The Thing That Watched Me

The Wind between worlds

I was fourteen years old and in the fourth class of secondary school when the figure returned. Three years had passed since I had seen it walking inside the physics laboratory, and during that time I had almost succeeded in placing the memory among the foolish terrors of childhood.

I had not forgotten what happened. I simply no longer thought about it often. The physics laboratory remained in use, and during the day I entered it without fear. Sunlight fell through the same windows behind which I had once seen the silhouette moving to and fro. Students sat at the wooden tables, teachers wrote upon the blackboard, and nothing about the room suggested that anything strange had ever occupied it.

Years are enough to weaken even a terrible memory. What cannot be explained is eventually pushed aside, especially when nothing happens to remind us of it.

Then, one night, I woke suddenly.

It was close to morning, though the school bell had not yet rung. My room remained dark, and the hostel was silent. I could see the faint shape of the window and the motionless curtains beside it.

I was aware at once that something was wrong.

My body would not move.

The condition was familiar to me. I had known it since I was four years old, though it had been a long time since I last experienced it. My eyes were open, and my thoughts were clear, but no part of my body obeyed me. I tried to raise my head. I tried to move my arms. I tried to call out.

Nothing happened.

There was no pain. There never was. There was only the terrible separation between thought and flesh, as though my body had ceased to belong to me while my mind remained imprisoned within it.

Then I saw the figure.

It stood beside my bed, leaning directly over me. Its head was immediately above my face, so close that the black outline filled most of my vision. I could see no eyes, mouth, or other feature. It was the shape of a man bent over me, darker than the room around it. Though it had no visible eyes, I knew it was looking directly at me.

I tried to draw away, but my body remained still.

The figure did nothing.

It did not touch me. It made no sound. It simply remained above me and looked down at me.

I struggled against the state with everything I had. I commanded my hands to move and tried to force my voice through my throat. I attempted to turn my head away from that blank and lightless face. None of these efforts produced even the smallest movement.

The figure did not retreat.

Until that night, some distance had always separated us. Even when it terrified me, there had been a room between us, a stretch of floor, or a pane of glass. That distance had been the only boundary I possessed.

Now there was nothing between us.

I do not know how long I remained beneath it. Time behaved strangely whenever I entered that condition. A few seconds could seem endless, and I had no way of knowing whether I had been awake for a moment or for several minutes.

Fortunately, it was almost time for the school to awaken.

The bell rang.

Its harsh sound broke across the silence of the hostel. Almost immediately, I heard movement from the surrounding rooms. Beds creaked. Doors opened. Voices called along the corridor as the other students began preparing for the day.

I continued struggling.

As the hostel filled with sound, control returned to my body. When I could move again, the figure was gone.

Nothing remained above me.

I sat up and looked around the room. The curtains hung beside the window, and the weak morning light had begun to enter. Outside my door, the other students were moving through the corridor as they did every morning. No one sounded frightened. No one had seen anything.

I rose and prepared for the day.

I told no one what had happened. I had spoken of the figure before, but the memory of the girls searching the empty laboratory remained with me. I did not want more questions, and I had no answers to give them.

The following night, I was sitting with my friends in the common area. We had gathered after the day’s activities and remained there talking. Some of the girls sat around the tables, while others occupied the old chairs along the walls. Their voices overlapped as they discussed lessons, teachers, and the usual troubles of school life.

I had slept poorly the previous night, and weariness soon overcame me. I rested my head and closed my eyes while the conversation continued around me. I had not intended to sleep for long.

At some point, I became aware again.

I could still hear my friends speaking.

Their voices had grown distant, though I knew they remained close to me. I opened my eyes and saw the common area. The tables, chairs, and girls were all where they had been before I fell asleep. Nothing in the room had changed.

Yet I could not move.

The same condition had returned.

I tried to lift my head, but my body did not respond. I attempted to call one of my friends, though no sound escaped me. They continued their conversation, unaware that I had awakened.

This time, however, the silhouette was nowhere in the common area.

Something else had taken its place.

A wind began to blow.

It was not the weak night air that sometimes entered through the open windows. This wind was violent and ceaseless. It rushed around me with the force of an approaching storm, filling my ears and pressing against me from every direction.

Yet nothing in the common area moved.

The curtains did not rise. Papers did not scatter from the tables. My friends did not pause or turn towards the windows. They continued speaking as though the air around them remained perfectly still.

I could feel the room and the wind at the same time.

It seemed that one foot remained in the world where my friends sat around me, while the other had crossed into another place. I was not moving between the two worlds. I was present in both of them at once.

In one, I saw the common area beneath its familiar light. I saw the girls talking and laughing. I saw their hands moving as they spoke and their faces turning towards one another.

In the other, there was only darkness and the roaring wind.

Shadows stood within it.

There were many of them. Some appeared tall and narrow, while others had no shape I could clearly understand. They gathered at different distances, their bodies forming black marks against a darkness that should not have allowed anything darker to exist.

I could not see faces among them.

I could not tell whether they were watching me or whether they even knew I was there. They did not approach. They remained scattered throughout that other place while the wind moved among them.

The common area had not disappeared. I could still see my friends through it all. Their voices reached me faintly beneath the wind, as though they were speaking from the far end of a great distance. One of them laughed, and I saw the others turn towards her. They were only a few feet away from me, yet I could not reach them.

I fought against the condition, forcing myself towards the world of the common area. With every effort, my friends’ voices grew clearer while the wind and the shadows weakened.

I continued struggling until movement returned to my body. The moment I became fully conscious, the other world vanished. The common area became whole again, and my friends’ voices returned to their proper distance.

I raised my head and looked around.

The girls were still talking. None of them appeared disturbed. No one was looking towards the windows or gathering papers blown from the tables. Everything remained exactly as it had been before I fell asleep.

For a few moments, I said nothing.

I was not certain whether I had awakened from a dream or returned from somewhere else. The wind had seemed too violent to have gone unnoticed, yet my friends showed no sign of having felt it.

“Did a strong breeze just start blowing?” I asked. “Like it was about to rain?”

The girls looked at me.

One of them laughed.

“What breeze?”

Another shook her head and told me that nothing had happened. The air had remained still the entire time I slept.

I looked towards the windows. The curtains hung quietly beside them.

Their laughter made the experience seem foolish, and I began to feel foolish for asking. I shrugged, told myself that I must have been dreaming, and soon returned to my room to sleep.

Yet it had not felt like an ordinary dream.

I had not imagined leaving the common area. I had remained there, listening to my friends and seeing them around me.

I had simply been somewhere else as well.