When I was ten years old, nights were my greatest enemy. I never knew what would happen once the lights went out, and I never knew if I would make it through the darkness without a scare. My mother had started locking my bedroom door at night, which at first felt like punishment. I would bang on it sometimes, frustrated, yelling that I was responsible enough, that I didn’t need to be caged like some criminal or wild animal. But her face, always stern, never gave way. Her hands tightened the lock as she whispered, “Stay in bed, no matter what.”
At the time, I didn’t understand why. I thought maybe it was fear of intruders, or some new rule she had decided upon. But that night, the reality made itself terrifyingly clear. I woke to the faintest creak outside my door. My heart skipped a beat. There was scratching—light, deliberate, almost as if someone—or something—was testing my defenses. My small ten-year-old body froze beneath my blankets. I wanted to run, to scream, to do anything, but the lock prevented my escape. I stayed perfectly still, straining to hear every sound. The air was heavy, thick with the shadows that clung to the corners of my room.
Footsteps. Slow. Careful. Heavy. Circling my door. My stomach twisted into knots as I realized that whatever—or whoever—was there knew the layout of the room. The sounds pressed against my ears, every shuffle echoing in the small space. My mind raced. Was it a burglar? A ghost? A creature from the nightmares I tried desperately not to think about?
Hours—or perhaps minutes—passed like centuries. I stayed paralyzed, breath shallow, clutching the blankets. The scratching stopped. The footsteps faded. But the terror lingered, a tightness in my chest that made it impossible to sleep. When the first rays of sunlight crept through my curtains, I finally dared to sit up, trembling.
I asked my mother, cautiously, why she had locked me in. She looked at me, her face calm, but her eyes serious in a way that made me shiver. “Because you sleepwalk,” she said simply. The words barely registered at first. Sleepwalk? Me? That didn’t make sense. I had always thought of sleepwalking as something from movies, a joke, a harmless quirk, not a terrifying reality that had kept my mother awake for months, carefully guarding me from myself.
From that day on, my nights were never the same. Every creak, every scratch, every shifting shadow in my bedroom became a potential danger. I lived in constant awareness, a ten-year-old learning to navigate a world where my own body could betray me while I slept.
