I first realized something was wrong when I found pictures on my phone that I knew couldn’t be real.
It had been awhile since I’d looked back through my gallery app more than a few days, and I only did it this time out of boredom while waiting in line at the drive-thru pharmacy. That sense of comfortable familiarity at scrolling past pictures I was reminded I’d taken—a cool-looking sky, my dog Tenner, the girl I’d been seeing for the past few weeks—was pleasant and distracting. So much so I had to hear a honk behind me before I remembered to edge up ten feet to keep the line moving.
But when I went back more than a few of months, things started to change. The pictures were things I didn’t remember. People that weren’t familiar and places I’d never been. What was all this? No one else had ever used my phone to take photos that I remembered, and certainly not long enough to take months’ worth of pictures I’d never seen. As I went back two years, I was now into my last phone’s pictures that had been saved in the cloud, and again, none of these looked familiar. I was even in some of them, posing or hugging people, even kissing this woman in several that I didn’t know at all.
Mouth dry, I pulled out of line and drove away. For a few minutes I just wandered, my mind feeling spongey and untrustworthy, like I’d taken something or had too much to drink. It distracted me, made me feel unsteady. I caught myself weaving off the road once, then a second time, and that was enough to get me to pull over at a gas station and park. I needed to get my shit together before I had an accident.
I reached for my phone again, but stopped short. I didn’t want to see more pictures. It would only make me feel stranger and more disconnected. I…I needed rest. I’d just close my eyes for a minute, try to relax, and see if I could make it home. Before I knew it I was asleep, drifting along a river of dreams that took me all the way back to
laying on my bed at home. I had music playing low—heavy metal that Dad would call “devil music” only when I cranked it up too loud—and I was staring at my ceiling. Back then I was only eleven, and on Friday nights like this one I could stay up late so long as I stayed in my room and pretended I was going to sleep. So I’d read or listen to my CDs low or maybe the radio show that came on at midnight on the weekends. I’d stare at the ceiling of softly glowing stick-on stars and planets and fight the urge to sleep as long as I could.
This night my parents had already gone to bed themselves, and I knew I only had a few minutes more before the growling lyrics of the band blended into a steady rhythm that would lull me to sleep.
When the knock at the window came I jumped. What could it be? I was on the second floor, and all the trees were on the other side of the house. Turning, I squinted as I
looked up at the policewoman frowning down at me, a look of mild concern on her face. “Are you okay, sir?”
I blinked around in confusion. I was still at the gas station, but it had already gotten dark. Rolling down the window, I gave her an awkward smile. “Um, yeah. I…did I do something wrong?”
She smiled a little. “No, not that I know of. But the cashier in there called 911 because she said you’d been sitting out here since this afternoon. I think she was worried you were sick or something.” The officer raised an eyebrow. “You sick?”
Shaking my head, I glanced toward the store and saw a young woman looking out at me over some kind of chip display. Giving her a little wave, I turned back to the policewoman. “No…I just was really tired I guess. Meant to pull over and rest my eyes for a minute and…what time is it?”
She glanced at her watch. “Just past ten-thirty.”
“Fuck! I mean, um, dang. I guess I really did need sleep. Maybe I’m coming down with something after all.” I suddenly remembered the pictures on my phone and fought the urge to blurt out what I’d seen. Maybe tell her that someone must have hacked my phone or…no, that was stupid. And maybe it was part of a dream anyway. Trying to look sane and sober, I gave her an apologetic smile. “I really am okay though. I’ll just head home if that’s okay.”
The woman studied me a moment and then nodded. “Yeah, sure. Just…you’re sure you’re okay to drive?” When I nodded, she stepped back. “Okay. Well, have a good night. Hope you feel better.”
I backed out slow and careful, and when I reached the road I could tell I was feeling better. More steady. I made it home and waited until I was inside to look at my phone again. My heart sunk when I immediately saw the strange pictures where I’d left off scrolling. The top one on the screen was of me and this woman I was kissing in other pictures standing together smiling. The closeness and angle made it seem like I was taking the picture of us, and in the background I could see a pool and what looked like a cookout, but again, it was a place and people I didn’t recognize.
Despite having been passed out in my car for almost six hours, I suddenly felt very tired. I didn’t want dinner, just more sleep, and I needed to be up early in the morning anyway to go visit
“Mom, how’ve you been?”
She looked up at me, her eyes bright and cloudy at the same time. I could already tell it wasn’t a good day for her—her momentary excitement at someone coming to see her was already fading, and she wasn’t even trying to hide the fact that she didn’t recognize me, which on her scale of trying to accommodate her Alzheimer’s, was on the low end.
So I sat with her, trying to make small talk that went nowhere as she briefly but politely responded to this stranger who she maybe had some odd sense she should know, but she couldn’t say from where or when. As we stared out the window at the birds hopping around on the sunlit brick patio outside, I felt the restless need to try again to get her talking more. I made a joke about how the bricks must be hot for the birds to hop around so much and
“Those are sparrows. They hop when they’re on the ground because that’s not where they belong. They forage down below, but they live in the trees. As opposed to a true ground bird like a partridge.” When I looked up, her sharp eyes found mine as her voice grew lightly reproachful. “I’ve told you that before, Nolan.”
I nodded, my vision growing slightly hazy as I broke her gaze and looked back out the window. “Yeah, Mom. You have. Sorry, I forgot.”
She reached over and patted my leg. “No need to be sorry. I get forgetful too.” I blinked, struggling with what to say, when my mother spoke up again. “Where’s Marcia? She didn’t come this time?”
I looked back at her then, unable to hide my confusion. “Marcia? Who’s Marcia?”
She raised an eyebrow and laughed. “Who’s Marcia? Don’t let her hear you say that.” When I didn’t smile or laugh in return, her expression grew more serious. “Nolan, I’m talking about your wife. Your wife, Marcia.” Her lip began to tremble as her eyes widened slightly. “I…I do have that right, don’t I? I know I get confused sometimes, but…I mean I know you have a wife named Marcia.” She paused, looking down at her hands, milling against each other nervously as she went on. “Don’t you?”
I almost told her yes just to get her to stop looking so terrified and ashamed, but what good would that do? Telling the truth, lying, none of it made it any better. Ten minutes from now she would just…a thought suddenly struck me. Pulling out my phone, I opened the gallery app and scrolled down into the pictures I didn’t recognize before handing her the phone.
“Hey, just…look at these pictures, yeah? You can touch the screen and scroll them. Yeah, like that. Just, do you recognize any of these people?”
My mother blushed slightly and shot me a hard look. “Is this to see if I can remember any of them?”
I shook my head. “No, Mom….no. I…I don’t remember these people. I don’t know what these places are or who took the pictures. I just wanted to see if you do.”
Her frown deepened. “Honey, are you okay? I know…” She sighed. “I know you’re worried about getting memory problems like me, but you’re still young. What, thirty-five?”
I nodded. “Yeah, until next month.”
She smiled. “Until next month, that’s exactly right. So try not to worry. Memory can be…”
I cut her off, trying to keep my voice soft. “Mom, please. Just look while…” while you can still remember things “…while I’m still here.”
My mother watched me for a moment and then nodded, turning to studiously scroll through several of the pictures before looking back up at me. “Honey, you know all these people. This is Marcia.” She pointed to a photo of the woman I’d seen so many times. “And these two? These were taken in Doug’s backyard.” She scrolled down a bit more before pointing. “See? There’s Doug and his wife right there.” She met my eyes again, clearly afraid. “Are there other pictures you meant? I must be looking at the wrong ones.”
I swallowed and took the phone back from her. “No…No, those are the right ones.”
We sat silent for several moments until she spoke again, her voice barely above a whisper. “You really don’t remember your wife or your best friend? You’re not playing a trick on me? I won’t be angry…but Nolan, are you telling me the truth?”
Shaking my head, I looked back up at her. “I swear. I think something’s wrong with me. There has to be.”
She looked confused. “What’s wrong with you?”
“Well…I mean I can’t remember things. Things I should remember.”
My mother smiled, her eyes drifting back toward the window. “Oh, that happens to everybody. I have memory trouble sometimes too.”
Shuddering, I reached out and took her hand, giving it a squeeze. She held it for a moment before pulling back, her gaze distant now and far away. I sat with her a few more quiet minutes before heading back to the car, the light painfully bright as I
looked at the thing tapping at my window. Its face was large and round, hard and white, with a faint glow that seeped through the glass to fill my darkened bedroom with a haze of sickly light. The electric guitar riff squealed high before the bass kicked in, and in the space between the two, the creature knocked again.
I was terrified as I looked at it—a face with just a small jut for a nose and two large pits for eyes dug into a circle of bone white, it looked like a child’s monstrous, half-finished drawing of the man in the moon. And behind it, floating in the silver light of the real moon, I saw twisting grey limbs splayed out in every direction like a stick-bug married to an octopus, every arm or leg ending in a hard hooking claw. Even the one that rapped on the window between beats of the music.
It must have been the light that drew me forward. I could see it reaching out to me, a shining cloud that I breathed in, and when I breathed it in, I lost my fear. And unafraid, I opened the window.
It didn’t wait for an invitation, and even as it crawled forward onto me, I saw its face begin to split open into a terrible mouth. All of it was a terrible mouth, a horrible hunger, a million turning teeth around a pink questing tongue. The tongue shot out and pierced my breastbone even as the force of it flung me back into its surrounding arms.
I gasped and found my fear again.
I heard something, and at first I thought it was my own frantic mind whispering, but no. It was the creature, telling me everything would be okay. That it was so sorry, but had to be this way. It had to live, and it would give me what it could but in the end it would have to take more. It was sorry, but there was so little room for mercy in this
“world, and there won’t be more if we don’t make it, right?”
Marcia blinked at me. “Nolan?” She laughed as she followed my gaze to something horrible and distant that she couldn’t see. That I couldn’t see anymore either, except in some dreaming memory or remembered nightmare. I blinked and looked at her.
“Sorry, hun. I think I spaced out for a second. What were you saying?”
She shook her head, frowning slightly as she leaned across the table. “It’s okay. I just…you looked kind of freaked out.” The waitress brought us our lunch just then, but when she had left, Marcia picked the thread back up. “You looked kind of scared. What were you thinking about?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. I think I was remembering something from when I was a kid. A nightmare I had once about a monster coming in my room and…” I took a sip of water. “and eating me.”
She laughed. “Jesus! Well, you look pretty good for someone that’s been monster-eaten. What made you think about that?”
“You know how it is. Sometimes things just come back to you at the weirdest times.”
Marcia stabbed a piece of pasta. “I guess. But you’ll have to tell me that nightmare.”
“Yeah, sure. I will.” I picked at my own plate absently. “Just…not now, okay? I don’t want to thi…” My words died as I saw the edge of something colorful poking out under the rim of my plate. Pulling it out, I felt my tongue begin to thicken in my throat as I recognized it. It was a piece of folded color paper, slick to the touch and folded into a square. Turning it over just confirmed what I already knew it was. Liner notes for an old CD I had growing up. I’d been playing it the night there was a knock on my window.
“What is that?” Marcia’s voice was curious, but also concerned. She could see my face, see my hand shaking as I read the words that had been scrawled across the front of the paper. The cover image was of a tombstone surrounded by skeleton hands licked by fire, and the words were written in small, neat rows within the borders of the gravestone, almost like an epitaph. I recognized the handwriting—it was mine, at least mine when I was a kid. But the words…what were those words…
The sky will burn the
”night you die.”
I jumped, slightly startled at the voice at my elbow. Looking behind me, I saw a tiny old woman in a pink bathrobe shuffling past me. She had to have been the one that said it, but I couldn’t tell if she even knew I was there at all. I noticed motion at the corner of my eye as one of the nurses ran up and gently grabbed the woman’s shoulders. Giving me a sour look, she started steering the lady back toward the front of the nursing home.
“You really have to be careful when you come out. Always make sure the door latches behind you please, and that no one follows you out. Sometimes they slip through.”
I went to apologize, but she was already hustling the little woman back across the parking lot. Frowning, I headed on to my car and got in. Did I really know these people like Mom said? And if so, what was the best way of finding out when I didn’t even know who or where they were? And if I had amnesia or something, wouldn’t they have found me already? Wouldn’t my wife be at home instead of me having memories of dating Penelope and…I needed to take a breath. Maybe start by trying to contact Penelope and see what she knew and remembered.
Feeling slightly better that I had a plan, I reached to
get the bill when I heard Marcia laugh. Looking up, I saw she was tearing off pieces of bread and feeding it to a pair of birds that were hopping around between our table and the next. She glanced at me and grinned.
“Aren’t they cute? I wonder what kind they are?”
My throat felt tight. “I think they’re sparrows.”
She nodded absently. “Well they’re brave. We must be giants to them, and they still come down and dance around our feet for some tasty bread.” Her smile began to fade. “They hop back and forth when they’re on the ground because that’s not where they belong.”
My eyes widened. “What did you…”
“Please don’t feed them, ma’am.”
I looked up to see the waitress looking at Marcia disapprovingly before gesturing at the metal railing surrounding the perimeter of the dining area. “We’ve got the fence up to discourage animals from bothering customers, but sometimes they slip
through. I am still young, so the lives I give you aren’t many or long, and I am sorry they tangle at the end. They say I will get better as I grow.
The bony limbs holding me were hard and sharp, but their grasp, while firm, was still gentle. I looked down and saw the thick tongue, purple-black now, sucking at my chest, draining my insides. It didn’t hurt, not really. It was just pressure and tension. And as I watched, the creature pulled the tongue away, apparently satisfied.
Sleep now. Go back to those lives. They are real and this is the dream. They are your life and this is the nightmare. Do not be afraid.
It was easing me back onto my bed now, and I did want to just sleep, to just wake up from this terrible dream. But then I saw orange light flare in the corners of the room and I couldn’t help but look over at the flames crawling up the wall.
Do not worry. You will not feel the fire. It is only so others do not understand I was here. And this is a dream, remember? You cannot be hurt by a dream.
It took a hard black claw and softly nudged my head back straight so I was staring up at the ceiling.
There, just relax and let go. Let go and wake up in your real lives, not this shabby thing.
I sensed more than saw as it moved to the window.
And thank you. I will always remember what you gave to me. Thank you.
It was gone now, but I wasn’t far behind. My breath was hard to come by and my chest felt numb. I couldn’t move anymore, and the edges of my vision were already fading to greyish-black. Fighting back a distant kind of panic, I focused on the ceiling. All those glowing stars and planets, the comet I’d stuck myself when Dad held me up to reach. I couldn’t see their light anymore, not really. The fire was too bright. But I still imagined them glowing, still alive and shining down on me.
The fire reached the edge of the ceiling, causing the first of the constellations to curl and burn away.
Oh God. I needed to wake up. I needed to get out of this right now. This wasn’t my real life. My real life
was this, wasn’t it?
I looked around my car, halfway out of the parking space at the nursing home. What was wrong with me? Was I losing time now? Losing who I was?
No. I knew who I was. I was Nolan and this
was my real life. Marcia was my wife and we just had lunch and everything is great and I was okay. Everything was okay.
Trembling, I reached out and touched Marcia’s arm as we walked away from the restaurant. She stopped and looked back at me, her smile quickly turning to a look of concern.
“Nolan, what’s wrong?”
“I am
me, aren’t
I?”
Marcia’s forehead furrowed as she frowned. “Of course you are. What are you…” Her eyes widened as she began to scream. I only had to look down to see why.
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