| abstract
| - As of the time that I am writing this, it is now October 25th, 2012. I write this because I have nowhere else to turn to, as most of the people I am closest to find what I have to say either too unbelievable or abhorrent. Even the people that I live with, people I know I should be able to reason with, seem to be going out of their way to ignore my pleas for action even though they understand the phenomenon that I have been experiencing in this place of apparently esoteric nightmare and dark history. It all began about 17 years ago when my mother, my stepfather and I moved into our new house. It was a quaint little house in the rural countryside, about a mile from the California delta in the bay area. The house lay on about an acre and a half of property, which was quite unkempt and overgrown when we arrived. We only had a single neighbor and on the other side of our house was a vast corn field extending all the way to the cold rushing waters of the Delta. The street we lived on was a long, winding street with very few people living on it, and I estimate that within a 10 mile radius of our house the must have only been about a hundred or so residence in the region itself. It was, I thought, bizarre that for being in the California bay area, the town felt surprisingly empty. Years ago, before the real estate market collapsed, such a property must have been worth a fortune. Even so, our family was able to purchase the house at an incredible bargain through a local bank that seemed almost eager to get rid of it. The bank never did explain to my mother and step father exactly why the property was such a steal, but my real estate savvy mother jumped all over the opportunity even though the house itself was a very lived-in "fix 'er upper". Around the time we moved in, I was 9 years old. I remember being terrified of moving, living in the country, going to a new school, and living with my new stepfather, who for whatever reason always seemed strange to me for no good reason. When we moved in, though, I was ecstatic to find that we had such a huge backyard to play in. To make matters even better, the previous owners for whatever reason had left a large amount of old toys in the backyard out by the old garage. This external garage was pretty far from the house itself and near a thicket of trees, making it an ideal place to play. In fact, the whole garage area was like a big old junkyard with old belongings strewn about everywhere you looked. To my parents, this was an utter frustration, but I myself enjoyed looking through all the old doodads and toys which must have belonged to a boy about my age. The very first strange incident I remember as a young boy was playing with the old toys one day on the ground out behind the garage, being called inside for dinner, and upon returning finding that all the toys had been cleaned up. It was as if somebody had hired a whole team of people to painstakingly polish and clean each and every toy, and I could have sworn that whoever had done this had even taken some toys and touched them up with new paint. Some toys that were broken had even been fixed, and all of this was done in a manner of minutes while I ate supper inside. I tried to explain what had happened to my parents, but of course they thought that I had done it all myself. If I had known what I know now, I would have been terrified; at the time forever, I just shrugged it off as somebody's practical joke, even though that made absolutely no sense. Three years later, I had outgrown many of the toys and my step father decided it was time to box them up and store them in the garage. He spent a good deal of the day with me cleaning up all the toys as well as trying to dispose of a lot of the other junk that was strewn about the backyard. The next day however, he went outside to find that many of the toys had been taken out once again. In fact, they had not only been removed from their boxes, but strewn about the small grove of trees like somebody had been playing with them there. He blamed me for this, and I tried to reassure him that I had not taken the toys out and that perhaps some local kids were sneaking onto the property to "fuck with us". This was the first time I uttered a curse in front of my step father, and this combined with his frustration over the toys lead to some rather drastic disciplinary actions which I refuse to discuss. After this, he made me clean the toys by myself, and this time I added a padlock to secure them for good. For whatever reason, ever since that day, the relationship between me and my stepfather has been a turbulent one. But as unpleasant as that was, I soon began to realize that he was the least of my worries; something was beginning to happen in our house that I could not explain, and as the years went on the occurrences only got more frequent and strange. Occurrences of unexplainable activity began to happen not just outside in our acre long backyard, but inside our own home as well. The guest room, which was across the hall from my room at the opposite end of the house (where my parents slept), had always given me the shivers quite literally, and it was strangely the coldest room in the house even though the sun always shined through it's windows. Soon, however, the room began to take on ominous implications worse than the frigid temperatures. The wine bottles we stored in that room began to break, and we soon had to store them elsewhere. I was again blamed for this happening, wrongfully so. Once or twice a month I would hear scratching, scurrying, and cracking in the other room. I soon bought a fan to drown out the odd noises so I could sleep better at night, but as the fan would run I would occasionally hear faint whispering from across the hall only to have the voices cease as soon as I turned the fan off. By the age of 16, the house was getting more and more on my nerves. I soon found myself thankful to go to my classes, or to friends houses just to avoid my own. My mother, too began to notice weird things, like the inordinately large number of birds that would crash into our windows and die. She once told me to call the police, because she thought she heard burglars laughing from our outdoor garage one night. When the police arrived, nobody was found and nothing had been stolen. To this day she swears she heard laughing from across our long backyard. The place undoubtedly bothered me the most, however, as most of the activity which I noticed seem to come from the guest room next to my own. On the night after my 22nd birthday, while my parents had left me alone in the place, I was on the computer while simultaneously watching a film on TV. As I left my room to get some popcorn, when I returned I was utterly shocked to find that my desktop computer screen and the TV movie had been switched so that the television now showed my PC's desktop where as my PC now showed the movie I had been watching on TV. I began to yell obscenities, and in a bewildered state I turned both the TV and my computer off. When I turned my PC back on, I was shocked to see something on my desktop that I had never seen before. It only popped up momentarily, but as it did I nearly jumped out of my seat. My face turned white as I realized that my desktop background had been changed to a simple white background with the words "ERIN WUZ HERE" crudely scrawled upon it. A moment later, and after a strange dimming of all the lights in the room, the image was gone. I tried to search my saved background images, but never could find that particular one again to document it. It was at this point that I definitely concluded something was terribly wrong with this place and, once again, I could not convince my mother or stepfather otherwise. Over the next few years I worked as a park ranger while also attending community college. I was determined to save up and move out of the house that had been bothering me so much. Just as I had saved up enough money, however, another bizarre event occurred that crushed my hopes for salvation. This time, it became clear that whatever had been harassing me also did not want me to leave. I had withdrawn most of my savings in preparation to pay, in cash, for some necessities I would need for my new apartment. Upon returning home with the money, though, I became distracted by my mother calling for help, saying that she had somehow been locked in the guest room. I set my cash down and rushed to help her. Inside, the guest room was so cold that my mother and I could see our own breath. There was no way she could have locked herself inside, and she claimed that it felt as if somebody was holding the door from the outside. When I returned to my room, the money had been burnt to a crisp and my hopes for moving away were suddenly dashed. I decided to do some independent research about the house's previous residence, but found that a number of the older folk in the area were reluctant to talk to me about anything. I practically had to beg for information, but most folk around the area were either too young to remember or too selfish to care about my inquiries. Finally, though I managed to get some truth about the place from an elderly, very wealthy couple who ironically enough lived within walking distance of our own home. The old couple invited me in, seeming cordial enough. The old wife offered me some coffee as her husband began to talk. As the old man regaled me with stories about the place, he spoke with a sort of emotional regret which I could not tell whether he felt for me, or the house's previous owners. "Good souls, those ones. Don't quite reckon I remember their names." he said. "All anyone remembers of that place is the bits of history that showed up in the papers that day when it happened, course. This is a small town, a christian town...and don't you let nobody tell you nothin' else. So, cause of that we don't like to talk about tragedies like what happened there. Funny how one bad thing reflects on the whole community, you see. Maybe that's why that shady ol' bank kept their traps shut when they sold you that place on the cheap...and, oh yes, I know all about how cheap you got that place." The old man gave a chilling cackle. "I bet you think you got that place for a bargain, and sure as shit you did, young man. A real steal that place...but she has a bad past. From what I 'member it was just a single mother living there, real nice girl if I remember. Her boy, too, was a real cute kid. But the husband, by Jehova, was a goddamn monster by every meaning of the word." he said. Now, his voice shrank until it was little more than a whisper as his wife returned with the coffee. "Let's say you wake up one morning, young man, and hear sirens and police cruisers all up and down the road. Let's say you get your rain coat on, walk down the street to where that mother and her son live and see it swarmin' with suits. All over the back yard. I talk to the police, I sure did. They gave me all sort a hints that that fine lady's husband just got released from prison...but what he done. Back yard, I went back there after the police left. Nobody there to stop me, and I was curious. Found that old metal shed by the garage. Blood all over it. Smell of death. Wish I never looked. Wish you never had to come asking about it..." After spending some time with the old man, doing nothing but listening, I had heard enough. I thanked him for his help, and I left without taking a sip of my coffee. I was familiar enough with the shed the man was talking about, as it sat right by the old garage near the thicket of trees on the other side of the acre of land we lived on. That night, I took my camera and investigated the area. I did not find much, but just as I was about to give up I tripped over something. From the garage, I took a hoe and began working on clearing weeds around the place where I tripped, as I was certain that whatever I fell over had been solid. Finally, I unearthed some sort of concrete slab deep in the dirt. I brushed it off with an old broom I found nearby, and gave it a quick glance over. My eyes, I can imagine, must have jumped out of my skull when I saw a pair of shoe prints, an obscured date, and the name 'Erin' imprinted into the unearthed slab. Since then, I have tried earnestly to get the hell out of this house. Sometimes I feel like forces beyond my control are keeping me here. Even as I sit at this computer and type this, I feel an unnatural malaise that tells me to "stay inside" and "never leave". I mostly laze about now. I lost my job, and I drink most of the day away. I do not sleep much any more, but when I do, I can feel something calling me out to the thicket of trees by the garage, and by that horrible shed. In my dreams I go there and play with the toys that I locked away so long ago.
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