I can’t tell you exactly why I joined the neighborhood watch group, it may have been because of my boredom or the need to do something useful or maybe because I wanted to do something good. Either way after four years of living in the Small Town of Innsmouth, spending the money I made selling my families old farm while trying to write a book, I signed up for the watch group and was immediately accepted.
We spent most nights walking around the crimeless town helping people find their lost pets or reprimanding teenagers who hung out near the gas station and drank alcohol. It was a pointless job, until the first body was found.
The local mayor had taken his own life our group were the closest to his house, so naturally we were the first responders. On arrival we met his traumatized and frantic wife who lead us to the body. As I stepped into the house I got an almost recognizable feeling of unease, one that tracked deep into my soul. However at that time I brushed it off to the fact that I was being lead towards a dead body.
In his study, the mayor sat on his chair. His head down with his chin touching his chest. It looked like an almost natural sight, like he had fallen asleep after working too hard. With the only thing out of place being the shot gun on the floor and the streak of blood and brain matter splattered across the wall behind him.
It was clear to both our group and the rest of the town what had happened here and why he did it. The Mayor had a little project up the Mountains that bordered our town, a drilling project to look for natural resources, coal, However something went wrong about a year ago, an accident occured, and several people died.
It was later found that safety protocols were not being adhered to on the work sight and the Mayor was blamed. Using his political contacts he managed to avoid jail time and keep his office, but it seemed like he felt guilty.
A lot of the towns people thought he should have felt guilty, because after all, he had taken the lives of a lot locals. Although I didn’t have much to say about the situation, I still couldn’t shake the familiar unease and tried to understand why it was so familiar. Which took me back to a memory from my past.
When I was younger, barely five years old, I lived in a large farm house. In proportion to my young body the house was gigantic and I spent months exploring it. That was until I stepped on the wrong part of the dark basement.
The entire floor started to disintegrate into thousands of pieces and some of those pieces even started to climb up my body. I screamed louder than I had ever screamed in my life and my dad found me.
It turned that I had stepped into a rats nest and disturbed them, My parents never knew we had a rat problem. However once they did they got to work at getting rid of them. Using a number of different products.
When only a few rats were left scampering around the house they brought in a cat. Apart from farm animals I had never had a pet in my life and I loved the cat, it was gentle and soft to me and I often played with it. However when I wasn’t playing with it, it turned into something else.
The cat would stalk around the house and hunt for rats, and when it found those rats it was a completely different beast.
After the Mayor was buried and the small town had forgotten the entire situation, another body was found. This time it was a homeless man and I’m sad to say that not much attention was paid to his death.
Again we were the first responders to this situation. A group children walking to School had come across his body and called us, he was floating face down in a local stream and from the back it seemed like a drowning.
When emergency staff pulled him out they found something different. His face was unbroken, but bent sideways. Not in the way someone would turn their head, but more like in the way a force would hit someone and turn their face sideways but keep their head straight. With his jawbone in his cheeks and his forehead occupying the space behind his earlobe.
Officially, he had taken his own life, jumped of a nearby bridge and hit a banister on the way down. Unofficially I felt the same unease at this scene that I had felt at the first scene. Again I flashed back to the cat, catching rats and it almost seemed like I was meant to connect that situation to this.
The third and final body was found not long after. This case was different because instead of a guilty politician or a homeless man, it was a young girl. Barely nineteen, the regular church girl had used her keys to open up her throat on the steps of the church.
Again we were the first responders and again the feeling off unease enveloped me.
In the investigation that had come later, it was found that the Young Woman had come to the church for help. It was also found that the homeless man had recently been attending church services and that the Mayor had had a visit from the local Pastor a day before his death. Of course all the pieces were coming together and naturally the pastor was taken in for questioning.
Everything seemed to be making sense, until it didn’t make sense to me. The next three events happened to me over the course of the week and although they seem random, The fact that they were random is what made me understand.
On a seemingly random night I returned to my home to hear noises. They were definitely human noises and they seemed to be coming from the attic, the basement and the bathroom.
Investigating each my a taser in my hand I found absolutely nothing. The noises were unmistakable words but I couldn’t quite figure out what they were. So I went to sleep thinking that I was losing my mind.
I awoke in the middle of the night to the noises again, However this time they were coming from my phone, my television set and my radio. However anytime I approached one of these devices the noises dropped again.
I had watched enough horror movies to know what a ghost haunting was, I had also watched enough horror movies to know that staying in the house during a haunting was the dumbest thing I could do. So I left and went to a motel.
The next morning I left the motel with the intention of seeking religious help, however the pastor was in police custody so I needed to find something else.
I would never figure out what that other thing was because everywhere I went, I saw something out of the corner of my eye. A man was following me, dressed a cloak and a white mask, holding a knife. However Everytime I tried to approach him he disappeared.
In less than twenty four hours I had gone from a ghost to a serial killer. A smarter man wouldn’t be able to see what was happening, However I was a failed writer and a failed writer could see amateur work when it presented itself. So the next event put it all in perspective for me.
I sat down at a diner and ordered lunch while trying to figure out my next move when the plate was put in front of me. Bacon and eggs, I enjoyed my meal and it tasted better than any meal I ever had.
I had been so consumed by it that when I looked up I realized the diner was empty. Hoping to compliment the chef or at least the waiter, I went to the door of the kitchen, but stopped short of opening when I looked through the door at the strange sight in front of me.
Two beings other than human were talking. They were stereotypical aliens with large heads and big green eyes, holding probes in their hands.
I left and ran as far as I could. I ran until it made sense. In forty eight hours I had been haunted by three incredibly lazy horror tropes. Each one just a way to add conflict to a horror story. It was the dumbest shit I had ever seen and it had been in every horror movie I would watch, worst than that it downright amateur and something I would write.
Regardless of the silliness, I still felt the unease and fear in each situation and again flashed back to the cat.
It moved through the house, caught a rat and took the rat with it. Cats never immediately kill a rat, they instead play with them. As if they want this other living being to feel afraid of them. Pushing them, pulling them, jumping on them, until they get bored. Only when the rat goes limp and no longer allows the cat to play with it, does the cat finally kill it.
I don’t know what’s going to happen next but I do know horror tropes, and going to a pastor is pretty much the end of any horror story and I believe that may be why all those people died after the local pastor got directly involved. They refused to play and the cat killed them.
As for the metaphorical cat, I think that whatever it is, it came from the accident in the mountains and somehow it uses what humans have made themselves afraid of, to play with them. Horror tropes, guilt, fear of religions and whatever else may exist in our minds.
In the last week’s I’ve seen a number of these tropes, some of the have genuinely terrified me. Things like dead Children, dismembered family members and spirits show up, fill me with dead and leave.
Other horror tropes are just silly, sometimes there’s a serial killer standing at the door waiting for me to run up the stairs and other times their are garden gnomes stealing my food.
However in all of these, I know I can’t seek help, because if I do than I end the story and the cat kills me, however I also can’t stop playing its game. Because if I go limp, it ends the story and the cat kills me.
I have to let it keep torturing me, for as long as I can.