Some time ago, I had a very long day at my college from 8 AM to 6 PM; needless to say, when I got home I was very tired. I skipped dinner and went straight to bed, slept straight from 6 PM to 11 PM.
This is where the weird shit starts; my parents are usually awake until at least 12 PM every day but the whole house was silent and there was no light at all. Getting out of my bed and checking the ground floor of my house for my parents, then walking up the stairway to check on them, I noticed how most of the doors were closed, which is weird since we have cats (note: I didn’t see or hear any of my cats that day) and they don't like the closed doors, plus there's always the risk of trapping them somewhere.
The living room was empty but the television was running (so far the only source of light except for the ones I had ignited) it was only showing static and the sound was muted. “Okay,” I thought and turned off the television, no big deal my dad might have forgotten to shut it down. Turning off the television I went to check my parents’ bedroom, my parents weren’t making any sound, they weren’t snoring etc., but there was clearly someone underneath the duvets so I just went downstairs and grabbed some water before heading to bed myself.
Now that I think of it, it’s astounding how black that night was. There was no light from the stars and the moon wasn’t visible either. The lights that usually light up the water tower visible in the horizon from the window in the kitchen weren’t lit either, plus, the soft flickering yellow light usually cast by the old worn-down streetlights down next to my window wasn’t in place either. All in all I can describe that night as is simply cold and dark.
Going to sleep thinking nothing of it I quickly fell asleep, but not into the usual dark, dreamless sleep (I don’t usually dream/remember my dreams) the best way to describe my sleep is a series of short dreams all ending in my demise or at least scaring the living shit out of me.
The first dream was rather pleasant; I was in a tropical environment with my classmates and my closer friends, big white sandstone buildings and a huge plaza with fountain the ground was red stones and very warm plus there was a lot of palm trees in a square around the fountain providing cover and also creating shadow for four benches around the fountain. I remember how there was “sound” in my dream but if I focused on exactly what was said or what the sound was it faded until there was no “sound” at all.
After I’d taken in the scenery in this dream(and what was weird is that I was aware of me dreaming I could feel when I was sleeping deeply and also when my sleep was shallow) I was greeted by one of my childhood friends. I remember his reassuring face and our idle chat as we strolled over to one of the benches around the fountain.
Another one of my childhood friends was sitting there, and there was also a table in front of the bench. He asked me if I would care for a drink, I said “Yeah, thanks” and I took a cup and watched him pour wine into it. I lifted the cup for a toast and when I was about to drink the wine rapidly evaporated into thin air.
I remember getting angry and tossing the cup down on the ground, at this point I don’t remember my friends having any faces and they were just standing there frozen whilst my eyes were drawn to the sky. I then watched how a crow came as if out of nothing, the crow then turned into two crows and the two crows turned into four crows, so on so forth until there was a massive murder of crows seemingly hovering in place in the air.
What I did next might seem unreasonable, but what I did was close my eyes slowly and then open them again. As soon as my eyes were fully opened the first crow flew at me unbelievably fast with the others soon following. I remember narrowly dodging the first crow but the rest hit me, and then as if my mind was a cheap slide projector another dream followed.
I was in a huge room, bigger than any I have seen in my real life, much bigger than the meeting room in the German “Der Reichstag”, much taller than anything I have ever seen. When I looked up at the roof it seemingly just ended in nothingness after towering several hundred meters above me. It was a rectangular room with the two longest sides being the one I was on and the other opposite of me. There was no floor; it also stretched for a few hundred meters ending in a black, seemingly bottomless light-sucking abyss. It was as if the darkness reached out from the abyss and clawed its way up the sides of the wall. I was standing on a platform on one of the widest sides of the room. The platform had a railing and the railing stopped just in front of me, with enough space for a human to pass through casually. If you walked through you would fall down though because the footing of the platform ended just there. There was the same kind of platform and a door opposite of me, on the walls in the same height as the platforms were a lot of bookshelves made out of polished dark wood they were spanning the entire circumference of the room.
The only way for me to get to the other side would be by climbing on the bookshelves. Mind you I was only wearing my underwear (the same I was wearing when I went to sleep actually). I decided that I wouldn’t get anywhere by just standing around on this platform and so I climbed over the railing and started crawling across the polished, smooth surface of the bookshelves. There were no books in the bookshelves but there was a lot of grey, sealed letters. I don’t know why I didn’t open any of them. When I reached the bookshelves of the opposite wall I noticed a small wooden bowl, in the bowl was a small clay doll with button eyes and a small dress made out of patchwork felt in blue and purple colors. I looked at the door by the platform and I noticed a very small keyhole. In my mind at that point in time it seemed obvious where the key was. So I tore this clay doll apart and found 3 very small rusted keys. 2 of them were broken but one of them was not, and I was certain that the one left untouched would be the one that fit in the lock. As soon as I gripped after the key I felt my footing slip and I fell on my back down into the abyss. Yet again, my mind as if it were a cheap slide projector simply put another dream on.
This is the second-most terrifying experience of that night. My dream was that I woke up; I was lying on my side in the bed with my eyes close. No matter how hard I tried I could not open my eyes, my eyelids were simply too heavy. I even tried opening my eyes with my fingertips but I could not slide the lids up. I reached for the switch to my bed-side bright halogenous lamp and flipped it. Instantly I could sense that something was wrong, even though my eyelids were closed I could still perceive my room, but it wasn’t brightly lit as if by my lamp but rather there was a very soft light coming from behind me veiling the room in a sort of greyish twilight-y “light”. The most unsettling thing though, is the shadows dancing on the wall opposite of my bed in the direction I was facing. The walls were completely black against the greyish-white wall jumping up and down. It’s kind of silly now, but they would be the complete mirror image of a “classic” devil horns and a pitchfork 3 of them jumping up and down on the wall. I felt cold sweat all over my body and I started shaking. I sort of panicked, and I fumbling reached for the switch of my lamp. When I hit it though the shadows kept dancing, and with the loudest BANG I’ve heard for a while my door burst open and I saw a tall pitch-black man in a trench coat with a matching huge hat that shrouded his black face in the already apparent darkness of the hallway outside of my room. Even though I am Danish and that also being my main language I heard the man yell at me “The crows are hungry!”
With this I woke up, my body covered in sweat and me breathing heavily. I was almost afraid when I reached for the switch on my lamp and flipped it on. This time it worked and I was back in my world of light. I was up for a couple of minutes and drank some water, then I decided to go back to sleep. At this point the time was 3:26 AM I know this because I checked my phone soon after I woke up.
No more nightmares followed and I first woke up at 11 AM later that day to the front door opening, it was my parents coming home with a couple of bags. I ask them where they had been and they told me “When you fell asleep yesterday we didn’t dare wake you even though we had plans to visit your brother.” Turns out they had slept over at his place because it snowed so much that night.
To this day I wonder who it was underneath my parents’ duvets, and I wonder if the crows are still hungry.