Hypnophobia

*Patient Name: Walling, James*

*Age: 22*

*Gender: Male*

*Diagnosis: Hypnophobia, an abnormal fear of sleep.*

*First hand notes retrieved by Agent 28 from the office of the treating physician, Dr. Emil Sarcozan. Further commentary unavailable. The following are excerpts from the patient record with no omissions.*

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**Day 1**

Upon referral from the emergency department, James Walling reported to my office this morning in a hysterical state and has agreed to an immediate stay in the psychiatric wing of the hospital. The diagnosis itself is quite rare and we do not often see such severe cases in younger males with no family history of anxiety disorders. Consequently, it may be worthwhile to go over his initial story in detail before assessing current behavior.

Patient claims to be afraid of sleep because “*the man in the room gets closer every time*.”

When asked to clarify, patient described a recurring visual phenomenon beginning approximately one month earlier. He insists the issue first occurred after a long overnight drive back from school. He returned to his apartment near three in the morning, exhausted, and fell asleep without trouble. Around dawn, he awoke suddenly and noticed a man standing in the far corner of his bedroom. He described the figure as “*too tall, but not giant*” and “*dressed in black from the neck down.*” The man had no visible facial features because the room was still dark. Patient assumed for one irrational but vivid moment that a burglar had entered the apartment. He reached for his phone to call 911. On blinking, however, the corner was empty.

Patient initially dismissed the event as sleep paralysis or some other half-dream state.

The following night, he saw the man again.

This time, according to James, the figure stood a little closer to the bed. Not in the corner anymore but beside the dresser, still silent, still too indistinct for any facial features to register. Patient turned on the bedside lamp immediately. No one was there. From that point onward, the process allegedly repeated itself each time he slept. The man reappeared a little nearer than before. Night after night, nap after nap, even once after briefly dozing in a parked car outside the grocery store. The figure continued to close distance.

Patient states he stopped sleeping voluntarily five days ago.

“*He was at the foot of the bed last time,*” James told me while wringing his hands. “*If I sleep again, he’ll be on top of me. You don’t understand. He gets closer because sleep lets him. I think that’s how he moves.*”

Patient exhibits severe sleep deprivation. Eyes bloodshot. Hands tremulous. Speech rapid but coherent enough to follow. He appears genuinely terrified rather than manipulative. Physical exam from the emergency department notes elevated blood pressure, dehydration, and auditory sensitivity, all consistent with extended wakefulness. No illicit substances found in preliminary tox screens.

The plan for today is simple observation and hydration. I do not intend to force sedation until I have better reason to doubt the patient’s report of hallucination or mania. He has agreed to remain under supervision in a single room on the ward. Orderlies instructed to note any sleep episodes, intentional or otherwise.

At the time of this writing, James has not closed his eyes longer than two seconds.

---

**Day 2**

Patient lasted until approximately 4:15 AM before involuntary sleep occurred. He had spent the entire night pacing the room, speaking only when spoken to, and repeatedly asking whether anyone else could “*see the corners moving.*” At 4:15 he collapsed into the chair by the window and drifted off for less than one minute.

His scream woke half the ward.

When staff reached the room, James had fallen backward with the chair beneath him and struck the side of his head against the radiator. He was found sobbing and pressing himself flat against the wall nearest the door. Small superficial laceration above left ear. No concussion symptoms thus far.

Patient claimed the man had moved again.

“*He was kneeling on the mattress,*” James said. “*Not at the foot of it. On it. He leaned down like he wanted to tell me something. I woke up before he could.*”

I asked whether he recognized the face.

Patient shook his head violently. “*There isn’t one. Not really. Just dark where one should be.*”

That particular detail has repeated with unusual consistency. He does not describe a hidden face, but an *absence* where the features belong. He can name clothing, posture, relative location, but nothing from the head except shape and dark.

James no longer believes the hospital room provides meaningful protection. He spent much of the morning demanding that staff move him somewhere with bright lights and no corners. “*He uses the corners,*” he said. “*He folds out of them.*”

We tried a low-dose sedative in food at lunch under the theory that enforced rest may lessen the psychotic fixation. Patient noticed the drowsiness almost immediately and became combative, throwing the tray at Nurse Harlow and attempting to wedge a pen into the window seam to pry it open. It took two orderlies and myself to restrain him long enough to explain the medication. Once informed, he did not calm so much as shut down. He now refuses all food not opened directly in front of him.

I admit some discomfort in writing what follows.

At 2:20 PM, while reviewing charts at the nurses’ station, I looked up toward James’ room and thought I saw a shadow move past the interior window. The room lights were on. James was seated in plain view on the bed. Yet for a brief instant, there appeared behind him a second shape, very tall and narrow, crossing from one corner of the room toward another. I went in immediately. There was, of course, no one else there.

James studied my face when I entered.

“*You saw him, didn’t you?*”

I told the patient no.

This was a lie.

---

**Day 3**

Patient has entered an advanced state of panic and cognitive deterioration. After another largely sleepless night, James experienced three separate microsleeps during morning rounds despite every effort to avoid them. Each episode lasted only seconds. Each resulted in escalating distress.

Episode one: patient jerked awake and vomited into waste bin.

Episode two: patient screamed “*He touched the blanket*” and demanded that all bedding be removed from the room.

Episode three: patient bit his own wrist hard enough to break skin in an apparent attempt to remain conscious after his head began to nod. This behavior forced us to place him in soft restraints for his own protection.

He begged me not to let him sleep.

That is not uncommon in anxiety cases. The difference here lies in his certainty. Most phobic patients fear abstract consequences: losing control, dying, dreaming, suffocating. James fears a singular progression with almost mathematical precision. Every sleep equals one step closer. No deviation. No ambiguity.

“*How many times have I slept since it started?*” he asked me this afternoon.

I told him I didn’t know.

He laughed in a thin, awful way. “*I do. Twenty-one. Which means tonight he gets my face.*”

When asked what he meant, patient became agitated and refused further clarification.

At 5:40 PM, Nurse Harlow entered the room with fresh saline. She left immediately and reported that the temperature inside James’ room felt “*ten degrees colder than the hall*.” Maintenance checked the vent and thermostat. No mechanical issue found. I entered shortly afterward and experienced the same sensation. Noticeable drop in temperature localized only to that room.

James watched me notice it.

“*He’s in here during the day now,*” he whispered.

For the first time since admission, I found myself checking the corners.

I have ordered constant observation tonight.

Personal note, not for chart inclusion:

If I continue keeping these records privately, it is because something about this case has begun to disturb me in ways my training does not fully explain. This afternoon I dozed for no more than a moment at my desk. In that moment, I dreamed of James’ hospital room exactly as it looked under the fluorescent bulbs. The bed. The chair. The window. And at the foot of the bed stood the man in black. He was turned toward the doorway, as if waiting for someone to enter.

I awoke with a start and found my office door open.

I had closed it earlier.

---

**Day 4**

I no longer believe this is a simple psychiatric case.

James slept at 1:12 AM despite restraints, caffeine, continuous conversation from staff, and one overhead flood lamp brought in from maintenance to keep the room painfully bright. Human exhaustion triumphed, as it always does. His eyes rolled half shut during a question from Orderly Stevens and that was enough.

He did not scream this time.

He whispered.

“*No, not yet.*”

Those were the last words he spoke while awake.

According to both Stevens and Harlow, the patient’s entire body went rigid in the bed the instant sleep took him. They describe not the normal slackness of unconsciousness but a posture of acute attention, as if something had called him to stillness. Stevens attempted to rouse him and received no response. Harlow moved toward the bedside and then stepped back so abruptly she struck the wall cabinet hard enough to crack the glass.

When I arrived, James remained asleep.

There was another set of footprints on the floor.

Wet. Bare. Larger than the patient’s. They began in the far left corner of the room and ended at the bedside.

No corresponding water source could be identified.

The footprints had not been there ten minutes earlier when Stevens logged his previous check.

I approached the bed. James’ eyes moved rapidly beneath the lids. His mouth worked as though speaking to someone unheard. Then, in one synchronized motion, both of his hands rose from the sheets and covered his own face.

Not reflexively. Deliberately.

Stevens shouted that someone else was in the room. Harlow insisted the curtains were moving though all windows were shut. I confess I saw nothing directly with my own eyes except the footprints and the patient. Yet the pressure in that room altered in a way I can only compare to the moment before a thunderclap. A tremendous anticipatory weight.

Then James woke.

He tore his hands away from his face and looked at me with such naked horror that I nearly stumbled backward. He began clawing at his own eyes immediately. It took all three of us to stop him. During restraint, he repeated the same phrase over and over:

“*He wore me. He wore me. He wore me.*”

We sedated him by force after that. There seemed no ethical alternative.

Patient is asleep now as I write this.

The wet footprints are gone.

---

**Day 5**

James Walling expired at 3:09 AM.

Official cause pending review will likely read cardiac arrest secondary to extreme exhaustion, psychosis, and violent self-harm risk. That is not untrue. It is also not the full truth.

I remained in the room after sedation because some irrational instinct convinced me the patient should not be left alone again. The night passed without incident at first. He slept heavily. The room remained cold enough that my breath occasionally fogged near the bed. At 2:43 AM, I noticed the corner nearest the radiator had darkened beyond what the room’s lighting conditions should permit.

The dark spread.

It did not move across the floor or wall like shadow from an external source. Rather, the corner itself seemed to deepen, as if gaining physical depth inside the plaster. The fluorescent light above the bed continued burning, yet no illumination reached that angle now. I stood. I recall this vividly because my chair tipped backward and struck the floor and still James did not wake.

Then the man stepped out.

Height approximately seven feet. Limbs disproportionately long. Clothing black and featureless from neck to ankle. Head shaped like a normal man’s at a distance, except for the front, which contained no eyes, nose, or mouth. Only a smooth depthless dark, matte as coal. The figure moved with absolute silence to the bedside and bent over the patient.

At no point did it acknowledge me.

I could not move. Not fear exactly. Not even shock. More like every command from brain to body had been politely set aside by some larger authority.

The man reached down and placed both hands over James’ face.

The patient woke beneath them and thrashed once, weakly. There was no scream. No struggle of consequence. Only a brief desperate sound through blocked air. The room temperature dropped so rapidly my eyes watered. Frost appeared on the metal rail of the bed.

Then, impossible as the image remains, the black figure lowered its blank head toward the patient and seemed to inhale.

James’ body flattened.

I do not mean metaphorically. I mean the flesh itself lost dimension beneath the sheet, collapsing as if emptied from within. In seconds, all that remained in the bed was the outline of a young man under hospital linen with no meaningful depth to it. A skin of him. The hands slid from his face and the corpse beneath bore no features at all. Just smooth pale flesh from forehead to chin where everything had been.

The figure straightened.

For the first time, I saw movement on the blank surface of its head.

Features emerged there one at a time from beneath the darkness. Eyes first. Then nose. Then mouth. The face that resolved was James Walling’s, though older somehow, calmer, relieved even.

It looked at me.

And with my patient’s voice, it said:

“*You should sleep, doctor.*”

I found myself on the floor at dawn with staff pounding at the locked door. James’ bed was occupied by his body, fully dimensional once more, though dead and faceless exactly as described above. No sign remained of the other figure.

I have tendered my resignation this morning.

If these notes are ever found, let them stand as warning rather than evidence. I no longer seek belief from others. I only know the progression was real, and that whatever followed that young man through sleep now knows my face as well as I know its lack of one.

I have not slept since."