Screams in the Night

Every now and again, I have had dreams that were so scary, I woke-up screaming. I woke up the whole house a few times as well. Most of the time I sound something like a mummy crossed with a very sad opera singer. Once in a blue moon, I can actually annunciate my creepy sounds into solid words.

I spent some time recently camping with my daughter in the Porcupine Mountains.  Just the two of us sharing a tent and making baskets for a few days. We did some swimming in Lake Superior, went to Lake of the Clouds, and ate our meals around a campfire.

Our first night in the tent had been tense. One-thirty in the morning something moving outside woke me up. Whatever had been moving around was big and loud. I waited a bit and I heard it move half way around our camp before I poked Molly.  

“Do you hear that?”  I asked.

“Yeah, I hear it too.”

We sat in silence as this thing made its way around even more of camp. By now a dog starts to bark and we saw the lights in neighboring tents popping on.

Like all scared people have to do at a time of crisis, we needed to use the bathroom. We ran to the bathroom quickly, and on our return, we went to the car instead of the tent. We watched as the couple in the camping site next to us came out of their tent with bags of food.  

We viewed the Perseids Meteor shower for the next two hours from the safety of my car.  The two of us sat there in the middle of the night, under the active sky, catching up and talking about life. It had been the best part of my trip.

Understandably, I missed her when she left shortly after noon on Saturday. Her schedule had changed at the last minute. The rest of the day in class wasn’t the same with her gone. However, I made the best of it at the same time making an awesome willow basket.  

After class, I went to the beach and took a brief swim in Lake Superior.  After swimming, I ate a quiet dinner and puttered around camp. With a nice campfire going, I settled in for a few hours watching the flames and listening to the campers around me.

When the time came to spread the coals out and climb into the tent, it didn’t take me long to fall asleep. Around two-thirty I had a horrible nightmare which caused me to scream in my sleep. The odds were in my favor because it had been one of those blue moon nights. I woke to my screaming out for help.

“Help.”

“Help me. HELP ME.” I knew instantly I had been caught in a dream and needed to, “Wake-up!”

I didn’t breathe, not even an exhale as I laid there in my sleeping bag. My ears were pricked listening at every sound. Anticipating the all-familiar sound of someone unzipping their tent, I knew I had been busted and needed to come up with a plan.

My first thought had been to do nothing. Just wait and see if anyone came over to check on me. I thought about fake snoring but remembered I wasn’t any good at it.

My next plan had been to just say I had a snake in my tent, but was able to get it out. Most people would have totally felt empathy for me. I liked this plan a lot.

So, I waited with my plan. A few minutes slowly go by and the only sound I can hear is someone rustling in their tent. I think it’s the young family of four camping on the other side of me. Another minute passed and I heard, outside my tent, the crinkle of mice feet on the dry leaves.

After a minute more, a bird hidden in the woods lets out a sound resembling a screaming woman.

“Oh, thank you Mother Earth and all your critters of the big woods.” I said with relief.

I now had a foolproof way out of this. If someone from the camp were to say something I would reply, “No, that wasn’t me. But I did hear it too. Sounded like a bird or something?”