This is my last year at a state university with a large campus town that is a part of the actual city. Growing up in the suburbs, I had to adjust to living in a more urban environment. Despite this I was excited, high off of the idea of being in college and so far from home.
Over the course of my first semester my roommates and I became familiar with the area, strolling down the main street, eating out, and hitting the bars way more than we should’ve. Everything we needed was in walking distance including convenience stores, fast-food restaurants, bars, a gym, friends’ dorms, and our classes.
The university also has an excellent bus transit service but I never got used to public transportation and preferred to walk. The longest you would ever need to travel by foot is about 25 minutes but it’s rare and you get used to it.
However, what caught me the most by surprise was the amount of homeless in the area.
Walking along the main street of campus or even on your way to class, depending on where you live, it is not uncommon to pass a few beggars. They’ll usually be posted near an entrance to a store or by an alleyway, every so often rattling their change-filled cups and offering a meek ‘god bless.’
Luckily, my parents raised me well and I had no problem with them, always trying to donate a loose buck or two if I could spare it and even stopping to chat if I had the time.
There are a few regulars that I eventually recognized every time I went out. Pat; a frail old lady always perched on the knee-high railing outside of the Walgreens. I gave her my french-fries once coming back from McDonalds and she smiled at me with features too small for her face. Jeffrey is the short tempered bum who always finds himself outside the bars when the sun sets, giving and receiving heckles from the frat kids in line. The police usually pick him up by the nights end.
I felt an extreme sense of empathy towards the homeless. I understand that all it takes is one bad choice and any one of us could be on the streets, begging for a loose dime. On that same note, it took some time to comprehend that most of the money you give will be spent on drugs and booze. It’s a difficult situation to be in, with the stigma and all, but I did my best to put myself in their shoes.
It is most likely because of this empathy that my life became a diabolical nightmare during the winter of my freshman year.
It didn’t take long for me to develop mild insomnia and a completely reversed sleep schedule. For a period of a few months, I would sleep through my classes waking around 4 P.M. I’d recover and eat something before walking to my sister’s apartment, who is two years older than me, to spend the night smoking weed and watching movies. When I was too baked to think straight and after my sister fell into a kush coma, I would walk back to my dorm at about 4 A.M.
The walk was only 10 minutes and along main roads for a good deal of it, although the cold during winter made it a brutal process.
When January rolled around I had returned to campus from winter break and was taking things easy because it was the start of a new semester. After a couple weeks though I was back to my routine, waking late, sleeping early, and smoking in between.
That night my sister was snoring so loudly, that it was beginning to annoy me. I remember I looked at the time on my phone and saw the numbers 3:09 AM illuminate my face. My sister seemed content to snore as loud as physically possible so I packed my laptop into my backpack, threw on my timbs and left.
The cold hit me as soon as I opened the door to the apartment building. It passed through my clothes like they weren’t even there, the wind invading every inch of my skin as I began to walk. The night was unnaturally dark, complementing the freezing temperature well, and wrapping me in a pitch black bear hug.
A creeping unease settled as I got further from my sister’s apartment. When I first started going out in the early hours of morning, I did have some phobias of getting mugged or murdered but those fears lessened after doing it so often. There really isn’t anyone out that late, and if by chance you do see somebody, you mind your own business and keep your head down.
I eventually turned onto one of the main streets, and I felt my shoulders loosen slightly. The night felt lifeless, and I took solace in the red hue that the traffic lights cast every two seconds or so from the intersection behind me.
I enjoy my fair share of horror movies and stories, reading Barker, Lovecraft, and the great King, and their imagined terrors seemed to follow on my heels that night.
The rhythmic scraping of my boots as they sliced at the frigid sidewalk was my only form of companionship. The streets, stores, apartments, even the air; all empty.
My body warmed at the sight of the halfway point ahead. A lone streetlamp, blinking quite fast, unfixed for the better part of a year. The familiar sight made me want to increase my pace. Instead I decelerated my gait to a slow creep, and soon stopped moving altogether.
Someone was sitting beneath the streetlamp. It was very difficult to make out any features from where I was standing, about 25 yards away, due to the strobe-like effect the light was inducing.
Flash: A hunched figure
Click: It melts back into the darkness
Over and over at a quick pace.
I hesitated for a good 20 seconds, too uncomfortable to stand still but too nervous to move. I was afraid, but scolding myself internally, I forced a step forward. I had promised myself I wouldn’t be a coward anymore when I got to college. High school was difficult for me and I was exhausted of being scared of others.
In that moment I had forgotten that fear is a primal emotion. Fear has served the human race, a loyal ally, warning of things we can’t understand and of forces we are no match for.
Another step, and I had found my pace, matching the strobe flash of the street lamp.
Flash, Click; Step; Flash, Click; Step; Flash, Click; Step.
After a few strides I could tell it was a woman, and based off her disheveled appearance and visible age, I safely concluded she was homeless.
I began to sympathize. The closer I got the more features I picked up on, catching glimpses every time the streetlamp flashed.
Flash; black, wild hair; Click; Step; Flash; no shoes on her feet; Click; Step; Flash; her eyes-
I stopped again. What the hell was wrong with her eyes.
The street lamp flickered and the woman, in the split second between light flashes, now had her head twisted in my direction. I didn’t register any movement. One moment she had her head held up in the direction of the street, and now she was staring directly at me.
Except she wasn’t staring. I had mistaken two realistically drawn eyeballs for her real eyes. They looked so real, I nearly missed the thick black threads that crisscrossed between her eye lids, sewing them shut.
The light had stopped flashing, and was now been shining brightly on the freak below. Her mouth opened into a wide ‘O’ and she began to stir.
Then the light flashed off and remained that way. I couldn’t see her anymore. My heart pounded in my chest, painfully, making it hard to breathe.
I’m not sure how long I stayed, frozen in terror, before I realized the last thing the woman did before the lights cut out was begin to stand.
I’ve never run faster in my life. I practically leapt across the street, boots pounding against cement as I flew. It was hard to see and my feet felt heavy.
A block later I heard the singing. It wasn’t any Disney princess shit. If you’ve ever heard clips of ‘throat singing’ that’s about as close as I can describe it, but lacking any of its humanity. The wicked noise followed me to my dorm.
When I shut the door to my room, there was silence. Still extremely high and on the verge of mania, I stripped my sweat soaked clothes off, and ran the shower as hot as my body could handle. I curled onto the floor and let the water wash over me.
I woke up the next morning to banging on the door and someone asking me how much longer I was going to take. The shower was still running and my skin had mild burns from the hot water which had now turned cold.
Working with four hours of sleep, I spent the whole day in bed, and the next day too. At the time I was convinced I had schizophrenia. I was smoking way too much weed and I remember reading that it increases your risk for developing schizophrenia. During the those 48 hours I kept doubting my own mind, even asking my roommates, ‘You hear that?”, every time a noise came from outside our room. I’m pretty sure I freaked them out.
The weekend luckily arrived and my mind had managed to somewhat bury the memories from that night. I made sure to drink myself stupid, and my friends carried me home Friday and Saturday night.
One thing to note is that apparently, while I was being dragged home while blacked out from the bar one night, we had seen a homeless lady on the side of the street. When we passed by she shook her cup of change and I reacted so violently, screaming and trying to wrestle out of the grip of my buddies, that passerby’s around us were going to call the cops. The poor little lady was trembling, trying to pick up the spilt change around her as I was hauled away. I don’t remember this happening.
I started to stay the night at my sister’s place. Convincing myself it didn’t happen took some time, but the anxiety that came when 3 AM rolled around was very real. I’d stay huddled on my sister’s bed while she slept, not even leaving to go to the bathroom until the hour passed.
Spending the night there actually helped my sleep schedule. My sister was fine with me sleeping over, but she had shit to do so staying in bed until mid-afternoon wasn’t an option. I started going to classes again and hanging out with my friends more and spent less time at my sister’s.
A week into this and I had gone out to lunch with some of my friends. After our meal, they wanted to stop by the Walgreens for some snacks and candy. I stayed outside to wait for them, and noticed Pat sitting on the railing that circled a patch of bushes.
Without much thought I grabbed my wallet and fished out a dollar. She was watching cars pass by and humming to herself. When I got close, Pat stiffened like a bolt of lightning shot through her. She jumped to her feet, spun around and locked her beady eyes with mine.
Pat’s tiny face was stained with terror.
It was frightening to see and stopped me in my tracks. My arm was outstretched offering a dollar, but Pat treated it like it was radioactive material.
“Hey, Pat,” I managed. I thought I had surprised her, so I paused expecting her to recognize me since I’ve talked to her before. “Er, I got you a dollar.”
Pat took a step back.
“why?” She croaked.
The question confused me. “Well- “
“why me?”
Even in broad daylight, I couldn’t see her step off the curb. I never saw the car, accelerating off a left hand turn, the driver focused on trying to beat the oncoming traffic.
One of my friends who was walking out of the store when it happened said she was so light the car knocked her a good 15 feet into the air. “I can’t believe how high she flew, man,” he kept repeating afterward. “She really went flying, man, she was so small.”
Pat’s head had hit the curb with enough force to split it open, smearing its contents across the street. In the pictures you can see bits of hair and brain matter at the end of the block, carried by the river of blood that flowed along the side of the street.
Even though I was the closest to it, I only saw the gruesome scene from the photos and video that spread through the student population like wildfire.
When Pat had spoken her last words, the throat singing begun to sound again. It filled my ears, and Pat heard it too. She wasn’t looking at me when we spoke. She was looking behind me.
I blacked out to the sound of the ungodly music and brakes screeching.
I woke up in an ambulance, which is every college kid’s worst nightmare and begged the paramedics to let me out when I figured out where I was. They didn’t listen and took me to the hospital. My parents paid for the bill and the therapy after finding out what happened. They were calling me nonstop in the months following, constantly checking up, asking if my therapist was listening to me. I gave them a rehearsed answer every time.
Some time passed before I could bring myself to watch the video of the aftermath that my roommate had received in a fraternity group chat. A student had begun to record right after the vehicle struck Pat.
The video starts with the camera pointed down at the recorder’s feet. Screaming and shouting can be heard as the camera shifts from faded checkered Vans up towards the street.
The director is some distance down the block and the entire scene is on display. A skinny 20-something-year-old slams the door to his undamaged vehicle and staggers towards the motionless, disfigured form on the ground. Some jackass, most-likely an arrogant pre-med prick, kneels over Pat’s body feeling uselessly for an extinct pulse. Within the first ten seconds of the video, the amount of liquid that had leaked from Pat onto the street was shocking.
Glimpses of my slumped figure can be seen on the sidewalk as people scatter, both further and closer to the accident. Nobody is really around me except for my friends who don’t seem to notice me. I can’t blame them.
There was one oddity I found in the video. If you looked to the right edge of the screen, where the opposite sidewalk is, there is a homeless man sitting along the wall of a store. Out of everyone on screen he seems the most unfazed. Throughout the entire video he is motionless and has his hands clasped together in what looks like some form of prayer. If you look further along the road you can see another homeless lady doing the exact same thing. Both had their eyes fixed directly on Pat laying in the road and seem to mutter something under their breath, their lips moving ever so slightly.
The university gave extra time on assignments to all students for the next two weeks. I was given some special accommodations by the university and it was much appreciated.
I couldn’t focus on school, chores, or taking care of myself. I would lose track of conversations and movies or shows that I watched. It took some time to notice that my roommates and friends had started to avoid me. Less invitations to go out, ending conversations with me as soon as possible, avoiding me whenever I was in the room by always coincidentally having homework they needed to finish in the study room.
I started going to my sister’s apartment all the time again. I would spend days back to back there; waking, smoking, eating, shitting, smoking, and sleeping. That was it.
The rest of the semester passed in a blur. About two weeks before the last of finals wrapped up, the incident that forced me to take a gap year and finish my college career living off campus occurred.
My sister’s boyfriend came up for the weekend. Obviously, I couldn’t stay with them so I was forced to go back to my dorm. At this point my roommates and I weren’t even on speaking terms. They sort of nodded a greeting at me whenever we saw each other before burying their heads back into their phones or laptops.
I had convinced my sister to let me take a few nugs of bud back to my dorm. My roommates were asleep and I was scrolling through my phone when I decided it was a good time for a smoke. We were on the third floor and there was going to be a fight in the morning if I hotboxed the room, so I went to my window and started cranking the lever to open it wide.
I went about finding my bowl and grinding the weed up on my desk. I heard some scraping outside but I assumed it was a tree, brushing up against the building from the wind. When my bowl was packed I checked my phone. 3:13 AM. I went back to the window and leaned outside, the glass against my lips and a lighter raised in the other hand.
What waited outside plunged me into a state of shock.
Assembled en masse below my window was a crowd of people. They were all disheveled; clothes in various stages of tatters and rips, dirty hair clumped together and sticking out at bizarre angles, unkempt facial hair and sores adorning most of their faces. Huddled together they stood, hands interlocked, faces downcast and a low droning chant rose from them.
Now sweating profusely, the bowl slipped from my grasp. Time slowed as it fell and, after what felt like an hour, I watched it explode with a sharp pop on the ground below, directly before the throng of vagrants. The droning ceased as suddenly as flicking a switch. My bladder loosened and I felt a vague wetness spreading down my leg and soaking into my pants.
As one entity, the faces of 30 rose to meet mine. All of their eyes were closed. All of them with realistic eyes drawn on their eyelids.
To my horror, now seeing all their faces, I could recognize some. They were all homeless. Jeffrey from the bars, Lewis from the alley by McDonalds, Lavell from the corner of Main Street.
Pat was there too. A dreamy smile plastered across one half of her still mangled face. The left side of her head drooped down so low it rested on her shoulder. Somehow I knew that her painted eyes had found me as everyone else’s had.
I don’t remember when I started to hear the throat singing. I was lost in the gaze of dozens. The rumbling began, a vile vibration I felt throughout my whole body.
It was coming from below. When I looked straight down, I’m sure I lost a vital piece of my sanity.
Eyes sewn shut stared up at me. The freak that was under the streetlamp that night was now scaling the dorm wall. The things mouth was open, the throat singing now at an animal-like climax. It raised its right arm, and it’s nails scraped across the brick as its hand reached out and pulled itself closer to me and my window.
The horde began to sway, dancing perversely, spinning and bending at crooked angles.
Scrrape
The thing was close enough to see that its eyes were straining against the twine sewn deeply in its skin folds. It was trying to open its eyes. It was trying to look at me. I wish I had left before its left eye ripped free of the strings holding it closed.
I stared into the hole in its head, empty enough to hold an ocean, vast enough to house the cosmos. There was nothing, and yet everything within that vacant socket. When I saw movement shudder from inside, I felt my mind slip into madness. I was and still am terrified of what would’ve happened if it opened its other eye.
My roommates woke to delirious and incoherent gibberish and me pointing towards the window, before I sprinted out of the room and locked myself in the public bathroom. They called my parents when they looked and discovered nothing.
After this I did a brief stint in a mental hospital, 7 days in total. Everyone I tell my story to gives me the same look I used to give to others who weren’t mentally there: A mask of pity hiding the thoughts of, “Wow, this guy’s off his fucking rocker“. They let me out a couple days after I learned that no one would believe me and the process would become a lot smoother if I just shut up. I was sent back to my parent’s house and spent the next year under the careful watch of my mom and dad.
A few months later I tried to tell my dad the truth but he started to give me that look. I noticed when he tried to discreetly slip to the bathroom in the middle of my story. He pulled his phone out of his pocket while he shut the door. When he walked back out I was laughing, telling him I couldn’t believe he fell for it. The relief on his face was obvious and he laughed with me, sat back onto the couch and gave me a hug.
“I’m so glad you’re better.”
It took a year to fully convince everyone I had a mental break from stress and anxiety and that I could function again in society. My parents had exhausted a lot of money on me and I couldn’t apply to another college. The state university sympathized with my situation and offered for me to come back as long as I followed certain guidelines. Living off campus wasn’t one of them but I insisted.
It’s my final year now and I’m looking forward to a relaxing and uneventful future. I know this isn’t a possibility but my therapist says my future is in my hands and nothing is certain. What is certain is that I dream every night.
Sometimes its Pat, her head still a mess of flesh and brain, with the same trance-like smile, before a car eviscerates her from my thoughts. Other times I’m looking deep into the empty socket of the thing. Infinite and hollow, but housing something that lurks in the fringes of my mind’s eye. The common denominator of all these dreams is the incessant croaking of the throat singing. It never stops, even following me back into the waking world sometimes. I’ll awaken, trying to breathe but unable to gasp for air. The guttural noise sounds like its coming from everywhere, all around and even inside of me.
Therapy doesn’t help. Neither do psychedelics. The hellscape I was sent to off shrooms was worse than reality. I pray but no one answers. I’m sure my death won’t be natural. It will either be by my hands or theirs. I just wish for it to end soon.