So I'm posting this on here understanding that most people will think this is some unfinished story, a piece of fiction written like it really happened. I understand and accept that. I’m familiar with this reddit, and while I haven’t read a ton of stuff on here, I’ve enjoyed what I read, and I think I “get it”.
But I also don’t know who to ask about this, especially without seeming crazy or turning to some weird forum that will get me unreliable answers from pranksters or crazy people. So if someone has ever heard of something like this before, or you have some thought or suggestion, please post it. Or if you think I’m making it all up, I get that too and no hard feelings.
I work as in-house legal counsel at a medium-sized, pretty profitable real estate company based in the southeast. I’ve been an attorney for nearly ten years and the closest I’ve come to a courtroom is when I go to a courthouse to do land title searches. I’ve been married for eight years and we have a four year old little boy. I say all this so you have some idea that I have a good but pretty ordinary life. I don’t have strange hobbies or friends, I don’t typically go outside of the normal boundaries of my day to day existence to meet odd people or experience dangerous things.
But last Tuesday, I woke up to a strange text message. My alarm was set for 7am, but my phone buzzed about 640, and it stirred me out of sleep enough that I checked it. It said, “You saw something you shouldn’t have”. Being half-asleep, I kind of stared at it for a minute, trying to figure out what I had seen before the overall weirdness of the message dawned on me.
First of all, the sender was blank. No name, no number, no symbols, no indication that there were blank spaces like someone had hit a spacebar repeatedly and it had taken the input as characters. I couldn’t even highlight anything in the sender space. Second, the font of the message was different. Not like it was a different font than normal, but there were several letters that shifted noticeably higher or lower than the letters around them in a given word. Third, I haven’t seen anything. Aside from going to work, a parent-teacher conference, and out to pick up a pizza, I can’t think of anywhere I’ve even gone in the week prior to that message, and I sure haven’t seen anything weird or criminal or whatever.
I show it to my wife, and she just laughs it off. Says its probably some marketing thing or maybe a wrong number. That seems like a reasonable possibility, so I push it aside. Two nights later, last Thursday, I start having bad dreams.
When I was little I used to have night terrors. I’d wake my brother up screaming my head off, and it got so bad that even though my parents couldn’t really afford it, they took me to a sleep clinic for a few days when I was eight. I don’t remember what help they really gave me, but I know it stopped or I grew out of it, and aside from the occasional normal nightmare I’ve never had any problems since.
But this dream, while it was unpleasant to some degree, didn’t feel like a nightmare or even a dream. It felt very real and strangely mundane. I was at a dimly lit library, going through old books, and while I can’t say what I was looking for, I know I felt a growing sensation of frustration and unease that it wasn’t there.
When I woke up, instead of feeling relieved I felt panicked, and in my sleep-addled stupor I tried to force myself back to sleep, but of course that never works. After a few minutes, my phone buzzed. It was another message in the one-sided conversation from the mystery sender.
“You saw something you shouldn’t have and you need to stop before your life”. The message stopped there, but there was a photo attached. It was a dark picture of a man squatting down in an aisle, peering intently at a row of faded books on a low and dusty shelf. The heavy, metal bookshelves and the long aisle made it clear it was a library, and while the picture was at a bad angle and poorly shot, I could tell it was me. Not me from any library I'd actually ever been in, but me from my dream.
I felt sick as the idea bloomed and took root in me, and I considered waking my wife to show her, but something in me resisted the impulse. Maybe it was fear that she would look at me with worry, or worse, sadness and fear, in her eyes. I don’t know. But I haven’t told her yet. I haven’t told her about the last of it either.
The dreams have continued. Me at some strange place I consider home in the dream, me at a restaurant, me walking through some unknown town on a stormy afternoon with patches of hail coming down intermittently, thudding against an umbrella with a heavy, wrought metal handle. All these things seem real, and I wake in a strange panic. No more messages for the last few days though, and while I’ve grown to dread and hate my phone when it buzzes, my hope was that whatever strangeness had been happening was fading and would eventually take the dreams with it. This morning I found a coin on my nightstand.
I call it a coin because it is a small flat disc in the shape of a coin and with a heft as though it was made of metal. But its surface is not metal. It seems to be some kind of mottled gray leather or scales, almost like shark skin. But it is solid and sturdy, and it has some kind of embossing, but it is hard to make out due to the thing's color and texture. And its probably my imagination, but it feels like its warm.
The message buzzed through a few minutes later. “You saw something you shouldn’t have and you need to stop before your life is consumed”.
I think I need help, I just don’t know what kind. Has anyone experienced anything like this before? I don’t know what is going on and I don’t think the message is fucking finished yet. Please respond if you know anything.
Brief update: I appreciate the responses both public and private. Some helpful information and suggestions. I've considered trying to text back, but I didn't at first out of concern it was a phishing scam, and later because I was honestly scared and wanted to ignore it hoping it would go away. Worried it might provoke a reaction. But it is good advice and I will try it. My wife is taking our son to her parents tomorrow, so I'll wait and try it when I'm alone just in case. I do know I'm not imagining the texts though. Both my wife and a guy I'm friends with at work read them too. Haven't shown anyone the coin yet. Idk. Anyway, thank you again and Ill post an update in the next few days.
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