I couldn’t sleep that night.

Honestly, I hadn't been able to close my eyes for very long since we'd moved to Lackley, a small, nowhere town in the dead center of Virginia. With a population of less than 1,500, it was the kind of town where everybody knew everybody. Quaint, uncomplicated. 

Mom and Dad loved the fact that it was so small, "the perfect place to raise a family" they'd say.  They were so sure they'd made the right move, they never listened to me or my younger brother or sister when we told them we were scared. "Scared of what," they'd scoff. "There hasn't been a crime in this town since the 70's." In their minds, we were a long way from Chicago, my hometown, and they wanted to keep it that way. But this town had a darkness that, in the waking hours, the adults liked to pretend wasn't there.

There were always whispers about the legend of London Lane. How it was haunted, and how the haunting had a way of "sticking with you", but there were never any answers.  The grown-ups would always warn us kids to avoid it. "It's not natural down there," they'd say in hushed tones, speaking of that forbidden area on the west side.

The only thing was that I didn't avoid it. How could I? My friends dared me to walk up and down that street and, of course, I couldn't say no. I did it and nothing happened. For the longest, I thought it was a joke. Until I noticed it following me.

At first I thought it was just my shadow.  I'd try to brush off the fact that I suddenly felt scared all the time, like I was on high alert. But I never saw a shadow that looked like that, that moved so fast, that appeared even in the dark...in the middle of the room. And why couldn't anyone else see it, too?

I lay there in my bed that night, half-asleep, replaying how I'd been seeing it all week: in class, in the gym, on the street outside my house. Everywhere. And how, whenever I brought it up to my friends, they'd avoid the conversation. I didn't notice until that night that my friends had slowly stopped coming around after I told them what I'd been seeing. Maybe they don't believe me, I thought at first. Or maybe they did...

My thoughts were interrupted when a sharp, guttural roar pierced through the night.  I bolted upright and waited, listening. Nothing.  Did I really just hear that? I looked over to the window I kept open, but all I saw was my curtain blowing from the cool autumn breeze outside.  I laid back down and tried to shake it off, ignoring how fast my heart was beating.

I sat up again when I heard the crunching of the leaves outside. I definitely heard that.  What...?  I stared out the window, frozen in fear, as the sound grew louder and louder, closer and closer.  I’d finally managed to pull the blanket back to get out of bed when I saw it: the shadow, wide and towering, moving across the curtain.  My breath caught in my throat as I remembered that my room was on the second floor, at least 10 feet off the ground.  The shadow never looked that tall before...I could just make out the silhouette it cast against the trees. Long, skinny arms, overstretched torso and inky black, even in the moonlight. Suddenly, what the grown-ups would always say came back to me: It's not natural.

It slowly started to move, stooping down low enough so its head was parallel to the opening.  Was this real?  And those eyes, glowing red and inhuman...it was staring right at me. I hadn't realized until then that my whole body was shaking. I had no idea what it was, but I knew it had been watching me.  I knew it could kill me.

It snaked one barely perceptible, willowy arm through my window, followed by another, and then its head, never once taking those eyes off me.  It growled, low and animalistic, as it crawled crookedly into my room.  No! I sat petrified, tears streaming down my face.  Its stare felt hypnotic, locking me in a trance. Just as I opened my mouth to scream, I jolted awake in the middle of my bed, drenched in sweat. 

A nightmare...?

I looked over towards my window. There was nothing there.  Just the breeze of the wind blowing my curtains softly, like it always did.  With sweat pouring down my face, my eyes frantically darted around my room. Nothing. “What the hell was that?”  I whispered to myself.  I plopped back down in my bed, my heart rate accelerating past what I thought to be safe.

Just then, a scream rang through the night air.

“Help! Somebody help me, PLEASE!” 

I hopped out of bed and burst into the hallway, where I ran into my family looking just as stunned as I was. This time, it was real.  “Somebody’s hurt!”

“I know, I know.  We heard it too,” Dad whispered.  “Just go back to your room.”

“Go back to my room?! But--”

“Just go,” he cut me off, lifting a hand that always signaled the end of the conversation.  “There’s nothing we can do.  It’ll all be over soon.”

I was dumbfounded, furious, confused. Mostly, I was scared.

Nothing we could do? What did Mom and Dad know? Who was screaming for help, and was that really a dream? Sleep escaped me that night.

The next day, the whispering intensified throughout town as everybody gossiped about the  

midnight scream.  It was a girl in my class.  "She should've never went down that road," I heard one teacher say.  I decided not to mention that I had done it too.  By that time, I'd lived in Lackley long enough to know that when it came to the haunting of London Lane, the townspeople knew to look the other way no matter who the victim was.  “This isn’t the first time it’s happened, and I don’t think it’ll be the last,” someone said sorrowfully. 

The girl's parents were hysterical at the vigil that evening. My parents and everyone else were sad, but eerily unsurprised. I was sick to my stomach...  I'm next, I thought as I made eye contact with that same dark shadow that stood just beyond the crowd, imperceptible to everyone but me.  I wanted to cry, but the tears wouldn’t come.  I wanted to run, but I couldn’t stop staring at those eyes.  I watched it walk, jerky and unnatural, closer to the vigil circle. "Mom..." I tried to scream, but it came out as a whisper. “Mom!” Everyone stared, startled and bewildered.

“What is it, Alan?” She answered, eyes wide with concern.

I looked back across the crowd.  It was gone.

Over the next few weeks I lived sick with fear, looking over my shoulder with every step I took.  The paranoia took my appetite and, eventually, my sanity as the line between fantasy and reality began to blur.  Every shadow I saw, I thought for sure it had caught up to me.

A month after the vigil, my family and I moved back to Chicago.  My parents suddenly realized small towns weren’t all they were hyped up to be.  I guess for them, it’s a hell of a lot better to go up against what’s natural than what’s not.  The shadow exists now only in my memory, but the fear never left.  I know I should be grateful that I’m here to tell the tale, but living in this state--trapped in my own terror--is worse than death.  

I never fully recovered from that time in my life.  And as I type this from my room here at the asylum, I can’t say for sure whether or not it’s over.  Lately, I can’t help but feel watched...haunted.  But according to my doctors, acute psychosis has a way of playing tricks on the mind.  So I’m sure that shadow in the corner isn’t real.  

It isn’t real. Is it?