Greetings, fellow perfectly normal humans. It is I.
I had planned on doing this on the last day of the previous month, but that pernicious thing known as Real Life became particularly insistent over the most recent couple of weeks, and as a result several of the things I intended to do then I find myself doing post-then. IE, now.
Thus here it is, late, but intact. Enjoy...
It had been known by many names over the centuries and millennia, throughout many cultures and languages. Night Hag. Mokthi. Boba. Jinn. Trud. Mazzmuredd. Old Hag. The Terror. Sleep Demon. The centaurs knew it as The Black Stallion. The goblins had several very obscene names for it, but never told anyone not a goblin what those were. In more modern non-magical times and cultures, it was sometimes called Alien. Which was doing a great disservice to the real aliens, who found the whole thing offputting and tended to make their scientific investigations turn into farce to the point that at times they gave up in disgust and went home. Some cultures even called it the Hat Man, while in the wizarding world it was commonly thought to be a particularly evil poltergeist.
The wizards, of course, simply put up wards against ghosts and ignored the truth. Oddly enough, by pure luck, and a lack of understanding of how their wards actually worked, they accidentally hit on a method of deterring it that mostly worked. Not by blocking it in truth, but by making it itch so much it avoided such places because it was just bloody annoying.
But, of course, the non magical world had no such defenses, even ones that worked by chance rather than design. So, in the end, it was barely affected, since the number of magicals was so low compared to the rest of the world that even avoiding all of them on principle hardly caused any lack of victims. If it had been capable of amusement it would have found the entire situation worthy of a laugh, but it wasn't so it didn't.
If the wizards had really spent any time on investigating its nature, had possessed enough curiosity to pay attention, they would possibly have discovered it was vaguely related to something they knew all too well. Like its far more numerous distant cousins known as dementors it was an emotivore. It subsisted on emotions, pulled directly from the victim's mind. Unlike them it didn't take everything. It was smarter. It knew how to ration its intake and spread it widely enough that few traces were left behind. No permanent damage was done, or at least no permanent physical damage was done. It was sneakier than that. On the other hand, for those it visited often, because it sought out certain minds because it found the flavor more palatable, the long term psychological damage was more than enough to render life nearly unbearable in some cases. Ultimately, and sadly, suicide was a not-infrequent consequence.
In truth, considering how long it had been wandering the earth, alone and constantly seeking nourishment from any intelligent mind it could find, the death toll it had created as an accidental byproduct of its existence far, far outweighed that of the dementors much more lethal attacks. They drank deeply at the well of the mind and without potent protections would drain it dry, while it sipped lightly, coming back time after time for another drink of the sweet nectar of emotions.
Except for one day every year. On that day, the energies that some referred to as magic, although that was not particularly accurate in reality but was close enough to suffice, altered very slightly due to incredibly complex relationships between many factors throughout the planet and indeed solar system. Few even suspected how this worked, and only recently had anyone begun to understand the subtleties of the truth. Regardless, on that one day, after the sun had fully set, it was driven both to higher levels of activity and feeding, and to feed more completely, more deeply, on its victims. It was never fully satiated, but on every other day of the year could restrain itself if only out of some vague sense of self preservation.
On this day, there was no such restraint. And suffering was an unfortunate result.
So it had been for longer than any historical record still extant could show. No one truly knew when it had first appeared to plague the world. Even it didn't know, not that it cared. Time was irrelevant to it, except insofar as it looked forward to the next meal.
Myths had grown up around its predations for, quite possibly, as long as there had been something sufficiently intelligent to comprehend the concept of a myth in the first place. Civilizations had risen, fallen, and been forgotten, but it persisted. Such was the way of the world.
And tonight was, once again, that night. The time it could fully extend itself, could gorge itself on as much emotional energy as it wished, and would do so.
Nothing could really prevent it, wizards and magic barely able, in the end, to merely divert its attention a little. It was fully aware of this but thought little of what its prey believed about it, or tried to do to avoid its attention. None of it was relevant after all.
Night fell across the land. Activities for the most part slowed as people descended into slumber. Prowling the darkness it sniffed around for a suitable victim. There. That one radiated nicely, disturbed sleep causing the mind to emit precisely the right type of emotions it luxuriated in consuming. Moving closer it slipped through the wall of the dwelling, crouching over the murmuring figure in the bed, tendrils of immaterial being reaching into the mind of the victim and gently, expertly, tweaking the nightmare to maximize the distress caused by the brain working against itself. This was its real talent, learned and polished over the eons.
The victim finally half-woke, eyes fluttering and dimly focusing on the shape hanging over it. A spike of true terror flowed deliciously from a panicking mind as the victim found itself paralyzed by the malign influence it spread by its very presence. Aware that something was terribly wrong but completely unable to do anything to resist, the terror grew unbearably as it drank deeply of the rich emotional miasma, until the victim, driven to the point of exhaustion, finally sank into complete unconsciousness. Mind shut down past the level where even nightmares could form, the emotional flow ceased.
Sated for the moment, it felt a distant sense of accomplishment, before it moved on to the next meal. There were so many victims and so little time in which to indulge itself before it was forced back to the half-existence it chafed at for the rest of the year. This one glorious night was never enough, but it would make the most of the opportunity.
Sliding through the dwelling it fed twice more before moving on, never more than satisfied for mere moments before the hunger rose again.
It did not think of time as most living intelligences did, but it was aware that it had been contentedly draining fear and panic from its prey for much of the night when it finally arrived somewhere it had never previously visited. There were many such places, for even though it had existed for as long as civilization itself, if not longer, there was only one of it and the world was a very large place. It tended to gravitate towards larger population centers as they produced the most sustenance, but this night it had found itself much further afield than it had gone in some years. The last time it had passed this way, the human community here had been much smaller and far less nutritious. But now… now there was a very satisfying quantity of victims.
Moving into a house it sensed the sweet nectar of a nightmare from, it ignored the feline creature that hissed at it and dashed from the room as it bent over the bed. Ah. This was a fertile one indeed. A young mind, those always gave the best results, and this mind was truly deep. It could tell just from a sniff that once it prepared the ground the crop would be wonderful…
So it reached out, once again sinking into the victim to induce true terror, and…
Eyes blinked open.
This was not unusual. If anything, it was desired behavior, as a victim that found itself awake but unable to move, seeing it hovering over it menacingly, invariably produced even more emotional output than just the nightmare it enhanced did.
Eyes focused directly on it, then narrowed.
That… was unusual. Even wizards, who were far more sensitive in many cases than non magicals were, tended to be unable to make out more than a misty disturbing presence. But even as it moved to invoke the terror, to put the fear of it into this meal, the creature was looking right at it in a way that almost suggested it was entirely capable of seeing it.
Unique, yes, but not really important. It would have its meal regardless of the wishes of the victim. That was how it worked. That was how it always worked, and had done for longer than this human's entire civilization had existed. It pushed harder, waiting for the emotional flood to pour forth.
"I don't think so," the victim said very quietly. Still looking directly at it, in a manner it had never encounter in all the time it had been. Almost surprised, it studied this unusual meal, then metaphorically shrugged. It wasn't a magical being, there was no sign of the defenses those annoyances used, so what could this meal do except be a meal. Throwing caution to the wind in its eagerness to sup deeply on what surely would be a particularly sweet nightmare, it thrust itself into the mind before it.
"I'm sorry, Mr Nightmare, but I'm afraid I can't allow that," the meal whispered. Not really capable of understanding the meaning of the words, but picking up on the intent, it paused for one tiny moment, due to the unexpected lack of fear. And in that moment, the meal showed that it was not a meal at all. It was something entirely different.
Something wrong.
Something horrifying.
Something, that had via methods it had never encountered before in all its long existence, somehow abruptly grabbed it. Even though the victim was just lying there looking at it, it suddenly couldn't pull back even if it wanted to. Which in its shock it very much did. Completely blindsided by finding itself, for the first time ever, physically restrained by something it couldn't see, couldn't sense, but something that was absolutely irresistible, it thrashed and wailed inaudibly. Nothing like this had ever occurred before. Nothing like this should be able to occur. It knew that, knew it couldn't be kept out, or truly warded away, despite what the wizards fondly believed. Yet, here and now, it was stuck.
"I see…" The young victim, which was clearly nothing of the sort, seemed to radiate interest and calculation, making it shiver even as it kept trying to escape. There was something beyond disturbing in the way it was being examined, dissected, by that gaze. "Interesting. But it is three o'clock in the morning and it's a school night, so I need my sleep, you see. It's very rude to sneak into people's bedrooms in the middle of the night and wake them up too. So I think you should just go in here and think about what you've done for a while. I'll have a good look at you after school. In you go."
Whatever was holding it pushed irresistibly on all sides, compressing it shockingly as it was funneled into a space much too small for comfort, inside a glowing sphere that appeared from nowhere. Screaming in fear, finally understanding what its victims felt when it fed, it was forced immovably into its prison, which closed behind it. The thing on which had wished to feed looked on its work and smiled, before the glowing sphere floated across the room and landed on a flat surface.
It could do nothing, could not even move, as the meal it had tried to consume turned over in bed and went back to sleep. It was unable to even sense anything outside the impossible bubble it found itself in. And no matter what it did, so it remained.
In what passed for its mind it decided that should it ever manage to escape, it was never going to come this way again.
And it wondered what the thing that had trapped it was…
Perhaps some of the images it had seen in the nightmares of its victims were more real than it had realized.
Michael exchanged a glance with Helen, then both of them looked back to Hermione who was holding up a roughly three inch diameter crystalline sphere, a pale glowing violet in color, and examining it with interest. It seemed to emit a strange sensation that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up although he'd be hard pressed to explain why, and peering closely at it he fancied he could see a wisp of darkness writhing around inside it in a manner that conveyed… terror?
"Ah… Hermione, dear?" His daughter looked up inquiringly at him. "What… is that?" He pointed at the thing with his fork.
"It's a very rude creature that woke me up at three in the morning and scared Mr Boots," she replied, putting the sphere on the table in front of her bowl of cereal then picking up her spoon. "Just because it was Halloween there's no reason to go around waking people up like that." She yawned. "It was highly irritating."
"Creature?" Helen said, sounding somewhat puzzled, and also worried.
"I think so, yes," their daughter replied. "It's not really alive in the normal sense of the word but it has some sort of mind at least. And it was trying to give me a nightmare or something. I think…" She looked pensive for a moment, then put the spoon down and wrote a few lines in the notebook next to her, before resuming eating her cornflakes. "I'll have to do some more research on it. But for now it can stay in there where it won't bother anyone."
Michael stared at her, then at the sphere, before sighing faintly and glancing at Helen again. She was shaking her head fondly. "I see." Taking another slice of toast, he started spreading butter on it. "I wonder if Doctor Langham would be interested in seeing whatever that is?"
"Ooh! I'll have to write up my observations and conclusions!" Hermione looked pleased.
The sphere full of something bizarre didn't but it didn't have much choice in the matter when you came right down to it.
Five minutes later Mr Boots jumped up onto the table and batted the ball onto the floor. The three of them spent some time chasing him around before they got it back, and as a result Hermione was nearly late for school.
No one ever worked out why the incidence of night terrors dropped by nearly ninety-six percent overnight in late 1990.
