If there’s one thing I would ever go to jail for, it’s trespassing. As a kid who lived in an upper middle-class neighborhood, who had gotten bored of every hobby my parents funded, I had too much time on my hands. Especially during the summer, I would always be trying to find new stupid shit to do.
At seventeen years old, my newest hyperfixation became going into the unoccupied houses that did not yet have tenants. However, once you’ve seen one empty house, you’ve seen them all.
I started going to abandoned shops, lots of land that were still for sale, storage facilities, etc. These were all places within walking distance of home. I didn’t have a lot of options since I was still procrastinating on getting my license at the time.
My strategy of walking around aimlessly until I found a cool place to explore, was starting to yield less and less results. I was on the roof of my parents house one day while they weren’t home. As expected, there was nothing particularly interesting up there. I ended up lying down, staring at the clouds. I was bored out of my mind, and trying to fight the urge to start breaking into occupied homes just for the thrill of it.
Don’t get me wrong, I always knew my behavior would get worse with age, and that life wouldn’t end well for me when I took it too far. That didn’t change the fact that I still wanted to slow down the process of my downfall for as long as possible.
I looked to the left and saw the local water tower peeking over the horizon. You could barely see the top since most of it was obscured by the woodline. An alternative.
At the front of every suburban neighborhood is a playground, sometimes with a tennis court and a basketball court beside it. Surrounding this area was a line of trees, separating normal civilization from an area of the woods that the neighborhood had not yet expanded into.
This water tower was just a half mile into those woods, the only connection to civilization being a dirt road that led right up to it. If anyone was gonna come by for maintenance, it’d be through that one road cutting through the trees. I would see them a mile away, and nobody in their right mind would unexpectedly cut through the woodline behind the playground to catch me trespassing. The risk was low, and I needed something to keep me entertained.
Nobody was at the playground at the time, so I was clear to enter the woods. The water tower was a lot smaller looking up close than I thought it would be, and it was surrounded by a fence topped with barbwire. I was a little disappointed, but hey, beggars can’t be choosers.
I hopped the fence, cutting the shit out of my hands and ankles in the process, and took a look around. There was a sort of ladder sticking out the side. Surprisingly, it was easily accessible and I had no trouble getting to it. I took one last look around before I began climbing.
How easy would it be for someone far away to spot me while I climbed the tower? You know what, who cares. It’s not like anyone would know who I was from that far anyways, and if the cops were called, they would have to come down the dirt road, giving me at least a minute to climb down and make my escape.
Getting up to the balcony was kinda neat I guess. I didn’t expect to see anything interesting, but man was I dangerously close to doing worse crimes already. The slippery slope was extra slippery that day, so I decided it could hurt to climb further, up on top of the actual tank.
The roundness of it gave me a good adrenaline rush as I struggled not to slip downward. Using my palms like a lizard, and pushing the toe of my shoes into the wall to lift myself up, I got onto the top in no time.
The second I stood up, I saw a person on the dirt road staring right up at me. I sighed, throwing my hands up in the air. I was already exhausted from the climb.
“Welp, you caught me!”
The man didn’t respond. I stared back at him, just kinda waiting to see what would happen next. Apparently nothing.
I noticed he was unusually tall. At least seven feet. Tall enough that I could see his face. I assumed it was my imagination, but something about his eyes looked alien. For starters, they were pretty huge. The longer I looked at it, the more I felt the tug of a vaguely familiar feeling, long since forgotten and tucked away in the far corners of my mind. Fear.
It had been a while, and I missed the sensation. I decided to try amplifying it a little by pulling out my phone, and zooming in on the man with my camera. Just like I thought, his eyes were super fucked up. No corneas, no iris, no pupils, just static. The kind of static you would see on a TV.
It’s strange how quickly your heart will start beating fast and hard, the exact moment you see some weird shit. How does your body know to do that?
I needed more. I excitedly climbed down to get a closer look at the guy. When my feet hit the grass, I couldn’t see him anymore. He wasn’t anywhere on the dirt road, and somehow I didn’t hear a sound in the woods surrounding me. Even the squirrels running around would make enough noise to make me spin around, thinking there was a human nearby. But this weird man with the static eyes disappeared without a trace.
Was he some sorta supernatural entity, or was this an elaborate prank? I would have fun with it either way, so I tried to find him. To make a long story shorter, I didn’t.
I didn’t see him until the next time I climbed the water tower and saw him again. Just like last time, he was gone when I climbed down. Luckily, this time, I had brought a new drone I saw on Amazon. I was gonna sit on the tower, flying it around while I watched the camera footage on my phone, but now I was using it to try to find out where the man ran off to.
I sat down on the dirt road, watching the camera footage as I flew the drone above the trees to scout the area. Part of me didn’t expect to see him at all, which made it surprising when I saw him standing on the road the second I went higher than the water tower. He stared straight up at the camera, and right next to him was yours truly, obliviously staring down at his phone.
I jumped to my feet, tunnel visioned and ready to fight for my life. I was staring right at where I saw him in the footage, but he wasn’t there. I spund around, assuming I was already too late to avoid being stabbed from behind, or knocked out with a led pipe, or something.
He wasn’t around. One hundred percent gone without a trace. I froze, listening as silently as possible. I remember being annoyed at how much noise my heartbeat was making, but I tried to pay attention to every tiny sound, every slight change in the wind, every shadow…
Abruptly, there was a loud crack, accompanied by absurdly fast movement in my peripheral vision. I flinched with my entire body, stumbling backwards with the all grace of an orangutan with parkinsons. In that moment, I was completely unprepared to defend myself, and my mind was bank. After falling on my ass, limp with fear and ready to shit a hole in my pants, I realized it was just the drone. It fell from the sky after I was spooked enough to forget steering it.
I got to my feet, brushed myself off, and made a deep sigh that turned into hysterical laughter. That was awesome! The most fun I think I had in a decade at least.
Now there was no doubt in my mind. This was definitely a supernatural entity, and I could not wait to start fucking with it. As far as I was concerned, this was my new toy.
I had a new theory that he could only be seen by people who were high enough above the ground, so I decided to test this out. My drone was broken, so I had to climb the water tower again.
While on the tank, I climbed from the side closest to the road so I could have a better view of it. Without taking my eyes off the road, I eventually saw him the second I stood atop the tower. It seemed like a bit of an arbitrary measurement for making him appear. Maybe he was a ghost that died by falling off this very water tower?
I tried slowly kneeling down. I stopped seeing him when my head went down about three feet. That specific spot in the air seemed to he the threshold. I was 6’2, meaning that if I was 5’11, I would have never known about his existence in the first place.
Maybe it wasn’t the tower itself. Maybe it was how thin the atomosphere got, or maybe a specific elevation above sea level, or maybe a personal limit set by the man himself in order to hide his face. Whatever the case, it was pretty cool.
I called my friend Cameron. Well, I wouldn’t say friend. More like a timid loner who for some reason had this strange need to be liked by me. He would follow my every command religiously.
Basically I called him, we made some chit-chat, and I convinced him to come to the water tower. He protested at first, making complaints about spiders and not liking the woods and… etcetera. I told him to stop being a bitch and he came over.
Instead of cutting through the woodline, I watched him come alllll the way down the dirt road like the goody-two-shues he was. Sigh.
When he got to the water tower, he didn’t seem to notice the seven foot tall man beside him, but he did see me.
“Ian! What are you doing?!”
“Yo, Cameron. Mind doing me a favor?”
“Yeah, don’t worry! Just stay calm….”
He said, pulling out his flip phone (the poor fella had strict parents) and beginning to dial 9-11.
“Wha-? No, I’m not stuck, idiot! Just listen for a sec.”
Confused, he put him phone away.
“Do you see anybody next to you?”
I asked. He looked around.
“No… Why?”
“Alright, Cameron. What I want you to do is extend your left arm.”
“Like this?”
He was close to touching the entity.
“Good, now take two steps to the left while keeping your arm up.”
He did as he was told. He wasn’t quite touching him yet, although his hand was less than an inch from their shoulder.
“Just a liiitle more.”
“Oka-“
The second he made contact, Cameron vanished entirely. In that same instant, I heard his voice coming from all directions. Horrendous screams of agony. He sounded like he was being electrocuted in the nutsack while thousands of termites munched on his pancreas.
I nearly stumbled off the tower. The sound was hitting me directly from all sides, despite there being no trace of its source.
Was Cameron now just a disembodied mind experiencing no sensation other than suffering? I climbed down from the tower in a hurry to get away from those shrill, deafening screams.
“IT HURTS”
He screamed in a breif moment of semi-coherence. He seemed to have difficulty stopping himself from screaming long enough to form sentences. After several attempts, he was able to cry out the word “help” before continuing the screams.
When I hoped the fence and looked back up at the tower, I could see a strange bundle of vibrating neon light, continually expanding into nothing. The source of the sound.
I figured people would come rushing over, and I could just pretend to be one of them, but nobody came. I cut back through the woods again to see children playing on the playground, neighbors at the tennis court, and couples on the bench making smalltalk. Nobody could hear the screaming except for me.
After walking home, the echoes of his screaming still traveled across the sky, all the way to my parents house. I could hear it when it was in my room. Annoyed, I put my headphones in and took a nap.
I woke up around 3am, wondering who the hell was making such a ruckus, and then I remembered. I went out onto my balcony, and could hear the screams echoing over the otherwise silent neighborhood. To anyone else, this would be a peaceful night.
I could hear Cameron occasionally force out a word or two. Ow, help, please make it stop, someone please, etc. I climbed onto the roof to get a better look at the water tower. I could see the neon lights above it more clearly in the dark. It actually kinda looked like a portal. Portal to hell maybe?
Needless to say, I got fed up pretty quickly. After three days it was clear the noise wasn’t going to stop. I didn’t want my own personal symphony of repetitive screams and complaints. The nature of the screams suggested that Cameron hadn’t even slightly got used to the pain, as if whatever was hurting him found a way for the pain to be fresh and novel, no matter how much time had passed.
At some point, I noticed that his number had been deleted off my phone. When I saw his parents, I said hi to them. They made no mention of him either. I tried asking them “how’s your kid doing?” and they laughed and said I was mistaken, that they never had any kids. It was kinda hard to hear them over Cameron’s screams, ironically enough.
So it seemed like I was the only one who was gonna go deaf by 30 because of this, and also the only one who remembered Cameron. For now at least. I was sure I would eventually move somewhere else and forget about this whole saga while I looked for something different to be entertained by.
But I wasn’t that patient. Another eight days passed, and I was ready to pour boiling acid down my ear canals. I did what any sane person would do. I discretely borrowed my dad’s rifle at one in the morning, and brought it to the water tower. I put it in a guitar case just so when I was seen on the security cameras, it just looked like I was out for a late-night gig or something.
At the water tower, I put in my noise canceling headphones and climbed to the top. The portal was about ten feet above me when I stood atop the tower, and there seemed to be something moving inside it. But I wasn’t here to investigate. I was here to shoot that fucker causing him to scream endlessly.
With the flashlight attached to the scope, I was able to get a pretty clear view of the static eye man. It occurred to me suddenly that just because nobody could hear the screams, doesn’t mean that nobody would be able to hear the gunshot. I needed to get this right on my first shot, immediately climb down, and get the hell out of there before someone came to investigate the noise.
I looked up a quick YouTube tutorial on how to hit a target with the type of rifle I was using. There were a few fundamentals involving breathing, aiming, and uh… a couple others. I don’t remember now, but I had it nailed down at that moment.
I got into the least awkward kneeling position I possibly could, where I could still see the man.
“This is your only warning. Either stop this annoying disturbance, or find a way to turn the volume down!”
“I CAN’T”
Yelled Cameron, thinking I was talking to him. Apparently he could hear me when I was close to the portal. He went back to shrieking at the top of his lungs.
I aimed, keeping my breathing as controlled as I could, doing my best to filter out the noise. With my finger on the trigger, I pulled slowly… ever so slowly… there was more resistance than I thought. I found myself gripping the trigger pretty hard, knowing at any second there would be recoil and a s- God dammit. I still had the safety on.
This time I didn’t think about it too much, as I was getting impatient. The second the round fired, hitting the man directly in the forehead, he moved. He was now standing right in front of me, and began lumbering towards my direction while staring blankly into the distance.
I jumped the fuck off the entire water tower, making sure to land on the outside of the fence. The gun fell onto the towers balcony with a clang. In mid air, time seemed to slow down a little for me. I had just enough time to realize I would rather break one leg instead of two so I could run away.
I stuck one leg out to receive the worst of the impact, and did just that. I scrambled into an animalistic, three-legged run. I bolted through the woods, breaking through stray branches, struggling not to trip over roots, brushing against thorn bushes, and exhaling so much dust. The sound of Cameron’s screams got closer and closer no matter how fast I went.
When I ended up in a clearing, I saw the neon portal in front of me. The sound wasn’t chasing me, I’d been running toward it.
I looked up behind me. No sign of the man. There was no portal above the water tower anymore, which confirmed that this was the same one. It moved.
I walked over to the other side to see if I could get a good look at what was moving around in it before. If you guessed it was Cameron, squirming around in pain, you would be correct.
He was hovering inside it, unable to move himself in any direction. It didn’t stop him from desperately flailing his arms and legs around. He stopped when he saw me, and reached a trembling arm. His arm was actually long enough to hang out of the portal.
He begged, screaming at me to pull him out. I was wearing gloves, so I didn’t think anything would happen to me if I grabbed his hand. I could feel the pain in my leg start to creep in, so I wanted to get this over with. When I pulled on his wrist, there seemed to be an invisible force pulling against me, but it wasn’t hard to overpower.
The screaming Cameron actually began to come out. By the time he was hanging halfway out of the portal, he was able to hold back the screams. Now he only made stifled grunts through gnashed teeth.
When regular gravity started to apply to him somewhat, I suddenly had an idea. Wouldn’t it be funny if I just let go and walked away? I considered pretending like I was about to do that, only to say just kidding and finish pulling him out.
….but that’s when I noticed. Cameron’s screams weren’t as loud as they were before, and his voice even now was strangely quiet. It was like someone used the remote from the iconic Adam Sandler movie “Click” to literally turn him down.
I let go, and the portal wasted no time pulling him back in. Cameron once again shrieked in agony, begging, cursing, demanding me to help him. I just smiled. This is exactly what I needed.
Knowing that he was there, suffering indefinitely, would give me the high I needed to get me through the day. It added flavor to my life. I could visit him now and then when it started to get stale, give him some false hope, and then let the portal take him again to re-ignite my excitement.
The regular sting of my everyday boredom wouldn’t be as bad as it usually would. I could just think about him screaming in the pain portal, and get off on it once again.
“Sorry Cameron, but it’s getting kinda late and I need to get some rest. You know how it is. I’ll come help you out tomorrow if I have time. Later!”
I ignored the rage-filled screams and insults as I turned around. I bumped right into the man, the myth, the legend himself, Mr static eyes, and I stumbled back. There was a bleeding wound on his forehead, right where I shot him.
He took a step closer to me, and I was too stunned to move. I definitely touched him just now, and he definitely remembers me shooting him in the head. Is he about to punish me the same way he’s punishing Cameron?
He opened his mouth, about to speak for the first and only time, and his words would change the trajectory of my remaining existence.
He said to me:
“Is this more to your liking?”
Hesitantly, I nodded. He nodded back, and then vanished. I didn’t understand how he came to be, or why any of this was specifically the way it was, but they say not to look a gifthorse in the mouth. From that day forward, I had nothing but gratitude for the supernatural entity I came across that summer.