“H, you there?”
I feel a cool gust of air escaping the tunnel.
Then nothing happens for a really long time.
It feels like forever, and I watch it go light, then dark, and light again, as clouds roll past in the sky. Mostly it’s just the moon and me.
I know H is nearby, somehow.
I don’t really know how it works, but I want to know. That’s why I’m here. I have to know. It’s either be curious or be a fucking pussy. It’s easier to be a pussy and just run away from what’s happening, but then I’d never be able to forgive myself, because what I’m seeing and feeling is nothing I’ve ever experienced before. It’s both crazy and cool. I don’t know how to describe it. That’s basically why I’m so curious.
Life can be so dull when every day it’s school and then home and then parties and everyone acting like some concert or football game or dance is like some big deal. When it really isn’t. It isn’t. I have a hard time finding interest in what’s already there, everything laid out in front of me like it’s already been lived, prepackaged for all of us graduating high school. We go through steps and never really make our own footprints in the ground.
We just step where everyone else has stepped.
No new paths.
I don’t like that. I hate it, really.
But this, what’s happened, it’s different. You hear so much about demons and hauntings and possession, but it’s just like being in a movie or becoming a rock star: it never really happens to you.
But it’s happening to me.
See? I can’t just be afraid.
What’s happening is worth understanding as long as I keep my distance.
I’ve thought about it and I’ve made up my mind: I want to understand; more than anyone would want to understand me, I want to understand this. Everyone around me just wants to be around me, like some entourage.
I want to care.
Most people probably don’t care about anything other than themselves.
So what, then, if I sit here all night?
It gets lighter around me, but it remains dead-end night in that tunnel.
I hear footsteps nearby, but it passes.
Just someone, a person, or maybe my imagination.
But I’m here. I’m here to say hi.
I’m here to understand.
I’m here to see H.
Shortly before dawn, I stand back up. My legs ache like hell, but I stand there for, like, another hour.
I talk into the tunneclass="underline" “How are you feeling?”
When the sun finally replaces the moon, I say into the tunnel, “Good morning.”
But there’s nothing there for me to see.
I’ll walk back at some point, but I know that it was right to have gone here. It was the right choice. I needed to sort things out. Not everything is sorted, but I’m beginning to understand where my priorities are. There’ll be an exorcism and there’ll be all the usual stuff, step by step, that will end up being my life… but something is happening here that doesn’t happen to everyone. Only, like, 40 percent of the world ever experiences stuff like this. It’s common enough that you know all the symptoms, but it’s special in that way that you end up on a short enough list.
It’s true, though I didn’t want to admit it:
I will be remembered at Meadows as the guy who was haunted.
I’ll be like the others who ended up the same way.
But I really don’t care. I don’t care what they think because what they think is clearly what everyone else has already said. Nothing new there.
I understand all of that.
So I’m ready to understand everything else.
Before leaving, I say into the tunnel, “See you around.”
And I make the not-so-long walk back to my car.
I don’t realize how tired I am until I’m almost home. I start to nod off while driving. It’s bad, yeah, but that’s why I drive slower, and I keep things under the speed limit. I look at the time on the dashboard, and it’s early enough that only the morning people are really going to be out.
The sky is a shade of blue. It’s more a mixture of the end of night and the first couple blinks of new day.
It’s dark enough still that I need my headlights on.
Funny to note: I didn’t have them on the entire time I was on the interstate. I thought the trucks and cars honking at me were just doing me a favor, trying to keep me awake. I’m okay though. No accidents.
I pull into the driveway and rub my eyes.
Yawns can feel so good sometimes, you know? Same way there’s nothing like a good stretch. I glance up at my window the way I always do and I’m surprised to see that the lights are on. Not only that, I see a figure in the window. I blink and it’s gone and I’m kind of like, “Was that you, H?”
Maybe I made that part up.
I am pretty tired. I probably just imagined it.
I leave the car where it’s going to be left and head up the walkway to the front door. Inside the house, I don’t notice the change right way. It’s kind of like a slow burn, how sometimes you light something on fire and it doesn’t flare up the way you expect, not right way. I notice the laptop first; it’s right where I left it, but it’s been opened. A video plays, an ASMR video I haven’t watched.
All the empty bottles and garbage, even the board and its pointer — it’s all gone. Went missing or something. I’m not playing stupid. I know what happened. I can put all the pieces together.
So I might not completely understand it, but yeah, I know what just happened. Scratch that — I know what happened while I was gone. There’s no mess and no sign that there was ever a party.
I sit down on the couch. I laugh. “But I like the version where the party still happens because, like, everyone still gets a good scare.” Then I add, “And we get a good laugh.”
I lie down on the couch, laptop on my stomach, and I start up the ASMR video from the beginning.
Just as I’m beginning to nod off, I hear it.
It’s my voice but it’s not me who’s saying it. It’s different from the other times.
The voice says, “Welcome home.”
And I know it’s you. It makes me shiver but I let it pass.
Keeping my eyes on the video, right before I fall asleep, I say: “Home sweet home.”
I think that’s supposed to be funny.
I wonder if H laughs, or if it’s possible for H to laugh.
I’ve been waiting for this. It’s so sudden — know how sleep sort of pulls over you like a sheet, like you’re a body being covered but you’re not actually dead? Yeah, that’s how it starts. Pure sleep, the kind that just works, and you don’t have to work for it. It just comes. Just sleep. Guess it’s there, waiting for me. I find it even though I don’t really know what I have. It is sleep in the most basic kind of way. It’s nothing and everything until I see it open in on a familiar setting. I can’t put my finger on where I am, only that it’s happening again.
Like I said, I’ve been waiting for this.
It feels like before. So real, I can sense that this is reality, but then I know I’m dreaming. If I really need confirmation, I can hear myself breathing. I don’t know how to really explain it all but it’s there. I’m just outside of anything real. I’m in this, right now, and I recognize these people.
Here’s how it all comes to me:
I see the bright blue sky first. Second, I see the trees, the forest, and I hear the various trappings that make a person know immediately that he’s out in the middle of nowhere. I’m talking the sound of birds, the bugs biting at you, the smell that’s supposed to mean that there’s no smog, none of the usual pollution. It’s all there, and it wraps around me like I’ve never left.
Then we’re walking.
I say “we” because there are three people with me.