It's not a Window. It's a Door.

  

I woke two days ago having slept for twenty hours. My dead hand crusted with the drying remnants of whatever corruption weeps from my bite wounds and stained pages of writing littering the floor around me. At first I thought to destroy it, but somehow I can't. I tried to not spread it to others, but my hand--normally bereft of feeling--has begun to throb and ache, and I know the reason just as I know it will stop, at least for awhile, once I hit submit. So forgive me, as I don't know the meaning or consequence of the strange account my hand wrote while I slept. And for any that wonder how I came to be in this position of telling these strange things, the story of my recent life begins here.    

It’s not a window. It’s a door.  

When my sister gave birth to Emily, it was a big deal in our family. My husband died last year, and I doubt I’ll ever bear children of my own, and even seven years ago Emily was the first grandchild in the family. She was a sweet and beautiful baby with wide green eyes and a bright, cheerful disposition. Even as an infant she had personality, and this only grew as she got older.  

I live in Alabama, and my sister lives all the way in the outskirts of Waco, so even though we are a close family, I only get to see my sister and niece at major holidays and for a few days every summer when they come stay with me. Which is what made her suggestion that they come visit last month a bit strange.  

We talk on the phone every Sunday, and that evening we had just been chatting about nothing in particular, but I could tell she was stressed or preoccupied. She said her husband, Rich, was very busy at work lately, but that should ease off by late April, and she said Emily was doing well in school, though she was a bit too focused on drawing these days. She said it with a laugh, but I know my sister and something was wrong. I almost asked, but thought better of it, figuring she’d tell me when the time was right. Within a few minutes she had brought up them coming to visit. I was surprised but happy, and at first I assumed she meant during Emily’s spring break, but she meant just a couple of days later.  

At this point I couldn’t help myself, and I asked if everything was okay. Had something happened with Rich? Was Emily okay?  

She gave a brittle laugh and said everything was okay, but she wanted to see her big sister if it wasn’t a bad time. I told her it wasn’t, and by Wednesday afternoon they were there.  

I had just seen Emily at Christmas when everyone had met up in Ft. Worth for the holidays. At the time, she had been the same bright, joyful girl I'd always known. She would flit from person to person, telling jokes, listening to stories, always ready to talk but never rude or demanding. I know she’s my niece, but she was perfect.  

But when they arrived at my house in March…she was just different. Her eyes looked dull, and while she still talked and was polite, very little of her old spark seemed left. After we got her settled in the living room, I took my sister into the kitchen to grill her. What was going on with Emily? Had there been some trauma or signs of abuse? When did this all start?  

My sister, to her credit, was patient with my barrage of questions. She said that it had started about two weeks after Christmas, and no, she didn’t think it was due to anyone abusing her. That while she was more subdued, Emily still ate okay, made good grades, and didn’t get into trouble except for her drawings.  

I had given Emily an antique case full of drawing chalks at Christmas, and while she had seemed only mildly interested at the time, sometime in mid-January, she had started using them more and more. My sister said she would draw windows on walls throughout the house and much to her own dismay. She had scolded the girl, explaining how hard it was to get that kind of chalk off the walls, and forbidding her from drawing on walls outside of her own room.  

For a time it worked, as the child focused her efforts solely upon her own walls, drawing windows over every open space she could reach before going back to wipe away earlier, more crude works. This continued for weeks, and a clear pattern emerged. She was drawing the same thing over and over again. Not just the same type of thing—a window—but the same one.  

My sister said if you compared them side by side, they all looked nearly identical, but she realized over time that details were being added, tweaked, refined. Almost as though she was focusing the lens of a camera to get a clearer picture. What was strange, aside from the obvious, is the window panes were largely blank. She expected a child’s drawing of a window would mainly be about what was on the other side, but the panes contained no details other than the cut and imperfections of the glass.  

At this point in talking to me, she realized how long we had been in the kitchen and with a panicked look she rushed back into living room. I followed, and we found Emily where we had left her, sitting on the sofa with her hands folded, staring off into space. I crouched down and spoke to her for a few moments about the fun we would have while they were visiting, and she responded normally overall, but it was still very muted. I made them dinner, and later on she was tucked into bed with her promise to wait and start any art projects in the morning with us.  

A few minutes later, me and my sister were back on the sofa, drinking wine and talking. I told her it was best to let Emily keep at it until she tired of it, as it was almost certainly just a phase, and she was welcome to draw wherever she liked in my house. She seemed unsure, but finally agreed, hoping the child would move past it quicker with all the fun distractions we could provide. We talked about going to the zoo, the amusement park, the movies. Eventually, with the help of the wine, my sister began to relax and I steered the conversation away from Emily.  

We talked about work, and then local gossip from our respective towns that meant little to each other but was still good for a laugh. Then we talked about Rich. I had known Richard for two years before my sister did. We had met in a sophomore Intro to Philosophy class and quickly became inseparable. He was from Tennessee originally, but he had lived all over the world and carried an air of exotic intelligence and wisdom about him. We were best friends and more, and we pushed each other to be more and be better both physically, mentally and spiritually.  

When I was a senior I invited my sister to come visit, as she was starting to look at colleges. I introduced her to Richard, and within a month they were dating. Within a year, they were married. And did I ever have misgivings or sad nights about it? Yes, of course. But I understood it was for the best and was necessary. It was meant to be and I had to accept it.  

As we talked, she began to drift off, fighting to focus as she told me about how Richard had grown more distant lately and wasn’t as concerned about Emily as she thought he should be. I commiserated in a vague way and her chin drooped to her chest as she finally fell asleep. I considered that sitting like that, bereft of the lively sparkling eyes and wryly curling smile that had always made her so charming, she looked like she was dead. A pale dead toad.  

Banishing the thought, I kissed her head and gave her a shake. We stumbled to bed, and the next day our week of fun began.  

Zoo, park, movies, go-carts. We did it all. And Emily participated dutifully, but with no real joy. And every afternoon when we returned home, she went to the empty guest room I had designated at her art room and drew on the walls.  

The drawings were remarkable. Whatever they had been originally, they had become almost indistinguishable from the real thing now. And Emily worked amazingly fast, but with such a level of detail, it still took hours to complete a version before starting another. My sister wanted to stop her, but I held her back from interceding, and by the fourth day I had run out of fun suggestions and we decided to just let her go until she burned out, so long as she rested and ate.  

On the sixth day, Emily woke me in the blue hour of early morning. When I looked at her, she nodded and led me to the room. All had been scrubbed away except for one, last example in the middle of the back wall. I examined it closely and then bent down to smile at Emily and kiss her forehead. I told her we would wait and show her mama that night.  

Emily slept most of the day, but she went outside and played in the afternoon, which delighted my sister. That night, after a dinner where Emily ate and talked more than she had all week, we took her mother up to show her the art room. She entered slowly, looking left to the scrubbed wall and center to the impossibly perfect drawing there, and then her gaze continued its trajectory to the right and landed on Rich, who stood there beaming at us. Her eyes widened, and Emily ran forward to hug her daddy.
 

My sister took a step forward and then caught herself. She asked what he was doing here and was anything wrong. He had taken a deep crimson length of chalk out of his shirt pocket and given it to Emily with a nod. She ran back to the drawing as he stood and smiled at his wife, saying it was really good to see her, to see all his girls. My sister glanced at me, but I barely noticed, as my focus was on Emily as she finished drawing a red knob on the expertly replicated dark gray frame she had labored on the night before.  

She had barely finished lifting the chalk from the wall when the knob began to turn. I felt the buzz of excitement that been building in me for days swell and explode. I turned to my sister, not able to resist stealing a glance and a shared smile with Rich in the process.
 

“It’s not a window.”  

My sister blinked confusedly, her face paling now. “What?”  

I fought down the maniac urge to laugh. “It’s not a window. It’s a door.”  

As I spoke, the knob had completed its third slow revolution and the door opened—first, just a crack, and then enough to let something in. The lights dimmed at its entry, which was a momentary kindness for my sister, as I don’t think she truly saw what dragged her back in. I saw too late that the door was swinging back closed, and neither Rich nor myself could reach it before it shut with a brittle snap and became chalk on a wall again. I pounded the wall with a curse, but Richard put a comforting hand on my back, telling me to check the lines, that it would be okay.  

Stepping back, I pulled out the piece of glass I had received from Greenland six weeks earlier. Part of an original door. Looking at the drawing through the glass, I could see the lines of power fading, seeping away like water at the slight imperfections that existed. I told Rich the same and he smiled. It was okay, he said, because we had a sweet little girl who would keep trying until it was just right. He looked down at Emily, who was now holding his hand, and she returned his smile and nodded.
 

Feeling overcome with love and pride, I went and hugged them both. We would keep going until a door was perfect and stayed open. And what a glorious day that would be.

---

Credits

 

FM Rider (Part 2) [FINALE]

 

“…managed to get power to the transmitter again, just for a little while. I need help. I don’t know exactly where I am, but it’s underground somewhere. Some kind of building or bunker maybe? I don’t know. I…I’m really scared and I’m getting weak. It’s been a long time since I’ve eaten, I’m trying to ration but I’m running out of food. Please, come help me…Oh, God!”  

I listened to the recording over and over. I’d decided early on that if I ever heard it again I’d be ready to record it. I thought about using an app on my phone, but I worried it would freeze up or an ad would pop up at the crucial moment. So I went to an office supply store and bought a small digital recorder. I kept it charged and nearby as I drove, and thankfully remembered it when I heard the woman’s voice over the car’s speakers again. The sound of her panic-stricken voice was so sad and lonely, but it suddenly felt like the car was filled with rich, oxygenated air, sharpening everything and giving me a light buzzed feeling as her words washed over me. I tried to pay attention to what was being said, but I had been so close to giving up that the sense of euphoria and nervous desperation to make sure it was recorded overrode real comprehension.  

The angry buzz of static cutting off the message brought me back, and I fumbled with the recorder to play it back again. All but the first couple of words was there. I listened to it several times more carefully and then began driving in the vicinity, back and forth, tweaking the dial a little but not overly much. It made sense any transmission would be on the same frequency, but I couldn’t be sure, especially when I hadn’t paid attention to the frequency the first time in my desperate fumbling to get the signal back.  

But there was nothing. Over several days I memorized the recording, even dreaming of it the little bit that I slept. Then on the fourth day, I heard her.  

“I remembered a…a sign that is outside somewhere. It said something about tatters I think. Look for the sign and a door. A strange door that goes into the ground. I think I hear…” The voice stopped, but instead of static, a strange song began to play. It sounded as though it was being played on some kind of flute or piccolo, and if it ever looped back on itself or repeated, I couldn’t tell it. I had stopped the car as soon as the voice started, triggering the recorder again. After listening to the music for several minutes, I felt new hope flare in my chest. If it would only keep playing, maybe I could use it to narrow down where the signal was coming from.  

For the next four hours I went in different directions, carefully tracking which directions caused the signal to get weaker and stronger. Eventually, I reached the point where I couldn’t get closer on a paved road. Spotting what looked to be something between a dirt road and a trail, I headed for it and began to work my way out into the desert. The moon was bright and high in the sky, lighting everything up like some kind of silver and blue daytime. The path curved this way and that, but eventually it petered out at a clump of desert scrub. But I was too close now. I pulled out a pocket radio I’d gotten when I picked up the recorder and dialed it in to the frequency. There was a strange doubling effect of the music as the radio came to life, making my head swim for a moment until I shut the car off. Grabbing a flashlight, I headed out toward the signal.  

It occurred to me absently that once the signal was clear there should be little to no way for me to tell if it was getting stronger just by the sound of it. But it was, as I said, an absent thought, pushed away casually as I fumbled through the dark shadows cast by the cold desert moon. The fact remained that I could feel it getting stronger somehow, and I knew I was heading in the right direction, very close to my goal. Then I saw the door.  

 

It reminded me somewhat of the doors I’ve seen in old movies of small airplane hanger doors, not the ones for the planes, but for personnel. Metal and utilitarian, but with small curve to the outer frame, as though to introduce an element of whimsy. This door was clearly old and rusty, but it didn’t appear to be locked or secured in any fashion. More strangely, it was sunk in to the side of a rock rather than a building, almost as though someone had just attached a fake door to a giant boulder.  

At first there seemed to be no signs at all, no indication as to what this place was, but then I noticed a metal sign in the shadow of the boulder. I reached and picked it up carefully, suddenly the image of a rattlesnake underneath it burning brightly in my mind. But there was no snake. Just a rusted sign, half rotten from the elements. Turning it in the moonlight, I could dimly see the name that had been painted on it: Tattersall Security.  

I already knew this was the place of course, but that just confirmed it. I felt my heart leaping in my chest as I reached for the door, the terrible certainty that it would be locked and impenetrable filling me with dread. Instead, the latch offered no resistance and the door swung open easily to reveal a cold, yawning darkness. It was a tunnel, traveling down and curving out of sight to the left some forty or fifty feet away. I felt a thrill of fear, and for a moment I thought about calling for help, getting someone else out here to help look for the woman and help her. But a dozen reasons and excuses for not doing that crowded my mind as soon as I had the idea. I debated internally for a moment, but just a moment. Then I went down into the dark.  

 

The tunnel became a more proper hallway around the corner, concrete walls and ceiling, with metal mesh underfoot. The hallway then opened up to become much wider, the edges of the walls just visible in my flashlight’s reach. The air was thick and coppery, making every breath seem like an effort. I thought about calling out, but the weight of my fear and anxiety kept me quiet as I went.
 

I began to wonder about the purpose and practicality of such a big, empty subterranean space. What was the point? Had something been stored here? If so, there was no sign of it. Speaking of signs, there were none here. No labels or icons, no symbols of any kind. It made me even more uneasy. Something wasn’t…  

Just then I saw the far wall, four doors set within it. These were the first doors I’d seen since entering this area, and I felt sure behind one of them I would find the author of those transmissions. Two of the doors were larger cargo doors, so I focused on the smaller, outermost doors first. The first one led down a much smaller hallway with several turns before coming what appeared to be a series of cubicles and outer offices. Again, there was no writing or other signs of what was done here. No sign of people ever being here at all. I mean, there was furniture and all, but no messy desks or mementos, no indications of hasty retreat or a controlled shutdown. It was almost like a stage or movie set that was exacting in its attention to detail but still felt artificial because it had no spark of life.
 

Still, I searched the area thoroughly. I tried a few lights and computers, but no luck. The power seemed dead, which made me wonder if the air was getting recycled or if I was breathing the dead air of years or decades earlier. I pondered distantly if I could be breathing in primarily carbon dioxide and not realize it, passing out and dying in here, smothered to death by this place. But I pushed it aside and continued back to the main hall.  

When I went through the other door, I saw that it led to a large area filled with crates. Most were empty, but some were partially full of MREs, clothing, and various equipment I didn’t understand the function of in the slightest. In the back I saw a set of double doors and went through them into another hallway. There were a few rooms here and there along the hall, their purposes apparent from the items they contained. A small kitchen/mess hall, several rooms with beds and lockers, one larger space that seemed to be a rec room, complete with a couple of decks of cards and an ancient looking pool table hulking in the shadowy back corner. Everything still had the air of artificiality to it though, every feature that should show signs of people and be somehow comforting was wrong in some intangible way, and more worrying for it.
 

I would periodically try the radio, but I got no signals inside this place at all. Everything was dark and silent, and I found it hard to shake the fear that my flashlight might peter out and leave me lost and wandering forever in utter blackness. But it was still burning bright, pushing back the darkness in a blue-white cone before me. Soon it highlighted another set of doors, and beyond them, another set of stairs going deeper down.  

I went down the stairs, feeling the concrete growing slicker as the air became moist and sticky. There were four flights with no other branches off to other levels before the bottom. At the bottom, another set of doors, these solid steel and secured with three thick bolts that appeared to be operated by large gaskets set in a row along one side. But the doors were open now, and I saw that the hall beyond was much different.  

It appeared to be made of some old stone laid carefully in some strangely ornate fashion. It reminded me of pictures I had seen of Mayan and Aztec structures in some strange way. The air was thin and freezing here, and as I moved forward, I saw that a gray mist hung limply in the air, reflecting my light and making it harder to see past into the darkness. For a moment I thought I saw something or at least sensed something, but then my entire mind was taken up by the searing pain cutting through my foot.  

Screaming, I instinctively crouched and grabbed my leg, dropping the flashlight in the process. As the light pinwheeled around, I again thought I saw a glimpse of something beyond the stones, but then it was gone and my brain was on fire with pain.  

Fumbling for the light, I grasped it and shined it down on my foot. Three metal blades in a triangular formation rose two inches from the top of my right foot like bloody stalagmites. Feeling faint, I passed my light over the floor and saw several more outcroppings of sharp metal hidden within the mist. Cursing, a realization settled over me. My foot was bleeding badly and I needed to get out of here right now or I could die. Soon.  

Standing again slowly, stifling little screams, I stood again and prepared to pull my foot free. Gripping my leg at the knee with both hands, I began to pull up. The pain was incredible, and my foot seemed no closer to being free. I tried again, but while I felt my foot lift some, it seemed stuck somehow. Feeling around with shaking hands, I probed the blades gingerly looking for some sign of what the problem was. I felt my stomach twist as I felt downward curved barbs along the lower portion of each blade. They had hooked into the muscles, bones and tendons of my foot and didn’t want to let go.  

But it didn’t change anything really. I had to get out of here and get help. And there was no way but pulling my foot loose. There was no one here to help…I suddenly felt a giddy rush of hope. Maybe the woman really was here, and if so, she could help.  

I began yelling, explaining why I was there and that I needed help. The words barely echoed at all, as though the stone walls were swallowing them. I tried again, my voice cracking with the strain and my growing terror. I could feel coldness starting to press in on me as the loss of blood started its inexorable process of pulling me down. Cursing again, I cast aside the hope I’d held for a moment and gripped my leg again. I had no way to cut my foot or pry at the metal. I would just have to tear it free or I’d die here in this tomb.  

“One…two…” I yanked as hard as I could, feeling more than hearing something pop in my foot as it came free with pain so blinding that I faded out for a few moments. When I came back, I was on the ground, but free. I thanked God I was wearing a belt and cinched it tight around my thigh before trying to stand again with limited success.  

The next hour was terrifying and excruciating as I hopped and crawled my way back up, wary of other traps and fighting the cold darkness crowding the edges of my vision. The pain and adrenaline dilated time in such a fashion that before I knew it, I was back on the highest level in the long, giant hallway. Then stumbling across the desert toward my car. Then inside, when I had a moment of panic at the realization that it was my accelerator foot that was injured before tucking that leg under, tightening the belt around my leg again, and using my left foot.  

I’d like to say I made it all the way to the emergency room by myself, but that’d be a lie. I passed out and rolled to a stop about eight miles from the nearest hospital, and when I woke up, I was in a hospital bed. My first thoughts were confused and fearful, wondering what had happened to put me there. Then I remembered, and I felt such a wave of relief and gratitude that I started crying.  

That’s when she came in the room. She looked to be in her early thirties, and even if I wasn’t in the middle of some kind of survivor’s euphoria she would have been beautiful. She smiled as she came in and I embarrassedly tried to scrub my eyes with the heels of my hands. I felt very weak and disconnected from my body, and my head felt cottony. Painkillers, I thought thankfully.  

“So you’re awake, huh? About time.” She smiled warmly at me. “Know why you’re here?”  

My mouth felt dry and thick. “Uh…I fucked up my foot, right?”  

She laughed and nodded with a grin. “You did indeed fuck up your foot. And I want to hear about how that happened when you feel up to it.”  

I nodded again. “Ok…” I felt myself blushing slightly despite the medication. “What’s your name?”  

Her smile widened a bit. “Alison. What’s yours?”  

“Don’t you have it on my chart?”  

Alison’s brows drew together. “I do. You had your wallet on you. But I want to make sure you didn’t lose so much blood you went retarded. So what’s your name?”  

Her serious expression and tone made me laugh unexpectedly, sore throat protesting. After a moment I nodded and croaked, “Ok ok. It’s Julian.”  

Still looking serious, she said, “Cool. No retardation.” She broke into a grin, but it fell from her face after a moment. “But seriously, you did get badly hurt. The doctor won’t be in until tomorrow, but there’s a lot of damage to your foot. Good news is you get to see me for at least a few more days.”  

 

I was in the hospital for six more days, and when I was released, it was with the diagnosis of permanent nerve and muscle damage to my right foot. Loaded down with antibiotics, steroids and pain meds in my complimentary plastic sponge bath tray, I was wheeled back out to the front of the hospital.
 

I was glad to be out of the hospital, but I felt a desperate, gnawing sadness that Alison wasn’t here. We had talked a lot during my time here, and I wanted to keep seeing her when I got out, but I was worried she wouldn’t want to, that I’d somehow misread the connection that seemed so strong between us. But when I asked where she was that morning, I was told she wasn’t working. After a couple of hours of paperwork and me trying to stall, one of the other nurses patted me on the back and asked did I need them to call me a cab service to get home.  

 

But out at the front of the hospital, there was no cab. Instead, there was a beat-up looking hatchback that had seen better days idling at the curb. And then Alison was getting out and coming around to help me get in the car.  

“Thought you were getting away from me? No cabs for you.” I was grinning at her like an idiot but I didn’t care.  

“After I get home and take an actual shower, I want to take you out on our first date.”  

She was easing me into the passenger seat smoothly, but she stopped a moment, her eyes widening slightly before she smiled. “I think we’ve already been dating at least a couple of days. But we can iron out the details later.”  

 

We were living together a few weeks later and were married by the next spring. After some saving and vacillation, we decided to move to the northeast. There was a clinic in Vermont that had a nursing program Alison had finally been accepted in, and I had gotten a job at a local small town pharmacy. The old pharmacist decided he liked me and encouraged me to go to pharmacy school, letting me work part-time and study during slow periods. Before I knew it, we had been there for five years, had a house and a dog, and were insanely happy. She had mentioned the idea of children, but I told her about Mary and that I wasn’t ready yet. She said she understood and I believed her.  

I had told her about the transmissions of course, and what I’d found in that strange place. I never suggested going back out there and neither did she. There were times that I felt like the entire purpose of those strange nights of driving desert roads, going through that door, getting hurt, was just to lead me to her. There were other times that I still felt the strange call of that place, of unresolved mystery and unfinished business. But more than that. The feeling of something being wrong.  

It was a feeling that I couldn’t understand or control, and as time went on it grew stronger. It invaded my sleep, with my dreams leading me back to that strange stone hallway, something watching me from deeper in the darkness. But instead of terrifying me, it just made the drive to return and finish…something…that much stronger.  

So when I got word through some old work friends that Ricky had died of a heart attack, I used it as an excuse to fly back. Alison wanted to come with me, but I convinced her not to miss work and that I’d be back in a couple of days.  

When I went back to the car after the graveside service, I already had my change of clothes and supplies with me.
 

 

It took a couple of hours, but even without the transmission I found my way back to the dirt road, to the door, to the rooms below the earth. They seemed undisturbed since I had left, the only notable new feature was the trail of old brown blood I’d left escaping last time. I followed the trail back down the stairs and to that hallway, taking care to watch for blades in the floor or any other trap. I walked with a cane now, and it was a constant reminder of watching where I stepped.  

I saw the spot I had gotten hurt at, blood crusted on the barbed blades, and I moved past it. I had the sense of not being alone, but I didn’t see anything. Then I saw the far wall, completely bare and featureless other than the same types of ornate stone that swirled around in every direction. There was nothing here.  

Sighing, I almost started to leave when I stopped myself. Something still wasn’t right. Something was being kept from me. So I stood still, closed my eyes, and tried to concentrate on being empty and opening my senses, my mind, ready to accept the truth.  

At first, there was nothing. Then suddenly I didn’t know what direction I was in, and I wasn’t aware of my body any longer. I had a body, or so it seemed, and I had eyes, or so I thought, but everything was dark and cold and strange. And yet, I could still see. I could see some gigantic monstrosity I was somehow a part of, melted and merged into this vast horror. I felt the cells of the green-grey mottled mass of flesh shifting constantly, containing the DNA and imprints of hundreds or thousands of different organisms, the wills of those beings still not fully absorbed sparking periodically along the surface of its slick and slimy surface like fireflies dancing above an open sewer pipe.
 

I could hear some of the thoughts of those other lights, and could hear the madness in most of them.  

But most of all, I could hear the titantic black will of the Other, whose being stretched back beyond the confines of this space into some other realm, but whose mass and power here continued to grow. Its will sounded light and musical, and I instantly recognized it as being the song I had heard, the song that had led me here. This memory led to others, and I realized that what I was seeing, what I was experiencing now, was the truth.  

I never left this place. I was led here and fell into this terrible thing’s trap, whatever it is, and had been made part of it as it fed off me as it had others. It digested its meals slowly, and filled them full of false memories and lives like a spider filling a fly with venom. The more I tried to discern truth from lie, the more I realized I didn’t know what was real any more.
 

Had my parents died? Had I ever taken care of Mary? Did Alison exist? I just didn’t know anymore. Somehow, that thought terrified me more than everything else.  

But still, if it pacified its victims, this thing might have some weakness to the other wills it consumed. If I could just remember long enough, not slip back into the lie, I could fight back, maybe even stop it. I just have to…  

 

I wake with a start in my seat as the stewardess is announcing that we are beginning final decent into Montpelier airport. Alison is waiting at the terminal when I land, and after hugging and kissing we head to the car and start the drive home. She asks about the trip, the funeral, and I tell her. I want to tell her something else, about a dream I had while I was gone, but it’s faded out of my grasp. Reaching out, I grip her hand and give it a squeeze. She squeezes it back.  

“I’m glad you’re home.”  

I look out at the dark trees passing by as we drive along. Then I turn back to her, studying her silhouette in the green glow of the dashboard. “Yeah, me too.”   

---

Credits

 

FM Rider (Part 1)

 

These periods of...productive slumber continue, and the latest writing is much longer, so I will have to break it into several parts. I have no real new updates on my own condition, other than the easing of my dead hand's throbbing as I henpeck these words with my other hand. If you are unfamiliar for how I arrived at this point, I talk about that journey here. Thank you again for your time and your attention. It is a bright spot in this deepening well of darkness I find myself in.    

---

 

FM Rider    

I drive around at night because I can’t sleep normal hours any more. I used to—back when I was a teenager, I was always the first one to call it a night. Not early, you understand, but by midnight I was usually out. When my parents died, I was in bed asleep. I got the call to come to the hospital, to identify the bodies and pick up my sister Mary.  

There was no one else to do any of it. Our grandparents on both sides were dead and our mother’s sister, Beth, was a reoccurring character in many meth-fueled dramas that played out across various parts of the state. Even if I could have found her, I wouldn’t have. I was twenty-four at the time, and I was old enough to take care of an eleven year old girl. Two years out of college, I had relatively good job as a shift manager at a large food distribution plant only a few miles from my apartment. The work was dull and I didn’t want to do it forever, but it paid the bills for the time being and it gave me flexibility since I could work out my own schedule for the most part. This last point was key now. Looking down the hall at the impossibly tiny and shell-shocked little girl sitting in a molded plastic chair next to an older, heavy-set woman, my heart broke a little.
 

She’d never know how much she was going to miss out on. Our parents weren’t perfect, of course, but as I’d gotten older I’d come to realize how great they were. They were caring without being smothering, funny without trying too hard, encouraging without being pushy. Best of all, they believed in us, and not in the willfully blind way that you see some parents do. They knew us, understood us, and pushed us to be the best version of ourselves that we could be. I realized I still needed to identify them and that I couldn’t put it off, couldn’t see Mary first without having to explain why I had to leave again. So I stopped and turned around, heading back to the nurse’s desk and following the directions down to the coroner’s office adjacent to the morgue.
 

They only made me look at the faces, which weren’t badly damaged on the surface other than some dark patches and a spot on my father’s face that went down too far where his cheekbone used to be. The cuts and scrapes that were visible had stopped bleeding some time before and the bodies had been cleaned, at least above the sheet. Below…well, from what I was being told, the car accident had been terrible. How Mary had survived, let alone without anything more than a few bruises, was anyone’s guess.  

After I signed the forms a squat, clammy man thrust at me with robotic condolences, I went back upstairs to get Mary. She started crying when she saw me, jumping into my arms and hugging me tight. The woman seated next to her eyed me suspiciously.  

“You her brother…” She glanced down at a clipboard in her ample lap. “Mike?”  

I raised an eyebrow. “Julian.” She smiled thinly and nodded and I saw it had been some strange kind of check that I was the right person. I already didn’t like her.  

I looked down at Mary. “Ready to go?” She nodded against my chest, and as I turned to go, the woman stood, her smile gone.  

“Hold on for me, son. There’s some things we need to go over. Is there someone else we should call? Your Aunt Beth maybe?”  

Turning on the woman, I tried without much luck to keep the anger out of my voice. She’d been picking Mary for information at a time like this. “No. Beth is a junkie, and I don’t know where she is. And my parents named me her guardian in their wills.”  

She recoiled slightly, but then she narrowed her gaze slightly and pushed forward. “That may well be, son, but we still need to…”  

“We don’t need to do anything. You need to fuck off.”  

 

The first few days were really hard on both of us, but within a few weeks things started feeling somewhat normal. I’d changed my work schedule so I was always home from when she got out of school until I dropped her back off the next morning. I saved some money up, and by the time summer came, she was able to go to a day camp the days I worked. Mary had always had friends, but she made a couple of new ones at the camp that lived just a few blocks away and went to her school in a grade below her. I didn’t know what a little girl’s life was supposed to look like, but Mary’s seemed like it was getting closer to it anyhow. She was going to the movies, hanging out, having sleepovers. It was taking time, but things were going good again.  

Then I got a call a little after 8 one night when Mary was at a slumber party. The mother, Ann or something, said that Mary’s nose was bleeding and wouldn’t stop. The edge of panic in the woman’s voice told me it was bad. I got there and took her to the hospital in less than twenty minutes, and less than twenty hours later we knew that she had a brain tumor. Very lethal and inoperable.  

It went quickly. Less than two months later she was dead, only a few weeks before her thirteenth birthday. I felt some anger and sadness to be sure, but mainly I felt scooped out. I went through the motions of living, but I didn’t really think about what I was doing. I didn’t think about anything. And I didn’t sleep very much anymore.  

So I started driving at night. I lived an hour from what most people would consider the edge of the desert, but I wound up going there most nights. The lack of people and lights, the lack of noise and reminders of people living lives, it helped somewhat. Most nights I’d be back home by four, collapsing into a fitful sleep for a few hours before getting up to go to work, but there were times I’d stay and watch the sunrise climb past the edge of the world, turning everything the color of fire. The thought of that fire comforted me in some strange way.  

 

I also started spending more time on the internet, looking for hobbies and things to read, anything to occupy my thoughts for a bit. There are so many odd corners online, and as time went on I started delving deeper and deeper into pockets of esoteric groups. Conspiracy theorists, occultists, ufologists, you name it. Most of them seemed sadly desperate to me, as though they wanted something to believe in and were grasping for whatever lay close at hand, just needing a life line. None of it stuck with me much, and after a few months I’d given it up almost entirely. I’d found my life line on the roads.  

And the radio. As much as I didn’t want to see people, I oddly developed a habit of listening to the radio when I was driving. What didn’t matter that much, though I found myself gravitating more and more to late night talk radio as time went on. There was a surprisingly large overlap between radio crazies and internet crazies, and something about that was strangely comforting.  

It was one night late in August, nearly eighteen months since Mary had died, that I first heard the woman’s voice on the radio. I was turning the dial idly, knowing there was at least thirty minutes before the next good talk show was on, when suddenly out of the static I heard a woman speaking. Her voice caught me before I really heard what she was saying. It was raw with emotion, some combination of terror and desperate sadness that hit me hard.  

“…I don’t know how long. But I hope someone can hear this. Please, please help if you do. I don’t kn…” The signal faded out and didn’t return. After another few seconds of driving, I stopped and turned around, trying to find the signal again. No luck. I went back and forth a few more times, but nothing.  

 

I couldn’t sleep when I got home. Over the next few days, I couldn’t get the thought of the strange transmission out of my head. Reason told me that it was nothing. Either part of a movie commercial or radio play or something equally benign and boring. But I didn’t really believe that. It sounded too real.  

Or maybe I just wanted to believe in it because it was a mystery, a distraction. I enjoyed driving around at night, roaming the desert roads, but it was in a detached way. It was a form of therapy, and it did help some, but never brought me real joy or excitement. This didn’t either—not exactly—but going out that night was still the first time I’d looked forward to anything since Mary died.  

I’d done research during my lunch break on my phone, trying figure out how far away that broadcast could have come from, and it was disheartening. I knew I was on the FM dial when I heard the transmission because I remembered some of the stations I passed. And according to what I’d read, while FM signals didn’t typically travel as far as AM and relied more on line-of-sight reception, they could still be broadcast 60 to 100 miles depending on the location and power of the source, and depending on occasional atmospheric events, some signals would get bounced way further for a time, even from another part of the world. But I didn’t think that was the case—it didn’t feel right and the woman had sounded American without a strong accent that stood out to me—but that was still a lot of ground to cover. I started to get down again at the realization that I was unlikely to ever know where the voice had come from or what it meant, if anything.  

But still…I didn’t have anything better to do, and if I wanted to spend a few nights listening out for it, what was the harm? Thinking about the best way to do it, I could feel my anticipation growing again. After work I went to a bookstore and found a book of maps that covered a thousand square mile area of the region. The maps in the front were big and more general, but as one went deeper in they zoomed in more and more on bigger roads and towns, while also filling in some geologic and historical points of interest that lay in the vast brown and grey seas of desert lapping at the edges of every highway and county road.  

I ran home and spread open the map book, trying to figure out exactly where I’d been when I first heard the woman. I’d grown familiar with those roads in the last few months, but it was still hard to say. Driving aimlessly like that through the dark, tired and not paying attention, and then having your attention awoken by a strange voice on the radio…it didn’t exactly foster the best recall of landmarks and mile markers. Still, I was pretty sure of the road I was on and could narrow the stretch to probably a thirty mile span. But I still had no way of knowing how close or far I was from the source, so I had to assume up to one hundred miles in every direction. So over two hundred square miles…it was a lot.  

I used a ruler and a pencil to draw out the distance on one of the maps mid-way through the book. Even out in the desert, that kind of area covered five small towns, the edge of two medium-sized cities, and nearly fifty roads. On the one hand, it was daunting. At the same time, the complexity of it, of driving those routes, keeping track of where I’d been and still needed to go, all while searching for some elusive signal…it was appealing in a strange way. So I headed out.  

Deciding to start with that same stretch of road, I’d alternate driving and pulling off for a bit, rolling the dial back and forth, ears pricked for any sign of the woman’s voice. But there was nothing. Just the standard stuff and the dim crackle of static in between. After a couple of nights of this, I started expanding the search, going further and further out from that center point each night. But it was a slow process. The roads didn’t conform to my desire for an organized grid search, and even with the large gaps that keeping to the roads led to, after a week I was only fifty miles away from where I had started. I wasn’t discouraged exactly, I still looked forward to going out every night, but I did think another angle might be helpful, so I started trying to think of ways to figure out what the signal could be.  

I started with the commercial idea. I took a couple of nights off from riding and combed the internet for any currently playing ads or descriptions for movies or tv shows that might be compatible with what the woman was saying. There were a few potentials, but nothing that panned out. Then it occurred to me that I knew someone who listened to the radio as much as I did.  

 

Ricky was in his late fifties and could generously be considered a functioning alcoholic. He was a line manager at the plant, and while he was only semi-reliable as an employee, he was a warm and likeable guy. He’d been one of the first people to talk to me when I went to work at the center, and one of the very few that continued to be friendly once I got promoted. Despite his age, Ricky was always off doing something on the weekend, and he had a myriad of hobbies. One of them was listening to talk radio at all hours of the night.  

I went to him when he was on lunch break and he grinned when he saw me. “What’re you up to, Cap? Coming to give me a raise?”  

I laughed. “I can’t give raises. And why would you get one?”  

“Hard work and ingenuity, man. I’m always thinking about the company.” He gave a smirk and a wink.  

“I’ll pass that a long. Got a second?” He chuckled and gave a nod. I told him about being out driving and hearing the voice. I didn’t tell him I kept going back out there, tried to make it sound very casual, just wondering if he’d ever heard anything like that. When he said no, I told him about the internet research I’d done to make sure it wasn’t just a commercial. He nodded again, more thoughtfully, clearly more interested now.  

“Hmm. Have you ever heard of number stations?”  

I shook my head. He smiled a little and continued.  

“They’re weird. Basically, at different points in time since people have had radios, there are these strange stations that will pop up. Sometimes briefly, sometimes for years. They’ll play strange music, or have strings of numbers being repeated, hence the name.”  

“Weird. Where do they come from?”  

“A lot of them are suspected to be a way to send encoded messages. Some old-school espionage. But some of them, no one knows. And people have tried to triangulate where the signal is coming from, but it’ll move on them when they get close. Real spooky stuff. I haven’t heard of anything exactly like what you’re describing, but there’s definitely some weird shit on the radio from time to time.” Ricky smiled expansively, proud to show off his obscure knowledge.  

A search of the internet told me Ricky was telling the truth. I wasn’t sure how I’d never heard about the phenomena during my days of surfing the strange back alleys of the web, but I also wasn’t sure how the information that existed helped me. This seemed different than most of the accounts I read, and again, I couldn’t even rule out it was a one-time fluke transmission of something boring and innocent. I went back out again that night, but I could feel my enthusiasm waning.  

Then I heard the voice again.

---

Credits

 

You Saw Something You Shouldn't Have (Part 4) [FINALE]

 

By the time I got home Thursday evening, I had decided I wanted the thing to come. Whether I wanted it to come back to finish me or so I could attempt to kill it would change moment to moment, but the idea of fighting back had built slowly throughout the day and remained a constant. I was tired of being a victim to whatever this all was, of having things taken away from me. Thoughts of suicide faded more and more, in no small part due to the words of encouragement I’ve received here, and while I was still resigned to the fact that I was likely going to die, I decided I still had a little more will to try and resist left in me.  

So, of course, nothing happened that night.  

When I arrived home, I checked the house again thoroughly, and it was untouched since my last visit. No sign of my family or their belongings. Now beyond the initial shock of all that had happened and slightly better rested, I had more time to study the pattern left behind by their…erasure. Not only were all of their belongings gone, but there were other things gone or different too.  

My son had done a handprint in clay back in October for a school project. He had given it to me, and since then it had been displayed in the kitchen, up against the backsplash on a small stand meant for a photo or baseball card or something. It and the stand were gone.
 

I had a long, waxed raincoat that my wife had given me two years ago. Very expensive and nice, though I rarely actually wore it. I checked our coat closet and it was gone as well.  

Even things like furnishings were different. If it was something I had bought or we bought together, it was still there. But other pieces of furniture or hangings that she had bought alone or had before we were together were either absent or replaced by something unfamiliar to me, as though to fill the hole left by the other object’s absence.  

My bank account was another strange anomaly. As I had previously mentioned, my job apparently no longer exists, and I have no indication of some other job that has taken its place. No business card, no strange contacts in my phone, etc. So I looked on my account to see how much money was left and where it was coming from.  

I have plenty of money in there, more than I usually do in fact, and when I look at the deposits, it shows a direct deposit of close to seven thousand dollars once a month for as far back as the records go online. The name attributed to the deposits is just a sequence of letters, numbers and symbols, which—if they have some meaning—don’t mean anything to me and could well be random.
 

I consider calling the bank the next day to try to learn more about my benefactor, but just the idea of it seems exhausting. I’m ready to be done with all of this. So I set aside my phone, pick up the softball bat I had recovered earlier in the same closet that was now missing my fancy, rarely-worn raincoat, and go to the back yard.  

For the next hour I roam around outside and in, calling out to the terrible thing that is haunting me, demanding that it confront me. I can feel some ever-shifting mixture of fear, anger, and despair coating my tongue and my words. By the end I’m more begging and pleading than anything else.  

But nothing.  

Fine, it’ll come in its own time. I go back in, eat something, and then go to sleep. I can’t bear to sleep in our bed, or even stay in our bedroom for any length of time. It’s too sharp a reminder of my wife’s absence or nonexistence. So I set up on the sofa again downstairs, and before long, I’m deep asleep.  

I have long, strange dreams that night, and while they bore the same texture of realness as the other dreams since the texts had begun, I don’t remember any details of them. What I remember instead is the sudden and sharp pain in my right hand that woke me.  

I tried to sit up in the shock of the pain, but my hand was immobile down near the floor, so the result was a protesting flair of pain in my shoulder as I spun/fell off the sofa and onto the carpet. I caught myself on all fours, my gaze at a good level to see what was eating my right hand.  

It was another of those…things. I still don’t know what to call them. But this one was much smaller. The small, glistening bulk of its body was spread out across my hand like a glove or mitten up to just past my wrist. At the time I was in such pain and terror that very little cohesive thought was occurring, so bear with me, as much of my description is based upon reconstructing these events upon reflection. The dark, ball of snakes mass I had seen on the larger one was here too, but spread out over my hand, like an inner layer to the horror that was trying to consume me. Looking at it now, I guess that is where all the teeth come from.  

There were so many teeth. Needles boring down into my flesh, plucking at my tendons and scraping at my bones. As bad as that was the overwhelming sense of pressure was somehow worse, as though the creature was competing with itself as to what method would destroy my hand first. When I looked at it for the first time, I swear it paused and considered me, though it had no eyes or face I could see. Then it went back to work, and I began to scream.  

I couldn’t move my hand because it had wrapped parts of itself securely to one of the legs of the sofa, and my first few attempts at pulling free just caused fresh pain with no progress. I looked around for a weapon, but I saw none within reach. I did notice where I had left the strange, leathery coin on the coffee table however. The coin had burst open from the inside while I slept, apparently having been this demon’s womb the entire time. But that information wouldn’t help me now. I needed to kill it.  

My hand was beginning to go numb, and I knew I had little time left to save it, if it could be saved at all. Straining with the effort, I partially stood and began moving towards the kitchen, because while thing couldn’t be dislodged from the sofa, the sofa wasn’t attached to anything. As I began pulling it and the sofa along slowly, it bit down and crushed my hand more, and I felt sure it would just burst, leaving me with a bloody, ragged stump. But I kept pulling, my screams having died out in my concentration and effort. I made it across the living room. Then into the edge of the kitchen. I thought about a knife, but I was afraid I would just hurt my hand or it would somehow just dislodge and crawl up the knife to my left hand spider-quick before I could drop it. I began pulling out drawers, and I found an old trigger lighter that I sometimes used on the grill outside.  

Saying a frantic prayer, I pulled the trigger. Nothing. Again, and a small flame appeared at the end of the lighter. I held the trigger and stuck the flame to the creature’s flesh. Dark gray smoke began trailing up from the site of the flame, and there was a terrible smell that made me gag, but that was all. No reaction from the creature at all. The pain was fading away now, but that somehow made me more afraid, not less. I cast my eyes around for some new weapon, but saw nothing other than a small cow salt shaker that must have been one of the replacement objects, because I had never seen it before. I suddenly thought of garden slugs, and having no other ready options, I picked up the shaker and turned it over.  

Mercifully salt poured out, and this time the reaction was immediate. The milky flesh turned black where the salt landed, seeming to stick to and burn the creature as it began trying to release my hand. I put my right foot down on it and my palm to hold it in place as I shook out more, rubbing my hand along the floor to catch salt crystals that missed their mark initially. The creature gave a violent shudder and then went still aside from the continued withering of its flesh. I slid my hand free from its carcass and continued to shake salt with the other, until it had dessicated into a small black wad of flesh that began to crack and crumble into flakes before my eyes.  

I sat staring at the remnants of the monster for what seemed like several minutes, making sure it did not somehow reconstitute itself, before turning to look at the hand I was holding cradled in my lap. There was no blood, or leaking fluid of any kind. Instead, my hand looked slightly swollen, but otherwise normal aside from the hundreds of small holes that now adorned nearly every millimeter of my flesh. Even the skin on the sides of my fingers had holes, as well as multiple holes through each fingernail. In places where I could clearly see veins, there were holes there as well, but still no sign of blood.  

And no pain. No feeling at all actually. My hand just flopped limply on its wrist without even a tingle or some phantom sensation.
 

Trying to decide the best course of action, I looked at my phone and realized it was 2 a.m. on Saturday morning. I had been asleep for close to 30 hours.  

I considered going to the emergency room for a moment, but I hesitated. I knew in the state I was in I would likely seem strange at best and totally insane at worst, and for the moment I seemed okay physically unless it had injected me with some poison, which a hospital likely couldn’t help with anyway. Ultimately I decided to just go to the doctor the next day unless things got worse. While I slept no more that night, my hand stayed the same and nothing else happened.  

This morning I went to the doctor. Since it was a Saturday, I wound up having to go to an emergency wound clinic across town instead of my normal doctor (if I have a normal doctor anymore), but apparently my insurance card still works and within half an hour I was back in a room getting examined. The doctor on call was a pleasant young woman who seemed very knowledgeable, but was also very curious about how the injury occurred. Rather that try to make up some elaborate lie that would probably seem implausible, I just told her that I didn’t know. That I woke up outside my house and my hand was just like that.  

This led her to check to see if I had some head injury or blood pressure spike that had caused me to pass out, but ultimately she couldn’t say much beyond that it appeared that I had severe nerve damage, what she called “neurotmesis”, based on my clinical signs and the wounds I had. She took x-rays, and she saw a small fracture in my ring finger that she splinted, but said that anything more in depth would need to be done at the hospital. I told her I didn’t think I needed the hospital, but I would follow up with my doctor soon. She protested, suggesting that such a strange and severe injury should be checked more thoroughly than she could accomplish at the clinic and right away. I thanked her and left.  

I drove home, trying to avoid looking at my right hand, both because it looked disgusting and because it was a constant reminder of the night before. When I got inside, I wrapped it in a bandage, not because it needed it, but just to avoid looking at the pockmarked skin. My goal had been to stay awake most of the day, monitoring my hand and watching out for another attack. In spite of myself, by noon I had fallen into a deep, dreamless sleep.  

When I woke, my nose was assaulted by a terrible, rotten stench. I immediately looked at my bandaged hand, which was soggy and laden with some brownish, green bile. Stifling a retch, I ran to the kitchen sink and pulled off the wrappings. Running my hand under the water there, I saw that there was no sign of anything oozing from my hand. It was as though the holes had been turned on like some filthy faucet and then turned back off again. I washed my hand several times, and then dried it carefully, feeling new panicked sadness at the wrongness of it dangling at the end of my arm like so much dead meat. I felt tears coming to my eyes, and I moved back to the living room, noticing the pen and paper on the ground for the first time.  

It was an old legal notepad that seemed vaguely familiar but I couldn’t recall from when or where. Sitting nearby was a ballpoint pen of the type we kept around the house to make notes or write checks. Both had light, drying smudges of the same ichor that had been seeping through my bandages, and the pad had writing on it.
 

I recognize my handwriting, and I’m right handed. Based on that and the smudges, I feel sure I wrote these words with my dead hand while I slept. I don’t know what it means, but what the notepad said was this:    

The Magpie Song  

There's a flock of magpies round me, round me,

They soar as high as you see, you see,

They took my eyes, but fairly paid,

For I rest in their eyes as even trade,

Spanning the land and the sea, the sea,

There's a flock of blackbirds in flight, in flight,

They move to and fro every night, every night,

They took my ears, beaks sharp and wry,

But it favors me with each sobbing cry,

Found in the spaces away from the light, the light,

There's a flock of crows crying loud, crying loud,

They cast shadows great as a cloud, a shroud,

They took my tongue, and so my voice,

By then I was strong--they had no choice,

It's with their pink darts I taste the tears, the tears.

There's a sky full of rooks and it's me, it's me,

See the remains in the field I used to be, used to be,

But now I move free, still young and hungry,

Still reaching out into the void.

I see you.

Shining there.

Your spirit.

Unaware.

   

As I finished reading it, my phone buzzed. It was a text message. It said “You saw something you shouldn’t have. But now you will see and tell much, much more.”  

I will plan for this to be my final entry, at least for now. If I post further, it will be due to some major change or update, or if I have some new writing I need to share. God help me, but I don’t know if “telling” such things is a good thing or not. I need time to think. Thank you again for all your support, I hope this post finds you well.   

 

***

 UPDATE:

I’ve started dreaming again. Since my hand was attacked, I sleep more and more. At first I would sleep for abnormally long periods, but it would be offset by long periods of wakefulness. Over time that is changing, and I am losing more and more time. The only potentially positive side effect of this is that I’m dreaming again, and I feel these dreams are a key to something.  

I don’t remember much of them, just spending time in a world that is similar to ours, but very different at the same time. As I walk there, I see cities, people, the features of a modern world. But I see dark and strange things too. I remember the alley bar from my earlier dream. I think my dream self visits there often. It’s an odd and lively place, with trappings of this mysterious other place all around. Symbols on the doors, strange mutterings from a group hunched at a corner table, and music that sounds like something that would be playing at a cat diner in hell.  

But in the end, a bar is a bar. And here, I can tell people know me. Most seem to respect or fear me, even though I'm wholly ignorant as to why. But it feels real, and compared to my waking life recently, it feels good. I set up at the bar, order a drink from the short, grinning bartender who approaches, and decide to make the most of this profoundly lucid dream.  

That’s when the good-natured buzz of the crowd died. Sensing as much as hearing it, I turn to see an older man entering the bar. He was unremarkable at first, well-dressed but not flashy, nodding to people as he entered, but saying very little as he threaded his way to a booth in the corner.
 

Yet I felt the room tense as he moved through it. I tried to discreetly study him for the reason why, but it wasn’t until he was moving out of my field of vision that I saw it. Out of the corner of my eye I could see something much like the thing that had attacked my hand floating behind him, its tendrils wrapping tightly around his limbs and head.
 

I had to fight to keep from crying out, slowly turning back to my drink and trying to breathe. The thing was much larger than the creature that attacked me or even the one I had seen in my back yard. And rather than being largely translucent and flowing, it was a dark, smoky gray with sharper edges at irregular intervals along the flesh of its bulbous core. Thinking about it now, I think those might have been more teeth from its dark center, grown so long they pierced its own skin.  

I sat paralyzed for several moments, analyzing the glimpse I had and trying to decide what to do next, and that’s when I woke up.  

For the first time in days I wanted to go back to sleep, to try and see more. Right or wrong, I’ve grown to feel that dream place is as or more real than this life, and that some part of myself is fighting to show it to me rather than having me decay in some dreamless slumber. But sleep was gone for the moment. I checked my phone and saw it had been nearly 26 hours since I was last awake.  

The strangest thing about my increasingly odd life is that there are no real rough edges. As I’ve mentioned before, I have money deposited in my account from some unknown source. Everyone I knew has either been erased or doesn’t know me anymore. I still eat and drink, but even if I sleep a whole day I never see signs of soiling myself or being overly hungry or dehydrated when I wake up. I feel like everything had been pruned away so I can primarily sleep and sometimes write these strange things with my corrupted hand. I worry there will come a time when I don’t wake up at all.  

So I go out. I go to the store, trying to avoid the strange looks my gloved hand receives. It would be easier if not for the mild distaste I see when people encounter me, like they smell something rotten. Even before they see my hand, even when I know I’m clean. I dress largely the same, and I’m not poorly groomed. Yet I feel like some dirty vagrant who is unwelcome as I push a shopping cart down the aisle. I don’t even think they know they’re doing it. Its like some deep, animal part of them knows I’m wrong now.  

I go to the park sometimes, and that’s better, especially when it’s empty. I have figured out that I can stave off sleep awhile by staying in a public place. I think the dead hand doesn’t want me passing out in public. But if I stay too long, my normally limp hand will begin to throb painfully and with increasing urgency until I go home and go back to sleep.  

I feel like a prisoner, but I haven’t given up. I’m trying to find any connection between what has happened to me and the writings my hand produces. So far what I’ve managed to learn is that there is a Tattersall Security--some low-profile outfit that does mainly government contracts, so that might be a connection with FM Rider. And based on some forum discussions I found, there has been a strange increase in the amount of “door graffitti” in certain parts of the southern and central U.S., and out of the few photo examples I found online, several looked like what was described in It’s not a window. It’s a door..
 

Finally, I haven’t found another writing yet, or at least not a narrative. But two days ago I did find something I had done—the hand had done—while I was asleep. It was a drawing of a cave, or that’s what it seemed to be at least. Below it was just one word: Mystery.  

I don’t know what any of this means yet, or if I ever will. But I will keep trying, and I wanted to update you on things during the brief window of wakefulness I have. If I can, I will write again, and I hope this finds you well.

 

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Credits

 

You Saw Something You Shouldn't Have (Part 3)

  

I’ve had a lot happen in the past few days. I’m currently using the wifi in the lobby of a motel I stayed at last night and I’ve been aimlessly wandering since Saturday, never staying at the same place more than one night. But I think that’s over--it’s not accomplishing anything, and I’m very tired. And that’s not what happened first. That’s not where we left off, is it?  

I looked back at what I had posted last, and it was all accurate. The last few days have made me feel surer that I am either so insane that I’m likely in a padded room right now, rocking in my own piss and shit, dreaming up all this, including writing to you, or it’s real. If it is real, I think there’s a very good chance that I’m in Hell, in which case would that make it real or just an imagined torment? I don’t know, but I find the semantics of it pretty funny at this point.  

But back to the story, right? Got to tell the fucking story. And I do. I feel compelled, and when I’m getting it out I feel more at peace than any other time, like I’m lancing a boil. Enough of my whining. On with it.
 

I went back into the probate court that afternoon and met with a Ms. Mercer, who was pleasant and helpful enough, though she had no real help to give. She said that the paper records were all transferred into their database back to 2002, which of course covered Luke who was born in 2013. No sign of him. Tried every search parameter, but no luck.
 

So then I start asking about doing a search of the physical records. Even when they put those records in a computer system, they have to keep the originals of vital records in most states. The woman was again helpful as she could be, saying that I was in luck because they had records going back to 1982 in the courthouse, though they were about to transfer everything up to 2015 to an off-site storage facility in the next few weeks to make more room. After that paper copies from the originals would take a written request and a few days turnaround. But again, she pointed out unironically, today was my lucky day.  

She led me into a cavernous room filled with deed books and land plats, which made me realize I’d never even called into work the day before or today. Pushing the thought aside, I followed her through another door to a smaller, more densely packed room full of file cabinets. She showed me how the filing system worked and offered to help further, but I told her I could work on it myself. I planned to be thorough, so I had made up a more elaborate story that I was doing genealogical research and Luke was a distant cousin. This made it easier to explain that I would need some time to look through records for not only him, but any other lost relatives. In truth, I just wanted to be alone with the records and make sure it was not misfiled if I didn’t find his birth certificate right away. Ms. Mercer nodded cheerfully and meandered away, heading to a nearby breakroom where another woman was apparently eating some variety of office birthday cake.  

I began searching, and it took little time to see it wasn’t there. No sign it ever had been. I expanded my search to the entire drawer, then the two drawers before and after, going through each certificate individually. It was monotonous, but as I searched I began picking up on pieces of the conversation between Mercer and the cake lady.  

They were talking about the funeral Mercer had been to that morning. It was for a man who had run a local barbershop for a number of years, a man who Ms. Mercer clearly thought a lot of and had even dated briefly when they were both just out of high school. There was some wistful talk of him being kind and handsome, but what caught my attention was their tone of voice as they spoke. It carried not just sadness or regret, but a thick cord of fear. At first I didn’t understand, as it was incongruous with what they were saying. Then they started discussing how he died.  

The man had been found out behind his barbershop one morning earlier this week, having apparently been attacked the night before. No one knew what had attacked him, but his entire head was riddled with tiny holes. Face, scalp, even under his jaw. The cake woman, whose brother was apparently the local coroner, said they were like teeth marks, but long needle teeth, and from all angles and from nothing that he had ever seen. In any case, the damage done had been extensive. His head had been crushed and punctured severely, and according to the same coroner, and this last part had not been discussed publicly, while the injuries would have killed him, he actually died fairly slowly from suffocation, possibly while still being bitten.  

About that time the women looked out at me and I realized I had stopped just sneaking glances and was staring at them. I smiled and nodded, pretending to go back to my search, but after whispering to each other for a moment, they headed back up to the front. After they were gone, I pushed the story from my mind and headed back into the drawers.  

After an hour I gave up on finding Luke. I wanted to cry, but I felt too hollowed out and tired to actually do it. Turning to head back up to the front and away from the courthouse, I had a thought. My wife was born in this county too, back in 1984.
 

I didn’t know why I felt like I needed to check her too until I did. There was no birth certificate for her either. I searched the entire drawer, a new wellspring of panic rising in my chest. Trying to catch my breath, I pulled out my phone.  

First, I checked my text messages. She had sent me three the day before asking me to come home, but each time I had just sent a text back saying I was okay and I would see her when I got back. But since then, nothing. I had assumed she had given up for the moment, but now I wasn’t sure. I called three times to her cell number and twice to the home phone, but there was no answer at either. They just rang.  

I almost ran from the place, but I got control of myself and waited long enough to ask Ms. Mercer to run a computer check for my wife before I left. Again, nothing. I already felt myself growing numb. Thanking her, I left the office.  

The trip back home was uneventful, and I honestly don’t remember most of it, my head in a dull fog. I felt like I was just waiting to read the report saying I had terminal cancer after the doctor had already given me the bad news. My life was gone. Anything further was just going to be confirmation.  

I pulled up at the house, and felt a rueful lack of surprise that there was no sign of my wife’s car. My key worked--the house was still mine apparently, but there was no sign of my family or their belongings. I checked the house thoroughly more out of some need for completeness than out of any real hope, and found nothing. Two hours later, exhausted in every sense, I passed out on the sofa.  

I found myself in another one of those too-real dreams. I was walking down a dark alleyway in some unknown, rain-soaked city, my face cold as wind whipped past me, bringing with it the spicy scent of old decay. I was headed towards the bright spot in the alley, a neon sign hanging above a door that appeared to belong to some kind of bar or club.  

There was a bouncer at the door, a thick-necked man with a collapsible baton held casually in his meaty left hand. Without thinking about it, I pulled a coin from my pocket, holding it in my palm for him to see. It was the strange coin I had found or its twin. In the dream, I saw and felt it pulse and shift on my palm slightly, though my dreamself did not scream or throw it away. After a moment of studying it, the bouncer nodded and let me pass through the door.  

I woke up suddenly at that point, and I saw it was still dark. My phone had gone dead, but after charging it for a few minutes it told me it was actually Saturday night around 9pm. I had slept for over twenty hours. There were no missed calls or texts, and no signs of anyone having come in while I was out. I was alone.  

I took a shower, hoping it might clear my head and tired of my growing old-sweat stink. I was still numb, but I could tell that I hadn’t eaten in over a day and so I microwaved some soup and sipped on it as I looked out the French doors that went out to our back patio and the yard beyond. I stood there staring for a few moments before I saw the thing floating there.  

It was the same thing I had seen at the gas station or something like it. There was very little moon that night, but we have a security pole light that illuminates the back yard very well. I could see the thing coming toward me slowly, still thirty yards out but slowly undulating back and forth as it lazily crossed the distance.  

I’ve thought a lot about how to describe this thing, and I still don’t know. In some ways it reminds me of some giant pale jelly fish. In other ways it looks like a semi-opaque dry cleaning bag given obscene life. If it has a head, it is the roundish mass that moves it forward, a ball of pale and largely translucent flesh that floats in the air. At the center of this mound is a writhing ball of darkness. It reminded me of pictures I’ve seen of a ball of snakes mating. If this thing has a center, a nucleus, a face, this cancerous core is it.  

But that is not the entirety of it. Trailing back from it, partially hanging, partially floating by some unknown suspension, are more long strands of the same pale and glistening meat. Like a comet’s tail, it slowly follows behind the mound, shifting on unknown currents as smaller strands occasionally dart out as though tasting the air.
 

I stared at it for at least ten seconds before I was able to move. I found myself wondering if it might be filled with long needle teeth. Then I ran.
 

It was moving extremely slowly towards the house, so I took half a minute to put on shoes, grab my wallet, phone and keys, and get my jacket from where I had dropped it when I had come home the day before. Then I was out the door, in my car, and heading away. I looked in my rearview, but never saw it follow.  

That was five days ago. I’ve been running ever since. Motel to motel, having given up any pretense of not using cards or worrying about being tracked. Just trying to stay away from whatever that thing is, whatever it might want. I called my job once, and to my lack of surprise, they didn’t know who I was. Yet my cards still work, all my online accounts, everything that does not rely on people seems to be purring along just fucking fine.  

I’ve been largely on autopilot these past few days, but that changed last night. I saw it again, outside my motel. Only for a moment, and it didn’t come closer, but I knew that it knew I was there just the same.  

So I give up. I’m going home. It’ll either get me or it won’t. Or maybe, just maybe, I’ll go ahead and kill myself if I can get up the stomach to do it. Actually, it’ll probably depend on how scared I get. Because despite everything, despite feeling utterly used up and hollowed out, I’m still fucking terrified.  

This will probably be my last entry. If I survive somehow, I’ll post again. If I don’t, well you know. Thank you for listening to all of this. I’m so alone now, and it means so much to talk about this, even in such a strange format, even if it amounts to screaming out into the dark. Thank you.   

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Credits

 

You Saw Something You Shouldn't Have (Part 2)

  

My son is gone. I don’t know how else to say it or how else to start this, and I don’t know what the point of any of this is at this point, but I also feel like this is the only place I can actually talk and not sound crazy, even if it’s just because everyone here thinks its just a story I'm telling.
 

When I say he is gone, my beautiful, smart, funny boy Luke, that is what I mean. Not kidnapped, not run off, not missing. As far as I can tell, he has been obliterated from this world entirely.  

Here is my first post with its brief update: Part 1  

After my first post the other day, I took to heart some of the advice I received and decided I would try responding to the text messages. I was going to wait until Thursday because I knew my wife and son would be leaving to spend a few days with her parents. Not because of all this, you understand, just a visit that’s been planned for the past few months. The trip is five hours and to another state, so it doesn’t happen often but I saw no reason for them not to go this time, especially when no strangeness had seemed to touch them yet and I was about to do something that might provoke some unknown response.  

So yesterday morning I woke up at 630, thinking I’d get up early and have breakfast with them before I went to work, as they would have already left before I got home that night and I wouldn’t see them again until Sunday. When I stepped out of our bedroom, I saw Luke’s door was closed. This was strange, because we never close that door so we can hear him and keep a better eye on him. But I figured he’d just shut it and was either playing or still asleep. I knocked and then opened the door, but it wasn’t his room.  

It was the same room, but with no sign of Luke in it. Where his bed had been there was an eliptical machine with clothes hanging off it. Instead of a collection of army men and tanks on the floor there were boxes of books and an old t.v. The room was not full, but there was no sign of recent movement of objects to or from the room. I even thought and looked at the walls for thumbtack holes where Luke’s posters had been hung, but the walls were unmarked and covered with old, faded paint.
 

You need to understand that two weeks ago I would have left the room immediately, assuming I had made a mistake or was going crazy, and would have sought the right room or some kind of help. But now, I am already fearful I’m going insane or that something large and terrible is coming for me. I take more care to look and consider, to see if reality is consistent with what I’m perceiving. So it was only after I went through the room thoroughly and found no sign of my boy that I checked the others. And it was only after I had searched everywhere upstairs that I began looking for my wife.  

It seems odd to me in retrospect that I didn’t think she would be gone too. Maybe I had some dim, animal sense of her presence in the house, or maybe I was just too overwhelmed to process any more at the moment. In any case, there she was, eating a bowl of cereal at the bar that divides our kitchen and living room. She gave me a sleepy smile at first, but it quickly faded as she saw my expression and heard what I was saying.  

“Where’s Luke?”  

“Who? Luke?”  

I tried to keep my voice even, but I could hear my fear and rage creeping in. “Luke. Our son.. Where is he. What happened to his room. Why are you looking confused?”  

I swear she looked genuinely concerned as she stood up and came towards me. “Honey. You need to calm down. I think you had another weird dream. One where we had a child I guess? We don’t have any children, at least not yet.”  

I was already shaking my head as she spoke. “No. No. You’re lying, or under someone’s control. We have a fucking child. His name is Luke. He’s going to be five in June. He’s…” I started crying some at that point, and when she reached out to hold me, I didn’t pull away. We kept talking for the next couple of hours, during which she showed me photo albums, social media, emails that all either contained no trace of Luke or actual references to us not having kids yet. I agreed to go to a psychologist immediately, and my wife began making calls, but the quickest I could be seen on a nonemergency basis was this coming Monday, and I got her to agree that making this an emergency was jumping the gun, especially with what it could do to my career or bar license.  

She said she needed to go into town in the afternoon and I told her to go, that I was okay. That it was probably just stress and bad dreams. In truth, I needed her to go so I had time for what I needed to do. It may be that I’m crazy, but I’d like to be sure before I commit to that path. If I get medicated, or worse, committed, it may be too late.  

So she leaves, me waving and assuring her I'll stay right there, and ten minutes later I’m my car. I’d like to say that I lied to her to protect her, and that is true. But it isn’t the whole truth. I also didn’t trust her entirely, and I wanted to verify Luke’s existence without her.
 

So I head to his school. I talk first to his teacher and then the administration. I do it in that order intentionally because I know I’ll likely never get to the teacher if I’ve already been asking strange questions at the office. I try to ask my questions calmly and with some subtlety, but that’s hard to pull off when you are asking about a child that has either been erased or never existed. Both the teacher and the office said Luke was never at that school. They also acted like they didn’t know me, when I have memories of going to open house, two conferences, and the Christmas program.  

I sat out in my car afterward for a few minutes, crying and trying to reconcile what I knew and felt with the world I’d woken up in. I was close to giving up and going home before I was missed when something occurred to me. I knew that teacher.  

Aside from related to Luke, I’d never been to that school or met that teacher. Yet I knew her name, her face, where her room was, and what it looked like. Whatever was happening, it really was happening, or I was so far gone that I was lying to myself and creating facts as needed to sustain the delusion. In either case, I made the decision to pursue it further.  

I text my wife, apologizing for leaving, telling her not to worry and that I’ll be back the following day. I have a long trip ahead of me. Luke was born in the same county my wife is from, the same place I thought they would be heading to today to visit his grandparents. I’d already rejected trying to confirm his existence with my wife’s parents for several reasons, but I did want to check the birth records at the county probate court. It was one of the few official ways of verifying a young child’s existence, and my hope was if there was some kind of….manipulation going on, maybe it wouldn’t go that wide or deep. And yes, I know I sound paranoid and insane at this point, and will moreso later on.  

After sending my wife a long text, I finally send a text to the unknown number. “What happened to my son?” I probably typed and erased ten different messages before settling on that one. Not too vague or specific, not overly emotional or confrontational. I waited for ten minutes for a response, but none came. Setting the phone down, I headed out.  

There was no way I would make it to the probate court before it closed for the day, so I drove slowly, using the time to think. At one point I stopped and got something to eat at a fast food place, going inside just to be out of the car for a little while. I sat inside after forcing myself to eat a few bites of a burger I didn’t want when I had an idea. I had brought that strange coin with me. I didn’t really remember picking it up, but I was in a frenzied rush when I left the house. I went back up to the condiment bar in the restaurant and got five packs of sugar, emptying them on the table and spreading them in a thick but even circle a little bigger than the coin. My idea was that I could try pressing the coin into the sugar to see if I could tell anything from the imprint it left behind.  

I did it on both sides, and on one side there were strange shapes and what might be words along one edge, but they were faint and nothing I recognized. On the other side it seemed like there was a picture of something. Possibly a whale? I tried to take pictures with my phone, but flash washed it out and no flash was too dark. I gave up and went on the road again.  

By 1030 I was close to the area and was going to look for a place to park for the night, having found the idea of getting a room with my card somewhat terrifying, as though someone would find me and capture me in my sleep. I had already gotten money out of the ATM before heading out that afternoon, and it needed to last me for a while for food and gas. But speaking of gas, I needed some. I’d been so preoccupied that I let it get down to the fuel light, and the only gas station within the next thirty miles was lit up but closed.  

The sign on the door said “Back by midnite”, and while I had no guarantee it was true, my stupidity had left me with few other options. So I sat and waited. The attendant did come back a few minutes before midnight as promised, but something else happened before she got there.
 

I had gotten out of the car a second time to stretch my legs and wake myself up some, pacing the lit parking lot of the gas station and peering out into the surrounding dark. In the distance I could see the dim shadowy shapes of a couple of houses, partially lit by three amber street lights that seemed to have been haphazardly placed to poorly light this spot in the road. Everything was so still and quiet. It felt like I was the only thing living in some dead or frozen world. Then I saw movement in the distance.  

It was at the edge of the pool of light thrown down by the farthest street light, dipping in and out of the dark. I couldn’t see much, and my first thought was that it was a large plastic bag of some sort being blown by the wind. Except it didn’t move right, and there was no wind. I would just catch glimpses of it, light and dark, shiny and rippling, several feet above the ground and bobbing like an obscene balloon tugged by an invisible child. I ran back to my car and locked myself inside, and was ready to leave gas or no gas, but when I looked again it was gone. When the girl came and unlocked the door, I thrust forty dollars at her and pumped the gas as quickly as possible, getting back out on the road too fast but maintaining control of the wheel.

 

I didn’t stop until I reached the courthouse, and I parked nearby for the night. My plan had been to sleep in the car, but there was no sleep to be had at this point. I kept watching for that shape and writing this that you are reading. If I am able, I will post this today, which is Friday. This has become a journal of sorts for me, and I still hold out hope it may lead to help, but at least it will be a record if nothing else.
 

Update: Apparently the lady that is in charge of birth and death records is at a funeral and won’t be back until after lunch, so I will post this now. I will try to post again soon with what I found and any other update. Thank you all again for listening and trying to help.   

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Credits