Trouble Sleeping

Some kids cant go to sleep without their door ajar and a light on in the passageway.

This was never the case for me, I always slept in complete darkness. When I was a child, I dreamed more than anyone I've ever discussed it with, I had several dreams that I could remember a night. And in every one of my dreams, I died. I died a thousand deaths, being shot, stabbed, poisoned, I fell from cliffs, I burned in fires. Most of these nightmares I just put down to an overactive imagination.

The dreams I was shot, it was usually by some soldiers in some war. Too many movies. But some dreams, I knew were different. They all involved places I knew, as opposed to the other nightmares, where I was killed in all sorts of locations I'd never been to. These particular dreams, I was prey. I was being hunted by some beings that I couldnt see, couldnt feel, but I knew they were there. When they caught me, they tried to kill me. But they were non-corporeal, so they couldnt physically injure me in these dreams.

When they got me, I couldnt breathe, and I felt them draining at me.

Normally, when I knew I was dreaming, I could wake myself up very easily. But not when they had me. I could feel them keeping me in the dream, and it took all my will to drag myself away from them and wake up.

All my other nightmares, I could wake up and say to myself "It was only a dream", and forget about it. But these particular dreams i couldnt get out of my head. I somehow knew that they were real. And that scared the hell out of me. In the nightmares, when these beings caught me, I was trapped, and couldnt breathe. I would slowly, intentionally, claw my way back to consciousness. I am an only child, and for the first 12 years of my life, i slept alone, in a bedroom at the opposite end of the house from my parents.

Occasionally, I would have friends sleep over. And I would completely freak them out. Because I discovered that when I was dying in a dream, and couldnt breathe, I couldn't breathe in real life. Sometimes for extended periods of time.

Some of the times, I'd wake up, and whoever was staying at my house would be shaking me, trying to wake me up cause I was choking, unable to breathe in. As soon as I regained consciousness, I could breathe again. This didnt happen every night. Just the nights when I knew the dream was real. Sometimes I would be having a normal dream, dreaming about being a champion footballer or whatever the gently caress young kids dream about, when I knew that the being searching for had me found me in the dream, and all of a sudden the dream became real.

Over time, I realised that not all of my real dreams involved me being hunted down. Sometimes, I would be talking to other beings. One group of beings in these real dreams tried to help me. These were not like the dark, invisible things which tried to kill me, these other beings were semi visible, shorter than me at the time, making them quite short. They tried to teach me things in the dream world. There were three in particular.

I cant remember the names of two, but I can remember the name of one distinctly: "Ry-ing". I'll explain why i can only remember that name later. These beings taught me, and i think they tried to help me hide from the hunters, but they couldnt protect me, or fight the hunters off. I learnt that in these real dreams, I had powers I didnt have in the real world. I could fall great distances without injury, because I could slow how quickly I fell.

It was as if I could affect gravitys effect on me. This also meant that I could almost fly. It was more levitation, it required all my concentration in the dream, and I could never get more than a meter or 2 off the ground, and couldnt move very quickly. There were other creatures that inhabited my real dream world. One was a small creature that looked a little like a hedgehog. It was a misty, semi transparent creature, which made it easy to accidentally step on.

If you stepped on it, you wouldnt feel normal pain from its spikes, but a strange pins and needles feeling. The other strange thing about these creatures was that where they died, this pins and needles effect would stay where they died, even if their carcass was moved, or decayed. There was one corner of my grandparents house that my father grew up in where I knew one of these creatures had died, because I got that effect in my foot wherever I stepped there in my real dreams. All these dreams happened when I was about 10 and younger. I guess I started having them less and less often, and I forgot about them. I mean completely forgot. I never thought about them once. When I was about 15 or so, I can remember one sepcific dream I had.

Some invisible beings I could sense were trying to get me. And in the dream, thats when I remembered. I remember all the dreams I had when I was younger. The realisation was so shocking I felt like it hit me. The closest analogy I can draw is the effect you see in movies where the camera draws away from the subject, but zooms in, so it looks like the subjects face doesnt change in size, but the background rushes in at them. I remembered having real dreams. The strange thing was, the being that was attacking me suddenly drew away and disapeared. When I woke, I could still remember everything. I could remember the dreams I had as a child as if they had just happened. I found it strange. But as a 15 year old, i had stopped beleiving in things like that. I thought it was just my imagination.

A couple of years ago, I was talking about dreams with my dad while we were having a few beers. He told me that when he was a child, he had two friends that came back to a lot of dreams he had. He told me their names. I didnt recognise one, but hearing the other one nearly made me drop my beer. "Ry-ing". The same name as one of the three that tried to help me in my dreams.

My father told me how they used to be his friends in his dreams when he was young. And he went on to describe one particular dream, where one of his pets in his dream, a little creature he said looked like a "shadowy brown echidna", died. He told me exactly where it died, just in between the crabapple tree and the kitchen. This was EXACTLY the spot that I had dreamed of knowing one of these creatures had died, because I had walked over the place it had died in one of my dreams, and had felt the strange pins and needles feeling that these creatures gave the place where they died.

The place was outside at the time of my fathers dream, but by the time I was young the kitchen had been extended, and the spot was indoors in a corner. This blew my mind. Most things in my life like that I put down to coincidence, but that was just too close. I told dad about the same dreams I had had as a kid, and to my surprise, he wasnt shocked at all.

He said that his mother had similar dreams when she was young, and so had her father (my great grandfather, who died a long time before i was born). I have spoken to my grandmother about this, and she remembers vividly talking to 'the little people' in her dreams, and talking to her father about it. She seems to treat them as perfectly normal. Having an Irish background, she beleives in 'the little people'. I had never even heard of them until i talked to her about it, and that was a long time after i had these dreams. I havent had real dreams for years now.

I havent seen Ry-ing or the other two in my dreams for years either. But i know that they are still there. What really bothers me is that my father, grandmother, or (from what i have heard) great-grandfather was ever hunted in their dreams. They knew that other, evil creatures existed in the same world as the little people, but they were never attacked. I was attacked every real dream I had.

The other difference was that 'the little people' taught my family, and spoke to them, but they didnt teach them what they taught me, limited flying, controlled falling etc. Why was I different?

I cant explain how I know these dreams were real. I am agnostic, I'm not sure theres a God, im not sure of much in this life, but some things I just know. I knew that of my 4 grandparents, my maternal grandmother would die first, even though my fathers parents are older and more sickly, and my maternal nan was fit as a fiddle til the day she died. I know that my father will die before my mother.

I dont know how I know, I just do. Sometimes, lying awake at night, I can almost feel the real dreams. But whenever I concentrate on them, i feel them slip away, like sand through my fingers. Sometimes I momentarily see things that arent there, like a single frame with an extra object spliced onto a roll of a movie.

When I get Deja-Vu (this happens occasionally, about once a month), it kills me. I often have to sit down and close my eyes i get the feeling that strongly. But what really fucks with my mind is my memory.

You know how sometimes when you are trying to think of someones name, or a word, and you get it "right on the tip of your tounge", but you just cant remember it?

Whenever I think about these dreams, i get that feeling. Like theres something about all this that i have almost forgotten. But i know that its important somehow. But remembering it is like trying to grasp smoke. I have tried hypnosis to remember more, but i am one of the one in ten people that cant be hypnotised, it just doesnt work on me.