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horrificramblings · 7 years

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Please, please let this be a dream...

Have you ever had a head injury? A serious injury, one that was difficult to recover from? I have. The story of the injury itself is not a great one, I was hiking early one morning with my boyfriend when a dog came barreling up the trail between us from behind - I was knocked sideways, slipped on the dew moistened two-by-four at the top of a small retaining wall on the trail edge and fell about seven feet down the side, hitting my head pretty decently on the protruding edge of a huge rock in the ground before coming to a stop. My boyfriend, Lyle, went a bit green later when recalling the sound my skull had made as it hit the jagged edge of that boulder. I was out for a couple of minutes until he and the owners of the dog clambered down and were able to gently rouse me, their faces open in horror at the sight of my blood soaked hair. Head wounds like to bleed, a lot, and this was a big one. I earned eighteen stitches behind my right ear and a few nights in the hospital for observation, along with a temporary neck brace and all the tests and scans that come along with a serious knock to the head. Once it had been determined that there was no injury to my spine and I was alert and coherent I was released with a prescription for T3’s for the headaches that came in waves and lasted for what felt like hours, with instructions to use them sparingly and only for the worst pain. The rest would have to be controlled with Aspirin.

The worst part was that this wasn’t my first concussion. I suffered two mild ones during my teenage years - mild but both serious enough injuries to have momentarily knocked me out. If this hiking doozy had been my first head injury my post concussional symptoms might not have been quite so bad, however as it was my third they are nothing short of terrible. The headaches are definitely the worst part. I don’t want to constantly be taking pain medication and try my best to be sparing with the Aspirin and extra sparing with the T3’s unless they’re really bad - which they often are. Besides the headaches though I am prone to irritation, I have a hard time focusing and my short term memory has become non-existent. I’ve also found myself doing things like staring out the front door, or into an open cupboard with no recollection of how I came to be there or what I was looking for. It’s so frustrating and I feel so useless sometimes. I work as a receptionist in a busy hair salon and, since my multitasking abilities have suddenly gone down the toilet, it became nearly impossible for me to do my job. After my fourth horribly botched cash-out left me in frustrated tears I decided to spare my boss from having to let me go and told her I needed a break from work. She, who had been watching me mis-book appointments, blank out on calls with clients and forget to pass tips on to the correct stylists, agreed without hesitation but not without regret. We’re close and I’m generally very good at my job. She helped me to fill out all of the necessary paperwork to submit to apply for Employment Insurance and so here I am, managing on a percentage of my salary and dealing with my symptoms as best I can.

It’s been almost two months since my injury. The headaches are still regular, my memory hasn’t improved in the slightest and concentration is difficult. My days are frustrating. Lyle leaves for work at seven. I usually sleep until around 9, trying to get as much rest as possible. My day is spent puttering around the house doing the few small chores that two tidy people create, and walking as much as possible. This is because I simply don’t have the focus to read a book, read the news, watch a movie or even an entire episode of a television show. It’s horrible. I’m usually a big reader, it’s my go-to way of passing the time, and Lyle and I are huge movie buffs. It’s so frustrating having had two of my biggest hobbies ruined for me. So I go for walks. I stick my earbuds in, listen to music or try to pay attention to an audiobook or podcast, and get out of the house for as long as possible, headache permitting.

Two weeks ago I returned from a walk to the grocery store, and when I took the laundry detergent I’d bought downstairs to the basement laundry room I was surprised to see that the back door, which leads to our unfenced yard, was unlocked. It doesn’t sound terribly out of the ordinary, except that we don’t ever really use that door in the fall. It’s too cold to use the yard much, and even if I were to open it for some reason I would never leave it unlocked for fear of intruders. Our yard backs out onto a deep green belt and my imagination can go wild conjuring the kind of weirdos that might hang out in there. Honestly, I’ve always been more than a little creeped out by that stretch of woods, it seems sort of unnaturally dense and dark. Like I said though, my memory is garbage and I very well could have heard our cat, Nancy, scratching while I was doing laundry, let her in and forgot to lock it. Stranger things have happened. I locked the door and told myself to try to remember to ask Lyle about it. I didn’t, but I had strange and frightening dreams that night, of dark and wind, that I only half remembered afterwards.

A couple of days later I was doing a load of Lyle’s work coveralls when I happened to glance at the basement door and saw that the deadbolt was unlocked again. He was home this time so I called him downstairs.

“Did you leave this door unlocked?” I asked him, pointing to the door that, for some reason, I suddenly didn’t want to get too close to.

“No, I haven’t even used this door in ages. Did you maybe let Nancy in down here?”

“I don’t think so…” I replied, and the look on Lyle’s face told me he thought that was exactly what had happened, which annoyed me. “I really don’t think I did” I said with a bit more conviction.

“OK, well, it’s no big deal” he said, flipping the deadbolt home. He kissed my forehead and went back upstairs while I stood staring at the door, trying to remember the last time I had opened it and feeling dismayed as well as irritated when I came up blank.

Within a few days of that door episode I developed a new symptom in the form of minor visual hallucinations. They started as occasional small spots or cloudy shapes in my periphery and over the course of a couple of days increased to larger, shadowy, human sized shapes that still just hovered at the edge of my vision. I knew that these weren’t real figures that I was seeing but they came unexpectedly and made me jumpy and uneasy - two new states of being that I really didn’t need added to my already taxing daily life. I told Lyle about them and made an appointment with my Dr, who I saw yesterday. She assured me that this was nothing of concern but told me to come back if they progressed into more detailed hallucinations. When I came home from that appointment and shrugged my coat off I noticed that it was much cooler than usual inside the house and I could smell the crisp, earthy fall air. I went around the main floor, checking for windows that I might have left cracked open, and when I realized that they were all closed my heart jumped into my throat. I could see cloudy shapes forming at the edges of my vision, probably brought on by stress, and I crept over and peeked down the basement stairs to see the back door standing open a couple of inches, one of my imagined shapes huddled off to the side of it. Rushing back to our entranceway I grabbed my jacket and cell phone, slipped outside and hurried down the block a few houses before dialing Lyle at work. He answered on the third ring.

“Hey babe, I’m just about to meet with the homeowners can I -”

“The door is open” I blurted out, interrupting him.

“What? What door?”

“The basement door, Lyle. I just got home from the doctor and it was cold inside and I looked downstairs and it was open!” Lyle was quiet for a moment.

“Well, did you close it?”

“What?!”

“Did you close the door, Lane.”

“No I didn’t close it, I don’t want to go down there! It was even worse because I could see one of my stupid new shadow things down by the door.” Lyle sighed audibly.

“Ok, babe, where are you right now?” My eyes began to brim with tears as I sensed the exasperation that he was trying to hide from his voice. I could also feel the onset of what would likely be a vicious headache.

“I’m just down the street a bit, a few houses away.” I drew a shuddery breath and tried to calm myself.

“Ok. I’m not going to be home for another two hours or so and you sound pretty shaky. What’s your plan? Are you just going to wait for me outside?”

“Lyle, I didn’t open that door, I swear I didn’t. I wasn’t even in the basement this morning.” I could hear him talking to someone with his hand over the mouthpiece of his phone, he wasn’t really listening to me.

“Lane, I really have to go. Look I know you don’t remember opening the door, but this wouldn’t be the first time you’ve done something without realizing or remembering. There is no other explanation, is there? I think you should go home, lock the door and lie down. I’ll be home soon, OK? I’ll see if I can take off right after this meeting.” Tears tumbled down my cheeks.

“OK” I whispered.

“Love you, see you soon” he said and ended the call. I stood, glancing around me for a minute, the houses on either side of the street all looking vacant this weekday afternoon. Most of the driveways were car free, and I felt very alone. Lyle was probably right, though - it probably had been me. I’d become a bit fixated on the door, it wasn’t too out there to imagine myself opening it and peering outside during one of my weird “spells”. I turned around and headed back to the house.

When Lyle got home late yesterday afternoon I was napping in our bed, Nancy curled on my chest. The headache that had indeed come on full force by the time I’d locked both doors had abated a bit, but still lingered on the right side where my injury had been. Lyle sat on the bed beside me and smoothed my hair from my eyes.

“Hungry?” he asked, “I brought thai home. I got a bottle of wine too, if you want a glass.”

“Sounds good” I replied, easing an unimpressed Nancy off of my chest and slowly swinging my legs out of bed. “I’ll be out in a second.” Lyle stopped in the doorway and turned back to face me.

“You were still too nervous, huh?” I shook my head at him, perplexed. “The door, babe. I know you were a bit freaked, but you should have run down and closed it. It’s not safe to sleep with an open door.” He turned and walked into the kitchen.

The evening found us wandering the aisles of Home Depot after a lengthy argument in which I swore I had closed and locked the basement door before lying down, while Lyle shook his head and muttered his concerns about my memory problems. After conceding that it wasn’t my fault, that all of this was much more frustrating and life affecting for me than it was for him, we decided to at least stop the basement door from being a problem going forward. We bought an automatic closing hinge for the door, as well as an expensive bluetooth activated deadbolt that could only be opened with either the traditional key or key fob that it came with, both of which we agreed Lyle would keep, or with an app on our phones which we set so that it would automatically lock again once the door closed, as well as sending an alert to both of our phones any time the lock was triggered open. I felt much more relaxed late last night when Lyle had finally finished installing and setting up our new back door security. We sat in bed drinking red wine and watching funny videos on YouTube for a while before turning in and I felt much better than I had in days.

“So what did the doc say about your vision? We didn’t even talk about your appointment.” I put my empty glass on my bedside table and leaned my head on Lyle’s shoulder as a man on the laptop screen punched a moving bush that suddenly charged towards him.

“She said it’s not that unusual, it’s likely caused by stress and I shouldn’t worry unless they start to look less splotchy or cloudy and appear more real.” Lyle nodded.

“Makes sense that they would be caused by stress, especially if you saw one downstairs by the open door. Poor babe, that’s actually really creepy.” He giggled a little and shivered.

“Uh yeah, it is. It’s really creepy and I don’t really want to think about it now that the door thing is sorted, OK?”

“Right” he said, closing the laptop and leaving the bed to go to our ensuite bathroom to wash up. “There is definitely no creepy door opening ghoul in this house, no ma’am.”

“Definitely not” I agreed and followed him into the bathroom.

Despite feeling much more reassured and at ease last night before bed, I had a terrible nightmare. In my dream I awoke to frigid cold, a breeze was stirring my hair and I sat up to find myself alone in the bed. “Lyle?” I called out, looking towards the dark ensuite. There was no reply and I tried again, “Lyle? Where are you?” My voice seemed to echo in the cold room. A noise startled me, an insectile chirruping sound and I looked over at my flashing phone to see notification after notification of the basement door being opened. “Lyle!” I called again, louder this time. Again there was no reply and I got out of bed, the icy breeze wrapping around my bare ankles as I crept from the bedroom. There was another sound, a beeping noise, not from my phone but from downstairs. I peered around the dark living room, startling at the shadowy shapes that disappeared from my vision as soon as I looked at them full on. They seemed to be everywhere. I hurried to the basement stairs and stood at the top looking down, the stairway lined on either side by shuddering, blurred, vaguely human shapes. Lyle stood at the basement door, fob in hand, unlocking the deadbolt with a beep and opening and closing the door over and over with his back to me. “Lyle, stop!” I shouted. He froze for a moment at the sound of my voice, then opened the door as wide as he could and stepped into the dark opening before turning to look back at me, eyes bulging, a huge, silent scream twisting and contorting his features. I stared at him in mute horror, then screamed as he was suddenly and violently pulled away into the night and the door slammed noisily shut.

The phone woke me this morning.

“Hey” I answered, groggily.

“Hey, how are you feeling? You sure were tossing and turning last night” Lyle said, clearly from around a cup of coffee.

“I had a really bad dream” I told him, closing my eyes against an incoming migraine and trying not to recall the way his face had looked at the end of my nightmare.

“Yeah I could tell, I could hardly even shake you out of it. What are your plans for today? You should try to get out of the house, do something fun.” I laughed without humour.

“Honestly it’s looking like a T3 morning for me, I’m going to try to eat something quickly so the pill doesn’t kill my stomach.” A shadow figure flickered in the doorway at the corner of my vision. “Shadow guys are showing up early today” I said quietly, wincing as I sat up in bed. “Probably not a good sign.”

“Shit. I’m sorry babe. Ok, well, I mean at least you don’t have to worry about that stupid door, right? That’s something. Tell me if you want me to bring anything home, ok?”

“K, thanks. I’ll see you later.” I disconnected before another of his sweet words could drill into my already hammering brain.

After forcing myself to meticulously chew and swallow a piece of buttered toast I chased my little white pill with a sip of ginger tea and took my mug out onto the front steps for a bit of fresh air. The cool breeze helped a bit to lessen my encroaching nausea and I closed my eyes, inhaling through my nose and exhaling through my mouth for a few minutes and trying to will the pain away. The pill was kicking in and I could feel the migraine beginning to loosen its grip and decided to go lay down on the couch for a bit.

Well, according to the clock that was more than twelve hours ago. I somehow slept through the entire day and don’t even remember dreaming at all. I hope that, maybe, that means that I’m dreaming right now. Because Lyle should have been home hours ago, but the house is dark, and cold, and my phone is showing that the basement door has been unlocked thirty-two times tonight. The shadows have formed a flickering corridor, two rows of vague figures leading from where I am on the couch to the top of the basement stairs, they appear to be swaying in the wind that blows up into the living room. I can hear the door down there, beeping unlocked, opening, closing. Maybe, hopefully, if I just lay here with my eyes closed I’ll eventually wake up, because I know what I’ll see if I look down those stairs, and I don’t think I could stand it again...

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