WHEN DARKNESS FALLS by Ashyne

Feature Writer: Ashyne

Feature Title: When Darkness Falls

Published: 24.10.2024

Story Codes: Erotic Horror

Synopsis: What is the truth behind the demon who violates me at night?

When Darkness Falls

Peering out through the half-opened windows, I watched the countless stars twinkle in the night sky. Some were red, blue and others a faint white hue. All of them sparkled like beautiful flowers floating in a vast ocean of darkness.

Beneath them, like a curtain of light, was the illumination that radiated softly from the city, blanketing the lower portion of the sky in a yellow glow. As most of the city went to sleep, the curtain slowly, gradually, descended, allowing the blackness to reclaim its dominion of the sky.

I, too, felt my eyelids grow heavier, drooping down lazily over my tired eyes. Sleep was approaching me silently and rapidly despite my desperate attempts to avoid it.

I held on to my stuffed animal toy, letting the soft fur of its cuddly body keep me awake for as long as I could manage. But, as always, it was a futile effort. No matter how much I wanted to escape it, it would inevitably claim me.

Burying my face into my beloved plushie, I started to sob, warm tears forming at the corners of my eyes as sleep beckoned me into its dark embrace.

Then, the nightmares began. They were always the same, on every night that they seeped into my mind. Those same scenes repeated themselves, whenever the darkness arrived and I went into slumber.

Before long, I heard the footsteps from outside my closed bedroom door. The shuffling feet sounded awkward, as if they meant to move fast but, for whatever reason, could not.

Inside my mind, I screamed. I knew what was to come. The unwanted anticipation and the numbing fear that accompanied it pushed my sanity to the edge.

Feeling the insane pounding of my rapidly-beating heart against my chest, its vibrations rushing to my head, I waited. And as I waited, I pretended to be asleep, though I was quite certain I was already sleeping, but the nightmare seemed so real.

I closed an eye, but the other I opened a little, barely wide enough to allow me a glimpse through the semi-darkness at the door next to me.

It began with a squeak, that of the doorknob being turned, so very gently that, perhaps, whoever was turning it wanted not to rouse me.

A small stain, formed by my tears, appeared on my pillow. The fear was incredible, that fear in the waiting, already knowing what was coming, yet not having the courage to face it.

The knob made a half-turn, and stopped, but it was not released.

I squeezed my toy tighter. Then came the grating sound from the hinge as the door was pushed, slowly, and the darkness from outside, like a stifling black cloud of shadow, seeped into my room.

A space, no wider than the palm of my hand, formed between the door and the wall. The door remained very still, as if frozen in the icy darkness.

I continued to wait, with each passing second the terror within me pulsing through my veins and threatening to send my anxious heart to a shocked stop.

The darkness was nearly impenetrable. I could not see anything in the living room from the small gap, and whoever had opened my door had not revealed itself yet. A scratching sound came from beyond my room, the sound of nails against the wall.

And the source of my terror exposed itself to me, but not completely. The dim glow cast by the hanging moon and streetlights from outside my window barely offered any illumination.

A bald head, oval in its shape and with a whitish-grey face, appeared in the narrow gap in the doorway. It cocked its head sideways at me, eyes blacker than the night staring at me, lidless and large. The long neck extended downward to a body I could not see, hidden outside the room behind the door.

The face itself was demonic in its appearance. It had a mouth, with lips stretched thin and colored as if it wore black lipstick. The nose was non-existent, only two holes where the nostrils should have been.

Humanoid, yet so strangely familiar and unfamiliar at the same time. As it stood there, the head began rapping against the door every few seconds, pushing it into the room a short distance each time.

Having that frightful entity so close to me sent me into a terrible fit. I trembled violently, screaming again and again, but not a sound came out of my gaping mouth.

Beads of perspiration, cold with fear itself, popped out from pores all over my body, wetting my night clothes and matting the fur of my plushie against its body.

The rapping sound, resembling the sharp and rhythmic knocking of knuckles against polished wood, grew in intensity, the head of the demonic being extending deeper and deeper into the room and craning toward me.

Soon, its body appeared, naked and bare. The skin was of the same color as that on its face, that sickly hue that seemed to come straight from the grave. Thin and lanky, as if anorexic, the skeletal frame of stretched skin and sharp bones slithered without a sound into my room.

By then, my eyes were wide open, unable to shut even if I had so wanted to close them, to block out that despicable, unwelcome sight from tainting my mind’s innocence.

But, no. No matter how much my body wanted to move, or how much I wanted it to obey my desperately struggling mind, it simply would not listen. My body was frozen, with fear or with the unknown powers cast on me by this strange creature, or maybe both.

Either way, I was trapped- a screaming and helpless mind within an unmoving body. A perverse sound came from the uncanny entity. It was a cackling noise, some arrogant laughter aimed at a vulnerable prey who could not free itself from its predator’s grasp.

It was now entirely in the room, and the door was wide open. It reached for me with fingers that resembled tendrils. They wrapped around the toy I was holding and pulled it out of my grasp, flinging it across the room and sending it crashing against the numerous cosmetics arrayed on my dressing table.

The monster was on my bed in a second, leaping onto the mattress and sprawling itself over my body. The odor from its unconcealed form clogged my nostrils and sent a sour taste gushing up the back of my throat, causing me to gag uncontrollably.

Grabbing my wrists with one clawed hand, it ripped the clothes off of me, leaving me half-exposed in my underwear, then shredding that as well, so that I was eventually stark naked and slick with perspiration.

The next few moments, which I felt lasted hours, passed by in agonizing slowness.

The monster violated me in every natural orifice of my body that it could fit its thick appendage into, its hands groping my flesh relentlessly, all while I could only move my eyes, to stare at the horror unfolding before me and unleashing itself upon my defenseless body.

The pain was immense and blindingly searing in its heat; the appendage shoving deeper and deeper, until I felt the explosion of wetness between my thighs, that of my own blood and the demon’s vile seed.

Its heinous deed done, the creature leapt off of the bed and fled my room, the door slamming shut, seemingly by itself, a moment later.

There I lay, too tired and in pain to move. I closed my eyes that were flecked with tears.

And opened them what felt like a short while later, but it was already the morning and my eyelids had long crusted over.

Dawn had arrived, and with its golden glow streaming into my room, I felt safe. But the nightmare, I quickly realized, had not really been a nightmare.

That time, as had countless other times in the past, I found that terrible scene of evidence- my ripped clothes and personal accessories littered around the room. The bed was stained with specks of my blood, but not a drop of semen from the demon.

Again, like every incident before, I reported everything of the previous night to my parents, who always listened very intently and solemnly. I knew I could trust them with whatever troubles I had.

I was thankful that they never dismissed my problems but showed their utmost concern for my well-being. Though at nineteen years old then, I was more than a little girl but nevertheless still their precious child to be protected.

The nightmares, or what seemed to be nightmares, had been seriously affecting all aspects of my life for the previous year. What triggered it, I did not know at that time.

My parents took me to visit various psychologists and psychiatrists, certain that I was experiencing some sort of sleep or mental disorder. Perhaps something related to the agonies of adolescence and the unfamiliar emotions that accompanied the processes of puberty.

These trips started a few months after the initial incident, when the night attacks grew invariably more violent. Whereas in the past I had only seen the demon or had it molest me, recently it had begun physically abusing me and raping me.

Rape. It was a word that sent shivers through the spine of most people. To me, it was a word made real by my own horrific experiences.

I was sent for physical examinations, and the various doctors concluded that I had indeed been sexually penetrated, but not by any demonic appendage. Semen was never once detected, and so could not be analyzed.

One female gynecologist even claimed that I had been masturbating with a foreign object inside my private parts, and that it was what caused the abrasions along my vaginal walls, and that I was inventing this story as a cover-up to hide my shame and guilt at doing something “dirty.”

It was absolutely ridiculous. However, another doctor offered a more plausible answer. He said that certain sleep disorders could affect the mind’s control of the body during sleep. He mentioned problems with the normal functioning of sleep paralysis.

Under normal circumstances, the body would be motionless while the person slept. He suggested that I might be suffering from parasomnia, a category of sleep disorders that included night terrors, involuntary limb movements, and sleepwalking, to name a few.

This would indeed explain the extreme terror I felt during the nocturnal encounters, and the bruises on my body, supposedly caused by my hitting myself unconsciously while asleep.

I was referred to a sleep therapist, but I saw him for only a few sessions before my parents withdrew me with my consent as the consultations were getting incredibly expensive and nothing worked.

The nightmares and bruises still returned, and I woke up the next morning after each encounter with the irrefutable evidence that something truly bizarre had occurred the night before.

Naturally, my attention shifted to the world of the paranormal and the unexplained. I became deeply interested in certain areas of paranormal study such as UFOs, demons, poltergeists and ghosts.

I reviewed and researched each category very carefully, going through the tomes of papers and articles I found in my neighborhood library and on the vast Internet.

Meanwhile, my academic performance in university and my relationships in my social circles suffered as a result of both my increased fascination with the supernatural and with the fear that accompanied me everywhere I went.

It was a fear that made me terrified to go home, to go to bed, or even to look at myself in the mirror, afraid that the entity would be waiting for me or staring at me in my reflection.

I began to avoid looking at any reflective surfaces, and kept religious icons in my room; even though I did not subscribe to any religion, I felt that they would at least relieve some of my anxiety, somewhat akin to a placebo.

Home. It was a sanctuary for most people, a place of safety and comfort, but for me, it was the source and well of indescribable terror.

What was it that stalked me in my sleep, that disguised itself as nightmares, that chose me for its perverse deeds? Most importantly, why only me? Friends could never relate as such things didn’t occur to them.

I visited the campus library between classes on most days, hiding behind bookshelves and in isolated corners, poring over the many books I found. Afraid to face the world with the shame I bore, of being the victim of sexual violence of the most unimaginable kind.

My friends- they, too, began to avoid me, and teased me for my “unhealthy” obsession with the paranormal, as they labeled it. We used to spend the hours after school together, but now all I cared about was spending my time in libraries and on the computer, alone.

I read the reports, the articles, the witness accounts. Many people appeared to have experienced the same encounters I did. They recounted similar details and emotions, the exact feelings of dread and despair during and following each attack.

The Incubus. I first read of this demonic being on one of my regular excursions to the public library. An entire book was dedicated to it and its relative, the Succubus.

It was a hellish creature that visited and preyed on women when they slept, impregnating them so that their spawn would be born part-demon and part-human.

Its roots went back to early history, but whether it was a real creature, a hallucination caused by sleep paralysis or by extreme sexual repression, I did not know.

Then, the world of ufology pulled me into its addictive hold.

Close encounters of the four kinds, alien abductions, otherworldly implants, missing time, unidentified flying or submerged objects, extraterrestrial sightings, and other unexplained phenomena in ufology bore much resemblance to my own experiences.

Of particular interest to me were the abundance, and myriad types, of alien beings allegedly encountered or sighted by witnesses over the centuries and even millennia.

One of these alien species, known as the Greys, was nearly identical in form to the creature that had been visiting me.

That night, on the very day I found out about the Greys, I found myself on my sweat-soaked bed again, once more waiting in fear for the inevitable emergence of the creature.

And it came, as expected. Head appearing in the gap in the doorway, as if floating, held up by only a long neck, the rapping began, like a drumbeat reverberating endlessly within my head.

Paralyzed as usual, I could only watch without being able to resist as it did horrible things to me. But, I was careful, even in my hysteria, to note every detail of the creature’s appearance.

The next day, I met a local ufologist, who sketched the creature based on my vivid descriptions of it.

He advised me to urgently set up a video-camera in my room to record the events if they were to repeat themselves, which I knew they would.

After admitting that I did not have one, he offered to lend his to me. I gratefully accepted and thanked him profusely for it, then hurried home to prepare it before nightfall.

For the next six days, the creature did not appear. The camera, its eye trained on my bed, captured every moment of my sleep, but recorded nothing unusual. It would seem that the creature was not willing to allow itself to be caught on film.

But when the camera was removed, the nightly assaults continued. When the camera returned, they again stopped. I eventually had to return the video-camera.

Two weeks after my first meeting with the same ufologist, he asked me to visit him because of a very strange detail in my description of the creature.

I met him in his office, and he showed me the sketch which I had already seen once before- the one he made based on my recount.

However, beside the sketch of my creature, the man displayed the sketches he had made of other sightings by different people.

He told me to carefully examine and compare my sketch with the other sketches. When I had done so, and still did not understand what he meant by “a very strange detail,” he pointed to my sketch.

It soon became apparent. I picked up the uncanny resemblance of the creature’s face to my own facial features.

The “alien” creature, the ufologist told me, after running a portrait photo of me and the sketch of the creature through the computer’s facial analyzer, possessed multiple similarities to my facial structure.

A hallucination, then? Was it a fear of myself that led me to conjure up such an entity in my mind and manifest it in the physical world, similar to what I had read regarding the nature of poltergeists?

Was it the trauma of puberty or the struggles of adolescence that caused me to subconsciously harm myself in my sleep, then attributing my personal acts of violence against myself to the creature I had imagined?

The ufologist, now certain that my sightings and encounters were not of otherworldly origin, referred me to an ex-colleague, a hypno-therapist. He wished me well, but said that this was out of his expertise.

The hypno-therapist, who used hypnotic techniques for therapeutic purposes, agreed to meet me two days after I had introduced myself to her on the phone.

Going by a name she would only disclose as “Eve,” the hypno-therapist and I grew very close. We made twice-weekly appointments with each other, even as the creature haunted me more frequently than ever before.

I did not tell my parents or any relative about my meetings with Eve and, when I went out, would only say I was visiting the library.

As the weeks flew by, and with each hypnosis session that Eve conducted with me, she probed deeper and deeper into my subconscious mind, into the mysterious and abyssal depths that previously remained out of reach of my awareness.

Intimate details of my private life left my half-parted lips as easily as I would tell any close friend, as I lay each time on the comfy couch, her soothing words coaxing me to reveal more and more.

Eve explained to me that however this entity had been born in my mind, it resided in a very deep and dark place, and it was a place so carefully hidden that it would take a while to locate it and unearth its well-kept secrets.

She spoke to me of the mind, of how it blocked and suppressed traumatic memories in some people, and suggested that something terrible had happened to me and that my own mind was hiding it from me to protect my fragile sanity from the terrible truth.

Time and again, she would press me to reveal the details of this entity, and so I gave her the sketch, which she constantly used to refer to during our sessions.

One day, months later, Eve discovered the source.

It was a Saturday, early morning. I had a simple breakfast of scrambled eggs and buttered toast in Eve’s office, something she prepared for me each time we met on the weekends. A simple meal would prevent the mind from being distracted by the stomach, she often stated as if it were fact.

It was another session that began like any other I previously had. We met, we hugged, we sat on the couch, and I related to her the events of the past few days.

Then, I lay down in as comfortable a position as I could manage, and closed my eyes as Eve counted down from twenty to zero, by which time I entered a semi-sleep state where my subconscious mind was brought to the surface while I remained alert.

During that time, Eve asked me some questions and compared what I said during hypnosis to what I had told her before the hypnosis began.

A few more questions, and the probing went deeper still. Always deeper, plunging into the unexplored abyss of my mind. She asked me to describe the bedroom again, to recall the smell of it, the taste of the air, the feel of fabric against my skin, the appearance of the room and its objects, and the sounds I heard.

When it came to my memory of the creature, she persuaded me, very gently, to elaborate in as much detail as possible on its appearance, the noises it made and the smell coming from it.

What Eve was trying to do was take me from the present back to the memory, to that moment when it actually happened.

The fear came back as well. Choking on my own saliva, tension tightening my muscle fibers taut, I watched the creature, and heard Eve’s voice at the same time as if the voice of God was speaking to me, emanating from the ceiling above.