I’m what you might call an eccentric.
I collect odds and ends from things of supernatural and paranormal nature. Haunted movie props, abandoned animatronics, hell, I even sleep next to the supposed cursed ashes of a 15th century witch! (I keep her urn on my nightstand.)
So this mundane, everyday, run of the mill sign should not have caused me as much trouble as it did.
Last week, I found out a small café by my house that I frequent, was closing due to lack of business. I asked if I could keep their “open” sign as a sort of memorabilia and the owner agreed.
I took it home and stuck it in my living room window because I thought it looked kind of funny.
Everything was fine until tonight, when I began preparing dinner for myself and my girlfriend, she told me she would be over in about an hour so I started making her favorite dish when I heard a knock at my door. I left the kitchen and opened my front door expecting to see my girlfriend. Instead I was greeted by a man who looked like he should be sitting in the back of a Starbucks, typing away on a $2000 MacBook about how much he hates capitalism.
He looked to be in his early twenties, but dressed like he had just raided his grandfathers wardrobe. He wore small rectangle glasses that sat on the end of his nose that he couldn’t possibly be using to see, a brown cardigan that looked like it had the texture of steel wool, and matching brown corduroy pants and loafers.
“Hi, can I help you?” I asked
“What’s for sale?” He spoke in a quiet, calm voice with a slight mischievous looking smile on his face.
I could feel a smirk creeping up on my own face at his question.
“Oh! That! Haha ummm it’s just kind of a joke I guess”
“A joke.”
“Yeah…” I said scratching the back of my neck.
“Well, I don’t see anything funny about that” he replied in his same monotone voice, his smile, still sitting on his face, but his eyes narrowing. “C’mon, show me what you have for sale.”
“Look, it’s getting late and I was just getting ready for dinner an-“
“SHOW ME WHAT YOU HAVE FOR SALE!!! SHOW ME WHAT YOU HAVE FOR SALE!!! SHOW ME WHAT YOU HAVE-“
He started screaming and cut me off, it caught me so off guard I almost lost my balance, and I quickly slammed the door in his face.
“What the fuck was that?” I muttered.
I started texting my girlfriend about the man as I made my way back to the kitchen. Just as I got back to the stove, I heard another knock at my door.
I walked back to the door, and using caution, checked through the peephole this time.
I saw a sickly looking man in a dirty white tank top with a black beanie and sweat pants, he began knocking again as I was opening the door and it made him jump.
“Oh…hey man…all I got is fifty right now, but, you know, I’m good for the rest, I’ll have a hundred tomorrow” he said scratching a huge festering wound on his right arm that I had failed to see through the peephole.
“Wrong house” I said and I began to close the door, but something was wrong and I couldn’t shut it all the way, I looked down to see that the man had jammed his shoe in the doorway at the last second.
“No no! C’mon man! I see your sign!!” He said raising his voice.
“I don’t know what kind of drugs you’re on, but I don’t have any-“
He pulled out a switchblade, cutting off my train of thought about as fast as he would probably start cutting me if I didn’t do something quick. I looked to my right, at the umbrella stand beside me, and got an idea.
“Right… THOSE drugs” I said grabbing an umbrella out of his line of sight, he seemed to mellow out a bit when I said that, but his eyes grew big as dinner plates when he saw me drive the tip of an umbrella into the infected gash on his arm.
I saw green and yellow puss escaping from the now deeper hole, as well as maggots and other disgusting bugs that spilled out over my porch. He actually tried to pick some back up and cram them into his arm in between howls of pain.
I slammed the door in his face and locked it.
I walked back to the kitchen to turn the stove off before I accidentally burned the house down, and was about to call the police when I heard yet another knock at the door.
I looked through the peephole again to see an old couple, they looked to be in their 80’s, gingerly, I opened the door.
“H-hello?” I asked
“Hello son, we’re here for eternal salvation”
“Excuse me?” I said opening the door up a bit more to get a better look at the couple. They looked like they were dressed for a big event, maybe a wedding or an award show of some kind.
“Yes son, the priest told me on my death bed to search for the opening to heaven, and by gods graces, here we are”
I blinked twice.
“Are you telling me you two are…dead?”
“Passing on” the old man corrected “now if you will just step aside so we may have a word with saint Peter I-“
I slammed the door in their faces, this was way too much, could these people really be dead?! That could explain some of the weirdness but… no…
I heard the elderly couple howling outside and I peeked out from behind the living room curtain to get a better look. A few more people had gathered at my doorstep and were howling now too.
“Let us in!!! Open the gates! Let us in!!! Open the gates!!!” They chanted.
This has been going on for a few hours now, I even ripped the damned sign down and chucked it out my second floor window into the ever growing crowd that now stretched down the block. It was starting to look like Woodstock for the dead out there or something.
I tried calling the police, but I was only met with the operator telling me to “OPEN THE FUCKING GATES!!!”
I tried calling my girlfriend too, she answered, but told me to look by my neighbors blue car. To my horror, I saw her out there among the dead, chanting along with a huge grin on her face.
The voices are swimming around inside my head now and I can’t get them out. I don’t know what to do, I’ve been an atheist my whole life so I don’t have a clue about anything god related going on here.
If anybody knows anything about what’s happening to me here, please let me know, I’ll be on standby. If they don’t break down my door and swarm me first.