The View From Above

It was a sweltering Tuesday in late July when I woke from a fitful nap, the kind that leaves you heavy-limbed and uncertain of the hour. I was sprawled on the threadbare sofa in my aunt Helena’s farmhouse, the one she’d inherited from her grandmother and filled with relics of a century past. The house sat alone at the end of a gravel road, surrounded by dried cornfields that rustled like whispers in the evening wind. My aunt was in the kitchen, clattering pots and humming to herself, and the only other sound was the low murmur of a television in the den, where my cousin Marcus was watching some nature documentary about crabs.

I opened my eyes—or rather, I became aware of seeing. My body felt leaden, as if the nap had pinned me to the cushions, but that wasn’t the strangest part. The strangest part was that I was looking down at myself. There I was, curled up on the sofa, my chest rising and falling with slow breaths, my mouth slightly open. And yet, I was also floating near the ceiling, near the wooden beam that ran the length of the room, my vision tilting slightly as if I were a bird perched on a rafter. I could see the dust motes dancing in the late afternoon sunlight that slanted through the window, and I could see the clock on the mantel: 6:12 PM.

At first, I thought it was a dream, a waking nightmare from too much heat and too little water. But everything felt too real. The smells, for instance: the scent of old wood and lavender sachets, the faint tang of burnt toast from the kitchen. I could hear my aunt humming a melody I recognized from my childhood, and the crinkle of a bag of chips from the den. I tried to move my hand, the one that was still attached to my physical body, and I saw it twitch. But I also felt a strange detachment, as if my hand were a puppet’s and I was the puppeteer above.

I was not scared. I was fascinated. I remember thinking, ‘This is like astral projection, like in that movie we watched last week.’ And so I decided to test it. I focused on the ceiling, and I drifted a little higher, until I could see the top of the grandfather clock, where a small spider had spun its web. I could see the dust on the blades of the ceiling fan, which was slowly rotating, stirring the warm air. I could even see the faint outline of a water stain on the ceiling, shaped like a map of a country I didn’t recognize.

I heard my aunt call out, ‘Dinner in ten minutes, love!’ and I saw my physical self on the couch stir, but not wake. I wondered if I could wake myself up, or if I was trapped. So I tried to descend, and I felt myself sinking, like a feather falling, until I was back in my body. I snapped upright, gasping slightly, my heart pounding. The clock read 6:14. I had been ‘out’ for two minutes.

My aunt came in, wiping her hands on her apron. ‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost,’ she said, laughing. ‘Did you have a bad dream?’

I shook my head. ‘No, I think I was awake. But I could see myself from the ceiling. It was amazing.’

She raised an eyebrow but said nothing, just went to set the table. I didn’t tell her more, because I wasn’t sure what to say. But that evening, lying in bed, I felt an odd tingling in my scalp, as if something were brushing against my hair. And I had the strange feeling that I was not alone.

The next day, I tried to do it again. I lay on the same sofa, at the same time, hoping to reproduce the experience. I closed my eyes and tried to imagine rising, but nothing happened. I felt only the ordinary weight of my body on the cushions. I almost gave up, but then, just as I was about to get up, I heard a voice—not my aunt’s, not Marcus’s, but a whisper that came from everywhere and nowhere. It said, ‘You saw me, didn’t you?’

I froze. The room felt cold. I looked around, but there was no one. The voice came again, softer, almost like a breath. ‘You saw me. Now I can see you.’

That’s when I noticed something on the ceiling, right above the sofa. It was a small, dark smudge, like a shadow, but it seemed to move, to pulse, to be watching me. And in that moment, I realized with a sickening clarity that what I had seen the day before was not a trick of the mind. I had been sharing my vision with something that lived in the space between the beams, something that had been watching me for a long time, and my moment of detachment had given it a foothold.

I never told my aunt or Marcus. I started sleeping with the lights on, and I avoided the den. But every night, I could feel the smudge on the ceiling, like a stain on my consciousness. And when I moved away from that farmhouse, a year later, I thought I was free. But sometimes, in the quiet hours, I’ll catch a glimpse of a dark shape in my peripheral vision, and I’ll remember what it’s like to float up there, looking down at the world, and wonder if something is looking back, waiting for me to rise again.