guess it’s fine admitting it now—I’m getting a little worried.
Not afraid. I’m not, I swear.
But something, everything, is starting to feel different. Everything’s changing and I’m not sure I understand what that means.
I’m still shivering, damn.
It takes getting under the blankets, napping for, like, an hour—or at least trying to nap—to stop shivering. I want to get online and read about people’s experiences with demons, but I can’t type. My fingers keep hitting the wrong keys. So yeah, I get under the covers, keeping the lights on even though it really doesn’t matter if they’re on or not, I hear the haunting continues no matter what. If it needs to, it’ll zap the lights. But it feels, you know, reassuring.
I pull the sheets over my head, just enough so that it’s kind of hard to breathe. I don’t really sleep though. I just listen to the sound of my breathing, the sound of my voice, but I’m not talking. I’m not saying anything, which takes all the comfort out of being under the covers. I try not to think about anything, but that doesn’t really work.
So I make a run for the other side of my room, secure my laptop, making sure it’s plugged into a power source, and get back in bed.
Before I really do anything, I get a message.
Becca. I’m actually a little relieved. This takes me away from what’s been happening since I got home.
“I’m like so angry at you right now you have no idea.”
I read the message twice before replying, “I have some idea.”
“Then you know that I had to walk home. Walk home.”
“Becca, I’m... sorry?”
“How sincere, ugh.”
Fess up, Hunter. Admit that this isn’t going to just go away. And I’m not talking about Becca.
“Look I am sorry, okay? Lots going on. It’s crazy.”
Becca types and erases and types. I watch the cursor flicker. I look around the room. I don’t see anything wrong, but the feeling is still there. I wish it would just lay off for a little bit—just a little fucking bit.
Becca’s reply: “I’m still angry. I want you to know that I’m angry. Things are crazy yeah but that’s not an excuse for leaving me at school.”
Either I tell her or I don’t. She isn’t going away.
“It’s not that.”
“What? What are you talking about?”
“Something happened, okay?”
Becca types, “Oh my god...”
I know she’s thinking I got with someone. That’s how Becca thinks.
“No. No it’s not that.”
“Then WTF are you saying????”
Say it. Just fucking say it.
“I ran the gauntlet the other day and...”
“No...”
“And yeah. Things have been happening.”
“You”—Becca’s cursor flickers—“you’ve got to get this gone ASAP.”
Just say that you know.
“I know.”
“When did you go? Hunter, you’re so stupid sometimes. Why would you go to Falter?”
She’ll pick you apart if you talk about it.
Becca blasts me with messages, many of them about how stupid I am for running and that it’s even worse because I didn’t tell anyone.
Then I tell her I went on Friday.
“Last Friday???”
“Yeah.”
That sends her over the edge. Well, she’s already fallen over the edge, so it sends her over another edge, somewhere. The edge after all the other edges.
“Hunter. Hunter...”
“I know.”
She’s worried. I’m sort of worried too.
I think the lights in my room have dimmed.
Here comes Becca with all her so-called wisdom: “You have any idea what a demon is?”
It goes on for paragraphs. I think she copy-pasted them from other sites. I was going to do this anyway, so it works, but Becca’s not going to let up now. But I needed to tell someone. I already feel better for having told someone. It’s kind of like, “Why didn’t you tell anyone?” But at the time, knowing what would happen, as in what’s going to happen from this point on, it makes you dizzy. Like you want to faint. It’ll be easier to just faint than having to see it all pop.
Becca tells me that demons aren’t people. They never were people. They’re unclean and dark masses. They look for hosts and try to make the host theirs. They populate the earth and maybe come from other planes of existence. No one knows about that part, but demons can take the shape of you or something else who’s close to you.
Then she lists out the symptoms.
She lists out the symptoms, and I swear:
They happen right as I read them.
Becca says it’s common to see doors opening and closing.
My door opens but no one’s there.
It remains open until after she lists out “cold spots” and “noises.”
My room gets really fucking cold, so cold that I can’t really type, so I go and get another hoodie—I have a lot of hoodies—and put the hoodie on top of the hoodie I’m already wearing. Zip the fucker up, hood over my head. I feel like I’ve gained twenty pounds, everything’s so tight and packed in, but I’m still going to get under the covers. I’m sweating but at least I’m not that cold.
There’s sort of a banging noise, but I can’t be sure where it’s coming from.
“Hunter,” Becca types.
I haven’t been responding, whoops. “What?”
“Are you having trouble sleeping?”
“You know I’ve got insomnia,” I reply.
“No, like, do you wake up at three A.M. every night?”
I think about this, but I don’t really know. “I wake up a lot at night. That tossing and turning deal.”
“Think
