There are some things you need to know about Alan. That was it’s name, Alan. My sister was no older than five when she “came” up with him, and typically these kinds of fictional friends have either simple or incredibly strange names. My girlfriend says hers was named ‘Princess Pickle,’ which is precisely what I mean. “Alan” felt way too normal.
After my sister passed, we went through some of her stuff. Things to remember her by. I found myself lost in thought with each item, spending almost an hour holding one of her shirts. Grief can be funny like that, making time pass as if it’s frozen around you. My dissociation was bad enough to get in the way of daily life. It made it unsafe for me to get behind the wheel, unable to take a simple phone call. Stuck in a foggy haze that made me want to melt in my bed. But visiting home and finally sorting through her belongings (it had taken us weeks to muster up the strength to even enter her room), I felt like I was giving myself the closure I needed. I had the house to myself today, so I took my time going through it all, letting the sun set from behind the pale blue curtains.
That’s when I found a stack of old drawings. Stuff me and her had made as kids. The first on the stack had reminded me of Alan, the weirdest of my sister’s fantasies. I had never forgotten the description she gave me once, while we shared a bottle of beer in the pantry, hoping our parents wouldn’t wake. We’d been teens then, aimlessly discussing whatever came to mind. Somehow, Alan was brought into the conversation, and I remember asking her about him. What she remembered, what she created.
Her description was so bizarre I remembered it distinctly. He was supposed to be a mix between a monkey and an angel, with wings made of baby teeth. He had two black marbles for eyes and a smile made of candy. He was multicolored, and his body was constructed of cheap plastic and black licorice. So, yeah, I laughed right in her face the second she was done. This was at the beginning of my exploration into recreational weed, so I explained to her how even high I wouldn’t be able to come up with something so batshit as that. She agreed with a chuckle, acknowledging how strange her mind must have been. In her defense, children were known to have weird imaginations.
I looked at the crude drawings of Alan, the crazy creature with the suspiciously-boring name. I was surprised to find one my sister drew at six showed him to be long and lanky. His smile was ear to ear, and his licorice fingers dropped down to the floor. Perhaps it was my sister’s drawing abilities that made him look so strange.
I flipped through the pages. The next few were of cartoons we enjoyed, family portraits, comics with such terrible handwriting I couldn’t read what any of it said. And then another Alan drawing, this time when she was seven. Her skills had slightly improved, but Alan still looked incredibly off. Elongated body, a smile too large in contrast to his beady black eyes. And this time, his mouth was spewing streams of red crayon like a waterfall. A bit morbid, I noted, but I continued. Immediately, another Alan drawing. He was on the ceiling above my sister in her bed. The caption read “ALAN NEVER SLEEPS WHEN I SLEEP.” Weird. Really weird. I kept going. Alan got more and more detailed the older my sister was. I was shocked to find the drawings kept going far beyond when I expected them to stop. Nine. Ten. Twelve. Fifteen. Nineteen.
The most recent was a couple weeks before she passed. She had been twenty two. I knew her art to be really good. She often drew flowers in stunning detail. Pretty landscapes, eyes, horses.
This one of Alan disturbed me.
I could see the texture of his skin. The vibrancy of the color pencils coupled with shading that made it three-dimensional. His face was seemed more like a caricature of a monkey than a real one. The cartoonish shape of his head did not pair comfortably with his photo-realistic facial features. His beady eyes were glossy like black pearls. The skin creased around the corners of his haunting grin, and the candy teeth were red and hardened sour candy shaved to form a sharpened point. Red strings hung from his lower jaw like exposed nerves, and thin as hair strands. His wings were constructed of thousands of molars and canines, each tooth a different color of white and yellow. The thought that each one belonged to someone different crossed my mind, and it made me shiver.
The drawing was made only of his upper half, no caption. I began to truly wonder whether this thing with Alan had became some weird kind of obsession for my sister. Maybe, as she grew, he reminded her of simpler times, so she drew him often for nostalgia. To pay a tribute to her childhood. He probably wasn’t creepy looking to her, and perhaps I was being cruel for judging Alan so harshly.
I glanced outside the window, seeing it was already dark. I still had my childhood room here, and was given permission to stay the night. But a part of me wanted to sleep in my sister’s bed. Perhaps that’s weird, but like I said, I was having a hard time grappling with her loss.
Her bed didn’t have any sheets, and I didn’t bother to put any on, laying atop her bare mattress. Still in my jeans and sweater with unkempt hair, not even bothering to brush my teeth. I kept the lamp on by the nightstand and listened to the crickets chirp outside the window. I must have fallen asleep rather quickly, for the next thing I remember is the feeling of something brush against my face. I opened my eyes and swatted it away, thinking it may have been a bug or a strand of my hair. It fell back down across my face, and I grabbed it to examine it closer.
It was black licorice.
My blood froze. I let it go, slowly, and heard it ascend up towards the ceiling. As I was thinking to myself how this must’ve been a nightmare, three more licorice strands rapidly descended and twisted around my wrist. It began to tug me up towards the ceiling, and I quickly grabbed on to the headboard. More of the vines latched on to me, now both my legs and torso, and I was beginning to be lifted off the bed. Something on the ceiling was pulling me towards it.
Immediately, I thought of Alan. That thought alone terrified me so much I couldn’t look up to confirm it to be true, or to go on assuming I was having an incredibly lucid nightmare. But nonetheless, I was losing my grip, and the more I fought the tighter the licorice held, possessing impossible strength. Despite my fear, I slowly turned my head towards the ceiling above me. My heart was pounding so loud it deafened my ears. I wasn’t sure what about this was real, but I had to know. If Alan was really there, somehow, against all odds.
I finally turned my head and found nothing. A bare ceiling with nothing there but a fan that hadn’t been switched on.
No, that wasn’t right.
The harder I looked, the more “he” came into view. He materialized right in front of me. The beady eyes, that awful grin. As soon as he came fully into my view, he released me. My body fell with a thud back onto the bed, bobbing from the box springs. I stared in dumbfounded silence, unable to make sense of anything that was happening. Alan cocked his head to the right, plastic rubbing against plastic. He stared deep into my soul, barely illuminated by pale moonlight and the dimly lit lamp.
My sister had forgot to mention Alan’s face had patches of multicolored fur. That he smelled of rotten sugar and breathed in long, raspy breaths. He filled the entirety of the ceiling, easily eight feet in length, and his licorice tendrils clung to the corners of the room like ivy.
At my breaking point, I flung myself off the bed so fast I knocked everything off the nightstand. I stumbled out the bedroom door and slammed it behind me. I fumbled for the car keys in my pocket, raced down the front porch, and started my car. I only stopped long enough to lock the front door. My dash displayed the time, 2:37 AM, as my engine sprung to life. I quickly put it into drive and sped down the street far faster than I should’ve, turning out of the neighborhood and onto the main road.
There was hardly anyone driving at this hour, so I sped to the stoplight and waited for the green. It felt like now I could finally take a breath, until I looked in my rear view and saw fucking Alan in my backseat, spilled across the pleather covers. The light turned, and I knew I couldn’t sit there idly, so I made a sharp right turn and pulled over to the side of the main road. Keeping my eyes on Alan, I exited my car and thrust open the back door. He turned his head to me, as if mocking me. I was surprised I could grab him, and with all my adrenaline, threw him out the car onto the gravel. He laid disheveled until he began to untangle himself and stand, towering over me. He made no move to attack me, and the absurdity of it all exploded from my mouth as I screamed a slew of incoherent words with plenty of swears sprinkled in. I was on the side of the road cussing out my dead sister’s demented imaginary friend, feeling deranged, angry, and at a loss. Alan watched me throw my tantrum, ending with me slamming the hood of my car with my fist and succumbing to a sob.
None of this made sense. The world had gone mad the second after that phone call from my father, who could barely speak as he explained how a drunk driver hit my sister. She had gone on a walk. He sped through the intersection as she crossed the street. They had to scrap parts of her off the god damn asphalt.
My mother made me promise I would always protect her, and I failed to do so. Now I was being punished.
I looked back up, partially surprised to find Alan still there. Waiting for me to come to my senses.
“You’re not real.” I spat, pointing my finger at him accusingly. I felt all kinds of stupid, arguing with this abomination of a thing. Maybe he was supposed to be her guardian angel, but he fucked that up just as much as I did. The two of us made quite the pair. I closed my eyes, hoping he’d disappear so I could get back in my car and drive myself to a psych ward. Or off a cliff, whichever helped me more. Instead, I felt a tap on my shoulder and stood, exhaling as Alan passed me a crumbled piece of paper. I took it and saw a string of numbers and letters drawn crudely in crayon or marker.
“What am I supposed to do with this?” I asked exhaustedly, as Alan gestured with his gangly limbs toward my car. It took my a moment to understand. I looked back down to the paper.
It was a license plate.
“You were there.” I said to him, long since the point of denying what was happening to me. Alan stared knowingly.
My sister’s death was a hit and run. Eyewitness reports couldn’t confirm much more than the make or model, and there hadn’t been any street cameras in range. I folded the paper up and stuffed it into my pocket. Getting back in to my car, I didn’t bother to let Alan back inside. I knew I’d find him in my flat waiting for me. In fact, I know knew he wouldn’t leave me alone until I made use of what he witnessed. Until I found the fucker who killed my sister and make him pay.