/yesod

Tag: demons

  • 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.

  • my phone buzzes

    Message from my wife this morning…

    Just another day at The Last House.

  • fragments

    …a long bodied cat, muscular and lean, stalks through the room — insane eyes, gaping mouth drooling as it swivels its head from side to side . . . its long gray fur matted and ragged, trailing after it in the air…

    …I turn and see the electrical plug floating in the air before my face, the cord dangling. With a start, I snatch it from the grasp of the unseen hand and shudder.

    I lay it down on the bedspread and turn to the nightstand. When I turn back the plug is floating there again. I dart my hand out and grab where the wrist would be, feeling something unseen struggle against me.

    I let it go, fascinated and supremely creeped out. Objects on a nearby shelf rattle as something passes around the room. The lamp overhead swings and I can see, in my mind’s eye, something there circling overhead — a faceted, multicolor crystalline rat. Waves of malign hate pour off of it.

    I command it to appear, my voice full of authority and strength.

    Unable to disobey, the creature shimmers into view — altering its form, taking a friendly cartoon shape as though made out of balloons.

    I grasp it in one hand and command it again, demanding it shed its false form and reveal itself for what it truly is.

    It struggles against my hand and the slow pull of my voice, drawing it out, forcing it into a form I recognize…

    … I wander through the modular home, amazed that I’d forgotten we bought it just in case the new house didn’t work out. And in the back bedroom something terrible and sad lies under a sheet on the top bunk…

  • nephew, demon

    [This is directly transcribed, without changes or edits, from a journal entry dated September 12th, 2001]

    And in my dream my three-year-old nephew [REDACTED] — plagued by depression and despair all his short little life — has finally given into his despair, twisting a length of picture hanging wire around his neck and hanging himself. I find his stiff body eyes open, jaw clenched. Although he is dead, his body continues to move and walk. He is speechless and his face is blank, almost hateful. We all avoid him, his stiff legged roaming across the floor, his baleful gaze. When his mother comes home, it is up to me to break the news to her. His mother, in my dream, is my aunt [REDACTED] — the mother of my cousin, I know, makes no sense — but she is full of cold rage and asks me why I didn’t take the wire from around his neck she blames me, I am certain of it and I can only point in horror to his animated corpse. Ignoring me, all business now, she takes the horrid little child and her arms raising him up and speaking quietly to him. She is a Christian fundamentalist and I realize that there is something far worse at work here then death. He twists away from her, in her arms, and stares at me with a blankly cunning look — and hideous, diabolical language pours out of his mouth like vomit, demonic and awful. He spews his bubbling, babbling talk at me and in growing horror I find my breath is gone, I cannot speak, I cannot pray any words of protection, my lips are numb and my tongue is thick in my mouth, and then, With ever-growing horror, I hear my own bubbling voice respond in kind, echoing his hideous demonic voice with my own.

    I wake in horror and dread, mouthing the words “Veni Sancte Spiritus” in my gasping, choking voice.

  • the girl in the warehouse

    [This is directly transcribed, without changes or edits, from a journal entry dated May 4th, 2000]

    …and because I have been thrown out of my house, lost any connection to my wife and children, I am living in an old building adjacent to where I work — downtown, in the old industrial district, where an empty warehouse is easy to find.

    I barely have any clothes and none of my belongings, but I make due — hiding my shame by getting to work extra early each day and staying late.

    Shortly I come to realize that the place where I am staying is haunted — a small girl with dark hair and pale clothes flits about shyly in the evenings. She is sad and somewhat horrible as well. The is a demoniac sense to her, the way she pops up without warning.

    Late in the evening, on my way back to my new “home”, I pass by a bar and some women out front shout at me. One of the comes over and after a brief conversation she suggests I bring her home with me. I do.

    We get back to my small room. She is already all over me.and before I can lock the door she is kneeling on the bed, unclothed, pulling her dress up over her head.

    I turn to see her there, and I stop for a moment.

    She smiled wide and warm, and then I see her eyes dart to a place beside me and her smile falters.

    There dark girl is there, hideous and livid.

    And I suddenly realize that she is not a ghost, never was a ghost — this thing was never alive, never drew breath or felt joy. What has come is older than anything in creation, masquerading,

    She looks at my companion, frozen in a parody of her formerly seductive pose, and she speaks.

    I don’t remember what was said, but the truth of it strikes home with such force that my “date” is driven from the room, sobbing and weeping.

    And, alone with that terrible pale girl, I wait. She looks at me for a moment.

    And then she is gone.

    The next day, in my dream, my secret is found out by the people I work for. I can’t recall how, but it is discovered.

    The big surprises: First, they aren’t angry with me for being there, they’re sympathetic in fact. I find out that one of them also did a similar thing with his ex-wife — he stayed where I am staying.

    Face with this information, I don’t say anything but I know my face tells it all.

    “Yeah, I was there for a few weeks,” he says, watching me.

    “Is the ghost still there?” He asks, offhand.

    “Yes.” I am dumbfounded.

    “Man, she used to scare the shit out of me.” He laughs.

    One of the others says “What’s this ghost?”

    We tell him and, goaded by his fascination, I offer to bring him down.

    “I gotta see this,” he says.

    As we walk down the hallway, it begins.

    Far up the hall, we can see her standing there watching us.

    As we approach, I recognize a familiar feeling of cold dread.

    Brackets and boxes fly off shelves, thrown at us by unseen forces.

    Prepared for this, nerves ringing like an alarm, I knock them away from us — grabbing a broom and brandishing it like a sword.

    My friend marvels at my skill.

    “Yeah, I’ve got a high midichlorian count.”

    We continue on towards the girl. She is hideous and pale, and the lines other face are very dark, her eyes like pits.

    I know what she is, and it is no ghost — she is something far older, engaged in a grotesque masquerade, playacting the child in a diabolically ironic manner.

    We sit and speak of childish things. I am hoping to draw her away from my real thoughts but I can feel the rage boiling within her and I cannot stop it when it finally surfaces.

    Nearby an old man sleeps on the sidewalk, drunk beyond all waking.

    She finally reveals what I already know.

    I am talking with her, realizing that my phony jocular child voice is not only annoying to her, but entirely unnecessary… I know she knows that I know what she truly is, and I know that she knows that I know that she knows that I know.

    But I keep up the pretense; I can see her fighting it at every step.

    Finally, we discuss the colder weather and Halloween is coming soon, I remark.

    And with that, she goes ballistic — force and rage radiating off of her, she’s halfway levitating, screaming with rage.

    And then I wake up, frightened by one of my own dreams for the first time in a very long time.

    [2013 Addendum: Although this dream raised a number of disturbing feelings, I remember being very proud of the Star Wars joke. In fact, I still am.]

  • mother, father, cat

    Do demons stand still? Can you look for them in corners or out of the way places? Do demons stop long enough for you to see them? Do demons stand near us? Where do they stand?

    In the dream, my house has been transformed into a filthy hole. The kitchen is a mess, bits of food, dirty pots and pans, and crusty dishes piled everywhere.

    My mother sits on the patio and smokes cigarettes.

    My father sits in the living room, studying Talmud.

    I try to clean up the mess.

    My cat walks though my dream, his mind embraced by madness. His mouth gapes, his eyes stare, insane light shining through. His tongue flaps out between his fangs, drooling mucous and vomit. He yowls to wake the dead.

    I call to my mother to put on her glasses. I ask her “Can you see him? Can you see the cat?” She doesn’t answer. And I ask her again, and then I say “Can you see demons..?” And I go into my earlier ideas on demons. I speak and the cat yowls and in the living room my father is a dusty corpse.

    When I woke from this dream I was saying “Do demons stand still?” in a breathless gasp.