Acting out a nightmare: Night Terrors

When I was twelve-years-old, we lived in a yellow two-story house in Fontana, California. It was a peaceful place. It was our refuge from the world. There were three bedrooms upstairs where the kids slept. My parents slept in the master bedroom on the main floor. I was the oldest and had my own room, my sister was the youngest and had her own room, and my two brothers shared a room. The four of us shared a bathroom.

One night at about one in the morning I woke up to my five-year-old sister screaming for me. I ran into her room and flipped on the light. She was sitting up in her pink bed. She looked at me, screamed my name, jumped out of the bed and backed into the purple corner as if I was a wild animal approaching her.

"Blake, HELP!" she screamed.

"I'm right here Kristine." I said as I knelt next to her and reached out my hand to cup her shoulder.

She slapped my hand away and screamed again, "Blake, HELP! HELP ME PLEASE! IT'S TRYING TO GET ME!"

I stepped back when I heard my mom sprinting up the stairs. She ran into the room. "What's going on?" she shouted. My brothers joined her in the doorway. They rubbed the sleep from their eyes.

"It's like a nightmare. She is wide awake, looking straight at me, but she doesn't see me. She thinks I'm something else." I said.

My mom knelt down and said her name.

"Blake, Help me! It's trying to get me!" she screamed out again.

"What's trying to get you sweetheart?" my mom whispered.

"She doesn't see you either. What the heck is going on?" I reached passed her flailing arms and picked her up and shook her to try to wake her. She continued her uncontrolled sobbing. I placed her back in the corner. My mom kept talking and trying to soothe her.

I walked passed my brothers to get to the bathroom. "Do you think she went crazy?" one of them said to the other. They weren't smiling.

I came back with a glass of water. I poured some on her head, trying to wake her from her nightmare. It didn't work. I tried yelling back at her. It didn't work. Ten to fifteen minutes passed from when I woke up. My dad was still asleep. He could sleep through anything.

Finally, as a last resort, with just enough force to get her attention, I slapped her across the face. That got me slapped upside the head by my mom.

"I'm just trying to help, nothing else was working."

"Don't hit your sister." She smacked me upside the head again.

After the slap Kristine calmed down. She put her thumb in her mouth and fell back asleep. We tucked her back in bed, curled up in the fetal position.

The next morning she had no recollection of the nightmare, or acting it out. She couldn't remember me slapping her either.

She had a condition call Night terrors. We called them terror-mares. She had one every couple of months for a while. We prayed they would stop, and were blessed, because they did.

Later in life, her nightmares were external. She wondered if her brothers put reptiles under her sheets, or if we were hiding under the bed. A gentle shake of the bed frame is a convincing earthquake. She always screamed when I grabbed her ankle as she ran to take cover from the shifting plate tectonics.

She still checks under the bed when she comes to visit at my house with her family. I haven't told her I don't fit under there any more. What are big brothers for?