Have you ever seen something that wasn’t there? Or heard a nonexistent noise, or felt an imagined itch? Many people do. On sleepless nights when the waning moonlight is my sole companion, I’ll often see a flash of movement in my periphery, or hear a sourceless squeak or experience a sharp tickle race across my skin, and that’s hardly the worst of it. Whenever this happens, I must remind myself that there’s nothing there; it’s just an evolutionary holdover. In days gone by, our ancestors lived in wilder environs, haunted by prowling predators, so it was far better to see something that wasn’t there than to miss something that was. It just makes sense. These phantom sensations of mine are solely figments of my own overactive but well-intentioned imagination. That’s what I tell myself.
I can’t say for certain if the hallucinations began when I was at college, but that was the time of the event which shaped all that followed. I was living alone then—completely on my own for the first time in my life—renting a room opposite the edge of campus. It was tiny, but I didn’t require much space, and it wasn’t without its charms, either. A fresh coat of paint neatly complemented the original hardwood floors, and the lone window afforded me a view of Old Main’s ivy-enmeshed clock tower that I wouldn’t have traded for the world. There was just one critical flaw: I wasn’t quite as alone as I first thought.
The first incident occurred on the cusp of autumn with the first major exam period right around the corner. I was up late that night, hunched over Campbell’s Biology, when I heard a strange scratching noise. Swiveling my chair around to search for its source, I beheld a sight which I shall never forget. There, crouching on the foot of my bed, was a huge rat! It was the biggest I’ve ever seen, and monstrous in more than size alone. Its entire body was ghostly white, but its eyes were a demonic, bloody red. Oh, those hateful eyes! I still shudder whenever I think of them.
What made them so awful, I believe, was their absolute lack of familiar features. Normal human eyes have clearly distinguishable pupils, irises, and sclerae, but this beast’s eyes had none of these. They were nothing more than opaque red orbs, like beads of fiery glass. It may be a worn-out aphorism that the eyes are the windows to the soul, but this glaring set betrayed no existence of a soul whatsoever behind that angular, inhuman face.
In a situation like this, some people might attack the grotesque vermin while others might recoil or run away. Either option would be perfectly fitting for the fight or flight response, but I did neither. I practiced a third F: freeze. Although I’m embarrassed to admit it, there was just something about that soulless gaze which held me transfixed upon my chair, petrified with fear.
I don’t know how long I sat there as an unwilling participant in that strange staring contest, but I do know that I was not the one to break it off. With a strident screech, the creature leapt from its perch and charged toward me like a lioness closing on a gazelle, its gnashing yellow fangs on full display. This second shock spurred me from my paralysis, and so letting out a shriek of my own, I fled the room, leaving the beast behind.
I did not return home for the rest of that night. Instead, I crashed at my friend Norma’s off-campus apartment. As one of my closest companions, she had no objections to the spontaneous visit, but this didn’t stop her from inquiring anyway, simply out of idle curiosity. When I told her, however, she laughed in my face. Next, she accused me of constructing a ruse in a transparent attempt to sleep with her, and then finally scoffed at my apparent inability to handle even a single rat. I tried to explain to her that it wasn’t just a rat, but it quickly became clear that there would be no convincing her. If only she had been there for herself—if only she had seen its hellish eyes with her own—she would have needed no further explanation. That’s what I told myself.
By the subsequent evening, my return home was well overdue. I needed not just my study materials but also my sleep, and I didn’t wish to impose upon Norma for a second consecutive night. With no better options, I screwed my courage to the proverbial sticking place and ventured home, mentally preparing myself to face my foe the entire way.
As my key slid into the lock, the click of each pin in its chamber echoed like heavy iron bolts being thrown back on the cage of a wild man-eater. Inch by inch, I eased the door open, then cautiously poked my head inside. The beast was nowhere to be seen. Maybe I gave a sigh of relief or maybe it was just my bravado deflating, but either way, my room was once again my own. The rat must have merely wandered in by mistake. It was just passing through and I would never see it again. That’s what I told myself.
The next two weeks passed without incident. I won’t say I forgot about that first frightful encounter, for how could I, but I was more than happy to let past events remain in the past as I looked eagerly forward to the future. Homecoming weekend was on the horizon. Campus was awash in the red and gold foliage of mid-October, and all was abuzz with student activity. You couldn’t turn around without seeing three displays or some event promoting school spirit. I dare say the festivities could even get overwhelming at times, but these were the times I would retire to the quiet seclusion of my room.
That Friday, I was out late at a mixer with Norma when suddenly it all became too much. I raced back to my room seeking solitude, but when I threw the door open, I found that I wasn't alone. The beast had returned. Our gazes met in a trice, and just like that, we were locked in another staredown. This time, however, I was the one to make the first move.
I’d left the party in such a rush that I was still absentmindedly holding my drink. It was a seasonal beer, nothing special, but the bottle felt weighty and solid in my clenched right hand. My instincts must have taken over at this point, because the next thing I knew, it was hurtling through the air at the intruder. I held my breath as it soared frustratingly mere inches over its target’s head and collided with the far wall, where it burst into a shower of shattered glass and pumpkin ale. As the hoppy spume melted into the floorboards, the beast dropped to the floor and scampered away unscathed.
I had steeled my nerves in that moment that I attacked, but this second encounter left me even more shaken than the first. In the nights which followed, thoughts of the beast’s return haunted my subconscious. Repulsive sensations disturbed my dreams and thrust me back to wakefulness in a cold sweat. It felt like tiny misshapen hands were scrambling over me, or a naked, scaly tail was slithering across my skin like some loathsome serpent. As sickening as these experiences were, they were just bad dreams, nothing more. That’s what I told myself.
Homecoming weekend came and went, but the nightmares only grew more lurid, and I found myself staying up later and later each evening in a vain attempt to avoid them. I shouldn’t have bothered. When sleep finally caught up with me in the wee hours of Tuesday morning, the awful sensations weren’t far behind. Scarcely had I closed my eyes, it seemed, than I felt hot, fetid breath upon my cheek. Lifting a heavy eyelid, I discovered that this burning breath was no phantasm. A pair of eyes blazed in the gloom like red-hot coals!
Instantly I was wide awake again, and acting more on instinct than intent, I seized the foul thing with both hands and catapulted it into the darkness. A muffled thud returned from the shadows, followed by the scratching of sharp claws racing across the hardwood floor toward me. In a single, hurried motion, I rolled out of bed, threw back the blinds, and opened the bottom drawer of my desk, where I kept a small assortment of tools. The cold steel of my claw hammer gleamed wickedly in the moonlight. The curl of its hooked fingers even seemed to beckon my hand to it. Snatching it up, I spun to battle the abhorrent thing once and for all, but the beast was gone. How could I return to bed though, after what had just occurred? I had no other option but to remain awake, armed and vigilant, waiting for my nightmarish foe to reappear. The next time I saw its terrible face would be the last. That’s what I told myself.
From this point onward, my trusty weapon never left my side. I knew that rats are nocturnal creatures, so each night I would forego sleep to await its return, hammer in hand, until exhaustion ultimately took me at dawn. Sleepless nights became wearisome days; days became a week, and the waiting became insufferable. The whole ordeal was maddening in every sense of the word.
The weekend after Homecoming presaged midterm exams. Given their considerable impact on my final grades, I allowed my study regimen to be interrupted exclusively by brief but regular skirmishes with my nemesis. I would often see—or imagine that I saw—a white flash of motion in the corner of my eye. Then, acting with all haste, I would send the hammer whirling end over end at it, only for the missile to clatter off of an empty section of the floor. Nothing but a fresh gouge was ever left in its wake. Other times I could hear scraping and scrambling coming from within the walls. In these instances, I’d seize my weapon and drive it clear through the Sheetrock over and over again with monomaniacal fervor until the taunting noises ceased, but never afterward did I find a body.
It didn’t take long for this frantic clamor to attract the attention of my landlord, and when he saw what I had done to his new paintwork and vintage parquetry, he evicted me on the spot. Left with nowhere else to go in the ever-tightening grasp of autumn’s chill, I once again turned to Norma for help. She was sympathetic to my plight when informed of the situation, although I confess that I may have been economical with the truth. Judge this action of a desperate wretch how you will, but I needed somewhere to stay, if only for the remainder of exams week. Thanks to my circumlocution and Norma’s charity, I was able to spend this time living between the library and the undeserved hospitality of a friend. It wasn’t an ideal arrangement, but I took solace in the fact that having quit the rented room, I was at least free of my rodent tormentor. That’s what I told myself.
When my last midterm was completed and turned in, I trudged back to Norma’s and promptly collapsed on her pull-out couch. The preceding weeks had been so full of anguish and isolation that there was little space left for anything else—especially rest—and my time to pay the piper had finally arrived. I hadn’t even the energy to remove my shoes first. Nevertheless, it was still quite the shock when I awoke to discover that two entire days had passed! Flinging aside the quilt which had mysteriously appeared, I sprang to my feet, but Norma held me where I was. She assured me that I needed the rest, and once my initial astonishment had worn off, I had to agree. My second surprise came when she invited me to stay with her indefinitely, an offer which I eagerly accepted.
Every weekend thereafter, it seemed that she had plans to attend some function or another, and never once did she fail in asking me to join her. I hadn’t realized it at the time, but those months which I had spent on my own were terribly lonely, and although the wind and rain of November brought a bitter chill to campus, they could do nothing to detract from the warmth of her company.
December’s arrival heralded the approach of final exams, but we distracted ourselves from the looming threat of assessment with a crowded social calendar. By day, we were in the library cracking books, but when the sun went down, we hit Fraternity Row to crack open brews instead. It was on the last Friday night of reading week, as we were leaving our study chamber, that I saw something which froze me in my tracks. When Norma looked back at me with concern, I lifted my arm and wordlessly pointed to the threadbare wing chair in the corner. An enormous white rat was crouched upon its arm. The sight both terrified and excited me. At long last, Norma would see the feral fury for herself and know what had caused me so much suffering. Following a brief glance at the alcove, however, she turned back to me with no cry of alarm. The blank look upon her face told me that she saw nothing but an empty chair!
Have you ever seen something that wasn’t there? I have, and at one time these illusions could be dispelled with a second look. They used to go away, but no longer. The rat never goes away anymore. Wherever I am, I see the apparition in horrid detail, staring back at me with those soulless red eyes. I hear its cries, smell its foul breath, and feel its monstrous hands upon my skin, but despite what my senses tell me, I know it isn’t really there. Or at least, that’s what I tell myself.
Previously published by the Creepy podcast.
03/06/2025
11:10:22 AM