Dreaming of Fear

I will have trouble falling asleep tonight. I know this, and, yet, I can not stop myself from thinking these things. It is terrifying to recall that sense of dread, of anxiety; of raw fear. To know that when I fall asleep tonight might be the night I have to feel those things all over again, and it makes me sick to my stomach. The only comfort I have is to know that at least one other person has experienced these things and she agrees it is fear. True. Raw. Fear. Strange that that should be a comfort.
It all began twelve years ago. My family and I had just moved into our new house in the country on our cattle ranch. The house was the finished product of two long years of hard work and planning of my parents dream house, but to me and my brother it was the beginning of new adventures and the end of moving. At the end of the five miles of dirt road lays our beautiful home and our property and nothing else, for that is where the road ends. It is a two story light brick house with dark green shingles, six huge white columns on the front porch, and three windows looking out the front of the house on the second story. The window on the right was to be my room, the middle one was the bathroom and the left my brothers. When we moved in the upstairs still needed to have its walls painted and the carpet put down, so until that had been done my brother and I slept in our red bunk bed in the playroom above the garage.
I still remember the day my room was finished. We had just gotten off the bus from school and my mother was waiting with the front door open for us as she always was with her always brilliant smile. When I got inside she and my dad told me they had a surprise for me and took me upstairs. When I opened my bedroom door I found my four poster bed fully assembled and made with my brand new comforter set my mother had bought just for my new room, my room. For the first time in my life I had my own room. No longer would I be sleeping in the same room with my brother and two cousins, I finally had a place all to myself. It was only a short while after that day, maybe three or four months, before I had the dream the first time that would make me hate my room at night.
I have had this dream that makes goosebumps creep up my arms and legs many times since moving in. Maybe sleeping in a room all by my self for the first time in my life is what brought the dream on. Up until the day we moved in I had always been accustomed to someone else being in my room. Whether it was just my brother or my brother and two cousins I had never been alone at night. You see my father is a twin and he and his twin married sisters, so I have grown up very close to my cousins. Before we moved into our new houses, for my dads twin also built a house just down the road form ours, we all lived in a three bedroom two bath house until the houses where done. Forcing my brother, cousins, and I all to slept in a room together on bunk beds but we didn’t mind. To this day I am still not sure what the dream was supposed to mean. If there was supposed to be some hidden meaning to it I may never know.
Even though I have never had this dream outside our house I am reluctant to think about it much less type it down now in my apartment for the fear that I may dream it tonight. Call me a stupid girl or whatever else you like but unless you have ever had a dream like the one I am about to attempt to describe you can never appreciate how terrifying this dream is. I am not sure I will be able to do it justice for the fear it evokes in me so you probably will call me a stupid girl if I fail.
It always starts out the same way. I am walking up the stairs to my room and as I reach the landing of the second floor I turn to the left and face the short six foot walk to my room. The first thing I notice is that there is another door that is not there in real life. It is to the left of my bedroom door about eight feet roughly. Now the first time I had this dream this did not seem odd or send the tide of dread over me the way it would the next time and the times after that when I would dream this. As I reach my bedroom door it is dark inside my room. I reach to my right to switch the flip on the wall but when I do nothing happens. It is then that I put two and two together and realize that I have yet again forgot to pull the cord on my ceiling fan, because at night I used to turn the light of from the safety of my bed by pulling on the cord and I sometimes forgot to pull it again when I woke up. So in my dream I walk in and I notice that the storage room door is open but I still keep going to pull the cord and when I do the light still does not come on. It is at this point in my dream when I realize I am not alone, but by the time I realize it is to late, it has me. The door is slammed and I am trapped. I feel it watching me. I can only describe it as pure evil I don’t know how else to explain it. I run back to the door and twist and turn on the knob but nothing happens. I start beating on it franticly and scream for my mother and father to come save me before it gets me. But to late, I can feel it rite behind me and I know my parents will never make it, it is to late, it has got what it came for, it has me. That was when I woke up crying alone in my room in the dark. I remember being terrified that it was still in the room but was to afraid to move for fear it might notice I was there. Eventually I got up enough courage to bolt out of bed and across the landing to my brothers’ room where I curled up in a little ball at the head of his bed.
After having the dream so many times I have realized the significance of that second door. That second door is where the evil thing comes from but it does not come out that door and into my room, it comes through the little door that is in my storage room that goes to the attic. I have a storage room attached to my room and to this day if it is left open I have a little panic attack and the feeling of dread washes over me.
I always know when I am about to have that dream though by the time I see that second door and no matter how hard I try to wake up I have never been able to. That wave of dread immediately washes over me when I see that second door because I know that pure evil is waiting for me. I have even tried to convince my self it isn’t going to be that dream, but sure enough when I go to flick the switch nothing happens and I know I was wrong. When I got a little older the dream changed up a bit almost like it knew I had gotten used to the signs of it being that dream and changed so it could terrify me in a whole new way. The dream changed but was still the same in the sense that pure evil was still waiting for me in my room and it only wanted me and no one else. When I walk up the stairs in this dream the door is gone but still by the time I am standing on the landing and facing the door I know it is in there. I run back down the stairs to tell my parents something is in my room but of course they don’t believe me. That is about the point I would wake up when it changed to that form of the dream. Other times I had made it all the way to my bedroom door and flicked the switch before I realized it was that dream. It changed again when I was about sixteen. The dream would start out to where I was already in bed and would wake to find that storage room door open. It is hard to describe the feeling that comes over me, it is just fear.
For a couple weeks after having that dream I would be terrified to go to my room at bed time. I would wait for my mother to walk in there first and turn on the light before getting close. After a couple of weeks I would forget about the dream and would be able to go into my room before my mother did, but not long after I would have it again. I remember the first time I thought the dream had finally came true. I got to my door and flicked the switch and nothing happened. This had happened before because like I said I sometime forgot to pull the cord. So after calming back down and convincing myself “you just forgot to pull the cord” I stepped into my room and pulled the cord. Nothing happened. The sanctuary that was the light did not occur. I bolted like a cat thrown in water because I knew that that dream had finally come true and that my door was about slam shut. It never did and after running to my mother and telling her all about it she went upstairs to check it out. It turned out that the bulbs had just burned out.
It has been about three years since the last time I dreamed it. The sight of the storage room door being open or if my light doesn’t come on when I pull the cord is enough to make me have a panic attack. Just recently I discovered that my aunt, my mothers sister, started having almost the identical dream, just change the layout of the house, shortly after moving in. She is not sure what the dream is supposed to mean either. And just like me the dreamed stopped about three years ago. I find that very odd, but unfortunately will never know what or why it started and stopped around the same time as m aunt. I wish I knew because that dream has impacted my life more than a dream ever should.