The Wrong Hue

I’d always been a light sleeper, but that night, the shift in the air was enough to pull me from a dreamless void. My room was bathed in the familiar cold blue of my LED strip, a color I’d chosen because it made the space feel like the bottom of a swimming pool at midnight. But as I blinked awake, I noticed something wrong: the strip above my desk now cast a sickly amber, the color of old photographs and decay. My mother must have changed it, I thought, though I hadn’t heard her come in.

I lay there, staring at the ceiling, when a weight pressed down on my stomach. It was gentle at first, like a cat settling, but then it grew heavier, solid, and unmistakably real. I froze, my breath catching. I tried to move, but my limbs felt like lead. Then, as abruptly as it had come, the pressure vanished. I sat up, gasping, and scanned the room. Nothing. The closet door was closed, the curtains still, the amber light steady and wrong. I checked my phone: 11:31 PM. I’d only been asleep for twenty minutes.

I convinced myself it was a dream, a waking nightmare born from the color change. I pulled my covers up to my chin and forced my eyes shut, but I could feel the closet’s presence like a third eye in the dark. I whispered a prayer to no one and eventually drifted off.

The next morning, I confronted my mother at breakfast. ‘Did you come into my room last night?’ I asked, my voice steady but my hands trembling. She looked up from her coffee, puzzled. ‘I only changed your light color, honey. I told you about that yesterday.’ I shook my head. ‘But I felt something on me. Something heavy.’ She laughed, a dry, dismissive sound. ‘You were probably dreaming. You know how you get about that closet.’

My father shuffled in, still in his robe. I turned to him, desperate. ‘Dad, did you come into my room last night? Around 11:30?’ He yawned and scratched his head. ‘No, I was asleep by ten. Why?’ I explained, my voice rising. ‘Something was on me. And my light was changed.’ He shrugged. ‘It’s just a light, kiddo. Don’t sweat it.’ They both laughed, exchanging a glance that said I was being dramatic.

But I couldn’t let it go. I started paying attention to my closet. Every night, I lay in bed, the dim amber light making the shadows deeper, and I watched the door. I’d hear soft rustles, like fabric shifting, and sometimes a low hum that vibrated in my chest. I told my parents, but they brushed me off again, my mother saying I was ‘too sensitive’ and my father joking that maybe I had a ghost. They didn’t understand. The weight wasn’t a nightmare. It was a warning.

A week later, I decided to confront it. I left my light on the bright blue setting, but when I woke at 3 AM, the room was bathed in that sickly amber again. The closet door was ajar, revealing a darkness that seemed to breathe. A smell, like old dust and burnt sugar, wafted out. I sat up, my heart pounding, and the weight returned—not on my stomach, but on my chest, pressing me down into the mattress. I struggled, but my arms wouldn’t move. The closet door creaked open wider, and from the blackness, two pale, elongated hands emerged, reaching for me. They were cold as they brushed my cheeks, and a voice whispered, not in my ear but inside my skull: ‘You see me now.’

I screamed, and the pressure released. I lunged for the light switch, flipping it on. The closet door was closed. The amber light was gone, replaced by the normal bright blue. My parents burst in, alarmed, but I couldn’t explain. I just pointed at the closet, shaking. They checked it, found nothing, and told me to go back to sleep. But I knew what I saw. That thing was real, and it lived in my closet, and it had chosen the wrong hue to reveal itself. Now, every night, I keep my light on its brightest setting, but when I close my eyes, I see that amber glow burning behind my lids, and I feel the weight of something patient, waiting for me to forget. I can’t forget. I can’t sleep. And somewhere inside me, I know that one day, the light will fail, and it will come for me again.