You may like to feel that when you are in sleep you are safe, safe even in that somnolence state and that when waking into a new day you have passed over the darkness and awoken into light. Not so, reader, there are many secret ways that during the night's darkness something waits, unseen yet close and its very presence in the atmosphere begins a subtle disturbance that will find its way to you.

Let me recall to all of you something of a warning from a piece of writing given to me. No matter how exhausted from the day and longing to fall into sleep, and acknowledging the moment your head touches that pillow you will fall into deep rest not waking until the light of morning; it will never happen that way. Going to sleep is like when a child frets over what comes in the dark during the hours of night.

When it happened I woke early in the 3rd hour of morning. I am alert. I am expecting it to happen. The certainty that it will take place creates tension, brings fear, brings an alertness to listen, to try and be in preparation. When the frantic knocking on the front door will not go away I have borne witness to that very first time I ventured to answer its call. I was met by a whisper of a breeze passing by me into the house, nobody stood at my front door at that moment of the last knock and me quickly opening the door.

I no longer wake now. It, whatever it is, does not come a calling. But for you my reader, I have planted a seed in your subconscious by telling you my tale. Maybe you can bear witness to the stranger who comes a knocking on your door. Never answer that first call!

transcribed from the spirit of Samuel Deakin