The first time it happened, I thought it was funny.
I was 17, driving my dad’s Cadillac to my job at a stadium, doing food concessions. My eyesight is poor, but back then it was just a little bit of nearsightedness, so I only wore glasses to drive. I got to work, parked, and set my glasses on the hump between the foot wells of the front seats. I’m not sure why that was my habit, but it was. I worked my shift, returned to the car, and my glasses were gone. I searched the car for several minutes, but my dad kept it clean so it was pretty easy to tell they weren’t in the car.
Nothing else was missing, and I didn’t really need my glasses to drive, so I just let it go for the time being. My car got out of the shop and then went back in again, so that three weeks later I was driving my dad’s car again, this time to school. At the end of the day, I went back to the car and my glasses were on the hump between the front seats. Right where I’d left them three weeks and twenty miles away. There is no way I could get out of a driveway or a parking lot without them falling, much less weeks of driving, yet there they were.
I decided that gnomes - not really, but it was a placeholder idea - had taken my glasses and then graciously returned them. It was a funny story for when the subject of the inexplicable came up.
The next time it happened was a few years later, when I was in college. I smoked then, and one day I shifted the blanket on my bed, which caused my cigarettes to slide off the bed between it and the wall. I watched it slide off, but then… It was gone. There was nothing at all between my bed and the wall, (I pulled the bed entirely away from the wall) and there was no ‘under the bed’. I never saw them again. But again, this was a funny story, right? Maybe the gnomes were trying to make a healthy change in my life.
There was a longer pause, and the third occasion - I was beginning as of this instance to feel like there was some connection - was more than a decade later, when I was in my mid-thirties.
I was in my car, gathering my stuff to get out. For some reason my bank card was on the passenger seat; I think I’d gotten gas. As I was fumbling for it, I knocked it between the seat and the center console. I literally watched it fall. I never saw it again. My ex and I spent a combined three hours searching for it, but it was gone.
It’s annoying to have to replace your bank card, and it wasn’t any less annoying when the same thing (aside from a different car and, of course, card) happened again a few years later. But still, it seemed silly. Not to be taken seriously, no matter how weird or occasionally annoying. Yet it gave me a distinct sense that there was more going on in the world than we can directly know.
For a while after that there were debatable instances. Like, did I genuinely just not see the object out in plain sight, or was it simply not there a moment before? My brain isn’t great, I honestly can’t say if any of these occasions were actually inexplicable or if I’m a silly goose who can’t see things that are right there.
And when things started happening again, I still couldn’t see how they made any sense at all.
Socks started appearing in my laundry that weren’t mine or anyone who lives here. Before you ask if maybe someone has been here - naked - that doesn’t live here? Not a chance. My husband and I are both disabled and we spend all of our time together, or at least in the house, if not always within arms’ reach.
So yeah, socks. I have certainly had socks go missing, who hasn’t? But these weren’t like my glasses, these socks never belonged to me. So if you’re missing some socks……..
But recently it’s all begun to be much less amusing.
Things started to appear. I think it started to happen before I was aware of it. Trash, product wrappers for things I’ve never bought and such, started to be found when I was cleaning out my car. Then one day I finally started to feel fear.
When I saw the Bank of America card on the passenger seat I thought for an irrational second that it was my own card, lost more than fifteen years ago, finally returned like my glasses. Nope. It was in someone else’s name. Right there on the seat of my locked car. The name was Jamie Stewart, which could be any gender, so that wasn’t the slightest help. I decided that in all likelihood the card had already been canceled, so I should just destroy it. But as I listened to the shredder chewing it up I realized that what I really wanted was to obliterate it.
Another card appeared. In another name. I didn’t know what to think about that. This time it was a Citibank card, like the second card I “lost”. I was finally getting spooked, though I still laughed it off as a weird story.
Other things began to appear, at decreasing intervals. The laundry seemed to be the delivery method of choice, branching out from socks. At least when that happens I don’t see the moment of change. Every item was shocking in its own way, I never got used to it. Like, is it more disturbing to find corporate swag for a company I’ve never heard of, or to find a sweater I’d donated to Goodwill decades earlier (I do like that sweater, had often regretted donating it)?
My husband never saw any of these things happen and I think, honestly, that he figured my bipolar disorder was making me mildly paranoid. But when the six pack of Sierra Nevada appeared he was right next to me when I opened the fridge. “Did… Did you buy those?” I asked him.
His eyes were wide. “I don’t even like that kind of beer!” he said. Which I knew. Which he knew I knew. He backed away, almost staggering. He ripped his eyes away from the beer and shut the fridge. He said, “I’m sorry, honey, I gotta admit I thought you were, I dunno, absent minded, or having delusions…” he trailed off.
“Fair, all things considered,” I said. I was feeling a certain relief that he actually believed me, but still highly unsettled by this latest appearance. Then I laughed and said, “But hey! Free beer!”
“Yeah, free beer I hate,” he replied, laughing. He cringed slightly, though, as he opened the fridge again. We had shifted positions while we talked and his body was blocking my view of the fridge. His face was expressionless as he closed it without removing anything. He turned away and started making a cocktail, apparently deciding to side-step the matter.
I shrugged and went to the fridge myself. I wasn’t going to let this, this, whatever this is, stop me from getting a Coke. When I opened it there was a Mexican Coke next to my American ones. Not only did I not buy it, but it wasn’t there the first time. It was right where the beer had been, but the six-pack was gone. I stood there for quite a while, staring. Finally I shut the door and walked away, putting tap-water in a glass. I took a sip and said, “Did you see the Mexican Coke just now? I mean when you opened the door?”
He nodded, but said nothing. His eyes were a little wild. He tried to speak but at first only a weird noise came out. He cleared his throat and said, “And the beer was gone.” He tried to laugh, but it sounded funny. The wrong kind of funny.
“Maybe we should just buy a new fridge,” I said, and made an odd choked noise when I tried to laugh. “At least the gnomes brought you something you like!” he said, teasing me.
“I’ll pass. Mexican Cokes are great, but I’m a little leery of supernatural Cokes,” I replied and led the way out of the kitchen. We had to pass through the dining room to return to the living room, and there I faltered because, well, it wasn’t like we passed through it a few minutes previously.
The tablecloth was pushed along to bunch up at one end of the table, a vase of daffodils very near the edge. On the freshly bare table was one of the little pads of paper we have all over the house, a capped sharpie next to it.
It was the light that made my adrenaline spike. We hadn’t left it on, but now the overhead light shone brightly down, more brightly than we have it set at. The entire scene was obviously set up to bring the pad to my attention and I was suddenly terrified of what I would see there. None of it seemed remotely funny all of a sudden.
I was staring at a spot just off target trying to build up the courage to read the words on the pad when my husband gasped, a sound I’d never heard from him in fifteen years of marriage. My eyes leapt up to his face, then followed his gaze to the pad of paper.
I read the words, written in large letters, “YOU COULD BE MORE GRATEFUL.”
So now my husband and I are sitting on a brick patio in the back yard. With no need to consult we had bolted there from the dining room. His cocktail is empty, as is my water glass, but we’re afraid.
I don’t know what to do now. Do I go for the Mexican Coke, to show my, er, gratitude? Do I hire an exorcist? I mean, it’s not like there’s a monster in the kitchen, right? Right?? Why is all this happening? Does some entity really feel like it’s doing things for me, not to me? Was that entity just being sarcastic? This whole business about things appearing and disappearing would feel like gaslighting if there was sense behind it, but I’m certain there is no human being that could be responsible. Is something trying to make me think I’m even crazier than I actually am? I just feel like what started out as intriguing playful mysteries has become simply alarming.
Is something or someone genuinely trying to communicate with me? Does it fundamentally believe it is benevolent? Or is it evil, trying only to torment me? Because tonight, it’s a torment.
What do I do?