Mind the Gap

Hello my little Autumn leaves, 

I’m delighted to report that the weather has been both cold and wet here. I found myself once again staring out of the window watching the rain and feeling hypnotised. And I’m already on the look out for pumpkins in the shops, ready to purchase one and spend Halloween carving it out before vegging in front of the TV with spooky films. 

I’ve been thinking about nightmares and bad dreams, and how it is these that we tend to remember more. Perhaps because they often wake us with a start, breathless, our eyes wide as we look around the room to make sure nothing from the nightmare has spilled over into the comfort of our room. 

As a child and through my teen years, I had a recurring nightmare. It’s one of the reasons why now, as an adult, I don’t like their being any blinds or gaps in curtains in the downstairs of my house. The dream always started the same…

I’d be in an old classroom from Primary School, surrounded by other children. I’d walk to the library tucked into the corner of the classroom to put a book away but when I turned round, everyone had gone. The silence would press down on me and I remember a distinct feeling of unease wash through me. I’d walk to the door and leave the classroom and realise that the school was empty. I was the only one left.

There would be cups of milk abandoned, the sand and water table abandoned, its blue plastic water mill still spinning from the last child who poured water on it. The weather outside was always foggy and the sky was the colour of a bruise. I’d walk through the school, opening and closing classroom doors looking for someone, anyone. It was then that the tapping sound would start at the windows.

Not the pleasant tap-tapping of rain, but of long, slim fingers with knotted knuckles. A husky voice would sing-song my name and ask me to open the blinds. My blood would run cold and no matter where I went inside the school, the faceless person would always know which room I was in and tap on the window, saying my name.

In the dream, I would always press myself to the wall, my eyes wandering up the window as I held my breath. The tapping would grow louder and the voice would sound more sinister as it urged me to open the blinds. I could hear the smile in his voice, it was wicked and cold. And as quickly as the tapping had started, it ended abruptly, leaving me wondering if the sound of my heart could be heard by the man outside. 

I’d stand up thinking it was over, but one of the blinds didn’t quite reach the bottom of the window sill and that’s when I’d see a pair of wide, lifeless eyes staring at me through the gap.

A piercing shriek would fill the air and I’d start running…This is where I’d usually wake up.

I haven’t had this dream for so long but to this day, I still don’t like gaps in curtains or blinds when it turns to night. I never knew the thing that was stalking me, I never saw its face but it scared me. Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if it had caught me? Probably best not to dwell.

Did you have any regular bad dreams as a child? Or perhaps you have a theory as to what my dream meant? Either way, why not comment below?

Now go and brew some Valerian root tea and fall into a nightmare free sleep.

Stay spooky!

👻LWG👻

An Uncomfortable Read

Hello my little ghouls,

Nice of you to join me again. I don’t know about you but I absolutely love this time of year because I feel it’s the perfect time to snuggle up with a good book. I know I’m not alone in thinking that at this time of year and the approach to All Hallow’s Eve, you can’t go wrong with a book that has a creepiness to it, or is just outright horror!

That’s why I recently settled down to read Earthlings by Sayaka Murata (author of the highly successful Convenience Store Woman) And this definitely has similar themes to those in Convenience Store Woman but it’s a lot more detailed and a lot more warped. It’s a classic example of a book cover being misleading. I mean look at the front…A cute little hedgehog? Yes please. 

It’s one of those books, that’s hard to talk about, because it sounds crazy and also because the amount of things the book covers are disturbing. We’re talking rape, child abuse, incest, murder and cannibalism. It’s not the darkest thing I’ve read, but it’s definitely up there as one of my most uncomfortable reads. 

That aside, it is really easy to fall into this story. Told from the perspective of Natsuki, who has always felt like an outsider, she tends to feel as though she doesn’t belong with her family and believes she must be a witch or an alien. It’s only her cousin Yuu who seems to understand her, and she only gets to see him once a year during the Summer, on the family trip to Nagano. However a series of events, mean the pair may never see each other again and so they make one last promise to each other, to survive, no matter what.

Natsuki, now fully grown and in an asexual marriage, enjoys a quiet life. But her family and society have other ideas, they wonder why she hasn’t had a child yet and Natsuki feels a familiar pressure weighing on her. In the hope that some time visiting Nagano might help, she sets off to the hills with her husband in tow and about reunited with her cousin Yuu. And it’s here that things get even weirder. Which is saying something, because there’s A LOT of weird and uncomfortable stuff before this.

It’s like reading a bad dream, a sense of unease and nausea fill you, but you keep on reading because in spite of some Natsuki’s faults and bad decisions, there’s also something loveable about her too. It’s a book that looks at the pressures of society and expectation of women to be mothers. It’s a book about people who choose to not walk the path set out for them in life. It’s about the victims who go ignored or don’t react the right way. It’s a lot and it’s hard but it’s worth it!

Dark, disturbing but insanely well written. Uncomfortable to read? Yes. But worth reading? Hell yes!

I’d love to know if anyone else has read this and what your thoughts are, so please comment below.

Stay spooky!

👻LWG👻