3:06 AM

I will never set foot in my parents’ house ever again. Don’t get me wrong, I love them, but that house drives me insane. The sounds in there make the tiny hairs on the back of your neck stand up. The nightly slamming of the wooden sliding doors of my wardrobe whenever the wind picks up, and the mysterious sounds coming from behind one, or more, of the thirteen closed doors leading to the freezing cold bedrooms and studies that either have massive windows that make the darkness of the night inescapable, or have no windows at all. Then there are the stairs that squeak at every step, no matter your foot placement, and the wooden floorboards on the first floor that screech when you accidentally step on a weak and springy plank.

It doesn’t help that the house is practically in the middle of nowhere, making it a big, boring-looking rectangular beacon in a pitch-black space that never seems to end once you get there. With no streetlights around, the only light at night comes from the occasional full moon. Usually, it’s perfectly quiet outside. No cars, no people, no nothing – it’s unsettling, really. But sometimes, a sound of clanging metal swirls around the house, travelling all the way from the nearest farm. My parents always told me it was the sound of cows accidentally banging their metal gates while sticking their heads through to eat their hay, but I’ve always thought it could be the sound of slaughter. No one really knows what goes on at that farm anyway. Sometimes, during the cold spring nights, you get woken up by a storm of hissing and screaming, as if it’s happening right next to you. Your heart races and your pupils widen as you search for the source of it in the darkness of your room, even though you don’t really want to find it. When you finally turn on the lights, there’s never anything there, and you just pray that the noise came from the stray cats meeting up and fighting outside your bedroom window.

But the sounds aren’t even the worst part. It was the nightmares that made me lose it completely. There were periods when, night after night, I would wake up, sweating, panting and shaking, trying to recover from another deeply disturbing dream, and it always happened at 3:06 AM. Always. What did that mean? I once read that when you always wake up at the same time at night, it means there is another creature in the room with you. That made sense. Sometimes, a breath stroked my neck, and I repeatedly thought I could see the whites of a pair of eyes. I could only make it go away by turning on the lights as quickly as possible. When the episodes became really bad, I even rearranged my room so my bed would be next to the switch for the big ceiling light. The small reading light by my bed wasn’t sufficient anymore. The panting and shaking would only stop if I could see every inch of my room, lying on my back with the sheets covering every bit of my body from the neck down – and if I fell asleep again, it was game over. I had to stay awake, eyes wide open, trying to ignore the softly knocking wardrobe doors.

Most nightmares were recurring, too, especially the worst ones, the ones set in my parents’ house. I still remember every single one of them. The one that’s haunted me the most and was the hardest to get rid of lasted for years, always coming in periods of a few weeks. The same thing for nights on end. It’s not without reason that I’ve never spent a winter evening alone in that living room.

Our living room was unnecessarily large; it could’ve easily been two living rooms. The side with the TV corner had three large windows, two in the short wall at the end of the room, and one just around the corner on the long wall of the room, next to the TV. On the other end of the room, there was a tall window stretching from the ceiling to the floor, looking out onto the backyard. The dream would always start the same way, and I always knew what was coming. I was on the couch opposite the TV, with my dad sitting on the far end near the windows. My mom was in her usual chair with her back towards the two large windows in the short wall. The lights were on in the room, but outside, the night had long fallen. We were always watching TV, like normal people do, but for some reason, I always looked away towards my parents to ask them something. That never changed. I knew I shouldn’t do it. I did it anyway. As soon as I turned my head towards them, I could see a pair of white eyes over the window frame, peeking into the room from outside, as if they’d been waiting for me. Sometimes, the creature had put its hands on the window frame and I could see the white edge of its nails. But there was never a real face, or even a head.

“Look,” I gasped, “someone’s there,” and both my parents turned towards the window, confused. As I stared into the bright white eyes, my parents saw nothing but the darkness of the night. The sound of the TV stopped, but the visuals kept playing, and my parents just looked at me and scoffed.

“There’s no one there,” my dad always said, and my parents mindlessly refocused their gaze on the soundless TV.

“No, there is someone there, look!” I tried to scream out, but I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t open my mouth. The eyes were still looking at me, watching me sink into panic and despair. After a while, a bright white set of teeth accompanied them. It was mocking me; I could hear it chuckle. When the smile faded and the look in its eyes turned violent, I finally woke up, gasping for air because I hadn’t been able to breathe and swinging my arm to find the light switch. My eyes darted around the room to make sure no one was there. 3:06 AM.

“It’s not real,” I always whispered, scaring myself with the soft sound of my cracking voice.  

I tried to believe those words, but I never really did. It all made sense together, you know? The noises, the dreams, the presence in my room. I tried not to see it – I didn’t want to, but there was no way around it. It was haunting me, whatever it was. I had to get out, so I left. I haven’t woken up at 3:06 AM since.

Last night, I got a call from my mom. She hasn’t been sleeping well, she said. She keeps waking up at night. Always at 3:06 AM.