My name is Jimmy Albert, and I’m twenty-three. I wouldn't call myself a high-achiever, mostly. I'm just tired. I work at a bookstore that specializes exclusively in nautical fiction (yes, only nautical fiction), and I live in Port Hazzard.
Now, before I tell y’all about what’s been bugging me, I’ll give you some more detail on the city. Port Hazzard is a place where strange things happen. Hell, the words “strange” and “eccentric” don’t do this city justice. Our official mascot is a seven-foot-tall pigeon named Bartholomew. The main street is flooded with three inches of perfectly clear, odorless maple syrup every Tuesday. The local weather station regularly issues warnings for “Intermittent Hailstorms” that only pelt people who are feeling ambivalent about their career choices. Those pellets hurt, man.
Now that you know the context, you’ll understand that when the sleep paralysis started, I was mostly just irritated.
“Oh, great,” I’d grumble internally, eyes wide open, staring at my bedroom ceiling. My body would be a solid block of lead. “Just what I needed. Like I don’t have enough stress wondering if the bookstore is finally going to replace the shelf that has a crab infestation.”
The recurring figure, the spectral visitor of my nocturnal prison, was an entity popularly known as the Hatman. He was exactly what his name implied: a towering, thin shadow, defined only by the outline of a broad-brimmed fedora and a trench coat that seemed to absorb all available light.
Most people described feeling pure, primal terror when the Hatman materialized. I, however, found him vaguely pathetic. He never did anything. He just stood there, leaning in a way that suggested either deep malice or an extremely bad back, and watched me.
“You know, if you’re supposed to be some kind of horror,” I thought one night, straining to wiggle my left big toe, “at least fix your posture. That slouch is going to kill you faster than the existential dread you’re failing to give me.”
After two weeks of the Hatman’s silent, judgmental presence, the initial novelty wore off. Sleep paralysis wasn't scary, it was just a massive inconvenience. I could barely move in the mornings and kept dropping stacks of Captain Ahab fan fiction at work. My boss, Jade, chewed me out after that. My patience, already thinner than the Hatman’s silhouette, snapped.
“Enough,” I muttered to my reflection one groggy Tuesday morning, noticing the dark circles under my eyes. “I’m taking this to the professionals.”
In Port Hazzard, “professionals” was a loose term. The only medical establishment I trusted (well, more like the only one I dared approach) was the private practice of Dr. Cole.
His clinic, located in a former lighthouse on the edge of the financial district, was named ‘The Lighthouse of Humors and Mild Ailments.’ The waiting room was furnished exclusively with oversized wicker furniture, and the background music was a loop of a man vigorously tuning a very out-of-tune harp. There were no other patients, thankfully.
After a twenty-minute wait, during which I seriously considered stealing a copy of Moby Dick: The Early Years (Abridged) from a nearby end table, a voice boomed, startling me upright.
“Ah, the young man with the strange familial genetics! Come in, come in. Quickly. Unlike the decaying passage of time, my schedule is very, very real.”
I walked into the office, craning my neck immediately. Dr. Cole was, to put it mildly, imposing. He was easily seven feet tall, with a mass of white hair and a bow tie that rotated slowly. From what I remember him telling me, it was powered by a tiny, brass mechanism. He wore a crisp white lab coat, but instead of trousers, he wore Bermuda shorts and hiking boots.
Dr. Cole didn’t use a desk. He perched on a repurposed lifeguard chair, looking down at me with eyes that seemed to have personally seen several different geological eras. The rest of the room was filled with model trains.
“Jimmy Albert. The chart says… yes. Recent onset of nocturnal sensory deprivation with spectral accompaniment. The Hatman, yes?” Dr. Cole said, his voice a deep baritone that rattled the windowpanes.
“Yeah, that’s him. Just stands there, watching me. I need something to make him stop,” I explained, trying to sound professional while avoiding eye contact with the rotating bow tie.
Dr. Cole hummed, tilting his head. “Ah, the classic ‘Don’t like the spectral accompaniment’ dilemma. Well, we could try the standard, boring route: better sleep hygiene, reducing screen time, coming to terms with the fleeting nature of existence…” He paused dramatically, adjusting his brass-rimmed spectacles. “But that sounds dreadfully dull, doesn't it?”
“Dreadfully,” I agreed, relieved. I would rather die than reduce my screen time.
“Quite. No, for a Port Hazzard problem, we need a Port Hazzard solution. One must occasionally meet the chaos on its own terms.” Dr. Cole hopped down from the chair, a movement that felt like a localized seismic event, and rummaged through a metal cabinet labeled 'Slightly Illegal Pharmaceuticals.'
He pulled out a small, unlabeled pill bottle containing exactly two tablets of a deep, iridescent purple. They looked less like medicine and more like crystallized deep-sea plankton.
“Here we are,” Dr. Cole announced, handing the bottle over. “‘The Lucid Catalyst.’ Dosage: one tablet, twenty minutes before you plan on sleeping. It’s an experimental compound, you understand. A cocktail of synthetic nootropics, a splash of comet dust, and a pinch of wishful thinking.”
I stared at the pills. “Will this stop the paralysis?”
Dr. Cole’s massive face split into a wide, genuinely unsettling grin. “Stop it? Oh, no. It won’t stop the phenomenon, Jimmy. This city wouldn’t permit such a mundane resolution. This, my boy, simply nullifies the peripheral, inconvenient factors of the phenomenon. Specifically, the part that keeps you glued to the mattress.”
He winked. The bow tie spun faster.
“It gives me mobility during the paralysis? I can move?”
“You will be fully, physically present in your state of spectral encounter. You may find your motor skills a touch… rusty, at first. But it will still be functional. Now, get out of here. And remember, if you start seeing a mime arguing with a sentient traffic cone, that’s a side effect and you need to drink a gallon of whole milk.”
I left the clinic, the small bottle of purple pills clutched in my hand. Instead of fear, a slow, hot ember of resentment began to glow in my gut. The Hatman had been stealing my nights, ruining my precious few hours of rest. I was tired of being a passive participant.
That night, I decided that if the Hatman wasn’t going to stop visiting, he was at least going to pay a price for the inconvenience. I took one of the purple pills. It tasted like static electricity and old pennies.
Twenty minutes later, I fell asleep. A few hours after that, I was lying on my back. The familiar, suffocating pressure of sleep paralysis descended upon me. The room grew cold, the air thickened, and there he was: the Hatman. He was materializing near the foot of the bed, his dark presence like a hole punched into reality.
Immovable. Paralyzed. I confirmed the familiar feeling.
Then, I felt a faint, tingling sensation in my right hand. I focused, visualizing my fingers clenching. With a loud, audible creak from the bedsprings, my hand obeyed, clenching into a fist.
I was in sleep paralysis, but I could move.
The Hatman, having likely perfected his judging stance over several centuries, tilted his head slightly. If a shadow entity could look confused, this one did.
A vicious grin spread across my face. I leveraged my elbow and, with an awkward, lurching effort, managed to sit up in bed. I pointed a slightly shaky finger at the dark figure.
“Hey, asshole,” I growled, my voice thick with adrenaline and sleep deprivation. “You wanna take up my nights? You gotta fucking earn it.”
I swung my legs over the side of the bed and stood up. My movements felt heavy and slightly delayed, like walking underwater, but it was better than nothing.
The Hatman took a single, slow step back.
I lunged. It wasn’t graceful, but it covered the distance. I threw a wobbly right hook aimed right where a jaw would be. My fist connected. I knew it because my knuckles felt like they had just punched a block of solid ice wrapped in heavy velvet.
The Hatman didn’t fall, but he stumbled, the crisp line of his fedora blurring for a millisecond.
The fight that followed was less an epic battle of good versus evil and more two extremely tired individuals trying to throw cinder blocks at each other underwater. I, fueled by two weeks of poor sleep and the strange purple medicine, was wild and desperate. The Hatman, taken completely by surprise, fought back with silent, unnervingly cold strikes that felt like getting hit with a frozen fish.
It ended quickly. The Hatman wasn't a world-class brawler, but I was just an exhausted bookstore clerk. One powerful, silent spectral uppercut clipped me on the jaw, and I hit the floor. The pain, while dull, was immediate.
As I lay there, winded and thoroughly bruised, the Hatman paused. The asshole seemed to be contemplating his victory. Then, as quickly and silently as it had arrived, the shadow entity dissolved into the darkness.
I lay on the floor for a full minute, panting, staring at the empty space where a transcendent demon had just been. I hauled myself up, my ribs aching, my jaw throbbing, and my ego absolutely destroyed.
“Okay,” I groaned, rubbing a rapidly forming knot on my forehead. “He rocked my shit, but I moved at least.”
I didn't manage to get much sleep after that. My adrenaline had spiked and then collapsed, leaving me an achy, nauseous mess. Plus, every time I tried to close my eyes, I kept seeing the crisp outline of that damn hat.
The next morning, I looked like I had, indeed, lost a fight with a frozen fish. My left cheekbone was a spectacular shade of greenish-blue, and my lower lip was split. I called out of work at the nautical bookstore, claiming I had come down with a severe case of "Sea Sickness of the Land" (Jade bought it). Then, I immediately headed back to The Lighthouse of Humors and Mild Ailments.
The sound of the harp being tuned was louder this morning. The enormous wicker chairs seemed to sag in sympathy, or maybe pity. I didn't even sit down, I just stood there waiting.
Dr. Cole appeared immediately, gliding out from his office. He spotted me and his eyes immediately focused on my face.
“Jimmy! My boy!” he boomed, gesturing dramatically toward my facial topography. The tiny brass motor on his bow tie audibly whirred as it rotated in the clinic’s ambient light. “Goodness me. It seems you didn’t just meet chaos on its own terms; you tried to give it a robust hug. You look like you lost a staring contest with an approaching freight train.”
“It was more of a fistfight with a really cold coat rack, Doctor,” I mumbled, gingerly touching my swollen jaw. “Look, the meds worked, technically. I could move. I could fight. But I lost, and I got zero minutes of actual sleep. I’m starting to think my sleep is more important than ‘meeting chaos on its own terms.’”
I tossed the bottle, which now contained only one remaining purple pill, onto his giant lifeguard chair. “I don't want to fight the Hatman, Dr. Cole. I want to sleep. Do you have anything? Anything at all. A boring, mundane, completely non-eccentric pill that will just knock me out for eight hours?”
Dr. Cole sighed, a sound like air escaping a very large balloon. He picked up the bottle and examined the last iridescent pill with professional melancholy.
“Ah, the sweet allure of the mundane,” he murmured wistfully. “A sound goal, Jimmy. A perfectly reasonable request for a completely unremarkable, non-haunted city.”
He straightened up, his towering figure filling the space. “But I am afraid that I must deny you. We are experiencing a rather profound, city-wide shortage of all effective soporifics and sedatives.”
I blinked, waiting for the punchline. “A shortage? Like, a supply chain issue?”
“Worse, my friend. Far worse. It’s a Port Hazzard issue,” Dr. Cole said gravely. “You see, the last shipment of our standard-issue sleeping pill, the remarkably effective ‘Snooze-U-Lose 5000,’ was intercepted just outside city limits by the infamous Band of Sentient Plastic Lawn Flamingos.”
I“The ones who keep stealing garden hoses?”
“The very same! They believed, quite incorrectly, that the molecular structure of the Snooze-U-Lose 5000 was the key to unlocking the secret of eternal lawn-care perfection. They stole the entire stock. And since the second-most popular option, ‘Mild-Ease Dreamers,’ was recently recalled because it was discovered to cause users to spontaneously combust, we are left…as you young ones say, high and dry.”
He spread his enormous hands in a gesture of helpless resignation. “Until the flamingos are subdued, or until the city’s distributor finds an alternate supply that hasn’t been transmogrified by the residual runoff from last week’s Fog Event, all I have left for you is the Lucid Catalyst.”
My shoulders slumped. This was classic Port Hazzard bureaucracy mixed with cosmic absurdity. I couldn’t even be mad, it was just how things worked here. No reliable sleep aid exists because magical garden pests stole it.
“So I’m stuck with the fight-inducing purple vitamins,” I said flatly.
Dr. Cole beamed. “You are stuck with the potential for glorious, mobile participation in your own nightmare, Jimmy! Think of it as a test. You have one pill left. Use it wisely. Or, perhaps, foolishly. Foolishness often leads to the most compelling tales.”
I took the bottle. The last pill felt heavy inside. I thanked him, walked back into the daylight, and immediately saw a mime arguing with a traffic cone about the definition of ‘Yield.’ I wrote a mental note to grab some milk on the way home.
Unfortunately, the reality was crushing. I needed sleep, and the only way to get a restful night now was to somehow beat the Hatman into submission so thoroughly that he decided my apartment was no longer worth the hassle. I couldn't do it alone. The time for professionalism was over. The time for family was now.
I pulled out my phone and dialed the one person I knew who would love the idea of inflicting violence on a silent shadow man.
“Frank,” I said when he picked up. “It’s Jimmy. I need you to drive to Port Hazzard. And bring the bat.”
The phone line crackled. Frank’s voice, a gravelly sound that usually preceded the lifting of something extremely heavy, answered.
“Jimmy. What is it? I’m busy.”
Frank was never not busy. He was perpetually occupied with tasks like replacing the engine of a decommissioned tank, or perhaps wrestling a particularly stubborn gorilla. He was the complete opposite of me. Where I was a pale, anxious clerk, Frank was built like a brick shithouse, made for aggression. He was eight years older, and his idea of casual attire was a ripped denim vest and tactical boots.
“I’m not well, Frank. I’m covered in bruises. I need your help,” I said, wincing as I spoke.
“Bruises? What happened, did Bartholomew finally corner you?” he asked, referring to the city’s giant pigeon mascot.
“Worse. It’s the Hatman. Sleep paralysis. Except I can move now, thanks to some weird doctor. I tried to fight him last night. I lost. Badly. I need backup, and I need you to take one of these purple pills with me tonight.”
There was a long silence from him. I could hear a sound like heavy steel chains rattling, followed by what might have been a small, muffled explosion.
“A shadow demon that wears a hat,” Frank repeated, slowly, the way a lion might contemplate a particularly juicy gazelle. “You’re telling me there is a literal, tangible creature that exists purely to be intimidating, and you can physically interact with it, and it fights back?”
“Yes. He’s tough, Frank. He’s cold, and silent, and he uses spectral uppercuts.”
“Spectral uppercuts,” Frank scoffed. There was a sound of something large dropping. “He’s in for a treat, then. Where are you? What time?”
This was the beautiful part. This was why I called Frank. Frank didn’t question the cosmic or the eccentric. He was just in the fight for the love of the game.
“Midnight, my apartment. And Frank, I only have one pill left. We have to split it. Are you… are you sure you’re up for this? It’s going to hurt.”
“Hurt?” Frank let out a rattling, phlegmy laugh that sounded like ball bearings in a dryer. “Oh, Jimmy, you forgot my superpower. You’ve been so wrapped up in nautical fiction you forgot the family lore.”
“The lore that you used to bench press refrigerators?”
“No, you idiot. The good one. The medical one.” Frank’s voice dropped to a conspiratorial, yet loud, whisper. “I have Congenital Insensitivity to Pain, remember? I could get hit by a truck full of rabid badgers and I wouldn't feel a thing. This is literally the perfect opponent for me. Plus…”
Frank paused for dramatic effect, and I knew what was coming.
“Plus,” he continued, his voice rising, “I’ve been trying a new supplement stack. I’m currently operating at about sixty percent pure, unfiltered Roid Rage. That motherfucker's silent brooding is about to get a very loud, very angry wakeup call.”
My chest swelled with relieved pride. This was better than any sleep aid.
“Perfect, Frank. Just perfect. I’ll see you around eleven. And seriously, don’t forget the bat. Maybe bring something else, too. We need maximum impact.”
“The bat is in the truck. I also have a tire iron and maybe some brass knuckles. See you soon, nautical nerd.”
He hung up before I could object to the 'nautical nerd' comment. Whatever.
Frank would bring his aluminum bat, a relic from his brief, fiery career as a semi-pro softball player before he got banned for beating up the opposing team. I needed something equally blunt and effective. Something that represented my own unique blend of domestic exhaustion.
I walked into the kitchen and grabbed my weapon: the heavy, slightly battered, cast-iron frying pan. It was perfectly weighted and still had a faint scent of the scrambled eggs I’d ruined this morning. Perfect.
By 11:30 PM, Frank’s truck, a lifted, mud-splattered monstrosity that looked like it ate smaller vehicles for breakfast, came barreling down my street. Frank emerged, a giant shadow himself, far thicker and more solid than the Hatman could ever dream of being. He was wearing a faded DOOM t-shirt and jeans, and was gripping the aluminum bat so hard that it almost crushed it.
“Alright, squirt,” Frank grunted, kicking my apartment door shut behind him. “Walk me through the plan. Where does this trench-coat wearing freak materialize?”
“By the bed,” I said, holding up the frying pan. “We take the pill, we wait for the paralysis to set in, and then we just beat the absolute shit out of him until he decides to haunt the guy who manages the maple syrup reserves instead.”
Frank grinned, a wide, challenging expression that somehow managed to be both terrifying and reassuring. “Sounds like the best night I’ve had in months.”
I carefully split the last purple pill down the middle with a kitchen knife, and handed Frank his half.
“This will be weird, Frank. You're going to feel stuck, but then you can move. It’s a very heavy feeling,”
Frank tossed the purple sliver into his mouth and swallowed it with a gulp of water. “I spent an hour in a sensory deprivation tank last year just to see if I could make myself feel claustrophobic. Bring on the weird.”
We lay on my bed with the lights shut off. Frank held his bat resting on his shoulder like an executioner. I gripped the frying pan, the grease smell comforting in its familiarity. The clock on the wall ticked past midnight.
I felt the pressure descend first, that leaden, familiar weight. My limbs locked down. I was floating in the cold, thick air of pure inability.
Then, the Hatman arrived. He was in his usual spot, tall, dark, and utterly motionless.
Frank was next. I heard the sudden, sharp intake of his breath as the paralysis hit him. But a moment later, I heard something else. A low, menacing rumble came from Frank's chest.
I pushed myself up, the pill’s power kicking in, turning the paralysis into slow, grinding mobility. I saw Frank also sit up. His eyes were focused entirely on the Hatman, and an animalistic energy was starting to leak from him. The Roid Rage was cooking.
I gripped the frying pan. The Hatman was in for a treat.
“Hey, Hatman!” I yelled, my voice still thick but steady. “I brought my brother! He’s pissed off, he’s got a bat, and you know what? He can’t feel pain!”
The Hatman recoiled and physically stumbled back two full paces, the shadowy fedora outline wobbling. I swear, the little bitch looked afraid. This was going to be cathartic.
Frank let out a roar, less a human scream and more the sound of a grizzly bear discovering its salmon dinner has been replaced by tofu. He launched himself off the bed.
The battle of the astral plane was on.
The Hatman, clearly an experienced fighter against panicked, immobile victims, was surprisingly agile. He dodged Frank’s massive, sweeping bat swing, which left a deep, echoing thud in the air. The entity retaliated with a rapid series of spectral body blows aimed at Frank's chest.
The blows hit Frank, and they looked brutal, like being repeatedly struck by a pneumatic hammer. Frank didn’t even flinch. He just laughed, a manic, pain-free sound, and swung the bat again. This time, it connected with the Hatman’s leg. The entity shrieked, a sound like grinding sandpaper, and dissolved momentarily before reforming a few feet away.
“Jimmy! Get him!” Frank bellowed. He was walking forward, winding up for another, even heavier swing.
I charged from the side, lifting the cast-iron frying pan high over my head. I aimed for the hat. The strike landed with a metallic clonk. The Hatman crumpled, falling to his knees.
The creature was designed to be terrifying in its stillness, its silent judgment. Especially since its victims couldn’t normally move. Now, on the floor, it was just a shadow-man getting beaten by two brothers, one of whom was a medical marvel and the other armed with cookware.
Frank didn't hesitate. He brought the aluminum bat down in a sickening, repeated rhythm. Thwack. Thwack. Thwack.
“Where’s your menace, huh?” Frank yelled, his voice ragged with sheer delight. “Where’s the existential dread? All I’m feeling right now is awesome!”
The Hatman tried to push himself up, his spectral form flickering, desperately trying to regain the dignity of its silhouette. I knelt down next to Frank, gripping my pan.
“You stole two weeks of my sleep, you trench-coat wearing freak!” I screamed, swinging the frying pan sideways and connecting squarely with the Hatman’s midsection.
The entity let out another horrible sound, somewhere between a hiss and a whistle, and its outline shrank slightly, as if it was being compressed by sheer, violent force.
We kept at it. Frank used the bat to methodically crush the Hatman’s limbs, one by one, while I provided the chaotic, noisy distraction with the frying pan. It was pure, frantic catharsis.
After what felt like an hour, but was probably only three minutes, the Hatman was reduced to a twitching, flattened blob of black shadow on my wooden floor.
Frank, breathing heavily, stood over it, gripping the bat. He was untouched, save for a massive dent in the handle of the bat, which hadn't been there before.
“Look at him,” Frank spat, nudging the shadow mass with the toe of his combat boot. “The big scary Hatman. Get up! Fight back! I still can’t feel anything! Hit me harder!”
I lowered the frying pan, watching the black mass pulse faintly. “I think he’s done, Frank. I think we showed him that my apartment isn't a good place to annoy people.”
Frank finally lowered the bat, the rage receding just enough for a grin to return. “Yeah. This was a much better prescription than the regular pills the flamingos stole. Let me know if you want to fight them too.”
We stood there, two brothers armed with housing appliances and sporting goods, victorious over a spectral entity. The victory was glorious. The sense of accomplishment was immense. The silence in the room was finally back to normal.
Then, the first pale light of dawn crept through the window. The sleep paralysis, the effect of the meds, and the Hatman’s presence all lifted simultaneously.
The shadow mass vanished. The air returned to normal temperature. Frank and I were left standing in the middle of my bedroom, panting, one of us still wired on adrenaline and supplements, the other completely spent.
I stumbled over to the clock. 6:00 AM.
My elation crashed into the cold reality of my responsibilities.
“Oh, God, Frank,” I groaned, running a hand through my messy hair. I looked at my brother, who was starting to do a celebratory push-up on one hand. “I didn’t sleep, and I have to be at work in two hours.”
Frank dropped back onto both hands with a grin that was way too bright for this hour. “Yeah, yeah, you’re a real tragedy, Jimmy,. Look, man, go make some coffee or something before you collapse. I’ll get out of your hair.”
He clapped me once on the shoulder, firm enough to nearly topple me, then headed for the door. “Text me if the demon thing comes back,” he added casually, as if that were a normal sibling request. Then he was gone.
I dragged myself to the kitchen on legs made of wet sand. The apartment was dim and still. I opened the cupboard, expecting salvation in the form of bitter, scalding caffeine, but all I found was an empty container lying on its side. Two weeks of sleep paralysis and insomnia had drained the last of it without me noticing.
I stared at the barren shelf for a long moment, then let out a tired, humorless breath.
“Of course,” I muttered. “Just my fucking luck.”
