Don't Talk About The Birdman

My experience begins on a cold fall night. The moon blanketed outside with a gentle blue. My room is on the second story, with my bed in the corner, windows on each surrounding wall. I fell asleep with the cold radiating off the moist window on my face. My body was cozy and warm beneath the layers of quilts. That's when my dream began.

I was awake and it was day, and outside my window were 2 eagles, and one flew down and paused with it's wings extended, back towards me.... then it turned around and it had a man's face. His face was dark with strong angles, high cheekbones. His facial features were pointed, birdlike, and his eyes piercing... stern. Pitch black. He began flapping his wings and I collected the feathers.

A few years later, after I long had forgotten this dream, my friend told me of an odd dream of a birdman. It didn't click until a year later when she repeated the dream that he sounded exactly like the bird in my dream.

In her dream he told her that he was going to meet her at the buttes. We knew we shouldn't talk about it a lot, for superstitious reasons (meaning maybe it'll show itself???) but being the suckers for a good scare, we dwelled on each eerie coincidence.

After that story lost its fear factor, we each began divulging in the freakiest "true" scary stories that we could come up with, and after a half hour we really were terrified.. It was only the two of us awake in the house and we began to hear thumps from her attic... We sat so petrified and still that our racing heartbeats could be heard. Nothing.... then thump...very gentle... pause....thump... not a heavy pounding... just a gliding bump noise on the carpet... like slow longs strides. The pauses were far between. At that point we were both cuddled in the lazyboy recliner, arms around each other like two seven-year-olds... We put the volume up on the TV and turned the channel to a cheesy "romance" HBO movie to lighten the atmosphere but it did no good.. the bumping stride was nearing the stairs.... Funny, how in moments where you should be running out the door, you realize you have to pee... and even more stupidly, go alone to use the bathroom... Well, that's what I did... with all bravery, crept to the toilet which was at the base of the stairs that led up.... but figuring whatever it was, was going slow enough that I could make a run for it. Momentarily, it stopped.. and I figured it was just our imaginations feeding off each other... I calmly headed back until I heard a high pitched shriek... and a painful cry out from upstairs... My legs stopped working properly, and I stumbled along to get to the living room and jumped on the chair with my shaking friend.. After that, silence.. it felt like hours before any sign of life escaped... we stopped scaring each other and talked about other lightened topics.... eventually getting comfortable and even laughing... After a few minutes, we almost forgot about the strange noises until suddenly, both our mouths dropped to let out silent screams and our eyes widened to deathly o's.

In the dark corner, between the bathroom and the living room (where we sat) the attic door swung open. Our eyes struggled to adjust to see what would appear behind it... and a tiny silhouette appeared.. we finally managed to scream.... and then a whimper let out... which became a loud cry.. It was my friend's stepchild, who had fallen asleep upstairs, and had come down to be greeted by us and our rude awakenings.

Haha.. well, maybe that's a lesson to us with our imaginations, but it still doesn't explain the dream we had years ago, during a time we hardly knew each other... and the birdman that promised to meet again.