As I type this, the blood dries upon my fingers.
The smell of iron and metal- it follows me, room to room in this horrid place, where most of my childhood memories still rest. I can almost see myself dragging bags of fresh vegetables through this hallway and into the kitchen, the sun beaming through the window, illuminating her smiling face. As I turn I see my father, slumped forward in his chair, his head wrapped behind the umbra of his newspaper; there was a long gash splitting his skull, extending between his eyes, and through part of his nose.
I laugh. Do you find yourself laughing, too? I reason that it is the body’s natural response to stress; that is why we, as humans, so frequently laugh when found in awkward or tense situations. As I stared at it, the still-warm corpse of my father, another laugh escaped my lips.
I killed my mother, and my sisters; but I can still hear her. Upstairs, walking around, sometimes scratching at the door like an animal left outside of its front porch. With each movement, she was asking, “why?”.
“I can’t answer that.” I said, aloud. God- I couldn’t help myself.
She wouldn’t respond, no, but she’d scratch, so I went to check on my sisters instead. All three of them, prancing around in the inside of their room, singing, even talking. They were discussing their day, their friends, but would stop when I knocked. I even tried saying their names, asking if they could hear me, but they drop anything they are doing the moment they hear my voice. I cannot lie- that sudden silence hurt more than any physical ordeal I have gone through since.
My father, bless him, is the only one that would speak to me. Every hour or so, the gore that held his brain inside his skull slowly crawls back into place, and he sits upright. It takes a few seconds, but he’s awake, and lucid. As I type these words, he reassembles himself, tiny bits of flesh suddenly moving like they were being pulled by an invisible thread.
I was a reporter, once. Haven’t been for four years now; but I still had all the equipment. There was a camera resting on the table in front of me, untouched, and it shall stay that way. Nobody should bear witness to the things laid before me.
“Hey kid.” My father says, now fully pieced together. “I made those pancakes the special way, with the blueberries you picked from the-
He struggles on that last word, that last syllable, and his head splits downwards as if pushed by an invisible hand. My hand, hours ago, clutching the ax I would use to collect wood for our fires.
“I’m sorry.” I said, but in the end I am not. These things, familiar seeming as they may act, are not my family. I struggle to think a thing like this could have ever existed on Earth, in any capacity. It is simply too primal, too cruel- a thing that acts with instinct so severed from our own that I am beginning to lose my mind for thinking about it.
I will start at the beginning as best I can, though I find my memory is shaking almost as bad as my hands. The mind is such a fucking fragile thing.
My family, whose name I cannot bring myself to type here, owns a lake house in the depths of rural Maine. It was a beautiful place, and we found ourselves staying there often. We felt a connection to those woods- a kind of calm that could only come with the blessings of nature.
It was only natural, I suppose, that tragedy would befall us. With great goodness comes a greater evil, and that is how I have described it to myself as time trudged onward, as it does. In hindsight, it was a simple case of people getting older, and life taking its toll.
I was twelve when my father got brain cancer, and passed away in his sleep under a waning Maine moon. The blue light of the sky seemed to get dimmer as he shut his eyes for the last time, as the frigid air whispered through the trees.
We kept going to that lakehouse, until I was nineteen, I believe, but the calm had shattered. We could hear him in every creak of the wood, every cold gust of air through the pines- the silence wasn’t ours anymore; but my mother wouldn’t sell it. She insisted it be kept, and quickly became the destitute thing I sit inside of now. My mother’s passing was the last straw- all of us eventually went our separate ways, my three sisters all starting careers somewhere in the midwest, and I to pursue a career in journalism. Last I checked, they all still kept in touch.
Meanwhile, I’ve lost everything to bad investments, and I can’t even keep enough fucking money for rent. This place, with its rotted wood and molded foundation, is now my home, and potentially my tomb. Like father, like son, I suppose. I’ve been living here for five months, dodging collectors and debtors intent on stripping me of everything. I cannot lie, in the beginning, it was peaceful. The routine of it. I was starting to piece myself together again, even formulating plans to begin a new writing gig to start paying off my obligations.
Then, about 2 months ago, I started hearing them. Crawling around in the walls. They were small, the size of my fist- resembling that of an imp, from legend. The way they looked at me, their big eyes full of life and expectation. How could I not raise them? Feed them? As they grew, they began asking questions- not with words, but with their touch. It felt as though they were slowly siphoning my experiences from me, reliving them; then slowly, became them. In front of me was my father, years before he passed, my mother, as beautiful as I remember, and my sisters- bundles of pure joy and love of life that I’d long forgotten.
They meandered around, talking, playing with each other, but never really interacted with the environment, save to knock things over accidentally. Overwhelmed with emotion, I cried for hours. My newly-born family simply regarded me with confusion, and at that moment I made the biggest mistake of my life: I decided to teach them what it was like to be a real family.
I started by showing them hours upon hours of family video tapes- footage from the long days we spent here. They stared at the screen, sometimes even forgetting to eat, or drink, for days, until every tape was watched multiple times.
The switch was almost instant. Life flooded through them, and almost immediately my mother went to start cleaning the kitchen, while my sisters ran upstairs to play in their room. My father went outside to the nonexistent garden to collect blueberries that weren’t there. It was like they were dolls, playing out a story even though the pieces themselves were out of place.
What really began the madness was when they talked, like answering machines, or a pre-recorded line on a phone. Things that were said in the videos were parroted for hours on end, driving me mad; this was no family, but a collection of otherworldly puppets, seemingly designed to infuriate me. They went on, barely interacting with me now that they were what I assumed to be full grown, until just a few hours ago.
It started with my mother. I noticed that over the last few weeks her teeth seemed to have gotten sharper, and her eyes narrow when she passed by me, like a cat about to pounce. I started to become nervous around them, but I noticed something through my madness; that no matter how much they tried, they could not go more than a few meters from the house. It was as though they were almost tethered, and on numerous occasions I saw my sisters running outside only to get pulled by what seemed like some sort of invisible thread, causing them to fall and crawl back inside of the house.
I thought of calling the police, but my gut tells me it would be futile. If I did, they’d be more likely to look up my criminal record- which has not been good. I have more than a few outstanding tickets in more than a few cities, so I reasoned it would be better to figure this out myself. Now, I am not sure I made the right choice.
Just a few hours ago something changed within them- my mother, with that terrifying look in her eyes, snapped. She was on all fours like a rabid beast, red foam pooling in the corners of her mouth. She lunged at me, recoiling into her room after I struck her hard across the face. Now that I think about it, this was most likely the first time they had ever felt pain. After this interaction, the whole family tensed. My sisters won’t leave the room or respond, my mother will not stop scratching at the door, and my father sat in his chair, unmoving, his face hidden behind an old newspaper from over twenty years ago.
I used that as a chance- underhanded as it seemed, to thin the herd before the rest of them became fully feral like my mother. I got the ax from our backyard and struck my father in the head with it, breaking him open like an egg.
However, now the creature regenerates every hour or so, the pieces coming together and splitting apart as if mimicking the action of him dying. I have no idea what to say or do, now. I can feel my brain crashing against my skull, and I haven’t slept for what feels like years. I am surprised I managed to record all of this down, though I don’t think I have much time left. I am going to attempt to kill them all, permanently, even if it ends up killing me as well. I have made so many mistakes- I hope this small act will purpose, in some way, to my otherwise purposeless life.
If I have figured out a way, or made any progress, I will continue to post. Cell phone service is spotty at best, but it will work, eventually. I pray this does not get any worse.