They don’t make any sound when they move.
It’s one of the things we all remembered. No footsteps, no breathing, no voice. You will never know how close they are until it is much, much too late.
And once you have seen them they never let you go. Even if you survive the night you will spend the rest of your life on the run.
Trust me.
I know.
*
I am one of the “survivors”, if you can really call us that. We go on with our lives the best we can. Running and hiding and praying. Our group met online, all brought together by stories just like my own.
I had been searching for years, hoping for any clue about what I had experienced. I spent countless hours scrolling through page after page of useless rumours and fictional accounts. I moved through hundreds of chat groups and forums until at last I found this one, the real thing. People who were hunted like me. People who have seen them.
*
There have never been many of us. The highest membership has been 6 and lowest 3. Most of us are single and live alone, afraid of cursing another to our fate. We still spend time on different forums and groups, keeping watch for ones like us. We invite them to join if they wish and offer what little help we can provide. But finding someone is a rare thing.
We share our histories and our theories with each other, for all that it is worth. Support each other in any way we can. Meeting in person is frowned upon as it is believed to draw greater attention from our pursuers.
All our histories are quite similar. We saw one of these creatures and they saw us. From then on there was no real escape, we had been marked and would eventually be taken. For one of us it happened as a friend was snatched during a house fire. Another was during an earthquake, another in a riot. They are drawn to events where people go missing, though there seems to be no other consistent factor. Time of day, country, season, age. All appear irrelevant.
They are easier to see in the dark, as strange as that sounds, being almost invisible in direct light. Survivors have seen them on overcast days, dark figures in doorways or alleys. In truth, even in the best conditions of weak moonlight, you will not see much. Shadowy figures with blank featureless faces, often still as statues yet very much alive. They have never shown on camera or video to our knowledge. They could be beside you right now. No-one would know until it was too late.
Once it has happened, once they have seen you, they will always be on your mind. Like a gun at your head or a knife to your throat. Everytime you close your eyes they will be waiting. You will see them in your dreams, ghosts at your back.
When I first joined our group and found others sharing my experience, I was relieved but not surprised. I had never doubted my sanity, or thought this was in my imagination. I knew it was real, knew they were following me. We all do.
You can feel them watching, feel them drawing close and you will know it is time to run. Another road, another town, another life. To buy yourself just a little more time.
*
The name we use for these beings is “Gogolaki”. I don’t know where it came from or if it holds any special meaning. It must have originated before the present iteration of our group as none of us can recall its origin. We don’t even know what language it is.
“Gogo” may be Japanese for p.m. (night-time). Or it could refer to a Greek name meaning “watchful”. The best match we could find for “Laki” was the name of a volcano. Not much, I know. The word feels like a fragment of something, a tiny piece of an answer. Or perhaps it means nothing at all? It could simply be a nonsense word chosen at random.
Our theories on what these things are, what they are doing, range from mundanity to fantasy. Just last week a member proposed that these entities were a manifestation of our own fear, that we make them real by being afraid. If we could stop thinking about them, he claimed, they would cease to exist. I could not help but laugh. At last a solution! If only it were so easy.
Still, I can understand the need for these flights of fancy even if I have no time for them. For some, the group is all they have left. The only outlet for our hopes or hopelessness. We have, all of us, trimmed away our lives to make running easier, to keep loved ones safe.
*
Eventually, each one of us will stop posting. There will be no response to messages, no sign at all. The rest of us will be left wondering. Have they been caught at last? Have they committed suicide before being taken? (it is not an uncommon course of action). Do they still survive and have simply gone quiet?
An example.
Last year a member called “JD” went silent. He had been an unusual case. Despite his situation he had fought to keep his life unchanged, staying with his wife, keeping his job and home. He had been seen and marked when he was abroad for work, though the distance covered since had offered no protection.
He said often that he could feel them searching for him, feel their presence drawing closer. He had dreams of being pursued through barren landscapes, deserts and ice fields and burned forests. His hunters always remaining just out of sight.
We have all had this dream.
Still, he refused to flee. I do not know what his plan was, whether he thought he could fight or believed they would never reach him. Whether he simply could not give up on his life, no matter the consequences. He grew quieter over the weeks, more erratic, posting messages in the middle of the night and drinking heavily. It was painful to watch. We all knew if he did not run he had little time left.
One morning we all logged in to see his last message.
“They are here.”
*
Of their victims there is never any sign, not a trace left behind. I have often thought it would be better if there was something, anything at all. Bones perhaps. A bloodstain. A report of a cry for help. But there never is.
They bide their time and when they come for you there will be nothing to do but run, for as long as you can.
Why do they take their time with some of us? Waiting for months or years to strike? As always there are dozens of ideas, none in any way provable. As for myself, I believe they enjoy watching us suffer, watching us run. They want us to. In the end, they come for you when you have lost everything, when the running and waiting and fear has deadened you to the point that it no longer hurts.
We must face the truth that we are helpless. All we have is talk, yet we will find no great solace, no revelations.
How many people have been taken? How long has this went on? We don’t know and likely never will. We can confirm nothing as fact. Where they are from, what they are, what they want. We cling to fears and rumours because they are all we have.
*
The strangest aspect of these abductions comes afterward. Those who are taken are forgotten. All memories of them decay in a matter of months, fading away until nothing remains.
Example.
Years ago, I visited the home town of a group member who had been missing for just over a month. What can I say, morbid curiosity got the better of me. I did not tell the others.
In my time there I spoke to the womans parents, husband, friends. They were already beginning to forget her. The closer they had been the longer the memories lasted, but no-one was immune to it. I remember meeting her husband and at first, just for a moment, he didn’t even recognise her name. I could read the confusion in his eyes. Why couldn’t I remember? he was thinking, then hating himself for it. He was in tears when I left. This womans family had only reported her missing 4 weeks earlier yet already it was as if it had never happened. No-one was following up, there were no posters or appeals for information. Other than her name on paperwork it was almost as if she had never lived at all.
I have often thought this is the true reason for our group. A last effort to be remembered, to have someone know that we lived. It is sad and lonely and desperate. I know that. But what can we do? What can any of us do? We cannot prove what we say is truth without consigning others to our fate, and I for one do not wish that on my conscience.
No matter how we were loved we will become as sandcastles before the tide, dreams upon waking. Lost and lost and lost.
This is what awaits us and we are all aware of it.
The longest anyone has ever been in our group is 11 years, before they disappeared. Before they were taken.
This is my 10th year.
*
And what of my story?
In this tattered old memory I live in a small town in the mountains, just my father and I. We were always moving and always to places like this. It had only ever been the two of us, travelling together all my life. I never knew my mother or any other family. My father was my whole world.
One night he burst into my room as I slept. I did not know the time but it was dark outside. I was 7 years old, frightened and confused. I saw his pale face, worried, eyes wide. He snatched me up from the bed into his arms and grabbed a jacket for me.
“Dad? Whats wrong?”
He didn’t answer.
I heard the storm outside, the rattle of the windows, rush of rain. It had only been a breeze when I went to bed, now it had become a wild roar. There were people shouting in the streets, lights on, cries for help. I learned later that the storms had caused a landslide in the hills, collapsing a damn. The ensuing flooding wiped out everything in its path including our home.
My father reached the top of our stairs and stopped suddenly, frozen in place, a foot on the edge. He stared down into the corridor below. Moonlight flickered on the floor and I realised water was already coming in. I remember his stubble scratching my face as he held me tight against him. His breathing, fast and ragged as the wind screamed against the walls through the darkness outside.
“Dad?”
He reached out for the lightswitch, still staring down the steps. He was shaking as he flicked off the light.
It was there.
On the stairs, a dark figure only a few feet away. A shadow among shadows, blank face watching us, still as stone.
“Run.” my father whispered.
The thing moved, faster than I could see, flashing up the steps and then I was falling, tumbling down and splashing onto the wet carpet. I looked up, dazed.
My father was gone and only the figure remained. The storm roared again outside, the rising flood pressed against our door and it burst inward, icy water washing around me.
It turned, slow, silent. Even in the dark I knew it could see me, knew it was looking straight at me.
So I fled. Out the front door into the chaos of the streets, wading as much as running. Soaked, freezing, struggling to breathe and wild with fear. I did not stand out from the others around me.
The flood took every building in the town that night and hundreds of lives. It was a miracle I was not one of them. No-one ever found any trace of my father, and no-one wanted to believe the story of a crazy child when so many others had been lost.
He became just another name, with only me to remember him.
And now, all the years later, I am losing him again. No matter how I have tried he fades from memory, his eyes, face, words. I replayed everything I had of him in my mind, every day since he was taken. Everything I could every moment I could. Holding on to all I had left. Even that wasn’t enough.
No matter how I try now I cannot see his face, I cannot hear his voice. There is nothing left of him to me, only the knowledge that he was there. Will that go next? How much longer can I hold on to him?
Soon all that will remain are the questions I would ask him.
How did he know about them? How did he know they could be seen by turning out the lights? How long had we been running and hiding?
How did he keep going.
*
It is quite a thing to be afraid of. Not simply death and the unknown, but of being completely forgotten. Everything you were now as insubstantial as a breeze, with no-one to know it.
They have never let anyone go.
Sometimes, in the desperate nights, pressure and anxiety fold in overhead like I am trapped in a falling building. It becomes a feverish panic and I try to fool myself. To find a way out, to stop running. I tell myself, perhaps I will be the first to escape. They will pass me by. I will leave this all behind and live again.
We all lie to ourselves when we have nothing left.
*
They are close now. No more running, I think. No more fear.
Is it better to see death approach, I wonder, or live in the ignorance of the light?
I do not know.
All I can do is sit here in the dark, and wait.