The Inverted Lullaby

My name is Cole, and I’m thirteen, though I’ll be fourteen in a month. I play bass in a band called ‘Golgotha’s Anthem’—we’re a Christian death metal outfit, which confuses most people, but it’s our way of wrestling with the dark. This story is about something that happened to me two years ago, back when I was eleven and my imagination had teeth.

I’d fallen asleep with the lights on, which I did a lot back then. My room was a mess of posters and tangled wires, but the light from the ceiling fixture cast a sickly yellow glow that made everything look jaundiced. I was deep in a dream that felt more like a loop—a scratched record skipping over the same image. In it, my bedroom was the same, but the light was different: dim, sourceless, as if the air itself was glowing faintly. And from the wall above my headboard, a shape emerged. Not a shadow exactly, but a presence—a black, formless head with no features, just a void that seemed to drink the light around it. It would push through the plaster like water, gaze at me (if it could gaze), then retract. Then it would happen again. And again.

I woke with a gasp, my heart hammering against my ribs like a caged bird. The room was dark—the light was off, though I was sure I’d left it on. I was face-down on the mattress, my cheek pressed into the pillow, the sheets tangled around my legs. I tried to move, to turn over, but my body was a stone. And then I heard it: a low, droning hum, like an ancient vacuum cleaner revving up somewhere outside my window. But it wasn’t outside. It was in the room.

The sound grew louder, and a wind began to blow from directly above me. It wasn’t a natural breeze; it was focused, like a column of air pressing down. I felt my shirt lift, the fabric tickling my back as it fluttered. I was paralyzed, unable to even twitch. The wind continued for what felt like an eternity, and then it stopped as abruptly as it had started. My body released, and I could move again. I scrambled to my feet, my back itching where the shirt had been lifted. I clawed at it, feeling raised welts—like scratches.

I didn’t sleep the rest of the night. I stayed in the living room with all the lights on, the TV blaring. My parents found me there in the morning, huddled on the couch, and they just thought I’d had a nightmare. I didn’t tell them the details. I didn’t tell anyone, not even my bandmates, for months.

But the scratches didn’t fade. They stayed, angry red lines across my shoulder blades, as if something had raked its nails there. And the dreams—they didn’t stop either. Every night, the same wall, the same void-head, the same silent watch. Sometimes I’d wake up with a new set of scratches, longer than before. I started wearing hoodies even in summer, hiding them.

One night, I decided to fight back. I was older by then, twelve and a half, and I’d been reading about spiritual warfare in my Bible. I placed a cross on my nightstand, a silver one my grandmother had given me. I said a prayer, and I fell asleep with the lights on.

The dream came again, but this time I was different. I wasn’t just a passive observer—I was standing in my dream-bedroom, facing the wall. The void-head began to emerge, but I didn’t run. I took a step forward. ‘In the name of Jesus, leave me,’ I said. The head paused, and for a moment, I thought it would retreat. But instead, it tilted, as if considering me. Then it spoke. Not in words, but in a sensation—a sound that was almost a voice, like a choir buried alive.

It said: ‘You invited me.’

I woke screaming. The cross on my nightstand was gone. In its place was a single black feather, not from any bird I’d ever seen. And on my back, fresh scratches, but this time they formed a pattern—a spiral, like something trying to bore into me.

I called my bandmates, even though it was three in the morning. They came over, their parents worried but trusting. We prayed over my room, and as we did, the lights flickered. One of them, Jordan, our drummer, claimed he saw a shape in the corner of my room—a tall figure with no face. We anointed the doorposts with oil and read Psalm 91 aloud. The presence seemed to lift, but I didn’t feel safe.

Since then, I’ve kept the lights on. I’ve slept in the living room. But I know it’s still there. I see it in my periphery when I pass mirrors. I hear its vacuum-breath when I’m alone. And the scratches—they’re still on my back, but they’ve changed. They form a sentence now, in a cursive that looks like it’s been burned into my skin: ‘I am the space between.’

I don’t know what that means. But I know it’s not done with me. It wants something. And I’m afraid I’m going to give it to him.