Don’t Let It Know That You’re Awake

Download>>

From the start, Lindsey didn’t like the house. It was a nice, ranch-style home, and far nicer than where her family moved from, but there was something sinister in its geometry that seemed to want to swallow her whole. But her family was together, and the future seemed bright for the first time in a long time. Besides, home was home no matter where it was.

She picked out the bedroom in the far corner of the house, and spent her first day there unpacking and watching the cars and kids on bikes passing outside her window. What kind of people lived in the neighborhood, she wondered? What sort of life would her family have here?
She was a year from graduating from college, the first in her family to make it that far, and as that day inched ever closer she felt more and more disconnected from her blue collar roots. While her cousins and neighbors were dabbling in the leavings of the Summer of Love some ten years prior, she had set herself to her books and studies. She was determined to rise above her station; she would not be barefoot and pregnant and cordoned off from the world at large. Her kids were going to be well-bred, and she was going to rise above.  
By the time Mama called for dinner that first night, Lindsey had forgotten all about how she didn’t like the house; and now that she looked at her things set in their new places around her room, she thought that she could really be happy here. That first day had been a pleasant one, and her family sat down to a dinner of fried chicken and corn bread–Mama’s speciality–and they all basked in the warm thankfulness for new beginnings and a bright road ahead.
After dinner, Lindsey went to work the evening shift at McDonalds and met with some friends to talk about the foreign study trip coming up in the fall. By the time she got home, the sun had gone down. If the house was merely sinister by day, by night it was downright monstrous. The porch light and lit windows gave it the look of a furnace, as if crossing the threshold was to step straight into the fires of Hell. And there was still the shape of it—something ever-so slightly off-kilter. Maybe a misconceived angle or uneven foundation; whatever it was inspired disquiet. But, home was home, so she went inside.
Mama and Daddy had waited up for her, and even though she wanted to stay with them a while, she had class at 8, so she kissed them goodnight and went to her room to get some sleep.
She stared at the ceiling for a long time. Sleep never comes easy in a new place; every sound is strange and alien, setting you to wonder if maybe there wasn’t more space around you than the walls seemed to contain. Every passing car yields its own ineffable vibration, its headlights throwing grotesque shadows across the walls making you see things that are just not there. And then, no matter how brave you are, every fear of yours and your ancestors comes creeping back in, reminding you of a long time ago when mountain cats prowled around you and you prayed to your god for safe passage to dawn. Then, all at once, sleep takes you.
Lindsey awoke in the still morning hours before the sun came up. Something was wrong. She felt for her lamp, but couldn’t find it. What was it that woke her up? Why did she feel so off? It hadn’t been a dream, she hadn’t slept soundly enough for that. Sound—that was it. There was no sound. No creaking house, no distant cars, not even the steady cadence of crickets interrupted the quiet. Then she saw it.
At the foot of her bed, looking down at her: it was tall and draped in tattered white robes. Stringy white hair stretched to the floor like cobwebs and obscured an unknowable face that was neither male nor female but altogether horrible. It didn’t move, it didn’t even breathe. It just stood there like some perverse mannequin, somehow lifeless but still looking. Somehow, she knew it was looking. It was looking at her, watching her through the inky black.
She pressed her eyes shut and held them so. “It’s not real.” She thought, hoped, and then prayed. She opened her eyes again. It was still there, and hadn’t it moved just a bit closer?
“Don’t let it know. Don’t let it see that you’re awake. Don’t let it see that you can see it. Don’t. Just don’t.”
She wanted to scream, but knew whatever hands it had would find her quickly if she did, and then it would be all over, that cobweb hair choking her life away as she finally saw that terrible face clearly. She clenched her teeth hard until they felt like breaking.
The thing lurched forward.
And then she had to scream.
Crickets. Sunlight.
Lindsey opened her eyes and saw, by the dawn’s first light, that she had passed the night. And, like all such fears, her’s were banished by the light of day.
It was a good day; Lindsey attended her classes, learning more about Europe and all that she would see come autumn. She worked her second job at the local mall, and spent time with her artist friends talking about deep things. It was a good day, but come nightfall, she had to return home.
The lurid glow of the house’s windows called back the previous night; and as she lay in bed listening to passing cars and the house’s groans, the fear crept up on her once more.
And then–
Silence.
Her eyes fluttered open, and she stared at the ceiling for a good long while not wanting to know if her nightmare had returned. A long time passed, and sleep wouldn’t come. “It was all just a dream. You’re being hysterical. Just look and see for yourself,” she thought.
That rang true, and despite the quiet, and the terror of the night before, Lindsey cracked a grin and peered at the foot of the bed, knowing that there was nothing there.
Except there was.
There it stood, just as before, deathly still, yet somehow looking.
“Don’t let it know that you’re awake. Don’t let it know.”

Life went on like this for the whole summer. Every day Lindsey would work her jobs, save her money, do her best in class, and dream of getting away to build her life. By night the fear would return, and that thing would keep a steady, silent watch over her.
“Don’t let it know that you’re awake.”

Then, September came, and Lindsey left with her class for foreign study in Europe. For three long, wonderful months she toured the continent, making new friends, and even finding the man she would one day marry. She was on her own and making her way. Her hometown and everything about it were a million miles away. And not once, in all of that time, did she dream about the thing in white. That, too, had lapsed into distant memory.

Lindsey cried for the whole trip home from the airport.

After all that had happened, she was going back to her small hometown. She was going back to her three jobs, back to class in a pre-fab lecture hall, back to going nowhere and longing for escape. She wanted to tell her family about the trip, but knew deep down that they just wouldn’t understand.
She fell asleep that night dreaming of Venice. The sights, the smells, the sounds—what sounds?
Her eyes snapped open. Life in a foreign city had never been this quiet. Not even her nights in the Celtic country far from the city centers were this quiet.
Was home always this quiet?
It didn’t take her long to remember, and despite her better judgment, she looked to the foot of her bed. The thing in white was watching her as if no time had passed.

“Don’t let it know that you’re awake.”

Lindsey was there another year and a half before graduation and a new job lifted her from the nest to set her flying for Atlanta and the future that she had always wanted. Once in Atlanta, the dreams all ended. She never again saw the thing in white. It was just another funny story from her past.

    Many years later, when she had a family of her own, Lindsey received a phone call from an old friend from those days. They met and talked and laughed about their childhood and how far they had come.
    “I always wanted to get out of that town,” Lindsey confessed, “it was closing in all around me, and I’ve never looked back. That whole year leading up to graduation I had this horrible nightmare about this thing dressed in white standing at the foot of my bed just staring at me.”

    Her friend was stolid.

    “You were living in that house on Gardenia Drive around then, weren’t you?”
    She didn’t answer.

    “You know we lived in that house too, right? A few years before you did. I always hated how that house looked, like something about it wanted to grab you and eat you alive. All my friends thought the place was haunted, but I never saw anything. My sister though, she had the back bedroom in the far corner of house. Every night that we lived there, she said she woke up to see a tall white something that wasn’t a man or a woman with long, spidery hair, standing totally still at the foot of her bed. Somehow though, she knew that it was watching her.”
    “And she kept telling herself: ‘Don’t let it know that you’re awake.’”