Silent Screams

When I was five, I was never the nightmare-prone type. Too isolated. No contacts with the external world, except windows to the forest behind our house, no movies or books to instil a fear of something. Since I was also homeschooled, no contacts with people, except my mother, and my only sister.
Nothing could give me nightmares, for I was exposed no nothing except children books about morality, and primary school education books.
The worse is, I got nightmares anyway.

The first I can remember, it was about 11 p.m. o'clock. I was playing with some toys, when my window flew open, panels opening toward the inside of the house, not the outside, which it should have done. I remember that I felt nothing at first upon seeing this; I was numb. A wind crept through the window, cold to the feel but not to the touch. Several seconds later, it wasn't only the wind that flew in a rush of air. It was an entity, bodiless, yet very present. It wasn't a ghost, for it seemed to be made of wind; the entity howled, silently, and it only looked as if the wind formed a hole where the entity's mouth should have been.
I was frozen there, unable to scream (I could never scream in my nightmares), while the wind entity flew right at me.

There is only one thing that bothers me, though: I specialized in dreams, so I know how it feels to sleep, even when I sleep. I don't recall that feeling. I don't recall being asleep. The next thing I know, I am in the kitchen, taking a glass of water, waiting for the entity to leave my room, which it eventually did.

The second nightmare, it was slightly different; this time, I recall that I was dreaming during the following events.
A soft yellow/orange glow filled my room, coming from everywhere yet nowhere, for there weren't any lights.
My room had its usual four walls, only this time, it had no door to the main corridor of the house, and a fifth wall at the centre of the room. The room was completely bare, and noticing my window, I walked to it slowly, expecting it to fly open to the inside. Which it did, and this time, I didn't froze in horror. The entity flew past me, and I felt a presence behind my back. I turned, and felt more than saw the presence of the entity. It was both in front, and behind the fifth central wall of the room, and under the yellow light, its shadow was also both in front and behind the wall. It seemed cautious, and it told me, in a grave voice, to not be afraid.
"I am not afraid," I told it, and the shadow moved the lenght of the wall, about to reveal itself when the wall would stop.
The shadow finally reached a point where it wasn't hid by the fifth wall; but it stayed, only this time, the shadow stood upright, as if something was casting a shadow, but against the air. It then talked to me prudently, but fear took over my curiosity, and I woke.

Afterwards, I never had any nightmares, until when I was about eight. During the night, while I was sleeping, I heard someone calling me. I woke up, and I swear that I stayed awake afterwards. So much sure, that I stayed awake till 3 in the morning. So, a voice calls me, and I wake up, to look if it is my mother. But no one is in my room. I shrug, and I turn back to lay my head face-first in my pillow. I screamed silently instead (I did not want to wake my family).
A face was half-smiling, half-snarling at me, covering in 3D my pillow. A face dark grey and flaky, as if it had been roasted in flames.
It smiled/snarled at me invitingly, asking me to go back to sleep, and acoompagn him to what he called "the lower worlds."
I don't like following burned stand-alone faces into anywhere, so I disgustingly flipped the pillow and jumped out of bed, sat by my desk and waited for the morning to come. At 3, tired, I climbed with precaution in my bed, and flipped hhardly my pillow, expecting the snarling face. But it was gone, and I slept uneasily after.

The next morning, I found in books that there was a new radical theory, that proposed that our universe was but one in a million, possibly billion. The theory also propossed that the universes were stacked one below the others. No need to say that I was freaked by that news, for the snarling face asked me to join him in "a lower world". Another esoterical theory that I discovered, and which both scared me when it was nightmares, or enchanted me when it was good dreams, was that dreaming could be in fact voyages to those outer-worlds.

Almost no nightmares ever bothered me again, until one and only one dream when I was twelve, and which I never forgot. It wasn't a nightmare, but it was very troubling.

I spoke with a man, in that dream, who seemed like a leader of a powerful spiritual group. He was fun, and I had a good time, and finally, I decided to wake up, and he wished me goodbye.
In the void that follows, a completely dark and silent instant that is the transition between dreaming and waking up, there is no thoughts at all that pass there; it's like a complete void. I was in that void, when I heard the spiritual's leader voice break in the silence, which startled me. He had an apologetic tone, and he told me, full of compassion:

"I am sorry. I truly am. But it is necessary. Absolutely necessary. Soon, very soon, your sister will die."