/yesod

hiç vigilans somniat

  • 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.

  • comedy and tragedy

    …when the comedian pulls up in the Winnebago, I hop in. We chat and get acquainted while his two cats prowl around in back.

    A few hours on the road and I realize we’re not going to get back home in time for me to help out with the baby’s bedtime. I’m embarrassed to say anything, I don’t want to appear unprofessional.

    We arrive at the venue — an old theater in Charleston, West Virginia. A few people are already in the balcony seats, waiting for the show to begin.

    While the comedian gets ready to go onstage, I call my wife to apologize and break the news.

    “I should be back around midnight,” I tell her. Then I remember the driving time. “Actually, it’ll probably be later than that.”

    She is annoyed, rightfully so. But she doesn’t press the point.

    I feel terrible and offer to rent a car so I can return early.

    She hesitates before answering. “I wasn’t going to say anything, but…”

    She tells me that there’s been an accident. The father of the two girls who lives across the way fell from their balcony and died.

    (Somehow I recall an earlier dream, while dreaming this one, in which the man’s mentally disabled brother also died. This family has seen nothing but tragedy, in my dreams.)

    I rent a car and, in time, arrive back home. A cloud of sadness hangs over the apartment complex, clinging to everything.

    Looking across the way, I can see into the windows of the neighboring apartment where the two little girls play on their bunk bed. I worry that they might fall.

    An elderly man comes into their room — their grandfather, I assume. He moves so slowly, weighed down with age and sorrow.

    I make a mental note to go over after dinner and offer to help.

  • laundry room

    20130728-171418.jpgAs 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.

  • lavender dress

    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.

  • the visit

    Halfway through my day I stop and reach desperately for a scrap of dream from the night before, a vague memory that my character Jee came to see me.

    She had something important to tell me.

    But the dream is gone, nothing left but a sense of something forgotten.

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  • in the shower

    …as I’m washing my backside, someone peeks in between a seam in the shower curtain — old and wizened, though I cannot tell whether it is a man or a woman. They roll their eyes up at me, almost comical, and purse their mouth in a silent “Oooo…”

    …and then I wake with a start, my afternoon nap ruined.

  • the right to bear arms

    …I’m stunned to see the President of the United States at the door. He bustles in before I can get my head around his sudden appearance.

    He is alone and clearly in peril. He slams the door and locks it behind him, thanking me for letting him in. It is strange to see him scared, completely alone. I wonder where his Secret Service protection has gone.

    He apologizes for the intrusion and removes his tattered coat. I notice he has a shoulder holster beneath.

    My mother comes into the front hallway and is clearly displeased to see him in her home. She informs us that his interruption is right in the middle of ‘Dancing with the Stars’ and that she doesn’t “feel comfortable with that man having a loaded gun in the house.”

    Her glare is withering.

    I protest, saying it’s our duty to give him shelter and protection. But it’s clear that she’s unimpressed, perhaps because she didn’t vote for him. She returns to her program, leaving me to apologize to the President…

  • precision

    …with slow, precise snips of the nail clippers, I remove most of my right toenail, somewhat proud to have done it in a single, broad piece.

    The skin beneath is tender, painful. I hope my wife will not notice.

  • the apartment across the way

    We’re living in an apartment complex, a bit run down and seedy. But this is all we can afford.

    In the apartment across the way, a young couple live with their two small children. The woman is slight, dark haired and sickly. Her husband is darker, brows constantly knotted with rage. His mentally-challenged brother lives with them.

    It is a sad family.

    News spreads through the complex from neighbor to neighbor like crows carrying misfortune from field to field.

    I am work when my wife calls to tell me that the sickly woman has passed away, leaving the husband on his own to care for their children and his brother as best he can.

    The whispers don’t quite reach the point of wondering if he was the one who killed her.

    I see him walking, the baby in his arms and the older daughter — just only four years old — and want to offer to help. But I do not. I have a family of my own, after all.

  • david and mickey

    It’s night and we’re driving, my friend David and me.

    I’ve known him a long time. Since we were in sixth grade, I think. We’ve stayed in touch that whole time, mostly.

    Well, we fall out of touch and then back into touch. We haven’t seen each other in years — almost twenty, I think . . . though I’m not quite sure exactly how long it’s been.

    But we’re back together for the evening, heading over to the old mall to see the new Mickey Mouse cartoon that’s just been released. David is excited. I’m feeling sleepy a bit under the weather. I haven’t been sleeping.

    Most times it seems like I always haven’t been sleeping.

    At the mall, David produces a small swipe card — somehow he’s managed to clone it from one of the security guards, in order to sneak in to the movies without paying. He has one for me as well and I’m feeling a bit panicky as we swipe our way through the back door, coming face to face with a guard.

    He ignore us. In our suits and ties, I suppose we look like we belong there, behind the scenes.

    I follow David through the hallways to an area behind the movie screen. There is a small riser of stadiums seats, sparsely attended, looking down on a little orchestra pit and a small constellation of microphones. I realize that the movie soundtrack and dialogue will be performed live for the premiere, like an old time live radio show.

    For reasons I that aren’t explained, the sound effects are recorded on the film, however.

    I watch the actors mug their way through the performance, mildly impressed at how well everything goes. I forget sometimes to watch the screen where Mickey’s antics play out in silvered, larger-than-life magic.

    A woman makes her way through the seats, selling concessions. She has the pillbox cap, fishnet stockings, and pin curls of yesteryear. But all she has to sell are oversized chili dogs in greasy wax paper envelopes — far more suitable for a ballpark than a movie.

    I buy one and, somehow, my youngest daughter is there to help me share it. Though she makes a terrible mess of it and I worry that my wife will be upset over the junk food and additives. We’re so careful with her diet…

  • frantic spider

    …the spider struggles against the pull of the water as the tub drains, a thin filament of almost wire-like web cast out like a dark line . . . it clenches like a fist in the water, and I feel the tug of the web and pull my hand away, leaving it to it’s fate…

  • masks and shadows

    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.

  • the floating eye

    …and I have no breath to scream as my daughter falls twenty feet to the hard concrete floor, a gasp pressing out of my as I run to pick up her tiny, limp body.

    “Oh god, her eyes…”

    I turn away hiding her face from my wife so she cannot see how our daughter’s right eye has become detached and is floating freely between one socket and then other as she tilts her head, a dreamy smile on her face.

    It is horrible to see. It is my fault.

    So horrible that, later that day, I decline to tell my wife the particulars of my dream. I want to spare her the horrors of that image, the drifting float of our child’s eye.

  • robotic

    … 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.

  • opening night

    …I find myself in the front row, enduring an abysmal production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” directed by my ex-wife.

    It’s godawful. Pretentious and ponderous. They’ve changed the language, modernized all the poetry out of it. And, insult to injury, they’ve added songs, turning it into a musical.
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    Only Puck holds any interest. Dark and twisted, a spiky clenched fist of mischief scuttling around the poorly-lit stage.

    The production closes with a clueless rendition of You Are My Sunshine — rewritten by my ex to include a commentary on the unreliability of love.

    Ugh.

  • great

    I would be delighted if my ex-wife didn’t show up in my dreams, however briefly, ever again.

  • early morning

    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.

  • doing the dishes

    …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.

  • lounge act

    Woke early this morning with a handful of broken fragments from last night’s dreams, losing little shards as the day progresses, memories and images slipping through my fingers and lost for good.

    Here’s what’s left…

    …a heartfelt farewell from one of my clients, almost paternal in how touching his words are…

    …my wife and I stop off at a local bar set up in a aluminum trailer on the outskirts of town, an absolute shithole under new ownership — the proprietor is a short, pudgy twerp utterly clueless and out of place in his red satin tuxedo. I recognize him from a dream when I was very young, when he had a suave and menacing manner. His name is Kincaid. I haven’t thought of him in thirty years.

    While he vainly tries to chat up my wife, I’m cornered by a heavyset woman in a ball gown. Despite her ragged, bottle blonde shag haircut I recognize her as an acquaintance from my local theater days.

    I barely know her but she acts like I’ve been on her mind every single day of the past ten years. She tells me she’s singing now — the “talent” to keep the patrons happy. I make the mistake of saying that we’ll come by to hear her perform sometime, spurring her into an impromptu rendition of an old torch song.

    She fills each note with so much feeling that I’m mildly impressed — at least until she leans forward, putting her knee on the seat next to mine and. She takes my hand, staring deeply into my eyes as she sings…

    …I wake, a little embarrassed for her and a little puzzled by the reappearance of Kincaid after almost thirty years.

  • Sunday nap

    …there are three children playing at the curb, jumping in and out of a deep puddle of mud and dirt. The oldest of these, perhaps eight years old, stops in the midst of bossing the other two around and turns as he notices me…

    …and a man’s voice tells me “Look to the world around you…” as I wake up, wondering where this dream or vision came from.

  • brief reunion

    …we sit together in the small living room, balancing plates on our knees and doing our best to keep up the conversation despite the fact that there are some genuinely difficult conflicts unresolved between a few of us. And the fact that some of us are dead.

    It’s a surprise to see them, my grandparents. Odder still is the appearance of multiple versions of my grandfather — he sits with my grandmother, each of them in their late fifties, full of good humor and health . . . and he sits next to me in his early nineties, broken and cadaverous, his eyes pits of sorrow.

    My mother is there . . . but there is something odd about her. I can’t quite tell what it is and I don’t understand why no one else seems to notice or care…

    …and when I wake, I wonder what it means . . . wonder if a call will come today with bad news.

  • footsteps and flashes

    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.