(Listen to an audio reading of this story on YouTube here!)

 

If you are reading this, then know that there was nothing to be done. What I do is an act of necessity, and it pains me that this is the only solution. I do not know who will find this first, but to anyone that is related to me, I apologize. I certainly hope you do not come home to this, mother, father. You are still on what I presume to be an important vacation, not due back for another month. If possible I’d like them not to be involved. It would probably be too much for them.

The Foe is upon us, friend. I am the only one that can stop it. You’ll find me in the attic. Please don’t come if you have a weak stomach. XXSAF2AMLJS87F… The sequence continued, but the rest was stained in blood and illegible.

The note was left on the kitchen counter, written on a notebook paper, covered in blood at the bottom. I noticed it when I was pouring myself a glass of orange juice while waiting for the toaster to pop. It appeared to be my own handwriting, and it was apparently days old now.

“Hey, Doc,” I said. “What is this?”

Doc was a spirit that lived in my house. There were about a dozen of them that came and went, first appearing when I discovered them about a month ago, but they weren’t ghosts like most people think of them. Instead, they’re like tiny balls of energy with little arms and legs. They’re kinda cute, really, once you get over how unnerving their nonexistent facial expressions are. They don’t even have pupils for crying out loud.

The little blue spirit appeared, standing on the granite, about eye level with me. He (it?) looked at the note for a second, then looked back to me. “Words,” he stated. None of them ever really said more than three words in a row.

“I can see that, Doc. But it looks like I wrote it.”

“Did you?” His voice sounded like the tones of a wind chime.

“Of course not. I don’t remember writing this. I mean, it’s a suicide note. These are the sort of words you write when you plan on… But I don’t even remember writing this.”

He didn’t reply at first. After a moment, he picked up the paper. It was larger than him, arms stretched outwards as much as they could go. He still couldn’t even lift it off the table. “Seems… strange,” he said.

“That’s what I’m saying. What do you think?” I had been trying to train the spirits for about two weeks now. They aren’t smart the way humans are, but they can do basic things, so I named them accordingly. Doc was the one I talked to about the weird things I saw. I mostly asked him about spirits, but maybe he had some insight into this, too.

“Your writing,” he diagnosed.

“So I just wrote that and forgot about it?”

“Obviously.”

“Don’t be sassy with me. What about the blood?” I asked.

“Your blood,” he confirmed.

“How do you know that?”

“Who else?”

“I suppose. Fetch,” I called into the house. Fetch, a green spirit wider than most of the others waddled down the stairs and into the dining room. I pointed to the glass across the counter. “Orange juice, please.”

He climbed up the cupboards and onto the counter, then grabbed the glass with both hands. “Don’t spill this time,” I added. He held onto it like he was hugging a tree, heaving it up and pacing over. He managed to put it back down where I stood without breaking anything, which proves I am a ghost whisperer. Well, besides the obvious. I took the glass and chugged it.

“So, lets assume I wrote this and forgot,” I pondered. “What was the point? What is ‘The Foe’ and why am I the only one that can stop it? What about these weird letters? There’s no way I just made all that up.”

“Wine breaks head,” he supplied.

“Oh, come on. All the alcohol in the world couldn’t have made me this drunk. Can spirits write?”

“Not like this…”

“You’re always so resistant when I ask about you and the paranormal.”

“Because.”

“See? You’re doing it again. Normal people don’t wake up to read their own suicide note. And even if they did, they’d probably find it the next day, don’t you think? It’s not like it was hiding somewhere. I don’t feel very dead. So what’s going on?”

“I don’t know…”

I sighed. “You’re useless.”

“Attic?”

“What’s that?”

He pointed to one of the words on the page. You’ll find me in the attic. I never open the attic. In fact I had only been up there twice that I could remember. I dreaded the thought of going up there now. Attics always creep me out. Whenever you’re watching a horror movie, bad things always start in either the basement or the attic.

And I don’t have a basement.