Night Terrors
Sweet Princes pray for dreams worth remembering, but sometimes the dark of consciousness chases the ether.
4:38 a.m.
A pressing bladder rouses me after only a few hours of sleep. This morning, I’m not blessed with the quick return to slumber. My desperate biology is firing on all cylinders, and my mind quickly wakes to match it. My carnality wants the warm lump next to me, happily cooing a little hiss-buzz, hiss-buzz. Sleep is a precious commodity for her and I don't want to rob her of it if she's uncovered a cache. So, flesh machine, since you couldn't respect my unconscious self, you'll have to contend with conscious me instead.
I move through the house in darkness. It’s not pitch black, but it is lightless. I never turn on lights at night—I’ve made a game of knowing where the furniture is, mastering a “night walk” that spares my toes from phalangeal damage. My partner sleeps poorly. She always has. I do what I can to preserve that fragile rest.
Biological necessity addressed, I confront the unconscious Wolf in the mirror. We stare one another down attempting to assess which of us is real and which imagined. It is just a dim reflection, but it’s enough. A rush of memory crashes over me.
Friday night, 1981. I am nine years old, curled up between the couch and the coffee table, watching TV with my parents and younger sister.
The room is paneled in dark, wood-plank veneer with short pile harvest gold carpet. To my right, a large brick fireplace. The coffee table is a heavy, ornate thing with glass inlay, usually smeared with rings from sweaty Coors cans and speckled with ashtray crumbs. This house is a two story home built in the 1940s. The low ceilings give the room a claustrophobic feel in spite of the large, heavily curtained windows behind the television console. My father, before installing the paneling, sprayed the ceiling with a popcorn texture that was popular in the era.
I still remember him with the oversized plastic hopper, struggling under its awkward weight and wrangling the rubber hose feeding it. As the ceiling dried, he applied gold glitter from a hand-cranked spreader. I was seven then. As he turned the crank, the room filled with golden dust, coating everything—including me. Magical. He complained for years after that “the damned glitter never would quit coming off and getting everywhere. Ever.”
That night, ABC is screening The Amityville Horror.
I shouldn’t be watching. I suspect this even as I crouch behind the coffee table, peeking up from the edge. My parents sit behind me on a green-on-green brocade couch. The house smells of ash and old upholstery. The imagery and jump scares have young me in a full panic and I my mother expresses concern that this may be too much for me. My father resists. 'It'll make him tough.' He says.
Then, one of the tamer scenes plays out. Tamer in content, but the effect on me will be lifelong.
A character is washing dishes at a kitchen sink—short yellow curtains at the window. They look up. Two glowing red eyes open and stare back from the darkness outside.
Even now, four decades later, that image still lives in me. I cannot dwell on it often because it dredges up panic. I don’t even like writing about this, but I woke and have stumbled down this memory well. It gives me chills, typing this. My skin prickles with goosebumps.
For years, when asked what I was afraid of, I wouldn’t describe it aloud. I referred to it only as red eyes in the dark. The last time I described it in detail was nearly twenty years ago, in a quiet conversation on a slow Wednesday afternoon at work.
My whole life, I’ve resisted looking out windows at night. What might look back?
I don’t think these images are harmless. They lodge in the developing minds of children and echo across decades. Parents: please don’t let your kids watch horror at nine. Otherwise, they may find themselves wide-eyed at 5:00 a.m. in another century, heart pounding as their ice maker mimics the sinister creaks of a haunted house.
Just now, a neighbor starts up his pickup truck. The low rumble of the engine reassures me. I am not alone in this pre-dawn vigil. I have allies—however unaware they may be.
The house hums, creaks, and settles. My rational mind knows better: there are no red eyes, no blood-soaked walls, no malicious spirits pressing in from the edges. But my limbic system does not listen to reason. It stirs, flush and electric—an indecently lush machine, wired for thrill, fear, and the more exquisite shades of anticipation.
Back in the mirror, moonless predawn light gives just enough to see my face. No glowing red eyes—just mine.
But they don’t soothe me.
Because what floods in now isn’t a horror movie memory, but something deeper. The real terror isn’t supernatural. It’s me. My imperfections. My failures. The reflection looking back.
There he is, the monster I’ve truly been running from my whole life.
Not the imagined demons of childhood, but the flawed, fearful man I sometimes see in quiet moments like this. And in him, generations of the same.
And what do you do when the monster you’re running from lives inside you?
You look. You name it. You stay. Running only wears you out and leaves less for the fight. Bend like the willow and let the storm pass.
Luke 20:1-47
1 On one of the days while he was teaching the people in the temple and declaring the good news, the chief priests and the scribes with the elders came 2 and said to him: “Tell us, by what authority do you do these things? Or who gave you this authority?” 3 He replied to them: “I will also ask you a question, and you tell me: 4 Was the baptism of John from heaven or from men?” 5 Then they drew conclusions among themselves, saying: “If we say, ‘From heaven,’ he will say, ‘Why did you not believe him?’ 6 But if we say, ‘From men,’ the people one and all will stone us, for they are convinced that John was a prophet.” 7 So they replied that they did not know its source. 8 Jesus said to them: “Neither am I telling you by what authority I do these things.”
9 Then he began to tell the people this illustration: “A man planted a vineyard and leased it to cultivators, and he traveled abroad for a considerable time. 10 In due season he sent a slave to the cultivators so that they would give him some of the fruit of the vineyard. The cultivators, however, sent him away empty-handed, after beating him. 11 But again he sent another slave. That one also they beat and humiliated and sent away empty-handed. 12 Yet again he sent a third; this one also they wounded and threw out. 13 At this the owner of the vineyard said, ‘What should I do? I will send my son, the beloved. They will likely respect this one.’ 14 When the cultivators caught sight of him, they reasoned with one another, saying, ‘This is the heir. Let us kill him so that the inheritance may become ours.’ 15 So they threw him out of the vineyard and killed him. What, then, will the owner of the vineyard do to them? 16 He will come and kill these cultivators and will give the vineyard to others.”
On hearing this, they said: “Never may that happen!” 17 But he looked straight at them and said: “What, then, does this mean where it is written: ‘The stone that the builders rejected, this has become the chief cornerstone’? 18 Everyone falling on that stone will be shattered. As for anyone on whom it falls, it will crush him.”
19 The scribes and the chief priests then sought to get their hands on him in that very hour, but they feared the people, for they realized that he told this illustration with them in mind. 20 And after observing him closely, they sent men whom they had secretly hired to pretend that they were righteous in order to catch him in his speech, so as to turn him over to the government and to the authority of the governor. 21 And they questioned him, saying: “Teacher, we know you speak and teach correctly and show no partiality, but you teach the way of God in line with truth: 22 Is it lawful for us to pay taxes to Caesar or not?” 23 But he detected their cunning and said to them: 24 “Show me a de·narʹi·us. Whose image and inscription does it have?” They said: “Caesar’s.” 25 He said to them: “By all means, then, pay back Caesar’s things to Caesar but God’s things to God.” 26 Well, they were not able to trap him in his speech before the people, but amazed at his answer, they became silent.
27 However, some of the Sadducees, those who say there is no resurrection, came and asked him: 28 “Teacher, Moses wrote us, ‘If a man’s brother dies, leaving a wife, but he was childless, his brother should take the wife and raise up offspring for his brother.’ 29 Now there were seven brothers. The first took a wife but died childless. 30 So the second 31 and the third married her. Likewise even all seven; they died and left no children. 32 Finally the woman also died. 33 Consequently, in the resurrection, whose wife will she become? For the seven had her as a wife.”
34 Jesus said to them: “The children of this system of things marry and are given in marriage, 35 but those who have been counted worthy of gaining that system of things and the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. 36 In fact, neither can they die anymore, for they are like the angels, and they are God’s children by being children of the resurrection. 37 But that the dead are raised up, even Moses made known in the account about the thornbush, when he calls Jehovah ‘the God of Abraham and God of Isaac and God of Jacob.’ 38 He is a God, not of the dead, but of the living, for they are all living to him.” 39 In response some of the scribes said: “Teacher, you spoke well.” 40 For they no longer had the courage to ask him a single question.
41 In turn he asked them: “How is it they say that the Christ is David’s son? 42 For David himself says in the book of Psalms, ‘Jehovah said to my Lord: “Sit at my right hand 43 until I place your enemies as a stool for your feet.”’ 44 David, therefore, calls him Lord; so how is he his son?”
45 Then, while all the people were listening, he said to his disciples: 46 “Beware of the scribes who like to walk around in robes and who love greetings in the marketplaces and front seats in the synagogues and the most prominent places at evening meals, 47 and who devour the houses of the widows and for show make long prayers. These will receive a more severe judgment.”
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Thank you for coming here and walking through the garden of my mind. No day is as brilliant in its moment as it is gilded in memory. Embrace your experience and relish gorgeous recollection.
Into every life a little light will shine. Thank you for being my luminance in whatever capacity you may. Shine on, you brilliant souls!
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