Chapter 8

Much later that night, I woke from a deep sleep because my roommate's cat was walking on my head.

I burrowed farther into the pillow, muttering, "Salem, go bother your person. I'm not the food monkey." Salem patted the back of my head. I felt a claw graze my ear. "Dammit, cat…" I mumbled, dragging the blankets up higher.

Slowly—very slowly—it percolated through my sleep-sodden brain that I was several states and the length of Texas away from my apartment, I was still sleeping on the couch, and my mom didn't own a cat.

There was something touching my arm. It wasn't a hand. It didn't feel like flesh at all. It was cool and slick and very thin, and scratchy—like a twig? And it was moving.

In fact, it was stroking my bare arm.

It wasn't an insect. I have been climbed on by any number of insects. This had weight and pressure. The largest Hercules beetle in the world would not have felt like this.

Dread rose up and took me by the throat. Oh god, what was happening? I pictured a skeletal hand—a rake—claws. I couldn't move. I couldn't think. I could barely breathe. All I knew was that I could not move. If I moved, if I acknowledged it in any way, then it could get me. (No, it wasn't scientific, or even sane. We were way past either of those things.)

The thing moved up my shoulder. It couldn't be a hand. Even though it seemed to have multiple fingers, it was too thin to be bone. My heart hammered against my ribs.

From my shoulder, it traced the side of my face and went into my hair. I could feel it sliding through like the teeth of a comb, catching on the curls. It came loose for an instant then slid back in. Then again.

I was lying on the couch pretending to be asleep and a monster was combing my hair.

People say, when they hear about a terrifying event, that they would just drop dead of fear. I've said it myself. "I'd just die." Or "I'd just pass out." But nobody ever tells you what to do when you don't die, when you're lying there and something is touching you and you're pretending to be asleep because everybody knows that monsters can't get you as long as you're asleep and your heart pounds but you keep not dying and you stubbornly remain conscious and it keeps happening.

"The roses say to say your prayers," whispered a voice in my ear.

My breath came in short, miserable gasps. It has to know I'm awake, I thought. It has to be able to tell by my breathing. This was bad, because if it knew I was awake, it could do… something.

If it saw through my pretense, it gave no sign. The thin, twiglike touch continued raking through my hair and I was completely paralyzed.

Paralyzed.

Paralysis.

Oh sweet Jesus,I thought, with unutterable relief, this is sleep paralysis.

It's never happened to me before, but I've read about it. It happens to a lot of people. One of my roommates used to get it all the time. You can't move, and you have a dream—somewhere between a nightmare and a hallucination—about an intruder in the room. Alien abduction experiences are usually sleep paralysis. It doesn't feel like a dream, it feels real. This felt real. But it wasn't. It couldn't be. There were no monsters, just a glitch in my brain chemistry.

I sagged with relief. My muscles unlocked and I sat up.

I caught a glimpse—just a glimpse—of something vanishing below my eye level. I jerked back, even though I knew it had to be part of the hallucination. It's not real, it's not real, your brain is just catching up to the rest of you…

I laughed shakily and looked around the room. Nothing there. Of course. There wouldn't be. "Right," I said out loud. "Just my brain." Shit, though, that packed a wallop. No wonder people believed in UFOs afterward. If I had a brain that saw little bug-eyed gray dudes instead of unknown monsters combing my hair, I'd probably believe in them too.

I got to my feet. My bladder had strong opinions about the four bottles of cider. It was probably still pissed—ha ha—at me about the drive across Texas. You have to drink a lot of coffee to cross Texas, but there are not rest stops nearly as often as there should be. Somewhere in West Texas, at the bottom of an off-ramp, a coyote is probably still wondering who left the strange mark in his territory.

I padded down the hall to the downstairs bathroom, not bothering with the light. Even now, the route was basically muscle memory. The moonlight streamed through the sliding glass doors. The yard was blue and white, with sharp-edged shadows. The rosebushes made a complicated topography, and I could make out at least one bloom that practically glowed in the moonlight. Pretty, in a gothic sort of way. I'd have been more impressed if I didn't have a sinking feeling that the garden was as devoid of moths as it had been of bugs.

Still, there had been ladybugs. Weird, erratic ladybugs, sure, but they'd been there. That was positive? Maybe? Unless they were trying to get away from some kind of pesticide residue… but that doesn't make sense, they'd just fly next door. There's plenty of bugs everywhere else on the street. No, there's got to be something on the roses…

Whether thinking about the roses distracted me, or the limit on sleep paralysis is one per customer, I slept through 'til morning without so much as a dream.