I met my husband 8 years ago in our junior year of college. He always tells our friends it was love at first sight despite the fact that he couldn’t see my face during our first interaction. We got locked in a basement at a frat party, it was dim and he didn’t have his glasses with him. I remember seeing him around campus and I always thought he looked silly with them. The lenses were so thick they made his eyes as big as saucers. That was one of the first things I noticed about him. He spent the majority of our time in the basement with his eyes squinted, he said it hurt his head when he didn’t have them. We were stuck down there for a few hours, one of his friends came looking for him and we got out. He ran up to his bedroom, asking me to stay put. He returned with his glasses, finally taking a good look at me in the light. He told me he thought I was a girl with a cold based on my voice, but I clearly made quite the impression on him as he asked to hang out more often.
After about a year of being friends and spending the majority of my time at a frat house or with my horrible roommate, I decided to move off campus. I asked him to move with me, we were best friends and we needed to focus on getting our life together in a less distracting environment. He agreed, we were both excited to start building our lives side by side. I loved spending time with him, watching him fall in love with me at the same time I did was one of the greatest things in life.
He kissed me in front of everyone on our graduation day. My heart practically jumped out of my chest when it happened, not that I didn’t want to kiss him, I just never expected that he’d make the first move in front of all of his friends and family. He pulled away, slapping and hand across his mouth in shock at his decision. We laughed about it, he lost a few of his frat friends after that, but the majority of people we knew were accepting of our new relationship.
We continued living together in the city until our engagement. A lot of dark stuff happened between then. He got a job at a slaughterhouse as a janitor of sorts. This caused a lot of arguments between us, I thought it to be cruel. The job eventually became too much. He was one to wear his heart on his sleeve, I could always read his expressions better than he knew. He came home one day looking tense, as his partner I offered to help him relax which led to him running away and puking up his stomach into the sink. He saw some stuff happen at work, he walked in on a man who he worked with violating one of the cows. It freaked him out enough to talk to his boss and ask if there were any alternative positions he could take, one that didn’t include blood and guts.
His boss sent us out to a small farm in the countryside. It was a big change as neither of us had experienced country living, but it looked good financially. We’d get to live on the property for free, he’d get paid by the hour, and all he really had to do was look after a couple of animals. He proposed to be before our move, we had a quiet wedding in the city and started our new life in the country as newlyweds. Things were really good for awhile. I’d started work from home as a graphic designer, and he took care of the farm.
There was only one negative, the wheat field.
It freaked me out when we first arrived. It was tall, taller than me and my husband, and it stretched out for miles. I had a previous traumatic experience in a corn field when I was in college, I accepted a drink from a friend that was laced with a psychedelic and got lost in it. Things weren’t the same for me mentally after that. It was one of the dark points I mentioned earlier on. I spent awhile trying to recover from the whole situation, my husband by my side every step of the way. I did eventually, but the backyard of my new home was something that sent a chill down my spine.
I put it behind me, choosing to focus on my art and husband. I decorated the house, started a garden, took up yoga and crystals. My husband didn’t suspect my disdain to the surroundings of our home, I knew that if he did we’d move back to the city in a second.
We had neighbors, two brothers who lived about a half mile down the road from us. They said they only stayed for 3 months out of the year as a trip in memory of their late parents. I became friends with one of them, he was spiritual, peace and love type of guy. The other was ADHD personified, he and my husband got along quite well, they had the same interests in numbers and statistics. They became good friends in an incredibly short amount of time.
The last time I saw my husband was a week ago,
He got home from the samll town we went grocery shopping in, he walked in with mud on his knees and elbows, I laughed a bit at his appearance, he tried to mess around and hug me, explaining as he chased me around the house that he slipped on his way up the driveway, he kept stumbling as he didn’t have his glasses on, I didn’t think anything of it. After a few minutes of trying to be funny he said he was going to go shower, he tripped on his way up the stairs, getting mud on a few of them.
By the time he was done showering the sun was down. He called me from upstairs, asking if his glasses were in our bedroom or on the counter. I checked and couldn’t find them anywhere. He said he thinks they might have still been outside from when he fell. I offered to go out and help him look, but he was a kind man. He didn’t want me out in the cold or to get dirty, he knew I had a fear of being outside in the dark as well. I curled up on our couch while he walked out of the light of our porch, I could see his flashlight moving around from my peripheral vision for a bit, I worked on a piece on my iPad, the customer needed it done by the morning and I was so focused on getting the details figured out that I didn’t even notice the time passing. I wish more than anything that I just went outside with him.
I finished up the piece, the house seemed too quiet, I checked the time. He’d went outside an hour ago to find his glasses. He wasn’t back.
I stood up, looking out the window, I stepped outside and called his name, I got nothing but an echo and the sounds of grasshoppers in return. I closed the door, creeping up the stairs to our bedroom and bathroom. Not there.
I don’t know if this will make you guys think I’m m horrible, if it does, I understand. I don’t think I’ll ever forgive myself for how things went that night. Maybe it was shock or fear. Or maybe it was irrational and I’m truly vile, but I went upstairs to my bedroom and laid in bed. I remember thinking to myself that I shouldn’t worry, that he’d be back any second. I shouldn’t go outside and look for him because he was ok, he was just taking awhile to find his glasses. I couldn’t sleep that night, the air was still in the house and I’d felt more vulnerable than ever before, like the sides of my body were exposed to a crowd of people, any sound I heard felt like I got lifted higher on a crucifix, spread out and unable to defend myself from the unknown. I don’t know when I fell asleep, but as soon as daylight showed I went outside and searched everything. I went to the neighbors house, I explained to them what happened, still in a bit of a daze. We went to the police station where they told us there wasn’t anything they could do for the next 48 hours.
We spent all day looking around town, the grocery store, the library, everywhere. I called hospitals in the area, talked to gas station clerks. Nothing.
I got back home later in the day, checking the house and farm again, my friends offered to stay overnight to which I said yes. I went up to my bedroom at 9:00 PM, my friends were in our guest room which brought me some comfort.
I was woken up at 2:00 AM by some strong winds. I heard a rattling come from the backyard, I stood up and looked out the window, trying to avoid eye contact with the wheat field as best as I could. There was little to no way to see, the only light source came from the chicken coop. Despite my best efforts, my eyes traveled to the field. I noticed movement in the plants coming from awhile away, it moved closer and closer to the edge of the field. By that point I was trembling, my heartbeat pounded hard enough to make me feel sick. I couldn’t see whatever it was that was causing the movement, by the time it got close enough for me to make out I turned away, squeezing my eyes shut and putting my hands over my head. I was so afraid, I felt myself begin to unravel. I needed my husband back.
One of my friends had to work at 6:00 AM, I walked downstairs to say goodbye, thank them for everything they’d done to help. They left at 5:30, I couldn’t go back to sleep, still feeling a sense of shock at the fact that my husband was gone, and I had no clue what happened. I made some coffee and slowly walked back upstairs, I took a second to crouch down on the stairs, lightly touching the mud prints from the last time I really saw my husband.
I heard a sound coming from the bedroom, I slowly stood back up, trying to tiptoe to the source. I made it to the crack in our bedroom door, I saw my husband inside. As much as I wanted to run in and hug him, a piece of me told me to stay put. I watched him for a second, letting my eyes adjust to what I was truly seeing.
He was nude, his spine seemed to be severely curved to the left, the line of his back going deep and crooked. He was hunched over, his arms dangled at his sides as if he was no feeling in them, they were long, it looked like his shoulders were dislocated, the skin on his neck to his shoulders stretched unnaturally. His knees were bowed inwards, I watched as he took a shaky step toward the window, his feet dragged and his knees wobbled, almost like a fawn taking its first steps. Everything about the scene was uncanny, I could make out his side profile, his jaw was slack, his eyelids hung low, his eyes expressionless.
I slowly backed away, walking downstairs to the living room. I waited for him to come down, to tell me he hurt himself, that’s why he looked so odd, or to tell me he was lost in the fields, that’s why he appeared so gaunt. I placed my coffee cup down with force, I wanted to make noise. I wanted it to know that I was in the house, to hide or run away if it needed. I knew immediately that I was afraid of it, even if it looked like my husband.
An hour passed, I could hear heavy footsteps upstairs, they lightened over time. My blood ran cold at the fast paced footsteps I heard coming down the stairs, I clenched my firsts, I asked for forgiveness subconsciously. I don’t know what I expected.
My husband walked into the kitchen, dressed, showered, and walking normally.
He smiled upon seeing me, asking why there was mud all over the steps. I laughed, still sitting at the counter. He didn’t question my lack of response to his disappearance. He walked past me, planting a kiss on my cheek and reaching for the box of cereal in the cupboard. I noticed what looked to be stretch marks up his arm. I didn’t know what to say, my lips quivered, I had little to no control of my facial expressions. As much as I felt the situation wasn’t normal, I couldn’t help myself from standing up and wrapping my arms around him. He hugged me back, rubbing my head and planting another kiss to my cheek. I let our a quiet sob, gripping him tighter, desperately waiting to feel a connection with him. I thought that the closer I was to him physically in that moment, the more likely I would be to shake the ugly feeling I had about him.
I peeled myself away from him, grabbing his face in my hands and looking into his eyes. I couldn’t see anything in them, no emotion. He had a smile on his face, it looked like nothing I’d seen from him before. I told him I had to go to work, he nodded and kissed me goodbye. I got in the car and drove to my friends down the road. Only one of them was home, I knocked and started to explain what was happening as soon as he’d opened the door. He looked at me like I was crazy, because who could be afraid of their own husband who was missing only 24 hours ago.
I stayed at his house for the next few hours, he tried to help me rationalize what I thought I saw, but in the end he really didn’t have anything to explain the behavior. I asked him to come home with me, see for himself. the car ride to my house was silent, my anxiety as we got closer was evident. We pulled up, going inside to find my husband on the couch going through the camera roll on his phone. He watched videos of us, he laughed at the same time as he did in the video. I announced my presence, he turned his head practically all the way around to the front door, smiling when he saw us. It looked different from the smile earlier, his gums showed and his eyes scrunched up with his lips. He laughed, identical to the laugh we’d just heard him rehearsing.
“I didn’t hear you come in!”
All three of us sat in the living room for a bit, acting as though everything was normal. My friend watched videos on his phone, he scrolled onto one, a math question that apparently only 1 out of 100 people could solve. He looked up expectantly at my husband, raising his eyebrows as a way to ask if he could solve it. My husband who everyone knew to be the smartest person they’d met, who graduated with a degree in mathematics and statistics, looked at him, shrugging his shoulders, letting out a chuckle that seemed far too artificial.
That was just the first day back.
The next day was still strange, I still hadn’t asked him any questions, he hadn’t brought it up at all. I noticed that he didn’t bring anything up himself. He wouldn’t speak unless I spoke to him first. He barley ate anything, he hadn’t gone out to check the animals or clean up, nothing.
The third day he left for 5 hours. He walked outside, he went into the wheat field. I watched him and did nothing to stop him. He came back later as if nothing happened.
The fourth day, my friends came over again, watching him in confusion, my husband didn’t notice their questioning faces.
The fifth day I went to my friends house again, only one of them answered the door. He said his brother hadn’t come home that night.
Yesterday night, my husband went into the wheat fields again, I watched him return from the guest room window. He had blood dripping down his shirt, chunks of what seemed to be flesh clung onto his mouth and hands. He looked around skittishly, like an animal hoping to not be caught doing something bad. He came in through the back door, hurriedly running up to our bathroom, I heard the shower start, I listened from the guest room, tears ran down my face, I realized that my husband was gone.
30 minutes ago, I walked by the bathroom and watched him through the door he left slightly open. He grabbed the corners of his mouth, stretching each end up to his ears, the skin ripping slightly. He dragged his hands over his eyes, the skin underneath them molding with his fingers like clay. He put his hand in his mouth, his thumb resting under his chin, the other hand opposite, this fingers pressed against the roof of his mouth. He pulled, dragging his jaw open at least 12 inches. There was a tearing sound, like the nerves in his face were snapping, his bones popped, saliva poured out into the sink, he placed his hands on the counter and watched himself in the mirror. He was sad.
I think I’m going to kill him today. There’s a consistent sense of guilt I have. I let my husband be replaced by whatever this thing is. A part of me hopes he’s still out there, I can’t let him be replaced by this replica. I won’t let the man I love be immortalized this way, I can’t.
Wish me luck.