The Clockwork of Half-Awake

I’ve had sleep paralysis since I was twelve. It started in a cramped attic room in a creaking old house in Bellingham, where the walls were the color of dried blood and the floorboards moaned with every step. My bed sat angled so I could see the hallway door and a sliver of my brother’s room beyond. The first episode lasted ninety seconds. I was pinned, face turned toward a plastic alarm clock that ticked too loud. My heart pounded, and I thought I was dying. When it broke, I flew across the hall into my parents’ room, gasping. After a few more, a doctor said it was sleep paralysis. ‘Harmless,’ he said, ‘just a glitch in your brain.’ I believed him. Then I turned twenty-two.

I lived in a ground-floor apartment carved into the back of a split-level house in the outskirts of Eugene. My cat, Mocha, a thirteen-year-old tabby, slept curled against my side. The room was small, but I had a screen door that opened onto a narrow patio overgrown with ivy. That night, I lay on my back, facing the screen door. A sliver of moonlight fell through it, illuminating the dust floating in the air. I was counting the holes in the mesh to drift off when the familiar weight came.

First, my limbs turned to stone. Then my chest. I couldn’t even lift my pinky. I tried to cry out, but my throat was glued shut. My eyes, however, could still move. And they were locked on the screen door. That’s when I saw the outline of a hand press against the mesh from outside. It was thin, with long fingers, and it slid along the screen as if tracing the diamond pattern. I thought, ‘Just a hallucination. Just my brain.’ But then the hand pulled away, and a face appeared.

It wasn’t a human face. It was pale, featureless except for two dark holes where eyes should be, and a gaping mouth that stretched too wide. It pressed its face against the screen, and I felt the cold draft of its breath wash over me. The cat didn’t stir. The room smelled of wet earth and rot. I tried to blink, to break the spell, but my eyes wouldn’t close. The thing began to whisper, though I couldn’t make out the words. It sounded like paper ripping, like old leaves crumbling.

Then it did something impossible. It reached through the screen. The metal mesh didn’t break; it just parted like water. The hand came through, then an arm, then the rest of its thin, elongated body. It crawled over the threshold and stood at the foot of my bed. It was tall, taller than any human, and it swayed like a reed. I could hear the floorboards creak under its weight, even though I knew I was paralyzed. It leaned over me, and its face hovered inches from mine. The eye holes were empty, but I felt something staring into me, rooting through my memories.

It opened its mouth, and instead of a scream, a sound came out that wasn’t sound at all. It was a hum, a low vibration that made my teeth ache. The room began to warp—the walls bowed inward, the ceiling stretched like taffy. My cat suddenly yowled and bolted off the bed, vanishing through the screen door as if the mesh didn’t exist for her either. And for the first time in my life, I managed to move—but not voluntarily. My body lifted off the mattress, rigid, as if I were a puppet and the thing held my strings.

I floated toward it, and it opened its gaping mouth wider, wider than any jaw should. I saw a spiral of teeth inside—not rows, but a vortex. I tried to scream, but all that came out was a single high-pitched note. The thing replied in the same note, and then it began to hum a lullaby I recognized from childhood—the one my mother used to sing. But the melody was wrong, twisted, as if played on a broken music box.

Then, as suddenly as it began, I dropped back onto the bed. The paralysis broke. I lay gasping, drenched in sweat. The room was normal. The screen door was intact. Mocha was beside me, grooming her paw, as if nothing had happened. I checked the clock: three minutes had passed. I sat up, trembling, and looked at the door. There, pressed into the dust on the inside frame, was a single handprint—smaller than mine, with all five fingers and a thumb, but the palm was smooth, without lines.

I didn’t sleep that night. The next morning, I called my doctor, but he said it was just a vivid episode. I tried to believe him. But every night since, I’ve felt that hum in my bones. And sometimes, when I’m fully awake, I catch Mocha staring at the screen door, her pupils blown wide, as if she can still see it. I’ve started to notice that the pattern of the mesh has changed slightly—the diamonds are just a little more stretched in one spot, as if something has pulled them. And last night, I found a single dead moth on my pillow, its wings arranged in a spiral. I don’t know what it wants. But I know it’s not done with me. The clock on my nightstand now ticks in a rhythm that matches my heartbeat, and I can’t stop listening. I think that’s how it gets in—through the spaces between seconds, through the patience of a mind that refuses to sleep. And I’m terrified of the night when I finally fall asleep and it’s there, waiting in the half-awake dark.