I blinked a moment at the enigmatic subject line of the email that had just come in from Allen, an old friend that I hadn’t heard from in a few years.
Do you see it?
What was that supposed to mean?
To be honest, I was surprised to see an email from him at all. We’d always been more inclined to pick up the phone and talk if the urge to catch up with each other ever arose. Sending an email out of nowhere was unusual. Actually, it had probably been more than a year since we’d even connected, so it was definitely unexpected to see the email in my inbox.
Even more so, one with such a cryptic subject line. It didn’t become much clearer when I clicked on the email, either, bringing up only a single sentence in the message body.
Please tell me I’m not crazy.
I grinned a little, thinking to myself that, based solely on this email, I wasn’t so sure I could provide him with that reassurance right now. I was about to pick up my mobile and give him a call, despite the late hour, when I noticed the image file attached to the email.
Okay, I was now a little curious.
I opened the file and found myself faced with what looked like a still-frame image captured from a night-vision surveillance camera. The view was that of a backyard, neatly adorned with carefully trimmed hedges, a small metal shed, and a few children’s toys scattered about on the manicured lawn. I could just make out the dim shape of a swing set protruding into the camera’s field of view to the side.
The yard was fenced in with a wooden privacy fence and appeared to border a treeline of some sort. It might have been a forest or maybe just a small swath of trees; I couldn’t really tell from the picture, but from the dense and pregnant shadows, I got the impression it was more likely the former.
I frowned as my eyes scanned over the image, trying to understand exactly what it was that Allen was wanting me to look at. The timestamp on the lower right corner of the image indicated that it had been captured at 2:15AM the previous day.
“What am I supposed to be seeing here?” I wondered aloud, grabbing my reading glasses and leaning closer to the screen. I zoomed in as far as I could before it started to pixelate and distort, but still didn’t see anything out of place.
My eyes drifted across the grainy image, the pale green monochrome of the night vision mixing with the visual artifacts and making everything a little unsettling and almost surreal, despite the otherwise excruciatingly ordinary scene. I squinted and leaned closer, wondering if there was something obvious that I was supposed to be picking up on. Still, nothing caught my eye.
Finally, I shook my head and leaned back in my chair. Whatever I was supposed to be looking at was eluding me.
Hell, maybe this whole thing was some sort of oddball joke I just didn’t get. Allen had never really been wrapped that tight, if I’m being honest. Nice enough guy and a good friend, sure, but he was what a lot of folks would call, ‘eccentric’. I can’t remember how many times I’d seen him with an antique book he’d found in a secondhand shop, usually with archaic subject matter bordering on the slightly disturbing.
I remember one time, he’d excitedly shared with me a heavy leather-bound and time-worn book he’d found on some internet auction site for obscure book collectors. I don’t remember the title, but it had been written in what looked like Arabic script and he kept going on about some guy named Yazid or something like that. I only remember the name because he wouldn’t stop talking about it for weeks. He’d told me that he’d been trying to get his hands on the book for years and had paid five thousand bucks for it.
Five thousand bucks. I shit you not.
So yeah, that was Allen.
As soon as the thought that this was some sort of prank entered my mind, though, I summarily dismissed it as a possibility. It was just too far out of character for him.
I was reaching for my phone and was getting ready to dial his number when I realized how late it was – almost 1AM. It was far too late to call him now, I thought. He was obviously still awake, as he’d just sent me the email, but I didn’t want to wake up his wife or kids, especially on a weeknight. I’d call him tomorrow after work and try to figure out what this was all about.
At this point, it was more of a curiosity than anything else, but a warning voice in the back of my mind was whispering that something wasn’t right.
I was getting ready to shut off the laptop and head to bed myself, already pushing the strange email from my thoughts; I had been doing some work research and had lost track of time. I could feel my eyes growing heavy and almost hear the call of my pillow from the other room. Besides, I still had work in the morning and I knew I’d regret it when my alarm went off at 6.
With a resigned sigh, I switched off the desk lamp and was reaching to close the lid of my computer when my mobile phone abruptly rang. The sudden assault of the ringer in the otherwise silent and darkened house startled me more than I care to admit, and when I looked at the display, I was only mildly surprised to see Allen’s caller-ID. I quickly pressed the button to accept the call.
“Allen. Hey there – long time no talk,” I said, trying to sound far more enthusiastic than I felt. Allen had been a close friend for many years, but we’d drifted apart as family and careers took their toll on us. Well, his family and my career, I suppose is more accurate. “I was just looking at the email you-,” I started, but he cut me off, his voice strained and clearly stressed.
“Do you see it?” he asked, an urgency in his voice that was almost pleading. “Tell me you see it, Nick.”
I hesitated, starting to feel a little uncomfortable. I still had no idea what he was talking about, but his demeanor set me on edge. “I looked at the image you sent me, but I’m not sure what I’m supposed to be looking at, if I’m being honest. If you’re trying to show off your landscaping skills, you’re probably better off waiting for daylight to take a picture,” I replied, trying to lighten the tone.
He fell silent a moment, his ragged breathing the only sound coming through the phone, tinny and thin. I could tell he was trying to calm himself, trying to muster control over what almost felt like panic.
The line was quiet for so long that I felt I needed to say something to break the spell. Just as I opened my mouth, however, he spoke again. This time, his voice was calmer and low.
Man, he sounds tired, I thought.
Worn thin.
“Open the image again,” he said.
My hand was moving to the mouse before I even realized it. I didn’t reply as I opened his email and then the JPEG file. Once again, my screen was filled with the grainy, green-toned night-vision capture.
“Okay,” I said. “It’s open. Now what?”
“Look at the fence,” he urged me.
I did, my eyes falling once again on the wooden privacy fence bordering the yard. It looked the same as before – just an old, cheap fence that was probably due for replacing before too long.
“Okay,” I said, drawing the word out like I was waiting for the punch line.
“Do you see it?” he asked, that same frustrating question that I’d been struggling against since I received his email.
Why the hell was he playing these unnecessary pronoun games? Why was he being so ambiguous? If there was something he wanted me to look at, why not just come out and…
My thoughts fell away as my eyes settled on something in the picture, something I hadn’t caught before. Something I wouldn’t have seen if Allen hadn’t been so insistent.
There appeared to be a shape rising above the fence in the corner of the yard, just within the shadow of the woods. At first, I thought it was just one of the trees, but it didn’t quite look right. The more I scrutinized it, the more my mind began to seek out patterns, interpreting it as something more than an encroaching and oddly shaped tree.
If I squinted and focused hard enough, I could almost imagine it as something more.
Something alive.
I couldn’t make out any detail – if, in fact, there were any details to make out – but I had the impression of something vaguely human-shaped, tall and thin and twisted.
At this point, though, I felt pretty confident that this was nothing more than my brain trying to find order in chaos, searching out and creating familiar shapes in the image.
Pareidolia, I think it’s called. I’d read an article on it a while ago, about how our brains are wired to seek out familiar images in ambiguous visual patterns. It’s why people see the Virgin Mary in water stains on a wall, or Elvis in a piece of burned toast. Apparently, human brains don’t like visual chaos. They’re constantly trying to rationalize everything we see, even if there’s not really anything there.
“Um, yeah, I guess,” I said finally. “You mean the tree on the other side of the fence – the one in the corner near the shed, right? It’s definitely weird looking, but I don’t understand-”
Allen cut me off again. “It’s not a tree,” he hissed, sounding like he was almost trying to convince himself as much as me. I could hear some frantic clicking of a keyboard in the background and a few moments later, another email appeared in my inbox.
I clicked on the attachment without direction this time. The scene was similar, but the timestamp on this image was from shortly after midnight tonight, less than an hour ago.
My eyes immediately sought out the same location that I had seen the shape, but now I frowned in confusion.
The shape was gone.
No, not gone. Moved.
I found it a moment later, this time inside the fence line on the other side of the image. It was partially obscured by the hedges, but I could see enough.
More than enough to feed my nightmares for the rest of my life, however long that may be.
My eyes widened and my breath caught as I studied the image, trying to understand what I was looking at. Though my mind kept trying to reject it, I couldn’t help but return to the same conclusion over and over again – it was real.
It had the general shape of a man, but impossibly tall and malformed. It’s head and entire body were mostly featureless and looked almost like they were woven from dead and brittle vines and thin tree limbs – almost like something you’d expect to find at some rural craft fair during Halloween. The head was elongated and narrow, and two small glowing beads of dark light, deeply set within the tangle of sticks and vines, reflected back in the infrared sensors of the security camera.
Its mouth, or at least what looked like it might have been a mouth, hung hideously wide and slack, as if the jaw had been dislocated and stretched far beyond its limits. I couldn’t see any other features in the woven nightmare of sticks that made up its horrifying caricature of a face, but those pinpoints of reflection where the eyes should have been sent a chill down my spine. I would have sworn they were looking directly at the camera.
No, not just at the camera.
At me.
Its limbs were grotesquely long, its arms ending in a perverse imitation of fingers or claws that nearly brushed the ground. The thing towered far taller than any human ever could have, and as tall as it was, its back was hunched over, one shoulder drooping lower than the other, and the entirety of it seemed covered in a viscous, amber-tinted sludge. I could almost imagine it dripping across the ground with each shuddering footstep.
In an instant, I found myself on my feet, my desk chair banging into the wall behind me. My eyes were fixed on the image.
“What the hell is that, Allen?” I cried out, feeling my heartbeat hammering in my chest, hearing the pulsing in my ears. “This has to be some sort of set-up, right? Tell me this is a joke. Is this some new fucked-up sculpture that Chloe built?”
My friend was silent for a long moment, but I thought I could sense a cautious hopefulness sweep over him. When he spoke, his voice trembled so badly that I could barely understand his words. “You see it! Tell me you see it!”
“Of course I fucking see it,” I said harshly, an abrupt and irrational sense of terror running its cold fingers down my face, the feeling of blood draining away. “But what is it?”
He inhaled deeply and then his breaths came in little ragged puffs, almost like he was suppressing a nervous laugh.
“Thank God,” he breathed, and now I was sure I could hear an anxious anticipation in his voice. It sounded like he was on the verge of tears. I heard furious typing on his keyboard and then what sounded like quiet, relieved, sobbing. “It’s gone. Oh, thank you, God!”
“Allen? Allen!” I repeated, still standing and aware of the fact that I had moved several more steps away from my laptop – from that thing in the picture that was still occupying my screen. It’s eyes were still fixed on the camera, and though I had subconsciously moved a few steps to the right when I retreated, somehow they seemed to have shifted a bit, as if to follow my movements.
But that was impossible, of course – an optical illusion, nothing more. This was just a still-frame from Allen’s security cameras. It was a static JPEG image.
It was almost another minute before he finally collected himself enough to respond to me, and when he did, there was something shadowy and secret hidden behind his words. Something that only added to my own growing anxiety. I couldn’t place it, but I knew something was wrong.
“It’s gone, Nick. Thank you! Thank you so much! I knew I could count on you. It’s been so long, but I knew you’d still be able to help me.” he said, his words falling over each other in a tumble. His breath was hitching as he spoke, but it wasn’t fear or desperation anymore. It was relief – immense, immeasurable, relief.
I had no idea what he was talking about.
“What do you mean it’s gone? Help you with what? Allen, you need to start making sense, and I mean right fucking now,” I almost shouted. I was far past tolerating his half-sentences and word games. I wanted answers.
I needed to know what the hell this was all about.
When he spoke again, his voice was quieter.
“I’m sorry, Nick. I really am,” he said, and I didn’t miss the color tinting his voice this time.
What was it? It almost sounded like remorse.
Or guilt.
“I have a family, Nick – Chloe, Rick, and little Emily. Chloe’s pregnant again, as a matter of fact. I have to protect them, no matter what,” he continued, sounding almost manic as the words poured from my phone. “You would have done the same, I know it. Anyone would have done the same. You’re a good man, Nick. Thank you for saving my family.”
Frustrated and still not understanding exactly what he was rambling on about, I decided that I was done looking at whatever this was in the image he’d sent me. With a quick step, I moved to the laptop and closed the image. In its place, the original file still stood open, showing the first capture he’d sent me.
I moved the mouse to close that one as well, but froze as my eyes involuntarily sought out the thing that had been hiding just beyond the fence line.
It was gone.
Numbly, I retrieved my desk chair with one hand, pulling it close and sitting without taking my eyes from the screen.
Frantically scanning the image again, my eyes kept trying to find the figure in the tree line.
Nothing.
Nothing but trees and shadows.
I rubbed my eyes and looked again. It wasn’t possible; this was a static image – it couldn’t just change.
But no matter how much I argued with myself, the proof was right in front of me. I was now looking at a completely nondescript picture of Allen’s backyard through his security camera.
Nothing was out of place.
No nightmare horrors from the pit, no eldritch creatures clawing their way from the shadowed tree line to prey on the innocent and unaware.
Nothing.
Allen had been quiet for a while and when I took the phone from my ear, I saw the call had ended. I didn’t bother trying to call him back. I knew he wouldn’t answer.
I set the phone on my desk and looked over my shoulder at some small, innocuous sound.
I suddenly felt very alone in my house. The doorway beyond my office was cast black in deep shadows, and the solitude and isolation were palpable. The wind picked up outside briefly, whistling through the woods behind my property. A few moments later, I heard the growing hiss of the coming rain as it swept through the darkened woods.
I sat in silence for a long moment, eyes fixed on the curtain-covered window across the room that looked out upon my lawn and into the dense trees beyond.
It took me a while to piece things together, but I think I have it figured out now. I hurriedly typed this post and uploaded it. I’m not sure how much time I’ve got left, so I just need for you to answer one question for me.
Do you see it?
