The Nightly Etchings

Ever since I turned sixteen, I’ve had this unshakable habit of sleeping like the dead. My mother jokes that a freight train could thunder through my bedroom and I’d slumber through it. But lately, something has been disturbing my rest, leaving its mark on me, quite literally. I wake each morning with fresh scratches and bruises that weren’t there when I closed my eyes. I live in a tiny apartment above my father’s antique shop, where the floorboards creak with the weight of old furniture and the walls are lined with mirrors that have seen too many years. My bed is a simple iron frame, pushed against the far wall, not in the center like some people prefer. I’ve never been one to toss and turn, so the idea that I’m causing these marks in my sleep is out of the question.

It started a week ago, on a Sunday. I remember because I had to wear a long-sleeved shirt to church to hide the angry red lines that ran from my elbow to my wrist. My father noticed and asked if I’d been wrestling with the cats that sometimes sneak into the alley behind the shop. But I don’t let any animals near me; their fur makes my skin itch and my eyes water. The bruises on my thighs were a deeper purple, like someone had gripped me with force, and they ached when I pressed on them. I tried to dismiss it as a clumsy fall, but I knew better.

That night, I decided to do an experiment. I wore a pair of thin cotton gloves to bed and tucked the sheets tightly around me, making it impossible for me to scratch myself. I also placed a camera on my nightstand, its red light blinking in the dark, ready to capture whatever happened. I fell asleep quickly, as usual, and woke hours later to the sound of my own heartbeat pounding in my ears. The room was cold, colder than it should have been, and the air smelled faintly of dust and something metallic. My gloves were on, but when I looked at my arms, there were fresh scratches, as if someone had drawn them with a needle. The camera’s battery was dead, and the memory card was corrupted, showing only static when I tried to play it back.

The second night, I hid a voice recorder under my pillow. When I woke, the scratches were deeper, and the recorder had captured a low, rhythmic scraping sound, like nails on a chalkboard, but slower, more deliberate. It went on for nearly an hour, starting at 2:17 AM and ending at 3:03 AM, right when I usually stir. The sound seemed to be coming from inside my room, perhaps from the direction of the old armoire that sits against the opposite wall. I’ve never opened that armoire; it’s been locked for years, and my father said it’s full of ‘junk’ he’s been meaning to sort through.

On the third morning, I woke to find the scratches had formed a pattern: three parallel lines on my left forearm and a circular bruise on my inner thigh, almost like a bite mark. I showed my father, and he frowned, saying they looked like ‘something out of a folk tale.’ He mentioned that the shop has been in our family for generations and that the previous owner, my great-grandfather, had a peculiar habit of carving symbols into the furniture to ‘ward off bad dreams.’ I asked what kind of symbols, but my father just shrugged and said he didn’t remember.

Determined to get to the bottom of this, I decided to stay awake one night. I drank strong coffee and propped my eyes open with toothpicks, but by 2 AM, my eyelids were heavy. I fought it, pinching myself, but eventually, I must have dozed off. I woke with a jolt at 3:15 AM, and the room was pitch black. The moonlight that usually filtered through my thin curtains was absent, as if something had blocked the window. I felt a presence, a weight in the air, and then a cold hand pressed against my thigh. I tried to scream, but my voice was gone. The hand was rough, calloused, and it dug into my skin with surprising strength. I managed to reach over and fumble for my lamp, and when the light flooded the room, there was nothing there. But I saw, on my thigh, a fresh, livid bruise forming in the exact shape of a handprint.

Panicked, I called my father. He came in, bleary-eyed, and I told him everything. He listened quietly, his face growing pale. Then, without a word, he went to the armoire and produced an old, tarnished key from his pocket. He unlocked the doors, and inside, among dusty boxes and moth-eaten clothes, was a leather-bound journal. It was my great-grandfather’s, and it contained detailed instructions for something called ‘the nightly etchings.’ It described a ritual where a person would voluntarily let the ‘night carver’ mark them, believing it would protect the family’s fortune. The carver was a spirit that only appeared during deep sleep, and the marks were its signature. But the journal also warned that if the marks went ignored, the carver would become more aggressive, eventually taking more than just skin.

I stared at the journal, then at my bruises, and then at my father. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ I asked. He shook his head. ‘I thought it was a family myth, a way to scare children. I never believed it until now.’ He pointed to a passage: ‘If the carver’s marks are met with fear, it will feed on that fear, growing stronger. The only way to appease it is to invite it, to welcome the etching as a blessing.’ I laughed, a bitter laugh that echoed in the quiet room. ‘Welcome this? You want me to let this thing keep hurting me?’ My father looked at me with desperate eyes. ‘We have to try. It’s been in our family for a century. It’s why the shop has thrived.’