My best friend’s been tweaking for the last couple of weeks. He hasn’t been himself.

I usually see him once a week - coffees, drinks, a gathering with our larger group of friends, you name it. His normal self is chipper, optimistic, thick-skinned, patient, and lots of dad jokes. Too many dad jokes. Martin is a picture “swell guy” - three dimensional, but overall “lawful good” on the moral alignment chart.

His descent first showed up as bags under his eyes, with a hint of irritability, at one of our routine hangouts. We were sitting in Starbucks sipping London Fogs and talking about nothing of real importance, when I noticed his eyes dashing to the door every time someone entered. Anytime I was telling him a story or giving him my thoughts on something he asked me, he wouldn’t really look at me. He’d look behind me. Scanning the room. Looking far out in the distance, and then returning his gaze to me, nodding as if he was paying attention the whole time. I wasn’t offended or anything, but after a few of these instances I lazily threw out the following line:

“Hey man, everything okay?”

He looked surprised. Almost like I challenged him or something.

“I’m sorry?” he responded.

“Uh, just asking if everything’s good, you… seem a bit tired.”

I know what you’re thinking - never tell anyone that they look or seem tired. I get it. It’s never a good look. But holy shit did I cross a line with him.

“Are you with him?!” he asked, slightly louder than what I’d consider an appropriate “inside voice” in Starbucks for two men in their thirties.

“Dude, what?”

I think he could tell from my demeanor and tone of voice that not was I not “with him” (whoever “him” was), and that he was probably losing it. He said as much:

“Sorry, just… going through a lot right now. Dealing with something really weird.”

“You okay? Your headspace fine? Did you get in some shit?” I said back.

He shook his head.

“Been having a lot of trouble sleeping. It’s kind of bleeding into everything. I’m wigging out a bit.”

“What’s going on?” I asked. “Do you wanna talk about it?”

He shook it off.

“Just, I don’t really wanna dwell on it. I’ll be okay. I just need a normal night’s sleep is all. Just a normal night’s sleep.”

Fair enough, I thought.

We continued hanging out, and it was mostly fine. He was reigning in his paranoia and predilection to scan the surroundings of our cozy local Starbucks, probably out of kindness for me more than anything else. We parted ways, and I held a thought in my head hoping that my good friend would get over his weird sleepless hump.

I didn’t dwell on the interaction too much in the following week. College showed me all-too-well that lack of sleep caused by pulling sequential all-nighters can throw off your mental state pretty easily. I assumed that the next time I saw him, he’d be back to his usual self.

Ahead of our usually scheduled weekly cadence, Martin sent me a text message.

“Sophia’s gone.”

I had to re-read it a few times for good measure. Any other time in our friendship, I would’ve assumed he was doing a bit, but coming off the heels of our weird hangout last time, I took it seriously. Sophia was of course his long-time girlfriend and recently turned fiancé of seven years. As someone who thinks true love is a lie, Martin and Sophie were always the weird exception to me with just how “made for each other” they were. Naturally, I was thrown.

I texted back.

“You guys broke up?”

No response for thirty minutes. I followed up again.

“Hey, did you get my last message okay? Do you wanna call?”

Immediately, my phone started ringing. I answered.

“Hello?

It was silent on the other end for a good while. Static. I could hear soft breathing.

“Martin? Dude, what the fu–”

“Sorry, sorry,” I heard him say back. “It was just feeling off. Felt like he was still here. I just need to wait. I think I’m okay. I think I’ll be okay.”

“Dude. What is going on?”

“Can we meet in person?” he asked me. I blurted out “yes of course” out of instinct but regretted it pretty much immediately. Before I could double back and say “wait actually can you give me some more context on literally everything that’s going on”, he hung up. At least we were meeting in a public setting, I guess.

Pushing down the confused and twisted feeling in my stomach, I made the drive to Starbucks. On the way, I was ping-ponging back and forth in my head between “They probably broke up and he’s taking it poorly” and “Martin is going through a 1/3rd life crisis and is going to take us all out in a murderous blaze of glory.” I’ll spare you the other theories I had, but I was definitely all up in my head during that car ride.

I made it to our usual Starbucks, thanked every deity I could once I realized the coffee shop was completely packed (safety in numbers baby), and made my way inside and towards a small table that Martin had secured for us.

He looked like he’d seen better days. Bloodshot eyes, unkempt hair, the bags under his eyes now greater in number and more visible. His mouth was held slightly open, as if he was disgusted by everything around him.

“Buddy –” I started. He cut me off.

“I know what you’re thinking. I’m losing it. Or maybe I did something stupid. Something unforgivable. You’re probably sizing me up right now, analyzing everything I’m saying. Well, sorry to break it to you, but this is not about you, this is about me and – ”

Borrowing a line from my therapist, I jumped in.

“Martin. Martin. Let’s take a deep breath. Breathe in. Ground yourself.”

I took a deep breath. He hesitated at first, but slowly he caved and mimicked.

We both exhaled.

“Awesome. Now… talk to me. What’s going on? I have time.”

He took another deep breath for good measure, and then started.

“Like I said, I know what you’re thinking. You probably think I’m going off the deep end, and maybe something happened to Sophia because of it. Whatever you’re like thinking in your head man, please just… listen to all of this with an open mind. Please.”

I pretended to have an “open mind” as he continued.

“A couple months back… I started noticing that Soph was having some trouble sleeping. She’d be murmuring to herself as she was drifting off - nothing that really made a whole lot of sense. Occasionally I’d hear her in her sleep saying “Why”, and “I don’t understand” and “Please, please just go away!”. At first I thought these were just random night terrors, but it felt like they were getting more and more intense as the nights went on. I tried asking her about it but she’d always dodge my questions. At most, she’d tell me that she was just hoping she’d get over it, and that it was probably just a recurring nightmare.”

Huh. Okay.

“Unfortunately, things only kept spiraling from there. I kept pressing her as her sleep-talking was getting more and more fucked up and fearful. I’d sometimes hear her straight up whimpering while asleep… crying even. It took a lot of asking, but eventually she opened up. She said that whatever she was experiencing, it wasn’t a nightmare… it was stuff that was, in her words, happening in the “space between waking life and dreams”. The headspace you enter as you drift off deeper into sleep, but right before you’re fully immersed in a deep dream. I googled it and the technical term is the hypnagogic state.”

“Right. Got it. So… what happened?” I asked, getting a bit impatient.

He hesitated for a moment.

“I don’t want to put this shit on you man,” he said. “But I’ve got no one to talk to about this.”

“Dude, you’re good. Tell me.”

“You sure?” he asked.

I nodded. I’m pretty good about dealing with spooky paranormal/supernatural stuff. While I find some of the theories and stories to be fascinating, it never really shakes me. I’m of the strong opinion that most things that we consider to be otherworldly experiences have clear real-world reasons for happening. Basically, I’m on team James Randi. You get the idea.

He continued.

“She told me that… as she was drifting off to sleep, in the darkness and the patterns of what she saw with her eyes closed, she noticed something far off in the distance. Something that didn’t fit with the dark shapes and colors she usually saw in her vision. Something else. A silhouette. Very subtle at first, but definitely there. Something that felt like it didn’t belong.”

“Great man, that’s super interesting and all but I have to ask… where is Sophia right now? Did you guys break up? Or is this something–”

“Look, just, let me get there. Please,” Martin interrupted. "Night after night, as she'd try to fall asleep, she'd keep catching this silhouette in the distance. It was getting more and more prominent. More clear, amidst the colors and patterns and lines and visual noise that she would see with her eyes closed. The usual closed-eye hallucinations, but with this additional silhouette. This person, who it felt like was ever so slowly getting closer to her. Her night terrors started getting more frequent. She told me that it felt like there was nothing she could do to make this person go away. To stop them from reaching her. By the time she'd told me all of this, she said that this person… this thing, it's uh, body and face were now incredibly clear and right in front of her anytime she was almost asleep in that hypnagogic state. She said that at this point, she could clearly see his blank expression. A mouth, and a nose. No eyes, but hair. No emotion anywhere on the face, but locked in on her. Fixated on her."

His description of this stuff was definitely strange, but I needed to cut to what was important. I needed to know exactly what happened.

“Martin, where is Sophia now?”

Martin started nervously picking at his arm. A tic I’d never seen before.

“She left home eight nights ago. You’re the first person I told.”

“Dude, what?! Call the police or something?! Why are you telling me?!”

He looked down, a mix of guilt and gloom on his face.

I couldn’t shake the fear that there may have been some foul play here courtesy of Martin. I’d known this guy forever, and yet at this moment he was feeling more and more like a stranger. His voice strained as he continued:

“The night before she left, she told me what happened. She saw the man under her eyelids again. This time, he was closer than he’d ever been before. She could tell that he was reaching out to grab her arms. She was frozen in fear. He grabbed a hold of her, and started “pulling her under”. She couldn’t explain where he was taking her, but the sensation felt like she was getting pulled down into the depths of something. The black patterns that usually came with her closed-eye hallucinations started turning crimson red. It felt like she was being pulled down from her spine, from her very essence almost. As she started sinking, she could hear thousands of voices speaking in languages she’d never heard before. And yet, even though the voices and the words were new, she felt like she could understand them. They were all somehow saying the same thing, using different words. Forever. They were all saying forever.”

He paused. He was pulling at his sleeve again. Anxiously scratching.

“She… she told me she fought back with everything she could. Climbing and clawing and trying to get back to the surface. Trying to wake up. She barely did. And when she did, she was screaming from the top of her lungs. Woke me up in the middle of the night. Scared the shit out of me.”

He shook his head. Like he was trying to deny any of this was even happening.

“She showed me her arms, man. Deep bruises on both of them, in the exact same spots. She said that they were in the exact same places that he grabbed her.”

“What happened next, Martin?” I asked. We needed to stay on target.

“That was it. From there, she just got up and left. Walked out the door. She said that no one could help her. That she felt like she was going to be pulled into some sort of hellish eternity that no one could comprehend. That whatever it was that she felt, it was more real than waking life. Like that was the truth. She kept going on about how she felt trapped, and that the only way to avoid what was waiting for her was to not fall asleep. That was the only thing she cared about. Not falling asleep. Not me, not her family, friends, dreams, her future just… escaping what was coming for her. She was going to find some way to never fall asleep again. She packed a bunch of nonsensical crap into a travel bag and just left. Drove off, despite me trying to convince her otherwise. It felt like my words were just going through her. I haven’t seen her since.”

Martin was convincing, for sure. It sounded like whatever he was saying, he did really believe it.

But that didn’t change the fact that we needed to call the authorities.

“We need to call the cops, man. Maybe they can find her.”

“You don’t understand. She was right,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

Martin was full-blown emotional at this point.

“It’s real man. I’m seeing it too. Every time I go to bed, before I fall asleep, I see him. It’s just like she described. In the blackness and the patterns and the the colors, I see his silhouette in the distance. It’s so obvious. He’s right there. And he’s getting closer and closer. H-he finally reached me for the first time. Grazed me on my arm. Felt like it was just a light touch, but then I woke up with…”

He rolled up his sleeve on his left arm, revealing a very deep, dark purple bruise.

“Like seriously man, what the fuck?!” he continued. “I’m just… she was right man. I can’t sleep. Anytime I even nod off, I see him emerge from the darkness, fixating on getting closer to me. Fixating on… taking me away.”

Martin was the worst I’d ever seen him. Throughout his whole telling, he was scanning the Starbucks, eyeing the door. Eyeing everyone. Afraid. I couldn’t deny it, my hair was starting to raise as well. Whatever he was talking about, whether it was real or not, it felt like an awful and unsettling happening. I didn’t like any of this.

But, neither he nor I were equipped to deal with this. The only thing I could think of at this exact time (besides hoping and praying that it was all just some delusional babble on his part and we could pull him out of his psychosis) was to get the authorities involved because there was a missing person.

We spent some time trying to talk about less eerie topics than what he and Sophia were supposedly seeing. Eventually, I was able to break through to him and remind him that I was on “his side” and ultimately I convinced him that calling the authorities was the right move. He called the authorities about Sophia’s departure and what she was experiencing, and they had both of us come by to the station to answer questions about the last time either of us had seen her and what her state of mind was at the time of her departure. Separately of course.

At the station, the cops were a bit more lenient with me - Martin had let them know that I was the one that told him to call them in the first place, so they ended up correctly sizing me up as a guy who was pretty much clueless about all of the happenings. Beyond the standard questions of “When did you last see Sophia” and “Did you sense anything different about her in the last few months?” (my answers being quite useless as I rarely see her unless it’s a big gathering or something), they started asking me questions about Martin and his relationship with her: If he’d ever showcased erratic behavior before, if their relationship was on the rocks, that kind of stuff. I definitely know that Martin was going through some deep stuff, but the more I thought about it, the more I was sure that he just couldn’t be responsible for anything grizzly. At his core, he was still the guy I knew: lawful good. Just… struggling with something a bit incomprehensible right now.

The cops let me go home. I tried texting and calling Martin but didn’t hear anything for the night, so I assumed he was still in questioning or being kept there overnight.

Same thing happened the next day - my calls and texts were left unreturned. I heard nothing from him. I contemplated calling the authorities again to ask for a status update, but opted instead to just hope for the best and try to keep my mind off things.

Finally, after a few days, my phone buzzed.

It was a text from Martin. I read it:

“Hey. They’ve been keeping me under supervision. They haven’t told me if I’m a person of interest in Sophia’s disappearance yet. They haven’t confiscated my phone yet and I’m still allowed to make calls, but I can’t leave.”

Shit. That’s not good. Before I could start typing my reply, I received another one.

“It’s getting worse. I’m trying to stay awake. Every time I close my eyes and drift off, he gets closer. He’s going to pull me in. Tell the officers that they have to try to help me stay awake. I can’t fall asleep. I can’t.”

Welp. I doubt I could convince the officers of anything at this point. Stirring over what to type as my response, he sent me another text:

“Nothing else is more important to me. Not Sophia. Not you. Nothing. I can’t get pulled under. I know what’s coming for me. I understand what’s real now. I need to stay awake. I need to stay awake forever. I can’t go.”

A knife was twisting in my stomach. I had no idea what any of this was, and how anything could impact my friend’s mind this much under such a short period of time. I could see more texts coming in, but I didn’t want to read them. I wanted to puke. Every part of my rational mind was starting to melt - the slow unsettling thought of the supernatural being a real and malicious thing was creeping in. I couldn’t let it in.

I ignored it. I tried to get my mind off it. I watched a comedy, and I went to bed. It was hard to sleep and forget everything, but I powered through the best I could.

I avoided my phone the next day. I kept my mind on other tasks. The sinking feeling was still in my chest, but I fought it as much as I could. I took a walk, watched TV, spent extra time cooking for myself, and continued to find other ways to kill time. I was able to carry through with distracting myself until the evening, where I was finally mentally and emotionally ready to address the rest of the text messages that Martin had sent me, as well as any other spam that had come through during the day.

I scrolled through the chain of messages from Martin:

“I need to stay awake forever.”

“I need to stay awake forever.”

“I need to stay awake forever.”

“They’re threatening to take me to a psychiatric hospital since I won’t go to sleep. Please stop them.”

“They want me to take sleeping pills. Please help.”

“I think they’re going to confiscate my phone.”

“I NEED TO STAY AWAKE I NEED TO STAY AWAKE I NEED TO STAY AWAKE”

I shrunk the above down for brevity, but his final message kept going on and on. A near endless string of him typing “I NEED TO STAY AWAKE”. It was horrifying. What the fuck was going on.

As I took in the messages, I realized that all of these had been sent by him last night. There’d been no text messages sent by him today. Complete radio silence from him after yesterday turned to midnight.

Before I could muster up sending him a text or calling him, a phone call came through on my cell. I answered.

“Martin?”

“Hello, this is Officer Borowitz. Am I speaking with Brian?”

“Yes… this is Brian.”

“We have an update on Sophia’s case. We’d love it if you came down to the station.”

I drove to the station, again ping-ponging worst case scenarios in my head on the journey there.

I arrived. I was brought into a room and was sat down by a couple of officers. They talked me through everything that had happened. The “conversation” was at times a flurry of questions, and at other times, a half-hearted update on what had happened. The whole thing was a blur.

I remember a mish-mash of scattered questions throughout the hours they spoke to me:

“Do you know if Martin had plans to escape our supervision area last night? Did he tell you about any plans he had?”

“Were Sophia and Martin part of a cult?”

“Do you know if Sophia and Martin were in close communication over the last week?”

“Were Martin and Sophia ever suicidal?”

Amidst their questioning, I kept asking them what happened. They danced around it for a while, and then tried to quickly skirt over it before proceeding back to their questions. I think they were just trying to keep things as professional as possible while getting as much info from me as they could. They mentioned what had happened, almost as if it was a throwaway fact. Like it was nothing of real importance:

The cops found Sophia and Martin’s bodies. They were both lying next to each other in their bed. back at their home. Their heads, from the bridge of their noses upwards, had been removed. Mouth, nose, and a blank expression on their face. Everything else was gone.

Among the grizzly and strange details that were being shared with the emotional intelligence of a seasoned and detached heart surgeon, was the fact that none of the officers had any idea on who had done this. They weren’t sure if Martin and Sophia had planned this themselves, and if they had, how they’d pulled it off. There were no visible signs of foul play, and no hint at all on where the top of Sophia and Martin’s heads were.

The blur continued and followed me as I went home. I was horrified. Scarred. Life felt empty. I quit work, could barely eat, could barely sleep, and any belief structures I’d set up (or lack thereof) had been completely shattered. I was sure that whatever happened, it wasn’t something that could be explained by any of the tools humans had at their disposal.

Months passed. Many months before I could have a single solitary day that could even partially resemble what one would call “normal”. But… time does what it does. Slowly, the human spirit builds some sort of strange masochistic resilience. You carry on because you can. And slowly and surely, the guilt and the shame and fear and horror and everything in between, little by little, start to fade away. There was still a big beating heart of pain at the center of me, but… I could get out of bed. I could do things again. I was sleeping better.

That was until I started seeing him.

Truth be told, I think he’d been there longer than I wanted to admit. I’d just been in denial.

There, lingering in the corner of the patterns and particles sprinkled onto a background of black that I’d see with my eyes shut as I was drifting off to sleep… was him. That silhouette hiding in the dark fuzzy static. Something that didn’t belong, far off in the distance. Slowly, so slowly, making his way closer and closer.

He’s closed the distance over the last few weeks. Everytime I see him, he’s closer and clearer than before. I’ve been in denial. None of this is real, this can’t be real, I’m just seeing things. But now, in the instant before I fall into a deep dream, he’s right in front of me. Clear as day.

He grabbed my arms the other night. I woke up with a row of bruises on both sides. I saw his blank expression. A mouth, and a nose. No eyes, but hair. Locked in on me. Fixated on me.

Sophia’s description, or rather, Martin’s retelling of Sophia’s description, was spot on. I got a hint of what happens when he finally takes you away. I heard the words - thousands of voices speaking in languages that were completely unfamiliar, and yet, recognizable. All of them saying, in their own special ways… Forever. And me, submerged in something so horrible and incomprehensible and yet something I immediately understand with all of my being. Something horrible I can’t ever escape from.

Nothing is more important to me now.

I need to stay awake forever.

I need to stay awake forever.

I need to stay awake forever.

I need to stay awake forever.

Please, something, help me stay awake forever.