Cat Walk, installment 2

Cat Walk,

installment 2
By Samuel Winterwood

“Well no! I haven’t been out of bed all night, you must’ve left it off and forgotten about it m’baby, you know something like sleepwalking maybe.”
“No!” Sam said, “I know I didn’t,” he sounded more and more aggravated as his mind started to clear from the fogginess of sleep. “It was on when I fell asleep, I know it was and I didn’t turn it off Sarah!”
“So what Sam, what’s the big deal about the television being off?”
“Because the fan never went off.”
“Sam, I’m getting ready to call the white jackets to come and get you!“
“You don’t understand sweetie.”
“That may qualify as the understa … “
“Look” Sam interrupted his wife mid-sentence. “I know I left the TV on, because the light from it brought me into a twilight sort of sleep before it went off. Then I felt something strange, I don’t know what, I started to feel fear for no reason. It was like the instinctive fight or flight thing. Ya’know?” Sarah sat studying him she didn’t remember ever seeing him in a state like this before, he was genuinely scared. “I knew something was wrong and that I had to protect my family. Then it seemed like the electricity went off but in the back of my mind I knew it was strange because the fan was still on. You know that sensation when the sounds and things that you fall asleep to just stop, sometimes you wake up a little. Right?”
“Yeah, go on.”
“Well I woke in a haze and looked over to see the time and hanging over you was this thing that looked like a oversized, spindly, cat-griffin sort of thing. I’ve never seen anything like it before, not in horror movies, not in my nightmares. When it saw me wake it started to change shape or something and move away from you. I leaned over you and took a swing at it but there was nothing there.” Sam sat there in a mild sweat still clearly upset. Sarah reached over and wrapped loving arms around him and started to rock back and forth while patting his muscular shoulders a little and trying to settle him down just like you would do a child who woke from a bad dream. Sam didn’t resist, he just tried to relax and let her sooth him.”
“it sounds to me like you had a bad dream honey” Sarah cooed into Sam’s ear. “Come on, lay back down we have an early day tomorrow.”
“It sure as hell didn’t seem like a dream, I even it heard slither away with its catlike wheezing, laughing hiss, It was really creepy.”
“Come on” she said again “let’s lay back down and try to sleep.” She dabbed beads of perspiration form his forehead with a tissue that she pulled out of a box on the nightstand. “Do you want some water, some Tylenol or a shot of whiskey or something?”
“No” he said, “if I do I’ll get it, you go back to sleep.” So she straightened out their light summer covers a little and laid back down.
“Do you want the light on?” she asked him.
“Nah, go ahead and turn it out”
“Okay honey you get some sleep now” she said as she reached up to off the lamp.
“Yeah, yeah, okay honey maybe your right; maybe it was just a bad dream.” Sam sat there in the quiet darkness watching the curtains gently swaying in the breeze, because the fan was still on.