When I was a child, I was afraid of the closet. It didn’t help watching movies like the first Poltergeist or that American Ninja movie, where another girl gets sucked into the closet and then gets possessed by a ninja. The Horror movie, House scared the ever living crap out of me, but the one scene that I will never forget is when that thing erupts out of the closet. And I was done, but I still watched the rest of it. And the closet continued to haunt me even with Cat’s Eye when James Woods peered inside, realizing that someone was indeed in there, watching him. It would take years to get over this phobia. Thank you, Hollywood, but the stuff of nightmares had yet to come.
When I was eight-years-old, my mother thought it would be a great idea to take the kids to the movies. Her movie of choice was Ghostbusters. Either she didn’t realize that this movie was no Comedy or she didn’t realize that this movie would not only scare the crap out of her kids, but it would also scare the crap out of her. I spent half the movie with her hand glued over my face, and when did she stop covering my eyes? It was when Sigourney Weaver’s character gets trapped in the chair by the demon dog and hurled into… You guessed it. The closet!
Around the same year, I was also introduced to The NeverEnding Story. This was supposed to be a warm, fuzzy kid’s movie. While I was at camp, we were taking on a trip to the movies, and I was excited. I sipped my soda and popped my popcorn, and the movie began. And so did the Nothing, and that was it. I slid down in my chair, wanting nothing more than to leave, but I was stuck. I was trapped, and just as I got interested in Atreyu’s quest, we meet G’mork. And that scene, where the thunder roars and the lightning flashes, scared the ever living crap out of me, and for years afterward, that one scene haunted my dreams. It was only years later that I could shake it off and truly appreciate this story.
And then the next summer, I was sent to sleep away camp. It was my father’s idea, and my mother went along with it. It had its moments, and then it didn’t. During my time there, we went to the movies, and again, the movie of choice was supposed to be a warm, fuzzy kid’s movie called Follow That Bird. It was a Sesame Street movie. How bad could it be?
Shortly after seeing that movie, I returned home. I felt cold, sick. I didn’t know why. Maybe, I missed home more than I thought, but it was something else, something that was just beginning to scratch at the surface. And when I went to sleep that night in my bed, the nightmares began, and I found myself trapped, held hostage by the same two men. The windows were covered up with newspaper. The wooden door was locked. The floor was dirty, and I was scared, cold. I begged them to let me out, let me return to my family, but it didn’t matter what I said to them. They were never going to let me go, and I would remain with them until the end.
When I was a child, there was no such thing as night terrors. At least, to my family, there was no such thing, and they thought I was acting out. But every night when I went to sleep, those nightmares waited to take hold, pull me in, and rip me apart. I was always trapped, locked in a room, and doomed to stay there until I died. I sometimes got out. I would run up to the storefront, peer inside, and see my family, but to my horror, they had moved on. They forgot about me, and as I focused on them, the two men took me again. I just couldn’t escape, and these dreams, these nightmares started to poke at the seams during the day, unraveling me. And I just slipped away.
It was only a year or so later when I stumbled across the creative writing class in the seventh grade. The two women there were convinced of my writing talent, but I was a mess. I knew I was a mess, and I thought they were crazy. But later, I started to write, and as I wrote, I pulled the darkness, the nightmares away from my mind and drowned them in pages and pages of white. I created horrible futuristic worlds, monstrous monsters, and darkness, the darkness that had held me for so long. I didn’t realize then, but I realize now, that I was just beginning to pull myself back from the brink and struggle to regain what I had lost, myself. And it was all because of that damn movie, Follow That Bird. It had struck a chord in me, a chord so deep that it could have traced back to a past life, a horror that ended in tragedy, and then it surfaced, clawing its way to the top and drawing blood. It drew blood, doing its damage, but not anymore. Whatever ghost haunted me with its terror and tragedy was now laid to rest in the notebooks that I used to cling to for dear life, cutting that chord, and I would never forget. And I never have today, but maybe, that’s just the trouble with past lives.
