While perusing the newspaper one morning, out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of a shadow moving. I thought nothing of it, figuring it was just a tree moving outside my kitchen window. Perhaps is was only a tree. I only wish that I knew for sure. One thing is for sure though, never again will I be able to blow off that image in the corner of my eye, or that bump in the middle of the night, not to mention those voices you hear, but can't quite understand what they're saying.

Sometimes I wonder how people can just ignore things that they either can't explain or don't understand. I used to be like that too, until . . . until these little images and noises began to control my life.

It began about two months ago. I was in the shower getting ready for work, as I had done thousands of times before. Through the curtain I saw a shadow moving throughout the bathroom. I knew that I had locked the door, so I was intrigued as to who was intruding on my daily routine. I poked my head out of the shower to find that there was nobody there. Except for the steam building up on the mirror, the bathroom was in the same exact condition as when I got into the shower. I got back into the shower, and just as i was finishing up, there it was again, the shadow. I got out of the shower and, just as before, the bathroom was unchanged. I looked over at the door, it was still locked. I turned on the fan so as to clear some of the steam from the room. I wiped off a part of the mirror, leaving straks of water in my wake. As I brushed my teeth I heard what sounded like someone calling for me, at first I cast it off as noise from the fan and the water flowing into the sink. Then I heard it again. I opened the door and, as steam bellowed out of the bathroom, yelled through my house. There was no response. I called out again, still nothing. I figured it was just my imagination, closed the door and rinsed my mouth out.

My day at work was relatively uneventful, or atleast it seemed so until I reflected upon it. There wasn't anything like there had been that morning, just one or two times that I thought I heard someone call my name and maybe once that I saw a shadow out of the corner of my eye, but nothing as extreme as the events of that morning.

The dreams I had that evening were the most graphic that I had experienced up to taht time. I would be walking down the road and suddenly a wall of flames would shoot up around me slowly closing in. Through the flames I could see imp-like creatures dancing and holding staffs. I could feel the heat upon my face. The imps started changing in a language that I couldn't recognize: "Sitrom a riv! Sitroom a riv!" they would chant, the closer the fire came the louder they would chant. I reached my hand out into the flame and it was all over, or so I thought. I had escaped the fire but I was on the same street, I was having the same dream again.

This dream pattern continued until i was saved by my alarm clock. It saved my from my nocternal nightmare, but it only brought me into the nightmare of my waking hours, a nightmare that is seemingly inescapable.

Each night the dreams would become more and more vivid. One of the creatures seemed as though he was trying to signal something to me; he didn't move in the same stiff and repetitive manner as the other creatures did. His face looked almost human, and he stood upright, as if he were a miniature person, maybe even a child. Why was he there? What was his purpose? What was he trying to tell me? Each night his face would become more and more human.

One night it all became clear to me, it was the same dream I had been having for about three weeks now, only I could see the child's face clearly now, it looked so familiar, but where had I seen it before? Just then the image of a child's body laying in a ditch along a back road with forest on either side appeared to me, then I saw my car with a broken headlight and blood on the hood. The two images began to flicker intermittently. They flickered faster and faster until the two were indistinguishable, shaping into the same image. It was at that moment that I realized why this was happening to me. I had hoped it was just a drunken illusion but the stories in the papers told me that it was true. I tried to run, I thought that I had escaped that horrid night, but it had finally caught up with me.

Only after I reconciled for what I had done did the images and dreams finally stop. The question of what was causing my torment, guilt or some spirits, has yet to be answered. It is a question that I would prefer to not know the answer to.