Too Scary
Too Scary
by
Heather Farthing (c) 2023, all rights reserved
I stumble into the RV, dragging grocery bags along the ground and nearly falling on top of a mound of plastic and cereal boxes.
“Honey, I’m home,” I call out, wiggling my burning wrists out of the bags and dragging the door closed.
There is no answer.
I glance around the living room/dining room/kitchen combo skeptically, looking for something amiss. The air is as still as a tomb, an oppressive silence that makes the voice fall flat and the chest feel heavy. It’s like being in an ancient graveyard, with the feeling that something is watching for you to touch something you shouldn’t.
“Hello?” I ask the air.
Nothing.
I never know what I’m coming home to when Spooky feels sedentary and reclusive. It could be hands reaching out of reflective surfaces, books and small items reorganizing themselves, the groceries and supplies putting themselves away, or, once or twice, the looming shadow of something large, horned, and ominous standing in the bedroom doorway.
He doesn’t normally step out without me, especially during bright, sunny days, fearing the predators that live in the light the way humans fear the things that dwell in the dark. He has spooked the neighbors or answered the door, checked the mail at front desks, usually leaving nervous glances and unsettled feelings in his wake.
It is possible he wandered somewhere, a cold spot following a crowd to a food truck or local point of interest. Not generally during the day when the sky jellies are out, but that’s why he would use the human smell for cover.
As I put the groceries on the table, unease twists my stomach. It’s possible he got swept into an imprint and is currently acting out some forgotten moment in time. Those are always a problem, since he doesn’t quite remember who he is or what he’s supposed to be doing, and I worry if it happens when I’m not around I might not know where to look for him.
Spooky is a strong specter, though. He can generally power through whatever foreign memory he’s walked through.
Sky jellies are another beast altogether. They generally stay away from human habitats and the scent of the human condition, but they are a predator like any other and hunger drives them to aberrant behavior, just like wolves and bears.
I try not to think about it as I knock on the lid of his coffin, currently taking up most of my living room, all glossy black and silver accents. Spooky is classic and classy, a German baron from the 1800s, and wears his upperclass roots on his literal sleeves.
There is no answer.
I suppose he could be asleep. He does sleep, or whatever the equivalent is. They’re nocturnal, naturally, which keeps them away from the sky jellies, and is why activity spikes at night.
Nothing.
Frowning, I knock again.
Nothing.
Normally he sits up after one or two tries, his hair and skeleton luminous, dressed in a black silk dressing-gown that would probably cost as much as the RV if it were real, with sleepy eyes and a stifled yawn.
I frown, tapping my foot and thinking. There isn’t a lot of space in an RV for someone to hide, especially with a full-sized coffin laid end to end in the living room, but Spooky isn’t bound by the physical.
He could be in a mirror. He likes mirrors, it’s an antebellum mortician thing, but I don’t know how to get him out of those.
I’d just be happy if I could hear him snoring, or smell funeral arrangements, or feel an unexplained cold spot. I mean, if he was taken by an imprint or eaten by a sky jelly, how would I know about it, and how long would I stay before I needed to give up and move on?
I take some comfort in knowing that he’s haunting me, specifically. He says he always knows where his haunt is, like a homing pigeon, and would still instinctively come for me, even if lost in an imprint. He’s also got his own defenses against sky jellies, so it’s not like he’s a walking steak.
Still, it is unusual to come home and not feel…haunted.
I step around the coffin and into the bedroom, looking into the mirror at the vanity. I rotate it around to show the television, and then once more, but my reflection doesn’t age or decay, a formless, blue-eyed shadow doesn’t appear behind me, and white hands don’t pound from the other side of the glass.
Strange. He could be in the bathroom mirror, but that would be like a human just…hanging out in the bathroom. It’s possible, but probably not.
I turn around and look at the neatly-folded bed. It’s the bedspread with the tombstone and spiderweb motif, which means he at least did some laundry today, since I had the cute bedsheet ghosts he hates, and he takes any chance to cycle them back through the two or three stowed in the storage space below.
You ever been in a lake or swimming pool under partial shade, and the current changes at the sun-warmed water ebbs away and the cool, shady water wraps around your ankles like the cold hands of death?
Wisps of black smoke coils from beneath the bed, like a fire trying to catch, smelling of funeral flowers.
I step around to the side of the bed, drop to my hands and knees, and lift up the black dust ruffle.
The creature beneath the bed is made of gray smoke and black shadow. It writhes and boils like dye diffused in water, with vague shapes formed in the darkness like clawed hands and pointed ears. Shockingly pale blue eyes, devoid of sclera or pupil, stare out of the shadows.
Behold, the fearsome boogeyman.
“You alright, Spooky?” I ask, settling onto my belly.
“Liebchen!” he breathes sleepily and a bit panicked, like someone waking from a bad nightmare to a comforting presence. “It is good you are home.”
“Do you need some formaldehyde?” I ask kindly, watching the vapors solidify into a white-haired German man in his early twenties, dressed from head to toe in black, with a damask waistcoat and dress shoes. “Or watch some scary movies with me?”
“Nein, liebchen,” he protests, shaking his head. “I was making enough scary movies today.”
“Oh?” I ask, my interest piqued. He thinks Poltergeist is a revenge fantasy and Amityville is a slapstick comedy, so I can’t imagine what he might have watched to drive him under the bed, hiding like a scared child.
“It was vile,” he explains. “A character study on the villains and their terrible crimes. I have never seen such grisly depictions of torture! I thought there was a rating system in place?”
I run a list of title through my head and come up blank. He haunted a family-run mortuary for two hundred years, so I’m not sure the likes of Saw or Hostel would phase him, but then again, embalmed corpses don’t beg for their lives.
“What was it?” I ask, head propped on my hand, elbow along the floor.
“Ghostbusters.”
by
Heather Farthing (c) 2023, all rights reserved
I stumble into the RV, dragging grocery bags along the ground and nearly falling on top of a mound of plastic and cereal boxes.
“Honey, I’m home,” I call out, wiggling my burning wrists out of the bags and dragging the door closed.
There is no answer.
I glance around the living room/dining room/kitchen combo skeptically, looking for something amiss. The air is as still as a tomb, an oppressive silence that makes the voice fall flat and the chest feel heavy. It’s like being in an ancient graveyard, with the feeling that something is watching for you to touch something you shouldn’t.
“Hello?” I ask the air.
Nothing.
I never know what I’m coming home to when Spooky feels sedentary and reclusive. It could be hands reaching out of reflective surfaces, books and small items reorganizing themselves, the groceries and supplies putting themselves away, or, once or twice, the looming shadow of something large, horned, and ominous standing in the bedroom doorway.
He doesn’t normally step out without me, especially during bright, sunny days, fearing the predators that live in the light the way humans fear the things that dwell in the dark. He has spooked the neighbors or answered the door, checked the mail at front desks, usually leaving nervous glances and unsettled feelings in his wake.
It is possible he wandered somewhere, a cold spot following a crowd to a food truck or local point of interest. Not generally during the day when the sky jellies are out, but that’s why he would use the human smell for cover.
As I put the groceries on the table, unease twists my stomach. It’s possible he got swept into an imprint and is currently acting out some forgotten moment in time. Those are always a problem, since he doesn’t quite remember who he is or what he’s supposed to be doing, and I worry if it happens when I’m not around I might not know where to look for him.
Spooky is a strong specter, though. He can generally power through whatever foreign memory he’s walked through.
Sky jellies are another beast altogether. They generally stay away from human habitats and the scent of the human condition, but they are a predator like any other and hunger drives them to aberrant behavior, just like wolves and bears.
I try not to think about it as I knock on the lid of his coffin, currently taking up most of my living room, all glossy black and silver accents. Spooky is classic and classy, a German baron from the 1800s, and wears his upperclass roots on his literal sleeves.
There is no answer.
I suppose he could be asleep. He does sleep, or whatever the equivalent is. They’re nocturnal, naturally, which keeps them away from the sky jellies, and is why activity spikes at night.
Nothing.
Frowning, I knock again.
Nothing.
Normally he sits up after one or two tries, his hair and skeleton luminous, dressed in a black silk dressing-gown that would probably cost as much as the RV if it were real, with sleepy eyes and a stifled yawn.
I frown, tapping my foot and thinking. There isn’t a lot of space in an RV for someone to hide, especially with a full-sized coffin laid end to end in the living room, but Spooky isn’t bound by the physical.
He could be in a mirror. He likes mirrors, it’s an antebellum mortician thing, but I don’t know how to get him out of those.
I’d just be happy if I could hear him snoring, or smell funeral arrangements, or feel an unexplained cold spot. I mean, if he was taken by an imprint or eaten by a sky jelly, how would I know about it, and how long would I stay before I needed to give up and move on?
I take some comfort in knowing that he’s haunting me, specifically. He says he always knows where his haunt is, like a homing pigeon, and would still instinctively come for me, even if lost in an imprint. He’s also got his own defenses against sky jellies, so it’s not like he’s a walking steak.
Still, it is unusual to come home and not feel…haunted.
I step around the coffin and into the bedroom, looking into the mirror at the vanity. I rotate it around to show the television, and then once more, but my reflection doesn’t age or decay, a formless, blue-eyed shadow doesn’t appear behind me, and white hands don’t pound from the other side of the glass.
Strange. He could be in the bathroom mirror, but that would be like a human just…hanging out in the bathroom. It’s possible, but probably not.
I turn around and look at the neatly-folded bed. It’s the bedspread with the tombstone and spiderweb motif, which means he at least did some laundry today, since I had the cute bedsheet ghosts he hates, and he takes any chance to cycle them back through the two or three stowed in the storage space below.
You ever been in a lake or swimming pool under partial shade, and the current changes at the sun-warmed water ebbs away and the cool, shady water wraps around your ankles like the cold hands of death?
Wisps of black smoke coils from beneath the bed, like a fire trying to catch, smelling of funeral flowers.
I step around to the side of the bed, drop to my hands and knees, and lift up the black dust ruffle.
The creature beneath the bed is made of gray smoke and black shadow. It writhes and boils like dye diffused in water, with vague shapes formed in the darkness like clawed hands and pointed ears. Shockingly pale blue eyes, devoid of sclera or pupil, stare out of the shadows.
Behold, the fearsome boogeyman.
“You alright, Spooky?” I ask, settling onto my belly.
“Liebchen!” he breathes sleepily and a bit panicked, like someone waking from a bad nightmare to a comforting presence. “It is good you are home.”
“Do you need some formaldehyde?” I ask kindly, watching the vapors solidify into a white-haired German man in his early twenties, dressed from head to toe in black, with a damask waistcoat and dress shoes. “Or watch some scary movies with me?”
“Nein, liebchen,” he protests, shaking his head. “I was making enough scary movies today.”
“Oh?” I ask, my interest piqued. He thinks Poltergeist is a revenge fantasy and Amityville is a slapstick comedy, so I can’t imagine what he might have watched to drive him under the bed, hiding like a scared child.
“It was vile,” he explains. “A character study on the villains and their terrible crimes. I have never seen such grisly depictions of torture! I thought there was a rating system in place?”
I run a list of title through my head and come up blank. He haunted a family-run mortuary for two hundred years, so I’m not sure the likes of Saw or Hostel would phase him, but then again, embalmed corpses don’t beg for their lives.
“What was it?” I ask, head propped on my hand, elbow along the floor.
“Ghostbusters.”
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