A neighbor knocked on my door, clearly shaken. “I keep hearing your son crying at night.” I frowned and said, “That’s impossible—he sleeps peacefully.” The neighbor hesitated. “Then why do I hear him screaming ‘stop’ every single night?” That evening, I pretended to fall asleep and waited. Slowly, my son’s bedroom door creaked open. And standing there was…
The neighbor showed up just after dinner, standing on my porch with his hands shoved deep into his jacket pockets.
“I don’t want to alarm you,” Mr. Collins said carefully, “but I hear your son crying at night.”
I frowned. “That can’t be right. Evan sleeps through the night. He always has.”
Mr. Collins didn’t look relieved. He looked more concerned.
“That’s the thing,” he said quietly. “I hear him screaming. Saying ‘stop.’ Every night. Around the same time.”
A cold wave washed over me.
That night, after my husband Ryan went to bed, I did something I’d never done before.
I pretended to sleep.
I lay still, eyes closed, listening. Minutes passed. Then an hour.
At exactly 2:17 a.m., I heard it.
A soft creak in the hallway.
My heart began to pound as I cracked my eyes open just enough to see the glow of the nightlight across the hall.
Evan’s bedroom door was opening—slowly, carefully.
Someone was standing there.
It wasn’t Evan.
It was Ryan.
He stood stiffly in the doorway, eyes half-open but unfocused, his posture rigid, his breathing slow and uneven. He stepped inside Evan’s room without turning on the light.
I slipped out of bed and moved silently down the hall.
Through the crack in the door, I saw my husband kneel beside Evan’s bed.
“Stop moving,” Ryan muttered flatly.
Evan whimpered.
Ryan’s hand rested firmly on Evan’s shoulder—not striking, not shaking, but holding him down as Evan twisted in panic.
“Dad, stop,” Evan cried. “Please stop.”
My blood ran cold.
Ryan wasn’t awake.
He was sleepwalking.
And my son had been living with it every night.
I pushed the door open hard.
“Ryan!” I shouted.
He froze, blinking rapidly, confusion flooding his face as he looked down at Evan, then at his own hands.
“I—what am I doing?” he whispered.
Evan bolted upright, shaking violently, and ran straight into my arms.
That was when I understood.
My son wasn’t having nightmares.
He was being trapped inside someone else’s.
The next morning, Evan barely spoke.
Ryan didn’t remember a thing.
“I swear,” he kept saying, running his hands through his hair. “I’ve never hurt him. I’d never—”
I believed him.
But belief didn’t undo damage.
Evan finally told me the truth after breakfast, his voice small and flat.
“He comes in almost every night,” he said. “Sometimes he tells me to stay still. Sometimes he just stands there. I don’t know if he’s mad.”
My chest ached.
“How long has this been happening?” I asked.
Evan shrugged. “Since we moved here.”
Six months.
Six months of fear my child had carried alone.
Ryan admitted something he’d hidden out of embarrassment—he’d sleepwalked as a child, especially during times of stress. Work had been brutal lately. Long hours. No sleep.
That didn’t make it okay.
But it explained the pattern.
We contacted a sleep specialist immediately.
The diagnosis was severe parasomnia, triggered by anxiety and exhaustion. Ryan wasn’t conscious during the episodes. He wasn’t violent—but his actions were still terrifying to a child.
The specialist was blunt.
“Until this is under control,” she said, “he cannot sleep near your son.”
That night, Ryan moved into the guest room. Evan slept with me.
Locks were installed. Motion sensors. A sleep monitor. Ryan began therapy and medication adjustments.
But the hardest part wasn’t the logistics.
It was the guilt.
“I thought he’d be mad at me if I told,” Evan said one evening. “I didn’t want Daddy to go away.”
I held him tightly.
“You did nothing wrong,” I told him. “And Daddy isn’t going anywhere. We’re just making sure you’re safe.”
Ryan cried when Evan finally said that out loud.
Progress came slowly.
Ryan’s episodes decreased within weeks. The medication helped. So did boundaries, rest, and honesty.
But Evan still startled at night.
He flinched when footsteps passed his door. He slept with the light on. He needed reassurance—often.
We put him in therapy.
The therapist helped him name what he felt: fear, confusion, love mixed with anxiety.
“You can love someone and still be scared of what they did,” she told him gently.
Ryan never defended himself.
He apologized to Evan again and again—not dramatically, not tearfully, but consistently.
“I’m getting help,” he told him. “And I won’t let it happen again.”
Months passed.
Evan stopped sleeping in my bed. He laughed again. He stopped checking the hallway at night.
One evening, he asked, “Can Daddy read me a story?”
Ryan’s hands shook as he picked up the book.
Trust, once broken, doesn’t come back all at once.
It returns in small, brave steps.
And we took every one of them together.
