I had dozed off. Writing grant applications and searching and researching all night long had finished me off. After thirty-seven hours of homework and papers and letters explaining why I need more money, I crashed. My cold coffee in my lucky mug hit the hardwood floor and the handle broke and didn't wake me up.

My hands were still on the keyboard, holding Jay on caps lock. I woke up with one of my housemates staring at me. I was on the floor and she was sitting at my laptop. She had checked on me and seen the screen of my laptop.

"I read what you wrote. That's jacked up." Cherry told me. I looked up at her groggily from the floor.

"What?" I had no idea what she meant. She got up and left me there. I sat at the bar and looked at my laptop. I had not written what I read. I had no idea who had or why. It was some kind of story about a child being abducted, tortured and murdered from first-person narration and in sadistic detail. Frightened and disturbed, I deleted the whole thing, noticing the description of the killer and his home and ignoring it.

A week later I was studying late and the same thing happened again. I was waiting for a webinar with some classmates and my camera was going. I fell asleep, half asleep at the keyboard. When the meeting started I woke and said "Hello".

Then I noticed there was another disturbing account. A cold chill ran down my spine and I began to sweat. My camera was already recording for the meeting and showed me sitting there typing in my sleep. I jumped from my seat, tipping it back. My fingers had flown, typing an astounding one hundred and eighty words per minute. I normally just peck at the keyboard doing about twenty, top speed.

I dismissed myself from the meeting. I could see the perspiration on my forehead and the dilation of my eyes to tell me I was panicking. I was also standing there breathing heavily. I had written a terrifying account of a murder victim in horrifying detail. I had no memory of it. I couldn't comprehend those two facts. I was gripped in fear, glancing around, feeling as though something were with me, watching me. The fear slowly bubbled down when I anticipated no tangible threat. It became the quality of a dull horror, like a pain becoming a familiar ache.

Days went by and I could think of nothing. I could no longer sleep; exhaustion would not rock my nerves. Every shadow held a pair of unseen eyes. I could feel it. I was a rod, a conduit; they knew and I knew they knew. When I slept I met them:

I cannot describe my dreams here because forbidden are the worlds within my mind. They are only thoughts and therefor I cannot state them as facts. My reaction to the specters who spoke to me in my sleep, and as shades of night when my eyes opened, was primal. Screams and hysteric violence, as I woke up from my nightmares, were my first reactions.

I had to sock my hands to keep from scratching my face or pulling out my hair. I had to close the door on my cat because the damage to my room indicated nocturnal thrashings and violence that would have endangered her. My dark skin grew pale and flaky and my eyes became puffy and red. My grades went from a ninety-nine percent average to just eighty-six. The guy I was seeing got scared away and even though we weren't official yet, I felt dumped. So while my actual dreams might not be tangible, the nightmares became my life.

I woke up one Saturday afternoon. I was dehydrated and starved and hadn't shaved. The decision to resist what was happening to me by taking care of myself was a gradual thought as I lay there. I rose to go get water and breakfast and to take a shower.

Terror seized me when I came out of a faint. I was sitting naked at the kitchen-bar with my laptop, and I had done it again. The new story was beyond the others. The details were so intensely horrible that I fell off the stool and began to dry heave. Cherry found me there and frowned severely. Her and the others had already complained about my recent problems to the landlord. I was causing a disturbance. She took a picture of me there, with her phone.

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I started to cry, trembling. I hadn't written it, hadn't written any of those terrible stories. I had no idea how I had, but it wasn't me. Those were my severe troubles before I dropped out. It wasn't long before I couldn't pay my rent on-time and then not-at-all.

At least the six months of being homeless and tramping kept me from my laptop. I resolved that all that had happened was just stress, just caused by being too stressed out at school. I managed to get a job working at a drive through burger place. I slept near there until I'd saved enough to rent another room. By the end of last year I had gotten back into school. There was still a lot of anxiety about getting back on my laptop.

I had never deleted the last story. As I read it I began to realize that since that time I had heard of the same murder in the news. It was a true story, I had somehow written every detail and then some, even getting the name of the victim right. It wasn't yet in the news at the time I had written it, so there was no way I could have known, unconsciously.

My time outdoors and my previous experiences, the darkness, the loneliness and all I had done to rebuild my life encouraged me. I was still quite afraid, but I was more afraid that I almost knew the truth, and yet I could still believe myself to be crazy.

I drank some sleeping medicine from the corner drugstore. Then I sat at my laptop and waited. Drowsiness overtook me, the drug taking effect. When I was almost asleep it took hold of me. I almost knew it was happening, almost felt it. Then I was gone, asleep at the keyboard.

When I woke up I knew the truth. I had another victim's testimony, a first-hand account of a murder in terrifying and graphic detail. Somehow I had channeled her and written her story. I felt nervous about what I had to do with it, but the fear of what I had become was slowly leaving me.

I got on my phone and called the police department, asking to be put in touch with the homicide department.

"This is Detective Winters, Homicide. Who are you?" The man on the phone asked me.

I identified myself and then explained that I had information about a local murder. I told him who she was and where her body was. Then, as he sat in silence I felt a gnawing fear of the police. Would I somehow get blamed because I knew so much?

"How do you know all this?" He asked.

"I type what the dead say when I sleep." I said, hoping and praying he would believe me. When he said nothing I asked: "You don't believe me, do you?"

"Actually, I do believe you." The homicide detective assured me. "I have seen more unbelievable things. Besides, the details you described are all accurate. We are already on a case like that. I'm also watching the suspect you described. I know it was him. With your help I am going out to my car right now to collect the weapon from where you said it is. Then I am going to go arrest him."

"That's it?" I asked.

"Yes." Detective Winters promised. "Next time you have something to get off your chest you can call me directly."

"I don't understand." I confessed. "What is going on?"

"You know better than I. I am just another messenger. That's what you are now too. So that's that."

I didn't get anything more from the police. They had confirmed that my stories were true. I wrote another and called them and they took me seriously. Another and another left me prematurely gray and developing wrinkles decades before I should. I feared their visions: the pain and the grotesque moments becoming my own memories. I cannot understand what I am now: an automatic typist for ghosts. Some kind of literal ghost writer. The police pay me for my help solving murders and I get to remain anonymous to the public.

A cold, lonely and misunderstood life; ghost writing for the dead.

Alone, I got in touch with Cherry and asked her if she had cared for my cat like she had promised. When I had Madame Whiz back in my life I felt better. When I slept I slept soundly, having a way out from my nightly terrors, now that I would write and share their stories. I think my cat knows what I have gone through, somehow; she senses it and forgives me for being gone for so long. The darkness was not so cold with her curled up, keeping the ghosts away.

For that is all they are and they only wish for rest. At least that much I understand.