Sorry if this is confusing. I have a hard time wording things, and often I find that no matter how clear I try to make myself, people end up being unable to understand what I’ve tried to get across regardless. It’s a problem I’ve had my whole life, and I’ve not been very social because of it, so I’m sure you can imagine that when I met E for the first time (I’m using E as a placeholder here so as not to give away his full name), and he responded to my explanations and monotone descriptions with a look of understanding and appreciation, we got along rather well.
I’ve known E for a while now. We’re the same age, we have similar interest, and we see each other fairly often. He’s from a rather large family- fourteen siblings if I’m remembering correctly- and we have a lot to talk about, so we often hang out and chat about…well, nothing, really. His company is nice. He did ask me out once, confessing to a crush he’d been sitting on for a while, but I didn’t feel the same way, so I turned him down. Since then we’ve been a lot closer. I think the pressure of being rejected was what held him back.
E is one of the older members of the family. He has four older siblings and he’s part of a set of triplets. It can be daunting sometimes, I think, and anyone who knows him knows that he’s usually a nervous wreck. He gets super anxious, to the point where normally he can’t even step outside due to the paralyzing fear of having to be seen by others, or speak to them, so it came as a pretty big surprise to me when he didn’t flinch when I smiled with entirely too many teeth, or didn’t laugh as hard as people normally would at his jokes, or when I didn’t bother putting on unnecessary expressions for his sake during conversations. Likewise, I think it came as a surprise to him when after months of observing his pale grey eyes, ever-peeling skin, and his morbid sense of humour regarding death, I could tell that he was dead.
Neither of us really minded each others oddities.
I’m giving this context because it’s important for what’s yet to come. E is dead, of course. He’s a corpse. He can walk, and talk, and think for himself, obviously, but please make no mistake. He’s dead. The rest of his family is the same, all sharing those same lifeless grey eyes.
I noticed those eyes on the second eldest sister, I’ll call her S, when I saw her studying with some other friends. They had been sat around a table with a desk lamp, all participating in what I think was some sort of group project. She had been sat behind them. I noticed the eyes first because the way she had been sat, along with her clothing and her dark hair, almost entirely concealed her in a veil of shadow, excluded from the circle and hidden in the background. Some time later, I saw her face under some proper lighting; I personally think she bears an uncanny resemblance to Megan Fox in the film Jennifer’s Body, but with a subtler alt/gothic style of makeup, and clothing to match, but at the time none of that had been visible. I only saw her when she moved, looked up, and those glassy eyes caught the light of the lamp. They gave the impression of a cat, reflective, something like a mirror. I didn’t like it. The suddenness of it made me jump.
I feel like I need to preface this by saying that since knowing her better, I can’t say that anything is really…wrong with S. She’s dead, but that’s not of importance to me, and the initial startling wasn’t anything unusual. I like staying out of groups too, and sitting at the back of a circle of people is something I’ve done often. It gets too crowded when I’m fully involved. Since meeting her I’ve learned that, like her younger brother, she has some anxiety problems too- though they’re not nearly as severe. I know that she prefers her face being covered when she’s outside. I know she smokes. I know she’s strict with herself. I know she has a tendancy to lean towards the occult, and that she likes to lay her eyes on strange things, clasping at whatever shadows dance just beyond her reach, just to get a sight of them. Just to touch what cannot be seen.
S is a lot like me. But unlike me, she just seems…entirely too aware of things. She’s the type of person I imagine would see something scuttling across the floor in a horror movie, and, rather than leaving or finding a place to hide, would stalk closer for a better look. Sometimes I catch this look on her face as though she’s not entirely there. Sometimes I could swear it’s as though there’s a rope around her waist that pulls her towards things, tugging in such a way that she cannot control the urge to feel out the bait and the trap for herself. Sometimes I wonder if she does it purely because she can, rather than for any true understanding of things. I don’t know what it is about her that makes her so eerie to me; her older brother is practically an angel, her younger siblings are all fine, but she spooks me somehow. I often catch her in the library after dark, talking with a man I can’t quite see. He wears a cloak, and sometimes I could swear I almost see the illusion of wings against his back.
I’d normally ignore this, because although it’s strange and unnerving, it hasn’t caused me any problems. But I’m writing this because something HAS happened recently.
At night, when I try to sleep, I hear things outside. Weird noises. Growling. Faint scratching. Sniffing. It sounds large, and thin, and the sounds usually come from above my window, so it must be tall. I live in a pretty urban area, so the biggest animals around are foxes, I’ve never even seen a deer around here. But whatever it is, it slowly moves around and sniffs and scratches, and I cannot shake the impression that it’s searching for a way in. I can’t see it through the gap above my curtains, mind you, but when I go to the shops the next day I see the scratch marks in the brick wall and I know it wasn’t a dream. I’ve left the lamps on overnight recently, when I’m home alone, because that seems to stop it from getting any closer. My theory is that it can’t step into the light.
Every time this happens, I talk about it with E. He’s weirdly calm about it, compared to his usual nerves. I guess he then goes and tells S afterwards, because she shows up for the night with some odd book I assume she got from that cloaked man in the library. She sits there and reads it calmly in the darkness. I don’t know how she can make out the words, seeing as she never uses a reading lamp or anything on these occasions. The Thing comes back, it sniffs around, and then it recoils with a hacking noise and it’s rapid footsteps scatter across the road, away from us. It doesn’t come back for the rest of the night. She usually falls asleep after finishing the book, but I always stay awake, just in case it comes back for that night. It never does.
Yesterday night, though, she didn’t bring a book. I don’t know what she brought. It was in a box, and although I couldn’t see what was inside, I could hear it faintly rustling about in there. She kept that box on her lap the whole night, and when she moved to turn off the lights, I refused. I wouldn’t let her. Something about it felt bad. She tried reassuring me, but after I snapped at her and demanded they stay on, she gave in and went to bed. Again, I stayed up.
I’m scared. I don’t know what she’s doing. I don’t know what’s outside. I don’t know what will happen if the lights go out, and I don’t know why the thing avoids us when she brings those books. Most of all I can’t understand why she’d stop bringing them. It always leaves when she’s reading. I’m scared of what’s in that box and I’m scared of the thing outside. She’s nice, but this whole thing just scares me, and she’s really creeping me out. I don’t know if I’m looking for advice, or just to vent, or what. All I know is that the sun has been down for a while now and I’m so tired. I don’t want to turn off my lamp.
. . .
Edit.
There’s been a power cut. The lights are off. It’s outside again.