Member-only story
Was What Happened a Dream or Something Else?
The frightening experience that left me afraid of the dark for years
I was around nine when Roy, an elderly man who’d lost his legs and crawled instead of using his wheelchair, came to live with us.
He didn’t like us children, and we didn’t like him. He teased us and picked his nose with his long pinkie fingernail. We called him an ugly old nose picker.
In my nightmares, a man with two legs, looking just like Roy, chased me.
I’d wake and scream until my mother rushed to save me, taking me downstairs to sleep in bed between Father and her.
But my father complained and made my mother take me back to my bed.
There I was left to pray.
Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep.
If I should die before I wake,
I pray my soul the Lord to take.
The prayer didn’t make me feel any better. In fact, it made me fear I might not wake again.
To end the nighttime problems, my mother and Dorothy, a woman who lived with our family, pushed two beds together to create one giant bed. I slept on the inside next to Kathleen. Dorothy and our younger…
