The Sleeping Horror

Carter breathed a deep satisfied sigh as he watched the car move away down the long, gravel driveway. He leaned against the wooden fence, feeling the cool weight of the keys in his fist as he breathed in the scent of the new paint that drifted up from the timbers.

The sun was low in the sky as the car disappeared into the trees and Carter turned to gaze up at his new home. Though it was not his trade, he had worked closely with the architect in designing this place. It was his perfect home, nestled into the granite in one of the remotest parts of the Slieve Bloom mountains. Outside of the small clearing that skirted the house he was surrounded on three sides by tall coniferous trees which clung to the thin rocky soil of the mountain where the surface was not simply exposed rock. The front of the house opened out onto two acres of ground that had been meticulously levelled to a soft slope. This would be Carter’s playground, it was already set up into runs and breeding pens for his poultry.

The house itself was a large, two story rectangle. It was almost entirely glass fronted, with hardwood planks forming sections of facing between the rooms and levels. His bedroom and study took up most of the first floor where there was also a large ensuite bathroom and a guest bedroom, though Carter was not someone who often entertained guests and certainly not ones who would be likely to stay overnight.

Carter was a solitary individual though he did have a small circle of friends, which had mostly began as professional acquaintances, he was quite content to conduct most of his relationships over the phone or internet.

He walked up to the front door, eager to turn the key for the first time since the official handover and cross the threshold of his home. The door swung inwards and Carter proceeded inside, immediately he headed for the stairs taking the steps two at a time in a half jog. He walked down the wide open hallway and entered his study. He took a cursory glance around as he was already well familiar with the place from his time supervising the installation of the furnishings. He lowered himself into his chair, placed an elbow on his desk and leaned back to take in the view from his study window.

Below him he could see the gentle slope of his playground, his eyes moved across it until it dropped off into the steeper mountainside, the coniferous trees below rolling down into the valley until they reached the bottom, across the valley the mountains began to rise again until they reached higher than the house was on this side. They filled Carter’s field of vision from left to right and as the sun began to dip below their highest ridges, the whole scene was filled with hues of green and blue and purple, with steaks of yellow and red and orange filling the sky.

A wide smile grew across his face as he turned from the window and pushed the power button for his computer. It was time to begin working.

***

A week had passed since Carter had taken up residence of this home and discipline was beginning to prove to be an obstacle as he settled into his new lifestyle. Though he had been retiring reasonably early each night, his sleep was uneasy and as he woke each morning, disturbing and dimly remembered dreams submerged into the dark corners of his mind. Work had been starting later each day for the past week and after a promising start over the first few days, he knew that his output was already beginning to suffer.

It was almost 11 in the morning and still Carter was cradling his first cup of coffee of the day. He stifled a yawn and poured the remaining liquid down his throat before wearily making his way toward the stairs and proceeding to the study. Usually, he would have liked to head outside and spend some time watching his chickens settle into their new home and taking in some fresh air so that when he sat down to work he would be feeling relaxed and refreshed. Unfortunately, time was not on his side and he knew that if he did not start working now it would be a wasted day.

Sitting in front of the keyboard that day, Carter repeatedly caught himself falling into a daze, either staring at the few words he had typed on his screen or absently gazing out of his window at the scenery below. The only thing that seemed to snap him out of this stupor was when he would irritably rub at the bridge of his nose. His spare reading glasses were quite uncomfortable and had already marked deep grooves into the sides of his nose. He had resorted to wearing them after falling asleep while wearing his usual glasses on his second night in the new house. When he had woken up the frames were mangled and the lenses could not be forced back into place.

The afternoon gave way to early evening. Carter read back over the last few sentences that he had typed and struggled to suppress his sense of rising frustration as he highlighted the words and deleted them. After several attempts to rephrase what he was trying to write, he conceded to his frustration and gave up the day as lost. He turned off his computer and left the room.

This kind of tiredness and absentmindedness was something that Carter found totally alien, he had always been someone who rose early and filled his days with tasks to be achieved. He was a man with hobbies, a man who was never happier than when he was in the middle of a new project. It was this characteristic that had seen him attain moderate success as an author and which had allowed him to realise his dream of living in a place like this. He tried to explain away the weariness that had dogged him over these last few days as an adjustment to the mountain air and hoped that it would naturally wear off soon, but deep inside himself he could feel a sense of unease and trepidation growing and he did not quite know why. As the evening drew in and the light began to fade from the world, Carter retired to bed earlier than he had in a very long time.

He woke as the first rays of the sun began to intrude upon him. Confused and groggy, he tried to situate himself. He was sitting on the edge of his bathtub and the floor of the bathroom was covered in a mess of broken glass. As consciousness slowly began to assert itself he realised that in his hand he was holding a piece of metal. It took a few moments for him to identify the object. It was the frame and stand belonging to the magnified shaving mirror, which he kept on the shelf over his sink.

The metal was twisted and deformed, as though he had forcefully pulled it apart in order to remove the mirror from the frame. Something about one of the shards on the floor caught Carter’s attention and he slowly leaned forward to pick it up. In places, the mirrored backing had been scratched off and it could be looked through like a magnifying glass. He held the shard up before his face, slightly unsettled by the effect of looking at both his reflection and the distorted, magnified image of the dimly lit room beyond. He placed the shard and the twisted metal frame beside him on the edge of the bathtub and then noticed his fingernails. Carter discovered that they were bent and worn and beneath them lay flakes of the silver material that had formed the mirrored surface. Never in his life had Carter been aware of any kind of night time somnambulism on his part, but it appeared to him that he had gotten up at some part of the night and violently attempted to dismantle his shaving mirror. Still feeling desperately groggy and more than a little confused, he decided to go back to bed and deal with the mess in the morning.

Cautiously, he stepped over the shards of glass in his bare feet and pulled the door closed behind him as he made his way back to the bedroom where the thick curtains would keep the sun at bay for a few more hours and perhaps allow Carter some sorely needed sleep.

***

Considering the exploits of the night before, Carter felt surprisingly refreshed after the few hours of sleep he had snatched after returning to bed. He had taken a leisurely breakfast and was heading out to inspect the perimeters of the chicken runs and pens. Living in such an isolated area had many benefits, but one drawback that preyed on his mind was the likelihood of an increased number of predators that could take an interest the chickens that Carter kept. As he walked along the fences, he watched for any signs of the presence of pine martins, foxes, badgers or mink. Glancing at his watch, Carter decided that he had plenty of time to enjoy his surroundings before work would beckon.

He would take a walk up the slope of the mountain, through the tall trees and rock and see if he could observe any animal tracks, badger sets or anything else that might be of consequence to his birds. A melange of forest scents filled every inward breath and a deep layer of dry, browning, coniferous needles cushioned his footsteps as he trudged up the slope. Although the sun was shining brightly that morning, it was cool and dim under the trees. The serene quietness of the place might have been unnerving to some for the sense of isolation that it prompted, but to Carter it was one of the areas chief assets. During the building of the house, he had taken brief walks into the forest around the house and so he had a degree of familiarity with the lay of the land, he was taking a route up the slope and to the left of his house towards an outcropping of rock that he had seen before. It was one of the few standout landmarks in the forest, where a gargantuan chunk of granite had been exposed through natural weathering over the aeons. It did not follow the same slope as the rest of this part of the mountain, but instead rose almost vertically from the earth to a great height perhaps twice as tall as the surrounding trees. It jutted from the side of the mountain like some great promontory and Carter suspected that if he followed the slope alongside it, he would be able to find a spot where he could walk out onto that colossal mass of rock and make his way to the outward edge and survey the view where it above the forest.

Though he could not see his destination through the treetops, he was quite confident that he was moving in the right direction. After perhaps twenty minutes of walking at a reasonably relaxed pace, Carter noticed something out of place with the landscape ahead, there was a break in the usually uniform roof of treetops ahead of him where the sunlight poured through. Upon getting closer, he realised he could see the granite promontory ahead through the break in the canopy and the reason for the break became clear. Huge chunks of rocks and boulders had recently fallen from the sides of the outcropping and had torn violently through the ancient trees as they tumbled down the slope. These gigantic stones lay at rest at a few spots between him and the promontory and the trail of destruction that they had left behind could be traced back through the roof of the forest.

Carter wondered if this devastation could have been some unforeseen result of the blasting which had been carried out during the building of his home and the following levelling of the two acres of land where his chickens now resided. Had the vibrations of those explosions travelled through the underlying rock and loosed parts of the promontory? The surveyors and engineers who had signed off on the blasting had claimed that it would be entirely safe, but Carter could not imagine what else could have caused the damage he now saw before him.

After stopping for some time to examine the pulverised trunks of the fallen trees and the mammoth gashes in the forest floor where the boulders had torn their way down through the slope, he noted the time and realised he would soon have to begin work for the day. A vague sense of disquiet flashed over Carter but was almost immediately dismissed as he turned and began to walk back in the direction from which he had come.

***

Having had an unusually productive day in front of the keyboard, Carter retired to bed feeling renewed. Perhaps he was finally acclimatizing to his new surroundings and he would soon be back to his old self. He drifted comfortably to sleep, and began to dream. He dreamed that he was laying in absolute darkness. He could feel cold damp rock beneath his body. He tried to reach out, to sit up but found that he could not move. His body felt strange, almost alien. In the darkness he could hear nothing but the most minute hint of the echo of water dripping on rock. He got the sense that he was in a cave of some sort, the muffled echoes of the water convinced him that was in a narrow tunnel where the slightest noise would echo back and forth, uninterrupted forever, becoming muffled and distorted and obscene.

His thoughts felt strange, disjointed, was he asleep? Carter had heard of sleep paralysis, was this it? The darkness was becoming more oppressive now, as though it had a viscous quality, it was weighing down on him, suffocating him. He tried to reason with himself. He was in his bed, he must have pulled the blanket over his head and the stuffiness was provoking this strange dream. He would wake up soon, or roll over and all of this would just stop. His breathing was slow and laboured and though he felt the urge to scream welling up inside, he could not feel his mouth or his throat or force them to make any sound. Something suddenly interjected on the nothingness that surrounded him. Had there been a noise? He strained to listen. Those minute, muffled drips that had seemed so innocuous before were a cacophony now, filling his whole world, he could hear nothing else. Moments which lasted eternities passed as he lay, trying to quell the rising panic, trying to reason that this was all a dream, when he heard it again. It was more concrete this time, something definite. Somewhere, on the very edge of hearing was the slightest sound of scrabbling. It was like stones being disturbed, falling into the tunnel and bouncing down a gentle slope. It was definite but also seemed very far away.

 Carter woke. He was on his knees high up on side of the mountain in the action of pulling stones away from a tiny concealed hollow in the side of the promontory. In shock he reeled back from what he was doing, overbalanced and fell. What was he doing? He looked down at himself, he was fully dressed, his hands and fingers were scuffed and bleeding. Over his shoulder he was carrying his laptop bag. Sleepwalking again? He sat on the damp ground, the first hints of dawn were beginning to appear over the crests of the mountains as Carter tried to make an account of himself. The dream that had been so disturbing was already beginning to recede, what had it been? Something to do with a cave? He sat, staring dumbly at the little hollow that he had been scrabbling at. He leaned forward and peered a little closer, it was more than a hollow it was an opening to a tunnel. It was small and overgrown with roots which he had already mostly torn away in his sleep. He crawled towards it and stuck his head inside, there was indeed a small tunnel perhaps large enough for a man to squeeze into. As he peered further into its depths, the choking darkness inside suddenly filled him with an unaccountable terror and revulsion, Carter withdrew immediately in an involuntary spasm of horror and found himself running down the side of the mountain towards his house. The laptop bag was banging heavily against his hip and without stopping to look at its contents, he flung it away and carried on running.

By the time Carter had arrived home, his dream had been almost totally forgotten except the fact that it had been to do with a cave. Of course, he had found a cave while sleepwalking, so it was only natural that it should intrude in some way upon his dream. He remembered that he had been afraid, but not why. As the day wore on, Carter rationalised his experience more and more. Yes it was strange that he had begun to sleepwalk at this age, but there was nothing overtly unusual about sleepwalking in itself. He would do some reading on the subject and try to find out more about the phenomenon. He was also annoyed at himself for throwing away his laptop bag in his ridiculous panicked descent of the mountain. It had felt heavy at the time, had he thrown his laptop away into the forest? After a quick search he found his laptop in his bedroom, though he still resolved to take a walk up the mountain the next day to find the bag. By the time evening arrived, Carter was exhausted and rather than worried, he was wryly amused by the whole situation. He had no doubt he would sleep soundly that night.

***

He was back in the cave, but something was different this time. He could hear something approaching. Hurried footsteps echoed on the stone floor, occasionally splashing through pools of still water. It was very close now, almost upon him. Panic began to fill him once again. Terror, which was becoming sickeningly familiar, gripped him. Suddenly, blinding light filled his vision. He tried to look away, but as much as he struggled to move he was paralysed. The light was being shone directly into his eyes from a point only a few metres away, he was certain that beyond the light something was peering at him, examining him intently. The beam of light moved away and he could hear the footsteps again moving alongside his prone body. His vision was filled now only by retinal burn afterimages of the light. He heard the sound of a zip opening, then the clinking, clattering, sounds of metal and glass objects being emptied onto the stone floor. Slowly, Carter’s vision began to gain definition. Through the haze of retinal burn he could see the dim outline of a man. His back was turned to Carter and the light seemed to be coming from his head. Perhaps the man was gripping a little torch between his teeth. The beam of light shone on a strange device which was on the floor. It looked ancient, corroded and covered in the filth of aeons. It seemed to be comprised of lenses and mirrors attached to spindly wheels of metal, arranged in such a way as to focus light onto and through each other. Carter could see what had been emptied from the bag, pieces of glass and metal. Was that his laptop bag? Were those the frames of his mangled glasses? Was that his shaving mirror?

The man began to remove components from the strange device and replace them with the various materials from the bag. Carter’s horror was now giving way to an equal measure of curiosity and incredulity. It seemed that hours passed as the man continued to make alterations to the device. Carter focused unwaveringly at every movement of the man’s hands, watching, waiting to see the purpose in his bizarre actions. He no longer wondered if this was a dream, he no longer cared. No matter what way he moved, the man’s back was always towards Carter, yet even in the vanishingly dim light there seemed to be something familiar about the man. Carter was certain that if he turned around, he would recognise the interloper’s face.

Finally, the man stopped working. He swept aside the bits and pieces that littered the floor around the device and shifted his position so that he was sitting cross legged before it. Carter saw the man reach up and take the torch from his mouth and move it down towards the device. He shone the light into one of the lenses and began to twist the lens back and forth until it focused light onto an adjacent mirror, there was a bright flash as the light was reflected and focused across each lens and mirror. Carter was not a student of optics by any means but he knew that what he was seeing was impossible, after the man took the torch away and lay it on the ground the light in the device continued to get brighter and brighter. The lenses and mirrors began to move slowly and the light seemed to migrate to the centre of the device where it congealed and shone like a tiny white sun. A dull, droning hum began to emanate from the machine and Carter began to feel vibrations in the rock around him. As the noise and vibrations grew, the man began to shift his position once again. He was slowly turning around. Carter stared at the man’s head, eager to finally see who he was, frightened that the brightness of the device would cast the face in shadow and deny him the opportunity to identify the person. When he had turned, Carter finally began to believe that he had lost his mind for that face with its grotesque wide mouthed grin had been Carter’s own. Reeling in shock and horror and a nameless disgust, Carter stared into the eyes of the man who possessed his body as the man stared back. That sickening grin did not fade as the man reached behind himself and with his forefinger, touched the solar epicentre in the device.

There was a blinding flash of light and a nauseating sense of vertigo as all of Carter’s senses ceased for a moment and then instantly reasserted themselves. Carter’s body slumped onto the cold damp floor. He choked and coughed as he struggled to right himself. He had regained the ability to move but found that he had somehow been resituated some way across the cavern, he was now on the floor beside the device. The machine was dormant now, silent and dark. The only light in the room was from the torch which lay beside him. Carter picked up the torch and stood. Following blind instinct he shone it into the corner of the cavernous room where his prone body had been laying before, the realisation of what had happened hit him like a thousand tons of rock.

Laying prone on the floor, in the same position as Carter had been in his nightmares, was a creature more obscene than Carter could have ever imagined. It lay, a long featureless mass of albino flesh, apparently without limbs or perambulatory organs of any kind. At one tapered end were clusters of lifeless eyes above a flap of skin that might have been a mouth. There was no doubt in Carter’s mind that it was dead now. How many long ages had it lain in this abyss of darkness, helpless and alone? How many times had it used that strange device to send it’s consciousness into other beings before finding itself stranded here? The apparatus had obviously been damaged in some way but had remained operational enough for the creature to deposit its mind into Carter’s body while he slept. The link must have been a fragile and tenuous one as it had taken weeks to get Carter’s body down into that cavern to repair the device. All that time, while the creature had been in his body, Carter’s sleeping mind had been slumbering inside the form of this hulking slab of flesh. Now that it was free of its previous paralysed helpless form, how far afield could it have fled? As all of these questions flooded Carter’s awareness, he began to mindlessly smash the device to pieces, frenziedly crushing each small component beneath his feet. He picked up the first rock that came to hand and began to pummel the lifeless obscenity that lay in the corner, its thick hide eventually giving way to the ferocity of Carter’s hysterical attack.

Carter didn’t know how much time had passed when he regained control of himself, sitting breathless against the wall of the cavern, still gripping the rock, his body coated in the filth of that vile creature. He made his way to his feet and by the light of the now dimming torch, groped his way out of the cave and began the walk home.