Fear and the Night

Journal Entry, dated 03 April

I don’t know what was wrong that night. Usually, I find the darkness a comfort, like an old blanket or a well-worn shirt. That night….that night, something was off. It felt like someone was walking (or dancing, I suppose) over my grave. My dog and I, we walked along the bike path. I was musing to myself and he was sniffing things, as usual. Somehow, my mind wandered to spirits and the like. To take my mind off the uncomfortable thoughts, I looked up at the sky. Everything was different. The clouds were orangy, and so was the gigantic half moon above them. The stars weren’t even out.

As my dog “watered” the grass, I had a sudden flashback. I was in grade ten again, and the class was sitting in a half circle around our teacher as he recalled stories from HIS childhood. He had lived out with his aunt on a farm briefly. He recalled, every October 24th, that the voices would come in the night. The first time they had come, his uncle had heard them. Faint and indistinct, he thought perhaps some people had wandered onto his farm and were seeking help. He went out with the lantern, searched the entire farm, and come back empty handed. He shrugged it off until he heard them again, louder this time. It sounded like a family, with a father, mother, some children and an infant.

Again, he went out, and again they assailed him from all directions. I could hear the tremors in my teacher’s voice as he described it. Every October 24th afterwards, his uncle would sit in the kitchen with a shotgun across his lap and a bottle of whiskey in hand while everyone else cowered beneath the table and wished the voices away. The ghostly voices seemed to be coming from everywhere. He described each one with frightening clarity. The father’s voice boomed commands across the fields, angry and worried. The mother’s was out towards the barn, crying in frustration, trying to calmly keep her children under control. But they were the worst, he said… they were the worst. They screamed and cried and howled like banshees. The children called out questions and pleas, while the baby just kept crying. He didn’t know what made them do that. He guessed that maybe the house had been burnt down, but they would never know. It was an old farm, from way back in the days when Canada was just being settled.

Now, I’m not saying ghosts or spirits or whatever you want to call them exist, but if they do, I have every reason to respect them. I live perhaps no more than five hundred feet from Munn’s Graveyard. I can almost see it from my bedroom window. I’ve had my own run ins with them. Some nights, when I’m in bed and up because I’m a bit of an insomniac, I see auras, sort of. You know, when you get up too fast and everything becomes a sheet of dotty yellow? Put that into the shape of a person and make it transparent, and that’s what I see. I’ve seen a whole bunch. You can tell who they are by the way they move. There’s an old man, a farmer, a soldier… The longer I look at them, the more defined they become. It’s creepy.

Most nights, when I see them, I just face the wall and hide my face. I’m terrified of them. Once, one started to move towards me. It was like the size of a five year old, and it seemed to be beckoning me to play. I just flipped myself over and started to repeat the words “no fear” over and over again. I couldn’t have been more than an inch from the wall, but when I managed to open my eyes again, the face was there, half in and half out of the wall. I just stood stock still. It did the same, and as we stood there looking at each other, it – she – started to sort of congeal. The features became three dimensional, then started to round out, then the eyes…the sockets formed. I just closed my eyes. When I opened them again, she was gone. I haven’t seen her since. But sometimes, it feels like someone’s touching my body: usually my hair or head, but sometimes my legs. I know nothing’s there, though. It’s creepy as hell.

As we walked, I tried to purge my mind of these thoughts. My throat had swelled and hackles risen as we emerged into the light of a streetlamp. I felt as if someone was staring as my back, trying to burn a hole in it. I whipped around, but no one was there. Nothing. Not a single sign of life. My neck still felt odd, as it there was a faint pressure there. A thin line around it, actually. I rubbed it, yet the sensation did not fade. I could still feel the presence behind me. I jogged the rest of the way home, casting worried glances of my shoulder the entire way. Once, just once, I thought I might have caught a glimpse of a small form made purely of shadow. It was there and gone at the same time, and I could swear that there was a smile on the ‘face’. Even now, as I write this, I can still feel it. I feel like I’ve tried to swallow a tennis ball whole. Except now, it’s like someone’s stepping on my throat every time I try to write a word….