My Son Woke Screaming About the Lady, and Then So Did I

My son Theo started the night terrors around his fourth birthday. I want to say that plainly because I need you to understand I spent months believing this was a childhood thing, a phase, wiring in a small brain sorting itself out. The pediatrician used those exact words. A phase.

He would sit bolt upright, eyes open but not seeing me, and scream in a way that did not sound like crying. It sounded like fear that had no bottom. His whole body would shake. And every time, when he could finally form words, he said the same thing. The lady is standing in the corner. The lady is looking at me. Tell her to stop looking.

We did all the things. Night light. Calming routine. No screens after dinner. I read that during a night terror a child is not really awake, that they will not remember it in the morning, and that was true, he never did. He would eat his cereal the next day cheerful and blank. Only I remembered. Only I lay awake after, listening to the house tick and settle, staring at the corner of his room he always pointed to, the empty corner by the window, and seeing nothing.

Until I did.

It was a Tuesday, I remember because I had a dentist appointment I was dreading. I had fallen asleep on the pullout in Theo's room, which I did sometimes after a bad night so I could reach him fast. I woke in the small hours and knew instantly something was wrong because I could not move. My body was a sandbag. My arms would not lift. My mouth would not open. I have since read all about this, the sleep paralysis, the brain awake and the body still locked in its sleep switch, and I understand the mechanism now, I do. But understanding a thing is not the same as surviving it.

I was on my back and I could see the ceiling and the top of the window frame. And in the corner, the corner Theo always pointed to, there was a woman.

She was tall and she was still. Her head was tilted, just slightly, the way you tilt your head when you are curious about something small and helpless. I could not see her face clearly, the room was too dark, but I could see that she was facing us, facing the bed where my son slept two feet from me, and I could not move to put myself between them. That was the thought that filled my whole mind. I cannot get in front of him. I cannot reach my child.