On The Other Side

I remember when it all started: I was a determined child at four years-old and I convinced my mother to let me stay up late one night. My mother exhausted from her daily activities reluctantly gave in to my pleas to watch Peter Pan on our green-tinged TV.

She had been in bed for about 40 minutes when I heard a noise outside. The sound of steps on concrete was seemingly getting closer, until I was certain they were coming up the walk-way to the front door. I saw a silhouette of a man pass by the living room window; he kept walking to the door and jiggled the doorknob checking if it was locked. The rattling stopped and he started walking back down the walk way. I started breathing again but I was still paralyzed on the couch. It all of a sudden occurred to me that he might check the kitchen door too. I wanted to run and make sure the kitchen door was locked, I wanted to scream and wake my mother to go do something but my body betrayed me. I could do nothing. I was trapped inside a motionless body with a racing mind. I could hear each step as he casually walked toward the kitchen door. The sound of him jiggling the doorknob was pounding in my head like bombs. Fortunately for me, the door was locked, and he turned around and walked away.

Once I could finally move again, I ran to wake my mother. In her exhaustion she did not believe a word I had said. She told me that I should be in bed already and to turn off the TV. I was devastated. Now I was aware of an eminent danger lurking outside our doors and that no one would listen.

That event sparked a reoccurring nightmare that was to haunt me for many years to come. For some reason which I cannot explain, the dream was always in black and white on a fall day. The light all around was hazy. I was dressed in a gray clothes sitting in front of my house near the sidewalk holding some twigs tied with twine. I could see a figure on the sidewalk a few houses down. He was dressed all in black. It was unmistakably a man, but a large crow mask disguised him so I could not tell who he was. He walked slowly toward me and I could sense something was wrong, something ominous was about to happen. I stood up and started running toward the house and he started running too. I ran toward the car in the driveway but I couldn't get in. I could only run around it to avoid him. The steely black eyes on his mask stared out at me. His black figure clearly defined on the other side of car was trying to harm me, but he would have to catch me first. Slowly his head and body transmogrified into an enormous crow dripping a black oily fluid. He flapped his oily wings, rose high into the air and with loud screech came barreling down at me. I would usually wake up just as I jerked out the way of his fatal beak. It would be many years until I learned how to defeat this demon.