“Mandy! Wake up! Please, wake up!”. “God…what time is it??? Why are you pestering me in the middle of the night??”. “There’s something in the hallway…please wake up and get in bed with me”. My sister Misty and I shared a mutually amiable relationship. In our delicately balanced accordance with one another, everyday so filled with happiness, especially in the summer, and absent of any and all inclinations toward selfishness or expediency, something we’d never even thought to inflict upon one another were cruel jokes, since we both scared easily. So to awaken to such anxious supplication was to stare into the face of almost a complete stranger.
I told her she was having dreams, and though perturbed, I entreated her to just get under the covers with me. She did so unquestionably, but what roused me from my lassitude to a sudden, overwhelming impetus of fright was the icy touch of her skin. She was shivering feverishly and her grasp around my waist was desperately firm. I couldn’t remain asleep from that moment on, but what truly threw me into tumult was her tremulous utterance of the words “it’s right outside the door”.
I sprung upright from my pillow, which, that quickly, was already damp with cold sweat. My palms pale and clammy, I suspect what frightened me most was seeing Misty’s fetal formation sculpted by the blankets, where she remained concealed and shuddering. Before I saw anything more, the floorboards groaned, though I couldn’t discern the placement or distance of the sound. The rain was a sweeping, sidewinding assault outside and the wind was pushing the walls with such gnashing power I feared they might collapse in on us.
My limbs frozen and rigored, the cyclone outside battering the house in a violent rage, I could only stare vacuously at the door, and wait. Something was happening. Whether through sound or by movement, I sensed a potent change in the room’s atmosphere. An ash colored pattern had begun to form in front of the door with a sluggish, almost imperceptible integration. At first I thought it was smoke. Something burning downstairs in the kitchen. The taste of ash rested on the tip of my tongue and the odor of sulphur crept up into my nasal passage and gilded my throat down to my tendering belly.
It was surely a burning smell, and what at first took on the form of an amorphous billowing had slowly begun to transmute to something of human design. It rose from the floor as if standing up from a crouched position. It was tall. Really tall. It’s limbs narrow and posture haggard and lanky like some elderly beggar shuffling down an alley doubled over in the infant stages of ketoacidosis. As the shape grew more stark and more black, I was terror-stricken out of stasis and, nearly bursting into tears, I tossed the covers over my head and clasped my sister around the waist.
“Now do you see it????”. “Shhh. Yes”. “Is it in here with us????”. “Just be quiet and stay still”. The wind howled and lightning crashed all around us. Shaking in tandem, our embrace tightened. “Mandy, I’m so scared….”. “I know. It will be okay, just keep your mouth shut!”. I’ve always held the belief that everything, whether existing in the physical realm or a disparate one, operates purely out of self - interest. Even in those moments of unadulterated terror my thoughts prevailed analytically. It wants something. It’s definitely there. I saw it. I can smell and taste it”. The floor began to creak one footstep at a time, and it was approaching. “…But what does it want????”.
Misty jumped like a sputtering engine and shrieked impulsively as the steps closed in and the stench grew more rancid. The air still held suspended that awful sulphuric odor, only now, the closer it got…. Crrrreeeeeeaakkkkkk. Crrrreeeeeeeeeeeeaaakkkkk. … The more the acrid stench had formed a bitter sweetness. But not a pleasant kind. Crrrrrrreeeeeeeeaaakkkkkk. More like the rank, nausea - inducing aroma of tempering grease emulsifying to a putrid concoction in the bowels of a back alley restaurant dumpster in the middle of a humid and sweltering summer afternoon. It was sickening.
Misty reacts purely out of emotive impulse, but as her older sister and protector, I didn’t have that luxury. And closer it got. Closer. Closer…until finally, it halted, right at the foot of the bed. Before I could form another coherent thought, Misty screamed from the bottom of her lungs, I adjoining, as suddenly the covers were literally ripped out of our grasp. Like a lone wanderer surrounded by wolves in a forest, out of purely primitive impulse, I thrust my arms around the back of my neck, braced for attack, and curled into a ball. And then a gentle voice floated down to us…“girls???”.
In a spat of utter confusion, we both loosened. Misty still with her head buried underneath her pillow, quivering like a leaf in a storm, I found myself unguarded and astray of my fear, turned, and saw our mother standing next to the bed. I looked into her doting eyes quizzically. “MOM???? WHAT THE HECK?????”. Misty sprung from her pillow next to me, breathless yet stirred with both quandary and relief. “I came to check on you. Wanted to make sure the storm hadn’t busted down your windows…”. “Oh my God, you scared the HELL out of us!”. “Shh…it’s okay. I’m sorry to wake you”. Misty fell back onto the bed, groaning in exasperated annoyance. “Mom, Jesus”. “No worries, kids. All is okay. I’m going back to bed”.
Though we both dozed back into a deep, long sleep, still in the same bed, I could sense trouble in Misty’s expression the next morning when I woke her up. I looked at her, and she looked at me. No words were spoken, only mutual glances of unsettled dread. Knowing it was merely our mother checking on us, something still filled me with unease. Misty as well. We should have been in a place of serenity. We should have felt protected, but some how, we felt vulnerable and perpetually bemused. Something just wasn’t right in our house after that night, and the narrow path which led to such unspoken assertion stopped in one place - our mother’s eyes.
For weeks, months, even, afterwards, we stayed together everywhere we went. We slept together. Even showered together, bizarre and uncomely as that sounds. However it was the only way we could remain in a place of mental security. If one of us had to go somewhere and the other would be rendered alone and in the hands of our mother, one of us would plead with her that we be together. Suddenly we felt like we were in danger around her. It was in her eyes and little flashes of expression across her face which could only be described as some form of subtle malevolence.
Finally Misty spoke one night, her mouth to God’s ear, as we lay cupped to one another under the covers. “Mann, can I ask you something? Do you ever feel afraid of…mom?”. I felt it dutiful to tell her the truth, yet at the same time, I understand the wiles of impressionable young minds and the damage such suggestion could assail them. Not wanting to compound the fear swimming in her already overimaginative fancies, I felt it only right to not fan flames. “No. Not at all”. “Then why do we still sleep together???”. For that, I had no good answer. So I made one up. “Do you ever have nightmares, Misty?”. “All the time”. “Yeah. Me too”. I suppose that sufficed. However I felt compelled to tell her not to ever say that around mom. She said “oh, no. I never would”. Deep down, I knew that to be true. She trusted me more than anyone.
I myself was bewildered by my own sudden terror of our mother. I could tell that my comment at least mildly tamed Misty’s fears, but mine were only growing in magnitude. One morning, I clambered out of bed, sluggish and with unbalanced equilibrium, and, for a moment, utterly unguarded, I made my way down the hallway to go to the kitchen to get a drink. In my hazy lassitude, a familiar stench wrangled my senses. It was back, the peculiar phenomenon. As it lifted me swiftly from my stupor, stomach beginning to twist itself into knots, I took a second to wipe the crust from my eyes…
….and in that moment, I walked right into my mother, which sent me tumbling backwards into the wall. The sun had just risen, but the twilight was still dim. She was standing at the end of the hallway, feet planted in a wide, threatening stance, hunched, arms dangling and fingers curled like wretched claws. Her silhouette was mostly black, but a tinge of light painted her face pale with a dreadful likeness. The stench grew so strong I felt myself suffocating in it. The way she was standing…it looked like she was preparing to lunge at me. To attack. Her lips were twisted and bowed. Eyes so dark they emitted their own shadows, and she said, in a deep voice that wasn’t familiar, “you have no reason to be afraid of me”.
And so I come back around and entertain my initial contemplation of motive. I know that whatever it is, it is our mother. Why it took its time to reveal itself remains a mystery to me, but the analytical side to me still asks, what does it want? What is its desire? What does it covet? What does it need?. And with the utmost astuteness that my adolescent brain can configure, the question only has one answer. It already has what it desires - us.
And so, life must go on.