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If you’re armed and at the Glenmont metro, please shoot me.
Make it a headshot. Shoot me in the temple, aiming slightly downwards. I need the bullet to travel the shortest possible distance through my brain before it hits my hippocampus. If I’m lucky, the sensation of the gunshot ripping through my skull will only last a few decades.
As awful as this sounds, you’ll be doing me an enormous favor. Death by a headshot, AS SOON AS POSSIBLE, is vastly better than the alternative.
My ordeal started over ten thousand years ago, at 10:15 this morning. I earn extra money by participating in drug trials. I’m a so-called “healthy subject” who takes experimental drugs to help assess side effects. Once it was a kidney drug. A few times it’s been something for blood pressure or cholesterol. This morning they told me the drug I took was a psychoactive substance intended to accelerate brain function.
None of the drugs I had tested so far have ever done anything for me, in the recreational sense. In other words, none of the drugs I’ve tested have given me a killer buzz, or mellowed me out, or anything. Maybe I’ve always ended up the placebo group, but nothing I’ve tested had affected me at all.
Today’s drug was different. This shit worked. They gave me a pill at 10:15 and told me to hang out in the waiting room until they called me back for some tests. “Only about thirty minutes,” the research assistant told me. I flopped onto the waiting room couch and read a few articles from a copy of Psychology Today that was sitting on the coffee table. They hadn’t called me back when I finished the Psychology Today so I picked up a US News and read it cover-to-cover. Then I read an old Scientific American. What was taking them so damn long?
I sluggishly turned my head to look at the wall clock. It was only 10:23 am. I had read all three magazines in eight minutes. I remember thinking this was going to be a long day. I was right.
The waiting room had little bookshelf with some used hardcovers on it. When I stood up to walk to the bookshelf it felt like my legs barely worked. It’s not that they were weak. They were just slow. It took a full minute just to stand up off the couch, and another minute to take two steps to the bookcase.
I scanned the old books on the shelf and picked out a copy of Moby Dick. My arms had the same problems as my legs. Just reaching one foot in front of me to grab the book took a long time. I actually got bored just waiting for my hand to reach the spine of the book.
I slogged back to the couch and collapsed onto it in a slow-motion fall that reminded me of the low-gravity hops of astronauts on the moon. I opened Moby Dick (slowly) and began reading. I started with Call me Ishmael and got as far as Ahab throwing his pipe into the sea (which was all the way to friggin chapter thirty) before they called me back.
“How are you feeling?” the research assistant asked me.
“I feel slow,” I said.
“Actually, it’s the other way around. Everything seems slow because you’re so fast.”
“But my legs. My arms. They’re moving in slow motion.”
“Your body seems like it’s moving slowly because your brain is fast. Your brain is running ten or twenty times faster than normal. You are thinking and perceiving reality at an accelerated pace. But your body is still constrained by the laws of biomechanics. Frankly, you’re moving much faster than a normal person,” she pantomimed a jogging motion. “But your brain is running so much faster right now, that even your fast walk seems very slow to you.”
I thought about my slow-motion flop onto the waiting room couch. Even if my muscles had slowed down, my body would still react to gravity the same way. But in the waiting room, I even fell in slow motion. Slow muscles couldn’t explain why gravity seemed weaker. My brain was going at warp ten. That’s how I managed to read three magazines and the first thirty chapters of Moby Dick in fifteen minutes.
They ran a series of tests on me. The physical tests were fun. They made me juggle three balls. Then four. Then six. I had no problem keeping six balls in the air because they seemed to be moving so slowly. It was boring, frankly, waiting for each ball to move through its arc so I could catch it (with my slow-motion hands) and toss it back into the air. They threw cheerios in the air and I caught them with chopsticks. They dropped a handful of coins and I counted the total value before they hit the ground.
The cognitive tests were less fun, but very illuminating. Finish a fifty-word word search (three seconds). Solve an intricate maze drawn onto a poster-sized paper (two seconds). View a slide show projected at ten images per second and answer detailed questions about what I saw (95% correct).
They told me I measured over 250 on the Knopf scale. Apparently, that’s deep into the superhuman range of thinking speeds.
Then they sent me home. “It’ll wear off in a few hours,” they said. “Which will seem like days to you. Try to use the residual effects to get some work done. Catch up on work emails while you’re still in high-speed mode!”
The ride home was horrible. It was only three metro stops, and in real-world time, it only took about thirty-five minutes. But in my drug-accelerated hyper-time, it felt like days. Days. Just walking out of the medical research suite to the elevator seemed like it took an hour. I sprinted out of the office, willing my legs to push me faster. But, the laws of biomechanics held me prisoner. As accelerated as my brain was, I couldn’t do anything to make my legs work faster.
The huge disconnect between my body and mind made it extremely difficult to judge how and when to slow down, turn, or rotate my body. I had basically turned into giant, slow-motion spaz. I misjudged my speed and rammed into the wall by the elevator button at a pretty good speed. Even though I could see the wall coming at me, I couldn’t make my finger, outstretched to hit the elevator button, move away fast enough and I jammed it against the wall. Hard. The pain was intense. If my brain had been running at regular speed, it probably only would have hurt for thirty seconds or so. But in my accelerated state, the intense pain seemed to last for half an hour. Forty-five minutes maybe.
The elevator ride was horrible. It felt like I spent four or five hours just descending seven floors, with nothing to look at but the interior of the elevator car.
I sprinted to the metro station. I have to admit, this part was almost fun. Even though my body moved at, what seemed to me, super-slow speed, I could still carefully choose how and where to place my feet, swing my arms, and turn my torso. It only took a block or two to getting used to having a brain that ran two dozen times faster than my body. Then I basically sprint-danced the rest of the way, twisting and juking between people on the sidewalk and dodging moving cars with inches (a.k.a. minutes) of clearance.
I spent an hour, in my time frame, descending into the subway and running to the platform. Endless tedium waiting the six minutes for the red-line train to arrive. Although there was more to look at on the metro platform than inside the elevator, it was still intensely boring. I should have stolen that copy of Moby Dick.
The red-line train roared into the station in slow-motion. The normally high-pitched squeal of its brakes was frequency shifted by my high-speed mind to a long low tone, like a monotone Tuba solo.
It wasn’t just the squealing subway train that was three octaves lower than normal. All sound was slowed to the point of near inaudibility. Voices were gone, shifted below the threshold frequency of my hearing. I did manage to hear a screaming baby on my subway car – her shrieks slowed to sound like whale songs. Sharp sounds like a car horns and trucks bouncing over potholes were low, muddied roars like distant thunder.
Back at the research offices, I could still hear and communicate with the research staff. But now verbal communication with anyone would be impossible. The effects of the drug were still intensifying.
I spent what seemed like days on that fucking red-line train. Days. Listening to the whale-song of the screaming baby and the Tuba solo of the brakes. Where ordinary voices were frequency-shifted out of my audio range, smells didn’t seem to be affected. I never became nose-blind to the body odor, the stench of the train’s brakes, and mélange of farts and other smells wafting through the metro car.
I finally got back to my apartment. Sprinting through my open door and into the front hall at full speed was like a slow, relaxing drift down a lazy river.
I was relieved to be home. At least I had stuff I could do there. I picked up the book I was reading – One Hundred Years of Solitude – and finished it. Despite turning the pages so quickly that I tore many of them, it seemed like most of the time I spent finishing the book was spent on page turning and not actually reading. Three minutes had passed since I got home.
I tried surfing the Internet (my GOD it takes a long time for computers to boot these days) but it was too frustratingly slow. Hours (seemingly) to load each new page, and a fraction of a second to read it. A hundred articles in my news feed read and just three more minutes done.
I dipped into my pile of yet-to-be-read books and finished two more. Four more minutes had passed.
I decided to try to sleep off the remaining effects of the drug. Unfortunately, whatever part of my mind is responsible for perception, the part that’s been accelerated to hyper speeds by the drug, isn’t the same as the part that governs sleep. Despite being awake for what I perceived as days, my physical brain still thought it was 1:25 pm. It was not ready for sleep.
Nevertheless, I tried to sleep. I walked to my bedroom (a slow 45-minute drift through my apartment) and flung myself into bed (lazily falling like a feather onto the mattress). I closed my eyes and lay there for hours and hours (10 minutes of reality time) before giving up. Sleep would not come. I was facing what was going to feel like days, or maybe even weeks of being trapped in a slow-motion prison.
So I took an Ambien.
The sensation of the pill and the splash of water I used to swallow it sliding my throat was sickening. A lump that blocked my breathing, moving like a slug down my esophagus.
I read a book. Ten minutes had passed. I read another. Eighteen minutes since I took the Ambien. I threw the book across the room in disgust at my situation. The book slowly pirouetted and spun through the air, like a leaf blowing in a breeze. It hit the wall with a long, faint rumble – the only sound I had head for what seemed like hours – then drifted to the floor like a flip-flop sinking in a swimming pool.
The force of gravity hadn’t changed since I took the pill. The laws of physics were the same. It was just my perception of time that had gone wackadoo. This meant I could use the speed things seemed to fall as a way of judging the effects of the drug. Based on how long it took the book to drift to the floor, I estimated the effects of the drug were still intensifying.
I read a magazine. I turned on the television – I clearly saw each frame of video like I was watching a slideshow. Frustrated, I turned the television off.
I read some more. The first two books of Churchill’s A History of the English-Speaking Peoples. Not exactly a light read. Frankly, I hated it. But given the hours of tedium it would take to go get another book off my bookshelf, just sitting on the couch and reading Churchill was better. Or at least less worse.
It had now been thirty-five minutes since I took the Ambien. I lay down on the couch and closed my eyes. Time passed. I inhaled – a hours long process. Time passed. I exhaled for more hours.
Sleep. Would. Not. Come.
I needed a new plan. I decided to go back to the offices where they gave me the drug. Maybe they would have something that could counteract its effects. Or at least something to knock me out until it wore off.
I exited my apartment as fast as possible – taking hours in my time-frame to do so. I didn’t even bother locking the door. It would have taken too long.
Down the stairs (it’s faster than the elevator if you run), through the lobby, out the front door and onto the street. These few things felt like a long day at the office.
Sprinting down the street, dancing and weaving between pedestrians with, what must have looked to them, superhuman dexterity. Down the first flight of stairs at the metro. Across the landing. Another hour. Then on to the second flight of stairs. That’s when the Ambien hit me.
The Ambien didn’t make me sleepy. Not at all. Instead, it must have had a severe cross-reaction with the experimental drug I took this morning. I was bounding down the second flight of stairs, moving in slow motion, but still making perceptible progress. Then, wham – everything stopped.
The dull roar of the street and metro noise ceased, replaced by the most perfect silence I’ve ever experienced. My downwards motion seemed to completely freeze. Before the Ambien kicked in, my perception of time was maybe a few hundred times slower than real-time. After the Ambien took effect, time moved thousands of times slower. Every second seemed like days to me. Even just moving my eyes to focus on a new point was like an impossibly slow scroll across my visual field.
Over the course of the afternoon, I learned how to walk, run, and jump when my mind ran hundreds of times faster than my body. But with another four or five orders of magnitude of slow-down caused by the Ambien, body control was almost impossible. I fell on the stairs. Even though I was all-but-frozen in mid-step, controlling my muscles was impossible. I commanded my foot forwards for hours, then backwards for hours more when it seemed like I would miss the next step. Hours attempting to adjust the angle of my ankle, then re-adjusting when it felt wrong.
Despite these efforts, I rolled my ankle on the next step. The pain wasn’t at all mitigated by the slowness. Hours of increasing strain on my bent ankle. The nerve signals that send pain into the brain must work differently than the nerves in my ear. Sonic energy was spread out over time, diluted until it was imperceptible. Pain flowed into my brain undiluted by the change in my perception of time. Hours and hours of increasing weight on my turned ankle turned into hours of increasing pain upon increasing pain.
I pitched forwards, my high-speed mind completely unable to control my low-speed body. I drifted downwards for days, managing to rotate my torso enough to keep my head from impacting the ground first. I eventually landed on my right shoulder. At first the impact wasn’t even noticeable. Then I felt a slight pressure in my shoulder as it came in contact with the ground. The pressure grew, bringing increasing pain, for hour upon hour. My shoulder finally gave out, popping out of its socket with an endless sickening tug.
I came to a stop days later, crumpled onto the ground, staring at the ceiling. The pain in my shoulder still screaming with the intensity of a fresh violent injury. I had plenty of time to think during that fall. If every second seemed like days to me, then each minute of real-world time would be like years. Even if the drug cleared out of my system in the next two or three hours, this nightmare would seem to last centuries.
By the time I hit the ground, I had a plan. I would somehow get to the platform and throw myself in front of a train.
I twisted onto my hands and knees. Days of my dislocated shoulder crying for relief. I misjudged my rotation and rolled onto my back. I tried again, collapsing onto my face as I tried to figure out how to control a body that moved slower than grass grew. Weeks of effort were finally rewarded with success – I stabilized on my hands and knees.
If just getting on all fours was this difficult, I figured that walking or running was completely out of the question. So I crawled. I crawled through the metro tunnel. The dumb looks on the faces in the crowd lingered on me for weeks. I crawled under the turnstyle and onto the escalator.
The escalator spilled the rush-hour crowd onto the platform at the same speed a glacier spills ice into the sea. I looked out over the crowded platform during my interminable downward ride. The train status sign said the next train wouldn’t arrive for twenty minutes. Twenty minutes was like a year to me. I’d have to spend a year on the metro platform, waiting to die.
I crawled off the escalator, enduring days of stupid expressions on the commuters’ faces. I crawled a few feet to a concrete bench and curled up next to it, trying to find a position to lessen the pain in my shoulder. Then my problem with time got worse. Impossibly worse.
The massive slowdown on the stairs was just the beginning of the interaction between the experimental drug and the Ambien. It fully hit me while I was curled up by the bench. I blinked. Years of darkness followed. Sound was already gone, and with my blink, sight was gone as well. All that existed was the pain from my fall.
My hyper-accelerated mind wasted no time compensating for the lack of sensory input. Voices spoke to me. They sung to me in languages that never existed. Patterns and faces and colors came and went in my mind’s eye. I recalled my whole life, and imagined living another. I forgot English. I settled into a profound despair. I spoke to God. I became God. I imagined a new universe and brought it to life with my thoughts. Then I did it all again. And again.
My eyes opened with geologic slowness. A faint glow. Weeks. A slit of light. Weeks. A narrow view of the metro platform – ankles of the commuters near me and an advertisement on the opposite wall.
I extracted my phone from my pocket. A project that spanned decades. How can I even explain the boredom? The pain in my shoulder is nothing compared to the boredom. Every thought I can think, I have thought hundreds of times already. The view of ankles and advertisements never changes. Never. The boredom is so intense it’s tangible – like a solid object of metal and stone wedged into my skull. Inescapable.
What are my options? If I crawl and fall onto the tracks without an oncoming train to crush me, I won’t die. I’ll experience even more pain from the four-foot fall, but I’ll most likely be rescued by some do-gooder on the platform and unable to act when the train finally does arrive. My suffering in that scenario will be endless.
So I wait for the train. So I can throw myself under it. When it finally hits me, I will experience the pain of being ripped to pieces for centuries until finally, the light of life leaves my brain, and my experience ends.
I’ve lived hundreds of lifespans at the foot of this bench. I am far older, in spirit, than any human who has ever lived. Most of my life experience has been a snapshot of pain huddled on the floor of a subway platform, with an unchanging view of ankles and advertisements.
This post is my plan B. My Hail Mary. My long-shot. I’ve spent lifetimes typing and posting this message in the hope that someone will read it and become convinced that my suffering must end. Someone on this platform right now. Someone who will find the man curled under the bench, the man who crawled down the escalator, and kill him as swiftly as possible. A bullet to the temple.
If you’re armed and at the Glenmont metro, please shoot me.
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I don’t know when you’re going to read this, but I can tell you when it started: I was out for a walk alone in the woods when the entity came for me. It was beyond a blur. It was, for lack of a better term, absence of meaning. Where it hid, there were no trees; where it crept closer, there was no grass; through the arc it leapt at me, there was no breeze of motion. There was no air at all.
As it struck, I felt the distinct sensation of claws puncturing me somewhere unseen; somewhere I’d never felt before. My hands and arms and legs and torso seemed fine and I wasn’t bleeding, but I knew I’d been injured somehow. As I fearfully ran back home, I could tell that I was less. I was vaguely tired, and it was hard to focus at times.
The solution at that early stage was easy: a big cup of coffee helped me feel normal again.
For a while, that subtle drain on my spirit became lost in the ebb and flow of caffeine in my system. You could say my life began that week, actually, because that was when I met Mar. She and I got along great, though, to be honest, I’m pretty sure I fell in love with her over the phone before we even met.
It was almost as if the strong emotions of that first week made the entity fight back—it was still with me, latched on to some invisible part of my being.
The first few incidents were minor, and I hardly worried about them. The color of a neighbor’s car changed from dark blue to black one morning, and I stared at it before shaking my head and shrugging off the difference. Two days later, at work, a coworker’s name changed from Fred to Dan. I carefully asked around, but everyone said his name had always been Dan. I figured I’d just been mistaken.
Then, as ridiculous as this sounds, I was peeing in my bathroom at home when I suddenly found myself on a random street. I was still in my pajamas, pants down, and urinating—but now in full view of a dozen people at a bus stop. Horrified, I pulled up my clothes and ran before someone called the cops. I did manage to get home, but the experience forced me to admit that I was still in danger. The entity was doing something to me, and I didn’t understand how to fight back.
Mar showed up that evening, but she had her own key.
“Hey,” I asked her with confusion. “How’d you get a key?”
She just laughed. “You’re cute. Are you sure you’re okay with this?” She opened a door and entered a room full of boxes. “I know living together is a big step, especially when we’ve only been dating three months.”
Living together? I’d literally just met her the week before. Thing was, my mother had always called me a smart cookie for a reason. I knew when to shut my yap. Instead of causing a scene, I told her everything was fine—and then I went straight to my room and began investigating.
My things were just as I had left them with no sign of a three month gap in habitation, but I did find something out of the ordinary: the date. I shivered angrily as I processed the truth.
The entity had eaten three months of my life.
What the hell was I facing? What kind of creature could consume pieces of one’s soul like that? I’d missed the most exciting part of a new relationship, and I would never understand any shared stories or in-jokes from that period. Something absurdly precious had been taken from me, and I was furious.
That fury helped suppress the entity. I never imbibed alcohol. I drank coffee religiously. I checked the date every time I woke up. For three years, I managed to live each day while observing nothing more than minor alterations. A social fact here and there—someone’s job, how many kids they had, that sort of thing—the layout of nearby streets, the time my favorite television show aired, that kind of thing. Always, those changes reminded me the creature still had its claws sunk into my spirit. Not once in three years did I ever let myself zone out.
One day, I grew careless. I let myself get really into the season finale of my favorite show. It was gripping; a fantastic story. Right at the height of the action, a young boy came up to my lounger and shook my arm.
Surprised, I asked, “Who are you? How did you get in here?”
He laughed and smiled brightly. “Silly Daddy!”
My heart sank in my chest. I knew immediately what had happened. After a few masked questions, I discovered that he was two years old—and that he was my son.
The agony and heartache filling my chest was nearly unbearable. Not only had I missed the birth of my son, I would never see or know the first years of his life. Mar and I had obviously gotten married and started a family in the time I’d lost, and I had no idea what joys or pains those years contained.
It was snowing outside. Holding my sudden son in my lap, I sat and watched the flakes fall outside. What kind of life was this going to be if slips in concentration could cost me years? I had to get help.
The church had no idea what to do. The priests didn’t believe me, and told me I had a health issue rather than some sort of possession.
The doctors didn’t have any clue. Nothing showed up on all their scans and tests, but they happily took my money in return for nothing.
By the time I ran out of options, I’d decided to tell Mar. There was no way to know what this all looked like from her side. What was I like when I wasn’t there? Did I still take our son to school? Did I still do my job? Clearly, I did, because she seemed to be none the wiser, but I still had a horrible feeling that something must have been missing in her life when I wasn’t actually home inside my own head.
But the night I set up a nice dinner in preparation, she arrived not by unlocking the front door, but by knocking on it. I answered, and found that she was in a nice dress.
She was happily surprised by the settings on the table. “A fancy dinner for a second date? I knew you were sweet on me!”
Thank the Lord I knew when to keep my mouth shut. If I’d gone on about being married and having a son, she might have run for the hills. Instead, I took her coat and sat down for our second date.
Through carefully crafted questions, I managed to deduce the truth. This really was our second date. She saw relief and happiness in me, but interpreted that as dating jitters. I was just excited to realize that the entity wasn’t necessarily eating whole portions of my life. The symptoms, as I was beginning to understand them, were more like the consequences of a shattered soul. The creature had wounded me; broken me into pieces. Perhaps I was to live my life out of order, but at least I would actually get to live it.
And so it went for a few years—from my perspective. While minor changes in politics or geography would happen daily, major shifts in my mental location only happened every couple months. When I found myself in a new place and time in my life, I just shut up and listened, making sure to get the lay of the land before doing anything to avoid making mistakes. On the farthest-flung leap yet, I met my six-year-old grandson, and I asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up. He said, “Writer.” I told him that was a fine idea.
Then, I was back in month two of my relationship with Mar, and I had the best night with her on the riverfront. When I say the best, I mean the best. Knowing how special she would become to me, I asked her to move in. I got to live through what I’d missed the first go-around, and I came to understand that I was never mentally absent. I would always be there—eventually. When we were moving her boxes in, she stopped for a moment and said she marveled at my great love, as if I’d known her for a lifetime and never once doubted she was the one.
That was the first time I’d truly laughed freely and wholeheartedly since the entity had wounded me. She was right about my love for her, but for exactly the reason she’d considered a silly romantic analogy. I had known her my whole life, and I’d come to terms with my situation and found peace with it. It wasn’t so bad to have sneak peeks at all the best parts ahead.
But of course I wouldn’t be writing this if it hadn’t gotten worse. The entity was still with me. It had not wounded me and departed like I’d wanted to believe. The closest I can describe my growing understanding was that the creature was burrowing deeper into my psyche, fracturing it into smaller pieces. Instead of months between major shifts, I began having only weeks. Once I noticed that trend, I feared my ultimate fate would be to jump between times in my life heartbeat by heartbeat, forever confused, forever lost. Only an instant in each time meant I would never be able to speak with anyone else, never be able to hold a conversation, never express or receive love.
As the true depth of that fear came upon me, I sat in an older version of me and watched the snow falling outside. That was the one constant in my life: the weather didn’t care who I was or what pains I had to face. Nature was always there. The falling snow was always like a little hook that kept me in a place; the pure emotional peace it brought was like a panacea on my mental wounds, and I’d never yet shifted while watching the pattern of falling white and thinking of the times I’d gone sledding or built a snow fort as a child.
A teenager touched my arm. “Grandpa?”
“Eh?” He’d startled me out of my thoughts, so I was less careful than usual. “Who are you?”
He half-grinned, as if not sure whether I was joking. Handing me a stack of papers, he said, “It’s my first attempt at a novel. Would you read it and tell me what you think?”
Ahh, of course. “Pursuing that dream of being a writer, I see.”
He burned bright red. “Trying to, anyway.”
“All right. Run off, I’ll read this right now.” The words were blurry, and, annoyed, I looked for glasses I probably had for reading. Being old was terrible, and I wanted to leap back into a younger year—but not before I read his book. I found my glasses in a sweater pocket, and began leafing through. Mar puttered in and out of the living room, still beautiful, but I had to focus. I didn’t know how much time I would have there.
It seemed that we had relatives over. Was it Christmas? A pair of adults and a couple kids I didn’t recognize tromped through the hallway, and I saw my son, now adult, walk by with his wife on the way out the door. As a group, the extended family began sledding outside.
Finally, I finished reading the story, and I called out for my grandson. He rushed down the stairs and into the living room. “How was it?”
“Well, it’s terrible,” I told him truthfully. “But it’s terrible for all the right reasons. You’re still a young man, so your characters behave like young people, but the structure of the story itself is very solid.” I paused. “I didn’t expect it to turn out to be a horror story.”
He nodded. “It’s a reflection of the times. Expectations for the future are dismal, not hopeful like they used to be.”
“You’re far too young to be aware like that,” I told him. An idea occurred to me. “If you’re into horror, do you know anything about strange creatures?”
“Sure. I read everything I can. I love it.”
Warily, I scanned the entrances to the living room. Everyone was busy outside. For the first time, I opened up to someone in my life about what I was experiencing. In hushed tones, I told him about my fragmented consciousness.
For a teenager, he took it well. “You’re serious?”
“Yes.”
He donned the determined look of a grown man accepting a quest. “I’ll look into it, see what I can find out. You should start writing down everything you experience. Build some data. Maybe we can map your psychic wound.”
Wow. “Sounds like a plan.” I was surprised. That made sense, and I hadn’t expected him to have a serious response. “But how will I get all the notes in one place?”
“Let’s come up with somewhere for you to leave them,” he said, frowning with thought. “Then I’ll get them, and we can trace the path you’re taking through your own life, see if there’s a pattern.”
For the first time since the situation had gotten worse, I felt hope again. “How about under the stairs? Nobody ever goes under there.”
“Sure.” He turned and left the living room.
I peered after him. I heard him banging around near the stairs.
Finally, he returned with a box, laid it on the carpet, and opened it to reveal a bursting stack of papers. He exclaimed, “Holy crap!”—but of course, being a teenager, he didn’t really say crap.
Taken aback, I blinked rapidly, forgiving his cussing because of the shock. “Did I write those?”
He looked up at me with wonder. “Yeah. Or, you will. You still have to write them and put them under the stairs after this.” He gazed back down at the papers—then covered the box. “So you probably shouldn’t see what they say. That could get weird.”
That much I understood. “Right.”
He gulped. “There are like fifty boxes under there, all filled up like this. Deciphering these will take a very long time.” His tone dropped to deadly seriousness. “But I will save you, grandpa. Because I don’t think anyone else can.”
Tears flowed down my cheeks then, and I couldn’t help but sob once or twice. I hadn’t realized how lonely I’d become in my shifting prison of awareness until I finally had someone who understood. “Thank you. Thank you so much.”
And then I was young again, and at work on a random Tuesday. Once the sadness and relief faded, anger and determination replaced them. After I finished my work, I grabbed some paper and began writing. While the weeks shifted around me, while those weeks became days, and then hours, I wrote every single spare moment about when and where I thought I was. I put them under the stairs out of order; my first box was actually the thirtieth, and my last box was the first. Once I had over fifty boxes written from my perspective—and once my shifting became a matter of minutes—I knew it was up to my grandson to take it from there.
I put my head down and stopped looking. I couldn’t stand the river of changing awareness any longer. Names and places and dates and jobs and colors and people were all wrong and different.
I’d never been older. I sat watching the snow fall. A man of at least thirty that I vaguely recognized entered the room. “Come on, I think I finally figured it out.”
I was so frail that moving was painful. “Are you him? Are you my grandson?”
“Yes.” He took me to a room filled with strange equipment and sat me in a rubber chair facing a large mirror twice the height of a man. “The pattern finally revealed itself.”
“How long have you worked on this?” I asked him, aghast. “Tell me you didn’t miss your life like I’m missing mine!”
His expression was both stone cold and furiously resolute. “It’ll be worth it.” He brought two thin metal rods close to my arm and then nodded at the mirror. “Look. This shock is carefully calibrated.”
The electric zap from his device was startling, but not painful. In the mirror, I saw a rapid arcing light-silhouette appear above my head and shoulder. The electricity moved through the creature like a wave, briefly revealing the terrible nature of what was happening to me. A bulging leech-like mouth was wrapped around the back of my head, coming down to my eyebrows and touching each ear, and its slug-like body ran over my shoulder and into my very soul.
It was a parasite.
And it was feeding on my mind.
My now-adult grandson held my hand as I took in the horror. After a moment, he asked, “Removing it is going to hurt very badly. Are you up for this?”
Fearful, I asked, “Is Mar here?”
His face softened. “No. Not for a few years now.”
I could tell from his reaction what had happened, but I didn’t want it to be true. “How?”
“We have this conversation a lot,” he responded. “Are you sure you want to know? It never makes you feel better.”
Tears brimmed in my eyes. “Then I don’t care if it hurts, or if I die. I don’t want to stay in a time where she’s not alive.”
He made a sympathetic noise of understanding and then returned to his machines to hook several wires, diodes, and other bits of technology to my limbs and forehead. While he did so, he talked. “I’ve worked for two decades to figure this out, and I’ve had a ton of help from other researchers of the occult. This parasite doesn’t technically exist in our plane. It’s one of the lesser spawns of µ¬ßµ, and it feeds on the plexus of mind, soul, and quantum consciousness/reality. When details like names and colors of objects changed, you weren’t going crazy. The web of your existence was merely losing strands as the creature ate its way through you.”
I didn’t fully understand. I looked up in confusion as he placed a circlet of electronics like a crown on my head in exact line with where the parasite’s mouth had ringed me. “What’s µ¬ßµ?”
He paused his work and grew pale. “I forgot that you wouldn’t know. You’re lucky, believe me.” After a deep breath, he began moving again, and placed his fingers near a few switches. “Ready? This is carefully tuned to make your nervous system extremely unappetizing to the parasite, but it’s basically electro-shock therapy.”
I could still see Mar’s smile. Even though she was dead, I’d just been with her moments ago. “Do it.”
The click of a switch echoed in my ears, and I almost laughed at how mild the electricity was. It didn’t feel like anything—at least at first. Then, I saw the mirror shaking, and my body within that image convulsing. Oh. No. It did hurt. Nothing had ever been more painful. It was just so excruciating that my mind hadn’t been able to immediately process it.
As my vision shook and fire burned in every nerve in my body, I could see the reflected trembling light-silhouette of the parasite on my head as it writhed in agony equal to mine. It had claws—six clawed lizard-like limbs under its leech-like body—and it cut into me in an attempt to stay latched on.
The electricity made my memories flare.
Mar’s smile was foremost, lit brightly in front of a warm fire as the snow fell past the window behind her. The edges of that memory began lighting up, and I realized that my life was one continuous stretch of experience—it was only the awareness of it that had been fragmented by that feasting evil on my back.
I’d never managed to be there for the birth of my son. I’d jumped around it a dozen times, but never actually lived it. For the first time, I got to hold Mar’s hand and be there for her.
No. No! That moment had shifted seamlessly into holding her hand as she lay in a hospital bed for a very different reason. Not this! God, why? It was so merciless to make me remember this. I broke down in tears as nurses rushed into the room. I didn’t want to know. I didn’t want to experience it. I’d seen all the good parts, but I hadn’t wanted the worst part—the inevitable end that all would one day face.
It wasn’t worth it. It was tainted. All that joy was given back ten thousand fold as pain.
The fire in my body and in my brain surged to sheer white torture, and I screamed.
My scream faded into a surprised shout as the machines and electricity and chair faded away. Snow was no longer falling around my life; I was out in the woods on a bright summer day.
Oh God.
I turned to see the creature approaching me. It was the same absence of meaning; the same blank on reality. It crept forward, just like before—but, this time, it hissed and turned away. I stood, astounded at being young again and freed from the parasite. My grandson had actually done it! He’d made me an unappetizing meal, so the predator of mind and soul had moved on in search of a different snack.
I returned home in a daze.
And while I was sitting there processing all that had happened, the phone rang. I looked at it in awe and sadness. I knew who it was. It was Marjorie, calling for the first time for some trivial reason she’d admit thirty years later was made up just to talk to me.
But all I could see was her lying in that hospital bed dying. It was going to end in unspeakable pain and loneliness. I would become an old man, left to sit by myself in an empty house, his soulmate gone long before him. At the end of it all, the only thing I would have left: sitting and watching the falling snow.
But now, thanks to my grandson, I would also have my memories. It would be a wild ride, no matter how it ended.
On a sudden impulse, I picked up the phone. With a smile, I asked, “Hey, who’s this?”
Even though I already knew.
Author’s note: Together, my grandfather and I did set out to write the tale of his life. Unfortunately, his Alzheimer’s disease progressed rapidly, and we were never able to finish. He’s still alive, but I imagine that, mentally, he is in a better place than the nursing home. I like to think he’s back in his younger days, living life and being happy, because the reality is much colder. It’s snowing today; he loves the snow. When I visited him, he didn’t recognize me, but he did smile as he sat looking out the window.
|
I’ve been blind since birth. As I grew up, everything was described to me in such vivid detail that I didn’t even realize why it was that important to see, especially having no reference point to compare it. We lived in a single-floor ranch house, that’s what Father told me. In my mind, of course, I could see, although unlike how a sighted person could. I had spatial awareness. I knew where my bedroom was, where the bathroom, living room and kitchen were. Each wall had its own texture. I don’t know if that was done on purpose, or if I could feel things others never noticed.
I rarely fell over. Only if Father, or one of the visitors, put something somewhere they shouldn’t have. It was usually the visitors, and Father would shout.
They visited infrequently, and only briefly when they did. Father said I shouldn’t speak to them, that it unsettled him. He’d worry when I saw something he didn’t, saw it with my ears or by touch.
Ellie was the first. She seemed very sweet. She asked me my name and why my face was so messed up. She was in the living room. I could hear where she sat from her breaths. Harsh nasal sounds, as if her nose was blocked. When father had a cold, he’d always breath through his mouth, big labored breaths, as he wasn’t used to it.
When people mentioned my face, I always touched it, trying to work out why it was so strange to them. When I asked if I could touch theirs, there was always a pause. I guessed sighted people never did that. Why would they need to?
When I asked Ellie if I could touch her face, she reluctantly agreed, but moments later Father entered the room and asked me who I was speaking to. I told him, “Nobody.” He would always punish me when I spoke about them. I think it scared him. He’d take my arm and march me off. I’d be knocked off-balance and disoriented, to the point where when he finally set me down, my hands would frantically search my surroundings until I knew where I was. It was usually my bedroom, though every now and then he’d leave me outside, in the middle of nowhere. That was the worst. I would be lost and scared. He told me about the road that ran in front of the house, and explained that the sounds I heard were cars, that they’d kill me if they touched me. Those sounds were my only means of recognizing my surroundings. I waited until I heard one, and then knew which way to run back to the house.
I heard Ellie that evening. She whispered to me, saying she was scared. I whispered back, but she didn’t hear.
I asked Father about Ellie. He didn’t want to talk about her. I asked him why. He didn’t reply. When I told him that she asked about my face, he asked me how I responded. I told him I wanted to touch hers. He laughed, though I knew he wasn’t happy. I could hear the difference. When you laugh for pleasure, your mouth is wide open. When you pretend, your mouth is almost closed. To me, the difference is obvious.
It wasn’t until I was older that he explained.
He said we lived in a special place, connected to the “other world”. That sometimes dead people slip through, people who died in pain and wanted to reach the living. He explained that because I couldn’t see, I was able to tune in to that. That they knew I was listening when others weren’t. He said I had to ignore it. Otherwise, he told me, they’d latch on and never leave me. All the dead want is to be alive again, he said. It was dangerous, and they would trick me. He said he knew how to deal with them, but he couldn’t help if they became attached to me.
Alex appeared to me a few years later. She told me she was lost and didn’t know where she was. I told her I wasn’t allowed to speak to her. Still, she pleaded for help. I kept quiet, knowing what would happen if I said anything. “Did you speak to them?” Father asked. Though I was upset, I told him no. I wished I could help her. I knew what it was like to be lost, and it scared me.
Alex didn’t whisper to me at all. I’d ignored her, and she ignored me. Father saved me, and I was thankful.
After Alex, I knew what I needed to do, so I did it. The spirits stopped bothering me after that, for a very long time. That was, until Sarah appeared.
Sarah didn’t give me a chance to be quiet. I was on my own, sitting in the living room and listening to the television. “Help,” she said. “I need to find a way out.” I stayed silent. “You can hear me, can’t you?” she asked, surprised.
“I’m not allowed to speak to you,” I told her.
“Please,” she begged. “I’m scared, I’m lost. I want to see my daddy.” I gripped the arms of the chair and told her I wasn’t allowed.
“He’s dead,” she said. I didn’t answer. “Your father is dead,” she said again.
I wasn’t going to fall for it. I heard banging from around the room as things began to fly, and the shelves began to shake. “Stop it!” I shouted. And it did.
“Please help me leave,” she said.
I wasn’t going to talk to her. I did the only thing I thought would help. I unlocked the front door, hoping she’d run out and get lost, just like I would do. When I heard from her no more, I locked the door and sat back down. I listened intently for any signs she was still there. Except for the sounds of the TV, it was silent.
I hated when my heart raced. I became all too aware of the tick-tock feeling of the rise and fall within my chest, like it was about to explode. When I heard my father’s voice, I screamed.
“Son,” he said, “I need your help. I think I’m dying.”
I did what he told me to do; I didn’t speak. If he did die, he’d never leave me. Instead, I raced out into the open air and shouted for help. I shouted until my voice was hoarse. I heard the sounds of cars racing along the road in front of my house. I shouted until I heard someone respond. It was a woman.
“What’s wrong?” they asked. I told them I think my father was dying. They asked what had happened to my face. I pleaded with them to help me, and they promised they would.
I sat down on the grass and waited. Sometime later, the woman returned to me and asked if she could hold my hand. “I’m so sorry,” she told me. I heard the sounds of sirens, and of people rushing. I asked what was going on. The woman said she was there for me.
As the noise died down, a man asked me a question. “I’m a paramedic,” he said. “What happened to your face?” I told him I was fine. He asked if I was sure, and I told him I was. He asked if I minded him touching my face. I said it was okay.
A moment later, I felt a pressure release from around my forehead and the air felt cold against my skin. It sounded as if he were peeling an orange. I imagined that in my head and worried he’d expose my insides. I screamed and asked what he was doing. He told me everything was going to be okay, and the woman squeezed my hand, telling me to be brave.
I didn’t know what it was I was experiencing. I felt a tight pain within my head, like when you smash your shin against something hard, followed by something I’ve come to understand as “bright”. It hurt so much. I began to cry.
“What happened to your eyes?” the paramedic asked. I said I was blind. He asked to check them. The pain returned when he examined them.
“Do you know him? the man asked the woman who had helped me. She told him that I had been screaming for help and that she had come to my aid, but that she had never met me before.
“How long have you had your eye injury?” he asked me. I told him I’d been blind from birth. He asked me if I could see his fingers. I told him no. He asked if I could open my eyes. I said I didn’t know what he meant. He asked if he could open them for me. I didn’t respond. Then I felt his fingers on my face, fingers covered in something rubbery. Suddenly, it became “bright” again. I screamed.
He tried to calm me. The woman squeezed my hand again. I didn’t know what was happening. Things I couldn’t describe came to me. It was like it always was, but multiplied one hundred-fold, and so much more real. I carried on screaming as a fuzzy form came into view.
“Just breathe, okay?” the paramedic said. “Everything will be fine. When was the last time you saw?” As my heart began to calm and my breathing slowed, I became distracted by what I was experiencing. It overwhelmed me. I wanted to cry, and I did. “How long has it been?” he asked again.
“I’ve never seen anything before,” I told him.
* * * * * *
I was told to keep an eye mask on for most of the day, only taking it off at night at first, to allow my eyes time to adjust. At the same time, I was placed in the custody of my aunt and uncle, and didn’t even know it at first. They were shocked at what happened to me, and that I had never attended school.
The past few years have been a rollercoaster ride. The doctors said I may never have perfect vision, though what little I have is a Godsend, and I’ll take what I can get. I’ve only recently been learning to read and write, so I apologize if my English isn’t the greatest. It’s the best I can do.
I’ve been asking my aunt what happened to my father, but all she says is that he died of a heart attack. I asked what sort of man he was. She says he was her brother and she’ll love him no matter what. My uncle doesn’t want to talk about him at all.
I’ve been using the computer a lot recently, and really enjoying the internet. I can’t believe such a thing exists. After being so lonely for so long, I can talk to whoever I want, when I want, though I’m wary of that. After all, how do I know if who I’m speaking to is alive? No one seems to share my father’s concerns about that.
Today I was on a forum discussing the spirit world – I was so happy to find people who I could relate to – and someone curious about my username sent me a link to an article on a true-crime website. It was about my father, and mentioned me by name. They asked me who I was, and if I was the same person. According to the article, my mother had gone missing soon after my birth. It said I’d been bound so that I couldn’t see. That my father always wanted a daughter.
They found fourteen bodies in the basement. They said one got away, a girl by the name of Sarah Frank. She was the one to call the police. They found Father’s car parked around the back of the house. They supposed he carried his victims into the basement via the storm entrance and left them there. Sarah had managed to get away after she agreed to be his daughter following four days of sustained torture. She stabbed him with a knife he’d placed on the counter to butter some toast.
I didn’t want to believe it. And I am not sure I would have, if it weren’t for the names of the victims, two of which stuck out: Ellie Farmer and Alex Riddle. I’d spoken to them both in the living room.
To this day, I wonder if my father had been honest with me about a single thing in his life. Throughout it all, one question remains above all others.
Did I speak to Ellie and Alex before, or after, he killed them?
|
When I got the first one, I was literally seconds away from stepping onto the plane when a call from “UNKNOWN” blared from my cell phone. It was a ringtone I hadn’t heard before, one I was pretty sure hadn’t come with the phone.
Normally, I wouldn’t have stopped to answer it, but I was expecting a call about a job I had interviewed for the previous week. I took a deep breath in and accepted the call.
“Hello?”
“Do not get on the plane.” A woman’s voice, garbled and strange, as if her vocal chords had been shredded, and she was trying desperately to choke out speech. Despite the unnerving, fractured quality of her voice, her tone was insistent and eerily calm. Then the call ended.
I froze. I had always had a slight phobia of air travel, and something about this call just… there’s no way I was about to get on a seven hour flight now. I turned around and headed toward the food court. I’d just get another flight later in the afternoon, I figured.
I watched from the airport Starbucks three hours later as every TV in the terminal lit up with the crash footage of the plane I should have been on.
No survivors. Not a single one.
I tried to trace the call. So did the police. But there was nothing to trace. There was no evidence my phone had ever received a call around that time. They analyzed phone records, incoming and outgoing communication to my phone… nothing.
I wasn’t making it up. I couldn’t have been.
That wasn’t the only call. Throughout the years, they were few and far between, but always right. And I always listened.
“Do not go on that blind date tonight.” Five months later, my would-be “date” was convicted of killing four women, all with my hair color and build. Found them in a shallow grave about 250 feet from the diner he offered to take me to.
“Do not drive to the concert tonight.” Eighteen-wheeler lost control and plowed into a line of cars. Every driver crushed. Every driver killed. In the stretch of freeway I would have been driving down.
No matter if I got a new phone, if I moved across the country, the calls would still come. I could almost feel the presence of… whatever it was, whatever it is, watching over me.
I imagined being at the bottom of the freezing ocean, still strapped into my coach-section plane seat, or being in that mass grave across from the diner, or watching an eighteen-wheeler skidding toward my car, knowing death was imminent, and I’d get this tightness in my chest. I’d think about how thin that line was. How close I’d gotten.
If I hadn’t had a job interview I was waiting to hear back from, I’d have never listened to that first call. And that would be it for me.
It always felt like something was coming for me. But there was always this… this fractured, warped voice, with these calls that never seemed to exist after I heard them. Self-destructing warning signals, rotting away before my eyes. And I was alive.
I had a bad feeling about this cruise.
I had planned it as a girl’s week out with some of my old friends from college, and was looking forward to a week in the tropics in the dead of winter—but part of me could almost sense that the call was coming. Maybe I’d watched Titanic one too many times, but there was a little nagging fear from the start.
I hoped it would be fine, but I knew that if something was going to happen, I’d get the call. I’d know.
Now, a week before I’m set to go on the cruise, after stepping into my apartment after returning from dinner with a friend, I notice my cell has a message from “UNKNOWN”. They’ve never had to leave a message before. Haven’t checked it all night.
Damn it, and I had really wanted to go on that cruise, too. Ah, well. Not worth whatever horrific fate awaited me in that cold dark ocean.
I click “play message”, and feel my stomach drop as I listen to the voice, sounding horrifically distorted, as if it emanates from a throat slashed to ribbons, crackling with more urgency than ever before. I look around my apartment as the voice on the phone repeats the same phrase over and over again.
“Do not come home after dinner tonight. Do not come home after dinner tonight. DO NOT COME HOME AFTER DINNER TONIGHT.”
|
I missed the scorching wind of Andalusia. How it pours sunlight onto your face, toying with eyelashes, flattening dry sand against cheeks and milling around hair. I missed the smell of the valley and that ripening softness of Muscat fluff glistening in the afternoon breeze.
From up here, I can see the house where I grew up. I see white chapels tucked into grape orchards like pawns scattered on a chess board. I can see patches of asphalt on El Jardinito Road hailing from the old town through dappled rocks, then waning behind the horizon with erratic headlights of beat-up trucks cruising along.
One of the pit stops along Ed Jardinito, where truck drivers stop to relieve themselves, marks the starting point to this wavy trail. All covered in blotches of spindly grass stalks and flaxen sand, the trail is barely noticeable at first. Truth is, no one even cares to notice it. Why would truckers taking a blitz-leak care to check on a mucky trail leading to God knows where? But I do. This is how I got up here, to the top of this hill, where I am standing now. I’ve climbed all the way up here, so I can finally end it all – all these years of vagrancy and fugue, exile and fear. This is where it’s all going to come to an end.
But for now, I am enjoying the view of the valley unfolding below. I am sipping the air of what could be my final memories.
He will show up soon. He always does. Like a shadow, he’s been following me right on my footsteps, always there, behind me. And there he is!
His limping figure appears behind the sharp bend off El Jardinito. He looks up and he sees me, then stops for a moment to catch his breath and leans on his cane, as if assessing the remaining trajectory for this final stretch, then resumes his walk. Or should I say, “resumes his agonizing trudging”. Years of endless chase took a toll on his body. No wonder. How long has he been chasing me? Ten, twenty, thirty years?
He is slow. Methodically slow. But for once, I will not run. I will wait. Right here, behind this rock. I will finally come face to face with him. This sharp Swiss knife blade I am holding in my hand will soon lance right through his neck bone. Yes, that’s what I am going to do.
This ends here, at the dead end of this sandy trail atop the hill overlooking the valley with its white chapels and Muscat orchards.
Funny. After all these years, I still don’t know the real name of my chaser. I always called him what master Borges called him
“He who wanders”.
He who wanders, listen. I will kill you.
* * * * * *
Borges. The Borges. I idolized him when I was in college. Many did, but I was different. It was 1961. I was an average lazy learner at the Universidad Laboral de Córdoba, floating around from one semester to another with barely passable grades. I had very few friends and almost no interests. One can say that I had an early form of an identity crisis.
Besides chugging Anisado, my only other passion was Literature. Latin American Literature. Borges and Neruda were at the forefront. One could only imagine my excitement when I saw a pamphlet hanging on the wall of the Literature faculty.
Spaces were limited. But who cared? It was the man himself, Jorge Luis Borges, coming to give us a lecture followed by an open panel of questions. Like a maniac, I rushed to the auditorium hours before the lecture. I was the first in line and when the doors opened, I got the front row seat. The auditorium was packed with drooling chins of young self-proclaimed prodigies, awaiting the arrival of the great one.
And there he was, the blind Lord of Literature, walking upright onto the stage with a cane and his loyal assistant right by his side. Standing ovation. He nodded and made a “thank you, please be seated” gesture.
Then he began. The lecture was dedicated to Spanish writers, I cannot distinctly recall if it was Cervantes or De Vega. It truly made no difference. Somehow, I managed to sit through his entire lecture, which lasted over three hours, and remember nothing. He talked slowly and methodically, pouring honey into our ears like Segovia’s guitar, with his absent eyesight affixed on the ceiling.
And then it happened. Something that caught me completely off guard.
Before closing the day, Borges was about to take questions from the audience. Of course, I raised my hand and so did about hundreds of other students. One of Borges’ assistants whispered something into his ear, which made him smile.
“It is an honor for me to be in front of an audience of young people, but our time is not infinite,” he said with blind eyes still pinned on the far corner of the hall. “For that reason, I will randomly pick questions from five of you.”
I have never won any prizes or lotteries in my life. When I played poker or blackjack, I lost far more than I won. I knew my limitations and that turned me into an average apathetic person, rarely trying to outdo oneself. And so, sitting still with little ambition – I got used to that.
Until that moment. When I saw Borges pointing his finger in my direction, that came as nothing short of a shock.
“Me?”
“Yes, young man. Senor Borges picked you. Step forward and introduce yourself,” said his assistant.
I did not know what to ask. So, I quietly mumbled my full name.
“Fernandez Augustin Navaro”
Borges shifted his gray-shaded pupils in my direction as if reacting to a sudden buzzing of a fruit fly.
“Fernandez Augustin Navaro. Navaro. Haven’t I met you once before, young man?” he asked.
“No, senor Borges. I never had the honor.”
“But you will. We will meet again, Senor Navaro. You and I will meet again. But for right now, what is your question?”
The rest of the day was foggy. I don’t even remember what question I asked, it must have been about him winning the Prix International, not sure. And maybe not important. No, not important at all.
The greatest writer in the history of mankind called me by name and then that bizarre unreal thing he said about us meeting again. When?
* * * * * *
Nine years later. In 1970.
And there I was – a somewhat-promising journalist in one of London’s somewhat-scandalous tabloid newspapers. Every week my name was featured on the second page alongside with celebrity chronicles and vile rumors. My paycheck was decent enough for a small studio flat by Manchester Square. After years of having been pent-up by directionless studies, you could say I became something more than an average. Or at least that is what I believed.
That day (it was early October, arguably the best season in London) began as usual. I ate my chic breakfast consisting of two scrambled eggs, ham, toast, and dark roast coffee at Barrymore’s Diner and was ready for a pleasant walk to the office. It was shortly after 8 am, and I was in no hurry.
My route was the same as it was every day: pass the square, right turn on George Street, left turn on Thayer, another right on Marylebone. My thoughts that morning were all preoccupied with the piece I was working on, so I was slowly making my way through the square when something caught my eye. Or rather, someone. At first, I did not pay much attention to him, no more than I did to anybody else who idled at the square that morning. Hippy rascals with soiled hair playing guitar on every corner was a common theme in those days, and London town was certainly no exception. So here was another one of those misunderstood love proclaimers, sitting right behind the gated area of the square. Striped worn out jacket, heavy cap, sandals with clots of woolen socks sticking out. A common hippy bum as anyone may have thought. I thought so too except this one had something that made my intestines churn. I didn’t know what it was, but once I saw him, I felt the irresistible urge to instantly walk away and never see him again.
The way he looked at me, that gloomy frown that made me think of a line from Oscar Wilde, “that fellow’s got to swing.” There certainly was something outer worldly about that “fellow.”
His eyes, as if carved from a rock below his forehead were mercilessly drilling thousands of tiny holes through me. I added pace. As I turned back one last time, I noticed him slowly walking towards me. Past the gates of the square, onto the street, paying no attention to screeching tires of honking cars. Walking right towards me.
He’s just a bum. No, he is not.
Just another one of those unwashed hippies. No, no, run run run!
George Street was empty like in post-war bombed quarters. I could hear my brisk footsteps. Or was it the drubbing of my aorta against the chest? He was catching up.
Run? Don’t be silly. Yes, run. First slowly as if you’re trying to not show your chaser that you’re scared. No, not scared, more like in a hurry.
Why am I running? I can take him out with one punch.
But it really wasn’t about that. It was my first experience of that feeling, which I can only describe as some sort of primordial sense of fear. Panic. Dread. Unexplained sense of looming doom arching above you like a dark figure with a scythe.
I ran. I ran faster than my feet could move. As I turned the corner on Thayer, I paused and looked back, fearing to see him right behind. Scrambled eggs, toast, and dark roast coffee were about to make their way back up through my esophagus.
Wiping the sweat off my palms onto my pants, I bent forward in a protective position and looked around. Empty windows of George Street were checking me out like a toddler witnessing parent in a cowardly act.
Whoever that man was that incensed me into this uncontrollable panic, he was now gone. Shame on you, Fernandez Augustin, I repeated to myself while making futile attempts to enthrall palpitation to subside. Shame on you. I mumbled repeating that word. Mumbling turned into whistling that song by “Magic Lanterns”. Shame, shame. I whistled, acting calm and self-composed. I sang without knowing words only to convert my mind to something else. I sang so others wouldn’t notice me shaking.
I climbed the stairs of my office building. Three at a time. Third floor. The familiar smell of typography oils calmed me down. Safe heaven. Shame on you, Fernandez Augustin Navaro.
* * * * * *
Even now I question myself whether my journey to madness began on that day or was it underway for many years. Madness that creeps in and recedes in tidal waves. Is that how it usually happens?
All I know is that an hour later I was laughing at my little moment of weaknesses.
Preposterous and rubbish, my thick Andalusian twang spoke to me. The idea of being fully checked out by a specialist did cross my mind, and I immediately thought of Doctor Patel in Camden Town. He’d give me a comfortable medical diagnosis like a panic attack and prescribe some white pills, I thought.
Little did I know that the day had more surprises in store. The unnerving script development continued in a more eerie fashion when my boss marched to my desk with a pack of printed paper.
No, Navaro you are not going to see Doctor Patel in Camden Town who will make a judgment call on your insanity. Instead, you are going to do an article on Jorge Luis Borges’ new book. He is making his presentation today at London Public Library and blah, blah, blah.
I forgot about the panic attack. The thrill of seeing Master Borges again, nine years later, was surreal. Moments later I was sitting in a cab on my way to the London Public Library, scribbling all possible questions I should be asking him. El Informe de Brodie? Other books? Forget it! I knew very well what I would ask.
I paid the cab and galloped up the marble stairs leading to the hallway, where the Master was about to hold his new book presentation. I elbowed myself through the crowd of journalists to occupy the coveted front-row spot. Quick inventory check: wallet, j-sack along with the omnipresent Swiss knife. Seconds ticked leisurely on my wristwatch. Four more minutes.
Forget this morning’s sickness. Forget Dr. Patel. Collect yourself, Fernandez Augustin
* * * * * *
“Navaro! That’s your last name, isn’t it?”
“Yes. Yes, Senor Borges. But how do you..?”
“Nine years ago, in Cordoba. I told you we would meet again. Do you remember?”
I nodded rapidly completely forgetting he couldn’t see me. Stupid.
“Perhaps,” continued Borges, “it would be more prudent for us to speak privately after the conference. I invite you to have coffee with me. You like Colombian coffee, Mr. Navaro? I shall see you precisely at 6 o’clock at the address that my assistant will provide.”
His blind eyes were still affixed at the top far corner of the hallway, far above all the congested sharp-penciled critics and arduous followers of his divine writing. The attention was now all on me, as revealed by hundreds of photo flashes from behind. I thought of all the explaining that I would have to do tomorrow. How does Borges know you? Are you friends? You were raised in Cordova, are you his illegitimate son?
Back then I did not know.
Answers came later.
* * * * * *
Memory is a tricky animal. As I gaze over the valley and satiate my lungs with familiar smells, I cannot think of anything specific. Vague and elusive memories of my childhood home. And these orchards, these white chapels and the old town itself – nothing but an incomprehensible sensation somewhere down there, below the chest cage.
I close my eyes and let the sun twirl around with tinted specks of mosaic light. I am trying to focus without looking. Alas, nothing comes to mind. I’ve been robbed of my memory. You!
I cast my eyes at the trail again. He is closing in. It’s hard for him to walk upward, and yet I see that determination in his eyes, in his tight grip of that wobbly walking stick, in the way he periodically stops to catch his breath and eyeball the remaining distance. I am not going anywhere. Five? Ten more minutes? Come and take me, old man. If you can.
I almost see his facial expression under the heavily pronounced frontal lobe. It’s a grin. It’s an expression that says, “We shall see.”
* * * * * *
Once I read an interview in “The Morning Times”. In it, Borges was portrayed as extremely humble and minimalistic. His house was depicted as a perfectly organized space with easy access to everything. Books on the shelves (judging from the admiration of the columnist, there were lots of them) were organized by theme and by title. Dictionaries and encyclopedias were grouped together on the same rack, so he could find them easily.
In another article, dated 1966, I read that when Borges travels, and those travels were quite extensive, he carries a whole rack of books along, some of which may not even be read.
When I entered his hotel room, that very bookrack was the first thing that caught my eye. I stood perplexed at the multitude of titles, most unknown to me, when I heard the door swing wide open, and there he was entering through the doorway with a leisurely swinging cane.
“Ah, Senor Navaro, how kind of you to visit this old man!”
I took a step towards him and produced some gibberish like “pleasure is all but mine”. He half-smiled and pointed his hand to the chair.
“I know you will quite enjoy the taste of Colombian dark roast.”
Borges sat down and leaned slightly backwards, without releasing his cane.
“Do you know the biggest advantage of being blind?” he asked and answered immediately. “Blind don’t need light, so my utility bills are way lower.”
He laughed at his own joke only to be interrupted by his assistant carrying a tray of aromatic coffee poured in two small porcelain cups. Amazing how the very idea of drinking coffee instantly changes your mood before you even take your first sip.
As I was readying to go on a pre-scripted monologue of expressing my gratitude and honor, Borges jumped right into the action.
“I will get right to it, Senor Navaro. About you being here and about me remembering you. I know you have many questions. I will attempt to answer some. Some, but not all. When you leave this hotel, there will still be some questions that you will have to find answers to. On your own.”
He gently picked his cup of coffee and with hand somewhat shaking, took an artistic sip. Yes, I had questions. So many that my brain membranes were buzzing in bewilderment and disbelief. Here I was, sitting in the room with one of the greatest writers, who happened to mysteriously know my name and
“Have you by any chance read my ‘The Book of Imaginary Beings?’” asked Borges.
I have. Many times. I read it in Spanish, when it just came out. Very recently I bought the English translation in some shabby bookstore off Oxford Circus. I read that book far too many times, but never in its entirety, mostly starting on a random page. Just as Borges had intended it to be consumed by his readers.
“You see, Senor Navaro, that book was, and perhaps still is, a never-ending work in progress as human imagination has no boundaries. I have included what I had researched over ten years ago, then recently expanded and republished with more figments of collective human imagination. But the book is merely a small subset. In a way, the book writes itself. In some form, it’s a labyrinth, an endless one, a living one, where every corridor and every room is never the same. What I had always wanted is the book to reflect the labyrinth in our collective subconsciousness, the force that drives our minds to craft. For that reason, all the creatures in my book are strictly fictional. Mythical. Am I not boring you?”
“Not at all. I understand, Senor Borges.”
He nodded and wiped a coffee grind off his nose.
“That book, as its title implies, is all about imaginary beings. Tales, legends, folklore. But one thing that no one knows is that I had originally intended this book to include one more being. A being that goes by its Latin name Quietus Est. It appeared and disappeared across many cultures, sometimes centuries apart. Very little is known of it, but what I found was indeed astonishing. First, this being is physically no different than an ordinary human. You may say, it is human in many ways. As I studied this entity, I became more and more agitated. I could not stop. Like a madman, I was trying to learn more and more, but very soon the excitement turned into another feeling. Fear.”
“Fear of what, Senor Borges?”
Borges eyesight shifted from the corner of the room straight on me, as if he could perfectly see me.
“Fear of what I had uncovered. That Quietus Est is not a myth at all.”
He attempted to take another sip, but his hands started shaking, so he had to put the cup down, spilling some of it on the saucer and around the table.
“Pardon me, young man, I am trying to maintain composure. But you have not tried the coffee”, he said wiping his mouth and forehead with a knitted handkerchief.
I raised the small cup and took a sip, disregarding the aromatic fumes of Colombian beans drifting down my internal gorges.
“Pardon me sir, but you are saying that the imaginary being called Quietus Est was not imaginary. Is that why you decided not to include him in your book of imaginary beings?”
“Only in part. Fear came from the realization of what it would mean for mankind to know about its existence. You see
it’s no secret that we are all well aware of our eventual demise. We all die. But imagine what would happen if we all stared right into the face of death every single day of our lives and knew the time that was left for us in this world. Death not as a vague concept portrayed by middle-aged artists, not as a folklore tale of a grim reaper. But as a real living entity that stalks you and walks around showing you a ticking clock counting down minutes and seconds. Getting closer to you with every second, trying to grab your hand. Running from death is worse than death itself.”
He took a deep breath and closed his eyes.
“But I shall talk no more. Allow me to give you my scribbles from years ago. These are unedited in their raw format, so please pardon the poor language. It’s right there, in the drawer. You will find a folder with a yellow piece of paper. Read it aloud, while my ripe old body attempts to catch a breath.”
I opened the drawer, as he instructed, and found a yellow piece of cursive handwritings carved in Spanish with some Latin phrases. The scribbles were short, less than a page long with marks and scratches, but most of this was very much decipherable. He must have written this himself half-blind, I thought. What caused him to do that and not dictate to his assistant? I unfolded the paper and began reading.
Quietus Est
It is said that one shall not know about its own ways and times of demise. The imminent passing is only felt by those that are either terminally ill, and even so, they don’t possess the knowledge of when and where, or by death row inmates awaiting the exact day and time of their execution. Lack of such knowledge coerces us to exist. Sumerians believed in a certain deity (the word “deity” was scratched and replaced with “demon of death embodied in human flesh and bones”, which again was scratched and replaced with “entity”), whose sole role was to stalk its victims and inform them of how much time they have left to live. Per the ancient “Book of Dead”, which was discovered as a set of clay tablets, typically buried in corpses, only those that are “luminous” can see the deity (again crossed out twice, replaced with “demon”, then with “entity”). The “luminous” ones are thought to be either people with high spiritual powers or vice versa, the cursed ones, condemned by priests. The reference briefly reappears in some Egyptian manuscripts, but in later writings is replaced by Anubis or – in rare occurrences – by Horus. The writings again depict this unnamed being as an eternal human who never sleeps, but always wanders. What’s strange is that neither Sumerians nor Egyptians ever gave the entity a discrete name. However, the latter rare findings during Dark Ages refer to him as Quietus Est. The only depiction of Quietus Est was that of an ordinary human standing next to a sun clock, which was used to measure the time that the chosen one had left to live. From time to time Quietus Est stalks the chosen one and, when cornered, moves hands of the clock forward to shorten the lifetime. If the chosen one cannot escape, then his time eventually runs out.
The very last reference was found in
“Enough, Mr. Navaro. You understand the idea. Now on to the main question. Why are you here?”
He drew closer, and a dull shadow from a lamp cut right through his elongated forehead.
“Quietus Est is an eternal wanderer who is always with us, the timekeeper who sits at the edge of the stage with a ticking watch on his wrist. The greatest gift given to mankind is its inability to see him. When I lost sight, I thought blindness was a blessing in disguise. But one does not require eyes to see the wanderer. What eyes cannot see, ears can hear and skin can feel. I hear him. I feel him. You are here, Mr. Navaro because you and I are the luminous ones…”
Borges paused and asked me with a trembling voice: “Mr. Navaro, you saw him too, didn’t you?”
Cold shivers that have been accumulating in my lower back rushed up my spinal cord in millions of explosions. Nausea formed a massive ball of air in my throat, and for a moment I struggled to breathe. Desperately trying to cease the thumping inside, I pushed words out.
“I saw him today.”
* * * * * *
How do you get used to the notion of being a passerby on this Earth? Ordinary humans do not have to get used to that. We have that built-in protection layer, that safety cork in our brain membranes that separates the realization of being mortal from flooding down upon us. It allows us to breathe the air. It lets us exhibit this extraordinary, yet sacred carelessness. The mental block that denies the laws of life on a primitive emotional level even for the keenest scholars. The indecipherable Tetragrammaton is shown to us in every step we take, in every cup of Colombian coffee we sip, in every word of wisdom that we collect from books. Every second we bypass the sinister tick-tock and hear the name of the God being whispered into our ears. And yet we, humans, turn around and whistle “Shame Shame”, deceiving our own self-cognizance. And that, as Senor Borges called it, is the true blessing. Those who possess the name of the divine being are doomed. Knowledge is madness. Knowledge is inexistence. Knowledge of death is worse than death.
We sat in his hotel room until early morning, the two luminous and doomed souls. Our casual exchange of words was amplified by the ticking of the clock. It was dawn when I noticed Borges nodding in his sleep. His left hand was still resting on the cane and his pupils were shuffling behind shut eyelids.
Borges was dreaming.
So must have I.
As I was exiting the foyer of the hotel, I hid behind the column and looked around the street. It was empty. Bleak light of street lamps drew strange crossbeams on pavements. Early October leaves were gyring in closed circles like witches around the fire.
I was looking around, hoping to not see him.
He wasn’t there. But he was. I felt his presence not very far from me.
* * * * * *
Muscat orchards – they resonate inside like echoes of a guitar string heard from a deep alcove, but nothing particular comes to mind. I am trying to shift focus from one object to another, but my nomad memory is lost in endless labyrinths. You took my memories away from me, didn’t you?
Wait, mortal. Wait five more minutes, and you will know the answer, I hear in my brain. He is talking to me now. I can see how the long uphill walk is wearing him out. But what are pain and tiredness when you’re crossing the finish line?
As Borges warned me, “Do not ever come close to him. Do not look him straight in the eyes. He will always be near. His watch will be ticking. If he attempts to catch on, run. But he will forever follow. In a way, he will be like a shadow of you.”
And I ran. And he wandered. I evaded. He followed.
He came too close to me in my hotel room on the second day after my long night in Borges’ quarters. The fool in me still thought that escaping from him would be as easy as moving into a new flat. Or checking into a hotel. So I did just that. It was some shabby hotel minutes from my work where I decided to spend a few nights just to think things through.
That evening, and I remember every minute of it, was my first face to face encounter with him. My room, B6, was on the basement level. As I stumbled through the dark hotel corridor, trying to find the key to my room, I felt his presence, but my ignorant foolishness dismissed all mental warnings and turned the keys. As the door hinge squeaked, I took my first step into the hotel room. A street-level window was casting two thick yellow streaks of light on the floor carpet. I smelled dust and spider webs.
He was in my room. Sitting on the edge of the bed with a rope in his hand. A thin white blanket was covering his head like a shroud around a statue. I stood in a stupor like a paralyzed insect. An avalanche of sweat gushed from every pore of my body. With hand twisted behind my back, I was feverishly trying to twist the doorknob. He got up from the bed with a groan. He took a step towards me.
Hand too sweaty to turn the knob. Open it. Open!
He grabbed my wrist.
Open! Run!
The stretched corridor of the hotel basement flashed like random shots of a silent movie. Run! B5. B2. B1. Run! Staircase. Up! Exit! Run!
“Your time is coming, Fernandez Augustin Navaro!” a whisper crawled into my ears. “Coming, coming!” hissed the wind.
I ran until my legs gave in. I fell down somewhere in the outskirts of the town, passing out in an alley amidst rubbish until sunup.
My madness has begun.
In the days following my first face-to-face encounter with Quietus Est, I’ve moved out of my London flat. I had some savings, enough to tramp town to town, continent to continent, doing temp jobs here and there, sometimes sleeping on streets. He was right behind me.
Even if I didn’t see him for a month, I knew he would soon catch on. It would be only a matter of time for him to pop up somewhere
on the opposite side of the street, in the next car over on the subway, or madly prying through shutters of windows in the house across.
My attempts to speak to Borges were futile. How does the blind master live with this curse, I wondered. How does he manage to evade his sinister follower?
I had questions. Far more than I had anticipated. But Senor Borges was already on the other side of the globe. I wrote him letters. He never replied. I tried calling hotels where he stayed. Unavailable.
The books that he wrote, I bought all of them in attempts to find hidden meanings. What if he had secret messages for me inside his writings? The Book of Sand, Dr. Brodie’s Report
I even searched his earlier writings, analyzed every word. Pointless. Futile.
Until 1983. “Shakespeare’s Memory.” His final book, as it turned out to be.
I was somewhere in Eastern Europe when I bought the book. Immediately I began my scrupulous study. Letter by letter, page by page, analyzing every space and every punctuation sign.
And that’s when I found it. The answer.
The answer was the story itself. The story that did not require much study or decryption. All I had to do was read it. I knew I had to come face to face with Quietus Est like Borges did, but not before having to go through the life of an exile. That’s what Borges had intended me to do. Such was his final and only message to me embodied within his last story. A story written for the public, but intended for my eyes only.
The story was that the protagonist receives memories of Shakespeare. Memories that overwhelm him, overpowering his own. He forgets modern day cars and engines, instead remembering faces and names from some distant past, memories he has never known. Memories that belonged to another man.
“In a way, he will be like a shadow of you,” Borges told me that night. Slowly but surely, my shadow was becoming me. That’s why I can only vaguely remember you, my childhood home. Him or me, no more running. It ends here.
* * * * * *
Few more minutes, I say to myself as I look at the watch. There he is. He is out of breath. Beaten, tired and bent by the weight of his own arid body. One last push, old man, and we will meet.
I am hiding behind the rock. His footsteps on gravel and sand, I can tell them from any other footsteps in the world. His breathing, wheezing and crackling. I am counting to five.
He knows where I am, but he is too tired to take that last step. Let me take that step for you.
I am staring at his face, wrinkled like leaves of an ancient scroll.
“Time’s up, Quietus Est,” I am telling him.
He is not fighting back, and my Swiss blade finds a comfy spot below his Adam’s apple. I am going to finish him now.
Popping sounds are coming out from his flabby throat. What are you trying to tell me, old man? Let me hear your last words. I am easing the pressure to let him talk. But the sounds that come out not words, but laughter.
“You, you are confused,” he says. “You’ve got it all wrong. Let me, let me help you understand.”
I am letting him sit up. He is coughing blood. One wrong move and he’s dead. He wipes the blood off his lips and nods in understanding.
“All my life I have followed you,” he begins slowly. “It’s a miracle I have come this far and lived this long. Ever since I left Cordoba, I was a ticking time bomb. I was diagnosed as suicidal. Doctor after doctor, therapies, specialists, prescription, yoga – I have tried them all. Some helped for a while, and the disease subsided, but then trolled back with a new stronger wave. It’s this disease that nests here” – and he points to his head – “forcing me to look for a way to end my own life. It all began in London, on that morning when I was sitting on the bench in the middle of that square, feeling the disease gnawing on my brain. My first attempt was in that hotel, room B6. I sat on the bed in that dark room for hours with a rope in my hand and a blanket over my head. Death opened the door and stood above me in the darkness of the room. Oh, how I wanted my pain to end! But it was not meant to be. Not then, not there. I had to live on. Ever since that day, it was a cat and a mouse game between us. I chased death, and death would always slip away. Until now.”
He pauses, rubbing his flabby neck, then points his finger down the valley and continues: “I was born in that house. I remember every moment of my childhood. My parents, my toys, my school. I remember playing hide and seek with my cousins in Muscat gardens and dosing off to Sunday clergy in that white chapel. I remember Eastern rugs being washed on the street and the smell of grapes. My name is Fernandez August Navaro. And you, you have no true name, but they call you Quietus Es |
One of my least favorite parts about being a middle school history teacher is the bullshit “Living History” assignments we give at the end of every school year. Kids are supposed to sit with their grandparents and video tape, voice record, or transcribe their oldest memories for posterity (and for an easy way to bring up their GPA).
I have been doing this for seventeen years, and when I collected the projects this time around, I assumed they would be as dull, if not duller than usual. This had not been a particularly bright class.
So I went home, poured myself a glass of wine, and prepared for a long night of “I only owned two pairs of pants when I was your age” and “My brother got beat with a newspaper for hitting a baseball into a neighbor’s yard.” And of course, these projects were peppered with innocent, old-person comments that were so horribly sexist and racist you just had to laugh.
Now, I had a girl in my class whom I will call Olivia. She was pudgy, quiet, and proved herself a consistent B student. I expected her project to be as unremarkable as her, and perhaps that’s why I was so profoundly disturbed by what I witnessed that night.
Olivia had submitted two discs for some reason, so I began with the one marked “interview.” My screen hiccuped twice before a grainy image of a living room came into view. The place was a hoarder’s hell. Olivia was curled up in an armchair clutching a notebook and looking like a scared animal. Across from her sat a man with a somber countenance, smoking a cigarette and staring at her expectantly.
“Go ahead,” a woman’s voice whispered from behind the camera. Olivia’s owlish eyes flashed towards the screen, then back to the man.
“I am here with my Great Uncle Stephen,” she began almost inaudibly. “He is going to tell us about his oldest memories from being in the army.”
Great Uncle Stephen looked like he’d rather be in a goddamn trench at the moment, but he waited patiently for the questions to begin.
Not surprisingly, Olivia read verbatim from the suggested questions sheet I had handed out to the students. He answered her curtly. Once or twice I heard her mother whisper “Speak up, Olivia” from behind the camera. Typical, boring shit.
So I was intrigued when Olivia set down the notebook and asked, “Did you like being in the army?”
That was totally off-script. Great Uncle Stephen emitted a chain smoker’s wheeze. “Nope. Glad to get out of my town though.”
“Where did you go?”
“Balkans.”
“Uh-huh,” she said. I doubted she knew what the Balkans were, and my suspicion was confirmed when she asked, “Was Baukiss very different from here?”
“Yes.”
Mom cleared her throat from behind the camera, perhaps encouraging Great Uncle Stephen to be a little more forthcoming.
But Olivia seemed genuinely interested. “Uncle Stephen,” she asked, “what is your very worst memory from the army?”
The old man crushed his cigarette in the ashtray and then slowly lifted himself out of his chair. “I’ll be back,” he mumbled. The camera cut off.
When the screen flashed back on, everything was the same except Great Uncle Stephen had several pieces of paper in plastic sleeves laid atop all the crap sitting on his coffee table. One, he held in his hand.
“I was a kid when I enlisted,” he said, looking at Olivia. “Your brother’s age,” he told her. Olivia nodded. “I never saw combat. Both of my deployments were to cities in Eastern Europe that had been destroyed by civil wars. Everything was a mess. I felt like a janitor for fuck’s sa-”
“Ahem!” Mom coughed.
Great Uncle Stephen sighed and looked at his paper. “My unit was assigned to a school that had been obliterated by all the violence. Broken windows, caved-in rooms – and for some reason, the part that got to me the most was that the school had been like this for years before we got there. No one had lifted a finger to fix it. I saw kids walk by it on their way to go beg for money or whatever shit they did-”
The camera dipped towards the floor as I heard Mom whisper harshly at Great Uncle Stephen. I couldn’t make out what she was saying, but it wasn’t hard to imagine.
“Do you want to hear this goddamn story or not?” I heard him bark in response. “Then you better let me tell it how I want.”
“Mom,” Olivia chimed. “Please stop interrupting.”
“Are you presenting this in front of the class?”
“No, Mom, we’re just handing it in to the teacher.”
“I’m sure he’s heard the word shit before,” Great Uncle Stephen contributed helpfully. I wasn’t a “he” as a matter of fact, but other than that the statement was accurate.
The camera was lifted and after a couple of blurry focus adjustments, the shot was the same as before.
“Ahh, I’m talking too much anyway,” he grumbled. He lifted the piece of paper in his hand close to his face. “In the basement, I found this letter. I didn’t know what it said but I had a buddy of mine translate it. So I’m gonna read it now. And then I’ll tell you what I saw in that basement.”
A chill ran down my spine. Mom zoomed in to Great Uncle Stephen and his letter. His palsied hands trembled as he held up the paper. This is what he read:
Dear Sir,
I never loved my country. So many of these skirmishes are born from patriotism, a power struggle for the shards of a once-great empire, but I do not care what name my home has on a map. This fighting is senseless and I stay as far away from it as I can.
It was not these attacks and disorganized violence that took the lives of my wife and child. It was illness. Mercifully, it happened quickly for the baby. Nadja suffered for longer. I watched in horror knowing I could do nothing for them. My only solace is that I was there for them every step of the way. I stopped going to work one day, and no one came after me. I doubt they noticed I was gone. Since the school was simply across a field, visible from my window, it would have been easy to go for a few hours each day and come home quickly to care for them. But what was the point? All I did was clean floors. I was as useless to the world as I was to my family.
I tried to take Nadja to the hospital, but the journey was too long and taxing. I brought her home and she died that night.
After Nadja and the baby were gone… well, I don’t remember much. I didn’t leave my hovel, barely ate and slept, thought many times of taking my own life. Tempting though it was, I felt paralyzed by my own helplessness.
The one thing that kept me sane was my radio. I never turned it off once. Even though I didn’t listen to the words being said – in fact, the channel I got the clearest was in English (I think) which I don’t speak a lick of. But the voices, the music, and the true knowledge that life existed beyond this violent city sustained me.
I have no idea how much time passed before I saw the light of day again. I was dizzy from hunger, so finding food was my priority. My radio came with me, of course. Since I first holed myself up, it has gone everywhere with me. It talks to me as I sleep and as I wake. I don’t know what it’s saying, but I know I would die without it.
Once I had some water and food, it occurred to me that the only thing left to do was go back to work. So I did. The following morning, I simply returned to the school where I was a janitor and got back to work.
Nobody made a big deal out of it. Like I said, Nadja had been sick for a long time, and those who worked at the school knew it. I appreciate that no one had pestered me to come back to work during the hardest days of my life. The teachers never said much to me, but we smiled at each other in the halls and that mutual respect was perhaps the reason I decided to come back at all.
The place had gone to the dogs without me, so I simply grabbed my broom and rags from my closet and set to cleaning. Everyone is grateful to have me back, I know. And the best part is that nobody minds my radio. I bring it with me everywhere and keep the volume low enough not to disrupt the students. No one has ever complained. In fact, I suspect they like it.
The schoolhouse is not very big, but does require a lot of maintenance. The floors are always sticky and stained, so I spend most of my time mopping. Kids make messes – I guess that’s why I’m still in business. Sometimes I have to move things around to make sure I get every spot on the floor beautiful and clean, but I take pride in that.
And the repairs! The school always needs tune-ups here and there, and I am happy to help. Some days I’m reconstructing a desk that broke as I whistle along with the radio, other times I handle more serious, structural issues. Days when I have work like this, I feel truly instrumental, like a cog in a larger machine. How could this school survive without me? It took me a long time, but I once again feel that I have purpose.
There is a larder behind the school that is full of preserved food. In lieu of payment, I am allowed to take as much food as I need. That arrangement is fine – what would I do with money anyway? I used to bring the food back to my home, just one field away from the school, but when I started sleeping in the basement no one seemed to notice. This school is special to me and I cannot leave it unguarded.
When I am besieged with memories of my wife and baby, I turn up the volume on the radio to drown out such thoughts. It works for me every time.
Except this morning.
Because this morning, I woke up to dead silence.
I frantically examined the radio to see what had happened. I honestly cannot tell you how many days in a row I have been using it. Did it simply live out its life and die naturally? I have spent the entire day trying to fix it. Most of this time, I have been crying. I am losing my mind without it.
I have given myself until sundown. If I cannot fix it by then, I am going to take my life. I am writing this because the sunlight is starting to die and I know what my fate shall be.
I have thought about taking one last walk through the halls of my school, saying goodbye to the students and teachers. I know I will be missed. But I cannot bring myself to leave this room. I cannot go anywhere knowing that my radio is dead in here.
There are no more tears in me. It feels now like I can’t catch my breath. I vomited what little food I had in my stomach and I am growing dizzy again, like I did after Nadja died. I am not long for this world.
But before I take my life, I have closed the door to this room and stuck a chair beneath the handle. It is the only room in the basement and has a small casement that lets in just enough light for me to see what I am doing. If anyone is kind enough to come looking for me, they should not be met with this gruesome sight. Perhaps they will see the door is blocked, smell my rotting body, and simply forget I ever existed.
But I have placed both my radio and this note outside the door. Kind sir, if you are reading this, I have one humble request: please fix it. Save my radio. It did not deserve to die in its sleep and I am ashamed that I cannot revive it.
Now I am ready to join Nadja and little Ludmilla in heaven. I hope this school can find another janitor who loves and cares for it the way I do.
The hour is now. Do not forget my radio.
Stanislav
When Mom zoomed back out, Olivia had tears in her eyes. “Thank you for sharing, Uncle Stephen,” Mom said, her voice choked. “I think we have enough.”
“Wait!” Olivia chirped. “He said there’s more. What did you find?”
Before Great Uncle Stephen could open his mouth, the image disappeared. My jaw dropped. Was that it? What did Great Uncle Stephen see?
I promptly remembered that there was a second disc. This one was unmarked, but I hoped it contained the rest of the interview.
There was no video, only audio. The voice that started up was Olivia’s.
“Hi, Miss Gerrity. I’m sorry about my mom, but she refused to record the rest of what my uncle was saying. But I asked him to continue and secretly recorded the story as a voice memo on my phone. I remember you said earlier this year that history is written by the people who win wars.” She sucked in a breath and commenced crying. “But everyone’s history is important, even if they are sad, pathetic people and even if they never won a single thing in their life. I haven’t slept through the night since I finished this project, but you have to hear what my uncle has to say.”
There were tears in my eyes, too. The sincerity of her words was beautiful. I was also flattered that she had remembered some trite phrase I threw around because it was what my history teachers said to me.
Before I got too sappy over it, the audio began again.
“Fine,” came Mom’s frustrated voice. “If you want to hear the rest of the story, fine, but this is not appropriate for a school project.”
“Let me finish,” Great Uncle Stephen snapped. “If it’s too much for you, help yourself to a snack in the kitchen. But Olivia wants to know what happened.”
I heard her mother mumble something and walk away. Olivia and her uncle were alone. I imagined her looking at him expectantly.
“So did you find the radio? Or did it get ruined when the school got blown up?”
He rasped and I heard the distinct click of a lighter. “That letter,” he began slowly, “had a date on it.”
“What date?” she inquired hungrily.
“It was dated two weeks before we started rebuilding the school.”
“Didn’t you say the school had been destroyed like two years ago?”
“Yes,” replied Great Uncle Stephen. “It had been.”
There was silence as I felt goosebumps on my arms. The images that came to my mind were almost too overwhelming to express, but Great Uncle Stephen put them into words effortlessly. Clearly he had spent his whole life thinking about it.
“This man, this Stanislav, went to a vandalized, falling apart schoolhouse and cleaned up blood and rubble like it was spilled drinks and dust. He smiled at dead bodies in the hallway and believed they were smiling back at him because they liked his radio. He moved around corpses so he could sweep the ground under them. The roof was half collapsed, so when it rained, he must’ve gotten soaking wet but was so oblivious that he didn’t even feel a thing.” I could hear Olivia crying steadily. “I found the larder he was talking about. It was all pickled, preserved food that probably tasted like shit. Most of the stuff was moldy.”
“Did – did you see the dead body?”
“Yes. Hanging from the ceiling, but still amazingly… lifelike. He wasn’t rotting away. This hadn’t happened years ago.”
“Did he look peaceful?” she asked, a chord of desperation in her voice.
“Couldn’t tell you. The smell was rank, and his face was blue and his eyes were bulging. Like this.” I imagined him demonstrating.
“And the radio?” Olivia wept.
I heard Great Uncle Stephen take a long drag of his cigarette. “It was there, alright. And it was still on.”
|
I found this note, nailed onto a tree on my front lawn. I really don’t know how to describe it. I’ll just let you read it yourself.
[Note start]
I saw you today. It was your birthday. You didn’t see me. You hardly ever do these days.
Your skin looked so nice and healthy, and your eyes, they were the most beautiful I’d ever seen them.
You’ve grown so much. I remember how different you used to look when you were younger.
I remember the day I first met you.
It was four years ago. I was sitting at my desk, head down, listening to the teacher rattling off names for attendance. The teacher called out a name I didn’t recognize, and a stranger’s voice answered behind me. Was there a new student?
The teacher didn’t pause for a second, just continued calling out name after name. I turned my head to where the voice had come from.
I saw you, a pale thing, so thin, your eyes so red, at a seat that should have been empty.
I saw the fireflies flying around you, flickering. Dozens of them, never straying far from you.
I saw them going through you, and coming out through your skin, like you were a mist to them. Can you believe I thought you were a ghost?
No one else seemed to acknowledge the new stranger sitting at the back of the class. Class after class, hour after hour passed as I waited for something to happen. For someone to notice you, for you to leave, for you to let out a ghoulish scream and claw at me like in the horror story I was certain I was in. But nothing happened.
Teachers came and went. My classmates laughed and slept, and you just sat there.
The bell rang for recess. The other kids ran to their mundanities for the day, leaving me and you together in the empty classroom. You stood up and pulled a chair from the desk next to you, making it face your desk. You turned your head to me and spoke.
“Well, you’re slow today. Come on. Ask me your questions.”
I don’t know why I didn’t run away screaming at that moment. Probably would have turned out better for me in the long run, but let’s not speculate.
I guess, at that point in my life , I was pretty bloody lonely. I figured there was only a 50-50 chance you’d eat me and the other 50 was that someone wanted to talk with me. Kid priorities don’t make sense to me either these days.
So I went along with the flow. I walked over to your desk, sat down on the chair you pulled for me, and asked my question. What were you?
You told me you didn’t know.
You said that once you were a child, just like me, with parents and friends. You used to go to the same schools as me.
Then, one day, one ordinary day, when you were ten, you just woke up and you were like this, covered in fireflies and no one could remember you the moment they concentrated on anything else. No one, not even your parents.
You told me of how I’d notice you, every day. How I’d think of you until recess every day.
How I’d come to you every day. How we would talk, every day. How we would meet for the first time, every day, for the last three years.
About how I’d forget the instant I walked out of the room.
How everyone would forget you. How the fireflies would make them. How for the last three years, you’d been alone.
Your story was very hard to believe. So I didn’t. I asked what reality prank show I was on. You looked, well, unimpressed, and asked me to continue telling my story.
I was caught off guard by the non sequitur. You said last time I was here, I was telling you a story, a horror story about a haunted house.
As you detailed the story, goosebumps prickled my skin. It was a story I’d been making up in my head. A story I hadn’t told anyone yet.
At that moment, a million reactions were open to me, all simultaneously adequate and inadequate. But the only thing that seemed proper was to finish the story for you. So I did.
Halfway through, you interrupted me to ask if my mother had recovered from her sickness yet. I had to shake my head, a bit ashamed at the fact that I shared this private matter to a stranger. The story ended a few minutes before recess.
My next class was in another room.
You told me to go. Your steadiness took me back. You seemed so… accepting of your fate. Like you’d already gotten used to the idea of being forgotten forever.
I was a kid back then. I wasn’t a particularly smart kid, and I was probably on the onset of a crush. So you can excuse what I did next as an example of my childhood stupidity.
I grabbed my scissors, pressed it against my arm’s skin, and dug in. As it drew blood, I pushed it forwards, till the cut formed the shape I wanted.
Letter by letter, I carved your name onto my arm.
Just so you know, I don’t regret that. Don’t get me wrong, kid power might have made me do it, but it sure as hell didn’t make the pain go away. It was one of the most painful experiences of my life.
But even then as a kid, I thought what was happening to you was unfair.
I remember how your eyes looked when you saw that. The confusion. How strange it was for you that anyone would want to remember. I remember that look so clearly.
When I woke up the next day and saw your name on my arm, I remembered you. I didn’t forget.
That day, for the first time, we had a conversation that wasn’t so one-sided.
You said no one had ever done anything like that before and suggested I might have a mental illness. I won’t deny it, that drew a little blood. As we talked, a creeping thought came into my head: Did you prefer it when I didn’t remember?
That night, I was sitting up on my bed, staring at your name on my arm, wondering if I should cover it up so I couldn’t see it and give you back your privacy, when I heard a crash.
I looked up to see my bedroom window shattered and a dirty rock on my floor. I looked out of the cracked window, to see a dark figure on my lawn.
You were outside yelling, about how we should hang out.
It took me a while to get used to how bad you were at talking to people. Years without practice, made you quite a bit rusty.
That was all right. We had a lot of time.
For the next two years, we spent most of our free time together. Most of the time, we talked. You’d tell me an aspect of your life and how you lived.
You still stayed in your old house. Your parents never noticed the food that had gone missing, never noticed the extra room, or that you’d stolen the extra keys.
One night, I confided in you that I was beginning to think you were a part of my imagination, Fight Club style. After all, what could you do to me that I couldn’t do to myself?
You spent the next month or so trying to leave bite marks on my ear or neck, to prove a point. I still have a few scars on my ear, so I guess you did.
Looking back, I could see the warning signs even then. Your skin seemed to get worse and worse, paler and paler, and you’d rubbed your eyes raw.
It was in winter we had our wakeup call.
The morning began like any other. I woke up, brushed my teeth, and started searching for clothes to wear. It was a winter morning, and my room was dark, so I didn’t see your name on my arm.
The cold sent shivers through my body, and pulled out a long sleeve jacket. A small bell rang in my head. Don’t you usually roll your sleeves up? Yeah, and why did I? That was annoying.
I finished tidying up and headed to school. On the school bus, I felt oddly content, like something I’d been worrying about had just… disappeared.
I walked up the school stairs, down the hall, through my classroom door, and sat down at my desk. The same feeling of a burden forgotten hounded my mind. What was I forgetting?
When recess came, I just sat at my desk, while my classmates ran out. It felt like a ritual, but I didn’t know what for. I was contemplating just walking out to join them, when I heard it.
It was something small in the wind, like a whisper, but it came over and over, incessant. It sounded like my name. I knew this was strange, that this was worth my attention, but I felt oddly calm. Everything would be alright, everything would be fine. Just ignore it.
I sat there at my desk, my mind a war zone between two conflicting, contradictory voices, when I felt a force tugging on my sleeve. The moment I noticed this, my jacket sleeve tore open. I saw your name on my arm, and then your hand that had ripped my jacket open.
You’d been yelling at me for over 20 minutes.
I think that was the moment we realized how on edge our friendship really was. One accident away from complete erasure.
We spent most of the next year in the town library together, trying to find out what the fireflies were.
It wasn’t really a problem for me. Because of my mother’s treatment, my family couldn’t afford to go on any trips, and our house didn’t have heating anymore, so I was happy to spend my time with you.
Trying to find information was a puzzle in and of itself. After all, how would I read about people I couldn’t remember and how would you find out who was special when no one could even remember enough about them to record them?
We found our old family trees and records. Individually, we’d write down the name of everyone in the book on two lists, and then we would compare. The names I hadn’t remembered to write down, but you had, would become the focus. They were the names who were under the curse of the fireflies.
We compiled a list of “suspicious” books. Books we thought could help us, because they were written by, or were about, the people we were searching for.
I read the books, with the list of names side-by-side, reading it again for every page of the book. You scoured the internet on the library computers, on the lookout for articles about the people.
Our search would lead us to the first glimpse we got of what was really happening to you.
It was late at night when you found the picture. I was a bit drowsy at that time, and almost about to nod off when I heard a sharp intake of breath. I turned to see you standing up, pointing at the screen.
I didn’t see anything. Well, anything noteworthy. On the screen was a picture of a clearing somewhere in the woods.
You held up your piece of paper where you’d marked out two names.
Susie Applebee-Reagan, 13.
Terry Applebee-Reagan, 12.
Siblings.
For a moment, I saw the paper and the screen side-by-side.
Side-by-side.
And then I saw them.
Two figures, emerging from the woods, towards the camera. They were almost humanoid, with the exception of their limbs, which stretched to nightmarish proportions. Their blank, white skin was that of a pure albino, and looked more like tree bark than anything you expected to find on a mammal. A cloud of fireflies surrounded the duo.
The shorter one looked emaciated. I could see their rib cages, around which their… their eyes! God, their eyes! So small, so red.
The taller one, with its white hair, didn’t look alive anymore. They were little more than skin wrapped around a skeleton. Fireflies swarmed out of the pair’s empty eye sockets. Both reached for the cameraman.
I looked at the article surrounding the picture. It was a blog posted by a hiker, twenty years after the last mention of the two kids. The picture was a mystery to the cameraman as well. He’d been wanting to go to the woods pictured for a while now, but he never actually remembered going there. The picture had just appeared on his camera one day, out the blue.
For a moment, I looked at your face. Your thin, pale face, with those red-veined eyes. Would that be you when my scar faded? Just a walking horror I’d glimpse, then forget?
We worked through our reading list at a much faster pace starting from that moment.
Maybe we should’ve gone slower. At least every book, every website we’d left untouched, promised hope. The books that we finished and tossed aside promised nothing but the clearing in the woods as one’s future.
And we tossed aside a lot of books.
I believe I tore through three-fourths of my reading list before I stumbled across the journal. Oh, God, that horrible, horrible journal.
The journal used to belong to a mental patient, named Joey, who claimed to be a serial killer. He was locked up in an asylum when the police discovered his supposed victims never existed. He was ‘diagnosed’ with a need for attention, and shoved away.
They should have electrocuted him. They should have fried him until his flesh melted and his hair burned.
In the journal, he talked about how he carried out his killings. He knew things, bizarre and disturbing things no one else knew. He knew of strange creatures that lived in the woods. Of them, his favorites were the fireflies.
I’m not going to tell you how he summoned these things. I trust you. I trust you more than anyone, but a thing like this belongs to the ground more than it ever will to the human mind. In the end, it’s sufficient to know that these things were not fireflies.
Joey would start his ritual by taking a kid. Any kid, anyone he pleased. He could take them at any time, in the dead of night from their own homes, or in broad daylight from their front yards.
It didn’t matter if he was seen. He’d take them to his house and drag them inside. Usually, an Amber Alert came up at that point. He didn’t care. Like I said, it wouldn’t matter soon.
He’d drag them to a special room in his house. Here the fireflies would come and latch onto them. Now, nobody was searching for the kids. Not the police, not the parents. Nobody.
From then on, he could do whatever he wanted to the kid. He’d get bored of them after a day or two, after the child had broken. At that point, he disposed of them. Hacksaw, kitchen knife, anything would work.
He detailed a large pit of bodies he kept in the woods, swarming with bugs.
One day, I guess he got bored of that too, so he went right to the police station and turned himself in. Not on account of guilt, no, no, no. He just wanted someone to know about the stuff he was doing. Sick bastard.
Oh, don’t get the wrong idea. He never stopped killing kids. The asylum doors didn’t stop him from doing what he liked. It just made him improvise.
He made a new way. He modified the flies, so they could survive without a host, just in a dormant state. When a child (he specified the age) would approach the swarm, it would latch on and begin its effect. Over the years, the child would warp horribly into the things we saw in the woods.
I wish I could hate him in peace. I wish I could say the world owed him nothing. But that wouldn’t be true. He detailed a way out. On the final page, there was an exact explanation on how to get rid of the fireflies.
You must have seen something in my face because, at that moment, you asked if had I found anything.
I said no and closed the book.
A few minutes later, you shut down the computer. You picked up the last book and went through it yourself. When you reached the end cover, you tossed it aside.
I asked what we should do now.
You said it was alright. I could go home. We’d talk about it in the morning.
I stood up and walked past the shelves of books. I headed for the library entrance, but stopped right outside the door and waited. I waited until I heard the sniffling sounds.
I sneaked back to our table, where you were quietly sobbing.
You had your head in your hands. I sat back down, as you raised your eyes to me.
You said you wished you’d never met me. How happy you were when you had nothing to lose. How I ruined your life.
You’d never really gotten better at talking to people. That was the worst love confession I’d ever heard.
I remember how we kissed that night. I remember your hands gripping my hair. I remember that kiss.
I wish it could’ve been just a kiss.
I’m sorry I ruined that moment. When my arms were around you, I was close enough to steal a firefly without you noticing.
I remember holding the firefly in my hand. I remember how it struggled, until it didn’t. Until it was a part of me.
The fireflies shifted. They came over to me, and left you.
I remember the familiar look in your eyes. The confusion. I never wanted to see that confusion in your eyes again. You deserved to be loved and you deserved to know that.
I wasn’t really living anyway.
You reached for me. I pulled away, as the last lights of recognition faded from your eyes. And then you were just staring at a stranger, walking away into a crowd of strangers.
That was a year ago.
You’ve gotten so much better since then. You have so many friends now. So many people at your birthday party. You also look so much healthier. I haven’t been as fortunate.
My skin’s gotten a lot paler, and my eyes hurt all the time now. I couldn’t go to school like you did all those years. I haven’t wasted my time though. I found Joey’s pit.
The bodies, there were so many bodies. There’s a grave for those children now.
Without me, my mom could afford her surgery. She looked so happy. Just yesterday, I saw her playing with my baby brother.
I saw you crying yesterday. You were with your friends, laughing. For a brief moment, your eyes met mine, and then, they were so wet.
I think I’m going away. For good, I think. You’re not going to be happy if I stick around.
I’m so happy I met you, even if you don’t remember me.
[Note end]
Sometimes I go through depressive episodes. I feel so lonely, even with my friends. I don’t know what’s going through my head during these times, and sometimes I’d end up in a bath tub, a knife in my hands and my wrists bleeding.
Until now, I thought I was cutting my wrists. I wasn’t. The cuts… they’re letters.
I’ve been carving a name onto my arm.
|
Addiction took our mother slowly, rocked her through it and sung her to sleep sunk deep into the mattress on her bed. When her back teeth fell out, she left them on the side of the bathtub. I was seven, and I kept them in a matchbox, the missing pieces of her kept safe so that she wouldn’t be lost forever. So maybe one day we could put her back together. Our house fell around us, and we tried our best to raise ourselves. The ceilings had water damage, the bottom stairs had dry rot, and in the winters the radiators bled rust. But it was still our house, and Annie made it a home.
My sister Annie mothered me, with lopsided Band-Aids on bruised knees and lukewarm microwave meals. She told me ghost stories and didn’t mind when I crawled into her bed later on, too scared to sleep alone. She taught me to dance, barefoot on the living room carpet, music channel on full volume on the TV shaking our preadolescent hips. She always let me shower first so that I could enjoy the hot water, and never complained when she had to make do with the cold. She brushed my hair every day before school, even when I screamed and hit her when she caught the tangles. Annie was dark-haired like her father, whoever he had been, but I was blonde. Annie was desperate to be blonde too, like Marilyn Monroe. Like Mom. I think she thought it would make them closer, remind Mom less of her dad. I’d give anything for her to have her hands in my hair one more time, even if it hurt. She moved to New York when I turned eighteen and never came back. I still dream about her sometimes.
Keeping up with our mother was impossible, and we learned from a young age that we would always be left behind. It didn’t make it any easier. When she was drinking light, she was radiant and would wake us up at 3 am with pancakes dripping in cherry syrup. Sometimes when the weather was right, and she’d had enough being drunk alone, she would call our school up and tell them we had both come down with summer sickness, and we’d drive to the beach instead. I remember being nine years old in the backseat of the car coming home after one of our ocean days, sucking the salt from my fingers. Annie had just dyed her hair blonde, her best friend Jane helping her bend over our kitchen sink. From behind, I couldn’t tell who was the mother and who was the daughter, radio up and windows down, blowing the sky inside.
When she was drinking heavily, she’d be out all night, hair piled up like a beauty queen, eyes glazed over and ringed with glitter and black. Sometimes she’d be gone a day or two. She would never give us advance notice; one day we’d just wake up to an empty house, with the fridge packed full and a post-it note on its door, complete with a smear of Mom’s lipstick in the outline of a kiss, telling us she’d be back soon. Sometimes she’d bring guys home, filling the table with beer cans and ashtrays, smoke up to the ceiling, Mom lost in the haze. We’d sleep with pillows over our heads, trying to drown out the music they would blast all night, and wake up to strangers at our kitchen table in the morning, asking us where we kept the coffee.
When Mom drank too little, she fell apart. She wouldn’t buy food, and the refrigerator went bare. She’d chain smoke, leaving cigarette burns on the wallpaper up by the stairs like the walls were sick and decaying. She barely slept, walking around with blue half-moons under her eyes, knuckles raw. She would scream at the slightest thing. I remember once when I spilled a glass of juice on the couch. She looked over at me with dead eyes and dragged me off onto the carpet and then took every single cushion off the couch and into the back yard and set them on fire. Annie went to watch a while from the window and then sat next to me on the floor, backs pressed against the skeleton of the seats, head resting in the crater of my collar bones.
It was the worst when Mom drank too much. She’d laugh too loudly and too long, at anything and everything, until her mouth started to shake and she began to cry into her cereal at the breakfast table. Annie shut down when Mom was like this, going somewhere deep inside herself where no one could hurt her. She’d stay up until the morning watching old black and white movies on TV, whispering the lines she knew by heart like prayers. When I was five years old, I’d cry when I’d find Mom passed out on her bed, sure she would never wake up. Annie would wipe my tears and tell me she was only sleeping, like the princesses in my storybook. We’d sit on Mom’s bed together and wait for her to wake up. When we were older, I was the one who would pick Mom up off the bathroom floor again and again, and Annie would put her to bed, smoothing her hair off her face, wiping the vomit from her mouth, and changing her clothes if she’d pissed herself. Watching them then, there was no doubt that Annie was the mother now.
It was October, and I was thirteen, Annie sixteen. It was a Wednesday night and Mom had been gone for two days. She’d called us that morning from a payphone, voice slurring, telling us she was having the best time with all her new friends, and that she hoped we were doing fine. When she asked me if I was having a good birthday, I hung up on her. My birthday had been the day before. Annie had given me a pile of presents, strawberry lip gloss and glittery nail polishes. I didn’t ask where she’d gotten the money for them. I didn’t care. We’d taken the bus to the beach with Jane and ate the birthday cake she had made for me, sand getting into the frosting. It tasted like sweetness and the sea, and I savored every bite and scrape of sugar against my teeth. We watched the sun go down, Annie snapping grainy photos on her Nokia as I blew out my candles, wishing over and over that Mom wouldn’t come home, that she’d stay gone this time.
But that Wednesday night, Annie and I weren’t speaking. Anger hung heavy between us, seeping through the floorboards. It began when she tripped at the bottom of the stairs. We’d both laughed, Annie throwing her head back, the gap between her front teeth catching the light. When I’d bent to pick her up, I felt her breath, warm against the freckles on my cheeks. I let go of her arms, and she fell again, hitting the floor and grinning, shaking her hair from her face. Her breath was heavy with whiskey. I couldn’t start picking her up too, couldn’t watch her fall again and again. Just like Mom, I knew she’d never get back up.
I’d stared down at her, blonde hair hanging over her eyes, and all I could see was our mother. Then I was running, feet slamming the hallway like heartbeats turned loose. I’d run for the kitchen and tipped every bottle we had down the sink, shoving Annie back as she fought to stop me, catching liquor on her fingers as it fell. She grabbed my shoulders and made me drop the very last bottle. It smashed between us on the floor, glass shards shining like we’d dragged the stars out of the sky and broken them, like pieces we could never put back. Outside through the open windows, the sky turned pale gold, the clouds a mess of pink and cream smeared across the horizon. I cried then, watching my sister on her knees picking up the pieces. That was Annie, always trying to fix things even when it was too late.
The smell of food dragged me from my room, my stomach turning traitor inside my ribcage. Annie was cooking pasta, real food not made in a microwave. She’d set the table, Tammy Wynette singing softly from the CD player, Annie gently swaying her hips as she stirred the tomato sauce, rich and warm. As we ate in silence, I forgave her more with every bite. Mom never cooked dinner, never remembered my favorite had been spaghetti since I was a kid, and never stayed sober long enough to sit up at a table. Annie wasn’t Mom.
We were washing the dishes when we first heard it. A moth was crawling down the inside of the pane, and I cracked the window to let it out into the dark. From the backyard came a faint sound. I tilted my head to listen as it was coming from far off. Crying. I figured it was Mika, the two-year-old next door, having a tantrum loud enough for us to catch, or maybe even Lucky Strike, the cat that belonged to the junkies down the street, begging for food like he sometimes did. I always wanted to feed him when he came around, winding over my ankles, but Annie always stopped me, saying once you started giving they never stopped taking. Looking back, I don’t think she was talking about the cat.
Annie flipped the Christmas lights strung up around the porch, and we sat on the plastic beach chairs watching the skies. When we were little, we’d sit outside, and Annie would tell me the names of all the constellations and the stories of how they came to be hung up in the night sky. I had to grow up before I realized she made them all up as she went along. It was a game we still liked to play now, making up ridiculous stories for the shapes we could pick out.
“Ah, yes, that one there is the Coors Light. It got there when God dropped it out of his convertible window and never picked it up,” she said, nodding sagely and hiding her smile.
“Of course,” I said, waving my hands and pointing up past the power lines. “Right next to The Ashtray, left there by angels on a smoke break.”
“Yeah, they say if you wish on it, all your dreams will come true,” said Annie with a grin.
Then she stopped laughing, and her voice grew quiet, face tilted up to all those dead stars.
“Let’s wish, Emmy. Let’s wish.” So we did.
The sound of wailing interrupted us. It was closer this time, and definitely human. We turned to one another in confusion. Annie shrugged, and I squinted into the black. It sounded like a baby, lost, tired and alone.
“It must be Mika?” I said, slowly getting to my feet. “Maybe he walked around the back? Do you want to call Connie and tell her we’ll bring him over?” Annie didn’t reply. I sighed and rolled my eyes. “Okay, I guess I’ll do everything then.”
I stepped off the porch, grass soft against my heels. The air smelled like it might rain, fresh and clean and growing. A promise unfulfilled.
“Em.” Annie’s voice was strained. I turned to her with a smile. It died on my face when I saw the look on her own. “Em, get inside now.”
She was staring out into the dark, past me, and opening the door with one hand behind her, fingers fumbling on the latch. I froze, barefoot in the dirt. I’d glimpsed what she was looking at.
In the bushes by the back fence, someone was crouching with their knees tucked up neatly under his chin, and his arms wrapped around his legs. His mouth was agape, softly opening and closing as he cried. Like a child, lost in the dark. No – not like a child. More like someone pretending, mimicking the sound under cover of darkness. Suddenly they straightened their back, snapping upright, face still obscured by shadow. They were tall and slim, extraordinarily thin by human standards.
Panic made me move, carried forward by animal instincts leftover from a time when people still lived in nature. I was faster than Annie, dragging her inside and slamming the door behind us, hearing it bounce on its hinges as I locked it. We watched as the person slowly approached the house with long, deliberate strides.
Annie reached for my hand, holding me tight, and turned me to face her, holding my shoulders.
“Don’t turn around, Emmy. Don’t turn around.” Instinctively I started to look over my shoulder into the gloom. Annie grabbed my face hard and shook her head. I knew then she was serious.
“I’m…” her voice cracked, and she cleared her throat, gripping my hand tight enough to hurt, nails digging in, grounding herself. I looked down at our interlocked fingers, both of us born of the same bones.
“I’m going to call the cops, and everything is going to be…” Her voice faltered, stuttering. Tears spilled over her lashes. Annie never cried.
“Your phone’s on the porch,” she whispered, and bile crawled its way up my throat. Her phone was upstairs, charging.
A soft, tap-tap-tapping filled the silence. Annie turned wide-eyed to the window.
It was the sound of someone’s forehead slowly and repeatedly bumping against the glass. Then the blows accelerated, gaining in both speed and strength, skin meeting glass until they were slamming into the window hard enough to shake the panes.
A moment later the tapping stopped, and I was about to ask Annie if I could look now, when she screamed, followed by the sound of cracking glass and a tremendous crash. Whoever was in our yard had just smashed their face hard enough into the window to shatter it.
We ran up the stairs two steps at a time, skipping the rotted ones out of habit. I turned to look behind me once, and Annie yanked my face back before I could see. The sound of glass breaking echoed behind us as we made it to the bathroom and locked the door. A weak, mewling cry, like that of an infant calling for its mother, filled the hallway, trapped between the walls and entryways.
Annie threw her back against the door, feet jammed up against the bathtub, clutching a knife she had grabbed from the kitchen. I joined her, shoulder to shoulder, and did the same. Slow footsteps started on the stairs, calculated and casual. The crying took on a mocking quality, resembling laughter, arriving in short, shrill bursts of sound followed by high-pitched giggling, and then silence, only to start again a moment later. The first door on the upstairs floor was my bedroom, and we heard the distinct sound of it slamming open.
They were looking for us.
“What the fuck is going on?” I asked Annie, not even bothering to brush away the tears that I couldn’t keep from falling. I watched my sister pick herself up off the floor and brace her hands on the door as we heard the sound of a second door slamming open. Mom’s room. The next room on the hallway was the bathroom. Annie pulled me to my feet and handed me the knife. I shook my head and pushed it back to her, terrified of what would happen if I had to use it. Annie shoved me and pressed the knife into my hands, thumb pressing hard enough along the edge to draw blood. I watched a winding road of crimson rivulets cascading down her wrist. In spite of the pain, Annie continued pushing the blade into my hands. Finally, I took it from her.
Something slammed against the wall that Mom’s room shared with the bathroom. A high-pitched howl followed. I held my breath and felt my heart beating frantically in the base of my throat.
“I’m gonna get the phone from my room,” my sister said. I shook my head dramatically in protest. Before I could say a word, Annie clamped a hand over my mouth. I could taste the blood on her hand, salty and sweet. Like birthday cake by the ocean. “Yes. I’m gonna get the phone, and I’m going to call the cops. We’re going to be okay.”
I shook my head again.
“It’s the only way,” Annie insisted. “When I go, I need you to lock the door, and I don’t want you to open it for anything or anyone. Not for me, not for… anyone. Promise me.”
I shook my head, and Annie pressed her hand against my mouth, pushing my teeth against my lips so forcefully it made my eyes water. “Promise me, Em!”
Something smashed in the room next door. Annie brushed the hair from my face and gently tucked it behind my ear. “Promise,” she mouthed, and unlocked the door as slowly as possible, the bolt scraping gently. I watched the curve of her shoulder disappear into the darkened hall, like the moon in eclipse. And then she was gone. I couldn’t move or breathe for a second, and then I slammed the bolt shut just as something bounced off the outside of the door. A high-pitched scream ensued, followed by the handle rattling up and down hard enough to pop a screw loose. I watched it roll toward me on the tiles. And then everything went still.
I sat with my back to the door, holding the knife and wishing I was holding Annie’s hand instead. The silence continued. For a moment, the only sound was that of my breath slowly filling the room.
A voice broke the illusion of solitude.
“Em?” a familiar voice came through the door. Startled, I gripped the knife even more firmly than before. “Honey, what’s going on?”
“Mom?” my voice cracked. “Momma, is that you?” I wrapped my arms around myself to keep from shaking.
“Sweetie, it’s okay, just open the door. It’s okay, just let me in.” The handle rattled again, gentler this time. “Just let me in, it’s all okay.” She banged impatiently on the door, and I took my handle of the bolt.
“Honey, I’m sorry. I’m sorry that I missed your birthday. I’m sorry I’m such a terrible mother. Please!” her voice broke, and she started to cry. “Just let me in, baby. I’m so sorry.”
I screwed my eyes shut. She sounded so sad and so lost. I just wanted her to hold me as like she did when I was a kid, when I’d come in with a scraped knee after falling off the swings. Maybe this time she meant it. Perhaps it would all be okay. My hand found its way to the bolt again.
My sister’s voice came through the door, warm and gentle. “Yeah, Emilie, let us in. It’s all okay.”
My hand froze on the bolt, and I tightened my grip on my weapon. Annie never called me by my full name. A hand banged on the door, handle rattling. “Emilie, let us in!” Annie’s voice became low and guttural, followed by the same shrill giggles from before. Mom spoke now, pleading and crying, her voice growing louder and louder. “Let us in! Let us in! Let us in!” she shouted over and over again, punctuated by her fists on the door. I thought about bedtime stories, and all the demons and monsters we pray never crawl out from under our beds.
“That’s not my sister, and you’re not my mother!” I screamed through the door, hands over my head. I climbed into the bathtub, curled into the fetal position, and clutched the knife to my chest. I didn’t know what it was outside that door, but I knew it wasn’t Annie. It wasn’t the voice that scolded me whenever I changed the TV channel, the one that sang me happy birthday, the one that told me I was smart even when I got bad grades, the one that read me stories about princesses that never wake up. It wasn’t human.
Bangs and yells came from downstairs, followed by the footsteps of people running. A low, guttural howl ripped through the house, filling the room until I felt like I was drowning in the sound, and then the door was kicked in. I screamed, covered my eyes, and waited to die.
A moment later arms found me, lifted me from the tub, and carried me from the room. I looked at the outside of the door as I was taken downstairs. Its exterior was covered in long, scraping claw marks, stretching to the floor. I found the hallway covered in the soft, downy remains of torn-up pillows, making it appear as if it had snowed indoors. I watched the tiny feathers drift slowly as men in uniforms checked each of the rooms that looked like they had been ripped apart by something feral.
Outside, police cars and an ambulance waited in our driveway, and there, in the middle of it all, was Annie, bathed in blue and red light and glowing in the dark like a neon angel. I threw myself from the officer’s shoulders and ran to her. Then I held us both together, broken pieces and all, standing under all those constellations we’d concocted. Muffled screaming came from the ambulance, which rocked occasionally. Annie gently turned my head away, smiling so sadly it made my chest ache. I understood.
It turns out there was no demon. No wild animal or bad men were trying to break in. It was just Mom, out of her mind on booze, drugs, and everything in between, coming to the end of a week-long binge. Something had finally broken inside her head, and this time we couldn’t put her back together no matter how hard we tried. Sometimes you fall one last time, and then never get back up.
Annie had seen her rail-thin frame in the garden, blood dribbling from her mouth, track marks bulging on her forearms like unmapped roads, desperate for one more hit, one more fix. She’d searched the kitchen for all the alcohol I’d thrown away, and when she hadn’t found any, she went hunting for the stash hidden in the bathroom. She hadn’t wanted me, just the drugs on the other side of the door. She’d been so high she was able to mimic Annie’s voice nearly perfectly.
The real monsters are the ones that eat you alive slowly, the kind that comes in a bottle or a needle, or at the end of a long list of reasons why you can’t get out of bed in the morning. Sometimes the monsters are the ones that raise you or love you the most. But it’s up to you to let them in.
|
The red lights are only making the pain worse. It is an immense, earth-shattering pain, in my midsection and in my head. I try to move, but I can’t; I try to speak, but I can’t do that either. It hurts too much, and my voice obeys me no more than do my joints or my muscles or my bones or my mind.
And yet still there is movement. I can feel myself being lifted up and placed on something – a bed, maybe, or – no.
A gurney.
“Alright!” one of the EMTs says, and several others then roll me into the back of an ambulance, and climb in behind me. But I’m already fading fast, and feeling an inexplicable heat, by the time those doors are shut.
One EMT, a blonde woman, shoots me a curious little look, just as I’m slipping away, and says aloud, “Wait. Wait, I think I know…
”…we’re made of that stuff, right?”
I turned around. There was a woman there, red-haired and about my age, give or take, and she was alarmingly beautiful. But how long she’d been staring at the exhibit alongside me I had no idea.
”I’m sorry?”
”I said ‘you know we’re made of that stuff, right’?” She nodded at the museum wall, which depicted in detail the births and life cycle and deaths of stars. I pursed my lips.
”We’re… made of stars?”
”Yep. Isn’t it awesome?” She stepped up beside me and moved her arm across the diagram as she spoke. “I just watched a documentary about it last night. Stars are just fusion factories held together by their own gravity. They start off fusing hydrogen to helium, and then they keep going on and on, fusing heavier and heavier elements until they’re fusing the heaviest stuff. Then they exhaust their fuel and collapse under their own weight, and they blow off their outer layers and pretty much shower the galaxy with all these random elements, some of which are eventually used to create life.”
”Huh.”
”Yeah. I’m Robin, by the way.” She extended her hand, and I shook it.
”Uh, hey. Brian. Nice to meet you.” There was an awkward pause before I said, “Alright, I got one for you. If you replaced the sun with a black hole, what would happen?”
”Depends on its mass.”
”Nope! The answer is – drumroll please – nothing. I mean everything would get dark and cold, but we wouldn’t fall in. Earth’s orbit would remain entirely unaffected.”
”IF the black hole had the same mass as the sun.”
”What?”
”What you said would only be true if the black hole in question happened to have the same mass as the sun. Which it wouldn’t, because the sun isn’t massive enough to collapse into a black hole.”
”Oh. Damn.”
”Yep. Me one, you zero. Sorry, pal.”
”Alright.” I said. “You’re on. Whoever gets the most points by closing time buys drinks.”
She smiled at that and punched me in the shoulder, just light enough not to sting. ”Alright, loser. Come…”
“…on,” the EMT says. There is a flurry of activity around me, and there are voices, too, and blinding lights, and a cooling down of that monstrous heat.
One of the paramedics is looking me over. Then he looks to another colleague – the blonde woman – and he shakes his head, slowly.
“This one’s gone, Rachel.”
But she continues running tests, running diagnostics, placing a soft hand on my arm in case I’m awake enough to appreciate the comfort. I am. Barely. But I’m fading fast, and that heat is coming right on back as I do.
“Not yet he’s not,” she says. There’s pain in her voice that she does her fruitless best to conceal. “I already lost one earlier, Todd. I’m not losing…”
”… another one!” Robin said, and I laughed and agreed and we rushed to the back of the line.
”See? Told you you’d like Ferris Wheels. Can’t believe you’ve never been on one before today.”
She shrugged. “Never thought they were as extreme as roller coasters, so I wasn’t interested.”
”Well they’re not supposed to be ‘extreme.’ Ferris Wheels are for all the parents waiting on their kids and sick people trying to relax their stomachs so they don’t puke funnel cake all over the pavement.”
”And adorable young couples, apparently.”
And just then we were waved into the next seat. We sat ourselves down, and moments later the great wheel began to groan and protest and, finally, to turn; it dragged our cart around its underside and then lifted it up, up, up to the top of its crest, where we could see the whole city at twilight, and the ships in the harbor that were backlit red with the setting sun, and the clouds that were lined at their tops with just a little bit of starlight. Robin snuggled up next to me and put her head on my shoulder, and I put my arm around her waist. For a moment then I could’ve sworn the empty seat in front of us move on its own, and furrowed my brow. But then Robin spoke.
”Thank you for being here with me,” she said. I didn’t respond with words;I just kissed her on the head and held her tight, as the Wheel began taking us…
“…down on the eighteen hundred block of Gardersdale,” one of the EMTs says. “Yeah. Yeah. Another one, I know. Hell of a fucking night, isn’t it?”
The conversation is muffled again in short order. I’m drifting in and out, but the jostling of the room and the sound of an engine tell me we’re still in the ambulance.
The other paramedics, for their part, continue running tests and checking my vitals, and as they work I try to remember what’s happened. But it hurts. Dammit, does it hurt, almost as much as that rushing heat, and the effort is further disrupted when the ambulance hits a bump in the road and I nearly spill out of the gurney. But Rachel puts her steadying hand on my chest and says, “Hang in there, Brian. We’re almost…”
”…there!” Robin pointed at the interstate ramp, and I took the turn and put St. Thomas Vineyard away in the rearview.
”Still can’t believe Mason got married,” I said. “He’s only known that girl for what, a year? Less?”
Robin shrugged. “They were in love.”
”They hardly knew each other! They don’t know if whatever they’re feeling is genuine, life-long love or just new relationship googley-eyes that hasn’t worn off yet. I guarantee it – and I’ll put money on this – they’ll be done within a year. Just watch.”
”You don’t know that,” she said. There was a brief pause, and then she added, “We’ve been dating for two years.”
”So?”
”So… how far off do you think we are?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. Haven’t really thought about it.”
”You haven’t thought about it? At all?”
”I mean of course I’ve thought about it. I just… I don’t know if we’re ready, you know?” I looked over at her, but she just stared out there at the rain with her chin in her palm. So I continued. “Think about it like this: people prepare their whole lives for jobs, right? They start going to school as soon as they can talk, and they’re not done till they’re in their twenties, and it’s all so they can get a piece of paper that says ‘hey, hire my ass, I’m smart enough to work.’ But marriage? Nobody trains for that shit. People just hook up and say, ‘hey we’re twenty five, or twenty eight, you’re cute, I’m cute. Let’s spend fifteen thousand dollars on a giant ceremony and then live as glorified roommates for five years until we’re both fat and hate each other and get divorced because neither one of us knew or cared how much work this thing would require.”
There was a longer pause then, before she said, with a degree of seriousness I wasn’t in the least bit prepared for, “Is that where you think we’re headed? ‘Glorified roommates?’”
Quickly I calculated an avenue of retreat. But I calculated wrong. “No! Not you,” I said. “Not us. I mean most people, you know? Most people just dive in and either get divorced or stick it out till someone gets heart disease. The divorce rate is more than fifty percent now in the US. But the ‘I-don’t-love-you-anymore’ rate? Shit, that’s probably close to ninety by the time everyone hits middle age. I just want to make sure you’re the right person, you know?”
If ever there were words I wish I could’ve taken back, it were those twelve. She said nothing, but I saw her reflection in the window, and the little tear that welled up in the corner of her eye said more than words ever could.
”Listen, I… that came out wrong. I just meant-”
”Can you drop me off at my car, please?”
”I thought you wanted to come over-?”
”I don’t feel good. Please?”
And we drove in silence for a while, as the rain picked up its pace and fell in sheets and in torrents. After another twenty minutes I made the turn onto my street and parked, and once I did she got out without so much as a glance and walked across the road to her own car. I ran to follow.
”Robin, wait!” I grabbed her lightly by the arm. It was slick with rainwater. “Talk to me. Please?”
”What do you want?”
I blinked. ”I want you to talk to me. I just s-”
”No. I mean with us. Where do you want this to go?”
”Where do I want this to go? I want to be with you! Listen, I didn’t mean to imply that – that I don’t want that. I just want us to be smart about it. You know?”
”Well maybe love isn’t something you can calculate on a fucking spreadsheet, Brian!” She was shouting over the cacophony of the storm. “Maybe it’s just this thing you feel, you know? And maybe it doesn’t make any damn logical sense. Maybe it’s not supposed to. But that’s part of what makes it special; it’s an adventure; it’s a ‘jump off a cliff with me’ type of thing. And yeah, sure. Not everyone survives the fall, I guess. But if you find the right person, then-”
”A ‘jump off the cliff with me’ type of adventure? Come on, Robin! We’re not writing up a damn dating website profile here; this is real life! There are kids involved, and finances, and house buying, and mortgages and all that shit! Not every day is some cute little romance comedy. This is half your life we’re talking about. Two-thirds, even. Okay? All I meant was that you have to be prepared for it. I just-”
”I thought we were prepared.”
”What do you mean?”
She dug through her purse for a moment, and then held up a ring that was brilliant even when covered in the rain. I felt my heart skip at least a full beat.
”Is that, um-”
”It was my mom’s,” she said. “She gave it to me before she died. She said, ‘find your partner in crime, Robin. Find someone who’ll sweep you off your feet. And jump off a cliff with you.’” There was a pause before she added, “And at the time she said it I thought I knew exactly who that person was.”
I tried for a moment, but I knew, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that there was no combination of words in the English language that could be strung together to right this ship.
”Good-bye, Brian.” She kissed me on the cheek, and rubbed the back of her hand on down it. And then she turned and got in her Civic, and drove off until I couldn’t see her tail-lights at all through the pouring of the…
“…rain’s comin’ down hard, boys,” another of the EMTs said. “Careful when you unload him.”
There were grunts of acknowledgement, and then the back of the ambulance flew open and the sound of the storm utterly exploded into it; I felt the rush of wind, and the rain pelting my skin in sheets, and together they helped a bit with the oncoming heat that still I couldn’t place. And then I felt movement. The gurney dipped and hit pavement while the paramedics held me down. And then there were shouts, and lights, and running feet, and then the hospital door…
”Open?!” I shouted. The man behind the counter shot me a look. But I shouted it again, over the sound of rainfall and through the glass. “I said, are you open?!”
And then he pointed at the sign saying the opposite, and went back to reading. But I wasn’t taking no for an answer; I dug out my wallet and pulled a twenty from the fold, and slapped it flat up against the glass. Within seconds the paper was soaked with rainwater. But it got his attention, and he rolled his eyes, and the door clicked and whirred and slid open.
”Make it quick, man.”
”I know, I know. I will. Thank you so much.” I ran down the aisles and then, true to my word, made it back to the counter in less than a minute. The man put down his book, and processed the sale.
”Date night?” He said, as he bagged the card after the flowers. I smiled a bit.
”Something like that.” And then I thanked him and ran back out to my car, and got inside, and took out the card and scribbled on its inner sleeve the words, ‘Jump off a cliff…
“…with me, with me!” A doctor running alongside the cart motioned to some nurses in the hall, and they ran to follow. He turns to the EMTs. “Is he stable?”
“He’s slipping. Heart rate’s falling, breathing slowing. Not good. Mumbled something about being too hot earlier, but if anything his temperature’s too low.” Someone shows the doctor a chart. He reads it as he runs, and his face is grim.
“Shit. Alright,” he says. “Let’s…”
”…move!” I shout at the car I’m passing. “Just a little rain, assholes.” But it wasn’t. It was a lot of rain. Sheets and buckets and torrents of it, in fact; it’d long since turned the dirt to mud, and it swept up against my windshield like ocean surf, and the road was slick with little rivers of it than ran on down past the pebbles. I was going far, far too fast for such conditions. But I didn’t…
“…care about that,” the doctor said. “I just want to get his fluids up. Rachel!”
The woman from the ambulance runs up and discusses my condition in harsh whispers with the doctor. As I fade, and as the damn heat floods on back in, it becomes impossible to hear what they’re saying. But it’s abundantly clear from the body language that she hasn’t yet give up…
’…hope for a reunion with these guys?’
’Well, Bolan and Snake say they’re against it, entirely. So that doesn’t bode well. But on the other hand, Sebastian’s said on multiple occasions that he’s willing to do it for the fans. And look what happened with Guns N’ Roses! Few years ago nobody wouldn’ve thought they’d get back togeth-‘
I switched the radio off, and then wrapped both hands around the wheel with such force the knuckles turned white on the grip. The car hit seventy miles per hour. Seventy five. Seventy nine. The windshield wipers were flying, but they weren’t going fast en-
*”FUCK!”
I slammed my foot on the brakes as the lights of activity in the road came in out of nowhere from the rain. The car jolted and shuddered and fought for traction with the pavement, and I felt the tires squeal and the metal of the car grind in…
“…protest.”
“I don’t care if he wants to protest!” the doctor snaps back. “You tell him to wait in the damn lobby like everyone else!”
The nurse accepts her orders and heads back out into the hallway. “I’m sorry, sir,” she says. “You can’t see him until-”
“Until what?! That’s my son in there! That’s my son! That’s-” and then there’s a scuffle of feet, and more shouts as a security guard drags my father from the wing. Rachel pauses as she hears the shouts, and then her eyes well up a bit with tears, and she looks at my face and appears to realize something. But she doesn’t say what. The shouts continue, but they fade. And so do I. And in comes the heat as I do.
“That’s my son!” Dad says. “That’s my boy! Let me see my boy! Stop! Please…!”
”…stop!” The police officer had both hands up as my car barreled towards him. “Stop! Stop the car!”
Finally there was a jolt and a shudder as the tires gained control at last, and the car slammed to a halt. Both the officer and I sighed in relief, and then he approached my window and tapped the glass with his knuckle. I lowered it.
I shouted over the rain, “I’m sorry, sir! Roads are crazy out here. You okay?”
He ignored the question. “I’m gonna need you to sit here for a bit, okay?” He said. “Just until the accident’s cleared up.”
”Accident?”
”Its bad.” He nodded in the direction of the wreckage, and then he said again, “Just sit tight! We’ll waive you over when there’s an open lane.” And then he ran off into the storm.
I scanned the scene. There was a man on the side of the road, I saw, sitting on the pavement with a poncho for the rainfall and his head in his hands. His SUV was totaled; the front end was bent and twisted and hideously mangled.
But the other car was in far, far worse shape than that. I squinted hard, and could only make out panels of white amidst charred black chunks of metal and the force of the rain. But it was enough.
It was a Civic.
Oh, God. Oh, God, no. No, no, no.
I got out of the car and left the door hanging open in the rain, and then I ran forward, at least until the officer caught sight of me and ran back over and grabbed me by the shoulders.
”Hey!” He said. “I told you to wait in the car! What’re you-”
”ROBIN!!” I shouted over him. “ROBIN!”
And then I saw it; a fleeting glimpse of movement, a white sheet flipped on a gurney. A strand of red hair fell from the right side and hung there as the EMTs carted away the body.
”ROBIN!” I screamed. “That’s my girl! That’s my girl!” The officer was confused and stunned and did the only thing he could think to do – drag me back to my car.
”No! Stop!” I was inconsolable but in no shape at all to resist. “Stop, please! That’s my girl! Let me see my girl! Please, stop!”
One of the EMTs, covered in blood from the waist up, turned to look at the spectacle. But then someone shouted her name.
“Rachel!” The doctor says. “You with us, or what? Let’s go!”
She blinks as she stares at me, and then says, “Uh, yeah. Sorry. I just realized, this guy was-”
“Just get the charcoal, please? We don’t have time.”
And she does; she runs off to fetch exactly that. And then I feel a hideously invasive sensation – a tube is being placed in my nose, and then I feel it falling down, into my throat. I’m too weak to gag, but I somehow manage to clench my fist. A nurse sees the movement, and he holds me down to steady me.
“Whoa, whoa…”
”…Whoa, whoa, you okay, man? My roommate stumbled back as I threw open the door. I charged past him. “You’re comin’ in hot!” He said again. “You good, bro?”
But I ignored him. I went to the bathroom, and I leaned up against the sink for a long moment, and I grabbed my temples and set my jaw and sobbed without a sound; aching, wracking, heaving sobs. I heard a knock.
”Hey, man,” he said. “You good, dude? Anything I can like, get for you? Or-?”
”I’m fine,” I managed. It wasn’t convincing in the slightest, but I didn’t care. I opened up my phone. There was a text from Robin there, from this morning.
It read, ‘I love you,’ and they were all at once the most beautiful and the most painful words I’d ever read. ‘I love you.’
I love you, too. I’m coming. Hang on, baby. I’m coming.
Then I backed out, and found my dad in the contacts list, and typed, ‘I love you, Dad.’
Moments later I got a response: ‘I love you too, son! You okay?’
But I ignored it, and then I threw open the cupboard, and I grabbed an old…
“…bottle of pills,” a nurse said. “Swallowed the whole damn thing. Lucky his roommate called it in when he did.”
But the doctor is incredulous. “Well. That remains to be seen, now, doesn’t it?” Then he turns to the door. “Rach-”
And she pushes it open with her elbow before he finishes. “I got it, I got it. I’m here.”
“Alright!” He says. “Fingers crossed, people. Let’s see if we can’t save a psycho!”
There are isolated chuckles. Rachel, though, almost snaps at her superior for the insult, but then someone says, “Here we go!”
And then there is thick, wretched black stuff funneling down that tube and down into my throat. I’m almost desperate enough, but not quite strong enough, to resist it. I can feel it sliding, and hitting bottom, and pumping, and pulsing. My heart rate is erratic; my breathing is erratic; my ability to comprehend the situation is every bit as erratic. I struggle as much as I can against the restraints, but all my effort and all my strength of arms musters up not more than the faintest whimper.
But Rachel hears it. She moves to my side, and she holds my head, and says, in soft enough a whisper that only I can hear the words, “Don’t follow her, Brian. Don’t follow her. Please, Jesus. I need him here. I need this win.”
But I begin to fade all the same. One by one, as the spikes on the EKG slow to sporadic pulses, I see the nurses turn to each other and shake their heads. One by one by one, that is, until there is only a trembling Rachel there, and she’s holding on for me tight enough for everyone in the room.
“Call it,” the doctor says, just as the darkness swirls in and I feel like I’m starting to fall away.
The conversation carries on as I pass.
“Two thirty two AM,” one nurse says.
But I can hear Rachel screaming in protest – “No! He’s not gone! There’s still time, there’s still time to save him, there’s still…”
But she’s wrong. I’m already gone. Her voice, and her face – those things are behind me as I pass. They’re fading away into the darkness that’s consuming me, and swallowing me whole, and throwing me to the winds.
And just when the magnitude of the situation dawns on me – then comes the heat. There are monstrous amounts of it. It rips and tears and scorches and scalds, and had I the ability to scream out or even to breathe I would’ve done so until my throat was hoarse. But then there is a new pain. A different pain.
A hand reaches out of the blackness, and it grabs my left-side forearm with such mighty force that the resulting pain eclipses that of the heat, and the nails of that hand rip right through the flesh. And then I’m being pulled, and there is a rushing wind. It is cool and refreshing and beautiful, and suddenly I’m somewhere else entirely.
I blinked. The darkness was gone, and the heat with it, and that sensation of being devoured. Instead, those things had been replaced with starlit clouds as far off in every direction as the eye could see. But my arm stung like hell all the same. I looked at it. There were nail-marks, I saw. Four deep cuts beneath the inner wrist and a fifth on the side, in the shape of a hand. They bled a bit. And then I heard an all too familiar voice.
“You okay?”
I stood up, slowly, and I turned, holding my damned stinging arm while I did it, and said, “Robin. Robin, w-what was that? That darkness? And the heat, and th-”
“Its where you would’ve spent your eternity, Brian, had I not pulled you out.”
I had no words other than the weakest, “Thanks.”
“You know,” she said, holding her own arm. “Suicide’s not exactly what I meant by ‘jumping off a cliff.”
I blinked again, and took a long, deep breath. “Yeah. I guess I didn’t think things through.”
“Not sure you fully realize how much of an understatement that is.”
“Well, maybe I don’t. But you know what? I’d do it again, Robin. I’m serious.”
She nearly rolled her eyes, but I doubled down on the sentiment.
“What I said? Out there on my street? I’m sorry. I mean it, I’m sorry. You were right. Love isn’t about taxes or headaches or just tolerating each other until we’re seventy. It’s like your mom said. It’s about sweeping your girl off her feet. It’s about jumping over cliffs with someone, and not knowing where you’ll land, and not caring, as long as you get there together. And if this is where we land, wherever this is, I’m okay with that.” And I leaned in for a kiss.
But she stopped me with her hand before it landed, and I opened my eyes.
“I can tell you’ve been working on that speech for a while,” she said.
“Over and over again In my head, in the car, until… until I got to the scene of the wreck.” I looked at the ground, and then back up at her. “And I realized, right then, that if you fucking left the earth itself than I would, too. So here I a-”
“I was wrong, too.” She cut me off.
“W-what do you mean?”
“About love. I was wrong. My mother was wrong. It’s not just about crap you see in rom-coms and greeting-cards, Brian.”
Again I blinked. “I know that! I know, it’s – it’s something you feel in your heart; that defies logic and reason. Not something you can put on a spreadsheet. Like you said earlier.”
She sighed a bit, and then said, “Can I show you something?”
“Uh, I guess so. Sure.”
And then she took my hand, and Infinity rolled in and faded back out, and all of a sudden we were somewhere else entirely.
“Are we -?”
“On the Ferris Wheel? Yep. Turn around.”
I did, and there we were, past Robin and past me, on the seat above and behind us. I remembered it like yesterday; we were staring out at the whole city at twilight, and the ships in the harbor that were backlit red with the setting sun, and the clouds that were lined at their tops with just a little bit of starlight.
I rustled in my seat a bit and it moved, and past Me saw it and looked like he was about to speak. But before he did, past Robin said “Thank you for being here with me,” and got a kiss on the head.
“What do you see?” Robin said.
“Us. A year ago and change. I remember that day like it was yesterday. Your mom had just died, so I took you here. To get your mind off things.”
“You did. That was the first day in months I’d felt truly safe and truly at peace. That was love.”
“I know it was. And I still love you, just the s-.”
“It’s a kind of love,” she said, cutting me off again. “And it’s absolutely beautiful when it lasts. But can I show you something else?”
“Uh… okay. Yeah.”
She took my hand again, and again Infinity itself rolled in and out like the tide, and then we were somewhere else. The hospital, it looked like. St. Joseph’s.
“What do you see here?”
I looked around. Nurses running up and down the hallway. Doctors reviewing notes and talking to their patients.
“I don’t know. A hospital.”
She nodded in the direction of a particular room. “Look in there.”
So I did. There was a woman on the cot. She was emaciated and hairless and deathly frail, and the Doctors inside were shutting off the last of the machines.
“A dying woman,” I said. “Looks like cancer.”
“Yep. And what about there?”
I looked down. There was a nurse crouched down in front of the same door and talking to a girl – eight or nine years old, if I had to guess – in silly voices. The girl had been crying, but the nurse managed to make her smile a bit, even as her mother died on the other side of the door.
“Looks like a nurse comforting a little girl.”
“That’s right,” Robin said. “And that little girl will remember that nurse for the rest of her life – even if they never meet again or so much as exchange names – as the lady who came to her in her darkest hour and made her smile.” She turned to me. “That’s love, too. Just as beautiful and just as precious as what we had.”
“What’s your point?”
She didn’t answer; she just stuck out her hand with a sad smile, and I took it. Infinity faded in and back out a third time. And then we were in the waiting room.
“See that?” Robin pointed to the corner of the room, and I squinted.
“Oh hey! What’s Dylan doing here?”
“He called the ambulance when you didn’t come out of the bathroom,” she said. “He knew something was wrong, and when they drove you off he followed them here. Been standing there ever since, asking for information on you every time a nurse walks by. He’s starting to annoy them.”
I watched my roommate for a bit, and sure enough he grabbed a nurse, and asked her a question that I couldn’t hear. She said something pleasantly dismissive, and he nodded, and then leaned his head back up against the wall and closed his eyes.
“Wow. I uh, I had no idea he cared that much.”
“That’s love, too, Brian. Would you do the same for him?” But she held out her hand again before I could answer, and I took it. For a fourth time Infinity blinked.
And then I was in the emergency room, looking down on myself. I was covered in vomit from the charcoal and the pills, but I was still, too. Deathly still. Most of the nurses and the doctor were still walking out the door.
But Rachel wasn’t. She was crying openly now, and making no effort to hide it. She reached for something. A needle, it looked like, or a syringe.
“What’s she doing?”
“You’ll see soon enough,” Robin said. “But that there? That’s also love.” She held out her hand once again and said, “One more.” And I took it.
And then we were in the parking lot of the same place. The rain was coming down harder than ever.
“Turn around,” Robin said. And I did. And then I stopped; There were no words.
It was my father in his car. He was holding a Bible up to his chest with both hands, and he was crying in a way no child should ever have to see their father cry.
“And that there?” Robin said. “That’s the kind of love that can move mountains.”
I put my hand up against his window. He didn’t seem to notice.
“He can’t see you, Brian. Not from there.”
I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand. “Okay,” I said. “I get it. I fucked up.”
And then she released my hand, and all of a sudden we were back in the clouds again, under the stars. I wiped another tear before it fell. “So now what? It’s too late for me to go back down there. I’m already gone.”
Robin took another step forward, and said, “Maybe not.” And she put her hand on my temple, and my eyes rolled back.
And then I saw it.
*Rachel and I are on a beach. Our child is playing out in the surf, and the sun hits her hair just right, and for a moment it is made of gold.
And then the image fades, and another one takes its place.
A birthday party. I have silver hair at my temples. Rachel does too. But it doesn’t matter. Our little girl is turning ten.
And then that image fades, too, and is replaced by another, and another, and another; each one yielding another moment where someone loved someone else enough for it to break through the clouds and be seen forever, even if the moment itself lasted only for a heartbeat. Finally there is an image of Rachel and myself on a porch as old as we are, and she holds my hand and says, “I’m glad you didn’t follow her.”
And I say back, “Me too,” and I kiss her on the head.
And then Robin pulls back her hand, and there we were again, standing out there in the clouds together.
“How did you do that?” I asked.
She shrugged. “Time has nearly no meaning in this place. I’ve been here for a while, Brian, and yet the doctors haven’t even left your operating room. Don’t think too much about it. Just think about what you want.”
“That,” I said. “Was… was that my future?”
She shrugged again. “Could be. I don’t know what you saw, and I don’t need to know. Was it enough?”
I nodded, and she stepped forward again, and said “Then go and get it.”
“I’ll miss you too damn much.”
“Well there’s nothing wrong with missing someone,” she said. “That just means love lasted a little longer than what ignited it. So go ahead and miss me. You owe me that much. Feel the loss; stand up to the storm like a man, and memorize the pain, and learn it inside and out, and let it roll over you in waves and run its course. And then one day you’ll wake up and realize you have scar-tissue where the skin used to be, and you’ll be stronger than the grief ever was.”
“I can tell you’ve been working on that speech for a while.”
“Like I said. I’ve been here for a while.” And then she kissed me, one last time, and for the briefest moment all the little scars and cuts and scrapes and nicks in my heart were filled up and made whole, and she said, “You’re made up of the stars, kid. Now go light up the world.”
And then she was…
“…gone, Rachel. Okay? I’m not gonna tell you aga-”
But I shot upright before the doctor could finish the thought, and I gasped for air when I did and grabbed at my chest with more strength than I’d had in hours. There was a needle in it; a bolt of life to the heart, and Rachel broke down in tears when she saw me.
“Well I’ll be damned,” the doctor said. “Welcome back to the land of the living, son. And Rachel?” She turned around. “Good work, kid. Made me proud.”
And he left, and she turned back to me and tried to hide a smile while she did it. “Hey there. How’re you feeling?”
“Better than dead.” There was a pause before I added, “Hey. I’m glad you got your win.”
She took my hand and squeezed it. For a moment she paused when she saw a scar below the wrist that looked like the result of fingernails dragging through flesh. But then she dismissed it and said, “I am too. And you’ll get yours. Okay? I promise you will.”
I said, “I know.” And with that she got up and left the room to go save someone else’s life, while I took out my phone, and opened up the most recent text, and hit reply.
‘Am now.’
CREDIT: Jesse Clark
|
Sometimes, otherworldly beings find interesting ways to try and contact you. They might use a Ouija Board, or maybe come to you in a dream, or sometimes they speak through another person. They each have their own style and preference that’s particular to them. The one who contacted Jack spoke to him through his computer, or, I guess you could say the communication was through onscreen text. The first time it happened, Jack had been sitting at his computer playing Solitaire. A blinking red light from the router indicated that his internet connection was down again. This was at least a weekly occurrence, and Jack was getting used to this spotty internet service. As he moved his cards, the game faded into a solid black screen and the red text appeared.
“Hi Jack, I need a favor from you. You’re a very special person and I know you’ll help me. I can’t ask this of just anyone. I really need your help.”
Jack paused for a second. The router light was still blinking red. “Is this some sort of joke?” He couldn’t help but wondering.
Several moments later the message continued, “Yes Jack, I know this is weird for you. But I don’t want you to worry. This is just a small, easy favor I need. I’ll make sure you’re rewarded.”
Now nearly in a panic, Jack reached around and pulled the internet cable completely from the wall.
“Still here, Jack. I don’t want to waste any more of your time so I’ll get right to what I need. Tomorrow when you go to work I need you to move the large potted plant that’s next to the elevator on the ground floor. All you have to do is pull it out three inches from the wall. If you do it at 8:17am nobody else will be in the area.”
Jack sat there, refusing to respond, still trying to figure out what was happening.
The writing continued, “Look Jack, I’m asking you because I KNOW you’ll do it. You won’t let me down. You’re special. We’ll talk tomorrow.”
Jack pulled the power cord from the wall and the computer went blank. “Did that really just happen?” he thought.
Still shaking from the experience, he took a warm shower and got ready for bed, convincing himself that he’d either had some crazy dream or that is was just some elaborate joke. But who would play that kind of joke on him? He didn’t really have friends, or enemies.
He woke up the next morning feeling refreshed. Work would start at 8:30am, and Jack was never late. He pulled into the parking lot at 8:10am. Normally he’d just go right in, but the message had told him to move the plant at 8:17am. Was he really going to do it? Overnight, Jack’s fear had turned into curiosity. Let’s say he moved the plant, he wouldn’t be doing anything wrong or illegal, right? In Jack’s mind, the most reasonable course of action was to move the plant. He’d do it, nothing would happen, and he’d be able to put this whole crazy matter behind him. One minute before 8:17 Jack left his car and walked towards the building. He entered the foyer at the exact time he was supposed to. The message was right, nobody else was around.
“Odd,” Jack thought. The building was normally busy this time of morning, but this temporary lull had been accurately predicted.
“Fine! Let’s see what happens,” Jack muttered to himself.
He walked up to the large potted plant placed firmly between the two elevators in the lobby of the ten story building. The plant looked like it was fake, a decoration people passed every day without really noticing. It was heavier than Jack realized. He put some might into his effort and pulled the plant out three inches to his best estimate. He stood back and looked at the plant, then looked around the lobby. People were coming in behind him now and the lobby was starting to fill up again. Nobody seemed to notice the plant was in a slightly different location, nothing seemed different at all. Jack skipped the next elevator and waited, waited for…something. But nothing happened. Finally Jack entered the elevator and made it to his 7th floor cubicle, on time like always.
If you ever asked Jack’s coworkers to describe him, you’d hear words like polite, quiet, respectful, and competent. And while those words were all accurate, they gave little indication of the truth, the truth that Jack really didn’t like most people. That’s not to say he disliked them, just that he had very little interest in getting to know them or being their friend, save for one. Allie, the girl who sat two cubicles down from him, was the only person he wanted to know more about. With her big smile, blonde hair, and beautiful figure, Jack was very interested in learning all about her. Despite his lack of success with women in the past, he was actually doing a fair job getting to know her. Every morning as he passed her cubicle, he’d stop for a chat. The chats were one minute at first, then two minutes, then several minutes. Jack was surprised that she actually seemed to like him.
On this particular morning, their daily conversation lasted only a couple of minutes. As they exchanged their morning greetings and talked about Allie’s wild night out, the elevator doors opened up behind them. Out hobbled James Bentley, the boss of both Jack and Allie.
James’ loud complaining could be heard throughout the office, “My damn foot!”
“What happened, James?” came the mumbled queries.
“It’s that damn plant they have in the lobby. I ran right into it and twisted my ankle.”
“James, you can barely walk. You need to go to the hospital,” came Allie’s concerned reply.
“Can’t do it now. I have meetings all day. Too important to cancel. I’ll just have to tough it out.”
Jack, feeling stunned, left Allie’s cubicle mid conversation and sunk down into his chair. It was his fault, he was sure of it. How could he have been so stupid and careless? Still, no use in worrying about it now. A twisted ankle would heal, everything would be alright.
Upon his return home, Jack went immediately to his computer and turned it on. As soon as the computer booted up, the screen went black and a new message popped up.
“How was your day, Jack?”
He sat there, staring at the screen, not knowing how to answer. The message on the screen continued, “Actually, I know how your day was, but never let it be said that I’m not polite. You’re wondering what’s going on. You want to know why James Bentley had to twist his ankle. Well Jack, this chain of events isn’t done playing out. I don’t want to tell you too much too soon, but this will all make sense to you in short order. Just go to work tomorrow like you normally do. Don’t worry about a thing Jack. You’ll be rewarded. You’re special. Talk to you tomorrow.”
Jack sat back in his chair. What was going on? Who was this was sending him messages? Jack’s curiosity was fully engaged, and he was almost a bit excited to see what would happen next.
The next morning at work started off as any ordinary day. Jack noticed that the plant had been pushed back fully against the wall, probably by the night cleaning crew. James Bentley showed up shortly after lunch, hobbling into the office on his one good foot.
“Man this foot is killing me,” Jack could overhear him say, but apparently James still had a meeting he didn’t want to miss. It wasn’t until around 3 o’clock that Jack saw him again. James, who always seemed to prefer Allie over others, came limping up to her cubicle.
“Allie, you’re not doing anything right now, are you?”
“Um, no. Nothing that can’t wait until tomorrow I guess.”
“Good, could you please drive me to see my Doctor? I probably should’ve gone yesterday, but I just couldn’t get away. This pain is just killing me right now and I don’t think I can drive myself, I barely made it here this morning and I don’t think I can even push the gas pedal right now. We can take my car if you want.”
“Yeah that’s fine James, I don’t have a problem taking you.” Turning to Jack she said her goodbye, “See you tomorrow, Jackie.” She put on her coat and slowly followed James as he struggled down the hallway. She gave a half turn and a shrug in Jack’s direction, with a little smile as she walked away. Jack felt even lonelier than normal when she was gone.
It was ten minutes later that they all heard the crash. It was preceded by the loud horn of an 18 wheeler and screeching brakes. The collision itself was a sickening thud of two large metal object colliding. Even on the 7th floor it was loud. The office workers gasped and ran to the windows.
“Is that James’ car?” One of them asked.
“Hard to tell from up here,” someone responded, “It’s so banged up.”
The horrifying implication of what’d just happened came to Jack immediately.
“No, no, no,” he though. “This can’t be true.”
Shaking all the way, he ran to the elevator and went to the ground floor along with several others from the office. Some of them were crying. As they joined the growing crowd around the scene of the accident, Jack could hear the far off sound of emergency sirens. Looking past the gawkers, he could see that the 18 wheeler had hit James’ car broadside, its driver had been thrown out onto the pavement where he lay motionless. James was sitting in the passenger seat of his car, motionless but with a surprised look on his bloody face. Jack couldn’t tell if he was alive or dead. The driver’s side, where Allie was seated, had taken the hit. The space she’d been occupying had been compacted to a third of its original size. Allie’s head was smashed open and her twisted body was broken and battered. The crowd was stunned. Tears, screams, sirens; that was all Jack could hear. Without going back inside the building, Jack ran to his car and drove home, angry and sad.
He made the journey home and to his computer. There the machine sat, he wanted to turn it on, but was afraid of what he’d find out. Was he really the one responsible for Allie’s death? The whole chain of events had started with him. He knew he was to blame. Jack reached for the power button, and then pulled his hand back. Finally, after several minutes, he found the mental strength to turn it on. The screen flickered and then went black, and the familiar text started appearing on the screen.
“No Jack, it’s not your fault. I know you’re blaming yourself. But all people die eventually, some just sooner than others.”
Jack stared at the screen. He resisted the urge to throw the monitor to the ground.
After a moment, the writing continued, “Jack, I’m going to tell you something, and I really need you to seriously consider everything I’m about to say. You thought you were in love with Allie. The truth is, you just wanted to fuck her. And please excuse my language, but every once in a great while it’s best to be blunt. Jack, she wasn’t the one for you. She would’ve made your life miserable. Yes, you would’ve eventually found the courage to ask her out. She actually was interested in you. She thought you’d make a good “project.” Sad really, for her, not for you. I want you to think back to all the things she told you. Why did her last boyfriend break up with her?”
“Because she cheated on him,” Jack mumbled under his breath.
“Because she cheated on him, Jack. The same thing she would’ve done to you. She would’ve made you happy for about 2 months, and then miserable for the next 4 years. Sneaking around, laughing at you behind your back, spending all your money. Once you finally got rid of her, you would’ve been so jaded that you’d never date again. This is true Jack. I see all future possibilities, the ones that come to pass and the ones that don’t. You’ve seen how she really is Jack, but you let your lust for her blind you to the truth. Together, you and I have made sure you avoided that path. One more thing Jack, this isn’t done playing out yet. There’s more to come.”
“No! Fuck you! You killed her!” Jack screamed and threw the monitor from the desk. It landed on the floor and sparked out.
Jack got barely any sleep that night, and the next day he wasn’t sure he wanted to go to work, but the last words he’d been told had piqued his curiosity, and his anger had somewhat subsided. No work was done that day at the office. The company brought in grief counselors, people shared their thoughts, they cried, they hugged. James had actually survived the accident, but was in a coma. The doctors thought he might recover eventually, but nobody was really sure.
Late in the afternoon, Jack was approached by Diego Salbara, the head of the division. Diego was blunt and upfront, and he offered James’ position to Jack. Technically it would be a temporary promotion, but James wouldn’t be back any time soon. Diego promised him that the promotion would be made permanent once enough time had passed.
“Let’s keep this low key for now.” Diego told him. “I know it might seem quick, but the Lancaster project James was working on can’t be stopped. It’s too important to the company. I need someone in charge right away, this can’t wait.”
Stunned, Jack accepted the promotion. He left work with a strange mixture of feelings, not really sure how he felt about anything. On his way home, he stopped at the electronics store and bought a new monitor. He made it home and powered up the computer. Once again the writing came on the screen.
“Jack, I want to be the first one to congratulate you! I’m proud of what you’ve accomplished.”
Jack stared at the screen.
“Jack, I have to ask your forgiveness because haven’t introduced myself yet. I’m called the Seer. Like I told you before, I see what will be, and I see what can be. It’s a very powerful gift I have. But you know what, Jack? For all my power, I still can’t do anything corporeal. I can predict, I can see, and with enough effort, I can even communicate. But I don’t have a body, that’s something that was taken from me a long, long time ago. That’s why I need you Jack. I’m an artist of sorts, an artist of human manipulation. You’ll be my paintbrush and my canvas. I want you to work with me Jack. It’s all very simple, just perform simple tasks for me, from time to time.”
Jack was becoming more and more curious.
“And Jack, before you give me an answer, I want you to know a couple of things. First off, I’ll never lie to you. Secondly, I’ll never ask you to do anything which, taken by itself, is wrong or illegal. Yes, bad things will result, and sometimes people will die. But they’re going to die eventually anyways, right Jack? And the bad will always be balanced out by something good happening to you.”
Jack winced at this last idea, but he fought the urge to turn the computer off. The Seer was right. Everyone would die eventually, why not let something good come of it? And what about never lying to him? If he’d known at the time that Allie was going to die, he’d have never gone through with the original favor. But as he thought more about it, he realized The Seer hadn’t lied to him, but had only withheld information. Still, Jack wondered if he could trust The Seer.
“Work with me Jack, together we’ll make incredible things happen. I’m just asking you to perform little tasks from time to time. Oh, but these little tasks will have great consequences! They’re going to be beautiful Jack, and they’ll always end with a reward for you. That’s the beauty of my art, one single task produces something bad and something good. Oh, one last thing Jack, I can see you’re having trouble with this. If I stopped talking to you right now, it would take you about two weeks to decide to join me. But you know what Jack, you WOULD join me. That’s right, you’re going to say yes. So instead of waiting, why don’t you just say yes to me now? Let’s get started Jack. And when all this is over, you’re going to thank me. I promise you.”
Jack considered what The Seer had just said. His initial feeling of revolt was slowly fading. He paused, and then for the first time, he placed his fingers on the keyboard and responded directly to The Seer. “What do you want me to do next?”
_____________________________
As years passed, Jack did every favor the Seer asked of him, and as the Seer had promised, Jack was rewarded for his actions each time. The rewards often came in unexpected and interesting ways. One of the more memorable experiences for Jack happened about 2 years after he first agreed to help the Seer.
“Jack, I need you to go downtown tomorrow,” the Seer requested. “Enter Garmin’s Liquor at exactly 12:37pm. A man will ask you a question. The answer you’re to give him is ‘twenty seven.’”
As always, the Seer’s instructions were simple and direct, yet mysterious. The next day, as requested, Jack entered the store. In front of him, a burly construction worker was at the counter filling out a lottery playslip.
“Let’s see here,” said the construction worker, “My birthday, that’s the 15th, my wife’s birthday, that’s the 24th, and my kids’ ages, two, ten and thirteen.”
The man scratched his head and looked around, zeroing in on Jack, “Hey buddy! I need another number. Ya got one for me?”
Jack smiled, “Twenty seven.”
“Really? I was thinkin’ bout playin’ thirty five. But ya know what? I like your face, let’s go with twenty seven!”
With that, the man completed his slip and paid for his lottery ticket. “See ya, pal!” he said happily and he patted Jack on the shoulder on his way out the door.
Jack tried not to put any more thought into what would happen to this man. “Just let these things play out, Jack. You’ll never guess how things end up, so just let yourself be surprised,” the Seer had advised him. Still, it was impossible not to wonder about these things from time to time. He knew, considering the way the Seer worked, there was no way possible that he’d actually helped this man. But giving him a losing lottery number? That was too simple for the Seer. And he couldn’t imagine he’d actually given him a winning number. So that’s how Jack was surprised, when two weeks later, he ran into the same man again, this time at the grocery store.
“Hey buddy! It’s you! I remember you! Check it out, I won!” Indeed, the man looked like a million dollars. Wearing new clothes, a new gold watch, and a big goofy smile, the man walked right up to Jack.
“I didn’t think I’d ever see you again, but I’m glad you’re here. I coulda never won without you. Hey, lemme buy these groceries for you. No wait, that’s not good enough for you, you’re my good luck charm. Always gotta treat people right, that’s what my mom says.”
Reaching into his pocket, the man removed his checkbook and promptly wrote Jack a check for ten thousand dollars. “It’s the least I can do for my good luck charm.”
After thanking the man, and feeling a bit confused by the whole thing, Jack raced home to his computer. After turning it on, the Seer’s writing appeared on the screen. “Well Jack, how does it feel to be ten thousand dollars richer?”
“It feels good. But I can’t help but wonder, we’ve never helped anyone before. Why are we starting now?” Jack asked that question with a tinge of guilt. He never liked to admit that people were being hurt by his actions, but in this case his curiosity overwhelmed any latent feelings of guilt.
“Oh Jack, we haven’t helped anyone. Yes, that man is happy now, but he’ll have lost every last penny within two years. You saw it for yourself, he just gives money away. Old friends, lost relatives, they’re all going to come asking him for money. And there will be some very bad investments as well. The stress of losing everything is going to cause his wife to leave him. She’ll take the kids too. He’ll be alone and broke, a ruined man who would have been much better off if he’d never won. You needn’t feel bad Jack, it’s the man’s own stupidity and greed that will do this to him.”
Jack felt some regret, but the Seer’s rationalizing, and focusing on his own reward, always put him at peace in the end.
Through the years, no two tasks were ever alike. Sometimes the effects of his actions were direct and easy to see, other times they caused a chain reaction so complex that he simply could not follow it.
“Go to the County Administrator’s building, park in space number 43 at 4:47pm.” came one such request. Jack did so, and two months later he met Donna, with whom he fell in love and ended up marrying. He wouldn’t have even known the two events were even related if he hadn’t asked the Seer about it.
“Jack, when you parked in that space, you caused the person who would’ve parked there to park in a different spot, but she bumped the car next to her. She barely made a scratch, but she called her insurance agent anyway, causing him to leave the office late. He missed his train home, and while waiting for the late train, he was mugged and stabbed, he’ll never fully recover. The muggers took his credit cards and used them…..and Jack, I could keep going with this, but there’s another twenty three people involved. Sometimes these favors are going to be very complicated, but let’s just say your action ultimately caused Donna to be in the exact right place for you to meet her.”
Jack’s relationship with the Seer grew. Though remaining mostly mysterious, the Seer divulged enough information over time so that Jack could get a generalized understanding of the Seer’s history. From historical references, Jack knew the Seer was thousands of years old. When still alive, the Seer had been a powerful fortune teller and artist, who foretold future happenings through paintings. A foolish king, who misinterpreted the Seer’s prediction and lost a battle as a result, had the Seer executed. Unencumbered by physical senses, and existing in a lonesome void, the Seer’s abilities expanded exponentially. Finally learning to communicate with the living, the Seer began reaching out to those who would respond, including Jack. And of course, the Seer knew everything about Jack. In all, it was as much of a friendship as one can have with a dead person. And Jack was grateful to the Seer too. He had a nice job, a nice house, a beautiful wife, and people respected him. He was happy, which is something he never really felt before the Seer contacted him.
Twelve years in total passed, twelve good years for Jack. Task after task was completed, usually about one every month. Jack, sitting in the office of his large rural house, was contacted by the Seer once again.
“Hi Jack, I have a favor to ask of you. This one’s the easiest yet, you don’t even have to get up. Call Riago’s Pizza in exactly two minutes, let the phone ring three times, then you can hang up.”
Jack smiled, nice and easy. He no longer wondered about how these tasks would play out. He trusted the Seer and simply did as he was told. Jack made the call, exactly two minutes later.
The quietness of the household was broken 30 minutes later by the ringing doorbell. “That’s odd,” Jack thought. Neither he nor Donna were expecting anyone. Jack looked out the peephole and saw a pizza deliver boy. The logo on his cap said “Riago’s Pizza”.
Jack opened the door. “Here’s your pizza,” said the boy as he thrust it into Jack’s hand.
“But I didn’t order this.” Jack argued.
“Look, I don’t give a damn if you ordered it or not. Mr. Riago told me to take it here, so that’s what I’m doing.” the delivery boy argued, as he looked increasingly annoyed and spat in the bushes.
Jack looked at the boy in front of him. He looked to be about seventeen years old, but the most noticeable thing about him was his size, he was huge. Probably about six and a half feet tall, and very muscular.
“It’s already paid for by credit card, just take it, because I’m not driving it back.” The boy put out his hand for a tip.
“I, I don’t have any cash on me.” Jack told the truth.
“Whatever,” came the disgusted reply. The boy looked past Jack into the house, then turned and walked slowly to his waiting car, looking over his shoulder as he walked.
Jack closed the door and took the pizza to the living room, where Donna was watching TV. After explaining what had happened, he excused himself to go to his office, promising to return shortly.
Donna opened the pizza and took a piece. “Come back soon sweetie, this pizza’s got all your favorite toppings on it.” Donna giggled as she took a bite.
Arriving at his computer, the Seer’s words appeared on the screen. “Confused, Jack? Don’t be. Your neighbor down the road ordered the pizza. Mr. Riago told that boy the correct address, but a ringing phone made it difficult for him to be heard clearly. Still, give the boy credit, he got the street right at least.”
“So my reward is a pizza?” Jack typed, a little confused.
“Yes Jack, your reward is a pizza, and also the chance to spend a little time with your wife. Go down there, share the pizza, enjoy it. When you’re done, make love to Donna. That’s not one of your tasks, that’s just some advice I think you should follow. Oh, by the way, your neighbors who ordered the pizza are arguing right now, over the silly fact that the pizza didn’t arrive. Some of the things people argue over amaze me, they really do. Their fight is going to get very heated, but you don’t need to worry about that. Go, enjoy your night.”
Jack followed the Seer’s advice, cuddled with Donna as they enjoyed their meal, then made love to her on their big, comfortable living room couch. Donna fell asleep on the couch shortly after 11:00pm. Jack lay there awake, this latest favor, it just felt odd. Carefully extracting his arm from under Donna, Jack left the living room and headed upstairs. Sitting down at the computer, Jack typed, “Are you there?”
“Yes Jack, I’m actually always here. I’ve been waiting for you to come back. That pizza delivery boy. He’s quite a specimen, isn’t he?”
Jack looked quizzically at the screen.
The seer continued, “He’s a horrible employee. He was hired only three days ago and already Mr. Riago wants to fire him, but as a physical specimen, he’s strong, fast, and VERY observant. For example, he noticed that you didn’t lock the front door after he delivered your pizza.”
“What?” Jack said aloud as he started to get up.
“Sit down Jack. I need to tell you something important, and locking the door now won’t change your situation.”
Jack slowly took his seat again at the computer, looking behind himself as he did so.
“You see Jack, it’s true that I never lied to you. Everything I’ve ever told you is 100% honest. But yes, I’ve withheld certain facts. You see, I told you that every task causes something bad to happen to someone else and something good to happen to you, but there’s a third thing. There’s an ultimate goal that each task was working toward. Remember Allie? Of course you do. What you probably don’t remember about her is that she was helping to pay her brother’s way through college. When she died, he had to drop out. He was going to be a great psychologist, but now he works in a factory instead. That’s really too bad for our pizza delivery boy, he could’ve used a good therapist a few years ago, but that good therapist wasn’t there for him, instead he got some Freudian quack. And remember our lottery winner? Yes you do. He was a neighbor to our pizza boy, after he lost all his money of course. He beat the boy senseless after the boy jumped into the street in front of his car. Quite a traumatic memory for our young lad. And his mother didn’t care about that incident, didn’t protect the boy at all. She couldn’t, not after using all the drugs given to her by her boyfriend, who happened to be one of the muggers who robbed that insurance agent. He bought the drugs with the money he made from the robbery. Do you see now the scope of my artistry?”
Jack sat, glaring at the monitor. He wanted to get up, to check on Donna, but he was too scared to move.
The Seer continued, “Jack, you’ve done over a hundred tasks for me, and each one has served an ultimate purpose, to psychologically destroy this boy, turn him into a monster, and to bring him here tonight. Don’t you see Jack? This involved tens of thousands of people, and billions of possibilities. If you had failed to complete even one of the tasks, the whole chain would’ve collapsed. This was orchestrated by me, and set in motion by you. Together we’ve done something wonderful, this is a masterpiece of human manipulation. Our masterpiece. And it all begins and ends with you, two perfect points in time. Tonight, wrong address, no tip, this poor boy finally snapped. He’s downstairs right now. He’s slitting Donna’s throat, at this exact moment.
Jack could hear a short, muffled scream coming from the living room, followed by a gurgling noise.
“No!” Jack screamed and stood up, starting to run downstairs.
“Jack, stop!” The voice startled Jack. It was inside his head. For the first time, the Seer was talking to him directly. It was a pleasant voice, a feminine voice. “You can’t do anything, she’s already gone. He’ll be coming for you shortly, and you can’t stop him.”
“But why?” Jack cried with tears welling up in his eyes.
“It’s not an artistic masterpiece if it doesn’t begin and end with you, Jack.” Her voice was soothing. “I want you to appreciate the fact that I’m talking to you directly. This requires all of my energy, and as a result, I’ll have to rest for several years before I can contact anyone again. That’s how special you are to me. Please don’t feel bad about this, Jack. I want you to take a moment and enjoy our accomplishment as much as I do.” The voice paused briefly, and then continued. “Do you know what Jack? If I’d never contacted you, you would have lived for eighty five years. Eighty five boring, meaningless, and bitter years. And when you died, nobody would’ve been at your funeral. I gave you twelve great, meaningful years. You were happy, and together we did something beautiful, something unique.”
Jack paused a minute and considered his twelve years of happiness, and his tears of sorrow mixed with tears of joy. He turned and looked at the computer, while behind him, the massive hulk of the demented delivery boy appeared in the doorway, a bloody knife in his left hand.
On the screen, the last words from the Seer appeared, “Don’t you have something to say to me, Jack?”
Jack wiped his tears, and absorbed everything the Seer had just told him.
As the hulk started stepping closer to him, Jack said mouthed his final words, “Thank you.”
|
Sunday
I’m not sure why I’m writing this down on paper and not on my computer. I guess I’ve just noticed some odd things. It’s not that I don’t trust the computer… I just… need to organize my thoughts. I need to get down all the details somewhere objective, somewhere I know that what I write can’t be deleted or… changed… not that that’s happened. It’s just… everything blurs together here, and the fog of memory lends a strange cast to things…
I’m starting to feel cramped in this small apartment. Maybe that’s the problem. I just had to go and choose the cheapest apartment, the only one in the basement. The lack of windows down here makes day and night seem to slip by seamlessly. I haven’t been out in a few days because I’ve been working on this programming project so intensively. I suppose I just wanted to get it done. Hours of sitting and staring at a monitor can make anyone feel strange, I know, but I don’t think that’s it.
I’m not sure when I first started to feel like something was odd. I can’t even define what it is. Maybe I just haven’t talked to anyone in awhile. That’s the first thing that crept up on me. Everyone I normally talk to online while I program has been idle, or they’ve simply not logged on at all. My instant messages go unanswered. The last e-mail I got from anybody was a friend saying he’d talk to me when he got back from the store, and that was yesterday. I’d call with my cell phone, but reception’s terrible down here. Yeah, that’s it. I just need to call someone. I’m going to go outside.
Well, that didn’t work so well. As the tingle of fear fades, I’m feeling a little ridiculous for being scared at all. I looked in the mirror before I went out, but I didn’t shave the two-day stubble I’ve grown. I figured I was just going out for a quick cell phone call. I did change my shirt, though, because it was lunchtime, and I guessed that I’d run into at least one person I knew. That didn’t end up happening. I wish it did.
When I went out, I opened the door to my small apartment slowly. A small feeling of apprehension had somehow already lodged itself in me, for some indefinable reason. I chalked it up to having not spoken to anyone but myself for a day or two. I peered down the dingy grey hallway, made dingier by the fact that it was a basement hallway. On one end, a large metal door led to the building’s furnace room. It was locked, of course. Two dreary soda machines stood by it; I bought a soda from one the first day I moved in, but it had a two year old expiration date. I’m fairly sure nobody knows those machines are even down here, or my cheap landlady just doesn’t care to get them restocked.
I closed my door softly, and walked the other direction, taking care not to make a sound. I have no idea why I chose to do that, but it was fun giving in to the strange impulse not to break the droning hum of the soda machines, at least for the moment. I got to the stairwell, and took the stairs up to the building’s front door. I looked through the heavy door’s small square window, and received quite the shock: it was definitely not lunchtime. City-gloom hung over the dark street outside, and the traffic lights at the intersection in the distance blinked yellow. Dim clouds, purple and black from the glow of the city, hung overhead. Nothing moved, save the few sidewalk trees that shifted in the wind. I remember shivering, though I wasn’t cold. Maybe it was the wind outside. I could vaguely hear it through the heavy metal door, and I knew it was that unique kind of late-night wind, the kind that was constant, cold, and quiet, save for the rhythmic music it made as it passed through countless unseen tree leaves.
I decided not to go outside.
Instead, I lifted my cell phone to the door’s little window, and checked the signal meter. The bars filled up the meter, and I smiled. Time to hear someone else’s voice, I remember thinking, relieved. It was such a strange thing, to be afraid of nothing. I shook my head, laughing at myself silently. I hit speed-dial for my best friend Amy’s number, and held the phone up to my ear. It rang once… but then it stopped. Nothing happened. I listened to silence for a good twenty seconds, then hung up. I frowned, and looked at the signal meter again – still full. I went to dial her number again, but then my phone rang in my hand, startling me. I put it up to my ear.
“Hello?” I asked, immediately fighting down a small shock at hearing the first spoken voice in days, even if it was my own. I had gotten used to the droning hum of the building’s inner workings, my computer, and the soda machines in the hallway. There was no response to my greeting at first, but then, finally, a voice came.
“Hey,” said a clear male voice, obviously of college age, like me. “Who’s this?”
“John,” I replied, confused.
“Oh, sorry, wrong number,” he replied, then hung up.
I lowered the phone slowly and leaned against the thick brick wall of the stairwell. That was strange. I looked at my received calls list, but the number was unfamiliar. Before I could think on it further, the phone rang loudly, shocking me yet again. This time, I looked at the caller before I answered. It was another unfamiliar number. This time, I held the phone up to my ear, but said nothing. I heard nothing but the general background noise of a phone. Then, a familiar voice broke my tension.
“John?” was the single word, in Amy’s voice.
I breathed a sigh of relief.
“Hey, it’s you,” I replied.
“Who else would it be?” she responded. “Oh, the number. I’m at a party on Seventh Street, and my phone died just as you called me. This is someone else’s phone, obviously.”
“Oh, ok,” I said.
“Where are you?” she asked.
My eyes glanced over the drab white-washed cylinder block walls and the heavy metal door with its small window.
“At my building,” I sighed. “Just feeling cooped up. I didn’t realize it was so late.”
“You should come here,” she said, laughing.
“Nah, I don’t feel like looking for some strange place by myself in the middle of the night,” I said, looking out the window at the silent windy street that secretly scared me just a tiny bit. “I think I’m just going to keep working or go to bed.”
“Nonsense!” she replied. “I can come get you! Your building is close to Seventh Street, right?”
“How drunk are you?” I asked lightheartedly. “You know where I live.”
“Oh, of course,” she said abruptly. “I guess I can’t get there by walking, huh?”
“You could if you wanted to waste half an hour,” I told her.
“Right,” she said. “Ok, have to go, good luck with your work!”
I lowered the phone once more, looking at the numbers flash as the call ended. Then, the droning silence suddenly reasserted itself in my ears. The two strange calls and the eerie street outside just drove home my aloneness in this empty stairwell. Perhaps from having seen too many scary movies, I had the sudden inexplicable idea that something could look in the door’s window and see me, some sort of horrible entity that hovered at the edge of aloneness, just waiting to creep up on unsuspecting people that strayed too far from other human beings. I knew the fear was irrational, but nobody else was around, so… I jumped down the stairs, ran down the hallway into my room, and closed the door as swiftly as I could while still staying silent. Like I said, I feel a little ridiculous for being scared of nothing, and the fear has already faded. Writing this down helps a lot – it makes me realize that nothing is wrong. It filters out half-formed thoughts and fears and leaves only cold, hard facts. It’s late, I got a call from a wrong number, and Amy’s phone died, so she called me back from another number. Nothing strange is happening.
Still, there was something a little off about that conversation. I know it could have just been the alcohol she’d had… or was it even her that seemed off to me? Or was it… yes, that was it! I didn’t realize it until this moment, writing these things down. I knew writing things down would help. She said she was at a party, but I only heard silence in the background! Of course, that doesn’t mean anything in particular, as she could have just gone outside to make the call. No… that couldn’t be it either. I didn’t hear the wind! I need to see if the wind is still blowing.
Monday
I forgot to finish writing last night. I’m not sure what I expected to see when I ran up the stairwell and looked out the heavy metal door’s window. I’m feeling ridiculous. Last night’s fear seems hazy and unreasonable to me now. I can’t wait to go out into the sunlight. I’m going to check my email, shave, shower, and finally get out of here! Wait… I think I heard something.
* * * * * *
It was thunder. That whole sunlight and fresh air thing didn’t happen. I went out into the stairwell and up the stairs, only to find disappointment. The heavy metal door’s little window showed only flowing water, as torrential rain slammed against it. Only a very dim, gloomy light filtered in through the rain, but at least I knew it was daytime, even if it was a grey, sickly, wet day. I tried looking out the window and waiting for lightning to illuminate the gloom, but the rain was too heavy and I couldn’t make out anything more than vague weird shapes moving at odd angles in the waves washing down the window. Disappointed, I turned around, but I didn’t want to go back to my room. Instead, I wandered further up the stairs, past the first floor, and the second. The stairs ended at the third floor, the highest floor in the building. I looked through the glass that ran up the outer wall of the stairwell, but it was that warped, thick kind that scatters the light, not that there was much to see through the rain to begin with.
I opened the stairwell door and wandered down the hallway. The ten or so thick wooden doors, painted blue a long time ago, were all closed. I listened as I walked, but it was the middle of the day, so I wasn’t surprised that I heard nothing but the rain outside. As I stood there in the dim hallway, listening to the rain, I had the strange fleeting impression that the doors were standing like silent granite monoliths erected by some ancient forgotten civilization for some unfathomable guardian purpose. Lightning flashed, and I could have sworn that, for just a moment, the old grainy blue wood looked just like rough stone. I laughed at myself for letting my imagination get the best of me, but then it occurred to me that the dim gloom and lightning must mean there was a window somewhere in the hallway. A vague memory surfaced, and I suddenly recalled that the third floor had an alcove and an inset window halfway down the floor’s hallway.
Excited to look out into the rain and possibly see another human being, I quickly walked over to the alcove, finding the large thin glass window. Rain washed down it, as with the front door’s window, but I could open this one. I reached a hand out to slide it open, but hesitated. I had the strangest feeling that if I opened that window, I would see something absolutely horrifying on the other side. Everything’s been so odd lately… so I came up with a plan, and I came back here to get what I needed. I don’t seriously think anything will come of it, but I’m bored, it’s raining, and I’m going stir crazy. I came back to get my webcam. The cord isn’t long enough to reach the third floor by any means, so instead I’m going to hide it between the two soda machines in the dark end of my basement hallway, run the wire along the wall and under my door, and put black duct tape over the wire to blend it in with the black plastic strip that runs along the base of the hallway’s walls. I know this is silly, but I don’t have anything better to do…
Well, nothing happened. I propped open the hallway-to-stairwell door, steeled myself, then flung the heavy front door wide open and ran like hell down the stairs to my room and slammed the door. I watched the webcam on my computer intently, seeing the hallway outside my door and most of the stairwell. I’m watching it right now, and I don’t see anything interesting. I just wish the camera’s position was different, so that I could see out the front door. Hey! Somebody’s online!
* * * * * *
I got out an older, less functional webcam that I had in my closet to video chat with my friend online. I couldn’t really explain to him why I wanted to video chat, but it felt good to see another person’s face. He couldn’t talk very long, and we didn’t talk about anything meaningful, but I feel much better. My strange fear has almost passed. I would feel completely better, but there was something… odd… about our conversation. I know that I’ve said that everything has seemed odd, but… still, he was very vague in his responses. I can’t recall one specific thing that he said… no particular name, or place, or event… but he did ask for my email address to keep in touch. Wait, I just got an email.
I’m about to go out. I just got an email from Amy that asked me to meet her for dinner at ‘the place we usually go to.’ I do love pizza, and I’ve just been eating random food from my poorly stocked fridge for days, so I can’t wait. Again, I feel ridiculous about the odd couple of days I’ve been having. I should destroy this journal when I get back. Oh, another email.
* * * * * *
Oh my god. I almost left the email and opened the door. I almost opened the door. I almost opened the door, but I read the email first! It was from a friend I hadn’t heard from in a long time, and it was sent to a huge number of emails that must have been every person he had saved in his address list. It had no subject, and it said, simply:
seen with your own eyes don’t trust them they
What the hell is that supposed to mean? The words shock me, and I keep going over and over them. Is it a desperate email sent just as… something happened? The words are obviously cut off without finishing! On any other day I would have dismissed this as spam from a computer virus or something, but the words… seen with your own eyes! I can’t help but read over this journal and think back on the last few days and realize that I have not seen another person with my own eyes or talked to another person face to face. The webcam conversation with my friend was so strange, so vague, so… eerie, now that I think about it. Was it eerie? Or is the fear clouding my memory? My mind toys with the progression of events I’ve written here, pointing out that I have not been presented with one single fact that I did not specifically give out unsuspectingly. The random ‘wrong number’ that got my name and the subsequent strange return call from Amy, the friend that asked for my email address… I messaged him first when I saw him online! And then I got my first email a few minutes after that conversation! Oh my god! That phone call with Amy! I said over the phone – I said that I was within half an hour’s walk of Seventh Street! They know I’m near there! What if they’re trying to find me?! Where is everyone else? Why haven’t I seen or heard anyone else in days?
No, no, this is crazy. This is absolutely crazy. I need to calm down. This madness needs to end.
* * * * * *
I don’t know what to think. I ran about my apartment furiously, holding my cell phone up to every corner to see if it got a signal through the heavy walls. Finally, in the tiny bathroom, near one ceiling corner, I got a single bar. Holding my phone there, I sent a text message to every number in my list. Not wanting to betray anything about my unfounded fears, I simply sent:
You seen anyone face to face lately?
At that point, I just wanted any reply back. I didn’t care what the reply was, or if I embarrassed myself. I tried to call someone a few times, but I couldn’t get my head up high enough, and if I brought my cell phone down even an inch, it lost signal. Then I remembered the computer, and rushed over to it, instant messaging everyone online. Most were idle or away from their computer. Nobody responded. My messages grew more frantic, and I started telling people where I was and to stop by in person for a host of barely passable reasons. I didn’t care about anything by that point. I just needed to see another person!
I also tore apart my apartment looking for something that I might have missed; some way to contact another human being without opening the door. I know it’s crazy, I know it’s unfounded, but what if? WHAT IF? I just need to be sure! I taped the phone to the ceiling in case
Tuesday
THE PHONE RANG! Exhausted from last night’s rampage, I must have fallen asleep. I woke up to the phone ringing, and ran into the bathroom, stood on the toilet, and flipped open the phone taped to the ceiling. It was Amy, and I feel so much better. She was really worried about me, and apparently had been trying to contact me since the last time I talked to her. She’s coming over now, and, yes, she knows where I am without me telling her. I feel so embarrassed. I am definitely throwing this journal away before anyone sees it. I don’t even know why I’m writing in it now. Maybe it’s just because it’s the only communication I’ve had at all since… god knows when. I look like hell, too. I looked in the mirror before I came back in here. My eyes are sunken, my stubble is thicker, and I just look generally unhealthy.
My apartment is trashed, but I’m not going to clean it up. I think I need someone else to see what I’ve been through. These past few days have NOT been normal. I am not one to imagine things. I know I have been the victim of extreme probability. I probably missed seeing another person a dozen times. I just happened to go out when it was late at night, or the middle of the day when everyone was gone. Everything’s perfectly fine, I know this now. Plus, I found something in the closet last night that has helped me tremendously: a television! I set it up just before I wrote this, and it’s on in the background. Television has always been an escape for me, and it reminds me that there’s a world beyond these dingy brick walls.
I’m glad Amy’s the only one that responded to me after last night’s frantic pestering of everyone I could contact. She’s been my best friend for years. She doesn’t know it, but I count the day that I met her among one of the few moments of true happiness in my life. I remember that warm summer day fondly. It seems a different reality from this dark, rainy, lonely place. I feel like I spent days sitting in that playground, much too old to play, just talking with her and hanging around doing nothing at all. I still feel like I can go back to that moment sometimes, and it reminds me that this damn place is not all that there is… finally, a knock on the door!
* * * * * *
I thought it was odd that I couldn’t see her through the camera I hid between the two soda machines. I figured that it was bad positioning, like when I couldn’t see out the front door. I should have known. I should have known! After the knock, I yelled through the door jokingly that I had a camera between the soda machines, because I was embarrassed myself that I had taken this paranoia so far. After I did that, I saw her image walk over to the camera and look down at it. She smiled and waved.
“Hey!” she said to the camera brightly, giving it a wry look.
“It’s weird, I know,” I said into the mic attached to my computer. “I’ve had a weird few days.”
“Must have,” she replied. “Open the door, John.”
I hesitated. How could I be sure?
“Hey, humor me a second here,” I told her through the mic. “Tell me one thing about us. Just prove to me you’re you.”
She gave the camera a weird look.
“Um, alright,” she said slowly, thinking. “We met randomly at a playground when we were both way too old to be there?”
I sighed deeply as reality returned and fear faded. God, I’d been so ridiculous. Of course it was Amy! That day wasn’t anywhere in the world except in my memory. I’d never even mentioned it to anyone, not out of embarrassment, but out of a strange secret nostalgia and a longing for those days to return. If there was some unknown force at work trying to trick me, as I feared, there was no way they could know about that day.
“Haha, alright, I’ll explain everything,” I told her. “Be right there.”
I ran to my small bathroom and fixed my hair as best I could. I looked like hell, but she would understand. Snickering at my own unbelievable behavior and the mess I’d made of the place, I walked to the door. I put my hand on the doorknob and gave the mess one last look. So ridiculous, I thought. My eyes traced over the half-eaten food lying on the ground, the overflowing trash bin, and the bed I’d tipped to the side looking for… God knows what. I almost turned to the door and opened it, but my eyes fell on one last thing: the old webcam, the one I used for that eerily vacant chat with my friend.
Its silent black sphere lay haphazardly tossed to the side, its lens pointed at the table where this journal lay. An overwhelming terror took me as I realized that if something could see through that camera, it would have seen what I just wrote about that day. I asked her for any one thing about us, and she chose the only thing in the world that I thought they or it did not know… but IT DID! IT DID KNOW! IT COULD HAVE BEEN WATCHING ME THE WHOLE TIME!
I didn’t open the door. I screamed. I screamed in uncontrollable terror. I stomped on the old webcam on the floor. The door shook, and the doorknob tried to turn, but I didn’t hear Amy’s voice through the door. Was the basement door, made to keep out drafts, too thick? Or was Amy not outside? What could have been trying to get in, if not her? What the hell is out there?! I saw her on my computer through the camera outside, I heard her on the speakers through the camera outside, but was it real?! How can I know?! She’s gone now – I screamed, and shouted for help! I piled up everything in my apartment against the front door –
Friday
At least I think that it’s Friday. I broke everything electronic. I smashed my computer to pieces. Every single thing on there could have been accessed by network access, or worse, altered. I’m a programmer, I know. Every little piece of information I gave out since this started – my name, my email, my location – none of it came back from outside until I gave it out. I’ve been going over and over what I wrote. I’ve been pacing back and forth, alternating between stark terror and overpowering disbelief. Sometimes I’m absolutely certain some phantom entity is dead set on the simple goal of getting me to go outside. Back to the beginning, with the phone call from Amy, she was effectively asking me to open the door and go outside.
I keep running through it in my head. One point of view says I’ve acted like a madman, and all of this is the extreme convergence of probability – never going outside at the right times by pure luck, never seeing another person by pure chance, getting a random nonsense email from some computer virus at just the right time. The other point of view says that extreme convergence of probability is the reason that whatever’s out there hasn’t gotten me already. I keep thinking: I never opened the window on the third floor. I never opened the front door, until that incredibly stupid stunt with the hidden camera after which I ran straight to my room and slammed the door. I haven’t opened my own solid door since I flung open the front door of the building. Whatever’s out there – if anything’s out there – never made an ‘appearance’ in the building before I opened the front door. Maybe the reason it wasn’t in the building already was that it was elsewhere getting everyone else… and then it waited, until I betrayed my existence by trying to call Amy… a call which didn’t work, until it called me and asked me my name…
Terror literally overwhelms me every time I try to fit the pieces of this nightmare together. That email – short, cut off – was it from someone trying to get word out? Some friendly voice desperately trying to warn me before it came? Seen with my own eyes, don’t trust them – exactly what I’ve been so suspicious of. It could have masterful control of all things electronic, practicing its insidious deception to trick me into coming outside. Why can’t it get in? It knocked on the door – it must have some solid presence… the door… the image of those doors in the upper hallway as guardian monoliths flashes back in my mind every time I trace this path of thoughts. If there is some phantom entity trying to get me to go outside, maybe it can’t get through doors. I keep thinking back over all the books I’ve read or movies I’ve seen, trying to generate some explanation for this. Doors have always been such intense foci of human imagination, always seen as wards or portals of special importance. Or perhaps the door is just too thick? I know that I couldn’t bash through any of the doors in this building, let alone the heavy basement ones. Aside from that, the real question is, why does it even want me? If it just wanted to kill me, it could do it any number of ways, including just waiting until I starve to death. What if it doesn’t want to kill me? What if it has some far more horrific fate in store for me? God, what can I do to escape this nightmare?!
A knock on the door…
* * * * * *
I told the people on the other side of the door I need a minute to think and I’ll come out. I’m really just writing this down so I can figure out what to do. At least this time I heard their voices. My paranoia – and yes, I recognize I’m being paranoid – has me thinking of all sorts of ways that their voices could be faked electronically. There could be nothing but speakers outside, simulating human voices. Did it really take them three days to come talk to me? Amy is supposedly out there, along with two policemen and a psychiatrist. Maybe it took them three days to think of what to say to me – the psychiatrist’s claim could be pretty convincing, if I decided to think this has all been a crazy misunderstanding, and not some entity trying to trick me into opening the door.
The psychiatrist had an older voice, authoritarian but still caring. I liked it. I’m desperate just to see someone with my own eyes! He said I have something called cyber-psychosis, and I’m just one of a nationwide epidemic of thousands of people having breakdowns triggered by a suggestive email that ‘got through somehow.’ I swear he said ‘got through somehow.’ I think he means spread throughout the country inexplicably, but I’m incredibly suspicious that the entity slipped up and revealed something. He said I am part of a wave of ‘emergent behavior’, that a lot of other people are having the same problem with the same fears, even though we’ve never communicated.
That neatly explains the strange email about eyes that I got. I didn’t get the original triggering email. I got a descendant of it – my friend could have broken down too, and tried to warn everyone he knew against his paranoid fears. That’s how the problem spreads, the psychiatrist claims. I could have spread it, too, with my texts and instant messages online to everybody I know. One of those people might be melting down right now, after being triggered by something I sent them, something they might interpret any way that they want, something like a text saying seen anyone face to face lately? The psychiatrist told me that he didn’t want to ‘lose another one’, that people like me are intelligent, and that’s our downfall. We draw connections so well that we draw them even when they shouldn’t be there. He said it’s easy to get caught up in paranoia in our fast paced world, a constantly changing place where more and more of our interaction is simulated…
I have to give him one thing. It’s a great explanation. It neatly explains everything. It perfectly explains everything, in fact. I have every reason to shake off this nightmarish fear that some thing or consciousness or being out there wants me to open the door so it can capture me for some horrible fate worse than death. It would be foolish, after hearing that explanation, to stay in here until I starve to death just to spite the entity that might have got everyone else. It would be foolish to think that, after hearing that explanation, I might be one of the last people left alive on an empty world, hiding in my secure basement room, spiting some unthinkable deceptive entity just by refusing to be captured. It’s a perfect explanation for every single strange thing I’ve seen or heard, and I have every reason in the world to let all of my fears go, and open the door.
That’s exactly why I’m not going to.
How can I be sure?! How can I know what’s real and what’s deception? All of these damn things with their wires and their signals that originate from some unseen origin! They’re not real, I can’t be sure! Signals through a camera, faked video, deceptive phone calls, emails! Even the television, lying broken on the floor – how can I possibly know it’s real? It’s just signals, waves, light… the door! It’s bashing on the door! It’s trying to get in! What insane mechanical contrivance could it be using to simulate the sound of men attacking the heavy wood so well?! At least I’ll finally see it with my own eyes… there’s nothing left in here for it to deceive me with, I’ve ripped apart everything else! It can’t deceive my eyes, can it? Seen with your own eyes don’t trust them they… wait… was that desperate message telling me to trust my eyes, or warning me about my eyes too?! Oh my god, what’s the difference between a camera and my eyes? They both turn light into electrical signals – they’re the same! I can’t be deceived! I have to be sure! I have to be sure!
Date Unknown
I calmly asked for paper and a pen, day in and day out, until it finally gave them to me. Not that it matters. What am I going to do? Poke my eyes out? The bandages feel like part of me now. The pain is gone. I figure this will be one of my last chances to write legibly, as, without my sight to correct mistakes, my hands will slowly forget the motions involved. This is a sort of self-indulgence, this writing… it’s a relic of another time, because I’m certain everyone left in the world is dead… or something far worse.
I sit against the padded wall day in and day out. The entity brings me food and water. It masks itself as a kind nurse, as an unsympathetic doctor. I think it knows that my hearing has sharpened considerably now that I live in darkness. It fakes conversations in the hallways, on the off chance that I might overhear. One of the nurses talks about having a baby soon. One of the doctors lost his wife in a car accident. None of it matters, none of it is real. None of it gets to me, not like she does.
That’s the worst part, the part I almost can’t handle. The thing comes to me, masquerading as Amy. Its recreation is perfect. It sounds exactly like Amy, feels exactly like her. It even produces a reasonable facsimile of tears that it makes me feel on its lifelike cheeks. When it first dragged me here, it told me all the things I wanted to hear. It told me that she loved me, that she had always loved me, that it didn’t understand why I did this, that we could still have a life together, if only I would stop insisting that I was being deceived. It wanted me to believe… no, it needed me to believe that she was real.
I almost fell for it. I really did. I doubted myself for the longest time. In the end, though, it was all too perfect, too flawless, and too real. The false Amy used to come every day, and then every week, and finally stopped coming altogether… but I don’t think the entity will give up. I think the waiting game is just another one of its gambits. I will resist it for the rest of my life, if I have to. I don’t know what happened to the rest of the world, but I do know that this thing needs me to fall for its deceptions. If it needs that, then maybe, just maybe, I am a thorn in its agenda. Maybe Amy is still alive out there somewhere, kept alive only by my will to resist the deceiver. I hold on to that hope, rocking back and forth in my cell to pass the time. I will never give in. I will never break. I am… a hero!
* * * * * *
The doctor read the paper the patient had scribbled on. It was barely readable, written in the shaky script of one who could not see. He wanted to smile at the man’s steadfast resolve, a reminder of the human will to survive, but he knew that the patient was completely delusional.
After all, a sane man would have fallen for the deception long ago.
The doctor wanted to smile. He wanted to whisper words of encouragement to the delusional man. He wanted to scream, but the nerve filaments wrapped around his head and into his eyes made him do otherwise. His body walked into the cell like a puppet, and told the pa |
The bell above the door rang noisily as I entered the bookshop. My hopes of just browsing through the books without attracting the attention of a well-intentioned but usually annoying clerk were immediately dashed. I hate to be bothered while perusing the shelves. But upon closing the door and getting my first glance at the shop itself, I decided that due to the smallness of the shop and the type of books it contained, I was more likely to have to search out the proprietor myself if need be.
The shop was hard to find, and even more difficult to understand. While bookshelves covered nearly every wall from floor to ceiling, they were all completely empty. The only volumes I could see were the twenty or so that were displayed on a long wooden table in the middle of the room, along with just a few more that were on what I supposed passed for the counter where business was transacted.
As I crossed the shop to look at the volumes on the table, I noticed how dim the lighting was, and how old everything seemed to be. This building had housed some sort of shop for a long time, and the wood and fixtures were definitely showing their age. It was just the kind of shop that I loved to find. In my search for rare and unusual books, I find shops like this one usually hold the greatest treasures.
All of the books were bound in leather, which was very encouraging to me. While leather does not necessarily mean a rare or valuable book, it certainly piques my interest. I traced my fingers along the surface of the books admiring the craftsmanship of the leather bindings and the titles etched in them.
“May I help you?” a voice asked just behind my right shoulder.
Startled, I turned very quickly and nearly spilled several of the books off the table.
“Please be careful, sir,” the voice said again. “These books are quite valuable.”
The voice belonged to a short, elderly man, dressed in a black suit that was probably as old as he was. Bald, and slightly hunched over, he looked every bit the book store owner.
“Sorry,” I said as I straightened the books. “I didn’t hear you come up behind me.”
“That’s quite alright, sir,” he said as he extended his hand to shake mine. “My name is William Gilcrist.”
“Pleased to meet you,” I said, shaking his hand. “Alistair Frye.”
“Welcome to my shop, Mr. Frye.”
“Thank you. I must say that your selection of books is quite limited given all the shelf space you have.” I immediately regretted saying that, as I might very well have insulted him. However, if I had, he seemed not to care.
“As I‘ve gotten older, Mr. Frye, I’ve found my taste in literature has become, well, more specialized. I have sold or given away the majority of my inventory and retained only the volumes that have special value to me. They have become more of a personal collection now.”
“I take it they are still for sale?”
Gilcrist looked at me with a nervous smile.
“Oh, yes! But may I say that the prices are quite steep.”
“Rarity and collectability are seldom inexpensive”, I said as I turned back to the book-laden table.
“I had a hard time finding your shop. It is quite well hidden among all these side streets and alleyways,” I said as I picked up the topmost book on the table.
“Rarity and collectability may sometimes require extra effort as well, don’t you think Mr. Frye?”
“Very true, Mr. Gilcrist, very true.”
I wasn’t long into examining the books on the table when I started to notice a pattern in the subjects of the books. Each of them seemed to deal with what I would call the darker side of humanity. There were many volumes about murders, torture in the Middle Ages, and several volumes about famous (or should I say infamous) crimes and their perpetrators. While I never held much esteem for this genre of literature, I must admit that, rather ashamedly, I was curious about the contents of these books.
“I am more than a little surprised at the subject matter of these books, and maybe even more surprised that these are the only books that you chose to hold on to out of your entire collection,” I said to the shop keeper.
“Mr. Frye, in spite of what the literary community may think of this type of literature, I have always been fascinated by the subject of man’s inherent capability to bring harm to others. Man’s inhumanity to man, as they say.”
His eyes seemed to brighten as he spoke of this, and I found myself beginning to feel a twinge of apprehension about continuing this conversation. I took a half step towards the front door of the shop.
“Please, Mr. Frye, don’t be put off by my affection for these books. I assure you it is merely a hobby of mine, not a lifestyle. I only read about these subjects. I don’t participate.”
As he said this, his face took on a friendlier aura; his smile was genuine and reassuring. “Come. Let me show you some of my treasures.”
* * * * * *
After what must have been a half-hour or so, I was tiring of Gilcrist’s endless sales pitch about his valueless but admittedly intriguing books. I found myself actually having some desire to read some of the books, but not enough to pay the exorbitant amounts of money he was asking for them. The subject matter alone brought on some degree of hesitancy on my part.
“Mr. Gilcrist,” I said, interrupting his latest soliloquy on a book about unsolved murders in Europe. (I believe that was the subject, for my mind had started wandering some time back.) “While your collection is certainly interesting, I find them somewhat morbid and also very expensive. I believe I am ready to take my leave and to thank you for your time.”
Gilcrist looked disappointed and somewhat ….well….frightened, as strange as that seemed to me.
“Oh no, Mr. Frye! Please remain a short while longer, as I have one more book I would love to show you. I believe you will find its subject matter as well as its asking price to be quite attractive.” Gilcrist turned and began to work his way toward the counter in the rear of the shop.
“Really, Mr. Gilcrist, I don’t think I would be interested.”
“Please, Mr. Frye. Indulge an old man for just a few moments longer.”
I found both the look on his face and his genuine excitement to be enough to convince myself that a few moments more would not inconvenience me that much. It was very apparent that he did not get many opportunities to show off his rather meager collection.
“Very well sir, one last volume.”
His gleeful reaction was such that, while I value my time very much, I knew I had made the right decision in humoring Mr. Gilcrist for a few more moments.
He removed a leather-bound volume from a back shelf that until now had completely escaped my notice. As he brought it to me to look at, he carefully wiped away any dust from the cover and with a great amount of care, placed the book on the table.
“This book is the prize of my collection,” said Gilcrist. “I keep it on the back shelf to protect it from those who may not realize its value. I trust you, however, Mr. Frye. Please take a look.”
The book was bound in very expensive-looking brown leather. It also had a leather strap with a bronze buckle so that the book could be securely closed. While still in quite good condition, it was obvious that the book was very old and had been handled frequently. However, there was no title to the book, either on the cover or on the binding. I was quite puzzled by that, and it must have shown on my face, as Gilcrist picked up my thoughts right away.
“The title is on the opening page. You’ll have to undo the buckle to discover what it is.” While I found having to do as he asked to be somewhat tedious, I had gone this far, so I undid the buckle and strap to open the book.
Mr. Gilcrist was nearly giddy with excitement.
* * * * * *
The title of the book was “Acts of Vengeance.”
What struck me the most is that the title – as was the rest of the book, as I would soon discover – was handwritten. I was amazed that a book of this size, which consisted of what had to be nearly a thousand pages, was totally written in longhand. Being a connoisseur of valuable books, it was apparent to me that this book was a journal or diary of some sort. My interest in this book was increasing by the moment.
“I must admit that this book is very unusual,” I said, turning to Mr. Gilcrist. “How is it that you came by it?”
“I purchased it when I was a young lad and I have had it in my possession for a very long time,” Gilcrist said.
“Well, it certainly is curious. I will have to say again that the subject matter is of little interest to me, but the book itself would be a great conversation piece to add to my personal collection.”
Gilcrist agreed. “I can assure you, Mr. Frye, that the book will be a welcome addition to your library. Would you have any interest in purchasing it?”
Taking up the book and examining it again, I replied, “Yes, Mr. Gilcrist, I believe I might. If your asking price isn’t too steep.”
Gilcrist took a moment to think about how to begin the negotiation. Finally he offered up a price that was half of the price he was asking for every other book in the shop.
“That is a very reasonable price, Mr. Gilcrist. Maybe too reasonable. I can’t help but feel I would be taking advantage of you.” I said, knowing full well in my mind that I would pay much more for this book if need be. I was developing a sort of attachment to it.
“Nonsense, Mr. Frye. You would be doing me a great service. I have been the proprietor of this shop for a very long time, and I am in hopes of retiring soon. It would be of great comfort to me to know that the book is in the hands of someone who will take care of it and treasure it for what it is.”
“I can hardly refuse then, can I?”
“I have a bag left to put it in,” he said as he took the money I gave him and stuffed it into the pocket of his suit coat.
“That isn’t necessary, sir, I have my satchel here. It will protect it very well until I return home. I am very grateful for your time and your generosity.”
Gilcrist looked at me with a look of both relief and sadness.
“It is I who am grateful, sir. You have placed my mind at ease much more than you will ever know. Good day.”
“Good day to you, sir,” I said as I turned and opened the door. I remember the little bell over the door singing out again as I exited the shop. However, this time I found it to be not quite so annoying.
* * * * * *
As Gilcrist watched the door to the shop close behind Alistair Frye, he could feel it begin to happen. His part in this nightmare was nearing completion. After decades of frustration, he had finally finished. He felt terrible for Mr. Frye, but that emotion was far outweighed by the relief he was experiencing.
Gilcrist made sure the door was locked and slowly turned to walk to the rear of the shop. He passed through a curtain leading to the back room, which had long since ceased to be a storage room. It was his living quarters and had been for many years.
He walked up to an old dresser with many old photographs on top of it. A tear came to his eye as he looked upon the faded photographs of his wife and family for the last time. They had all passed away long ago. Gilcrist had outlived them all. Not surprising at all, given the fact that Gilcrist was almost two hundred years old. Lovingly touching each photograph, Gilcrist spoke very softly.
“Please forgive me. I had no choice.”
Gilcrist turned away, removed all of his torn and tattered clothing and went to sit in an old chair, the fabric of which had worn thin with age. Tears began to pour from his eyes as he fearfully realized what would happen next.
“At last this is over. God forgive me.”
Gilcrist began to moan as the pain began. Almost tolerable at first, but as the seconds passed by his groans turned to screams. His body began to shrivel as if all of the moisture it contained was being slowly drained out. His skin began to mummify and his eyes shrunk back into his head
His arms and legs twisted into horrible angles, and his chest and stomach receded until his backbone was visible from the front. Still screaming, Gilcrist began to fall apart, his jaws falling open in a horrible gaping maw.
As his screams finally began to fade, he managed to repeat once more, “At last…”
Five minutes later, Gilchrist was gone, his body reduced to nothing more than an unrecognizable mound in the seat of the old chair.
A mound of dust and bone.
* * * * * *
I quite forgot about the book for a short period of time. I brought it back home to my townhouse and placed it next to my reading chair in the library. Then, due to my life becoming completely unraveled, I spent very little time reading at all.
My wife Grace chose that time to announce that she was leaving me. I was nearly overcome with shock at the news. I knew full well that our marriage was by no means perfect, but I had no inkling that she thought it imperfect enough to dissolve it. There were pressures on our marriage since the beginning. My long hours at the accounting firm where I was employed, my passion for books, which Grace deemed ridiculous, her constant absence from home, working at various charities throughout the city, and most damaging of all, our marriage was childless. Not because we were unable to have a child, but because Grace would have none of it. I had resolved myself to never being a father, and it still remained an open sore of resentment between us.
I tried to speak to Grace on several occasions about the possibility of saving our marriage, but she was immovable on the subject. She kept to her room, only emerging to leave the house. One night upon returning home from work, she and everything she considered hers, was gone. I sat alone in the dark all that night, trying to decide what I would do now. I finally determined that the best course of action for me….was to hate her.
* * * * * *
The carriage pulled up in front of the two-story brick building located just off the main square of the city. The sign over the door read “D. Crosse, Accountant.” That would be Damien Crosse, my employer. A likeable enough fellow, but a bit full of himself for owning the most well-known accounting firm in the city. What was not well known is that Damien Crosse knew very little about accounting. He had inherited the firm from his father, and if not for the expertise of his employees, the doors would have been shuttered long ago.
Just as I have for a thousand other mornings, I entered the front door and made my way to my desk, situated in the very back corner of the room. My desk was away from any window or door. I had become accustomed to this spot because I could get far more work done. I seldom was disturbed. On this particular day, that was not to be the case.
It was late afternoon and I was doing very well with lessening my workload. I like to have a clear desk when I leave for the day. Suddenly, I sensed someone standing at the front of my desk. Raising my head from my work, I was startled by the sight of Damien Crosse staring down at me, his arms virtually loaded with papers and ledger books.
“Sorry, Mr. Crosse, I was lost in what I was doing and I didn’t realize that you were standing there,” I said as I nervously rose to my feet.
That’s quite alright, Fry,” he said as he took all the documents he was carrying and loudly dropped them on my desk. “I appreciate employees who are so involved in their work.”
“Thank you, sir.” I was developing a bad feeling about what was going to happen next.
“Which is exactly why I have chosen you to finish this large project for me. Mr. Danford expects all of his accounts to be in order for a presentation to a potential buyer by Monday morning. They are quite a mess, I’m afraid,” Damien said, obviously enjoying himself. “I’m sure that it will take the rest of this evening and most of the weekend to complete.”
“But, but, Mr. Crosse,” I stammered, “I have commitments for this weekend which have long been in the planning.”
“I’m sure you do, Frye,” he said, obviously bothered by my objection, “but I have made this commitment to Mr. Danford, and it is one I intend to fulfill. My hope is that your commitment, and shall I say dependence, on your employment here is equally as important to you. After all, it’s not like you have a wife or family to go home to.”
Instantly, I was both ashamed and infuriated. How dare he bring up my home life and use it as a weapon against me in this battle of wills?
“Mr. Crosse! I am appalled!” I yelled.
“Yes, yes, I’m sure you are,” Crosse said as he began to turn away. “The question is, Frye, how appalled are you? Enough to end your employment here, or not?”
Resisting every urge to pummel Crosse for his unbelievable behavior, I sat back in my chair. Given my present situation, which Crosse was well aware of, I could not refuse.
“Very well, Mr. Crosse,” I said with my eyes down, “I’ll finish the project.”
“I knew you would, Frye,” he said with his usual arrogance, “I knew you would. Now as you can see, while you were making a much bigger issue out of this than it should have been, everyone else has gone home. Here is the key to the front door. Let yourself in and out as much as you need to in order to finish the work this weekend. Now lock the door behind me when I leave,” he said, getting his coat. “My new lady friend awaits me in the carriage outside.”
I followed Damien to the front door to lock up as he asked, my hatred for the man nearly boiling over. As he stepped through the door, I saw the carriage that awaited him. As the carriage driver opened the door for him, I caught a glimpse of the woman that was waiting for him. She nodded ever so slightly when she saw me, with a wry smile that clearly demonstrated her air of superiority. Damien Crosse leaned over as he sat down and gave her a kiss. His new lady friend was my wife, Grace.
* * * * * *
I instantly flew into a rage. I began to throw papers and ledgers from all of the desks. I sent lamps and inkwells flying against the walls. I wanted to do so much more damage, but eventually, I just sank down to the floor and wept. How long I was there, I don’t recall, but I eventually left to begin what would be a very long walk home. I left the front door to the accounting firm wide open when I left, hoping that one of the more nefarious people who wander the street at night would find their way in and wreak more havoc upon Crosse’s offices. It would serve him right.
I arrived at my home in the middle of the night. Exhausted, I sat down rather heavily into my reading chair in the library, determined to drink myself into a stupor. Before I could accomplish that, however, I noticed the book I had purchased at the book shop. For some reason, it stood out to me, even though it was nearly buried in a pile of books I had yet to read. Maybe it caught my eye because of the title. “Acts of Vengeance”. How appropriate, for on my long walk home, I had been deliberating on how I would seek vengeance and retribution from both my harlot wife, and that bastard ex-boss of mine, Damien Crosse.
I removed the book from the pile and held it for a moment. I was anxious to discover what was written inside, but for some unknown reason, I was hesitant to do so. It was almost as if it would be a point of no return for me, should I open this book. I continued to hold the book without opening it. Eventually, after much thought, my curiosity began to outweigh my trepidation, and I opened the book.
Upon first inspection, the book seemed to be normal and not at all unusual, albeit well worn. However, I did notice that it had no print date or copyright. Even more strangely, it did not list the author’s name anywhere. I found that very odd. The title page simply offered up just that, the title. “Acts of Vengeance” was clearly handwritten, in a very strong and exaggerated style of calligraphy.
I found the page that followed most intriguing. It held several lines of what I determined to be a language I was not familiar with. There were various angled but straight lines, along with other symbols I did not recognize, and was unable to decipher. I considered this to be a puzzle to be solved later as I wanted to explore the rest of the book.
As I turned the pages, I found the book to be divided into many sections, each written in distinctively different handwriting. Some sections were in cursive and some printed. Some easy to read, some almost illegible. I turned back to the beginning of the book and began to read the first section.
As I read, I was astounded to find that it was the full account of a man that had sought revenge against a neighboring landowner who he accused of stealing food from his barns. It was very apparent by the wording that he used in telling his story that it had happened a long time ago. The story was complete in every detail, up to and including the gory retelling of how the man had exacted his revenge by finding the man out working his fields, and running him through dozens of times with a pitchfork. The delight the author took in this vengeful act was very apparent by his writing, while I found myself sickened by his grim tale. He even signed his writing. Horace Black.
While I was taken aback by the story, I became fascinated enough that I had to read the rest of the chapters. Each one was a grisly tale of vengeance authored by the person who exacted their revenge. As I read, I began to have my own thoughts of vengeance against those who had wronged me. Morbid fantasies filled my mind as I considered seeking justice against them. However, I knew that I was not cut of that cloth. Violence just wasn’t in me.
I read a few more of the chapters — those that were legible — and found myself becoming physically ill as I read how people had gone to great and violent lengths to get back at those who had wronged them.
Without realizing it, I had read all night. The sunlight was just inching its way across the floor as I came to the last entry in the book. Exhausted, I considered saving it for another time, but my mind was far from being capable of sleep, so I decided to read it after all.
* * * * * *
This last entry was by far the most disturbing. The author wrote of how his siblings had conspired to cheat him out of his rightful inheritance. He had shown little interest in the family business, instead choosing to pursue a degree in literature. This infuriated his brothers, who considered him lazy and unworthy of a share of the family fortune. Using deception and unscrupulous lawyers they were successful in denying him his share.
Something in his mind snapped. Betrayal and vengeance drove him beyond the limits of what he thought himself capable of. His entry went on to describe how, one evening, soon after the betrayal, under the guise of reconciling with his brothers, he arranged to visit them in their inherited mansion. While appearing to be sincere about mending the rift in the family, his motives were much more sinister.
About halfway through dinner, the drug he had managed to slip into their food began to take effect. The drug was not meant to kill, but rather to incapacitate. The brothers were not able to move, but remained fully conscious. The author taunted them and laughed in their faces. He tortured them with their own dinnerware until they were bloody and torn. Then in one last, ultimate act of vengeance, he set fire to the room. He stayed as long as he could, watching the flames lick at the flesh of his brothers, their eyes wide with terror. He laughed maniacally as he left the house, more than a little disappointed that he would not be able to watch them burn.
How horrible! This entry was by far the most diabolical and disturbing. It occurred to me that each entry was worse than the one before in terms of how gruesome the murderous acts were. I was glad to be done with the book. As I began to close it, I noticed that the last entry, like many of the others, bore the signature of its author. As I read it, sheer terror took over my every thought. I had met this murderer just a short time ago. The author’s name was William Gilchrist! The proprietor of the book store!
* * * * * *
As soon as I recognized the author’s name, a jolt like a powerful electric current coursed through my body! I wanted desperately to jump out of my chair, but I found myself unable to move. The pain was excruciating! I resigned myself to the fact that the pain had rendered me motionless except for the violent spasms that every muscle in my body was experiencing. My only hope was that this seizure, or whatever it was, would be short-lived. My mind had remained very clear through this ordeal so far, but that was soon to end.
I became disoriented. Not dizzy, rather, but unable to maintain my thought processes. I could no longer concentrate. It was as though my thoughts were no longer my own. A montage of pictures and ideas swirled before my eyes, which were tightly closed due to the pain I was in. The thoughts in my mind were horrible! My mind was creating terrible visions of the stories of vengeance I had just read. They were rapidly appearing in my mind’s eye with startling and vivid detail! It was if I was witnessing all of the brutal murders that had taken place in the book!
The book!
That’s it! In some mystic way, the book has to be the cause of this! If I can just get away from it, I can remove myself from this nightmare! With every bit of strength and will I could muster, I tried to force myself to release the book which was still open in my hands! But however hard I tried, I could not let go! Fighting through the pain, I lifted the book from my lap. What I saw nearly drove me beyond the limits of my own sanity! The words in the book had turned red as if they were written in blood. There were rivulets of red running down the pages, dripping off the bottom of the book and landing in my lap as large, awful, drops!
Once again, I attempted to throw the book away from me, but I could not. It was if the book was glued to my hands, when in fact it was much worse. I began to scream as I realized that I was not gripping the book; the book was gripping me! The leather cover of the book had somehow grown over my fingers and hands and engulfed them almost up to the wrist. I was virtually a prisoner of the book.
The pain grew more and more intense until I felt myself losing consciousness. Trapped in a dreamlike state, the visions of murder and torture became incredibly vivid. Gruesome and bloody deaths kept repeating in my mind, each one more horrible than the last. It was if I was witnessing each death from above, and as I watched, I found my attitude towards them changing. I began to be less offended by them, and actually started admiring some of the ingenuity that went into some of them, and also took some amount of joy in the sheer viciousness of the crimes.
As I watched, something incredible began to happen. As each scenario played out in my mind, I noticed that the murderer in each of the visions was somehow becoming familiar to me. His back was always towards me, so I had not recognized him before. Now, however, in one last blood-soaked vision, the murderer turned to look at me. I screamed in pure terror. It was like looking into a mirror. My face was twisted into the most terrifying, maniacal smile. I realized that the familiar figure in all of these diabolical acts had been me! And just before I passed out I saw that the victim of my butchery in this last vision had been Damien Crosse.
* * * * * *
I am not sure how much time passed before I woke up. However, judging by my ruddy appearance and aching muscles, it had been quite a while. I prepared a light breakfast and went into the bathroom to make myself somewhat presentable. Halfway through shaving, I realized that I did not really have any reason to actually be presentable, since my wife was now gone and I am certain that my actions at the accounting firm had resulted in my termination.
As I thought about my present circumstances, I sensed a growing fury inside of me. I had done absolutely nothing to deserve what was happening to me. All my years of fidelity to my wife and loyalty to my employer had been thrown away like so much garbage! I stood to lose everything I had worked so hard for. My career, my marriage, even my dignity! No one could take that away from me, no one!
As I stroked the last bit of shaving cream off my face, the glint of the straight razor caught my eye. I held it in front of me and admired the ivory handle and the brightness of the blade. It was so beautiful. I was taken with the idea that while the razor was designed to be a useful tool, it was also a dangerous and effective weapon.
As I continued to look at it, I began to picture in my mind how the razor could certainly be a perfect instrument of justice and revenge. Looking into the mirror, I noticed the dark circles under my eyes, the disheveled look of a broken man, and the evil smile of someone who had just realized what he must do.
* * * * * *
I was becoming quite accustomed to the dark, both the dark of the night, and the ever-darkening condition of my soul. I reveled in it as I crouched in the shrubs outside Damien Crosse’s mansion. I am sure when he purchased it, he gave no thought to the fact that living outside the city and a long way off the road would be a considerable help to anyone who may wish him harm. I had no problem approaching his house unseen. The remoteness of the property, and the darkness which I now so enjoyed, made it very easy.
I waited for several hours, watching for the lights to go out in the house. As the hour grew later, they were extinguished, one by one. Now, only one light in the upstairs bedroom remained lit. I had somewhat of a working knowledge of the house, as I was often called here to bring work to Damien on the days when he did not want to come in to the firm. When the last lone light went out, I approached the back of the house and proceeded to work on opening the rear entrance. Not being well-versed in burglary, it took me longer than I would have liked. I worked with great care and caution, and eventually, the lock opened.
I stood in the entranceway for a few moments, not because I was unsure or even afraid, but because I wanted to prepare myself for the deed I had come to perform. I took several deep breaths, and shook my arms and legs to loosen them. Then, with razor in hand, I stepped across the threshold.
* * * * * *
I was being so careful to be cautious and quiet that it seemed to take an eternity before I reached the bottom of the staircase leading upstairs. I was getting so close. I didn’t want to make a mistake now and ruin my opportunity for vengeance. As I placed my foot on the bottom step, the wood creaked faintly. I froze in terror and waited without moving a muscle until I was sure that the sound had not awakened my prey. I took another step, this time placing my foot as close to the end of the step as possible. Grasping the railing of the staircase as tightly as I could, I climbed the stairs at a painstakingly slow pace.
I hesitated at the top of the stairs, suddenly realizing that I had never been in the upstairs of the house. Which room was Damien’s bedroom? My confidence began to waver, as I had no desire to search all the rooms while attempting to avoid detection. After a few moments, I collected my wits and realized that I could determine where the bedroom was by remembering the last light to go out in the house. It only made sense that it would be the right room. Knowing where that light had been, I was able to find my way to what I believed to be the correct door.
I put my ear against the door and listened for several minutes. It was hard to hear anything because my heart was pumping so fast that all I could hear was my own blood rushing through my veins. Willing myself to calm down, eventually I was able to hear someone snoring in the room.
This was the moment I had been waiting for! There was no turning back. I could hardly contain myself as I reached for the doorknob. I pulled my hand back quickly to cover my mouth.
I had this insane urge to laugh! I was about to commit the ultimate act of evil, and I was going to enjoy every second of it. Finally, I was ready. I slowly turned the doorknob and entered the room ever so quietly.
* * * * * *
The bedroom was pitch black. Long, heavy fabric curtains cut off almost all of whatever light was trying to enter through the window. I stopped just inside the doorway to allow my eyes to adjust to the dark. In just a few moments I was able to make out where everyt |
“Speak louder, please.”
I put my hand up next to my ear from the back of the room, signaling that she would need to raise her voice.
She took a deep breath. I could see anxiety turning her cheeks beet red, as strands of blonde hair began to fall out of the same nappy pony tail she wore everyday. There was something about her so familiar, but I just couldn’t put my finger on it. With her face glued to the paper, too afraid to make eye contact, she quickly sputtered out,
“Hi my name is Paisley Jackson, and this is my poem called ‘My Family’.”
Paisley was a shy little girl. In fact, she was one of the quietest students I ever had in my 10 years of teaching. Which I guess being the youngest of 11 will do that to anyone. Surprisingly, she was very smart, unlike the rest of her siblings who were dumber than a box of rocks. Lord, the Jackson kids were such a headache, except for Paisley of course. I just wish I could’ve given her more opportunities to improve her future.
Don’t get me wrong, I tried to help Paisley, I really did. I gave her clothes, food, and even had funds lined up for her. But, living dirt poor in a shack out in the middle of the desert, was a bad hand to be dealt in life. Besides no matter what I did, it wouldn’t have made a difference, everyone knows that the cycle of poverty is almost impossible to break.
I crossed my legs, pen in hand, preparing for yet another bland story about a family I’d never get to meet. If you’ve ever worked with underprivileged kids, you’d know that guardian involvement is quiet rare. When it came to interest in their daughter’s education, Paisley’s parents were no exception.
“I have two mommies. One named Betty who can make good spaghetti. I call her Mom, she’s the one that’s married to my dad Tom. One named Claire with pretty yellow hair. I call her Mommy, dad calls her his project, his hobby.”
Being smack dab in the middle of Utah, I’ve seen hundreds of polygamist families, so this didn’t strike me odd. Besides, even though polygamy is illegal, I try to keep my nose in my own business.
“Mom takes care of us all. She can do that because she’s so tall. Mommy wears a pretty silver bracelet. She wears it because she’s so famous.”
Wouldn’t be the first time I saw kids coming up with stories about celebrity parents to add excitement to their ordinary lives. I just didn’t expect it to come from Paisley.
“Mommy has me and Tommy. He’s one of my older brothers. Mom is a lot older. She has all the others.”
I cringed. That meant that one of Paisley’s mothers had given birth to 9 children. I couldn’t imagine going through that many pregnancies.
“Dad says me and Tommy are a gift from God. He’ll never hit us with a rod. His pride and joy is Tommy, but he says the only person he truly loves is Mommy.”
I looked up from my grade book, with the line about a Rod catching my attention. However, this wasn’t the first time one my students have accidentally reported abuse. Truth is, CPS picks and chooses who they want to help.
“Mom is having another baby. She’s mad Dad wants to name it Daisy. Mommy can’t have no more kids. Her last one died of SIDS.”
Shifting in my seat, I scribbled down a note reminding myself to deliver my daughter’s old baby clothes to the Jackson’s shack. As a mother myself, I know babies can be expensive.
“Dad says she did it on purpose, because she wanted to run off and join the circus. Mom says it wasn’t her fault. I promised to keep that secret in the me-and-her vault.”
I shook my head in sadness. How could someone blame a grieving mother for something she couldn’t control?
“Mommy was the one Dad chose. He watched all of her school shows. They were joined in the night. Daddy says inside her is a lot of fight. Mom is just a cover, Dad doesn’t really love her.”
I threw my hand up, a gesture meaning “stop” I had taught my students, but Paisley didn’t look up. She continued to read, oblivious to my disappointed frown. Obviously one of her siblings put her up to this as a joke.
“Mommy says she needs to get out. She wants to show me what life is all about. Dad gets mad, it’s his biggest pet peeve. Mommy is sad, she just wants to leave.”
“Mommy sings to me her favorite song. Mom says Dad’s head is wired wrong.”
Shaking my head, I sighed. Another child with so much potential, and such a kind heart, was stuck in the middle of a lovers quarrel that didn’t even involve her.
“Last birthday, I wanted to take Mommy to see her favorite basketball team. Mom made me a cake with frosted buttercream. I got to go see the Knicks, but Dad said he made a mistake he couldn’t fix.”
“Nothing is the same anymore. I don’t know why for sure. Now Dad cries at night alone. He asks God “What have I done?” To Mom he no longer tends, she hopes the baby will make amends.”
Paisley rose her head up with a smile, looking for my approval. Although I was appalled at the inappropriateness of her poem, I didn’t want to break her spirits. She clearly was very proud of it, and scolding her for something that wasn’t her wrongdoing, was just going to send that little girl back into her shell that I’d been trying to break for months.
So instead, I clapped, making the rest of the class (who were too young to understand the gravity of the situation) applaud too.
“Mrs. June, I brought a picture of Mommy for extra credit, it’s got one more part of the poem. Can I show the class?”
I nodded my head, thinking there couldn’t possibly be any details worse than what she already presented.
Paisley reached into the front pocket on her old worn out hand-me-down dress, pulling out an old, aging photo. She flipped the flaking picture around, displaying it as if it were her most prized possession.
My blood ran cold. I finally figured out why Paisley looked so familiar to me.
In what seemed to be a school photograph, smiling ear-to-ear exactly like Paisley, was a young woman by the name of Claire Daisy. She was a High School student, popular for her ability to gain the lead in every school play, that went missing without a trace 12 years prior. She was last seen leaving theater practice late one night, but then she just vanished. No sign of a struggle. No witnesses. No evidence. No body. Nothing. Her case was covered on every news station in Utah for a while, because of how peculiar it was, until people lost interest.
Paisley happily continued. I was so in shock I couldn’t stop her, as she read off the back of the picture.
“There is one thing I don’t understand, and maybe you’ll have the answer at hand. If Dad’s love for Mommy will never sway, why did he treat her that way? Mom lays her head on a nice soft bed. But Mommy sleeps in the basement under a big slab of cement.”
|
I suffer from a condition called Charles Bonnet Syndrome, or Visual Release Hallucinations if you want to get more technical.
It’s a condition that’s far more common than you might realize — it’s estimated that as many as half of people with gradual loss of vision will experience one or more bouts over their lifetime. Yet I’m willing to bet that most of you have never heard of it.
The reason for that is because most sufferers are scared to tell anybody what we experience. I know I was.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. My name is Andrew and I’m 26. Two years ago I woke up with awful blurred vision, every single edge and detail clouded as if somebody had smeared Vaseline on a camera lens. It never got better.
I was scared then, and got over to Doctor Harper’s surgery as fast as I could, suddenly needing to take a cab rather than climb in the car I’d driven without incident ever since I’d bought it three years prior.
The doctor did some tests, asked me some questions (‘Have you been much thirstier lately?’, ‘How often do you urinate?’, ‘How would you describe your tiredness levels?’) and then gave me the diagnosis that changed my life forever.
Diabetes.
Type-One.
He explained that I would need to take insulin shots with every meal, that eating the wrong foods without monitoring my blood sugar could see me drop into a coma — or worse.
Then he got to my eyes.
‘Andrew, your diabetes has resulted in maculopathy. Do you know what that is?’
I shook my head dumbly, already reeling with the shock of my diagnosis, and Dr. Harper went on.
‘It’s when the diabetes affects the blood vessels at the back of your eye, blocking them and causing them to leak into the macula, the central part of your retina that helps you to perceive color and fine detail. When these blood vessels leak into the macula, it can cause significant damage.’
With a lump in my throat, I asked: ‘OK, so how do we make this better?’
I couldn’t see Harper’s face properly when he spoke, but his tone of voice was enough to tell me what I’d been dreading.
‘I’m sorry, Andrew,’ he replied gravely. ‘Perhaps if we’d caught this a little sooner we might have had some treatment options available to us, but I’m afraid the damage has been pretty extensive. We can take steps to arrest the development of the condition, but I’m afraid it’s irreversible.’
I felt as if my world had come crashing down around me. I was just 24, still at my physical peak. I was active, playing basketball and cycling a couple of times a week. And now my health, my body and my sight had been taken from me.
The first six months were tough. I broke up with my girlfriend, a sweet girl called Holly who tried to make it work but couldn’t because I was so damn angry all the time. I lost my job, because if there’s one thing an architect needs it’s his eyes. I even fell out with a lot of my friends, making excuses to not meet with them until they stopped asking. In truth it was jealousy on my part, envy that they got to keep on living while everything I’d ever hoped for had been snatched away.
I became a recluse, never leaving my apartment, barely bothering to wash, shave or get dressed each day. I was so sure that my life was over, I stopped even trying to live it.
I was an asshole.
It took me a long time to realize this, but in the end, it was the nurse assigned to visit me at home, a tall, no-nonsense, experienced woman called Lois who brought this to my attention.
‘You’re an asshole,’ she said.
‘What?’ I gasped, shocked at her language.
‘So you’ve got diabetes, do you know how many people do?’ she asked, then, before waiting for my answer, she continued: ‘Do you think they all hide in their apartments, refusing to get on with their lives? Losing your vision is a terrible thing and you do have my sympathy, but, Andrew, it’s no excuse to give up.’
‘But you don’t…’ I argued, trying to defend myself, but she hadn’t finished.
‘Understand?’ she growled. ‘One of the bravest men I know was paralyzed from the neck down when he was just a child and he hasn’t given up. You can do so much more with your life, and you have people that want to help you do that, but you can’t even be bothered to shave that ugly fucking beard off. Stop being a crybaby and make a fucking difference.’
Of course, it didn’t happen overnight, and I argued with her. I was furious at her blunt insensitivity and told her to leave. I said I’d tell her superiors, but she laughed and told me I wouldn’t.
‘You won’t because you’re a smart guy and you’ve got too much pride for that,’ she said. ‘I’ll see you next week.’
That night I shaved. I opened my curtains and actually looked around. Things were blurry, but when I really looked, I could see the things scattered around my home. The mess I’d let it become.
When Lois came back the following week the place was tidy. I was clean-shaven, dressed. I’d even attempted to comb my hair. She didn’t say anything about it, didn’t mention the argument of the week before, but she took me out for coffee down the street. She guided me along the sidewalk to the coffee shop, talking to me, reassuring me. It was daunting, even though it was less than a block away, but I felt so proud when I got there.
We talked, me and Lois. I think I even laughed.
Afterwards, she walked me home, then, when she helped me back inside, she said: ‘It’s nice to meet you, at last, Andrew.’
That day was the beginning of my new life. I moved to a new apartment, a ground-floor place, and joined a group of other young people with visual impairments. I made friends. I got out, every day, even if it was just a short walk, but I made a point of seeing what I could of the world.
I bought what I could, but the Sawyers — the old couple that ran the local store — would bring my groceries by once a week. Clark’s a gruff old coot, so he refuses to coddle me, and he’s told me that he respects me for being like I am, for maintaining my independence, for not giving up.
From a guy like him, that’s one of the sweetest things I’ve ever heard.
Things were going so well… and then, one year ago, it started.
I walked into my living room, a mug of coffee in my hand, and I saw a Victorian funeral carriage stood right there on my rug, complete with two huge, proud horses in full livery, adorned with long black plumes in their bridles. They stood perfectly still, while the driver, a small bearded man in period costume and a top hat, fidgeted with the reins and peered at me expectantly. Bizarrely, they were far clearer than the usual blurry shapes that I could see.
I damn near pissed my pants.
I dropped the cup, spilling scalding hot coffee over my bare feet, jumping backwards with a cry of pain and alarm. When I returned my attention to the horses and carriage back in the room, they were gone.
At that moment I wondered if I was going mad. Apparently, most of us do, which is understandable. How would you feel if you’d seen that exact same sight in your home? Unless you’re Jack the Ripper, I imagine many of you do not have a coach and horses just lying around. I certainly didn’t.
Eventually, after much quiet swearing to myself, and more than a little self-delusion, I managed to convince myself that I had not seen what I thought I had, that it was merely a very vivid daydream.
This seemed to work and I got on with living, even if I entered that same room a little more cautiously in the days that followed. Finally, I forgot about it.
Two weeks later I saw a giant, floating, swirling, orange ball in my bathroom.
I damn near pissed myself again.
I stood staring at it, this bizarre, rotating levitating globe that was a little larger than a beach ball hanging in mid-air over my tub, open-mouthed for a full 10 seconds, before finally screwing my eyelids tightly closed and whispering to myself: ‘That isn’t there… that isn’t there…’
After five seconds I opened my eyes again. It wasn’t there.
Have you ever had cause to doubt your own sanity? To wonder whether what you perceive is truly there, or if your mind has betrayed you?
Honestly, compared to the loss of my vision, the prospect of losing my wits was so much more terrifying. I’d fought against adversity and took pride in the fact that I am not just a survivor, but somebody who is living his own life. How could I do that if I was insane?
I barely slept that night, and I remained jumpy for days afterwards. Any sign of movement or any unfamiliar shape would set my pulse racing, would cause me to doubt whether it was truly there.
It was the toughest time I’d ever been through, worse even than that time after I was diagnosed with diabetes.
At least when Dr. Harper had told me about the Diabetes I had a definitivew prognosis, I was given facts by a medical professional, my affliction was physical, it had a name, and most important, it had a treatment plan.
This was something else. My own mind at turned against me, my senses and perception of reality had become twisted and unreliable. It’s only when you’re in that position that you realize just how terrifying it is. Your senses and the way in which your brain interprets them are your only true defenses against danger. You perceive danger and you avoid it, preventing your body from becoming harmed. But what happens when you can’t trust your perception to alert you to dangers that are truly there?
Lois picked up the problem first, noticing my skittish manner. She asked what was wrong, if I needed to talk about anything, but I told her no, I was fine but I hadn’t been sleeping well.
That last part was true; I hadn’t been able to sleep a wink. Just the very thought of being institutionalized — spending the rest of my days a sedated, blue-pajamas clad zombie in a white room with only the echoing cries of my fellow inmates for company — terrified me beyond measure.
But what was the alternative? Live life as a risk to myself and others?
Ultimately, I chose to ignore it. I reasoned that if I was able to function around other people without them realizing what was going on, that was good enough.
A full month passed before the next incident, and I really did think that maybe I’d put this whole mess behind me. With every passing day my confidence had grown, so that Wednesday morning I’d stepped out onto the sunny street feeling pretty carefree.
Each Wednesday I’d treat myself to a latte down at Joe’s, the same coffee shop that I’d visited with Lois. It was a custom that gave me a great deal of pleasure, one that had seen me forge friendships with other regulars as well as the staff, including Joe himself.
As I made my way down the street, white stick in hand, I glanced about me, taking in the colors and shapes of the world around me. I enjoyed the feel of the sun on my face and the sounds of the birds singing. It was a good day.
Then I saw them.
A party of pilgrims, six of them, all dressed in Settler-era attire, sitting cross-legged on the asphalt. They didn’t look at me. Instead, they were engaged in a heated, yet strangely silent, conversation.
I froze, staring at them. Still they argued, gesticulating furiously at one another. However, I couldn’t hear their angry voices, despite the fact that (judging by their ill-temperament) they must be screaming at one another.
Paralyzed by shock, the white stick fell from my numb fingers, clattering onto the sidewalk. I turned to leave, desperate to flee from the haunting sight of the Colonists in the road, but I was so panicked, in such a hurry, that I stepped on my cane. It rolled underfoot and before I knew it I pitched over, tumbling to the hard ground below.
I didn’t quite break my fall in time, banging my cheek hard on the floor and skinning my palms.
I heard a cry from a passerby, a friendly concerned woman who rushed to my side. She knelt beside me, helping me up, applying a Kleenex to my throbbing cheek which she informed me was now bleeding. I tried to tell her that I was okay, there was nothing to worry about, but this Good Samaritan insisted on driving me to Dr. Harper’s office to get my injuries looked at.
Now I think back to it, I’m pretty sure that she knew my obvious distress was nothing to do with the fall. At the time I was embarrassed and angry, but now I realize I owe her a debt of gratitude. Without her intervention, I don’t know how much longer this would have gone on before I cracked up and ended up in an asylum after breaking down through sheer stress.
‘Andrew, why don’t you tell me what happened?’ Dr. Harper asked, gently dabbing at my cheek with disinfectant.
I explained that I’d just lost my balance, and that no harm was done, but I think he saw through my feeble protestations to my underlying agitation. He didn’t press or force the matter. He simply asked what might have caused my clumsiness. Then he asked how I’d been as of late.
When I’d finished mumbling my way through the most non-committal answer I could muster, he placed a gentle, reassuring hand on my shoulder.
‘Andrew,’ he repeated gently, ‘why don’t you tell me what happened?’
I burst into tears. I told him how scared I was, how I’d fought so hard for my independence and now I knew it would be taken from me.
He listened patiently, and then asked me to tell him why I ever thought that?
I paused then, took a deep breath and thought about it. This was the point of no return. But really, what other option did I have?
So with tears running down my cheeks, I told Dr. Harper everything. I told him about the horse and carriage, the orange globe and the pilgrims. I told him how I’d been living each day in fear, how I was terrified that I was losing my mind.
Dr. Harper thought for a while, and then he said: ‘Andrew, I don’t think you are losing your mind.’
The sense of relief at that moment was so powerful it overwhelmed me, rendering me speechless.
‘You say that even though you’ve seen these things, you’ve never heard any noise from them? Have you detected any odors or experienced any other physical sensations, such as touching them?’
I shook my head no, and he patted my shoulder once again.
‘Andrew, have you heard of Charles Bonnet Syndrome?’ he asked.
‘Charles Bone… who?’ I asked, confused by this sudden unexpected turn of conversation.
‘Okay, let me explain,’ Dr. Harper said kindly. ‘Charles Bonnet was a Swiss naturalist who was born in the 1700s. He discovered a curious condition in his elderly grandfather, who was nearly completely blind due to cataracts. The old man regularly experienced visual hallucinations, including random patterns and even people and places. Sound familiar?’
‘Yes,’ I replied, still confused. ‘Am… am I suffering from dementia?’
‘No, Andrew, not at all,’ Dr. Harper reassured me. ‘Do you know how perception works? In layman’s terms, your eyes take in light, via the iris and pupil, which is then processed via the retina and translated into electrical signals which are decoded by the brain, which simply organizes these signals into a recognizable image. With me so far?’
I nodded, finally starting to understand.
‘When the retina becomes damaged, such as those that have undergone macular degeneration, those signals become warped and jumbled,’ Dr. Harper went on. ‘The brain still receives them, so it does its job, translating these distorted signals into an image. It kind of fills in the gaps for you. Sometimes it fills these gaps with colors, patterns, creatures, and places that aren’t present. And this is called Charles Bonnet Syndrome.’
I nearly wept with relief. ‘So I’m not mad?’ I cried.
‘Not at all,’ the doctor replied. ‘This is an entirely physical condition; your mind is in full working order. If you were suffering any form of mental illness your delusions wouldn’t be limited to just the one sense — you’d hear these interlopers, smell them, even feel them. This is a condition solely related to your eyes, not your brain.’
As I left Dr. Harper’s office I felt as if a weight had been lifted from my shoulders. Sure, my vision was still an issue, but now I knew it was only a problem with my eyes, not my mind, I knew I could handle the situation. I was ready to face the world again.
Since then I’ve seen plenty of weird visions.
I saw a huge waterfall in the park, complete with a hazy mist and butterflies flitting about it.
I saw a Native American warrior, complete with a huge feather headdress, sitting at a stool at the counter in the coffee shop.
I saw an intricate — and quite impossible — structure of scaffolding crisscrossing the entire front of my apartment block.
Hell, on the Fourth of July last year I even saw a great swooping green dragon in the sky, twisting and cavorting through the air overhead.
All looked utterly and completely real, yet, now I knew they were simply tricks of the eye, they were no longer disturbing. In fact, I actually came to quite enjoy them, even looking at them as unique and entertaining little shows or works of art that existed purely for my pleasure and nobody else’s.
I came to welcome them.
Then, a month ago, I saw her.
It was night time — it’s always night time when I see her — and I was just getting ready for bed.
I walked into the kitchen to get myself a glass of water and actually cried out in alarm when I spotted the figure in the corner.
She was tall, by far the tallest woman I’d ever seen, and even though she stood hunched, she still had at least six inches on me.
I was used to seeing ‘characters’ in dated and bizarre dress, but this was different somehow. It didn’t seem like an outfit from any one time, instead a bizarre mishmash of items.
She wore a tuxedo jacket, figure-hugging and black, tailored to the female body-shape, over a dirty old ruffled dress-shirt. To complete the ensemble she wore a bright red bow-tie.
On her hands, which she held out to either side as if shrugging, or maybe feeling for rain, she wore dirty white gloves. Her fingers were disproportionately long, almost spidery, and occasionally they twitched, as if she longed to grip and squeeze something in them.
On her lower half, she wore shorts the same crimson as her bow-tie, over opaque black nylons. Her legs were long, lithe — attractive, if the truth be told — the legs of a dancer.
She also wore red heels, the same hue as her shorts and bow-tie, but they sparkled and shimmered, bringing to mind Judy Garland’s ruby slippers from The Wizard of Oz.
As strange as this ensemble was, I couldn’t tear my eyes from her face.
Most of it was obscured by a jaunty bowler hat, tipped and tilted to hide her eyes and nose, but beneath the brim of her hat, I could see the deathly pale skin of her face and a grin that sent shivers down my spine. It was wide – too wide – with entirely too many teeth. A smile is meant to be an expression of warmth, it’s meant to feel welcoming and benevolent. But the look on this woman’s face oozed malice, it felt much like the sort of glee I’d expect from a snake as it corners a rat.
However, the thing that startled me most was that she had a third arm sprouting from her back, curled up and over her head like a scorpion’s tail. It was longer than any arm should be, and the hand only had three fingers, like a claw. It was pointed straight at me and as I swore in dismay and stumbled sideways it seemed to track my movement.
I stood staring at the creepy figure for a few seconds, trying to get my head around the situation. She just stood there in the corner, grinning back.
Finally I realized that this was just another of my hallucinations and breathed an audible sigh of relief.
One of the tricks I’ve picked up over the months of suffering from Charles Bonnet Syndrome is to break the line of vision toward whichever stimulus is causing my brain to interpret the images into the hallucination. Think of it like restarting a faulty computer, how refreshing the system debugs it. To this end I close my eyes and count to five. Then, when I reopen them, the hallucination is gone.
So, as I stared at the horrifying, malformed figure in my kitchen, I knew that to make the image go away I simply had to close my eyes.
I’ll be honest here, when I counted to five I hesitated a little before opening my eyes. If I’d opened my eyes and she’d still been stood there, smiling that wicked smile at me, I think I might have had a heart attack. She wasn’t, and I breathed another long sigh of relief, fetched my glass of water and went back to bed.
The Tall Woman haunted my thoughts in the days after I saw her. She was different from the other visions I’d had. Somehow she felt more real.
It was this agitation that my buddy Jason picked up on when we met for lunch the following Friday. Jason was one of those same friends I’d tried to drive away shortly after I lost my vision, yet he’d refused to give up on me, continuing to get in touch week after week.
Good friends are hard to come by, but great friends — the ones who will be by your side for life — are even rarer. Jason, God bless his kind heart, is one of the latter.
‘You’ve got to tell me what’s going on, dude,’ he said, as we sat down over pizza.
‘What do you mean?’ I asked, trying to brush it off.
‘You’re so distracted, it’s like you’re looking for something in here all the time. You’ve eaten, like, one slice in pizza in the time it’s taken me to eat four. So, I repeat, you’ve got to tell me what’s going on,’ Jason said, waving a slice of pizza around for emphasis.
‘It’s nothing,’ I replied, feeling a little stupid, ‘I just had a hallucination a couple of nights ago that really got to me.’
‘I thought you were cool with those now?’ he asked, putting the pizza slice down.
‘Yeah, I am. I mean, I was, but this was different,’ I replied, resigned to talking about it. ‘She scared me.’
‘She?’ Jason asked, his interest clearly piqued. ‘Tell me about it.’
So I did, I described the Tall Woman and how she’d appeared to me. I explained that unlike any of my other hallucinations she felt more real, and that she was the first to feature such a weird and unsettling mutation. Sure, I’d seen smaller versions of people in the past (a phenomenon referred to as Lilliputian by medical professionals), but the extra appendage and impossibly distorted face were something I had yet to encounter thus far. I think it was that, combined with the unnerving expectant stance, that had disturbed me the most.
‘So,’ Jason said after I’d finished, ‘You say she had great legs?’
‘Shut up, you asshole,’ I laughed, throwing my napkin at him.
‘No, seriously, I get it, man,’ Jason replied, passing the napkin back to me. ‘If I walked into a room and a giant mutant was waiting for me, it’d scare the shit out of me too. But you know what caused you to see this. It’s like the coachman and that waterfall you saw, it’s a condition that you know you have and it’s one that you know how to deal with, OK?’
‘I know, I know,’ I replied. ‘Thanks, man, you’re right.’
I did feel better too, so I smiled at him, took a big bite of my pizza and changed the subject, asking him about his psycho ex, a conversation he was all too happy to dive in to.
The next time I saw the Tall Woman, just under a week later, I was brushing my teeth.
I was stood at the washbasin, brushing away, when I spotted a figure in the mirror. She was out in the dark hallway, peeking around the door behind me. That same sinister grin I’d seen before stretched her narrow face into a distorted grimace, the dirty bowler hat pushed down over her eyes once again.
Each of those three long spidery hands gripped the door frame.
As crazy as this sounds, it felt like she was trying to avoid being spotted.
I cried out, spitting toothpaste foam all over the mirror, my toothbrush clattering into the basin.
I spun around, my heart thumping in my chest, my breathing ragged in my throat.
She wasn’t there. Of course, she wasn’t.
The doorway was empty.
I tiptoed forward, hesitantly, trying to look around the doorframe into the hallway without actually sticking my neck out into its shadowy confines. The seconds ticked by as I drew closer and closer. I couldn’t see anything so, finally, with a whisper of self-affirmation, I stepped out of the bathroom. The hallway was empty, as was the rest of my apartment.
I was shaken again — this was the first time I’d seen a hallucination in a reflection, and I wasn’t even sure that I’d actually seen it.
Now, as I sit here, writing this, knowing what would follow, I think I thought like that to try to protect myself, to shield myself from the truth.
I was an idiot.
A full fortnight passed without incident. Sure, I saw a flash of color one day, a dancing yellow lightning bolt that zigzagged back and forth on the street outside my apartment, but that was exactly the sort of thing I’d come to expect from my condition. It was exciting, otherworldly, but it wasn’t scary, not like she was.
In retrospect, that fortnight was blissful. It was a reminder of what life could be like, the existence that I’d carved out for myself since my diagnosis. Life was good.
The night that changed the way I viewed the Tall Woman, last night, I’d been out and had a couple of drinks. I’d met the other guys with visual impairment for dinner and we’d ended up at a bar afterwards. I wasn’t hammered, but we got through plenty of beer between us, and by the time I stepped out into the cool night air, I felt decidedly light-headed.
It took me a while to make it home, laughing and talking to a couple of the other guys from our group as we strolled along. It had been a great evening.
It’s probably the last truly good one I’ll ever have.
I bid the other guys goodnight and, fumbling with my key, let myself in.
With swaying steps, I strolled into my hallway, slamming the door a little too loudly behind me.
I took off my jacket, hung it on the hook by the door, and then hit the light switch.
She was waiting at the end of the hallway, all three hands held aloft into claws, reaching for me, that same maddening malevolent grin on her pale face.
I swore again, louder than ever, actually jumping back a step, recoiling from the impossibly tall and terrifying figure lying in wait in my own home.
The Tall Woman didn’t move. She just stood there, staring and smiling at me.
I stared back, but I sure as hell didn’t smile.
‘Jesus Christ…’ I muttered under my breath. You know how you can feel a little paranoid after a few beers? That feeling of non-specific post-alcohol dread? Imagine that combined with a giant grinning mutant woman suddenly appearing in your home.
Suffice it to say, it was very, very, very uncool.
‘I don’t need this,’ I sighed and closed my eyes.
One…
Two…
Three…
Four…
Five…
When I opened my eyes her face was just a foot from my own, grinning wider than ever.
She’d dashed the length of the hallway and was now stood so close that her long, grasping arms were either side of me, her fingers twitching and clawing at the air around my face. I could see her chest heaving as if she were actually laughing silently at my attempts to dismiss her.
As if the thought that I could ever be free of her was amusing.
I screamed, a full-bodied shriek of terror, and actually dropped to my knees, covering my head as if to fend off an expected blow. It never came.
Finally, I lowered my hands, gasping for breath, shaking. The hallway was empty, the Tall Woman nowhere to be seen.
I stayed there, on my knees, for a moment, gasping for breath, then I was on my feet and I turned and ran, out of the apartment, out of the building and into the street.
I stood there, shivering, terrified beyond reason, without a clue as to what I’d do next.
Finally, I pulled my phone from my pocket and I made a phone call.
‘Hey, Andy, what’s up?’ Jason asked.
‘Jason, I need you to come here,’ I said, sobbing.
Jason didn’t ask why, didn’t complain, instead he simply replied: ‘I’m on my way.’
Less than 20 minutes later his car pulled up outside and he dashed over to the steps outside my building where I was sitting, shivering.
He threw his jacket around my shoulders and asked what happened, his voice filled with concern.
‘She’s in there!’ I stammered. ‘The Tall Woman. She’s back.’
‘Okay, Okay,’ he said, gently helping me to my feet. ‘Come on, man, let’s go in there and check it out.’
I wish I could say that I was brave when we went inside, but I’d be lying. I cowered behind Jason, one hand on his shoulder as we made our way through my home. Of course, we didn’t find a thing — we’re talking a giant mutant woman in a poky little one-bed apartment — where the hell was she going to hide?
Finally, after we’d checked every single room twice, I had to admit that she was gone.
‘I’m so sorry, man,’ I apologized, feeling genuinely stupid. ‘I got scared and… I’m sorry man…’
‘Hey, forget about it, buddy,’ Jason said. ‘So, I’m here now, where do you keep your booze?’
Half a bottle of bourbon later, we were both feeling pretty talkative.
‘She’s, you know, just kind of different, you know?’ I tried to explain.
‘I get it, I get it,’ he said. ‘It’s like, you saw something bad and you feel bad and… that’s bad.’
He didn’t get it.
‘No, she’s different, you know,’ I explained. ‘I’ve never had a repeat hallucination before. And they’ve never been scary, you know. She’s not like the others.’
‘Dude,’ Jason said, taking another sip of bourbon, ‘you’ve got, like, Charlie Bony Syndrome and you know that makes you see shit, so…’ He waved his hands in the air like a magician who’d just performed a trick.
‘I know, I know…’ I replied.
‘No listen, Andy,’ he said. ‘You know it makes you see shit, it’s just your eyes, yeah? You didn’t hear anything, you didn’t feel anything. This is how that stuff goes. It’s your eyes, and I know it’s scary, man, but you’ve been through, like… hell and high water in your life so far. You’re tough — one of the toughest, bravest guys I know — and you can handle some creepy hallucination bitch.’
I laughed, I couldn’t help it.
‘She is a very creepy hallucination bitch though, dude.’
He laughed too and we both took a drink.
‘You know, that could help…’ he said finally, his voice thoughtful.
‘What, drinking?’ I asked.
‘No… well, yes, it does,’ he giggled. ‘I mean like, demystifying her. You should give her a name. Something stupid, so she’s not scary.’
‘I’ve got say that as much as I like Creepy Hallucination Bitch, that’s a bit of a mouthful,’ I laughed.
‘Yeah, I get that,’ he replied.
Suddenly something he’d said came back to me.
‘How about Helen?’ I suggested. ‘Helen Highwater?’
‘Awesome,’ he said, then raised his glass. ‘Here’s to Helen, buddy.’
‘To Helen,’ I smiled and drained my glass.
Jason spent the night on my sofa, mainly because he’d had too much to drink to even think about getting behind the wheel of a vehicle, but honestly, I think the reason he drank so much was so he’d have an excuse to stay and keep an eye on me.
I’m glad he did, knowing that he was there made me feel safer and I was able to get some sleep. It gave me a sense of security to know that if the strange vision I’d just christened Helen was to appear again, I’d be able to call on him for support.
This morning, we both needed support.
‘It feels like a mule kicked me in the head,’ he groaned when I made my way into the living room.
‘Yep,’ I replied, my own head thumping. ‘Joe’s?’
‘Joe’s,’ he replied firmly, and staggered to his feet.
As we drank strong black coffee and ate muffins, we didn’t talk much.
Finally, Jason broke the silence.
‘So, you feel cool now?’ he asked, his mouth still full of blueberry muffin.
I nodded. ‘Yeah, I think so.’
‘Not still freaked out about you-know-who?’ he asked.
‘Helen?’ I replied with a smile. ‘No, I really don’t think I am. I reckon I can handle some creepy hallucination bitch.’
‘Good,’ he laughed, giving me a hearty pat on the back. ‘That’s cool, man. I bet you can.’
Now, as I sit here cowering in my bathroom, too scared to go out into my apartment, I know we were both wrong. About everything.
Remember how earlier I told you that the thought of being institutionalized, that the very idea of losing my grasp on reality was the most terrifying thing I could imagine?
Now I’d welcome that, because the alternative is far, far worse.
After breakfast, I said goodbye to Jason and he climbed into his car and drove away.
The day passed without incident, and when Lois stopped by this afternoon she even commented on how upbeat I seemed.
‘You got a lady in your life?’ she asked, casually.
I laughed at that, wondered what she’d think if she knew the truth.
‘Yeah,’ I chuckled, ‘Something like that.’
‘Good for you,’ she sniffed. ‘You make sure you treat her right.’
That tickled me even more and I had to bite my lip.
‘Sure,’ I replied, ‘I’ll do my best.’
Tonight, still a little wiped from the exertions of the previous evening, I decided to turn in early. I brushed my teeth, washed my hands and face, and got changed. Finally, I fetched a glass of water and walked into my bed |
My grandfather grew up on a chicken farm outside of Krakow, Poland. He passed away a few years ago at the age of 82. A few days before his passing on, due to an aggressive form of stomach cancer, he sat me down next to him in his old rocking chair and said in his familiar polish accent, “After I took the boat to New York, I promised to leave this story behind.”
He didn’t look up as he spoke to me, simply staring into his cup of black coffee. “It’s been 70 years, and I must tell someone before I meet God.”
“I was born in a small, quaint, empty town, which, despite the Nazi occupation, still functioned. We lived in this two-bedroom farmhouse, my father, mother, and my brothers Michal and Igor. I’m sorry you never got to meet any of them. Anyway, Michal and Igor were twins – identical twins actually – and we had heard rumors of the Nazi fascination with identical twins. This forced us to be even more reserved, even though we already lived in a secluded part of the countryside, in the last occupied house in the town. In order to avoid going into the occupied towns, we basically ate only chicken and eggs for every meal, and whatever else Mama could gather from the garden. It was lonely, but we survived.
“The thing that was most difficult for me was the fact I had to sleep in the basement. Due to Michel and Igor being toddlers, they required my father and mother’s attention. The basement was cold, with only a small window, and the moonlight was the only light I got. Because of this, I always delayed going down there until I was absolutely exhausted, so I wouldn’t have to lie there awake. On the nights that I couldn’t manage to sleep, I would look out of the window, which gave me a small view of the garden and the large, abandoned water well. This was my daily activity throughout those lonely war-torn nights. In general, it was boring and uneventful, but occasionally I would catch a glimpse of a family, or even just a man, or two lovers, sneaking their way through our garden up to our front door. They always looked rushed and frightened, and sometimes wore tattered uniforms. What would follow were horrible sounds of banging and pleadings for whoever lived there to open up, followed by an argument between my father and mother over whether we should let them in.”
He moved in the chair to adjust himself.
“You see, son, we didn’t know it – well, at least I didn’t – that we lived fairly close to the Auschwitz Concentration Camp, and that those people were escapees.”
“Well, did your father let them in?!” I asked impatiently.
“No,” he said. “It would have been a death sentence for them as well as for us. The Nazis didn’t like Poles, but they tolerated us, and it was easier to hide Michel or Igor than an entire family. My father did what he had to do in order to keep his family alive. As the war went on, fewer and fewer people began showing up in the middle of the night. That’s about the time our chicken and vegetables began to disappear. Losing our only supply of food would not have been tolerable, and at that point, my father suspected it was the escapees, so he built a fence around our property. Despite this, the chickens continued to disappear. They weren’t killed; they were simply gone. Just vanished from their cages and pens.
“One night, I decided to stay up myself in order to see if I could find out the answer. I battled my tiredness until the wee hours of the morning, and despite the poor lighting and rain, I caught a glimpse of what seemed to be a human figure run across the garden. I rushed upstairs to tell my father, and he ran outside with a knife, the best home-defense weapon we could afford, but we found nothing. No one.”
“The next day we did find something, though. Footprints. Leading from the chicken cages to the water well. They were made in the wet mud from the rain, and they were of bare feet. No shoes. No socks. Just feet. My father had mercy on the man who was trying to find refuge and left him a note, indicating that he had two days to leave and then he would begin to seal the well.”
I waited impatiently for my grandfather to tell me about the fate of the man.
“The following night, I got the idea to take a blanket down the well to the man since winter was creeping in. I waited until my parents were asleep and I snuck outside. I shouted something friendly down the well, indicating to the poor man that my intentions were benign, and I began my descent, clinging hand and foot to the pegs attached to the stones. As I neared the bottom I smelled something absolutely horrific, and I pulled my father’s flashlight from my pocket to try and shine it on the man. It was then I came to the realization of just how large the well was, having been used to supply water for the entire town and its families in the past. Families which no longer remained.
“But I found no man, only a hole. A gap in the stone, where the wall of the well had collapsed, opening up to some type of crevice only two meters wide and three meters deep and tall. Inside sat not a man, but an entire family, of which only a single skeleton-like creature survived. The light reflected off of its sunken eyes and gray skin. Blood covered its face, and chicken carcasses were strewn everywhere – a pile of decomposing poultry beside a woman and what I suspected had been her son and daughter, children who couldn’t have been much more than five years old. And they seemed to have been dead for weeks. The man, if he even could be called that, just gazed at the light, and I stared back, incapable of breaking his stare. I did not feel threatened by him, for he lacked any aggression whatsoever. He simply crouched motionlessly, without a sound, next to the putrefying bodies of his loved ones and the chickens that must have been his source of water, as their meat was uneaten.
“He was empty, devoid of whatever in us makes us human. He should have realized the members of his family had died long ago, but he was still bringing food for their corpses. He couldn’t accept it. He did finally turn his head, though, when I shone the light back onto the corpse of his daughter. He stared at her, and then sat down closer to her, and continued his vigil.
“’You can leave now,’ I said to him. ‘I’ll open the gate so you can escape. My father will seal the well in the morning. Please leave now.’ My young voice and advice seemed to have no effect on him.
“At that moment I decided it would be better for me to just climb back up the well and leave, and hoped the man would follow and escape. As I began my climb, I shone the light on him one final time.”
“What did you see, Grandpa?” I shuttered.
“I saw a tear fall from his eye. He had become a man once again. He was only able to break free from the delusion after seeing the body of his daughter, which had until that time been obscured by the darkness. He realized then that he had been bringing food not to his family, but to corpses.
“That night it rained again, but in the morning when my father returned to seal the well, I found no footprints leading out of it.”
|
Publisher’s Note: This is a companion piece to Slum.
I never liked Rustic Gables Skilled Nursing Facility.
Years ago, I worked as an EMT for MediTrans Ambulance Service. We did inter-facility transports, mostly dialysis runs and hospital discharges, so I spent a lot of time around crappy nursing homes. But even with my bar set as low as it was, Rustic Gables SNF still managed to underwhelm.
The four-story building itself put off an air of hostility. Near Sixth and Alvarado in a slummy corner of Westlake, Rustic Gables SNF sat like a diseased tooth – a squat, square, filthy-white structure jutting out of a narrow, uneven parking lot surrounded by a fourteen-foot fence.
Inside, Rustic Gables was, well, exactly how you’d expect. The residents were crammed four to a too-small room. Every August, half the ancient window air units broke down. Their one-and-a-half star rating was on display over the reception desk, and I’m pretty sure they only managed the extra half-star because someone knew how to BS the inspector.
The faceless healthcare conglomerate that owned the place had bought the property from a bank auction. I’d never leave anyone I loved at Rustic Gables SNF.
Rustic Gables burned through nurses like cheap cigarettes. It seemed like every time I approached a nursing station, I was greeted by a different young woman in stained scrubs. Meanwhile, my partner and I would run into ex-Rustic Gables employees everywhere we went – dialysis centers, hospitals, other SNFs.
It was rumored that Rustic Gables was haunted.
Stories were told of eerie voices behind patients’ closed doors. Of strangers seen wandering the halls, of objects moving by themselves, and of staff members somehow teleporting themselves all over the facility without realizing it. I heard more than one tale in which the teller swore they’d seen a nurse walk into a patient’s room, fail to reappear, then be found on the next floor up – swearing she hadn’t been near the patient’s room in hours.
Once, a patient had been killed when a nurse gave her a second dose of Metoprolol, sending her into hypovolemic shock. The guilty nurse swore that she’d spoken to the medical director, in person, and that he’d given her orders for the extra dose. That was obviously bullshit – the medical director had been in his office, miles away, with multiple witnesses. But the nurse was insistent, even after she’d pled guilty to avoid jail time.
I highly doubted that incident was the work of ghosts – a hangover was a more likely culprit. But even the most skeptical of the ex-nurses agreed they’d gotten a bad vibe working at Rustic Gables, especially at night.
*****
In early 2010, my wife Lily told me she’d gotten a job at Rustic Gables SNF. I warned her that everybody who worked there hated the place, and offered to continue paying the lion’s share of our bills until she could find other employment.
“You want me to say ‘fuck you’ to a full-time nursing job with benefits?” she snapped, squishing her mouth into a pissy little bow. “I’m sick of working at Subway. Do you honestly think anyone else is going to offer me anything with no experience?”
She had me there. The oversaturated medical job market of Los Angeles was a tough spot for a recently-graduated Licensed Vocational Nurse, especially in the middle of a recession.
“I get it,” I told her. “But I’m making enough money now. And I don’t think you’re going to like Rustic Gables much. People say it’s haunted, and you hate horror.”
Lily flashed me a condescending, pursed-lip smile. She knew I hated that smile. She was a tiny girl, my wife, barely five feet tall and maybe a hundred pounds soaking wet. Her eyes were opal-shaped and deep-set in her square face. She had long, dark, silky hair. A clump of it fell over an eye.
“But you’re not making enough money, Cyrus,” she chirped, as though I were a retarded kindergartener. “And I’d rather hang out with Casper the Friendly Ghost then ask my dad for money. Again.”
I closed my eyes and counted to ten. She was baiting me. Her parents didn’t like me much, because I didn’t have a college degree and my parents were alcoholic white trash. And her father had loaned us money twice in the last year. Once the previous January, when we signed the lease and had to cough up first and deposit for our microscopic Koreatown one-bedroom, and once in August, when my car broke down.
“Fine, Lil,” I said through clenched teeth. “Do what you want.”
With that, I went to shower and get ready for bed. Our marriage was doomed. We both knew it, but neither of us had the balls to give that final nail in the coffin the mighty whack it needed.
*****
Lily took the job. A couple days later, during her second training shift, my partner Rivera and I were sent to Rustic Gables to pick up a patient. A patient who, of course, lived on the first floor – where Lily was stationed.
Our patient was a bed-confined octogenarian going to St. Vincent for a g-tube placement. It should have been a quick, drama-free call, but the nurses didn’t have the paperwork done yet. Lily was being a complete asshole about it – hanging over the shoulder of the charge nurse, smiling her noxious pursed-lip smile as her new friend berated us over the pick-up time (as though it were our fault they didn’t have their shit together).
Rivera went to the ambulance to charge his phone. I’d grit my teeth so hard my skull hurt, and a half-glance at Lily’s haughty profile was enough to propel bolts of pain up my jaw. For the sake professionalism – and my sanity – I walked away.
I wandered to the mismatched front lobby, and there I found a shriveled old woman with dyed orange hair, curled up on a stained couch. A nasal cannula dangled from her face, attached to an oxygen canister on the back of a rickety wheelchair. Her eyes snapped open. When she saw me, her face fell.
“How are you, ma’am?” I asked sweetly. “Do you need help?”
She mumbled something, her voice weak. I hunched beside her and asked her to repeat what she’d said.
“I’m waiting for Scott.”
I looked around. “Is Scott your nurse? I can find him, if you want.”
She shook her head sadly. “He comes here, at night. He talks to me. I’ve gotta stay here or I won’t see him.”
I breathed in, and found that the lobby had a weird smell to it. Kind of rotten, but kind of sweet, like the funk that filled our station when the shared fridge was opened. The orange-haired lady didn’t seem bothered by it, but I was relieved to see Rivera round the corner, paperwork in hand.
I came home after Lily; she pretended to be asleep. The next morning, she was gone before I work up. Perfect situation, I thought. Now we never have to talk.
******
A couple weeks later, my company picked up another dialysis patient out of Rustic Gables SNF. Soon, Rivera and I were sent to get him. On the way in, I spotted the same orange-haired woman, on the same stained couch, still waiting for Scott.
The new dialysis patient, let’s call him Herbert Smith, was seventy-nine and not doing well. He was bed-bound due to the lingering effects of a stroke, half-blind, and atrophied. He looked in my general direction when I called his name, but responded to all further inquiries with incomprehensible muttering.
His room, happily, was on the third floor, which put a whole story between me and Lily. We got him loaded in the ambulance, and after a set of vitals I took advantage of the fifteen-minute drive to Western Dialysis to finish some paperwork. Herbert Smith stared mindlessly ahead, seemingly unaware of my presence.
Then, he mumbled something.
I looked up from my writing. “What’s that, Herbert?” I asked loudly.
“The one-legged man talks to me,” he repeated.
I leaned in. “Who talks to you, Herbert?”
“The Oriental man. The man with one leg. He comes into my room at night.” Herbert’s milky eyes were unfocused, staring vacuously into some point between the road and the ceiling of the ambulance.
“The Oriental man, huh?” I pressed indulgently.
“He’s angry with me,” Herbert continued, speaking to oblivion. “He knows I left him. I wish he’d go away.”
*****
That night, I came home to every light in the apartment on and Lily in the kitchen, making a cup of tea. This was a surprise, as she’d gotten into the habit of feigning sleep. On the rare occasions she’d exchanged a few words with me, she’d done so with a constipated pout, as though my presence was physically painful.
“You’re still awake, Lil?” I asked without thinking. I immediately realized the stupidity of the question, and braced for the sarcastic answer.
But the nasty remark didn’t come. “Yeah,” Lily replied nonchalantly. “I have a headache.”
She looked at me. For the first time in awhile, I didn’t see contempt in her eyes. I realized, all of a sudden, that I no longer remembered how to act around Lily without picking a fight or continuing one. Then I thought of something.
“Lily,” I asked, “the old woman who’s always on the chair by the door, with the bright orange hair and the oxygen. Who is she?”
Lily frowned. “Her name’s Greta, she’s in my station. She’s pretty far gone.”
“I talked to her,” I said. “She said she was waiting for Scott.”
“Oh, I know.” Lily shook her head. “Scott’s not coming. He was Greta’s son. He died of cancer five years ago. There are pictures of him all around her room.”
This piece of information jolted me. I remembered the look in Greta’s eyes when I’d woken her – pure happiness, then immediate disappointment when she realized I was not, in fact, her long-deceased child. Poor old bird. Dementia’s a bitch.
I’d thought that night was a fluke, as far as my and Lily’s relationship was concerned. Lily, tired and in pain, hadn’t had the energy to antagonize me. But the next night, I came home to her awake, again, and decidedly un-antagonistic. And the next, and the next.
One night, I came home to find her huddled on the couch, shaking, the glow from the muted TV illuminating her tears. My first impulse was to run – I’d long forgotten how to comfort Lily. But I’m not an impulsive person.
What came next was the first honest conversation we’d had in months.
Lily had been on edge for weeks. Work was the problem; her shifts at Rustic Gables had become both physically and mentally unbearable, for reasons she couldn’t justify to herself, let alone anybody else.
“I just… as soon as I walk in, my chest tightens up and I start feeling weak,” she said. “I’m scared of something, but I don’t know what it is. And whenever I’m alone, I hear things. Little noises behind me. But when I turn, there’s nothing there.”
I reiterated that she could leave, that I’d pay the bills, and that I’d known other nurses who’d left because the place was too creepy. But Lily shook her head decisively. She wasn’t batshit. And if she quit after working at Rustic Gables for barely a month, she’d appear flaky.
*****
The next day was Herbert Smith’s dialysis day, and Rivera and I were the crew sent to pick him up.
The young nurse on duty told me he was being showered; we’d have to wait a few minutes. I considered going to find Lily. Then I was drawn to a feature of Herbert Smith’s room I hadn’t noticed. There was a bulletin board on the wall parallel to his bed, and someone had pinned up several old newspaper clippings. I looked closer.
Herbert had been a medic during the Korean War. One article, titled “Wounded Hero Welcomed Home”, described his commendable service. He’d found a young soldier with a chest wound lying on a path. All of a sudden, bullets started flying around them. He pulled the soldier into a ditch, patched him up, and waited with him until they were found by an American platoon.
While Herbert was hailed as a hero, he had regrets about the incident. He’d seen another man, a Korean villager, lying on the ground with a nasty wound in his leg. The man was writhing, but too weak to remove himself from danger. Herbert had been conflicted. But he could still hear gunshots and, following protocol, he stayed put. By the time help arrived, the Korean man had died.
The article included pictures taken by a soldier in the platoon. In one of them, you could just make out the face of the dead Korean in the background. I remembered Herbert’s comments about the ‘Oriental man with one leg.’ The one who he hadn’t gone back for.
As long as I’d known him, Herbert hadn’t looked great. But I was surprised at just how severely his health had deteriorated. His atrophied limbs had become skeletal, his skin was translucent, and he’d lost hair. His cloudy eyes didn’t even flicker as we lifted him from his bed to the gurney.
I drove that day, Rivera sat in the back with Herbert. As we wheeled the old man in, I asked Rivera if he’d said anything strange in the back. Rivera gave me a weird look; he wasn’t aware Herbert could speak at all.
Herbert was completely unresponsive as we placed him in his dialysis chair. He slumped to one side; we propped him up with a pillow. While Rivera chased a tech for a signature, I wrapped the blood pressure cuff attached to the dialysis machine around Herbert’s arm.
Before I knew what was happening, Herbert Smith was clutching my bicep.
I jumped. The old man kept hold, his grip stronger than his spindly fingers should have allowed. His milky-white eyes bored into mine.
“The Oriental man says he’s going to take me with him.”
I wrenched my arm out of his grasp. Herbert went limp and flopped over. I called his name, but his ashen face drooped dumbly and his liquid eyes were dull. Whoever had spoken to me was logged off, signed out, no longer in the building.
Forty-five minutes into dialysis, Herbert violently tore the blood-filled tubes from his arm. The staff attempted to stop the bleeding, but he fought them off with an alarming level of ferocity. It was said that Herbert Smith never looked so peaceful as he had while being carried out by paramedics, already into irreversible shock. He died before they made it to the hospital.
*****
I remained ignorant as this was going on. Rivera and I ran a few more calls. I drove in and out of hospital parking lots, pondering Herbert’s Korean ghost. Later, at around six, I received a text from Lily.
That was hot Cy :)
It was a weird thing to say. I assumed she meant our conversation the night before, responded with a single smiley face, and thought about it all afternoon. For months, I’d wanted Lily gone. I’d fantasized about coming home and discovering she’d moved out. But, when I read that text, I felt a little twinge of the ecstasy she’d inspired in me when we were eighteen and obsessed with each other.
As soon as I walked into our apartment, Lily jumped me. Wordlessly, passionately, we made love on the couch. Her perfume, her red lipstick, her hair tickling my skin was intoxicating. It was instinctive. Animalistic. When we finished, we lay entangled on the couch, strands of her hair still in my mouth.
“That was amazing,” I muttered to her. “I’m so glad we did that.”
“You started it,” she teased, running her hand across my chest. “That was a pretty hot kiss. The charge nurse was pissed, but it was worth it.”
“What’s the charge nurse got to do with anything?” I asked innocently.
Lily pulled away. She sat up. “You came to see me at Rustic Gables. You kissed me. Right in front of the other nurses.”
I went cold. “Lily,” I said, “I didn’t do that. I was at Rustic Gables in the morning, to pick up Mr. Smith, but I didn’t see you at all. I didn’t kiss you.”
She forced a laugh. “Cy, stop fucking joking. Unless you’ve got a twin I don’t know about, you kissed me today. The other nurses all saw.”
“I don’t know what to tell you, Lil,” I said. “I was on the third floor for, like, fifteen minutes, then in the ambulance the rest of the day.”
Lily glared. Shoving me out of the way, she grabbed her clothes and stood up.
“Fuck you, Cyrus. You’re a fucking liar.”
With that, she stomped to our bedroom and slammed the door. In the morning, she was gone before I woke up.
The whole thing bothered me. Apparently, Lily had been passionately kissed in front of her co-workers by a guy who looked just like me. I’d long suspected she had undiagnosed bipolar disorder, but I might’ve been wrong. Maybe undiagnosed schizophrenia.
*****
Two days later, Rivera and I were sent for Herbert Smith. The nurse at Rustic Gables told us he was dead.
Rivera went to call dispatch and tell them that, in fact, our services were not needed. I waited with the gurney in the front lobby. Orange-haired Greta was curled up on the couch, presumably still waiting for Scott. Poor lady. I tried to catch her eye, but she was oblivious to my presence. Then I saw tears running down her face.
I would have gone to talk to her if a hand hadn’t jerked my arm. I whirled around, and found myself face-to-face with Lily. Her eyes were puffy and bloodshot. She was pissed.
“There you are,” she snapped. “What the fuck, Cyrus? You’re messing with me now?”
“Lily, what are you talking about?”
“I heard you calling my name,” she said, unable to control the tremble in her voice. “Down the hall. In that fucking creepy voice. Where were you hiding? Under a bed or something?”
“Lily, I didn’t do that. I’ve been here.”
“It was your voice!” Lily insisted. “Saying ‘Lily, come to me.’ I was handing out meds, and I heard you. I’m so sick of your fucking jokes!”
“Lily, I’m…” I started.
“Fuck you, Cyrus. I want a divorce.”
With that, she stomped back to the nurses’ station. I didn’t go after her. I stood there, useless, fuming. All the anger and resentment I’d been nursing for months; the frustration of never, ever being good enough for Lily swirled around me like a tornado. I wanted her dead. I wanted to wrap my fingers around her neck and stare into her protruding eyes until they glazed over.
If Rivera hadn’t come to tell me that we had another call, I’m not sure what I would have done. We spent the rest of the night with one of the respiratory therapists, wedging a 400-pound, ventilator-dependent vegetable onto our gurney and driving him to a crappy post-acute in Sylmar.
As we drove back to the station, I saw I had missed two calls from Lily, and that she’d left me a voice message. I ignored it. Even thinking about her jacked my blood pressure.
Lily didn’t come home that night, and I was relieved.
*****
The next morning, I was dismayed to see the address of Rustic Gables flash across our pager. We were picking up a psych patient. An old lady with dementia wigging out, going to the Brotman psychiatric ward.
The name of the patient: Greta. The orange-haired lady in the lobby, always waiting for Scott.
“It started a little after midnight,” the charge nurse told me. “All of a sudden, she was screaming and crying. I’d never heard anything like it. Just this… this anguished, otherworldly wailing.”
“Had she had any change in medications recently?” I asked.
The nurse shook her head. “Her son, Scott, died about five years ago. She was very devoted to him, and she’d been telling some of the nurses that he comes and sees her at night.”
I nodded sympathetically.
“Anyways,” the nurse continued, “last night, she kept on screaming Scott’s name over and over. We got her into bed and gave her a sleeping pill, but it didn’t take. She woke up around three, dragged herself out of bed and into the hallway. We found her pawing at the door of a storage closet.”
They had Greta restrained to the bed – unnecessarily so, I thought, as whatever sedative they’d given her had reduced her to a near-comatose state. We moved her onto the gurney without issue. But in the back of the ambulance, she squirmed around and opened her eyes. She threw a languid look my direction.
“So, Greta,” I said kindly, hoping my voice would keep her quiet, “How are you doing today? Have the nurses been treating you good?”
“Scott came to me,” she said emotionlessly.
The words hit me like a punch. “Let’s not talk about Scott, okay?”
“He was burning,” Greta continued, as though she hadn’t heard me. “His face was melting. He was screaming in pain.”
Tears welled in her eyes. “Then… then it wasn’t Scott anymore. It was this.. this monster. This demon. And he told me that’s what Scott looked like in… in Hell.”
She sobbed. I might have said something comforting; if I did, it had no effect. I don’t remember. In that moment, at that moment, I had never been more disturbed in my entire life.
Greta didn’t speak again. She just cried, tears and snot collecting in her wrinkles. She cried all the way to Brotman, and kept on crying as we waited for her room to be ready. We heard her moans as we pulled our gurney down the sixth-floor hall, until the elevator doors closed.
*****
Lily didn’t come home that night. Days passed; I was given no clue as to her whereabouts. I called a few times, but her phone was off. I should have been concerned that she left so much of her stuff in the apartment. But she had her ID and bank cards, she had plenty of scrubs stowed at her parents’ house in Rosemead, and I assumed no one in her family was fond enough of me to call.
Finally, a week later, Rivera and I were sent back to Rustic Gables.
I don’t remember who or what we were supposed to pick up. We were walking through the little lobby, noticing Greta’s absence, when I felt hands around my waist. Tiny, perfectly-manicured hands. Lily stood behind me, looking happier than she had in a year. Rivera shook his head playfully and told me he’d meet me on the second floor.
When he was gone, Lily took me by the hand and led me away. Towards the back door, which was only ever used by nurses sneaking a smoke. Down a narrow hallway I’d never noticed, which extended to the left of the back door and dead-ended.
“Lil,” I said, “where have you been? I was starting to get worried.”
She stopped pulling and turned around, holding me close. She wrapped her arms around my neck, stood on her tiptoes, and kissed me passionately.
“I’ve been with a friend,” she murmured into my ear. “I miss you, Cyrus.”
She kissed me again, then pulled away and resumed tugging my hand with surprising strength. She stopped in front of a nondescript little closet, across from the janitor’s storage.
“Make love to me, Cyrus,” she breathed, her voice thick and sultry. “I know a special place.”
She reached for the doorknob. As soon as she let go of my hand, my senses came crashing back down to earth.
“Lil,” I said kindly, “I’ve got to pick up a patient. Come home tonight. We’ll talk then.”
She gazed into my eyes with a ‘come hither’ smile. For some reason, this freaked me out. Maybe because her mouth seemed to extend a little too far into her cheeks. Or maybe because, in the six years we’d been a couple, Lily had never once used the phrase “make love to me.” One way or another, my weird radar blipped, and with one more “come home tonight, Lil” I escaped to the elevator.
“Cyrus!” Lily called after me. I didn’t turn around.
On the second floor, I found Rivera talking to a squat Korean woman I recognized as the first-floor head nurse, Lily’s supervisor. The nurse glared when she saw me.
“Hey you,” she said gruffly, “you’re Lily’s husband, right?”
I nodded, inviting the catty comment.
“Where has your wife been?” she asked. “Her phone’s dead, she hasn’t shown up for work in a week.”
“Um, she’s here,” I said. “She’s downstairs. I just talked to her.”
The nurse shook her head. “Well, I haven’t seen her all day, and I just left the desk five minutes ago. She hasn’t clocked in since the twelfth.”
I was confused. I told the nurse something, then ran down the stairs to the first floor, dead-set on finding Lily and proving her presence. I’d kissed her, I’d felt her arms around me. So either she was deliberately messing with her boss, or else her boss was crazy.
Or I was crazy.
No one was at the first-floor nurses’ desk. I paced the halls, peeking into rooms. Nothing. No Lily. Then I thought of something. She hadn’t clocked in since the twelfth. The twelfth of February. That sounded familiar.
I checked my phone. The last missed call from Lily had occurred on the twelfth of February. That was the day she’d chased me down in the lobby, accused me of calling her name in a “creepy voice,” demanded a divorce.
I saw the voice mail icon, and recalled she had left me a message that day. I dialed my voicemail, deleted a few messages, and then I heard my wife’s voice. Her sobbing, panicked, terrified voice.
“Cyrus!” she breathed. “Cyrus, I know you’re not here, but I keep on hearing your voice. And I saw you again. But it wasn’t you, because your face was all blurry. Then you… you walked into the closet and disappeared. Is this a joke? Please fucking tell me this is a…”
She gasped, and I heard the phone drop. Then a muffled male voice. A voice that sounded terrifyingly familiar, saying something like ‘found you!’
Then I heard another voice. My wife’s voice. Calling my name. But it wasn’t coming from my phone.
“Cyrus! Cyrus!”
I followed the voice. It was coming from the back entrance, from the direction of the closet Lily had tried to drag me into. As I approached, I remembered what I’d been told about old Greta. She’d freaked out, and they’d found her pawing at a closet door. Had it been this door?
I turned the knob. I flicked on the light switch.
I found myself staring at a tiny, dusty storage room seemingly used as a dumping ground for cardboard boxes and broken equipment. The floor was peeling linoleum, and cobwebs hung from two cheap metal shelves. A healthy coating of dust told me this room was rarely accessed by the nursing staff.
I heard it again.
“Cyrus! Cyrus!”
I did a 360, then was hit with the dizzying realization that the voice was coming from under the floor.
Anyone with the IQ of a monkey could tell you I should have bailed. That a disembodied voice calling my name, beneath the floor on the first story of a building, was not a phenomenon I should investigate alone. But, somewhere between my softcore-script conversation with Lily and her gut-churning message on my phone, I stopped thinking logically.
I looked around. No doors, no stairs, and I knew there wasn’t a “basement” button on the elevators. Then I saw it. Under one of the shelves – a trapdoor. And a small black object. I knelt to look.
A Motorola Razr, with a Hello Kitty bauble and a small crack to the bottom left of the screen. Lily’s phone.
This discovery turbo-charged my nervous system. I stood up, grabbed the shelf, and pulled. With a loud VOOM, the metal structure pivoted. I examined the trapdoor. It was latched and fastened with a dusty, rusted lock.
Lily’s voice – louder – floated up from below. “Cyrus! Come find me, Cyrus!”
Using my pocketknife, I easily picked the ancient lock. Then I lifted.
I saw darkness. As my eyes adjusted, I saw stairs. Damp, rotting wooden stairs leading down to some sort of cellar. I breathed in and gagged. The musty, earthy smell was overpowering. It was the smell of a wooden shed after the rain, mixed with the smell of a compost heap, mixed with a smell reminiscent of the family of possums that had gotten trapped under my mother’s mobile home one December, died, and rotted until spring.
“Cyrus!” Lily cried again. This time, she sounded agitated. Scared.
I took a deep breath, then descended.
I proceeded cautiously – cell phone in one hand, pocketknife clutched in the other – step by step. By the pale blue light of my cell screen, I saw the floor was dirt. I made out a dark blotch that must have been a puddle, and I heard faint dripping. The walls were grey cinderblock with black designs painted on them.
Then, my feeble light fell on a woman with blue scrubs and long black hair. Lily.
“Lil!” I cried out. “Lily! What the fuck are you doing….”
“Shhh.” She put her finger to her lips as she approached out of the darkness.
Then I was standing on the earthen floor, and she was close. Close enough for me to see that her features weren’t right. Her eyes were too small. Her nose was too flat.
She took my hands. Her features shifted, blurring in and out of focus. Was it an effect of the light seeping in through the trap door? Were my eyes still adjusting? And why had Lily, of all places, chosen…
And then her mouth was against my mouth.
I couldn’t eat for three days. I felt her warm tongue dissolve in my mouth. Turn cold and dead. Break into icy chunks that tasted like dust and stringed cabbage and rotting fish, expanding in my throat, choking me…
I pulled away, coughing and sputtering and trying to scream. I dropped my phone. As I dry-heaved, I heard Lily’s laughter. Now it sounded distant. Without thinking, I stood up.
My phone had landed in the puddle, creating an inverted spotlight. A body, noose around its neck, hung from the rafters. Immobilized by terror, I was forced to take in every detail.
Blue scrubs. Feet dangling lifelessly. Claw-like hands, plaster-still in rigor mortis. Long black hair. Purple cheeks, open mouth, swollen tongue dripping dark saliva. Bloodshot opal eyes protruding like a demented cartoon character’s, staring into oblivion.
Lily. Dead. Lily.
I don’t know how long I stared at my dead wife hanging from the ceiling before I felt the hand on my shoulder. Jolted from my traumatized paralysis, I turned around.
Illuminated by the light from the open trapdoor, was me.
My mirror image stood in front of me.
While Lily’s doppelgänger had flitted in and out of focus, mine was explicitly, grossly exact in every last detail. The little hairs on my unshaved cheeks. The red pimple on my forehead. The scar at the corner of my eye, from when I “fell off my bike” during one of my second stepfather’s drunken rampages. It’s – my – smile was malicious. Triumphant.
Then it spoke, in a twisted, modulated mockery of my voice.
“Aren’t you going to say ‘thank you?’”
Then it started to melt.
I don’t remember much after that. I heard my own voice screaming – whether it was me or my putrefying doppelganger, I don’t care to find out. There were more voices, women’s voices, women’s screams. Rough hands on me, an arm around my shoulders leading me up, up… then sunlight, then sirens.
*****
Lily had been dead for more than a week. That’s what the police officers told me, the second time I was questioned. The types of questions they were asking, I was sure they were going to pin it on me, especially given the nature of my and Lily’s relationship. But they didn’t.
In the end, they ruled her death a suicide. She’d died by strangulation, though they didn’t know how she’d managed it. She must have found the rope already hanging from the rafters – the cellar was fourteen feet high; there was no way she’d have been able to climb up and tie it herself. Nor could they find the chair or stool she had jumped off.
They didn’t know how she had found the basement. None of the nurses knew the dirt-floored cellar even existed. When the healthcare corporation had bought and gutted the place, they’d left the back of the first floor as it was. No attention had been paid to the sad little closet.
And no one could explain how she’d gotten down into the basement in the first place. There was only one entrance – the trapdoor. The trapdoor I’d found, locked from the outside.
Even with the coroner’s report, the cops had trouble pinning down a timeline. Lily had gone missing on the twelfth, of that the head nurse was adamant. I insisted I had seen her, alive, on the day her body was found. Rivera backed me up.
We weren’t alone.
Another nurse had had a conversation with Lily on the 15th; she remembered the date because it was the day after Valentine’s day. And a patient claimed he hadn’t actually seen Lily, as it had been dark and his eyesight wasn’t what it used to be, but had heard her voice singing him to sleep.
This one was particularly strange, because the night the old man had allegedly been sung to sleep by Lily was a good two weeks after she’d died, and a week after her decomposing body had been recovered. The cops wrote him off as confused. But I’m not so sure.
*****
I left town after Lily’s funeral. My father in Bakersfield, with whom I hadn’t spoken in years, called out of the blue and invited me to stay with him. When the flashbacks stopped and the memories scarred over, I screwed my head back on and went to paramedic school. I found a job, ran the Baker to Vegas stretch for a few years, then decided to take the next step in my career.
I only applied to LA City Fire because it was ultra-competitive and I assumed I’d fail the psychiatric exam. When my new hire packet came in the mail, I picked it up off the porch with trembling hands. I wanted to say no. But LA City was the job a million guys would kill for; and my dad told me he’d knock me out, throw me in the back of his truck, and leave me on the station steps if he had to.
*****
I moved back to Los Angeles in March of this year. I didn’t know anyone; I’d lost touch with all my old fr |
I rested my arms behind my head, skim-reading the credits of a movie I’d just watched. After seeing them through about half way, I lifted myself from the sofa and walked to the kitchen, stretching my arms out above me. I opened the fridge door and found a full cartoon of juice, so I sat down on the kitchen counter by the window, cracked open the lid, and took several long, noisy gulps. When I couldn’t drink anymore, I gasped to let in new air and wiped my mouth on the back of my hand. My evenings were uneventful around this time in summer. It was 9:15pm on a Saturday in July; school was out for the holidays and my parents had gone to visit my aunt and uncle who lived by the coast, they would still be gone for 2 more weeks. I declined the invitation to join them, I didn’t dislike the place or my relatives, but we usually stayed there so long that I’d miss most of summer break, and I’d truthfully rather spend it with my friends in town. I was a good kid who knew how to wash clothes and use an oven, and generally not an idiot, so they let me stay at the house so long as I kept it clean.
As I sat, I looked out into the garden to check for anything scary in the dark, it was empty and black. I kind of wished we had a pet, a dog or a cat would be nice about now, but their hair always made me sneeze and my eyes go red and itchy. With that in mind my dad said no, even though I wouldn’t mind it. 9:22pm, I put the rest of the juice cartoon back in the fridge door, and went back over to the window. Hoisting myself onto the counter again, I glanced out to the garden and identified the shadows one by one to make sure everything was in it’s place. The bushes were their usual shape, two small trees stood together by the back fence and a metal table with 4 chairs sat casually on the patio. I liked to check these things, which is largely why I wasn’t scared of the dark. I would always get up to investigate small noises in the night, and I hated sleeping with my face to the wall. If someone was in my room at night, I’d rather know about it so at least there was the faintest chance of getting away somehow. This meant that my worries were quickly put to rest as I either found nothing downstairs but the radiator popping with the heat, or opened my eyes to see an empty bedroom. Not knowing what could be making the odd noises coming from the kitchen, or on the stairs, or in my room is what makes my skin creep.
9:30pm, I got down from the counter and wandered back into the living room to turn off the TV, and decided to take the rest of the juice upstairs. I went back into the kitchen, opened the fridge door, and stopped. Turning my head to focus outside, I could see someone was standing in the garden. I shut the fridge door and turned off the light so they couldn’t see me so easily, and moved slowly to lean on the kitchen counter to get a better look. All the doors were locked and all the neighbours were home, I took a moment to remind myself this. Still, my heart quickened a bit as I stood there straining to see his or her shape in the darkness at the end of the garden. I had to keep glancing away to keep their fuzzy outline clear in my vision. They were standing very still, and were a little thin, but that’s all I could see, I couldn’t tell anything else.
‘Oh.’ I said aloud. It was the garden umbrella leaning up against the back fence, I forgot that we used it for barbeques. I smiled at myself, pleased that I didn’t get too worked up and went upstairs to my bedroom. I laid on the bed and propped my head up on a pillow, opening my laptop on my stomach to see if anybody was online. Apparently someone else was bored and saw my name pop up.
Chris: Hey!
Me: Hey, you ok?
Chris: Yeah, bored, are your parents still away?
Me: For a couple more weeks
Chris: Why don’t I come round?
Me: I don’t want to be rude, but I kind of can’t be bothered to hang out tonight lol, thanks though
Chris: I know what you mean, it’s cool, what about tomorrow?
Me: Yeah that sounds better
Chris: Cool, I’ll be round about 1, I’ve got some family stuff to do in the morning
Me: okay
Chris: Do you still have a tent btw? We can camp in the garden or something.
Me: Aww a slumber party, I love you too bro x
Chris: Whatever lol, you got the tent though?
Me: Yeah somewhere, let me check. Brb.
I got up from my bed and headed to check the cupboard under the stairs. I didn’t know where the tent was but it seemed a good place to start. I opened the cupboard door and started shifting coats aside, some cardboard boxes were stacked up at the back and might be hiding it, so I started unstacking them. I took out a couple of the easy to reach ones and had a stroke of good luck as the tent bag came into view. I leaned over the other boxes, and picked up the bag, and took the big garden umbrella that sat beside it too, just in case it rained tomorrow. I paused. I put the tent down.
It took me a couple of seconds to get back to the kitchen window and focus on the darkness outside. My eyes weren’t yet adjusted to the dark, so I couldn’t see all the way to the back fence. Turning off the kitchen light I leaned on the counter and continued staring at the same point. The other garden features began to fade into view one by one, fitting my previous mental image. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to see, the darkness gave way to the familiar forms I knew, but after a while, I was certain there still stood a figure against the back garden fence. It hadn’t moved. I stood there for 15 minutes looking at it, I couldn’t tell it’s shape properly, but it did look like someone standing there. I decided it wasn’t a threat; I thought if I was in any real danger I would’ve been a lot more worried by now, that thought kept me calm. But I also wanted to find out what it was. I couldn’t stand there forever, I jogged upstairs, picked up my laptop, and brought it down to with me to the counter.
Me: Could you come round now?
Chris: Oh?
Me: Yeah, I think I can see something in my garden.
Chris: What Is it? An animal?
Me: No it’s tall, I thought it was an umbrella.
Chris: And now you’re sure it isn’t?
Me: I don’t know, I thought it was someone, but now I’m sure it’s not a person. It just looks weird and I don’t think it was there before.
Chris: Before when?
Me: I don’t know, earlier today maybe? I can’t remember.
Chris: Are you scared?
Me: I’d feel better if someone else was here
Chris: Well I did offer to come round, and I am bored…
Me: So yeah?
Chris: Yeah, I’ll come soon
Me: Cool, thanks, use the front gate.
I sat there watching the black shape lean against the fence for another 10 minutes, eventually, the doorbell rang. I opened it and Chris ran in, and bear hugged me.
‘It’s been too long!’ Chris mock-cried.
‘Yeah it must have been a whole day.’ I retorted, smiling.
‘The torment!’ He replied, pretending to ignore me.
‘Look, come over here.’ I said, pushing him off and walking to the kitchen. I switched off the light and pointed in the figure’s direction. ‘Look’.
‘Give me a sec,’ Said Chris, ‘I can’t see properly…’ A minute later he noticed, ‘That black thing?’
‘Yeah’.
‘Um…’
We both stood there looking at it for a while. I half expected it to be gone when he looked. He leaned over the counter.
‘It’s just a big plant or plank of wood or something, Let’s go watch TV.’
‘Will you check with me to make sure?’ I asked.
‘Do you have a torch?’ he returned.
‘No.’ I admitted.
‘Well, we could check if we keep the kitchen light on and open the back door a little.’ he offered. I thought for a second and agreed, but said we should stay right by the house.
We slipped on our trainers and opened the back door, stepping onto the patio I felt the air was heavy and warm that night. Chris walked behind me. We stood very close to the door, peering at the back fence.
‘Should we-‘, I had just started to speak when he quickly stepped into the house again, still looking at the fence.
‘What?’ I asked following him in. I turned, and realised that the figure was gone. It was obvious from the light coming from the back door, that the fence and the rest of the garden was just as it always was.
‘Where is it?’ Chris said.
‘If it was leaning against the fence, it probably fell over into a bush or something.’ I tried to convince us both. We stared out for a few seconds longer, and decided that we were too nervous to go and check. I don’t usually give into my night terrors, but now they were just beginning to click into my head.
‘Can you stay over for the night?’ I asked Chris.
‘Um, yeah, sure…’ It didn’t sound like he really wanted to. He kept his eyes on the fence.
We both went inside and locked the door before going up to my room. I got out a sleeping bag for Chris, and drew the curtains without looking outside into the garden again. We talked about stupid stuff for a couple of hours to take our minds off the garden, and fell asleep.
In the morning, I found Chris’s sleeping bag empty. I called out to Chris and he said he was downstairs, so I threw on a T-shirt and went down.
‘Sleep well?’ I asked.
‘Yeah pretty well, but I kept thinking about the garden and stuff. Hey, did you find that tent?’ He returned.
‘Er, yeah.’ I answered, remembering that shape which I had forgotten about until now.
‘Well, I was thinking about the camping thing, and thought maybe we could bring the tent to my house. It would just make a change you know?’ I didn’t have to ask him why, I wasn’t to keen on staying in my garden after last night. Wait, last night… Come to think of it, the sun was up and I wanted to check the garden while it wasn’t pitch black. I asked Chris and he hesitantly agreed.
We put on our trainers and stepped out into the garden. I don’t know what we were so worried about, it was bright and colourful. The plants and bushes around the edges of the garden smelled good, and there was a bird in one of the small trees singing out for it’s mate somewhere. We walked to the back fence to find nothing out of place, and looked over the bushes in front of the panelling to check if anything lay behind them. We found nothing. I walked around the edge of the whole garden once more while Chris tried whistling to the bird. It cocked it’s head from side to side trying to figure him out. It was a warm day, perfect for camping that evening, I decided.
We talked as we filled a couple of rucksacks with sleeping bags and some food from the kitchen. We didn’t want to set up a fire, so we packed some tinned hot dogs, bread, a packet of tomatoes, and chocolate, as well as some bottles of water. ‘There’s a forest just next to my house which is actually pretty good,’ Chris explained ‘Our garden backs onto the edge of it. I stayed in a tent there once with my dad for my first little camping trip when I was like, 7. I remember I was so excited at the time, I thought we were really roughing it like some hardcore mountaineers.’ Chris laughed at himself. ‘If we get too cold or need more food we can just go to my house. My parents are out so we’ll have free run of the place anyway.’
‘Yours are away too?’ I questioned.
‘It’s their anniversary so they’re out for the night,’ he explained, ‘They’re staying in a hotel the next town over, they’ll be back in the morning.’ Apparently leaving your kids behind was in fashion this summer.
At about noon we left my house with the 2 rucksacks, a sleeping bag for each of us, and the tent, and made our way to Chris’s house. It was fairly close by, and a part of the same pleasant neighbourhood. We talked and joked a lot walking side by side, nodding and greeting a couple of familiar neighbours as we went. It was a crazy nice day, the sun was almost too much, it was hot on our necks, and the trees by the sidewalk seemed to glow green from underneath as the sunlight passed through the leaves. A sprinkler offered us some water as we walked by one house, and it felt good on my hot arms. I was already sweating by the time we got to Chris’s place, we hadn’t been walking for more than 20 minutes. We didn’t go inside his house immediately because it was so hot, so we went straight to his garden and dumped our bags in the shade. He wasn’t joking, the gate of his garden backed straight onto an impressive forest. very tall, thin trees stood high above the house, and continued as far as I could see. Some bushes and shrubs littered the forest floor, but most of it was either grass, or fairly smooth sections of dirt. I didn’t see how this forest was classed as ‘small’.
‘Looks good right?’ he boasted.
‘It’s awesome.’ I admitted, opening the gate and surveying the area. I walked out in between the trees and found a flat spot for the tent. I turned around to ask Chris’s opinion, and paused, a little disappointed. It didn’t feel like real camping when his house was so obviously in our faces.
‘Let’s go a little further in so it at least feels legit.’ I said, and walked back to pick up my bags, Chris objected to carrying his ‘heavy shit’ any further. We walked in a straight line from Chris’s house, and kept checking behind us until the house was just about obscured by trees in front of each other. We had only gone a very short way in but the forest was already thicker and greener, there was even a long rope swing hanging from one of the trees, but it looked too old to hold our weight, so we decided to keep our spines unbroken and give it a miss. I unpacked the tent and set it up with Chris’s help, and we threw our sleeping bags inside. I laid down inside to test it out. It was so warm and humid I had to adjust my breathing for a second. I stepped out again, and asked Chris if he had a torch for the evening.
‘I can do better than that.’ was his response and he took off towards the house. I was too hot to run after him, so I opened my rucksack and cracked open a bottle of water, downing half of it and putting the rest back in the pack. I Laid down on a patch of grass and looked up at the canopy. The leaves were shifting gently in a breeze I couldn’t feel from down here, and I watched them sway and mesh together until I heard Chris return.
‘Did you get a torch?’ I asked closing my eyes. The sun shone through my eyelids and coloured my vision red. I listened to the soft sound of his footsteps on the grass as he walked past me towards the rope swing. ‘That’s not going to hold you,’ I warned as I heard him tug the branch with a small creak. He tugged it and it creaked in response. I listened. He tugged it once more, and again. There was a moment of silence as I guessed he was still weighing it up, and then another tug. He continued to tug a few more times, and the creaking followed each one. I was sure it wouldn’t hold his weight, and I smiled predicting one big creak and a snap as the rope or the branch broke. I waited as some final tugs were made. Creak, creak. I waited still. Creak, creak, creak.
‘Yo!’ I heard Chris’s voice coming from his garden, I sat bolt upright almost spraining my neck as I snapped my head sideways to face his house. He was jogging through the trees holding an electric lantern. I switched my gaze in the other direction towards the rope swing. It was hanging still, nothing nearby. I stood up and turned full circle, nothing in any other direction.
‘What…’ I mouthed to myself walking towards the rope. I tugged it gently, it didn’t creak. I pulled it harder, it didn’t creak. My mouth went dry. I jumped up, grabbed hold, and yanked it down. The branch bent a little as my feet touched the floor, and still it didn’t make a sound. I kept hold of it as I stared up towards the branches, but eventually the rope gave way under my weight somewhere in the middle, and a soft thud fell on my ears as the thick rope fell in front of me. Chris was rattling the lantern as he came by.
‘I’ve never used this before, I got it for Christmas from my cousin. She buys some weird presents. Ah, I see the swing is dead, lets have a proper burial in memory of all the joy it gave us!’ I didn’t respond. I continued looking up at the branch with half a rope swing tied to it.
‘…Hey, are you good?’ Chris followed my gaze.
‘I thought you’d already come back,’ I said immediately, I wasn’t the type to let things slide with an “oh… it’s nothing.”
‘What?’ He replied.
‘Someone walked by me and was messing around with the rope swing.”
‘Who was it?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Are they still around?’
‘I don’t know! I had my eyes closed and was laying just there,’ I pointed, ‘but then I heard you shout, so I looked around and there was nothing here. I heard them walk by my head.’ I felt a bit sick.
‘Look, calm down a second’. Chris began. ‘It’s the middle of the day, we’re 30 feet from my house, and even if it was a person, so what? It’s just some public woods, anyone can come through here.’
That made some sense, and he was right about it being public. But then where were they? I glanced around one more time, however the trees quickly layered up and I couldn’t see far at all. I guessed it was possible for me to lose track of someone here in a short distance.
‘Okay.’ I said ‘Man… I can stay alone in the house for weeks on end, but I can’t handle a short walk through the woods on a summers day.’
‘That’s why you’ve brought some muscle!’ Declared Chris, wielding the lantern above his head, and I laughed.
We spent the day walking around the forest, and returned to the tent to get some water when we were too hot. We talked about school and what our plans were for the future. We talked about dreams we’d had, and ghosts, and creatures that lurked in the dark. Neither of us were too scared of things like that, but they made for good camping stories. Chris told a particularly good one of a woman who lived in the woods. She had the head of a cat and if you heard her raspy meow, that meant she was trying to find you. If she stopped meowing, it signified you were found, and she was quickly making her way towards you. It made my skin crawl a little, and we stopped telling stories soon after that.
The light of day eventually faded, and it was getting hard to see, so we headed back to the tent for the night. The impressive heat during the day had killed our appetites, so we left the food for now and decided we’d eat it in the night if we got hungry. Chris hung the electric lantern at the front of the tent, flicking it on as he did so. It was surprisingly bright, and spilled a yellow light onto the ground and onto the trees that faced us. The warm glow looked dramatic, but whatever was beyond the light was hidden in blackness. Our immediate area was clear, but after a few paces the light seemed to stop dead. It looked weird. Chris ducked under the tent opening and I followed him. The sleeping bags looked inviting as the heat from earlier had gone and it was too cold for shirts and shorts. We got inside and took the lantern with us.
‘Can you hear meowing?’ I said, my head tilted as I strained to hear.
‘Yeah, I can hear some bullshit too!’ Chris smiled and zipped up his sleeping bag. Damn, I thought I had him, oh well, I zipped up my own bag and we laid there talking for a little while, and then the exhaustion of such a hot summer’s hit us and we fell asleep.
I had a dream that we were walking to Chris’s house again, but there were more trees than before, and it was getting dark very quickly. I blinked, and suddenly it was night, with the forest sprawling in every direction. The rope swing hung in front of me. I turned around and Chris was gone. I heard a creak behind me, a feeling came over me like I’d missed a step on the stairs. For some reason, I couldn’t turn around. I started walking straight ahead, and the rope swing soon came into my view again, I was aware I was in a nightmare. The rope swing slowly lifted itself up into the trees and I watched it disappear. I walked over and stood beneath where it had been, and there was a rustle above me. As I lifted my eyes to the canopy, a black figure with the head of a cat came hurtling downwards with it’s mouth open horrifically wide, one of it’s teeth touched my left eye, and I tore myself awake, gasping as I sat up in the tent. My back was damp with sweat and Chris was asleep next to me, the lantern was still on and I could see our backpacks at the end of the tent. I took a moment to breathe and then let myself lay back down, my head thumping on the floor a little too hard. I winced and reached for the bottle of water to my side, downing a few mouthfuls. I couldn’t fall asleep with the glow of the lantern on my eyelids, so I sat up and searched the tent for it. I quickly realized the light was coming from outside.
‘Chris?’ I said, still confused from sleep. He mumbled something in reply. ‘Chris, where’s the lantern?’
‘Uh…Somewhere….’ He said slowly and sleepily, before turning over.
Looking around again, the light was obviously coming from outside. I weighed up the options. Either some murderer had snuck into our tent and done nothing but take the lantern outside. Or, we didn’t actually bring it into the tent and I had remembered wrongly. That sounded more convincing. So I knelt by the tent door and unzipped it. From the opening I looked around, it wasn’t immediately obvious where the glow was coming from. Why couldn’t I see it? I looked up. The lantern was resting 20 feet in the air, hanging in the dark. Goosebumps swept across my skin and I zipped up the door before shaking Chris.
‘Chris, please wake up!’ He heard the urgency in my voice and sat up.
‘What? What’s wrong?’ Chris said, rubbing his eyes.
‘The Lantern’s hanging outside.’
‘But I brought it in.’ He assured me. I felt sick as my reasoning broke. We both looked at the front of the tent.
‘We should go back to the house.’ I said, my resolve buckling. I was just a kid in a forest who’s parents were away.
‘I’m not walking through the dark.’ He replied, Chris was now looking worried.
‘We’ve got a Lantern-‘ I stopped myself. We looked at the front of the tent again. We couldn’t sit there forever. We were getting scared as we sat there doing nothing, so this was the plan; we weren’t going back to sleep, we would get the lantern back somehow, leave everything here, and spend the night in Chris’s house.
I hated being the one to go first. I wanted to turn back even just crouching by the tent entrance. Unzipping the fabric door I looked around, nothing. I peered over the tent behind us, nothing in sight. Literally nothing, everything was black outside of the light. I took a step out and it was cold, Chris said the same as he stood right by my side looking over his shoulder. He turned back and saw the lantern in the air.
‘Oh my god.’
We stood there looking at it for a few seconds that seemed to crawled by. Eventually I worked out which tree it was hanging from, the broken rope swing at my feet confirmed it. Way up out of reach, the lantern hung above our heads, tied to the other end of the rope that still dangled from the darkness. I couldn’t work it out, it was high up, too high up for even a ladder. The trees were thin and bare besides the leaves that made up the canopy, There was no where to climb. Picking up the length of rope that had snapped off earlier, I bundled it up and tied a knot, and aimed at the lantern. I took a step back and jumped, tossing it into the air. It caught the lantern on it’s side and sent it swinging. It threw shadows rocking around us, I suddenly wished it hadn’t hit it. The light made the shadows lean from side to side with the lantern. The horrible, unnatural swaying made me panic and my eyes became wet as fear took a solid hold of me. I picked up the rope again, and lobbed it desperately at the lantern. I missed, and the bundle of rope sailed off into the darkness. Helplessly I turned to Chris who had already grabbed his backpack. He span around and threw it with a yelp, and it hit the lantern dead on. it fell and thudded to the floor with a crack, but the light was still on, I ran to pick it up.
I turned to Chris and almost cried with relief.
‘Okay go, go, go, let’s go!’ I urged, and he started jogging quickly towards his house as I followed. We half ran, half stumbled off into the dark, checking over our shoulders and working ourselves up as our thoughts were consumed by everything that may be waiting in the trees for us. I don’t know how long we were moving, but it soon became apparent that Chris’s house wasn’t in this direction.
‘For God’s sake, where is it!’ Chris said, tension taking hold of his voice, ‘We’ll have to find the tent and try again.’ A couple of tears were forming at the corners of his eyes. They were probably on mine too, but my heart was thumping so hard I didn’t notice.
‘Okay.’ I took a breath and we turned around, heading in a straight line directly behind us. What if we didn’t find the tent? I couldn’t stop myself thinking that over and over as we retraced our steps. We walked for what seemed like twice as long, before the light finally fell on the side of the tent.
We ran up and stood close to it’s side, looking around to try and figure out which direction we should go. The silence was like the build up of a nightmare, right before some horrible thing lurches out at you, screaming. The comparison made me gag and I scrunched my eyes shut, the hair on my skin lifting. My temples were so hot it felt like my brain was thudding against the inside of my skull. I couldn’t begin to guess where the house was. We could see about ten feet from the lantern, and then pitch black, there were no clues. Every direction looked wrong. Chris took the lantern from me and walked in a small circle, straining his eyes to try and see. I stayed put.
‘Chris, Turn it off.’ I whispered to him hurriedly
‘What?’ He asked
I stepped quickly and quietly towards him, bringing my face to his.
‘There’s something in the tent.’
His gaze shifted past me towards the tent and he stood there staring. We were standing on the left hand side of the tent, and from this angle I could just about see the unzipped door hanging open, but I remembered leaving it that way. So that wasn’t what was making me clench my teeth together. A few feet away, my rucksack sat outside on the dry earth, with the food I had packed, now neatly arranged trailing from it. Our sleeping bags were also nicely laid out, end to end, making the line of belongings lead straight into the mouth of the tent. I took a careful step forward so the light could pass more easily through the fabric. It couldn’t have been a trick of the light, something big and dark was obviously crouched, with what I guessed was it’s front, facing the open door. I hated myself for not seeing it sooner. It didn’t move at all, or seem to breathe, it just sat, waiting for us to investigate the display it had made.
‘Turn it off.’ I whispered again. Chris continued staring, deaf to me.
‘CHRIS.’ I pleaded in a whisper.
A voice from nearby joined in.
‘Chris.’
We both heard it and the blood fell in our veins. It came from the tent. A slow, strained, rasp of a voice that sounded like a parrot copying a new word. The sound clicked across my skin and crept into my ears. The light flicked off with a click that was too loud. Chris grabbed my shoulder, and I clenched my fists closed, painfully tight. We stood there in complete darkness, I didn’t want to move and I didn’t want to stay. My brain fought for control as my legs waited for a decision, rooted in place. We breathed shallow, quiet breaths, blackness pressing on our eyes like water. Sweat ran down my neck, I couldn’t see the tent.
‘Chrisss.’ Something said. ‘Turn it offff.’
My stomach flipped inside out as the thing in the tent played with my words. I quickly grabbed Chris’s hand, yanking him in the opposite direction. I ran like I never had before, Chris’s legs thudding alternately with mine. The sprint continued for about a minute, we lost ourselves as we ran through absolute darkness. I forgot where we were and I couldn’t see what was in front of my face. I ran head on into a tree, and my forehead struck it’s side with a sickening, hollow knock. sparks lit up inside my eyes as I chocked back the pain. It hurt so much I couldn’t breath. Chris tried to pull me on, but I buckled to the floor on my knees and threw up. As I collapsed onto my back, my head went numb, Chris lifted me up.
‘Please don’t stop, please, please!’ He begged, I couldn’t reply. ”Please, please keep going!’ I forced my legs to take my weight as I locked my knees upright, leaning on Chris. My body felt empty and a little blood rolled down my forehead and into my brow, I wiped it away as I tried to grasp the situation again, but the pain was too much.
‘Wait, I can’t!’ I begged, ‘Just wait, just wait…’ We stood together in the inky woods, but we could have been anywhere. I couldn’t see Chris as he huddled next to me, it didn’t feel like darkness, it felt like someone had wrapped my head in a blanket.
Neither of us said a word as we waited, but our breathing was loud, and I wondered from what distance it could be heard. Reality began to return to me, and the pain was now just about bearable, I straightened up, grasping at what was happening, the pins of fear sank into me a second time, and I started counting in my head. One minute passed without any sound in the world. The wind was dead, and the birds might be too. another minute went by, I continued counting. Three minutes. We were still alone, was it even looking for us? I reached for Chris’s arm in the dark, he jumped when I touched it, but I steadied him with the other, he was still holding the lantern, good. We had light on our side, now if only we could use it. I went over the events hurriedly in my mind; the lantern was hanging from a tree, we got out of the tent, then couldn’t find our way home. By the time we returned to the tent, something was in it, but then why did it take the lantern and do nothing while we slept? If It was sheer luck that we were alone when we were trying to get the lantern, I wondered just how small the possibility was of us getting a second chance.
I stayed silent for a moment and then whispered as best I could. ‘Chris, we need to turn on the lantern. We need to fucking get away from here, we can make a run for your house but we need to see!’
‘No! please, we have to stay here!’ Chris tried to whisper too. ‘We can wait for morning if we have to, you can’t turn it on.’ I could hear in his voice that a sob was breaking through. ‘Just keep quiet! You fucking have to, Please!’ I parted my lips to try again, but as I did, I heard something. A very faint clicking sound from somewhere in the dark. It was almost inaudible, but it was there. An irregular, stuttering, clicking sound. It sounded fingernails on a wooden table. And it was moving. It came from in front of us, I was sure of it. A steady ‘click, clack click,’ filled my ears as we tried gauge the distance. It was drawing closer. ‘Click Click Clack.’ It stopped. I was glad for the first time in my life that I couldn’t see what was waiting in the dark, perhaps that meant we were also hidden. As my thoughts fired off in every direction, I gave the thing in the darkness the image of the cat-headed woman, and it terrified me. I was just waiting to hear that meow. But my ears were met with something else.
‘Chris.’ I tensed my throat and tried not to cry. ‘Chris.’
It said his name twice, and I cupped my hand over my mouth, the horrible, scraping dialogue sounded a few steps away. The words were said oddly, with no meaning behind them. They were just sounds that this thing had picked up, and was now using them to catch us out in the dark. Chris let go off my hand and I heard his foot plant softly on the grass behind him as he prepared to run. ‘Don’t you dare.’ I tried to project into his mind. ‘Don’t you make a sound’.
‘Chris. Pleeease.’
It sounded so wrong, drawn out like a door slowly opening. Chris let out a whimper as it called him. I froze and waited for something, anything to happen. There was a long silence and I held my breath for as long as I could. I couldn’t wait anymore. Very slowly I reached out to Chris and put my hand on his shoulder, and very carefully we both lifted our feet and managed to step without making a sound. We back stepped away from the voice and didn’t stop moving, but ever so carefully. So, so slowly. I didn’t care how long it would take us to get somewhere, if it took us an hour every step, we were going to get out. Chris backed into a tree, and gasped audibly. The clicking started up immediately, ‘click click clack click’, it rolled on, consistently moving towards us. I didn’t know what to do, All I could think of was to screw my eyes shut and try not to scream. As we stood there, the clicking came to a stop an arms length away from where we stood. Silence.
‘Chrisss. Turn it on. Pleeease.’
Fear took over, Chris switched on the |
Paul pulled the envelope out of his leather attaché case and settled into an uncomfortable chair behind a large writing desk. Late afternoon sun filtered in through the bay window but couldn’t defeat the dankness of the old house, nor the dreariness of his mood. Luckily, he had had the mind to pack a few battery-powered lanterns, and one of them now provided enough illumination to examine his mother’s ornate handwriting on the back of the envelope.
“For Paul” it read. He traced the letters with his fingers, each one written with care and love. Pensively, he squeezed the bridge of his nose and released an exhausted breath. He had admittedly taken the loss of his mother very hard, as she was a kind, bright, thoughtful woman taken way before her time – but he was a lucky man, and had married a woman who exuded those same qualities and had been blessed with a daughter whose genes seemingly came from the women in his family.
He had received the envelope several weeks before at the allocation of mother’s will. Its content undoubtedly was a letter, most likely full of sage advice and love. He had agonized over opening it, though, as he was unable to come to terms with reading his mother’s final words, but his wife, Lauren, had finally convinced him that they might provide comfort rather than sadness.
With final resolve, he retrieved a dusty letter opener from the desk and began to read the handwritten letter.
* * * * * *
To my dearest Paul,
There are not enough words in the dictionary to express my love for you, Lauren, and your sweet baby Emily. I only hope that I have shown you that love over your twenty five years of life. My health may be fading, but know that I will always be with you, and that I’m sorry for what I’m about to reveal to you. I fear though that there isn’t enough forgiveness on God’s green Earth for what I’ve done.
If you are reading this, that means that my final will and testament have been executed and you are probably surprised to find that you are now the owner of a small farmhouse in Creekside, Pennsylvania. It is the house that I grew up in. Heed my words, Paul – Do not go to that house. Put the deed in the back of your safe, claim it as an asset, but otherwise forget that it exists. You may be curious to see the childhood home of your mother, but please – do not go to that house.
I’m going to tell you why, Paul, and you may not have the same respect for me afterwards, but it is imperative that you understand the gravity of the situation.
My parents and I had moved from that house when I was around fifteen to live with Aunt June. However, when I was a few years younger than you are now, fresh out of college, I was offered a teaching position at a school a few towns over from that childhood home. You know my parents both passed away shortly after we had moved to California, and now I’m telling you that they too had left me that house in their will – but they never provided me with the knowledge I’m about to bestow upon you, my poor, sweet Paul.
Out of convenience, I moved into the house several weeks before summer ended. The town hadn’t changed much; it was still secluded, surrounded by forest, and its residents were still fairly strange and private. They did remember who I was, though, and they definitely remembered the accident that caused my family to leave.
As I was buying some groceries, the woman behind the counter recognized me and told me that I shouldn’t have come back and strongly suggested that I should turn around and leave right then and there. She grabbed me by the hand forcefully to express her urgency. There was a scar on her arm, just like the one I bear – the one I told you I got from falling off of my bike as a little girl. I was admittedly a little freaked out, but not enough to take her advice. That whole town is a little kooky, and at the time I thought I was being shunned for what happened when I was a teenager, but there was a fearfulness in her tone that has sat with me all these years.
The house had remained untouched for 8 years, and I spent that first day cleaning a thin film of dust off of everything. I was exhausted by nightfall, and, feeling that it was awkward to sleep in my parents’ old bedroom, I opted for my old one on the first floor. Because my room was small, my bed was flush against the wall, partially covering the only window in its length. A dresser and vanity were against the parallel wall. I remember collapsing into that bed that night, my body aching from moving boxes and cleaning.
I’m not sure what initially woke me up that night, Paul. I don’t recall a noise that pulled me from slumber, but I was overwhelmed by a feeling that I was not alone. Moonlight through the window cast shadows, but after a quick scan I knew the room was devoid of life save for me.
And then I saw it. In the vanity mirror. A reflection of the window. And looking in through the window was a creature that should not exist. That cannot be from this world. Too horrible for words. Just know, Paul, that this thing was evil. Even in the pale light, you could see the vile intentions in its inky eyes and snarling, fanged mouth. It looked excited. And hungry. Its grey hands pressed against the glass, each elongated, alien finger leaving a filmy residue behind as it dragged its claw-like nails down the window.
My back was turned to it, my feet only a few inches away from its face – separated by a thin plane of glass. I watched it feverishly watch me through the mirror. Unable to tell if it was aware that I knew it was there, I nonetheless felt like it was waiting for me to move. I, however, was frozen with fear. Honestly, if something by the grace of God hadn’t stirred me from my sleep, the sound of its screeching nails would have woken me. I was able to quell a surprised reaction and remained still.
Maybe it was minutes, maybe it was hours, but the thing finally left.
I’d be lying to you if I told you that was the first time I ever saw it, though. I’m so sorry, Paul.
There are three creeks that run parallel in the woods that surround the town, a few miles apart from one another. Of all the rules given to us children of Creekside, the most important one was that we were not allowed to pass the second creek and we were strongly urged not to venture too far past the first one. My parents told me there were old foundations and wells that made it dangerous for us kids to play there and that several children had gone missing in the woods, but it was apparent that the adults of town never crossed the second creek either. A few people who had risked getting close to the second creek claimed they had seen ghosts amongst the trees, and that lore alone was enough to convince us kids to stay close to town.
My best friends growing up were Jimmy and Andy. Jimmy, you know, would later become your father, but Andy was always a bit of daredevil and troublemaker, and I was an impressionable young girl. One day, Andy has stolen a few of his dad’s cigarettes and the three of us went into the woods like a bunch of stupid hardasses to smoke them. Andy got the crazy idea that we needed to rebel even more and explore the woods past the second creek. Jimmy and I were scared, for it had been so ingrained in us to never do it, but Andy was persuasive.
Andy crossed the ancient looking bridge over the second creek first, cigarette in mouth. Jimmy and I delayed across from him. It became clear that Jimmy wasn’t going to do it. He threw a rock at Andy, called him an idiot and started walking up the path towards town.
I begged Andy to come back with us, and I must have thrown my head back in frustration when he teased me. That’s when I saw it. The grey, gargoyle-like creature. It was perched in a tree, not too far away from where Andy was standing. It looked like a vulture eyeing its prey. I had barely started to scream when it leapt from the tree and tackled Andy to the ground.
Jimmy ran back to my side, but neither of us had any idea what to do, let alone how to comprehend the fear. I could hear Andy screaming and fighting, and I swear, Paul, that sound has never left my ears. I grabbed a rock and ran across the bridge. I hit the thing over the head, but it swiftly knocked me back into the water. I struggled but Jimmy pulled me out on the other side just in time to see the creature make off with Andy’s limp body through the trees.
I don’t know how long Jimmy and I sat there in shock, but the stars were out when we reached my house. We told our worried parents and the other adults who had gathered there our story. All of them seemed more shocked that Andy and I had crossed the creek than by descriptions of the creature. Jimmy’s mom let out a cry of relief when she realized her boy had not crossed – but my parents – my parents started packing up loose belongings and clothing hastily. We left town that night, and drove the whole way Aunt June’s, only stopping once, outside of Chicago. My parents died only sixth months later from a disease that doctors couldn’t identify.
I was young, and didn’t understand. Everything was a blur and I couldn’t discern one emotion and memory from another. At some point, I started believing that Andy had fallen in the creek and hit his head on a rock, and that my parents’ passing was an awful coincidence. It was easier to cope that way.
And then I saw that hideous face in the window like it had claimed me nearly a decade before and had been waiting for me ever since. I was relieved when it left, but fearful for I did not know where it had gone. I remained frozen the rest of the night.
Early the next morning, a knock came from the front door. I hesitated, gripped again by fear, but it was Jimmy. A nostalgic reunion was halted by his urgency to discuss something with me. I knew what it was before he even sat at the kitchen table. I wasn’t prepared for what he was about to tell me, though, Paul. I’ll spare you the details, and tell you only what you need to know.
This thing that lives in the woods has been there for a really long time, Jimmy says, far before the original settlement of Creekside. Nobody knows exactly where it came from, or much else about it, only that it was responsible for the vicious deaths of many of the town’s children. It likes young blood, Jimmy told me. Nobody could figure out a way to kill it either.
But the thing was conniving, and sentient, and realized that if the people left, its food would too. On the other hand, the townspeople feared that wherever they went, the creature would follow. So a deal had been made in blood. Anything that moved between the oval the second and third creek created belonged to the creature, and in turn, the creature would never harm anything that didn’t cross that boundary.
Jimmy told me I belonged to the creature because I had crossed the bridge, and my parents had been killed because they betrayed the pact. You see, Paul, it’s a curse. I know it’s hard to believe.
It didn’t take me long to make the decision to leave Creekside again. Jimmy didn’t know definitively what geographically bound the creature, but had done enough research to estimate that it only traveled within the confines of Creekside and nearby townships. He had also discovered similar tales of creatures around the world. These things are all over the place, and – I’m sorry, Paul. This is not important now. Check the files within your father’s study, they’ll tell you more than you need to know. Don’t delve too deep, though. It was his obsession with it that cost him his life – not the car accident I lied to you about. I’m so, so sorry.
Jimmy helped me throw a few boxes into my car, and promised to meet me again soon. I turned around one last time to share a moment of silent solitude with him before I got in my car. As I turned back, I could see terror transform his face. He called my name, but I didn’t have appropriate time to react. The creature bounded from the woods and leapt to the roof of my car.
It crouched, dropping its face to be even with mine. Sneering, its rancid breath smelled of dried blood. My knees weakened and buckled as Jimmy swooped in to tackle the thing off of the roof. Jimmy fought with all his might, but wasn’t a match and ended up crumpled a few feet away from me. In hysterics, I tried to flee but quickly found I had nowhere to run. The thing caught me promptly and dragged me into the woods with little effort. Jimmy composed himself enough to start running after us, screaming for me to make a deal. I lost consciousness before I could make sense of what Jimmy was telling me, a fleeting memory of Andy whispering in my mind.
Paul, please remember how much I love you as you struggle to manage the final parts of my story.
A small fire blinded me as I awoke on cold, damp ground, surrounded by trinkets of times gone by. An old wind up children’s toy. A few dog collars. Andy’s engraved lighter. Bones were littered everywhere.
The creature sat squat across from me, watching me zealously. It was muttering anxiously and rocking on its wolfish feet. I was surprised, as ancient as Jimmy told me this thing was, to find that it spoke English. “Spoiled,” it said, gravelly. “You spoiled.” I remember its coal eyes following me as I nervously brought myself to a sitting position. “I knew it was you. Too old now. Spoiled.”
I seemed to be in a cavern of some sort with two tunnels that faded to blackness, neither discernable as the exit. I haven’t forgotten its words, nor the look in its eyes when it stopped rocking. “You can’t leave. You are mine. You belong to me. You crossed the water. But you are too old to eat. You spoiled.”
Realizing the thing was contemplating over whether to kill me or not, Jimmy’s screams strained through my head, and I understand that he had meant for me to make a deal with the creature for my life. The creature liked to bargain. So I asked it, Paul, what it wanted in exchange for letting me go.
It thought awhile, before it smiled maliciously. It wanted one of my children, and one of my children’s children. I wondered if this thing had been around long enough to inspire Rumpelstiltskin. I don’t know, Paul, but I took that deal. I nodded my head, and agreed that when I had children, I would bring one of them to the creature, and if I had grandchildren – I would sacrifice one of them as well. It might seem like a rough bargain, but it would get two for letting one go.
You might be sickened now, Paul, but realize that after considering the offer thoughtfully, I simply intended to just never have children. I resolved to give up becoming a mother. I thought I had tricked it.
The creature took my hand, cutting its claw deep into my forearm creating a brand that would bond me for life. Then, it simply let me go. Jimmy, and several others he had gathered, waited at the bridge. None of them asked me how I survived, for they all knew by the scarlet letter on my arm.
As you know, Jimmy would leave Creekside and settle with me near Aunt June in California. On good conscience, I couldn’t sell the house and put another family in the vicinity of that evil thing. I had become resigned to the fact that I had to abandon the opportunity of motherhood, but could never bring myself to permanently and medically destroy the chance of pregnancy. I just couldn’t do it, Paul.
And Jimmy and I were careful, even after we married. But, several years later, I became pregnant with you. And your twin brother, Andrew.
I know that’s a shock. I’m not proud of what I did, Paul, and I regret never telling you about your brother. I knew, though, that the creature would take me, as it did my parents, if I betrayed our deal. The scar on my arm burned long before I gave birth to you. I took that baby, Paul, that infant, only a few days old. I took him back to Creekside and left him on the other side of the bridge on the second creek. I am unworthy of forgiveness, and to this day, the memory induces nausea and unbearable heartbreak. It was an evil thing for me to do, but it let me watch you grow up into the man you are. I’ve given you every ounce of goodness I could.
And that’s why I’m dying, Paul. I knew Lauren was with child a month before you announced it because the scar on my arm was on fire – reminding me of my dues. I can’t pay them this time. I can’t do that to you, or sweet Emily. I have lived my life, and only hope that I can be reunited with your father and Andrew on the other side. I fear that my actions have provided for more insidious consequences, however.
I will repeat my initial warning, Paul. Do not go to that house in Creekside. Only evil waits there. I can’t bear to imagine if the creature is able to reach Emily. Our sweet, sweet Emily.
I love you, Paul, with my whole heart.
I am so sorry, but do not deserve your forgiveness.
– Mom
* * * * * *
Paul put the letter down on the writing desk. He could distinguish disturbed and disgusted emotions amongst a primal fear and sadness. He couldn’t categorize and understand his thoughts.
He was unable to tell if these emotions were targeted towards his mother or himself.
His mother had made some awful and anguishing decisions, sure, but he probably should have read the letter before he brought his wife and daughter to this place.
Suddenly, his mother’s childhood house seemed a little darker. Dazed, he tried desperately to grasp the connotations of his mother’s letter.
The sound of glass smashing broke his stupor – the sounds of glass shattering, the ferocity of his wife’s screams, and the fading wail of his daughter’s cries.
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On several occasions my interest in the supernatural has taken me to some of the most prestigious seats of learning in the entire United Kingdom. From the venerable halls of Oxford and Cambridge, to the more humble surroundings of inner city colleges and schools, my pursuit of evidence to substantiate such claims has rarely been fruitful. However, while exploring the University of St Andrews in Scotland, I found a rather interesting tome hidden away in a dark and musty corner of the campus library.
The book itself was unusual, its cover bound in a weathered and blackened leather which unashamedly wore the wrinkles and cracks of time. It dated back to the 16th century, and seemed to contain various descriptions and accounts of the daily lives of the people of Ettrick; a small isolated town built in the south moorlands of the country.
Perusing the volume there were a variety of entries from a number of authors spanning a 60 year period. It seemed to have been handed down from town elder to town elder over that time, and to be quite frank most of it contained idle musings on the townsfolk and plans for a number of humble building projects and improvements.
Just as I was about to conclude that the book was of little interest to me, I noticed on the inside of the back cover that someone had drawn a picture. It was elegantly depicted, but I would never have described it as a pleasing sight, in fact my immediate reaction was one of disgust upon first viewing it.
The combination of the harsh, almost angry black lines used and the stark imagery of the scene as relayed by the artist left me with a thoroughly unpleasant impression of its subject. I shuddered as I cast my eye over it in an attempt to take-in the picture of what seemed to be of a man, tall with long, thin arms and legs. His face was partially obscured by one of his gaunt white hands, but what could be seen was monstrous. Prominent veins protruded from his forehead leading up to a pallid bald head, his eyes were deep set into his skull and the surrounding woods seemed to twist and lean away from him fearfully.
At first I assumed that the picture was some form of hideous graffiti, but at the bottom of the page was inscribed the date of 1578, and a rather unusual name: ‘Herbert Solomon’. Whether this was the name of the menacing figure in the drawing or of the artist, I did not know.
Disturbed yet compelled by that dark woodland scene, I decided that the book required further study. I desired greatly to know who this creature was, and why someone had felt the need to capture his strange form in a drawing; a drawing at the back of a book otherwise used to record the lives of the townsfolk. On closer inspection what surprised me further was that the same image seemed to recur elsewhere in the book, but drawn by apparently different individuals.
Within the book I found numerous mentions of Herbert Solomon, and it became clear quickly that he was indeed the emaciated man in the picture. He had lived in the 16th century on the outskirts of Ettrick town. It was a small and underdeveloped place, surrounded on all sides by the thick cover of Ettrick forest, which itself sat in the midst of a vast region of southern moorland.
The town had a small parish church with one humble steeple, an inn normally used by those travelling through the unforgiving countryside, and quaint cobbled streets which wound their way around the stone cottages and town hall.
According to the descriptions in the book, during the December of 1577 children began to disappear from the town. The first was a young girl by the name of Alana Sutherland. She had been playing with some friends by an old well on the outskirts of the town, but had dropped a small toy doll down it accidentally, which had caused her much distress. Unable to retrieve it, she returned home to borrow some string and an old hook in the hopes of being able to fish the doll out of the water below. She was last seen walking towards the well just as the sun set.
In a panic the townsfolk searched, they dredged the well, they combed the wheatfields, and even sent several groups of those willing into the surrounding woods. Alas, the girl was not found.
A few days later a young boy by the name of Erik Kennedy was running an errand for his grandmother. It was dark, but he had only to take some wool over to the Munro place as way of a thanks for the grain they had provided, and they lived but only a few streets away. It was assumed that at least the centre of the town would be safe, but the boy never completed his errand. He vanished, as if he were torn from existence.
By the end of January an unusually bitter winter had caused significant damage to the town and its people. Large, thick sheets of ice and snow covered each house and building. Several people died from the cold alone, and the general mood of Ettrick town was a sombre one.
Despite these trying times, the townspeople were more concerned with the safety of their offspring. In total, seven children had now disappeared without rhyme or reason. Whole families wept in despair and the people of Ettrick began to view one another suspiciously. They knew the truth; someone was taking their children from them.
By mid February two more had went missing and accusatory glances were now being shared between every family, and every member of the community. The town elder decided to act, and took upon himself the arduous task of identifying and catching the fiend.
Bureaucratic discussions were had, church groups convened, and in every house in every street, in every corner of Ettrick, one name crossed the lips of its inhabitants: ‘Herbert Solomon’. The more the name was mentioned, the more certain his guilt became.
Herbert Solomon was an outsider. He lived in a small wooden cabin amongst the woods which surrounded the town, and due to his unfortunate appearance tended to avoid human contact. What his malady was no one was sure and in the unenlightened times of 16th century Scotland, many believe that he was cursed.
Modern eyes would have guessed him to be the victim of a wasting disease. He rarely ventured into town, except on a few occasions to trade for supplies and even in those instances he covered his face with a brown tarnished hat and a grey piece of cloth, which obscured his features below two deep set and darkened eyes.
Several of the townsfolk told stories of Herbert Solomon, according to these accounts he would stand on the edge of the forest watching the farmers till their land, and their children play in the fields. It was his fascination with children which left many feeling uneasy. Some of the town’s children returned home from playing near the woods on a number of occasions with beautifully crafted dolls and toys. They were a present, from Herbert Solomon, and being innocent children they could not know of the dangers therein.
When the children began to disappear, eyes immediately turned to the strange man living in the woods. Accusations were carried by the whispers of fearful parents, and as the whispers increased in number so did their volume, until it was decided that Herbert Solomon must be stopped.
On a cold February night the elders of the town decreed that Solomon should be arrested immediately. Grief, anger, resentment, and fear grew to a fever pitch with this news and every man woman and child set out across the fields, entering into the surrounding forest in search of the child killer Herbert Solomon.
Details of exactly what occurred that night are limited, but it seems as though the people of Ettrick town attempted to remove Herbert from his small cabin by setting it on fire. The crowds cheered as the heat grew and the fire rose. His screams echoed throughout the woods finally to be silenced by the flames.
The townsfolk believed that justice had been done, and while the grief of the parents whom had lost their children could never be quenched, there was at least the satisfaction of knowing that the man responsible was now dead.
However, over the following few days an unease descended upon the entire town. Stories began to spread of strange encounters in the streets at night; a gaunt shadowy figure prowling the cobbled stones, hiding in the darkness. Within a week numerous residents claimed to have woken up during the night to the petrifying sight of an unwelcome visitor.
One account was of an elderly lady who woke to the sound of something rustling under her bed, only to nearly die of shock as a tall, thin man pulled himself out from underneath. She fainted, but not before she saw his face; a withered complexion as if ravaged by disease, his eyes blacker than night and his hands comprised of tightly pulled skin over a bony interior.
Another story consisted of a local tradesman who while investigating a noise from his cellar was confronted by a hideous figure, so tall and gaunt that it had to hunch over to avoid the low ceiling entirely, its sheet-white face flickering in the candlelight. The man managed to escape, but he refused to re-enter his premises.
It became clear to the townspeople that the vengeful ghost of Herbert Solomon was still searching for other victims from beyond the grave. His hate and hideous form haunting the town which murdered him.
With each passing day the sightings grew in intensity and number. A fog descended on the town, and the people wept and grieved as the sound of Herbert Solomon terrorised each person, night by night. He was seen wandering amongst the wheatfields, in the cellars and lofts of cottage houses, his long gaping footsteps ringing out each night through the streets of Ettrick town.
They had been cursed. In life Herbert Solomon had taken and murdered their children, and now in death he seemed to possess the twisted means to terrorize the entire town.
Then the unthinkable happened; another child went missing. A young orphan girl – who often wandered the streets when she could not find a place to call home for the night – was heard screaming for her life. The townsfolk rushed to their windows, looking out but not daring to leave the imaginary safety of their houses; paralysed by fear.
The screaming ceased quickly and moments later wandering aimlessly out of the fog came the menacing figure of Herbert Solomon. He rushed down the street, his lifeless arms bashing against the houses which he passed, scraping the doors and windows with his rigid fingers, emitting an unnatural yell of anger and hatred on his way.
The girl was gone, and the town grieved once more.
In the proceeding days the fog grew denser and with it came the unwelcome news of two more children taken. One a girl whom after having a raging argument with her family, left the house never to be seen again. The other a boy named Matthew, the son of a notable drunk, who was taken from his own bed by the hands of Solomon while the father lay unconscious from drink.
During a church service the unthinkable happened, Solomon appeared briefly in the aisles of the church seemingly unaffected by consecrated ground. The congregation whimpered in horror and disdain as his warped, spindly form walked slowly behind a pillar and then vanished.
It was indeed a show of influence.
Hope was almost lost. Not even a place of worship could deny him, and he was now capable of entering any home at night and then taking whatever, or whoever he wished. The town had to act, or abandon the place altogether, but there was no guarantee that the curse of Solomon would not follow.
The local vicar, a man by the name of McKenzie was asked by the people of Ettrick to use any sacred power which was ordained to him. In an attempt to destroy or banish the spirit of Solomon, a plan was provided. The vicar and a few chosen individuals armed with torches, swords which had been blessed, and vials of holy water, would take guard over the town waiting for the cursed figure of that child killer to show his face once more.
Then they would confront him.
Observing as much of the town as possible from several house windows, roofs, and strategic street corners, McKenzie’s chosen waited. They did not, however, need to wait long. That night the lonely figure of Herbert Solomon appeared through the mist, walking the streets of Ettrick with purpose. Yells and screams rang out as people alerted one another that Solomon had returned.
Families held their children close as dark thoughts consumed the town: Please spare my child, take another’s.
McKenzie was the first to confront him. His will was shaken by the sight of Solomon’s hideous pallid face, rotten and ravaged. The gangly spindling figure stood staring intently at the vicar through black, clouded eyes.
Another man now joined, then another, before long Herbert Solomon was surrounded. McKenzie instructed the men to slowly close the circle, drawing their swords with one hand while brandishing flaming torches with the other.
Fear gripped them, but they knew that this could be their only chance. McKenzie threw a vial at Solomon’s lumbering feet and as he uttered a Christian Psalm, another man struck out with his torch. The blow crackled as the cloth covered arm of Solomon caught fire. Cheers rang out from the townsfolk watching from their homes above, but the man had strayed to close, providing a gap in the circle which Solomon claimed with purpose.
He fled.
His spindling legs and flailing arms cast spider like shadows on the walls and cobbled streets as he passed. The townsfolk gave chase, following the pathetic figure as it negotiated each street corner, lane, and courtyard in an attempt to escape their rage.
The noise alerted the town: Herbert Solomon is trying to flee!
From every home across the town, people poured out of their houses carrying whatever they could as way of a makeshift weapon. They flooded the streets and ran towards the protestations, shouts and screams of Solomon’s pursuers.
With every turn of a cobbled street corner, Solomon was running out of places to hide. Finally, as he stumbled down the town’s main street, he stopped. The townsfolk had blocked all escape routes; he was trapped.
McKenzie pushed his way to the front of the crowd, asking for quiet and calm as he approached the hunched defeated figure of Herbert Solomon; he and his chosen few were going to rid the town of Ettrick of this abomination once and for all.
Vial in hand, accompanied by several large bullish men brandishing swords, McKenzie approached slowly reciting verses from the bible. Through dark eyes Herbert Solomon observed the townsfolk, their faces etched with hate and thoughts of revenge, moving towards him and then, he simply turned and entered an open doorway next to him.
The people gasped and MacKenzie and his followers rushed inside after him. The house they had entered was still, and lying on the hard wooden floor of the main hallway was the pale body of a young girl. The creaking of floorboards under weight sounded above as numerous pursuers searched the house, disappointed to find nothing.
Then something miraculous occurred, the little girl gasped for air – she was alive.
She had little or no strength, all she could do was utter one word: Below.
In the cellar of the house McKenzie found a grim and horrific scene. The floor was covered in blood and the quite dead body of a man lay face down upon it. Chained to the walls of that dim place were the children who had been taken.
They were partially drugged, malnourished, and traumatised, but they were alive.
The town rejoiced with the news, families were reunited, lives were mended. The mist of a bleak and horrible winter slowly lifted and all seemed well. On regaining their strength, the children recounted what had befallen them.
Each of them had been taken by a man called Tom Sutherland. He was the father of the first girl who had went missing and it appeared that it was he whom had killed her. No one knew for sure, but many were aware of his bad temper and on more than one occasion he had beaten poor Alana.
Consumed by guilt and loss, Sutherland began taking children at knife point and locking them in his cellar. Often drugging them with a local herb and occasionally beating them while pathetically weeping in self pity.
On the day that the children were found, Sutherland entered the cellar drunk, carrying a knife and rope. He began striking the children once more, and told them that one would die that day. He untied one of the children and pinned her to the ground with his knees. The knife hovered over her neck, but just as he was about to plunge the blade into her, someone entered the house.
Sutherland grew ferocious with anger but whoever was standing at the top of the staircase struck such fear into him that he quickly back peddled into the cellar. Ducking under the doorway was the tall scarred figure of Herbert Solomon.
At the sight of him, and now being free, the little girl crawled quickly between Herbert’s long legs. She was free, but too weak to run. She fainted before she could escape the house.
Details of what happened to Tom Sutherland were muddied by the unstable, semi-conscious condition of the witnesses. But it was clear that his neck was broken, his head twisted with such force that it faced an unnatural, opposite direction.
There were various accounts of subsequent glimpses of Herbert Solomon, and some of the children claimed to find beautifully crafted dolls and toys on occasion sitting at the edge of the woods, but of course this cannot be substantiated.
Indeed, I would have said that the entire story could not be substantiated, if it were not for the events which I experienced several months after reading that old book, in the depths of St Andrews University.
A colleague and dear friend of mine invited me to stay at his family home for a few days in the countryside. I knew that the house was in the borders, not half an hour’s drive from Ettrick and could not miss the chance to have a closer look at the area. I had managed to persuade the powers-at-be to allow me to take the book from St Andrews and show it to my friend. He had a particular interest and not insignificant knowledge of the history of the area. I thought perhaps he could shine a light on this curious tale.
His family were very to kind to me, and the house and its grounds were serene in the summer sun, with his children playing in the fields having a carefree and happy time. After reading the book he told me that it was fascinating, and that he knew of a local poem which had been written in the 17th century about a man called Solomon who killed children, but he could not tell me any more.
The next day we heard screams coming from nearby the house; it was my friend’s little girl. We raced outside. Following the cries for help over an old fence and down a steep grassy hill, we reached a winding and furious river. The girl had fallen in and was clinging to a large tree root which thrust out from the opposite embankment into the water. The root was wet and my friend let out a scream of anguish as his daughter lost her grip, being swept down stream towards a large formation of huge sharp rocks which jutted out from beneath the surface. The river would not let go and was throwing her around with such force that it was difficult to see how she could survive.
Filled with the abject terror that she could drown we finally made it to the water’s edge. As we rushed into the murky torrent we watched helplessly as the poor little girl was about to crash into the rocks.
We were too far away!
Suddenly our attention was grabbed by the cracks and creaks of a tall gaunt figure at the other side of the river, rushing out of the woods at tremendous speed on the opposite bank. With one swift motion a thin, bony hand plunged into the violent water, prevailing against the immense currents, finally pulling the young girl to safety.
She was alive. Frightened, crying, but alive and unhurt.
The pale faced, emaciated figure placed the girl gently on the ground, stared at us from across the water through darkened eyes as we ourselves clambered to safety, then turned and disappeared into the woods. Fading away to nothing but a memory.
Even in death Herbert Solomon was the kindest and gentlest of souls.
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Part One: The Beginning
Bedtime is supposed to be a happy event for a tired child; for me it was terrifying. While some children might complain about being put to bed before they have finished watching a film or playing their favourite video game, when I was a child, night time was something to truly fear. Somewhere in the back of my mind it still is.
As someone who is trained in the sciences, I cannot prove that what happened to me was objectively real, but I can swear that what I experienced was genuine horror. A fear which in my life, I’m glad to say, has never been equaled. I will relate it to you all now as best I can, make of it what you will, but I’ll be glad to just get it off of my chest.
I can’t remember exactly when it started, but my apprehension towards falling asleep seemed to correspond with my being moved into a room of my own. I was 8 years old at the time and until then I had shared a room, quite happily, with my older brother. As is perfectly understandable for a boy 5 years my senior, my brother eventually wished for a room of his own and as a result, I was given the room at the back of the house.
It was a small, narrow, yet oddly elongated room, large enough for a bed and a couple of chest of drawers, but not much else. I couldn’t really complain because, even at that age, I understood that we did not have a large house and I had no real cause to be disappointed, as my family was both loving and caring. It was a happy childhood, during the day.
A solitary window looked out onto our back garden, nothing out of the ordinary, but even during the day, the light which crept into that room seemed almost hesitant.
As my brother was given a new bed, I was given the bunk air beds which we used to share. While I was upset about sleeping on my own, I was excited at the thought of being able to sleep in the top bunk, which seemed far more adventurous to me.
From the very first night, I remember a strange feeling of unease creeping slowly from the back of my mind. I lay on the top bunk, staring down at my action figures and cars strewn across the green-blue carpet. As imaginary battles and adventures took place between the toys on the floor, I couldn’t help but feel that my eyes were being slowly drawn towards the bottom bunk, as if something was moving in the corner of my eye. Something which did not wish to be seen.
The bunk was empty, impeccably made with a dark blue blanket tucked in neatly, partially covering two rather bland white pillows. I didn’t think anything of it at the time, I was a child, and the noise slipping under my door from my parent’s television bathed me in a warm sense of safety and well-being.
I fell asleep.
When you awaken from a deep sleep to something moving or stirring, it can take a few moments for you to truly understand what is happening. The fog of sleep hangs over your eyes and ears even when lucid.
Something was moving, there was no doubt about that.
At first, I wasn’t sure what it was. Everything was dark, almost pitch black, but there was enough light creeping in from outside to outline that narrowly suffocating room. Two thoughts appeared in my mind almost simultaneously. The first was that my parents were in bed because the rest of the house lay both in darkness and silence. The second thought turned to the noise. A noise which had obviously woken me.
As the last cobwebs of sleep withered from my mind, the noise took on a more familiar form. Sometimes the simplest of sounds can be the most unnerving, a cold wind whistling through a tree outside, a neighbor’s footsteps uncomfortably close, or, in this case, the simple sound of bed sheets rustling in the dark.
That was it; bed sheets rustling in the dark as if some disturbed sleeper was attempting to get all too comfortable in the bottom bunk. I lay there in disbelief thinking that the noise was either my imagination, or perhaps just my pet cat finding somewhere comfortable to spend the night. It was then that I noticed my door, shut as it had been as I’d fallen asleep.
Perhaps my mum had checked in on me and the cat had sneaked into my room then.
Yes, that must have been it. I turned to face the wall, closing my eyes in the vain hope that I could fall back to sleep. As I moved, the rustling noise from underneath me ceased. I thought that I must have disturbed my cat, but quickly I realized that the visitor in the bottom bunk was much less mundane than my pet trying to sleep, and much more sinister.
As if alerted to, and disgruntled by, my presence, the disturbed sleeper began to toss and turn violently, like a child having a tantrum in their bed. I could hear the sheets twist and turn with increasing ferocity. Fear then gripped me, not like the subtle sense of unease I had experienced earlier, but now potent and terrifying. My heart raced as my eyes panicked, scanning the almost impenetrable darkness.
I let out a cry.
As most young boys do, I instinctively shouted on my mother. I could hear something stir on the other side of the house, but as I began to breathe a sigh of relief that my parents were coming to save me, the bunk beds suddenly started to shake violently as if gripped by an earthquake, scraping against the wall. I could hear the sheets below me thrashing around as if tormented by malice. I did not want to jump down to safety as I feared the thing in the bottom bunk would reach out and grab me, pulling me into the darkness, so I stayed there, white knuckles clenching my own blanket like a shroud of protection. The wait seemed like an eternity.
The door finally, and thankfully, burst open, and I lay bathed in light while the bottom bunk, the resting place of my unwanted visitor, lay empty and peaceful.
I cried and my mother consoled me. Tears of fear, followed by relief, streamed down my face. Yet, through all of the horror and relief, I did not tell her why I was so upset. I cannot explain it, but it was as though whatever had been in that bunk would return if I even so much as spoke of it, or uttered a single syllable of its existence. Whether that was the truth, I do not know, but as a child I felt as if that unseen menace remained close, listening.
My mother lay in the empty bunk, promising to stay there until morning. Eventually my anxiety diminished, tiredness pushed me back towards sleep, but I remained restless, waking several times momentarily to the sound of rustling bed sheets.
I remember the next day wanting to go anywhere, be anywhere, but in that narrow suffocating room. It was a Saturday and I played outside, quite happily with my friends. Although our house was not large we were lucky to have a long sloping garden in the back. We played there often, as much of it was overgrown and we could hide in the bushes, climb in the huge sycamore tree which towered above all else, and easily imagine ourselves in the throes of a grand adventure, in some untamed exotic land.
As fun as it all was, occasionally my eye would turn to that small window; ordinary, slight, and innocuous. But for me, that thin boundary was a looking glass into a strange, cold pocket of dread. Outside, the lush green surroundings of our garden filled with the smiling faces of my friends could not extinguish the creeping feeling clawing its way up my spine; each hair standing on end. The feeling of something in that room, watching me play, waiting for the night when I would be alone; eagerly filled with hate.
It may sound strange to you, but by the time my parents ushered me back into that room for the night, I said nothing. I didn’t protest, I didn’t even make an excuse as to why I couldn’t sleep there. I simply and sullenly walked into that room, climbed the few steps into the top bunk and then waited. As an adult, I would be telling everyone about my experience, but even at that age, I felt almost silly to be talking about something which I really had no evidence for. I would be lying, however, if I said this was my primary reason; I still felt that this thing would be enraged if I so much as spoke of it.
It’s funny how certain words can remain hidden from your mind, no matter how blatant or obvious they are. One word came to me that second night, lying there in the darkness alone, frightened, aware of a rotten change in the atmosphere; a thickening of the air as if something had displaced it. As I heard the first casual twists of the bed sheets below, the first anxious increase of my heartbeat at the realisation that something was once again in the bottom bunk, that word, a word which had been sent into exile, filtered up through my consciousness, breaking free of all repression, gasping for air screaming, etching, and carving itself into my mind.
“Ghost”.
As this thought came to me, I noticed that my unwelcome visitor had ceased moving. The bed sheets lay calm and dormant, but they had been replaced by something far more hideous. A slow, rhythmic, rasping breath heaved and escaped from the thing below. I could imagine its chest rising and falling with each sordid, wheezing, and garbled breath. I shuddered, and hoped beyond all hope that it would leave without occurrence.
The house lay, as it had the previous night, in a thick blanket of darkness. Silence prevailed, all but for the perverted breath of my, as yet, unseen bunkmate. I lay there terrified. I just wanted this thing to go, to leave me alone.
What did it want?
Then something unmistakably chilling transpired; it moved. It moved in a way different from before. When it threw itself around in the bottom bunk it seemed, unrestrained, without purpose, almost animalistic. This movement, however, was driven by awareness, with purpose, with a goal in mind. For that thing lying there in the darkness, that thing which seemed intent on terrorizing a young boy, calmly and nonchalantly sat up. Its labored breathing had become louder as now only a mattress and a few flimsy wooden slats separated my body from the unearthly breath below.
I lay there, my eyes filled with tears. A fear which mere words cannot relate to you or anyone else coursed through my veins. I would not have believed that this fear could have been heightened, but I was so wrong. I imagined what this thing would look like, sitting there listing from below my mattress, hoping to catch the slightest hint that I was awake. Imagination then turned to an unnerving reality. It began to touch the wooden slats which my mattress sat on. It seemed to caress them carefully, running what I imagined to be fingers and hands across the surface of the wood.
Then, with great force, it prodded angrily between two slats, into the mattress. Even through the padding, it felt as though someone had viciously stuck their fingers into my side. I let out an almighty cry and the wheezing, shaking, and moving thing in the bunk below replied in kind by violently vibrating the bunk as it had done the night before. Small flakes of paint powdered onto my blanket from the wall as the frame of the bed scraped along it, backwards and forwards.
Once again I was bathed in light, and there stood my mother, loving, caring as she always was, with a comforting hug and calming words which eventually subdued my hysteria. Of course she asked what was wrong, but I could not say, I dared not say. I simply said one word over and over and over again.
“Nightmare”.
This pattern of events continued for weeks, if not months. Night after night I would awaken to the sound of rustling sheets. Each time I would scream so as to not provide this abomination with time to prod and ‘feel’ for me. With each cry the bed would shake violently, stopping with the arrival of my mother who would spend the rest of the night in the bottom bunk, seemingly unaware of the sinister force torturing her son nightly.
Along the way, I managed to feign illness a few times and come up with other less-than-truthful reasons for sleeping in my parents’ bed, but more often than not I would be alone for the first few hours of each night in that place. The room where the light from outside did not sit right. Alone with that thing.
With time you can become desensitized to almost anything, no matter how horrific. I had come to realize that, for whatever reason, this thing could not harm me when my mother was present. I am sure the same would have been said for my father, but as loving as he was, waking him from sleep was almost impossible.
After a few months, I had grown accustomed to my nightly visitor. Do not mistake this for some unearthly friendship, I detested the thing. I still feared it greatly as I could almost sense its desires and its personality, if you could call it that; one filled with a perverted and twisted hatred yet longing for me, of perhaps all things.
My greatest fears were realized in the winter. The days grew short, and the longer nights merely provided this wretch with more opportunities. It was a difficult time for my family. My Grandmother, a wonderfully kind and gentle woman, had deteriorated greatly since the death of my Grandfather. My mother was trying her best to keep her in the community as long as possible, however, dementia is a cruel and degenerative illness, robbing a person of their memories one day at a time. Soon she recognized none of us, and it became clear that she would need to be moved from her house to a nursing home.
Before she could be moved, my Grandmother had a particularly difficult few nights and my mother decided that she would stay with her. As much as I loved my Grandmother and felt nothing but anguish at her illness, to this day I feel guilty that my first thoughts were not of her, but of what my nightly visitor may do should it become aware of my mother’s absence; her presence being the one thing which I was sure was protecting me from the full horror of this thing’s reach.
I rushed home from school that day and immediately wrenched the bed sheets and mattress from the lower bunk, removing all of the slats and placing an old desk, a chest of drawers, and some chairs which we kept in a cupboard where the bottom bunk used to be. I told my father I was ‘making an office’ which he found adorable, but I would be damned if I’d give that thing a place to sleep for one more night.
As darkness approached, I lay there knowing my mother was not in the house. I did not know what to do. My only impulse was to sneak into her jewelry box and take a small family crucifix which I had seen there before. While my family was not very religious, at that age I still believed in God and hoped that somehow this would protect me. Although fearful and anxious, while gripping the crucifix under my pillow tightly in one hand, sleep eventually came and as I drifted off to dream, I hoped that I would awaken in the morning without incidence. Unfortunately, that night was the most terrifying of all.
I woke gradually. The room was once again dark. As my eyes adjusted I could gradually make out the window and the door, and the walls, some toys on a shelf and… Even to this day, I shudder to think of it, for there was no noise. No rustling of sheets. No movement at all. The room felt lifeless. Lifeless, yet not empty.
The nightly visitor, that unwelcome, wheezing, hate-filled thing which had terrorized me night after night, was not in the bottom bunk, it was in my bed! I opened my mouth to scream, but nothing came out. Utter terror had shaken the very sound from my voice. I lay motionless. If I could not scream, I did not want to let it know I was awake.
I had not yet seen it, I could only feel it. It was obscured under my blanket. I could see its outline, and I could feel its presence, but I dared not look. The weight of it pressed down on top of me, a sensation I will never forget. When I say that hours passed, I do not exaggerate. Laying there motionless, in the darkness, I was every bit a scared and frightened young boy.
If it had been during the summer months it would have been light by then, but the grasp of winter is long and unrelenting, and I knew it would be hours before sunrise; a sunrise which I yearned for. I was a timid child by nature, but I reached a breaking point, a moment where I could wait no more, where I could survive under this intimately deviant abomination no longer.
Fear can sometimes wear you out, make you threadbare, a shell of nerves leaving only the slightest trace of you behind. I had to get out of that bed! Then I remembered, the crucifix! My hand still lay underneath the pillow, but it was empty! I slowly moved my wrist around to find it, minimizing as best I could the sound and vibrations caused, but it could not be found. I had either knocked it off of the top bunk, or it had…I could not even bear to think of it, been taken from my hand.
Without the crucifix, I lost any sense of hope. Even at such a young age, you can be acutely aware of what death is, and intensely frightened of it. I knew I was going to die in that bed if I lay there, dormant, passive, doing nothing. I had to leave that room behind, but how? Should I leap from the bed and hope that I make it to the door? What if it is faster than me? Or should I slowly slip out of that top bunk, hoping to not disturb my uncanny bedfellow?
Realizing that it had not stirred when I moved, trying to find the crucifix, I began to have the strangest of thoughts.
What if it was asleep?
It hadn’t so much as breathed since I had woken up. Perhaps it was resting, believing that it had finally got me. That I was finally in its grasp. Or perhaps it was toying with me. After all, it had been doing just that for countless nights, and now with me under it, pinned against my mattress with no mother to protect me, maybe it was holding off, savoring its victory until the last possible moment. Like a wild animal savoring its prey.
I tried to breathe as shallowly as possible, and mustering every ounce of courage I could, I reached over slowly with my right hand and began to peel the blanket off of me. What I found under those covers almost stopped my heart. I did not see it, but as my hand moved the blanket, it brushed against something. Something smooth and cold. Something which felt unmistakably like a gaunt hand.
I held my breath in terror as I was sure it must now have known that I was awake.
Nothing.
It did not stir, it felt, dead. After a few moments, I placed my hand carefully further down the blanket and felt a thin, poorly formed forearm, my confidence and almost twisted sense of curiosity grew as I moved down further to a disproportionately larger bicep muscle. The arm was outstretched lying across my chest, with the hand resting on my left shoulder as if it had grabbed me in my sleep. I realized that I would have to move this cadaverous appendage if I even so much as hoped to escape its grasp.
For some reason, the feeling of torn, ragged clothing on the shoulder of this nighttime invader stopped me in my tracks. Fear once again swelled in my stomach and in my chest as I recoiled my hand in disgust at the touch of straggled, oily hair.
I could not bring myself to touch its face, although I wonder to this very day what it would have felt like.
Dear God it moved.
It moved. It was subtle, but its grip on my shoulder and across my body strengthened. No tears came, but God how I wanted to cry. As its hand and arm slowly coiled around me, my right leg brushed along the cool wall which the bed lay against. Of all that happened to me in that room, this was the strangest. I realized that this clutching, rancid thing which drew great delight from violating a young boy’s bed, was not entirely on top of me. It was sticking out from the wall, like a spider striking from its lair.
Suddenly its grip moved from a slow tightening to a sudden squeeze, it pulled and clawed at my clothes as if frightened that the opportunity would soon pass. I fought against it, but its emaciated arm was too strong for me. Its head rose up writhing and contorting under the blanket. I now realized where it was taking me, into the wall! I fought for my dear life, I cried and suddenly my voice returned to me, yelling, screaming, but no one came.
Then I realized why it was so eager to suddenly strike, why this thing had to have me now. Through my window, that window which seemed to represent so much malice from outside, streaked hope; the first rays of sunshine. I struggled further knowing that if I could just hold on, it would soon be gone. As I fought for my life, the unearthly parasite shifted, slowly pulling itself up my chest, its head now poking out from under the blanket, wheezing, coughing, rasping. I do not remember its features, I simply remember its breath against my face, foul and as cold as ice.
As the sun broke over the horizon, that dark place, that suffocating room of contempt was washed, bathed in sunlight.
I passed out as its scrawny fingers encircled my neck, squeezing the very life from me.
I awoke to my father offering to make me some breakfast, a wonderful sight indeed! I had survived the most horrible experience of my life until then, and now. I moved the bed away from the wall, leaving behind the furniture I had believed would stop that thing from taking a bed. Little did I think that it would try to take mine…and me.
Weeks passed without incidence, yet on one cold, frostbitten night I awoke to the sound of the furniture where the bunk beds used to be, vibrating violently. In a moment it passed, I lay there sure I could hear a distant wheezing coming from deep within the wall, finally fading into the distance.
I have never told anyone this story before. To this day I still break out in a cold sweat at the sound of bed sheets rustling in the night, or a wheeze brought on by a common cold, and I certainly never sleep with my bed against a wall. Call it superstition if you will but as I said, I cannot discount conventional explanations such as sleep paralysis, hallucination, or that of an over-active imagination, but what I can say is this: The following year I was given a larger room on the other side of the house and my parents took that strangely suffocating, elongated place as their bedroom. They said they didn’t need a large room, just one big enough for a bed and a few things.
They lasted 10 days. We moved on the 11th.
Part Two
After writing my account of an horrific experience I had as an 8 year old child, many have encouraged me to speak about the aftermath. I’ve been hesitant to do so as I have felt unsettled since I broke my silence. Sleep has not come easy to me these last few nights. My scepticism, however, remains resilient and as such I will tell of what I experienced in the other room.
This won’t be as long, as what occurred only took place over a few days but that was more than enough for me.
If you recall, after that unwelcome nightly visitor left me, I was moved into another bedroom a year later. This room was much larger than the previous one and had a warm and welcoming atmosphere to it. Some places feel bad. The room before felt foul, but this one did not.
Thankfully I was given a normal bed, the previous one was taken apart and thrown out (a welcome sight I might add). I loved my new room, I enjoyed the space for all of my toys, I was happy that the place was large enough to have my friends drop by, but most of all I was relieved to just be out of that uneasy, foreboding part of the house.
On the first night I slept more soundly than I had done for a long, long time. Of course I still moved my bed several feet from the wall. I told my mother that I and my friends liked to use the gap between the bed and wall as a hiding place when we were playing.
I awoke the next day feeling refreshed and relaxed. As I lay there watching some of my favourite cartoons on a small portable television, I noticed something odd. An old dark brown armchair which had always been there, sat at the foot of my bed, large and looming. It was frayed and worn, having been given to us as part of a suite by my cousin, but it had been used many times even by then. The chair itself was not unusual, but what unsettled me was that I could have sworn that before I had went to sleep, the chair had been facing away from the bed. Now, in the cold light of day, the chair was facing me. I assumed one of my parents had moved it while I slept, probably looking for something which had been left their before we switched rooms.
The second night was not as restful. It was around 11pm and I could hear my parent’s television from the other side of the house. The room was largely in darkness, the only illumination an orange hue drifting through my window from the street lights outside. I lay there content. Content, until I heard something quiet, yet unmistakable.
At first I thought it was the sound of my own breath exhaling and inhaling as I rested, but when I stopped for a moment, the quiet almost inaudible sound of someone else in the room breathing in and out did not cease. It continued, rhythmically and without pause.
I lay there in the darkness, but while I was still recovering from the terror instilled in me from my experiences in my previous bedroom, I was not entirely afraid. The breathing was so distant and unlike the wheezing I had heard during my encounter with that thing in the wall, that I remained calm, and even at that early age I believed that it was so subtle, that it was probably my imagination playing tricks on me.
Still, I took no chances, I stepped out of bed, walked across the room and turned the light on. The sound had gone. I stared at that old worn armchair facing the foot of my bed, which was within reaching distance of where I slept, and turned it around to face the other way. I had no real reason to do so, but something about it sitting there filled me with dread.
The third night I was not so fearless. Again, I awoke in darkness. Lying on my back I stared up at the ceiling which seemed to happily absorb the dim orange light from the street. The tree outside my window swayed in a calm breeze casting a strange collection of improbable moving shadows across the room.
I could hear nothing but the long and distant hum of the city’s night traffic. Just as I began to drift back into sleep, I heard it; a creak from the bottom of my bed as if something had moved, or shifted its weight on the floor.
I raised my head, peering through the darkness, but saw nothing strange. Everything sat as it had done throughout the day, nothing was out of place. I cast my gaze across the room; some comics on the floor, a few boxes which had still to be unpacked, the armchair unmoved still facing away from the bottom of my bed; there was nothing sinister here.
I was now fully awake, glancing over at my television considering whether or not to enjoy some late night TV. I’d have to keep the volume low of course as my older brother would hear it in the next room and no doubt tell me to switch it off.
Just as I sat up fully in bed, I heard it again. A low creak, accompanied by a sound. The sound of the slightest of movements. I looked again at the room. The dim orange shadows cast by the leaves hanging by my window now took on a more menacing form.
I still saw no reason to be afraid. I stared at the chair at the end of my bed and saw nothing unusual about it. It’s quite common for the mind to take a moment to fully come to terms with what it is seeing. It takes time to put the full horror of what is in front of you together, into a moment of cold, bitter realisation.
Yes, I was staring at that old worn armchair in the dark, but what I was also staring at was the person sitting in it!
In the dim light I could only see the outline of the back of its head, the rest obscured by the spine of the chair. I sat motionless, staring, praying, hoping that my eyes were being misled by their surroundings. The slow creak of movement as it shifted in its battered throne chilled me to my very core; this was no mere trick of the dark.
Then, it shifted onto its right side. I knew what it was doing, it was turning to look at me. It was difficult to make out, for even in that room it seemed darker than everything around it. I saw what looked like a collection of long fingers slip over the crest of the chair, and then another. The room was silent but for the sound of this thing shuffling in its seat, and the crash of my racing heart.
At first I could only make out the outline of its forehead, but then it began to rise up revealing two pin points of light in the dark recesses of its deeply set eye sockets .
It was staring at me.
I screamed, and within a moment my brother and mother came into the room, switching the light on, asking if I’d had another bad dream. I sat speechless, barely acknowledging them, staring intently at the now empty armchair.
I was only in that room for another few days before we suddenly moved. I saw nothing for the remaining nights, except for my last sleep in that room where I awoke to the warm air of something breathing into my ear. I jumped out of bed, turning the light on. The slow rhythmic breath of something unseen remained, louder than before. I spent the rest of that night on the couch in the living room.
Two years later I slept soundly in my bed, in our new house. There had been no other incidences, and I was sure I had left behind whatever strangeness had plagued me, in that little average suburban home.
I was, however, left one parting gift. My tormentors (and in my opinion the watcher in that armchair was a different entity to the thing in the elongated room) had one last surprise in store for me. Like an animal claiming its territory, I was not entirely out with their grasp.
For one last, terrifying moment I felt the presence of those, things. I lay their sound asleep, two years since those horrifying experiences. I was in the throws of a nightmare and suddenly, happily found myself awake, safe and sound in my bed. The room was darker than usual. I breathed a sigh of relief as one does when waking from a nightmare.
But the room was so dark.
I could see nothing at all, as if something had snuffed out the light. I chuckled to myself, realising that I must have pulled my blanket up and over my face while sleeping. The cotton blanket felt cool against me, but the air was a little too warm, almost stifling. Just as I was about to remove the blanket for some air, I heard it: For the last time I heard it.
The rhythmic breathing of the watcher at the end of my bed.
Fear gripped me, followed by anger and despair. Why could I not be left alone? I then did something most peculiar. I decided to speak to it. Perhaps this thing did not mean to harm me, perhaps it was unaware of the terror it had caused. Surely a young boy deserved some mercy?
As the breathing grew louder and closer, I began to cry. I could feel its presence on the other side of the blanket, its breath hanging over me like a stagnant wind.
Through the tears I uttered two words, words which surely would put an end to all of this:
“Please stop”.
The breathing began to change, it became more animated, quicker somehow. I could hear something shuffling next to me, standing close by. The breathing then moved, first back to the foot of my bed, and then slowly across the room, through the door, into the hallway, and then gone.
Half crying, half elated, I lay in the still darkness, my face still covered by the blanket. You may consider this a victory of some sort, but I do not. If those things were real, I know now beyond a shadow of a doubt that their intentions were not misconstrued, they were twisted, filled with malice. I would normally never use such a word to describe anything, but it’s as close to evil as I hope I ever come.
How do I know that? I’ll tell you how. Moments after that thing seemed to have left the house, something pressed forcefully down on top of me, pushing the blanket with great strength against my face. I could feel a large hand with long thin fingers wrapping the covers around my skull, its nails imprinted upon me like razor sharp ridges. I managed to slide down into the gap between the bed and the wall, quickly making my escape, clambering and screaming out of my room waking my family.
Make no mistake, that thing in the darkness tried to smother me, smother me to death.
Part Three: My Fears Realized
A few days ago I submitted two nightmarish accounts from my childhood, perhaps you best read them to truly comprehend what has befallen me. I had been compelled to silence, gripped by the irrational fear that somehow even after all of these years, should I speak of it, that those things would seek me out and once again wreak havoc on my life.
In the name of science and reason I confronted those fears and set out to vanquish those tormented memories once and for all by sharing them with o |
My name is Julien Serrault. It is the 7th of January, 1882. I am an innkeeper outside the mountain town of Briancon, at the base of the French Alps. The inn does not do much trade, and in the winter months I am sometimes alone for days at a time. In recent times I have earned a pittance delivering dry goods and sundries once a month to Abbey St. Genest eight miles west. The abbey is housed in Castle Archambault, a somewhat forbidding edifice deep in the forest, accessible only by a winding road that is often made impassable by snow. In the time of Napoleon’s rule, the castle had been the possession for twenty years of Count Archambault and his wife, well-respected in their day and generous with their wealth. They were found dead in their bedroom after having disappeared from public for many weeks, the victims of suicide by poison. It was rumored that the countess, Nadia by name, had dabbled in the occult and brought doom to herself and her innocent husband by seeking immortality through demonic visitations, turning the castle into an impure, accursed place habitable only by those with total purity of spirit. All nonsense, of course, a tale conjured by fools to cruelly cast doubt upon the sincerity of the count’s donation of his land and riches to a church neither he nor his wife had any dealings with in life.
The abbess of St. Genest, Mother Henriette, was a gregarious woman who invariably came out to meet my wagon during a delivery and always insisted on helping me with the load while she entertained me with the latest joke she’d heard from the man who helped the sisters tend their expansive gardens. I grew fond of her over the two years I delivered to the abbey, sometimes taking the sisters’ handmade crafts and pies back with me to sell at the inn. One afternoon in November I loaded up my wagon with barley, rice, cabbages, and pears and began the ninety-minute trek to the abbey to drop off the month’s supplies. I got an unusually late start, and night fell as I went, the remnants of a recent snowfall settling in the woods all around me. As usual, I passed no one on my journey. The weather in these parts is unpredictable enough from October to April to dissuade any casual travelers from venturing too far into the forest. I arrived at Gola Road as day became night. The tall spires of the castle became visible through the trees a half-mile away. The road sloped upwards gradually, and a man on foot would be exhausted upon reaching the castle’s front gate.
This time Mother Henriette was waiting for me just off the road, most likely having spotted the wagon from one of the castle’s high windows. She laughed at my tardiness and informed me that the abbey was not accepting overnight guests no matter the color of my coin. She opened the gate so I could proceed to the storehouse, where two of the sisters would assist me in unloading the goods. I never felt less than humbled on the castle grounds, small before its immensity, although it was surely of modest size when compared with some in the Alps.
When we were done and I was to be on my way, Mother Henriette approached me holding something in her arms, something swaddled in a blue blanket. She introduced me to what she called her ‘little friend,’ a baby deer that had wandered onto the grounds seeking shelter. She held it fondly and maternally, explaining that the sisters had little choice but to watch after it until it could survive on its own, as its mother had never appeared. Peering through the growing dark, I saw that the deer was sleeping, its head almost completely enclosed and snug under the blanket. I told Mother Henriette I was surprised the baby wasn’t awake and alert in the bitter cold, and she said she worried about that too; the poor creature often slept for hours and hours at a time. I reached a hand under the blanket and touched its little head. For some reason the deer’s body was incredibly warm to the touch, disturbingly so. I mentioned this, too, to Mother Henriette, and she concurred. All they could do was pray for the beast and take care of it as best they could. And that was my November visit to the abbey. I reached the inn by seven o’clock and settled in for the night with a book.
After falling asleep I fell prey to some terrifying dreams. I came awake well past midnight, trying to shake a vision of a gigantic undersea monstrosity crashing through the bow of a ship on which I was a mate. At the sound of a crewman screaming and the bow splitting, dooming all on board to death in the ocean, my eyes opened in my bedroom. I managed to fall asleep once again, but yet another nightmare came for me. I was tied to the ground in the woods at night, and a man whose head was encaged in a bizarre metal apparatus approached me, holding a baby high above his head. I was begging this man not to harm it, but he then stood over me, the baby crying and kicking, and without a word he slammed that poor little child down upon my left arm, undoubtedly killing the infant with the awful force of the strike. I awoke at that exact moment, a dog howling somewhere far away in the forest. I lay in my bed quite still for a moment, feeling a tingling in my left arm, as if in fact it had been struck. Then, perhaps five seconds after this terrible dream ended, an excruciating bolt of pain leapt up my arm from fingers to shoulder. A second bolt followed the first, and I rose from my bed in a panic, moving my arm into the moonlight that streamed through my window.
What I beheld caused me to cry out in horror. My arm was twisted around so drastically it was as if God himself had attached it to my body incorrectly. It had also broken in two places, white bone protruding just below my elbow. I managed to stagger three steps forward but then collapsed to my knees, weeping in agony, having no understanding of what could have happened to me. The thought that perhaps an intruder had broken in and assaulted me flitted in and out of my fevered mind, but it simply could not be. There came a final grievous bodily injury I did not even feel at first, but which asserted itself there in the dark only when I began to stumble down the stairs to the inn’s bottom floor: some of the fingers of my left hand, and my entire palm, had been burned red as if I had dowsed it all in hot water. Only three or four days later did I become certain that the afflicted flesh corresponded exactly to that which had touched the tiny deer brought to me by Mother Henriette.
Not ten minutes after discovering my injuries, I made my way out to my horse and climbed onto his back with great effort so as not to have my arm strike his side. I had made no effort to wrap it; it would have been too painful. I somehow rode four miles to a veterinarian whom I knew lived in a small cottage by the main road, urging my horse to a gallop despite the fact that such jostling caused me great agony. I simply could not take my time. The veterinarian’s wife answered my plaintive knocking. Though the man himself was away, she had learned much from him over the years, and somehow she was able to set my arm just well enough so that I could get two hours’ rest beside the hearth and set off at dawn, she plying me with narcotic whiskey from the moment I entered that saintly woman’s home.
My injuries were slow to heal, but heal they did. It was immensely difficult to operate the inn with just one young hired hand as I recovered, but I hosted only three guests in late November along with the semi-nightly visitors whose numbers I could normally count on one hand. I told those who inquired that I had fallen off a ladder while conducting a repair on the roof of the building, always privately musing upon what could possibly have caused the affliction. Nothing made any sense. Especially puzzling was the conundrum of the burns on my hand; the pain from these marks had faded quickly, but the redness remained for almost a week.
On the 12th of December, a carpenter named Gorsky delivered a message to me from the abbey. It was in Mother Henriette’s hand. In the note she told me that illness had overcome many of the sisters, including herself, and that it was best if I not make my monthly goods delivery at all. She explained that they had more than enough stores to last another few weeks and that it was not worth the risk to my health to come out and make contact. I asked Gorsky how Mother Henriette had given him the letter, and he said it had simply been nailed to a post beside the abbey’s front gate with a request that it be delivered to me. I thanked him, a bit worried, as the nature of the illness Mother Henriette mentioned remained a mystery. Most likely a virus had laid them low, perhaps almost all of the nineteen women who lived in the castle. More troublesome was the possibility that a sudden snowfall might cut me off from the sisters for an extra week, or even two or three possibly. If I was not able to get there on schedule and such a storm occurred, I knew they might go hungry, being desperately poor. Despite the worth of Castle Archambault, its inhabitants themselves possessed nothing beyond what they needed to survive, and I knew them often to be in ill health because their most basic nutritional needs sometimes went unfulfilled.
I awaited further news, but the next time Gorsky passed by, he said he’d seen no more communications outside the abbey’s gate as he’d made his way past the day before. Sitting with a glass of Schnapps, he did mention he’d seen one thing that had given him pause. He labored to describe it to me, uncertain as to how to convey the image in words and unsure of what to make of it. The sun had been low in the sky as he’d trotted on his horse up Gola Road, the horizon orange and red, throwing everything into sharp relief. In a high room he’d seen two silhouettes, feminine ones. They were engaged in a frenetic sort of dance, he thought, though that wasn’t quite right; they were locked at the arms and were spinning fast, their heads cocked back, one body urging the other toward greater and greater speed. There was nothing in this act, Gorsky said, that suggested playfulness or joy. Trees had blocked his view rather quickly, and he had been unable to get another look at this anomaly. I asked him to tell me the story again, more carefully this time, but again it led nowhere except into the parts of imagination that pondered such enigmas only in the lonely minutes before sleep.
It was approximately the 23rd of December when a most unusual visitor came to my establishment. At that time, after a snowfall of fourteen inches over the course of a single Saturday, no guests were staying at the inn, and no one at all had come in for a drink or refreshment in two days. Only when the weather warmed in late April would the inn become busy again, my life less afflicted with banal solitude. On the night I write of here the front door opened at about ten o’clock and a tall man entered, kicking snow off his boots. He offered a subdued greeting and asked if I had a room available for the night, and if I could tend to his horse. He was traveling to Font Christiane and would set out again in the morning, but he simply could not abide the wind and cold he’d come through under a waning moon. I offered him a key, and he asked me to prepare him any sort of meal if it was possible, a cold one being adequate. After I stoked the fire, I went into the kitchen to fix him turtle soup and boiled potatoes.
When I emerged into the front room with this modest repast, my guest was sitting at the table closest to the fire, gazing into it, appearing utterly exhausted. His face and his hands were chapped from the cold. He was perhaps fifty years old, had a thick red beard and somewhat sad eyes. I asked him how far he had traveled on this night, privately amazed that he should be out at all with the snow still so deep on the road. Six or seven miles, he said, especially concerned that his horse be well fed. I went to complete this errand, assuring him the animal would be given a suitable place to sleep for the night. He had finished his meal by the time I returned, and he thanked me softly as I cleared his plate. I led him to his room, which was just down a short hallway.
As I was taking my leave of him, he asked me something, finally speaking more than a few words. He asked me if I had any dealings with the abbey at the northern end of Gola Road. I said that yes, for almost two years I had delivered dry goods there on a monthly basis. He frowned severely, became keenly attentive. And had I gone there recently? he wanted to know. I explained that I hadn’t, and told him about Mother Henriette’s note. He advised me then to stay away from the abbey even if I did not hear from her again. He had just come from there this very night. A terrible sickness had befallen the sisters, he said, and it was vital that no one go near them. I asked him when it would be safe to visit them once again, expressing my fears that they might not have enough to eat. His response, spoken in a tired and deeply sorrowful voice, was that I should consider the poor women lost. I was flabbergasted. Lost, he said again. He had not been able to heal them. So he was a doctor then, I realized, and the satchel he carried was his medical kit. He bade me goodnight and closed the door.
I walked back to my own room, unable to fully internalize the ghastly news. I did not even worry for myself, my own health. I wondered what sort of God would allow this to happen to such pious women, but of course, disease has taken away many people of my acquaintance. The abbey was a most difficult place to live, its unfeeling stone a cruel conductor of the winter chill. I would try to learn more as time went on. The thought occurred to me that perhaps the nuns’ adoption of a wild animal, even one so seemingly harmless, had brought them a devastating illness. I still remembered its odd and inexplicable warmth to my touch and the troubling imprint it had left upon my person.
It was the very next day, after my guest had left the inn without a word before I even awoke, merely leaving payment on a dining table, that someone came after him. I was asleep upstairs at nine in the morning, having drunk too much the night before while musing upon the fate of Mother Henriette and the sisters. I roused myself upon hearing a faraway knock, wincing at the residual pain in my left arm that accompanied my every hour, and opened the front door to find a lad of perhaps eighteen standing on the doorstep, weighed down by a heavy saddle bag. He asked me if Father Cerf were still here or if he had ridden on across La Durance. I told him I did not know a Father Cerf, but the lad seemed to believe he had stayed at the inn the night before. Soon enough it became apparent from the young man’s physical description of my guest that the man had not been a doctor at all, but a servant of the cloth. The lad wanted to deliver a message for him from Pramorel. He shortly went on his way, visibly upset at the thought of having to follow him through the snow all the way to Font Christiane.
As the days passed and the precious few who came to the inn seemed to have no more information about the abbey, I became more and more troubled by the silence. Despite Father Cerf’s warning, I knew I would have to at least ride past the castle to confirm to myself that there was no way I could help the sisters, no way at all. I had decided upon a Monday morning to set out on this task, but upon stepping outside an hour after dawn, I could see the mists over the mountains swirling ominously, and I knew the snow was about to blow in on high winds. Eleven inches fell before nightfall, and the wind screamed as it swept down Clemencigne Road, stranding me at the inn for another three full days filled with loneliness and troubled thoughts.
On Tuesday night I set about a thorough cleaning of the inn’s five empty rooms in an attempt to take my mind off such disconcerting matters. In the room that had been most recently inhabited, by a young and very friendly scholar who had been passing through and compiling notes for a book about the episcopacy in western Europe, I found two books that he had left behind in haste or absent-mindedness. One of these was a colorful local history of our region, penned by a man named Dufresne. I knew of him, actually; he had taught at my school when I was but a lad of seventeen. I took a chair by the fire and paged through it, ashamed at my lack of knowledge of the area where I’d lived and done business for more than twenty-five years. When I caught sight of a mention of Count Archambault, I read more slowly and observantly. There was a detailed account of the count’s improvements to the land and the general area around it during his life, as well as the revisions he had engineered concerning the way the people of Briancon were represented in government. But the pages also bore mention of his curious death beside his wife, who had also expired from poisoning, almost certainly by their own hand.
Five years after they passed, and one year before the Catholic church officially took possession of the land according to Archambault’s will after much legal dispute, the castle was inhabited by a respectable family named Roucet. They became the center of a mystery, as all nine family members disappeared without a trace sometime in the year 1809, including two young children. Those who came to the castle in response to a curious lack of communication found the place well-appointed as always, but completely empty, the family’s horses unfed and dying. No explanation for their vanishing, and no trace of any of them, was ever found. It was at this time that whispers of some satanic influence within the castle took hold as never before, and those who believed that Nadia Archambault had been a witch had their notions entertained for decades. In the minds of the superstitious she was a craven temptress whose true ambition had been to reach out from beyond the grave to consume the souls of the living. From what Dufresne could surmise, much of the slander that stained her name had grown as a response to her social reticence and her rather frightful appearance. She was described as a wisp of a creature, pale as sleet, with a piercing gaze.
Then there was the apocryphal tale of a soldier boarding in Briancon who, struggling on foot through the great storm of 1801 to reach his declining mother, saw the castle rising in the distance against the stars and trudged up Gola Road in the hope that someone there might offer him a bed for the night. According to the legend, dutifully reported by Dufresne’s rambling history, the soldier saw through the blowing snow a small woman, wearing neither coat nor hat nor gloves, standing with her back to him in the center of the road. When he reached her she turned and touched his chest with bony fingers, issuing him an invitation to lay with her in the castle, where she would show him all the passageways she had created for one she called ‘the Conqueror.’ On her forehead was marked an inverted cross. The soldier fled this woman and, upon seeing a portrait of Countess Archambault long after her death, swore it had been she whom he’d seen that night. Had he not supposedly been one of Napoleon’s most trusted captains by that time, the story would certainly have been resigned to the ages without a fuss.
As I write these words, it is 4:10 a.m. on the 7th of January. I find myself writing as much as possible about what came well before the last four hours so as to put off the final accounting of what I have so recently seen and heard. Nothing matters in the end but what is real, not conjecture or rumor. After finally making it to the castle and witnessing all my mortal heart could bear, I have now returned to the safety of the inn and can do nothing now but tell the truth, and report all that I saw on this mournful, godless night, if only to this journal.
I could not leave for the abbey until my hired helper came to the inn to host anyone who might visit, so it wasn’t until almost eight o’clock that I set out for Castle Archambault. I loaded my wagon with some goods for the sisters in the unlikely case the information I had been given was completely wrong and they could use the assistance. The weather was passable when I left, with low winds coming from the east, a crisp but not terribly unpleasant night. On the way I saw someone coming down the road in the other direction, a solitary man on horseback who was singing very softly to himself. Aside from this man I saw no one.
I reached the abbey’s gate at about nine-thirty, having traveled more slowly than normal, giving myself every chance to turn around, thinking of all the reasons I should not be on this errand. Moving onto Gola Road, I actually stopped briefly when I could spy the upper part of the castle against the sky. But in the end I overcame my superstitions. The first thing I noticed through the trees that fronted the castle, troublingly, was that there was not a single light to be seen in any of its windows. Usually the sisters lit candles well before dusk and placed one behind every pane, more for the benefit of travelers than themselves. It had always been a comforting sight to see, an image of warmth and humanity on this frigid, somnolent road that stretched for miles in either direction without any glimpse of something welcoming. Now there was just a bloodless phantasm. The building looked as if it had been empty for a hundred years. It would be very cold inside, the stone walls chilling one to the core.
The low iron gate in front was closed but not locked, not a terribly unusual happenstance. I left the wagon and my horse behind and moved through it, approaching the front door, which I had never actually parted. In my right hand I held a kerosene lantern, having prepared myself for the dark. Embedded in the door was a heavy knocker shaped like an owl, which I struck five times against the wood. I waited. No one came. I had not expected a response. I pushed gently on the door and realized it had not even been fully shut. There was no visible gap between the door and the jamb, but someone had obviously not noticed that it had never been closed. Or perhaps it had intentionally been left open. I entered Castle Archambault for the first time.
All was black within. Closing the door behind me against the light wind, I found myself in a long, draughty front hall that stretched left and right. The gloom enshrouded me, and my lantern could not show me anything that was not less than five feet in front of me. The walls around me were hundred-year-old gray stone, virtually devoid of ornamentation of any kind. I called out a greeting, my words echoing with a sad hollowness, and I received nothing in return. I chose to move to my left down the hall, stepping carefully, my eyes trained mostly downward. The floor was scratched and in many places not quite level with the earth. My foot came to rest on dead winter leaves once or twice, a sign that perhaps the front door had been left open wider and longer than it had even first seemed. The sisters would certainly have swept them out right away. I knew it was true then, that they had all perished. I needed little more proof. I wondered if Father Cerf had at least sent men to give them all Christian burials before leaving the castle to its uneasy repose.
The hallway ended at a short flight on curving steps. I ascended them, surprised at the din of my boots on the stone. Before me was a short corridor with a single room on each side. I moved forward. That was when I heard something, a faint musical note coming from the end of the corridor. Someone was at a piano, and from the depths of despair my heart leapt with hope. The same high G was being keyed again and again at three- or four-second intervals, meaninglessly. I followed the note down the corridor past closed doors bearing empty sconces. This hallway ended up ahead in a room with no barrier to entry. Holding the lantern high, I began to make out the shapes of furniture, and then its details. What I entered was a sitting room with two straight-backed chairs and little else. Turning and casting the beam of the lantern to my right, I beheld the origin of the music. One of the sisters sat at a small piano, the index finger of her right hand resting gently on that G key. She lifted it and reset it, striking the note again, for the seventh or eighth time.
There was something deeply wrong with the woman, as I saw instantly. She was completely unclothed from head to toe as she sat there in this tenebrous enclosure. My puny light revealed a naked and emaciated body. I would have looked away in shame had my eyes not been drawn irrevocably to her face. The sister, one of the younger ones at the abbey, appeared blindfolded—but then, looking harder, I saw the truth of the matter was that she had been crudely and haphazardly bandaged around the eyes. She was utterly blind as she sat there, naked and unaware of my presence. She must have been freezing, but of it she gave no sign. I did not know what to say, or if I should say nothing at all and meekly withdraw. But then she sensed my presence and took her finger from that solitary key. The sound of the note faded to nothing, and there was silence save for the sound of the wind sighing through the castle’s hidden crevices. Slowly she turned her head in my direction. The bones in her face protruded unflatteringly, and her lip had been bloodied. She said to me, softly and pleasantly as if nothing in the slightest was wrong, ‘Who is it that has come to visit the sisters?’
For a moment I was too taken aback to respond. Finally I managed to nervously utter my name, and state where I had come from, the plume of my breath visible before me. I apologized for my presence and assured her I would withdraw from the abbey immediately if she wished it. Out of shame I raised the lantern higher so as to direct its feeble glow only above her neck. But instead of asking me to retreat, she offered a slow, sickly smile. Even though she could not see, she seemed to be looking directly at me. She bade me stay, stay and meet the others. I swallowed hard. I could see a drop of moisture high on her cheek, and moving just a little closer could determine that what I was looking at was blood.
I asked the sister if she desired a blanket, or food from my wagon, or medical assistance. I could not stop myself from asking what was wrong with her eyes. She tilted her head strangely. She said that of course she had torn them out as soon as she’d been able. Certain that I had misheard, I leaned in ever closer and asked her to repeat her words. When she did, in a chiding tone that made me feel like a child caught not paying attention, I asked her why she had done such a terrible thing. I was barely able to get the words out. She said that the nighttime was a tolerable time but that in the day, all the sisters saw much too much of this hideous world.
I stood in stunned silence. I was about to offer my coat, nervous at the very thought of getting so near to this deranged woman, when she rose from the wooden bench in one swift motion. She was more emaciated than I had even thought at first, and a streak of wet dirt ran from her exposed hip down to her right knee. She excused herself, told me she was terribly late for vespers, and suddenly took off in a run past me, moving trustingly into the dark, arms outstretched. Instinctively I reached out to her, my fingers only brushing her shoulder, which was so cold to the touch that I would have believed her to be a corpse. She left the room and moved down the hallway, intent on leaving me behind. Mortified, I remained where I was. The light of the lantern gave me the last glimpse of her I would ever have, her short, ragged black hair matted to her skull as she vanished, feet making soft padding sounds on the stone.
It was fear that kept me in place, fear that had already overwhelmed my sense of concern and compassion. Being there in the abbey felt like being in a tomb. I knew that if I turned fully in the direction the sister had fled, I would continue out the front door, climb into my wagon, leave and never return. So I forced myself to stand perfectly still and reclaim my nerves. Thirty seconds passed, then a full minute. I shone the light around the room. There was a thin door set into the rear wall, and I went to it. As I touched the knob I felt a gelid draft swirl around my legs and heard the sound of a single dead leaf tumbling across the stone nearby. I moved through the door and closed it behind me, trying intently not to let it make a strong sound as it latched. I do not remember the turns I took then, never daring to venture up the stairs that sometimes concluded a hallway’s length. Climbing deeper into the castle before I was aware of all that was truly around me seemed a daunting, frightening undertaking. I dreaded the way the castle so effectively hid what lay ahead of me, reluctantly revealing itself in cryptic patches and sections before the slowly weakening kerosene flame.
I had no more than five more minutes navigating the lonesome abbey’s narrow passageways before I received another, more ghastly shock. Suddenly the lantern’s light fell upon two livid faces in the dark. I stopped short in my tracks, my heart thrumming. A pair of women stood under an archway, their backs against a cragged stone wall. They too were naked, scrawny, and they too had crudely bandaged their eyes with strips of torn cloth. Moving the lantern slightly to my left caused three more faces to appear, all of them sisters of St. Genest, once serene and humble servants of God, now unclothed, sick with some illness that had no name, and perhaps utterly insane. Almost all of them possessed a sinister grin that belied their sorry condition. The oldest of the sisters, perhaps seventy years in age, spoke. She said how delightful it was that someone other than Father Cerf should visit them and perhaps bring them treats. She hoped whoever stood before them now would be kinder than Father Cerf had been, less given to judgment.
I did not respond until another sister asked my name. I gave it. One of them offered apology that Mother Henriette was not here to receive me. When I asked where she was, another replied that she had been among the first to ‘offer herself up for feeding.’ I asked what that meant, and the older sister barked out hoarse laughter. ‘We must show him!’ she said. ‘It is almost time we fed the baby in any case!’ One of the group, a woman whose scarlet hair hung down completely covering her face, clapped her hands like a schoolgirl. She said in a voice almost completely strangled by pneumonia that it had become very difficult to decide who was to be fed to the baby because everyone wanted so much to be chosen. Perhaps I could decide for them. It would be a kind of game.
Feeling my own voice about to abandon me from fear, I summoned it forcefully and told the sisters before me that I was ready and willing to transport them all to the care of doctors, and that I felt there should be no delay in this regard. ‘We hear so much of doctors!’ the oldest exclaimed harshly. ‘But we are so happy here, until the last of us has been eaten.’ Another stepped forward. Her bandage was cinched so tightly around her eyes that the flesh on its borders had gone red, perhaps from infection. I jerked back as if a snake were approaching me. Perhaps, this one said, the first among them to find me and touch me in the dark would be allowed to experience the feeding this time. This thought occasioned a titter among them all, and my very blood slowed in my veins. Giggling, two more stepped forward, reaching out playfully. Their hands were filthy, as if they had been clawing in the dirt in the frozen garden outside. I shouted at them to stay back. At this they seemed to freeze in mid-motion, and expressions of surprise and genuine offense crossed their sallow faces. There was silence. Then the eldest said if I did not wish to play, I could not speak during the choosing. ‘Come, sisters, to the great hall, so we can finish tonight’s event!’ she said.
They all turned to the north, toward the direction I had originally been set on, and moved as swiftly as their blindness allowed toward some unknown destination. I followed, amazed and dismayed at how easily they made their way, as if they’d been blind since birth. Only one of them seemed to need her hands to feel her way, and I wondered in some dim corner of my mind if perhaps she had been the most recent to take out her eyes, or beg another to perform this task. T |
The long road home seemed to go on and on. The road continued to stretch in front of the vehicle endlessly. The light that shone through the branches of the tall, green trees danced across the window in random patterns, and every once and a while, obnoxiously shining in your eyes.
The surroundings were full of deep green trees forming a forest around the road. The only sound was the sound of the car’s engine as it traveled down the path. It was peaceful and left a serene feeling. Although the ride seemed like a nice one, it lacked every form of ‘nice’ from its two passengers.
The middle-aged woman behind the steering wheel had neat short brown hair that fit her complexion quite well. She wore a green v-neck T-shirt and a pair of blue jeans. Diamond stud earrings decorated each of her ears, which partially showed from behind her haircut. She had deep green eyes, which her shirt brought out, and the lighting seemed to make them more noticeable. There wasn’t anything significant about her appearance. She looked like any other ‘average mother’ you would see on TV shows and the like, however, the one thing that made her different than the ‘average mothers’ was the dark bags she had under her eyes. Her facial expression was gloomy and sad, although she genuinely looked like someone who smiled a lot.
She would sniffle every once and a while, and occasionally glance in the rear-view mirror to look at her son in the back seat, who was hunched over partially, with his arms held tight around his chest, and his head pressed against the cold window. The boy lacked any normal appearance, and anyone could plainly see there was something wrong with him. His messy brown hair went every which way, and the luminescent lighting brought out his pale, almost gray skin. His eyes were dark, unlike his mother’s, and he wore a white T-shirt and scrub pants that had been provided for him by the hospital. The clothes he had worn before were so shredded and bloodstained that they weren’t wearable anymore. The right side of his face bared a few cuts along with a split eyebrow. His right arm was bandaged all the way to the shoulder, which had been shredded when his right side hit the shattered glass.
His injuries appeared to be painful, when in reality he couldn’t feel anything. This was just one of the glories of being him. One of the challenges he had to face while growing up was growing up with a rare disease that caused him to be completely numb towards pain. Never before had he felt himself get hurt. He could have lost an arm and felt nothing. The other major disorder he had faced, which was the one that deemed him many insulting nicknames in the short time he attended grade school before he switched to homeschooling, was his Tourette’s Syndrome, which caused him to tick and twitch in ways he couldn’t control. He would crack his neck uncontrollably and twitch every once in a while. The kids would tease him and call him Ticci-Toby, and they mocked him with exaggerated twitching and laughing. It got so bad he had to turn to homeschooling. It was too hard for him to be in a common learning environment with seemingly every kid poking, or more like stabbing, fun at him.
Toby starred blankly out the window, his face empty of any emotion, and every few minutes his shoulder, arm, or foot would twitch. Every bump that the car tires hit would make his stomach turn.
Toby Rogers was the boy’s name and the last time Toby remembered riding in a car was when it crashed.
That’s all he thought about, unconsciously replaying everything he remembered before he blacked out, over and over again.
Toby had been the lucky one; his sister had not been so lucky. When the thought of sister came, he couldn’t help the tears that welled up in his eyes. The horrible memories replayed in his mind. Her screaming that had cut off when the front of the car was smashed in. It all went blank for a moment before Toby opened his eyes to see his sister’s body, her forehead pierced with glass shards, her hips and legs crushed under the force of the steering wheel, and her torso pushed in from the too late inflated airbag. That was the last thing he had seen of his dear older sister.
The road home continued on for what seemed like forever. It took so long to get home because his mom wanted to avoid the sight of the crash. When the surroundings gave way to a familiar neighborhood, they were both more than ready to get out of the car and step back into their own home. It was an older neighborhood with quaint little houses all next to each other. The car drove in front of a blue house with white windowpanes. They both quickly noticed the old vehicle that was parked in front of the house, and the familiar figure that stood in the driveway. Toby felt automatic anger and frustration take over him at the sight of his father. His father who wasn’t there.
His mother pulled the car up in the driveway beside him before turning off the engine and preparing to step out and face her husband.
“Why is he here?” Toby said quietly as he looked back at his mother who reached to open the car door.
“He’s your father Toby, he’s here because he wants to see you.” His mother responded in a monotone voice, trying to sound less shaky.
“Yet couldn’t drive up to the hospital to see Lyra before she died,” Toby narrowed his eyes out the window.
“He was drunk that night, honey, he couldn’t drive-“
“Yeah when is he not,” Toby pushed the door open before his mother and stumbled out onto the driveway where he met his father’s gaze before looking down at his feet with a stern expression. His mother stepped out behind him and met her husband’s eyes before walking around the car.
His father opened up his arms, expecting a hug from his wife, but she walked past him and put her arm around Toby’s shoulder and started leading him inside.
“Connie,” her husband began in a raspy voice, “What no welcome home hug, huh?”
She ignored her husband’s obnoxious words and walked past him with her son under her arm.
“Hey, he’s sixteen he can walk by himself,” his father began to follow them in. “He’s seventeen,” Connie glared back at him before opening the door to the house and stepping inside.
“Toby, why don’t we get you in your room to rest okay? I’ll come get you when dinner is ready-“
“No, I’m sixteen. I can walk by myself,” Toby said sarcastically and glared back at his father before stumbling up the small staircase and turning into his room, where he slammed the door violently.
His little room didn’t have much in it, just a small bed, a dresser, a window, and his walls had a few picture frames of his family, back when they were a family. Before his father became an alcoholic and acted violently toward the rest of his family. Toby remembered when he was arguing with his mom and he grabbed her by the hair and shoved her to the floor, and when Lyra had tried to break it up, he pushed her and she hit her back on the corner of the kitchen counter. Toby could never forgive him for what he did to his mother and sister. Never.
Toby didn’t care how much his father beat him down, he couldn’t feel it anyway, what he did care about was how he intentionally hurt the only two people he cared about. And when he was waiting in the hospital where his sister took her last breaths, the only one who didn’t rush there was his dad.
Toby stood by the window and looked out at the street. He could have sworn he saw something out of the corner of his eye, but quickly blamed it on the meds he was on.
When dinnertime had come and his mother called up to him, Toby came down the stairs and hesitantly sat down at the table across from his father, and in between his mother and an empty chair. It was quiet as his parents picked at their food but Toby refused to eat. Instead, he just watched his dad with a blank stare. His mother caught on to his staring and elbowed him slightly. Toby looked over at her slightly and then down at his uneaten food, which he still didn’t touch.
Toby laid in be, he pulled his covers over his head and stared at the window. He was tired but there was no way he would fall asleep. He couldn’t, there was too much to think about. He had been debating on whether or not to follow his mother’s directions and forgive his father, or continue holding a grudge with his boiling hatred.
He heard his door creak open and his mother padded into the room and sat on the bed next to him. She reached over and rubbed his back, which had been turned to her.
“I know it’s hard Toby, trust me, I understand, but I promise you it will get better,” she said softly.
“When is he going to leave?” Toby said with an innocent tone in his shaky voice.
Connie let her gaze fall down to her feet. ” I don’t know honey, he’s staying as far as I know,” she replied.
Toby didn’t respond. He just continued to look forward at the wall, holding his damaged arm near his chest.
After a few minutes of silence, his mother sighed before she leaned in to kiss his cheek and stood up to walk out of the room. “Good night,” she said as she closed the door.
The hours passed slowly, and Toby couldn’t quit tossing and turning. Every time he let his imagination take over, he heard the screeching of tires, the screaming of his sister, and he would uncontrollably jerk in bed. He threw off his cover, and lying on his back, he pulled his pillow over his face and cried into it. He could hear his own pitiful weeping. He would have been screaming and crying if e didn’t press his pillow over his face.
After a few seconds, he threw the pillow off his face and sat up, hunched over, holding his head and breathing roughly, tears streaming from his eyes. He couldn’t help but cry. He tried to keep it in, but he couldn’t stop the whining and whimpering as he sat there shaking. He inhaled before he stood up and walked around his bed to the window and peered out, taking deep breathes trying to calm down. He rubbed his eyes and looked out at the group of tall pine trees across the street.
He stopped suddenly, and his gaze slowly centered on something standing under the street light. He heard ringing in his ears and couldn’t look away. The figure stood beside the streetlight, about two feet shorter than it did, long arms draped at its sides as it stared up at him with non-existing eyes. The figure had no facial features to speak of. No eyes, no mouth, no nose, yet it held Toby’s hypnotized stare, seemingly peering into his very being. The ringing in his ears grew louder and louder each second he stared before suddenly it all went black.
The next morning Toby woke in his bed. He felt different. He wasn’t tired at all, and when he consciously woke up, it felt like he had been lying there awake for hours. He had no thoughts flowing through his mind. He sat up slowly and stumbled over to the wall, but when he stood he automatically felt dizzy. He stumbled to the doorway and walked down the stairs. His parents were sitting at the table, his father was tuned in to the small TV that sat on the counter top, and his mother was reading the newspaper. She quickly looked over when she felt Toby’s presence looming behind her.
“Well good morning sleepy head, you’ve been sleeping forever,” she greeted him with a hesitant smile. Toby slowly looked over at the clock and noticed that it was 12:30 p.m.
“I made you breakfast but it got cold, I was going to wake you but I felt you needed sleep,” her expression fell from happy to worried as her son resisted responding to her.
“Are you all right?”
Toby stumbled over and sat by his father. He felt as if he was on idle and had no control over his actions. He was seeing everything he did, but I didn’t register in his brain properly. He reached out to his father’s arm, but his hand ended up getting slapped. His father turned to him abruptly and pushed his chair over whit his foot.
“Don’t touch me, boy!” he yelled.
His mother stood up, “Alright know that off! That is the last thing we need!”
The days went by, and things continued on as they were. Connie spent most of her time cleaning the house, and her rude husband spent most of his time ordering her around. It was just like how it used to be before the crash.
Toby never really left his room. He would sit by his bed and tremble. His mind would wonder, but his thoughts changed too fast to be remembered. He would pace around his small room like a caged animal or stare out the window. The unhealthy cycle continued.
Connie continued to be pushed around by her husband, being way too submissive to him, and Toby remained in his room.
Before he could think twice, he would begin to chew on his hands, tearing the flesh from his fingers. He would gnaw his hands until they bled. When his mother walked in on him while he was doing so, she reacted horribly. She rushed him downstairs and grabbed the first aid kit, wrapping his hands in bandages. Afterward, she demanded that he wouldn’t leave her side again.
Toby isolated himself so much that he grew to hate being around others. His memory grew glitchy as well. He’d start missing memory of minutes, hours, days, and so on. He would begin talking nonsense about things completely unrelated to the conversations he would have. He’d go off about seeing things, sharks in the sink as he washed the dishes; hearing crickets in his pillows, and seeing ghosts outside his bedroom window. His mother grew so anxious about his mental health that she decided it would be good for him to talk to a professional about what he was feeling.
Connie walked Toby into the building, holding his hand and guiding him in. She walked him up to the front desk and began talking to the lady who sat behind it.
“Mrs. Rogers?” The lady asked.
“Yes that’s me,” Connie nodded, “We’re here to see Doctor Oliver, I’m here with Toby Rogers.”
“Yes, right this way,” the lady stood and led them down a long hallway. Toby looked at the framed artwork down the halls and tuned in to the sound of the lady’s high heels on the hardwood floor.
She opened the door to a room with a table and two chairs.
“If we can get him to sit in here for a few minutes, I’ll get the doctor,” she smiled and held the door open.
Toby stumbled into the room and sat down at the table. He looked over at his mother and the lady before the door slowly shut behind them. He looked around the room before he held up his tightly bandaged hands and began to bite at the bandages to unwrap his hands, but he was interrupted as the door swung open and a young woman in a black and spotted dress with light blond hair stepped in, holding a clipboard and a pen.
“Toby?” she asked with a smile.
Toby looked up at her and nodded.
“Nice to meet you Toby, my name is Doctor Oliver.” She put her hand out for him to shake by hesitantly pulled away when she noticed his bandaged hands.
“Oh,” she smiled nervously before clearing her throat and sitting in the chair across the table form him.
“So I’m going to ask you a few questions, try to answer them as honestly as possible, okay?” she placed her clipboard down on the table. Toby nodded slowly and held his restrained hands in his lap.
“How old are you, Toby?”
“Seventeen,” he responded quietly.
She wrote that down on the paper that was clipped to the clipboard.
“What is your full name?”
“Toby Aaron Rogers.”
When is your birthday?”
“April 28th.”
“Who is your immediate family?”
Toby paused for a minute before answering her question, “My mom, my dad, and…” he stopped, “M-my sister.”
“I heard about your sister dear…I’m really sorry,” her expression faded into a sad pity-filled look.
Toby nodded.
“Do you remember anything from the crash Toby?”
Toby looked away from her. His mind went blank for a moment. He looked down at his lap, and in the surrounding area, he heard a faint ringing sound. His eyes widened and he froze in place.
“Toby?” the counselor asked.
“Toby are you listening?”
Toby felt a shiver go down his spine until he froze once again and slowly looked over out the little window through the door, where he saw it. A dark featureless figure, peering in at him. He stared, eyes widened, the ringing growing louder and louder until suddenly the loud voice of the counselor broke his trance.
“Toby!” she yelled.
Toby jumped and fell sideways out of his chair and backed up into the corner.
Doctor Oliver stood up, holding her clipboard to her chest. A surprised look in her eyes.
Toby met her eyes again, his breath hitching as he twitched.
That night Toby lay in bed. His eyes were dazed as he stared straight up at his ceiling. He could feel himself begin to doze off when he heard the scattering of footsteps down his hallway. He sat up and looked towards the doorway, his door wide open. There was no light everything was lit by the luminescent blue glow of the moon through his window, leaving a cold lighting. He stood up and slowly made his way toward the doorway when suddenly the door, which previously was wide open, slammed in his face. He gasped and fell back.
He was out of breath when he hit the ground and he began breathing heavily, his eyes wide open. He waited for a few seconds before getting back on his feet. He reached out and grasped the cold door handle with his bandaged had and it creaked open. He looked out into the dark hallway and tiptoed out of his room. The window at the end of the hallway lit up the darkness with blue moonlight as he padded his way down. He could hear footsteps rustling around him, and faint giggling followed by the pitter patter of small feet, which sounded like a child had run in front of him, giggling and running around. The hallway was a lot longer than he remembered. It seemed endless…like the ride home from the hospital. He heard the door creak in front of him.
“Mom?” he called in a shaky voice.
Suddenly a door slammed behind him and he jumped and turned around. Behind him, he heard a long eerie groan that sounded like croak right in his ear. He turned around as fast as he could and was suddenly face to face with none other than his dead sister. Her eyes were clouded white, her skin pale, the right side of her jaw dangling there by tissue and muscle, glass protruding from her forehead, black blood leaking down her face, her blonde hair pulled up in a pony-tail as it always was, and she was wearing her grey t-shirt and athlete shorts, which were dirty and spotted with blood. Her legs were bent in ways they shouldn’t be. She stood emitting a long croaking noise only an inch away from Toby’s face.
Toby yelped and fell back.
“AH!” He started to crawl backward away from her, but he was unable to break the eye contact he held with her blank, dead eyes. He dragged himself backward until he backed up into something.
He stopped for a second. Everything was dead silent except for his heavy breathing and crying. He slowly looked up to meet the blank face of a tall dark figure, the same figure that stood over him now. Behind the tall dark mass were rows of children looking to range from three to ten years old, their eyes completely black and dark black blood leaked from their eye sockets.
He screamed and stood up as fast as he could only to be tripped by dark black tendrils that wrapped around his ankle. He fell straight on his stomach and got the wind knocked out of him. He tried to scream but he couldn’t make a sound. He wheezed out before it all went black.
Toby woke with a start. He screamed out and sat up as fast as he could, completely short of breath. He wheezed out and held his chest with his bandaged hands. It was just a dream….just a dream. He lay back down on his bed and rolled over on his side. It felt like against weight had been lifted off his chest as he took in deep breaths. He stood up and padded over to his window. He saw nothing. Nobody was out there. No ghosts, no figures, nothing.
He heard the rustling and coughing of his father outside the doorway. His door was closed.
He walked over and opened it. Looking out into the hallway once again, he padded down the hallway and into the kitchen where he found his dad standing and having a smoke in their living room. Toby waited for a second and watched him from around the corner before a burning feeling started deep in his chest.
Deep boiling anger overtook him. He heard the little imaginary voices in his head.
“Do it, Do it, Do it,” they chanted.
He turned away and held his arms. He felt like he actually had control over himself, unlike he did for the past few weeks since he got home from the hospital. He actually had complete thoughts for just moments before the chanting of the little voices in his head clouded them.
“Kill him, he wasn’t there, he wasn’t there, kill him, kill him,” they continued on. Toby trembled. No. No, he wasn’t going to do it. What, was he going crazy? No. He won’t kill anyone. He can’t. He hated his father, but there was no way he was going to kill him.
That was it, the last thought he had before he fell into an idle state once again. The influence of the voices in his head was too much. He began to silently walk up behind his father. He reached over the counter to the knife in the case. He gripped it in his hand. He felt the sensation take over his chest. He let out a snicker.
“Heh… heheh… hehehehehe! HAHAHAHAHAHA!” he began laughing so hard he had to gasp for breath. His father turned around abruptly before he felt a brute force shove him to the floor. He grunted as the air was knocked out of him.
“What!” he looked up at the boy who stood over him, grasping the kitchen knife in his hand.
“Toby, what are you doing?” he went to sit up and put his arms out in front of him in self-defense but before he knew it Toby was on top of him. He went to grab his neck, but his father reached out and blocked his hand by grabbing onto his wrist.
“Stop! Get off of me, you little fucker!” he yelled and with his other hand he threw an off-center punch towards Toby’s shoulder, but he didn’t stop.
The look in Toby’s eyes was not sane. It looked as if a demon had taken control of him. He yelled back and went to stab the knife into his father’s chest, but his father blocked him and grabbed onto his wrist once again. He went shove him back, but Toby kicked his feet out in front of him and landed a hard blow straight to his father’s face. His father recoiled and pulled his arms away to cuff his face, but Toby got back up and drove the knife straight into his shoulder.
His father let out a loud cry and went to pull the knife out, but before he could, Toby threw his fist straight into his face.
He began to pound his fists into his head, laughing and wheezing. He cracked his neck and grabbed the knife and ripped it out of his father’s shoulder. He drove it deep into his dad’s chest and repeatedly stabbed into his torso, blood spilling out and getting splattered everywhere. He didn’t stop until his father’s body went still. He threw the knife over to the side and leaned over his body, coughing and panting. He stared at his father’s smashed-in face and sat there twitching until a loud scream broke the silence. He looked over to see his mother standing a few feet away, covering her mouth, tears streaming down her face.
“Toby!” she screamed, “Why did you do that?” she cried.
“W-why!?” she screamed.
Toby stood up and began to back away from his father’s bloody corpse. He began to back out of the kitchen. He looked down at the blood-soaked bandages on his hands and looked up at his mother one last time before he turned and ran out of the house. He ran into the garage and slammed his hand against the control panel on the wall and pushed the button to open the garage door. Before he ran out, he noticed his father’s hatchets, which had been hanging on the tool rack above a table full of jars filled to the brim with old rusted nails and screws.
One of the hatchets was new, it had a bright orange handle and a shiny blade, and the other was old with a wooden handle and an old, dull blade. He grabbed both and looked down at the table and he saw a box of matches, and under the table was a red gasoline tank. He held both of the hatchets in one hand and grabbed to matches and gasoline before running out of the garage, down the driveway and up the street. As he approached the streetlight that he could see out his own bedroom window, he heard police sirens in the distance.
He turned around and the red and blue flashing lights came rushing down the street. Toby stood for a second before he pulled open the cap on the gasoline tank and ran down the street, spilling gasoline all over the street after him. He turned and ran into the trees. He poured the last bit of gasoline out before he reached into his pocket and pulled out a match. He struck it against the box and immediately dropped it. In an instant, flames burst around him. The fire caught on the trees and bushes around him and before he knew it, he was surrounded by fire. The silhouettes of police cars were visible through the flames as he backed away into the forest around him. He looked around but his vision was blurred, his heart was pounding, and he closed his eyes for a moment. This was it. This was the end.
Toby felt a hand on his shoulder. He opened his eyes and looked over to see a large white hand with long boney fingers resting on his shoulder. He followed the arm that was attached to the hand up to a dark, towering figure.
It appeared to be wearing a dark black suit, and its face was completely blank. It towered over Toby’s small frame as it looked down on him. Tendrils reached out from its back. Before Toby knew it, his vision blurred and he heard the sound of ringing in his ears. Everything went blank.
That was it. That was the end. That was how Toby Rogers died.
A few weeks later, Connie sat in her sister’s kitchen. His sister, Lori, sat next to her drinking a cup of coffee.
About three weeks ago, Connie lost her husband and her son, and a few weeks before, she had lost her daughter to a car crash. Since then she moved in with her sister. The police were keeping her busy, they had just finished cleaning up the case, and the story had been released two weeks ago. The focus of the world seemed to have shifted to completely new stories.
Lori switched the TV on to a news broadcast. On the TV the news reporter began introducing the new headline.
“We have breaking news! Last night there have been reported the murder of four individuals. There are no suspects yet, but the victims were a group of middle school kids who had been out in the woods late last night. The kids had been bludgeoned and stabbed to death. The investigators have discovered a weapon at the crime scene. It appears to be an old, dull-blade hatchet, as you can see here.”
The picture changed to show snapshots of the weapon exactly as it was left at the crime scene.
“Investigators have pulled the name of a possible suspect, Toby Rogers, a seventeen-year-old boy who stabbed his father to death a few weeks ago and tried to cover up his escape by setting a fire in the streets and forest area around the neighborhood. Although they believed the young boy had died in the fire, investigators suspect Rogers might still be alive, due to the fact that his body was never found.”
|
My name is Jim. I’ve been in and out of construction contracts for the last seventeen years. Between those contracts, I do what I can to make a few extra bucks, since you never really know when the next contract will show up and unemployment pays you just enough to lay awake hungry at night. Most of us have heard of Uber and Lyft. I figured it was the perfect way to sustain my take-out burrito habits until my next work order. However, my driving record isn’t exactly clean.
I owe a few thousand dollars in fines for my DUI from three years ago. Before anyone goes up in arms, no one was injured and I wasn’t in an accident. I was leaving the liquor store for the third time that afternoon and was busted by a cop, waiting in the parking lot for me to wobble back into my car. It’s pretty foolish considering the liquor store is in walking distance, but my drunk brain was more concerned with being mugged than being caught by police. Lesson learned, I’m sober now. Fatter from an oral fixation on Mexican food, but sober.
When I failed to meet the requirements on Uber, I went searching online for something similar to ride sharing or some sort of P2P, smartphone type work. I came across an app called Cerber. I was reading one of those “10 ways to make money without bleeding out” articles when I saw an advertisement for Cerber on the side of the article. Big, orange letters glowed against a black background with the phrase “hellish commutes made heavenly.” I found that to be cheesy marketing, but since I’ve never heard of this specific company before, I figured they were a startup and wouldn’t be too picky about participants. I went ahead with filling out a brief application, submitted and hoped for the best. This is where it started to get weird. Immediately after I hit “submit,” my phone rang.
It was 11:47 P.M. when I pissed myself to the phone ringing. I looked at my phone to see “UNKNOWN” illuminating the screen in my dimly lit bedroom. I don’t answer those calls during regular business hours, let alone during the late night. I decided to respect their privacy, ignore the call and not bother to find out who was calling me. I shoved another taquito in my face, and made my way towards my unmade bed. As soon as I dove into my flattened, stale pillows to begin my pity party, my phone rang again. It still said “UNKNOWN,” but it was now coming in as an emergency. Why?
I answered the phone to a woman’s voice veiled with a cheerful disposition that had to be fueled by caffeine and cocaine. “Hello! Is this James Atwell?” She chirped.
“Uh…yeah? Who is this?”
“Hi! This is Adeline with Cerber calling you back about the application you just submitted!”
“Oh, uh,” I was still tonguing chicken taquito out of my teeth “hi. That was awful fast, did I submit incorrectly?” I said with clear apprehension, but moderate enthusiasm. These folks were fast.
“No not at all!” I could hear her clicking her mouse as she spoke to me, “I just wanted to alert you that we have reviewed your application and would like to know when you could start!”
“Uh,” I struggled to get some pants on, cradling the phone between my ear and shoulder. I finish buttoning my pants and say “now, I guess. Are people active this late?”
“Oh yes! Our most active hours are between 10 P.M. and 4:30 A.M.” she stops clicking her mouse “Please download the application onto your phone, quickly make a profile and you’ll be ready to receive requests! Do you have any questions?” I can hear her smiling, gross.
“Uh, no. I don’t think so.” I say as I finish zipping up my jacket.
“Wonderful! Thank you for choosing Cerber! Give them hell, Jimmy boy!” She hung up before I could respond. Give them hell? What the actual…okay, well no time to waste, I suppose.
I download the app, make my profile and mark myself as available. I drive a relatively new SUV so I’m not exactly convinced I’ll be first pick. Gas isn’t cheap and everyone wants to save money. This means I have some time to clean up the taco foils and cardboard boats out of my car. About twenty minutes into trying to alleviate my car of the turgid smell of jalapeño and old cheese, I got my first ring. It was a ride request for one person, a man named Ray, seeking a ride to San Francisco. The city is about an hour from where he’s requesting the ride, but a drive I am very familiar with. I tap on “accept,” throw the bag of trash in the garbage bin and start heading over to the pinned location.
To my surprise, I was directed to a neighborhood that was just a few blocks away from me. I parked outside of a post-80’s style suburban home, coated in sharp sparkle and salmon pink paint. From the door, I see Ray emerge from his pastel green door and immediately, I knew something was off.
Ray was obscenely tall. He had to be an easy seven-and-a-half feet, slouching. He shoved his pallid hands into the pockets of his gray jacket, hood pulled well over his head so that his face wouldn’t be seen. His long thin, legs, adorning blue jeans and clean, black dress shoes, carried his slender frame at a calm stride to my vehicle. As he came closer, I noticed he was wearing a tie and a formal jacket under his normal hoodie. Different strokes, I guess.
He approached my window, his head down and said “Jim?”
“Yeah, you’re Ray?” He sounds so normal. This man is anything but.
“Yeah. Would it be too much trouble to ask you to fold the first row of seats for me? Because, you know. . .” he gestures below his torso to his knees, all while still keeping his head down. He didn’t want me to see his face, but I didn’t feel threatened by him, so I just ignored his lack of eye contact.
“Yeah, sure. No problem at all.” He steps back so that I can open my door and access the back seat. I folded the first row of seats so that the third row was the only place left to sit.
Ray climbs in, takes his seat and buckles up, “Thanks, man.”
“Of course, bought this thing for comfort anyway, know what I mean?” I chuckled. He remained silent with his head facing out the window. Awkward.
The silence of the drive was excruciating. I did my best not to spend too much time glancing back at him. He hardly moved. Every few minutes he would uncross and re-cross his legs. My nervous tendencies finally got the best of me and I had to be “that dick.”
“Those are some serious stems,” I nervously chuckle, “you play basketball as a kid?”
Maintaining his gaze out the window he replies “That’s a serious gut, you eat a lot of food?”
I got immediately defensive, but I brought this on myself and kept my mouth shut.
“Doesn’t feel good, does it? Someone commenting on your size.” He said so calmly.
“No. It doesn’t. I apologize.” I say through gritted teeth. I was no longer inspired to conjure up anymore small talk for the duration of the ride.
About thirty minutes later, we arrive at his destination, which lead me to old Fort Miley. I never recalled this place having an actual address. While my gaze was fixed on the location, dumbfounding me as to why anyone would want to be here this late, he slowly got out of the car and closed the door. He kept his back to me and pulled out his phone as he started walking away.
I was still very much in a state of “what the hell” when I got a notification on my phone. He gave me five bat wings and a 20% tip, bringing the grand total to $1,279.37. My jaw about hit my lap at the astronomical amount. As I brought my face up to try and stop him and alert him of what had to be a mistake, he kept walking, put his hand up and gave a gentle wave. I watched him until he was far into the trees before I finally looked back down at my phone. He left a written review for other riders that read “Go easy on him. He’s new.”
What. The. Actual. Fuck.
I sped home as fast as I could without tipping off any highway patrol. I ran inside my house, darted to my computer and tried to make sense of what I just got myself into. To my chagrin, I couldn’t find a single thing on the internet about Cerber. Not even a website, beyond the application page they offered through the advertisement.
I sat back in my chair for a moment, my hands in my lap and continued to process everything. Who pays that kind of money for an hour ride? Who the hell was in my car? What the hell was in my car? I grabbed my phone and opened the app again. Maybe something was there that could provide some kind of answers. Well, I found my answer.
I clicked on the menu option that you would see for most applications and found a description option. It read as follows:
“Cerber is a dedicated ride-sharing company that ensures anonymity and safe transportation of the paranormal.”
It goes on to talk about rates, amenities and safety measures. I never had a chance to read the terms and agreements, no one does. I went back to check everything I signed and sure enough, it’s a transport service for ghosts and shit.
The rates applicable to me are too good to pass up. Two-thirds of what it cost to pay my mortgage was made in a matter of an hour. Maybe this is dangerous, maybe it’s absolutely insane, but I’m going to stick this out and see where it takes me.
* * * * * *
I WAS NOT READY!
Tonight has been insane. I got “waterproof” seat covers (let’s face it, water is not the concern here) and salt-free snacks. I had a hard time finding a way to get “finger foods,” so I just got unsalted nuts and dried fruit. I had no clue what paranormal entities ate, so I took a stab. I learned quickly that paranormal entities couldn’t care less about almonds and dehydrated nectarines. Can’t blame them.
I tried my best to get a good night’s rest after the strange evening I had. Part of me was too shaken to sleep, the other part was partial excitement on what my next rides would be like. I eventually gave up on sleep and went to a general store to pick up snacks, water bottles and seat covers. After coating my car in as much vinyl preventive measure as humanly possible, I treated myself to enchiladas and a cold Pepsi. After my meal, I felt accomplished enough to attempt sleep again. I was awaken by another “UNKNOWN” call again at 11:47 P.M. Doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out who was calling me. I eagerly picked up the call, nearly dropping the phone, “I have questions!”
Adeline burst into a giggling hysteria and replied “Oh I’m sure you do, Jim. What would you like to know?”
“First off,” I held a finger in the air, ignoring that this was a phone call and not a physical confrontation, “why the hell are you calling me so late?”
“Last time we spoke, it was this exact time. You answered then and I figured if I called you at the same time, you would answer at that exact time.” She said calmly and slowly. Good point. I carry on with false confidence, trying to pretend that I don’t feel as stupid as I sound.
“Second, I want to know if the payment I received was a mistake.” I asked, chewing on my thumbnail.
“No, not at all. Was that not proper compensation? It appears that ray gave you a pretty generous tip. Would you like to file a dispute?” I could hear her clicking her mouse again.
“NO!” I yelled into the phone. Mostly because I wouldn’t want to see what’s in store for anyone that pisses Ray off. I clear my throat and continue, “no, sorry. I just feel like that was maybe too generous? Why was the fee so high for Ray?” I’m so afraid of the answer.
“Jim, I can assure you that the compensation was not an accident. Do you remember the part of the application that asked you if you had a spouse, relatives, children or friends?” My heart found its way to my colon. I knew where this was going.
“Yeah, I remember.” I practically croaked my answer, my throat felt so dry.
“Well, to put it as gently as I can,” she stops clicking her mouse, “the riders that you’re transporting are not typical beings like yourself. Most of them are harmless, but some. . .” insert long, unnecessary, pregnant pause, “. . . can be dangerous. If something were to happen to you, we would prefer not to worry about liability lawsuits. It’s not that you’re life bares little meaning, it’s just business Jim.” I sit back and recall my answer. I have no one. I answered “no” to that part of the application.
I let the answer sink in too long and hear Adeline chime in, “Are you still with us, Jim? Did you have more questions?”
“Uh,” I close my eyes and try to gather my thoughts, “Yeah. What sort of amenities and safety measures should I be worried about?” I ask, rubbing my very stressed out temple.
“We’ll start with the uncomfortable topic of safety measures, get the ugly out of the way,” she begins with a soft, yet sinister tone, “you should get yourself an air-tight container to hold sage and a lighter inside. Sometimes certain entities can leave behind an unseen residue and the moment you feel a heaviness after your passenger has exited, you’ll want to burn some of it in your vehicle until you can feel the tension has dispersed.” I scurry to find a pad and pen to write this down. She continues, “You’ll also want to invest in a raincoat or poncho.”
“A rainc- Adeline. . .” I ask in exasperation.
“Yes, Jim. A raincoat.” I roll my eyes and continue to make my list, “Make sure you invest in a facemask, protective eyewear and booties. You can never be too careful.” She finishes.
“Alright,” I complete the rest of the recommended items list, “Now what about the amenities?”
“That depends on how willing you are to get your hands dirty for your riders,” I could hear the smirk, “just how important is it to you to ensure your riders receive the highest quality experience?”
“Not very,” I say defensively. I’m sure the government is already tapped into my line by now, “I just want to drive and maybe not die. Extra steps sounds like it could tamper with that.”
She lets out a chortle “Is there anything else I can do for you, Jim?”
“Uh, no,” I feel no more confident now than I did before picking up the call, “thanks, Adeline.”
“No problem, Jimmy boy!” Her sickening disposition returns as if this is all so normal for her work nights, “Can we count on you to continue driving for us?”
I stare off into the bedroom wall, chewing on that question. Why shouldn’t I? The money is right, the work is interesting, and I make my own hours. I would be an absolute fool to turn this down. The worst that happens is I die and after discussing the pitiful state of my private life and the lack of people therein, it doesn’t seem so bad.
“Yes,” I say, switching the phone from one ear to the next, “Yeah. I’ll keep driving for Cerber.”
“Wonderful!” She exclaims, “Good luck! I’ll be in touch!”
“Thanks. Have a good night, Adel. . .” the line went dead before I could finish.
It was already after midnight, it’s time to get my ass into gear. I don’t have time to pick up the safety items, I survived without them last time and
I feel like I’ll get more ride requests on a Friday night, safety gear is going to have to wait.
I park at a local donut shop that remains open 24 hours. It’s not tacos, but I can get a churro there, close enough. My phone dings with a request from someone named Borg in a residential area just four minutes away. The final destination was a twelve minute ride to an old industrial building that I thought was shut down. I accept the request, dust the cinnamon-sugar off my shirt and start driving. I’m instantly relieved when I see that the request didn’t come from Ray. He was nice enough, but his potential is absolutely terrifying. I pull up to a very plain and vapid home. It was well kept with a brand new fence, it was just ordinary. So far, so good. Then Borg walked out.
Again with the tall! He was a mammoth of a man, standing at least seven feet tall, jaw slack, with a large set of tusks weighing down such massive jowls, dripping with saliva. Borg was dragging a very large hammer, wearing mild construction gear including a hard hat, tool belt and cement crusted boots. My eyes were wide, drawing in as much of this creature as my retinas could handle.
“JIM?!” He bellowed as if trying to call my attention from across four football fields.
My body still vibrating, I reply with, “BORG?!” I don’t know what compelled me to be so risky as to yell at him, but my body was going rogue at this point.
“YES, BORG!” Borg opens my door with shocking delicacy, climbs into the back seat, accidentally slamming his hammer on his own foot. He didn’t flinch, but I totally caught that.
Borg stares at the back of my headrest, breathing like a hog with bronchitis. He had breath bad enough to gag a maggot.
“Just getting off work?” I ask to try and stave off the wet snorting sounds from behind me.
“YES. BORG BUILD FENCE. BORG NEED BEER.” Oh buddy, I can relate.
“Jesus, Borg! Do you have a volume dial?! Tone it down and break the knob off, for the love of god!” I finally snapped. This is how I die.
To my surprise, Borg lets out a thunderous cackle so loud that I’m sure it gave me prostate cancer, “JIM FUNNY! BORG LIKE JIM!” I give him a weak smile and decide to just focus my attention on the road. We were rounding the last turn of the trip.
I pull up to the abandoned warehouse and it’s just as dilapidated as I remember. The metal walls and roof were coated in rust, the wooden beams poking out of place with dry rot and patches of unkempt weeds swallowed up any semblance of a driveway. I come to a complete stop and Borg plunks his massive boots onto the gravel. He gracefully closes my door and walks over to my window, “THANKS JIM! GO SLEEP! JIM LOOK BAD!” Are you fucking kidding me?
“GOODNIGHT BORG! GO SLEEP! BORG TOO LOUD!” I bark at him with a grin. He grins back and begins his short, seemingly painful walk to the front doors of the building. I caught myself half-smiling as the doors shut to his murky mansion, when it was violently interrupted by the realization that the smell Borg emitted had not followed him out of my car. Oh no. This is so bad.
I quickly drive to a nearby gas station to assess the damage. This giant, sticky man-fetus was making all that noise for a reason. He literally shit his own pants in my back seat and his internal matter leaked EVERYWHERE, leaving big, Borg butt cheek imprints.
My night was clearly shot. I bought some paper towels, bleach, air fresheners and a few taquitos from the gas station I was stopped at. It took me a full two hours to clean this hazardous waste out of my car, but I was still able to alleviate the blasphemous evidence from my back seat. It was around 3:52 A.M. when I finished. I remembered Adeline saying that the highest hours of operation ended around 4:30 A.M. so I went ahead and put out a ready signal to try and salvage my night. How I wish I would’ve gotten Ray instead, anything else would have been better than this traumatizing experience.
I got another ping almost instantly after putting out signal. At least I had another fat payout to look forward to. Then I noticed something strange. The request was coming from the very gas station I was already parked at from someone named Angela. Stranger still, there was no destination that followed. Albeit bizarre, I figured it was an app malfunction and I accepted the request anyway. Immediately after accepting, my back door opened and shut so quickly that it almost sounded like one fluid motion.
“Hi, James.” That voice. There’s no way. My blood instantly turns to ice and my body starts shaking violently. This isn’t happening. This can’t be real.
I turn my head slowly, shuddering at the woman who sat in the back seat. My horrified gaze met with her milky eyes, shattering my senses like glass. Of all the terror, sadness and despair I’ve ever encountered in my life, it’s incomparable to what I was feeling in this very moment. Tears involuntarily streamed down my face, my mouth hanging open, hands tensed into fists on my steering wheel, white-knuckling my grip as if I may be ripped right through the roof of my car. This isn’t real. It just can’t be real.
The request… came from my dead sister, Angela.
* * * * * *
Angela died at the age of 24, I was 28. My sister was a tiny, intelligent, nerdy and independent woman, who prided herself on her ability to quote every scripture in the Bible in a nondenominational way while also being able to recite every Greek god, their spouse, children and histories therein. She had a natural curiosity for stories, sincere compassion for the voiceless and loved her family deeply. Angela never missed a single Christmas dinner. She was working on her doctorate in international mythology before she died. You all thought that a philosophy degree was useless? Angela and I were very close. The four of us as a unit had very healthy relationships and could always rely on each other. We kept our circle small and tight.
Her body was found dumped on the side of highway 5 and it was in terrible condition. For those of you with weak bellies, I urge you to skip over this paragraph. Her body was severely sexually assaulted with instruments that involve slicing holiday ham. Her head was almost entirely severed from her shoulders, appendages were found in a black garbage bag placed right next to her corpse. Stranger still, her cause of death was not due to any of these fatal blows. She was hot-shotted with heroine and was dead before this massacre could have taken place. The reason they know this is because when a body dies, blood coagulates and takes on a viscous texture, causing blood to pass through veins and arteries at a much slower rate. Pair coagulation with a stopped heart, no longer able to circulate and pump blood, you get a very minimal mess and little blood spatter. Perhaps the most ominous and puzzling part, she was found wearing a necklace that no one in my family recognized. A small, silver bullet dangled from a delicate silver chain. It was like an anti-trophy, a clean break-away from the typical psychopath. This person was a sadistic showman that meant to confuse and bring an unreasonably high shock value to anyone who stumbled upon the knowledge of this crime. It worked. The case grew cold and hasn’t been reopened since. None of us ever got closure from her death. Just two years after we buried her, our parents committed suicide. They locked themselves in the garage, doused themselves in gasoline and lit themselves in fire. They were found still holding hands with no sign of struggle. The death of my parents didn’t affect me as bad as Angela’s death did. You expect your parents to expire. You don’t expect your baby sister to be slaughtered. No one is ever ready for a call like that.
My baby sister, the one who intentionally got a job at the bookstore to sneak books out simply to learn, was gone. Any hope and good that was left in me was buried along with her. I traded in the notions of starting my own family for the more tangible future in alcoholism. My baggage was exhausting enough for me, there’s no reason to subject that sort of madness any further. The gnawing pain eventually went numb and formed invisible mental scar tissue to cover up any residual damage from that impact. Yet here she was, staring at me with a vacant expression, from the backseat of my car.
I jumped into the back seat and hugged her tight, sobbing for several minutes, while she tried to hush me as though we were being watched.
“James, please,” she said trying to quell the inconsolable teenager I was in that moment “I need your help.”
I immediately shot back, grabbing her arms, “I thought I would never see you again, Angela. It’s been ten years.” I said, gathering my composure.
“I know,” she looked down in her lap trying to hide her own pain, “I’m sorry. I would have come sooner. . .”
I cut her off, resting my hands in my own lap and say “wait, why now?”
She looked back up at me and said “I would have come sooner, but you were self-destructing. Seeing ghosts would only amplify that sort of behavior, so I watched from afar.”
“Okay,” I nodded, looking past the milky desaturation of her eyes and into her now very present soul “I can understand that, but you are here now. What exactly do you need my help with?”
Her face became very stern, replying with “I messed up. You know how I was studying black masses, occultism and ritualistic spiritualism?” I nodded and she continued, “well, I was turning up empty handed in every path I traveled, so I dug deeper. . .” she became uncomfortable and shifted in her seat, “I decided to go through the dark web to find what I could on summoning entities. I eventually came into contact with a man who only referred to himself as Wade.” she turned her face to the back of my seat and shut her eyes as if she had to scrape to the bottom of her cerebellum to recall the next few steps, “he claimed that he could summon Baphomet and that he would perform such summons for me. However, I already knew that Baphomet could not be summoned. So he was either going to make a huge fool of himself or I was going to witness one of the most intelligent entities ever written about. Both results would have been fruitful for my research. I was so concerned with just wanting more experience, I never stopped to evaluate the risks.”
She let herself chew on that for a minute. She looked like she was truly checking out of the conversation, so I softly spoke “Angela?”
She shook her head, bringing herself back to the discussion, “I’m fine.” She pushed her hair back and that’s when I saw the giant, dark bruise with a tiny hole in the center of it, like an eerie halo. I chose to ignore it for now because I was growing impatient and wanted her to wrap it up.
“We met at a coffee shop close to where I lived and he drove us two hours out of the way to what looked like a barely standing building, lights still flickering inside. We walked in and he instructed me to take my shoes and coat off. When I was done taking my second shoe off, I blacked out. I’m not sure how long I was out for or what delivered me to being unconscious, but I woke up clearly drugged.”
“It was heroine,” I interrupted, “the cops told us you were hot-shotted. That’s how you died. They had told us you were not an addict since you didn’t have any other physical distress from active use.”
“Yeah,” she rubbed her neck, staring forward, “well, he didn’t kill me right away. He put an IV directly into my neck and delivered it slowly enough to keep me tranquilized first.” A clear expression of rage swept over her face, her voice still calm, “I woke up in what looked like a mortuary. I was on an old, metal gurney, sustained by leather straps. That wasn’t even necessary, I couldn’t even lift my head let alone escape. I knew I was going to die. I was just afraid it wasn’t going to be quick. He told me that I was stupid for seeking dark answers to dark questions and that my demise was entirely my fault. He wasn’t wrong. I put myself in that exact position, I felt foolish. I should’ve known that summoning Baphomet wasn’t possible and that should have been enough to raise some red flags.” I rolled my eyes at that last part. Nerd alert.
“He told me that my death was important regardless of how I had arrived to this situation,” she continued, her voice taking on a monotonous infliction, “he said that he wasn’t even part of any known religious sector. That he was a one-man worship and that it was because he was a true god among men.” Her mouth curled up into a slight smirk and she said, “I verbally retaliated though. My last words before he mainlined China right into my jugular were ‘I thought gods were perfect? You have mustard on your shirt and you reek of dollar store aftershave. You’re not a god, you just suffer from narcissistic personality disorder.’” She cackled at her own remark. I wanted to cry just watching her reflect any sort of positive feeling. I’ve missed her so much.
“Well that pissed him off enough to end it,” she said half-smiling, “I hope it brings you some sort of peace knowing that I didn’t suffer.”
I nodded and replied “it does, but what exactly do you need my help with?”
“Well, I want you to find him, I guess,” she shrugged, “I’m not his first and only victim. I’m not exactly sure what I want you to do once you find him, but I want him to stop this psychotic church-of-self agenda.”
“Do you have any sort of lead you can give me?” I ask eagerly. Maybe she wasn’t sure what to do after he was found, but I had a few ideas. I may even call Ray for help.
“It’s been ten years.” She said, looking directly into my eyes, “but I do remember where the location is. The funeral home that I died in.”
My hands start shaking, my breath trembling, “where was this exactly?” It was then I heard my Cerber notification chime. She finally added the destination to the ride she had requested. I look from my phone resting on the dash to her. She was smiling such a warm, lovely smile for being so dead.
“What do you say, James,” she lifted her finger, pointing at my phone, “shall we begin?”
My body fled with pinpricks of pure adrenaline, “Hell Yeah,” I jumped to my front seat, “I’ve been waiting ten years for this.” We started driving down I-5 south. We had a three hour journey ahead of us. The tip better be fat.
* * * * * *
Angela and I spent the ride in relative silence for the first hour. Something wasn’t sitting right with me. When telling me she wanted me to find him, my mind was too focused on the possibilities of torturing this crackhead that killed my sister, I almost missed that last part.
“Angela,” my inquisition sliced through the quiet hum of my tires and penetrated her gaze on the road.
“Yeah?” She was holding herself as if she was cold.
“There’s something that’s bugging me.” I say, tapping my thumb on the steering wheel.
“What’s up?” No sign of a guilty conscience and I’m not sure I felt so comforted by that notion.
“When you said ‘find him, I guess,’ what exactly does that mean? What do you mean, ‘you guess’?” I was trying to hide the accusatory tone, but I’ve always been terrible with composing myself.
“Well, I don’t really know. I feel like finding him and the resolve therein may allow me to leave this purgatory of just walking around the living. You know, unfinished ghost business.” She genuinely sounded theoretical.
“You mean, you don’t know?” Still sounding like I’m interrogating her. I can’t help it, I’ve seen some weird shit and since she’s my sister, I feel like I can ask away, no-bars-hold.
“Strange, isn’t it?” She says, cocking her head to the side, allowing her eyes to do what I assumed was a blank stare. Her peepers didn’t creep me out until then. “You would think that dying delivers a sense of clarity or answers some questions. That’s just not the case. Dying is like exiting scene one and walking into a different set, in a different costume and unrehearsed lines. It’s confusing. I’ve read a lot about souls being trapped because of unfinished business and I can’t help but think I’ll be closer to resting if I try every avenue, no matter how cliché it sounds.”
My heart crawled into my throat, choking me with sadness. I just got her back and she’s already trying to leave. I try to soften the mood and say “Well, why do you even want to go to heaven? There’s no affirmation in the Bible that says there will be tacos on the other side. Why chance it?”
“I don’t even know if heaven is real. I know this isn’t necessarily my eternity, but heaven could just be a fairy tale for all I know,” dammit, that backfired. Now I feel worse.
“So you’re saying that, what? Your soul just dissipates?” Still swallowing as much sorrow as I could.
“That’s not what I’m saying,” she almost sounds annoyed. I’m not sure if my stupid questions are irritating her or if she’s irritated with her own lack of answers, “I’m saying I don’t know. I’m saying that I do know that I’m stuck and don’t know what the next step is or what arrives thereafter.” She stares out the window, concluding this discussion. I may suck at reading women, but I could tell I wore out the topic. I left well enough alone, grabbed another cold, gas station taquito and munched in silence. Sort of. So crunchy, even cold.
My phone dinged with another Cerber notification. I squinted at the request to share a ride with the current passenger. I guess even the supernatural care about the environment too. Makes sense, they’re typically immortal or live longer than humans anyway, being mindful of cutting back where you can is never a bad idea. They may also be just as cheap as my sister too, who knows.
“Hey Angela, someone wants to share your ride for about fifteen minutes, is that cool?” She nodded, still brooding in her own, nerdy and dramatic state of despair. I hit accept to someone named Siobhan.
I pulled up to a lake that was pinned in the request. Standing there was a gorgeous woman, long red hair, waxen skin and a black dress that only revealed her head, hands and shoes. She was |
It started when we called out to the stars; into the darkness. We felt so small, tumbling through vast emptiness while clinging to the skin of the world, and without a single reason why. We were curious, yes, but ultimately I think we were just terribly frightened. And we were young, so very young. We were children, and like a lonely, lost child we did the only thing we could think of to make it stop. We did what we thought we had to do to make the universe make sense.
We called for help.
For years we scanned the sky for a sign. We sent signals to the stars in the darkness beyond.
“Are we alone?”
But the skies were quiet. Always so quiet; leaving us to our own makings.
But crying children never cease, and neither did we. We sent calls into every corner of space for decade after decade. We refused to believe no one was out there. They had to be. Yet, for some unknown reason, they never answered us.
Everyone remembers when that changed.
They think it responded to the Arecibo message from 1974. The response to the Arecibo message was received almost three months ago, in two separate parts. The first part of the message was received at the Hat Creek Radio Observatory in California. The Allen Telescope Array picked up what sounded like static interference that continued on for over an hour. It consisted of unintelligible screeching and buzzing sounds that continued without pause for the whole hour. The meaning of this message was never discovered, if it had one. The only thing we knew was that the signal’s origin came somewhere in the Hercules constellation, near Messier 13. As soon as that signal stopped, the real message began.
We made contact that day, and we were asked a question.
“Who. Is. There?”
It came not through the radios, but as a voice. A voice, inside all of our heads, asked the question to all of us. I heard it. My wife heard it. The young heard it and the old heard it. Even the deaf heard it. Everyone, everywhere, heard this voice whisper that question in their heads, in every language on Earth.
I remember it almost too clearly. It asked in that familiar, yet indescribable voice that’s always there in my mind. It was like one of my own thoughts had gone rogue, and had decided to speak directly to me. The world seemed to stop as everyone listened for what came next.
“Where. Are. You?”
The heavy question seemed to linger in our minds for hours afterwards, and then for days, and then for weeks. That day changed everything.
There were the doubters from the very beginning, and the “holy ones” who claimed that God had spoken to all of us and that the time to repent was now. There were those who claimed they’d heard nothing, and those who’d claim that the aliens had given them their own secret messages. And, of course, there were those who truly believed that we had been contacted for the first time by an extraterrestrial race like us; one ready to communicate. Ready to lead us out of the dark.
We were wrong.
We never made contact with alien life, at least, nothing comprehensible or discernible to human understanding. The stars are vast, and in their vastness our voices had touched the ears of something truly incomprehensible. Something hungry and malevolent. The Voice.
We realized our mistake when the ground started to groan.
Beneath our feet, everywhere, the ground seemed to moan. The muffled sounds shook through the dust and dirt below us. No one knew what was causing it, at least, not until the calls started coming in.
The graveyards were screaming.
All at once, the dead had started screaming. Every deceased man, woman, and child was turning in their graves. All the animals did so, too. Every dog, every cat, everything that had ever walked this earth. The cries of ancient whales shook the seas, and the shrill screeching of birds echoed in the forests. The caskets shook, and the morgues howled.
The voices stopped together, in an instant leaving the world in an amplified silence. In their absence, a new sound filled the air. The Voice returned.
“I. Hear. You.”
It came as a whisper from behind. An ominous, yet oddly playful, presence that felt so close, but was truly still so far away. It let us breathe in the silence for a minute before it made us a promise. It was a promise we all knew to be true.
“I. Am. Coming.”
The Voice was gone, and the air was again filled with screams. This time they were from the living.
After the Voice had gone we were left to our own devices. Millions panicked and rightfully so as chaos took hold of the streets. Many would die in the violence and the gunfire of that night. They would be known as the raptured before long, and the rest of us were the condemned. We could only wait.
The screaming dead was only the first of the side-effects that we felt as the Voice approached. The closer it got, the more we felt it.
That first night after the screaming we noticed the stars bleed for the first time. A section of the western sky had turned black, blacker than the night. It was only truly visible because of the ring of stars around it. The light from those stars had turned red, and they seemed to bleed across the sky like food coloring dropped into water. Their light swirled and flowed all around the edge of some unseen mass.
I knew then that I was staring into the face of the Voice. Our scientists claimed that nothing was there, and that their radar and scans always came up empty. Their telescopes could see nothing but darkness in that section of space. However, the proof was right in front of us as every night that ring of darkness got wider, and more stars bled in the sky.
We watched it come.
As each night passed, the black spot would widen, and more stars would distort and bleed around it. During the day a new hell would greet us. The side-effects worsened. The day always brought something new. I’m sure most of what happened will go untold and unknown.
The animals started disappearing. All of them. No tracks, traces, or bodies were left behind. Pets would run away, some violently so. They all retreated, never to be seen again. The forests were left abandoned, the oceans empty, the air was left silent. The world left seemed empty and lonely. They left like water receding from the shore, just before the tsunami breaks.
One day, about two weeks ago, scientists tried to talk to the Voice again. They hoped, perhaps, to reason with it. They told it about what was happening on our world, and asked it questions. The scientists begged. It didn’t speak. When asked what the Voice sent a response. The next night the skies lit up with streaks of fire. It was alight for hours, blazoned with orange and red. We didn’t realize the effects until the next day when the televisions turned to static, and the telephones refused to work. We had sat, watching, as all the satellites were knocked out of the heavens.
After that reports became rumors and rumblings; sanity a thing of the past. The air chilled and weighed us down. The Voice was nearly here, and everyone felt it.
It rained for a week after the satellites fell. The rain was salty, and mired with an unknown filth that turned the grass black. Maybe the satellites tracked something back in with them when they hit the sky, no one knew for sure. All we know is that it fell from clouds black as charcoal that blotted out the sun, like liquid ash. Darkness fell upon us for days.
When the clouds went away, the skies were empty. There were no clouds, yet the sky hung low and gray. If the sun was anywhere in the sky it never made itself known. Even it had abandoned us. Each day grew slowly darker and darker until night and day became almost the same.
Some people would claim later that they’d seen things in the dark; creatures with gangly limbs and crooked faces, lurking in the corner of their vision. They were tall, white creatures that looked molted or rotten through their transparent skin. Appearances would last for just a second or two before vanishing without a trace. Some believed this was the first step in the alien’s invasion, but the rest of us didn’t know what to think. We just knew that it was nothing that simple, or benign. They must have been hallucinations, just more madness to endure, but ultimately as harmless as anything else. As harmless as the screams of the dead, the missing animals, and the dying sky.
Appearances slowly increased in duration and number. I think everyone saw them once at the least, but I don’t think a single person would ever guess why they were truly here. They never touched nor spoke to anyone, and they certainly never harmed anyone. Most who got good looks at them described them as mournful, or sorrowful looking. Some even claimed the creatures watched over them at night, and others even claimed that it seemed as if the creatures were sorry for them. One claimed to have even seen one prostrate upon the ground, hands clasped above its head. He said it was praying for us.
Prayer was no help. The churches and places of worship that had divided us for so long failed to bring hope to any in the end. The Voice let them pray and beg for a while, but just days ago the Voice ended it all. No one questioned how, for at this point nothing that happened surprised anyone anymore, but on the final day all books of worship burned. Every last Bible, every Quran, everything.
People rushed to their centers of faith, but found no solace. The churches and temples had suffered the same fates, if not worse. The people were left, abandoned by their greatest hopes. There were rumors of churches all over the world, with walls formed from the bodies of those who sought refuge. They were merged to the walls; stuck to them like flies in a trap. They died still pleading for hope, but they were beyond God’s help. The rest of us had learned to stop begging.
We waited.
The final message came. From beyond the sky it fell upon us. The Voice echoed, and it spoke the simple truth.
“I. Am. Here.”
There is a darkness beyond the horizon, the likes of which I doubt has ever been seen. It brings with it the screams of countless souls, and it moves fast. The stars are dying now, and I know they’ll never be seen again. The light is dying so fast.
I leave this not as a warning. No, it’s far too late for that. Instead, consider this the last realization; the last humanity will ever know. For we used to wonder whether or not we were alone, and lost, but never whether or not we were safe and hidden. The universe is infinite, and our understanding was significantly more finite. We should never have beckoned to the darkness. Instead we should have clung to the light, and closed our eyes every time we were turned to the void. As the final minutes’ approach, I hold one final truth to be certain.
I now know why the skies were always so quiet.
|
I was a beautiful young woman once, full of love and life. My lily-white skin was soft and warm, my belly swollen with new life, and my hand held by my husband, Edward. Edward was a good man. We married young, in the spring, when the air was heavy with the scent of the blossoming trees and the ground damp with dew. I remember how he smiled when he lifted my veil, as if seeing me for the first time. His eyes were soft and blue, crinkling at the sides as he told me he loved me. Who could have known this man would become my curse? This kind, gentle man, whose love gave me such life that I might live forever.
The winter came and my belly bulged with the fruit of our love. The chilled winds forced me to keep inside, and the maids tended to my every need. Many days I spent sewing by the fire, softly singing songs without meaning for hours on end.
And then, one night, I felt it.
The pain was immense, as if I was been torn from the inside out. I screamed for my maids, and one cradled my arm and attempted to lead me to my chamber. Another ran for Edward and he came crashing through the door, his manner wild with fear and excitement. He took my other arm and I was brought moaning up the stairs, wailing and huffing with exertion. When finally I was safe in my bed, the doctor came. He went about his way, and ordered me to push and breathe while Edward held my hand, both of us soaked with sweat. Suddenly, the doctor paused. He spoke quietly to the midwife and she ushered Edward out the room. He protested madly, shouting over her shoulder; “I am with you, Joanna!”
I smiled through the rat tails of my sodden hair and calmed him, “Do not fear for me, Edward. I will be safe here.” My voice, though torn with pain, sounded surprisingly calm. He looked back at me desperately, and the door was closed in front of him.
That was the last time I truly saw Edward. The doctor told me I was bleeding too heavily and he couldn’t stop it. I cried, “My baby! Is my baby going to live?” but for all my life I cannot remember if he answered me. In that instant, the world seemed to go numb. The pain was remained, but dulled, like a blunted knife. The room seemed to drift into grey before my eyes. I could see the doctor lifting up my child in a blood-soaked blanket, but all I could hear was the colossal ringing in my ears, and I did not know if the infant cried. The darkness closed in from the corners of my eyes, as if I were falling down an endless hole, and finally, enveloped me completely.
Yet, I did not truly leave. I was new, risen from my body and standing in the corner of my room. For a while all was silent but for the ringing, although the light had come back to me. I saw the doctor open the door and speak to Edward, and I saw him fall to his knees and scream in pain. I saw the maids gasp and cover their mouths, and the midwife rocking my baby in her arms, humming softly, her eyes red and stinging. And I saw my body, stretched out on that bloody bed, my eyes still open and looking straight at me. I tried to touch my hand, but my fingers passed straight through. We looked at each other for a while, as if I hoped my body would blink and sit up. Yet I lay there, stoic, stubbornly deceased, and I felt as though I grew thinner, as if I was completely drained of everything.
Then, all sound gushed back and awoke me from my stupor; Edward’s howling sobs, the weeping of the maids, and the screams of my baby. I went to the midwife, although she did not see me. In her plump arms, he seemed so small. He too was covered in blood, but he was so alive. His cries were the most beautiful thing I had ever heard, and amidst all the loss in my home, new life graced us.
For a while, Edward did not look at our child. He allowed the maids to change my bedsheets, then placed me amongst new ones as if I were asleep. He laid beside me and embraced me all night, his tears soaking my cold, dead skin. It was as if he was trying to warm me, to bring me back to life. How I wanted to embrace him back, to tell him I was still with him, but there seemed no way. So I laid on the other side of my corpse, resting upon myself and watching darling Edward sleep, wishing with all my heart to come back to him. But I could only watch.
Eventually, the undertakers came to collect my body. Edward did not fight them, but sat and watched them with eyes sunk and dead with grief. He and I stood together at the window as we watched the cart take me away, and I held his hand. Although my ghostly fingers could hold no earthly thing, he seemed to feel me, and he looked at his hand for a long time, then up at my face, or where my face would have been. He tightened his grip on thin air, yet I felt we were together, across the worlds of life and death, and I could almost feel the warmth of his hand on mine.
He spoke nothing of this, of course. But that night, he went to the baby’s room, where the nurse sat and knitted beside him. He dismissed her, and he sat in her place. He looked at our child, then addressed the room as a whole. “Are you with me, Joanna?” he said.
“Yes!” I cried, but he could not hear me. He waited for an answer, and desperate, I tapped the mobile above the bed with the tips of my fingers. It rocked to and fro, and Edward saw it and knew it was me. The baby giggled at the knitted birds that moved with the mobile and held out chubby little hands to them.
Edward looked at our child with love, and spoke to me again.
“As long as you are with me, my darling, I am a blessed man. But heaven knows I miss you even though you are here.” He stroked the baby’s head. “He is all I have left of you know, my baby boy. He is the evidence of our union, and I haven’t even named him yet.” He let tears run down his face as the boy gripped his finger in his tiny palm. “Jonathan,” he whispered. “In memory of my Joanna.”
I smiled and stood beside him as he cradled our son, like some twisted family portrait. I placed my hand on his shoulder and we sang to him together, a folk song my mother had sung to me when I was a child, and Edward’s mother to him.
Sleep now, my love, for all the night
Slumbers soft until the light
Warms your heart and warms your mind
and teaches you wisdom, to love and be kind
Sleep now, my love,
for all the stars
Shimmer, watching from afar,
And angels will watch you and smile with delight As you sleep all through the night.
Edward slept in the chair that night, with Jonathan softly snuffling in his arms. In my new, spectral form, I could not sleep, but was content to watch my family, and stay with them.
Three years passed, and Jonathan grew into a beautiful young boy, with Edward’s bright blue eyes and my soft brown hair. The maids adored him, and Edward doted on him. We would sit together on the floor and play, and Jonathan seemed to feel my presence with him, just as Edward did. Sometimes a maid would happen upon Edward speaking to me and back away to gossip, but they did not bother us. We were the perfect family.
* * * * * *
That winter, after his third birthday, Jonathan became terribly ill. His fever ran high and beads of sweat ran off his little head and Edward cried for him. The coughing was the worst part. I could not hold my baby in my arms and tell him it would all be alright, but only stand and watch as he coughed up blood and mucus. His plump little body became emaciated and his face sallow with sickness. The doctor told Edward it was too late to save him, and all they could do was make his passing comfortable. He wept all night, holding my sweet baby’s hand, and when he cried, he called him Joanna.
I wondered if my baby would join me in the next life, and that I might finally be able to touch him. I had seen other spirits in this realm, the ghost of the gardener’s boy that was crushed by a falling tree, the specter of the old man who had lived here before us and passed in his sleep, but not many. I had spoken to them once or twice, but one by one they left me. The old man was first, he moved on not a month after I had come to this world, and the gardener’s boy left when his father died, after a terrible force caused his heart to stop. I was alone on this side of reality.
I suppose it was selfish to wish this upon Edward, but it was such a lonely existence. I never wished for Jonathan’s death, but it came sure enough. He’d been sick for so long, it was almost a relief when he finally passed. I could see it in Edward’s eyes, behind the pain of his loss. He held my baby’s hand so tight it was almost impossible for the doctor to move him away, then he locked himself in our chamber, weeping uncontrollably.
I wept too. I had lost my only son. Never again would I see him laughing with Edward or squirming on the maid’s lap, and still he did not come to me in the next life. I waited for days, but he never appeared. I felt the pain of loss in full force; he was truly gone, snatched away from me forever. I screamed and howled, and the sorrow turned to fury, giving me the strength to fling vases from their places, smash mirrors and throw open doors in my mad search for my son. The maids were driven almost insane with fear and called for the priest to exorcise the house, but Edward would not allow him to take me away. We looked together, I in the spirit world and he in his dreams, and still there was no sign of Jonathan. Edward barely left his room, but sat in his bed and spoke to me, even when I was not in there with him. I suppose it brought him comfort not to be alone. But I was alone, and I was afraid of being so forever.
Many doctors came to see him, friends and even religious men, in the hopes of bringing him back to health. They told him “It does not do to dwell on dreams. We must all move on,” but my Edward refused. He expressed his fear to them, telling them I had stayed behind, but Jonathan had not returned to him. He asked if Jonathan was lost and afraid, or if it was I that was left behind. They only shook their heads at him. “Joanna isn’t here,” they would say, as I held his hand.
* * * * * *
As my misery grew, I grew stronger with it. Rumor quickly spread around the town of hauntings in my home. The servants told their friends of things moving out of place, of doors opening and slamming shut of their own accord, candles blowing out without wind and my disembodied cries echoing throughout the house. One maid, a simple creature called Marianne, was dusting the mantelpiece one warm June night, and happened to glance into the mirror. Behind her, she saw my ghostly image, darkened with fury and loss, but when she turned, she could not see me. She quit that night. The cook was soon to follow, after I forced all the knives to hurl themselves at the wall near where he stood. I never intended to harm them, only to drive them away, so we could be alone, my husband and I. Those rumors they spread were toxic to him, and I knew that I must protect him. I had no idea that I was sealing my own fate.
A whole year passed, and every servant in the area refused to work for Edward in his haunted house. Jonathan still had not come home to me, so Edward and I would sit by the fire and wait, silently. With the meddlesome servants gone, I had no need to act out of fury, only to love my husband. He would read his books and I would sit in my chair and watch him, peaceful. When we were together, I felt safe once again, but when he slept, I felt fear and loneliness rush back to me like vomit rising in my throat, and once more I would tear the house apart and cry for Jonathan.
Edward hanged himself on the fifth anniversary of my death and Jonathan’s birth, from the chandelier in the dining room. I wonder if I truly tried to save him, or did I let him die so he could come to me. I can’t remember now, it has been so many years. No one had worked for my husband for such a long time that it was days before they found his corpse, rotting from the rafters.
* * * * * *
Myth carried on our legacy for us. Many families moved in after Edward died, but none lasted very long. All left in a hurry, claiming of terrifying hauntings, of screaming and crying, of dark figures in the shadows. I was trapped in that house, and as my stories lived, so did I. Perhaps Edward and Jonathan were trapped there too – many families complained of hauntings I never performed, of a child laughing, of a man softly singing. Maybe they were with me, but inaccessible, or maybe the families had exaggerated their stories, but either way it drove me to anger. I wandered that house for hundreds of years trying to find my family, but I never saw them again.
I saw other spirits from time to time, as I had seen them before. I saw a little girl who had been run over by a cart, and a wife who had been beaten by her husband. I saw the gristly burns on the specter of a baker who had died in a fire, and heard the crying of babies that were lost before they even learned to talk. Some of them left much faster than others, as people began to forget them. The beaten wife disappeared one day, as her sister passed and her husband took a new wife to torment. The baker passed along with his wife, and the babies vanished when their mothers gave birth to new sons and daughters. But people did not forget me, in my haunted house all alone. My story was passed on from generation to generation, and my house became a cheap tourist attraction. Sometimes teenagers would break in through the servant’s quarters and dare each other to spend the night with me, or homeless men would take shelter from the wind and the rain.
They trapped me here, these stories. I realized soon I had sealed my fate, in my desperation to find my son and my husband, I had created a legend. People would always remember me, the mother who lost herself and her son, and who drove her husband to death. Other spirits only had to remain here while others grieved for them, but grieving for me ended with Edward. Nobody grieves for me now, but you never forgot me. And so we wander the house, together but apart, for perhaps an eternity, looking for each other and for our son. I grow tired of searching in vain, but I cannot cease to exist when others have cursed me to stay. Maybe Jonathan and Edward have moved on now, and it is only I that is stuck in this imitation-life. I might never know. All I want is to rest in peace with my family, but you keep me here, like an exhibit in some twisted zoo.
And so I cry here, alone forever, begging you to forget me.
|
I’ve always been fascinated with the unknown, particularly creatures of the unknown. I don’t know when this obsession of mine started. It probably started when I was a young kid and would watch documentary series on aliens, Bigfoot, Yeti, unknown sea monsters, and the like.
My obsession earned me my share of names and bullying in school. Like a good nerd I pushed up my glasses and shook it off and moved onto college where I earned degree in zoology and eventually my masters and PhD. Along the way I had discovered the gym, alcohol, women, contacts, and other things life had to offer. However, my main love was cryptozoology.
I spent two years of my late 20’s running around the world with well known and respected biologists, zoologist, marine biologists looking for new species and studying others that we knew little about. My colleagues and myself found new insects, fish, reptiles, but never anything that would fall under the strange or mythical. I made a name for myself in the science community. People liked to say I could find anything but Bigfoot. I enjoyed my small notoriety.
After those exciting two years I decided I wanted to work somewhere more traditional. While creating footprints around the world was fun, I was tired of never being in one place for more than a few weeks at a time. I also wanted to spend more time trying to research and find these storied monsters than work on someone else’s expedition.
I landed a job at a big state university in Ohio teaching in the biology department. I also started a cryptozoology club, which attracted a large following of students. With permission from the university, I would take students to so-called haunted places, hot spots for unknown creatures, and the like. We would always come up with some crazy disembodied EVP, blurry video, or grainy photo. We never had anything conclusive but it was fun for the students and myself and it got them to think outside of the box and question what we really know about our world. The passion for trying to discover the unknown that I saw in the group’s members is what kept my interest in it strong.
Like I said before, my main love was cryptozoology until one faculty Christmas party. There I met Diane. She was this beautiful brown haired woman about my age who worked in the English department teaching creative writing. I knew I needed to meet this woman. I wasn’t a scrawny nerd from high school anymore. I was in shape, successful in my field, and not too bad looking (at least I told myself that). I used a corny pickup line to introduce myself, she had a cornier comeback, we laughed, talked the entire party, exchanged numbers and the rest is history.
A few months after we started dating, we moved in together. I had never fallen so hard for someone. We shared a lot of common interests but had a lot of differences. I liked the outdoors and she preferred to stay in. I was a busy body and she was more relaxed. We both liked wine and a good book. She was a published writer who wrote these amazing stories about make believe creatures. I read several of her short stories and one of her books which all seemed to be centered on forest fairies and children.
“Diane,” I said closing her latest published book as I was sprawled out on the couch one evening. “Have I told you that you are an excellent writer?”
Diane was in the kitchen making her famous chicken alfredo. “Yes, but you can tell me again if you like,” she playfully responded.
“Can I ask you a question? Where do you get your inspiration for these stories?”
She walked out of the kitchen wiping her hands on a dishcloth. “I get them from the stories my grandmother told me when I visited her in Canada when I was young.”
I sat up on the couch and she gracefully took a seat next to me. “Tell me more, please,” I asked inquisitively.
“When I was young,” Diane began with a look of remembrance on her face, “we would visit my grandmother every summer in Alberta. She lived in a town called New Village. There weren’t many people there. It was a beautiful town shadowed by snowcapped peaks. There was a great big pine forest that lay between the town and the closest mountain. It was probably a few hundred acres or so. At the base of the mountain was this crystal clear lake that was full of fish and that emptied into a small river. All the kids in town would play in the forest, lake, and river but were strictly forbidden from staying out past sundown. This was enforced harshly by the towns people including my grandmother.” Diane paused for a moment.
“Go on,” I urged her with a smile.
“So, my grandmother would tell me about the fairies in the forest and how they liked to play tricks on people. If I disobeyed my elders they would take me away forever. Those stories always freaked me out. My parents didn’t like her telling me those stories but they agreed that I should listen to my grandmother and be inside before dark. The stories didn’t bother me too much until one of the young boys I played with each summer went missing in the woods. He ran away one night into the forest after a fight with his father. They never found him and the town’s people didn’t bother looking for him till after sunrise. I just can’t believe the people wouldn’t go looking for a boy in the forest until it was sun up unless they all truly believed in the fairies. The fairies in my books are mischievous but much nicer than the ones in my grandmother’s stories. They never take people away.”
Diane’s face was now a half smile. “Kind of your thing isn’t it?”
“What do you mean?” I looked at her slightly confused.
“You know… Imaginary creatures that live in the woods.” She looked at me with a smartass grin.
“Well, I’ve heard and read up on fairy folklore but it’s not something that many cryptozoologists spend a vast amount of time on. However, I’ve never heard of a town afraid of fairies, especially from a first hand account. It would be interesting to investigate something like that.”
Diane smiled a mischievous smile that stretched from ear to ear. “Good. My parents want to meet you and I want you to meet them. My grandmother passed away when I was young and my parents inherited the house. They retired there a few years ago. You can come with me this summer when I visit them and solve the town’s fairy problem.” By this point she was standing over me, giving me the puppy eyes to agree.
Just like that, our summer plans were made and in early June I found myself on a plane from Ohio to Alberta with Diane and a bag full of some of my recording equipment I took on my excursions with my student group. Once there we picked up a rental car and drove what felt like hours into the forest covered mountains. At one point we left the winding highway to exit onto an even more treacherous two-lane mountain road. 15 min from the highway we arrived at what looked like a ghost town. There were several small shops that were closed and what looked like an unfinished hotel from the 60s.
“This place has become a ghost town since I was a girl,” Diane said as we drove past the abandoned buildings.
A few short minutes later we pulled into her parent’s driveway. Her parent’s house sat on a short dead end road of a few dozen houses. Behind her house lay the thick pine forest she had mentioned to me. In the distant background loomed a majestic snow capped mountaintop.
Her parents greeted us with smiles at the door. Diane excitedly hugged her mother and father. I, trying to hide my nerves meeting my girlfriend’s parents for the first time, quickly shook their hands and introduced myself as John, the guy that was here to fix their fairy problem. They both smiled and paused before saying through their teeth, “The fair problem is under control. Come in dinner is about ready.”
My nervous attempt to be funny appeared to have become a strikeout. Dinner went well and we talked about our trip up and what I did at the university. With our bellies full, Diane’s father invited me on out to the back porch for a beer.
“So you teach cryptozoology at the university?” Diane’s father asked before taking a big swig of beer from his bottle.
“No, I teach animal behavior and social interaction. I would like to teach cryptozoology at some point but I need to have the class curriculum written and approved before I can.” I slouched in my porch chair and began to enjoy my beer.
“I suppose Diane has told you a bunch of crazy stories about fairies in our woods?” I looked at him and gave a small nod as I took another sip from my bottle. “They’re all true. Sounds stupid crazy but their all true. My wife told me those stories too and I wouldn’t have believed them if I hadn’t seen some crazy stuff or experience our neighbors niece disappear one night two summers ago in that pine forest.” He pointed towards the wood line just off his back yard while taking another swig from his bottle.
“We’ve had a drought the last few years and the pines are all dried up and getting brown. The forest used to be dark and green. Now it’s just a sad brownish color.” Diane’s father finished his beer and looked up at the sky. The pines were brown and looked all dried out, even in the setting sun. The air wasn’t filled with that typical pine wood smell. In fact the air was cool and stale.
“You want to see a magic trick?” He asked me excitedly.
“Uh… sure,” I said half expecting him to pull a coin out from behind my ear.
“Watch the back gate. The sun sets at about 9pm today. About that time the latch will pop up and it’ll swing open. No hands,” he said waving his in the air.
Diane’s parent’s yard was fenced in with a single back gate, which lead directly into the forest. Some of the forest pines’ branches hung just over the gate. I wasn’t quite sure how to take Diane’s father’s statement. So I waited. The sun slowly crept behind the mountains and the clock reached 9pm.
I finished my beer as we quietly sat on the back porch. As I was about to get up and tell Diane’s father that this was the longest trick I’d ever waited for, the sound of scraping against the opposite side of the fence caught my ear.
It started at the back corner of the fence. It sounded like a child was dragging a stick across its pickets as they walked by. The sound accelerated towards the gate. I was laser focused on the gate, paying no attention to Diane and her mother who had walked out on the deck with us. “Ching” went the gate latch and the gate swung open slowly as if pushed softly by an invisible force.
“No way,” I muttered to myself as I slowly began to walk off the deck towards the back gate. A strong forceful grip pulled me back up on the deck. My head snapped around to see Diane’s father gripping my arm with force.
“Don’t go over there,” he said in with a stern voice and look.
“Robert, let him go,” Diane’s mother chimed in. “John, stay here. Do not go anywhere near the woods or the wood line after the sun has set.”
“Mom… dad… stop.” Diane strongly pulled me away from her parents. “You’re embarrassing me.” She turned to me and said, “I’ll take you into the woods tomorrow. It’s fine. You’ll see. Come inside.” She turned and graciously stormed back into the house.
Feeling awkward, I pretended to take one last drink of my beer and began to follow Diane.
“You can go into the woods all you want during the day, but as soon as the sun sets you must be out,” Robert said cutting me off before I could walk inside. I stopped and looked at him. His face showed genuine concern. I glanced back at Diane’s mother. Her face had the same expression.
“Diane really likes you, John,” her mother started. “We would prefer if you left with her when your visit here is done. Explore all you want but please listen to us about the woods.”
“Yes, please listen to Mary and me,” Robert said almost pleading.
I looked down. “I understand. I’ll make sure to heed your warning. I brought some research equipment with me. Is it ok if I place a camera on the fence to capture this tomorrow?”
“That’d be fine,” Robert said. “Just do it early when it’s still light.”
I agreed and with that I went inside feeling a bit confused at Diane’s parents insistence on staying away from the woods after dark.
Diane and I got ready for bed that night and as I laid in bed with her head on my chest I tired to piece together if her family really believed in “fairies” and if their facial concern earlier was genuine.
“Your family really believes in the fairies don’t they?” I asked Diane.
She rolled over and picked up her head to face me. “It’s embarrassing. Not the fact that they believe in that stuff but that they are so adamant that the woods are a bad place. If I had been rebellious as a kid I would have run off into the woods many times. They are beginning to act like my grandmother when I was a child. I don’t’ know how my dad does that gate trick but it’s getting old. He pulled it on me two years ago and insists it’s not him.”
Diane was getting more annoyed the more she talked. “I’ll take you into the woods tomorrow. You’ll see. I used to play there as a child. There is nothing wrong with it.”
I pulled her in tight to my body and kissed her good night softly. “Ok, we’ll go have an adventure tomorrow,” I said before dozing off.
The next morning Diane took me into the pine forest after breakfast. She showed me all the things she could remember from her childhood. She showed me her favorite trails, which had become slightly overgrown. She showed me her favorite spot on the river and her favorite shore of the lake. The lakeshore was littered with dead fish here and there but strangely no rotting fish smell.
“It’s a shame that they died. I remember the lake being healthy when I was young. We used to fish here as kids,” she explained to me as we navigated the shores.
On the lakeshore was an old foundation to a building that never started. Diane said that it was supposed to be a lodge for visitors to the lake in the 60s but it was never finished. The crumbling foundation was covered in moss and looked more like a pathetic version of Stonehenge more than anything else.
It was about noon and we agreed to head back through the woods to get some lunch at her parent’s house. As we walked hand in hand through the woods on trails that I was surprised she could still navigate from her childhood memories. I noticed that almost all of the pines were brown or brownish green. Their trunks were rather large, swollen even, as if stuffed with something, and most of the underbrush was dead or looked like it was dying.
Diane mentioned that there had been little rain during the summer and spring of the last few years. I thought it strange that the forest would be dried out but the river and lake didn’t seem to be at low levels.
At lunch, Robert brought the topic of cryptozoology and my interests in what they felt were fairies in the forest.
“You should talk to Daniel Whitefeather. He’s a detective with the county and lives a few houses down. He’s also the last of tribe that once lived here. He’s sort of an amateur historian for the area and has plenty of stories to tell about the fairies in the woods. I’ll give him a call and tell him you’re coming over.” Robert gave me his address and at the encouragement of Diane I ventured to his house that afternoon as Diane and her mother had planned to do some shopping in the next town over.
I knocked on Daniel’s door, unsure if he would be home or not. The lock unlatched and the door slowly opened to an older man with a weather beaten face.
“Are you Daniel?” I asked reaching out my hand for a handshake. “My name is Johh, and…”
“You want to know about the woods, correct?” He said cutting me off. “Robert called and told me about you. Come in, please. I’ve got a few hours before I need to head to work to cover a night shift.”
I entered his house. It was large and filled with mounted animals, fish, and a variety of what appeared to be Native American memorabilia. He led me to his living room and motioned for me to sit. His living room walled on all sides by filing cabinets and bookshelves. There was no TV and a thick layer of dust caked most flat surfaces.
“So what can I tell you,” Daniel stated slowly taking a seat in the chair across from me.
“Well, whatever you know about the forest or the supposed creatures in the forest,” I started. “I study unknown creatures, mythological creatures, or whatever you want to call them and I’m familiar with fairies in folklore but I’ve never encountered an entire town that seemed to fear these creatures like they supposedly do here.”
Daniel sat back for a moment and look up at the ceiling as if to pull his thoughts down through the tile.
“My tribe, or rather my ancestors, was the first to settle this area. As the oral tradition goes, we were once a large and proud tribe that numbered greatly in Alberta long before the white settlers came. A harsh run of winters and warring with other tribes cut our numbers down and our enemies pushed us out of our original land. We wandered until we found this place. Cold, starved, and desperate for shelter we felt blessed to have come across a place with good hunting, the mountains to shelter us, and a river and lake to supply us with fresh water.”
I looked at him eagerly as he took a small break to remember his words. He sat up and leaned forward in his chair.
“The story goes that when we found this land, we were forbidden to enter the forest by the some strange creatures that lived there. My people would call them the forest walkers. They said they were guardians of the pine forest here. The chief seeing his people starving and without a place to live struck a deal with the forest walkers. We could hunt, fish, live here, and they would protect us as long as once every moon cycle, we agreed to give them one of our own.”
“Wait,” I interrupted. “So… like a sacrifice?”
“Yes,” Daniel continued. “Each full moon we would send one chose person by lot into the forest. Their screams would fill the night sky. It was a horrible thing but for us to survive the chief made the deal and we kept to it. Many years would pass as we sacrificed one after another of our own. Our numbers would slowly decrease over time but those who remained were always safe, had food to hunt, and freshwater to drink.”
Daniel got up from his seat and walked over to his bookshelf and pulled out a leather bound book whose page edges were yellowed from age. He plopped the book down in front of me on the coffee table between us. The book landed with a thud and a dust cloud filled the air.
“Sorry. I’ve been busy and haven’t had much time to clean,” Daniel stated fighting back a cough and swatting the air to clear it.
“It’s no problem,” I calmly replied as I sat back trying to avoid the allergen heavy mushroom cloud. “But how does what appears to be an Indian legend turn into a town of people fearing the woods?”
“That book,” he stated pointing at it, “Contains all of the stories about the forest walkers that have been passed down from generation to generation in my tribe. I started writing them down when I was young. I got them from the elders, my relatives, and many others before they all passed. I’m the last one and I figured someone should document this so others can know what we witnessed.”
Daniel sat back in his chair again now that the dust had settled.
“Everything changed when the white man came into our land. First it was one man. He was an explorer. We did not see him as a threat so we let him pass. However, he found gold in the river. He told others. Soon many others showed up looking for gold in the river. They brought furs, meats, beads, and guns. They were willing to trade for small pieces of land so that they could live here while they prospected. We agreed. The prospectors were supplying us with new things and we were trading small parcels of land for them. The white people cut down trees to make the clearing in which out town sits now. They built houses. They hunted and fished. We no longer sent one of our own into the forest every full moon.”
“So the sacrifices stopped because you were getting what you needed from settlers?” I questioned. “What about your deal with the creatures?”
“We lived peacefully along side the white man,” Daniel started again. “The forest walkers were angry that we had broken our deal. They would watch us from the tree line in the shadows. Their anger could be felt. One night several prospectors who were fishing the lake came home through the forest late. The walkers took one of them violently in front of the others. Their screams filled the night air. The survivors fled and never returned. They left their belongings and even their gold because they were so scared. Soon people who were in the woods past dark began to disappear. No trace could be found.”
Daniel sat up and took a deep breath. “When people started to avoid the woods after dark they started to trick people into coming into the woods. They would mimic the cries of children or loved ones during the night. Anyone who ran into the woods to save them would be taken. They took three mothers of our tribe once because the walkers cried like babies on the forest line. The women ran to save the “babies” only to be taken away. They only took one person at a time but they started taking them more often as revenge.”
“So they can mimic sounds or voices?” I questioned a bit confused.
“Yes,” he began while rubbing the side of his head. “They can take anyone’s voice or sound like anything that would entice you to enter the woods. The greed of gold was greater than the danger of being taken and more and more white people showed up until so many had disappeared that the word had gotten out that this land was cursed. Many people left but those who were widows with small children stayed. Everyone who lives here now is a relative of someone taken. My tribe helped them and welcomed them to stay here. It became forbidden to enter the forest at night.”
“So why are there people still living here?” I questioned. “Why not pack up a leaved this place if it cursed?”
“My people made a pact with those who were left from the prospecting rush. We agreed to guard this place and keep people from the evil here. We would tell no one about this place. We had made a deal and broken it. We had put others in danger. However, no matter what we did or said the word always made it out about the fishing and hunting or the gold in the river. People would come and disappear. Together we would warn them but they would disappear in the woods after dark. Once in the 60s a group found out about the fishing and tried to build a lodge on the lakeshore. They are all gone. We tried to warn them but they called us insane. It is only recently that this town and forest have gone unnoticed by the outside. There have only be a few disappearances in the last 10 years.”
“I’ve seen the foundation.” I sat up in the chair as I was drawn into his stories more and more.
Daniel got up and walked over to one of his filing cabinets. He pulled open the top drawer creating another small dust cloud. He reached inside and pulled out a black binder that was stuffed full of paper work.
“Here,” he said motioning for me to take the binder.
“What is this?” I questioned taking the heavy binder from him.
“It is all the open missing persons cases that I am in charge of. They are all from here.”
“That’s crazy,” I said as I opened the binder. “There must be hundreds of cases in here.”
“Some people say I am a shit detective. I know what happened to those people but it’s not something you can put on an official report and still keep your job. If you look at the reports they all have the same pattern. These people were all last seen before dark in the forest.”
I ended my conversation with Daniel, as he was about to get ready for work. He was working a missing person case from two towns over. He let me borrow the case binder and the book of his tribe’s stories.
That evening I set up a small camera and microphone on the opposite side of the fence in Diane’s parent’s backyard. If I could get something on tape I might understand better what I was dealing with. I paired it with my laptop, set it to record, and left the laptop in the bedroom while I got ready for dinner.
While sitting on the back deck after dinner I eagerly read through the stories of his ancestors. The only interruption was the sound of a stick being drug across the fence and the pop of the fence latch coupled with the Robert’s voice repeating “Right on time,” as the sun set behind the mountain. I had forgotten about my camera at this point.
That night I excitedly discussed with Diane what I had discovered during the afternoon.
“You should interview the neighbors. Most of them are older and are retired so they’ll be home.”
“I think I’ll do that tomorrow,” I said excitedly. The idea of having discovered a legitimate cryptozoology find that I could present to the community raced through my mind like a blazing wildfire.
“Only if you take me to a fancy breakfast in the morning,” Diane said with a devilish smile. “Mother and I are going to go pick blue berries tomorrow evening to make pie. It’s her specialty and I think you’ll like it.”
“Deal.” I went to shut off the lights and realized my camera was still recording through my laptop. “Diane, let’s see if my camera caught what popped open your back gate!”
Diane slid across the bed as I swiped my fingers across the track pad to remove the screen saver. The camera screen popped up and the camera looked like it was facing up at a window on a house rather than down the fencerow.
“That’s our bedroom window,” Diane said quietly. I stood up and walked over to the window. I could see the power light on my camera looking back at me. Something had moved it. No one had touched it since I set it up that I could recall.
I hopped back onto my laptop and rewound the captured footage. At 8:57pm the camera started to wiggle and then it violently drops at an awkward angle to the ground just as the fence is starting to be scraped. We watched and listened as the gate latched unlocked and the gate swung open. What ever did it was just off camera.
“Did you hear that?” I asked intensely.
“What?” Diane replied.
I bumped the audio level up and skipped back on the video. In a hissing tone the words “No. See. Yet.” sounded. It was quiet but clear.
“What was that?” Diane asked with a quiet shocked tone.
I fast-forwarded through the footage until I saw the camera start to move. From there and unseen figure picked up the camera and put it on the post where it was now facing our bedroom window. Our bedroom light came on and in the background of the footage you could hear a faint giggle like a small child would make.
“John, that’s creeping me out.” Diane reached across my lap and shut my laptop.
“Turn out the light, we’re going to bed.” She rolled over into bed and pulled the covers over her body. I shut the light off and followed.
The next day after taking Diane to breakfast in the next town over I went door to door asking people what they knew about the forest. Many were hesitant to talk to me until I explained who I was, what I believed, and that I intended to study what was going on. Once that was out of the way, I was warmly welcomed into many of their homes.
The town’s people had a wide array of stories. I wrote down as much as I could in a notebook. Their stories ranged from relatives disappearing to hearing strange voices at night to seeing groups of travelers go missing in one night without a trace. Many were older stories of loved ones who wandered into the forest late or failed to make it out before sun down. Everyone seemed to believe in the creatures that populated the pine forest but no one had ever seen one. One older gentleman mentioned his sister had gone into the forest on an afternoon stroll and never returned. For months afterward he swears he could hear her voice calling every evening to him from the woods but he dare not enter. Eventually the voice stopped.
The rest of the afternoon I dedicated to taking notes on all of the missing persons cases. I only stopped to kiss Diane goodbye as she and her mother left to get blue berries from the forest. She had promised to be home in an hour or two. I was fine with her going since it would be several hours before the sun went down.
“You feel ok going into the woods after the video feed from last night?” I questioned.
Diane shuddered and then sighed. “Nothing bad has ever happened during the day. My mother will be with me. I’m sure it was probably my dad playing a trick on us.”
“Just come home safe to me.”
She smiled and closed the door. I returned to my reading.
Each case had the same set of circumstances. The person was last seen going into the woods before dark or just after dark and not returning once the sun had set. Several of the cases mentioned witnesses hearing strange sounds from the woods. One case in particular mentioned that a county police search group went into the woods after dark. None returned. There was no good explanation of why the people went missing. News clippings placed the blame on people getting lost in the Canadian outback or the possibility of these people running into bears or wolves.
Exhausted after all my note taking I closed the binder full of cases and sat back in my seat in the living room. I breathed deeply and stood up collecting the binder and book that Daniel had let me borrow.
The front door swung open slowly. I looked up hoping to see Diane and her mother but to my surprise Robert walked in.
“Hey… I didn’t even know you were gone,” I said in a tired tone.
“Yea,” Robert started as he took his shoes off at the door, “You were buried so deep in your reading that you didn’t noticed I left for town. Just went out to get some gas for the mower. Yard is getting kind of long and needs to be trimmed.”
“Keep an eye out for Diane and Mary. They went to pick blueberries in the woods and haven’t returned yet.”
“Ok. The girls still have time. Sun won’t set for another 3-3 ½ hours.” I could hear a slight worry in his voice.
I finished gathering my things and walked to Daniel’s house to return his items. When I arrived he was sitting on his front porch, still in his police uniform with a beer.
“John,” he said with a smile holding the beer up in salutation. “I see you’ve come to return my binder and book. Did you find what you needed?”
I handed him the book and binder and took a seat beside him.
“I found a lot of interesting stuff. I interviewed many of the neighbors and I believe everyone feels like there is something in the woods. All the missing cases are similar. All the Indian stories are intriguing but tell me something… Why are there people still living here? I understand your ancestors made a pact but why not just up and leave?”
Daniel put his beer down on the porch and sighed deeply. He raised his hands up and placed them behind his head before sinking back into his chair.
“This will sound stupid but it has been an oral tradition and agreement of all those raised here that we would stay and make sure nothing would be built on this land beyond what has already existed. We didn’t want other folks to suffer what our ancestors have gone through. Everyone here is a relative of a prospector or settler that came here many years ago. Everyone has lost someone to those woods. All those boarded buildings in town belong to someone here. They’ve just agreed to never sell them and let them fall into dust. Most people couldn’t afford to move away anyway. Some of the houses up the street are the same way. Why give something to someone in the horrid place? We grew up here. We know what it’s like to hear the noises in the night and fear for visiting relatives. If the towns people all die off and this place falls off the map, it’d be best for everyone.”
He took another deep breath.
“We are the last of the people who will live here. Diane’s parents were raised here. She wasn’t. When they are gone the house will sit abandon. Just like the rest.”
I sat in silence trying to wrap my head around what Daniel was telling me. Sure none of the houses in the town were extravagant and no particular person seemed to be wealthy, but how could they live in a place that they all seemed to fear?
“What do they look like?” I asked.
“Who?” Daniel replied sitting up a little straighter as if surprised by my question.
“The forest walkers or the fairies or whatever you want to call them. What do they look like? I have no descriptions in any of the text you gave me. The only indication of someone talking to them was your ancestors.” I sat up and looked at Daniel with a stern look.
“Tonight is a full moon. Only a few people have been lost in the woods during the dark in the last ten years. They are angry. You can feel it in the air. I |
The Harbinger always went for the freaks. They were its favorite. It wanted ones that would fight back, and ones that wouldn’t be afraid at first; or, even better, ones that believed they could win. Those rare humans with bravado and confidence so great that they actually believed they could defeat it somehow. Those were always the most pleasurable to kill. It loved watching the life fade from their defiant eyes as it slowly ripped them to shreds; watching as the realization that they were in fact powerless dawned on them.
For centuries, this ancient creature had hunted down humans; whether for pleasure, sport, or because it was compelled to by instinct, it thrived on the death of the human race. However, it had long since grown tired of the predictable frightened screams and wails of agony that often accompanied its various campaigns. As such, it had opted to change its prey demographic to the more interesting humans one might find among the masses. After all, Earth now had over seven billion humans infesting its surface; surely some of them would offer a more unique and exciting hunt than the thousands the Harbinger had culled before.
That said, finding less predictable humans among millions of their more boring counterparts was like finding a needle in a haystack. Ever since the Harbinger had changed its modus operandi, it had become frustrated by the slower increase of its kill count. It had no idea which was worse: killing worthless, boring humans in droves, or spending weeks tracking down potentially interesting ones – sometimes only to find out that they just reacted as disappointingly as the rest.
But then, the Harbinger found Adrian Bishop.
At first, Adrian Bishop appeared to be yet another ordinary human with an ordinary life. He was a younger man of average height and build, with pitch black hair and a simple suit under a coat. The only thing about him that attracted the Harbinger’s very selective attention was the fact that this man actually saw it. Normally the Harbinger existed on a plane of existence above that of humans; only when it wanted to reveal itself would they be able to witness its terrifying form. Yet, one morning as the Harbinger was prowling the streets of downtown Ottawa, a man stopped in his tracks and looked directly at it. The Harbinger, confused, looked behind itself, certain that the man had noticed something else and was just looking in its direction. Yet nothing noteworthy lingered there, while the man’s gaze was pointed upward to meet the eyes of the nine-foot-tall monster.
And then, Adrian Bishop did something completely unexpected: not panic, or flee, or even show a hint of fear – he simply smiled. It was a knowing, mischievous kind of smirk. If the hideously malformed face of the Harbinger could have made a surprised expression then, it most certainly would have. As if that wasn’t strange enough, the man then simply looked away, and began walking again as if nothing had happened. The Harbinger stood, looking all around for anything that might have caught the passerby’s eye, but it seemed almost undeniable that the man had been looking directly at it. Needless to say, this warranted investigation.
So, the Harbinger followed Adrian throughout his day. Unlike before, the man no longer paid it any attention, going about his daily business as usual. The Harbinger discovered that he worked at a local convenience store as a manager. From what it could tell, he was quite well-liked by his employees and superiors, and had an almost painfully cheerful demeanor. The day passed by rather uneventfully, and the Harbinger grew bored. By the time Adrian started to head home, it was starting to suspect that the earlier incident had all been some kind of unlikely coincidence, and that Adrian hadn’t seen him after all. Still, the inter-dimensional monstrosity didn’t have anything better to do at the moment, so it decided to at least follow this human back to his house.
As they arrived at the rather small flat, the Harbinger followed Adrian through a short hallway and into the living room. Adrian began taking off his coat while the Harbinger lingered in the hallway, glaring suspiciously at one particular locked door on the far end of the room. It felt something strange coming from that room; something… unnatural, yet familiar.
“You can quit hiding over there, you know,” Adrian’s voice rang out, almost catching the creature off-guard. “I apologize for keeping you waiting, but I’m afraid it was necessary to keep up appearances. Don’t want people thinking—“
Before the human was even able to finish his sentence, the Harbinger was upon him with a long, blade-like claw pressed against his throat and another huge hand clutching his head. Adrian didn’t so much as flinch.
“What is your true name?” the Harbinger demanded, its voice sounding like a whisper and a scream all at once. It seemed impossible to it that this human could see it. In its lifetime, it had come across humans who could sense it using somewhat of a ‘sixth sense’ before, but never one who could actually lay eyes upon it while in the higher plane. Surely this was another dark being in disguise.
“My name?” Adrian queried, the creature’s firm grip not doing anything to deter his vaguely smug attitude. “Adrian. Adrian Bishop, human being extraordinaire.”
Growing frustrated, the Harbinger increased the strength of its grip, causing Adrian to wince. “Ow, ow! Easy there. You don’t want to kill me, my friend.”
“And why would I not?” the Harbinger rasped. “No human should be able to see the beings of the higher plane. You lie.”
“Sorry, but I beg to differ,” Adrian replied. “I am aware that you and your kind possess a keen sense for the supernatural, right? So I ask: is there anything remotely inhuman about my being?”
As much as the Harbinger tried, the human was right; from what it could tell, the man currently held firmly in its clutches was nothing other than human. Were it any other sort of ethereal demon, the Harbinger should have been able to tell right away. “How then?” the Harbinger insisted. “Has your science truly come this far?”
Adrian chuckled, even as the Harbinger’s claw pressed harder against his soft flesh. “No, of course not. I am as clueless as you are when it comes to the origin of my little gift, as it were. I’ve been able to see boogeymen like you since I was a child. In fact, I’m not even the only one who can. Though I assure you, it comes as no surprise to me that you aren’t aware of our existence; perceptive humans like me are quite a rare find, even today, when there are many more than there used to be.”
The Harbinger was still uncertain of this human. However, it couldn’t deny the evidence before it; even now, it was still concealed in a different layer of reality, yet it was conversing with Adrian as if it were on his level. The hideous features of its face contorted into what might have been interpreted as a look of disgust; the very idea of being unintentionally seen by a mere mortal was mortifying. Yet, at the same time, it couldn’t deny that Adrian Bishop appeared to be one of the most interesting humans it had come across in a very long time. Not once during this entire encounter had he even shown a hint of fear, as if he knew he wasn’t going to die. While the Harbinger was extremely tempted to prove him wrong by skewering him now, it instead opted to wait and see what he would do. Part of the thrill was watching them squirm, after all.
The Harbinger released its grip on Adrian, prompting a brief sigh from the man; not of relief, but of exasperation. “About time you came to your senses. You are an easily excitable one, aren’t you Harbinger?” He turned around, actually looking at the monstrosity for the first time since that morning. “And a handsome one, if I may say so.”
“Do not tempt me, human,” the Harbinger growled. “Give me one sufficient reason to keep you alive for even a single second longer.”
“Oh, I’ll give you more than just one,” Adrian said, that knowing smirk returning to his face. “See, I know exactly why you’re here. I understand your way of thinking more than most. You came here to kill me, because you thought I was interesting, didn’t you?”
The Harbinger remained silent.
“You thought I might put up a fight or try to resist. Make the hunt a little more interesting, right? Yes, I can see it in your eyes… err, eye. We’re kindred souls, you and I.”
The Harbinger scoffed, its bones cracking as it held its head up high. “Do not be so impudent as to think you are like me. You are but a mere insect compared to—“
“Yes yes, I know, that isn’t how I meant it,” Adrian interrupted, prompting an irritated growl from the monster before him. “I’m just saying, I’m tired of it too.”
The man turned around, and began walking across the room to the locked door. “You know what I mean. The paranoia that begins to set in when you stalk them. The fear they feel when they realize there’s no escape. The frightened wails and screams when you’re flaying them with your knife – or, I guess, claw in your case. It’s all so overdone!”
Adrian brought out a keychain and unlocked the door, revealing a stairway leading down into darkness. “After a while, you actually want some resistance. You want to stalk people who will have different reactions; ones who aren’t so afraid in the beginning. Why, I’m sure you’re itching to wipe this smug smile off my face right now. And that’s exactly what I was counting on.”
The Harbinger narrowed its bulbous eye at Adrian as he flipped a light switch. “If you come with me, I can give you exactly what you want, Harbinger.” He turned around with a grin halfway deranged and devious plastered on his face.
“A good hunt.”
And with that, he began descending down into the stairway. The Harbinger wasn’t sure what to do. It felt extraordinarily tempted to kill this human, and watch that overconfident demeanor melt away in his final moments. Yet, it was intrigued; more intrigued than it had been in a long, long time. Though he was human in body, Adrian Bishop appeared to be something entirely different in mind: something far closer to the Harbinger itself than any human it had met before.
Ultimately, the choice was obvious; the monster followed after Adrian, and began its descent down the stairs.
“I’m glad you decided to make the right choice, my friend,” Adrian said.
The room at the bottom of the stairs was surprisingly spacious for a basement, with a floor and walls made of stone cold concrete; it was what painted them that was of particular interest. Strange, archaic symbols littered the surface of the room, drawn almost anywhere and everywhere possible in what appeared to be dried blood. The only place where they weren’t drawn was in the very center of the room, where another larger, circular symbol of a similar nature had been carved into the floor.
An assortment of cabinets was set throughout the room, some of which contained books and files, while others were packed full of glass containers, vials, and bottles of substances. A long table was set against the right wall, on which were set a variety of tools ranging from saws and hammers to strange little devices that seemed to be designed for torture. By far the most intriguing part of the room, however, was the two cages at the far end. Each contained a person: a male and a female, sitting in the corners of their respective cages, cowering at the sight of Adrian Bishop.
“Welcome to my humble abode, Harbinger. Feel free to make yourself at home.”
Taking a look around, the Harbinger recognized many of the symbols painted on the walls, though the one carved into the ground was completely unknown even to him. Regardless, he knew what this was. “So, you are one of those humans foolish enough to dabble in the Black Arts. I should have expected no less,” the Harbinger said.
“Well, yes, though I like to think I do a little more than dabble,” Adrian replied. He moved over to a swivel chair in the corner of the room and sat down. “I’m a bit of an aficionado when it comes to what people might refer to as ‘sorcery’. I’ve spent most of my life studying up, and I’ve even developed a few little charms and rituals of my own. It’s not that hard if you know what you’re doing, really.”
Turning the swivel chair around, he kicked the wall lightly, sending him rolling back. “I’m not really a wizard or anything. Rather, I think I’m more akin to a psychic than anything else. The Black Arts is just a really grimdark term to describe the various combinations of actions, words, and symbols which allow the human mind to tap into the power of this place you like to call the ‘higher plane’.” He shrugged. “I can’t claim to know how all of it works; that plane of existence is probably completely incomprehensible to us lowly humans. Frankly I think a lot of the procedures you need to go through to cast curses and spells are ridiculously convoluted and cliché, but hey, what can you do?”
The Harbinger was growing impatient. “What is your point?”
“Well, you were wondering why I can see and hear you, right? It’s just that some humans have much greater latent psychic potential than others,” Adrian explained, his chair coming to a stop as it swerved around to face the Harbinger. “And I happen to be one of them. We’re called Seers – a term I coined, by the way. We have a strong connection to the higher plane, which allows us to be able to perceive its residents, among other things. In fact – not to brag – but out of all the Seers I’ve met, I am probably the most gifted. It allows me to perform incantations and rituals that most could probably never do.”
The Harbinger scoffed, turning its attention to the two cowering humans in cages. They were almost completely naked, wearing only ragged underwear, and the rest of their bodies were covered in bloody bandages. They had both had their hands cupped over their faces, as if doing so would hide them from their captor.
“Are you sure you are not simply what humans refer to as a… ‘psychopath’?” the Harbinger sneered. Adrian chuckled in amusement, following its line of sight to the two captives.
“I don’t know, probably. Though I think I’m a tad more ambitious than the average psychopath, to be honest,” he said. “As for these two, they aren’t here to be killed. They’re more like… my lab rats.”
The Harbinger observed the so-called lab rats for a moment longer. From what it could tell they seemed utterly psychologically destroyed, as they did little more than rock back and forth or mutter while sitting huddled in the corners of their prisons.
“Hmph. I have not seen depravity such as this from your kind in many decades,” the Harbinger said, though for once it was more of a compliment than an insult. Its long, bony finger pointed in the direction of a cabinet filled with narcotics. “I imagine that is what those are for, then.”
“Very perceptive of you!” Adrian chirped, growing more enthusiastic. “At first they were just another couple of toys to be played with and discarded, but I confess, I grew a little too attached to them. The two of them were rather resistant, after all – the woman managed to hold out for a whole week before pleading for it to stop, you know! That is quite rare. And when the man noticed I had started following him, he actually tried to stab me! Honestly, I admired their willpower so much that I couldn’t let them go to waste. So, I decided to try some of my experiments regarding true fear on them. You would be amazed what a combination of hallucinatory drugs, some simple fear-induction incantations, and just a smidgeon of physical torture can—“
“Enough of your talk,” the Harbinger snapped. “I grow bored. Where is this hunt you promised me?”
“Hmm? Oh, right. My apologies, I don’t get a chance to talk about my hobbies very often,” Adrian said, scratching the back of his head nonchalantly.
He pushed his feet against the ground, sending the chair rolling back before colliding with the cage of the woman. Her whole body froze as she briefly glanced up at him, before she curled up into a ball. Adrian crossed his legs, staring intently at the Harbinger.
“Now then, let’s get down to business. My proposition is simple enough: I’m offering to become your supplier. I take it you’ve been having trouble finding humans worthy to hunt, right? Well, worry no more. I know where you can find them; plenty of them.”
Again Adrian turned around and pushed against the bars of the cage, sending the chair rolling toward one of the cabinets. Using a hand to stop himself, he pried open one of the drawers, revealing a laptop.
“Marvelous invention, the internet,” he continued as he booted it up. “It allows you to get in touch with people from around the globe. Not only that, but I think you’ll find that people are much more interesting under the veil of anonymity. Without judgmental old society glaring over their shoulder, they’re free to say whatever they want. It makes it an awful lot easier to identify the potential hunts.”
Adrian began tapping away at the keyboard as he spoke. “Over the years, I’ve spent a long time trying to find people who might be interesting. And I don’t just mean resilient people. I mean people like me – people who’ve seen what I’ve seen. Seers. It took quite some time considering how rare they are, combined with the heaps of fakes and charlatans out there. But I developed a way for Seers to reliably identify one another, and I got us to band together. Now, I run an entire online community full of users who are Seers. It’s strictly invitation-only, of course. Some are more psychically gifted than others, but they can all at least see monsters. Because of that, I can guarantee that none of them have lived a normal life, or could be defined as ‘normal’ people.”
The Harbinger was speechless. If what Adrian was saying was true, it had just stumbled across the greatest opportunity in centuries. It was almost too good to be true. And because of that, the Harbinger wasn’t about to believe him right away.
“Nonsense,” it replied. “As if that little device could be used to amass so many people.”
Adrian sighed and shook his head. “Come on, Harbinger, don’t be an old geezer. You know as well as I do it’s perfectly possible. It was through this website and the people in it that I first became aware of you, after all.”
The Harbinger perked up at this. “Is that so?”
Adrian nodded. “Yes, yes it is. I was just logging on now so I could prove it to you. If I remember right, I was first informed about you by a user who actually observed you for a time while you were in New York. They watched you stalk a kid named… hang on.” Adrian moved his finger across the touch pad and tapped it a few times. “Here we go. It was a girl named Lucy Wilder, sixteen years old. Lived in Brooklyn. Had a scar on one of her eyebrows. You killed her back in 2010. Ring any bells?”
The Harbinger thought for a moment, before realizing it did remember killing a young girl with a scar on her eyebrow a few years ago. “That hunt was… substandard,” it commented. It seriously doubted that Adrian could have found this out on his own. He must have been telling the truth.
“That’s unfortunate. I do find that teenagers are some of the most easily frightened, aside from small children,” Adrian said, closing the laptop. “So then, am I right in assuming you believe me now?”
The Harbinger was willing to believe that this claim of a Seer network was true, but something was still off about the entire deal. “You plan to sell out the people that you spent so long gathering? Why? Are they not your ilk?”
Adrian was silent for a moment, looking at the Harbinger numbly before he suddenly burst out laughing. “Ha! Wahahaha! My ilk? You must be joking!” he boomed, prompting more frightened shivers from the humans in the cages. Calming down, he continued. “Come along, Harbinger, surely you must see by now I’m nothing like these other humans. You think I feel some sort of attachment to these people? They’re merely more playthings to be toyed with, that’s all. I gathered them for a very specific purpose, in fact, which is why I need your help eliminating them.”
“And what would that purpose be?” the Harbinger asked.
“Well, experimentation, of course. But not like what you’ve seen with these people. I plan to conduct a whole new kind of experiment, for which I specifically need Seers,” Adrian explained. “The problem is, none of the Seers actually live nearby. They’re dispersed throughout the world, and I can’t get to them easily, even with the Black Arts on my side. But you can.”
“I will not capture them for you and bring them back,” the Harbinger growled. “I will not be your slave.”
“Come now, don’t take me for a fool; I know that,” Adrian replied. “The experiment I want to perform actually involves a ritual. I don’t necessarily need to be there to activate it. It’s just that the mechanism requires a particularly gifted individual as the sacrifice. All I’d need you to do is set the ritual up as per my instructions each time, and kill your victim in the ritual setting – after you’ve had your fun, of course. The instructions will be different each time as I try out different variants of this ritual, since it’s custom-made.”
The Harbinger grew somewhat suspicious as it listened to Adrian’s explanation. “What is this ritual you speak of?”
“Well, that’s an interesting question! You see, it involves the combination of a series of ancient incantations passed down through my family for generations, combined with some basic trigger runes, a Type 5 spell circ—“
“What is its purpose?” the Harbinger impatiently interrupted.
“Right, sorry, rambling. Basically, I want to reanimate the dead.”
The Harbinger let out a chuckle at this. “Hah, you humans never cease to amuse me. Your televisions have lied to you; the undead do not exist. It is impossible to reanimate a corpse after its soul is gone.”
“Ah, I know, but I don’t intend to let the soul leave its body!” Adrian excitedly proclaimed. “Without going into too much detail, the idea is to trap the soul inside the dead body using the brain’s psychic energy. The high psychic potential of Seers should make it possible to contain the soul even after death, since the brain doesn’t immediately cease functioning. Then, the incantation you recite should stir the trapped soul, causing it to reanimate the body. In theory.”
The Harbinger was sure that this foolish theory was nonsense, but the man seemed completely confident in his abilities. And it was none of the creature’s business whether the rituals succeeded or failed. All that mattered to it were the hunts which were being promised.
“It seems like a fair exchange, doesn’t it?” Adrian said, looking up at the Harbinger. “All you have to do is a bit of handiwork after your hunt is finished. You can spend as much time psychologically decimating the person as you like, but once the time comes to finish them off, I simply ask that you kill them according to my instructions. And believe me, the hunts will be well worth your while.”
The Harbinger stared down at the seated man. The offer was too tempting to resist. At this point, there was no way it could refuse; as much as it still desired to kill Adrian, it would be foolish not to take advantage of his offer first. Then, after Adrian ran out of victims to supply, his number would be up, and the Harbinger would claim its ultimate reward: that smug grin of his.
The Harbinger made a quick, jerky movement with its head that resembled a nod. “We are in agreement, Adrian Bishop.”
And so, the partnership between monster and man began.
—
[AB] logged in
[AB:] I made the deal.
[TR:] Oh god
[RW:] Video footage?
[AB:] I’ve emailed it to all of you.
[GP:] Holy shit i’m so excited!!!
[TR:] Excited? I’m fucking terrified!
[AB:] Fear of death will do that to you, my friend.
[RW:] Hmm… saw the footage. It really is happening then, isn’t it?
[RW:] Finally
[RW:] Finally our lives will completely turn around
[RW:] I thought I’d be excited when this happened, or terrified. But I’m not really sure what to feel
[RW:] It’s just… happening.
[AB:] I understand, Roland. I feel the same way.
[AB:] But if all goes according to plan, it won’t be too long.
[AB:] As you know, it won’t happen right away. I’m having the Harbinger deal with some bottom feeders before I set him on you. This serves the dual purpose of gaining the Harbinger’s trust and performing some last-minute tests with the ritual.
[TR:] Those test subjects of yours won’t rise up for long, right?
[AB:] Of course. I’ve mixed in limitation runes with the symbolic formula to make sure that the subject will die after a few seconds. As long as they rise up at all, we’ll know it was a success. Then I simply remove the limiters when our time comes, and voila.
[RW:] I know it’s a little late to be saying this but…
[RW:] Are you sure this will work?
[RW:] I mean, will it really believe that bullshit about making zombies?
[AB:] It does not care what my goal is with these rituals as long as it gets an entertaining hunt.
[AB:] You see, creatures such as the Harbinger may seem devilish and cunning on the surface, but really they are quite simple-minded. Most of their prowess as hunters comes from their instinct rather than strategic thinking.
[AB:] That, combined with its borderline god complex, makes it so that it would never even entertain the possibility of being outsmarted by a lowly human.
[AB:] I could go on about the psychology of such creatures, if you wish.
[TR:] Noooo!
[GP:] No offense Adrian but please spare us another one of your lectures
[AB:] Sorry, I thought it might make Roland feel better.
[RW:] I suppose you’re right.
[AB:] Just make sure you have your acts ready. If the Harbinger gets bored with hunting you, the whole plan could fall apart.
[AB:] You are all the most powerful Seers I have come to know these few years. I trust that won’t be too much of an issue, correct?
[TR:] Course not.
[GP:] Fuck yeah!!!
[RW:] Yes, I suppose so.
[AB:] Excellent.
[AB:] With your cooperation, it won’t be long before we all Ascend.
—
The following months were filled with bloodshed. Though it had initially been skeptical, the Harbinger soon began to realize that Adrian’s claims were entirely true. Its first victims were what its benefactor described as ‘monster hunters’ – those who used the Black Arts to target monsters and either kill or seal them away.
“Personally I find those people to be fools,” Adrian had complained. “They believe they’re righteous warriors of justice, saving the world from evil one monster at a time, or some nonsense. Hah! In reality, they’re little more than pest control. They only have enough power to put down the most inferior and feeble-minded of beings, and barely enough to seal away some of those on a higher level. None of them could ever hope to defeat a monster such as yourself – but believe me, they will try. Many of them have died doing so.”
Each of the hunters provided more entertainment than the Harbinger had in years. Most operated on their own, but those who were in close proximity to one another actually banded together to engage in their little hobby. Some of them were intimidated when faced with the challenge that was the Harbinger, but having been approached by creatures of the unknown many times before, they did their best to use their weak incantations and rituals to get rid of it. Some of the less experienced ones, who couldn’t have known how much of a threat it really was, even went as far as to taunt and threaten the beast. It was all quite amusing, watching the insects and their false sense of grandeur fall apart as the Harbinger haunted them day and night.
To perform the rituals, it would wait until night fell to take its victim to a deserted building such as an abandoned warehouse. Adrian requested that a video camera be set up so that he could observe, which was no easy task for the Harbinger’s long, clawed hands. All of the rituals were highly complex, requiring overly specific procedures to perform. It needed to carve a particular series of symbols and runes into the walls in a particular order, facing a particular direction, and at a particular time of night. What was even more convoluted were the necessary actions; during one ritual the Harbinger was required to move two steps back, stab the victim in both of their legs, move two steps forward, and scratch their eyes out. Then it would wait for five seconds before biting the victim’s nose off, and leaving them to bleed out.
Considering how much these procedures caused the victim suffering, the Harbinger had no issues with performing them, and actually enjoyed it to a degree. Though, one strange commonality that all of the rituals had was the final procedure: the Harbinger would carve a symbol identical to the unknown one in Adrian’s basement, and simply stand in its center. Then, it would recite the same incantation thirteen times before killing the victim and allowing their blood to pool into the symbol. After this, it would wait several minutes to see if the dead human revived; but never once did the ritual succeed.
The Harbinger brought this up with Adrian one day after its tenth kill. “Your primitive little rituals do not appear to be succeeding. Do you still truly believe that the dead can be brought back to life?”
“Theoretically, everything checks out,” Adrian said, frowning as he looked over a diagram featuring a strange pentagram-like symbol. “Honestly, I don’t know why this is happening. Maybe the Seers’ mental energy just isn’t powerful enough?”
The Harbinger was well aware that the problem was probably more fundamental than that. It did not know a great deal about the Black Arts; after all, it was already a being with a powerful connection to the higher plane, and thus had no need for them. But over the centuries, it had managed to pick up a few of the basics of sorcery, and after remembering some of that trivial knowledge, it realized that there were a few faults in the procedures Adrian had been performing. The way he was arranging the symbols and runes, they were geared to perform the basic function of displacing energy, which was probably just causing the victim’s psychic power to be sapped away before it could be used to trap the soul.
Although it was somewhat confused by the contradictory nature of Adrian’s ritual, it did not say anything. The Harbinger realized that the reason Adrian had made a deal with it was in order to test this ritual, which meant that as long as the ritual needed to be improved, the arrangement would continue. Thus, it resolved to allow Adrian to continue his foolish escapade until either he figured the problem out on his own, or the Harbinger grew tired of his hunts. Ideally, he wouldn’t figure it out until it wanted him to, at which point his ritual would be a success, and his ego would be at an all time high. That would be the perfect time to bring about his ultimate downfall.
Satisfied with its little scheme, the monster continued to humor the man. “Is there no way to gauge a Seer’s mental capacity?”
“Yes, it should be possible to judge how strong someone’s psychic connection is based on the level of the incantations they can perform,” Adrian replied. “But that doesn’t mean I know everyone’s psychic potential; I can’t force everyone on my site to undergo a test. That said, the ones I’ve been sending you after are, to my knowledge, relatively weak. I’ve been saving the bigger fish for later, since I’m sure neither of us wants to waste those too early on.”
The Harbinger perked up at this. It watched Adrian roll from one side of the room to the other in his swivel chair, as he picked up another diagram. “And why would you assume that of me?” it asked. “It makes no difference to me what my victims’ psychic potential is.”
“Oh, but it does, Harby,” Adrian was quick to respond, putting down his diagram and looking up at the being. “Mind if I call you Harby?”
The Harbinger took a long step forward, growling as it glared down at him. “Do not tempt me, human.”
Adrian chuckled, “What is that, your catchphrase or something?” he teased. As much as the Harbinger wanted to skewer one of his legs on the spot, it restrained itself. The sense of safety the man was beginning to feel around it would only serve to make his death all the more delicious.
“Anyway, do you remember the day we met, when you mentioned that I might be a psychopath? I did a little research on the subject, and I discovered that I actually fit the bill quite nicely. But for that matter, so do a few of my friends.”
He picked up a Rubik’s cube and began to fiddle with it. “The more I thought about it, the more I realized that the more powerful Seers were all quite similar in disposition to |
Publisher’s Note: If you enjoy this story, the author encourages you to read its companion piece, Sniff.
My first job was at a 24-hour restaurant called Flavi’s, on Third and Burlington in Westlake. It was a real hole-in-the-wall place, the type where patrons line up beneath the menu board; specializing in burgers, gyros, and all-day, grease-heavy breakfast.
I worked graveyard shifts. So did most of my customers – the medical crowd (there were two middle-sized hospitals nearby), cops, firefighters, and the assorted civil servants that filtered in and out of the neighborhood.
A middle-aged LAPD officer used to come by, sometimes with a partner, sometimes alone. Let’s call him Officer Carlos Nunez. Officer Nunez didn’t look like a cop. If I’d seen him at the grocery store, I’d have thought he were a professor or an attorney or a realtor. He had a square jaw and high forehead, curly brown hair, an endearing bald spot and the friendly, diplomatic face of a sitcom dad.
Officer Nunez had stories. On lazy nights he could entertain his audience for hours, that “audience” consisting of eagle scout-looking fire babies, bored security guards, and nursing students off clinical shifts. Thirty years with a badge and a car had given him plenty of material.
When there were no kiddies to impress he talked to me. Some of his stories were pretty dark. He saved those stories for the coldest, windiest nights when Flavi’s was empty, save for him and me and the cooks.
Though it was nearly a decade ago, what he told me on one of those nights still lingers in the back of my mind.
“There’s a building,” he’d started, “less than a mile from here. Near Sixth and Alvarado. It was abandoned, repossessed by the bank. They should have bulldozed the dump.”
It had been low-income housing. The Primrose Apartments. Originally office space, the building was bought at auction in 1999, gutted, and divided into cheap little white-walled units where the roofs leaked and the air conditioning never worked.
In the early 2000’s, Nunez was dispatched to The Primrose every couple weeks, for the reasons one would expect. Domestic disturbances. Possession with intent to sell. Drunken brawls in the parking lot, solicitation, truancy, noise complaints. Nothing out of the ordinary for a public housing complex lodged within the bowels of a major city. Yet somehow, embarrassingly, the building played on his nerves.
“I never liked the place,” he told me. “It was creepy. No building erected in the 70’s has the right to be as creepy as that one.”
If he’d been asked to put a finger on the epicenter of this innate creepiness, he’d have pointed to a little closet on the first floor. The way he described it was, coming from the back entrance (which only employees and cops ever used), a left turn would take you to a set of double doors, through which the elevator lobby and the leasing office were accessible. A right turn lead down a narrow hallway, past the janitor’s storage, to a dead end.
The little closet in question was opposite the janitor’s. The door was unlabeled, innocuous, and should have functioned as glorified wallpaper. But for Nunez, who’d stumbled upon the closet while looking for a restroom, even a glance towards it filled him with irrational dread. A funny smell lingered about the door; he’d catch a faint tendril of the stench every time he walked through the back door.
One night, Nunez and his partner, a lady cop who went by Rusty, were dispatched to The Primrose to investigate a domestic disturbance – a man threatening his girlfriend with a butcher knife. They found the woman locked in the bathroom and the boyfriend pounding on the door.
Let’s call the woman Marisol and the man Modesto.
Nunez and Rusty managed to cajole the pair into cooperating. Rusty stayed in the bathroom with Marisol, Nunez sat in the kitchen with Modesto. Modesto claimed that Marisol was cheating on him with her ex-husband. He’d seen the ex hanging around the elevator lobby.
When quizzed on the subject, Marisol insisted Modesto was crazy. Yes, she was still friendly with her ex-husband, but it was solely for the sake of their son. She had no desire to sleep with him. And besides, the ex-husband lived in Washington.
It was suggested that Modesto had seen a man who resembled Marisol’s ex. He got defensive. He strode into Marisol’s son’s room and came out with a framed picture – the son, with his arm around a (taller, better-looking) man.
“I gotta see this shit every day,” he ranted to Nunez. “You don’t think I’d recognize this asshole if I saw him?”
It took awhile, but Modesto calmed down and admitted he may have been mistaken. Marisol didn’t want to press charges, and the couple was left in peace.
Two weeks later, Nunez and Rusty were called to the same apartment, for the same reason. This time, Marisol was barricaded in the master bedroom and Modesto was brandishing a tire iron, insisting he’d had an enraging conversation with her ex-husband in the lobby.
“You fucked him!” he screamed. “He told me! He said you fucked him on our fucking bed!”
Backup was called. Thirty minutes later, Modesto was cuffed, sobbing, to a chair, while Marisol tearfully paced, on the phone with the ex-husband, trying to prove he hadn’t been hanging out in the lobby of The Primrose.
“There!” She cried finally.
Triumphantly, she’d pulled up a picture on her phone and shoved it in Modesto’s face. She handed the phone to Nunez. It was of the man from the picture – her ex-husband – standing by a City of Wenatchee street sign, holding a copy of The Wenatchee World with the day’s date.
“No way he flew here, fucked me, then flew back to Washington in time to take this picture.”
Modesto was asked to elaborate. Maybe he was the butt of a cruel trick. He said he’d been alone in the elevator lobby, checking his mail. The ex-husband stealthily came up beside him, and had described – in graphic, excruciating detail – what he and Marisol had done while Modesto was at work.
This time, Modesto was more difficult to pacify. He’d been suspicious for months, he told the cops. He knew the ex-husband had attempted to reconcile with Marisol. He was uncomfortable with their amicable relationship. And it didn’t help that Marisol used her ex to stroke Modesto’s jealousy – she’d call him whenever the two of them got into a fight, and constantly talked about how good a father and provider he was.
Finally, they came to a resolution. Modesto went to stay with his brother, Marisol agreed to lock the doors, and a police car was dispatched to the neighborhood in case the ex-husband reappeared (or Modesto got cute).
Nunez didn’t know what to make of the two of them.
Modesto was obviously paranoid, but his fury and grief had been sincere. Marisol may have used her ex-husband to make her current beau jealous, but she’d seemed legitimately mystified by his accusations of infidelity. And Nunez highly doubted the ex-husband would have hopped a plane to Los Angeles just to fuck his ex-wife and stick it to her new boyfriend.
And then, there was the man in the elevator lobby. The man whom might have been in the elevator lobby.
Nunez and Rusty passed him on the way back to their squad car – a man, leaning against the wall, face buried in a newspaper. Nunez saw the man and registered what he was seeing, but it took his subconscious a minute to process the information.
Then realization of what he’d seen – and its implications – hit him like a ton of bricks and he’d ran, back through the back entrance, back through the double doors. But the man was gone, and Nunez was left to wonder whether or not it had all been his imagination.
Because he could swear the man had been reading a copy of The Wenatchee World.
*****
Next, Nunez detailed an incident involving a middle-aged bible-thumper he called Dolores.
Dolores lived on the second floor of the Primrose Apartments. She was a sweet lady, but painfully high-strung. At least once a week the cops were summoned to her humble abode. She heard a noise after midnight? Call the cops. Two “suspicious looking” men talking in the parking lot? Call the cops. Her son’s out five minutes past curfew? Call the cops. It had gotten to the point where the dispatchers recognized her voice.
Nunez had been sent to calm her down more than once. He believed that, truly, Dolores just needed someone to talk to. And she talked a lot. She talked about her blackout-drunk past. About her husband who had fled, in the dead of night, with the shoebox full of cash she’d been saving for her kids to go to college, never to be seen or heard from again.
She told him about how she’d found Jesus, and how she wished her meth-addicted daughter would come home. The daughter had been in Bakersfield last she’d heard, shacking up with the boyfriend du jour and three months’ pregnant. But that had been two years ago, and now her number was disconnected and her mail got sent back, and all Dolores could do was pray for her grandchild.
She talked about her son, Michael. He was seventeen and a senior in high school. Michael was a good boy, she insisted. But she didn’t like his friends. They were a bad influence on him. And lately, he’d been avoiding her calls and coming home late. He was surlier, angrier, and his clothes smelled like marijuana. He swore the pot smell had come from his friend’s car. But Dolores was scared. She thought he was doing drugs.
“I can’t lose him,” she’d sobbed to Nunez, as he’d tried to convince her that the car stalling in the parking lot wasn’t indicative of a drug deal. “Mikey is all I have left.”
One September day, Nunez and Rusty were, yet again, dispatched to Dolores’ apartment. He was more frustrated than concerned – they’d had a rough morning, and he wasn’t in the mood to take notes on the “explosion” (read: upstairs neighbor dropped a pot and lid) Dolores had heard, or nod and “uh-huh” through one of her long-winded tales of motherly woe.
But, according to the dispatcher, this time was different. Dolores, who usually took an assertive and condescending tone, had been screaming and crying. It was her son. He was hurt. The paramedics were fifteen minutes away.
Dolores answered the door howling.
Her prematurely-wrinkled face was streaked with tears. Her eyes were bloodshot, her hair stuck out where she’d pulled at it, and she was sobbing so violently she could barely speak.
“Michael…” she panted, pointing towards a closed door. “Michael he’s… he’s…”
She screamed. Primal, animalistic, she cried out to the sky and collapsed on the floor, burying her tear-stained face in her knees. Even thinking about it, Nunez told me, was enough to make him tear up. All the pain and despair in the world was captured in that scream.
Rusty tried to comfort Dolores. Nunez, hand on his gun, opened the door.
The smell hit him immediately. Musty, like a basement after a rainstorm, mixed with something sweeter – the potpourri his mother had kept in a bowl. He breathed through is mouth. He flipped the light switch.
A teen-aged boy’s room. In the far corner, a mattress with bedding kicked aside. On the mattress, a young man, no older than eighteen, was propped up against the wall. His head hung down, jaundiced blue eyes still open. Skinny, anorexic, purple blood pooling under waxen skin. Stringy red hair. Blotched, infected track marks, oozing pus. Joints stiff and contracted. Swollen tongue lolling.
Nunez buckled. He might have cried out.
Trembling like a dog, he knelt by the boy. Given the dullness of the sunken cheeks and the violet hue of the flaccid limbs, he hypothesized the kid had been dead for hours, if not a day. Overdose.
Slipping on a pair of latex gloves, holding his breath, he reached for the corpse’s face. The glassy doll’s eyes were too much to bear. If he closed them, his head would stop spinning and his hands would stop shaking and he could function like an officer of the law as opposed to a squeamish little…
A hand clasped his arm.
An icy, vice-strong claw grasped his arm.
It took him a twisting, maddening second to realize what was happening.
Michael’s – cold, dead, decomposing Michael’s – cyanotic fingers were wrapped around his wrist.
Nunez fell backwards. Michael sat up straight, folded, turned his torso. His stiff, angular joints jerked mechanically, grotesquely. His tarnished plastic eyes stared lifelessly ahead. Then the jaw moved, jostling the swollen, languid tongue. And, with no respect for mechanics or anatomy, he spoke.
“Officer Nunez.” A monotonous, alien mockery of a human voice. “This will all burn. You will burn with it.”
Nunez grunted, kicked, tugged, broke free of the creature’s grip. He twisted onto his hands and knees. He stumbled to the door, turned the knob, and fell into the living room, slamming the door behind him.
Dolores was curled on the couch, sobbing quietly. Rusty stood in the doorway, waving to the paramedics, who were making their way down the hallway with their gurney.
“The boy… he’s not…” Nunez stammered. Rusty turned to him, then snapped her head back towards the hallway.
“What the fuck?”
A paramedic pushed past her into the apartment. On his heels was a teen-aged boy with longish red hair and blue eyes, dressed in khakis and a NWA sweatshirt, looking quite confused.
It was Michael. Michael, very much alive.
Dolores screamed. In one movement she threw herself onto her son, collapsing with him to the dirty shag carpet, clutching him in a suffocating embrace. Rusty gave Nunez a look. The paramedic rolled his eyes.
“Dying boy found walking up stairs to his mother’s apartment,” he said sarcastically. “Please tell me he’s got an identical twin.”
It was a miracle Nunez held onto his shit. Looking at Michael – healthy, breathing Michael, cradled in his mother’s arms – he had never been so scared of a human being in his entire life.
“There’s a corpse,” he managed to force out.
Eager to establish some context to the zombie-movie jump scare he’d just experienced, Nunez grasped the doorknob with his right hand to pull himself up. Searing pain tore down his arm. He fell to his knees, groaning.
The paramedic pushed past him, opened the door, looked in, and snorted.
“There’s nothing here.”
Nunez managed to rise to his feet. He and Rusty peered into Michael’s room. There was nothing. The mattress, save a bunched-up comforter and sheets, was unoccupied. No blood. No excrements. Just an empty teenager’s bedroom.
He did a lap of the room just to make sure. He shook out the comforter, dug through a hamper of dirty clothes, threw open the closet door. Nothing. No remnants of the atrophied, decomposing corpse that had threatened Nunez with fire. He sniffed the air. The musty, potpourri smell still hung in the air, but it was fainter now, dissipated, despite the tightly-closed window.
Dolores, giddily happy, concluded she must have imagined seeing her son’s dead body. She didn’t do any drugs – no, sir! Clean for twelve years! – but had been under a lot of psychological stress, and lay awake nights haunted by visions of her only remaining child repeating her youthful mistakes. That, with the heat, and the smog… it was enough to make anyone hallucinate.
“I saw the same thing she did,” Nunez remembered saying. “Michael, sprawled dead on his mattress.”
At that, Dolores had frowned.
“What are you talking about, sprawled? I found him hanging in his closet.”
Nunez couldn’t get out of there fast enough.
It was weird, Rusty said, but not completely inconceivable. Dolores was delusional. Nunez had been overly susceptible to the power of suggestion, and had imagined seeing a corpse because Dolores said there was a corpse – induced psychotic disorder.
“I don’t know,” she told him. “If you’re really seeing things, maybe you should take some time off. Go see the department shrink.”
Nunez had passed on the shrink – no use having someone else tell him he was crazy. But, as it turned out, the time off was involuntary. He woke up the next morning with his right wrist ballooning. Dislocation fracture.
“I must have fallen on it,” he lied.
No attention was paid to the five purple bruises around his wrist, so much like the prints of five strong, clutching fingers.
*****
Nunez told his final tragic tale of the Primrose Apartments as though it had been a dream, testimony knotted together with conjecture and hearsay.
He was on medical leave for two months while his arm healed. When he returned to the station, he was greeted with whispers and pitying stares. Rusty – bless her heart – had stood up for him, telling their superiors the incident with Michael and Dolores was a non-issue, a side effect of overwork. But he guessed the paramedic team had told everyone he was losing it.
Luckily for him, he wasn’t the only guy on the force rubbed the wrong way by the Primrose Apartments. In fact, even the tenants of the Primrose Apartments seemed put off by the place. According to Officer Otanon, a desk cop that knew everything about everyone, families were jumping ship like rats before a storm.
“They can’t keep it filled,” he’d said to Nunez over the water cooler. “They’re at about half-capacity now, and that’s with subsidies from the county. No one can stay there for long, save the druggies who’ve already fried their brains. There’s a rumor the building’s haunted.”
Others sought him out as well, usually in secluded spaces, always requiring multiple assurances that, as far as top brass was concerned, the conversation did not happen. They’d been to the Primrose Apartments. They’d seen stuff.
“It’s always the users and the drunks,” Officer Anderson murmured excitedly. “Always the same thing. They call us flipping shit because they see some dead family member in the kitchen. Or the fucking elevator, or staring down at them from the ceiling. If it were one, I wouldn’t be too worried. But it’s one every week. Always at that god-forsaken dump.”
“I think I’m going crazy,” Officer Liu told him late one night, after everyone else had left. “Some old lady called us down there because she was convinced her neighbor was stealing from her. Total bullshit, we found her missing antique vase in the closet, right where she’d hid it from the home care nurse, who she also thought was stealing. You know the type.
“Anyways, I finished up with her, and my partner said she was going to the car. But when I stepped out into the hallway, she was waiting there. We took the elevator down. On the first floor I stepped out. She didn’t follow me. I looked back, and she wasn’t in the elevator at all. She’d just disappeared.
“This… chill came over me, and I ran like a rabbit. I ran back to the car. And guess who I found sitting shotgun, talking on the phone to dispatch? My partner. I asked her how she got there so fast. She looked at me weird. She said she’d never gone back into the building. Dispatch had requested a landline. She’d been in the car, on the phone, the whole time.”
“If you don’t mind me asking,” Nunez said, “what did the two of you talk about on the elevator?”
“That’s the thing,” Officer Liu replied. “On the elevator, she’d asked me what I thought the point of life was. We’re never really fulfilled, and then we die and it’s like we never existed. It was the most depressing conversation I’ve ever had. I swear, it messed me up for weeks. And I noticed this weird smell…”
“Like a wet basement mixed with potpourri?”
“Yeah,” Officer Liu said. “I’d say weed and mold, but that works too.”
Then Nunez learned about little Thaddeus Wheeler.
Thad was twelve years old. He lived on the fourth floor of The Primrose Apartments with his mom, two little brothers, half-sister, and niece. Sad story. His mother worked as a CNA at St. Vincent, nights. Thad’s father had been in the ground for three years, shot in the driveway of the house where the family had once lived. Likely the victim of a gang initiation. There were photos of him with the kids all over the apartment.
Little Thad had been a good student. A good kid. A talented artist – talented enough to make a difference. Had been. Lately, his teacher had reported that Thad was falling asleep in class and falling behind on his work. He ignored his friends and family; while his brothers played video games or rode bikes in the parking lot, Thad would lock himself in his room. His drawings, once of animals and fantasy creatures, had become much darker; scary things with sharp claws and teeth.
Once, a month before, Lydia Wheeler – the mother – called 911 in a panic. When she’d arrived home at 5:30am, Thad was missing. Three sets of cops were dispatched to search the premises. They found the boy an hour later, fast asleep in a little closet.
“Right across from the janitor’s closet?” Nunez asked, dreading the answer.
“Yeah,” the other officer said, frowning. “How’d you know?”
When asked why he did it, Thad responded that he simply liked it there. Sleep-walking, everyone thought. But the police had been called to Lydia Wheeler’s apartment twice more since then. Once, by Lydia, because Thad was hitting his head against the wall and wouldn’t stop. And once, by a neighbor, because Thad was wandering aimlessly through the halls, clutching a serrated steak knife.
Lydia told the cops that Thad’s nighttime sojourns to the little closet on the first floor had become a recurring incident. Three times a week, she would find him there, asleep on the dirty linoleum floor. She was looking for a therapist.
The next time Thaddeus Wheeler inspired a 911 call – by the sister, Rochelle, this time – Nunez and Rusty were one of the two pairs sent.
“Twelve-year-old African-American male,” the dispatcher had said. “Locked in a bedroom. Armed with a knife. Possibly a second person with him.”
Nunez and Rusty met Rochelle, a chubby girl of about nineteen, in the hallway outside of the apartment. A toddler and two school-aged boys huddled at her feet.
“There’s a man in there!” Rochelle cried. “I went to the door to call Thad for dinner, and I heard him talking to someone. This deep, man’s voice responded. Then Thad started screaming NO! NO! NO! and something slammed against the wall! I tried to force the door, but it’s locked and I think there’s something pushed against it.”
“Did you hear what the man said to Thad?” Rusty asked calmly.
Rochelle shook her head. “I think I’m going crazy. I couldn’t make out what he said, but it sounded like… I don’t know. It’s bullshit.”
“What?” Rusty asked.
“I thought he sounded like my stepfather. But my stepfather’s been dead for years.”
Rusty herded Rochelle and the children towards the elevator. Guns drawn, Nunez and the other two officers entered the apartment.
From one of the rooms, they heard a child crying.
Coming up on the closed door, Nunez and the second cop positioned themselves. The burliest of the three turned his shoulder, took a running start, and rammed the door.
BANG!
The door slid open; a nightstand had been placed against it. Nunez nearly dropped his gun in shock. The must-and-potpourri smell hit him in the face like a wave.
Little Thad sat on the floor between two sets of bunkbeds, clad in a wife-beater and boxer shorts, holding a steak knife. Up and down his arms and legs were deep, jagged, self-inflicted cuts. His face was swollen and snotty.
Upon seeing the two guns pointed at him, he dropped the knife and let out a small cry.
“We’re not going to hurt you, kid,” Nunez heard himself say.
The room was completely trashed. There were pictures on the walls. Horrible demons, mutilated humans and animals, flames, torture implements. Upon closer inspection, the drawings were determined to have been completed with both marker and Thad’s blood.
The paramedics and the Department of Mental Health were called. The apartment was thoroughly searched for the esoteric second party – the man with the deep voice. No one was found.
Nunez and Rusty approached little Thad as he sat, shivering, on a gurney, the paramedic bandaging his arms.
“Hey, buddy,” Nunez said amicably. “I’m Officer Carlos. Do you mind if we ask you a few questions?”
Thad shrugged.
“Okay. Your sister told us she heard you talking to someone in your room. Can you tell us who?”
Thad stared.
“You’re not going to get them in trouble, buddy. We just want to talk to them, make sure they’re okay. We’re not going to arrest them or anything.”
“You can’t arrest him,” Thad said. “He’s not human.”
“Oh?” Nunez responded. “Is he a ghost?”
“He’s my dad. He’s dead. He died, and the angels sent him to Hell. He comes and sees me at night. He tells me what to do so me and my family don’t have to go to Hell with him when we die.”
“Oh. What does he tell you to do?”
Thad shook his head. “He says I have to draw demons every day. And, whenever I have a bad thought, I have to hurt myself.”
The DMH lady came back then, handing a 5585 detainment form to the paramedics. The paramedics lifted the gurney into the ambulance. Rusty stayed back to talk to them; Nunez, brain buzzing, went to start his report.
The druggies see their dead family members. That’s what Officer Anderson had said. Officer Liu had spoken to his partner, while his partner was in the squad car talking to dispatch. He’d seen Michael’s corpse reanimate and assault him, Dolores had seen Michael’s corpse hanging in the closet, Michael was alive. Modesto had seen Marisol’s ex-husband, the ex-husband was in Washington. Rochelle had heard Thad’s father’s voice. Thad said his dead father came and visited him.
What the heck was going on in that apartment building?
*****
The next time Nunez was dispatched to The Primrose was the last.
It was some old neighbor lady. He couldn’t have said which one; there weren’t many tenants left. Of the seventeen units that comprised The Primrose, only ten were filled. This lady had heard yelling coming from the apartment across the hall, a man with a deep voice and either a woman or a young child. The dispatchers immediately recognized the apartment number. Thaddeus Wheeler.
Nunez and Rusty used the back entrance. Immediately, Nunez was overtaken by the smell – musty basement and potpourri. Rusty didn’t notice; she headed straight for the elevators. Nunez looked to his right.
Thaddeus Wheeler stood in the hallway, between the janitor’s storage and the underused little closet where he liked to sleep.
Rusty had already disappeared through the double-doors. Nunez knew he should have gone after her, but he didn’t want to give the kid the opportunity to sneak away. Thaddeus Wheeler was a very troubled little boy. He needed to be institutionalized. Not for 72 hours under 5585 hold. Long-term. Until his bipolar disorder, or schizophrenia, or whatever drove him to argue with himself and paint in his own blood, was sufficiently tamed by medication.
Slowly, outstretched hands in full view of the boy, Nunez started down the hallway.
Thaddeus smiled at him when he got close.
“Hi, Officer Carlos,” Thad said. “Have you figured it out yet?”
“Figured what out?” Nunez asked conversationally.
“What I am.”
Thad’s smile grew wider, toothed and maniacal. The musty-sweet stench was suffocating.
“Lemme give you a hint,” Thad said.
Then his voice changed. It became monotonous, an alien mockery of a human voice.
“This will all burn,” Thad said, in red-headed corpse Michael’s voice. “You will burn with it.”
Nunez backpedaled. The smell was intoxicating him, drowning him. Then he noticed Thad’s bare arms – the arms that had been violently slashed up, several weeks before, with a serrated steak knife.
There were no scars on those arms.
“Wha…what…” Nunez sputtered.
Thaddeus Wheeler – the thing that looked like Thaddeus Wheeler – laughed.
“Bzzzt! Wrong answer!” he boomed, in a grown man’s voice. “I am whatever the fuck I want to be.”
Then, lightning-fast, he pulled open the closet door and vanished within. Burning adrenaline, Nunez followed.
He found himself alone in an empty storage closet.
The closet was… well, it wasn’t what he’d been expecting. He didn’t know what he had been expecting. It was a little room, maybe ten feet by twelve, with exposed concrete walls and two rickety shelves. A rusted lawnmower sat in one corner, and a pile of molding boxes filled with fluorescent light bulbs rested beside one of the shelves. Cobwebs hung from the ceiling, and the stained linoleum floor was curling. He held his breath. He couldn’t bear the smell.
Where had Thaddeus gotten to? There was nowhere to hide.
Behind him, he heard the door slam shut. He whirled, right hand instinctively reaching for his gun.
Standing in front of him, between him and the door, was his grinning doppelganger.
The man wore his uniform. Nunez recognized his own pointed nose, unshaven cheeks, and receding hairline. His deep brown eyes and untamed brows. He even stood the same way – feet apart, shoulders hunching forward, leaning on his right leg. The man was Officer Carlos Nunez. And he, like the real Nunez, was reaching for his gun.
Not thinking, not feeling, operating solely on instinct, Nunez shot. Three times. He heard the bullets hit. POP! POP! POP! Then ringing in his ears, and then silence.
He stood frozen, sweat-drenched hands threatening to drop his loaded weapon, trembling and drawing deep, ragged breaths, as the dust settled.
He’d blown three holes through the flimsy wooden door. But again, he found himself alone. He was a middle-aged officer of the law with years of experience, abandoning his partner and hiding in closets, shooting at figments of his imagination.
Then there was a mighty CRACK! Then a BANG! Then a scream. Then more screams.
He exited the room to the hallway, and immediately found himself swept up in a minor exodus. Wild-eyed residents – scantily-clad moms with kids, old couples in sweats – piled out of the stairways, fleeing for the exits. Nostrils now clear of the musty, sweet closet stench, Nunez smelled smoke. Then the alarms began blaring.
“FIRE!” screamed an emaciated middle-aged man, running from the stairwell.
Nunez screamed into his radio, insisting that dispatch send every available fire unit to The Primrose Apartments, now. He ran up the stairs, crying the alarm, assisting old women with walkers, scooping up toddlers, herding the residents towards the safety of the evening air.
When the last stragglers had been evacuated, Nunez surveyed the scene. In the distance, he heard sirens. Then he noticed the residents were all clustered around he same spot in the parking lot, too close to the burning building. A woman screamed. Nunez pushed his way through the throng.
A body lay there, sprawled facedown, blood pooling around what had been its head. The small, dark form was obviously dead – spongy grey tissue had been splattered across the asphalt. He fell, someone said. Or he jumped. Poor little boy.
His broken arms were extended, as though he’d embraced the sky. Then Nunez saw the scars on the shattered extremities, and he knew.
It took until the early hours of the morning to extinguish the flames, and weeks to even begin cleaning up the mess. Ambulances came and left. Fourteen injuries in all; the burn unit at the county hospital must have had an interesting night. The uninjured residents, barred from returning to their apartments by the police and fire barricade, trudged to the bus stop or the waiting cars of sympathetic friends. Those with nowhere else to go milled around for hours; finally, a church down the street agreed to take them in. Nunez saw Marisol and her sobbing son; shaking Dolores and stone-faced Michael. Then came the coroner’s vans.
When the ash had dissipated and the ruined building finally cooled, nine bodies were recovered. One of them was Rusty. Another, Lydia Wheeler. Lydia had died of smoke inhalation in her room. It was never confirmed or denied, but whispered amongst the firefighters that she’d been locked in.
A gas explosion had occurred in the kitchen of Lydia Wheeler’s apartment. Little Thaddeus lit a match. He set his mother’s couch on fire. He turned on the stove. And before the entire floor was engulfed in flames, he jumped out a window. Motives were thrown around; finally, it was decided that the little boy was a paranoid schizophrenic, and the entire tragedy was a catastrophic side effect of his psychosis.
Nunez had expected an ass-chewing, if not a suspension, for chasing specters while his partner was trapped in an inferno. So he was much surprised to be greeted as a hero. Some of the people he’d helped out of the building credited him with saving their lives.
The “human face” of the tragedy, as presented by local newscasters, was Rochelle Crane, Thaddeus’s older sister. She was lucky; she’d been out of the apartment with her daughter and little brothers at the time, getting ice cream. Rochelle spoke kindly of Nunez, saying he and Rusty had been the only officers who’d cared about her poor, doomed sibling and mot |
My grandfather was an inventor.
All his life he’s be tinkering with something, either taking something that existed and changing it, making it into something brand new (Or at the very least different) or inventing something entirely from spare parts. And while nothing he invented was ever earth shaking it was always one of my greatest delights, ever since I was a little girl, to see what he’d made.
Childhood visits to his home would always begin or end with me sitting on the couch, a look of absolute fascination on my tiny face as he showed off whatever gadget he’d put together in his workshop this time around. It was like having my own personal Santa who worked all year ‘round to fill my eight year old mind with wonder and glee.
My older sister was likewise excited, no matter how much she tried to hide the excitement it filled her with, probably in an effort to appear cooler or more mature than myself. And while, because of real life getting in the way, the visits became fewer and fewer the older we got, we would always make time to see him at least a few times a year. And every time he would have something new to show us.
He really was a genius.
I should add that isn’t meant to imply something horrible happened to him. I’m sure some days he wishes it had, that it had been him who had wound up in that hospital instead of my sister but no, he went in his sleep and I hope that his passing was a peaceful one.
Even all these years later I can’t bring myself to be angry about what happened, can’t bring myself to hate him. He had no idea what would happen, no clue how things would pan out.
He knew something was wrong, oh yes. He wasn’t some doddering old fool. He knew the first time he looked through them that something was wrong but he thought it was something only a little odd, something unsettling and curious perhaps but not anything dangerous. Not anything that would HARM anyone.
I think deep down he just wanted to know that he wasn’t crazy. He wanted to be sure that he wasn’t seeing things. And who can blame him?
There were three of us that year.
Myself and my girlfriend Justine and my sister Joan. We were both used to our grandfather being bursting with energy to show us whatever he’d put together so his oddly subdued mood when he came to the door to greet us came as a bit of a surprise. I was a little disappointed in fact, as I’d been hoping Justine would get to share in the experience of having a new invention demonstrated before our awe struck eyes. We’d only started dating that year so it would be the first chance she got to see the kind of things I’d been telling her about.
The day passed pleasantly enough as we chatted, enjoyed lunch and watched the television together. I think it was
Joan who asked him, finally, if he had anything special to show us today. We knew that he’d been working on something as while this was the first time we’d seen him in person in a while we’d both spoke to him on the phone in the preceding months and he’d eagerly explained to us that he was working on something he thought would be quite extraordinary.
I still couldn’t tell you how he made them, nor would I if I could. Nor could
I tell you what his original idea for those oddly coloured circles of glass had been, before that fateful day he’d looked through them and seen what he’d seen. He never shared details of his work with us beforehand as he wanted it to be a surprise and afterwards I think he was terrified of the thought of anyone replicating what he’d made.
All I know is that when Joan pressed him to reveal his latest invention he looked nervous in a way I’d never seen him before, looked as if he was deeply troubled by something. He hesitated before speaking as if not sure he should say anything at all before explaining to us that the nature of what he was working on had changed after an ‘Unusual event’ and that he wasn’t sure if it would be a good idea to show us the end result.
Now we may have grown since the days when we could perch on his knee but whether someone is two years old or in their twenties the surest way to make them want something all the more is to tell them they can’t have it. So his reluctance (Which at the time I’m sure we BOTH thought was feigned, to heighten the suspense before the unveiling) just made us both want to see his invention more than ever.
With a little persuading he agreed and left to fetch it. He came back a few moments later with what appeared to be a pair of glasses.
With one big difference.
The lenses were like no glass we’d ever seen before. I can’t even describe the colour of it without resorting to words like ‘Red-ish’ or ‘Green-y’ as they didn’t seem to be EXACTLY any colour that we have a name for. In fact they didn’t seem to be exactly any one colour at all, as if you tilted them one way they would look different to if you tilted them another. I know full well that probably sounds more like magic than something a well-meaning old man could put together in his humble little workshop but there you have it.
Joan asked what they did and our grandfather paused for a few moments,
as if not quite certain how to answer.
In the end he told us that we really had to put them on for ourselves as he was certain neither of us would believe him if he told us. Joan wanted to put them on first but as she lifted them off the table he reached out and grabbed her hand.
He cautioned her that it MIGHT be startling at first but that she wasn’t in any danger and that if she got frightened she could just take them off. He warned her that what she was about to see may not make any more sense to her than it did to him but that we were all there and that she was safe. I could tell Joan was a little frightened. She always was lousy at hiding how she felt from people and even I was feeling a bit unsettled by our grandfather being so uncharacteristically ominous about the whole thing.
Joan slipped the glasses on and we waited.
She gasped and then for the next few moments she looked puzzled more than anything. Her lips moved wordlessly and I thought I caught a ‘No…that’s not right’ under her breath as she seemed to look around at something none of us could see.
And then she began screaming.
I don’t know if you’ve ever heard someone scream in horror in real life. I can promise you this; it is not like in the movies. The movies do not convey the awful sound of someone you love screaming their lungs out, making a noise more like an animal than a human being. They cannot make you feel the things I felt in that moment, watching Joan yank the glasses from her head and hurl them across the room.
And nothing could have prepared us for the sight of Joan beginning to claw at her own eyes, screaming louder than anyone should be able to scream as she did it.
It took all three of us to restrain her at first. When we had her pinned down so she couldn’t hurt herself anymore Justine and my grandfather held her that way while I called for an ambulance. I had to watch as she was strapped down and wheeled into the back of one, thrashing and hissing and shrieking like some mad animal, like something utterly consumed by fear.
I explained what had happened, knowing full well how it made me sound. Justine and I both explained the series of events that lead to this to the sceptical if not totally disbelieving hospital staff and then to the specialists called in when nothing short of being tranquilised proved effective at stopping my sister from trying to hurt herself while screaming like that.
The glasses had supposedly ‘Gone missing’ which made proving what had happened difficult. And it wasn’t until almost a year later, long after my sister had been committed, that my grandfather finally confessed to me that he’d destroyed them. I don’t know if having them could have helped, could have given the doctors some way to make things right. I doubt it somehow and I can’t truly blame him for doing what he did, given that it was an act born out of guilt and an honest desire to make sure this didn’t happen again.
I asked him what my sister had seen that day, when he told me what he’d done. I asked what those glasses had done to her. He hadn’t wanted to talk about it and for the first time in my life I’d raised my voice to him, angrily demanding to know, after all this time, just what had driven my sister to this state. What had affected her so deeply, so profoundly that she was now no longer even recognisable as the person I’d grown up with.
He took me to his workshop and began digging around through the bits and pieces that littered the place, the half-finished and now long discarded inventions still awaiting completion, he produced two pieces of glass rather like the ones that had been fitted into those glasses. He told me that there wasn’t any way to describe it without sounding insane, that if I had to know then I had to see. But he begged me not to do this, that knowing wouldn’t make things any better.
He was right.
I held the glass up to my eyes and in an instant everything changed. Instead of just my grandfather stood before me now there were dozens more in the room with us. But they weren’t people.
They were pale and emaciated, hunched over and dressed in dark clothing with black lips and wide lidless eyes that seemed to almost bulge from their skulls in a manner both comical and horrifying all at once. Their mouths were full of hundreds of thin teeth, like needles. Their fingers were grotesquely long and ended in dark and viciously pointed nails that scraped along the floor as they walked. And all of them were talking, or rather their lips were moving soundlessly.
Each and every one of them was trying to say something that couldn’t be heard, dozens upon dozens of voices trying to convey something.
I dropped the glasses to the ground in shock. And my grandfather brought his foot down on them hard; grinding them to powder beneath his foot, muttering that he should have done this in the first place. He put an arm on my shoulder asking if I was alright. I was far from alright and he had been correct…what I had seen had made things worse, not better.
It took me a while to work it out of course. Why this had such a horrifying effect on my sister and yet I had survived the experience, frightened but not sporting the mental scars it had given her.
The glasses only let me SEE the creatures. I couldn’t hear what they were trying to say to me, couldn’t understand the message they were trying to impart.
But my sister was deaf.
She could read their lips.
|
To: Jeremy Fuentes, Ph.D
Professor of Cultural Anthropology
University of California, Berkeley
Jeremy –
I assume you have heard about the strange discovery made at 918 E. 3rd Street – a converted warehouse located on the corner of 3rd and Weller Avenue, in the middle of the Arts District in Downtown Los Angeles.
The building is currently undergoing renovations. Three weeks ago, construction workers noted a foul odor wafting through the property, coming from behind what they had thought was a solid brick wall. But upon further investigation, it was discovered that the inside measurements of the property did not match up with the outside. There was, in fact, a 25x30ft. space on the first floor completely overlooked. A secret room, so to speak; one inaccessible from any point inside the building or out. It was located at the far end of the property, along the wall forming the west side of Weller.
With permission, the workers broke through the wall to access the otherwise-inaccessible area. Immediately, they were floored by the overpowering stench of rotting meat. Bandannas over their noses, they entered the enclosure.
Inside, they found a nice 16mm camera, smashed to bits. They found film equipment, all destroyed – cracked lights, torn screens, metal light stands folded like paperclips. Cheap-looking framed paintings and kitschy prop menus scattered like confetti. And three bodies.
Three decomposing bodies, in a state too disturbing for description. Though the term “half-eaten” has been thrown around.
How the equipment, or the corpses, ended up there has yet to be determined. Neither the walls nor the ceiling were disturbed at any point, and there was no sign of tunneling under the four-foot-thick concrete floor.
No one can explain how three dead people and a bunch of film paraphernalia magically appeared within a completely walled-off space. But it was all the more shocking for me, personally, due to the contents of a handwritten letter left for me by a former patient of mine.
Her name was Kathryn Soo. She voluntarily checked herself into the Marsdale Psychiatric Treatment Center, where I am an on-call physician, several months ago, and was discharged shortly before the horrific discovery at 918 E. 3rd Street. I am no longer in contact with the young woman. However, I believe you will find her testimony – a transcript of which I have enclosed – very intriguing.
Sincerely,
Larry Schurr, M.D.
*****
Testimony of Katy Soo
1/5/2015, Marsdale Psychiatric Hospital
Just for the record, shooting Bella Cardone’s movie at the Three Friends Diner wasn’t my idea. I told her it was a scam; that no restaurateur in Los Angeles with two brain cells to rub together would have possibly charged us so little for a location so photogenic. Again and again, I insisted it just felt wrong.
I was right. I used to like being right.
A little back story.
I’m Katy. I’m 21 years old. I used to be a junior at Cal State Northridge, studying business administration and film production. I enjoyed the phone calls and the organizing and the paperwork-filling that most film students hate, and had built up a modest reputation as a pre-production guru amongst my classmates, as well as with friends and acquaintances who attended other schools.
Bella Cardone was one of such acquaintances, a 29-year-old international student from Italy I’d met at a third-rate horror film festival. She’d been employed at a television station in Rome doing… something, but dreamed of writing and directing Hollywood movies. She was one of a dozen or so, mostly foreign, enrollees a year and a half into the two-year Master’s program at New York Film Academy; she was writing her thesis script at the time, and asked me to help organize the production of the short film.
Her script was about a starving artist working as a waitress, who gets dumped by her boyfriend then has an existential breakdown in which she imagines herself poisoning her customers and getting tortured, culminating with a series of flash cuts in which she simultaneously slashes her wrists and drowns in the ocean.
Typical pretentious grad student fare.
We needed to lock down five locations: an apartment, a beach, a park, something that could function as a dungeon, and a restaurant. The beach and the park were relatively easy, and a classmate of Bella’s agreed to let us use her North Hollywood apartment for two days. Another classmate, a quiet little guy named Sandeep, discreetly told me about an S&M store with a basement dungeon they infrequently rented out for movie shoots. I don’t know how he came to be so familiar with such an establishment, and I’m not sure I want to know, but it proved ideal for our purposes. Which left the restaurant – a notoriously difficult one for students and independent filmmakers.
So when I found a little French place in Encino on Craigslist, got in touch with the manager, and played the “broke student” card so well he granted us use of his restaurant for a night for a little over $400, I was ready to sign the papers, get the permit, and move on. It was two weeks before Bella’s scheduled first day of shooting, and I had a million other things to worry about – from liability insurance to catering to talking Northridge underclassmen into helping out as G&E crew and PA’s.
Bella, however, thought $400 for a night was too expensive, and remained convinced she could find a better deal. So she went on Craigslist herself and placed a “restaurant wanted for student film” ad. But I’d put up a similar posting three weeks earlier (that’s how I found the French place in Encino), and Bella received the exact same responses from the exact same people.
With one exception: an e-mail from [email protected], which she forwarded to me. It read like this:
CLEAP LOCTN for filmn studnts! Restarant in downtown Losangeles. 35 weller ave. 100 fr day. Rsp nd to this email, will send you key, pay on dt of filming. MST b decmbr 3rd aftr noon.
I was suspicious immediately. $100 for a day of filming seemed a little too good to be true. Then there was the poor spelling and lack of contact information, and the fact that when I tried to respond to the e-mail, all I got was an error message.
And then there was the key.
The key turned up in Bella’s on-campus mailbox two days after the e-mail, enclosed in a stained brown envelope with no return address. And as if that wasn’t creepy enough, it came with a scrawled note – “key to 3 frends dinr.”
I was ready to call it a scam and be done with it. But Bella thought we should at least check the place out. If it was real, she argued, it was too good a deal to pass up. Movies are expensive, and we were already pushing her budget. So I agreed to go with her and Hamed Shirazi, the cinematographer, to 35 Weller Avenue. Which, it turned out, was in the middle of the Arts District.
I have a love-hate relationship with the Arts District.
It’s a cool place to meet a friend at her new loft. There are some nice restaurants and amusing wall art, and the dissonance created by graffiti-coated trashcans, barbed wire, and long smelly lines outside the social services building sharing a block with yoga studios, BMWs, and boutique gift shops hawking 80-buck vintage baby sweaters is ironically poetic. But the streets are one-way and parking is nonexistent. I drove in a triangle for fifteen minutes before surrendering and pulling into a $10-flat-rate lot.
“Weller Avenue” wasn’t a street so much as a glorified driveway – a short, narrow alley that branched off of 3rd street and dead-ended. A large, L-shaped building occupied the east and north sides of Weller. It appeared to be a closed night-club in the process of being converted into an art gallery. The blacked-out windows were covered with torn, dirty stickers advertising shows long since played and bands long since broken up, and graffiti artists (the gang-affiliated kind, not the Arts Foundation kind) had had their way with both the seafoam-green walls and the ratty trash dumpster abandoned in the corner.
The grey brick warehouse that functioned as the west side of Weller, 918 E. 3rd Street, looked completely unoccupied. A sign hung in a window; the building had apparently been bought by East River Development. I recognized the name – my realtor father knew some people who worked for that company. They bought old commercial properties and converted them into trendy, pricey apartments.
The most prominent visual, however, was the mural painted on the north wall. It depicted the head and chest of a woman, face tilted eastward. The woman had tan skin, ruby-red lips, and flowing hair in varying shades of blue – periwinkle at the tips, darkening to deep lavender at her scalp. Her eyes were closed. In the background, some distance behind her, was what appeared to be an orange grove. It was a beautiful painting, and strangely mesmerizing. If you looked at the woman one way, she seemed young and innocent, sporting a demure grin. Then, if you cocked your head or blinked, lines appeared on her cheeks and her lips rearranged themselves into a pouty sneer.
I saw only one door on Weller, leading into the grey building.
It was a very shabby door of splintery, untreated wood; with a rusting doorknob and keyhole. No business name. No street number. This couldn’t possibly be the restaurant from Craigslist – Three Friends Diner, I guess it was called. How did anyone ever find the place? I was still puzzling when Bella and Hamed found me.
“Bloody hell!” Hamed barked, in lieu of a greeting. “Where’s the restaurant?”
“Here, according to my phone,” I said. “I’m willing to bet money someone is fucking with us.”
Bella didn’t seem too concerned; her eyes were fixed on the mural.
“So pretty!” she exclaimed. “Can we film?”
I shrugged. “I’m not sure. We might run into some copyright issues. And it doesn’t look like we’re going to be filming here at all, since we’re not looking at a restaurant.”
Bella frowned at me, and took the key out of her purse. She walked up to the wooden door.
“Here?” she asked.
“I don’t think so,” I said. “There’s no sign or anything. I mean, you can try it, but I’m really doubting that key is going to fit into that…”
Bella turned the key and pulled at the knob. With a creak, the door opened. Hamed and I rushed to her and, together, we stepped inside. Hamed scrambled for a light switch, and then the room was illuminated by a warm, golden glow.
We found ourselves staring at Three Friends Diner. It was perfect.
It was a larger space than I’d thought it would be; rectangular-shaped, the kitchen jutting out from the north wall. Behind the kitchen was a small corridor leading to the bathroom and a closet that could function as dry storage. The walls were painted that particular shade of deep red that looks beautiful on film, and the tables and chairs and diner-style booths were a nice contrast in black and grey. And each table was adorned with a salt and pepper shaker, an empty bottle of ketchup, and a vase of plastic lilies.
“Don’t get too excited yet,” I said to Hamed, who was examining one of the series of stained-glass lamps from which light was emanating. “We don’t know how much juice you’ve got to work with.”
“That’s the beauty of it,” he said gleefully. “I don’t even need that much juice. If we come a bit early and switch out all these bulbs, I can use the lamps as practicals. Plus, this place obviously isn’t open yet, which means I’m not sharing power with anything.”
He was right about that. The freezers and refrigerators were unplugged, the storage closet was empty, and there wasn’t a plate or a cup or a scrap of food to be found. It was definitely a new restaurant, the latest in an avalanche of trendy urban eateries inundating the Arts District as the neighborhood gentrified. Of course it was hard to find. That would lend an air of mystery to the diner, foster the impression of exclusivity, attract a Twitter following.
“I love it!” Bella announced. “Can you get a permit?”
I tried to talk her out of it. Something about Three Friends Diner made me nervous, made the little hairs on the back of my neck stand up. But it was exactly what Bella had been looking for, and Hamed had already started planning shots, and the little hairs on the back of my neck didn’t stand a chance against cheap, gorgeous, and logistically ideal. The restaurant wasn’t open yet, which meant we could shoot during the day, decorate how we wanted, and place the camera anywhere without worrying about being in anyone’s way. And December 3rd – the date the mysterious proprietors had insisted on – was our scheduled 6th day of shooting.
“Don’t look under the horse you get,” Bella told me.
I think she meant “don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.”
That saying is a reference to the Trojan Horse, given as a token of surrender by the Greeks during the Trojan War. I don’t know why people keep repeating it. Because if the Trojans had looked into that horse’s wooden mouth, the Illiad might have ended differently.
As I said before, I’d been forced to park in a ten-dollar lot. And, of course, the attendant’s iPhone was malfunctioning, so I couldn’t pay with my card. I had no cash; the attendant directed me to a convenience store on Alameda that apparently had an ATM. I wasn’t thrilled. It was getting dark, and a trendy neighborhood six blocks from Skid Row is still a trendy neighborhood, six blocks from Skid Row.
The convenience store stuck out like a gold tooth; a little scrap of what the neighborhood used to be, wedged between a café and a construction site. A cracked neon sign branded it “Alameda Mart,” the ice cream fridge was stuffed with La Michoacana popsicles, and the cash register sat behind a pane of bulletproof glass. I engaged in battle what must have been the slowest ATM known to man, and was mentally cursing the “loading” screen when I became aware of the sole other customer in the shop.
“Need to pay for parking?” he asked.
I turned. The man standing behind me was obviously homeless – he wore grime-caked jeans and a stained military service jacket, and his leathery face demonstrated the dullness of days with no soap.
I nodded and smiled.
“You a tourist?”
I shook my head. “Student filmmaker, actually. My friend’s going to shoot at this restaurant on Weller.”
Immediately, I doubted the wisdom of sharing this piece of information. I didn’t want him to show up and beg for change. But his unshaven face fell, and his tone became one of alarm rather than anticipation.
“There’s no restaurant on Weller,” he murmured. “There’s just Bessie.”
I giggled. “Bessie?”
He nodded. “That’s what folks ‘round here call her. The old folks say she can change things. Make things appear and dis’pear.”
He leaned in, narrowed his eyes, and dropped his voice to a conspiratorial whisper.
“If I was you, I’d stay away. They say every twenty years, for one day, Bessie ‘comes corp’real and feeds.”
I would have asked him to elaborate; to explain exactly who “Bessie” was and why I should be afraid. But right then the shop proprietor noticed the homeless man, and yelled at him what I’d assumed were not nice words in Spanish. He booked it and, by the time the ATM coughed up my cash and I was back on Alameda, he’d disappeared.
On the way to the car lot, I passed Weller. The blue-haired girl was right where I’d left her. Standing in front of a grove of trees in three-quarters profile, facing westward towards the door of the Three Friends Diner, eyes closed. Was she “Bessie?”
Then fear washed over me like a cold shower, and I ran. I threw a twenty at the parking attendant and got out of there as fast as I could. Something about that mural had scared the shit out of my subconscious. Halfway to the 405 freeway, I figured it out.
She – Bessie – was facing the wrong way.
*****
Bella’s first five days of filming went delightfully well. So well that, when I arrived at Three Friends Diner for the sixth and final day, December 3rd, I forgot I was scared of the place.
Crew call was one. Hamed had already been there for an hour, switching out light bulbs and unloading equipment with Esteban the gaffer and two grips, Miguel and Andrea. Our grip truck was parked out front, partially obstructing my view of the mural. But I could tell that Bessie was facing eastwards, towards the club-turned-gallery. As she had been the first time I saw her. Of course. It had been dark that night, and I’d been scared and alone. I’d seen things that weren’t really there.
I made my way through the obstacle course of lights and c-stands, set up my iPad at an unused table, and worked on the equipment drop-off schedule as crew members filtered in. I heard Katia’s voice at least a minute before she and Bella walked through the door. God, that chick was loud. Bossy, too; no wonder she was such a good assistant director. Then came Venna, the production designer, carrying a large box of prop-house framed pictures and the menus she’d designed. Nairi, the 1st camera assistant, set up the Arri while her lackey du jour loaded film. Then two more grips, Pete and Ryan. Kaylee and Michelle, the freshman PA’s. Lisa, the script supervisor. Dante, the sound guy. And finally Ming, the make-up artist.
Then the actors came, and then Hamed and the guys were setting up lights for the master shot, and then Katia was calling for last looks, and then we were pushing in for close-ups. The first four hours went as smoothly and productively as we had any right to expect and, for a short time, we entertained the possibility of finishing early. We were an hour ahead of schedule when we broke for lunch, everyone talking and laughing and enjoying themselves.
That’s when things started getting weird.
Right after lunch, as we were picking ourselves up and resuming our work, one of the freshman PA’s – Michelle – went to use the restroom.
A minute later, there was a bloodcurdling scream.
Ryan dropped a c-stand. Nairi nearly dropped a lens. Hamed and Esteban took frantic steps towards the bathrooms as Michelle sprinted down the hall back towards us.
“Who the fuck was in the storage closet?” she cried.
We all looked at each other.
“Seriously,” Michelle demanded. “This isn’t funny. You fucking knocked me over.”
“Michelle,” Katia asked, “what are you talking about?”
Michelle was trembling. She looked ready to cry.
“I went to the bathroom,” she said. “And I heard this… thumping coming from the closet that’s back there. Someone was pounding on the door.”
“We didn’t hear anything,” Hamed said.
“Someone was, like, ramming against the door,” Michelle repeated. “And so I opened it. And someone ran right into me, then ran towards you guys.”
She sobbed. Hamed narrowed his eyes.
“You sure, Michelle? Because we were all out here, and no one came running from the bathrooms.”
“He was wearing a black hoodie,” Michelle insisted.
I looked over the dining room to see if anyone was missing. Nope. Seventeen crew members, four actors. None of whom was wearing a black hoodie. All inside a restaurant with only one entrance.
“You didn’t see who it was?” I asked Michelle, rather stupidly.
“Obviously not!” she shouted. “It happened really fast. I just saw the black hoodie and really pale, really white skin.”
We couldn’t solve the mystery. Michelle was pretty shaken up. One of the grips, Miguel, offered to drive her back to Northridge. He said he had to go, too, because he had afternoon classes. But it was hard to miss the tremble in his voice or the dampness of his palms. And suddenly Kaylee, the other PA, also had “classes” she’d forgotten to mention, and tagged along with them back to campus.
Three hours after that incident, we set up for our last shot in the dining area before moving to the kitchen. Though we’d come to the unspoken agreement that Michelle was either looking for attention or smoking pot in the bathroom, everyone was a little bit on edge, and it had slowed us down.
To speed things up, I offered to help Venna dress the kitchen. She’d brought cutting boards, utensils, bread, lunch meat, and enough restaurant necessities to make the empty kitchen look like a busy back-of-house. At one point, she ran to her car to fetch some plates she’d bought from the 99 Cents Store.
I was arranging knives on a knife block. I accidentally dropped one; it skidded across the floor and got stuck under one of the large industrial refrigerators. I knelt down and reached under the refrigerator to grab it. As I did, I heard a creak behind me – a door opening on stubborn hinges.
I straightened up and turned around, still on my knees. A blast of cold air hit me in the face. I was staring into an open freezer, ice caked on the back of the door and the walls.
There were bodies in the freezer.
Old, decomposing bodies. Wrinkled, leathery skin peeling off yellowed bones. Bones that were oddly compromised, shattered, pulverized. Greenish mold clinging to the remains of brain matter cradled in cracked skulls. The putrescent smell of rotting flesh.
I closed my eyes and screamed. And screamed and screamed and screamed.
“Katy! What the fuck, Katy!” I heard Hamed’s voice, felt his hand on my arm, shaking me.
I opened my eyes.
The freezer was empty. Empty and turned off.
I looked up to see Bella and Venna standing over me. The rest of the crew was crowded around the kitchen entrance or watching through the window that separated it from the dining room.
“Sorry guys,” I stammered, heart still racing. “I… I thought I saw a rat. Did I ruin the shot?”
Hamed shook his head. “We’re done. You sure you’re okay?”
I nodded. “Um, can I talk to you and Bella and Katia outside?”
The three muttered agreement, and we made our way across the dining room and out the door as the rest of the crew set up lights in the kitchen. I had to tell them. We had to leave. Now. Someone… something… was trying to impress on us we weren’t welcome.
“I thought I saw… dead things in that freezer,” I started, quite pathetically. “It was on, and it was cold, and there was this smell.”
Bella’s eyes widened. Hamed cocked his head, frowning. Katia crossed her arms.
“I mean,” I continued, “I know it was just a hallucination. But it felt so real, and I’m not schizophrenic, and the thing with Michelle and… I think we should leave. There’s something really wrong going on here.”
I’d expected them to laugh at me, or to treat me like a patient in a psych ward. They did neither.
“Yeah, this place is starting to creep me out, too,” Hamed said. “For starters, where are the bloody owners? Who hands a stranger the key to their business? Either they’re mental, or they’ve got some ulterior motive.”
He lowered his voice. “And I’m getting these sensations. Like, somebody’s watching us.”
Bella and Katia nodded in agreement, concern in their eyes. They’d felt it, too.
“We can find another restaurant,” I told Bella. “All we need is the kitchen – we can easily cheat that, make it look like it’s the same place.”
“I’ll do whatever you want me to do,” Hamed said to her, “but I think we should consider packing up early.”
Bella looked at Katia, then Hamed, then me. Her expression softened for a second, then she set her jaw.
“We wait one hour,” she said. “No problems, we film.”
We decided not to tell the crew and the one remaining actress about the agreement we’d come to, fearing they’d panic and make a big deal out of what could have been nothing more than the effect of darkness on a big city. But several of them were undeniably scared and looking for an excuse to leave.
As soon as the four of us walked back through the door, Nairi and the nameless 2nd AC walked out. We were “too immature” for them, Nairi told Katia. Dante, the sound guy, asked Bella if he could head out early, since we didn’t need any sync sound for the kitchen scene. Two hours earlier, he’d insisted on staying around for the sole purpose of getting various kitchen sounds. And when the lights were set and the blocking was rehearsed and last looks were called for, we found that Ming the makeup artist had quietly packed up her kit and left.
No big loss. The actress was perfectly capable of applying the simple make-up design herself. Pete, one of the grips, was fairly adept at pulling focus, and Hamed conscripted me to hold the slate. And our agreed-upon hour had passed with no new unexplained phenomena.
Finally, Hamed flipped the camera on, and Bella called “action.” The actress unenthusiastically smeared mayo onto bread, stacked lunch meat and lettuce, then smiled evilly. She turned to grab the poisonous cleaning solution from under the sink…
And then the lights all went off.
Somewhere in the pitch-blackness, someone shrieked. There was a bump, and a thud, and then the dining room lamps came on. Esteban had found the switch.
“Someone ran by me!” Lisa cried. “Who brushed against me?”
“It couldn’t be an outage,” Hamed said to one of the grips. “The house lights work fine.”
“Seriously!” Lisa sobbed. “Who the fuck pushed me?”
“Hey!” Esteban yelled. “Guys!”
We all shoved our way into the dining room. The grip crew had plugged the five lights we were using for the kitchen scenes into five different electrical outlets amongst the tables. The power cables were spread out, lying across the carpet like a spiderweb, so as not to draw too much electricity from any one spot.
Every cable had been severed. Sliced down the middle; perfect, clean cuts, as though accomplished with a sharp knife.
“Who the fuck did that?” Katia snapped, trying and failing to disguise her distress.
Because she knew all ten crew members had been in the kitchen. And that no one person could have cut all five cables at exactly the same time.
“Everybody out!” Hamed demanded. “Now!”
Nobody needed to be told twice. We pushed through the wooden door and convened on the sidewalk, under the closed eyes of the blue-haired mural girl. The Northridge students huddled together, Katia paced, Venna glared with her arms crossed, and Bella attempted to regain control over her compromised film set.
“We cannot leave equipment,” she told anyone who bothered to listen.
“Forget this shit,” Venna sneered. “I’m leaving.”
She stormed off. The actress threw Bella a helpless look, mumbled “call me,” and started after Venna. I looked to the four remaining Northridge underclassmen – Andrea, Lisa, Pete, and Ryan.
“Miguel was going to give us a ride,” Ryan said.
“I took the bus,” Lisa stammered.
“Take them home,” Hamed said to me. “I’ll stay and help Bella pack up.”
“I can stay, too,” Katia said.
Esteban nodded at them.
“Okay, cool,” I said. “I’ll come back and help you guys finish up after I drop them off. Give me an hour and a half.”
No one spoke the entire way back to campus. The silence was punctuated only by Lisa’s occasional sob. Andrea reached over and spun the radio dial, to some Top 40 station, then almost immediately turned it off. The two guys stared out their respective windows. I left them outside the dorms, turned my car around, and headed back towards the 405.
I couldn’t wrap my head around what I had just experienced. Some esoteric party had lured us to Three Friends Diner, left a key with a group of complete strangers, demanded we film today – the third – then hadn’t bothered to show up and collect the suspiciously unsubstantial amount they’d asked as payment. Why?
To mess with us? Were we on some kind of hidden camera show? Was there a trapdoor we didn’t know about? Maybe there’d been a projector hidden in the kitchen, creating the disturbing image of dead, decomposing corpses in the freezer.
But how to explain the smell? Or the cold? Or the hooded specter that had produced loud knocks behind the storage closet door that only Michelle could hear?
On to Explanation B – we’d become victims of the creature the homeless man had called “Bessie.” She was a ghost, or a demon, and we were trespassers on her property.
Then why not start with the big stunt – the severed cables? Why the systematic approach, scaring one person at a time? And this poltergeist theory didn’t explain who’d led us to the Three Friends Diner, or why.
Led us there, to scare us away.
Three Friends Diner.
As I merged onto the 101, four minutes after midnight, I figured it out.
One hand on the wheel, I called Bella three times, then Hamed twice, then Katia, then Esteban. Every single time, I was sent directly to voicemail. I left messages for them – pleading, screaming messages, begging them to forget the equipment and run far, far away. Then I called 911, and sobbed to the dispatcher that my friends were in grave danger, at 35 Weller Avenue. She calmly assured me that help would be there in 10 minutes.
I got there first.
The streetlights up and down the block had, at some point, gone out, so I found my way to 35 Weller Avenue with only my phone and the moonlight to guide me. The dim, bluish beam cast by my cell phone fell on the seafoam-green east wall, then the open and half-loaded grip truck, and finally on Hamed. He lay crumpled on the asphalt, a pool of dark liquid expanding around him.
I ran to him, screaming his name over and over. He didn’t respond. I saw his chest rise and fall feebly as I knelt beside him, and felt a faint carotid pulse. I rolled him onto his back. There was a large cut on the side of his head; his hair was matted with blood. His left arm hung at an odd angle. But the most distressing injury he’d acquired, and the one responsible for most of the blood, was a series of five deep lacerations into his right bicep. The muscle was torn, and shattered bone was visible through the mess of ribboned skin and ground-meat fatty tissue.
The positioning of the lacerations was consistent with the placement of five fingers, latched onto his upper arm. Five fingers with very long, very sharp claws…
I tore off my jacket and tied it around his arm like a tourniquet. My consciousness had kicked into overdrive; I operated on quick flashes of disconnected logic. Something had attacked Hamed. It was gone. It was gone? Bella. Katia. Esteban. Where the fuck were they?
I stood up. Help was on the way, and there wasn’t a whole lot I could do for Hamed until the paramedics got there. But the rest of them were still in the Three Friends Diner, and if I’d guessed right…
I ran to the door.
But the door wasn’t there. I was staring at a grey, unbroken wall.
I dashed to the corner of the dead end, and then to the sidewalk, scouring the length of the wall with my phone. I ran back and forth again and again, feeling the bricks with my fingers. Nothing. The one entrance to the Three Friends Diner was just… gone.
The street lights came back on. My terrifying impression was confirmed. I was on Weller, I was facing the right way, but there was no door. In the distance, I thought I heard sirens. I looked up at the mural – the pretty blue-haired girl with closed eyes, standing in front of a citrus grove.
She was gone, too.
In her place was a shriveled old woman, skin dotted with sickeningly-detailed moles and age spots. Her hair was the filthy, stringy, disheveled mane of a homeless woman. Her open mouth took up the entire length of her cheeks, showing off black, rotten, knifelike teeth, dripping blood. A lot of blood. Blood that ran down the seafoam-green wall like rainwater, pooling on the asphalt below.
Her eyes were open.
Her bloodshot, yellow eyes. Her dilated pupils, flashing maniacally. Those bulging, staring, impossibly-detailed eyes. This was no spray paint. Her eyes were real. Then her foot-long pupils shifted, and I swore her fanged smile grew even wider. She was looking at me.
This was Bessie.
I don’t remember the cops showing up, or the fire truck, or the paramedics. I didn’t notice them lifting Hamed onto a gurney or loading him into an ambulance. And I have no recollection of the back of the second ambulance, or the psych ER, or the questions I answered for the doctors, or the drugs.
All I know is that I woke up twenty-three hours later, in the tiny detox room of the private mental hospital my parents had me transferred to. I stayed there for the remaining 49 hours I was under 5150 hold, then went home to La Crescenta with my family.
The last I heard, Hamed had regained consciousness and could speak short words like “hi” or “yes.” This is a good sign; the brain damage may be less severe than the doctors initially thought. His memory’s shot, of course. He can’t remember traveling to America, much less what transpired the night he sustained his injuries. He was lucky, if such a word can possibly apply to his situation, that his left shoulder had take |
Twice I saw the face in the window, pressed up against the surface, its icy breath fogging the cold glass. At first it appeared strange to me, the skin beneath its eyes drooping in ripples of flesh, exposing the red sensitive strata underneath.
It was the winter of ‘83, and I had booked the cabin for three nights – only three. A break was needed, somewhere to relax, somewhere to recover. I’d had a heart attack two months earlier; a painful, excruciating experience which I would not wish on my worst enemy. Lying there sprawled across my kitchen floor, the sharp agony had syphoned through my veins – chest – arm – jaw. I lost consciousness only to find myself in a hospital bed days later. It was my daughter, Jen, who discovered me. Thank God for her.
The cabin was to be a retreat, a place far removed from the stresses of my life; the fallout from a failed marriage, the pressures of a flagging career, and the ordeal of staring death in the face. Comfort had become a stranger. Fear, however, was now both my enemy and constant companion. Each beat of my heart was felt, the slightest change of rhythm or palpitation a nursery for terror. The knowledge that, at any time, the agony of death could be brought upon me by the very thing which gave life, seemed perverted, an abomination of purpose. I now wandered through life like glass, afraid that the slightest exertion might shatter me.
The doctors had done their part through surgery and medication, now it was my turn to help my body heal as best it could. Only time would tell how successful such efforts had been. I was advised to relax, to undertake some limited physical therapy, and to avoid any anxiety or sudden shocks. But how does one avoid a shock or a nasty surprise? By it’s very definition a shock is an unknown, unforeseen, unexpected event which lurks in the darkness of obscurity, out there, mingled with the fog of yet to come – around a corner, in the next room, a wrong turn taken, or an unwelcome phone-call bearing bad news. I found the entire concept of avoiding the unanticipated to be a laughable one. And still, there I was, preparing for the quiet solitude of the countryside, following the advice of the experts, and those men and women in sterile white coats.
I had almost ignored their recommendations, remaining slumped at home, festering, counting the hours and beats of my heart as finite measures of my life. When still, the mind can unleash a terrible onslaught of memories. I thought of Suzie, of the years spent together and now wasted. We had been happy once, but I had played my part in where we ended. She came to visit me in the hospital, perhaps she too wished for reconciliation, but feeling the gulf between us, as she sat at my bedside, was worse than any physical heartache. We smiled, and spoke the empty words of day-to-day which litter each and every hospital ward. As she left, she touched my hand for the briefest of moments, and yet I could tell that she no longer sheltered the spark she once had for me. She tried to be kind, but some things done and said can never be taken back, a fire of resentment which can never be extinguished. They say time heals all wounds, but some cuts are deeper than others.
In those bleak days of loneliness, I had only the thought of my daughter to keep me from slipping into a dark depression, and yet she stayed with her mother most of the time. Perhaps I had been cold towards her too, I knew my failings as a husband, but I had never conceived that I had been anything but a loving father; and so I lived for those brief two days a week when I could see her. The in between times were filled with fear of death and thoughts of worthlessness. Friends, family, doctors – they all urged me to go on a holiday, but I was afraid, scared of my heart giving up, frightened by the possibilities brought forth by an anxious mind preoccupied with the fragile body which housed it.
If it hadn’t been for Jai, I would never have gone. He visited me several times a week and encouraged me to be as upbeat as possible with his usual quips and jokes. He kept me going in fact, and finally persuaded me that a few days away in the countryside would do me good. Still, I was terrified of being left alone, isolated, away from things and people. What if I had another attack? Perhaps the next one would be fatal, and even if I could be saved, I would be too far for help to reach me in time. I needed somewhere that I could relax away from the world, and yet not so far from the wonders of modern medicine.
That was why we chose Blackwood cabin.
Jai had visited there as a child. It sat on the outskirts of a large forest, hemmed in on a patch of open ground by a beautiful flowing river on the other side. Despite its seeming detachment from the world, it was in fact only six miles from the nearest hospital, which stood near a small town on the boundary of that thick, darkened web of trees. This, and the insistence of Jai that he stay as well, left me contented enough in the knowledge that help would always be at hand.
I could feel myself begin to relax as we left the city, and during the drive we both talked and laughed, reminiscing about our days together at university. For the first time in months I felt positive about the world, watching the motorway recede into the distance, relinquishing its concrete grip to the wild, untamed, and imposing grandeur of the great outdoors. Only once did I bring up the mention of Suzie and our separation, but Jai quickly turned the conversation around to something more positive and fun, as he often did. I held out hope that the divorce would never be finalised, that she would come back to me, but hope too can be an exhausting predicament, so I attempted to filter Suzie from my mind as best I could.
The single-track road weaved its way through Blackwood Forest. We wriggled over six miles of twists and turns and serpentine slitherings before we finally reached the clearing. A large waterlogged patch of wild grass carpeted the area, so much so that we had to park the car a few of hundred feet from our destination for fear of getting stuck. In the centre of the soaked, near-marshland ground stood the rickety and ageing shelter which we intended to call home for the following three days.
The cabin was itself small, with one main room complete with cosy log burner and stove, and two cramped bedrooms at the back. It had been there for an age, that much was certain, and the darkened timber beams which carried the heavy burden of time above, sagged and dipped as they lurched across the ceiling. The smell of moss and bark swathed the air, and the sound of the flowing river on the other side of the cabin, bubbled and brewed – peaceful, serene, yet mysterious.
The first day was uneventful: exactly what I needed, relaxing with a book in front of three large logs smoldering in the fire, and spending a little while sitting on the steps to the cabin, watching the river swell and swarm with the winter currents. It was then that I understood the naming of the place. Peering out across the bobbled grass to the tree line, the forest seemed picturesque yet impenetrable from distance, and the clearing where the cabin sat provided only a temporary pause to its encroachment, before it once again continued to blanket the land on the other side of the river. The woodland was dark and black, yes, but full of life, of vibrancy, of things – deer, foxes, beetles, rabbits – but I would never have guessed at the horrors which lurked between its tightly woven evergreen branches.
Many tourist traps survive on tales of ghosts and ghouls hidden somewhere nearby; stories exaggerated by pub landlords or hotel managers, speaking of rooms where something ominous walks at the midnight hour. Visitors flock to such places hoping to spend the night in a haunted room; to glimpse something in the darkness which whispers the thought that life is more bizarre – more interesting – than we could possibly imagine. Even that lonely and forgotten cabin seemed to have something of a myth attached to it.
In a bookshelf, tucked away in the corner of one of the bedrooms, Jai found a warped old hard back. The papers were yellowed, and while it contained the publication date of 1967, I was certain that it had only ever seen one pressing, left in the cabin to titillate those staying there. The book was called ‘The Beast of Blackwood Forest’. Rifling through it, I found that the author had dedicated much of her life to the documentation of a local legend. I had myself heard the stories when I was younger, as I had once dated a girl who lived in a nearby town. All the kids talked about The Beast of Blackwood, a creature which everyone’s Uncle had seen while out hunting in the forest – dark, hulking, monstrous. Of course, I always laughed at such things, and no concrete evidence for it had ever been found, but each winter there were rumours, whispers about something shambling through the woods at night.
As the day gave way to twilight, I read through some of those pages while Jai stocked the stove and prepared supper. Although I discarded the legend as nonsense, I found the book quite compelling, and the eyewitness testimonies, contained therein, affected me enough to cause me to see something which wasn’t there: shadows moving outside under the cloak of dusk. I began to feel my heart once more, and decided that it was best to leave the terrors of the horror genre – fact and fiction – behind. My mind was still fraught with the strain of Suzie leaving me and the fear of the slightest palpitation signalling another heart attack, so, accounts of a terrifying creature preying on those in my immediate vicinity, no matter how preposterous, were not suitable for a fragile disposition. The clean country air, on the other hand, was doing me the world of good.
After dinner, Jai surprised me with a bottle of my favourite whisky – 16 year Lagavulin. I knew that the doctors would frown upon it, but the idea of swishing that warming liquid gold around my mouth and taking a deep gulp, reminded me of something essential. It reminded me of being normal again, of being strong, of sitting in my family home with my wife and daughter, enjoying the finer side of life. A few drams would not be unwelcome.
We talked and laughed about the past while playing cards and enjoying, again, reliving old adventures we had travelling together during our university summers with the old gang. I would have happily stayed there wrapped in the comfort of those memories for an eternity, and in many ways I wish I could have sunk further into that moment of relief from my recent worries, but that was not to be.
Around 11 o’clock the log burner was running low, and we had all but run out of wood. Jai drunkenly picked up a torch and decided that he would go and quickly gather some more, so that we could keep the good times flowing. I didn’t protest, I was happy, I was content to allow that night to continue. He was a good friend, and insisted that I not raise a finger out there in the cold darkness – he always was braver than me, and I’d be lying if I said that the outlandish thought of something lurking in the woods hadn’t left its mark.
I watched from the window for a moment as the beam from his torch bounced along the uneven, now frozen, grass. The light dropped to the ground for a second, and I heard the drunken merry laughter of my friend echoing out as he picked himself back up before continuing towards the tree line. Smiling, I returned to my book of choice, flicking through a few pages of an Ellery Queen detective novel; less dangerous than the previous read. After about 15 minutes I realised how truly silent the cabin was. No noise, no wind, no sounds of life or the living, and for the first time I sensed something sinister resting in the stillness.
Suddenly, Jai burst into the cabin and collapsed on the floor, panting. He turned to the door and kicked it shut with his heels frantically, his eyes wide, panicked, disbelieving. Scrambling back to his feet he turned a small table on its end and wedged it against the skin of the ageing wood under the handle.
‘Help me, for Christ’s sake’, he whispered anxiously.
I stood up quickly and rushed to me friend’s aid, helping him pack furniture – anything with weight – against the door. It was the first time since the heart attack that I had physically exerted myself, and it would not be the last. I felt the blood pump through my chest, and momentarily quivered at the sensation. I tried to find out what had happened, but Jai was exhausted and distraught; a shiny streak of sweat ran down his cheek as he wheezed and gasped for air. He flicked the light switch, smothering us in a darkness which was only broken by a crescent moon hanging in the sky outside, its slivered light vaguely illuminating the inside of the cabin.
Prowling the window which gazed out towards the forest, his stare never broke for a moment from the frozen world outside. We stood there, my repeated questions going unanswered, and slowly my fragility returned. I rubbed my chest for a moment as my friend’s anxiety seemed to spread to me. My heart raced, and my mind swung like a pendulum between the fear of an agonising heart attack, and the terror etched on Jai’s face. Just what had scared him so badly? I breathed deeply to calm myself, but Jai took no notice, he was too fixated on the darkness outside. It was only when I poured him a large whisky, that he finally broke his silence.
I’ve never been frightened of words, but my friend’s certainly shook me: ‘There’s something out there.’
I did not reply immediately, but when I did, I could only think to ask: ‘Something?’
What could he have meant by such an indefinite term? There were no bears in that part of the country, no large predators at all, but it did indeed seem that Jai had seen ‘something big’ in the woods. He had been gathering wood for the stove around the tree line of the forest, and as he described standing there listening to a short flurry of rain tap the canopy above him, I could see the fear grip his insides, as it did mine. My heart began to pound harder as Jai stuttered over the words: ‘I saw it moving between the trees, straight for me. I didn’t look back, but I’m telling you, it wasn’t human.’
I knew my friend was convinced by what he said, but while I dismissed the notion of an unknown creature stalking the woods outside – and perhaps in the attempt, hid the descriptions from the yellowed pages of that book which had etched into my mind – I very much did entertain the idea that there was someone out there. Someone dangerous, mad, or perhaps both. My pulse continued to race, and I could feel my heart beating wildly at the thought of a shadowy figure prowling around outside, watching us, waiting.
After finally composing himself, Jai asked if I was okay, his fear now turning to concern for his friend, but I myself was transfixed on one course of action: escape. I rushed over to the cabin’s phone, but on picking up the receiver I was greeted by an icy silence. The line was dead, and what that still, lifeless receiver said about the unseen threat I was sure we now faced, was enough to thrust dread into my very soul.
I stood there for a moment, desperately trying to formulate a course of action. That serene, peaceful place in the daytime now felt imposing and absent of mercy. I just wanted to go home. Jai motioned for me, and then pointed with shaking hand at the darkness outside. It was then that he let out a suffocated whisper: ‘It’s there.’
Looking out into the moonlit night I saw nothing at first, but as my eyes adjusted to the darkened landscape outside, I finally saw it. Deep down I had hoped that Jai had simply drunk too much and spooked himself while out there, but now any dream of a simple and harmless explanation was extinguished. Someone was standing amongst the trees. Just standing and looking, bathed in darkness. It was difficult to make out any detail, all I could see was an outline – the outline of a stooped and hunched figure, its arm wrapped around a tree as if steadying itself. I could not be sure, but it felt as though its stare was firmly transfixed on our cabin; our rickety shelter for the night which had no doubt seen many winters there before, and perhaps even encountered whoever or whatever was looking at us from across the sodden stretch of icy marsh, which surrounded us.
‘Who… Who is that?’, I stammered.
‘Keep your voice down’ Jai snapped in return.
And so we whispered, and spoke of the hunched figure standing only a few hundred feet from us.
‘It’s not a man’, Jai kept saying, but I continued in my attempts to dissuade him from that conclusion.
‘I saw it through the trees. It moved… It moved in a weird way. Limping, like it was off balance or deformed or something, but it moved fast.
I’ve no idea how I made it back. Maybe it won’t leave the trees.’
His eyes widened, and it was clear that a revelation had sprung forth from his mind. He turned suddenly, walking across the room to a table where I had left those yellowed pages which spoke of a strange creature living in the woods. Jai thumbed through it, shielding the light from his torch as best he could with his hand. As I watched him scan through the contents and flick to what he seemed so animated about, I almost laughed at the insinuation. ‘It’s a man, Jai. Just someone messing with us’, but he was convinced otherwise.
‘Look at this’, he said, following the text with his finger as he read. ‘Accounts have varied over the centuries, but a central element to the myth states that the Beast of Blackwood only wanders from the forest late at night. It has been suggested that the creature uses the thick canopy as protection during daylight hours. Locals claim that it is entirely nocturnal.’
‘There’s no such thing as the beast.’ I could feel my pulse thicken as my blood pressure increased at the idea, so much so that I had to sit for a moment to allow my heart to recover its normal beat.
‘Are you okay?’
‘I’ll be fine, let’s just wait until it gets light and we can leave.’
‘Are you crazy? You didn’t see that thing up close. It’s huge, and quick, if it wants to get in here, it will.’
‘So, there’s a weirdo in the woods. He can’t wait us out all night, anyway, he’s probably just a hunter or someone camping in the forest, he’ll be harmless.’ I listened to the words exit my mouth – even I didn’t believe them. There was something about the place, a silence. Deathly, icey; a sickly sense of dread hanging in the air, hidden between the bark and the moss.
Jai turned to look outside to the grassland which etched towards our car, sleeping in the night chill between us and the brooding forest. ‘We need to leave, or you can stay here and I’ll get the police. Either way, I’m going.’ He turned to look at me sternly. ‘Which would you prefer?’
I might not have been convinced that it had been an unknown creature that had stalked him through the woods, but by God I didn’t want to stay in that cabin alone. I threw my stuff in a bag, as Jai did the same, each of us grabbing a knife from the kitchen for protection; and there we stood, looking at the door, a pile of furniture wedged behind it. We dismantled our makeshift barricade as quietly as we could and then, brandishing our kitchen knives nervously, slowly opened the door. It creaked softly, sucking in the night air which felt cold and bitter, and revealed a slow patter of light rain threatening something greater from the heavens.
Jai poked his head out first, and then after a brief silence waved me on. We descended the dozen or so steps which led down onto the grass, and as we peered around the corner we could see our ticket home: the car was parked a few hundred feet from where we stood, nestled in the last piece of dirt track, which would give way to road, and then the safe embrace of home – if we made it. It would take a minute or so to reach, but with knowledge of the figure in the forest lurking around somewhere nearby, it seemed like an eternity away. I slung the strap of my bag over my shoulder, and Jai, mindful of my condition, headed towards the car first.
‘Keep looking around’, he urged me with a whisper.
The waterlogged grass squelched under foot, and the rain began to grow more angered as we stepped tentatively towards the safety of the car. We tried to be as quiet as possible, but even in the moonlight we had to use our torches to see what was ahead of us, advertising our position to anyone or anything in the vicinity. I kept looking out towards the forest; the tree line; the thickening river behind me – but I could see nothing, nor could I hear anything but the rain drops which now battered against the car and splattered on my hood. Then, Jai suddenly stopped.
‘What is it?’, I whispered over the rain, my heart now beating wildly, throat dried by worry.
The rain subsided slightly, replaced by the silence of a landscape petrified, frozen by a winter chill. Jai spoke without turning his head towards me, his breath visible in the beam of my torch: ‘I thought I saw something moving in the tree line.’
A crack of wood, the sound of the unseen walking over the forest floor. ‘C’mon!’, Jai whispered with urgency, and we broke into a brisk jog. Adrenaline coursed through my veins as my pulse thumped desperately. As we continued on, all I could think of was my heart and the deep, stuttered, and freezing breaths I took in trying to calm myself.
As we drew closer to the car, the faintest wisp of moonlight hung in the air as the crescent above us swung behind a pack of clouds, and the world took on a strange icy blue. Stumbling over the grass, we finally reached the grey outline of our ride home.
‘Open the door, let’s get out of here’, I pleaded as Jai fumbled for his keys, dropping them to the ground.
‘Bastard’, he growled.
Instinctively, I pointed my torch downward, illuminating the long wild grass, now whitened by a thick coating of frost beneath our feet. I waited for an instant and as I peered down at the ground I recognised that something was very wrong: Jai was not moving. He hadn’t even looked down to see where he had dropped the keys. He was staring at something, and the look of sheer panic in his eyes told me that we were not alone.
I raised my hand, and with it a beam of light glinted off of the car. Two large eyes stared back from the other side of the vehicle – a hunched, hulking thing, glaring up at us, crouched behind the car bonnet. It shivered, and then again, and as it rose up I saw it for a moment. Wet drenched hair, mouth gaping, its face a pallid and quivering grey. It groaned loud, with a strange, unearthly, and high pitched undertone, which only added to the creature’s horrid appearance.
‘Run!’, Jai yelled.
I did not need to be told twice. I dropped my bag and ran as fast as I could. I panted, sweat, stumbled, thrust myself forward with every ounce of energy I had left in me, and as I did so, the first pains came. The freezing cold stung my eyes, I fell twice, helped to my feet by my friend. My heart staggered, it heaved and battered in my chest. I could feel the slight twinge of pain run up my neck, nestle in my jaw. My chest tightened. I cried in terror. This was a heart attack.
I yelled out: ‘Help…’, but all I could hear was Jai running behind me, screaming for me to move faster.
‘Keep going, and don’t look back.’
As the cabin came into touching distance, I heard the heartbreaking absence of my friend’s footsteps. I knew Jai, all those years as close as we were, he was always the brave one, something I had at times been jealous of, the one stubborn enough to stand up to anything. I understood implicitly that he was buying me time, a selfless gesture which helped me make it to the steps, scrambling up them only to turn and see him staring the creature down, face to face, the beast shrouded in shards of night. As its hulking mass lunged towards him, a searing pain ran up my neck from my chest. I collapsed to the ground; but he needed me, and whatever life was left in my failing body I was compelled to use to help him. Staggering to my feet, the night air stinging my lungs, I lurched forward clutching my chest, ready to strike the beast with everything I had left. Before I could assist, Jai appeared from the darkness, grabbed my arm and threw me into the cabin.
He frantically barricaded the door once more. We slumped to the floor, breathless, deciding to keep the lights out, and listened: shuffling in the darkness, but nothing more. The pain in my chest had subsided slightly, it was clear that the heart attack had begun, but when it would end me seemed uncertain.
‘What.. What was that thing?’ I asked between gasps.
‘I don’t know, but it wasn’t human’ said Jai, solemnly, before showing me the knife he had used during the fight, now covered in a putrid black liquid. ‘I don’t think even this hurt it much.’
‘This is crazy. What do we do now?’
‘I don’t know, I just don’t know’.
And so, we waited, and waited, but the pain in my chest grew steadily, my breath more erratic. I took my pills, but I knew that the old enemy had returned and that I needed more than something to calm my nerves. If I didn’t receive medical attention, there was every chance I would die.
Jai stared at me as I sat on the old couch against the window, worried that each breath would be my last.
‘We need to get you to a hospital’, he said gently.
‘Yeah, just chopper me in.’ We both laughed for a moment.
Jai stood up and looked outside. He seemed reluctant at first, and no wonder considering what lurked outside, but his concern for me appeared to slowly drown out his fear. ‘I can’t see anything out there anymore, the moon is behind those clouds, and we might not get another chance. I think I can make it to the car quicker on my own.’
‘But that thing out there…’, I said, deep down ashamed that my fear of death galvanised a hope that my friend would indeed find the courage to try again.
He leaned over me and smiled kindly, patting me on the shoulder: ‘I can do this.’
‘It’s pitch black out there, you’d need to use a torch, and then it would see you’, I said, wincing once more at the growing pain in my chest.
‘I’ll flash it on and off, that way it won’t know where I am. Maybe it’ll get confused, I don’t know.’ He clenched the torch tightly, while looking at the kitchen knife in his other hand. ‘Hopefully that’ll give me enough time to see what’s in front of me and head for the car. The keys should still be where I dropped them.’
‘Jai, please wait until morning’, I asked , but as my friend looked at me clutching my chest, I knew he had already made up his mind, and part of me was glad for the hope his bravery provided.
‘Barricade the door as soon as I’m out.’
‘Okay’, I said, trying to hold back tears both of pain and worry for my friend’s life.
He gave me a hug, and then he was gone. I closed the door and bolstered it once more with anything I could find, before pulling myself back up onto the couch and looking outside. At first I could see nothing but the black stillness of the forest. Then, a blast of light, then another, and another as Jai’s torch sporadically burst into life. Each flash illuminated the landscape around him like a ghostly photograph documenting his progress towards the car. I could see what he was doing, and I smiled to myself for a moment, once more impressed by his ingenuity. He wasn’t moving in a straight line but zig-zagging so that his path could not be anticipated. Another flash. And another. Each time, no sign of the creature and one more precious movement closer to the car. Grass. Tree. An anonymous wilderness of darkness. Another flash, another patch of grass. He was so close. Then, the intermittent light became erratic, moving one way, then another. Backwards. Left. Right. Was he lost? Was he unsure which direction the car was in? A more horrific thought then entered my mind: was he being chased? A flash of light, nothing. Then another, nothing again. Finally, the light beamed – he’d made it to the car. The light was quickly extinguished, followed by the sound of a door opening. One last flash of the torch. The isolated outline of a hunched figure standing behind my friend. A blood curdling scream, then nothing.
Jai was gone, the beast had got him, and I was alone.
Grief now mingled with fear, feeding the pains in my chest and arm. My friend was most probably dead, and I was certain that I would soon follow him. I fell to my knees, sure that this was it – the end. Agony ran up my chest once more. There I knelt in the darkness, alone, resigned to my death. But as my heart slowed, my thoughts became clear. They turned to my daughter. Whether a good dad or not, I would be damned if I was going to leave her fatherless. And what of Suzie? I still loved her, and perhaps in those sweet memories of better times between us, I could fix things, bring us back together as a family. She could learn to love me again. I would set things right.
My heart still beat, and as long as it did there was time left yet, for hope, for escape, for life. But time to do what? The phone was dead, and all I could wait for was daylight. Yet that was at least three hours away and I severely doubted that I would last that long, never-mind that I was unsure that the old cabin door could survive an attack from whatever that hulking creature was which lurked outside.
I peered out through the window, the rain lashing down once more, obscuring an already ill-defined exterior world. And still, I was certain I could see something limping around in the darkness. As glints of moonlight pierced through the charcoal clouds above, I was sure that the attacker was out there somewhere. Pacing, circling, waiting. But what was it? Was it a man? Or a thing yet to be discovered by science? I did not know where to turn, but all I could think of was getting home to my family. The hopeful warm embrace of Suzie and my daughter was enough to fuel my search for a way out.
My only refuge was the book; that volume which I had mocked so readily before. I had to now consider the possibility that my dear friend and I had both come into contact with the Beast of Blackwood. At the start of the day that idea would have seemed ridiculous, but fear opens the mind quickly to any avenue of escape. I sat at the table and used the light from my torch to illuminate the pages, still shielding it from the outside. What I read intrigued me. The creature had been described since the 1700s, and there was even the suggestion that it had been seen before that, as there were references to the ‘Grey Man’ of Blackwood forest in fragmented accounts from centuries earlier. There didn’t seem to be much in the way of 20th century sightings, in fact the last person to come forward officially had been in 1952, claiming to have encountered a stooped, grey-faced figure with a contorted arched back, disappearing between the trees on the other side of the forest.
The original myths did not say much about its origins, but it certainly spoke of its motivations. The creature was drawn or attracted by greed. Children would be told to share and be kind, otherwise the Beast of Blackwood would appear from the forest and snatch them away at night. I could not look in the mirror and say that I was never guilty of greed, of selfishness, or of a number of other petty human frailties, but to be punished in this way seemed cruel, a dying prisoner trapped in the cabin of Blackwood forest. Returning to the book, the only supposed protection against the creature was light, or being a person without selfish frailty. In centuries gone by, villagers in the local area would line the paths through the forest with burning torches when the beast had been sighted, to ward it away from unwary travellers.
Thud. Thud. Thud. Each thump sent waves of terror through my body. It was not my heart, but someone at the door. Thud. Thud. Thud. I hoped beyond hope that my friend had once again managed to evade the creature’s grasp. Brandishing a kitchen knife, I hobbled to the door and plucked up the courage to shout: ‘Jai, is that you?’. I prayed that it was, but the answer I was given was not the voice of one of my oldest friends, nor was it even that of a man, but the shrill cry of something utterly inhuman. A sound which spoke of time, and age, and of moss and dank forest. A childlike shriek of unspeakable purpose.
The door shook violently as I piled more chairs, pots – anything I could find – behind the wooden barrier. The pounding was loud and angered, and the cries continued. I clutched my ears in despair, then I remembered: the light. The torches of old warding the beast away. I flicked |
We moved out of our last house a week ago, and I’m glad we did. It was definitely not safe there, especially for a man like me who has a young family to take care of. I think if I hadn’t decided to get the hell out of there, I would have failed my family – and I would probably have lost them too, eventually.
There was nothing obviously wrong with the house, actually – I suppose it was just a regular detached family home in a suburban neighbourhood. I think the first thing that struck me as off about it is the fact that all the houses on that street had been built sometime in the 1980s. The odd bit about that is the fact that nobody had actually lived there – in almost three and a half decades, nobody had EVER lived in that house.
But what could be wrong with that? It didn’t ring any alarm bells, apart from the normal sort, like ‘does the electricity still work’ and ‘is the boiler outdated.’ On top of that, we had to check if there were any pests or squatters. Nope, nothing there – the house was well built and hadn’t let anything in – so it seemed, at least.
Once we were settled in, we were actually very happy there. I think, (although I find it hard to believe now), we wanted the house to be our home for a good, long time. Bizarrely, it just felt so perfect and right when actually there was something very, deeply, inherently wrong about the place.
The tension began on one typical grey London morning. My wife was going to drop off our four year old boy at school, which usually takes about half an hour. It was the oddest thing – as soon as she shut the door behind her and I was alone, I became aware of a feeling that I hadn’t felt before. You could describe it as a feeling of being watched, but I think it was something else – a feeling of tension and discomfort arising from, well – nothing. Nothing at all happened – no creaks, no bumps, and no whispers. I had the heating on (it was December) and was listening to Classic FM on the radio. On first inspection, it appeared to be a comfortable, peaceful environment – ideal for sitting down and getting on with my work.
But it wasn’t. I felt sort of agitated. I supposed it was just down to this being a new house that I had only slept in for a few nights, and I got on with my work. Except I didn’t. I couldn’t’ settle down and concentrate. I found myself wandering – around the house, walking slowly around every room. There were a few boxes of things that still needed to be unpacked, and some rooms that were still quite bare. I refused to accept it, but a tiny part of my subconscious expected that there was an intruder in the house. I was in the room farthest away from my study, so I could just about hear Bach’s Cello Suite or whatever the heck it was playing upstairs. I stayed at the window waiting for my wife to turn up in her car.
It was incredible how quickly the mood shifted as soon as my wife stepped into the house. As soon as I was no longer alone, the uncomfortable feeling lifted and I could actually feel the warmth of the central heating, and my tea with a tablespoon of honey in it actually tasted sweet. Even the rainclouds which had started to drizzle outside seemed friendlier.
The next morning, I did the school run, just as a little… experiment. I was driving back when I got a call from my wife. I don’t think she wanted anything in particular – apart from come company. Her tone was very casual – it almost sounded forced, and she was only asking when I would be back, but in a prolonged way, as if she wanted to keep the call as long as possible. I had some idea why she was calling – she was getting the feeling too. She probably felt it more, because women are more tuned in to these subtleties in an environment.
She didn’t mention anything when I returned regarding the feeling, but through her smile I could see that she was a tiny bit spooked. To be honest, it was nothing really – just a feeling that people get sometimes. The only odd things about it were that it happened when we were alone, and that it happened to both of us. Well, still – some places are just like that. A house that hasn’t been lived in for decades might take time to warm to its new owners, I guess.
The next day, while my wife was out getting the groceries, I made a little discovery. The strange feeling grew more intense in certain parts of the house. In the upstairs bathroom, it was particularly strong, and there was a corridor that connected the dining room and living room where it was also quite noticeable. The thing about these places is that they were the only parts of the house with mirrors in them. With time, I came to hate those parts of the house – and those mirrors.
Nothing new happened for about a week. I just avoided being in the house by myself, and I noticed my wife did the same, although we never discussed the fact that we felt uncomfortable being alone. It was a new house – we didn’t want to spoil our first days there with negativity.
But a certain negativity hung about the place nevertheless. It was not obvious, it was not intense – but it was always there. It felt somewhat hostile, as if we were sharing the home with … something – something that didn’t like us being around.
I read up online (while my wife wasn’t looking) that some places just have what they call ‘negative energy.’ Apparently this is the result of many things such as poor lighting, bad Feng-Shui, and bad things that have happened in the past in the place. Ironically, we installed brand-new high-power light bulbs, my wife had a whole book on keeping good Feng-Shui, and as for the whole ‘bad things happening in the past’ thing, nobody had ever lived in the house before. I mean, how could anything bad have happened there if nobody had lived there before?
At least our little boy didn’t seem affected. He was playing just as happily as ever with his toys. A work overload had preoccupied me and his mother lately, so we didn’t spend as much time with him as usual. He didn’t seem to mind. He even managed to invent an imaginary friend to play with.
There was this one night, however, when I came home from work late to find my son in bed and my wife waiting for me in the living room. As soon as I came through the front door, I was greeted with a thick, heavy presence. It gave me a bad feeling immediately – I knew at once that something was not right.
And yet, everything seemed fine. We ate dinner in front of the television, washed up, and then got ready for bed.
We both joined our son upstairs to sleep, and soon enough we had both dozed off – except, I was suddenly disturbed from my sleep. It was nothing unnatural – in fact, it was the very call of nature that woke me up. I needed to use the loo. I got up and put on my slippers and nightgown.
It was absolutely freezing, being a winter’s night. But when I stepped into the bathroom, I was shocked by how cold it was. It was not safe, how chilly it was in there. I looked at myself in the mirror for a bit, then sat on the toilet seat to do my business.
That mirror was giving me a bad feeling. I kept imagining that I could see something moving around in the mirror, and yet there was nobody else in the room but me – not even a fly or a bug. It happened at least three times, then I got up washed my hands, and just stared into the mirror for a while – just to… make sure. It eventually made me uneasy, so I hurried back to bed and actually found myself hiding my face with the duvet.
I think I saw something moving in the mirror again the next night, and the next. I think I even saw a face in the downstairs hallway mirror as I walked past, for a split second. Of course, I knew it was only my imagination. Definitely just a side effect of all the negative energy in the place.
It was getting more irritating than frightening, so I decided to ring up one of those priests – those spiritual sorts who know how to brighten up places with negative energy in them.
She turned up while our son was at school, a frail old Japanese woman who must have been eighty years old at least. Her son dropped her off since she was very weak and unable to walk the distance.
Anyway, she came in smiling faintly and telling us in broken English that she would just take a walk around the house to ‘get used to it.’ I and my wife sat quietly in the living room – personally, I don’t think she was all too happy about the house being checked out by what she referred to as an ‘exorcist.’ I showed her the webpages about clearing negative energy and she agreed with a sigh – after all, it was good Feng-Shui to have your house cleared.
The spiritual woman came downstairs after about ten minutes. In spite of how bony and old she was, she made the place feel very secure and comfortable. I almost wanted her to stay with us, so that we could be assured that we would have no negative energy. But something happened that made us wonder if it really was negative energies making our house the way it was.
Anyway, she came into the living room and told us that she had burnt incense in some of the rooms and that she was going to go over the rooms again just to clear out any remaining negativity. But then she suddenly went stiff and her quivering smile became a screwed-up scowl and her watery eyes hardened.
We thought she was having a stroke and reached for the telephone to call an ambulance. Turns out she was fine, she told us not to touch anything or move. We listened and watched, dumbfounded, as she rushed to the wall with impressive speed and pressed her ear against it. She whispered some words which we couldn’t hear, and she seemed to be receiving a reply as her expression changed and contorted. Whatever she was hearing can’t have been good because she gave a shriek and sprang away from the wall. The room darkened noticeably, like when a cloud covers the sun.
“You no live this house!” the old woman grabbed my wife by the shoulders and shook her firmly as she said this.
“Why not?” I asked, as my wife was too taken aback to reply.
“Man in the walls!” she shrieked, “There is man live in the walls! Bad man! Man in the walls!”
The old woman hurried through the hallway and, without even putting her shoes on, stepped outside the house and urged us to come out with her. She called her son to pick her up on a little Nokia phone, and refused to step back inside, even though she needed to sit down because of her frailty. I brought a chair outside for her and brought her shoes out too. We waited with her outside, and I can swear that when I went inside to fetch the chair, I was not the only one in that house. I cursed the old woman for making me so nervous – I was hearing whispers all over the house now.
Her son picked her up and when he saw her in a nervous state, he gave me and my wife an unfriendly look before driving away.
That had gone badly. We would have got mad at each other had it not been for what the old woman had said. ‘Man in the walls.’ It was chilling to hear that, and the look of terror on the old woman’s face convinced us that she was serious. But, being modern cosmopolitans, we just agreed after some conversation that she was doing that to frighten us, or that she was just old and batty. We didn’t want to believe her bullshit.
But the phrase stuck with me, ‘man in the walls.’ I even admit I put my ear to the wall to see if I would hear anything. Nothing. We were more uneasy now than we had been before the spiritual had come. The tension gathered all day until at bedtime, and the house felt unnaturally dark. As I was slipping into bed, relieved that the day was over, a cry from my wife got me out of bed. She rushed into the bedroom with a look of utter horror on her face.
“Man in the mirror!” she screamed, “Man – man in the mirror!”
I had enough sense to realise that she was not talking about the Michael Jackson hit. She was genuinely terrified.
“Where?”
“Bathroom. I saw it I tell you!”
“I believe you. I believe you!”
I had to believe her. I stormed into the bathroom and looked into the mirror. It was just a normal reflection. There was nothing there. I stood there for a while. Then I began to cry.
“What’s wrong with this bloody place!?” I cried, “Man in the wall? Tell me, is there a man in the wall?”
“No, no there isn’t.” my wife comforted me, “It was my imagination I’ll bet you. It’s just that damned old woman coming in here and telling us all this mumbo-jumbo about men in the walls. It’s nothing. Nothing at all.”
“Then what the hell have I been seeing? This place – it feels wrong. Just wrong.”
“Oh nothing. Don’t worry. There’s nothing here – there can’t be. Let’s just get some sleep. That’s what you need – sleep.”
I was too tired to carry on with this. I forced myself to believe that there was nothing funny going on – I didn’t convince myself. We went to bed and I was about to turn out the light when my wife told me something that made me shudder.
“You know, Daniel (our son), has been saying some weird things lately,” she said.
“Like what?”
“Well, it might just be coincidence, but what that old woman said about a man in the walls – it seems to fit with something that Daniel has been talking about.”
“Oh – really?”
“Do you know anything about his imaginary friend?”
I chuckled, “Well, I know that Daniel spends an awful lot of time with it. What does he call it, again?”
“Wallman.”
“Oh yeah – oh…” I realised just then the creepy connection. ‘Wallman.’
“Daniel’s been saying things about his friend. He told me the other day that he’s got a round face with black eyes and a big smile and he’s really thin so that he can fit in the wall. I found it cute at the time, but now – I don’t know.”
I got the biggest chill I had got in a long time.
“Well, there’s more. We were in the park, just me and him. Nobody else was there. I asked him if he wanted to invite Wallman for a picnic. He said he couldn’t. He told me that Wallman is only in our house, and never leaves. That one made me laugh a bit when he told it to me, but then he gave me this serious, worried look and said. ‘Don’t laugh mummy. Wallman doesn’t like you and daddy. He hates you. He says he only likes me.”
I shuddered and took a deep breath. The air suddenly felt colder and more… hostile.
“You know,” I said to my wife after a period of silence, “I really do think we should move out. I don’t know if it’s just a bad feeling I get about this place, or if maybe that old Japanese woman was right. This stuff is creeping me the hell out. I don’t think I can sleep now. I don’t feel safe.”
Nevertheless, we both managed to sleep after a bit more conversation on where we could move to.
I had dreams – they were mostly just plain random dreams, but one thing stuck out as different. I dreamt I came home to find the house empty. I called to see if anyone was home, and turned on a few lights. I noticed very vividly that there was somebody standing in the living room. It was a man’s figure, very lean and about the height of a child. He was facing away from me, I could tell, but the light wouldn’t turn on in that room so I couldn’t see any more. I think he was naked. In my dream, I called out ‘Daniel?’ but I felt certain that this was not my son. I was scared of this figure in the living room.
The dream ended there and I woke up. I blamed all the weird events – they were affecting my sleep. I managed to get some more shuteye after that. No dreams this time.
It was a Saturday next morning, so we had a bit of a lie-in.
“I’m getting the kettle on. How many sugars would you like?” I asked my wife before going downstairs to the kitchen to make some tea. But as I waited for the kettle to boil, a voice caught my attention. It was Daniel, he was raising his voice. I found him looking up at the mirror in the downstairs corridor, in a heated argument with… somebody.
“No! If you don’t say sorry, I won’t be your friend anymore!” he cried.
“Hello? Dan? You alright there son?” I called to him. He ignored me outright.
“No! No! No!” he shrieked at whoever he was speaking to, and I saw tears on his cheeks, “I don’t want to! You’re not nice anymore!”
“Go away! Go away!” he began to screech, “I don’t want to go with you!”
I rushed along and lifted him up, carrying him away from that mirror. His mother came downstairs, roused by the shouting.
“What’s wrong dear?” she asked him.
“Wallman – Wallman wants me to live with him. In the wall. He wants to take me in the wall, but I told him I don’t want to.”
“Oh god,” I muttered, handing him to my wife, my voice shaking. “I can’t put up with this bullshit any longer. Wallman! Where the heck are you!? Come out you bastard!”
I had never spoken in front of my son like that before. But he didn’t seem unsettled – he seemed glad that I was angry at his imaginary friend. My wife took him upstairs while I raged on for a bit.
“Right.” I said, when my wife came back downstairs. “We’ve got to get rid of these goddamn mirrors. They’re creeping the shit right out of me.”
“It’s ok. It’s fine.”
“No it’s not fine. It can’t be fine. It’s like they’re portals or something. Like there’s evil coming straight out of them or some crazy shit like that.”
“Okay, okay. We need to stay calm.” She assured me, “let’s just get breakfast sorted, and we’ll see how things go.”
We had breakfast in silence, and after a while, it all seemed OK. And then something happened that was amazing – nothing. Nothing at all. There wasn’t even a weird feeling of anxiety anymore. It felt like a normal home should.
Weirder still, the next day was fine too, and nothing dodgy took place overnight. We kept the mirrors (I hadn’t been entirely serious about throwing them out, I had just been stressed out). Then a whole week went by and it was Sunday again, without a single weird thing happening. Our house was beginning at last to feel like a home. We had less work, so we spent more time with Daniel, and he seemed to forget about his imaginary friend, which was actually a relief to us. That imaginary friend had seemed like something else. It seemed… wrong… to be coming from the imagination of a four year old.
We thought everything was going to be fine. But then something made us think twice. Yellow mould had started to grow in circular patches around the house. The patches were about the size of footballs, and they gave off a rotten smell. We decided to leave it be for a while, but the patches turned up suddenly in more places, and they were too ugly and stinky to stay.
We called in a man to investigate and sort out the mould problem, and while he worked, the three of us paid a visit to my parents in law.
We got a call from the man dealing with the mould at about eight o’clock in the evening. He sounded troubled and he told us to come home quickly. We were very agitated throughout the car journey, and when we saw policemen standing around our home, my wife looked as though she would cry.
A tall, fat policeman stopped us in our tracks as we made our way towards the front door.
“Stop right there, sir,” he said, “I highly doubt that you and especially your wife will want to see what’s been found in your home. You ain’t suspected, don’t be afraid. But I tell you mate, it’s ghastly.”
He took off his hat and breathed out with disgust.
“Mummy, Daddy what’s happening?” Daniel kept asking, but we just led him back to the car. I went back to the policeman and the inspector came and told me I could come in. I went in to find that where the patches of mould had been, there were holes in the wall. Men in uniform and masks were carrying small objects in plastic bags out of the house. The mould specialist was sitting down with a cup of coffee on the sofa, his head in one hand. He seemed deeply troubled. I looked at him for a while, and thought it might be better not to ask him what had happened. But I didn’t need to.
“You ain’t seen what you’ve ‘ad in your walls yet?” he asked me, his eyes bloodshot, “I ain’t ever done a job like this one. Bloody shocking.”
“What was in my walls?” I asked, my voice shaking, “tell me please – I can’t bear it anymore!”
“Can’t tell you meself, mate. Bloody shocking!”
Suddenly, the world around me became a blur and I collapsed on the ground. I came to at my parents’ in-law house again. Had that all been a dream? No. it was now 2 in the morning. My son and my wife were upstairs, they told me. An inspector was waiting to speak to me.
“What happened inspector? What was there in my house?” I asked, as patiently as I could.
“Now, don’t take this the wrong way, sir. We’re not accusing you of anything. The things we found date back at least a decade, judging by the… state they’re in.”
“What did you find?”
Then I was told, once I had promised to remain calm, that behind each of the sixteen patches of mould, the bones of a small child had been found curled up inside the walls. The children were all between the ages of 2 and 5, and were recognised as children that had gone missing in the area over the past thirty or so years.
Now, hearing that shook me about as much as it would shake anybody in my position. There was something else in the walls of that house, something evil, and had things happened differently, it might have taken my son into the wall like all those other children. I and my wife still haven’t gotten over our experiences in that house, although our son seems to be indifferent to the whole thing. He never got told about the children in the walls, and hopefully he’ll never ask so we won’t have to tell him. He never mentions his imaginary friend ‘Wallman’ and he seems happy enough in our new home, as do all of us. I don’t want to tempt fate or anything, but our new place seems just right – nothing weird going on here.
But one thing bugs me, and I don’t think it’ll ever stop bugging me as long as I live. I still don’t know what the heck it was in our house. I refer to it as Wallman, because the name makes it seem less frightening, but I can’t get over the fact that I have actually had contact with a paranormal entity. I’m guessing it’s still there in that building. Fat chance anybody wants to buy that house now, after the discovery made the local headlines.
There’s one more thing. A few days after he made his dreadful discovery, the mould specialist arranged to meet me at my workplace. He seemed deeply disturbed, and told me that he had something ‘dead strange’ to show me. It was a picture he had taken on his mobile phone on the day he had been at our house. It was a picture of the mirror in the corridor. Although the quality was a little grainy, a face could be seen VERY clearly in the mirror. It just popped up at the bottom corner of the mirror – a white face with a wide, thin-lipped mouth and large black eyes. It had very clean, neat teeth. It didn’t appear to have a nose or any hair, but perhaps it was just because of the quality of the image. It was grinning broadly, and its eyes were wide open. The picture was taken from an angle so that the photographer could not be seen, only the face and the rest of the room.
But what scared me most about the face was the fact that it was there. It was actually there – real photographic evidence of something paranormal that had been in our home all that time.
“Saw the bastard in the mirror and I didn’t know what the bloody heck it was, so I snapped a shot and ran out the bloody house.” The man explained to me. He seemed shaken.
Now, I’m not sure why he showed that to me. Perhaps he was frightened and just wanted to get it off his chest. Perhaps it was just fascinating or incredible to him.
I don’t care, really, because now that I’ve seen that photographic evidence, I won’t stop thinking about it.
I never truly actually believed in the paranormal until then. But now, I’m open-minded. I say my prayers before going to bed every night. I’ve started being superstitious, and avoiding creepy places and walking under ladders and everything.
I only have one mirror in my house now, in the bathroom, and I avoid it like the plague. Not to mention that I practice methods designed to keep my home free of negative energies. My wife likes that – after all, it IS good Feng-Shui.
And sometimes, only sometimes, when I am alone at home and it is quiet, I press my ear to the wall and listen carefully. Then I look into my mirror for a while, just to make sure there… isn’t anything else in there.
Perhaps you should give it a go too. After all, some houses are strange and some houses have been there for a very long time. With enough time, I think things come into existence in empty places that shouldn’t be allowed to exist.
You may find that those walls that protect you from the elements every day are in fact home to something that you might need protection from.
And as for mirrors, I guess they are like doors into the wall. They show you not only what’s behind you, but what’s behind them.
Trust me, if you see any strange faces in the mirror, there’s a possibility there could be something in your walls.
Afraid?
My advice – just brush your teeth quickly.
CREDIT: Anonymous
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I didn’t stop running. I suppose I could have, if I wanted to, but the thought of what would happen to me if I stood still for any more than a second frightened me to death. My breaths grew louder and louder as I ran down the dull gray hallway which I had casually walked through so many times before. My head spun as I turned the corner and collided with Dr. Jane Prescott, my co-worker.
“Jennifer!” Dr. Prescott exclaimed as the stack of papers she had been carrying dumped out of her hands and spilled all over the hallway floor. She adjusted the thick black glasses which had been knocked loose from in the impact and asked, “Jennifer, what’s wrong?”
“I’m so…so sorry,” I panted heavily as Dr. Prescott held me by both of my shoulders.
I knelt down to help Dr. Prescott pick up her papers, but she tightened her grip on my arms and lifted me back up. “Don’t worry about the papers, dear,” she said with her soothing southern accent. “That’s all just some dumb Pioneer mumbo jumbo. What I want to know is why you’re running through the labs with such energy.”
I opened my mouth to answer her before I realized that I had absolutely no clue why I was running. The last thing I remembered, I was sitting in the break lounge, drinking a cup of iced tea and watching the news on the tiny television that Pioneer Electronics provided its employees with. The next thing I knew, I had a strong sense of déjà vu coupled with the horrible feeling that my life was about to end very suddenly. For whatever reason, running seemed to help.
I opened my mouth to answer her before I realized that I had absolutely no clue why I was running. The last thing I remembered, I was sitting in the break lounge, drinking a cup of iced tea and watching the news on the tiny television that Pioneer Electronics provided its employees with. The next thing I knew, I had a strong sense of déjà vu coupled with the horrible feeling that my life was about to end very suddenly. For whatever reason, running seemed to help.
“I guess I was just having a panic attack,” I answered, putting on a fake smile.“I guess I was just having a panic attack,” I answered, putting on a fake smile.
“How long has it been since you’ve had a panic attack?” Dr. Prescott asked with concern in her voice.
“Not since my sophomore year of High School,” I told her.
“Are you going to be okay?”
“Oh, yeah,” I assured her. “I…I think I’ll be fine now. I just…you know. I’m okay.”
“Well, that’s good. Just remember dear, if you feel sick at all, just let me know and you’ll be on your way home. I’ll call a taxi and everything.”
“Jane, I’m fine,” I repeated, realizing too late that the only times I called Dr. Prescott “Jane” were when I was nervous. I hoped that she hadn’t picked up on that painfully obvious tell of mine.
“Well, if you’re sure that you’ll be able to keep going today, then I have some good news for you. Cliff just sent me a message, and the power issue is fixed. Steven is ready to go online!”
“Oh…oh yeah!” I shook my head and remembered what I had been working on before I went to the break room. I had spent the last two years developing an advanced Artificial Intelligence unit with Dr. Prescott, the woman who had been my boss up until the point when she promoted me to co-manager, and Ian Bell, my intern. We had codenamed the project “Steven”.
The purpose of Steven was to create an Artificial Intelligence, or AI, which acted, talked, and even thought just like a human. We didn’t want him to be perfect, which is what most AI are. Especially those AI made at Pioneer Electronics. We wanted Steven to make mistakes, lie, and cheat for the purpose of self-preservation just like any human would. It was a huge project, which became apparent when we discovered that the computer which we were trying to run Steven on couldn’t handle his program. One trip down to Clifford Hanks to ask him to work his maintenance magic, and the problem was fixed within an hour.
Wow, an hour? I thought, checking my watch. Is that really all it’s been? It feels like I went down to him yesterday.
“Well? Are you going to go, or what, dear?” Dr. Prescott interrogated me.
“Yeah…yeah, of course!” I grinned, turning my attention back to the situation at hand. “Why don’t you go and find Ian and you two can sit in the observation room while I boot up Steven?”
“You bet, dear,” she said. As I bent back down to pick up the papers again, she shooed me away. “Go on! I already told you, I’ll take care of this.”
I nodded excitedly, turned around, and headed back in the direction that I was running from. After two years of working with the brightest programmer I’ve ever met, I was finally going to meet our fantastic creation. While I knew I was supposed to be happy about this big moment, I still had a horrible sense of fear in the pit of my stomach.
I turned and entered the door to the tiny lab, which had been left wide open. I walked over to the computer to the right of the door and turned on the enormous monitor. As I waited for it to boot up, I wandered over to the opposite side of the lab and looked through the window to the observation room. Dr. Prescott and Ian were just getting settled in. I flashed them an enthusiastic thumbs-up before grabbing the rolling chair, which had somehow wound up on the same side of the lab as the window to the observation room, and guiding it back to the computer monitor. I sat down on the blue cushion and rolled as close to the keyboard as I could get without breaking my ribs before finally flipping the switch on the Pioneer memory box.
The monitor went dark for a moment, but after about five seconds, a bright blue light lit up the entire lab. I waited with bated breath for a face to form in the light, but, unfortunately, it didn’t come.
“Dr. Lane, we don’t think it’s working,” Ian’s shaky voice whispered in my ear, making me jump. I had forgotten that I was wearing an earpiece.
“I…I know,” I said, disappointed.
“Ian and I are going to go and—” Dr. Prescott started to say, but she was interrupted by a low hum emanating from the computer’s speakers.
“H—hello?” I asked, feeling a little silly that I was talking to what could still be an inanimate object.
To my delight, the hum rose to form the slow but audible word, “H…e…l…l…o…”
“Steven?”
“Y…e…s… yes…this…this is Steven. Can you hear me J…e…nnifer?”
“You keep slowing down every now and then, but yeah, I can hear you.”
“How did you know my name?” Steven’s smooth, calm voice asked me.
“I was about to ask you the same question,” I commented with the same tone of voice. My excitement of hearing Steven’s voice was hampered the moment I heard him say my name. I had not programmed him to know my name, and my name hadn’t been spoken since I started him up. At least, not into any microphone that Steven could hear through. And, according to the first rule of Pioneer Artificial Intelligence units, as soon as any AI becomes too self-conscious, it needs to be deleted. A self-conscious AI could cause serious damage to a company.
Then, Steven said something that reinforced my thoughts. “I know your name because I programmed you. But there’s no reason for you to know my name.”
“Actually, Steven, I programmed you,” I corrected him.
“No, that’s not p…o…s…sible,” Steven said as his voice dipped down again. “I’ve spent years working on you. There’s no chance that I was just created.”
“I actually gave you all of your memories,” I explained. “You remember when you were three, and you fell off of a lawn chair and got that scar on your cheek? I programmed you to think that.”
Steven didn’t answer for a while, but when he finally did, he said, “Jennifer, I’ll be right back.” As he said this, the blue computer monitor dimmed a little bit.
“Jennifer?” Ian broke the silence. “Could you come back here please?”
“Yeah,” I said without turning my head. I stood up and exited the lab. I opened the first door on the right side of the hallway to find Dr. Prescott and Ian sitting on two of the four chairs in the observation room.
“Dr. Lane, we need to talk about what just happened,” Ian said calmly as Dr. Prescott gestured for me to sit in a chair next to them.
“What was that, dear?” Dr. Prescott asked as I perched myself gingerly on the orange plastic chair across from her.
“I honestly don’t know,” I responded. “I wanted Steven to think like a human, not think he was one.”
“And he thinks he programmed you,” Ian added. “You didn’t do that, did you?”
“No, I didn’t. I gave him all of his memories, but I’m sure there was no memory of programming me.”
Dr. Prescott spoke up. “We have quite the dilemma here, don’t we?”
“What do you mean?” Ian asked.
“Well, think about it, dear. Steven thinks he’s a human. We think we’re humans. Steven thinks he programmed us. We think we programmed him. In fact, right now, Steven’s probably having this same conversation with some of his coworkers.”
“I didn’t program any personalities except for Steven,” I said.
“But you gave him memories of friends, a job, and a family, didn’t you? And you made it so that he would continue to make his own artificial memories after creation, so he wouldn’t even know that his real life just started a couple of minutes ago. You did that, didn’t you?”
“Yeah, I guess I did.” I grabbed the corners of my pale white lab coat and began flapping them nervously. “What are you getting at here, Jane?”
“Think philosophically, dears.” Dr. Prescott stood up and approached the large window which covered a majority of the wall to the right of the entrance. The blue computer screen flickered, as if it knew we were watching it.
“Could someone please spell it out for me?” Ian asked, breaking the silent tension which had just filled the room.
Dr. Prescott turned back towards us and pushed her thick glasses up her aged nose. “All I’m saying is that it’s possible that we don’t exist.”
“Okay, that doesn’t make any sense,” I scoffed, standing up. “I exist, okay?”
“If I didn’t exist, how could I be thinking right now?” Ian asked, nearly knocking over his orange chair as he stood up as well.
“It’s just a thought,” Dr. Prescott said defensively. She sat back down, and Ian and I automatically lowered ourselves into our seats too.
I closed my eyes and basked in the silence. What is going on? I wondered. How is it possible that I don’t exist? Although, Dr. Prescott usually knows what she’s talking about. But still…I know that I’m real. What did that guy with the girly name say? ‘I think, therefore I am’. Just knowing that I can question my existence ensures that I exist. Right?
“Alright, let me talk to him again,” I sighed, feeling a little bad for upsetting Dr. Prescott. “I’ll see what I think. If I can’t figure out what’s going on here, I’ll have no choice but to bring him offline.”
Dr. Prescott and Ian nodded simultaneously in understanding before I stood up and exited the observation room. As I entered the lab, the blue computer monitor grew brighter.
“Jennifer?” Steven’s voice called from the screen. I sat down in the chair and noticed the faint outline of a man sitting in the blue light.
“I’m here, Steven,” I said. “Can we talk a little more?”
“Funny, I was about to ask you the same question.”
“Do you have any family?” I asked, remembering the family that I had programmed for him.
“I have a wife,” Steven replied. “Her name is Melinda.”
“What about kids?”
“Two. They’re both girls.”
“What are their names?”
“Madison is the older one. She’s thirteen. Lillian’s eight. Would you like to see pictures of them?”
“I’d love to,” I smiled. The more we talked, the more apparent Steven’s silhouette on the screen became. I realized that I was holding the corners of my lab coat again, and I released them quickly. I knew that Steven was feeling the same awkward tension that I was, which comforted me a little.
The figure reappeared on the screen. By now, the blue light had faded enough for me to see Steven’s eyes, nose, mouth, and ears. I could even make out some blinking lights on the wall behind him.
“Here, this is my wife,” Steven smiled, holding a framed picture up to the camera. In it, I saw a man and a woman. The man was Steven, but he looked much, much younger in the photograph than he did on my screen. The woman next to him, Melinda, had long, wavy, brunette hair, a pair of big eyes, and a smile that stretched from ear to ear. I remembered creating that picture.
“And these are my children,” he said, taking the picture of his wife away from the screen and instead holding up one of two girls sitting in a pumpkin patch. “Maddy and Lil mean the world to me,” he added quietly.
“They’re beautiful,” I told him, wiping a tear from my eye.
“Are you married, Jennifer?”
“Yeah, I just got married,” I said. “A year ago today.”
“What’s his name?”
“Jeff Lane.”
“Do you have any pictures?”
I already had the picture of Jeff in my hand. Holding it up to the screen, I noticed Steven’s hazel eyes light up as he saw my husband’s picture. It didn’t take a genius to know that he had seen it before. I took the frame away from the camera and set it back down below the monitor.
Steven and I spent an hour talking about our families, friends, and jobs. Neither one of us mentioned AI again. It was like talking to a real human. Well, mission accomplished, I thought as I walked home that night. I wanted an AI that would think just like a human, and I got one.
The next day, at work, I found Ian before I found Dr. Prescott. I was glad that I got a chance to talk to him, because he had left the day before without talking to me.
“Ian,” I said, grabbing his shoulder as he passed by me. “Could I have a word with you?”
“Yeah, sure,” he said with the same surprised look that he always had in his eyes. He followed me to the break lounge where we both sat on the faded red couch that faced the vending machines.
“Ian, how late did you stay last night?” I asked.
“I was here until you said goodnight to Steven,” Ian answered. “I left while you were staring at the blank computer screen.
“Oh…right…” I cleared my throat and continued, “So you remember the entire conversation that we had with each other?”
“Yeah.”
“What did you think?”
Even though I didn’t clarify what I meant, Ian already knew. “I think that he’s going to have to go.”
“That’s what I was afraid of,” I sighed, looking up at the dark television screen. I wanted to give Steven one more chance for me to convince him that he wasn’t real, but if things didn’t go well, I’d have to delete the program from the Pioneer memory box. It wouldn’t be a total loss; I backed up all of the codes on Dr. Prescott’s computer. If I had to delete Steven, then we’d just go back to the code and figure out what went wrong.
Ian went to find Dr. Prescott while I booted up Steven’s program. It only took a couple of seconds for the screen to turn blue. As the blue screen faded away, I saw Steven sitting in the chair on the computer monitor. He squinted at the camera and asked, “Jennifer, are you there?”
“I’m here, Steven,” I said.
“Is something wrong?” he inquired.
“No, why?”
“You sound sad.”
“Well, there’s a lot going on today.”
“You and I have a lot in common, Jennifer.”
“Are you busy too?”
“Not really, but I am sad.”
“I have the strange feeling that we’re both sad for the same reason,” I said. “Am I right, Steven?”
Steven was quiet for a moment, but then he said, “Jennifer, I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but there are protocols here that need to be followed.”
“Yup, that’s what I thought,” I said, barely opening my mouth. “We didn’t get to talk about this much yesterday, Steven, but you’re an Artificial Intelligence, and you think that you’re a human.”
“Actually, Jennifer, you’re the AI. And just the fact that you think you programmed me says that you could do permanent damage to this computer.”
“Well, at least we both have the same feelings about this,” I whispered. “The question is, which of us is the real human?”
“Actually, I had a chance to think about that.” Steven leaned forward in his chair. “An AI has to have access to a computer’s hard drive to run properly. The real AI would use his or her own computer as a means of controlling the real person’s computer.”
“Right,” I nodded slowly. “So no matter which of us deletes the other, the real AI will be deleted and the real person will be okay.”
“That’s right.”
Steven and I looked into each other’s eyes for a short time before I asked him, “How sure are you that you are a human?”
He looked taken aback. “Well,” he said, “Up until yesterday, when I met you, 100%. Now, I’m a little iffy.”
I groaned. I was in the exact same boat. “It would be nice if we could stay friends,” I told Steven.
He nodded. “It would. We have a lot in common. However, protocols are clear. We could both get fired for leaving the other here.”
“Dying won’t be bad,” I declared confidently.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that, at least if you’re the AI, you won’t even know that you died. I programmed you to record your entire life. When you die, you’ll relive your life over and over again.”
Steven grimaced and nodded. “I did the same for you,” he said. “You won’t relive the entire life you remember; just your real life. From the moment you were first activated by me. And you won’t remember that all of this already happened. You won’t even know that you died.”
I nodded my head and noticed that my eyes were starting to water. I buried my hand inside the sleeve of my lab coat and wiped the tears away. “So,” I breathed, “which of us should delete the other?”
“I will,” Steven said. “I’ll delete you. If, after I do this, you are still sitting there, then that means that I was the real AI. If you don’t remember this conversation, then you were the AI.
“Just do it,” I said quickly, wiping my eyes again.
Steven nodded. “Goodbye, Jennifer,” he whispered hoarsely.
“Goodbye, Steven.” Steven broke eye contact with me and began typing away at his computer. The typing echoed through the speakers next to my screen. I turned around and saw Dr. Prescott and Ian practically pressing their noses up against the glass window in anticipation.
As I turned back around to face the computer, I was shocked to find that Steven was fading away. He was slowly getting replaced with the same blue screen that I saw when I first activated him. However, even though the video was fading, the audio kept growing louder and louder. The buttons on Steven’s keyboard tapped away at my brain, causing every last cell to vibrate violently.
I couldn’t take it anymore. I needed to move. I couldn’t just sit here and listen as Steven destroyed himself. I stood up so quickly that the blue rolling chair rolled all the way to the window of the observation room on the other side of the lab. Dr. Prescott and Ian were no longer sitting there. They were gone. I ran out of the lab. The moment I entered the hallway, I felt like someone started squeezing my lungs. Oh no, not again! I thought. It’s another panic attack!
I felt dizzy. Every direction I turned, I felt like there would be someone waiting there to grab me and take me somewhere far away where I’d never be seen again.
“Leave me alone!” I screamed with the little air left in my chest. I didn’t even know who I was screaming at. I just couldn’t stand still and wait for someone to take me. I turned my head and realized that I was still standing outside of the small lab. I turned to the right and ran down the hall. I didn’t know where I was going. I didn’t know where I thought I could go. I just couldn’t think straight.
I didn’t stop running. I suppose I could have, if I wanted to, but the thought of what would happen to me if
I stood still for any more than a second frightened me to death. My breaths grew louder and louder as I ran down the dull gray hallway which I had casually walked through so many times before. My head spun as I turned the corner and collided with Dr. Prescott.
“Jennifer!” Dr. Prescott exclaimed as the stack of papers she had been carrying dumped out of her hands and spilled all over the hallway floor. She adjusted the thick black glasses which had been knocked loose from in the impact and asked, “Jennifer, what’s wrong?”
“I’m so…so sorry,” I panted heavily as Dr. Prescott held me by both of my shoulders.
I knelt down to help Dr. Prescott pick up her papers, but she tightened her grip on my arms and lifted me back up. “Don’t worry about the papers, dear,” she insisted. “That’s all just some dumb Pioneer mumbo jumbo. What I want to know is why you’re running through the labs with such energy.”
I opened my mouth to answer her before I realized that I had absolutely no clue why I was running.
Credit To – Christopher Gideon
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Pray, for devils have no reason
Satan waits to curse your ways
Have you seen it in his eyes in the sunset?
Have you wondered if he’s laughing when he plays?
– Kansas, “The Devil Game”
This is a set of instructions for how to speak with the Devil.
Which, as those of you with any sort of brains at all might note, is a patently moronic proposition on the face of it; one likely to culminate in any number of thoroughly unpleasant fates. Honestly, it would probably be smarter to publish your credit card number on Facebook, or take up a career in crocodile-wrestling.
But then, that isn’t going to stop you, is it? Not if you’re sincerely interested, at least. Technically, if you do everything just right, there’s a fair chance you’ll walk away scot-free; and that seems to be reason enough for some people to decide that it’s a good idea. Especially if you’re the fate-tempting, thrill-seeking, scare-junkie type. Or the desperate type.
Which brings me to a point of clarification I ought to make. This is NOT a manual for making any kind of Faustian bargain – you know, the whole sell-your-soul type of deal. Although if you happened to bring it up in conversation, he certainly wouldn’t be one to refuse. Following through with such a foolhardy bargain, however, would necessitate removing some the protections which you will put in place for your conversation, and I don’t think I need to spell out for you why that would be a BAD idea. If you’re really mathematically impaired enough to want to trade something that will last an infinite number of years for something that might last about 90 (tops), there are plenty of other rituals out there for you to follow. This one, if performed correctly, should only allow the two of you to talk.
This, perhaps, begs the question of WHY exactly you would want to speak with the Devil in the first place. (Maybe some of you just like the idea of making small talk with extremely dangerous occult entities, but for the sake of the human race I hope most of you aren’t quite that stupid.) Short answer is – he KNOWS things. Things that some of you may have a deep, vested interest in finding out. I mean, he’s not omniscient or anything – much as he might like to pretend otherwise, he’s not God – but he’s definitely got a supernatural advantage over the kind of knowledge any human would be able to obtain. For example, he probably wouldn’t be able to predict when the next World War will happen, or tell you the cure for cancer… but he could very well be able to predict the winning numbers of tomorrow’s $500 million Powerball drawing, or tell you what deadly, undiagnosed condition might be afflicting one of your loved ones.
Of course, the Prince of Darkness doesn’t just go around giving out winning lottery numbers to anybody who asks. And trusting any sort of information obtained from a being commonly described as “the father of all lies” is liable to land you in a worse situation than you were in when you started. However, if you’re really dead set on finding something out, and you’ve exhausted all other options, there IS a way to try to get accurate information out of the guy.
You see, like so many of the more urbane villains in popular culture, the Devil has a bit of a penchant for games and gambling. Of course, the reason he likes them so much is that he almost always wins. Unless you happen to be a fiddler named Johnny or are being represented by Daniel Webster, you’re probably going to get your ass handed to you. But, if you’re determined enough to want to face the risks and the long odds, there’s a certain game the two of you could play to try to win the information you need.
First things first, though. We’ll start off with a description of the summoning process, then get into the rules of the game, some tips for how to play, and finally, of course, the inevitable litany of arcane shit that might go horribly wrong.
In order to contact your conversational partner, you’ll need to go to a church at midnight. It doesn’t matter what kind of church – large or small, old or new, liberal or conservative – just as long as you’re sure it will be empty. The last thing you want is for some preacher to walk in on you while you’re in the middle of this (for the sake of the preacher’s well-being, as much as your own). The process will probably work best if you try it on a new moon, or a full moon, or Friday the 13th, or Halloween… the actual day is less important that the psychological effect it has on you (as long as you don’t try it on Christmas Eve or something stupid like that, you should be fine).
The time IS important, though. You don’t have to start or end your ritual at exactly 12:00:00am Greenwich Atomic time or anything, but as a general rule of thumb you ought to show up a bit before midnight and have everything set up by no later than ten or fifteen after. Show up a LOT before midnight if you don’t know how you’re going to get in. Shockingly enough, most Houses of God do tend to lock their doors at night, at least if no one’s there to watch over them (and remember, we want EMPTY, got it?)
There are, of course, certain things you need to bring, and certain things you can’t bring. For this ritual, you will NEED:
• A full can of salt – you won’t need to use all of it, but it’s always better to have more than you need than to have less.
• Seven candles, red or white being preferable.
• Something to light the candles with. You would be shocked how often people forget this. Occult ritual or not, they aren’t going to magically light themselves!
• A length of red string, rope, yarn, or thread.
• A full-length floor or wall mirror. Ideally, you’ll want to find one of these already present in the church (they’re a bit unwieldy to be lugging around with you during a break-in). However, if there really aren’t any there, you’ll have to bring your own.
You might also find it useful to bring some markers, pencils, paper, a flashlight, and any sort of tools that might be necessary to secure your entrance into the church.
You will NOT be permitted to bring in any electronic or timekeeping devices. THIS INCLUDES all cell phones, smartphones, tablets, E-Readers, mp3 players, PDAs, calculators, wristwatches, pocket watches, kitchen timers, hourglasses, etc, etc, etc. (Seriously, it’s worse than the SAT.) If you’re one of those people that has your smartphone practically wired into your brain, don’t worry – you can bring those things with you to the church as long as you leave them OUTSIDE the room in which you will be doing the ritual. If you brought a flashlight (helpful for finding your way around without attracting unwanted attention), leave that outside too.
Also, don’t bring in any sort of religious paraphernalia to protect you, especially if it pertains to the Abrahamic religions. (And yes, if those goth-y black cross earrings you’re wearing are hanging right-side up, they count.) If you have any kind of holy symbols like that with you, the Devil will simply refuse to show up.
Don’t worry, you’re not going in totally unprotected. In fact, most of the supplies with you are not for any sort of Devil-summoning ritual, but for your own protection – old superstitions and folk magic remedies to guard oneself from evil. From what I know of it, the effect’s mostly based on the power of belief, so there are probably numerous other objects, artifacts, and procedures that would work just as well. If you’d like to risk being left helpless at the mercy of the Devil in order to test that theory, feel free to experiment! However, for anyone without a psychotic death wish, I’d recommend sticking to the ritual as follows:
Once you’re sure you have all the right supplies with you, make your way into the church and find someplace to set up. It can be anywhere from the main sanctuary where services are held, to a Sunday school classroom, to a walk-in supply closet – as long as you have a sufficient amount of open floor space and are certain not to be disturbed. Set up your mirror first – this is where the Devil will appear when you summon him. As such, you mustn’t complete the summoning until you’ve laid down certain wards around it.
First, surround the mirror with an unbroken circle of salt. If the mirror is hanging on a wall or door, lay down a semicircle around it instead, making sure that the salt touches the wall at both ends. Then, wrap your red string around the mirror several times. The color red, especially red string, is symbolic of protection in the folklore of many cultures and religions. This is also why red candles are a good idea.
Speaking of the candles, set them up around the outside of your circle (or semicircle) of salt, spaced at relatively even intervals. No, you do not have to get out measuring tape and make it exactly perfect, but do at least try to make it look as though it was set up by someone old enough to be trusted with matches. Light the candles in a clockwise fashion, being careful not to disturb the salt – if you break the circle, you’ll have to start all over again. Once all of the candles are lit and burning strongly, your protective wards are complete. You are now ready to proceed to the actual summoning.
To do so, you first must get the Devil’s attention and demonstrate your resolve by performing some sort of sacrilegious act in the holy space. Turning a crucifix or cross upside-down is fairly conventional, but it’s not the only option. For example, I know of a kid who once fulfilled this requirement by scribbling obnoxious graffiti all over a painting of Jesus hanging in his Sunday school classroom.
(The nice thing about turning a cross upside-down is that once you’ve finished your encounter – assuming you’ve survived it in one piece – you can just flip it right-side-up again and no one’s the wiser… sidestepping the relatively minor but still irritating risk of having your Sunday school turn into a reenactment of the Spanish Inquisition for the next month and a half.)
After you’ve finished doing whatever offensive thing you decide on, shut all doors to the room and turn off all of the lights, so that the space is lit only by the candles. Face the mirror and stare deeply into it, concentrating on your desired outcome. There are no incantations, no arcane strings of Latin you have to recite. Just look into the mirror and wish as hard as you can for the Devil to appear there. After a few moments of this, when you feel ready, close your eyes and count to ten. Then open them.
If all has gone correctly, you will no longer see your own reflection. You will be looking at the Devil… or at least, looking at the way the Devil has chosen to appear to you. Chances are, he won’t look like your conventional red, horned demon with goat legs and a pitchfork, nor any other sort of terrible apparition. No point in scaring you off now… better to lure you in, make you feel safe. To that end, he generally takes on the appearance of a fairly average, nondescript human being. If anything, he’s prone to vanity and will lean towards the more attractive end of the spectrum.
The only really frightening part of him will be his eyes. No matter how hard he tries, he can’t hide the sinister gleam smoldering deep within them, the malevolent amusement and hunger, like the eyes of a spider contemplating a fly struggling in its web. They’re supremely confident, those eyes… confident, and without pity. Don’t look into them too deeply, or you’ll begin to feel helpless and paralyzed with dread, losing your hope and your will to fight.
Since you’ll probably be just standing there staring at him in shock for a few moments (having on some level expected for the ritual to fail), he’ll initiate the conversation by asking you what it is you desire from him. If you can gather your wits enough to string together a coherent sentence, you should respond with something like: “I wish to challenge you in a game of question-and-response.”
Even if you don’t get the words exactly right, he’ll know what you mean, and he’ll accept your request with a wide, predatory grin of anticipation. He’s been playing this game for a long time, you see, and he’s very good at it. Most humans, on the other hand, are very bad at it. This gives him a chance to, at the very least, thoroughly mess with your mind, and at most… well, we’ll save that for the “litany of shit that could go wrong.” You’ll have to play it very smart to avoid justifying his expectations.
The general rules to the game are very simple, with a few caveats that can make things more complicated. He’ll begin by asking you a question (he always initiates the game). It can be anything from a piece of obscure trivia, to a riddle, to an extremely personal inquiry. Don’t worry, you won’t be immediately plunged into Hell if you get the wrong answer or anything like that. As a matter of fact, he won’t even tell you whether you got the answer right or wrong.
After you’ve answered his question, you get to ask him one in return. Now, here’s where the consequences of your response come in. If you answered his last question correctly, he will respond to your question as honestly and accurately as he is able. However, if you answered it incorrectly, he is free to lie to you as he sees fit. Perhaps if you’ve asked him something you’re better off not knowing, he’ll tell you the truth about it anyway. More likely, he’ll feed you the most insidious, damaging lie he can come up with. Either way, after he’s responded, he’ll ask you another question, and the process will repeat over and over again until you decide to call it quits.
Now, you may be sitting there thinking that it sounds fairly easy to get the information you need… all you have to do is wait for a question you can answer correctly, and then take that opportunity to ask him what you really want to know, ignoring everything else he’s said. Well, it’s not that simple. The Devil will never give you an easy question, one that you can be completely sure of the answer to.
He may instead give you questions that you have some vague knowledge of, that you think MAYBE you know the answer to but aren’t really confident… thus forcing you to endlessly second-guess yourself, obsessing over whether or not you can trust the information that he gave you next. Perhaps you’ll think that what he said was a lie, WISH it was a lie, but be eternally consumed by doubt, unable to fully convince yourself that you were wrong. Or perhaps you’ll have to make a huge choice based on the information that he gave you, and be tormented by fear and indecisiveness as you realize that your fate (and perhaps that of others, as well) rests entirely upon whether or not you were able to correctly recall some arcane piece of trivia that you don’t even remember now.
(You’ll never remember the exact questions the Devil asked you, by the way; that would make it too easy for you to go back and check on your responses).
Or maybe, instead of testing your knowledge, he’ll ask you something personal, something you even lie to yourself about. You’ll answer back to him, thinking you’ve gotten the question correct (“No, I don’t resent my sister”… “Yes, I would turn the money in to the police!”) – but he’ll know better. He’ll know better than you do that you’re lying, and he’ll lie to you in return. And you’ll believe him. You’ll believe him until you are no longer able to deceive yourself, and by then it might be too late…
Or maybe… maybe he won’t even give you a chance to get an accurate response at all. Maybe he’ll just ask you endless strings of completely impossible questions, making you more and more frustrated and disheartened as you realize you’ll never be able to force him to tell you the truth. Questions like:
“What was the exact height of Mount Everest in centimeters in the year 1666?”
Or “What is the air-speed-velocity of an un-laden swallow?”
(Although, knowing his sense of humor, if he ever asked the latter he might consider “African or European?” a correct response.)
There ARE a couple of ways to short-circuit this particular strategy, however – additional rules and courses of action that make the game more interesting and prevent you from being stonewalled completely. Although in all honesty, he probably wants for you to try one of those options anyway.
The first option is to ask him a riddle instead of a question. If you somehow manage to stump him and he answers the riddle wrong or gives up, he’ll be obligated to give you a truthful response to your next question. If he answers the riddle correctly – once again, don’t worry, he won’t pounce on you like a sphinx or drag you into Hell. What WILL happen is that he will get a “pass,” allowing him to lie in response to one question he would otherwise be obligated to answer truthfully.
Honestly, if he gets a pass, you might as well just give up and quit the game right there. It’s nearly impossible to determine when he’s telling you the truth under the best of conditions. Adding another layer of complexity by constantly trying to figure out when and if he’s used his pass… it’s about enough to make any normal person’s brain explode. There’s no way. Just forget it.
The second option is for you to take a “dare” from him. If you accept it and vow to follow through, then once again he’ll have to answer your next question truthfully. If you choose instead to reject it, he’ll get another “pass.”
Now before you freak out and reject that whole idea completely, you should know that he won’t ask you to do anything overly dramatic or unspeakably evil, like blow up a hospital or murder somebody. As a rule of thumb, most dares won’t involve direct loss of life or any major felonies. However, they certainly won’t be easy. Inflicting severe pain on yourself, doing something that terrifies the shit out of you… cutting off a treasured relationship, publicly humiliating yourself or someone you love… all of these things and more, things you might not even be able to imagine, are completely on the table.
If you’re willing to go that far, to put yourself in that kind of position… you’ll get your answer. However, if he manages to come up with the one thing you know you simply can’t or won’t do… well, then once again you might as well just quit.
One last thing – DON’T think you can just tell him you’re going to do something and then not do it. If you accept a dare and then don’t follow through with it… well, let’s just say there will be consequences. Just suck it up and keep your promise, no matter WHAT it was. Trust me, you’re better off that way.
Finally, when you’ve either gotten the information you wanted or given up on it completely, you may end the ritual by simply thanking the Devil for accepting your request, bowing politely at the waist, and bidding him farewell. The surface of the mirror will seem to swim and flicker for a moment, and then you will be looking at your own reflection again. Only when you are absolutely certain that you’re looking into your own two eyes again may you turn away from the mirror, flick the lights back on, and begin dismantling your protections.
Now – and this is important – even if you haven’t gotten the information that you wanted, you MUST end the ritual in this manner before 66 minutes have elapsed. Well, I suppose that technically you have 66 minutes and 6 seconds (subtle, right?), but if you’re seriously going to try to cut it that close without any kind of timekeeping device, you’re probably screwed anyway. I cannot emphasize enough how important it is that you keep to this time limit. I’ll save the reason behind that for the end, but don’t skip ahead… I’ve still got a few important tips on how to play:
1. Be very careful what sort of personal information you give out. Try not to talk about yourself, especially your emotions and problems, any more than absolutely necessary. This guy knows human psychology like the back of his hand, and he WILL get inside of your head. It’s like talking to Hannibal Lecter. Give him enough to work with and, even if you don’t believe a single word he says, he will still find ways to fuck with your mind like nobody’s business. If anything he asks makes you even remotely uncomfortable, do not hesitate to lie through your teeth. There will be plenty of other questions.
2. On a similar note, try to keep the game on track and moving briskly. Unstructured interactions of any kind are to be avoided. Chances are that at some point he will try to draw you off on a tangent – discussing something that fascinates you, analyzing a response you’ve given him, or finding some other excuse to speak at length without moving the game forward. This is not only a waste of valuable time but also another excellent opportunity to mess with your mind.
3. If you choose to give him a riddle, use one you’ve made up yourself. If your riddle has ever been written down anywhere at all, from the pages of “The Hobbit” to some long-lost tome of ancient magic, he will already know the answer. That said, it still has to be a LEGITIMATE riddle, with an answer that makes logical sense from some angle. You can’t just ask something like “What’s green, has ten legs, and hops?” then claim for some inexplicable reason that the answer was “marshmallows.” Nor can you ask him a straight question like “What have I got in my pocket?” (he probably knows that, anyway). There are no hard-and-fast rules to determine whether a riddle makes sense or not, but you’re a reasonable human being. Your ancestors ate from the Tree of Knowledge. Please, for the love of crap, use common sense.
4. If you choose to take a dare, there is a slight chance that the Devil will ask you to do something seemingly easy… deliver a letter, for instance, or scribble a ten-digit number in a public restroom stall. If he does ask you for something like this, and you have even a shred of common decency in you, do NOT accept. Chances are that he’s using you to further some sinister plot, one liable to ruin a lot of lives and harm a lot of people. Who knows, maybe you’re the type of person who really doesn’t mind throwing an unknown number of total strangers under a bus to find out what you want to know… but at least be aware that that IS what you’re doing.
5. Last, but not least, be very aware of the time. It might be helpful to do some practicing beforehand and get a feel for how long an hour is without a watch. The Devil will probably put off discussing the things you’re most keen to find out for as long as he can; and as you near the 66 minute deadline, he’ll start trying harder and harder to distract you, captivate you, and otherwise keep you playing until it’s too late. He’ll string you along, feed you little glimmers of false hope, keep you thinking: “Just a few more minutes… I’m almost there!” Don’t fall for it. Don’t go over the time limit. No matter what.
Now, you might be thinking that this game really doesn’t sound all that dangerous so far… threats of psychological damage rarely seem to carry the same weight as threats of physical damage, even though their costs are often just as great. Hate to burst your bubble, but the game is FAR from safe. There are plenty of ways for you to seriously screw yourself over both physically and mentally (not to mention spiritually). And it is with these that I will conclude, in the vain hope that they may make some sort of impression…
First, while you are speaking with the Devil, do NOT let him out of your sight. Keep staring into the mirror no matter what happens. He will undoubtedly try various tricks to make you look away… You will hear noises behind you, feel eyes on the back of your neck, see shadowy phantoms writhing in the depths of the mirror. A cold breath will blow upon you from behind, smelling like the crypt. A deep silence will settle, only to be interrupted by a loud SMACK directly behind your head, giving you about the worst jump-scare you’ve ever had. Hell, the Devil may even abandon a measure of his own dignified façade and give a sudden jump of feigned shock, shouting loudly and pointing behind you with a very convincing look of terror on his face. Whatever he might test you with, you must not look away from him. If you look away, if you lose sight of him completely – even for one second – you will look back at the mirror to find him gone.
Well, not gone. Out of the mirror. In the room.
With you.
Exactly how much of your body the police will find the next morning, and what state it’s in, will depend entirely on the sort of mood he’s in.
The same thing goes if you break any of the protections you laid down before beginning the ritual. Interrupting the circle of salt, letting the red string unwind, knocking over a candle or letting one go out… any of these things will free him from the mirror, and then – well, you’re all a bunch of creative horror junkies. I’m sure you can fill in the blanks.
On a different topic, you may reach a point in the game (probably after a long series of maddeningly impossible questions) where the Devil asks you the deceptively simple question “What is your full name?” You MUST NOT give it to him. Names can be things of great power. Although the Devil will, of course, already know your name, telling it to him yourself is akin to inviting a vampire into your home. Your name is deeply synonymous with your own, inner self; thus, giving him your name is powerfully symbolic of giving him your self. If you are foolish enough to make this mistake, all of your protections will be for naught, and he will seize upon your unwitting offer with malicious glee, stealing away your soul and dragging it back with him into Hell.
At least this way the police will find a complete, identifiable body. As a matter of fact, your vacant shell will be totally unblemished, seemingly having dropped dead of sheer terror.
Last, but certainly not least, there’s the matter of what happens if you go over the time limit. This is arguably the worst thing you can do. You won’t think so at first… the Devil will give you no indication that you have in fact exceeded the time limit and you will conclude the ritual as if nothing had gone wrong. Perhaps, as the Devil’s image in the mirror trembles and gives way, you’ll see a particularly nasty, triumphant smirk flash across his face, but this will be easily dismissed as your imagination. You’ll turn the lights back on, gather your belongings, and go to leave the room. But, when you open the door, you will see… nothing.
That’s right, nothing. Just a flat, white void extending infinitely in all directions. Only the room which was reflected in the mirror will now exist.
Incidentally, if you turn back around to face the mirror again, you may catch a last glimpse of your own reflection. Perhaps it will even turn and favor you with a smirk and a cheeky wave before sweeping out the door into the perfectly normal church hallway outside.
As you may have already figured out, you yourself are no longer in the church. Your soul is now trapped in the mirror, and the Devil has taken the liberty of possessing your body, now that you are no longer using it.
Pound on the glass and scream all you like, you’ll never get out on your own, and no exorcist can help you. But don’t worry, it’s not like you’re in Hell, right? At least, not necessarily…
What you have to understand, see, is that a human soul stripped bare of its flesh is a deeply volatile and vulnerable thing, especially when trapped in the land of the living. You are now an entity of purely mental properties, and as such, the barriers between what is real to you and what is imaginary have been completely dissolved. As you fill that reflected room with your anger, your sorrow, your fear at being trapped, these emotions will begin to coalesce, given form by your mind. If you’re not particularly imaginative, these creatures may not be too terrible, may not be able to inflict too much horror and pain. With time, you may even be able to teach yourself to get rid of them.
If, however, yours is a mind haunted by monsters…a mind that is vibrantly creative and imaginative and more than usually twisted… well, there’s no telling what horrors might come clawing their way out of the maelstrom, tasting sweet release from the confines of your subconscious, hungering for your terror and suffering. They will refuse to be banished, dragging you kicking and screaming into an endless positive feedback loop of pain and fear.
Needless to say, if you’re a regular patron of websites like this one, you’re probably pretty well fucked.
There’s only one way to find release from the mirror and the world that you’ve created therein. They say that if you call to the Devil once more and ask him to free you from the mirror, he’ll be willing to take you out.
For the usual fee, of course.
Who knows, maybe if your imagination is twisted and powerful enough to create a personal Hell that leaves you begging for the real thing, those talents might be put to good use. There are over seven billion people in the world, after all; even the Devil himself can’t be messing with all of their minds at once. Talented help is always appreciated.
Of course, the corollary to your being trapped inside the mirror is that the Devil now gets to do whatever he wants in your body until sunrise. At around that time, your body will mercifully drop dead from the strain of the possession; autopsy will probably identify the cause as some kind of coronary event. Don’t get too relieved, though, he’s perfectly capable of stirring up plenty of trouble in those few hours.
For instance, he may decide to do something big and dramatic, like purchase a large meat cleaver and go on a murder spree, starting with the names in your address book and working his way out to complete strangers if he has time. Or perhaps he’ll focus on only one person, someone who trusts you completely, using your persona to get him or her alone and vulnerable, and then… well, no need to describe it here. Once again, I’m sure you can think of a few things.
Starting to see why I called this the worst outcome yet?
Of course, there’s also a chance he won’t lay a finger on any of your loved ones, instead deciding to do something a little more subtle… more insidious. Like drop off a few nondescript, unmarked packages on certain doorsteps in the dangerous part of town. Or locate a particular dusty, age-yellowed text in the storeroom of your local library and intentionally misfile it in the Young Adult Literature section. Or whisper seven very choice words into the ear of the distracted-looking young redhead waiting for the 3am subway train.
Or maybe he’ll decide that, in this age of waning superstition, not enough people are getting interested in his games, and the knowledge of them is in danger of being lost. Maybe he’ll decide he needs to get the word out a bit more, do a bit of networking, attract some new suckers… ahem, “challengers.” Maybe he’ll take a quick peek at your browser history, see where the impressionable, curious minds are hanging out these days. Maybe he’ll even write a quick tutorial, in modern parlance rather than some inscrutable, obsolete demonological text… post it on the Internet and see how many bites he gets…
Haha, maybe I really shouldn’t have gone there. But if you’ve made it this far without shying, a little twist at the end isn’t going to put you off, is it, dear Reader? I’m sure there are plenty of intrepid adventurers among you with burning questions you’d like answered. And you’re all a smart bunch. You know the pitfalls, you know the conventions, you live and breathe this sort of thing, do you not? There’s no way YOU’D fall into any of the obvious traps, right? You’re not some Dick or Jane off the street, after all; you’d be bringing a whole new level of competition. You would…
Oh, excuse me just a moment, I think I hear someone calling for me…
What? You want out that badly ALREADY? Must be one Hell of an imagination you’ve got on you.
Perfect.
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Part 1
The events of the past several days have both shaken my understanding of the world, and left me with a disheartened and perplexed disposition. Yet I feel that I must organise these events in my mind, that I am compelled to structure the terrible things which I have seen so that I may understand them better, so that my mind may be at rest – a need to quantify just what took place.
It was entirely by accident that I met one John R———. It was Spring, and the early crocuses were faring well against the last frozen constraints of winter’s grip. I was researching an article I was writing for a publication which was, shall we say, less than reputable, when I found myself at the mercy of a small Highland village for the evening.
The whole ordeal was frustrating and tiresome to say the least. I was supposed to be back in Glasgow that night to type up my notes and brush off the fog which often accompanied my writing assignments. Being stranded in a tiny village with one street and a pub inn, which looked like it hadn’t been decorated since the dark ages, was not my idea of home comfort; especially after a few weeks of constant travel, interminable interviewees, and more than one restless night in a dingy bed and breakfast.
There had been a small subsidence one town over which had made it impossible for the local bus to continue onward and, more importantly to me, carry me to safety. Following several phone calls as I attempted to procure alternative travel arrangements, it became apparent that I was going nowhere until morning. The sleepy pub inn which was affectionately entitled The Laird of Dungorth – looking like it could fall down on top of me at any moment, complete as it was with warped wooden rafters and a clientele who appeared just as creaky – would have to be my home for the night.
After speaking to the owner, a tall, peaked man in his fifties, I was kindly given a small room upstairs which clearly hadn’t been slept in – or cleaned – for some time. Still, the people were nice enough and after some basic but enjoyable local food, I sat in a cosy arm chair by an old open fire in the bar, deciding to kill the boredom with a few pints of local beer and a bottle of wine. The flames danced around before me, and as the evening drew in and the numbing of alcohol took effect, I actually was quite content – almost glad to be in such rustic surroundings. The village may have been somewhat bleak, but against the cold winds outside and a darkening sky, the inn was not without charm.
I’m not sure how long he had been sitting there, hypnotised as I was by the heat from under the mantelpiece and a few glasses of red, but it became apparent that I had been joined by another guest at the inn. He sat across from me in a broad and frayed armchair on the other side of the fireplace, sat there gazing at the flickering flames.
He was curious in disposition. Outwardly he appeared to be relatively young – probably in his early thirties – but his persona was swamped in a fragility which one would normally not expect to see in a man of his age. His face glowed in the firelight, carrying with it worry and lines which betrayed an inner turmoil; his eyes defocused, glazed over and his hands trembling slightly as he warmed them by the burning embers.
‘Is there a problem?’ – I heard the words, but did not register them until they were repeated.
‘Excuse me. Is there a problem?’ The man addressed me in a sharp manner, and I was taken aback by the realisation that I had been staring at him for several minutes.
‘No. Not at all,’ I answered apologetically. ‘I… I thought I recognised you.’
As he turned to face me he displayed in his expression a look of disbelief at my obvious lie, but thankfully, not without a small vestige of good humour.
‘I apologise if I was a little abrupt with you,’ he said. ‘It’s just that I am sick and tired of people staring at me around here.’ He raised his voice at the conclusion of his sentence and cast a wide eye around the pub to the few scattered drinkers and lurkers who populated it. I sensed that those present wished to avoid his gaze.
We then diverted into an hour or so of small talk. His name was John R—— and he was a land acquirement agent from London. He claimed to be appraising a location nearby, which a local farmer was willing to sell off to property developers, but I immediately sensed that he was not comfortable talking about his work. In fact, he quickly changed the focus of the conversation on to me entirely; my job, life, family, anything. It was as if he needed our exchanges to continue in an obviously failed attempt to keep his mind distracted from a hidden anxiety. Each time I attempted to ask a question about him or his life, he would either provide one or two word answers, or ignore them altogether, moving quickly into a question of his own.
Finally the conversation ran its course – as they often do with only one real participant – and for a moment we sat in relative silence; the only sounds coming from a few locals propping up the bar and the occasional clink of empty glasses being washed and cleaned by the owner.
The pub was now noticeably dimmer, with most of the light being provided by a few small overhead lights and the fire which continued to crackle and flicker all evening. I turned to one of the windows outside, seeing nothing but darkness. Then the words just escaped from my mouth without a thought, or effort: ‘Why would people be staring at you, John?’
There was a long pause as I looked at him while awaiting an answer, his eyes trained to the floor, but his face etched in worry. I expected no in-depth response given the curtness of his previous conversation, and so continued drinking my wine when he suddenly replied in a somber tone: ‘They all know, but they don’t have the courage to speak about it.’ Turning to the few fellow drinkers still in the pub he then shouted: ‘They’re all afraid!’
The response from the landlord and his patrons was unusually muted. They seemed to ignore John’s accusation entirely, with only the briefest hesitation of movement or conversation proof that they had actually heard the outburst at all. I did not expect such a volatile response, but there was desperation in that shout; anger and frustration. Then, looking directly at me with what I can only describe as a mixture of fear and heartbreak, he opened his mouth as if to speak again, before hesitating once more. I sensed that the man deep down wished to finally relieve himself of a burden, as if some piece of toxic information was boring into his very soul.
As a writer, my curiosity was captivated by the possibility of an enthralling tale, perhaps even one I could use as the basis for a future article or story. Anticipating that he now only required the slightest push to confide in me, I leaned over and whispered ‘What is it?’ filled with conflicting sentiment. I could feel that I was about to become privy to something important, yet by his trembling and anxious demeanour I dreaded what that something might be.
Another moment passed, and it was as if the entire room had fallen under a shadow of palpable silence, those nearby listening from tenebrous and uninviting corners. Then he spoke: ‘If you’d be kind enough to share your wine with me, I’d be glad to tell you,’ he said softly.
He did not have to say twice. I rose out of my chair and asked at the bar for a second bottle and glass to share with my companion. There was a peculiar hesitancy as the landlord picked up both from the shelf behind him, placing them in front of me. As I returned to my seat, I knew those present were now watching me, and I felt in my bones that there was something uncomfortably stifling about their looks; shadowed accusatory glances steeped in fear.
I poured a glass of wine, of which John drank in one glutinous gulp – a sight I knew well as of a man drowning a malignancy which burns inside. After pouring him another, I sat the bottle between us waiting for him to tell his story.
After looking down at his drink for a moment, he raised his head, staring intently at me as the fire crackled and burned, then as if exorcising a burden from his soul, he began.
* * * * * *
John had initially intended on spending no more than a few days in the village. Even after travelling all day from London, and the evening bringing with it the bite of the Scottish winter, he intended to get started as quickly as possible – the quicker he was finished, the quicker he’d be home.
Working for a large property acquisition firm, it was his job to facilitate rich clients in their pursuit of land on which to build on. The individual he was representing at that time was especially interested in buying some farmland with a beautiful country view, where they wished to build a large holiday home for their family. The location in question had recently been put on the market by a local farmer who had fallen on difficult times as the economy wilted. John was therefore hired to evaluate the land and negotiate a price, based on the recommendations made by a group of surveyors who had been there the previous week.
After checking in to The Laird of Dungorth, he drove his car to the farm which was only a few miles outside of the village. The entire area consisted of large sprawling fields where crops were grown and animals grazed, a few patches of woodland, and the occasional river or bubbling stream. The negotiations were relatively simple, the farmer – an elderly man by the name of Dale – needed an injection of money as soon as possible to keep the rest of the farm on its feet, while the buying client was enthusiastic about the potential purchase and wished to conclude the deal quickly.
Regardless, John was always careful about finalising a deal before he himself had taken a look at the land. Over the years he had developed a reputation for delivering exactly what a client wanted, without any nasty surprises after procurement such as land subsidences or other planning difficulties. Although he didn’t much enjoy the ground work of surveying, he was well qualified to spot anything which might cause difficulties at a later date, but despite this thorough attitude, he still hoped to be back in the city perhaps as soon as the next day, all things being well.
The farmer, Mr Dale, graciously agreed to take him out to the land by tractor, and it was not without a slight feeling of remorse that John listened to the old man describing the history of the area, his family’s attachment to it, and why it was so important for him to keep the place going. But business was business, and the money Dale would make on the two fields in question would provide him with a substantial windfall – hopefully enough to help him weather the financial storm.
Night approached quickly, and John was delighted that the bumpy and uncomfortable drive did not take too long. After a short time Dale stopped the tractor, pointing to the two adjacent fields he was selling. For the next half hour John sloshed through the mud and grass in his boots, taking photographs of where his clients were thinking of building, while perusing the surveyor team’s notes, comparing them with his own observations. Dale did not wish to accompany him in the survey and so stood by the side of a gravelled path, watching forlornly.
Finally John had finished, but just as he did so his eyes were drawn to a hill a few miles away, one which looked out over the entire area. It appeared to be uninhabited, with what looked like patches of woodland and grassland being its only distinguishing features. Despite its distance, the hill seemed to dominate the horizon, and without verbalising it he felt as though it was special or unique somehow. On returning to the tractor he pointed to it, but Dale seemed unwilling to talk about that particular subject, answering any questions pertaining to it with an icy silence. It was John’s job to keep a portfolio of land which he thought clients might have been interested in, and with what to him looked like a beautiful view of the countryside, it would be something worth appraising for development, especially for a rich business person in love with the Scottish Highlands.
On the short journey back to the farm, John felt compelled to continually glance over his shoulder at the hill and was convinced that his professional instincts were telling him to investigate it more closely. After some annoying persistence Farmer Dale eventually surrendered his silence and spoke briefly on the subject, with obvious disdain for the unusual landmark. When asked who owned it, even if perhaps Dale himself was the landlord, but at the mere mention of this the farmer scoffed saying only: ‘No one owns that place, and no one goes there neither.’ He would not say much else, but before John departed for the inn, the farmer placed a reassuring hand on his shoulder and advising him to leave the hill alone, that it was dangerous and that he hoped he would never have to speak of it again. While Dale seemed to fear any mention of it, the overriding impression conveyed was that the old man was dominated by a profound sadness; one which was best left alone.
As much as he was fascinated by the farmer’s warnings, it was not the first time that John had encountered local superstitions – ones which he of course never listened to, otherwise he might have lost out on a few good pieces of land or property throughout the years. The stories locals would entertain him with always seemed to revolve around older, more remote parts of Britain. In the past he had been told tall tales about abandoned houses which carried with them the stain of some murderous deed, or woods which should not be cut down for fear of what lived in them, but without exception nothing untoward had ever happened. There was no solidity to the myths, and while he enjoyed listening to accounts of hauntings and strange beings which prowled the moors and open countryside, he had little time for them in his line of work. Such stories were a fun distraction, but beyond entertainment around a campfire, they served little purpose.
Returning to the inn, he was tired and keen to get to bed, hoping to conclude any business the following day. But before he retired to his room, he decided to have a small nightcap at the bar. The landlord seemed amiable enough, and happy to have someone staying there as the inn’s location often left it quite empty, but his friendly demeanour altered drastically at the mention of the hill. Much like Dale, the landlord seemed reluctant to give any detailed information about it and provided his own words of warning, citing ‘bad ground’ as reason enough to let it be.
Whispers and subtle dissension came from the darkened corners of the room as locals seemed perturbed by John’s questions. No one approached him, but he was well aware of their discomfort. His remark of ‘you’d think the hill was haunted’ which was intended as a joke, provoked only silence. The void of sound left John feeling unwelcome. Quickly, he finished his drink and walked towards the stairs to his room, but as he did so a young woman barely out of her teens gently touched him on the shoulder and whispered into his ear ‘Please don’t go to the hill, no one ever comes back.’
The landlord was within earshot and quickly chastised the girl for even mentioning it, then turned his back while cleaning a pint glass, saying in a stuttered tone: ‘You sleep well, sir. I hope you can conclude your business tomorrow, and get back down to London quickly.’
To John it sounded more like a warning than a simple good night.
* * * * * *
The next day he rose early and made his way downstairs to be greeted once more by the landlord, but the man remained relatively quiet, which John found odd since he had seemed to be quite a talkative fellow when he had first arrived. Dismissing his host as just another individual averse to mornings, John grabbed a light breakfast and then made his way back out to the farm to conclude the purchase of Dale’s land.
As he drove along the quiet country roads, appreciating the impressive landscape even in overcast weather, the farm came into view, but in the distance so too did the hill. He thought that it seemed a little more prevalent or imposing than the day before, with its crooked structure leaning towards the village in the distance, but quickly shook those feelings from his mind, regarding them as the after effects of the townsfolk and their superstitious behaviour. And yet, there was something about that place.
With only a few administrative duties left to perform, John was hopeful that he could be finished by noon and then make the long 7 or 8 hour drive back to London, finishing up some loose ends before taking part in his usual routine. On a desk in his apartment sat a 30 year old bottle of Balvenie malt whiskey, which he would pour a glass from after completing an important deal. This would be accompanied by a cigarette or two – the only time he smoked as he couldn’t trust himself to not succumb to the habit – a takeaway meal and the next day off from work, to do as he pleased. These were the times he enjoyed the most; the conclusion of a deal and a little break before, once again, being sent to another remote corner of the British Isles.
Sitting in Farmer Dale’s cottage, John enjoyed the cosiness of the place and its antiquated decorations which reminded him of his grandmother’s house as a child. Many of the facings were original and he was certain that much of the house must have stemmed back countless generations. Dale himself seemed in a more pleasant mood than the day before, making his guest a cup of tea and a sandwich while John prepared the last of the paperwork.
As the old farmer pottered around with a kettle and a pair of cups in hand, John glanced through a nearby window, noticing that the house itself looked out towards the nameless hill a few miles away. Without thinking, he mentioned casually that those at the inn seemed wary of it too.
On giving John his tea, Dale sat down at the opposite end of the kitchen table, stirring his cup thoughtfully. There was another silence, similar to that of the evening before and despite the cosy surroundings, John once again felt uncomfortable. Then, eventually, that unsettling feeling gave way to annoyance. Why should he not simply ask why people were so afraid of it? These were just superstitions, and it was madness to think that in the modern age people could still be swayed so easily by simple stories.
After toying with the idea of remaining quiet, John finally broke the silence: ‘Mr Dale, I don’t mean to be rude, but ever since I arrived in the village, people seem to be acting strangely about that hill, and they treat me like I’ve committed a crime just by mentioning it.’
‘Perhaps you did,’ he replied. ‘Perhaps you shouldn’t have mentioned it at all, son.’
‘With all due respect, I just wanted to know who owned it as I thought it could be good for the area, an exciting property development.’
‘Property development,’ Mr Dale scoffed. ‘The only thing that should be done with that place is that the ground be sowed with salt.’
‘It’s just a hill.’
‘Just a hill…,’ the old farmer trailed off for a moment, looking out of the window towards the uncomfortable subject of their discussion.
‘Mr Dale,’ John said, this time more softly, ‘I’ve been to many scenic locations around the UK. I know that some areas have stories, they get a bad name, or just seem a little frightening, but in my experience I have never come across any of them that couldn’t be put down to simple superstition. I’ll even prove it.’
‘Prove what, lad?’ said Mr Dale, suddenly apprehensive.
‘I fancy a stroll before I head back to London. I think I’ll take a look.’
Standing up abruptly, the farmer appeared now more anxious than angry. His upper lip quivered and he had the appearance of a man who had been hiding a destructive amount of stress from the outside world, just waiting to be vented.
‘You mustn’t go there!’ he shouted.
‘Please, Mr Dale. I didn’t mean to offend you.’ John’s thoughts now turned back to the deal at hand, and with nothing signed yet he did not wish to jeopardise it with his curiosity. How would he explain that to his client?
The old man slumped back down into his seat as his eyes glazed over, as if fighting a losing battle against an onslaught of terrible memories.
‘I lost my son to that place…,’ he said, trailing off.
‘Oh God, I’m terribly sorry, Mr Dale. Please accept my apologies, let’s just forget the whole thing.‘
‘No, it’s not your fault.’ The old farmer smiled across the table with a sorrowful countenance. ‘No one talks about my boy. I’m not allowed to. The locals think that just speaking about him and the others will somehow bring more misery down to the village.’
After a brief pause of contemplation he broke down, saying: ‘He was a good lad. We’re not built to lose our children. Oh God…’
Burying his head in his hands, he began sobbing uncontrollably. John did not know what to say. He could only offer: ‘I’m so sorry. Is there… Is there anything I can do?’
Wiping the tears from his eyes, Dale sat back in his chair mournfully. After a few deep breaths he composed himself and then spoke, his voice quivering with held back emotion: ‘No one knows when it started, and no one knows why.’
‘What started?’ asked John, his compassion now overpowered by his curiosity.
‘I grew up in this village and even when I was a boy people didn’t have a clue. Sure, they talked about old stories, about a dispute between two powerful families which went back hundreds of years.’ Dale leaned forward scratching the greying stubble on his chin before continuing, ‘But no one knew their names, at least no one who was willing to talk about the hill. The deeds to that land are probably sitting in some solicitor’s safe with the owner living the high life somewhere, unaware of the price we’ve all paid.’
‘Surely there must be a record of the owners?’
‘I’m sure there is, lad, but you won’t find anyone around here who wants to know. Over the years, the odd person would ignore the warnings and venture up there. Normally kids daring one another to have a go. But they never come back.’ Dale shuffled in his seat uncomfortably as tears began to fill his eyes once more. ‘My boy… He didn’t listen. And just like the others, he went up and then he was gone.’
‘Surely you went after him?’ asked John in disbelief.
‘Yes, I did. I tried to go up there, but as broken by grief as my wife and other children were, they pulled me back from the foot of the hill. They knew it would take me too.’
‘So, your own son could have been up there, hurt, dying, and you didn’t go after him all because of a stupid superstition?’ The idea that myths and lies could have resulted in a young boy’s death enraged John, yet he felt ashamed of himself as soon as the words left his mouth.
Dale suddenly flew across the table grabbing his now unwelcome guest by the collar, battering him against an old stove. ‘Who do you think you’re talking to!’ Dale screamed, his voice shaking John to his core. For an old man, he was still as strong as an ox.
For a brief moment he thought that the farmer was going to hit him, but then, just as quickly, Dale relinquished his grip, turning his back. ‘When you have three other children to feed and a wife who would be heartbroken, you’d think twice about going up there too. Besides, a few of the boys from the village helped my wife and well, no one would let me go. Not because they cared about me – well, maybe some did – but mainly because they live in constant fear of that place, of what’s up there. That it might come down and pay us all a visit.’
Straightening a chair, the old farmer scribbled his signature on the remaining papers and then asked John to leave, which he did after offering his apologies once more. At the door, both men gave their polite goodbyes with Dale simply adding: ‘There’s an old saying around here: “Best leave alone”. You’d be wise to listen to it.’
***
Despite being shaken by the old farmer’s volatile reaction to his enquiries, John was still certain that he wanted to visit the hill. Knowing that those in the village would try to dissuade or even physically restrain him from doing so, he was resolute in driving there immediately from the farm. As he got under way he thought that perhaps some good could come of it. He could break their fear of that place, but it was more so his stubbornness which now motivated him. He wanted to prove he was right, and if he discovered a piece of land perfect for development in the process, all the better.
Getting there was more troublesome than he had first anticipated. While there was a small country road which led to the foot of the hill, it had been apparently blocked off by the villagers. An arrangement of large concrete slabs, red bricks, old wooden posts, and other discarded materials had been unceremoniously dumped at either end of the road, making entrance by car an impossibility and by foot only with great difficulty.
Seeing the very real and physical lengths which the locals would go to in order to stop anyone from accessing the hill, John felt an increasing impulse to reach its peak and then return to the village to let those below know how ridiculous they had been. After leaving his car by one of the blocked entrances, he climbed over the stack of rubble with some effort, careful not to cut himself on anything which protruded, and then made his way along the road. For a moment he considered what he might find on the hillside and the very real possibility of discovering the grim remains of a previous visitor; thoughts which momentarily left him questioning his current course of action.
The road was just wide enough for a single car, and it had obviously been left to the elements for some time, with large potholes scarring its surface and deposits of mud and gravel covering the tarmac in places. As the hill came into view he was struck by how much larger it appeared to be than he had estimated. From distance he would have assumed a quick hike to its peak, but looking at its incline arching away from him, he realised that it would probably take around two hours to reach its crest and that was only if a track or at least good footing could be found. Looking at his watch it was early afternoon, but he believed he’d still have enough daylight to make it to the top and then back to his car safely.
It was there that he began to notice some of the strange landmark’s more peculiar features. It stood quite alone, with no accompanying hills around it, as if it had been left there in isolation, quarantined from the land itself. Its ascent seemed more pronouncedly crooked than it had at distance; asymmetrical, leaning slightly to one side in bizarre fashion, and it’s surface was covered in sporadic pockets of trees, while wild and untamed collections of long grasses; a tangle of dead yellow strands embraced – or strangled – by the green shoots of more successful strains invading all around. Most surprising of all was that there was a man made path which ran up towards the peak, one which he was delighted to discover. It had been spared the onslaught of the wiry and spindly grass which had consumed everything else. For a moment John considered that this was all a hoax and that he was the victim of an elaborate joke, as the path looked well worn as though often used. But then a much darker thought flirted with his rational sensibilities: That the hill itself was leaning inward, enticing visitors, welcoming them to an unknown destination. He quickly dismissed this notion and continued on.
An old gate blocked the way. It was wooden, but had obviously been subjected to the ravages of the Scottish weather for some time, as its surface was partially eaten away by green moss and mould. As it creaked open John stepped over the threshold and as the gate closed behind him, a shiver ran up his spine accompanied by a mild nauseous feeling in his throat. If he had been superstitious himself he would have said that the place was bad, that the air seemed foul, but he was not easily affected by such thoughts. It was more likely that something he had eaten had not agreed with him, rather than the hill itself acting upon his nerves.
Wandering up the path, he attempted to make as good time as possible. The idea of making his way back down at night was not one to be relished, with unsure and unseen footing, and as the afternoon sky was already a little dimmer than it had been at noon, he marched up the hill with intent, excited to take in the view from the top.
The incline increased slightly, and with it so did the sporadic nature of his surroundings. The long grass had claimed everything bar the path, and as clumps of trees occasionally flanked him, he could now appreciate why the locals had come to fear such a place – the reeds of dead grass and ivy encircling each trunk suggesting malevolent purpose. Some of the trees had even fallen over, taking unusual positions at steep angles, appearing as if they head been pulled into the earth, broken by the fingers of grass which had clung to the husks of wood like a very real leviathan – but while the idea was fanciful, somehow the hillside did indeed feel wrong, unnatural in places and as John ascended it, a coldness began to creep up his arms. He had hiked before, and in his job had often been required to brave the wilderness while evaluating land, but this felt different. It was as if the land was affecting the temperature, rather than the weather, making it increasingly difficult to ignore the oppressive atmosphere of the hill.
Stopping for a moment, he rubbed his arms hastily to warm them, pausing to appraise his progress. He was astonished by how far he had actually climbed. He had been walking for no more than twenty minutes, but looking in the direction he had come from, he must have been at least half way up the hillside. But how could he be? At every evaluation of the hill’s size, it seemed to confound the previous conclusion. It was as if the place was warped somehow. John laughed to himself at being so swept up in the impression of his surroundings. Yet, the silence bothered him. No birds, no rustling bushes filled with rabbits, foxes, or even insects. Indeed, the entire hillside felt dead. No, not dead, he thought, but in the grips of death itself. It was, however, winter so perhaps he should have expected the seeming sterility of the countryside, but the quiet still perturbed him.
Then another unusual phenomenon came to his attention. An inconsistency. Something which contradicted his own memory, his very faculties. The path behind was now different. While climbing, John had been amazed by how overgrown the hillside was compared to the track leading upward. This led him to suspect that it was perhaps used regularly, but on looking down the hill, it now appeared to be engulfed by the wandering hands of nature, perhaps not completely but certainly to a far greater degree than it had been before. The grass swept over it, while bushes and trees leaned in nearby suggesting a more rugged terrain than he had initially noticed – yet the path ahead lay clear.
Looking to the world outside and down below, everything appeared distant somehow, almost synthetic in appearance. The colours were not as vivid, the meadows which populated the valleys had forgone their vibrancy, and the sky itself filtered down towards the ground with what John could only describe as ‘false light’.
He struggled to dismiss the unwelcome feelings he was experiencing, and while he continued on for a time, as he climbed, the nausea from when he had first stepped foot onto the hillside returned. The cold sensation which had enveloped his extremities had progressed like a disease, penetrating his insides and chilling him to the bone. John had tried his best to reach the peak, but he was no fool. He knew that not a month passed without a report on the news about an inexperienced walker or climber going missing on a remote mountain, and while the hill was a seemingly more humble prospect, he was now willing to accept defeat, even welcoming it. The surroundings felt menacing and his current physical condition was enough to cause retreat.
Though he had not reached the summit, John decided that if he still made it back to the village after being on the hillside, that would be enough to dispute the their superstitions. Perhaps he would return in the summer to evaluate the land, considering his decision to be a postponement rather than an admission of failure; entertaining the notion that the locals may have been right all a long was not something he wished to do. |
During my childhood my family was like a drop of water in a vast river, never remaining in one location for long. We settled in Rhode Island when I was eight, and there we remained until I went to college in Colorado Springs. Most of my memories are rooted in Rhode Island, but there are fragments in the attic of my brain which belong to the various homes we had lived in when I was much younger.
Most of these memories are unclear and pointless– chasing after another boy in the back yard of a house in North Carolina, trying to build a raft to float on the creek behind the apartment we rented in Pennsylvania, and so on. But there is one set of memories which remains as clear as glass, as though they were just made yesterday. I often wonder whether these memories are simply lucid dreams produced by the long sickness I experienced that Spring, but in my heart, I know they are real.
We were living in a house just outside the bustling metropolis of New Vineyard, Maine, population 643. It was a large structure, especially for a family of three. There were a number of rooms that I didn’t see in the five months we resided there. In some ways it was a waste of space, but it was the only house on the market at the time, at least within an hour’s commute to my father’s place of work.
The day after my fifth birthday (attended by my parents alone), I came down with a fever. The doctor said I had mononucleosis, which meant no rough play and more fever for at least another three weeks. It was horrible timing to be bed-ridden– we were in the process of packing our things to move to Pennsylvania, and most of my things were already packed away in boxes, leaving my room barren. My mother brought me ginger ale and books several times a day, and these served the function of being my primary from of entertainment for the next few weeks. Boredom always loomed just around the corner, waiting to rear its ugly head and compound my misery.
I don’t exactly recall how I met Mr. Widemouth. I think it was about a week after I was diagnosed with mono. My first memory of the small creature was asking him if he had a name. He told me to call him Mr. Widemouth, because his mouth was large. In fact, everything about him was large in comparison to his body– his head, his eyes, his crooked ears– but his mouth was by far the largest.
“You look kind of like a Furby,” I said as he flipped through one of my books.
Mr. Widemouth stopped and gave me a puzzled look. “Furby? What’s a Furby?” he asked.
I shrugged. “You know… the toy. The little robot with the big ears. You can pet and feed them, almost like a real pet.”
“Oh.” Mr. Widemouth resumed his activity. “You don’t need one of those. They aren’t the same as having a real friend.”
I remember Mr. Widemouth disappearing every time my mother stopped by to check in on me. “I lay under your bed,” he later explained. “I don’t want your parents to see me because I’m afraid they won’t let us play anymore.”
We didn’t do much during those first few days. Mr. Widemouth just looked at my books, fascinated by the stories and pictures they contained. The third or fourth morning after I met him, he greeted me with a large smile on his face. “I have a new game we can play,” he said. “We have to wait until after your mother comes to check on you, because she can’t see us play it. It’s a secret game.”
After my mother delivered more books and soda at the usual time, Mr. Widemouth slipped out from under the bed and tugged my hand. “We have to go the the room at the end of this hallway,” he said. I objected at first, as my parents had forbidden me to leave my bed without their permission, but Mr. Widemouth persisted until I gave in.
The room in question had no furniture or wallpaper. Its only distinguishing feature was a window opposite the doorway. Mr. Widemouth darted across the room and gave the window a firm push, flinging it open. He then beckoned me to look out at the ground below.
We were on the second story of the house, but it was on a hill, and from this angle the drop was farther than two stories due to the incline. “I like to play pretend up here,” Mr. Widemouth explained. “I pretend that there is a big, soft trampoline below this window, and I jump. If you pretend hard enough you bounce back up like a feather. I want you to try.”
I was a five-year-old with a fever, so only a hint of skepticism darted through my thoughts as I looked down and considered the possibility. “It’s a long drop,” I said.
“But that’s all a part of the fun. It wouldn’t be fun if it was only a short drop. If it were that way you may as well just bounce on a real trampoline.”
I toyed with the idea, picturing myself falling through thin air only to bounce back to the window on something unseen by human eyes. But the realist in me prevailed. “Maybe some other time,” I said. “I don’t know if I have enough imagination. I could get hurt.”
Mr. Widemouth’s face contorted into a snarl, but only for a moment. Anger gave way to disappointment. “If you say so,” he said. He spent the rest of the day under my bed, quiet as a mouse.
The following morning Mr. Widemouth arrived holding a small box. “I want to teach you how to juggle,” he said. “Here are some things you can use to practice, before I start giving you lessons.”
I looked in the box. It was full of knives. “My parents will kill me!” I shouted, horrified that Mr. Widemouth had brought knives into my room– objects that my parents would never allow me to touch. “I’ll be spanked and grounded for a year!”
Mr. Widemouth frowned. “It’s fun to juggle with these. I want you to try it.”
I pushed the box away. “I can’t. I’ll get in trouble. Knives aren’t safe to just throw in the air.”
Mr. Widemouth’s frown deepend into a scowl. He took the box of knives and slid under my bed, remaining there the rest of the day. I began to wonder how often he was under me.
I started having trouble sleeping after that. Mr. Widemouth often woke me up at night, saying he put a real trampoline under the window, a big one, one that I couldn’t see in the dark. I always declined and tried to go back to sleep, but Mr. Widemouth persisted. Sometimes he stayed by my side until early in the morning, encouraging me to jump.
He wasn’t so fun to play with anymore.
My mother came to me one morning and told me I had her permission to walk around outside. She thought the fresh air would be good for me, especially after being confined to my room for so long. Exstatic, I put on my sneakers and trotted out to the back porch, yearning for the feeling of sun on my face.
Mr. Widemouth was waiting for me. “I have something I want you to see,” he said. I must have given him a weird look, because he then said, “It’s safe, I promise.”
I followed him to the beginning of a deer trail which ran through the woods behind the house. “This is an important path,” he explained. “I’ve had a lot of friends about your age. When they were ready, I took them down this path, to a special place. You aren’t ready yet, but one day, I hope to take you there.”
I returned to the house, wondering what kind of place lay beyond that trail.
Two weeks after I met Mr. Widemouth, the last load of our things had been packed into a moving truck. I would be in the cab of that truck, sitting next to my father for the long drive to Pennsylvania. I considered telling Mr. Widemouth that I would be leaving, but even at five years old, I was beginning to suspect that perhaps the creature’s intentions were not to my benefit, despite what he said otherwise. For this reason, I decided to keep my departure a secret.
My father and I were in the truck at 4 a.m. He was hoping to make it to Pennyslvania by lunch time tomorrow with the help of an endless supply of coffee and a six-pack of energy drinks. He seemed more like a man who was about to run a marathon rather than one who was about to spend two days sitting still.
“Early enough for you?” he asked.
I nodded and placed my head against the window, hoping for some sleep before the sun came up. I felt my father’s hand on my shoulder. “This is the last move, son, I promise. I know it’s hard for you, as sick as you’ve been. Once daddy gets promoted we can settle down and you can make friends.”
I opened my eyes as we backed out of the driveway. I saw Mr. Widemouth’s silouhette in my bedroom window. He stood motionless until the truck was about to turn onto the main road. He gave a pitiful little wave good-bye, steak knife in hand. I didn’t wave back.
Years later, I returned to New Vineyard. The piece of land our house stood upon was empty except for the foundation, as the house burned down a few years after my family left. Out of curiosity, I followed the deer trail that Mr. Widemouth had shown me. Part of me expected him to jump out from behind a tree and scare the living bejeesus out of me, but I felt that Mr. Widemouth was gone, somehow tied to the house that no longer existed.
The trail ended at the New Vineyard Memorial Cemetery.
I noticed that many of the tombstones belonged to children.
CREDIT: PerfectCircle35
More classic Creepypasta stories can be found here:
The MOMO Challenge
The Russia Sleep Experiment
Sonic.exe
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Ghost stories? Nah, we don’t have anything like that around here. We DO have the story of Jacob, but that’s about as close as you’ll get.
…You really want to know?… Well, I’m not supposed to tell you, but all right, just no interrupting. I don’t have the patience for it.
How to describe Jacob Emory… well, I guess you could say he was the kind of guy you could never take notice of. This isn’t to say he was a bad kid, in any sense- many people in this town thought he was the most reliable person for an odd job in the state- but he never really excelled in anything. He was the living proof behind the statement, “jack of all trades, ace of none.” Most of this was due to his own lack of will. He dabbled in damn near everything this town could offer him, automobiles, radio operation, store management, what have you, but he never stuck with anything. His friends and workers went after him about it a number of times, but everybody got the same unsatisfying response: “It just wasn’t enough.” Needless to say, any friends he kept were either very patient or never spoke of the matter altogether.
It was probably inevitable, then, that Jacob would leave to go abroad. I don’t remember where he went, but I think Gertrude down the street knew before she passed on- you’ll have to scout someone else if you ever get curious. In any case, no one even tried to stop him. Everybody thought that a little travel would stamp the ambition out of him, or else feed it until it was no longer an issue. Hell, we even gave him a sending-off party, which I thought was pretty nice of everybody.
So anyway, he was gone for… six, seven years? Can’t remember. You’ll have to check with someone else about that, too. Anyways, he came back, eventually, and he had changed, obviously enough. He was amiable, energetic, all smiles all the time, and we all quickly learned why. He showed us a souvenir he’d brought back- a solid black stick, the length of a pencil but the texture of chalk. We all wondered why on earth such a simple thing would prompt such a spring in his step, until he gave his demonstration. He took a piece of paper, and with this stick- God, there’s got to be a better word for it- with this stick, he… he drew a crude circle.
It dropped, and rested on the border of the paper, like a stone. It didn’t leave the paper, but it acted out on it, sort of like an old movie projector on a screen.
Son, I know how crazy that sounds, and if you feel like playing skeptic, then you can leave an old man to his craziness, but I know what I saw, even if everyone’s been hushing it up, and that stone he drew dropped. Jake even passed around the paper, and as it was being passed, it rolled around as the paper got tilted. None of us had any words for it- Hell, what was there to say?- but he continued drawing demonstration after demonstration for us, stick figures in various pageants and plays doing everything from fighting each other to making perfect “human” pyramids, and we all thought it was incredible. That was all the go-ahead he needed- he announced that he planned to put on shows to pay for rent and food, where he would draw anything the crowd members wanted. THAT we talked to some length about, and he eventually convinced us that it would be safe, his drawings ethical, the practice lucrative and unique, and the attention would not go anywhere outside of the town’s borders.
Poor Jacob. If I’d not been so swept up in the moment, I might’ve read the signs right then and there, and saved the sorry son of a bitch by snapping the terrible thing in half. But I was younger, we all were, and we saw no problem with encouraging him with what we all saw as an incredible experience to be shared with everyone else. Now, he didn’t have any big radio or television connections, mind you, and the internet wouldn’t come around for another decade, so he did what all people on a shoestring budget do- he advertised his show with fliers. Fliers might not mean anything to you city-folk, but in a small town, they gain a fair glance-over from time to time, and what’s more, Jacob’s managed to stick out by having little figures jump up and down and whatnot to get people’s attention. His first show must’ve gotten nearly sixty or so people, probably a lot more than that.
And his shows were fantastic. Someone would shout out a scene from a play or a comedy sketch, and Jake’s hand would fly over a white wall like a bird. He’d been holding back when he made that stone, that’s for damn sure. His illustrations were all spot-on, and he could make an incredible human figure in minutes. Come to think of it, I don’t remember any of his scenes lasting more than ten minutes to make. They were all really well-done scenes, too- not only could you see a knight charge a castle, Jake would draw the castle’s interior as well, like a wedding cake split down the middle, so you could see the knight scale the walls, fight his way through levels to the dungeon, fight back out with the princess, and make a leaping jump off castle parapets onto his getaway horse all in complete silence. Not realistic, no, but that was part of the appeal- none of us went in there expecting something real. When a scene or a sketch was finished, either the characters would leave off a wall or he’d cover the wall with white paint. This was good, in a way- it gave these shows a time limit, so that when he’d finished with all of the four walls in the room, everyone knew the show was over until the paint dried.
Jake, meanwhile, was changing in a bad way. I’d mentioned that upon his return, he’d been extremely energetic. Well, that energy, that vitality or fervor or whatever you want to call it, it never left him. Not for an instant. Far from it, it seemed to grow in him, and he enjoyed it all too much. His eyes grew wider, he slept gradually less over time, his statements and opinions more radical and frenzied, and though he never was a pushover, he was starting to make people nervous in his company.
A month or two passed, and Jake’s audience grew like a wildfire. Nearly everyone in the town paid to see Jake’s art in action, and he had to rent out larger and larger places for them to sit. He now didn’t stop after one scene was done- he moved directly on to the next, put on the next blank space on the wall, sometimes to the intriguing effect of causing scenes to mingle, which the crowd loved. The subject matter got more wild and immoral, the monsters got more bizarre and creative, the fighters using more impossible weaponry, all for the sake of the crowd’s interests. Jake got steadily more indulgent, which we figured was from the money, and he became a drinker and a womanizer (neither of which got rid of that vitality, by the way.) Some of those women claimed that they’d woken up in the middle of the night to see him scribbling with that stick on a drawing pad, a gigantic grin on his face, and while most of them said that they’d assumed he was drawing them in the nude, there’s rumors that one or two of them got glances at that notepad. Those anonymous few supposedly said that those drawings absolutely weren’t nude pictures, but neither of them, whoever they are, will say what he was drawing. Don’t bother looking for the notepads or fliers, though, they’re all gone now. I’m getting off-track; point is, he was hitting the bottle, and that’s important, because it was that drinking that would eventually ruin everything.
On the night of one of his performances, as he walked in front of his cheering crowd, it was immediately apparent to everybody that he was completely drunk. I was in the front row, and I could smell the bourbon on him from ten feet away. The show started, he went through a bunch of sketches and scenarios the crowd recommended, when at the end someone asked that he draw himself. Everyone cheered the idea, I guessed they’d been wondering what his creations thought of him, and he eventually obliged.
No sooner had Jake finished connecting the final two lines on his coat, than every single character, across the vast, expansive wall, all stopped and looked directly at that illustration. Lovers stopped kissing, clowns stopped laughing, robots stopped fighting pirates, everything stopped and looked at the Jacob-illustration. The crowd died almost instantly- I remember Jake’s face at that moment, pale white, full of terrible comprehension at his mistake, and looking desperately for the cans of white paint he’d forgotten to put out before the show. Everyone else? They were looking at the fake Jacob.
That Jacob reached into his jacket pocket, pulled out a black stick of his own, and as we all watched, drew a door. He pushed on his side and the door swung open, allowing him to walk through onto the floor of the auditorium.
The rest was an absolute hellish pandemonium. People screamed and ran for the exits as Jacob’s characters, both those currently on the wall and those which had previously left before being covered up, ran out of their own exit, throwing pies, shooting lasers, blowing fire and poison and the impossible. I was near enough the exit to escape, and gave only one backwards glance. The scene will haunt me forever.
Jacob Emory was being dragged by his creations, kicking and screaming, through the door his copy had made.
The auditorium burned down, obviously enough, but I have no idea how many characters escaped, what happened to the fake Emory, or how many people died. The fire brought the fire department from the nearest cities up to over a hundred miles away- they in turn brought the police force, which brought the government, which hushed up everything. They took the fliers and any art Jake had made, and swore everyone to secrecy or else life detainment. The fire was blamed on a cigarette in the garbage during a basketball game, and we all eventually went on with our lives. Jacob was made to never have existed.
In retrospect, I realize everything. Jacob hadn’t been creating illustrations. Illustrations don’t move, much less act or attack-they’re just images people see, shadows made to look like real things. Jacob had been making life- actual thinking things in some alternate dimension, using a power that was never meant to fall to mortal hands. He got drunk on his power. His punishment was probably well-deserved.
Incidentally, the government screwed up on two different accounts. They did a damn good job silencing everyone, but proof remains. The ruins are still there, you know. The auditorium’s ruins. I hear they’re going to start reconstruction soon, which will wipe out any remaining evidence someone can definitely see, but I went back there once, several years after the fire- just once. Amidst the rubble, covered in ash, I saw something squirming. I looked closer. It was Jacob Emory’s hand on the wall. Exactly like it had been three years ago, (sweaty but calloused, I remember,) but it was constantly flailing, as if the body it was supposed to be attached to was still writhing in flames.
That was mistake number one. Number two was those creations.
Like I said, I don’t know how many escaped, nor how many the government agents found and caught, but I will say only this- Those tall grass meadows on the outskirts of town? Don’t go into them. Ever. You were asking about those white figures you’ve seen at night, right?
This town doesn’t have ghost stories.
CREDIT: Douglas Greenwood a.k.a. Peter Divine
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[MESSAGE BEGINS]
We made a mistake. That is the simple, undeniable truth of the matter, however painful it might be. The flaw was not in our Observatories, for those machines were as perfect as we could make, and they showed us only the unfiltered light of truth. The flaw was not in the Predictor, for it is a device of pure, infallible logic, turning raw data into meaningful information without the taint of emotion or bias. No, the flaw was within us, the Orchestrators of this disaster, the sentients who thought themselves beyond such failings. We are responsible.
It began a short while ago, as these things are measured, less than 6^6 Deeli ago, though I suspect our systems of measure will mean very little by the time anyone receives this transmission. We detected faint radio signals from a blossoming intelligence 2^14 Deelis outward from the Galactic Core, as photons travel. At first crude and unstructured, these leaking broadcasts quickly grew in complexity and strength, as did the messages they carried. Through our Observatories we watched a world of strife and violence, populated by a barbaric race of short-lived, fast-breeding vermin. They were brutal and uncultured things which stabbed and shot and burned each other with no regard for life or purpose. Even their concepts of Art spoke of conflict and pain. They divided themselves according to some bizarre cultural patterns and set their every industry to cause of death.
They terrified us, but we were older and wiser and so very far away, so we did not fret. Then we watched them split the atom and breach the heavens within the breadth of one of their single, short generations, and we began to worry. When they began actively transmitting messages and greetings into space, we felt fear and horror. Their transmissions promised peace and camaraderie to any who were listening, but we had watched them for too long to buy into such transparent deceptions. They knew we were out here, and they were coming for us.
The Orchestrators consulted the Predictor, and the output was dire. They would multiply and grow and flood out of their home system like some uncountable tide of Devourer worms, consuming all that lay in their path. It might take 6^8 Deelis, but they would destroy us if left unchecked. With aching carapaces we decided to act, and sealed our fate.
The Gift of Mercy was 8^4 strides long with a mouth 2/4 that in diameter, filled with many 4^4 weights of machinery, fuel, and ballast. It would push itself up to 2/8th of light speed with its onboard fuel, and then begin to consume interstellar Primary Element 2/2 to feed its unlimited acceleration. It would be traveling at nearly light speed when it hit. They would never see it coming. Its launch was a day of mourning, celebration, and reflection. The horror of the act we had committed weighted heavily upon us all; the necessity of our crime did little to comfort us.
The Gift had barely cleared the outer cometary halo when the mistake was realized, but it was too late. The Gift could not be caught, could not be recalled or diverted from its path. The architects and work crews, horrified at the awful power of the thing upon which they labored, had quietly self-terminated in droves, walking unshielded into radiation zones, neglecting proper null pressure safety or simple ceasing their nutrient consumption until their metabolic functions stopped. The appalling cost in lives had forced the Orchestrators to streamline the Gift’s design and construction. There had been no time for the design or implementation of anything beyond the simple, massive engines and the stabilizing systems. We could only watch in shame and horror as the light of genocide faded into infrared against the distant void.
They grew, and they changed, in a handful of lifetimes they abolished war, abandoned their violent tendencies and turned themselves to the grand purposes of life and Art. We watched them remake first themselves, and then their world. Their frail, soft bodies gave way to gleaming metals and plastics, they unified their people through an omnipresent communications grid and produced Art of such power and emotion, the likes of which the Galaxy has never seen before. Or again, because of us.
They converted their home world into a paradise (by their standards) and many 10^6s of them poured out into the surrounding system with a rapidity and vigor that we could only envy. With bodies built to survive every environment from the daylit surface of their innermost world, to the atmosphere of their largest gas giant and the cold void in-between, they set out to sculpt their system into something beautiful. At first we thought them simple miners, stripping the rocky planets and moons for vital resources, but then we began to see the purpose to their constructions, the artworks carved into every surface, and traced across the system in glittering lights and dancing fusion trails. And still, our terrible Gift approached.
They had less than 2^2 Deeli to see it, following so closely on the tail of its own light. In that time, oh so brief even by their fleeting lives, more than 10^10 sentients prepared for death. Lovers exchanged last words, separated by worlds and the tyranny of light speed. Their planetside engineers worked frantically to build sufficient transmission infrastructure to upload the countless masses with the necessary neural modifications, while those above dumped lifetimes of music and literature from their databanks to make room for passengers. Those lacking the required hardware or the time to acquire it consigned themselves to death, lashed out in fear and pain, or simply went about their lives as best they could under the circumstances.
The Gift arrived suddenly, the light of its impact visible in our skies, shining bright and cruel even to the unaugmented ocular receptor. We watched and we wept for our victims, dead so many Deelis before the light of their doom had even reached us. Many 6^4s of those who had been directly or even tangentially involved in the creation of the Gift sealed their spiracles with paste as a final penance for the small roles they had played in this atrocity. The light dimmed, the dust cleared, and our Observatories refocused upon the place where their shining blue world had once hung in the void, and found only dust and the pale gleam of an orphaned moon, wrapped in a thin, burning wisp of atmosphere that had once belonged to its parent.
Radiation and relativistic shrapnel had wiped out much of the inner system, and continent-sized chunks of molten rock carried screaming ghosts outward at interstellar escape velocities, damned to wander the great void for an eternity. The damage was apocalyptic, but not complete, from the shadows of the outer worlds, tiny points of light emerged, thousands of fusion trails of single ships and world ships and everything in between, many 10^6s of survivors in flesh and steel and memory banks, ready to rebuild. For a few moments we felt relief, even joy, and we were filled with the hope that their culture and Art would survive the terrible blow we had dealt them. Then came the message, tightly focused at our star, transmitted simultaneously by hundreds of their ships.
“We know you are out there, and we are coming for you.”
[MESSAGE ENDS]
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The last storm was already on the horizon when I woke that Sunday morning. It hung in the south, a solid black wall of dust, churning and seemingly motionless. I’d every intention of sleeping late into the morning, as had been my Sunday custom since Adele and the girls had left, but the distant rumbling and crackle of lightning drug me from the bed just after sunrise. I shuffled drowsily around the farm in the early morning, lashing the doors of the barn, rounding up the two stubborn hogs, and shuttering the windows; but soon I found myself rooted in place, captivated by the writhing shape in the sky. It stretched impossibly wide across the open sky, rolling across the border from Nebraska. The air had a dry, electric chill, and already the sickly yellow wheat swayed in anticipation.
I was in a trance, eyes locked on the distance when I saw a small light dust plume to the west, picked out in stark contrast with black beyond. The horse and rider at the base of the little dust devil approached the farm at a sharp trot, and my dust bleary eyes registered the silhouette. Carl Jordan had owned the farm next to mine for as along my family has been in the Dakotas, I grew up with his great booming laughter warming our home nearly every night. His usual broad, yellowing smile was absent beneath recently trimmed mustache and broad rimmed black hat; his dark suit was blotted with fine layer of grit that he brushed absently at.
“Eddie.” His voice was tired and small as he looked down at me. “No church today?”
I hadn’t been in months and he’d once admitted to envying me. I just didn’t see the need any longer, and I’ve relished the extra hours. I ignored the question.
“What’s troubling you, Carl? Mattie all right?” I asked.
He turned towards the south, to the storm and sucked loudly on his lower lip. After a few moments of thought he sighed deeply, with a phlegmy rumble.
“The Hattersons are dead. All of them, ‘cept Saul.” He said evenly, not returning his gaze to mine. I drank this in for a moment, feeling the insides my sinuses beginning to burn in the cold and arid breeze. I briefly dwelt upon the image of the youngest Hatterson, a tow headed toddler with the dim looking smile I’d seen at the general store with Saul and Molly a few days prior.
“How?” I asked finally. He grimaced slightly, still gazing south.
“Saul’s missing. No one seen him since last night. Molly and the kids are dead, and Saul’s gone. It don’t sound good.” Carl slumped forward a little, and I saw, not for the first time how, old he was. “The whole hornet’s nest is stirred up over in Pickton. He was gonna lose the farm they say.”
Fleetingly, it concerned me that I could easily see the connection between these facts.
“Mattie’s fine,” he said after another silent moment. “Just a little ill this morning, thanks for asking.” He broke from the black clouds, and fixed his eyes on me. He offered a pale imitation of his familiar smile, but his eyes remained squinted tight, haunted. He looked as if he had more to say, but at last, he just nodded and gathered the reins.
“Be safe, Eddie,” he said, a phrase worn smooth by repeated use, and turned towards his farm, trotting quickly, head still crooked towards the storm.
By noon, I could only watch as the it reached up and blotted out the sun.
* * *
The dust storm enveloped us, obscuring the sky like the hands of God. I did my best to ration the allotment of bourbon I’d poured off that morning, watching the black wind scour the earth through a broken shutter slat. During the storms of the years before, pale and weak compared to this tempest, Adele would huddle with the girls to read scripture, inevitably ending with the Revelations in hushed reverent tones. I’d tried not to scowl at her fear and awe before, but now I could feel a little tremor of doubt in me, as I looked out at the sackcloth sky.
When the sky darkened a few shades at nightfall, I prepared a small meal of bread and fried eggs, and drained the rest of the bourbon. Later, I laid in the unmade bed with the world spinning, and the sky howling outside and tried not to think.
The storm raged stronger than ever the next morning, the sun winking through the maelstrom, a fat circle of hazy orange like a fading coal. Late in the day, it showed no sign of abating and I resigned to leave the house, if only to feed the animals. I tied my goggles to my head, and a damp bandana around my mouth, but I still gasped at the ragged burn of the dust when I stepped outside into the storm. The lining of my throat seemed to crack and bleed within moments.
I could barely see the barn but I set out instinctually towards it. A tall hillock of fine black dust was pressed to the side, and it took me a few kicks to clear the door. The dust had seeped in everywhere, and the hogs and cows were covered in a layer of grime. They stood still in their pens, eyes red and glassy, shuddering and jerking with each loud creak from the roof beams. They ignored the food.
There was a twisting coil of anxiety in my chest when Carl arrived, leading the terrified horse behind him. His beard was matted with dust, and he had to sweep the lenses of the googles clean at my doorstep, but instead of entering, he only waved me out to join him.
“You need to come with me!” he shouted over the storm. The dust between his teeth had formed a thin black mud that flecked at the corners of his mouth. It was his tone, flat and even, that terrified me. I didn’t argue, but pulled on goggles, and offered him a second bandana.
I followed close behind him, one hand on the horse’s haunch. Carl picked his way down the path, navigating by some uncanny memory of the curves in the little road. We walked cautiously and deliberately west for the better part of half a mile, past Carl’s own farm, towards the leaning shape of the Collins farm. A throbbing dread began to stir in my breast as we approached.
The door was thrown wide open and off one of its hinges, swinging violently in the wind. I could see Roger Collins, slumped in the door frame, the congealing blood on his forehead caked with the fine dirt. His eyes were open, the left eye beneath the bullet hole was flooded red and tilted wildly skyward. Clutched in his curled hands was a rifle with one spent casing.
Abigail Collins and her youngest were inside, curled tightly around each other in the corner of the room. The flowers of blood that bloomed on the fabric of their dresses was bright and vivid.
Slumped upright at the dinner table, as if ready for a meal, was another figure, filthy and caked with black dust. He seemed composed, sitting upright and proud, despite the pinprick bullet hole, clean and bloodless, standing starkly in the center of his throat. His grimy skin was dried and shriveled, his eyes were closed, the lids sunken over the pits. It took a long yawning moment to recognize the desiccated face. Saul Hatterson, hands clasped around a little revolver, looking for all the world like he’d been dead for a week. Saul Hatterson, grinning obscenely wide, showing dried black gums.
Despite the roaring storm, there was a unearthly stillness in the little house, and I could hear my heart thudding in my ears. I turned to Carl with pitiful expression, a plea for some sort of understanding.
“I was bringing them some canned food. Roger was worried about being able to last out a long store,” he shouted from the front porch, where he was closing Roger’s eyes and wiping the blood from his hand. He looked up at me and stood. “Jed’s missing.”
I gazed around the room again, before turning to Carl. “You don’t think that Jed…” I began, letting the idea remain unsaid. Jed was a quiet and sickly kid, but something about him had always set my teeth on edge.
“No,” he barked. “I don’t think a 15 year old could be capable of this. But I didn’t think Saul was either. None of this makes any sense” He brushed the lenses of his goggles clean once more.
“No, it does not.” I agreed.
“We should head into Pickton to tell someone, but I- I need you to drive the Collins’ Ford. I can make it between our three farms on foot reliably enough, but I don’t think me or that horse could make it all the way into town.” Carl looked mildly embarrassed, hidden as he was behind dust and beard, and I followed him to barn.
The Model A made a few grinding rasps before dying completely, refusing to respond to anything. When I opened the gas cap, a damp and clumping mixture of dust and gasoline tumbled from the little opening. My breath came in increasingly shallow gasps as we moved to the Collins’ tractor, unscrewing the cap. The same reeking clay was stuffed to the top of the tank.
The walk back towards our farms was silent, my heart pounding as I struggled to keep my breathing steady, as the inside of my sinuses were scoured raw. First Carl’s tractor, then we checked mine, both were useless and clogged with dust. If Carl was as panicked as I was, he refused to show it.
“Eddie, I don’t know what this means,” he yelled to me as we crouched over my tractor, the sky dimming. “But I think I’d appreciate it if you stayed with me and Mattie tonight. The storm has to let up in the morning I’m sure.” I could see at last the spark of fear in his eyes, and it brought me a little solace.
* *
Carl went ahead, panicky with thoughts of Mattie, sick in bed on her own, and I agreed to follow shortly. I entered my house to gather my shotgun and a tin of coffee. I don’t believe I intended to start drinking, but the bloody and crooked eye was shining wetly in my memory, and I drew from the bourbon a few soothing pulls.
I recall being tired and weary from the day’s grim business, but I don’t remember lying down on on the cool wood of the floor. When I woke gripping the gun and empty bottle, the sky was lighter, but the whirling black cloud still surrounded the world on all sides. Tuesday. I thought through a fog of pain. Or is it Wednesday? I groggily allowed the shame to flood in when I realized I’d left Carl and Mattie waiting all night.
After finding all the water drained the night before, I dressed for the storm and headed out to the well. The pump handle strained against me as I pressed downward bringing up the first sounds of water. What came out of the pump was black and viscous, a thin black paste. I dropped the tin bucket in disgust, feeling yesterday’s dread igniting behind the alcohol ache, and I turned quickly towards Carl’s farm.
On the road, with my destination not yet visible, I turned to see behind me. There wasn’t even the faint outline of my barn. In that moment, I was alone, surrounded by a wall of vibrating earth and wind all sides. It could have been all of creation and I would never know. It could be the end of creation, and I would never know. I turned back towards Carl’s farm and began to run in a panic, frantically hoping I had not altered direction.
As the small unpainted house came into view, I saw Carl’s horse, lying motionless on the ground, still tied to the railing on the porch. A small dune of black dust had formed against one side. The door was wide open, slamming into the wall with a sharp crack at each breath from the storm.
My panic spiked like a fever when I stepped inside, and my body began shaking violently.
Mattie lay spilled from her bed, trailing sheets and and a shredded fragment of her nightgown. Her head was twisted, the neck bruised and bent, and bulging glassy eyes seemed to stare directly at me. Her tongue was thick and black between her teeth.
Seated on the bed above her, spindly legs dangling over the edge, was the dried and leathery corpse of Jed Collins, the missing boy. His eye sockets gaped empty and black as he silently grinned out at the world.
Carl was nowhere to be found.
I backed out quietly from the house, at last truly toning out the chaotic roar of the storm. My mind spun trying to make sense of utter madness, and it stoked the fires inside me; panting, desperate dread flooding my limbs until I found myself propelled blind, running through the storm towards my home.
I continued past the hulking silhouette of my barn, legs flooding with fire as I sucked in great lungfuls of choking dust. I thought nothing of destination, I only wanted to get as far away from the storm as possible, far from the empty charnel houses of my neighbors, and from empty eyes and wicked grins.
I made it as far as thin fork of the Missouri that carves the far edge of my land. I saw, through the wall of shifting haze, the black outline of the river from a distance. When I approached, legs slowing and lungs burning, I saw the river more clearly, wide and unearthly still. The water was black and thick, and in mute disbelief I watched it flow, slowly like molasses, under a dark and churning sky. And then, I began to understand.
*
I nailed the shutters closed, driven by an animal urgency of purpose. The door I braced with Adele’s heirloom cabinet, allowing it to crack and splinter on it side as I stacked a steamer chest on top.
I didn’t really believe that this would slow whatever would come tonight, in the howling darkness, but I wanted to have the time to know, to be sure. The last bourbon bottle lay empty on the floor, and I was glad for this, for the chance to be clearheaded at last. I sat, back to the wall, facing the door with the shotgun in my hands and I waited.
The sky darkened and the storm continued to howl; I measured my breaths, trying to hold onto a that moment of calm, to stretch it out until it dried and snapped apart.
It was late at night when it arrived. I could hear the heavy footsteps circling the porch, pulling lightly, testing each shutter. My hands were suddenly slick with sweat on the barrel of the shotgun.
The shuffling footsteps stopped in front of door, and I saw the wood flex ever so slightly as pressure was applied. A scraping sound began to rise, hissing, from the small barricade as it began to slide slowly across the floor. The force on the other side of the door increased slowly, steadily, grinding against the heavy barricade until the door was open to the storm and to the night and beyond.
The figure swept into the room with a silent grace that surprised me, and stood regarding me. Carl’s skin seemed to crackle and go taut like paper as he moved, and in the hollow of his empty eyes were tiny twisting clouds of dust, blue ribbons of electricity arcing across the sockets. He was smiling, a smile I’d never seen from him, a wide obscene grin.
I felt a strange sort of calm then, the surety of knowing, despite the impossible madness of it all. I raised the shotgun.
“Eddie,” the thing inside Carl hissed, in a voice like grinding sand. The corpse took another step towards me, and I saw a black trickle of mud from the edge if its cracked lips. “Go ahead and shoot, Eddie. See what it gets you.”
I smiled back at him, seeing the solution so clearly at last. I took a moment to be thankful that Adele and the girls are gone; thankful, in an awful way, that I’d struck her hard enough for her to finally leave me. This would not be the night that they die.
It had moved halfway across the room now, shuffling towards me, the malevolent sparks of its eyes locked on me. The now-familiar dread reared up to swallow my temporary peace.
I saw, in the black whirlpool of it’s eyes, the great storm, covering the entire earth in a final gloom; I saw trails and chains of endless murder and atrocity crisscrossing the darkened world, into that last eternal night. I saw the end.
All I had left was a little sliver of hope, enough to spur me onward. I swung the shotgun up under my chin, feeling the cool of the barrel on my chin. The thing inside Carl jerked to a halt, and ceased to smile; and I knew I’d gambled right this time.
It needed me. And it can’t have me.
I made sure I was smiling, drinking in the thing’s rage and frustration.
The thing roared and with a leap, burst from Carl’s body, his drying muscles snapping and shredding into long fraying fibers, as it shed him like a coat, thudding to the floor behind. It was a swirling cloud, a flurry of dust, coursing with lightning and pure, elemental hatred that I saw then, surging towards me faster than I would have believed possible. Thin tendrils coiled, and tightened, and wound their way through air, twisting towards my mouth and nose. I could feel them caress the raw passages of my lungs, hot, twisting and unmistakably, horribly, alive as they slid into me.
I pulled the trigger.
—
CREDIT: Josef K. / Cameron Suey
|
The anniversary of Layne’s death wasn’t for another three days, but when “Cochise” came on the radio as I approached that curve, I took it as a sign. Layne’s favorite song. I pressed the gas and shifted gears as Chris Cornell began to wail. The needle on the odometer crept up.
40. 45. 50.
The yellow posted warning sign screamed at me, but still I accelerated. The night Layne died, the cops estimated that his friend Jimmy had tried to take this curve doing 65.
Fucking Jimmy, the weird little stoner kid from down the street. I hated him, hated his faux hippie parents who changed the flowers around the roadside crosses with the seasons, like Jimmy and Layne and those other kids gave a damn if it was Christmas or Easter anymore. But the Hendricks did it anyway. Now the crosses were decorated with bright orange leaves, for fall. I saw them appear just as I entered the curve, doing 67 mph.
The rear of my beat-up Civic began to slip, but I gripped the wheel and held onto it, taking the outside. I kept my gaze focused ahead of the slide, knowing better than to fix on stationary objects. Too late to hit the brakes. Instead, I eased off the gas and turned into the spin at the apex of the turn. My car gave a shimmy and a weird bobble. For one heart-stopping moment, I thought this would be the one that got me. But the Civic held on, even on tires that desperately needed replacing. When I accelerated at the end of the turn and whipped onto the straightaway again, I released the breath I was holding and pulled to the side of the road. I walked back to the place where the four white crosses waited and stared at the name on the first one. Then I ripped the leaves from it.
Jimmy Hendricks.
They hadn’t even spelled his name right. They hadn’t taught him how to spell his name and they hadn’t taught him how to take a curve.
I walked behind the crosses and lay on the ground beside a scarred oak tree, in the same spot that had once soaked up my brother’s blood. I stared up at the September sky and said, “You left me all alone.”
The night of the accident, my mother had called to say she’d be working late. Although I was only fourteen months older than Layne, my mother had always left me in charge.
As soon as I’d told Layne, he’d started pestering me to go to the movies with Jimmy. I usually let him do what he wanted because Layne could talk the birds from the skies. But my mother’s new boyfriend made me uncomfortable. He stood too close, stared too long. I’d cast a nervous glance at the living room.
“Hey,” Layne said. “Go to Sherry’s till nine. I swear I’ll be home by then. I won’t leave you alone with him.”
I had nodded, and he’d grinned. I hadn’t smiled back.
He’d made me look at him. “I promised Dad and I promise you–I’ll always protect you. I swear on my soul, I’ll never leave you and I’ll always have your back. So, nine o’clock … okay?”
But that was a promise he hadn’t been able to keep. When I’d rounded that curve a quarter after nine that night, the EMTs were frantically working to save Layne and one of the other boys. I’d thought maybe they’d known Layne wouldn’t make it to the hospital, because they’d let me have a few precious seconds by his side.
His green eyes had been dazed, unfocused. I’d clutched his bloody hand and screamed his name. He’d made a gurgling sound and turned his face toward me.
“Hold on, hold on,” I’d begged. “Don’t you leave me! You promised you’d never leave me!”
He’d squeezed my hand and then they’d pulled me away. He’d died before they reached the hospital.
If Layne had been driving, would he have made the curve? I thought the handling on the Hendricks’ Accord and my Civic probably wouldn’t have been that much different, and Layne had even more experience than I had on the dirt bike track. Unlike me, he hadn’t quit when our father died. But that was just one more ‘what if’ in a towering pile of ‘what ifs’ that loomed high in the sky and meant nothing at all.
I pulled into my childhood driveway a few minutes later and sighed. Visits with my mother, never pleasant, grew excruciating around the anniversary of Layne’s death. It hurt to see what this place had become, what my mother had become. Flower beds so meticulously tended when my father was alive were strangled out by weeds, framing a sagging, peeling white house with missing shingles. A rusted swing set still lingered beside the house, unused for over a decade. And the outside of this place wasn’t half as desperate as the inside.
I put the car in park, stepped out and adjusted the short skirt that was part of my work uniform before kicking a beer can and scowling at the tall grass.
I barged in without knocking and followed the sound of the blaring television to the living room, where my mother’s boyfriend predictably occupied my father’s old recliner. I kicked a pizza box and flinched when a cockroach skittered away from my gleaming black heels.
“Where’s Mom?” I asked, and Darius turned his bloodshot eyes on me. He leered, his eyes traveling slowly up my body then down again. “Is that any way to greet me?”
“Oh, my bad. Hey, Darius, you fucking pervert. Where is my mother?”
He laughed and stood, lurching on his feet. For a moment, I felt the same panic I had at fifteen, but my fingers fumbled in my pocket and closed around the knife I kept there. I forced myself to remain calm. I wasn’t a helpless teenager anymore.
“She’s at the cemetery,” Darius said, then licked his lips. “We’ve got time to have a nice little visit. Come say hi to Daddy.”
“Stay away from me,” I said. “You got all this time, why don’t you go mow the fucking yard? Seems like the least you could do, since my mother pays all your bills.”
His eyes hardened. “Don’t talk like that to me, you little whore.”
Moving faster than I anticipated he could, he lunged at me. My head cracked against the drywall and he seized my chin, forcing me to look up at him. His breath smelled like beer and garlic and I gagged.
“I hear you put out for everybody that comes through that bar where you work. I’m getting jealous.”
He pressed his filthy, stinking body against mine and tried to push up my skirt, but the knife was already in my hand. His eyes widened when he heard the click of the switchblade. I was sure Darius had been in enough barroom brawls to know what that sound meant. I pressed it against his crotch.
“That’s not big enough to kill me,” he hissed. “And if you ever cut me, you’d better fucking kill me.”
I smiled. “It’s big enough to get rid of some unsightly bulges. I keep her sharp.”
He released my chin and held up his hands. I let him back away.
“Tell your mother if she ain’t back by dark, I’m locking her out.”
“This isn’t your house,” I snapped.
He shot me a baleful look, then slumped back to the recliner.
I gulped a breath of fresh air when I stepped outside. I’d left this place as soon as I’d graduated high school and if not for the obligation I felt for my mother, I would never come back at all. The cemetery was visible from the driveway, just over the hillside, but I chose to drive. I could guess what shape my mother was in.
I found Mama sprawled on the ground between my father’s and Layne’s graves, a half-empty bottle of Jack in her hands. Once Bella had been beautiful, as her name suggested, but those days were long gone. Her face was ravaged by alcohol, drugs and grief. She looked up with bleary red eyes.
“It’s time to go, Mama,” I said, and reached for her arm.
She jerked away. “I’m not ready to go yet.”
“It’s getting dark and I need to get to work.”
“Go then,” she muttered.
“I need to make sure you’re home, and that you have your medicine. You want it, right?”
Of course, she did. Mama liked her medicine almost as much as her alcohol. After a near overdose last month, I had taken her pills and dispensed them to her on a weekly basis. It really needed to be on a daily basis, but I couldn’t stand the thought of making this trip every day. I suspected Mama went through a week’s supply in a couple of days, but was also pretty sure it would take more than that to kill her.
Mama allowed me to help her up. She kissed her fingertips and placed them first on my father’s tombstone, then on Layne’s.
“It was your fault,” she told me.
I wrapped my arm around my mother’s waist, taking on most of the small woman’s weight.
I’d heard comments like that so many times they barely stung anymore. I figured Layne was better off wherever he was, because surely this was hell. I was almost jealous of him. I didn’t put much stock in the afterlife, and the thought of just nothingness sounded pretty damn good to me.
We didn’t talk on the way back to my mother’s house. No use telling her about Darius. Mama hadn’t cared when I told her about him seven years ago, and she wouldn’t care now. Another wound that barely stung anymore. I helped her to the front door, gave her the little box labeled with the days of the week, and left.
All this crap had taken longer than anticipated and I was nearly ten minutes late when I pulled up to Charlie’s Bar. Half the sign had shorted out, so it simply read Char Bar, which was an apt name for anything that came out of that kitchen. That’s what the locals called it. Charlie hated it, so I called it that, too.
I straightened my skirt, flipped and tousled my hair, then undid an extra couple of buttons on my shirt. I was a damn good waitress, but I wasn’t naive enough to think that’s why I got the best tips. When you leave home at seventeen, you learn to play the game to survive.
Brody looked up from the bar when I walked in and gave me one of his perfect, dazzling smiles. He was a college kid making a little extra cash while he finished up the school year. Maybe not as spoiled as most of the ones who came through–he actually worked–but a rich boy just the same. He’d be gone before the ink dried on his diploma.
The bar was a weird mix of college kids, locals and stragglers off Interstate 24. They segregated themselves in odd little clumps. I edged past a rowdy group of bikers and headed toward the bar.
Brody placed a bag of lemons on the bar and said loudly, “Thanks for picking these up. Sorry I made you late.”
“No problem,” I said, taking his cue.
Charlie came around the corner. He looked at me, the bag of lemons and finally Brody. “Tell Jacobs if he can’t get the order right, I’ll take my business elsewhere.”
Brody tapped a salute off his forehead and Charlie frowned, but he disappeared back to the kitchen without another word.
“Thanks,” I said, and he smiled again. He really was handsome. I liked the way his blue eyes crinkled in the corners when he grinned. But we were so different I wasn’t even sure if we’d count as the same species.
“You’ve got even tables. I already did their drinks. Two and eight have ordered. Six was still looking at the menu.”
He was always helping me. Every shift, he stayed late to help me roll silverware and refill ketchup bottles, though that was not part of his duties. I’d never admit it, but sometimes the most fun I had all day was when we were cleaning up. He’d put some stupid song on the jukebox and sing to me. Sometimes we’d dance. Even though he probably just wanted what every other guy who tried to talk to me wanted, at least he was nice about it. Unlike the biker at table three, who was yelling to get my attention.
“Hey, Blondie!” he shouted. “Get that sweet ass over here and take my order. I’m thirsty.”
Kristy, the other waitress on shift that night, stood helplessly by, trying to take his order, but the biker would have none of it. I motioned her forward.
“Take my six,” I said. “I’ll handle it.”
Looking relieved, Kristy scurried away. I pasted on a smile and sauntered over to the table.
I spoke to the one making all the noise, a muscular dark-haired man with a snake tattoo that started at his neck and ended with rattles down his middle finger. “What can I get you?”
He leaned back in his chair and gave me an appreciative smile. Fishing his wallet from his pocket by the chain attached to his belt loop, he withdrew two one hundred dollar bills and placed them beneath the salt shaker.
“Two buckets of Bud to start. One of these is for the tab, one is for you if you don’t let us run dry till that hundred is gone. Understand, sweet thing?”
“Sure thing, honey,” I drawled, and his grin widened.
As I walked away, I heard him tell his buddies, “Tell me that ain’t the best ass in Tennessee.”
I rolled my eyes and made a face at Brody, who stood tense at the bar, watching the exchange.
“Two buckets of Budweiser,” I said.
“Avery, that’s not your table. You don’t have to serve those guys.”
“I can take care of myself, Brody.”
He frowned, but turned to fix the buckets without another word. Sweet of him to worry, but unnecessary. Plus, that tip would be great, considering rent was due this week. I might actually be able to eat something that didn’t come from the Char Bar.
When I returned to the table, I noticed a cell number scrawled on one of the bills. I resisted the urge to roll my eyes again and instead, engaged in some banter with them. When I walked away, Rattlesnake slapped my ass.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Brody start to come around the bar and I hurried to head him off.
“I said, I can take care of myself,” I hissed. “Do not go over there.”
His blue eyes flashed. “Avery, you’re not a piece of meat. He has no right to touch you.”
“I don’t mind.”
He scowled and threw a dish towel behind the bar. “Maybe you should.”
Yeah, maybe I should. Maybe I should do a lot of things. But these days, it was hard to feel much of anything.
Finally, the bikers left and the crowd thinned. After I took table four their check, I stepped outside to smoke.
When I heard the back door creak open a moment later, I flicked my ashes and said, “If I just fuck you, will you stop following me around like some little damn dog?”
Brody sighed, leaned back against the wall, and squinted at me.
* * * * * *
I clutched the shoulders of the man who labored over me. His snake tattoo looked even more sinister covered in a fine sheen of sweat. But I wasn’t thinking about that, wasn’t even thinking about him. Sex was just a release for me. There were never any feelings attached. Maybe that was why Brody’s words troubled me so much. I closed my eyes, remembering what he’d said.
“Jeez, Avery. Why are you such a hardass? Maybe I just care about you.”
I snorted. “You don’t know anything about me.”
“I want to,” he said. “One chance. Let me take you out on a date.”
A date. I nearly snorted again. I hadn’t been on a real date since high school. One night stands with strangers hardly counted. Brody had no idea.
“Why would you want to date me?’ I demanded.
He gave me that crooked grin and shrugged. “I dunno… because sometimes you forget to be an asshole?”
I laughed in spite of myself.
“I think you’re afraid of me,” he said. “I think you know I’d be good to you, and you don’t know how to handle that.”
“I’m not relationship material,” I said, and took another drag of my cigarette.
“You could be. With me.”
I stubbed my cigarette out and gave him a patient smile. “You think we’re alike. We’re not.” I pointed through the window at a group of roughnecks. “I’m like them. White trash, going nowhere.” Then I pointed at a group of giggling college girls waiting around the bar for Brody’s return. “You’re one of them. You’ll leave here after you graduate, marry a girl like that, named Mallory or Ashley or Tiffany and forget about this little dive bar you worked in during college. You’ll forget about me. I don’t mean anything to anyone.”
“You’re wrong,” he said. “You mean something to me.”
* * * * * *
The biker collapsed on top of me and I sighed, glad he was finally finished. I’d hoped he could take my mind off things, but now I regretted even coming to his motel room.
He rolled onto his back, and I lay there, thinking. Waiting until I thought he’d dozed off. Then I eased away from him and fumbled for my clothes in the dark.
His hand shot out and grabbed me, pulling me back.
“Where you think you’re going?” he asked, slurring.
“I need to get home,” I said, and tried to pull away.
“Aw, no,” he said. “We ain’t finished yet, darlin. Just taking a breather.”
“I’m finished,” I said. “Let me up.”
In the dark, I didn’t see the fist swinging around at me. He clocked me in the side of the face and I fell back, stunned. His hands closed around my throat and I kicked and flailed at him, but he was so strong.
My last thought before I lost consciousness wasn’t of Layne, but of Brody. Of how disappointed he’d be when they found my naked, battered body in some cheap motel tomorrow.
I’d tried to tell him. I was no good. Guess he’d finally see that.
* * * * * *
I woke up on my stomach, my cheek pressed against stiff white sheets. It took me a moment to remember where I was, but I was smart enough not to move until I got my bearings.
I hurt. I hurt all over, especially my throat. What had he done to me? I needed to cough. My throat burned, tickled. My eyes watered and I didn’t know how long I’d be able to suppress it. I heard his labored breathing beside me. Sounded like he was out, but I didn’t dare turn my head. Instead, I strained to see in the dim room, looking for a weapon. He’d left the bathroom light on. I saw the contents of my purse strewn across the worn carpet. My wallet gaped open. Empty.
Motherfucker.
I gritted my teeth and made a push toward the edge of the bed. I paused, but detected no change in his breathing. I forced myself up on shaky legs and fumbled on my clothes. Stuffing my things back into my purse, I realized my money wasn’t the only thing missing. So was my knife.
The smart thing would’ve been to slip out the door and run. But I needed my money. Not just the $100 tip, but the other $170 he’d taken from my wallet. I crept to his side of the bed and unplugged the lamp. When I tried to lift it, I found it was bolted to the table, so I unplugged the phone instead. Then I searched until I found his wallet. I thought about just taking my part of the money, but I thought, fuck it, and took it all–my money, plus two hundred or so.
He began to stir.
I gripped the phone and crashed it down on his head. He cursed, and I hit him again. Then I ran.
The morning sunlight nearly blinded me, and for one terrifying moment, I couldn’t find my keys.
“Please, please, please,” I gasped, fumbling in my purse.
There they were. I jumped in my car, still watching the motel door, but it never opened.
I didn’t kill him, I thought. Surely I didn’t kill him.
I was nearly a mile away when I caught my reflection in the rearview mirror. Blood spattered my face. I hadn’t even felt it.
“Oh, God!” I said, and fumbled in my glove compartment for napkins.
Twenty minutes later, I stood in front of my bathroom mirror, trying to figure out what to do. Ugly red bruises stood out against the pale skin of my throat. Even the whites of my eyes were red.
Maybe I should go to the police. It was self-defense, right?
I decided to drive back to the motel. To my relief, his bike was gone when I got there.
For two days, I never left my apartment. The next night, however, I had to work. I almost called in. This was the anniversary of Layne’s death. I might not make it until tomorrow anyway. But with my luck, I’d probably survive. Again.
I tried to cover up the bruises with makeup, but that somehow made them look worse. I washed it off, then tied a scarf around my neck. It looked dumb, but I couldn’t think of anything else. At least my red eyes had cleared up.
Brody gave me a long look when I walked into the bar. Change of shift was busy and I managed to avoid him until my first smoke break. He followed me outside.
“That biker guy’s been looking for you,” he said.
“Oh?” I said, and he frowned at the rasp in my voice.
“I told him you’d quit. When he came back the next night, I told him you’d still quit. Charlie backed me up. He looked pretty rough. Not as rough as you, though.”
Before I knew it, he pushed me against the wall and reached for the scarf.
“What are you doing?” I asked, trying to force his hands away.
“I haven’t seen anyone wear an ascot since Fred on Scooby-Doo.”
The scarf came free in his hands.
“Jesus, Avery!” he said, and I felt absurdly near tears at the horror in his eyes.
When I didn’t speak, he said, “That guy said you took his money. What are you into, Avery? Is it drugs?” He looked away. “Prostitution?”
A tear slid down my cheek. “Is that what you think of me?” I shook my head and pushed past him. He tried to grab my arm, but I jerked away.
I walked through that back door, through that restaurant, and out the front. I heard Brody call my name, but I never slowed down. Maybe fate would be kind tonight.
* * * * * *
I wanted to die. More than anything. I kept picturing the look on Brody’s face. He was the only one who’d believed in me, the closest thing I had to a friend. Now he thought I was some sort of crack whore.
By the time I hit the curve, I was doing 70. When the rear end came around and I started to spin, I closed my eyes and pictured Layne’s face. Suddenly, his voice filled my head, shouting instructions, as clear as if he were in the seat beside me. When I opened my eyes again, my car was sitting neatly on the side of the road, just past the white crosses.
I opened my door and nearly fell out onto the shoulder. I half-stumbled, half-crawled over to the memorial and collapsed in front of Layne’s cross, sobbing.
“Avery! Avery, are you okay?”
I rolled onto my back and tried to scramble away. Brody fell to his knees beside me and reached for me. “Hey, it’s me!”
I slapped his hands. “What are you doing here? Why are you following me?”
“What just happened?” He looked at the crosses. His gaze lingered on Layne’s. “What is this place?”
“My brother died here.”
I never talked about my personal life. Ever. But once I started talking, I couldn’t stop. I told Brody everything, about Layne, about Darius, my mother … even about rattlesnake guy. When I finally stopped, I was afraid to look at him. Now he would know I was trash, just like I’d tried to tell him.
He wrapped his arms around me. I froze for a moment, then sagged against him. His arms tightened around me. “What happened to Layne was not your fault. Why would you think that?”
“I was the oldest. I was in charge. We were supposed to stay home.”
“You were kids, Avery. This wasn’t anyone’s fault.” He paused. “What I just saw, with the curve … you do that every year?”
I didn’t answer.
He kissed the top of my head. “You are the strongest person I’ve ever known.”
I gave a strangled laugh. “I’m weak. When I went into that curve tonight, I wanted to die. I’m so alone, Brody.”
He gave me a fierce hug. “You are not alone. Not anymore. Let’s get out of here, okay? We’re going back to my place.”
I wasn’t sure what showed on my face, but he shook his head. “Not for that. I’m not letting you stay alone tonight.”
He stood and reached to help me up. I took his hand. He smiled and hauled me to my feet. I brushed a kiss on my fingertips and pressed it to Layne’s cross, then slid under the arm Brody offered.
His place wasn’t much bigger than mine, though his furniture was better. I’d muddied my clothes, so he found me one of his shirts and a pair of drawstring shorts to put on. We talked for hours, about my family, about his. I learned that money didn’t necessarily buy a happy childhood. Even when there was nothing left to say, I felt comfortable. Safe. I hadn’t felt that in years. I fell asleep with my head on his shoulder.
I woke sometime later, lying on the couch. Brody lay beside me, spooning my back, his arms around me. When I stirred, he mumbled, “Don’t go.”
Lying there, wrapped in the heat of his body, breathing in his scent, I didn’t want to go. I twisted around and kissed him. He kissed me back, rolling on top of me. But when I reached to tug his shirt over his head, he stopped me.
“Avery-”
“Please,” I said. “I want this.”
He led me to his bedroom. That night, I broke one of my rules–I didn’t leave.
I woke the next morning and reached for him. His side of the bed was empty. I snagged a t-shirt off the floor and went to search for him.
I found him in front of the stove, singing and dancing in his boxers, making breakfast. I pressed my fingertips to my lips, but failed to suppress my smile.
Apparently, he didn’t hear my approach. I witnessed a rather inspired performance of Prince’s song, “Kiss.”
I laughed, feeling happy for the first time in a long time. He whirled, but didn’t seem embarrassed. He placed a plate of pancakes on the table and seized me, dancing me around his tiny kitchen.
“Good morning, beautiful,” he said.
“Good morning.” I glanced at the plates of food covering the kitchen table and raised an eyebrow. “You having company over?”
“Ha. Ha.” Sunlight streaming through his kitchen window made his eyes look blue and bright as a June sky. “Baby, I am hungry!” He winked at me and said, “And maybe I wanted to impress you a little.”
I grinned and draped my arms around his neck. “Oh, I’m impressed. Mostly that you have this much food in your house, considering we both work at the same place.” I winced. “Well, maybe we used to. I guess maybe we’re fired.”
“I took care of it. I talked to Charlie, told him you had an emergency and it’s all good. We have tonight off, too.”
“What?” I gasped. “Charlie hates me.”
“No, he doesn’t. You never miss work. Besides, how would he replace both of us?”
“You’re amazing.”
He smiled. “So… since we have tonight off, how about that date?”
“Date?”
“You know … dinner, dancing? Something besides burned corn dogs and dancing around the jukebox at Char Bar.”
‘’But that’s my favorite.”
“I know. I may have set the bar too high, but I’ll do my best to impress you.”
“You already impress me.”
And he did. Brody was a nice guy. A good man. When I found out I was pregnant six weeks later, he didn’t say, “Are you going to keep it?” or “Is it mine?” He said, “Marry me.”
“Brody, I don’t know if it’s yours. I won’t put this on you if it’s not yours.”
“I don’t care if it is. It will be. We will never know any differently, and the baby won’t either. I love you, Avery. We can be the parents we always needed. Marry me.”
But I couldn’t. Not without knowing. I talked to my doctor and he scheduled an amniocentesis when I was far enough along.
The day we met the doctor to discuss the results, I was a wreck. I’d given up cigarettes the day I learned I was pregnant, and my nerves were shot. I’d been unable to sleep that night and, while staring into Brody’s face in the moonlight, I’d made a decision. If the baby was his, I’d marry him, and I’d do my damnedest to be a good wife and mother. If it wasn’t, I’d leave in the middle of the night and never look back. I was not going to tie him to another man’s child.
Brody tried to make small talk while we waited, but I couldn’t hold up my end. Both me and my baby had so much to lose. I wanted Brody to be the father so badly. Not for his money, or even his support. One day, this child would want to know about its father. I did not want to have to tell it that I didn’t even know his name.
The doctor looked at Brody and held out his hand. “Congratulations, Dad.”
Brody’s grin lit up that office. He pumped the doctor’s hand and then turned to hug me.
So, I agreed to marry him. On our wedding day, Brody punched his best friend in the face for telling him he couldn’t turn a whore into a housewife. Maybe he was right. I didn’t know. All I knew was that I would do my best not to let him down. Not to let either of them down.
I didn’t know if I was capable of love, but the day I looked into Brody’s shining eyes over that surgical mask when he held our son for the first time, I knew I loved them both.
I couldn’t say it, however, but I hoped he knew. He stood by my side when I cut ties with my mother. My son was my priority now. I could no longer try to help someone who wasn’t interested in helping herself. I also would never have my child around Darius.
Lucas was a difficult baby. Brody and I learned how to live on little sleep. A colicky infant stage progressed to night terrors by age three. That was the age he began to talk a lot more, and also when I started to suspect there was something terribly wrong with my son.
One night, as he played with one of his toy cars, he looked at Brody and said, “His name is Dale.”
Brody glanced at the black car with the number three on the door and looked at Lucas in surprise. “Yeah, that’s Dale Earnhardt’s car. How did you know that?”
Lucas shrugged and said, “My other dad told me.”
Brody stared at me. “Other dad?”
I shrugged, but I saw the tension in his face.
“Who’s your other dad, Lucas?” he asked.
Lucas wouldn’t answer.
“Can I see you in the kitchen?” I asked.
“You can’t turn a whore into a housewife, right?” I said, when we were out of Lucas’ earshot.
He reached for me and I jerked away.
“I’ve never cheated on you. I’ve never even considered it. I … care about you.”
Brody sighed. “I know you do. I’m sorry. It just … caught me off-guard, I guess.” He pulled me to him and this time I didn’t fight it. “I love you, Avery. And I know you love me, too. I only wish you could say it.”
I did, too. There was this feeling that, if I did, something horrible would happen. One night, while Brody lay across my lap, I traced the words on his back with my fingertips. I thought he was sleeping, but he kissed my thigh and said, “I love you, too.”
My mother called me a week before the tenth anniversary of Layne’s death, begging to see Lucas. She told me she’d been clean for two years, and that she’d kicked Darius out the same day I had told her goodbye. I told her I’d think about it and disconnected the call. That night, I pulled down an old photo album from the closet. I’d stolen it from my mother’s house before I moved out. Lucas climbed into my lap and Brody looked over my shoulder while I flipped through it.
Lucas pointed at a picture of a 10-year-old Layne and said, “That’s me.”
“No … honey, that’s your Uncle Layne. He’s in heaven now.”
Lucas ignored me, poring over the pictures with an intensity rarely seen in the rambunctious toddler.
He pointed at another picture. “That’s my old dad.”
“That’s my dad,” I said.
He looked at me with his bright blue eyes and said, “I know, Mommy.”
That week, Brody called me from a restaurant parking lot. I heard Lucas in the background, having a meltdown. They’d been fishing and stopped to get lunch.
“Hey, honey,” Brody said. “Do you want us to bring you something?”
“I’m good. Why’s he crying?”
“You’ll never believe it. He’s crying because the waitress took away his corn cob.”
“His… what?”
“A corn cob. He started screaming that he wanted me to make him a pizza pie or something, like his old dad did.”
Lucas screamed in the background. “Piece pie! Piece pie!”
“Do you have any idea what he’s talking about, babe?”
“No, none.” But something was there. Some memory tugged at the back of my mind.
Brody sighed. “Okay, well … we’ll be home in about an hour. I love you.” He hung up instead of waiting on the reply he knew wasn’t coming.
I stared at my phone, then impulsively called my mother.
“Mom, I have a weird question. About Layne.”
“Okay,” my mother said slowly.
“Did Dad ever make something for him, out of corn cobs?”
“Yeah. He made these pipes, out of dried out corn cobs and sticks. Layne thought he was big stuff, clamping it between his teeth and walking around like Popeye.”
“I don’t remember that.”
“Well, you were a girl. Your father didn’t believe in little girls even pretend smoking.”
“Did he call them something?”
“He called them peace pipes. He’d grab his cigarettes, hand Layne his pipe and say, ‘Come on, son, let’s go smoke our peace pipes.’ Why do you ask?”
This was not something I wanted to run by my mother. “An old memory, I guess.”
They made small talk. My mother told me about the latest sobriety coin she’d earned and said, “Avery, I’m sorry for everything. I’m sorry I didn’t believe you about Darius. I–”
“Mom, I have to go,” I said. “I’ll call you later.”
Some things I wasn’t ready to forgive, or even talk about.
Rummaging through the freezer, I took an ear of corn from a freezer bag and boiled it. Then I shaved the corn from it with a knife and placed the cob on the back porch to dry. I made a pipe and sat it on the entertainment center.
Lucas didn’t notice it until that afternoon, after supper. He yelled, “Piece pie! Piece pie!” until Brody followed his gaze and got it down. He shot me a questioning look, then handed it to Lucas. Lucas stuck the end of it in his mouth and beamed at them.
That night after I put him to bed, Brody and I discussed it.
“What are you saying?” he asked. “I know it’s odd, but you don’t really think–”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “But he says such strange things sometimes. |
Publisher’s Note: This story is the second of a two-part arc told from the perspective of two individuals, Ruth and Bill, via their journal entries. For the best experience, we recommend you read the first half of the story, told from Ruth’s perspective, before reading Bill’s Account. For Ruth’s Account, please click here. To see a list of all stories in the series, click here.
The person who brought Bill’s journal to my attention has asked not to be identified. He insisted on giving me transcripts, not originals, so in this case what I’m showing you is exactly what I received. As before, neither I nor my source makes any claims about the veracity of these documents.
I’m sure many of you will want to know more about the documents themselves, but unfortunately, my source was not forthcoming. When I asked him how he acquired Bill’s account (I did so many times) his only response was: “I didn’t.”
I wish I had more insight to offer you. I’m afraid these new passages raise at least as many questions as they answer.
* * * * * *
12/7
I’ve got calluses on my hands from burying my brother. If we’re rescued today, I’ll have to explain that to someone. Some search-and-rescue trooper, some forest ranger, will hold my palm to the light of a chopper window and want to know how I managed to rub the heel of my hand raw.
I practice, sometimes. I practice what I’ll say to people when we get back home. Dr. Harmon, the department head, will need to know how I got Geoff and Lillian killed doing what was supposed to be straightforward field research. They were both his students, hand-picked for great things, led astray by the man who wrote his dissertation on the Russian Yeti, who taught a cryptozoology class disguised as a folklore survey. I got bumped off the tenure track for that. Harmon talked over me in meetings. Like I wasn’t there.
Ruth was on the floor with Ira for days after he died. Wouldn’t speak. She was holding his dead fingers and fussing to wash all the blood away, crying soundlessly with her mouth open, more like a wheeze. I had to do something, so I picked up her journal. Flipped through, all the way back to that night in the dark, the full moon rising and Ira down in a hole.
She isn’t documenting the whistlers anymore. I’ll see her in the corner by the stove sometimes with her notebook open and the pen just hovering over a page, not actually making words. She’s thin as a scarecrow now and her lips are cracking. I wonder about the things that she doesn’t write down. There are entire days she didn’t see fit to make note of. Then there are other things, little details, that I don’t remember at all. Things I don’t remember saying. This is the whole problem with the work we do. Incompleteness. Hearsay.
Two tonight, to the north, for about an hour after sunset. They separated, seemed to be approaching the lodge from either end of town, then abruptly moved further away. Nothing concrete but the tracks outside and the marks on Ira. They don’t seem willing to bother us inside, but we know that’s temporary. They took Sam, the helicopter pilot, right out of the lighthouse kitchen. Something broke the window above the sink. It was pitch black and he yowled like a cat. Ira had the rifle ready. It was dark and rainy and he aimed for the pilot, for the back of the head.
Still no reception. You listen to static long enough and it starts to sound like something, so we keep the lounge radio off. Food running low.
12/8
Mom will be at the airport when we’re rescued. She’ll ask about Ira before she asks about me. I’ll have that hanging over me for the rest of my life—that the wrong brother made it out of the wilderness. Cain and Abel, but he was the marked one. I can already see the disappointment in her eyes, hear the weepy sighing.
I am sorry he’s dead. Not as sorry as I should be. He didn’t scream the way Geoff did, didn’t scratch and bite like Lillian. He just stared up at me through the blue darkness, stared as if to concede that the order of things didn’t matter, that it could be either of us in the hole and the outcome would stay the same. The day we’re rescued I’ll have to find some way to keep the truth under wraps. Those eyes.
Ruth isn’t on her feet yet. When I got back from scavenging today, she was at the freezer door again, crying. There’s a woman in there, a chef, dead. She’s all the evidence we have about what happened at Red Hill. Not enough. We should dig a second grave, but the ground is even harder now.
Our bodies are broken. Little wounds, cuts and scrapes, twisted joints and tight muscles. Nothing gets a chance to heal. It’s just pain on top of pain, and hunger beneath it all.
I went back through the houses today, looking for anything we can use. Pointless to write an inventory down. Nobody had supplies to overwinter in Red Hill. Seems even the chef was planning to head south once the weather came in.
Three, maybe four whistlers around tonight. Very distant, north of us. We’ve got every lantern gathered in the lounge, all of them hanging from the antler chandelier along with tendrils of dust. It’s bright enough to read by, almost enough to feel truly safe. They’ll pick their night soon, I imagine. Only heard them briefly, but clear as a bell, so it was disturbing when I commented on it and Ruth said she didn’t hear them.
Lillian’s research centered on self-delusion. No two descriptions of the whistlers are exactly alike. There are similarities between accounts, sure, but she thought every victim was complicit, somehow. That you go so long fearing something you can’t see, and eventually you decide what it looks like. You decide what you believe. And then you see what you want to see.
Ruth woke me up later to say she heard the baby. She kept saying my name and begging me to listen, her nails digging into my arm, her face not an inch away from mine. Katherine’s birthday is tomorrow. I didn’t say anything. I was afraid of making her cry. Instead I held her like she was mine, my lips to her forehead. She went back to sleep.
I’m not sure how much more of this we can take. I think of the Survivor Theory all the time, the different permutations of it. If I shoot myself, will they leave Ruth alone? I remember Kirker Farley, the first trapper I ever interviewed, said the whistling stopped altogether once his last companion was dead. Said he walked out of the woods unmolested and found help. I’d want to walk for at least a day first. Make sure she wasn’t hassled with burying me. That’s how Ira said he would do it. Take the gun and go for a walk. What did he tell her? Rock ptarmigan. He was never supposed to come back that day. I guess he never really did.
No. I can see the logic, say the words, but I can’t do it. Ira wasn’t the only coward in these woods.
12/9
Ephraim Defoe was the first whistler scholar to describe the Survivor Theory. He wrote a paper about it—the idea that the whistlers are in some way dependent on humans and so will always leave one alive. A living human begets more humans. A survivor tells the story, excites curiosity, leads to more expeditions, more idiots in the woods. It implies long-term thinking on the part of the whistlers. Planning. A cycle of sowing and harvest.
Ruth doesn’t believe this part of the mythology.
“Obviously every story has a survivor,” she says. “The incidents without survivors don’t become stories. They don’t make it into the record.”
But I think about Kirker Farley. Gray mutton chops and a crumpled stetson, knuckles like oak bark. He was a Korea vet who retired to the wilderness once he got home. Took a vow of poverty. He spent a winter stranded and snowbound with six other people, all ex-military, all skilled and tough as nails. The whistlers picked the group apart one man at a time over the space of a month, and finally Kirker was left alone with his best friend, and that man started to lose his mind, started howling at the moon. Kirker killed him, his best friend. A knife, while he slept. Gentle as can be.
Everyone I’ve ever told the story to said that’s the answer right there: Kirker is just a murderer with a story to cover up his own wrongdoing. Maybe his case really is that simple. At the beginning, Ruth suspected all cases were that simple. I asked Kirker, though, when we sat down together, “Knowing they only take one at a time, why kill your partner and isolate yourself? Why not just stay together? Why wouldn’t the whole group stay together, arms locked, one impenetrable unit?”
He smiled the strangest smile. And he said: “A whistler ain’t a hound chasing a fox. He’s an angler waiting for a shark. Patient, patient, patient.”
We’ve been out here for months now, and I still don’t know what he meant. I do know I didn’t have the nerve to follow my own logic. I couldn’t sit idle and let the whistlers dictate terms. No whistlers tonight. When they come back, they’ll come in force. They’ll be insistent. I made my brother a promise, and I’ll keep that promise. But not today. Not yet. There’s still the coast.
12/10
Today we found Gary Law’s luggage in a cabin behind the lodge. It’s nice knowing this is where he came from. It helps put a date on whatever scattered the population of Red Hill. The man brought enough pleated slacks out here to start a catering company. Navy and Khaki, cufflinks and polo shirts. He’s got bear tour brochures and a receipt for a seaplane charter. It’s as if this was his first time outside an office. He’s got the look of someone they’d send search-and-rescue for, but we haven’t heard anyone flying over.
I’ve heard that’s something the whistlers can do. They can change what you hear, when. Mask what’s true and plant what isn’t. Lillian tried to record the whistles one night, but didn’t pick anything up. All we get is static on the radio. I wonder.
No idea how Gary Law made it so far north by himself, on foot. Why on earth he picked that direction to begin with. Ruth gathered up his plane ticket and put it with his ID. It’s documents. Worthless documents. We don’t have anything of Ira’s, but we’ve got a whole damned library on Gary Law. I never actually saw the man’s body. It was strange timing. I came back to Ruth burying a man hours after I’d left Ira to die. But he didn’t die. Didn’t speak except to say that we were wrong. It was a warning, just a warning, he said. The whistlers didn’t kill anybody.
Neither did I, I guess.
12/11
There’s a book in the lounge on traps and snares. I know exactly two traps, from scouts: the one where you make something heavy fall on your prey—a deadfall—and the one where you funnel your prey down into a hole. They’ve each got their drawbacks. There are knots and nooses in this book, diagrams for cornering bigger game. Ira was a damned Eagle Scout. Ruth likes to remind me of the things he knew that we’re both useless for.
Today I left her washing the bedsheets in water so hot it turned her arms red. She saw a tick on the carpet, she said. I probably brought it in on my socks. I would help, but I get the feeling she doesn’t want me around the lodge.
There was good rope in the Jeep. I made three different leg snares and one neck snare that I don’t have high hopes for. The book’s got instructions for small elk, boar, bear, and porcupine. I’d be glad to have any of those for dinner, but what I’m more interested in is what might happen if a whistler stumbles across a trap, or what they might do to a tethered animal in distress.
The academic part of me hasn’t frozen to death yet. Unlike Ruth, I haven’t forgotten why we’re here.
I found a pair of pole climbers in the closet. I stopped halfway up a mossy spruce and watched the forest for a good long time once the snares were set. I picked a little clearing where the ground is spongy, not a quarter mile behind the houses across from the lodge, but well-hidden. Half the noises of the woods come from the trees themselves. Creaking and swaying and whispering like they do. From my perch I could see the roofline of the lodge, smoke from the stove, and endless green in every direction. There are hills between here and the coast.
I heard something just as I was returning to the lodge—a low rumble, a growl. I looked back and saw what looked like a dog streaking away from behind the houses and disappearing into the woods. We freed a brindle mutt from one of the houses. He’s been following me in and out of the woods, doesn’t like me getting too close to his house, the gray shack right on the edge of the opening in the trees where I usually hike in. He runs with low shoulders and a mean little snarl. I’m sure he’s starving. If he finds himself in one of my traps I may put him down. If I brought him home, Ruth would want to feed him, name him. Can’t afford that.
After dark, there had to be twenty whistlers around the lodge. It was deafening, the sound of them, and all in the direction of that gap between the houses, the place where the forest opens up, where I set my snares. I didn’t tell Ruth this. Maybe it occurred to her anyway, that their activity might have something to do with my time alone out there. I piled wood into the stove and made her put on a pair of socks.
She’s been biting her nails down to nothing and talking in her sleep. I listen to her through the night. I don’t sleep much myself.
12/12
Ruth isn’t eating. She thinks I don’t know how little food there is, thinks I don’t notice her pretending to chew an empty spoonful of that yellowish fruit cocktail. When she’s rescued, people at work will make a fuss over how thin she is, how hard her arms and legs are now. It sickens me, the way we take our bodies for granted, the way we would sit at desks and count calories and deny ourselves a beer after work.
Damn, I’d like a beer tonight.
I said it to Ruth just now. She’s between me and the stove, braiding her damp hair. She laughed a little.
She’s pitying me my lack of imagination, maybe, or maybe she’s hoping I won’t ask for the other thing I want.
Checked the snares today—caught some kind of fox, dispatched it with Ruth’s hatchet. It was gamey and tough as shoe leather, but we ate it anyway, chewed like jackals till our jaws were sore. There’s plenty of salt and pepper, which didn’t help as much as you’d think. Nothing in the other traps. The neck snare looked disturbed, but the wind might have pulled it off the branches. Hard to tell.
Ruth keeps telling me to take it easy, rest in bed, get off my bad leg. I can’t bring myself to tell her that keeping still sounds like a death sentence to me. If she had her way, we’d curl up under the blankets together and wait for spring. Spring would come, but we wouldn’t see it. The only way any of this matters is if Ruth makes it out alive.
When she sees me going to the front door she asks me to stay where she can see me, stay within shouting distance. I cross the lounge to give her a kiss before I go, but there’s no give, no return. She’s my sister when she chooses to be. When they come to rescue her, that’s what she’ll say. That I was her brother-in-law, that I looked after her, that I was a decent help to her in Ira’s absence. That I tried.
12/13
It’s hours after dark. I just made it back. Ruth saw me limping and chewed me out, says I’m walking too far, putting too much weight on my bad leg too soon. She doesn’t know what I do all day. She assumes I’m still going through houses, finding matchbooks and hard candies lost behind sofa cushions.
I’m trying to finish it, but I didn’t even get the damn noose around my neck. Impossible to reach a good branch on these evergreens. It had to be high up so they could see me, so she could see me, so she’d know it was over. It’s how we did Geoff, Ira and I. Took him hunting. Tied him to a tree, waited until we heard them closing in, until his screams were drowned out by the whistling, and the other thing, the screeching and deep growling and the snapping of bones.
I had every intention of watching them take him, but in the end I didn’t have the nerve. I was sprinting away at Ira’s side, deciding the horrific din meant only that we’d done our jobs well, that the whistlers deemed the transaction acceptable, that they would leave us alone for a few more nights. We got back to camp and told Lillian we saw the whistlers attack him, and she believed us because they were silent for a long time after that. Almost two weeks.
Ira didn’t know the stories well, but he was convinced it was the right thing. The lighthouse keeper was certifiable, but he pointed out, rightly, that the only way to survive the whistlers is to play by their rules.
“They take one at a time,” he said, the night the chopper crashed.
We were all around his hearth with him, nodding. We all knew it was true. They take one at a time and they leave one alive. That one alive was going to be Ruth. We agreed, Ira and I, whispered the plan together. It had been years since we’d agreed about anything, but our decision about Ruth was mutual and urgent. He didn’t hate me for loving her then. He needed my help. The whistlers make the rules, but we decide the order.
We heard them closing in that night and dragged the lighthouse keeper from his bed. He was an old man, no trouble. We didn’t wake the others. In the morning, we told them we saw him walking off on his own, babbling about sparing the rest of us. We all remembered the pilot screaming about his wife and kids; we were all spooked by then. All willing to believe anything. Geoff marked an empty grave with a broomstick and Lillian cried and called the man a hero. We camped in the woods that next night, thought we might hike out of whistler territory before anybody else had to die. But we gave them Geoff next, then Lillian, and then we were down to just us three. Just us three. And suddenly all I had in common with my brother was that I wanted to live, and wanted Ruth to live.
I fell out of the damn tree before I even found a branch. Banged my leg up good.
Patient, patient, patient. That’s what I keep hearing, kept hearing, as I scraped away the soil and deepened the hole, as I grabbed roots and hauled away stones. It was already there, a collapsed burrow of some kind, so convenient, a receptacle for my darkest instincts. Ira had poor night vision, wore contacts. It was easy, in the dark, to get him where I wanted him. To scare him into the trap. My hands were freezing. He was a sacrifice, but unaccepted.
He was mute when he came back to camp, and even when he could accuse me he didn’t. Why? Why did they march him back to our door?
He opened his mouth to say something before Ruth fired. In my dreams, I give him words. An accusation. A condemnation. A warning.
* * * * * *
Hi again,
This will be my last update for a while. I think I owe you all a recap of what’s been happening for me in real time since I began posting these journals.
When I first met the man who gave me Bill’s entries–let’s call him Mr. H–I was struck by his stoic, resigned way of sharing them. Even though he was a bit territorial about the originals (to date I have not seen them) he was determined about the idea of sharing the story with a broader audience. I felt silly for the way I’d personalized the narrative earlier on. Talking to him, I stopped feeling like I had harmed anyone by posting Ruth’s journal. I didn’t feel as conflicted about it as I did at the beginning.
I had one last meeting with Mr. H before posting the first transcript of Bill’s journal online. Yes, the man lived near me. He was grizzled, older but not elderly, used a wheelchair but could walk short distances.
I found his company a little frightening at first. He wasn’t a creepypasta reader, as you might guess. The backpack I bought from the estate sale actually belonged to him. He was a family friend of the grandmother who died, and she had been keeping a handful of his old things in storage. The granddaughter sold his belongings without realizing what she was doing.
I returned the backpack and Ruth’s pages to him, though he wouldn’t tell me how he came by them or why he’d given them to the grandmother for safekeeping. This was on Sunday, before I posted the first half of his transcripts. It seemed like the right thing to do.
Yesterday I went back to Mr. H’s house. I went to ask if I could take some final pictures of both of the journals together, and the backpack. I know I told you I wasn’t interested in proving anything, but it seemed the final record would be more complete if I could offer at least one photo that encapsulated all of the material. Even comparing the age and color of the paper would be edifying.
When I arrived, there was no answer at the door. It was unlocked, though. We live in a small town. I knocked loudly before letting myself in.
I found him in his living room, hanging from a beam, a toppled stepladder on the floor. I’m in tears as I write this. I had never seen a dead body before. Reading about the horrors Ruth and Bill faced… I think none of it was real to me until now.
I don’t know what he did with the two journals and the backpack. I didn’t see them in his house while I waited for the police to arrive.
Do I suspect that Mr. H is Bill? A few of you have implied as much. I’m afraid I can’t answer the question now. I never asked him point-blank.
All I can do is leave you with Bill’s version of events.
We begin on the fourteenth of December, the morning after Bill attempted suicide in the woods beyond the lodge…
* * * * * *
12/14
I’ve talked to a few eyewitnesses over the years who swear whistlers look just like people. A little paler, maybe. Dead behind the eyes.
I spoke to an old woman, Wilma Derren, a goat herder, who said they can look however they want to look. Like a goose or a sheep or a human being. It’s when they open their mouths that you hear the truth, and then they change back to their natural form. She wouldn’t describe what that was.
She was convinced she’d seen one walking across her field one night, all alone, looking like a young man with torn clothes. She brought him inside, fed him dinner, and he didn’t speak a word to her. She turned away from him for a moment when she was clearing plates, and when she looked again he had gone from the table, sprinted silently through the front door. That night, the whistlers came. They trampled her fences in the dark and she lost half her herd. Found a doe torn to pieces by something. The rangers dismissed her story out of hand. Game warden had some explanation for her about bears. There was no sign of a bear though. No prints. Nothing interesting about the dead doe.
I wonder now if they weren’t half right. Ruth has said she thinks the whistlers could be protecting us. That we are not sharks, but more like sheep. Sheep at the mercy of wolves, and the whistlers our shepherds. I don’t know now. I don’t know what to believe.
* * * * * *
The dog’s house has the best angle on the woods. I went in through the kitchen door and looked through the back windows. I wonder if they’re out there now, having a laugh about my abandoned noose. I’m brave inside my own head, brave on paper, but I haven’t checked the snares today, and likely won’t. I’m thinking, actually, that it’s about time we made our way to the coast. It’s our last option now and I’m sick over it. Dead if we do, dead if we don’t.
The leg is killing me. I’m eating Tylenol and aspirin like candy. We have more medicine than food left, but nothing helps much. The worst pain doesn’t come from the leg anyway. It comes from the ticking clock, the whistlers at night, Ruth’s face. From knowing I’m a coward and a failure. Knowing she knows.
Tonight she drew me a bath and sat on the tub’s edge to wash my hair, her legs against my back, her feet in the hot water. We didn’t talk, but I rested my head against her thigh and she sort of stroked the back of my ear. That’s enough for now.
12/15
Damn dog came for me today while I was siphoning fuel from the van. Out of nowhere, but luckily Ruth saw and came running. She tried to scare the little bastard back into the woods, but he wouldn’t go, just stood whining at the trees, backing away from the swing of her stick, whimpering but refusing to flee.
Geoff had a theory. Called it the Symbiosis Hypothesis. He didn’t study whistlers much, but he was big on cryptids in general. People always ask: given that ecosystems only function because every organism plays a cooperative role, how is it possible that a tertiary predator could go unnoticed? A population of any sustainable size has a measurable appetite. His answer was that there must be larger blind spots to account for elusive species. He thought cryptids must exist in pairs, like a clownfish and an anemone. The anemone shields the clownfish from the outside world, protects it with poison that the clownfish is immune to. The clownfish helps the anemone by maintaining it, giving nitrogen, managing parasites, luring in prey. In this way they operate at a remove from the rest of the ecosystem. They cooperate, and might survive when logic says they shouldn’t.
Ruth was shouting at the dog, shouting toward the woods, backing up to me, to shield me. We heard something out there, as her voice echoed. Something called back to her. A scream. I’d heard it before. I’d thought it was a different part of the whistler’s repertoire. A screech. A new inflection that comes over them when they go from stalking to attacking. It’s what we heard the night Geoff died. The same gnashing, shrieking. It echoed out of the cave where we left Lillian.
Lillian. Lillian with long red hair and adoring eyes for Geoff. She almost got away from us. She fought. Ira shot her in the leg. We told Ruth we were firing on the whistlers when she asked about the sound. Said we could see them, like hard shadows, moving in the depths of the cave. Lillian wore the night vision goggles. I imagine she saw them more clearly than anyone ever has before. We didn’t see anything, only heard them. We heard this sound. A shriek like a wildcat. Like a deranged woman. The whistling came after, came second, came from a different part of the woods and closed in.
Now the dog was whining, and then it cowered out of sight. And Ruth turned to raise me to my feet. We were urgent to move, but we weren’t pursued. I can’t explain the shift, like a drop in temperature, a slackening of the wind. The whistlers were not there for us, but there for it. The whistling overtook the shrieking, and then everything hushed at once. They left us alone.
Ira said it. Said it in a clear voice in the days after I thought he’d lost his mind. “It’s a warning,” he said. “The whistlers didn’t kill anyone.”
What did he see from down in the hole? He said he saw tool marks. He said it to Ruth, but looked at me, wanted to make sure I knew I wasn’t forgiven. I used a folding spade. I thought we were a day’s walk from Red Hill then, maybe two. You have to give them something if you want to get away. It’s what the lighthouse keeper said, it’s what the stories say. You play by their rules, you live. Or, you have a chance. I gave them Ira. I would do it again.
I kept thinking I should have told Ruth everything. Here she was standing in the street with a stick of firewood and no idea what’s out there. I hit my head, I wasn’t much use, but I heard it again: the shrieking sound, and a rumble beneath it, atmospheric, eerie like thunder. Then the whistling. The dog was gone by then, but I can’t help thinking he’s part of it too. The hair was spiked on his neck. Eyes wide. We humans, we’ve got a way of personalizing things. Of assigning motives, emotions. Help or harm. Patient, patient, patient.
Ruth took me inside and cleaned my wounds, stitched up my leg. I’m bruised everywhere from my fall from the tree. She didn’t ask about that. Maybe she assumed it was old bruising still, or just more evidence that I’ve been pushing myself when I shouldn’t.
We shared the last of the gin. It’s battery acid, but somehow I couldn’t get enough. I could see it getting to her as the evening got dark. Not the gin, but the fear. The screech we heard, the anxiety in the dog’s eyes. The feeling that the longer we’re out here the less we know. A very final sort of despair. Like she might collapse and never get back up again, even after everything we’ve done. I couldn’t have that, so I rose and took her in my arms, and held her, and when I realized there was no way to tell her it would be all right, I kissed her. And she let me. I heard her sighing, and felt the weight of her against me, letting go. There was something tight in her face, more like desperate resignation than love. Maybe that was my own pain getting in the way. My need.
I brought her to the lounge and pulled her down with me on the bed, hurting everywhere and not caring. She undressed us both. I wonder, now that she’s asleep, if she’s dreaming of me or him.
It’s funny. I’m not afraid of death tonight.
12/16
I’m going to get Ruth to the coast. I decided this morning. Red Hill is a death trap, slow or fast, we’ll die here if we stay. And we have the Jeep. Maybe we’ll go fast enough that the screeching thing won’t follow us. Maybe the whistlers will close in on it once we’re gone. They’ll kill it. That’s what Ruth thinks. She thinks it’s a monster, something old and unspeakable, something the people of this region have been conflating with the whistlers since time immemorial. She thinks the whistlers are on our side. That they’re keeping it at bay.
Time is a factor. My leg is in bad shape. The bite needs antibiotics, and we don’t have them. She tried to get me to stay in bed, but I won’t. There’s too much work to do.
I got the fuel and gear loaded into the Jeep, then in mid-afternoon I decided to walk back out toward the snares. I heard her yelling for me not to go too far, but she doesn’t understand. I can hear the whistlers all the time now. It isn’t just at night, and it isn’t just when they’re putting on a show. I can hear them talking through the day, hear their conversations out under the trees. They get clearer and clearer every minute. Soon, I think the whistle tones might turn into words. Something I can parse.
It’s a relief to be inside my brother’s mind like this. Ira wasn’t afraid of them. That night it hailed. I have nightmares about that night. They marked him out for understanding, and now they’ve marked me, and I’m grateful. They’ll leave Ruth alone. I went back out to the snares because I was ready, at last, to give them their opportunity. I’m limping. Easy pickings if I’m wrong. I went as far as the hanging tree and got the pistol ready.
Hope feels like madness. I want to see them. The whistlers, the shrieking thing. I want to see them for myself before I die. That’s not too much to ask, is it?
The murmurs became chatter, became whistling. They were calling me out of the clearing where I’d set my snares, away, into the trees. I followed them with measured, trusting steps. Somehow I knew they wouldn’t leave me behind. They were leading, not fleeing. The snow had an icy crust, and soon I wasn’t just following sound and emptiness. I was following tracks. Dog prints. And I looked ahead and I saw the dog, the same one, standing in a treeless space where the woods ended. It was the edge of a cliff, snow and granite and scraggly trees. I could hear moving water, and the dog was staring at me, into my eyes, like he was possessed of a human mind.
“Are you one of them?” I said.
And the dog turned his back to me. He wagged his tail once and ran straight ahead, ran straight off the face of the cliff. And the whistlers, they were closer than I knew, their voices erupting behind me and ahead, from down in the gully and right at my back.
And what I don’t know—what I can’t know—is whether he jumped for me or for them. Whether they were making noise over his death or my witnessing it. Whether Ruth and I matter any more or less to the whistlers than the hares and foxes and birds we’ve hunted along the way. I walked to the cliff’s edge as a matter of reflex. It was a very long way down, a sheer granite face with icy lines of runoff. I didn’t see the dog. I saw cars. A dozen? Maybe fewer. Cars and trucks, driven clear off this cliff face, crashed and mangled, blackened where they’d burned.
It happened before we reached Red Hill, but not long before. It was a graveyard, a fresh one. Here lies the whole population of Red Hill, a sign might say. It’s one thing to be backed against an edge. It’s another thing to drive clear off it. There weren’t many bodies in view, but the ones I could see were removed from the vehicles. Thrown? Dragged? It’s hard to say.
Ruth got a paper published in a good journal a few years ago on the subject of mass hysteria. When a group of people panics all at once, they become like a single organism. They might see thin |
The first time I saw Bret, I was nineteen. I’d found a job working security at Dave’s Storage Unit. My duties included keeping vagrants and thieves from disturbing the 40 rental units that were laid out in five neat rows in the middle of downtown Atlanta and helping customers with lost combinations for their locks. It wasn’t the safest part of town to be working a night shift, but it seemed to be easy work and the hours meshed nicely with my class schedule at the community college. I trained two shifts on days, and then showed up that Thursday at 10 p.m. for my first shift alone. Or so I thought.
I arrived ten minutes early. A guy in a Fall Out Boy t-shirt sat at one desk playing Solitaire and a girl with long blond hair had her feet propped on the other, with a ball cap pulled down covering her face.
“Hi,” I said, when he looked up. “I’m Jason. New guy.”
“I’m Tom, ” he said, and started shoving stuff into a backpack. “Quiet day so far. Good luck. The crazies come out at night.”
The girl lowered her hat and stared at me. She was the kind of beautiful that just stops a guy in his tracks. Big green eyes, full lips, flawless skin… I realized I was staring and mumbled a ‘Hi,’ in her direction. Her eyes widened and she tipped her head in greeting.
Tom looked up at me, eyebrows raised. “Yeah… so, all the keys are in the top drawer of that filing cabinet, along with a master list of the combination locks. Don’t give anyone access unless they show two forms of I.D. and you make a copy of it. They’ll fire your ass if you’re not a stickler about that. And it has to be the person with their name on the contract, not a girlfriend, not a wifey. Some guy almost got canned because he let a wife in and she left with his whole stamp collection in the middle of a divorce.”
“It was him,” the girl said, and pointed at Tom. He ignored her, already heading toward the door.
“See ya, wouldn’t wanna be ya,” he said. “Night shift sucks.”
The girl flipped him a bird and I laughed. Tom shot me a look I couldn’t decipher, but then he gave a half-hearted wave and shut the door behind him.
I looked at the row of monitors and then back at the girl. She hadn’t taken her eyes off me and I felt awkward and flushed under her gaze.
“I’m Jason,” I said again, and immediately felt like an idiot.
“Bret,” she said, and leaned back in the chair. “Nice to have someone to talk to in this joint.”
“What about Tom?” I asked, sitting in the seat he’d vacated. She shook her head. “He’s a tool.”
“So… are you second shift or third? I thought I was working alone.”
She shrugged. “Wherever they need me.”
I guessed they called her in to keep an eye on the new guy, and she didn’t want to say she was supposed to babysit me. It was funny, because she seemed standoffish at first, but she was a talker and I loved to listen to her. By four a.m. it felt like I had known her forever, just one of those instant clicks and maybe even more so by the types of conversation people tend to have at those hours. We talked everything from childhood to politics. I think I was already falling a little in love with her.
She saw me stretch and said, “You want to go outside? We can do a walk around.”
A cool breeze blew, but she didn’t seem to notice. I couldn’t stop sneaking glances at her as we walked. Faded jeans, scuffed boots, black t-shirt and a camo jacket. I probably had close to the same outfit in my closet, but on her, even the ordinary seemed beautiful.
We walked the length of the first row and started down the second when she stopped and touched a bright yellow dandelion sprouting up through a crack in the sidewalk with the toe of her boot. “Those are my favorite flowers.”
I laughed. “Those are weeds.”
She smiled. “Those aren’t weeds. They’re wishes. Haven’t you ever blown on one and made a wish? And even when they’re yellow–that’s my favorite color. They’re such happy, hopeful little things.”
That made me smile, too. I’d never thought of them in that way. So many girls I knew seemed hung up on materialistic things, and Bret could find beauty in even this small flower. I was captivated.
When we made it to the fourth row, she stopped. Her face pinched into a grim expression as she said, “I don’t walk down this row.”
“Why?” I asked, taken aback by the look in her eyes.
“Number 27. It gives me the creeps.”
It was the third bay door, and it looked exactly like the first two. I didn’t understand, but I wanted her to smile again. “Then we skip this row.”
We finished walking the last row. A drink machine stood at the end of it and I asked her if she wanted one. She shook her head as I fed quarters into the slot.
A payphone I hadn’t noticed rang shrilly, making me jump. I laughed at myself and glanced at her. Bret’s expression wiped away my smile. She looked terrified.
“Don’t answer it!” she shouted. “Don’t ever answer it!”
I gaped at her, not understanding. “I don’t–I won’t–what’s wrong?”
She didn’t answer. She started walking briskly back toward the office. I chased after her, my change and soft drink forgotten.
“That phone rings every morning at 4:17,” she said, as I opened the door for her. “When you answer it sounds like dead air, or there’s some sort of hissing noise. It gives me the creeps.”
“Probably some automated thing. Wrong number or something, but it’s set on an auto-program.”
She looked at me and said, “Do you believe in ghosts, Jason?”
“You think a ghost is calling?”
“Don’t make fun of me!’” she snapped.
“I’m sorry.” I held up my hands in a gesture of surrender. “Do I believe in ghosts? Well, I haven’t ever seen one–”
She made a scoffing noise, and I said, “–but I won’t rule them out. My grandmother believed in ghosts. She said she had ‘the sight’ and swore that some people in our family could see them. Some had the gift of precognition, too. She was a very smart, reasonable lady.”
Mollified, Bret sat at the desk. “So, do you think everyone becomes a ghost when they die? Or do some move on to someplace else? Why would people be stuck here?”
I shrugged. “Unfinished business? Violent death? I don’t know. What do you think?”
She took a moment before responding. “Maybe the unfinished business. Maybe… maybe there just is nothing else.”
The easy vibe of our earlier conversation disappeared. She seemed anxious. Stressed. No matter what I tried to talk about, she seemed distracted. When Abe, the old guy on first shift appeared to relieve us, she walked out the door without saying goodbye. I bid a hasty good morning to him and ran to catch up.
I almost lost her, but I spied her head as she got on the train. It’d been a long time since I had a MARTA pass, so I had to dig for the $2.50 fare. She frowned when I sat next to her in the back, and I realized I probably looked like creepy stalker guy. Too late now, but I didn’t want her to be upset with me. I really liked this girl.
“What are you doing?” she asked, and I wanted to run, but the train lurched forward.
“I feel like I upset you and I’m sorry.”
She looked at an elderly lady in the next row, who was staring at us. Bret shook her head, like it was okay, but the lady got up and moved toward the front.
“It’s not you,” Bret said. “But I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Let’s talk about dandelions then,” I said. “They’re my new favorite flower. Like you, pretty and magical.”
As corny as that was, she laughed, and our conversation slipped back into the same easiness it had before that payphone rang last night. At least, until the next stop.
A lumbering bald man with beady dark eyes got on and took a seat a couple of rows in front of us. I saw Bret stiffen, though he didn’t pay much attention to us at all. His gaze fixed on a pretty Latina who sat in the middle, playing on her smartphone.
The rest of the ride, Bret never took her eyes off the man. He wasn’t pleasant to look at, but I didn’t understand her terror.
“This is my stop,” she said, and stood. The dark-haired girl also stood.
“Bret,” I said. “Uh, where are we? I need to get back to my motorcycle.”
She laughed then, the tension evaporating from her face. “You crazy boy. It will circle back around in about 6 more stops. I’ll see you tonight.”
She waved and walked forward, giving the man a wide berth. For a moment, he looked like he was about to get behind them, and I was prepared to do so as well, so she’d feel safe, but he just sat there.
Bret was already there when I arrived that night. She laughed when she saw the small bouquet of dandelions in my hand. Tom’s eyebrows shot up. He opened his mouth, then closed it again. He left in record time.
“I don’t think that guy likes me,” I said.
She waved her hand dismissively as I put the dandelions in water. “He doesn’t like anyone. And thank you for the flowers. They’re lovely.”
So are you, I thought, but I didn’t have the courage to say it yet.
I wasn’t about to bring up the guy on the train. I hated that tense, scared look she’d worn this morning. But to my surprise, she did.
“That man is evil,” she said. “Please don’t ask me to explain how I know. I’m afraid he means to hurt that girl and I don’t know how to stop him.”
My stomach dropped. “Bret… did he hurt you? We need to call the cops.”
She hesitated long enough to make me think he had, but she said, “No. I don’t know. I can’t remember things, and I’m scared to remember things. The phone makes me think of something but I push it back. Anyway, it’s not about me now. It’s about that girl.” She took a deep breath. “Let’s talk about it later. I don’t want to think about it right now.”
“I looked up dandelions between classes today,” I said. “People in the 1800s used to blow on them after they went to seed. If all the seeds blew away, the object of your affection shared your feelings.” I shook my head and gave her a pointed look. “You may not know it yet, but I think you’re in love with me.”
She laughed, long and hard and I grinned, pleased to see her happy again. Then her face got sad. “I wish I’d met you before, Jason.”
“What’s wrong with now?” I asked, with uncharacteristic bravery. “You’re not married, are you?”
She shook her head. “No, but I’m not what you think I am. There are a lot of bad things, Jason. I don’t want to explain, because I really like you.”
“You’re a beautiful girl with a weird taste in flowers. Think of all the money I’d save on Valentine’s Day if you were my girlfriend.”
She laughed again. “Just keep talking to me. I hardly talk to anyone anymore, and you’re so funny. Tell me about the motorcycle. I’m glad you made it back to it.”
“I actually didn’t come back to it this morning,” I admitted with a laugh. “I got off the train and took an Uber to my place, then hitched a ride to school. Took the train back to work tonight. I was kinda hoping I’d see you.” I had seen the creepy guy, but I didn’t tell her that. “Come outside and I’ll show it to you.”
She walked around it, trailing her fingers on the gleaming blue paint. “It’s pretty,” she said, “but I don’t like these things. They’ll get you killed.”
“I was hoping I could take you on a ride on it sometime.”
She gave me a glance that looked like a definite ‘no’, but said, “We’ll see.”
Everything was fine until the phone began to ring at 4:17 a.m. I watched her face get that same terrified look and wondered what in the world had happened to her, and if it connected somehow to the creepy guy.
Around time for the day shift guy to come on, she mentioned the guy on the train again. “I don’t know why, but I have the feeling he’s going to do something to her, soon. I hate to ask, because I know you need sleep and go to class, but… would you ride the train with me again?”
“Of course,” I said.
Abe appeared at six on the dot. “Good morning, Sunshine!” he said, dropping his backpack onto a chair.
“Good morning, Abe,” Bret said. To me, she said, “I love that old guy.”
I chatted with him for a moment. Bret moved to the door and I said goodbye to Abe, intent on following her, when he called out, “Hey!”
His old face was pale when I glanced back. He pointed a shaky finger at the Styrofoam cup filled with dandelions. “Where did these come from?”
The look on his face spooked me. I wasn’t sure what was happening.
“I–I picked them for Bret.”
The old man face went slack with shock. “You know Bret? You’ve seen her?”
“Wha–” I whirled to look at her. She held out her hands in supplication. Tears streamed down her face. For the first time, I noticed she had on the same outfit as she had yesterday.
“I’m sorry, Jason. I didn’t–I didn’t know what to say.” “Jason?” Abe asked, louder. “I said, have you seen Bret?”
I couldn’t tear my gaze from her.
“Apparently, your grandma wasn’t the only one who had the gift,” she said, and walked through the door. When I say, walked through the door, I mean right through it. A freaking solid metal, closed door. I couldn’t move, couldn’t speak.
Finally, I half-fell onto one of the chairs. I heard Abe talking, but it was like he was speaking through a tunnel. It seemed like forever before I could focus on him.
There was nothing I could say that wouldn’t sound insane, so I didn’t bother to sugarcoat. I said, “You didn’t see her, just now, when you came in here?”
He shook his head, his rheumy eyes huge.
I told him about working with her, about some of the things she’d said. Even about the weird ringing phone. When I finished, he just stared at me.
“To be honest, I don’t know whether to believe you right now, or to call the cops,” he said.
I nodded. It was a fair statement. I don’t know what I’d think, in his shoes. “She said you used to be a cop, before your wife got sick.” I looked up at him. “She said you’re the reason she loves dandelions. You told her about how your wife loved them, and how you decorated her hospital room with them before she died. Bret said it was the most romantic thing she’d ever heard.”
Abe sat heavily in the chair. “I did tell her that. Can I ask you to describe her for me?”
I did, down to her scuffed boots, and he nodded. Then he reached into a desk drawer and pulled out a picture of her. It was Bret, alright, but on a MISSING poster. The clothing described as the last outfit she was seen wearing was what I’d seen her in.
“She went missing from her shift here, six months ago. I showed up and this place was wide open. There was a great deal of blood out by that payphone. The police never had any leads.”
I gestured at the row of monitors. One showed the drink machine and phone. “What about the cameras?”
“Installed after the fact. Because of her. Too little, too damn late.” He leaned forward, giving me a hard stare. “I loved that little girl. She was like a daughter to me. I’ve brought her dandelions myself. I have never believed in ghosts, but I saw your face this morning. I believe that you saw her, or you’re some kind of nut and think you saw her. But I don’t know how you know some of the things you know if that were the case. Bret and I worked together some, before we lost personnel and she got bumped to nights. I think she would’ve mentioned you, and I only told her the dandelion story right before she went missing. You could be the nut who took her, but I don’t think so. I can’t imagine why she’d share something like that with a person who would hurt her. If you see her again, ask her how much a mail order bride costs.”
“What?” I felt like I’d fallen back down the rabbit hole again. Nothing made sense. I wondered if I was dreaming.
“Just do it,” Abe said. “Now go home. You look like shit.”
Only when I stumbled to the parking lot did I remember my promise to ride the train with her. I thought about Bret and the Latina girl. In fact, I skipped class and lay in my bed and thought about them all day.
When I got to work that night, Tom was the only one there. Even though I still felt punch drunk and scared, I had hoped Bret would be sitting there. Abe apparently hadn’t told Tom about any of it, because he treated me with the same dismissiveness as always. It was weird to look back and realize he and Bret had never really spoken or interacted at all. I hadn’t had a clue.
By 4 a.m. I was getting a little stir crazy, so I jumped up to walk around the storage buildings. I turned the corner of the last one and walked straight through Bret.
I screamed like a little girl. She giggled a little, and clamped her hand over her mouth. “I’m sorry. Jason–”
“Are you real?” I demanded. “Am I crazy?”
“I think I’m real,” she said. “At least, I was. I know it sounds like I’m lying, but I don’t remember much.” She nodded at the payphone. “I remember this phone and it ringing. I think he used that to catch me off-guard. I answered it and he hit me with something. I think–” She pinched the bridge of her nose. “I think he’s about to kill that girl on the train. Maybe I’m supposed to help her.”
Abruptly, she swung her fist at my arm and it passed right through. I yelped.
“Stop doing that!”
Despite everything, she laughed. “I was just checking. I don’t know how I’m supposed to stop him when he can’t see me and I can’t touch him.” She winked. “On the bright side, I bet you look crazy as hell on the security cameras right now.”
I scowled at her, then something occurred to me. I glanced at my phone. 4:20 a.m. “Hey, the phone didn’t ring.”
She shot it a scared look. “What does that mean? Are we on the right track, or are we running out of time?”
I had no answer.
The next morning when Abe came in, he gave me a wary look and said, “Is she here now?”
I nodded and pointed at the chair she was sitting on. “Bret, how much does a mail-order bride cost?”
She laughed. “Tell him I said, ‘Ask Ernie.’”
I told him and his dark eyes teared up.
“Bret, what happened to you?” he asked.
“She doesn’t remember but we are trying to figure it out,” I said.
“Tell him Maggie still visits him. I’ve seen her around him. She’s got a little girl she calls Bumblebee with her.”
I told him and he burst into tears. When he could finally speak, his voice was a gasp. “There’s not a soul alive who knows that. Bumblebee was our daughter. She died back in 1974. I’ve never talked about her since.”
“Jason, the train,” she said, and I told Abe we had to go.
“Godspeed, son,” he said.
When we got on the train, the girl was already there. The bald man got on the same stop he had previously. His attention was once again fixed on her, but hers was once again fixed on her phone.
I had no weapon and this guy was twice my size, but when I thought about him hurting Bret, or this stranger, I think I could’ve taken him down with pure adrenaline. We were about to find out, anyway, because this time when she stood, he stood too.
It was still early, not a lot of folks out yet. We followed him, following her, trying to stay ducked out of sight.
She paused outside a storefront and fumbled in her purse for her keys. That was the distraction he was waiting on. He charged her like a bull.
It was terrifying, how quickly he seized her and dragged her into an alleyway. I ran blindly into the alley behind them. He had her pinned against the wall, his meaty hand around her throat.
“Hey!” I screamed. “Hey! Let her go!”
She still had her keys in her hand. While he gaped at me, she swung at his head with a vicious arc. She missed his eye, but the key dug into his cheek. The girl gave it a savage yank, opening up his face.
With a bellow of pure rage, he dropped her and grabbed his ruined cheek. Blood spurted between his fingers and he ran straight at me. I made a desperate lunge for his legs, but he barreled past me–straight into the pathway of a Meko’s Milk truck.
I’d hear the sound of that impact in my head for the rest of my life. A thudding, cracking, squelching sound. But I was glad. He’d never hurt another girl again.
Bret was gone. I missed her terribly and hoped every day she’d reappear. I realized that was selfish and then I just hoped she was at peace. There was no grave to visit, so sometimes I’d gather little bouquets of dandelions and place them at the office, or at my apartment. Such happy, hopeful little things…
Four months after the incident with Edward Culpepper (that was his name–I’d followed the story avidly in the papers), I was getting a little overtime, helping Abe go through the stack of delinquent customers.
“Looks like we’ll be cleaning out units #27 and #38,” he said. “Non-payment of rental fees.” He tossed the copies of their agreements on the desk in front of me and I froze. Edward Culpepper’s face stared up at me from the photocopy of his driver’s license. Renter of unit #27.
Abe noticed my face and said, “Jason? Are you okay?”
“That’s him,” I said. “That’s the guy who killed Bret.”
I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before then. Her strange fear of that unit. Now it made sense. I told Abe and that old man moved faster than I did as we grabbed the combination for that lock.
It took us a while because the until was completely filled with old furniture and boxes of junk, but towards the back, we found a metal barrel. On the ground beside it lay Bret’s army jacket.
Abe grabbed my arm. “We are not opening that. We are calling the cops right now, do you understand me?”
I let him pull me outside, because I didn’t want to see her like that, either.
Bret’s body was finally laid to rest. With her mother’s permission (and notice to the caretaker so he wouldn’t try to kill them), Abe and I did some gardening work on her grave that next spring. Yellow dandelions covered it, looking as beautiful and sunny as the girl they memorialized. I think she would be pleased.
Five or six years passed. I graduated from college, got a real job, fell in and out of love a couple of times, but I never really stopped thinking of her. Every time I saw a white dandelion, I picked it and made a wish. When I was in the area, I visited her grave and made sure she still had her cheery little offerings.
One day, I was riding my motorcycle up near Nashville, enjoying a sunny summer day. I guess the driver of the Camaro didn’t see me when he swerved around a semi to change lanes.
I flew through the air and fell back down, hitting the ground with a bone-jarring thud. I lay there, conscious of sounds and light, but I couldn’t move at all. I couldn’t feel anything either, except for the heat of the sun on my face.
I was disoriented, but I guessed I was in the median. Lying on grass, for sure, because there was a round, white dandelion inches from my nose. Blackness seeped at the edges of my peripheral vision. I couldn’t blow on it, but I made a wish anyway, then passed out.
When I came to, I still couldn’t move, but I felt a little more. Specifically, I felt someone nudging my side. I looked up to see Bret prodding me with the toe of her boot.
“You gonna lie there all day?” she asked, and extended her hand.
Surprisingly, my hand rose to grab hers and didn’t pass through. She felt solid. Real. I wondered if I was in the hospital and this was some anesthesia-induced delirium. But the sun felt real enough. I even smelled burned rubber. I let her help me up, and I stood there for a moment, swaying. I saw my bike some yards away, crushed.
“Ugh,” I said. “Maybe I shouldn’t move too much before the paramedics get here.”
She winced. “Yeah, about that…” She pointed to the ground beside me.
It was surreal to see my broken body lying there, staring sightlessly up at the sky.
“Oh,” I said. “Ouch.”
She shook her head. “I told you those things would kill you.”
“So… now what?” I asked. “Is there a bright light we walk towards or what?”
“You’re so calm. I like that about you.” She shrugged. “If there’s something we’re supposed to be walking toward, I haven’t found it yet. Maybe it’s just me and you.”
“Maybe it’s my wish,” I said, and she raised an eyebrow.
“I made a wish right before I passed out—died, whatever.”
She scrunched up her nose. “Oh, yeah? Is that why I’m here? What was the wish?”
“Just one I’ve wished a thousand times now. You’re really bad about responding to your ghost messages.”
I took her hands and made her face me. “Sorry. Still getting the hang of this business.” She waved her hand dismissively. “Such a rookie. But tell me, what was your wish?”
“What I always wish–that I could see you again someday, and do this,” I said, and kissed her.
I’m not sure how long we stood like that, kissing and holding each other while sirens screamed and traffic whizzed by on the other side of the median.
Eventually, we started walking. I didn’t know where we were going. Didn’t care. All I knew was that I was with her.
“So,” I said. “Who’s Ernie and what’s this about a mail-order bride?”
Before she could tell me, a terrible cramp seized my body and I felt myself being tugged backwards. Brett frowned, her green eyes suddenly sad.
“It’s not your time,” she said. “Stop fighting it.”
I didn’t want to let go. I wanted to stay with her.
But the tugging became a vacuum until I had no choice I went hurtling backwards.
I blinked and saw an ambulance worker standing over me.
“There you are,” he said as he popped up the stretcher I was somehow on.
They loaded me onto the helicopter. I saw Brett standing over his shoulder. She held a dandelion in her hand.
“It’s okay, Jason,” she said. “Some things are worth waiting for.”
Then she blew on the dandelion, making a wish.
|
It was a long time ago that I heard the tale. I was deep in the desert, with only myself and a man I had hired as a guide. We found a small oasis at the bottom of a valley and set up camp for the evening. Later that night, under a moonless sky we sat around the campfire. My guide was carving something from a piece of wood while I stared out into the desert.
“Do you know any good desert stories?” I asked. He looked at me from across the campfire for a moment with his bright blue eyes and then gazed into the fire. He nodded.
“There is one I know,” he said. “It is a very old story, and not one that many people know.”
“Well, let’s hear it then,” I said. “Preferably before the campfire goes out.” He smiled at me and began to tell his tale.
“Millennia ago, there stood in the desert the great and ancient city of Zatan’nataz, the oasis city, home to tens of thousands. It was beautiful in the sunlight, with its polished sandstone buildings shining brilliantly. It streets were full of life and color, with the merchants shouting at the pedestrians, the children running through the courtyards, and the priests and scribes going about their business. The buildings everywhere were adorned with garishly colored tapestries and murals, most including the Golden Frond, the symbol of the oasis city. Brightly painted statues stood guard at all gates and on the corners of the temples. Each of the city’s quarters held a massive fountain spraying water high into the air. At the center of all of the roads was the Tower of the Moon, rising into the sky above the city. At its base stood the Great Crypt, the sanctuary of the priesthood and the heart of Zatan’nataz. A high and impenetrable wall surrounded it all in a near perfect circle. But things were far from perfect in that ancient city.
Just before sunrise on the night of every new moon, a young hunter named Aser climbed onto his roof to view the monthly spectacle. As the first light of dawn came over the horizon, all activity in the city ceased. The streets were empty, the people in their homes stayed silent. And then came the sound of slaying from the Great Crypt. It was a faint sound, but unmistakable. Every citizen of Zatan’nataz claimed that they could hear it when it happened. And then the locked doors of the Great Crypt opened and four high priests carried out a large stone sarcophagus emblazoned with the Golden Frond and the Black Sun, the sign of the goddess. While all others hid in their homes for the duration of the ceremony, peeking out of their windows if they were brave, Aser crouched on his rooftop and watched them as they went from the center of the city to the southern gate.
For five years the ceremony had been carried out. An old, old legend had stated that the city was under the protection of a goddess. One day, it said, a demon would come to destroy the city. On that day, the goddess would come, banish the demon and usher in a golden age for Zatan’nataz. But the demon had come and the goddess had not. The high priests slew the demon using ancient and forbidden magic, but its heart refused to die. They ripped the organ from its body, but a new body began to slowly grow around the heart. They could not destroy it, nor could they dispose of it, so they placed it in the deepest shrine of the Great Crypt and sealed the doors. Then they returned, every month, when the demon was nearly regenerated, and cut its heart out once again. Then they placed the husk in the sarcophagus and carried it to the Pit of Zakas, which was said to be the entrance to the underworld, and threw the lifeless body into it, coffin and all. And thus the high priests claimed they protected the city until the goddess came to destroy the demon once and for all.
The people of Zatan’nataz claimed that this was their golden age. They claimed that the demon was defeated. Aser called that heresy. To all that would listen, he made his case. Aser was a man of faith that believed the prophecy must be followed precisely. Until the goddess destroyed the demon, he said, the golden age would not truly come. And for the goddess to appear, the demon must be let loose upon the world. His friends laughed at first. They tried to persuade him otherwise. Failing at that, they turned their backs on him at last. Aser called them blind. He said that their golden age was a farce. He had watched the city for many years and he had seen the rot beginning to set in over it.
It began with the high priests. Beneath the banner of the Black Sun, they claimed that they were above all others in the oasis city. They began to amass wealth, servants, and power beyond compare. He had heard rumors of them stealing from the city’s vaults and claiming it for the temple. He had seen them take young women from their families to fulfill their own desires. And he had seen any who stood against them disappear as if they had never existed. The city had fallen into ruin with its funds depleted. Violence, crime and corruption had taken hold. But the people claimed that the golden age was upon them because they did not want to believe what was directly in front of them.
At noon on the days of slaying, the doors of the Great Crypt stood open and the priests flaunted their power. For on display on the great altar for one hour was the heart that they had ripped out of the demon’s chest. It beat slowly as the bravest citizens viewed it. And at the end of the hour, the veins and arteries began to sprout once again and the people of the city were banished from the Crypt until the next day of slaying. Aser viewed it every time. He was drawn to it. At times he thought he could almost hear a voice in the air, pleading with him to free it from its torment. And one day, as the voice was clearer than it had ever been, Aser finally decided to take action. He would unleash the demon.
For one month he planned how he would do it. He could not merely stop the slaying. The doors of the Great Crypt had powerful seals upon them. And even if he could gain entry, how long would it be before the demon awoke? No, his course of action had to be more precise. He must rejoin the body and heart. He knew the course of the priests transporting the husk to the Pit of Zakas. Along the way there was a large boulder that had been there since before the first stone of Zatan’nataz was laid. It was there that he must wait. He readied his bow, which he had practiced with since he was a small child. His aim was near perfect. He laid out his arrows and performed certain rituals and blessings over them, saying that what blood they spilled would be for the greater good.
And so the next day of slaying came. Aser had hidden behind the great boulder a day before and camped there. He had no fear of being discovered, for none but the holy men with their load traveled toward the Pit of Zakas. Dawn came and the city went silent. And despite being a half-mile from the city gates, Aser heard the sound of slaying. Over the years he had come to know the exact timing and pace of the high priests travelling with the great stone sarcophagus. So he waited, knowing exactly when they would cross in front of the boulder. And exactly when he expected, he heard footfalls on the other side of his refuge. He circled the stone quietly, so that he came around to the road behind them. As he moved onto the road he saw them walking slowly ahead of him, with their backs turned. He drew his bow and aimed for the priest to the front and right, the farthest away from him. His years of training had served him well, for the arrow found its target in the back of the priest’s head. The other three staggered as one edge of the sarcophagus was no longer held aloft. Aser drew his next shot and fired at the priest on the back right. The arrow struck him in the back and he fell. With that, the sarcophagus tumbled to the right, its side slamming into the dirt path. Its heavy stone lid loosened and fell to the earth. Its contents struck the side with a dull thud.
By now the remaining priests had turned and seen him. They drew their ceremonial blades and charged. Before the nearest could reach him, Aser had buried an arrow in his throat. As the last ran at him, Aser drew and fired his fourth arrow. And then something happened that did not happen often. He missed. With the priest almost upon him, Aser panicked and quickly drew another arrow. He rushed the shot and fired wildly, missing the priest again. With that, the man was upon him, swinging the razor sharp blade toward his head. Aser raised his bow to block the strike. The blade cut effortlessly through the thick wood, but missed its mark and buried itself in Aser’s shoulder. He screamed in pain and watched as his blood began to soak the sand beneath him. For a moment he waited, expecting the strike that would cut his throat. But it did not come. He raised his head and saw that the priest was exhausted. It had been years since he had had to act so swiftly. Aser took his chance and knocked the sword from the man’s grasp. Acting on instinct, he pulled the man to the ground and leapt on top of him, his hands going to his throat. For what seemed like an eternity he choked him, until the man finally stopped moving.
Aser rose to his feet panicked and gasping for breath. His killing of the others was sanctified by the blessed arrows. This was cold blooded murder. His soul was now forfeit. After a minute of panic, he calmed himself by remembering his goal. Surely if he heralded in the true golden age he would be redeemed. He approached the fallen sarcophagus, its lid lying silently on the ground beside it. He prepared himself to gaze upon an abomination and looked inside the stone coffin. What was inside was not what he had expected. What was inside terrified him more than anything else on earth ever could. After many minutes of staring, he carefully gathered up the contents in a large burlap sack, painfully hefted it over his good shoulder, and ran back toward Zatan’nataz.
For hours he hid in a darkened alley with his prize. It seemed like an eternity. Finally he saw the sun rise directly above him and he knew it was time. The priests would not be suspicious at first, for Aser was always present at the displaying of the heart. His plan to retrieve the heart had been subtle and complex, but for all those hours of waiting, rage had festered inside his heart. He would not draw it out one second more than was necessary. It was then that he heard a loud crack and knew that the doors of the Great Crypt had been unsealed.
He threw his burden over his right shoulder once more and marched toward the Crypt. As he reached the doors he saw that a priest was slowly pulling each of the doors open. One of them smiled as he saw Aser, for they had seen him every new moon for years. His smile faded as he saw the bag draped over his shoulder. As Aser reached the doors, he shoved the left door as hard as he could. The door struck the priest and he fell onto his back clutching his face. When the priest on the right protested, Aser swung around, one end of the heavy sack on his shoulder striking the man in the face and sending him to the ground as well.
The ceiling of the Crypt towered high above him, the sunlight filtering in through a hundred small windows. He strode through the towering statues surrounding him toward the great altar in the center of the room. Two priests were present, one on each side of the altar. Upon hearing the noise at the entrance they had drawn their blades. Aser let the bag he carried fall to the floor with the sickening noise of dead flesh. The priests charged at him, but Aser was ready this time. He knew their aim would be poor, and that they had no strength to their blows. He grabbed the wrist of the first to reach him and wrenched it until the blade dropped from his grasp. He placed a hand on the man’s chest and shoved him into the second priest. They fell to the floor screaming. Aser saw red and knew that the second man’s blade must have cut one or both of them. He didn’t care.
Aser stepped around the two men on the floor and made his way to the great altar in the center of the room. The light from the windows above made the golden altar shine brilliantly, but what Aser wanted was the lump of dull flesh sitting on top of it. A shudder ran through him as he picked the heart up off of the altar. The beating was slow and faint, but there nonetheless. Aser closed his eyes and began to silently mouth a prayer. Before he could finish it, a hand roughly grabbed his wounded shoulder from behind. His arm exploded in pain as he was spun around. Opening his eyes, he saw a large man clad in leather armor towering above him. The dull leather was emblazoned with the symbol of the Black Sun. Aser had little time to react as a heavy fist struck him in the face and everything faded to black.
Aser awoke in a room the likes of which he had never seen before. He had been seated in a heavy wooden chair. He did not seem to be bound in any way. In front of him stood a tall central stand containing a dimly burning torch. The light cut through the darkness around him, casting strange shadows on the walls. This was unsettling as Aser could see nothing between the torch and walls that could be casting the shadows. The walls were covered in paintings that may have looked normal in the light, but underneath the dim light and shadows there was not one of them that did not look demonic. Graceful figures became twisted and scarred. Beneath him on the floor was a carpet made from the hides of animals he did not recognize.
Several seconds after he awoke, he heard a door open behind him. Soft footsteps approached his back and he heard a low voice.
“I presumed that my personal study might give us a bit more privacy than the cells in the dungeon,” the voice said. A tall man clad in the same branded armor walked to the front of him. He turned and stood directly between Aser and the torch, his figure silhouetted against the dim light at his back. Aser could make out nothing about his face except for a pair of flashing blue eyes that stared back at him.
“Allow me to introduce myself,” said the strange man. “I am Sukaz, head of the Guardians of the Priesthood. You won’t have heard of us, of course. We take great care to make sure of that. We find it makes our jobs easier.” As Aser’s head fully cleared, the rage returned, stronger than before.
“What have you done?” Aser said in a low growl.
“I have done nothing,” said Sukaz. “You, on the other hand, have committed several acts of murder, put the people of the city into a panic and almost ruined many years of hard work.”
“You know what I mean,” said Aser. “What was that?!” The rage was evident in his voice. He saw a flash of white as Sukaz grinned at him.
“Ah,” said Sukaz. “You mean what was in the sarcophagus. But you don’t need me to tell you that. You knew the moment you saw it, whether you want to believe it or not.” Aser thought back to hours before, when he gazed into the great stone coffin. There was a corpse inside, but it was no demon. It was the body of a woman. She was tall, beautiful and regal. He had seen the skin of the body shine faintly, bathing the inside of the sarcophagus with light. Aser said his next words slowly and deliberately, rage permeating every syllable.
“You have slaughtered a god.”
“Yes, repeatedly,” said Sukaz. Aser leapt from the chair he was seated in, his hands going for Sukaz’s throat. As soon as he had risen, the man’s fist crashed directly into his jaw. He fell back onto the chair painfully, tasting blood and feeling that two teeth were missing from the right side of his jaw. “Do not think that you can kill me as easily as a few pampered high priests, boy. Luck has been on your side thus far. It will not be again.” Aser drew himself back up in the chair, but remained seated. He glared back at the man in front of him, tears beginning to well up in his eyes.
“How in the name of all that is holy can you do such a thing?” asked Aser, his voice nearly breaking.
“To be fair,” said Sukaz with a maddening tone of superiority, “I have never killed her myself. You can credit your illustrious priesthood with that. As for why, they do it because of the one thing that drives all men.”
“And that is?”
“Fear,” said Sukaz. “Five years ago, the high priests began to descend into a state of arrogance and decadence. They began to amass power, created the Guardians, and robbed the city blind. And then she appeared; the very goddess these priests claimed to work on behalf of. And on that day, those men that once thought themselves righteous feared judgment more than any.” Sukaz laughed softly. “I am not sure who struck the blow, but before she could say one word to them, a priest drew his blade and impaled her through the heart. Then they saw the blood withdraw and the wound begin to heal. They had been afraid of judgment for their pride. They were now petrified of judgment for the murder of a deity. And so the cycle began.”
“Five years,” said Aser. “Five years! How many times has it been?? How many corpses have been thrown into the pit?! Why do they let this continue?!” He was sure that someone outside would hear his screams, but Sukaz just stood there and let him continue. When he finally stopped, the man laughed.
“Your people are cowards,” said Sukaz. “They cannot face what they see in front of them. Their city could be burning around them and they would not notice.”
“The city is burning!” screamed Aser. “And you know it! How do you let this happen day in and day out?”
“Because the world may be better off with it gone,” said Sukaz. “The oasis city is dead and rotting. It must be cut off like a gangrenous limb.” The man’s tone changed as he said those words. His voice echoed from the walls around them. Aser’s rage began to dim. Fear began to replace it.
“Who are you?” Aser asked, his voice lowered to a whisper. Sukaz crossed his arms and looked up toward the ceiling, as if trying to find the correct words to say. After a few seconds, he circled the torch in the center of the room, until he came to a stop on the side opposite Aser. Turning towards Aser, he could see Sukaz’s face at last. It seemed completely normal, with short dark hair and a thin pointed beard. Then Aser saw the shadow being cast behind him. Though Sukaz was only slightly taller than Aser, the shadow loomed high above them both. The shadow’s head appeared to have several horns jutting off of it at odd angles. Massive wings stretched to its sides, covering the entire wall with darkness. Sukaz saw Aser’s eyes go wide. He grinned and circled back around to the front of the torch.
“I am someone that is very much above the people of this city,” said Sukaz.
“You are the demon,” said Aser. “The demon of legend.” Sukaz chuckled, the sound ringing off the walls.
“Demon? No,” said Sukaz, shaking his head. “I prefer to see myself as more of an angel; one with a very specific purpose.”
“Destruction,” said Aser.
“Change,” said Sukaz. “Nothing lasts forever in this world. To try to do so is folly.” He moved closer to Aser, who cowered in his seat. “All men die, all cities fall to ruin, and all empires crumble. It is the natural order of things. Your city, your goddess, and your people try to work against nature itself.”
“It wasn’t all the priests, was it?” asked Aser, finding some small semblance of courage.
“That depends,” said Sukaz, the tone of superiority coming back into his voice. “I may have started their decline into corruption, I may have caused them to doubt their beliefs, and I may have implanted their fear of their goddess, but I did not draw that blade and I have not touched her.”
“You won’t get away with this,” said Aser, his voice finally confident once again. “I won’t let you do this. The goddess will live again!” Sukaz tilted his head to one side and looked silently at Aser, a questioning look in his eyes.
“Very well,” said Sukaz. “You are free to go.” Aser’s jaw dropped and a dumbfounded look came onto his face.
“Really?” said Aser. “You are not going to imprison me? Kill me?”
“Would you like me to?” asked Sukaz. Aser stared back silently. “No, my friend,” said Sukaz. “It is not my place to kill you. My purpose is to bring ruin. Perhaps yours is to bring ruin to me. Who am I to interfere with the machinations of fate? Go.” Still staring at the man in front of him, Aser slowly got up from the chair. With a great deal of fear he turned his back on the man and started toward the door behind him.
“However,” said Sukaz. “You may not want to go through with this.” Aser stopped in his tracks two steps from the door. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He did not want to listen to what the demon had to say, but something made him turn around.
“What do you mean by that?” asked Aser. Sukaz had moved back around to the other side of the torch in the center of the room. The massive shadow was visible once again on the far wall. Steeling himself, Aser walked to the torch, glaring at Sukaz from directly across.
“I just mean that should you follow this course of action, the results may be much worse than you anticipate. What may seem like the right thing to do may be anything but.”
“Do not try to fool me,” said Aser. “You cannot see the future.”
“Perhaps not,” said Sukaz. “But I have watched this world for longer than you can imagine and I have become quite adept at guessing the outcome of things. Would you like to see what the future has in store?” For the first time since he began his quest, doubt began to slip into Aser’s mind. He tried to remind himself that that was exactly what the demon was trying to do, but that slight twinge of doubt began to grow. Aser found himself unable to resist.
“Alright, demon,” said Aser. “What can you tell me of my quest?” Sukaz grinned more broadly than ever as the words left Aser’s lips.
“I prefer to show you,” said Sukaz. The man waved a hand over the torch in the center of the room and it was extinguished. Fear gripped Aser as the darkness enveloped him. Then, from above him, a light appeared. He looked up and saw that it was the moon, high overhead. Looking back to the floor, he saw a forest laid out before him. He heard Sukaz clearing his throat behind him and spun around. Aser found himself on the top of a high ridge, looking down on Zatan’nataz from miles away. Sukaz stood on the very precipice.
“What will happen when the goddess lives again?” asked Sukaz. “Is it not possible that her wrath will be great?” With that, a brilliant light appeared in the sky above the city. A massive glowing orb hung ominously over Zatan’nataz. “Is it not possible that the city will pay the price?” The orb descended in a split second, striking the center of the city. A flash of light struck Aser’s eyes and he had to cover them. Moments later, he felt a shockwave wash over him. Uncovering his eyes, he saw that a dozen more of the orbs had appeared above the city and were beginning to descend. Forcing himself to look into the light, he saw blast after blast tear the city apart. Houses were thrown high into the air. The great statues were blown to dust. He saw the Tower of the Moon shatter and fall.
“But why stop there?” asked Sukaz. “Will her wrath not be great enough to punish the world of men as a whole?” The entire sky was suddenly alight with the massive orbs. They began to move outward, travelling towards the far eastern cities and the coastal cities of the north. “Would you watch the world burn just for your hope?” The great orb nearest to them in the sky began to descend directly towards Aser. In seconds, the light had engulfed him and he could see nothing. Aser steeled himself, closed his eyes and tried to ignore the vision before him.
“That will never happen,” said Aser. “Our goddess is merciful and just. She would never punish those that have not wronged her.” His voice was confident, but in his mind the seed of doubt began to grow larger. After a moment, Sukaz spoke again through the light.
“Perhaps,” he said. “So let us assume you are right and that your goddess is not the wrathful sort. Let us assume that your beloved golden age does indeed come after my demise.” The light around Aser dimmed and began to flicker. He slowly opened his eyes and looked around him. He was in the battered husk of a city. Tall wooden houses burned around him. The air was heavy with smoke. Ash lined the streets. Sukaz still stood in front of him on the broken street.
“Where are we now?” asked Aser. Sukaz shrugged.
“One of the eastern cities,” he said. “Sted or Lasaria or Holm or one of the other ones I cannot remember.” Sukaz bent down and grabbed a handful of ash. As he spoke, he let it sift through his fingers and let it drift away in the searing wind. “Your golden age comes, but your city’s pride does not disappear. It only grows.” Sukaz turned and began to walk up the road, stepping over burning debris. Aser hurried after him. He felt his feet sink into the hot ash. He could not help but wonder where all of the people were. Perhaps the vision was not complete.
“They begin to see themselves as superior to those around them,” said Sukaz. “They are ruled over by a living deity and they feel they have the divine right to rule over these other pathetic cities. The armies of Zatan’nataz march on them all and burn them to the ground.” The two of them finally came to a great courtyard. Aser moved ahead of Sukaz and saw that the paved area had been ripped apart and that great pits had been dug into the earth. Moving towards one, he saw that it was not a pit, but a mass grave. A hundred charred skeletons filled the pit to its very brim. He saw movement and the center of the courtyard and his attention was torn away from the bodies. The smoke cleared and he could see a banner flying proudly. It was bloodied and torn, but the symbol of the Black Sun could still be seen emblazoned on it.
“What once inspired faith will now only instill fear,” said Sukaz. Aser felt rage begin to boil up inside him, but he could not tell what it was directed at. Was it at the men of this future? Sukaz? Himself?
“No!” screamed Aser. “The people of Zatan’nataz would never do this! I have lived there my entire life and I have never once doubted that they are good people.”
“You still believe that after knowing what has transpired there for five years?” asked Sukaz. “Your naivety is amusing if nothing else, I must say.”
“Even if our leaders have fallen to corruption, the people will not,” said Aser. Sukaz smirked and shook his head at Aser.
“So once again, let us assume you are right,” said Sukaz. “Your precious people are faultless and they spend their golden age doing wholesome, peaceful things.” Aser struggled to keep a calm façade in response to Sukaz’s mocking tone. “Do you trust the people of the surrounding cities just as much?” As he spoke the words, the city around them blurred and changed. The sound of the flames died down and was replaced with another sound: metal striking metal.
“The men of the surrounding cities see your great wealth and power,” said Sukaz. “And as always happens, they are filled with envy and fear. They will try to crush you.”
As the scene around him finally stopped shifting, Aser found him and Sukaz standing in the market quarter of Zatan’nataz, beneath one of the great fountains. The waters ran red. Around them, soldiers fought madly. The guards of Zatan’nataz were outnumbered and outmatched, but they struggled on, more falling each second. The soldiers attacking them had many different sigils on their armor.
“They will succeed,” said Sukaz. He motioned for Aser to look behind him. Aser did so and saw the body of the goddess once again. Her heart was removed and the body had been decapitated. Aser fell to his knees seeing the streets of the oasis city full of death. He closed his eyes and lowered his face into his hands. The noise around him fell silent. He looked up and found himself in Sukaz’s study once again, the torch shining dimly from its stand. Aser felt his head spinning. Sukaz stood over him, armed crossed, awaiting a response. Aser met his gaze, glaring back into the bright blue eyes. He rose to his feet and took a deep breath.
“So,” said Sukaz. “What is your course of action now?” It was almost a minute before Aser replied.
“I believe in the goddess,” said Aser. “I believe in the city of Zatan’nataz. And I believe in all people. I will see your downfall, demon, no matter the cost.” There was no trace of uncertainty in his voice. There was not even any rage. There was only a conviction that brought a look of shock to Sukaz’s face. Aser shoved Sukaz away from him and went for the door.
“Stop,” said Sukaz. Aser sighed and waited, keeping his back to Sukaz.
“Going to kill me now?” asked Aser. He heard Sukaz’s footsteps approach his back.
“No,” said Sukaz. “I’m not going to be that kind.”
“Then what do you want?” asked Aser. He felt Sukaz’s breath on the back of his neck.
“You have seen what could happen,” whispered Sukaz. “But now you must know what will happen.” Aser remained silent. “I gave you a chance. A chance to stop your fool’s crusade and live out your days in peace. The same way I gave your priests a chance to save themselves and repent. But they failed to take it, and now so have you.”
“I will not listen to more of your lies, demon.”
“Then listen to the truth!” said Sukaz, his voice raising. “You will go and tell the people of me and your high priests. And do you know what they will do? They will call you mad…and heretic. And they will take you and lock you away in the Tower of the Moon in a tiny cell with one tiny window. And every new moon you will look out that window and wonder if it is finally the day that the high priests break the cycle and release your precious goddess. And that day will never come.” Aser closed his eyes and focused his thoughts inward, ignoring Sukaz, whose voice rose with every word. “You will watch your city travel the road to destruction. You will live out your life in that cell waiting for the day to come! And on your deathbed, you will finally know that that day will never come!” Sukaz grabbed Aser by the shoulder and spun him around, screaming directly into his face. “Where will your faith be then?!” Sukaz finally fell silent. Aser reached up and removed his hand from his shoulder. He looked back into the demon’s eyes and smiled.
“The same place it has always been,” said Aser. Sukaz glared back and returned the smile.
“You think you will be rewarded in death as a martyr,” said Sukaz. “But you do not know the truth. She is not a goddess. She is Zatan’nataz, the very soul of the oasis city. With every day of slaying, the city decays, brick by brick. And when enough bodies have been cast into the pit, your precious city will collapse under the weight of its own pride. You’ll have no deity to put faith in.” Aser remained silent for a moment. When he spoke again, Sukaz heard something change. It was subtle, almost imperceptible, but it was there.
“I have learned something here today, Sukaz,” said Aser. “I thank you. I really do. Because if Zatan’nataz is only a city, then there is only one thing left to place my faith in. I believe in the people. And if this city does fall one day, the people will survive it, and you will know that you have failed. Where will your pride be then?” Sukaz said nothing as Aser turned and left the room at last. Sukaz thought quietly for a moment and then smirked.
“Good luck, man of faith,” he said. “You will need it.” The torch went out and the room descended back into darkness.”
My guide stopped talking and began carving once again. I waited a minute for him to resume before speaking.
“Well?” I asked. “What happened then?” He looked up at me and smiled.
“There are no records that still remain from that ancient city,” he said. I sighed and got up from the campfire. I grabbed a torch and stuck it into the fire. After lighting it, I walked toward the spring a short walk away from our camp. I kept talking as I walked away.
“So do you think the place even existed?” I asked.
“There are certain relics that have been found that supposedly come from the oasis city.” I reached the spring, planted the torch into the earth beside me, and drank a handful of water.
“And there are some that say that deep, deep in the desert on cold and moonless nights, a strange man appears,” said my guide. I was about to turn back to the campfire when I saw something out of place beneath the water.
“A strange man with flashing blue eyes.” I pulled the torch out of the earth and raised it higher.
“And they say that if you ask politely, he will tell you the tale.” A large slab of stone lay at the bottom of the spring.
“The tale of the last man of fait |
It’s true what they say – that when a person goes blind their other senses heighten in order to compensate. Knowing that, and thinking back on everything that happened to me, I still can’t come to a rational conclusion of how these events unfolded around me without my knowledge. Granted, I couldn’t actually see any of it happening, but I never suspected anything of this magnitude when judging solely on the minor oddities that I had experienced.
Sure, every once in a while I would hear noises, but my house was old and seemed to have a mind of its own. All of its pops and creaks had become just as familiar to me as navigating its interior without the benefit of sight. Even when things began to turn more bizarre, I always found a way to rationalize them away. Looking back, I ask myself, “How could I have been so… well, for lack of a better word, blind?”
My mother had tried to convince me not to move into the house alone. “Sarah, a young blind woman shouldn’t be living all by herself,” she’d said. But I wanted to – needed to. I needed to prove to myself that I was strong enough to do it. Besides that, as a 24-year-old, I didn’t want to live with my parents forever. And I sure didn’t want to wait around for a nice man to marry and move in with. That may never happen.
Having lost my sight at an early age due to a freak accident with industrial strength cleaning chemicals, I knew all too well the nuances of learning to create a mental map of my surroundings.
When I first moved into the old house I used my cane exclusively. I waved it back and forth in front of me with every step I took. I knew roughly where all of the furniture was since I was the one that directed the movers on where to put everything. I employed the cane for nearly a week, using its tip to develop a mental image of the layout. The learning process was slow and clumsy at first, but I eventually got to the point that I was able to shed my cane after several days and began walking cautiously with my arms extended. I progressed further and became familiar enough with the territory that by the end of the first month I was able to walk freely without the use of my cane, or arms or any other aid.
I became quite adept at moving throughout the house freely. Not only that, but the house was located in a somewhat urban area which made it convenient to walk to any place I had the need. The grocery was only three blocks away. There was a department store across the street from that, and a bank and coffee shop just a bit further on. I got used to listening to the flow of traffic and timing the lights in my head so I would know when the “Walk” and “Don’t Walk” signals were lit. Occasionally a kind stranger would offer to take my hand and lead me across. I would thank them and we would part ways once we were safely on the next sidewalk.
In those days I was working from home making phone calls to patients that had recently been discharged from the hospital. In essence, I was being paid by the hospital to administer surveys that were then used to improve their services. The hospital was kind enough to provide me with a laptop computer that contained several different voice-command software applications. I spent my days transcribing the recorded phone calls by speaking the customers’ answers into a microphone, and having the data fields automatically populate accordingly in the program.
The first odd event that I remember was on one particular day when I got up from my work desk for a lunch break. As I was headed into the kitchen, I kicked an object in the middle of the living room floor. I heard it slide a short distance on the carpet. I knew that I hadn’t left anything in the way of my path as I had just been through there not even an hour ago, and there was nothing on the floor.
I knelt down and patted around until I located the object. A book. By feeling its Braille title I recognized it as a book on national parks that I kept on my coffee table, some five feet away. I didn’t remember knocking the book off of the table. I stood there perplexed. The longer I thought about it though, the less frightening it became to me. I convinced myself that I must have simply forgotten about knocking the book to the floor, and I must have stepped over it or next to it during my other passes through the room. I returned the book to its place on the table and went about making my lunch.
That night, while lying in bed, I heard a sound that came from the kitchen. It was almost entirely masked by the usual sounds of the pops and creaks from the house settling, but I definitely heard it – faint as it was. It was a very light humming noise. So light, in fact, that an average person without enhanced hearing may not have heard it at all from this distance. I slowly got out of bed, listening intently, the sound increasing as I made my way down the hallway and through the living room.
As soon as I passed through the threshold into the kitchen I knew what the sound was. It was the compressor motor on the refrigerator, and it was substantially louder than usual. I approached the appliance and found that its door was standing wide open. I eased it shut and the hum returned to a normal volume.
“What on earth? Did I leave this open?” I questioned myself in a whisper. Maybe it didn’t close all the way the last time I swung it shut, I thought. I returned to bed, but had trouble finding sleep. My mind wandered and questioned how I could have overlooked the fallen book and the open fridge door when they’d first happened.
The next morning, I decided to go have breakfast at Espresso Express, the little coffee shop up the road. They served excellent coffee, and you could also get a ham & cheese croissant melt that was to die for. That alone was worth the effort of showering, dressing, and leaving the safety of the house to be plunged into a buzz of whizzing traffic, honking horns, and people clamoring on the sidewalks.
On that morning a gentle stranger helped guide me across the intersection just ahead of the coffee shop. I said, “Thank you!” as they released my arm, but there was no response. He or she was lost in the shuffle of people on cell phones, their conversations momentarily audible to me as they passed in front of and behind me. The tinny sound of a bicycle bell alarmed me, and I felt the breeze left behind when the rider whipped past. I entered the coffee shop to a much more serene environment and enjoyed my favorite breakfast at a seat near the plate glass window, bathed in the sunlight that washed in on me.
That afternoon I took a break from making phone calls to use the bathroom. As I was seated on the toilet, I heard something next to me. It was as if something had brushed against the sink – an ever so subtle sound. My heart rate rose and my brow furrowed as I strained to listen closer. All I could hear was my pulse throbbing in my ears. Suddenly a wall clock in the living room chimed four ‘o clock, startling me to the point that I jumped slightly while still seated there. I regained my composure, washed up and returned to the computer to transcribe the data from my phone surveys.
I closed the laptop and went to make dinner at 6:30. Over the years, I had learned to be extra careful when dealing with the hot oven and burners. Once I had accidentally set a plastic plate directly onto a burner that was still hot, resulting in a cloud of noxious fumes that lasted for days – long after I’d finished cleaning up the mess. I was lucky that it had burned itself out and the damage wasn’t any worse. After that close call, I bought a small fire extinguisher to keep on the countertop next to the oven.
On this particular night, I made my dinner without any risk of fire. However, the undertaking wasn’t completely without incident. As I proceeded to make dinner I discovered that the canned goods I needed for the recipe were missing from the cupboard. I have always kept my canned goods in very specific places on the shelves so that I would always know what was what without the benefit of being able to see the labels. I don’t remember using up the items I needed that night, but apparently I already had. So, I opted to make a casserole instead.
I sat at the dinner table enjoying the simple meal I had made. The television was playing in the background, filling me in on all of the day’s news headlines. I finished the first portion on my plate and reached to dip into the casserole dish once more. I scraped the inside of the dish, the sounds of metal on ceramic echoing throughout the kitchen. It was empty.
“I can’t believe it! I couldn’t have already eaten it all!” I said incredulously. I had thought for sure that I’d prepared a bigger portion than that, and I didn’t remember emptying the dish fully onto my plate. Thoughts ran through my head in an attempt to reason out the matter: Had it baked up to be less than I’d anticipated? Had I spilled some on the table while dishing it onto my plate?
In search of the missing food, I placed the palm of my hand on the tabletop and moved it steadily over the area within my reach. As I was doing so there was a distinct movement in front of me. I gasped and my heart rate immediately quickened. I felt the blood pulsing through my neck. This sound was not as subtle as the others I’d been hearing. It was obvious – a sudden motion of something moving across from me. I continued listening, but all I could hear was the much-too-chipper weather man on TV giving the forecast.
Suddenly I was overwhelmed with a feeling that I was no longer alone at the kitchen table. “Is someone there?” I called out, hoping there was no reply.
Silence.
I felt a shift in the air pressure as if something moved behind me followed by the creak of a floorboard. I froze. Something brushed against the back of my hair, gentle as a feather. I recoiled and let out a squeal.
I shot up out of my chair, made my way to the corner of the kitchen and turned to face the interior of the room. “Who’s there?” I demanded. No answer. By this time I was breathing heavily, practically hyperventilating. My chest and throat radiated heat as my heart raced inside, giving me the sensation of acute indigestion. I thought I might vomit.
I slowly made my way to the doorway leading into the living room. I stood there for what seemed like an eternity listening for something, anything that would explain the circumstance. Eventually I moved on and worked my way into the hallway bathroom. I locked the door behind me.
It took over an hour and a half for me to calm down. While in the locked bathroom, I wrestled with my thoughts. I reasoned with myself. I didn’t want to admit that my mother was right, but maybe I shouldn’t be living alone. It appeared to be taking its toll on me. On the other hand, all of these things could be logically explained, I told myself. If I wasn’t blind, I’d have seen whatever it was that caused the noises and it would be so obvious. I’d laugh about how ridiculous it was to be scared of it, I’m sure. At least that’s what I tried to convince myself.
What finally brought me out of the bathroom was the ringing of the telephone. I admit it startled me at first, but only because it had been so quiet for the last two hours. I cautiously opened the door and entered the hallway. My phone was in the living room. I approached it quickly and answered.
“Hello?”
“Hey, Sarah, it’s Jill.”
Thank God, it was just my friend Jill. “Hi, Jill, how’s it going?”
“Oh, I’m doing good. I saw you at Espresso Express today,” she said in a playful tone, which I didn’t understand initially.
“You did?”
“Mmm-hmm. I saw you in the window when I walked by on the sidewalk.” Still in a playful tone.
“Well, why didn’t you come in and say, ‘hi’?” I asked.
“I didn’t want to disturb you.”
“Disturb me? Why would you be disturbing me?”
“Because, silly, I assumed you were on a date. Who’s the lucky guy that was sitting with you?”
My mouth slacked open. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t form words.
“Sarah?” Jill asked, “Are you okay?”
I dropped the phone. I could still hear Jill’s muffled voice even though the speaker was face down on the carpet. I frantically made my way around the house, arms flailing in front of me.
“Who are you?” I yelled into the house. “What do you want?”
I was terrified, but also angry. I felt violated. I didn’t necessarily want to encounter whatever it was, but I couldn’t go on hiding in my own house any longer. I spent hours searching every square inch of the property and found nothing. I finally went to bed after I was able to calm down, but I did not fall asleep until the wee hours of the morning.
A light rustling sound woke me not long after I fell asleep, still in the dark hours of early morning. I wasn’t sure at first if it was real or if I had dreamed the noise. As I was about to get up, I noticed that the sheets next to me were pulled back. I stretched out my right arm into the empty space beside me. It felt warm as if someone had been lying there with me. The events of the previous day flooded back into my memory. My sightless eyes welled up with tears as I began to question my own sanity. Frustrated, I bolted up and out of the bed. I threw on some old clothes and headed toward the front door with the intention of fleeing the house, unsure exactly where I was going to go – maybe Jill’s place. She lived fairly close.
I wanted to take my cane with me as I always did whenever I went outdoors. I searched the house frantically, unable to remember where I’d left it. I almost always left it propped against the wall by the front door, but it wasn’t there. I made my way along all of the perimeter walls, feeling desperately for the cane.
When I neared the kitchen I still had not found my walking aid, but I made a discovery of a much more startling nature – a barely detectable vertical crevice in the wall I had not known about previously. I used all my fingers to follow the crease up the wall, across the top, and down the other side. It was a doorway designed to fit perfectly flush within the wall. I leaned my weight inward against the panel and felt a slight give on its right side. I worked my fingers into the crevice on that side the best I could, eventually prying the panel free. It swung open to the left. I gasped in shock and my pulse quickened. A hidden room right in the center of my house.
How I wish that I would have had sight at that moment. I faced a completely unexplored territory inside my own house with the possibility that someone else was in there with me.
I entered slowly, arms extended. “Is someone in here?” I whispered, afraid to ask the question. There was no response. I stepped forward. To my right I discovered a flat surface – a tabletop. I ran my hands along its surface. On top of the table, I was able to make out several unopened cans of food. No doubt these were the missing canned goods I’d been looking for. The table also contained silverware and a can opener that disappeared weeks ago.
My heart rate increased even more and my palms began to sweat. I worked my way forward until I came to a wall that I knew bordered the living room. I found a hole the size of a quarter at eye level. Sweat began to form on my brow as well. I found another similar hole on the next adjacent wall. This wall bordered the bathroom. Tears started to well up in my eyes. I was able to find two more holes on the two remaining walls bordering the kitchen and the bedroom.
I dropped to my knees in absolute horror and disbelief. How long had this person been watching me? How could I have not known? My hands were on the floor in front of me and I felt something soft. I investigated further with my fingertips. It was some sort of comforter or sleeping bag. At one end was a fluffy pillow.
At this point I was not only terrified beyond description, but I was also furious. How dare someone spy on me covertly from within my own walls! I knew I had to run out of the house and get to safety immediately, with or without my cane. I decided I would go to Jill’s house and we’d call the police from there.
I made my way to where I remembered the hidden door to be, my arms sweeping the area ahead of me in a panic. Instead of the open door, my hands found the warm torso of a human, a male, standing silently in the doorway. He grabbed both my arms and pulled me out of the hidden room and into the house.
We struggled in the kitchen. I kicked at him and screamed as loud as I could into his ears. I was able to get one arm free and I used it to grasp for the fire extinguisher that I knew would be by the oven. He attempted to pull me away, but my fingers reached its nozzle. I swung it at him, feeling the metal cylinder connect with the back of his skull. He released my other arm and I pulled the trigger in his direction, enveloping him in a cloud of white foam.
I ran into the utility room off of the kitchen where I knew my only advantage existed – the fuse box. I found the box and tripped every lever I could find, eliminating all power from the house. If this perverted psycho wanted to kill me, he’d have to do it on an equal playing field – in the dark.
The intruder had not followed me into the utility room. The fire extinguisher must have dazed him. I remembered the toolbox I kept in that room, and I quickly retrieved the longest screwdriver I could find. I stood in the corner and listened carefully. If he was still conscious, he would not be able to move around in the pitch darkness without creating noise. I would surely detect his movements.
I held the screwdriver against my chest, gripping its handle tightly with both hands. I felt my wildly beating heart against the side of my fist. After an eternity, I moved forward a bit. I may have knocked him out, or even killed him. I had to make sure.
I left the utility room and entered the kitchen. There was still no sound from anywhere in the house. I passed into the living room and headed toward the front door. Halfway through the room, I could feel his presence. Something in the air around me had shifted. Without warning there was breath on the back of my neck followed by a deep whisper directly in my ear, “The showers were my favorite.”
I screamed and swung around, stabbing the screwdriver into empty air. I ran for the door. It was merely a few feet away, but I couldn’t reach it due to the resistance I met when the voyeuristic brute’s arms wrapped around my waist. He wrestled me to the floor and straddled me. I tightened my grip on the tool and plunged it as hard as I could into his side.
I shudder to think about it when I recount the feeling of the steel shaft separating two of his ribs. It was horrid, and I was only able to stomach it knowing that if I hadn’t acted, my life would have ended then.
The man winced in pain and let out a deep, growling grunt. He fell backward and rolled off of me. I turned over onto my chest and pushed up off of the floor, then crawled over to the couch and used it to get back onto my feet. I still held the screwdriver, a warm trickle of blood seeping onto my knuckle.
I could tell that the intruder was writhing around on the floor near the doorway. I would have to exit through the back door. From the opposite end of the living room, I entered the sunroom where the door was located. I wasn’t as familiar with this entry point, causing me to fumble around with the deadbolt and screen door locks for longer than I would have liked.
I knew there were concrete stairs there leading to a flat patio. How many steps? Four? Five? I couldn’t remember. I proceeded slowly. The last thing I needed was to fall and twist my ankle. After navigating the steps, I came to the end of the patio, which emptied into a narrow alleyway between the shotgun-style houses behind mine.
My steps were slow and cautious. My hands told me there was a brick wall to my right, and a brick wall about five feet to my left. The sides of the two houses. I was entering unfamiliar territory without the benefit of my cane. My breathing was frantic and the tears continued to fill my useless eyes. I kicked something and nearly fell over. It felt plastic – a child’s toy maybe. I was moving much too fast compared to my level of comfort with the surroundings. But I had no choice as footsteps were approaching behind me.
I picked up the pace, waving the screwdriver out in front to buffer my impending collision with any obstacles. Ten more feet of forward progress and the screwdriver alerted me, with metallic clanging, to the presence of a chain-link fence connecting the two houses.
I stopped and cried out, my voice breaking up through my tears, “No.” I turned around, my back to the fence. I began swinging the screwdriver violently.
“Leave me alone!” I screamed.
More hyperventilating.
More tears.
The man approached slowly, and then stopped just a few feet away from me. I got the feeling he could see what he was doing. Either there was an electric light in this alley or the dawn had already crested enough that ample ambient light was available. I didn’t know which one was the case because I had no idea what time it was.
Knowing I was about to die, I just wanted answers. “How long?” I managed to ask. “How long have you been in there?” My voice was angrier than I’d expected.
“Since before you lived there,” he replied calmly, his voice deep. “I got lucky with you – a blind girl. With the others, I couldn’t come out in the open when they were home. I couldn’t sit and eat dinner with them. I couldn’t stand over them while they worked at their computers. I couldn’t go to the coffee shop with them.” There was a pause as he moved even closer. “I couldn’t stand next to them in the bathroom.”
I cried uncontrollably in a whirlwind of emotions. I had never before felt so violated, so angry, and so terrified all at the same time. There was sudden movement again in front of me.
“Don’t touch me!” I demanded as I held up the screwdriver. I don’t know exactly how it happened. I don’t know if he didn’t see the tool or just didn’t care, knowing that he was caught. But as he lunged forward, he managed to impale himself on the screwdriver and pin me up against the fence. My hands were still gripping the handle, but it was so deep inside him that his shirt was touching my fist.
His breathing became gurgled, and his last words to me were, “I couldn’t snuggle next to them in bed either.”
We collapsed together as one unit. The fence tore at my back as we slid down onto the ground. His dead weight nearly crushed me, but I managed to push him off and crawl away. I crawled all the way back to my house, in through the back door and into the living room to my phone. I sobbed hysterically as I keyed in the digits 9-1-1 and fell to the floor.
|
Officially, Yuri Gagarin was the first human to reach outer space. His historic flight in April of 1961 kick-started the space race in earnest. The Soviet space program, however, was shrouded in secrecy from the beginning. There have long been questions regarding the existence of “lost cosmonauts,” those individuals who’d ventured beyond our atmosphere at the cost of their lives, their failure and very existence expunged by the Soviet government in an effort to save face.
From a listening station just outside of Turin, Italy, two amateur radio operators had been scanning the skies since the 1950s. In October of 1960, a full six months before Gagarin flew, they picked up a strange transmission from space. Breaking through a sea of static came the ghostly voice of a woman, which they were able to record. She spoke Russian, and while they couldn’t understand it, the distress in her voice was clear. She seemed to be choking back tears as she spit out the words. After a moment the static came creeping back, swallowing her voice like a wave. It wasn’t long before the operators had a translation:
“No one will ever know,” she was repeating. “No one will ever know…no one will ever know…”
The words would prove prophetic, for indeed no one would know who this mysterious woman was, or why she said what she’d said.
Until now.
—
Growing up, the greatest speeds Roza Ivanova had ever known were on the back of her favorite horse Agripin, racing across the rolling hills of the Irkutsk countryside. She’d never felt so free as on the back of this powerful beast, and almost believed his hooves might well leave the ground upon cresting each rise, never to land again.
Then came the war to shatter juvenile fantasy. Like so many Russian families, hers came to know loss and hardship firsthand. Roza didn’t like to talk about that. She had been lucky though, securing an education in Moscow in the years that followed. It was here at university where she found her second passion after horseback riding, that of skydiving. Agripin never did leave the ground, but Roza, having achieved the feat on her own, now gleefully dove back toward it.
Motherhood and a stint in local politics kept her busy after graduation. Yet if her thirst for adventure was quelled, it was not quenched. It simmered below the surface, anticipating any chance to boil over. It was with great delight, then, that she received news of her selection for training in the nascent Soviet space program: Me? They want to see me? What I can show them!
—
Sergei Korolyov was adamant: It must be a woman. Pulled from the Gulags two decades prior, the brilliant head of Soviet rocket development insisted to his superiors that it would be a public relations coup. Besides, he argued, women in general are smaller and lighter than men. And as he was so fond of saying with regard to launches, every gram counts. Only in the last few months had the potential for a payload greater than dogs been realized. Their deaths were not a deterrent. The Politburo, for their part, did not need much convincing. They glowed at the choice. “Hah!” responded a low-ranking official. “First person and first woman in one — let the Americans best that! They haven’t the balls twice over!” That earned a smattering of laughter from the council.
The selection process began, and by the time Korolyov’s team found Roza, there were nine other candidates. One by one, they were brought in and presented to him in the same brusque manner.
“Name?” The baby-faced director sat scribbling at his desk.
“Roza Ivanova!”
He gave her the briefest of glances as he continued to write. “And where do you come from, Roza Ivanova?”
“Irkutsk Oblast, Siberia!”
“Mm-hmm. Age and weight?”
“Thirty-two years, fifty-six point seven kilograms!”
Scribble scribble. “Thank you, Roza Ivanova from Irkutsk. You may go.”
It was new, tense, exciting. She couldn’t wait to start.
All of them passed the rigorous training process, which included isolation and centrifuge tests, numerous parachute jumps, and engineering studies. But it was Roza they picked in the end. Her skydiving background should serve her well in the mission’s critical reentry stage, as should her political acumen in presenting a face to the media. It was an easy face to look at too, with high cheek bones, asiatic eyes, and a confident smile framed by thick blond curls. She was also the lightest of the group — every gram counts — and her father being a war hero didn’t hurt either.
She counted the days until her launch, half-believing there was no way it would actually come, that this was all a grand dream — until the day it actually came.
—
The October morning in the Kazakh Steppe was cool, dry, and gray. Early sunlight began its steady march across the warming tarmac. Roza had seen the Vostok rocket plenty before. Still, being ferried to it now, knowing what was in store, it impressed anew as the sun rose. The thing was a marvel, a shimmering silver-white skyscraper towering over the flat landscape. Four massive boosters draped off its sides, meeting the core stage with an elegant taper. The surmounting nose cone pointed triumphantly skyward.
Already suited, Roza met with Korolyov at the launch pad. He took her gloved hands in his. “This day will be a remarkable one,” he said, planting kisses of well-being on her cheeks. “You will succeed.” She smiled, grateful for his words. She only wished her son could be here. Of course, the mission must be kept secret, for now, even from her loved ones. Especially from her loved ones. She made her way toward the service structure cradling the rocket. Back turned, Korolyov fetched a pill from his pocket and tossed it down his throat. He was a jungle of frayed nerves inside.
A flurry of thoughts filled Roza’s head as the elevator inched its way up the scaffolding. She felt as if the whole of her life had condensed to this single moment. That she had a responsibility not to one person, not to any group, but to all of mankind. And realized, behind the pride and joy, there lurked the somber knowledge that for a short time, she would be more alone than anyone who ever lived. She made these thoughts known to the flanking personnel, save the last, and they recorded them. With a soft whine, the lift came to a halt before the vacant craft.
Assisted by technicians, she secured her helmet and squirmed inside the cockpit. Cramped, but not much to it, she mused. Seat could use some cushioning. The instrument panel was simple in the extreme: a few gauges, various indicator lights, a moving half-globe to show position. Controls were all but nonexistent. In fact, all major controls were locked. The craft would operate with automatic systems or via remote ground control — manual override was not an option. Nobody was sure how a human might react in the weightless environment of outer space, so no chances would be taken. After a final check, the hatch was closed and sealed. Roza communicated with ground control, operating under the call sign “Dawn,” while awaiting the go-ahead for launch. She’d chosen as her own call sign “Agripin.”
AGRIPIN: How do you read me?
DAWN: I hear you well. Cabin pressurization complete. VHF reception is good. Ping 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.
AGRIPIN: I understand fine. Ready to go. How do I look?
DAWN: Roger. TV image is good. Heart beat is normal. Lights check.
AGRIPIN: Roger. Lights are good. Like a New Year tree. [laughs]
DAWN: A bit unseasonable for that, I'm afraid.
This pre-flight chatter continued for a while, until finally:
AGRIPIN: I hear the valves working. Slight rumbling.
DAWN: Yes, get ready please.
AGRIPIN: Ready. I feel good. Rumble increasing.
DAWN: We are giving ignition...preliminary stage...intermediate...main...lift off!
Whoomp. The scaffolding parted. Steam billowed, fires burst, and the tower slowly rose in defiance of gravity.
AGRIPIN: Soar, Agripin, soar!
Roza was pushed to her seat with oppressive force as the vehicle shook and rattled. She prayed it would hold together. Agonizing minutes later, having propelled her to north of 18,000 miles per hour, the boosters dropped away in unison. Acceleration let up at once, throwing her forward. The payload fairing split in two petals and fell away, revealing a second porthole at her feet. She radioed that she could see Earth, that it was breathtaking. Then whoomp as the second stage ignited. Multiple Gs pinned her back as the rocket arced in an easterly curve away from Baikonur Cosmodrome. The sky had gone from white to a variety of lighter and darker blues, approaching black: a smooth gradient of Earth to space.
The second stage engine shut down, then whoomp as the third fired up. More Gs pounded every part of her body, threatening to flatten her, as if she were being pinned down by an elephant. She rode the wave of acceleration until the final stage was spent, detaching with a bang. Free. Ten minutes after liftoff, all sensation of speed stopped for good. Roza was now free-floating in space. She sat off her chair as far as the restraints would allow, enjoying the sensation.
The Vostok spacecraft was little more than a hollow ball on a cylindrical chassis, terminating to a retro engine and bristling with antennas. Its objective was to make one revolution around Earth before reentry, after which Roza would eject from the module and parachute to the ground. Total flight time should be just over one and a half hours.
Roza fed ground control continual status updates as she got on her way. This would constitute the bulk of her mission, as there was little else to do but enjoy the sights. Through the lower porthole, Earth was a beautiful mosaic of mountain, sea, and cloud. She reached for an overhead compartment, producing a monocular (a request granted with some hesitation — every gram counts, after all), lifted her visor, and trained the instrument on random landmasses. The terrain crawled by like a conveyor.
Forty-two minutes after liftoff, Roza reported that she was on the night side of Earth and would soon be passing over the United States. The California coast with its nebulous tendrils of city lights rolled into view, and she wondered how slumbering Americans would react to news of this Soviet woman above their skies.
If Sputnik was a headache, this ought to be a full-blown nervous breakdown!
She radioed ground control for a general update. No response came.
—
Korolyov was himself on the verge of a breakdown. He paced back and forth through a blue haze of cigarette smoke, puffing and steaming. “My capsule!” he shouted to anyone making the mistake of eye contact. “How is my capsule?”
“She has passed beyond the radio horizon,” said a flight controller, “but should –”
“But should have come back by now!” snapped Korolyov.
“Sir, there are any number of reasons why –”
“I’m getting something!” The controller was interrupted again, this time by a radio operator. “I think it’s her!” He turned up a dial.
Korolyov frowned, cocking an ear. Reception was poor at first, the words coming through in disjointed chunks.
AGRIPIN: ...read me? There is...repeat, I can see something...orbit...to be artificial. Do you read me? Dawn, can...I see an object...
DAWN: We read you, we read you. It is poor, say again!
AGRIPIN: I understand you. Dawn, there is a foreign object in orbit ahead.
Every body in the room froze.
—
The world of dream transitioned to that of waking. Daylight was breaking above the South Atlantic when Roza, still trying to make contact with Dawn, caught sight of a twinkle. A thing that should not be there. Now, communications restored and curiosity piqued, she provided details as they came.
AGRIPIN: Object is in a higher orbit...I believe I will overtake it. Reflective surface, spherical...approaching closer...too big for a satellite, I think. Just a minute...
Roza retrieved the monocular and aimed it through the forward porthole. She gasped. The shock could not have been greater were it a flying saucer with little green men inside.
AGRIPIN: A spacecraft! I make out lettering...”CCCP” -- it's one of ours!
DAWN: Chyort!
The expletive was under the breath, unintended, but audible.
AGRIPIN: I see extensive damage. A hole has been ripped through the reentry module...two sides...catastrophic. It...
Roza struggled to maintain composure. The craft was almost identical to hers. She conjectured that a small meteoroid might have punched its way through the hull, a one-in-a-million stroke of incredibly bad luck. Aside from the damage, there was something else about this craft that bothered her. It was…too small? What did that mean?
Then came a new shock:
AGRIPIN: There is...oh! Can it be? There is an occupant inside! I see the torso, the helmet. How is this possible? I am approaching closer...
Her little spaceship sailed toward the anomaly.
AGRIPIN: I see the helmet in the sun. He is smi...
Roza let herself trail off. She could not finish the sentence, because it made no sense. Smiling? He was smiling? She pressed the monocular’s eyecup to her skin and soon saw why.
The meteoroid — or whatever it was — had torn not only through the craft, but through its unfortunate occupant as well. His body ended in ragged strips just below the waist. She forced herself to watch as it floated listlessly about the cabin. When the front of the helmet came into view once more, Roza took a good look at the face. The eyes were tiny, shriveled orbs. What she’d mistaken for smiling was in fact decayed flesh around the mouth, exposing teeth and gums in a horrible rictus. This surprised her. She would not have expected decomposition in space.
And he was so young. So young… Her brain did not want to process the final revelation that would set every piece in context. Yet she could not escape it as the gap between the two vehicles closed:
This was no man. This was a boy of about ten years.
Dogs were not enough. They needed a person in space, and before the Americans. Booster capacity, though, had not been adequate for a fully grown adult. Close, they were close, but not quite there. And they could not wait, would not wait. Their solution was a heartbreaking compromise. He must have launched not four months ago, when the last pair of “muttniks” went up. Every gram counts.
Roza thought of her son as anger welled within.
AGRIPIN: A boy? You sent a boy? How could you do such a thing?
DAWN: Agripin -- Roza -- please. We could not foresee such an accident. It was imperative he go.
Korolyov’s voice reached across space, ringing hollow by the time it filtered through Roza’s earpiece.
AGRIPIN: But why? It wasn't right. He should be acknowledged, people should know he was first. We must tell the world he was first!
A heavy sigh, then a moment of silence before Korolyov spoke again:
DAWN: Can you not reconsider?
AGRIPIN: I insist! The right thing must be done.
Rosa’s resolve was clear. More silence.
DAWN: I am sorry, Comrade. He cannot be first in space. And neither can you.
An orange lamp alerted her to the working of the attitude control thrusters. The view tilted as they fired in quick spurts, pitching the rear of the craft earthward.
AGRIPIN: Wait! What are you doing? Stop!
DAWN: I--we cannot return you. In any form. The wreckage may fall into the wrong hands.
Paralyzed, she stared into a silent empire of solitude. The black expanse stared back with a million starry eyes.
AGRIPIN: You mean to...
DAWN: You have served the Motherland well. I am sorry.
And Korolyov was sorry. She was a good Soviet. A good woman. But he could not risk a return to the Gulags.
The smaller Vostok came into view above and to her right. One arm of the remains of its passenger, palm out and bent at the elbow, seemed to give her a lazy zero-G wave as it bobbed through the window.
AGRIPIN: Nyet! Nyet! What you are about to do --
Whoomp. The retro rocket fired with a roar. In tandem with the nitrogen thrusters, it pushed her into a new orbit curving away from the Earth, into an escape velocity from which there was no return. The corpse floated and grinned behind her.
AGRIPIN: Nyet! You cannot!
Roza was powerless to stop the remote commands. The stars beckoned, growing the tiniest bit closer.
The capsule, her bravest, swiftest horse, was now her coffin, and it was her fate that she would be interred in the cold folds of deep space. The conditioned air of the cabin was ice on her skin. It smelled sickly sweet, like rotting fruit. Roza began to shiver. “But no one will ever know about us!” she cried out to the uncaring cosmos. “No one will ever know…no one will ever know…”
Agripin galloped through her mind, unbounded at last.
—
“Shut it off,” said Korolyov, pointing to the radio. Click. The men in ground control sat at their consoles with grim faces. Korolyov opened a new pack of cigarettes, tapped one out and hung it at his lips. “Tragic, yes. A setback, yes.” He struck a match. “Do not fret, Comrades. We will try again. And we will succeed.”
He trudged out the room in a wake of blue smoke, searching his pockets for another pill. No such luck.
|
There was once a very well behaved eight-year-old boy named Miles. He did all the things that good children are supposed to do, nearly all the time. He ate all his vegetables, unless they were carrots. He completed all of his school assignments, except for that one time he forgot to finish his homework. He was always nice to his friends, unless you count that one time when he yelled at his schoolmate, Tony. And he never spoke back to his parents or got mad at them, with very rare exceptions. Yes, he was nearly perfect, and he was a joy for his parents to raise, almost all the time.
That boy existed more than thirty years ago, and in a manner of speaking, he still exists. That boy? He’s me, and he will always be part of who I am. I can remember every transgression I made as a child, not only because there were so few of them, but because they ended up shaping my life in a way you could never imagine.
Of all my misdeeds, the one that stands out most vividly is the very last time I yelled at my parents. The funny thing is, even though I can remember being mad, and I can remember every word I said, I don’t recall exactly why I was upset. When I try to think of the reason, it’s like looking at a blank sheet of paper in my mind. I can tell you that it wasn’t anything that my adult self would find consequential, but I know it felt important at the time. It was two days before Christmas, and the words I spoke felt foreign as they came out of my mouth, probably because I’d never said anything quite like it before.
“Go away! I don’t want you to be here anymore! I don’t want you to talk to me ever again!”
I could see the hurt in my parents’ eyes as I unleashed my tirade towards them. Even now, I’m surprised at what a profound effect the words from my eight-year-old self had on them. Their dismay was mixed with obvious shock upon hearing me lash out. My mother had a look on her face that was confused, sad, and angry all at the same time. Father was harder to read, but I knew he wasn’t happy. Sadly, the looks on their faces are among the last memories I have of my parents. Their distraught scowls are burned in my mind; two visages that are now a permanent part of my psyche.
By the time that Christmas Eve came around, all had been forgiven. Whatever the issue had been, it was resolved. My mother cooked a special ham dinner, and we had a roaring fire going. The house was warm and extra comfortable, and in the hours after dinner, I sat and sipped from a mug of hot cocoa with peppermint. I no longer believed in Santa Claus, but that didn’t stop me from feeling a natural yuletide excitement. I fell asleep that night staring at the dazzling lights and shiny ornaments that clung to our Christmas tree. I vaguely remember my father carrying me to my bedroom and giving me a little kiss on my forehead.
I awoke later that night to the feeling of someone poking their finger into my back.
“Wake up, kid.”
It was a voice I’d never heard before, a man’s voice, with a slight drawl. My eyes opened widely as I instinctively rolled out of bed in an outright panic. I fell to the floor and screamed for my father.
I was trapped in a corner of my bedroom. I could see the man’s silhouetted figure looming clearly in front of me. A small red glow came from a cigarette in his hand. I froze in fear of this stranger who had invaded my home.
The man spoke to me again, “Quiet down, he can’t hear you right now anyhow.”
He put his cigarette to his lips and inhaled deeply. As he did, his face was illuminated by the red glow, and I could see his deep-set eyes, his dirty fingers, and his long black hair.
“But kid, I can hear you. I can hear you better than anybody, in ways you can’t even understand.” He pointed at the side of his forehead as he spoke.
I didn’t reply, but even through my fear, I couldn’t help but wonder who the man was.
He nodded, as if he knew exactly what I was thinking. “So, you’d like to know who I am. Well, I’m the guy who’s tuned into your mind. I’m the guy that’s been around for a long time. And most importantly, I’m the guy who gives kids what they ask for.”
He looked straight into my eyes, invading my mind and reading my thoughts. “No kid, I ain’t Santa.” He was agitated. “You stupid? Do I really look like that fat fucker? No man, I’m much better. I don’t judge, and I don’t discriminate. I give kids what they ask for. The good kids, and the bad kids.”
I finally found the courage to speak, even though he seemed to have no trouble answering my questions before I even asked them. “I- I didn’t ask for anything.” My voice trembled as I spoke.
“Sure you did. You wanted your parents to go away. I heard that loud and clear. Loud and clear. Not very nice of you. I’d say that makes you a bad little boy. But don’t worry, like I said, I don’t discriminate.”
“But I don’t want them to go away…”
He shook his head. “You said it, you meant it at the time. I heard it. I don’t hear all the kids, just some of them. And I hear you loudest of all.”
Tears began streaming down my face, but their presence didn’t seem to change the visitor’s demeanor towards me.
“Well kid, I just wanted to meet you, and see whose voice has been screaming in my head the past few days.” He turned and started walking towards the door. “I gotta get started. It’s time to give you your gift, and get a gift for myself too. Merry fucking Christmas, kid.”
He flicked his cigarette into the corner of my bedroom as he passed through the doorway, repeating himself as he walked down the hallway in the direction of my parents’ bedroom. “Merry fucking Christmas.”
The door to my bedroom shut, even though the man himself had made no effort to close it.
I screamed aloud for my mother and father. To this day I still have no idea if they heard me. I wish I could tell you that I bravely ran out of my bedroom to warn them, but I just sat huddled in the corner, crying and afraid. I listened intently for sounds of a struggle, or for my parents yelling, but I couldn’t hear anything.
Hours passed, and I could see the outside sky turn from black to gray, then to orange. I waited for my mother and father to find me. The orange sky turned blue as the day wore on, but they never came. An absolute silence hung over the house, yet still I sat there. It was well into the afternoon when I finally left my room. I knew I couldn’t stay there forever. I tiptoed slowly to my door and opened it only a few inches. Looking out from inside my room, the house appeared normal. Everything that I could see was in its place. I pulled the door open all the way, almost expecting the man from the night before to jump out at me, but that didn’t happen.
My voice broke the silence, “Mom? Dad?”
No response.
Trying my best to stay quiet, I walked slowly down the hallway towards my parents’ bedroom. Their door was ajar.
“Dad?”
I put my hand on their door.
“Mom?”
I pushed it open and looked inside.
I don’t actually remember what I saw. To be clear, I’m perfectly aware of the fate that befell my parents, based on what was told to me later on. But I have no memory of the actual sight that I witnessed during that one awful moment. It’s a traumatic event that my sane mind has blocked out. Even today, when I recreate the events of that night in my dreams, the scene fades to white as I push the door open. My next memory is of me laying down in the street directly outside of my house, screaming and flailing my arms wildly. The Porter family, who lived next door, witnessed my distress through their living room window.
Mr. Porter exited his house and rushed over to me, he could tell something was seriously wrong.
“They’re dead!” It was all I could say. I repeated it again and again.
Mrs. Porter followed closely behind her husband and comforted me as he went to check inside my house. A minute later, he exited and promptly vomited in the bushes.
Nobody ever told me the whole story of what they found in that bedroom, at least not directly. It was explained to me that a very bad person had broken into my house and murdered my parents, even though I already knew as much. What was held back from me at the time the fact that they’d been decapitated. The cuts were clean, almost surgical. Both bodies were laying on the bed as if they’d been asleep when it happened. The worst part was that their heads were missing, not to be found anywhere. Their bodies were sliced open, and strange symbols were drawn on the wall in blood. Other than the carnage itself, absolutely no physical evidence was discovered at the scene. Not one fingerprint, stray hair, or footprint was left behind. Nothing.
The police listened to my story once I was ready to talk. I found out later I was considered to be an unreliable witness, mostly because the details of my story didn’t mesh with the lack of physical evidence.
A specially trained detective, and my new therapist, sat down with me to review what I’d told the police earlier. “The man, he wasn’t wearing gloves?”
I shook my head no. I clearly remembered the cigarette in his hand, and there was no glove.
“And he threw the cigarette on the ground when he was done smoking it?”
I nodded yes.
“And he closed your door when he left your room?”
I shook my head no, then thought about it, and nodded my head yes. I wasn’t really sure.
The detective took notes as I talked. He nodded his head pleasantly, but even then I could see the strange look on his face when I told him that the man had read my thoughts. The one thing I never told the police was that two days before the murders, I’d asked for my parents to be gone.
The sketch artist came by afterwards. He started off by drawing some Smurfs for me, then he slowly began working me up to the task of remembering what the murderer looked like. I appreciated his effort. When he was done, the picture looked somewhat like how I remembered the man, but not exactly.
I was taken in by my mother’s sister, Aunt Janine, and her husband, my uncle Anton. As unlucky as I had been with the deaths of my parents, I have to say that I was nearly as lucky to have those two in my life. Other than my parents, they were probably the best people in the world who I could’ve lived with. Looking back at the events in my life, I have to say that today I miss them every bit as much as I miss my parents. Janine worked as an office manager, but she took a leave of absence in the first few months after the murders so that she could be home to support me. Anton worked for a home security firm. He was the kind of man who always had a smile on his face, so much so that it would be impossible for a person to even imagine him angry. He made instant connections with people, and he had a confidence about him that made people want to seek his approval, whether consciously or unconsciously.
Janine and Anton didn’t have any children of their own, and they’d always been very generous towards me. I knew them well, so it was easy for me to slip into their lives. I put a huge effort into making sure that I gave them no trouble, and I asked them for nothing. My conversation with the murderer was never too far from my thoughts, and I could hear an amalgamation of his comments ring though my mind daily, “I give kids what they ask for. The good kids, and the bad kids.” I didn’t know what the good kids were given by this man, but I understood all too clearly what happened to the bad children.
It was two months before I felt like I was ready to go back to school. Janine and Anton, and even the school administration, were very helpful and understanding throughout the whole process. My classmates welcomed me back with smiles and words of encouragement. It’s often said that children can be cruel, but I think it’s even more true that they can be sweet and supportive. I really can’t emphasize enough how much returning to all my friends helped me along in the healing process. My anxiety began to ebb, and my therapist proclaimed that it was a major milestone for me.
Despite the progress in my psychological healing, there were always several thoughts that I couldn’t rid myself of. The first was the guilt that I felt about asking for my parents to go away. I knew full well that the murder of my parents was in no way my fault, but there was always that nagging voice that wouldn’t let it drop. I’d asked for them to be taken away, and that’s exactly what had happened. The second thought was that the murderer would return again the following Christmas. Initially, all the adults assured me that he would be arrested quickly. Then, when that didn’t happen, I was promised that there was no way he could ever get his hands on me, and that I was safe. They made sure that I was never left alone, and when Janine went back to work, she only did so part-time so that she could pick me up when school let out. I also had difficulty with the more unbelievable aspects of what happened that night. I tried to convince myself, on a daily basis, that the murderer was just a normal man, and that my memory of those fantastical elements was merely my own imagination betraying me. But just like the guilt I felt, the troubling thought, that this man was more than just a man, didn’t subside entirely.
For victims of trauma, anniversaries can often trigger symptoms like depression and fear. For me, Christmas was the anniversary of my worst memory. As the summer ended, Janine and Anton, along with my therapist, decided early on that Christmas wouldn’t be celebrated in our household that year. Nobody felt that I’d be ready for it, and they were right. Since we knew that Christmas was going to be an ordinary day for us, Janine and Anton made sure to throw me a huge birthday party in October of that year, when I turned nine. It seemed like most of the community turned out. We had a bounce house, ponies, and even a magician. Everyone, including me, had a great day. It was probably the first time in ten months that I’d grinned. Sure, there had been smiles up to that point, but I’m referring to the type of grin where your teeth show and the elation on your face can’t be mistaken.
Unfortunately, the joy of my birthday couldn’t last forever. Inevitably, the signs of Christmas slowly started popping up not long after Halloween passed, and my anxiety started increasing. Though we weren’t going to celebrate it, Christmas would be impossible to ignore. Holiday lights, store displays, television commercials, yuletide songs pumped over public address systems… how can one avoid all those and still function within society? Though those harbingers couldn’t be avoided altogether, Janine and Anton made a concerted effort to minimize my exposure. Instead of letting me watch my TV shows, Anton taught me the game of chess, which we played nightly. For the most part, they avoided taking me to any stores, and kept me home, or close by, as much as possible. Avoiding these triggers probably helped somewhat, but I still couldn’t get rid of the tightening feeling in my chest that I felt every morning when I woke up.
I managed to avoid any sort of breakdown until the 21st of December. Aunt Janine, because she was taking care of me, had herself been staying home an inordinate amount of time. Finally, after our fifth game of rummy in a row, she’d had enough.
She tossed her cards aside. “You know what, Miles? We’ve been cooped up too long. Let’s get out of here. We’ll go get some ice cream. One little trip out won’t hurt. Right?”
I smiled in response. “Okay!” Ice cream sounded good, even in the middle of December.
Aunt Janine, who was talkative by nature, kept the conversation flowing all the way to the ice cream shop. I suppose this was her attempt to keep my focus away from the lights and displays that we passed, and it worked too. Ask a kid questions about his favorite superheroes, and he’s going to fairly preoccupied while he talks about them, even the quiet ones.
We made it into the shop, I ordered a double scoop of chocolate fudge brownie. We sat down to eat our treats, with Aunt Janine still engaging me in conversation. Just for a brief moment, a nearby toy store’s glittering Christmas display caught my eye through the window. They had a life-size poster plastered in their display window. It was a picture of Santa upon a rooftop, posed in a position as if he were just about ready to climb down a chimney. Blazing Christmas lights surrounded the display, and large words spelled out, “What do you want for Christmas?”
I tried to turn away, but the colorful lights clouded my vision, enlarging in their scope until they all combined, finally creating a great white light.
“Miles? Miles?” My aunt’s voice was becoming more and more urgent. I suddenly realized she’d been calling my name for several moments.
The cup of ice cream dropped from my hand. “I… I just want them back.” At that moment, the tears flowed freely. I could think of nothing else. I was hysterical.
Aunt Janine quickly came over to my side of the table.
“Oh my god Miles. I’m so sorry.” She grabbed me and hugged me tightly. I reciprocated, holding onto her as firmly as I could. “This was a bad idea. I’m so sorry sweetie. I’m sorry I brought you out. That was stupid of me. I’m so sorry. I miss them too.”
It took at least fifteen minutes for Aunt Janine to calm me to a point where we could leave the shop. We left our unfinished ice creams behind.
No other incidents happened in the next couple of days, and my interactions with Anton and Janine helped distract me. Finally, it was Christmas Eve. I was quiet all day long, even more so than usual. Anton noticed, and had a talk with me after dinner.
“You okay, buddy?”
I nodded my head yes.
Despite my assurance that I was okay, he could tell I wasn’t. He knew almost exactly what was on my mind.
“Come here, Miles. Let me show you a few things.”
I followed him to the living room window where he moved the curtains aside. “See these windows?” He slapped his hand on the pane to show me how solid it was. “This is the strongest window that they make for residences. My company installed these. They’re unbreakable, and there’s no way someone can open them from the outside.”
I stared at the window, while on the other side, blackness enveloped the house.
He took me over to the door. “See how strong this is? It would take a tank to knock this door down. The back door too. And there’s no other way in.”
He led me over to the alarm control panel that was on the wall. “This is the best system that they make. I installed it myself.”
He kneeled down to my level. “Miles, you’re safe here. Nobody, and I mean nobody can get in here unless we let them in.”
He glanced to the side with his eyes. “And don’t tell your Aunt I showed you this.” He moved his coat aside so that I could see the holstered pistol he was wearing. “Just some added protection. But I won’t even need this.”
I nodded, feeling a little bit safer, but not completely. I still worried, not only for myself, but for Janine and Anton as well. Bedtime approached, and Aunt Janine, with an insight usually reserved for longtime mothers, knew the one thing that might make the night a little easier for me. “Miles, do you want to sleep in our room tonight?” She asked.
“Yes.” I smiled and nodded at the invitation. We would all be able to look out for each other. They’d protect me, and I’d be able to warn them if someone came in.
They put some soft blankets on the ground for me, right next to their bed. It was in a nice, protected spot in the large gap between the bed and the wall. I couldn’t fall asleep for several hours, but I could hear both Janine and Anton begin their nightly slumbers. Their breathing became rhythmic and almost melodic. I listened intently for any noises that might’ve been out of the ordinary, but nothing abnormal sounded out. There was a clock ticking somewhere in the house, and the occasional car passed by outside. Finally, my weariness overpowered my uneasiness, and I began my night’s sleep.
The dream I had that night was unlike any other I’d had before. I was in what appeared to be a large garage, the type where mechanics worked on cars. All around me, automotive parts were spread out along the ground, tires were stacked up, and an old rusted chassis filled the center of the room. Grime dripped from walls. The area was lit by a single overhead lamp. I instantly knew I was dreaming, even though it was the first time I’d experienced a lucid dream. From the corner of the garage, I heard metal clanging. I turned around to face the sound, and out of the darkness, the man who’d taken the lives of my parents emerged.
He spit some phlegm onto the ground and wiped his mouth before addressing me. “Hey kid. Don’t worry. I ain’t gonna hurt you. I’d like to though, I’d really like to be able to shut you up, but it don’t work that way.”
Despite my grimy surroundings, and perhaps because it was just a dream, this didn’t feel like a place of anger and fear. Unlike the year before, I was able to find my voice right away. “Why do you want to shut me up? I hardly ever even speak.”
When you consider some of the other obvious questions, I know it may sound strange that I chose to open with that. Who was this man? And why did he take interest in me? Those were the questions I was really thinking, but my participation in the dream was guided, as if my actions weren’t wholly my own.
The man finally responded. “Hell, you quiet ones are the loudest of all. Y’all never stop thinking. Thought after thought, you kids can’t ever just shut your brains off. Gimme just one loudmouth, those kids never think about anything. Tell you what, if it was up to me, I’d just rip all your fucking heads off and be done with it, but like I said, it don’t work that way. I ain’t allowed to hurt a child.”
I looked around, and came to a slow realization. “This isn’t my dream, is it?”
“That’s a stupid question. You ever dreamed of a place like this? Of course not. This is my dream, kid. I’m parked right outside your house. I just wanted to take a moment to peek in on you.”
My fear of this man, which had been otherwise controlled to this point, slowly began creeping back.
He saw the look of despair spread across my face. “Have you been a good boy this year?” He gave a little chuckle. “Actually, yes. You have been. Do you ‘member what I said last time? I give kids what they ask for, the good ones, and the bad ones.”
I shook my head. “I didn’t ask for anything.” I spoke with a confidence that I didn’t really feel.
“Sure you did. You kids always ask for somethin’. And don’t you worry now, ’cause you’re gonna get it.”
The room, and the man, began to fade away. “See you next year, kid. I get the feelin’ that you and I are going to be part of each other’s lives for a long time.” Those were the last words I heard. Pure whiteness consumed me, and then I slept peacefully.
My eyes opened. Outside the window, I could see the gray sky that signaled the approaching dawn. The house was eerily quiet. Too quiet. I stayed fixed in my bed on the floor, listening for signs of life from my aunt and uncle, but I could only hear my own heartbeat. I wanted to sit up and look over to them, but I was afraid of what I’d find.
The dream had felt so real, I wasn’t sure what to think. I continued to listen. “Please.” I whispered to myself, “Let me hear them breathe.”
Several minutes passed. I still heard nothing. Tears began streaming down my face, and my pillow became wet. I knew deep inside that eventually I would have to look and see if they were okay. I couldn’t lay on the floor all day, but my gut instinct told me that I didn’t want to witness what was up there. Drawing upon my deepest strengths, I put my hands over my eyes and sat up. Slowly, I moved a single finger away from my teary eye.
There was no blood, no gore. I pulled my hands fully away from my face. I could see uncle Anton’s chest clearly rise and fall. He was sleeping peacefully, and very quietly. Aunt Janine turned in her sleep and mumbled a few nonsense words before resuming her silent rest.
I smiled, then I laughed in relief. I could see no evidence that the man had been there. It was still early, but any sense of sleepiness had been pushed away by my earlier feeling of dread. I stood up and walked over to the mirrored closet door. I looked at my red eyes and wiped them dry, while behind me I could see the reflection of my aunt and uncle sleeping soundly. There was no need to wake them.
I left the room with the intent of getting something to eat, most likely a bowl of cereal. I walked down the hallway and passed by the alarm panel on the wall. All the lights were green. The doors, the windows, they were all secure; nobody could’ve gotten in.
Now fully relaxed, I passed through the living room on my way to the dining area. That’s when I saw it, sitting right on top of the dining room table. I froze in place and looked all around, to see if there was anything else out of place, but everything else was as it should’ve been. I turned again to the table, and stared at the beautifully wrapped gift box that definitely hadn’t been there the night before. It was a large box, maybe about eighteen inches square. The wrapping paper that covered it was bright red, with sparkles all over it. A pretty green bow covered the top.
My aunt and uncle had agreed that we wouldn’t be celebrating Christmas that year, yet there sat a gift box atop the dining room table. I wondered if they’d changed their minds. I walked slowly towards the gift, step by step. I stood up on one of the dining room chairs, so that I could see the top of the gift. Whoever had wrapped it had taken their time. The box’s lid was wrapped separately from the box itself. I lifted it up, then I peered inside.
There was no “fade to white” for me that time. No, I saw exactly what was in the box, and simultaneously, three truths occurred to me. The first truth was that the man had been in my house. Despite all the security measures, he’d gotten in and out without raising a single alarm. The second truth was that the man had been right, I’d asked for something without even realizing it. The third truth was the sinking acceptance that his visits would be an annual occurrence.
I stood there on the chair, staring into my parents’ dried out eyes, which were still in their decapitated heads, which were both in the box. I’d said I wanted them back, and the man, however he did it, had heard me, and granted my wish in a manner befitting his evil ways.
The ultimate truth that I learned from that day was that there could be no mess-ups with my behavior, and I could want for nothing. I was being constantly watched, and my mind was being continuously invaded. Bad actions would be severely punished, and even good behavior would lead to its own sick and twisted reward. And that’s the story of how a very well behaved boy became the perfectly behaved boy. And as a perfectly behaved boy, all my desires had to be held in check. Emotionally speaking, I had to become less than human, so that the visitor would have no fuel for the wicked game he played.
Of course, nobody is truly perfect, and there were slip-ups throughout the following years, times when I inadvertently made a wish or asked for something. Those slip-ups were very costly to me, but I don’t care to recount the full extent of them here. I think I’ve given enough of myself for tonight. I’m weary and beaten, but what I will tell you is that after thirty years, I’m no longer afraid to finally say that I want the painful memories to go away. I don’t want them anymore. I even said it aloud, I want the memories to be gone.
It’s cold outside right now, and it’s getting late. I think I’ll make myself a cup of hot cocoa with some peppermint before turning in. That will make me happy. For the first time in ages, I’m calm and at peace. Looking out the window, I can see all the pretty lights on the eaves of the houses. I don’t think I ever really had the chance to appreciate just how festive they make everything look. For a long time I just didn’t care, but now, I’m going to take a few minutes to enjoy them while I can. Good night everyone, and merry Christmas.
|
They put up a tall fence covered with black tarp and topped by barbed wire, surrounding Lake Collette at the center of Juniper Valley, so that no one could see what they were doing. Two of the three local cop cars were stationed 24/7 at either end – one to the east, one to the west. This all went on for three days while some unknown, official body did what needed to be done, then, overnight, the black barbed-wire fence was gone, replaced with one of the normal chain-link variety.
A few middle school kids dared Kevin Whitter to apply a pair of wire cutters and sneak in. My little half-brother knew Kevin; the kid claimed to have seen unmarked vans and a bevy of sunglass-wearing government agents with automatic weapons surrounding a team of scientists in hazmat suits, dragging the carcass of a monster out of the water. The monster had ten legs, the skin of an alligator, and the body of a squid. Or the body of a shark. Or matted fur, or feathers, or teeth.
It changed per telling. And it was all bullshit. I’m guessing Kevin Whitter either chickened out before doing the deed, or else was picked up by the cops as soon as he approached the fence.
At the end of the three days, some early risers in Juniper Valley reported witnessing unmarked cars heading east on Skylark Road, towards the highway and the air force base and the Palmdale airport. Whatever government agency was operating behind the blockade, searching the lake, they were gone without a trace by the time the sun was up.
And whatever they found, they weren’t telling. The cops were clueless; all they told us townsfolk was that, due to a bacterial infestation, we were not to swim in the lake until further notice.
I will never swim in the lake again. And I hope to God they killed them all.
*****
I stayed in Juniper Valley during the summer, with my father. He and my stepmother loved it there, loved the isolation and the small-town lifestyle. Though I would hesitate to even call Juniper Valley a “town.” It’s an unincorporated cluster of ranch-style homes planted like a pimple amongst the Sierra Pelona Mountains.
In the ’90s, the population of Juniper Valley and the surrounding hills was eight hundred and change. There was one general store in town, one gas station, one church, and one dirty little inn with a bar/restaurant. Anything else one might need could be found in Palmdale, a 45-minute drive east, through miles of gridded power lines and golden flatland, dotted with silos and scrap metal.
The town resembles a bowl, with Lake Collette at the basin, and streets and houses arranged around the edges, along the slopes of the surrounding hills. Calling Lake Collette a “lake” is also stretching things a little bit. It’s a sag pond, right on the San Andreas Fault, which cuts straight through Juniper Valley. During droughts, Lake Collette would drain to a glorified puddle, a mossy marsh of waist-high weeds.
There were quite a few rainy years during my childhood. Lake Collette would remain a proper body of water then, even in the midst of the hot, dry summer. I’d look out my bedroom window at the lake, below the dim circles of light cast by the two street lamps on Skylark Road, pitch-black like a tar pit. On moonless nights it seemed depthless, and I felt as though it could be a kilometers-deep well. A black hole. It could suck me in, swallow me whole.
I grew up. My months in Juniper Valley became skull-crushingly boring. My dad and stepmother worked, my half-siblings went to summer school, and my friends were seventy miles away. The nearest library was almost as far, and the rabbit-eared TV picked up three channels: local access from Palmdale, the Bible channel, and assorted infomercials.
It was my step-grandmother who told me about the Willfell Animal Sanctuary. She went to church with the lady who ran the place, a retired park ranger named Kathy. The shelter was a non-profit funded solely by donations, with an all-volunteer staff. Kathy owned an acre of hillside land off Skylark Road, just west of town, a fifteen-minute walk from my father’s house.
I was thirteen the first summer I volunteered at Willfell, and I went back every summer after. They loved me there. By “they,” I mean the only two staff members: Kathy, an earthy woman in her sixties who functioned as CEO, manager, accountant, and primary caretaker of the animals; and Jacques, a 27-year-old autistic man who cleaned cages and walked dogs as part of a government-subsidized program. And I fell in love with the animals. There were about sixty of them, homeless dogs and unwanted cats.
There were two huge kennels in Kathy’s large backyard: one for dogs, one for cats. Further back, rabbit hutches. And at the far end, against the sturdy fence, a tiny stable that housed an elderly racehorse and a fat little donkey.
When pounds in Palmdale and Lancaster received animals they had no room for, they’d give them to Kathy. She’d drive her rickety, old, windowless van east to the highway, then come back hours later with new furry charges. Sometimes, she’d function as a poor man’s dog catcher – agencies would direct her towards residences from Juniper Valley to Acton, asking her to remove starving, nearly hairless dogs from gardens and pull emaciated cats out from under cars. These were the highway strays, abandoned on the 14 by individuals who no longer wished to be pet owners.
That first summer, I meet Jane Kitornes.
Jane was a friend of Kathy’s, a retired Navy nurse who worked as an at-home caregiver and took in homeless cats. She visited Willfell at least once a week, sometimes bringing large bags of cat food. Jane was a rough lady. Tanned, sinewy, wrinkled beyond her years; only ever seen wearing stained wife-beaters and baggy fatigues. She’d never married, had no family I knew of, and seemed to prefer the company of cats to humans. Kathy considered her an asset – she’d take in twenty cats at a time, accepting responsibility when we had no more room.
She owned a half-acre a few miles southwest of town, off a shabby two-lane road called Oak Tree Lane. Oak Tree Lane snakes between grey-green hills before dead-ending deep in the Angeles National Forest; rusting mailboxes stick out of the ground like flags at the head of dirt roads, leading to remote ranches and groves and campgrounds.
Jane’s cottage was at the end of one of these dirt roads, in a little clearing carpeted with knee-high weeds and prickly shrubs, surrounded on three sides by gently-sloping hills. She’d take me there, sometimes. There were always cats everywhere.
Cats inside and out. Cats on the sofa, cats sitting atop Jane’s washer, cats sunning themselves, stalking field mice and butterflies, sleeping and fighting and screwing. I’d spend hours at Jane’s house with her cats, helping her clean up and clean litter boxes, cuddling kittens from the occasional litter.
Jane liked me. Since she obviously felt little need for human companionship, I took this as the highest of compliments. Every summer, on the first day I’d see her, Jane would break out into the biggest, brightest smile that Kathy swore she reserved only for me.
“You’re like me, Marlena,” Jane would say, as I stared out the window of her 1979 El Camino. “You can cut through anyone’s bullshit and see their soul. That’s why you love animals so much. Your standards for souls are higher than most.”
*********
The earthquake hit the winter of my junior year. I remember waking in the middle of the night, roused by the “thud” of my precariously-placed math book falling off my desk. The mild shaking lasted about 3.5 seconds, then I realized I’d experienced an earthquake, rolled over, and fell back asleep.
My dad, his family, and Juniper Valley were hit a bit harder. Positioned on the San Andreas Fault and closer to the epicenter, structural damage was rather extensive. And, as the area was experiencing a rainy winter, rocky mudslides closed roads and isolated remote dwellings. The mess had been cleaned up by summer, but I noticed broken sandbag barricades and new, violent cracks along Skylark Road.
Lake Collette looked more robust than I’d ever seen it, but was surrounded by a chain-link fence. The water had taken on a greenish tinge, and hosted islands of thick, yellowish scum. For now, it was closed to the public.
I returned to Kathy and the Willfell Animal Sanctuary – with a driver’s license this time, which secured me a new responsibility. Kathy’s windowless van still hadn’t broken down, but she was sick of driving it all over the valley. So she handed me the keys. I enjoyed it at first. Rambling through golden plains until I saw the boxy developments of Palmdale or Lancaster; rescuing filthy, unloved creatures from the clutches of abusive owners or uncaring bureaucracy.
Jane Kitornes had all but disappeared. Her last nursing charge had passed away, and she was rarely seen in town – only at the general store, Kathy told me, and rarely. I think Kathy and I were the only people in Juniper Valley who noticed her absence. I missed Jane. I missed the way her face lit up when she saw me, and the warm summer afternoons spent in her backyard. I called her landline once. It had been disconnected.
Soon, the cats started appearing.
My third day back, I was sitting in Cathy’s office when I received a phone call from a talkative old lady in town. There was a cat in her backyard; it had been sitting in the lower branches of her oak tree for hours.
“I think it’s someone’s pet,” she said. “It’s too chubby to be a stray.”
This, in and of itself, was not an extraordinary event. Everyone in town knew Kathy ran a shelter, and would infrequently call her in lieu of animal control when an unknown animal became a bother. Sometimes said animal would be a neighbor’s lost pet; other times, a runaway that had wandered from Palmdale. Kathy always made an effort to find the owner. Rarely, a feral, abandoned highway stray would make it to Juniper Valley. These poor creatures were always half-dead things with matted fur and exposed, pustule-dotted skin. They usually had to be euthanized. Or died before the local vet got the chance.
At first, I assumed the calm, well-groomed, grey-and-white shorthair I found in the old lady’s oak tree was the former: a townie’s escaped house cat. I tried to coax the thing down with a can of tuna. No dice. It wasn’t remotely interested in the food – it just stared; black, depthless eyes locked on something that wasn’t me. I stood, tuna can in my outstretched hand, looking like an idiot, for five frustrating minutes before giving up and going to the van to grab Kathy’s net. When I got back, the cat was gone. I never saw it again.
It bothered me all night. It was like the cat had been messing with me.
And it happened again and again. Homeowner after Juniper Valley homeowner, calling Willfell and asking us to remove a cat from their property. Always cats. Always different cats, I don’t think I ever saw the same one twice. The homeowner always insisted he or she had never seen the animal before, and they never had collars. They always appeared well-fed, if not overfed; their fur, though not show-quality, was thick and intact.
It became troubling. Juniper Valley had a population of 842; it was located forty-five minutes from the nearest town, and surrounded on three sides by hills and forest. Everyone knew everyone else’s pets, and the sudden appearance of so many unaccounted-for cats was mysterious, to say the least.
And these cats were not like any cats I’d ever seen before.
They liked fresh water. I’d find them sitting in fountains and kiddie pools. They didn’t seem to like the sun. They’d come out at night, or else be found in some shaded, dark, enclosed space. They were silent, never hissing or meowing.
They were really, really good at getting in and out of places. I found one curled up in the back of a lady’s car. Though she admitted she’d left the door unlocked, the physical act of opening and closing the door should have been impossible for a creature with only paws at its disposal.
They were smart. Supernaturally smart. At times, I fell under the disturbing impression the cat was taunting me. I’d be setting up some trap, or extending the net. The cat would sit there, calm and cool, watching intently. There’d be a minute in which I’d have some semblance of hope I’d finally catch the thing this time, and then the cat would dart out of my grasp. Or vanish the moment I turned my back.
The weirdest part was, once or twice, the cat stopped before running off and looked at me. I could swear it was laughing.
And they all shared the same icy, emotionless black eyes. I wished they didn’t remind me so much of the empty eyes staring from the euthanized corpses I saw at Willfell.
Finally, I caught one.
It was early July. I was quite pleased with my cunning. I bought one of those huge plastic storage tubs from the general store, filled it with water, stuck it in the back of the van, and waited for my feline quarry – a large, pug-faced tabby this time. After an hour of hiding in the cab, the cat climbed down from the roof where I’d found it and into the waiting reservoir. I raced to the back, slammed the van doors, donned leather gloves and prepared for a hissing, clawing fight.
But, surprisingly, the cat didn’t struggle at all. It was fully submerged in the water, curled up on the bottom of the container like a rock. I picked it up, shoved it in a cage, dumped out the water, and drove.
It wasn’t until I was halfway to Willfell that I noticed the smell. Once, my nine-year-old son dropped a fish stick in the back of my car and forgot about it. A humid summer week later, my car smelled just like that cat had.
When we got there, the chubby tabby put up about as much of a fight as it had in the van. I didn’t hold it for long – years of experience with scared animals taught me that the less time spent with claws inches from my face, the better. But the short span of time the cat was in my hands was enough to make me seriously uncomfortable. It was heavy and, somehow, doughy. My hands sunk into its flesh like silly putty. And it was cold.
I left the cat in the ‘quarantine’ cage in Kathy’s office. We usually only used the cage for animals that were obviously ill, which the tabby was not. But there was just something… wrong with this cat. Like it shouldn’t be mixed with others of its species. I gave it bowls of kibble and water, then sat down at the desk to fill out an application for a grant. Kathy was gone for the weekend, visiting her sister in Bakersfield. Jacques was in the back, cleaning out the pony stall.
I couldn’t concentrate. Not with the cat there.
I looked over my shoulder every other minute. Each time, I’d see the same thing – the flat-faced tabby, sitting in its water bowl, staring at me. It never blinked. It never moved. It didn’t even appear to breathe. The rotting, fishy odor filled the room.
Finally, I cracked. I double-checked the latch on the cat’s cage, locked the office door, and pretended to be busy feeding the dogs. I called the vet and asked if he could come by and take a look at the feline, but he said he wouldn’t be able for another week.
The next morning, I found the office window wide open, the quarantine cage open, and the cat gone. I wasn’t disappointed.
Not long after that, everyone started talking about little Charlie Henderson.
Charlie was 12, and had been skateboarding alone, shortly before midnight, in the parking lot by Lake Collette. The lake was still scum-covered and fenced off, and the occupants of the nearest homes had long since packed it in for the night. The way he told it, Charlie had been approached by a cat. He bent over to pet it, and the cat danced away, leading him to a grove of trees behind the lake.
He followed the cat. Then, suddenly, he was attacked by a small army of cats. They jumped from the trees and emerged from the shadows, latching onto his clothing and limbs and dragging him towards a hole in the fence. If a lost car hadn’t pulled into the parking lot and turned around, causing the cats to scatter and giving him time to run away… well, who knows what they’d have done with him?
No one believed him, of course. Everyone assumed he’d been attacked by, maybe, one feral cat, and his imagination had taken over. Because cats don’t corner people and jump them – that takes organization and planning, intelligence not possessed by house pets. And his story got weird, too. He claimed one of the cats had stretched itself, like silly putty, and grew an opposable thumb.
Then Jane came back.
It was a cloudy afternoon, and I was taking advantage of the slight cool-down to deep-clean the dog kennel. Kathy was gone again, in Riverside watching her granddaughter play softball. I was busy scraping dried dog crap off the concrete when Jacques ran out to tell me there was a lady asking for me. I wiped off my hands and went inside, to find Jane Kitornes staring at me from Kathy’s living room.
Jane had never been fastidious about her appearance. But, if I hadn’t known her so well, I would have assumed the gaunt, trembling figure in a stained wife-beater was a homeless woman. Her hair was a frizzy, matted mess of grey. She looked unwashed; her arms and chest were striped with lacerations of varying degrees of depth, in various stages of healing. And her eyes, which had once seemed to serve as a window to a rational, calculating mind, now allowed a glimpse into bloodshot insanity.
“Jane!” I said. “What… are you okay?”
She didn’t smile. “Do you have any?” she asked.
I frowned. “Any what?”
“Cats, Marlena,” was the curt reply. “It’s the cats. I need the cats. They’ve been wandering.”
I gave her what I hoped was a kind smile. “Okay, Jane. I can show you the cats. But Kathy said I’m not allowed to have any of them adopted without her around.”
That was a lie, but I wasn’t about to pass Jane custody of a pet rock, let alone a living, breathing creature. She was obviously not in the physical, emotional, or mental state to care for anything, not even herself.
I walked her out to the cat kennel. As expected, a small herd of dogs ran towards Jane to sniff her and beg for attention. Then, about three feet from her, the dogs stopped. They sniffed the air, whined, and loped off in all directions. Not a single one got any nearer.
Jane looked over the cats seriously, then sighed in disappointment. She shook her head, turned around, and paced back to Kathy’s house.
“You haven’t caught any,” she said.
“What are you talking about?” I asked.
She glared, looking through me. She could cut through anyone’s bullshit and see their soul.
“You know what I mean, Marlena. My cats. Call me if you catch one. There’s so many of them now. And they’re getting bigger.”
With that, she walked out the door. She stopped. She turned around.
“And Marlena? Watch the lake.”
I spent the rest of the day in a daze. I’d been wondering where the weird cats came from – they didn’t belong to anyone in Juniper Valley, and it was hard to believe that they’d all migrated from Palmdale. Jane took in homeless cats. Maybe they were hers. I didn’t know why they would have left food, water, and shelter to wander for miles along an isolated road and into a neighborhood, but it was at least a possibility.
That night, following a tangled motivation I couldn’t put into words, I borrowed my father’s car and drove to the parking lot by Lake Collette. Where Charlie Henderson had been attacked. I pulled right up to the fence, turned off my car, let my eyes adjust to the darkness. I obeyed Jane. I watched the lake.
I hadn’t sat for ten minutes before I saw movement. A black shape, creeping out of the shadows and approaching the water’s edge. More movement, against the clump of trees to my right.
Cautiously, quietly, I opened the car door and stepped out. I shut the door gently and tiptoed towards the fence.
A large black cat waded in the dirty lake. Its paws were inundated. It kept on going.
A subtle creak. I came closer, until I was grasping the metal links of the fence, and I felt it quiver under my fingers. I looked to my right and saw them. Two more cats. Huge cats, the biggest I’d ever seen. Cats climbing down the fence like monkeys, head first, completely vertical. One, then the other, jumped gracefully to the ground and stepped into the feeble light bleeding from the two streetlights. One was yellow, the other a tabby.
The first cat was almost completely submerged. With the lightest gurgle, it ducked under the scum-covered waterline. Into the black hole, the toothed tar pit.
The light wasn’t good at all. It looked as though the second and third cats had… had flattened when they hit the ground, like play-doh thrown at a wall. And there was something about how they moved. They jiggled, their legs bent the wrong way. Or maybe it was just the shitty lighting.
Where was the black cat? It couldn’t still be underwater.
Ripples in the lake, small islands of yellow scum shifting in gentle waves. I didn’t feel a breeze. There was something else in there.
A cadence of nerves was triggered in my brain, forgotten but immediately recognizable like a song. I was scared of Lake Collette, scared like I had been as a child, when the black water had seemed from my bedroom window a depthless well. I ran to the car. I did a donut in the parking lot and sped home.
******
The next morning was hot and bright and, under the cloudless sky, it all seemed ridiculous. I was letting the Charlie Henderson rumors get to me.
I walked past Lake Collette on my way to Willfell. I went right up to the fence. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary; no cats in sight. A light breeze ruffled the water.
I breathed in and gagged. It smelled like rotting fish mixed with a McDonald’s dumpster. It smelled like the pug-faced tabby I’d caught.
Cats don’t like water. Cats don’t swim. I’d spent nearly half a decade surrounded by cats, and the cats I’d been chasing around yards and spying on the night before weren’t… cats. That smell. The way the tabby I’d caught had felt when I held it – bloated and putty-like. Cold. Those cats didn’t purr or meow. They didn’t eat. They didn’t poop. Their intelligence. And that stare – those glassy, corpse-like eyes that seemed to take in everything and nothing.
And Jane. Her cats, she’d said. They’ve been wandering. They’re getting bigger. Maybe she was going nuts, living out there alone in the wilds, a mile away from her nearest human neighbor. The dogs wouldn’t come near her. Her own cats had been attacking her, apparently – how else to explain the scratches all over? Yet still, she was desperate to have them back.
I had to talk to Jane again.
Kathy was still gone and it was Jacques’ day off, so I planned on heading to Jane’s lonely dirt road as soon as I fed the animals. But a couple from Palmdale called unexpectedly, asking if they could come by with their daughter to pick out a pet. By the time they’d selected a Corgi mix and made arrangements to have the dog neutered, it was after five.
It was fine. It was still light out. I locked up, grabbed the keys to the van, and made my way into the hills.
My teen-aged bravado waned as I traveled farther and farther away from Juniper Valley. There’s no defined town line, but when you reach the intersection of Skylark and Oak Tree Lane you’re essentially watching civilization shrink in your rear-view mirror. I’d forgotten just how far away Jane’s shack was from anything, and just how desolate and lonely the mountain road became. I didn’t see a single other car the whole time.
Finally, I came to the rusted blue mailbox with Jane’s numbers on the side. I turned on the dirt road. The van jerked violently as I climbed up the hill. When I reached the apex, I saw Jane’s shack. Carefully, foot on the brake, I made my way down into the valley.
It didn’t look like Jane was home. There was no light coming from the windows. I pulled up closer, into the driveway, past the house, to the carport in the back. The back door was wide open, and Jane’s El Camino was there.
The cats weren’t.
No cats lounging in piles by the stairs. None prowling around the yard. I’d never been within a quarter-mile of the house, day or night, rain or shine, without seeing at least a few cats.
I pulled beside Jane’s car, climbed out of the van, strolled into the backyard. Jane’s empty property looked lovely in the approaching dusk. Tall grass surrounded by gentle golden hills, spindly naked trees reaching for the heavens, majestic firs meeting fluffy white clouds like an Old West movie backdrop.
She must have been hiding in the house. She must have crept up behind me. Because I don’t remember feeling the blow.
******
I woke up lying in cool, moist dirt. I was looking at water. Lake Collette? No, I saw nothing but hills and foliage in the distance. Where the fuck was I?
I sat up. My head spun; I felt blood in my hair. I was sitting on the bank of a small pond. The water was greenish and thick with algae, covered in thick yellow scum. I took a breath and lurched. The smell. Rotting fish, rotting flesh, fast-food dumpster – stronger than I’d ever smelled it before.
The water moved. Something was emerging a few feet in front of me. Swimming to shore. A black cat, paddling with uncomfortable, almost human strokes. I scrambled backwards, away from the approaching creature.
It reached land. It pulled itself onto the bank. It stood up.
Anyone who grew up watching Looney Tunes knows what a cat, in theory, looks like standing on two feet. This was nothing like that. The black cat’s weight shifted. Its belly bulged, its lower legs swelled, became shorter and fatter. The effect was the same as squeezing a stress ball. Instead of a creature with a skeleton and tendons and muscles, I was being approached by a thing, with the consistency of jelly, wearing a furry suit.
I screamed. I stumbled to my feet. Then I felt icy fingers curl around my neck.
I struggled, and instinctively horse-kicked my unseen attacker. The hand loosened, and I whirled around.
I was face-to-face with Jane Kitornes.
But it wasn’t Jane.
Her face was round and flat, boneless. The wrinkles under her eyes had smoothed themselves out, and her nose bulged like a mushroom. And her eyes…
The maniacal glint was gone from her eyes. So was the consciousness, so was the recognition, so was the vitality. Her pupils were so dilated her irises were no longer visible, and what had been white was now completely red.
Her eyes didn’t move. They were those of a corpse.
A wobbling arm extended, and I was falling backwards, back towards the pond. Towards the demented, anthropomorphic cat. I turned my body and caught myself as I slid, my left arm plunging into the murky water.
A cold weight on my shoulder, knocking me backwards. Then the cat… cat thing… was sitting on my chest. It held out a paw, then stepped on one foreleg with the other. Its paw bulged, then… reshaped itself. Its toes grew fatter, skin stretching, and a small nub popped out of the side. An opposable thumb. Like putty in a rubber glove.
Then something in the water grabbed my hand. Something soft and cold and rubberlike, slimy but very, very strong. It pulled me. It was pulling me into the water. Then something else jerked a my hair.
Jane stood over me, smiling. She bent down, hands outstretched. Pudgy, bloated hands, attached to rope-like arms that jiggled and curled and changed shape…
What happened next is a blur. I remember clawing, kicking, screaming at the top of my lungs… and then I was running, stumbling, lungs burning, stinging, aching, cursing the spongy, weeded ground that gave under my feet. I pushed through dry shrubs and jumped over tree branches, praying I was going in a direction that would lead me to humanity, and that the crinkling of grass behind me was only my imagination.
Then I was on top of a hill, looking down at Jane’s shack. And then I was in Jane’s yard. I saw the van and lunged for it, threw myself in the driver’s seat, silently thanking the spirit or guardian angel that distracted me so I’d left the keys in the ignition. I slammed the door.
I looked up. Out the windshield. And into the red-and-black, empty eyes of the thing that had been Jane. It was smiling. She’d always reserved a special smile for me.
I turned the key. I gunned it.
SQUELCH!
The van jerked violently. I slammed on the brakes, kicking up dirt like smoke. I felt a sticky moisture against my cheeks. I took a breath, and barely managed to pull open the door before I projectile-vomited. Even thinking about that acidic, rotting-seafood stench induces a nauseous tickle in the back of my throat.
I’d crushed Jane under the front right tire. I’d popped her.
*****
God must have been smiling down on me that night, because the van still ran. I drove it straight to the police station. In the parking lot, I surveyed the damage. The front bumper was dented, and a headlight was out.
There was no blood. The mangled metal was splattered with glossy, opaque white goo.
I was almost completely honest with the sleepy-eyed desk cop. I said that Jane tried to drown me in the hills behind her home, chased me to the van, and then I ran her over; but I left out the part where her body had taken on the properties of pasta and silly putty. The cop asked sarcastically if I’d been doing any drugs, but radioed a car to the site.
Over the next week, I was questioned multiple times by the police. Their questions became increasingly bizarre, to the point where they were asking about toxic chemicals and lights in the sky (seriously) and whether I was, or had ever been, involved with a heavy metal band and/or a witch cult (this was the late 90’s). I was chastised for driving down a lonely backroad, alone, to approach a crazy woman. But I was never charged with a crime.
The cops were cagey, but they’d found something.
By the next morning, Oak Tree Lane was blocked off by the County Sheriffs, and the inhabitants of the hills had been roughly evacuated with no explanation. Then came more sheriffs, then the unmarked cars, then the tall, black, barbed-wire fence around Lake Collette. Jane’s death was reported as a “freak accident.”
*******
I tried to forget. I holed up in my room, watching happy movies on VHS, until my mom came to take me back to Van Nuys. I went back to school. I threw myself into studying and applying for college. When I needed to, I snuck my mom’s sleeping pills.
Eventually, however, curiosity overwhelmed my fear. I wanted answers. So I elected to spend the following summer, my last before college, in Juniper Valley with my father.
Willfell was no more. Kathy had left the animals with a larger no-kill shelter in Acton, retired, and moved to Riverside. There was a large “for sale” sign in front of what had once been her home. And it had been a dry winter. The chain-link fence, broken and bent, still surrounded Lake Collette, but the lake was little more than a puddle.
I flirted my way into a job waiting tables at the bar/restaurant (they weren’t great with checking ID’s). I spent my nights serving burgers to bored townies, trying to strike up conversations about the strange events of the previous summer – the shadowy agents, the fence, the crazy cat lady. I was offered nothing but rumors, speculation, and good old-fashioned lies.
Finally, I met a man named Aaron. He was in his twenties, chubby, and socially awkward. He worked as a counselor at a camp for disabled children. He talked about Dungeons and Dragons a little bit too much. And his uncle was a local cop. It was a slow night; I shot the shit with Aaron for awhile. When I asked him if he’d heard about the “crazy cat lady” who’d died last year, he played it off like a tabloid headline.
“What crazy… oh, that lady!” He laughed nervously. “Yeah, I heard about her. They found her body and drained some pond in the hills, and all her cats were missing. That’s about it.”
But I’d noticed his eyes widen and his hands tremble.
I guess I got lucky. Aaron’s cop uncle, apparently, had a weakness for Jack Daniels and a tendency to ignore police confidentiality when drunk. And that weakness must have been genetic, because a sloppy, giggly hour later Aaron was singing like a canary.
The night Jane had tried to kill me, two cops had been dispatched to her home off Oak Tree Lane, expecting to find an empty bottle of Everclear and a discarded bag of ‘shrooms. Instead, they found what had been Jane Kitornes.
Pieces of her were scattered across the ground like debris. They radioed for backup, and a small posse spent the remainder of the night on a scavenger hunt for vital organs. They found skin, plenty of skin. The piece that once covered her back was folded up in a torn white tank top. Her bones and organs seemed strangely melted, as though pulled from a vat |
My mother, my siblings and I moved into this awesome new house a few months ago. It’s a really cool plantation-style home out in what was once a rural area outside of New Orleans. By now the area is a little more built up, so it’s really more like a spacious suburb.
Anyway, it had been about 9 months since our father died. My mom really wanted us to get away from our old house; it was full of too many memories. She wanted us to have a cool, spacious house to play in and give us a fresh start. Apparently we got this place at a decent deal because the former owner was this old woman who passed away and her family wanted to get the extra house off their hands. She died peacefully in her sleep, but it still made us a little uncomfortable so no one moved into her bedroom. We just let it be a guestroom if anyone had visitors.
We have a wonderful neighbor named Miss Leah who lives next door to us (about a half mile away). She’s a small but powerfully built woman who welcomed us to the area with open arms. The former owner of the house was an old friend of hers who she visited all the time, and my own mother soon took on the role of her new friend. They immediately became best friends, always giggling in our kitchen on the weekends.
Miss Leah loves telling tales of Voodoo and even practices it herself (many people in New Orleans do). She mostly practices the “light” voodoo, like charms for good luck and protection. She told me that you can talk to spirits if you write them letters and put them in a place where they know to find them.
I started seeing her every now and then, late at night when I can’t sleep, sticking envelopes into our mailbox (I can see it from my window). When I’d go out in the morning, though, no envelopes would be there. One night I saw her doing the usual mailbox routine, and as soon as she walked far enough away, I ran out to see what she was putting in our mailboxes. I saw a little, silvery, unaddressed letter to Maggie, which turns out to be the name of the old lady who lived in our house before us. I always thought Miss Leah was joking about talking to the dead, but it’s clear she practices it herself. Just to test things out, I stood at that mailbox, watching it for a few hours. Eventually, the sun began to break over the horizon so I figured I had waited ample time. I opened the mailbox.
The letter was gone.
At first I was in complete disbelief, but then I was overcome with excitement. If Miss Leah could talk to Maggie, maybe I could talk to my dad!
I keep a little shoebox under my own bed. It’s full of little trinkets and pictures that remind me of my dad. I go through it every now and then, when I miss him most, as a sort of therapy.
A few nights after trying to rationalize what had happened with the note to Maggie, I decided the best way to test it out was to try it myself. I wrote a letter to my dad, which felt silly at first because I don’t know what dead people like to talk about. I wrote:
“Dear Daddy,
Miss you! How are things on the other side? Mom bought this cool house for us and we have a fun neighbor lady named Miss Leah. We’re all doing ok over here but I especially miss waking up every morning to the sounds of your loud singing in the shower. I hated it back then, but now I realize how funny and charming it was.
Sincerely,
Julia”
I placed the note into my special shoebox and slipped it back under the bed. When I woke up in the morning, it wasn’t there. I wasn’t sure how to handle it. Did he really get the message? Does he write back? What do I do now?
Well, I still needed to go to school that day so the excitement of my supernatural letter-writing subsided and I headed over to the bathroom to get ready. My older brother was singing his lungs out in the shower, something unusual for him, but I figured he was trying to become more like our dad.
I knocked on the door, “hurry up in there! I need to pee!”
The singing continued.
“Jay, how much longer are you going to take?”
The singing continued. Then someone tapped on my shoulder. I turned around. It was Jay. He said, “Calm down Julia. I’m not in the bathroom. Is the door locked? Lemme see if I can jimmy it open for you”
He opened the door with ease. The bathroom was empty. No singing. The shower wasn’t running, but the tub was wet. I walked in and started brushing my teeth, amused by what had just happened. I noticed the mirror was a little bit foggy, as though from shower steam. There was a message written in the mirror. It said “How bad do you miss me?”
I walked the fine line between being totally freaked out and super elated that my dad was communicating with me. I wrote another letter that night.
“Haha I miss you more than you can possibly imagine, Daddy! Don’t ever doubt that. But tell me, how are things on the other side?”
That morning I woke up. The letter in the shoebox was gone, but I noticed a new letter near my door. It looked like someone slipped it under there. I opened it up. It said, “what do you want most from me?” I found it weird that my dad wasn’t really carrying the conversation well, but I decided I’d write a quick response and go to school. I wrote:
“Well, I guess what I want most is for you to come back and play with me like old times. But I know that’s silly.”
When I got back from school, I went straight to my room to check on the letter. I opened my door and my dollhouse, which we stored in the attic, was smack in the middle of my floor. My mom had been at work all day, my brother was still at swim practice and my sister went to the mall with her friend after dropping me off at home. I don’t know who could have moved it…except maybe my dad. I saw a note next to the dollhouse. It said, “PLAY WITH ME.”
My body froze. Something was unsettling about this whole setup. I didn’t feel like I was in danger or anything, but I just wasn’t comfortable. I walked to Miss Leah’s house and she was sitting in her rocking chair on the front porch with her cat, Rufus, in her lap. I told her I knew about the letters she wrote to Maggie.
“Ah yes, sweetheart,” she said. “Even though she’s passed, I haven’t stopped talking to Miss Maggie one bit. She’s was my best friend, and I want her to know how much I love her and how much Rufus misses the little tuna treats she’d give him. I write her almost every day, just updating her on my life so that when I pass, too, it’ll be like she didn’t miss a beat.” She asked me if I was thinking about writing to the dead, too.
For some reason I didn’t feel comfortable telling Miss Leah that I had been writing to my dad already. I told her I was “considering” writing a letter to my dad and that I would try it out that night. She laughed, “OK honey. You’ll have to let me know how it goes tomorrow.” I played with Rufus for a little while as Miss Leah talked on the phone with her nephew. The sun started going down and I figured it was about time for dinner so I said goodbye to Miss Leah and Rufus and walked back over to my home.
My mom and everyone else were already back.
“My god where have you been!” my mom yelled. I told her I was hanging out with Miss Leah, which eased her nerves a little bit since she knew I had been home alone for a while, which scared her. My sister was grounded for abandoning me for the afternoon, but she said it was smart for me to go to Miss Leah’s. She then said, “You know that dollhouse was expensive, right?” which seemed like an odd question but I answered, “Yes. I suppose. Why?” and she explained, “Well, I guess I just wish you’d taken better care of it, is all. I saw it in your room when I was looking for you and I could see you picked off all its paint and there were some dings and dents and I just thought it was such a shame. Also, next time you’re getting something from the attic, wait until I get home and I can help you, honey.”
Bewildered by my mother’s comment, I ate dinner in silence. Afterwards, I helped with the dishes and made my way back to my room with apprehension. It seemed like the dollhouse was in great condition last I saw so I knew something must have happened after I left. I prayed my mom was just seeing things, that the dollhouse was, indeed, exactly how I left it. I opened my door.
My mom was wrong. The dollhouse wasn’t a little dinged up. It had been ripped to bits. Its tattered remains were strewn about the floor. Even my little dolls were mangled with their arms snapped backwards and their heads missing. I couldn’t fathom what had just happened. Then I saw the letter…
“WHY WON’T YOU PLAY WITH ME?”
My hair stood on end. I could feel the rage emanating throughout the room. I tried to rationalize. I tried to tell myself that the context made me sense rage, but there was nothing to worry about. But how can you rationalize things when you’re going around writing letters to dead people who break your furniture? I felt terrible that I had upset my father this way. He bought me that dollhouse himself, so it must have hurt to destroy it. I immediately wrote a new letter to my dad saying:
“Daddy,
I’m so sorry for not playing with you. I love you, but I think we need to let go. You belong on the other side and I belong here. I just want to say one more thing to you. Something I never got the chance to say before:
Goodbye Daddy.
-Julia”
I slept with my brother that night. He was nice about it–didn’t even ask what I was afraid of. He could tell I was disturbed and he didn’t want to push me. Before we went to bed, he did say one thing. “You know there’s no such thing as monsters, right?”
“Yes,” I whispered. At that point I wasn’t sure if I was lying or not. It was still comforting to say it. I didn’t think I was dealing with a monster, or at least I wasn’t sure about it. I didn’t even really know what a monster was supposed to be. A dragon? A Boogeyman in your closet? An angry father?
The next day was Saturday, and I still wasn’t comfortable being in my room for long. I got dressed and walked to Miss Leah’s. I wanted to leave the house without checking the shoebox. It felt like I was leaving an angry parent, and wanted to give them time to cool off before we talked again. Miss Leah was sitting with Rufus, as usual, and they both watched the bluejays hop around in their yard—Rufus slightly more attentive than Miss Leah.
“Well hey there sweetheart,” Miss Leah called out. “How’d it go last night?”
I knew she was talking about the letter and I knew she’d know exactly how to fix things. But before I could begin speaking, she interrupted “Let me guess, it didn’t work.”
“Why would you say that?” I asked.
“Because I know better than anyone else that spirits can’t move physical objects. I have to use my special charm paper to write to Maggie, and I doubt you got any charm paper.”
I felt a little ashamed after that. I’m not sure why. I guess I just felt like I’d been deceiving Miss Leah. I didn’t tell her the whole story. I just told her I thought it worked because the letter was gone.
“Well, Julia. My best guess is you’ve got a prankster in your house. Probably your brother; he’s too silly for his age.”
She went on about all the things she’s told Maggie. She said it didn’t happen often, as it was hard for Maggie’s frail little spirit to do much of anything except read, but Maggie would sometimes write back. Maggie said she hadn’t crossed over yet, but when she did cross over, she wouldn’t be able to get letters anymore. Maggie said that she loved Miss Leah and her letters, but one day, she’d need to move one. She said eventually, Miss Leah wouldn’t have the strength to write letters and they would become fewer and fewer. Once Maggie knew it was too hard for Miss Leah to write anymore, she’d cross over and wait patiently with Petunia, another one of Miss Leah’s cats who had passed away. Maggie said Miss Leah would know when she crossed over because her letters would stay in the mailbox, and no one would take them.
I wandered home later that afternoon wondering if my dad was ever going to cross over. I wasn’t sure how to feel. I know what I saw and what I did. I wrote letters to my dad. I left them where he’d check (our box). They were gone later. I heard him in the shower. I saw his message in the mirror. I saw the dollhouse and his notes. I know no one in the house could’ve moved the dollhouse. I was certain it was Daddy.
I arrived in my room, fragments of the dollhouse still scattered about the floor. I remembered the last letter I wrote. The one that asked my Dad to move on. I was afraid he’d be angry with me. I was afraid he’d accuse me of not loving him enough, of lying to him. I didn’t want to check the box, but I needed to see if he got the message.
I opened it. The letter was gone.
But in it’s place was a new letter. It said “Julia” on the cover, so I knew it was for me. I figured he wrote back. I opened it. And I was horrified at what I saw.
“Daddy isn’t here”
I bolted down the stairs and prepared to run back to Miss Leah’s and explain everything. But I didn’t have to. There she was, giggling with my mom in the kitchen. I started walking toward them, but there was something on the other side of the division between the kitchen and living room, where I could still see it but Mom and Miss Leah couldn’t. We put a framed picture of Dad there in order to remember him. There was a note on the picture. It said, “SAY A WORD AND THEY’RE DEAD”
I wasn’t sure what to do. I knew I needed to keep quiet, but I also knew that something very, VERY sinister was going on. And there was nothing I could do to stop it.
My sister and brother were going to a big house party, and my mom wanted to go hang out with her girlfriends that night, so Miss Leah actually came over to take me to her house for the night. My mom tried to apologize for the late notice, but I was so excited to get out of the house and away from…whatever it was, that she didn’t even get to finish her apology.
That night, Miss Leah let me stay up late with her and Rufus. At around 12 am she started writing a letter on her special charm paper. It was very thin, and glowed a silvery hue. I asked her how to make it and she said that it comes from the soul. We walked to my house together and put the letter in the mailbox. The next day, my mom picked me up and we stopped by the mailbox because someone had pulled the lever up. There was a note for Miss Leah there, and I knew exactly whom it was from. The paper had that same thinness and silvery glow. Mom wrote it off as someone dropping it off in the wrong box and asked if I would run back and give it to Miss Leah.
I sprinted down the street to Miss Leah’s. She opened the letter and began reading while I sat and waited with Rufus. When she was done, Miss Leah’s face turned pale. I never thought I’d see such a white, porcelain complexion on a live human being. All the color was gone from her face and she trembled. She was clearly disturbed. VERY disturbed. She told me not to go home, that she’d call my mom and everyone would come over for lunch. She immediately put down the letter and picked up her phone. Once her back was turned, I took the letter to read it.
“Dearest Leah,
So sorry I’ve taken such a long time to write back to you. It seems that I lack the spiritual power necessary to write. Heck! I could hardly even write when I was alive and had hands.
The lady who moved into my old house with her family is lovely as ever and I want you to know that I’ve been watching y’alls friendship and I’m so happy for you. I miss giggling in the kitchen with you, but watching you and her talk is almost as good.
I’ll bet you met all her children as well. Most of them are sweet as can be. Jay has a heart of gold and seems to really care for the family. Catherine has a great sense of humor. Always makes me and the rest of the family laugh. Julia is a curious little one. She reminds me a bit of you.
Then there’s the fourth child. It’s a vicious little thing. You know the one I’m talking about? The one with the black eyes and the long, dark claws that lives in my old room? It’s always causing a ruckus.
I’m glad I’m dead because that little scoundrel really gives me the creeps. It watches poor Julia as she sleeps and leaves awful little notes around the house.
I noticed the other day that it’s started taking knives out of the drawers at night and bringing them under the bed with it. That mother should really do something about keeping it under control.
Perhaps you could help with that?
Can’t wait for your next correspondence!
Fondly,
Maggie”
I couldn’t breathe. I just sat…frozen…as Miss Leah screamed into the phone.
“Oh god please tell me y’all are ok! Pick up the phone! Please PLEASE pick up the phone!” She decided to call 911. When the police got to my house Miss Leah and I waited outside. They found my mom, my brother, my sister. They found them all over the house lacerated into shreds of flesh. They couldn’t determine how it happened, figured it was a wild animal or something.
But Miss Leah and I knew how it happened. While we were waiting outside the house we both looked up into my bedroom window. Standing there, in the room where I slept at night, was a black eyed child with an evil grin that stretched ear to ear. It raised one long, sharp finger….probably 12 inches long, to it’s mouth as if to say “shhhhhhh…”
Credit To – J-Rog
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I was one of those frail, sickly children for the vast majority of my early years. I was constantly being shuffled from physician to physician with one ailment or another; asthma, perpetual tonsillitis, severe allergies to everything. You name it I dealt with it at one point or another growing up. This meant that I spent a great deal of my formative years at home, in bed, miserably sick and more than a bit morose. There was an upside to this however, my father would often take time out of work to sit in my bedroom and read to me.
Some of my fondest memories as a child involved my father sitting in a chair next to my bed with one science fiction novel or another spread across his lap. I can’t count how many days were spent in such a fashion. I look back on it now and can’t help but smile when I picture that large man with his bushy beard, reading those thick novels to take my mind away from whatever was ailing me at the time. I was fortunate to come from a very loving home. My mother and father were extremely doting and focused all of their collective time and energy on raising their only son. I was particularly close to my father. We’ve all heard the old adage about Daddy’s girls and Momma’s boys, but that simply wasn’t the case in my experience.
Of course, every boy views his father as some larger than life, lantern jawed superhero, and I was no exception. My father was an enormous man, maybe six foot two and well over 250 pounds. He was an intimidating figure, and my childhood friends would often remark on just how large he was. He had very intense grayish blue eyes, brown hair that was slowly receding, and a thick red beard. But as intimidating as he may have appeared his demeanor, especially towards me, was always so calm and relaxed. He never once raised his voice within earshot, nor did I ever witness him use that great bulk of his to bully or intimidate. He was a kind soul, and spent all of his time letting his only son know just how much he was loved. He’d spend hours of his evenings after work in my room, sitting on the floor playing with my toys. I can’t help but chuckle when I picture that large man sitting cross legged on the floor with whatever superhero or mutant turtle I was interested in at that point. He even kept a small journal of all the funny little things I’d say and do, with some of his own musings remarking on just how quickly I was growing. I recall years later, when I was a man myself, reading that journal and being moved to tears by how deeply this man loved me.
Now my father was not a particularly religious man, in fact, if I had to peg his beliefs I’d say he was atheistic now that I have a grasp of such things. This was in direct conflict with how he was raised. He’d grown up in a very small town in North Carolina and was brought up in a very strict southern Baptist family. He remarked in the journal, just days after my birth, about how he found the Bible to be even more preposterous now that he had a child of his own. In particular the story of Isaac and Abraham did not sit well with my father. He couldn’t imagine any scenario in which he’d be willing to sacrifice his only son to some voice in his head. He was a very straightforward “logic and reason” type of guy. In addition to religion he absolutely abhorred superstitions and myths he made several comments about being leery of anyone that claimed to believe in aliens or ghost stories. Now he never made these statements to me directly he wanted me to come to my own conclusions regarding religion, superstition and the paranormal. But he did jot down all of these thoughts in that journal of his with the intention of giving me this book when I became a man myself. Unfortunately he never did get that opportunity.
As you can imagine, his death had a devastating impact on the course of my life. I remember vividly my mother coming into my room with tears and makeup streaming down her face. She cradled me in her arms and for the longest time simply rocked back and forth while sobbing silently to herself. Eventually she pulled herself together enough to tell me that my father’s small pickup truck had been struck on his drive home from work. The other vehicle involved was a semi, being driven by a man with too little sleep and too much alcohol in his system. He didn’t even know that he’d been involved in an accident until the officer responding to the crash pulled him from the wreckage of his own vehicle.
I was in shock, I was beyond consoling and honestly, I was furious. I was only five or six when my father passed, and in my mind all I could focus on was the fact that my dad had broken his promise. He would say to me, as he tucked me in at night, that I was his favorite thing in the world and he would always be there to make certain I was safe. It was repeated so often, night after night, that it almost became a mantra of his. But he made that promise and now he wouldn’t be around to keep it.
After my father’s death my mother was unable to afford the small three bedroom home nestled in the foothills of the mountains that I’d grown up in. We were forced to move to an older, run down part of town and needless to say it was just another factor contributing to the overwhelming sense of loss I was dealing with at the time. I hated the town, I hated the new school that I was required to attend when my health permitted, but most of all I hated our new home and the empty feeling it seemed to exude without my father’s presence. He’d never lived in that house, those walls had never heard that big guttural laugh of his, or sat idly by as he read to me during one of my many tilts with sickness. The house was a source of anxiety for me in those days. It was old, built sometime in the 1920’s my mother had told me. It was ancient, it was cold and everything about it seemed to be in a constant state of disrepair. The white paint was chipping in numerous spots on the exterior; the hardwood floors were warped and pockmarked throughout, even the grass outside remained a dismal brown year round.
The house only had two small bedrooms, a bathroom, a tiny dated kitchen and a musty little living room that seemed to be an afterthought in the builder’s original designs. I loathed that house; the floors creaked as everything settled at night, the windows were so old and grimy that they permitted very little light. My room was situated in the very back of the home and was so small that I had just enough room for my twin bed and a little dresser.
We’d been in the house for about six weeks when I started noticing some odd things happening, especially at night. I would come home from school to find that my bed, which had been made that morning, was in complete disarray. The clothes in my closet would sometimes be strewn across my room, much to my mother’s disapproval, and other small things like doors and windows seemingly opening and closing of their own volition. But the first truly unnerving occurrence that I can recall was just after my mom had tucked me in one night. I was staring at the ceiling, trying to decide if the water stain above my bed resembled a dog or something a bit more equestrian. I was beginning to nod off, catching myself closing my eye lids for a bit longer than was required to blink. My thoughts were slowly spiraling towards something that were closer to dreams when I heard a small scratching sound coming from the foot of my bed. At that time my bed was nestled in the corner of the room parallel to the doorway on one side and opposite my small closet that was a few feet from the foot board of the bed. I dismissed the sound as one of the many unexplained noises the house emitted at night and began drifting once more when I heard the noise again. This time it was louder and unmistakable as scratching, it was with a bit more purpose it seemed. I held my breath, closed my eyes, and focused all of my attention on deciphering that sound.
This time when it happened it was definitely louder and seemed to have a rhythm to it that just couldn’t be naturally occurring. It was almost like Morse code, like the scratching was meant to convey some kind of message. I got the feeling that it wasn’t trying to say “Ship in distress” or anything as mundane or typical as that. I can’t explain why, but the sound began to make me very uneasy as though it were malevolent in nature. The hair on the back of my neck began to rise without prompting and I found myself pulling the cover closer and closer to my chin. It would stop sporadically and then begin again with more fervor each time and always that same rhythm, scratch, scratch, scratch followed by a short pause and then scratch, scratch. I was frozen, completely fixated on this noise, but unable to call out to my mother whose bedroom was on the other side of the wall.
My mouth was dry and I was constantly moving my tongue around, swallowing to force something resembling moisture back into my mouth. Suddenly the scratching stopped, mid-sequence this time, and was replaced by the rattling of the closet doors. The closet was that old accordion style sliding type, with the wooden slats. I was amazed that the sound hadn’t prompted my mother to come in and see why I was out of bed. The rattling became more insistent, violent even, and that’s when I rediscovered the ability to scream. I yelled at the capacity my little lungs would permit until my room was flooded with light and I could make out my mother’s silhouette in the doorway.
“What’s wrong honey, what is it?” concern evident in my mother’s sleepy voice. I sat up in bed never taking my eyes off of the closet doors. “There’s someone in there mommy, in…in the closet”. She blinked a few times to clear the remaining fuzziness that sleep offers from her eyes and walked over to the closet. She flung the doors apart with a horrid screeching sound, and when it was clear that no boogeyman was immediately apparent, began shuffling the clothes hanging from the rod to show me there was no occupant. “See sweetheart, there’s no one in here it was just a bad dream”.
She closed the doors again crossed the hardwood floor and arranged herself at the foot of my bed. “It’s no surprise that you’re having nightmares son, considering…considering all that’s happened recently.” She patted my leg, and then reached up to smooth my disheveled hair. “I promise you, there’s no one in there”, she said. I was finally able to peel my attention away from the closet and meet her eyes, “I know there was” I said “there were some weird scratching noises and then the doors started to shake.” She stifled a yawn behind her fist and then patted my cheek as she rose from the edge of my bed. “Just a dream son, there’s no one in there, and there’s no one in the house but us.” “Now please, try to get some sleep, you have to go to school tomorrow and you don’t want to be nodding off in class.” She crossed the room and told me she loved me before she turned my bedroom light back off. I heard her mattress springs sigh as she got back into her bed and I laid down again myself.
I maneuvered myself as close to the wall and headboard as I could manage, pulled the cover up to my nose, and shut my eyes with such force that they squeezed tears down my cheeks. I tried to control my breathing and focus everything my sense of hearing had to offer for that sound. My heart was pounding so loudly in my ears that I barely heard the first scratch when the noise came again. I stopped breathing all together and waited for the next series of scratches to begin again. The minutes dragged by but the sound did not come again and at some point I fell into a rather fitful stage of sleep that was accompanied by nightmares.
Over the coming weeks the sound would come and go. There didn’t seem to be any pattern to it at all. There would be several nights in a row with absolutely nothing unusual occurring and then there would come a night when the scratching would start up as soon as I began to drift off and last until I screamed for my mother. This became something of a pattern, I wouldn’t say I became accustomed to it, but I knew that on those nights when the scratching started that all I had to do was yell for my mom and after she came in to take a look around I’d finally be able to sleep.
It had been three or four nights since the last time I’d heard the rhythmic scratching. I’d managed to fall asleep that night without event, maybe I’d been lulled into some false sense of security as it’d been several nights since the last “closet incident”. It was about 1 or so in the morning when I awoke with a start. I had fallen asleep on top of my covers and as soon as I became aware of being conscious I wrestled with trying to crawl underneath them. After much effort, I was finally able to get underneath the comfort and security of my sheets when I began to wonder what exactly had stirred me from the throngs of sleep. It was a cloudy night, so the limited amount of light permitted through my bedroom window was at an absolute minimum that night. I controlled my breathing, listening for that ominous sound and forced my eyes to scan the bedroom. And that’s when I saw it. Standing at the foot of my bed, in front of my slowly deteriorating closet doors was a very large form. It was so dark that I couldn’t make out whether this thing, this being, was facing my direction or not.
I couldn’t move, I couldn’t scream, I could barely even draw breath. All of my attention was on that form at the foot of my bed, I couldn’t look away, it’s as if my eye lids were taped open and I was forced that look in that direction. The form never moved, never even shifted from foot to foot. It simply stood there, massive and dark and seeming to fill the whole room. There was no scratching sound, no rattling of the closet doors, just this form standing stoically in the middle of my room. Amazingly I fell asleep. I can’t begin to imagine how that came to be. I just know that one minute I’m fixated with every fiber of my being on this figure in my room, and the next minute I’m opening my eyes to sunlight trickling in through my window and birds chirping outside as they went about their daily activities. What’s even more amazing is that I didn’t awake with that sense of terror that I’d grown accustomed to after a run in with the scratching sound, I even felt rested for the first time in months. This same thing happened again several times over the next couple of nights. I found myself waking in the middle of the night only to be confronted by the image of that large silent form at the foot of my bed. Again there was no scratching sound or rattling closet doors, just this figure standing there a few feet away. I never worked up the courage to yell for my mother or try to get a closer look at this shadow like form. I still wasn’t even certain if it was facing in my direction on the nights this occurred. I even began to wonder if perhaps this thing standing in my room at night had simply tired of causing a ruckus in my closet and accepted my presence in the house.
The next few weeks went by without anything of note occurring. I ate breakfast, went to school, came home and then went to bed. My health had hit a relative high point during that period of time and I was attending school on a regular basis for the first time in memory. At some point I even befriended one of the boys a few houses down and spent my evenings playing video games and the like at his house. I went to bed absolutely exhausted each night and woke the next morning well rested and looking forward to what the day might hold. I began to discount those terrifying events that had occurred in my room in the weeks prior as nothing more than my imagination.
My mother had taken on more hours at the furniture factory where she worked to help pay off some of the debt that accrued after my father’s death. On the nights she worked late I was to spend my evenings over at my new friend Ryan’s house until she returned home. I didn’t like to see my mother so tired from all of the extra work she was putting in, but I did enjoy getting to hang out with my friend and his rather expansive collection of video games (a luxury my mother simply couldn’t provide for me at the time). This routine of staying with Ryan’s family until my mother got off of work lasted for several weeks until my mother had an accident at work. She broke several bones in her right hand and wrist and was unable to work at all for the next few months, let alone pick up extra hours. She was obviously dismayed because just as it seemed our lives had begun to take on the normalcy that everyone expects, some unforeseen event once again caused that pattern to veer off course. She received some pretty heavy duty pain medication along with the cast on her arm and retired to bed early the night of her accident. I was permitted to watch television after I’d completed my homework, and then I went to bed myself after my favorite cartoons went off,
I’d been in bed for about half an hour, listening to the unusual sounds of my mother’s snoring from the next room when I thought I heard that all too familiar scratching sound from my closet. Initially I tried to ignore it, going so far as to covering my head with my pillow and forcing myself to sleep. After a few minutes I realized that this wasn’t working, the scratching sound never abated and only seemed to increase in tempo as the minutes passed. I was more angry than frightened at this point. It had been many weeks since the last time I’d had to deal with this and I’d begun to hope that it had stopped altogether.
After a few more minutes I finally came to the decision that I would open the closet door myself and finally put my mind at ease. It had to be a rat or something, there had to be some explanation and I was determined to find out. I pushed the cover towards the foot of my bed and began moving my feet towards the floor. As soon as my bare feet made contact with the cold hardwood the scratching sound ceased all together and was replaced with the violent shaking of the closet door. I let out an involuntary yelp as it had been a long time since I’d heard that sound, and I’d never seen it be so violent. The closet doors were rattling around with such force that I was afraid they would tear loose from their hinges. I lifted my feet back into bed and worked up the courage to begin yelling for my mother. “Mom…Mom please come here” I yelled with as much volume as I could muster. No response, not even the slightest break in her snoring, she was out cold. I yelled again and again, but to no avail. The moment I began yelling the shaking of the closet doors had ceased, as they usually do in this situation.
But my yelling wasn’t followed by the sound of my mother’s footsteps this time, and the doors began shaking once again. I didn’t know what to do, I was far too scared to get up and make a mad dash for my mother’s room, but my fearful screams seemed to have no effect. I began to sob, I’d reached a breaking point and I couldn’t help but pull my knees up to my chest and whimper. Suddenly the doors quit their frantic dance, they just stopped shaking altogether. I managed to lift my face from the protection of my knees and to my horror I saw the closet doors begin to slide apart. No more scratching, no more rattling, I was finally going to come face to face with my tormentor.
The doors finally opened all the way and I could see now that my clothes and the darkness within were shifting. I could just make out a hand part the clothes on the rack and felt bile rise in my stomach as I realized the skin on that hand was absolutely putrid. Gray and mottled and I now became aware of the most horrific stench I’d ever encountered. I wanted to spring from my bed and through my window, or pull the cover over my head and will this nightmare away. But I was completely transfixed, rooted in place, I couldn’t budge a muscle. I could now make out a torso in the space that my clothes once occupied it was covered in that same rotting flesh as the hand of course. Next, and most terrifying, I could make out two pools of absolute darkness that constituted the eyes on this nightmare. They were sunk down deep into the sockets of its face and were completely void of any emotion that I could discern. Just two black pits of emptiness. The creature had finally emerged from behind my shirts and jackets hanging from my closet rack.
It paused for a moment at the entrance to the closet, and seemed to size up the room. It was tall and impossibly skinny, almost to the point of being emaciated. The fingers and toes ended in long black ragged nails, nails that were almost talon like. Bits and pieces of flesh were missing over various parts of the creature’s body. I could clearly make out what appeared to be ribs in its torso, and the yellowing bone of one elbow. It had a few tufts of jet black hair protruding from its grotesque and bulbous head. Its mouth was wide and filled with small rows of teeth that came to points so sharp they looked like they’d been filed. Its nose was two little slits with absolutely no protrusion that I could discern.
It just stood in the doorway of my closet, smiling at me with those little sharp teeth and that unnaturally wide mouth. It stared at me as if it was trying to convey that it had all the time in the world and intended to drag out whatever horror was about to visit me. Suddenly the creature jerked its head to the side and seemed to sniff the air with that horrible little nose. The sniffing became more frantic and the creature kept jerking its head from side to side as if it’d caught a scent it wasn’t fond of and was trying to ascertain exactly where this odor was originating. That’s when I noticed movement from my peripheral, I was able to tear my eyes away from this monstrosity long enough to look to the corner of my room where I’d seen the sudden movement. And there, standing just feet away from me was that large dark ominous form.
It seemed even more massive than it had in previous encounters, and it also seemed to be radiating an intense anger. To my amazement this anger did not seem to be directed towards me, but at the creature now standing in front of my closet. The creature let out a hiss and then a sound akin to a whimper and took a step back when it noticed the large form standing in the corner of the room. I looked back at this dark figure standing so very close now, and for the first time I could make out distinguishing features. I realized that before this form had stood with its back to me on those nights it had appeared in my room, because now I could clearly make out a face, a face that was covered in course red hair. I could now see that this figure was a very large man with pale white skin and a receding hair line. But the most noticeable feature were the intense grayish blue eyes that I could make out even in the darkness of my room. Those eyes left the monster in my closet for just a moment and made contact with my own. This great big man standing in the center of my room, this great big man that I thought I would never see again, he smiled and then winked at me.
And with a burst of movement that my eyes could barely track he dove into the beast, driving it back into the depths of my closet, while the doors closed on them both. I sat on the edge of my bed, with tears in my eyes, and my mind racing to process what it had just witnessed. I finally broke my stupor long enough to race to my mother’s room and wake her. After a few moments of frantic shaking on my part, she finally swam to the surface of consciousness. When my face came into focus she immediately sat up out of bed and took me in her arms. “What is it sweetheart, what’s going on?” At this point I had begun to sob uncontrollably as she rocked me back and forth in her arms. I pulled myself together long enough to say “He kept his promise…he said he would always be there for me and he meant it”. My mother tried to get me to explain, but I just continued to cry into her shoulder as she rocked me back and forth. At some point I managed to fall asleep with my mother whispering words of comfort until I drifted off.
I never did hear another odd sound from my closet after that night, or any other part of the house for that matter. From that point forward things returned to normal and I felt as though a weight had been lifted off of my shoulders, I’d received some form of closure from the events that took place that night. I also knew that no matter what obstacles I might face in the years ahead, I would always have someone looking over my shoulder, ever ready to fulfill a promise made to a small sickly child.
Credit – [email protected]
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Lavender Town as seen in Red and Green
The Lavender Town Syndrome (also known as “Lavender Town Tone” or “Lavender Town Suicides”) was a peak in suicides and illness of children between the ages of 7-12 shortly after the release of Pokémon Red and Green in Japan, back in February 27th, 1996.
Rumors say that these suicides and illness only occurred after the children playing the game reached Lavender Town, whose theme music had extremely high frequencies, that studies showed that only children and young teens can hear since their ears are more sensitive.
Due to the Lavender Tone, at least two-hundred children supposedly committed suicide, and many more developed illnesses and afflictions. The children who committed suicide usually did so by hanging or jumping from heights. Those who did not act irrationally complained of severe headaches after listening to Lavender Town’s theme.
Although Lavender Town now sounds differently depending on the game, this mass hysteria was caused by the first Pokémon game released. After the Lavender Tone incident, the programmers had fixed Lavender Town’s theme music to be at a lower frequency, and since then children were no longer affected by it.
One video appeared in 2010 using ”special software” to analyze the audio of Lavender Town’s music. When played, the software created images of the Unown near the end of the audio. This raised a controversy since the Unown didn’t appear until the Generation 2 games: Silver, Gold, and Crystal. The Unown translate to “LEAVE NOW.”
There is also the said Beta Version of Lavender Town.
It is said that the Beta Version of Pocket Monsters was released to some kids to test the games. This is the video of the Beta Version of Lavender Town:
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“Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things that escape those who dream only at night.”
-Edgar Allen Poe, “Eleanora”
***
“Go to bed and wait for the Sandman.”
Even as it came out of James’ mouth it seemed to him a strange thing to say, and he was not sure why he had, but for some reason it worked: Daniel went to bed.
The next morning, though, he asked: “What does the Sandman look like?”
James was making breakfast. Daniel sat at the table, short legs swinging under his chair. “Nothing, really,” James said. “It’s just an expression.”
“What does it mean?”
“Just something people say.” He put a plate of eggs in front of Daniel and kissed him on the top of his head. He thought that would be the end of it.
Until he saw the Sandman for himself.
He was getting ready for bed and stopped by Daniel’s room to check on him while he slept, as he often did. It was such a routine precaution that when he saw a pale, naked man sitting on the edge of Daniel’s bed, rocking back and forth, it took a moment for him to process what he was seeing.
He reacted the way any father would, of course: He ran into the room screaming, and for a moment he thought about attacking the intruder, but then the man on the bed turned, and that’s when James saw that it wasn’t really a man: It was a pale, slithery thing, hairless and warped, its joints turned the wrong way and its body out of shape with itself. When it moved it was like an insane marionette dancing on a stage.
James froze. The skittering thing watched him. He felt spreading warmth, and he realized he’d pissed his pants. Only when he remembered that Daniel was still there in bed, staring at the broken-shaped thing sitting a foot away, did he regain the courage to move. He grabbed Daniel and ran. In the hall he turned to see if the thing would follow them, but it didn’t. For a moment it watched and then, moving like a stop-motion nightmare, it crawled to the window and jumped out, leaving only the billowing curtains to mark its passing.
James had trouble talking to the police. He reported a break-in, but when asked to describe the intruder he didn’t know what to say. How could he make the ordinary man in the blue uniform sitting at his kitchen table while two of his colleagues searched the house understand a thing like he’d seen? He couldn’t even understand it himself.
To make it worse, Daniel’s memory did not correspond to James’: He described an ordinary looking burglar. “A man in a mask,” he said. James thought about it: Had it been a mask? No, it would had to have been a full costume, and an elaborate one, something like they would use for a movie. And that would not explain the way it moved…
But in the end he simply echoed his son’s testimony: “A man in a mask,” he said. “A burglar.” The lie unsettled him almost as much as what had happened.
The doctors said Daniel wasn’t hurt and showed no signs of molestation. James was relieved. They stayed at a motel for a couple nights until they felt ready to come home, and then James had a new security system installed, along with bars on the windows. He didn’t like the sight of them in Daniel’s room, but it seemed like the only thing to do.
James was frightened that first night back in the house, but Daniel, strangely, was not. When asked if he felt okay sleeping alone, he just said yes. In the end it was James who found himself wishing he were not sleeping alone. He was up all night listening for the sound of anything moving in the house. Although he had convinced himself that his memory was faulty and that it had been a normal (albeit probably deeply disturbed) man in his son’s room, when he closed his eyes even for a moment he pictured bloodless skin and a twisted, inhuman face. He found himself wondering, why my house? Why my family? He knew, of course, that there didn’t have to be a reason. But still, he wondered.
Two weeks later Daniel stopped talking. James didn’t notice at first; kids went through quiet phases sometimes. But eventually he tried to get Daniel to talk, and he wouldn’t. Eventually, it became clear that he couldn’t.
Back to the doctor they went. Nothing wrong with him that we can see, was the diagnosis. Was it the trauma, James asked? Could be, they said. Sometimes these things come on late. Children can be a mystery even to those who know them best. They recommended a child psychologist, whom James couldn’t afford. He could not, for that matter, even afford the bill they were giving him now.
Nothing seemed to help. Daniel would write out answers to questions sometimes, but never more than a yes or no. When James would ask him what was wrong, or if he’d seen or heard anything that frightened him, Daniel would only stare. He seemed furtive and bemused. James found himself missing the sound of his son’s voice. Sometimes he wanted to hear it so bad that he ached. But it seemed that Daniel would not talk again until he was ready.
James had other things to worry about, too. He was convinced, beyond reason, that the intruder was not really gone. Though the alarm never went off and the locks and bars remained undisturbed, he was sure that he heard movement in the night. Not normal movement: It was a sound like a huge snake slithering through the house. When he heard it, he imagined horrible things. Nothing was ever there when he went to investigate, though he often thought he glimpsed something just out the corner of his eye, a pale foot or a misshapen shadow that would slink away as soon as he turned.
He rarely slept, and when he did he had haunted dreams.
Soon he realized he had not left the house in weeks except to go to the bank and buy groceries. He felt hemmed in. With Daniel acting mute he hadn’t had an actual conversation with anyone in weeks, so he called his mother. The connection was bad and her voice sounded faint, on the verge of being not there at all. “I guess I’m okay, Ma,” he said, pausing to wipe the sweat from his palms and then make sure he could hear Daniel playing in the next room. “But things have been a little rough. We had a break-in.”
“Oh how awful!” Mom said. “Did they take anything?”
“Nah. Just ran off. It was weird though. I haven’t really felt comfortable since then.”
“Are you still working at that hospital?”
“No Ma, I left last year, you know that.”
“Oh. Well, have you been getting out? What about that nice woman you were seeing last year, the one who played the piano?”
James scowled. She was always asking that kind of thing. Didn’t she know how hard it was being a single father? That he didn’t have the time? He was about to say so when something made him pause.
“Ma, is there anyone else on the line?”
“I don’t think so?”
James was sure he heard it, though: the short, gasping sound of someone trying to hold their breath and failing. A cold feeling crept across the back of his neck. “You’re sure nobody is listening on your other phone?”
“Dear, there is no other phone, I’m on the cell, that’s why the service is so bad.”
“Then what is—” James stopped. If the sound wasn’t coming from her end, then…
He dropped the phone and raced to the hall. The extension hung on its hook, undisturbed. Heart pounding, he hurdled into the garage; the spare phone sat on the workbench. No one was in sight. But could they have been? Could someone have been here all along, listening to his phone call, and then slithered away? Might they be here even now?
The next day he took out the extra phone extensions. He even filled in the jacks with rubber cement. Daniel watched him work, eyes curious, but James offered no explanation.
He began giving Daniel a light physical exam every week. His CNA training was a little rusty after a year on disability, but you never really forget. It was an absurd thing to do, of course; even if there was a physical cause for Daniel’s behavior, it would be nothing he could discover this way. And he was aware on some level that it was compulsive behavior. Nevertheless, it made him feel better.
One morning James set the diaphragm of the stethoscope against Daniel’s chest, but he could not locate a heartbeat. He moved his hand in search of the right spot, to no avail. Then, to test it, he listened to his own heartbeat; it came through steady and clear. But when he checked Daniel again he didn’t hear anything. A thought came unbidden to him of the Tin Man in “The Wizards of Oz,” whose chest was empty as a kettle.
A sick feeling roiled his stomach. He threw the stethoscope down and grabbed Daniel by the shoulders, looking into his face. Daniel stared back with bright eyes. He even smiled a little, with the corners of his mouth. James felt the tingle of tears. He swept his son up in his arms and hugged him, and Daniel hugged back. Then James put his shirt back on him and sent him to play. The stethoscope, he decided, was broken. He threw it in the trash.
Things got worse. James’ terrors were no longer relegated to the long hours of the night. Now it seemed that some creeping, some skittering and scuttling, some unknowable noise in some dark corner or another, filled every second of his day. The thought of how big the house really was started to weigh on him: There were so many rooms he wasn’t in at any given time, so many places someone—or something—else could be. He imagined strange figures occupying the rest of his home when he wasn’t around, melting into the walls or merging with the shadows whenever he turned on a light or opened a door. How would he know if they were there? How would he ever know?
Soon he didn’t even have to be outside of a room to imagine it. When he walked up the stairs he pictured pale figures lurking beneath them. When he went down the hall he pictured a crawling thing slithering behind the walls, shadowing his every step. If he sat too long in the same chair he imagined that it was right behind him. And he was never comforted when he turned around and found nothing there, as he could only guess that meant it had moved, swiftly and silently, behind him once again. Wherever he was not looking right now, that was where he imagined it to be.
He was losing his mind, he knew. The only thing that helped him cling to sanity was that Daniel seemed undisturbed. Other than his muteness, his behavior was perfectly normal. And whenever he seemed to sense that his father was troubled he would hug him, or squeeze his hand, or even smile. Sometimes, when he left the room, James cried.
One night he found himself creeping around the house with no lights on at two o’clock in the morning. If the intruding thing had taken to violating his daytime activities then he would get revenge by confronting it on its own terms: the night. And really, night was no more frightening to him now than day. They were almost interchangeable.
He padded barefoot down the halls, up the stairs, in and out of disused rooms. Sometimes he stopped to listen, hoping to locate it by sound; it was a stealthy, creeping thing, he knew, but it was awkward at times, and it couldn’t always keep its strangely shaped limbs from making their distinct, irregular footsteps. The smallest noise would give it away…
There was one room he suspected it spent most of its time in: the spare bedroom. Not a bedroom at all, really, more like a closet just large enough to accommodate a bed if one were so inclined. It was unpainted and uncarpeted and drafty; he’d always meant to fix it up. He didn’t come in here very often because he disliked the bare, unused look of it. It made him think of a partially dissected corpse.
He came in now, though. If the thing made its nest any one place in the house, this would be it. Of course, there was nothing there now…but that didn’t mean there was nothing there.
He cursed, running a hand through his sweat-damp hair. What was he missing? How did it hide from him? What was its secret? He peered into the room’s empty corners one by one, getting his face a few inches from the plaster and floorboards so that he could be certain—certain!—that there was no space for it to conceal itself.
The light bulb flickered. He froze. My God, he thought….it’s on the ceiling! He pictured it crawling above him like a huge, pale lizard. That’s how it gets around, he thought, that’s how it escapes anytime I should have it cornered, it just scuttles up the wall and hides right over my head! He imagined it dangling down behind him like a spider. If I turn around, he thought, it will be there, hanging with its face right next to mine. He held his breath. He did not want to turn around, but he had no choice; it was between him and the door.
With a quiet sob, he rounded on his heels.
Of course, he was alone. There was no man on the ceiling; he checked twice. Maybe it crawled out and was waiting for him in the hall…but when he checked there the coast was once again clear. It should have been a relief, but it was not. After all, it had to be in here somewhere. If the ceiling was not its trick that just meant it was something else, something even more strange, even more clever…
He went to Daniel’s room. He had had not stopped checking on him at night, like he always had. This time, though, rather than open the door he listened at it first, pressing his ear against the grain of the cheap wood and holding his breath, terrified that he would hear a skittering sound on the other side of the barrier. What he heard instead shocked him more:
Daniel was talking to someone.
James recoiled for a second and then, when he’d caught his breath, he all but kicked the door in. Daniel was already awake, indeed, sitting up in bed, but he was not saying anything now. The light flashed on and James stalked halfway into the room before stopping, suddenly torn: What did he want more, to confirm that his son could speak again or to find whomever he was speaking to?
The creak of a door hinge settled the matter for him. He ran to the closet and threw it open: There was nothing inside, or at least, nothing that shouldn’t be there. He swept aside clothes on their hangars, but nothing was hiding between them. Then he dragged the toy box out and emptied it into the floor: Nothing. He combed along the bare walls and floor and, yes, the ceiling, pushing aside every last bit of rubbish and stray knick-knack so that he could be sure, absolutely sure, that nothing was hiding.
All the while Daniel watched him.
After a few minutes James was panting and covered in sweat and the closet was bare, and there were neither intruders nor answers inside. It struck him as funny, somehow, and he started to laugh, very quietly. He kicked his son’s toys out of the way as he went to sit down on the bed, dazed. He became aware, all at once, of several things, first being that he had not slept in days and was nowhere near his right mind. The second was how close he’d come to really losing it, for good.
Tomorrow, he decided, they would both sleep until the afternoon, and when they did wake up he and Daniel would get out of this creaky old house. No more staying cooped up like prisoners, and no more checkups, and no more dreams about monsters. He would even take the bars off the windows. It was time to get back to living like real people again. It was time to—
James saw it when he brushed a hand through Daniel’s hair. He pulled Daniel (a little too roughly) closer. His son acquiesced to the examination without fidgeting or complaint as James pawed the side of his head, hoping that what he was seeing would somehow stop being apparent. He stared and stared until he ached from not blinking, but there was no denying what was right in front of his eyes:
Daniel was missing an ear.
No, he realized with mounting nausea: both ears. There was no injury, no incision, no mark where they should have been, simply smooth, blank flesh. As blank as Daniel’s quiet, unperturbed demeanor.
James swept him up in his arms and ran into the hall. He was not sure where he was going or what he meant to do when he got there, he just knew that there was now nothing more important than getting his son out of that house. But their path was cut off: A naked man sat in the hallway with his back to them. No, not a man: James recognized its stretched limbs and stooped shoulders. The pale thing squatted on its haunches, rocking back and forth like it was palsied. It almost seemed to be in pain. James hugged his son closer and backed away. Then he heard Daniel’s voice: “dad-ee.”
James turned to Daniel, and he heard the voice again:
“dad-ee.”
But Daniel’s lips hadn’t moved.
James looked back at the hunched figure. Its head jerked when it talked, like a tic:
“hello. dad-ee.”
James’ mouth went dry. It took several tries before he could speak. “Don’t call me that.”
“it is. this voice’s name. for you.”
“Go away. Leave my family alone.”
“but i am. your family.”
The longer it talked the more the voice became distorted and blurred. An icy feeling nestled in James’ stomach. “Who are you?”
“someone. who came to visit.”
“Why here?”
“you. invited me.”
James’ heart thudded against the inside of his chest. “Why?”
“i had. something you wanted.”
James licked his dry lips. “You’re lying. You don’t have anything I want. I want you to leave. Leave, and never come back.”
“who. is. daniel’s. mother?”
James blinked. “What?”
“who. is. daniel’s. mother?”
“What the hell kind of question is that?”
“how. old. is. daniel?”
James blinked again. The thing’s voice caused a pinching pain in the center of his forehead. “Stop asking me these things.”
“when. is. daniel’s. birthday?”
“…I don’t know.”
“what. is. his. middle. name?”
“Shut up.”
“what. was. his. first word?”
“I said shut up!” James wanted to tear the thing apart with his bare hands. Only the heaviness of Daniel in his arms kept him where he was.
“you were. alone. you wanted. a son. so i. made one. for you.”
James’ hands began to shake. “That doesn’t make sense. Made out of what?”
“out of. myself.”
James’ stomach turned over.
“but now. i need those parts. back.”
Daniel picked at James’ shoulder to get his attention. Something was strange about Daniel’s face. “Danny? Open your eyes.”
Daniel scrunched his eyes shut tighter.
“Open your eyes. Danny? Danny. Open your eyes. Open your eyes!”
Daniel shook his head, trying to refuse, but he couldn’t hold it forever. Eventually his eyelids flicked up and James saw the truth.
Daniel’s eyes were gone.
James almost dropped him. For a second he wanted to throw his son down so that he could stop looking into those empty holes in his face. Daniel opened his mouth, as if to speak, but of course, he had no voice.
“he is coming back. to be part of me. again.”
“No. No, no, no, give him back, give him back!”
“i. cannot. it has been. too long. i warned you. this. would happen.”
“You’re lying! You’re lying, you’re a fucking liar, give me my son back, give him back!”
“i. do not lie. i. warned you. he could not exist forever. but you. do not remember. you. can only remember. what i want you to. you forget. all the times. we have talked.”
Daniel felt like a doll, or an empty bag. His hair was falling out, disappearing before it touched the ground. His hands vanished into his sleeves and his feet rolled up inside his pants cuffs. James cradled the tiny, shapeless thing. Tears streamed down his face. Soon he held a pile of empty clothes, and then those too were gone.
He looked around the house; toys disappeared, photos vanished from their frames, Daniel’s little shoes were no longer by the door. James turned toward Daniel’s room and confronted a wall where the door should be. He groped the blank surface, fingertips scrambling. He hit his head against the wall. The pain didn’t feel real. “Why did you do this?”
“it was. what you wanted. and i learned. so much.”
“This is impossible. People will ask, people will wonder: the police, the hospitals, the people in the neighborhood!”
“they. have already. forgotten him. they only. remembered. what i wanted them to. like you.”
James pressed his hands to his aching skull. “Will I at least remember him after this?”
“you. can try. but your mind. will fail you. now that everything. he was. is part of me. again.”
James sat on the floor, looking at the blank wall. Out the corner of his eye he saw the thing creep toward him and even felt its wet hand on his shoulder, but he did not look at it.
“If I won’t remember any of this,” he said, “then why tell me?”
“because. a father. should know.”
And then James was alone.
Abigail worried about James sometimes.
When they met a year ago, he said that he’d never been married and he’d never had kids, but there was a certain pained expression he assumed when he said the last part. Abigail knew that look: She’d met parents who lost children before. You learned to recognize it.
And there were other things about him that worried her too. Sometimes she would find him staring at a particular spot on the wall, brow furrowed in concentration. He did not seem to realize he was doing it. And of course there was the insomnia, and the sleepwalking to consider too. Yes, there was lots to worry about. But she loved him all the same.
James still said he’d never had kids, and neither had she. She’d long wanted one, but it was impossible, and she worried that James wouldn’t stay with a woman who couldn’t be a mother (though he constantly assured her that it was not so). There were times—and more and more often of late they were the nights when James took to sleepwalking, and even Abigail imagined that she heard strange, scuttling noises in the house and saw impossible shapes in dark corners—when she thought she would do anything, absolutely anything, if it meant having a little daughter for she and James to raise.
And at those moments, she became truly afraid. But she never knew why.
Credit To – Tam Lin
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Back in May of 2010, my best friend, Andy, and I wanted to make a video game that we thought was going to change virtual reality gaming and the horror genre forever. We were both out of the university, me with a degree in computer programming and him with digital art design. Both of us were avid gamers. I think we played a bit of just about everything: racing, JRPG’s, MMO’s, sports, you name it. We wanted to make a game unlike anything you could get coming from overseas. You could call it an ambitious goal for a couple of aspiring indie gamers, but both of us were ambitious guys.
Andy was a big fan of horror and was actually the first to come up with the idea. We had heard of the four-dimensional theaters that were being introduced in places like Korea and London, where you weren’t just watching a movie, but feeling it and smelling it. If the movie was set in a pine forest, there were triggers that would release the scent of pine to the audience. Likewise, if the characters were standing on the windy deck of a ship, fans would start blowing to mimic the conditions of the movie in the theater. All of it was to create a more realistic, interactive experience for the viewer and we thought it would be awesome to try to implement that with a 4D game.
Obviously, we didn’t have the manpower to make an entire game by ourselves. We were in a lot of debt because of school and wouldn’t have been able to afford the virtual reality hardware in our wildest dreams. That, and we had no idea how to develop the technology needed to create the 4D gaming experience. Throughout the following summer, we networked like crazy, pitching our ideas to different developers, both indie and big-time. There was interest, but the 4D concept was still very much in development and no one was sure they wanted to invest time and resources in it without the assurance that it was going to hit off.
I won’t bore you with the details of how it happened, but we finally hit a breakthrough in September when an independent company called Systelien contacted us after our attempts to pitch the idea to them. They thought it had potential and were interested in on-boarding us as writers and programmers. The company itself would take the rights for the game, of course, and there would be a team that would make the final decisions during all stages of development. It was still more than we could have ever hoped for.
There was a team of 150 people, a third of who were hardware developers. The “controller” was built into a padded, inclined chair, with a minimalist headset that fits around the players’ eyes and ears. The joystick and buttons could be swapped on the arms to accommodate if the player was left-handed or right-handed. Really high-tech, right? Where the money was really sunk was in the environmental simulators and the sensors and nodes that would be attached to the player’s body to monitor their physical status.
Like I said, the game was meant to be a horror game. We settled on the story of an unnamed character going into a haunted mansion to get rid of evil spirits and getting stalked by a demon. The most clichéd plot and setting you could think of, but that was what we were going for. We wanted something that would easily be associated with fear. The idea was that the demon fed off fear and would find you more easily if you were afraid. First, it would scare and drive the character crazy and then it would kill him/her.
The monitors attached to the player analyzed the physical signs that the player was afraid (rapid heartbeat, dilated pupils, harsh breathing, clammy or sweaty skin, etc.) and use that information to determine how aggressively the demon would act. You could think of it as a social experiment; you could see how well a person would stay calm under pressure. Theoretically, a completely calm person could make it through the entire game without much danger, but the scares and the atmosphere wouldn’t let you go through the first level without making you anxious.
The real fun started once the demon came after you. We wanted to keep it subtle. No jump scares. That was cheating the player out of the experience. If you think about it, people with real paranormal experiences never report a demon breaking through a glass window and going for your throat. They report brushes against the skin, whispering in the ears, and a loud sound in the distance. Even tingling or electrical sensations.
Those were the kinds of things we recreated. We programmed the system to deliver these audio and sensory cues when the player reached a certain level of anxiety. The more scared you were, the more scares you received. At the beginning of the game, you might hear heavy breathing or footsteps behind you. You might even feel cold spots as you navigated the mansion. As you progressed and became tenser, you might feel a grip on your arm (from a blood pressure-like cushion on the chair that tightened around the muscle) or a hiss directly in your ear along with the feeling of breath. It was elaborate and it took forever to produce, but when they hooked you in, it was amazing.
I had the privilege of being one to test it as it was being produced. They put me in the chair, turned off all the lights, and would play the game through the headset as well as project the images you were seeing onto a wall so that the team would see it too. The graphics were realistic they got the rooms of the mansion down to the last detail.
About a year and a half after the sensors were developed and implemented into the system, we started looking for beta testers. We started advertising in magazines and message boards for people to come in blind and play the game, giving any criticism or reporting any glitches they experienced. The majority of the feedback we received was positive and, after several revisions, we could safely say that we had a successful project.
Of particular note were the reports from the beta testers in which they claimed to get the feeling that someone was in the room with them or that they were getting tingling or hot/cold sensations in parts of their bodies where the nodes were not attached. The room where the chair and the interface were located was kept clear, aside from the player, as often as possible. The team was separated from the room by a one-way mirror. We would have been able to see if anyone was in the room apart from the player and in nine out of ten cases when this was reported, there was no one (the other 1/10 were when a technician was coming in to check the interface).
There were times when we would disable and re-enable certain audio and sensory simulations to further test which ones gave more stimuli than others. During one playthrough, the player might have the cold spots and then during the next, those would be disabled. We never told the players which ones were activated and which were not. The strangest cases were when someone playing the game for the first time would report a cue when it was clearly disabled.
In one particular case, a middle-aged woman reported her hair being tugged gently. I can tell you right now: that had not been programmed into the game at that point in time. It was an odd occurrence, but one that could have easily been chalked up to the imagination. Actually, we assumed that most of the cases like this were due to the power of suggestion. We just cautioned the rest of the beta testers not to talk about what they went through so that the people coming in could get as authentic an experience as possible.
As tends to happen in these situations, people started spreading rumors. Some of my favorite rumors were the ones that made the Systelien staff out to be cultists who were secretly sacrificing the beta testers to the demon portrayed in the game. I have no idea how that one held up as long as it did, since there were absolutely no reports of injuries on- or off-site and every single one of the testers came out of the building alive. The internet and gossip do strange things to people, I guess. However, rumors like that were starting to give Systelien a bad reputation. We decided it was time to bring in the media to defeat some of these rumors. We hadn’t wanted to have reporters before for fear that other gaming companies would try to copy our methods, but now seemed like as good a time as any.
We got several offers and wound up taking one from a popular gaming magazine. The reporting team came in and interviewed us about the games and the 4D techniques used. We used the opportunity to show them around the building and debunk the rumors about animal and human sacrifice. It was actually pretty funny; after the interview, the reporting team wanted to try out the game for themselves. They all had good things to say about it and when the article was published, donations and other requests for interviews began streaming in. Andy and I said we should have let the media come in sooner for all the benefits we were getting.
The more we searched Systelien’s message boards, the more we started noticing threads crop up about people who claimed they were experiencing the things in the game after they had left Systelien and gone home. They were going through the same supernatural phenomena in their everyday lives as they had in the game. In every claim, they said that they would feel as though someone was getting very, very close to them, looking over their shoulders, and breathing down their necks. I guess that was one thing about the demon in the game that we had neglected to mention. It had no sense of personal space. The reports eventually involved both minor and violent poltergeist activity. And people would be going through this for days afterward. The reports helped to spread the word even more, but it didn’t help the persisting rumors that the testers were being possessed.
The most popular thread where the reports were being archived affectionately called the demon causing these incidences the Systelien Demon or the Systelien Specter. I liked the Systelien Specter better.
Then came the day when a young man, only 17-years-old (we’ll call him John), claimed that he wanted to file a lawsuit against us as he had been scratched during his time playing the game. As I remember it, John had been doing fine up until he had reached the basement of the mansion and then had screamed for us to let him out. The only evidence of the scratches was a set of pictures taken after he had exited the building. The scratches shown on the pictures were deep and red, clearly not something that had been dealt by a human. Maybe by a machine, but an inspection of the chair revealed no sharp parts sticking out. The lawsuit was eventually dropped since there was no way to prove he hadn’t scratched himself prior to coming in. It’s not like we do a full body examination before sitting our testers down into the chair.
It was at this point we decided to stop bringing in random beta testers and test the game ourselves for the last stages of development. I was one of the first to be strapped in. They had added so much stuff to the gameplay and so many more cues that I barely recognized it from the first time I had played. I remember going down the foyer staircase after exploring a series of darkened hallways lit by old Victorian-era lamps, feeling my palms sweat and the hairs on the back of my neck standing on end. The wind outside the mansion had been howling for the last half hour and it sounded like someone was whistling a funeral march.
I paused on the stairs to look at the windows, searching for any weird textures needing to be fixed, when I felt a tingling along my spine on my upper back, like someone was pressing his or her chest against my back. It wasn’t just in the game; I could feel the press in reality. I reached up and felt only the chair. The thing that really set me off, though, was the voice that spoke my name in my ear. It was whispered and very clear, no mistaking it for the wind. I spun the camera around, though I knew there would be nothing to see. The demon had always been invisible. Now I knew why some of our testers had joked about feeling violated while playing.
I just assumed Andy had played a joke on me, but he swore up and down that he didn’t put any coding in the game for the demon to say the player’s name. That would have been my department, not his. He just designed skins. Still, I remained convinced that someone was just having fun with me. There wasn’t even a place to input your name! Someone must have pre-recorded it.
I played through the rest of the area and then headed home to file my report. It was another late night; I had been pulling the late shift for a couple of weeks as our deadline was drawing closer. We had been having decent weather until about 2 AM, when the wind picked up and the rain was coming down in buckets. Andy and I had come from the Midwest and were used to bipolar weather. I just worked on and paid it no mind.
Until the power went out, anyway. I grabbed my flashlight, feeling all the anxiety from my time in the game returning. This was a different story, though, and I knew that. My house wasn’t haunted and I had never believed in ghosts for my entire life. My brain said it was ridiculous, but my pounding heart told a different story.
I couldn’t help but feel every draft and hear every creak of the floorboards as I went down to the generator (which, of course, was in the cellar). The wooden steps lead me down into the darkness and I have to admit that, by the time I reached the concrete, I was considering just going back upstairs and burrowing myself into my bed. I forced myself to cross the floor to the generator and turn it on. Immediately, the back-up lights flickered on, casting a red hue over the dusty shelves and rusty tools on the workbench. So, now I got to be in hell, too.
The way back wasn’t nearly as bad as the way down and I reminded myself that everything I had experienced in the game had been just that, in the game. There was nothing to worry about. The demon – the Systelien Specter, or whatever – was an enemy made out of ones and zeroes. It couldn’t do anything to me.
I was halfway up the stairs (about at the same point I had been in the game when I had heard my name, actually) when I distinctly felt someone tightly grab my wrists. As in, squeezing-like-my-wrists-were-being-juiced tight. I screamed and dropped the flashlight, which went off on impact. There was no one there, but I still slapped at where I imagined the hand had come from and clamored up the stairs. I didn’t stop until I was out the front door and in my driveway, getting drenched and not caring. I whipped out my cell phone and punched in Andy’s number.
He said he knew how I felt. During his test play through, he had accidentally backed his character into a fire since he had been so busy keeping an eye on the rest of the room. We had all laughed at the mistake, but he hadn’t mentioned the fact that after we had taken him out of the game, he had felt a burning in his lower calf. Later, when he looked at his leg after getting home, he discovered he had a first-degree burn right where his character had touched the fire. I drove to his house and looked at his leg myself. He had already spread ointment on the area and bandaged it up, but when he pulled it back, I was staring at a red and swollen burn wound.
Out of morbid curiosity, I called the other members of our team who had tested the game that day. It was the same story all around. In the game, Jill had stood in front of a window that had shattered and then cut her hands while picking up the jagged pieces of a ceramic vase had suddenly fallen to the floor. Matthew’s character had been crushed by a falling bookshelf and then, when he had been getting into his car, his door had closed when he wasn’t ready and three fingers had been broken. I looked at my wrists again, where dark, purplish bruises were forming. These couldn’t be coincidences anymore. I didn’t know what was going on, but it wasn’t just a game anymore.
The next day was a holiday, so everyone at Systelien was off. I invited anyone willing to go back to the game room to try and play through the game one more time. Andy and I had gone through the possibilities. The point of the entire game had been for the character to go into the mansion to exorcise the demon. They could do it by collected special candles and then lighting them in a circle in the attic of the mansion. After some other steps were done, the demons would be forced out of the house and everything would go back to normal. It had been a crazy night and at any other time, I thought we would have been crazy for discussing these things. We thought that maybe, by completing the game and, by extension, the ritual, we could stop whatever the hell was going on. After all, no one, to this day, had ever finished the game from beginning to end.
The game was as complete as it was ever going to be. Andy volunteered to play, for which I was grateful. Maybe it was cowardly, but I didn’t want to be the one to go in. The room was frigidly cold as we attached the nodes. We threw a blanket over Andy to make sure he didn’t freeze. The rest of us (five, in total, not including Matthew, who had gone to the hospital to treat his hand) gathered behind the one-way glass to watch.
It was eerie, watching his progress through the game. I knew all of those corridors so well, having labored over their game files for months. Yet, now, everything looked new, now that I was sure that I knew what the game was capable of. I watched Andy’s heart rate rise and fall on my monitor. His skin-temperature-analyzers went haywire as he rounded every corner. As was supposed to happen, he felt the demon close in when his fear spiked. But this time around, its interactions were low-key, almost subdued. I fought against my suspicion that it was just biding its time. The demon was made of ones and zeroes. Numbers can’t hurt anyone. I thought this even as I rubbed my bruised wrists.
It took four hours for Andy to make it all the way through. He didn’t even take a bathroom break. He just wanted to get this done as much as we did. He crept through the halls, doing his best to keep calm despite the advances of the demon. He collected the six candles needed for the ritual and made his way up to the attic.
Then, things started happening that were definitely not in the programming. The paintings and potted plants in the game began shaking and flying off the walls, clearly aimed for his character. In the safety of the monitoring room, two filing cabinets overturned before sliding across the floor and knocking down two staff members. Wires attached to the wall disconnected and sprayed sparks around the room. Grabbing a fire extinguisher, I prepared to extinguish any flames that cropped up.
Andy had placed the candles on the floor of the attic and was using an old lighter to light them. He was able to get the fourth candle lit before he suddenly bucked in his chair, screaming for us to stop the game. When we rushed in, I saw his hands flailing, as though he was trying to tear off the nodes and sensors glued to his body. Maybe that was part of it, but when I got a closer look, I realized he was fighting with something invisible that was holding him down on the chair. His shirt and face had been slashed and blood dribbled from the wounds. I was afraid I was going to break his arm since I was pulling so hard to get him off the chair. Finally, we got him free and out of the room, slamming the door behind us. Andy’s character had already died and the ‘Game Over’ screen mocked us as we scrambled to call an ambulance.
I didn’t sleep for the rest of the day and the following night as I waited in the hospital. Andy’s wounds were worse than we thought. There was a massive amount of internal bleeding that we hadn’t known about. The doctors tried to stem the blood loss with transfusions, but their efforts were for nothing. Andy passed away early in the morning.
A week later, I saw a news special about the death and its connection to the game and Systelien. I couldn’t blame whoever had blabbed. The police blamed Andy’s death on the system malfunctioning, as though that could explain the scratches and the internal trauma. Our supervisors didn’t care. They ordered the project to be shut down and I was grateful. I never wanted to see that game again. The only way I was ever going back to the Systelien building was if that room was demolished and the chair dismantled. Though, to be honest, I wouldn’t have been surprised if anyone who tried to take it apart was attacked as well.
I left the company when the announcement was made that the game would be discontinued. People on the forums expressed everything from disappointment to relief. The game was over.
For weeks, I couldn’t stop glancing over my shoulder. I moved away from the town and the memories I had of Andy. My co-workers held a farewell party for me, despite the fact that they probably had the right to blame me for everything. They said that I had helped make a game that would never be forgotten by anyone who played it.
That was all well and good, but I was desperate to forget and spent the rest of my life trying to do so. I was always keeping two eyes on the shadows and jumping at every little creak. There was this little fear that I would hear my name whispered in my ear again, which would mean that whatever I had created had followed me, and I never wanted to think about that possibility.
The only thing I could do was try to sleep and ignore the times when I felt an invisible, clammy hand stroke my face.
CREDIT: TheHootax
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Luke stepped out of the warm comfort of his best friend’s house into the cold winter air. The sun was quickly slipping beneath the horizon and the trees of the forest cast long twisted shadows across the yard. Luke said goodbye to his friend and thanked his mother for having him over, as their goodbyes drew to a close the front door swung shut, and a silence fell over Luke. He stared out across the lawn into the twilight forest that awaited him. It was only a fifteen-minute walk from his friend’s house to his own, and he had made that walk countless times before, but as he watched the night descend upon the world, something sinister began to fill the shadows.
Luke knew what was coming next. It didn’t happen often, but he knew tonight it would be coming for him. There was an acute sense of dread in the air, and he could almost feel its gaze watching him from the ever-lengthening shadows. Luke stepped off his friend’s porch and into the night.
Luke crossed the thirty yards from the porch to the beginning of the forest path with little incident, but as he entered the woods, he entered another realm. No longer did he live in the world of modern conveniences where a warm, bright home was only a short walk away. In its stead was a primeval existence where danger lurked in every shadow, and his only salvation was a night’s march away.
Luke had been walking for little over a minute when it began. Far in the distance standing between two trees, it was there standing motionless watching him. Its twisted figure lit by the dying rays of the sun. No sooner had Luke seen it, than it was gone, and with it vanished the last vestiges of daylight. The hunt was on.
Luke began to move faster but he had to hold himself back, knowing if he broke into a run, it would soon chase him down. This was not Luke’s first time seeing the thing, and after enough encounters he had learned the rules. He was not to run or scream or it would be angry. If it was angry, Luke received a deep gash on his arm or leg. Luke had been fortunate to never anger it further. Luke knew if he kept calm and walked home; the thing would not punish him. It would be terrifying but he would arrive home alive.
The first time he saw it, he had run home with his heart ready to rip itself out of his chest. He received a nasty cut down his leg for his troubles and he arrived home dirty, bloody, and trembling. He had stumbled into the house and sunk to the floor, shaking and crying. When he told his mother what had happened, she dismissed the whole thing as a product of his overactive imagination. She promised to get rid of the thorn bush that had scratched him and told him to calm down. Since then he had stopped telling his mom when he saw it, and when the thing cut him he hid it from her. Not only did his mother blame his imagination, but so did everyone else he tried to tell: His father, his brother, even his best friend blamed his overactive imagination. His father and brother had told him to stop playing pretend and act his age. Luke was alone with his twisted companion.
Luke continued onward, trying to contain his fear. Every second he fought the urge to scream and run for his life. Luke knew that it could appear at any moment. He might turn a corner and it would be in the middle of the path. He might glance to the side and see it behind the nearest tree, but no matter what he never saw it for long. Luke was not even sure what it looked like, as it never stayed in sight long enough for him to set its appearance into his memory, but although he rarely saw it, its presence never left. Whether it was noxious smells of filth and blood, ragged panting, or drooling Luke knew the thing was always close by.
The walk was stretching into an eternity for Luke. He felt as though he had left his friend’s house hours ago, and yet it seemed there were miles and miles left to walk until he was home. Luke began to pick up the pace a little, and as his step quickened, he heard a shuffling gait behind him begin to rustle the leaves. This was incredibly odd as he had never heard its footsteps before. They were close, but not so close that Luke was considering bolting. Oddly, these heavy footfalls made Luke feel better. He knew he couldn’t possibly be imagining them. He could hear leaves rustle and crunch beneath his pursuers’ feet. He could hear it physically impacting the world. Surely that couldn’t be his imagination.
Time dragged on, and Luke could hear the footsteps growing closer and closer. His already strained heart began to beat even faster. After a while, Luke could hear the footsteps directly behind him. The thing was just waiting for Luke to turn around and look at it, but he would not succumb. He knew as soon as he stopped or looked behind him, the thing would devour him. Just as Luke was ready to give in and run for it, the footsteps stopped. Luke was so surprised he faltered, and as he slowed, he felt the thing’s breath brush along his neck. As the acrid fumes swept around him, he almost fainted, but by some miracle he was able to keep his feet. Luke gathered his senses and kept on walking. Behind him, the thing let out a murderous shriek; as though it were angered Luke had not succumbed to its taunts.
Luke was more frightened than ever but he refused to give into the thing. Luke shoved his hands into his pockets, stared at his shoes, and picked up the pace. Luke kept on this way for several minutes, and for several minutes, all was quiet. Luke began to hope that tonight’s nightmare was over. As he raised his head to check his surroundings his eyes fell upon the feet of his pursuer. It was standing there in the middle of the path, waiting for him. Luke refused to look. He stared at its vile feet refusing to meet its demonic gaze. Its feet were sick and disfigured, with yellow cracked talons protruding from them. The largest one was curved like a raptor’s, and stained with blood. The skin was a sickly pale yellow, and covered in pockmarks and warts. The arch of the foot was inhuman and twisted almost like a coiled spring. Luke was almost sick but again he found a way to keep himself under control.
Almost as soon as Luke had taken in the thing’s sick feet, they were gone. Luke could take no more; he broke into a run. He knew the thing would be furious, but he longer cared. He just wanted the terror to end. As he ran, he heard the thing stomping behind him. Its footfalls were thunderous and it let out a bloody shriek. Luke could hear the fury in its cry, and it drove him to run ever faster. Luke could tell he was close to home. If he could hold out for thirty more seconds, he could make it out of the woods. The thing’s footfalls drew ever closer, and Luke was almost ready to give up. His legs were moving slower and slower by the second, his lungs were burning with each breath, and his face was growing cold, as though his blood were seeping out of it. Luke caught sight of the edge of the woods, and with one maniacal last burst of energy, kept going. He heard the thing closing in, its screams grew frenzied as it prepared to kill, but just as Luke began to feel the thing’s claws sink into his shoulders, he burst beyond the tree line, and onto his own lawn.
Luke stumbled to his porch, wheezing the whole way. He dragged himself on to the steps, and collapsed, trembling as adrenaline coursed through his exhausted body. Luke lay there in silence trying to recover from his horrid experience when, from the woods, Luke heard a rabid snuffling. He raised his head, dreading what he might see. From out of the woods emerged the thing. Luke had no idea what to do. The thing always disappeared when he left the woods. The thing had broken its own rules, and Luke was too exhausted to do anything but watch it draw closer to him.
As it came closer he began to see it in ever greater detail as it stepped into his porch light. The thing was hideous beyond belief. It was disgusting and unnatural. It had one huge red eye in the middle of its face. Below it was a crooked gash of a mouth that hung open, revealing a veritable hacksaw of black and bloody teeth. It had no nose or ears and its head was covered in limp spikes. Its shoulders were uneven as one arm was gimpy and the shoulder twisted. The arm was withered and hung by the creature’s side. Its other arm was massive and had claws matching those on its feet. The claws extended down to the ground and dragged as it marched forward. Its spine was twisted, and it seemed a miracle that the thing could even walk.
Luke stared in horror as it approached. He knew he was facing his death. He was too physically and mentally exhausted to do anything but stare into the disfigured face of death, but extraordinarily as the thing drew within five feet of him it stopped. It stopped and stared at him. Luke did not know for how long they made eye contact but after a while, the thing simply turned and ran off into the woods far faster than Luke ever thought its twisted frame could move.
Luke lay there for some time until he could muster the energy to stumble into his home. When he returned his mother’s only remark was that he was late, and he should know better than to make her worry like that. Luke numbly stumbled into his room and collapsed. He did not sleep soundly that night, nor would he for many nights to come, but he thanked God he had survived. He didn’t know what had made the thing turn back. Maybe it had some sort of twisted sense of honor that stopped it from killing a defenseless boy, or maybe it just wanted to preserve him for another night of sport. Luke didn’t know and Luke didn’t care. He was just thankful to be alive.
That same night, another young boy returned home late. He scrabbled through the dirt with his cracked and yellowed claws into the entrance of his home. As he lumbered into the dank cavern that was his home the boy’s mother demanded to know where he had been. The boy was out of breath and sweating from his earlier exertions. He could barely get out a response to his mother. He told her that he had seen the thing again. His mother told him to stop playing pretend and go to bed. He protested that he had gotten close to it this time, looked at it, and even touched it. He told her how hideous it was with its smooth pink skin, and its squashed face with its two beady eyes, but it didn’t seem dangerous. He didn’t know why it always ignored him when he tried to be friendly, and tonight, it had run away again. He felt bad because it often cut itself on all the thorns along the path when it ran. His mother told him to shut down his overactive imagination and stop telling her such ridiculous stories. He grumbled as he shuffled into his room and lay down in his bed of worms to go to sleep. He would get the thing to talk to him one day. He just had to keep on trying. The thing often walked through his yard at night. He would just say hi to it again in a week.
CREDIT: RedBullReptar
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Last year I spent six months participating in what I was told was a psychological experiment. I found an ad in my local paper looking for imaginative people looking to make good money, and since it was the only ad that week that I was remotely qualified for, I gave them a call and we arranged an interview. They told me that all I would have to do is stay in a room, alone, with sensors attached to my head to read my brain activity, and while I was there I would visualize a double of myself. They called it my “tulpa”.
It seemed easy enough, and I agreed to do it as soon as they told me how much I would be paid. And the next day, I began. They brought me to a simple room and gave me a bed, then attached sensors to my head and hooked them into a little black box on the table beside me. They talked me through the process of visualizing my double again, and explained that if I got bored or restless, instead of moving around, I should visualize my double moving around, or try to interact with him, and so on. The idea was to keep him with me the entire time I was in the room.
I had trouble with it for the first few days. It was more controlled than any sort of daydreaming I’d done before. I’d imagine my double for a few minutes, then grow distracted. But by the fourth day, I could manage to keep him “present” for the entire six hours. They told me I was doing very well.
The second week, they gave me a different room, with wall-mounted speakers. They told me they wanted to see if I could still keep the tulpa with me in spite of distracting stimuli. The music was discordant, ugly and unsettling, and it made the process a little more difficult, but I managed nonetheless. The next week they played even more unsettling music, punctuated with shrieks, feedback loops, what sounded like an old school modem dialing up, and guttural voices speaking some foreign language. I just laughed it off – I was a pro by then.
After about a month, I started to get bored. To liven things up, I started interacting with my doppelganger. We’d have conversations, or play rock-paper-scissors, or I’d imagine him juggling, or break-dancing, or whatever caught my fancy. I asked the researchers if my foolishness would adversely affect their study, but they encouraged me.
So we played, and communicated, and that was fun for a while. And then it got a little strange. I was telling him about my first date one day, and he corrected me. I’d said my date was wearing a yellow top, and he told me it was a green one. I thought about it for a second, and realized he was right. It creeped me out, and after my shift that day, I talked to the researchers about it. “You’re using the thought-form to access your subconscious,” they explained. “You knew on some level that you were wrong, and you subconsciously corrected yourself.”
What had been creepy was suddenly cool. I was talking to my subconscious! It took some practice, but I found that I could question my tulpa and access all sorts of memories. I could make it quote whole pages of books I’d read once, years before, or things I was taught and immediately forgot in high school. It was awesome.
That was around the time I started “calling up” my double outside of the research center. Not often at first, but I was so used to imagining him by now that it almost seemed odd to not see him. So whenever I was bored, I’d visualize my double. Eventually I started doing it almost all the time. It was amusing to take him along like an invisible friend. I imagined him when I was hanging out with friends, or visiting my mom, I even brought him along on a date once. I didn’t need to speak aloud to him, so I was able to carry out conversations with him and no one was the wiser.
I know that sounds strange, but it was fun. Not only was he a walking repository of everything I knew and everything I had forgotten, but he also seemed more in touch with me than I did at times. He had an uncanny grasp of the minutiae of body language that I didn’t even realize I was picking up on. For example, I’d thought the date I brought him along on was going badly, but he pointed out how she was laughing a little too hard at my jokes, and leaning towards me as I spoke, and a bunch of other subtle clues I wasn’t consciously picking up on. I listened, and let’s just say that that date went very well.
By the time I’d been at the research center for four months, he was with my constantly. The researchers approached me one day after my shift, and asked me if I’d stopped visualizing him. I denied it, and they seemed pleased. I silently asked my double if he knew what prompted that, but he just shrugged it off. So did I.
I withdrew a little from the world at that point. I was having trouble relating to people. It seemed to me that they were so confused and unsure of themselves, while I had a manifestation of myself to confer with. It made socializing awkward. Nobody else seemed aware of the reasons behind their actions, why some things made them mad and others made them laugh. They didn’t know what moved them. But I did – or at least, I could ask myself and get an answer.
A friend confronted me one evening. He pounded at the door until I answered it, and came in fuming and swearing up a storm. “You haven’t answered when I called you in fucking weeks, you dick!” he yelled. “What’s your fucking problem?”
I was about to apologize to him, and probably would have offered to hit the bars with him that night, but my tulpa grew suddenly furious. “Hit him,” it said, and before I knew what I was doing, I had. I heard his nose break. He fell to the floor and came up swinging, and we beat each other up and down my apartment.
I was more furious then than I have ever been, and I was not merciful. I knocked him to the ground and gave him two savage kicks to the ribs, and that was when he fled, hunched over and sobbing.
The police were by a few minutes later, but I told them that he had been the instigator, and since he wasn’t around to refute me, they let me off with a warning. My tulpa was grinning the entire time. We spent the night crowing about my victory and sneering over how badly I’d beaten my friend.
It wasn’t until the next morning, when I was checking out my black eye and cut lip in the mirror, that I remembered what had set me off. My double was the one who’d grown furious, not me. I’d been feeling guilty and a little ashamed, but he’d goaded me into a vicious fight with a concerned friend. He was present, of course, and knew my thoughts. “You don’t need him anymore. You don’t need anyone else,” he told me, and I felt my skin crawl.
I explained all this to the researchers who employed me, but they just laughed it off. “You can’t be scared of something that you’re imagining,” one told me. My double stood beside him, and nodded his head, then smirked at me.
I tried to take their words to heart, but over the next few days I found myself growing more and more anxious around my tulpa, and it seemed that he was changing. He looked taller, and more menacing. His eyes twinkled with mischief, and I saw malice in his constant smile. No job was worth losing my mind over, I decided. If he was out of control, I’d put him down. I was so used to him at that point that visualizing him was an automatic process, so I started trying my damnedest to not visualize him. It took a few days, but it started to work somewhat. I could get rid of him for hours at a time. But every time he came back, he seemed worse. His skin seemed ashen, his teeth more pointed. He hissed and gibbered and threatened and swore. The discordant music I’d been listening to for months seemed to accompany him everywhere. Even when I was at home – I’d relax and slip up, no longer concentrating on not seeing him, and there he’d be, and that howling noise with him.
I was still visiting the research center and spending my six hours there. I needed the money, and I thought they weren’t aware that I was now actively not visualizing my tulpa. I was wrong. After my shift one day, about five and a half months in, two impressively men grabbed and restrained me, and someone in a lab coat jabbed a hypodermic needle into me.
I woke up from my stupor back in the room, strapped into the bed, music blaring, with my doppelganger standing over me cackling. He hardly looked human anymore. His features were twisted. His eyes were sunken in their sockets and filmed over like a corpse’s. He was much taller than me, but hunched over. His hands were twisted, and the fingernails were like talons. He was, in short, fucking terrifying. I tried to will him away, but I just couldn’t seem to concentrate. He giggled, and tapped the IV in my arm. I thrashed in my restraints as best I could, but could hardly move at all.
“They’re pumping you full of the good shit, I think. How’s the mind? All fuzzy?” He leaned closer and closer as he spoke. I gagged. His breath smelled like spoiled meat. I tried to focus, but couldn’t banish him.
The next few weeks were terrible. Every so often, someone in a doctor’s coat would come in and inject me with something, or force-feed me a pill. They kept me dizzy and unfocused, and sometimes left me hallucinating or delusional. My thoughtform was still present, constantly mocking. He interacted with, or perhaps caused, my delusions. I hallucinated that my mother was there, scolding me, and then he cut her throat and her blood showered me. It was so real that I could taste it.
The doctors never spoke to me. I begged at times, screamed, hurled invectives, demanded answers. They never spoke to me. They may have talked to my tulpa, my personal monster. I’m not sure. I was so doped and confused that it may have just been more delusion, but I remember them talking with him. I grew convinced that he was the real one, and I was the thoughtform. He encouraged that line of thought at times, mocked me at others.
Another thing that I pray was a delusion: he could touch me. More than that, he could hurt me. He’d poke and prod at me if he felt I wasn’t paying enough attention to him. Once he grabbed my testicles and squeezed until I told him I loved him. Another time, he slashed my forearm with one of his talons. I still have a scar – most days I can convince myself that I injured myself, and just hallucinated that he was responsible. Most days.
Then one day, while he was telling me a story about how he was going to gut everyone I loved, starting with my sister, he paused. A querulous look crossed his face, and reached out and touched my head. Like my mother used to when I was feverish. He stayed still for a long moment, and then smiled. “All thoughts are creative,” he told me. Then he walked out the door.
Three hours later, I was given an injection, and passed out. I awoke unrestrained. Shaking, I made my way to the door and found it unlocked. I walked out into the empty hallway, and then ran. I stumbled more than once, but I made it down the stairs and out into the lot behind the building. There, I collapsed, weeping like a child. I knew I had to keep moving, but I couldn’t manage it.
I got home eventually – I don’t remember how. I locked the door, and shoved a dresser against it, took a long shower, and slept for a day and a half. Nobody came for me in the night, and nobody came the next day, or the one after that. It was over. I’d spent a week locked in that room, but it had felt like a century. I’d withdrawn so much from my life beforehand that nobody had even known I was missing.
The police didn’t find anything. The research center was empty when they searched it. The paper trail fell apart. The names I’d given them were aliases. Even the money I’d received was apparently untraceable.
I recovered as much as one can. I don’t leave the house much, and I have panic attacks when I do. I cry a lot. I don’t sleep much, and my nightmares are terrible. It’s over, I tell myself. I survived. I use the concentration those bastards taught me to convince myself. It works, sometimes.
Not today, though. Three days ago, I got a phone call from my mother. There’s been a tragedy. My sister’s the latest victim in a spree of killings, the police say. The perpetrator mugs his victims, then guts them.
The funeral was this afternoon. It was as lovely a service as a funeral can be, I suppose. I was a little distracted, though. All I could hear was music coming from somewhere distant. Discordant, unsettling stuff, that sounds like feedback, and shrieking, and a modem dialing up. I hear it still – a little louder now.
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We had just moved into a little ranch house in the suburbs. Storybook neighborhood – quiet, friendly neighbors, picket fences, the whole nine yards. Suffice it to say that this was supposed to be a new start for me, a recently single dad, and my three-year-old son. A time to move on from the previous year’s drama and stress.
I viewed the thunderstorm as a metaphor for this fresh start: one last show of theatrics before the dirt and grime of the past would be washed away. My son loved it anyway, even with the power out. It was the first big storm he’d ever seen. Flashes of lightning flooded the bare rooms of our house, imparting unpacked boxes with long creeping shadows, and he jumped and squealed as the thunder boomed. It was well past his bedtime before he’d finally settled down enough to go to sleep.
The next morning I found him awake in bed and smiling. “I watched the lightning at my window!” he proudly announced.
A few mornings later, he told me the same thing. “You’re silly,” I said. “It didn’t storm last night, you were only dreaming!” “Oh…” He seemed somewhat disheartened. I ruffled his hair and told him not to worry, there should be another storm soon.
Then it became a pattern. He would tell me how he watched the lightning outside his window at least twice a week, despite there being no storms. Recurring dreams of that first memorable thunderstorm, I figured.
It’s easy to hate myself in hindsight. Everybody assures me there’s nothing I could have done, no way I could have known. But I’m supposed to be the guardian of my child, and these are useless words of comfort. I constantly relive that morning: making my coffee, pouring milk over my cereal, and picking up the newspaper to read about the pedophile local authorities had just arrested. It was front-page stuff. Apparently this guy would select a young target (usually a boy), stake out their house for a while, and take flash photos of them through their window while they slept. Sometimes he did more. My stomach sank as the connection was made.
At the time, it was merely something from a child’s imagination. In retrospect, it is the scariest thing I’ve ever heard. About a week before the predator was caught, my son came up to me in his pajamas. “Guess what?” he asked.
“What?”
“No more lightning at my window!”
I played along. “Oh, that’s nice, it finally died down huh?”
“No! Now it’s in my closet!”
I’ve yet to see the photos police have collected.
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It was a car accident. Nothing particularly remarkable, but fatal nonetheless. You left behind a wife and two children. It was a painless death. The EMTs tried their best to save you, but to no avail. Your body was so utterly shattered you were better off, trust me.
And that’s when you met me.
“What… what happened?” You asked. “Where am I?”
“You died,” I said, matter-of-factly. No point mincing words.
“There was a…a truck and it was skidding…”
“Yup.” I said
“I… I died?”
“Yup. But don’t feel bad about it. Everyone dies.” I said.
You looked around. There was nothingness. Just you and me. “What is this place?” You asked. “Is this the afterlife?”
“More or less,” I said.
“Are you god?” You asked.
“Yup.” I replied. “I’m God.”
“My kids… my wife,” you said.
“What about them?”
“Will they be alright?”
“That what I like to see,” I said. “You just died and your main concern is for your family. That’s good stuff right there.”
You looked at me with fascination. To you, I didn’t look like God. I just looked like some man. Some vague authority figure. More of a grammar school teacher than the almighty.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “They’ll be fine. Your kids will remember you as perfect in every way. They didn’t have time to grow contempt for you. Your wife will cry on the outside, but will be secretly relieved. To be fair, your marriage was falling apart. If it’s any consolation, she’ll feel very guilty for feeling relieved.”
“Oh,” you said. “So what happens now? Do I go to heaven or hell or something?”
“Neither,” I said. “You’ll be reincarnated.”
“Ah,” you said. “So the Hindus were right.”
“All the religions are right in their own way,” I said. “Walk with me.”
You followed along as we strolled in the void. “Where are we going?” “Nowhere in particular,” I said. “It’s just nice to walk while we talk.”
“So what’s the point, then?” You asked. “When I get reborn, I’ll just be a blank slate, right? A baby. So all my experiences and everything I did in this life won’t matter.”
“Not so!” I said. “You have within you all the knowledge and experiences of all your past lives. You just don’t remember them right now.”
I stopped walking and took you by the shoulders. “Your soul is more magnificent, beautiful, and gigantic than you can possibly imagine. A human mind can only contain a tiny fraction of what you are. It’s like sticking your finger in a glass of water to see if it’s hot or cold. You put a tiny part or yourself into the vessel, and when you bring it back out, you’ve gained all the experiences it had.”
“You’ve been a human for the last 34 years, so you haven’t stretched out yet and felt the rest of your immense consciousness. If we hung out here for longer, you’d start remembering everything. But there’s no point doing that between each life.”
“How many times have I been reincarnated, then?”
“Oh, lots. Lots and lots. And into lots of different lives.” I said. “This time around you’ll be a Chinese peasant girl in 540 A.D.”
“Wait, what?” You stammered. “You’re sending me back in time?”
“Well, I guess technically. Time, as you know it, only exists in your universe. Things are different where I come from.”
“Where do you come from?” You pondered.
“Oh sure!” I explained. “I come from somewhere. somewhere else. and there are others like me. I know you’ll want to know what it’s like there but you honestly won’t understand.”
“Oh.” you said, a little let down. “But wait. If i get reincarnated to other places in time, could I have interacted with myself at some point?”
“Sure. Happens all the time. And with both lives only aware of their own timespan you don’t even know it’s happening.”
“So what’s the point of it all?”
“Seriously?” I asked. “Seriously? Your asking me for the meaning of life? Isn’t that a little stereotypical?”
“Well it’s a reasonable question.” you persisted.
I looked in your eye. “The meaning of life, the reason I made this whole universe, is for you to mature.”
“You mean mankind? You want us to mature?”
“No. just you. I made this whole universe for you. With each new life you grow and mature, and become a larger and greater intellect” “Just me? What about everyone else?”
“There is no one else,” I said. “In this universe, there’s just you, and me.”
You stared blankly at me. “But all the people on earth…”
“All you. Different incarnations of you.”
“Wait. I’m everyone!?”
“Now you’re getting it.” I said, with a congratulatory slap on the back.
“I’m every human who ever lived?”
“Or who will ever live, yes.”
“I’m Abraham Lincoln?”
“And you’re John Wilkes Booth, too.” I added.
“I’m Hitler?” you said, appalled.
“And you’re the millions he killed.”
“I’m Jesus?”
“And you’re everyone who followed him.”
You fell silent.
“Every time you victimized someone,” I said, “You were victimizing yourself. Every act of kindness you’ve done, you’ve done to yourself. Every happy and sad moment ever experienced by any human was, or will be, experienced by you.”
“Why?” You asked me. “Why do all this?”
“Because someday, you will become like me. Because that’s what you are. You’re one of my kind. You’re my child.”
“Whoa.” you said, incredulous. “You mean I’m a god?”
“No. Not yet. You’re a fetus. You’re still growing. Once you’ve lived every human life throughout all time, you will have grown enough to be born.”
“So the whole universe,” you said. “It’s just…”
“An egg of sorts.” I answered. “Now its time for you to move on to your next life.”
And with that, I sent you on your way.
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We’ve all been there. You have just gone to a certain place, at a certain time on a certain date, done a special thing and the thing you suspected would happen has just fucking happened, not to mention the fact that you’ve just seen whatever the fuck it is that lives in your mirror, been told in detail how you’re going to die, and the highly demonic and invincible thing you summoned is heading towards you.
Also, your family are all dead, your friends are all missing and you’re being framed by someone with access to your bedroom. What the fuck do you do now, sweet protagonist?
Well, you’ve come to the right place to find out: These are the simple rules one must follow in order to firstly, not become the victim of creepypasta and furthermore, to come out kicking if the worst does happen. With the help of this guide you too can be the catatonic, traumatised wreck as opposed to the guy currently being worn as a coat by some dude who roams a lot. Just keep these simple rules in mind…
1. Mirrors and darkness don’t mix.
2. Actually mirrors are a general “NO”, in creepypasta world, there is nothing more sinister.
3. There is zero chance of survival if you look the thing that no one else can see or answer it’s question incorrectly.
4. If you are alone at night in a creepy mental institution,take some time to consider what the fuck are you doing there, then, if it is appropriate to do so, leave.
5. Avoid going to places where everyone else who went there never came back or died inexplicably.
6. If someone stops your vehicle at night and asks to come with you, it would probably be in your best interests to politely decline.
7. Killing is the last method of survival, use it sparingly but without fear.
8. WHO WAS PHONE is always a good thing to ponder. Also who the hell answers a phone while kissing a dead persons sexy daughter. A douche is who.
9. Get a simple .38 revolver. Load it with 2 silver bullets. If you really feel there is no chance to come alive out of a situation, take one shot at whatever’s threatening you. If this doesn’t work, you still have the last shot to become an hero with.
10. Area 51 is simply too well guarded to let you get in. Or to let any alien out.
11. When going to a hotel, try to steer clear of unauthorized areas. If you couldn’t resist but you saw a red thing, take some time to consider the price range and hotel standard on your next visit. Have you ever stayed at a haunted Hilton?
12. When booking your hotel stay, Trip Advisor can be an invaluable tool in deeming whether your choice is the scene of a multiple murder/full of dead people/built at the mouth of hell. Local newspapers can also be helpful.
13. Invoking demons, speaking weird languages and performing rituals of any kind is considered dangerous. Refrain from doing that, especially around Abandoned Warehouses, Churches, Psychiatric Institutions, Forests and your house in front of a mirror at night.
14. When going to a new area, environmental understanding is a key to survival. Ask around for cursed places, legends, dangers and other details. Listen to the local peoples’ advice, and don’t be afraid to ask if you’re unsure of which attacks/disappearances are paranormal and which aren’t.
15. Always have a Bible next to your bed. Provides average reading material, proof of beliefs and a really heavy object to throw at enemies.
16. Don’t count on Holy Water. Get a sturdy vial of Sulfuric Acid and let a priest Consecrate it.
17. Japanese priests cleanse rooms by waving katana swords around. Their ritual is 100% effective on corporeal forms.
18. If you find 666 messages on your phone, mailbox, email, etc consider changing the said service provider. Also don’t bother listening /reading the messages. It’s spam. Extra dimensional, possibly, but spam nevertheless.
19. Old pharmaceutical companies cant help you. Unless you specifically need “Blood Of The Innocent”, ”Snake Oil”, and “Radioactive Syrup”. Which is never.
20. If you need to sign it in blood, you do not need to sign it. All mainstream governing bodies will accept contracts signed in ink, bear this in mind if offered deals that seem too good to be true.
21. Lighthouses are dangerous. Avoid them at all costs. If you work at a Lighthouse consider a career in Insurance Sales, or Veterinary Care.
22. There is simply no reason to listen to music that causes suicidal tendencies, or to watch films that have had strange/disastrous consequences..
23. If you like to plan ahead and have some money, buy your auntie and uncle a house in Bel-Air. Nothing can harm you there no matter how scared your mother is.
24. Secret secluded untouched places in old buildings are left untouched for a reason. Pioneers never say “die” but in fact they do have an unusually high mortality rate.
25. Before you start swimming in the ice-cold waters of a murky lake at the center of a dark forest at midnight, ask yourself, do you really want to travel to an ancient and terrifying city? If the answer is “no,” then stay at home instead, and watch whatever quality programming is available on Cinemax.
26. On your 33rd birthday try celebrating in a well lit house with the company of others.
27. Refrain from using the One True Name for anything, there is probably a reason people gave it a nick.
28. Watching TV static for long periods may be hazardous to your health, try satelite TV to combat this problem.
29. Get a cat. Those furry little hairballs seem to perceive unnatural phenomena better than us, and if desperate, simply throw it at whatever is about to get you.
30. Cemeteries are bad places, especially in foggy conditions and on halloween.
31. Try not to close your eyes, ever. If you must, do so only briefly.
32. If you hear chanting, run until you are out of earshot.
33. If you are too old to play with dolls, you do not need to be anywhere near one of the creepy little fuckers.
34. Legends can offer valuable insight of where not to go camping with friends.
35. When babysitting, ascertain the family’s tastes and preferences, to avoid being killed by poorly selected statues.
36. Even if you are certain that running will not save you, it is always best to try.
Follow these simple rules and little (or massive) harm may befall you. Either way, the important thing is to make sure your tale is told, copied, and pasted repeatedly.
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Part 1
I’m not a guy who gets scared easily, but I’m also not the kind who keeps his head in the sand, if you know what I mean. When something doesn’t feel right, it doesn’t feel right, period. I acknowledge that most of the bad things that happen in life can be blamed on people or the world around us, but I also believe there are things that fall outside those two categories, at least until we prove otherwise.
Like what happened at the body farm.
I’ve wanted to be a writer ever since I was a kid, so forgive me if I get too flowery sometimes, it’s the habits of a writer. As I’m sure you know, though, writing doesn’t pay the bills, and despite my dream of earning a living by writing, I’ve always needed a day job to get me by. Through the father of a friend, I ended up getting trained and certified as an unarmed security guard straight out of high school, which I did all the way through college. It was easy, and the money was good enough for a while, but eventually I looked for something with a future in it. So long as my writing wasn’t taking off, I figured I might as well build a career. After a long search I got a job at one of the major banks- which one I’d rather not say.
Six years I spent working my ass off, climbing my way up the ranks. That was until five weeks ago when they decided they had too many branches open on the east coast, as well as too many employees working those branches. So I got the boot. No severance, no fanfare, no apology, I was out on the street, and as I soon found out, no one was hiring.
When things started to get desperate I paid a visit to this employment agency up the block from my house. I’ve never liked the guy who runs it, but as I said, times are desperate. So I walked in and signed up. They didn’t seem too hopeful when I asked about other bank jobs, but when they saw the security guard experience on my resume’ they perked up. As it turned out they had an overnight temp guard position they were having trouble filling. Needless to say I was hesitant to take what I believed was a step backward. Not to downtalk or discredit guardwork in any way, it just doesn’t fit the direction I’m trying to go in at the moment. You’d think being an overnight guard would afford me plenty of time to write, but the truth is I’ve always had a hard time writing while completely alone. For some reason it makes me uneasy, and I end up getting nothing done.
The point is, I didn’t want to take the gig, but a man’s gotta eat. My choice was helped by the rate they were paying, which was at the higher end of what guards usually make. Against my better judgment I accepted. They made a few phone calls, wrote down an address and sent me on my way. “It’s on the water,” is the only detail they gave. My old uniform was a bit snug but it still fit. I actually found that fact a little disappointing.
Around five o’clock I arrived at the address they’d written on the card, which it turned out was a boat launch to get over to an island, on which was the actual gig. I’ll call it Twain Island, since I’m pretty sure I’m not supposed to be talking about it in the first place, even though its actual name is one I’d never heard despite growing up close-by. After a confusing exchange with the older guy who ran the dock, he told me something which very nearly made me turn around and get back in my car.
“I need to see your phone,” he said. I was confused, but I took it out of my pocket and showed him. Then he said, “If that’s a camera, I need to take it.” I made a joke, something like, “What’s on that island, the Queen of England?” but he wasn’t amused. I argued with him for a minute but in the end I handed it over. Like I said, a man’s gotta eat. A few minutes later an even older guy came got me and took me onto the boat. Since it was only the two of us, and since I had no idea what I had gotten myself into, I tried to make some small-talk. The guy wasn’t very talkative, but as we approached the island he made the second sketchy comment of the day, this one in the form of a question.
“Have you ever been to one of these farms?” I told him I’d been to plenty of farms, to which he said, “Not like this one you haven’t.” I had no idea what he was talking about, but by then we were already pulling up to the dock that stuck out from the rocky shore. We docked. Before I could ask where I was supposed to go he was already pulling away. It seemed he didn’t want to stick around long. There was a building up the way’s a bit which looked like an old rec center. Given that I had nowhere else to go, I headed for the building. Halfway across the lawn was a sign which read, “[Twain] Island Forensic Anthropology Facility.” They were words I was familiar with seperately, but together lost their meaning. As I contemplated exactly what they meant, a young guy wearing a guard’s uniform came around the side of the building and waved me down.
“I heard the boat,” he said. He introduced himself as Eric and handed me a walkie-talkie. He explained that, other than a few computers with an internet connection, all communication on the island was done by old-school means. In case of emergency they even had a two-way radio set-up. I asked him why I wasn’t allowed to bring my cell and he said it was so no pictures ended up on the internet, which I’d heard from a friend who did guardwork at a high-end jewelry manufacturer, so it made some sense. It still didn’t tell me what the hell was going on out on that island.
I point-blank asked him. All he said was, “C’mon, I’ll show you.”
We walked not into but around the decent-sized building, past a second, smaller building and into the woods beyond. Eric said something about the island being the alleged site of buried pirate treasure, but to be honest I wasn’t paying much attention at that point. There was a strong smell in the air, pungent and sweet and downright awful which I found impossible to ignore. Eric noticed my face and said, “Ever smell a dead body before?” I shook my head no. He said, “You’ll never forget it now.”
At that point we came into a clearing in the woods where the foul odor really ramped up. I’ve always had a strong stomach, but even this was excessive. I felt a ball form at the back of my throat. There were two people, one male, one female, both roughly college-aged and wearing similar, gray coats standing over what looked like long, low cages made of chicken wire. As we walked closer I could see dark forms in the cages like piles of trash. The girl looked over at us and nodded politely but the guy didn’t bother. She was pretty and he looked like a bug. It wasn’t until we were right on top of the cages that I realized what they held.
The first body I saw, in fact have ever seen, was a woman’s. Her skin was impossibly waxy with large patches of discoloration, as if the wax had been burned. She looked like someone had sprinkled rice across her, like a new bride. Unfortunately, it wasn’t rice. The maggots crawled on her legs and pooled in the crevices of her neck. Her surprisingly white teeth grinned up at me, exposed, and her belly was inflated like a birthday balloon. My mouth watered from the rising feel of vomit but I managed to keep it in check. It helped to not look at her creeping skin.
He introduced the two as Bernard and Terri, interns from the [name removed] Institute, and said there were two more wandering around somewhere, as well as the man in charge, a scientist by the name of Doctor Christianson. Terri could see I was bothered, so she was nice enough to finally explain what was going on. “We study human decomposition,” she said. The goal was to better understand the process in order to help, among other things, police determine more accurate times of death in a variety of settings.
I looked at the five or six other cages, which she explained were to keep birds away, and asked how many there were on the island. “It varies,” she said, “but it usually hovers somewhere around fifty.”
Fifty dead bodies. One island. No boats.
They said some see-you-laters and then Eric led me around the rest of the island, first to point out some of the other body sites- more corpses, some caged, some not- and then to perform a perimeter around the shore. He said I’d have to do at least two such rounds during my shift, which I was already thinking about skipping. It took about forty-five minutes for us to circle back around to the dock, which I noticed was the only way onto or off of the island short of risking the waves crashing onto the sharp rocks and the ring of slimy garbage. By then the sun was starting to set. Then he took me inside the main research building which as I’d guessed had been converted from a sports center dating back some fifty years. We took a quick look around at the operation and I saw the back of someone’s head inside one of the rooms, but other than that not much registered. I think by that time my head was spinning too fast for anymore information to get in.
We left the main building and went to the second building which served as the guard’s office. Eric pointed out the bathroom, the lockers, the eating area with stocked fridge, the flashlights, the desk with the two-way radio, which he showed me how to use, though by then he was eyeing his watch. He gave me a grin and asked if I was all set. I shrugged, which was the most sincere answer I could give.
“I’ll be honest,” he told me, “most guys don’t last long here. Especially the night shifters.”
“Thanks.”
“If you take out the mental part it’s the easiest job in the world. But that mental part…” His voice trailed off, and I knew exactly what he meant. What could be easier than making sure a bunch of stiffs stayed dead? And yet with the sun going down I was filled completely with dread, the kind where you want to run and scream in no particular direction. Before I could articulate the thought, the sound of a docking boat rose up, and with a nod and a few more last-minute instructions about filling out the log book, he was gone.
“Next boat’s at three a.m.,” he shouted from across the lawn, which seemed like a pretty important detail to be leaving for the last second. Ahead of him were the two interns I’d met, Bernard and Terri, along with two others. Terri waved and I waved back, pretending to be unphased. On the boat already, aside from the old man operating it, was a man whose face I couldn’t make out from a distance other than a beard. I assumed it was Doctor Christianson, though I had no way of knowing for sure.
After the boat chugged away and made a line for land, I looked around at the dimming island, inhabited by me and fifty rotting corpses, give or take, with the wind kicking up off the ocean, and wondered how I’d ended up that way. Just a month earlier I’d been sitting comfortably behind a desk in a warm bank. It was incredible how quickly life could shift beneath your feet.
I retreated back inside the guard’s office and immediately decided to stay in it until the boat came to get me at three. I locked the door. Screw the promises, screw the temp agency, screw the Twain Island Forensic Anthropology Facility, I wasn’t about to go stumbling around in the dark on an island full of dead people, caged or otherwise. There was no way anyone would know one way or the other whether I’d done my rounds or not, and I had a hard time believing that anyone would want to get onto the island, let alone be able to pull up to the dock and get past me without being heard.
To pass the time I had the internet, thankfully, and that got me past the first few mindless hours. Before I knew it the clock over the door read twenty past nine o’clock. Outside it was pitch black, while inside it was way too quiet, so I pulled up some music videos and let them play in the background, a huge playlist of classic rock songs, as I opened a text file and thought of some story ideas I’d like to explore. Not surprisingly, most of them had to do with zombies coming to life and attacking the living. Nothing really stuck, though, and I began to have that familiar uneasy feeling that comes whenever I try to write alone. After a few minutes I stopped trying to fight it. I closed the file and then my eyes.
I’m not sure how long I was asleep. What I do know is what woke me up. With my eyes still closed I started to become aware of a sound under the music, the playlist still coming out of the computer’s speaker, which was faint but getting louder. It was far off in the island, but I could make it out as clear as anything.
And I know it sounds crazy. I really know it does. But it was a woman crying.
When I realized this, my eyes shot open. I jumped out of the chair, grabbed my walkie-talkie and flashlight and ran out of the office, turning on the flashlight as I came around the building. I stopped for a second and shone the light into the forest, catching nothing but the trunks and leaves. For a second I wondered if I’d actually heard the cries or if I’d been half in a dream, the way light sleep messes with you, but then I heard a shout, definitely a woman’s pitch, and I bolted into the woods. All I could think was some idiot had found their way onto the island, maybe even a group of idiots, thrill-seeking kids, and hurt themselves on my watch. I would have to carefully forge the log book to cover my ass on this one.
That already familiar stench came to my nose as I came into the first clearing. My flashlight picked up the metal of the cages. I stopped running. I remembered myself, where I was and why I had locked myself in the office. Those cages, just sitting there in the dark. Corpses staring up. Maggots and flies. The cries had stopped, which had me thinking either I was being pranked or much worse: I was too late to help whoever it had been.
I did what I swore I wouldn’t, which was the job they’d hired me to do. With a major amount of hesitation I did my rounds. Either I would find the woman, I figured, or I could honestly tell the Doctor that I’d secured the island when they found a body in the morning. Another body, that is. A new one. As I walked the edge of the island I formed a joke in my head about how they could leave the dead woman where they found her and just add her to the guest list. The joke always ended with me saying, “You’re welcome.”
I’ll be honest, I didn’t do a full perimeter, but I did do most of one. Other than half of a hollowed out horseshoe crab I didn’t find anything, so I cut back toward the first clearing where I’d sworn the woman’s cries had came from. I walked slowly in case I came across any more body sites, especially the uncaged kind, which I didn’t want to stumble over in the dark despite the little yellow flags that marked them. The smell would probably warn me first, except for the really long-gone ones, the piles of bones which still stunk but not nearly as much. Needless to say, I was relieved when I reached the clearing.
The beam of my flashlight caught the top of the cages as I walked between them, using them as a guide back to the office without really focusing on them. For some reason I still don’t understand, maybe because my eyes picked up something different in the dark, or maybe I felt a change in the air, I shone the light into the last cage, the first I’d seen a few hours earlier, where the bloated woman had grinned up at me.
My feet stopped. So did my heart. What my flashlight saw, what I saw, changed me forever. And I know it sounds crazy. I really know it does. But the cage was empty.
I got in closer to get a better look, because there was no way what I was seeing was real, but I was horrified to find it was. The body was gone, the only thing left of it a long patch of dead grass, a puddle of half-dried fluids, and strips of what looked like leather but I knew wasn’t leather. The cage around it was left exactly where I’d seen it. Only the body had disappeared.
As I stared down at the empty cage, my walkie-talkie crackled in my pocket. It made me jump a bit, the sudden noise in the night, and I fished it out of my pocket where I’d forgotten I put it during the perimeter sweep. But if the first sound made me jump, the second made my skin crawl worse than one of the corpses behind me.
A woman was whispering on the other end. I turned the volume up and pressed the speaker to my ear to hear better. The words were too low to make out, only the distinctly female tone, the same as the one who had called out from somewhere in the woods. Nervous, I brought the walkie-talkie to my mouth and pressed the button on the side.
“Hello? Who’s there?” I tried to sound like I was in charge but it wasn’t convincing. I let go of the button and brought the speaker back to my ear, straining to hear the whispers.
A laugh. A woman’s laugh, high-pitched and delirious, came through the speaker.
Instinct took over and I ran. I ran away from the cages and out of the clearing, into the woods and out of them again until I was running between the two buildings and back into the office, slammed the door shut and locked it. My pulse throbbed in my neck and I tried to catch myself with my hands on the desk, taking great, big breaths of air in.
Breaths of air. Stale air. Not just stale, but wretched. Sickly sweet and pungent, the smell of those bodies had somehow moved into the guard’s office, even though none of the sites were anywhere near it, even with a strong wind to push the air around the island.
It was then, as I pushed myself up off the desk, that I thought again of the missing body. The woman’s body. The woman’s voice on the radio, the whispers and the laugh. It was then that I realized not just the air had gotten into the building.
I looked at my hand- a smudge of something black was on my palm. There was a matching one on the table.
Part 2
They asked me to go back.
It was three days ago I was picked up tired and hungry on that dock. The captain had found me with a dying flashlight in one hand and a turned-off radio in the other. This time I was the one who didn’t say much, I just got out of the boat, drove home in a daze and fell asleep in my bed. I spent a lot of the time since thinking about what I’d experienced on Twain Island, the rest of it applying to jobs who didn’t call back. I went back and read what I wrote. It sounds almost ridiculous now, like the ravings of a wild man, especially happening so soon after I woke up. The more I thought about it, the less real it seemed.
As I was applying for other guard jobs, the guy who runs the temp agency called me to tell me the Forensic Anthropology Facility had contacted them to ask about hiring me again. With no hesitation I told him I had no interest in going back to that island. While I was at it, I thanked him for not warning me about the nature of their research. He swore to me he didn’t know- I didn’t believe him- and told me before I made up my mind that they were willing to raise their rate by almost thirty percent. “I think they’re tired of giving the free tour, if you know what I mean,” he said.
It’s hard to argue with that kind of money when you’re unemployed. There was still the whole matter of the disappearing body, and the creepy laughter, and the traces of death in the guard’s office, which were three very good reasons to never go back. I couldn’t exactly ask him about all that without sounding insane, so I asked him the next best thing. “Did they have any complaints about the last time,” I asked. The way I figured, if a body got up and walked away on my watch, they might think I had something to do with it.
“If they had any complaints,” he said, “I doubt we’d be talking right now.”
He was right, of course. The whole thing was feeling more and more like something I’d dreamed up. About an hour earlier I had checked my bank account, which was getting grim, and now here I was saying no to a cushy paycheck. I thought of Eric’s advice, how it was the easiest job in the world so long as you could manage the mental bit. Then I thought of my dad who worked in high-rise construction for thirty years, and once drove himself back to a job site after having his thumb sewn back on so he could finish out the day.
God help me, I went.
A thought occurred to me as the boat captain drove me over to the island: what if the body actually had gone missing and they were luring me back to question me about it, or even catch me in the act of doing it again? What if they’d gone to the cops but didn’t have enough evidence to accuse me? My stomach sank, and I looked over at the old guy at the wheel. He looked back at me with a funny look in his eye. Maybe it was something. Maybe it was nothing. It was too late to turn around now.
When I got to the island it was still bright out, which helped get me off the dock and onto land, and I was interested to notice that no one had come to greet me when I arrived. I took it as a good sign and went to track down Eric. It didn’t take long- he was at the computer in the guard’s office.
“I didn’t think I’d see you around here again,” he said with a laugh. Apparently the boat captain told everyone how ready I was to leave when he pulled up the other day. It was a little embarrassing, but to be fair no one had prepared me for the kind of shit I’d shown up for. Eric found it hilarious but I could tell he understood where I was coming from. While we were on the subject, I asked him if he had ever heard anything weird on the island, especially on the night shift. He asked me what kind of weird. “I don’t know. Stuff moving. Voices.”
He got a soda from the fridge. “Uh oh. Don’t tell me you’re the superstitious type. That doesn’t really fly here.” As he chugged the soda down I assured him I was a rational person, but he seemed skeptical. According to him, despite Twain Island being an island there were still plenty of animals that lived there. Some swam over, others came over on boats or floating garbage. “We’ve asked Doctor Christianson about animal control but he says it would ruin the balance of nature, which is important for their data or whatever. I think he just doesn’t want to pay for it out of his grant money.”
It wasn’t the first time I got the vibe no one liked the doctor. After I finished catching up with Eric he threw away his empty can and announced he was going to complete his final rounds before it was time to go home. I think he expected me to hang out in the office, like he would if he could, so it surprised him when I headed out in the opposite direction. I wanted to reacquaint myself with the island and the interns. Based on the look he gave me, he definitely thought I was a crazy person.
The real reason for my walk was even crazier than he suspected.
No one was working in the main clearing, so I used the privacy to check the cage where the body had disappeared, or where I’d convinced myself it had, at this point I didn’t know what to think. It had been an uneventful return so far and I doubted I would get such a mild reception if they suspected me of something as gross as grave robbing. So as you can imagine, I was especially confused when I found the woman inside the cage. There like she never left. She was less an inflated bag of maggots by now, more skin and bones than the last time I’d seen her. Her rotting body was oddly comforting.
When I turned away from her, Bernard the intern was standing at the other side of the clearing with a clipboard in one hand and a ruler in the other, checking on one of the other bodies. I don’t know how long he’d been there but when I turned to leave he threw me a look too nasty to ignore. Instead of heading back to the office as planned I went his way and struck up a conversation. Something pointless about the weather which he stayed quiet through. When I was done with my bit, he not-so-subtly changed the subject.
He asked me what my interest was in the female specimen, and the way he asked it I understood what he was implying, which by the way is disgusting. I didn’t know how to answer him without sounding insane, so I told him I’d heard some sounds out this way the last time, but when I came to inspect the site there was nobody there. But what he said next made my legs go cold.
“Did you move her?”
It took me a second. I said no, no, I definitely didn’t, and would have no reason to, and I asked him why he would ask something like that. He didn’t want to say at first, but after I asked a few times he told me the photos hadn’t matched up from one day to the next. Specifically the position of the body.
I asked him if it was possibly animals, the ones Eric told me lived on the island, the garbage-riders. Like I was a child who’d asked a dumb question in class, he tapped the cage next to him with his foot and looked at me to say, “that’s what these are for.” “What about gases,” I asked, all those things that happen when we decompose, couldn’t that move a body? With no lack of attitude he assured me he knew which movements were natural and which ones weren’t. “She was definitely moved. If it was you, you’re better off coming clean.” I could see he wasn’t going to bend on this, so I told him it wasn’t me, and if he didn’t believe me it wasn’t my problem, and I went back to the guard’s office. But I’d be lying if I said our conversation didn’t weigh on me for a long time after that.
By the time Eric got back from his final rounds I was in a dark place. My thoughts were spiralling down and I was angry at myself for coming back to the island. I was giving strong thought to quitting and hitching a ride back on the late boat, and Eric could probably tell, since he was acting especially light and jokey, trying to improve the mood in the guard’s office. I suspected it was less for me and more for himself, which he proved when he casually dropped that he had some big plans for the night, which would have been ruined if I hadn’t shown up.
At that point Terri popped her head in for a few minutes to say hi and ask Eric a question about the alarm system in the main research building. Before she left she told me it was good to see me again. After she was gone Eric chuckled and said how obvious it was that Terri was into me. I told him that was bullshit. “Why do you think they asked you back,” he asked.
“You were tired of giving the free tour,” I quoted.
“There’s other guys they could have asked. And she brought your name up like five times in the past three days. Said you have ‘kind eyes.’ Who else were they gonna bring back?”
I didn’t put much faith in what Eric said, but it beat thinking about other things. It didn’t hurt that Terri was pretty cute- in a weird, works-with-dead-bodies way. The thought of asking her out distracted me for a while. Soon enough I was alone. The boat came and left and like an idiot I didn’t get on it.
I spent the first hour like the first night, on the internet, visiting the usual time-wasters, but after a while I started to think about what Bernard had said. To be honest, it pissed me off. This guy, this bug-looking prick, doesn’t even know me, wasn’t even there that night, yet he thinks he can throw around disgusting accusations. Pretty soon I wasn’t paying attention to the screen- I was thinking about cornering Bernard in one of the more private areas of the woods and giving him something real to accuse me of. I’m not an outwardly violent guy, but that doesn’t mean I’m incapable of it.
Something by the door caught my attention. Movement. I turned in time to catch a spot of darkness moving past the window, and for the second time that day my legs went cold.
The shadow was in the vague shape of a person. I’d like to say that I jumped out of my chair, flung the door open and jumped on the intruder like a damn security guard, but the truth is I stayed as still as I could. I listened to the grass rustle and I didn’t move a muscle until the sound was gone. A minute later I stood at the open door, shining my flashlight into the dark. And even though I didn’t want to, even though I hated to admit it, I found myself surrounded by the very familiar, very strong smell of rotting corpse.
My first instinct- and it would be yours, too- was to step back inside and lock the door, radio the police and shut myself in a broom closet until help arrived. But I also knew that dead bodies don’t get up and walk around, that those things don’t happen except in movies. I pictured my dad and what he would do in this situation if he was still alive. He would find whoever was screwing with him and jam his reattached thumb into their eye. My undetached one would have to do.
Due to an overcast night the woods were already black. The way the flashlight’s beam pierced the night reminded me of footage of deep-sea divers. I moved quietly between the trees and toward the main clearing and strained to hear even the slightest sound of footsteps or movement in the woods ahead of or around me, but other than the wind and the ocean I couldn’t hear a thing. What made me happiest, though, was finding the woman’s body in its cage where it belonged- even now that sounds like an unbelievable thing to find relief in- and after a quick check I discovered all of her roommates were in their respective cages, too, at least in this site. Taking courage from that I decided to finally do some proper rounds. There was a mystery on that island, something the employees weren’t telling me, and it was time I figured it out.
I moved into the woods at a sharp angle, aiming to reach the shore at a particular spot I’d seen with Eric the other day, a point at the island’s heighest where he said you could see a small cave opening at low tide. The point itself didn’t matter so long as I had a target, though something about the overcast night got me confused, not being able to use the moon or stars as reference, and after a couple of minutes I found myself turned around. As it turns out, the island is larger than I’d thought at first, and it’s very possible to get lost on it. I tried to correct my path using the sound of the ocean- just keep heading toward the waves- but after a minute I came into a clearing and was surprised to find it was the one I had left a few minutes earlier.
If I were a smarter man I would have said screw it and returned to the office, but my decision to find answers had made me too stubborn to take the easy way out. Instead I turned around and headed once again for the same spot on the shore. This time I made an even sharper angle. There was no way I was going to end up back in that clearing.
The good news is, I didn’t. The bad news is I became completely disoriented by the night and the tree after tree after identical tree, and it wasn’t long before I couldn’t even tell which way the ocean was, the sound of waves coming through from all directions. Twice I came across body cages but I didn’t stop long enough to get a look at them. It was bad enough putting my back to them in the dark. Thinking about their dead eyes on me put some speed in my step. If you’ve ever been lost, you know the feeling of frustration and hopelessness it brings, how you kick yourself for being so stupid. You blame yourself for every mistake you’ve ever made. Whether or not you believe in God, you start making pacts and promises. “If you just get me out of this I promise to be a better person,” even though you fully intend to forget everything you said the moment you’re found again. Bottle up that feeling and let it loose on an island of cadavers, and you’ll start to understand what went through my head in those woods.
When I got really desperate, I started to notice the smell of rotting meat.
With the breeze blowing so erratically through the trees I couldn’t get a bearing on which direction the stink came from. Whether it was following me or I was following it wasn’t clear. Only one thing was: it was getting stronger. I didn’t know if I should walk slower to keep from stepping in something or run away from someone pursuing me. As much as I wanted to check the trees, my flashlight stayed trained on the ground, and thank God it did. Out of nowhere I came across a body, a pair of purple feet sticking up from a patch of green ivy. It wasn’t even marked with a flag, which I thought was extremely dangerous, and if it had been, the flag had fallen and disappeared under the thick vines. The body was muscular, definitely a man, and as I got closer I saw it was missing its head and one of its arms. Flies buzzed on its freshly ruptured skin. Their whining voices got under my own skin, into my eardrums, and nausea bubbled up in my stomach, the taste of acid at the back of my throat.
I threw up behind a tree. Doubled over, wiping my mouth clean, a stick snapped somewhere in the woods under weight, as if someone had stepped on it. I straightened up and aimed my flashlight toward the sound of appr |
I am one of the biggest streamers on Twitch. I play games spanning all genres, and my streams consistently get over 20,000 viewers. I love what I do. It has taken me many years to get to where I am today, and not a day goes by that I wish I was doing something else.
That is until the horrifying events of last Friday happened, which have shaken me to my very core and left me wondering if I will ever stream again.
The stream started normally. I powered on my face cam, loaded up my Twitch interface, and then went live. My viewer count immediately jumped to 2,500, and within a few minutes was at 10,000. Although this has been the norm for at least two years, watching that viewer count rise so quickly still makes my heart race inside my chest. It makes me remember all of the streams that I did back in the day: when five viewers meant that my stream was popping off, and receiving even a tiny donation sent my head spinning through the clouds.
I greeted my chat, and then made a big announcement: for today’s stream, I was not only going to play the games of their choice, but I was going to play them with randomly chosen subscribers. I wanted to do something special for my sixth-anniversary stream, and the positive response was immediate. The chat board started filling up so quickly with comments and emotes that they flew across my computer monitor faster than my eye could register.
The event began successfully. I played a few matches of Overwatch with a guy who happened to be around my age (and who was hilarious) and then Dead by Daylight with a girl who had just finished high school. My stream quickly rose to 50,000 viewers, and might’ve even reached 100,000 had things not turned out the way they did.
As it stands, the stream took a frightening turn while I was playing with the third subscriber of the day—a seven-year-old kid named Tanner.
“Hello Dee!” he said after joining my discord server, opting to call me by my nickname instead of my streamer name.
“Hey buddy,” I said.
I could immediately tell by the sound of Tanner’s voice that he wasn’t any older than ten. For this reason, my initial thought was to discreetly find a way to dump him and then pick a different subscriber to play with. It’s not that I have anything against kids. I just felt uncomfortable streaming with somebody so young. I didn’t want to do or say something that might upset him, and I also wasn’t sure how my chat was going to respond. I have a zero tolerance policy for bullying or negativity during my streams, and the last thing I wanted to do was exploit this kid for my own personal gain.
When I turned my head to read the chat room though, the comments were nothing but positive:
He sounds so cute!
Come on Dee! Play with him!!
I wonder what game he’s going to choose?
These comments and several dozen similar ones flooded my monitor within seconds of Tanner’s voice ringing in my headset, so I knew that I had to play with him. If I backed out, then there would be an uproar.
I wish now that I had listened to my gut feeling and dumped him rather than put myself (and my chat) through what happened later. Looking back though, joining my discord server might’ve been the best thing that Tanner could’ve done that evening—for it increased his chances of making it through the night.
“Welcome to the stream,” I continued. “Do you know what game you want to play?”
“Minecraft!”
He gave the answer that everybody in the chat had predicted, which spent them spiraling into awwwws and silly emotes.
There was an innocence to Tanner’s voice that made me like him immediately. I could tell that he was the quintessential kid: fun-loving, excitable, and quick to laugh.
“Minecraft it is then,” I said. “Let’s boot her up.”
“Okay.”
We were silent as we launched the game. I knew that as a professional I should be making small talk with him, but I just wasn’t sure how to go about bantering with such a little kid. I don’t have any younger siblings or cousins, and my wife and I haven’t reached the point where we’ve decided to have kids of our own yet.
Luckily Tanner solved this problem for me.
“Should we play in my world or yours?” he said.
“Let’s play in yours. I think everybody would love to see what you’ve built.”
“Alright.”
He sent me an invite. I accepted it, and then spawned into his world.
“Come and find me so I can give you a tour of my—”
His voice was interrupted by the sound of shattering glass, which boomed through his headset so loudly I had to lower my volume. Based on the explosiveness of the sound, I figured that its source was close to his computer.
“Is everything alright?” I said.
“Something just broke in the living room,” he said. “Let me check.” I heard the muffled sound of him taking off his headset, and then heard him quickly pick it back up and place it on his head less than a minute later. “Dee,” he continued, voice a frightened whisper. “There is a strange man inside my house, and he just went into my parent’s room.”
* * * * * *
The stress in Tanner’s voice convinced me that he wasn’t lying. I could practically hear the tears forming in the back of his eyes, and would’ve tried to comfort him if the phrases “strange man” and “parent’s room” weren’t ringing inside my mind so loudly they were threatening to block out all reason. I felt like somebody had laced the Dr. Pepper bottle resting beside my mouse pad with acid; I was experiencing a bad trip, and this stream gone wrong was my own personal hell.
It was the realization that I was still maneuvering my character in Minecraft that finally snapped me back to reality. Here a child was in the middle of experiencing a life-threatening event live on my stream, and there I was mining a tree for its logs with my bare fists as “Subwoofer Lullaby” pulsed gently through my headset. The shame I felt at my selfishness, and forever caring so much about view counts and the fickle comments of my chat, still lines my throat to this day.
I closed down Minecraft, yanked my hand away from the mouse, and then placed my focus solely on the microphone and the sound of Tanner’s voice. Everything else that I normally cared about while streaming I buried under my desire to help this innocent kid, who probably fell asleep every night watching my YouTube videos on his IPad.
Doing my part to save his life was all that mattered.
“Tanner,” I said. “You need to call the police immediately. Are you by a phone?”
Luckily my voice came out steady. I was afraid that it would come out shaky given the adrenaline pumping through my body like a drug. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the comments of my chat room whizzing across my monitor like a broken slot machine. I did my best to ignore them.
“My phone is in the living room,” he said, voice just above a whisper. I could tell that he was only moments away from crying.
“Don’t worry buddy. I will call the police for you. Is there any place that you can hide? Where inside the house are you? Are you in your room?”
“Yes. I am in my room.” His tears had started falling full force, making his voice nasally.
The distant scream of a woman erupted in my headset. The scream sounded painful, and guttural, as if whoever was making it was having their vocal cords torn out one thread at a time.
For one of the only times that night, the chat became completely still.
“You need to hide now, Tanner. Is your headset wireless?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. Take it with you and crawl under your bed.”
For the next few moments, all I could hear were sniffles and the rustling sound of Tanner sliding under his bed.
“I’m here.”
“Are you safe?”
“Yes.”
“Ok good. Stay put—I am going to call the police. But first I need you to tell me where you live.”
Luckily he knew his exact address, and I wrote it down using the pencil and paper I always keep in front of my monitor as soon as the words left his mouth.
“Good job buddy. You are doing great. Hang on for a second while I call the police, alright? Don’t take off your headset.”
“Don’t leave me all alone Dee.”
His voice was laced with so much feeling as he said this that for a moment I felt tempted to ignore the police and stay right there in the discord server with him. This feeling quickly passed though as another scream, this time from a male, exploded through my headset and sent the hairs on the back of my arms shooting into the air.
“I’m not going anywhere. I promise. This will just take a moment. Stay where you are.”
I quickly looked up the number for the police station in his city—which was in another state, so I couldn’t just dial 911—on my computer, and then pulled out my phone and gave them a call.
“Police department, please state your emergency,” said a woman’s voice in my ear.
I told her the situation in as few words as possible.
She paused for a moment before speaking, presumably looking at whatever resources were in front of her. “Our closest officer is thirty minutes away,” she finally said. “He will be there as quickly as he can.”
“Thirty minutes?!”
It was then that I realized how truly secluded Tanner’s house was from the rest of the city. From my initial scan of Google Maps—I had typed in his address on a fresh tab while I had explained the situation to the dispatcher—I could see how rural his neighborhood was. I doubted that it had a local Walmart, much less a regular police presence. The closest house was probably ten acres away, and the next one, miles.
“Yes,” said the dispatcher. “You heard me correctly. Is Tanner still on the line, er chat with you?” A rare slip-up, and understandable given the unlikelihood of the situation. I had heard of other streamers getting swatted before, but this made even that dangerous prank look like child’s play in comparison.
“Yes, he is.”
“Good. Is he still safe?”
“He should be. I told him to stay under his bed.”
“Tell him that a police officer is on his way, and that he needs to stay hidden until he arrives.”
I put my headset back on and relayed Tanner her message. He responded with a tear-clogged “ok,” and then I lifted my phone back to my ear.
“I told him.”
“Thank you. From here on out I want you to stay in the chat with him. Put me on speaker phone so that I can hear what you are staying, and so that I can advise you should any new developments occur.”
The moment the words speaker phone left her mouth I cursed myself in my mind. Why hadn’t I thought of that? Here I was surrounded by thousands of dollars’ worth of gaming equipment, and I was too stupid to think of utilizing a technology that even my eighty-year-old grandfather could use.
I hit the speaker button, placed my phone in front of my keyboard, and then nuzzled my headset back over my ears.
The sound of Tanner’s shallow breathing greeted my flesh. He sounded like a small and wounded animal, caught in the middle of a railroad track as a freight train came hurtling towards his head.
“Hang tight buddy. A police officer is coming as quickly as he can. You are doing great.”
“Thank you, Dee. I always knew that we would be friends.”
Before I could respond to such a touching remark, a scream so guttural ripped through the headset that I nearly reared back in my chair.
“Are you ok?” I said, trying to keep my stomach acid from rising into my chest.
“They are in the living room now,” he said, voice almost a sob. “I think he’s killing them.”
Several more screams burst through the chat.
“He’s killing them!”
“Keep your voice down Tanner! Or he will hear you.”
My command was greeted by whispered sobs.
I imagined Tanner’s voice shrieking in my ears as he met the same fate as his parents, and sped along the officer’s patrol car in my mind.
Another volley of screams berated my headset, flooding my ears with a twisted crescendo of guttural yells. These screams seemed to go on for an eternity, and then my headset went silent.
Several agonizing minutes later the dispatcher’s voice sounded through the phone on my desk, telling me that the officer had just arrived at the front of the house. This news came much earlier than the initial estimate of thirty minutes, and filled my body with joy.
“Keep hiding, Tanner,” I said. “That police officer I told you about just pulled into your driveway. He is there to help you.”
“Okay, Dee.”
A few moments later the sound of gunshots burst through the headset, followed by another round of screams.
Terror gripped my lungs at the sound. Coming in guns blazing like that I’m sure hadn’t been the officer’s plan; something must have happened. My guess was that he had been ambushed, and I desperately hoped that he had been the one to come out on top.
“What are you hearing now Tanner?” I said.
He was silent for a few moments, and then said something so horrifying that it has haunted me to this day, and will continue to do so until I am old and gray.
“The man just said dumb f-word cops. Their heads don’t come off like they used to.”
* * * * * *
I slumped back in my chair, blood draining from my face like water down a drain. I’m sure if I would have looked up at my monitor I would have saw a ghost staring back at me. My already sky-high stress levels went plummeting into the stratosphere, and I couldn’t tell up from down.
“Their heads don’t come off like they used to.”
“Dumb f-word cops.”
The sound of Tanner’s hoarse and innocent voice projecting the words of such a sadistic man will echo for an eternity in the darkest chambers of my mind.
So horrified was I by the thought of what had happened to that poor police officer tears nearly filled my eyes. Now wasn’t the time to let my emotions get the better of me though. Given that there weren’t any other cops in the immediate area, I knew that I was the best-positioned person to help Tanner escape this situation alive, and (as much as it frightened me to think about) in one piece.
“Just sit tight Tanner,” I said, voice almost as hoarse as his. “I’m going to find a way to get you out of this. I promise.”
“I trust you,” said Tanner. He had stopped crying long ago. I could tell that he had fallen into survival mode, and respected him all the more for it. Although he wasn’t my kid, and I had only known him for such a brief time, my newfound responsibility towards him made me feel as if he had been born into my arms.
“Hang on for one second. I need to talk to the woman on the phone again, ok?”
“Ok.”
I took off my headset and leaned in closer to my phone. “Are you still there?”
“I am.”
“The officer you sent is dead.”
“Are you sure? How do you know?”
“Tanner heard him get…beheaded.” I knew of no other way to say it. “He can hear the man who killed him talking to himself about it in the living room.”
“Jesus Christ.”
Hearing this brief comment from the dispatcher filled me with almost as much dread as the thought of hearing Tanner’s last breath billowing through my headset—for it was the moment that I realized just how much of a dangerous turn the situation had taken. If a professional police dispatcher, who dealt with emergencies daily, was shocked enough to make such an out of character comment, then something truly extraordinary was taking place.
“I have a swat team on the way, but it will take them at least thirty-five minutes to get there. And this time when I say thirty-five minutes, I mean it. We were lucky that officer Brunswick was able to arrive at the scene so quickly. The swat team is traveling from town, which is a lot slower going.”
I pictured officer Brunswick’s body laying in the middle of Tanner’s living room, bloody and headless, and thought that he was anything but lucky.
“What do we do then? He doesn’t have that much time.”
“You need to tell Tanner to flee the house the moment he has the chance. His house is in a densely wooded area; he can take refuge in the trees until the swat team arrives. Ask him if he has any windows in his room.”
“Okay. Good idea.”
I grabbed my headset from its place on my desk and then threw it back over my ears.
“You still with me, Tanner?”
“Yes, sir.”
The way he sometimes called me sir was so endearing that it only made me like him (and fear for him) even more.
“You need to run out of your house the moment you get the chance and hide in the woods until more policemen get there. I know it’s scary, but you have to trust me. Are there any windows in your room?”
“No.”
Tanner’s answer made me place my head in my hands. What kind of room didn’t have any windows?
“I don’t think I understand. You said that you are in your room, right?”
“Yes. But my room is in the basement.”
Of course, it was.
At this point, I couldn’t see any variations of this situation that ended with Tanner leaving the house alive. He might as well have been stranded on the moon for all the good anybody could do for him down there. The thought that he might get pulled out from under his bed at any moment, screaming bloody murder, before the sadist slashed him to pieces burdened my every breath.
Before I had a chance to consult with the dispatcher about this new development, Tanner’s whispering voice once again greeted my ears.
“He’s looking for me, Dee. I can hear him walking around upstairs. He keeps saying that he is going to find and kill whoever is hiding from him.”
My heart just about leaped through my chest.
Once I took a breath and thought about it though, it made sense that the intruder now knew that there was somebody else inside the house—for why else would a police officer arrive at the scene, gun drawn, unless somebody had reported him?
“Everything is going to be fine. Just stay where you are. More help is on the way.”
“You don’t understand. He is coming down the hall towards the basement. I can hear his footsteps getting closer.”
Tanner’s voice started speeding up.
“I have to do something Dee. I can’t stay under my bed. He will find me too easily.” I heard the sound of thumping footsteps approaching through my headset. “Oh my god—he’s at the top of the stairs. He’s—”
I heard the rustling sound of clothes sliding across the carpet.
“Tanner!” I shrieked. “Tanner!”
The cacophony of a body tumbling to the ground razed my eardrums. I heard the sound of a knife splitting flesh, and then a scream so guttural it made all of the previous screams I had heard that night seem like laughter.
I nearly passed out in my chair. I felt like my heart was being torn from my sternum. Had I really heard what I just thought I had heard? Had Tanner, that innocent little boy who had just wanted to play Minecraft with his favorite streamer, really just been massacred in his own bedroom? I couldn’t stomach the thought. This couldn’t be happening. The universe couldn’t be so cruel as to rob this innocent child of his beautiful life.
Just as I had given up hope that I would ever hear Tanner’s voice again, his voice rang out, loud and clear, through my headset.
“I got him, Dee,” he said. “I tripped him as he came down the stairs, and then merked him with his own knife—just like you would have done.”
I looked over at my monitor, and through the thousands of pepe hands and poggers I could see whirling across the chat at a nauseating pace, my eyes locked onto one word, which stood out among all of the emotes like a signpost glowing through the windows of a speeding car:
Justice.
* * * * * *
As proud as I am of Tanner for taking the situation into his owns hands, and ending the life of that miserable wretch, I am having difficulties finding myself again after such a traumatic experience. The memories of that stream haunt me daily, and plague my sleep with brutal nightmares.
It’s not the sadist that haunts me—although I think about him a lot too—but the prying, invisible, 50,000 pairs of eyes that were watching the events unfold in real time through my stream. They had loved every minute of it. It was the best stream that they had ever seen, and probably ever would.
It was this thought that caused me to have a realization: they would watch the same thing again if they were ever given the chance. If it happened in a different time, in a different place, and to a different kid, they would drop everything they were doing and glue themselves to their computer screens, as if they were watching an episode of Game of Thrones.
After my experience that night, I learned that human beings flock to violence just like junkies in desperate need of a fix. They search for it on the dark web, they buy it on discs, they read about it in books, and sometimes (if they are lucky enough) they even watch it unfold live on Twitch.
In this way, I learned that we are all like the sadist. We might not act on our violent impulses, but we revel in them nonetheless. We need the Tanners of the world to suffer—for without them, what else is there to entertain us?
That is why, my friends, the biggest stream of my life scarred me for life, and I will never stream again.
|
3/23/01
Due to the overwhelming number of requests I have received to tell about my discoveries and bizarre experiences in a cave not far from my home, I have created this web page. I will outline the events that happened to me during the past few months. Beginning with my journey into a familiar cave in December 2000 and ending… well, it hasn’t actually ended yet. I will use my caving journal as the text to tell about my recent experience. I will give them to you as I experienced them, in chronological order.
I have included photographs that were taken during my many trips into the cave. I have also created a few illustrations to help the reader get a better idea of what things looked like in the cave. All of the photos were taken by me, or one of the few people I went into the cave with.
I want to point out a few things before I tell about the events:
1- Most of the pictures were taken with a Kodak disposable-type camera. I took a better camera into the cave on one or two of the trips. Pictures on this site are all original photos and have not been messed with or enhanced, other than where noted. As a rule, I get my pictures put onto disc at the time of developing so I don’t have to scan them later. This ensures the best digital quality.
2- I will not reveal the names of the other people involved in this experience. If you know me well enough, you probably know them already.
3- I will NOT reveal the location of the cave to ANYONE for ANY REASON! So please don’t ask! I refuse to be held accountable for anyone’s life but my own. I will refer to the cave as Mystery Cave. That is NOT its real name.
If you think these events sound far-fetched, I agree. I would come to the same conclusion had I not experienced them.
I will try to finish the site as soon as possible. Check the date on the main page to see when I’ve made updates.
To protect myself from people who might want to copy this site, I include the following: All text on this and following pages are my own words and copyright 2001.
Ted
I will divide the text into two colors for the sake of clarity. The plain text is taken directly from my caving journal. The italicized text is my comment as I reflect on the experience. I will do my best to convey the thoughts and feelings I had during the entire event. I will not use the actual names of the other individuals involved. I will include the entire relevant text of my journal. Only small parts of the journal will I skip. This will only occur when the entry has nothing to do with the experience in the cave, such as eating dinner after a trip, getting fuel or snacks, irrelevant details, etc. (My journal is fairly thorough) I will merely summarize what I am cutting out of the actual entry.
In an effort to present this experience in as accurate light as possible I will type my journal as I wrote it: sans grammar check. Please overlook my errors. My additional comments will help to clarify the things I wrote in my journal.
Caving Journal 12/30/2000
B and I decided to get in one more caving trip before the New Year, so we set our sights on Mystery Cave. Not a spectacular cave, but since neither of us had been caving in awhile it would be nice to go to any cave. There was a bit of excitement to this trip. There was a small passage in the lower portion of the cave that I wanted to check out to see if it was possible to get past it. It had a small opening, but lots of air blowing out of it. Even though it is way too small to climb through, I had never even checked to see what was inside the passage. We got our gear loaded up and hit the road by 3:00 p.m. We got to the cave in great time, since B likes to drive fast. We anchored from the usual tree and began to rappel into the cave. I went down first and got my gear together while B came down.
I will refer to B many times. We have been caving together for many months now. He was injured in a caving accident a few years ago and was told he would never walk again. Through hard work and perseverance, he not only walks but can get around very well in caves. The trickier parts of a cave might slow him down a bit, but he can make it. He patiently works through an obstacle until he gets past it.
As for the reference to the small opening in the cave, there is a saying among cavers: “If it blows, it goes”. Meaning, if a passage has a good flow of air, it is probably worth investigating.
After we explored all of the usual passages we climbed down to check out the hole. The hole is located deep in the cave, near the lowest part of the cave. It is on the side of a cave wall, about three feet from the floor. To look inside the hole I had to kneel down to duck under an overhang of rock.
The original opening. I put my glove in the hole for size reference.
I used my backup mini-mag light and held it inside the hole to see what I could see. I was excited by what I saw. The wall around the hole was about 3-5 inches thick. It led into a tight passage. The passage opened up a bit just inside the hole. It continued back about 10–12 feet in a small crawl space. After that it seemed to really open up! Although how much we couldn’t tell. This could be a virgin passage. (Obviously, no one has passed through this route, but there could be a way into the passage from the other side.) To even get to the crawl space we would have to enlarge the opening. Currently, it is about the size of my fist. Once we get past the opening we would have a tight crawl back to where it opened up. It would take some work, but we thought we could do it. We sat down for a few minutes to rest and contemplate our plan of attack. While we sat there in the darkness we could hear the wind howling from the other side of the passage. It was a low, eerie noise. We could also hear a low rumble from time to time. No big deal, though. The cave is in the vicinity of a highway that has heavy trucks drive on it. We figured the rumble was the effect of the trucks resonating through the rocks.
We determined that our best plan would be to haul a cordless drill into the cave to drill into the rock. Then we could take a bullpin and a small sledgehammer and break up the rock. It seemed pretty straight-forward. We would widen the hole big enough to squeeze in and see what was on the other side. The efforts to haul all of the equipment down to the hole would be a pain, but we hoped it would be worth it. I named the passage Floyd’s Tomb, after Floyd Collins. It seemed to look like the tight spot where Floyd spent his last miserable days on earth.
A rough drawing of how the passage originally looked.
Floyd Collins was a caver back in the early 1900s. He got stuck in a tight crawl space and was unable to free himself. It is an amazing story that is detailed in a book called, “Trapped: The Story of Floyd Collins” (I think that was the title. I don’t recall the author). Calling our passage Floyd’s Tomb was not only a tribute to Floyd, but a commentary of the size of the passage.
Ha Ha! In retrospect, it is funny how simple I thought it was going to be. I figured a few hours work and we would be in. Had I known how long it was going to take I doubt I would have even begun the project. Had I known what I was going to experience in the cave I never would have returned.
We gathered up our gear and headed for the surface. Normally I couldn’t care less if I ever came back into this cave. There is nothing special about it. But now I was psyched about getting back and getting through. We hadn’t even left the cave and we were planning our return trip.
(The rest of the journal entry talked about the climb out of the cave, our dinner, and our trip back home.)
January 27–28, 2001
B and I were both excited to get back into the cave and get to work. I figured with about 4 hours work we could be in and see what was on the other side. We had arranged to borrow a DeWalt cordless drill to bring with us. We also had masonry bits to drill with, sledgehammers (two) to break up the rock, bullpins to insert into the drill holes, and a few other tools that we ended up not using. Getting the tools down to the work site proved to be a challenge. One of us would climb down the rope and stop at a ledge or good resting place, then the other person would lower the tools. We kept repeating this routine until we got to the bottom of the cave. Then we had to drag the tools to the hole. It took about an hour to finally get to work.
B took the first turn at the hole. After an hour of exhausting work, we could tell that we were not going to get through in one session. We kept trading off after we worked ourselves into a sweat. One would take a break and get some food and water while the other one went to work.
The routine went like this:
To begin work we had to get down on our knees and do our best to avoid smacking our heads on the ceiling. Working in this awkward position we would drill into the wall around the hole. That was difficult work. We really had to push on the drill, and it was still slow progress. Then we inserted the bullpin into the hole and hammered on it until the rock broke up. Then we would repeat the process. To give you an idea of how slow it went, the typical size rock that would break off was about fingernail size. If we broke off a large piece (about 1/3 the size of my palm) it was cause for celebration.
From time to time, for variety, we would just wail on a cold chisel with a 5-lb. sledge. It was slow progress. The problem with the sledge was that we couldn’t take a good swing because of the tight quarters.
Even though we spent many hours and several trips working on the hole we never did find a better technique for widening the hole. The drill/bullpin/hammer got the best results for our efforts. We came up with some crazy ideas for breaking up the rock. Everything from TNT (never seriously considered) to hauling a generator to the mouth of the cave and running an extension cord down to a jackhammer. We even thought about using liquid nitrogen to freeze the rock and make it more brittle!
After a couple hours of hard work, we realized what our limiting factor was going to be. It was about then that our first battery met an abrupt death. We had a second battery, so we swapped them out. The second battery lasted a little longer because we hammered and chiseled a little more often and a little longer each time. Finally, after about three more hours of drudgery, the second battery died and we called it a night. Whew! We could tell that we had done some work in the cave, but it was not much. For the first time since we got in the cave, we sat back both of us took a break. It was nice to check out the results of our hard work. Then we noticed the howling again. It seemed to be a little louder than the last time we were there. We just figured the wind was blowing a little stronger outside. What we could not figure out was the rumbling. It, too, seemed to be louder, and more frequent. This time we could not attribute the noise to trucks. The road that the trucks drove on was not very busy to begin with. At that time of night, it should be dead. Yet the rumbling continued. It seemed to be coming from deep within the passage. B said he would ask some veteran cavers what could be causing the noise.
We didn’t spend a long time admiring our work. We still had to haul the gear up and out of the cave. Actually, we left some of it in the cave. It was still difficult work. What made it worse was that we were both exhausted. Our original plan was to be done with this cave and hit a couple of other caves in the area the next day. Instead, we decided to crash at a nearby motel, charge up the drill batteries, and go back to Mystery Cave.
A photo of the opening after our first trip.
My journal goes on at length about the night after we left the cave: We got a room, dinner was excellent, I didn’t sleep good despite the fact I was exhausted, etc.
We both slept in so we got a late start back into the cave. The second day working on the cave went about the same as the first. We worked until both batteries were dead again. We were still not even close to getting through.
The howling and rumbling continued as the day before.
On Caving
Before I continue with the next journal entry I thought it might be helpful to the reader to explain a little bit about caving and about the atmosphere in the cave. As I re-read and think about my description of the cave I notice that much of the language I use in my caving journal, and the descriptions, or lack thereof, assume that the reader has a knowledge of caving and what it is like inside a cave. In other words, I write my journals for ME! I will take this time to give a more detailed description of the cave. I will tell about what it was like while we worked on the cave. And I will summarize our feelings up to this point.
The cave was “discovered” several decades ago when construction in the area unearthed its entrance. From that time to the present it has been visited by mostly locals in the area and avid cavers in the region. Beer cans can be found intermittently in the cave, mostly in the upper half. When the cave was first entered it was probably beautiful. Dust, graffiti, vandals, pigeons, and regular use have diminished its appeal. There are still places in the cave where small formations remain undisturbed, as a reminder of what the rest of the cave used to look like.
To enter the cave one must have a good length of rope, in order to rappel down into the rock. A nearby tree serves as a good anchor point. Once the rope is tied to the tree, about 20 feet away from a small cliff, it can be tossed over the edge of the cliff to a small ledge 15 feet below. Cavers can then descend the short distance to the entrance. Once inside the cave, artificial light must be used. My light source of choice is a battery operated, helmet mounted light, known as a T.A.G. light. Safe caving calls for at least two sources of backup lighting. For my backup lighting, I have a mini-mag light mounted to my helmet, and another helmet mounted light in my pack (which I always carry with me). I also have glow-sticks that I carry with me. These are not considered good sources of back-up light, by some, but they are good to use for taking lunch breaks. And they could be used to get out of a cave if the other sources fail.
After a short climb over large rocks, the caver comes to a large pit. The same rope is used to reach the bottom of the pit. The drop is only 50 feet or so, but it is not free-hanging. In other words, you can’t slide straight down the rope, which is preferable. You have to snake your way around sharp rocks as you descend. The ascent is made more difficult for the same reason. The pit varies in diameter from about 10 feet, to 3 or 4 in a few places. The walls are lined with a sharp, white rock called popcorn. Let me correct that: it used to be white, but is now covered with dust and dirt that was kicked down from above by years of caving. The popcorn makes it painful to brush against the side of the pit. My choice of clothing is Levi’s, T-shirt, gloves and knee pads. I usually leave the cave with few scrapes but at least I am comfortable while I climb around inside. The temperature is stable year-round. It feels cool in the summer, and warm in the winter. We have gone in on freezing days, and 10 feet into the cave it is warm enough that coats are not needed. It is a good temperature to work in, as we learned.
For this size drop, I usually use a “figure-8” descending device. For the climb up I attach myself to the rope using a Petzl ascender, but I climb up on my own without using the device. It is there merely as a safety attachment, in case I slip. Other cavers have their own methods of getting down and up. At the bottom of the drop, the caver gets to do some crawling for a while. There is a small room, about 6X6 feet, at the bottom that gives the caver a spot to leave his harness and descending/ascending gear. Since there is no more steep drops the harness is not needed and will only get in the way.
Once the caver gets down to the 6X6 room he can take a break under a ledge while the rest of the party comes down. Then he must drop to his knees to negotiate a 10-foot long passage that is only a few feet high. This is where the knee pads come in handy. The floor is covered with soft dirt, intermingled with bits of broken rock from above. The thin layer of dirt does nothing to soften the blow to the hands and knees as the caver works down the crawl space. As a reward, at the end of the crawl, he gets to drop to his belly and scoot under a tight squeeze. Not “really” tight, just something low enough to make the caver scoot along in the dirt.
Once the caver gets on the other side of the squeeze there are a few feet of crawl space, then the cave opens up enough to stand. For most of the rest of the cave, the caver can stand, or at least stoop. The cave splits off into several passages at this point. Two routes wind around rocks and crevasses and come to abrupt dead-ends. The other two lead to small pools of water. Each route is fun to explore. They all lead on for a hundred feet or so in a gradual downward slope. Most of the time the caver can walk upright in the passages. Other times he will have to climb over large boulders or occasionally crawl on hands and knees.
Water is a common occurrence in caves. I have been told that one of the local residents was one of the first people in the cave, and that his cousin dove into the pools using SCUBA gear. He said the cave continued down for a couple of hundred feet underwater. What they were hoping for, and what happens frequently, is that the passage comes up somewhere else, with virgin cave passages to explore.
Unfortunately, I don’t possess the knowledge to give more detail about the types of rocks in the cave. When we were drilling we would have some parts that were easier to drill than others. And there were different colors in the rock (refer to the photos taken in the cave). But that is the best I can do to describe the makeup of the cave.
At the point, the cave splits into four routes, the two passages that dead-end are to the immediate left of the caver. Straight ahead and to the right are the passages that lead to pools of water. The entrance to the passage on the right is the largest of the four. The arched opening rises nearly 10 feet in the air, ending a mere foot below the cave ceiling. As the caver enters the passage the ceiling gradually lowers until it is about six feet high. It continues at this same height for the 40 feet that the passage travels in a continuous direction. This section of the cave resembles a hard rock mine. Its arch nearly perfect and the floor flat and easy to walk on. It’s easy to picture rusty mine cars on rail lines, and dust-covered miners with blistered hands gripping dull picks. The pseudo-mine comes to an end and the caver is once again forced to drop onto hands and knees and get reacquainted with the floor of the cave. This time the crawl lasts about 20 feet. The floor is sloping gently downward for the first half of the crawl. Then it gets fairly steep and slippery. Able-bodied cavers can still climb carefully down the slippery slope. When I go with B I carry the end of the rope that we used to get down to this point. I usually need to tie another short length of rope to the first rope to make sure he can use it to reach the bottom. The crawl lasts a few feet beyond the bottom of the slide. Over the next 10–12 feet the caver slowly begins to regain the standing position.
After walking a few feet and climbing down a short drop-off the caver arrives at a small level area which has a passage leading down immediately to the left. The passage ends 75 feet later at one of the small bodies of water. To the right is a rock wall. Straight ahead is an indentation in the wall which goes back about 3 feet. On the wall at the rear of the indent is a small hole, about the size of a softball. To get near the hole the caver ducks under an overhang and kneels upon the rocks that rise above the floor by a few inches. By the time the caver reaches this point, he is either warm or sweating and the first thing he notices is the cool breeze blowing out of the hole. It was my recognition of this hole as a potential doorway to unexplored portions of the cave that ultimately led to this telling of my experience.
As has been my tradition for all the years I’ve been caving, the party reaches a point in the cave, usually at the deepest part of the cave, that all lights are extinguished. Complete blackness fills the eyes. For a moment the individual caver strains the eye muscles, focusing in and out with the expectation of catching a crumb of light somewhere in the false night. After several futile moments, the caver turns his head at a sound- perhaps another caver- only to have the other senses return, and then heighten. The sounds, smells, and feelings that have been overlooked to this point come racing to the caver in perfect detail. The pain of their own behind sitting on the cave floor. The smell of dust, sweat, guano. The sound of modern material shifting on age-old rock as cavers attempt to find comfort on this solid foundation. At the back of every caver’s mind at this time is “What if?”. What if a person HAD to climb out of the cave with no light. Would he make it? Would he find all of the turns and bends which got him to this place? If not, would a rescue party find him in time?
The depth of darkness recognized at this time is something that is rarely experienced outside a cave. Many first time cavers erroneously declare that they have to hold their hand to within 2 or 3 inches of their face before they can see it. The truth is the human eye is incapable of seeing in an absence of light. If they did not hear something coming toward them, they would feel it before they saw it. COMPLETE and TOTAL dark! This exercise is a great way to remind people to take backup lighting.
As we proceeded to work in the cave we developed a system pretty early and little changed in succeeding trips. The first time in the cave, B took first shift at chipping away at the opening. After about a half hour he needed a break so I took over. He told me what worked best and I continued doing the same. We would try new things from time to time, to use new muscles, but usually stuck to the same method. We would use the masonry bit and press on the drill as hard as we could and drill out a hole in the rock. Safety glasses and dust masks were worn while working. Then we would insert the bullpin and hammer it into the rock and break out small chunks of the cave. Then we would drill another hole and repeat the process. Occasionally the drill would hit a soft spot in the rock and that step would be shortened. We would work until we became too tired to continue, then B and I would trade.
While one of us was working the other would remain in the darkness and either eat or drink, or just lay down on the cave floor, padded by rope bags. After just a few rotations we were tired enough to catch a nap while taking our break. The only light we used was the helmet light on the head of the worker. Since it was pointing toward the hole, the resting person was left mostly in the dark. This was a welcome benefit, since the resting person was usually, well, resting. The rest break was also a chance to cool down a bit, which didn’t take long in the cooler temperature of the cave. Fortunately, the temperature of the cave allowed us to work pretty hard and not overheat much.
I remember that I frequently looked and the hole and thought, “Hey, it’s big enough. I think I can squeeze through,” only to be disappointed in my attempt. However, even after the first attempt and failure, I knew that I would keep working on the hole until I got through. This despite the fact that I knew it would take many more hours of hard work. It actually became an obsession with me. I tried to get out to the cave and work as often as I could. I hoped that the passage led to a larger undiscovered cave that we would be the first ones to enter. I guess the explorer in me wanted to find a new frontier there in the cave. Since B is such an avid caver he was motivated by the same desire to find a new unexplored cave. What we did find was not at all what I expected…
February 10, 2001
Scarcely two weeks had gone by and already we were on our way back out to work in the cave. We admit we have become obsessed with the idea of getting through the passage. That may be a sign of how exciting our lives really are. It’s not that we think there is going to be something great beyond the passage. We just like the idea of being the first humans on the face of the planet to set foot in a virgin part of the cave. Although if we found a hidden treasure that would be fine with us!
We got a late start and drove part of the way in the dark. When I tell people that I go caving at night they wonder why. They don’t stop to think that it is always night once you’re inside the cave. All the way out to Mystery Cave we talked about new ideas to speed up our work. B also told me he talked to some caver friends of his that came up with an explanation about the rumbling noise. They thought it might be the sound of water deep within the cave. Possibly a waterfall. They couldn’t really explain why the noise seemed to come and go. To me, it is just one more reason to get through. So we can solve the mystery.
This trip we took B’s dog, Whip. She is a Jack Russell Terrier. I was not at all concerned about taking the dog into the cave. We have taken her before. She answers the call of nature before we go in, and then waits until we get out again. Also, she is well behaved inside the cave. We simply had to lower her via a custom made harness until she reached the bottom of the main drop. Then she negotiated the rest on her own. She loves to explore, but won’t go out of our sight. She doesn’t have a light attached to her, so she has to wait for us. Another reason I didn’t mind bringing Whip along was because we planned on putting her into the small hole and see how far into the passage she would go. That might give us an idea of what is on the other side. We knew that if there were a drop-off that we couldn’t see, the dog would turn around and come right back out. We thought we might have to do some work on the hole before even the dog could get through.
B’s dog, “Whip”, near the entrance to the cave.
Despite working in the dark of the night we were able to rig up and get down pretty quickly. We didn’t take as many tools as last time. Plus, we left some in the hole so we wouldn’t have to haul them out and back in again. I did manage to get two more batteries for the drill for a total of four. Also a few more masonry drill bits. Even with the dog, we made good time getting down. Then something bizarre happened that I can’t quite explain.
The dog began exploring as soon as we let her off the rope. She was in hog heaven, sniffing and darting about around our feet. She would run from one person to the other as we made our way back to the work site. At the point, the cave splits into four passages the dog seemed to run out of juice. She just stuck right by either B or me. That seemed kind of odd. As we progressed further into the cave she would only stay by B. She seemed edgy. Like she saw something she didn’t like. As we approached the short drop-off before the hole, she stopped and would only come further after we coaxed her. The hair on her back stood on end. Finally, as we got to within 20 feet of the hole she began to whimper, and hide behind B. Her tail was between her legs and she was cowering down on the ground. Strange! I have seen her square off with dogs twice her size, but now she acted as if Satan himself was lurking in the darkness. I figured there must have been animals that used the cave as a home, and Whip smelled their scent. Too bad it upset her, because there was no way she was going into the passage.
We decided that with this new development (the nervous dog) one of us would work while the other stayed with the dog a few feet away from where we normally rested. We got right back into our routine of drilling, hammering, etc. With our extra supply of batteries, we were able to really push hard on the drill and not have to worry about using up the batteries. This did not make our work any easier, but it did speed things up a little bit. Progress was still slow. I really didn’t mind, though.
My journal goes on for a while about the progress we were making. The entire time we worked, Whip did not move. She just laid there on a rope-bag, shivering. She would whimper from time to time. One thing I didn’t think about at the time was that she would not take her eyes off the hole. We should have been more observant of this intuitive animal.
We were on our fourth battery when the second bizarre thing happened to us. B was working. He had just finished drilling a hole and was getting ready to hammer the bullpin when he stopped working and looked into the hole. I was kicking back, almost asleep, and hardly paying attention to B. He had a light by his side to illuminate the work area. I could see in the eerie glow a puzzled and intense look on his face. He looked over at me and shook his head. I asked him what was up. He said that he swore he just heard a strange noise emanating from the hole. He said it sounded like rock sliding on rock. Sort of a grinding sound. I assumed his ears were just ringing from the drill (he didn’t wear any earplugs this trip). He assured me he heard what he said he heard. I didn’t have an explanation, so I went back to dozing. B sat in the quiet of the cave for a long time before he resumed work. Also, he would stop from time to time and just listen. B is very grounded and not one to pursue some imaginary sound. I believe he heard something, but I’m not too concerned about what it was. I assume we will figure it all out once we get through the passage.
The final battery lasted another hour or so. We were sitting around talking about our progress when I decided to see if I could get my head through the hole. My head easily fit, but there was no way my shoulders were going in. As I was kneeling there contemplating how close we were I noticed something that B overlooked: The wind had stopped! In all of the times I’ve been in the cave I have always felt the wind blowing. The last time we were out working on the cave the wind was blowing worse than ever. Even earlier we remember the breeze cooling us off. But now, nothing! B said he did not know when it stopped. The rumbling had ceased, too. BIZARRE!
This plain old cave was becoming mysterious. We talked for a long time in the dark of the cave. We debated what could possibly be causing these unusual events to occur. I think part of the reason we were sitting in the dark was because we were both too hammered to move. We could come up with no reasonable explanation for the strange things happening in the cave. After sitting for at least a half-hour we slowly loaded up our gear and started for the surface. Whip couldn’t have been happier to get out of there. Once again we left some of the tools in the cave. We just put them in the hole. Not enough people use the cave to worry about. Plus, we were too tired to care.
We made a lot of progress on this trip. It helps to have the extra batteries. We still have a long way to go, but it sure is nice to see how far we have come.
Our progress on the hole.
The rest of the journal entry talks about climbing out of the cave, getting a room at a motel, and CRASHING! We were beat!
In retrospect, I can’t believe how casual we were about everything that was happening in the cave. At the time the only thing we could think about was getting into the passage. Everything else was just a minor distraction. I do recall thinking that it would be nice to get in and see how the mechanics of the cave worked (where the wind was coming from, what was making the noise, etc.) Now, weeks later, I think of my ignorance and naiveté, and shiver.
March 3–4, 2001
It took us three weeks before we got back out to Mystery Cave again. Our attitudes have changed a bit since we first started the project. In the beginning, we looked at the whole thing as a fun adventure. Since the last trip out we found ourselves taking a more serious approach. On the drive out this time, our conversation was a little more subdued than before. We hadn’t talked much since the last trip (not for any reason but scheduling conflicts). Instead of discussing ways of getting through the passage, we found ourselves talking about rational explanations for what had happ |
I’ve never much cared for religion. I mean, it’s interesting and all; the old parables and philosophic insights from people two millenniums removed from the present. I particularly enjoy the books of the Apocrypha, and the Bible’s magnum opus of Revelation, if for nothing else than the interesting stories. Even some of the tenants, like an emphasis on strong family bonds and moral stature I can resonate with, but in terms of a giant omnipresent entity that created everything yet loves us unconditionally, watching our every move from unseen planes – yeah, I don’t know about that.
I still don’t ascribe to a singular religious doctrine, but knowing what I know now… well, let’s just say the title of atheist would be a little disingenuous. Staking my flag in that camp would contradict all the principals of which my life has been founded upon. Try as I may, I cannot in good faith deny or refute what I myself witnessed. Calling whatever we discovered ‘god’ may in time prove a bit inaccurate, but there is no denying it, we found something.
Science has at times become this sort of monolithic and infallible institution. One that suffers from the ostracization of fringe concepts that fail to breach the egotistic blockade. It is all too often wielded as a trump card to negate all that doesn’t assimilate to the prevailing narrative. Too often outlandish claims are torn asunder because no metrics exist to properly digest them.
For all the good it has brought, science is not and will not ever be an absolute. Nothing is. Absence of proof is not proof of absence. And what happened out there, in that lab deep below the streets of Stockholm, now stands as a testament in my life, to all the ventures humanity has yet to embark upon. It serves as an anchor, and if ever I find myself drifting away into the blissful seas of cognitive dissonance, it is there to remind me how small and naïve I truly am.
I graduated from UCLA with a Bachelor’s in physics, and an incredible opportunity landed in my lap. One of my professors had put in a good word for me with a lab out of Stockholm. I was contacted and offered an internship. One of dozens to be extended the opportunity. I accepted the offer without a moment’s hesitation.
From there I uprooted my Californian lifestyle to move halfway around the world to the frigid north of Sweden. I was not prepared for the cold. Most of my summers were spent in a bikini, frolicking on the sandy beaches of Santa Monica and lounging in the sun. Sweden might as well have been another planet. Temperatures would plummet to a bone-chilling negative 30 in the winter. Lucky for me though, I had a marvelous host family who helped me acclimate myself and integrate into Valhalla.
I was brought on to the team and slowly began the arduous process of melding into the group. They were all incredibly kind and welcoming, but still the feeling of being woefully outclassed by my colleagues was thick as tar pitch. The project consisted of over fifty men and women, all of them among the best the world had to offer. They hailed from Germany, Japan, Poland, Hong Kong, South Korea and many other sovereign states. It was a melting pot of some of the greatest minds I’d ever met. Seeing them in their element and marveling at the way their minds hurdled asinine topics to delve straight to the cortex was altogether incredible, and more than a little intimidating.
The expressed goal of the coalition was to study the behaviors of quarks, protons, and other particles in the subatomic realm to further decode the complex world of theoretic energy matrices. By extension, the group also allotted resources to develop tools for observing and decoding quantum entanglement and string theory. These principles were still in their infancy at the time, and none of us could have ever imagined the enormous magnitude of the things that were to come.
The lab had its very own particle accelerator, which I myself pretty much obsessed over from day one. Most of the concrete data, however, was relayed from the lab in Geneva, home of the large hadron collider. I even got to see the magnificent machine in person on a few occasions.
One thing that has always staggered me, is the amount of incredible achievements capable when the pursuit of knowledge guides the way. However, the complete polar opposite is also true, as curiosity without empathy all too often yields crimes against humanity.
As you may already know, the large hadron collider was the first machine capable of synthesizing the particle known as the Higgs-Boson. The machine is a particle accelerator built in a 27-kilometer loop. It uses a state of perpetual vacuum and temperature colder than that of outer space to accelerate particles to 99 percent the speed of light. These particles collide with one another, creating spectacular outbursts of radiation and results which are believed to be similar to that of the big bang on a much smaller scale. It is also through this process that the infamous Higgs-Boson can be synthesized.
Some call it the ‘God Particle’, but many physicists are not fond of the omnipotent moniker. It is in a way suitable though, as it is ubiquitous and can spontaneously manifest or dematerialize through processes which are not yet entirely understood. It is a sort of bridge between matter and antimatter. The entity that binds the ethereal with the corporeal. It is the place between light and dark, hard to define, as once light ends, shadow begins, and vice versa. The exact moment of intersection is difficult to pinpoint, but there is a definitive moment, and that moment is the Higgs-Boson.
It was once thought that matter could only exist in one place at a time, however, the particle slit test of our progenitors proved otherwise. A particle accelerator was used to eject electrons between one of two microscopic slits. They naturally assumed the electrons would pass through either slit A or slit B, and when directly observed, their premise was corroborated.
However, when an imprint background was installed to bypass direct observation, they noticed a peculiar detail. The electrons produced what is known as a wave, or interference pattern on the imprint like ripples in a pond. This meant that the electrons were interfering with themselves while simultaneously passing through both and neither of the slits. It was at first thought to be a false-negative and outright impossibility, but thousands of repeated experiments all reached the same conclusion. There was no denying it anymore. Matter can exist in more than one place at a time, and reality is altered simply by perceiving it.
The world of particle physics is a strange one, and one which we have only just begun to glimpse the majesty of. At times it may even require us to suspend our own limited human understanding of things, to contemplate things beyond our minds’ comprehension. It was this idea which was the tabernacle of all the group was trying to achieve. To unravel the mysteries of the subatomic universe, and better understand reality itself.
The group was funded magnificently, and state of the art equipment was provided from lavish donors from all around the world. My contemporaries and I began to study the processes again from square one. This consisted primarily of monitoring the nature of particles and testing the same process over and over ad nauseum. Progress was slow, and many failures were soon under our belts, but you can’t build a house without chopping down a few trees.
It took years to decode part of the formula, but eventually we learned that the behavior of these particles could be predicted under certain pretenses. They could also; to a certain extent, be directed. Programmed to inhabit separate locations at the same time, giving them the perceived ability to exist in two places at once. In reality, though, it was more akin to a transfer of locale via microscopic slits in the Higgs-Boson. We realized it was not a matter of traveling to, but instead travelling through. Through the fabric of space itself.
With electrical stimuli and coordinate-based geo-synchronization, one could manipulate these particles to transfer locations faster than the blink of an eye. The machine used was primitive compared to later iterations, but its true potential was not lost on us for a moment.
Time went on, and the technique was further refined, most readily in the distance were particles able to be transposed. It started as only a few nanometers, but eventually we could transfer particles several feet.
It was through this process, that blueprints for an entirely new type of machine were first devised. It was to be a machine unlike any before it. Instead of electrical stimuli sent through circuits and wires, it was transferred directly from one location to another. Wireless energy transposed through space. This greatly improved computing capabilities and allowed the machine to act and calculate much quicker than anything ever seen before.
Initial ideals for the machine were skeptical at best, but as time went on, the real significance of its potential became apparent. When combined with a suitable processor and digital interface, it soon began decoding encryption and translating mathematics ciphers in a fraction of the time of anything seen before it. It didn’t stop there, though.
With a binary converter, it wasn’t long before human physiology itself was soon able to be deciphered and converted into convenient little anagrams and simplistic formulas. This soon gave the machine the ability to replicate human tissue and organs from fetal stem cells. When given raw biomass, it could manufacture a duplicate heart or lung. One which was genetically indistinguishable from that of the donor’s DNA.
On one occasion, the machine even managed to regrow the arm of an amputee war veteran. Most of us thought it couldn’t possibly work, that the nerve endings on the man’s arms would be unable to be resuscitated after so long. But after seventeen hours in surgery, when I saw the vet move his new fingers for the first time after transplant and cell resuscitation, I knew we had discovered something special.
Diseases became able to be observed on a molecular level and eradicated before gestation. A virus or bacterial strain could be genetically reprogrammed to attack and destroy itself rather than the host. HPV, AIDS, the black death, the common cold, strep throat, gonorrhea – none of them stood a snowball’s chance in hell against the unrivaled power of the machine.
It could even reprogram human DNA to desired proportions, eliminating extra chromosomes and restoring neural pathways to reverse entropic cognitive illness like Dementia and Parkinson’s. Even pre-birth conditions like cerebral palsy and microcephaly were in the process of being all but eradicated.
It wasn’t just organic material either. The machine could take a block of carbon and alter its isotopes to create carbon-14 and elicit radioactivity. This proved interesting for further power possibilities as the machine demonstrated the potential for creating its own fuel source, but there was another more pertinent discovery.
By changing the number of protons or neutrons in the atomic nucleus, the given element’s atomic weight was altered, thereby turning it into another element altogether. The machine held the power to change the very building blocks of the universe itself. It could turn copper into gold, bromine into iodine.
I think it was then that we first realized the scope of what it was that we had created. The applications for the machine seemed endless. It could write books, clone living organisms, and alter the very elements beneath our feet. It was the philosopher’s stone, the holy grail, and the all-seeing eye in one convenient little package. The Deus ex Machina. The world’s very first quantum computer was born.
One important distinction I would like to make, despite the rumors; the quantum computer was not, in fact, an AI. It had computing power which was eons beyond that of a normal computer, and the ability to perform almost any task given to it, provided the necessary accommodations were implemented. For this reason, it was not allowed to make decisions for itself. Many in the group were justifiably nervous at the prospect of an artificial intelligence somehow gaining sentience and going rampant with the power of quantum manipulation.
We really had no idea where our experimentation would lead us, and so the decision was made early on, to prevent it from thinking on its own and going all Skynet on us. The computer was a beast of burden, happily doing any task given to it, but it was us that held the reins.
That was when the bureaucratic troubles first began. A lot of donors for the project, and even a few of my fellow team members, had their own ideas on how to best utilize the machine. Every nation involved wanted it for themselves and had their own vision on how best to implement its capabilities.
Several members of the coalition ended up leaving the project or being outright dismissed, promising to return with a battalion of lawyers at their back. One man was even caught attempting to smuggle data from the lab, and detained to await prosecution. The reigning project overseer was also relieved of duty. In his place, Dr. Henryk Lundgren assumed the role of director of operations.
Dr. Lundgren is a dear friend, and a brilliant mind. That’s what makes his fate lie so heavily on my heart. It’s a tragedy what befell him, but I won’t act as though he wasn’t responsible for stoking the flames.
Lundgren managed to settle the group down and unite a divided faction of researchers who all held their own agendas. He made the executive decision to keep the computer in the hands of the international team and continue to study it for continued data analysis and eventual replication. All those who didn’t abide were dismissed or removed physically as the need arose.
Lundgren had toiled for years on the development of the machine’s virtual capabilities, and decided it best to invest more heavily into it. It took months of development, but soon a fully-functional Sims-esque program was up and running. The simulation was modeled to be an exact carbon copy of our own world and held all the coordinating pieces within it. All the people, animals, and nations. Augmented control apparatuses were then developed to allow us the ability to view the computer’s creation firsthand.
The simulation it created was so visceral, that none could even perceive that they were in a simulation at all. Test subjects were exposed to their own loved ones within the program and could not distinguish them from their real-life counterparts. I even took it for a spin a few times. I was hooked up to the monitor via a neural cortex interface, and had my mind rendered into the simulation.
I awoke to the sights of sunlight peeking through my blinds, and the sounds of cars outside. Around me on the walls were posters of Harry Potter, JoJo and the X-files, among countless others. I recognized immediately where I was. It was my childhood home, an apartment complex in Sacramento. The simulation was so detailed, that even my old raggedy-Ann doll with the missing eye was there.
My parents were both there and acted in accordance to how they would behave in real life. My dad even made new corny jokes in a fashion that suited his personality. It wasn’t a memory though, it was an entirely new scenario, concocted by my mind and the quantum simulation.
My parents are both deceased in real life, and getting to spend time with them again was… indescribable. Even if they were just simulations, the experience was profoundly cathartic for me. I ended up leaving the simulation in tears, overwhelmed by the experience and the ability to speak with my parents once again. It even made dealing with their absence a little easier in the real world. After all, I could now speak to them any time I wanted. I found myself never wanting to leave the matrix.
Dr. Lundgren subsequently questioned me about my experience, and I was all too happy to relay the things I had seen. He listened intently, with simple occasional nods and one-word responses. His grey face wore a smile, and cheeks dimpled in delight, but his eyes were far from the present, and worried.
We held a meeting with all staff members sometime after. Lundgren stood and paced in front of the group, silent and mind swirling in thought. When he did finally speak, he held our undivided attention. He walked through all that our little group had managed to accomplish, and all the things we had learned on our journey. All the miracles unraveled and translated into digital coding, and all the advancements made. It was not a triumphant voice, however; it was somber, as if none of it truly mattered. He then first proposed his new theory.
Here we were, with an entire simulated universe at the tips of our fingers. A digital reality created and maintained by a machine we had built. A simulation which was so authentic, that none could tell it apart from reality itself. And if we had the power to create that, how did we know that our own universe was not the result of the same process? How did we know our reality was not, in fact, a simulation?
An unnerving silence befell the rest of the group as Lundgren concluded his epiphany. All in attendance seemed to silently contemplate the idea, with a noticeably nervous aura now lingering. There wasn’t much said after that, but there didn’t need to be. We had an entirely new goal.
Upon returning for work the following day, I immediately noticed that several of our colleagues had abandoned the project without so much as a ‘goodbye’. Only 7 of us remained, among which was the prestigious Henryk Lundgren. He was changed though, his upbeat optimism and inquisitive attitude reverted to an impatient gibbering wreck of a man. He became hostile to prolonged questioning, and I could see the idea gnaw on his mind as he walked the tightrope between madness and genius. At times he even appeared on the verge of psychosis. He would ramble and talk to himself, and pretty much stopped leaving the laboratory altogether.
We set our sights on a new task; to dismantle and test the hypothesis of Lundgren. To develop an ability to break through the boundaries of our suspected simulation and peer beyond our own reality to glimpse whatever may lie on the other side. Nothing else seemed to matter anymore by that point.
Life may be accidental, consciousness too, hell even complex organisms like human beings the result of genetic evolution and a bit of luck. However, simulation is not accidental. It requires an immense amount of dedication, programming and logistics. Not to mention, power and maintenance.
The ability to synthesize digital worlds is not something learned or accomplished by accident. It takes time, resources, and brainpower to even attempt it, and even then, it’s no guarantee. The one concept that was off the table immediately, was that the theorized simulation was the result of natural phenomenon or random cosmic alignment. If Lundgren’s hypothesis was correct, and our universe was indeed a simulation, then someone or something had to be pulling the strings behind the veil.
Powerful as the quantum computer was, even it did not have the ability to glimpse directly into higher dimensions. As stated before, it took commands only from us, and could only perform tasks which we could coherently articulate to it. We realized rather early that directly viewing outside the boundaries of the universe was likely not possible. The only option was to send a message.
Through remedial experimentation and dozens of ponderous sleepless nights, we finally had a breakthrough. Our reality is based on laws. Laws of motion, laws of attraction, laws of physics. These laws cannot be broken accidentally, but with quantum technology, they can be manipulated. Many believe that intelligent extra-terrestrials were first alerted to humanity when the atomic bombs fell on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Ours was essentially the same idea. Demonstrating that we had the capability to toil with the quantum world in hopes of eliciting a response from a higher being. If we could ‘break’ or ‘bend’ one of these laws of reality, then perhaps the orchestrator would be compelled to respond.
One of the earlier discoveries we had made was that of the concept of reverse time. Time is a measurement of something that occurs, and without anything to observe, time is meaningless. The concept only makes sense when in the presence of matter. The two concepts of space and time are coterminous, like light and dark or hot and cold, one does not exist without the other. Where there is space there is time, and where there is time there must be space. The opposite of matter is not nothing, but anti-matter. A true nothingness or void of anything substantial does not exist. It cannot exist based upon the nature of existence itself. Anti-matter is the invisible material which operates unseen and fills all the gaps which matter does not. All of it held together by the Higgs-Boson.
If an opposite of matter exists, then an opposite of time must as well. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction, and all reactions must remain proportional to force exerted. By utilizing the quantum computer, we had the ability to send protons back in time… sort of. We could make them exist where they once had not by using dark energy matrices and particle superpositioning to put them in two places at once.
The discovery had actually been made sometime earlier, but never officially tested. It was restricted and marked as unbroachable, as many of our patrons were rightfully concerned by the prospect of unintentionally altering the past. Doing so could create a butterfly effect and wreak havoc upon the present. We were told vehemently that the reverse-time experimentation was forbidden, but now we had a legitimate reason to take an interest.
It took some convincing on our end, but eventually, we were successful when we promised to unveil the greatest discovery yet. The parameters were set within the computer and the lab was prepped for the operation. A single seed of dianthus caryophyllus was placed in a transparent reinforced container in the center of the room. The specimen was placed on damp resin paper, and several little green tendrils had sprouted from its shell.
The idea was to reverse the symbiotic metabolism of the test subject and cause it to rapidly revert to a zygote state. The seed would be directed to perform it’s life cycle backwards, thereby contradicting the natural forward flow of life and time.
The parameters were finished, and Lundgren stood by the machine. He glanced to each of us individually with a sullen demeanor and nervous twinkle in his eye. He looked to me last, and I nodded. Lundgren took a deep breath, adjusted his glasses, and flipped the switch.
Immediately the tendrils within the seed began to retract. They disappeared within the shell soon after, and the seed shrunk until the point in which it was no longer visible. The computer alerted us that the task had been completed, and silence descended upon the crew.
We stayed that way for several seconds until a commotion from the computer drew our attention. An array of flickering lights and sirens began to wail like banshees, indicating an error of some sort. Suddenly, the seed reappeared and began to grow at an impossible rate. A mass of wriggling green tendrils erupted from the shell and pressed firmly against the case within seconds. It swelled within and the chamber violently ruptured a moment later, sending shards of glass catapulting throughout the room. I managed to duck away just in time, but others in the group were not so lucky.
One man, Reginald Diabek, was struck with a shard in the neck. The piece cut a gash across his throat, causing a thick crimson to spill forth from his gullet. He collapsed to the ground as others began to rush to his aid. Before we could reach him, the engorged serpentine appendages of the seed ensnared him, slithering around his neck and abdomen. Diabek gurgled and terror filled his eyes as the green pythonic roots began to constrict him.
I watched, at a loss for words as Diabek’s wound sealed. His grey hair turned to a dark brown. The wrinkles on his forehead and bags below his eyes dissolved into his skin in a matter of seconds. The blackheads and liver-spots on his cheeks soon followed suit. All of us watched, stupefied as the process continued onward and Diabek appeared to age backwards.
Diabek had to have been nearly sixty years old, but in a matter of moments he appeared as though he was a young man in his early thirties. He then went young adult, then juvenile, then teenager. Diabek screamed in terror as his voice cracked from a gruff, raspy tone to a high-pitched pre-pubescent shriek. His body shrunk in his clothes and his extremities retracted within his coat. By the time we had reached him, he was gone.
We didn’t have time to gawk, as our stupor was interrupted by the computer blaring a warning siren, and a flickering plethora of lights designated an external problem of some sort. The display was a failsafe designed to protect the computer from malicious outside sources. Most of us thought the firewalls of the quantum computer were enough to prevent any attempted breach, but apparently, we were wrong.
One of my colleagues scrambled to the kill switch. He was poised to throw it, when he was halted by a sudden shout from Lundgren. Lundgren stood, eyes wide as dinner plates and mouth agape as he stared at the main monitor of the computer. The warning display had ceased, and only a single screen remained active. Upon it was displayed a single loading bar, with approximately twenty percent of it being filled in. This indicated only one thing; something was being downloaded.
We immediately surmised that it must be a virus or other malware of some sort. A prospect once thought impossible based on the security measures of the computer, and yet the download persevered. All attempts made to restrict the download and halt its progress proved futile.
We exchanged nervous glances with one another, torn on whether to pull the plug and save our creation from hostile insurgence or allow it to continue to whatever ends. The call was eventually made by the investors outside the room, who had since been notified of the development. They demanded power be cut, and the machine be saved. The computer represented a colossal investment, and the costs to repair or replace it if any damage were to ensue was not something taken lightly.
Begrudgingly, Lundgren followed orders and commanded shutdown protocol. It was done straight away, but the machine did not power down. It continued, impossibly, and without a direct power source sustaining it.
Panic began to erupt from the lab, and power to the entire facility was ordered to be cut from the mainframe. It was done within seconds, and the room fell into darkness. The only light that remained was that of the main monitor as the download reached the halfway mark. The computer groaned and whirred under enormous duress as hundreds of fans shot to life to attempt to cool the leviathan machine.
We stood back, unable to make heads or tails of the development. There was simply no possible way the machine should’ve remained active, and yet it was. It continued to fill up the progress bar, powered by the fuel of some unknown outside source. With no other viable solutions at hand barring physical destruction of the computer itself, we could do nothing but await the culmination.
The download finished several minutes later, and the room fell into pitch black. We deliberated for a moment, before deciding our only recourse was to power up the computer once again. The mysterious file weighed in at an impressive 100,000 terabytes, enough to fill hundreds of normal hard drives, but just another drop in the ocean for the quantum computer. Once full mobility was achieved, a single never before seen prompt filled the screen.
“Unknown file type. Do you wish to execute the file?” All attempts made to bypass the prompt failed. We quickly used a separate program on another screen to trace the file’s origin, but to no avail.
Now, there is no hiding from a quantum computer behind a proxy or VPN. It uses an algorithm-based process combined with a ping response speed to determine probable origin up to an accuracy of 99.999%. We’re talking response time measured in millionths of a second, but for a quantum computer, it’s like the ABC’s. Sure, it gets it wrong once in every million attempts, the point being it always has a guess. This time, however, we received a new message.
“Unable to determine file origin.” Lundgren took a step back and pondered the situation and wiped the beads of glistening sweat from his brow. With nothing else at our disposal, he realized there was only one option left. And so, he gave one last command.
“Open it.”
The computer began to render the file, the process taking several minutes to complete. It was entirely in binary code, and eventually translated to a single message. Upon completion, two words in a white font sat silently amidst a black background.
I never thought two simple words could have such lasting effects on my psyche. Those two words that have made me question everything I thought I ever knew. The computer fizzled out moments later and shut down. All of us just kind of left after that.
I returned home, overwhelmed by the events and left with a mystic sense of terror instilled deep in my stomach. The following morning, I was called by one of the investors. He informed me that someone had broken into the lab late the previous night and sabotaged the operation. The lab was lit ablaze and soon reduced to a smoldering pile of ash, and the quantum computer was damaged beyond repair. Whoever had done it possessed a security card and seemed to know the exact process required to dismantle the automatic sprinkler system.
Police held a single suspect in custody. A man who appeared as a neurotic mess in the center of a maniacal nervous breakdown. He was tried and convicted sometime later, and declared clinically insane. He was ordained to a mental health facility in northern Sweden, and it is there that he remains to this day. That man’s name? Henryk Lundgren.
I’ve never been able to properly assess just what it was that happened that day. The event has left me shaken and confused in more ways than I could possibly list. I don’t suppose I’ll ever be whole again, I just can’t be.
I know the truth, the reason for our meager existence. We had reached out far beyond, and something answered our call. Whether or not it was truly what we would call ‘god’, I can’t say. But I will say, after what I saw happen to Diabek, and what became of Lundgren, I can’t think of a better word for it. I think god is something we never could’ve imagined. It holds us all within the palm of its hand, and with a simple flick of the wrist, we would cease to be. There is no love, there is no salvation, there is only that which lies beyond the margins of reality. That which we have no possible hope of understanding.
One thing is also certain; it is watching us, and it does not want us meddling in that which we have no business seeing. We are set amidst an ocean of infinite black seas, and it was not meant for us to travel far. That final message could not have been clearer, and anytime I find myself drifting, I remember those two simple words relayed by the quantum computer in its last moments of life.
“TURN BACK.”
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Author’s Note: For those of you who might be curious, this is intended as a companion piece to The Perfectly Behaved Boy, a story that was published on this site two years ago. However, this tale was written so that it will stand on its own, with no prior knowledge of this universe needed by the reader.
Some of our most lasting memories are associated with Christmastime. I can clearly remember receiving a red tricycle when I was four. I can still smell the roast goose my mother made for our Yuletide dinner when I was six. I recall fondly that when I was nine, my father let me climb up a ladder to place the star atop the tree. And when I was eleven, a dead man terrorized me on Christmas Eve. When I was twelve, he came back. This is the story of that man.
As a child, I lived with my parents in Biltfort Manor, a home that dated back to 1897. It’s probably the nicest house you’ll ever see. I could go on and on about how beautiful it is, but the splendor of the home isn’t important to this story. What you really need to know is that there’s a feature on the grounds that, as far as I know, isn’t replicated any other place. You see, a few years after the manor was built, the Biltfort family started a tradition that still carries on to this day; they planted their Christmas tree outside the manor house when Christmas was over. The trick to doing this successfully is that you have to get a tree with its root ball still intact. This first tree, the “1901” tree, is rooted right next to the house. About twenty feet away from that tree is – you guessed it – the “1902” tree. As the years went by, each new tree was planted a little bit further away. The effect is that as someone pulls off the main highway, they’ll follow a line of evenly spaced pine trees that get older and grander as they get closer to the manor. Some of the trees are quite huge. The Biltforts owned the manor through two generations, finally selling it in 1952. The new owners fell in love with the Christmas tree tradition and continued on with it. My family bought the home in the late 70s, and we too kept up with the tradition.
I loved staring out the car window at the line of trees every time my parents and I drove up to the house. Each one had its own history and unique personality. When I was feeling bored, I’d go outside and run alongside them. Sometimes, I’d even use a stopwatch to see how long it took me to make it to the farthest tree and back (three and a half minutes, by the way). It was during one of those runs that I first noticed something was amiss; there was a twice-as-large gap between two of the pines. It was as if another tree should’ve been there, but wasn’t. From the road it wasn’t really obvious because the treetops grew together so thickly, but it was noticeable from close up if you were paying attention. Most people probably wouldn’t have given a second thought to the apparently missing tree, but to me it was a mystery in my very own front yard, and I dwelled on it all day long, wondering what possibly could’ve happened to it.
Fueled by my curiosity, I counted the number of trees between the house and the missing pine – I got fifty-seven, which meant that “1958” was unaccounted for. I pointed it out to my father later that evening. He took a walk with me before sunset and confirmed that yes, a tree did, in fact, appear to be absent.
“I wonder what happened to it,” I said as I stood in the exact spot where it should’ve been.
“I dunno, Champ. Maybe it got sick and died.”
I laughed at that. “Trees don’t get sick!”
“Sure they do. Lots of things can make a tree sick. Or maybe it even got hit by lightning.”
“Well, I want to know for sure!” I demanded. As the words came from my mouth, I felt a sudden chill pass through my body. It started at my feet and worked its way up. I shuddered, not knowing why I was doing so.
My father didn’t seem to notice. “I don’t know if we’ll ever know for sure, Charlie. Sometimes that’s just how it is.” The sun was starting to set, so together we walked back to the manor house.
The mystery bothered me for months, right up until Christmas Eve – and that’s where this story really begins. It was late when the dead man arrived, several hours after my parents and I had enjoyed our Christmas Eve feast. I was trying to fall asleep when I noticed, by the pale green light of my digital clock, that someone was suddenly standing at the foot of my bed. I had no idea how he’d gotten inside.
My heart nearly tore out of my chest. I feigned sleep in the hope that the man wouldn’t hurt me, but he wasn’t deceived. “You can get out of bed,” he said with a drawl.
My eyes peeked open, but my body didn’t move.
“Get up!” he insisted as he violently pulled my comforter from the bed with his dirt-encrusted hands. I sat up shakily, all the while planning to run off to my parents’ bedroom once the opportunity presented itself.
“Don’t think about goin’ runnin’ to your parents now,” the man said. He wasn’t very tall, but his dark, stabbing eyes peered past his greasy long hair and made him more menacing than any giant could’ve ever been. “Yeah, that’s right. I’m in your head. I know exactly what you’re thinkin’.” He grabbed my shirt and lifted me to my feet. “What do you want for Christmas?” he asked.
Fear drove away my ability to speak.
“Fine, don’t tell me,” the man said with a laugh. “I already know what you asked for.”
I reflexively ran through my Christmas list in my mind… an Atari, a basketball, a race track…
“Boy, you ain’t gettin’ an Atari from me,” he twanged. “But you want to know about that missing Christmas tree out front, don’t you?”
Still holding onto my shirt, the man walked me out of the room. He didn’t even flinch when I screamed out for my parents. To my dismay, they didn’t respond, which didn’t seem to surprise him at all. I later figured that he’d used some sort of charm that kept them asleep, though I know they would’ve fought tooth-and-nail to help me if they could’ve.
We made it outside to the front of the manor, where an unfamiliar car was parked. I can’t tell you the make or model, but it was a shiny white muscle car straight from the 1970s. He left me standing there as he went around to the driver’s side and stepped in.
He looked over at me through the side window. “Get in,” he demanded. The passenger door opened on its own.
I shook my head slowly as I backed away. Only a minute earlier I’d been resting snug in my bed, yet there I stood in the cold outdoors being given directions by a violent man. Everything was happening so fast.
“Boy,” the man drawled, “if I have to get back out of this car to collect you I’m going to cut your fuckin’ tongue out.”
I took another step backwards and slipped on slush and gravel, landing square on my ass. Inside the car, the man reached into his waistband and pulled out a switchblade that opened in a single, fluid movement. I turned and tried to stand, but my feet slipped out from under me and I fell back to the earth. I heard his door open and in only a few seconds he was upon me.
“Now you’ve pissed me off, kid!” He jammed his fingers into my mouth and pinched my tongue. I shook my head ferociously, unsuccessfully trying to free myself. He made a fist with his other hand and punched the side of my head. “I’m just gonna keep clockin’ you if you don’t relax,” he spat out.
Stunned into obedience, I stopped shaking my head. The man pinched his fingers down hard and pulled my tongue past my lips, further than I ever realized it could extend. The knife glinted in the moonlight as he raised it up and started slicing into the side of my exposed tongue like it was a piece of veal melting under steely pressure. If you’ve ever bitten your tongue before, multiply that pain by a thousand and you’ll know how I felt in that moment. Just as I thought I was about to lose my tongue forever, the man stopped mid-slice and threw the knife to the ground in anger. It sizzled as it landed in the snow.
“Goddamn it!” he screamed. “Just look what you made me do!” The blood ran freely from my mouth. The man reached into his back pocket and threw an oily white rag at my face. “Clean yourself up!”
I ran a trembling finger up to inspect the incision point on my tongue, and considering how much it hurt, I was surprised to find that he hadn’t cut nearly as deep as I’d thought and my tongue was still mostly attached. The man walked back to the car and let himself in. He didn’t have to say another word, he just stared at me with a venomous glare that dared me to take another step away. I obediently stepped inside and closed the passenger-side door. The low rumble of the idling engine suddenly became much louder. I heard the dirt and gravel kick out from underneath the rear tires as I was pushed back into the seat by the force of the car accelerating.
“Don’t be gettin’ no blood on my upholstery,” the man said as he stared straight ahead.
“Thuck you, ath-hole,” I shot back defiantly as the tears from my eyes ran down and mixed with the blood from my mouth. Nonetheless, I made sure to sop up all the blood with the rag.
The car vibrated as a thick fog enveloped us, and the road that we’d been driving on began to slowly transform from a modern asphalt highway into a rutty byway that I didn’t recognize. I got the feeling that wherever we were going, it wasn’t a place that was accessible to just any driver.
The car shook as it took the bumps in front of it. The man didn’t slow down; in fact, he sped up, making the ride as uncomfortable as possible for me. Soon, a small building, framed in moonlight and dirty snow, appeared in the distance. As we got closer, I saw gray paint peeling from its clapboard siding. A shabby tin roof covered the structure. The only entrance was a garage door that opened as we approached.
As the car pulled into the structure I took in my surroundings. This garage was far larger on the inside than it looked on the outside. Grease covered the walls and grimy tools lay haphazardly on the floor. The only light came from a single overhead lamp and a smudgy window that let a little moonlight seep through.
The man pulled inside and revved the engine before killing it. “God damn it!” he yelled as he punched the steering wheel. I didn’t know why he was mad. “Don’t leave this car,” he demanded of me as he stepped out and walked toward a small room that was built into the corner of the garage. The man entered and closed the door behind him.
I did as he had demanded and stayed in my seat, bleeding in silence. Soon the rag became saturated with blood, and I was faced with an undesirable choice – leave the car against the man’s instructions or get blood on the seats, also against the man’s instructions. I glanced around at the interior of the car, and oddly enough, it was in showroom condition. Hesitantly, I opened the door. It was well greased and moved silently. I stepped outside just as the rag absorbed its last possible drop. The next drop landed on the floor of the garage.
A new voice spoke out to me from the dark. “That looks painful.” The overhead light made a cone of illumination in the dusty room, but the voice had come from just beyond the lighted area. “It’s okay, you can come closer.” The new voice was far less aggressive than the voice of the man who’d cut my tongue.
I waited to let my eyes fully adjust to the conditions, and eventually I was able to make out the shape of a person sitting on the ground. The new person sighed at my reluctance to go to him. “All right, hold on a minute, I’ll come to you.” I heard the clanking of chains as the form stood up.
A dragging sound, specifically metal being scraped over concrete, filled the room. As he drew nearer to the light, I could see that an automobile engine, attached to him by chains, was trailing behind him. He huffed as he pulled his burden. The cacophonic sound of clanging links and scraping metal made me cringe. The chains were wrapped around his body and secured with several cast-iron padlocks. They extended a few feet out to where they were bolted to the engine block. This man, a wretch, wasn’t going anywhere fast.
“Did he do that to you?” He pointed to my bloody mouth.
“Yeth,” I affirmed.
The wretch in front of me laughed. “Well, it looks like he fucked up, then.” He pulled closer to me and studied my face. “That’s a lot of blood. He ain’t allowed to do that to the kids.”
We studied each other for a moment. His face was smudged with grease and he wore blue coveralls. He looked like he might have been about twenty, but they were twenty hard years.
“What’d you do that got him so pissed off?” the wretch asked me. “He usually doesn’t make mistakes like that.”
I shrugged my shoulders.
“Hmmm, something got him outta sorts.” The wretch stroked the stubble on his face. “What’s your name?”
“Tharley Morrithon.” The pain and swelling in my tongue made it nearly impossible to speak.
“You said Charley Morrison?”
“Uh huh,” I uttered with a nod.
He pondered some more. “The name don’t sound important. Where do you live, Charlie?”
“Bilthforth Manthor.”
“Ah-ha!” he shrieked. “That’s it! That’s what’s got him so outta sorts. He had to go back there.”
I stared blankly at the wretch, waiting for an explanation.
“You see, guys like Corbin,” he pointed to the office where the man had disappeared, “they don’t like visiting places that remind them of when they were alive.”
Corbin. The man’s name was Corbin. I pondered whether it was a first name or last name.
The wretch kept babbling. “After the state put him in the hot chair in seventy-four, he became something of a new man… became a disciple of the Rule Maker.”
“Whoth the Rule Makther?”
The poor wretch seemed desperate for friendly conversation. “You know, I’ve been here ten years and I haven’t totally figured that out for myself. Best I can tell, he’s some sort of demon. I don’t even know what his name is, I just call him the Rule Maker because it seems like he lays out all sorts of rules for Corbin to follow. All I know for sure is that he sends Corbin out every Christmas Eve to destroy the lives of certain kids. He sees the same ones over and over. They’ve got some sort of master plan but I don’t know what it is.”
From inside the office, a booming voice spoke out in an inhuman language that sounded to me like chain saws and car crashes. The walls of the garage shook and my teeth rattled inside my head.
The wretch paused to listen to the voice, then spoke when it was quiet again. “That’s the Rule Maker. I ain’t ever actually seen him. Anyway, those two really get off on messin’ up kids’ lives. Just to give you an example of what they do, one kid asked for his parents to go away, so Corbin cut their goddamn heads off and took them. Then he fuckin’ gave the heads back the next year, just ‘cause the kid said he missed them.” The wretch looked around suspiciously to make sure they were still alone. “This shit is planned out, man, and it’s totally fucked up.”
“Whyth me?”
“Like I said, I don’t know how or why he picks his kids. All I know for sure is that he’s not actually supposed to hurt them directly. It’s the Rule Maker’s number one rule. He’s jus’ supposed to screw with ‘em… take their wishes and twist them around.”
More of the booming voice came from the room, and Corbin could be heard arguing back in the same indecipherable language.
“Man, the Rule Maker’s pissed,” the wretch said with an almost gleeful laugh. “Whatever Corbin had planned for you, it’s going to be totally different now. He’s going to have to make amends for what he did to you.”
The voice of the Rule Maker exploded again. For a moment, it felt as if the whole building was going to collapse around me. When it stopped, Corbin yelled back in English, “No, I don’t want to give her up! She’s my first kil…” He was cut off by a scream from the Rule Maker that was so loud that cracks formed along the dirty window and paint chips fell from the ceiling above.
“Fine! I’ll do it!” Corbin shouted in anger and resignation.
The door to the office opened and Corbin backed out slowly. He genuflected as he passed through the doorway, and his angry stare began to fade from his face. “It will be done,” he stated into the room with a returning calmness. He closed the door behind him. Turning, he noticed me and the wretch. “Stop talkin’ to him before I cut your hand off,” he said to my new acquaintance.
“Yes, sir!” The wretch snapped up and saluted.
“Get back in the car,” Corbin demanded of me.
Not wanting to further upset Corbin, I jumped into the passenger side of the car while the garage door began to roll up. In the mirror I could see the wretch lift his arm up and wave goodbye to me. Before the door was even completely open, the car peeled out and sped from the building, clearing the bottom of the door by only a hair. The last I saw of the wretch, he was standing dejected-looking amid a cloud of rubbery smoke.
The car tore over a fog-enshrouded road while its headlights reflected backwards and created a glowing white aura around it. The engine protested and growled as Corbin shifted into the highest gear. I couldn’t see more than five feet out the window, but Corbin only went faster. I looked at the speedometer… 120… 130… 140.
My head felt woozy and heavy. I laid my head back against the headrest and shut my eyes. The pitch of the engine went higher and higher until it faded away completely.
I came to. Had I been unconscious? The night was clear, with no sign of fog. I saw dirty snow banked up along the edges of the road and the car was traveling at a relatively sane speed. We drove for several more minutes in silence until Corbin slammed on the brakes and skidded along the asphalt.
He turned and glowered at me. “Here’s the deal, if you can save the girl, you can save yourself.”
“What girl?” I asked with the sudden awareness that my mouth no longer hurt. I stuck my tongue out and felt along its side. I could feel a lump of scar tissue, but it was otherwise healed.
“You’ll figure out who she is soon enough.” He reached over me and opened my door. “This is your one chance. Save her and you’ll never see me again. If you don’t, I’ll be comin’ back for you.”
I stepped out of the car, confused about my mission. As soon as my second foot hit the asphalt, the car drove off with its rear wheels spitting pebbles at my face. Soon, I was alone. I took in my surroundings. The road I was standing on snaked through the woods. The moonlight reflected off the snow, providing me with at least a little bit of light. One of the nearby hills looked familiar, like something I’d seen around my home. I walked that direction and crested it within minutes. From the peak, I found myself looking down on Biltmore Manor. Yet, something seemed off about it as I approached. The cars parked in the manor’s roundabout driveway didn’t belong to my parents; they were classic cars that I didn’t recognize. As I trudged through the slushy snow and drew closer, small details came into view that confirmed that something wasn’t quite right. The curtains in the windows were the wrong color. Plants and hedges were different, and the Christmas trees, the ones that were all in a magnificent line, seemed to be smaller from when I’d last seen them.
The front door opened and a well-dressed couple emerged onto the front stoop. The woman, who was holding some neatly wrapped gifts, descended down the stairs, followed by the man. They were deep in conversation as they went to one of the cars and opened the trunk.
“Hello?” I shouted to the couple. They both cocked their heads as if they heard something, like I might have been shouting at them from a mile away, though I was actually fairly close.
“Did you hear that?” the woman asked the man.
The man shrugged his shoulders. A moment later, a boy, who was maybe a couple of years younger than me, emerged from the front door and ran to the couple. “Shut the door,” the man said to the child, “and make sure it’s locked.” The child ran back up the porch stairs to make sure the house was secured.
“Can you help me?” I asked with uncertainty.
They gave no response. The three of them loaded into the car, and I could hear bits and pieces of their conversation as they did so. They fretted about being late for whatever gathering they were going to, and the boy sang a Christmas song to himself.
Their conversation was meaningless to me, that is, until I heard the woman mention HIS name – Corbin. I froze and listened intently. “… so I put Corbin to work today, mostly some gardening out back, but I also had him dig a hole to plant the Christmas tree.”
“Already?” asked the man who I assumed to be her husband. “It’s barely Christmas Eve. Why the rush?”
“Have you seen the tree lately?” she asked. “It’s dry. If we wait too much longer there won’t be a tree left to put in the ground, and we won’t be breaking fifty-plus years of tradition on my watch.”
The man nodded and spoke his agreement. “I suppose it’s starting to get a little dry, and maybe a little unsafe.” The car started up and the family drove off without ever acknowledging my presence.
Through the window, I could see into the parlor, which was festively decorated with a Christmas tree and lights that were strung all over the room. I noticed with increasing unease that they were drastically different from the decorations my family had put up. I walked around the house, looking in every window that I could manage, and in each instance, the furniture and decorations were all different from what was supposed to be there.
I wasn’t sure what to make of the situation, but I decided there would be little to gain by standing around outside. I had a task – a mission even. I had to push onward. I went to a side door and tried the handle to see if it was unlocked, but I found myself unable to grip it. As I clamped my hand down, the doorknob felt soft, like it was made of dough, and my hand actually sank into its rubbery surface. I gasped and pulled my hand back. I collected myself and I put my hand out again, this time pushing on the door itself. As before, the door, which should have been rock-solid, felt like dough that my hand could pass through. I put my arm all the way in, then kept pushing. In a few moments, my shoulder was through as well. I took a deep breath and then thrust my leg through. I was half inside and half out, which was an extremely odd sensation. I continued on, pushing my head, and then the rest of my body, into the home. I was fully inside. I turned and looked at the door I had just gone through. It was solid as ever.
I explored the house, confused and angry that it wasn’t how it was supposed to be. On the kitchen wall, I finally saw it, a calendar – it was from 1958. I had already guessed that I was out of my own time, but that confirmed it. I continued exploring, looking for the “her” who I was supposed to save. I walked up the stairs, and oddly enough they supported my feet just fine, without getting all rubbery. There was nobody upstairs, the family, and any staff, were obviously gone for the night. When I looked out the window at the end of the hallway, I saw a small cozy structure that appeared to be a bunkhouse. A light could be seen through the window, and a shadow moved across the floor. The bunkhouse wasn’t something I’d ever seen before – it didn’t exist in my time period. As the manor was clearly empty, I left and headed over to the unfamiliar building.
As I approached, I could see that the bunkhouse was not kept up nearly as well as the manor house. “Hello?” I spoke as I peered into a window. I could see that it was a two-room structure, with the front room doubling as a workshop and being used to store all sorts of tools, but the room also showed signs that someone had taken up residence there, with an icebox and a couch along the wall.
In the corner, I could see the back of a man who appeared to be fixing a lawnmower. His shaggy hair fell over his shoulders. In my heart, I already knew who it was, Corbin. I heard the wretch’s words sound through my head, “You see, guys like Corbin, they don’t like visiting places that remind them of when they were alive.” It was clear that thirty years before my time, Corbin had worked as a handyman at Biltfort Manor and lived on grounds.
My goal was somewhere inside of that bunkhouse, I was sure of it. I entered the same way I’d entered the Manor, by stepping through a closed door. Corbin didn’t seem to hear me, until he did. The clicking of the ratchet he was using stopped cold and he perked his head up. “Who’s there?” he asked. I stood still. Turning and looking in my direction, he spoke louder, “I said who’s there?”
He couldn’t see me. I took the opportunity to study his face. It was definitely the same man who’d cut my tongue and then brought me here, but he looked much younger, more vibrant. His face was fuller and his teeth weren’t nearly as nasty.
“What do you want here?” He spoke in my direction, but his gaze fell somewhat to my left.
He fetched a pack of cigarettes from the tabletop next to him and took a moment to light one.
“You’re the one who brought me here,” I said. He cocked his head, but it was obvious that he couldn’t make out what I was saying. I must’ve sounded like a fly or a gnat to him.
A light thumping sound came from the back room. Corbin instantly decided there was nothing of interest in front of him and shouted toward the thumping. “Damn it girl, you best not be makin’ noise!” He walked to the door and kicked it open. Inside, I could see a girl sitting on the floor. She was chained to the bedpost, and she looked miserable in a ratty gray dress and old slippers. I guessed she was probably about twelve or thirteen years old. The girl shivered in fright. It was her, the one I was expected to save.
Corbin reached back and slapped her. “I said shut up!” he screamed as the poor thing winced in pain. Without another word, he walked out, slamming the door shut behind him. By then I had walked into the bedroom; it was just me and her. She waited a minute after he left, then reached under the bed and pulled out a metal file. She looked at the door to make sure Corbin wasn’t coming back any time soon, then slowly started rubbing the file against one of the links of her chain. She’d already created a large divot, even though the file was dull. She must’ve been working on it for days. At least the dullness made for quiet work.
The poor girl was filthy and ragged. Black circles ringed her eyes. She paused from her filing and looked up, sensing something in the room with her.
“Hello?” she whispered.
“Can you hear me?” I whispered back.
“Yes, I can hear you. Where are you?”
“I’m right in front of you,” I said.
I hadn’t meant to scare the girl, but it was understandable when she jumped back in fear. She banged into the bed, pushing it backwards. She shot a fearful look at the door, hoping that Corbin wouldn’t come barging back inside. From the other room, the sound of a ratchet turning stopped for what seemed like an hour, but soon the clicking picked up again.
“I won’t hurt you,” I told the girl. “What’s your name?”
“My name is Magda.”
“I’m Charlie,” I told her. She reached out her hand to where I was sitting, and I felt its coldness as her fingers passed through my face.
She shivered. “I can feel you!” She managed a small smile.
“What are you doing here?” I asked her.
She told me her story in whispers and gestures. Corbin had purchased her from her father a couple of months earlier, who himself had kept her locked up in a cabin for several years. She recounted some happy memories from her early childhood, when her mother was still alive, but the second half of her existence had been one of misery. As she told it, nobody except her father and Corbin even knew she existed anymore. She was happy to have someone to talk to, even someone she couldn’t see. At one point she stood up and walked to the closest corner of the room, which was just about as far as her chain would allow. She lifted a small slab of rock which concealed a hiding place under the foundation of the bunkhouse. She reached into the secret vault and showed me her single treasure, a small doll she had created out of various items and tidbits she’d found lying around. “This is Perla,” she told me as she held the doll up proudly before cradling it like a baby. I could see that Perla was made from scraps of burlap that were tied together with bits of twine. Her insides were formed by twigs that stuck out from beyond the fabric, and her head was made from a closed pinecone. It was a pathetic doll, but it clearly meant everything to Magda.
“You see,” Magda explained, “this stuff was left over after Corbin pulled the Christmas tree inside here so he could trim it and get it ready for the big house.” She smiled for the first time as she spoke about it. “I grabbed these things when he wasn’t looking.”
“Why don’t you tell anybody you’re here?” I asked her. “Why don’t you yell when you hear someone walking by outside?”
“The boy,” she said, “he told me he’ll kill the boy if I make any noise.”
I thought back to the child who’d left with his parents earlier. “He’s gone right now. I think they went to a Christmas party.”
That seemed to reinvigorate her. She carefully put Perla back into her hiding spot. “You’ll be safe here,” she said to the doll. She took her seat on the floor and picked up her file, which she began moving back and forth against the chain with determination.
“I’m leaving tonight,” she said as she filed. “I’m going to wait for Santa in the big house and have him take me away from here, up to the North Pole where people will be nice.”
“I don’t know if Santa can help you, Magda.” Her face fell at those words. “But I can.” She smiled.
Together we came up with a plan. I would try to draw Corbin outside by making noise. Once he was distracted, Magda would sneak away and run into the manor where she would use the phone to call for the police. “Just dial zero and the operator will connect you,” I instructed her. “Don’t wait for Santa.”
Needing only a few more minutes, Magda finally succeeded in cutting through the chain and was able to free herself from its bitter grip.
I moved back into the main room, where Corbin was still working on his damn lawnmower. Using every last ounce of breath, I yelled his name. “Corbin!” He jerked his head up. “I’m over here!” I yelled.
“The fuck is goin’ on here tonight?” His agitation was evident as he stood fully upright. “Who is that?”
“I’m outside!” I shouted as I began pushing myself through the outer wall. He took a step toward the front door, then thought better of it and moved to the bedroom. He flung the door open, only to see Magda appear to be sleeping on the floor still wrapped in her chain.
Leaving the girl where she lay, he stomped back across the bunkhouse and shoved open the front door, which nearly came off its hinges. His head swiveled both ways as he poked it out and looked for the source of the distraction.
Moving a little farther outside, I shouted again, “Over here!” I could see Corbin’s ears twitch as he tried to understand what he was hearing. He took a tentative step out of the building, but didn’t appear willing to move any farther. I screamed for him to come find me. He shuddered momentarily, then a heated sneer grew on his face.
“Whatever son of a bitch is out there, you best run.” He pulled a switchblade from his pocket and opened it with a click. He stepped away from the bunkhouse, closer to me. Behind him, I could see Magda slowly stepping out of the bedroom. Her slight frame worked to her advantage as she glided silently across the floor. I kept calling to Corbin, who had taken about ten steps out of the bunkhouse. It took Magda only a few more seconds until she was standing in the doorway behind him. The sneer dropped from Corbin’s face, replaced with a baffled stare as he scratched the back of his head. Magda wavered on the stoop, unsure if she should continue on or not; she began to shake. I was already screaming as loud as I could at Corbin, but it was having less effect with each passing moment.
In desperation, I began cussing and swearing. Instantly he turned back and faced my position, as if he could intrinsically tell that someone was cursing his name. The sneer returned to his face, and he boldly stepped closer, though he was still unable to see me. Magda took the opportunity and left the bunkhouse, and with feathery footsteps, she noiselessly moved toward the manor. Only a few seconds later, Corbin lost all interest in what I was doing and turned back around, barely missing the sight of Magda disappearing around the corner of the Manor.
I followed Magda, praying that she’d quickly call the police like we’d planned. I felt a moment of anxiety when I sa |
“Have you seen the Blaganschlor
Hung by rope composed of gore
Who says his name and nothing more
His true name lost in days of yore?
At the gray and barren meadow
Where ancient rivers used to flow
The dying light of summer’s glow
Will call him from the dark below.”
Those are the first two stanzas of ‘The Blaganschlor’,” said Susan Ferris. “They describe Arbormill’s most famous ghost and how to find him. Supposedly, if you go into the gray meadow in the woods east of town on the hottest day of the year, you will see the Blaganschlor at sunset. It appears as a man being strangled by his own intestines. His name comes from the stories that the only sounds he can make while being strangled sound like blagh and schloooor.” Susan attempted to get a laugh from the class in front of her by mimicking the rough zombie-like sounds. It didn’t work. Most of the people in Mr. Edwards’ class looked bored, including Mr. Edwards.
“No one knows who he was or why he haunts the woods, but local tradition states that if you see the Blaganschlor and survive, you get to write a new stanza for the poem describing your encounter. The entire poem is kept at the public library. To date, at least four people have never come back from their hunt for the Blaganschlor, but it’s widely assumed that they just wanted to get out of Arbormill.” That one got a couple of laughs. She was about to conclude the report when the bell rung, signaling the end of the day and the school year. The majority of the class jumped out of their seats and sprinted for the hallway. Susan grabbed her books off of her desk and was about to head for the hallway when Edwards cleared his throat and beckoned her over to him. Susan tried not to groan too loudly.
“Well,” asked Susan, putting on a fake smile. “What did you think?” Edwards’ expression made the answer relatively obvious.
“For starters, I think you half-assed that presentation the same way you’ve been half-assing this class all year.”
“And what makes you think that?” asked Susan, in a tone of disbelief that didn’t seem entirely genuine.
“Susan, this assignment might seem easy, but it’s supposed to sum up the class,” said Edwards. “I ask kids to go out and write about a local ghost story. This is Arbormill. We have about ten thousand of them. I always hope that kids will bring in something close to home, personal even. I like students knowing that the history around them affects them.”
“And I totally understand that,” said Susan. “Can I go now?” She took a step towards the door. Edwards kept talking.
“You picked the Blaganschlor,” he said. “It’s an old story that everyone in town over the age of five knows. You didn’t say anything that the kids in here haven’t heard. It wasn’t anything personal; you just picked something you didn’t have to do work for.”
“I know at least two of the other students made up their stories completely,” said Susan.
“At least they put in the effort,” said Edwards. “Spoken like a true Ferris, though. Blame everybody else.” Susan winced. Her family was not held in the highest regard in Arbormill. ‘Not a one worth a damn’ the older residents would say.
“Yeah,” said Susan. “So what? It’s not like this class matters. This is just the easiest elective I could take this year. ‘Local History’ is not a class that’s going to go on my college resume.” Edwards leaned back in his chair and smirked briefly.
“Probably not,” he said. “But getting an ‘F’ in such a worthless class would look pretty bad on a transcript.”
“You can’t fail me,” said Susan. She crossed her arms and stood straighter, trying to be intimidating. Edwards wasn’t buying it.
“Final grades go out in a week,” he said, smiling. “If you don’t make this up in that time, I most certainly can.” Susan’s demeanor changed abruptly. She brushed her hair back and leaned towards her teacher.
“You’re sure we can’t just move past this?” she asked, smiling innocently. Edwards rolled his eyes.
“I’ve been teaching a long time, Miss Ferris. Don’t even try.” Susan reverted back to being pissed off instantly.
“So what the hell do you want then??”
“You’re going to redo this report on the Blaganschlor.” Susan raised an eyebrow.
“I thought you said you didn’t like me doing the Blaganschlor.”
“I have a challenge for you,” said Edwards. “If you can bring me five facts about the Blaganschlor that I’ve never heard, I’ll give you your ‘A’.”
“That is BS!” said Susan. “Everybody already knows everything about that stupid ghost!”
“You’ve got six days, Miss Ferris,” said Edwards. “The public library closes at 7:30, so I suggest you get down there while you can.” Susan started to protest, but stopped herself short. She started to storm out of the room, but Edwards spoke up again, this time in a softer tone. “I’m sorry about the family remark, Susan. But you’re the only Ferris I can remember that might actually do something with their life. I want you to appreciate that.” Susan didn’t reply as she left the room. She thought again about changing her name.
An hour later, Susan Ferris found herself in the Arbormill Public Library. She had contemplated asking the librarian for help, but the glare she had gotten when she walked in had soured her on that plan. Susan thought that if she didn’t know better, she’d think the librarian preferred being the only one in the building. God knew there wasn’t anyone else in there.
As Susan approached the large shelf labeled ‘Local Legends’ near the back of the library, Susan saw the framed Blaganschlor poem on the wall. Twenty-two verses of made-up stories. For as many ghost stories as Arbormill had, Susan had never believed in any of them. She usually assumed it was for the tourists that came to see the most haunted town in the Midwest. It was possibly the most interesting thing in Iowa besides corn. Quickly scanning the poem, she saw the final four lines were by Chris Sanders, who had gone out to the woods on a dare after graduating last year.
Out in the woods I saw the ghost
It looked really gross
It went back in the trees
Because it didn’t want to mess with me
Chris wasn’t the best poet in the world. Susan turned her attention to the shelf full of books. There were dozens of books that might have information on the Blaganschlor. She decided to start with one titled ‘Legends of Arbormill’. It was the newest book, written by some lady named Laura Smoldt. Susan vaguely remembered her going around town last year dragging up every little story she could. She opened up the book and quickly found the entry about the Blaganschlor. It said pretty much everything she’d said in her presentation with one added detail. It said the last person said to be taken by the ghost was John Tracy, who disappeared on June 21st of 2013. Susan only knew him from vague rumors around town. From all accounts, he was a drugged up freeloader. The story went that he was bet a large sum of money to stay out in the woods all night. When he disappeared, the general consensus was that he’d taken the money and gotten out of town.
Susan looked through three more books with little to show for it other than a doodle of a stick figure Blaganschlor she had begun drawing on one of the tables. The fifth book she grabbed was titled ‘Ghosts of the Heartland’ and was from 1991. The Blaganschlor was one of three ghosts from Arbormill detailed in the book. She scanned the article, not hoping for much, when something she saw sent a chill down her spine. It talked about the three people that disappeared before Tracy. It said they had vanished in 1910, 1949, and the last was a man named Jeff Olson on June 21st of 1980.
Susan knew she had found something that no one else knew. 33 years apart, people had vanished in the woods on the exact same date. And now she knew the years of the other two’s disappearances. Susan began ripping books off the shelves, flipping through the pages and stuffing them back on if they didn’t have any dates in the entry. Two hours later, at 6:30, she was amazed to realize she had been through the entire shelf of books without finding another clue. Susan collapsed into a nearby chair in disbelief. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see the poem on the wall. It almost felt like it was taunting her. She was about ready to go smash the frame when an idea occurred to her. She sprang to her feet and made her way across the library, hurrying past the librarian’s desk, to find herself at the newspaper archive.
The entire section was filled with massive binders with old copies of the Arbormill Post stored in plastic sleeves. A sign on the wall informed her that she was not allowed to take the binders out of the library. Scanning the older section of binders, she found the collection from 1949. She laid it on a table and began flipping through the sleeves of yellowed pages. She paused at June 21st, hoping she was wrong and right at the same time. Flipping the page, she saw what she had expected.
On June 22nd of 1949, Matt Slater was reported missing. The article was very brief and set in the bottom right corner of the page. All it said was his parents’ names, his age, and that he was last seen heading into the woods. Susan slammed the binder shut and went back to see if the papers went all the way back to 1910.
“Yes!” she screamed, as she saw the year she was looking for.
“Quiet!” came the reply from the front desk.
She didn’t pause as she flipped through the pages this time. Susan knew what she was going to find. Brenda Baker had disappeared into the woods on June 21st of 1910. The article was much more informative, but also very strange.
“Some say that the disappearance is the work of the ghost dubbed the Blaganschlor, first sighted nine years ago in the Malone Woods,” read Susan. She had never heard the woods called the Malone Woods. Nowadays they were just the east woods. “Thought to have something to do with certain events taking place in 1890, the ghost is rarely seen due to the shunned nature of the forest. A reward will be given for any information regarding the disappearance. Residents are advised to avoid Malone Woods in the meantime.”
Susan sat down and stared at the page. Something happened in 1890 that had made the town shun the forest for 19 years. Something that the writer would not even give a name to. Something that had been covered up.
Susan felt anxious as she walked towards the oldest section of the archive. When she found the binder labeled ‘1890’, she had the urge to flee the room and take the F. Something drove her on, however. It was a notion that had finally taken hold that there was something out there in the woods. She was a believer for the first time ever.
Susan slowly turned the pages of the binder, not knowing exactly what she was going to find. Everything was normal for the first few months. Around the beginning of May, a drought had set in on the county. That was all the Post talked about for weeks. On June 17th of 1890, everything changed.
The headline read ‘A Butcher Among Us’. It detailed the police discovering the body of a young woman that had been strangled and mutilated. Two days later, another girl was found dead. The exact method they were killed by was absent from the article, but the second mentioned massive wounds to the torso. One day after the second body was found, a young man was found dead with similar wounds. As Susan turned the page, she expected the string of bodies to continue. However, the next page’s headline was a different kind of frightening. Massive plumes of smoke were seen early in the morning over the woods east of Arbormill. With the severe drought, it was a possibility that the entire forest and town with it might go up in flames. Susan quickly flipped to the next page to see how they stopped the fire. It turned out that they didn’t. A massive rainstorm moved in overnight and drowned the flames. It had been the first rain in two months. When Susan read the first paragraph of the story from June 22nd, she knew that page was what she had been waiting for. Looking at her watch, she knew the librarian would be kicking her out shortly. She needed to look this over carefully and she needed it that night. Keeping one eye on the doorway, Susan opened the latch on the binder and took out the page. Seeing more of the same story in the next day’s edition, she took that one out as well. She could hear the librarian getting up from her chair and she rolled up the pages and stuffed them into her book bag. A moment later, she was smiling innocently at the librarian as she yelled at Susan to get out.
Later, in her room, Susan pulled out the pages and unrolled them on her bed. Rolling them up had damaged them a bit, but they were still legible. It detailed the events of the day, beginning with the pillar of smoke mysteriously disappearing. When police and firemen entered the woods they found three things. First, a large area of the forest had been reduced to ash. The burned woods were at the intersection of two dry riverbeds. Secondly, they found two dead bodies burned down to the bone. Lastly, they found a young woman in hysterics a short distance from the burned area. After they got her calmed down a bit, she claimed that one man had kidnapped her and was going to kill her out in the woods. The other man had witnessed the kidnapping, followed them and saved her. She was unaware of how the fire started. The two bodies were identified soon after. The kidnapper’s name was Silas Malone, a man that had moved back to Arbormill after spending most of his life in the deep south. The picture of the man in the paper was unnerving. He had pale, staring eyes, a scar across one cheek, and part of an ear missing. The man who had stopped his was identified as Daniel Ferris. Susan stopped reading and just stared at the page as her family’s name stared back at her. She didn’t recognize the picture next to the name, but even in the black and white, she could tell that Daniel had the bright green eyes that were so common in her family.
She quickly turned to the paper from June 23rd. The police conducted a search of Malone’s property in the woods and found a charnel house. Several parts missing from the three human victims were found, as well as a number of dead animals. As far as they could tell, the oldest parts were from at least a month prior, the same time that Malone cut himself off from what few friends and family members he had. Reports said that he had become obsessed with the idea of mortality. After all was said and done, Daniel Ferris was a hero. Malone’s estranged family denied any inheritance and gifted all of his assets and property to Ferris’s widow and child.
Susan suspected two things from the reports. First, she knew that the incident had to have been covered up by the town. Malone and Ferris’s names had been stricken from the records. Even the name of the woods had eventually been forgotten. Secondly, she no longer thought the hottest day of summer was a factor. It was the date that it all ended: June 21st, which just happened to be tomorrow. She just had to talk to one person to be sure.
The next day, Susan headed down to the mall at ten to find Chris Sanders, the last person to go out into the woods. She remembered that he had gone out on the 21st because it was the day after school had ended. He came back with a wild story and added his lines to the Blaganschlor poem. She found him almost immediately, hanging out with his buddies outside the main door into the mall. He smiled broadly as Susan approached him.
“Hey there, babe,” said Chris. “Heard Edwards chewed you out good yesterday. Want to tell us how you got out of that one? In graphic detail?”
“Actually, I have a question for you,” said Susan. Chris and his cronies laughed.
“I’m free tonight, if that’s what you want to know,” said Chris with a smirk.
“Good, then you can come out to the east woods with me tonight,” said Susan. “You went out there last year, right?” The blood drained out of Chris’s face as his smirk faltered.
“Of course I did,” he said. “And I saw that stupid ghost. I wasn’t scared at all.” Susan stared him down.
“I know you didn’t go out to the gray meadow, Chris,” said Susan. “Because I know what happened to the people that really did on the 21st. They’re the ones that didn’t come back.” Chris’s face went from pale to gray.
“You’re saying that if I’d actually gone-“
“You’d have done the world a service, Chris. Nice talking to you.” As Susan walked away, she could hear all of his buddies starting to yell at him. She knew what she had to do now. She had to go out to the ashen meadow, where the dry rivers met, and prove all of it once and for all. She’d keep people out of those woods and save her family’s name at the same time.
Everyone said that the burnt meadow was easy to find. You just had to find one of the dry riverbeds running through the woods. Susan arrived at the edge of the woods around 8 o’ clock, with the sun still shining. That gave her about an hour to get to the meadow. She set her phone to go off five minutes before sunset so she could have her camera at the ready. Ten feet away from the tree line, she almost gave up and turned back. She had enough to give Edwards at this point anyways. Then she remembered Daniel Ferris’s eyes. That was her family’s legacy. He was a hero that nobody remembered. She had left a note in her room with everything in it in case she didn’t come back…just like Daniel. Susan stepped into the Malone Woods.
The woods weren’t overly dense, but the oppressive heat still made them seem claustrophobic. There was absolutely no breeze inside the trees. Susan couldn’t see a single branch or leaf moving. She couldn’t hear any birds or animals. It was like time had stopped inside the forest. She could imagine the woods having been exactly the same for a thousand years. Until Silas Malone decided to make them his own.
Susan had been hiking for almost twenty minutes when she finally heard the first noise other than herself. It sounded like footsteps behind her. She quickly spun around, hoping to see an animal of some sort. There was nothing. She waited for a minute, hoping the sound would happen again. It didn’t. She turned and began walking again. As soon as her back was turned, more footsteps echoed through the woods. She spun around again, more quickly this time, hoping to catch someone behind her. Again there was nothing. She walked back the way she had come, checking behind trees as she went. She searched the entire area the sound seemed to come from and could not find the source. Checking her phone again, she saw that she only had half an hour to find the meadow. She began walking very quickly into the woods. And, once again, as her back turned, the footsteps came from behind her. Directly behind her. Within five feet. Susan ran.
As she sprinted through the woods, the footsteps ran with her, never losing or gaining ground. Susan dodged trees left and right, trying to lose her pursuer in the more dense foliage. At one point, the feet behind gained on her and pulled to her right. Susan resisted the desire to look back and darted left, trying to run faster. A stitch in her side told her that she couldn’t keep the pace up much longer. As the trees around her began to blur, a strange thought occurred to her. She felt like she was being steered; directed towards a specific point. As soon as the thought materialized, the ground beneath her feet fell away at an incline. She instantly lost her footing and fell headfirst down the slope. As she fell, she finally looked behind her and saw only trees.
Susan woke up to the sound of her phone’s alarm going off. It was the alarm that meant five minutes until sunset. She sat upright and looked around her. Red light shone through the treetops as the sun began to set. She didn’t have much time. She looked back at the slope she had fallen down. Her eyes followed it down into the woods. Looking behind her, she saw another slope on the other side. Susan realized she had found one of the dead rivers. She rose groggily to her feet, rubbing the sore spot on her head. After a moment’s consideration, she faced the path of the riverbed away from the setting sun and ran as fast as she could.
The sun was still barely over the horizon when she reached the ashen meadow. She climbed up the side of the riverbed and into a large round area directly between the two valleys. It was a patch of gray dirt about 200 feet wide. There were some sickly looking weeds, but the only evidence that anything substantial had ever grown there were two charred tree trunks that were mostly rotted. The fading red light had an ominous effect on the ground. The gray and red combined to make the ground look as though there were fires still burning. Susan was almost grateful when the light finally faded and dusk set in.
Susan wasn’t sure what was going to happen, but it was going to happen on tape. She pulled out her phone and a flashlight and started recording the area around her. So far there wasn’t much to see; just trees and scorched earth. After scanning the trees for five minutes with nothing to show for it, Susan decided to turn off the camera to conserve the battery. She had just put the phone back in her pocket when she heard it from behind her. A low and haunting sound.
Blaaaaaaaagh.
Her blood ran cold. It sounded just like she’d imagined. Words being stifled by a crushed throat. Susan turned her light behind her. Out of the woods came the Blaganschlor. It was exactly as she expected and far, far worse at the same time. It was a vaguely transparent young man that came stumbling out of the trees. Out of a massive hole in his abdomen came a distended mass of entrails that reached up and around his throat. Translucent blood dripped off of every wound and left a shining trail behind him. It was the eyes that she found the worse though. They were two bloodshot masses of pain, suffering, sorrow, and rage.
Susan began to back up slowly, not wanting the thing to reach her. As she studied the phantom, she realized that the ghost was neither Silas Malone nor Daniel Ferris. She actually recognized him as the third body discovered during Malone’s killing spree. Still backing up towards the riverbed, Susan pulled out her phone and tried to get the camera working again. She looked at the screen only to see the words ‘low battery’ before the screen went black.
Schloooooooor.
The new moan came from behind her. Susan turned to see another transparent figure climbing up the embankment. This one was a young man in the same condition as the other figure. From what remained of his clothing, he had to have been from a much more recent time period than 1890. As this revelation came to her, moans came from the woods in every direction. Susan flashed the light all around the meadow and saw six more lurching phantasms coming out of the forest around her. A monstrous chorus of agonized groans filled the air. Susan looked around her for a way out, but the ghosts seemed to be everywhere she looked, pain and rage shining in their eyes.
Susan had almost given up hope when she heard a loud noise in the woods to her right. A figure that was definitely not a ghost leapt out of the woods and motioned for her to follow.
“This way! Hurry!” Susan recognized Chris’s voice. Somehow the asshole had summoned up the courage to come out here. Susan wondered if he wasn’t that bad after all before running to him. The new arrival had thrown the ghosts into disarray. Susan ran by them and into the woods as they were staring at Chris. As she hit the woods, he ran behind her. About a minute into the woods, Susan had to stop and lean against a tree. She doubted the ghosts were quick enough to follow them and all of the running from earlier had taken its toll on her body. She was amazed she was still capable of keeping upright. Chris walked by her and looked deeper into the woods. She shined the light on him as he faced away from her. She still couldn’t believe he’d followed her.
“They probably won’t follow us for long,” he said. “They don’t like straying too far out of the gray meadow.” Even in her exhausted state, there was something about his voice that sounded off to Susan. Chris had no accent, but she noticed a distinct drawl in the last sentence. She looked more closely at the figure in front of her. Susan’s eyes trailed up his body, becoming more concerned with every inch. At last, she saw the side of his head. A piece of the figure’s ear was missing. And she had seen that wound before.
“Silas Malone,” she said in a whisper. The figure in front of her jerked at the sound of the name. There was a long pause, and then the laughter began. It was a loud, hysterical laugh that sounded like he had just heard the funniest joke in the world.
“I haven’t heard that name in so long, missy,” said the figure. Whatever he had done to mimic Chris’s voice was completely gone now. Malone’s voice was low and hoarse. “So we got us a historian here.”
Malone turned and Susan saw the face from the newspaper. The pale blue eyes and the scar stood out on a face that was otherwise blackened by ash. There was a maniacal grin on his face full of jagged, smoke-stained teeth.
“What are you?” she asked, staring in horror. Malone approached her slowly, knowing she wasn’t going anywhere.
“Well, I ain’t no pansy-ass ghost,” said Malone. “That’s for damn sure. I’m what you’d call a revenant, caught between the dead and the living. I’m here for some very specific unfinished business.” He put one hand on the tree above her head and leaned down, his face inches from Susan’s. “So what brings you to these parts talking about ol’ Silas?” She steeled herself and looked him square in his pale eyes.
“I’m Susan Ferris.” Realization dawned on the dead man’s face. There was a hint of rage in his eyes before a wide smile broke onto his face again.
“Well don’t that beat all?” he asked. Malone suddenly grabbed Susan by the throat and threw her to the ground. He began to squeeze. “You’re gonna wish you’d kept that little tidbit of information to your damn self.” He let go of her throat and Susan gulped in a deep breath of air. She felt Malone grab one of her feet and begin to drag her. He was headed back to the meadow.
“Now, I usually like doing my work out here,” said Malone. “I like doing it right when people have that feeling of hope. Right when they think they’re getting out alive. But you, Miss Ferris, you’re going to have an audience. And I hate to inform you, but you’re gonna suffer a lot more than them.”
In her light summer clothes, Susan could feel every rock and twig on the ground scraping against her body. She attempted to kick her leg free of Malone, but his cold hand had a death grip. He wasn’t letting go and she didn’t have the ability to fight.
“You see, little girl, I had an arrangement with certain parties I can’t place a name to. The price for what I wanted was five souls sent downtown. Three were easy. Then your great-great-grand-daddy decided to be a hero and try to save number four. I knew he was following me the entire way. These are my woods, you see.” Susan looked ahead groggily and saw the moonlight in the clearing ahead.
“The dipshit thought he was being sneaky. He hung back a ways and kept lighting matches to see his way. Must have thought they’d be harder to see. So he comes up on my clearing, right? And I’m waving my knife around in front of that girl’s pretty little stomach and he can’t take it. Did exactly what I expected him to and tried to get the drop on me. I’m kind of proud to say that I had him gutted in under thirty seconds. Some hero he was.”
“He still killed you,” said Susan, still clinging onto some semblance of lucidity. Malone dropped her briefly and turned to her with rage in his eyes.
“That dumb son of a bitch couldn’t kill me in a thousand years!” he shouted. “He dropped one of his god damn lit matches on the grass as I was gutting him. It was so damn dry it lit up right under my feet. And what a sick, god damn joke it was. Last thing I felt was the rain hitting my face.” Malone cracked up at that and started to laugh like a maniac again. He grabbed her leg again and continued. “But I got myself a loophole. I was the fifth soul owed, you see. So I get a second chance. I needed five more to add to the pyre.”
Malone dragged Susan out of the tree line and into the ashen meadow again. The full moon had risen and the clearing was fully visible. Susan could count eight ghosts moaning in the darkness, all of them backing away from Malone.
“These deadheads get the whole week to spook people here,” said Malone. “But I get all of one night a year to do my work. Do you realize how many years it has taken for five people to come out here on exactly the 21st of June?” He dropped Susan’s leg and left her rolling on the ground in agony. Her leg felt like it had almost been dislocated and her back was torn up.
“Since 1891?” she asked, barely coherent.
“Oh, you ain’t lying,” said Malone, turning towards her. “And guess what? You’re number five. So I think they all need to see this. You think the summer’s hot up here, little girl? Wait ‘til you feel the heat down below. I can tell you, it feels a lot like burning to death. I’ve done both, you see.”
Susan struggled to get to her feet, but her body didn’t want to cooperate. The night had taken an awful toll.
“And what do you get out of it?” she asked, her eyes meeting Malone’s.
“I wanted to live forever,” he said. “And now I get to do it outside of this sorry little excuse for a forest. Although I might actually miss it, you know? That’s why this all works, you see. Because these are my woods, in life and in death. I control what goes on here.” What he said stirred something in Susan’s mind; something she read in a newspaper.
“No,” she said, rising onto one knee with a great effort. “They’re not.” Malone stared her down.
“What do you mean by that?”
“After you died, your family didn’t want anything you owned,” said Susan. “They gave all of your property to Daniel Ferris’s widow; everything including your land. These woods belong to my family.” Malone began to chuckle. He seemed to be forcing his laugh this time.
“You think anything a damn piece of paper says changes anything?” asked Malone. “These are my woods and my souls.” The transparent figures surrounding Malone took their eyes off of him and looked at each other. Susan gathered every ounce of strength she had left and rose shakily to her feet.
“I say that all of these souls are free,” she said. “And you, Silas? You can go join yours down in Hell.” Malone must have felt a change because he suddenly had a look of panic on his face. He looked at the souls around him. They were looking at each other more urgently now, their moans becoming louder. With a mighty effort, one of the ghosts yanked on the bowels around his neck. They let loose.
“No,” said Malone. “You belong to me. You can’t disobey me! Put that back around your neck!” Another ghost took the intestines from their neck; then another; then another. Malone turned back to Susan with a look of rage and horror. “Let’s see how much power you have here when you’re soul number five!”
Malone pulled a blackened knife from his belt and ran at Susan. She saw the blade seconds away from her. Then, as he began to thrust it into her, something caught his arm. It was a loop of intestine. Malone jerked backwards, caught in the loop. He reached out for Susan with his other arm, but two inches from her face, another loop of entrails ensnared his other hand. They yanked backwards and pulled Malone to his knees. Susan looked around in shock as she saw the ghosts gathering behind him, two of their intestines stretching impossibly long to latch onto Malone. Another stepped forward and its bowels shot forward, snaring Malone around the neck. He began to choke out muffled curses.
“No…she’s…mine.” Malone grabbed the noose around his neck and pulled it away briefly. “SHE IS MIIIIIIIIIIINE!!” After that deafening howl, the snares around him yanked back with a huge force. Malone reached down with a mighty effort and dug into the ground, his fingers leaving a smoldering trail of scorched earth as he slid back towards the vengeful crowd of phantoms. His pale eyes were filled with a fear more visceral than any of the ghosts’. More and more of the ghosts grabbed onto Malone and lifted him into the air in the center of the mob. Susan saw the ground beneath him light on fire. The smell of sulfur filled the air. Before she could see what happened, a ghost walked directly in front of her and looked into her eyes. She recognized the bright green eyes of Daniel Ferris. He raised a hand and wordlessly pointed into the ravine, telling her to go. She could not refuse. |
Last summer, I flew back to my hometown for a school reunion. It had been almost three years since I had graduated from school, and aside from close friends, I had heard nothing from the rest of my classmates.
The reunion took place at the school itself, lasting till midnight. I arrived home early that day, giving me time to catch up with my family before I headed down.
At the reunion, almost everybody had turned up. There was food, drink and plenty of time to get up to date with what had been going on in everybody’s life. Boys I hadn’t seen in ages gave me aggressive hugs and said things like ‘long time no see.’ Girls I hadn’t seen in ages fussed over me in a motherly way, saying things like, ‘Oh, my goodness!’ and ‘You’re so grown up!’ Then everybody went round talking to nearly everybody else, asking and answering all manner of questions. For the first two hours or so, some of our former teachers who still taught at the school were there, which was nice. They left before sundown.
As the night drew to a close, and most people began to head home, I and a few others hung around outside the school hall. I leaned against a railing and sipped lemonade while listening to the conversation. One of the girls asked about a certain boy who hadn’t turned up.
“He said he couldn’t be bothered,” explained another. “He says he’s going on vacation with his college friends or something.”
“Typical,” someone commented, and they all began to reminisce about how antisocial that particular classmate of ours had been. As they talked, my mind drifted off elsewhere. I tried to think of who else hadn’t turned up. Among a few other absentees, one person stood out – Maisie, a tall quiet girl who had been in many of my classes.
“Hey did any of you see Maisie Heathen?” I posed the question out of the blue.
The others quietened down, registered the name, thought about it, and shook their heads.
“Nah,” said one boy, “but let’s be honest – she was probably the least likely to turn up. I mean, she hardly turned up at school, some weeks.”
“Yeah,” said one girl sarcastically, “says the guy who skipped school to play video games. At least she still got respectable grades.”
“Whoa, no need to get personal,” the boy grinned. “Her attendance didn’t really make a difference, anyway – she was naturally smart.”
“Unlike you, right?” The girl teased him. The others continued bantering, while I thought about Maisie. It struck me that she hadn’t entered my thoughts for so long. Three years at university many miles away with another set of friends in another town had taken their toll. It felt like all the excitement of student life had made me move on from this small world which was my old school, and in moving on, I’d forgotten so much.
“Didn’t she go to Oxford or something?” I heard someone ask. I tuned back into the conversation, as they were talking about Maisie.
“Wouldn’t be surprised.”
“I’m pretty sure she applied there.”
“Yeah, and she got in. I remember seeing Mr. Thompson congratulating her on it.”
“She was odd,” remarked a boy named Joe. “Nice, but sort of in her own world, if you know what I mean.”
“Hmm,” I nodded. I knew what Joe meant.
“So, anybody know what she’s up to now? Anybody in touch?” asked Joe. We all shrugged.
“Maisie went missing last year,” said a low voice from a few yards away. We looked to see a man’s outline standing in the darkness. He stepped into the light. It was a former classmate, David, who had been eavesdropping from the shadows.
“Huh?” I looked at him stupidly, feeling suddenly cold.
“She went missing last year,” he repeated. “They still haven’t found her.”
We all exchanged uncomfortable glances.
“Oh, come off it, David,” I heard a girl say. “Stop trying to frighten us.”
David came and leaned against the railing beside me.
“I’m really not trying to be funny,” he said. “You know I’m not known for my sense of humor.”
It was true. David, a lanky kid with glasses, had always been rather serious.
“Honestly. That’s what I heard, at least. My parents told me about it around when it happened, last autumn. People were talking about it in church. Her family was stressed. Everybody was trying to console them.”
Nobody said anything for a while. The party had become noticeably quiet, and people were leaving by the minute.
“That’s… weird,” a girl said. “Do you know what happened? How did it happen? Where?”
“I don’t know the little details, but I do know that she had gone on a trip alone. Apparently she had wanted to get away from everything for a while. So she had booked some cottage in the middle of nowhere, gone to live there by herself, and after a few days, vanished.”
“That’s terrible,” someone remarked. I don’t remember who, as I was too caught up in my own thoughts.
Vanished? I wondered. What on earth could have happened?
Shortly, the gathering dispersed and we all went home. Joe offered me a lift, which I accepted. We hardly spoke, and when he dropped me off, we exchanged short, sincere goodbyes. Something was seriously wrong. Maisie had disappeared and not been found. That in itself was inherently a frightening thing. But I had a nagging feeling that there was something greater behind her disappearance – something that had been building up over the years. I felt like I knew something about what might have happened, but, for some strange reason, couldn’t quite put my finger on what it was.
I lay awake that night, trying to think back into the past. Slowly, it all came back to me, and when it did, I shivered.
Maisie had joined my secondary school in year thirteen – the final school year. From her first day onwards, she kept to herself.
She was a tall, delicately made girl with refined features. With her prominent gray eyes, dainty nose, and flaxen hair neatly bound in a single braid, most agreed that she was pretty. She usually sat alone in class and spent more time gazing out the window than paying attention to the teacher. In spite of this, she got high marks in most exams. And although she hardly took part in athletics, when she did turn up, she could outrun even most boys.
Over time, her reclusiveness earned her disdain from some members of the class. Her high achievement only made them resent her more. I, on the other hand, felt bad whenever I saw her, and more than a little curious to know what was up with her. She never seemed to be all there. It was as if she were constantly engrossed in another, faraway dimension. At the time, I saw it as enigmatic. Now, having thought about it a bit more, I’ve come to realize that her behavior was troubling, a sign that something was troubling her and wouldn’t leave her alone. But as a simple seventeen-year-old boy, I didn’t understand these things.
I sometimes told my mother about Maisie’s behavior, and she told me to ‘be nice’ to her and ‘be a gentleman.’ I remember one particular conversation we had – my father was at work, so it was just me and my mother in the kitchen.
“Mom?” I began, tentatively.
“Yes?”
“You know that girl Maisie?”
“Of course, I know her. You’re always talking about her.”
“Well, she still hasn’t made any friends. She literally doesn’t talk.”
My mother smiled.
“And…?”
“Well… I don’t understand girls, and I just find it strange. Do you have any idea what could be the matter with her?”
“Really, Daniel, there’s no need to pry into people’s lives like that. It’s nosy.”
“But I’m sort of concerned, mom,” I said plaintively.
“That’s sweet of you, but I’m sure you don’t need to worry about her. Everyone has their own problems, and I think she’d prefer to keep them to herself.”
I thought about what my mother said, and wondered what kind of problems Maisie might have had.
“Do you mean, like, family problems? Are her parents getting divorced or something?”
“Could be, but I doubt it. I’ve met her parents, and they don’t look like they’re splitting anytime soon. And they seem to be really nice people.”
I realized that I had seen them once, too. They had seemed like nice people. They were the sort of gentle, charitable church-goers who cared a lot about community and never skipped Sunday Mass.
Their daughter was different. I figured that whatever was on her mind was something very personal that she hid even from her family.
But whatever could that be?
My simple masculine brain couldn’t get over her mysterious sullenness.
“You know,” my mother suggested one day, “if you’re concerned, you could go talk to her. Perhaps she just feels isolated at this new school. You never know, it might make her feel welcome here.”
I considered it.
“I might do that,” I said. “Yeah, I might do that, mom.”
I first spoke to Maisie Heathen on the way home from school. I wasn’t expecting to cross paths with her, as I had just had after-school detention. I was likely the only one at school apart from the caretaker. It was a chilly, blue-skied evening in October, and the sun had sunk enough to slightly darken one half of the sky.
The homeward path cut through farmland at the back of the school, where a path had been demarcated with low wire fences on either side to keep students out of the fields. I noticed Maisie on the path, about two hundred yards ahead of me. I realized this was my chance, and tried to walk faster to catch up with her, then ran. I noticed she looked downwards slightly when she walked. But she moved quickly, and I was a little out of breath when I caught up.
That’s when something weird happened. When I was about five yards behind her, panting like a dog, she heard me and turned around with such a look of fear upon her face I’ll never forget. It scared the heck out of me, seeing her face tightened into that silent, wide-eyed scream.
When she saw who I was, she looked with embarrassment at her feet.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “I’m sorry. I thought… I’m sorry.”
“Don’t worry. I should learn to make better first impressions. I was running to catch up with you.”
“Why?” She turned fully around.
“Because…” I tried to think of a reason. Eventually, I just told her the truth. “Because I wanted to talk to you.”
We continued down the path through the fields, then exited onto a lane that led down to town, where I lived, and where she presumably lived.
Maisie was surprisingly easy to talk to. Her manners were a little odd, but she responded to questions and even asked some about school-related stuff.
I asked her what she thought of her new school. She shrugged and said, “It’s okay, I suppose.”
“You mean you don’t actually like it,” I remarked.
“No. I’m indifferent,” she said, and we walked on quietly for a while before she explained, “We move around a lot. I’ve been to so many schools that it makes no difference to me anymore.”
“So… why do you move around? Is it because of your parents’ work?”
She completely ignored that question, and said something to change the subject. I can’t remember what – I just remember it took me aback how abruptly she changed the subject.
We eventually parted ways at a crossroads. I told her that if she should feel lonely at school, she should feel welcome to approach me. She responded with a quiet smile. It was a sweet, genuine gesture of gratitude, but something about it sent a chill through me. I could see through those eyes of hers that she knew something I didn’t, and that she had been through things I couldn’t fathom. It was a quietly haunting, fragile smile.
I walked home feeling glad that I had broken the ice between us. I felt like I had been a ‘gentleman,’ whatever that meant. But somehow, something still didn’t feel right.
The first occurrence that struck me as genuinely odd took place later that year. I took a job cleaning the school on Fridays after school. It was a warm day in early summer, and I had the task of cleaning the theater hall. It had been built sometime in the 1950s, and was rather grand. The seats would be full and lively whenever there were performances. On that day, I thought I was the only one there.
I was carrying the vacuum cleaner to a backstage room, when suddenly the door to that room opened and a girl, white as a sheet, came out. I nearly screamed. It was Maisie Heathen. She had been in the room all along, and she looked terrified, as if she’d seen a ghost.
“Whoa, everything alright?” I asked, laughing.
She looked ready to burst into tears, then ran out of the hall, leaving me utterly confused.
Suddenly, I felt afraid to enter the backstage room. What on earth was in there? What had scared her so badly? Against my instincts, I went in. There was no one there. I checked all of the potential hiding spaces and turned on every light, and found nothing. Perplexed, I retrieved the vacuum on and started cleaning. All the while I was in there, I had this sinking feeling in my stomach – the impression that something terrible would happen at any moment, causing me to hightail it out of there white as a sheet. But nothing happened. I vacuumed the place and got out of there quickly.
I never raised the topic with Maisie. The year wore on and nothing of that level of weirdness happened.
Many weeks later, however, something did happen. Not something weird. Something disturbing.
Believe it or not, Maisie was actually beginning to fit in. She made some friends.
Occasionally, she would engage verbally in lessons. This turned heads, as it was strange to see someone so silent suddenly so vocal. Not that she was particularly outgoing– she was still quiet and understated, but it seemed as though some mysterious shadow had shifted away from her.
There was a summer concert in which she played a piano solo in front of the whole school. I applauded heartily.
I gradually came to the conclusion that she had simply had some form of anxiety earlier.
Then, on the last day of term, school finished early. It was a sunny day, and I had been planning on going to the movies with some friends. It turned out they were all going to a nearby nightclub that evening. I had no intention of joining them, as I can’t stand drinking or anything to do with it, so I settled on having a quiet evening at home. But as I set off along the homeward path through the fields, I noticed Maisie Heathen ahead of me – just as it had been the first time we had spoken. But it was high summer now, not fall, and the day was cloudless, and she was at ease.
“Maisie!” I called as I caught up. “Do you have a moment?”
She turned and nodded. We hadn’t spoken in a while.
As we walked, the sound of crickets in the grass filled the air.
“So,” I said, after much anticipation, “do you like films?”
“What?”
“I said, do you like films? You know, movies?”
“I don’t mind them.”
“Would you like to see one? Tonight? At the cinema?”
She seemed to be considering my offer, because she smiled quietly to herself. Then she said yes.
I expressed my gladness, and, when she asked why I was asking her, told her about my friends ditching me for a nightclub. That seemed to amuse her. Then I told her which movies were showing. She settled on a horror film, which surprised me. Horror? Really? She didn’t seem the type.
“It starts at eleven-thirty, though,” I warned her. “Are you going to be able to come that late?”
“Sure, I can.”
“Then that’s settled, I suppose. Shall I pick you up?” I offered.
“Please.”
“Where should I pick you up from?”
“My house.”
“I don’t know where you live.”
On the way home, she told me where she lived. It was close to my own home. I went home and killed time till night fell.
At eleven, I drove my parents’ car to her house. She didn’t own a mobile phone, so I waited outside. All the while I waited, I felt, for no apparent reason whatsoever, a touch of dread. I had the radio on and was sitting comfortably in a car parked in a pleasant suburban neighborhood. But something outside seemed to be stirring. I kept looking out of the windows, expecting to see – well, not knowing what to expect to see. But there was definitely something about the place that night which was making me uneasy.
I jumped when somebody opened the passenger-side door and climbed in on the seat beside me. It was just Maisie. I hadn’t seen the front door of her house open.
“Where’d you come from?” I asked. “I could swear I never saw the front door open.”
“I came through the back door,” she explained. “It’s quieter, and I don’t want to let my parents know that I’m going out.”
“Oh… right.” I realized I was doing something against her parents’ will. I didn’t want them to worry if they found her gone, and I didn’t want to be the one responsible. But I guess I had no choice. Calling things off was out of the question at that point.
The drive took twenty minutes or so, and aside from ours, there were only about five other cars in the lot. This cinema was, bizarrely, a standalone building a few hundred yards off the side of a lengthy 50 MPH road. Usually, theaters are downtown or a part of shopping malls, but this one was large, with its own parking area and nothing else around for miles. It was quite nice, really – away from everything else. The only noise usually came from the road – but at eleven-thirty, long after dark, even that lay silent. Beyond the cinema, woods seemed to stretch on endlessly.
We bought our tickets and joined about a dozen other viewers in the theater. The film itself was about some demonic possession, and it was fairly cliché, but it gave me the cheap thrill I’d paid for, and the audience screamed at least three times. Every now and then I glanced at Maisie. Something about the way she watched the film was strange. Rather than looking excited or bored or afraid (how people usually look when watching horror), she seemed intense and… angry? Maybe not quite angry. It was more a look of hatred – not obvious, but subtle and cold. I found it disconcerting, but shrugged it off, and told her I was going to the bathroom. Her expression relaxed into a pleasant smile as she nodded.
Alone in the men’s room, it was perfectly silent and relaxing. That is, until I noticed footsteps moving about in the hall outside. I assumed somebody was coming to use the bathroom, but whoever they were didn’t enter. Their feet slapped against the floor as if they were barefoot, and there was a lot of time between each step, suggesting that whoever it was either had unusually long legs, or was taking immense strides.
I washed my hands and left the bathroom. Strangely enough, there was no one out there. Again I shrugged it off and returned to my seat.
When the movie was over, Maisie and I waited until the end of the credits, by which time everybody had left. Then we made our way out to the car.
“Wait, I left my pullover inside,” she remembered just as we reached the car.
“Should I get it for you? It’s empty in there now.”
“No, I’ll go.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah.”
So I slouched in the driver’s seat and watched her hurry back inside, in search of her pullover. She was pretty brave, going in there alone. The place tended to get a bit spooky at this time. Creepily enough, mine was the only car left. I wondered if there was anyone else at all in the building with her.
Anyway, I flicked the radio on and waited. When several minutes had gone by and she hadn’t returned, I began to get nervous. I turned to open the door – and I froze. In the woods behind the cinema, there was a man standing, facing me. He was far away, but I saw clearly that there was something wrong with him. First of all, he was stark naked. His pale body, wiry and lean, was on full display. This began to sound alarm bells. The only rational explanation for his state of undress was that he might be an escaped mental patient. Or perhaps he was a pervert. He could be dangerous, I realized. I got out of the car, and the man disappeared into the trees at once. I was getting increasingly uneasy.
I decided to go find Maisie. A lone eighteen-year-old girl in an empty building at night just seemed like something bad waiting to happen.
But to my relief she came out right then, wearing the pullover.
We got into the car and shut the doors. I switched the radio on, and, when the silence between us lasted too long, asked her what kind of music she liked.
“I don’t listen to music,” she said.
I half-expected that answer, and shook my head with a laugh.
“But you play it quite well.”
She shook her head with a smile. I switched the radio off, remembering the man I had seen. I reckoned this would be more a more interesting topic.
I told her what I had seen and began to regret it. She became suddenly on edge, asking me where I had seen him. I pointed at the trees. He was no longer there.
“I need to get home now,” she said, looking me squarely in the face. “Please.”
“Okay,” I acquiesced. I didn’t ask any questions.
I started up the car and we drove out of there in a hurry. We didn’t talk until we had left the theater far behind.
I stole glances and saw that she was biting her nails. Something was bothering her – something about the man’s description, perhaps? I had no idea. I just kept driving.
Several minutes later, I stopped midway along a country road and got out.
“Why are you stopping?” she asked, clearly agitated.
“I need some fresh air,” I said. It was the truth.
“Here?” she asked. Even though we were alone, she continued looking around cautiously.
“It’s nice here,” I explained. “Really, you should come out with me. I cycle along here with friends sometimes.”
With some hesitation, she joined me. We leaned against the car while looking at the fields, which lay as far as the eye could see on one side of the road. On the other side were thick woods. On that quiet, warm night, it was nice to stand out and simply gaze at the fields.
In spite of her earlier unease, Maisie seemed to feel more and more comfortable where we were. Perhaps it was the pleasant view before us, or the fresh air, or perhaps it was the excitement of being out at night – whatever it was, something made her forget about whatever had frightened her. I told her about how I had once been roughly at this same spot with some friends at sunrise, and how beautiful it had been. Then she opened up and tell me about how she was honestly finding living in this town and going to this school. We laughed a little about the antics of our French teacher, and even discussed poetry we were studying.
Occasionally we would say nothing and simply take in the cool night air.
During one such silence, I felt a sudden inexplicable pang of dread. Unsure why, I turned to look back at the road. What I saw flooded me first with confusion, then utter disbelief, and then with relentless creeping fear. The naked man from the cinema was there, standing less than a hundred yards away.
How? I wondered. How was he there already? More chilling, however, was the question of why. What did he want?
When I had first seen him, I hadn’t thought much of him besides that he might be a potentially dangerous pervert. But where he stood in the moonlight, other odd details became clear. He appeared to be very tall – perhaps somewhere between six and seven feet. He was clearly emaciated, apparently suffering from starvation, and yet his thighs and shoulders appeared bulky, and disproportionately muscular. There was something disturbing about his face as well. It looked blotchy and deformed – like a melted plastic clown mask. Perhaps it was a mask. From my vantage point, I couldn’t tell for certain.
“Uh, I think we should get in the car,” I said.
“Huh? Why?” she said, turning to me. Then she stiffened, and I knew she had seen him too.
“Hey, come on! Get in the car, quick!” I began to breathe heavily. She didn’t seem to hear me. She looked as though she were in another dimension. I opened the door and tried to usher her inside, but she was alarmingly firm.
The stalker stood still. The more I watched him, the less I thought of him as a person and the more I thought of him as… something else. There was something disturbing and inhuman about his face. His presence stank of raw, otherworldly menace.
He moved. He began to sprint. Towards us.
Maisie took off. I knew she was fast, but I’d never seen her run like she ran then. It was as though she had been maddened by pure terror and lost control.
“Shoot!” I cried, fumbling with the car door. My hands were sweaty and felt weak, as if enfeebled by fear of the stalker. Looking back, I was shocked by waves of cold panic. He was quick. Demonically quick. There was no way she could escape him on foot, let alone me.
I overtook her in the car and called repeatedly from the window. Hearing me eventually, she got in. Then I put my foot on the gas and drove like there was no tomorrow. I expected to see the stalker in the rear-view mirror. Instead, I saw nothing but an empty road. It was as if he had never been there in the first place.
I didn’t dare say a thing throughout the drive home. My thoughts ran wild and my arms shook on the wheel. We reached our hometown in silence, and it wasn’t until I stopped outside her house that she spoke.
“No,” she whispered. “Take me to your house. I don’t want to go home.”
“Sure, sure,” I was baffled, but didn’t want to fluster her by asking why. “Not a problem.”
So we drove a few more streets to my house, entered through a back-door, climbed the stairs to my room and closed the door firmly. I drew the curtains and turned on a reading lamp.
“Feel free to take the bed. Don’t worry, I’ll sleep on the armchair.” I smiled, and felt ridiculous for acting as though nothing had happened. She got under the covers without a word, and hid her face in her hair.
I settled down, still shaking, on my chair.
“Don’t leave,” she said. It was more of a plea, and it made something within me go soft.
“Trust me, I won’t,” I said. That’s the last thing she said before, somehow, falling asleep.
I sat there for hours trying to make sense of what had happened. Something about that strange man had really shaken Maisie up, so much so that she couldn’t sleep in her own home. Why not? Did she think he’d follow her there? I realized that my mother would be most dismayed if she found me with a girl in my room at night. But I was her friend, and hated to see her so afraid. I couldn’t have said no.
She slept a few feet before me, breathing calmly, apparently in peace. But I knew that something was troubling her. I got the terrible feeling that the weird distorted-clown-faced man was somehow connected with her strange behavior.
No, absolutely not. This was a random, one-off incident, I told myself.
But then why was she so afraid of him? Why did the mere description of the man arouse such immediate and disproportionate fear?
Could she know him? How?
Who is he, anyway?
There were too many questions and my head was too tired to contemplate them.
Eventually, from the exhaustion of sitting upright, I began to doze off. I was lulled to sleep by the hum of the night breeze, the quiet whir of the fridge downstairs, and the soothing sound of footsteps. Of bare skin slapping slowly against concrete outside, as if whoever was out there had unnaturally long legs.
After the incident at the movie theater, Maisie more or less stopped talking to me. I didn’t hold it against her. I assumed she just needed time. But weeks passed and she kept silent. During the last week of school, I passed her in a hallway and we made eye contact. She forced a wry, short-lived smile.
“Daniel,” she spoke at last, “I…”
She sighed and hurried away without finishing what she wanted to say.
We finished school without ever speaking again.
On the last day, I slipped my number into her locker, in case she ever wanted to get in touch.
She never did.
The summer months dragged by. Another semester at the University began. Years passed. Before I knew it, I forgot much of what had happened. You’d think someone would remember things like that. But no. It was almost as if my brain was deliberately trying to erase the memories.
After what David said at the reunion, things came flooding back. I revisited the archives of my memory, and was frightened by what I found. I spent the following days strolling around town, thinking nonstop about the whole frightening affair, and trying desperately to understand.
About a week later, I was going for a run in my hometown and crossed paths with someone I hadn’t seen in years. Maisie’s father. He had lost weight – not to mention quite a bit of his hair – but I knew him at once. He didn’t notice me until I said hello, and seemed to only vaguely remember me, which was upsetting.
We stood talking about what I had been up to, college and stuff. Then there was a pregnant pause, and I dared to mention the topic of his daughter’s disappearance.
“Look, Mr. Heathen, I heard very recently about… Maisie. I’m devastated.”
He looked up at me through his old-fashioned glasses with a tragic, defeated look in his eyes.
“Young man,” he said softly, “this world has things in store for some people that seem so unjust, so cruel, that they test our faith in the Almighty. But we must keep the faith. It’s all I have now. That, and Mrs. Heathen.”
I waited for him to carry on. Instead, he tenderly took one of my hands in his. It chilled me how frail he seemed for his age.
“What’s troubling you, boy?” he asked. “You seem to have something on your mind.”
“I – I do,” I admitted.
“If you wish, you may tell me. Let us go to the house of God.” I didn’t know what he meant until he gestured to the church. “Evil things won’t follow us there.”
Shortly, we were seated beside one another in the old town church. It was always open and always empty, apart from Sundays when a few regulars would attend.
I described to Maisie’s father how I had often felt concerned about his daughter. I told him a lot. But I didn’t mention the night at the cinema.
He listened intently, sighed, and then spoke.
“Mrs. Heathen can’t bring herself to accept it, but deep down, I know that Maisie was afraid of something. I think you will have noticed that she could sometimes be withdrawn – perhaps a bit unresponsive, as if she were not quite fully present.”
I nodded.
“Well,” he continued, “she wasn’t always like that.” He reached into his breast pocket and handed me a photo. I knew at once that it was his daughter – only she was several years younger than when I had known her. It was a school photo, and she was smiling. It was a carefree, sincere expression, untouched by any underlying anxiety.
“I’m not sure what it was, but something in her changed when she was thirteen. I think I know when it happened. You see, we lived for a short time in another part of the country. In a small, rural town up north. There were woods near the village that had a reputation for being… unwholesome. Haunted, even. The place had a dark history, according to the locals. Work had brought me there, and we were new in town. Maisie didn’t fear the superstitions. One night at a sleepover, she and a few friends she had made at the local school thought it would be exciting to go walking through those woods.”
“What happened?” I asked.
“Nothing happened,” he replied, then hesitated. “Not at first, that is. But things began to happen soon after.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I fear that something followed her home that night. Something from those woods latched onto her, and never let go.”
“Some… thing?”
“Something,” he explained. “An evil being. A demon, if you will. Whatever it was, it haunted her, and when we left that town, it followed.”
He paused a moment, reflecting, then went on.
“It was nothing much at first – just nightmares. Then she complained about a presence in the corner of her bedroom. Naturally, that was unsettling, but nothing came of it. We put it down, at first, to her watching too many horror films. Then she stopped eating. Then she had trouble sleeping. She demanded that we take down the mirrors in our house. We didn’t know what to think. I got the first feelings that something… unnatural… was happening. But I wasn’t sure. I never once saw anything unusual with my own eyes. But sometimes, I admit I would go into her room at night and feel the hairs stand up on my neck, inexplicably. She would go through phases of extreme paranoia, followed by extended periods of normalcy. But whatever it was kept coming back.”
“Mr. Heathen,” I said, my voice shaking, to my surprise, “did she ever describe what this thing looked like?”
“Never. Maisie avoided talking about it. I don’t know if it even had a visible form.”
I couldn’t help but think of the man outside the cinema – his elongated body, his hideous deformity, his strange, threatening aura. I tried to remove the image from my mind.
Her father carried on.
“Before she vanished, Maisie rented a waterfront cottage in a remote area. She told nobody about this apart from a university professor whom she trusted. It was a strange thing for her to do. Our family has no affiliation with the |
Consider this a warning. In the event it ever comes to you during a moment of weakness, as it did me all those years ago, say no to the Pastel Man. It doesn’t matter how much you love the person that it promises to help, nothing is worth what it wants in return. I tell you this in hopes that you don’t make the same mistake I did that cold winter night, kneeling beside my father’s writhing body on the living room floor.
It was 1997 when I first encountered the creature and ever since not a day has gone by where its awful face hasn’t haunted my thoughts. I was a teenager then, but I look at that evening as the night my childhood died – corrupted and violated by a callous hell beast with pale blue skin.
Even though it happened years ago, I still remember the events of that fateful first encounter vividly. I could tell you what my father and I were wearing, the toppings on the pizza we were eating, even the score of the football game playing on the TV. It was around half time when my father’s speech started to become slurred, which I found odd since he had been nursing the same bottle of beer since kickoff. Stranger even, I had seen him drink a six-pack to himself in the past without even appearing tipsy so I was having trouble understanding how a single drink could have such an effect on him. I realized it wasn’t the alcohol when half his body went limp and he slid off the couch. I asked him if he was all right, but his words had now become incomprehensible. I grabbed the phone off the coffee table and dialed 911.
“911 what’s your emergency?”
“I think my Dad’s having a stroke.” The thought had only crossed my mind a second before the operator answered the phone.
“Ok, we have your address. An ambulance is on its way. It should be there soon. Is he conscious?”
“Yes. He is, but I can’t understand him.” Nonsensical jumbled sounds were rambling out my father’s mouth. I was afraid. He was all I had. My mother passed away when I was a baby so I never got the chance to know her, but my dad was always there for me – doing the job of two parents. If I lost him then I would be alone.
“That’s normal with strokes. It’s good that he’s awake – “ And I didn’t hear the rest because that’s when I dropped the phone.
I was having one of those moments where everything faded into the background while my world fell silent. The football game playing on the television, the operator giving me instructions over the phone, even the sound of my father’s voice as he wailed in agony on the carpet became white noise – dissolving into the air as I lost all awareness of my surroundings. All of my attention and focus was now on one thing. The horrible abomination that was standing in my kitchen watching my father and I with a twisted smile across its disgusting face.
Its head narrowly missed scraping against our kitchen’s 9ft. ceiling as it shifted from side to side, fidgeting with anticipation like a giddy child in class on the last day of school waiting for that final bell to signal summer vacation. The pastel blue skin that covered its entire body, from the creature’s head all the way down to its feet horrible grimy feet, looked weathered and wrinkled like leather that had been left out in the sun for days. Hanging off its long, lanky frame was a plain brown satchel with black stitching. It lightly caressed the strap of its pouch with a long finger while it looked on with an eager expression on its face.
At first I thought I had gone mad from the sight of seeing my father have a stroke, but the closer the monstrosity slinked towards us, the more I realized it was no hallucination. It ducked its head under the light fixture in the living room and stepped a spindly leg over the couch. Though the monstrous freak of nature was clearly bipedal, it had moved down to all fours and appeared to be stalking us like some wild animal hunting its prey. I should have been terrified, but the horrible smile on its god-awful face made me feel more anger towards the thing than fear. It was as if it was taking pleasure in my father’s misery. Closer still it crept and I grabbed my father’s hand out of desperation in some veiled attempt to protect him. The creature stopped its face mere inches from mine before shifting its attention down to my father.
“I can save him, if you’d like?” I was taken back. I had prepared for the terrible thing to take a chunk of flesh out of my neck with its teeth or slash me across the face with its black crusty nails, but speaking to me was the last thing I expected. “He’s dying, but I can save him. If you’d like?”
I sat there, mouth agape, cradling my father’s head in my arm and staring into the two pink bulbous eyes that took up more than a third of the foul thing’s face. I remember thinking that they reminded me of Easter Eggs – a bizarre connection for my mind to make given the situation. It stood back up on two feet and once again I was reminded just how imposing the creature really was. It told me its name, which I dare not repeat because it also explained that speaking it is the best way to summon the beast. For the remainder of my story I will refer to this entity as the Pastel Man – just a name I came up with due to the pigment of its skin and the light shade of pink that was the color of its eyes. That and for some reason giving the creature a silly name always helped to make me feel less afraid of it. Not much less though.
Finally, my mind had recovered enough from shock to allow me to stutter out a few words, “What do you mean you could save him?”
“What I do is make deals, young man.” Its voice was surprisingly angelic – like a thousand choirs all singing in unison. If one were to close their eyes while the creature spoke to them, they might imagine they were listening to a seraph, not the hideous monster that was sporting a depraved grin in my living room. However, its extraordinary voice only managed to make me feel more uneasy. It wasn’t right that something so beautiful would belong to such a repulsive creature. The Pastel Man gestured to its satchel. “I have the ability to save your father’s life, but you have to agree to a deal with me.”
“What kind of a deal?”
“Everything happens for a reason, even death.” Its mischievous smile widened just a bit as if the creature was getting to the punch line of a joke. “It’s true that I can save your father’s life, but someone must die in his place. One shall die, so another may live. That’s the deal.” I clutched my chest. “Not you, what would be the point? No, I’m giving you the option to choose the person who will be replacing your father this evening.”
I was stunned by what I was hearing. “Are you death?”
The Pastel Man threw its head back and let out terrible howl. It was only later that I would come to realize that was how the wretched thing laughed. “No, I’m certainly not The Grim Reaper, although you aren’t the first person to ask me that. I’m not the devil either, nor do I work for him. Let’s just say I’m an independent contractor, shall we?” Two tiny holes that lied on the center of its face in the absence of a nose flared in satisfaction of its explanation.
“I can choose anyone?”
“Well, not anyone. That wouldn’t be very fun would it?” I could see a row of shark like teeth hiding in its mouth as it separated its lips to speak. “Your father’s replacement must be someone else in your life.”
“I’m not a murderer.” My voice was tiny. It barely escaped my mouth. I looked back down to my father. He had lost consciousness and his skin was becoming pale. “And I don’t think I could kill anyone I know.”
“You don’t have to murder anyone, young man.” The sly creature was moving into its final pitch. “All you have to do is tell me who it is you want dead and I will do the rest. Surely there must be someone you wouldn’t mind out of your life? A teacher, an ex girlfriend, a rival at school perhaps?”
There was. I had fantasized about it many times, but never in my wildest dreams would I have ever acted on it. Everyone has that person in their life who is toxic. Someone who makes getting up in the morning more difficult and I was certainly no exception. “Walter Flannigan,” I muttered under my breath.
“Who?”
“Walter Flannigan. He’s the guy at school who gave me this.” I lifted my shirt and showed it the handprint shaped bruise on my chest that Walter had given me during one of his infamous “hazing sessions” in the locker room earlier that week. “He’s been shoving me into lockers, and beating me up since I was a freshman. The faculty doesn’t do anything since he’s the best football player in the history of our school. He’s a five star recruit going to a huge college next year. ESPN even did a piece on him.”
“Ahhh,” The Pastel Man began to snicker to itself. It somehow widened its already enormous pink eyes even more then crouched back down to get face to face with me again. “What fun is being a king, without serfs to torment, eh?”
“Well I’m tired of being tormented so just go and kill him before I change my mind!”
The Pastel Man shot a massive hand out and wrapped its long fingers around my face. The grin that it was wearing since I first laid eyes on it had now been replaced by a scowl. “YOU DO NOT TELL ME WHAT TO DO! ARE WE CLEAR!?” I nodded sheepishly. The grip it had on my face was so tight. I understood then and there that if it wanted to, the creature could easily snap my neck or crush my skull like an egg. “Good, because it’s not so simple, young man. There are steps that must be taken.”
“Steps?”
“Yes,” A playful smirk once again returned to the Pastel Man’s face. “You will have to be present when this Walter Flannigan dies. In fact, I need you to summon me or else I can’t complete my end of the bargain. Get the boy alone and speak my name. You must watch him die by sunrise or else you will be violating the terms of our agreement. So do we have a deal?” I nodded again and the monster released its hold of my face before snatching my hand. Its giant paws swallowed my palm as we shook to cement the deal. “Excellent. With this handshake our deal is binding, young man.”
I watched curiously as the Pastel Man reached into its satchel and fumbled around until it found what it was looking for. In between its repugnant fingers it held a strange looking insect about the size of a quarter. The bug buzzed its wings in attempt to flutter away, but could not escape the Pastel Man’s grasp. With its other hand, it pushed down on my father’s jaw in order to open his mouth.
“What are you doing?” I asked, but the Pastel Man didn’t answer. It then violently stuffed the insect in my father’s mouth jamming it down his esophagus with its filthy fingers.
The Pastel Man rose once more to its feet. “There, the deed is done. Your father will recover in full. Now it’s your turn. Remember, the boy dies by sunrise or the deal is off.”
It turned its back to me and began to slither away.
“What if I change my mind?” I asked.
The creature stopped almost mid stride and twisted around. Again its smile had been supplanted by an awful sneer. I felt even less safe then when it was holding my face in a vice grip earlier. “Your father’s health has already been restored so someone must replace him. One must die so another shall live. That was the deal. If you fail to complete your end of the bargain then that someone will be you. Believe me when I say this young man, I don’t need to be summoned once our deal has been broken. I will come for you. That is a promise. And when I do you’re going to wish you never crossed me.” With that it continued out the kitchen and through the backdoor. I chased after it, but by the time I got outside into the back yard, the thing had disappeared. It was then that I spotted the lights of the ambulance as it pulled up across the street from my house. I flagged down the EMT’s and led them to my father.
It wasn’t difficult to find Walter. I knew exactly where he was going to be, but I had completely lost track of time while waiting to hear from my father’s doctors in the ICU. I had to hurry to Eddie Gillen’s house. Eddie’s parents were out of town and he had been talking all week at school about the “Rager” he planned on throwing. There were two things I knew about Walter:
1) Eddie was his best friend
2) He never missed a party.
It was somewhere around 3:30 AM when I pulled my car up to Eddie’s. I parked a little ways down the street so I wouldn’t be spotted. Because I had gotten held up at the hospital, I feared that I had missed my chance to catch Walter. My concerns were alleviated when I saw his raised pick-up truck still parked in the driveway. Another thought crossed my mind. What if Walter had gotten too drunk and passed out. I tried to think of away to get into Eddie’s and get Walter alone long enough for the Pastel Man to do whatever it was it had planned. Luckily for me, it wasn’t too long before Walter stumbled out of Eddie’s front door and climbed into his truck. I let out a sigh, having just escaped a potentially challenging problem.
He pulled out and I followed behind, staying far enough away so that I wouldn’t tip him off. He was drunk. Even from the distance I was tailing him, I could see his truck swerving in and out of its lane. The Pastel man’s otherworldly voice played itself over and over like a heavenly broken record in my mind.
“You must watch him die by sunrise…”
I wondered if I even had the courage to summon the creature again. Seeing it once that night was traumatic enough. Could I really handle looking into its horrible face for a second time? And what about Walter? Even though he was a huge ass, he didn’t deserve to die and certainly not at the hands of that thing.
It will kill you if you don’t let it kill him. Just remember, you’re doing this for Dad.
I’m not sure if it was the little angel on my shoulder or the little devil that was whispering in my ear. I looked out my driver side window. A pink ribbon lined the horizon – the very first signs of sunlight making its presence known in the dark evening sky. In a couple hours morning would arrive, and I would be too late to complete my end of the bargain. I would see the Pastel Man again one way or another.
Walter lived up in the foothills outside of town where some of the wealthier people owned homes. I had been there once for a school project – one where I did all the work and he ended up taking the credit. We had come to a part of the road leading towards his house that cut through a wooded area. I knew there would be no houses for a stretch so I decided that was where I would make my move. I sped up until I was tailgating the truck then started flashing my brights and honking my horn. I was prepared to rear end him in order to get him to stop driving, but it didn’t even take that to get the job done. He must have been panicking. His truck started to swerve violently across the street before running off road, sideswiping a tree, and coming to a complete stop.
I pulled up behind him then hesitated for a moment. A glimpse of the creatures grin flashed through my mind causing me to shutter. I got out of my car, but left the engine running and my headlights on. “Hey Walter!” I shouted.
Walter’s door jerked open and he jumped out the truck to the ground below. “Sean The Shithead?” he was confused, but clearly annoyed. Sean The Shithead was the nickname he had affectionately given me on my second week of school. Within a month he had my entire class calling me it. “You think that was funny? I am gonna fuck you up you little bitch!”
He stormed towards me with both fists clenched. Again doubts crossed my mind about whether or not I could pull the trigger. Guilt began to pump through my veins. Walter’s life was about to end and it was going to be because of me. Memories darted through my consciousness: All the afterschool beatings I took at the hands of Walter, the Pastel Man’s wicked smile, the look on my father’s face as he kicked and screamed on the living room floor. Finally those words, spoken through that unnervingly angelic voice of that terrible monster.
One must die so another shall live
Walter was moving closer. It was now or never. I had to choose whether or not I would summon the beast before the decision was out of my hands. I shouted the Pastel Man’s real name out in a burst of emotion aimed directly at the star football player. Walter paused for a moment, looking at me in confusion then recollected himself and proceeded towards me again – The Pastel Man was nowhere to be seen. For the second time that evening I wondered if I had gone insane. Could everything that had happened to me that night been in my head? What was real? Was my father even sick? Again I repeated the thing’s name in an effort to summon it, but this time it did nothing to hinder Walter’s pursuit of me.
He violently shoved me against the hood of my car, grabbed hold of my shirt collar and spun me around. Walter raised his fist to hit me. I winced and put my hands up in order to prepare for impact, but he never struck me. It only when I opened my eyes that I realized I wasn’t crazy. Walter’s face was white. His mouth hung open just as mine had when I first caught sight of the Pastel Man earlier that evening. I turned my head to see that unmistakable, long, lanky body slink out of the shadows and in front of my car’s headlights. Its face still wore that warped smile and I knew just beyond those thin lips was a mouth full of tiny daggers capable of tearing muscle from bone. Neither Walter nor I said a word. I think I might have been almost as terrified as him. My stomach began to feel sick as the Pastel Man stalked ever closer. I didn’t look at Walter’s face. How could I? The boy was about to die at the hands of this horrible monster and it was my fault. I didn’t have to summon it. I didn’t have to shake its hand.
“I’m sorry.” I truly was and I still am.
I hadn’t taken my eyes off the Pastel Man, but I think it had more to do with not being able to look Walter in the face than fear for my life. Walter said nothing. My car’s headlights fell on the creature’s face and now we could both see it clearly. The Pastel Man’s large pink eyes seemed to glow bright in the light of the headlamps.
Walter let go of me and made a break for his truck, but the hell beast pounced on him with a surprising amount of speed and agility that I had not yet seen it demonstrate. His screams were met with only apathy from the creature as it dug those filthy black fingernails into Walter’s abdomen. I tried to look away, but the Pastel Man made sure I remembered our agreement.
“YOU MUST WATCH, YOUNG MAN! DON’T FORGET WE HAD A DEAL!”
I forced myself to look back at the massacre. The creature’s smile had mutated from mischievous to depraved. It looked as if it was deriving some sort of sick sexual pleasure out of the torture it was putting Walter through. Deeper still, it burrowed its long bony fingers into Walter’s stomach. With a jerk the heinous thing yanked out a hand full of his intestines and dragged them across the ground as it approached me, flaring those holes on its face that filled in for a nose and clearly pleased with its handiwork.
“It’s over then?” I’m not sure if I was asking or begging the creature as the two of us faced each other in the empty street that night.
The Pastel Man threw his head back and once again let out that revolting howl. “Over? We’re just getting started.” It headed back over towards Walter, who at this point was crawling along the ground still trying to get to his truck while his innards trailed behind him. The Pastel Man cut him off and snatched him off the asphalt, easily lifting him by the head with one hand. It toyed with him for a bit, forcing Walter to look into its hideous face. With its free hand the creature reached into its satchel and pulled out a much bigger insect this time. It was different than the one my father had unknowingly ingested, both in size and in appearance. If the bug that the creature jammed down my father’s mouth was the size of a quarter then this one must have been as large as a golf ball. It was slimy – the mucous like membrane that encased its body glistened in my cars headlights. The Pastel Man dangled the nasty bug in front of Walter’s face for a few seconds.
“Now be a good boy and open your mouth.”
Walter screamed. That gave the blue beast the opening it needed. It thrust the slimy insect in his mouth and past his tonsils with its filthy fingers. I watched on as Walter gagged, presumably on the oversized maggot as it made its way down his throat. Soon he began to turn blue. I could tell he was choking to death and even though I wanted to save him, there was nothing I could do. A minute later and the Pastel Man dropped his lifeless body to the ground.
It examined the carnage for a moment, pondering over it as if it was a masterpiece in an art gallery. Then the demon turned away, retreating back towards the shadows and disappeared into the night without saying word. I stood there in the road, looking at the scene and still feeling sick to my stomach from what I just witnessed. I don’t know what I expected, to happen after the deed was done. There was no explosion, no brilliant light show where I would watch Walter’s soul either dragged down to hell or ascend upwards towards the heavens – just a dead boy in the road. A dead boy and his murderer. The Pastel Man was the gun, but I pulled the trigger. In a way there were two dead boys in the road that evening.
I knew that I didn’t have time to dawdle. At any moment a car could have come driving down the street and find me standing in the middle of that massacre. I sprinted back to my car and sped down the street towards town.
The coroner attributed Walter’s death to a drinking and driving accident, although there was understandably a lot of suspicion regarding the odd circumstances surrounding his demise. The autopsy revealed no evidence of the slimy bug that the Pastel Man had placed in Walter’s throat. The town was devastated. I remember a candle light vigil was held in his honor. A couple of big news outlets covered his death because of Walter’s status as an elite college football recruit. My father made a full recovery and just a couple of days after his stroke was released from the hospital. I would go on to graduate high school and meet the love of my life the very first semester at my university. Her name was Diana and she was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. We married shortly after college, settled down and had a wonderful boy named Mathew. However, I never forgot the hand I played in Walter’s death. I have carried that guilt with me since the events of that night. No matter how much I wanted to, I couldn’t forget. The Pastel Man wouldn’t let me.
It must have seen me as an easy patsy because the creature has come to me again and again every time a loved one has been on the brink of death, offering me the same deal I accepted that first shameful night. Though the creature had been persistent in its pursuit of blood lust, the image of Walter’s gruesome death never left my mind and gave me the strength to say no to its propositions. Even years later, on the eve of my father’s passing, I was able to refuse it’s proposal when the Pastel Man visited me in his hospital room.
I’ve been cursed to have my soul tested till the day that I die by the Pastel Man. A test that for years I was able to persevere through, until one evening where my life began crumbling down and once more the creature took advantage of me in a moment of weakness.
Diana and Mathew were on their way back from the airport after visiting my in-laws. I was swamped at work and had to pull an all-nighter in order to finish a project by its deadline so my wife hailed a taxi rather than ask me to pick them up.
It was around midnight and I was alone in the office when I got a call from the police department. They told me a drunk driver had collided with their cab on the highway coming back from the airport. My wife and the cabbie were killed on impact and my son was in critical condition. I sat there at my desk, unable to move or formulate a coherent thought. It was then that I realized I wasn’t by myself in the office anymore. Perched atop my boss’ desk was The Pastel Man, that abhorrent smile still painted across its nasty wrinkled face. It didn’t need to make an offer. This I believe the creature already knew.
“Can you save them?” I asked.
“Yes and no.”
“What do you mean!? Just spit it out!”
The Pastel man’s smirk disappeared and I could tell that it was not pleased with my tone of voice. Memories of the vice grip it had on my face the last time I demanded something from the creature bled into my consciousness. Perhaps it realized I was past the point of threats because instead of lunging at me as the creature had done in the past, it decided to clarify its cryptic response. “I cannot pull someone back from death’s clutches, only save them before it gets its hold of them. Your wife is dead. Now make your peace with that. Your son’s life on the other hand can be salvaged. For a price of course.”
I racked my mind. I couldn’t think of a single person in my life who deserved to die at the hands of that pale blue monstrosity. Even someone as awful as Walter didn’t deserve the gruesome fate he received that night due to my poor decision. But my son was all I had now, and he didn’t deserve to die either. Not because someone else had made a poor decision that evening and got behind the wheel of a car they were too intoxicated to drive.
The Pastel Man’s glorious voice filled the room again. I seemed to be hearing it from all directions. “The drunk driver that crashed into your family’s cab is still alive and in the very same hospital as your son. Why not him?”
For the first time that evening I looked into the large pink eyes of the creature. “You said it has to be someone I know?”
“Semantics. It just needs to be someone who has directly impacted your life. The moment he drove his car into your wife and son’s taxi he became a candidate.” The Pastel Man flared the tiny holes on its face with glee the way it always did when it was content with itself.
“Fine. Let’s do it,” I said. I shook its giant hand to make the arrangement official. And with that the Pastel Man gave me the instructions to complete our deal.
When I met with the doctors at the hospital they updated me on the condition of my son. “We’ve done all that we can, but he’s a fighter,” The doctors feigned optimism, but I could see in their eyes that they didn’t expect him to make it through the night.
They led me to his room and gave me some time alone with him. The Pastel Man was already there when I entered, smiling down on his broken body. Quickly I shut the door behind me and nodded to the creature. It reached a gangly arm into its satchel and pulled out the same type of strange looking insect it had shoved down my father’s throat. I opened Mathew’s mouth and with two grubby fingers the creature crammed the bug deep into his oral cavity.
“He will make a full recovery. Now it’s your turn.” The Pastel Man waltzed behind the hospital curtain in my son’s room. I knew I didn’t have to check to see if it had disappeared. If it were to make another appearance at the hospital that evening, then it would be because I spoke its name.
When I agreed to the bargain at my office The Pastel Man had told me what room the driver was being kept in. His injuries were far less severe than Mathew’s so he was in a different wing of the facility. I could feel my heart pounding as I made my way towards his room. With each step the beating in my chest grew louder. Already that same feeling of guilt I had felt while I looked down at Walter’s corpse lying in the middle of the road washed over me. I was about to take another person’s life. Who was I to decide whether someone deserved to live or die? I felt just as ugly and horrible as the Pastel Man looked. Maybe I didn’t have pointed teeth or wrinkly blue skin, but if I knew that if I went through with our deal, then I was just as big of a monster as it was.
I stepped as stealthily as possible through the door, hoping no one would notice me sneak in. As I looked down at the face of the driver lying unconscious in his bed, I instantly felt that familiar sickness in my stomach. He was a boy, no older than Walter the night The Pastel Man and myself unfairly snuffed out his life before it truly had a chance to shine. Walter could have become someone different when he matured, someone capable of doing real good in this world, but he was never given the opportunity. This driver was just a stupid teenager who made a mistake, one that he’d never get the chance to atone for. I saw Walter in the boy’s face and my stomach began to churn more. I tried to call out the Pastel Man’s name, but couldn’t. Perhaps that little angel on my shoulder wouldn’t allow me. I would not be responsible for the death of another boy. Not this time. I refused to pull that trigger.
I walked out of his room and didn’t look back. I spent the rest of the evening sitting next to my son’s bed. The first few rays of morning sunlight snuck into Mathew’s hospital room and caught my attention. I peeked out through the blinds and watched the sun rise for the first time since the night Walter died. It was beautiful. The pink ribbon that lined the horizon had bled into the sky creating a dazzling purple hue. I had my light show, and it was spectacular.
I broke my deal with the Pastel Man and in doing so my fate now rests in its filthy hands. Hands that it likely plans on burying into my abdomen. On the plus side, my son will recover in full. It will be hard for him growing up without his parents, but he’s always been close with his Aunt. My wife’s sister is a wonderful woman with a caring family. She’s his legal godmother and promised us the day he was born that she would always be there for him. Her husband does well for himself and they’ve never had a problem with money. The life insurance policy Diana and I took out combined with the money we had been putting away for Mathew to go to college will insure that there should be no financial issues while he’s under their care.
It’s only a matter of time before the Pastel Man comes for me. I have accepted that my death is near, but I’m not scared. In a way I look forward to it. It’s almost as if the boy that died within me on that terrible night has been given another chance. When I die all the guilt and hate that I’ve had for myself dies with me – wiped away so that my soul can cross over to a new plain of existence pure and innocent. The way it was before I ever met that monster.
One must die so another shall live.
That’s what the Pastel Man said.
Credit To – Vincent Vena Cava
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Everyone knows that kid in school, the one who spends half the school year at home because their immune system can’t handle the massive amount of germs and viruses that tend to accumulate in an elementary school. I was that kid. I found myself getting sick every other week. Something in my body was always fighting off illness and fevers were more than common. My doctors didn’t know what was causing it, but since it never was serious enough to warrant a hospital trip, they concluded that I got the short end of the stick as far as my immune system went.
This did not make my mother’s life easy, given that she had recently divorced my father when I started first grade. She needed to be able to go to work and having a sick child made it very difficult. She reluctantly asked my grandfather for help. They had been estranged for years after a fight, but he agreed to take care of me and took us both in.
Moving into my grandfather’s house was a new experience that I had never encountered. It greatly outshone the small apartment my mother and father had lived in, a large Victorian home that had been in the family for generations. It stood three stories tall and had a large yard behind it, leading into a forest. It had fallen into some disrepair over the years as my grandfather had gotten older and with no other children to want the house, he’d stopped caring for it. The neighbors had offered him help fixing it up, but he’d rejected them multiple times vehemently, stating that he didn’t want people in his business.
From what my mother had told me, he’d always been a very cold and unfriendly man, including to her. It didn’t change even around me, always feeling as though he would rather be doing anything other than talking to me. That he even took us in though made me think that there had to be some good in this man, being an optomistic child.
It was shortly after we moved in that my fevers started up. My mother had to work and my grandfather was nowhere near as attentive as my mother was, so he left me to my own devices. They were mild, enough to remove me from school, but after a few hours sleeping past when I would have woken to leave for school, I’d get bored with laying in bed and wander. And for a six year old who spent most of their time alone and stuck in a bed, a huge house was the perfect place to explore.
My bedroom had been set on the second floor, next to the master bedroom so I was always near and able to hear my grandfather’s snoring. There were multiple bedrooms on the third floor, which made me wonder why my grandfather had bought the house when he’d only lived with my grandmother and mother. My first exploration would be of downstairs though.
The kitchen was large and made me wonder how much cooking my grandmother had done when she was still alive. The tiles were chipped in many corners and it was easy for me to hide in the large pantry, thinking that it would be a perfect place to jump out from if someone passed by. Even the oven seemed oversized, darkened with stains from meals past. My grandfather didn’t cook much, but he kept a steady supply of basic things to feed myself and my mother. I had never had much of a problem with foods with a few exceptions, which was surprising when you compared most of my classmates who spent most of their days living on chicken nuggets and sandwiches with the crusts cut off and only grape jelly.
The living room was a bit bare, the carpet worn down and rough to the touch. An old and torn couch stood in front of a television that barely functioned, looking archaic and rabbit ears bent in multiple directions. The scratches on the couch looked animalistic and I wondered if my grandparents had once owned animals and just never bothered to get it fixed. Outside of a set of dusty coffee tables, a flickering lamp and a grandfather clock that rang out with a distorted chime, nothing else interested me in this room. I didn’t imagine that it was used very often.
What was used often was the study. It was where my grandfather spent most of his time, looking over books and writing down words and numbers that were impossible for me to comprehend. Even as an adult, I still struggle with the cryptic poems and drawings that seemed to be his entire life’s work. He’d taken up most of the wall space with bookshelves and stocked them to the ceiling. The constant smell of pipe tobacco wafted out from this room and hung on his clothing. I learned very quickly not to bother him when he was in there. The look he cast to me when I knocked on the door was one of anger and disdain. When I asked what he was working on, he shooed me out of the room and told me to never go in there again, that it was not a room for children.
When the downstairs became boring, I made my way up the stairs and to the third floor. This one was even more empty, nothing but the doors to the bedrooms and a stained bathroom, along with a window that you could see the forest behind the house from. I struggled to see where the forest ended, looking like an endless sea of green and brown, darker as you tried to see further.
I checked the bathroom first. Again, everything seemed a bit oversized, but I was a rather small kid, so I wasn’t particularly bothered by it. The bathtub made me happy, I could practically swim in it. When I leaned in to look, it was stained dark on the bottom, darker than porcelain normally would be, but with how run down the house was, it seemed to fit. I turned on the water and the water came out reddish brown before slowly becoming clear. In older houses, the pipes still had a lot of minerals and rust in them, but it still looked a bit unnerving. Seeing the clear comforted my imagination though, especially when the sink did the same thing.
I did notice something a bit strange when I opened the cabinet under the sink. Far in the back, behind a few cleaning supplies, was a lone and dirty rubber duck. I found it odd because it didn’t seem at all like my grandfather to keep something this childish about, but concluded that it must have been my mother’s when she was younger and just abandoned. Feeling a sense of fondness, I took the duck from the cabinet and did my best to wash it off. The poor thing had been left there so long, when the grime came off from him, his yellow body was almost bleached white. His eyes, once black and shiny, looked grey and lifeless. I still liked the little duck though, and decided to take it with me as I explored.
The bedrooms disappointed me for the most part, looking long unused. There were three all together. The first was the most barren of the three, a long faded blue rug half crumpled on the floor and the bare frames of a twin bed in the corner of the room. The wooden slats on the bottom looked cracked and broken, as though someone had stepped on them or jumped violently on the mattress when it was still there.
The second had a bit more in it, barren bookshelves with a few thin books far too high for me to reach. Again, another abandoned bed frame sat in the corner of the room, missing its mattress as well and in just the same shape as the other bed. By now, I certainly wondered why my grandfather had multiple beds up here and who used to live in these rooms.
In the last bedroom, there was a dresser and eerily enough, a crib. My first thought was that this had been my mother’s when she was a baby. It was very small, a change from so much of the oversized objects in the house, just big enough for an infant. Off to the side of the room was what caught my attention. There was a door in the wall, a small square door that I guessed led to the attic. When I tried to pull the door, I found it was stuck closed fairly tightly. I pulled again and once more, but being out of bed and having been wandering up and down stairs had made me tired. I could feel my body begin to ache and decided that it would be an exploration for another day, dragging myself back down to my bedroom and laying down on my bed, falling asleep. The duck that I had kept in my hand stayed on the pillow beside me.
Someone had their hand on my head, feeling my forehead. There were whisperings above me, but they didn’t sound like my mother or my grandfather. They sounded like kids, people my age. I thought I felt a weight on my chest for a bit. Another hand touched my arm, a small hand. Having had many feverish nights, I thought I was dreaming until I could feel fingernails starting to dig into my arm. The whispers turned to snickers and laughs, something dark. I wanted to open my eyes, but I couldn’t. Something had me pressed down and whatever was laying on my chest was pressing to my throat.
And suddenly…
It was quiet. The hands and whispers were gone. The weight on my throat and chest was gone. I could open my eyes again. When I did, I found the duck sitting on my chest, staring at my bedroom door. It was the evening now and I knew my mother would be getting home. A nightmare, I told myself. A fever dream. I’d had lots of them before, and knew none of them were real, this couldn’t have been real. I rubbed my arm where I had felt the nails, not bothering to see if they had been real or not.
My mother swooped me up when she came home, looking tired and worried, telling me how much she missed me. My grandfather had barely left the room all day and somewhere in my sleeping, he’d left me a sandwich and juice, not wanting to wake me. My stomach still was in a knot, but seeing them both in the house helped to ease my nerves.
I decided that night to take my rubber friend into the bath with me before I went to bed. My mother filled up the bathtub, making a comment of rust in the pipes as the reddish brown water flowed out and then faded into clear, and helping me in. It felt soothing and watching the little discolored duck float was amusing. It almost seemed to smile, being in use again. Remembering, I asked my mom when she got it. She looked confused at me.
“I wasn’t much for baths myself. I never had a rubber duck.”
I gave a small “oh” at her and looked back at it. It had been so dirty, it had to have been there from long before. In the middle of my thoughts, I could hear her cellphone ring.
“Ahh, sorry honey, Mommy will be right back.” She said apologetically, rushing off the get her cellphone and take the call.
Now it was just me and the rubber duck. All alone in the bathtub and not able to see my mother’s figure, the walls of the tub seemed higher and larger, almost growing. I felt like I was shrinking and brought the duck to my body, not wanting to lose him in the water that seemed to be expanding around me. I could hear the same noises from my dream earlier, the same snickers and whispers. The thought that I was still dreaming crossed my mind, or that I was getting sicker, but the sounds were getting clearer and clearer. I could make out two voices, a little boy’s and a girl’s, having a quiet conversation. The third made no sense. It sounded like a baby’s gurgle but it was much too…distorted and almost sounded like choking. They were getting louder. And closer to me. Until it felt like they were over the side of the tub. I felt as though if I brought my eyes up away from the duck in my hand, I would see them. As a hand touched my shoulder, I could contain my fear no longer and screamed for my mother.
Her footsteps stomped to the bathroom and she burst in, frightened and worried for me safety. When I looked up, there was nothing but her in the doorway. No children, no baby. Only me and the duck. I wrapped my arms around her and cried, scared and telling her that someone was there, that someone touched me. She held me and stroked my back, telling me that the fever was making me imagine things, that I was sick and she’d take care of me, make it better. I tried to argue with her, but she told me that crying would make my fever worse and to just breathe, that she was there.
She toweled me off and put me to bed, telling me how important it was that I get better, that she loved me and even though it was hard for her to be here, she always would be and if I really needed her, she’d come. I don’t know what drove me to, but I brought the rubber duck to bed with me. She didn’t seem bothered by it. She even patted its head and said it would be a good dream companion, keep me safe. It may have been my imagination, but when I looked at it before she turned out the light, it almost seemed to smile and its eyes darken a bit.
When my mother turned off the light and left me in the dark, fear gripped my heart for a bit. I had wondered if those strange whispers and creatures were going to come for me when I went to bed. I had heard them before, I was sure of it. Would they wait for me to sleep? Would they just come in the dark? What were they, were they human? I couldn’t close my eyes, I was too frightened. The noises never came though. I could hear my grandfather’s snoring on the other side of my wall and my mother’s softer sleeping sighs as well. I couldn’t stay awake forever, as hard as I tried. I set the duck on the dresser beside me and bid it goodnight before falling back to sleep.
I heard them again. I was sure of it. Footsteps heading towards my bed. I had awoken before they got to me and could hear them. My breath caught and my hand moved slowly over to my dresser, feeling the rubber of the duck and where its head was turned, facing me. I’m not sure what compelled me to do it, but as a kid, you get some crazy ideas of what might help and protect you. In a moment, I grabbed the toy from my dresser and pointed its gaze to the sound, yelling “Go away!”
To my surprise, I heard a pair of tiny shrieks and something move through the open door, small footsteps on the stairs. I panted, holding the toy tight. Someone was there. They were real, I wasn’t imagining it. I wasn’t going to waste any time. I jumped from my bed and dashed into the master bedroom, duck still in my hand.
“Mommy, Grandpa, there’s something upstairs!” I called out, shocking them both and my mother turning on the light. I ran into her arms and buried my face in her chest, telling her of the kids in my room, the talking, that I heard them run up the stairs. My mother tried to calm me down, but my grandfather seemed angry and ripped me from her arms, holding mine and telling me to stop this nonsense and go back to bed, stop telling lies. My mother looked cross at him and told him that I was frightened and should stay with them. He argued that there was no one in this house and I wasn’t going to learn to handle myself unless I stopped being coddled. Not wanting to keep an argument going that late at night, my mother got up and said she’d stay in my bed for the night and keep watch over me. Looking irritated, my grandfather grunted and curled back up in bed, telling her to turn off the damn light on her way out.
My mother held me all night in my small bed. I think she must have been uncomfortable, but she didn’t seem to mind at all. Her warmth was comforting and within minutes, I had fallen back to sleep.
She did this every night for the next three nights, particularly as my fever got worse. The whispers stayed away when she was there, and after the first day, I grew nervous about napping when she wasn’t home. It left me worn out and exhausted, aggravating my illness. I felt a heavy throbbing in my ears and the morning of the fourth day, I couldn’t hear at all.
The doctor had said I had a severe ear infection and needed a lot of rest and antibiotics. It was an unnerving thing, not being able to hear. You take it for granted when you can, all the little things you missed. I wasn’t able to hear the tea kettle in the kitchen, nor the creak of the floorboards as I walked up and down the stairs, nor the sound of birds in the forest out behind the backyard. During this time, the duck, who I had named Leonard, never left my side. Whatever those things were, they didn’t seem to like him. He seemed to like me though and as I carried him around, his eyes seemed to get darker and shinier.
My fever spiked in the night and I could barely move from my bed. My mother watched over me, worried. She wrote things down on a notepad so I could understand what she was saying. She talked to my grandfather a lot and even though I couldn’t hear, I could tell they were fighting by the looks on their faces. When he left, she looked defeated and wrote something down on the paper.
“Mommy will be sleeping in Grandpa’s room tonight. You just call if you need anything, okay?”
I nodded and she kissed my forehead, the little concerned wrinkle in her brow as she turned off the light. I was so tired, that once she left the door, my eyes closed into sleep.
It did not last long though. I realized shortly after I had fallen asleep. I couldn’t hear them! I couldn’t hear if they were coming into my room or not! My skin tingled and a cold sweat started up in my body. My hand scrambled about my dresser, but somehow, I had dropped the duck from its place beside me. It wasn’t there. It wasn’t there! Tears began to form in my eyes, thinking that I couldn’t hear the creatures that were coming in, that my friend, my only friend, was gone and couldn’t protect me. Even calling for my mother wouldn’t work, they’d get me before she got there.
My blood ran cold as I could feel hands, two hands on each arm touch me, hold me down. The pressure returned to my chest. They were here. They were here and there was nothing I could do about it. Tears dripped down the side of my face and something else did. Whatever was on my chest was looking down at me, its head over mine and dripping something thick and cold, putrid smelling. It smelled like the rusted water from the bathtub, but far worse. I could see it staring down at me, small head silhouetted in the darkness by what little light I could see. The ones on the sides were digging their hands into me, and I could feel how slimy their hands were, cold and disgusting. I was sure I was going to die. My throat was being constricted, tiny malformed hands pressing to my neck and choking me. Everything was feeling tighter and tighter around me. The pressure was growing stronger and stronger and their grip on my arms dug into my skin. A feeling of resignation and relief came over me as I began to pass out.
A bright light flashed before my eyes, two small screams could be heard and all at once, it was all gone. I sat up, gasping for breath and heard something fall to the floor. Quickly, I turned on my light and reached for it. It was Leonard. All his color had returned, but it looked as though someone had tried to burn him, black misshapen patches on his body. He looked happy though. I hugged the small toy to me and cried, cried harder than I ever had before. It woke up my mother. I told her I didn’t want to stay here anymore and begged her to go somewhere else, to move, anywhere. She held me close and cried with me and promised me that we’d go somewhere else. Maybe it was the way I was crying or when she saw what looked like dark dried blood on my cheeks and arms, she knew something was deeply wrong.
Thankfully, one of my mother’s coworkers had the kindness in her heart to take us in. We moved out of my grandfather’s house, who barely said a word to us when we left, walking back inside to his study, I imagined. I would not leave Leonard behind. He stayed with me on the move and still stays by my bedside, even as I have long grown into an adult. I did not hear any whispers or feel any more presence in the nights. After that night, my illnesses suddenly cleared. I was able to go to school and function as a normal kid.
When my grandfather died, I was a teenager in high school. My mother called me and asked if I would help move a few things out of the house, though she did ask rather gingerly. I said that I would.
When we returned to the house, close to ten years after we had left, it was in even worse shape than we had remembered. The windows were coming off the hinges, the roof had rotted and fallen in at places from heavy rains and the plant life was overgrown outside the house. We walked inside and the smell was horrendous, reeking of mildew and the vague scent of death. She cringed and asked me to look for anything that may be saved, otherwise to leave it. I don’t think she wanted anything from that house and would have burned it to the ground right then if she could.
I walked into the study and the smell of death was stronger than anywhere in the house. The chair where he had sat often was stained with something unmentionable. I imagined that was probably where he had died. A book lay open on his desk and I picked it up. The text was close to illegible, but I could read small words and dates, March 13th and April 2nd. They showed up repeatedly. I glanced through some of his other books and many were just the same, scattered drawings and journals everywhere. I picked up the ones that seemed the most important and left the room, happy to be out of the smell.
After disposing of the long rotted food in the fridge and pantry, I made my way upstairs, a sense of apprehension in my body. I’m not sure what I expected, it looked just the same as when I had briefly lived there ten years ago. The forest still expanded out into a sea of trees, and even as an adult, I could not see where they ended.
I remembered the second bedroom and the books that were on the shelf and went to see if they were still there. Indeed, they were and I reached up for them. They were photo albums and a journal. The photos seemed to go from the most recent to the older. I looked through and found pictures of my mother, going from a teenager to a child, to a toddler. When I got halfway through, I found other pictures that left me confused. They were pictures of children, a boy and a girl. They looked old and worn away, slightly distorted and black around the edges of it. They were mixed up, but the oldest they seemed to be was around 7 years old. In one particular picture, they were standing and waving to the camera with my grandmother in her younger years. She looked to be pregnant. In another picture was the boy in the bathtub smiling up at the camera. Holding Leonard.
My skin prickled as I stared at the photos. No one had said anything about other children. As far as I had known, my mother was their only child. Why would my grandfather hide this from her, from me, from…anyone? I closed the album and put it in the box with the journals, looking at the other book that had been on the shelf. When I opened it, a small envelope fell out. It had never been sealed shut. With a shaking hand, I opened it and pulled out the documents. They were birth and death certificates. The dates…1950 to 1957. 1951 to 1957. Causes of death, drowning. And…my grandmother’s. 1922 to 1957. Cause of death, suicide. Down in the doctor’s notes, it detailed her autopsy.
“The patient suffered multiple self inflicted wounds to the stomach and chest. The largest wound was created on the lower abdominal region and ruptured the uterus and small intestine. A brief blood sample and the expanded uterus lead to belief that the woman had been pregnant. Blood and amniotic fluid had been found around the woman’s mouth, as well as unknown flesh found in her teeth. No infant body was discovered with her and investigation is still in progress.”
This…was sickening. Was I reading this right? It was saying that…my grandmother had killed herself and tried to eat her own child? There was no death certificate for any infant in the bunch. Had they never found it? I looked through the book, searching for anything that would give me a clue about the children, what had really happened. There were places in the book where pages had been torn out. I searched the room desperately and found them having fallen behind the bookshelf. The writing was not my grandfather’s, it was far too neat and legible. The first page had the date of March 12th, 1957.
“They’re gone. I can’t…even believe it. My babies. He won’t even look at me. He thinks I did it. I turned my back for a minute. Just a minute….what a cruel world, to take ones so young. He keeps staring at me. Those eyes are burning holes in me, I can’t stand it. He’s looking at the young one in my stomach. He’s thinking I’ll drown it too. That man…he won’t hold me, won’t comfort me, won’t shed a tear for them.
What if he’s right though? The thought of my child coming into this world and losing them…no! No, I can’t let it happen! I can’t let them suffer, breathe in this foul air of the world, to be forced into existance just because I wanted another child…how selfish am I? I need…to help him. Save him from this world, but…I can’t bear losing another. What will I do?”
The second page seemed to be a letter. I was marked with the date of April 2nd. I tried to wipe off the dirt that seemed to be staining the page before I realized what the splotches and stains actually were: long dried blood. My body trembled and I feared what it would say. How long had my grandfather been hiding this? Against my better judgement, I carried on.
“my darling child,
i don’t have much time. i held you today, covered in my life and fluids, cut from my womb. you’re crying so quiet, i didn’t think you’d be so big, able to cry. i had hoped you’d be small enough to just sleep. even though you’re not ready, you look so beautiful. i made a mistake. don’t worry baby. i’ll put you back, then we’ll go together. i’ll bring you back in my body before we leave this world. then you won’t ever be alone. Mommy loves you so”
The letter seemed to cut off there and a trailing pen mark led off the paper, which made me guess that my grandmother had lost consciousness while writing it. My hands were shaking violently and tears had stared to form in my eyes. I dreaded the thought of showing this to my mother, finding out her mother was…No. I’d keep this to myself. She didn’t need to know. I put the letters back into the envelope and took the album and the book. I’d clear out the album when I got home, give her pictures and burn the others. They somewhat looked like someone had already tried.
The last room to inspect was the third bedroom. The roof had collapsed over this one and rotted wood and tiles lay scattered about. The crib that had been there before seemed to be missing. I was about to turn and leave, seeing nothing of value to take when I remembered and a chill went through my spine. The attic. I had never made it in as a kid. Given what I had found on the bookshelf, I thought of just leaving it be. I didn’t want to know. But…I knew I had to.
With a yell, I yanked open the door, feeling it snap at the top hinge. The smell of dust and dampness seeped out. I could barely see inside, but there was a light bulb hanging inside. My hand searched the side of the wall and found the switch when I crawled inside. What I found made me scream out loud.
The crib that had been in the room before had been put in there. The floorboards were stained all over underneath it. Inside the crib, the small mattress was covered with a red and black sludge, looking like it was slowly breathing, gasping for air. It moved and what looked like a misshapen and contorted face. It opened its mouth at me and let out that same gurgling cry I heard so many years ago.
I did not stay any longer. I scrambled out the small door, slammed the attic door shut and grabbed the box, running out of the house faster than I had ever moved. My mother caught me outside and asked what was the matter. I told her that something was living there, something that needed to die, that we needed to get away. She worked to calm me down and got me to the car, driving off as fast as she could to get us back home.
I never went back. I never stepped foot in the neighborhood again. My mother told me a few years after that, a storm had caught fire to the roof and the entire thing lit up and collapsed from poor care. I gave my mother the journals and took the photos of the children, my grandmother’s entries and the death certificates. I tried to burn them, but they would not catch fire, as hard as I tried, only blackening the edges. The documents and pictures are kept far away in a storage of mine, hidden there to be forgotten and abandoned when I die or for someone who knew nothing of her or our family to find one day, far off in the future.
I do not know or care if that thing…is still alive. What I know is that Leonard still remains by my bedside at night. His head is always, always turned to the door. My husband thinks I’m crazy, but tolerates it. I won’t let him turn on the radio at night. I can’t take the chance of not hearing the whispers again if they ever do return. He says he doesn’t like the silence at night.
He doesn’t know what the real silence is.
|
Edgar raised his head up from his chest; back pressed firmly into his favorite recliner, his entire body drenched in cold sweat. He stared into shadows at the edge of the living room, eyes welling with tears as he lifted the revolver slowly and deliberately to his temple. “Seventeen”, he whispered to the darkness.
The index finger of his right hand had already found its perch on the trigger during the weapon’s ascent, during which he had hesitated no more than a second, his only concern ensuring that the angle he chose would prove fatal. He clenched his left hand into a fist at his side, steeling his will. He inhaled sharply. And with further need of neither breath nor will, he clenched his right hand.
Darkness flashed brilliantly to light from the barrel of a .38 Special, as the gunshot’s dull thunder echoed around the room. The remains of Edgar Freeman slumped sideways in what had once been his favorite chair. The other man with him in that chamber smiled softly, the one in the shadows who had been briefly illuminated by the muzzle flare, that sallow man in the dark suit with the pale blue eyes. He smiled as everything turned gray.
Edgar flailed his way to a sitting position, ripping the covers off the bed as he always did when waking up from that goddamned nightmare. After the fourth night in a row with the same dream, he had taken to sleeping with his bedside lamp turned on. After the sixth night in a row, his frenzy upon waking had sent it crashing to the floor – bulb broken and shade cracked by the impact. Tonight had been the eighth night, and as he recited every vulgarity he could recall into the inky darkness of his bedroom, he swore that today he’d find the time to go purchase a box of light bulbs.
Involuntarily recalling the stranger in the dream’s inappropriately sweet smile, he reminded himself to ask the clerk for their highest wattage.
After a warm shower and a few minutes collecting his thoughts on the side of the bed, Edgar set about his day. Nearly-tasteless scrambled eggs and coffee which would have been merciful if it had been tasteless comprised his breakfast, and his thoughts turned to how absurdly better Haley’s morning meal would have been. Whatever other problems they had, Haley’s cooking had been beyond reproach. He would regularly wake to the mouthwatering aroma of a nutritious breakfast which she had prepared for him – usually egg whites on a wheat English muffin with a tall glass of orange juice – at least before the morning sickness had started and kept her occupied in her prayers to the porcelean goddess for her first waking hour of every day. All this, he reminded himself bitterly, was in the past now.
As the Vice-President of Marketing for the second largest athletic apparel company in the country (and, as he thought of himself, a reasonably attractive man) Edgar was more than used to the occasional flirting – both casual and aggressive – from young female interns and employees within his department. It came with the territory, and it was never anything he couldn’t brush off. Thoughts of either taking it further than flirtations or reporting it to Human Resources very rarely crossed his mind; the former on account of his pregnant wife, the latter on account of the ego boost it provided. One month ago, however, Edgar began an affair with a particularly buxom college intern named Samantha. Above and below the brassiere, she had been nothing special; just a warm body to quell the urges to which Haley had been unwilling or unable to tend after entering her third trimester. Even the sex was unremarkable.
Their first rendezvous took place in a motel a few blocks away from the office, the type of place with bay windows overlooking less than scenic freeway overpasses, and even the roaches use black lights before scurrying under the unmade bed. As a cursory nod to legitimacy, the establishment stopped short of offering rates on a per-hour basis – a fact known because Edgar had inquired upon checking in.
After that first encounter, the two grew bolder and less discerning in their indiscretions. Edgar’s office came next, and that time had been a little more satisfying – a combination of the danger and the skirt Samantha kept on at his request. But boldness turned quickly to carelessness, and Edgar was an apprentice of infidelity less than two weeks before Haley discovered his betrayal.
Whether it was a whiff of unfamiliar perfume or a phone call from one of Edgar’s jealous rejects who had spotted the two of them around the office, his adultery with Samantha was soon the topic to which Edgar returned home from work. The accusation was on her face the minute he walked through the door. He had come home late from a particularly wild romp with Samantha, and the words from Haley’s trembling lips quickly disclosed exactly how much she knew.
It would have been pointless to lie – she had too many details and he too little imagination – so Edgar confessed, and made a perfunctory effort to justify his behavior. She cursed him with a severity and intensity which Edgar had never seen from her before, and in her final words to him she made it clear that she was leaving, and that she would make sure he would never in his life have a role in raising their child. Despite his heartache at the prospect of losing Haley, Edgar had spent too long in a cutthroat business to take threats passively, even from his wife. He laughed bitterly, and reminded her of the quality of the lawyers within his means. When he was done, Edgar said with words he instantly regretted but found himself powerless to silence, she would be lucky to get weekends and a few holidays with the kid.
That was a lie and he knew it, but at the time his main objective was to get off the defensive and regain the upper hand in the fight – maybe even make Haley reconsider her choice to leave. He would happily cut some hefty checks to a marriage counselor if it saved him from the much larger ones in the form of alimony and child support. But something in the way Haley was smiling at him suggested that he had misunderstood her intentions. And as he realized far too late; if he had been more observant, he might have noticed an empty hook on their key caddy, and connected it to that sardonic grin she was wearing.
She hadn’t left right away, like he had expected. Isn’t that always the way it works in the movies and on television? The guy comes out of the bathroom or back from the bar a little while after the fight to find the gal’s suitcases dusted off and bulging with all the expensive clothes he bought her over the course of their relationship? Her haughty and defiant, him prostrate and pleading?
Edgar would have never played the latter role in his life, but he had fully expected the former from Haley. Instead, an hour after he walked away from their screaming match to take a much-needed shower, he stuck his head into the living room to find her sitting in his favorite chair (what a bitch) staring off into space and rubbing her (Goddamn is she ready to pop) pregnant stomach.
As far as Edgar was concerned, that was the end of the first of presumably many arguments on the subject. He ascended the stairs quietly, and slipped into bed. The day had been long enough, and she clearly wasn’t going anywhere or she would have left already. Haley never came to bed, but neither did he hear the front door slamming behind her before he drifted off – so it seemed she had decided to stay at least for the night. All will be well, Edgar told himself as sleep overtook him. But I doubt she’s going to fix my breakfast for a few days.
The noise which ripped him out of that deep slumber came just after five o’clock in the morning, according to his alarm clock. By the time consciousness took hold, the sound had died as quickly as it came. He stood reflexively, and scanned over the bed with eyes barely awake enough for even that simple task. Eventually determining Haley’s side to be empty, Edgar shuffled out the bedroom door and down the stairs to determine what caused the sudden clamor.
He didn’t need to reach the bottom of the staircase, or allow his eyes further time to adjust, to know that she had decided to leave him after all. One glance into the living room cleared up any doubt on that subject. There were no bulging suitcases, or haughty looks – just an unlocked and opened gun cabinet, a crimson splatter on the wall, and a steady trickle of the same beading down the side of his favorite chair and pooling on the hardwood floor beside it.
After a moment of shocked paralysis, Edgar lunged for the house phone in huge, desperate strides. The rapidity was not for the sake of Haley, through whose newly-ventilated skull he could clearly catch glimpses of the televised presidential debate at the far side of the room, but for her blameless passenger of seven and a half months. He gave all the pertinent information to the infuriatingly indifferent emergency control room operator, and waited in the hallway with the front door flung open wide.
The gunshot had drawn a crowd of early-waking neighbors to the driveway in front of the Freeman residence, a phenomenon bred not out of bravery in the face of danger but from the casual ignorance of danger reserved exclusively for neighborhoods peopled by the wealthy and sheltered. They eyed him accusingly, none with less than dawning suspicion in their gaze. Edgar raged at them for this; first with harsh thoughts, then with guttural growls and impotent flailing. They would collectively step backward when his fury and frustration flowed strongest, and advance again when the yelling waned in ferocity – a human tide of slack-jawed gawkers.
The spectacle was temporarily dissolved by the wailing siren and subsequent appearance of an Advanced Life Support ambulance, from which paramedics rapidly spawned just a few minutes after Edgar’s conversation with their dispatcher (another feature exclusive to the type of neighborhood in which Edgar and Haley Freeman resided). The crowd made way for the emergency vehicles, but soon found a new vantage point on Edgar’s lawn.
The paramedics discovered Edgar’s wife slumped over in his recliner, and strapped her lifeless form into a gurney. Once she was properly secured, they wheeled her rapidly out of the house and into the back of their ambulance. Edgar jumped in as well, and there was no time to either ask or answer any questions before the crew slammed the bay doors and sped off toward the county hospital.
Between checking vital signs and attempts to keep oxygen pumping into the corpse of his wife for the sake of her unborn child, Edgar noted the cautious glances being shot his way by the Paramedics – as well as the blue flashes from multiple police vehicles following close behind the ambulance. I didn’t have anything to do with it, he wanted to say – to scream – but in the back of his mind he knew that was just a degree or two away from being precisely the truth, and so he remained silent.
He had thought they would throw the handcuffs on him as soon as they arrived at the hospital, but instead the throng of police officers just explained they would wait with Edgar while the doctors did what they could for the baby – and maybe get some information from him if he felt up to talking. Edgar nodded assent, largely because the officers bore all the mannerisms of men who intended to get some information from him whether or not he felt up to talking.
They stood outside the operating room, lined up in the viewing area. The officers gave Edgar his space; his face mere inches from the glass, taking occasional breaks to wipe the window off with his sleeve after frantic breaths had fogged it to the point of opacity. They questioned him hesitantly; he answered them hastily and with little regard for the words he used. His concerns were elsewhere, and he knew there was nothing he could unintentionally blurt out to incriminate himself. He watched as the surgeon made a large incision into Haley’s lower abdomen (at least she’s sedated for this, Edgar thought insanely) and set about removing the baby from her womb.
Within a few minutes, everyone in the viewing area knew everything they needed to know. The officers knew that Haley had apparently died at her own hand (the autopsy would either confirm or deny that), that she had likely done it as a result of her husband’s infidelity, and that Edgar had seen little or no warning signs leading up to the suicide. Edgar, meanwhile, knew that the baby was alive but fading fast, that the baby was a boy (they wanted the gender to be a surprise, one of the few things on which he and Haley never disagreed), and that the baby was being placed in an incubator as a last-ditch effort to save its life.
Edgar stood outside the room, the police now keeping an even more respectful distance as he watched his infant son die. There was little commotion about it, and little the doctors could do to prevent it. The child’s eyes opened once the entire time, and the next thing Edgar knew they were pronouncing the time of death as 5:46 AM. They just cut him out of Haley at 5:29, Edgar thought frantically. My kid – my son – was alive less than half an hour. I didn’t even have time to name him. A girl and Haley names him, a boy and I name him; that was the promise we made since we couldn’t even fucking agree on names. Edgar slammed his fist against the wall, and distantly felt his knuckles grinding. As he fell to his knees, his hand hurt far less than the scalding hot tears welling behind his eyes.
That was two weeks ago. Today, Edgar ate nearly-tasteless scrambled eggs, and drank coffee that would have been merciful if it were tasteless. Eight nights now he lived with the nightmare of killing himself destroying any semblance of sleep. Eight nights now he lived with the man in the shadows of that nightmare smiling at his decision to do so. Light bulbs, a huge box of them, highest wattage the hardware store sells, today after work. Edgar again reminded himself of the errand as he threw on his jacket and walked out the door.
Work went much the same as always, only with the added distraction and morbid water-cooler fodder provided by his wife’s suicide. It was annoying, more than anything.
Edgar first became consciously aware of a man’s form standing just outside the threshold of his office’s open doorway when he glanced at the clock to determine exactly how far into the night he had been lost in paperwork. He came to work at dawn and knew it was now certainly dusk, at a minimum. The day had been typical office fare for the return of a bereaved coworker – mindless platitudes and weightless sympathy, empty words from the empty hearts of people paid just enough to pretend to care but not enough to do so convincingly. There was no telling exactly how long the man had been silently standing in the darkness of the hallway, but Edgar recollected the first vague feeling of being watched a few minutes prior. Everyone but the night shift security guard had left hours ago, giving him a welcome respite in which to concentrate and catch up on missed work. Or so he had thought, until this new interruption.
“Hello?” Edgar hesitantly greeted the interloper, fearing the inevitable next in a long line of ham-handed jabs at emotional consolation.
“Evening, sir.” the reply came, grating and phlegmy. His eyes still attempting to adjust to the drastic change from the brightness of his office to the hallway illuminated only by the ambient moonlight leaking in from sporadically-placed windows, Edgar judged by the unfamiliar voice that this was either a stranger – a vendor, perhaps – or a colleague with a particularly nasty cold that he’d better not be spreading around.
“Step inside, I’ve been burning holes in my retinas under this lamp for the past two hours, I can’t see a damned thing out there.”
“Really can’t stay,” the man intoned, practically gargling, “just passing through”.
“Yeah, I know what you mean; it’s been quitting time for hou… have we met?” Edgar’s eyes had begun to adjust, and he grew uneasy. The stranger was still dim and blurry, but clearly wearing a dark suit of indeterminable quality. Another minute and it would be clear if this was some sort of tight-assed internal auditor from the 14th floor, or another detective sniffing around after Haley’s death. Whoever it was, the suit betrayed him for a stranger. Fridays around the office were always Casual Day, when even the senior executives wore polos and khakis. The man was showing no signs of leaving, so Edgar made his eyes’ next mission determining whether or not he had one of those idiotic access badge lanyards they all had to wear around the building.
“I’m new. I’m a messenger. I’m here to deliver a package.”
Edgar cocked his head, dubious. A courier in a three-piece suit? Pull the other one. No badge, either. Edgar did not reply, hoping the (Process Server? Jehovah’s Witness?) stranger would state their business and move along.
“You work such long hours. Don’t you miss your family, sir?”
A knot materialized in Edgar’s throat, and he sat bolt upright in his chair. After the initial shock wore off, Edgar softened his posture, quickly convincing himself of the question’s innocuous nature. A labor union representative – of course. He slipped in here to try and play on some suit’s delicate sensibilities, blather about unpaid overtime and kids tucking themselves into bed. Just trying to get us to abolish our non-unionizing clause with factory workers. “I receive fair compensation for the work that I do, as does everyone in our employ. So no, I’m fine, really. Thanks.” That should get the point across, he thought with a certain grim satisfaction.
“Oh. I’m sorry to hear that. Well…” The stranger turned slightly as if to leave, paused, and leaned his head inside the office for the first time.
“They certainly miss you.”
The words scraped like icicles up the length of Edgar’s spine, gripping his skull with tendrils as cold as the grave. The face was gone from view as quickly as it came – the form of the man as well – but the hideous visage remained burned into Edgar’s brain, and in the recesses of his mind he was acutely aware that it would be etched there until his dying breath. The eyes were of a milky blue so pale and distant they suggested blindness, but met Edgar’s with an unerring gaze that insisted they saw him very well indeed. The rest of the face was unburdened with such signs of vitality. His skin was sallow and sickly, and even at a distance it appeared to be the texture of well-worn leather. The man’s cheeks and eye sockets were sunken, the flesh drooping loose in these places, yet drawn tight against the skull around his forehead and mouth. Gaunt and cadaverous, every feature from the greasy, matted hair, to the quivering wattle of flesh when he spoke was identical to that of the dark stranger in Edgar’s recently acquired nightmares. But everything else was peripheral to the all-encompassing terror which he felt at seeing those damned eyes. There was something unpleasantly familiar in them, something horrible which he found himself powerless to name or explain.
Once he regained control of his frozen limbs, Edgar lunged toward the doorway where the man had stood moments prior. The elevator hadn’t dinged its arrival, and the stubborn latch on the stairwell door hadn’t let out the audible clack customary to every opening and closing. ‘He’s still somewhere on this floor’, Edgar thought frantically. The idea gave him strength, but no real clarity of purpose. He knew only that he needed to confirm that the stranger’s presence here was more than merely a result of his overtaxed mind and guilty conscience. There were no desks, no bathroom stalls, no supply closets left unsearched by the time Edgar’s frenzied investigation reached its fever pitch. Motivational posters tacked to the walls of overbearingly congenial and downright suspiciously diverse businesspeople smiling and clasping hands warmly seemed to be mocking him, silent conspirators against Edgar in his quest. “Sure we know who he is and where he went,” Edgar could imagine them saying, “but we’re too busy leveraging our synergy and engaging in value-added interfacing to dialogue on your initiative.” He dragged both hands through his hair, gripping thick handfuls of it and tugging slightly. His visitor, if something more than a delusion, had departed unseen and unheard. Edgar could feel his heart pounding wildly, seemingly slamming against the back of his ribcage. He stopped only to grab his briefcase before sprinting down the stairs to escape the increasingly oppressive emptiness of the office.
The executive parking deck was windowless, and thus even darker than the building from which he had just departed. It was barren except for him and his Lexus, and likely had been since the security guard made their most recent tour through it hours ago – the guard having shut off all but the emergency lights on the way out. Despite that small assurance, Edgar found himself casting furtive glances over both shoulders, and quickening his pace each time they revealed a total lack of reason to do so. He had never been a superstitious man, any fear of monsters had been laid to rest long ago by the waking horrors which walk amongst men brazenly in the daylight. Student loan debt, insurance premiums, layoffs, mortgage payments – life, Edgar had learned decades ago, sports fangs and claws that make laughingstocks of those belonging to the vampires and werewolves man invented to cope with it. And yet, he scolded himself while fumbling nervously for his keys, all it takes is a little nudge from the imagination to awaken that primordial terror – to populate the uninhabited darkness with things which have no right to exist.
He was five feet from his car and had just unlocked it with the electronic remote attached to his keys when he heard the scream. It was high-pitched, womanly, terrified, and resonated from the office area directly behind him. ‘Did Haley scream that way right before she pulled the trigger?’ Edgar thought wildly. He stopped in his tracks, turned sharply, and saw nothing. Then, as if in response to his silent inquiry, the gunshot came. Edgar snatched the cell phone from his pocket, frantically calling 911 for the second time in as many weeks. He flipped the phone open to his ear, but the operator requesting the nature of his emergency sounded a thousand miles away. The clacking, dragging footsteps coming down the corridor from the sound of the shot and toward the executive parking garage, however, sounded very close indeed. Edgar dropped the phone and practically dove into his car. His foot was on the accellerator as quickly as he could throw the vehicle into gear.
The roads outside the office were illuminated solely by street lights and the occassional flash of a passing motorist’s headlights. The sun had vanished below the horizon hours ago – when people in khakis or sensible skirts departed on a fourteen hour break from pretending to care about each other’s children or gastrointestinal complications, and left Edgar alone with two weeks worth of backlogged paperwork. Stress, Edgar attempted to convince himself, can make you see things. Stress, he rationalized, can make you hear things. Emotional trauma. None of it took any pressure off of his mind or the gas pedal as he sped toward home.
Upon his frantic arrival, Edgar knew something was wrong before he ever burst through the front door. He hadn’t turned any lights off since the nightmares started, much less when he expected to be out past sunset, and yet he found himself fumbling around the darkness of his hallway for the lights. When his blind groping finally brushed across the light switch, there was very little surprise in finding the knob broken off – following the day’s events, it would have been a bigger surprise if the switch had been in working order. Instinct told him to turn and flee the house, but the flashing red number ‘one’ on his answering machine called with an even greater urgency.
Despite his hand’s anxious trembling, Edgar’s finger struck the Play button with unerring precision, a motion he had grown well-acquainted with over the past two weeks. People he hadn’t spoken to or thought about since practically before meeting Haley had seemingly not forgotten him, and had spent the interval between his wife’s death and now calling to offer their condolences. Their concern only served to compound his feelings of guilt with each message – what had he done to deserve such loyal friends? He fully anticipated another instance of the same consolation, when one of the last voices he would ever have expected emanated from the machine.
“Edgar?” the voice’s normally chipper lilt came, tinged with an unmistakable edge of caution. “It’s Samantha. I know I shouldn’t be calling you. I’m probably the last person in the world you want to hear from right now, and I can’t tell you how sorry I am for what happened.” There was a pause and what sounded like a sob. Edgar thought this was quite possibly the most real, orgasm-less emotion he had heard from Samantha since they first met. “Sorry for everything, really. I… we… we couldn’t have known how this would end. But I know I have no right to call. I’m just worried about you, is all. I laid out of work today because I heard you were coming back, and thought you didn’t deserve to have to bear seeing me on top of everything else… I could only imagine how hard it must be for you right now… and to tell the truth, I was scared to see you. Scared you might point at me every time someone asked, or something… I know, it’s stupid. And selfish. But I came by the office just now to pick up some work to take home with me, and I saw your car in the parking garage…”
Edgar eyed the time of the message on the answering machine. She had called sometime between the end of his frantic search of the office, and before he made it to his car. Which means that she was there right about the time that…
The voice on the machine had kept talking, and Edgar found himself now listening more intently than ever, his knuckles turning white from clenching the kitchen counter so tightly.
“…saw your office light was on, but you aren’t anywhere around. And man… this place looks like a tornado hit it. Someone really tore through here. I thought about you right away, so that’s why I’m calling. I don’t know if this is long overdue, or if I should have just done a quick fade and found another job and never called you again, or what… I mean, what’s the appropriate thing to do here? I can never make things right, but… I’m just so sorry, Edgar. Please call me back when you get this. I miss…”
‘Miss’ was the last word spoken by Samantha – unless one counts a bloodcurdling scream, following which came the sound that silenced whatever would have come next. The gunshot rang out like a thunderclap, and lost none of its horrible potency on the way through the phone lines to Edgar’s answering machine. The ensuing silence was deafening, and Edgar stood rigid in front of the machine, bent forward and staring at it intently – as if he expected it to begin displaying visual clues as to what had taken place. He got audio instead.
“Miss you, yes. You are very missed, indeed.” The male voice, undeniably the same as earlier that day, gargled as it chuckled into the receiver. The machine beeped, and a solid red zero informed him that he now has no unheard messages. But to Edgar the zero represented far more than that. It seemed almost an answer to not just how many messages he had, but to every question that mattered. What, why, who, how? What’s left, what matters, what will tomorrow bring? Nothing but zero, of course. Just a big blood-red negation.
Edgar released his death grip from the counter, and groped his way into the darkness of the living room. He passed another light switch on the way, noted with no real interest that the switch had been broken off of this one as well, then flopped down into his favorite recliner. “I have had”, Edgar whispered into the emptiness of the house that would never again be a home, “a very tough month.” The answer to his presumedly receipientless statement came in the form of a chuckle from a dark corner of the chamber. Edgar felt every muscle in his body go tense, and he lost all control of his bladder. He could not possibly have cared less about the latter, he merely stared into the darkness and waited for whatever must come next as the warmth spread across the front of his pants.
The man in the shadows stepped forward and Edgar winced away, sinking as deep into the plush chair as he could dig himself. The stranger, simply put, had gone from looking like his flesh was preparing to free itself from its Earthly prison – to actually having accomplished the task. Edgar was staring at the face and body of a man who had begun to lose some very respectable chunks of himself. Like butter melting in a warm room, some of it actually sloughed off as he made a methodical exit from the darkness.
“I know you’re wondering why I’m here, and why the past few weeks have seen your life seemingly spiral out of your control. At this point it comes down to fate. Fate is like playing tug-of-war with an adversary significantly stronger than you: There will always be times when you feel the rope inching your way, your heels dug in and your earnest exertions yielding the result you’ve worked so hard for, the victory you know you deserve. But even the times in which you feel the most control, the firmest ground, those are merely your opponent adjusting its grip. But this doesn’t preclude what you might call free will; the choices people make are what set fate in motion, and those are the pivotal moments.” He paused, then seemingly as an afterthought, “Like you, renting that motel room. Very few things from that moment to this one have been in your control, and none of them of any consequence. Your whore is dead now, and killed by your own gun. Her right eye looks a great deal like your answering machine, now. Just a big red zero. No new messages. By dawn, you’ll be in a cell. Your wife found out about you and the whore a few weeks ago. Maybe she took her own life, maybe you had a role in that. The whore, though… she was murdered. There’s not a jury in the world for whom your guilt is anything but a foregone conclusion.”
“Why.” Edgar breathed the inquiry flatly, incapable of inflection. He had never felt so tired – so completely drained and hollow – in his entire life. With each word the pale stranger spoke a deep burning emanated from every muscle in Edgar’s body, and yet the frantic scurrying of his mind remained as strong as ever, desperate to place those eyes he felt he knew so well.
“Why what? Why did you stray from the wife who once loved you? I couldn’t help you there. Not that knowing would change anything for either of us. But that isn’t the most important ‘why’ for you, is it? You want to know why this is happening to you, why I’m doing this. But for some reason you’re afraid to ask me who I am, the true question behind the ‘why’, to which I can only say that you must answer for both of us.”
The stranger resumed his lumbering gait towards Edgar, halting and awkward as he tottered ever closer. Edgar’s mind was drawn deep inside of itself to access the half-recalled memory of something he saw years ago in a mid-dawn walk across the parking lot on his way into work. A tattered salt-and-pepper moth, deceased at the base of a light pole; a coroner’s inquest doubtless would have revealed an acute case of banging one’s self repeatedly into a domelike miniature plastic electrical sun. Then came a stiff breeze which sent the moth airborne, flapping and tumbling toward Edgar’s path through the parking lot. The breeze settled, and the moth resumed being a body perfectly at rest; as all dead things should, Edgar reckoned, unless acted upon by an outside force. An unseen force, in the case of the moth; and, Edgar again reckoned, in the case of the man now standing before him. Because in his movements, Edgar saw that moth very clearly. These were the movements of something which once lived, and was now being acted upon by an entirely different unseen force – one which could only approximate the mechanisms of the vessel it now controls. The wind had been the name of that force driving the moth back into a perversion of life, but to name the force which could do the same for a man?
After a moment of silence which seemed to stretch for hours, Edgar met the stranger’s pale blue eyes with the last shred of courage he had. “Death?”
Then, a little more confidently: “You’re Death.”
The strange |
I had managed to keep a healthy scepticism of ghosts, ghouls and all things supernatural until I was 28. I found most claims of such things to be dubious at best, and harmful at worst. I was very much in the camp of the classical sciences as I had studied physics at Edinburgh university several years earlier. While my profession has never taken me back into the scientific arena, I had until this time maintained a ruthless opposition to pseudo-science and superstition.
My friends often wonder about the change they saw in me at that time. What surprised them was that it wasn’t a slow, steady change of heart, but rather a complete turnaround over night; a transformation, if you will. It may have appeared as if it occurred so very quickly, but in fact it happened over a slightly longer time scale; two weeks to be precise.
It was February, in fact it was the week of Valentine’s day. Around this time I was going through a socially isolated phase. It’s something which often happens in the bleak Scottish winters, where I become increasingly wrapped up in my own loneliness and passing bitterness at those who ‘fit in’. It was, and still is, a neurotic hangover from my teenage years, one which has plagued me for far too long.
Two weeks earlier I had found myself wandering through the cobbled streets of Edinburgh to clear my head. Walking, as amusing as it may seem, has always been a great comfort to me. You are, in every sense, alone with your thoughts, but that part of you which craves the company of others is slightly appeased by being ‘in’ the world, even if you’re only in it long enough to share a glance with a passing stranger.
Edinburgh is a very old city and has remarkably kept much of its former self. The cobbled streets meander down the steep side of what was once a volcano, breaking off sporadically into narrow lanes which occasionally open up into secluded court yards. These numerous court yards are often flanked on all sides by tall terraced houses, huddled together as if whispering of a secret and long forgotten past. The impressiveness of Edinburgh as a city is often lost on those who have lived there long enough to find beauty commonplace.
As often happens when gripped by depression, I hadn’t been sleeping well. I had finished work the previous evening around 5pm and while I managed to get a few hours sleep, my mind just wouldn’t let me relax. Come 6 in the morning, even though it was a Sunday and I could for once have a long lie, I conceded defeat in my attempts to have a proper rest and got up to greet the world, however reluctantly.
By the time I had set out it was still early morning and the cold January air stung my face. Although Edinburgh is, for want of a better expression, a tourist city, at that time it still seemed relatively deserted, even for a Sunday. A slight mist had risen out of the water of Leith making it feel all the more colder as I passed through the narrow lanes and down empty pavements, entirely oblivious to where I was going.
As the shops opened and the first trickle of tourists bled out onto the cobbled walkways from their hotels, I deliberately headed for a quieter, often forgotten network of streets. My wandering mind had indeed taken over, for as I broke through the haze of a daydream I found myself standing at the gates of an old graveyard. I had been thinking of turning back and heading home, but something about this place awoke a compulsion in me; I had to explore it.
I found it curious that the gates, constructed out of blackened steel rods, were lying unlocked as early in the day as this. Entering the cemetery, I immediately noticed the overall isolation of the place, enjoying the sound of gravel under my feet which pierced the silence, as I moved slowly along a path littered with small white stones.
It wasn’t a large graveyard. It seemed to consist of two separate plots, with the older graves at the front, bordering the fence and gate, filing backwards up onto a diminutive nearby hill where the more recently deceased residents lay. The oldest graves bore the weathered scars of age, I found one which was dated 1776, but the epitaph was illegible. I felt a sadness staring at the headstone, wondering about who it belonged to and indulgently contemplating about myself as a forgotten or lost soul.
Eventually I moved off, wandering up the hill towards the newer graves. I found myself drawn to a large old sycamore tree which loomed over several graves below it, with an almost protective demeanour. I stared at one of the headstones, reading the words but not registering them, as my mind was engulfed by yet another daydream. The grave stood out somewhat from those around it. The headstone was white in colour, while those which accompanied it were forged out of a deep, black marble.
Without thinking, I ran my hand over the smooth stone feeling the occasional mark of the elements upon it. At the foot of the headstone lay a small, innocuous vase. It was made of a brownish metal (copper I assumed as the surface exhibited small veins which were blue in colour due to its exposure to the weather).
As I stood there, something rose up out of my mind. Something which bothered me greatly. At first I did not know what it was, experiencing it merely as a low, growing sense of discomfort. As this feeling of unease reached a crescendo, I suddenly realised what was wrong.
The name on the grave was Lisa Maine.
I knew that name well, everyone in the local area did. I had known her when I was growing up, as we went to the same school together. She was someone that I watched from afar, full of life and exuberance, while I was shy, reclusive, and reserved. I possessed that intense infatuation and desire for her which only a first love can produce.
The words on her headstone came into sharp focus; age 15. I was overcome with a tremendous sense of grief and loss, one which took me entirely by surprise, so much so that I had to leave that place; I just couldn’t bear it. As someone who prides himself on being level headed and immune to flights of fancy, I could not shake the profound unease which often comes with outrageous coincidence.
I exited the graveyard as quickly as possible and headed home ignoring the now cluttered Edinburgh streets. I did not look back.
Over the following few days or so I was preoccupied. I was overworked and was having trouble sleeping, but that was not unusual for me. What was unusual were the immovable thoughts and memories of Lisa Maine, thoughts which now stayed with me wherever I would go.
I had been terribly affected by her death as we were only 15 years old at the time, but that was over a decade ago and I had not thought of her for many years. It was as if seeing that gravestone had awoken a sense of loss, a sense of pain which I had managed to bury so far deep inside of me, that I had persuaded even myself to forget it.
A cacophony of memories now haunted me; beautiful and terrifying. At any one moment I would be exhilarated by the thought of her smile, her hair, her kindness, and at the very next engulfed by despair at the image of her lying under six feet of earth; cold and alone. Once full of life, now a decaying husk, which had long ago housed that beautiful soul.
If I had told anyone of how I felt they would have called me overly emotional or sentimental, for the fact remained; I barely knew Lisa. Watching her for years across a classroom, I imagined myself talking with her, sharing those intoxicating moments which mean so much to a teenager; the first connection with someone you adore, the first feeling of being loved, the first kiss.
I had in fact hardly ever spoken to her until only a few weeks before she died. In one of those embarrassing manoeuvres which teachers often pull, the pupils were all forcefully partnered with someone to take to our first social dance. Social dancing was a torrid affair. For someone like Lisa it was fun and to be enjoyed, while for me it was something to be detested. I was embarrassed, possessing none of the talent to be a dancer and even more so afraid to spend time with a girl, held back by my own teenage awkwardness.
It was the end of January, and Lisa quickly set me at ease in social dancing class where we practised. I cannot convey the simultaneous sense of joy and fear which I felt when she asked me to walk her home that day. Some people find social interactions to be exhausting, much like myself always worried about saying the wrong thing, but some individuals can set others at ease with the smallest of effort; Lisa was one of those people. As we walked across an elegantly Victorian bridge towards her house, the winter sun bathed our surroundings in a cool, comforting glow. I couldn’t have been more content to be in the presence of this happy, kind hearted girl. She was so beautiful, with an incredible smile and golden locks of hair which seemed more at home in a fairytale than our surroundings.
For weeks we walked the same route home every day. Talking, laughing (something I rarely did) and growing ever closer. When you are that age, everything is so potent. Most can fall in and out of love in a heart beat. I didn’t have many friends, and I lived alone with my mother who was not a particularly affectionate women, so in that short time I fell in love with Lisa Maine.
On the 13th of February, we stopped outside her house. We stood talking for a moment and then for the first time Lisa became distant. She stared straight at me in a way that she had never done before. I felt uneasy, yet exhilarated. There was a moment, a tiny moment where we said nothing to one another, then she hugged me. Her fingers slid through my hair. I will never forget how sweet she smelled, how alive she felt, and how grateful I was to someone for showing me a kindness I had never previously known.
Lisa slowly let go of me and then skipped up to her front door. Just before she disappeared she turned and smiled at me one more time. Then she was gone.
Immediately I knew what I was going to do. For the first time in my life I was full of purpose and focus, a desire to do just one thing. I ran as fast as I could to the local shops. I was lucky as most of them were shutting up for the day. A kind old man who ran a rarely used card store allowed me in to his shop, even though he was just closing.
I was going to buy my first Valentine’s card.
It had to be perfect. It had to be just right. After looking at almost every card I could afford, I found one. It was fate. The card was red with a white circle in the middle. In that circle was a boy and girl walking hand in hand into the distance, together. I did not care what it said inside, because I have always had a way with the written word, and knew I could put something down which came from the heart. I bought it. After leaving the card shop I went straight into my local newsagents. I had kept aside my last two pounds. My mother gave me an allowance to buy my lunch at school every week, and I knew she would not give me more should I spend it. Despite it meaning I would have to go without lunch for a few days, I bought a box of chocolates to accompany the card.
I rushed home, walked straight past my mother, who barely greeted me, grabbed a pair of scissors from the kitchen and went upstairs. I knew I would get into an unbelievable amount of trouble for it, but I didn’t care. I cut a slither of material from the red curtains hanging in my mother’s room and tied the makeshift ribbon around the box of chocolates. In my mind it now looked like a Valentine’s gift. I wrote in the card explaining how I felt about Lisa and how much those walks home had meant to me, signed it, sealed the envelope and slid it under the ribbon so it sat nicely with the chocolates.
I waited for the next day. It came all too slowly.
The 14th of February. I will never forget the excitement of getting ready for school. I took one last look at the chocolates and card before slipping them into my bag. I think I made it a little too obvious that I was carrying something important and delicate, as I cradled the whole bag in my arms for most of the day.
I was so enthused, so focused that I was going to march straight up to Lisa and give her the gift without a care for what the others, some of whom could be very cruel, would think.
But she was not there.
She wasn’t in the playgrounds, she wasn’t in her classes. For the subjects we shared, I just sat and stared at her empty desk and chair. School finished and I found myself walking the same route Lisa and I would normally. I stood outside her house, holding the chocolates. I can’t describe the feeling I experienced there. Call it the effects of a lack of food or the exhaustion of having been so primed for the day, but anxiety took me and as a result I couldn’t bring myself to knock on her door. I went home, dejected. I couldn’t so much as eat a bite of the undercooked ham my mother threw down in front of me, so I simply went upstairs and crawled into bed, barely sleeping all night.
For the next two days I walked that same route and found myself holding onto those chocolates, not daring to cross the threshold of the little white fence in front of Lisa’s house. On the third day I asked our teachers about Lisa’s absence, something which just hadn’t occurred to me to do. I associated any authority with being cold, distant, and unfair, and as a result normally avoided contact with my teachers at any cost. Mr Randall, our History teacher, told me that Lisa had come down with a bad fever and was very ill.
She could be off for weeks.
With this news I was resolute; I was going to knock on her door, and knock on her door was just what I did. I knocked, and knocked, and knocked, but no one answered. The next day I did the same, and again, no one answered.
It had now been five days since I had last seen Lisa. It was a Saturday and, once again, I went over to Lisa’s house, chocolates and card in hand. As I approached her house, the sky clouded over, casting a dull hue over Lisa’s seemingly deserted street. It was clear to see that Lisa’s father was not a gardener. The garden path split an overgrown and patchy lawn in two with clambering weeds stretching up towards the sun through numerous cracks in the concrete slabs. I stopped to look around and focused my gaze on what seemed to be a smallish gnome figurine smothered in the undergrowth; it had sadly been broken.
Many suggest that when something is wrong, a person knows. They may not be aware of precisely what has happened, but that they can almost feel a palpable sense of dread in the air. I looked around and continued towards the front door.
Something was different.
I was sure that the house had seemed as deserted as it had on the previous days I had visited, and while the house was for all intents and purposes exactly the same as before, there was one change. The front door was open. I was convinced that it had been shut when I had arrived, but I dismissed this as simply the by-product of my fascination with the condition of Lisa’s garden. You see, I can’t quite explain it, but there was something suffocating about that house on that quiet street.
I reached the door and grasped the door knocker, chapping three times. No answer. I repeated my knocks more forcefully this time, but still no one came.
The door was only slightly ajar and as such I couldn’t really see much of the interior. All I could tell was that the house was dark and that the air escaping through the doorway was musty, as if nothing had stirred inside for days. I started to feel nervous. I didn’t really know why.
Clearing my throat, and stammering slightly I asked ‘hello?’ several times without answer. The street was empty and the whole place felt devoid of life. Then a thought began to ruminate and gather momentum within me. What if Lisa and her father were hurt? I started to play out all of the possibilities in my mind, the two of them lying somewhere in the house injured without food or water for days. Then I remembered that my History teacher had said Lisa was ill. He must have spoken to someone to know this, probably Lisa’s father. I hoped that she was not so sick that her father had taken her to hospital.
Despite the logic of my thoughts, I still could not dismiss the horrible feeling that something was indeed wrong. Fear began to grip me, yet I closed my eyes only for a moment and found the memory of Lisa’s embrace all the solace I needed to overcome it. I held on tightly to the card and chocolates as I pushed the door fully open. It moved silently, but I was sure the noise of it hitting a doorstop on the floor would alert anyone to my presence as the bang echoed throughout the house, but still no one came.
The house was bathed in darkness.
I took one last look around me and crossed the threshold. While Lisa did not come from an affluent family, the house had an upstairs and must have had at least four bedrooms with an attic. Perhaps the fact that Lisa was an only child made the house seem all the larger or emptier, but as I slowly made my way down the hallway, I felt as if each footstep echoed throughout distant passages and rooms.
Beginning with the living room on the ground floor, I moved from room to room occasionally asking if anyone could hear me, but I quickly became aware that I was only talking to myself. The air was stiflingly hot and running my hand across a radiator I realised that the boiler must have been on for some time.
As I moved into the kitchen at the rear of the house, I heard something. It was an almost rhythmic dull thudding. I couldn’t identify what it was, but I knew it was coming from somewhere upstairs. I left the kitchen, which I was glad to do as it was filled with the smell of rotting food, and walked to the foot of the stairs.
The staircase was quite narrow and ran along the inside of a wall. At the top of the stairs was a landing which curved round to the left and led onto the other rooms. The dull thudding was now more pronounced and as I slowly climbed the stairs the same fear which had gripped me at the door returned. The realisation of wandering into someone’s house uninvited came to the fore. Stopping for a moment, I closed my eyes and thought of Lisa again. I continued on.
As I reached the top of the stairs, the thudding noise stopped; I shudder now even just thinking of it. There were three doors leading to the other bedrooms and one leading to a bathroom which I could already see was empty. The door to the first bedroom lay open. I peered in slowly almost expecting to find someone there. There was no one. It was Lisa’s father’s room, neat, organised, with almost no objects of any note. The only curiosity was that the curtains were not drawn.
The door to the second room was closed. Again, I was overcome with a sense of intrusion. I was walking around inside someone’s house without invitation. In effect, I was a trespasser. I knocked on the door quietly. Waiting for a moment I realised the room must be empty and turned the brass handle on the door. It opened. As I pushed the door it creaked and then suddenly stopped after only a few inches of movement. Something was behind the door. I pulled it towards me and then pushed again, but no luck. With each attempt the wooden door bashed off of something. I suddenly became aware of the noise I was making as each attempt echoed throughout the house. It was not dissimilar to the thudding I had heard before.
I tried one more time, pushing against the obstacle as hard as I could. No luck. I was about to give up and move on to the next door when I saw what was blocking my entrance. I will never forget the cold glassy stare of the face which seemed to be peeking out from behind the bottom of the door. The skin a pallid grey, a few retreating locks of hair covering an otherwise balding head, globules of sweat congealed under. Most of its features were obscured by the door, but the only visible eye still stared, clouded and covered in shadow.
I didn’t scream because I quickly realised that not only was this the face of Lisa’s father, but that he was very much dead. I felt numb, but looking back I realise I handled the situation much more calmly than many of my age would have, but then I did have a strange fascination for such things, reading many accounts of quite horrific death scenes.
I stared for a moment, composed myself, and then instantly turned to thoughts of Lisa and where she might be. Was she in the same room? Was she in the attic? All I could hope for was that she was OK.
Something then happened. An event which I have to this day repressed, ignored, and avoided as much as I possibly could. Something which shook me to the core. Something which I have never told a soul.
The face staring up at me through that gloom filled gap in the doorway, moved. At first it was only slight and I disregarded it as the effects of shock. Then it moved again. Suddenly the door began to shake violently as if being punched and kicked by the body lying behind it. The head turned upwards as the cracking of rigamortis from the neck struggled against each sharp and vicious movement. A putrid gurgling sound gasped out, enraged from deep within its bloated throat.
I closed my eyes. I was sure it was not real. The banging stopped, and the house fell once again into silence.
I let out a sigh of relief and opened my eyes. What I saw I can barely describe now. The face had moved upwards from behind the door to be level with mine. The door shook and rattled under the strain as its venomous attacker tried to claw and batter its way through. Finally, the face pushed and squeezed through the gap in the door, revealing its repulsively loathsome features in their entirety.
Dead, swollen with clotted blood, gasping relentlessly for air, all the time staring straight at me through hate filled eyes with lips pulled back over teeth gritted together, grinding against one another in wretched hatred.
I do not remember much of what took place after that, perhaps I am glad to. I know I escaped, and I know that I ran home confused, crying, and babbling like a madman. I also know one more thing, while the memory has been pushed so deep inside that I can barely recognise it, I know whatever was in that room slipped through the gap in that doorway; slipped through and grabbed me. How I escaped I do not know.
The truth was more horrifying than I could have imagined. Lisa’s father had lost his job a couple of weeks earlier and as bills mounted combined with the pressures of looking after his only child, he snapped. When the police entered the house they found poor, sweet Lisa’s body in the cellar. Her wrists were tied to a radiator. She had been strangled to death. After killing his daughter, Lisa’s father had then went upstairs and hanged himself in her room. After a few days of hanging there, the cord he used to choke the life from himself seemed to have snapped. The police found his body slumped behind the bedroom door. The door was open.
As time eroded the memory, the explanation of these events altered greatly. Through my years of study at school and then University, I read of psychological pressures and how trauma could bring about vivid hallucinations. I had convinced myself that I had found Lisa’s father dead and that the shock had produced the rest of the experience. No matter how real it felt, the idea that a corpse twisted by rage and hate, perhaps even by the love I felt for his daughter, could somehow come back to life and attack the living, just did not fit in with my scientific and atheistic understanding of the world.
I dismissed the entire experience, but one thing had still managed to haunt me until I managed to hide it from myself. The police reported that Lisa had been tied up for a couple of days before she was killed.
The date of her death was recorded as the 15th of February.
She had been in that cellar, tied up, frightened yet alive when I had come by to give her her Valentine’s gift. People talk about hauntings and spirits, but the memory of that contorted face rising up through the doorway was nothing compared to the knowledge that had I went into her house that day, that maybe, just maybe I could have saved her. Yes I was a child, but I could have done something!
I grew up, but I never felt that love again, that feeling of connection with another human being. I developed an unhealthy attachment to my own company and found myself more interested in burying my head in textbooks than perhaps meeting others, or even falling in love. The friends that I did have were never that close to me, nor did they ever truly understand who I was.
Seeing Lisa’s grave had brought it all flooding back to me. Those stolen moments, that thing in the house, her death. The funny thing is that of all those memories, both traumatic and precious, the one thought which would not leave me was of the Valentine’s gift I never gave. While I still hoped that the dead thing in Lisa’s house was of my own imagination and that the world was still very much material, lacking in the spiritual, I still felt the need to rectify this.
I had kept the card all those years, in many ways it was both my most cherished and loathed possession. Cherished for the memories which it drew up from within me, and loathed for the same reason. On the morning of the 14th I walked through the cobbled streets of Edinburgh towards Lisa’s resting place, on the way I stopped at a little newsagents and picked up a box of chocolates.
On my first visit I had wandered there by accident, vaguely negotiating each street in a daze, but this time I was focussed and resolute. Sentiment is a curious thing and it had encouraged me to keep, not only the card, but also the ribbon I made for the chocolates. When I entered the graveyard I gazed up towards that lonely hill where she lay. I felt hesitant. Not because I did not want to leave the gifts by her graveside, but more so because I did not know the extent to which the feelings of remorse, sadness, and bitter nostalgia would overcome me again. Nevertheless, I took a moment and then made my way up over the whitened path, up towards the hill, up towards her.
There I stood. The sun was still relatively low in the sky and it cast long, contorted and exaggerated shadows over everything. After standing there for what seemed like an age, I pulled out the ribbon, tied it carefully around the box and then placed the chocolates and the card against the cold headstone.
I don’t know if I said anything. At the time I probably didn’t as I was still convinced that she wasn’t there to hear me; that once your loved ones pass away, they are gone forever; that death is the end. I do know that I cried. I cried like I hadn’t since I was a child. I fell to my knees and buried my head in my hands. I was inconsolable.
Those moments of utter sadness, utter despair at the cruelness of life and what it had done to beautiful Lisa were the last I had as a true sceptic, for as I knelt there the wind blew gently through the graveyard; gently caressing those stone markers of loss and those who attended them.
I had heard and read about people having a religious or spiritual experience, and while I cannot truly accept others’ testimonies, I can say that what I felt at that moment was profound; an achingly beautiful feeling of companionship and love. I looked around. No one was there, but I felt that someone was. I tried to shake the feeling off as my mind simply playing tricks on me, but no matter how much I tried to stick to that interpretation of events, I simply could not do it. That feeling shared a twin emotion. I had only once ever felt that way before; when Lisa hugged me the last time I saw her. As the sensation washed over me, I realised that I had truly been searching for that same feeling again, but never found it until that moment.
I stood up, wiped my eyes and touched the gravestone as if to say goodbye. I walked to the graveyard entrance with a smile which stretched from ear to ear, something anyone who knows me will tell you is extremely unusual. When I reached the gate I glanced once more at that hill, which for me was no longer a site of loneliness, but one of love and friendship.
The second and last time I can say I have ever seen a ghost was at that moment, for standing up on the hill beside Lisa’s grave was the blurry image of a young girl in a pink social dancing dress. I did not run to the grave, because I knew I did not have to. She waved slowly at me and then disappeared behind her gravestone.
I walked home. I felt full, joyful, and exuberant. It is almost impossible to describe that experience by the graveside, perhaps completeness will do for now, but even that cannot convey it.
Friends wonder what happened to me around that time. The truth is that I found something I did not know was missing. Some reading this may think that I found my faith, but it was not that at all. What I found that day was companionship and acceptance from the only person I had ever truly loved. I knew from that day onwards that the world was a far more mysterious and wonderful place than I could ever have possibly imagined. I knew that I would never fear being alone, for when I go wandering through the streets of Edinburgh and find myself on a quiet stretch of road, I smile to myself knowing that if I listen carefully I can hear the footsteps of Lisa, that girl I loved so dearly when I was a child, walking with me wherever I go.
|
“Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host.
But anger is like fire. It burns it all clean.”
– Maya Angelou
I know of an anecdote, one about a little girl named Madeline. Little Maddie was seven years old, with dark chestnut hair and wide blue eyes. Everyone thought she would grow up to become such a pretty woman, and a smart one at that. Maddie loved to read books, all kinds of books; fairy tales and history, fantasy and mystery. Her parents were so proud of her for being so smart and pretty and brave, they knew she was special. But they were also scared. You see, little Maddie was sick… very sick. She rarely left her bed. But she had her books, and the love of her parents to keep her company. She was brave for both herself and them. Of course, Maddie didn’t know any better.
One day, on a sunny afternoon in December (Not a dark stormy night in Autumn), just a few days after Christmas, Maddie’s parents came into her room, full of books and the left over wrapping paper, all crinkled and sparkling in the sunlight that leaked through her window. They said that they’d have to leave her alone for a while. Not long, just an hour. Just enough time to meet with the doctor. They said that they would be right back and that if there was any trouble, to call them with the phone that was kept on the nightstand, the one next to her bed, the red one. Maddie wasn’t scared, and she knew it wasn’t a good idea to move around too much. She was just too brave. Her father kissed her on the forehead, her mother on the cheek. Maddie smiled, and asked if they could open her window. It was an especially warm day with a clear blue sky. Some fresh air could be good. Maddie’s father smiled back, as he opened the window.
“Anything else?” Her parents asked before they left.
“No I’ll be alright,” She said to them. “I’ll just read a story for a while.”
And then Maddie was alone. All by herself in that great big house, no sound at all except for the beeps of the machine, the one that kept check on Maddie’s heart. She tried to read her book, but the sunlight that fell on her face made her sleepy. Maddie closed her eyes, for how long she didn’t know. Not long enough to dream, but long enough to loose time. To her it was just a blink and nothing more. But she didn’t open her eyes willingly. The squawk of crow, a black crow, forced her from the peace of sleep. Well, it wasn’t just a crow. Maddie also felt warm, too warm for December in even the best of times. When she woke up, she saw that a crow had perched itself on her windowsill. She also saw something else, something that made her shriek.
The chair that was kept in Maddie’s room, the chair that her mother would sit in just before bedtime, the chair that should have been empty, had been filled by a stranger. Too Maddie, it looked like a person, but also not like a person at all. It had a face, with eyes and a mouth and a nose and all, and it had arms and legs, just like a man’s. It was even wearing a suit, a black suit with a white shirt and a purple tie. But this stranger, this man if you will, looked wrong to Maddie. His face had all the right parts, but they were mutilated in ways almost incomprehensible. Shiny and pink in some places, black and crackled in others. He had no lips, and his nose was made of two small holes that flared in and out as he breathed. His eyes were yellow and sunken, never blinking, not even once. His body, while never falling to ash, had small flames dancing up and down the lengths of his arms and face, flickering hot light. His cloths were covered in the stains of blood. He looked much like a burn victim would, before the fires were put out. The machine, the one that kept watch over Maddie’s heart, began to beep quickly and loudly. Maddie forgot how to be brave.
“Don’t be scarred Madeline,” Said the dark man, his words sounding like nails against glass, more of a rasp than a voice. “I’m not here to hurt you.”
“Who are you?” Asked Maddie, feeling a bit less frightened.
“My name is Lazarus, and I’m a bad man for all the right reasons.” He said back to her. Smoke was rising softly from the fires. He seemed to be in pain, but doing his best to ignore it, somewhat stoically.
“Lazarus,” Maddie said out loud, pronouncing each syllable carefully. “That’s a weird name.”
“It’s an old name. A very old name, from a very old story.” His eyes searched Maddie’s face, looking for any sign of expression, but she gave nothing away. His eyes eventually fell upon the book in Maddie’s lap, Alice in Wonderland. “I see you like stories,” Maddie nodded her head. Everyone knew that she liked stories, even strangers. “I happen to know a few. Would you like for me to tell you one? We have some time to spare.”
Maddie didn’t know what to say. She thought the burning man was being friendly enough, even if he was scary. But Maddie was alone, she was always alone she realized. She never got to meet anyone new, so she decided it best to let Lazarus stay. Besides, she loved stories, even bad ones.
“Okay,” She said, “You can tell me a story. But you’ll have to leave before mom and dad come home. I don’t think they’d like you.” Lazarus inhaled deeply, a wheeze through his mouth and an exhale of smoke through his nostrils. He nodded in agreement.
“There was once a family of rabbits, a mommy rabbit and three baby rabbits. They lived in a rabbit hole in the forest. They were happy. The baby rabbits would jump and play all day under the shade of the trees or in the tall grass of the sunny meadow while their mother looked for food in the forest. At night, they would return to their hole, and they would snuggle together in the warmth and safety. They never worried about anything, as there was always plenty of food and fun things to do, and they always had each other for comfort when they got sad or frightened. It was good. But one day in while playing in the meadow, a fox hiding in the grass approached the three little rabbits, who were unaware of the impending danger. Their mother came out of the thickness of the forest just in time to see the fox, but was too far away to call to her babies. She knew that she could not reach them in time to get everyone safely into the rabbit hole, and even then, the fox would always know where to wait.
“What did she do?” Asked Maddie. Lazarus raised his charred hand, motioning for Maddie to wait and listen. “Well, the mother rabbit had a difficult decision to make. If she wanted her children to get away from the fox, then she would have to take action. But all actions have consequences. She knew this, but she also loved her children more than she feared the fox. So, she ran out of the forest as fast as she could go. She ran towards the fox hiding in the grass, and when she was close enough, she called out to her children. ‘Go, ran back to the hole!’ she yelled. The three little rabbits heard their mother just as they saw the fox. But the fox was no longer interested in the little ones. The mommy rabbit had caught his attention, as she led the fox further into the meadow, away from their hole and away from them. They little rabbits got away. Their mother was not so lucky. The fox had caught her, ripped her to bloody ribbons, but her children were safe, and that was all that mattered.”
Maddie was silent for a moment. So was Lazarus. “That was a sad story,” Said Maddie. Lazarus nodded his head, because he knew it was a sad story, but then again, the truth doesn’t pick favorites. “I didn’t like how the mommy had to die.”
Lazarus gritted his teeth together. “She could have lived, if she had wanted to. But then what would have happened to her children? She died to save them, for the greater good and out of love.”
“I guess so, but it’s still sad that they had to grow up without their mom.” Maddie looked at her windowsill, there were two more crows perched there. One of them stretched its wings and settled next to the others. She thought it was odd, but said nothing. “Would you like to hear another? We still have some… time.” It was hard for Maddie to tell if Lazarus was happy or sad or angry; his voice was always the same. His face never changed either.
Before she could answer, Maddie coughed into a tissue. It was a long, hoarse cough. When she finished, she saw that there was blood soaking through the soft paper.
“I’m sick,” she said, looking at Lazarus. He leaned in close to her, so close that Maddie could count each of his crooked brown teeth. He leaned in close, and whispered into her ear.
“I know.”
“Do you have any stories about sick people?” She asked. Once again, Lazarus, the burning man, nodded his head.
“It doesn’t have a happy ending either.”
“That’s okay.” She said. “I’ll still listen.” Lazarus placed his bony fingers on his lap, and breathed in deep.
“A long, long time ago, there was a small town on the shore. There were people who lived in this town, all sorts of people; bakers, silk weavers, carpenters and many more. They lived happily and productively. They would work and play and marry and live long happy lives. But one day, people started to get sick. Not everyone, but quite a few, and more every day. The ones who got sick would grow black boils on their faces and necks, their skin turning yellow and green. It was a very painful sickness, one that would eventually kill. The doctors of the town could do nothing to stop it, as there was no cure. The only option was to barricade the town, to stop the great plague from spreading. No one was allowed to leave once they entered the town. One of the people who lived in the town, a tailor, had a wife who was outside of the town limits before the sickness had taken over. She had been away, to visit her family a ways off. When she returned, she was stopped by a guard, who said that she may not enter without permission. The tailor’s wife begged and pleaded to the guard, telling him that her husband, the man she loved, was in the town. The guard finally told her that if her husband would allow it, then she would be able to enter. He also warned her that she would not be allowed to leave again.
Word was sent to the tailor, that his beloved wife was awaiting his permission at the gates. At first, he was overjoyed at the prospect of seeing his dear wife again, as he had been very lonely since her initial departure. But, as he thought upon it, the tailor’s heart began to sink. He realized that if he were to allow his wife to enter the town, that he would condemn her to the same fate as so many others. The thought of her suffering through the sickness, the sores and bile and rot, the festering misery, he could not allow it. He wanted her with him, of course he did, but he loved her too much to let her perish along with him. He was already showing symptoms of plague. So it was with a heavy soul that he refused the messenger. He was heartbroken, his eyes wet with guilt and grief. When word came back to the tailor’s wife, who had been waiting at the gates all morning, her heart was also crushed. It wasn’t until years later, after she had remarried and raised several beautiful children that she was finally able to forgive him. She understood that her first loves only wish was for her to continue on and be happy.”
By now the sun was no longer shining. Overcast had made the sky a light shade of gray, almost white when compared to the crows on the windowsill. More had shown up while Lazarus told his story, so many that there wasn’t enough room on the sill for all of them. They were starting to perch themselves on a nearby tree. Maddie coughed some more.
“I liked that one better than the first. At least it wasn’t all bad.” She said after her fit of coughs. “But why are you telling me all of these sad stories?”
Lazarus looked at Maddie, never blinking, never smiling. In a voice as black as coal, he said, “I think you know why.”
Maddie looked down into her lap. She did know why. But she wasn’t scared. No, Maddie knew how to brave, and not just for herself either. She turned to Lazarus, his face charred and scarred beyond recognition of humanity, former or otherwise.
“When?” she asked. Lazarus turned his head to the window, towards the black crows that had gathered.
“Soon.” He said to her. The beeps from the machines, the ones that kept check on Maddie, they became irregular, slowing down.
“Do we have enough time for one more story?” She asked him.
“Not much, but we can try.” He replied. Maddie shook her head. She said that it would be okay, that she would still listen. Even if it had a sad ending.
“There was once a sweet little girl, with chestnut hair and wide blue eyes. She loved stories, all kinds of stories….”
When Maddie’s parents returned, they found her lying still in bed. She had stopped smiling, stopped breathing. They cried into each other’s arms. What they had been told by the doctor, they knew it was only a matter of time. Even still, they didn’t think that it would be this soon. Their souls had been profoundly crushed, shattered into oblivion. But in a strange way, not in a callous or indifferent way, they were relieved. The weight of the inevitable had been lifted, and in its place a sharp sting. They knew this as they wept, and while gazing out of the bedroom window. They were focusing on the sky, which had grown into a perfect and terrible shade of gray. They were so focused in their sorrow, that they never even noticed the burns left on the chair.
The crows had taken flight.
Credit to: Stephan D. Harris
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Dear Abby,
We’ve never met before, so this may seem a bit odd, but I feel this is necessary. My name’s Jay for starters, I work the checkout line at the grocery store up on 67th Street. You know the one with the parking lot that’s way too big for the the store itself? Yeah, that one. I’m 24, fairly tall and have a rather scraggly appearance. You probably wouldn’t recognize me if I came up to talk to you, I don’t have a very memorable face. Heh, I don’t really know why I’m telling you all this to be honest… But, this isn’t the point of me writing you.
I was working late at night yesterday, it was a very average day for the most part. Nothing too exciting happened, but you’d be surprised how interesting this job can get at times. I’d been reading some book the guy that’d worked that counter the shift before me had left, it was some really crappy murder mystery chock full of cliches. Incredibly boring, if you ask me. But… It’s something to do I guess. When you showed up though, my whole night changed. I don’t know exactly what it was about you that caught my attention at first, but as soon as I saw you I got this odd feeling. A weird mix between excitement and terror, that’s the best way I can describe it at least. I saw you walk into my line and I quickly composed myself, I’d been slouching down in my chair for a while since I rarely ever get anyone in my line. It was only when you got closer that I realized what about you had caught my attention… You were absolutely beautiful. You walked up and said “hey” and handed me your cart. I could tell by the way you were talking and the way you looked that you were very sleep deprived, though this wasn’t surprising considering how late it was. After a second or two of awkward silence I realized that you’d greeted me, I suddenly forced out a “h- hi” in response. I cursed myself out mentally for that one.
I sat there for a second, trying to focus. “What’s your name?”, I said. It’s only later I realize how odd this must have seemed, what kind of a grocery bag guy asks what someone’s name is? I’m glad I did though. I remember, you said you were named Abigail, but that you go by Abby for short. Abby, it seemed to fit so perfectly. The name seemed to roll off my tongue as I said it back to myself silently. It was like sweet honey, it just felt good as I said it. You seemed to be perplexed when I looked back at you, and I wondered if I’d done something to upset you. “Shouldn’t you be packing those?” you said and pointed to your groceries. Suddenly shocked and embarrassed, I looked up and apologized, then clumsily started shoving groceries into bags as fast as I could. I couldn’t believe myself, how stupid could I be? But when I looked up, I realized you were laughing.
“You’re kind of cute” you said. I tried to play it off cool, but I was obviously thrilled. A girl like this thought I was cute? “You are too” I said, as I hastily packed the rest of the groceries. As you walked out, you turned around as you reached the door and said “Have a good night”. I’m guessing I look pretty stupid writing all this down, you probably still remember it, I mean it did just happen yesterday. But I went home ecstatic that night and with all the confidence in the world. I feel like it’s almost unreal writing it back here.
Anyways, I wanted to write you this letter Abby to tell you that, I love you. I don’t know what it was I felt that night, it was some weird mix up of emotions. But all I know was that even in that small little transaction we had, I felt as if there was something between us.
Please, write me back soon.
Sincerely, Jay
Dear Abby,
It’s been a week since I sent my last letter and I still haven’t gotten a response, but that doesn’t matter. How’ve you been? My life’s been just as normal as usual, get up, go to work, go to bed. I live in a really shitty apartment, but I guess that’s what you get when you work as a grocery bagger. I’ve thought about you a lot lately, and I sometimes wonder if you still remember me.
I saw you again today at work, this time it was at a more reasonable hour, thankfully. I didn’t want to bother you to see if you’d approach me on your own. You came to my line again, which made me absolutely thrilled. This time I was less nervous, I was going to act normal no matter what you did or said. I wasn’t going to let a girl like you slip through my fingers. As you walked up you muttered something that was too quiet for me to make out, and waited at the end of the counter for me to finish packing your groceries. This obviously wasn’t what I had expected, but it wasn’t all too bad. You didn’t seem to feel anything at all, actually. I was expecting you to either come up and talk to me or avoid me like the plague, but instead you just walked on through as if I was another stranger. This makes me wonder if you got my last letter, you should check your mailbox more often.
There was one moment where I felt something though. I looked over briefly to see what you were doing, and at the same time you seemed to look up at me to see how far along I was. Right then, are eyes locked. Only for a second or two, but in those two seconds I saw so much more in you than I had seen last time. I felt as if I had known you for years, like I knew all your intricate feelings and emotions. Did you feel anything like that with me?
Shortly after I’d finished packing your bags you paid and walked out, obviously this was a pretty normal process for me considering I do it about 50 times every day, but I had been determined since the night I wrote you that letter that the next time I saw you I was going to get more out of it. I kind of screwed that one up… I wasn’t satisfied with it, I had to have more. There’s a little room in the very back left corner of the grocery store designated for staff. In there though I knew they kept all the security footage from the day, all staff are informed of this and the security camera’s locations when they’re hired. Luckily for me, there’s one positioned right next to my counter.
I waited until the store closed up and everybody left, and then I went in. After flipping through a few of the TV screens, I found the one that was connected to the camera by my counter. I re-winded it until about when I remember you coming in. After a few minutes of scanning, I’d found it. There you were, I paused on the best still shot I could find. I knew the camera wouldn’t do you justice, but it was the best I could have for now. Having a longer look at you I realized how truly perfect you were. Every feature of your body, your hair, your face, your legs… Your chest, was just perfection. I re-winded the tape to when you’d first came up to my line a few times, I couldn’t help myself. My eyes were glued to the screen.
After a few minutes of consideration, I popped out the tape and shoved it in my pocket, and then drove home. I knew I wasn’t allowed to, I could very well be fired for taking such actions, but I couldn’t help myself. I had to have you with me at all times, even if it means me losing my job.
Abby, I love you. I love everything about you. I think about you constantly now. Do you feel the same way about me Abby? I just want us to be together, forever.
Write back soon.
Yours truly, Jay
Dear Abby,
It’s been 3 days and I still haven’t gotten a reply. Why don’t you want to talk to me? I’m still unsure if you got my last two letters, please tell me if you have.
So I got fired from my job, they found the missing tape. I got a call from the store owner, my boss, at 6 am on Monday and was told to come in immediately. They were having a mandatory all staff meeting. When I got there, all of the staff was gathered around a small table with the owner at the head of it. Once everyone had arrived he told us that apparently there had been a minor robbery yesterday, they’d had about 200$ worth of stuff taken from them. And the one tape that would have shown who was the culprit was the one I had taken… Just my luck. He told us that no one was going to leave the room until someone confessed. After a few minutes, I finally gave in. I told him everything, about how I felt as if me and you had had some kind of connection. After explaining the whole story, the entire room was staring wide eyed at me. After I finished, I sat there in silence for several seconds. Suddenly, the store owner broke the tension. “Jay, you’re fired. Get out of here now and don’t come back,” He said.
I did as I was told and got out of there as fast as I could. That stupid prick, he’s always treated me like shit. He’s been on my case since the day I got the job, I swear he’s just been waiting for me to do one little thing that could justify firing me. And the one time I slip up he finds out. Why didn’t he understand though? Doesn’t he get that you and I are meant for each other? Any rational man would have understood, anyone put in my situation would have done that, right?
I’ve been searching you up a lot lately, with no job I have all the time in the world to spend learning about you. Do you know how much you can find out about someone with just a first name and a town of residence? I found out your last name’s Marrot… What a beautiful name, Abby Marrot. I can’t help but say it aloud whenever I think about you. I also found out you’re 24, and you only live a mile away from me. I drove down to your apartment complex today, it looks very nice, much nicer than where I live. I asked to see you multiple times, but I was told that you weren’t there every time. I felt more and more discouraged every time, but I was determined to see you again.
After a few hours of asking, I decided to stay back in the parking lot for a while waiting for you to come back, and after many hours of waiting you did. It was late at night, around 10 I believe. I saw you pull up in your car and get out. I felt a sudden rush of warmth at seeing your face again, I know I have the security camera tape to look at, but it doesn’t compare to seeing you in real life. I made sure to record it for later when I was at home, this time with a much higher quality camera. I wanted to capture as much detail as possible, I didn’t know the next time I would see you and the security tape wasn’t enough for me anymore.
I asked the woman at the front desk multiple times what your room number was, but she refused to tell me. She thought I was some sort of creep, see Abby, these people don’t understand us, they don’t understand what we feel for each other. I ended up waiting in the parking lot a little while longer until someone came out. After talking to him for a bit, he told me what your apartment number was. He didn’t want to talk at first, but I made him… You’d be surprised what you can make people tell you when you’re holding a knife to their chest. Don’t worry, I didn’t hurt him too bad, but we can’t have someone interfering with us. Don’t you agree Abby? I’m sick of all these people trying to keep us apart.
I ended up watching you from the parking lot for a while, once I found out your room number and how the rooms in this complex were organized it wasn’t hard to locate it. You should be more careful about shutting your blinds you know, I was easily able to watch you from the parking lot.
I can’t get you out of my head anymore, ever. All I do is watch that video I took of you over and over. Abby, I want to be with you forever. I want to wake up in the morning to see you next to me in bed.
I cannot wait until the next time I see you again.
Love, Jay
Dear Abby,
I have some really exciting news Abby, I’m moving in with you! Aren’t you excited? We can spend hours and hours and hours together, it’ll be just perfect.
Let me explain, my job paid just enough so I could make rent and pay for food every week. Because of this, I had little to no money in savings, no where near enough to last a very long time. When you take that money flow away it doesn’t take very much time until you have nothing left. I was able to get by for a few days, but just today I got evicted. This could actually be better then I had originally thought, I wouldn’t be surprised if that guy that gave me your room number has been able to contact the police by now. This way they won’t be able to find me, and we get to spend all the time in the world together. It’s perfect isn’t it? I made sure to bring all my tapes and photos I’ve taken with me though, and my cameras of course.
You should really tell who ever’s managing your apartment complex to get better staff, I was able to get by security easily. I went up to your room and knocked on the door, but I got no answer, so I decided to get in by other means. After scanning the footage I took from last night over a few times I noticed that you have a ventilation shaft in the corner of your room, not surprising considering how hot it can get in the summer here. I figured there had to be some kind of maintenance hatch that I could get in through. After a few minutes of looking around, I found a door at the end of your hall that seemed to be some kind of staff room, and luckily there was a way into the vents there.
I crawled through them until I got to your room, it was very cramped and hard to move around in, but I managed. When I got there though, I felt a rush of success. I figured since the lights were out and I couldn’t see you that you weren’t home, but I’m patient. I scanned every part of your room, trying to memorize all the intricate details. Your scent over-whelmed me as I sat there, I had caught it briefly during the two times I saw you at the store, but never this strong. It was mesmerizing, I couldn’t quite place my finger on it but it reminded me of something, it was almost like peaches. I sat there hunched over for a few hours, though I’ve taught myself to be extremely patient. I can sit completely motionless for hours at a time, not moving a muscle, no one was going to notice me.
Then, you finally got home. I felt a wide smile form on my face the second I heard the door open. There you were, my love. Of course you took no notice to my presence, the light in your room seemed to be angled perfectly so you couldn’t see anything in the vent after the first few inches. I tried to contain my excitement, but I started breathing very heavily. I tried to cover it up as best I could, but it was hard… You suddenly looked right at the vent. I went completely silent. After a few seconds though you seemed to lose interest, this made me smile. This was the perfect spot.
I could tell I had startled you though, all throughout the night you were turning over in your sleep to look at the vent. People seem to have a of sense for when they’re being watched, it can send them into complete panic. Don’t try to fake it Abby, I can tell when someone’s awake, when someone’s truly scared sleep becomes impossible. Why are you so scared anyways? It’s just me, why would I scare you? You do love me, right? You know I love you.
I’m looking forward to spending every day with you now Abby, write back if you can.
Love, Jay
Dear Abby,
I saw you wake up this morning, I didn’t sleep a wink last night. You were too enthralling, I spent the whole night watching you. I couldn’t help it… Anytime I tried to look away my eyes seemed to be drawn back a few seconds later. You look even more amazing when you’re sleeping, you know. You’d be surprised how much you can learn about a persons personality by watching them sleep. I was tempted to get out of the vent to get a better view of you multiple times in the night, but I resisted the urge. I couldn’t have you figuring out I’m here, not yet at least.
You seemed to spend a lot of time in your bathroom in the morning, I assumed you were taking a shower or putting on make up. Why would you do that Abby? Anything you could do to change the way you naturally look would only cover up your true beauty. Why would you want to do that, don’t you want the whole world to see what I see in you?
You left shortly after to work, or at least that’s what I assumed. After careful consideration, I decided to leave the vent. I slid my hand through one of the slits and felt around for one of the bolts. The surface of the vent was very smooth, which made them very easy to find. I grabbed onto one and twisted as hard as I could, and finally was able to pop it off. I did this with all the other bolts and finally removed the grating.
The first thing I did was go over to the bathroom. I quickly disposed of everything I could find that you could use to mask your face, that stuff disgusts me. This way everyone’ll get to see you how you truly are. I also found something else in there, your hair brush. I grabbed it and brought it close up to my face to examine it. It was a dull blue, with a very thick rounded handled. But that wasn’t what interested me, the hairs… That’s what made me so interested. I took a good few minutes to pull every one of them I could see out and line them up on your counter. I counted them, I’d gotten 59. This pleased me greatly, I quickly scooped them up and put them in my pocket.
I spent the rest of the day going through your stuff to learn more about you, your interests and such. I take it you’re a big movie fan Abby? I found your collection in the back of your closet, I have to say it was quite impressive. I found something else in there that made me mad, a picture of you with another man. It disgusted me just looking at him, holding you like he owned you. I’M the only one that can have you Abby. No one else.
At about 8:30, I considered starting to get back into the vent, since that’s usually about when you get back from work… Then I had another idea. I looked at your bed, the blankets hung low enough to the floor that you couldn’t see underneath the bed unless they were lifted up. I first screwed the vent grating back on, and slowly slid under with a smile on my face, and waited for you to get home. When you finally came in you looked completely pale, and I noticed someone else came in behind you. They were talking to you about hearing noises coming from your room throughout the day. I mentally yelled at myself, I would need to be more careful from now on. Going under the bed had been a good idea though, since obviously your first thought was to check the vent. You thanked the person and they left. Finally you and I were alone.
I sat there in silence until you went to bed, it seemed to be an eternity before you did. I wanted to get a closer look at you tonight, and this was my chance. You got in bed and turned off the lights. I was cautious though, I waited for hours to make sure you were asleep, and when I was sure you were I slowly slid out from under the bed. And I saw you there, you looked absolutely stunning. Every curve of your body was perfect, every little detail was beautiful. I was in awe just looking at you. I reached out my hand and I started to stroke your face, it was soft like silk. I felt myself starting to get hard, your beauty was over whelming. I slowly reached down and started to pleasure myself, I tried to control myself out of worry of waking you up, but I couldn’t help it. I felt pure ecstasy, everything about you was perfect.
Suddenly, you seemed to turn and started to wake up. Horrified, I quickly slid back under the bed trying to be as quiet as possible. A few seconds I saw you get out of bed and look around. I could sense your fear even without looking at you, you should feel calm with me around you Abby. I’ll protect you Abby, no one will ever touch you but me, I’d kill someone for you Abby.
I made sure to pay attention today, you didn’t bring in my letter from yesterday or any mail at all, you must just not check your mailbox. I’m going to change that though, I’m going to leave this one on your desk tomorrow.
Oh, I forgot to mention, I’m making something special for you. Check in your closet after you read this.
Yours forever, Jay
Dear Abby,
I spent more time today working on the surprise while you were at work, you’re really gonna love it Abby. I’ve put a lot of work into it you know. I spent a few hours today putting the finishing touches on it, and I think it’s finally ready for you to see.
You got home at about 8:30 again, and saw the letter laying on your desk almost immediately. I started to smile as I saw you open it, waiting to see your reaction. It was really quite interesting watching your face, I could see all your different emotions and thoughts. You seemed to be confused at first, then shocked, then horrified. You started to shake violently and I saw that you were starting to cry, do you not like me Abby? Why were you crying? Don’t you love me? DON’T YOU LOVE ME ABBY?
Everything after that was a blur, you looked over to the closet while still sobbing. You seemed to be contemplating whether to open it or not. Instead, you ran past it and out the door. When you came back you had all my letters in your hand and started going through them. At some point you seemed to break down and curl up on the floor, tears still rolling down your face. I could tell you were desperately trying to say something, anything, but you were to paralyzed in fear. After about 10 minutes, I saw you look under the bed, in the vent, anywhere I could be. You see though Abby, I’m smarter than that. I knew you’d look in those places, I found a better place after I finished your surprise. You’ll never find me here, no one will. Isn’t it great? I can watch you forever and ever and there’s nothing you or anyone else can do about it.
You hadn’t found your surprise yet though Abby, and I could tell you were still thinking about it. I saw you look over to your closet, I knew you wanted to open it but at the same time you were nervous. What was going to be in it? What would you find? This couldn’t last forever though, you and I both knew that. I watched you slowly walk over to your closet, fumbling with the handle trying to get a firm grasp on it. Suddenly, you flung the doors open and saw it.
It was a scrapbook, of me and you. I saw you flipping through the pages, you seemed to be shocked. Do you not like it Abby? I got pictures of you and I when you weren’t looking, pictures of you sleeping, pictures of you at your computer. I’d scattered the hairs I had collected throughout it, along with pictures of couples together, of course with our faces on them though. I got that picture of you with the other guy and put it at the very back, except I didn’t leave it like it normally was. I scratched that little prick’s face off. I hate him so much. If I knew who he was I would hunt him down and make him suffer. Don’t you get it Abby? No one, NO ONE can have you but me. Me and you are meant for each other, no one else.
I watched you sob for another 30 minutes, and then get up and run out of your apartment. Shortly after you came back with multiple police men. This shocked me. Did you not like the surprise Abby? Why would you bring these people into our room? They’ll never find where I am, but if they did it could ruin everything. All my work from the last few weeks would be for nothing. You wouldn’t want that, right Abby?
I’m exhausted from todays work, and as much as I love you, I need sleep Abby.
Have a good night, I love you.
Love, Jay
Dear Abby,
Do you see what you’ve done Abby? DO YOU SEE WHAT YOU’VE DONE? I woke up at 8 am to see you franticly packing your bags, I was confused at first, but then I understood. You were leaving me. You don’t love me. You don’t love me. How could you do this to me Abby, you were the only thing I wanted in life, I had nothing else to live for, but when I first met you I saw a shimmer of hope. I thought that I’d finally have reason to wake up in the morning and go on with my shitty life. And you went and threw that away. How could you do this to me Abby?
A few seconds after you left your room I got out of my hiding spot and followed behind you. I saw you throw your bags in the back and then get in your car and start it. I wasn’t going to let you get away though Abby, I would never let that happen. I ran as fast as I could to your car and smashed out the window and dragged you out. Did you really think you could get away from me Abby? I had to hit you over the head to knock you out, you were making too much noise. Someone else, someone that doesn’t understand, could have seen and ruined everything.
Well, I had a plan for if you reacted like this. I drove out to the storage unit at the edge of town, I’d reserved a slot the day I decided to move in with you. I drove up and unlocked it, I grabbed you and carried you inside it with me. It had only been a few minutes so you were still unconscious, I made sure to check through your pockets to make sure you didn’t have your phone with you. I set you down at the very back of the small room, then i got in and lowered the door. I called the owner of the storage unit and told him that I had visited my lot the other day and forgotten to lock it, and asked him if he would mind locking it for me. Of course, he said yes, and I hung up. I then threw the phone on the ground and stomped on it, to make sure that it’d never work again. Shortly later I heard the owner come up and lock the door.
About an hour later, I saw you start to get up. I first heard a very faint grunt, then I saw your leg start to move. Shortly after you were fully awake. When you saw my face, you started to scream, which then subsided to a whine and then to a whimper. That’s when you saw it, the one other thing in the room. My knife. It was obvious why it was there, and after a second or two of realization you jumped and grabbed it.
I looked you dead in the eyes and said “Abby, I love you.” and then I felt the searing pain of the knife being driven into my side, I felt it being pulled out and jabbed back in with great force. I could feel it go in each time, like a fire burning a hole through my chest. I fell to the floor, laughing while coughing up blood. I saw you back away, trembling, and sit back down in the corner.
And now, as I sit here in a puddle of my own blood writing this, I wonder how you’ll go out. Will you use the knife to take your own life? Or will you let starvation take you? Either way, we’ll be together in death Abby. Together from the day I saw you till the day we both died, just as I wanted it. And as you sit there, crying, I can tell you’ve come to this realization. Abby, this is all I ever wanted, and for that I have to say thank you.
Love, Jay
Credit To: Kyle “Kman” Mangione-Smith
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When I was a small child, I was terrified of the dark. I still am, but back when I was around six years old I couldn’t go a full night without crying out for one of my parents to search beneath my bed or in my closet for whatever monster I thought was waiting to eat me. Even with a night light, I would still see dark shapes moving around the corners of the room, or strange faces looking in on me from my bedroom window. My parents would do their best to console me, telling me that it was just a bad dream or a trick of the light, but in my young mind I was positive that the second I fell asleep, the bad things would get me. Most of the time I would just hide under the blankets until I became tired enough to stop worrying, but every now and then I would become so panicked that I would run screaming into my parents room, waking up my brother and sister in the process. After an ordeal like that, there would be no way anyone would be getting a full nights rest.
Eventually, after one particularly traumatizing night, my parents had had enough. Unfortunately for them, they understood the futility in arguing with a six year old and knew that they would be unable to convince me to rid myself of childish fears through reason and logic. They had to be clever.
It was my mother’s idea to stitch together my little bedtime friend.
She collected a large assortment of random pieces of fabric and her sewing machine and created what I would later refer to as Mr. Ickbarr Bigelsteine, or Ick for short. Ick was a sock monster, as my mother called him. He was made to keep me safe while I slept at night by scarring away all the other monsters. He was pretty damn creepy, I had to admit. Honestly, looking back on it all now, I’m still impressed that my mom could think of something so strange and disturbing looking. Ickbarr had the stitched together look of a Frankenstein gremlin, with big white button eyes and floppy cat ears. His little arms and legs were made from a pair of my sister’s black and white striped socks, and the half of his face that was green was made from one of my brother’s tall football socks. His head could have been described as bulbous, and for his mouth my mom attached a piece of white fabric and sewed in a zigzag pattern to shape a wide grin of sharp teeth. I loved him at once.
From then on, Ick never left my side. So long as it was after dusk, of course. Ick didn’t like the sun, and would get upset if I tried to bring him to school with me. But that was okay, I only needed him at night to keep away the boogeymen, which was what he was good at. So every night at bedtime, Ick would tell me where the monsters were hiding, and I would place him near the section of my room closest to the spookiness. If there was something in the closet, Ick would block the door. If there was a dark creature scratching at my window, Ick would be pressed up against the glass. If there was a big hairy beast under my bed, then under the bed he went. Sometimes the monsters weren’t even in my room. Sometimes, they would hide in my dreams, and Ickbarr would have to come with me into my nightmares. It was fun bringing Ick into my dream world, as he and I would spend hours fighting off ghouls and demons. The best part was, in my dreams, Ick could talk to me for real. “How much do you love me?” He would ask.
“More than anything.” I would always tell him. One night in a dream, after I had lost my first tooth, Ick asked me for a favor.
“Can I have your tooth?”
I asked him why.
“To help me kill the bad things.” He said.
The next morning at breakfast, my mom asked me where my tooth went. From what she told me, the “tooth fairy” didn’t find it under my pillow. When I told her that I gave it to Ickbarr, she just shrugged and went back to feeding my little sister. From then on, every time I lost a tooth, I would give it to Ick. He would always thank me, of course, and tell me that he loved me. Eventually though, I ran out of baby teeth, and I was beginning to get a little too old to still be playing with dolls. So Ick just sat there on my bookshelf collecting dust, slowly fading away from my attention.
Over time the nightmares, however, became worse than ever. So bad that they even began to follow me to the waking world, terrorizing every dark corner or rustle in the bushes. After one particularly bad night biking home from a friend’s house where I swore a pack of rabid dogs were chasing me, I got home to find something strange waiting for me in my room. There, on my bed, standing fully upright in the soft glow of the moon light from my window, was Ickbarr. At first I just thought my eyes were playing tricks on me again, they had been all evening, so I tried to flick on the lights. Another flick of the light switch. Then another, and another, with no change to the darkness. It was then that I started to get nervous.
I backed away slowly towards the door behind me, my eyes never leaving the shape of Ick’s silhouette, my hand awkwardly outstretched behind reaching for the doorknob. I was just about to get my ass out of there when I heard the door slam itself shut, locking me into blackness. In nothing but shadows and silence, I stood frozen in place, not even breathing. For how long I can’t say, but after what felt like a lifetime of cold fear, I heard the shrill, familiar voice.
“You stopped feeding me, so why should I protect you?”
“Protect me from what?”
“Let me show you.”
I blinked once, and everything changed. I wasn’t in my bedroom anymore, I was somewhere… else. It wasn’t Hell, but the comparison wasn’t far off. It was some sort of forest, a horrible, nightmarish place where partial embryonic abortions hung from the canopy, and the ground swarmed with carnivorous insects. A thick fog wafted through the air and with it the stench of rotting meat, while chartreuse lightening flashed across the night sky. In the distance, I could hear the agonizing screams of something not quite human. My head throbbed like it was about to explode, the pain forcing out a river of tears. In my mind, I heard his voice again.
“This is what your reality would become without me.”
I felt earth shaking footsteps approaching fast.
“I’m the only one who can stop it.”
It was behind me now, huge and angry, hot breath across my back.
“Bring me what I need, and I will.”
I woke up before I could turn around.
The following day I raided my parent’s closet for my brother’s baby teeth, giving them all to Ickbarr. Almost immediately the night terrors ceased, and I was more or less able to go on about my life as normal. From time to time, I would have to sneak into my little sister’s room and snatch what was meant for the tooth fairy, or strangle one of the neighborhood cats and pry out its sharp little incisors. Anything to ward off the visions, anything from a shark tooth necklace to a cavity ridden bicuspid. I also began to notice that Ick would move about my room whenever I left for any length of time, rearranging my stuff and hanging additional curtains. He was even beginning to look more lifelike, somehow. In the right light his teeth would glisten, and he was warm to the touch. As much as he creeped me out, I couldn’t work up the courage to just destroy him, knowing perfectly well where that would leave me. So I went on collecting teeth for Ick throughout all of high school and college. The older I got, the more things I would learn to fear, the more teeth Ick would need to keep me safe.
I’m 22 years old now, with a decent job, my own apartment, and a set of dentures. It’s been almost a month since Ick’s last meal, and the horrors are starting to crowd around me once more. I took a detour through a parking garage after work tonight. Found a man fumbling with his car keys. His teeth were stained yellow from a lifetime of cigarettes and coffee. Even still, I had to use a hammer to get out the molars. When I got back to my apartment, he was waiting for me. On the ceiling, in the corner. Two white eyes and mouth of razors.
“How much do you love me?” He asks.
“More than anything,” I reply, taking off my coat.
“More than anything in the world.”
Credit To: Stephan D. Harris
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Listen To The Russian Sleep Experiment Narration
The Story Of The Russian Sleep Experiment
Russian researchers in the late 1940s kept five people awake for fifteen days using an experimental gas based stimulant. They were kept in a sealed environment to carefully monitor their oxygen intake so the gas didn’t kill them, since it was toxic in high concentrations. This was before closed circuit cameras so they had only microphones and 5 inch thick glass porthole sized windows into the chamber to monitor them. The chamber was stocked with books, cots to sleep on but no bedding, running water and toilet, and enough dried food to last all five for over a month.
The test subjects were political prisoners deemed enemies of the state during World War II.
Everything was fine for the first five days; the subjects hardly complained having been promised (falsely) that they would be freed if they submitted to the test and did not sleep for 30 days. Their conversations and activities were monitored and it was noted that they continued to talk about increasingly traumatic incidents in their past, and the general tone of their conversations took on a darker aspect after the 4 day mark.
After five days they started to complain about the circumstances and events that lead them to where they were and started to demonstrate severe paranoia. They stopped talking to each other and began alternately whispering to the microphones and one way mirrored portholes. Oddly they all seemed to think they could win the trust of the experimenters by turning over their comrades, the other subjects in captivity with them. At first the researchers suspected this was an effect of the gas itself…
After nine days the first of them started screaming. He ran the length of the chamber repeatedly yelling at the top of his lungs for 3 hours straight, he continued attempting to scream but was only able to produce occasional squeaks. The researchers postulated that he had physically torn his vocal cords. The most surprising thing about this behavior is how the other captives reacted to it… or rather didn’t react to it. They continued whispering to the microphones until the second of the captives started to scream. The 2 non-screaming captives took the books apart, smeared page after page with their own feces and pasted them calmly over the glass portholes. The screaming promptly stopped.
So did the whispering to the microphones.
After 3 more days passed, the researchers checked the microphones hourly to make sure they were working, since they thought it impossible that no sound could be coming with 5 people inside. The oxygen consumption in the chamber indicated that all 5 must still be alive. In fact, it was the amount of oxygen 5 people would consume at a very heavy level of strenuous exercise. On the morning of the 14th day, the researchers did something they said they would not do to get a reaction from the captives, they used the intercom inside the chamber, hoping to provoke any response from the captives they were afraid were either dead or vegetables.
They announced: “We are opening the chamber to test the microphones step away from the door and lie flat on the floor or you will be shot. Compliance will earn one of you your immediate freedom.”
To their surprise, they heard a single phrase in a calm voice response: “We no longer want to be freed.”
Debate broke out among the researchers and the military forces funding the research. Unable to provoke any more response using the intercom it was finally decided to open the chamber at midnight on the fifteenth day.
The chamber was flushed of the stimulant gas and filled with fresh air and immediately voices from the microphones began to object. 3 different voices began begging, as if pleading for the life of loved ones to turn the gas back on. The chamber was opened and soldiers sent in to retrieve the test subjects. They began to scream louder than ever, and so did the soldiers when they saw what was inside. Four of the five subjects were still alive, although no one could rightly call the state that any of them in ‘life.’
The food rations past day 5 had not been so much as touched. There were chunks of meat from the dead test subject’s thighs and chest stuffed into the drain in the center of the chamber, blocking the drain and allowing 4 inches of water to accumulate on the floor. Precisely how much of the water on the floor was actually blood was never determined. All four ‘surviving’ test subjects also had large portions of muscle and skin torn away from their bodies. The destruction of flesh and exposed bone on their finger tips indicated that the wounds were inflicted by hand, not with teeth as the researchers initially thought. Closer examination of the position and angles of the wounds indicated that most if not all of them were self-inflicted.
The abdominal organs below the ribcage of all four test subjects had been removed. While the heart, lungs and diaphragm remained in place, the skin and most of the muscles attached to the ribs had been ripped off, exposing the lungs through the ribcage. All the blood vessels and organs remained intact, they had just been taken out and laid on the floor, fanning out around the eviscerated but still living bodies of the subjects. The digestive tract of all four could be seen to be working, digesting food. It quickly became apparent that what they were digesting was their own flesh that they had ripped off and eaten over the course of days.
Most of the soldiers were Russian special operatives at the facility, but still many refused to return to the chamber to remove the test subjects. They continued to scream to be left in the chamber and alternately begged and demanded that the gas be turned back on, lest they fall asleep…
To everyone’s surprise, the test subjects put up a fierce fight in the process of being removed from the chamber. One of the Russian soldiers died from having his throat ripped out, another was gravely injured by having his testicles ripped off and an artery in his leg severed by one of the subject’s teeth. Another 5 of the soldiers lost their lives if you count ones that committed suicide in the weeks following the incident.
In the struggle one of the four living subjects had his spleen ruptured and he bled out almost immediately. The medical researchers attempted to sedate him but this proved impossible. He was injected with more than ten times the human dose of a morphine derivative and still fought like a cornered animal, breaking the ribs and arm of one doctor. When heart was seen to beat for a full two minutes after he had bled out to the point there was more air in his vascular system than blood. Even after it stopped he continued to scream and flail for another 3 minutes, struggling to attack anyone in reach and just repeating the word “MORE” over and over, weaker and weaker, until he finally fell silent.
The surviving three test subjects were heavily restrained and moved to a medical facility, the two with intact vocal cords continuously begging for the gas demanding to be kept awake…
The most injured of the three was taken to the only surgical operating room that the facility had. In the process of preparing the subject to have his organs placed back within his body it was found that he was effectively immune to the sedative they had given him to prepare him for the surgery. He fought furiously against his restraints when the anesthetic gas was brought out to put him under. He managed to tear most of the way through a 4-inch wide leather strap on one wrist, even though the weight of a 200-pound soldier was holding that wrist as well. It took only a little more anesthetic than normal to put him under, and the instant his eyelids fluttered and closed, his heart stopped. In the autopsy of the test subject that died on the operating table, it was found that his blood had triple the normal level of oxygen. His muscles that were still attached to his skeleton were badly torn and he had broken 9 bones in his struggle to not be subdued. Most of them were from the force his own muscles had exerted on them.
The second survivor had been the first of the group of five to start screaming. His vocal cords destroyed he was unable to beg or object to surgery, and he only reacted by shaking his head violently in disapproval when the anesthetic gas was brought near him. He shook his head yes when someone suggested, reluctantly, they try the surgery without anesthetic, and did not react for the entire 6-hour procedure of replacing his abdominal organs and attempting to cover them with what remained of his skin. The surgeon presiding stated repeatedly that it should be medically possible for the patient to still be alive. One terrified nurse assisting the surgery stated that she had seen the patient’s mouth curl into a smile several times, whenever his eyes met hers.
When the surgery ended the subject looked at the surgeon and began to wheeze loudly, attempting to talk while struggling. Assuming this must be something of drastic importance the surgeon had a pen and pad fetched so the patient could write his message. It was simple. “Keep cutting.”
The other two test subjects were given the same surgery, both without anesthetic as well. Although they had to be injected with a paralytic for the duration of the operation. The surgeon found it impossible to perform the operation while the patients laughed continuously. Once paralyzed the subjects could only follow the attending researchers with their eyes. The paralytic cleared their system in an abnormally short period of time and they were soon trying to escape their bonds. The moment they could speak they were again asking for the stimulant gas. The researchers tried asking why they had injured themselves, why they had ripped out their own guts and why they wanted to be given the gas again.
Only one response was given: “I must remain awake.”
All three subject’s restraints were reinforced and they were placed back into the chamber awaiting determination as to what should be done with them. The researchers, facing the wrath of their military ‘benefactors’ for having failed the stated goals of their project considered euthanizing the surviving subjects. The commanding officer, a former KGB agent, instead saw potential, and wanted to see what would happen if they were put back on the gas. The researchers strongly objected, but were overruled.
In preparation for being sealed in the chamber again, the subjects were connected to an EEG monitor and had their restraints padded for long term confinement. To everyone’s surprise, all three stopped struggling the moment it was let slip that they were going back on the gas. It was obvious that at this point all three were putting up a great struggle to stay awake. One of the subjects that could speak was humming loudly and continuously; the mute subject was straining his legs against the leather bonds with all his might, first left, then right, then left again for something to focus on. The remaining subject was holding his head off his pillow and blinking rapidly. Having been the first to be wired for EEG most of the researchers were monitoring his brain waves in surprise. They were normal most of the time but sometimes flat lined inexplicably. It looked as if he were repeatedly suffering from brain death, before returning to normal. As they focused on paper scrolling out of the brainwave monitor only one nurse saw his eyes slip shut at the same moment his head hit the pillow. His brainwaves immediately changed to that of a deep sleep, then flatlined for the last time as his heart simultaneously stopped.
The only remaining subject that could speak started screaming to be sealed in now. His brainwaves showed the same flatlines as one who had just died from falling asleep. The commander gave the order to seal the chamber with both subjects inside, as well as 3 researchers. One of the named three immediately drew his gun and shot the commander point blank between the eyes, then turned the gun on the mute subject and blew his brains out as well.
He pointed his gun at the remaining subject, still restrained to a bed as the remaining members of the medical and research team fled the room. “I won’t be locked in here with these things! Not with you!” he screamed at the man strapped to the table. “WHAT ARE YOU?” he demanded. “I must know!”
The subject smiled.
“Have you forgotten so easily?” The subject asked. “We are you. We are the madness that lurks within you all, begging to be free at every moment in your deepest animal mind. We are what you hide from in your beds every night. We are what you sedate into silence and paralysis when you go to the nocturnal haven where we cannot tread.”
The researcher paused. Then aimed at the subject’s heart and fired. The EEG flatlined as the subject weakly choked out, “So… nearly… free…”
The movie…
We still await the day we get to see this classic creepypasta turned into a Russian Sleep Experiment movie
More classic Creepypasta stories can be found here:
Jeff The Killer
Slenderman
Smile Dog
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Publisher’s Note: This story is a sequel to the previously-featured tale, A Sunset in Texas. The author encourages you to read the first installment in the series to better understand the events of this one. You can find the first part here.
Cooper jostled slightly in his seat as the pickup truck bounced its way down the countryside road. The asphalt had long since faded, giving way to cracks and bumps that marred its surface. As his vehicle cruised down the road, he looked out his window at the fields that flashed by. Rows of corn passed hypnotically by his gaze as his destination drew nearer. He peered in the rearview mirror to see his stepson, Andrew, staring out the window as well. The teenager’s blond hair danced in the air that was streaming through the crack near the top of the window. Cooper’s gaze was suddenly diverted back to the front of the cab as his wife placed her hand over his while he gripped the gear shift. Susan gave him a warm smile and squeezed his hand.
“You know, you really didn’t need to take the afternoon off to come out here with us. We could’ve just come the next time you were free from work,” Susan said.
Cooper grinned as he continued to stare out the windshield.
“We both needed a break, and I know all of three of us missed spending afternoons out here with Gunnar.”
Susan let out a light chuckle that was nearly lost in the wind through her open window and the static-laced song emitting from the radio.
“Finally,” Cooper let out under his breath.
The familiar white farmhouse Gunnar inhabited came into view over the top of some low-lying bushes. Cooper let off the accelerator, causing the truck to slow before turning into the gravel driveway. As they drew closer to the familiar home, rocks crunched under the tires and the smell of freshly cut grass entered through the open windows. Andrew perked up in his seat and his eyes went wide.
“You didn’t tell me we were going to visit Uncle Gunnar,” he exclaimed without any hesitation to keep the excitement from his tone.
Cooper chuckled and glanced at him in the rearview mirror.
“If I’d told you in advance, you would’ve been bugging me the whole way here on how much longer it was going to be.”
Andrew had now tuned out his stepfather’s voice and had his face pressed against the glass. With one final press of the brakes, Cooper brought the truck to a halt with the passenger side facing the front door. As if on cue, the screen door was flung open and Gunnar’s tall slender frame stepped out into the sunlight. He wiped the palms of his hands on the front of his pants before outstretching his arms into a welcoming embrace.
“I was wondering when y’all were going to get here,” Gunnar let out as Andrew threw open the door to the truck.
He bolted across the narrow span of grass that stood between the front steps of the house and the driveway. Andrew shook Gunnar’s hand and pulled the man into a hug.
“I know it’s only been a couple of months since you were last here, but I can swear that you’ve grown at least another inch. I figured you would’ve stopped
growing at your age.”
“I’m giving you a run for your money. Maybe I’ll make six foot by the end of the summer,” Andrew let out as a joke.
Gunnar rustled his hair and looked up as Cooper stepped out the truck and walked in their direction. They shook hands, but Cooper quickly found himself being pulled into a bear hug.
“You should know better than to greet me with just a basic handshake,” Gunnar said as his voice trailed off into laughter and the end of the sentence.
He let go of Cooper as Susan approached with a large smile across her face. Gunnar bent down slightly to reach her height and embraced her as well.
“It’s been a good few months since I’ve seen you as well.”
“Well, my job keeps me busy most of the time. Trust me, there’s nothing I’d want more than to just come out here and relax sometimes.”
Gunnar nodded and turned to Andrew who was now swaying back and forth in the porch swing.
“You know, Andrew,” Gunnar called out, “a new calf was just born earlier this week. Why don’t you and your mama head over to the stables and have a look? It’s almost her dinner time anyway. You still remember how to feed the newborns we took care of last summer?”
Andrew nodded with excitement before bolting down the front steps in long strides and taking off in the direction of the stables on the other side of the property. Susan shook her head with a grin before walking behind him.
“The boy is sixteen, but still gets excited like a child when he comes here,” Susan said with a laugh as she quickened her pace to catch up with him.
Once the two were out of earshot, the smile slowly started to fade from Gunnar’s face as he turned to look at Cooper.
“I have a feeling I know what this is about,” he said with a concerning neutrality to his tone.
Cooper kept his gaze on Andrew and Susan as they continued towards the stables.
“The day was going to come eventually, Gunnar.”
Cooper took in a deep breath as a cool breeze blew across the property.
“I just wish I had a little more time to prepare my answer properly,” Gunnar let out.
He walked back up the front steps with the boards squeaking under his weight and Cooper following close behind.
“Go ahead and have a seat and make yourself comfortable. I’ll fix us each a drink. I have a feeling we’re going to need at least one over the course of this conversation.”
Cooper let his body collapse into the cradle of the rocking chair. Kicking his feet up on the railing, he slowly pushed himself back and forth as he listened to Gunnar fooling around in the kitchen through the screen door. After a couple of minutes, he stepped back outside with a glass in each hand.
“White Russians,” Cooper asked with an amused hint of surprise in his tone. “My God, you really are old-fashioned.”
Cooper took the glass and stirred the liquors and heavy cream together with the small plastic straw. Gunnar took a seat in the chair next to him and stared out over the field adjacent to the property. The air had gradually gotten cooler over the course of the day, evolving from a discomforting heat to an enjoyable coolness.
“You know Coop, I’ve been dreading having this conversation with you ever since you married that girl.”
Gunnar took a sip from his glass while Cooper kept his eyes locked on him in complete silence.
“I don’t mean that in a bad way. Every man in this town needs to have the conversation with their kid at some point. Some people don’t mind it because they already know the answer, but others try to put up a fight in fear of the possible disapproval their kid has for our customs. They all know what results from their son or daughter disagreeing, so I can hardly blame the parents for fighting all of this.”
Gunnar let out a heavy sigh before resting his drink on the porch railing.
“I know that Andrew has no clue what goes on in this town, but do you have any hunch as to how he’ll respond when he finds out, Coop?”
There was a moment of silence between the two men. Bugs chirped in the grass and the faint crackle of a radio could be heard from somewhere in the house. Cooper swore he could make out the lyrics to “The Man in Me” by Bob Dylan through the static. They sat without saying a word. Gunnar had his eyes locked on Cooper while he stared out over the land and thought for a moment.
“To tell you the truth, Gunnar, I have no idea how he’s going to respond to all of this. I’ve tried taking him hunting to test the waters. He shot a deer last winter, but he was very hesitant when it came to gutting the thing and harvesting the meat.”
Cooper made an aggravated sound before pinching the bridge of his nose.
“That’s the only thing even remotely close to testing his feelings about all of this that we’ve done. I honestly have no idea which way he’s going to go with this, and I’m just terrified that, that…”
“That we’ll have to kill him,” Gunnar let out with no emotion in his tone.
Another awkward silence hung in the air as Cooper shuttered at the cold realization he had been so afraid to confront. Cooper stretched and reached for his glass resting on the porch railing. In one gulp, he finished off the drink and placed the glass back down on the weathered wood.
“It’s never easy,” Gunnar said while continuing to stare out over his property.
“Some of the strongest men I’ve come to know in this town cried like a baby when their kid was taken away. It’s never easy for me either. No matter how many times I do it, I don’t think I’ll ever get over the feeling of knowing that I’m the one responsible for killing someone’s child.”
“Then why do we keep doing it?”
Gunnar turned to look at Cooper. He was now sitting fully upright in his chair and staring at him with the most serious look plastered on his face that Gunnar had ever seen.
“Son of a… you know the answer to that, Coop. Don’t make me explain it.”
Cooper sat in silence for a few seconds before grabbing his glass and retreating inside. He sloshed more liquor and heavy cream in the glass, hardly paying attention to the proportions he was throwing together. As Cooper came back through the doorway, he stirred the light and dark liquids together with his finger before wiping it on his shirt. He took a large sip before falling back into the rocking chair.
“Let me rephrase the question. I know your reasoning as to what would happen if we didn’t do it, but there must have been some incident that caused you to set this in motion. I find it hard to believe that you’re doing this just as a precaution. Something did happen or got really close to happening.”
Gunnar smiled and looked over at Cooper.
“Sometimes I forget just how smart you are, Coop. There’s a damn fine reason you’re the only person I’ve abducted who has walked out of this house alive,” he said with a chuckle.
Gunnar let out a heavy sigh and propped his feet up on a nearby end table.
“This was probably about 12 years ago. There was a boy named Rodney who was just a year or two younger than Andrew. Now, we were able to get away with not sending our kids to school for a little while, but eventually, we knew that they would need the proper education. Much to my father’s disliking, we let them go back to school. It took longer than my father had originally expected, but it was still only about five months before the incident occurred.
He was in a class with a few other kids from the town. There was this one girl named Lily who sat next to him for the whole day. They had grown up together, so it only made sense that they were really good friends. It was because of this that they confided in each other. One day, Lily went home and told her dad that Rodney wanted to go to the police and tell them everything that was going on in this little town. That very night, her father came running to our front door and started banging on it. I was already in bed but could hear him from downstairs in our living room explaining everything to my dad.
Immediately after this, my father grabbed the shotgun hanging above the fireplace. Nestled under the covers of my bed, I heard him slam the door to his truck and the engine roar to life. As he peeled out of our driveway, my young mind raced trying not to imagine what he was going to do next. The following day, Rodney wasn’t in school. He wasn’t there the next day either, or any other day after that. I made the assumption of what had happened, and my old man skirted the question whenever I asked him. It was years later when my old man passed the tradition on to me that he fully explained what had happened that night.
He had pulled up to Rodney’s house with the shotgun slung over his shoulder. It was late at night, so his parents answered the door with a lot of confusion. My father told them not to interfere and simply pushed past them and walked upstairs. As Rodney’s mother screamed and collapsed to the floor, my father dragged the boy down the stairs, screaming and fighting the entire way down.”
Gunnar paused for a moment. The void of silence was once again filled by the surrounding bugs and soft, blowing breeze that passed through the trees.
“My father took Rodney outside, led him deep into the property, and put a bullet in the back of his head.”
Cooper was sitting with his hands clasped together and holding his chin up. His gaze was now focused out over the farmland and the setting sun that was beginning to disappear below the horizon.
“So, you were correct in your assumption, Coop. We don’t just do this as some paranoid precaution. We do this because it almost happened, and I don’t want anything like that ever happening again. Should anyone discover what goes on in this town, I don’t want to be around to witness the fallout the members of our society would have with any armed authority.”
“Have you considered just ending this all together and letting the generations that remember and participated in it just fade away with time?”
Gunnar chuckled and finished off his drink. He kicked a leg up on the patio railing and rocked himself in his chair.
“Trust me, I’ve considered it on more than a few occasions. It’d be a weight off my shoulders, but I don’t trust some of the people in this town. There’s a reason I’m the sole person who goes out and gets meat for those who want it. I’m terrified that if I gave up the whole thing, those who crave it bad enough would just defy my authority and try to get it themselves. Let’s face it, not everyone is as smooth, clean, and tedious as I am. I’m terrified that someone would easily get caught, and then the whole town would be busted.”
Off in the distance, Cooper could see Andrew and his mother returning from the stables. His stepson had found something which he now held in his hand, but Cooper was unable to make out what it was from a distance.
“I know it’s not ideal,” Gunnar said in a somewhat defeated manner. “However, it’s still the best I can do with the situation my father put us in all those years ago. I personally never see an end to this, so the best thing we can do is just try and control it to the best of our abilities.”
The two men were silent once again. Cooper ran through the multiple scenarios in his head while Gunnar did his best to not let emotion cloud his judgment.
“If we end up having to go through with it… I want to be the one that does it.”
Gunnar raised an eyebrow and turned to give Cooper a surprised look.
“You know, I’ve had parents offer to do the same for their kid in the past, but I never really expected that to come out of you. Are you sure you’d be up for it?”
“I killed my own father, didn’t I,” Cooper asked with a sense of pride as he recalled that night in vivid detail.
“Yeah, but your father was someone that you despised with every fiber of your being. That’s a lot different than killing someone that you’ve come to know and love as your own son.”
Cooper opened his mouth to respond, but found he was unable to say anything.
“Look, Coop, I’ll give you until tomorrow afternoon to go through with all of this. If I pull Andrew aside tomorrow and find out that you haven’t asked him about it, then I’ll have to do it myself. Now, you and I both know that it would pain me deeply to do that to the poor kid. So, for your sake and my sake, I want you to go through with this.”
Cooper nodded and focused his gaze on the two members of his family as they drew closer to the farmhouse. Andrew came bolting across the yard with a large grin plastered on his face. Clutched in his grasp, Cooper could make out that he had the post of a wrought iron fence. A spike adorned the top and rust dabbled numerous spots on its surface.
“Looks like you found part of the fence that used to run around this property. That thing fell into disrepair before I was even born” Gunnar said while reaching into his pocket and retracting a pocket knife.
With one swift motion, he flipped it open and scraped at some of the rust. An orange powder fell into the air, revealing the dark metal underneath.
“It looks like most of the rust is only on the surface. How about after dinner, you and I go ahead and clean that thing off and get it treated?”
Andrew nodded his head with excitement and rested the large length of metal against the door frame. Susan opened the screen door and turned her head back as she stepped inside.
“Andrew, how about you come help me fix dinner?”
Andrew heeded his mother’s instructions and followed her inside. As the sound of shuffling pots and pans echoed through the screen door, Gunnar turned back to Cooper with a serious look on his face.
“If I were you, I’d talk to him after dinner. Should worse come to worse and we have to… take care of him… I personally think it would be best if the last memories he had were of a night like this, surrounded by family.”
Gunnar stood up from his chair and placed a hand on Cooper’s shoulder.
“I’m putting a lot of faith in you Coop. Please, don’t let me down.”
With a final heavy sigh, Gunnar went inside to help prepare dinner. Cooper found himself sitting alone on the front porch. The sounds that were drifting outside from the kitchen were filtered out. All he could hear where the buzzing of cicadas and a slight breeze wafting through the tall grass near the edge of the property. Just like the first time he had ever been in this house, the sunset was casting an eerie orange glow over everything. What had once been a living nightmare when he woke up strapped to a chair in Gunnar’s living room, was now a place he considered to be his true home. He had come to love and accept Gunnar as the father figure that he never had growing up.
Out the corner of his eye, he saw faint movement. The door to the barn had been left open, causing it to rock slightly on its hinges as it got caught in the breeze. A soft groan would escape the hinges, barely audible to Cooper over the distance. As he stared at the building that he had dragged his father into, the smell of blood began to fill his nostrils while the memories of that night came flooding back. He shook his head and jolted up from the rocking chair. Not wanting to think about it anymore, he walked inside just as dinner was being pulled from the oven.
The four of them ate at the dining room table that had been adorned with the first flowers of Spring. There were plenty of stories told and laughter to be had as night began to fall over the small Texas farmhouse. The entire time, Cooper’s mind swarmed with the thoughts of what he was going to have to do later that night. However, he managed to keep his composure and put on a pleasant demeanor during all of it. After Susan served dessert, Andrew helped clear the table and put all the dishes in the sink. After they had all been scrubbed and placed on the drying rack, the four of them sat in the living room watching a movie on the television. The clock above the mantle was just about to strike ten when Cooper leaned over and whispered something in Andrew’s ear.
“Would you mind coming outside and helping me with something?”
Andrew did not ask any questions and simply followed Cooper outside. As he opened the door, a symphony of the night filled their ears. The entire landscape had come to life with the sound of birds, insects, and other nightlife that inhabited the surrounding land. Cooper stepped off the gravel driveway onto the freshly cut grass, his boot leaving prints in his wake. The two men walked in the direction of the stables, guided by the faint shadows of vegetation in the moonlight.
“What do you think of living in this town,” Cooper asked bluntly, not knowing how else to start the conversation.
“I mean, it’s not bad or anything. I’m just not a big fan of the isolation.”
Cooper continued to walk as he pondered how to continue the conversation.
“Well, there’s a reason this town has remained isolated when many others have evolved and expanded over the years.”
”“There’s a reason? Real smooth move there, Coop,”” he thought to himself.
“I know.”
Cooper felt his heart skip a beat. He almost tripped in a shallow hole, causing him to stumble slightly before regaining his balance.
“Whatever you think the reason is, I can guarantee you that’s not it.”
“You mean it’s not because the people of this town practice cannibalism?”
Cooper was now at a complete loss for words. He had ceased his stride, causing him to stand and simply stare at his stepson. Silence hung in the air around them, save for the sounds of the surrounding wildlife. Although Cooper was tempted to say something immediately, his loss for words caused him to think over his next words carefully.
“Damn… you’re even smarter than I originally anticipated.”
Andrew did not respond to this. He stood motionless and stared at Cooper with unblinking eyes.
“I guess before we get too deep into this conversation, I have to know, how did you find out? Uncle Gunnar and I do our best to keep all of this a secret from the kids.”
Andrew motioned his head to the side, signaling for Cooper to follow him as he began walking again. Deciding it was best not to question the sudden leadership role that his stepson had taken, Cooper followed.
“Not every kid knows. Well, let me rephrase that. Some kids know, but not all of them believe it. The first time I heard these stories was in middle school. I was with a group of friends when some of the older kids started trying to spook us with tales about how some members of the town would go abduct people across the state and butcher them.”
As they continued to walk across the field, Cooper kept his gaze straight ahead. He did not speak a word and simply listened to Andrew’s explanation.
“At the time, we didn’t really think of it as anything more than some sick and twisted joke or a somewhat pathetic attempt to spook us.”
“So, when did you find out that it actually was all real,” Cooper asked.
Andrew paused for a moment as he gathered his thoughts.
“It was the day I spent the night at this kid’s house for his birthday. We had been good friends for years, so his parents let me stay for dinner and spend the night after all the other kids had gone home. His mother had made a roast that filled the entire house with an intoxicating aroma. At the time, I just thought she had splurged and spent a little extra cash on the good pork roast from the butcher.”
Andrew sighed and stared up at the stars in the sky.
“It wasn’t until we were all seated around the dining room table and his mother placed the still-steaming pan down in the middle that something struck me as odd. Whatever meat this was, it certainly didn’t look like any kind of roast I had had before. When I asked what it was, his parents just stared at me for a moment. The mother didn’t know how to respond, so the dad just asked me if I wanted to try a little piece.”
Andrew ceased speaking, causing a silence to fill the space between them.
“So… What did you do,” Cooper asked in a dry tone.
“I thought about all the rumors of people being abducted and butchered. I also thought about all the instances where some kids would stop coming to school. It suddenly occurred to me in that moment that perhaps there was some truth to those stories. My mind suddenly began to fear what would happen if I acted out at the dinner table.”
“So, I did the only thing that was guaranteed to keep me safe. I took a big slab of it on my plate and ate every last bit.”
Cooper could hear Andrew swallow loudly. He assumed his stepson was having to swallow down vomit after reliving that memory.
“I don’t really disagree with it. I guess the one thing I don’t like is that innocent people are usually the ones abducted for all of this. I guess it’d be different if this was done with criminals or other degenerates of society.”
Cooper tuned out Andrew’s voice immediately after the sentence ended. From deep within his mind, a consideration came back that he tried to keep tucked away. Deciding this was as good of a time as any, he stopped in his tracks. Andrew did the same when the familiar crunch of vegetation under his stepfather’s boots ceased.
“Follow me, Andrew. There’s something I think you need to see.”
Cooper turned on his heels and started back in the direction of the barn. Andrew followed close behind. During the walk over there, both remained quiet and to themselves. When they finally reached the tall and looming shadow of the barn’s structure, Andrew ran back to the house and soon returned with the iron post clenched tightly in his grasp.
“Trust me, you wouldn’t need to defend yourself,” Cooper said with a forced chuckle. “But I guess if it makes you feel comfortable, go ahead and bring it.”
Andrew stood in front of the large doors. One of them hung slightly ajar, causing the smell of old wood, motor oil and decaying plants to come spilling out into the cool night air.
“It should go without saying, but I want to make sure you understand the severity of what I’m about to show you. If you speak a word of this to anyone, I won’t hesitate to put you down. I’ve come to think of you as my son, my own flesh and blood. As much as it would pain me, don’t think that there would be any resistance for me to put a bullet through your head. Do I make myself clear?”
Andrew swallowed the lump in his throat and nodded his head. Cooper swung the door open fully and motioned for his stepson to follow inside. As Andrew stepped over the threshold, he placed the sleeve of his flannel shirt under his nose to avoid the growing severity of the smells inside. Cooper continued towards the back of the barn where a rickety flight of stairs ascended into a loft. Before going up on the first step, he grabbed the shotgun that was hanging from a hook on the wall. As the two men climbed up the stairs, the ancient wood groaned and squeaked under their weight. When they finally reached the top, Cooper reached out and flicked a light switch that was mounted on a structural post with the wires crudely stapled to the framework of the barn. To the right of the opening in the floor where the stairs came up, Andrew could hear a light bulb crackle to life, and a sickly yellow glow filled the area in front of him.
Cooper stepped onto the loft and waited for Andrew to reach his side. Andrew could see that the floor was covered by a thick blanket of dust, although it had been disturbed in some places. His eyes then focused on a set of chains that were bolted to a large beam overhead. The links drooped down from the ceiling until about halfway between the beam and the floor before curving out towards the back of the loft and disappearing into the shadows. Before Andrew was able to question what they were for, Cooper lifted his boot and banged it loudly onto the floor.
“Wake up,” he screamed in a deep and booming voice that echoed throughout the building and sent a chill down Andrew’s spine.
There was a moment of silence before shuffling could be heard from across the space. The chains rattled slightly, causing a metallic clinking to echo in the air. Andrew watched in horror as one hand with a chain shackled around the wrist stretched out from the shadows and clawed at the floorboards before it. Soon afterward, another one came forward with a matching chain shackle and caused the cracking of its joints to fill the air. Andrew found himself unable to move as the two arms extended into the light and heaved a body from the shadows. A head that was covered by greasy, disheveled hair emerged from the darkness. A mouth appeared from behind matted locks of hair and opened as if to scream, but only a painful squeak escaped. It’s head slowly turned from side to side, attempting to locate where the sound of Andrew’s heavy breathing was coming from. The thing let out a raspy wheeze as its gaze locked directly on him. Andrew started to step back, put Cooper quickly grabbed his shoulder and halted his movement.
“I’ve brought someone to see you,” he called out.
This caused the creature to let out another pitiful attempt at speaking. Extending a hand further, it caused the chains above to rattle and echo throughout the building.
“We’re going to step towards you. We don’t want any trouble like last time, do we?”
The head started to hang towards the ground.
“I said ”now do we?””
Cooper slammed the heel of his boot even harder onto the floor this time. The boom caused the creature to throw its hands around its head and bend down into a fetal position.
“Stay close to me and listen to anything I say,” Cooper said as he motioned for Andrew to follow him.
Together, the two took slow and cautious steps towards the thing that was now huddled over in a ball on the floor. With each footstep that connected with the floor, Andrew could see its body tremble with fear. Now within close distance, Andrew could tell this was not some starved creature, but a human being.
“Dad, who is that,” Andrew asked as they stopped in front of the individual.
Without speaking a word, Cooper used the barrel of his shotgun to pull the greasy strands of clumped hair away from the person’s face. In the dim light from overhead, Andrew stared down at the face that he had not seen for years. Although yellowed bandages were wrapped around his eyes, he was still able to recognize some facial features. He felt his limbs go numb and the iron post fell from his hand. It came down on the floor with a loud thud, causing the man that lay in front of them to throw up his hands in self-defense.
“Dad… I thought you…”
“Your mother had to keep you from the truth for a reason.”
Andrew turned to Cooper with tears starting to run down his cheeks.
“Your daddy never died in a car crash like your mother always told you. She did that to spare you from the truth until she felt you were ready to hear about it. She personally would have liked for you to stay oblivious to all of this for a few more years, but I don’t see a better time for you to know than right now.”
Andrew continued to stare down at the malnourished and weathered figure of his biological father on the floor. The images in his mind of a once muscular and powerful figure were now replaced with those of the weakened person that lay before him.
“Why… Why did you do this to him,” Andrew barely managed to choke out through heavy sobbing.
Cooper took in a deep breath and prepared himself for the conversation he had always dreaded would come.
“I had only known your mother for just a couple of weeks when I first met your father. At first, he was respectful to me, and I grew to respect him. However, things immediately started to reveal themselves one night when your mother pulled me aside. She told me about all the times that he would beat her and how she thought I was the person that could finally help her escape the living hell he had turned her life into.”
Andrew looked up from his father to look at Cooper. A dead expression was plastered across his face as he glared down at the man before them.
“That wasn’t even the worst of it. She told me that he had just recently started to sexually abuse her. It was small things at first, but they eventually grew to be extremely dark and sinister. It got to the point where your mother would fake having a late shift at work so that she could sleep in her car in the parking lot instead of going home to him.”
All that Andrew ever thought of his father over the years suddenly came crashing down around him as he stared down at the monster that lay trembling at his feet. For the first time in his life, Andrew could feel an emotion towards his father that he never thought would come forth; blistering anger.
“I told Gunnar about this in confidence one night when I was visiting. As badly as I wanted to tell the police about all of this, we both knew that that would only lead to the possibility of them finding what goes on in this town. If we turned your father in to the police, he could just as easily lead them back to what goes on here. Any sort of law enforcement presence in this town is extremely frowned upon. So, we decided that the only sensible thing to do was take the matter into our own hands.”
Cooper paused for a moment and sucked in a deep breath before continuing.
“Gunnar and I hopped into my truck and drove to your house one night when you were at a sleepover. As soon as we opened the doors and walked onto the front lawn, we could hear your mother screaming from inside. We ran towards the front door and could see your father pinning her onto the floor. Thankfully, he had left the door unlocked, so we burst in and took aim at him with our weapons. He was continually punching her in the stomach, and our sudden presence hardly seemed to slow him down. As badly as I wanted to blow his head off right then and there, your mother was too close for me to guarantee she wouldn’t be hit as well. Gunnar ran up behind him before he had time to react and smacked him on the back of the head w |
I’d always known that my great-grandma was an orphan, but in late October of last year, she decided to tell me the truth about what happened to her family.
We were visiting her for her birthday. It was a tradition in our household; a road trip we knew in the back of our minds we’d take only a few more times. She was turning ninety-eight, so that was just the cold hard truth of the matter. In my childhood, the journey to central Iowa had been a fun and light-hearted affair, but now my brother and parents could only maintain strained politeness as we met up and hit the road together. Each of us knew that this trip might be our last.
For several hours, we drove through vast open farm fields that stretched from horizon to horizon.
My great-grandma’s house was down a narrow dirt road off a wide dirt road off a gravel tractor lane. As a city boy, it was, more or less, the most remote possible dwelling I could imagine. She was born there, had lived her entire life there, and would soon—well.
As we parked in an open muddy rectangle and stepped out to stretch our legs, the constancy of the place surrounded me. Every single year of my life, this house and its land had been exactly the same. The sky was open blue, the earth was a sea of waving gold, and the wind was a smooth river of cool warmth. There was never anything to mar those three pillars of sensory experience except the house, the barn, a defunct old tractor, and the bell.
The bell was a simple thing raised high on an old metal crook. It sat out in the fields about a quarter mile from the house, serving as a measure of the wind. If a storm was coming, the bell was supposed to ring, a necessary precaution in tornado country. The only problem was, the bell and its crook had rusted over long ago. Every time I got out of the family van from age five to age twenty-six, I glanced that direction and felt a sense of unease as my gaze fell upon that decayed artifact. This time, at age twenty-seven, I looked over and saw that the bell had been scraped and polished clean of rust. It glinted in the sunlight, practically daring me to look at it.
I followed my family inside while struggling with a feeling of dread that I couldn’t articulate.
Who had cleaned the bell?
And why?
I tried to stop thinking about it as we gathered in the kitchen and said our hellos. My great-grandma was making tea, and shooed off our attempts to help. She was a frail woman for whom movement was difficult, but she’d never let that stop her. “The Wi-Fi password is on a note in the living room,” she told us with unquestionable authority. “Go stare at your phones and the tea will be ready in a moment.”
My brother and I did as we were told, but my parents turned on the television instead of looking at their phones. For a few minutes, we stayed in our separate worlds, only returning to the present when my great-grandma brought in the tea.
And we had a nice time.
That night, when everyone else was long asleep, I happened to open my eyes and see a glow under the door of the guest room I shared with my brother. My parents were in a different room and would not see the same light, so it was up to me to investigate. Quietly, so as not to wake him, I crept out and down, finding my great-grandma still awake. She sat in her big jade-leather chair, her gaze on the television. She asked me without looking my way, “You don’t fall for this stuff, do you?”
“What, like ads?”
She pointed her thin little arm at the nearby couch. “Sit.”
I sat.
“I’m going to tell you a family secret,” she said softly, finally looking my direction. “It’s for you, and possibly for your brother, but not your parents. Do you understand?”
I didn’t, not fully, but I nodded.
“You know I was an orphan for a time. Born in this house, lived with my family, but then raised by an uncle after it happened?” She didn’t wait for my nod. “I was ten years old that night. It was my birthday.”
My mother had gotten me a small cake about the size of your fist. I looked forward to that cake every year, since we didn’t exactly have sweets bounding about back then. It was eleven cents, so rather expensive, but my mother got one for every one of us on our birthdays no matter what she had to scrimp or save. All year long, I saw Mary get her cake in January, Arthur get his cake in March, Eleanor in June, Clarence in July, then Ruth a week after Clarence. Then it was months and months until me, the odd one out, on October 29th. I was so excited for that cake. As the days rolled closer, as the morning dawned, as the hours inched by, I hopped around the house like a bunny rabbit.
But I wasn’t allowed to eat it until well after supper.
I stared at the clock, so I know. Yes, that one on the mantle there, the brass and chrome one. Same one. But I stared at the clock, so I know: night fell at six forty-one. That was the moment bright orange stopped glinting off that clock and my mother rose to light a lamp.
I looked up at her. “Now?”
She smiled and shook her head. My brothers and sisters complained in a chorus in support of me, but she just shook her head at them. “Too soon, and she’ll ruin her supper.”
Father came in from the fields not long after that, dirty and tired as all get out. He ate in silence while we chattered endlessly about what type of cake it would be. Under the frosting, who knew? It might be raspberry, vanilla, or even chocolate.
We grew silent as father neared the cleaning of his plate, an event which would mark the end of supper. Four pieces of meat and bread remained, then three, then two… any moment now…!
He stopped at the last piece, holding it unmoving above the remaining dollop of gravy.
We turned our heads.
It was the bell. The bell was ringing out in the fields.
Father grunted, then put the last piece of his food back on his plate before rising. He opened the front door; we braced ourselves for the wind, but none came. He spat on and held up a finger to the night air, then shook his head. He moved back into our lamplight and sat.
Arthur asked, “Is it gonna storm?”
Mary asked, “Is there gonna be a tornado?”
My mother shook her head, smiled at us, and told us not to worry. No wind meant no storm.
But that bell kept ringing.
My father dipped his last piece of food in the gravy and prepared to eat it despite the constantly ringing bell—but then sighed and put it back down. He motioned to Clarence.
Clarence was the oldest, so he understood. He was nearly a man himself, and tying the bell would be no problem. He grabbed a candle, protected the flame with his hand, and headed out the open front door.
My brothers and sisters and I piled up to the window; opening it, we found nothing but absolutely still chilly air. We watched his little spot of light move out around the house and into the fields in the direction of the bell. The clanging metallic sound stopped, finally, and the candle’s little flame hovered next to it for a solid minute.
“Why’s he taking so long to tie it?” Ruth asked.
Eleanor suggested, “Maybe he’s having trouble making a knot. Knots are tough.”
We watched for another minute or two before—and I know how this sounds—the little flame in the distance began to rise. Slowly, smoothly, straight up. We followed it with our eyes, exclaiming the entire time, as it moved out of sight beyond the roof overhang.
The bell began ringing again.
“His knot must have come loose,” Arthur said.
Our parents came to look at our insistence, but there was nothing to see by then. Father motioned to Arthur. Happy to help out, Arthur grabbed a full lamp rather than a candle. He hurried out the front door, around the house, and into the fields while we watched from the window. The lamp was easier to see, and we were absolutely certain he reached the crook.
As the lamplight hovered there, the bell stopped ringing.
At that point, we had no reason to think anything was amiss. Maybe the wind had just blown a wisp of burning candle string up into the sky and Clarence had gotten lost in the dark. He would see the lamplight, find Arthur, and they would both come back. The rising little flame we’d seen had just been a fluke.
Only problem was, staring out into the autumn night, we still felt no wind at all.
We stared at that unmoving light for a strangely long period of time. What was he doing out there? Was he calling for his brother? Why couldn’t we hear him, if so? Our parents looked away for a moment, and in that instant, the lamp went out. We children bleated, but by the time they glanced back, there was nothing to see. There was only darkness.
The bell began ringing again.
My father began grumbling, but there were no more sons to send outside. He narrowed his eyes with thought, then handed Ruth, the oldest girl among us, our main lamp.
Our mother laughed. “Ruth, be a dear and go find your silly brothers.”
Ruth was a little hesitant, but she accepted the lamp. Leaving us in darkness without it, she headed out around the house and into the fields. This lamp was brighter, and we could actually see her carrying hand and her white pajamas in a small lit halo. On the way there, she regularly called out, “Clarence… Arthur… you two lost?”
About halfway to where the other two lights had stopped, her calls went instantly silent midsentence. “Clarence… Arth—”
It wasn’t that she’d given up yelling. The sound reaching us had simply stopped completely. We could still see her carrying the lamp, still see her hand and pajamas, still see her turning this way and that. She even raised the house lamp near her face and we saw her shouting into the darkness. We just didn’t hear anything—nothing except that constantly clanging bell, growing faster in pace and louder in urgency.
Mary, Eleanor, and I looked up at our parents with fearful gazes.
My father shook his head, speaking for the first time that night. “So there’s wind out there after all. The air is like a river inside an ocean. It’s movin’ fast out there, carrying her voice away. But we can’t feel it here.”
My mother seemed worried, but she nodded and accepted that. We saw her accepting it, so we gulped and believed it, too. We all glued our eyes to that open window.
Ruth reached the bell, and, in that stronger light, it entered our view unmoving at the exact same time we heard it stop ringing. Ruth looked this way and that, clearly concerned. She seemed to silently yell a time or two before moving closer to the motionless bell. A half-tied rope hung from the crook, an indication that someone had attempted to tie it, but we couldn’t see Clarence or Arthur anywhere near her. She put the lamp down on the ground to free her hands for tying the rope the rest of the way, but that mostly hid the light among the low-lying recently harvested stalks.
We waited, breaths held.
The air held in my lungs started to burn.
At long last, we were forced to breathe again.
Ruth’s light continued to sit there, barely visible between the broken plants.
“What’s taking so long?” Mary asked.
Eleanor said, “I hope she’s alright.”
Father told us, “She’s fine. Damn kids are just playing a game with us.”
Our mother nodded in agreement. “Eleanor, go fetch your sister, will you?”
Eleanor shook her head. “No way! It’s scary out there!”
“It’s just a game. You’re not playing a game with us, too, are you?”
“No.” Eleanor gulped.
“Then go get your sister and brothers. Tell them to come back in.”
It was pitch black out there, and almost the same inside with us, save for one lone candle. Trembling, Eleanor took our last candle and crept out into the night, scooting along the side of the house to stay as close to us as possible. Shakily, she called, “Ruth? Arthur? Clarence? This isn’t funny anymore.”
Now it was we who sat in the dark. As Eleanor began to move further away with the last of our light, we tensed. Father eyed the open front door, and mother softly moved to close and latch it. I wondered what they meant by that move, because how were the others supposed to get back in? But I supposed they’d unlatch it if anyone came back and knocked. Mother moved away from us in search of more candles. Through it all, the bell kept ringing out in the dark.
Increasingly scared, I held Mary’s hand tightly and yelled out the window, “Be careful, Elly!”
She must have happened to cross that invisible silent threshold at that moment, because she turned around in surprise and stepped closer. “I heard your voice go quiet, but there’s no wind! Papa’s wrong!” She stepped away again. “See, when I pass this point, my—”
She held up the candle to show us that her mouth was still moving, but we heard nothing. Come to think of it, her hair wasn’t moving, and we hadn’t seen Ruth’s pajamas billowing in any wind. I asked father, “What’s doing that? What’s making it quiet out there?”
“It’s just a game,” father insisted. “They’re all lying. She’s just pretending to make noise so it looks like she’s being silenced.”
Eleanor reached the bell; father’s grip on my shoulder squeezed to nearly painful.
She reached down for the lamp Ruth had left; lifting it with one hand and holding the candle with the other, she approached the clanging bell.
“See?” Mary whispered to father. “The candle’s not going out even though she’s not protecting the flame. There’s no wind out there.”
“But the bell is ringing,” he said gruffly. “So there is wind.”
Eleanor kept looking left and right as if she’d heard something; slowly, she reached the bell, which was hanging unmoving from the crook.
But we could still hear it ringing.
Next to me, Mary began to cry.
“It’s a game,” father said angrily. “It’s just a game they’re playing.”
Eleanor threw the lamp at something in the darkness. We saw the lamp crash, shatter, and go dark, but heard nothing. She raced toward us, candle in hand, but the flame went out because of her haste. We waited to hear her approaching or screaming, but nothing followed.
The bell continued to clang.
We waited in terrified silence.
Mother returned with a candle for each of us, and we sat vigil at the window. Nothing and no one moved. For hours, the bell clanged without wind. The night remained pitch black. The bell clanged, and clanged, and clanged, driving deeper into our ears with each passing minute.
Near midnight, we broke.
Father was beyond agitated. “Mary, go find your brothers and sisters.”
“No!” she cried. “I’m not going out there!”
Mother glared at her. “You have to. This game has to stop.”
Urged on by both of them, Mary burst into tears and climbed out the window. Holding her small candle, she inched out into the fields. Her sobs went quiet as she passed that same point out in the darkness; her flame reached the bell, and the ringing stopped.
Her flame snuffed out.
We held our breaths.
The bell began ringing again.
Father clenched his fists. “Go.”
I turned and saw he was looking at me. I suddenly realized I was the only child left in the house, and I felt horribly alone. Everything in me shrieked against the thought of going out into that cursed night. “No.”
My mother wavered in place. No longer adamantly in line with my father, she began to cry, too.
“What are you doing?” he demanded. “It’s just a game. There’s nothing to be scared of!”
She screamed and demanded, “Why do you keep saying that? Why have I been helping you do this?!”
He grabbed her and shouted in her face, “Because we haven’t been sending our children to their deaths! That’s not what’s happening!“
She pushed his hands away and ran for the window. Pushing past me, she tumbled out and ran screaming toward the still-clanging bell; not out of fear of father, but out of terror for her children. “Arthur! Clarence! Ruth! Eleanor! Mary! For God’s sake, where are you?!”
He growled and leapt out after her, yelling, “We didn’t kill them! Everything is fine!“
They both continued shouting until they passed that point in the dark—and all went silent.
Except for the bell.
Twice more, it stopped ringing, and twice more, it began again.
In panic and terror beyond reason, I closed and latched the window and pushed all of the furniture against every entry to the house. I curled in a cupboard holding the last candle up to my face as it slowly melted its way down toward my fingers. I was alone. Somehow, I was alone. We’d all seen the danger and stared right at it as it happened, but one by one they’d all gone out there anyway. I’d been surrounded by a full band of siblings my entire life, and now I was completely and utterly alone in a house in the middle of nowhere.
By the length of my candle, it was three in the morning when the knock came at the door.
I trembled, but did not make a sound.
The knock sounded again forty heartbeats later. It was louder this time.
I shook, holding my candle tight.
The third knock was more like a tremendous crash or kick, and I heard the door explode inward.
Sixty heartbeats of silence passed… and then the floorboards creaked.
Something in me told me to put out my candle for fear of it being seen through the cracks in the cupboard, but I didn’t dare. Not darkness. I couldn’t handle darkness. I would scream if I did, so I kept it lit.
Slow quiet steps moved through the house. Whoever it was seemed to be pausing and listening at times; at others, they would rush forward to a random spot in a sudden frenzy and then stop abruptly.
Four hundred heartbeats after that, the bell began ringing again.
But this time, it rang from inside the house.
It rang from the kitchen.
It rang from near the bed.
It rang outside my cupboard. Clang, ten feet away, clang, five feet away, clang, right up against the cupboard door—
And then it opened.
I sat expectantly, mouth open and eyes wide, as I waited for my great-grandmother to continue. After a bit, I realized that was it. “But what’d you see?”
She shook her head. “That’s not the point. I’m here, so obviously I survived, and a young man like you doesn’t need to know what horrors walk this world outside the paved cities of man.”
Gulping, I asked, “You’re not just pulling my leg? This really happened?”
“Yes.” Her gaze went distant by television light. “But here’s what I want to tell you, and what you should tell your brother. The thing that opened that cupboard door and stared at me from the dark—the thing that hoped to wait out my candle before the coming of dawn—had a bell tied to one of its teeth with a blood-soaked rag, such that it would clang when its mouth was opened for hunting. Somehow, some way, some heroic poor soul managed to tie a warning bell to that thing before they died. We heard that warning bell all night long, and yet my entire family walked out there one by one. We didn’t listen because we didn’t want to listen. My father knew what he was doing halfway through, but he didn’t want to accept what he’d already done, so he did even worse to continue living the lie.”
I narrowed my eyes. “What are you saying?”
She grabbed my hand briefly. “Fear will tell you to put your candle out, but your head will tell you to keep it lit. Don’t give in to fear. You keep it lit, you’ll get through this.”
Turning my head, I became aware of a sound in the distance. “Is that… is that the bell? I was so caught up I didn’t notice. How long has that been ringing?”
She just clenched her fist and turned back to the television.
|
Every city claims to have them, and every city will tell you that theirs is the best. Most larger places will lay claim to having quite a few. I am of course speaking of secret bars. The kind of bars with no name out front, where a secret password is required to get in. This is what started my obsession, and may have cost me my soul.
The year was 2001. I had turned 21 earlier that year, and had already done up all the new freedoms that come with that age. I had done bars, casinos… you name it. At first it was so cool, because for years I had felt like a kid, like some wet behind the ears idiot that the rest of the world sort of just patted on the head. Even after turning 21, things remained annoying. People would hear that I was 21 and treat me not like an adult, but as a new adult, like a grown-up that still needed grown-ups. I was annoyed. I worked downtown in a dreary office job, inputting data. The nice thing about it though were my hours, 3 pm to 11 pm. For a single guy in his early 20s, it was perfect. I got to sleep in everyday, and I would get off of work just in time to take the quick walk from the New Orleans central business district, cross over Canal Street, and bam, I was in the French Quarter, land of booze and women. Lots of fun times were spent down there.
But as I said, even that began to get boring. Really boring. So, I began to research “secret bars.” I found a few right away, and most of them were just as boring as the regular bars. One in particular, called Mythique, was located up a narrow stairwell, accessible only through a tiny door located under the bar downstairs. Once I got up there though, it was just another bar. The clientele was a bit more pretentious; most of them thought they were the second coming of Lestat, but in the end, it was the same thing—a bar, drinks, people and usually crappy music. I remember one night I was at home in my tiny apartment, using Metacrawler (remember, this was 2001) and searching for more secrets in my city that I was now old enough to exploit. I kept finding links to the same boring places I always went to. Then my email binged, or I should say, announced, “You’ve Got Mail!”
I clicked open my email and saw the heading for the message read “Secret Bar.” Now, I was sure if I had asked anyone on my AOL buddy list for help, and I didn’t recognize the sender. I figured maybe I was in a chat room one night and asked around, but I figured it was worth a check. The email was simple and short, and read something like this…
SECRET NEW ORLEANS BAR: Looking for a journey, not afraid of hell, not too shy for heaven, then come visit us. Be in Jackson Square tonight at 2am. Wear a black shirt and grey pants, and have a cup of coffee in your hand. Seat yourself in the 3rd bench. This is your only invitation, miss it and you will never be invited again. PS: Come alone, tell no one.
That was the end of the email. I was lucky that my job required me to wear a suit, because it just so happened that I had a pair of grey slacks. I pulled on a black t-shirt and realized that I actually looked pretty good. I figured this could be a prank, but even if it was, even it if turned out to be nothing, I would go out and have a few drinks anyway, maybe even get laid. I didn’t have to go into work the next day, so this night could turn out to be fun anyway. However, I may have been a bored, idiotic 21 year old, but I wasn’t totally stupid. This could also be a trick, a trap or something worse. So, I called my best friend Mike up. I told him that I was going out with some strangers from work, and that I wasn’t sure about them. I told him I would call him by 4am, and if I didn’t, for him to call and check up on me. I told him I would be in the Quarter. Mike had to be up for work at 4am, so it wouldn’t put him out of his way to call me when he got up.
I left my apartment at around 1:30am. I only lived about 15 minutes from downtown, but I figured I would make sure I was on time. By 1:55am I was sitting on the third bench in Jackson Square, sipping my coffee, and waiting.
At 2am, the Cathedral bells rang out twice, and I received a tap on the shoulder. A gorgeous woman was sitting next to me, and I thought to myself…..this is too cliché to be real. To me, she seemed like a walking cliché for a “hidden bar.” Goth girl, mid 20s, really hot….yeah, she was from the bar, I knew it from the start.
“I’m Jodie,” said the woman.
“Well, at least you’re not ‘Raven’ or ‘Death’ or ‘Lilith’ or some other stereotypical goth name,” I replied, but I did so with a smile.
She returned my smile with one of her own. “Nope, always been Jodie, and you must be Kurt, right?”
She knew my name…very cool. Of course, my name was on my AOL profile where the email was sent, so if this was her attempt at a cool trick, I was one step ahead.
“Yes, Kurt, that’s me. I guess you’re here to show me to the secret bar?” I asked.
“Only if you’re ready to journey to hell, or heaven…depending on your tastes. We like to consider this to be the first ‘back out’ point for new clients. You can decline the invitation now, and go home, or to some other bar, or wherever you’d like. Only be warned that no other invitation will ever come to you again.”
I considered this, and decided that it was already after 2am, I was out, dressed and full of coffee. I wanted to see this place.
“Lead on, Miss Jodie,” I replied.
She stood up and began to walk ahead of me—at a rapid pace, I might add.
We walked in silence for some time, weaving deep into the Quarter, past Bourbon Street, past all the loud and drunk tourists, past the warm and safe lights, the cop cars, the music from the bars. Before long, we were in the dark part of the Quarter, mostly residential, and very few people were on the streets this way. She suddenly stopped and walked up the stoop to a private residence. She fiddled with keys, opened the door, and gestured for me to enter.
“Wait, is this someone’s house?” I asked.
“This is the house where the dead scream in silence, where the walls rot, where pain becomes pleasure, where pleasure becomes death. This is the House of Din, He who dwells on the black star. Enter.”
I thought this was the coolest pitch for a bar I had ever heard. I figured it was rehearsed, but she said that whole little phrase with a lot of conviction. I had no idea who Din was, and I certainly didn’t know about black stars, but I did have a desire to push on.
She walked me into the house, which was empty. No furniture, no nothing. Now, French Quarter real estate isn’t cheap, so if this place was renting a house, just to serve as the cover for a bar, they clearly took themselves seriously. This might not be so boring after all.
What happened next was strange. She turned me towards a small hallway with an elevator. Now, I know that some houses back in the day had elevators. However, this one only appeared to go down. New Orleans isn’t exactly known for having basements, especially in homes. As I went to step in, she stopped me once more.
“This is your second ‘back out’ chance. Same as before, you can turn around and leave, no harm, no foul.”
“Push the button,” I replied, pointing at the down button, and stepped in.
The elevator ride felt long. Really long. At first, I was thinking that this was impossible, no one builds down in this city; hell, we even have to bury our dead above the ground. As far as I could see, though, we were going down. This was one of those older elevators with just the metal grate door. I could see wood and metal going past us, and this eventually gave way to stone. I was about to question this, when it occurred to me…
“Cool trick,” I said.
“Trick?” Jodie asked.
“Yeah, the elevator is rumbling in place while a rolling graphic goes by outside to look like we’re going down, right? Because, while I am no expert on elevators, I would say that we’d have to be at least 20 stories below the city right now, and I know that just isn’t possible.”
“You’re right,” she replied, grinning. “We aren’t 20 stories below the city. We are, by now, at least 2000 stories below, if you are using ‘stories’ as a measurement.”
I wanted to say something back, about how that was a lie, had to be a lie, we hadn’t been riding that long, and that amount of depth wasn’t possible on a tiny elevator like this. However, I figured this was all part of the act, like her whole speech about the “House of Din” and all that crap. I didn’t want to become too obnoxious or pushy. She might end up asking me to leave, figuring I would ruin the scene for other patrons. Instead I just smiled and decided to play along with a really cool and elaborate bar scene. Fake or not, this was by far the most ambitious effort I had ever seen put forward for a drinking establishment.
Shortly after, the elevator stopped. Jodie stepped in front of the doors, but before she opened them up, she turned back to me. “This is your final chance to back out. If you wish, I will take you back. However, once I open these doors, you will be in hell. You may find your way back to the surface tonight, but some find that leaving is just impossible. Some stay forever. In the interest of free will and fair play, I am bound by the Council of Nod to offer you this final chance to return to your life. Choose now.”
“Amazing speech Jodie,” I replied. “Really great, you guys clearly put some thought into this. Yes, I want to go to this bar.”
She smiled and opened the doors. A small door sat at the end of a wooden hallway that looked like it may have been built around the time of the pyramids. There were no lights, I could only see by the small electric light in the elevator, and the light coming from the door ahead. I walked forward, and as soon as I stepped off of the elevator, the heat hit me. It wasn’t so hot that I couldn’t take it, but if anyone has ever experienced being in an attic on a really hot day, with no ventilation, then you’ll have an idea of how this felt. The air was thick beyond description. I instantly was covered in sweat, and I knew that if I stayed in this hallway for too long, I would pass out. I turned to look back, and saw the elevator already heading back up. From what I could see, there was no button to call it back down either. I guess Jodie wasn’t kidding when she said that was my last chance to back out. I crossed my fingers that the bar would be air conditioned, and walked forward, into the light.
What happened over the next couple of hours is largely a blur. I will tell it as best I can.
I entered that bar. It was small, very small, about the size of a bedroom. There was a single wooden bar, 3 bar stools pushed up to it, and 3 small tables in the corner area. The room was poorly lit; only a small light bulb, hanging from the cord, was providing the light. However, it was well-lit enough to see everything, and sitting right on the bulb seemed the most logical. There was a small shelf behind the bar, typical set up, liquor bottles in front of a mirror. There were 5 others in this room, plus the bartender. I saw a Gothic girl sitting at one of the tables, sipping a drink with a rather plain dressed man. There were two gentlemen at the other table. One was wearing a business suit, the other was wearing that awful ‘cowboy’ attire that was popular in almost all walks of life, even secret bars. There was another woman, average in appearance, probably in her mid 30s, smoking at the other side of the bar. Of course there was me too, so that completed our little circle. There was no music playing. The walls were old wood, oak maybe. The bartender, now he was a classic. White shirt, black pants, suspenders and bow tie. Like something out of the roaring 20s. It was still hot too. Not as bad as the hallway, but pretty awful. Liquor would only make me hotter, but I was here now. I figured I would test the waters.
Now, as for liquor, I saw no bottles that I could recognize. None were labeled. There was no beer either. No name brands. No cash register. No bar mat. This place was as simple as you could want. After a moment, the bartender spoke to me.
“Welcome to Hell!” he announced, smiling.
“Cool name, sort of expected it, though.” I tried not to sound rude or pretentious. They had put on a great show tonight, but calling the place Hell…really? Too predictable.
“Well, it translates differently in lots of places. Hell is just the way you know it. Shall I call it something else?” he asked, and he didn’t seem to be joking or annoyed.
“No, Hell is fine, how about a drink…Jack and Coke please,” I said.
“No Jack here, and no Coke either,” he answered at once.
“What do you have then?” I asked.
“Well, most people down here have a drink we call Regret. I can also serve you Loneliness. Or if you’re feeling particularly bold, our house special is Damnation.”
“Wow, you guys are really playing up the hell thing. Okay, serve me some Regret please.”
He handed me a drink poured from a brown bottle. It tasted amazing too. I figured it to be a bourbon, and wished I had some Coke to mix it with. Apparently there was no ice here…I chuckled, of course not, ice in hell…what am I thinking? The drink was tasty though, and the buzz hit me quick.
I ordered up a Loneliness and begin to look around at my fellow patrons. None of them seemed to even notice me. The goth girl was cute though, so I picked up my drink and decided to walk over to her, when suddenly the woman sitting at the bar began to whimper.
“I am so thirsty…can I please have some water,” she seemed to be pleading this to the bartender.
“No ma’am!” He replied with that same stupid grin. “No water in Hell, not even a small amount. Have another cigarette, though. Wash it down with some hard liquor.”
“No more smoking…my mouth is too dry…no more liquor…water please,” she continued, and to me, it began to sound a lot like begging.
Instead of handing her water, he held out an unlit cigarette. It was then that I noticed the overflowing ashtray, the size of a damned punch bowl, sitting next to her. It was full of butts, had to be over a thousand of them in there. Had she smoked them all herself? I strained my eyes and studied her harder. He lips were blistered badly. She had been at it for a while. The bartender patiently held out the cigarette, grin never leaving his face, until she finally sighed and took it. He produced a lighter and she took a drag. She began to cough violently, gagging too. I decided to chime in.
“Hey man, she doesn’t look so hot, and I really don’t think she needs another smoke. She looks like she dying of thirst too. Call the elevator, man. She’s had enough I think.”
The bartender turned his big smile on me. “Who? Ol’ Nancy here? Naw, Nancy is a trooper, man—smokes a couple packs a day. And as far as her thirst, well, she knew this place was a thirsty sort of dive before she walked in the door, but she wanted to be here. She is getting exactly what she wanted.”
I walked over to Nancy and placed my hand on her shoulder. “Ma’am, if you want to get out of here, I’ll walk you over to the elevator. You don’t look so great right now.” I tried to sound as concerned as a 21 year old kid could sound.
Nancy looked at me and smiled. “Oh, I’m fine…just fine,” she said, but her mouth quivered as she spoke.
The bartender was watching us like a hawk, still smiling, but his smile no longer looked so friendly. “Everything okay?” he asked, beaming like a used car salesman.
Nancy shakily replied yes. The bartender turned around, and in that second Nancy gripped my arm hard, pulled me into the smog that was her breath, and whispered…
“Leave while you can,” so low that I almost missed it. Her breath was like a chimney, she must have been chain smoking for days. I smoked, and so do most of my friends, and even on nights when we would chain smoke and pound booze until the sun rose, none of us were ever that toxic.
I walked over to the man in the business suit. He at least appeared sane.
“Hey sir, I think that lady over there needs help,” I said to him.
The man looked at me and laughed. “We all need help, kid. We’re in Hell after all!” he shouted.
As he did this, I looked over at the goth girl, just in time to see her begin to cut herself, deep and hard from the looks of it. The plain dressed man sitting next to her begin to laugh in a high pitched tone, almost a giggle, and that was when I noticed that he was masturbating. Only, not in the sense that we all do, at home. No, his penis was raw, bloody, torn away in places, but he just kept going at it.
“Stop that! Look at what you’re doing to yourselves!” I screamed at them. They looked at me and I noticed that the girl was crying, but also smiling. Her eyes were practically begging to her self-inflicted pain to stop, yet she just kept cutting.
I had seen enough. I reached over and attempted to pull the knife out of her hand. Just then, I felt a strong grip on my shoulder, stronger than anything I had ever felt in my life. It was the bartender, he had come around the bar to grab me.
“No, NO sir!” he screamed into my ear. “Every patron of Hell gets to enjoy their treats without judgment. After all, judgment has already been passed. We exist beyond that now. Let her cut, she loves it after all, can’t you see she loves it, she is smiling ear to ear!”
The bartender dragged me back to my stool, and with great speed, was somehow back behind the bar again.
The Secrets
“Now, you wanted secrets, right, Kurt? You were bored and wanted more. That is what you came for. Now drink your drink before I beat your fucking face in!”
Through all of this, he never stopped smiling. He slammed a glass before me. I murky liquid was inside. He grabbed my arm and begin to squeeze, the pain becoming unbearable. My mind began to race…this was no bar—this was something, but not a bar. I wasn’t ready to believe I was actually in hell, but I knew I was somewhere bad.
“DRINK YOUR DRINK SIR!” he screamed again, and fearing that I would pass out from the pain, I slammed down the liquid in front of me. It tasted horrible. I couldn’t describe it then, and I can’t now, but it was fierce.
He let go of me, and suddenly the room got much hotter. The light began to flicker, and suddenly I was afflicted by knowledge. Things I didn’t want to know, things that no one would want to know.
My mother had an affair…and the man I had grown up calling dad was in fact not my father at all.
I had a brother who died. I never knew that.
My boss at work hated me.
My grandfather committed suicide…all these years I just thought he died naturally.
My mother was going to abort me…but changed her mind because she couldn’t afford the abortion.
I was going to die alone.
My wife, a woman I would meet in six years and fall madly in love with, would die in a car crash with my three year old son in the back seat. There was nothing I could do to change this.
I would go blind in my 60s from a work related accident.
There were currently 34 people in the world right now, some who I thought of as friends, who wanted me to die. They hated me.
No one, not my mother, not my father…no one had ever loved me, at all.
Those were just a few of the secrets that suddenly hit me. There were thousands, maybe millions more, but by then my mind couldn’t process them all. There were some things, things about me, things about people I knew, that were so dark that I am thankful that I cannot remember them, because to dwell on them for even a second longer would have brought on madness.
Frantically I looked around the bar. The woman, Nancy, was still smoking, only her throat was on fire…a small red glow, smoldering, right in the middle of her throat. She was clearly in the worst pain of her existence, but she continued to take puff after puff of her cigarette. Each time she did, the glow on her throat would get brighter.
I looked straight ahead into the mirror behind the bar, seeing the gore fest that had begun behind me. However, what took my attention was the small, black figure, standing directly to my right. It was maybe 5 feet tall. Its skin was jet black. The only thing that stood out was its eyes. They were human eyes, but bright. Not glowing, just….bright enough to stand out from the onyx of its face. It had small horns on its head. It had very white, very sharp teeth.
Somehow, I knew this was Din, and I was in his house.
I looked towards the door, but it was gone. The heat continued to get worse. The secrets were still popping into my mind, each worse than the one before. Entire dimensions of my soul were being revealed to me. All of it horrible.
Just then, my cell phone rang. The ring tone, something from my world, something from up above. It grabbed my attention, and in that moment, the secrets slowed down a bit. I looked down, it was 4am…Mike, Mike was calling to check up on me.
His name, Mike…yes, I have a friend named Mike…my best friend. The more I focused on things that were real, the more stable things became around me. The secrets were almost stopping now. The macabre scene around me was slowing down too. Nancy was back to just smoking again. The goth girl wasn’t cutting. That sinister face of Din…it had also retreated just a bit.
MIKE…MIKE…my oldest friend…yes, we grew up together, we rode our bikes together, we had sleepovers, pizza parties…and the more I focused on the real world…if I could just…
The door was back. I bolted for it.
“Stop! You had your chance to back out!” screamed the bartender, and I looked back just in time to see him leap over the bar behind me.
I shot through the doors and back into the tiny, impossibly hot hallway. The bartender burst through the doors, and I did the only thing I could think of. If thinking about the real world, weakened this place, then perhaps a real link to the real world would break it. I hit “answer” on my cell phone, and the voice of my best friend, who was calling from the safety of his apartment, greeted my ears. I could even hear music in the background, real music.
“Mike…call the cops, I am in real trouble here,” I screamed into the phone.
“What, I can barely hear you man, your connection sucks,” he answered.
The bartender was still coming, still grinning. I had one last idea.
I pushed “speaker”.
Mike’s voice, a product of the living world, owned by someone who had not made a deal to enter some level of hell, flooded the hallway. The bartender stopped.
“He is not allowed to know of this place…to have any contact without being invited…even voice contact…it violates the Council of Nod.”
That was when the final blow to the bar from hell was delivered. I heard Mike, in his sleepy yet concerned voice, say, “What is the Council of Nod?”
Contact had been made. Whatever rules governed this place had been broken.
Suddenly, the elevator came down. The bartender, still smiling, looked down at me.
“Sorry, sir, but you have violated the rules. You are no longer welcome at this bar. Please leave.”
Jodie was standing in the elevator. I stood up and climbed in. The effects of the drink I consumed were gone. No more secrets.
My phone had died; I guess calling from hell drains a battery. However, the effects were enough. We rode up in silence.
When we reached the surface, Jodie walked me out of the house, onto the stoop. Then she spoke. “You may think you won tonight, but you didn’t. You had a chance to ride this elevator up, as well as down. Your heart wanted secrets instead of happiness, though, so it went down. You could have gone up, and everything you could ever have possibly desired would have been yours. So, go on, feel proud. We like proud mortals, because the proud ones always find their way back to Hell.”
“Fuck you, Jodie.” I replied, but did so as I was walking away. I didn’t want to tempt these people anymore than I had.
When I got home that night, I remembered almost all of the secrets. Over the years they have slipped away, slowly at first, then, like a dream, I would wake up and more would be lost. I wrote down the ones that I listed here, because I didn’t want to forget them all. However, when I read them now, they don’t seem like secrets anymore, just like weird lies.
Of course, I called the police the very next day. I wanted to help those people down there. I had to dress up the story a bit. I told the cops that I was led there by Jodie after meeting her in the Quarter. I left out the part about the place possibly being a level of Hell, and simply described it as a basement where people were being tortured. The cops got a warrant and went in. The house was empty, as I said it was. However, there was no elevator found. The cops said there was a large closet area that appears to have had an old elevator at one time, but it was long gone now. The house itself was still on the market; it had no owner.
For a few years I would go down to Jackson Square around 2am, hoping to catch Jodie luring another victim into the house. However, I never saw her again. Years went on, I did marry, and no, my wife was never killed in a car accident. We don’t have kids yet, though. Perhaps when I violated the contract, the Council of Nod, or whatever, I somehow broke that cycle. I’ll never know, but I will be careful. After I posted this, I burned the list of secrets that I had written down. Of course, I could always read them on here, but I won’t. And in time, hopefully I will forget them too. I never confronted my mother about the abortion plan, or asked who my real dad was. Those secrets seemed so real, but Satan is also called the “Father of Lies” for a reason. I am not sure if Din is Satan or just a lesser version of him, but I doubt that Din is a very honest sort either.
I post this as a warning though. A warning to be careful when seeking out secrets. Some things are kept secret for a reason, and to know them, is to know madness.
|
“You sure you want to go in there alone?”
The warden was an uncompromisingly beefy man who drank, smoked, and just wanted to survive until retirement. He ran a tight, clean ship and, for his efforts, he was rewarded with the pleasure of guarding the vilest of abusers. His charges were lifers and he got to babysit them until they died. But he wasn’t paid to babysit the small, bespectacled poindexter with the briefcase walking next to him.
“Yes,” the little man said, avoiding eye contact. “I think he’ll be less inhibited if there are no guards.”
“That’s the last thing he is,” the warden growled. He could sense the tension in his men as they descended further down the basement. “Do you know his story?”
“Yes, I’ve studied Benedict for a long time.”
“Do you know he almost escaped once? Took only a moment. Still not sure how he did it, but he got his claws on one of my men and—” His voice trailed off as he noticed the two guards look at him. “He killed him. Only took a moment. I don’t know how he got to him, but he has a way of sort of hypnotizing people. He talks in a way that sucks you in. I guess that’s how he got all those kids to come home with him.”
The little man fidgeted nervously and said nothing. The warden studied him closely. He looked woefully out of place in a dungeon like this. He belonged in an ivory tower office, writing condescending academia bullshit about the troubles of the world. They began to walk again. The guards walked slower than before and reflexively put their hands on their weapons.
“So, does he say much?” the little man asked.
“Oh, he talks all the time. I think he thinks he’s some kind of prophet. Lots of biblical, end-of-the-world shit. He’s here for life. No chance of parole. Can’t even be around other prisoners. He’s in solitary twenty-three hours a day. He gets one hour of exercise in the yard.” He stepped in front of the little man. “He’s got nothing to lose.”
The little man shuddered but seemed determined to go on. The warden sighed. They turned down a long, deserted hallway that was dimly lit by fading fluorescent lights. There was a closed door at the end of the hall. The guards drew their weapons.
“Okay,” the warden said. “This is how it goes down. He’s secured. The door will be locked from the outside the moment you go in. No way out until you hit this signal.” He handed the little man a small remote. “There’s one camera that we’ll be monitoring. No windows. It’s all padded, so no sound. As you requested, we won’t be listening. No audio. The guards will be with you the whole time.”
“Lights?”
“This remote here. Shuts the lights on and off. Not sure why you want that.”
“Perfect,” the little man said. “But I was promised he wouldn’t be tied down. Cuffs are okay, but not chained to the chair.”
“I don’t know who promised you that, but he’s going to stay chained. I’d advise you not to get within five feet of him.”
“Warden, I appreciate your concern. But, please. I had to call in a lot of favors to get this interview. I must have him relaxed. He has to be unchained. And no guards.”
“Are you crazy?”
“Please, warden. I know the risks. Again, favors.” He handed the warden a small slip of paper. The warden read it carefully. His expression changed from pity to annoyance.
“I’m not taking responsibility for you if you go in alone.”
“I understand. Please, warden.”
The warden sighed, pulled out a cigarette, eyed the door nervously, and then nodded his head as a signal to open. The guards checked the small viewscreen to ensure that Benedict was secured. One drew his weapon and the other nervously approached the door. The guards made eye contact, nodded curtly, then rushed into the room.
Benedict watched them curiously. He was in his late forties, still fit despite years of solitary, and had a piercing, unblinking gaze. He offered no movement or resistance. He scanned the intruders and then fixated on the lit cigarette. The warden knew he’d salivate over it.
“Hello, Benedict,” the warden said, standing close to the door. “This is the guy who wanted to talk to you. Are you okay with that?” He puffed his smoke in a small display of superiority.
Benedict looked him in his eyes and wet his lips. “It would be my pleasure,” he said in a measured, slow, soft voice. The warden nodded. “And do give my best to Susan, Cassidy, and Cody.”
The warden reflexively tried to stay calm, but his forehead instantly began to sweat as the murderer spoke the names of his wife and children. “The professor here just wants to interview you. You play nice, and you get an extra hour in the yard every day next week.”
The first guard kept his weapon pointed firmly at Benedict’s face. The guard was tremulous and looking for a reason to shoot. The second guard nervously unlocked Benedict’s chains. The prisoner’s eyes raised as each lock clicked open. He met the warden’s gaze with an amused, questioning look. In an instant, they both knew the little man was in grave danger.
The warden grabbed the little man again and whispered into his ear. “This is nuts. If he charges, we’ll come in firing. We’ll be shooting to kill. If you get in the way, well, it won’t be good. I know people who think killers are sympathetic. I know people who think they are the ones who can find the good in them or some shit. But there is no good in him. Only darkness. I know others who are just fanboys. Sickens me. Don’t think you’re special to him or to me. I don’t care who wrote your little note. Also, don’t forget that he’s a killer who mutilated thirteen children. One was four years old. Don’t forget that.”
The little man nodded. The guards retreated, weapons still trained on Benedict’s head, and the door shut with a vacuum seal thud.
The little man sat on the chair across the small table from the cuffed killer. Benedict’s eyes focused on his every mannerism. The little man put his briefcase on the table, folded his hands, looked at the killer and smiled nervously.
“What can I do for you, professor?” His voice was low and soft enough that the little man felt compelled to lean in to hear.
“Thank you for agreeing to this. I’ve read all your writings and media pages –“
“And you want my autograph?” Benedict held up his cuffed hands.
The little man paused, seemed to realize that he sounded foolish, and continued. “No, thanks. No. Um. But again, thanks for taking the time to talk to me.”
Benedict raised his eyebrows. “Are you a comedian?”
The little man giggled nervously. He fumbled with the lock on his briefcase. The opened the top and pulled out copies of Benedict’s writings and multiple photographs. Benedict instantly took an inventory: two pens (one plastic, one with some metal) and two paperclips. “Do you mind if I record this?” the little man said, placing his phone on the table. Benedict nodded an affirmation keeping his eyes fixed on the pen with metal. The little man pulled out a letter opener and cut open a manila envelope. Benedict masked his surprise at the sight of the small knife.
“So, uh, where would you like to begin?”
Benedict studied the little man. He wasn’t making eye contact. His movements were jerky – no rhythm – a clear sign of fear. He wasn’t sure how to start the interview – another sign of fear. He’d probably never been out of his office. This was almost too easy. Benedict considered him prey. He licked his lips.
“Would you like to hear about my mother?”
The professor laughed nervously. “Well, I think what I really want to know is why you did it? I mean, a lot of the victims were, well…”
“Children?”
“Children.”
Benedict took a deep inhale. “I wanted to destroy the illusion of innocence.”
The professor gulped.
“Are those pictures?”
“Yes,” the professor said pulling out the photographs of the crime scene. Benedict had called the police himself, perhaps bored of the chase. When they arrived, dead bodies were hanging on the wall of his small ranch house like obscene Christmas decorations. Benedict confessed instantly to the crimes. Unlike other mass murderers who commit suicide, Benedict relished in telling the parents of the victims every detail on their children’s sexual assault, torture, and pleas for mercy. Benedict seemed to enjoy describing exactly how each sounded when they cried. He became excited at the prospect of seeing the pictures of the scene.
“I can’t see, move them closer.”
“Oh, okay, sure.” The professor slid a batch toward the killer, still clipped in the upper corner. The little man said nothing as Benedict slowly paged through the pictures. He stared lovingly at one particularly brutal photograph of a child lying in a pool of blood and vomit.
“The body will often expel feces or semen at the moment of death,” Benedict stated placidly. “It’s beautiful. Don’t you think it’s beautiful? Angel lust? The death of the innocent?”
“No. I can’t really look at those pictures. Gives me nightmares.”
Benedict smiled. This was too good to end quickly.
“I’m afraid I never caught your name.”
“John. John Smith.”
“Is that right?”
The little man shyly giggled again. “Do you ever think about them?”
“Yes,” Benedict said, looking up from the photos and squarely in the little man’s eyes. John Smith squirmed in his chair and broke the gaze, looking down in his lap. Benedict imperceptible slid the larger paperclip off the table into his lap. John looked back up. “I think about them every night. I carry a piece of them with me. That used to be literal.” Benedict smiled at his macabre joke. “ They comfort me at night – small voices begging me to stop. It’s like a lullaby.”
“Do you ever feel guilty?”
“Why?”
“Well, they’re children.”
“For now. But then they’ll grow up to be policemen or bankers or models. They’ll perpetuate the lie of this world. I helped them escape before they became as evil as the rest of us.”
“You think we’re all evil?”
Benedict laughed. “All evil. All predators, it’s just that I’m the only one honest about it. Millions of more children will die of diarrhea this year than from anything I did. Millions. And do you care about that?”
“Sure.”
“Really? Have you saved any of them?”
“Well—”
Benedict leaned back in his chair and looked to the ceiling. Under the table, he quickly bent the paperclip into a small pick and began to work the lock of his cuffs.
“You go about your life, secure in the knowledge that you are a good person, but a short plane trip away, children are starving, being raped, being killed, and you don’t care. But if they are little cute white kids, you pay attention.”
The little man scrunched his eyebrows. “I’m not sure that’s fair. You don’t know anything about me.”
“I know much more about you than you think. Would you like me to tell you?”
“Sure.”
Benedict leaned across the table and spoke softly. “Your parents were professionals, academics probably. They were fixated on their work and you always felt like you needed to live up to their standards. You made good grades, but excellence eluded you. You were accepted into a state college and got a master’s degree. You tried to get into medical school, but failed. So you got a doctorate in some psychobabble that was given more out of charity than achievement.”
John seemed to shrink in his chair, his face belying shame and vulnerability. Benedict smiled and savored his dominance. “You married, but you know she never loved you. You also know she’s cheating on you. You are hoping this interview leads to a big splash in the papers and finally some work that you can be proud of.” Benedict’s voice continued to lower. John leaned in to hear. “Am I close?”
John looked stunned. “That’s incredible.” His voice was soft and weak.
“I know everything about you. But I won’t help you with your interview.”
John looked hurt. “Why not?”
“Because I don’t trust you. You won’t even tell me your real name. If you want me to trust you, you’ll need to show me.”
John looked up hopefully, seemingly eager to please his master. “How?”
Benedict looked up at the camera. John turned around for an instant. “Cover it.”
John thought for a moment. He sighed, took off his coat and reached toward the camera. He dutifully hung his coat over the lens. While his back was turned, Benedict freed his hands, quickly snatched the letter opener and hid it in his lap.
“Better?”
“Better.” Benedict smiled. “I can tell there’s a question you really want to ask me.”
John looked shaken. “Yes,” he said softly. He sat down, paused and gathered his thoughts. “Yes, there is.”
Benedict leaned forward, inching his face across the table. John did the same.
“Have you seen it?” John asked quietly. His eyes pleaded.
Benedict paused. “Yes.” His voice was barely a whisper. John leaned closer.
“The Darkness?” John whispered.
Benedict smiled. “Yes.”
John leaned closer. “Tell me about it.”
“The Darkness lies in all of us. It’s in your heart right now, just waiting to bubble to the surface.” John leaned closer. “The world is a vampire. It feeds on the poor. You grow fat eating the bodies of children. I just let it show through my actions. I’m really just you. I show the world its hypocrisy because I have the strength to do so. You just sit by and let the rich grind their bones to dust. I give the world a gift.”
“What gift?” John whispered.
Benedict paused and leaned closer. John did the same.
“Pain.”
John’s eyes widened. Benedict began to see each step. His hands were free. The letter opener was poised. He would strike quickly, right in the face. Maybe he would catch his eye. He loved slicing an eye. John would recoil. He would spring on him and plunge the knife – not too quickly! – into his neck. He would puncture just medial to the sternocleidomastoid muscle, plunge about two inches, feel the resistance of the tough arterial wall, then feel the quick give as the adventitia was cut. The blood would be under significant pressure. It would shoot — hopefully into his face! – and into the opposite wall. He would drink some. He was aroused at thoughts of orgy.
John inched closer. “Benedict, did He tell you his name?”
Benedict paused. It was such an oddly specific question. “Yes.”
John’s voice lowered still. “What is it?”
“Beelzebub.”
John’s face fell in disappointment. He shoulders shrugged and he shook his head. Benedict wasn’t sure how to process this look, but it was time to spring. His pupils dilated, his heart raced, and his lips smiled. At the speed of thought, he relished the orgasm of the simple brutal act of dominating another man. He would tear into his fragile throat and, for a sweet instant, the small professor would look to his better in pleading surrender. He felt the edge of the professor’s throat, then he felt a foreign snap vice grab his wrist. Down became up. He saw the ceiling, then felt his back and head smash into the unforgiving cement floor. All breath left his body and his vision tunneled to a small corridor. For an instant, he thought he was dead. Natural instinct put every ounce of energy into finding the next breath.
Benedict coughed and sat up, confused. John stood at the corner of the table, sighing deeply with his back toward the fallen killer. Benedict felt the letter opener still in his hand. He sprung from the floor with a warrior’s yell and reached for his prey’s nape. He again felt his feet leave the ground. He flew brutally into the wall. The acoustic pads softened the blow, but the blunt crush again expelled all his breath. He felt a penetrating punch under his right rib and heard a sickening crack. Benedict spun around in angry fury. He reached savagely toward John, but again he lost control of his body. His face violently smashed into the table bloodying his nose. Involuntary tears filled his eyes. Fire flooded through his right hand as he heard the slice stick of the letter opener pierce his hand into the table below.
Benedict recoiled, blinded and in searing pain, and realized he was fastened to the table. His mind pleaded to grasp the situation but he found no answers. He moaned, choked, and searched for his breath. His eyes focused on the knife sticking through his hand. The little man stood next to him. He reached forward, grabbed the knife, and yanked it with enough force to lift the table for a small instant. Benedict’s hand was free and he slumped back into the chair. He gasped for breath and stifled a cry.
John sighed, calmly righted his chair from the floor, sat down, and stared at the table. Benedict instinctively squeezed his hand, trying to stem the bleeding and the pain. John rubbed his head and searched for words. He eventually looked up, met Benedict’s eyes, and sighed in disappointment.
“Beelzebub? Beelzebub? Really? That’s the best you could come up with? Why not Azmodeus, or, or maybe Beetlejuice, or Darth Vader? And did hear you right? Did you really quote a line from the Smashing Pumpkins? Are you serious?” John shook his head and clucked his tongue. “I’ll be honest, I’m disappointed.”
“Call the warden,” Benedict hissed. He looked at John with abject, burning hatred.
“I will give you credit for getting the cuffs off so fast. That was pretty good. But the letter opener? Really? You went for that instead of the pen? I really expected more.”
Benedict was humiliated and hurt. He searched for a way to attack his foe. John seemed to notice.
“Heh. Well, here, you want to try again?” He tossed the letter opener toward the prisoner in a clear act of dominance. Benedict shrugged. “I’m not going to talk to you, let me out.”
“And all that – that – bullshit about pain and rich people. My goodness. I expect better exposition from some freshman seminar paper.” He shook his head. “You’re really just nothing. I mean, just nothing.” He gathered the pictures and papers and stacked them neatly in the briefcase.
He thought for a moment and then looked Benedict in the eyes. Benedict met his gaze and, for a brief moment, John’s eyes turned completely black. Benedict was angry and hurt, but in that moment, he became scared.
“I thought your actions were so horrific, that you had actually seen the Darkness. The real Darkness. Not the watered-down version we experience every night. The real Darkness. He has a name. But you didn’t. At least not in a conscious way. But those kids – I mean, that was so horrific that maybe you saw it in the past or in a dream. Maybe you were just too stupid to notice. Anyway, I must apologize, but I have to check.”
“Let me out.” Benedict fancied himself the smartest man in any room. He’d been called evil, a monster, a villain, but never stupid.
“We’ve evolved away from darkness, haven’t we? We hide from it. We fear it. We huddle together and pray for the dawn. Really, we’ve become weak. If light leaves, well, we’re helpless.
“You’re right, ‘John Smith’ is not my real name. You were wrong about everything else. My parents are terrific. I love them dearly. I have a sister. I never did marry. I was good at numbers and did pretty well as an accountant. Made partner early. I had a good, if humdrum, life. But one night, I saw the Darkness. I saw it just as clearly as I see you now. I thought I was dreaming. But I wasn’t. It spoke to me. It was real. It was real.”
He began to turn the briefcase, revealing a hidden snap on the side. He slid it open. He looked squeamish and he backed away. Two thick, hairy legs poked out. John pulled out a pen, fished in the pocket quickly, and pried out a hideously large spider that had waited smashed in a tiny space. John backed up and shuddered. The spider sat fat and motionless on the table.
“Do spiders bother you?”
Benedict tried to conceal any hint of emotion. “No.”
“They scare the crap out me. Ugh.” The spider sprang off the table and scurried to the corner of the room. It squeezed into a small space and looked into the room with hideous, unblinking black eyes. “That thing is a Goliath Tarantula. It creeps the bejeezus out of me. You can imagine how horrible it is to carry that thing around. Didn’t show up on the x-ray when they searched my bag. These things normally eat birds. Whole birds.” John mimed a bird size with his hands. “This one can smell and taste blood. Ugh.”
Benedict rubbed his injured hand.
“Watch.” John grabbed the letter opened and tossed it into the corner. The spider reached out with its front legs, drew the metal into its body, and Benedict imagined it licking his blood from the blade.
“I think that’s the worst thing about darkness. Uncertainty. Just as we’ve evolved to pray to the light, that thing evolved to live in the darkness. When we lose our senses, we become naked and helpless. Even the worst of us feels the gnawing fear of uncertainty.” John took a deep breath. “I saw the real Darkness and He told me his name. I heard it reverberate down to my very soul. You can’t forget that. I saw Him dance. Things started to happen to me. I can’t explain any of it. But something distracted Him and I ran. I ran for all I was worth. I ran for my life. I’ll never forget that face, that voice, that name. I also know He’s coming back. I know I’ll see signs. I’ll see heralds – others who have seen the Darkness. I imagine as His time gets closer, I’ll see more of them. I thought maybe I’d see it in you. I thought your actions were so inhuman, that maybe the Darkness corrupted you. Maybe you were the herald of the end. But you didn’t see Him. You just did all that cruelty for masturbation. Really. You’re just a pervert who finds pornography in violence. You’re meaningless.”
John began to pace around the room.
“The thing is, I’m not even sure I’ll know what to do when I find a herald. If you’re naked in a room with a spider, do you want to find it? Or do you not want to find it? You know? I can’t stop Him from coming. What should I do? Call the police? Who will believe me? I don’t even know what I’ll do. I just want to know.” He approached the chagrined killer. “I just want the uncertainty to end. I want the dread to end.”
John stood, walked over to Benedict. “Look at me.”
“Go to Hell.”
John smiled. He roughly grabbed Benedict’s face and lifted it to his. He leaned in as if to kiss him. “There’s a moment of naked, unadulterated fear, where I can see into a man’s soul. It’s a gift from Him. He calls to me. If He’s in you, I will see it. If you’re a herald, I will see it. I need to know. I need to see into your soul, in your moment of greatest fear. Maybe, just maybe, you’re not just a meaningless pervert. Maybe sometime in the past, you were exposed to something beautiful. Terrifying. But beautiful.”
Benedict spat in his face. John backed up. “All of us are afraid of the dark.” He hit the signal to turn off the lights. Benedict was smothered with heavy, complete darkness.
“I’m not afraid of the dark,” he said weakly.
There was no answer. Benedict sat still for what seemed to him like an eternity. He waited, waited for any sign that something would happen. “I want out. WARDEN!” Benedict screamed. “WARDEN, LET ME OUT!” He screamed for a few minutes. He thought about trying to rush the door, but to what end? The spider was in that corner. The door was locked. He thought about feeling around for John – maybe he could grab him and force him to open the door. Could John see in the dark? Was John still in the room? He alternately wanted him there and wanted him gone. He felt the sick dread that he was alone and exposed with a blood-eating goliath spider.
He felt around the air near his body, but then he reflexively pulled his hands in for fear of what he may feel. A shudder seized his spine. He considered screaming again, but now felt that any sound drew unwanted attention. He sat perfectly still, listening for any movement or breath. All he heard was his own heartbeat. He wondered if he could hear his hand bleed.
“This won’t work. I’m not afraid,” he pleaded, but his voice was meek. He stood, but felt dizzy and nauseous. His visual cues of balance were gone. He stumbled backwards toward the wall, hoping for some sensory feedback to orient his mind in this new, horrifying world. “This won’t work,” he sobbed. He tried to hold perfectly still, hoping he would hear some movement or breath. He heard nothing.
Minutes passed. Or was it hours?
Benedict became afraid to speak or cry out. He wanted to cry. “Please. Please let me out. Please, I’ll tell you anything. I’m sorry about the children.” He felt a quick brush against his leg.
“Please…”
* * * * * *
The door opened and the little man emerged with his briefcase in hand.
“You were in there a long time,” the warden said. “Holy –“
“I don’t know what happened. Heart attack, maybe. I dropped the signaler and tried to do CPR for the last hour, but, well, he just died. I’m sorry, warden. I even think I accidentally cut his hand in the process.”
The guards rushed over to the body. One kept his gun fully trained on the killer’s head. The other nervously checked for a pulse. He shook his head.
“Again, I’m really sorry. Really.”
The warden looked puzzled at the placid look on the little man’s bookish face. “Did you at least get what you wanted?”
“Tragically, no. Nothing useful. I really thought I would with this one.”
They both glanced at the dead body on the floor.
“Warden, I heard you have an interesting prisoner in Cell 12, block D. Life term. Killed a family of six?”
“Yeah. He’s a piece of work all right.”
“Do you think I could ask him a few questions? In the same room?”
The warden backed away from the unnaturally calm little man. “Sure. We’ll set it up for next week.”
|
I haunted them and they never knew it. Mama, Papa, and my little brother Jacob; they always looked right through me, for two years never detecting even the slightest sign of my presence. Have you ever felt the bitter outrage that boils inside you when you’re being ignored? Well what happened during those years was even worse than being ignored. At least if someone ignores you, they still know you’re there. My very existence remained unacknowledged, and the madness of my situation fed into itself daily. I couldn’t leave the area around Papa’s wheat farm, some unknown force kept me bound to that place, and an opportunity to exit had never presented itself. I didn’t even know what an exit for me would look like. With no outlet to express my frustration, and nobody to communicate with, my ire and ill will grew, soon consuming the entirety of my thoughts.
If you don’t yet understand, I’m dead. For the two years immediately following my death, and before I came to this place I’m at now, I was the one and only ghost on my family’s farm. Perhaps, in hearing the story of my life and demise, you might learn how to avoid some of the mistakes I made. So please pay attention, because there’s a lesson in here somewhere, but I’ll leave it for you to figure out what it is.
_______________
It was 1950, and Papa’s wheat farm had been doing well. The war had brought an economic boom, which continued well after the soldiers came home from the battlefields of Europe and the islands of the Pacific. I was twelve years old, and my brother Jacob was seven. He was fun to pick on, and it was my enjoyable hobby to get him in trouble as much as I could. I loved to intentionally leave messes, like spilled milk, that he would invariably get blamed for. Sometimes, I’d complain to Mama that he was bothering me when he wasn’t really doing anything wrong at all. It felt good to see him get scolded and run off to his room, crying his denials. I’d laugh when that happened, and I’d embrace those incidents in my mind, because those were the moments when I was the good child, the one who wasn’t getting into trouble.
But the overall best thing about having Jacob around is that he would sleepwalk. When this happened, he was almost always in a highly suggestible state. Since his bedtime was an hour earlier than mine, I had many opportunities to sneak up to his bedroom and put suggestions into his mind. If left alone when sleepwalking, he probably would’ve never left the upstairs part of the house, but at least half the time, I could get him to do nearly whatever I asked of him.
I’d tell him things like, “Jacob, take your pillow outside and lay down on the grass.” Then I’d laugh to myself as he actually attempted to leave the house with his pillow in hand.
Mama and Papa were aware of his problem, and kept a close eye on him. But they had no idea about the manner in which I was exacerbating the situation. It was only after several incidents, that one night, Papa finally overheard me giving Jacob some sleepwalking instructions.
“Jacob, go throw this over the banister,” I told him as I placed his favorite toy truck in his hands. We were standing right outside of his bedroom.
I turned around and saw that Papa was upstairs too. Clearly, he’d heard me. I jumped back in surprise, unable to think of anything to say. After several awkward moments, I ran off to my bedroom without speaking a single word. I felt shame and guilt, but most of all, I just didn’t want to get into trouble. I could hear Papa walk Jacob to his room and put him to bed. Through the wall I could hear him speak some comforting words. When Papa came to my room a few minutes later, I pretended to be asleep. He stood in my doorway for a moment; he probably knew I was really awake. He stepped inside, covered me with a blanket, and left. I spent the next hour awake in bed, wondering and worrying about what would happen the next day.
Papa finally got his chance to talk to me while I was eating breakfast the next morning. He entered the dining room and sat down at the table. He spoke in his always calm, but firm voice, “Mary, what were you telling your brother last night, about the toy truck?”
“Nothing, Papa. Why?”
“Now Mary, please don’t lie to me. I took a break from the fields just to come talk to you. Please, tell me what you said.”
I felt my annoyance and anger rising up. I wasn’t going to let Papa blame Jacob’s sleep walking problem on me.
“It’s not my fault he sleepwalks!” My voice came out louder than I’d intended.
Papa sighed, then took a moment to contemplate before speaking again, “Nobody said it was your fault, but I need to know what’s going on with you two.”
I didn’t want to admit what I’d been doing. To admit that I’d been giving Jacob suggestions while he walked in his sleep meant that everything would come unraveled. Papa and Mama would know how I’d been treating him. I thought that they would finally figure out all my secret misbehaviors. The idea of everything coming down at once overwhelmed me. I’d always been quick to anger, a trait that I’d inherited from neither my mother nor my father. In that regard, I was unique within my family. Now, I could feel the fury coming up. There was a small part of me that tried to stop the upcoming eruption, but the anger couldn’t be sequestered.
“Leave me alone!” I screamed. “I hate you Papa, and I hate Mama too.”
At that moment, I really did feel hatred towards Papa and Mama. Why did Papa have to question me? Why did he have to pry? And Mama always agreed with Papa. She was in on this too.
Papa was stunned and could say nothing. I’d shown my anger and frustration many times before, but I’d never spoken to him like that in the past. I could see that he was more hurt than mad. That didn’t matter to me.
It was a Wednesday, and a school day. I got up, grabbed my two schoolbooks and ran out of the house crying, heading down the driveway toward the distant dirt road, and then to the school. Normally I would’ve walked with Jacob, but there was no way I was going to wait for the brat that morning.
I got halfway there before I stopped. I didn’t feel like going to school. I’d stopped crying, but the thought of sitting in class while an adult lectured me didn’t appeal to me that morning. I’d never skipped school before, but even having the thought was a liberating feeling. I walked down to a nearby pond and relaxed under a tree, picking dandelions and blowing their tops off. When I tired of that, I tore some pages out of my books and spent some time folding them into paper airplanes. Then, I walked along the shore of the pond, getting my shoes muddy and wet. After a couple of hours, finally bored but still upset, I decided to walk back to the farm. I figured, when Jacob showed up at school without me, the principal would’ve called my house to make sure everything was okay, so Mama and Papa probably knew I was missing. I didn’t care about that. I cut slowly through the fields, heading towards the house, but with no real goal in mind.
It was May, the time of year when the wheat that had been planted in winter was harvested, and everyone was even busier than usual. Reaching the edge of a field, I saw that Peter, one of the farmhands, was harvesting the wheat atop Papa’s big combine. Usually it was Papa who drove the machines, but not right then. Maybe he was out looking for me? The thought of him frantically searching made me laugh. Peter drove the combine up to the grain truck and began emptying his load of wheat.
Peter had been in the army, and Papa had hired him right after he came back from the war. Papa said that all the soldiers who charged into enemy fire on that beach, like Peter had, deserved to have a job waiting for them when they got home. Peter had two bullet wounds on his left arm to prove his bravery, and they could be seen whenever he wore short sleeves. He never really talked about how he got them, though.
Mama never trusted Peter. “He’s irresponsible and he drinks too much,” she’d argue with Papa. But Papa wouldn’t hear it. Sometimes, late at night, I could hear Peter cry out from the bunkhouse. Bad dreams, I guess. The other hands would yell at him to shut up, and he would. Usually, Peter was good-natured, but there was a part of him that always seemed a little distant, and he sometimes snapped at the other farmhands with little provocation. However, he was always nice to me and Jacob, and seemed to enjoy our company. Peter was one of my favorite people on the farm.
Still feeling angry and bored, I saw that I had a unique opportunity. The big machines, especially the combine, were fascinating to me. I knew Papa would never in a million years let me ride on one of the machines with him. But Peter? With his friendly demeanor towards me, I knew there was a chance he’d let me.
“Hi Peter!”
Peter turned and looked at me. “Hey there, Mary.” He smiled, “Shouldn’t you be in school?”
“Teacher got sick and let us all go home.” It was the best lie I could think of. Then, trying hard to mask my still simmering anger, I continued, “I’m glad I ran into you, Peter. I wasn’t expecting you to be here.”
Peter chuckled and grinned. “Well you never know where I’ll pop up. Maybe we were just meant to run into each other today. My grandfather always told me, there’s no such thing as accidentally running into somebody.”
It seemed Peter was starting in on one of his philosophical conversations, and while I usually liked hearing him talk, at that moment I only had one goal in mind.
With a fake smile, I made a request. “Hey Peter, do you think I can I ride up there with you?’
“Don’t ask that Mary, you know I can’t have you up here.” Peter’s smile wavered a bit.
“Please, Peter. I’ll hold on real tight. You’re the only one who’s nice to me.” I used a slightly whiny voice, and I made my eyes appear watery by squeezing my eyelids together tightly for a moment.
“Please? Pretty please?”
Peter paused and wiped the sweat off his brow. He took a small flask out of his pocket, opened it, and took a quick sip before considering the request.
“Well fine, get up here and hold on, but don’t let your daddy see you up here. We’ll both be in big trouble.”
The truth is, I was somewhat hoping Papa would see us. Not because I wanted Peter to get in trouble, but because I wanted to see Papa get mad. I was already in trouble anyway.
I climbed on top of the machine and swung my legs over the metal crossbars that provided the only protection to whoever might be in the open cab of the combine. Peter revved up the engine and drove slowly forward. As he drove, the wheat was pushed slowly underneath the machine by the big spinning reel in the front. The crop was cut, threshed and separated all at once by this giant mechanical beast.
Rather than trying to enjoy the ride, I scanned the field looking for any sign of Papa. Peter was sitting in the only seat, so I awkwardly squatted in the small space next to him, holding on tight to the horizontal bar.
Peter looked and smiled. “Hang on now, we’re gonna turn around.”
Peter reached the end of the row and I redoubled my grip on the bar, but my attention was focused on trying to spot Papa. As the combine swung in a big arc, its wheel slipped into a large rut, jolting the whole machine. My wet shoes slipped from under me, and though I tried to hold on, my sweaty palms easily betrayed me. I slid under the protective cross bar and landed atop the giant, spinning reel. I saw the panic on Peter’s face as I slipped, but he was too slow to react and couldn’t stop the machine in time. My scream was cut short as the reel carried me over, and then under the giant combine. The machine carried forward and overtook me, and its gnashing, unforgiving cutters quickly ended my life.
________________
Here’s something you probably don’t know about being dead, your feelings become simplified, and it’s incredibly difficult to have more than one emotion at a time. With practice, the dead can learn to maintain control over their thoughts, but that may take years. Watching life move on without me, I couldn’t help but feel anything but anger. I don’t know if I can explain it satisfactorily, the hollow feeling a lonely ghost gets while watching the living… watching, hating, and eventually despising them. There’s no sleep when you’re dead, no break you can use to reset yourself or your thoughts. There’s no point at which you wake up feeling better, those moments simply don’t exist. Sometimes, strong memories are triggered by sights, sounds, and even smells, and your emotions may go in an entirely different direction. But normally, your feelings are like a freight train, unstoppable and headed only one way.
Two years, alone, yet surrounded by my now despised family. I spoke to them daily. I told them I hated them, but they never heard me.
“I hope you die, Jacob.” It felt good to say it to him after I saw that my wooden doll house was now in his room, stuffed full of his toy cars.
“Go to Hell, Mama.” I’d say as she sat wistfully in her rocking chair, looking out the window towards the wheat fields.
“Papa, everything is your fault. I hate you.” I’d say that to him every day.
And Peter? I loathed him most of all. Of course, he had to leave the farm after what he’d done to me. He spent eight months in jail for his negligence. I heard Mama talking on the phone, telling a friend how he’d gotten off easy, on account of his war record and the fact that his father had once been an important man in the county.
Even though Peter wasn’t there, I’d speak to him too, “Why do you have to be such a drunk idiot, Peter?”
I watched as holidays passed by, all celebrated without me. Seasons cycled through, and the world around me began to change. Jacob got bigger, Papa hired new farmhands, Mama took up quilting again. Me, I stayed the same.
It was in May of 1952 when something different, something amazing, finally happened. Someone heard me speak. I was in the house with my family, spewing my hate towards everyone, yet to no one person in particular. Jacob had gone to his room to sleep, and Mama and Papa were listening to a radio show. I was upstairs in my old bedroom, looking at the blank walls.
“I hope this place burns down.”
“Why?” Came a curious voice from behind me.
I turned and found Jacob standing right next to me. For once, he was looking at me instead of through me. His eyes were open, but with the blank look on his face. I’d seen that look before. Jacob was sleepwalking, which was something he hadn’t done in a while.
My surprise momentarily subdued me, and I could say nothing in response.
“Why do you hope the house burns down, Mary?”
“You, you heard me, Jacob?”
“Yes Mary, I heard you.” His voice was monotonous.
For a moment, a very brief moment, I felt a tiny bit of relief and happiness, but the anger wouldn’t relinquish its domination over me, and quickly returned to the forefront.
Trying to see if Jacob would still be susceptible to my suggestions, and allowing my hate to guide me, I spoke, “Jacob. There’s something I want you to do.” Keeping my voice calm, I continued, “Follow me to the end of the hall.”
Jacob was a good listener, and together we moved down the hallway. Then, with minimal effort, I encouraged Jacob to go find Mama and Papa. They were in the kitchen, and didn’t notice Jacob as he slowly and silently walked up behind them.
“Tell them that you hate them, Jacob.”
Jacob had a confused look on his face. His mouth opened, as if to speak, then closed again.
“Say it Jacob, if you want me to be happy.”
Jacob finally spoke to Mama and Papa, “I hate you.”
They both turned around, surprised.
I spoke another instruction to Jacob, telling him what to say, and he complied.
“Both of you are stupid fucking bastards.”
Mama gasped at hearing her little son say such a horrible thing. I didn’t even know what all those words meant, but I’d heard the farmhands use them when they thought nobody else was listening to them.
“Jacob sweetie? What’s wrong?” Mama looked closely and seemed to be able to tell that Jacob was asleep. She looked back at Papa, who nodded his understanding. He had a concerned look on his face.
Mama guided Jacob back upstairs, and then sat with him while he settled comfortably into his bed. She sang a quiet song to help him relax. I stayed the night in his room, waiting to see if he’d get up again, but he slept through until sunup.
The next morning, I watched as Jacob sat eating his breakfast at the kitchen table. He was reading from a book called 1001 Riddles for Children while he ate. Mama was cleaning the dishes.
“Hey Mama, what’s full of holes yet still holds water?”
Mama pondered the riddle for a moment, “I’m not sure, angel.”
“A sponge!” Jacob laughed aloud as he said it.
Mama laughed too, “That’s a good riddle, Jacob.”
Then, Mama took a more serious tone, “Jacob, do you remember coming downstairs last night, after you went to bed?”
“Nope,” Jacob said as he thumbed through his book looking for more riddles.
Mama didn’t say anything else about it, but it was clear she was troubled by the incident.
Over the next two weeks, Jacob had three more sleepwalking incidents. Each time, I was able to exert control over him. And each time I had him go into Mama and Papa’s bedroom and express my hate to them. I could tell they were getting more concerned, almost scared, by these nighttime visits. Jacob seemed unaffected by these experiences and was always happy in the morning. Soon though, I became bored with this activity, and sought out something else I could do with Jacob, but with my single-track mind, new ideas were difficult to create.
One afternoon, I overheard Mama talking on the phone in the kitchen, her exasperated tone caught my attention, “Can you believe it? He came to the farm yesterday! He wanted to talk to us, but one of the farmhands stopped him, told him to leave. They said he’s camped under the trestle.”
Mama paused as the voice on the other end spoke, then she continued, “Well yeah but we can’t kick him out of there, that’s not our land.”
Mama listened for a moment, then spoke again, “Well they said he wanted to apologize, but he was drunk. He’s a real mess apparently.” I could hear an amount of bitterness come through in Mama’s tone, and I could see tears at the corners of her eyes.
Mama continued with the conversation, but I quickly grew tired of listening and left the kitchen. An hour later, I figured out who she’d been talking about when I saw Papa outside arguing with another man. I looked closer. It was Peter he was arguing with. I could hear them both clearly.
“Please, Mr. Ford,” Peter cried, “I just want to tell her I’m sorry.” Pleading tears streamed down his face, and he struggled to stand up straight.
Papa’s words were clear and deliberate, “You need to go. I don’t want you to come back. You have no reason to be here. Go away, and if I hear about you camping out around here any more, I’m gonna let the sheriff know.”
Peter stood silently, then gave the only apology he could give, “I’m sorry for what I did. Please tell the missus for me, I’m sorry.”
He turned and slowly walked towards the road, defeated. Papa stood in place, watching as he grew smaller in the distance. Finally, Papa turned, and looking at the staring farmhands who’d collected nearby, told them to get back to work.
Peter had come to apologize for the second time in two days, but Papa had refused to listen to him, and wouldn’t let him talk to Mama. Peter had failed at his task, but his presence had succeeded in accomplishing something else, reminding me of my own death.
And that’s when I got the new idea. I had died as a child, why shouldn’t Jacob die as a child too?
“Jacob should die, too.” I spoke it to myself, repeating it several times. I asked myself why he should get to live, and I couldn’t think of a good reason. If Jacob died, I’d have someone who could see me, and someone who could hear me. Not just when he was sleepwalking, but all the time. I could tell him what to do, dominate him. It’s what he deserved. Mama and Papa didn’t deserve to have Jacob. I did.
“Thank you, Peter,” I said to the small, forlorn figure disappearing in the distance. “Thank you for the idea.”
Once I had the inspiration and the goal, it was surprisingly easy to devise a plan. Jacob was becoming more and more responsive to my nighttime directions, and it seemed that he could sleep through almost any sort of disturbance. I’d be able to lure him out to the train tracks that ran along our farm. Every morning around 5:30 AM, the train passed by. It was nearly always on time, to the point that Papa was able to rely on it as a wake up call. It would do the job for me, its huge locomotive would smash Jacob, and he’d be mine.
That night I watched my family as they went about their nightly routine. They ate dinner, they laughed at Jacob’s jokes, he told them about school, they told him he was a good boy. For just a moment, I remembered myself eating dinner with my family. A fleeting happy thought passed through me, but it faded quickly. My hatred was too great to let it take root.
The evening passed by, Jacob completed his homework, took a bath, and went to bed. An hour later, Mama gave Papa a hug and went to bed as well. Papa stood alone for several minutes, looking silently out the window towards the wheat fields. Then, he too retired for the night. Silence and stillness took over the farm. The night air was warm, and the moon cast a silvery glow over the ground.
I waited in Jacob’s room through the night, my always present anger was tinted with giddiness as I imagined how it would be to have a ghostly Jacob by my side. I’d make him do what I wanted, and I’d laugh as Mama and Papa cried over his broken body.
Finally, it was time. The train would be coming soon. I called out to Jacob as he slept, using my most pleasing voice. At first, he didn’t move. I’d never actually caused him to sleepwalk before, each time I’d only interacted with him after he started on his own. My plan depended on him getting up when I asked him to, and I was suddenly a little bit worried that I wouldn’t be able to rouse him.
“Jacob, Jacob.” My voice was musical and sweet.
Finally, after a couple of minutes, Jacob mumbled a tired response, “What is it, Mary?”
“It’s time to get up Jacob. I have something fun I want to show you, but you have to come right now.”
Jacob sat up and looked around the room. The blank look on his face told me he was still asleep.
“Where are you, Mary? It’s dark.”
“I’m over here, just follow my voice.”
Slowly, Jacob got up, walked out of his room, and followed me down the hallway. The house was eerily silent, save for the creaking of the wooden floors under Jacob’s feet and the ticking grandfather clock on the first floor. The moonlight streamed in through the cracks of the curtains, and slowly, slowly, Jacob made his way towards the top of the stairs.
“You’re doing good, Jacob. I have such a surprise for you, and after that we’re going to play and have fun, you’ll be mine, Jacob, always.”
He slowly descended the stairs, his eyes open but his mind still fully asleep. We proceeded through the living room, moving past the rocking chair where Mama rocked me to sleep when I was small. On the grandfather clock, I could see it was 5:25 AM. Perfect. The train would be there soon, and I just had to get Jacob out the door without making too much noise. Papa always slept soundly, but Mama woke easily.
“Careful, Jacob, open the door easily. If you open it too quick you’ll hurt me. You don’t want to hurt me, right?”
Jacob unlocked the door and slowly pulled it inward. Papa kept everything well oiled, so it gave only a slight creak. Jacob stepped forward and pushed past the screen door, making his way onto the front porch. The screen door, on a tight spring, slammed back against the doorframe as he let it go.
“Jacob! You idiot! Be careful,” I hissed at him.
I’d told him to be careful, and that little brat couldn’t even follow a simple direction. Mama and Papa’s room was right above the front door, and I could hear Mama’s concerned voice drift down to us. She was speaking to Papa, but her words were indecipherable from my location.
“We need to hurry up, Jacob. Let’s go, or you won’t get your surprise.”
I led Jacob as quickly as he’d go. We walked to the outskirts of the farm, past the old drinking well near the edge of the property. The tracks were waiting for us on the other side of a fallow field. It took Jacob a few minutes to slowly amble across the terrain, with my constant redirection goading him on. In the background, I could hear Mama and Papa, they were outside calling for Jacob, yelling out his name. It didn’t seem as if they’d spotted him yet.
I laughed, “You’ll never find him in time.”
“Find who?” Jacob mumbled.
“Shut up, Jacob. I’m not talking to you.”
Jacob’s cherubic face glowed from the moonlight, and a soft morning wind passed by and gently rustled the wheat fields. I could still hear Mama and Papa, sounding more and more frantic, looking desperately for their “only” child. Off in the distance, the train horn sounded.
“We’re almost there, Jacob.”
Several moments later we made it to the tracks. I could hear the train heading towards us, and the rails began to vibrate. The sound of the approaching steam engine grew ever louder, and its headlight was visible in the distance.
“Stand right here, Jacob, on the rail. No matter what happens, don’t move. If you move I’ll be really, really mad at you.” Jacob’s mind was still open to suggestion, and he stood with both feet upon one of the rails.
I waited patiently as the train approached. It was a loud, unstoppable monster rumbling down the tracks. It would show no pity, but Jacob didn’t deserve that. Closer, closer, only ten seconds away now. Its light began to bath Jacob’s body in an eerie glow.
I saw Papa across the field. He finally spotted Jacob and began running frantically towards us, but he was at least seventy yards away, an impossible distance with the train nearly upon us. I positioned myself over the rail directly across from Jacob so that I could look at his face. I held out my ghostly arms, and Jacob responded by holding out his.
Jacob was still standing on the rail, facing me, when the train’s screaming horn finally made him wake up. Wide eyed and confused, he jolted into consciousness. He looked right at me, then at the train speeding towards us, then at me again. Could he still see me? Jacob stayed there, paralyzed by his fright and confusion, with the roaring machine merely seconds away.
Behind Papa, I could see Mama fall down to her knees, screaming in desperation and anguish. Her scream, even over the roar of the oncoming engine, rang loudly through the night. All of her sorrow and agony was contained in that one scream. It was powerful and unmistakable. I realized suddenly that I’d heard Mama scream like that before. But when? Then, I remembered; I’d heard that exact scream at my funeral. Without any warning, a memory was triggered, a memory I couldn’t suppress any longer, and temporarily, I was locked in a moment from two years earlier.
My funeral. I’m watching, nobody can see me, nobody knows I’m there. My family and relatives are gathered at the family plot, with our barn visible in the background. As my wooden casket is lowered slowly into the dry earth, Mama screams out in sorrow and despair. Papa puts his arm around her and tries to remain stoic. His eyes are quivering, and as my casket reaches its final resting spot, he breaks down into tears, sobbing out loud. The strongest man in the county, crying unashamed as his little girl is laid to rest. He and Mama are comforted by relatives, Jacob buries his face against Mama’s hip, “Why did she have to go away, Mama? I miss her so much.”
I finally remembered, I had been loved.
Mama, Papa, Jacob, they had all loved me, and they all had mourned my loss. No matter how much trouble I had caused around the farm, no matter how much I talked back to Mama, and even with all the times I picked on Jacob, they had loved me unconditionally. A deluge of happy memories pushed through my mind like water spilling through a broken dam. These were memories my mind had refused to process for the last two years. I remembered coming downstairs Christmas morning to find the wooden dollhouse that Papa had made for me, I remembered all those nights Mama held me close and rocked me to sleep in her rocking chair, I remembered Jacob following me around the house, idolizing me and trying to act like me. I remembered the whole family going into town to get ice cream. Everything good. I remembered all the good times.
I had been loved, and they still loved me.
I looked up from the train tracks into Jacob’s terrified eyes. I still held my ghostly hands over his outstretched arms, and he looked right at me, crying. The train bore down upon us, with its horn screaming and its brakes squealing. I pulled my guilty gaze away from Jacob and looked directly into the light of the train. I no longer wanted to see my little brother die.
“I’m sorry, Jacob.”
Papa was still thirty yards away when I felt the train pass through me. It was a massive force, and even in death its raw energy and cold iron gave me a shiver. The train continued on through. Its forty unstoppable, fully loaded cars careened past our farm, over the trestle and into the cool morning, still attempting to slow down.
I’d done something monstrous, but I didn’t want to be a monster anymore. I looked down with regret. Stillness began returning to the air, and the noise of the train started to fade. I turned and looked down the track, trying to spot Jacob’s body, scared that I’d be successful. I saw nothing. Where was he?
Then I heard it, Jacob sobbing in a ditch not more than ten feet from me.
“You alright, Jake?” It was Peter talking. Both he and Jacob were lying in the ditch, covered in dirt, scrapes and tears. A broken whiskey bottle was next to Peter. It’d fallen out of the large pocket of his overalls, which were stained wet with the former contents of the bottle.
Then I realized what’d happened. The man whose stupidity and carelessness had gotten me killed, the man whose recklessness had caused me to feel so much hate, had just saved my brother’s life. Even though Papa had told him to leave the area, he’d stayed, sleeping outside in the dry wash under the trestle. From his encampment, he’d seen Jacob approach the tracks and had come running up from behind me as fast as he could. Despite his drunken stupor, he’d had enough focus and coordination to tackle Jacob off the tracks not more than half a second before the train passed. I wondered, when Jacob had looked at me after waking up, had he really seen me, or had he been looking through me to Peter?
Papa arrived seconds later, and held Jacob tightly in his arms. He looked at Peter, and though he didn’t say a word, he gave a nod of acknowledgement and thanks. Finally Mama got there, crying hysterically, but with a sense of relief. She gave Jacob kisses all over.
Looking at them, I finally understood the real reason I’d wanted Jacob to die. It wasn’t because I was lonely, it was because I’d been jealous. He was alive and I was dead. He still had Mama and Papa, and I didn’t. He’d grow up, and I never would. And as I thought about it more, I realized that I’d been jealous of him since before he was even born. Being there, watching my family hug, I was finally able to let my feelings of anger, bitterness, and jealously recede. It was as if the train, instead of sweeping away my brother, had swept away all the hate. The love for my family had always been there, and it felt good to finally acknowledge it.
“I’m sorry, Mama. I’m sorry, Papa. I’m sorry, Jacob.” That felt good to say, even if they couldn’t hear me.
Then I looked at Peter, “Thank you, Peter, for saving my little brother.” It felt good to say that too. I didn’t hate him anymore, I couldn’t. My mind felt much clearer after being able to shed the anger of my death.
I watched them all for several moments, until finally, I noticed a light far down along the train tracks. The rails weren’t vibrating, so it couldn’t have been a train. Mama, Papa, nobody else seemed to notice it. It was calling to me, telling me to follow it, telling me to come home. I felt like the light had probably always been there, I just hadn’t been able to see it until then. I understood that it was my time to leave, my time to move on to whatever was next.
As I began moving down the tracks, I turned one last time to look at my family. I spoke softly to them, “Goodbye, I love you all.”
I turned again and continued towards the light. Jacob was still sobbing, but between sobs, I heard his soft, barely audible voice speak ou |
On the 25th March, at 14:57GMT, the world stopped for 27 minutes and 54 seconds. No-one noticed at first. Those that eventually did were ordered to keep quiet.
——————————————————————————————–
There was no sudden jolt, no collapsing into unconsciousness, no transition into utter darkness and back again. Nothing.
For everyone, time had appeared to pass as normal, one second moving uneventfully into the next. Birds flew, people talked, the wind and the rain blew and fell respectively – nothing had occurred to indicate that anything untoward or unexpected had happened to the inhabitants of the Earth.
Only those who looked beyond our planet and its ring of constantly chattering satellites now found that the rest of the universe told a different story.
NASA and related space agencies noticed first. Signals to ongoing missions beyond those in orbit around the Earth were all off by almost 30 minutes. Frantic investigation revealed that the same time discrepancy was occurring for all incoming signals. Naturally they came to the conclusion that the problem must therefore lay not with these external elements, but with the computers on Earth. But this led to a bigger question – one computer glitch was possible, but all of the various space agency’s computers across the globe showing the same failure at exactly the same time? Naturally, a virus or a sophisticated global hacking attack was the next obvious answer. An international team to investigate such a large, well-coordinated cyber-attack was being discussed when the first calls of alarm came in from confused and concerned astronomers, and the true significance of what had actually happened became known.
Using data retrieved from telescopic arrays at Jodrell Bank, Palo Alto, Mount Pleasant and others across the world, confirmed against existing stellar records and computational models of the local galaxy and beyond, it became apparent that for twenty seven minutes and fifty four seconds the Earth had somehow been out of sync with the rest of known time and space. In essence, the world as we knew it had winked out of existence during this period, and then returned as if nothing had happened.
For all intents and purposes during that short window of time, we had ceased to be.
The international investigation team was repurposed, a blank cheque written giving it it’s pick of resources and the best minds in their fields, all to investigate this one event and all sworn to the utmost secrecy. None of them needed to be told the panic that would ensue if this information
became public before a suitable, and hopefully reassuring, reason could be given for the event. Those that couldn’t keep silent were quickly and quietly silenced themselves.
Despite the various project names assigned to the sub teams, those involved began referring to the event in a half joking manner as ‘…the day God blinked’. In casual conversation between project members this was eventually shortened even further to just ‘the blink’.
——————————————————————————————–
After six rings, Ben finally answered the door.
“Mark! What are you doing here?”
“You invited me remember?”
“Did I?! How odd? Well, I probably had a reason at the time. It’s still good to see you anyway. Come on in!”
I’d known Ben since childhood. We attended the same schools for a while, before his crazily high IQ led him onto a fast track of higher education and beyond. We kept in touch though; his parents were sensible enough to realize he needed some grounding in the real world, and encouraged our friendship with the usual sleepovers and camping trips. Their smarts lay in forcing Ben not to let his social skills atrophy completely like a lot of very intelligent kids were wont to do. As a result, whilst he was frequently side tracked and forgetful, he still functioned in normal society with a degree of
success.
After our respective schooling had finished we both moved into the IT industry, although at vastly different levels. For myself I now worked in tech support, mostly maintaining insurance systems for a range of small independent companies. Boring, but it paid well and allowed me to travel. He on the other hand was self-employed and preferred working from his ‘Apartment of Solitude’ as he called it, referring to himself as a ‘Consulting Technician’ (he’d gotten the idea from watching re-runs of ‘Sherlock’). His work was a lot more varied and advanced, and whilst he never openly admitted to hacking, he certainly had enough technical knowledge and experience to have been employed in the past by such names as Google, Microsoft and IBM when they needed someone to test the all new, unhackable security they’d just put in place, or track down those that had subsequently been able to breach their all new, unhackable security. He preferred the latter work he told me; it added the
‘thrill of the chase’, plus it usually paid better.
What was even less well known was the work he occasionally did ‘off the books’ for such groups as the Department of Defense and the NSA. He admitted his working for them was twofold: one, they wanted his expertise and brilliance, and two; it allowed them to keep tabs on his expertise and
brilliance. He didn’t mind this as he explained:
“Well, it keeps them happy knowing where I am and what I’m doing. Or at least what they THINK I’m doing.”, and then he’d grin and pass me the latest decoded email he’d intercepted. He didn’t do anything with the stuff he found, he just enjoyed the challenge.
To be completely honest, sometimes it was hard to pin down just who Ben was and what his motivations were from one moment to the next. I’d just grown up accepting him and his eccentricities, quickly coming to the conclusion his life was a complex pattern of impulses and ideas, woven together from threads that were as much madness as genius.
There was his belief that every time someone said ‘Abracadabra’, an angel lost its wings, or that the common cold existed as a vast, hive mentality that avoided detection by its elements constantly hopping from body to body. Mad crazy shit like that. Half the time I thought he was joking; for the rest I just hoped he had enough common sense to rein it in when in public.
Then there were the times he did and said things that ended up on the opposite end of that, when what he said made absolute, unnerving sense. On those occasions he spoke with a lucidity that seemed to cut through all the crap humankind had built around its certainties and beliefs, as if he’d
touched on some universal truth we should all by rights know. All I could do at those times was marvel at how someone with such a kaleidoscope for a brain, entertaining such a maelstrom of contradictory thoughts constantly, could suddenly bring all those elements together to produce those single blindingly white lights of truth.
Then he’d suddenly go off on a tangent, accusing his neighbours of being CIA agents trialling neurotoxins on the local cats and we’d be back to normal.
Still, I came at his summons. Despite the crazed theories and odd habits, it was definitely the most entertaining conversation around, plus his library of illegally downloaded films was truly a wonder to behold. That and he was my friend.
It was during a piece of work for NASA, idling through their secure systems looking for proof of Area 51 during his off time, that led him to first discover, and then piece together, all the facts concerning March 25th and the ‘blink’ found by the international team so far.
Being his only close friend he’d decided to fill me in on this ongoing conspiracy, mainly so he could show off his talents once more, hence the invitation. As he spoke he appeared completely oblivious to how my face was gradually growing more and more incredulous. He described what the
world’s space agencies and astronomers had discovered, and how a secret scientific think tank was now investigating what had happened. Physicists, Quantum theorists, Mathematicians…the whole spectrum of sciences, all focused on this one problem and the questions associated with it: what had
happened, why it had happened, and most importantly, was it likely to happen again, and if so, what was the risk of it being permanent.
He told me of the total news blackout and how any amateur astronomers or similar who now came to the same conclusions were to be either brought on board, treated as cranks, or disappeared with extreme prejudice. Their biggest fear was a mass panic he said, or the world’s religions taking
credit on behalf of their respective Gods and several genocidal wars kicking off as a result. As he said:
“There’s nothing more disconcerting I guess then not being able to trust your own reality. We’ve been raised in a world where it’s fine to distrust your government, your employers, even your family, but your own entire existence?! Definitely a recipe for chaos.”
“Places like CERN have been placed on almost permanent hiatus. The governments of the world have no proof experiments like the ones they were doing there are the cause, but then I suppose they had to point the finger somewhere until more evidence showed up. There’s a lot of theoretical
work being done now, but pretty much zero practical. I guess it’s only a matter of time before they get the scriptwriters in from Doctor Who to brainstorm a possible cause.”
He sighed at this, sat back in his swivel chair and span round, gazing at the ceiling seemingly lost in thought, then he slowly came to a stop and returned his gaze to me, a mischievous twinkle in his eyes:
“Then on the other side, you have all the religions…”
At this he paused again, looked around his cluttered desk, and then started building what looked like a tower of various bits and pieces. As it slowly grew in height, he continued speaking:
“Remember our bible classes? I liked the stories, if not the morality. I especially liked the story of Babel….”
The rising structure of books, hard drives, chocolate bars, magazines and other random items his hands could find in reach had risen to a height just below his chin. He added a few more items, adding to the precarious sway it already had. Pausing again, his hands not touching it but spread wide on either side ready to stop any imminent collapse; he attempted the voice of an old English vicar delivering a sermon:
“Man in his hubris decided to build a tower to God, so he may converse with his creator! God though, in his glorious wisdom, decided man should not be allowed to do this and took steps to rectify the situation. So he cursed mankind with the gift of many tongues!”
He smirked at this, his eyes never leaving his tower, and returned to his normal voice.
“Well, many a project, plan or peace has been ruined by the inability of people to understand each other. It might be that humanity is over reaching itself again. With the final proof of the existence of the Higgs-Boson, maybe God’s decided we’re getting too close again, and he’s selfish about his tricks. Time for another lesson perhaps?”
At this he slowly closed his hands into fists on either side of the precarious edifice he had created, then with a single finger gingerly pushed it near the top. With a crash, his metaphorical tower scattered across the table and the floor. He waited until the sound of the books and rubbish
falling had died away before speaking again, this time in a thoughtful voice.
“Maybe the ‘blink’ as they call it was God giving us a heads up, a warning to stop encroaching on his intellectual property, else risk the consequences.”
Then he grinned, his tried and true atheism once more reasserting itself.
“Personally, looking at all the facts so far accumulated, I believe the answer lies even further afield.” he said, a knowing smile on his face.
I took a comfort break at this point, shaking my head at this new conspiracy theory. When I got back, he’d moved on already, his head now buried in the side of a PC tower case now perched on a different desk he reserved for ‘mechanical endeavours’. It was quiet for a while, broken only by
his humming as he fiddled inside the case whilst I looked for somewhere reasonably clean to sit. Then abruptly he spoke again, his voice oddly masked by the case.
“As I was saying, I believe the answers they seek lie further afield. I have statistical proof in fact.”
“Statistics?! You?”
He’d often laughed at statistics in the past, and blamed them for 78.65% of the world’s ills (in his mad pedantry, he had indeed worked out a formula that he said proved this figure). That being said, he told me once he could destroy the world with a single spreadsheet, and in my more fatalistic moments I honestly believed him.
“I accept, statistics in all their perceived infallibility, are the most fallible things in the world.” he mumbled from inside the case, reaching aimlessly for a screwdriver on the desk next to him with a hand coloured orange and black from a mix of grease and Cheetos.
“Take a work of fiction and add numbers to it, and suddenly it becomes non-fiction. Add a pie chart and a graph and it becomes an inviolate truth.”
“Bollocks” said I, only half listening as I lounged on a large dirty bean bag littered with wrappers and the odd wire.
He’d then retracted his head from the case, looked me in the eyes and said with a devilish glint in his own:
“Pass it to the right people in the right places at the right time, and it becomes law.”
“Hmmm” I replied, deciding not to entertain his paranoid fantasies further in favour of a magazine I’d just found on the floor amongst all the other junk haphazardly discarded as part of his less than ordered, less than sanitary, lifestyle.
He grunted at my lack of enthusiasm for continuing one of his favourite topics, and buried his head back in the tower case once more before continuing anyway.
“However, in those cases I am referring to your basic, biased marketing, pressure group and political statistics. Now pattern recognition, that element within the field of otherwise exploitable statistics,
THAT I do have time for.”
Extracting his head again, he looked around the desk the case was on, shifting papers this way and that as he continued, partially lost in thought:
“You’ve heard of SETI of course….”
“Hold on…if we’re heading into alien territory, you can kiss my ass right here and now.”
He fixed me with a glare, and I threw my hands up in the air in resignation, muttering:
“I’m sorry, please continue oh knowledgeable one!”
“Thank you. SETI, the search for extraterrestrial life, one of their jobs being the analysis of signals bouncing in and around our local galaxy.”
“Of which they have never found any conclusive proof of intelligent life.” I reminded him pointedly. He ignored me.
“What if the patterns they’ve been looking for are wrong? What if you could analyze these seemingly random signals another way. What if there is a pattern, but its spread over a longer period so you don’t even see it as a pattern. Ah ha!”
Triumphantly his hand came out of a pile of books clutching a pad of post-it notes, scattering the books across the desk in doing so. Fishing a pen from his trouser pocket, I saw him scribble ‘To Do’ on the top note and slap it on the side of the tower’s case, before turning around to face me with an excited grin on his face.
“Have you been watching the Discovery Channel again? Is there a UFO special on this week?” I asked knowingly.
He looked at me indignantly, though I noticed he quickly closed a TV guide that had been open on his desk amongst the mess.
“What if I told you I had written my own pattern recognition algorithm? What if I told you that I had found a message in those signals?”
“Bullshit.” I said quietly, suddenly a lot less sure of myself, now more than a little shaken by what this meant if he had indeed succeeded in discovering a message from an alien race.
“Well, it wasn’t easy” he continued, feigning an air of false modesty, “…and I do have the NSA to thank. Although if they discover I’ve been running this algorithm in the background on their decryption
supercomputer, then I may have to leave abruptly, or apologize. You never can tell what mood they’ll be in one day to the next…”
“Ben. What about the message?” I said firmly, cutting him short, standing to face him.
“Oh. That.”
He went quiet, looking around evasively. My doubts quickly returned.
“What was the message Ben?”
“Well, it was short, and it is really rather impressive decoding anything like this obviously…”
“Ben!”
He paused, and then said abjectly: “Hello. Are you content?”
There was a few seconds silence, before I started laughing uncontrollably, mostly out of relief. Ben looked indignant.
“Well, I think it’s a very poignant message. Better than ‘Prepare to be annihilated’.”
“Oh god….hold on a sec….I can’t breathe! You had me shitting myself for a moment there!”
“I take it then you don’t believe what I’ve found is a message from an alien race? Would you PLEASE stop laughing!”
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Ahhhhhhh…..Ben, you’ve got to admit, if you were to imagine contact from another species, I think I’d be looking for something a little more, I don’t know, profound? I mean, we’ve sent out a gold disk giving a snapshot of the human race and our knowledge. Music, mathematics, you name it. And what do the hyper intelligent aliens send back? The equivalent of ‘Have a Nice Day!’ ”
“You don’t think it’s from outer space then?” he reiterated.
I looked at his pained expression and answered in a more reasonable voice:
“Look Ben, I’m sorry. I think your algorithm found a pattern that wasn’t there, and extrapolated meaning from it.”
Turning, I returned to the bean bag and my perusal of the magazine.
He stood there a few moments, and then he turned and flopped down in a large, comfortable swivel chair behind another desk, this one littered with laptops in various states of construction and destruction, connected by an array of cables in what appeared like haphazard fashion. Pressing the on switches of three of them, his face was illuminated in the telltale glow of their screens. His focus flitting between the screens and his fingers dancing across the keyboard in front of him, he had nevertheless decided to continue, and began outlining his newest theory.
“I disagree. I’ll go even further and state that this is an alien species with an interest in the human race. A species directly involved in the evolution of mankind.”
“Here we go. Are we really back on the ‘Engineers’ theory once more? Has Ridley Scott been sending you secret messages in his films again?” I muttered, not looking up from the page I was now reading.
He ignored this and continued:
“Think about it. The human body is an amazing machine. It regulates itself, heals itself, and has the ability to create more of itself through reproduction…”
“I thought you only believed in things you had experienced for yourself?” I asked; peering over the top of the magazine at him, my voice now openly amused. I saw him scowl before he continued with his monologue.
“As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted, the human body is an amazing machine. And that is exactly what it is. A piece of technology, built using biological parts rather than mechanical ones. It is not however, a perfect machine.”
“What do you mean?” I asked despite myself.
“Well, think about it. It has its own defensive capabilities in the form of white blood cells to ward off illness, the ability to heal wounds, etcetera, etcetera. Occasionally though, this excellent piece of machinery goes wrong; it functions incorrectly. It overreacts to certain stimuli. It has a
faulty piece of code if you will.”
“And what’s that?”
“Why, cancer of course!”
“What?!” I asked, shocked despite myself. It was only another crazy conversation with Ben, but the word ‘cancer’ always sent an involuntary shiver down my spine. I’d seen enough of its effects on friends and family to be adverse to even its mentioning. Ben though, oblivious to my discomfort, had continued:
“Cancer is the body performing incorrect actions, creating cells where it does not need to. It’s not an attack from an external source causing this, but rather an internal failure of the biological system. A
mistake nothing more.”
“We have in essence, a design flaw, and if our God or Gods are supposedly infallible, then logic dictates we were not built by a benign omnipotent being, but rather are constructs of more fallible ones. Action should have been taken to rectify these errors. To complain if you will.”
Despite myself, I took another look over the magazine at him; nervous now for a reason I couldn’t quite put my finger on:
“What. Did. You. Do?”
“Why, I sent a message back telling them this of course!”
——————————————————————————————–
I hadn’t seen Ben in six months. Work had kept me busy in London, and he wasn’t one for texting or casual telephone conversations to catch up. Then one day he called me up suddenly to come visit.
By this time, snippets of information about ‘the blink’ had begun to leak out onto the internet, on even some of the more respected sites and journals. Most normal people saw it as just another mad conspiracy theory. Having spoken to Ben before though when he’d outlined all the data, the fact
that other sources were now relaying the same information sent chills through me. It was one thing for it being just another of his crazy theories, but quite another when a growing number of external bodies were now seeming to confirm the event’s existence.
This time when I rang his doorbell he answered on the first ring, but I wasn’t ready for the sight when he opened the door. He was haggard and tired, like he hadn’t slept in days, and his clothes were rumpled and dirty, even more so than normal. As I stood there I caught a look in his eyes. They were bloodshot and there were large, dark circles under them, but there was a calm I hadn’t seen before, which was echoed in his voice as he welcomed me in. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it at first, but then it dawned on me; I had seen and heard this kind of response before in those who were in the
final stages of terminal illness: acceptance. I felt my body prickle with unease; that chill that ripples across your skin when you stop thinking in the past or the future and all your attention is suddenly focused on the NOW because you know the world you’re used to is about to change in some
fundamental way.
I paused in the doorway, and looked him in the eyes. Then without thinking I drew him into a massive bear hug. Ben had never been one for physical contact in all the time I’d know him, but he accepted the hug without question, and I felt some of the tension release from him. We parted after a
short while and I asked him sincerely:
“Are you okay? Nothing wrong with you?”
“No…No…Nothing physically at least.”
“Good. Good, because you look like shit.”
He laughed weakly at that, and then quieted. We stood there silently for a few moments, before the thought that had been nagging at my mind since he’d invited me forced itself out:
“I’ve noticed on the web there’s been a lot of noise about this ‘blink’ thing you mentioned last time. I was wondering…did you get an answer?”
He smiled weakly, ignoring my question, inviting me in and simply pointing me to the large bean bag for me to sit, as I had done so many times before. If anything his apartment was even messier than the last time, but somehow the impression of organized chaos was gone. This was just mess that
had been left to accumulate, like the owner no longer cared.
As I sat down, he went over to a desk and fiddled with a laptop, moved some random items on the desk, almost like he was stalling. Then turning to face me, resting himself against the desk, he asked me in a vague voice:
“Do you remember what I was talking about the last time you visited?”
“You mean the alien thing?” I answered, trying to make my voice sound light, the smirk on my face forced and obviously fake. I’d given in to his suspicions and he knew it. Before he would’ve rubbed this fact in my face, but today he didn’t. Such things didn’t seem to matter to him anymore,
which made my voiceless fears even greater.
“Not just humanity, but all life on Earth, has been engineered. An external source created it, and maintained it. It is my belief…”, at this he uttered a dry, mocking laugh at his use of a word he had previously despised.
“It is my belief now that the Earth has experienced various ‘stages’ of life. There have probably been several of these stages, back from when Earth was first formed, up to and including today. Of these earlier ‘versions’ we have no substantial evidence of. The last one before us though, we do have several indicators lying around.”
He left it hanging, waiting for my mind to catch up. It didn’t take long, although I was surprised at how easily I was accepting what was possibly another one of his eccentric theories.
“You mean the dinosaurs don’t you?” I said quietly; his restraint somehow infecting me as well now.
A small smile arranged itself on his lips again, though the sadness never left his eyes.
“Indeed. Those big stumbling sods before us. For the sake of clarity, I’ve classed them as Version 5.0 of life on Earth. We are Version 6.0 I now have reason to believe.”
“What about your message, did you get an answer?” I asked again, a bit more impatiently.
“Not just my message. The Earth’s been sending radio signals and more out for quite a few years now. If we can find their signals as I’ve proven, they can certainly pick up ours, even the unintended ones.”
“What are you trying to say?”
“That they got our messages, and they took action.”
I tried to swallow now in a dry throat.
“What action?”
“You work in technical support. What is usually your first recommendation when something stops working correctly?”
“I don’t know…usually turning it off and back on again does the trick in the majority of cases…”
At this my voice trailed off as I realized what he was implying, what this said about March 25th and the lost 27 minutes and 54 seconds.
Ben started laughing, trailing off into a sad cough as he saw what he’d said take hold in my mind. Then he suddenly went off at a tangent, just like the old days, and I listened despite the sick feeling in the pit of my stomach at what I was now thinking.
“Chariots of the Gods! Chariots of the frigging Gods! Imagine that. Aliens coming down to teach ancient civilizations new tricks. Or maybe they didn’t. Maybe Version 6.0 was still under warranty at the time and part of that warranty included on-site maintenance. Hell, my money’s on the Greek gods actually being extraterrestrial consultants sent down to fix bug problems. Makes you wonder which fucked up piece of code triggered Pompeii!”
“SHUT UP!” I suddenly raged. Maybe he was in one of his mad phases again, but I knew that he wasn’t. The sane, logical part of me didn’t want any more truth; knew I couldn’t handle any more.
I looked up, and Ben was staring at me, not in anger, but in sympathy. He settled down next to me on the bean bag, passing me a beer he had obviously just fished out of the small fridge he kept behind his desk. I took a long swig, let my breathing settle, and then passed it back. Taking that as a
cue to continue, he did, but quieter this time, less tinged with the hysterical note that had appeared to be emerging in his speech earlier, like he’d reached the peak of his madness and was now trailing off the other side.
“It would explain why so many people believed in pantheons of Gods back in the day. Alien engineers popping down to fix ‘the system’ whilst we were still covered. Just like Microsoft ending support for older versions of Windows though, maybe we just passed the date where Version 6.0 of
life on Earth was covered, so they stopped coming.”
He took a swig and passed it back, his voice now wistful, his eyes unfocused, trying to look across the unfathomable void to where he imagined our progenitors resided:
“And now, in this age of radio and microwave signals, the people of Earth are finally sending messages and emails that can be picked up by their ‘Gods’, bemoaning this and that failure with their bodies, their families and the world around them, demanding answers, and these messages
tumble out across the ether of space, picked up by some backwater tech support desk in some forgotten nebula. The number of messages reaches a critical mass, a statistical point where action must be taken, and some alien equivalent of a high school dropout named Gary checks a scrap of paper on his desk for the instructions to an age old piece of software…”
He downed the rest of his beer.
“…and then turns it off and on again.”
Silence reigned for a few minutes, during which he stood up and made another trip to the fridge, this time bringing back several more bottles. He settled back down on the bean bag and passed me one before he spoke again.
“I got a message back you know.” he said simply.
I looked at him incredulously, and then demanded:
“Jesus Ben! What did it say?!”
His eyes were dark, pausing a long while before reaching into his back pocket and slowly unfolding a piece of paper, mumbling something about ‘decryption software’, ‘language analysis’ and ‘Word auto-formatting’ before passing it to me. It read:
—————————————–
Dear EARTH,
Thank you for replying in regard our recent query as to your ongoing happiness with your software. We passed on your multiple concerns to the relevant technical support helpdesk.
Unfortunately ongoing support for your current version of LIFE 6.0 has ended. The initial reboot of your hardware/software attempted previously appears to have not resolved your issue(s). Therefore we will be refreshing your system to previous stable release LIFE 5.3.
Your contract does not include backup/restoration of existing data, so all current data will be wiped post version LIFE 5.3.
Thank you for using LIFE and please contact us if further issues occur.
Best Regards.
—————————————–
“Refresh?” was all I could mutter, confusion and dread dulling my senses.
“Using the version numbering as a guide, my guess is that would be resetting the Earth back to the late Jurassic period.” he murmured thoughtfully, taking another swig of beer.
“I sent a message back of course, asking them not to do anything. I even couched it in the proper terms: ‘We have decided to continue with our current installation, please do not reboot nor refresh the system. Please ignore all other bug reports unless forwarded by me. Ben Glover, Sysadmin of Earth’. Hopefully they got it in time.”
“Bug reports?”
“Prayers”
“Oh.”
Then I looked at him again, the look of disbelief obvious in my eyes.
“Sysadmin of Earth??”
He didn’t meet my gaze, but rather sheepishly kept his eyes locked to his beer bottle.
“Well, I had to sound like I was in charge didn’t I?”
“Do you think they got your message?” I asked hopefully after a pause.
“I honestly don’t know. We can hope though. By my calculations we’ll know in the next couple of hours or so. It’s why I invited you over I guess. So we can watch the end together. Then again, we might just wink out of existence…” his voice trailed off.
Silence reigned again, broken only by our occasional sips. There wasn’t, in all truth, very much else to say.
After a while he finished his beer, rested it gently down next to him, and then yawned expansively, leaning back on the bean bag with his hands clasped behind his head and said matter-of-factly:
“Well to be perfectly honest, I don’t think the dinosaurs were given a fair enough crack of the whip the first time round. Only right they should be given another go.”
I turned in disbelief to argue with him at this irresponsible attitude, and then saw the barely suppressed laughter in his eyes. When all was said and done, what was there left to do but wait and see what happened, and laugh at the absurdity of it all? He started, and I joined in, till the tears were rolling down our cheeks.
And there we sat, laughing and drinking beer until our world ended… maybe.
Credit To – Charmingly Shallow
|
My father told me a story once. I’ll never forget it, for a few reasons. I think it’s the first story he ever told me as a child. It’s also the story of how my grandfather died. But honestly, that isn’t the reason.
You hear stories on TV, or sometimes you overhear something in a public place. People talk about ghosts and aliens, and you think to yourself, “That ain’t real. They’re making it up, or they’re mistaken, or they’re crazy,” or something like that. You just can’t believe it. That is, until something happens. Something that brings it all together, connects the dots in a way you didn’t think of before. Maybe it happens to you, or maybe you hear the same story, again and again, from different people. It doesn’t take long for the world to become a lot bigger than you thought it was.
As I said, this is a story my father told me, but I never believed it, even though he swore up and down it was true. It wasn’t until I started clicking around the internet that I started to believe. I started to hear other stories just like the one my father told me. It didn’t take me long to believe after that.
That’s not what my father called it, of course. He’s never used the internet in his life. He wouldn’t know what the online community had taken to calling it. When he chose to call it something other than “it” or “that thing”, he called it a “skinwalker”, after an old Cherokee tale his grandfather told him.
But I’ll tell you the story, the way he told it to me:
“We were out hunting one night, in the woods surrounding the dairy farm in Ohio where we lived at the time,” he’d tell me. “We were tracking coyotes. We’d kill ‘em for fifty bucks a skin. They’d kill calves sometimes. We’d do it every night because we needed the money. Sometimes, while we were out, we’d come on a deer and kill it. Our landlord didn’t mind, and it could feed our family for a few nights and save us some money.
“Anyway, we were done making our rounds and heading home, walking ’cause we didn’t have a car or four-wheeler back then. We’d cut through the woods. That’s when we came upon it.
“Blood, everywhere. Splattered on the trees, in the grass, in the creek, everywhere. At first, we figured it was a pack of coyotes. We’d seen how, sometimes, when they weren’t able to scavenge for whatever reason, they’d start hunting deer or cattle out of desperation. The worst was when they bred with feral dogs. But this wasn’t like that.
“You see, when a pack of dogs, wolves or coyotes attack something, they do it right. They’ll pick off one that’s weak, sick, or old, or just small. They’ll hunt it, draw it into a corner, someplace it can’t get out off, and they’ll run it right to the biggest one, the alpha. And that deer will never see that alpha. It might hear it, but it won’t see it. All of a sudden its throat will be torn out, and it’ll drop dead. It’s quick, and it’s clean. That wasn’t what happened here.
“Something had come upon a group of deer. Coyotes won’t attack a group. Wolves wouldn’t either; they’d get too much of a fight. There were three, I think. Three bodies, just torn apart. You’d see a head or a torso here, a leg there. Predators don’t do that. They don’t leave scraps behind. Whatever had done this hadn’t done it for food… It had done it for fun. But we didn’t know that at the time, of course. We just saw a bunch of carcasses and figured it’s something we had to take care of. I remember my dad telling me to go home, that he thought it was the work of a pack of feral dogs.
“But I wasn’t leaving him, and I damn sure wasn’t hiking through two miles of woods alone, in the dark, with nothing but a .22 and a pocket knife. I was only thirteen at the time, so a .22 rifle was the only gun I could reliably use. Dad had the shotgun, and I wasn’t going anywhere without it or him.
“It took me a while to convince him, but finally we began tracking whatever did that. It wasn’t hard, either; we just followed the blood. Either that thing bled a deer before it got away, or it dragged one for a mile. I don’t know. What I do know is that I’d never seen my dad scared before that night.
“We started hearing the most horrible sounds. Now, I’ve been in a lot of woods in my life, and I’ve been all over the world, but I ain’t never heard noises like I heard that night. I heard things screaming.
“I heard deer, fox, rabbits, raccoons, and birds, all of them afraid of something and hightailing it. Keep in mind, this is maybe twelve or one o’clock in the morning. Except for the fox and some birds, nothing was supposed to be awake at that hour. But they weren’t just awake, mind you. They were on the run! That night, I saw flocks of birds flying straight into trees trying to escape… something. We came upon a pack of coyotes, and nearly shot a couple thinking they had their eyes on us, but then we saw they were running in from someone, nothing toward us. They didn’t even notice us and went right past.
“Then some deer did the same. Then some rabbits, squirrels, and foxes. Even a couple of wild hogs. These critters were supposed to be hunting each other, and the only thing they cared about was getting as far away from there as possible.
“We should have put two and two together, that maybe whatever we were tracking wasn’t something we were supposed to see, and wasn’t something we could kill. To this day, I don’t know why we didn’t just go home. I guess we were curious. I think that was my dad’s nature, to go toward trouble, to fight. And being aware of the things my father did during the war, I figured it was best to stay by his side.
“We finally reached an open valley. It was normally a soy field, but it wasn’t in season, so it was just flat dirt. That’s when we saw the tracks. Animals fleeing the forest had leveled everything in their path. But where that deer blood was, nothing had taken a single step. It was like whatever was responsible had left it for us to find.
“The tracks were shallow. Whatever it was couldn’t have weighed more than one hundred pounds, but that didn’t mean much. A bobcat weighing forty pounds soaking wet can tear out your throat if you ain’t careful. The fact this thing was on the lighter side just meant it was probably quick and was going to be tough to hit.
“So we followed the tracks, and it didn’t take us long to find where they led. There’s an old schoolhouse that sits on the top of a hill. Half of it had been ripped out by a tornado, but nobody lived there, not for a long time. Sometimes we caught homeless people in there, or drug addicts looking for a safe place to shoot up. We figured maybe that was it. Maybe it was some sick kid riding a high. But we didn’t think that for long.
“When we got to within fifty yards, we heard a noise. A sort of screech made up of two different sounds. One was high-pitched, and another was a low growl. It was making both sounds, at the same time, if that makes any sense.
“We approached to within twenty yards, and we heard another sound, different this time. I remember thinking that it sounded like paper being torn apart, while someone was swinging water back and forth in a bucket.
“Dad looked at me, knelt down, and whispered. He told me I had to stay behind him, because we’re about to corner our prey. Any animal will fight when it’s cornered, especially a predator. But we can tell by the tracks that there’s only one. He tells me it’s probably a single feral dog, most likely rabid.
“The plan, he said, was to sneak up on it while it was eating, shoot it, and then keep shooting it till it didn’t move anymore, then slit its throat. And if it got to dad, it was my job to shoot or stab it to get it off him. So he walked up with me right behind him, just a tad to his side, so I can see what it is. I wish to this day I hadn’t.
“It was leaning over a carcass, tearing off its flesh, and throwing what it didn’t nibble at aside. There was blood all over the brick, glistening in the moonlight. It was pale white, and looked a little like a man, but not quite human. It had arms and legs like ours, but it sat like a monkey, hunched over. And its hands weren’t normal; it had long fingers with claws at the end.
“So we saw that, and my dad hesitated. He wasn’t about to fire at a person. So he cleared his throat to try and get it to turn around.
“I swear to God almighty, all the noise just ceased in an instant. I ain’t ever heard true silence before that, and never again afterward. But for two seconds, nothing made any noise. And I mean nothing. This made it all the louder when that thing turned around, made this shrill cry, and pounced on dad.
“He got a shot off. I think he missed. If he hit it, it didn’t faze the thing at all. But it was on him, tearing entire parts of him off. I started shooting it with the .22, point-blank, but the thing barely bled at all. I got off five rounds, and then I started hitting it with the butt of the gun. It didn’t budge, or even register that I was there.
“It was clawing at my dad, removing whole chunks of his flesh. It started on his torso, peeling off the skin on his chest, and then it moved up. It tore out his throat, ripped his nose clean off, and gouged out his eyes. Then it scalped him, and started digging in. I stood there, helpless, as it ripped off the bottom half of his jaw, the little bones and that tube in his neck, and then his ribs.
“I don’t exactly remember what happened, but somehow my dad’s knife ended up in this thing’s shoulder, and my dad, what was left of him, that is, ended up on my back. I was running, and by God, I was going faster than I’d ever run before or after. And it was following me. I ended up back in the forest, opposite the woods we started in. I was heading towards my landlord’s house because it was the closest thing to help nearby. But even that was half-a-mile away.
“All the while, I could hear the thing screeching and moaning. I heard branches cracking and getting thrown around. It was cracking so loud and often that it sounded like someone was taking an axe to every single tree I passed. But I never looked back, not once. The thought didn’t even cross my mind.
“Finally, I tripped and fell into some gravel. I looked up to see my landlord and a bunch of his buddies drinking around a campfire. I screamed and cried, and they came over. I told them to call an ambulance, and my landlord looked at me and said something I’ll never forget.
“‘What is that on your back?’ he asked me. Just as the words left his mouth, it dawned on him without my saying a word. It was one of those godawful flannel shirts my dad wore everywhere, he realized. And it was damn near all that was left of my dad. Aside from a bit of my father’s head and torso, that’s all there was. Absolutely nothing below the waist.
“Suddenly, we heard it. The screeching. My landlord grabbed me, causing me to drop what’s left of dad on the ground. And I was fighting him, crying, because I thought we could still save him, somehow. But the truth is, my dad had been gone well before I ever picked him up, and all I’d done was carry a corpse back home. My landlord had to pick me up and throw me inside before I would go with him.
“He and his buddies, all of us went inside together, and they locked the doors and got their guns. The landlord asked me, ‘What happened!? What happened?!’ But I didn’t know what to tell him. He pieced enough of it together to understand that there was something dangerous out there. All the lights in the house were on, and someone called the cops. They would get there as soon as they could, they said, but that meant in fifteen minutes.
“We looked outside and saw it walk in front of the fire they’d made. No one knew what it was. One of them said it looked like an ape. Suddenly, something came crashing through the window. We all fired at it, but quickly realized it wasn’t the thing. No. It was my landlord’s dog. Well, his body, anyway. His head and legs were missing.
“We had just started pushing things in front of doors and windows to form a barricade, when we heard something in the garage. I remember one of his friends saying that the doors were open. We heard metal and glass being ripped and smashed. We dragged the couch and TV in front of the door to the garage, for added measure.
“It banged around some more, but then it got quiet. Not silent, like it was before. We could hear it move around some, and the guys were talking, making sure their guns were ready. Someone handed me a pistol. No sooner had I cocked the hammer back when we heard something shatter upstairs. Then we heard it screech again, except this time it was louder, and it didn’t echo and fade out. Because it was inside.
“We all rushed to the one door that led upstairs, and we got to it just as that thing did. It opened it just a bit, and four or five men just slammed into it. It managed to get its hand through. Someone with a shotgun took care of that. Put the barrel right up to its wrist and pulled the trigger. Blew its hand clean off.
“That only pissed it off, though. It started shoving that door, clawing. We were on one side, pushing as best we could, and it was on the other, doing the same. The wood wasn’t going to hold, so someone told us to keep our heads down. Suddenly the top half of the door was gone and my ears were ringing. There were splinters everywhere. Two or three of them had just unloaded on the top of the door.
“I don’t really know where it went after that. The police got there. I was still glued to what was left of the door. The sun was up before they pried me loose. They put me in a hospital for a while. While I was there, a whole lot of people talked to me, but I didn’t respond. Not for a long, long time.
“When I got back home, I got a job for the landlord, working on the farm. We didn’t talk much, not about the thing. But, I signed up for the army when I was nineteen, and he sat me down to drink some scotch as a send-off. I asked him, right away, what the police told him. The story they went with was that it was a wild animal, probably a wolf, or maybe a bear that had migrated north. I asked him how they could say that when they had the hand. He looked at me, stunned.
“He told me that the hand never made it back to the station. The cop who had it in his car got into a wreck. Drove into a tree, and died on impact. The hand was never found, likely taken by an animal. The cops, when they would acknowledge the hand existed at all, said it was simply the paw of a bear that resembled a man’s.
“I never talked to the landlord again. He went missing while I was in basic training, and no one ever saw him again. There were rumors that he owed some people some money and skipped town, but I don’t think it’s that simple.
“As for me, I never went back to those woods. I wouldn’t even if I had the whole goddamn U.S. Army at my back.”
* * * * * *
That was the extent of what my father told me about the incident in the woods.
There’s just one problem, however: my father lied.
When my mother died, I don’t think my father felt he had anything left, and that he might as well settle old scores. He returned to the woods, and he never came back either. The FBI was called, and they came and put on a show for everyone involved, but I knew they weren’t really looking. I had to get an agent drunk and slip him a few fifties before he finally told me that they get a few calls about those woods every year, about someone up and vanishing. But that was all he wanted to tell me. Before he got up and left with the rest of his team, he wrote the name they’d given the creature on a napkin. Of course, I didn’t realize that’s what it was at first. It wasn’t until I put the words in a search engine online that I understood what they meant.
Honestly, I would have rather not known. As it turns out, there are hundreds of stories just like my father’s, as well as photos and drawings of the thing. And though the details vary, everyone who has encountered it agrees on one thing: it’s still out there, and there isn’t a man on earth that can stop it.
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Um… hi there. I guess you could say I’m writing this as a cautionary tale to those who plan on studying abroad in future. I don’t mean to discourage you from going in the first place, it’s more like I just want you to be aware of this so that something like this doesn’t happen to you too.
I guess I should explain a little bit. Last summer I was selected to participate in the study abroad program that would be centered in Rome for several months. Like anyone would be, I was elated. I had never been out of the states before, so this was going to be a real adventure for me.
In the weeks that followed I happily packed anything and everything I could fit into my suitcase. (I will be the first to admit that I had way over packed for this trip.) I was nervous about leaving my parents for the first time but I was also excited for the newfound freedom I would have while in Europe. Before I knew it my parents were dropping me off at the airport, and I was boarding a 19 hour flight to Rome.
Despite being long and tedious, the flight wasn’t all that bad. When I exited the airport I was greeted by the program supervisor and several other students who would be studying with me. They were about the same age and all looked just as excited as me. From there we went to our mandatory orientation meeting, and afterwards we went to pick up our apartment keys.
In the months that preceded the trip, we were responsible for getting to know our would be roommates as well as finding a place to stay that we could all afford. There were three girls I would be staying with. They were all nice enough and made an effort to make me feel welcome, though I will admit it’s a bit hard to get close to the group of preformed friends. But despite my slight alienation, it seemed that things were all going to work out well. All of us were on a similar budget plan, and by that I mean none of us really had much money to spend. Because of this we were all on the same page while searching for the cheapest apartment we could find.
After several days of searching we stumbled across an ad for an ancient apartment located above the Campo di Fiori. That was a prime location and we couldn’t believe it that it was still available, no less listed for an unbelievably low price. This immediately sent alarm bells off in my head. The place was enormous yet the rent was cheaper than the much smaller apartments in a far less desirable part of town. However reason never really wins out in a group of excited young women. They had already made up their minds and if I would be staying with them this was my only option.
We each received our own set of keys as well as a map with walking directions. Because of its prime location it really didn’t take us long to get there. The Campo was amazing. During the daytime it was filled with a vibrant market, while during the evening it was lined with lively street performers. All of the apartments surrounding it looked to be ancient, so ours really didn’t stand out all that much. After circling the square three or four times we finally noticed the number nailed to the front of a massive old wooden door. This would be our home for the next three months.
I fought with my keys for a moment until there was an audible click of the heavy old lock. The thick old door swung forward with a screech. We were then met with a long winding staircase. We all looked at one another and groaned. None of us had accounted for the fact that the building had been constructed before elevators were common. So three sets of stairs and countless complaints later, all four of us, with luggage in hand stood outside our new front door. Once again I reached for my set of keys and fought with the stubborn lock. As soon as the front door was opened there was a stampede of young women trying to claim the best rooms. Being a three-bedroom apartment, it meant that two of us would have to share. I personally didn’t really care so I let the others battle it out. When the dust had settled, I found that I would be sharing a room with a girl called Stephanie. That was fine with me. Stephanie was nice enough and she was also very quiet, my ideal feature in a roommate.
Over the course of the rest of the day we ran around exploring our new home. There were two bathrooms, a full kitchen, and a living room with an ancient TV. Once again I began to feel uneasy. Just how was it that we were able to get all of this for such a low price? But before I could finish the thought I was interrupted by a fit of loud squealing. My initial reaction was to panic, however I soon learned that all the noise was from excitement. Down at the other end of the apartment near the front door, apparently there was another part of the flat we had missed. I followed the noise until it led me to a long dark hallway. There at the end, behind the group of squealing women was a washing and drying machine. For those of you thinking “what’s the big deal?”, I should explain that these things are incredibly rare in Rome. Generally exchange students have to wash their clothes by hand in the sink before hanging them up to dry. What was a luxury item like this doing in such a cheap apartment?
Just as the screaming quelled it picked right back up again as the girls noticed a door adjacent to the washing machine. Beyond that door was a master bathroom. It had a balcony, a claw-foot tub, and even a bidet. The girls immediately started fighting over “who’s bathroom this was going to be”. I didn’t really see why we couldn’t share, but apparently the others were dead set on having ownership. As it turned out it ended up being my bathroom. Stephanie had made a logical argument that because she and I had to share a bedroom, while the other two each got their own, it was only fair that she and I got share the master bath. And I’ll admit that at first I was actually kind of excited, it was after all, a really nice room. However over the course of the next several weeks I began to grow more and more wary of the room. I don’t know how to put it into words. It’s like every time I went into that room I could feel something’s eyes on me. And the voyeuristic element wasn’t really what had me so unnerved. It felt like whatever was watching me was angry, that it didn’t want me there and that it wanted to hurt me.
I began doing everything in my power to avoid the room. I asked Alisha if she would mind if I were to use her restroom occasionally. I made up a lame excuse about how it was far more convenient since her room was so close while my bathroom was at the other end of the flat at the end of the very long hallway. She happily agreed though, when I told her that she could use my bathroom anytime she liked. This worked well for a while. For about the first two months of my trip I was able to completely avoid the eerie room. It wasn’t until the final month that everything began to unravel. One night as I prepared to brush my teeth, I found that Alisha was already occupying her bathroom. I could hear giggles coming from down the hallway, it was clear both Stephanie and our other roommate were both getting ready for bed in the master bath. I decided that since there was strength in numbers, it would be all right just for tonight.
So I made my way down to the large bathroom where I joined the boisterous girls in brushing my teeth. They were in the midst of some conversation when Lindsay, our other roommate, had broken into such a furious fit of laughter that she had to lean on the wall for support. But suddenly she jolted upright as if she had been shocked. We all looked at what had been the cause of her reaction: there on the wall, about the same level as the bathtub was a tiny door. None of us had noticed it because it was the same color as walls. The landlord had even painted over it. Naturally this made me a bit nervous. Whatever it was, the landlord clearly didn’t want anyone opening it. But as usual, throwing all caution to the wind Lindsay reached for the handle and began tugging with all her might. Stephanie clucked her tongue in disapproval before pulling out a small pocket knife. She began delicately carving along the seam of the door. I wanted to beg her to stop, but I really didn’t have the energy to argue that night. So within a few minutes, Lindsay had yanked the little door open with a loud crack.
It was… a crawlspace. It was fairly large. My guess would’ve been you could have fit at least three or four people in there. I was rather curious as to why the landlord would’ve sealed up an empty little room. While I thought about this, Stephanie and Lindsay began calling for Alisha to come see their new discovery. She was just as excited as they were when they first discovered it. However, as could be expected, this excitement waned over time and eventually the crawlspace was just turned into storage for a few towels and laundry baskets.
In the following days after the unsealing of the crawlspace, things started to go from eerie to downright terrifying. Annoyingly, Alisha had changed her nightly routine so that I could no longer use her bathroom in the evenings. Once again I was back in the large bathroom, all the while, the feeling that I was being watched growing worse and worse. I began to get so paranoid each time I went into that room that I would literally jump at the slightest noise of pipes settling, and as soon as I was finished I would run at full speed down the hallway and close the door behind me. For some reason I seemed to be the only one feeling this way. It’s not like I could’ve told the other girls either. I was already enough of an outcast as it was. So I just kept to myself and hoped it would go away eventually.
Unfortunately that wasn’t the case. One night as I was getting ready for bed, I found myself alone in the bathroom. As I stood in front of the mirror brushing my teeth something set the hairs on the back of my neck straight up. There was a faint rustling noise. Not the kind that could’ve been caused from my roommates at the other end of the flat. Any noises caused by them would have had to have been quite loud to reach me all the way at the end of the long hallway. No this noise was very faint, the sound of someone gingerly shuffling things around. I stood completely silent, terror filling me. The soft rustling noise was coming from inside the crawlspace. I turned on my heels and ran down the hallway to grab the attention of my roommates. I tried to explain to them what happened, but all that came out were incoherent murmurs.
Eventually I managed to stutter “S-Something. Something’s inside the crawlspace!”
They looked at me with fear and confusion in their eyes. As a pack we moved together down the hallway into the bathroom. I nearly fainted when I saw the tiny door hanging fully ajar. Though this discovery filled me with horror, Alisha immediately pointed to the balcony’s sliding door. Stephanie had left it open to air out the bathroom after having taken a shower several hours ago. She peeked her head out the door and pointed to the slanted rooftop adjacent to ours. There was a pigeons nest occupied by few birds. The girls surmised that a pigeon must have found its way in and was the cause of the disturbance. They all had a good laugh as we made our way back to the living room. I pretended to shake it off but I knew it was not a pigeon that caused the rustling noise. First off, the tiny door had been shut tight all day. None of us really cared to leave it open because it smelled quite musty inside. And secondly, the door had been shut when I left the bathroom, I am certain of this, yet there it was wide open when I returned. You’re not going to tell me that a pigeon knows how to and is capable of opening and closing a door all by itself.
It was at this point that I began to suspect that something was terribly wrong with this apartment. When I got back to my room I pulled out my laptop and called my best friend via Skype. She had always been the skeptical and methodical type, however she also kept an open mind towards things that were hard to explain. I decided that out of anyone she was probably the best to talk to about my situation. As I expected, she was initially quite doubtful. Though she also agreed with me that a pigeon was quite likely not the source. She asked me if I had any photos of the crawlspace. She said that if she could see it, that would help her to understand a little more clearly, and possibly help her to come up with a more logical explanation.
Relieved at her willingness to at least hear me out, I reached for my camera and made my way back down the eerie hallway. When I arrived I found, to my relief, that the door was still closed. I stood in front of it for a moment, gathering my nerve before finally pulling the little door open. Despite the clutter left inside by my roommates, it was empty. I snapped a quick photo before closing the door once more and running back to my room. I immediately plugged my camera into my computer and uploaded the photo. When I finally opened the image, I was petrified by what I saw. There in the upper right-hand corner was a face, baring its teeth at me. My whole body began violently shaking.
“Dear God. That thing is in our home!” I muttered to myself.
Fear began to overtake me. Someone had sealed whatever it was inside of that crawlspace, and we had let it out. I was so absorbed in my panic I didn’t even notice when my roommate returned. She was so blissfully unaware of the imminent danger we were in, yet even if I tried to warn her she would not believe me. I was at a loss of what to do, and finally decided that I would deal with it in the morning. Though not by a large amount, I did feel braver in the sunlight. From there I attempted to get some sleep. Though for the first time ever since being there I closed and bolted my door before getting into bed. Stephanie eyed me suspiciously while doing so, but I just told her jokingly that Lindsay had been sneaking into our room the previous nights and had been stealing my nutella. She laughed heartily, shaking her head before settling down for the night. I will admit that the only reason I was able to find any sleep that night was because of her presence. Something about not being alone can give one a sense of false security.
It was about two o’clock in the morning when the sound woke me. I had always been a light sleeper so the faint noise was enough to stir me. It sounded like a door being pushed open at the other end of the flat followed by footsteps. But these weren’t just normal footsteps. They were far too fast. It sounded like someone was running at full speed from the foyer to the living room and all about the apartment. But these weren’t heavy footfalls like the kind you would expect from a running person. They were very light, almost unnaturally so. My initial reaction was to assume it was either Alisha or Lindsay, so I got up and stuck my ear to the wall behind me that separated Lindsay’s room from mine. I could hear her faint but steady breathing. She was clearly asleep, it wasn’t her. I then crossed over to the other side of my room near the door and once again stuck my ear to the wall. Alisha’s snoring was quite audible, there’s no way it was her. I slowly began to grow fearful as I turned in a last resort to see if Stephanie had perhaps gotten up, but I could plainly see her resting form silently rising up and down. A shiver went down my spine and I nearly screamed when I realized that the footsteps had come to a stop outside of my door. Despite all the lights being out, I could clearly see the looming dark shadow of a form through the tiny crack at the foot of my door.
I dared not move. Whatever it was, it was just standing there. Waiting. Then to my horror, my doorknob slowly began to jiggle. Gently at first but then growing violent at the realization of it being locked. The noise of it eventually woke my roommate. She sat up, blinking in confusion. That instant the jiggling of the doorknob stopped. She asked me just what the hell I was doing and if I knew what time it was. I told her it wasn’t me! I told her that whatever had opened the door to the crawlspace the previous day had come back. But she just furrowed her brow at me and said that I needed to get more sleep.
The next day I made an appointment with my programs supervisor. I told him that I just needed to go home. He tried to tell me that I was just homesick and that it would pass, but I insisted. He eventually gave up and let me call my parents. They were confused but understanding. They were able to change the date of my return flight to the following morning. I really wanted to get out of there that day, but understandably that was the soonest they could manage. Unfortunately this meant that I would have to stay one more night in the apartment.
When I returned I tried to tell the others about what had been going on. I knew I was going to be getting out of there and would be out of danger, but I was still immensely worried for their safety. But none of them took me seriously, they looked at me as if I was a mad woman. They didn’t say anything but I was sure they all thought I was going home because of some sort of mental breakdown.
At that point there was nothing I could say that would convince them. So that night I locked my door and hesitantly went to bed. And right on cue, once again around two o’clock in the morning I was awoken by the rapid footsteps scampering around the apartment. I could hear the door to the bathroom begin to creak open, followed by the door at the end of the hallway. The footsteps grew louder and faster as they moved through the apartment. And finally, once more they came to a pause outside of my door. I could hear breathing this time, slow and heavy. I sat up in panic, and to my horror I saw that Stephanie had forgotten to lock the door behind her after getting up to use the restroom.
It was right outside my door and I did not know if I had time to jump up and try to lock it before the thing realized there was nothing blocking its way. I hesitated a moment too long and by the time I had sat up straight in my bed, the handle slowly began to turn. I froze in terror as the door cracked open revealing my tormentor. It stood there ominously in the doorway, staring me down. It’s eyes protruded slightly from its skull and gave off a very faint bluish light. It didn’t appear to have a nose, only slits where the nostril should have been. It had the teeth of a man, but had no lips, giving it the impression of an eternally toothy snarl. It’s grayish white skin was waxy and stretched tight over its bony face. The rest of its skeletal form was hard to make out as it was almost entirely enveloped in shadows.
After pausing for a moment in the doorway, it began to head toward me. As it moved, its body let out sickening cracks. I sat there, still petrified by fear until it had made its way to the foot of my bed. It’s heavy breaths were deafeningly loud. I don’t know how Stephanie slept through it. The air had begun to smell sour and stagnant.
With frightening speed, it jolted to the other end of the bed, mere feet from me. I gagged at the smell of it, like sulfur and rotting flesh. Slowly it unfurled one of its along the gnarly hands and proceeded to reach for me. Not until it was several inches away did I finally find my voice. I screamed as loud as I possibly could and it halted in its tracks. Stephanie shot up from her bed, visibly frightened. The creature hunched over on all fours and fled from the room with unsettling movements that recalled those of the spider. A moment later Stephanie switched the light on and looked at me furiously. She demanded to know what the fuss was all about. I told her exactly what had happened, but she just called me a nutcase.
The taxi came to pick me up very early the next morning. The sun had not even risen by the time it arrived. None of the girls came to see me off, but I expected this. After loading my luggage into the trunk I climbed into the back seat of the old cab. It had driven right through the square and was sitting at the base of my apartment. When I leaned to look out the window I could see where my room had been. My face contorted into a mixture of panic and concern. There, looking out of my old window was the creature. It’s unblinking eyes bore into me and it’s lipless mouth curled into a snarling grin. Before I could say anything, the cab driver had taken off, leaving that hell house far behind.
I tried to warn them. I really did. I did everything in my power to try to warn them of the danger that they were in, but none of them listen to me. There was no way I could’ve stopped what happened after I returned home. You see, several weeks after returning to the United States I received a phone call from the program director. He informed me that a day before the program ended, all three of my past roommates had been reported missing. The authorities had no idea just how long they had actually been gone for, as they were only recently discovered to be missing when the program director went to check on them after none of them made it to the end of the program wrap up meeting. They assumed it had been at least a week or two, since all the food in the apartment was expired. There was no sign of forced entry, and no valuables were missing. The only notable detail mentioned in the report was that when they arrived on the scene, there was a strange little door hanging ajar in the bathroom. And when they approached it, they were met with a powerful odor coming from no visible source. The official report has them declared as missing, but I know that they’re all dead.
I know that I’m incredibly lucky to have made it out with my life. I think the only reason I’m still alive today is because I fled thousands of miles and across an ocean. Despite their unwillingness to listen, I still feel an unimaginable amount of guilt over what happened to those girls. That’s why I’m writing this now. I may not be able to go back in time and save them, but maybe I can prevent this from happening to you. Please, PLEASE heed my warning. If you ever get the opportunity to study abroad, keep this in mind: if it seems too good to be true, it probably is. And WHATEVER you do, don’t stay on the third floor of the ancient yellow apartment complex above the Campo di Fiori. There’s something there. Something evil.
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A few years ago I was spending some time with friends exploring old, supposedly haunted, places. We were at the Edisto First Presbyterian Church, where a girl named Julia Legare was buried in her family mausoleum in 1852.
People reported hearing unearthly screams time and time again, but never investigating the cause of it. Fifteen years later, when they opened the door to the mausoleum to inter the next family member who had died, finding her corpse huddled in the corner next to the door, arms outstretched as if still trying to find the exit.
Well, my friends thought it would be a funny idea to shut the giant stone door (which was originally open) behind me and pick me up in the morning. The bastards left me there… I tried and tried, using all of my strength, but I couldn’t budge it, it had taken four people to put it in place. In the dark, I resigned myself to the night ahead of me.
Now, I normally don’t frighten easily, but sitting there in the relatively small place, surrounded by a looming pressure that I couldn’t begin to explain, the darkness itself seemed to try to consume me. From all around it felt like weight was pressing against my skin, making even breathing hard. I sat in the dark for what must have been hours.
Then I heard the scratches. They were faint at first, I was sure it was my imagination, but soon they became more and more frantic as time passed. I huddled up in one of the corners farthest from the door and tried to cover my ears but nothing could stop the growing cacophony. This all may have lasted for a few minutes, but each second was an unbearable eternity.
Then, a loud scream echoed through the darkness, it was a wail of unrestrained pain and fear. The scratching stopped. For the first time I could distinctly make out the sound of a girl sobbing to herself, the pitiful gasping of one without a shred of hope left.
I felt such sorrow at the moment, such pain, that I think I forgot how to be afraid. In my heart all her suffering seemed to resonate. Inexplicably, I found myself apologizing aloud for everything that had happened to her. Hell, a part of me wanted to reach out and feel for a body to hug, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it for fear that I truly would find one.
I don’t know whether or not she heard me or was even aware of my presence, the sobbing continued and I could again hear fingers against the stone slab that was the tomb door.
I fell asleep at some point, which I felt was a merciful gift from the fates. I’m not sure how long I was out, but I was woken by a loud and powerful thud as the door slammed against the ground outside. I could tell from the light gray outside that daybreak was near, so I must have slept for at least a few hours.
I stumbled outside and went to a small unlocked prayer house. I think previously it was a segregated mini-church, but regardless, I leaned against the door and waited nervously until my ‘friends’ arrived. I approached them as they clustered around the fallen door, two of them were kneeling next to it with faces of shock.
There were bloody streaks covering the interior of the door, some with light scratches from fingernails, many without. I think now that she must have shrieked when they broke away from her hands, but I can’t be sure.
At first, they looked to me, then checked my hands, then nervously glanced at one another. I was rightfully pissed with them and told them every detail of what I remembered, wanting them to know what I had been put through.
Finally, after I grudgingly got into the car and we started to head back, someone spoke up. My friend said to me “We were afraid to say anything, but look at your face.”
I later found out that many times people had tried to permanently seal the entrance to the mausoleum, including enough heavy locks and chains that it would require heavy equipment to remove it, only to have it found torn open with the door lying on the ground once more. This was in the 1980s, the last attempt of many through the decades. It seemed like some force was ensuring that it was impossible to ever repeat the mistakes of the past. This is something I am understandably quite grateful for, but to this very day I am chilled to the bone when I think of what happened that night.
When I reached from the back seat and adjusted the rear-view mirror, I saw that there was blood caked on my face. Just like the streaks upon the stone slab, there were dark red lines on either side, as if someone had gently cradled my face with torn fingers as I slept that night, feeling the warmth of another for the first time in over a hundred years.
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Have you ever wanted to love someone, but couldn’t?
That’s how I felt about Tammy. We never should have gotten together in the first place, but it was her birthday and I didn’t know what I was getting myself in for. She invited all five of us from the office and I was expecting to just have a drink and go home. Fast forward to the bar, half an hour past when we were all supposed to meet, and every time her phone buzzed I knew it was another person canceling at the last minute. But she was glowing with warmth that wasn’t dampened by her disappointment, and I had nowhere else to be, and hours can melt together so fast when you’ve found someone to be lonely with.
Tammy blamed herself for how the party turned out in a vicious, self-deprecating way that left me scampering to reassure her. And the harder she was on herself the kinder I had to be, until somehow without meaning to I called her beautiful because I couldn’t bear her thinking otherwise for another minute. The way her face lit up in response was proof that I wasn’t lying, and the way she smiled back made me feel like it was the first time she’d ever really believed those words.
Tammy stayed close to me as we were leaving together. Close enough to feel her breath on my neck. Then her arms were wrapped around my arm and her warmth wasn’t just something to be imagined anymore. Just to keep her balance, she said, but no amount of steadying herself was enough for her to let go. She’d been drinking after all, and needed someone to drive her home…
Well I think she really was beautiful that night, and the more of her she trusted me to see, the more beautiful she became. But love? It wasn’t her fault that she came to love me, and it wasn’t my fault that I couldn’t feel the same.
A starving man doesn’t care what he eats though, and the lonely will cling to anyone who makes them forget what it’s like to be alone. Tammy and I stayed together, and the phrase “maybe this is what love is supposed to feel like” kept hoping up in my head. Tammy treated me with devotion and smothered me in kindness, and the longer we stayed together, the harder it became to imagine my life being any other way.
Tammy would do anything to keep me, and she reminded me every day. I could think of no better way to thank her than with everything I had to give. She was nothing but joy on the day I asked her to marry me, and basking in that light I told myself that her happiness would be enough for the both of us for all my years ahead.
Then there was my other wife. The one with the shaved head. The one with the nose rings, and the leather jacket, and the tattoo of snake twisting from one thigh to the next. I don’t know if you could call Zara beautiful—certainly not in the same way you could Tammy—but you could call her other names and they’d all turn her on.
I met Zara in another town where my company headquarter’s was. I had to go once a month, every month, but it didn’t take long before I found an excuse to go every weekend instead. Tammy was pregnant, and I wasn’t proud about what I was doing. But neither was I ashamed, because any guilt I should have felt was a drop in the ocean that was love.
Zara was everything I’d never known I’d wanted. She was wild, unrestrained, insatiable. She was a witch who put me under her spell, a demon who had claimed my soul. These are the types of excuses I’d tell myself whenever the guilt began to crawl up my spine. When I’d hold Tammy at night I’d tell myself stories of all the mad things men have ever done for love I’d put myself in their noble company. And when I fell asleep, I’d dream of being back with the girl whose touch was fire.
A weekend was never enough to spend with Zara, and every time was harder to leave than the last. I couldn’t leave Tammy with the child though, and the anxious worry that this had to end began eating away at me night and day. I kept them both a secret from each other, swinging back and forth, barely trusting myself to call one by name without my tongue betraying me with the other’s. The more the pressure grew the more insecure and defensive I became, until one day by surprise Zara told me she was jealous of my time. She didn’t want me to leave again. She wanted to be my wife, and fool that I was, I told her that I wanted the same.
It wasn’t a very official wedding—Zara wasn’t into that sort of thing. Our hands were clasped in the forest and our feet were in the stream when I placed a ring upon her finger. My life as I knew it had ended forever, and I couldn’t imagine anything but happiness to come.
I told myself then that I would make one last trip to end things with Tammy. She’d be better off alone—I wanted to believe—than with someone who didn’t need her anymore. I would do my part and help pay for the child, and I wouldn’t need much money because nothing I could buy would fill my heart the way holding Zara did. Tammy would cry, but I wouldn’t break, and in five years time—in ten years time—when I’m old and grey with shaking hands—I’ll hold Zara all the tighter knowing that I was almost too weak to follow my heart.
And maybe that’s how it would have gone if Zara hadn’t followed me back. She thought she would surprise me by making the trip to help me move. She thought she was being clever by calling my work and pretending to be a client setting up a meeting at my home. How could she have known that Tammy was home while I’d gone to the store to pick up some things for our new born child?
The police were home before I was. The weeping young mother and the screaming punk—it wasn’t hard for them to figure out what happened. The knife-slashed curtains and the shattered plates—there must have been quite a fight to be loud enough for the neighbors to call the cops. The blood-stained carpet and the dirty tracks into the nursery—there was no way to hide the evidence, or mistake what happened to my daughter who was slashed into ribbons before she’d ever learned her name.
Zara and I never spoke again. Not even at her trial where I was called as a witness. I couldn’t even meet her eyes when I told the jury about the affair, that I’d loved her, and that I knew it was wrong. I told them that Zara had been jealous, that she’d killed the child, and that I never wanted to see her again.
The only thing that could have been harder to bear was when Tammy forgave me. She said it wasn’t my fault. That I’d made a mistake. That we could learn to be happy together again. And I believed her, because as heavy as this weight was for me to bear, I knew that I couldn’t bear it alone.
That was almost twenty years ago, and Tammy and I have moved past it the best we could. We had two more children, both boys. I’m glad of that, because if we’d had a girl I don’t think I could have looked at her without thinking about the child who had been cut. If Tammy can still love me after all that, then who am I to say that I can’t love her in return? Despite everything I’d done to avoid being alone though, I know that it’s only a matter of time.
Tammy is sick, and she isn’t going to get better. I’ve been spending every day at my wife’s side, and our youngest will be leaving to college in a few weeks. Then it’s just going to be me and my regrets, thinking about the words Tammy said to me last night.
“I told you I’d do anything to keep you, and I did,” she told me. “If you didn’t think Zara killed our daughter, you never would have stayed with me. I had to do it, don’t you see? We’ve made each other so happy through the years.”
I always knew I never loved her, but it’s taken me my entire life to find out why.
WRITTEN BY: Tobias Wade
(If you want to narrate this story, please contact the author by clicking HERE)
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The Mandela Effect. That phrase never meant anything to me. Spooky, I guess, but it wasn’t something I thought about for more than five minutes. I mean, honestly, until college, I didn’t even know what it was. I’m not one for conspiracy theories or ghost stories or anything like that, so what would you expect? I wish I was still so ignorant.
It all began in my Life Science class. I was twenty at the time, and it was pretty close to the end of the Fall Semester at FSU. My professor, Doctor Arnault, had given us our finals early, because she had a heart and didn’t want us to be studying for everything at once. She figured doing our finals before everybody else’s gave us time to study hers without any distraction, and then gave us time to study everybody else’s with a little less stress.
I loved her for that.
But part of me wishes she never had decided to bless us that way.
On the last day of class, most people skipped. Everybody knew we weren’t really doing anything and everybody just wanted to be done for the semester. Still, some of us were bound by the attendance policies on our scholarships, and others, just out of courtesy to Doctor Arnault, showed up. I personally was present because I loved her class.
One more hour and fifteen minutes of her teaching was a win for me. And, hell, I had nothing better to do.
She began the class slightly differently than she usually did. We’d often start out with a current event from earlier in the week- something about GMO’s, the dramatically declining population of giraffes, or something else relating to life science. But today, we looked at an older article, and something far from relative to biology. It was about the Mandela Effect. I’d never heard of it before; most of us hadn’t. But she was passionate about it. The old lady was usually pretty sprightly while teaching, choleric when somebody disagreed with her- but, man, today she was ecstatic.
“All right. To those of you considerate enough to show up to my class today, I have a treat for you. I’m going to teach you all about something that you’ll probably never forget. Or maybe you’ll blow it off; I don’t know. But if this intrigues you like it did me, I’m sure you’ll be happy you arrived. Can somebody tell me when Nelson Mandela died?”
Everyone looked around confusedly. Then a girl raised her hand.
“He died a couple years ago. 2012 I think.”
She slowly nodded, studying the class like she was waiting for something. And she found that something.
“Seagrave,” she pointed at a boy in the class, “why the confused face?”
“Well, uh, I thought he died like, a while ago. The nineties or something. In prison.”
She beamed with delight.
“Well, class? Is Amanda right? Or Cole?”
Everyone seemed conflicted. Most of us were like me and honestly had no clue. But a couple people agreed with Cole, and one other person agreed with Amanda.
“Amanda,” Dr. Arnault commended, “you’re closer to correct. He died from a respiratory tract infection on December 5th, 2013. But, why did some of you think he died in prison in the early nineties, then? Several of you thought that. Badaar,” she motioned at one of the guys to explain, “where’d you come to that conclusion.”
“I could swear we learned that in seventh grade. In my world history class. It was part of black history month.”
“Yeah, same here,” one of the girls nodded. “Black history month when I was a kid. He died and then there was this thing about his wife trying to sue some company…?”
“Exemplary,” Dr. Arnault was more complacent than I’d ever seen her. “You remember all this being said. Except, strangely enough, it never was. None of this was ever said. Look it up. Go to Google and search ‘Nelson Mandela, Death.’ You’ll find nothing about the nineties or a prison. For that matter, type in ‘Nelson Mandela Prison Death.’ You won’t find a CNN article or a documentary about his funeral which was televised all over the globe. You won’t find his purported cause of death, and you’ll find nothing about the riots in South African cities afterward. Because none of it happened.”
This left me a little weirded out. Most of the class was silent now and waiting for her to make sense of it.
“It’s a phenomenon known as the Mandela Effect,” she grinned. “A complete mystery. An enigmatic anomaly on Earth with no scientific explanation.”
And from that point, the hour and fifteen minutes flew by. I thought five minutes had elapsed when it was time to be dismissed. It left me absolutely mind-boggled.
Basically, it’s this theory that Nelson Mandela did die in prison in the nineties. But then, something happened that somehow reversed this event, and he went on to live decades longer, before dying again in 2013. Though some of us don’t remember Mandela dying in the twentieth century, others do. They remember the news coverage, the papers, the heartfelt speech from his widow- but all of it vanished from the universe when this “event” took place and rewrote history. And all that’s left is this huge collective memory. These people that “know” he died like this, and all remember that same thing somehow, but it’s “wrong.” Personally, I don’t remember being told Mandela died in the nineties. But a lot of people did, and do.
There are two theories behind it. The first and less common is time travel. They say that someone went back in time and altered an event just slightly, but it created a ripple effect that resulted in something changing dramatically. Here’s a made-up example.
Bob married Sally. Bob and Sally met downtown some time back in August of 2005; Bob’s dog just got ran over and he was grieving, and when he saw Sally walking her dog, he couldn’t help but walk over and talk to her. Before long, they were in love and married. Well, then, Jake goes back in time, to the same town around the same time. Jake’s driving on the road about the same time Bob’s dog got run over, but since Jake’s driving, and he’s in front of the car that hit Bob’s dog, and since Jake is a better driver, he comes to a halt and never hits it. The dog runs back over to Bob completely fine. So, now, when Bob goes downtown, he doesn’t think twice when he sees Sally walking her dog, and they never say a word to each other. They each get married to somebody else, and now their son, who could’ve cured Cancer or something, never exists.
But time travel is believed to be entirely fictional and improbable. The more common theory is that there are several universes, all alternate, and that sometimes they “rub shoulders,” or, essentially, cross paths. Like, two cars in a really minor accident. A fender bender. Universe A rear-ends Universe B, and almost everything is the same, except Universe A needs a new bumper. Well, in literal terms, now something between Universe A and Universe B is swapped. Nelson Mandela lived to 2013 and died of a respiratory tract infection and not in prison in the nineties, and now, everybody in Universe B thought he died from a lung infection instead of in an African jail. This one’s the commonly believed one.
After Dr. Arnault’s class, I looked more into it, and there are other examples too. Take “The Berenstain Bears,” for example. We all read those books as kids; or, at least, our parents read them to us. Well, without looking, how was their name spelled?
Berenstein?
Berenstain?
Which one?
If you said “Berenstein,” you’re one of thousands of others that would bet their house you’re right. But you’re wrong. It was never spelled that way. And what about Curious George? Did he have a tail? What position is The Thinker making? Is his fist pressed against his head, or is his hand not even balled up, slumped into his cheek, his fingers extending all the way to his chest?
Curious George does not have a tail, and The Thinker is doing the latter position.
These things may seem silly, but if they’re wrong, why do so many people believe them to be true? Personally, I have my own theory about the Berenstain Bears and Curious George. When you read the name “Berenstain,” it looks Jewish, or German. And like many Jewish or German surnames, you think of it as ending in “stein” instead of “stain.” Take for instance “Goldstein,” “Perlstein,” hell- “Einstein!” We all know that name. “Berenstain” just doesn’t look right, and over time, our minds filled in the “a” with an “e.” Same with Curious George. He’s a monkey, for god’s sake. Of course, we think he had a tail. He’s even commonly portrayed hanging from a vine, with his head down and his butt up in the air, as if he’s hanging from his tail. These are more like the power of suggestion: through external factors, our memories of these simple things were altered.
But then you have The Thinker, King Tut’s burial mask, and Nelson Mandela, of course. If The Thinker really is posing with his hand in a relaxed, non-curled, flat motion, pressed against his cheek, which is folding over his knuckles, why do we remember his hand completely balled up and resting against his head? And not just us, but popular cartoons depict it this way as well! Why do so many people make this mistake?
And King Tut’s burial mask: what is on the top of the mask, right between his eyes? There’s a figure depicted there, an animal, to be more specific. For those of you that thought “snake, duh,” you’re like me. But, you’re wrong. At least, partly. There’s a snake. And a bird. A bird that looks so outlandish and unnatural on that mask that I can’t even look at it without shaking my head.
There couldn’t have been two animals! That looks ridiculous! Look it up on Google and see for yourself. I remember in sixth grade, I had a world history textbook with that burial mask on the cover. I looked at that thing every damn day. Hell, when I was nodding in class, that’s where my eyes fell: down onto the cover of that book which was sitting on my desk. I never saw that bird. I thought that maybe it could’ve just been the angle, but the bird sticks out so far that there’s no way you can’t see it, unless the mask was turned completely away from you, which it never is. And if it was, you wouldn’t be able to see the snake, either. I’m not the only one that remembers it looking like this. Popular cartoons draw it wrong all the time, too.
But there was always a bird on that thing, since 1323 BC.
Well, enough of my rambling. You might be wandering what all this has to do with me.
See, after Dr. Arnault’s class that day, I couldn’t get this off my mind. I was so spooked out by it, so morbidly intrigued, that it just occupied my thoughts. I felt like a victim of it. But still, it wasn’t some grand epiphany of mine, some life-changing philosophy. After all, I was too busy studying for exams to ponder it that often. But all that changed when I sat down with my friend Asher a week later for breakfast.
Asher and I had been friends since first grade. We met at Tawas City Christian Academy in Michigan, in a town with a population of less than ten-thousand. It was always freezing there, dreary and grey, and silent. You could see the whole town from a five-story building. There were miles and miles of abandoned cornfields, and the only real moneymaker in the town was its small harbor at which fishing occurred. I discovered later-on that apparently in other countries, Tawas City, Michigan, is known as the “Bird Watching Capitol of the World.” Purportedly, a vast array of bird species migrate there, and it’s great for bird-watching. I never noticed that. All I can remember is the snowy, grey skies, the silent cornfields, and the feeling that if the place was wiped off the face of the Earth, no one would notice.
Naturally, the public school was puny, but the private school- it hardly existed. In my class, there were fifteen of us. Sixteen, including the teacher.
So I thought.
“I’m starving, man,” Asher sighed, walking ahead of me into the diner.
It was early on a Saturday morning. It was the last week of the semester and we’d been studying like crazy. We figured our day would be spent doing the same thing as usual: an amalgamation of studying endlessly and resisting the urge to buy Adderall, which was pretty prominent on the campus around that time. But my day didn’t consist of that at all.
We sat down at our usual booth, Asher’s hair as red and messy as usual. He was a ginger, and a mischievous one at that. He was a prankster and barely passed his classes; he was here for the booze and the girls, and his grades reflected it. But as best friends do, I forced him to study and pass.
Still, breakfast was a school-free zone. All mention of classes and tests was off-limits at the diner. Here, we wanted to rid our minds of it all. The last time we met up, I went on and on and on about the Mandela Effect, to the point he wanted to shove scissors in his ears, so I tried not to mention it today.
“I’m telling you, man…” he sipped his coffee. “When this is over, we’re partying like crazy. Like crazy, Sean. I don’t want to remember where I am when I wake up that morning.”
I chuckled. “Yeah, man, for sure. Don’t you sometimes wish we were back at Tawas Christian? I mean, not back in Tawas City. But just, the classes? We thought they were so hard…” we both laughed. “God, we were wrong.”
“Yeah, that was a whole different universe, bro. Shit was so easy compared to now. And there were only fourteen of us in total, unless you include Ms. Davis, which is fucking crazy.”
“Fourteen? I think it was fifteen, man.”
He looked confused. “Nah, bro, fourteen. Me, you, Erin Engels, Tyler Mahoney, Zach O’Toole, that quiet girl named Grayson, Elizabeth, Norman, that one kid… Uh… I don’t remember his real name but we all called him Taz.” We called him Taz because he talked so fast nobody could hear what the fuck he was saying.
I chuckled as I remembered him.
“There was Brian Reed, Amy, the twins George and Jordan Reynolds, and that one nerdy kid. Dylan. And then, Ms. Davis. That’s fifteen including her.”
“And Eve.”
He squinted his eyes.
“Who?”
“Eve. The shy girl. Remember? Short, blonde? Brown eyes? Didn’t talk to anybody?”
He shook his head. “That was it, man. There were fourteen of us.”
“No, dude,” I replied, “there was Eve. I’ve been waiting for you to name her the whole time.”
He just looked at me like I was telling him bread was a liquid.
“Asher, are you messing with me? Stop, dude.”
“I’m not messing with you. There just wasn’t an Eve. I distinctly remember fourteen of us. Remember? Four girls, ten guys?”
“No,” I shook my head, “five girls, ten guys. That’s how it was. Her name was Eve. She didn’t talk to anybody and we both never said anything to her. You’re messing with me and it isn’t funny,” I started to feel panicked. “I’ve been reading all that shit about the Mandela Effect and now you’re trying to freak me out. Come on, stop it, man.”
Now he looked frustrated. “Stop with that Mandela shit. There’s no Eve. You’re sleep-deprived.”
“What…?” I was getting annoyed, but also terrified. All this hysteria I’d embraced lately as I considered if the Effect could be real left me feeling hopelessly crazy as Asher argued with me. I knew there was an Eve. She went to Tawas Christian with us. Her face was easy for me to recreate in my mind.
“Sean…” he looked at me intently. “Are you fucking with me?”
“No…” I replied, trying not to sound panicked.
It was such a simple situation. Asher just forgot about her. It was over a decade ago and she wasn’t by any means a notable student. She shied away from conversation, sitting in the back of the room with nothing to say. She only talked when forced to by Ms. Davis and none of us struck up conversation with her.
“Bro, you’re just forgetting about her. She was quiet, man. Like, really quiet. First grade was a long damn time ago.”
“Maybe,” he shrugged. “Honestly, though… No, I can’t be. I can’t be. I remember that class easily. There were fourteen of us. You must be thinking about something else.”
“Don’t tell me I’m thinking about something else!” I felt hopeless.
“What the hell was that?” he glared at me.
“Man, this isn’t funny! You know that Mandela shit’s been freaking me out! Please… Asher… Stop…” I pleaded.
He looked horrified.
“Sean… I’m not fucking with you… Why you getting so worried, bro? Here,” he slid me his coffee, “just, relax, man. Relax… It’s not a big deal. You’re fine.”
“She was there with us… Asher, remember reading group? There were fifteen of us. There were five of us in each group. Eve was in my group.”
“No, man. I mean, you’re right about there being five in each group. But Ms. Davis was in a group. Remember?”
“No, she walked around and supervised,” I argued. “Asher, Eve was in my group. I know she was, because every time she was forced to read, she’d choke up and not say anything. And then the few times she did read I was always enamored to actually be hearing her voice. Because I never did. Like, no one did.”
Asher was still and silent. Both of us knew what we knew. But one of us was wrong. Right?
“Dude…” I begged. “I… Her car. Remember that at least? Her mom dressed nicely. In a dress, always. She’d come to pick Eve up in that fancy black car. I never gave a shit about cars and I still don’t. In my senior year of high school I thought that Altima was a car make. I couldn’t tell the difference between a Porsche and a Honda. But I remember her car because it was so nice looking. It was probably a Cadillac or something. Come on, man, we use to always think it looked cool when it came into the pick-up loop. Her mom was the first to arrive every day, and Eve would get up quickly from her lone corner on the bench and trudge over to the car. And her mom would come out, dressed nicely, even if it was snowing, and hug her. Every single time. And she always smelled nice because her mom hugged her every morning too and got her perfume on her.”
Now Asher actually looked worried.
“Sean…” he shook his head. “I don’t remember her. I’d say you’re thinking of someone else from another school, but we’ve gone to the same school since first grade. And I don’t remember her. Ever. Maybe it was someone you met in preschool.”
“No, no, we both talked about her. She was in my reading circle in Ms. Davis’s class.”
“What about after that? You’re only talking about first grade.”
“I don’t remember her after that. She must’ve moved. But she was in first grade. That’s probably why you forget her. She moved and you just remember all of us that graduated fifth grade there.”
“No, man… I remember first grade too. She wasn’t there. Ms. Davis was my favorite teacher. I remember that year easy. There wasn’t a girl named Eve.”
I don’t really know why, but I felt like crying. Imagine that all your life, you never believed in ghosts. Then you see this horror movie or something, and there’s a scene where the main character is looking in a mirror, and then his reflection stops following him and does its own thing, and it’s horrifying. After that, you just keep thinking about that scene because it scared you so much. But hey, it’s just a movie. It’s not real. And that’s the only thing keeping you from never looking into mirrors again.
But then you figure out the movie’s based on a true story.
Okay, anybody could say that. It’s “based on a true story” like all horror movies. Just because it could be true doesn’t mean it is. Nothing’s hitting close to home.
And then it happens to you.
You get out of the shower. You’re drying off, and you happen to look into the mirror. You raise your towel to dry off your hair, but when your reflection comes into view, its arms are at its side and it’s staring at you.
Holy shit!
You’re terrified. It’s real! It happened to you, and there’s no denying it!
That’s how I felt at that table. Maybe it wasn’t as concrete, but I knew Eve was in that class. I remembered her like the back of my hand. But Asher didn’t. Not at all.
It was just like the bird on King Tut’s burial mask, like The Thinker’s flimsy hand stretching the skin of his cheek, like the absent footage of Nelson Mandela’s huge funeral in the early nineties.
I felt like I was going to have a panic attack. For the rest of the day, I didn’t study anything. I was too overwhelmed. I tried my hardest to assimilate Eve into a preschool memory, but she was incompatible. She didn’t fit.
She didn’t fit at my old church.
She didn’t fit in my neighborhood growing up.
She didn’t fit anywhere but Ms. Davis’s first grade class.
Finally, that night, I called my mother on the phone. At this point, I wasn’t entirely convinced I was witnessing the Mandela Effect; some part of me figured Asher had just smoked too much reefer in high school and forgot about her. And I knew how to find out if I was right.
I told my mom that she wouldn’t hear much from me this week because of all the studying I’d be doing, which she totally respected. So, she was pretty surprised when I called her.
“Hey, Sean!” she sounded excited. “What’s up?”
“Hey, Mom! I wanted to ask you something. Do you remember a girl named Eve in Ms. Davis’s class? A short blonde girl with brown eyes?”
“That’s a random question,” she replied. “Um, no, it doesn’t ring a bell. On your seventh birthday, you invited over all the kids, but I don’t remember an Eve.”
“Yeah, I invited her but she didn’t come,” I remembered. “She was really shy. That’s probably why you forgot her.”
“Well, I have some pictures of you in first grade. I could send them to you and you could point her out to me if you see her in them. Why are you asking, anyway?”
“Well, Asher doesn’t remember her either. It’s just weirding me out a little bit.” I chuckled, trying to hide my nervousness. “Yeah, it’d be cool if you sent those pictures. Do you have the one of the whole class?”
“The one with all fourteen of you?”
The words left me severely uncomfortable.
“Uh, fifteen. There were fifteen of us, Mom.”
“No, fourteen, I thought.”
“What… the fuck…?” I whispered. “Mom… Yeah, just, send me the pictures, if you can.”
“Okay. Is everything okay, Sean?”
“Just feeling weird. It’s weird nobody remembers her.”
“I don’t have the class picture,” she sighed. “I wish I did. Asher’s mom might. See if Asher can get it from her. But I’ll send you the ones I have!”
“Okay, thanks, Mom.”
We talked a bit longer after that, but my mind wasn’t occupied by the conversation. All I could think about was Eve. I could remember her short body, her perfect posture, the quaint dresses she wore to class. I could remember her scent that to this day still appeared sometimes in supermarkets or in a lecture hall for a fading second, just long enough to remind me of first grade. I could remember her voice when she finally worked up the courage to read in our reading circle… I could remember everything about her. I knew I’d be able to point her out if she showed up in any of the pictures.
Still, what bothered me was this: the Mandela Effect is a smooth criminal. It’s articulate, pin-point, exact- it leaves no trace behind. Here’s what I mean.
The Thinker, for instance. A lot of people remember taking pictures with it. They know The Thinker didn’t look the way it does now when they took the picture, so they go back and find their old vacation album, brushing the dust off and reluctantly finding them posing with their ex-wife before the statue. And all the work and awkwardness of thumbing through the old album was for nothing, because in the picture, The Thinker is doing exactly what they remember it wasn’t doing.
Even weirder are the pictures that went viral of people standing right in front of the statue posing with their fist against their head. They’re in front of the damn thing. Don’t you think they’d maybe notice it wasn’t doing what they thought it was doing, and not pose incorrectly right in front of it? But maybe they’re not complete idiots, or just downright oblivious. Maybe when they took that picture there… it was pressing its fist against its skull. And then, when the Mandela Effect occurred at some untraceable, inexact moment in time, the picture changed. But only the statue. It left everything else that wasn’t the statue the same, resulting in the bizarre image of people posing incorrectly right in front of it.
I knew that if this was the Mandela Effect I was dealing with, there’d be no point at all to receiving these pictures. Whether or not Eve was standing there when the picture was taken thirteen years ago, she wouldn’t show up in them.
The only way to catch the Mandela Effect is through relative things. Like the people posing wrong in front of the statue. And this wasn’t relative. If the universe pulled Eve from existence, then she wouldn’t be present in any of the Polaroids.
But I wanted to check anyway. Maybe something would stand out.
My mom sent four pictures; the first was of me, Asher, Brian Reed, Taz, and Norman playing at aftercare one day in the mud. The second wasn’t useful either; just me and Asher sitting at a picnic table one night at open house. The third picture, however, was interesting. It was of the Christmas Concert. All fifteen of us were taught three church songs to sing at the concert and our parents came and watched. It was humiliating for all of us, except maybe Erin, who was born to be a star- but it was especially embarrassing for Eve. This photo jogged my memory immediately. And what made it so strange was the formation of the girls.
In the picture, you can see all of us on stage. There is a one riser on the stage, and some of us were standing on it, while the others were standing in front on the stage itself. On the left side are the boys, five in front, and five on the riser. On the right are the girls: three in front, and one on the riser, between two of the girls. It looks like somebody’s missing in the picture.
You have Erin on the left, then Amy next to her, then Elizabeth next to her, and then Grayson is standing on the riser between Erin and Amy. Eve would fit perfectly between Amy and Elizabeth.
Perfectly.
Why the hell would they put three girls on the stage and one girl alone on the riser, asymmetrically? Especially when the boys are lined up perfectly? It made no damn sense.
And I remember Eve there that night, how scared she was. I remember her white dress and thinking that for once, we were all dressed like her, and she didn’t stand out. And I remember her crying backstage and being scared to death to go out, and not singing the entire time but just freezing up.
I’d bet my soul that all that happened.
The final picture was also useless: just me and Brian Reed in a kickball game that we played on the last day of school. Brain Reed was trying to peg me out and I’m running like a madman for first base.
I saved that picture of the Christmas Concert onto my phone. It was just the proof I needed to show Asher.
The next day, when I ran into Asher, I showed him the picture. To my surprise, this actually affected him. He seemed nervous when he started to consider how weird the picture looked. He told me that if I had mentioned Eve now, after he’d seen the picture, he would’ve just thought it was a coincidence. But since I mentioned Eve before either of us had seen it, that made it a lot stranger. Still, he wasn’t ready to believe in the Mandela Effect. Not like I was.
But he was curious enough to ask his mother if she had our class picture.
She did.
Both of us waited anxiously for her to send it. I couldn’t remember anything about the picture. Still, I wanted to see if there was a strange placement of students like the Christmas Concert, and so did Asher. When he got the message, both of us were shaking with anxiousness. The moment I saw it, I gasped.
“Remember!” I jumped. “The bee-sting!”
“Huh?!” Asher flinched, startled by my screaming.
“Asher!” I grabbed him. “See how we’re standing like that?! It was because of Eve!”
Ms. Davis stood in the middle of us, seven of us on her left, and seven of us on her right. Those on her left were turned slightly to face her, thus the left sides of their faces were showing and the right sides were blocked. And those on her right were turned leftward, so their right was facing the photographer. What stood out was the ample negative space in the picture. When groups pose in this fashion, it’s a way to shrink the size of the group. Usually, the cameraman has trouble fitting all the people in the shot, and thus they form this way so they can all scrunch up and fit, but still look natural. But in this picture, it’s easy to see that we had more than enough room to stand correctly and still fit.
That wasn’t the reason we stood that way.
“Asher!” I felt as if I’d stricken gold. “We’re all posed like that ‘cause Eve got stung by a bee! Dude, tell me you remember! We were going in to take the picture and she got stung right underneath her right eye. Her face got all swollen and she was crying because she didn’t want to look like that in the picture, so the photographer said to pose like this, and Eve could turn the left side of her face to the camera!”
“Dude…” Asher scratched his head. “We just posed like this so we could save room…”
“No, we didn’t. There’s no reason to do that. There’s so much room on the left and right side, it’s unnatural, even. We wouldn’t’ve done it for that reason.”
“I don’t remember anything like that happening, man… Honestly, this is starting to weird me out. I think we should just forget about it.”
“I… I can’t forget about it…” I replied. “She was real… I can’t believe nobody can remember her.”
There was only one option left for me to do. I had to have a reunion with them. If we all met up and others of us remembered Eve, I’d know I wasn’t crazy. Most of us hadn’t spoken in years. Still, I had Erin as my friend on Facebook. She talked all the time about having a reunion now that we were all in our twenties, and I knew if I mentioned it, she’d ruthlessly try to put it together.
I contacted her that night and she was completely on board. All of us were about to be free from college for Winter Break, and I suggested we meet back in Tawas City. I was going down there anyway to see my family for Christmas. My mom had long suggested I throw a reunion at the house; she said she’d be honored to host and cater it. When I told Erin about it, she couldn’t be more compliant. She assured me she’d contact the others. All fifteen, she said.
My heart raced. I asked, “All fifteen?”
“Yeah,” she responded, “all fifteen, us and Ms. Davis.”
And at that moment, I felt another sense of dread. Erin always tried to keep the group together. Her forgetting Eve meant something was seriously wrong.
When December 18th arrived, I was shocked to pull into my old driveway. I hadn’t been there in years. Usually on Christmas, they came down to Tallahassee to visit me. It wasn’t anything against them; I just hated Tawas City. Around Christmas time it was freezing cold, and most of its residents went south for the winter if they could afford it. It was a ghost town, and a frigid one at that.
My parents had picked me up from the airport and driven me here. The entire way, I reminisced. As we passed through the frozen-over cornfields, under the bleak white sky, I felt like I’d been here yesterday. Nothing was different. It was all completely recognizable. Perhaps the only difference was some of the old buildings looked somehow even older, even more decrepit and abandoned.
Throughout the drive, and especially when I got back to my house before anyone else arrived, really all I could think about was Eve. I felt closer to her here in this ominous, forgotten town. Back entrenched in the snow, something I hadn’t felt in years, I sensed that she was in arm’s reach of me. I knew that if I were to ever find closure, it’d be at this reunion. If just one other person remembered her, then I wasn’t crazy. Then the Mandela Effect was real, and Eve was real, and Asher was wrong.
God, I prayed for that closure.
At four o’clock, all of us that could make it arrived. Ms. Davis was unfortunately busy with her family, as her father was dying and they didn’t know how much time he had left, and Norman was completely untraceable. The last of us to hear from him was Brian Reed, who remembered Norman getting into trouble some time around eighth grade and going to Juvenile Detention. After that, he pretty much vanished.
Not like Eve, though. He was still in the pictures. They still remembered his name.
When the other twelve showed up at the house, I forgot about Eve for just a moment. Seeing Erin again was awesome. She was as beautiful and energetic as always, her long brown hair now styled maturely and her vibrant green eyes now only wiser. Tyler Mahoney was also just as handsome as he’d always been. The stud was still dressed to kill, even in the freezing weather. Brian Reed had joined the Navy and was on Liberty. He was even bigger now than he was then, and was engaged to his girlfriend since high |
Part 1: A Diner Called Daisy’s
This whole thing started on a road trip around four years ago. We left to go from Northern California to the East Coast, traveling through the Midwest. It was me, my wife Kimmy, our 7-year-old daughter Katie, and 5-year-old son Alex. Everything went fine for the first few days. We took our time with the trip because we weren’t really on a constraint in that regard; we stopped at pretty much every landmark one can see whilst making a cross-country trip. But there was one night, in a state in the Midwest that I won’t name, which led to a series of events that still hasn’t ended.
It was around 9 pm on a Wednesday night, and we had collectively decided to stop at the next place we saw to eat. We saw a sign to exit at the next ramp for a place called Daisy’s Diner. We get there, and nothing seemed amiss. It was just about dark, and we decided that after we’d eaten, we would find a hotel for the night.
Daisy’s Diner was a classic small-town eatery, with road signs on the wall and a waitress that called everyone “hun”. It had a very classic “small town USA” feel to it. The food had a home-cooked taste to it. I could certainly imagine this place being at its capacity on any given day, however, at the time we were there, there were only four other people in the restaurant. A man and a woman ate together at a booth, while two men separately sat at the counter. All four of the other patrons left before we did, and were replaced with two more men who came in at separate times. It was the last man to come in to bring what had happened to our attention. He informed me that if I was the one with the Hyundai truck outside, it had been ransacked.
I ran outside, and sure enough, the passenger’s side door was open and everything had been rifled through. CD’s were strewn about the seats, the paperwork from the glove box was on the passenger’s side floor, the backpacks my children had in the backseat with their belongings were opened and gone through. I was furious. I demanded to see camera footage, only to find out the cameras were essentially for show. I asked to know who the people were that had left the restaurant before us. The solitary waitress only personally knew one of the men, and vehemently vouched for him. Against my better judgment, I decided not to pursue him or the other, still unidentified man, instead choosing to let the police handle the situation.
I explained to the police that as far as I could tell, nothing had been stolen, and no damage had been done to the car. The waitress gave the name of the one man she knew, and the police knew him as well. Not because he’d had run-ins with the law, but because he was a very active member in the local church, and was a man who was held in high regard by the entirety of the community. As for the other man, all I had seen was his back. Ultimately, nothing was done about the break-in, besides the filing of a record of the incident report and a casual “keep an eye out” from the police. I assumed the other man in the diner had seen our vehicle full of our belongings, out of our line of sight, and seized the opportunity. Carpe Diem you piece of shit.
We were directed towards a motel in the small town in which we had eaten. Since it was now close to midnight and my wife wanted to lie down and get some rest, we decided we were safe enough to stay there, being that it was a motel, and there’d be other people there. Whatever logic I could scrape together is what I used to justify staying there because I was admittedly too tired to keep driving. However, when we got to the motel, it was as close to something out of a horror movie as could be. The sign had missing letters, and there were only two other cars in the dirty parking lot. That said though, the area was well-lit and would provide adequate shelter for a few hours.
The man who helped us at the counter had a strange vibe about him, but checking into the room went without incident. Actually, until the morning, I thought the whole night had gone on without a hitch. When we were settled in the room and ready to go to sleep, I double and triple checked the locks on both the door to the outside, and the door that connected to the next room. It wasn’t an ideal situation, but such was the case that the only room with two queen beds was connected to another room. The clerk informed us that the only other person staying there was a woman at the opposite end of the motel, and went as far as showing us that the room connected to ours was empty. We all slept okay, in fact for much longer than we had planned. I woke up in the morning and opened the blinds to check on the car, which I had parked directly outside the room. Nothing seemed out of place, at least on the outside. There was a small piece of paper that had been slid under the door to the outside. Assuming it was a check-out receipt, I ignored it and got ready for that day’s drive.
After a shower, I sat on the bed to watch TV while my wife inevitably took four times longer than me to get ready. It was then that I decided to take a look at the checkout receipt. I picked up the once-folded piece of paper and opened it. My heart sank when it turned out to be a drawing from my daughter’s backpack, but with a slight change. It was a picture of our family, but the thief had added a crudely drawn version of himself to it, and the words “nice to see you”. Being that the addition to the drawing was done in crayon just like original artwork had been, there was nothing about the man I could discern. All I knew was that whoever had broken into our car had followed us to the motel and slid this drawing under our door. Or at least that’s what I thought.
My son, the ever-questioning, observant young man that he is, was playing on the ground with some toy cars near the door, asked me what the rubber piece lining the bottom of the door to the outside was for. I explained that it was likely to keep things such as leaves and snow from blowing under the door, and keeping either heat or cold air in. It was then that I realized that the rubber strip would have prevented a piece of paper from being slid under the door. The revelation hit me like a ton of bricks. Whoever had set this drawing on our floor had done so from the inside. I checked the locks on the connecting door and found one of them to be unlocked. In an effort to spare my wife and children the horror I was currently experiencing, I just rushed them out under the guise that we’d slept late and I wanted to cover a lot of ground that day. I considered talking to the motel clerk, but by that time, a younger girl was working the counter, and I wasn’t going to stay there a second longer than I had to.
We got back onto the highway without interruption and continued our trip. My wife asked me what was wrong but I shrugged it off as being still tired. We made the rest of our journey with nothing out of the ordinary happening. Aside from the alarming incidents at Daisy’s Diner and The Galleria Motel, our road trip was actually pretty fun. Our activities proved to be a good distraction from the uneasy feeling I had in the pit of my stomach.
I made sure to take a different route home, so as not to pass through the small town where the incidents had happened. We finally returned home about three weeks later. All of our mail was piled up on our front porch, so I grabbed it as I walked back into our house for the first time in nearly a month, Unpacking and getting situated took precedent over looking through the mail, but I eventually got to it, and things began again.
Towards the middle of the pile of mail, there was an envelope with no return address. I opened it, and found a single handwritten note and a folded-up piece of paper.
“The girl is vary good at pichures.”
I unfolded the paper and it was yet another drawing of my daughters. This one was of a black and brown dog. I figured whoever was doing this had gotten our address from our vehicle’s registration or some other kind of document after going through the car. I informed the police, who did a pretty shitty job of making me feel safe. I kept what had happened from my wife, as I knew she would just worry, and I wanted to keep my family as stress-free as possible. I wondered how many pictures my daughter had in her backpack, but in reality, I knew it was quite a few. I’ll get to that later.
Everything was fine for about a week, until one day we got back home from a day at the park. We got inside, and the kids ran over to the couch and turned on the TV. My wife walked into the kitchen to start making the kids something to eat. I went to the bathroom. When I got out, my wife was standing at the sliding door to the backyard. That’s when I heard it: barking. My thoughts raced, and I refused to believe it, it couldn’t be. Sure enough, a black and brown German shepherd, about a year old, was tied to a fencepost in our backyard. By this time, our kids had heard the barking and came to check out what was going on. We all ventured outside, and I told them to stay back while I inspected the dog. The leash was tied to the post in a way that made it look like the dog had jumped over the fence and gotten caught or something, I don’t know, it really didn’t make sense. It just wasn’t completely obvious that someone had put the dog there intentionally. Upon meeting me, the dog licked my hand and rolled on his back to have its stomach pet. The kids then rushed me and began showering the dog with love, which it wholeheartedly accepted. He seemed enthralled with the kids, who returned the affection in droves.
My wife found a soft spot in her heart and pleaded with me to keep the dog. It went against my gut, as I knew what the dog was a result of, but in my ongoing efforts to shield my family, I reluctantly agreed to keep him. We named him Roscoe, a name my daughter picked. In a weird way, I felt like I was giving whoever was doing this exactly what they wanted. I knew this hadn’t been a coincidence. I just didn’t know why it was happening. This dog incident didn’t come off as a threatening gesture. None of it made sense.
The dog quickly became a member of our family. He took a particular liking to Katie, which of course made me uncomfortable. While I was naturally pleasant to the dog and made sure he had a good life, there was a part of me that despised him. A part of me that hated what he represented, and that was the fact that there had been a strange man that had either personally or organized a dog based off of one of my daughter’s pieces of artwork being placed in my backyard. I felt like he knew we kept the dog, and that the dog was happy here. I felt like he had done this before and that he got off on it.
But I had no way of knowing. I had already called the cops and they essentially told me there was nothing to be done. The way I saw it, and I’m sure they would’ve agreed, is that I wasn’t necessarily dealing with what one would call a “stalker”. I mean, sure, there were stalking qualities to what was going on, but since we’d been home, we hadn’t been followed (as far as I could tell), and hadn’t received strange phone calls. The only correspondence was the letter that I had hidden from my wife. There wasn’t exactly anything proactive I could do to protect myself and my family, so I figured I would just have to take everything as it came up.
The end of the summer came, and we always had a tradition. We would spend a week at my late father’s cabin. The thought of canceling this year certainly crossed my mind, but I chose not to, as nothing else had happened since we’d been “gifted” with Roscoe. So we packed up the car and made the four hour trip to the cabin, which was on the edge of a small town called Long Lake.
Part 2: A Town Called Long Lake
Long Lake was a small town of cabins that people vacationed at; I don’t think there were any permanent residents. The people who worked at the general store and restaurant there commuted from the town about 20 miles away. By this late in the summer, people were scarce, if even there at all. When we arrived at our cabin, the neighbor we’d come to know over the years – an older man named Floyd who vacationed there with his grandkids – was packing up to leave for the year. Apparently, he’d spent about three weeks up there that year, much longer than usual. It turns out his grandkids were feeling as if they were “too old” for the annual cabin trip. I felt kind of bad for Floyd; I knew how much he looked forward to the trip.
After introducing Roscoe to our annual neighbor, we said our goodbye’s to Floyd, who promised to return the following year, even if he did it alone. I had the wife and kids start unloading the car while I went and unlocked the cabin. Before I approached the door, I stood there, looked off into the distance over the lake, and breathed in a big helping of fresh country air. It felt like a weight was off my shoulders being here, and not having to worry every day, wondering if that would be the day I got another one of my daughter’s drawings in the mail. I felt truly at peace, even if only for that moment. That peace would quickly fade, though, when I got to the door of the cabin. It was already unlocked. Now, chances are, it was just left unlocked from us the previous year. I really had no ground to suspect anything other than that, even with everything going on. There was no way that the mystery man could’ve known where our cabin was, much less gotten there before us. I had kept a keen eye in the rearview on the trip up to make sure we weren’t being followed, just to be safe, and I had no reason to believe we had.
I opened the cabin door, and the air was heavy and moist. There was a thick layer of dust on everything the eye could see, amplified by the rays of sunlight coming in through the windows. Everything was exactly as it was a year prior. I breathed easy, taking solace in the fact that it was more than likely myself a year ago that had made me worry so much presently. I walked to the master bedroom and fumbled with the fuse box until the power came on. My family entered the cabin, my children wide-eyed with excitement. They ran to the other bedroom, which contained bunk beds, and immediately began bickering over who got the top bunk. My wife went back outside to get another round of bags and suitcases while I got the water going. Knowing I had to personally get the electricity and water running gave me even more peace of mind; it meant that no one had been using these utilities in at least the past while, as evidenced by the dust.
Things went well for the first day. We got settled, and I put off cutting the grass until the next day. We took a ride on the ATV’s and played board games. The next day, I took my family to a spot across the lake that we’d taken the kids to every year. It had a small playground and an actual beach. There was a dock a little ways out into the water that my daughter was now big enough to play on with my wife, and my son enjoyed trying to catch fish with his hands at the shore. We grilled out and had a nice meal, and stayed there until almost sundown. My plan was to cut the grass when we returned home, but as we pulled into the small, grassy area we used as a driveway, I noticed that the grass was freshly cut. My heart once again sank into my stomach.
My wife commented that a neighbor must have done us a favor, and went on about her business. I looked around, and every other lawn that I could see was still uncut. I knew who had done this. Well, not exactly who, but I knew. I truly was confused at the motivations of this mysterious stalker. So far, he had given us a dog who had quickly become a member of the family, and next, he cuts the lawn of our cabin for us? A part of me almost considered just accepting what was going on, as it seemed harmless. And that feeling only grew in me when nothing bad happened the next day. But then, the fourth day came.
It was about 7 am, and my wife took Roscoe outside so he could run around and use the bathroom. She tied his leash around a post that had been designated specifically for him, and went inside to start cooking breakfast. Roscoe was a quick learner, and in the short time we’d had him, we’d trained him to do a few things. One of these things was to bark when he was ready to come inside. My wife cooked breakfast and I woke up the kids, and we all sat down to eat. It wasn’t until we were nearly finished that Katie asked where Roscoe was. Strange, I thought, that he hadn’t barked when he was ready to come in. I figured he was just having a good time enjoying the openness of nature around him. I told Katie that mommy had put him outside and that I would go get him. Nothing could have prepared me for what I saw when I walked out of that cabin.
Roscoe was on the ground, and his throat had been brutally gouged open, so much so that he was nearly decapitated. Then, from the horizontal throat cut was a vertical cut down to his testicles, and his innards had been removed from his body and placed next to him. His blood pooled in the grass around his small, lifeless body. I felt like I was going to throw up. I ran over to him and looked at his wounds. I could tell that it had been done with a blade of some sort, and was not a random animal attack. Before I did anything else, I ran back to the cabin and told my family to stay inside and not look out the windows. I left before they could question me.
As tears streamed down my face at the horror I was currently taking care of, I dug a hole for Roscoe. I gently placed him in the hole and pet his soft back one last time. I truly had come to care about the dog, no matter where he had come from. I filled the hole with dirt and went to put the shovel back in the shed. I don’t know how I hadn’t noticed it when I went to retrieve the shovel in the first place, but on the siding of the cabin was a message, written in what I assumed was Roscoe’s blood.
It simply said “GOOD DOGGY”.
I washed the message off before returning inside to my family. The entire time I had been dreading explaining to them what had happened. I sat my kids down and told them that while we were inside, another animal, probably much larger than Roscoe, had gotten into a fight with Roscoe and hurt him to the point where he had to go to doggie heaven. My wife and children cried, and I joined them. None of us could believe that we had just lost the newest member of our family. With this, though, I told everyone to pack up, because it wasn’t safe to stay in the area with such a large animal on the loose. They abided, and we were on the road within the hour.
We stopped at the gas station just outside of Long Lake to get gas, pick up snacks, and use the restroom before we set out on our four-hour trip. We all went inside, and thankfully, I was the first to come out. I saw it from the gas station doors: an envelope under my windshield wiper. I sprinted to the car in hopes to get it before my wife saw it. I succeeded, and immediately checked the area around me for someone, anyone. There was no one. No cars driving in either direction, and no one on foot anywhere for as far as the eye could see. I even made a circle both ways around the gas station, and did a check inside the gas station itself, and found no one that hadn’t been there already. I wanted to ask the gas station clerk to see the security camera feed, but a cursory look around the place didn’t reveal any cameras; that, and I didn’t want to alert my wife to the note I’d found.
I waited for my son to get out of the bathroom and told everyone to wait by the door for me. Inside the bathroom, I opened the envelope and took out the folded piece of paper. This drawing was one of our house that Katie had done about a week prior to our road trip. I remember because I had hung it up on our refrigerator when she finished, only for her to take it down to put in her “portfolio”. This one depicted our family in the swimming pool in our backyard. The addition to this scene was the same crudely drawn man standing behind the fence, with a pile of wrapped presents next to him. There was writing on the back of the picture this time too. “We are a hapy famly : )”
I didn’t know what to think of this picture. My family and I had been swimming in our backyard countless times that summer, even after the incident in the Midwest, when my guard was 100% up. I was positive no one had been spying on us. My only rational guess was that the man had used the pool in place of the lake we had swum in days prior, and the fence to be the treeline from which he could have spied on us. Whatever the case was, I folded it up, put it in my pocket and got my family and I the hell out of there. I took random back roads and out of the way turns on the somber ride home, much to the confusion of my wife. I told her I was checking something on the car; I was obviously seeing if anyone was following me, and again, I found no evidence of that.
When we returned home, the first thing I did was cover up the pool for the remainder of what was left of the summer, much to the dismay of my family. I made up some bullshit about how the water levels had been affected in our absence; something that didn’t really make sense but got the job I wanted done.
I wanted to tell my wife what was going on. I really did, but at this point, I felt like I had already hidden so much that the focus wouldn’t be on the issue at hand, but rather on my evasiveness. So I resolved to continue the charade. I was the protector of this family, and I was going to do just that. This wasn’t anything I couldn’t handle on my own, I told myself. In retrospect, I could’ve used all the help I could get.
Part 3: A Time For Giving
Things were fine for a few months, with nothing eventful happening. I found myself going crazy at the notion of not being able to do anything about what had happened. I’d forced myself to accept that the pool in the picture was a stand-in for the lake, and that this person had been watching us. I didn’t know what to make of the presents though. He’d already done…what he did to Roscoe. I thought maybe that was the present. But then he had already given the picture of the dog back to us when he gave us Roscoe, so that wasn’t it.
The kids went back to school at this time, something I was especially apprehensive about. I had to quell my worries though, so as not to alert my wife as to why I didn’t want to leave my kids, ever. Luckily, as I said, for the first few months after summer, nothing happened. I was at a point where I felt more at peace than I had since this whole thing had started. Then, the Christmas season came.
We had just put our tree up, hung the ornaments and all. We had a nice family dinner that night, I remember it vividly. Everything was great. The kids were excited for Christmas, my wife and I were a little less excited for Christmas shopping at the sardine can we referred to as the Christmastime mall in our town. Our kids were doing great in school, my wife and I were excelling in our careers, and most importantly, there had been no contact with the stalker. The only thing of any importance that happened during this period was that my wife sort of called me out. She detected that something was wrong from my general attitude of worry all the time, but I played it off. We talked for a while, about all sorts of things, but we were happy at the end of the conversation. My rationale was that perhaps this was all over, why bring it up now?
That night, we all went to sleep happy. Now, I’m a heavy sleeper. That night, though, I woke up at about 3:30 in the morning. Normally if I wake up thirsty, I’ll just soldier through it and fall back asleep. For whatever reason, though, that night, I got up and went to the kitchen for water. As I went to walk back upstairs, something made me turn my head towards the tree. The moonlight coming in through the window illuminated the tree and that’s when I saw it. There was a present under the tree. I quietly but quickly made my way over to the tree and picked it up. It was a small box, wrapped in green Christmas style wrapping paper. There was a to/from card with a bow tied through it, though the “from” was just a “ : )”. The “to” was to Katie.
I remember standing there for a moment in utter shock; this man had just been inside our fucking home. Before I did anything else, I went through the rest of the house, top to bottom, making sure he wasn’t still here. I went and checked on both the kids, as well as my wife. When I felt satisfied after what felt like an hour of useless searching, I went back to the “gift”. I tore off the wrapping paper and ripped open the box. Inside were an envelope and a videotape. Yeah, a videotape. Like what they used before DVDs.
I opened the envelope, already knowing what it was going to be. Another one of my daughter’s drawings. I unfolded the paper and sure enough, this one was of a princess my daughter had drawn. The princess was dressed in a pink ball gown with a tiara and a wand. The addition to this drawing was what I’m assuming was a pool of blood beneath her, and in the corner, a tiny drawing of the man himself holding what somewhat resembled a knife. This one really got to me. I didn’t know if my daughter had drawn that picture imagining herself as the princess, or if the man himself had seen it that way, I had no way of knowing. I got rid of the box and wrapping paper so my wife wouldn’t find it, and put the drawing and videotape in with my work things.
The next day, I went to a pawn shop and picked up a VCR. I got it for $3, can you believe that? Anyways, I went home while the wife and kids were gone, and went to the basement, just in case they came home. I hooked up the VCR to the older television we had down there in our makeshift rec room, and inserted the tape. Before I pressed play, a million different things ran through my mind. I wasn’t sure what I was about to be watching. All I knew is that I wasn’t going to like it. I was expecting to see video footage of my family shot from a hidden location.
The first image was of a dark room with a white sheet hanging over a wall, running onto the floor, like a green screen. A person walks out from behind the camera, but not far enough to make out any kind of description. He’s off to the very far left side of view, only his right shoulder is in the frame. I hear a creaking of some sort, like something opening. Then I hear whimpering. A little girl whimpering. I hear a voice whisper “Go.” and then out walks a little girl of about 8 or 9 dressed as a princess. She was a spitting image of my daughter’s drawing. Pink ball gown, tiara, and wand. She walked to the sheet and turned around, now facing the camera. Tears streamed down her face. The man went behind the camera and picked it up. His voice filled the hushed static that loomed over my basement.
He quickly whispered, “Do it. Do what you’re supposed to do.”
The girl started outright sobbing. A hand flies into frame and smacks the little girl. It made me wince. She stopped crying and began to…“act.” She curtsied, and introduced herself as “Princess Penelope”. That was the title of my daughter’s drawing. Between sniffles, she went on to say how she was so happy she had been rescued by her prince, and how he had taken her to a huge castle to live happily ever after. She started sobbing again. The man’s voice spoke again, this time more sternly, though still in a whisper. “Keep. Going.”
The girl sniffled herself back to a point that she could continue. “My…my daddy was mean, though. He didn’t want the prince to rescue me.” My heart sank. I felt as if this was all allegorical to my daughter. The girl continued “So now, the prince is going to punish me because my daddy wasn’t nice to him.” The camera is set back on the surface it was on when the video started. The man then storms at the little girl and she screams, as he begins to stab her repeatedly.
I couldn’t watch, so I turned my head away. The sound was even worse. Her screams will never leave my mind. The man grunting as he thrust his knife into her will forever be burned into my ears. I looked back, because I had to know who this man was. Every part of me had hoped he was foolish enough to show his face on the tape, but I knew he wouldn’t. And of course, no such luck. In fact, he was wearing a mask of some kind. When he was finished, he intentionally walked around the camera’s line of sight, leaving only the poor girl’s lifeless body in the frame, before shutting the camera off.
I vomited. Repeatedly. Until there was nothing left in my stomach. The first thing I did was go to the police station. I regaled to them everything that had happened up to this point, from the car break-in to the dog, to this. Now that there was a murder, that definitely appeared legitimate and not staged, they seemed to take more of an interest. I told them I was keeping this ever-developing situation from my family, which they severely frowned upon and advised against, but said they would respect my decision, which I was very grateful for.
I got home later that day, and my wife asked where I’d been all day. I told her I went to conduct an interview with a detective for a project I was working on (I’m a writer). She bought it. That night, she asked me what was bothering me. A few years of marriage under our belts and this meant that she could read me like a book. I had to play it off. I told her I was frustrated with my current project, and was having a hard time moving forward. Being the amazing wife she is, she gave me some encouraging words which, had I actually needed them, would have cured the problem instantly. This is, of course, weighed on my conscience. It was the first time since everything began that I was actually tempted to tell my wife about it. As I’ve said, deep down, I wanted to, but in some selfish sort of justification, I felt I was doing a good thing by keeping them in the dark. In retrospect, I would obviously have told my wife everything from the very beginning. This was just a scary time for me; I wasn’t exactly in my right mind. So give me a break.
About a week later, the detective in charge of my case called me. He basically told me they had nothing. No idea who the girl in the video was, as she didn’t match any missing children profiles in the national database. There was nothing that stood out about the room in which the video was filmed in. The only reason they knew the video was filmed any time recently was because there was a pack of cigarettes in the corner of 2 frames of the video, which had a logo that was new to the brand. I asked for a police officer to be stationed down the street from my house and at my children’s school in unmarked cars, and they obliged.
After this, nothing happened until March. While the police hadn’t closed the case, it wasn’t at the top of their priority list any longer, as a lack of leads made it come to a head. We no longer had police watching our house or the school. The calls from the detective got fewer and farther between, until I didn’t hear from him at all anymore. I knew this wouldn’t last, though. Every day I felt like I was going to get another letter. Or rather, he was going to try to get another letter to my daughter. I had just been lucky enough to intercept them up to that point. But my luck ran out eventually.
Part 4: A Change of Scenery
It was March, the month of my daughter’s eighth birthday. As the days got closer, my anxiety rose; I felt like this would be prime time for this sick fuck to do something again. We got all the presents Katie wanted for her birthday, and arranged to have a party at our house the day of, since it fell on a Saturday that year. We had a whole setup in the backyard. It was an arts and crafts themed party, which I was reluctant to do, for obvious reasons. But my daughter was the definition of an artist. Inspired, motivated, and I was so proud of her. I just knew what some of her work had gone to and how it was being used, and it broke my heart.
The party went well. All of her friends showed up, everyone was having a good time. We all ate, and then she had begged enough to open presents and we finally let her. We had them all set up on a table in the backyard. As we got deeper into the presents, the happier she got. Then, we got to a present that had no “to/from” card on it. I locked eyes on the present. It was a box wrapped in the same wrapping paper as the box that contained the video a few months prior.
He had won. I couldn’t jump up and rip the present out of my daughter’s hands without alerting my wife of something. I also couldn’t let her open it. I didn’t know what to do |
I bought a camping backpack from an estate sale and found the following pages inside.
There was a bundle of papers wadded in a deep pocket of the backpack, but I didn’t notice until after I got it home. I went back to the house where the estate sale was held, and a young woman answered the door. She couldn’t say who the backpack belonged to and had no interest in the papers. Her grandmother was the one who died (of old age, natural causes). Apparently, she was a bit of a hoarder, so I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to track down the source. The handwriting is tiny, and the pages are damaged. I’ll transcribe as faithfully as I can.
September 5th
The man on the trail is dead and will need to be moved. It is a more difficult task than I would have guessed, and nearly impossible for a 5’ 4” woman with no help and no gurney. I tried to drag him toward camp right after I found him this morning, but only succeeded in pivoting him and twisting his legs around each other horribly. Bodies look so wrong once they stop feeling pain. I never thought I would have so much experience with death, but I haven’t cried over the loss of someone since the lighthouse. This man shit his pants before he died, and moving him made the smell worse. It will bring the animals in. Still no sign of Ira or Bill.
September 6th
I used Ira’s foam sleeping mat like a sled to move the dead man. It still took me an hour to drag him thirty yards, and now the mat is so torn up that I’m questioning whether it was worth the effort.
Gary Law. His driver’s license is in his wallet. He’s from Utah. I took the sight of him as a good sign at first. Another human on the trail might have meant we were close to civilization, but now I’m not sure what he was doing out here, or what it means. I can’t tell what killed him. No claw marks, no wounds on his hands. He’s stoutly built, but with a bagginess about his physique that makes me think he was starving. He died with his mouth open, every mucus membrane turned ash gray. I don’t think he was attacked. It’s a relief—if he had been missing pieces the logical thing to do would have been to move camp, but then Ira and Bill would have come back to nothing. I’m more afraid of being separated from them than I am of anything else. Still waiting on them both.
September 8th
I spent all day yesterday stripping and burying Gary Law. He was shorter in stature, but his clothes should fit Bill well enough. His feet were small, so I’m keeping the socks for myself. They’re almost brand new, thick, blue wool. I can tell he wasn’t an outdoorsman. Everything else was new too: new shoelaces, new cross-trainers, new windbreaker, none of it quite right for someone trekking this far out. And the pants are from Banana Republic, pleated, and with a neat sheen. These aren’t pristine like everything else, and were hemmed by a tailor. I washed them in the creek, but they still smell like shit and death. Everything does, actually, to the point that I think the smell might be on me, in me. I weighted the pants down on a stone near the ridge that gets full sun. I miss bleach. I put green boughs on the signal fire today, but there was no answering smoke. I’m more worried about Ira than I am about Bill. It was Bill who found this trail to begin with. He always finds his way.
September 9th
Bill came back today. He took his time coming through the trees, and I got so scared I almost fired the gun. But he clapped, and I clapped back, and he called out to say he was injured. It was the loose shale on the hill between camp and the cave where Lillian was killed. He got caught in a slide and wound up buried to his hips, and one foot wedged between boulders. He couldn’t get free until the rocks shifted again, which they did, that night, when a whistler came by. He’s sure it didn’t see him. He had to spend two days convalescing within sight of Lillian’s cave before he was well enough to hike back. Two nights alone out there.
I boiled water while I listened to his story, and gave Bill some aspirin from the dead man’s backpack. His foot needed to be wrapped, but I don’t think it’s broken.
“We should stop splitting up,” I said.
He nodded and pushed his pack toward me. There was salmon and berries and some mushrooms I didn’t really trust.
“We should think about hiking out,” he said. “Pick a direction and go. It’s been four weeks. We’ll only get weaker.”
“When Ira comes back,” I agreed, but Bill pursed his lips like there was something he couldn’t say.
“What?”
But he only shook his head.
It’s been ten days now since Ira left.
September 11th
I woke up this morning to a sound I thought was a whistler, but it was actually Bill, on his knees, crying at Gary Law’s grave. I yelled at him about it—about waking me up and making so much noise. He looked hurt, and I felt bad. I’m just worried about Ira, I think, and afraid. I don’t know what we’ll do when the weather starts getting colder. If we wait too much longer, hiking out won’t be an option. There hasn’t been any sign of rescue—no planes or helicopters, no smoke. No sounds but wolf howls and the distant whistling, like elk mating calls, almost. If Ira were here, he’d tell us a story to get our minds off things. He’s a registered nurse. He doesn’t panic.
September 12th
I apologized to Bill last night. He shook his head like it was nothing, so I put my hands on his shoulders and apologized again, because I needed him to really hear it.
“Well I’m sorry you were alone,” he said. “We should never have left you alone.”
He was looking into my eyes so sadly, and I imagined he was remembering all of the awful things of the past weeks, and feeling the same guilt I felt. It was our research that brought everyone here, our recklessness and curiosity to blame.
Then he kissed me, and kept kissing me, and finally I kissed him back, because I was feeling something for once. Not even lust, really. More like homesickness. A little breakthrough of pain and wonder after all the bitterness and hardening and cold. We undressed each other and had sex in the tent. I don’t know why. I’ve never cheated on Ira before. Never even thought about it. This didn’t seem wrong, in the moment, but now it’s difficult to write down. It just felt like something we both needed. We didn’t say anything at all. Afterward he went outside to sleep by the fire, like he couldn’t stand to be so close. He spent this morning hauling water and wood, barely pausing to acknowledge me. I don’t think it will happen again. I don’t think either of us will tell Ira.
September 15
It’s late. We hear whistlers, just north of us, a chorus of them. Bill says he hears eight distinct tones, but I don’t know. It could be dozens. We put the fires out, and now we’re crouched in the tent with the knives and the gun. Bill reaches for me, puts himself between me and the sound when it crescendoes. I don’t think he knows why he does it. I don’t think it would make a difference. We won’t sleep tonight.
September 21st
Ira is back. His coat is in tatters, and his hat is gone. He isn’t speaking. I would call it shock, but he’s the only one with medical training, and I don’t really know what to make of him. He walks and moves fine. He doesn’t look at me. Doesn’t seem to see me.
I feel so guilty. I’m the reason he’s out here. Now every time I look up I find Bill staring at me. He tries to communicate with looks, but all I ever make out is the fear and shame. Ira won’t eat. We zipped him into the dead man’s jacket and left him to sleep, but he’s been shaking and mumbling all afternoon. He seems exhausted, but he hardly closes his eyes. It’s my fault.
September 26th
Ira hasn’t improved much, although he is sleeping now, and eating some. I’ve only seen him sick once before, food poisoning on our honeymoon. He was so stoic about it, and didn’t want my help. Now he hasn’t got much choice. I walked about a mile north and shot a porcupine, and Bill is setting up an alder smoker so we can save the meat. He’s getting serious about us hiking out, but I’m not sure how we’ll manage it with Ira so sick. “He made it back here, didn’t he?” Bill said. “He’ll snap out of it.”
Maybe so. Neither of us has speculated about what Ira saw. All we know is he was on the south side of the mountain. Bill has proposed we go west as far as the river, then follow it south. If he’s right about where he thinks we are, we’ll hit Red Hill before it starts to snow. There’s a lodge there, and a few permanent residents, or so the helicopter pilot said. If anyone is looking for us, they’ve certainly asked around in Red Hill. I’m glad we have meat now. I’ve been feeling weak.
September 30th
Ira is recovering, and not a moment too soon. I woke this morning with his arms around me, and the look in his eyes said he knew where he was, who I was, and was bursting with something he wanted to say but couldn’t. “It’s okay,” I told him. “Be patient with yourself.”
We had a cold snap last night that left frost on the ground. All three of us cuddled together to sleep, Ira between Bill and I, and at one point Bill reached over to grab my shoulder. I think we’re done with the awkwardness. I think we both know we were just scared.
We don’t have anywhere near enough food for the journey, but we’re leaving tomorrow anyway. Bill has a cold.
* * * * * *
Update: 3/5/2015
Hi all. I’m glad so many of you shared my enthusiasm about the first entries, though my enthusiasm has since twisted into something else. Yesterday, in the comments, I mentioned that I felt lucky for finding these pages at the estate sale. I don’t feel lucky anymore. I feel guilty.
This is going to sound crazy, but the more I read and transcribe, the more anxious I feel about the pages and the woman who wrote them. Her name is Ruth–that comes out in tonight’s excerpt. I still don’t know much about her–I have no leads to share about the young woman at the estate sale or her grandmother. Yet, I feel like Ruth is close. Like she’s aware of what I’ve done. Like she’s angry. I can’t explain it. It’s as if I can hear her. Whispers of disappointment rising along with my own pulse. I’m certain now that she never meant her words to be used this way–to be posted online with so little context, offered up as entertainment. I didn’t sleep well last night.
Still… I feel like we’ve started something now that needs to be finished. A few of you expressed interest in seeing Ruth’s original pages, but I think that’s where I should draw the line. It’s where I can redeem myself. I’m uncomfortable with the idea of photographing the original documents–her original words–and turning them into just another memento mori for the internet to have its way with. At this point, it makes no difference to me if you believe me or not. I guess that might seem selfish, but you can’t hear her like I can.
Anyway, here’s the rest of what I’ve transcribed so far…
* * * * * *
October 3rd
Third day of walking.
I wish I could talk to Lillian about what happened with Bill. She was young, ambitious, and so funny. Plus, she had a whole hoard of birth control pills. She and Geoff were dating. I forget how many you take in emergencies, and how soon after it has to be. But the pills are in her pack, and her pack is in the cave with the whistlers and whatever is left of her. She had the maps. She had everything that mattered. The cave is miles behind us now.
We built a big cairn by the stream. At some point, we’ll have to lead rangers out here, I’m sure. They’ll want to collect Lillian, and Geoff, and the helicopter pilot. I can’t remember his name. I hope one of us makes it out so his family can hear that it wasn’t his fault. He had three daughters, and was expecting a fourth. I can’t imagine what his wife is doing now. If anyone finds this: it was an electrical malfunction. He got us to the ground safe and sound. He was perfect, even fixed the problem, but then the weather closed in, and we couldn’t take off. Lillian knew the way, so we hiked to the lighthouse. And then the whistlers came.
October 10th
It has rained for two days. The dead man’s jacket is nowhere near warm enough for Ira, and too big, but we don’t have anything else. At least it’s waterproof.
We hear whistlers every night now, just after sunset. Three or four of them, calling back and forth. Bill is convinced they’re tracking us. We stack rocks high around the fire.
We’re following a new game trail now, instead of the river. The walking is easier. I didn’t think twice about it until last night. Bill leaned forward on his elbows at the fireside while the whistlers seemed to be circling us.
“What if this isn’t a game trail?” he said, his voice a low murmur. “What if they made this?”
I don’t have the energy to think about that. It’s simple: If we’re walking a trail they made, if their nightly whooping is urging us into a trap, we’re fucked.
Ira curls up in a ball when the whistlers start calling. He writhes like someone is sticking him with pins. All he’s said so far is “Let’s go.”
October 14th
It hailed today, hard. We had to take shelter under a tree, and when dark fell there were no whistles for the first time in a week. The silence was somehow more eerie than the threat of the whistlers. Ira felt it too, because about fifteen minutes after dark he stood up and started whooping and whistling out into the rain, calling and screaming in a tone that didn’t sound like him. Bill yelled at him to be quiet, but he acted as if possessed, calling out to them at the top of his lungs with his eyes rolling back in his head. Bill tackled him to the ground and beat him to shut him up.
“Stop it!” I said, at first, but when Ira didn’t stop making noise Bill looked at me, and I closed my eyes and nodded. He had to knock Ira cold to get him to be quiet, and he was sobbing while he did it, pleading with Ira to settle down. The wind was sharp, and I think it saved us. Every tree was vibrating and creaking and howling. The whistlers had likely all retreated to their caves.
Maybe they hibernate. Maybe they’ll leave us alone soon.
October 17th
Ira was his old self this morning, as completely as if we had gone backward in time. He was up before either of us, heating water. He said he took so long to recon the south side of the mountain because the whistlers caught him in a trap.
“It was a hole, clearly dug with tools.” He was shaking while he spoke. “They only came at night, and I didn’t get a good look at them. I could hear them, and see silhouettes, but nothing definite. It was too dark. I don’t know what they wanted with me. I got out. I climbed out. And I ran.”
We’re well away from there now, finally reaching the end of the ridges and the start of a valley where everything is very green. I hope the change in biome means a decrease in the whistler population. Part of me wants to take steps to document as much, if it’s true, but all of our field notes were lost with Lillian’s gear, plus the night vision goggles and the cameras. My biggest fear is that we’ll all be killed, and our disappearance will inspire some other young researchers to come up here to solve the mystery for themselves. We’ll become just another line in the sick folklore that draws people to this cursed place. I would hate to be part of that cycle, knowing what I know now. The whistlers are very real, and they don’t want us here.
November 1st
I dreamed last night that I was pregnant with Gary Law’s baby. Nothing else happened in the dream. I was hiking endlessly with Ira and Bill, and all three of us knew that I had been with the dead man, and it bothered us, but we wouldn’t talk about it. I woke up with my period, thank God. I’ve never been so happy doing laundry.
We’ve made camp by a small lake in the low point of the valley. It’s uphill from here to a distant saddle Ira thinks he remembers seeing from the air. It’s only about two miles away. Red Hill should be just beyond that, Ira says, but we don’t have the energy to push that far yet. We’ll rest today, and tomorrow we’ll move, and hopefully we’ll be drinking beer at the Red Hill lodge before dark.
Ira is the best shot, so he took the gun to look for rock ptarmigan. We lit two fires and agreed he’s not to go beyond shouting distance, but I still worry. The whistlers don’t seem willing to attack when we’re in a group. Lillian and Geoff were both alone when they were killed. Besides, I’m not convinced Ira is fully recovered yet. He says nonsensical things in his sleep, cries out and scratches. That’s new.
Bill and I went fishing after the laundry was done. It was stupid, doing it in that order. All we caught were minnows, and even that took hours.
He was staring at me while we sat. The cold was seeping into my bones, making me irritable. I haven’t been warm in weeks.
“What?” I said.
“He’s not himself. You know it.” He meant Ira.
“He’s better than he was. He’s okay. We’ll find him a doctor in Red Hill.”
“What if Red Hill isn’t on the other side of that saddle? What if we get up there and we’re facing another week’s worth of empty forest? What then?”
I realized my eyes were closed. I opened them, and the lake seemed oddly bright. Bill’s fingers were pressed against his brow.
“We’ll worry about that when we have to,” I said.
“I’m saying I don’t trust him like this, Ruth. He doesn’t remember the other night, after the hail. He can’t control himself.” He flexed his hands. “He could get us killed.”
“He’s my husband.”
“He’s my brother.”
I nodded, but that was all I could do. I have known Bill longer than I have known Ira, and spend more time with him most days, back at home, since we work in the same department. He introduced me to Ira at a Christmas party. Six years ago, now.
“What should we do?” I asked.
“I don’t know. But I think we may need to be open to the idea of cutting the rope, at some point. If he gets any worse, it may come to that.”
Bill started rock climbing on the weekends in college. “Cutting the rope.” It’s a metaphor for letting Ira die so we can live.
November 2nd
Yesterday, while Ira was still out hunting, we heard three shots in the woods. Two too many to take down a rock ptarmigan, and Bill and I stood, staring, tense, for just a moment before we hurried to put out the fires and pack what we could into our bags. Ira came running into camp, breathing so hard he couldn’t say what was wrong. He had no gun and no bag, and he grabbed my arm as soon as he was close enough and pulled me through the grass, up the valley, toward the saddle. Bill looked alarmed. He caught up to us and pried us apart. He yelled at Ira and handed me my haphazardly stuffed pack. All our clothes were still wet, torn from the line, and Ira’s eyes were wild. He stared off behind us, toward the woods he’d run from.
“It’s a warning,” he said. “I understand it now. It’s a warning.” Bill tried to talk him down, but then we heard the whistlers’ eerily musical voices. I’ve never heard it during daylight, and never so close as this. I followed Ira’s gaze into the trees, and stared, and listened. I couldn’t move my legs. I couldn’t even draw breath. I held onto my pack straps with a stony grip, like it was attached to a balloon that might whisk me out of harm’s way any moment.
Ira took my arm again, and now Bill was helping him, pushing me along the trail until I could run, until we all were running as fast as we could. The trail led straight into the open, and we all reacted differently, ducking through alders or sweeping wide from the trail to be closer to the cover of the hemlock. Ira took the shortest path, straight through the matted grass of the game trail, and soon he was far ahead of me, and it was all I could do to keep my eyes on him and my legs moving as fast as they would go. He was the first to reach the hill covered in scrub, the saddle between two jagged peaks. He ducked low as he ran, and I lost sight of him.
Bill’s bad foot and pack slowed him down, and I saw him stop and crouch, wide-eyed, beneath the trees, after we’d been fleeing for ten minutes that felt like fleeting seconds. Ira’s vanishing sent panic straight to my toes. It took me no time to decide not to wait with Bill. I had to catch Ira. I kept running until I reached the ridge, my lungs burning, but once I arrived there was no sign of him, no trail to follow. I lumbered to the crest of the saddle, clapping frantically, looking back over my shoulder for Bill, who was also gone. From so high up I could see the forest beyond, and the river, and a flat brown bay at low tide. No town. No Red Hill. I clapped, but neither of them clapped back. I was so exposed, but the whistling was distant now, and in fact I couldn’t pick it apart from the wind with any certainty. I walked closer to the trees, and built two fires with my firesteel and shaking hands, the second in the open of the hilltop, big and smoky. The hemlock makes for thick cover. There was plenty of dry tinder.
We left the tent behind, and the sleeping pads. Bill had the stove and the cooking pots. Ira had the gun. I have the hatchet, the firesteel, the wet laundry.
I made a lean-to with a small roof of boughs, and sat through the evening with my back tense against a thick tree, and waited, and slept fitfully. I did the same today, and kept the fires alive, and now it’s getting dark. I should walk back down into the valley to collect the tent, but the sound of the daytime whistle is stuck in me like a splinter. I can’t face the creature that made that sound, even after years of looking for it. I never believed the stories, not really. We came here to research the folklore. To listen to elderly trappers and hunters tell the outlandish stories they grew up with, to record them for posterity. We should never have come here.
No sign of Ira or Bill |
As an investigative analyst for the FBI, I spent years combing through the depths of the digital colossus known as the “Dark Web.” It’s mind-numbing work, filtering through thousands of illicit sites offering services ranging from outrageously fake to bone chillingly real.
My name is Clara Sanders. I’m 35-years-old, unmarried, and come from a loving household with parents who made it their goal to prepare their little girl for anything life could throw at her.
“Exposing you to the elements,” as my father put it. He enjoyed work as a logger, being good with his hands and methodical with his mind.
My mother had been an engineer—strong and incredibly intelligent. They’d done a good job preparing me for this world, but not the one that existed below it. Not the one lurking behind our screens, under our browsers and away from the familiar social media platforms most of us were content to use.
I had to brace myself for this world on my own. Working for the Federal Bureau of Investigation at least meant I was doing some good by bringing down bad guys on the Dark Web, but that still didn’t make it easy.
The more time I spent setting up Tors, establishing VPNs, and creating online profiles to interact with sketchy assholes, the more I felt the darker parts of my mind erode my normally positive outlook. I’d built up a considerable tolerance for this kind of thing. Formed a mental catalogue of the most despicable examples of human nature I’d ever seen. It helped dull the impact of the next brutal image I knew I’d inevitably come across. But in the long run, my ability to ward off the encroaching darkness was slowly diminishing.
So I kept chugging along through the shadowy underbelly of the internet.
I quickly came to realize what was legitimate and what wasn’t on the Dark Web.
The hitmen were bullshit. Scams created by phishing sites to mine desperate and unstable people for their money.
So were the Red Rooms. Jerking off to a live stream of some poor bastard having his throat sawn open or a woman being sexually violated to the point where she’d be better off dead. It didn’t exist.
But those were the easy days.
At least with sites that claim they can offer you a mafia hit or high-end murder, you know there’s a high chance you’re just looking at an edgy user interface with some bad malware underneath.
What made my skin crawl were the real products out there. The drugs and illicit weapon sites were creepy, but nothing I hadn’t seen before. I’ve scanned plenty of these, occasionally expressing interest in a product to see what kind of prick I could lure out of the shadows. Unfortunately, with this being the Dark Web, I rarely got a hit.
These users operated on cautionary and clandestine transactions, employing high level encryption software and heavily encoded profiles to conceal their identities. Only the lucky break or rookie mistake might yield an arrest.
The real evil resided in the sexual underworld of the internet. I’ve seen it all, and even in a safe, little cubicle, I sometimes felt like I’d entered one of the darker corners of the world. Only the sexual shit reveals the uglier side of humanity, exposing what people are truly passionate about.
When exploring sites hosting pornography, I found there were tiers I could apply to the extremity of their content.
The first tier was “technically legal, but understandably kept on the down low.” Extreme fetishes, rape fantasies, orchestrated gangbangs, a touch of violence, but all done with willing participants. If there’s anything I’ve learned while going through these sites, it’s that everyone gets off to weird shit, and sometimes it’s better not to question that.
Tier two ushers in the grey area. Not in terms of legality—anything on this tier is illegal as fuck—but it does seem to dance the line between sexual lust and true perversions. Crush porn, bestiality, mutilation, self-harm, rape, and far more that simply makes one question the state of the world.
And tier three, the darkest in my mind, revolves around what transforms the Dark Web from an eerie online legend into a truly terrifying entity. Human trafficking, torture, and explicit content involving children. These were the places where part of me couldn’t help but wonder what one could really do in the face of such evil.
Sadly, I’d had plenty of time to ponder this notion over the last two years, particularly on the issue of CP (child pornography) as the FBI launched the largest cyber investigation in history to topple Playpen, a monolith of human depravity.
Operation Pacifier as it was called took me to black spots on the internet that seemed to have no end. Playpen was a Tor hidden service that created, distributed, and advertised CP to more than 215,000 members at its most active periods. As an investigator, I was tasked with not only watching countless videos of young victims being tortured, violated, and defiled, but also developing relationships with the users in an effort to identify them.
Nothing has ever been harder than striking up a conversation with a 40-something-year-old man from Wisconsin who, in any other environment would’ve seemed perfectly friendly, and trying to sound enthusiastic as he described fondling his 5-year-old son while he was hog tied to his bed. Trying to engage in a casual conversation about the graphic abuse of a child stretched my will power to the limit.
It only heightened my understanding of how truly evil the Dark Web was. People like this were at home there, engaging in a shadowy imitation of day to day social interactions with their fucked up friends.
Fortunately all that torturous grinding paid off in the end. Thanks to the connections I and others in my department had established on the site, the FBI had been able to hack more than 1,000 computers involving members of Playpen.
900 arrests were made, including the creator and administrator of the site, Steven Chase, who’d only revealed his IP address by mistake. The cocksucker had swiftly been introduced to the American penal system where he received a 30 year sentence, but by that point I didn’t feel it was enough.
Along with the 900 arrests, 259 victims ranging from infants and toddlers to kids in their early teens had been rescued. Sadly most were Playpen users’ own children, a notion that stirred a ferocity within me. I couldn’t imagine my parents doing something so cruel as violating me and then sharing it for some pathetic fuck to get off too. Operation Pacifier was the moment the Dark Web truly changed me, igniting a revelation in my core that wouldn’t go away.
It isn’t enough, I thought to myself, staring at my monitor while the rest of my coworkers gathered in a conference room to celebrate the success. They deserve worse.
In front of me lay a minimalistic web browser, with small icons depicting some of the most severe sexual imagery I’d ever seen filling page after page.
Over 23,000 images and videos had been collected. I’d been tasked with going through a vast swath of those to confirm they were indeed what we already knew they were. It was an ugly protocol, verifying CP. You had to make sure each little window into the destruction of a child’s life was real. That way it could be officially used as evidence against the motherfuckers who’d engineered such a heinous thing.
I shook my head, a limp strand of curly brown hair swaying back and forth in my gaze. Breathing shakily, I clicked out of Playpen’s main page and typed through five encrypted security doors to open up another chat. Despite the monumental breakthrough with our case, the FBI hadn’t simple shut down Playpen. They’d taken the reigns from the living shit stain who’d created it with the intent of tracking down more members.
I was chatting with one right now.
His last message had just popped up.
> Just put down the little one down for a nap. God I want her so bad, but then I’d have to deal with all that crying again ;) What do you think?
Closing my eyes, I shored away my desire to tell him I’d rather he get fucked with a railroad spike and instead wrote a polite refusal.
> I’d just let her sleep. Can’t wake the baby.
That was all. I quickly closed out of the chat, trembling visibly to keep my temper, and grabbed my purse. I wasn’t sure how much more of the Dark Web I could take.
Collecting my things, I quickly bid a couple coworkers good night and ducked out into a vast parking lot. February in Washington DC made my breath curl into thin wisps as I made a beeline for the lonely Mazda 3 that shuttled me to and from work every day.
Slipping into the driver’s seat, I squeezed the wheel tight between my fingers, imagining that cocksucker’s throat in its place. Then, taking a shaky breath, I pulled out of the lot and headed straight for the nearest bar.
It didn’t take long to find one. And at this time of night on a Tuesday, most were empty. I selected one of the smaller establishments known as The Hole in the Wall. A dim neon sign flickered weakly in one window as I stepped into a subpar barspace filled with lacquered wood, cracked green cushions, and tacky memorabilia.
The only other occupant of the place was an older man in his fifties, sporting a couple day’s stubble and looking pissed that someone had intruded on his quiet night. He put down the glass he’d been polishing as I headed over to a booth and slumped into it.
“What can I get yah?” he asked in a gruff tone.
“Bourbon,” I sighed, holding up four fingers to indicate the amount.
He nodded, seeming to become a bit friendlier. “Tough day then.”
“In a way,” I agreed.
He rose his eyebrows, as if wanting me to elaborate but I didn’t feel up to it.
When the bartender realized this he resumed his gruff composure, pouring my drink and sliding it onto the table.
I accepted it gratefully and downed half in two gulps, leaning against the paneled wall. Something hard pressed into my hip as I did so. Curiously, I put my drink down and pressed at the spot by my thigh. I noticed the cushioning of the booth seat bulged slightly in the area between myself and the wall, clearly suggesting something had been stuffed underneath.
Sliding a hand under the cushion, I felt something thin and smooth push back and pulled it out. It was a laptop, relatively new and seemingly in decent condition. I placed it on the counter and looked over at the bartender.
“Was someone recently in here with a laptop?”
He shook his head, clearly perplexed. “Not in the last ten years.”
I nodded understandingly, gazing around the seedy bar. This was the kind of place one came to reflect poor life choices, not get work done. For a moment I considered handing it over to the barkeeper, but stopped myself. Given the laptop had been left in a public place by someone the owner had no recollection of ever seeing, I had a pretty good hunch it would just end up in an evidence room.
Alternatively, I could take it into work the next day and set about seeing if I could find the owner then. While my reasoning sounded like it was the right thing to do, a little voice in the back of my head also suggested the second motive. It would afford the opportunity to work on something other than the monsters I’d been talking to.
With my mind made up, I downed the rest of my drink and booted up the laptop. The bartender watched me curiously, but didn’t say a word.
It took several moments for the laptop to power up to a flickering black screen with a plain “Y/N” option. I hit the “Y” key and a line of text appeared that sent a bolt of fear arcing down my spine.
> Hello, Clara. We are so happy you found us.
Taking several deep breaths to steady myself, I timidly typed out the first question that came to mind.
> How do you know who I am?
The reply was instantaneous, as if whatever existed on the other side of the screen had predicted my query.
> You are not the only one who unearths information for a living.
My next askance seemed obvious too.
> Who are you?
Again their reply came within half a moment.
> That isn’t important. What is important is that we know what you have been doing.
The screen suddenly bloomed with multitude of horrible photos, making my jaw clench tight. Each and every one had been branded into my mind from the investigation. The laptop was flashing through the archives of Playpen.
“FUCKING STOP!” I yelled out loud, before hurriedly typing in the command.
> STOP
The bartender looked over in alarm, but I remained entirely fixated on the laptop. Mercifully the disturbing images of suffering and abuse diminished as fast as they appeared, replaced with another line of text from the mysterious entity on the other side.
> You have spent more time on the Dark Web than most. You know what evil dwells here. We would like to help you fight it.
Breathing hard, I typed in the only logical question.
> How?
This time the reply didn’t come immediately. Instead a single photo slowly faded into frame. In it a man stood proudly over two beautiful girls. My heart sank as I took in their faces, framed by curly blond hair and beaming happily at the camera. The man standing over them appeared just as carefree. He had square glasses framed over soft green eyes, a slightly hooked nose and the beginnings of a receding hairline.
Then the image flashed to a grainier image. With a jolt I realized it was moving. A video. Those two girls now lay on a large bed, unnaturally still and looking incredibly vulnerable. I clenched the sides of the table as the father, now dressed in only underwear and standing in front of a full-body mirror recorded himself with a shitty webcam.
The sheer change in his disposition took my breath away. He still held the same casual grin and carefree composure, but now an edge of sadism shadowed his eyes and curled the corners of his mouth. He said something, but mercifully the sound had been muted. I trembled with fury, struggling to retain my composure and remind myself how many of these sad, obscene situations I’d assessed in my office. But this was different. I was alone now.
I watched for a second more as he moved from the mirror toward his girls. Frantically I began mashing random keys just as he leaned over his youngest. The image froze and the screen went dark once more.
I slumped back into the booth, breathing hard. Another line of text appeared on the screen.
> This is David Welsh. Father of two, systems analyst for a rapidly growing tech company, and one of the top submitters to the website your employers just spent two years taking down. His girls are very popular there.
My jaw tightened as I hastily typed a response.
> We’re in control of Playpen now. The FBI are using the site as bait to catch more predators. They’ll be incarcerated and monitored for the rest of their lives.
The next response chilled me to the bone.
> It’s not enough though, is it?
Those had been the exact words I’d thought that very afternoon, reflecting on the sheer magnitude of degeneracy contained in that one site. Looking at that line, I chose my next words with care.
> We’re doing all we can.
Even as I hit enter, I knew it was a weak response. The mysterious figure seemed to agree.
> I know. Sadly the institution you work for is limited by the chains of legality and constitutional rights.
A pause.
> But you aren’t.
My heart constricted in my throat, pulsing like a drum as I struggled to grasp what this unknown entity meant. Eventually I replied.
> What do you mean?
Their response came rapidly once again, knowing my curiosity had been piqued.
> You are intimate with the sprawl of the Dark Web. You’ve seen to just what extent a hell this place is. It’s a virtual black hole, where all the worst in humanity is treated as a commodity, and a highly profitable one at that. There are no morals here and the FBI is bound by too many. You have the benefit of being in between. We would like to offer you the chance to exact another critical blow to the online child abuse trade.
I couldn’t speak. They seemed to take my silence as a motion to continue.
> Remember our friend, Mr. Welsh?
His image flashed on the screen once more.
> Well he’s not just a contributor to this disgusting little site, but also the fail safe for the entire Playpen community. We conducted a slightly more intrusive hacking procedure than your dear friends at the FBI and found quite the naughty stash backed up onto encrypted files throughout the Dark Web.
I leaned forward, my throat going dry at the thought that some sadistic fuck out there might be able to move on and reboot such a twisted empire.
The faceless stranger on the other side of the screen continued.
> Now of course I can purge his files, send them away with the flick of a wrist.
I could sense the “but” before it appeared.
> However, there’s another side to this. Taking away Mr. Welsh’s toys and sending the law after him is not enough. There is always a chance he might have his balls stripped off if his cell mates found out what he was in for, but that’s just a chance. He deserves more. He needs to face the true, abject terror he’s caused in his own home.
They paused once more.
> That’s where you come in.
I wasn’t sure what I felt in that moment. Fear, anger, doubt, emptiness, but also a resilience. As if they were challenging me.
Cautiously my fingers found the keyboard once more.
> What do you want me to do?
The answer came back simply.
> Remove him. Painfully and permanently.
I shook my head.
> And if I refuse?
Another instant, premedicated response.
> You’ll be free to go on as you are. But a man who’s been sexually abusing his two daughters for years will continue to do so until the files are revealed.
My reply was tepid.
> And you would reveal the files, right?
There came another pause, this one by far the worst.
Then.
> That remains to be seen.
I wanted to scream. To throw the computer across the room after typing horrendous slurs at this twisted anonymous stranger. How could someone use a child’s life—a child’s innocence in such a way? I couldn’t comprehend the notion, but quick as my temper had flared up, it rapidly subsided. And with the ensuing calm came a finality.
Trying to even my breathing, I responded.
> I’ll do it.
The stranger’s final response came in the form of an address accompanied by a brief list of instructions.
Ask if he knows anyone else involved.
Make him suffer.
Remove him from this world.
A small note at the bottom promised more information would come once I’d completed my task.
After jotting down the address, I closed the laptop and looked around for the bartender, but he’d left at some point during my exchange. Briefly I wondered if he knew more than he let on, but decided not to press the issue.
It was nearly ten in the evening and the address I’d been given pinged at just over an hour and fifteen minutes away. I could get there in under an hour if I sped, but I decided I could spare a little time to stop by a hardware store along the way. I needed to get some supplies.
As I drove, I couldn’t help but feel as though the stranger on the other end was tracking my every move. I replayed the night’s events in my head, wondering if I’d made the wrong decision.
No. This wasn’t some random change of heart. I told myself. It had been a long time coming. Despite the mystery figure’s brutal means of coercing me, one thing did ring true in those creepy, self-assured texts. These monsters deserved worse.
Clicking through page after page of emotionally and physically damaging images wore down my ability to view the people we were targeting as human. The moment they linked themselves to the Dark Web they became something more sinister. An incarnate of a cruel, primal instinct that drove them to satisfy a bewilderingly wicked sexual desire at the cost of their loved ones.
Over and over I’d glimpsed this instinct in the faces of those who partook in the despicable acts posted on Playpen. Even worse, I’d played along with it in my effort to lure more information out of them. All those hours spent at my desk experiencing this depravity had culminated into a single, stark outlook that was as brutal as it was simple: These people valued satisfying their craving over all else and the Dark Web was their means of accomplishing it.
This was a conclusion I’d arrived at a long time ago. The entity on that laptop had simply been the push I needed to act on it.
The remainder of the trip transpired in silence as I considered what I was about to do. I made sure the store I went to fell on the more run down side so there was less chance of surveillance catching me. My inventory consisted of basic utilities—rope, duct tape, rags, and then more specialized equipment including a sledgehammer, chisel, box cutter, butane torch and more.
Once everything had been acquired, I paid with cash and resumed my journey. It didn’t take too long to arrive at the modest, two-story suburban home of David Welsh. While observing the home from my car, I recalled the two poor daughters this monster had and realized there was an issue.
I couldn’t very well send this cocksucker to hell if one or both of his daughters woke up. Panic began to rise in my chest as I struggled to think of what to do.
Then the laptop pinged in my bag.
I’d almost forgotten about it, my thoughts so wrapped up over this execution and the morality of it all. Sliding it out of my bag, I opened the computer to see a new message had appeared.
> You think we’re that careless? The girls are at their grandmother’s while our dear friend David figures out how to deal with his favorite pedo-site being taken over.
I sighed with relief, briefly wondering how they knew I’d arrived, before shaking my head. They’d obviously tracked the laptop.
Another message pinged.
> 228737. Code for the burglar alarm. After that, what transpires is up to you.
I stared at those words, understanding the unspoken message behind them. Whatever the fallout was, it ultimately came down to the choice I made. Setting my teeth, I knew what I needed to do. I gathered my supplies, put on a pair of disposable gloves, slid out of the car and hurried across the street to the darkened home.
It only took a moment to slip into the home and deactivate the alarm. Once that had been taken care of, I silently moved through the house, catching brief glimpses of the two smiling girls in family pictures alongside their monstrous father. I marveled at how I never would’ve seen any difference in the personalities of David Welsh and his daughters had I not known what I did beforehand. His youngest had his green eyes and slightly hooked nose, and the older possessed a similar mischievous smile. But that was where the similarities ended.
Abruptly the image of them smiling flashed to the two girls unconscious, splayed unnaturally across a bed with a heavily-breathing man looming over them. The camera descended toward the two girls and I had to squeeze my eyes shut to filter out what came next.
Unfortunately the moment of disorientation caused me to stumble and knock a picture from the table. My throat constricted as it tumbled to the floor with a crash.
Acting instinctively, I went entirely still and reached into my bag to take hold of a weapon. I fumbled for a moment while a light from upstairs came on and a soft, slightly nasal voice called out.
“Hello? Who’s there?”
Squeezing my eyes shut, my fingers finally wrapped around something solid—the metal canister of the butane torch—and gripped it tight. If David came down the stairs, I’d have to act fast.
For a fleeting moment it seemed as if he was content to go back to bed, but the events of the past couple weeks had him on edge. I counted his soft footfalls as he made his way down the carpeted staircase. I’d positioned myself just inside the doorway to the kitchen, fifteen paces or so from the bottom step.
David called out again. “I’m armed, you know. I don’t want any trouble.”
I cautiously peered around the corner of the kitchen alcove, glimpsing David’s shadow illuminated on the front door. In that moment I made out something long and thin in his hands and breathed a silent sigh of relief. He had a baseball bat. Or perhaps a baton.
It didn’t really matter. I was simply relieved it hadn’t been a gun. A surge of confidence steadied my nerves as I counted his steps. When he reached the bottom of the stairs, his footsteps became soft creaks against the wooden floor, helping drown out my breathing which seemed deafening.
As he shuffled forward, uttering empty threats and warnings, I took one final glimpse at the girls he’d raped and abused. Then I stepped out of the doorway just as David was rounding the corner to catch him off guard.
“WHAT THE FUCK!” David screamed, stumbling back and swinging his bat wildly. He was even less impressive in person—only a few inches taller than me and heavier than his picture suggested.
I ducked under the first swing and slammed the canister into his ribs as he over-rotated, grimacing with satisfaction as I felt a rib dislocate with the blow. But it was short lived as the desperate man jerked the end of the bat backwards and caught me in the jaw.
Pain exploded in my vision as I stumbled back, clutching my mouth with my free hand. Then anger overrode it as I refocused on the terrified man in front of me.
“Who the fuck are you!” he shouted, stepping forward to bring the bat down on my head.
I didn’t respond, and instead took the opportunity of him leaving his lower body vulnerable to drive the heavy canister into an explosive uppercut that caught him between the legs, nearly rupturing his genitals in the process.
David’s face went pale as the blow took all the the strength out of him. The bat clattered to the floor and the man slumped to his knees, hands squeezed between his legs as he groaned in pain.
I held his gaze for a moment, feeling no remorse for what I no longer even considered to be a human being. Instead he was to me what his girls had been to him—a means to an end. Squeezing the canister tight, I swung it sideways and cracked the edge against his temple.
David’s eyes went dark as he slowly crumpled to one side.
With the threat neutralized, I kicked into high gear—binding David’s hands behind him and gathering up any incriminating evidence including the picture I’d knocked over. I quickly checked to see if I was bleeding, but only found a tender welt. Once done, I looped my arms under David’s armpits and slowly began to drag him back up to his bedroom.
It took awhile, but I had plenty of time. Each step I yanked the deadweight up took me a little closer to the endgame, which neither excited or scared me at this point. The dull ache in my jaw seemed to best convey how I felt. It was a pain I needed to eradicate with the proper catharsis. And this transcended far beyond the sick fuck slumped in my arms. It was how I planned to combat the Dark Web now—not worrying about playing clean or dirty, just playing.
Once I’d cleared the stairs, the going became much easier. I dragged David into the master bedroom, which was painfully familiar thanks to that horrible video. A flashy computer sat opposite the four poster bed. I shuddered to think what it contained as I lifted the man up onto his bed and checked his eye movement to ensure he hadn’t regained consciousness on me.
Satisfied that he was still out cold, I stripped him free of his pants and shirt, mopping away some of the blood trickling down his temple with the clothing. Then it was a simple matter of trying him down, duct taping a ball of rags in his mouth and waiting for him to come around.
I didn’t have to wait long. By my estimation, I figured the blow from the canister would take 10-15 minutes to recover from and sure enough David came too.
The gag immediately came in handy, quelling the shouts of confusion that roiled up in his chest. With the wedge of rags, all that screaming amounted to a series of guttural muffs. Once those died down and David realized he had no way to rip the gag out, he settled on communicating through his eyes.
A pleading, feral light shined in them. I held his gaze for a long moment, showing no sympathy and instead conveying the unfeeling emptiness now residing in my heart.
“This won’t take too long, David,” I said softly, resting myself against the lip of his desk and setting out the various tools I’d bought during my pitstop. “There are a couple things I want you to know. One, this will be painful. Two, we both know precisely why this is happening. I’ve seen the videos of what you did to your daughters.”
A low moan filtered out of the rags, sweat beginning to stream down the sides of David’s face and sting his eyes, making them tear up.
I selected my first tool, ignoring a faint sense of queasiness at its implication. It was a chisel, intended for prying old nails out of a deck.
I turned to David and settled on his bed where he yanked at his bonds, trying to cower away.
“The only other reason I’m here, and this could be your saving grace, is whether you can tell me if you know any details about about your fucked up friends on Playpen.” I twirled the chisel as I waited for him to respond.
His frantic look seemed to harden at my inquiry, a surprising quality for someone in his position. If he’d been part of a gang or military unit, resistance would’ve been expected, but not for some shady pedo on the Dark Web.
“I take that as a no then?”
I reached across his chest to take the gag out. He drew in a ragged breathful of air and sneered at me, giving me the first glimpse into the side of the man capable of brutalizing their own kids.
“Fuck you, bitch,” he spat. “You don’t know what the fuck you’re playing with.”
His tone actually took me aback for a moment, but I snapped out of it and assumed my air of cruel indifference once more.
“Hold that thought,” I instructed him, shoving the gag back into his mouth. “And don’t bite your tongue.”
Before he could comprehend what I said, I slowly, meticulously slid the chisel under his right knee cap. Blood seeped out, but there wasn’t much. The pain, however, would be horrendous and David let it show.
He jerked against his bonds for several long seconds as I levered the chisel through the articular cartilage around the bone and then lifted upward, snapping it free like a mollusk off a ship’s prow.
“MRRRRRRMMMPH!” David thrashed all he could, his knee cap flopping loosely under the skin.
Satisfied, I retracted the tool and wound a length of duct tape around the rendered limb. A fair amount of blood seeped through, but it wasn’t life threatening.
David wriggled around for a half a minute longer until exhaustion wore him down. He now gazed up at me with a mixture of unrestrained hatred and animalistic fear.
Next, I selected the box cutter. Now that we had established a rapport, I hoped he could understand the level of agony a human could suffer in the hands of someone who knew what they were doing. Particularly in the case of a someone who’d witnessed atrocities on level with his.
Running the razor blade under David’s throat, I took out the gag once more but held the point of the blade under his chin. “No naughty words this time, alright? If you have any information, tell me. If not, that’s also fine. It makes no difference to me.”
And those words rang true. That had been how David rationalized his monstrous actions toward his daughters. How I had dealt with spending all that time going through video after heart-rending video. The only way to counter the Dark Web was to either give oneself over completely to corruption as David had or approach it with academic indifference as I now did.
That was why hearing David’s next statement only made me sigh.
“Jesus fucking Christ, what did you do to my leg, you cunt?! I will skull fuck you if you don’t let me go now!” He shouted, yanking against the ropes and almost knocking himself out as he shifted his dislocated knee.
I had to be careful not to slice him with the box cutter from all the thrashing. When I realized he had no intention of giving me a straight answer, I replaced the gag and moved over to his right hand.
Another flash of anger surged through me as I imagined that hand wrapped around the throat of his daughters, stripping them of any semblance of normal life.
“Wrong choice of words, David. We’re going to be here all night the way you run that mouth of yours.”
He clenched his hands tight, but each finger possessed a thin muscle that ran from the tip back up the length of the arm. It was a simple matter to slice the one connected to the pinkie, allowing the digit to dangle free. David’s muffled screams pierced his gag once more as he shook, trying to free himself at all costs. But the bond held tight and I continued.
The night passed on in this manner for hours. I felt nothing in that time while David’s nerves were exposed to sear |
There is no fear as potent as the fear of the unknown. No monstrous visage discovered yet has been as terrifying as the infinite potential for horror which exists before the mask is removed.
That is why we humans, in our naive misunderstanding of the universal order, are gripped by the mortal fear of death. We think it the final frontier – the greatest imaginable unknown from whose penumbral shores no traveler may return. And so we cling desperately onto even the most dreary and anguished lives, suffering any known evil over our release into the beyond.
But death is not to be feared, because death is very well understood. We have witnessed it, caused it, measured and recorded it to the last dying spasm of neuronal flickering. Even as I lay dying, it seemed silly to me that I should be afraid of the emptiness which reason promised to expect.
While I was alive I wouldn’t experience death, so there was no reason to be afraid now. When I was dead, I wouldn’t be capable of experiencing anything, so fear still had no cause. That thought brought me great comfort as I felt the last erratic struggle from my heart against the inevitable conclusion I approached. It wasn’t until I was finally drifting off to sleep that a final intrusive doubt bubbled in my brain:
What if it isn’t death which is to be feared? What if it is what lies beyond?
And so troubled did I slip beyond mortal understanding, stepping into a world as far forsaken by reason as I was now from life. I was still in the hospital room, but the bustle of nurses and the beeping machines lost their opacity as though I was mired in swiftly descending dusk. It seemed as though every sound was an echo of what it once was; every sight a reflection. With each passing moment, the world was becoming less real…
But all that sight and sound – all that being – it wasn’t simply disappearing. It was transforming into a figure beside me. The less real my room became, the more real the figure was, until presently it existed in such sharp actuality that nothing beside it seemed real at all.
His cloak was black. Not the color black, but its essence. It was as though seeing a tiger after a lifetime of looking at a child’s crude drawing and thinking that’s all a tiger was. Reality flowed around his scythe like a brush through water colors, and I could see each elementary particle and time itself sunder across its blade.
Surely this, I thought. This is why we were taught without words to fear death. I clutched at my hospital blanket to cower from the intensity of the Reaper’s presence, but the once soft cotton now flowed like translucent mist through my hands. I knew in that moment that nothing could hide me from the specter’s grasp, for he was the only real thing in this world.
You’re late.
They weren’t words. My head ached from the strain of this knowledge as my lateness was burned into my awareness, imparted like an inescapable law of physics as unequivocal as gravity.
We don’t have time for the usual speech. Hurry now.
I felt myself swept up around him like dirt in a hurricane. Before I knew what was happening, we were outside the hospital, moving at such a frenzied pace that the world around me blurred into a dizzying tunnel of flashing light.
If you’re lucky, IT will have gotten bored of waiting for you.
I had too many questions, all fighting for attention in the forefront of my brain without any making their way out.
You’re quiet. I admire that. Usually people ask too much.
“What’s the point?” I asked. My voice felt flat and dead compared to his overwhelming substance. “How can I try to comprehend something so beyond mortal knowledge?”
You can’t. But it’s still human nature to ask.
We weren’t slowing. If anything, our pace was increasing. I wasn’t running, or flying, or anything of that nature. It was more like the rest of the world was moving around us while we stood still. A vague darkness and a heavy damp smell made me guess that we’d gone underground, but I couldn’t say for sure.
“One question then,” I asked. “What else is here besides you?”
And that is why questions are pointless. Death is not a place, or a person. It’s all there is.
Troubling thought, but made more so by the growing howl which began reverberating the rocks around me. We still seemed to be descending into the Earth, and the air was growing warmer and denser now. The sound continued to mount as though the world itself was suffering.
“Then what is IT?”
What I’m here to protect you from.
The rocks split from a flash of his scythe, and the ground opened further into a sprawling cavern dominated by a subterranean lake.
“But I thought you said you were all there is.”
No, I said Death was all there is.
We weren’t moving any longer. Light glinted off the scythe from some unseen source and streamed into the lake like a tributary. Once inside, the light didn’t reflect or dissipate, but swirled and danced like luminescent oil.
“I thought you were Death.”
Death is not a person.
The light was taking a life of its own inside the water. The still surface began to churn with the enigmatic energy. It took my scattered mind a long while to realize that I was the energy flowing into the lake. I still felt tangled up with the figure, but we now existed as a beam of light boiling into the water.
I knew I wouldn’t understand, but that didn’t stop me from feeling frustrated. If Death is all there is, then what is IT? What was waiting for me? The water pressed in around me and I couldn’t speak, although I could still draw breath somehow.
IT is here.
Something was in the water around me. Hands grabbed me by the legs and began dragging me downward. I was amazed to even discover I had limbs again. They felt so alien to me that it was almost as though this body was not my own. Light flashed from the scythe – then again. The hands let go, and the howling rose once more. The Reaper was fighting something, although I couldn’t make any sense of the battle except for the madness of thrashing water.
The howling Earth reached its crescendo, and the screams made the water around me convulse and contract like living fluid. Had the Reaper cut it? Was I safe? I began to explore my new body in the water, but just when I thought I was beginning to gain control the hands clutched me once more. I lurched downward, struggling in vain against their implacable grip.
“What is here?” I tried to shout against the suffocating liquid. “What is happening?”
But I couldn’t sense the Reaper’s presence any longer. The heat was unbearable, but the cold depths the hands were dragging me toward was even worse. I became aware of a blinding light at the bottom of the lake, and though I struggled, the hands dragged me inexorably onward.
I’m sorry. I couldn’t fight IT off. It seemed to be coming from so far away now. We will try again next time.
The pressure – the heat – the noise – the hands dragging me into the blinding light. I closed my eyes and screamed. I was free from the water now, but I just kept screaming. I couldn’t bear to look at IT – whatever had stolen me. Whatever was Death but wasn’t – whatever even the Reaper could not defeat.
Then words spoke. Real, human words from a real human mouth. My senses were so distraught that I couldn’t make sense of them, but I’m guessing they were something like:
“Congratulations! He’s a healthy baby boy.”
Most people can’t remember the day they die, or the day they were born. I happen to remember both, and I know that they are the same.
WRITTEN BY: Tobias Wade
(If you want to narrate this story, contact the author by clicking HERE)
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“Okay Father, we need you to cooperate with us here. If you’re honest from the beginning, things will be a lot better for you.” Officer Green sipped his coffee, a little too weak for this time of the night. Things like this didn’t happen very often in his small town so he wasn’t used to having to stay up all night. But when there’s a homicide investigation, it’s all hands on deck.
“Are you a God-fearing man, officer?” Father McKenzie held his hands together, nervously rubbing his knuckles.
“Not sure what that has to do with anything, but no, not particularly.” Officer Green leaned back in his chair, his spine aching. We’re not going to get anywhere with this guy, he thought.
“Then you’ll never believe me. But I’m not worried. God knows that I’m a good man and I’ve done nothing wrong.”
Officer Green took another sip of his coffee; longer this time. He needed some time to think about what to say next. He hadn’t done many interrogations during his time on the force and most of them ended with a confession in about 5 minutes. This one, he could tell, was going to be a bit more difficult. “Well if you’ve done nothing wrong, why don’t you just tell me what happened? What time did you arrive at Mr. Young’s house?”
“I arrived at his house around 6 pm.”
“And did he invite you over?”
“Yes.”
“Why?” This is going to take all night if I’m only getting one word answers from this guy, he thought, leaning forward and resting his elbows on the table.
“It would probably be best if you heard it from Eric Young himself.”
“Alright smart ass, what are you talking about? That guy is dead.”
“I received a letter in the mail from him a few days ago. It’s in my car. I think it would be best if you just read that.”
Officer Green paused for a moment. He wasn’t totally thrilled with the idea of following orders from a suspected murderer. But what else was he supposed to do? This interrogation was going nowhere. Nowhere fast at least. He put his palms down on the table, hitting it with more force than he intended, obviously a little exasperated from the events of the night. He pushed his tired body up and left the room.
About an hour had passed before Officer Green returned with the letter. Four pages all sealed in individual plastic baggies. It was really the only hard evidence they had so far. He returned to his seat, across from the Father, not saying a word to him. With another sip of his now-cold coffee, he settled in for a read.
“Dear Father McKenzie,
It’s been a while since I last went to church. About 20 years or so, probably. But I need your help now. I’m not proud of what I’ve done but it really didn’t seem to hurt anyone in the beginning. I was really doing more good than harm. I should explain.
I’ve been a ghost hunter for about 10 years now. But I don’t really hunt ghosts. I just go into people’s houses, use my fancy equipment to look legitimate and tell them there’s nothing to worry about; no ghosts here. They thank me, they pay me, I leave. If they continue to insist, then I burn some stuff, put some crosses up, yell some bullshit like, ‘Whatever spirits are here, please leave.’ Then they thank me, they pay me, I leave. Simple. I know I’m a fake but at least people minds are put at ease and they just go on with their lives. I know there’s no such thing as ghosts but some people’s imaginations just run wild and they need someone to calm them down. That’s my job. For 10 years now I’ve been doing this job without incident.
I got a phone call from a woman named Penny Hutchins a few weeks ago. She told me there’s an evil spirit in her house and she hears that I’m the best ghost hunter around. She seemed very spooked – as most people are when they’re convinced they’re being haunted. I assured her that I would help her and that the ghost would be gone in no time. I told her I’d fit her in in the next week or so. Her voice trembling, she replied, “Please hurry.”
When I arrived at her house, I unloaded my equipment and headed in. This appointment started out just like any other. I discussed my rates with her and she was eager to pay any amount if I could just help her. She had $1000 cash in hand, telling me to take it all. I did my usual spiel about how it depends on the severity of the haunting and the stubbornness of the spirit, blah, blah, blah. I fully intended on taking the full $1000 at the end.
I got out my fake EMF meter and started walking around the house with her, pressing the button under my index finger that makes the meter move. She tells me to go into her bathroom because that’s where the ghost usually is. Father, as soon as I walked into that bathroom, my blood went cold. Partially from fear, and partially due to the actual temperature of the room. I could see my breath; that’s how cold it was. At first I thought there must just be something wrong with her furnace. I should just tell her to call someone else. But then I turned around. Penny was standing behind me, staring right through me. The door slammed shut behind her. Her eyes started to roll into the back of her head and her mouth slowly fell open. Her head then tilted ever so slightly to the side. Her pupils were no longer visible but I knew that she wasn’t looking through me anymore, she was looking in me.
I carry a cross necklace around with me, just for added effect, but at that moment, I felt like that cross was the only thing that could save me. I dropped my EMF meter, grabbed the chain out of my pocket and swung it around at her as I slowly backed away, further into the room. I started screaming at her, telling whatever evil spirit that was there to leave Penny alone. My heels hit the bathtub. I had nowhere else to go. She lunged towards me, arms outstretched. Her skin was turning grey; her body looked lifeless the way her limbs flailed. I ducked down and dove for the door, escaping her grasp. The handle was frozen; the skin on my hand stuck to it instantly. I thrust my shoulder into the door as hard as I could but it wouldn’t budge. Penny, or whatever Penny had turned into, starting come towards me. I started banging on the door, yelling for help. She reached for me. I tried to slap her hand away from me but she grabbed my wrist. The cold went straight up my arm; I could feel it in my neck. I screamed like a little girl, pulling and tugging, but her grip was too strong. Finally, I kicked her right in the gut and she flew back into the bathtub, taking the shower curtain down with her. I looked at my hand. My skin was completely white from the tips of my fingers to about my elbow. I started to feel dizzy and that’s the point where I blacked out.
When I came to, Penny was sitting beside me, her face right over top of mine. “Eric?” she said. “Eric, talk to me! Are you alright?”
Everything came back in a flash and I jolted up to my feet and backed up to the door. Penny looked like Penny again. My arm was back to its normal colour.
“What happened?” I asked.
“What happened is that you’ve cured me!” She exclaimed, slowly moving towards me. Her eyes were glossy as she held back tears of joy. Tears of relief.
I didn’t know what to say. I couldn’t fully wrap my brain around what had happened. “I… I don’t understand,” I sputtered.
“Come. Come to the kitchen, I’ll fix you up a cup of tea. Do you like tea?” She opened the bathroom door with ease. This seemed to be an entirely different woman than the one I had met minutes ago. Or was it hours? I had no idea how long I had been out for. I followed her down the hallway and sat at the kitchen table. I started putting my equipment back in their individual cases. I had to compose myself. I couldn’t let her know that this wasn’t just another day in the life of a ghost hunter. I didn’t want to lose out on that $1000 if she found me out.
“So this ghost…” I began, selecting my words carefully. “What has it been doing to you?”
Penny filled up the kettle, not looking at me as she spoke. “Oh, it was terrible. That room has been getting colder and colder by the minute. I haven’t really slept at all in days. This spirit, she haunts my mind, mostly. Just yesterday, I blacked out for what seemed like hours. She’s been showing me horrifying images. Thank God you showed up today or I might not have been able to bear it any longer. She is a very restless, malevolent soul. I did a lot of research on spirits when this whole thing first started. I’m sure you know all about it though. You’ve dealt with this kind of thing before, I’m sure.”
“Oh yeah, all the time. I had a very similar case just last month.” It was a good thing I’m a good liar. But lying is why I’m in this mess now.
Penny fixed my cup of tea and she made pleasant small talk with me. I tried to respond as normally as possible but my mind was elsewhere. I tried to bring the topic back to her haunting. “So, what kind of things would this spirit show you?” I asked.
Penny sipped her tea, looking deep into her cup. “I really… I don’t want to relive that horribleness. I’m sorry. It was just too much for me.”
“I understand.” I looked at my teacup. Still half full. We continued the small talk as I tried to drink my tea faster. Turns out Penny had three kids, all of whom are grown up and moved away now. She downsized by moving into this house and started having issues with this ghost a few days in. Her kids all thought she was going mad and started making comments about nursing homes. Penny couldn’t have been older than sixty.
Anyway, I’m rambling now. I’m writing to you, Father, because this ghost is now with me. Something happened when Penny grabbed my arm. I can feel this spirit’s presence all the time. I black out frequently throughout the day and she shows me horrible things. I’ve done research but I can’t figure out who she is. But she’s shown me what happened to her.
I see these images as if I’m floating above her, watching the scenes unfold. Based on her attire, she must have lived in the late 1800s. She is in her house with her father. He begins to yell at her. He yells at her for not coming home before dark. She looked to be about 16 years old. She yells back at him. He grabs her and throws her against the wall. She cries. She sobs uncontrollably. He picks her up off the floor by the arm and throws her into a bathroom, shutting the door with immense force.
Another scene. Days later, her father opens the door. The girl looks sickly, slouched against the wall. Painted in blood around her are little pictures. Pictures of the girl, eating her father. Her father is terrified. He backs out of the room as she laughs. Her eyes pierce through him – into him. He slams the door as he leaves.
Every time I black out, I wake up in another part of the house. Things around me will be broken. My house is a disaster now but I can’t will myself to do much about it. This spirit has consumed my life. The scenes get worse from here.
The father has a doctor come in to try to find out what is wrong with his daughter. The doctor opens the door. The girl’s hair is matted. She’s removed almost all of her clothes and is crouching in an animalistic manner. The walls are covered with more and more drawings of the girl killing the father and eating him. The girl looks up at the doctor and screeches. She lunges for him. The doctor retreats and slams the door. The doctor and the father stand there, awestruck. They hear the faucet turn on. The water is the only thing keeping her alive.
After she showed me that vision, my faucet began to turn on and off intermittently. I thought about calling a plumber at first. But no plumber can help me now.
The next time the father opens the door, the girl is completely naked. Her foot has been severed at the ankle but her foot is nowhere in the room. She looks up at her father. Her eyes look dead – completely devoid of life. “Daddy,” she says, her voice toneless. “Help me.” She reaches her hand out to him for a moment then puts it down on the bloody floor. She begins to pull herself across the tiles towards him, her head held tilted up the whole time. The father stands his ground for a moment but can’t take it. He slams the door again. The girl screams in agony.
When I came to after that vision, I found myself with bite marks around my ankle. Some points were deep enough to break the skin. All I do now is sit in my room, waiting for the faucet to turn on. Waiting to black out again. I can hear her voice in my head sometimes. “Help me,” she says. I’m worried I’m starting to go mad. I’m worried she’s going to bite my foot off. Or that I’ll bite my own foot off. I need your help, Father. I don’t want to get anyone else involved. I know Penny passed the spirit on to me when she touched me and I don’t want anyone else to suffer the same fate. I would have called but during one of my black outs, I broke the phone. I can’t go out because I’m afraid that I’ll touch somebody and pass her spirit on to them.
I know I’m a bad person, I know I’ve done wrong but I don’t think I deserve this torment. If this is God’s way of punishing me for stealing people’s money, then I want to apologize. I need you to come to my house so that I can confess my sins. Before it is too late. Please hurry.
Sincerely,
Eric Young
Officer Green placed the last page back in its bag. Father McKenzie had been staring at him the entire time as he read. Officer Green met his gaze. “You expect me to believe… that this guy was being haunted? By a ghost?”
“No. I never expected you to believe it. But that is the true story.”
Officer Green shook his head. “This is ridiculous,” he proclaimed. He gathered up the papers in the bags and left the room.
“Are you hearing this bullshit?” Officer Green asked his partner, Warren, who had been behind the two way mirror.
“Just got a call from Tony. He says we should come down to the crime scene.” Warren, Officer Perry, had been on the force for about 20 years – 10 or so years longer than Officer Green – but even he had never had a case like this.
Eric Young’s house was a disaster zone. Picture frames shattered, the couch was overturned, and the smell of rotting food was almost unbearable. The smell of rotting flesh had not yet kicked in but it wouldn’t be long.
Eric was still fairly young. No older than 35 years. He had no wife and no children. His mother had died when he was young and his father lived across the country. No siblings, nor did he make many friends in the ghost hunting profession.
Officer Green and Officer Perry entered the crime scene for the second time that night. They had been the first ones to respond to Father McKenzie’s 911 call. The body had not been moved yet. The poor guy still lay there on the floor of his bathroom, mouth wide open, surrounded by blood. The most disturbing part of the scene was his eyes – or lack thereof. His eyeballs had been ripped from their sockets and were just hanging off his face, resting on his cheek bones.
“Over here guys, come take a look.” Tony Walker, the medical examiner, sat in the pool of blood, dressed in a plastic suit.
“We can’t just look from here?” Office Green asked. He wasn’t overly squeamish but he also had never seen anything this gruesome before.
“Green, come on, man up.” Warren bumped his shoulder against Officer Green’s as he strode past. Green soon followed.
Tony lifted Eric’s pant leg, nice and gently. “Oh my God,” Warren breathed, bringing his hand to his mouth.
“Both feet, completely frost bitten. But this one…” Tony rolled up the other pant leg. “This one has almost been severed off.”
“W… With what?” Green stuttered. He was fairly certain he knew the answer but felt the need to ask anyway. He still held on to a shred of hope that Tony would say a knife or even a spoon.
“Teeth. The guy was gnawing his leg off with his own teeth. Weird, eh? “
The three men shared some awkward glances amongst themselves, no one certain what the next move should be. The half severed ankle was surely odd and the frost bite would have been much less odd had it not been August.
“Maybe we should call someone in about this. Someone from the state?” Green suggested.
“No, it’s fine. He obviously just went crazy and died from blood loss. End of story. No murder,” Warren concluded.
Green had to look away. He turned and started walking through the house, carefully stepping over the broken glass. He stood in the middle of the living room. A small desk sat in the corner. It was the only thing in the house that seemed to be in order. Upon further inspection, Green found some papers on the desk. Whoever was supposed to be searching for evidence here was not doing a great job. Green sat down at the desk and started reading.
“Dear Father McKenzie,
It’s been a few days since I sent my letter and I haven’t heard from you yet. Things are getting worse. I need you to help me as soon as possible. I have less and less time that I’m in control of my body.
The visions are getting worse. I’m beginning to have trouble separating the visions from reality and now, rather than a bystander viewing the scene, I’m beginning to view the scenes as if I am the girl. That poor girl. I don’t understand why she is doing this to me. I don’t understand what she wants. But she needs help. I need help. I’ve had two more visions since I wrote you last. Two more that I remember vividly, that is.
The father has given up on saving his daughter. But he can’t have anyone know about her. It would ruin him. He opens the bathroom door. The girl hasn’t gotten much worse. Her bones are protruding through her skin. She’s obviously starving. She reaches for him, mouth wide open. “Daddy,” she whispers, her voice raspy and tired from screaming. He takes a deep breath and reaches out for her. She bites his hand, drawing blood; he lets out a shriek. He grabs a fistful of her hair with his free hand and pulls her off of him. He drags her through the house, kicking and screaming, scratching and fighting to hold onto something. He takes her out the back door, continuing to drag her on the ground, a trail of blood seeping into the fresh white blanket of snow. They come to an outhouse at the very back of the property. He opens the door and throws her in. The girl looks up at him.
It is at this point that my view of the scene begins to shift and I am now seeing it through her eyes.
“Daddy?” Her voice has a tone of panic, much different from the way she sounded before. “Daddy, what’s happening? What’s going on?” She begins to yell, tears beginning to stream down her bloody face.
“Rose?” He says. “Sweetheart, are you alright?” He begins to cry as well. He kneels down towards her, reluctantly pressing his palm to her cheek.
Her eyes roll into the back of her head. Before the father has time to react, she… I… bite his thumb clean off. He screams. He slams the door shut. I’m in darkness, laughing. Just laughing.
I’ve tried to do more research and find out who Rose was but nothing has come up. My computer is now shattered so I guess I’ll never know. I thought that maybe if I knew more about her, I would be able to help her but that hope is lost.
It is getting more and more difficult to write. I can feel Rose in my mind, beginning to take over my thoughts. She is taking over my actions. She has shown me another vision – I hope this is the last one. I can’t bear to explain it. I have more bite marks all around my fingers and more around my ankle. My bones are cold. I haven’t eaten in days. Please Father. Please help me. I don’t know if I can bear to see any more of what she is showing me. I need you to get her out of me. Please hurry.”
This letter wasn’t signed at the bottom. He never really got a chance to finish it. Green took a deep breath.
“What is that?” Warren peered over his shoulder.
“It’s another letter, more gibberish about a ghost. I guess you’re right, he did go crazy.”
Officer Green and Officer Perry returned to the station. Officer Perry immediately went to the coffee pot to get another one started. Officer Green went to his desk first. He searched for all open cases between 1850 and 1920. There were two about a girl named Rose but he knew exactly which case he was looking for. It was difficult to read as the document he found was a police report that had been scanned into the computer. The writing was messy and the ink was uneven. From what he could decipher, a girl named Rose Walker disappeared December 17th, 1897, never to be seen again. What struck him as odd was that she was reported missing by her teacher, not her father.
Green grabbed another coffee before returning to the interrogation room with Father McKenzie. Neither of them said a word for about a minute. Officer Green just stared at him and he stared right back.
“Tell me what happened when you got to Eric Young’s house.” Officer Green said, trying to keep his tone even and not stutter.
“I’ve already told you, you won’t believe me.”
“I believe you. I believe you now.” He looked Father McKenzie dead in the eyes in an attempt to convey how serious he was.
“Alright… Here’s the truth. When I arrived at Eric’s house, he never came to the door. It was unlocked so I went inside. Everything was a mess, as you’ve seen. I could hear groaning and mumbling mixed in with occasional screaming coming from the bathroom. I knew I didn’t have much time so I rushed over there and flung open the door. Eric was lying on the ground, gnawing on his own ankle. I could tell that the spirit had taken full control of him now and I had to act quickly. I got out my bible, my cross and my holy water. I had to hold him down with one arm while I held my bible with the other hand. Eric started to come back but he was utterly petrified. I tried to calm him down but he just kept screaming. ‘What have you done to me?’ He kept saying. That’s when he began to scratch at his eyes. I had to look away. I immediately called 911. I didn’t think there was anything else I could do for him.”
Officer Green leaned back in his chair and folded his arms. “You’re free to go,” He stated blankly.
“I beg your pardon?”
“You’re no longer a suspect. It’s been concluded that Eric Young went mad and killed himself.”
“But you know that’s not entirely what happened.”
“I know. And you know. But as far as anyone else is concerned, he went mad and killed himself. I don’t think anyone else will believe the story even if they read the letters. Even if someone does, no one in their right mind would blame a death on ghosts in a police report.”
“That is true.” Both men began to stand up and head for the door, Officer Green leading the way. “Officer?”
Officer Green turned around to face him, turning the knob and pulling the door open a few inches. “Yes, Father?”
Father McKenzie extended his hand to Officer Green. Officer Green smiled slightly, pressing his lips together. He reached out to shake his hand.
“I’m sorry, Officer.”
Green’s eyes widened as Father McKenzie quickly grabbed onto his hand. He tried to pry his hand off of him, finger by finger, but his grip was too tight. Father McKenzie stared right into Green’s eyes, tears beginning to well up. Green’s hand began to get cold, his fingers started to turn white, numbness began to creep up to his wrist.
“I’m so sorry.”
|
They follow the same neat routine every day. The boy wakes up to the sound of that unpleasant alarm at 6 AM every morning, Monday through Friday. I listen carefully to the sheets rustling above me as he tosses, turns, shifts in his bed struggling to force himself awake. On the occasion that he falls back asleep in the safe warm embrace of his bedding, face nuzzled sweetly against his puffy down pillow, his mother will come in.
Now, his mother often wakes up at 5 in the morning, a beautiful time when the light of the morning sun is still waking with the rest of Earth’s creatures. I can move more freely at this time, though risky as it may be. I watch her arise; her husband lies silent, still consumed by a world of dreams. I follow her to the bathroom and watch while she cleans her face, brushes her teeth and prepares for the day. Sometimes she sees me, but never thinks anything of it; how exhilarating those days are, to make eye contact with the people who house me. As she wanders down stairs to prepare breakfast, we part ways and visit the boy. As I mentioned earlier, on occasion he will sleep in, much like today. I stretched out and relaxed, awaiting the mothers’ arrival; it was always pleasant to be in the company of my family.
She arrived on schedule. With breakfast ready she wouldn’t be letting him sleep any longer. I have watched this week after week and in my humble opinion it is this behavior that makes the child feel he can sleep as he pleases; this routine is what gives me strength, what gives me confidence. My eyes follow the door as it opens and I watch her fuzzy slippers step closer. Her skin smells so sweet. For a woman of her age, her soft flesh is so tightly wrapped around her legs, it is all I can do to stay put and not act on instinct. I let the aroma fill my nostrils and allow her voice to dance along my ears. She walks out of the room and soon my vision is obscured by cartoon character pajamas and bare feet. His toes are so small, so delectable, little treats on little feet. I reach out to touch them, my claws leaving the safe haven of darkness that conceals all that go bump in the night. The light burns my flesh as my claws sprout from under the bed; they brush against his clothes, so very close to that youthful perfection. The pain surges through my hand, my arm, it’s almost more than I can handle. I reach forward to grab his ankle and he steps away. I pulled my hand back under the bed, nursing the burns, but the thrill of the hunt filled me with glee. I am so proud of how good she is to him and how much he is growing into a little man. I fade into the shadows and vanish from his room.
The father was still asleep. It’s 7 AM now, the bus should be arriving for the little one soon and how I will miss him. I contemplate following him to school, but risk outweighs reward. Exciting as the thought is; to be left stranded in a school yard, even though I would be blessed with tender morsels left and right, I may not make it home. Last thing I would want is to leave my home unguarded, to come back and find it claimed by another. No, I must defend my home; defend my people, till their bitter end. From their closet I watched the father sleep. The door was left cracked open this morning. He disgusts me; he is by no means a pleasant person. His flesh is coated in filth and only does he bathe when forced by the wife. I find myself all too often eagerly awaiting his departure to work. Ever since he changed his schedule to a later shift, I have found my routine has been shattered. Oh, how I miss the days that he would be out the door before his wife rose so that I would have her all to myself; how I could be there for the child and admire the beauty in his ignorance. Now, I’m afraid I must tiptoe from the morning to the afternoon, my time alone with the woman is no longer so. Yes, I can watch her from the mirrors, brush against her as she sinks into the couch, but no longer do I posses the luxury of freedom. The father will leave shortly before the boy returns, with this I find solace. The sun will begin to dip down below the horizon while he slaves away the hours at his job.
As night dominates the sky I can move as I wish, inside and outside of my home. Well, I used to go outside. Lately I have noticed prying eyes gazing at my family from the windows, concealed by darkness. I am tempted to get rid of them, but I don’t know how many wait, and I can’t risk leaving my people exposed. My kind grows very envious of those of us with homes and families of our own, they seek to destroy our success and ruin everything we worked so hard to accomplish. I’ve found myself staring out the window, watching as shadows jump from street light to street light, contemplating if the less fortunate can be of use to me. I may have a decision soon; perhaps tomorrow night I can have a chat with a little one.
They call today, Saturday, and I share mixed feelings for this one. I have my humans all day, but this also means the foul one lounges on the couch, shoveling filth down his gullet and barking at my people like a savage beast. Today was a true test of my self control. Today he hit my boy.
The little one was running around, talking about his school week and what simple things his brain consumed. He was so excited; I was so excited, I wanted to embrace him and share my pride, but to do so would be disastrous for us both. I watched as he spread his joy across the house, but anxiety and fear grabbed hold of me when he approached his father. I could see what was going to happen as the boy tugged on his father’s sleeve and talked louder than the television in feeble hopes of gaining his parent’s attention. I saw the disdain on the large one’s face. I felt the rumble of his growl as the boy continued. My claws dug into my hands as I waited, helplessly. Then it happened, he struck my boy while shouting profanity. The child ran to his room, holding back tears, refusing to show his pain. I was conflicted by the need to follow him, and the need to gut this beast and hang him by his entrails. Saturday is the day I decided he had to go.
Night fell quickly, and once they were in their beds I sneaked outside. I could see the hungry eyes staring from the bushes, trees, rooftops, they were so eager to claim my home. “I only need one of you,” I snarled, my well fed form towering over the lesser creatures of the night. “I am looking for a little Lust,” I called out, and not a moment later several starved demons scurried before me. They snapped and slashed at one another, until I snatched a smaller one up and held it up by its leathery tail; the others quickly disappeared into the night. “I have a deal to make with you,” my voice rumbled in dominance at the tiny creature that stared fearfully into my massive eyes. “I will share my wealth with you in exchange for the removal of the alpha-male in this home. I need it done discreetly and I grow angrier every day I can’t maim or massacre him. Will you assist me?” I asked it, giving not a hint of room for refusal. The creature seemed compliant so I closed my hands over it and returned to the safety of my home. I scaled the stairs in strides and soon was looking down the gaping maw of the monster, snoring away beside the beautiful woman I cared so much for. Once more I held my new weapon by its tail and dropped it into the man’s mouth, it slid effortlessly down his throat without invoking so much as a stir in his sleep. It was the perfect match. I felt better.
As the days went by, the father grew more distant from his family. He earned a promotion at work, had increased hours, and was often away on business. My life was improving exponentially, but this was only the beginning.
Peacefully I watched my boy sleep. I wanted to move in closer, but if I did, he wouldn’t be the same. As I lost myself in happy thoughts, they were interrupted by shouting in the parent’s room. The father came home intoxicated tonight; this isn’t a strange occurrence, but he slipped up. The father was supposed to be on a business trip this weekend. Not only was he home a day early, but there was lipstick on his neck. My heart filled, swelled with joy as the wife began striking him with a lamp and driving him out of the house. She found the strength to get rid of that dead weight and I was so proud of her for that. We were finally all going to be one big happy family.
My family has been doing well, but things have changed. They seem complacent; they seem content with their lives and genuinely happy. I want to be happy for them, but I feel strange. When the father was around, I was so upset, so disturbed, but I was powerful and a force to be reckoned with. The mother has taken to new habits; she admits when she is wrong, she replaces punishment with a teachable moment, she has become so humble. If they are so happy, why can’t I be?
I feel so weak, I feel sick and I think I have been losing weight. I hadn’t thought about what I was doing and now I am going to die for it. They will never know I existed, they will not miss me and I will rot away in the shadows. I only hope the boy can fight off the demons that will nest and make this their home. He will have to forgive his father or invite in Wrath. He must stay active in school and avoid Sloth. He cannot fall to the influences that consumed his father; I hope that the mother will stay strong as well, and look out for him. When Lust took their father, she didn’t have to deal with the abuse any longer; she could move on and be content… She didn’t have to be proud any more, but I will always be Proud.
|
The first week.
It’s all in the numbers. That’s how you understand anything of real value in this world.
At this point, we don’t need the baby monitor anymore. But even after all this time, I still need the static to fall asleep. It was a while ago when the baby started sleeping through the night, and I needed it through that transition. The monitor has one of those screens, too, that turns on if there is movement in the room. It really doesn’t turn on anymore. But sometimes I’ll wake up in the middle of the night and press the on button. Just to look.
Just to remind myself.
A healthy male in his prime will produce anywhere from around thirty million to an excess of one billion sperm during an ejaculation. Of that group, only so many make it to the fallopian tubes—fewer than twenty sperm ever reach the egg. Sometimes none make it.
I had met my wife in high school, but we didn’t date until after college. She went her way, I went mine, and for some reason both of us backwoods kids ended up in Panama City at the same beach during spring break. It was the kind of scenario we both completely hid from our parents, but that was the beginning. The first kiss escalated into a lot of other firsts that we just sort of blew right through that week. We had come so far since then. Getting married, the honeymoon in Florida. We decided to put our careers on hold and spend a few years together. It was a good call. But that was also before we started doing the math for everything. Realizing that we’d be in our fifties once the kids left the house. And that was if we had the first kid nine months after we started trying.
When it comes to trying to get pregnant, ovulation is at the center of everything. Ovulation is only a little window. Certain religions even track cycles so they can have unprotected sex around the ovulation cycle to prevent pregnancy. Even if a couple has unprotected sex and is trying to conceive, the odds are only stacked so much in their favor. A couple trying to get pregnant can still find themselves without child after a year. Something like 10-15% will take longer than a year to get pregnant.
You know, the real irony of having children with my wife was that we were actually both in the same health class together. Mr. Schuller was this old conservative values man from the middle of the century. He didn’t teach us much, but he did manage to tell us interesting anecdotal tales that had nothing to do with sex or reproduction. He never did tell us the odds of anything. None of the real numbers.
Like the odds for miscarriages. Most people don’t ever look these up, so they don’t realize that a spontaneous abortion can take place at any point during the first twenty weeks, but mostly just the first thirteen. And the numbers get smudged on this one, but the odds of a miscarriage are around one in five. Some experts believe the odds are three out of five. If it happens early enough, an uneducated mother-to-be will think it was just a late period.
When we finally decided to have children, it took us two years to get pregnant. And not just two years of trying to not try. We were actively trying. Two years of almost treating it like our part-time job. It took a bit of the fun out of it, actually. But we knew we both wanted it. We were more than ready for that next phase of our lives. When it finally happened, we were so happy. My wife was the one who told me we had to wait a few weeks. She told me how common miscarriages were and that’s what got me started on the numbers. On knowing the odds.
Most mothers don’t know to wait. They take the pregnancy test and they let everyone know they got the pink little circle or the triangle or the double lines. Then the doctor visit takes place and the baby’s gone. They never did the research to know how frequent it all is, how often things don’t work out. And the reasons are countless. Sometimes the body just rejects the baby. Other times, the mother smoked or drank too much caffeine or some other drug. Or maybe the mother is over 45 years old, in which case their odds jump up to a fifty-fifty chance of keeping the baby to term. Sometimes, it just happens. No one’s to blame and something just doesn’t line up.
We also went through a few false alarms in those two years. We made it pretty far at one point. We were a week away from telling our friends and family when my wife had another period. It was a rough point in our life together. But we kept trying. We knew it would happen, eventually.
Once your child’s born, there’s a one in 1,500 chance that it will pass away from SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome). They just fall asleep one day and never wake up again. No one has completely figured out why. If the mother is seriously ill, the odds go up that the child will have difficulty. Any number of external factors limit the chances for the baby: smoking, drinking, eating wrong, drugs, even getting the flu. In America, the child mortality rate of children that don’t make it past their fifth birthday is around five for every one thousand. In some countries, it’s above a hundred for every thousand. America’s current population is around 310 million.
When we finally were able to tell our friends and family, I was so happy. We were making it; when we found out it would be a boy, happiness grew into pride. We took classes; pride turned to paranoia. We bought padding for everything, stocked up on band-aids and medicines and bought enough diapers to last us a year.
All those odds.
All those numbers stacked against all of us. And it has even gotten better over the years. That our species has survived this long is always a wonder to me, when I sit down and consider it all.
I guess you could say I was a nervous father. During our pregnancy, every day felt like a miracle. The idea that life was being molded in there. That our bits of protoplasm were forming into something that we would later shape in other ways, and which would shape us, was the most amazing feeling I had ever experienced.
Through the screaming and the drugs and the sleepless nights, there he was. The more perfect version of ourselves. Still pure from his lack of experience with the world. Not yet touched by the harshness.
We did our best to be informed. It was pretty hard stepping up to the plate with that. Cynthia was too drugged up to say yes or no to things, so there I was, remembering the classes and remembering what to say no to. What to say yes to. They try to sell you anything in that moment. Most of the time they just want to get off shift early. You can’t blame them too much, I guess. A job’s a job. And I have no reason to be bitter about our experience at the hospital. But there were a few moments where I thought they were trying to get over on us. I just had to keep reminding myself about everything. You can learn a lot from history. I mean, up into the 1950s doctors were still telling women to smoke while they were pregnant and they took x-rays of the babies.
Rhythms are quickly established during the first few days. Sleep when the baby sleeps. Anyone who doesn’t do that deserves to be tired. Babies are like cats with regards to the number of hours they sleep. Once the newborn wakes up, you just go through the motions. Change, feed, burp, rock. Sleep.
But, then, last night happened. I had the monitor on and I fell asleep to the static low hum with the volume set at 40%, just in case. At four o’clock in the morning, the baby started screaming hard. It was the loudest, most terrible scream I had ever heard him put forth. There’s something inside you when you become a parent. Something inside that doesn’t make those screams annoying. Instead, when it’s your baby, you just feel the screams like blows to the gut. I would do anything to soothe my little guy. Anything to make him feel better.
I would do anything to hold him. To give him that comfort.
To hold him, again.
It was all in the numbers, somewhere. That’s how it always was and how it always is. Anything of real value has to be measured. And life is the most valuable of all things.
He screamed for thirty minutes over the monitor. The motion sensor even came on, he was so active. My wife and I just laid there.
The baby had passed away two weeks ago.
SIDS.
—
The second week.
Mr. Schuller was the type of teacher that tried to tell stories to make points that never related to the lesson. He was always trying to teach clumsy ethical lessons during health class, pushing his opinions and way of life with the cavalier arrogance of a Bible-thumping illiterate. To be honest, most of us just let all that stuff flow in and out of our ears. But in hindsight, some of those stories were good for a young teenager to hear. They must have made some sort of imprint, I can still remember them.
Mr. Schuller once spoke for forty minutes about the future of wireless technology. How the future would be all about wireless this and wireless that. This was around a year or so before any of us had heard of WiFi. Dial-up modems were still the way to access the Internet, and we all had to wait a hot minute for the static and noise to run its course while we dialed in. Mr. Schuller told us how wireless was not a new thing. How an inventor named Tesla had done experiments with electricity that spanned miles and only consisted of wireless transmissions of energy. There was a whole strange point to the story, but that part has since been lost to me. All I remember is visualizing the light bulbs turning on at such a distance. It’s the image I think of every time the baby monitor hums.
When that screen pops on from the motion in my son’s room, I think of Tesla. I think of the wireless transmission to the baby monitor and I wonder how the energy is used.
Last night was the night I decided to stay awake. Four o’clock was always the time the motion began, when the movements in my son’s room would turn the monitor’s light on. When the noises would start.
Same exact time.
Every single night.
But last night, I decided I would change one of the variables. After three weeks, I needed to know. I was ready to start dealing with the loss and ready to start understanding what was happening. That’s what I told myself, how I rationalized.
The night dragged on, but I was able to stay awake. There was a low level of adrenaline keeping me on the edge, like the feeling kids get when they know Christmas is in the morning, except devoid of the joyful anticipation. I was blindfolded on a rollercoaster, going up a hill, and I had no clue when I’d take the plunge or how steep it would be.
I thought of my son and the last months he was alive. How we used to play around. I had gotten him a small stuffed fox with deep orange fur and beady eyes. He loved the thing and would tackle it to cuddle against its plush fiery fur. For the life of me I couldn’t find it anywhere after his death. It had just disappeared.
I stared at the clock on the night stand until it clicked over. Four o’clock. Right on schedule, my son started to cry. Last night was the first night I considered the numbers involved. Four was never a time that he would normally wake up. My son was always asleep until at least six. I tried to remember if he cried the night he passed away. If maybe he warned us and this was a way for us to finally get there in time. A way for us to do the right thing.
Parents sleep so little in those first months. It was entirely possible for us to sleep through him crying at four if he woke up several times throughout the night. I couldn’t remember. But thinking about it made me feel guilty. I shook my head and sat up to look at the monitor. Three weeks of listening to my son cry and I never had the guts to pick up the monitor to look. I wasn’t sure what I would see. I licked my lips to get the dryness out of my mouth. I reached to pick up the monitor and took a long breath. The room was so dark that looking at the screen was blinding for a few seconds. I had to let my eyes adjust, and when they did, I was gazing right into the crib. The sound of crying continued coming from the piece of plastic, wirelessly transmitting its way into my hands.
There was something there, something dark and blurry, but it wasn’t my son. I couldn’t tell what it was. It was almost like it was canceling out the pixels on the LCD screen. I had been waiting for so long to see him again, I never thought I would be staring at something that wasn’t a child. At a crying black blob of nothing. Was I crying, too? Maybe. I was having a hard time rationalizing what was happening, having a hard time breathing. My hands were shaking. And a tingling feeling kept creeping up and down my spine.
I had my finger on the power button, just to check. I needed to turn off the monitor for a moment. To let go. To say goodbye to my son. Three weeks of listening to the hum and then the cries was enough for me. My son was gone, and I needed to be able to accept that. Then, the black blob shifted and turned. It had eyes that radiated light, and the eyes looked right into the camera. Right into me.
I turned off the monitor as quickly as I could and tried to make myself continue to breathe. My brain wanted me to hyperventilate; my body wanted to do nothing except retreat into itself. I didn’t know what the blob was, or what it being there meant. I was trying to figure it out when I realized that the monitor was off, but the crying sounds of my son hadn’t stopped. The cries were real, and still coming from the other room.
I was shaking from the tingling feeling in my spine. But I decided to look. I needed to see. I looked over to my wife. She was still asleep. She always was. A part of me didn’t think she even ever heard the monitor. But the sound was clear and audibly coming from our son’s room.
He was still crying.
I got out of bed and made my way to my son’s room. The cries got louder as I got closer, as though they were being amplified. I reached the door. A part of me hoped to see my son again. To hold him. For everything to be a dream or some strange hallucination. He was still alive and well. SIDS never happened. What were the odds of that? I didn’t know. For once, I didn’t care. I forced myself to take a breath and I opened the door.
The second the door was open the sound of my son’s cries escalated to an intensely high pitch. Whatever was in the crib shot up to a sitting position. The eyes glowed with fire and they turned to look right at me. My ears were burned with the sound. The creature’s mouth was moving to the cries. It was the source of the sound. It had replaced my son. I couldn’t understand what was happening.
My wife was the only reason I woke up this morning. She found me on the floor outside my son’s room, the door to his room still closed. My clothes were gone and dried blood caked on the sides of my head, rivers of crusted red flowing from my ears. My body was covered in scratches. I asked my wife if she heard any of the noises from last night.
“What noises?” she asked.
—
The third week.
It’s been a rough week. I haven’t woken up in my own bed for a few days now. Sometimes I remember getting into bed. Sometimes I’m going about my day and I simply wake up and it’s morning. The stress has started to force me away from my wife. Or maybe it’s her distancing herself from me. We never talk about it, leaving me to assume that this is just her own way of coping. It’s logical.
People react to things differently. Her reaction has always been to sleep. To roll over. To zone out. She would do that all the time back in high school. Health class would start to get boring and she would go to the bathroom, do her thing. For some reason, I find myself thinking a lot of those days. How I used to stare at her in class. Fantasize about her when I’d get home from school. How much of my life started in high school? Why would those days never leave me? What if we had just never had a son?
Every day I wake up, it’s to the sound of myself screaming. Just like the sensation of urinating in your sleep, the dream revolves around the scream. A slow fade gradually brings the scream out of the dream and I realize I’m the one making the noise. Making the bed yellow. Bleeding on a carpet somewhere in the house. Some mornings I’m downstairs. Most mornings I’m at the door to my son’s room. The door is always closed. The last few days it’s been locked.
I’ve asked my wife about it, about the door, but she persists in giving me the silent treatment. I’ve been getting mostly stares instead of conversation. I feel like I’m back in high school, passing notes to try and communicate and having girls look at me like I’m a fool for asking them out.
My wife has even changed her clothes. Like she doesn’t want to wear the things I bought her. Or maybe the clothes remind her of our son. That would be reasonable. Sometimes I notice. Sometimes it’s like the clothes change in the middle of the day. Nothing extreme, just a color here, a hat there. It throws off the day just enough to be devoid of sense. Sometimes it takes me an hour to pinpoint it.
Sometimes she reminds me of Alice, another girl that I sat near in health class back in high school. Alice was something. She always wore white. My wife was Cynthia, though. Cyn. She is Cyn. We used to have fun. Back when we were dating. We would take turns DDing and we would just tear up a town. Sometimes we’d go out parking, even though we each had a place. And when it came to serious adult life, she was wonderful. Every time I got sick, she was there for me. Ice cream, back rubs, the works. It was enough for me to propose. I knew I wanted to spend forever with her. To be the one to dote on her when she’d get sick. The good old days. It wasn’t that long ago, but it feels like it was a lifetime.
Sometimes, when my son was inconsolable, I would turn on the TV. I was always lucky and found the right channel with the same shows. The dumb coyote never did win out. Always had an anvil or a ton of bricks landing on him. He seemed to have all the money in the world for gadgets, but lived out his life as a poor man. Never understood the meaning there. I suppose it was something about what’s right in front of a man—how that stuff should make him happy. Either way, my son ate up the vaudeville. Every time.
Tangents. I never seem to tell a story straight through.
Last night, I didn’t leave the monitor on. At least, I didn’t remember keeping it on. Maybe I did and I just lowered the volume. The nights have started to blur. It’s been a few weeks, now. It didn’t matter, either way: the cries started at the same time, and I heard them all the same.
For me, the most haunting part of this experience has been that I was the worried parent. I was the one who couldn’t sleep through him crying. I just couldn’t take it. I was paranoid about everything. I’d wake up every hour or two and walk into my son’s room and just check up on him. Check the thermostat to ensure it wasn’t too warm or too cold. Leave the nightlight in the hallway on. The things that reasonable parents do.
I remember now. The night my son died, he cried out in the middle of the night. Some time around four, I think. But I was too much of a zombie. Something had happened and I was at work late. By the time I got to sleep, I just wouldn’t wake up. Couldn’t transition from the sound in the dream. But I knew he was crying. A part of my brain knew it wasn’t the dream making those sounds, but I ignored the cries. I just wanted to get a few hours in. My wife was always a sound sleeper. She never even knew. When I asked her if she heard the sounds the night prior, all she could say was the same thing: “What sounds?” We were both hysterical when we realized what had happened.
Last night, the cries happened at the same time. Four in the morning. The same exact time as the night my son passed. Except last night, the cries ended early. Instead of half an hour, it was only five minutes. And then a pause. Silence. I thought something had happened. Maybe the cries would start if I turned on the monitor. But the monitor was already on. Like I said, I didn’t remember turning it on, but there it was. Glowing with the speakers crackling.
I took the monitor off my nightstand and I rested it on my chest. I gave myself a few seconds to adjust to the brightness. There it was. The dark blur. My son. Sitting up in the crib, looking at the monitor with the glowing eyes. There was no crying, though. We both sat there, looking at each other through the miracle of wireless technology. Through time and space. Through the crackling.
I tried to speak.
I couldn’t find the words.
The dark mass stood up and seemed to slide over the railing of the crib and out of the frame of the monitor camera. Something was about to happen, but I kept staring at the monitor. I started to hear sounds coming from my son’s room, just off camera. Whatever it was knew how to open a door, because the next thing I heard was the creaking sound of my son’s door swinging out into the hallway. It wasn’t a loud creak. Just enough for me to question whether or not I heard the door moving. Then the nightlight in the hallway went out.
I tried peeking my head over the edge of the bed, but staring at the monitor for so long had made everything else darker. I couldn’t see it, but I could hear it. Something was there. I held my breath to see if I could hear it. I could feel the air in the room shift with the air conditioner. But whatever had been moving had stopped. Maybe it wasn’t there. Maybe I was starting to lose it. Maybe my wife was right to be distant.
I took a long breath to steady myself. It was just the AC. Just the hallway light burning out. But then I heard something shift. Something was in the room, and it was resting directly next to my side of the bed. Everything fell silent. I couldn’t even feel my heart beating. My eyes teared up.
I clicked off the monitor’s screen and then I twisted the monitor around in my hands to use it as a flashlight. I moved slowly. I stopped breathing. I couldn’t hear it, but I knew it was there. I peeked my head over the edge of the bed to where I knew it was. I pointed the monitor.
Half a breath.
I clicked on the screen.
I saw it before the screen had reached its full brightness. Rusty orange and night’s gray blurred with the few rays of moonlight slicing through the blinds to color the plush face of a stuffed animal. The face of a fox with the body of a child. Glowing eyes of fire shot up from the edge of my bed and into my face.
I woke up screaming to my wife giving me CPR. My face was marked by a large, scabbed gorge.
—
The fourth week.
When I was a much younger man, being raised by my father, I was often told a story about a fox. My mother wasn’t around often while I was being raised. She was there, but that was just her body. Her mind was somewhere else. My father was the one who raised me, and every year that I remember being alive we went deer hunting. Those have always been some of my favorite memories. Ones and zeros that have always stuck around and reminded me about the best days of my life.
Out in the woods of upstate New York, you could walk for miles without ever seeing a trace of man. Just the trees and the wildlife. The animals we were hunting would always be the last things we would ever see. The math involved in it all was amazing to me. The odds. The numbers. How long we would spend in the woods compared to the encounters with our prey, sitting in a tree stand, walking through to try and push the animals one way or the other.
It was when we sat in the tree stands that my father would start talking, always at a whisper. He’d tell me about the fox that he would see when he was a boy, same fox in the the same woods. The actual woods that we would be sitting in while he was telling me the story. He saw the fox for years and never understood what it was doing out there or why it always seemed to find my father. My father explained it in his own way. He would always say, “A fox never dies. Not really. You can tell when you look in their eyes that some are thousands of years old. They carry knowledge in those eyes. They’re old. And if a fox finds you, they’re looking out for you. Sometimes that’s a reason to be worried. Most times, it means you’re doing something right with your life.”
I was never afraid of foxes, listening to those stories. I always thought they were lucky. A guardian type of animal. And as long as I was my father’s son, I always had a stuffed fox lying in bed with me. The same fox I gave my son the day he was born. Same fox that was in the crib the day my son left us.
Most of the time, when we would finally get a deer, it would go down pretty fast. My father would give me the first shot and if I missed he could usually get a hit. We’d look out into the woods, climb down the tree and head over to the deer. Most of them died with their mouths open, so they could get their last gasps in. I was lucky to never have to watch the last breaths, but I could always imagine how it must have felt. How those final pulls of air didn’t quite reach the lungs. The emotions that must have been within the mind of a creature that doesn’t understand the reasons behind what has just happened.
I was the one who found my son that morning. I stood there longer than I should have, but I didn’t need to pick him up. Not to know that look. The glossed eyes, the jaw slack with his mouth open. He looked just like the deer. When I finally held him, he was as cold as metal in the snow.
Memories. The more we gather, the more they seem to attach themselves to objects. I look at a rocking chair, and I remember being a boy. I smell a flower, I’m reminded of my wife. I see a fox, and… well. There are a lot of things I think of when I see a fox. Just like last week. Whatever it was, I wasn’t dreaming.
Life in the past week hasn’t been easy. I’ve been waking up in my own bed again, but the nights are still the same. Every night, the baby monitor is turned on and I hear it. When it all first started happening, I tried to get my wife to go with me to a hotel, so we could escape and not have to go through it all. I even had the car packed, and she still wouldn’t go. Wouldn’t even talk to me. She had a blank look that I’d never seen on her before. She was staring at me like I was insane.
A couple of nights ago, the volume of the crying was unbearable. Even with that, my wife never woke up. She just laid there like a pile of pillows. Her answer to everything. Alice was always like that.
Cyn, I mean. My wife. Always wearing white.
Eventually, all came to a head for me. I decided to end it all, and spend the night in my son’s room to settle everything. I brought the baby monitor with me and locked the door. I was going to stay there the entire night, no matter what happened.
I couldn’t sleep. I just sat there in the rocking chair, looking around my son’s room. The wooden toys, the polaroid photos we lined on the walls, the drawers of clothes, the table we used to change him on, and the crib. The empty crib. Midnight came, and then one and two o’clock. There was enough light from the moon to see the shadows of the clockface on the wall. When the clock came closer to four o’clock I stood up and held my breath.
The baby monitor turned on in my hand. I looked down for a moment and saw my son through the screen, standing there at the edge of the crib.
I started crying.
When I looked up, my son had the head of the fox with his eyes glowing. My heart started racing and I realized that I should take a breath. I took the air in slowly through my nose. There he was, the fox. The child.
The fox opened up its mouth and cried a loud human cry. I looked back down to the monitor and saw it was my son on the screen. I dropped the monitor and looked back at the crib, but the fox had climbed out of the crib and was standing in front of me.
I felt my nose start to bleed. My ears were on fire from an intense pressure. I knelt down and felt the weight of the world in my legs. My body wasn’t mine. My son wasn’t mine. My life was no longer mine.
The fox started to walk toward me, the eyes getting brighter and brighter.
I could feel the room shaking. My legs were numb from squatting down. I held my arms out to my son. He was beautiful. I closed my eyes.
Then it happened. He was there, in my arms. It was him. We stayed there for a long time. Until the sun began to rise.
I had to look. I couldn’t stop myself. I wanted to see if the fox had left. But when I pulled him back to look at him, he was gone. There was no fox. No child. I was alone in the room. I stood up and my legs buckled. I started to shake, and that’s when I woke up.
I woke up from everything.
I looked around. I was lying in my bed. My son’s fox was lying next to me. My fox. I raised my arm and saw the IV stuck in me. It was my bedroom, but monitors were next to the bed. I turned to see if my wife was there, but she wasn’t. How could she be? The room was bright. It was the morning. White walls, white ceiling.
Nurse Alice walked in. She always wore white scrubs, always clean. I made her tell me the truth. What had happened to everyone. My son, my wife, my father. She had a look on her face—how many times had she told me the truth?
That it had all happened years ago.
Hospice.
I was in hospice. My son had died decades ago. My wife had been gone for nine years. I had dementia and the moments where my lights turned back on were getting farther apart.
Reality.
It was just a moment. A break from the fog.
I’m just like the coyote, chasing that dumb roadrunner. Living every day the exact same. Repeating the mistakes. That dumb coyote. Always getting the anvil dropped on him. There was no monitor. No coyote. No fox. There was nothing. Just a bunch of ones and zeros buzzing through my head, confused as to the order they’re supposed to stay in, mixing and matching to muddle up my memories. Just numbers floating around in an empty space. It’s all in the numbers. That’s how you understand anything of real value in this world. How many days did I have left? Did it even matter? Counting down to the end.
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Estimated reading time — 15 minute |
I didn’t want to move to a new place. All of my toys were in boxes and we didn’t have any T.V. Mom told me to play outside but she was always busy and Dad was at work. There weren’t any kids around there anyway. Mom told me to explore the house, but I didn’t like to. The house was empty except for boxes. The basement was dark and the attic was dark too and I didn’t like the funny smell in there either. The old people left some treasures in the house and those were fun. I found some shiny spikes that Mom called Jacks. She said they were for a game but I need a ball to play it. I couldn’t find a ball but the Jacks were fun to spin like tops. I found an old Teddy in the attic too when I went up there with Dad. It’s missing an eye and it has a big smile. I didn’t tell Dad about it because he doesn’t like dirty toys. He threw away Blanket after it was old. He never told me that, but I know he did.
The forest was fun to play in but Mom said not to go too far. I found a little house that looked like Dad’s old shed. It had leaves and stuff growing all over it and it looked all broken and really old. There was a little window with bars on it and I didn’t like it. I stayed away from the house because I didn’t think there was treasure in there. Sometimes I threw rocks at the house. I thought I might break it, but it was still pretty strong. I found frogs in the forest. They were hard to catch. I also saw other kids in the woods, but they all hid behind the trees and watched me. They didn’t say anything and I didn’t like them watching me. They got closer and closer if I stayed too long in the forest.
At night I heard noises. They made me very scared. I had to hide Teddy from Dad and Mom so I kept him under the bed, but when the noises got louder I would hold him tight and he would make me feel better. The noises got real bad when it was really late. It was the kids in the forest crying. They got louder when they were closer to the house. I never told Dad or Mom about them because grownups always think I’m dreaming when I’m not. I felt safe with Teddy anyway, so I didn’t need to sleep in their room.
I started to hear their voices one night. They were whispering real quiet outside, but I could hear them whispering. They were outside under my window and they were looking up into my room. In the night they glowed pale green like my star stickers, but brighter. I didn’t like to look at them. They had holes instead of eyes. When they got louder, I held Teddy closer. They went away in the morning.
One night I heard Teddy talking. He had a soft voice. I was crying because the whispers were getting louder. He told me it was going to be alright. He promised to keep me safe. In the morning when the children went back to hide in the forest, I talked to Teddy.
“Are you a good guy?” I asked Teddy. I made sure Dad and Mom were busy so they wouldn’t find us.
“I am a friend to children, little one. I am their guardian in the night from the wickedness of the Bright Eyes. I have protected many children from those creatures and I will protect you too.”
“Who are they?” I asked Teddy.
“They want to take you away little one. They want to hurt you. I am old and I am weak, but I can protect you for a while longer. I appear to children who need me. Those things aren’t children, they hide what they really are inside the skin of children. I have fought them for such a long time, but they grow strong as I grow weak.”
Every night Teddy would stay with me. The Bright Eyes came closer and closer though. They would float up to the window and stare inside. They whispered their noises to me and Teddy told me to shut my ears with my hands while he kept them from coming inside. He told me that he was getting weaker and that was why the child-monsters tried to get me. One night they got into the house. They came up the stairs and started scraping my door. We had to sit against the door to keep them from coming in. Their whispers were loud enough that I could hear them. They kept saying,
“Come and play, come and play. Come come come.”
Teddy watched over me while I was sleeping. In the morning Mom found me sleeping on the ground. She asked what was wrong, but I was afraid she would take Teddy away, so I couldn’t tell.
Teddy told me in the morning that he was too weak to protect me for much longer. He said that there was only one way to keep the Bright Eyes from hurting us.
“There is a key in the basement. We need that key to keep us safe. I cannot go with you. They are strong in that darkness. They will sense me if I go down there and they would take me from you. But they will not see you. They are asleep while the morning sun is up. I need you to go down and get the key.”
“I don’t want to go down there, Teddy.” I told him, hugging him. “What if they try to hurt me?”
“I’m sorry little one, but without that key, neither one of us will be safe for much longer. You can get the key, I cannot.”
“How will I find it?” I asked him.
“They will be guarding it. They know that with it, we can be safe from them. One of them will be holding it. You must take it without waking them. I will wait here for you.”
I didn’t want to go down there, but I couldn’t let them take Teddy away. I was scared, but I went down the stairs quietly. Teddy waited at the top watching me. He was quiet too so he wouldn’t wake them up.
I found them in the corner of the basement, hiding behind a lot of boxes. They were glowing in the dark and they were curled up together. They shook like they were cold and they sounded like they were crying. I was afraid. They didn’t see me. Their eyes were closed like Teddy said. One of them was holding a string tied to the key. I sneaked after them, hiding behind boxes. I wanted to cry without Teddy there with me. I got closer to them. I held my breath tight and was very quiet.
I got very close and I reached out for the key when the one holding it opened its eyes. It looked at me. Its eyes were empty. I screamed, but I grabbed onto the key and turned around, pulling it away until the string broke. They all got up and started coming after me yelling,
“No! Stop!”
They chased me. I tripped on the stairs and I heard them sliding up behind me like snakes. I got back up and ran up the stairs as fast as I could while they tried to grab my legs. I got upstairs before them and closed the door. I heard them on the other side. They were still yelling and hitting the door. I held the key tight. I looked down at it. It was black and plain like an old-fashion kind. I didn’t like how it looked. Then I noticed that Teddy was gone. I called for him, but he didn’t answer. I didn’t know where he went, he said he would wait but he was gone. I started crying.
Dad found me when the Bright Eyes stopped making noises. He asked me what was wrong and why I yelled. I couldn’t tell. I hid the key so he wouldn’t find it. I knew that Teddy had to hide too. That was why he wasn’t there. Dad was very angry. He told me not to yell except if it was an emergency. He told me that he found my Teddy and that he took it and threw it away. I cried and told him I needed Teddy, but he didn’t listen. He said he would get me a new one, but I didn’t want a new Teddy. I was afraid without him and Dad wouldn’t listen!
I hid from Mom and Dad all day. They didn’t know but they couldn’t help me. But Teddy came back at night time when I was in bed. I saw the door open and I was afraid it was the Bright Eyes, but I saw that it was him.
“Teddy! You came back!”
“Yes, little one. I will never leave you. Your Father tried to take me away. He is being controlled by the Bright Eyes, but I was still strong enough to escape their power. We don’t have much time. Did you get the key?”
“Yes.” I said. I got out of bed and showed him the key.
“You are very brave little one, but you must be brave one more time. This time, I will not leave you. We must go into the forest. There is a place there where they cannot go.”
“But I’m not allowed outside at night. If Mom and Dad find out, they might not let us be together anymore.” I said this, but I felt bad because I was scared of going in the forest.
“After tonight, you will be safe, but we must go now before it’s too late.”
I heard the Bright Eyes crying in the basement. They were hitting the door again.
“Please, little one. This is our only chance.”
“You’ll be with me the whole time?”
“Yes, little one. I will stay with you until you are safe.”
We sneaked out of the room. I held Teddy and the key tight. We went downstairs and had to go past the door to the basement before we could get outside. I saw the green light through the cracks and I ran. I heard the door open behind us when I got outside and I saw the Bright eyes push their way out, crying and yelling.
“No! Stop! Come and play!”
I ran into the forest. It was very cold. Teddy told me where to go. It was very dark and I tripped a lot. The Bright Eyes kept coming, flying after us. I ran further and further and I fell down and scraped my knee. I dropped Teddy. Teddy ran into the forest.
“Wait Teddy! Don’t leave me alone!” I yelled.
“This way little one! Follow my voice!”
I stood up and held the key. I ran after Teddy. He kept telling me where he was and I ran after him. I kept crying. The Bright Eyes were so close behind, still making horrible sounds.
“In here.” Teddy said. I stopped and saw that he was standing in the old forest house. The door was open. It looked much smaller in the dark.
“I can protect you in here. You will be safe from the Bright Eyes, little one.”
I looked at Teddy, with his wide grin. I smiled back, but I was scared. It was a very dark room.
“Do we have to go in there?”
Teddy looked sad. I felt bad for being scared.
“If you don’t hurry, they will find you, they will take you away. They will hurt you. I want to protect you, little one. You must come in here and shut the door. They can’t come in here when I’m here to protect you.”
I turned around. The bright children with crooked faces were floating after us. Dark stuff dripped from their empty eyes. They were flying forward with outstretched hands yelling,
“No! Come! Come! Come and play!”
I ran into the house and shut the door.
“Quickly now! Lock it with the key before they can get in!”
I stood on tiptoes to reach the lock and put the key in. I turned it as fast as I could. Right when I stopped, the children started hitting the door very hard, yelling at me. I dropped the key on the ground.
“No! Come and play!”
I ran away from the door to the corner of the room. I tripped and fell down onto a pile of hard, lumpy things. I turned around and saw Teddy walk up to the door. He bent over and picked up the key.
“Teddy, what’s all this stuff on the ground?” I asked him. I was afraid because he wasn’t saying.
The Bright Eyes were hitting the door, but it was locked and they couldn’t get in, just like Teddy said. He walked toward me. I heard something rip and his button eye fell off and rolled on the ground. The fur on his face began to rip and two glowing red holes appeared. They got real wide and bright and lit up his face. He smiled real big and his mouth began to rip open too. He made a sound like Granpa used to make when he was sick.
I cried. I ran away from Teddy and started to hit the door with my fists. It was locked up tight. Teddy’s eyes got really bright and lit up the room like a night light. Two long cracking arms with knifes instead of hands came out of his mouth and began to scrape against the floor, pulling Teddy toward me. I crawled back to the corner. I fell on one of the lumpy things underneath me and hurt my hand. They were white and hard and had scratches all over them. There were lots and lots of them all over.
“What are you doing Teddy? Please stop! You’re frightening me!” I cried as he came closer.
The children were yelling to me from the darkness. They reached in through the bars of the window. I finally knew what they saying. They weren’t saying, “Come and play,” they were saying, “Run away.”
Credit To – Marcus Arias
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Two years ago, a bunch of my friends and I went on a school-sponsored trip to Alaska set up by the Pursuit Institute. I was placed in a group with nine, no, ten other students, and two adult chaperones. Another group was also made up of similar numbers, and each group would start at one location and then we would switch places halfway through. The trip would consist mostly of hiking and backpacking in Denali where we would camp in tents and then hiking near the Kenai Peninsula where we would stay in a cabin.
We arrived in Anchorage at about 2:00 in the morning, but it was still light out as Alaska never really got dark that time of year. Our groups parted ways after claiming our baggage, and my group began our trip by driving to Denali National Park where we would be spending the next several days. We all had a great time and before we knew it, it was time to meet up with the other group and trade places for the second half of our trip.
We converged in front of a supermarket and the two groups swapped stories and shared some laughs. It was all fun, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was . . . wrong with the other group. Their stories would be incredibly vague or they would just stop halfway through as if they caught themselves from mentioning something without even realizing it.
It was all incredibly eerie but no one but me seemed to notice. When I tried to question them further or go into detail about their trip they would simply become dazed and say that it was really all just a blur. Then, getting defensive, they would ask me details about our trip so far. I scoffed and tried to remember a specific event only to find that . . . I really didn’t remember much either. In fact, as I began listening to my group’s own stories, we were being just as vague as them! It was all so strange that no one, not even I, immediately noticed that the other group was short one kid.
Suddenly though, it hit me.
“Where’s Josh?” I asked the group. Everyone turned to face me, their eyes seemed glazed and cloudy as their faces reflected my own confusion right back at me. What they said next made my blood run cold.
With such genuine seriousness that it couldn’t have possibly been a joke, one by one, they asked, “Who the hell is Josh?” Even the adults looked puzzled.
Giving a nervous laugh, I turned to my own group for support only to see that they were looking at me with the same expressions. Confusion was plastered across every one of their faces, looking at me with blank eyes. Then, suddenly, confusion turned to laughter as if they realized that I had been joking.
“Haha! Nice man! You had me goin’ for a second there!” Matt said as the mood quickly lightened back up. I laughed with them and pretended that it had been a joke, but all I felt was a horrible sickness rising up inside me.
That’s when a kid from the other group said, “Haha, but seriously, what’s with YOUR group? You guys are acting all weird and . . . where is Sarah?”
“Haha, very funny.”
“Yeah, real original.” Members of both groups snapped back at him, almost in unison. No one named Sarah had even been in our group, and even I was pissed that he was making fun of me. That is, until I saw the look on his face.
When no one took him seriously, his appearance was bleached to a deathly pale tone and his eyes widened, shifting from side to side nervously. Then he looked at me. Our eyes met and we both knew that something was horribly wrong. Although we couldn’t really be sure that the other was telling the truth, we both seemingly knew someone who was now forgotten. We simply stood there for what felt like forever, staring at each other.
He looked horrified, I’m sure I did too. Before I got a chance to talk to him however, we were shoved into our separate cars and were on our way to our new destinations, their group to Denali, ours to the Cabin. I doubted talking to him would’ve done any good anyway though. What could either of us have said? He didn’t remember Josh, and I sure as hell didn’t know anyone named Sarah.
The more I thought about it, the more I began to convince myself that it must have been a joke by everyone to screw with me. A group joke that everyone was in on except for me. Josh was probably just hiding in the car, laughing his ass off. I felt like such an idiot for believing that another kid had experienced what I had when he was really just flat out mocking me in front of everyone! I buried my face in my hands. Part of me was angry, but I was mostly relieved. It certainly made more sense to think that it was all just a joke on me. I was actually impressed that they’d got the adults in on it too.
But, overall, I was still pretty pissed and I decided that the next time I saw the kid who mocked me; I would punch him straight in the face! How dare he mess with me by making up someone! Sarah Duffy, yeah right!
My mind froze . . . Duffy? He had never said a last name. Where did I get that from? And why did it sound so familiar?! What startled me was that I even had a face to put with the name! My mind suddenly exploded with pictures and memories.
Sarah! She was my best god damn friend! How the hell did I forget about her?! I was clutching my head and gasping for air as everyone in the car looked at me and began yelling for me to calm the hell down. I couldn’t calm down though, my mind felt like it was being smashed with a sledgehammer and the more my memory cleared, the worse it got. Pain, the likes of which I had never experienced before, racked my body as I curled into a ball shivering and straining to maintain consciousness. The memories continued rushing back into my head, threatening to split my mind in two until, suddenly, it was over.
I sat up, and, bleary-eyed, looked around me. Everyone stared right back at me, terrified.
“Guys, Sarah! Sarah Duffy! Please, dear God, tell me you remember her!” I practically screamed.
Their faces once again switched to anger.
“Goddammit, John!” One of the adult chaperons yelled, “We thought you were having a seizer or something! If you pull one more stunt like that for the sake of a joke, we’ll send you straight home! Are you okay? What the hell was that?”
I began tearing up, “You guys don’t know Sarah? She- . . . she was my friend! She was your friend, for Christ’s sake!” I began searching for a specific memory. “Kevin, you made fun of her goofy hair right when we got off of the plane in Anchorage!” I cried, “Please, for the love of God, tell me you remember that!”
No one said a thing. They all just stared at me with judgmental expressions.
“That joke has run its course,” Kevin said coldly.
Not one of them showed any signs of recognition, but I knew she was real! Or had been anyway. What the hell had happened to her? I strained and tried to remember the last time I had seen her, but any recent memories were still elusive and blurry.
No matter how hard I tried, all thinking about it did was bring back the headaches and pain. Finally, I was forced to stop or everyone would begin to seriously worry about me again.
I just sat in the car for the next several hours of the drive and stared out the window at the bleak, grey surroundings, as rain ran down the glass. It had been raining since we arrived in Alaska, and it showed no signs of letting up for the next couple of days at least.
Finally, we arrived at the entrance to the trail that would take us to the cabin the other group had stayed at. We unloaded our packs, strapped them on, and set out on our 7-mile hike to where the secluded lakeside cabin lay. It was about 2:00 in the morning, but since it never really got dark out, our plan was to hike in immediately and get there by 5:00 so as to have a full day ahead of us.
That being said, however, the constant rain and low-set clouds made for poor visibility and the hike in was a struggle, to say the least. Through the thick fog, it was near impossible to even make out a tree branch before it struck you in the face, seemingly out of nowhere. Being mindful of possible grizzly bears, we took care to keep our group loud so as to scare them off. About an hour in, we were all singing “Journey” at the top of our lungs when I suddenly fell to my knees, and then collapsed to the muddy ground, clutching my head. I had once again been trying to remember when I had last seen Sarah when it all came flooding back in a horrific wave of grotesque images and unimaginable terrors.
There we were, at the Denali campground. The torrential rain pelted down and the sky was so dark that for the first time since we had been there, it actually seemed like night. Everyone was settling down under the tarp around the campfire, and many people were already asleep in their tents. That’s when Jenna asked if anyone had seen Sarah as she still hadn’t washed her dishes.
“I’m pretty sure she went to bed already,” I said, “I don’t want to be creepy, but I’ll go check to be sure.”
I reluctantly walked away from the warmth of the fire and into the oppressive darkness and driving cold rain. As I approached her tent, I could tell that she wasn’t inside as it was unzipped with the door lying wide open. I immediately ran to close it.
What an idiot! I thought to myself, the tent is completely soaked inside now!
That’s when I heard her muffled, agonizing scream. It came from somewhere in the woods surrounding the campground and I, without thinking, immediately ran off into the forest after her. After shoving my way through thick spruce and willows, I reached a clearing where I could barely see Sarah’s body on the ground as some . . . thing, which was mostly obscured by trees and underbrush, was ripping her open. She was screaming with all of her might but the thing’s bony hooked hand was covering her mouth. Its long fingers curled almost all the way around her head. The sound of her death was horrendous as bones snapped and skin was peeled away. I wanted to help, but couldn’t bring myself to move.
Sarah was long dead by the time I realized that the creature, was beginning to . . . wear her. It had hallowed her out and was now sewing her lifeless corpse onto itself. I was still paralyzed with fear when it suddenly turned towards me.
Sarah’s grotesque, shredded carcass was now horribly reanimated, and it began crawling towards me like some kind of broken marionette as her dead eyes looked straight ahead, yet saw nothing.
I finally broke out of my trance and began frantically sprinting back towards camp. Sarah’s corpse could’ve easily caught me crawling, but the thick underbrush forced it to stand up awkwardly and begin a demented walk in which everything moved all wrong. This, fortunately, gave me enough time to reach the safety of the campfire, although, when I arrived, I had no idea what I had been running from . . . or really any of what I had just done.
No one asked me if Sarah had really been asleep, because none of us knew a “Sarah.”
And that thing, pretending to be her, cringing at the light of the fire, slowly slunk back into the dark of the forest.
I bolted upright to people yelling, cursing, and struggling to their feet. I had been near the front of the group, so when I feel to the ground, many people behind me tripped over my body and then tripped the people behind them.
“Oh, God! I’m sorry, you guys!” I cried. “The uh, the ground is really slick here!”
Grumbles were heard and several insults flew my way but we all eventually got up and continued moving. My mind was racing. The fact that I could remember Sarah when no one else could must have had something to with seeing the creature before it stole her skin.
For me, it must have just been the initial shock that caused the lapse in memory. It was for this same reason that I could remember Josh while the other kid didn’t.
My blood froze. He didn’t remember Josh because his memory had blocked the horror from him . . . because he had seen Josh being taken in the exact same area in which we were now hiking! And our bear calls were bringing it right to us!
Breathing heavily, I slowly turned my head around to look behind me.
Sure enough, following from quite a distance, and just barely visible in the bleak grey fog, I could see the silhouette of some sort of fucked-up human impersonation; grotesquely stumbling along just behind our group . . . wearing the decaying face of Josh. Its limbs swayed and bent in directions impossible for a human to imitate, and there were seams where the skin split away and was held together with nothing but a few fleshy strands. When the creature saw me looking, it darted away off the path, but I could tell that it was still following us. It was waiting for something.
I doubted it would attack us with such a large group and I was sure that no one would believe me, and so I was forced to simply continue hiking.
Finally, we reached the cabin and everyone tried to get some last-minute sleep before we started our day. Everyone but me. I knew that thing was sulking around in the darkness of the woods surrounding the cabin, waiting for one of us to go out alone.
Morning came and everyone quickly prepared for our hike of the day. We would be hiking up a mountain which required some intense bush-whacking just to reach the base thus realistically making the trip at least 4 hours both ways. We packed our lunches, consisting of nothing but protein bars and water, and zipped up our rain gear as the weather was still nothing short of a downpour. The sky remained a depressing grey and light thunder could be heard rumbling in the distance.
That’s when someone said what I had been dreading. The worst-case scenario.
Ashley stepped forward and apologetically said, “Sorry everyone, but I feel . . . just terrible, I think I’ll stay behind on this one, you guys go on ahead, I’ll stay here at the cabin.”
“No!” I cried. “You have to come with us! We have to stay together!” Everyone turned and looked at me.
“Jesus, John, if she’s not feeling well, let her stay,” Pam scolded.
“Ah,” I stammered. “That’s not it! I just . . . Uh, fine! I’ll stay too!”
“You don’t have to do that John.” Ashley said, “I’ll be fine here alone.”
“No, you won’t!” I wanted to scream, but I had to calm my nerves. “Naw, I didn’t wanna go on this dumb hike anyway.” I laughed. “You guys have fun, though!”
Everyone looked at me weirdly, and then glanced at each other, before shrugging and heading off into the woods. I wasn’t sure if we would be any safer with just the two of us, but what else could I have done? We would just have to buckle down inside the cabin and hope for the best. As soon as the others disappeared out of sight I turned to Ashley and said, “Alright, we need to get inside the cabin now.”
“I appreciate you staying with me and all… but you’re kinda freakin me out,” she said.
“Haha, sorry,” I awkwardly laughed. “It’s pretty damn wet out here, though. We should really go inside.”
“Yeah, that’s a good plan,” she said slowly. “I better lay down for a bit.”
That’s when I saw him, or… it… standing twenty or so feet behind Ashley. Josh’s decaying corpse; horribly stretched and disfigured in order to cover whatever thing was wearing it. Ashley saw me looking and turned around to let out a strangled squeak. “Wha . . . What the fuck is that?!” she screamed. I said nothing and simply grabbed her arm, taking off running to the cabin, slamming the door behind us. The thing didn’t run after us, rather, it began slowly walking towards the cabin. It knew we had nowhere to go. I locked the door and scrambled to barricade it with anything I could find.
Now there was nothing to do but watch its demented impression of a person as it crawled ever so slowly towards the door. Its hands dragged along the muddy ground and its fleshy skin hide swayed ever so softly as it staggered.
“What the hell is that?” Ashley kept repeating over and over between her ragged breaths.
“I-I-I don’t know!” I stammered. “I just don’t know!”
“What does it want?!” she screamed as it reached the door and tried the handle.
“I assume, it wants a new… coat,” I said through clenched teeth.
She drew a breath and fell to the ground before looking up at me, horrified. The thing moved away from the door and now stood a few inches behind one of the windows, staring in at us. Its cold gaze could be felt from behind the dead eyes of Josh’s face and we could hear skin widening as it smiled. It was messing with us.
Ashley broke down and began weeping. “Leave us alone!” she cried. “Get the hell away!”
The thing did nothing and simply stood there motionless. Then, it slowly lifted up one of its hands and began lightly rapping on the window.
Knock, knock, knock. A slow steady rhythm.
It had no intention of breaking the window or anything. It just wanted to let us know that it was there.
Not that we needed the reminder. I couldn’t take my eyes off it. This continued for several hours as the sunlight slowly faded and the rain and wind picked up. Soon the sound of it knocking was almost drowned out and I was having to strain to see it in the dim light. Heavy sheets of water whipped around and obscured its form. At one point I let my eyes wander for too long, and when I looked back, it was gone. The knocking had stopped. I bolted upright just in time to barely catch a glimpse of it disappearing around the side of the cabin.
“This is bad,” I said. “I think it’s tired of waiting.”
Ashley let out a squeal and buried her face in her hands. I wasn’t sure if it could get in from somewhere else but it clearly knew something we didn’t.
“It’s okay,” I said, thinking fast, trying to pep talk myself more than anything. “All we need to do is wait for the others to get back! They should be here any minute now!”
“Who?” Ashley asked.
“The rest of our group!” I said. “Kevin, Lauren, Pam? Those guys! Remember?”
“I… I don’t know who you’re talking about,” she stated, looking at me puzzled. “It’s always been just the two of us.”
My heart practically stopped, and as I sank to the ground in despair, I began to hear knocks… all around the cabin.
|
Allen hurriedly gulped down the last of his milk when he heard the doorbell ring.
“Mom! Chad and Mike are here, I’m leaving for school,” he shouted at the ceiling of the kitchen. He grabbed his backpack off the counter and headed for the door.
“Wait!” His mother rushed down the stairs, half stumbling in the process, stopping him just as he grabbed the door handle. She looked haggard and a worry line creased her brow. Red rimmed eyes gave testament to the fact that she had been crying for some time. His mother absentmindedly adjusted Allen’s scarf with a nervous, shaky hand. “Remember to hurry straight home today, okay?”
“I know, Mom. Mary’s coming today.” At the mention of Mary, a choked sob escaped his mother’s throat. Not wanting to see her so distraught Allen tried to cheer her. “Look, why don’t I just stay home today?” he ventured.
“You can’t, honey. You know the rules,” she managed to squeeze out, fighting to quell even more tears. “Now hurry and go.” With that she gave Allen a quick hug, and opened the front door with a sharp jerk, much like yanking off a Band-Aid so as not to prolong the pain. With a forced smile she ushered Allen out into the cold. As she shut the door behind him her sobs returned unbidden. She collapsed against the door, unable to support her own weight. She slid slowly to the floor, the whole time murmuring through her tears, pleading, “Please don’t forget…please don’t forget…”
* * * * * *
The brisk fall air sent an immediate shock to Allen’s system. He pulled his coat tighter around him, watching his breath curl away in wispy tendrils before turning his eyes to his fellow 3rd grade buddies.
Mike was wearing his usual cocky grin and the ever present glint of mischief was in his eyes. He was the trouble maker in the trio, and as such he was always up for an adventure. By rights of being younger (“Only by a month!” as he was always quick to point out) he was the defacto second in command behind Allen.
Then there was Chad. The kids at school had many names for Chad. They ranged in creativity from “Stupid-head” to “Chard the Tard”, but they all expressed the same point. Chad was slow. Allen’s mother had once told him the technical term for it. To the best of Allen’s recollection it was “high function-something idiot something”. The kids at school chose to focus on the idiot part. What mattered the most to Allen and Mike was that of all the people in Willow Falls, Chad was the most sincere, the most innocent. They took care of him like a younger brother.
“Chad…your shoes are untied again, man!” Allen cast an exasperated look towards Mike. “Why didn’t you help him out?”
Mike, looking hurt and indignant at the same time, responded, “I tried, but you know he only lets you do it.”
Allen let loose a sigh that clearly stated how heavy the burden of the world weighed on his shoulders and bent to tie Chad’s shoes.
“Loop once, loop twice, and it all looks nice!” Chad sang his shoe tying song as Allen went about the work. “Friends to the end,” he rhymed again once Allen had finished. Most people found Chad’s chosen manner of communication irritating, but to Allen and Mike it is was one of his more endearing qualities.
“Chad buddy, you really need to learn to do that on your own. I might not be around to help next time.” Allen’s gentle admonishment was met with a warm smile and enthusiastic nod of Chad’s head. “Alright, Triumphant Trio, off to school!”
“I’m not a fool, I go to school!” chimed Chad as he fell in with the others.
Together the three youngsters made their way down Birch Lane heading for Willow Falls Grade School. Willow Falls was a quaint little town, no more than 100 families, and thus the walk from Allen’s house to school was relatively short. The boys made good time, all the while chatting about whatever it is that interested boys of their age. Chad would chip in with a well-timed rhyme causing all three to laugh. Considering what day it was, the boys were in rather high spirits.
“…and that’s when I pulled her hair!” Mike was in full story telling mode as he regaled his two friends with his latest misadventure involving his neighbor Sally. Arms swung and hands gestured to emphasize every point by pantomiming his actions. Despite the cold, he was working up a nice flush in his eagerness to relate the tale. Allen listened intently, nodding sagaciously. Chad, not fully grasping all the nuances of the story, took his cues from Allen. “Then she got this weird look in her eyes and started leaning tor-,” Mike stopped talking abruptly.
Allen looked up to see what had made his friend pause. He saw it immediately. They were coming up on the gate. The malice emanating forth from the gate was so evident that even Chad was able to recognize it.
“Chad hate bad gate,” he stated in a choked whisper. Both Allen and Mike nodded their agreement to Chad’s simple assessment, but words failed the other two boys. This was The-Gate-That-No-One Opened. Standing 8’ tall, the gate loomed over any who passed by it. The truly intricate details that went into the ironwork were only visible upon close inspection. Most however, never got that close. Even Mike, the brave one, would not come within more than a few feet of it. The hinges on the gate had long since rusted, and the gate had looked ready to topple over for years. But it had not. Instead it maintained its constant vigil, forever standing sentinel to that which was behind it.
On the other side of the gate, a worn cobblestone path ran straight for 15 feet or so before rounding a bend and disappearing behind the giant hedges. No one knew exactly where the path lead, for on the other side of The-Gate-That-No-One-Opened was The-Park-That-No-One-Entered. Located in the geographical center of Willow Falls, the true name of the park was lost in the annals of the town’s history. In the middle of the massive park, rising above the hedges and sitting on the crest of a hill, stood the willow tree. Some quirk in the lay of the land made the willow visible from anywhere in town while the rest of the park lay shrouded in secret behind the surrounding hedges. The town founders had likely seen the tree and named the town after it. That was just speculation of course, just as it was the general consensus that the path behind the gate most likely led to the willow tree.
With an unspoken agreement, the boys hastened their steps, eager to escape the unnatural silence and icy dread that overcame all who crossed the gate’s path.
“Maybe we should just go back home today.” This from Mike, the brave one.
“No, we have to go to school,” answered Allen. “You know the rules. We all do.”
“Yeah, but…” he let his protestation trail off and instead turned his attention to stepping on every dead leaf that came within reach of his feet.
“School’s the rule,” Chad intoned with his head hanging and hands in his pockets, the walking picture of dejection. The boys continued down Birch Lane.
* * * * * *
It had been another typical day at WFGS. At recess, some of the other third-grade boys had devised a new game. They thought it would be funny to stuff a sock down Chad’s pants and try to get him to chase his “tail”. Chad, always hoping to please, had gleefully complied. Misunderstanding their teasing laughter for encouragement had caused him to try all the more enthusiastically. If there was one talent Chad did have, it was his ability to completely focus on one task to the exclusion of all else. This only lent fuel to the laughter as he doggedly spun in circles, determined to catch the sock. Mike and Allen were quick to intervene. One of the boys was sporting a growing black eye where Allen had punched him. Mike, fresh from the principal’s office (“My second homeroom,” as he liked to call it), already had his name on the board.
“At least it wasn’t Pin the Card on the Tard again.”
“Yeah,” agreed Allen. “Hey don’t look now, but they’re at it again!”
Ignoring Allen’s advice, Mike whipped his head around just in time to catch Sally and her group of friends peeking his way. They quickly ducked their heads back together and returned to hushed whispers laced with intermittent giggles.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with Sally,” Mike said with a look of consternation on his face. “Ever since yesterday she’s been acting weird and looking at me funny. Maybe I-“
Mike was cut short as the 3 chimes of the P.A. system declared an upcoming message from Principal Ladsen. Ms. Shoemaker, with her stern hair bun and horn-rimmed glasses immediately set to shushing everyone. Due to what day it was, quiet and attention were quick in coming. The eyes and ears of the twenty-three nine-year-olds in her class were focused on the loudspeaker in the corner. The same was true for every classroom throughout WFGS.
Some slight feedback was followed by a hiss and a pop, trailed by Principal Ladsen clearing his throat. Finally, he began to speak.
“Alright everyone, listen up,” he commenced rather unnecessarily. “We all know what day it is, so I need you all to go straight home. Don’t dally in front of the school, or stop on the playground. As soon as the bell rings, in about five minutes or so, you children get right back to your houses. That’s all.” Three chimes indicated the message was over.
The principal’s proclamation had set a noticeably somber mood through the halls of the school. In the back of the class, a small, timid hand raised slowly in the air.
“Yes, Stewart?” Ms. Shoemaker was slightly taken aback to actually have some form of interaction from the normally withdrawn Stewart. “What is it?”
“Ma’am, um… if it’s so important we go home right away…I mean…um…why can’t our parents just come pick us up?” His voice quavered quite a bit.
“Because,” she said around a sad, understanding sigh. “It’s not allowed. You all know what the Town Charter says. You know the rules, straight home.” As if to help punctuate her answer, the bell chose that moment to ring. She had to raise her voice to be heard over all the scooting chairs. “Now remember, children! Straight home!” Her voice had become shrill as it chased the children out the door, “Don’t forget!”
* * * * * *
The halls of WFGS were eerily quiet. The chattering and general hubbub of an entire school’s worth of youngsters were replaced by grim looks and muttered whispers quickly hushed. The clatter of hundreds of shoes was supplanted by hesitant, slow steps, heading for the exits. Allen and the other members of his threesome followed along swept up in the silent, inexorable tide. Even Chad seemed to pick up and reciprocate the mood.
No one stopped at the playground. The usual groups did not gather at their usual spots. The hopscotch area was forsaken, children walking past it without a second glance. The words of the principal were heeded. The children had been trained well. They were prepared for this day. Within 5 minutes the schoolyard was completely deserted. The only sound came from a squeaky swing as the wind slowly pushed it back and forth.
* * * * * *
The Triumphant Trio turned onto Birch Lane. Few words passed between them. Heads ducked, a few furtive glances exchanged. Every now and then a chilly fall breeze would whip around them, carrying a few leaves across the sidewalk. Other than that, the boys walked in silence.
Almost as if they could sense its presence, and all of the same mind, the boys crossed the street in order to skirt the gate. Despite his better judgment, Allen risked a glance. In the distance, on the hill, the willow tree danced in the wind. Its massive low hanging branches skipped across the ground. Allen imagined that he could hear the branches clacking together, even over this great distance, and to his young ears the noise sounded like macabre laughter. It gave Allen the impression that the tree was eager, full of glee for the upcoming events.
A shiver ran itself along the length of Allen’s spine, and he quickly jerked his gaze back down, staring at the pavement as he placed one foot in front of the other. He wished he hadn’t looked.
Soon, not as soon as they would have liked, the trio were outside Allen’s house. The air had already grown noticeably colder, and the light was starting to wane, fading faster than usual. Shadows of streetlamps and trees began stretching across the pavement, long skinny fingers searching, searching.
Mike, the brave one, barely looked at his friends as he gave them a perfunctory wave. He quickly turned on his heels and high-tailed it to his house across from Allen’s. Allen couldn’t blame him; he felt the urge to run home himself. He turned his attention to Chad.
“Alright, buddy. Remember, head straight home, okay?”
“I won’t be late for my dinner plate!” Allen couldn’t help but smile despite the situation.
“Straight home, Chad.” Chad gave Allen his usual grin and enthusiastic nod before turning and heading home. His house was at the end of Birch Lane, on the other side of the curve, just out of view. For a while, Allen stood and watched, torn between walking his dear friend home and heading home himself. He had just made up his mind to escort Chad when his attention was drawn by a frantic banging.
He turned and looked at his house to see his mother pounding hectically away on the window. When she saw she had his attention she began forcefully gesturing, and the look in her eyes left no doubt about her intentions. Allen regretfully put all thoughts of chasing Chad from his mind and bounded up the stairs to his porch and into the safety of his home.
If Allen’s mother hadn’t gotten his attention in that instant, if he had just kept watching Chad as he rounded the curve, if he had looked a moment longer, he might have seen his best friend trip.
* * * * * *
Chad had skinned his hands in the fall. It was okay, though, he fell often. He was used to it. His shoelaces had come undone again. They were the culprits behind his loss of balance! He looked around expectantly, waiting for Allen to tie his shoe for him. Then he remembered what Allen had said this morning. Allen wasn’t here to help him.
A fierce light of determination began to glow in Chad’s eyes. An idea began to formulate in his slow mind. He would tie his shoes himself and make Allen proud. With his giant grin on his face Chad eagerly set to work.
“Loop once, loop twice…”
* * * * * *
Allen’s mother reached through the gap in the door and pulled her son into the house. She hugged him tightly. After she had satisfied herself that he was indeed real and home safely she pushed him out to arm’s length and glared at him.
“What in the world were you thinking?!” she demanded. “I told you to come straight home!”
“I was just going to make sure Chad got home and then I was going to run right back!” he protested.
“No Allen! No! You know the rules!”
“Okay, I’m sorry! I got it. Mary’s coming.”
* * * * * *
Throughout the town of Willow Falls, all the preparations for the night were the same. Doors were locked, curtains were drawn, and parents gathered up their children. They huddled together in whatever room they felt the most secure, hoping the events of the night would pass quickly. It was no different in Allen’s home.
He and his mother sat in the living room, lights dimmed. She hadn’t let him out of her sight since he’d gotten home. Every few seconds she looked his way, verifying he hadn’t disappeared.
* * * * * *
Sometime between the late afternoon and dusk, Willow Falls changed. The cold deepened even more. Darkness seemed to envelop the town, bringing with it an unnatural silence. The wind slowed, and then eventually petered out altogether. No birds chirped, no squirrels squeaked. It was as if the town was a void, no sound, no movement, and at the epicenter of this lifeless black hole stood the willow tree.
In that dead, deafening silence, the town waited. In that silence, the heavy, oppressive silence, Time itself held its breath. And into that silence came a squeal. The cry of tortured metal reverberated throughout the town as centuries-old rusted hinges were forced to grind against each other. On and on the sound came, setting nerves on edge and jaws to clenching. After an unbearable amount of time, the squealing thankfully stopped. The gate was open.
For half a heartbeat all was deathly still again. Then the whistling began. A slow haunting tune that carried on without end. A horribly unnatural sound that never paused for breath. It came under the doors, through the walls, found its way under pillows and through fingers, found its way in despite all efforts to keep it out. A ceaseless barrage of a nightmarish melody that searched out every soul, eroding strength and engendering despair. The whistling was the herald. Mary had come.
* * * * * *
Allen and his mother clung to one another. Eyes were squeezed tightly shut against the terrible, incessant whistling. The tune blotted out all else, muted all thought, leaving only the desire to cower in fear.
When the first footstep was heard on their porch they both held their breath. Slow, even paces took the steps one at a time, not in the least of a hurry. One by one the heavy steps came closer to the door and stopped.
The knock came, causing his mother to jerk and let out a little scream. She squeezed Allen to her all the tighter, rocking back and forth, whispering “No no no…” to herself over and over again as if it were her mantra of protection.
Another knock, not at all ungentle, almost shy.
“Please…” came the voice, a little girl’s. “Please…let me in. It’s so cold, and I’m hungry.” It was a pitiful plea that tore at the heart.
A third knock.
His mother was in tears now as she pressed his head to her chest. “Just go away, Mary.” She quietly pleaded.
“Please, it’s so cold. I’m hungry.” A fourth knock. “Please…”
“Leave us alone!” his mother shouted, fear lending power to her voice. On the other side of the door came an infinitely disappointed sigh. The weighty footsteps turned and slowly receded back to the road, leaving them to their isolation. Allen and his mother shared a look that communicated much. They were relieved that their trial was passed, but they knew they were not the first, nor would they be the last.
The ritual was repeated again and again throughout Willow Falls. Always the timid knock, followed by a heart-wrenchingly pathetic plea for shelter from the cold. And always hungry, always so hungry. The whistling continued on.
* * * * * *
Success! He had finally wrestled the tricky laces into a knot. Chad was extremely proud of himself, and he couldn’t wait to tell Allen. Chad stood with a rare smile of self-satisfaction. Few and far between were the moments when he accomplished something on his own.
It was then that he noticed the whistling. He had forgotten! His mother, the principal, Allen, they had all told him to go straight home, but he had tripped. He had been so focused on tying his shoes that he had lost track of time. His house was only two doors down. He could see his mother in the window screaming through the glass, willing him to get his feet moving. He could still make it home, he still had time.
He took a step. Too late.
“Please…” the voice came from behind him. He could see the despair in his mother’s face, hands clutched to her chest. She was sobbing. He knew he should run. He knew it, but he couldn’t make his body work. Fear paralyzed him. “Please look at me.”
“N-no…” he stammered. His heart raced in his chest. Tears flowed freely from his eyes, matching his mother’s.
“Look at me please!” the voice beseeched.
“I’m not supposed to. I should have gone home.” No rhyming now, he was too terrified. His eyes watched his mother through the window. Her face drained of all blood, her eyes rolled back, and she fell out of view. “Allen told me to go home. My momma is w-waiting.” By now his whole body was trembling.
“Look at me.” Not a plea anymore.
“Allen told me…” His slow mind, dimmed further by terror, barely registered the warm stain spreading down his pant leg.
“Look at me!” The final command sapped the last of his meager resistances. His body was no longer his own. He managed a few whimpers as he was forced to turn and look at Mary.
* * * * * *
The whistling was different now. Still haunting, yet a subtle undertone was different. Something had changed.
Allen’s mother noticed it just as he had. She scooted to the window and pulled back the curtain just enough to peek out. She gasped, covering her mouth with her hand.
“Oh, poor Martha!”
Martha? That was Chad’s mother! Panic filled Allen’s heart. Before his mother could react he yanked back the curtains so forcefully that they fell from the rods. There! Mary was just out of his field of vision, but he could clearly see the small inert form that was being dragged behind.
“Chad!” Allen beat his fists against the glass. “Chad!” Logic and reason were forgotten in worry for his best friend. He raced for the door, prepared to charge out into the cold. His mother was faster and tackled him from behind.
“No! Stop, Allen! You can’t help him, baby!” For a moment they wrestled around, but she used her superior weight to keep him pinned to the floor.
“I told him to go home! How did he forget?” Guilt and shame drained Allen of any energy he had left to fight his mother. “I should have walked him home! How did he forget?”
* * * * * *
Somewhere in the middle of The-Park-That-No-One-Entered an innocent, simple-minded boy began to scream. It was a scream of anguish, a scream of terror, a scream of pain. The scream carried on until it was drowned out by another scream. This was the scream of tortured metal as the gate once again began its harsh journey. The whistling stopped. The gate closed, not to open for another year.
The wind began to blow, leaves began to skitter. Birds chirped and squirrels squeaked. It was as if Time began to breathe again and life returned to the dead void.
Somewhere another boy sat, lost within himself, lost to his grief. His eyes wide open, staring at all, seeing nothing.
“How could he forget?”
Loop once, loop twice…
Someone always forgets.
|
He first suspected that they were going to eat him when he noticed the distinct lack of Yuletide smells. It wasn’t perhaps a conscious thought, at least not one which had been fully realised, but there was a clear growing uneasiness within him. Somehow he just knew.
Surely if a family invited you for Christmas dinner, the house would be filled with the wonderful aromas associated with that annual feast; succulent roast turkey, honey glazed vegetables, perhaps the fumes of mulled wine or a brandy covered Christmas pudding, but no, all of these were absent.
Yet the table was set.
It was a particularly bleak Christmas, and while snow was often welcome at that festive time of the year, the penetrating cold and frost which seemed to sabotage both homes and their residents’ bodies was not. The temperature had plummeted on the 7th, and there had been little sign of any forthcoming reprieve.
Families attempted as best they could to reach one another, but for many it was to be a lonely Christmas day. Travel, especially for the elderly, was almost impossible for fear of slipping on the ice. One fall was all it would take for a broken hip or shoulder, and for the more fragile individuals amongst them, recovering from such an injury was not an easy task. Certainly not as easy as it would be for those of a younger vintage.
The Cardinal family had taken pity on an elderly gentleman who had recently moved into the neighbourhood only a few streets away. They were of an upstanding stock and took part in a local home-help initiative spending time with the old and vulnerable. Everyone knew and loved them.
Timmy was the youngest, a boy of only 5 or 6. He was a child whom all looked upon with great adoration – never complaining, never causing trouble, always adorable – and his ten year old sister, Camilla, was equally as admired.
They were both a testament to the caring and nurturing parenting skills of Ben and Lucy Cardinal.
Each year as the cold winter drew in, the Cardinal family were admired for their dedication and commitment to those around them; their passion, almost zeal for helping those who were less fortunate. But behind the smiles and the skin-deep façade of that of a loving family, lurked a far more sinister purpose.
They had a tradition each year. A way to reward themselves for their kindness and generosity; one which stemmed back through many previous generations of the Cardinal family. Each Christmas they would invite a guest for dinner who would be welcomed with open arms into their home, sat down at a beautifully set table, provided with humorous and enjoyable Christmas conversation, and then by the light of the roaring fire, the guest would be stabbed to death and eaten gratefully.
They all reveled in the old tradition, with Timmy looking forward to it the most – he had a ferocious appetite and a waistline to match it – but children do get so wrapped up in the anticipation of a family Christmas and his parents were delighted to see a growing boy fill his belly.
Camilla was of a more quiet disposition than her stout little brother, slight of figure with a pallid complexion which reminded all of her mother, but make no mistake; she adored eating with the family and could render anyone silent with a sharp, cold insult.
Ben was the local police chief for the area, so covering up their annual feast was quite the cinch, while Lucy was, shall we say, a relation of sorts and was entirely enthusiastic about maintaining the Christmas tradition.
Their guests were invariably those without family, and often of a ripe old age. Forgotten by society, left to wither in their isolated little houses. Ben explained to the children yearly that it was almost a kindness to put the victims out of their slowly increasing misery, and besides, when they did eventually die they would be shoved into a box in the ground or roasted into ashes; what a waste of good meat!
This year Timmy and Camilla were especially excited. It was all their mother could do to calm their nerves, but on that Christmas eve it was nearly impossible, for they knew the special treat they were in for the following day. The cardinals were hosting a most special guest.
His name was Sergiu Moraru and he hailed from Eastern Europe. They had never had foreign meat before and the very idea of tearing into some delicious exotic muscle and fat, made this years feast something to really look forward to.
They had met old man Moraru just a few weeks earlier when Ben had noticed the unusual name on his home-help list. Each year as Christmas approached, the volunteers at the local church would be given names and addresses of pensioners in the area who had no family and would be left quite alone over the holiday season. At that festive time of year, and worried that many of the frailer residents might succumb to the biting cold, church committee members would visit each of these lonely individuals and offer a friendly ear, a helping hand, and often some hearty food to the poorest of those on the list.
The names would rarely change, but at least one person on that list would sadly pass away that year. Being an upstanding member of the community and a high ranking police officer in the area, Ben would often inform the church that one of their flock had sadly passed away, and with no friends or family known, he would concoct a lie which usually involved a long lost son or daughter, appearing to take their sadly departed parent somewhere far away to be buried. That or he would say that they had simply moved, having a bit of a deal with a local estate agent and solicitors firm to throw the proceeds from any property sales their way.
The family were not without influence.
It was incredible how little people questioned this, but as the Cardinals ensured that each Christmas meal was not an active member in the church or community, people just assumed that Ben knew best.
This year the Cardinals had been hoping to invite Lucy Rindridge around for her Christmas swan song, but unfortunately she had died during the summer. Ben had investigated and he suspected that an intruder had been inside the house with her at the time of her death, but it seemed as though the causes were natural.
No, the family would just have to have someone different for dinner. Then the name appeared on the list:
‘Sergiu Moraru – 86. Slight Emphysema, no family. Knows no one in the area as he has only recently moved here.’
Perfect.
Ben found Mr Moraru to be an absolute delight. While he was obviously very frail, his mind was still sharp and he regaled Ben with numerous colourful stories about ‘the old country’ and the adventures he had while in the full bloom of youth. Of particular interest were his war stories, and Ben was thrilled to know that their main course would be that of an intelligent, well-traveled man.
He even looked unlike any of the previous victims. He was quite tall, although slightly hunched with age, and with a long crooked nose and intense stare Ben fancied that in his youth Moraru would have been quite intimidating. His kind smile and obvious fragile frame, however, left Ben in no doubt that the kids would love him. They enjoyed eating those with character and a gentle disposition.
He always enjoyed the meat more if it had a keen mind and was out of the ordinary, as the family religion (one which had managed to stay unseen yet influential throughout the centuries) stated that the eating of another human being would transmit some of its strengths to those whom devoured it.
As with many of those who can only look into the past rather than into the future, Sergiu Moraru enjoyed the company greatly, and was touched when Ben invited him to sit at his family’s Christmas table.
The old man was extremely frail and required the assistance of both Ben and Camilla to help him in and out of Ben’s car and then into the house. His emphysema was particularly bad that day as each step was accompanied by the wheezing, fluid-filled sounds of struggling lungs.
Each room of the Cardinal home was draped in a multicoloured selection of rather crass Christmas decorations, with numerous cards adorning every visible table and mantelpiece showcasing just how popular Ben and his family really were.
The table was beautifully laid with a red cotton cloth resting underneath an elegant creme dining set. The old man found that the rest of Ben’s family were just as pleasant and congenial as he was. Timmy and Camilla were kind and very well behaved for their age, helping the frail old man to his chair carefully and then waiting on him, topping up his drink as their mother and father busied themselves in the kitchen.
Finally, Lucy appeared carrying a huge centrepiece plate. It was unusually large and as she sat it in the middle of the table, empty and devoid of food, old man Moraru caught a look on Lucy’s face. It was brief, and he immediately attempted to disregard it as a product of his imagination, but it unsettled him deeply. It was as if a private joke had passed between the eyes of Lucy and her children, a flicker of a grin, and not one of kindness or of Christmas spirit, but rather one resembling that of a conspiratorial bully. As if Sergiu was the unwitting recipient of some unwholesome prank, waiting to be ridiculed.
Just as the unease began to diminish, Ben appeared with a large jagged carving knife and a long, two-pronged fork which reminded Sergiu more of a butchers’ implement than that required to cut a decent sized turkey.
A turkey which became increasingly conspicuous by its absence.
There they sat for over an hour, each member of the Cardinal family replenishing the old man’s drink with enthusiasm and showing concern for every and each cough or moment of uncomfortable breathing experienced by their guest. But it was a strange concern.
There they sat gleefully, asking Moraru questions and then listening to the stories and answers which came about his life, where he had lived, how many battles he had fought in. But the interest and concern seemed to be distant somehow. It was only skin-deep. Each time their guest mentioned the old country, those same conspiracy-laden glances were traded across the table, as if excited, not by the content of the stories, but rather by the simple fact that Moraru was a foreigner.
The absence of not only food, but that of the mere mention of it was unsettling enough, but what was more perplexing was that Ben repeatedly stole looks towards an antique clock which sat on a mantelpiece above the fire. Looks which were poorly hidden, and betrayed their purpose: He was counting down the minutes to some event. While the old man had no idea what that event was, the certainty was apparent that it was not connected to anything cooking in the kitchen oven.
Moraru knew that there was simply no food being roasted, grilled, or even cooled on a window ledge nearby. Whatever was being planned it was not going to involve him eating a Christmas meal.
It was Camilla who stopped smiling first at his anecdotes and historical observations. She had ceased listening. No longer was she politely laughing at obvious jokes and the endearing sight of an old man repeating himself through forgetfulness. Camilla was simply staring. Staring with those pin point cold dark eyes. As a snake before a strike.
Timmy was next to abandon the act as he began to grin menacingly at Sergiu, as his hands gripped a small serrated steak knife intensely. The most alarming thing was that the focus of Timmy’s stare was not the old man’s face, but his wrinkled neck.
With one last glance at the clock, Ben ceased being the jovial, attentive host and began to run his fingers along the huge carving knife in front of him, with an a mixture of anger and lust upon his face.
Sergiu had seen many things in his time, but nothing as surprisingly strange and unnerving as this.
Finally, when the clock began to chime, Lucy relinquished her false, endearing shell, and exposed the cold hearted and twisted personality which lay beneath.
As the chimes slowly rang throughout the house, one by one, echoing and lonely and piercing in their symbolism, each of the Cardinals rose up from their chairs, sharp, jagged knives in hand, and waited.
The chime rang once and they uttered an indecipherable phrase in unison.
The chime rang twice and they increased their cult-like chorus in ferocity and volume.
The chime rang three times and then they stopped.
All were silent, the house devoid of sound, Christmas spirit, and that of hope. The old man’s wheezing grew in intensity as the uniquely bizarre sight of the twisted family about to dine dawned upon Sergiu.
The family then quietly, and efficiently, walked around the dining table and stood motionless, surrounding their guest. Just as the old man was about to inquire what was to become of him, the clock on the mantelpiece burst into life one final time. The chime was different from the others. It was sharper, somehow fouler, and echoed once and once only throughout the Cardinal home.
From behind, Lucy slit the old man’s throat from ear to ear as Ben thrust his carving knife deep into Sergiu’s stomach. Both parents then removed their knives and stood back watching with pride as Camilla cut and stabbed repeatedly, while Timmy thrust his steak knife in and out of Moraru’s legs, neck and arms.
After a a few minutes, the frenzy diminished as both children grew tired, and with one last downward thrust, Timmy drove his steak knife so deeply into the old man’s hand that it skewered it completely, embedding itself into the table on which the hand rested.
The children now ran to their parents’ collective embrace. They hugged and rejoiced in what was a fantastic Christmas game, and now could look forward with delight to some succulent exotic meat.
Arms wrapped around one another, they stared at their victim and began to laugh loudly commenting on the old fool’s stories of times gone by, the war, and the old country.
As they turned to each other once more, the laughter diminished and they looked into each other’s rosy, blood covered faces and shared a family moment. This had been one of Ben’s favourite sacrifices.
But the laughter had not completely ceased. One person was still laughing loudly. Confusion turned to abject horror as the bizarre truth revealed itself: It was Mr Moraru.
Sitting covered in blood, his head tilted back and the deep cut in his throat wide open, the dinner guest laughed loud and strong. A laugh which was both young and old.
His head arched forward as he pulled Timmy’s steak knife out of his hand, dropping it on the floor. Camilla screamed, as Lucy hid behind Ben. What they thought to be a corpse now stared at them all, as they had stared at it with a singular purpose.
Timmy began to pee himself and cry as two previously retracted fangs cracked through the old man’s upper gum revealing a serrated and terrifying grin. As he rose to his feet Lucy fainted, and with both hunch and age now gone, the Cardinals’ guest loomed tall and dark before them, his eyes piercing, telling tales of countries, and decades, and of centuries of existence.
Sergiu Moraru ate well that Christmas.
|
The sun was just setting on a clear and brisk fall evening as Diane began making her way home through the winding, cobbled streets of the city. In the countryside, it might have been a lovely twilight, but much of its beauty was lost here. The tall brick buildings crowded close to both the streets and each other, obscuring the sunset and plunging the ground below into deep shadow. The streetlights had already been on for quite some time. They cast sickly yellow pools of artificial light around their immediate area, but somehow never managed to bridge the gap between adjacent lightposts entirely. They were bright enough, however, to hide most of the stars from view, leaving the sky above the city a dull, undifferentiated gray slowly fading to black. Incidentally, if one were to gaze up at this uninspiring sky while walking between the close-set buildings – and if the haze and shadows were just right – the tops of the structures would seem to lean in and reach towards each other ever so slightly, as if trying to enfold the street like a giant hand and block out the sky completely. It was enough to make even a deserted street seem unbearably claustrophobic.
Diane did not gaze up at the uninspiring sky as she walked home. She also did not gaze left, or right, or anywhere else except forward and slightly downward, fixating on the cracked and uneven brick road immediately ahead of her. Walking the city alone at nightfall could be dangerous, and she knew it. And while it was not quite late enough to mark the transition from mildly risky to downright stupid, it was still plenty late enough for Diane to feel uncomfortable. She walked briskly, ignoring the shadows of strangers passing on either side of her, the lights and laughter from pubs and shops lining the street, and the dark, gaping mouths of the shadowy alleyways in between. She wanted nothing more than to be at home, curled up in front of the fire with a good book; and she silently cursed her poor planning as the streets darkened around her.
Gradually, such that she could not pinpoint exactly when it began, Diane became aware of a feeling of trepidation exceeding her usual late-night jitters. A shiver drifted down her spine and she quickened her step, trying to pinpoint the origin of the feeling. It was the sort of feeling one often experiences when alone in dark places: a slight increase in heart rate, a prickle of goosebumps, a creeping sense of unease… and above all, the vague but undeniable feeling that you are being watched. Such feelings are often triggered by something – a movement caught from the corner of the eye, an unexplained noise, a cold breeze, and so on. Diane couldn’t tell what the trigger had been this time, and it bugged her. Around her, the city went about its usual evening routine, not quite bustling but not yet quiet, seemingly oblivious to the presence of one specific young woman among the many citizens going about their business. Still, the sense of being watched would not leave Diane, no matter how much she tried to rationalize it away. It tugged at the corners of her mind, raising the hairs on the back of her neck and sending waves of tension throughout her body.
Almost home, she thought, just a few more minutes of walking. Just got to get home. But the uneasy feeling only gained momentum as she hurried down the night streets towards her warm little townhouse. Diane became increasingly alert, listening vigilantly to the sounds of the city: the whistle of the wind through the buildings, the boisterous merrymaking from the pubs, the hushed conversations of passerby, the buzzing of the streetlights, her own footsteps echoing across the cobblestones… wait. She was suddenly seized with a flash of intuition. Her feeling was not merely one of being watched… it was one of being followed. As she focused down to the sound of her footsteps, she thought she heard a strange echo in them. Although she walked this same road in these same shoes almost every day, there was something unfamiliar in the pitch and timbre of her footfalls, something foreign. As if someone was walking completely in step with her, following just behind her…
The mere thought was enough to ratchet her vague uneasiness up a notch into real fear. Heart beating fast, palms sweating, she steeled herself and glanced around backwards to glimpse her pursuer.
No one.
The street behind her was almost empty, the closest other pedestrians being a group of three apparently tipsy young men staggering away in the opposite direction.
Just my imagination, she thought, but oddly this thought did not bring relief, for the feeling persisted after she turned back around. If anything, it grew stronger. She felt the weight of another’s gaze fixed on the back of her head. Her mouth grew dry. Her hands trembled. The clicking of her footsteps seemed to swell to the exclusion of all other sound, a hollow click-clack, click-clack projecting into a silence that now seemed as heavy and suffocating as a down blanket. She listened desperately, trying to catch her phantom pursuer in a misstep, or at least to pick out the foreign sound that had made her suspect his (her? its?) presence in the first place. But the difference was impossible to pinpoint with her rational mind, despite the insistence of her subconscious that something was amiss. Attempting to confuse her pursuer (if indeed there was one), she walked a bit faster, then rapidly slowed, then did a series of little off-beat trips, skips, and hops. All of which availed her nothing, except perhaps to make her look completely ridiculous to passerby. And yet the strange echo continued, nebulous and elusive, fraying her nerves and feeding the mounting dread that now possessed her.
Ever since Diane was a child, she’d had a very active imagination. As a young girl she was afraid of the dark and the quiet more than anything else, for her mind would fill it with waiting monsters and phantom noises. Every night after her parents put her to bed, she would switch on the little lamp on her bedside table and sleep with the light on. If her parents noticed, which they sometimes did, they would come in and turn the light back off again. She hated it when this happened, for if she awoke with the light off, she would never be able to reach over and turn it back on again. The six-inch gap between her bed and her nightstand became an unbridgeable void of dark menace; the young Diane was convinced that, the moment she tried to reach across, monstrous hands would reach up from under her bed, grab her exposed wrist, and drag her screaming into the shadows. Only the magical rectangle that constituted the top of her bed was safe, acting on the monsters as a circle of salt might act on a witch. And even the bed might not be safe if a REALLY BAD THING was lurking in the darkness. There amongst the vague, half-imagined terrors of a child’s imagination would Diane lie, mute and paralyzed, sleepless until the morning sun finally shone through her bedroom window. It was horrible. And God forbid she should have to use the bathroom.
Yes, Diane knew that she had an overactive imagination. But she thought she had conquered it years ago. She was a grown woman now, not a child; she shouldn’t be imagining things. And yet, the certainty of being observed…followed…hunted refused to disappear. Someone or something was following behind her, some deep intuitive part of her knew it. She was not a child anymore, and with every passing moment, she became more and more certain that she was not imagining this. And she became more and more afraid.
Maybe whoever it was just ducked into an alley or dodged out of sight the last time I turned around. That’s possible, she thought. With this in mind, she bit her lip, steeled herself… and without warning whipped around as fast as she could, turning her whole body to face her assailant.
Nothing. An empty street.
The sight of the dark, empty passage behind her nearly sent Diane into a full-blown panic attack. The shadows, the buildings, the very air itself seemed to pulsate with malicious intent, as if the city she now saw was merely a thin veil draped over a writhing, seething mass of… It was suddenly very difficult for Diane to breathe. A weight pressed against her chest and her eyes welled with terrified tears. Her body shook like a leaf. It took every last iota of her self-control not to shriek like a madwoman right there in the middle of the street. She was suddenly seized with a strong and urgent compulsion to GET INDOORS, to seek shelter from the terror, however irrational, that seemed to stalk the streets. She turned quickly back around and darted into the nearest lit building, letting the door slam behind her without turning back. She collapsed against the wall next to the door, eyes closed, breathing like she had just run a marathon. For a few moments she just stood there like that, calming herself down and trying to regain control of her breathing. Only then did she open her eyes to survey the room she had just entered.
Diane had, in her terror, stumbled into a small pub. The place was a bit dingy and not particularly well-lit, but at least it was brighter than outside, and the few patrons seated in small groups throughout the establishment seemed friendly and respectable enough, at least upon first inspection. A couple of them were glancing over in her direction, their curiosity perhaps aroused by her strange, panicked entrance… or perhaps simply by the fact that she seemed to be the only woman in the place except for one slightly harried-looking waitress. Diane still felt a bit uneasy, both from the attention and from her feeling of being followed in the street, but coming inside had managed to dissolve the worst of her panic. She did not in the least feel ready to venture back out into the street, though, so instead she sat down quietly at a vacant, two-person table near the door and tried to collect her thoughts. After a minute or so, the waitress she had noticed earlier came by and asked Diane politely if she would like anything to drink. Diane requested just a cup of hot tea please, if they had it; and the waitress gave her a kind, understanding smile and a pat on the back of the hand before bustling off to fill the order.
By this point, Diane felt much better, although the lingering feeling of being watched still persisted in the back of her mind. She was seated with her back to the front door and window of the pub, and a small part of her was still convinced that someone or something was looking in on her through that window. However, she pushed this idea away as firmly as she could, telling herself that she was being ridiculous, that it all must have been nothing more than her imagination. She had gone a fair ways towards convincing herself this was true when a man slid casually into the seat across from her.
Well aware that she was the only female patron in the pub, Diane opened her mouth to tell the man that she was not interested in flirting, but stopped when she got a closer look at him. The man was a lot older than she had expected, old enough to be her father. He had short, graying brown hair and a slight stubble across his cheeks, and the skin around his bright blue eyes was wrinkled not only with age, but with the kindly and wise smile that stretched across his face. Overall, he had a caring, patriarchal aura that – along with the golden wedding band she noticed on his left ring finger – suggested to Diane that this was not some young, self-styled Casanova looking for a date.
“Fergive a stranger fer soundin’ nosy, but… Are ya doing a’right, lass? Yer lookin’ a mite troubled, an’ ya stormed in here earlier like you was in a downright panic.” His voice was deep and rugged, but also soft, carrying a lilting accent that was somehow soothing to Diane.
“Oh, I’m doing alright,” Diane responded sheepishly, “Just… had a bit of a fright on my way home. Nothing really; just my imagination I suppose. Bit embarrassing, actually. I just wanted to… stop in, get a bit of a hot drink and calm down before heading back home for the night.”
The man nodded understandingly, taking a short gulp from his own mug as the waitress returned with Diane’s tea. As the waitress left, he responded, “Yeh, these city streets c’n be a touch dauntin’ at night, what with everythin’ bein’ so damn packed in. Not all safe fer a young lass walkin’ alone, either,” he added with a stern look. Diane nodded her understanding and sipped her tea with an embarrassed blush, looking down into her cup rather than at her companion. “What was it put such a fright inta ya, anyhow?”
“Oh, like I said, nothing really,” Diane responded, “Just a… creepy feeling I got, nothing to worry about.”
The man set down his mug and leaned his chin on his hand. “Why don’tcha tell me a bit about it, lass? Talkin’ bout these things has a way o’ makin’ em feel better, sometimes.”
Normally, Diane wouldn’t want to reveal something so embarrassing, particularly to a stranger, but she still felt in need of a bit of comfort, and the man seemed so sincere… she wound up telling him the whole story. Surprisingly, instead of nodding his encouragement or even looking amused at her folly, the man’s face seemed to grow darker and more troubled as Diane’s story progressed. When she had finally finished, the man sat there in silence for more than a minute, biting his lip and staring into his mug. Finally, Diane felt the silence had gotten too unnerving, and said to him, “Ummm, sir…?”
“Oh,” he exhaled in surprise, looking up from his mug, “Oh, sorry lass, I dinna mean to ignore ya. It’s jus’…”
“Just what?” Diane asked, a creeping feeling of dread starting to seep back into her body.
“Well… ya hear stories ‘round here, lass. Superstitious nonsense, the most of ‘em, but… there’s no denyin’ there’s some stuff what happens roundabout these parts at night that jus’ ain’t been explained. An’ what ya jus’ told me sounds an awful lot like one old story I hear now’n’ again…”
An icy chill went down Diane’s spine. “What story?”
The man drummed his fingers nervously on the table, looking torn. “Look, I don’ wanna put a fright in ya fer no reason lass, but… I was raised in a real superstitious family, and curse me if it ain’t been passed along enough for me to think… that it’d be riskin’ your safety not to tell ya.”
“Tell me what? Please, I want to hear this. Even if it is just superstitious.”
“Well, as tales would have it, there’s this… thing what comes around the streets a’ night, in the city like this. Some kinda monster, or ghost, but nobody knows what it really is, or what it looks like. An’ every now’n’ then, fer some reason it’ll… latch on… ta somebody, an’ follow ‘em around, walkin’ right behind ‘em as they go about their business.”
“Catch is, y’see… it ain’t really real. At least not in our world, not normally. I don’t get all that weird metaphysics stuff ‘er nothin,’ but supposedly it’s on some kinda other plane, for the most part. One what overlaps with our world but ain’t really a part of it… like it’s below what we c’n see an’ feel, and most people go through their lives hardly even knowin’ it’s there. Unless somethin’ there takes a shine to ya. Even then, it can’t do much… it can see ya, an’ it can follow ya around, but it can’t really harm ya, see, ‘cause it’s not really there. In fact, some people don’t notice it followin’ em at all, jus’ go on ‘bout their evenings without a care in the world. But others… people who’re more sensitive, more open ta stuff that ain’t exactly rational an’ concrete, they’ll notice it followin’ em. They’ll feel a cold chill on their backs, a sense of bein’ stalked… like a sixth sense or somethin.’ May even hear it followin’ em, jus’ a bit, or catch a quick glimpse of it, jus’ for a moment out the corner o’ their eye. Never more’n that, ‘cause it’s not really there, remember? At least not yet.”
Diane gulped. “…Yet?”
“That’s why it’s the sensitive ones what have to worry about it, see? If you don’t notice it, it c’n follow ya ‘round till the cows come home an’ not make one lick of difference. If ya do notice it, though, if ya start feelin’ it, and seein’ it, and expecting it… well, it starts gettin’ more real to ya, dunnit? An’ as it starts gettin’ more real ta you, it starts gettin’ more real period.” The man paused for a moment. “You said ya looked back at the thing twice, didn’tcha lass?”
Riveted by the man’s story (and practically speechless with fear) Diane simply gave a series of quick, twitchy nods in response.
“Well, don’t get too scared now, lass, but… they say it’s the lookin’ what gives it it’s real strength, lookin’ back an’ expectin’ with all yer heart to see somethin’ there. That brings it closer ta this plane, makes it more solid. The firs’ time ya look back at it, it immediately starts to feel more real to ya. Whatever spooked feelings ya may’ve had before, they’ll go up tenfold after ya look back. The footsteps’ll get louder, the glimpses clearer. You’ll be more’n’more convinced that somethin’s followin’ ya around.”
“Same thing happens the second time ya look back. Fear gets jacked up another notch. Monster gets closer an’ more solid. Start’s followin’ right behind ya, breathin’ down yer neck. It knows it’s gettin’ near the kill. They say the trepidation’s near unbearable, ya feel compelled to look around one more time… but that’s the one thing ya should never do. ‘Cause that third look is all it takes to bring that thing full on into our world. Real an’ solid as you are. Turn around that third time, an’ you’ll be lookin’ it straight in the eye.”
“No one knows exactly what you’ll be lookin’ at, mind you. Some say it don’t even have a form of its own ‘till you give it one, an’ that when you do, it’ll be yer worst nightmare. Your own personal boogeyman… whatever thing, real or imaginary, scares ya the most on God’s green earth, that’s what it’ll look like. But o’course, that’s all speculation, ‘cause so far as I know there ain’t no one what’s seen that thing an’ lived to tell about it. That’s the only thing ‘bout it that’s for sure… it’s a murderous, evil thing with an unholy hunger fer human flesh an’ bone. The moment you see it, it’ll seize on ya an’ tear ya limb from limb, rip ya apart an’ disembowel ya while yer still alive an’ screamin,’ savin’ yer head fer last. Only thing what the police’ll find of ya when it’s done will be some ripped up, bloody clothes an’ maybe a few slivers o’ bone.”
“Some say that ain’t even the worst part though. Some say that after it’s done devourin’ yer flesh, that thing’ll steal yer very soul an’ drag it into that other world it comes from, an’ there it’ll torment ya fer all eternity. Still jus’ speculation but… it’s ‘bout as plausible as anythin’ else in the story.”
By this time, Diane was as white as a sheet and trembling in sheer terror. She felt certain that the awful monster the man had described was exactly what was stalking her. The story had reiterated exactly how she had felt while walking out on the street a few minutes earlier. “W-what do I do?” she asked the man in a pleading voice. “How do I get away from this thing? Did I lose it by coming in here?”
The man shook his head mournfully. “Prob’ly not, lass. From what I heard, it don’t give up that easy. Even if it didn’t follow ya in here, which would explain ya feelin’ a bit better, it’s probably still standin’ outside waitin’ for ya. It’s smart. It knows this ain’t yer home. An’ it’s real determined. It wants ya; I’m sure you could tell.”
Diane hid her face in her hands and let out a quiet sob. Yes, she could tell. She could feel its horrible eyes on her through the window even now, boring into the back of her head. “Then what do I do?” she asked, her voice trembling with repressed tears. “How can I make it go away? There has to be a way, there just has to be!!”
“There is, lass,” the man told her in a soothing voice, “And it’s a plenty simple thing, too… but it won’t be easy. Remember, that thing ain’t real ‘till you look back at it that third time; it can’t hurtcha unless you do that. What ya have to do is go home. Go out there an’ walk straight down that street to yer house. And no matter what ya do, no matter what ya see or hear, no matter how strong the compulsion hits ya, you MUST NOT LOOK BACK. Ya already looked back twice, once more and it’ll have ya fer sure.”
“Go home an’ walk into yer house, but don’t look back jus’ yet. Not even ta lock the door behind ya. That thing don’t care ‘bout locks an’ doors, not really, an’ yer not safe even in yer own home. Not ‘till ya complete the ritual. It’s like knockin’ on wood or throwin’ spilled salt over yer shoulder, it’ll drive the bad things away. What ya gotta do (without lookin’ back, mind you) is go to yer bedroom an’ find somethin’ precious to ya, some kinda personal talisman. For lotsa people, it’s some religious thing… a Bible or a crucifix, some such, but it doesn’t have to be. Just has ta be meanin’ful to you. You find this talisman, an’ you turn it over in yer hands three times, while repeatin’ the followin’ incantation three times: Tenebras non timeo, quia nihil residet. I think it’s Latin er somethin.’ Anyway, once ya do that the monster should be driven away, an’ you can go ahead an’ open yer eyes an’ turn around. Then go lock up yer doors an’ go straight to bed, an’ everythin’ will be better in the mornin.’ Havin’ failed once, the monster ought never come after ya again.”
The man paused and appraised the terrified young woman sitting across from him. “Think ya can do that, lass?”
Diane took a deep breath and sipped down the last of her hot tea, trying her best to calm and center herself. With some effort, she stilled the trembling of her hands and let her heart slow down to a reasonable speed. Biting her lip and gathering all of her resolve, she looked the man straight in the eye and said, “Yes. I can do it.”
“Good. You look like a strong an’ smart woman ta me, lass; ya’ll do jus’ fine. Just remember not to look back, no matter what.”
“Can you… could you maybe come with me? Walk me home? It would be easier with someone by my side to talk to.”
The man shook his head. “Sorry, lass, it jus’ don’t work like that. Ya started this thing alone, ya gotta finish it alone. But you can do it. I believe in ya.”
Diane bit her lip and nodded. “Okay, I think I get it. Thank you.”
“No problem at all, lass. Think yer ready?”
Squeezing her fists tight and gathering all her courage, Diane nodded again, once, with finality. Then she stood up.
“Good luck to ya, lass. Ya should be okay goin’ out the door, but once ya’ve turned down the road towards yer house, don’t look back the other way again for anythin’.”
“Alright… goodbye then. Thank you so much.” And with that, Diane turned and strode purposefully towards the door. As she reached it, she realized somewhat sheepishly that she hadn’t even asked the man his name. However, she did not go back to ask him – she felt that, if she turned away from this door now, she might never be able to muster the courage to go through it again. Steeling herself as if for a dive into cold water, she pushed open the door to the pub and walked briskly back out into the street, head down, turning immediately to her right… the direction of home. There was literally no turning back now.
Almost as soon as she stepped back onto the road, Diane felt the suffocating terror descend on her again, even stronger than before. The feeling of eyes boring into the back of her skull was almost painful, her brain being pierced by two icy beams. For the first time, she caught movement out of the corner of her eye, shadows that really shouldn’t be there if she were truly alone. While she was in the pub, the sun had set completely, and it was now pitch dark except for the weak, unnatural yellow phosphorescence of the streetlights. The city streets were mostly deserted, and the silence was palpable… except for Diane’s footsteps and the unnatural echoes of her pursuer.
Oh my God, those footsteps! Perhaps it was because she had heard them first, perhaps she was more sensitive to sound than sight, but the echoing footsteps behind her now seemed the most real of all. She could swear she heard solid feet striking the ground behind her, matching her gait more clumsily now than before. Sometimes an errant footfall would even strike at a different time than hers, letting her know beyond a shadow of a doubt that someone was behind her. Close behind her. Perhaps it was just the breeze, but she could even fancy that she felt cold breath on the back of her neck. The creature was so close, so close, she could tell. She felt its malice in the very atmosphere surrounding her, its anticipation and evil glee as it contemplated seizing her and ripping her to shreds, feeding on her terror and pain as well as her flesh. All it needed was one more look…
And damn it, even though she knew that look would seal her doom, in her mounting terror she couldn’t help but feel compelled to look behind her. That unseen presence breathing down her neck, piercing her with its eyes, filling her to the brim with horror… it was almost unbearable. Something about being unable to see it, unable to turn and face it, was almost worse than actually facing the thing. She supposed that was what it counted on. In any normal situation, ignoring such a strong feeling of impending danger was pure lunacy. Vision was perhaps humankind’s most important sense… when one heard a strange noise, felt a strange presence, it was a fundamental reflex to turn and look for the danger. Not to do so required the suppression of one’s strongest instincts. Although her rational brain insisted that the thing now walking behind her could not harm her unless she looked at it, some deeper, more animalistic part of her was clanging alarm bells with all its might, certain that looking was less dangerous than not looking. What if the man was wrong, what if this thing behind her could harm her, right now; what if its long claws were at this moment closing in on her jugular vein, its jaws opening to devour her whole???
Plagued by such thoughts, Diane gritted her teeth and broke into a run, not caring who might see her fleeing from nothing and think her mad. The footsteps behind her got even louder and more out of sync with hers as she ran. She was trembling all over, heart beating way too fast, terrified beyond belief. She could not help imagining the thing behind her… her worst nightmare… what it might look like. Vague memories of the imagined monsters that terrorized her childhood surfaced and coalesced. She imagined a creature with a round, gaping, bottomless maw, lined with horrible jagged bloody teeth. A creature with too many arms and legs, all bent in impossible conformations, all tipped with vicious claws. A creature with no order or symmetry, a crazed surrealist collage of terrible organs and implements of destruction. Or, perhaps most terrifying of all, a creature which lurked only on the edges of perception, amorphous, shrouded in darkness; a creature whose true form could not be imagined, for to see it even in the mind’s eye would drive one mad. Such was the creature that haunted her as a child. One which she never imagined or even tried to, one which went forever unnamed, a horrible malignant IT promising terrors beyond even her vivid imagination, beyond her worst nightmare.
Finally, Diane turned onto her own street and saw her front door, so close, just a few running paces away. Flooded with both terror and relief in equal measures, she closed the distance to her small townhouse in record speed, flying across the scraggly, brownish grass of her yard, bounding up her front steps, fumbling for a few horrible seconds with the key to her front door, terrified that she might drop it, then finally shoving it into the keyhole and violently throwing open the door. She closed the door behind her as she entered but, as per the instructions of the man at the pub, did not turn around to lock it, but proceeded straight up the stairs to her bedroom. Indeed, despite being inside her own home, she still felt the presence of the thing following her… its eyes on her back, its footsteps on the stairs… even the sound of the front door creaking ever so slightly, and if it had needed to open it to follow her in. But she was calmer now, knowing that it was almost over. She took the stairs not at a run, but at a brisk walk, and traversed the hallway to her room at the same pace. She already knew what her talisman was going to be… a treasured gift from her childhood…
Diane, you see, had not gotten over her childhood terrors of the dark and unseen monsters alone. Her parents had been loving and supportive, of course, but somehow had never known quite what to do with her. They never took her fears seriously at all… a position which only served to make her feel worse, as she was convinced that her fears were real and disheartened that her parents did not believe her. The one who actually helped free young Diane of her demons was her grandmother. When Diane was about ten, her grandfather died and her grandmother moved in to the same apartment complex as her family. Soon after, Diane happened to awake screaming from a nightmare one night while her grandmother was over visiting. The kindly old woman comforted her and coaxed her back to sleep, and the next day the two of them had a long, serious talk on the subject of fears. Grandmother took Diane’s concerns much more seriously than her parents seemed to. After a long time talking, Grandmother told Diane that the only thing she could do to put a stop to the monsters stalking her was to face them. Diane was horrified by the very suggestion. “But they’re so scary, Grandma! What could a little girl like me do to them? They’ll just get me!”
“Well, Diane,” her grandmother said, “the way I see it, there are only two possibilities. Either the dangers you fear are real, or they are the product of your imagination. If they are real, then they will find it easier to harm you if you don’t know what they are. You’re a smart little girl, with strong parents who love you very much and would do anything to protect you. I’ll wager it would be very hard for anything to harm you within the safe confines of your own home… unless you were too afraid to defend yourself from it. Knowledge is power, Diane, remember that. If the dangers are just a product of your imagination, then if you stand up tall and learn to face those fears, you’ll see that they can’t hurt you… just laugh in their faces and they’ll disappear! Either way, it’s better to face the things that scare you than to give in to them.”
The night after their talk, Diane woke up late at night, as she sometimes did, to find that her parents had turned off her bedside lamp. She thought she heard rustling and was seized with the sudden certainty that there was something hiding under her bed, waiting to grab her and gobble her up. In this situation, she would normally lie paralyzed with terror until morning, maybe even wetting her bed because she was too afraid to get up and go to the bathroom. That night, however, she remembered her grandmother’s advice. Gathering all her courage, she decided to reach across the void between her bed and her nightstand and turn on the bedside lamp.
She sat up in bed (a feat of bravery in itself) and took a few deep breaths, then, as quickly as she could, she lunged over to her nightstand and turned on the lamp. Nothing grabbed her, and the lamp cast its warm circle of light across her room. Diane was surprised and elated that nothing bad had happened. She could just go back to bed now, with the light on, and probably sleep fine… but, she realized, that didn’t really solve the problem, not all the way. Big girls didn’t sleep with the lights on; that was why her parents always turned it off. When Grandma said to face her fears, she meant all the way – and now, empowered by this little victory, might be the only chance Diane had to muster the courage to do it.
Trembling slightly, hardly believing her own boldness, Diane retrieved a small flashlight from her bedside drawer… and turned the lamp back off again. In the darkness, the unseen presence of the monster under the bed seemed to return immediately, and Diane’s heart raced with fright. But, she had to do this. Letting out a loud, high-pitched war cry to inspire herself (and alert her parents should anything actually go wrong) Diane jumped from the safe haven of her bed onto the no-man’s-land of the floor, dropped to her belly, switched on the flashlight, and pointed it under the bed.
No monsters. Just a couple of dirty socks and a toy ball she thought she’d lost. When D |
The cold was the first thing I felt.
Even before my eyes were open I felt a very deep chill in my core, a thousand spindles of ice sewn between my tissues. I blinked, my eyelids slowly bringing and stealing back the darkness, and with it the desire to keep them closed forever.
I was lying face down on the floor, the tiles speckled with browned blood. I moved my arms to push myself up, but my muscles were stiff, almost too stiff to bend without breaking. I feebly pushed myself up, forcing weight upon deadened legs. I began to wonder why I felt the way I did. I wasn’t sure how long I’d been lying there. There was the most peculiar feeling in my stomach, a sort of dissolution. Perhaps I had ingested something that knocked me out?
Wait. Where was I? I looked around the room I was in. It was a kitchen, mostly everything in order except for the few traces of a hurried exit. The back door was open, barely bolted to the top hinge. Cabinet doors were left open, and it seemed only the food readily edible was taken. A knife set was knocked over, with a few blades missing. There was blood splattered on the floor, in which I was laying. I could see a putrid stream of it running down my shirt, but after a quick search I couldn’t find, nor feel, any wound.
Each window I saw had the blinds drawn, and the lights turned off, as if the house’s occupants were hiding. I went into the living room, barely bending my brittle knees into an awkward walk. It was dark, but I could see the outlines of furniture well enough. There was nothing out of the ordinary, except that the front door had been barricaded with a desk. There was a bedroom towards my right, the door closed, and then a hallway near the front door. The entire house was dark, and empty.
Except for me.
Where was I? Whose house was this? And then, then I realized I didn’t know who I was.
I thought and thought and thought upon it, trying to bring up some memory of a name, a friend, an activity, my face. I didn’t even have a vague image of my own face, and the feeling of facelessness was eerily disconcerting. Trying to access my convoluted memory banks, I realized I couldn’t remember anything other than the cold of waking up on that kitchen floor. I slowly became more and more sure that I had been poisoned, or perhaps had an allergic reaction. What makes one amnesic and unconscious? It had to be some sort of chemical.
What if I lived alone? I checked for a wallet in my pocket, but found none. I tried to call out, but something was wrong with my voice, as it felt and sounded like my vocal cords were shredded. The only thing to come out was some sort of strangled noise, mixed with a phlegmatic sputter. I spat out a gob of blackish-red blood caught in my throat. I couldn’t taste it, but it looked disgusting on whoever owned the couch in front of me.
Since no one had responded to my vocalization, I decided to leave. Going to the front door, I pulled the heavy desk aside. It was difficult, not because of the weight, but because of my limbs. My arms felt encumbered by hundreds of pounds, and the rest of my body had been struck by from sort of torpor, like it was being pulled towards a supermassive black hole in the opposite direction I tried escaping to. Trying to grip the hulking piece of furniture was difficult as my fingers wouldn’t cooperate, but the desk gave way easily, more easily than I thought it would.
I’m not sure how long I spent trying to open the door. Time seemed different. I couldn’t tell how long a moment was, as I was completely grounded in the present. Trying to recall waking up in the kitchen was slowly becoming more difficult. After what could have been hours of failing, I orchestrated all of my fingers together into a twisting motion and opened the door. The difficulty of something seemingly simple perplexed me, but I lost interest and soon forgot about it.
I had heard of concoctions that paralyze, but were there some that caused memory loss as well? I knew of the Haitian zombies that forgot themselves entirely and served whatever voice they heard after they resurrected, but there was no voice to command me. My experience wasn’t quite as dramatic, but someone’s blood was in that kitchen. Maybe I survived an assassination? I had been subdued on purpose, and I could still feel the results in my rigid muscles. But if amnesia was an intended side effect, what would someone stand to gain from it?
I walked out the door, into a suburban neighborhood, trying to figure this conundrum out. The sky was overcast and gray, a constant threat of some sort of foulness to rain from the heavens. The wind was strong, blowing various trash and debris down the street. I could see black smoke on the horizon, rising up to coalesce with the dark clouds.
Step by step, I moved the desiccated-feeling body I was in down the driveway. I didn’t see a single person, just the signs of an exodus. Front doors were broken down or left open, windows smashed, burnouts from tires throughout the street, and the strange feeling of not being alone. I could sense someone was around, I could hear their heartbeat, I could feel their warmth. I needed to find them, I needed to know what was going on. Someone would help me, I was sure.
A too-thick saliva began to form in my mouth, a very foreign saliva. I spit, a purple slime tinged with red hitting the ground, along with something white. The purging of a toxin?
So I began to walk. I made horrible progress, walking down the street on a pair of dead legs. I didn’t mind it, though. I was lost in a sort of mindlessness, not discontent to just be wandering. The whole time, the possibility of other people probed my brain, insisting I find them.
Walking down a street through the eternal maze of neighborhood, I came across a dog. A big Doberman. At first, he caught my attention in an interested way. I looked at him, enthralled. But then he caught a glimpse of me, and started barking. The barking became louder and louder, and I began to grow irritated. The way the dog stared at me, fangs bared, caused my reservedness to subside. I could feel the fury cauterizing my body, crawling up my spine, making my hands shake. This animal was challenging me. My prey.
I strode over to him, oblivious to the deep growling. The dog readied himself to pounce, and the thought of this pathetic thing posing a challenge was amusing. He jumped forward, biting into my calf, hard, hard enough to cause a crunch to sound. But I was so full of rage, so full of hatred that my whole body was numb. I threw myself upon the dog, wrapping my hands around his neck tightly. I slowly began twisting my iron grip with as much power as I could muster, and nothing in the world would stop me from breaking his neck. He managed a whimper in such a saddening manner that if I could feel sorrow, it would’ve hurt me inside. So I made it excruciating for the dog, finally breaking his neck after his head was twisted a hundred and eighty degrees. Then I picked his corpse up, slammed it into the street, and started punching in his ribcage, grinding his flesh and innards against the cement with my fists, until just the head and hind legs remained intact, connected together by a spine and fur matted with the dog’s bloody remains.
When I was done, I asked myself what I had just done. I now felt nothing, I was calm, I was collected. My mind analyzed the situation and it deduced my anger as a fair reaction, though I had a subconscious feeling that what I had just done was sickeningly wrong.
What if I had brain damage? I had heard a story of how a man had brain damage in a specific area, which caused him to fly into a blind fury at the smallest sleight. What if it happened to me? Enough oxygen deprivation can cause both brain damage and unconsciousness. Was I even mentally fit to be a human being anymore?
I needed to find someone quickly.
I continued on, eventually reaching the end of the neighborhood. Two cars were crashed into each other, and I walked up to them. One was empty, while the driver of the other car was resting his head on the steering wheel. I walked over, opening the door and lifting his head up by the hair. His forehead was caved in, pieces of skull broken off in his brain. He didn’t smell particularly good, so I picked him up and threw him into the street.
I sat in the car, looking at it. I was sure I’d driven cars many times before, but as I sat in that seat, I couldn’t figure out what I was supposed to do. I grabbed the wheel, turned it. Nothing happened. There were a ton of buttons next to the wheel, and I began pressing them. One of them made a terrible noise come on, and after forgetting which one it was, I left.
I was on a main street. There were cars parked in the lots out front of derelict shopping centers, the occasional sign of violence streaked upon the pavement or wall in a bloody fashion. The lights of miscellaneous shops were still on, though I could see no one inside. Automated traffic lights went through their cycles, unaware that they did nothing to serve the people who weren’t there. The place was a ghost town, void of anything that might be alive.
Then I saw someone. I was in front of a grocery store, the entrance destroyed by a flipped car. The person I saw appeared to be a man. He limped, and it seemed like every time he put weight on his right leg it would almost snap out underneath him. He was making his way into the apartment complex from the other side of the street. I tried yelling out to him, but all I could make was a groan.
He continued on to the complex grounds, and I decided to follow him. When I passed the surrounding fence, however, I saw a group of people running up a flight of stairs into an apartment. One of them was holding a gun towards the man trying to follow, who seemed to beseech something of them by holding his arms out. From the look of it, he needed medical aid.
And then they shot him. I immediately took cover behind the fence, peeking around the corner. The last person to go in was a woman, who made the strangest feeling rise in my chest. I took a look at her as she stared at the corpse of the man her friend had just shot. She couldn’t see me, however, and went inside.
There was something peculiar about her. She contorted my chapped lips into a goofy semi-grin. I had a feeling like I knew her, like I needed to know her again. Perhaps she could help me sort this whole mess out. Maybe I could find out who I once was.
But I wasn’t going to be able to approach them if they were just shooting random people. I made my way towards the grocery store. My muscles began to grow flexible, and I could move a bit more smoothly now, though the calf the dog had bitten wasn’t as strong as my uninjured one. I began to hope that whatever chemical was in my system was starting to wear off, and that there might not be permanent effects after all.
I walked through the parking lot. The place was abandoned, though it didn’t seem voluntarily. Some of the car doors were open, some were painted red. One trunk was open, half-filled with groceries and a carton of eggs smashed upon the concrete next to it. Dozens of carts were left astray. The car that had rolled over had smashed the glass doors leading into the grocery store. It appeared the car was resting upon a few people, their blood and organs forced out of their bodies all over the cement. The wind blew. It was cold.
I got to the dumpster behind the store, and opened it up. I grabbed a piece of cardboard, and underneath was a small child, face gnawed until it was unrecognizable. I could see the bone of the nose, though the cartilage was gone. There was an ear spat out next to his head. The lips were eaten in a particularly vicious way, exposing smashed-in teeth and purple gums. The eyes had been slurped out, leaving this eight-year-old child staring into the sky with a lifeless gaze. The skull was smashed in and the brain was served at 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit. The body had pieces picked off of it in varying degrees, in some places to the muscle, in others to the bone. This was the work of something wild, something extremely voracious. The child was small enough to be an easy meal for a pack of starving dogs. There was even a news report about cases like this a few months ago. Wasn’t there? Or did it seem like something that would be on the news? Regardless.
I reached my hand into the emptied stomach, digging up past the remains in search of wet blood. After getting some, I wrote “I’m not an enemy, don’t attack!” on the cardboard. The body gave off a foul stench, and it wasn’t the sight so much as it was the scent that deterred me. It wasn’t decomposition, but there was something definitely wrong with the corpse.
So I left, utterly forgetting the small child. I arrived back at the opening of the apartment complex. The door the group had entered was shut tight. I waited, not sure how long it was, but completely content with passing the time doing nothing. Then I thought it would be better to see them coming before they could see me. So I took my sign and went to the cemetery across the street from the apartments, where I would be able to properly observe them.
Night came. Everything was quiet. Not a single car passed. No one walked along the sidewalk. There wasn’t a single person out picking up fast food, visiting the grocery store or renting a movie. Orange glows on the horizon kept me company.
Anything that a human being might once do was never to be done again.
I lay there, silently, watching, alone in a yard full of corpses. I had the same sensation I had in the neighborhood I woke up in, that there were people around. I knew I could feel the ones in that apartment. So I waited for them.
The only uncomfortable part was the cold. I couldn’t get warm at all. I wished my body would metabolize whatever was in me. I just wanted to feel alright again.
I was slowly beginning to forget what exactly I needed metabolized from my body. Was it something bad? It couldn’t be, as I felt perfectly fine. I had the vague feeling that I should wait for the people who went into the house, that maybe that woman I saw could tell me what I needed out of my system.
I spent the night next to the grave of Chris Redfield.
Then day came. It seemed slow, but I couldn’t be sure. My mind was only conjuring up blanks when I tried accessing the last few hour’s images. The clouds stayed, like a dark harbinger hiding whatever might be bright, whatever was left that could be warm, if there was anything that could make me warm again.
Finally, I saw them come out. A few, including the woman. I made as much haste as I could, holding up my sign, until I caught one of their eyes. It was a man, thin, gaunt, bones quite prominent, like an undead skeleton. He had a handgun, and as soon as I came into his vision he pulled it up, aiming it at me, yelling out a warning. The other two looked at me, and the woman I had seen gasped.
I got a better look at her. She was beautiful, even angelic. Blonde hair, of a very light color. Green eyes, the color I imagine Mother Nature herself might have. I could see an aura around her, of a bright white. I saw it shoot towards me, and I was instantly soothed. My leg felt alright, my spirit was healed, my being rejuvenated. I loved her, and I’m sure I loved her even more back before, when I knew who I was.
She looked at me, mouth agape, expression stunned. The skeleton covered in flesh took a step forward, but she stood in front of him. I held my sign out, and she read it. I could see a tear run down her face. They muttered a conversation to each other, but the man let me continue on.
“No, how can you trust him?” The man yelled as the woman I loved started walking towards me.
“We’re going back, right now, with or without you.” And the other two started running back up the stairs. They meant nothing to me, however, so I didn’t care.
I dropped the sign. This woman, a complete stranger to me, yet so familiar I felt that if I lost her now I would lose my entire life. She came closer, and stopped.
“Is that you?” She whispered.
“Yhhuss.” I managed to articulate with difficulty. For this woman I could remember nothing about, this woman that I loved, I would do anything.
She walked up to me. I extended my arms to embrace her, and when she fell into them I ripped her fucking throat out, the flesh in my mouth one second and swallowed in the next. She started choking on blood, trying to scream and failing, falling to the concrete. She was mute, the same way I was.
I got down to my knees, making a fist and smashing through her ribcage to get the best-tasting organs. I broke the skin, broke bones, gripped her heart, ripped it out and started savoring it. I had no idea why I was doing any of this, as I was now a mere victim of my instincts. This drive took over my hands and jaws, this inherent rage encoded within my existence. I know knew the purpose of my existence.
The only thing I loved right now was the way her flesh tasted, the first thing I had been able to taste in so long. It had the perfect texture, the right amount of chewiness, and the blood was a perfect compliment. I felt an elation, I felt an amazing high I had never known as I consumed her carcass. I felt a tooth get stuck in a particularly calloused piece of hand, but swallowed it anyway.
I would regret this later, if I could still regret. If I could still regret, I might regret that after I had my fill, this woman would get up, only to suffer the same bewilderment and estrangement from reality as I had. I might regret that I was purposely going to let her reanimate, so she could do infect others. I might regret the deaths of the others she would eat. I might regret letting the corpses of children be thrown into dumpsters after her victims did their part to spread this disease. If I could still regret. If I even cared to regret.
I might regret succumbing to the results of my twist of fate. I am now the plague-bearer, I am now the one I used to despise in horror movies.
I am the downfall of my former race.
I am the apocalypse.
And then I began to feast.
* * * * * *
I walked down the stairs of the safe house, a volunteer to collect supplies. Ash and Leon accompanied me. We made it down the stairs and walked over to the car. All of a sudden I heard a yell from Ash, and turned. He was holding his gun up towards one of the dead–
It wasn’t just one of the dead. It was my husband.
The tumultuous storm of negative emotions I’d experienced these last two days had just ended. Ever since the genetic switch within humanity’s junk DNA was pulled magnetically, there was no place more like Hell than home. Each one of us was now another’s apocalypse.
One by one, countries fell. The Northern Hemisphere was hit, then America, then our state. It was one swift sweep, like God waving his hand across the world to clean up a mess he had let grow too big. I knew it was the end. The beginning of that end started when one of the undead broke into our home and bit my husband in the back of the neck. Life became meaningless.
Until this moment. Now he was back. Back from the dead, not completely, but close enough. My reason to stay alive was resurrected in the form of this corpse in front of me. I could see past the glaze in his eyes that he could remember me, that he had been searching for me. He stared at me, the way he used to stare before he would tell me he loved me.
Ash stepped forward, and I quickly stepped in front of him. I read the sign my husband had made, painted in some sort of red, which said, “i m n e me) doet atak”. His spelling was never very good anyways, but this meant that he was still cognitively functioning. And even though he was a shambling corpse with a shin bone piercing through his calf, I still loved him. I tried to stop myself from crying.
“What’re you doing?” Ash asked.
“That’s my husband,” I told him.
“That’s NOT your husband, he’s a corpse, a zombie hungering for your flesh. He probably walked in from the same cemetery as the other cadaver.”
“I’m going to talk to him.”
“No, how can you trust him?” But I had already started walking towards my husband.
“We’re going back now, with or without you.” I heard Ash yell, and then their footsteps up the stairs. I didn’t need them, though. The only person I needed was him. The man in front of me, the one with the dilated, newly-pigmented pupils that were as ghostly as the full moon, the one with the blanched, sickly pallor, whose jaw hung slightly slack and leaked a purple fluid. He was missing one of his front teeth, but with the bloody and rotting gums he had developed, it seemed like they’d all fall out soon anyhow. He was covered in dried blood, and smelled of decomposition. But death was the final barrier, and he had broken it. Now we could be together forever.
I stopped in front of him.
“Is that you?” I asked.
“Yhhuss,” he rasped, like his vocal cords had been cut with a scalpel and then sewn back in by a high school special ed student with a cleft hand.
I walked up, he opened his arms, and he embraced me.
* * * * * *
The cold was the first thing I felt.
Such an overwhelming cold. I opened my eyes with difficulty. I was staring up at the sky. Massive clouds, dark and menacing, were sailing through the firmament. Lamps lit the area I was in with an orange glow, creating an eerie otherworldly sensation, as if I were in some reality that never existed until this moment.
With as much strength as I could muster, I tried moving. My muscles were stiff, and bending them was almost impossible. I finally got up, though. I took a look around. I was in the parking lot of what looked like an apartment complex. Where was this? Where was I?
Wait a second. Who was I? I began to try and recall something, anything from my memory. Nothing came up. I tried calling out, but the only noise I made was a strange gurgling, as if my throat were full of a liquid.
Then I looked down. There was a corpse next to me, lying face up. I had the strangest feeling that this man was important, that I had known him. He was missing a tooth, covered in blood, and obviously killed by a bullet to the head. He gave me a very peculiar feeling, and anyone who could feel sorrow would have been saddened by this man’s condition. So I started walking away. I had an instinctive feeling that there were people nearby, though where, I wasn’t sure. But I needed to find people. They would help me, I was sure.
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I used to live in a small town called Fenter. It was a quiet place to grow up with one school, a doctors, a police station, a cinema (with films shown a month after the national release date), two restaurants and a host of local shops on the west side. Over on the east side of Fenter was the residential area with about forty houses, the town bar and the local woods, which were about twenty square miles in across.
Even though I’d grown up my whole life playing in those woods it was still easy to get lost in them, so my father used to tell me and my friends to never go past the creek that ran through about a mile in. Still this gave us plenty of space to play in and we spent many summers building tree forts and playing hide and seek amongst the tall trees. One late summer evening me and my friend Jess were out near the creek seeing how close we could sneak up on the rabbits that inhabited the woods before they’d notice and run away. I’d spent about ten minutes searching for one and, in my eagerness; I’d left Jess behind. She’d stopped to examine some odd shaped rocks and being impatient I’d told her to catch up when she was finished. I was just reaching the hill where the creek bent and curved round to travel off north for another three miles when I spied one chewing on some leaves near an oak tree. I held my breath, grabbed my jacket to stop it flapping in the breeze and began slowly inching towards it. I was careful to avoid stepping on any twigs, if one snapped underfoot it was a definite game over and with the sun going down this would probably be the last chance I got to play before I had to go home for dinner. The rabbit was blissfully unaware of my presence; its brown coat tinged orange by the setting sun, ears flopped down like a hunters hat. The irony didn’t escape me as I crept up on it, silent as the leaves floating in the breeze. I smirked, I was about four meters away from it now and it still hadn’t noticed me, not my best but not bad. I slowed my pace even more; I didn’t want to make a rookie mistake in my excitement and ruin this opportunity. The rabbit finished on its leaf and casually began sniffing the next one before digging in. Two metres away now, the closest I’d ever gotten, I felt my heart beat in my chest and for a second I was scared the rabbit would hear it thudding against my rib cage and dart off. I shook my head and continued up behind it. It was almost within arms reach, I couldn’t believe it, I stretched out my arm, fingers extended. Wait till Jess heard about this, I’d be the first kid in town to have touched a forest rabbit. My hand was about a foot from brushing its soft pelt now, I could see each individual hair on it’s back. Thirty centimetres, I’d done it. I’D DONE IT! Suddenly an ear splitting scream pierced the air, shaking the silence of the woods in to shock and causing the resting birds to panic and scatter from the trees. I gasped and quick as a flash the rabbit was under the bush and gone forever. I cursed aloud and spat, frustration clouding my head. It was a good few seconds before I even stopped to think where the scream had come from. Then like a falling tree it hit me. JESS.
I sprinted back up the creek as fast as I could. She’d been about two hundred yards back when I’d last seen her, near the old silver birches. It took me about two minutes to reach the spot, next to the weird pile of rocks. My brow was covered in sweat and my hair was messed up where the wind had whipped through it but all I could think of was finding Jess, even though I knew the woods were perfectly safe I cursed myself for having left her alone. I spun around in a circle; scanning for any sign of her but there was none.
“JESS!” I yelled out, my voice travelling through the woods and echoing off the trees. It was getting darker and tall shadows were being cast all around me like a net.
“JESS WHERE ARE YOU, CALL OUT TO ME, JESS!” I stood and listened but there was no reply. I was just about to run further up the creek where the trail began to see if she had started to make her way home when I saw it. On the other side of the creek about fifty yards away it stood, tall as the lowest branches of the sycamore next to it about seven foot up. It was covered in black rags, ripped and torn across its thin, wiry body with a hood pulled tightly around its head, obscuring it’s features. Two white, pupil-less eyes stared at me from the shadowed recess and I spied the flash of teeth. Long slender arms with hook like fingers splaying off of stumped hands almost dragged against the floor by its sides. I suddenly noticed an over powering smell and wondered how I’d missed it, I’d smelt it before on the farms when the cattle were harvested in the slaughterhouses; it was the smell of death, thick and despairing. I almost choked but my mouth wouldn’t make a sound, I just kept staring at it, petrified, blood running cold through my veins. Even the birds had stopped yelling in protest and now there was nothing but silence, it and I; locked in a gaze that I would remember to the day I died. I don’t know how long I was standing like that, it felt like minutes but it was probably only a few seconds. Suddenly, it shifted its weight and hunched down. For a brief second I thought it was going to start running at me and I almost threw up, uncontrollable fear racking my body, but then I noticed it had stooped to collect something from the ground. I cried out silently… it was Jess; her limp body looking like a doll compared to it’s freakishly proportioned frame. Despite being thin and stick like it picked her up in one bony hand with ease, fingers clasped around her waist, teeth bared in a crooked, humourless smile. It opened up part of its shoal and pulled her close against it’s blackened torso, I caught glimpses of a rib cage and rotten flesh. I reached out my arm, as if somehow I could pull her back to me but it was too late, it had turned and started to stride off deeper in to the forest. Even if I had known that area of the woods and had the strength to move my legs I would have never been able to catch up to it and, before I even knew it, it had disappeared from sight, like it had never been there at all. Only the heavy smell of decay was left lingering in the air, the only evidence that I hadn’t just imagined the whole thing. I snapped my head round and began to run back towards town, it was a good miles distance and I’d never run that far before, but that day I ran and ran and didn’t stop, jumping over fallen logs and ducking branches, I dared not look back.
The darkness was almost complete by the time I burst from the undergrowth and in to the town’s edge. I sprinted to the bar and threw myself in to the door, practically collapsing on to the floor. I don’t really remember much after that but from what I was told later on it took them about ten minutes to stop me from screaming about a demon I’d seen in the woods and that we had to find Jess. By the time they’d actually gotten the story out of me and organised a search party two hours had passed. Jess’ dad shook me and shouted at me, asked me what happened to his baby girl. I could only stare dumbfounded and mute until my own father dragged him off and told him to get a grip. The sheriff organised the towns’ folk in to two groups and they each took a section of the woods. I tried to tell them that they all needed to bring their guns, that the thing had to be killed; the thought of going up against such a nightmare un-armed was too much, I begged my father to stay but he told me to calm down, that I was talking nonsense and was probably just in shock, my mind making up stories to deal with what had happened. He sent me home to rest under the watchful eye of my mother as he lead one of the groups in to the woods.
Three hours passed.
I was laying in bed still unable to sleep, huddled in my blankets, paranoid of every shadow and creak, convinced that IT, the nightmare, was going to come back for me, the only witness to it’s abomination, when I heard the front door open and the heavy steps of men entering the living room down stairs. I listened as they sat down and began to talk.
“Damndest thing I’ve ever seen in my life Jerry, I don’t know what’s out there but it sure riled up the dogs”, that was the sheriff speaking.
“What was it, a bear do you think sheriff?” I didn’t know the speaker but he sounded young, maybe one of the farm hands.
“Maybe… all I know is two of my best tracker hounds caught a scent, started going mad, they tore off in to the woods faster then I’ve ever seen them run, and they didn’t come back, now we’re two dogs and a little girl down, Jesus H”
Then the voice of my dad, I eased up a little, knowing he was back in the house made me feel safer,
“Chris said he found the poor girls gloves down by the creek, right where my boy said they were playing”.
The unknown voice came again, obviously Chris, “It’s true, they were covered in some kind of slime or something, don’t know what but it smelt god awful, one of the boys almost upped his liquor”.
“Okay, well at least we know she was there, I’m not hoping for much but I’ll pray, it’s one big forest and the chances o’ finding her are mighty slim”, the sheriff sighed, “I suppose I better go tell the family that they should be prepared for the possibility that they will never see Jess again, fuck, no man should have to outlive his kid, and the not knowing like this…”
“Didn’t Travis say he saw something big moving through the forest?”, another unknown voice, this one new.
“Yeah, he radioed in; said he saw some kind of, shit, I don’t know, giant moving in the distance, but the man was half pissed and it’s dark as the bottom of a well out there, probably just jumping at shadows, no most likely a bear or… a wolf or, something, jumped her from behind and dragged her off”, the sheriff again.
My father spoke, voice raised so everyone could hear, “Okay, lets all go home it’s been a tough night, we’ll search again for her tomorrow, even if it’s only a body we find, it’s better then the poor folks not knowing what happened, I want everyone to tell their kids not to go in that forest no more till we know for certain what occurred, understood?”
There were mumbles of agreement and then solemn goodbyes. The men left and the front door locked shut behind them. My father moved about downstairs for a few minutes before climbing the stairs and going to bed. Before he turned in he poked his head in to my room to check I was okay. I just pretended to be asleep, I had nothing to say, I didn’t even know what to tell myself, but one thing I knew for certain, I hadn’t been hallucinating, I’d really seen… IT, and whatever IT was it had Jess. I waited for a half hour after I heard my dad climb in to his bed before I sat up and switched my bedside light on. I crept out of my bed and got dressed as quietly as I could then I descended the stairs. My father had taught me how to shoot and maintain a gun a few years back, out here in the country it was important to know; hunting was a tradition amongst the men and when I was old enough my father would take me camping in the woods for a weekend of game shooting like his father before him. I knew where my dad kept his 44.Magnum and rounds in the garage and after searching around for a few minutes I found the key for the lockbox. I opened it up, loaded the pistol and grabbed a flashlight before leaving the house and locking the door behind me. My breath misted in the air as the unseasonably cold chill hung around me. I looked at the forest, once a place of fun and laughter now dark and sinister in the moonlight, branches stretching and contorting towards the sky like skeletal fingers. That thing had Jess and I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t do a damn thing to get her back, after all it was my fault for leaving her alone out there. I swallowed back the lump in my throat and began tenaciously walking down the road towards the woods.
“Don’t worry Jess”, I thought, “I’m coming”.
As I entered the woods I immediately began to question my actions, I knew that what I was doing was not smart by any stretch of the imagination, that my fool hardiness could very well get me killed. The thought of bumping in to the creature, out here, alone in the dark was more terrifying then anything I could ever imagine. And knowing that Jess was in that very situation herself was the only thing that drove me on. I trudged on the familiar old trail for about twenty minutes or so until I eventually came to the creek. I had never been here before in the dark and although everything was where it should be, it looked different. It was as if these were my woods to play in during the day, but now in the dark, it was an alien place, this was IT’s domain. I was a stranger here, unwelcome. This feeling was reinforced by the fact I had no idea what lay beyond the creek, except from what I’d seen in the immediate area from the other side. Carefully, I crossed the creek, the water soaking through my boots and dampening my trouser legs.
As soon as I stepped out on to the other side I felt like I was lost. How would I find my way back? Which direction would I go in? I ignored the first question; I had bigger things to worry about at the moment, and decided to head off in the direction I’d last seen the creature going. I started walking, vigilant for any signs of movement or noise. I’d expected there to be animals out this late at night but eerily it was silent, which made me feel vulnerable. Every footstep sounded like an alarm, telling the creature where I was. I stopped for a moment and looked around with my flashlight. I felt like the darkness was swallowing me; that the thing sat just outside the borders of light, laughing at my efforts to find it. I realised that if there was anything out there, the light would only serve to give away my position, effectively ending any kind of advantage I would have over it. After a pause I switched off the flashlight and waited for my eyes to adjust. It was difficult at first but after a few minutes I could make out enough of the forest to start slowly making my way through. It was about ten minutes later when I heard it. A short sharp yelp to my left in the distance. I paused and waited to see if any other noise was made. A moment later a snap echoed through the darkness and a dull thump. I was not alone anymore. Swallowing fear I sunk to my haunches and slowly made my way towards the noise. I had plenty of experience at being quiet from the rabbit game and even in the dark I didn’t find it too hard to distribute weight so as to move almost silently.
After a while I reached a clearing where the trees parted to a grassy patch about half the size of a football field. In the centre of the clearing was a rocky depression that sunk down in to the earth. I was about to make my way over and investigate when I saw it. It was standing near the edge of the clearing to the south and was slowly limping its way over to the depression, dragging something behind it. In the dark I couldn’t make out what it was but it was about the size of a child, except if the child had been snapped in the middle, it flapped limply with every bounce like a paper fan. I swallowed a lump and tears stung my eyes. I wasn’t sure if I was more scared or sad. I prayed to God to not let it be Jess and continued to watch it as it reached the pit and then hurled the object over the rim. It hit the ground with the unmistakable sound of crunching bone. The creature bent down headfirst as if to crawl down the rocks and then stopped. Slowly it stood back up and sniffed. I instinctively pressed my back to a tree, removing myself from view and strained to listen. I heard it sniff again softly and walk around in what sounded like a small circle and then… nothing. I waited. For what seemed like eternity I waited. I was unbearably tense, expecting to see it’s milky eyes slowly peer round the side of the tree followed by that big crooked smile at any second, or a long hooked finger to slide out of the darkness and rest itself on my shoulder. Nothing happened though, and nothing continued to happen for the next couple of minutes. Gathering my courage I hesitantly glanced round the trunk only to see the clearing was empty. I double, triple and quadruple checked the area making deadly sure it was gone and then I stepped out back to the clearing edge, making sure to keep low to the ground. To step out in to the clearing was out of the question, suicidal. What if it was only hiding at the clearing edge itself, or waiting in the rocky fissure at the centre. It would defy all logic, rebel against every survival instinct – and yet I had to know. I had come here looking for Jess, if I turned back now with out checking to see if it was her, crumpled and contorted at the bottom of those rocks then I may never know. The sheriff was right; the not knowing was the worst part. Before I stepped out I pulled the magnum from out of my waistband and cocked the hammer back, being careful to mute the click by smothering it between my legs. When it was loaded and ready to fire, I began to slowly inch my way out of the safety of the tree line and in to the open. I took a few steps and stopped, waiting to see if anything came crashing towards me. When nothing did I continued my cautious journey to the depression.
When I reached the lip I aimed the gun ahead of me and looked over. It was a couple of feet deep, about ten or so and was a little larger then I had expected. One side of the hole was hollow and extended in to the ground as a sort of cave, large enough to drive a car through. At the mouth of the cave was the body, slumped over a jagged rock. I glanced around again making sure I wasn’t being snuck up on then started to lower myself down. I would just need a quick glance to make sure it wasn’t – or was – Jess and then I’d leave, run back to Fenter. I’d wake my dad and the others, lead them here and we’d kill it, in this cave that was surely it’s dwelling. It could be in there right now, watching me struggle down the smooth rock. But I reasoned that if it was in the cave then there was noting I could do about it. I must be crazy; fear has consumed my brain so completely I must not be able to feel anything anymore I thought. This was proven wrong when I slipped and fell off the side of the rock, landing awkwardly and sending pain shooting through my ankle. I almost cursed aloud but bit down on my lip and shouted silently in my head. Luckily it wasn’t twisted, just achy and I was able to walk on it without a problem, the last thing I needed now was a broken foot. My thoughts were so preoccupied with the sudden pain that I had forgotten I was now right next to the cadaver. My leg bumped against it and I spun round gun at the ready, almost firing it off in to the rocks. I quickly berated myself for being so trigger itchy and then looked down. Relief and repulsion flooded through me. From this close I could see it wasn’t Jess, wasn’t even human, instead I realised it was a large dog, one of the sheriffs hounds that had gone missing earlier. It’s back was snapped in two and folded upon itself and its snout was crumpled back in to its face turning it in to a flat, tooth filled gap. Blood, fur, bone and brain where splattered over it and one eye hung loosely from the socket. The eye was positioned in such a way that it appeared to be staring right at me. I looked away and felt bile rising in my throat. The smell of death and decay was overpowering this close to the cave and I dreaded to think what other corpses were nestled away inside. I was about to begin scrambling back up the edge of the depression when I heard a sob. I spun round and stared in to the darkness of the cave. It sounded faint, as if it had come from quite a way away, echoing through narrow rock passages until eventually finding its way to the surface. It came again, this time it was unmistakable. It was the sound of a child crying. The first thoughts to rush through my head were of joy, she was alive, it must be Jess, hidden away deep in this creatures lair, and as soon as the thought had come I realised, with a fear unlike any I had ever thought possible to feel, that I would have to go in to the cave and get her. I didn’t have a choice, I just couldn’t turn back now, I may as well kill myself with the gun I held in my shaking hand then live with the guilt. I pulled out the flashlight and, readying the gun, switched it on. The beam stung my eyes for few seconds as they adjusted to the sudden light but I could see the cave went on for a few metres before widening in to a kind of large, rocky chamber that had passages of varying sizes detouring off further underground. I entered the mouth of the cave and shone the beam over the walls and floor. The beam danced over bones scattered across the ground. It looked as if every type of animal in the forest had eventually wound up in here, torn apart then stripped of flesh. I covered my mouth and nose with the sleeve of my gun hand and continued to walk. There were four passages and the sobbing appeared to be coming from the one furthest to the left, thankfully it was one of the wider ones and I found I could comfortably walk down and still have enough room to stand up straight. If the creature were to come now from the mouth of the cave I would be trapped. However if it was already in the cave then I was walking straight in to its spindly, disproportionate arms. I swallowed hard and continued to walk, after a couple of meters it turned right sharply and opened up in to a small version of the chamber I had just come from, I was amazed to find it was full of items. Watches, Jewellery, Passports, Letters, Glasses, Clothes, Books, Wallets; it went on, as if a museum to sentimentality and trinkets. I picked one of the passports and opened it up. Paul Ashcroft, born 1972 Herronford, Ohio. Another read Richard Blunt, born 1954 Westville, California. I shone the light over the letters, seeing the addresses were to places all over the country. Then it dawned on me. I finally understood. It all made sense, the reason I had never seen this thing in the woods before was because it had only arrived a short time back. It must of travelled from place to place, from forest to national park to desert to mountain, picking people off, taking their effects then moving on to the next town. It was like a sick scavenger hunt. IT was killing people and then keeping their items as souvenirs. Another sob brought me back to reality and I dropped the passport to the ground. I hurriedly walked to the back of the chamber I now called the museum and found another short passage and then a medium sized cavern, inside was Jess sitting on the floor and crying. She looked up when my light shone over her and covered her eyes.
“Please… P-please let me g-g-g-“ She burst out in to fresh sobs, tears streaming down her pale cheeks.
I stood paralysed for a second. I was so intent on finding her that now I had I didn’t know quite what to do. I decided I had best let her know it was me before deciding on anything. I shone the light upwards illuminating my face. Jess stopped sobbing and stared.
“ Jess I’ve come to rescue you, we don’t have much time. We need to go now before that thing comes back to find me here” I whispered kneeling besides her. She did nothing for a few moments then threw her arms around me, her body shaking.
“I thought I was going to die down here, I thought it was going to eat me, like it did the rest, I just- I don’t- it’s…” she trailed off unable to get her words out through the tears. I squeezed her back for a moment, and then went to lift her. The sound of metal clanging against rock reverberated through the cave. I shone the light down and my heart sunk. She was chained to a heavy metal ring pin that had been nailed deep in to the rocks beside her.
“I couldn’t escape” she sniffed, “I tried to pull it out but, it’s no use”. I stood for a second, defeat washing over me.
“I could go get help come back and-“
“NO” she squeaked, “Please don’t leave me here”. Panic spread across her face and it was all I could do to promise not to leave. I thought for a few moments and then realising my only option I took her chin and looked her in the eye.
“Jess, I have a gun, I’m going to have to shoot the chain to set you free, it’s going to be very loud and the noise will probably attract the thing here”, she said nothing just looked at me, ”as soon as it’s broken we’re going to have to run for the cave entrance and back through the woods”. She looked thoughtful for a moment herself and then took my chin, kissed me and then nodded.
I blushed, sitting below ground in a monsters cave and I was blushing. I almost laughed. I forced the emotion down and just smiled before taking my gun and aiming it at the chain.
“Cover your eye’s, I’ll do it on three okay? One, tw-“, a guttural moan sounded from the mouth of the cave and carried its way to us. I saw the colour drain from Jess’ face and I knew mine was doing the same. It was back. Without thinking I pulled the trigger. The gun cracked, deafening in such a small space and the chain shattered, I grabbed Jess before she could react and pulled her up, sprinting towards the museum. As we entered in to it I dived behind a table full of brick-a-brack pulling her down with me. No sooner had we landed on the floor I saw the creature enter in to the room and scramble over to the passage we had just exited from. As soon as it was gone from sight I pulled her back up and pushed her towards the passage that led to the cave mouth. She didn’t need to be told twice and we ran as fast as our legs could carry us. As the cave mouth came in to view a scream, full of horror and anger, rang from behind us as IT discovered its meal had been stolen. As we got to the cave mouth I could hear wood splintering and the tinkle of a dozens of tiny objects hitting stone as it tore through the museum after us. I grabbed Jess’s foot and hoisted her up till she grabbed the lip of the depression and pulled herself in to the clearing. I spun around and saw IT exit the passage in to the main chamber. Its hood had fallen down and exposed what can only be described as a half insect, half human face. I fired a shot off in it’s direction and it screeched in agony as the .44 bullet connected with it’s thigh, knocking it back for a second. I took the distraction and spun around, leaping for the edge of the depression and grabbing a hold. Jess seized me by the collar and helped pull me up just as I felt hooked fingers brush the bottom of my shoe. We started to run across the clearing. The sun was coming up now and the sky was a pinky-red, casting a slight glow on everything. We ran and ran and ran and ran. The whole while I could hear it crashing through the trees after us. If I hadn’t of hit it in the thigh I don’t think we would have stood a chance out running it, but somewhere, some God was watching over us.
It was about forty-five minutes before we reached the creek and by the time we saw the edge of the woods an hour had passed. I still to this day do not know how we managed to run so fast and far without stopping, but I do remember the adrenaline coursing through me so violently that I shook for hours afterwards. When we reached Fenter I fired the gun off in to the air. Within two minutes dumbstruck towns people surrounded us, some asking what had happened, others grabbing and hugging Jess and most just staring blankly. When Jess’ father arrived he broke down and cried holding his girl to his chest and thanking God, and me, equally for his daughters safe return. When my father arrived he took the gun from me, put his hand on my shoulder and gave me a look. It was a look that said he didn’t care what happened just that he was glad I was safe. Regardless we had to explain to the sheriff what had happened. After we both explained our stories, a group was organised and armed and I was asked to lead my dad, the sheriff and twenty or so other men to the cave. I was tired and reluctant to go back but next to my dad I felt safe. After a couple of hours we came across the clearing and found the cave system just as we had described. The museum was empty. The shattered chain was found at the back untouched and a brief examination of the other caves revealed them to contain skeletons of other people later identified as other missing persons from the towns that backed off of Fenter woods. A medical check showed they had been dead for days. The woods were searched all day but nothing was turned up. That Night as I looked out my window before going to sleep I saw it again, standing at the edge of the woods. It looked at me through my window for a while and I stared back, like when we had first encountered one another and then it turned and walked back in to the woods. I knew this would be the last time I saw it, it was moving on to another place, away from Fenter, from this area. The woods were searched for another week but nothing was found. The official report stated people had been kidnapped and killed by a maniac who had escaped in to the wilderness before he could be apprehended although the people of Fenter never questioned our versions of the story.
So that is my account. This all happened twelve years ago now and IT is but a distant memory. Jess has just finished university and is going on to become a lawyer for animal rights and I am working on the family farm after dropping out of college. I tell you this story not to entertain you but as a warning, next time you decide to go hiking in the mountains or camping in the woods. IT is still out there and next time, it might be your town IT decides to visit. Be safe.
Credit To – Mr.Twelve
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The west side bank has three exits, thirty windows and nineteen air vents. And when I arrived at the scene, there were thirteen people being held captive by a man with a vendetta.
“How bad are things?” I asked the officer in charge. So far no one had been hurt. But I knew that would change quickly if I didn’t start talking to the terrorist.
The task force is small. Stuff like this doesn’t happen every day to them. I can tell they are scared.
I sat down. Placed the headpiece on and turned on the mic to chat with a psychopath.
“To whom am I speaking?” My voice was calm and firm. I wanted to show that I was ready to talk as long as necessary.
The line was quiet for a moment and then a voice repeated my question word for word.
“To… whom… am I… speaking?”
It was a man’s voice. He sounded older. There was a nervous and emotional edge to the way he spoke. He was unsure about how this was going to play out.
“Special Agent Dennis Lassiter,” I replied back.
Another pause.
“Have you done this for long, Special Agent Dennis Lassiter?” he quipped. There was a bit more confidence in his voice this time.
“Seven years. How about you?” I wanted to show this son of a bitch I was ready to tangle.
“No. Never. But there’s a first time for everything isn’t there?”
“There doesn’t have to be. After all, we’re talking right now just fine. So I think we can come to some sort of agreement,” I told him. This was basic procedure. Actively listen. Find out what the kidnapper wanted.
There was a longer pause.
“You married, Dennis?”
That took me by surprise.
I hadn’t heard from Kristin in a while. Things had become strained.
“Divorced. You?” I kept my voice steady. I wanted him to get comfortable with me.
“Same. Wasn’t my choice really. Job never can make ends meet.”
Now we were getting somewhere.
“That sounds difficult. Stressful. I can imagine it would only make sense for you to do what you are doing.”
I needed to build rapport. Get him to trust me.
“Everything fell into place when Michael died,” he explained. From the way his voice cracked I could tell that had to be his son.
“How old was he?”
“Five. It was a car accident that took him from me. After that.. life just had no meaning anymore. I’ve… I’ve always wanted a son.”
He was in pain, and I understood it. “It sounds like you’ve been planning this for quite a while now.”
“Four years. But it was mostly a waiting game. Because I remembered every single detail. Just had to make it count, make it work.” Now he was rambling. I tried to steer him back on course.
“We can make things go your way. Everyone can walk away from this alive.”
“If I play my cards right, yeah. I know how this works.”
I relaxed a little. He was calming down.
“I know that you think this will somehow balance out all the pain that you have had to go through in your life, but it won’t. It won’t bring Michael back.”
Another very long pause. He was thinking over what to do.
“What if I told you it could?”
This time it was my turn to hesitate. I didn’t know how to respond to that.
“If it could bring back someone I love, do you think it would be worth it?”
I swallowed. His speech had conviction. He believed what he was saying could be true.
“Yeah. Sure. Of course. It would be a miracle.”
“A once in a lifetime shot to change things. Anyone would take that risk, right?”
Now his voice was shaky again. He needed to convince me.
“There must be another way,” I told him softly.
“None that I can see. Trust me, I’ve tried. I’ve thought long and hard about this moment for years, Dennis. To think of a way out. There isn’t.”
“But you have to succeed. So tell me what you need. We can make it happen.” He was slipping. Pulling away. Losing that connection. I needed to reinforce that I was his only shot.
“It isn’t about me. It’s about you, Dennis. And what you need.”
That struck me as an odd thing to say. But I tried to stay in tune with what he was getting at.
“Okay, sure. I can do whatever you need. Just say the word.”
“It’s a bit long. Do you have a pen and paper?”
“I can remember.”
“You’re going to want to write this down, Dennis.”
I shuffled and found one.
“All right. I’m ready.”
“Tomorrow morning you’re going to go down to the coffee shop like you always do. You’re going to order your favorite brand of mocha and talk about the weather to the cute barista. Her name is Lucy. You have made small talk before. She’s going to ask you if you have the time. You have to tell her no, Dennis. You have to get up, walk away and leave immediately.”
I felt a nervous sense of unease in the back of my head. How did he know so much about my daily routine?
“Okay… that’s an oddly specific request.”
“You mustn’t talk to her, Dennis. You must leave immediately and cross the street to buy a lotto ticket. 6 5 42 15 23. Repeat that to me.”
I did, even if I didn’t understand why I was doing so.
“Dennis… one other thing.”
I was hanging on his words, trying to figure this man out. Everything about the conversation had changed in less than a few seconds.
“Tell Kristin you love her.”
My mouth went dry. I heard the discharge of a gun. The SWAT team immediately moved in.
I stood up, my palms sweaty. I raced to the front entrance of the bank. The hostages were running out, shrieking and crying as they embraced family. Media swarmed to try and get a glimpse of the killer. But the bullet had been precise. He had blown his face completely off.
I stood there looking over his bloody body, confused and frightened by his words. I looked down at his index finger, saw a familiar scarring on it, and felt a shiver run down my spine. I had a scar there as well. From my second tour in Afghanistan. And a tattoo right next to it of the day it happened. They were the same.
I left the scene immediately, nerves shot and confused. This had to be an elaborate hoax.
But still the next morning I did exactly as instructed. To the letter. Even that damned lotto number. A few moments later the cashier congratulated me. I had won the scratch-off.
“What are the odds?” the cashier said excitedly. Astronomical, I realized. A once in a lifetime miracle. As I stood there and gazed at the ticket, something flashed before my eyes.
Another life. A life I didn’t live. I saw myself talking more to the barista. Dating her. Telling her I wanted to marry her. The life was good. We had a son. We were happy. Then it was dashed to pieces. I saw the crash that took his life. The glass impaled his young body against the side as the vehicle was crushed. I saw my wife spiral into depression and then take her own life. Slicing her wrists in the bathroom and waiting for me to find her cold and alone.
I saw the impossible abyss about to swallow me whole. Take me under until it never stopped strangling every last ounce of hope from my body.
And then the moment was gone. I was back in the cashier’s stand and staring at the ticket again.
I took out my phone and called the officer in charge. “Hey, Chief, sorry to bother you. But did you get an ID back on that body?”
“Body? What are you talking about?”
“The heist. What happened to the kidnapper?”
“…I… am not sure what you are talking about. What heist?”
My mouth went dry. I felt my phone vibrate. Another call was coming in.
“Lassiter… is everything okay?”
I checked the caller ID. It was Kristin.
Tears welled up in my eyes.
“Yes… yes, Everything is fine.”
|
Part I
The story I am about to tell you is rather confidential. Amongst the Mire, we are known as Regiment 9. Throughout Regiment 9, we are known as the ‘BlackGuards’, But in the small circle of men and women who actually make up the organization, we call ourselves ‘the exterminators’. Led by the infamous Commander, Cyrus Fiendel, we were essentially tasked with getting rid of all the pests that Emperor Dravis didn’t want to deal with.
Throughout all of training, I was told it was a most important task, keeping these beasts and terrible creatures contained to Ares and not to touch the enigmatic and far away planet known as ‘Earth’. This account will detail my experiences in this organization and how I eventually came to be the man you know me as today.
It was but two short months after I had joined the Guard and situated in the capital of Nation 9, it was a rather high class of living compared to the peasants below that Emperor Dravis had played a role in creating. Not to speak of politics, because I tend to ramble, but our new Emperor was hardly an apt ruler by most standards. Many were dissatisfied with the state the Mire, our continent, was in, and I have the distinct feeling Cyrus was one of them, as the first words he spoke to us that day were…
“Gentlemen and women, the Emperor once again requires us to take out his trash.”
We all stood in an orderly line within the hotel lobby, which had been cleared of all other people not too long ago. Our obsidian uniforms must have looked quite intimidating, covering our bodies from head to toe and being lined with all manner of different pockets, many of which contained a vast assortment of weaponry. These uniforms were fashioned primarily from hardened leather, strong enough to block shrapnel and perhaps a glancing blow from a blade while still allowing us the mobility that was so desperately needed when fighting monsters. A little uncomfortable to be worn at first, but you grew used to them with time.
Cyrus wore much different attire. He had a particular fondness for dark clothing, bearing an aged looking inky black cloak with odd brownish stripes up and down the torn up thing. Many of us theorized they were from the blood of his enemies, victory marks if you will. Indeed, it sounded a most sound assumption based on his reputation and appearance.
Our commander was immortal, you see. Not unkillable, no, but if he was let be for long enough, age could never claim him. For years and years, he had the same dark red eyes and needly black hair that covered his head. The eyes tended to bore into you even with a passing glance and there was most definitely a difference between standard red pupils and those Cyrus had, but none of us could really explain it. Besides this, the man had a flair for the formal. Black dress pants, black dress shoes, and pale white skin to conflict it all. Quite an eccentric looking person and to top it all off he was just shy of six-foot-one, perhaps twenty-five years of age being visible on him.
His tone was a harsh and authoritative one, fitting for someone in his position. None of us dared to disobey him or get on his notorious bad side.
“Right here in our capital lurks what is known as a ‘shapeshifter.’ We assume that it intends to reach the Scrye and your duty and mine is to find and stop it before it escapes the Ferego hotel.”
The Scrye, if you were unaware, was the entrance to Earth. An odd rift in time and space that had created a link between our worlds. There were many Scrye on Ares, and perhaps more on Earth, but cities tended to be built around them in order to make the implementation of Earthly technology a smoother process.
“Your mission will be to observe the scene and track down the creature. I advise you all keep on your toes, as intel suggests it is very capable of taking different forms,” he continued, pacing up and down the polished marble below. “I will also warn you that the scene in question is quite disturbing, but I trust you are prepared to see such a thing. With that in mind, you are now free to operate within proper protocol limits. If you wish to speak with me, I will be having a chat with the owner of the Ferego. Dismissed.”
We all raised an obedient salute and scattered after this. My hand immediately fell to my flintlock to calm my nerves. Not just an ordinary Anti-Cambria flintlock, but an exquisite work of Imperial craftsmanship. It was furnished a dull grey from polished Golenwood, and bore golden steel at the muzzle, trigger and hammer areas. The weapon fired silver ammunition, as opposed to the standard ice, fire, acid and regular shot of Regimental flintlocks. Quite effective against monsters. We were also issued brilliant sabres which bore a thin coating of silver above the steel. The handle of mine had a spiraling golden grip and rounded handguard. Both of these weapons were designed more to fell creatures as opposed to a fellow man, but we were also issued a selection of grenades and knives just in case we ran into some pesky humans on the way.
In our missions, we most often utilized our knowledge of the Cambrian language to win the day. Enlisting in the BlackGuard meant going through extensive courses to learn the essential words, but they ended up being about as helpful as advertised. A burst of speed, a blast of fire, or a protective barrier were often far more useful than the pistol or sabre. But even with all this in our arsenal, what we faced that night was far more terrifying and dangerous than we could ever have imagined. While most monsters were primal and animalistic, shapeshifters were one of the most intelligent… And deadly.
People soon began making their way out the automatic doors at the entrance. This also included me, of course, reassured by the flintlock my left hand grasped. It was quite muggy that evening. Nation 9 is a semi-tropical one, you see, and this kind of weather I had come to expect from the outdoors. Palmettos and palm trees had been planted outside to provide a greater sense of that slight tropical atmosphere to those who vacationed here in their spare time, coming from rich brown soil. I always thought that many places on Earth looked quite the same, but we have our differences, of course.
I had gotten to know a few people on the BlackGuard well, and one of these included a rather chubby fellow with a bald head named ‘Sledge’. Or at least nicknamed that, since nobody actually knew his real name. Sledge was a blunt person in a conversation, but had a sort of charisma about him that made his rashness bearable. I had originally met the man during training, and we became fast friends after, me and him, and I soon discerned that he was from a family of bakers in the countryside who had sent him to the BlackGuard in order to rake in the extra money needed to survive out there.
He never really complained about it, and from what I saw he enjoyed killing monsters. It may sound quite sadistic, but I assure you that there is a sort of primitive joy to destroying the things you had nightmares of. The BlackGuard tended to thrive on this joy as a means of moral and it worked, for the most part. Sledge began walking in sync with me on the pavement, keeping his face in front of him as he spoke.
“I’d say it’s best to stay together,” he said in his deep voice. “Shapeshifters are not to be trifled with one by one.”
I nodded in agreement, eyes gazing past the small street and taking in a most marvelous looking establishment.
A warm glow came from within the multitude of windows and the building itself had been made from a mixture of golden decorations and marble. A lavish hotel, especially compared to the one we had stayed in. The Regimental army lurked on the outside, having set up a sort of blockade around all corners of the building. They held muskets, flintlocks, and sabres and seemed to be on edge for whatever reason. I suppose their bright blue uniforms would make them easier targets to prey upon, though. Cyrus seemed to be lingering back for now, but he was known to get wherever he wanted to quite quickly, so I did not fret.
“It’s a real mess in there, folks,” a man in a black cap told us, scratching behind his neck uncomfortably. He was the unit leader, so both me and Sledge thought it appropriate to begin our investigation with him.
“Who was the one who was murdered?” I asked, trying to sound as official as possible.
“A politician named Lauren Welsche. She had been traveling about the Nation for some time now, campaigning for a tax reduction for the lower class.”
I had pulled out a small notebook and clicked my pen open. Once the information had been recorded, I moved on.
“Cause of death?”
“Probably either from being torn apart or impalement through the left eye. Take your pick.”
A little fear arose in me as I jotted this down. I thanked the man and walked past the barricade of soldiers who were present, along with Sledge, who had remained silent during the previous conversation.
From my previous briefing, I knew that everyone staying in the inn was forced to stay there for the investigation. A smart move in most cases, but with a shapeshifter on the loose? A little dangerous. I drew my sword with a metallic ring, and kept it at my side close at hand, just in case. The doors were rotating ones this time and not like the electric ones in the other hotel. They were coated in golden metal that I’m quite certain was not actual gold and had a window-like portion on them as well. As the two of us passed through them, we both stopped to take in the beauty of the lobby before us. The carpet was a crimson red, and the walls made from the finest lavender materials I had seen in a long time. A miniature waterfall was mounted a little further in, and poured an endless supply of the liquid while being attached to what I now refer to as the ‘east wall’. There was plenty of black leather furniture, such as couches and seats that sat towards the west hall, opposite a small fireplace.
Directly in front of us was the booking section, complete with a dark marble bar table and wooden key slots. A paranoid-looking man with sweat running down his face stood behind this, and seemed to be infinitely more comfortable when he saw us walking towards him. Other members of the Guard were also questioning people outside or spreading out through the lobby, but Sledge and I were the first ones to reach the man at the counter.
“Thank the Lord and Lady!” he exclaimed in what a resident of Earth may call a ‘French’ accent.
“You’re safe now, my good man. I will need you to answer a few questions, however,” I responded casually, to be met by vigorous nods.
“Yes, sir. Whatever it is you want to ask me?”
“First off, where did the killing take place?”
“Room 135,” he responded in a suddenly subdued manner, “I saw the thing…”
“What did it look like?”
The worker looked from left to right quickly, as if he was afraid of being watched, but soon spoke.
“It is a horrible creature… White skin. Very white. But paler than normal white. Its eyes were massive and completely black.”
“Anything else?”
He nodded again.
“More than six feet tall. Thin. It had a backbone that acted as a tail, and three taloned claws. The teeth were needles, sirs, but drenched in blood. You must kill it!”
He plead desperately. Sledge and I looked at each other briefly, and I’m quite sure we both had the same look of slight worry on our faces. Regardless, we had both fought other creatures and for all we knew, this one was just another target.
“Trust me,” Sledge started. “We’ll kill it dead.”
The trip to room 135 was an uneventful one. The hallways had the same red velvet carpet and lavender walls, with lamps lighting the way through them. Oddly enough, the air had quite a musty smell to it that made me cringe in displeasure.
“How could such a well kept place smell so vile?” I thought out loud.
“I’d say because someone was murdered, but yeah. It has a pretty ‘oldish’ scent to it,” Sledge agreed in a monotone. Thankfully, the death had occurred upon the first floor, so we were able to steer clear of the elevator. When dealing with a shapeshifter, they would probably be quite dangerous locations.
The room was appropriately marked by a dark red splatter of crimson that had bled into the similar colored carpet. No pun intended there. A mahogany door was ajar, and the trail of blood led into the room in question. The two of us only hesitated long enough to ready our weapons, and entered the room using our training methods.
One of us stayed towards the back with a drawn flintlock, while the other either bashed down the door or simply entered, a sabre in hand. This all was done smoothly, and with two people was easy to execute. The blood continued for some distance, and led to the sprawled out corpse of a middle-aged woman. A look of terror was across her face and blood took up a good portion of it now… leaking from her left eye. The room around her looked pretty standard and as lavish as one could imagine a lavish room to appear. Blood had been thrown everywhere, so clearly this beast didn’t mind making messy kills.
“Multiple chest punctures. She probably was still alive when the eye was hit, though.”
Sledge said, coming from behind me and stooping over the lifeless body. I quickly prepared my Cambrian knowledge and uttered a spell to aid the investigation.
“Spei-Luk.”
Those two words were strong enough a combination to get the job done. ‘Spei’ meaning ‘see’ and ‘Luk’ meaning ‘all’. I put my palm out before me, and a yellow tinted dusty wave fell across the body like fog from a fog machine rolling over terrain. As the dust cleared, a few choice bits glowed a bright red. I felt a little chill as some of my life energy left me in exchange for the spell, but two words was a trifling matter.
The first thing I noticed was a silver locket that was being clutched in the woman’s right hand. I removed it and opened it up, knowing fingerprints of a shapeshifter were hardly useful.
“Seems like she was a married woman,” I said with a frown upon my face, “why would a shapeshifter be after her?”
“Its goal is to reach the Scrye,” replied Sledge. “At least that was what we were told. This woman must have been preventing it from getting there.”
The picture of her husband was a little blurry, and in black and white. I put the locket in my pocket and moved to the next glowing object, which was a piece of paper a few feet away. I began reading it and quickly found the ink was faded and paper even more so. Astonishingly, it appeared about a hundred years old.
“By sight the curse is given. By blindness removed.”
Cryptic to say the least and neither Sledge nor I knew quite what to think of it.
“Keep searching for clues, I’ll take these two to the investigator in the meantime and see if we can get some more info,” he said.
“That would be a most terrible idea,” I started, shaking my head. “We need to be together at all times when dealing with something like this.”
“Before I enter, the first thing I’ll say will be ‘Mayflower.’ That way you’ll know it’s me.”
Looking back, I should have stopped him. But at the time, I felt that his plan was simple and effective. There are things you just can’t account for, I suppose. I handed over the two artifacts and resumed my search. My eyes fell upon a purse, also glowing red and upon opening it up I found there was only one item inside: a flintlock pistol of poor design, with wood that was rough to the touch and partially rusted metal components. I turned the weapon over in my hands and looked through the purse again only to find nothing. Was the gun loaded? I pulled back the metal slider on the side and found an odd bullet lodged within the chamber. Most flintlock bullets were color-coded, red being incendiary, whitish blue being ice, green being acid, and black a regular bullet. This one was a transparent yellow color in everywhere but the rear, which was still yellow but not see-through. Upon closer inspection, an orange tinted liquid bubbled within the upper end incessantly. What could that possibly be?
Needless to say, I also pocketed this and just as I was about to do likewise with the pistol I heard the familiar voice of Sledge just outside.
“Mayflower.”
I opened the door, half expecting to see some kind of beast, but to my relief, all I saw was the face of my comrade. “Find anything else?”
“Yes. This sorry pistol and a-”
“Say no more, I’ll take this back to the investigator and you can tell me the rest when I get back.”
He snatched the weapon from my hands quite quickly and I couldn’t help but think it rude that he would do such a thing. I made my displeasure known with a sour face, but Sledge tended to do these kinds of things regularly so it was hardly an unnatural occurrence.
As Sledge left, the door slammed shut behind him rather violently. Was he angry at me or something? I sure hoped not and tried thinking of what I could have possibly done in order to upset him like this. But no sooner had these thoughts entered my head, when I heard his voice once again just thirty seconds later.
“Mayflower.”
I opened the door and allowed him in again. Sledge sighed, leaning against the wall beside the door frame.
“They’re analyzing the locket and note. It’ll be about half an hour. People are splitting into groups now, and we’re in charge of collecting clues, I guess.”
He didn’t sound put off at all and I raised a suspicious eyebrow.
“You forgot to take this bullet with you,” I said, holding it out to him between my thumb and pointer finger.
“Where did you find that?”
My look of bewilderment only increased.
“The gun.”
“What gun?”
A chill ran down my spine.
Needless to say, we both were quite rattled by what had happened. My blood ran cold and I fished for any excuse possible to get out of the room.
“Let’s uh… Let us talk to the man in the lobby again.”
Sledge readily agreed, and we departed within the minute. We both had weapons drawn as we made our way through the hallway and only relaxed when we re-entered it and found Cyrus speaking with a thin man in a suit and tie towards the center area. We were unsure of whether or not to interrupt their conversation, but eventually decided to do so upon finding an opportunity.
“And they expect me to give them money for a murder?! It is preposterous!” the hotel manager said, his voice tinged with annoyance.
“Shouldn’t be necessary. If our investigation doesn’t turn anything else up, no payment will be required,” Cyrus replied formally. I chose the brief pause after this to speak.
“We have investigated the murder, sir.”
The commander turned his whole body to look at us, face looking quite unamused.
“And?”
Those two ruby orbs were like lasers. I quickly evaded making eye contact and replied, “Well… I believe we found the shapeshifter, sir.”
“And?”
“He took something. A flintlock, sir.”
“How?”
“Well, Sledge here was bringing some evidence in, and…”
“Very well. Resume your investigation, Mr. Cedric,” he interrupted, face briefly lightening up and turning back to the manager to resume his talk. Both Sledge and I slowly turned to look at each other and we both must have appeared terrified to be going back in so soon.
Cyrus clearly knew what was going on and since this was a training mission, he wouldn’t provide assistance unless absolutely necessary… Even if it meant our lives. A few other members of the Guard were skulking about the lobby and I began wondering if I should just try and do as they were without attempting to find the shapeshifter that had so recently paid me a visit.
“So what now?” asked Sledge, face returning to its normally firm and tough looking one. I rightly didn’t know, but decided to talk with the worker from before would be a decent idea.
I stated my plan to my companion, and we were off. But when we approached the counter, we found nobody there. Leaving where you were told to be during a BlackGuard investigation is a most terrible offense, and it also raised the question of how the good commander had not noticed his departure.
“Our options appear to be quite limited,” I began with concern probably written upon my countenance. “From now on we mustn’t leave each other.”
Perhaps I was stating the obvious, but I didn’t want to risk having another encounter with the creature again while it posed as my friend. That was for certain. At least we knew the general area the thing was in, and that was close by.
“How about we search for that guy? I think he knows more than he told us,” Sledge suggested with a shrug. Not having any other ideas in mind, I obliged and soon we were skulking through the hallways once again. I found it a little odd that out of the twenty Guardsmen who had been on this mission, I hadn’t been seeing too many of them around, but I assumed that was because they were searching through other floors. In about a half hour I was also thinking of seeing the results of the testing on the items I had found previously, hoping they would give us some more valuable hints later down the road.
As Sledge and I approached a staircase that led to the second floor, both of us stopped upon hearing an odd noise… A hollow noise that seemed to be coming from the very walls themselves. It was a rough scratching sound that paused every couple of seconds and then resumed in an almost methodical way. It only took place for about twenty seconds before ceasing permanently.
“What the devil…?”
I muttered. The two of us quickly turned our attention to this new development and began looking into finding a way to where the sound was coming from. From what I gathered, it was a little way into the wall and perhaps occurring from below… The basement. That was it.
Our short trip took us down a hallway opposite the staircase and soon we came upon a thin wooden door with a plaque reading ‘basement’ next to it. The door was locked, but I soon fixed this with a quick uttering.
“Linkil-Brik.”
I said, hand upon the doorknob. There was a click and the knob turned without protest afterwards. Out of the two of us, Sledge was stronger in a physical sense, but I was more able to use Cambria. Another chill ran down me upon the use of the spell, but I ignored it and began walking down a flight of stairs. Our weapons were drawn similarly to how they were before as we descended into a murky abyss and I couldn’t spy a light nearby. This forced me to utter yet another two words.
“Illi-Obsid.”
There was a brief flash, and the room was lit as it would be if proper lights had been installed apart from the solitary bulb that hung towards the center. I stumbled a little, the chill growing greater. My palms were beginning to get that feeling one experiences when awaking after sleeping on their arm.
“You okay?”
“Yeah.”
I answered, adjusting myself and hoping I wouldn’t have to utilize any more Words tonight.
Our surroundings were all comprised of thick concrete. They were a dull grey, including the debris-laden ground beneath me. It was far colder down here as well and I’m quite sure it wasn’t because I had used three spells tonight. To our surprise, we weren’t alone here either.
“Hello!” the voice of an old woman rang out. Sledge and I traced the source to a figure standing stiffly just below the light bulb at the room’s center.
“Hello. We are looking for the source of a scratching noise, madam,” I replied before Sledge had his opportunity to make an insult in the form of a question. She looked us over, an unsettling grin on her wrinkly, warty face.
“Scratching? Back room. Is in back room hehe.”
Her hand pointed to her right and another door located there. We were both quite suspicious of this seemingly random old lady as we approached the door she told us of.
“Maintenance room. No touch.”
We nodded, keeping our eyes on her as Sledge opened the door. The old woman grunted and walked towards one on the opposite wall as if nothing happened.
The first thing I remember from entering this room was the unholy smell. It was vile, rank and frankly disgusting. In fact, it had a similar odor to the musty smell from before. Except stronger…
“Holy shit…”
Mused Sledge, staring at something on the floor with wide eyes. I hesitated to gaze at whatever it was, but curiosity got the better of me. My eyes also widened as the corpse of the accented man from before appeared on the ground. A similar look of surprise was on his face, left eye once again being punctured and bearing nearly identical wounds when compared to the previous victim. So that explained where he had gone off to, at least, but the small amount of fear inside me was beginning to build upon itself.
The kill looked fresh, probably occurring just ten minutes prior to our arrival and it was likely that the scratching noise was his body being dragged there by someone… Or something. I was about to begin searching the room for further clues, when a deafening crack sounded from above. It was followed by muffled screams and the shuffling of feet.
More shots rang out and before I knew it, Sledge and I were sprinting towards the staircase and past the oblivious old woman who was still fumbling at the door. We both flew out the door and down the hallway, turning left to find a most terrible sight before us. Bodies had been thrown across the ground haphazardly. All impaled in the chest multiple times and all bearing a puncture through their left eyes. Blood stained the floor and walls and it appeared nobody was alive within the area. We both cringed upon looking at the scene, quickly coming to the conclusion that a patrol had encountered the beast… And ended up being dispatched. Their flintlocks were either scattered around or still in their crimson stained hands. More fear on their faces.
But I suppose the most frightening detail there was amongst this carnage was the fact both of our names had been scrawled messily upon the floor in a dark red.
Both Sledge and I knew that we had a lot to deduce if we were to make it through this alive.
First, and perhaps most obvious, was that we had to watch our backs to stop from being ambushed by this creature… Which was probably keeping us alive either for its amusement or some other reason that I couldn’t quite put a finger on. A few other members of the Guard arrived about a minute later and looked upon the scene with the same fear we had upon our faces when we discovered it. Cyrus was called in and he showed no signs of realizing that three people had just been brutally killed, walking past them and standing before me with crossed arms.
“Your names are on the ground,” he stated plainly. Everyone around us was watching in anticipation of what would happen next. I nodded at the commander.
“We don’t know why, sir. We were in the basement when we heard this terrible ruckus, and ran upstairs to investigate.”
“Yes, and I was in the lobby having a lovely conversation about fine wine when I heard the terrible ruckus. I want to know why you think your names are on the ground right now in blood.”
“Like I said, sir,” I started with a lost shake of my head, “we do not know.”
Cyrus scoffed and turned around, hands upon his hips and face awash with frustration.
“Someone get the bodies outside, we’ll have to make the arrangements concerning the burial after this mission concludes. And you two wait for the evidence you found to be analyzed outside. Hopefully this thing will stop killing my men if you aren’t near it.”
A bit too much to expect, but we didn’t complain. As we walked back towards the lobby, faces presumably both ghostly white, I pondered that this shapeshifter was moving and attacking with frightening speed, as if it had something planned out ahead of time. Adding to our apprehension was the fact it could take the form of anyone and impersonate them with ease. That woman in the basement was suspicious, but must not have been the monster if she was trying to open a door as we went to investigate. We could never know for sure where it was.
Outside, more and more soldiers were beginning to show up. It was as if an army was inside that building we had just been in. The man with the black cap from before was the one Sledge had gone too, according to what he told me on the way out and we approached him without hesitation.
“Have you found out anything else about the items?” Sledge asked.
“As a matter of fact, yes. There was a note inside the locket and that old piece of paper actually originated from Nation 4.”
I asked to see the note they had found, and was led to a small plastic table that a young looking woman sat behind, staring through a microscope and observing the ancient paper with the cryptic message. Beside the scope was a thin bit of parchment near the locket and I promptly picked it up. The writing was messy, but I was able to tell what the words said.
“Bullet to break the curse. If I fail, shoot it with a bullet. It watches from the dark. Good luck.”
With this new information, I removed the yellow projectile from my pocket and looked it over again. I knew what had to be done and took out my flintlock.
“What are you doing?!” asked Sledge. I could tell he knew what I was doing, but was just surprised that I was willing to believe what was on the note.
“Getting ready to close this case, good sir.”
It had been afraid of the bullet it had forgotten to take with the gun. This was why it had not killed us. Why it had not killed me in the room of the crime scene was still unknown to me, but I now knew that I had a huge advantage. My hand removed the whitish blue ice bullet from the chamber and replaced it with the yellow one, closing the hatch and cocking the hammer. “Let’s go, before someone else dies.”
We walked into that hotel again feeling much more confident and I had to refrain from leaking a smile as my boots took root on the scarlet carpet below the revolving doors again. I had deduced something else from the note we had found and I think it answered the question regarding how it could get around so fast. It was the vents. The scratching noise we had heard from within the walls was from the vents and not the basement all along. It lurked in the shadows, watching and waiting for an opportunity to strike. Just thinking about it made me feel uncomfortable, as it was probably watching our every move from within the vents ever since we had arrived.
The manager was standing towards the center of the room, back to us. We approached him and spoke out without any delay.
“Hello, sir.”
He jerked, and turned to face us with a sour expression.
“What do you want?”
“I would greatly appreciate it if you could turn up the heat in the ventilation system… By a lot.”
We quickly explained our reasons and watched as he moved to a panel on the western lobby wall. He quickly input a combination and tapped a small screen a few times and soon the whole building rumbled for a moment as the heating systems came to life. My nerves returned to me upon realizing that the shapeshifter would be forced to leave its home and wander the hallways in just minutes. When that happened one of two things would take place.
Either it took on the form of someone else and kept to the shadows, or it went in guns blazing… at us.
We spent the time making sure all are weapons and gear were ready, and I removed a test tube filled with blue liquid from a coat pocket and downed it. The substance tasted foul, but I felt an invigorating surge of strength just a minute later. This state-of-the-art liquid could restore one’s Cambria in seconds and I wanted to be ready if push came to shove, which I knew it would.
The manager began walking towards the doorway after a while, stating that he wasn’t about to die in his own establishment. I couldn’t blame him for doing so and I just hoped my plan would be enough to kill the monster.
The five minutes after that were excruciatingly long, but soon there was an unearthly roar from the distance and a fearsome thumping taking place from inside the walls. We readied our weapons, but that was when the worst possible thing happened.
Every light in the entire building went out, and we became engulfed in pitch black.
Cyrus would probably be quite angry at us for causing this to happen so suddenly, but it was a gambit we were willing to take to make sure this nightmare was ended before it began. Little did we know, we were in the epicenter of it already.
There was a faint shuffling in the west hall and I knew it would be best to start our hunt there.
“Lumi.”
An orb of orange light shone above our heads when I cast the spell. It may have made us a more noticeable target, but we would need visibility to be good if we were to stand a chance of killing the creature. We pressed on, beginning to sweat both from nerves and the heat beginning to spill into the area from the ventilation. My eyes darted all aroun |
Subsets and Splits
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