hic vigilans somniat
...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
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.
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
Message from my wife this morning... Just another day at The Last House.
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.
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
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
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
Napping this afternoon on the couch, I dream... ...we’re sitting at the dining room table, my wife and I. I hear someone call “Tom” from the back hallway. I turn to see something there, down at the bottom of the steps — small and pale, almost like a child. “Don’t look!” my wife says just as it rushes up towards me... ...awaken with… Continue reading forearms
Sitting in my office this afternoon, working. A few moments ago I heard the distinctive sound of the light switch in the back hallway snapping on. A few moments later I heard it snap off. My wife and youngest daughter are napping upstairs. Before I heard the light switch, it was quiet and peaceful. No telltale sounds of someone coming up… Continue reading switch
Downstairs, I run a bath for my daughter. I kneel down to check the water. When I rise, the old woman is standing in the doorway. She is hunched over, watching me. “Fuck.” And then she’s gone.
In the house behind ours, the light in the high attic window keeps turning on and then off again every few minutes. Disconcerting.
“What’s a haunted house?” My daughter is four years old and, a few days before Halloween, she’s decided to start asking questions. I wring out the washcloth, buying time. We don’t talk about these kinds of things around her. She has a couple of picture books, but… “What honey?” “What’s a haunted house?” “Well . . . that’s a house… Continue reading in the bathtub
When I get home after work, my youngest daughter meets me at the door. I’m late and phoned ahead to say they should start dinner without me. A plate of half-eaten food waits at my wife’s place at the same able. But she is nowhere to be seen. “Mama went upstairs,” our daughter tells me. After a few minutes, my wife comes… Continue reading a fall
My daughter an I are in my office when my wife calls from the TV room. I hear her but it doesn’t register until she calls again, a rising note of alarm in her voice. “What’s wrong?” She is pale, intense. I can’t tell if she’s angry or something else. “I just heard...” She stops, starts again. “Someone just knocked on the… Continue reading hard knocks
(Via Poorly Drawn Lines)
Working late, I hear one of the cats crying below in the basement. It is a faint, plaintive sound. I set aside the story I’ve been working on and get up with a sigh. Our two cats have been a considerable amount of trouble lately — skittish, fighting with each other late at night, becoming more and more territorial. Or,… Continue reading cat below
“There was something in the back hallway,” my wife tells me over dinner. “I saw it right before we were leaving.” “What did you see?” She thinks for a moment. “It was a blur in the air, almost shimmering. Just a movement...” Gooseflesh on my arms, the back of my neck. “That’s interesting you say that.” “Why?” “Tell me what else you… Continue reading shimmer
In the upstairs bathroom, I stand and wait for my youngest daughter to finish. My back is to the door. Given my history, that’s uncommon. As I help her down off the toilet, I catch a glimpse of someone passing behind me — walking through the hallway just beyond the door. I assume it’s my teenage daughter coming out of… Continue reading passing by
...and as I open the door leading from my office to the front of the house, I see a pale shape, not much more than the impression of a white dress moving through the light coming in the windows. It flows from right to left. I stop. I blink. It is gone.
That smell again. A warm, yellow smell of rotting fish. My youngest daughter and I are in the back hallway when it drifts past. It almost seems to stop and turn back, encircling us for a moment. I look down and see that my daughter has wrinkled her nose. After a moment, the stench dissipates. I can find nothing that might’ve… Continue reading stench again
...lying in bed this morning, I woke to the sound of the bedroom door opening. I hear my wife slowly close the door behind her. I hear her footsteps on the floorboards, approaching my side of the bed. I cannot move, cannot open my eyes. I feel a fingertip on my arm, just inside the hinge of my elbow. The footsteps move away.… Continue reading a sad girl
“Will you check the tub in a minute?” My wife comes into the room, a little cross. We are getting our daughter ready for bed. “What’s wrong?” “There was almost no water in the tub and it was cold.” “Really?” She repeats this again. Unspoken is the rebuke — or, perhaps, the fear — that something odd has happened. It was full,… Continue reading bath time
Early summer afternoon. Overcast skies. Waiting for storms. The house is gray. Quiet. Pale light from outside, dim within. The air still, dead. Every room feels empty and full at the same time. An unseen crowd gathers. Something around every corner. Watchful. Waiting. Patient.
We’re in the back bedroom, my wife and I. Fucking. It’s hard sometimes to find the time, the moment. Children, work, day-to-day life — these things conspire and distract and exhaust. But we find the time, when we can. We find the moments, synchronized, together. And it is good. Perhaps it is too brief, too short. But we know each… Continue reading the short
Reported by my wife: A few days ago she and our daughter were in the back stairwell, getting ready to go for a walk. Once she got our daughter into her shoes, my wife sat down to put her own on. While she was doing this, our daughter went down the three steps to the back door. My wife could hear her… Continue reading little girls
Sitting on the toilet in the back bathroom, I hear a sound at the door — as through someone pressed against it from the outside, maybe one of the cats? But the door has nearly an inch gap at the bottom. I can see nothing outside. A few minutes later I am jolted into a panic by the sight of something… Continue reading ragged
As I come into the front room of our house, I hear man’s voice whisper something — a single phrase, very distinct but unintelligible. Cleaning up in the back bathroom, I hear voices pitched in an argument — just a few lines back and forth — again, distinctly audible but no words can be made out.
Standing in the kitchen, I hear the sound of someone coming down the back stairs — slow, cautious . . . almost stealthy. But when I go to check, of course, no one is there. It takes a few minutes for the hair on my arms to lay back down again. My skin is electric, almost burning.
...and while my daughter plays in the tub, there’s a sudden wave of men’s cologne — acrid and sour — that passes over me. My throat closes, I am overcome with a coughing fit. Inexplicable. My wife does not wear perfume. I do not wear cologne. It lingers for a number of minutes there in the bathroom before slowly dissipating.
Woken by my daughter early this morning, unable to get back to sleep so I head downstairs to sit in the predawn dark, looking up from my book from time to time as little beads of shadow stream across the floor like dark mercury. An hour or so later, I hear footfalls overhead. They move through the laundry room to… Continue reading early morning
As I came into the laundry room this morning, a shadow moved in the dim light from right to left — coming from the hallway and passing through the closed and locked door at the top of the back stairs. The shadow was large, as wide as a refrigerator though not as tall. It has a solid mass to it,… Continue reading laundry room
...and as I turn to put a glass in the cupboard I startle and flinch backwards from the dark figure standing right at my left shoulder. Vague impressions . . . someone looking into my face . . . a male presence about my height but larger, heavy-set almost . . . broad head, the bare suggestion of something there… Continue reading doing the dishes
After dinner, my wife runs to the store. My daughter and I play in my office. The whole time, my skin is crawling. I have a sense that someone — or multiple someones — is passing through my office, moving past us unseen. The sensation is uncanny, disquieting. My daughter seems not to notice. When my wife returns, I make… Continue reading footsteps and flashes
