The Weight That Presses at Dawn

I’ve been meaning to write this down for weeks, but between my shifts at the copper mine and the state of my nerves, I’ve barely had the strength to hold a pen. I’m not looking for sympathy, just a record. The sleep paralysis started when I was sixteen, back when we lived in the old farmhouse near the salt flats. It came maybe once a month then, always in the dead of night, and I’d wake pinned to my mattress with that familiar weight on my chest. I’d see the same thing every time: a tall, thin figure in the doorway, its head tilted too far to one side, and I’d hear a sound like dry leaves rustling, even though the windows were shut. I told myself it was just my brain misfiring, a trick of the half-sleep state. I got used to it, or as used to it as anyone can get.

But now that I’m twenty-three and working the night shift at the ore processing plant, it’s changed. It’s no longer a monthly visitor; it’s every other week, sometimes twice in a week. It happens in the early hours, but also at dawn, and even once at noon when I’d crashed after a long shift. The worst part is that it’s starting to bleed into my waking hours. I’ll be walking down the corridor at work, and I’ll catch a flicker of movement out of the corner of my eye, a dark shape that vanishes when I turn. The other day, I was in the break room, and I felt a cold breath on the back of my neck, but when I spun around, there was no one there. My supervisor, a guy named Callum, noticed I was jumpy. He just shook his head and said, ‘You’re pushing yourself too hard, Nat. You need to sleep regular hours or you’ll end up like old Jenkins.’ Jenkins was the guy who worked the conveyor before me. He had a breakdown last year. They found him sitting in the control booth, staring at the wall, muttering about ‘the weight’.

I tried to take his advice. I started going home, drawing the curtains, and forcing myself into bed by 8 p.m. But the more I tried to sleep, the more my body rebelled. The last episode, two days ago, was the worst. I’d finally dozed off around 6 a.m., and I woke at 10 a.m. with that familiar heavy pressure on my ribs, but this time it was different. I wasn’t in my room. I was in the hallway of my apartment, but the walls were covered with a weird, brown, fibrous substance, like dried roots or veins. The air was thick, and I could taste dust. There was a figure at the end of the hall, but it wasn’t the tall thin one. It was a man in a mining uniform, security hatchback, with a face that was blank, no eyes, no mouth, just a smooth skin. He was holding a lantern, and the light cast long, stretching shadows that moved on their own. He spoke, not with a voice, but with a vibration in the floor. ‘You’re not supposed to be here,’ it seemed to say. ‘You’re not supposed to see.’ Then the pressure increased, and I felt like I was being pushed into the floorboards, and I couldn’t breathe.

I woke up gasping, lying on my bedroom floor, the sheets tangled around my legs. My alarm clock showed 2 p.m. I’d been out for longer than I thought. When I went into the hall to get a glass of water, I saw it: the same brown, fibrous substance, but only a faint patch near the baseboard, about the size of a dinner plate. I touched it, and it was cold, damp, and slightly sticky. It felt like wet leather. I scrubbed at it until my hands were raw, but it wouldn’t come off completely. I went back to work that night, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was watching me from the shadows of the plant. The ore crusher made a grinding sound that I started to interpret as a whisper: ‘You were not to see.’

I talked to my sister, Mira, who lives across town. She’s the only one who knows about my episodes. She wants me to see a doctor, but I’m afraid. What would I say? ‘Doctor, the sleep paralysis is now telling me secrets about the mine.’ She asked me what the figure in the hallway was wearing. I told her, a mining uniform, like the ones we wear but older, from the ’30s. She went quiet, and then she said, ‘You know, when Dad was alive, he used to tell a story about a cave-in in the old mine, back in the day. A whole shift was trapped for two weeks. When they dug them out, they were all dead, but the one who had the lantern, he had no face. They said he’d tried to ‘see’ what was in the dark and it took his eyes and mouth. They called him the Watcher who got blinded. I never believed it, but maybe you should get out of that plant.’ I laughed, but it was hollow. ‘Where would I go? There’s nothing else in this town.’ She said, ‘Maybe you need to leave town entirely.’ But how could I? My life is here.

Last night, I couldn’t sleep at all. I sat in my kitchen, drinking tea, watching the clock. At 3:33 a.m., the lights flickered. Then they went out completely. In the darkness, I heard that dry rustling again, and the weight pressed on my shoulders, forcing me to my knees. I felt something cold and smooth touch the back of my head, like a hand, but the fingers were too long, and they pressed into my skull, and I heard a voice, not in my ears but in my bones: ‘The ore remembers. The walls keep the pressure. You will carry us until you break.’ I tried to scream, but no sound came out. Then I felt a pressure inside my head, like a plug being pulled, and I felt my consciousness draining, and I didn’t even know what I was seeing anymore. I woke up on the floor again, this time with a nosebleed. The clock said 6 a.m., and there was a brown stain on the ceiling, just above the light fixture, shaped like a face.

I’m writing this now, at dawn, my hands shaking. I’m not sleeping anymore. I’m not even blinking for more than a second, because when I do, I see the hall, the man with no face, and the look of endless pressure, as if I’m standing at the bottom of a shaft of dirt and rock, and it’s all slowly settling onto me. I don’t know if this is still sleep paralysis, or if my mind is just cracking under the weight of this town and this job. But I know one thing: if you feel like you’re being watched, if you see shadows at the corners of your vision, if you wake up with a weight on your chest that isn’t just fear – get out. Get out while you can. Because the weight isn’t just in your mind. It’s in the walls. It’s in the ground. And it’s been waiting for you.