It was a dark and stormy night...But, then again, it always is, isn't it. Did you ever wonder why so many tales begin in this way? Stories which pour fear in to your soul and freeze the very marrow in your bones?

Before the dawn of time, before the big bang, things dwelt within the vacuum in the blackness of space. These things without form or thought drifted endlessly through the darkness, and they waited without knowing that they did so, nor the reason as to why. The universe exploded in to existence, and the things which came from the darkness found themselves becoming...more. Though they still had no form, they now knew that there was something else, something other than darkness. This something was light, and the shapeless things from the void could not touch it.

Millennia passed, and the things saw that there was a place where dark and light danced together, continually trading places and they ventured forth, invisible against the night sky.

They found form then, in the minds of ancient man before he learned to create fire to keep the darkness at bay. These things which had come from the dark took the shape of nightmares, and there they thrived, as the mind is also dark and vast, and the sombulent imagination infinitely more so.

Time passed, doling out seconds and minutes and days. Months and years turned to centuries. Millions of nights came and went, then came again, and as the population grew, so did the number of nightmares; spread from one person to the next through tales and recollection.

In the darkness, the nightmares slipped through the gaps between seconds and in the silence of the clock's tickings, for they existed before time, and were not bound by its passing, and they slithered in to minds deep in slumber.

These nightmares, these ancient creatures of the dark, they feed on fear, and they are always hungry. Always eager. Always present. Some nightmares passed down from the time before man knew of fire have taken permanent form. Others remain unnamed and revolting, with blazing eyes and sharp teeth. They are the things unseen, and the things which can never be unseen. There are nightmares which wait on potential, for a new horror, something yet to be imagined.

They creep through the shadows, lurking, waiting. Sometimes they chitter and flicker for a moment - that flash of something you thought you saw from the corner of your eye, and you blink. It takes a second, but a nightmare only needs a fragment of that to pounce, and seep in to the darkness behind your eyes.

That tickle in your ear, the one resting against your pillow, or the gaping black chasm of a yawn, the moment you turn out the lights, and the darkness suddenly writhes like ink around you...

It was a dark and stormy night...