The face appeared again.

                  An old man, white like death, a hazy glow around his head. Only his head. Hovering at the foot of my bed at first, then slowly, slowly floating towards me, raising up over my head and looming over me. His eyes are greyed, like how in movies a dead body that’s been dead for a while loses its iris and pupil color. They cease to look…human. It has a solemn look, maybe even concerned. I get the distinct feeling of fear and that it’s going to harm me, but I never get to the point where it physically harms me. I just feel like it wants to hurt me. It moves too purposefully, yet too slowly, but with an intention. What that intention is, I get the distinct feeling is malicious, a deep threat to me, but it never does anything to tell me one way or another. But I always wake up before anything else happens.

                  But am I really sleeping? It feels too real…

It comes to me in the night, as (I think) I’m deeply sleeping, completely disconnected from reality. In another world, completely disconnected from this one, the face appears and seems to bridge this world and whatever dreamworld I’m in. I mean, it appears in my dream, I seem to wake up, and the face is still there, lingering, maybe as an image burned behind my eyes rather than a real, physical entity. Right? Right. It’s just an optical illusion. Unserious enough to seek medical help, still, haunting me inconsistently in the night to the point I anticipate its appearance but not often enough or with enough pattern to have any recourse. Not that there’s no pattern at all. So far, I have noticed some small happenings that tend to be precursors for its appearance…but again, they’re so insignificant, that I can’t seem to recreate (or avoid) them with much success. Still, there are patterns…

Pattern One is my anxiety. I know, I know. Who isn’t experiencing some type of anxious reaction to the world around us lately? But it’s a different feeling for me. Like an existential dread that’s deep in my chest, making it difficult to breathe. Difficult to convince myself to breathe. As though I could just tell myself to stop, and my lungs would just…let go. As if I’m forcing myself to keep breathing, rather than it being a natural part of my reptilian brain. It’s in the quiet moments of the night, right as I’m starting to doze off that this feeling starts up. It’s not full-blown panic attacks, but simply an awareness. It’s in this awareness that the face seems to form. I feel it when I see the face. It feels most powerful the stronger that feeling of “let go” tugs at my brain.

Yet, it doesn’t come on when I’ve had full-blown panic attacks, so is it that simple?

There’s something there, but I can’t pinpoint what the exact line is that crosses a panic reaction and something deeper, darker, more sinister.

Another pattern, Pattern Two, is the type of night. It’s a darker night than normal, a more dangerous feeling night. Sometimes there are nights that seem alive. Bugs outside you can hear, the moon glinting, seeming to make objects glow; a liveliness that only belongs to the night. But this isn’t that. These nights aren’t made for humans…maybe even of this world. There’s a silence. A nothingness. A stillness that seems apropos of nothing to do with calm, balance, satisfaction, or other normal forms of nocturnal stasis. It feels, as simply as possible…off. There is no other way to put it. The night is darker than dark. The sounds are muffled and feel distant like after a heavy snow. That dangerous feeling, as though something is lurking right behind you, but because your senses aren’t finding their footing, it could overtake you at any moment and you’d never be able to stop it. That type of night seems to be when the face appears most.

Does it only appear during those nights?

Actually, yes, although, some nights The Still Night starts earlier than usual, while others it’s only as the face looms nearer that my attention tries to run away to something safe and finds that even the night holds no comfort for me. Even with these patterns, the experience is not controllable.

It might put me at ease if I knew the face. Is it a complete stranger? Or someone I’ve seen in passing? Is it someone I should know but can’t recall? Why has this face become one I dread seeing, and can’t escape, but must know more about? If I knew who it was, it might let me write off seeing it as some sort of dream-state mumbo jumbo. It might let me ignore it enough to let it slip away from my mind rather than seeing it more and more often, effectively burning it into my brain while seeing it more often forcing me to memorize it. I’ve tried everything at this point. I’ve been leaving my bedroom lights on when I sleep, even going so far as to leave all the lights in my house on at night, but the face still finds me. I’ve tried sleeping during the day, using sleeping pills for a deeper sleep, even resorting to using other substances to try to get away from it. But there’s no use. Lately, I’ve resorted to staying awake altogether.

During the day my mind is occupied with the face. I can’t seem to get away from it and it feels like it’s getting closer with every misstep I take trying to avoid it. It’s starting to get dangerous. I’ll see the face when I’m doing something mindless like washing the dishes. Suddenly it will show up and I’m mesmerized, trying to find something new about the face only to snap out of it and realize my hand has inched toward the garbage disposal.  When walking down the street, I’ll see it in front of me and will stop to try to find a hidden clue around the head (can I manifest the rest of the body somehow…?) only to find I’ve started to walk into the street trying to get closer to the car window I saw the face reflected in. There is no safety in staying away from the face and now there seems to be none in seeking it out either.

It’s been six weeks since the face first appeared. It’s coming more and more frequently now. Almost yelling at me, while saying nothing at all. No prophetic message, no threats or ill-will. Nothing but showing up as it always does, hovering, glowing, menacing. I’ve started to go for walks at night to try to keep my mind off it. It seems to help, at least until I go home and sleep. So, I walk. And walk. And walk with nowhere to go. Even when the darkness takes over as the lampposts stop on the occasional street. It feels safer than in my bed, in my own home, on my own street. There is no saving me, I’ve come to realize. My life will just be a series of running away from the face, leaving my normal life behind and making every decision about avoiding the glowing head that follows me. I may be right around the corner from accepting this fate, but I’m not there yet. I keep walking until it seems there’s no point in me walking anymore. The sun is starting to peak through the night. Might as well head back home and face it.

Sure enough, the face has found me not two blocks down from my house. It stops me cold as I see it hovering at the edge of the street I need to cross to. We stand and watch each other. It seems to just float rather than come toward me this time. I can’t help it…I must catch it. Breaking out into a sprint I dash across the street, but the face stays ahead of me and keeps the upper hand. Like in a dream where you’ve put your entire consciousness into running away, but when you look down at your feet and around your body, you aren’t going anywhere. Time feels like it’s slowed and I’m not going to catch up. It stays ahead and I stay behind. Maybe this is a good thing, I think, it’s always after me, now it’s time I go after it. One block down, and on my street across from my house I get a sudden feeling if I can just get it in front of my house, it’ll leave me alone. So, I run as fast as I can, starting to close the gap between us. Two houses down from mine it floats. I jump into the street to try to head it off and suddenly, the world starts to turn all around me.

 “Are you okay?!” a voice shouts from the ether. It rings in my ears as a concerned face appears to block the early morning sky. The man’s face turns to panic as he assesses my mangled body. “Somebody, call 911!” I can tell he was shouting, but his voice sounds far away. This realization fills me with dread as I study his face, and the lamppost lights flare then retract. The glow that illuminates his face starts to dim, the light receding from the outer borders of my vision. As the darkness, a dangerous darkness, a silence, a nothingness, a stillness that seems apropos of nothing to do with calm, balance, satisfaction, or other normal forms of nocturnal stasis fills my eyes and encloses his face. I know his face. It’s the face in the night.