Ghosts

Just woke up from a scary vision, and I can't get back to sleep and everything I look at is scaring me. Even this computer! I feel like my brother when he used to get scared at night. How horrible to be afraid of the dark. I've never been afraid of the dark. But now I can't even read Harry Potter book 4 to calm my nerves and arms, which are shot with adrenalin.

Tonight, our crazy neighbor, Deborah, was in her prime, screaming at our neighbors across the hall. Deborah, who does not like them for some reason, has taken to screaming at them: "surveillance! Surveillance! Security! Activated! Activated! Activated!" It's unnerving. She has lived next door for the past almost 2 years now, and claims there is FBI protecting her. She claims they have helicopters circling the building. She claims that years ago, she got in bed with the wrong man (she's always very graphic with us - she's around 60-70) who know wants her dead. She has 3 cats, and got a little dog named Chicho, but never takes it outside, for fear that "they will get to me by getting to him."

So we ignore this, but lately it's been getting worse. At least as far as I can tell. My poor neighbors share a wall with her, and can hear her barking out her window. I always hear her screaming bloody murder at her dog. I can actually hear her voice recede as she chases her little dog down her hallway, bellowing. She and I have before not spoken, as I seem to do things that set her off. But then she snaps out of it and appears to not have noticed that she would stare at me in the hallway like a deer in headlines. When she started to speak to me again, she'd just say: "Your hair has gotten so long! It's been so long since we've seen eachother."

David is the best with her. Or she is the best with him. I think she likes having him around, and he's the only one she'll respond to. She used to butter me up with gifts from the whole foods store or random paintings from her apartment. She would butter me up, or so I thought, because I have a dog, and she was dying for our dogs to be friends. Well, my dog can't stand her dog unfortunately, as the little thing just goes ecstatic whenever he sees my dog, since he's never seen any other dog before. But as I was saying, David has always been the bridge back to normalcy with her. She started bringing him gifts: sun screen when she found out he had a patch of skin removed from his face, lotion for his face, a pint glass, danishes when his mother came to town. We never eat any of it. Just bury it in the trash.

Tonight, however, I've reached my wits end. She let her dog out in the foyer outside our doors. He was barking loudly, something he does not often do when out there. She may have been barking with him earlier, and our neighbors asked her to be quiet. This set her off. She came out screaming. I had just settled in after a dose of Harry Potter when I heard the noise from outside our front door. I woke David up (who's been working super long hours on a movie) and he offered to stick his head out there as peace-maker [queue harps]. He stuck his head out there in the foyer, and mainly addressed Chicho, a safe approach. Deborah was yelling. It was terrible. A guy from another floor had come up, insisting she be quiet. She told David that it was not her causing the commotion, and took her dog back inside.

Meanwhile, the police had been called. They came, but could do nothing. I mean, what can you do? They pounded on her door, but no answer, of course. All had ended, or so I thought. I crawled back into bed and eventually fell asleep until suddenly, David was yelling "Get out! Get out!" and leaping out of bed. I followed, blind as a bat in the pitch black with no glasses, to see what was the matter. David reached our own hallway to the front door, and just stopped. I collapsed on the couch, waiting to hear what was the matter.

David said I had screamed, which caused him to jump out of bed. I looked at him like he was crazy, but then I remembered a face looking in at us from the window above our bed. It was looking in between the crack of the end of the blinds, which don't go all the way down, and the fan that is resting against the closed window. It was gray and it was looking at us. David said I screamed "Somebody's in here! Somebody's in here!" and then he leapt out of bed defending us. I had no recollection until he told me I had screamed, and then I could remember hearing myself. That was the most scary part.

Now I'm scared all over again. I don't know what to do! I hate that face and need to block it out. I think I need a night-light. Oh dear.

PS: Since typing this, I have since completed a study in nightlights to combat the image. Staring a computer screen to find nightlights has successfully dulled my brain into a hopeful mellow slumber.

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