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When I was a kid I used to entertain my brother with shadow puppets before we went to bed. Shadows are the more maluable aspects of a world that always forced me to be maluable.
While I sleep it whispers to me in some forgotten language that I can only understand in my dreams.
It’s angry. It will always be angry. And the longer I leave it inside the bottle the angrier it will become.
It assures me that one day it will be released, and on that day a curse will rain down upon any descendants I might have.
I want to laugh at the threat. Respond with threats of my own. Bury it somewhere. Throw it down a well. But with every nightmare filled sleep its threats seem more plausible.
The only thing I know for sure is that it’s rage is limitless.
It’s that feeling you get in nightmares. That feeling that you can’t hide from the monster. How do you hide from a beast that’s tethered to your own mind?
On those hazy nights I’d see them thrashing in the night, reaching towards the star. In those immediate moments I didn’t care about the order. I didn’t care that I was wrong. I didn’t care that the ritual had succeeded. I didn’t care about our argument.
My brain was too busy fighting a two front war, and it was losing on both accounts. On one side I fought to keep the image at bay, of you amongst the fangs, with a smile serenely on your face. Was this really what you wanted?
And yet, on the other side I heard something primal scream out an ancient reptilian song: Run…
My roommate didn’t have a cat. No, she had an RCA CPR300 VHS Camcorder. She held it the exact same way you’d hold an elderly feline that was very dear to the family. While she held it she rambled on and on about CRT tv’s and old radios. And if I’m perfectly honest, I miss those days.
She had about five CRT tv’s that were always on in her room. Never ending static. She treated those tv’s like some people treat their aquariums. I’d sit there and listen to her for hours mumbling about old radios, snacking on sunflower seeds. The shells would pile up and the grey light from the tv’s would dance around us.
Mostly I’d just listen, but occasionally I’d toss in a question about her history, parents, friends, how she made money for crying out loud. Not because I expected to learn anything. It was like how you toss a rock into a pond. Instinctual. What kind of ripple would it make? Just something to pass the time. But Grace wasn’t a pond she was more like a river. The question would make a quick splash. She’d laugh, make a dismissive comment and then just continue rambling, her words quickly moving over the sinking query.
I did get a birth date one time. I felt like we were getting close, so I bought her another CRT. I was tired of the uneven 5 and decided to help her make a nice round number. It took forever to find. Strangely, there were strangely none online. But I found one in an old secondhand store. The staff all gathered around when we plugged it in. They were surprised when the static ruptured forth. They said they had only hoped to sell it as a decorative piece.
When I showed it to Gloria, she said no thanks. She had a system, and even though she had explained it to me several times I still didn’t quite get the reasoning behind it. Something about how five was the perfect number for the arc of immediate human perception. One in front. Two on either side.
A little frustrated I shoved it into the back of my closet. I went out with my friends that night. I got back around 2, and when I opened my door I saw a grey light crawling along the floor from under my closet door. The tv had been turned on. I had guessed that she had gotten curious. I turned it off, and went to the kitchen to get some water. In the hall I saw that Gloria’s door was cracked open. One of Gloria’s eyes peered out looking at me.
“Calming, isn’t it?” she asked.
“Yeah, I guess. Look you’re still more than welcomed to have i-“
“No thank you. Enjoy.” The door closed suddenly.
Looking back, I think that was the night I started having sleeping issues. It was one of those problems where you are asleep but you feel aware of what is happening around you. I’d wake up never feeling like I went to sleep, while at the same time not know if what was happening around me during sleep was a dream or real. Did someone open my door? Did someone crawl into my closet? Did someone turn on the tv? Was there even an outlet in my closet? By the time the morning came around there was no way to tell. The door would be closed. The closet would be empty. The tv off. I’d knock on Gloria’s door to ask her about it, but she never answered after that. I guessed she was having sleeping troubles too. A week went by.
I drank a shit load of coffee one weekend, I wanted to see if these dreams were real. Sure enough, the door opened. A black shadow crawled in on hands and knees, and climbed along the floor. I was frozen. My eyes twisted in their sockets to follow the figure as it made it’s way to the closet. The closet door slowly opened, and the figure pulled the set along the floor carefully. Silent static burst up from the set which laid on its back. The figure slowly rose up from the ground. Sad eyes gazed beyond the light at me then slowly tilted down. Pupils enlarged as they connected to the source of the grey light. It took me 5 minutes to slow the steady thrumming of my heart.
I stood, careful not to disturb her. I joined her. My eye’s looked down into the endless static.
“It’s ready if you want to take the first sip.”
“What?” I had no idea what she could possibly mean. She smiled, and descended upon the screen.
Gloria began to drink. Drink the static from the screen. At first she was a cat testing the water. Then her head plunged into the screen creating a viscus ripple along its surface. One gulp after another. She consumed it, all the while, the static never receded. The grey light grew in intensity.
I snapped out of my daze, and quickly pulled her up. She resisted, but I didn’t give up. I pulled harder. We stumbled over.
She was laughing. The Tv was on its side. Normal. But Gloria wasn’t. Calmly she sat up. Her eyes were leaking fluid like static. But she continued to giggle. “It’s alright! Could you open the window for me?” She smiled at me. I didn’t know what was happening and I didn’t have any of my own ideas on how to help her, so I did as she asked. When I turned around, she was standing right behind me. I must have had my back to her for only a second.
Her fingers wrapped around my hands. Her glowing static filled eyes never blinked. She raised my hands and heled them gently. “Thanks for trying. I guess it just isn’t your thing.”
With that she moved me to the side, and looked out the window. Gazing out the window the same way she would her tv’s. The window was emitting the same grey. The light came in from outside. Something was out there.
It floated slowly like a drifting piece of wood. It was large, strange, and completely made of static. Then I saw another and another. All of them drifting through the city, like beautiful fish in an aquarium, completely oblivious to us.
“You’re all beautiful!” She called out waving to the strange creatures. Their bodies were like fish. Their faces with traces of a human structure. They were silhouettes, and they were coming out of windows and floating through roofs.
Gloria turned back toward me, the static in her eyes spreading out from her sockets. She smiled. The static spread over her cheeks, and down her neck. “You might need to get someone to take over my lease…” she said dreamily as liquid static burst from her lips. She looked happy as her form began to shift. She looked free as she levitated off the floor. The strange kind of joy she had always held on to and hid, was now visible to the world, and it was just as strange and beautiful as it had always been.
To be read only in the event of Aunt Rowan’s passing:
As you probably remember there’s a phenomenon in our town called “the blue door effect”. About five years back it blew up on social media. Teens were freaking out every time they saw something they thought looked like a blue door. More often than not they were just color corrected photos of a door. But the thing is, no one really knows where it all started. You see the actual first report of the blue door happened thirty years ago.
A farmer was sitting on his porch at night when a glowing blue door suddenly appeared in the middle of his freshly tilled field. His wife came out a few minutes later, and as soon as she came out the blue door vanished. The wife said she found the farmer with giant tears pouring down his face. Now that’s the story nobody knows, because the farmer only ever told it to his cop friend, and the only person that cop told was his protégé; me.
No, the story everybody knows is the hotel incident. That happened later, after I joined the force. There I am sitting at my desk when the call comes in that something is going down at the hotel, and nobody is sure if it’s a medical emergency or if drugs are involved or what. I got a paramedic buddy who was one of the first on the scene. They walked up the stairs to the second floor. First he heard the sobbing, then he saw the hall. It was filled with the hotel patrons lying on the floor bawling their eyes out. They claimed that a baby had started crying in one of the other rooms. This compelled the patrons to begin entering the hallway. One by one they saw a blue door at the end of the hallway and began to collapse into a ball of emotions. Each new sob brought another patron into the hall until the whole hotel filled the second-floor hallway. Despite all of this the blue door initially got over shadowed by the fact that one of the people in that hall was a senator and another was his secretary. But the role of the blue door would soon make itself known when the senator published his autobiography and included the tale of the blue door as a kind of coming to Christ moment.
I tracked several other incidents over the next few decades. As Tales of the blue door became more popular the tales began to get more outlandish. But sniffing out the genuine cases isn’t too hard if you know the details that matter. The compulsion to cry was a detail that eventually faded from the zeitgeist so if someone mentions it as a compulsion, that tends to be a point in their favor. But the main detail is the crying baby. Few people actually connect the crying to the door. So if they mention it, even off handedly, then you know they’re being genuine. So how do I know the crying and the door are connected? You see, I know where the door comes from, and I know where it always is.
There’s this little two-bedroom house. Nothing spooky about it. A couple’s been living in it for the past six years. Husbands a banker, the wife sells jewelry on the internet. Now she’s got this little room that serves as her workshop. The door is green, but before they painted it, it was blue. And years before the couple moved in, it was the door to a small bedroom that housed three siblings: A boy, a girl, and a baby. The older brother and the little sister occupied a bunkbed while the baby slept in a crib in the corner. One night the mom and dad were able to afford a night out. They left the oldest in charge of his younger sister and the baby. The sister was only three, and wanted to show her baby brother her stuffed bunny. She was too young to understand anything about lungs and airways. After a tragic night filled with yelling screaming phone calls and ambulances there were only two siblings again.
Eventually the family moved. The sister was too young to remember what she had done. Thank God. The parents did everything you were supposed to do, they leaned on each other, they laid in bed comforting each other deep into the night, praying that their eldest would one day forget too, but their eldest heard these prayers through the paper-thin walls. The still young boy decided to lie. To pretend. To spare his parents the realization that one of their children remembered the most tragic night of their family’s existence. Of course, he could also never tell his sister either. So, he closed the blue door to his old room and vowed never to open it again, but closing a door never stops them from wanting to be opened. There was only ever one person who can open the blue door.
Now after the passing of my dear parents, myself, and presently my dear sister, and upon completion of the reading of this letter the door is now opened.
People talk a little too much in a small town. In the end you kinda have to pick which story you’re gonna go with. Believe what you want, but I’ll tell it to ya true:
My first experience happened at a very vulnerable time in my life when I was a child. They came in through the window which faced out toward the cornfield.
I always dreaded family gatherings like Christmas, because my cousin Derrick would always ask “how them aliens treatin ya?” Every time, he’d say it just like that.
Being an abductee wasn’t enough. The open window didn’t mean shit. The shapes in the field were strong gusts of wind or kids being kids, and my word didn’t count for much in my family. I needed proof. A picture. I needed a picture.
Thought I’d make it easy for them. Sleeping outside in a lawn chair, instead of my room. Old film camera at the ready. And funnily enough that’s when the visitations stopped. Just when I was desperate for proof. I was eighteen.
Twenty years went by. No more abductions. Just rustling. I could always hear them in the corn field on Saturdays. Feel them watching me. But no craft. So I’d move my chair to a different location every night. Maybe I was missing their angle of entry or something. But nothin.
Derrick would still ask. Every time. “How them aliens treatin ya? The family would chuckle. The significant others of the year would whisper “What’s that about aliens?” Derrick would enlighten them. More chuckling. Time to say grace and eat. Fuck. I hadn’t mentioned the fuckin aliens in years.
Then one night, my appendix burst. My post was vacant. I begged my mom to go home and sit in the chair with the camera. She promised me she’d get somebody on it.
When I woke she informed me that she had sent a message to the family group text, and that Derrick had responded.
That’s when cousin Derrick became a little distant. Couldn’t get him on the phone. He’d change up what times and days he went to church. Harvest time came and went. Nothing.
He had my film. But I continued to keep my cool.
I broke into his trailer on a Saturday. He hunted on Saturdays. I say broke in, but he had given me the key to watch his two feed his goldfish a while back.
The photo and the negatives were under the sink.
It was around that time that I saw some headlights shine into the trailer.
Got spooked. Tripped over the end table. Smashed the fishbowl. Cut myself on the hand.
I thought it was Derrick, but the headlights passed on by. A few days later and we learned that Derrick had gone missing.
I sold the picture to a website, but to tell you the truth, and throw it all away if it’d bring back my cousin.
Now, I don’t know exactly what went down in the woods, but I have my suspicions.
New job. Crazy commute, but I’ll take what I can get.
There’s this tunnel I have to take to get to work. Morning’s a breeze. Night time is weird.
Boss makes us work late. By the time I hit the tunnel I’m drowsy.
Second week starts. Boss tells me I’m already falling behind. BS
Monday night 11 pm-hit the tunnel. Shadows seem to move. I make it home.
Tuesday 11:06:- The shadows are faint but they are there. Definitely moving.
Wednesday 11:10- The shadows are definitely hands. They get darker toward the end of the tunnel. Weird but looks cool. Decide to take a picture Thursday.
Thursday/Friday- Boss pissed. Work late. Hit the tunnel at 12:30- the shadows are very dark. Get camera ready. Shadow passes over the car. Car shakes. Startled. Camera falls to the floor. Nice pic of the dashboard.
Friday/Saturday- Boss livid. Hit tunnel at 1:00. Camera ready. I gun it. Darkness.
Wake in my office chair. No memory. Check my phone. See the photo. See the date. Saturday. 4:00am.
Waken up every day in a new life.
new hubby, alone, or a new wife.
And I walk everyday in a new way.
This job wasn't my job yesterday.
Am I finding myself in a new place?
New house, new clothes, and a brand new face?
Then three o'clock and I hear it.
Moonlight and the cloud that's the nearest.
Shoes grass. Feet air.
Bright light, Who's there?
And I know what's next but I fear it.
It’s that feeling you get in nightmares. That feeling that you can’t hide from the monster. How do you hide from a beast that’s tethered to your own mind?
On those hazy nights I’d see them thrashing in the night, reaching towards the star. In those immediate moments I didn’t care about the order. I didn’t care that I was wrong. I didn’t care that the ritual had succeeded. I didn’t care about our argument.
My brain was too busy fighting a two front war, and it was losing on both accounts. On one side I fought to keep the image at bay, of you amongst the fangs, with a smile serenely on your face. Was this really what you wanted?
And yet, on the other side I heard something primal scream out an ancient reptilian song: Run…
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