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.
---
Credits
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