Part 1
It’s been a long couple of nights. I’ve stayed up through most of them sifting through the many cardboard boxes searching for more of those strange papers. You see, I’m not having to check through just a few boxes. If you haven’t seen the images of the Collyers’ collection, you should take a moment to look them up. The extent of the hoard is just as the papers describe them: mountains. I’m currently sitting here in my dining room, typing this out on my laptop, while surrounded by stacks and stacks of boxes and bound newspapers. I almost feel like the Collyer Brothers myself. In more ways than one.
But in my digging I’ve found several more entries. Each of the mysterious stories I’ve found have been near the top of their respective boxes, never deeper beneath. Interestingly enough, all of the entries are also wrapped the same way; they’re trifolded, like the papers you’d pull out of an envelope, and also bound taught with hemp string. Now, not every bundle of papers that match this description that I’ve found have been entries in the story, but I haven’t found an entry to the story presented any other way. Furthermore, I think I’ve worked out a pattern. My theory is that whoever placed these papers in these boxes did so in the same general area. Not only that, but I may know how to tell which boxes were near another. I had the epiphany when, as I was shuffling through the endless documents, I noticed that the box in front of me had a distinctive, blotchy stain that perfectly aligned with the one next to it. If I continue to work through the boxes by lining up the stains and abrasions to find their neighbors, then maybe I can more easily find the rest of the entries.
I’m getting ahead of myself. I apologize for the rambling, but this really is fascinating to me. Until I get the chance to find more, I’ll transcribe what I’ve found. This, I think, is the correct chronological order of the writings. After I post this, I think I’ll take a long deserved rest. This task is starting to take its toll on me.
-————————–
Ragged. Dilapidated. Hermetic. Contemptible. He lay there on his mattress, unconscious and weak. Homer Collyer, the sad old shut-in, breathed his raspy breaths. He slept aside a mound of papers. They held news. News of a world the desolate recluse did not participate in. News that his faded, milky eyes couldn’t read. A practical man would toss the papers out and be done with it. A reasonable man would. But not he.
Slowly his eyes opened. For a time, he did not stir. Though consciousness had cursed him again, he kept still, pondering, questioning his life. His vision had decayed. No longer could he make out details. No matter how hard he focused, only blurry silhouettes filled his world. He closed his eyes again. Only in his dreams could he see clearly. He begged for another slumber, another set of visions to escape. But it was for not. The sloth had slept most the day through already. His mind refused to slip away again.
He forced himself up only slightly. He shifted to his back. He stuffed the pillows beneath him so that he could face the door. And there he saw It. Almost breathlessly he muttered the name Langley. Asked if his brother was there. Was that his silhouette? When no answer came, he swallowed hard.
“Do you really dare?” He asked, feigning fortitude. “Do you truly face me plainly in my own room? Ey, apparition?”
But the spirit said nothing.
“Are you a ghost? Or a monster? Perhaps an intruder come for my fortune?”
Slowly the old man moved his hand to the night stand. Slowly towards the drawer. Towards the pistol inside.
*POP!*
He was pale as a ghost on his arrival. The blood was gone from his face. A look of utter and unmistakable dread. Langley slowly pacified. His brother was still living. The breaths began to fill Langley’s lungs again.
“What in God’s name, Homer?”
Homer looked at the shape of his kin, now standing where It had just stood.
“Surely you didn’t think…”
“I dared not imagine it. I only ran when I heard the shot.” They kept silent. Only looking at each other. “Why then?” Langley wondered. “If not for that… purpose. Then for what?”
“It was here, dear brother. Or rather there. Standing where you are now. In the threshold of my room.”
Again Langley’s face grew pale. It couldn’t be. It wasn’t so. That It could go where it once would not. That It would ascend to the second floor.
“Why only now?” Langley wondered aloud. “After all these years. Why is it only now stepping closer?”
-–End of entry.
-—————–
The strange man stumbled his way through the labyrinth of litter. Although he was an intruder to this home, although he had climbed through the second floor window, now that he was in, he felt the greatest dismay of his life. The floor crunched underneath him. The years, nay, decades of refuse caused his every move to be announced.
“Who dares go there?” called a voice from the other side of the piles. “Is it you, Langley? Or is it you, apparition?”
The man slowly stepped towards the voice. On the other side of a grand piano, piled high with newspapers and dishes, sat an old hermit. He was in front of a fire, whose amber flames flickered on the wrinkles of the aged face.
“He’s neither,” said a voice from directly behind the guest. In shock, he recoiled and pulled his baton. “Easy, officer. Would you dare strike a man in his own home?” asked Langley.
“Apologies, Mr. Collyer,” muttered the shaken policeman. “Only here on duty. Came inquiring on the payment of some utility bills.”
Langley clicked his tongue in disapproval. “This is what the officers of this city do now? Come beckoning, breaking and entering on behest of the banks.”
“They’re quite overdue,” responded the officer. He pulled a booklet from his pocket and offered it to the shaggy headed man. He took it, but not kindly.
“I must find my checkbook,” Langley said. “Homer, watch over our guest won’t you?”
As the younger brother walked out of the room, the elder chuckled to himself. “Watch after.”
The officer now took a more inquisitive look at the geezer sat in his tattered chair. His gaze did not move from the flames. His body was arched, awkwardly and crookedly.
“Why do you sit like that?” asked the policeman. “With your knees to your chin. And why do you stare into the flames?”
“My vision is gone. My body is locked. I could not move from this position if I willed it with every bit of strength I have left. I am entombed in this sarcophagus of a corpse, only still surviving. Barely.”
Langley returned. He placed a freshly written check in the officer’s palm. The policeman leaned in to whisper to the younger brother. “Perhaps it is time. It would be cruel to let him continue as he is.”
Langley stared odiously at the man. “How did you get in?” he asked.
“A ladder through the second story window. Everything on the first is barred.”
“Did it occur to you that it was for a reason? Leave. Quickly.”
After he was sure the officer was gone, Langley got to work. He constructed barricades at every window, just as he had done on the first floor. When he was sure no entry could be permitted, he returned to his brother’s side. To his moldy green armchair. As the warmth of the hearth kissed his cheeks, he considered the policeman’s words. Perhaps it was time. Perhaps for both of them.
-–End of entry.
-———–
At last he had completed them. The last of the fixtures. The still mobile Collyer admired his work. A simple snare. One that he would know to avoid, but one that an intruder would miss amongst the clutter. The last of a series of trappings to keep himself and his brother safe. To give them some respite from the monster, and any intruders as well. But not just that. Also to keep the outsiders safe. So that none of them would intrude, and set the apparition free.
The radio’s tunes swung gently through the air. Langley allowed himself to collapse into his armchair.
“My back is quite stiff, Homer. Setting those traps is a job ill suited to an old geezer such as I.”
“Yet you are immeasurably more suited compared to I.” They shared a chuckle. “You do not understand gratitude, dear brother. You do not understand dear gratitude until you have lost your sight. Your body. Your sound mind. You do not know how grateful I am to keep my voice and ears.”
“Nor how displeased I am that those were the last to go,” chided Langley. Once again they laughed merrily. They had gone several days without disturbance from their monster. Several days of seeming normalcy. It would be their last.
-–End of entry.
-————
Those were the only three that I have found, but what a find they have been. The story, the true story of what happened to the brothers may nearly be mine to know. And perhaps, even likely, I will be the first to know the truth. Anyhow, I must get some rest. The exhaustion is playing tricks on my mind. I keep seeing shapes just at the edge of my vision. Maybe I’m being paranoid from the readings, but it almost seems familiar. No. I’m being silly. I’ll update again soon. If that last paragraph is anything to go by, perhaps I only have one more installment to find.
Final