Night Terrors

I woke up every day at 4:23 am for years from the same dream. I can still see the red light of the LED clock on my night table: 4:23 am. That fact scared me almost as much as the dream. Why 4:23 am? Every. Single. Morning.

It was the only recurring dream I had (and I had many) where I did not find myself completely alone and lost, falling, drowning, or trying to escape a fire. None of those terrified me as much as my 4:23 am dream. In the dream, it was night and the full moon cast a shimmering light through the curtained windows. I was in my living room kneeling on the floor. Sitting in a chair that did not exist in reality, was a vampire with black hair; a black cape that was evident only by how it tied at his neck and flared behind him in the chair; a long pale face with eyes that shone like a moonless, starry night; and, thin red lips. The skin of his face and hands was translucent, like powdery white porcelain. I was at his feet which were sheathed in shiny black shoes. His hands were relaxed, curving at the end of the plush arms of the chair, showing long, sharp black nails that could have easily reached out and touched my cheek.

Having some knowledge of how to fight them off – what ten-year-old doesn’t? – I would cross my fingers like a crucifix to ward off the evil that emanated from him.

And every night, he would laugh without moving his lips, the deep, humorless laughter resounding in my head, echoing in the room, and say: Do you really think that will stop me?

And then I would wake up.

Some 13 years later, unaware of my childhood nightly terror, my fiancé (who is now my husband) thought he would tease me one night in order to make me laugh. As we sat in his tiny room lit by the street lamp outside the single window above our heads, he told me in all seriousness while grinning fiendishly that he was a vampire. My eyes grew wide; cold fear tickled my spine as I leapt away from him convinced that his perfectly normal incisors looked extra sharp and that his eyes seemed to shine black like onyx in the dim light.

It took him hours to persuade me that he was only kidding.