everybody isn't here anymore nosleep

1.

I grew up in a house full of vanishing things. I wonder if that's what happened to my dad. He disappeared when I was three.

My brother was two years older than I was. I would ask him what happened to dad, and he would just stare at me.

You shouldn't ask about stuff like this, he would say. You should never ask about some things.

2.

Sometimes people move away, I didn't. I live where I grew up. I sleep in the same bedroom. I boarded up my mother's old room, just like I boarded up my brother's room before that.

I drive to work everyday. I come home and pull into the driveway and stare at the windows for a moment before I go in. I'm looking to see if i can see anything moving behind those blacked out windows in those boarded rooms. So far, I haven't seen anything.

I still hear things at night.

3.

We lost our cat when I was nine. She was three years old. Her name was Beluga. I named her. I was learning about whales.

The sunlight in the house seemed like it never worked. She could never find any place to lay down. Shadows moved too fast across the carpets, up and down the stairs, into the basement.

Sometimes I world see shadows seem to slip into the heating grates, pushing in between the holes.

Beluga wasn't around one morning when I went down for cereal. My brother was already there. He hadn't touched his cereal. He looked tired. I asked him if he had seen there. He didn't say anything.

He had stopped talking that year at school and at home. He only spoke to the neighbor kids outside, to the girls who got pregnant at 13, to the boys who got shot and died, after they made the girls pregnant.

Everything in my neighborhood was full of life, even if it died.

The school said my brother had selective mutism. I said he was being a dick. My mom hit me when I said that. He didn't say anything.

I never saw my cat again.

4.

I work downtown. I drive my car to work every morning though the tunnels. Every time I go into them, for a second I start to scream. Like the darkness and the ceiling are going to swallow me alive. Like I'm driving into a mouth. And one day it'll swallow me.

They've been doing construction on the tunnels from midnight to 5 AM. I'm always one of the first cars in. Whatever work they're doing leaves holes in the wall that are all filled up with shadows.

Yesterday I saw something in the holes.

The year my cat disappeared my house stayed the same size, but all the shadows got bigger.

My mom was getting smaller. Her clothes didn't fit right. Her smiles got small, smaller, then they were gone. Her voice shrank until all she ever said was a whisper.

Our food leaked out of our cabinets, too. Everyday there would be less. The refrigerator light went out. I stopped opening the door. The shadows took that room.

Before I fell asleep one night, with the windows open to let in hot streetlight air through the wide rips in the screens, I saw a hole. It was on my ceiling; a black spot on a black surface, spreading like oil on the ocean. It looked wet, and full of nothing. Paralyzed, under my sheets, I watched it, until all of the sudden it was morning and the only sound in the house was the coughing ignition of cars on the street.

6.

I asked someone at my work what they were doing to the tunnels.

"I think they're just like, fixing them," she said, distracted at the coffee maker.

"What's wrong with them?" I asked. "What needs fixing?"

"Oh, who knows what's wrong with things? The insides are all probably rotting."

7.

The notices that my brother was missing went up two days after I saw him last. It was almost fall. The days felt warm still, but there was a breeze that made you cough with its raw edge.

I put up some of the flyers myself. A girl I knew he talked to saw me struggling with the stapler against the telephone pole. She stopped her bike and got off.

"What happened," she said to me.

I shrugged and didn't say anything.

"I saw him a week ago," she said. "He said he was scared."

"Why," I asked. The sky was all blue crayon colored.

"He said there was something taking things from him," she explained, "and it told him it was going to need more. He said it took his voice when he was there but it needed more."

I didn't say anything. I just turned around and put up the picture of him, with "missing, please help" written on it. I heard her get back on her bike and ride away.

That night I heard his voice through the heating grates. He sounded far away.

"Nate," he said, all echoey, "it's going to need more."

8.

My mom didn't answer her door one day when I knocked. When I opened the door, she wasn't in her room. Everything was empty.

In the garage, there were boards. I covered her door with them, and my brother's too.

I started to bring things home. Small things at first. Cats, mice, stuff like that. I'd take them to the attic. I think the shadows came from the attic. I put them in there and close the door and run to my bedroom. I'd feel a rush in the air, a change of pressure.

I could always tell when the holes needed something. I could feel them starting to gnaw at the edges. And one night, they started to talk to me, to explain to me, they needed more than the small things I was bringing them. I needed to bring it larger things. Or it would take me.

9.

Everyday in the tunnel, I watch the shadows growing. I wonder if they'll get even bigger. I'll wonder if it's my house they're getting out of, or somebody else's, or if maybe they're just starting to grow everywhere. They haven't talked to me yet, so I don't know if I'll need to feed them, or if they can catch their own.

Driving home, I pass all the "Missing Please Help" signs. There seem to be more of them everyday.

Submitted June 11, 2015 at 12:28AM by Orphanology http://ift.tt/1QpgUVk nosleep