/yesod

Tag: ghosts

  • my phone buzzes

    Message from my wife this morning…

    Just another day at The Last House.

  • feet wrapped in rags

    …the children come out from the alcoves and holes, ragged scavenger ghosts huddled together and shuffling along the dusty floor, their hollow eyes sweeping back and forth, mouths gaping . . . they are in thrall to an old woman, an older ghost, who herds them like cattle and feeds off of their misery…

    I stand on the rickety wooden steps, watching them from above, not daring to step down into the range of their clutching hands.

  • ghost friend

    IMG_0745.JPG

    (Via Poorly Drawn Lines)

  • ghost weather

    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.

  • 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.

  • 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…

  • the dancing toy

    …disturbing discoveries in the new house continue as we settle in.

    (I should mention that this is not our actual house, not the new house we moved into earlier this year, but some alternate, dreamspace version that has that same-but-not-the-same quality which you only find in dreams.)

    There is the painting in the upstairs bedroom, for instance. At first glance, it appears to be that of an old sailing ship, seen from behind, silhouetted against the night sky. Upon further inspection, however, it’s actually a spaceship, seen from behind, heading into the clouds. It’s an ingenious optical illusion and I’m quite impressed by it, both in my dream and upon waking.

    But nothing on earth has the power to move this painting from where it hangs in the room. I try more than once, encountering a puzzling invisible force that halts my progress — like two pushing two positively charged magnets together. I can slide it along this force, but never past it.

    This same force prevents some objects from being brought into the room as well. Just inside the doorway they will stop against some force that, while slightly giving, remains unyielding.

    Today I am bringing a small muppet toy of my daughters into the room to put it away. Something takes it out of my hand and twirls it dancing through the air around me by one arm. It is as if some invisible child is at play, teasing me. But there is something cruel, angry behind this unseen hand.

    I am frightened by this but I pretend to be delighted. I think that this will fool whatever it is that’s behind this. I laugh, feigning wonder. I reach out and pluck the toy out of the air, feeling the faint tug of force as it gives way.

    The toy dances away from me again, snatched out of my arms and dangled above my face like one child playing keep away with another.

    I do my best to smile and laugh, even as the unseen force drapes the arms of the toy around my shoulders, wrapping them across my throat . . . slowly tightening them like a scarf.

    And I wake from my afternoon nap, my mind troubled and my skin crawling.

    Even now, as I hurry to take this down before the details of the dream fade, I realize something even more chilling: Whatever unseen hand was at work in my dream, it was large enough to lift the toy high overhead. And I am over six feet tall.

    That is, it is no child.

  • 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.]

  • haunted

    [This is directly transcribed, without changes or edits, from a journal entry dated April 4th, 1994]

    Ghost dreams. Windows that won’t stay closed. Doors opening onto nothing.

    Tired and depressed, once again.