August 2002

I climbed the stairs and headed toward my room, my eyes dry with fatigue. Mom and my stepfather were sitting together watching television in the otherwise dark room. He turned as I sat on my bed and asked if I was sleepy. "Yeah," I said, "it's late." He asked me what time it was. To me it seemed like it was 3 AM or so. I felt it. My watch - an old analog with a face aged yellow - said it was just past 1 AM, but that didn't seem right to me. My bedside alarm clock said 3 AM, but I let the disparity go. "It's past 1:00," I said. "I'm going to bed." They shut the set off and got up to leave me to it, and mom wished me a good night as they left. I got into bed and pulled the covers way over my head, enjoying their soft warmth. But just as my thoughts began to clear I heard my mother's voice shouting up to me from somewhere downstairs. "Go to sleep!" she yelled, her voice echoing, but distinct. What was she yelling about? I decided it was an errant request, and let it go. But she shouted up at me again, "Go to sleep!" and my eyes flicked open. "Shut up!" I yelled back, and pulled my sheets more tightly around me. A pause, and then, "Go to sleep!" I lifted my head and shouted back as loud as I could, "Shut up!" Now I was angry because I knew I would be in trouble for taking that tone with her, though I certainly felt justified. It was frustrating, and unfair. And sure enough, I heard my stepfather's feet padding back up the stairs. Unfair, I thought, and realized that I actually felt quite comfortable. I could drift off, I thought, and then what could he do? I'm just sleeping, minding my own business. I felt cocooned within a warm fold that hummed as I embraced it, and just as I began to fall through to the other side, my stepfather entered my room. I struggled to pull myself back from the clutch to sleep, and found myself barely able to move. The sleep paralysis was numbing, and still hesitant to recede, but my stepfather noticed my attempt to roll to face him, and sat quietly by me at the edge of the bed. I attempted to tell him that I had just woken up, but my words were without consonants, and ran together. He seemed to understand. When I could finally speak I asked simply, "Why were you guys yelling at me?" "Because," he explained, "we heard something, and we thought it was you." I was relieved that the truth was finally out then... but I was also curious. "What did you hear?" I asked him. "A whisper," he said. "It said 'shhhh... shhhh... shhhh...'" He paused after each, so that I could hear it as they must have. And I felt a faint chill because the sound was familiar to me too. That, I thought, was the ghost.