Trembling With Fear 05/22/2022

The Sandman by Jesse Martinez-Kratz

Lucas felt his heart stutter and restart as he awoke from his nightmare. He seemed to emerge feet first, with his muscles tense and his head swimming as it broke the surface of consciousness. The details of the dream were already blurring together, leaving only a faint sense of terror. His breathing was hard, his lungs gulping air as if he were going to scream. But he wouldn’t allow himself to. Just a bad dream, he thought. He attempted to calm himself, but his heart still pounded. Part of him wanted to throw off the covers, to flee barefoot across wooden floorboards and into the hallway, and then into his parents’ bed. He sat up, alert and ready to move before stopping himself. I’m older now, I can’t be scared, he thought, making himself slow his long gasps. He was twelve years old, long past the age of needing his mother’s love and his father’s protection, practically a tween and on his way to a driver’s license. If he was ever going to grow up, he thought, he needed to stop being a crybaby. 

But something didn’t feel right. 

There was a sense of dread that bled in from the nightmare, darkness that hung on the edges of the moonlight. He felt watched. This was an irrational realization, yet the sudden truth of the thought terrified Lucas. Something is here. He was more awake now, aware of how hot and moist his skin felt, trapped in his Detroit Pistons pajamas. His small hands wrapped in knots around the edge of his blanket as he strained to look around into the night. 

The room was perfectly still. 

This did little to ease his mind, and he couldn’t figure out why. His twin bed was positioned in the corner of the room, feet facing the closet, and diagonally across from the hallway door. A glint of moonlight came in from his window, next to his bed. This door was cracked open, as he always left it before bed, and looking at it, he realized what was wrong. Someone turned off the hallway light. Instead of the reassuring crack of golden light, his north star to the bathroom and over the Legos strewn across the floor, Lucas saw only darkness beyond the door, a grey-black void. He thought his mother must have turned off the light, he was twelve after all, but its absence still left him unsettled. He decided he wasn’t too old for parents’ bed after all. But as Lucas waited for his eyes to adjust to the limited moonlight, steeling himself to make a break for it through that unknown, the closet started to open. 

His eyes locked on the simple, silent motion of the door, then onto the space beyond it. The faint silver light of the moon filled it slowly, but not completely. A formless darkness resided between hanging shirts and bins of toys. 

As if it noticed his stare, the door flew open the rest of the way in a sudden swing, smacking the wall with a loud THUD, baring its gaping mouth open to him. Lucas panicked, clutching his eyes with his hands briefly before remembering the blanket. He pulled it taut over his head, like a second skin, while he blinked back fearful tears. His crotch was wet. I wet the bed, he realized, I effing wet the bed. He started to cry softly under the blanket, too scared to call out and too scared to leave the safety of his bed. Blood rushed to his head, and he felt his heartbeat in his teeth. He was still terrified when he heard his mother’s voice down the hall. 

“Lucas? What was that noise?” 

He was momentarily relieved, peaking slowly out from his cover to see the golden light creeping back in from the hallway. As he sat in his bed, ready to be received by the arms of his mother, something wet dripped onto his head. He looked up. He saw a figure suspended on the ceiling. Its body was wrapped in a decaying, brown-black robe with purple mold edging holes in the garment. It was torn around the chest, showing deep, wet cuts into dead, grey skin. In the place of a face was an old gas mask, one lens broken with a raisin-like black eye starring down, the other black lens reflecting the pale terror of the boy. Blood dripped from the elongated nose of the mask. 

In a light, raking voice it said, GiVE Me YOUr EyeS, as the bedroom door slammed shut and the light died. Lucas screamed as the Sandman descended on him…

Lucas felt his heart stutter and restart as he awoke from his nightmare. He seemed to emerge feet first, with his muscle tense and his head swimming as it broke the surface of consciousness. The details of the dream were already blurring together, leaving only a faint sense of terror.