/yesod

Category: hallucinations

  • attention

    attention

    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 startle, thinking that one of the other tenants came in when I was preoccupied. 

    No one is there.

    I step out from behind the counter, into the space between the jewelry counter and the rest of the store... Listening.

    Nothing.

  • alarm

    alarm

    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 in the room save for the pale light of morning coming in through the window.

    It was not my wife’s voice I heard, not her touch that woke me—no, just the spirit of this place, this house of ours, coming to rouse me on my day off.

    I lay back and consider going back to sleep.

    The real question, I tell myself, is whether or not you’re going to choose to believe in these sorts of things or not. 

    It’s a fair point. 

    I get up and go downstairs where I relate the events of the morning to my wife. 

    And then I check the house, just to m able sure everything is safe.

  • doo wop

    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...”

    I struggle to sit up, sleep still heavy on me, weighing me down.

    The radio, the song, louder now, insistent: “You cannot resist me, let me inside...”

    My hand finds the nightstand, flat against the tabletop.  Nothing.

    I realize then that there is no radio in this room, no clock. 

    The music, the song, the singing is coming from outside the window.

    A shadow looms there, just visible between the half-drawn blinds. Tall and dark, learning down to peer in at me, singing... cajoling... calling softly...

    “Let me inside, you cannot resist me, let me in... let me in...”

    I put my hand up, the selenite ring on my finger like a little moon, a bright ward against the darkness outside.

    The singing fades. The shadow slowly withdraws. Maybe it hisses as it does.

  • hereditary

    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 bell in my head ringing, signaling that our daughter might become the focus for it.

    I also can’t help wondering if, somehow, this is inevitable for her. If this thing I’ve carried for so long might turn out to be hereditary.

  • not a cat, not a dog

    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 course there was nothing there.

  • rush

    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.

     

  • not a bat

    “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 she tells me:

    She saw something hanging from the wall in the back hallway, up near the ceiling. A big dark mass, something solid. About the size of a cat. It reminded her of a bat, curled up and hanging there. It was alive, “kind of like an animal.” She ran to get her mom, thinking it might be a bat (we get them sometimes in the house, especially during the summer) but when they got back it was gone.

    If there was a bat that big in our house, I tell my daughter, we would know it.

    “You did the right thing,” I tell her. “If you ever see anything like that again, just come and get me or mom right away. We’ll take care of it.”

  • daylight come and me wanna go home

    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, somewhere.

    But, of course, no one in the house is listening to Harry Belafonte, not tonight.

    And yet, there it is.

    After a few minutes, the music fades.

      

  • music again

    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... waiting.

  • cat below

    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, like tonight, just crying in the basement for no reason.

    I open the door to my office and stop: There in the front room are both of our cats. We regard each other, eyes wide.

    I close the door again and return to work. 

    Below, the basement is quiet.

  • shimmer

    the back stairs“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 saw. What color was it?”

    “A gray-blue, a movement like...” She mimes someone passing a hand over their head. “Like someone was throwing a hood over themselves.”

    I nod, even though it’s not quite a match with what I saw the previous night.

    I tell her that when I was down in the basement, just as I was closing the door, something walked towards me... A shimmer in the air, like a heat mirage.

    Mine was brighter, nearly transparent, almost gold.

    It was there, then it was gone.

  • morning visitation

    ...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. 

    IMG_9583.JPG

    It flows from right to left. 

    I stop. I blink. 

    It is gone.

  • stench again

    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. 

    20140720-132247-48167758.jpg

    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 been the source.

  • a sad girl

    ...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. I struggle to rise, to grasp the her arm but my hand feels strange, tingling in the air where I reach for her, a moment’s resistance . . . then the woman pulls away and walks into a little alcove on the other side of the room.

    The woman is gone. It was not my wife. It was someone else, someone younger — her hair was longer, darker — and she had long scratches or cuts down her arms. And she was sad.

    I cannot confidently say whether or not this was a dream.

  • doppelgänger

    IMG_0084...and as I walk back into my office, I see — or I think I see — a man standing to one side and looking through my filing cabinet.

    It is me, myself. I am the one standing there, dressed in the same clothes I am wearing today.

    I blink.

    He is gone.

    I am gone.

    Unnerved, I get back to work.

  • the walking men

    Three or four times now, while I’ve been walking in the neighborhood with my youngest daughter, I’ve seen a man wearing a long black overcoat and a fedora.

    Three times now. Three different men. One of them is quite young, perhaps in his early twenties, with scraggly facial hair and glasses. Another is older, around my age. And another was a bit plump, balding. Unlike the others, he carried his hat in his hand. His face was shiny with sweat.

    They do not notice me, do not give off a feeling or “vibe” of any kind. Apart from their odd (at least for the season and area) apparel, there is nothing particularly interesting about them.

    They walk with purpose, always heading north.

    20140509-084042.jpg

    (Strangely, this coincides with some recent reading I came across about Walter Gibson and the odd sightings at his house on Gay Street.)

  • “Hey Dad?”

    Walking through the office I hear — or I think I hear — my son’s voice, very distinct and clear, call to me.

    I look back down the hallway but, of course, no one is there.

  • flake

    Packing up for the day, getting ready to head for home... I reach for my cell phone and watch in amazement as a bright flake of light, a translucent chip of yellow-white light about the size of my fingernail, floats up from the screen towards my face. 

    I blink, shake my head. It is gone.

  • stench

    20140126-113404.jpg

    Over the holidays, there were a number of points when I noted a pungent smell in the little hallway at the back of our kitchen — a cloying stench, like rotting fish.

    (I do not care for this little hallway. It feels off to me, somehow. There is a mirror of it upstairs and the one gives me a vague sense of unease as well — though I have not noticed any phantom smells there.)

    More than once I looked everywhere trying to find the source of the smell — searching in the hallway as well as the adjoining rooms. But there was nothing. And, oddly enough, the smell seemed to fade away as I searched. 

    Other times, most times, there was no smell at all. 

    I mentioned it finally to my wife who said she’d had the same experience on numerous occasions but couldn’t find an explanation for the smell either.

    It was puzzling and — not surprising, given my usual temperament — a bit eerie.

    Late one evening as I was getting ready for bed, I was in the shower — the bathroom is located off of the little hallway — when the same rotting smell suddenly rose up around me, permeating the steam of the shower. I gagged, nearly vomiting from the sudden, overpowering stench.

    And, inexplicably, every hair on my body and scalp stood on end. I was chilled, despite the heat of the shower.

    After a few moments, it passed.

    After I got out of the shower, I checked the drains — the most likely source of the smell. Nothing.

    We have not experienced the smell since.

  • ragged

    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 coming quickly towards me — it is as if it passed through the door.

    It is white and ragged, trailing fluttering strips of cloth. I have an impression of gray hair, a wrinkled face . . . an old woman who vanishes just before she reaches me.

    I am startled. I am scared. My hair is standing on end. The akin on my arms feels prickled and tight, almost sunburnt.

    This was not a vague impression or an easily explained corner-of-the-eye episode. I saw something.

  • whisper

    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.

  • gitchy

    A strange atmosphere hanging over The Last House tonight. 

    The sky outside is heavy with rain, but it doesn’t look like any will fall. The heat is heavy, like a hand on your chest.

    Inside . . . everything feels pressurized, oppressive. 

    There are shadows moving through the rooms, vague shapes darting here and there in the periphery of my vision . . . some pop out into my line of sight, trying to startle me. 

    Almost clown like, playful. But they want me to be scared. 

    I feel twitchy, paranoid . . . glancing, looking back over my shoulder as things pass.

    It hasn’t been this bad in a long time.

    It’s been getting worse by the minute. 

    It’s going to be a long night.

  • early morning

    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 the back stairs. But they do not descend.

    Later that morning, I ask my wife if she got up earlier. She did not.

  • peeking

    Later...

    Sitting in the living room, talking with my wife while our daughter plays . . . I see someone peek around the corner of the entry leading into the dining room, a brief flash like someone pokes their head out for a quick look and then ducked back behind the wall when I looked in their direction.

    Still cheating with my wife, I rise and go to have a look. 

    Nothing. No one.

    I sit back down and we continue our conversation. Over the next few minutes the peeking face pops out again five or six times. Irritating.

    I check again, making sure no one is there. It’s starting to wear on me. I have this feeling someone is deliberately messing with me. 

    The face is round-cheeked, almost cartoonish. With high brows and a surprised expression. I am reminded, vaguely, of Randy Quaid.

    The skin on my forearms stings, as though sunburned. My hair stands on end. I am chilled.

    One last time the face pops out. This time it has changed. No longer the goofy expression, now the eyes are dark pits and the gaping mouth flaps open, an insane toothless maw. Horrid.

    When I get scared, I get angry. And I am very angry now.

    My wife asks “Are you okay?”

    “I’m having a bit of a problem at the moment.” 

    After filling her in, I burn some myrrh and juniper — offering to the gods and banishing anything else.

    Nothing for the rest of the night, but the clammy feeling left by the memory of that hideous face still clings to me.

  • mossy

    Sitting with my youngest daughter this evening, something lingers in the corner of my eye. 

    I have a vague impression of something olive green, mossy, no more than three feet tall. A spindly figure standing in the little hallway leading to my office.

    Then it’s gone.