Since moving into my cabin in the forest a month ago, the quiet of the leaves and the birds has been the most soothing thing I’ve felt in a long time.
There have been other things too.
For the past few weeks, a small patch of tiny leaves, dirt and twigs has been appearing on my bed. Always in the same place, right beside where I sleep, at about shoulder height. I clear them away. They come back - sometimes days later, sometimes the same afternoon.
At first I thought someone was playing a trick. My brother Eddy and my parents live close by. But the cabin stays locked, and there’s no way in. There’s also no way the debris could have blown or fallen there on its own. I checked everything.
After a while I started half-seriously wondering if something from the forest was coming in and leaving it. Sometimes the leaves and dirt were there when I woke up. The thought that followed was worse: that whatever it was had been sitting on the bed, watching me sleep.
I never figured out how it was happening.
Last night, after midnight, I was drifting off when I heard the water filter start up. The unit is loud and distinctive; it’s in the next room, up a short stairway. I heard someone filling a cup. I assumed it was Eddy, even though everyone should have been asleep. Then I realised no one had come in. No one possibly could have. I always locked all the doors at night.
Fear moved up into my throat.
My bedroom was dark. At the foot of the bed, in the doorway that opens onto the forest, a figure was standing. It was wearing a baseball cap. For a second I still thought it was Eddy.
It spoke.
“Hey bro.”
It wasn’t him. My room was locked from the inside. Nothing should have been able to get in.
I tried to answer.
“Who… who… who are you.”
The words barely formed. My voice felt strangled. I understood, then, that I was in some kind of sleep paralysis.
The figure threw something at me.
I shook myself hard and came fully awake.
The figure was gone.
In the bed beside me was my own baseball cap - the one I always hang on the hook by the door.
