***
Sometimes I feel like my life is a dream, literally. It feels like a dream but I know it is not, it is a nightmare. A nightmare that never ends, it only begins—there—every. single. time.
A scary little house in the middle of nowhere. A young man and his son are trying to escape; the man has covered the eyes of his five-year old with a trembling hand to not let the kid see anything; panting, he is running towards his car. They must escape before someone arrives. There has been an accident. A man is dead. And a father is scared for his child, hoping he’s not seen anything.
But I saw everything.
In fact I still see it in my dreams. That night is all I have in my memories.
I was sitting inside the car waiting for my dad to fix the tire, staring at the house on my left. I don’t know what time it was, I was still learning to read time, but it was dark outside. Darker than any other night I’d seen. And there was a shiny little house across the road, glowing softly as if it was breathing. Must be fireflies. It was scary but beautiful, and I was staring at it mesmerized.
Dad had asked me not to get out, but I did as soon as I was able to unlock the door. I had to see that breathing house, and started walking towards it. I was under its spell, although I stopped when my foot hit against something, it startled me, but I picked it up in that disposition and kept walking. As soon as I got back to my senses I realized I was standing about halfway from the road and the house, alone, in the dark, holding on to something cushy. To this day I don’t know what I was thinking standing there but it was a strange feeling. I thought I was dreaming but I knew it was no dream. I was scared. The house’s glow was dim and I couldn’t see anything in that light.
Suddenly I heard a loud heavy cry of something, it was a motorcycle engine but I was a kid, the only thing I could think of was ghosts. I was terrified of ghosts. I screamed but without a voice (this still happens when I get scared).
My dad, who clearly didn’t see me getting out, realized I wasn’t there when he heard that noise and checked up on me. He grabbed the torch and started to look around, leaving the spare tyre on the road. It was dark and he was calling my name, but I was on the other side. I could hear him hoping he would turn back and cross the road. But I couldn’t say a word.
Standing stiff, I was praying for the ghosts to leave me alone when I saw a light coming towards me. A man came out of the back side of the house on a motorcycle, and he almost hit me!
He turned away to avoid me but lost his balance as he looked back at me. I could see the faint glow reflecting in his scary wide eyes when he sped up, hit the tire on the roadside and got his head smashed into our car.
I kept standing there clutching to that thing, remembering those wide eyes; couldn’t move; couldn’t cry. I was petrified.
A moment later dad found me, he held me up, closed my eyes with a hand and started running towards the car hoping I didn’t see anything. The next moment we were driving back home.
I should have stayed inside the car.
We never talked about that night again, didn’t tell anyone, not even to grandpa. We were going to grandpa’s house that night, but we went back home. Now whenever we go to grandpa’s and cross that little white house, dad always remembers what happened there that night. That’s the only house on the stretch of that road, he could never neglect that even if he wanted to.
A dirty white block of old wood in the emptiness of brown land. Two little broken windows, like two shallow eyes and a big green door—it’s a different green—dirty, old, dark…somewhat like a rotten olive but not exactly; one can never be sure, it keeps changing. But it is a large door, like a big inviting mouth. And when you pass by it, the broken window panes reflect the light as if the house is looking at you. Its horror is hard to neglect even on a bright sunny day, not to mention dad’s wasn’t that bright and sunny anymore.
Even though we never talked about it, I knew it had affected dad. I could feel it, something was not right. He started to become less happy, more scared.
He thought he could hide his fear in anger but his anger always gave it away. I’d seen him scared before, scared of how he could support me and mom when he’d lost that miserable job he hated. He could start anew, he’d always wanted to become a historian, but he was scared; scared of losing mom if he couldn’t make it work; she never wanted to leave but his fear made sure she did. I always knew when he was scared.
I was also scared. I didn’t tell him about the thing I was holding that night, I slid it under the driver’s seat. He didn’t notice.
But with time our fears started to fade away. We’d left a dead man in the middle of the road that night, there was blood all over our car, and we drove back eighteen miles with a flat tire! It was enough for anyone to imagine what had happened, someone could have taken a photo or called the police with our number. But nothing happened. No one ever talked about the man who lived in that house, the man we killed that night.
Still dad stopped letting me go out to play with other children for months. We moved to a different neighborhood, he changed his job, sold that car and bought a motorcycle instead, maybe to honor that man. But nothing happened. Even though I was a little sad because the soft cushy thing I hid under the car seat was gone with the car, I forgot that soon.
Life started to get a little normal. Dad, who had become rather silent since then, began to talk more. We began to go out. I joined a new school, made new friends, it was good.
On my seventh birthday dad bought me a book. It was old, in a leather skin and with some markings of what seemed to be the impressions of a metal tree motif that once was. The edges were aged, but he forbade me from touching it, like he would in a museum. Dad really liked such old and odd stuff.
Since that day, every night he would read me stories from that book, whether I asked him or not, because I never would. Much as the book was odd, the stories were creepy. It was failing the whole purpose of bedtime stories. But dad was loving it, he started keeping it in his cupboard, locked away from me what was supposed to be my gift.
That was the first time I felt he could love something more than me.
He never loved anything more than me. I was his world. He didn’t even let mom took me; he’d fought a court case when he had no job and almost no money just to not let me go. He could never love anything more than me!
Every night I would try to sleep with a pillow over my head, horrified by the imagery, petrified of fear, and he would sit beside me reading that grim book. He knew I was not enjoying it, I knew he certainly was.
For the next five years that was the only book he’d read to me—again and again.
And he never let me touch it. (Not that I ever wanted to, I hated that book.)
And he never bought me any gift again, but I was rather okay with that, I did not want more horror in my life. But that’s exactly what I got.
Soon my dad’s strange attachment to that book became an obsession, and he started to believe the book was about him. It had a story of a man who kept searching for his lost daughter; and now dad would come to me and he’d ask me about his lost “daughter”.
It was getting serious, and I had to do something about it.
I decided to steal his book. One night I managed to sneak into his room, he was asleep, I took the keys from under his pillow—cautiously—and I walked towards the cupboard, dead silently, on my toes. But the silly cupboard creaked loudly when I touched it. Dad got up and called for his daughter, that had never been! I knew no one was going to come, obviously, but I ran out of the room.
That moment scared the shit out of me! He was not my dad anymore.
I miss my dad.
That night I decided to never touch his book again and never did, but I’m going to. After about nine years of my first failed attempt, I have finally gathered the courage to open his cupboard. No matter how much I hate it, no matter how horrified I am, it is my dad’s memory now, the thing he loved the most.
It’s been eight months and seven days today. My last conversation with dad was a fight.
I came home from my evening job that night when he was getting ready to go out. He had knives and forks in his pocket, I have no idea how he found them. He had been going out in search of his imaginary daughter for a long time, so I had these things hidden in the kitchen but he somehow found it, and when I tried to stop him he threatened to hurt himself if I interfered. But he was not insane, well, I knew he would come back after driving a few blocks so I let him go. I was wrong. He never came back.
Grandpa came the next morning with dad’s motorcycle, he said the police found it near that little white house.
That house.
It was obvious but it didn’t occur to me that time, my mind wasn’t right. My dad was gone. He was my world. And it took me eight months and seven days to figure out the obvious.
We miss it because it is always there.
But today I’m looking the obvious straight in the eyes. I have the book in my hands, it is wrapped in an old but soft piece of cloth. It is that cushy thing I found near the house that night. The thing I’d thought was gone when dad sold the car. He must’ve found it; of course, he did.
That must have belonged to the man who used to live in that house, he must have dropped it there in the dark when he was going out.
I am sitting at my dad’s desk staring at the book to my left, near the window. I think I threw it out, but I don’t remember. The red-orange light of the setting sun diffuses through the cloth making it glow a little, reminiscent of the house that night.
The moon has risen, I’m thinking about life and death, staring at the book I haven’t picked up from the floor. My office called but I didn’t answer. I’m going to resign tomorrow, I don’t want to do accounts anymore. I know how my dad never did what he wanted to because of me, now I will do what I want to, for dad. I will take risks. I won’t be scared anymore.
I’ve picked the book up, it is still glowing, or I am dreaming. I don’t know. I want to know what is inside, I want to open it but deep down I am scared. No denial. I am scared of what could be there, scared of what it could do. I cannot open it.
For the past fifty minutes I haven’t blinked for once, not good. I am still staring at the book glowing in front of me, and I cannot blink. My eyes are red and I am crying without tears. This is painful.
I called grandpa and told him everything. He had no idea, dad never told him what happened that night on our way to his farm. Grandpa asked me not to touch the book. I suggested we could burn it, but he said we should give it back, it could be that the dead man was still searching for it. The book could be the lost daughter.
He is coming and then we’ll go there to leave the book where I found it.
I am sitting waiting for my grandpa to come, staring at the book. This is killing me.
Almost midnight, the neighborhood is sleeping—even the dogs are silent—and I am sitting at my dad’s desk, waiting for my grandpa to come, staring at the book in the silence of the night. It’s not glowing anymore.
I can almost hear my heartbeat, like a soft drum roll, fast; I can feel it. And I am not blinking.
I remember the eyes of that man when he died. This is getting scary now, my eyes! Grandpa should come soon.
Still waiting for Grandpa, it’s quarter past one in the morning. He should have been there long ago, but now his phone is also unavailable. I hope he’s okay. But I cannot just sit and wait anymore. My eyes are numb and it’s hard to see anything. But I have to go, I have to leave it there. I don’t know what else to do. I can control not to open it, but it’s beyond me to not look at the book. Now I can imagine how dad became so obsessed. He read it.
Everything is dark. I have the book wrapped in that piece of cloth, just the way it was, and I’m driving with the lights off. Dark is good, I don’t know if I can survive a day like this, though.
I’ve reached the place without seeing anything, as if the motorcycle has driven me here on its own. As if it remembers the last time my dad drove it here, or is it that it drove him? I don’t know. I’d like to think this is dad helping me out. He would want me to make it alright, I hope I could. But there is no plan, I don’t know what is going to happen, and I have my fears. But I’ll try anyway, there is no option.
Everything feels the same even after about sixteen years. Time has stopped here, it is that same old house. My eyes cannot focus, but I am standing very close to it. I can see that soft glow. Even the smell of this place is the same, it’s bringing back all those memories.
.
I cannot express how terrified I am. Someone else is here, maybe new house owners, or new house owners the old, maybe the old one who died.. I don’t know. But I’m hearing noises from the other side. Sitting on my motorcycle, with the book in my hand, I’m waiting. I don’t know what I’m waiting for, for them to not see me, or for him to see me. I am here to ask for forgiveness, that is all I can do; that is all anyone can do.
After about five minutes everything becomes silent, I’m walking to the other side, slowly and cautiously, trying to see anything I can to make sure it is the same spot.
And I leave the book there on the ground almost exactly where I found it.
All this time I have been thinking about him, hoping for him to notice that I’ve returned the book. The daughter is not lost anymore. And he may forgive me and my dad for what happened.
But as I start to go back I hear a soft thud, followed by some distant call. An ancient song, I cannot make out the words, but it feels like I have heard it before, like in a different lifetime. He’s come! He’s noticed!
I have to go. I cannot face it, I have put the book back, my job is done. I cannot hold my terror anymore.
I put on the helmet, but I can still hear that faint husky voice. My hands start to tremble in fear, and I cannot drive. I am almost stoned again. The silence of the night is amplifying the horror, if this is what ghosts sound like, I can tell you you never want to hear this voice. It is like the wind flowing between the trees and the leaves are molding the waves to make this sound. Except there are no trees here.
The sound is becoming clearer and louder, as if he is coming towards me. Now I can hear the words—my name—he is calling my name!
My hands are shivering, my eyes are dried up. I am in horror and pain; I cannot breathe; cannot move. I am stiff like I once was when I saw that man die. And he is coming for me now.
He is going to kill me!
But I cannot die like this, I have to go, I’ve promised my dad to face my fears. So I take a deep breath of that air, taking in all that I can and with every last bit of courage I turn the accelerator and the old machine reacts as if she wants to help me, as if my dad is with me. I don’t care about the sound anymore, I am not afraid of any ghosts!
As I rushed to the other side of the house to reach the road I almost hit something. Is it him?!
I turn back in horror and all I see is a terrified little kid standing in the dark, clutching tightly to that book.
***