I own a little antique shop in the pacific northwest. It’s in an even smaller town north of california and west of Idaho. We’re up in the mountains. It rains a lot. Great views. Not much in the way of business.
Especially that summer.
Most of my revenue came in the form of tourists and road trippers just passing through. My shop was just off a major highway, so it wasn’t unusual to have people pop by just to stretch their legs or grab refreshments. It’d been a few days since I’d had a ‘guest’ when the front door jingled. People were avoiding the area.
For good reason.
I looked up and there she was. A blonde twenty-something with her hair scraped back into a messy ponytail. She was wearing athletic gear, which was a little strange but not remarkably so. I figured she’d just been on her way to or from the gym.
“Can I help you with something?”
She stood there looking at me with the strangest expression. Her eyes were so wide I could see my reflection in them from three feet away. They fluttered around nervously, never focusing on me for long. Her expression was uncertain. Sad. Frightened.
“I don’t know.” She murmured.
“O-kay.” I put my book down and marked my page, “Well what are you looking for?”
“A way home.” She ventured, tucking her curled fingers against her chest. It was oddly vulnerable and yet gave me a strange sinking sensation at the same time.
“Are you lost? Do you know your address? I can help you look it up-” But when I looked up she was gone.
Vanished.
I have never doubted my own sanity so hard as I did in that moment. I couldn’t explain to myself where she’d gone or how. I must have just imagined her. I must have been more exhausted than I thought- and yet, I still looked for her between the avon glass, butcher block and straw dolls, eyes rattling from place to place like I’d find her inexplicably wedged into an impossibly small space.
I decided to finish locking up and just go home. Everything else could wait until morning. Obviously I needed more sleep.
A few seconds later I pulled the door shut behind me and checked to be sure it was locked. I was halfway to my car when I realized something was off. The creeping sensation I’d been feeling since the woman had entered my store took root in the pit of my stomach.
There was someone sitting in my back seat.
She wasn’t looking at me. She was staring straight ahead with the same vacant, lost look she’d been wearing in the store.
I immediately began to panic. Ten thousand questions rose and immediately drowned under the desperate desire to just get back in the store. I don’t think I took another breath until I was- and the door was locked behind me.
My next destination was the wall phone. I called my brother-in-law up and managed to tell him what was going on.
It was a few minutes before I saw his squad car pull around the corner. I stayed in the store and watched him check the perimeter before heading to my car.
I don’t know what I expected him to find but it certainly wasn’t the battered flashlight he came back with. He asked if it was mine- I said I didn’t think so. He asked if my car had been unlocked before. I said I wasn’t sure. He gave me a look- I’m sure you know the one- and offered to walk me to the car.
On the way he made me promise to be more careful and asked me if I wanted to keep the flashlight, since it wasn’t technically against the law to open someone’s car door and leave a non-threatening item.
Weird, but not illegal.
I didn’t know what else to do with it so I just said yes. I figured I could throw it out when I got home.
He was kind enough to follow me to the house. I was still rattled but feeling much better by that point. I even managed to smile while I waved him off.
I tossed the flashlight in the bin on my way through the garage. Trash didn’t get picked up until Tuesday but it was out of sight and out of mind there.
A few hours later I was washed up and tucked into bed, the incident mostly forgotten. I was two thirds of the way asleep when something woke me back up.
The living room light was flickering. Not rapidly, as I expected it to when a bulb died, but slowly and an even intervals. Great, I thought, wiring must’ve gotten worse. My husband had been supposed to fix it before his diagnosis. He wasn’t around to do it anymore.
I would have to call somebody out in the morning for it. Until then I got up to close my bedroom door. Halfway there the next flash caught me by surprise- and nearly blinded me in the process. WAY too bright and WAY too close to have been coming from the living room.
I caught the wall with my shoulder and snatched the door shut by feeling alone.
It took a few seconds for my eyes to readjust- And I still wasn’t scared during that time, more frustrated and concerned. That wasn’t until I opened my eyes again and saw the light flashing underneath my door that I realized something was very very wrong.
It has been a long time since I was in the Girl Scouts but I still remembered what three dots, three dashes and three dots represented.
I didn’t know of any wiring malfunction that could make a hall light flash sos.
Or line up underneath my door.
The way it was shining and almost had to be pressed right up against the crack.
I didn’t know of any wiring malfunction that sounded like a person breathing either. Heavy panting rasps right up against the door- punctuated by little hiccups and sobs.
THEY were the reason I opened the door. As terrified as I was they sounded even more scared. The deja vu when the door swung open and all I saw was a flashlight was crippling. It took me ten whole seconds to understand what I was seeing.
And as I watched it rolled- not over, but around in a circle. It flashed one more sos at my coffee table- I could hear the gasping and panting during the moments of darkness- and stayed on.
I hesitated to step over the thing. When I did I leaped like it was going to snatch my ankles. I felt much better once I was on the other side. Not safe and not completely, but by several orders of gravity- not being trapped helped. I backed a few feet away and turned around, staring at the flashlight until the rocking came to a complete stop.
“I don’t believe in- whatever you are.” Any belief I’d had in spirits died a few months after my husband did. I’d always believed that if ghosts existed he would find a way to contact me. Just to let me know that he was safe. That he was still there.
He never had- so I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt. It wasn’t possible.
And yet. Here we were. Here I was talking to a sobbing flashlight. It would have been laughable if it wasn’t so damn scary. I kind of wanted to cry myself.
“But I’m listening. Cautiously! And with the understanding that if you scream or make any sudden movements I am out of here.” Humor had always been my coping mechanism, but my legs were shaking and I was trying not to piss myself I was so scared.
The flashlight flickered weakly- as if it was running out of batteries.
I waited for a while before I reached out to touch it. Nothing happened. I set my hand on it. Nothing happened. I picked it up and-
All the lights in the house went out. All of them. Even the clock on the oven. My a/c whirred and died, plunging me into total darkness AND silence. My gut instinct was to fling the flashlight away from me- but it was also my only source of light, as at just that moment it came back on.
All the way on.
It absolutely flooded my living room with light.
What scared me more was the masculine scream. It sounded startled- but it also sounded angry. My fear of the flashlight and it’s weird behavior took a backseat. That scream felt very real in a very tangible way and it sounded VERY CLOSE.
I’d lived in that house for years. I knew every inch of it, even when I couldn’t see. I could have walked through it with my eyes closed- and that’s basically what I did. I put my hand out and rushed to my left, feeling for the corner that I knew turned into my kitchen. Every time I thought my eyes were about to adjust the flashlight would start strobing again. Dark and then bright, flashes without pattern.
It was dizzying. Like a nightmare. There were times I was sure I was falling- that the room had flipped onto its side or the counter was flying away from me. I threw myself across it and stretched for the phone. They were all landlines back then.
As crazy as it sounds I’d forgotten I was holding the flashlight. When I reached for the phone it flew out of my hand. I’d basically thrown it but at the same time, it almost felt like… it jumped?
All I’m sure of is that it flew away into the negative space. I heard it bounce off the wall and saw the flashes careen by me along the counter. I grabbed the phone and a knife from the block beside it, whipping around to confront whoever it was that was in my house-
Whatever. Whatever was in my house.
I’m going to try and describe it to you the best I can. I don’t care if you don’t believe me. There are nights I don’t even believe me- but I saw what I saw.
Not a person. Person shaped but there was no-
It was like they were made up of leaves, but not real leaves. The shadows of leaves. Does that make sense? No, probably not. It was like camouflage, but dark and shifting- and the pieces that were lighter than others were just transparent. If it hadn’t been so close I don’t think I would have noticed.
But it was really close. Close enough I could look directly into its hollow, gaping eyes.
Close enough I could make out the individual teeth in its jaw. Big, blunt teeth. White teeth. Human teeth.
And it was getting closer.
I held the knife out in front of me and tried to dial nine one one with my other hand. I knew in the back of my mind there wouldn’t be time for that. The thing moved like an Olympian at a dead sprint. It was closing in too fast.
I got ready to die. It sounds crazy, but in that moment I was absolutely certain that this was it. This was the end for me. Like being caught in the headlights of a semi or in a tunnel with a train. I felt heat swell across my arm and side and at the time- in that moment- I thought it was the monster climbing over the island.
It wasn’t until the light started to hurt my eyes that I realized it was the flashlight.
I tried to look at it but it was already too bright- and getting brighter. It got so bright I had no choice but to close my eyes and look away. It didn’t matter that I didn’t want to. I physically couldn’t look any longer.
I heard a pop and the shatter of glass, of plastic exploding. That scream again- that same angry, masculine scream- but this time there was something surprised about it.
“911, what’s your emergency?”
I pried my eyes open, ears still ringing, and stared in disbelief at the ugly black scorch mark across my kitchen wall. The island too.
“Hello? 911, what is your emergency? Is anyone there?”
I looked at the opposite counter, where the flashlight had been, and saw the remains of the flashlight. A cracked shell with bits and pieces of glass and plastic strewn all around it. I reached for the largest piece of the shell. It was still hot to the touch.
“Are you injured?” The woman on the phone continued to ask, “If you can’t speak try hitting a button-”
I lifted it to my ear and exhaled shakily.
“Yes? Hello. I’m here, I just- I don’t know what happened. Something- there was someone in my house.” As the plastic cooled I lifted it up. The lights in my house fluttered back on at exactly that moment.
I just wanted to go home. I swore I heard a woman sigh.
“Are they still there?” The operator’s voice echoed calmly in my ear.
“Yeah. Kind of.” I whispered, lowering the split casing and staring at the very real, very human legs sprawled in the middle of the ugly black smear in my kitchen. I crept around the corner to look down at him- the man dressed all in black.
“I think he’s dead.”
His body was still smoldering when the police arrived.