It wasn’t until I was sixteen that the sleep hallucinations became a problem.
The Summer heat was quickly devoured by late-night frosts. Creeping into the Idaho air was the scent of decaying grass, rotting leaves, and the distinct odor of black garbage bags. To give you a deeper understanding of our situation: my mother and I were living off of bread from the foodbank and sleeping on a second-hand mattress under an unzipped sleeping bag.
If there was one common theme in the four years following my parents’ divorce, it was a single word: uprooting.
The new rental almost didn’t happen at all. In fact, before settling on Idaho we were looking at apartments in the Vegas area. Yeah, we knew Vegas well. After very little deliberation, we came to a mutual understanding that we didn’t want to have to deal with 125-degree hell.
So, North we went.
We left with about $3,500 in the bank, a car filled with suitcases, and my mom still looking for work. Every day we spent looking for a rental without settling on one we were eating through savings meant for a down-payment.
We were getting a little desperate.
And then we saw the ad for the old house on Fillmore.
It was constructed of red brick, god-knows how many years before, and it was the oldest rental house I had ever seen.
“Hey Mom,” I whispered as I trailed along, glued to her side during the tour. The carpets were a mess and there were cracks cutting jaggedly through certain walls and corners of the ceiling. “At least no one died here.” I gave her a smug grin. “And it’s not like the previous owners were hardcore druggies or anything, right?”
I was trying to lighten the mood after we’d found out there were no appliances in the home; no stove, no oven, no dishwasher, no refrigerator, not so much as a microwave.
Our liaison, a lovely lady, heard me and responded:
“Oh yeah, no one’s died here.” She paused. ” But you should probably know that my brother lived here a couple years back, and I have no doubt in my mind that him and his junkie friends shot up in the garage.”
Oh great.
The garage that she was referring to had been remodeled into the master bedroom. I wasn’t sure why that seemed like a good idea to anyone.
The bedroom in question had one entrance from the kitchen. The other two doors led to the front and back yards, respectively.
Mom politely inquired deeper into the story about her brother, how long ago it was, if the carpets had been professionally cleaned, the norm.
In the end, we signed the lease; as I said, we were desperate.
Something we didn’t account for, however, was the spiders.
As it got colder, they started looking for warm places to hide, and that door in the master bedroom, the one to the backyard, had this perfect break in the seam between it and the floor. They liked to climb up on that wall and just sit there.
It was unnerving, but we didn’t mind too much – they didn’t bother us if we didn’t bother them. Plus, they got rid of the gnats and such.
That night, I felt like I had been awake, just laying in bed, for hours. It was cold in the room, and I almost resented my mother when I heard her snoring next to me.
At least one of us can sleep.
I couldn’t get my mind to shut down. There were too many tabs open and I felt like something had its gaze fixed on me. Eventually, I shook it off, took some deep breaths, and surrendered to the sense of drifting.
It felt like my eyes had just barely closed when I opened them again.
Something is crawling on me.
I could feel them, their sharp little legs grazing my arms like safety pins. They were under my shirt, they were all over the blankets, I could feel them crawling towards my face. One of them grazed my jaw, and I yelped.
Rolling onto the floor, I threw the blankets off, shot up to my feet, and looked down at the mattress.
Spiders.
They were everywhere, crawling over one another in a horde while my mother slept peacefully, blankets wrapped up to her chin.
“Mom!” I called.
“What?” She asked, shifting in bed to look at me. “What is it?”
When she put her hand down, I could see them disperse, trying to outrun her palm before being crushed into the sleeping bag under her weight.
I opened my mouth to tell her to get up! That they were all over her, but I couldn’t find the words. In the end, I just shook my head, feeling completely frantic, and ran out of the room. I darted through the kitchen, down the hall, and to the bathroom where I flicked on the light. My eyes desperately shot down to my body.
Are they on me? My thoughts cried out as I swiped at my arms and the tops of my thighs. Are they on me?
My breath was shaky until my eyes adjusted.
Nothing.
There was nothing there.
I stood there for a moment, dazed, and tried to piece together what had just happened.
My mother caught up to me in that hallway and asked what was wrong.
Eyes wide, face feeling pale, all I could manage was: “There were spiders on the bed.”
She gave me a look, but gently took my hand and guided me back to the bedroom where she turned on the light and shook out every blanket on the bed.
There were no spiders anywhere, not even on the walls where they usually hung out. There was nothing.
“You were just dreaming.” She smoothed my hair. “There’s nothing in the bed.”
Laying back down, facing opposite directions, Mom quickly fell back to sleep, snoring again. I stared into the darkness, my mind racing, afraid that if I fell back asleep I would have the same dream.
The one thing that kept flashing through my mind like the blaring red numbers of an alarm clock was this:
I could have sworn I was awake.