no sleep

The Faucets

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So, we all know cats are pretty weird. My cat is definitely no exception. Her name is Mrs. Gibbles, and she is probably one of the weirdest I have ever met. She loves to get to the sinks as I try to wash my hands or start the bath so that she can get the absolute freshest water possible. She will stare at the faucets in wonder as the water starts to come out, like it is some magical thing beyond understanding. It’s not uncommon for me to go home after working all day to find her in a cat-trance, staring at the faucets in one room or another. She will look at me as I make fun of her strange obsession, meowing needily.

“More water, Dad!” If she had her way, she would be a watterlogged piggy.

Recently, she has been acting even stranger around the faucets. She’s been refraining from drinking the water, unless I put it in her bowl. But she still stares, and it has been all she does for a week now. Extremely unusual and out of cat-character. She sometimes even makes a racket while I watch TV or clean the house, swatting at the steel and chrome and meowing incessantly. Sometimes I thought that she was attacking a roach or something! She would hiss and go into crazy-mode, running around the house at maximum velocity with her fuzzy white gut swinging back and forth only to charge back into the bathtub and attack at the faucet. I would try to surprise her, to see what she was up to, but whenever I did she was just staring in wonder at the glistening steel. The same look she has when she stares off into the spaces in-between atoms, gazing at ghosts.

Bored and with some extra money, I decided to set up some cameras. I thought maybe I could get some prime footage and get onto America’s Funniest Videos or something along those lines. Maybe just make my folks laugh. That would have been enough. But I don’t know what to do with these tapes now. I’ve begun moving out because of these tapes. I stay in a hotel with my Mrs. Gibbles, only packing during the day.

The footage started as usual. Just her looking out the window as I drive away, then immediately she plodded over to the bathroom. The camera in there was at a downward angle, looking from a corner where the ceiling meets the walls. She sat on the edge of the tub, away from the faucet. Staring. Nothing remarkable happened for a while, and she crawled into the far end of the tub laying down where she could stare at the faucet. Very very boring. But then I began to see some movement at the chrome, and I was unable to understand how the water suddenly began to run when I realized it wasn’t water.

Slowly, over the course of several minutes I saw a purple finger stretch from the faucet. Unmistakably a finger. There was a long nail, black on the tip, cracked and moldy. It felt around the tip of the spigot and Mrs. Gibbles began to hunt it. She crept toward it, and suddenly slid to attack, swatting and hissing at it. No audio, but this was the thing that she would always do. Smack, smack, smack and the finger disappeared. She stared up into the faucet, cutely sniffing at what I knew to be impossible.

Then the finger crept up from the drain below her, bits of my wife’s long black hair entangling it, but then I saw it was unlike a finger because it was much too long and it had no knuckles. More like a tentacle than a finger. It poked at her with an intelligent curiosity, startling her tail into a big poof, coaxing her to attack again. Playing. It disappeared, and as she investigated the drain, it reached from above and tickled the back of her head.

She leaned into it like she leaned into my rubs. I vomited.

I googled some information on my address. A young girl had been drowned in the tub by her mother when she was only 6.

 

 

tales of a travelling salesman final

Click here for a strange tale.

My Late Uncle Clive (2)

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Click here for Part 1

 

 

I’ve lived alone since the kids have grown up, and my wife left me soon after that. We stayed together to raise the family, but she never really loved me. I don’t resent her for anything at all, so lets move along as I correct myself. I don’t live alone, not really.

 

My dog Max was a big ol’ Golden Retriever, and in his prime he was rambunctious and would bark at everything. But as time went by, he became more reserved. Some people follow the same pattern. I’m just glad he didn’t follow the terrible pattern that is senility. Max was my best friend, and he always managed to find his way up to my lap no matter how tired he was.

 

I got home, and I was greeted by the familiar thumping of his tail on the hardwood floor of the hall. I flipped lights on and kicked my shoes off and scooped all the old boxes of take-out off of the kitchen table and into the trash. I threw down the old manuscripts and papers, and took some fresher take-out from the fridge to sate my growling stomach.

 

Max found his way in with me, and sat eagerly by his feeding frenzy area. His tail was uncontrollable as I poured fresh food into his bowl. We ate together in silence as I looked at these strange documents. The night was steadily growing darker, but I forgot to turn on the lights and my eyes adjusted without my knowing. They were too fascinating to peel myself away from. There was something about the strange, completely foreign symbols. They were unlike anything I had ever seen before. Pictographs and dashes and curls all blended together into some forgotten story.
Some of the scrolls were something similar to ancient Sumerian. But they were also not quite like what Google searches spat back to me. There were flourishes here and there, and odd pictures blended in between some of the lines. The text spiraled around some of these eldritch images. One in particular caught my eye. Some strange octopus, turned upside down but with angry eyes carved right ways up in the head of it. The tentacles held different items: A cross, a strange “Y” with two dashes in the botttom, and knives. I stared at the image for longer than I thought, because Max’s whine broke my concentration. He stared at me with keen interest and tilted his head. I took another bite of my food and it was already cold! Time was passing by with unusual expediency.
The night had fallen completely by this point, and to see I had my face pressed up all the way to the papers. I didn’t even notice! I stood and flipped some lights on to continue, but then I heard Max begin to bark at the front of the house. Extremely out of character for him, the barking was persistent and growing louder. He never barked at anything anymore, not even the mailman. But something had grabbed his attention with an eerie tenacity. A loud knocking broke the silence from the front door, and Max’s barks turned to growls. No one ever visited me, not even my kids. And at this hour?
I grabbed the bat that was by the front door and looked carefully into the peephole. On my front step was that strange man from before, his brown hair was carefully combed in a modest pompadour, and he was wearing a dark coat. He looked nervously over his shoulder and reached up again to knock when I popped the door open a crack. My eye was the only thing he could see when I asked:

 

“What the hell are you doing here?”
“I… Haven’t been honest with you, sir.”
“Well anyone could have figured that out, buddy. You’re not a good liar.” He chuckled and reached into his back pocket, at which I slammed the door shut thinking he was going for a gun.
“WAIT! I’m a detective! I was getting my badge!” he shouted with frustration. I carefully peeped out the peeper, and sure enough there was a gold shield there, held up next to his sheepish grin.
I opened the door again, this time unlatching the various locks all of the way so that I could let him in.
“Well, why didn’t you just start with that yesterday? Would have been much easier for both of us. Plus I thought you were some creepy and stuck up asshole.” He laughed at that as he stepped inside, hanging up his coat.
“I get that all the time. There’s a lot to tell you.”
I cleared the manuscripts off of the table hurriedly, putting a pot of water on to boil for a french-press brew. All the while trying to think about why a cop would be interested in my late uncle.
“I’m just going to dive right into it, sir. I’ve noticed a pattern in some recent cases, as well as some cold cases going back… quite some time.” He produced a file from thin air, it seemed.
“Oh, by the way. My name is Detective Jackson, call me Trent. I’m sorry for yesterday. I’ve had to be extremely cautious. I’ve been receiving death threats for my work, which is unusual, because I thought only I knew about it. Even my boss doesn’t know I’m here right now. I’ve kind of become obsessed. But hear me out.”
“Sure. I have nothing else to do, and I haven’t had company in years. Plus I like stories!” I smiled and he gave a thin smile back.
“Women have been disappearing from this town for hundreds of years. But people always assumed they were runaways, or something along those lines. Because there was no discernible pattern or similarity. Until I took the time to do all this work. Every 4 years, a young woman vanishes. She is always between 16 – 25, and according to the reports that are complete, they have no real close friends, and their family is broken. Fathers or mothers gone or addicted to drugs, you know. Very sad situations.” He spread the thick file out on the table this whole time, laying out photographs from recent years, and ending with one from a very long time ago. The type of photograph from when folks never smiled. Her hair and eyes were as black as the underside of the clouds outside that wandered through the night.
“People always assumed that because of their home situations, and their ages, that they simply ran away, or killed themselves. No one had ever been found, and so without a body they remain a missing-persons case. Never able to warrant a full on homicide investigation. There were never any witnesses to the disappearance, it was like they just walked out their homes one day and never returned. But this is where it gets weird. All of these disappearances began when the college was founded. I’ve even found old primary documents from colonial eras about some disappearances, but those were assumed to be Indian kidnappings or the like.”
The sound of my phone timer exploded into the kitchen, and scared us both. He actually stood completely upright and drew his gun, which he now awkwardly put back into his holster. The coffee was ready.
“But I have made a map of the disappearances, and they all are within 30 miles of the college. I had been researching strange disappearances like this, and apparently there was something similar going on in Louisiana a long time ago, and it had to do with some strange cult that required human sacrifice. Throats were cut, then burned, or simply just burned alive. Really horrific stuff. But your Uncle intrigued me because some of the records from that case had strange manuscripts remarkably similar to what he was working with when I went to canvass the staff at the college. He said that he wanted to meet me, that he had something to tell me that would blow a hole in this case but… He died within 48 hours of talking to me. That is how I know something is seriously amiss here. Of course there were the death threa — ”

 

 

Max began barking again, furiously. He had barked more this night than in the last few years all together. I stood and looked for him in the front, and saw he was foaming at the mouth and barking like a wild animal. His eyes were crazed and my heart was pounding as suddenly the window shattered inward, and the room burst into flames. The curtains caught fire and the fire spread over pictures on the wall and an old couch as Max bolted from the living room and into the kitchen, barking and barking and barking. Trent stood and had his gun drawn just as another Molotov cocktail burst into the opposite end of the house. The heat filled the air as flames began to cover everything.
“Save the manuscripts!” I shouted at him, as I grabbed an old family picture of mine. From a time when we were happy. With the picture in one hand, I scooped the massive retriever under my other arm, and followed Detective Jackson as he kicked down the back door and covered the flames there with a blanket he had found. We tumbled out into the dewy grass and stood in the night, watching the flickering flames spike up high into the sky. Tires squealed out front as the culprits got away. No time for even a glance.
“Well, I guess we should go to…. well my place isn’t safe either.” He looked at me, then the ground. Within an hour we awkwardly were checking into a hotel together. He passed out in one of the twin beds, and I sat in the other, typing this. I will update soon.

 

Something is afoot.

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Scratching (Final)

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Click HERE for the part before.

I’m writing this in the lobby of a Starbucks. I’m not sure how much time has passed, but I need to make a record of this before I finally lose my senses to the fear that is lurking behind my eyes. Or they catch up with me. My wife has left me and its my fault, all my fault. I’ve become obsessed. I should start from where I left off. Looking back at what happened there is so much gray, and not enough black and white. The people here are casting odd glances at me, they must think it strange for a homeless looking man to have a laptop and to be typing furiously while stifling the crazed laughter that keeps bubbling up into his mouth. No matter. Who cares what THEY think?? Th0ey have no idea of what lives out in the untouched woods east of this town.

 

OK, I need to focus. Focus.

 

I went back to the house. The house on the left, where the old man was, was embalmed with yellow CAUTION tape. Wind made it flutter and sound like some leathery wings above the din of the trees that swayed and twitched in the heat that blew through them. The humidity was so thick that I felt as if I was wading into some great, invisible sauna. The strange, seemingly empty house on the left stood silently. Staring. The trees all around us, being fairly far into the countryside, towered into the sky as they moved with the wind. I thought about how I wished I had enough money to buy a pistol. Buckshot and slugs would do.

I was going to move without hesitation today. I was going to finish this. It was going to be easy. I could corner them here and finally finish this. Oh, to be finished. Were that I could be and not a raving man holding on desperately to the cliffs of sanity — trying to save myself from the black waters of madness frothing below. I have to push their strange ritual out of my mind. That dark altar in the woods. Forgotten… Demanding attention.

Wait. The beginning.

 

I was about to re-enter my old home, the one that I had fallen in love in. So many memories were held within its walls; pale echoes of laughter glowed in my mind as I went to slide the key into the lock. The key barely touched the brass when a quick clamor and came from inside and I whirled to the window next to the door to see my white curtains obscuring my view. Shadows were all I could see, and one moved into the hallway and out of sight while another stealthily slithered to the kitchen on the right. A trap was in the process of being set and I had stumbled upon their devious workings. I would not become the next skull on their filthy shrine, cut into that wet colon of the earth. I would not be another trophy to be polished and displayed carefully in the foul darkness while they cleaned their rotting teeth with a splinter of my rib bone. I would not be, as it seemed more likely now, a sacrifice. It did not matter. I would not become another victim. Not today. Or ever.
I put a chair under the front door to keep it from being opened. Leaving it locked, I doused the front of the house in gasoline. Even the windows were covered in dancing flames as I moved around to the back. From the hole in the house foundation, rats came squeaking out into the dirt and into the underbrush. Then a black-nailed hand – elongated in a disgusting strangeness – pulled a pallid beast out as it gripped the dirt. I shot it and it wheezed and looked up at me as it gave its last repulsive breath. Hatred brewed in those obsidian orbs that stared unblinking as death filled its new corpse. Another came, and it was so fast!! It crawled out low to the ground as if this was another natural way that they moved — on all fours!! In one motion it had come out of the hole, and pulled its revolting counterpart over itself like a cloak. I fired 3 rounds into it, the buckshot only slightly penetrating until my final round – a slug – tore through them both and it fell into a steaming hump of grey flesh half into the brush and half in the dirt. Dark red blood began to pool and be absorbed by the planet. Mosquitoes and flies landed instantly on the macabre pile. A wafting of horrible smells from the body blended with the natural stink of a swamp. My house was engulfed in flames behind me, and while I was far enough away from the main part of town for it to take some time for police to get here, I had to work quickly — I knew I had to I had to finish them off now and here and forever and then leave this place and never talk again. There could be no more rituals. I had no clue – at the time – that these horrors were nothing compared to what I would find later. The blending of onyx and green in the moonlight… No. Not yet. I must write it all.
The house that had seemed vacant next to me all of those years was not, and the fire had grown out of control with the wind and spread to it. I checked inside the shed to make sure that my rudimentary barricade had held, which it did. A loud crashing and cries of the beings who had long been hidden echoed out. Melancholy and angry, animalistic and frightened. Unnatural, and yet… human. Almost. I moved just in time to see the last of them tumbling over each other into the forest, screeching and clicking and talking to each other… Maybe to me. Fragments of half-words and almost familiar tones drifted into my ears. I did see one that sat, staring at me from across the small field. It saw me, too. I raised my gun to fire a slug I had loaded, but it was gone. I knew that I could not leave them free in the forest, I could not pass the buck on to some other unsuspecting soul.

 

They were my responsibility. They were mine to kill.

 

I left the inferno raging behind me, screams of the damned erupting from the yellow blossoms of their funeral pyre. I crashed into the underbrush, and ran after the creatures. The fauna was thick on the ground, cutting and pulling and tearing at my arms and face and clothes. Ahead of me, I could hear the stampede of the hominids running through the forest. I caught glimpses of them standing upright, and I fired at them, missing. I don’t remember how long I chased them, my breath burned in my lungs and my legs were aching when I finally slowed down. It could have been an hour. Maybe even more. The adrenaline was endless, and my heart fluttered like a captured bird in my chest. I managed to slow my breath after a time, and listen. The sun was beginning to fall already. How long did I run? This part of the forest seemed untouched by man. A forgotten swamp. I began to walk, hearing silence around me. My crunching was stifled by the mud, for the ground had become much more damp. My eyes investigated every leaf and bush, tree and branch. I saw no signs of animal life in that place. No paths cut by boars in the brush. No scratchings from deer. Even the insect life was drained from this place, as the sun fell behind a clouded horizon. There was darkness now, and I was lucky to have packed a flashlight.
I moved through muck now, my boots almost getting sucked off by their sinking into a mire of ancient land. Spanish moss was thick in many places, choking the life from parts of thick oaks. Slopping through more and more, I was worried for gators, but saw none. I thought myself lucky for it, and stopped my breathing and strained my ears to focus on a sound I swore that I did not hear. But I did hear, and to think of it now makes me want to scream out at these fools around me who have no fucking clue what lives east of their suburbs and lattes.
The sound was chanting, words that I had never heard and wish to never hear again even if it means I have to take a spike to my ears. Half-human tones and alien syllables distantly found their way to my mind. Words meant to remain unheard — but I must try to make some sense of it all! some record so that people can know and avoid and perhaps… No. There is no defeating it I suppose. The dreams made it clear. The voices blended and clicked and did not make sense but here, I will try:

 

Ft’ngluii maglwf’nafh Kuthluun Reh’lyeh wvagah-najl phutadjnn

 

I heard these mumblings and moved closer, that is when the words became more clear to me. They chanted low, just above a whisper, and yet being in that strange silence of that old land it reverberated into my bones with every vile syllable. I moved quietly closer to observe a horrible sight and strange things that disappeared when I went back to look for them. I combed that same area for days and could not find anything. That glade was still there, a str a n ge island in the swamp with a river gliding around it murky and brown. It was still empty, when I went back. No animal life. But the shrine was gone, or invisible. Yes… The shrine.
The creatures swayed grimly chanting around a monolithic structure around 8 feet tall. Fires surrounded it, layers of sticks blended with a few headless corpses that crackled and popped and made me nauseous with a stench of charred flesh. The stone towered and was an odd color. Black and green and… yet not. Not obsidian and emerald though, it was almost as if the green had blended into the black, a disgusting and unknown color. Strange carvings were visible, unexplainable hieroglyphs and a malevolent etching of some strange being I cannot describe. Something from the sea. I stared upon the horror of this evil ritual, and raised my gun to fire. Slugs ripped into one and it fell suddenly, like a repulsive rag doll. The others looked around frantically and screamed with an overwhelming hatred as I fired again, and again, pumping rounds into the bush next to me. I think it was then I went mad, as some picked up strange amulets or totems from around the shrine and took off into the night, leaving the horrible fire burning flesh under the stars. The night was silent again, and I blacked out.
I woke up several days later, for I had grown a beard and bug bites covered my body. Maybe I came back into rational thought again, and repressed the time spent insane? I found my way back to that place and it was empty, no green/ black monolith jutting from the earth on that strange old island. Not even evidence of burnt grass. I laughed into the silence. Just empty dirt filled the island, and not even footsteps remained. I must be insane. I went back to the town, and I found that my wife had left the hotel without a forwarding address. Her number was disconnected. Her family’s was off. And so I went to look again at that place. It must be there!  But, there was nothing. I hunted in those woods for anything now, no boar or deer or ancient subterranean human cult lived there anymore. I googled my home address in the news just now. People disappeared 20 years ago from there, almost to the day. And 40 years before that. I have to leave now. The police are on their way, apparently. Something about arson. More like some sort of cover up. The people are whispering around me and I have to leave.

 

Scratching (2)

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Click HERE for Part 1

I heard something heavy on the roof, crawling above us.   I went outside to get a look at the thing, and I peered into the shadows above my house, trembling.  An overwhelming sensation of being watched came upon me, stifling my breathing.  I gazed upon nothing.  But that feeling of being quietly observed made me sick to my stomach.  There was nothing on the house… Not anymore.

I quickly went back inside.  Bolted that door tight again.  Moved the couch back in front of it.  I wasn’t going to risk going outside again, not after what I did.  Not after what happened.  There was something primal about our interaction, like a story that had been told too many times already over the course of history,  Us versus them.  I can’t explain it, but there is a hostility innate to the interaction between us.  Like homo sapiens forcing homo erectus into extinction.  Who would have thought my high school biology class would become useful to me?
After the roof scare, we decided to take all of the animals and just go into the bedroom for the night, since the doors were locked and blocked.  My wife took a pill to help her get some rest since she is a schoolteacher, and she can’t miss work since tests are coming up for the kiddos.  I stayed awake, clutching my Mossberg.  I felt pretty confident that all of the barriers that I made in the shed should keep the creatures in the ground.  But as I sat there in the darkness, I found myself thinking of their eyes, glittering in the dark looking up at me.
None of the descriptions you folks suggested really looked like what I saw.  The rake’s hands are much too big for this.  These things had more… dexterity.  Nimble fingers.  And the eyes were not dark, at least not with a light shining at them.  Seems more like some forgotten link between us and the primordial soup.
My thoughts were a whirlwind as sleeplessness began to catch up to me in a wild delirium.  The faintest brush of a wind in the bushes made my heart flutter, and my muscles tense.  And that FEELING!  The one of being watched.  Even the walls of my home seemingly could not keep those prying humanoid eyes from whispering into my mind.  The darkness itself seemed to hold them.  The shadowy corner, black in the room.  For all I could tell, there was something crouching in my room now —
Scratching began anew.

 

The location made me feel a new fear.  The walls!! The WALLS!! I have heard rats in walls before in apartments I lived in during my youth.  Light scratches and tiny scuttles.  This, was completely different.  It must be Them.  Scraaaaaaatch scratch. Scraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaatch.  Long, subtle scratches.  Like dragging long nailed fingers lightly over drywall.  I could picture the creature, skinny enough to slip into the frame of my home, grey skin pallid in the dusty darkness.  I loaded my shotgun with buckshot.  There was no question in my mind now, that there was something there.  And it was the thing that I saw.  There are no coincidences on a moonless night like that one.  There were no cute mice in my wall.  I knew.  I could not bring myself to pump shells into the walls, lest it let the creature spill into the bedroom.  Luckily my wife was out cold, but the dog was whining and growling again — like before.  I sat on the edge of my bed, feet hanging over the side to the ground, cradling my shotgun at the origins of the hellish sounds.
When the scratching first stopped, I went out into the living room to see the other side of the wall, to make sure it was within the thin frame and it hadn’t gotten into the home itself.  Surely, it was where I suspected.  But this gave me more scares.  The angles that strange body would have to twist into to get to where it is now are wholly unnatural.  It took all my strength left to not vomit, thinking of the disgusting being covered in dirt that had lived so close to me for so long.  And then I noticed that the cat had come out with me, and was at the window looking out intently at something.  I slowly walked over and I swear I caught a glimpse of a face peeking into my home.  A face not devoid of reasoning.  A face looking for something, someone.  Me.  As I got closer it was nothing but reflections and shadows…
I waited all night for something more.  But the scratching would stop, I would begin to drift off to sleep and then they would begin anew.  Toying with me.  As if it could sense my sleepiness and was playing with my mind.  Psychological warfare.  It is now almost 8 am, and the scratching has been gone since just before the sun rose.  They must be nocturnal.

I sure hope so.
I am going to take a quick nap, then go out into the shed.
If my hands will stop shaking.

 

Click HERE for Part 3

Scratching

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I haVE to type this quickly, please just give me a chance to explain.  I told the police what I am about to tell you, but they refused to believe me.  A friend told me that you folks might have some idea of what I am dealing with here.  In my backyard.
The yard is overgrown, there is an old shed that we haven’t had access to for years.  Peeking inside the single dusty pane on the garage, there is nothing remarkable to see: Tired old tools, shelves, and spiders skittering into the darkness.
My wife and I have a Shiba Inu, a very cute dog and also very intuitive.  It knows somehow when anyone is sad or even slightly stressed, and he will toss his body onto you to comfort you whether you like it or not.  We always just let him go running out into the yard to let him do his thing, and he always comes running back.  He loves crashing through the overgrown backyard that our landlord refuses to cut.  Ferns and bamboo mix to create a veritable Vietnam, especially on hot nights.  Like last night.
To write as clearly as I am, it is taking all of my focus.  What I saw makes me laugh and cry at the same time to think of and I couldn’t sleep at all because of it.  I kept my shotgun with the rack open next to me in bed, and my wife did not even protest.  She did not see, but she could hear.  And the police thought we were pranking them.  So much for protect and serve.
I let the dog outside as usual, and he ran into the underbrush with a hop and a skip.  But as I closed the door behind him to prevent the cloud of mosquitos from coming inside I heard something else out there with him.  Thinking a possum or the like, I stuck my head outside to call the dog back inside, but he was waiting for me already at the door.  I have never seen a dog afraid before, not outside of the movies.  He stood there shaking, and whimpering.  Tossing nervous glances outside as I began to shut the door.  Strange.  As we walked away, I heard something scratching at the door I just shut.
Thinking it was just an outside cat, which we have, I ignored it.  Best thing to do.  But the scratching did not stop for an hour.  My eyes locked on our ceiling fan spinning for eons as scratch scratch.  Scraaaaatch scratch scratch.  Over/ and over and over and eover and over
I finally got up to go kick the kitty off the steps but it stopped just as I strode over.  But then as I turned to walk back to bed there was more.  I rushed the door and opened it.
By the time I could see, all I caught a glimpse of was something like a pale hominid, crouching unnaturally as it crawled into the bushes.  A distinctly human looking head, but somehow elongated and sloping back.  Long arms.  The poilice wouldnt believe me.  I stayed up all night clutching my gun, sitting in the kitchen facing the back door.  Time to to time, the scratching would begin again.  And then subside immediately as I stood to open the door.  I could not get the courage to go out and find the creature, even with the cold steel at m side.  Somethiing about the darkness was different that night, obsidian without a moon.  That pale grey skin, stretched over strange bones, seemed powerful despite its emaciated appearance.

I called off work the next day to use the sun to boost my strength.  The heat was oppressive, beating through the leaves of the trees and onto my clammy skin.  The dog would not go out, he stood in the doorway whining and tap-dancing nervously which only added to my blood pressure and apprechension.  I could see a single footstep in the damp dirt outside the door, a shape that made me sick to see since I knew this was something beyond the realm of normal understanding.  Long toes, wide feet.  Like a simian, but with obvious abberations.  Swallowing my fear I delved into the greenery.

With each slow crunch of my feet going through the ground, my heart skipped a beat.  I could feel something watching me.  It brushed my arm and I turned to fire and looked at nothing more than a bush.  My nerves were shot.  I peeked into some bushes, moving slowly around the yard.  Then the shed came into view, and my heart stopped in my chest and tried to crawl into my throat.

The shed door was OPENED.  We were told that it could not open and they were going to demolish it once we were finsihed with our lease.  I entered with the gun raised ready to rip somethjing in half with a fleet of lead friends.   But there was nothing.  Tools, shelves, and dusty old spider skittering off to shadowed corners.
Nothing except for a rug upturned, and a trapdoor exposed by it.  Taking my phone, I lifted it open quickly and shined a light down there.

Several pairs of eyes glared back from the dark, and i fired without thinking into the black and shut the door immediately.  Chilling cries spewed up from the dirt basement, and loud crashes pushed wildly up against the door as I stood holding it shut slipping into insanity I could not push the eyes from my mind – they looked animal because they glowed but also they had an intelligence to them.  Some were scared some were angry what the fuck was living in my back yard this whole time.  Maybe it was not the posssums that were eating the stray cat food i leave out maybe it was them and their young creeping onto the porch each night it makes me sick to think of their long fingers shoveling dry kibble into their rotting mouths dear god I am going to be sick writing this

i turned a heavy tool chest over the door, and a shelf, and everything in the garage on top of it.  There was no way they could get out.  I cannot bring myself to try and kill them, they might get me… No one will believe me or even come out so I can show them this hell.  Not even my family.  My wife just laughs nervously when I try to bring it up and says i was seeing things.  But she wont go out and listen, or look.  I cant say I blame her.  I did not sleep again.  I don’t know if I ever will.
Even though there is no more scratching at my door.

_____________________________________________________________________

Got home from work, luckily everything was fine but I have to update.  There is scratching again.  The sun had been down for a few hours now, and my wife and I were dozing on the couch when it started.  The cat and the dog both started acting unusual, the cat scampering away into the house somewhere, and the sheebs just whining and grunting and growling at the door.  I stood up and paced quickly to the door, and it stopped.  I slowly crept toward the door, step by step lightly setting my feet on the ground with great care.   I put my ear up to the cold wooden door, hoping to hear something.  There was nothing.  Crickets droned on in the background.  I came back and sat down to upadte thi

There is somethiing on the roof now. I have to go.

 

Click HERE for Part 2