I don’t get much sleep these days. I never really have. Not since I was a teenager. Warm milk, scattered sheep, boring movies flashing on the TV screen at night. And drugs. Fistfuls of drugs, prescribed or borrowed, legal or not so legal.

            Nothing really helped.

            Not that it will let me sleep now, anyway. Not anymore. Whatever few hours I might have managed are pretty much shot now. Around the same time every night. Two o’clock, sometimes half an hour later, never as late as three.

            At first it was kind of interesting. I wouldn’t say fun, but at least entertaining. A slight breeze across my face. A light flickering in the hall. A thump off someplace I’d dutifully get out of bed to track down with my Louisville Slugger hiked up over my shoulder, pretending to expect some burglar I knew wasn’t there.

And if those don’t freak me out, it’ll run some water in the downstairs bathroom sink. Or flush the toilet, which, honestly, scares the crap out of me every time. Or when it’s really pissed, pounding on the front door, cranking on the stereo, and I mean cranking. That’ll get my ass out of bed. And the neighbors, too.

            Or when Sally started spending the night. At first it seemed OK with it. But that didn’t last long. Slamming doors, footsteps stomping across the ceiling, howling coming from the basement. My ghost the cliché started rattling chains at 2:30. Chains! Really? Some imagination? There aren’t even tire chains in the garage.

            One night, a wet spot on the bed we didn’t create and that was a hell of a lot more than just a wet spot. Flowing, gushing, someone’s draining the bathtub, water pouring off the bed, literally pouring.

            Sally texted me the next week saying she’d gotten too busy at work to have a relationship with anyone.

            Well, screw it. That was the last straw. I don’t care what nonsense it might create, I’m not going to respond to it. Like Alex, my dog when I was a boy, panting and whining for my attention at the edge of the bed, until he figured out I wasn’t going to give in and went off to bother my little sister, instead.

            But then the screaming started. And the joists and wall studs sounding like they were being pulled apart, walls shaking, the ceiling undulating in the darkness.

How real was this going to get? I wasn’t sleeping at all by then.

            A heating duct in the basement ceiling scratched and dented and looking like it had been clawed, a kitchen cabinet door dangling loosely on one hinge, the armchair overturned. And I stayed in bed, determined. Bring it on. Do your best.

            Then the screeching metal. Twisting, bending, aching.

            In the morning, the porch railing snapped and hanging midair, blocking my path as I headed out the door.

            And I knew then it would follow me outside now, too.