I’ve been a mute for over a month now. After everything that has happened, I can’t bring myself to say anything. It’s not that I feel bad really, it’s just that everyone is making a huge deal out of something meant to make me happy. I thought this was going to be easy—I thought they’d put me in foster care and move on. Instead here I am being forced into therapy.
I also don’t know how to explain to my therapist, my case worker, my mom, or the police that a shadow man helped me. How do I tell them without them thinking I’m insane? My therapist gave me this journal to help me speak. So, I might as well tell the truth on these pages.
********
It started about a year ago. I wasn’t sure if I was seeing things or not but every night at 3:33 AM I would wake up to a man in the corner of my room. He didn’t have any distinct features. In the dark he just had a silhouette of a man in a heavy coat with a short top hat.
I can’t tell you why I didn’t panic. For some reason he gave me this sense of calm. Plus, whenever I’m half asleep I really don’t have that same sense of alarm that one should. I didn’t tell a soul about what I saw every night. We just lived in total harmony together, him watching me as I slept and me letting him do so to his heart’s content.
His appearances started around the time my father started working more, drinking more, and coming home less. I spent most days (and honestly some nights) alone in our apartment. He still did his parental duties whenever he wasn’t degrading me or shoving me around.
He still paid rent, I assumed, since we hadn’t been kicked out. He would transfer money to my account so I could buy my own personal products and groceries for the house. All the bills seemed to be paid on time. And since him shoving me around didn’t really hurt me physically I never bothered to tell anyone. I also never bothered to fight back. He was drunk after all.
What really hurt me were his words. “Your mom left because you were an accident. She almost terminated you.” He’d say. His favorite was, “I have a hard time loving you since you scared the love of my life away.”
He would start saying things like this around my birthday each year but usually it would subside. I just took it as a sort of ritual we had that way I could get through his verbal abuse. My birthday would just mean my father was depressed. He missed my mom.
I can’t say why he would miss her honestly. The few times I’ve talked to her she’s been cold and sometimes my father would say the same of their conversations together. For a while he would call her first and I’d hear him in his room pleading for her to come back. She obviously never did.
My dad would do this on my birthday every year. Then start his abuse. Then it would all kinda die down. This past birthday she didn’t pick up.
I can say with total certainty, I am a stoic person. It was something about my own parent saying these words that cut like a knife though. Usually, I would shrug off the bullying in school or online but this for some reason just felt worse. Since my father knew me well and for my whole life, his words just felt like they were… true.
Like I said my father had always been a bit harsh but the heavy abuse didn’t start until a year ago. He was never really that affectionate towards me but we usually operate as close acquaintances that coexisted well enough. I cannot pinpoint what happened that made him start this behavior. He had a steady job and basic necessities a person needs. Looking back, I think it all started after my sixteenth birthday last year.
I remember the evening of my birthday after Dad placed a trio of cupcakes in front of me with lit candle (no happy birthday song). I blew the candles out and smiled as I thanked him. Our eyes met but his face was so sullen.
“You look a lot like her,” He said finally. “It’s kinda scary.”
Whenever he got like this I never knew what to say. How do I console a grown man? My own father? I have never experienced losing the love of my life. And to be honest I never really cared about not having a mother, so I didn’t have the same emotional investment.
“She hated you so much you know she snuck out of the hospital the night you were born?” This was the first time he had ever given me this much detail. “The staff was thin that night so no one saw her and I was asleep on the couch by her. She just got dressed and walked out. To this day I have no idea where she went. I don’t even know why she keeps the same number… or hasn’t blocked my number.”
I remember I focused on my cupcakes while he spoke. I took the single candle out of each one and gingerly unwrapped them as he droned on.
“Sometimes I think she does it to torture me.” He sighed. “Or maybe she does still love me but doesn’t want to be around you?”
I shrugged. He was looking at me expectantly as if I had the answers. As if I could decipher the mind of the stranger who birthed me. I may look like her, but I am not her so I could never help him through these moments.
I do remember that night I cried until my body ached. I cried so much I didn’t even remember drifting off to sleep. I woke up with a dry mouth, aching eyes, and a heavy chest. I started crying almost immediately when I remembered what had happened.
I rolled over to see the clock read 3:33 AM. As I did so I shifted my eyes towards my closet door where I saw him for the first time. I started calling him Top Hat Man. I read through some online forums and apparently, he visited a lot of people around the world. He mostly visited abused and very sad children.
The thing is people told accounts of him hurting them too. They said that his presence in no way is a good omen to anyone in the household, even the victim. But here’s the thing… he was good to me. He helped me.
*****
Now that there is some context my dear therapist (or whoever is reading this) the rest of what I have to say may make a little more sense. Remember how I said that many people said Top Hat Man was sinister? Meanwhile when he was with me it was like having a guardian angel. Well, there’s a few major moments that proved these feelings.
He watched me for months. It was probably five months before I even acknowledged I could see him. This night should’ve been like any other night where I’d wake up to see my alarm clock across the room read 3:33 AM. I never slept well anyway so I didn’t mind being woken up each night.
This night there were more entities in my room than Top Hat Man. I was having a fitful sleep, waking up every half hour or so since 9 PM the previous night. I counted down the time until Top Hat Man would show.
I wasn’t sure if he would even help. I just knew his presence gave me some comfort. Meanwhile, the shadow figures that swirled around my room were leaving scratches all over my body. At 3:30 one started to slowly rake their claws down my thighs towards my feet.
I remember trying to move but it was useless. The three minutes until his arrival were literal torture.
For a moment I thought I had blacked out. It wasn’t my eyes closing, it was my room going literally pitch black. It was so black like I was in a cellar—no windows, no doors, no source of light. I heard a low, guttural growl all around me followed by shrieking.
As quick as it started it stopped though. I had to let my eyes adjust but after a few moments I looked around my bed. The shadow people were gone and when I glanced in the corner there he was.
I crawled out of bed and limped my way to the bathroom. I cleaned the gashes on my legs in the shower and got them bandaged before going back to sleep.
The second time he intervened was about three months ago. It was 5 AM on a Saturday. The sun was starting to shine a bit, but my room was still mostly dark. I heard keys clumsily being put into our door then Dad’s footsteps. I started to drift off until my room door slammed open.
My dad stumbled in using the wall for support until he got his footing. Like I said before, we aren’t particularly close, which includes us never entering each other’s bedrooms. Confused that he stepped inside my private space, I sat up.
“I’m so glad you’re back, Teresa.” He grumbled. “I’ve missed you so much.”
It took me too many long moments to realize what was happening. He thought I was my mother. I go to throw my legs over the other side of my bed, but I was too slow. His heavy body crushed me into immobility. I immediately started to use my arms and legs to push him off, but he kept struggling against me.
“Why are you being like this Teresa? You’re always pushing me away any way you can.” He said way too close to my ear. I could smell the alcohol on his hot breath. Then he started grabbing at my hips and I fully started to panic.
I started basically flailing hoping that if I moved enough it would tire him out. He kept going though. I remember feeling burning hot tears prickling my eyes. I glanced over into the corner to see Top Hat Man gone as the first early morning rays shone through my window.
I had to fight this alone this time. Dad started to reach his hand up my shirt and my brain fought between two options: submit or fight. For a moment my body felt so tired, and I was so close to just giving in. Instead, I found just enough strength to grab his ridiculously large forearm and hold it into place.
I blinked away my tears locking eyes with him. “I am not Teresa. I am your daughter, Isabelle. You need to get off me before I call the cops.”
I was honestly bluffing. I wasn’t mentally prepared to be taken away or put my father behind bars. He didn’t need to know that. I held his gaze for a few more long moments before recognition lit in them. He slowly started to lift his weight off my body.
“You… look just like her.” He ran a burly hand through his hair before dragging himself down the hall to his room.
I immediately locked the door behind him—something I had never done before. I have never really feared my dad before this moment. I never feared him because I didn’t think he was capable of hurting me this way.
I don’t remember much more from that day until the night the Top Hat Man helped me for the third and final time. I can say that the rest of the following week he wasn’t a shadow in the corner. He walked closer to my bed, watching over me. His red eyes finally started to show and somehow, without features, it looked like they portrayed sympathy.
*****
This brings us to how I’ve come to be a mute and filling this journal with my confession. If you can even call it a confession. This is just the truth of the events that happened and my part in all of it.
I locked myself in my room every night moving forward after my dad assaulted me. I spent most of those nights crying myself to sleep and waking up crying. I was a mess. Then something I never expected happened.
Top Hat Man stood above me as I woke up back up around 4 AM, tears soaking my pillow. He moved, the same gestures as a human but he seemed to be totally made of smoke—a haze. Somehow, he managed to use his not-really-there hands to cups my face. They were oddly soft and really warm.
I sat up slowly and he fixed my gaze with his. His eyes looked like two burning pits of hell. No fear pulsed through my body in that moment, just a child-like need for protection.
“I can help.” He said in voice so deep yet so breathless. It’s like his voice was floating smoke like his body. “If you trust me I can help you.”
In awe, I couldn’t find the words to speak back to him so I just nodded my head slowly. With my confirmation he placed a hand on my forehead and in an instant I was drifted into a deep sleep. With that deep sleep I had the most unexpected dream.
It was me, my dad, and my mother. We were living in a beautiful home in the suburbs and functioning. A normal, happy, functioning family. It was a bright morning my parents kissed as Dad sat down with a cup of coffee. Mom was at the stove cooking my favorite breakfast—bacon and scrambled eggs.
Out the window I could see kids running around in their yards and neighbors greeting each other. Basically, the unrealistic, ideal life I imagine in the moments my heart is heavy. Here it was being played out in a dream. Mom sat the plate of food in front of me but as I go to take a bite I wake up.
I glanced around my room for a while, letting reality set in. There was no one in the corner by the closet. Everything looked normal in my room at least but I could feel a shift in the air. I slowly opened my bedroom door into the hallway. I looked to the end of the hall where my dad’s door was barely opened. Typically he slept with his door totally closed so I instantly felt suspicious.
I crept down to his door gingerly pushing it. It opened a bit with a squeak but no protest from anyone inside. I pushed the door the rest of the way to reveal my dad in his bed. Something still didn’t feel right and with the sun barely lighting the room I reached over to turn the light on.
I wasn’t quite prepared to see what I did but it still sent comfort slowly creeping through my body. In his bed laid my father deep gashed strewn across his body from head to toe. He bled out so much it pooled over from the mattress onto the floor around him. The window near his bed was busted in making it look like someone had broken in to torture him to his death.
I backed out slowly heading to my room for my phone to call the authorities. I took a few beats to drum up some acting skills before dialing 9-1-1. My distraught voice and hysterics had the dispatcher send the cops out in record time.
They quickly dismissed me as a suspect especially after seeing a huge bruise on my forehead (that I didn’t even know was there).
“Do you remember what he looked like when he knocked you out?” One of the police officers asked me.
I shook my head. “I slept through everything…”
*****
I put the journal down throwing myself back into my bed.
“Isabelle?” I hear from my open doorway. I look over to see my mom standing there looking at me softly.
I sit up and make room, gesturing for her to come sit down.
“You don’t have to give that your therapist,” she says. “I know he helped you.”
My eyes go wide despite myself. I don’t want to assume anything, so I say my first word in over a month.
“Who?”
“The Top Hat Man.”
I look her in the eyes waiting for her to continue.
She proceeds to tell me what led me to being left with my father.
“You father was never really a good man,” Mom tells me. “He was always abusive. Very abusive towards me and tried to prove he did it out of love for me.”
I see tears start to form in her eyes. She goes on to say how the night I was born the Top Hat Man appeared in the hospital room. My dad was asleep but mom was wide awake planning her escape.
“I had nothing to my name,” her voice is ragged from crying now. “Your father controlled everything—including not letting me have a source of income. I had to decide if I should take a newborn with me with no money, no car, and nowhere to go.”
At some point earlier that same night she tried to leave with me despite her better judgement. As soon as she picked me up I started crying waking up Dad.
He fell back asleep, I stopped crying, and shortly after that Top Hat man appeared before her. He was giving her a choice.
“I hadn’t seen him since I was younger. Once I turned eighteen, he just stopped showing up.” A sad smile spread across her face. “He’s protected the women in our family for generations.”
“Why us?” I ask.
She shrugs. “It’s just been that way for some time now. The women in our bloodline have gone through hell and as far back as my grandmother could remember he had been there.”
Once he appeared to her, Mom begged him to watch over me until she could come for me. She never did though.
“I never hated you,” she assures me. “But I’m sure your dad told you otherwise. I just felt so guilty and honestly so afraid of him. I wasn’t sure how to get you from you dad. By the time you were old enough I just felt like I had waited too long. I just planned to wait until you were eighteen to reach out to you.”
Her chest heaves with a sigh. I can tell she feels like a weight gone with that story out in the open. I honestly never would have known any of this with the lies Dad had weaved.
“Why didn’t you ever have Top Hat Man kill Dad? Before I was even born?” I ask her.
“I could have but then who would have taken care of us?”
I mull the question over. She’s not wrong. How sad though—that victims have to choose between violent comfort or complete destitution?
After our talk Mom took me out to the backyard and threw a match into the fire pit. The branches inside slowly started crackling, flames dancing in the dark.
“You can burn that journal, you can keep it for yourself, or you can give it to your therapist. It’s up to you.” She tells me before walking back inside.
I gaze into the fire and tap my fingers across the hard cover of the book. Across the yard I see two red eyes floating midair. I take a step forward but decide to leave him there just as he’s giving me my space. Instead I nod my head in acknowledgment.
I squat down next to the fire weighing my options. That doesn’t last long because a few moments later I toss the book into the fire. There’s no reason for me to forsake my foremothers… or my protector.