It’s a terrible thing that happened—what I’m about to tell you.

I’m still not entirely sure how I got here. I keep thinking back to the beginning. It’s funny how we do that, isn’t it? Think back to the beginning of something once we’ve reached the end. There are a number of things I do not know, a few of which are likely beyond my comprehension, but what I do know for sure is that I’ve reached the end.

I’m going to kill myself tonight.

You might think that to be a shameful thing. Maybe even cowardly. Or maybe you don’t. Maybe you understand that there are things in this world that can drive a person to such a dismal conclusion. Maybe you have no opinion whatsoever. Truthfully, I don’t even know who you are, nor do I know why I’m writing this. The window is on my right, not even a full arms-length away from where I sit—I can reach out and touch the sill with shaky fingertips. The drop is at least ninety feet. I’m less than ten seconds from eternity should I choose to leap. Yet something compels me to write this first, for an audience I will never know, with intent that dances on the rim of understanding. So, before I lose my courage, let me take you back to the day this started. And if you do find this—whoever you are—know one thing: there are unspeakable horrors on this Earth. Those of us who live and die in peaceful ignorance are truly the blessed; for I have seen what hides beneath, peeking through, stealing secret glances through murky channels with rotting eyes—and it is worse than any of us have imagined in our darkest hours.

My name is Henry Callister. It might help you to know a bit about who I am…or who I was on the day I learned of Gerald Greene. That fateful day was three weeks ago, September 19th, 2017. I know you’re probably thinking that three weeks isn’t a very long time, not much time for a person to dramatically change who they are—but let me tell you, time, like most things in life, is relative. Relative to the context in which it exists. Ten minutes might as well be five seconds if it’s spent telling stories with old friends; it may feel more like two lifetimes if someone is slowly peeling back your fingernails.

That Tuesday began like any other. I woke up a few minutes before noon, head pounding from the six tallboys of Rainier I had killed the night before, and after forcing myself to accept that I was around to face a new day, I left my apartment in search of some coffee. I live downtown in Portland, Oregon, and luckily for me there’s a coffee shop about every twenty fuckin feet. I walked a short way up Burnside to my regular spot, grabbed a bagel (covered in quinoa, vegan, look at me), a coffee, and stumbled dizzily back to my salmon-colored apartment building. I said I live downtown in Portland, but downtown is barely more than twenty blocks across. My building faces the city skyline in one direction, and in the other—the direction my window faces—is the West Hills.

I saved myself the extra twenty uphill steps and entered the building through the side door, next to the laundry room. The mail room is on that floor, next to the elevators, so naturally I stuck the key into 909’s slot to see what life had gifted me on this muted gray afternoon.

It’s hard not to feel like everything in life, every choice we make, every decision that sets us on our own unique course, is leading us to one specific event. Many people, many small choices, a countless number of seemingly random occurrences and influences had led me to be who I was, where I was on that day. How I wish they hadn’t.

There was an envelope inside my mailbox. No return address. My name and address scrawled in a stranger’s sloppy penmanship. Inside was a picture and a short handwritten note.

Inside was my death, at best. At worst, something I dread to even consider.

Receiving an unmarked, nondescript envelope is not uncommon for me. I work as a private investigator, hence my unorthodox schedule (read: I get wasted by myself on Monday nights and no one can say fuck all about it).

I opened it once I got back to my apartment, and mulled over my newest assignment as I chewed my stale bagel and sipped my lukewarm coffee.

What first grabbed my attention was the picture. The man I saw was unremarkable, plain. A white male, perhaps upper twenties/lower thirties, wearing a Columbia rain jacket with a flannel shirt underneath. He had a beard, thick rimmed glasses, combed over hair. He might as well have been the poster boy for Portland. I saw at least ten of him on my two-block walk to the coffee shop.

In the picture—grainy, black and white, somewhat out of focus—he was half turned, caught checking before crossing a busy street. This was the first thing somewhat out of the ordinary. Most pictures given to me are of the Facebook variety—you know, selfies, portraits, full color pictures taken on purpose. This one was clearly clandestine, taken at a distance by an amateur. Most of my assignments come with regular profile pictures and a note saying something like, “Henry, I saw your ad on Craigslist, and I’m pretty sure my boyfriend/girlfriend is cheating on me. Can you please follow them this Friday night and see if they go to X location and meet Y person and blah blah fucking blah?” I got into the PI business because I like to watch. Without being seen. And I’m damn good at it. I wish someone could have told me that ninety percent of the job is dealing with the paranoia of insecure lovers.

But every now and then I do get a picture like the one that sat before me of Gerald. Those ones tend to be a little more exciting. Usually they come with a note saying, “Hey Henry, my wife is cheating on me with her boss, here’s a picture of the little shit along with his address, can you take some pictures for me to use in divorce court?” Yeah, I know, still just some poor schlub asking me to investigate their unfaithful spouse, but at least those ones provided something of a hunt.

The note attached to this one was different than anything I had ever received, though. It said:

Watch me?

Gerald Greene

3100 NE Irving Street

Wednesday, 10 PM

Don’t be late!

Also unusual was the three hundred dollars in the envelope. No one ever sends me an assignment along with cash. Normally there would be a phone number or an email for me to contact and follow-up with. We’d agree on compensation and I’d be paid on delivery. This note had no phone number, no email, no one to contact. Just a name, a time, a place, and some money.

I looked back at the photo. Something about it seemed all wrong. It’s hard to say what, but I had the urge to rip it into pieces and throw it in the trash. Just take the money and move on, my mind said. I was already up three hundred dollars, why bother? But business was a little slow at the time, and someone willing to front me a couple hundred bucks likely had more waiting behind that.  

Plus, I had nothing to claim my time the following night besides some beer in the fridge and a few bad choices waiting to be made. What could it hurt?

I spent most of Wednesday shut inside, eyes pointed toward the tv, not really seeing anything. The sky was softly sobbing autumn tears, mourning another summer gone and past. I shed no tears for the changing season myself. Summer always feels too bright, too loud, too full of people. I never had a proclivity for the outdoors or socializing under the sun. I prefer to watch. And watching is easier when the air is gray, the clouds heavy, and premature dusk sets false shadows in places they don’t belong. Watching is best when the cold wind puts an extra tick in their step and the rain casts sparkling blindfolds over the eyes of the observed; watching is best when you can see without being seen.

I left my place that night at nine-twenty. It was a fifteen-minute drive to Gerald’s and I wanted time to find somewhere discreet to park. Plus, I had never been to that part of Irving Street; I didn’t know whether the address would take me to a house or an apartment complex. It turned out to be the latter, which meant casing the place a bit more. The first thing I did was circle the block to mark the primary entrances and exits. Nothing unusual: the main entrance was on Irving; fob system for the door that led to the lobby. The only door I saw on the back of the building opened to a short pathway leading to a dumpster, and beyond that an empty lot, recently demolished. I noted that there was no parking structure attached; a row of curbside cars lined the sidewalk in front of the building.

I parked my car on the west end of Irving where I had a clear view of the front door. On my passenger seat was my camera (a Nikon D850, one of the few nice things I own), my pack of Camels, and the picture of Gerald. I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do when I saw him, but one trick of this particular trade is you always take pictures. Always.

In the darkness of my car the picture of Gerald seemed worse. I was studying it, making sure I’d know his face when I saw him—like I said, his look was modest, unremarkable—but I was also hating it. Loathing it. He seemed to crawl in and out of the grainy pixels. I had the mad urge to hold the photo to my ear, to see if I could hear him in there. Something told me that if I got close enough to it, it would whisper to me; that long-forgotten voices would tell me old secrets through moist layers of Earth and decay. With distinct effort I put the picture back down and tried to clear my head. I smoked while I waited.

Sure enough, at ten PM exactly he walked through the front door. There was no question it was him—he was wearing the same clothes as in the photo. Maybe if my head were clearer I would have found that strange. But one thing this job taught me is that people are creatures of habit. We do the same things, over and over again, at the same time, like machinery in an assembly line. So what if he came out at exactly ten? Whoever wanted him followed probably knew him well; they almost always do. Same clothes as in the picture? Could be a coincidence, or could be that the guy doesn’t own that many clothes. Why would I find that odd when I was wearing the same rain jacket I wore practically every day from September to April myself?

But it’s easy to see through the writing once the story has already been told. It’s clear what twists are waiting up ahead once the ending has been revealed. The clues are unmissable after the true identity of the monster is unveiled. And the grinding, clicking noises I hear outside my window as I write this are more than enough to remind me that my story has been told. The flickering above  my head of the only light that still works in my apartment is sufficient proof that my ending has been revealed. The unnatural shadows that are pacing in my hallway, passing back and forth, back and forth, nothing more than dark shapes I can make out through the crack underneath the door, are adequate reminder that an unveiling is what awaits me.

Gerald hurried into his car, a silver Nissan Versa hatchback, and pulled away from the curb. I gave him a couple seconds of distance before pulling out of my spot and following him into darkness.

I followed for a few minutes as he drove and turned and changed direction. I maintained a safe distance, let a few cars get between us, but made sure to never lose sight of his vehicle. His driving told me he didn’t have the slightest idea he was being tailed. People tend to give themselves away, you know, when they think someone is on them. Their movements get choppy, their behavior more erratic yet strangely more predictable—you can practically feel the anxiety pouring out of their tailpipe with every sharp, telegraphed turn.

His driving that night was smooth, easy. I remember that clearly. He was in no rush. His car moved with subtle ease, like it belonged on the road. It was as if he were piloting a train, tied to tracks, inexorably linked to the path he was following, like every moment before this was a precursor, an appetizer, a wordy introduction to the main event.

The rain from that afternoon continued to whisper down on the dark street turning my windshield into a blurry watercolor painting of red taillights and shimmering storefronts.

Once we hit Stark we went west for three and a half miles. I smoked another cigarette on the drive, keeping my driver’s side window cracked enough to snake my hand out and drop the ashes to the street. The radio was low; always minimize noise when watching. The eyes see more when the ears are starved.

A few minutes later we turned right onto Morrison as we circled a broad open field surrounded by tall iron gates; I knew where we were going. Lone Fir Cemetery. I had last been here a few months earlier. A tourist visit, if you will, with my parents on one slow summer afternoon during their last cross-country trip to visit me. Lone Fir has a deep, complex history in Portland, one that draws visitors inside its thirty plus acres of memorialized death. Here are buried some of the original patients of The Oregon Hospital for the Insane, opened in 1862, and the institution’s proprietor himself, James Hawthorne. Not far from their primitive resting places are the graves of many Chinese immigrants, lives lost while building the city I call home. All in all a wonderful place to spend a dreadfully hot and neverending afternoon with the family.

Gerald parked his car in one of the angle spots by the entrance. I made sure to find an inconspicuous spot next to the curb on Morrison Street. I watched as he got out of his car and approached the main entrance. It was closed and locked as one would expect a cemetery to be in the middle of the night, and I was only mildly surprised to see him climb nimbly up the gate and throw himself over the sharpened ends at the top. I was aware of a side entrance that was regularly left unlocked; I could thank my ex-girlfriend for that (and not much else). She had eccentric taste, to say the least. I quietly walked to that smaller, more concealed, gate and tried my luck.

If it had been locked, would I have climbed? Probably. I’m good at my job and I take pride in my work, one of the few things I do well. But of course it wasn’t: I was expected. I stepped through the entrance and the fullness of the night swallowed me.

Finding Gerald again was harder than it should have been. I tracked east-northeast toward where he had entered, making sure to stay low and take advantage of the numerous tombstones and mausoleums that offered concealment. I left my rain jacket in the car—too noisy. Underneath I always wear a long-sleeved black shirt, black pants, black shoes, black socks. No detail is too small. My goal is to be a ghost, hardly there at all.

I spotted him stalking toward the far north wall where some of the oldest graves in the cemetery are located. Again I made sure to keep my distance and stay low. I snapped a few pictures while I had the opportunity. They were dark and out of focus, but good enough for government work, as the adage goes. I still hadn’t the slightest idea why someone would want me to follow this creep through a graveyard on a Wednesday night, but it wasn’t my job to ask questions. My job was to watch. Plus, can I admit I had grown somewhat interested in Gerald? The way he walked so confidently through this museum of corpses and memories, with no compunction; he acted like he belonged. I was careful of course, but he didn’t turn his head once or look over his shoulder like most people do when they’re in places they don’t belong, performing plays designed for an audience of one.

He stopped suddenly and sat down before a grave that looked more like a forgotten stone relic recovered from an ancient civilization than a tombstone. It might as well have been unmarked because whatever was inscribed on this slab was long erased, eroded by time and rain and nature’s indomitable desire to remove all traces of humanity.

Gerald had no trouble recognizing it, though; again my mind was pulled to the image of a train on tracks, a vehicle with no autonomy, no ability to change course or shift direction, simply destined to reach its final stop.

I watched for several minutes as he sat there motionless, back straightened, head resting high on his shoulders, with his legs crossed before him and his hands on the dirt at his sides. Slowly he began to run his fingers back and forth over the dirt, as if opening and closing a fist, scratching up soil and making small indentations. I grabbed a few more pictures because this seemed important—whatever it was—but photos are a poor medium to express this experience. He had begun to hum, you see, and the noises coming from him were all wrong. It began softly, a sound hardly audible, but as he continued to scratch and swipe the dirt with his fingers his voice gradually began to rise and change in pitch. I have never before heard such an unnatural sound, like titanic plates grinding against one another, the sound of a grand, hallowed door slowly creaking open for the first time in unimaginable eons, all rust and decay and misery entombed in a human vocal box. It was horrible. I wished for him to stop lest I lose my mind and become a mad, shrieking specter among a collection of so many horrid apparitions.

He continued for what may have been three minutes, may have been two hours, scraping and snatching dirt, moving his hands faster and faster and humming his sick tune higher and louder and more painfully and then—he stopped. Suddenly. So suddenly I nearly whimpered in relief. I was lucky to duck down behind the headstone I was perched near before he stood up, turned around, and briskly walked back in the direction he had come. I could see the brown stains on his palms as he walked back with no hesitation, no spectacle, no grand gesture. He strode mechanically as if this were every Wednesday evening, a small walk in the park, a picnic with an old friend.

I can’t tell you how long I sat there, alone, leaning against a forgotten headstone, my heart slamming against the base of my throat in violent tremors. Eventually I must’ve gotten up and gone home although truthfully, I remember doing none of that. I don’t remember driving or parking or walking in my front door. I don’t remember taking the elevator or going into my apartment or drinking everything alcoholic in my fridge and freezer. I do remember waking up Thursday afternoon with one bastard of a hangover, stumbling off my couch where I had apparently slept to turn off the lights which had burned through the night. At that point the night before was a blur, a twisted, sickly imitation of a memory. I had deep fear in the base of my stomach, crouching underneath my sternum and trying to climb out of my throat, but I had no idea why.

Until I checked my camera.

The graveyard pictures of Gerald brought back memories I wish I never created. Again I was tempted to delete them, remove them from existence and forget the whole damn thing. He wasn’t my problem. Some poor sap had given me three hundred dollars to catch their buddy doing some weird shit and I had gotten myself further in than I ever wanted to be. I decided that was the last time I would tail Gerald Greene. I didn’t need the money that badly. Let my mystery client find someone else to snoop for them, he wasn’t my problem.

I wish I could tell you that this is where the story ends. I would love to tell you about how I deleted the pictures and forgot all about Gerald. How I lived a long, healthy life; how I got out of the PI game, went back to college, got a job where I wear a suit to work every day and say things like, “Happy Friday,” “Doing well, how bout you?,” “You know, same shit different day,” or how I cleaned myself up enough to meet a decent woman who loves me and watches classic horror movies with me under a comfortable blanket on a stylish Chesterfield couch on Friday nights, and how my mom is finally proud of me for getting my act together, and doesn’t mention my name with a stinging touch of shame and guilt that she thinks she’s hiding but is leaking out of her in between every word and is brutally obvious in the way her eyes can never quite meet mine without darting in the wrong direction. How I wish that was where fate took me. But fate had other plans for me. Such a joyful path of fulfillment and adulation was never in the cards for the likes of me. I was born for black endings. I was put here to fulfill not dreams of success and contentment, but dark nightmares of screaming horror and horrific reality; created to dwell with the shades and wraiths in dark corners of neglected cellars and attics and crawl spaces.  

I kept the pictures. I had already suffered enough to take them and didn’t see the point in erasing that work, especially in case there might be some more money in it for me when my client got back in contact. But I had nothing to go on, no phone number, no email, nothing. So I waited. And I moved on with my life. And things were ok until a week later when the next letter arrived in my mailbox.

It was a Thursday this time, September 28th. I had mostly forgotten that horrible encounter in the graveyard and was feeling like myself again. Gerald was a faint impression somewhere in the back of my mind. Every time he tried to creep closer and take my attention, I stuffed him back into his room, that room we all keep in the back of our brains, locked tight, full of things that bite and hate. I was doing a good job too, until I saw that unmarked envelope, blank except for my name and address drawn in a stranger’s sloppy penmanship. My heart sank. My brain told me to drop it in the recyclable bin next to the mailboxes where residents stuff the unwanted circulars and coupon books, but what stopped me was the prospect of throwing a couple hundred dollars away. I knew there would be more money inside. Along with a note. Maybe a photo. I decided I would open it upstairs, put the money in my wallet (a token of appreciation for that horrible fuckin night, thank you very much), and toss whatever contents came along with it without even a glance.

I was right about the money, wrong, so, so wrong about everything else. Inside was a thousand dollars cash. Ten one hundred-dollar bills. All blue. Money I could very much make use of. It only felt right that I check the note that came along with it. It said:

Watchful eye wanted

4750 NE Duniway Road, Dayton, OR

Saturday, September 30th, 12 AM

Ecce; Video; Aperta

P.S. 801 SW 10th Ave, 210.11, FN 

A146

They say it was curiosity that killed the cat. We’re told that Lot’s wife was turned into a pillar of salt for trying to steal one last glance of Sodom as it burned. Why is it that there’s always some hideous squirming creature under the stone that wasn’t meant to be overturned? Why do we always find the truths we could live without behind our long-locked doors? And, a better question yet, why do we continue to look, continue to flip rocks and check latches and cast our eyes into dark crevasses, knowing damn well that we might find something that was meant to be hidden. Something that was purposefully tucked away out of sight. If I could answer that I wouldn’t be writing this story.

But I can’t, because I’m the cat. Except, that’s not exactly right either. Because the cat was killed for his transgressions. I wish my life was the only thing on the line tonight, the only thing I stood to lose. Because life is temporary. You lose that and it’s game over. The end. What happens then, when your soul is on the line? How do you pay for what you bought when the cost is your very essence? I fear I will have the answer soon now, so let me continue before it’s too late.

The first thing I did was Google the address. It led me to Lafayette Pioneer Cemetery, about an hour outside of Portland. A fairly small, unimpressive plot of land with a few headstones. Ok, I thought, this guy’s got a thing for graveyards. So what? Why would someone offer me so much money to document his obsession?

I decided to dig deeper into this place, to see if it had any connection to Lone Fir. I had never been to this one myself, but it was significantly smaller and less important looking than any cemetery in Portland. At least that’s how it looked through a computer screen. A few clicks later and I was reading about haunted places in America, and Lafayette, Oregon. According to an old legend, the corpse of a powerful witch rests in this cemetery. Typical stuff for the late nineteenth century: a woman was accused of witchcraft, subjected to an interrogation (i.e. tortured and coerced into an admission of guilt), and then hung. She was buried in Lafayette Pioneer Cemetery and since then people have claimed to see her spirit roaming the place. Some claim to see her standing silently among the trees; others claim she walks the graveyard with her head down, shuffling and stumbling aimlessly. Some people even go as far to claim they were chased from the graveyard by her spirit, touting scratch marks and cuts she gave them on their way out. I’m not one to spoil someone’s fun, but if I had to guess I would say those accounts are a combination of wild imaginations, group hysterics, and utter bullshit.

I found no connection to Lone Fir and decided to move on to the postscript at the bottom of the letter. All I could gain from that was an address, the rest meant nothing to me. The address took me to the Multnomah County Library. I had until midnight the following night to gather some idea, any idea of what this could be about, so I walked the eleven blocks downtown and stepped foot into the first library I had been in since I left elementary school.

After twenty minutes of mindlessly scrolling through shelves and trying to make sense of the numbers and letters I was given, I succumbed to my headache and sought help. I went to the front desk and approached the pretty young librarian, a girl in her twenties with sharp eyes and a friendly smile. In most other situations I would have been intimidated to walk up and talk to a beautiful girl, but I was busy trying to formulate how I would word my question.

“This might sound weird,” I said, “but does this mean anything to you?” I slid her the small piece of paper I had copied 210.11 FN A146 to.

She looked at it for a few seconds before answering. “Hmm…” she looked up and I was nearly knocked down by the vibrant green eyes staring back at me. “The first part looks like Dewey Decimal, but I’ve got nothing on the rest.”

“Dewey Decimal System, I remember that. That’s how you find books right? Like how you guys store them?”

She laughed at me. It was a friendly laugh; warm; one that said she was amused by my ignorance instead of offended by it.

“Right, if by ‘you’ you mean libraries, then yes. At least that’s how we used to locate books. Everything is digital now, much easier. But we still have the DDS in our system. Let’s take a look and see if we can’t find what you’re looking for.”

I turned around and surveyed the first floor of the library while she tapped her keyboard and searched for a book I didn’t know I was looking for. Everyone seemed so…so dead. Mindless. Empty eyes and simple faces stared at white screens at the computer station directly in front of me. I heard the clicking of keys and hushed whispers over tables of books; smelled coffee and old paper. This felt as much like a graveyard as that night with Gerald. I shook with a chill as I remembered his hideous screeching and the way he dug into the ground with writhing fingers like a man possessed.

“Are you ok?” I turned back and saw her looking at me with an expression that was part-amused wonder and part-concern. There was something else, too. Something underneath that I couldn’t quite pin down.

“I think I found your book. Follow me.”

She walked out from behind the desk and led me to the broad staircase on the far side of the room. We walked into a long row of bookshelves on the second floor and disappeared somewhere in the back, far away from the long line of tables occupied by students, deep in a sea of old books—scarred parchment enclosed within so many coffins of buckram-covered cardboard.

We stopped in a section titled Philosophy and theory of religion. She grabbed an old, worn book, deep crimson with snaking crack marks going up the spine, titled Beyond Good and Evil.

“Here it is,” she said, handing the book to me. “A good one, too. Doing a project for school? You don’t look like most of the lost PSU students that come in here.” Her smile was kind, playful.

“No, actually. I’m not in school. Just…” I struggled to find the words. What was I doing, anyway? I was led to this book and had no idea what to do with it. “Just trying to figure something out, that’s all.”

“Mysterious. I like it.” Again I was taken back, stunned by her vibrant gaze. People don’t usually look at me—I’m paid to be unseen, unnoticed. I normally don’t like being looked at, detest it, actually, but behind her eyes I saw something different. Curiosity, maybe? Attraction? No, couldn’t be. I still couldn’t place it.

“Well looks like that’s your ‘FN.’ ”

“What?” I shook myself awake, tried to clear my mind. It took an active effort to look down from her eyes to where her hand was pointing on the cover.

“Friedrich Nietzsche. ‘FN.’ The author.” She was pointing to the name on the cover of the book.

“Oh,” I answered, sounding dumb. “Yeah, that’s probably it.”

She laughed. “Well, if you need any more help, you know where to find me.” She touched my arm gently and then walked away, leaving me alone, suffocating in the vast collection of enshrined stories, forgotten philosophies, the smell of old pages.

I looked down at the paper she had given back to me before she left. 210.11 FN A146. I could cross off the numbers, those had gotten me the book. FN seemed accounted for too. So I opened the book to see if I could figure out the rest on my own.

My first thought was to open to page 146. I found nothing there that seemed relevant. Long-winded rumblings about philosophers and memories. I was annoyed. Maybe this wasn’t what I was meant to find, none of this made any sense.

It was too bright in the library. My head was pounding. I felt like I was being watched. I turned and searched and tried to find anyone in my vicinity, but I was alone. Really alone, in a far back corner of this unfamiliar sepulcher of words. The walls were lined with the accomplishments of various dead poets, scholars, and writers. It was hard to breathe. The room was a crypt and I could feel the walls getting closer, moving slowly, trying to creep in on me unnoticed.

I looked back down at the book to try to shake this claustrophobic feeling. I let the pages whirl in my hands and ended up on Chapter IV: Apophthegms and Interludes. Beneath this heading was a numbered list, already at 63. Despite not knowing what the fuck an apophthegm was, I skipped ahead a few pages and sought out number 146. A146.

Remember how I mentioned that feeling, that idea that everything you do, every choice you make leads you to one specific moment? How every single occurrence in your life is guiding you to one singular event, like a trolley car rolling down its tracks? I knew. I just knew. I didn’t need confirmation that this page, this sentence was what I was supposed to find. It stood out to me in brilliant clarity. It seemed to laugh at me and make fun of everything I was, it shouted and jeered and said: “Look at me Henry! Look! I’m your destiny; I’m who you are!”

A146 said: “He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.”

I dropped the book and left.

I spent Friday locked inside my apartment. It was dark outside, cloudy and cold and very still even in the prime of the afternoon. Darker inside, though, where I sat with my blinds closed, curtains drawn. The three lights above my kitchen bar had all gone dead at the same time early Friday morning. Funny, because they’ve never been on the same schedule, those bulbs; I remember replacing them one by one as the year went on, each of them going dark at different times, yet that morning they all stopped at once as if they had planned it. Talked it over. Made a decision together. I was down to one out of three above my bathroom vanity. I tried replacing those ones because they were more important. The two replacements I put in didn’t even last the length of my shower. Brand new bulbs, dead in under fifteen minutes. I decided to leave it that way. Not worth the trouble.

The natural light from my living room windows was enough that morning. Until I began to feel like I was being watched and had to close them, that is. My window faces the hills and my view is a dark green treeline that reaches up toward the sky, interrupted in a few spots by tall residential buildings that sit higher up the hill. I had never really noticed those buildings before. They were always there, of course, but camouflaged almost. Not in the same way that a soldier or a spy might be camouflaged, not purposefully, but camouflaged in the way that so many things in our daily lives are. Hidden in plain sight. Right there in front of us, always, but sitting in a blind spot.

I had never noticed how many windows—rows and rows of them, fifteen, twenty stories’ worth, set in long horizontal lines like spectators lined up in a theatre—were pointed in my direction. They felt like eyes. Vacant, open eyes, trying to suck everything in, trying to see everything, trying to watch. I thought I could see people in them. All of them. People standing in the windows of every apartment, nothing more than shadows from my perspective; blank, faceless silhouettes standing at their windows, trying to see inside, looking for me. So I closed the blinds. And the curtains too, for good measure.

At first I tried to kill time by watching tv; I had hours left in the day before I could head out to Lafayette and I was restless, anxious to be there. Part of me wanted to get it over with, but I would be lying if I said another part of me wasn’t itching and aching with curiosity. That horrible, wicked sound. I could hear it. I hated it. But it was calling me, demanding my attention. It wanted to be heard, wanted me to see it. And I wanted it, too.

There was nothing on tv that caught my attention—that’s one thing about working at night and being home all day. Daytime television. Nothing less appealing than it. So I turned to KATU and let the news run in the background while I wasted time on my phone. I was too tense, I switched from Instagram to Reddit to Facebook to Youtube back to Reddit—nothing could take my mind off the coming night. I was reading an article about lucid dreaming, the first thing that had any success in captivating me, when I noticed how quiet it was. The steady drone of monotonous news anchor voices had stopped at some point without me noticing. I looked up.

On my screen was the broad desk the anchors sit behind as they run through the day’s newsworthy items, but it was empty. The greenscreen behind it, normally a cool blue-filtered view of Portland from the waterfront with the KATU logo imposed on top, was blank. Black. No one was there. It was silent and foreboding. Must be a technical issue, I thought. The empty newsroom was eerie, unsettling. I decided it would be best to find something else to watch.

This is the part of the story where you write me off as crazy. Unreliable narrator. Probably the booze, you’ll say. Maybe you fell asleep and dreamed it. I don’t blame you. But I know what I saw, and I know that I was sober, and I know for fuck sure that I wasn’t asleep. Dreams can’t terrify you this deeply. Dreams can’t hurt you like this.

I stretched across the table for the remote and when I looked back the anchors were in their seats. Back where they belonged. They sat motionless and stared into the camera with empty faces. Emotionless. No one spoke. Just an older man in a black suit with a pink and silver striped tie and a young, blonde woman in a red dress, sitting, like wax figures propped in chairs or lifeless mannequins in a display. The channel wouldn’t change, the power button didn’t respond when I pressed it.

They were looking at me. I knew this immediately, even before I got up to unplug the tv and their eyes, their fucking eyes followed. They were watching me. They were staring right through the thin glass of my screen, gazing upon me as sure as I was them. I ripped the power cord from the wall and nearly cried when the screen went black and their corpse-like faces disappeared.

No tv. No windows. Even the phone wasn’t an option—I kept looking at my front-facing camera, trying to see it as anything but an eye, a frighteningly alive eye that was watching me. I turned it face down and waited for it to get dark.

The drive that night was slow and wet. The rain continued to drift lightly down, turning the world opaque and staticky. I arrived an hour early and parked my car deep past a corner of the adjacent street. It was a moonless night; the sky was dark and shifting with the movement of clouds and wind. I was immediately struck by how much darker it was out here than in the city. No streetlights, no houses for miles—just a lonely road, deserted, and a small plot of land, the eternal homes of many forgotten stories, built on a softly sloping hill that overlooked a void of black absence.

At first I tried to take advantage of what time I had alone there. I swung my leg over the low-lying, rusted chain with the No Trespassing sign attached and cut through the impressive darkness with my Maglite. Anywhere I pointed was lit up by electric blue light; everything peripheral to the lone beam was hidden by night. I noted where prominent headstones were, made a mental map of what obstacles might lie in my way when I followed Gerald. Most of the markers showed people deceased in the early nineteen hundreds.

My flashlight wavered and died. I smacked it, hard, on my hand and it sputtered back to life. Something seemed slightly out of place, like the landscape had changed in an almost imperceptible way in that brief moment of total dark. I continued forward in the small graveyard and noticed a gated-off section close to the far wall. The fence that surrounded it was short, barely waist high, and I stepped over it to inspect these graves which had been sectioned off. Here I found the markers hard to read, decayed and withered, but the few that were legible showed that these people had died earlier, mostly mid- to late-eighteen hundreds. Maybe the original cemetery, I thought, before being expanded to allow new residents.

My light went dark. I heard hurried footsteps through the leaves just outside the gate behind me. I smacked the Maglite on my hand in a few panicky thrusts but it was dead, just as dead as the bones six feet below my feet, so I turned and ran, somehow managing to hop the small fence and evade the gravestones I had passed on my way in.

Once I was out of the cemetery and across the street I turned and looked back; the cemetery was still. I couldn’t make out anything in the darkness ahead of me. I sucked cold, damp air into my burning lungs and tried to slow my heart which was banging wildly against my chest, demanding to be let out. My flashlight was still dead, useless, but now that I was across the street, safely outside the cemetery, I began to doubt myself. Had I really heard someone in there? It was dark, sure, but also very small, not many places to hide. My keen eyes are hard to avoid.

I thought of tales of the witch and felt foolish. I had been run out of the cemetery like so many people before me, probably spooked by a squirrel or a rabbit, all because my light had gone out at the wrong moment.

I decided to sit across the street and let my eyes adjust to the darkness. My spot provided a concealed vantage point from which I could watch the main entrance and wait for Gerald. On more than one occasion—as I sat for those twenty minutes, perched beside a bush, waiting, waiting—the wind blew in my direction, and carried the sound of many voices excitedly whispering and conspiring. I plugged my ears. Much better.

You might not be surprised to hear that he arrived at midnight; the very minute my watch switched from Friday to Saturday I saw headlights roll over the slight incline of the road, and watched as his small hatchback settled into the gravel lot that held the entrance. Maybe you’re further along than I was, as you read this. Maybe you can see where this is going. I couldn’t. I couldn’t see anything. Until later, that is. Later I saw everything. Dear God, did I see.

Gerald exited his car—in those same clothes, I was beginning to think he lived in them—and walked confidently up to the chain that marked the entrance. He stepped over without slowing and continued into the thick, heavy shade of the moonless night. I followed.

By the time I had reached the entrance, stepping slowly, careful not to make any noise or arouse his attention, he was already stepping over the wrought iron fence into the smaller, older graveyard. I decided to stay outside and watch from behind the tallest tombstone I could find. This left me with a partial profile view as he sat down before a decrepit, broken marker that seemed cold and forgotten, tucked toward a corner of this smaller plot.

I could see half of his face but felt confident that he couldn’t see me. It was dark, night within night; the rain had begun to drizzle back down again, providing an auditory distraction and an extra layer of concealment. He took off his glasses and tucked them into his breast pocket. I remember this clearly, because he stared straight ahead, his face inches from the tombstone he sat before, reminding me so much of that night in Lone Fir, with a straightened back, crossed legs, and a look of frightened exultation exploding from his face. His eyes were wide. Too wide. What I was seeing was horrible; whatever he was seeing was glorious, splendid.

He started making noises. At first I thought he was crying; the sound like choked sobs fighting their way from dank wells and locked chambers. Then it became rhythmic. Slowly I could hear a pattern in it. These sounds had no business coming from a human throat. What I heard was wicked, terrible in every sense: nails on a chalkboard; silverware scraping a plate; thousands of voices screeching and dying in pain. I plugged my ears. I jammed my fingers in so deep that the ringing inside my head drowned everything out. My eyes were left alone to experience this scene: hungry and avid they took it in.

His palms were on the ground again, but this time they weren’t snatching dirt and making troughs in the soil. They were flat on the ground, swiping in circles—quick, clockwise circles. His body was shaking and his eyes were bulging. The expression on his face was pain, ecstasy, revelation—

He stopped all at once. I felt powerless to move, so I continued to lay as I was and watched as he reached into his jacket and pulled out something flat and rectangular, like a piece of paper.  He held it in front of him, almost at arms-length, like he was plastering it on the tombstone, and then he began to rock slowly back and forth. He closed his eyes. He started to hum. This time it was normal humming, soft and serene, not like the horrid sound from the other night. His face was peaceful, there was a gentle smile at his lips.

I waited as long as I could, but he just kept rocking and humming, rocking and humming, like the ghost of an insane man left to haunt an abandoned cell. I couldn’t take it. I had to see what he was holding. I told myself I would leave immediately after I saw what was written on that paper. Curiosity had its hooks deep in my mind and that quiet humming was like the call of a siren, luring me closer.

I slid forward on my stomach, staying as low to the ground as I could. I moved around the stone pillar that was shielding me from his sight so that I would approach from his backside, the direction the paper was facing. It was dark and I couldn’t seem to discern anything written on that page, it seemed black, blank, empty. I got closer. Quietly I crawled until I was directly behind the iron gate that separated us, less than four feet from Gerald. I crouched to get a better view.

He was holding a picture of me. Taken from somewhere outside my apartment. I was crossing the street with a coffee in my hand, head half turned. I wanted to scream. I wanted to puke. I couldn’t look away. The world went quiet around me, I saw nothing but that picture and my own unsuspecting, oblivious face.

I finally shifted my eyes from the picture to see Gerald’s face turned back toward me, smiling a lunatic grin, all teeth and dead eyes.

I screamed as I fell backward. He knew. He knew the whole time that I was watching him.

I stood up to run but I was rendered immobile by what I saw. Faces, hundreds of them, surrounding me. Staring. Gazing. They were watching. Every direction I turned I saw spectral eyes and phantom stares. They were in and out of existence before I could discern any features, but I knew by the eyes that they were smiling. They were free.

As I finally found my feet and fled the graveyard in huge, leaping bounds, I was aware of their following eyes. I sprinted around the corner back toward my car. Amorphous shapes slithered in the woods to my left; half-formed, hateful glares lined the cemetery walls to my right; a hideous scrutiny from above marked me for tracking. They were many, but they were one.

I drove back to Portland in a blazing fury. I didn’t slow down until I hit 217 where the lights and other cars were. The back roads through Dundee and Newberg were too dark to feel comfortable. And as I navigated through them—gliding over long, sloping hills, cutting through vast tracts of farmland and empty space at breakneck speed—the overhead street lights went out one by one behind me.

We’re approaching the end of my story. There’s not much left to tell now. You’ve heard a lot about me, perhaps you even feel like you know me after this, so it might comfort you to know that I’ve decided against suicide. Don’t pat me on the back too hard; this isn’t a noble choice, it’s far from bravery and nowhere close to optimism. Writing this out has forced me to relive it. It’s made me experience the most horrific moments of my life again and again, like watching a tape stuck on loop or listening to a record that skips at the same groove in the track. But I’ve gained new insight, you see. I can see it much more clearly now. Suicide isn’t even an option. Whatever this is—whatever has followed me from that collection of boxed skeletons and rotted remains to corner me, to trap me under this one remaining light, this last bastion of sanity I have—won’t stop, even in death. I see that now. It’s marked me. Not just my flesh, but my spirit, my psyche, my anima. So before the last light goes out, let me tell you the rest of what I know.

I got home somewhere in the vicinity of two a.m. Saturday morning. I didn’t sleep that night. Have hardly slept at all since that night, actually. I don’t remember how I passed the time, but I do remember crying. And drinking. And crying again. The lights stayed on all night, the blinds down, the curtains drawn, the tv off. I could feel things moving around outside my window, trying to come around the corner of my hallway, to creep out of the darkness that was slowly consuming my apartment.

I didn’t leave my apartment for the remainder of Saturday or all of Sunday. I gathered every source of light I could find: every lamp, every flashlight, every candle, even my lighters and matches, and I sat and waited. I kept watch. It was out there, looking for me. But I figured it out. It can see better in the dark. Like eyes long-adjusted to the darkness of night, perpetually scanning the blackness, it searched and strained and sought me. I held on to hope that it might go away if I managed to avoid its gaze for long enough. Until Monday, when everything crashed down around me, and my last dreams of returning to my normal life died and withered away like a daylily in the desert sun, irrevocably lost to the surrounding abyss.

I found the courage to step outside on Monday. Probably because the sun was shining. Funny how I seem to like the sun these days, the light. I used to hide in the shadows, blend in to the background and hope the shade would protect me. Now I fear it. Every dark corner is a spotlight aiding hungry eyes trying to find what’s theirs. 

At first the warm sun was comforting, the soft fall air soothing. I walked up to Washington Park and stared down at the skyline below me. The trees were in their beautiful transition between vibrant summer life and quiet winter slumber, adorned with enough shades of green and yellow and  

red and pink to sate the eye of the most ambitious lover of autumn. I felt well. Hope was still crawling through my mind, trying to find a warm place to settle.

On my way back home I passed a woman pushing a stroller. She crossed the street when she saw me coming and seemed to crowd closer over her child in a protective stance. I tried to push the thought from my mind, tried to convince myself I was imagining things. But the way she looked at me…it was like she saw a six-foot-tall pile of snakes parading around in human clothes. The revulsion was undeniable.

I entered my building through the side door and grabbed my mail before calling the elevator. The door opened and I saw the familiar face of Christopher, my neighbor from down the hall. He walked past me quickly and ignored my half-smile and wave, the way we’d greeted each other the past two years. His face showed abject disgust. Probably in a hurry, I told myself. Everyone has bad days.

Hope was still something I could grasp at this point; it wasn’t yet an empty word, one that I could remember knowing but couldn’t actually remember, like a story from your early childhood that’s been repeated and repeated to you by parents and older siblings only to become a distant object that you can never fully see, never reach out and touch and feel.

Once I was back in my disheveled and lonely apartment I went through the mail. Safeway coupons, a credit card statement from Wells Fargo, a notice about construction in my neighborhood, and one white envelope with my name and address handwritten on the front. You’ll probably wonder why I didn’t throw it out, but please understand I had so little left to lose at this point. Yes, hope was still something I could dream of, something I could desire, but it was fleeting, growing fainter with every minute that passed. Also, I had so many questions. Questions with no answers. Maybe I thought I might find some resolution in that envelope, something that might explain what I had seen, what I had been through, and why it had been mine to see. But you must know by now that convenient elucidations aren’t part of this story. Happy endings are written for heroes. I’m no hero. I wasn’t put here to save the damsel in distress or free the townspeople from their captors; I wasn’t created so that there could be light and happiness delivered to a kingdom waiting for its savior; I’m not King Arthur or Robin Hood or Hercules. I was born for black endings. And we all play our part eventually.

Like Gerald. He played his part in all of this. He was the maestro, the conductor. He waved his hands and pointed wildly and I followed his orders like the fool I am. That’s why you know me. That’s why it knows me.

Inside the envelope was a small 3 x 5 index card, no lines, old and yellowing. It had a sloppy message scribbled on it:

This is fate this is fate this is fate this is fate

I’ve been hiding here for a thousand years, waiting for your ghost

I’ve been hiding here for a thousand years, waiting for your ghost

This is fate this is fate this is fate this is fate

The words felt vaguely familiar to me, but I couldn’t make a connection. I decided to take one last chance and head down to the library; you may have figured as much from what you’ve read, but I don’t have friends. No romantic interests. My family is three thousand miles away. I had no one else to ask for help, so I retraced my steps back to the last friendly face I had seen—the last set of eyes that had seen me and not darted furtively away.

As I stepped out through the large glass doors of my lobby that afternoon—yesterday afternoon—hope took one last stand. Bravely it stood, holding its ground, refusing to give an inch, and there—caked in the dirt and muck of so many years’ worth of failures, wet with the tears of a lonely person’s hidden moments—hope died.

She was standing behind the counter where I had first seen her. I don’t even know her name. Isn’t that funny? How someone you hardly know can suddenly become your lifeline, your only chance at salvation?

It was a sleepy afternoon in the library; the sounds were hushed, and the pallid light drifting through the windows had a pathetic, impotent quality. I didn’t bother trying to find anything myself this time. I walked straight to where she waited and slid the note to her.

“Does this mean anything to you?” I tried my best imitation at a coy smile, hoping she remembered our last conversation as fondly as I did.

She glanced down at the note and quickly turned her head back toward me. “No.” Her eyes were shifty, uncomfortable.

I didn’t know what to say. Her demeanor was icy, the opposite of what I remembered.

“Oh, I thought maybe you—”

“I want you to leave.”

Now she was looking at me. Looking straight into my eyes. Her expression was one of physical discomfort and strain. She didn’t want to see me. This time I really was speechless.

“I said leave. Take your fucking note and leave me alone. Don’t come back here.”

She threw the index card at my chest; it bounced off and floated slowly to the ground, making long, swooping arcs in the air as it fell. She walked away from the desk and went into a small office for the staff that was set into the wall behind the desk. That’s the last time I saw her, or anyone else.

I spent last night doing what research I could on my computer. I still have more questions than answers, but I’ve managed to put together enough of the puzzle to see the outlines, the shapes, the picture it’s trying to form. It’s hard to piece together a jigsaw when most of the pieces are solid black, but when you make a living dwelling in dark places, watching the night, your eyes start to adjust. They’re almost there now. Almost fully dilated.

Guys like Gerald, they tend to want something. Something they’ve never had, something they could never have. That’s what I learned while watching. I don’t know what it is that he was looking for—does it really matter?—but I do know that he was desperate to get it. Maybe he was looking for a better job, more money; or maybe he wanted strength or speed or to fly; maybe he was seeking love, trying to gift himself a silver tongue so that the next time he bumped into a beautiful girl with sandy hair and the most dazzling, wonderful green eyes he had ever seen, he wouldn’t make a stumbling fool of himself and leave her disgusted, forcing her to retreat to a back room for safety. Whatever he sought, he found it.

But he knew. Goddamn it he knew. He knew not to look. Because once you see it—it sees you. And there’s no taking that back. No undoing that. That’s why he sent me that letter, that first letter. He sent it himself. He knew he needed someone to watch. Someone to see. A gateway, a portal, a pair of human fucking eyes to let them in. And they’re here now, oh yes, they’re here, because I can hear them moving around me and I can see the shadows shifting, the darker spots in the darkness dancing around and marauding, closing in on where I sit beneath my last flickering light.

So now he gets what he was looking for, and I get what was looking for me. Some wish, some sick, deviant craving has been satisfied for him and I’m left to pay the cost. Because that’s what I am: a pair of watchful eyes. Born for black endings. This is fate this is fate this is fate this is fate.

My last light is about to go out now. I don’t think I could turn it back on if I tried. Because it can see better in the dark. And so can I. Haven’t I always? This is fate. I don’t think I’ll kill myself. Why run from what I am? I think I’m home now.

Besides—it only wants to watch.