before bed
The house teems with activity—shadows darting everywhere, faces peering around corners, dark shapes gathering form and detail to grasping at me as I pass by... I slide my scolecite ring onto my finger, take some mugwort, and head to bed.
The Last House
the watcher
...and mid-way through the episode, I look up from the sofa to see a large dark figure move from where it was standing in the entryway, heading towards the front stairs and out of sight. Startled, in spite of myself, I sit for a moment staring at the empty doorframe, waiting for the motion detector on the stairs to register the… Continue reading the watcher
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… Continue reading alarm
the last house
(This dream was predicated by the delivery of some cardboard boxes from U‑Haul. I had some old items in the basement that needed to be packed up and so when the boxes arrived I placed them in the back hallway. Later that evening, this is what I dreamed...) ...from one side a spirit approaches me, draped in ivory cloth and… Continue reading the last house
Chet
This afternoon I was in the living room and looked up to see our cat Chet coming around the corner to sniff at our new cat’s scratching pad. Odd thing is, Chet died last year.
“She won’t rest.”
My daughter is almost nine but we still use a monitor so that we can hear her if she wakes up in the middle of the night. My wife has gone to bed and I am up late, doing some work I brought home from the office. The monitor crackles and my daughter calls for me. When I head upstairs, she is… Continue reading “She won’t rest.”
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… Continue reading hereditary
my phone buzzes
Message from my wife this morning... Just another day at The Last House.
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… Continue reading not a cat, not a dog
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.
pest control
Here’s an e‑mail i sent to my wife this morning, slowly starting to put together a plan to exorcise the entity that currently occupying our house... What I know (or think I know) about the entity in our house... It is not human. It never was human. It is a conscious, aware entity. It is negative. It is drawn to insecurity, anxiety, and fear. It… Continue reading pest control
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… Continue reading not a bat
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… Continue reading peeking
laundry room
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,… Continue reading laundry room
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… Continue reading lavender dress