Nightlight

When I was 9 years old, I had a dream about a cat that was running loose in my house. The dream was more humorous than anything. Even though it was very dark in the dream, with the hallway in my house only being lit by a small nightlight, the dream was fun because I was trying to catch this cat.

It was too dark to see the cat well, but I eventually cornered it in the hall and tried to grab it. It seemed to have just stopped entirely, right in front of the nightlight in my hallway. When I picked it up to look at it, I immediately woke up.

I was covered in blood.

It was on my shirt, pillow, sheets, and hands. Apparently I had a nosebleed while I was asleep, and it had run down my pillow onto my clothes, because I was lying on my side. I ran to the bathroom and grabbed some toilet paper and held it to my nose, trying to get the blood to clot. (I had been used to nosebleeds throughout my life.) My dad was still asleep, and it was 4 am so I didn't want to bother him. It was a full hour before my nose quit bleeding. I was pretty light headed, but I started getting ready for school, because it was too late to go back to sleep.

During that school day, I kept thinking about that cat, because something about that dream was starting to make me feel uneasy. I kept trying to remember what the cat looked like, because I knew for a fact from what I could see in my dream, it wasn't one of my cats. (I had four at the time.)

It wasnâ€™t until my dad picked me up from school that I got worried. He told me that one of our cats, Ted, had died.

My mother would get home around 8 am, because she worked night shift. She didn't have to work the next night, so she decided to stay up for a while. She was holding Ted and watching TV, when she decided to go upstairs and lay down. Ted got up first and ran up the steps. She followed up behind him until she hit the top of the steps and noticed he was lying perfectly still in the hallway.

Right under the nightlight.

When I heard that point in the story I started crying. I was really scared at this point, but my dad just thought I was sad that the cat had died. While I was sad, I was more disturbed that the cat in my dream quit moving where my cat had died.

That night I had trouble sleeping. It was nearly 1 am before I finally managed to get myself calmed down to the point where I could sleep.

It was at that point that I had a dream, with nearly the same environment as the previous one. It was the upstairs of my house, but I was the only one there, and it was completely dark, except for the nightlight in the hallway. Lying under the nightlight, was the cat from the previous dream. This time, however, I got a perfect look at it.

It had the face of what I can only describe as looking like a barn owl. It was covered in completely sleek silver colored fur. And most peculiar, it only had one leg. All of the other legs, but the back left leg, seemed to just not be part of it.

It stood up on its one leg and opened its mouth to reveal a pair of fangs larger than anything I had ever witnessed. Its mouth had opened to point that was truly shocking.

Then I woke up.

Although this deeply scared me at the time, I had no other instances of this 'Cat' appearing in my dreams. It was ten years time, and in that time my dad died of leukemia, 2 of my other cats had died, and we had gained 3 new cats. (My mom takes in cats like... Shit takes in flies.) So my mom was at 4 cats once again.

One day, I came home on a visit from college to do some laundry. (My mom had already left for work) I hit the top of the steps to go to the washing machine, and then my heart sank.

My oldest cat, Shaft, was lying in the hallway on his side with his eyes wide open. His mouth was stretched open further than any other cat I had seen. Except, for that 'Cat' in my dreams.

What made it even more eerie, was the fact that the he was laying under that same nightlight that Ted had died under.

I was freaked out, so I grabbed him in some towels, and dug a hole for him in our back yard and buried him. I called my mom and told her that I had found Shaft dead, I explained the way I had found him, and she told me he had probably had an aneurism as well.

I took the nightlight, and told her later that I had accidentally dropped something and it broke it.

I didn't sleep for two days after that. I was seriously too freaked out to sleep in my mom's house. I drove back to my apartment, (even though I was tired enough that I could have run off the road and died), and I decided to go to sleep.

Then I had a dream.

I was back in the same place as all of the other dreams.

I was in my room, I was a kid again, and that nightlight was on.

I looked into the hallway, and once again... That cat was there.

This time, however, it wasn't missing 3 legs. The disturbing thing, was that the 3 legs it was previously missing, were there, and were black. The same color as my cat, Shaft.

Once again it stood up, but this time I didn't wake up. It opened its mouth like it did before, but then it rose up on its hind two legs.

With its mouth all the way open, it looked directly at me, and spoke without moving its mouth at all.

"Thank you for bringing me with you."

Then I woke up.

It has been less than a week since this happened, so I'm kinda freaked out. I can only imagine that it was talking about the nightlight. I've left the nightlight in my bag since I brought it home.