The Night Of The Disappeared

Then she was there.

Then she was gone.

I sat up in the bed, staring into the darkness. There was no-one, nothing there. I sat there unmoving for a moment, waiting. I could feel sweat cooling on my body in the cold night air.

I shivered.

Whether I shivered from the coldness or something else, I wasn’t sure. It felt as though the only sound in the room was the thump of my heart.

Eventually, after a minute or so, the tension eased and I felt calmer. I tried telling myself it was nothing more than a dream, even though I knew I didn’t believe it.

I readied myself to go back to sleep, or at least lie down and pretend to sleep.

She was there.

She reached out towards me. I saw her mouth move, in silence she called out to me, pleading.

I was half out of the bed, not knowing whether I was rushing towards her or away from her.

Then she was gone.

I sat on the side of the bed, feeling the rumpled sheets under me. The cold metal bed-frame pressed against the backs of my thighs. I thought I could even sense the grain of the wooden floorboards under my feet. Everything seemed hyper-real. Even the darkness of the room had a brooding quality to it beyond mere absence of light.

I got up and shuffled forward, yawning with tension rather than tiredness, until I stood at the spot where she had screamed for me.

The air there felt colder.

Or was I just imagining it?

Then she reached out and took me in her arms, wrapping herself around me and screaming in my ear, ‘Save me!’

Then, this time, before I could react, when she disappeared she took me with her.