I’ve made a throwaway for this. I don’t usually use reddit unless it’s some drug question I have that I can’t find the answer to without being shown a bunch of narcotic abuse helplines (google, and I don’t trust bing or yahoo). but I seriously feel like I’m going fucking insane. I have no one to talk to about this, for I fear I’ll be called insane or Hysterical. along with the fact that everyone I know has felt… off, lately. like they know something I don’t. or the kind of tension you have with someone when you find out something you weren’t supposed to.
I live on the side of a mountain. not a huge one, at all, but is called a mountain. it’s pretty populated, too. I have neighbours on all four sides of me, and houses and private property cover a large amount of the mountain itself. the botany is weird, though. when English settlers came here they brought over all their plants and shit like that, built their grandiose houses (most of which still remain). but, because of this, unlike most people in my country who are surrounded by gumtrees and wattles, I walk to school below towering oak trees and various rare plants from all over the world.
the house I live in is large. with passages and secret doors to complete. a huge spiral staircase, and a guest wing we never use that still smells like the 1800s. we’ve added, yes, but never taken away, and so all the old secret crevices remain, mainly unused since their creation. (I say mainly because the owners before us ran a cocaine ring and used them to hide drugs, we don’t do that unfortunately, but I think it would be a good business idea)
I’m getting off track, I’m sorry.
about a year ago, kids on my street stared talking about a house, a few doors down, whose owner died years ago. the story was that his daughter, so overcome with grief, refuses to sell the place. apparently she goes down there every tuesday and cleans the place. but she never moves anything, all the furniture, clutter, everything. everything is in its Exact place it was on the night he died in his bed 6 years ago.
to me, at the time a rebellious 15 year old obsessed with my chemical romance, abstract horror films and doing robitussin, this news was like christmas. I’d always been fascinated with that shit. i’d watched paranormal investigation videos on YouTube growing up. So the first chance I got, I asked two of the neighbouring kids to go with me.
I snuck out at around 12am, just after my parents had gone to bed. walking there, it seemed strange. I remember a distinct feeling of dread, like there was a pit in my stomach, dragging itself down through to the ground. My friends were both fucking around, hitting each other with sticks and shit. but the strangest thing was, it felt like we were walking for hours. and im not exaggerating, either. the house was 3 doors down from mine, where we started, and it took us 50 minutes to walk there, full pace. it was dark, and there were no streetlights so we couldn’t really see where we were going but I walk past that house every day on my way to school and it’s usually five minutes, tops. but it wasn’t this time.
once we got there, my dread seemed to disappear. it was raining by that point, so we were quick to sneak inside via the unlocked front door. inside it was musty, how you’d expect a house that hasn’t been lived in for 6 years and probably only dusted once a week. there was a heavy feeling to the air too, it was thick, and warm, despite the many open windows that let in the midnight winter air. The friends I brought, jasper and Liam, were 15 year old boys, so you can imagine how they were. They were making jokes left right and centre, and were in just as much awe as I was. Their presence made me lighten up a bit and begin to ignore the gut feeling in my stomach that was telling me to run very, very far away.
I wish I didn’t bring them. I wish I’d gone alone. because if I did, I wouldn’t have stayed. at least not long enough to learn the fucking truth.
we seated in the main area for a while, jasper drawing his graffiti tag on the fridge door, and me and Liam playing pretend broken home.
“WHERES MY FUCKING DINNER?!”
“IM FUCKING COOKING IT!”
“you always do this, YOU ALWAYS DO THIS!”
“well, maybe if you got up off your ass TO HELP, I MIGHT GET IT DONE QUICKER!”
“ohhh yeah, okay just BLAME ME for every MISTAKE YOU MAKE, HUH?!”
after a while of this, we got bored and decided to look around the rest of the home. walking along the floor was a bit of a roulette, as the floor would creak as if it were about to give in, and in some spots had sunk and felt significantly more malleable than the rest. the electricity worked in the main area, which was a kitchen connected to the living/dining room, cluttered with furniture and various family items, and as I looked at each one it was like a polaroid picture into this mans life. but the hall had no electricity.
as we walked down, it was like a huge mouth. it was so dark I couldn’t see the end of it, although it was rather short. so silent, apart from the rain, that It was deafening.
the silence was broken by jasper entering the first door. “yo check it out, it’s an office” he said, flashing his phone light into it. as I poked my head around the door, I could see all of the overflowing bookshelves, practically lined end to end with books, from Tolstoy to books on the occult. Although the occult ones, specifically, looked like they had been crammed in there, as if they were the last ones to be put back as the shelf was filling up.
on his cluttered desk sat a diary.
I decided that I didn’t want to read it.
jasper and Liam were joking around, picking up random trinkets and using them as swords, or looking through various briefcases. I pulled a book out of the bookshelf. ‘demons of the forest’ the title read, engraved in red on the black cover. there was a bookmarked page. flipping to it, my heart skipped a beat.
the page was titled “Asnath”, and it seemed to be hand printed, with a huge sprawling font. the rage had various scribbles and notes on it, some legible, most not. I wish I had gotten a photo, but I did write down what I could remember reading when I got home later that night, as best as I could given what happened.
“Asnath, commonly dubbed ‘the lurching woman’, is a spirit that roams through forests, and remote towns to feed on victims. Asnath is reported as almost 8 feet tall, although reports only describe her as a hunched figure, so it is likely Asnath is closer to 10-12 feet when straightened. Almost entirely black, with multiple (estimated 6-8 legs) and a monstrously long neck, Asnath resembles that of an arachnid, and has been reported to stalk in trees. One humanoid feature of Asnath is Her long, black hair and vaguely human face. although no one has gotten close enough to her and lived to report back. Asnath feeds on fear, often stalking her victims for long periods of time, where she will either wait for them to take their own life, or wait until they are driven mad before feeding. Asnath Regularly returns to victims homes to pray on other members of their family, presumabley as the family members and friends can be more easily manipulated.”
I huffed. I wish I didn’t. I wish I’d gotten the fuck out of there. but I remember specifically rolling my eyes and throwing the book to the floor. Jesper and Liam had left the room by then. I was about to, as well. but as I heard their voices echo so slightly in the bathroom across from me, the echo seemed to drown out, as all my thoughts seemed to be pulled toward the diary.
I eyed it for a bit, eventually giving in, the withered canvas spine cracking as I opened it up.
‘March 24, 2016
starting to recover from the death of my dearly departed wife, Adrianna. I find this diary to be comforting in my solace. I feel I must write or else my feelings will bottle up and overcome me. went for a walk today, nice wether. I saw Adrianna in the trees as they whistled at me. I know she is in a better place now,
Thomas Adler’
this passage bored me, but I flipped to the next anyway, almost robotically.
‘March 25, 2016
walked to get bread today. new neighbours moved in three doors down. lovely people
Thomas Adler’
I skipped ahead a few, as I was quickly tiring.
‘April 4, 2016
I fear for what I saw. in the trees. a dark figure, resembling a woman. I was sure I was seeing wrong, as my old eyes play tricks on me often. But at a second glance, I was met with the most grotesque entity I have ever seen in my life. I played it off as an animal, maybe a koala, that was brunt in the recent fires. But this thing was way too large for that. as I walked home I felt a presence watching me. I did not dare turn back around.
as I write this, a tapping at my window. I do not dare look up. for I fear it is that… thing. hopefully all will be solved in the morning. a trick of the old mind, perhaps
Thomas Adler’
I chuckled, this must all be fiction. an old man going insane after the death of his wife. poor thing, I thought.
‘April 20, 2016
it follows me. it’s always looking through my window. sometimes I see it, sometimes I do not. but I always know it is there. at night it taps on my window. it hides in trees and whenever I leave my house to go to the city, it is always in the corner of my eye. I can only wish to tell people, they’ll say I am mad. I cannot seem to stop writing in this diary, for fear of loosing my sanity. this diary is my only listener. this diary, and that… thing’
‘April 22, 2016
I do not know what has become of myself. I find myself talking to the house, mumbling things as though they were secrets that not a soul could hear, except they are all in a strange language not of this world. not for the human mouth to speak. I do not know how long I can last.’
as the pages went on, they became more manic. some of the following were just scribbled with the word ‘Asnath’ over, and over. some where covered in ink and spiralling patterns that seemed to be scrawled out of desperation. some were blank apart from a few specks of what I assumed to be blood. then there was more scribbling. until I got to what seemed to be the final page with anything on it.
‘April.
I cant deal with this much longer. the book. the book explained everything to me. that’s why it follows. thats why it haunts. it wants me. I know I am most certainly mad by now, for all reason and humanity has seemed to have left me. it will feast on me soon, I know it. I am not going to give it the satisfaction of killing me. I will die by my own hand.
Adrianna, we will meet again tonight.’
My mouth seemed to be fixed shut. my immediate thought was to laugh it off, but my body wouldn’t let me do so. I was then hit with a nave of nausea, as I heard the noise at the window above me.
tap, tap, tap.
I froze. I could feel it. I could feel it right there. my body seemed chained to the floor, along with my will itself. I couldn’t move as the insisting tapping noise grew more aggressive.
suddenly, I ran. I ran so fast and did not move my head or eyes up from the floor. I could feel my heart racing, pounding with the strength of what seemed like a million bolts of lighting. I ran towards the light of Jesper and Liam, in what I presumed to be the mans bedroom. but they did not move. they did not speak, their torches and eyes fixed infant of them. I looked up to what they looked at.
the bed.
covered in blood, sprayed up onto the wooden walls, capturing a movement, a moment in time. the mattress was soiled in blood, with other remains that had rotted so far into the bed that they seemed to have fused. there was no skull. not many bones. not enough for 6 years of decay.
I knew what had happened.
all I can remember is running. never looking up, never looking back. not for a second. we ran and ran and ran until I got home, where I remember jumping into my bed, pulling the covers over my head and praying for sleep. praying for it all the be a dream.
I never spoke to jasper or Liam after that. none of us ever spoke again. I kept the blinds of my room closed for months straight. would never look up when outside in my town. I rarely slept.
after months and a therapist I began to believe it was that of a bad dream. “The fear was playing tricks on you, You know how kids like to play things up in their heads” My therapist would tell me. and I began to believe her.
and so I stopped closing my blinds. I stopped looking at the floor. I began to walk to school again.
until three months ago.
I don’t really remember the second time I met it. I know I saw it. the first time seeing it was a blur to me. I remember I was walking to school, looking up at the sky to admire how the tall trees seemed to touch the sun from where I stood. and then it was there.
it follows me. it stalks me. During the day I see it in the distance. when I look out the window at school, its amount the bush trees on the horizon. when I walk it follows. sometimes it taps on my window at night. other times, it will poke its eyes through my window.
those, red, beady eyes.
I cant say anything to anyone, as I feel like they’ll say im insane or schizophrenic. but I just need someone to hear me.
so that brings me to now.
as im writing this, it taps on my window.
funny thing is, I convinced myself I would not let it take me. that I wouldn’t let it drive me mad, or to death. that I would ignore it. but it has begun to eat it’s way into my thoughts. they’ve become disturbed, stuff I cant even say on here because, in all honesty, I don’t want to be remembered as crazy. I’m not crazy. im a normal girl. I have dreams of becoming a philosopher and moving to the city, getting a job in a coffee shop while I study. I dream of waking up to the sounds of traffic, and drowning them out by putting on a Fiona apple record while I make myself a tea.
But I know it will consume me soon. so I can only do it myself. I won’t let it indulge in killing me.
I hope that you all see I’m not crazy.