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.
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, depth even.
I did not at any point feel afraid.
This is just another episode in a growing list of sightings here in The Last House — shadows mostly, sometimes dark and sometimes pale, moving up and down those back stairs.
My wife went to the market one afternoon this past weekend. The weather was warm and she was wearing a long lavender dress, very lovely. The dress has bare arms and drapes in a style reminiscent of a statue of a Greek goddess.
While she was out, a flash of color caught my eye in the back hallway. I saw the lavender dress, someone on the landing above the stairs leading down to the back door.
I assumed it was my wife but when I went to help carry in the bags, the hallway was empty.
This happened twice before my wife came home.
Then again tonight, I saw someone in the dress move down the back stairs.
My wife was upstairs putting our daughter to bed.
This time, though, the dress was pale blue.
Changing the sheet on my daughter’s crib tonight, strange flashes of faces in her room — white and black, bold stripes and contrast, large teeth and bulging eyes framed by wild hair . . . almost like the stark, menacing glee of Japanese oni masks.
These flashes, somewhere between a mental image and a visualization — not quite registered by the eyes or by the mind, but in a layer between them.
They’re there, they’re gone.
Puzzling.
Later...
Passing by the kitchen window I catch a glimpse of a dark figure striding across the roof of my neighbor’s house.
There . . . then gone.
... a brief visual flash this morning, something white and glossy scuttling across the floor towards me . . . about as wide as the coffee table, slightly taller, ducking its head to pass beneath it . . . insectile . . . vague impression of shiny black eyes, stripes along the legs and torso . . . attention and intelligence directed at me, artificial somehow and yet alive...
And then . . . gone.
Pushing through the soft fuzz of the baby monitor, my daughter’s cries jolts me awake: “Daddy, daddy, daddy...”
I’m up and across the hall before I have a chance to clear the mist from my head. Standing over her crib, I pat her back and tell her it’s okay. Once she settles down I head back to bed.
I make the mistake of checking the time. 5am.
Just enough time to slip back to sleep before it’s time to get ready for work.
My wife curls around my back — familiar and comforting, this shape we make together.
Just as I’m drifting off, I hear my daughter again, fainter this time: “Daddy, daddy, daddy...”
I raise my head and listen.
Silence.
Then, again: “Daddy, daddy, daddy...”
I sit up, my wife asking me what’s wrong.
I can hear her calling faintly, as though from a distance . . . as though she’s moving further away.
“Daddy, daddy, daddy...”
The light on the monitor is dim. No sound but the white noise buzz.
“Daddy, daddy, daddy...”
Faster now across the hall, at her crib in an instance.
She lies there asleep, content. Safe.
I sit on the edge of the bed, trying to ignore the faint cry that still pierces in the air, just barely audible.
“Daddy, daddy, daddy...”
My wife asks me what’s wrong. I shake my head, embarrassed and apologetic for disturbing her sleep. She puts up with so much of my insanity. Too much.
“Daddy, daddy, daddy...”
I get up and go to the little window, just open a crack to let in the hint of spring.
Outside a bird calls, lonely in the early morning dark: “Daddy, daddy, daddy...”
I shake my head, kiss my wife, and head downstairs to get ready for work.
...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 . . . a hat, perhaps?
And then it is gone.
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 no mention of it.
As we’re getting our daughter ready for bath time, my wife heads upstairs for a towel.
She comes back into the room a minute later, unsettled. “I just saw a light move across the stairs.”
It was a white light, smallish. She saw it briefly. But she saw it.
We nod, matter of fact. Just another thing to add to the growing list of things we’ve noticed in the new house.
Later that night...
I’m finishing up a few things in my office, getting ready to head up to bed. I hear footsteps on the back stairs. They stop for a moment, then continue down.
I go out to look, assuming my wife came down to get some water.
She isn’t there.
I go back in my office. A few moments later, the footsteps again. This time on the front stairs.
I open both doors of my office, looking to the front and back of the house.
No one.
It’s worth noting that there is no odd feeling, no crawling skin or discomfort or fear.
No sense that anything is wrong.
About a month ago I noticed that whenever I walked into the kitchen of our house I could smell honeysuckle. This went on for a number of days before I mentioned it to my wife.
She couldn’t smell anything.
Even more strange, this only happened when I walked through a particular doorway. Coming in from another entrance, there was nothing.
It’s worth mentioning that this is the same doorway that, sometimes, I will see a pale figure passing through as I approach.
Not often, but it’s there.
After a few days, the smell of honeysuckle went away.
Tonight I smelled it again.
And tonight, for whatever reason, I’ve been seeing movement — odd, almost geometric figures — at the corner of my eyes.
And, again, there was music playing when I laid down to take a nap earlier today.
Faintly . . . as though someone was listening to a radio in another part of the house.
But, of course, no one was.
And, again, there was music playing when I laid down to take a nap earlier today.
Faintly . . . as though someone was listening to a radio in another part of the house.
But, of course, no one was.
The voices again tonight.
No music this time, no men.
One or two women, I can’t quite be sure. Possibly a child.
I told my wife about the voices a few days ago. She could tell tonight that I was hearing them again. And, of course, she cannot.
We keep a fan going at night, even in cold weather. White noise.
She suggested I turn it off, just to see if that helped.
She might be right. I honestly can’t say for sure.
Maybe it’s a trick of the sound in the room, the combination of the fan and the hiss of the baby monitor.
With the fan off, we sat there in the dark and waited.
There. Not as loud, not as much. But there.
And again.
“I don’t hear anything,” she told me.
I apologized, turned the fan back on so she could sleep and came downstairs to wait it out.
Down here it’s the usual creaks and hums of the house by night. The fridge ticks over from time to time. The radiators gurgle. The cats snore, dozing. The baby monitor sounds a bit like running water.
And, sometimes, I think I catch a brief murmur underneath it all. Somewhere.
I honestly don’t know. Maybe it’s all just paradoelia.
But . . . I have a vague memory of something similar when I was a child. This would have been when I was maybe six or seven years old.
I remember my two older brothers got to stay up later than me, I remember thinking that it wasn’t fair they got to watch Hawaii 5.0 and I didn’t.
I remember lying there in bed, listening to the pulse of drums and what sounded like singing or chanting –faint and very far away.
I got up to complain that the TV was too loud.
My mother told me that the set was off. It was later than i realized, my brothers had gone to bed, She asked me what I heard. When I told her, she gave my father an odd look.
I would get to know that gesture very well in the coming years — the sidelong glance, lips compressed, a knot of worry in between her eyes.
Two or three times now, I have found myself unable to sleep because of the voices.
It sounds for all the world like two men having an argument somewhere in the house. Sometimes there are women’s voices mixed in. Sometimes there are children.
I can almost just make out what they’re saying. Almost.
Sometimes there’s music as well, faintly.
But I only hear it in our bedroom, only at night.
It’s… disconcerting. Maddening.
Irritating.
Impossible to sleep.
Waking up in the winterdark, I head downstairs. Cold floors and echoes of early morning dreams.
I pass by the front door and see someone out on the sidewalk, a dark shape bundled up against the cold.
Halfway to the kitchen, I stop.
The dark shape picking its way along the crust of snow, another echo in the back of my head. Old, old feelings.
The shape, slightly too tall . . . too tall and too dark.
Not a person, no.
Back at the door, I look one way and then the other. Up and down the street, far as I can see.
Nothing. No one.
[This is directly transcribed, without changes or edits, from a journal entry dated November 4th, 2001]
This place is full of voices. I can’t tell if what I’m hearing is from one who is here or who used to be here — but it hardly matters which. I’m hearing voices all day.