I Am Unreal

When I was a baby, my parents had to work hard to support me. While they were working long hours, my grandma (my father’s mother) would babysit me at her house. At the time she lived with my grandpa and my uncle (my dad’s brother) who was still only about 16 or 17 at the time. My parents usually took me to her house at 6 AM, and she’d put me in my crib and let me sleep for the rest of the morning. One day, she needed to take an urgent trip to the bank and my grandpa had left particularly early for work, so she had to wake my uncle up to keep an eye on me while she was gone.

He started to play video games and turned on my baby monitor so that he could hear me if I started to cry. A few minutes later, he could hear me tossing and turning in my crib, and then beginning to whine a little bit. He was about to get up when he heard someone hushing me. “Hello,” it said in a comforting and soothing tone. And then it began to hum. I stopped crying. He figured it was my grandma, so he went in to greet her but only I was in the room, safe and sound in my crib. He called around the house for her, and looked outside the window for her car but he was the only one home. He figured that the monitor had picked up on other frequencies and shrugged it off. He continued to play his video games, until he heard me shuffling in my blankets again.

“Hello,” the voice said again, only this time it was less sweet, and almost sounded mean.

“I am unreal” it whispered in a hurried tone. “I must get them before I get you.”

Immediately he barged into my room but again, it was only me. We were alone. He picked me up and brought me outside and waited for my grandma to come home. He told her what happened and of course she told my parents. At first my family was scared, but everyone sort of forgot about it.

Until I turned 15. One night, I came home from a party at about 11 PM to sleep in my own bed. I knocked out pretty fast, but at around 2 my mom could see me aimlessly walking up and down the hallway. She called me into the room with her, and I knelt down beside her bed and smiled, but I did not speak or respond to a word she said. I don’t remember this, I was unconscious. Finally, she nudged me and I jolted awake, surprised to be in her bedroom. She told me I had been sleepwalking and I went to bed. The next morning, I checked my phone and saw I had been texting my best friend. Three small, but three terrifying phrases:

“Hello.”

“I am unreal”

“I must get them before I get you.”

I never told my parents about these text messages, and nothing unusual has happened since then. But it still haunts me and it still keeps me up at night. I never found out what these meant when the voice in my baby monitor said them or when I sent them. But I don’t really want to find out, anyways.

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