The lights are too bright.

They hurt my eyes and I bury my face in the pillow to block them out.

Funny that. All my life I’ve been afraid of the dark.

I used to have a night-light as a child. It was in the shape of Winnie the Pooh. The light diffused through the yellow and red of the plastic throwing a warm glow round my bedroom at night. I had the light until I was about ten years old, when the plastic began to melt and Dad deemed it was dangerous.

“You’re too old for a night-light anyway,” he said.

He got me a chrome angle-poise lamp that I could use to do my homework. I loved it but I left it on all night.

Dad would see the light shining under my bedroom door and come in on his way to bed and turn it off.

“It’s dangerous. You don’t need a light on all night.  You’re asleep.”

What he didn’t realise was that I woke in the night in a damp sweat, totally confused by the dark that pressed down on me. I felt myself suffocating and gasped for breath like a netted fish while I fumbled for the light switch. In the dark anything could happen. An image flickered at the back of my subconscious, black and white and indistinct, like an old fashioned 8 millimetre movie, of aliens with big eyes, sunken cheeks and spindly arms and legs.

Dad laughed when I tried to tell him.

“You don’t believe in aliens?” he grinned. I shrugged. I don’t know if I did or didn’t but I couldn’t stop the images creeping into my head in the dark. I lay, listening to the noises of the house, trying to distinguish anything out of the ordinary, my heart beat frantically and the house creaked and settled itself down for the night. I was ready to run in an instant. I flushed hot and cold and a wave of nausea rolled over me as I felt certain something was coming for me.

We tussled over the light for the next few years. Mum did her best and left the hall light on for me whenever she could, but Dad was adamant I shouldn’t be “a wimp”. He took the lamp away and turned the lights firmly off when he went to bed.

At some stage I learned I could leave the computer on at night and the screen would send out a comforting glow. But then Dad found out what I was doing and he moved the machine to another room. I dreaded evenings and made excuses to avoid going to bed.

“I’ve just got to finish this essay.”

“Shouldn’t you have finished it earlier. Why does your homework take you so long?” Dad asked. I often stayed at the computer after they had gone to bed and fell asleep on the floor in the study.

I couldn’t sleep in my room. Darkness stole around me. It wrapped me up and squeezed me, draining life out of me. I spent nights on edge, continually anxious and ready to flee.  Fear and exhaustion drove me downstairs to the sofa, switching on a lamp which Dad couldn’t see from upstairs. In the morning I tried to get back to my room before anyone noticed.  I managed most days, but I was constantly tired from the broken sleep and worry.

I carried a huge weight of anxiety around with me. My eyes were dark rimmed and I nodded off in class. I was too tired to eat and pushed the food around my plate.

“For goodness sake Megan! Your mother has spent ages cooking that meal. At least have the decency to eat it,” Dad snapped at me.

I was forced to sit and pick my meal. Each mouthful tasted more and more disgusting. I found swallowing difficult. I knew I shouldn’t be eating it so when I’d finished I rushed to the bathroom and was sick. My body shuddered and shook, and acid burned my mouth, but it gave me a feeling of triumph. For the first time in a while I was in control.

Nights continued to be a problem. I kept a torch under my pillow, and played with the light on the ceiling until the batteries dimmed. They were expensive and I didn’t have much money.  I couldn’t sleepover at friends’ houses because of needing the light on, and I found myself being excluded more and more from things that were happening with friends out of school.

I had no control over night time but I did have control over my eating. It became my focus. I skipped school lunches, saving my money for batteries. I lost weight. When I looked in the mirror a pale face with sunken eyes stared back at me. I messed with my food which annoyed Dad. I was too tired to concentrate at school and my grades dropped which annoyed him more. I was in a daze during the day but a state of watchfulness at night.

But I still liked school. In my world which had turned upside down it offered a routine. My homeroom teacher tried to get me to see a counsellor.

“Don’t worry, she’ll grow out of it,” Dad said. “She doesn’t need a shrink.” I think he thought I was being defiant. Perhaps I was, but I needed to control something, since I could not dominate the dark.

As my clothes got looser, I had to keep my school skirt up with a safety pin. I managed to avoid two meals a day and pick at food in the evening. I was in command.

The first time I collapsed Mum took me to the doctor. I told her I was fine but she insisted. The doctor said I was too thin and prescribed some vitamins and sleeping tablets. He wanted me to keep a food diary and chart everything I ate. I made it up.

The first night I took a sleeping tablet but I woke unsure of where I was, shaking with chills and sweats and adrenalin rushing through my body. I knew something was creeping closer to me, but my legs were so heavy I couldn’t move. I struggled to the light switch, each step feeling as if I was freeing myself from mud. Exhausted I collapsed on the floor, drained. I decided not to take any more of the tablets and hid them in my cheek to spit out later when Mum insisted.

It became harder to get to school. Some days I was too tired and too weak to move.

“Megan, what are you doing to yourself?” Mum begged. I couldn’t explain to her that I was afraid of the dark. It seemed so silly, and it just made Dad cross. I found myself drifting off to sleep at odd times. I could sit on the school bus or in the back of a maths lesson and sleep. The kids laughed at me, but it had ceased to matter. I couldn’t care less. I was confused and my world had fuzzy edges.

The person who stared back at me from the mirror had huge eyes, pallid skin, lank hair and prominent cheekbones. Her arms and legs were insect thin. Moving became an effort.

The day I couldn’t get up they moved me here. I don’t know how long ago it was. The days have blurred together. There is a drip in my arm which aches where the needle is inserted and a machine that bleeps continuously.

 But they leave the lights on all night.

I am not afraid here. I feel as if I am catching up on years of sleep. I drift in and out of consciousness. From time to time I see Mum and Dad and a doctor or nurse but it is too much effort to talk to them. Sleep is more restful.

“…kidney failure … organs …” I hear words but they are a long way away.

When I wake next time I can feel people plucking at me, fingertips gliding over me as if reading me like Braille. I want to twitch away but my body doesn’t respond. The lights are too bright now. When I open my eyes there is a burning white orb coming closer and closer. More then anything I want to run. My legs are pulsing but my body is heavy, and I’ve no strength to turn away. The light is so bright is forces its way through my papery thin eyelids.

I can see faces, hovering, bouncing above me just on the edge of the light. They’ve come for me. Skeletal, pale, with large foreheads and high cheekbones and deep set eyes. There is nothing I can do about it.

Who would have thought they would have come in the light?