I still don’t know how you found me. Its not easy to gain access to me. It’s even more difficult to gain power over me. But then, sleep makes one vulnerable and no one knows that better than you.
For as long as time has existed, you have haunted the dream world, slipping through the unconsciousness of anything and everything that has ever dared to dream.
Nothing could have prepared me for it. Not the stories and the written accounts. Not the warnings and the rumours passed down from ear to ear over the generations. No, only meeting your gaze head on truly showed me what it meant to have a night hag visit you.
You found me, as you do, in the realm between waking and sleeping; where my feet were sinking into the clouds of sleep very, very slowly. It was the dread that clued me to your presence. I was suddenly very conscious of the fact that I was in bed and, kind of but not really, asleep. I could feel my back pressed against the feather mattress, my head locked against the pillow, and my heart thumping away like I had been running.
My arms and legs lay dead, though. Only my eyes obeyed my commands; I forced them open in the hopes of gaining some control back and looked right up at you.
At first, all I could see were those eyes: pitch black, with a clear, wide ring of white around them. The thick cloud of your hair surrounded us, i could feel the drag of the tressed against my neck. I felt the puff of your breath against my mouth and I dropped my gaze to look at the rest of your face.
What were you smiling at? I couldn’t comprehend what was so funny to you. Was it the way panic made me mumble? The way I teared up? Or the way I tried to take a breath against the weight of your knees on my chest?
You reared back and pointed one long finger to the right. Look, you said. Look.
I did.
Standing to the right of my bed was a—long deer. There’s no other word for it. It was elongated at the limbs, in the neck, in its snout. All its lines were stretched out like a cave painting. It was too dark for me to see, but I knew that the horns on its head were a deep red.
Do you know it follows you everywhere? You asked. I couldn’t have answered even if I could move my lips somehow. My eyes were stuck on the deer. I was convinced that if I looked away it would come closer. Stupid thought. It came closer anyhow.
It lifted one leg over the bed and pressed the hoof against the sheets. The body rose inch by inch as the deer heaved itself over, moving like it was in pain, like its body was a burden it carried everywhere.
Its always here when you’re sleeping, you know? You told me and I believed you. I would have believed just about anything you told me then. I know that night hags lie. That falsehood slips through their tongue with ease, and that they can convince you of a mirage without effort. But just then, as the deer stumbled over its ungainly limbs toward me, I believed you.
It pressed its soft head against my face and chuffed, while you kneaded your fingers against my chest like a cat. It knows you are a thief, you said. Thieves never stop being hunted.
The deer pressed closer and its musk nearly choked me. Its snout was bone dry and it rubbed against my chin.
When the hunt is over, the prey is gutted, stripped, and cut apart. One day your hunt will end and you will become a trophy on someone’s mantle.
I found the strength to move a finger, and you sniffed in disdain. The game was nearly over. Soon my second finger twitched, so you leaned back in. Send me away, but will it change your fate?
The third finger twitched and the spell broke.
You left first, but the deer remained to torment me until I wrenched my head away from it and threw my body off the bed. The hard impact of the floor brought me fully back into the land of waking and I gasped in pain.
I didn’t sleep again. I spent my time making sure you couldn’t return and then sat on the spot where the deer had pressed against me, wondering if the smell of musk was in my head. Once the inertia passed, however, I became angry.
I’m writing this as a warning. I’m not too proud to admit that you scared me. No, you placed your finger right against the heart of my fear and I congratulate you for that. But that’s as far as my courtesy to you goes.
My hunt may end soon enough, but until then, I can hunt in turn. Take care that you don’t become the trophy on my mantle.
Keep off.
-B