You’ll probably be pretty lost if you don’t read this first:
Thanks for all the support and suggestions I’ve gotten from folks. A couple of people have mentioned similar experiences to mine, so I thought I might dig a little deeper into what this thing could be. So far, most of my research has led me to articles about Dementors from the Harry Potter Universe and a couple of pictures of Spiderman’s Venom. I’m not sure that this thing has been around for long, that or it makes a habit of cleaning up after itself particularly well. I’m hoping it’s the former.
All of that being said, I sent a link to my first post to my little brother. We’re both writers and I wanted to get him to proofread it for me. He called me immediately after he was done reading and demanded that we sit down to talk. There was a bit of apprehension in his voice, so I didn’t question it, despite it being a two hour drive from my town to his.
I threw some clothes in an overnight bag and decided I’d make a day of it. Athens is fun town at night and my brother is the best of company. When I pulled into the hole-in-the-wall coffee shop we were set to meet in, I noticed his car was already there. I saw him across the shop, nestled in the corner with a cup of coffee in one hand and his phone in the other. He didn’t look up as I joined him at the table, instead he slid his phone to me and waited.
“Is this it?” He asked me, his voice uncharacteristically curt. I picked up the phone and nearly dropped it again. There it was. The creature from what I thought was my own personal nightmare, sitting on my brother’s phone. I looked up at him and nodded. I don’t know what I expected, but I hadn’t been expecting this. I’d never really talked about it with anyone but professionals as I didn’t want my family thinking I’d lost my mind. But here it was, finally, proof that I am not just paranoid.
“How long has it been following you? Bout five years?” He questioned when I didn’t respond.
“Yeah. It started right after the—“
“The big tornadoes in 2011, yeah.” He rested his hand on his forehead and looked down at his phone. “I’m sorry bro. I really am.” He shook his head a bit, it looked like he might start crying, but my brother never does. I was a bit surprised by his sudden shift in emotions. My brother is a very calculated individual, we’re the exact opposite in that department. I don’t think he’s been outwardly afraid of anything since we were small children. I’m the other way around entirely, I spook easily. We’re also polar opposites in terms of the mystical as well. He doesn’t believe in God, demons or things that go bump in the night. He is the epitome of logos.
“It couldn’t feed on you, could it?” I asked, already knowing that answer was yes. He shook his head in the affirmative.
“It certainly tried.” He smiled a bit when he said it. “It resorted to jump scares pretty early in the game. The first time it tried to lick me, I unloaded my .45 into its chest. It didn’t like that very much.”
He gestured towards his leg. A long, gnarly scar ran down his calf. I’d seen it a hundred times before. Up until this point, however, its origin story had involved too much whiskey and a 4-wheeler.
“It left shortly after that, right before the tornadoes.”
“So what? It stopped stalking you and moved on to greener pastures?” I asked, trying to mask the anger rising in my voice.
“Brodin! I had no idea it had moved on to you, I didn’t even think about it!” He said, recognizing the emotions in my voice for what they were, subtle accusation. “If I had, I would have said something. C’mon man.”
I knew he was telling the truth, but I was angry nonetheless. We talked for a while longer, my desire to remain in Athens drained almost as quickly as the conversation. He didn’t have much information for me, he’d stopped thinking about the thing almost immediately after it left. He just isn’t the type to delve deeper into stuff like that. After we finished our coffee, I told him I was going to go home. He understood, though I could see the disappointment on his face.
We walked out to the parking lot together to share a parting smoke before I hit the road. As I was getting into the car, a question occurred to me.
“Hey, Broki, one last thing before I go. When did it show up for you?”
He stopped and looked at me, but the realization came crashing down on us at the same time.
“Right after dad died.”
The drive home was particularly uneventful. I spent most of the time wondering about this thing, where it came from, what it really wanted. Mostly I wondered if it had anything to do with my dad’s death. My dad had lived alone in my childhood home after my mom and he separated. She got the kids, he kept the house. We had a rocky relationship until I graduated from high school. We got closer, but never close enough. I wondered if this thing had been attached to him, and if it had, for how long? Maybe it was the reason he’d been so emotionally distant, maybe he was trying to protect us from it.
Instead of going home, I decided to go to dad’s old house. I pulled in to the driveway and was immediately met with a sense of dread. When my parents bought the house, the neighborhood was considered one of the best in Georgia. Nearly 30 years later, not so much. Most of the houses were in varying states of disarray and my dad’s was the worst. No one in the family came here much, but I’d inherited it and couldn’t bring myself to sell. The front door creaked open and the smell of moisture and mold hit me hard. I hadn’t done much with it since my dad passed, and I only came by when it was necessary.
Through the front door was the vaulted living room, my father’s reading chair in the corner next to a pair of boarded up windows. The inside of the house was in less of a state of disrepair than I imagined. It had been broken into so many times, I half expected to find a group of squatters using the house as a shelter. But it was empty, all that remained of my father’s life and my childhood, and God did it smell awful. I opened a few of the windows and propped the front door open in the hopes that it would air out a bit.
Out of habit I made my way towards the kitchen, it was always my first stop when I visited dad. It had been the only part of the house I’d had to clean up after he passed. Mold and mildew from months of neglect was one thing, but I can only imagine what that house would have smelled like if I hadn’t cleaned out the refrigerator. I sat at the kitchen table and stared out of the singular window that over looked the back yard. A forest had grown up throughout it, covering my old swing set and most of the back deck.
As I spied out the window, memories of a once happy childhood spilling into my mind, a loud crash came from the garage. I slowly made my way to the back end of the kitchen, my father’s clothes still hanging in the adjoining pantry/laundry room that lead out to the garage.
I scanned the room for the source of the disturbance. My eyes landed on the attic door. We had one of those old attic doors that pulled down from the ceiling revealing a staircase-ladder-type-thing. Apparently the door had finally broken free of its hinges, as the door and ladder both rested in the middle of the otherwise untouched garage floor. The tingle of curiosity spread through my body and before I knew it, I found myself maneuvering to climb into the darkness above me.
I stepped up, a tenuous stack of boxes to act as my ladder as I hoisted my upper body into the attic door. It was easy enough to get a grip on the inside of the door-frame, and using a substantial amount of strength, I lifted myself into the blackness above. For a moment I panicked. I couldn’t see a thing around me and my legs dangled from the ceiling. It might have been hilarious, if I hadn’t come here alone. It was a tight squeeze, pulling my legs up through the ceiling, but I managed.
Somewhere above my head was the pull cord to the single attic light. In the darkness, however, it was nearly impossible to find, particularly since I had no ladder to balance myself. I reached out into the abyss before me and grasped for the cord. A few timid attempts later and my hand finally made contact with something. Something wet.
It snickered as I flung myself backwards, one hand brushing against the actual pull cord and the other reaching up to catch one of the rafters. I yanked on the cord and illuminated the attic, although barely. I was alone. As the adrenaline settled in my body, my eyes landed on a small box sitting atop a pile of books. When I was a child I would steal away up here for hours, reading through my father’s massive collection of Sci-Fi and fantasy novels. I’d never seen the box before, though. It looked like an old jewelry box, something straight out of my grandmother’s house. For its obvious age, in style at least, the box looked pristine. Someone had taken great care with it.
I opened the thing without hazarding a second thought. Inside there were a few pieces of jewelry, old rings and necklaces that I’d seen on my father in old pictures, obviously untouched for some time. The box also held some pictures of my parents, as well as my father’s wedding ring. I dug through the rest of the box, a feeling of warmth stirring in my chest. That is, until I found an envelope with my name on it.
I hesitated only for a moment before I tore open the seal. It was my father’s handwriting.
Charles,
I know you will find this eventually, though I hope you find it before it’s too late. I’m sure you have questions, and I wish I had all the answers for you, but I don’t. If you’re back in this house, I can only imagine it’s because you’ve finally realized that something is attached to you. I don’t know what it is, but it followed me back from Vietnam. You see, I didn’t lie to you when I told we had to kill a lot of rats, but we also killed a lot of people. Some that deserved it, others that didn’t. Those of us that had to do the killing, well, we left part of ourselves over there. It made us easy targets for… well, you know.
We all just thought we’d done a little too much dope. When we came home, I didn’t think about it. Until your mother got pregnant. You were nearly a stillborn, Charlie. They had to cut your mother open to untangle you from your umbilical cord. Somehow it had gotten wrapped around your neck. The doctors told us there was a good chance you and your mother could die in a natural childbirth. Even after the C-section, your mom almost died.
I spent the next two weeks fearing for the both of you. You wouldn’t eat and she was so sick, Charlie. Then that creature showed up at the hospital, like some sort of jester. I remember staring it down through door to your mother’s hospital room. It didn’t enter, it just sat there, licking at the air. After a few minutes, it scurried down the hall. One of the nurses showed up seconds later, to tell me that you’d stopped breathing.
You know the rest of the story, son. Everyone survived, miracles all around. Things went back to normal for your mother and you were a happy, healthy baby. But that thing never left me. It would show up at my hotels when I was traveling for work, eating crackers so you and your mom could eat what you wanted. It showed up when your brother was born and the doctors said this time would almost certainly kill your mother. It showed up when you came out of the closet and all I could think about was the AIDS crisis your mother and I lived through. It kept coming back, cause up until you were born, I’d never really feared losing something so much.
So I gave you up. When your mom started asking questions, I shut her out. I was cold and callous, so maybe you wouldn’t feel so bad when I finally pushed you all away. I thought that if I could remove you from my life, I wouldn’t fear losing you so much. And then maybe that creature would leave us alone.
But it didn’t. Even after your mom left and took you with her, after I stopped working overtime and let you fend for yourself. Hell, if anything, it got closer to me. I knew that as long as my family was alive, I’d have to deal with this thing. What was I supposed to do? Kill you? I thought about it once, only for a second, but boy did that thing seem to like the idea.
If you’re still reading this, then I’m assuming it has latched on to you now. It wouldn’t last long on your brother, but you, boy it’d eat you right up. That’s why I used to make you watch all those scary movies. I thought it might toughen you up a bit, but it did the opposite. When you started telling your mom I was scratching at your window at night to spook you, that’s when I decided I needed to make you all leave. Because, Charlie, I wasn’t doing it. When I swore to your mother it wasn’t me, I wasn’t lying, but I couldn’t tell her the truth. She would have had me committed and it would have been free to get you.
I’m sorry son, but I’m sure that doesn’t mean much now. I’ll be dead soon enough. You’ll find my body the next time you come over to write. I’m sure it’ll look like a heart attack, but eventually you figure it out. This thing, well, it can’t live on fear alone. At least, not the kind of fear your body can sustain. It’s been growing more and more violent the last few days. Soon I think it’ll scare me to death.
Isn’t that ridiculous?
The letter just stopped there. There was no signature, nothing else. I sat in the attic with the letter in my hand for a few minutes, pondering. I got the distinct feeling that I wasn’t alone anymore, but my mind was racing too fast for me to care. All the years of nightmares, the doctor’s appointments and therapy referrals, and it turns out I’d been right the whole time.
I stared blankly down at the letter, thoughts and memories flooding my mind. Every spook, every fright in the middle of the night, possibly every single time I’d been afraid in my whole life, I’d been feeding this thing. No wonder I struggled with drugs and depression. And no wonder I didn’t hear it behind me.
Its mocking laugh didn’t startle me as much as the coldness of its touch. It gripped my shoulders, and it pushed. I tumbled through the attic door frame, wincing as I braced to hit the ground. I heard the crack of bone as I landed face first into the garage floor below. Its foul tongue caressed my face before I lost consciousness.
Submitted July 22, 2016 at 07:51AM by Mr_Minot http://ift.tt/2acQXaU nosleep
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