hic vigilans somniat
Running the old technology store isn’t easy, and the in-fighting among the Muslim staff only makes things worse. I’m constantly being called on to referee arguments between them, particularly two older gentlemen who just can’t seem to get along. Meanwhile, the store is full of customers and homeless people keep sneaking in to recharge their phones. (Even within the dream,… Continue reading managing monsters
The day of the Royal Meet, boats clog the river in anticipation of getting a glimpse of the Queen as she passes by on the royal barge. Ahead of her passage, a sleek craft cuts through the water to make way for the royal personage and her retinue. The craft is rowed by a dozen young sailors with a coxswain at… Continue reading the new queen
...and as I go among the patrons checking to see if they need anything, an old black man speaks up: “I’m just glad to have a place to come where I am welcome for who I am and no one’s judging me for my past.” His fellow ex-convicts nod in agreement and I feel a wave of satisfaction knowing that my… Continue reading dive bar
On a visit to see an old friend at his theatre company in Eastern Europe, sitting backstage looking through old photos of past productions while the performers rehearse onstage. She sits chatting with me, casual and friendly, despite her celebrity. She is undeniably charming and beautiful, even without any makeup and wearing her old blue jeans. I feel a pang of… Continue reading the actress
...and as the throng pushes by the windows, I see an old friend being moved along by the crowd. Close by her, I can see—and only I can see—her husband walks at her side as though guiding and protecting her. Her husband, three months dead now, catches my eye . . . smiles, waves. They move past a post, out… Continue reading siv & dave
The house teems with activity—shadows darting everywhere, faces peering around corners, dark shapes gathering form and detail to grasping at me as I pass by... I slide my scolecite ring onto my finger, take some mugwort, and head to bed.
...a brief and puzzling walkthrough by an old friend from high school, someone I haven’t seen in over thirty years. And for some reason I couldn’t resist the temptation to heckle him, making up the most ridiculous and absurd things and announcing them to the rest of the gathered people, amusing myself and no one else at his expense. Harmless… Continue reading robert
...and as my wife heads up to bed I think to myself that I should probably clean out the car. It’s a mess, after all. The backseat is littered with rubbish from our trip to the beach. While I’m working I hear a familiar voice call to me from the darkened driveway “Hello Mister Camp!” — genial and comfortable, my neighbor,… Continue reading neighborly
...and when I turn to go back into the dining room I see a small shadow dart from one side of the room to the other, from one side to the other. Very distinct and very dark against the afternoon light coming through the window shades, it’s wings beating rapidly as it moves from left to right. I go in to… Continue reading like a bird in a frightened room
...and mid-way through the episode, I look up from the sofa to see a large dark figure move from where it was standing in the entryway, heading towards the front stairs and out of sight. Startled, in spite of myself, I sit for a moment staring at the empty doorframe, waiting for the motion detector on the stairs to register the… Continue reading the watcher
Working early at the store, music playing overhead while I stand at the counter and tap away at my computer. Preoccupied with personal gripes and past arguments—sifting through parental and paternal confrontations long past and never happened. My mind, in short, on other things. “Hey.” A hoarse whisper, loud, from someone standing in the open space to my left. I… Continue reading attention
Crowded afternoon at the store, lots of activity and customers. A guy gets my attention, excited to be buying the massive brass singing bowl we got from Tibet. I am excited for him as well, since it’s several thousand dollars. Not a bad way to end the day. I get cornered behind the counter by a difficult customer, raising hell over… Continue reading the end
I raise my hand and when the professor calls on me I ask “Are these real numbers?” She pauses and narrows her eyes, hand frozen in mid-motion on the chalkboard where she’d been writing out the tables for the various ratios she was explaining. “How do you mean?” I stand up and go to the front of the class, gesturing to… Continue reading ratio
I hear the door opens as she enters, the floorboards creak as she approaches the bedside, feel her palms on my shoulder as she shakes me awake. “You have to wake up, you have to wake up, you have to wake up…” Insistent, urgency in her voice. I twitch, struggling against the paralytic bonds of sleep. When I open my eyes, I am alone… Continue reading alarm
...and as the pus bursts against the mirror, immediately a small stalk sprouts outward from the center mass, giving life to two tiny toothed mouths . . . around the edge three petal formations unfurl and stretch outward, delicate and pale pink in the overhead bathroom light...
Arguing with two women to whom I am both somehow married. One is younger and very ambitious, middle eastern descent. She is furious with me, holding onto some misconception that I am preventing her from pursuing her career. Furious at the accusation, I point out how my first marriage was nothing but supportive of my wife’s efforts, even to the… Continue reading argument
After my wife woke up, I lay in bed for a long while. The door opens. A large misshapen brute of a man enters the room. Muscular and twisted, his hulking form loomed over the bed. Stripped to the waist and swollen with rage, he paced back and forth, stabbing a rusty handheld sickle down into the bedclothes as he muttered and growled… Continue reading brute
At the gateway of the ramp, I take the ticket from the mechanism and slyly point out that we can go through the first level without being detected. My companion is skeptical but follows along as we pass through the gate without being stopped. On the other side, a woman in uniform stops us for confirmation and I show her… Continue reading parking
(This dream was predicated by the delivery of some cardboard boxes from U‑Haul. I had some old items in the basement that needed to be packed up and so when the boxes arrived I placed them in the back hallway. Later that evening, this is what I dreamed...) ...from one side a spirit approaches me, draped in ivory cloth and… Continue reading the last house
She approaches, clothed all in white and crowned with gold. Her hair is dazzling white, almost difficult to look at, as with fresh snow in the sun. A gold chain hangs think across her shoulders, resting atop the white fur collar of her heavy coat, cinched at the waist with a belt of gold disks. Yet there is a puzzling detail, as she… Continue reading winterly
Waking from a dream of Winterly, I turn in the bed and shift my position to ease my sore back. And back into dreams I go... — For some reason, I am in drag. I am wearing a black bodysuit and corset, covered by a long draped coat in ivory. I wear a white bob wig. I do not know why I am… Continue reading flirting
Armed men have taken over the store. I manage to get out before they lock the doors, but I can’t just leave everyone else there I have to get back in. I have to try and do something, to stop whatever they have planned. I keep going from door-to-door, surprised at how easily they assume I’m one of them. But once… Continue reading robbery
I wake, half asleep, in the downstairs guest room, fumbling for the alarm clock on the bedside table. The clock radio is warbling a doo-wop tune from the 60s, the music is tinny, fading in and out of the radio static. “Let me in...” the voice sings, mellow and soothing. “You can’t resist me... Let me in... Let me inside...”… Continue reading doo wop
Somehow, I’ve been asked to participate in a rehabilitation program for dangerous prisoners. The prison is large and gray and nondescript, and you can’t escape the feeling of being trapped once you’re inside. The prisoners are terrifying. And these are the ones ready to be rehabilitated. My initial assignment does not work out well, since he appears to be more… Continue reading the assassin
In the night, as I move through a crowded back street, I get a message from someone who used to be a friend but is now, after much time and distance, nothing more than a vague acquaintance. “I need your help.” A few minutes later I walk into a one-room bar that barely qualifies as a place of business, let alone… Continue reading friend in need
The department has a new manager and she’s been placed in the cubicle with me, which means I have to shift the sprawl of my stuff in order to make room for her things (which are more important than dusty action figures, artifacts of personal flair, and binders full of meeting minutes no one if ever going to read). Within a… Continue reading Terminus
This afternoon I was in the living room and looked up to see our cat Chet coming around the corner to sniff at our new cat’s scratching pad. Odd thing is, Chet died last year.
My daughter is almost nine but we still use a monitor so that we can hear her if she wakes up in the middle of the night. My wife has gone to bed and I am up late, doing some work I brought home from the office. The monitor crackles and my daughter calls for me. When I head upstairs, she is… Continue reading “She won’t rest.”
Last night at 3AM the alarm clock on my wife’s nightstand went off, without any cause or reason. My wife never uses the clock for anything other than to tell time. It’s been sitting there for years. No one had been in our room, no one had any reason to fiddle with it or set an alarm... but it went… Continue reading alarm
Sitting at the dinner table, my daughter suddenly turns and looks over her shoulder. “What’s wrong?” She turns back around. “That was weird,” she says. “I heard someone say ‘Yeah’ behind me.” We go on with our dinner and I make a mental note to talk with my wife. We’re starting to see more activity around the house. There’s a little… Continue reading hereditary
Dozing on the couch this morning... ....I come into the room and see a baseball cap suspended in the air at about waist height, nothing apparently holding it up. It is not frozen in place, immobile — rather, it drifts and bobs slightly, like a magician’s trick. I reach out to grab it, try to push it down, but something… Continue reading unseen
Message from my wife this morning... Just another day at The Last House.
This evening as I was taking my daughter upstairs to bed, she froze outside her open bedroom door. “What’s wrong?” Staring into her room, she said “I just saw a cat or a dog or something on my bed. It looked up at me and then slid under the covers.” I turned the lights on and we went in. Of… Continue reading not a cat, not a dog
Walking to work this morning, something caught my attention: Small bits of red licorice scattered along the sidewalk, trailing over three blocks. I didn’t follow to find out to where they led. I know better. It’s October.
The theater is crowded with people, waiting for the play to begin. My wife and I sit and wait, looking through the program and studying posters for past productions lining the walls. When the show begins, I am transfixed. I’ve seen Macbeth a few times before, but this is just amazing. The witches scene is easily one of the most unsettling,… Continue reading by the pricking
As I’m setting up the ironing board, something rushes towards me from the living room... low and broad and dark, like a wall of shadow. I do not flinch. It breaks around me like a wave around a rock, dissipates into streamers of fading black and gray... and then is gone.
Here’s an e‑mail i sent to my wife this morning, slowly starting to put together a plan to exorcise the entity that currently occupying our house... What I know (or think I know) about the entity in our house... It is not human. It never was human. It is a conscious, aware entity. It is negative. It is drawn to insecurity, anxiety, and fear. It… Continue reading pest control
...the children come out from the alcoves and holes, ragged scavenger ghosts huddled together and shuffling along the dusty floor, their hollow eyes sweeping back and forth, mouths gaping . . . they are in thrall to an old woman, an older ghost, who herds them like cattle and feeds off of their misery... I stand on the rickety wooden… Continue reading feet wrapped in rags
...in the middle of an utterly boring and banal dream, I pass by a group of young women dancing on the sidewalk and one of them catches my eye. She motions to me, to get my attention, and mouths “Where have you been?” I keep walking, dragged along in the wake of my nonsense dream, looking back as she gestures once more...… Continue reading dancing
Talking with my wife today about recent events, particularly those involving our daughter. Making plans for when the exorcism should be performed, discussing when she might be able take our daughter out of the house for an hour or two. So I can work. She remarks that we should time it with the next full moon phase. Personally, I don’t necessarily… Continue reading nemesis
“She says she saw something in the back stairwell,” my wife tells me. Our daughter is eight years old and not prone to flights of fancy or making things up. Also, we have been very careful to not let her overhear any of our conversations about what is going on here at home. When I talk to my daughter, this is what… Continue reading not a bat
My seven-year-old daughter has been sick for a couple of days. High fever, probably the flu. She woke up tonight, sometime around 9 o’clock, frantic and consume dwith a fear that she could not (or would not) articulate. Glassy eyed, staring… Looking from my face to the face of her mother… She would not answer our questions. What’s wrong? Are you… Continue reading sick girl
Coming home late tonight, long after midnight... As I was walking up the driveway, a few stray flurries of snow in the air around me... I stopped. A voice, far off . . . one word, harsh and cold and drawn out breathless like the frigid night air. My name. Not my real name. The name I grew up with, what… Continue reading a voice on the wind
My wife, her best friend, and I decide to drop acid for the first time. We lay back on the couch and each of us take the squishy pink pill and chew slowly. I only eat half of mine. I’m worried about what might happen if I take a whole one. In time, I stand up and feel my balance shift and… Continue reading Winterly
A kitchen, a house in the country — dry and dusty, very little greenery. A little boy with dark hair and a baby face sits at the kitchen table playing with an old wooden birdhouse. I see a yellowjacket crawl sluggishly over the back of the birdhouse. Inside I see the telltale paper comb covered with more yellowjackets. I shout… Continue reading danger
My assignment for the magazine put me into his inner circle, where I could sit and observe first-hand what his life was like. I had five days with him. It was fascinating. He was remarkably laid back and kind. He answered my questions thoughtfully and, to my eyes, didn’t try to hide any of himself behind a facade. I particularly remember… Continue reading David
Sitting alone in the couch tonight, I slowly realize that I can hear someone singing. Somewhere in the house, a man is singing. It has a muted quality, as though it is coming from very far away. I stand for a moment and listen. I recognize it. The clear voice, the calypso intonation is unmistakeable. Someone is listening to Harry Belafonte,… Continue reading daylight come and me wanna go home
We awake to a burst of static from the baby monitor. This is not uncommon. It seems like almost anything can set it off, if we don’t put the damn thing in just the right spot. I reach over and shift the monitor on the nightstand, hoping to move it out of whatever signal is causing the disruption. The noise subsides and… Continue reading morse
“You were crying in your sleep last night,” my wife said this morning. “I was?” “You were whimpering. It went on for a while. I couldn’t get you to wake up.” I remembered then. I remembered waking up, her hand on my shoulder. I remember hearing myself crying in the dark. But I don’t remember why.
In my office tonight, getting ready to sit down and write... I stop. Music. Unmistakeable. Somewhere, someone is playing music. The house is asleep. I’m the only one awake. Yet there it is. Unmistakeable. I go out and stand on the front porch, just in case it’s a neighbor. Nothing. Back inside, the house is quiet. I stand in my office, head cocked...… Continue reading music again
