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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Stemponik on 2024-10-06 09:43:22+00:00.

I haven’t slept much these past couple of weeks. Listen, I don’t really know where to begin with this whole ordeal. It’s just been weighing on my mind lately, and no matter what I do, I just can’t seem to get it out of my head. So, I thought I’d write it down. I’m in my second year at university, studying chemistry (rather boring, I know) and I had a friend studying astronomy, called Garth. He was staying late one night, he’d been ill for a week and needed to catch up on some coursework, I decided to accompany him because I honestly didn’t have anything better to do.

So we’re sitting in the study hall, just us, Garth across from me taking notes from his brittle laptop that was probably top-of-the-line back in 2012, and I’m bored out of my mind: nothing interesting on my phone, I don’t have the energy to read any books and I sure as hell wasn’t going to do any of my own work. My eyes dart around the room for anything to distract me, and I do mean anything, there’s a brief moment where I contemplate getting up and repeatedly flicking the light switch on and off. Ultimately I don’t do that, because I’m not that much of an asshole. Instead, my eyes finally land on something else. At the back of the room, facing a large glass window, is a telescope.

The telescope is big. Not huge, mind you, just bigger than any telescope I had seen up to that point. It’s an ashen-grey colour, with deep red highlights on all the shifting sections of the device. It looks expensive, and I don’t really want to be in even further debt, so I touch it slowly and methodically, making sure that everything is held as securely as it should be. Its weight is supported enough for the worry in my brain to instantly evaporate, replaced just as quickly with newfound curiosity.

I’ve never been much of a space guy, it just never really caught my interest in comparison with the other major sciences. Yet there I was, almost giddy as I put my eye to the viewfinder, only to be met with pure, oppressive darkness. No lights, no stars, not even a moon. But, that was quickly rectified when I unscrewed the lens cap. Not my proudest moment, all things considered.

But here’s where it gets interesting. The way the window was installed gave me a clear view of the moon, the white beacon visible through the upper echelon of the window. I put my eye back on the viewfinder and quickly panned the telescope so that it was facing the moon– this telescope had some good zoom on it; I was able to make out all the different craters and rocks that scattered the moon’s surface, and despite my general apathy for space and astronomy, I found myself feeling an almost child-like wonder as I gazed upon this faraway land.

Then suddenly, while slowly adjusting the lens focus in an attempt to get an even clearer picture of the moon’s surface, I saw something move. My breath froze and my heart raced as I pulled myself away from the viewfinder. A pause. I look over at Garth and he’s still buried in his work. My brain tries its best to rationalize the movement as something natural: too much caffeine and not enough sleep, knocking the telescope slightly, straining my eye to see clearer.

I sigh, relieved, finding it almost laughable how easily I had scared myself with something so trivial. I bring my eye back down to the viewfinder to get another look at the moon, and that’s when I see it again.

It hasn’t stopped moving since I last looked. It’s big, it had to be if I was able to make out from such a distance. The thing looks almost human, but I wasn’t able to get a good enough look at it. Its skin looks almost identical to the dust that coated the moon itself, the only reason I was able to make out its rough shape was because of the harsh shadows that shrouded its body, leaving its silhouette trailing on the floor behind itself. Again, I could barely make it out, but it looked as if you got a stick-bug to stand up on its back legs. My breath once again gets caught in my mouth, but I don’t pull away this time, this feeling of unease creeps over me. I was already terrified, but this was something else; it felt like if I continued to stare something bad would happen, but no matter how hard I tried, how hard I pleaded with myself to move, I just wouldn’t budge, not an inch.

My eyes are still fixed on the thing when it stops moving. It turns its head to look at me, at least that’s what I think it’s doing, it’s hard to make out all the details, but I know it’s looking at me. You know that feeling, when it feels like something is watching you, the moment its head stopped moving that feeling seemed to burrow itself deep into me.

Despite it being too far to ever be able to see me directly, I know it’s looking at me. Not looking at the earth, not looking at my country, looking at me. Directly at me.

The thing seems to raise a hand to point at me, and it’s then that I find the motivation to step back out of the viewfinder and away from the window, pushing myself backwards as quickly and forcefully as I can, slamming against the wall on the other side of the room. The moment I do, the feeling stops.

“Holy shit, dude, you okay?” Garth asks, turning to look at me the moment he hears the crash of my back hitting the wall at a worrying pace. All I can do in reply is point a shaky hand towards the telescope. He eyes me sceptically, as you’d expect, and gets up to walk towards the telescope. He puts his eye on the viewfinder. “Are you fucking with me?” He turns to look at me with a pissed-off expression. “Why’d I fall for your shit, dude.” He goes back to his stuff and picks it up, quickly leaving the room.

I don’t want to be on my own with that telescope or that moon any longer than I have to. Getting up, I make a hasty escape towards the door Garth left through, and before I make it through the door, I take one last look at the telescope in the corner of the room. Its lens cap is still neatly discarded on the floor, and I don’t have the courage to go put it back.

It’s been two weeks since that night, and strange things have started happening. For a while now, virtually every time I looked at the moon, I could feel it looking right back at me, once again not at the earth, but at me specifically. And I’m positive that it knows that I know. I’ve also been having these weird dreams– well, dream to be specific. It’s the same one almost every night.

I’m lying down in my bed, paralysed from the neck down, and that thing is in the room with me. It’s far too big to fit inside normally so it’s hunched over to what must be a painful degree, with its long grey fingers gripping the end of my bed like a vice. I can see it no clearer than when I first saw it all those weeks ago, its features are shrouded in a shadow that engulfs my room. The only actual notable features I can make out are the thin, wet hairs that pool on my legs, and the fetid odour that seems to emanate from them. Every time it’s there I feel the need to wretch as the putrid smell creeps towards me. Its ragged breathing is devoid of any rhythm, as if it’s learning how to breathe for the very first time in its life, constantly having to remember to use its lungs on our oxygenated planet.

And then I wake up.

Though, in all honesty, I don’t think I’m dreaming. There’s been a few moments when I awaken from the prolonged state of sleep paralysis and find myself feeling that exact same sense of foreboding that I experience when I look at the moon. It’s always far too dark for my brain to make out anything in my room, but sometimes, just sometimes, I can feel the disgusting sensation of its long, slick hair slithering away from my legs and out of my room. I could put this down to my brain still being in some sort of sleep state when I wake up, and that would make perfect sense, if not for the fact that every time it happens, my legs are soaking wet; not from sweat, or any other natrual fluids– no, this is far too oily to be anything human. It can’t be.

I get up and look, and just like every time before it, a dark trail of something leads directly from my bed, across my floor and out of my window. I shudder at the picture my brain conjures of how this thing would have to contort itself just to fit through my window.

It’s like that almost every night, it’s gotten to the point that I dread going to sleep at night, and actively try and stay awake for as long as I can. It’s not a healthy lifestyle, but in all honesty, I prefer unhealthy to dealing with that thing.

But something else happened. Something far worse happened than recurring nightmares, and it firmly planted the fact this thing was real in my mind. About a week ago Garth stopped showing up to class. He had been getting worse before then, a little slower to react, too tired to bite back whenever someone insulted him, eyes sunken and dreary. I didn’t understand what was up with him at first. I wish I never found out.

Three days after he stopped showing up I went to his flat, just to check up on him. I raised my hand and knocked on the door, and waited. No reply. So I went to knock again, and that’s when it hit me. That stench. That foul, wretched stench. The stench of death. I was too scared to do anything, so I ran. I ran out of the university accommodation until I could run no longer. I didn’t know what to do.

I ended up contacting the staff who run the housing asking to check in on him, hoping– praying that he was alright. But, sadly, I knew deep down wh…

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