The cold weather has gotten worse, the lake behind the place I reside and work has even frozen over. It’s been about a month since my last post here, and not much has changed since then, mostly for the worse than for the better. New discoveries have been made about my predicament, and I’ve come to realize how fucked I truly am in all of this. Yes, I know, I’m being vague, maybe in an attempt to try and ignore everything that’s happened, as if the simple act of not acknowledging it makes it all go away. Childish, yes. I guess, I’ll start from where we left off,
Following the night I last posted, I was exhausted. Sleep deprivation does not a good worker make, and even worse was that it was the middle of the week. I felt the weight of everything falling on my body, like an anvil straight out of the ol’ Wiley Coyote shorts. I called Sylvie that morning, asking if I could close the shop for the day, and if I could talk to her some time soon when she wasn’t too busy. She told me it was fine and to take care of myself, and as for talking soon, she said she could drop by some time in the following week. I thanked her, and headed to bed, my body giving way under the weight of restlessness, sleep taking hold of me, more by force than surrender.
When I awoke, I still had some work to do, even if the store was not open for the day. Each day, we get a shipment to the back, always the stuff we need and nothing more. I always assumed it was either Sylvie or perhaps some local truck driver that dropped them off, but as for how they knew what to send? That I don’t know. And furthermore, as you might have gathered, I had never actually seen the products get delivered, not even once. They're always just, poof, right there at the back door. Honestly, the more I think about it, the more it creeped me out, especially with all the other ongoings.
Days passed after that, most of them boring and entirely uneventful, busying myself as much as I could to take my mind off of the nighttime events; stocking shelves, cleaning floors, that sort of thing. At night however, the dread would set in, with a lack of a pattern from this ‘thing'. I never knew when it would happen, when it would come, when it would wake me with that dreadful knocking. I did, however, come up with some form of a plan, of course, this wasn’t my idea exactly.
Sylvie had postponed our chat a number of times by this point, which gave me time to put my plan into action. Honestly, I’m not exactly sure what I expected to come of it, but one of you suggested that I buy some cameras and set them up to record over the night. I figure, maybe if I know what this thing looks like I can figure out what it is, and how to get rid of it. In reality, I was just trying to find anything I could do to even maybe combat this. Now, a few paragraphs earlier you may have picked up on a particular detail regarding the supplies for the store simply appearing. Not once in the entire time I’ve been here has so much as a single car nor person that wasn’t already in this sleepy town been seen by me. This place is remote, yes, it’s in the middle of nowhere, yes, but in all that time you’d think that I’d have seen at least one wayward soul, but no. You may think this is a random place to bring that detail up, but the more sharp witted of you may have pierced together why I do. When going online to have order the cameras, my address not only didn’t have any option for delivery, but it didn’t even show up.
As an aside, this led down an entirely different rabbit hole, which for lack of an idea where to place this, I’ll insert here. After I came up with a new idea, one that I’ll share in a bit, I decided to look up my address online. If you’ve ever touched Google Maps even once, you’d know that an address not showing up there is as rare as lightning striking you not once, not twice, but perhaps five or more times. You can imagine my face when I couldn’t find mine. But that wasn’t the only discovery I made. See, I looked into trying to find this town on a map, and can you guess what happened next? That’s right dear reader, it was not fucking there. Oh, but it goes deeper still, because not only does this town not exist but neither does the road leading into it. Now, when we rode into this town, we were on that road for a good bit, so the idea that miles of road is just missing from the map is odd. Is it plausible it just isn’t indexed? Yes. But given all the other things happening, perhaps it’s easier to think that I somehow now live in some place outside of reality, god knows it feels like it.
So, with the delivery of the cameras out of the question, I had to find some sort of work around, and honestly it was an easy one that hurts me to not have thought of sooner. My laptop. The camera on it is not the best of quality, but one, beggars can’t be choosers, and two, I wasn’t even sure if anything at all would be there. For all I know, this could be the ghost of a sound, which I’m not sure I prefer over the alternative, both suck.
That night I set my laptop up after testing to make sure it can record for extended periods of time (it can, and I have a pretty big hard drive). That thing didn’t show up that night, nor the night after or the night after that, but as sure as the winds blow, it did eventually show up. I fell asleep in the later hours of the evening, and awoke in a cold sweat. That horrible knocking. But this time, something was different, not in the knocking, but in me. I was not in bed. Before me was the door, almost beckoning me to it, like a siren song call of death whispered in my ear. It felt as though I were in a trance as my hand slowly reached out, inch by inch. Something in my head told me, commanded me, to open the door, to let whatever was tap-tap-taping on it in, that if I did, I would finally be at peace. My hand touched the doorknob, fingers wrapping tight around it. It was ice-cold to the touch, almost painfully so, and as my wrist had only just begun the motion of turning, I came to my senses.
The air smelled putrid as I jumped back, that thick miasma entering my nostrils with an aggression I had to this point not felt so potent. The moment I flew away from that door, it was no longer a light tapping, but a loud crescendo of slams and groans. BANG BANG BANG. The wailing and lashing grew louder by each passing second, and I prayed and pleaded to whatever god or deity might listen that the door held strong. The door was the only barrier this thing had, my one and only salvation, this thin wooden frame was the only thing in its way, and for some reason, I was the objective. I slammed my eyes shut, and pleaded, and prayed.
When the sun came up, its rays hit me with a paralyzingly bright glare. I felt its searing judgment over my cowardice, to which I did not much appreciate, it wasn’t the one that had to deal with this shit, and I was. I slowly rose to my feet, groggy and with a mouth drier than the desert sand. My whole body ached, my head throbbed, but at the very least for the time being I had survived yet another night. But how many more? Was I only on some streak of luck to have lived this long? Was it trying to wear me down till I gave in? So many questions swam around my weary brain, but with none to find, I slowly made my way out of the room.
In my delirium, I had almost forgotten the laptop I had left to record, but once I did recall, I ran to it with a haste I barely even knew I had. I checked the recording, it was there, potential proof of my torment, evidence that I wasn’t entirely crazy. I felt a renewed sense of vigor for the first time in days, maybe even weeks. Looking back, I’m not exactly sure what I was expecting to do if I did have evidence, it’s not like there were police to call, and unless they have the Ghost Busters on speed dial, I doubt they would be of much help anyway. After grabbing some coffee, and taking some deep breaths, I opened the file.
At first, I thought it hadn’t even caught the damn thing as I skipped hour after hour. My hope slowly began to melt away like a candle, and I felt myself physically deflating, that is, until I hit around the three AM mark. The feed had begun to bug out, artifacts, tearing, static. Every now and then a frame was clear enough to see, but only barely, and nothing I could make out was there, only suffocating darkness. Then, for a single frame, a single micro instance, one fraction of a second of time, I saw it. The image was covered in glitchy static, and the details were hazy at best, but the outline was there. A tall, looming shadow by my door, the limbs inhumanly long and lanky, hunched over as though the place was not quite tall enough for it to fit proper. I felt a chill go up my spine and down my throat as I stared at it, the feeling only growing with time. It was like it was staring at me somehow, not then, but now, through the screen. My stomach churned, and I slammed my laptop shut with enough force I was even scared I broke it.
My heart raced and my head spun. No matter what I couldn’t shake the image from my mind. Even though I had barely seen it, nothing more than a shadow, it instilled in me a fear more primal than fire or darkness. It felt evil, truly and completely evil, filled with hate and malice. And yet, the only evidence it left behind was the wet footprints at my door each time, proof that it was standing there, proof it was real and that I wasn’t losing my fucking mind. No, maybe I wish I was. Maybe it would be better if all this was some psychotic breakdown. GOD do I wish it was. Knowing this thing was real, knowing that it's been there at my door waiting, wanting me to open it. The knot in my stomach lurched, and I vomited, the stench of bile filling the air.
After I got washed up, and somehow managed to calm my nerves at least somewhat, I decided to open the store. Honestly, I didn’t really know what to do at that moment, and it was the only thing I could think to occupy my mind at the time, and staying in my apartment made me physically ill. At least when I was working, things felt normal, or at least more normal, not that that's a high bar. I got through most of the early morning routine, checking inventory, stocking shelves, cleaning. I had been working here for a good bit by now, and having learned all the locals by name, I also learned their routines. Some came into the store every other day, some only once a week, some just before closing, and some soon after opening. At times, I even knew exactly what they would buy before they even showed. So, imagine then my surprise when Ms. Morgan walks through the door half an hour after opening on a Wednesday, the same lady that came in only every Sunday after church almost as religiously.
This alone didn’t unnerve me. I mean, people break routine all the time, maybe she just needed to grab something real quick. I watched her as she walked around the store through the mirrors. There was this… off-ness about it all. You know that feeling you get when you know something isn’t quite right, but you can’t figure out why? It was that, every second I was looking at her, I felt that. It was as if her stride was slightly crooked, her gaze lingering a little too long when she looked at anything, and every now and again, I saw her stare at me whenever I looked away, just out the corner of my eye. I tried to tell myself I was just being paranoid, that the events of these past months just have me on edge. I tried my hardest to cast the thoughts out, that was, until out of nowhere, she was right on the other side of the counter, staring at me with unblinking eyes.
I must have jumped, because after a few moments, she smiled at me, as if to quietly reassure me, maybe. I gazed back, scanning her face, trying to pinpoint what about it was making me feel like she wasn’t human. Maybe it was her eyes, unblinking and too wide to be natural. Maybe it was her smile that spread just a hair too far. Maybe it was her teeth, yellowed and numerous. I shook my head and cleared my throat. I was letting my paranoia and anxiety overtake me.
“H-hello Ms. Morgan, I see you’re here outside your normal time. Need any help?” I tried to put on the best customer service voice I could muster and prayed she didn’t notice that internally, I was freaking out.
There was a long, drawn out pause, the silence becoming deafening as I awaited a response for this mockery of a person.
“Have you been sleeping well? You seem tired.”
She wasn’t wrong. I probably looked like a walking corpse, lord knows I felt like one. I nodded, never taking my gaze off her, scared that if I looked away even for a moment, it would be the last thing I did.
“Um, yeah I’ve been pretty restless lately. Still getting used to life here, ya know?”
What a stupid response. I had been here for months now, a third of a year or more. It was at that moment I realized that she hadn’t grabbed anything from the store. She came to my counter, empty-handed, as if her sole reason for coming was to stand there and creep me the fuck out. Well, if that was her goal, she achieved it in spades, because I was far past creeped out by now.
“Is there… anything in particular you were looking for, ma’am? I, couldn’t help but notice you didn’t grab anything.”
Again with the long pause. This was becoming a horrible pattern, I feared. I wanted so badly to just shoo her out of the store and be done with this, but I needed this job, I can’t afford to lose it now.
“Well now, I’m sure you’ll be feeling’ like a local in no time flat, just give it some time. I’m sure you’ll be just like us soon enough.”
Her voice felt so strange. It was her voice, but not, like something trying to mimic her, the sound perfect but the tone not. Despite her smile, the words felt almost flat in some places, and overexaggerated in others.
“I’m sure I will be, ma’am.” No the fuck I will not. “So, was there anything you needed?”
She just smiled wider at me in response. God, her face looked so strange, like someone sculpted it perfectly and then stretched it a little too far. I felt so sick. Just leave, please just leave. Perhaps god lent me an ear, because the moment after I blinked, she was gone. That alone would probably have freaked me out, were I not too busy sighing in relief she vanished.
I was so on edge after that, as I’m sure you can imagine. Had she always been like that? Had all the towns folk? Sometimes you never quite realize how odd something is, until you're forced to confront it, and the more I thought back, the more I questioned. Had they all stared at me like that, had they all smiled at me like that, had they all been something pretending to be someone? Left without an answer, I did all that I could to stay busy for the rest of the day.
I had begun to get fed up with Sylvie's constant rescheduling, and with everything that’s been going on, I’m not sure I could wait. I needed answers, needed them now, and not one, two, three weeks down the line. I needed answers, and she was the one who had them. I knew it. I needed answers, and I was resolved to get them.
Come the very next morning, I got up early. I steeled my balls and sucked up the courage to confront Sylvie over the phone. I would have done so in person, only, I had no fucking clue where she lived, not that this town was big, but I wasn’t going on a wild goose chase unless I really had to. I grabbed my phone and swallowed hard, dialing her number for the Nth time this week. The line rang, and rang, and rang. Every time I heard the ringing, the knot in my stomach got higher and higher, but eventually, she did answer.
“Hello…?”
The voice on the other end came tired and heavy. I assumed she had just woken up, possibly woken by me. I felt bad, but not bad enough to back down.
“Yes, hello, Sylvie? It's Alan again. Can we talk? It’s really urgent, and I don’t think it can wait.”
I tried hard to mask my anxiety and fear. I doubt I was successful. The silence that followed was deafening. What was with people in this town and their long fucking silences? Have they never heard of “awkward silence” before?
“Oh my… Y-yes of course, what’s wrong? Did something break? Are you okay?”
I was about to answer her quickly, but this time, I was the one that paused. Her words rang with concern, worry, and an anxiety that mirrored my own. They did. But they also didn’t. Remember earlier how Ms. Morgan’s voice was just slightly off? It was happening again. Her words faked emotion, like something that's never known a feeling a day in its life mimicking what it thinks concern should sound like. Am I losing my mind? No, let’s be honest, I probably already have. I cleared my throat before replying, trying to dismiss the haunting ideas in my head.
“I- Yes, no, I’m okay, the apartment is… okay. It’s just that, for the past few months now, I keep hearing knocking? On my door? Like, in the middle of the night. It’s kept me awake, and I don’t know where it’s coming from.”
Straight to the point. I did lie, I knew what it was, but exactly how was I supposed to explain that? Hi, yes, a seven-foot shadow demon is haunting this place and knocking on my bedroom door, send help! If someone said that to me, I’d surely think them mad. Of course, I think that of myself now anyway.
“Knocking? How odd.”
Monotone. This time there wasn’t even an attempt to fake it, her voice was flat and one note. It WAS her voice, I can’t stress that enough, but it was more like something wearing her voice. It wasn’t exactly mimicking it as much as it was hers stripped of any emotional beat to it. The idea gave me chills.
“Yes. Sometimes it's banging even. I don’t know what to do, and it’s making it really hard to work. Did any of your previous workers mention anything like this?”
Surely I wasn’t the first to be going through all this. She said there were others before me, and they all left, not that I can blame them. But I have a hard time swallowing the idea that absolutely none of them mentioned this.
“I see. It must be the pipes in the walls. I have a number for a nearby plumber here somewhere.”
It was as though she completely ignored me.
“What? I- No, I don’t think it’s the pipes, it’s not a metallic sound-”
“I see. It must be the pipes in the walls. I have a number for a nearby plumber here somewhere.”
“Sylvie, are you okay?”
“I see. It must be the pipes in the walls. I have a number for a nearby plumber here somewhere.”
“No, I-”
“I see. It must be the pipes in the walls. I have a number for a nearby plumber here somewhere.”
“I see. It must be the pipes in the walls. I have a number for a nearby plumber here somewhere.”
“I see. It must be the pipes in the walls. I have a number for a nearby plumber here somewhere. I see. It must be the pipes in the walls. I have a number for a nearby plumber here somewhere. I see. It must be the pipes in the walls. I have a number for a nearby plumber here somewhere. I see. It must be the pipes in the walls. I have a number for a nearby plumber here somewhere. I see. It must be the pipes in the walls. I have a number for a nearby plumber here somewhere. I see. It must be the pipes in the walls. I have a number for a nearby plumber here somewhere. I see. It must be the pipes in the walls. I have a number for a nearby plumber here somewhere. I see. It must be the pipes in the walls. I have a number-”
What. The. Fuck. I slammed the phone now on the receiver with such force it threatened to shatter then and there. What the fuck just happened? The way she kept repeating the same thing over and over, in the exact same tone until it became a cyclone of words crashing into my brain. Each time the phrase became more distorted than the last, that same emotionless voice, but it was like it was breaking, like the facade had begun to melt away, or maybe it was losing its grasp, I don’t know. My ears were left ringing, the world was left spinning, and I fell to the floor.
When I awoke, it was many hours later. At first, I didn’t even know where I was, my memories slowly returning to me as I tried to gather my senses. There was a wet warm sensation in my right ear, the one that I had held to the phone, feeling only to confirm what I had suspected it to be. Blood was dripping from it, having already left its mark on the floor in my time outside of consciousness.
As I finally got to my feet, I looked around the apartment. Everything was as I left it, everything right where it should be. The sun was still out, though it had begun its descent back towards the horizon. Looking at the clock on the wall confirmed, it was 2:02pm. When I called her it was around 6:45am, so I’d been passed out on my floor for a bit more than seven whole hours. The world felt quiet. Not the calm peaceful sort, but the tense and unnerving kind. I made my way groggily towards the kitchen, grabbing myself some water.
After hydrating myself and putting a bit of food in my empty stomach, I sat for a bit to gather my thoughts. Everything seemed to have escalated so quickly, and yet, the more I thought back, the more I noticed things I hadn’t before. Every time someone came into the store, they always watched me, the way one would a specimen in a lab. There was also the lake just behind the store, something I don’t think I’ve really brought up before, as until looking back, it never quite seemed relevant.
The lake was vast and wide, a constant fog blanketing to the point that one could never quite see the other end. Come to think of it, I should have noticed the lake on the drive in, with how large it was, and yet, I never did. The lake had only appeared to me after I entered the town. Now you may be thinking, there in the woods surely the trees could have kept it hidden away right? That's the thing, the lake goes far off to where it would be right against the road just about, and then some. There was hardly any way I couldn’t have seen it.
The more of the town I thought of, the more things just didn’t make sense. Most of it were things that one could go by without noticing, like a house slightly taller some days than others. There were little shifts like that, where unless you really think hard, you would never notice something was off. It wasn’t just the lay of the little town, but the people too. Sometimes, they were maybe a fraction of an inch taller or wider than other days. Other times, their hair was perhaps a tiny shade off what it had been the day before. How in the hell had I only now noticed all of this? No, perhaps I had always realized, but chalked it up to paranoia, especially with that damn knocking thing. Everything felt so normal until that started.
Eventually, I felt up for making my way downstairs, right around when the sky had only just begun taking on that orange hue. Before I headed down though, after stepping out of my door, in the corner of my eye, I saw that red door. When I first came here, it was chained with a bunch of locks, I even counted how many once. Thirteen. I turned my head to look again, something inside telling me to. I counted. One. Two. Three. Five. Eight. Ten. There were only ten on that door now. Is it possible I miscounted? Possible, yeah, but not likely. No, these locks were gone, and one of the chains now hung loose. I felt a chill run down my spine as I returned to going down the stairs.
I took in the supplies left at the back door, at the very least deciding I should put them in storage if nothing else. Walking outside, I paused and looked out at the lake. It was like an ocean more than it was a lake, an impossible middle-of-the-woods ocean. The water was murky, dirty, and the air smelled of rotting fish. There was always a fish smell to it, but today it was especially pungent. Not wanting to take in any more of that nauseating stench, I quickly grabbed the stuff and slammed the door.
Night was approaching fast, and a plan came to mind for my nighttime visitor, an admittedly very, very stupid plan, but it was better than no plan at all. I grabbed the box cutter I used and a metal pipe that had fallen off a shelf a few weeks back. When I returned upstairs, I began to move the furniture. The table, chairs, everything but the sofa, all of it was pushed to the door as a makeshift barrier. The sofa I was going to sit in, and I was going to stay up the whole night and try to keep this thing out. Again, it was a stupid plan.
The hours rolled by, daylight snuffed out and the darkness overtaking the sky, the moon passing overhead and the stars watching me. I put on the TV, the volume low so I could hear if the thing showed up, giving me something to focus on to stay awake. Not sure what I expected to happen, really, so I shouldn’t have been surprised when I was startled awake. At what point had I fallen asleep though? It didn’t much matter, as my mind went to full alertness right off the bat.
Nothing felt off, at least, no more than it already was. There was no knocking, no banging, the TV was still on, but something kept me on edge. Muting the TV, I strained my ears to scan for even the quietest noise. I sat there, listening, waiting. Nothing.
After a while, I slowly tiptoed my way to the barricade, leaning over the pile of desperately placed furniture to try and look out the peephole. I held my breath. My pulse raced. I was horrified of what could be there. My imagination ran wild of what horrors I might witness. And yet, none of that prepared me for what I did see.
Nothing.
The hall was as it always was, the nights above flickering slightly, but there was nothing out of place. Perhaps in disbelief though, I kept looking, scanning every detail. I held out without blinking till I was forced to by the sting of a dried cornea. I blinked a few times to settle the discomfort, before returning to my watch. Where once was a hall off nothing, suddenly there was only white, a milky void of any detail.
Had the hall vanished? Had space itself warped? Was I in some sort of white void? But then again, voids don’t usually blink, do they.
I fell back as I quickly scrambled away from the door. That sudden and familiar stench of death overtook me and filled the entire room. I had gazed into that thing's eye, and it had fucking gazed back. I damn near cracked my head open on the floor as I gathered the pipe and box cutter, no sooner than doing so, the thing had begun its assault. The door was shaking violently with every slam, a horrid sound like a battering ram, the furniture trying its best to help keep that thing out. It let out a horrid cry, forcing me to cover my ears as the walls too began to slam and shake and cry out at me. In my attempt to lock this thing out, all I really did was piss it the fuck off worse.
I watched the door bow and bend, the hinges begging to break, the door starting to show signs of weakening. I cried out and prayed for god to save me, the shelves on the walls falling, the floor becoming a graveyard of dishes and belongings. It felt as though the very earth itself had begun an assault on me, tears streaming down my face as all I could do was plead. Stop it. My ears rang, my head pounded, the whole apartment shaking with its fury. Stop it. I felt its violent rage seep into me, overcome with a fear the likes of which I’d never known. Stop it. I was small, weak, insignificant against this thing, this powerful thing, and it wanted me, it hated me, it cried out for me. STOP IT!
I screamed out at the top of my lungs, and the world stood still. I was left there with the broken remains of my life, and all I could do was cry. I have to find a way out.