Fearful and the Guardian: First Haunting (Patreon)

Do you want to play Hide and Seek?

My name is Andrew Phobos.

My life is a ceaseless stream of terrifying situations, coincidences, encounters, stalkings, hauntings, run-ins with scary or crazy individuals, and near-brushes with abduction, muggings, or even death.

That may sound dramatic, but trust me when I say it's all too real. I'd happily accept any reality where I didn't constantly live in anxiety about when or where the next one will happen. I've been called a moth before, flocking to the flame of danger seemingly with no control over my impulses to walk or drive alone, at night, in isolated or dangerous areas, often against what anyone would call better judgment. But honestly? I feel more like the flame, and all of the horrors I've been near-victim or witness to are the moths, drawn to me somehow.

I've always been a small guy, born prematurely. I was often mistaken for a girl because of my long hair and small build when I was very young. I didn't have a lot of my own friends, for some reason I was left alone for the most part by the other kids. It suited me, actually, since I preferred to sit alone and read or listen to music. Still, my parents were worried that I wasn't going to grow up sociable enough, so I was allowed to play with my older brother and his friends. They weren't mean, they never teased or bullied me or anything.  Damian always made sure of that.

Damian is 3 years older than me but you'd never have figured it from seeing us side by side.  He grew up like Dad: big, tall, the ideal family protector.  He seemed so invincible as we grew up, and while he, and my family as a whole, were mostly unaware or spared of the hardships I have encountered, Damian was constantly a source of strength to me.  All I wanted was to be more like him.

We shared a lot of the same interests. Saturday morning cartoons were our bonding process as we grew up. The problem was that while he liked the heroic characters, I felt more in touch with the bad guys, especially the scary ones because I always asked myself "What's he so scared of that he has to scare everyone else so much?" My mom called me a gentle soul. My dad called me emotionally sensitive but endearing.

Even so, I often heard my brother's friends describe me as cloying, clingy, and scrawny. I couldn't keep up with them when they wanted to go hiking. I was always the last one up the treehouse ladder since I took the longest to do so. I knew my brother wanted time with just his friends. I tried to give him that but being alone all the time just got depressing. I just ended up getting scared by the most random things. But when I was with them, the only fear was not being able to keep up.

It all started, I suppose, when I was seven years old. My father was a hunter, not by trade but for fun and to learn how to make jerky.  My mother was a stay at home mom, raising us on good family values and stories from her childhood, growing up on a Navajo reservation. 

We lived on the outskirts, in my youth, in a more rural area, bordering on a large expanse of forest. My father liked to lay traps to catch small game and such. I remember it was a nightly ritual for him, going out right before dinner to check his traps, and returning in time to eat with the rest of us: me, my brother Damian, and my then infant-sister Julia. He worked as a policeman and had several dark stories from his time in dispatch. Mom had been a nurse but quit when Julia was born so she could take care of us.

One night, he was out for longer than usual. He'd heard a scream from some animal and wanted to go make sure it didn't suffer for too long. We had started eating dinner but Mom kept looking up at the door, expecting him to be in at any minute. When we'd eaten at least half of what was on our plates, Mom started anxiously tapping her fingers on the table. Still, my father hadn't come back.

It was when we had finished dinner and she was standing up, already heading to the coat wrack and grabbing up a spare flashlight, when the door handle turned. My father came in. His clothes were stained with blood, but I could tell it wasn't his. He didn't say much, not even stopping to greet my mother, and informed us that the woods would be off-limits for playing in the evenings.  It wasn't like him to make such sweeping and out of normal declarations.  Whatever he had seen out there in the woods had really shaken him.  

Before arguments could begin, Mom sent all of us to bed.  I could hear them speaking in hushed tones for a while, but I didn't dare try and sneak out to listen to more.  Neither did Damian.  We were upset, feeling it was unfair, but we were kids.  We didn't know better.

I woke up much later that night to see strange flashing lights out in the woods.  Figuring it was a dream, I just rolled over and went back to sleep.  It wasn't until many years later I discovered that the police had been called to our property, but Dad never spoke about what they had went there for.  All we knew was that when morning came, Mom had agreed wholeheartedly with Dad

This came as a shock. We had grown up running rampant in these very same woods, racing beneath the trees and playing games of Tag, Manhunter, and Hide and Seek for as long as we could remember. I even had a favorite short tree, a gnarled chestnut where I could sit and read. We tried to ask why but he wouldn't say. We had to find other ways of entertaining ourselves in the evenings from now on. Keep in mind, this was before the age of smart phones. The only computer that could play games was in dad's office, and we knew we had to have special permission to be in there. It wasn't that we were destructive, but Dad liked his personal space to remain mostly untouched.

Cut to a few weeks later. It was Damian's birthday and he had all his friends over. Dad hadn't once dropped the new rule about going out into the woods after dark, but this was a special circumstance. We were allowed to go as far as the treehouse, which wasn't that far from the house. It was just up a wooded trail that we usually raced up and down, slowly going uphill, to the massive tree where Dad had built us an impressive-sized clubhouse. We took flashlights and promised to come in soon. I was allowed to tag along, Julia was at her own friend's house and Mom and Dad trusted us to keep to our word.

We had fun for a long time, playing any number of games. We eventually all climbed up into the treehouse, much smaller than it had seemed a few years ago. Still, there were a bunch of old toys up there and comic books in weather-proof boxes. Nostalgia hit hard and we all laughed and joked around, playing with the toys and reminiscing about the 'good old days', even though none of us were old enough to know a good day from a bad. After that day, we would most assuredly know the difference.

It was fully dark out now. Down the hill, we could see the lights of the house. No one was eager to have to head back in just yet, but we wanted to keep up our promise to Dad. It came down to who would climb down the ladder first. As ever, no one wanted to appear afraid, but no one wanted to be that unlucky chosen. We had just decided that it would be me, since I was the youngest. I was promised that they would all hold the lights for me and keep an eye out in case something happened. 

I climbed down the ladder, wooden grips wrapped in the handles of jump-ropes for a more solid but less splinter-inducing hold. I reached the bottom of the tree. That was when I smelled it. Something rotten, like old meat. Dad didn't have any traps around here, so it was unlikely that it was something caught in one, which had happened before.

One of Damian's friends had just started down the ladder and I was standing lookout. All of a sudden, I heard Justin's flashlight click on overhead and I looked up. He was staring, hard, pointing the beam of his flashlight at a section of woods. Everyone was quiet, staring just like he was. I looked. It was there, standing just in the undergrowth of the trees. It looked like something big and furry, covered in long, dark hair that made it hard to tell just what it was.

It almost looked like a bear at first, at least from the size of it, but then again it also had the shape of a deer, or maybe a moose or elk.  Thinking back, it was really hard to tell, even now.  Mainly because that wasn't the important thing about it. What I do remember to this day was its eyes. They were black, glittering like jewels or the shiny backs of houseflies. There was a colored tint to them, like how most animals' eyes glowed when you shined a light at them, except, instead of greenish-yellow, they were red. Like the way eyes look in old photographs.

But it was the face, something I'll never forget for as long as I've lived.  More specifically, the lack of a face remains seared into my mind. All the flesh and skin had fallen away, revealing what looked like a blank skull, like the worst case of mange mixed with wasting disease and skin necrosis. Its elongated teeth were all sharpened into fangs, the shortest of which was at least as long as my finger.  It gave the thing a smile, the sort of smile you imagine would be the last thing you'd ever see in the dead of night.

None of us could move, or even breathe. It hadn't seen me, focusing on that beam of light illuminating its hiding place.

"Andrew," whispered my brother up above me. "Try and get back up here." I turned to do as he said, but then he hissed. I looked up again and he was staring hard down at me with wide, scared eyes. "Andrew, run," he hissed. "It moved!"

"Did anyone see where it went?" asked Justin.

"No I didn't," declared Shawn.

Damian looked back down at me. "Run to the house and get dad. Just run." Looking back, we didn't know better, but this was probably the worst idea for this kind of situation. Still, my brother had never steered me wrong on purpose. He needed help, and he had turned to me to save him and his friends. I may be small but I'm fast, always have been. I was still scared, so he told me, "It's gonna be okay." That was enough.

"I'll be right back," I promised, and took off down the path towards the house, running as fast and quietly as I could. I remember hoping for the best, praying that Damien would be ok, and that I could get to the house, get Dad, and get back out to them in time. I was rushing down the trail when suddenly I heard something up ahead. I skipped off the path and into a nook of roots and rocks that I usually hid in during games. I barely fit in it anymore. I strained softly and quietly to remain hidden, barely daring to breathe. I heard shuffling from somewhere. Then I heard Damien's voice.

"It's gonna be okay," he said. Only, it didn't sound like him.

It was his voice, but he never talked like that:  slow, methodical and the words were flat. It was like he wasn't used to saying that. I didn't know what to do. I stayed quiet. If it really was Damien, he knew my hiding spot. He'd find me. "It's gonna be okay," I heard again, this time closer. "Just run. It's gonna be okay. Just run." He kept speaking in that completely weird voice, repeating himself like a robot.

I closed my eyes, waiting it out. The sounds got closer. And closer. That rotting meat smell was stronger, almost wanting to make me gag. I covered my mouth and nose, desperate not to cry. I screwed my eyes shut; I was too scared of looking up and seeing those glowing eyes right in front of mine. The sounds went away, the horrible smell started to fade. The shuffling was going back up the hill. Back towards the treehouse.

I sprinted from my hiding place, back to the house.  I've never run so fast in my life, and I pride myself on being a speedy little guy.  I could hear something rushing along after me in the dark, feel hot breath on my neck.  "Just run.  Just run," it repeated, over and over, almost like it was mocking me.  It had almost overtaken me by the time I reached the glow of our front porch light.

I burst in the door and slammed it behind me.  Crying, panting, barely able to speak; I must have looked a complete hysterical mess. My dad had been reading a book at the table. My mom was washing dishes in the sink. To say that I startled them when I rushed inside was an understatement.

I could barely get the words out. "Dad. Guys. In treehouse. Something big. Scary. They need help! Damian's out in the woods!" I kept repeating that last line over and over, convinced that my brother was for whatever reason trying to distract whatever it was away from us all. He was trying to be a hero, like in all those cartoon shows.

Dad didn't even hesitate or say a word. He grabbed up his shotgun and a floodlight. My mother called the cops. I wanted to go with him but mom said no, that I needed to stay inside with her. I screamed and cried, I needed to go save my brother. Dad was already gone, leaving the door to bang open as he raced up the hill into the dark.

I was convinced that that would be the last time I would ever see my Dad alive.

We heard gunshots, loud, echoing. Dad fired again, and again. The shotgun was so loud. Then it all went quiet. The cops still hadn't shown up. My mother had picked me up and locked us in the panic room inside of the closet down the hall, holding my dad's .44 and shielding me and Julia with her body. I've had nightmares about that night ever since, imagining whatever that thing had been ripping open the door and finding us.

Instead, after what seemed like an eternity, we heard Dad give the 'all-clear' knock. . He and the boys were back. They all looked white and terrified; I'd ever known someone could look like that.  They barely even looked like themselves anymore.  Dad's face was hard, and in my entire life, I'd never seen him look so scared as well. All I wanted was to run over and hug Damian, but when I tried to, he stepped back, looking straight at me with wide eyes. He had never looked at me like that before. I asked him why, crying again, sniffling and just wanting to hug my big brother. I had been so convinced he was going to die. None of his friends would talk to me. None of them have treated me the same since that day.

The cops had shown up, Dad speaking to them outside, and then me, mom, Damian, and the boys spent the night all cuddled up in the living room, watching movies until everyone fell asleep.  No one would barely say a word to me, sitting in a group as far away from me as they could. I cried a lot, had nightmares all night.  Dad told us in the morning that the police had found nothing, which really made him angry but I wasn't sure why. Everyone agreed to stay out of the woods when the sun was going down from now on. 

Dad applied for a position change not long after that.

I found out the whole story when we finally moved. Damian and the boys had remained up in the treehouse as quiet as they could be, keeping their flashlights off. They'd heard all sorts of sounds after I had run off to get help.  Being smarter and wiser for listening to Mom's stories growing up, having Dad personally train him in dangerous situations, Damian had taken charge of his friends.

That was when he told that I had shown back up at the base of the treehouse. I, or whatever it had been that looked like me, had told them it was all okay, to come down because I had found something cool. I'd said something similar earlier that evening when I found a salamander in the brook. But I hadn't been acting right. Damian told me I had been standing about twenty feet away from the tree, completely still and not moving. My words had been robotic and unsure as if I wasn't used to talking.

They had refused to come down without Dad there. I had just kept repeating that I had found something cool, and they just had to see it. When they refused over and over, I had said something like "I'll be right back," and vanished back into the trees.  Damian had wanted to climb down after me, to make sure I was okay even if I'd been acting weird but his friends wouldn't let him.  They were arguing about it when they had heard something shuffling around underneath the base of the tree.  Something was directly underneath the treehouse. Turning on the flashlight, they saw the thing, one paw on the bottom rung of the ladder, about to start climbing up. It had moved slow, methodical as if it were taunting them with their helplessness.

Then, Dad's shotgun had gone off. The thing barely seemed to register the loud blasts and angry, frantic shouts as he raced up the hill towards them all.  It just fixed them all with those horrible eyes, grinning that forever-grin, and then, calm as you like, it climbed back down the ladder, looking up at them. Again the shotgun went off, Dad's boots crunching up the path, and only then did it turn away. It stalked back off into the trees, vanishing into the darkness once again. 

Dad arrived mere seconds after but he didn't see it himself.  Damian and the boys had been so scared that their descriptions were all over the place. One said it had antlers and another that it had tusks like a boar. Damian's version had three eyes, one in the center of its skull, between the other two.  He led them back to the house, eyeing the shadows behind them the entire time.

The worst part to me was how Damian looked at me from then on. It took a long time for him to get over it. I didn't tell him that I'd heard him in the forest too. Maybe I should have.  But he had always tried to protect me, I wanted to do something to protect him for once.

I tried to take his mind off of what had happened with our usual games.  "Do you wanna play hide and seek?" I'd ask him. "How about tag?"

He never wanted to. We mostly stayed inside from then on; for as long as we remained living there, we never played outside again when the sun started to go down. The truly worst part was to come later that evening. To this day it remains one of the scariest moments of my life.

I was laying in bed that night when something woke me up. Sitting up, I blearily saw something up against my window. It was making small raking scratching sounds on the glass.  I figured it was just a branch that had fallen or been pushed up against the side of the house, something that had happened before. I tried to ignore it, but I couldn't.

It just kept making those repetitive sounds, scraping the glass unnaturally in a steady rhythm.

I eventually got up, peeking through the blinds. The branch was big, I'm surprised it didn't break the window. It just kept scratching and tapping against it. Sleepy as I was, I thought about opening the window and pushing it away, so tired from my constant state of terror and waking nightmares that I didn't think twice about it. I reached up and zipped up the blinds.

It wasn't a branch; it was a paw.

I suppose words cannot truly convey how utterly freaky this moment was by just that, but it was nothing like any animal paw I'd ever seen before.  Growing up descended from Navajo culture, I've seen my fair share of wildlife, heard all sorts of spooky stories from my mother's side of the family whenever we would go visit the reservation or when my grandmother would come visit.  It was oblong, more a hand than anything, overly long digits with inky-black pawpads on the underside and talons like black iron nails.

It was tapping those horrible clawed fingers against the glass, a steady tik tik tik, always followed by a long, slow drag down before it resumed.  It created the most unnatural if near silent shriek, and I could swear I saw it leaving actual scratches on the glass.

Tik, tik, tik, screeech...

Now it had my attention, easily spotting me standing transfixed in the window.  The paw waved, mockingly. I couldn't move; I couldn't breathe. The not-paw, not-hand retracted down. I followed it with my eyes, not wanting to look, wanting nothing more than to wake up from yet another nightmare. 

I saw it again as the moon came out briefly from behind the clouds. That horrific face with no skin or flesh, bare bone reflecting the moonlight in polished white sheen. Those glittering eyes, featureless, emotionless, but utterly fixated upon me.

It stood below my window, looking up at me.  I stood in my bedroom, looking down at it.  For moments, long moments that stretched as long as the waning shadows beneath the trees, I thought that I was about to die.  Any second it would somehow appear in my windowsill, filling it with its dark black pelted bulk, boiling inside of my room, set to devour me with over-long fangs and that ghastly smile that taunted me in my helplessness.

"Do you wanna play hide and seek?" it suddenly asked.  Even through the glass, past the howl of the wind all around, I could hear it, grating like feedback through a walkie-talkie or an audio recorder. It had my voice but like not-Damian's had been, it was stretched out, monotone and unnatural.  Like something without a voice of its own.

I didn't answer.  I couldn't have even if I had been smart enough to know that every word you give to these creatures is more power for it to wield against you.  I know better now.

"Do you wanna play hide and seek?" it repeated.

I shook my head. 

"How about tag?"

Again, I shook my head, more frantically now.

The smile, if somehow possible, without lips or any features of a sort to allow for such a gesture, grew wider.

I shut the blinds and hid under my covers, trying to blot out the sounds that all-too swiftly resumed.

Tik, tik, tik, screeeech...

I've since learned what that creature is called.  Research into Cryptids and my people's folklore provided me with that answer and many others, but left behind just as many burning questions, some that to this day I've yet to be able to explain. I refuse to speak such a name here. Just saying the name can call them to you.

And why is that moment etched into my mind, even after the grand scheme of my life has led me into countless terrifying episodes, hauntings, close encounters, and near-death or abduction experiences?  Why would that single experience proceed to haunt me well into my adult years, even after the many horrors I've been subjected to?

Well for one, I was 7.  You hold it together better than I was capable of at that age, you can mock me all you like.

And two, because my bedroom was on the second floor.

*TBC*

Credit for the Art goes to the massively talented and utter delight to work with:

https://www.artstation.com/nathanmadaarts

Find him here and on his Instagram

https://www.instagram.com/nathanmada_arts/