In the Blink of an Eye

I like to think of myself as a rather accurate example of sanity. My extensive studies in the field of medicine and mind have taught me much, but I seem to have been overtaken by some disorder that I have no knowledge of. Perhaps I have suffered some horrid hallucination, or maybe I have had some unknown mental breakdown, these things are not beyond possibility.

Allow me to start from the beginning, for I fear I have already gotten a bit ahead of myself. I make my living by working in a facility for the mentally disabled, an asylum, as it is commonly called. There I work mostly as a doctor, helping to move the patients about the facility, or assisting in their treatment in one of the many different rooms we have. Actually, my job description is also rather irrelevant as well, and I would be far better off to spend my limited time writing about something of relevance.

It is the strange occurences that have begun happening that I had originally intended to record. I fear there is no simple way to write this, so I will describe to you, the reader, the events in the order that they have occured and I will allow you to make your own conclusions.

I suppose I will start by stating that up until the date of January 21st, everything was completely normal. Before this day, everything was going as smoothly as could be expected of such a place. Obviously the patients will not always behave, that is a given for this particular field of work. However, on the night of January 20-21st, every single patient, without exception, awoke from what I could only guess was a nightmare. Each and every one of them was literally howling. None of them were forming any coherent words, just gibberish and horrid wails.

The cause of this is unknown to all of us. Many believed that the food they had eaten that evening had created some sort of imbalance in their systems, throwing their minds into some abnormal state that caused them to have nightmares. This does not seem logical to me, however, as I had eaten the same food as they and I had slept perfectly well until I was awakened by the patients.

Calming the patients was no easy task, it took nearly two hours to get them all quited and relaxed again. A few cases required the use of a rather potent sedative we keep on hand.

The next day another surprise awaited me. I had expected to be greeted by the patient's complaints and fear of the dreams from the previous night, but that was not the case. I found the exact opposite when not one of the patients spoke of any nightmares and, as far as I can tell, none of them even recalled the events from the night before. I personally found this very odd, as the patients were without doubt concious at the time of their cries.

The next few nights passed without incident, as my four-day shift ended, I collected the clothes I had brought and headed to my home for my three day off period. I always enjoyed these days off. Often I would join my friends down at the local pub, or, on particularly cold nights I would just relax in front of the fireplace with a book.

I had no family to return home to. I was married at one time, but being at the asylum for four days at a time does not allow enough time for a family. I would not give my job up, and due to that choice I am now alone.

My home is an amazingly quiet place. I could sit and just let my mind wander for hours at a time. Often I would become completely lost in my thoughts, slipping between sleep and conciousness late at night. I would sometimes awake in the morning, not knowing that I had ever dozed off.

I spent those next three days keeping mostly to myself. I desperately tried to figure out what it was that caused those nightmares that each patient seemed to share. I went over the events of the two days before that night, and could come up with nothing.

I returned to work on the wednesday of that week to learn that the patients had awoke on the night previous to the day of my return. I cannot say as though I was shocked by this news, but I was indeed worried. To me, the second occurence of such a thing rules out the possibility of coincidence, and creates the need for me to find an explanation.

When I attempted to question the more coherent patients in our facility, they could recollect no nightmares, and spoke of nothing out of the ordinary. The other staff was still not alarmed by the apparent case of night terrors, and I was given no support from any of them.

My curiousity got the best of me and for the next few nights I sat in the east wing where the patients spend their nights. They are kept one to a room, and the doors have sturdy locks on them that must be opened with a key which I am not permitted to carry. If another attack of these nightmares were to occur, I could do nothing but observe until the rest of the staff was alarmed by a nurse. My hope was to see whether the nightmares struck all at once, of if one patients fear awoke and alarmed the other patients.

The first night was uneventful, as were the second and third. I sat, sleepily, sometimes dozing off. I waited for a sound, for a patient to awake terrified from whatever it was that was haunting him, but nothing happened; not until the fourth night.

I had decided that this night would be the last that I spend in the patient's quarters. The fourth night was the last of my shift, and I would have been permitted to return home earlier that evening, if I had wished to do so. Instead, I sat in the east wing quietly watching the patient's heavy wooden doors, silently begging them to give me the answer. I studied the ceiling and floor's odd design out of sheer boredom. I filled out papers from the day before by candlelight. And I waited.

I believe it was around two thirty in the morning when my attention was taken from my papers by a soft cry coming from one of the rooms. I arose from the table at which I had spent the last few nights and cautiously walked to one of the doors of the patients rooms. I had no idea which room the cry had come from, and I peered through the metal bars that made up the window in the door, looking for movement. Nothing.

I heard the cry again, a little louder this time, and it had come from down the hall to my left. I made my way through the heavy darkness, stopping briefly at each door to look inside. My heart was pounding in my chest so furiously that I was sure the patients would be awakened by it's noise. Once again a patient wimpered, but this time it had come from the other end of the hallway.

The cries became more frequent, coming from behind nearly every door in the hallway. Each patient seemed to be having a dream. I looked through the door that I had been standing by at the time, and the sleeping patient was thrashing about, his bedsheets lay on the floor beside his bed.

I moved down the hallway to the next door, and the sight that awaited me caused me to leap backwards out of fear. The patient had gotten out of his bed and was pressing his face against the metal bars of the door. When I had turned to look inside I was no more than an inch from his own face. I stood now at least three feet from his door. Wide eyed and stunned, I looked at him and he returned my stare with closed eyes. It appeared as though he was still asleep. His mouth hung slightly open, his eyes shut but moving about rapidly under the eyelids.

What happened next terrified me then and it still does now. I should tell you now that this particular patient could not form coherent sentences and had extreme difficulty speaking. Usually he communicated by hand motions and grunts as that was all he knew how to do. Tonight, however, was different.

Curiously, I stared at the patient. Just as I had taken a step closer to the door his eyes shot open, wide and fearful he looked at me. Still pressing his face against the bars which slightly distorted it, he began to scream. His voice was high pitched and the sound he made was the sound of complete horror. He screamed until he was out of breath, not blinking or moving in any other way.

In my state of complete disbelief and fear, I did not realize how close it was that I was standing to his door. It was too late when he reached an arm through the bars and grabbed the collar of my shirt. I fought him, trying to pry his fingers from myself but his strength was inhuman. He pulled me to the door, so that I was once again inches from his face. He had stopped screaming, his eyes were as large and round as dollar coins now and as he looked at me I saw that they looked more lifelike and aware than ever before.

He spoke to me then, in such a sane and terrifyingly normal voice that I believe I fainted. I remember his words, though. I'll never forget them.

"I've seen him, he's real and he's coming and he'll get you too."

After that single chilling line was spoken, he began once more to scream. He released my shirt and I fell to the floor in front of his door. It must have been then that a nurse came along to investigate the noise and found me there, because i briefly remember being carried off to a bed in the staff's quarters - still hearing a horrid mix of terrified screams coming from the east wing.

I awoke the next morning alone in that room. Shakily I arose and sat on the edge of my bed. I tried to make sense of the events of the previous night but I could not. It was impossible, that patient could not talk, he was unable to since birth - it was in his records.

After I had assured everybody that I was all right, I was asked what happened. I shared with them my story, but I left out that horribly frightening line that the patient spoke, out of fear that I would not be taken seriously. I was told that soon after I collapsed the rest of the patients awoke and began to cry out as they had the previous two times. Once again they had to be sedated and put back to sleep; all of them, except the patient that had spoken to me, that is. He was sound asleep when I was found.

I was told to go home for the remainder of my weekend and relax, but first I decided that I had to see the patient that had spoken to me. I returned to the east wing, this time by daylight rather than candle light, though I still felt a pang of fear as I saw that heavy wooden door again. I approached it, and the patient was sitting on the end of his bed absent minded and looking out the window.

I had a watchman unlock his door and it was not without much hesitation that I entered his room. he seemed unaware of my presence until I laid a hand on his shoulder, at which point he looked up at me. I was nearly sure he was going to speak to me again, but instead he just grunted and looked back to the window. I asked him over and over what it was that me meant last night, to no result. He did not speak, or make any sort of coherent response. I tried again and again until he became obviously frusterated with my undending interrogation.

Quite frusterated myself, I gave up on him. I left the facility and went home for the remaining part of my off-period. I could not get the image of that patient's eyes out of my head for the entire day. His eyes that night, they were so huge. It was almost as though the fear that he felt had filled them up and expanded them, ready to overflow. The fear that I saw in his eyes that night seemed to have instilled itself in me, too.

For the entire day my hands shook, my knees felt weak and I could not walk about my home without hanging onto a solid object. I did not eat, I couldn't. I felt sick. I slept the daylight away, awakening to be greeted by the moon watching me through the window. I drifted back off.

It was the screams that woke me from my slumber that night. The patient's screams from the night before echoed through my home, so loud that it sounded as though he was standing right behind me. I looked around and I was alone, though the screaming continued.

It was when I tried to get up and fell face first into my pillow that I realized it was me that was screaming.

I knew not what caused me to yell out like I did, but the overwhelming fear that I felt that night is something that I will never forget. I closed my eyes, trying to clear my head, and it was then that I could see more clearly than ever. With my eyes closed I saw an image of a... a thing, something so completely horrific that I unwillingly began once more to scream.

It took all of my willpower to quiet myself, and I sat there then, afraid to move. Wide eyed, I sat, not daring to close my eyes to get another look at the thing. It was then that the urge to blink began to come over me, and as it grew stronger so did the fear I felt. All at once, it happened. I unwillinlgy blinked, and when I did I got another brief look at the thing that haunted the inside of my head. I cried out, and turned my head as though trying to look away. As instantly as it had appeared it was gone. Each time I blinked it would appear, causing me once more to thrash about, violently turning my head to the side.

I would describe the thing to you if I could, but I cannot. Each time I open my eyes I can no longer remember what the thing looks like, it's as though my mind and memory erase it because thinking about it would drive me insane. Each time I close my eyes I feel the shock all over again, the sight of something so horrible causes me to open them wider than ever and causes my fear to grow evermore. I always feel the horror rise up in me when the urge to blink makes itself known.

I cannot figure out why the patients in the asylum were able to fall right back asleep. I have not slept since that night, I have not returned to work either. I sit here day and night, not sleeping. I know that eventually I will fall asleep unwillingly, and the thing inside my mind will have all the time it needs to do whatever it is it wants to do to me.