SIGHTED Page 3

  A dim light cascaded through the dark, coming from my TV; I felt compelled to look in that direction. There was a tall, slender, dark, figure there, silhouetted against the static that danced on the screen. It was not my landlord, or even human. Memories of shadows and hovering apparitions from my childhood came flooding back to me. My heart began to throb, and I struggled to speak, but could only seem to make unintelligible noises. My eyes found its formless head. It seemed to notice me then; two crimson sharp oval eyes opened. I’d written about them in books, and spoken to dozens of eyewitnesses, but I tried to forget them all the same. I had hoped that I would never see one again.

  I could feel my heart rate increase; chills ran from head to toe. It began to move, snake its way across the carpet, and stand over the edge of the couch. It had an aura, like molten rubber, which curled and twisted toward the ceiling.

  Why me, why was it here? Why, after all these years?

  I screamed, and it was on top of me, sitting on my chest. I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t scream, all I could do was watch as its hands wrapped around my throat, sucking the life out of me.

  Maybe it was here to kill me? Maybe I didn’t mind so much.

  I let myself get drowned in its eyes, its hypnotic, frightening eyes, and let darkness take me…

  IV

  Sunlight warmed my skin and forced me awake. I gripped my chest, and drew in a large, deep breath. The room felt like it was filled with static; my head throbbed violently. I shook my head, reached for my phone, and saw that Caden had sent me a picture message.

  I opened it; another ambulance, this time in the middle of the night.

  Caden: Another one. Still think it’s a coincidence?

  A deep and powerful sickness settled in the pit of my stomach; I had to check on him.

  My phone rang, and I saw that it was my agent.

  “Hi, Jade,” I said.

  “Where the hell have you been?” She said. “I’ve been dodging calls from the publisher all week, they say they need your final draft within the week!”

  Right, the book. Damn it. “Sorry, Jade, I’ve been a little distracted. I promise, I’m working on it.”

  “I certainly hope so, because if you flake out on this contract, it won’t be easy for you to land another book deal, Luke.”

  I hated when she called me Luke.

  “I gotta go, Jade,” I said.

  “Get that manuscript done, damn it!”

  She hung up before I could respond. I rolled out of bed, limped into the kitchen, and tossed a cup of day old coffee in the microwave, ordered another Uber, and rushed out the door. This time the driver found me much quicker. I sank into the seat and held my head; the nightmare seemed so real. If it was a nightmare at all.

  The car began to move.

  “You okay, sir?” The driver asked.

  I nodded. “Yeah, just a little tired.”

  “Gotcha.”

  I was far from “fine.” In my mind’s eye, I was ten again, cowering beneath the covers in the middle of the night. A figure with elongated arms stood at the foot of my bed, unmoving, static. I remember being unable to move, breathe, or scream, each time it appeared. It had been the same the night before, and the night before that too. In the morning I would wake up on the floor with a sore neck, and the figure would be gone. I tried to tell my Dad, but, instead of answers and reassurance, I got a Bible lecture and a spanking for fibbing. He, and every psychologist I saw through the years, claimed that my pain was only in my head. I quickly learned not to trust my fears or paranormal experiences with him.

  The experiences with the long-armed man didn’t stop till we moved later that year. At first, I slept quietly, but that didn’t last long. I still remember the first time I saw it, standing outside my window at three in the morning. It seemed to be wearing an old-fashioned top hat. It sat there, every night, unmoving, while I cowered beneath my covers. It all culminated when I woke up and found the window shattered, glass strewn about the floor, sparkling in the light of the full moon. I was so scared that I snuck down stairs to get a drink of water, turning all the lights on as I walked. Monsters are scared of the light; such a childish thought.

  I dropped the glass and it shattered on the linoleum when I saw it, standing over me in the kitchen. I remember its crimson eyes opening for the first time, round, with sharp ends. I bolted up the stairs, screaming so hard my throat ran hoarse. When I reached the top, I glanced behind me; it stood still at the bottom, staring up at me, taunting me. My dad came out with the belt in hand, complaining about all the noise I was making. I tried to point to the hat-man as the culprit, but it was gone. I got ten lashes for breaking the window and the glass, even though I swore I didn’t know how it had happened.

  The problem persisted until we moved again. My dad forced me to see a therapist, and somehow the shadow people stopped bothering me. Still, those experiences had inspired me to become a paranormal investigator. In some ways, it was a way of facing my darkest fears. But, even now, I couldn’t lie to myself—the resurgence of the phenomenon was something I’d prayed would never happen.

  “We’re here, boss,” the driver said.

  I stepped out of the car, and found myself in front of Caden’s front door, pounding on it like a madman. There was no answer. He couldn’t have been gone, his dirty Mercedes was still parked in the driveway.

  Bells tolled from my phone. I rushed to open the text, but it wasn’t from Caden; eels swam and warred amongst themselves within the confines of my gut.

  Landlord: Your extension is over, rent was due yesterday!

  It wasn’t fair, it seemed like he was making thing up to justify kicking me to the curb.

  Lucas: You can’t just make things up, I still have today to get the rent together!

  In my frustration, I deleted the text. Even if I did have today to get the rent together, how could I? I pushed my rent troubles from my mind and focused on Caden’s house. The front door was locked. I tried calling his cell. No answer.

  I found myself at a neighbor’s door, ringing their doorbell.

  “Can I help you?” An old woman in a mumu and hair curlers answered the door.

  “Yeah,” I said. “My friend lives next door to you. I was wondering where he might be?”

  “I haven’t seen him,” she said. “And tell him to stop making all that goddamned racket!”

  She slammed the door in my face before I could reply. I turned back to Caden’s house, and gave it a long look. The queasiness in the pit of my stomach grew worse. Something was wrong. What if he was gone, hurt, or worse? I had to know.

  I found myself climbing over his fence, and at the back door. That act alone had me out of breath; I’m not as limber as I used to be. The shades weren’t drawn, and I could see through the sliding glass door into his living room. The coffee table was standing on its side, and there were papers and bits of splintered wood scattered across the oak floor in the living room. The door was locked… but the window wasn’t. I dug the screen out, tossed it behind me; I placed my hands against the bottom section of the window and pushed it up, then crawled through the opening.

  “Caden?”

  There was no reply, and no sign of him down stairs. I climbed the staircase and checked every room, leaving the master bedroom for last. It was eerily empty as the rest of the place. I paced the room to see if I could find anything to tell me where he’d gone. The bedsheets were cast on the floor in a lump, and there were clothes everywhere. Then they caught my eye, a series of drawings, both pinned to the wall and resting on his study. I picked one up to confirm what I was seeing.

  It was a black, slender, figure, with crimson sharp oval eyes… just like the one I saw in my dream. The rest of the drawings were the same, each in different positions. One of the drawings featured a shadowy figure standing next to a light pole outside, just like the photo that Caden had sent me. My eyes began to water, and I could feel the room getting colder. Had he been seeing them this entire time? why did
n’t he tell me? And if so, what did it mean? What do shadow people have to do with these men in black?

  I heard three loud thumps on the wall behind me and I jumped around, holding a pencil as if it were a knife - but there was nothing there. Then… three more thumps, this time, they seemed to be coming from above me. I walked around the room, and it persisted. Maybe something was in the attic? Cautiously, I located the entrance to the attic and found a chair to help me reach the latch. I opened it, and the stench of urine and body odor caused me to vomit in my mouth. I toughed the smell out long enough to throw the trap door up and get a look inside. I slowly opened my eyes to see Caden, sitting in the corner of his attic, twitching, and kicking at the wall next to him. I cursed, and ran to find a ladder.

  When I got back up there, he was still in the same spot, kicking away at the wall, empty bottle of Scotch clutched tight in his hand. There was a pile of empty bottles next to him and shards of broken glass, gleaming in the scattered light that I’d created by opening the trap door. I found myself next to him, bearing the smell, and touching his shoulder. His eyes were open, but he paid me almost no attention.

  “Caden,” I said. “It’s me, Lucas!”

  He looked at me; dark circles hung heavy beneath glossy eyes. He resumed kicking the wall. How had he gotten so bad over one night?

  “What happened to you?” I asked.

  “They keep coming for me,” he said. “I was right. They tried to erase it… but… I put it back together.”

  “Did they hurt you?”

  “The shadows, they —” He started to laugh. “They’re the key.”

  “The shadow people?” I showed him the drawing I’d taken from his study. “Why did you draw this?”

  His brow furrowed, slobber dripping down his mouth and catching in his beard. “They’re not really there, you know —no—you were wrong about that —we both were. They’re like, fragments, living nightmares that we’re forced to relive again and again, like our brains are trying to tell us that something went missing.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Lost bits of data that have no form, but tell a piece of the story.

  “They’ve been coming for us all these years, because we keep stumbling upon their little war, their little plot. But now I know what the fragments mean, what they’re trying to tell me!

  “It starts when you’re young, you don’t even suspect, you see something you shouldn’t in the sky, or in the woods, and they come for you, leaving you unaware, thoughtless, and scared! You tell your friends, your parents, and they don’t believe you, they just beat you for telling lies, or worse, send you to a shrink that tells you that you’re mad, that you’re seeing things. You’re made to believe that the things you experience are nothing but ghosts, or that you’re imagining them… but, they’re only half right…”

  My skin prickled, and I saw my ten-year-old self standing before my dad, belt in hand after just having told him about my experiences with the long-arm man. Saw myself desperately trying to explain the broken window in my room as the hat-man’s fault.

  Was it, though? I never actually saw the glass shatter…

  His kicking intensified, and he grabbed my arm tight enough to bruise. “You’re next. I know you’re next! They’re coming for you, and there’s not a goddamn thing you can do!”

  I broke his grip and fell away from him. I rushed back down the ladder, and found myself on his lawn, breathing the frigid air and fumbling for my phone. I dialed 911, and told the operator that I believed my friend was suffering from alcohol poisoning. Thirty minutes later, I watched them pull him out on a stretcher and load him into an ambulance.

  I watched it drive away, lights flashing, red and white. I couldn’t help but just sit there on his lawn, watching my breath swirl away in the wind and wonder what the fuck I was going to do next.

  V

  “Tell me, Zoe, have you ever seen a shadow person?” I asked.

  “Nope,” she said.

  I leaned back on my couch and tried not to seem as awkward as I felt. It’d been some time since I’d had a woman in my living room, and even longer since I’d had one in bed. I couldn’t allow myself to get distracted with that, though. My friend was in the hospital, suffering from a nervous breakdown, just days after having contact with the men in black. I was still trying to wrap my head around everything he’d said before they carted him off. I’d called the hospital earlier, but they told me he was heavily medicated and not to be disturbed while he was under observation.

  I fanned a few of the drawings Caden had made on the couch next to her. She picked one of them up, but didn’t seem to have a strong reaction one way or another.

  “Caden has been seeing these figures ever since he was visited by the man in black.” I showed her the image on my phone, and she lurched.

  “Jeez, that is just full of nope,” she said.

  “You’re telling me.”

  “So, what are you going to do?”

  “I’m not even really sure.” I leaned forward, clasped my hands together, and eyed the beer I had poured myself. “On one hand, it’s possible that the pressure got to Caden, and he just snapped. But, on the other hand, it’s also possible that everything he said was true. Maybe he has really been seeing these things.”

  “Is that why you called me? Part of me was beginning to wonder if you’d ever call, it’s been so long since we met.”

  “Honestly, don’t have an answer for you there, either.” My face flushed with warmth. “I panicked, called the first number I saw, and you answered.”

  “Z is at the end of the alphabet.” She laughed.

  “There was something he said, something about the shadow people being fragments of the whole.”

  “You totally dodged what I said, but okay, fragments of what whole?”

  I stood up, grabbed my drink, and began pacing around my living room. “Maybe the shadow people aren’t really ghosts, like I thought they were, and maybe they’re not even time travelers, like Caden believed. Maybe they’re fragments of memories from erased men in black experiences? Like, the worst damned night terrors you’ve ever experienced…”

  “Or, they’re repressed memories returning to the surface.”

  “That, that’s actually not a bad theory.” I was glad I had called her.

  “You’re welcome.”

  “Wait,” I said. “What do you mean it’s been so long since we’ve met?”

  “I gave you my number a week ago?” Her eyes were wide, she was leaning away from me.

  “No, that can’t be right…”

  It hit me; I almost dropped my beer. The answer was right in front of me, and I’d been too damned blind to see it. They tormented my childhood, and recently… I had hoped it was just a nightmare brought on by the stress I was facing in my life, but the answer was clear now.

  If Caden and Zoe were right, what did that mean for me? How many times had I been visited by them, and what did Caden and I know that was so crucial that it had to be erased?

  “You black out,” I said, “start seeing these figures, you imagine them breaking things, standing over you, stalking you, or-” I raised a hand to feel where I’d felt the shadow person’s hands wrap about my throat. “-Choking you.”

  “Lucas?” She stood up, reached for my arm.

  “I could have sworn that I met you only a few days ago, Zoe…”

  There was a chill between Zoe and me now, an eerie quiet.

  “Are you okay?” She asked, quietly.

  “No,” I said. “I’m really not.”

  Maybe everything was a lie.

  “Okay, so, I have an idea,” Zoe said, “and you’re probably gonna think it’s stupid, but here it is.”

  “I’m listening…”

  “Let’s go to that military base where your friend saw that UFO, maybe we’ll see something that’ll point us in the right direction?”

  “Roanoke is a three hour drive, Zoe… and my bank acc
ount is pretty much dry as it is.”

  “I’ll cover it.” She looked at her phone. “Besides, it’s only five in the afternoon right now, so we could get back before sun-up for sure.”

  “You don’t have to…”

  She started digging for her phone. “Yeah, you owe me.”

  “How do I not sound like a mental patient to you?”

  “I won’t lie, you sound like a nut job.” Her lips twisted into a smile. “But a fun nut job. I’m not so much interested in seeing UFOs as I’m interested in getting to know you.”

  “Wow, I’m not sure how to respond to that.”

  “You could say, ‘Fuck yeah, let’s do it!’”

  I laughed, almost spit out my beer. “You’re right, that’s what I should say.”

  “And who the hell knows, maybe you’ll convince me that all of this is real at some point?”

  “Maybe so.”

  She dangled her car keys and motioned toward my sliding glass door. I followed, grabbing my hoodie and my own keys. Locking the door behind us, we rushed up the hill and I followed her to her car. It was a white, beat up, four-door Sedan. I climbed into the passenger seat and we were off.

  To say Zoe was a safe driver would be a lie. The GPS had told us that the trip would take two hours and thirty minutes, but with her vehicle averaging ninety, we cut that down to just two hours. I was certain we’d end up getting pulled over, but we managed to arrive at our destination without getting into an accident, a feat that Zoe seemed very proud of. I had her take a dirt road, that would take us into a campground overlooking the base. Her lights gave the normally still forest a strange, almost surreal, quality. I felt my stomach tighten, and I found it difficult to breathe. I half expected to see my childhood horrors come to life among the shadows, hiding and waiting for us in the unknown.

  I saw it first, a small clearing in the pine trees on a hill that overlooked the base below. I told Zoe to park on the hill, and she shut the car off. With the lights off, and our breath beginning to fog in the cold, the pitch darkness was not a comfort to us.