I met Will when we were both sophomores in college. We went from being
fast friends to best friends to dating over the next year, and by the
time we graduated, we had already decided we were getting married and moving to
the Midwest. And for a few years we were so happy. Not that
we ever struggled, but when I got terribly sick for a few weeks,
he took care of me. When he lost his job, I kept his
spirits up until he found a new one. Overall, it felt like we
were incredibly lucky, and I was going through life with a person I knew
and loved the most in the world. It was three years ago when things
started to change. I blame some of it on the miscarriage. We decided
it was time to try for kids, and we were both excited when I
got pregnant, But just a couple of months later, I was getting sick
again. Like before, the doctors had never pinned down the exact cause of
my illness, and while this time it lasted less than a week, he
was During that time I lost the baby. We were both hurt by it,
but I think Will took it harder. He seemed haunted after that more
anxious and prone to strange compulsions, like throwing out perfectly good food and drinks
from time to time, and checking my car before I took any long trip.
It was as though he was terrified I was going to get sick again
or somehow have an accident. It was sweet and away, but also bizarre,
and any time I talked about us trying to have a baby again,
he just looked stricken and changed the subject. After some time, I decided
to let it go, thinking that eventually things would get better. Instead,
I found his suicide note. I call it that because even though it is
long and styled like a journal entry, the tone and purpose of it is
pretty clear. It's a confession, or maybe more of a concession, a
surrender to some terrible inevitability that Will seems to think has been crawling toward him
for most of his life, a life that he clearly means to end.
But when I started reading this spiral bound notebook that had fallen out from between
two dusty boxes and I rarely used attic, I didn't realize all of that
yet, because, as with most endings, Will's story began far away.
It read something else sees through my eyes I know how that sounds crazy,
which is why I never told anyone this, not even you writing this now.
Will you ever find it or read it? I don't know. I
may destroy it before I'm even done. Is it worth your understanding a bit
more if you don't believe or you believing me, if it doesn't stop you
from hating me. I don't have answers to any of that, and I've
spent years trying to find a way to understand. I feel like a toad
in a dried up pond, just cooking in the noon sun and not really
understanding why any of it's happening. I know things used to be good,
and I know I'm burning up, trying out, becoming less of myself,
and so so tired of being afraid all the time. But I'm not doing
a good job of explaining this, which is supposed to be the point,
So I'll start over. When I was seven years old, something stung me.
I'd been playing out with friends in the woods near my house when it
happened, and it hurts so bad that it dropped me to my knees.
I never saw what it was or where it went, but by the time
my friends got me back to the house. There was a knot on the
back of my neck the size of an egg. I spent two days in
the hospital, but when I got out I felt better, no side effects,
no scar or ongoing pain, just an EPI pen in case I ever
got stung again, and a strict rule for my parents to never go in
the woods again. In fact, over the next year, I mostly forgot
about the incident until one night I woke up to realize I wasn't in bed.
I was standing by my open bedroom window, looking out into the night,
and I could feel something moving in my head seeing through my eyes.
Like I said before, it's a crazy idea, easy for me to dismiss
as my imagination or me having a nightmare. And it wasn't like I started
having lots of odd behavior or blackouts. I didn't, so far as I
could tell, have any outward signs of anything touching me or invading me at
all, unless you wanted to count that one belt of light sleep walking.
Yet despite that, the feeling that something was there didn't go away. By
the time I was ten, I talked to myself regularly, having become used
to the idea that I treated it like a secret friend, be it God,
a guardian, angel, or a would very that only I could sense.
I need to stress that for the most part, none of this was
scary, even though I knew it was real. It was strangely comforting,
both because it gave me someone to share things with because it made me feel
special, chosen. But it's important that you know that I wasn't afraid of
it, because if I had been, I would never let myself get close
to you, you or our baby. When I met you, well,
I felt like my whole world changed. I think I knew I loved you
from that first night of the party, and that feeling has only gotten stronger
ever since. The idea having a life with you, starting a family,
well, if there's something better than that, I don't know what it would
be. And yes, I thought about telling you about my companion a hundred
times over the years. But even when I knew you wouldn't leave me,
I was afraid you'd think I was crazy, that you'd see me differently somehow,
as lesser than i'd been before, and the idea of that terrified me.
So I kept quiet and just counted my blessings that I had two wonderful
friends in my life. When you got sick the first time, I've never
been so scared. All the tests, the trips to the specialists, and
then having to spend three weeks in the hospital before you got well. I
really thought I might lose you. I didn't understand what was going on at
the time, of course, and so when you come home I was out
of my mind happy. It wasn't until you got sick again, when we
lost the baby, that I realized I was the blame. I woke up
one night. This was after you were already starting to vomit and run a
fever, but before we carried you to the hospital. I woke up one
night to find myself standing in the kitchen next to the open refrigerator. I
was pouring something, a thick, whitish line of slime from my palm into
the mouth of the milk jug. I stopped, panicked and confused, looking
around for some explanation of what I was doing and where the foul smelling stuff
coating my hand had come from. That's when I noticed the bitter taste in
the back of my throat, chest too tight to breathe, I reached into
my mouth to the point of gagging finger, trembling as it touched the small
hard point in the back of my throat. I ran to the sink then,
and vomited out more of the white fluid before making my way to the
bathroom mirror. Something was moving back there in the shadows of my interior.
Shining a light against the mirror, I focused the beam into a small point
of black bone, jotting out of the grayish pink flesh around it like a
tiny fang or small stinger, oozing more of that milky corruption with each twitching
shudder. It was then that I knew I had to die. I didn't
do it right away, of course, even when we lost the baby later
in the week, I made excuses. I was terrified of the consequences of
ending it, and there were days where I'd convinced myself the whole thing was
in my head. I'd feel nothing behind my eyes and see nothing when I
looked inside. I tell myself I was crazy and needed help, or I
was weak and needed to get over my strange nightmares and delusions, anything to
stay alive and be with you, But the signs would always return. I
know it seems strange to you, but I've taken to guarding your food,
putting in a dozen ways for me to check for tampering with something you might
eat or drink when I'm not in control. I know I've kept you from
getting sick at times, but it won't last forever. Whatever this thing is,
I know it's smarter and stronger than me, and more and more I
can tell it's taking control. So I have to stop it by ending me
now before I it's too late. I will go out into the woods tomorrow
and end it before I hurt you worse than I already have. I will
always love you, and if you ever read this, please know that I
never stop trying to find a better way. But it's crawling up the front
of my mind and I can't let it touch you. So good bye.
May fourteenth, twenty twenty three. Will I stuffed the journal under a pillow
as I hear footsteps coming down the hall. Wiping my eyes, I look
up to see Will standing there, staring at me. What are you doing?
His voice is cool and detached, like it has been a lot of
the time in the last few weeks. I'd taken it as a sign of
things maybe getting better, that he was being more cold and aloof as part
of getting his anxiety and depression under control, and that when he came out
to the other side he'd be his old self again. Now. I felt
a chill as he watched me watch him. Um, nothing, just reading
stuff. His expression didn't change. What stuff you look like? You've been
crying. I shrugged and forced to laugh. Just stuff on your phone,
you know, girls, stuff sappy stuff to make you cry. I'm okay.
Not the note that Will wrote over a month ago, right before he
started acting like like you. He nodded and made a sound deep in his
throat. Good. Well, come on, then, it's dinner time.
I've made you something special. I gave him a smile. Sounds great.
I'll be there, just need to get something first. Every Christmas my family
booby trapped the chimney. I never knew why until one year we finally caught
something coming down. That year, my trap did not work. They never
worked. The week before Christmas, we'd gone shopping as a family, first
to a craft store for the kids and then a hardware store for the grown
ups. Walking the clove Lyles Mariah Carey in the background, I had excitedly
wat a pack of orange HB pencils flat on either end. They made me
think of the scaffolding the builders had put up around school one year, full
of endless possibilities. Along with the pencils, I bought a bag of rubber
bands to bind them together. In my imagination, I conceived of a truly
fantastic catapult that would pelt the invaders with marbles and thumbtacks. Come Christmas Eve,
my sister and I sat at one table and went to work making our
own traps with the materials we had selected. I had my pencils, and
my sister, a few years younger than me, was busy making something out
of pipe cleaners and playdough. I remember scoffing at a work and thinking whatever
she had in mind wouldn't even work on a table Beside us, our mother
made her own. I always remember thinking that the grown ups put no real
imagination into their creations, but every year the sight of them would turn my
stomach. Nonetheless, Mom like broken light bulbs hung on ropes, and this
year she prepared another five or six to be nailed on the inside of the
chimney. She also fashioned some heavy wooden planks with dozens of rusty nails and
bent jagged knives driven into them. She always made the same things and would
stand at her table every year furiously soaring or hammering, with sweat pouring down
her forehead. Dad did his work in the garage. He had a welders
torch in there, and something called a lathe, and all sorts of other
interesting tools. His traps were almost always made of rusted metal and razors,
sharp edges, creaking hinges and springs that made even my childish fingers weary.
When he finally emerged from his workshop this year, he revealed a funny looking
contraption that looked to me like some kind of cannon with a large air canister
attached, the sort of thing I'd seen on a diver's back. When a
pressure plate was triggered, a sharp looking metal spear came shooting three feet out
of the barrel in a heart stopping explosion. Dad grinned with pride when we
all jumped back during the test fire. Then he spent thirty minutes swearing angrily
as he tried to reload the spike. After that he set about hiding it
in the fireplace. This in forore digging a hole, and there was a
brief moment as he knelt there, covered in soot, where he reached his
hand out toward me and called me Alex, asking me to grab the gas
canister and bring it over. Before I could even try and do what he
asked, Mom intervened and did it instead. Of course, she could not
pick it up, so she had to sort of roll walk it over.
Dad was quiet the entire time that happened. Whenever someone mentioned my older brother,
people went quiet. He could have picked up the gas canister easily.
He had always been big, even bigger than Dad. He took after Grandpa,
who was a giant at five six. In later years, my pee
teacher would lament I never got those genes. My sister and I both took
after our father, who, while big, was no giant. After all,
this was done after the loose rock and the ash was put back in
place, after the pressure plate and the trip wires were hidden or disguised as
standard Christmas decorations, After the bear traps were draped with all clothes or empty
boxes, and Mom's knife covered planks were placed beneath meticulously crafted false floors.
My sister and I gave Mom and Dad our traps. And they were placed
carefully in the middle of the ambush. I loved this moment. I don't
know why. I think looking back, it was the feeling of being a
unit, a family. We helped. I was still scared of the dark,
and my sister had barely mastered the toilet, but we were helping,
and good God. Ever since Alex had gone, I'd wanted to help so
bad. The shape of my older brother was a vague one. I loved
him, but I didn't really know him. Couldn't have given my age instead.
I grew up in a world where Mum and Dad cried a lot and
fought even more than sometimes they themselves would admit they fought over nothing at all.
They fought because it hurt, because even after my sister had been born,
they still couldn't bring themselves to touch Alex's room, or to even really
acknowledge that it existed without it causing a painful, sullen silence. So for
that brief moment where we stood surveying the fireplace in the living room, it
felt like our version of the perfect happy family. After that, it was
bedtime for my sister and I. We liked our special Christmas beds I liked
that they were cozy and special, and that Mum would put the telly on
and turn the volume all the way up, and no one cared if we
ate too much candy or even watched films we weren't allowed to watch. So
long as we stayed in the basement, it was fine. We had all
these blankets and pillows so we could make forts, and no one came down
to check if we were asleep at good time. Despite all the excitement,
though we usually never made it past midnight. There was only so much our
little bodies could handle. Mamma Dad, though they stayed up. I thought
that was normal. You don't know how much your parents sacrificed until you become
one yourself. Never appreciated what it meant for my dad mid forties by this
point, to stand upright and stay awake all night, or for my mom
to do the same, the two of them all night, shaking each other
awake when the other one started the flag. That was the year I lost
the privilege of ignorance. Isn't it funny had the best and worst moments of
your life often overlap. Maybe it's just a light bulb effect. I don't
know that night, my sister and I went down to the basement, climbed
into our blanket fort, and watched the never Ending Story Gee fell asleep ten
minutes in. I stayed up and watched every second of it. I can
still see all that in my mind as clear as day. Feels like one
of the happiest and purest moments of my life. Falling asleep on the credits,
gently dreaming of what it might be like to have my own dragon to
fly over school. I think that was it, the last time I was
just a child. I think most of us have memories like that, don't
we, The moment in time when we stopped being kids. Next thing I
remember, I was coming too, bathed in a cold gray light, eyes
heavy, head woozy. Something was wrong and I could feel it. It
was quiet, cold, with the draft, and my sister was nowhere to
be seen. It took me a moment to realize that the lights were off
along with the TV, and I was seeing the basement only by the glow
of the upstairs hallway. That was unusual. Mom and Dad always locked the
basement door and barred it from the other side. Tonight, it was wide
open, and something about the world up there seemed sinister to my childish eyes.
I don't know how to describe it exactly. I'd woken up and something
was wrong. I sat upright and slinked out of bed, in the hope
that any moment I'd see a better, happier world coming down those stairs,
Mum and Dad sister in arms, telling me Christmas was here. They'd just
let me sleep in. Maybe had it even snowed. Maybe that was why
the light seemed so odd, pale and diffused. God, I wanted a
white Christmas so badly. It was all over the telly in movies and magazines,
But all it ever seemed to do around us at that time of year
was rain in a fine wet drizzle, black windows come night, heavy winds,
cuddles that reflected street lamps. My only memory of my grandmother was her
singing, Rain, Rain, go away, come back another day. Nothing
else, not a face, just the sound of her singing that old nursery
rhyme Like Alex. She was another person I knew, largely through the grief
she left behind in others. I climbed the basement stairs and my hands and
feet, following some hidden instinct to be quiet. Years of sneaking around to
listen to Mom and Dad's fevered arguments had taught me to always put my weight
on the edge of my steps. Whenever I spied them mid fight. Mum
would be standing somewhere, looking thin and sad, arms crossed, with a
smell of cigarette strung in the air. I thought of this as I reached
the top, pausing to sniff the air, wondering if I might smell smoke
coming from somewhere further in the house. Instead, I picked out a gentle
whiff of something burned, not dissimilar to the smell of party poppers or old
fireworks, certainly thing like old cigarettes. And there was something else in there
too, something behind that black and subty odor, something metallic, almost sweet.
Eventually I looked, lifting my head over the final step and peering left
and right down the hallway that stretched either side. For a long time,
there was nothing, and I stayed in place, frozen by indecision. But
then, somewhere to my right, near the kitchen doorway, the cold morning
light that filtered through seemed to shift and move. Someone was in there,
surely moving around and casting shadows. Of course, it could be Mom or
Dad. I told myself, but I still did not move whoever it was,
I was silent, deathly so when I finally got the courage to move,
who was to go in the opposite direction? Not yet ten years old,
but even a child has an animal's instincts, and mine were telling me
to avoid anyone who was that quiet. So I crawled towards the living room,
letting the old carpet absorb the sound of my movements. When I looked
inside, I struggled to make sense of what I was seeing. It was
like a bomb had gone off. The sofa was torn to shreds. The
coffee table lay in pieces. All of our Christmas decorations lay crushed beneath broken
floorboards and ripped up carpet. The bear traps stood upright, their teeth locked,
their jaws snapped shut. Dad's piston was in two bits, the oxygen
canister embedded in one wall, the barrel bent and lying on the floor.
The sight of our traps destroyed set something off in me. I hadn't thought
of it until that moment, but they had always been an integral part of
our Christmas decorations. A little different to the usual fair, sure, but
every bit as important to us as anyone else's homemade decorations. Everywhere I looked,
there was another little bit of our history lying in a broken heap,
and it broke my little heart because I so desperately wanted to fix them,
to return the living room to the pristine state it had been in the night
before, when we'd been a happy family. I wondered if maybe Dad's little
invention had gone wrong somehow one year he nearly burned the house down. So
it wasn't strange to think that dangerous looking piston was responsible for all that destruction
or that pressure building up. Still no sign of my family, though didn't
look like they'd been caught in anything either. No blood Back in the hallway,
I looked at the light cast by the kitchen door. There was no
further movement, but I didn't trust the stillness in the air, wrong,
all wrong. Best chance now was to try upstairs, saying goes as before.
Really, it involved making my way to the front door where the stairs
leading up or near, and then slowly and carefully climbing them on all fours.
I knew these steps very well and disappeared up them as stealthily as anyone
could hope to. My bedroom was empty, so was my sister's. She
had a big window, so I got a good look at the world outside
and saw the sun was well on its way to rising. Early morning light
and heavy fog made everything look washed out and faded. Eerie too, like
the world was holding its breath in a way it was. My parents' bedroom
looked empty too at a glance, and I almost moved on without noticing the
strange and heavy shadow beneath their bed. I'm glad I didn't. I lingered
and looked a little harder. Something about the light down there convinced me it
wasn't empty, not like normal. And before I had any time for my
imagination to start conjuring up nightmares, my sister's face appeared from the gloom.
I nearly yelped from joy, but the expression she wore was as serious as
they come, just afraid or concerned, but almost sick, Pale with wide
eyes. It was like she couldn't quite register my presence. So I slinked
forward and reached out, touching her hand. She flinched and receded further into
the darkness. Something was wrong, so I crawled in beside her and checked
her for injuries, do my best not to alarm her further. She looked
fine, so all I could do was take her in my arms and try
my best to coax her out of a shock. When I finally whispered a
question, it felt far too loud, even though the only real sound was
the smacking of my lips. She recalled a little when I spoke, making
me feel like I'd broken the most precious silence of our lives. But I
had to ask. I had to know where his mom and dad. She
merely shook her head. So I asked again, this time, try my
best to stay even quieter, but it seemed like any sound was going to
alarm her. Where are they? In the end, she replied, only
so that I would stop asking. She pulled away as she did so.
She loved me, but well, she was an animal with a hiding place,
and I was at risk of ruining it. He took them up.
There was the only thing she'd said, all pointing at the roof. Those
five words chilled me to the core. They carried some subtle implication that our
parents were dead. I didn't like this thought. He made my skinitch made
the space we crawled into feel too small and uncomfortable. Her hot sensation began
to well up my throat, threatening tears. Was she really saying we were
alone? I didn't want that. I didn't want to be alone. I
wanted them to come back and sweep us up in their arms. Without really
knowing why I refused the believer, I shook my head and crawled out from
under the bed, hoping to go off and find them. I looked back
briefly to see if she followed, but she remained, seeming all too ready
to leave me to go after my fate. She disappeared into the shadows,
and I was left with only the slim comfort that she might at least be
safe there, out of sight, out of mind. Crawling out of her
parents bedroom, I realized I had very few options left. There was the
phone on the downstairs landing by the front door. It was that, or
maybe I could run down the lane and out to the nearest house, which
was maybe a quarter mile away, not far under normal circumstances. But did
I really want to go? Sprinting out the front door, hoping to God
that whatever it marched through all those traps like nothing wouldn't see me running out
in the open, better to get help to come to us, better to
reach the phone. I thought of Grandpa, Mom's dad, a hulking man
who generally terrified us all, a cantankerous old widower who had a bad habit
of telling us things Mom said we shouldn't know, like how it was our
grandmother's fault we had to be scared of the chimney at Christmas. I didn't
like him. He smelt of mildew and soil, looking giant who told us
awful stories of growing up with a part time job in a slaughterhouse that made
me want to cry. But right then I couldn't think of a better man
to ask for help. I made it down the stairs as quietly as I
descended them. I lifted the phone gingerly from the receiver, like it was
ready to explode. I didn't know what might make a noise, if anything.
Didn't know if the table would rock from a wobbly leg, if the
plastic would click from hitting something, or the dull tone would be a little
too loud. When you're trying to be quiet, everything feels dangerous every moment,
every object, It's all just another way to get caught out. One
of the reasons I thought of Grandpa was he was on speed dial. I
pressed the three and listened to the ring tone. I was tense at the
sound, muted as it was, and waited eagerly for this part to be
over. The whole time, I couldn't take my eyes off the hallway that
turned towards the basement in the kitchen. Occasionally a muffled creak or groan would
emanate from somewhere inside, and my skin would crawl. I'd never known a
longer, more unsettling weight in my entire life. When it was finally over,
there came no relief. Grandpa didn't answer the phone with the tact old
men usually don't. I hadn't expected the sound of his voice to be so
damn loud, Hello, Alice, is that you? It was probably just
the atmosphere, but it sounded like the old bugger was bellowing the words in
the very room. I was in terrified of how that noise might carry.
I slam the phone down and the receiver and cringe that the sound of the
internal bell ringing with the force. If there really was someone in that house,
they must have heard that. I wasted no time in waiting. I
ran, not crawled, up the stairs, still trying to be as quiet
as I could, but putting a good emphasis on speed. As I climbed,
I wondered if maybe I was overreacting, But no. From the kitchen
came the sound of breaking glass and clattering metal, like someone had torn a
cutler drawer right out of the cupboard and hurled it against the wall. Whatever
had been in there was moving faster than it had any right to. Every
footfalls closed the unseen distance, turning the corner and reaching the front door and
stairs just in time for me to disappear over the top step and dropped to
the floor. The fear that gripped me was electric. All the parents I've
been feeling up until this point felt thin and plastic in comparison the way that
as a kid you might run back from the bathroom convinced that something evil worked
in the shadows, when really, deep down, you knew there was nothing.
But this was a deep and grueling fear. I could hear something smashing
the phone and little table to smithereens, and I had just been standing there.
A visceral fear coursed through my body as I crawled on my stomach,
as fast as I could towards the nearest door, which happened to be my
own bedroom. It made my vision pulsate and my stomach twist and churn,
urging me to crawl on my belly faster and faster like a soldier dodging gunfire.
Once inside, I briefly considered hiding under the bed like my sister,
but something ab that didn't feel safe enough. I wanted something a door,
a wall, anything that I could put between me and whatever had made that
noise. The clauset, I decided that made sense. It was full of
old chunk I could squeeze between, and a small hatch that led into the
attic. All of this flashed through my mind in a split second, and
I veered towards the closet door, just in time to hear the first step
coming up the stairs. God, whatever it was, it was heavy.
I could hear the wood creek and the banister crack and splinter as it forced
its way up. I was breathing so hard now I was nearly whimpering with
each movement, coming down, close to losing control over my muscles and my
bladder. I felt like the finest piece of twine. Was holding me all
together, body, my mind, my sanity, all of it, waiting
for that final thread to break, and for it all to come undone at
once, collapsing into a heap as I messed myself, choking on desperate sobs
and tears. I don't quite know how I made it to the closet in
such silence. I managed to open the door and crawl inside without making a
noise, and then watched in terror through the slits in the door as I
waited for god knows what to happen. Whatever it was it was out there
in the hallway, landing, sniffing the air. I expected some sort of
animal by this point, a twisted reindeer for some reason, probably the season
and the sound of its hefty snorts reinforced that. But when it finally poked
its head through the open doorway to look for me, I saw something that
was perplex human, or at least had been hard to say. As a
family. Even now, we don't talk about it, Not before that day,
not after, not any of the extended family reunions where all the branches
of my line come together and discuss tactics for dealing with the curse it,
whatever it is seems to deliberately play on our expectations. Talking about it makes
you sound mad, even if it is with other members of the family.
I don't know how else to put it. You feel silly, make the
problem feel silly by extension, like you don't need to take it as seriously.
Of course, the curse is not some random force. It has a
sense of humor, I want to say, taunting, cruel. Certainly it
hurts to admit this, but everything it does all of the dead, and
there are plenty of them. For my grandmother had a lot of children,
and they all went off and had children too, so much so there were
eleven households at the last reunion, giving it plenty of victims to choose from.
But all of it, all the pain and misery, landing on the
roof, climbing down the chimney, leaving safely, if it was hit by
a single one of our traps. It was a damn game. They were
tricks. It was playing tricks on us, and it always had been.
And these tricks were part of a game that had rules. And why we
had to have the chimney because if we didn't it would behave unpredictably and that's
why the thing poked his head through my door, wearing a Santa hat and
a white beard. I hate this, by the way, hate going over
how the worst night of my life was some kind of joke to it,
But yeah, that's what it was. It wore a Santa hat and a
beard, and in truth, it made for a pretty terrifying image, especially
to a ten year old. Wasn't human? Was an animal either. Looked
like a rotten corpse, something you'd find withered and preserved out in the Alaskan
tundra, only for some scientists to say some caveman from the pleistin scene,
it may have been some kind of dead thing. Actually, it was leaking
a foul, gray fluid from its lipless mouth, crowned by yellow teeth,
and its cheap nylon beard was matted with the stuff. God, I can
almost smell it just talking about it. This school came and went in seconds.
It didn't know which room I'd gone in, so it made only a
brief sweep of mine before leaving to go take a proper look elsewhere. A
part of me considered shouting out to help my sister, but well, I
couldn't have moved my arms to do that if I wanted to. Instead,
I thought of how it was almost definitely going to take a closer look at
this room once it didn't find me elsewhere. Maybe it'd found my sister first,
But I didn't really want to think about that. Instead, I kept
imagining it returning to this place and stomping around, opening drawers, looking under
the bed, and surely it would turn its head at one point towards my
closet, see the slatted door, and realize exactly where I'd been hiding all
along. I had to move on from this place, and looking up,
I remembered the entry to the attic accessible from the very top shelf. This
was my best chance, my only chance, really. I began to climb.
Only this wasn't the graceful and quiet sneaking I'd been relying on so far.
Unlike the stairs, I hadn't made a habit of going this way silently.
I made it two shelves before I knocked an old transformer toy off,
where it hit the ground with a plastic clack. Another time, another place,
the noise would have barely registered, But to me and that thing outside,
it might as well have been a gunshot as Quickly as the head had
disappeared, that monster came roaring into my room, and I began to climb
with quivering arms. I came close to flailing out of control. I didn't
look back. I reached the top, pushed the hatch open, and pulled
myself through, just in time to hear the closet door torn off its hinges.
Once through, I couldn't stop myself turning around briefly, and that thing
was right there, grinning at me. It saw me, It knew where
I was. There was no hiding now, only running. This time I
really did lose control of my bladder when one of its clawed hands wrapped around
the hatch, I realized I had to keep going, keep running, keep
moving. I didn't know my way around the attic, but that didn't matter
right now. I had to keep going, keep putting distance, any distance
between me, and unfortunately the way wasn't very clear. My family, like
most, had jammed a lot of old junk into the attic, and first
when I turned and saw the piles of old boxes, I nearly panicked at
the claustrophobic maize that faced me. But when I had to get my hands
and niece to crawl through the only way forward. I came to hope that
maybe it meant that that thing wouldn't be able to follow. This hope spurned
me on, But I was only halfway through the tunnel of old plastic and
cardboard when there came the overpowering stench of rotten meat, letting me know that
that thing was closer than I dared to imagine. Then what little light there
was went away and something grabbed my ankle. I screamed, this was the
moment where I was meant to wake up. This was the moment when something
was meant to happen to stop the terror. I pulled at the boxes around
me, and they came tumbling down, spilling old furniture and photos, and
I grabbed at them too, hoping for some kind of leverage. But this
thing was big, and it hauled me out like a hunter plucking a rabbit
out of its warren. Briefly, it held me upside down and surveyed me,
and I stared into black, sunken eyes and a gaunt face covered in
lesions and pocks. With a smirk, he grabbed something from over its shoulder,
put it on the floor, and before I even realized what was happening.
It had stuffed me into a sack and thrown me over its shoulder.
The world became a blur. I felt my mind close in on itself,
and the world narrowed to a point as I fought to stop my thoughts racing
with images of what might happen to me, of being dragged into its home,
with that wretched mouth would open wide to swallow me whole, of being
killed or butchered or tortured. I don't know if you can really imagine what
it was like for me as a kid to curl up in that dark space
and contemplate my own mortality, to come face to face with my own death
or worse. But it broke me irreparably and completely. To this day,
I am broken because of it, because of that moment, so much so
that when it dropped me down with a heavy thump on the fireplace mantle,
I did not even move or try to escape. I already knew where was
taking me, of course, up the chimney, where else, And it
was too late. The fight was lost. If anything, At this point,
I wanted it to be over with. I wanted to be with Mom
and Dad instead The moments stretched on and on, seconds turned to minutes,
and I waited with held breath for this nightmare to move on, But it
didn't. It must have been making preparations for something, but what and how
long? Eventually I opened my eyes. Thin light made its way through the
coarse fabric of the sack, enough for me to make out a vague outline
of the destroyed living room. But the opening of the sack had also fallen
slightly in A small app was visible, with a cord that bound it wasn't
quite pulled tight enough, And there, like some strange reminder, was a
broken HB pencil, a tiny little piece of my trap one night, one
sleep, that was all that had separated me from this nightmare. Just the
day before, we'd been happy, or something close to it, And I
remembered that not only had this thing taken me away, it had also taken
my mother, my father, and even Alex, who I knew only through
ancient memories, and a room my mother didn't like letting me into. And
there was a damn good chance it was going to get my sister too,
All of it gone, leaving behind an empty house with broken things that no
one else would care about. Not the tree, not the presence, not
any of it. I felt something wash up from within me an anger,
a petulant, childish tantrum. I was screwed anyway, right, I had
lost everything, so why not? I reached out, grabbed a pencil,
and, poking my head out of the sack, saw that thing enter the
room with my sister held by her ankle in one of his misshapen fists.
She was bawling hysterically, and I hoped that with this final action I might
somehow save her. I crawled out of the bag, launched myself at it,
and jammed the broken pencil into its booted foot. Immediately it dropped my
sister and I stayed where I was on the floor, sobbing, head bowed,
waiting for the rest to come. Only nothing did. Instead, that
thing had sighed a bone deep, weary sigh, the kind of parent let
out when they realize the toddler has been quiet for too long. With a
voice like gravel. It spoke in a harsh Germanic accent, spitting some of
the words from between its broken teeth. So close this year, good trap,
little one, But I will not fall for this one Twice with one
of its clawed hands. It pulled the pencil out of his foot and stumped
away, and I passed out before I had the chance to hear the rest.
It was our grandfather who eventually found us, both huddled together on the
living and floor. The next month or so was a blur. A lot
changed. We were taken into my grandfather's care, and we had to bury
our parents, not to mention moving out sorting the home. Our contribution to
this wasn't much, of course, we were kids, but we still had
to go back and get some of our things. I don't remember much of
it, to be honest. My grandfather years later would sit me down and
give me an account of the night as best he could. My father's piston
trap had gone wrong and blown half the living room to smithereens bad luck on
any day, but this time it had happened the year that that thing came
to visit us, and with no traps left, it had a clean run
into the house where it wrought its havoc. Only has to be a nick,
my grandfather said, with a stoic stremes or gesturing a cut on his
palm. Your father over complicated things, I told him, this after the
time he caused the fire too much. Trap has the working principle not practical,
no need for compressors or pistons. That is why your piston. Yeah,
sent it away. You may trap, trap, hurt it, it
go away. Those rules we follow rules, give it chimney to come down,
play its game. We win or it wins. Either way it has
it's fun. He spiked the last words. Can't blame him. No part
of that was fun for us. But at least Grandpa was honest with us.
He explained the curse as best he knew it. The rules. The
traps introduced us to our extended family from je and we learned that the game
is played with at least one household from the family every year, and it
helps to stay in touch and talk about what did or God forbid did not
work. As for its origin, well, our grandmother took that to a
grave. Unfortunately Grandpa didn't know it, nor did anyone else. Might have
been something from a childhood, maybe a deal with something she found in the
woods. Who knows, it doesn't matter. He was a miserable man who
raised us as best he could. But I could at least understand why he
was so cantankerous and difficult. He'd fallen in love with a woman and gotten
a pregnant before the first Christmas, having no idea what lay in wait,
and then when he found out the bizarre truth, he stuck it out year
after year, one painful loss after another. I admire him for it,
admired the way he didn't let anything get to him, at least not in
front of us, because I do remember some things about waking up that day,
about him finding us. I remember that the monster, having lost its
game, had returned our parents to us, only it was a little too
late for them. I remember wet sacks beneath the chimney, blood leaking from
the fabric. My parents were cremated for good reason. Whatever it had done
to them, well, that thing is a sick and twisted creature, that's
for sure. I can only assume that's why after returning the sacks, it
had taken little tags and tied them around them top, gifting our parents back
to us, even after it had budgeted them until only ribbons remained. Merry
Christmas, little ones the tag read, and so many more to come back.
In twenty seventeen, I was about six months out of an internship with
a local law firm. I was a junior legal assistant as part of a
retainer team for a statewide biodiesel business. It wasn't my only assignment, but
it was the one I was formally hired for. However, during downtime,
I was bounced around various teams all throughout the year. It was early February
when the call came. The bio diesel place had a new owner and he
wanted to shake things up. Our jobs were safe, but he wanted to
make some investments new manufacturing plants, two in Missouri and one to the west,
within reasonable driving distance from their warehouses. Only problem was there were no
suitable properties to build on. This could be a multi million dollar kind of
thing, but we didn't have a property to sign off on. That is
until I realized that the area they were looking at was my old home town
of Tomscog, Minnesota. I suggested looking into an old property I'd gone by
a thousand times on my way to school. It was this massive empty field
in the outskirts of town with nothing but a few run down houses that could
easily be torn down. We knew the place was privately owned, but I
had no idea of who the proprietor was. My boss was ecstatic. See
the client had been considering calling the whole thing off, but if we could
offer them a property, we could probably get a fat bonus check along with
a finder's fee. It would be enough to take the junior part off my
job title. Since I suggested it, I was given time off to get
in touch with the owner of the property. There were some initial problems.
The original property documents had been damaged in a flood back in twenty fourteen,
and only part of the archive had been digitized. The document I was looking
for might not have been digitized yet, and since no immediate documents were available,
I was starting to suspect the worst. The clerk at the municipal office
promised they'd get back to me with a name within four to one eight weeks
twelve of the most That wasn't an option, so I packed my bags and
did my cat to my mom, got the fancy maroon B and W company
car and set my sights on familiar roads. It took me two stops for
gas and a needlessly complicated detour because of a fallen oak tree, but I
made my way back to that field just as the sun started to set.
After all these years, it was exactly as I remembered, one large empty
property, now covered in mud stained February snow, a run down barn at
the edge of the property, and a small, one story log cabin right
next door. All roads were overgrown and there were no discernible paths out there.
I considered going back in the morning, but I figured I had some
time life left. Maybe there was this big plaque with the name of the
owner out front. If so, I get over it all settled in a
day and be on my way home before I even had time to unpack.
It was getting late and the shadows had grown longer, but I was willing
to roll those dice. I double checked my phone, got a flashlight from
the trunk, and locked my car. The snow was deep enough to reach
my knees. My fancy shoes fell like paper. The cold went straight through
still. I pushed on bee lining straight across the field. I severely overestimated
how much time I had left. By the time I got to the cabin,
it was already getting dark. Using the flashlight, I took a quick
lap around the place, just to make sure I wasn't walking into some kind
of hillbilly trap room. It didn't take long for me to realize that this
place had been abandoned for years. Not only was it boarded up, but
the boards used were rotten. That the place was standing at all was nothing
short of a miracle. I tried knocking a little, just to make sure
no one was home, but I wasn't holding my breath. The place was
desolate. I looked for some kind of name or plaque or hell, something
carved into the wall somewhere, anything, but there really was nothing. I
considered coming back in the morning, but I could see dark clouds on the
horizon, and I didn't want to walk through that snow more times than necessary.
I decided I'd do a little urban exploring. After all, if the
door was open, it wouldn't hurt to have a peak inside. I walked
up to the door, I noticed something strange. There was a carving at
the top of the doorframe. Word by word, my flashlight revealed the full
sentence, no one has ever lived in this house. I tried to wrap
my brain around it. It didn't make much sense. What the hell did
that even mean? Of course, someone had lived there, someone built it,
and someone owned the property. Why would there be a house in the
middle of nowhere that no one had ever lived in? I hesitated. Something
told me to just walk away and come back in the morning, But the
clouds and the horizon and my freezing feet were telling me otherwise. There was
a carving that meant someone had the habit of leaving messages. Chances were there
might be more of them inside. Twiddling the handler a little, I noticed
the door was unlocked, so in I went. The cabin had a very
basic layout. There was one large room with a wooden bench facing a simple
fireplace. There were two handmade tables, and the westernmost wall was lined with
dried herbs, mostly blue and black. There was a surprisingly clean cowskin on
the floor, as well as a small door on the easternmost side of the
room leading to a kitchen. It was mostly just an antique kind of stove
and a couple of cabinets. But whoever lived there must have been accustomed to
a sparse lifestyle. But no, that wasn't it. I had to correct
myself. The carving said no one had ever lived there, then why the
furniture. I decided to ignore the message for the time being, instead focusing
on finding the name of whoever owned the place. There might be some initials
on the handmade furniture. I gently moved the bench and the table first,
going over them with my flashlight. There were no obvious markings, but another
problem quickly arose. My flashlight was giving up on me. It started the
flicker. Looking around, I could see no other possible source of light but
the old fireplace, and I couldn't imagine that thing not being clogged. Then
again, there was firewood, and I did have a lighter. I quit
smoking about two years prior, but I kept it around just in case,
breaking off a piece of bark and lighting it. I double checked to make
sure the smoke cleared and went up. Surprisingly it did. Glancing at my
phone, I figured I could use it for a flashlight as well, but
I didn't want to drain the battery. Instead, I lit a fire and
left the front door open, just in case the smoke didn't entirely clear out.
Carbon monoxide poisoning ain't no joke. As the fire sputtered to life,
they sat down to take a breather on the bench. It was a pretty
cozy little cabin, the kind of place you'd stay in a night or two
when going fishing. I could imagine my dad warming his hands by that fire.
I lost him in twenty ten, but that was the kind of place
he'd always been most at home in. As I warmed my hands, watching
my shadows grow longer, I could imagine him sitting next to me. I
could almost hear him, And in that moment, my eyes drifted to a
space right in front of the fireplace, the space where a small iron plate
protected the floor. I don't know what drove me to look closer, but
I realized there were no screws or nails keeping that plate down, so with
a quick touch of the fire poker, it came loose, revealing a sort
of makeshift metal box. There were four items in total, a broken pocket
watch, an empty hip flask, three spent shotgun shells, and a small
journal. I went straight for the journal, checking for a name. It
was getting darker outside, so I huddled around the fire. The snow began
to tap against the wooden barricades. I had two choices, to steal this
journal or to read it by the fire as the storm raged on. It
was my cold feet that decided for me. I took off my shoes and
warmed them by the fire as they started to slowly read my way through the
rough, cursive text of the old journal. Not the kind of job I
had imagined i'd do at a law firm. But things never quite go the
way you've planned. I opened the first page, hoping to find the name.
Instead, I was greeted by a strange text journal written by then nothing
that was it? No name, just that. I turned the book over
back and forth, no name anywhere. I kept reading. The first page
reads as follows. I once had a name, and creed a couple of
truths, thrown to the grave long before my end. Now I remain battered
and empty, my history as unusual as my mind turns, sun bleached and
distant, my heart burns of wrath. But I cannot recall as to why
I turned the page. I couldn't help but to be intrigued, if not
for any other reason, then to find the name of the author. This
house is not my property, and to my recollection, no one has ever
lived here. He proceeded to discuss at length the part of his history that
he did remember, growing up in Wisconsin, being the son of a shoemaker
little anecdotes of a long life. His first kiss, his first love,
his first house. But the further along he tried to remember, the foggire
it got. I was starting to think I might never find a name,
but I wasn't sure why. At some point, the author recalled something happening.
He couldn't explain what, or why or where, but he could recall
something upsetting his routine. Something came to him and it made him upset.
He spoke about putting up barricades, keeping a loaded shotgun at the ready,
and locking himself inside for days on end. It might have been here.
Then I made my stand. He wrote, it could be worse. It
should be, but I can't say that it was. He would go on
to detail some sort of struggle, but he couldn't picture what it was against
the text was so strangely written. I could tell there were segments, as
if written piece by piece, but it was impossible to tell just how much
time had passed between them. Even in the journal, the author lamented on
large segments of time randomly missing, And I couldn't help but to consider the
other items in the box, in particular the spent shotgun shells, the author
proceeded to explain how he'd broken the pocket watch, as if frustrated him he
was losing track of time. He might think ten minutes had passed, only
to realize the entire afternoon was gone. He broke his watch as a reminder
that he couldn't trust himself anymore. Maybe I'll remember that, he wrote,
or will the watch unbreak itself? I was disrupted from my read by a
sudden noise. Looking up, I could see the fire was dying out.
The sound actually came from my phone. Turns out it was my automated time
to go to bed. Alert, I'd been sitting there for six hours.
That didn't make sense. I stood up, clutching the journal. There was
nothing there. The cabin was empty, but I couldn't escape this sudden sense
of dread, like something awful had just happened, but I couldn't say exactly
what. Looking down on the journal, I suddenly realized that I felt exactly
as described by the author. I felt this unexplainable anxiousness, like that uneasy
feeling you get when you feel that someone is watching you, only more palpable.
Standing up with my back to the fireplace, I continued reading He continued
to explain how his flask was empty, but that he couldn't remember drinking from
it. He detailed his plan to conceal a few items along with its journal
for an entire day, just to see if he could remember to retrieve it.
But not yet, he lamented, there are trespasses to deal with.
This is where the spent shells came into play. The author revealed how it
found a group of strange trespasses. He'd taken them all out with his shotgun.
He wrote in detail about shooting three times, but that he couldn't remember
anything about them, men, women, or children. There was no way
to tell. I buried them by the barn. He detailed it seemed like
the right thing to do. Why am I crying? As the journal neared
its end, the author tried to summarize his remaining thoughts. Something came to
him wherever he was, It did something, and as a result, everything
was destroyed. He was devastated, but couldn't even remember why. It was
like muscle memory, something in his body was remembering the sadness I inscribe upon
this door. He wrote that no one has ever lived here. I do
not recall this place or any one living here. It serves as a warning
and a reminder that this is not my home. And with the final page,
the author documented putting it all in a sort of hidden lock box in
front of the fireplace. He would do so for one day to see if
he could remember retrieving it. Evidently he couldn't. With the final words on
the final page, he gave one last piece of insight, perhaps in a
moment of clarity. It started when I lit the fire, he wrote.
Everything turned worse after I lit the fire. Looking back at the fireplace and
the spluttering logs, I slowly came to the realization of what kind of situation
I'd put myself in. I accidentally followed the footsteps of a man who used
to be in that cabin, a man that I'd have owned it but couldn't
even remember it, or who knows, maybe he was just passing by.
I decided to take my chances and just leave. I brought the journal along,
opened the door, and prepared to brave the weather. But something happened
right then and there, Something made me stop, and I just stood there.
I stood there long enough for my hands to turn blue, and I
only snapped out of it when a snowflake hit my eye. I wasn't alone.
There was something there, and he was doing something to me. I
had wrung the damned dinner bell. Thinking about it, it feels a bit
like being eaten alive, not physically, the same feeling remains, this heedless
consumption, something taking an intimate part of what makes you into you and tearing
it away. That's what I still remember. That's what it feels like,
but it is hard to explain something I can't remember. It feels like a
void in your mind, but you have this instinct to fill it with something
bad, like watching a scary movie and knowing something horrifying is about to pop
up. Every time I think about it, trying to picture it in my
mind, I get that same feeling. Sometimes my mind fills it with a
sort of organic darkness, roughly shaped as a person. Other times it's just
some guy. It changes whenever I look back at it, because there is
nothing there for me to remember, so my mind fills in the blanks.
But who's to say that all those blanks are false? I turned around and
realized I'd been exposed to this thing. It was doing something to me,
and it was bad enough to make me run head first into the dark.
Looking back at this, all I really remember was feeling that immense panic.
I pray reflex my trying to escape a wild animal. I ended up in
the old barn, where I hid behind a mound of debris next to one
of those collapsed walls. My fingers were freezing, but I was going to
call for help no matter what. Only problem was. I couldn't remember the
code to unlock my phone. I tried, but between my fingers being too
cold to register and something unfathomable approaching from just around the corner, I decided
it was better to hunker down and be quiet. Because when I can't remember
anything about the physical features of it, I remember thinking it wasn't very perceptive.
For some reason, it passed me by, but I couldn't make any
sounds without revealing my position. Calling for help was out of the question.
Instead, I turned my attention back to the journal. My lock screen had
a bright picture blurred in the background, allowing me to use it as a
makeshift mini flashlight of sorts. For some reason, I wasn't afraid that the
creature would spot me visually. Perhaps it didn't have eyes. I turned the
pages back and forth looking for a particular segment. There was some thing about
the weapon the author had used to deal with the intruders that left me wondering.
But I could barely make out anything in that journal. Between my pounding
heart, my freezing hands, and the strange thing lurking about, I couldn't
make heads or tails of the damned cursive text. I can't remember what kind
of sounds the creature made, but I can remember the sounds the environment made
when it passed. I remember wood splintering as something climbed the walls. I
remember creaking wood from a sudden weight coming down. I remember a door splintering
as it was torn from its hinges. Finally I found the page I was
looking for. Just after talking about how he didn't know why he was sad
about killing the intruders, the author wrote, I threw the damn thing into
the hay loft. I have not been able to retrieve it, as the
memory of its shape eludes me. How does one recognize a weapon that one
has no recollection of ever wielding? I waited for the entity to step outside
before I made my way upstairs. It is a strange feeling trying to balance
the instinct to run with the obsessive thought of staying quiet. Every creaking floorboard
sent shivers down my spine, curling my toes in anticipation of something running me
down, but nothing happened. It didn't take long for me to find it,
an old double worrowed hunting rifle. Looking over it, I saw that
there was some sort of shell still loaded. Perhaps it would work, perhaps
not. I was no expert, and I didn't have much of a choice
but to try. I'd be a sitting dock out there without it. After
all, I couldn't remember where I'd parked my car. I decided to go
on the offensive. I made my way down the stairs a little too quick,
and before long I heard this scurring noise as something entered the old barn.
I remember standing a good fifteen feet away from it and raising the weapon
towards it. It stopped, but so did I. For a while,
we just sort of circled one another. I remember my movement being in response
to a threat. Do you is this eat or play? I asked?
If this is you eating, I bet all all those memories disappear after a
while digested, then you wouldn't remember what this is. Oh, what it
does. But you do, don't you. I remember tapping the gun for
emphasis. There was a long pause, but I can't remember. Why did
it respond? Could it talk? If you're just playing, then you you
might remember that this thing is loaded, I continued, and you might know
what it does. You saw what happened when he used it. You heard
it a shorter a pause. We stopped circling. I gripped the weapon tighter
and stepped forward advancing. If this was a consumer and it worked in any
way like we do, it would absorb and convert what it fed on into
some sort of nutrient. But if it was just collecting for some reason,
then it would have this archive of thoughts to recollect from. That was my
reasoning. Or maybe it was just clever. Maybe it was just as clever
as I was. I made my way back outside, even in the newly
fallen snow. I managed to find what remained of the path I'd made when
I first got there. I walked backwards down the path, my rifle readily
aimed at something I didn't want to build the trigger. If it misfired or
I missed, I was dead. Just having the means of defending myself was
enough to keep it away for now. I think it had left some sort
of toxin in me. Despite not being anywhere near me, I still felt
the effects of it. I kept falling into this sort of fugue state,
getting turned round and loosing grip of where I was going and why. At
one point I was just standing there, gawking at the dark as my rifle
thumped to the ground. But there in the dark, a memory surfaced,
the same memory I'd felt back in the cabin. Thought to my dad taking
me fishing. Back then, we'd worn rubber boots, and instead of snow,
there was mud. It was still deep, and I had to walk
the same way that I did in the snow. Maybe that's what triggered the
memory to begin with. I tried to keep that image in my head,
the anticipation as we gathered our bait, learning how to tie a proper knot
getting the correct measurements for the distance between the hook, the weight and the
bobber. I could almost hear the spinning fish line as the red and white
bobber sailed across the lake. Just holding on to something I knew I couldn't
forget was all I needed. It became this sort of bed rock keeping me
from completely losing my mind and focus. I could keep going, holding on
to something I knew to be true. It was a backstop keeping me from
losing track. I grabbed the rifle and pressed on as I did. I
remember something rustling the nearby trees, retreating into the woods. By the time
I had made it to my car, the tocsin had completely taken hold of
me. At that point I had little to nothing to hold on to but
for a few cherished memories. I crawled into my car, locked all the
doors, and tucked myself into a fetal position in the back seat, still
clutching the rifle. My body didn't know how to react. I was hot,
cold, wide awake, and deeply unconscious. All seemingly at random,
I would lose my sense of object permanence, bobbing my head back and forth,
completely forgetting what I was doing and what was even happening. At one
point, something made the passenger door creak. Maybe someone tried to open it.
Luckily, all the doors were locked and I had the keys. I
remember laying in the back of the car raising the rifle. Then there was
a pause, a long one. Something made me shake my head It made
me angry and afraid, very afraid. He left me with this sense of
a rabbit being stared down by a pack of wolves. I had something it
wanted, something it deeply valued. Again, this creature is just nothingness.
I can't recall what it looked like, or if it was even a physical
being. From context, I think it could talk. I think it said
something to me that I didn't want to hear, And to this day,
when I think of it, my mind just conscious. These are the worldly
horrors, teeth, skin claws. But I didn't lower my rifle, not
for a second. I didn't try my luck, and I didn't challenge fate.
And by the time the sun rose, it was gone, and with
it went the sweats, the confusion, and much of the memory voids.
First thing I did was check the shotgun shell. Turns out it was already
spent empty. That leaves a lot of questions, uncomfortable ones. If that
thing was just collecting, it would have known that I couldn't hurt it.
If it knew that, why did it let me go? Did I trade
it something? How would I even know? But if it was just feeding,
then how did it know to stay away from the rifle. I have
managed to put this story together piece by piece. Some of my memories are
still a bit touch and go, but this is the most complete retelling I
can make. I've tried to fill in as many blanks as I can,
but it's hard. I kept the journal. I think I still have it
somewhere. I showed it to my boss, but it was a weak comfort.
The client eventually ended up choosing another sight, leaving us in an awful
position. Needless to say, that trip didn't get me promoted. That happened
years later. Yeah, I still worked there, same firm. I get
the feeling that this thing didn't just make people forget things, it made people
be forgotten too. Despite all my efforts, not a single person I've met
or talked to can remember anyone ever hearing anything about the people who used to
live here. Even the cleric of the municipal office kept forgetting I'd even made
the request to inquire about the land to begin with. That might have just
been laziness, though, but I get this feeling that I'm missing something.
Even though I've wrapped my head around most of this and most of what happened
out there, I often get the feeling that I lost something in those moments
when everything in the world feels uncertain and half true. I look back at
that day with my dad, I listened to the spinning of the fishing line.
But here's the thing. This is what bothers me. This is what
made me want a post to kind of save this for posterity, like a
journal of my own hidden by my own fireplace. Lately, I can't remember
what my dad's eyes look like. Am I just forgetting or is something forgetting
it for me? My hometown of Cedar Creek, Colorado, had a woman
who everyone loved to hate. Her name was Miss Gatlin, and she was
both my elementary school's janitor and the escapegoat for all unfortunate events around our town.
The Cedar Creek elderly despised her for having a son out of wedlock,
and the town parents scorned her for giving sets On too much freedom, a
parenting style which had supposedly led to his death at the hands of our town's
eponymous river. As for the children of Cedar Creek, we didn't care at
all about social conventions or parental negligence, but we all agreed that Miss Gatlin
was an ugly lady, and that was enough to warrant our cruelty. My
best friend at the time was a curly haired menace to society named Isaac,
who, by fifth grade had established himself as a ringleader amongst the neighborhood boys.
He did his best to inconvenience Miss Gatlin, though his pranks did little
to rattle her. If we spread rumors about a poor hygiene just within ear
shot, Miss Gatlin didn't bat an eye. If we released bugs inside a
janitorial closet, she'd calmly sweep them outside. If we stuffed rotten food inside
a locker, she'd clean it out quietly and without complaint. Our usual tricks
never worked on Miss Gatlin, and all of us unimaginative kids were stunt by
how to best the woman whose job it was to clean up of all kinds.
In my last year of primary school, Hannaka fell a week and a
half before we were dismissed for winter break. All of the Jewish children thoroughly
enjoyed showing off their gifts to the rest of us, who had to wait
an eternity for our presence. Thanks to kimpossible spy kids and totally spies,
every kid in Cedar Creek was obsessed with espionage, so Isaac's gift of a
spy tech kit for kids made him even more popular than usual. Most of
the kit was cheap plastic junk, but there was a small spy radio that
seemed very well manufactured. It consisted of an earpiece and a button sized microphone
that was supposedly capable of transmitting audio up to a radius of five miles.
Isaac, myself, and the rest of our crew spent most of the week
before winter break running around town and testing the capabilities of the device. The
audio quality was surprisingly good, although the airpiece of microphone could only be separated
for about three miles before the sound became too distorted to understand. It was
a novel concept for a few days, but after a while we grew bored
of playing walkie talkie. Isaac wanted to use it for its intended purpose surveillance,
and he had the perfect target in mind. On the last day before
winter break, Isaac and I glued the button sized device to the back of
an old brooch we had found in his sister's jewelry box. We covered it
up with a strip of velvet and then glued on the pin and catch,
and by the time we were done, you couldn't tell anything was amiss.
We put it in a small white box, which we put in my backpack
for later. We determined that I would be the one to deliver it,
given Isaac's reputation as a prankster. After school, I found Miss Gatlin in
the staff breakroom. She barely looked at me as I walked into the room.
I noticed along the far wall of the breakroom a wall of cubbies,
each one marked with the name of a staff member. All of them were
filled with gifts and letters, presumably from parents or other employees at the school.
All of them, that is, except one. You can't be in
here, kid, miss Gatlin said to me in a gruff voice. I
know. I saw my backpack onto my stomach and fished around for the box.
It had gotten a little banged up in my bag, but I figured
she wouldn't really care. I procured it and held it out to her.
But I wanted to give you this before the break She stopped packing up,
turning fully towards me. For a long time, she just stood there,
staring suspiciously at the box. Setting her bag down, she took a few
steps forward and grabbed the box out of my hand. She gave it a
slight rattle and then opened it slowly. When she saw the brooch, she
gingerly took it out of the box and turned it around in her hand.
Then she paused again, looking between the glittering fake emerald and me. It's
not new, sorry, it used to be my mom's, I told her,
going off the script, Isaac and I had conceived to add more authenticity
to the handoff. She doesn't wear it anymore, but I thought you might
like it. Miss Catlin kept staring at me, her expression unreadable. I
half expected her to chuck it into the garbage bin in the corner of the
room, but to my relief, she gave me a single nod. Thank
you, she said, and pinned the brooch on to a cardigan carefully,
like it was a precious gem and not some cheap hunk of plastic. I
gave her a smile that she did not return, and then she shewed me
away. Isaac was waiting for me in the woods outside school. I flashed
them her thumbs up, and he slapped my back twice in congratulations. He
pulled the earpiece out of his backpack and held it between us. I put
my ear next to the speaker and was delighted when I could hear movement.
The sound was slightly more muffed now by the velvet backing, but the audio
quality was still really good. We heard the sound of snow crunching under Miss
Gatland's feet as she walked herself through the woods home. We listened giddily for
a few minutes, then raced back to my house to celebrate our success with
hot chocolate. Since we had the attention span of two ten year old boys,
we forgot about our triumph until just a few minutes before Isaac's mom came
to pick him up. When I remembered, I pulled out the earpiece,
which we had decided would live at my house since it was closer to Miss
Gatland's and listened more than last year, but not as much as the year
before last. What do you think about that? Do you like it?
Can you feel it? I see me personally, I've loved it since I
was a little girl, and falls so prettily. What the heck is she
saying? Isaac gasked me as if I had any clue. The better question
in my mind at least, was who the hell was she talking to.
She had no kids or husband and didn't have any friends. As far as
I knew, I don'no. I said, she's talking about snow. I
think, though, the question can you feel? It seemed an odd thing
to ask anyone. We sat there listening to a talk for five minutes straight.
I'd never heard Miss Catlin talk that much in my life, even though
we'd seen her most days since I was only five years old. Looking back,
I'm not entirely sure what we had expected, but it certainly wasn't a
monolog of that length. We strained our ears listening for another voice, but
heard nothing. Maybe she is Guido forensic. Isaac volunteered. I had no
idea what that was, but I trusted his authority. His mom showed up
to take him home, and I turned the speaker off to walk him outside.
After that, every once in a while, I would turn the speaker
on and listen. It seemed that no matter the time, be it early
in the morning or late at night, Miss Catlin was always talking. She
talked about all kinds of things, everything from clothing to stocks, to the
weather to politics. Sometimes she prayed talking so quickly and quietly that I could
only make out one out of every five or so words. She apologized often
and spoke constantly of a promise. Sometimes when I turned on the speaker,
all I heard was sobs, and sometimes the conversations were so strange that I
couldn't make heads or tails of them. A young woman smiled at me to
day at the grocery store. Isn't that just the sweetest thing? I felt
like It's been so long since some one smiled at me like that. Yes,
I know she was just doing a job. Probably it doesn't even know
my name. Eh. Oh, how hard this has been, how lonesome.
But I am so very close to the finish line. I won't break
my promise now. A few days before we returned to school, Isaac and
I made the trek over to a house in an attempt to figure out who
she was speaking to. I'd seen a house a few times before, and
each time I was taken aback by how small it was, isolated and weathered.
Her home stood at the edge of the southern woodlands, on a line
much plot of land, half of a street, with very little through traffic.
I remember standing on the side of the road with Isaac staring at the
little shack like house, which must have only had room for a bedroom,
a bathroom, and maybe a tiny kitchen. There's no way anyone else lives
there, Isaac said, after a while of standing and staring. We were
too far away to peering in through the windows, but we were also too
afraid to venture any closer. She's either a witch or she's just some sad,
ugly old lady who went crazy from having no friends. Isaac got bored
quickly, so we left not too long after that. After we had made
our way part way down the street, something compelled me to turn around and
give the house a final look. When I did, I saw the unmistakable
shape of miss Gatlin standing on the porch, staring in our direction. I
turned away and grabbed a hold of Isaac's arm. She's watching us, I
whispered to him. His eyes grew wide. Damn, he said, Should
we run? No, that'll look suspicious. Let's just keep walking. We
walked until we were out of eyeshot, and then we ran all the way
home. I'm not quite sure what spooked us so badly, but for some
reason, even when I was back in the safety of my own home,
and I couldn't shake the feeling of eyes burring into my back. And soon
they'll all be coming back. It's hard seeing them sometimes, knowing my Oliver
I was among them once. Sometimes I think I see him. At least
it'll get easier soon, thanks to you. By the time we went back
to school, my friends had grown bored of the spy gear. I volunteered
to return Isaac's speaker, but he said it was practically useless now since we
couldn't retrieve the microphone. Surprisingly, missus Catlin continued to wear the brooch every
day. It was always pinned to a non work clothes, so the only
time she was unbogged, as Isaac put it, was when she was in
her janitorial outfit and my school seeing a guard the brooch so carefully made me
feel kind of bad? Was that the only gift she had gotten for Christmas?
Was it the only gift she had gotten in the past decade. Maybe
she wasn't a witch or crazy. Maybe she was just lonely and had learned
to cope by talking to herself. Months passed, Isaac and company finally coming
to terms with the fact that they would never get the rise they were looking
for. Out of Miss Gatlin moved on to terrorizing the curmudgeonally old man who
lived across from Cedar Creek Elementary and was always yelling at kids for one reason
or another. I was happy for Miss Gatlin. One day in March I
found her sitting on a bench at the edge of campus during lunch. I
took a seat next door, not expecting much. She took one look at
me, then fixed the gaze back and a sad looking sandwich in her hand.
What do you want, she asked, without looking at me. Nothing,
just wanted to sit here at the sandwich. We're not friend's kid.
I know you don't have any friends. That's right, she nodded. Maybe
one day, though, I said, and to my surprise, she laughed.
I didn't realize she was capable of laughing. She looked at me properly
for the first time in our brief conversation, and I noticed that she was
smiling. It was an unpracticed smile, but a genuine one. Yeah,
she said, maybe one day. Miss Catling pagged up and headed back to
the school building. After that, she left a bag of mini oreos on
the bench next to me. I think she did it on purpose. I
grew accustomed to checking up on her every now and then, listening to her
conversations with herself. Sometimes it almost felt like she was talking to me.
Looking back on it now, I realized what a little villain I was,
and what an immense invasion of privacy I was committing. I wish that I
could take it back now, especially considering what happened next. Friday, May
seventeenth marked the ten year anniversary of Oliver Gatlin's death. I kept an eye
Miss Gatlin throughout the day, but she didn't seem any more dejected than usual.
Maybe things were finally looking up for her. In any case, although
I hadn't checked in on her for a while, I decided that evening to
see how she was doing. My parents were gone for the week and I
was only allowed to stay at home alone if I stayed inside the whole time,
so I had nothing better to do. Not long after sunset, as
I lounged on the floor of my bedroom, I turned on the earpiece.
Miss Gatlin was talking to herself as always, but there was something strange about
her tone. She sounded more excited than ever. Almost there, almost there,
almost there, She repeated those two words over and over until at exactly
eleven forty four pm, she let out a sound that I understood years later
to be a cry of triumph. It is done. It's done, Dark
Angel, Thank you, thank you. Ten years of solitude and it was
worth every second. Now Angel, bring him back, Bring him back to
me. What was she on about? Now? Were those song lyrics or
something? I strained my ears listening for another person out of habit, but
of course there was only Miss Gatland's voice. After a moment, her cries
of happiness faded, a voice taking on her confused tone. What do you
mean? No, I that can't be true. I kept my promise.
I followed every rule. I let no one in, kept no companions,
made no friends. I kept my wish a secret, as you told me,
my angel. I I sat up slowly, the building, terror in
her voice, putting me on edge, even from miles away. And then
she asked the question that still haunts me to this day, what do you
mean? I had an audience. There was a moment of silence, and
then the sure fire sound of the velvet backing of the brooch being ripped away.
I could hear a breath sharper and clearer than ever before. As she
repeated a single word, no no, no, no, no, no,
no, no no, she withdrew for the microphone, her rapid breaths
replaced by what sounded like a front door being thrown open with a bang.
There was no more noise from the microphone. I remember standing up in my
bedroom, not quite understanding what had just happened, and not quite knowing what
to do next. Something told me that I should go downstairs and make sure
that the doors were locked. So I tore myself to manup and forced myself
down the stairs to the dark first floor. I made my way around the
whole house, checking the doors and windows. Once I was done, I
just stood there. Somehow I knew she was coming and that there was nothing
I could do to stop it. I thought I was hearing the wind,
but as it grew louder, I realized I was hearing wailing. I heard
it long before I saw her, that god wrench and cry, that sound
that I had previously heard only pale imitations of in movies where her mother loses
a child. Standing in the darkness of my living room, I watched the
sprint from the tree line towards my house. Her mouth was wide open,
her eyes glazed over, and her body dressed in a white nightgown. She
looked and sounded like something out of my worst night terrors. I dropped to
the floor and crawled away from the window, taking cover behind a couch.
Why she howled, her moaning voice rising and falling as she ascended the steps
to my front porch and slammed as against the door. Why. I needed
to get to the phone, but the house phone was right next to the
window, and I was petrified. She hit the door so hard I was
afraid that the hinges would give way. How could you do this to me?
I climbed a hand over my mouth. She couldn't possibly know for certain
that I was in the house, could she? The origin of the wailing
shifted as she rounded the wrap around porch, the heavy knocks of a fist
against the door giving way to the thudding of her shoes and the wooden porch
floor. I stuck my head around the couch and saw no one at the
front window. But when I looked at the side, I saw a face
hovering inches from the glass. I screamed at the top of my lungs as
a fist came into contact with the glass, shattering it. I was so
horrified by the rain of blood speckled glass that I almost missed the sight of
the shotgun scabbard strapped to a Torso certain I was about to die, I
screamed at her to go away, to leave me alone, and she screamed
right back at me, asking me questions I didn't understand. Dogs had begun
to bark at the commotion, and my next door neighbor's porch light turned on.
Please just go away, I shrieked as I finally found my footing and
raced to the phone. I grabbed it from its holder and started the type
nine to one one as I decided whether or not I should risk running up
to the neighbor's house. When I looked at the broken window, though she
was nowhere to be seen, the wailing had rescinded, growing fainter and fainter
until I couldn't hear her at all. I stood there dumbly until the sound
faded entirely, my hands shaking. She was gone, I was sure of
it. Should I still call emergency services? After that moment, I heard
another fainter sound and recognized the statugy audio immediately as the transmission from Isaac's spy
gear. I raced upstairs, still clutching the phone, and grabbed a speaker
from the floor where I dropped it. I pressed it against my ear,
listening to the faint sound of a familiar voice. I hope this was worth
a kid, it said, calmly and coldly. I hope you and your
friends can laugh about this. I heard a bang, and then I heard
nothing at all. It took two weeks for the police to find her body.
Her final resting place was deep in the woods, under a thick shroud
of junipers, not far from the banks of Cedar Creek. As her face
was mutilated beyond recognition, her body was identified by the shotgun lying beside her.
They say that although she was covered in enough blood to entice every animal
within a three mile radius, her corpse was untouched by the beasts. Even
the insects seemed hesitant to feed, and the fungi slow to grow upon a
body, as though even the lowliest creatures feared contamination by the lonely woman in
the woods. They did not find a brooch on her person. I used
to work with an independent towing company in near Saint Cloud, Minnesota. We
mostly operated near Wilmart, South Center, Tomscogg, and Glenwood. I usually
did roadside assistance and recovery. Out in these parts you get a surprisingly large
share of vehicles that are just abandoned in the middle of nowhere. I know
it's a common side to see rusted outrex by the side of the road,
but if it wasn't for guys like me, you'd see three times as many.
So I got this call about a ross bucket that had smashed into a
stop sign and been left by the roadside. I was called in for the
pickup. It's not fun heading out in the dark as the rain clouds roll
in, but that's even more reason to get it done. Accidents happen in
the dark suck. Someone could get hurt. It took me a while to
get out there not a lot of cars on the road. I turned on
my warning lights and stepped out, keeping my earbuds in while listening to my
work playlist. I was sort of conditionally training myself to only listen to country
on the job and rock on my spare time, thinking I could powerl off
my way into some kind of work life recognition thing. Once I got out
of my truck, I could immediately tell something was off. I'd gone down
that road before, and I'd never seen a stop sign anywhere near it.
It was a straight road. Why would there be a stop sign? The
current question was this old beetle. The paint had peeled off years ago,
and half the interior was either rotten or torn out. There was algae halfway
up the wheels, with tufts of grass sticking out of the suspension. This
thing wouldn't run in a hundred years. Hell, you could barely get it
to roll at all. I was perplexed. There was no way someone was
driving this or crashing into anything. Someone had dragged it up there for one
reason or another. Turning my attention back to my truck, I almost choked
on spit. I counted no less than five people by the roadside, staring
up at the flashing warning lights. Five people, all different ages, there
this strange look of absolute adoration on their faces, slack jawed and unblinking.
They didn't seem to mind my presence. They were just there for the lights.
I looked at them for a moment. These were the people that had
dragged the car up, no question about it. Hell, some of them
had muddy hands and boots. Still, I thought about saying something, but
figured I just get my phone out in case someone wanted to cause trouble.
I locked my truck, not taking my eyes off these people, and tried
to get on with my job. They didn't seem to mind. They just
stood there, their eyes wide and black, staring at the flashing warning lights.
It was so eerie. I walked around that car, constantly checking over
my shoulder. I was waiting for one of them to burst into a sprint
or scream, but nothing happened. They just stood there, not a sound
or a word, heavy breathing in unison. I thought about filming it,
but honestly, I had to get out of there. I scooched the fallen
sign off the road and prepped the wreck. Through all of it, I
got this worried chill creeping up my spine. Whenever there was a sharp noise,
a rattling chain might set them off, or a creak of metal.
I didn't know what these people's deal was, so I didn't know how unpredictable
they were. As I finished and got ready to move out, I threw
her final glance back at them. My heart skipped a beat when one of
their eyes, yes, a singular eye, turned to me. She was
probably in her forties, with the kind of face that just screamed exhaustion.
As a second eye slowly settled on me, there was this bubbling unease in
my stomach. Something about her was just inhumane. It didn't feel like meeting
the eyes of a fellow Minnesotan, or even a Homo sapien. This woman
was something else, some other. I was about to get back into my
truck when she opened her mouth and spoke. Look at me, she said,
I did. I could not do it if I like staring down a
predator, keeping it obey, I had to look at her. Of course,
there was a plan to it. I didn't notice the two men sneaking
up on me from the other side of the road. I have a hard
time retelling this part. It's burned into my thoughts. But it's not like
a good burn. It's like a scab, and I just hate poking at
it. The only word that I can use for it is that it frightens
me, not just because of the violent implications, but because I now know
firsthand just how frail I am and living being. Hands grabbed me and I
was pushed up against the side of my truck. Some guy in his fifties
and look like a girl in her late teens, both insanely strong, with
a kind of grip you might expect in a wild animal. They were clinging
to me like their life depended on it. And yet none of them said
anything, no noise, no words, just huffs and unblinking eyes. Even
then, as my hands were pushed up against the cold metal, they weren't
even looking at me. They were still looking up at the warning lights.
The one who had spoken came around. She faced me and held something up.
It looked like one of those old box cameras with a crank on the
side. She turned it on with a metallic clunk, blinding me with a
powerful and warm light. She slowly turned the crank on the side, like
a nightmare's jack in a box. With every click, something would block the
light for a split second, effectively making it flash. She turned it faster
and faster, blinking turned into a strobe light. I can't explain what I
felt. It was like something filling my stomach, like my body was contracting
into itself, trying to make me shrink. I became so hyper focused on
this one blinking light coming out of that awful black box. I didn't even
notice that they let go of my hands, or how they all gathered around
me, how they watched as I had this mental seizure. I couldn't move,
I couldn't look away. My mind was just filled with this clicking noise,
resetting every impulse that came across my mind. I should run, Click,
who are these people? Click, I'm in danger. Click. I
couldn't finish a single train of thought. I just stood there, as transfixed
to that box as they'd been to my warning lights. I don't know when
I passed out. Could have been seconds, could have been minutes. All
I know is that I woke up by the roadside hours later as a passer
by tapped me on the shoulder. You're right there, they asked, you
hurt. I shook my head, trying to adjust my eyes, they still
burned from the light. I don't know, I said, I honestly don't
know. I called my boss, telling them what had happened, explaining why
I hadn't answered any calls. I also gave a statement to the police,
explaining what little I could to a very understanding man. It didn't make sense
to them, or me for that matter. Nothing was stolen, nothing was
vandalized, just people attacking people for seemingly no reason. The officers seemed sorry
to hear it, as if already apologizing for what they wouldn't be able to
do. I didn't see them until much later, under very different circumstances.
I was put on sickly for a couple of days to get back on my
feet, but at that point I didn't even know what I was feeling any
more. Coming home, I couldn't concentrate. Everything just felt off. I
could barely keep myself focused on the most minute task. I forgot my cooked
rice and the stove. I put down my phone in the middle of a
phone call. I left the tap running. I kept getting sidetracked, like
there was something vital missing in the back of my mind. This continued on
and off for a couple of day. I vividly remember how I tried to
stream some stupid reality show, but I kept forgetting what I was watching.
I didn't dare use my car or go shopping. I walked, and even
then I had to look down at my shopping list every few minutes. I
remember this one time when I tried to take a shower, I left the
water running forgetting to turn it off, just like with everything else. As
I finished up and stepped out, I flipped the light switch. But that
switch is this really sensitive thing, and I accidentally clicked it twice, making
the lights flash. That sent a wave of warmth through my body, the
kind of relieving warmth you get from stepping out of the blizzard and into a
living room. I always familiar and welcome, as if this was what I
was supposed to feel like in a simple wayed me. For a moment,
I felt like myself again. I ended up standing there for about twenty minutes,
just flapping the switch on and off, on and off. I pressed
it until the click of the switch started to sound like the click of the
black box, until time started to slow, making every click seemed further away
no matter how fast I went. And when I looked up at myself in
the mirror, I could see that my eyes were completely black, as alien
as those I'd seen that night. I could picture myself as her, exhausted,
unblinking and lost to the world. It scared the hell out of me.
I shut my eyes and tried to keep them closed, but every moment
away from the flashes, the clicking, it just it drained me, like
being stuck in the middle of nowhere has a blizzard slow he picks up.
I could feel myself growing distant, colder, slower. I twisted and turned
in my bed, trying to focus on something, anything, Mississippy. I
mumbled, spell Mississippi. I got all the way through it the first time.
By the second time, I made it about halfway through. By the
third, I could start, but didn't really know what I was doing anymore.
By the fourth I was upset, and I didn't even know why.
At some point in the night, I heard sirens, not too distant either.
Something in me tickled, it wanted me to get up. The thought
crossed my mind that maybe, on some level, I just wanted to see
the flashing lights. I walked up to my bedroom window and put my hand
on the blinders. I knew I shouldn't engage with it. I kept trying
to fight myself. The only thoughts that met no interruption with those aimed at
the sole purpose of seeing those lights. I kept trying to convince myself to
step away. But it wasn't that easy. Just a peak, I thought
to see if it works. There were three police cars and a fire truck,
all with their lights on. I was mesmerized. I saw it in
such great detail. It was as if time took a step back just to
allow me to bask in the excitement. I could see every color shift,
the intensity of moving back and forth between lights. It was like an exploding
mini cosmos, filling my head with warmth and excitement. I stared blankly at
it from my bedroom window. It was absolutely gorgeous. They were only there
for a moment, but that was all I needed. I was left breathless,
my face burning hot and my eyes watery. It felt like I'd run
a marathon. Hell, even my knees were weak. I had a short
moment of clarity as the cloud in my mind parted. I had to keep
the momentum up. I had to stay sane. Running to the kitchen,
I got my flashlight and all the spare batteries I could find, spilling an
entire drawer of miscellaneous bits and bobs onto the floor. I had to stop
a few times. The flick lights, which a boost. By the end
of the night, I found myself standing in the middle of a dark kitchen
with my flashlight followly planted under my face, clicking it on and off,
on and off. I had to I stopped sleeping after that. Sleep gave
me nothing, but that constant flash kept me going. It allowed me to
keep my head clear enough to make some sort of plan to fight it.
Not that I really wanted to, but because I knew in my heart of
hearts that it wasn't normal. They'd done something terrible to me. But for
the moment, I had to find a way to live with it. I
touk out my Christmas lights and set them to blink intermittently. I taped it
all up along the walls of my bedroom, right next to my computer.
Staying reasonably lucid, I managed to search the web for whatever this could be,
but I couldn't find a thing. I kept trying to spell Mississippi in
my head, the sort of test whether I was thinking straight or not.
More often than not I could make it through, but even a short lapse
of flashes would make me drop a few letters. But yeah, I didn't
get very far in my searches. I've never heard of something like this happening
to anyone, and neither did anyone else. Seemingly soon, I was just
al typing between my dark desktop and a full screen white page, on and
off, on and off. I could tell I was getting weaker. The
lack of sleep betrayed me. My hands were shaking from a lack of food.
After a while, I realized I couldn't just have lights around me.
I needed to indulge to stare drowning them. I was getting desperate. I
wondered the streets, hoping to see or hear something they could give me that
rush back. I even thought about starting a fire, just to get a
fire truck to come by. That's when it hit me, that's probably what
those people had been doing all along. They set that rusted car up and
lured me there, maybe solely for the flashing lights. It's hard to admit
my low point. I was standing with my phone in my hand, about
to call nine one one to claim I was being attacked, anything to get
the flashing lights and sirens. There was that screaming voice inside of me demanding
that I do it, and a whisper telling me I was destroying myself.
I had a choice go down this path and find myself a slave to impulses
or to surrender to the cloud in my head. I chose the latter.
I tossed my phone and wandered off slowly, forgetting where I was going or
what I was doing. I only vaguely remember the sky turning dark and rain.
There was a car honking as they raced past me, and a worry
driver asking me how I was doing. Without direction or purpose or solution,
I just kept going somewhere. It's a strange feeling, finding yourself lost in
your own darkness. It feels like viewing your life through a keyhole, catching
only bits and pieces with a barrier in between. And in the end,
my efforts were useless. There were others there on my side of the keyhole,
other people just as lost, wandering around. Some I remembered from that
awful night. Others weren't even human. It's not like I saw them,
more that I sensed them. Then it all came back to me. I
was standing in a clearing in a forest somewhere off in the middle of nowhere.
There were others there, but I didn't care to look at them.
All I could focus on was the middle aged woman standing in front of me.
With a blinking black box and a crank that clicked. Out of all
the lights I'd seen, this was the most beautiful. It was like getting
sucked into a deeper understanding. The clicks grew further apart, and every moment
was stretched in that bliss. Every blink of the light was like days passing
by in the heaven of my own making. There was a benevolence there,
someone caring for me, like a barm on my soul. Then it stopped
back in the darkness. A woman held out a phone as the box stopped
clicking. Ambulance, and that was all she needed to say. We made
it to the parking lot out of the old male, the old dead eye
for those who live round here. There were six of us, but none
of us said a word. There was this young woman who'd got in a
hold of her phone, and she didn't seem to know what to do.
She looked up as if coming out of a daze. Oh he's doing this,
she asked, Are we really doing this? There was a solemn moment
when none of us knew what to do. Finally, there was an older
man who stepped forward. He looked the young woman up and down and turned
to the rest of us. No one said anything. What was there to
say? He considered it, then leaned back, putting all his weight behind
it. He proceeded to strike her across the eye. She dropped to the
ground. The phone rolled out of her hands. The others proceeded to beat
her within an inch of a life. It was absolutely relentless. It's like
she stopped being human to them. I called the emergency services hell. I
told them exactly what I was seeing, a group of people brutally beating someone.
Meanwhile, the others kept attacking her. None of them looked away or
even frowned. I saw blood spatter hit one of their faces, and they
didn't even blink. Maybe they wanted to be convincing, or maybe there was
no space for a second guesser. Neither way, we would have fulfilled our
duty. She was barely breathing when they stepped away. The man who initiated
the beating held out a hand towards me, demanding the phone back. I
handed it to him. I was too new to be entrusted with something of
that value. I wanted to speak, but I didn't. Looking down at
the broken body, gasping for air, it did something to me. It
put a suggestion in my head that maybe this wasn't okay. It made me
question myself and made me think. I remember standing there watching the blood pooling,
when I considered can I spell Mississippi? I couldn't. Despite following this
path and succumbing to it all, it was still taking something from me that
was more apparent than ever. It was this subtle reminder that yes, I
was going down the wrong path, I was doing something wrong. I wasn't
fixing myself this way. There were sirens in the distance. I could see
the top of the tree line changing color. They were coming. The others
hid by the side of the road, their eyes going dark with anticipation.
I joined them, hesidentally, trying to make up some sort of plan.
When the flashing lights came around the bend, it was like drinking a glass
of ice water on a hot summer's day. It was a soothing breeze,
nothing like what I'd experienced from that black box, but a substitute, a
damn decent one at that. The colors bathed us and we just soaked it
all in. Except now I had this feeling that it just wasn't right,
like I was being used and manipulated, like there was something in those flashing
lights looking back at me. Eh oh, someone whispered eh. The others
joined a choir of hushed voices. At first it was just a noise,
but I could see what they were getting at. It was a fitting name,
the thing that drew us in, giving us a peek at something else.
Ao the end of the sea u Ao. There was an ambulance and
two patrol cars. By the time they got to the beaten woman. We
were all stepping out of the woods together. Someone was yelling at us the
stop. There were threats, demands, pistols drawn, then a click.
Looking to my left, the woman with the black box had returned. At
first, flashing light in their direction was all it took to distract them.
I couldn't see it properly from my angle. The others flocked to it like
moths, but I hadn't fallen under its spell yet. Instead, I looked
to the broken woman was barely conscious. The paramedics didn't have the time to
take her away. One of them was hiding in the back of the ambulance,
while the other just stood there staring at the woman with the black box.
We all moved forward slowly, a few whispers, a declaration of faith.
No, not faith, just worship. It isn't faith when you've seen
it, when you know it's there. The others joined into a circle,
two police officers as well. All of them stared blindly into this captivating light,
this invitation to behold, to step outside yourself and see this hidden blessing.
I tried to look away. I tried so hard. I tried holding
my eyes shut, but I couldn't. I wanted to look deeper and disappear
into that light, to let it burn me hollow inside and out, to
be free home. I heard it calling. I can't describe it, but
I heard it even with two hands covering my eyes. A clicking noise from
that box bore its way into my head and forced an electrical impulse of light
inside my eyelids. No matter, I thought, maybe it would be wonderful
in the end. Looking back at it, it's so unreal. The thoughts
are still there, but it's like they're not even my own. I tried
to recap a movie you saw twenty years ago, and you know, hadn't
it been for one stupid thing, I would never have made it here.
One of the officers, the one who drew a pistol, had dropped it.
I slipped on it. When I was drawn in, I fell hard
torso first, knocking the air out of my lungs. There lying on the
side, I noticed I was lying parallel to the beaten woman, looking at
one another from across the parking lot. I was reminded that there was still
time. Looking at her, I didn't see AO. I just saw the
pain of what was the com if I didn't tear myself away. So I
did. In one quick swoop, I picked up the gun at my feet,
held it up, pointed forward, and looked. I pulled the trigger.
The moment I did, my eyes fell upon the black box. I
could see it before me, every flash of light from that box, stretching
into days weeks. I could see the bullet travel across the sky in my
mind like a celestial body traveling across the stars. I could drown my thought.
What in this world of ale eternally seen and loved, wanted? Needed?
I gave up completely, just like the others I did. It gets
the hell out of me to admit, but experiencing that thing for the third
time was the final snap Luckily that one bullet found its target. The box
shattered into pieces. The inside of it was nothing but a powerful bulb and
a little hand cranked fan. That was all there was to it. As
the pieces spread across the asphalt, there was a moment of realization, like
something was torn out of my head. The world started to spin, as
if passing by a million miles per hour. I got the worst case of
vertigo i'd ever experienced, Barely able to breathe from the nausea. Collapsed to
the ground, exponging their empty stomachs. I saw someone having a seizure.
The man who'd beaten that girl half to death crawled up to me, took
my handgun and fired every single round into the woman who held that black box.
Maybe he too saw his chance to be free. It was absolute chaos.
I was sick. I was accused more flashing lights, but all they
did was worse in my nausea. I got my blood pressure checked. I
had to spend a night in jail. I think I could barely think straight.
Most of my time was past leaning over a toilet bowl, emptying my
bows over and over. Some of the stuff that came out just didn't make
any sense. When the hell did I eat a sunflower? And why the
hell was it blue? The beaten woman didn't accuse me, if anything,
sheared me. Maybe she saw that lastedtch effort for what it was. The
man who shot down her capter was charged, but I don't know for what.
After many considerations, I was eventually cleared. One of the officers on
site was actually the one I'd initially talked to when I was first assaulted.
So maybe you felt bad about not listening the first time. Maybe you've seen
the articles. They called it a prank gone wrong. I think it reached
like page eight of a national paper. This was a couple of years ago.
I wanted to put this the paper to remind myself that it actually happened,
and that my feelings and fears are still valid, because to this day
I get this sort of Havlovian response whenever something flashes. It's like my body
goes into shock immediately trying to get something out of me. Hell, it
made me throw up once when I was photographed for work. I think the
box was something called a raskin. I've seen a few of them circling online,
some sort of replica of an art piece by some old turn of the
century author. I just wanted to put this out there. When I found
myself looking for answers and there was none to be found, I felt so
goddamn alone. At least now there is one of us talking about it.
It stares in at me, pale fingers pressed against the windows glass. It's
raining hard now, and with a light from inside hitting it, I can
see that the water running down from its skin has a milky cast to it,
though the rain above doesn't seem to have. Looking back to its face,
I see it smiling at me now, rows of gray peg teeth,
too many teeth, and behind them a gray tongue twists in that greater dark
as it tries to speak or laugh without sound. I have the odd thought
that it's eaten too much candy and gone rotten inside, and it's no wonder
for all its strangeness. The thing outside looks like a little girl, at
least until you get to its eyes. They are black and cold and pitiless.
And though it's probably my terrified mind playing tricks, I could swear there
was something moving behind those eyes worms, and that they are what is really
looking at me and wanting to get in across the house. I hear Allison
start to scream. My stomach lurged when my phone lit up and I saw
it was Allison. I didn't want to fight anymore, and I didn't think
talking about it again would help anything. I told her I wanted to break
up two weeks earlier, and while that initial conversation had been sad and hard,
I thought at the time that it resolved things, and had even hoped
in time we could be friends again. But the next day she called and
wanted to talk again for hours, and the day after that and on and
on the conversation never changed. I felt like we needed to move on and
find people that we'd be more compatible with long term, and she wanted us
to stay together. The longer I've resisted giving in, the angrier and more
bitter she got. By the end of the week, she was accusing me
of chee, of lying to her, of using her. I told her
none of that was true, and I tried to stay patient because I knew
she was hurting and not her self. But eventually I had enough. I
told her last week that I didn't think we should talk anymore for a while,
and I hadn't answered her daily texts and call since then, and that
was my initial impulse this time too, but she kept calling. Normally,
it was only one call or text and she was done for at least a
few hours. But when she called the fourth time in a row, I
got worried something was really wrong. Taking a deep breath, I answered the
phone, Travis, are you there. Yeah, I'm here. It's everything
okay. You've been blowing up my phone? Yeah, No, everything isn't
okay. I I did something stupid. I didn't really mean to. I'm
not trying to excuse it, but I didn't really think it would work.
And then I want to take it back, and Alie, what are you
talking about? I'm coming over. Just don't open the door for anyone.
Keep the doors locked, and please don't open the door until I get there.
Lock. I'm really tired and I don't Travis, I need you to
listen to me. This isn't about us. If you don't listen to me,
I'm worried you might die tonight. And then she was gone. I
stared at the phone for a long time, my mind raising as I went
back through everything she'd said and tried to make sense of it. What was
she talking about? Was she crazy or on drugs? Was she dangerous?
It hadn't sounded like she was threatening me exactly, but people got weird sometimes
so when they were upset or hurting. Still, not that Alison didn't have
issues, but I didn't think she tried to hurt me. I jumped when
I heard the thumb at the back door. My first thought was that it
was Allison, though I didn't know why she'd be going around back walking through
the house. I turned on a couple of more lights, her frantic warnings
echoing in my head. She sounded really scared. But all the doors were
locked, weren't they. That's when I heard the knob on the back door
start the turn, heart hammering. I turned the corner and leaped to the
door, slamming against it as I turned the dead bolt and then twisted in
a knob lock as well. What the hell was I moved of the door
and over to the window, looking out the back porch. It had started
raining outside, and it was late enough that it was fully dark, so
I couldn't make out anything but a small, dark shape leaning against the outside
of the door. It looked like a short adult or a child. The
ear pressed against the door, as though listening for me on the other side.
What the hell? It lifted its head away from the door as it
caught side to me. A moment later. It was framed by the window
and the interior light, pale and terrible and smiling as it mouthed something silent
to me with its pale lips and dark tongue, looking into its black eyes.
I started to back away, but that's when I heard Allison screams and
pounding from the front door. It sounded like she was trying to break down
the door, and maybe she was running back to the front to the house.
I started to make out some of what she was yelling, Let me
in, now, it's coming. I took the time to look through the
pea hole in the door before opening it. It was Alison looking wet and
crazy and terrified. Under other circumstances that might have given me pause, but
at the moment I didn't feel much different. I threw open the door,
and she jumped in, ripping the door out of my grasp and slamming it
shut behind her before turning the locks again. They one of them followed me,
Oh God, have you seen the other one? Yet I stared at
her other one. What there's two of them? Her eyes wide and slightly.
It's already here too, isn't it it? Damn it, damn it.
She yelled and recalled from the door. As the knob began to rattle.
She looked at the door and back to me. Do you have any
guns? Frowning? I shook my head. You know, I don't look
what is this all about. If this is some kind of frank, it's
a really bad thing to grabbing the side of my face. She started crying
softly. It's no prank. I thought it was nonsense. She trailed off,
and she looked around the room. Where did you see the other one?
I swallowed. She's at the back door, nodding. She took my
hand and pulled me further into the house. We need to go somewhere without
windows your office. That door locks. Pulling my hand free, I stopped
in the hallway. Wait stop, I'm not going anywhere until you tell me
what the hell is going on. Grimacing, she grabbed my arm. There's
no time for that. We need to barricade a room until we can get
help. I shook my head. Screw that. If this is so serious.
I'll call nine one one right now. I pulled out my phone and
held it up. You sure you want me to do that? She pulled
out her own phone. Sure, go ahead. If I can't get you
to listen, let's at least get the cops in the way. I don't
have signal. I always have signal here. I looked back at my own
phone. It was the same. And while I went ahead and tried calling
twice, there was no dial tone or ringing. Looking up, I met
Allison's worried eyes. Damn, fine, let's go in there and you explain
to me what the hell this is. And after we were in my office
and the door was locked and barricaded with a bookshelf, that's exactly what she
did. I I haven't been dealing this whole breakup thing. Well, I
mean, damn, you know that, right, And I know I've seemed
crazy. And then I started accusing you of stuff and sitting down in my
desk chair. I snorted, yeah, like cheating, which I never did.
She grimaced and nodded. I believe you in my head. I do.
But the last few days I've been really hard, and I've been really
sad and bitter. I'd normally talk about stuff like this with well you,
but since that wasn't working and you had enough of my crazy, which I
totally get, but just saying, I went online and started reading different forums
and stuff where people were mad at ex's, got cheated on, wanted revenge,
all kinds of stuff. I felt like it was helping, just seeing
other people in that kind of pain, you know, Alison slumped down against
the wall. I never posted anywhere, never gave anyone anything, but somehow
I get this email a few days ago. No pictures or links, not
selling anything that I could tell, just a few paragraphs describing well. He
called it a revenge ritual. I st editor a ritual. The email called
it the night Hunt. I know how it sounds. At first, I
thought it was just an odd story or some viral marketing thing. But nothing
else like that came, and I couldn't even see the address it came from,
and it, well, it stuck with me. I tried to push
it out of my mind, but I kept opening my phone and rereading it,
and it didn't sound hard to do, and I didn't expect it to
do anything really, but of course I didn't. I thought it was more
like a cathartic thing, like when people burn someone's stuff after they break up.
She looked back up, her expression haunted. I didn't know what it
did was real. I felt my stomach twisting at the fear and dread in
a voice. What did you do? She buried her face in her arms.
It said, to take a box. You tied it up with a
bow, but before you close it, you put in something from yourself and
the one that wronged you. That and some paper, and then you then
take it to as close as possible to the place where you were wronged and
bury it. It has to be done at sunrise the next night. The
person that wronged you, they get punished. I felt my pulse rising higher.
Punished how Alison shook her head without looking up. I don't know.
It was all nonsense, right, I didn't think it was going to work.
So what you hired someone to punish me? She did look up.
Then, no, you're not listening. I didn't really want to hurt you,
okay, I was just mad and sad about everything. Yes, I
got the box and did the thing. I went and buried it. Well,
well, you told me we were done being together. But after that
I worried about it. I kept worrying about it all day. So after
work today I drove back out there to dig it back up. I felt
dumb, but I felt guilty too. She let out a bitter laugh.
But then the rain came. You know how people drive in the rain.
There was an accident and I was stuck in traffic for over an hour,
and by the time I got out there it was almost dark. I ran
out to get it. I was feeling more scared about it now, though
I didn't know why. That's when I saw them. I leaned forward who
She gave me a hollow smile. Those children, a small boy and girl,
dressed in dark clothes and with super pale skin. They were digging up
the box. Dropping her eyes, she went on. I wanted to approach
them, but just looking at them, even from a distance in the dark,
I was terrified. You could tell there was something wrong with them,
not just how they looked or moved, but something more. It was like
radiation coming from them, how wrong they were. So I hid and I
watched. They opened the box, took out the note and the two things.
A necklace he gave me for my birthday. A couple of years ago,
and a hat of yours you always wear around the yard at my place.
The boy kept the necklace and gave her the hat. The next moment,
she was gone, just kind of a weird shadowy blur like the film
got sped up in one spot and the boy he turned and looked at me.
She paused for a moment, looking around. Do you hear something?
I hear banging far away? Oh maybe it's my imagination. I strained to
listen for a moment, but all I heard was the wind and the rain
lashing the roof of her head. No, I don't think so. But
so what happened with the boy? She shuddered. He just started walking towards
me, like pepular pure something. I don't know. I just knew I
needed to get out of there, and I needed to warn you. Letting
out a long breath, I looked down at my phone again, Still no
signal. So what who are they? Alison shrugged. I don't know they
are people. I don't know what they are, just that she's after you
and he's chased me all the way here. Standing up, I felt fear
and anger bubbling up, but I tried to keep my voice even, well,
what did the damn email say about them? Just pretty much what I
said. It was more flowery and all, but it was basically just this
is a ritual to screw someone over screwed with you, to rebalance things.
It said that. I think I shook my head, and you just do
this not knowing what it's going to do or how it might hurt me or
you. Even she scowled at me. I said, I messed up.
I said, I didn't know it would really work. Why would I think
it was real? Some magic nonsense? But as soon as I did it,
I knew something wasn't right. When I saw them, her expression broke
and she started tearing up again. God, I really am so sorry.
I didn't know. I'll figure out a way to fix this. And I
was torn between wanting to comfort her and yell at her. How the hell
would you? Damn? I sighed and looked at the ceiling. What was
this note? You said something about a paper you bought in there? What
was that? Allison sat up more. Yeah, it was just like a
line of French. I copied it from the email, but I didn't know
what it means. I stared at her. Geez, just writing stuff down
and punning it in this damn thing, and you can't be bothered to google
it. Her expression began to turn red. Stupid, I know, but
it was just a few words, and I didn't want to know I was.
She shook her head again. I was afraid if I knew too much
then I wouldn't go through with it, and I thought I needed it.
I spread across my chest because you, at least a part of you,
you thought it might be real, didn't you. She was crying more freely.
Now, Yeah, okay, maybe I did. I'm ashamed of it,
and I'd take it back now if I could. But but yeah,
using you made me hate myself, and that made it feel okay to hate
you too. Somehow, even in the middle of everything going on, that
managed to hurt me more than I'd expected. Turning the stair at the wall,
I asked again, do you remember what the note said? Like what
the letters or words were? I think so it was like oh la tree
or unlatere maybe like that, but a little longer. I searched my memory
from a year of college French. Suddenly my mouth went dry. Was it
unlowd? I heard her sucking a breath. Yeah, that sounds like it.
What's it mean? Resting my head against the wall, I didn't try
to hide the fear of my voice anymore. It means one or the other,
I jerked back as I felt a dull thought in the wall. Did
you hear something again just now? She nodded, Yeah, me too.
I think it's in the access door under the house. It comes open in
the wind sometimes. Alison frowned at me. Well, even if they go
under there, there's no doors into the house, right, and they don't
seem to be coming in on us yet. I don't know if that's a
rule of theirs, like vampires or something. I looked around the room.
No doors, but there's a duct work under there, and every room has
vents. My eyes landed on the vent in the corner of the room,
just as Allison began to scream. There were tiny, pale fingers poking out
of the vent holes, stealthily pushing the cover free so the path inside with
us would be open. I ran over and stomped on the vent cover with
disgust, trying to crush the fingers between the lines of the metal, but
they were already gone. Hearing another cry, from Alison. I turned to
see another vent in the far corner, pushing up slowly. Get it.
We have to keep them out. She did stand up then, and at
first I thought she was moving to block the vent, but instead she went
to the bookcase and yanked it a side enough to open the door partially.
What are you doing? Stop that? She turned and looked back at me,
even as she slid through the gap. One or the other. And
it's not going to be you. I ran across the stopper, but she
was already gone down the hall, and by the time I opened the gap
enough to get through, she'd made it to the front door and yanked it
open. The storm came rushing in, wind and water and darkness, and
for a moment I was terrified she was just going to leave the door open
and let them both in. But no, she thumbed the knob lock and
went out, slamming the door behind her. I ran to the window and
looked out, watching a mute horror as she walked out into the rain.
Take me, it's my fault. Take me. And then she was gone.
It had been, like she said, a dark blur, like a
patch of the night, went fast, and then slow again. One moment
she was shaking in terror, calling out into the dark, trying to fix
what she'd done, and the next she just wasn't. Less than a minute
later the rain stopped. That was a month ago. There's been no sign
of Alison since, and though I did report a missing after discovering a car
outside my house, I haven't told anyone about what really happened. They probably
wonder if I did something to her, but they'll never find any sign of
that or anything else, because there's none to find. Well that's not entirely
true, because on that back window, with a thing that looked like a
girl stared in at me, there is a permanent stain of ghostly white where
her hand was pressed and dripped down. Seeing it now instead of running down,
it looks like it's grown up a warped pale fungus, or a twisted
evil tree, grown up from the ground of the park where me and Allison
first kissed and where I told her we needed to end, or maybe from
the dark earth nestled in the shadowed corners of the Human Heart. I thought
about calling the police, but I haven't figured out if I'm losing my mind
or if my entire family has lost theirs. Maybe I'll wake up soon and
this will all have been a terrible nightmare. For context. I'm an only
child and the only grandchild of my last living grandmother. A couple of weeks
ago, while at work, I received a phone call from my mother informing
me that my grandmother had taken a fall in a kitchen. Mom said that
my uncle Loo was with her and already in the ambulance. Paramedic suspected she
had a fractured hip and somehow sliced open her foot. She was edated due
to the pain, but was otherwise responsive and fine. I immediately asked if
I should meet them at the hospital, but Mom said, no, no,
don't leave work. I'll update you once I know more, so I
waited. I loved my grandmother, but she's probably the most stubborn woman I've
ever met. She has a home remedy for just about anything and loathes seeing
doctors, so I'm sure she won't be fun to deal with and fine to
a hospital bed. It doesn't help that Grandma absolutely refuses to use a walker
or cane despite her debilitating age, and will not leave a house to live
in a nursing home six months ago. Uncle Lou moved in with her to
help out. Not that he said it out loud, but a voice suspected
that he did it more for the free rent. With nothing else to do,
I sat at work, distracted and waited for a phone call from Mom
with news. That call didn't come through until long after I'd gotten home and
was brushing my teeth for bed. Apparently Grandma was awake now and doing fine.
She would need surgery for the broken hip, but they were able to
get the laceration on her foot stitched up and bandaged. I asked to speak
with her, so Mom help the phone up to Grandma's ear and I told
her I loved her and we're come see her once she was discharged. The
hospital only allowed two visitors, and Mom and Lou refused to leave her side.
Hi, honey, Grandma said through the receiver. I'm okay, but
they won't let me leave. My Mom's voice in the background exasperately explained that
she needs surgery, so they tell me. She houghed, I'm fine,
Anna come see me when I'm home and we can play cards. I smiled,
promised the visit and said goodbye. She was discharged the following week and
sent home. The hip replacement was successful, but she developed a nasty infection
on her foot. Between the two ailments, Grandma was confined to a bed.
Once she was comfortable at home, Mom gave me the okay to come
over, so I made some chicken dumplings and sat on the chair beside her
while Mom spoon fed it into Grandma's mouth. There you go, mom,
my mother encouraged. As Grandma sipped the broth off the spoon, I could
tell Grandma was wildly out of it. I had been expecting an earful about
having to use a bedpan, but due to the cocktail of narcotics and antibiotics,
she merely grumbled in annoyance at Mom's un loose, constant hovering. For
what it was, she seemed in good spirits, if not exceptionally tired.
After about two hours and two small soup, Missaps and I got up to
leave. Mom saw me to the door. She'll be fine, Anna,
Mom reassured LU and I had taken care of everything. Don't worry. I
left, feeling optimistic that my grandmother would be back to a spit by herself
relatively soon. That visit with a soup was over two weeks ago now,
not long after Mom took a leave of absence at work and hauled up in
Grandma's house with Uncle Lou. Each time I called, Marmon gave a new
excuse as to why I shouldn't visit. Risk of infection, flu season,
fatigue, bowel issues, you name it. At first, I accepted these
excuses at face value. They seemed legit. But I can't even get Mom
to put Grandma on the phone any more. I made more soup yesterday and
dropped it off, but Uncle Lou met me at the door and said it
wasn't a good time, but he'd make sure she got it, and we'll
always let her know when you call, he assured. I noticed there was
an intense floral, yet antiseptic scent coming from the doorway. Your mom won't
stop cleaning, he explained. Frustrated, I called and complained to my father
on my way home, but he defended Mom. Like always, She's always
been like this, he reminded me. They're extremely close, your Mum and
Grandma and Lou. Well, this just seems like classic Lou. You know,
this is the first time they really had to face the reality of their
mother's age. They're just protective and scared to lose her. I figured he
was right, and I hung up the phone, feeling a little less unsettled.
On Grandma's eighteen ninth birthday, however, I decided I wasn't going to
take no for an answer. I would go over there and give her the
present I purchased for her, a new thriller by a favorite author. I
arrived at the house in late afternoon and noticed all the blinds were closed.
Being that it was a warm spring day, it was common for Grandma to
have all the windows open and drapes open, letting in both the sunlight and
fresh air. I knocked twice on the front door, but no one came.
I knocked again, no answer. I tried the knob, but the
door was locked. I paused for a moment, considering that maybe no one
was home, maybe Grandma had a follow up with a surgeon. But both
cars were in the driveway, so I knocked again louder. The door opened
a crack, and a foul odor filtered out, nearly choking me. Mom,
I exclaimed, when a face appeared on the other side of the door,
what is that smell? Seeing it was only me, she opened the
door another inch. The infection's gotten worse, but we're monitoring it. Should
I call an ambulance, I asked, in a panic, pulling my cell
phone from my pocket. No, no, Anna, she quickly reassured me.
We have it handled. I stopped by and picked up refills o he
antibotics earlier, and we've been on the phone to a surgeon. Relieved,
I took a deep breath, but the smell was so overpowering. Mom.
That smell is ungodly. Why don't you open the windows? We tried,
she said, but she got so cold. Mom shrugged and didn't move.
Can I come in? I asked, attempting to look over her shoulder into
the dim house. I really didn't want to go inside due to the smell,
but if Grandma wasn't doing well, I wanted to see her. I
don't think it's a she murmured. Where's Uncle Lou? I asked upstairs in
his room. Her voice was reassuring, with the smell turned my insides.
Surely a smell like that could only mean bad things. I pushed the door
open, and Mom protested, just come back another day when she's feeling better.
I promise you that Lou and I have this under control. In the
kitchen, the odor was strong, but mixed with the smell of bleach.
I couldn't tell if that made it better or worse. At least, let
me see her and give her a birthday present. Mom looked down to see
the rapt gift in my hands and sighed. Of course. She said,
gosh, I'm sorry, we've just been so preoccupied. I'm sure she'll love
it. At that moment, Uncle Lou came trotting down the stairs and smiled
at me. Anna, Mom will be so happy you're here. I looked
at my mother incredulously. She was staring at her feet. Now what was
going on? Uncle Lou continued down the hall, and I could hear him
as he opened the door to Grandma's bedroom. Mom, you have a visitor
for your birthday. The smell of the house was searing my nostrils, but
I wasn't going to let Grandma know. I was repulsed by it. Mom
led me down the hall to Grandma's bedroom, instructing me along the way to
put on a grave face. I blasted a smile across my face as I
turned the corner into the room. Grandma was sitting up in bed, and
Uncle Lou had taken a seat on the mattress beside her. His body obscured
most of the but I could see her feet where they stuck out from under
the quilt. The toes and her right foot were black with crumbling toenails and
festering saws. The sheets under a heel stained yellow from dried puss. Lou
was prattling on to her, but Grandma didn't respond. Isn't it nice for
Hannah to come see you on your birthday? Mom? Goodness nose, you've
been through a lot this month. She has a present for you. He
turned expectantly to me, his profile moving just enough to reveal Grandma's form where
she sat up against the pillows. Grandma's dull, lifeless eyes stared straight ahead
at the wall, unblinking and glazed over. Her eyes were crusty and a
jaw hung wildly agape, with sagging lips revealing a gray fuzz that had begun
to coat her tongue. Uncle loopatted her leg while Mom hastily pulled the quilt
back down over her feet. I barely heard as Lou explained how cold she's
been from the infection. He picked up a tissue from the box on the
nightstand and began dabbing at the corner of her mouth. She doesn't talk much
due to the heavy sedation she's under, He explained. I couldn't tear my
eyes away from the pallid gray skin of Grandma's face and how it was starting
to sag in ways that had nothing to do with her rage. Flies buzzed
overhead, and Mom picked up a fly swatter and began swatting wildly at them.
Goddamn flies, she mumbled, They won't leave her alone. One of
the flies circled Grandma's face and landed in her open more. Uncle Lou merely
shooted away. She's been sleeping sitting up like this for the past week or
so, Mom explained, patting Grandma's now covered feet. The pain is just
too much for her to lay down. We tried, but her muscle spasm
and she can't move. My knees were shaking, and I could all but
back out of the room, reaching and pressing myself against the opposite wall.
Vomit creeping up the back of my throat. It's okay, Anna, Uncle
Lou said from inside the room. I know it's hard to see her in
such a state, but that's why your mom and I are here to take
care of her. We agreed we wouldn't let her go back to that hospital.
They've already messed up so much of her care. You saw a foot
and what the doctors did to it. How a hospital could let Kangarine go
unnoticed is beyond me. Mom agreed. We've been sponge bathing her regularly,
airing her feet, and changing the bandages frequently. It seems to be helping,
right, Mom, She asked, squeezing grandma's I tried to put my
head between my knees, but the smell was so overpowering. Mom stepped out
in the hallway and touched my shoulder. I re oiled. Oh, Hannah,
I am sorry. This is why I didn't want you to come over.
The gangrene smell is hard to tolerate, and I didn't want you to
have to see her like this. Not knowing what else to do, I
pulled her into the kitchen and said, in my most steady voice, Mom,
why didn't you tell me Grandma has passed. Mom's face didn't change.
She just looked at me. What are you talking? About Anna. She's
right there. You saw her? Yeah, I did see her, I
agreed, pointing at the bedroom down the hall, where the smell was so
strong that I was close to passing out. But Grandma is dead, ma'am.
You know that right, She's very obviously passed away. Mom's eyebrows narrowed
as she pursed her lips. Listen, Nana. I get that this is
hard for you. Hell, it's hard for all of us. But if
you're saying this just to hurt me, it's not going to work. Stop
being a brat. Your father is on the way over with a birthday cake.
The room began to spin, and I needed to get out of that
house immediately. I tossed the present on the kitchen table and grabbed my bag,
fleeing out of the kitchen door and into my car, where I took
deep gulps of fresh air. I could see my mom at the large bay
window looking out at me. She looked angry and upset, but quickly turned
and walked away. I pounded the steering wheel, yelling obscenities other than an
open casket funeral. I had never seen a dead body before, let alone
one that had clearly been dead for weeks, but Grandma was undoubtedly dead,
and my mother and uncle were staying in that house with the corpse, washing
it, feeding it, and talking to it like nothing had changed. I
threw open the car door and vomited all over Grandma's neglected shrubs. By the
time the dry heaves kicked in, Dad's car pulled in the driveway. Ay,
sweetheart, he said, as he opened his car door. See me
kneeling in the grass. Are you all right? Your mom called and told
me you were quite upset? Dad, She's dead, I choked out,
pointing at the house. Who's dead, he asked, his voice worried Grandma,
I shouted, Grandma is dead. Mom and Lou they're just sitting in
there with her body. Anna, calm down. Your mum mentioned you're in
hysterics and talking nonsense, talking nonsense. What are you saying? I choked
out. Go look, Dad, I swear you'll see. She's dead and
Mom and Luke have lost their minds. All right, he said, holding
up his arms in surrender. Let me grub the cake and I'll go inside
and see what's going on. Just stay here, okay. I collapsed back
in the front seat of my car. Blasting the ac in attempt to flush
the smell of rotten flesh sh out of my nose. It felt like an
hour before the front door opened again, and Dad calmly walked over to my
driver's side window. Hi, Anna, bear, he said, cautiously.
Did you see her, Dad, You saw her right, sh Anna,
he said, placing a hand on my shoulder. Calm down, Yes,
I saw her, and she's very sick, but otherwise alive. You Mom
and Lou had taken good care of her. What I nearly screamed? Come
inside, Dad said, going for the door handle. I quickly logged the
car. Dad threw up his hands in frustration. Just come inside, Anna,
Uncle Lou is getting Grandma into a wheelchair and we're going to have some
cake. He glanced at the front window of the house. Ah, see
there she is. I glanced out to see my grandmother's face at the window,
her dead eyes looking blankly out over the front yard. Riga Mortis had
made it so a body couldn't sit in the wheelchair just right. Even from
a distance, and through a pane of glass, I could see death in
her eyes and the shocking gape of her mouth. Her face looked even more
twisted now, as if she'd taken a last breath in a tremendous amount of
pain. For what made me scream in abject terror was that her cloudy pupils
seemed to turn ever so slightly toward me. I threw the car into drive
and sped out of the driveway, ignoring the shout to my father and uncle
Lou bursting out the front door. I didn't dare go home, where I
was sure my father would follow. Were they right? Was she actually alive?
It's not like a check for a pulse or air and a lungs before
I took off. I didn't touch her at all. Could it be me
then? Was either one having a nervous breakdown? I don't know what to
do now, absolutely terrified. Rest of all, when I close my eyes,
all I see is my grandmother's rotting face.