Dear Reddit,
Hello everyone, I’m updating now that I finally have the opportunity. For those who haven’t read my other post outlining how this all started, See that here.
Now, as I alluded to in a prior comment I made on that post while I was sitting at the police station awaiting questioning, I was in fact taken in for “disturbing the peace” or some such nonsense upon my return to the neighborhood. During questioning, I told them much of what had been going on, though I deemed it prudent to not quite focus on my primary theory of supernatural causes, and instead just lay out what I knew and didn’t know while suggesting the possibility of some elaborate prank by some unknown party.
This wasn’t as easy as it sounds, as it was hard to explain the weirder things through this lens. Especially since they had received statements from a couple of our neighbors outlining what they’d observed of the situation over the past couple weeks, and apparently fewer and fewer of them find the prankster theory believable. At one point I finally lost my patience and blurted out something along the lines of “THEN MAYBE THEYRE REAL GNOMES”, along with a few other possible supernatural theories I had heard from many of you.
By the Way, to clarify, I was and remain very thankful to you all for those insightful hypotheses, even if the police didn’t quite see them as such.
Anyway, They deemed a psychiatric evaluation necessary and I was taken to the nearby hospital for a couple of days. After appearing “surprisingly lucid” throughout my stay (as I happened to overhear one of the doctors say), and being as forthcoming and cooperative as possible, I was eventually deemed of sound mind and was let back out to my own devices, upon agreeing to and signing a promise to appear in court for the incident. I think the medical professionals I dealt with seemed to be more open to the prank theory, and viewed my supernatural musings as the confused ideas of a poor, nerve-wracked and superstitious old man struggling to make sense of a situation he couldn’t understand, rather than the full delusions of a raving lunatic. Nothing that would suggest any clear psychological issues or make me a real danger to the public I suppose.
When I arrived home, the gnomes and their various sinister companions awaited me, stationary, staring at me as I drove up. I wasn’t sure whether to be concerned or relieved at how little had changed since I’d left. Most of the lawn-spawn (as I’ve decided to use to refer to them collectively) even appeared to be stationed in the same locations. Some were shifted or transposed to other parts of the yard of course, but not in any meaningful pattern that I could discern. Regardless, I slowly and warily made my way to my front door, opened it, and immediately noticed two alarming developments.
The first is that the gnomes had apparently continued multiplying, and really made themselves at home so to speak. They obviously weren’t relegating themselves to the outdoors anymore. Loose objects were strewn across the floor, and various gnomes were distributed throughout my living room; on furniture, tables, random spots on the ground… one was even hanging from the ceiling fan and had the only non-sinister seeming smile of any of the group. Another had taken the place of a table lamp, though he’d apparently decided kept the lamp shade for himself, as it was now placed around the top of his pointy hat, covering the top half of his face.
The other more alarming thing I noticed was Lucy. She was standing in the room looking up at a particularly grumpy looking gnome nestled on top of my bookshelf, before jumping when she noticed me entering the house. Our ensuing conversation basically went like this:
“Oh hey, you’re not in jail! That's good” she greeted me.
“Wha- Lucy what are you doing here?” I asked.
“After that gnome fell or jumped on me or whatever, I was really scared for a really long time, like a whole day, that the gnomes were gonna come over and attack me again, especially after I killed one of their own. But nothing happened, and so I decided to start ‘vessigating. Sorry that I thought you were losing your mind at first, by the way.”
I sighed, and responded that it was ok, then asked how she got into my house.
“Oh the door was unlocked. Don’t know if that was you or the gnomes, but when I came in these guys had really already taken over by the looks of it” Lucy responded in a noticeably unfazed tone.
“Do your parents know that you’re here?” I asked next.
“Of course not.” She remarked in a similarly unworried tone, “they think I’m just riding my bike around, as usual. I didn't lie to them" she broke in, as I must have looked like I was about to admonish her (and I was), "I made sure to ride my bike here instead of walking so I wasn’t being a liar if I don’t have to. Anyway, let me tell you what I’ve found so far!” she finished excitedly. I didn’t stop her, deciding to hold on to my questions and admonishment for now, since I did genuinely want to know what she’d discovered in her admittedly ill-advised investigation.
“So, first thing is, I think the gnomes are in charge. Like, I bet they're behind the other stuff, like the other lawn decorations, and the death lake, you know. The gnomes are the only ones that have come inside the house, for example.
"Also, they don’t move when anyone is looking at ‘em. Not even sure they can. When I got attacked, it was from behind, and when I turned to see, he suddenly stopped moving and I was able to just pick him up and throw him. Since I came here, I’ve seen them in different places but never see them actually move TO those places. For safety though, I’ve been holding this in front of me as I walk around” she said as she held up a handheld mirror. She really is a clever little girl.
“But yeah anyway” she continued, “They seem to have different jobs, kinda like the ants I've been learning about in science class. Hard to figure out much so far, since I can’t watch them WHILE they're doing anything, but the ones outside seem to be like guards, most of the ones in here are probably workers of some sort, and a few seem to be helpers to the Queen.”
“Queen?”
“Oh yeah, Maybe I should say king, but I like my ant comparation better so I'm sticking with queen.”
“Comparison” I corrected, but she ignored me and went on.
“Besides, for all we know, some of these guys could be girls. Maybe girl gnomes have beards too. Here follow me, I’ll show you” she said as she walked toward my bedroom.
With a sense of dread, I followed her to my bedroom only to see the bed had been converted into some sort of pillow-and-blanket-fort looking structure, with a small loveseat from my living room placed right in the middle of the bed, adorned with sheets, clothes, and scattered jewelry from my departed wife. Neatly lining the top were a series of bird and squirrel skulls.
I briefly wondered how the gnomes had managed to move all of this, especially the loveseat, before noticing a series of makeshift rope pulleys that had been installed on the walls and ceiling, and a makeshift platform made from my antique dining room table, its cylindrical legs chopped off and placed underneath for their apparent use as rolling logs.
On that bizarre throne of fabric and furniture sat an admittedly regal looking gnome, somewhat larger and more polished looking than the others; it barely even looked undersized for the chair. As Lucy had alluded to, several gnomes were stationed around the ‘queen’ like attendants. This ruler of the gnome colony appeared to glare piously towards us in the doorway, with a dark and menacing expression on its face.
After staring dumbfounded at what had become of what used to be my bedroom, I snapped out of my stupor and turned to the overly-curious, under-cautious child next to me. “OK Lucy, you should not be here, this looks dangerous even if they can’t move while being observed. Go home right now!”
Lucy opened her mouth as if to protest, but then to my surprise she just sighed as if she’d been expecting this. “Aaaaalriiight, Mr. Eugene, but you have to keep me updated on what happens! That reminds me, see this?” she said as she pulled out a walkie-talkie. “My parents don’t really want me talking to you much anymore, so I borrowed these from my friend Sara”.
I tried to put on by best ‘solemn and wise grandfather’ demeanor and instead just said, “Lucy, do you understand how… suspicious it would look if your parents or anyone else discovered you secretly communicating with the old man of questionable sanity that was arrested on your doorstep days before? We could both be in a lot of trouble.” (well mainly me, I thought but didn’t say).
“Don’t worry, I’ll only use it when either my parents aren’t home, or I'm outside. I checked the ranges though, and you’re gonna want to keep it to the side of the house close to mine. Unfortunately that’s this side, obviously, but I’m sure you’ll get used to them" she said, gesturing to the inexplicable collection of garden gnomes that had made a throne room where I sleep. She was already walking towards the front door. Even though she hadn’t actually given me one, I told her that I couldn’t accept one of her walkie-talkies, only for her to tell me which drawer she’d left mine in as she walked out of the house and closed the door.
Honestly, after that, I just stood there for a short while, taking in the situation and wondering what I was going to do. Then I realized I’d forgotten something important to ask Lucy.
Checking to make sure her parents weren't home, and seeing only the car of her older cousin who often babysat, I said some regretfully vulgar words to myself, grabbed the walkie-talkie from the drawer Lucy had mentioned and turned on the device, and called Lucy.
“Weeeelll weeeell well” she said with the dramatic triumph a child feels when they feel smarter than an adult. Thankfully she didn’t stretch it out too long. “So soon, Mr. Eugene? Alright what’s up?”
“I forgot to ask, did anything happen with the baskets the other neighbors got?” I hadn’t been able to find much out from the police. I did mention it when recounting what Lucy told me, but was afraid to inquire too far since I didn't want them to think I had tried to poison my neighbors or something. No one ever mentioned them again to me, so I assumed nothing especially horrible had happened, but I wanted to be sure.
Lucy calmly answered “Oh those? Yeah I don’t think most people even took or kept theirs, especially after your ‘episode’, as Daddy called it. If they were anything like our basket, the vegetables smelled kinda rotten, I actually only took in ours to use them for a prank on my cousin. I think I saw the Harlans throw theirs in the trash outside, maybe everyone else did too.”
I could only hope she was right. I still didn’t understand how the gnomes and their tools and schemes really worked, but the gnome that attacked Lucy didn’t do so until she’d brought the basket inside to go through. Who knows, maybe that gnome was just a one-off thing. So I thanked Lucy and cut off the conversation, still not wanting to use the walkie-talkie any more than necessary. As I turned to put the device back in the drawer, I thought better of it once seeing that most of the gnomes in the room had turned toward me when I wasn’t facing them, though otherwise hadn’t moved. I decided it was probably better not to leave it there, and placed it in my pocket.
At this point I started trying many of you all’s suggested fixes from the comments and messages that resulted from my prior post. I scattered horseshoes and certain crystals around the house, burned some sage, incense and other such herbs suggested to me, and salted the doorways and the “koi” pond outside. At this point the Koi pond had grown, as had the hagfish-type creatures inside. Weird, unidentifiable white crustaceans also flitted around the edge. The nearest tree had deformed into a leafless, gnarled mess that leaned over the pond. It was covered in those wailing wind chimes. A little windmill had also popped up next to the pond, but the blades visibly had blood on the edges. I elected not to investigate that particular development more closely.
I walked over to the my garden, though it was clearly THEIR garden now. None of the plants looked remotely similar to when I was growing them. The leaves had mostly turned a sickly teal or grayish purple, and the leaves were chaotic shapes. The “Tomatoes” were actually an even brieter red than before, but appeared… fleshier, and seemed to faintly beat like a heart. I wondered if the gift baskets had contained vegetables more like these. I poured salt over the plants and surrounding earth, then made my way back to the front door.
It was locked. Luckily, I had a key, and it seemed the gnomes and other lawnspawn did not yet wield the power of a locksmith, so I easily opened the door. As I entered, I noticed a knew fixture in my living room: a note with the message “NOT WELCOME” crudely written, and the note pinned to the wall with a large kitchen knife. Every gnome in the room now faced the front door with scowls on their faces. I could see that the salt, horseshoes and so on had not immediately deterred the invaders.
I decided not to push my luck further and heeded their warning, at least temporarily. It looked like I really was going to have to call in the professionals.
After briefly telling Lucy through the Walkie-Talkie that I was leaving again and making her promise to ABSOLUTELY NOT investigate the house while I was gone, and tossing out the 20 or so plastic flamingos that had just randomly appeared inside my car at some point during all this, I drove to a hotel. I decided on a nicer one this time, closer to my house in case I needed to go back on short notice for any reason. Then I sat down, and perused the internet for religious and supernatural professionals that might be willing to help with my situation. I want to cover as much possible ground as possible, so I’ve already reached out to priests/priestesses of several religions, a psychic or two, even a ghosthunter in my area. I’m even thinking that I might arrange for all of them to come at the same time, though I could use some guidance on whether that’s a good idea or not, as well as if there’s any other kind of professional worth contacting.
Either way, I want this handled soon as feasibly possible, because I’m afraid of their increasing spread and power. Especially since as I was leaving the neighborhood this time, I noticed something. A new pair of garden gnomes in the Jones’ yard. Clearly styled from the same ‘set’. I hope it’s not too late for me or them, but I get the feeling that this may all be over sooner rather than later, one way or another.
-Best Wishes, Eugene.
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Credits
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