The Scream

The Scream happened in the early hours of the morning, about one week ago...

Dramatisation of the events.

It is common for a twin to sneak into our bed in the middle of the night. Not every night, but a few nights per week. Bizarrely they never do it together, or even a few hours apart on the same night. They alternate nights, like they've worked out a schedule to disrupt their parents between them.

This night J had decided it was his turn to sneak in.

But he saw "a scary shadow" just as he went to climb into our bed. So instead of climbing in, he elected to scream into my wife's sleeping face.

I was half awoken by this, but still disorientated enough that I may have fallen back asleep.

Except then my wife responded by waking up in a fright and screaming back at the kids face.

So now that there were two screams, I really had no option but to suddenly wake up and start screaming too - although I would contend it was more of a yell, as I'm clearly too deep-voiced and manly to actually scream.

My wife screamed again, in response to my yell.

Then J screamed again.

Then I yelled some more. And this is how mass hysteria happens. If we'd been in a crowded public place, there could been hundreds affected.

While yelling, I rolled over and turned on the bedside lamp.

Everything was then fine.

Mum and dad had a good laugh. J was mostly confused, and only slightly traumatised, by the entire situation. We got him to settle between us, had another laugh, then everyone slept through to the morning.

At breakfast, I ask J if he's told his twin R "about how silly mummy and daddy were last night?".

R is more interested in what J thought he saw than the reaction.

So J says, "it was like a bird, but it had a beak for the head and a head for the beak!"

A few minutes later, I hear him adding to the legend of the scary shadow: "it had 18 arms and 18 legs!"