As I sit here, at my cold and lonely desk, I find that I must tell my story to someone-- anyone. It's not right that I keep the horrible screeching and cawing of wild animals to myself, the scratching at my window in my study. It seems now that every branch tapping against that cold glass surface in the wind and rain makes me jump. The shadows stretching across the large fur rug strewn across my floor, making the stuffed animals seem to come alive, their glass eyes glinting in the light of the fire. I must write for what little sanity I have left. I have kept a small journal which I hope will help track what horrible things I have done.
* * * * *
12th of January, 1887
I found myself in another alcoholic stupor. I can hardly keep myself from kicking my leg under the table for what a stupid mistake I have made. The mix of absinthe and opium seems to dull the senses. Dr. Lindenbrok, the man I have been interning for and a good friend of mine, has taken advantage of my gullibility and stupidity to sign me on for his own thesis report on test animals. So far he has been rather vague about what we are going to perform on said animals but I doubt it could be anything good.
In other news, I have acquired a kitten from one of my friends. I think I shall name him Felix; it suits his friendly nature and speckled orange pelt. After my meeting with the Doctor, I found myself in a slight hangover, and the effects of having a feline companion to keep you company throughout the haze I seemed to be stumbling through was quite comforting.
17th of January, 1887
Dr Lindenbrock showed me to his laboratory today, which Oxford has lent him along with grant money. I listened with only slight interest as he chattered excitedly on how the test subjects will be given a dose of Rabies, and then watched to see the effects- we will attempt to find a cure. In theory, at least, I don't believe that this will work, but he shows me a few slides and I think to avoid confrontation I will agree to what he says.
Felix has gotten bigger now, today he seemed intent on trying to gnaw on my fingers as I tried to sleep until I pushed him off the bed. He was less than pleased with this and so far has taken up to mewling until I get him a bowl of cream. With this, I depart.
4th of February 1887
We started testing today. The horrible crying of the caged animals still sends shivers down my spine as I write. Before today all I and another intern have been doing was studying the virus under a microscope and jotting down notes. It doesn’t seem right having to hold down a living animal by the scruff of their neck and forcefully inject a killer virus into them. So far none of the animals have shown any symptoms, but rabies is slow. I’m beginning to regret this contract with Dr Lindenbrock already. I feel like I’m already getting attached to some of the test subjects.
I think Felix knows I am disturbed; I'm watching him pace lithely around my study like a caged tiger, his fluid amaranth tail flicking in anticipation. I have found that scratching behind his left ear triggers an interesting reaction; he winds up purring louder than any cat I have ever heard. His sound matches that of a steam engine even! It is a very comforting in the absence of other human life in my apartment. I find that shots of absinthe and the scratching of a cat's head mix quite well.
13th of February, 1887
The virus finally has set in in Test Subject 17. The previous have either died from shock or the virus set in too quickly. We even tried to test our vaccine before proper development on Test Subject 4. I had to look away as the horrible screeching form stilled my breath and chilled me to the bone as the subject's abdomen imploded, leaving a bubbling froth to drip from the subject's open mouth. My stomach still churns when I think of the wide-eyed terror of Subject 4's last few breaths before his brain was finally deteriorated. I am not entirely sure of the Doctor though, he seemed to watch intently as the horror was occurring, jotting down notes excitedly as the intern had to empty the contents of his lunch into the wastebasket.
Felix has grown more, spending an unusual amount of time pacing or sitting at the windowsill looking out towards the Ashmolean museum, where most of our research has taken place. Perhaps he is watching the magpies which flutter around and caw hollowly to the chill English wind. I’m beginning to doubt I’ll ever see the sun again with this miserable weather; it’s been absolutely dreadful.
12th of December, 1888
It has been almost a year, since the university funded the professor's research, and little progress if any has been made. I fear that the research grant we have been given is slowly being drained for less than intelligent reasons, mostly liquor, to quell the Doctor's disdain for failure. It seems we are also low on test subjects, the few we have left being less healthy or the elder ones, which are not as likely to provide an adequate result. I'm not sure how to comfort the doctor in his mood swings, although I did offer him a meal and informed him of my liquor cabinet, which he accepted eagerly. I'm not entirely sure if I feel as grateful a host as I think I should be though.
Felix on the other hand, has doubled in size, and other than the odd tail twitch, pacing, and looking out at the Ashmolean, he seems perfectly healthy. I’m afraid that I may have been overfeeding him as, well, he’s beginning to get rather tubular. Perhaps in my exhaustion I forget when last I fed him and continue to do so until he seems satisfied- the devil doesn’t know it’s not healthy. But, he still mewls like a small kitten and I find it hard to resist handing him something; I’m afraid I’ve gone too soft for this cat.
15th of December, 1888
I'm writing the night after Doctor Lindenbrok left my house from the supper I fixed for him. Admittedly I pride myself on my cooking, even if I had a very large orange tabby twining itself around my legs while I worked. The reason I am writing is not for the cooking, though. It was for how the professor acted around Felix. He seemed intensely interested around the orange tabby, never talking directly to me and always looking around for where Felix went, throughout the night he continually asked me questions as to where and how I had gotten a cat. I merely said Felix had turned up on his own, not wanting to tell him more than that because of his odd behavior- was that the truly right thing to do? I suppose it’s too late to regret my decision now.
The more alcohol the professor imbibed in, the more talkative he grew talked as to how the tests were going to fuel the grants and science as a whole. He spoke of things so darwinian and ancient- almost chilling if it weren’t so intriguing. He spoke of “if we could cure beasts of their burden, then we may cure man of all ills- this is merely a children’s project compared to what might be done when we succeed”. He spoke of many evils, most of which I deemed to be the rantings of madness and perhaps absinthe. The professor told me how he could make man immortal- to which I responded that he was a madman. I would not have him ranting about such insane subjects in my apartments, but he went on. His voice grew louder and more excited as he continued; saying that when man had nothing to fear, there would be no need of religion. Nothing to hold us back from what can come next. Men would become gods. After he reached the culmination of his tirade, we sat in a long moment of silence, I watched ill-at-ease as the professor paled. I think he realised how much information he had given me. Standing, we said goodnight and though I offered to take him back to his house, he politely declined my offer and left in a drunken stupor.
18th of December, 1888
Felix is missing. I don't feel like writing much due to my alcohol content and my current state of mind.
20th of December, 1888
I fear the worst for my dear Felix. I have looked everywhere for him and yet he is unable to be found. I am also beginning to hear rumors of the neighborhood strays beginning to disappear. The professor has been relatively silent, telling the other intern and me to take a break- though the last time I saw him he had a bandage around his hand and looked nervous. A thin sheen of sweat across his brow as we talked about his research paper. He replied rather sharply that perhaps I should take a break, that the subjects were probably just getting to me- and to save my nervousness I should take a rest. I don't know if I should trust Dr. Lindenbrok anymore though; he seemed rather odd throughout our conversation, the muscles in his face twitching ever so often, pulling up a sneer or an eyebrow.
21st of December, 1888
I still haven't found Felix, but the other Intern, Edgar, and I have devised a plan to see if the Doctor is all right and what he has been so secretive about. There is a window on the second story which leads directly to the testing room. With a ladder, Edgar will be able to get in and see how the Doctor is doing. Neither of us knows if this idea is even sane itself, but we both worry about Doctor Lindenbrok and we must know he is safe.
Felix is still missing, and it seems every time I see a shadow under my door or through my window I always look up in a falsity of hope.
23rd of December, 1888
It's a miracle I can keep my pen straight while writing because my hand is shaking so terribly. I am not entirely sure who or what we saw in the laboratory. It seemed to be the professor, but salivating and screaming at us when Edgar first came through the window. At first he seemed perfectly normal, turned away from us and looked like he was checking over the test tubes. But when Edgar pried open the old window he turned quickly. Professor Lindenbrok was neither man nor beast now, the muscles in his neck twitched, making his head shake and convulse as he opened his mouth and emitted the most horrifying laugh I had ever heard; it was wet, half-drowned by the saliva from the virus but still carried throughout the auditorium. I felt Edgar try and back away but wind up slipping and with a scream he fell into the room as the rabid man began to shamble towards us, his feet turned inwards and the maniacal laughter still booming throughout the large room. The violently twitching figure charged at Edgar as I watched helplessly through the window. Lunging forward, the Doctor’s mouth distended into a wide hatch to which he latched onto my colleague with. Pulling back his head with a jerk, he torn out Edgar’s throat and left the bleeding hunk of flesh dribbling between his jaws as crimson mixed with the foam which dripped from his mouth. After he was finished and my colleague lay lifeless on the tile floor, what I believe to be Doctor Lindenbrok turned and stared at me viciously with bloodshot eyes and a foaming mouth. The vermillion pool at his feet growing swiftly, as the doctor chuckled darkly again through the bile in his mouth. My blue eyes meeting his bloodshot hazel ones for an instant.
I let instinct take over and I ran. I heard the professor scream and run after me... but fear kept me swift and I made it back to my apartment. Every noise of unknown origin, every shadow cast by the fire- I always think of the convulsing body of Edgar as he bled out on the floor; or the Doctor and his mad laughter which echoed through the night. I don’t think it’s right to write about such things, but I do not trust myself outside of my own home to contact authorities about such an incident. I should sleep, I can just now see the sun begin its slow arc across the sky, but I don't know if it's even safe to sleep anymore. Should I find myself awake with the rabid man standing above me, ready to sink his teeth into me, I don't know what would become of me.
* * * * *
I can just now hear the maniacal laughter outside my door. Should I put down my pen and reach for my revolver? Should I end it now? I don't even know if it actually is my imagination playing tricks on me. Perhaps it's not the professor that is the mad one, but I. The half empty bottle of absinthe sitting on my desk beside me almost stares at me mockingly, the green fluid taunting me. I can still hear the screams and yowls of cats echoing painfully in my head.. I don't know what to do anymore; is there balm in Gilead? What safety do I have left but in my words, on this very paper is my sanity. Sanity which I feel could leave me at any moment in a rush of madness. Nothing is right anymore.
Goodbye,
Charles Valois, 30th October, 1889
Thursday, October 31, 2013
The Girl
The night when the girl came to him was like any other. He had gotten home from work late, cooked a frozen dinner, watched a few cooking shows, and eventually went off to bed. His brother Mark hadn’t returned his call, or the ones before that. He went into his bathroom to get ready for bed, and as he walked down the hallway stopped when he saw the picture. He had seen it so many times before, but it always had the same effect. She was standing on the couch, dressed in her Halloween costume. Maybe if he hadn’t been passed out drunk, he would have been able to help. He looked away from the picture and went into the bathroom. He wet his toothbrush in the sink and brushed his teeth, put on his pajamas, and looked at the bottle of anti-depressant and sleeping pills his doctor had prescribed him the month before. He popped two pills out of the container and swallowed them. He looked at the jar of pills, and after a few seconds popped two more, and two more after that.
With that, he got into bed. He turned out the light. As he lay, he dreamt about normal things, like his job, his mortgage, a nice person he had met at the coffee shop that morning. He dreamt normal things until in the back of his mind he heard a small voice whisper,
“Daddy, can you hear me”
He sat up straight in my bed. A girl sat at the edge of his bed. He only saw her through flashes of lightning illuminating her pale face. Her hair was black and parted in the middle, down straight. She wore a tattered dress. She was soaking wet.
“Daddy, why aren’t you listening to me”
The words echoed in his brain, and repeated themselves as if there were many voices overlapping. He blinked to make sure what he was seeing had been real. The girl had vanished, with the only trace of her visit being the wind excitedly blowing the curtains about through the open window, with a wet trail of water leading to the sill. In a panic, he fumbled around for his lamp switch. He sat alone in his bedroom, so very awake now after having been asleep only a few seconds earlier. His heart beat against his chest, hitting with such a force like it was trying to break out. He did not have a daughter. Did he? Which lead to the question of who that girl was and, if she was real, what had she been doing here? Why would she have been real, he asked himself. No, it wasn’t real. He had taken the sleep medicine to help him drift off, that must have had hallucinogenic side effects he hadn’t known about. He felt his sweaty forehead, and he realized he was burning up.
He decided to take a shower to clear his mind and try to think about something else. He went into his bathroom, undressed, and stepped into the shower. As he turned on the water, he was hit with the cold, sharp water as it slammed his spine and travelled down his body. He brushed his wet hair back from his face and looked into the little mirror on the side of the wall, watching his face. Water dripped down his nose. Was this the face of an insane person? Was he crazy? Had it been real? It couldn’t have been. As the water became hotter, the mirror fogged up until he couldn’t see himself. For the better, he thought. He was about to reach for the razor on the shelf so he could shave, when suddenly he saw something on the corner of the foggy mirror. The corner was wet, much wetter than the rest of the mirror, and condensation was appearing where the fog had been. They formed into a circle of little droplets of water, until that spot was completely clear. Then, the circle of condensation started moving down and to the right in a straight line. The line was completely clear, and he could see his reflection in the opaque line that was moving down the mirror. It was as if someone was dragging their finger across the mirror, making a drawing. But no one was there. At least as far as he knew. The line suddenly stopped and moved upward, and he realized that letters were being formed. What was trying to do this? As he watched in scared awe, the line continued across the mirror, making swirls and lines and crosses. As the lines were made, little drops of condensation dripped from them, creating little stains of clarity from the lines. The swirls and lines continued, until he began to make out two words. Suddenly the line drawing stopped. He stopped, and stared in shock at the two words written in the mirror.
“WAKE UP”
He shook with fear. What did this fucking mean? He was awake. He was awake and staring right at this mirror. As he stared at the phrase in the mirror, the lights went out, and the water suddenly turned ice cold. He stood there in the dark, cold and alone, as the water hit his bare body and carved sharp wounds into his back. A faint sound could be heard. It was a woman, but she was crying. He slipped on the tub and fell to the floor, his head hitting the wall and his bottom landing on the floor with a thud. He sat there, body in pain, shuddering as the ice cold water hit his body, listening to this ghostly woman crying, and started to cry himself. The woman’s crying got louder and louder, until it was as if she was right next to him. He didn’t know what to do, but suddenly the lights came back on and he was alone in the bathroom again. He wiped the tears from his eyes and slowly stood back up, but stopped when he noticed the razor on the floor, down from the shelf, with a trail of blood leading from the razor to the drain. He looked around his body for a cut, and suddenly felt a welt on his hip next to his glutes. As he touched it, he winced in pain, and when he brought his fingers back they were stained with blood. He put the pieces together in his mind, and realized when he slipped he must have knocked the razor from the shelf and it had cut his hip on the way down. Great. He stood up, shaking, and turned around to face the wall with the mirror. The mirror was now completely clear, and he saw his own scared reflection. His face was paler than he had ever seen it, and there was a look of true fear in his eyes he hadn’t seen in some time. But the fear only grew even more intense as he glanced below the mirror and looked at the smearing of blood across the wall, seemingly done by a hand. It was sloppy and unfinished, but he could clearly see the words “JOHN, WAKE UP” smeared across the tiled wall. Who was John? Was that him? No, his name was… Was… With a sudden feeling of confusion, he realized he didn’t remember his name. Whenever he tried to recall it, the clearly defined box in his mind where his name usually lied was a murky cloud of which he did not know the contents. But who had written the words on the bathroom wall? As weirder and weirder things began to happen, he had less and less of a reaction. His mind was numbing, losing sensation.
He decided it would be good to go back to bed. He stumbled up out of the bath, although the curtain was no longer there. As he got up, he looked at his bathroom sink, which the more he looked, the clearer it was becoming, until he could no longer see it at all. He stumbled out the bathroom door and down the hall, toward his bedroom. As he walked, the pictures on the wall slowly disappeared one by one, replaced by white. Pictures of him with other people, some older, and some younger. He didn’t know who these people were anyway, so he didn’t have much of a reaction. Had they been family? He was pretty sure he’d remember them if they were. The carpet he was walking on was slowly decomposing, too. As he finally stepped off the hallway carpet and turned the doorknob to enter his room, the last of the carpet disappeared and drifted away. He looked behind him at what used to be his hallway. Nothing was there. He was surrounded by a wall of white, with his bedroom door being the only apparent thing. He pushed the door open, and looked in his bedroom. The same thing was happening in here too. Things were disappearing more rapidly, but somehow it all felt calmer than it had. The lamp on his night table next to his bed slowly faded into nonexistence. Next his closet. The wallpaper began to curl up from the foundation, breaking into little pieces as they broke off and drifted upwards into the white sky. Soon all that was left was his bed, and white. Nothing. As his vision became groggier, he decided sleeping was the best option. He crawled onto his bed and collapsed, not fearing the darkness anymore, but welcoming it. As his eyes closed down for the last time, he could make out one figure; the girl in the tattered dress. She was sitting on the white floor. As his vision became fuzzier and fuzzier, the girl whispered one phrase:
“I forgive you.”
The paramedics didn’t find John’s body for four hours. They traced the cause of the fire to a knocked over lamp next to his bed. It had taken about thirty minutes for the bulb to heat up the carpet enough to set the first flame, but by that time he was already dead. They sprayed his body with a hose for five minutes trying to get the flames out, but even if they had done it in time it wouldn’t have mattered. Overdose was the official cause of death. The funeral was quick. Some family members came, some didn’t. Those who did came and cried. He was buried next to his daughter at the local cemetery.
With that, he got into bed. He turned out the light. As he lay, he dreamt about normal things, like his job, his mortgage, a nice person he had met at the coffee shop that morning. He dreamt normal things until in the back of his mind he heard a small voice whisper,
“Daddy, can you hear me”
He sat up straight in my bed. A girl sat at the edge of his bed. He only saw her through flashes of lightning illuminating her pale face. Her hair was black and parted in the middle, down straight. She wore a tattered dress. She was soaking wet.
“Daddy, why aren’t you listening to me”
The words echoed in his brain, and repeated themselves as if there were many voices overlapping. He blinked to make sure what he was seeing had been real. The girl had vanished, with the only trace of her visit being the wind excitedly blowing the curtains about through the open window, with a wet trail of water leading to the sill. In a panic, he fumbled around for his lamp switch. He sat alone in his bedroom, so very awake now after having been asleep only a few seconds earlier. His heart beat against his chest, hitting with such a force like it was trying to break out. He did not have a daughter. Did he? Which lead to the question of who that girl was and, if she was real, what had she been doing here? Why would she have been real, he asked himself. No, it wasn’t real. He had taken the sleep medicine to help him drift off, that must have had hallucinogenic side effects he hadn’t known about. He felt his sweaty forehead, and he realized he was burning up.
He decided to take a shower to clear his mind and try to think about something else. He went into his bathroom, undressed, and stepped into the shower. As he turned on the water, he was hit with the cold, sharp water as it slammed his spine and travelled down his body. He brushed his wet hair back from his face and looked into the little mirror on the side of the wall, watching his face. Water dripped down his nose. Was this the face of an insane person? Was he crazy? Had it been real? It couldn’t have been. As the water became hotter, the mirror fogged up until he couldn’t see himself. For the better, he thought. He was about to reach for the razor on the shelf so he could shave, when suddenly he saw something on the corner of the foggy mirror. The corner was wet, much wetter than the rest of the mirror, and condensation was appearing where the fog had been. They formed into a circle of little droplets of water, until that spot was completely clear. Then, the circle of condensation started moving down and to the right in a straight line. The line was completely clear, and he could see his reflection in the opaque line that was moving down the mirror. It was as if someone was dragging their finger across the mirror, making a drawing. But no one was there. At least as far as he knew. The line suddenly stopped and moved upward, and he realized that letters were being formed. What was trying to do this? As he watched in scared awe, the line continued across the mirror, making swirls and lines and crosses. As the lines were made, little drops of condensation dripped from them, creating little stains of clarity from the lines. The swirls and lines continued, until he began to make out two words. Suddenly the line drawing stopped. He stopped, and stared in shock at the two words written in the mirror.
“WAKE UP”
He shook with fear. What did this fucking mean? He was awake. He was awake and staring right at this mirror. As he stared at the phrase in the mirror, the lights went out, and the water suddenly turned ice cold. He stood there in the dark, cold and alone, as the water hit his bare body and carved sharp wounds into his back. A faint sound could be heard. It was a woman, but she was crying. He slipped on the tub and fell to the floor, his head hitting the wall and his bottom landing on the floor with a thud. He sat there, body in pain, shuddering as the ice cold water hit his body, listening to this ghostly woman crying, and started to cry himself. The woman’s crying got louder and louder, until it was as if she was right next to him. He didn’t know what to do, but suddenly the lights came back on and he was alone in the bathroom again. He wiped the tears from his eyes and slowly stood back up, but stopped when he noticed the razor on the floor, down from the shelf, with a trail of blood leading from the razor to the drain. He looked around his body for a cut, and suddenly felt a welt on his hip next to his glutes. As he touched it, he winced in pain, and when he brought his fingers back they were stained with blood. He put the pieces together in his mind, and realized when he slipped he must have knocked the razor from the shelf and it had cut his hip on the way down. Great. He stood up, shaking, and turned around to face the wall with the mirror. The mirror was now completely clear, and he saw his own scared reflection. His face was paler than he had ever seen it, and there was a look of true fear in his eyes he hadn’t seen in some time. But the fear only grew even more intense as he glanced below the mirror and looked at the smearing of blood across the wall, seemingly done by a hand. It was sloppy and unfinished, but he could clearly see the words “JOHN, WAKE UP” smeared across the tiled wall. Who was John? Was that him? No, his name was… Was… With a sudden feeling of confusion, he realized he didn’t remember his name. Whenever he tried to recall it, the clearly defined box in his mind where his name usually lied was a murky cloud of which he did not know the contents. But who had written the words on the bathroom wall? As weirder and weirder things began to happen, he had less and less of a reaction. His mind was numbing, losing sensation.
He decided it would be good to go back to bed. He stumbled up out of the bath, although the curtain was no longer there. As he got up, he looked at his bathroom sink, which the more he looked, the clearer it was becoming, until he could no longer see it at all. He stumbled out the bathroom door and down the hall, toward his bedroom. As he walked, the pictures on the wall slowly disappeared one by one, replaced by white. Pictures of him with other people, some older, and some younger. He didn’t know who these people were anyway, so he didn’t have much of a reaction. Had they been family? He was pretty sure he’d remember them if they were. The carpet he was walking on was slowly decomposing, too. As he finally stepped off the hallway carpet and turned the doorknob to enter his room, the last of the carpet disappeared and drifted away. He looked behind him at what used to be his hallway. Nothing was there. He was surrounded by a wall of white, with his bedroom door being the only apparent thing. He pushed the door open, and looked in his bedroom. The same thing was happening in here too. Things were disappearing more rapidly, but somehow it all felt calmer than it had. The lamp on his night table next to his bed slowly faded into nonexistence. Next his closet. The wallpaper began to curl up from the foundation, breaking into little pieces as they broke off and drifted upwards into the white sky. Soon all that was left was his bed, and white. Nothing. As his vision became groggier, he decided sleeping was the best option. He crawled onto his bed and collapsed, not fearing the darkness anymore, but welcoming it. As his eyes closed down for the last time, he could make out one figure; the girl in the tattered dress. She was sitting on the white floor. As his vision became fuzzier and fuzzier, the girl whispered one phrase:
“I forgive you.”
The paramedics didn’t find John’s body for four hours. They traced the cause of the fire to a knocked over lamp next to his bed. It had taken about thirty minutes for the bulb to heat up the carpet enough to set the first flame, but by that time he was already dead. They sprayed his body with a hose for five minutes trying to get the flames out, but even if they had done it in time it wouldn’t have mattered. Overdose was the official cause of death. The funeral was quick. Some family members came, some didn’t. Those who did came and cried. He was buried next to his daughter at the local cemetery.
Tuesday, October 29, 2013
It Has Spread
I used to pride myself in being honest. I was always big for my age, and sometimes got into accidents, but overall, I liked to think I was a pretty good kid. I got up early, went to school on-time, never skipped Sunday school.
But it’s funny what money can force even the best of us to do.
When the divorce ripped my family in half, and the cash ran out fast, my brother and I got into some pretty messed-up stuff just to start it flowing again. Though we dabbled in mugging and a little gambling, our strong suit was always robbery. We started on poorer, easier blocks, but after a year or so of practice, we graduated to a couple middle class neighborhoods. After we mastered them, we started hitting the higher-ups. Big houses, big dough, big security systems.
I guess my honesty got lost somewhere along the way.
However, now that I’m old and more than a little grey, all those forced entries are far behind me. I’ve found my honest again. Or, rather, it has found me.
I have tried to shed it once more, to shrug it off like I used to do so easily, but it appears that this time, my honesty is here to stay. So it follows by simple reason that, as a narrator, I am to be trusted. The story I am about to tell you concerns our last robbery—the one job that finally did us in—and as much as I’d like to sugarcoat it, I find myself unable to: these events of which I will speak are one-hundred percent true.
It all began on a day like any other in early spring. The sun was peeking out through a carpet of fluffy clouds, dappling the manicured lawns with jigsaw patterns of luminance. Pablo and I were crawling down the street in my pickup, doing what he called “the sweep.” We’d frequent the road a few times—surveying a few houses each way—until our eyes finally came to rest on something workable. An empty driveway, an overstuffed mail box—these were both signs of an easy entry.
“Hey, check this out,” Pablo called after our third length. He indicated with his finger a large, disheveled property littered with tree trash and thriving weeds. We usually made a point not to fool ourselves with long-abandoned houses, as they were usually void of anything useful, but… something about the place seemed to intrigue him.
After a closer look, I reasoned it must’ve been the 60” flat screen just visible through the front windows. I stopped the truck in the vacant car park, and popped open the driver’s side door as Pablo fished around in the glove box for his tool kit. “Hey, Zach,” he called without taking his eyes off the bright red box he’d liberated from its depths, “I can’t find the flashlight.” I rolled my eyes. “The sun’s gonna be out for a while.”
After a long silence, I suggested we just use our phones as a light source, to which he agreed. You know, just in case the sun happened to go out while we were inside.
When we reached the door, Pablo opened the toolbox, and retrieved his lock gun. However, after a few tries, he realized such gizmos wouldn’t be necessary this time.
The door had been left unlocked.
Pablo turned to me. Unlocked doors were risky. They either meant that the owner of the place was inside and his car just wasn’t there, or the genius had forgotten to lock up after leaving. The predicament was visible in my brother’s eyes, and I stepped back to give him some thinking room. It’d be great if the house was empty, but hitting a place with a guy inside was never fun. If he wasn’t sleeping or deaf, you either had to kill him—which I’d never been able to do—or head for the hills before he called the cops.
Pablo reached for the knob. “Let’s just take a peak.”
I nodded. That flat screen was pretty attractive.
The living room was expansive, encompassing the majority of the house’s first floor. Just beyond the television setup lay a pleasant kitchen and dining area, and a staircase which wound up a wall and out of sight. Pablo rushed to the TV, but I remember holding back for some reason. Some part of me found the kitchen more alluring. Leaving my brother to his typical dismounting routine, I strolled around the barstools flanking the island countertop, and headed for the stove. Running my hands along the smooth granite, a thought popped into my head.
You loved this feeling.
A memory accompanied the message. A fleeting image of myself as an infant, crawling along the countertops in our old family home, evading my father who would inevitably round me up and wrestle me into the sink for a bath.
I blinked away the recollections, and found tears in my eyes. Quickly clearing them, I turned to venture in search of my brother. Unfortunately, before I got far, my watery vision came to rest on the first in a string of uncertainties that now define the entire experience. You see, where the refrigerator should have been, there lay a hole. A void of dusty sockets and old wallpaper. Had someone hit the place first? But, looking back at my brother, I had to ask: Why was the television still there? Surely, the thieves would’ve made off with that if given the chance. My eyes swiveled downward, and came to rest upon the floor. Scratches rent the hard linoleum, a pale trail of marks that winded all the way from the fridge socket into a room beside the stair. A closed door barred my eyes from its interior.
To the sound of Pablo’s creaking wrench, I crept forward. The knob felt cold in my hand. Incredibly cold, as though someone had just lifted it out of a tank of liquid nitrogen.
Like a medical shot, I figured the whole ordeal was best to just run through, and get over with, before the anticipation forced me to reconsider. I couldn’t even really remember why, but I was experiencing a dramatic pull towards the room’s contents. A feeling somehow associated with the memory flash from before.
I yanked the door open before any more connections could gather.
The first thing I noticed about the room beyond was the smell. My eyes stung as rotting fruits, vegetables, and dairy products all battled for control of my olfactory glands. After I’d weathered the burns to my nostrils, my eyes followed up with a second beating.
My surroundings were hectic: a jumbled mess of papers and folders. I could tell the room had once been a sort of study, but now served as a bedroom as well. A rumpled cot hugged the grimy south wall, and an old blue notepad lay atop an adjacent nightstand. I also identified the source of the smell.
All around me lay bits of soiled food. Greenish sandwiches sat near bottles of curdled milk, wreathed in leaves of black lettuce. A large hunk of moldy cheese lay defeated within the left of a pair of loafers.
Each of these articles originated, no doubt, from the fridge… which rested on its side in the center of the room. A closer examination revealed a message, hastily scrawled upon the polished steel door. It read: “PLEASE GO BACK UPSTAIRS.”
As the cyclone continues to move west, I thought, all residents in the Ravenwood area are urged to stay within their homes until further notice. But had I thought it? I panned my vision away from the fridge, and honed in on the source of the feint report. Eventually I located a radio near the foot of the cot, and grinned as I realized it had only been the weather channel.
I had squatted to examine the radio, and in standing up, my eyes were again introduced to the blue notebook. Its pages beckoned from behind the rumpled cover, and I found myself unable to resist their pull. Acting on instinct, I snatched the book off the table and turned to page one. Only one word could be found there, written over and over again until its duplicates covered the paper. “It has spread to the lungs.” As I flipped through more and more pages, it became obvious that all were identical to the first. That same sentence scrawled again and again—a thousand times at least—was all the notebook held.
I thrust the thing back onto the nightstand and turned to leave. The former tenant of this house—whoever they were—obviously had more than a few issues.
“Zach!” I heard my brother call from back in the living room, “come here!”
I quickly complied, eager to leave the study.
Pablo had removed the TV from the wall, and it now rested face-down on the coffee table. But Pablo wasn’t anywhere near his work. I instead found him standing before the window, staring out at the unfolding rainstorm.
My mouth hung open. Where before a cloud-dotted sky had smiled down, now roiled a mass of thick black thunderheads. Thunder shattered the silence as I approached my brother. “Hey, we should go,” I yelled over the noise, “there’s a—”
“—Tropical storm coming through, I know,” Pablo replied, “I heard on the TV.”
“You turned it on?”
Another monstrous clap derailed the conversation, and left us standing in the dim natural light, staring at each other.
“Should I get the TV?”
I shook my head. “Let’s just get home before it gets any worse.”
Treading carefully over the soggy yard, Pablo and I made our way to the driveway. Once we’d reached the truck, Pablo climbed in, and I soon joined him. I fished for the keys in my pocket while he buckled in. Rain poured heavy on the windshield. Upon meeting with the key, the engine turned over a few times, then blew smoke and died. Thick blue fog curled from under the hood as it sputtered through its final moments. I pounded the wheel in frustration, but Pablo only scowled. “I’ll call a guy.” He reached for his phone, then thought twice. My eyes followed his to the road, which shone under a streetlight through a sheen of rainfall. Hailstones had joined the droplets, and I could feel the old truck popping and groaning with each hit. “Actually… Maybe its best we stay put,” he advised, “the roads’re like ice.” I thought for a moment. After seeing the room with the fridge, that house was the LAST place I wanted to go. However, the storm was going to town on the windshield, and it wouldn’t be long before the glass gave way to the ice. I eventually complied. As soon as we’d trudged back inside, I went around with my phone-light, and found some switches. Soon, I’d given luminance to the living room and the kitchen. I made a point to keep the study in darkness. That done, I met my brother by the door, and we set up camp on the living room couch. He told me to wait here until the roads cleared up, and I agreed that that was probably the best plan at this point. The far-off cracking sound of the windshield finally sighing its last punctuated our decision.
Sitting there on the sofa, I got my first good look at the ceiling. An air conditioner vent had been removed, leaving a fair-sized rectangular hole. This had been hastily covered by a white sheet, which billowed outward as new air was pumped in, and drew back as stale air was sucked out. The process produced a sound one could only notice upon looking right at the source. I remember it sounding just like breathing. Pablo sank into the cushions, and sleep took him within seconds. It reminded me of how he’d always conk out right after touching the mattress as a kid, while I tossed and turned, fighting to shut my eyes.
My dad used to get the biggest kick out of it.
To this day, I have no recollection of falling asleep, but as I did wake up some time later, I can only assume that to be true. I saw only blackness, and at first thought a lightning bolt had knocked out the power.
But rising to my feet, I found that hypothesis to be false. Through the window I could see that old street light from before, still shedding its sickly glow upon the wet asphalt. If the street hadn’t lost power, why were the lights off?
“Pablo?” I called into the dark, “what happened?”
My words earned no reply.
I felt for where he’d been before, but found only empty couch.
On an impulse, I decided to call him. The harsh backlit screen burned my eyes, though I eventually managed to key in his digits nonetheless. I lifted the phone to my ear as it began to ring.
At first, silence. And then… A feint chime from somewhere above me. Upstairs? The chime came again, and this time I was sure. My brother had gone upstairs. But why isn’t he picking up? I tried him again after it went to voicemail, but got the same result.
Two more fruitless tries drove me to stand. If he wasn’t picking up, maybe he’d hurt himself somehow. I had to locate him to see if he was okay. I marched valiantly toward the stairs, phone-flashlight in hand, yet the second my foot touched the first step, I felt my courage begin to recede. What had the fridge said?
PLEASE GO BACK UPSTAIRS.
What was that supposed to mean? Couple that with the message from the book, and you had genuine nightmare fuel. I’d long exiled my childhood fears of the dark, but as I followed my pool of weak light up those shadowed stairs… It seemed to gain back some of its old territory. I tried my brother again after I’d reached the summit, and entered a narrow corridor. His chime was closer now, a few doors away, in fact. I trailed the jubilant notes through the darkness, playing them again and again until I finally located the door. After giving the knob a good pull, I ventured into the room beyond, and poked at the ensuing blackness with my phone light. I found Pablo’s phone quickly, as its screen was still lit, displaying my calls. The device had been left face-up on the left of two nightstands flanking a queen-sized bed set against the northernmost wall. Unlike the grimy cot from before, this one was well-made, the sheets crisply folded to perfection.
Next to Pablo’s phone was another blue notebook, identical to the one downstairs, save for the writing on the cover. Where the other had displayed only wrinkled cardboard, “Dream journal” was carefully printed in sharpie. On another impulse, I picked this up, and flipped through it. This time, my eyes were met not with repetitive scribbles, but with concise, organized paragraphs. I didn’t take the time to read all of them, but there was one by the back that caught my interest. It, unlike the others, was accompanied by a picture.
The artist wasn’t a very experienced one, to be sure. The figure the picture depicted was wildly out of proportion, and the face was a mere two dots and a line.
This bizarre humanoid sat by a crudely-sketched bedside, in which lay a sleeping man whose head was entirely in shadow. Below this were written the words: “He always says the same thing.” I closed the book, and started towards the door, but a creaking sound from the hallway stopped me cold. More thumps and creaks followed the first, forming a slow chain of approaching sounds.
“Pablo?” I called into the dark.
No reply.
The thumps drew steadily closer. I backed away, only to trip over the foot of the bead and flop backwards onto the mattress. The thumps quickened as I fought to regain balance, then stopped altogether.
I breathed a sigh of relief, but chocked on it halfway through when the noises started up again. They were now dominated by a loud scrabble, one that traced the path of the thing from the doorway to the wall, where it transmuted into the scrape of ripping drywall. When this final set of noises at last ground to a halt, I knew where it was. The thing had crawled onto the ceiling. I took out my phone, and shone its backlight up into where I suspected its eyes to be. My blood froze. The hairs on my back shot up like syringe needles.
Could you even call them eyes? And the mouth…
I fought the urge to vomit, and instead channeled the energy into a mad dash for the exit. Just before I cleared the door, I heard the humanoid whisper in a voice like a crackling fire: “It has spread to the lungs.”
I knew at once were I needed to go. The one place where it couldn’t find me. The one place where it would leave me alone.
I tore down the staircase, and ripped through the kitchen, all the while aware of a second set of footsteps close behind. I wrenched open the door to the study, and flew inside, quickly shutting it behind me. I knew the lock wouldn’t hold him for long. He’s forced his way past it before. My phone light eventually fell upon the fridge, which had been moved slightly since I’d last laid eyes on it. I also noticed that another rotting thing had joined the mounds of spotty fruit and blackened vegetables. My light had found the corpse of a middle-aged man, one so old, it was now little more than wafer-thin skin and bone. But if he’d been in the fridge, and now wasn’t…
I pulled the fridge door open, and shined my light into the sterile expanse within. There Pablo lay, huddled in a shivering heap. Without saying anything, I joined him inside, and shut the door behind me.
“Zach,” he whimpered, “I didn’t turn on the TV, and you didn’t turn on the radio.” A blunt pounding vibrated through the door to the study, and I pictured the humanoid outside, banging its fists against the wood, clawing at the knob. “I know,” I replied, “and the storm didn’t turn off the power.”
With a final rip, the battered door gave in, and swung open on its hinges. Footsteps announced the humanoid’s approach, then stopped abruptly. I pictured the thing standing over us, smiling through its twisted mouth.
“It has spread to the lungs.”
Again, I have no memory of falling asleep, but the next thing I knew, I was being jolted awake by Pablo’s jarring ringtone. It was still dark within the fridge, but the backlight provided some luminance, and more crept in through a gap near the base of the door. My internal clock told me it was morning. I quickly silenced the phone, and cautiously pushed the door open. Blinking the sleep out of his eyes, Pablo was slow to follow. Eventually, however, we did manage to right ourselves, and stand up. Sunlight was slanting in through the study’s sweeping windows, and the corpse from before was nowhere to be found.
Dragged upstairs, some part of me thought.
The phone continued to vibrate in my hand, and I impulsively fingered the “answer” slider.
“Pablo?” It was my mom’s voice.
“No, no,” I groggily replied, “It’s me, Zach.” I braced myself for the classic “where have you been?” conversation, and prepared my explanation. “Boys, you have to come quickly,” she whimpered, “it’s your father.”
I couldn’t remember the last time she’d talked about him with that much emotion.
“He’s gotten worse. They say… It has spread to the lungs.”
But it’s funny what money can force even the best of us to do.
When the divorce ripped my family in half, and the cash ran out fast, my brother and I got into some pretty messed-up stuff just to start it flowing again. Though we dabbled in mugging and a little gambling, our strong suit was always robbery. We started on poorer, easier blocks, but after a year or so of practice, we graduated to a couple middle class neighborhoods. After we mastered them, we started hitting the higher-ups. Big houses, big dough, big security systems.
I guess my honesty got lost somewhere along the way.
However, now that I’m old and more than a little grey, all those forced entries are far behind me. I’ve found my honest again. Or, rather, it has found me.
I have tried to shed it once more, to shrug it off like I used to do so easily, but it appears that this time, my honesty is here to stay. So it follows by simple reason that, as a narrator, I am to be trusted. The story I am about to tell you concerns our last robbery—the one job that finally did us in—and as much as I’d like to sugarcoat it, I find myself unable to: these events of which I will speak are one-hundred percent true.
It all began on a day like any other in early spring. The sun was peeking out through a carpet of fluffy clouds, dappling the manicured lawns with jigsaw patterns of luminance. Pablo and I were crawling down the street in my pickup, doing what he called “the sweep.” We’d frequent the road a few times—surveying a few houses each way—until our eyes finally came to rest on something workable. An empty driveway, an overstuffed mail box—these were both signs of an easy entry.
“Hey, check this out,” Pablo called after our third length. He indicated with his finger a large, disheveled property littered with tree trash and thriving weeds. We usually made a point not to fool ourselves with long-abandoned houses, as they were usually void of anything useful, but… something about the place seemed to intrigue him.
After a closer look, I reasoned it must’ve been the 60” flat screen just visible through the front windows. I stopped the truck in the vacant car park, and popped open the driver’s side door as Pablo fished around in the glove box for his tool kit. “Hey, Zach,” he called without taking his eyes off the bright red box he’d liberated from its depths, “I can’t find the flashlight.” I rolled my eyes. “The sun’s gonna be out for a while.”
After a long silence, I suggested we just use our phones as a light source, to which he agreed. You know, just in case the sun happened to go out while we were inside.
When we reached the door, Pablo opened the toolbox, and retrieved his lock gun. However, after a few tries, he realized such gizmos wouldn’t be necessary this time.
The door had been left unlocked.
Pablo turned to me. Unlocked doors were risky. They either meant that the owner of the place was inside and his car just wasn’t there, or the genius had forgotten to lock up after leaving. The predicament was visible in my brother’s eyes, and I stepped back to give him some thinking room. It’d be great if the house was empty, but hitting a place with a guy inside was never fun. If he wasn’t sleeping or deaf, you either had to kill him—which I’d never been able to do—or head for the hills before he called the cops.
Pablo reached for the knob. “Let’s just take a peak.”
I nodded. That flat screen was pretty attractive.
The living room was expansive, encompassing the majority of the house’s first floor. Just beyond the television setup lay a pleasant kitchen and dining area, and a staircase which wound up a wall and out of sight. Pablo rushed to the TV, but I remember holding back for some reason. Some part of me found the kitchen more alluring. Leaving my brother to his typical dismounting routine, I strolled around the barstools flanking the island countertop, and headed for the stove. Running my hands along the smooth granite, a thought popped into my head.
You loved this feeling.
A memory accompanied the message. A fleeting image of myself as an infant, crawling along the countertops in our old family home, evading my father who would inevitably round me up and wrestle me into the sink for a bath.
I blinked away the recollections, and found tears in my eyes. Quickly clearing them, I turned to venture in search of my brother. Unfortunately, before I got far, my watery vision came to rest on the first in a string of uncertainties that now define the entire experience. You see, where the refrigerator should have been, there lay a hole. A void of dusty sockets and old wallpaper. Had someone hit the place first? But, looking back at my brother, I had to ask: Why was the television still there? Surely, the thieves would’ve made off with that if given the chance. My eyes swiveled downward, and came to rest upon the floor. Scratches rent the hard linoleum, a pale trail of marks that winded all the way from the fridge socket into a room beside the stair. A closed door barred my eyes from its interior.
To the sound of Pablo’s creaking wrench, I crept forward. The knob felt cold in my hand. Incredibly cold, as though someone had just lifted it out of a tank of liquid nitrogen.
Like a medical shot, I figured the whole ordeal was best to just run through, and get over with, before the anticipation forced me to reconsider. I couldn’t even really remember why, but I was experiencing a dramatic pull towards the room’s contents. A feeling somehow associated with the memory flash from before.
I yanked the door open before any more connections could gather.
The first thing I noticed about the room beyond was the smell. My eyes stung as rotting fruits, vegetables, and dairy products all battled for control of my olfactory glands. After I’d weathered the burns to my nostrils, my eyes followed up with a second beating.
My surroundings were hectic: a jumbled mess of papers and folders. I could tell the room had once been a sort of study, but now served as a bedroom as well. A rumpled cot hugged the grimy south wall, and an old blue notepad lay atop an adjacent nightstand. I also identified the source of the smell.
All around me lay bits of soiled food. Greenish sandwiches sat near bottles of curdled milk, wreathed in leaves of black lettuce. A large hunk of moldy cheese lay defeated within the left of a pair of loafers.
Each of these articles originated, no doubt, from the fridge… which rested on its side in the center of the room. A closer examination revealed a message, hastily scrawled upon the polished steel door. It read: “PLEASE GO BACK UPSTAIRS.”
As the cyclone continues to move west, I thought, all residents in the Ravenwood area are urged to stay within their homes until further notice. But had I thought it? I panned my vision away from the fridge, and honed in on the source of the feint report. Eventually I located a radio near the foot of the cot, and grinned as I realized it had only been the weather channel.
I had squatted to examine the radio, and in standing up, my eyes were again introduced to the blue notebook. Its pages beckoned from behind the rumpled cover, and I found myself unable to resist their pull. Acting on instinct, I snatched the book off the table and turned to page one. Only one word could be found there, written over and over again until its duplicates covered the paper. “It has spread to the lungs.” As I flipped through more and more pages, it became obvious that all were identical to the first. That same sentence scrawled again and again—a thousand times at least—was all the notebook held.
I thrust the thing back onto the nightstand and turned to leave. The former tenant of this house—whoever they were—obviously had more than a few issues.
“Zach!” I heard my brother call from back in the living room, “come here!”
I quickly complied, eager to leave the study.
Pablo had removed the TV from the wall, and it now rested face-down on the coffee table. But Pablo wasn’t anywhere near his work. I instead found him standing before the window, staring out at the unfolding rainstorm.
My mouth hung open. Where before a cloud-dotted sky had smiled down, now roiled a mass of thick black thunderheads. Thunder shattered the silence as I approached my brother. “Hey, we should go,” I yelled over the noise, “there’s a—”
“—Tropical storm coming through, I know,” Pablo replied, “I heard on the TV.”
“You turned it on?”
Another monstrous clap derailed the conversation, and left us standing in the dim natural light, staring at each other.
“Should I get the TV?”
I shook my head. “Let’s just get home before it gets any worse.”
Treading carefully over the soggy yard, Pablo and I made our way to the driveway. Once we’d reached the truck, Pablo climbed in, and I soon joined him. I fished for the keys in my pocket while he buckled in. Rain poured heavy on the windshield. Upon meeting with the key, the engine turned over a few times, then blew smoke and died. Thick blue fog curled from under the hood as it sputtered through its final moments. I pounded the wheel in frustration, but Pablo only scowled. “I’ll call a guy.” He reached for his phone, then thought twice. My eyes followed his to the road, which shone under a streetlight through a sheen of rainfall. Hailstones had joined the droplets, and I could feel the old truck popping and groaning with each hit. “Actually… Maybe its best we stay put,” he advised, “the roads’re like ice.” I thought for a moment. After seeing the room with the fridge, that house was the LAST place I wanted to go. However, the storm was going to town on the windshield, and it wouldn’t be long before the glass gave way to the ice. I eventually complied. As soon as we’d trudged back inside, I went around with my phone-light, and found some switches. Soon, I’d given luminance to the living room and the kitchen. I made a point to keep the study in darkness. That done, I met my brother by the door, and we set up camp on the living room couch. He told me to wait here until the roads cleared up, and I agreed that that was probably the best plan at this point. The far-off cracking sound of the windshield finally sighing its last punctuated our decision.
Sitting there on the sofa, I got my first good look at the ceiling. An air conditioner vent had been removed, leaving a fair-sized rectangular hole. This had been hastily covered by a white sheet, which billowed outward as new air was pumped in, and drew back as stale air was sucked out. The process produced a sound one could only notice upon looking right at the source. I remember it sounding just like breathing. Pablo sank into the cushions, and sleep took him within seconds. It reminded me of how he’d always conk out right after touching the mattress as a kid, while I tossed and turned, fighting to shut my eyes.
My dad used to get the biggest kick out of it.
To this day, I have no recollection of falling asleep, but as I did wake up some time later, I can only assume that to be true. I saw only blackness, and at first thought a lightning bolt had knocked out the power.
But rising to my feet, I found that hypothesis to be false. Through the window I could see that old street light from before, still shedding its sickly glow upon the wet asphalt. If the street hadn’t lost power, why were the lights off?
“Pablo?” I called into the dark, “what happened?”
My words earned no reply.
I felt for where he’d been before, but found only empty couch.
On an impulse, I decided to call him. The harsh backlit screen burned my eyes, though I eventually managed to key in his digits nonetheless. I lifted the phone to my ear as it began to ring.
At first, silence. And then… A feint chime from somewhere above me. Upstairs? The chime came again, and this time I was sure. My brother had gone upstairs. But why isn’t he picking up? I tried him again after it went to voicemail, but got the same result.
Two more fruitless tries drove me to stand. If he wasn’t picking up, maybe he’d hurt himself somehow. I had to locate him to see if he was okay. I marched valiantly toward the stairs, phone-flashlight in hand, yet the second my foot touched the first step, I felt my courage begin to recede. What had the fridge said?
PLEASE GO BACK UPSTAIRS.
What was that supposed to mean? Couple that with the message from the book, and you had genuine nightmare fuel. I’d long exiled my childhood fears of the dark, but as I followed my pool of weak light up those shadowed stairs… It seemed to gain back some of its old territory. I tried my brother again after I’d reached the summit, and entered a narrow corridor. His chime was closer now, a few doors away, in fact. I trailed the jubilant notes through the darkness, playing them again and again until I finally located the door. After giving the knob a good pull, I ventured into the room beyond, and poked at the ensuing blackness with my phone light. I found Pablo’s phone quickly, as its screen was still lit, displaying my calls. The device had been left face-up on the left of two nightstands flanking a queen-sized bed set against the northernmost wall. Unlike the grimy cot from before, this one was well-made, the sheets crisply folded to perfection.
Next to Pablo’s phone was another blue notebook, identical to the one downstairs, save for the writing on the cover. Where the other had displayed only wrinkled cardboard, “Dream journal” was carefully printed in sharpie. On another impulse, I picked this up, and flipped through it. This time, my eyes were met not with repetitive scribbles, but with concise, organized paragraphs. I didn’t take the time to read all of them, but there was one by the back that caught my interest. It, unlike the others, was accompanied by a picture.
The artist wasn’t a very experienced one, to be sure. The figure the picture depicted was wildly out of proportion, and the face was a mere two dots and a line.
This bizarre humanoid sat by a crudely-sketched bedside, in which lay a sleeping man whose head was entirely in shadow. Below this were written the words: “He always says the same thing.” I closed the book, and started towards the door, but a creaking sound from the hallway stopped me cold. More thumps and creaks followed the first, forming a slow chain of approaching sounds.
“Pablo?” I called into the dark.
No reply.
The thumps drew steadily closer. I backed away, only to trip over the foot of the bead and flop backwards onto the mattress. The thumps quickened as I fought to regain balance, then stopped altogether.
I breathed a sigh of relief, but chocked on it halfway through when the noises started up again. They were now dominated by a loud scrabble, one that traced the path of the thing from the doorway to the wall, where it transmuted into the scrape of ripping drywall. When this final set of noises at last ground to a halt, I knew where it was. The thing had crawled onto the ceiling. I took out my phone, and shone its backlight up into where I suspected its eyes to be. My blood froze. The hairs on my back shot up like syringe needles.
Could you even call them eyes? And the mouth…
I fought the urge to vomit, and instead channeled the energy into a mad dash for the exit. Just before I cleared the door, I heard the humanoid whisper in a voice like a crackling fire: “It has spread to the lungs.”
I knew at once were I needed to go. The one place where it couldn’t find me. The one place where it would leave me alone.
I tore down the staircase, and ripped through the kitchen, all the while aware of a second set of footsteps close behind. I wrenched open the door to the study, and flew inside, quickly shutting it behind me. I knew the lock wouldn’t hold him for long. He’s forced his way past it before. My phone light eventually fell upon the fridge, which had been moved slightly since I’d last laid eyes on it. I also noticed that another rotting thing had joined the mounds of spotty fruit and blackened vegetables. My light had found the corpse of a middle-aged man, one so old, it was now little more than wafer-thin skin and bone. But if he’d been in the fridge, and now wasn’t…
I pulled the fridge door open, and shined my light into the sterile expanse within. There Pablo lay, huddled in a shivering heap. Without saying anything, I joined him inside, and shut the door behind me.
“Zach,” he whimpered, “I didn’t turn on the TV, and you didn’t turn on the radio.” A blunt pounding vibrated through the door to the study, and I pictured the humanoid outside, banging its fists against the wood, clawing at the knob. “I know,” I replied, “and the storm didn’t turn off the power.”
With a final rip, the battered door gave in, and swung open on its hinges. Footsteps announced the humanoid’s approach, then stopped abruptly. I pictured the thing standing over us, smiling through its twisted mouth.
“It has spread to the lungs.”
Again, I have no memory of falling asleep, but the next thing I knew, I was being jolted awake by Pablo’s jarring ringtone. It was still dark within the fridge, but the backlight provided some luminance, and more crept in through a gap near the base of the door. My internal clock told me it was morning. I quickly silenced the phone, and cautiously pushed the door open. Blinking the sleep out of his eyes, Pablo was slow to follow. Eventually, however, we did manage to right ourselves, and stand up. Sunlight was slanting in through the study’s sweeping windows, and the corpse from before was nowhere to be found.
Dragged upstairs, some part of me thought.
The phone continued to vibrate in my hand, and I impulsively fingered the “answer” slider.
“Pablo?” It was my mom’s voice.
“No, no,” I groggily replied, “It’s me, Zach.” I braced myself for the classic “where have you been?” conversation, and prepared my explanation. “Boys, you have to come quickly,” she whimpered, “it’s your father.”
I couldn’t remember the last time she’d talked about him with that much emotion.
“He’s gotten worse. They say… It has spread to the lungs.”
Monday, October 28, 2013
Friends With Me
The room is empty except for the smell of mold and rotting wood
The floor is cold and I can feel the crevices of the rot with my palm and I have given up on getting the dirt out from under my nails and I have stopped tearing the hair from my scalp
Because the blood just dries tangles of hair together and makes the rats come out in search for food and
I don’t like the rats because they gnaw through corners of the room and skitter through the walls and I can hear them and they are mocking me because I have no walls to hide in.
They have warm walls with small spaces and I am in this big empty room and the wood is always cold and my nails can’t cut through wood like the rats can so I burrow them into my skin until I can press my palm to raw flesh and feel the warmth and hide in the layers of skin because I am the only human here
It is me and the rats and sometimes I can hear screams through the walls and creaks through the floorboards but the noises don’t want to be friends with me so I have stopped trying to scream back
My voice has stopped working
Anyway.
I have found the warmest corner and I sit here and pull my legs in close to me and I do not move, the rats may keep me from the walls but they can’t taunt me when I am
Hidden in my own
Mind.
You are probably wondering why I am in a room and why the rats are my friends, but I have to disappoint you and say that I’m not sure why either, I know nothing but the sound of boots on wood floors and occasional screams from what must be surrounding rooms.
So I suppose I’m just trapped here in this room with rats and rotting wood and thin, matted hair, with not much of a story to tell you. I suppose I can tell you the pieces of it;
I have been in this room since every bit of me was much smaller than it is now, I’m not sure how long it’s been but I’m at least double that size now, though my limbs are only a few inches around.
I am essentially skin and bones for I live off the occasional rat and the drops of stale water that leak through the ceiling into one of the corners.
There is not much more I can tell you, except that every time I hear those heavy footsteps of boots on hardwood floors outside my room, I make sure to stop breathing and pull myself in tight so I will not make a sound. Because I have never made a sound and no one has ever tried to get into my room, and I know better than to try and get out.
I make no noise because I do not want to be one of the screams.
The floor is cold and I can feel the crevices of the rot with my palm and I have given up on getting the dirt out from under my nails and I have stopped tearing the hair from my scalp
Because the blood just dries tangles of hair together and makes the rats come out in search for food and
I don’t like the rats because they gnaw through corners of the room and skitter through the walls and I can hear them and they are mocking me because I have no walls to hide in.
They have warm walls with small spaces and I am in this big empty room and the wood is always cold and my nails can’t cut through wood like the rats can so I burrow them into my skin until I can press my palm to raw flesh and feel the warmth and hide in the layers of skin because I am the only human here
It is me and the rats and sometimes I can hear screams through the walls and creaks through the floorboards but the noises don’t want to be friends with me so I have stopped trying to scream back
My voice has stopped working
Anyway.
I have found the warmest corner and I sit here and pull my legs in close to me and I do not move, the rats may keep me from the walls but they can’t taunt me when I am
Hidden in my own
Mind.
You are probably wondering why I am in a room and why the rats are my friends, but I have to disappoint you and say that I’m not sure why either, I know nothing but the sound of boots on wood floors and occasional screams from what must be surrounding rooms.
So I suppose I’m just trapped here in this room with rats and rotting wood and thin, matted hair, with not much of a story to tell you. I suppose I can tell you the pieces of it;
I have been in this room since every bit of me was much smaller than it is now, I’m not sure how long it’s been but I’m at least double that size now, though my limbs are only a few inches around.
I am essentially skin and bones for I live off the occasional rat and the drops of stale water that leak through the ceiling into one of the corners.
There is not much more I can tell you, except that every time I hear those heavy footsteps of boots on hardwood floors outside my room, I make sure to stop breathing and pull myself in tight so I will not make a sound. Because I have never made a sound and no one has ever tried to get into my room, and I know better than to try and get out.
I make no noise because I do not want to be one of the screams.
Hide and Seek
“Daddy’s in there. You’ll see, I’ll show you” she told me. It was sad. I shouldn’t be letting her believe this, but what else was I supposed to do? Tell her the truth? I had to play along. Even though I know it’s not good for her. “He’s in the shed out back, the one that mama never uses anymore. Let’s go let’s go let’s go!” she jumped up and down and grabbed my hand, pulling me down the path. The path led through a forest of tall trees which would eventually open up to the old shed. The shed we never use anymore.
She led me there silently, and it was beginning to get dark and cold. “Is this where you think daddy’s been this whole time?” I asked her, breaking the silence.
“Yes, he had to hide from mama. But he said he didn’t want to be far away from you and me.” “How long have you known about this?”
“oooh, I don’t know, a while. Also, you can’t make fun of him! He kinda silly looking, but don’t worry, he’s still daddy.” It was so sad listening to her talk like this. She seemed so convinced that her imagination was real. Should I tell her he is gone forever? I can’t. I can’t take that smile away from her little face.
“okay, okay I won’t. Do you two still play hide and seek?”
“Oh yes! And I know his secret hiding spot!” she giggled to herself, pulling me faster through the woods now.
“We’re almost there! Hurry hurry, it’s almost too dark for me to see!” The trees cleared and I could see a soft light in the distance among the darkness. The shed was in worse shape than I remember. I’m surprised the light still works. The wood was rotting, and the boards were falling off in places, leaving holes in the roof and walls. We slowed down as we got closer, and could see the cobwebs all over the abandoned building. I don’t know why she needed to bring me all the way out here just to see her imaginary friend. An imaginary friend who played as her father. I wish my sister could just accept that he was gone. That way she wouldn’t pretend like he’s still here. I wouldn’t have to be at this shed, rotting and falling apart as we speak. Mama told us never to come here.
Having to push hard, she opened the creaking doors. It was completely dark inside, and smelled like it was hundreds of years old. She turned on her flashlight, the only places I could see was wherever she pointed the light. She didn’t seem to be scared one bit. She led me further inside, to a corner in the shed. “Here he is, say hi!” she said, pointing the light to the corner. I was immediately in shock. A man, sitting in the corner looking up at me. He looked just like my father, but his skin was white. Not just pale, pure white. His eyes were coal black, against his snowy white skin, along with his white hair. He smiled at me, but I couldn’t smile back. Was that really my dad? Why has he been here this whole time? Why does he look this creepy? Is he sick? I didn’t know what to do. It was too unreal. I could suddenly feel tears run down my face. “Don’t cry Samantha, it’s just me. Remember me?” He held out his hand to me but I stepped back. The sound of his voice made my throat swell up. I’ve missed him so much, and after all these years he was here the whole time. I wanted to tell him how much I missed him, but I was horrified with his looks.
“What’s wrong Samantha? I know I look different, but I’m the same, promise. Come give me a hug.” he smiled, his teeth as white as his skin. This all felt like a dream. He looked like something that would only exist in your head, or in movies. His white face popped in contrast against the darkness around me, and his black eyes against his skin. The flashlight was shining directly on his face, he was the only thing I could see. Blackness surrounded all other sides of me. He stared at me, waiting for me to respond. Part of me wanted to hug him, a hug that I haven’t had in years. A hug that I thought I would never get again. But I couldn’t, I stood there in fear, crying, when I should be happy. “Samantha I told you! He looks a little silly, but he’s still daddy.” I couldn’t answer her. The more I looked at him, the more I sensed something was wrong. It wasn’t just his skin or his eyes. I could just feel this wasn’t right, we shouldn’t be here. I needed to grab her and run, run away and never come back. “Come on,” I finally said. “Let’s go back now. We need to go.” I choked on my tears of fear.
“Now wait a minute, wait a minute.” My father spoke in the same voice I’ve known and remembered for years. The same, but somehow different, and sent chills through my body. “How about a quick game of hide and seek?” I had a feeling this wasn’t the same kind of hide and seek. I pulled my sister away and tried to get out of that shed as fast as I could. She screamed, “No No No Samantha! It’s Daddy! It’s Daddy, he wants to play hide and seek!” We made it outside and it was already nighttime. I took her flashlight, shining it on the trees that surrounded us, trying to find the path that led us home. A white face appeared in the light of the flashlight. “I’ll tell you what,” he told us. “Go hide, and if I can’t find you by morning then you can go back home.” I agreed. But where do I hide? I just ran. I had no idea where I was going, but I just ran away from him. “Where are we going to hide?” my sister giggled to me. This was all fun and games to her. “I don’t know, where do you hide when you play with him?” I asked her, trying to remain calm.
“Let’s hide in his secret hiding spot! He’ll never find us there!” I let her lead the way, and she started going off the path, into the woods. We came across a large tree, bigger than all the others in the forest. There was a big hole in the trunk of the tree, big enough to fit people inside. We sat inside, and turned the flashlight off. All was dark, and the only thing we could do now was wait. Wait until morning and pray that he would never find us. I didn’t even know why I was so afraid of him, but I know it was more than his appearance. I could feel that we were in danger. Almost like my life was the one in danger.
We waited for what seemed like hours. But I had no idea how long it’s been. I flinch at every sound that is made. Every leaf that falls, every deer that walks by, and every owl that hoots. There was no telling where he is, maybe he knows where we are this whole time. He’s just standing right behind us, making me suffer by waiting even longer. Please, I would think to myself, please god let us be safe. I know this isn’t the same dad. I should’ve listened to my mother when she told us not to come out here. Why didn’t I listen? I’ll never see her again. It’s all over.
There were Footsteps in the leaves. They got closer and closer. Maybe it’s a deer, I kept telling myself in my head. Just a deer, that’s all. Louder and louder now, and then the footsteps stopped. Right outside the tree. I closed my eyes, holding on to my sister, who only thought this was a game. At least she would die happy. A knocking on the wood. He’s knocking, why is he knocking? My sister couldn’t contain herself and giggled. “Aha,” I heard the voice I’ve remembered, but was so much more different now. “I think I found you!” My sister turned on the flashlight and revealed a white face staring at us from outside the tree. “It’s okay now, you’re safe with me now Samantha! You’ll never have to go back home! Look at yourself!” My sister shined the light on me, and I look down at my arms. They were white. As white as my dad’s skin.
She led me there silently, and it was beginning to get dark and cold. “Is this where you think daddy’s been this whole time?” I asked her, breaking the silence.
“Yes, he had to hide from mama. But he said he didn’t want to be far away from you and me.” “How long have you known about this?”
“oooh, I don’t know, a while. Also, you can’t make fun of him! He kinda silly looking, but don’t worry, he’s still daddy.” It was so sad listening to her talk like this. She seemed so convinced that her imagination was real. Should I tell her he is gone forever? I can’t. I can’t take that smile away from her little face.
“okay, okay I won’t. Do you two still play hide and seek?”
“Oh yes! And I know his secret hiding spot!” she giggled to herself, pulling me faster through the woods now.
“We’re almost there! Hurry hurry, it’s almost too dark for me to see!” The trees cleared and I could see a soft light in the distance among the darkness. The shed was in worse shape than I remember. I’m surprised the light still works. The wood was rotting, and the boards were falling off in places, leaving holes in the roof and walls. We slowed down as we got closer, and could see the cobwebs all over the abandoned building. I don’t know why she needed to bring me all the way out here just to see her imaginary friend. An imaginary friend who played as her father. I wish my sister could just accept that he was gone. That way she wouldn’t pretend like he’s still here. I wouldn’t have to be at this shed, rotting and falling apart as we speak. Mama told us never to come here.
Having to push hard, she opened the creaking doors. It was completely dark inside, and smelled like it was hundreds of years old. She turned on her flashlight, the only places I could see was wherever she pointed the light. She didn’t seem to be scared one bit. She led me further inside, to a corner in the shed. “Here he is, say hi!” she said, pointing the light to the corner. I was immediately in shock. A man, sitting in the corner looking up at me. He looked just like my father, but his skin was white. Not just pale, pure white. His eyes were coal black, against his snowy white skin, along with his white hair. He smiled at me, but I couldn’t smile back. Was that really my dad? Why has he been here this whole time? Why does he look this creepy? Is he sick? I didn’t know what to do. It was too unreal. I could suddenly feel tears run down my face. “Don’t cry Samantha, it’s just me. Remember me?” He held out his hand to me but I stepped back. The sound of his voice made my throat swell up. I’ve missed him so much, and after all these years he was here the whole time. I wanted to tell him how much I missed him, but I was horrified with his looks.
“What’s wrong Samantha? I know I look different, but I’m the same, promise. Come give me a hug.” he smiled, his teeth as white as his skin. This all felt like a dream. He looked like something that would only exist in your head, or in movies. His white face popped in contrast against the darkness around me, and his black eyes against his skin. The flashlight was shining directly on his face, he was the only thing I could see. Blackness surrounded all other sides of me. He stared at me, waiting for me to respond. Part of me wanted to hug him, a hug that I haven’t had in years. A hug that I thought I would never get again. But I couldn’t, I stood there in fear, crying, when I should be happy. “Samantha I told you! He looks a little silly, but he’s still daddy.” I couldn’t answer her. The more I looked at him, the more I sensed something was wrong. It wasn’t just his skin or his eyes. I could just feel this wasn’t right, we shouldn’t be here. I needed to grab her and run, run away and never come back. “Come on,” I finally said. “Let’s go back now. We need to go.” I choked on my tears of fear.
“Now wait a minute, wait a minute.” My father spoke in the same voice I’ve known and remembered for years. The same, but somehow different, and sent chills through my body. “How about a quick game of hide and seek?” I had a feeling this wasn’t the same kind of hide and seek. I pulled my sister away and tried to get out of that shed as fast as I could. She screamed, “No No No Samantha! It’s Daddy! It’s Daddy, he wants to play hide and seek!” We made it outside and it was already nighttime. I took her flashlight, shining it on the trees that surrounded us, trying to find the path that led us home. A white face appeared in the light of the flashlight. “I’ll tell you what,” he told us. “Go hide, and if I can’t find you by morning then you can go back home.” I agreed. But where do I hide? I just ran. I had no idea where I was going, but I just ran away from him. “Where are we going to hide?” my sister giggled to me. This was all fun and games to her. “I don’t know, where do you hide when you play with him?” I asked her, trying to remain calm.
“Let’s hide in his secret hiding spot! He’ll never find us there!” I let her lead the way, and she started going off the path, into the woods. We came across a large tree, bigger than all the others in the forest. There was a big hole in the trunk of the tree, big enough to fit people inside. We sat inside, and turned the flashlight off. All was dark, and the only thing we could do now was wait. Wait until morning and pray that he would never find us. I didn’t even know why I was so afraid of him, but I know it was more than his appearance. I could feel that we were in danger. Almost like my life was the one in danger.
We waited for what seemed like hours. But I had no idea how long it’s been. I flinch at every sound that is made. Every leaf that falls, every deer that walks by, and every owl that hoots. There was no telling where he is, maybe he knows where we are this whole time. He’s just standing right behind us, making me suffer by waiting even longer. Please, I would think to myself, please god let us be safe. I know this isn’t the same dad. I should’ve listened to my mother when she told us not to come out here. Why didn’t I listen? I’ll never see her again. It’s all over.
There were Footsteps in the leaves. They got closer and closer. Maybe it’s a deer, I kept telling myself in my head. Just a deer, that’s all. Louder and louder now, and then the footsteps stopped. Right outside the tree. I closed my eyes, holding on to my sister, who only thought this was a game. At least she would die happy. A knocking on the wood. He’s knocking, why is he knocking? My sister couldn’t contain herself and giggled. “Aha,” I heard the voice I’ve remembered, but was so much more different now. “I think I found you!” My sister turned on the flashlight and revealed a white face staring at us from outside the tree. “It’s okay now, you’re safe with me now Samantha! You’ll never have to go back home! Look at yourself!” My sister shined the light on me, and I look down at my arms. They were white. As white as my dad’s skin.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)