/yesod

Tag: The Last House

  • the watcher

    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 movement . . . hoping it was just my daughter coming down for a drink of water.

    Nothing.

    I rise and go into the front hallway, looking up the stairs.

    After a long moment, one of our cats comes down and stops at the upper landing. 

    Her eyes, very wide.

    Chattering at me, she turns and disappears back upstairs.

    I return to my place on the sofa, wondering if the shadow has returned.

  • alarm

    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 in the room save for the pale light of morning coming in through the window.

    It was not my wife’s voice I heard, not her touch that woke me—no, just the spirit of this place, this house of ours, coming to rouse me on my day off.

    I lay back and consider going back to sleep.

    The real question, I tell myself, is whether or not you’re going to choose to believe in these sorts of things or not. 

    It’s a fair point. 

    I get up and go downstairs where I relate the events of the morning to my wife. 

    And then I check the house, just to m able sure everything is safe.

  • the last house

    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 vibrating with agitation. The spirit’s face is pressed forward through the gauzelike wrappings covering her head, frantic with worry as she confronts me.


    “What’s going on? Where are you going?” She cries hoarsely, shaking her hands. Her distress and misery are palpable, distorting the air around her, warping the edges of the room like the radiating waves coming off of a heat mirage. “Why are you leaving me?”

    At first, I thought this apparition was some sort of ghost but it occurs to me that she is in fact the spirit of our house—literally, she is the house—and the boxes in the hallway have upset her. She thinks we’re moving away. And she is upset. 

    I assure her as best I can, patting her shoulders at first and then hugging her, telling her that we aren’t going anywhere. Eventually I lead her in an awkward dance around the living room, hoping to cheer her up.

    –

    Over the next few days, when I think of it, I pat the walls of our home or briefly lay a palm on one of the doorframes, and say “It’s okay, we’re not going anywhere...” hoping to reassure her. 

  • Chet

    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 already out of bed, standing there in the semi-dark.

    “What are you doing? Are you okay?”

    She looks at me, eyes clear but confused. “She had to... she wasn’t...”

    I try to lead her back to bed but she stays there, looking around the room.

    “A lady was... she had to get up, her daughter... She won’t rest. She won’t rest.”

    I help her back into bed, make sure she’s settled, and head back downstairs.

  • 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 bell in my head ringing, signaling that our daughter might become the focus for it.

    I also can’t help wondering if, somehow, this is inevitable for her. If this thing I’ve carried for so long might turn out to be 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 course there was nothing there.

  • 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 can induce insecurity, anxiety, and depression.
    • It is not affected or intimidated by anger.
    • It can vocalize. It can speak.
    • It can make itself physically visible.
    • It is small but likes to pretend to be larger than it is.
    • It can imitate or impersonate different forms (male, female, animal, shadow).
    • It’s actual form is small, hunched, twisted, emaciated, pale.
    • It wears a mask.
    • It’s real face is humanoid but damaged, skinned with exposed flesh, eye sockets, and teeth.
    • It can make physical noise in the environment.
    • It can have physical contact with people.
    • It can have physical interaction with objects.
    • It does not appear to be related to other phenomena or spirits in the house.
    • It does not have any apparent connection or claim on our house or land.
    • It does not have an apparent connection or claim to anyone currently living in the house.
    • It appears to have full run of the house and is not limited or confined to particular rooms or areas.
    • It does not want us to leave the house. It is not trying to drive us away.
    • It goes inactive for periods of time.
    • It increases activity when there are significant shifts in the weather or seasons.
    • It is more active at night.
    • It can manifest in or affect dreams, particularly during the hypnagogic stage.
    • It manifests most often in the bedrooms, presumably because that’s when people are alone or vulnerable.
    • It does not appear to target animals or pets.
    • It tends to avoid attacks or activity when multiple people are present.
    • It attacks individuals when they are alone.
    • It attacks women more than men.

    Now, a couple of assumptions of which I am fairly confident…

    • It is not particularly strong.
    • It avoids direct confrontation or interaction.
    • It prefers indirect or surprise attacks.
    • It is not old.
    • It does not have a name.
    • It feeds on negativity, sadness, mental instability, or suffering.
    • It most likely is a manifestation generated by the grief, guilt, and suffering that occurred after Chris and Kelly’s [the previous owners] baby died.
    • It did not cause the death of their baby.

    (I suppose it is possible that it existed before Chris and Kelly, and it just attached itself and fed off of their misfortune. But I don’t think so.)

    _____

    We lead an interesting life.

  • 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 she tells me:

    She saw something hanging from the wall in the back hallway, up near the ceiling. A big dark mass, something solid. About the size of a cat. It reminded her of a bat, curled up and hanging there. It was alive, “kind of like an animal.” She ran to get her mom, thinking it might be a bat (we get them sometimes in the house, especially during the summer) but when they got back it was gone.

    If there was a bat that big in our house, I tell my daughter, we would know it.

    “You did the right thing,” I tell her. “If you ever see anything like that again, just come and get me or mom right away. We’ll take care of it.”

  • 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.

  • 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.