I feel the cold tendrils of dread furl and unfurl themselves in the far reaches of my mind. I pull the blanket up closer, leaving only my face free as I curl in tighter, eyes clenched shut, teeth gritting. No matter what I do, I can hear it.
That incessant hum was ever present, like a nightmarish symphony being played in some valley miles away - never enough to make out the words or even a consistent melody, just persistent awful noise.
Sleep. Go to sleep. I tried to command my mind, desperate to fall into the dark waters of slumber and escape the torment.
I knew it was useless.
I could feel it - a faint pull from the other side of the room - just beyond my back. I could feel my face pressing down on the eyepiece telescope, that eerie tugging sensation I could feel with every atom, raising the very hair along my skin in attention as I gazed out at it. Its light glowed through the drawn lace curtains; that pale, impossible shade of blue glittering through it with a phantasmic effect.
How much closer is it? I wondered. Just how much larger has it grown?
I can practically see it burning against the inside of my eyelids, the oddly tangible tendrils whipping and lashing forth as it bubbled and burst with energy.
No, I press the pillow over my head, grinding my teeth as I try to shake loose that train of thought. Enough.
I can’t look. I know I shouldn’t. With every night I’d taken to my telescope since that new star had appeared in the distant night sky, things had only grown stranger.
I clench my eyes and sucked in a breath, my mind drifting to the start of this torture. After a moment more listening to that ghastly hymn, I make my way to the laptop.
If nothing else, I will document my experience.
. . .
I saw it first nearly a week ago. For most of my life, I’ve had a fascination with the stars. It all stemmed from a childhood trip to Arizona, in which my father and I had gone out on one of those star-watching tours. From the moment I had seen the full extent of wonders weaved through the sky over our heads, I’d been obsessed.
I got my first telescope as a birthday gift that same year, and I’ve owned one ever since, though I’ve upgraded a great deal.
I say this to say, nightly star-gazing has been a hobby of mine for most of my life now.
Sure, I’m no professional astronomer, but as far as regular folks go, I feel as familiar with my night sky as anyone can be. What may seem a random assortment of light scattered above our heads to most, has read more like a map to me for the past few decades.
I can direct you to most planets visible in our sky, and name the constellations down to their individual stars.
So on that night, several days ago when something that gleamed brighter than almost any object I’d seen in the night sky beside the moon itself, burned with an uncanny sort of brightness like a flashlight pointing at me from closeby in the darkness, from some distance behind the celestial sphere, I took to it with a burning interest.
I focused my lens on the object, assuming in passing that perhaps I was seeing the north star, but a few seconds of thought made it clear that that wasn’t the case.
For one, the north star was on the opposite end of the sky, not even visible from my bedroom window. For another, it grew clearer the longer I stared, that whatever I was seeing, it certainly couldn’t be a star.
The light from most stars was that traveled millions of lightyears to our little blue ball, it’s why people say that some of the stars in the night sky might not even be there anymore - they’ve died and we’re waiting for the light to reach us. New stars formed over periods of hundred of years, and even after that, we’re not likely to see them for generations after.
Even the nearest of them could take lifetimes at least to fully appear in our night sky after being born. I watched that same segment of sky like my job night in and night out, I knew it like the back of my hand.
And with how bright the object seemed to burn, I was certain I couldn’t have missed it before, its sudden appearance leaving me only to accept it as a satellite, though too much about it indicated otherwise.
It gleamed and glittered with an uncanny blue aura, with such luminosity I couldn’t shake my mind free of the many doubts I felt as to whether such a thing could truly be man-made, yet any attempt at considering what then, could be the truth, only left me with an odd, anxious sort of feeling as I watched the dazzling thing, something in the pit of my gut stirring with a nauseating unease.
Oh, how it shone - so bright I was certain I could make out individual spikes of superheated plasma whipping and whirling out from the mass of the thing.
I knew such a thing was impossible, surely. No star could appear in the sky of such brightness, so suddenly and go unnoticed.
I’m not sure how many hours I remained there - in my spot at the window looking out at the sky, but it was long after the sun had fully dipped below the horizon and the song of crickets echoed from the bog out back of my house and through the night air that I finally stepped away.
My eyes fell back on the star that couldn’t be a star, an odd mix of wonder, and a vague terror I couldn’t place both bubbling within me.
I slid my hand into my pocket pulling out my phone with the intent to take a picture of the thing, raising it until the little blue pinpoint was visible at the center of the camera. I tapped the camera with an audible click.
Before I could look at the image, as if aware of my intent, the phone blinked once, then twice, before fading to black with only the low battery sign on its screen.
Irritation blossomed like spring flowers. I was certain it had just read 58% last I’d glanced at it’s charge, and the thought only fanned the mild annoyance.
I shot a parting glance at the ‘star’ that couldn’t be a star, feeling a chill of unease sweep over me.
Regardless of its admittedly odd characteristics, I was content, for the moment, to accept the satellite explanation, as inaccurate as it seemed, as the only logical conclusion I could draw.
Anything else, and it seemed like my mind was clawing at the door of the unknown, toying with irrational thoughts that were far less rational and far more unnerving.
Sleep tugged at the edge of my mind, eyelids growing heavier over the telescope. It had been a good enough night, outside of the unusual. Clear skies and I’d even managed to spot a shooting star at one point. The following day was a Saturday, which meant sleeping in, and a smile made its way to my lips.
As I rose from my spot, I kept finding my eye drawn back to that dazzling point of blue, shining brighter and with such a…unique sort of vigor to it compared to all the others lining the sky, and I could feel something stirring within.
When sleep finally came later that night, it was a restless one.
That night, it seemed the darker reaches of my imagination had been set ablaze, filling my sleeping mind with mystifying and grotesque scenes of nightmare.
I recall little of that night, just vague images of horrific things that now seem almost prophetic. Stars, that weren’t really stars, and horrors that lurked in the unyielding darknness surrounding us.
I woke with a start, gasping for air as I nearly fell from the bed in a blinding panic.
As reality began to resettle, memories of the night before resurfaced, and the mental images from my nightmare faded into the background, sinking their claws in deep.
The distant hum of what must have been the central heating filled the air which seemed thick with an uneasy miasma as though part of my nightmare had followed me into my waking hours.
I found my mind immediately turned back to the thing from yesterday. Just a light off in the distant sky, it seemed so inconsequential and yet it had clearly left some impression if it was the subject of the worst nightmare I’ve had in years.
Once I had gathered myself, I took to the internet immediately, posting to some of my frequented star-gazing message boards and a few astronomy communities with my questions - including an image of the odd sight.
‘Spotted this last night, something pretty bright a ways behind the moon? Does anyone know of any recent satellite launches or something?’ I titled it and began waiting anxiously for any sort of response.
As the replies slowly rolled in, a distinct unease grew more pronounced amongst the initial excitement of my discovery, still dwarfed by my interest and irritation at some of the tones of the responses.
‘Great edit lol, why are you wasting our time though?’
‘Mods ban this idiot.’
There were several that included photos of the exact same area of space as my own, and in none of them was that uncanny light visible.
I wondered if I was being pranked on a mass scale, as there was absolutely no way anyone who called themselves a star-gazer could miss something of this luminosity and apparent size in the sky - but the thought fell flat.
There was no way dozens of internet strangers would all be in on some plot to make me feel nuts.
No, they appeared quite genuine in their assertion that I was either mistaken or lying.
Confusion and a great deal of consternation filled me as I considered the responses, more confused than I’d initially started, and with my prominent theories; an airplane, or satellite, both falling flat for various reasons.
I was literally in the process of deleting my posts, feeling defeated and confused, when a private message appeared in my inbox. The username was a series of letters and characters, clearly random, and the account had been created that same day.
I almost deleted it, but upon seeing the brief preview of the message, I felt my stomach flip, and opened it immediately.
‘You’re not alone. The star, I see it too…’
An image was attached.
It was clearly taken from a far different location than my own, but I felt my breath catch at what was shown.
It was there.
Clearly, the thing I’d seen behind the moon burning bright with the same strange glow.
I felt somewhat reluctant, as the moon was nowhere to be seen in his photo, but I was certain the object was the same.
I quickly typed in a response, heart thudding as I willed my digits to move faster, mind racing.
‘THANK YOU. These people are making me feel insane lol. Do you know what it is? I was thinking of a satellite, but no governments seem to have launched any recently.’
His response was quicker than I’d even hoped for.
‘It’s not a satellite.’
I shifted in my seat, feeling a bubbling consternation at that.
‘What else could it be? A comet wouldn’t move that slow. And it seems to have moved a bit between our two pictures.’
I waited for a response for a moment, curious how this faceless person could be so certain the object wasn’t a comet.
When the response finally came, I almost closed the chat.
‘Tell me, have you heard its song?’
I scoffed, feeling that familiar irritation of having my time wasted as it seemed the one person I’d found with some potentially useful information was veering into the internet-crazy territory.
I don’t know why I didn’t end it there, I think the need for information was too great. Even then, something deep within me knew to take heed.
‘Alright, it’s getting weird. I’ll humor you. Care to elaborate?’ I leaned back in my chair.
I felt a chill roll down my back, and not just from the cool of the room whose temperature had fallen much overnight as the cold front moved in, I made a mental note to remember to turn the heat on after I was finished here.
The response came minutes later.
‘I’m sorry, I don’t want to sound insane. I have barely been able to sleep at all since this thing. I know how this is all going to sound but you need to try to listen, alright?
At this point, I don’t know if I can be helped, this is for no one’s good but your own.’
I couldn’t deny that the seriousness in the person’s tone it - chilled me. I shifted uneasily in my seat, casting a look over my shoulder out the window my telescope sat near, the last rays of evening light streaming in.
‘Okay, I’m listening.’ I responded.
He took only a minute.
‘It started with the sound. A song. Or a hum is probably a better word for it. If that picture is real, and you really saw it, you’ve heard it. Maybe you haven’t realized or thought it was something else. But it’s there.’
I scoffed, rolling my eyes despite the faintest trickle of dread somewhere in the far reaches of my mind.
I’d been home all day grinding away at some last-minute code for work, and the only sounds I’d been subject to were the distant blare of the television I left on for ambiance, my own keyboard, and the ever-present hum of what sounded like the AC.
‘No humming, bud. Sorry to disappoint.’
The response was quick.
‘Denial. It’s okay. Me too at the start. It doesn’t matter in the end, I think.
I’ll tell you what’s going to happen now. If I’m right, and believe me for your sake I hope I’m wrong, what I tell you and show you will prove it. I don’t know what it will do for you. I doubt we can stop this thing, but at least you’ll know you aren’t crazy.
Or if you are, we both must be.’
After a minute something loaded into the chat.
Another image. I tapped it and waited with unusual anxiety as it buffered.
I could help but feel both awed and unnerved at what I saw. It was undoubtedly the same glowing body that I’d seen in the night sky before, or something made to look like it at least…it was different.
It was much, much closer.
There was no doubt in this image I was looking at a star, or at least staggeringly similar to one, burning with the odd blue glow of the thing I saw the night previous, but it looked almost as large as the sun.
Individual angry tendrils of plasma furled from its form, and somehow - something its very appearance evoked a distant, but unwavering dread.
It was edited. Surely, it had to be. So much about the image was impossible for so many reasons.
I was in the process of typing my accusation, but they added more before I could.
‘It will look something like this tonight. Maybe a bit closer, maybe a bit farther for you. I don’t think this is an exact science. By that point, that fucking hum will be so loud it’s impossible to try and dismiss anything that makes any good sense.
If that happens, you can message me with any questions, or just if you need to talk about this.
I can’t say I have many answers, but I’ll be going on a week of this now, and I guess it’s good to know I’m not alone. I’ll try to help you if I can.’
Something in the messages gave me pause, reading with far too much sincerity for the writer to be some mere prankster, an elaborate one at that.
I decided that even if he must be insane, with what he seemed to be proposing just based on his vague words, was something of utter science fiction - he appeared genuine in his wanting to help.
‘Thanks, I guess. I’ve got to go.’ I promptly ended the conversation, closing the laptop, and standing from my desk.
With mounting frustration and a non-unsubstantial shroud of unease lingering, I closed my laptop and rose from my desk.
I shivered, both trying to shake off the disquiet that had seemed to drape itself over me like a trench and feeling the morning chill that seeped through the windows and filled my room as it raised gooseflesh along my skin.
My eyes drifted across the room, lingering briefly on the telescope already pointing out the window. The sun was all but set, and I’d been so caught up I’d forgotten to turn on any lights, leaving the room bathed in the dark blue of twilight.
I found myself dwelling on those odd messages.
It was nonsense, surely. Either the efforts of a troll who dedicated an impressive amount of effort to doctoring the photos, or someone struggling with mental health, perhaps assigning some greater apocalyptic meaning to an interesting anomaly.
Yet as much as I might have told myself that was the case, for the life of me, I couldn’t shake his words. I’d made my way to the living room to watch T.V. hoping to distract myself in whatever sat waiting on my Hulu.
I tried to get into the show, some mindless baking program, but my mind stayed on the conversation I’d had online.
A chill ran down my spine, and I realized that while I’d been glued to the couch for the past few hours, the temperature in the house had dropped several degrees.
I felt a faint twinge somewhere in the back of my head, the nagging sensation that I had forgotten something important, or was perhaps missing something.
It only served to worsen that lingering anxiety..
I could feel the frigid winter chill pressing itself inward against the house. Still distracted by my own wandering thoughts, I made my way toward the thermostat.
I wondered for a moment, what I had set it to, unable to recall even turning it on. I could hear its faint hum, almost rhythmic, but felt no evidence of its effect.
“Fuck, if this thing’s broken…”
I didn’t want to consider the expense.
Still, I couldn’t recall having turned it on at all the night prior yet I must have at some point.
My house is an older one, and the thermostat lacked any sort of timer feature, so it could only be turned on and off by hand.
I could hear its hum ever-present in the background, so much so that it seemed to weave itself amongst my thoughts like a catchy song.
The man’s seemingly inane warning wafted forth from the darker reaches of my thought. I tried to dismiss it, yet as I made my way into the living room, with every step my heart seemed to sink more. It was as though my mind already come to suspect the impossible truth.
I turned into the dining room, looking immediately at the thermostat on the nearest wall.
My teeth grit, eyes narrowing into a squint as I read the indicator on the thermostat.
It was off, neither heat nor air activate.
My ears perked, that ever-present hum that had been so easy to dismiss before seeming to drone louder in the silence, as I tried to make sense of it.
‘Have you heard its hum?”
I felt microtremors somewhere beneath the surface buzzing through me, my breathing gradually growing faster.
No. I shook my head, scoffing at myself. I was being ridiculous, surely, letting the words of an anonymous internet troll cause me to freak myself out. I knew whatever I was hearing, albeit strange, must have a reasonable explanation.
If not the air, perhaps I was hearing some other effect of the house’s inner mechanisms. Even if I could’t think of one, the alternative was…what? I was somehow hearing the sounds of a distant star? The thought almost made me feel embarrassed.
Ksshhhh.
The sudden roar of audio static rippled from the living room, sending a rush of hot panic coursing through me. A screech, like some cross between the feedback of a microphone, and an avian shriek rang out.
My heart pounded as I peered around the corner, and back into the living room.
The television had descended into a cloud of static, something I’d yet to see on the smart TV.
As I looked my eyes seemed to…adjust. I felt a pit open in my gut as, at the center of the screen, I was certain I could see something.
An eye? Ringed by the extending tendrils twirling and writhing through the static, a purple-blueish hue separating it from the black and white visual snow.
With a pop, the television shut off, making me jump despite myself, the screen immediately going dark. My head spun, feeling flush with heat as anxiety seemed to constrict my chest. Suddenly, I was feeling very uneasy in my own home.
With nothing else to do, I left the room, hoping only to turn my thoughts away from the oddities the past few days had foisted on me.
Yet no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t ignore it now - that distant humming, almost melodic…where was it coming from?
The image on the television played again and again in the far reaches of my mind, difficult to dismiss as a mere technical issue. I was certain of what I had seen.
As I entered my bedroom, I found my eyes drawn immediately to the window - to the telescope. I felt a twinge of unease as I thought about the night previous, the idea of searching the sky once again, breeding unusual consternation.
Still, I found myself approaching the window, feeling an almost magnetic sort of pull, as I peered through the open blinds. I could hear a distant rumble as lightning cracked somewhere far away.
The sun was all but set, the night sky bleeding through the dull navy blue of twilight, from the east a burgeoning wall of angry, black clouds pressed forth slowly.
Before I could really understand why, my eyes were searching the skies for only one thing, seeking that familiar point of unfathomable blue light, all the while that strange, humming of indeterminate source seemed to drone and hum almost…conspiratorially.
It was a strange phenomenon, one I feel I still struggle to adequately describe, like a distant, unseen concert band playing some faraway, discordant anthem for my thoughts. The fact that I’d yet to find a logical explanation for it made me uneasy in a way I couldn’t escape. I was beginning to deeply regret ever making those posts, that man’s story was clearly having a far greater effect on my subconscious than I’d thought.
The final rays of sunlight had faded from view, leaving only a cloudy sky with what little moonlight could break through to illuminate the vast expanse. As far as my naked eye could detect, there wasn’t a star in sight.
I felt something pull at me, an urge I wanted to ignore, but somehow knew I would not.
Sucking in a breath, I brought my eye to the telescope, stomach twisting despite myself as I peered into the night sky.
The cloud cover was thick, a substantial wall of gray between my view and the night sky, obscuring even the moon.
Thunder rumbled in the distance, the earthy scent of approaching rain on the air.
I couldn’t help but feel a soaring sense of relief. It seemed whatever it had been I’d seen that night, it wasn’t of any supernatural origin if mere weather could stand in its way.
I almost felt silly at how worked up I’d gotten. I made a mental note to call a doctor about the humming, certain it must be some odd sort of tinnitus. I had almost pulled away, satisfied to turn my attention away from star-gazing that night, when I felt a twinge of something.
It felt like an instinct, a sudden inclination too strong to consider before acting. My hand almost felt guided as I readjusted the telescope. Before I knew where I was searching, I stopped.
I felt the icy claws of dread run along my back. A slight tremor began to seize me, as I stared both in awe and disbelief at what lay above.
Visible, just barely, but there through the swelling black clouds, was an unnervingly familiar glow. That unmistakable shade of blue, somehow burning bright enough to be seen where the moon could not.
As the initial shock faded, another horrific realization began to dawn on me.
I could hear something… it was like a melody, played several houses away, a discordant rhythm that made my head spin.
It was faint still, but impossible to deny.
My hands shook, the view wavering. Nausea tugged at my throat, and I felt like I might vomit.
My vision buzzed with the sudden panic coursing through me. I clasped my hands over my ears, desperate to silence the ominous hymn, to no avail. I could still hear it, just as clearly as before.
‘H - how -?”
I grasped desperately for an explanation, every attempt at logic feeling all too flimsy as the faint melodic hum echoed through my mind.
I found my gaze drawn back to the sky, to that eerie light glaring through the clouds, and felt as though I was staring into the eyes of something horrid.
With little other action I could think to take, unwilling to call anyone for fear of sounding insane, I climbed into bed. It would be hours before I fell into a restless slumber, the pillow pressed over my ears doing little to cease the incessant hum.
My dreams were as vivid, and awful as before. This time, easier to recall.
I stood in an empty field, as vast as the eye could see with a sky littered with stars bearing down over me.
At the center, it hung, closer than before a burgeoning mass of pulsing blue. I felt trapped, locked in place under the force of its presence, and as I stood in horrific awe, I wondered if what I stood before was a star at all.
It appeared almost organic, made of glowing, writhing, flesh far larger than anything that should make sense. At the center of it all, an iris burned an inky black, and my mind groaned under the weight of my sanity, as I could feel its gaze on me.
From all around me came that persistent, stomach-turning symphony, louder than ever in the halls of my nightmare.
As I awoke that following day, I could still hear its tune, hanging with me for minutes until fading into the louder-than-before, melodic hum of the day previous.
The morning passed in a blur, fading images from the nightmare prior haunting me for most of it. I tried to avoid my laptop, my mind returning consistently to the conversation. The last time it had only served to unnerve me. I hoped to avoid the same.
By late afternoon, with that ceaseless melody still ringing in my ears, I was desperate. I peered out the window, that same odd draw seemed to pull me towards it, and my stomach dropped.
At the center of the sky, almost as visible as the moon in the early morning sky, was that eerie, blue glow. It was larger than before. Closer.
There was no mistaking it, no avoiding it despite the burgeoning dread it bred in me, it was growing nearer. I could hold back no longer, I needed answers. Quickly, I returned to my desk typing in a message to the man from before.
‘You were right.. I don’t know how, or what’s happening. But I think you were right.’
My foot twitched under my desk as I waited for a response, receiving one only minutes later.
‘I’m sorry to hear that. Genuinely. When I didn’t hear from you I’d hoped I was wrong. Are you having dreams? You, out in some massive pasture as that thing just stares into you - through you.’
The questions made my heart sink as my mind returned to the nightmare of the night prior. I could almost feel that same strange force I’d felt in the dream, standing amidst that impossible field as that star…or whatever it was, seemed to tug at my every atom.
‘Yes. They r getting worse too. And I hear something, that sound,’ I paused, digging my fingers through my ears in an outpouring of frustration, to no avail.
‘Like a tune I just can’t place. It’s louder today than yesterday. It feels threatening.’
‘The song.’
‘I call it the song. I don’t know what it is - but my theory is it’s that thing…calling us, I guess. No one else can hear it. And it will get worse, every day, as it gets closer.’
His response made my blood curdle beyond reason.
Panic trickled through my heart like a roaring river, it pumped through every vein in my body with an icy effect.
‘How do I stop it?’ I typed frantically.
‘How do I make it go away?’
I waited for several minutes, my foot thumping absent-mindedly against the carpet, with every moment the fear that I’d hear nothing back, left with no answer at all swelling.
When his reply appeared, I realized I’d have been better with nothing.
The gray box of an image appeared in the chat, taking several seconds to load. As it did, the words beneath were enough to make me want to slam the laptop shut, and scream into my hands until my throat was raw.
‘You can’t.’
The image loaded as I clicked it. At first, I couldn’t be sure what it depicted, but as my eyes roamed the inconceivable subject of the photograph, it dragged lingering phantoms of nightmares from the nights before back to the forefront of my mind.
It was a mass of light but…it was flesh, hundreds, no thousands of individual tentacles curling to form something like the shape of a star all around on the central point. The longer I looked, the more I felt my mind shift and groan under the sheer impossibility of what I was seeing.
Even through the screen, it seemed to shine, that grotesque parody of blue seeming to seep into my very atoms. I hardly realized I was moving when I closed the image, my hands were shaking so much that they clattered against the keyboard.
In that time, another message had been sent.
‘I don’t think I’ve got much time left. This is my fourth day, and it’s so close I can hear it chanting as it hovers above my house, just beyond the windows. I don’t think there will be a fifth.’
I struggled for a moment to grasp what I was being told, the realization cold as it trickled across my mind.
As if sensing my struggle to accept what was being said, another message came through, summing up my every fear in the first sentence.
‘There is nothing you can do, I’m sorry. I think it chose us, and we don’t have much of a choice in the matter.’
That ever-present droning tune seemed to grow louder with the thump of my heartbeat.
‘Why is it doing this?’ I couldn’t make sense of it. Whatever this thing was, it possessed abilities beyond reason, capable of affecting the mind and seemingly shifting physics and reality at its whim.
Why would it be tormenting me? Why would it attract its gaze from whatever great void it had occupied to a computer programmer in Illinois?
The response sent a nauseating sort of chill through me, making me suddenly feel very small and vulnerable even within the walls of my home.
‘Lol. Why do children go out of their way to drown ant hills? Why do some people take pleasure in hurting small animals? Because they can. Sometimes, I think, powerful beings do cruel things for no other reason than they have the power. Perhaps, it is simply a cruel thing, and it chose us.’’
‘Chose us for what?’
I found myself glancing over my shoulder every few seconds, peering back at the shuttered blinds half expecting to find that massive form filling my window, its inhuman pupil the size of a dinnerplate peering through at me.
As I returned to the screen a new message was sent from the user.
‘I don’t know. Something tells me I’ll learn soon. That same something says I probably won’t be in any position to tell you. I hear it now, even the words are clearer. It’s telling me so much…
I began to type another series of questions, but froze as I saw his response, not bothering to finish what I was typing.
‘I’m sorry I couldn’t be of more help. Truly. But, perhaps it’s better this way Angelo. Accept it.’
The mention of my name, which I knew to be nowhere on my profile gave me immediate pause, lending horrifying credence to his words.
I typed another message, then several more, begging for anything more than that, for some silver bullet to what I was faced with.
But every message following his last was accompanied by the little red icon that indicated a failure to deliver. My heart pounded, hopelessness rising in me like floodwaters in a hurricane spilling over any barrier I’d erected.
His account was gone. Deleted. Just like that, the only other connection I had to anyone who might understand what I was going through - severed.
I was suddenly adrift. Alone confronted by something I couldn’t understand, with little clue of where to turn.
I sat, almost shell-shocked by all I’d come to learn, for several minutes - as the dread that seemed to settle itself over me like some awful shawl. The light in the room grew dim, the familiar blue hue of the evening sky the only thing to illuminate the room as my screen went dark from inactivity.
I swear I - I could feel it somewhere out there, tugging faintly at my every atom, making the hair on my skin raise.
After a while, I dragged myself to the kitchen, preparing a microwave dinner as my mind roared with hopeless thoughts, soon after making my way to bed, all the while accompanied by that dreary, distant song.
Sleep came slowly, and when it did, it felt almost indistinguishable from reality despite the horrors it contained.
My next moments of awareness came amidst the ethereal cloudiness of dreams.
I stood at my window, skin almost burning with the feeling of my every atom buzzing as though I was being tugged forth. The sky was filled with a familiar glow, at the center of it all hung that thing. It was almost more like a starfish, a mass of something fleshlike pulsating with light and color surrounded by five stretching points reaching out to all sides.
At the center, were thousands - maybe millions of beings, all massed into one strange form. There were things I couldn’t hope to recognize, and human beings alike, all reaching out in a desperate and doomed attempt to free themselves, mouths opening and closing in silent screams. At the very center of it all, hung a massive yellow eye.
As I watched, it turned, and I felt its gaze on me.
I awoke that morning sweating through the sheets, a dull pain burning under my skin, and my stomach feeling heavy. The light streaming through the curtains appears, tinted almost - a faint shade of blue intermingled amongst the rays of sunlight.
In my ears, the wordless song was louder than ever before. I lay there for an indeterminate amount of time, trying to gather myself from the dream that felt like so much more than a dream and stifle the sobs trying to force their way up from the hopelessness that had been building within.
I stared at the window, hesitant to rise from my place in bed and look outside, already certain of what I would find. It would be closer today, that rogue star in the distance. With how loud the clamor of the disembodied symphony was in my head, a part of me already knew what to expect.
Still, mustering what willpower I maintained, I rose from the bed. The wood was cold under my feet, the only sensation I was aware of besides that unending song as I neared the window. Pushing the curtains aside, I peered up and out into the sky.
I didn’t have to search for long. There it sat, appearing larger and nearer than the sun which was still rising in the dark blue sky above. Even at so great a distance, its form seemed to…warp and shift, and I found my eyes unable to stay on it for too long. It was so much closer now.
I’m no mathematician, but I knew that with the distances it looked to be covering it must be traveling at hundreds of thousands of miles per hour through space.
Apparently, hurtling towards a singular point, me. With what rough estimations I could manage, at that rate, it would arrive in under a day. And then what?
The thought seemed to echo through my mind, making the stark lack of an answer all the more palpable and terrifying. If it were like any other star, which it clearly was not, it would engulf the Earth in a sizzling ball of fire, and be the end of all life as we know it.
I couldn’t help but prefer that alternative as awful as it would be. It was a less isolating thought and would have meant I wasn’t all but alone in the sense of impending doom.
Yet my mind fell back to the image that man had sent me, of what I knew to be the very same “star” hanging what couldn’t have been more than a mile or so over his head, and I know this burden is one I functionally shoulder alone now.
My every attempt at conjuring some vain sort of distraction failed miserably.
The television was utterly unusable, every channel replaced by that awful static in which I was certain I could hear and see such nightmarish things, and every attempt at the internet just found me desperately scouring the web for answers I would never find.
Even worse, I began receiving notifications, messages in my inbox that - when clicked - never appeared to be there at all, but always seemed to read such awful, portentous things; promises of what might happen to me very soon, when it’s light engulfed me as I had somehow seen it do before.
The night rolled on, and as the sun set beneath the horizon the room was overcome by the dull glow of twilight, and a faint, but unmistakable blue light pouring in.
At some point, I raised myself out of bed. My footsteps along the wooden floor corresponded to the drumbeat thumping of my heart as I approached the open window, feeling altogether small and vulnerable, an insect at the foot of the inconceivable - and I saw it.
It hung in the sky in the distance, at the height one would expect to see planes flying, its form writhing and impossible to keep in mind, vaguely like the outline of a star but composed of infinite moving limbs around its center, and at that center glowed the eye. I could feel it, baring down upon me.
I could hear it, its song growing into a booming symphony in my mind, like a choir had entered my room - for as long as I stayed there, glued to the impossible, unfathomable sight.
I don’t remember falling asleep. I can’t even remember returning to bed.
All I can recall are those moments standing before the window and the nightmares that followed, all weaving into one muddled memory, the end of one and the beginning of another blurred until I could only wonder if sleep had truly ever come at all or if I’d somehow found myself…
I remember only standing in a field, vast and unrecognizable, amidst millions of pale flowers, unable to break my gaze away from the sky above, which its form was now close enough to fill. On its surface, I could swear, it was composed of bodies, twisting limbs and fingers, gnashing mouths all struggling desperately with no avail, to pull themselves free of the thing, all coming together to form one glowing body that must have been the size of a planet.
There was one face, in particular, I found myself drawn to. Familiar though I had never seen it. I don’t know how, but I knew it was him, the man I’d spoken to and the only other person I knew to share my fate.
When I awoke, if I can call it that, the sunlight light that managed to pierce the clouds above made grey by the storm building overhead seeped in through my window, the echo of that awful melody lingered in my ears, and dread hung heavy in my gut.
That was several hours ago. I’ve since felt a cold certainty at what is to happen tonight. Though I do not understand how, or why, I’m certain that that thing is going to take me and make me a part of it. I don’t have much family, no wife, or kids, and my job isn’t the sort I’ll be remembered for.
So I write this in the hopes that someone, somewhere sees it. I’m sure most will dismiss this as fanciful fiction, or the ramblings of a madman. The latter may not be so far from the truth, at this point. But perhaps there’s even just one of you who finds yourself reading this, who’s experiencing, or will soon experience the very nightmare I face. If so, I apologize, truly.
May you find what comfort you can glean in the knowledge that you’re not, or weren’t, alone in facing this impending terror.
Outside the song grows louder, and the passing of every minute pours into the hour, drawing nightfall ever closer, and as I write this I feel a strange, conflicting mix of emotions moving through me, an almost blissful acceptance of what is to come and incomparable horror as I ponder on what I am to experience.
The sun is beginning to set. I can hear the song growing louder, almost discernable now. It’s…beckoning me.
This is where I’ll end. I don’t expect you’ll hear from me again. If you take anything from this, I suppose, be careful when you let your gaze wander in the skies above.
You never know what may be looking back.