little sisters, kidnappers, sleep demons

At night I lie in bed, gazing out the window into our small backyard – the scattered remnants of last spring’s garden, various (long dead) potted plants, and the large cypress tree in the southeast corner. Regardless of the hour, the slice of sky I can see never fully darkens but instead remains a buttery gray due to light pollution from a nearby street lamp.

That I can do this is no small miracle. I’m somewhat embarrassed to admit that, for most of my life, I’ve had a phobia of looking out of windows at night, the direct result of a traumatic experience when I was five. It was only when I started the garden two years ago that the darkness beyond my bedroom ceased to be intimidating.

***** 

My childhood home was a partially renovated 1920s bungalow. The neighborhood, slowly shifting into decline. My room was at the front of the house, with huge picture windows across two walls. In my earliest memories I shared the room with my younger brother, but when my sister came along the enclosed porch at the back of the house was revamped into a third bedroom.

It was early December. My parents had hired a sitter so that they could go Christmas shopping without three kids in tow. We’d just been put to bed for the evening, my brother in his room, my sister and I in ours, when I started to hear a persistent tap at my bedroom window, a sound that was foreign and troubling. I cowered in bed for what felt like hours before finally summoning what little courage I had to walk into the living room and inform the babysitter. She quickly dismissed my concerns and sent me back to bed. The tapping stopped and I settled in for sleep, only to resume right before I drifted off. Once again, and at this point terrified, I went into the living room to let the babysitter know. This cycle repeated several times – me, letting her know I was still hearing the tapping; her, blaming it on trees, the wind, or the furnace. She eventually allowed me to stay with her in the living room, but this change provided very little comfort. I was beside myself over the fact that my sleeping sister was now alone in the room.

Looking back our sitter, poor girl, couldn’t have been older than 13 or 14. She might have been completely clueless, possibly unsympathetic, but looking back I can’t help but think that she might have also been scared, trying to rationalize whatever I was hearing and putting on a brave face. To five-year-old me, however, she was a monster. Careless and cruel. When my parents called to check in, she at least notified them of the situation. They called the police and rushed home. The police investigated, and while the culprit was nowhere to be found, there were several muddy boot-prints beneath my bedroom window.

Over time I’ve tried to rationalize it. Maybe our sitter was trying to sneak a boy in but he went to the wrong window, and my persistence prevented her from bringing him inside. But my gut instinct has always told me that wasn’t the case. Years later my brother shared that, on at least three different occasions, he’d seen an older, bearded man looking through his windows at night. He’d never spoken up, terrified and half convinced he’d dreamed it.

 Fear and logic don’t always play well together, especially in the mind of a young child, and I had convinced myself that I was being ‘scouted’ for a possible kidnapping. The story I’d concocted went like this: The kidnapper, being savvy, wouldn’t be brazen enough to pluck me straight from my bed. No, he would take pictures of me through my window and then, should he happen to see me around town with my mom, would make his move and snatch me up. In order to combat this possible kidnapping, the best move would be to sleep with the blanket pulled over my head, preventing my picture from being taken in the first place.  A completely irrational solution, and something I did for longer than I care to admit.

*****

When I was fourteen we moved into a new house just outside of town. Custom construction in a private neighborhood, nestled between trees on a four-acre lot. Quite the change from our old house and neighborhood. My bedroom was on the second floor with a huge window that looked out onto a pond. The second floor! If someone wanted to tap at my window they’d need stilts or a ladder. Of course, by the age of fourteen, I was old enough to realize that there was no real threat outside of that window. With time I acclimated, often leaving my curtains open at night. It was a beautiful view, the night sky reflected onto the surface of the pond.

I felt safe.

*****

When I was 23 my parents threw a huge 4th of July party. Drowsy from a long day and a few too many drinks, I briefly fell asleep on the banks of the pond while watching fireworks before making my way upstairs to my old bedroom. Sleep eluded me, likely because of my short nap, so I stayed up and got online. Chatted on AIM. Updated my old (very locked) Diaryland account. And, at around 2 am, I heard the distinct sound of something at the window. The second-story window. Cue immediate panic. Logic gone. The only thing I could process was that someone was using a tiki torch, of all things, to bang at the glass.

I immediately went to my parent’s room to notify them. My mother was sympathetic, my father annoyed, but he did eventually grab a rifle to go investigate, finding nothing. I had to explain to them that no, I did not hallucinate someone beating my window with a tiki torch. It was about this time that my cell phone rang, followed by the house phone. My sister and her roommate had ditched our party early to go see some boys at a different party. After leaving they decided that they were hungry and wanted to raid my parents’ catering leftovers. My sister didn’t have the house key on her, so she tried to use a tiki torch to get my attention. (Apparently, she was high and hadn’t thought to use the phone first.)

That fall I moved into my first solo apartment – no parents, no roommates, just me. The complex wasn’t fancy but decent, sandwiched between a church and a hospital. My landlord had described the apartment as ‘plain vanilla, but safe’, and it suited me just fine. For the most part, I loved living alone. The only downside was that I suffered an increase in sleep paralysis episodes those first few months, something I have struggled with off and on since childhood. I’d often wake up with the sense that someone was in the apartment with me, checking each room and closet to assure myself I was alone before going back to bed. I’d also hallucinate earthquakes (very rare here in North Texas), likely due to the constant rumble of expansion-related construction next door at the hospital.   

There were two different instances while living in that apartment of someone trying to ‘break in’ the front door late at night. And, in both instances, it turned out to be my sister and her roommate, trying to crash with me because they’d lost their apartment key or were too drunk to drive the 30 minutes back to campus.

Between the tiki torch incident, the sleep paralysis, and the two ‘attempted break-ins’, my phobia had returned, though in a much milder form. And it wasn’t until putting the garden in the backyard of my current house that I seemed to be completely over it. 

I’m not entirely sure where I’m going with any of this. Maybe just noting that it’s nice to be tucked in bed, all cozy, viewing the darkness on the other side of my window as a friend rather than a foe. To have conquered at least one small facet of my anxiety.

*****

(For the record, darkness in and of itself has never bothered me. I’ve camped outdoors countless times. I’ve gone on night hikes. The issue was literally just looking out windows into the dark, not knowing what might be on the other side.)