11/11
The last few days have been rough since mom got back from the hospital. I’m feeling pretty down, she needs a lot of help doing basic things.
I haven’t written in a while. It’s funny, I wrote that first paragraph and just sort of stared at the page for a second. I think I feel better? It’s been a while since I’ve really spelled out my thoughts. I’ve been single for over a year now, and I feel like I’m just stuck in a pressure cooker on the lowest setting. That’s how pressure cookers work, right? I mean it’s been slowly building up, these kinds of feelings. It’s lonely, I thought working from home would be good for me, but I miss working with people, even the bad ones.
11/12
Alright, it’s around noon right now. Just got done helping mom again. It’s hard to see her getting old. I can’t tell if I prefer having her company or not, haha. It sounds bad, I guess. She dropped something behind the couch and I had to pull it away from the wall to grab it. She’s always been like that, having weird small little issues, dad used to help her with those things, before his mind started slipping.
They seemed a lot more distant the years before he went. You’d think it would be the opposite, but I don’t know. I don’t really know, maybe something came up between them. I have to get back to work, maybe I’ll come back later tonight and write more. It feels good to just vent a little, even if it’s to a notebook.
11/14
Yesterday was a doozy. I say that like it wasn’t a big deal, maybe that’s just me coping with it. Mom had another scare and we went to the hospital. She said she was feeling faint and I was freaked out that it was her kidneys again. I’m picking her up from the hospital tonight, so I have some more time to think on things, I guess.
Something strange just happened. I’m in my room when I write this, I’ve lived here for close to seven years in this house. When I walk into my room, there’s a window to the right that looks out at the neighbor’s wall. Under it is my desk and dresser, where I’m writing this. Opposite the window is my bed.
I just leaned back in my chair, and to my left, there’s a window that I’ve never seen before.
There’s curtains over it. It’s white curtains, like the other windows in this house, but I’ve never seen it before. No, there was never that window in here, there’s one on the wall opposite my bed, there’s never been one to the left. There’s never been one.
I saw it and something dropped in my stomach, I was so unsettled. I know this house. This is my room. I’ve never seen this window before.
I left the house, I’m at the park now. It’s getting cold, it’s chilly, but the wind feels alright, it’s refreshing me, I think. I was just so … freaked out by the window, I guess. I thought about it the whole way over.
I have to be psyching myself out. I don’t take drugs, my mom doesn’t, does she? Did she slip some hallucinogens in my coffee? I’m joking, but I’m not. There’s a lot I don’t know about her, but I don’t think that’s one of them.
I’ve been sitting here for a few minutes, I can’t really tell how long. I’m watching the cars go by. I think I’ve calmed down. I’ve been thinking about whether or not I want to go back to the house, technically, my break is almost over. What if I go back and the window’s gone? What if I’m just really stressed out and underslept and I don’t realize it, and I’ll do some research and find out that you can have waking dreams or something like that? Like I was dreaming and my brain just made up that it was there.
I go on this whole train of thought, and then my head stops and goes “But what if it isn’t? What if it’s still there?” And all these feelings come back. Fear isn’t the right word, I guess. Unsafe. I think that’s what I’m feeling. That’s what it made me feel.
Regardless, I have to go back. I have things to do. Maybe I’ll bring my laptop out to the living room today.
11/16
Yesterday was exhausting. My eyes still feel so heavy, I think that’s just bad sleep. I don’t even want to talk about it. I spent the whole day busy, and the entire time, this thing was nagging at the back of my mind, the window.
It had to have been close to midnight when I got back to my room. Pitch black, and when I flicked on the light switch, it was still there. I actually jumped. I didn’t even want to fall asleep. It’s still there. The curtains are still closed, and I don’t want to open them. I found myself staring at them in the morning. I looked ahead at the window that’s always been there, and then at this new one, I think it’s a new one. And I don’t know if I’m going crazy, but the light looked different. It just shone through the curtains differently than every other window in this house, at least this morning.
I feel stressed out enough. I thought working from home would be fun, it kind of is, but it’s like there’s no running from it now. Whenever I try to relax, there’s just something scratching at the back of my mind, I need to finish up documentation, I need to help mom with something, and now this window thing. It’s just getting too much. I want a vacation, but I can’t, now that she’s home.
It’s not all bad. For as much as I stress over her, it’s not the worst thing in the world to have her around. We’ve had a weird relationship for a while, ever since dad went. I was thinking about it the other day, and I realized that we’ve never had that close of a bond. She gave me a lot of love and affection growing up, but every once in a while I would catch something that made me feel off, like she wasn’t being honest with me. I still remember when I was six or so, I’m pretty sure, sneaking down the steps on Christmas Eve, I wanted to see Santa putting my presents down. But when I peeked down the stairs, the presents were already under the tree, and my parents were sitting on the couch, talking about something. I never caught everything they were saying, but I’ll never forget when my dad said “If you want a divorce, just ask for one.”
It was so confusing, I could feel my stomach dropping. I don’t remember how the rest of it went, but I think she denied whatever he was saying, and I scampered back up to my room.
The next morning, it was so happy. I was smiling, and I think I really was happy, but there was that same kind of scratching at the back of my mind, how weird it was that my parents in that moment were the same people from the last night. Was that really who they were? Or were they putting on some kind of show for me?
I think about that every now and then. Not much else I wanted to get off my chest. I should talk to someone about this stuff.
11/17
Mom had a visitor today, an old friend of hers, apparently. I’d never met him, or heard her mention him. I brought some drinks out for them, and he gave me a weird smile. I don’t know what that was about, I guess he was trying to be friendly, but it felt too friendly, if you know what I mean. Like I knew him. This isn’t some case where I met him as a baby, right? Cause that doesn’t count.
When he left, she also said something weird to me. She went “Isn’t he so nice?” and I said “Yeah, he was,” trying to humor her. But then she said “I’ve known John for a very long time, since college.”
I just kind of shrugged it off to her, but something about it made me feel nauseous. I don’t know, something bad. It stirred something bad up in my stomach. College is when my parents met, wasn’t it?
I’m sleeping with the covers over my head again, like a kid. Something about it makes me feel comfortable, when I can’t see the window. When I wake up, I try not to look at it, I try not to think about it.
11/20
I know what I wrote in the last entry, but it’s killing me. I haven’t been able to think about anything else, it’s like the thought has grown and grown in my head until it’s taking up all the space. I need to at least pull back the curtains and look through. And then, I’ll have some peace of mind.
I’m going now, I’m going to open the curtains.
I’m in the park again, my hands have stopped trembling enough to write this.
The wall that that window faces is the back wall of the house, pointing to the backyard. When I pulled back the curtains, that was not my backyard.
I don’t know what that was. It was somewhere else, there was a field of grass, but it looked like half of it was dying out, dark and yellow. A few hundred feet away, there were these dense woods, but the trees had no leaves. It looked like late fall, but it’s barely August, and the weather is not like that here. And the sky, damn it. The sky was this heavy, gloomy overcast that made everything look dark. I couldn’t have been staring out at it for more than ten seconds when I shut the blinds again.
It was such a still scene, it would’ve passed for a photograph if the clouds weren’t rolling slowly. The branches of the trees criss-crossed so that it was impossible to get a good look into the woods. That was too much for me, if I was any more curious, I’d have to risk … I don’t know, seeing something? I don’t even want to know.
That is not where I live. I don’t know where that is. I don’t know why it’s behind that window. I’m so scared. I don’t know what’s going on. Mom is home, I have to go back, don’t I?
Damn. Damn it.
11/22
I’ve had a lot of time to think. Yesterday, I asked mom about dad. Just some stuff that was heavy on my mind. I asked her if she really loved him. She seemed taken aback, and as soon as I said it, I felt like I’d crossed a line. I tried to clarify, I said “I mean, when I was a kid?”
She looked at me for a long time, and I remember thinking about how deep the wrinkles looked on her face. Eventually, she said she did, but a lot of things happened when I was in middle school, and she didn’t want to talk about it. That didn’t sit well with me. I wanted to say “Well, when are you going to talk about it?” I mean, how many years does she even have? It feels like she’s having an emergency every other day…
The only reason I asked her was because I was feeling anxious. I didn’t sleep well the night before, and I woke up to the sound of a train in the distance. It took me a minute to remember that I don’t live near a train. I just shot up and scrambled out of the room, and the moment I shut the door behind me, the noise was gone. I stepped outside and listened, nothing.
It just put me in a bad state. I started thinking about a lot of stuff, and then I asked her after lunch. I don’t know what the use is. I don’t know what I want to know, but I know there’s something, you know?
11/27
Slow day today, not much to talk about. I’ve been working and sleeping on the couch in the living room. Under normal circumstances, it would be much less comfortable than my bed, but the mental stress is gone, and that makes a world of difference.
Even so, I still have to go in there from time to time. I don’t want to pick up the slovenly habit of wearing the same clothes for a month straight; I know I’ve got no one to impress, but it’s like, I can’t let it get to that level, right?
So I have to go in to change my clothes. It’s so silly, I open the door slowly, like something is gonna be in there. Nothing ever is.
Well, except for the obvious. The window is always there. Shut. Curtains closed. Strange light glowing through.
11/30
Goddamn it. I’m writing this from my room again. Mom came to me today and said she didn’t want to sleep in her room anymore. She said that her room smelled like rotting meat. I went in with her, and was immediately hit with this awful, sweet smell. I searched around, expecting to find some kind of dinner plate she’d forgotten about, but there was nothing. And besides, I’ve seen rotting meat before in small amounts, like some steak scraps, and that wouldn’t’ve fumed up the room like that. You’d need a big cut, maybe even multiple, for the room to get that bad.
She’d already opened a window in the morning when she smelled it, and it hadn’t gone away. I offered for her to stay in my room, but she got this strange look on her face and refused, like it was a ridiculous idea. She said she was going to have to sleep on the couch.
That made me really uneasy, because it meant I’d have to go back here. But I couldn’t tell her no, and I couldn’t explain to her why I was so hesitant to sleep in my own room. I just couldn’t.
No one else has seen the window. I’m the only one who knows about it.
I pushed my desk to a different wall so that I can keep it in view at all times. I’ve been here working all day, and I haven’t noticed anything unusual. Nothing passes in front of it, there’s no noise. Even the light level seems consistent with the time of day outside.
I haven’t talked to anyone outside of mom for what feels like months. This journal is kind of all I have, so I feel the need to spill into it every once in a while, like a friend.
12/2
Report from this morning: Nothing to report. Yeah, no activity to speak of throughout the night or when I woke. I even slept pretty well. The weather’s been breezy lately, we’re well into the winter months, even if there’s no snow to show for it. I miss snow in the winter, I don’t think I ever stopped missing it. Anyway, always nice to wake up to a cold house, snug under the blanket, some wind chimes in the distance, makes me feel cozy.
I have some random garbage to do today after I finish answering emails. With everything that’s been going on, it’s nice to just get a peaceful, boring day, haha. Mom’s been doing alright too, I need to go grocery shopping for her, I’ll do it either today or tomorrow.
There’s no wind chimes in my neighborhood. I finished up the chores and decided to take a walk, and I went outside, and there were no chimes. No sound, nothing. Wind was blowing, I looked at my neighbors houses– their porches, and none of them have any hung up. I circled the block to check the houses behind me. Nothing. The closest was a place all the way on the other end of the street at the corner, and there’s no way I would’ve heard it from where my bedroom is with the windows closed.
Why did I hear wind chimes? Where could it possibly have been coming from???
I know the answer. I don’t know why I’m still acting like I don’t. I just want things to be normal again. I just want it to be the house I knew. Or thought I knew.
12/3
When I got home from the grocery store, mom had fallen over. She was trying to get something from the bathroom when she just lost her balance and slipped. Thank God she’d managed to catch the counter and slide down, but she doesn’t have the upper body strength to lift her own weight up from the floor. We used to joke about those commercials where the old people would fall over, but when you see your own mother struggling to even sit up, it all feels really … different. I don’t know, maybe it would be better to put her in a home or something.
She’s back on her feet now and watching TV in the kitchen, no severe injuries to speak of, but I’m pretty sure she got bruised.
I won’t lie, in the back of my head, I was a little annoyed, because it’s the worst timing. I mean, it’s never a good time for an elder to slip, but I’ve had something burning in the back of my mind for a few days that I hate talking about. I don’t even want to write it down here, which is so stupid. This is basically just writing to myself, so why am I so scared?
Whatever, I’ll bring it up tomorrow. This little episode will basically be forgotten by then, ignoring any aches and pains.
12/4
I slept facing away from the window last night. Something about it just made me uneasy, the same feeling I got when I looked through it, like I didn’t want to risk seeing anything.
Anyway, I’m just writing this on my self-appointed break, I find it relaxing. Once I’m done, I’ll talk to her, maybe I’ll have more to write about.
I do have more to write about, unfortunately.
I just came out and said it: I asked if she ever cheated on dad. Christ, the look on her face, I couldn’t tell if she was incensed at the accusation or shocked that I knew, if I really did know.
She denied it, which I expected. Actually, did I? What does she have to lose at this stage? She could’ve been telling the perfect truth, I just had all these questions…
I was thinking about a lot of weird little things from my childhood, like going to block parties where they both always seemed tense afterwards, like something had happened. Or nights where he was working and she’d slip away for groceries. At the time I was, what, seven? I didn’t think twice, but there’s like a hundred anecdotes like that. Why did Collins’ parents just stop talking to us? We were so tight, then all of a sudden I was forbidden to go over to his house, then his parents divorce and he moves away?
I asked her about all these things, and she seemed to have perfectly reasonable answers for all of them, it made me feel like an idiot.
I’m in my room now. The window is still shut tight, and for the first time since this whole thing started, I don’t want to leave. She got really angry, a lot more than I was ready for. I feel so bad. I mean, she’s in her eighties, how am I gonna go torching our relationship now? I don’t even wanna look at her, and I don’t think she wants to see me either.
12/5
I woke up to the sound of wind chimes again. In my sleep, I’d turned over so that when I opened my eyes, I could see the window, and its curtains blowing in the breeze.
I can’t describe to you the kind of terror I felt this morning. A straight shot of adrenaline through my heart wouldn’t have gotten me up as fast as I did in those next few seconds.
My eyes were still blurry from sleep, so I didn’t have a clear picture of what I saw, but as I rushed to the window, I could make out that same view. The desolate skies, the dying grass, the skeletal trees. I don’t know if I saw something moving in them or if it was just my imagination and bleary eyes.
I slammed it shut, but there was no lock. Every window in this house has a lock. Except that one. Damn it.
I just washed up in the bathroom, and while I was drying my hands, I realized there’s . . I don’t even want to say it, write it. On my left arm, there’s a bite mark. Two rows of flat teeth, like a person’s, etched into my forearm. It looks fresh. I can’t imagine a bite that didn’t even break skin could be very old.
I’ve been trying to focus all day, but I can’t. I no longer feel safe in my own home. I’m outside right now because I keep thinking I see something out of the corner of my eye, but nothing’s ever there. I don’t know what to do. If it was just me, I’d go rent a motel room or something until I feel better, but I can’t leave mom at home, not when I don’t feel safe myself. God damn it.
12/6
Last night I slept out in the living room on the floor. I told mom there was a draft in my room and I was worried about catching a cold. I guess it’s sort of true.
While I was eating breakfast, she told me she thought there was a problem with the water, because the bathroom sink’s pressure was strangely low. I don’t really want to check it right now, maybe later. The idea of the basement is giving me the creeps.
She’s been different lately. I think she’s still not over what I said the other day, which sucks. I haven’t talked to her about it since, but I’m thinking I should. It’s almost like she’s a different person to me now, and I don’t like it. We at least got along fine before.
God damn it, something weird just happened. I was working out in the living room when I heard footsteps coming down the hall from where the family room is, where mom was sitting. I looked up, and didn’t see anybody. I figured it was mom, but she said she hadn’t left. I must have some insane nerves if I’m hallucinating things, but I still don’t feel safe.
12/7
Today, I finally worked up the courage to go back into my room, just to make sure. Because I knew that I’d left the window closed, I had this image in my mind of walking in and finding it open. Then I’d know.
But it wasn’t open, it was still shut tight. I took a breath, and everything felt kinda normal. And then, I turned to leave, and saw a piece of paper by the door.
I couldn’t remember leaving anything there, so I grabbed it, and … God. I’m writing this on the porch right now because I can’t stand being inside.
It was a sheet of paper with text printed on it. It read: “There is a pipe in your basement that goes nowhere”
I just wanted to throw up. I can’t stand being in this house anymore.
I might have to go inside soon, it looks like its about to rain. Or, I could just stay out and get wet.
Mom had a stroke tonight. It freaked me out, I knew she’d had one before, but not in front of me. I couldn’t stand seeing her like that. The whole drive to the hospital was in the pouring rain, and by the time we got there it was pitch black. They took her in and told me that the only thing I could do was go back home and wait on a call to tell me she was conscious.
I felt terrible leaving her behind, but there wasn’t anything I could really do. Last time, she was out for over a day, and I can’t just sit in the waiting room for that long– or longer.
I’m in a motel right now. I only booked for one night, but I already feel better. Maybe tomorrow I’ll go back home. The thought of being alone in that house makes me feel… uneasy.
I need a full night’s sleep.
12/8
I got that full night’s rest, probably the first in weeks, to be honest. I feel pretty good. I can’t stay here more than a day, in case mom needs to come home, though, and that freaks me out a bit.
Update: I’ve been home all day, and I was right. It is weird. I haven’t seen anything out of the corner of my eye, I haven’t heard footsteps, there’s been nothing, and that’s kind of the problem. It’s lonely, empty, really. Just me. Still no word from the hospital. The rain hasn’t let up all day, it’s been pouring since yesterday, I’m worried the basement’s gonna flood at this rate, or worse.
It’s 10 PM and there’s no power. I’m writing this with the flash from my phone, and I don’t know how much time I have left, but I have to write this down. In the best case scenario, I’m just stupid and delusional. In the worst case, I want there to be some explanation for whatever happens.
The lights went out twenty minutes ago. The breaker is in the basement. There’s only one way to turn it on. There’s nowhere to go.
I can’t stop thinking about the note. The pipe down there. I know what’s going to happen. The day I saw the window. It’s going to be the same thing.
I have to go down there, because in the dark, I can already hear the sounds. I heard footsteps from inside my room. I heard breathing in my ear, and I snapped and there was nothing, but I heard it.
I have to turn the lights back on. I’m going to walk down those stairs, and I don’t care what I hear.
Taigen Moon Works 