As a boy I was very like other boys--in my waking hours.

It was in my sleep that I was different.

From my earliest recollection my sleep was a period of terror.

Rarely were my dreams tinctured with happiness.

As a rule, they were stuffed with fear--and with a fear so strange and alien that it had no ponderable quality.
No fear that I experienced in my waking life resembled the fear that possessed me in my sleep.