Sometimes he'd be outside of himself, running down the hill underneath the fly-over. He could see hands grasping, white and twitching and his own head trying to peep over the parapet: the concrete and seashell composite wall, the thick crash barrier.
And as he strained with all his might to force himself, by sheer intensity of will, to almost psychically power more strength into the weary arms of the Jim on the wall, he would always trip and stumble forward. He would then roll, roll, roll down the hill until his head collided and burst against the concrete wall; a wall that had saved many a motorist from plunging into the cold river, far below.
As soon as Jim's vision faded, as soon as a veil was drawn across the eyes of the self that had careered head-first towards a blunt head-trauma, he would be there inside the other body. Switched and slipping from the other side of the skull-splattered crash barrier, looking alternately at feeble fingers and whirling waters.
Inevitably, he'd cry out and fall with that sickness – remember the first drop of your first roller-coaster ride – and, as in dreams of this kind, panic overtakes his body long before it reaches whatever awaits below.
And there wakes Jim, in a dark room, in a soaking bed, still clawing at the covers for any handhold that might have saved him.
He starts to relax. After a few moments, at least, he is calm again. Jim lies flat on his back, his body feels so heavy. He notices his fiancé stirring beside him.
She rolls over onto her side, she is used to his nightmares now.
There comes, then, a scratching. A small noise, of tapping, perhaps, like the claws of a rat. Then comes creaking. It is the floorboards on the landing outside; they always creak like that.
The scritching is louder now, close to the bedroom door. It sounds as if something is slithering along, or is being dragged across rough carpet. The floorboards creak again, and then so does the door.
It's time to sit up; to get up and investigate. But Jim can't move his arm to prop himself up, and no amount of forceful instruction from his brain is causing his leg muscles to so much as twitch. The only part of his body that seems to be engaged is his optic nerve and the muscles which allow the movement of his eye.
The door is open fully. Jim can see more of the room now that his eyes have adjusted to both its darkness and its hints of light. Something is shuffling, scraping and pawing at the foot of his bed. He can hear it, it is breathing. A horrible, rasping whine like its lungs are thick with mucus.
Paroxysms of terror, apoplexy, catatonia.
Jim is so gripped as a form as strange and shapeless as the cloak of night hauls itself upon his useless legs. The darkness has hair and drags itself across his body with a weight that crushes Jim, like he's sinking deep into the bed.
Then hands push upon his face and his neck. The thing is propped upright, its full weight bearing down upon his chest.
How can he breath, how can his heart beat with this burden upon him?
Strange wisps of hair pass away and hints of a face are revealed. Repulsive, shredded, hanging; repellent in every way, all Jim's senses are straining against this creature.
And it just stays there, on his chest, sapping his strength, rising his panic. He can't quite believe this has happened again. How long now, before it ends? 'Til his body is his own once more?
His eyes flick, so wide with desperation, across to his fiancé, across for salvation. She is sleeping, so placidly, so peacefully, as always.
Oh, and how he hated her then.
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