This is true.

Growing up, there was one section of my house that always filled me with an irrational dread. The back hallway to my house always constricted me. It felt like a skeletal hand slowly worked its way around my stomach and squeezed. In my head, I could see this skeletal hand, its long bony fingers almost sharp at the tips. At first, I wanted to say a cold skeletal hand, but the hand that wrapped itself around me was not cold, it was not warm either, it was too ethereal to be either. All it did was put this pressure on me and fill me with the urge to flee.

The back hall led into the garage. It was always a little bit darker than the rest of the house, even in the middle of the day and despite the light. I don’t know what made me fill with panic whenever I walked down this hall, but every single time I did, I felt the urge to run well up within me. Every time I walked down the hall, it took every ounce of strength not to run to the door.

Sometimes, I can see a skeleton, peeking and peering at me. It’s in the back of my head. It is a perfectly ordinary skeleton. There is nothing ominous about the skeleton itself; no rotting flesh, no glowing eyes. When I go back home that feeling is still there. The urge to run swells up when the skeleton reaches for me. It is still there and I know that is not a childhood fear put into me from a bad dream.

This is also true.

Sometimes in the shadows I see people who aren’t there. They are not detailed people mind you, more like shadows. It’s like seeing through television static and the form is there. Those forms don’t seem to do anything but watch.

Like the hallway in the back of my house, some of these forms fill me with an incomprehensible panic. Like the hallway, this feeling is neither hot nor cold and it doesn’t drain the blood from me. It just fills me with dread; a dark dread that settles over me as if it is a stalker watching me from the shadows.

Sometimes, I swear I hear the shadows say my name. The way I hear it is like I am waking from a dream to the call of someone I know trying to pull me out of sleep. An in between hearing, one that I’m always unsure is really there. The voice echoes in my head like a vivid memory of someone saying my name. Voices from the past that I can’t connect to a face, but voices I know I’ve heard before.

This is another bit of truth.

Sometimes I dream of things; ordinary things, completely and totally mundane things. Then I live them. Once it was the sight of a bread cart in the aisle of the grocery store, other times it is the act of staring out the window in my kitchen as a bug flitters past. Once it was driving to work, yet another the site of my cube and a conversation with someone. The occurrences are countless and trivial … not the point at all. The point is, they are there and they are there often.

When these things happen I am filled with a sense of déjà vu that I know is more than that because I remember the dream. The feeling settles in me and I feel the same way I feel when I walk down that hall in my old house. I feel like I am about to panic and scream and cry out to say something about it, but I never do. It’s like I can’t say anything about it as it is happening.

When these moments (or minutes) happen, it’s like I suddenly jump outside of myself and become swept away on a current. Like I am acting but it is not me doing the things I do. My head floats away from me. I see things through my own eyes, but I feel very far away from myself. I know I must glaze over slightly when people are talking to me, but no one has ever said anything.

These are all little truths that make me feel like I am crazy. These are little truths that no one should ever believe. But, it is truth like this that makes lies and half-truth so much easier to swallow.

Posted by Utopia at November 23, 2006 04:54 PM

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Posted by: Andrea at November 25, 2006 10:48 PM

Posted by: Whisper at November 26, 2006 11:18 PM

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