Tommy Take a Picture

1/15/2009 Lately I've been thinking a lot about my childhood. I'm not usually one to reminisce but ever since my brother died, I haven't been able to stop dredging up these old memories. My brother Casey was always such a cheerful and intelligent young man. His future looked very bright to all of us. A good looking, 21 year old guy with an equally attractive fiance, good grades in college and a great job lined up for him at our dad's car dealership. He had everything a guy like him could want, so that's why it was such a shock when he up and killed himself a week ago. He hadn't been acting strangely at all. We had even made plans together the night he passed. We were going to the local watering hole to celebrate his 21st birthday before his real party would start. I always told Casey that the second he turned 21, we would hit the bars and drink till we passed out. I went over to his apartment at around 7 to pick him up. He didn't answer, so I went in using my key. It was dark in the modestly sized apartment. Strange, because my easily spooked brother would always have a light on in every room. Even at 21 he couldn't shake his old fears of something grabbing him in the dark. It was so dark I tripped over a pile of junk in his bedroom. That really got my attention though, since my bro was also a huge neat freak. I hit my nose pretty hard and my vision was blurred for a minute...but when I could see again I noticed some light. I stood up and got myself together enough to realize it was the crack of light shining from under his bathroom door. I ran and went to open it, but it was locked. I fiddled with it for a bit before realizing that something was very wrong here. My brother didn't have a lock on his bathroom door, they didn't come with the apartment and he had always been too lazy to do something like that himself. I quickly started to panic and busted the door down, banging up my shoulder pretty bad in the process. What I found inside was Casey in the bathtub, wrists slashed with blood already congealing onto his pristine bathroom floor. That was a bad enough thing to have to see, but what made it worse was...his face. He looked like he had been to hell and back and seen things I could only imagine, not that I wanted too. And there was something...off about it. Something about his skin color that was just a little wrong, even for someone who had lost all the blood he had. And his eyes...Jesus Christ, I can't even describe them. Have you ever seen the corpses in the movie The Ring? Awful movie, but they're the only things that even come close to describing the horrible state my brother was in. The more I stared the worse it seemed to get. I was transfixed. I was only in that bathroom for a few minutes at most, but it felt like hours. I finally managed to break away and call the police. I don't remember what I said to them exactly, or how I even was able to do it, but the next thing I remember I was talking to some officers about what had just happened. One of the officers came up to me and, flashing a badge, introduced himself as Maxwell. Maxwell told me that they had found a note and needed me to confirm that it was indeed from my brother. I hazily thought that was a little strange, who else would it be from? Not wanting to make trouble though, I looked at the note. I didn't know what I was going to see written on that piece of paper. I was expecting a letter at least. What I got was a sentence which didn't make sense to me, at least not until I woke up later that night drenched in sweat and screaming. It simply said, "Tommy took the picture."

1/22/2009 I was just going to leave it at that. I thought writing down that much would give me closure, or whatever my therapist called it. But ever since I wrote down that story the dreams have gotten worse. And scarier, I've started to hear voices. No matter where I go I hear them. The first time was in public, at the grocery store. It was this weird fucked up laugh that I can't really properly describe, but it rung a bell for me somehow. I felt like I had heard it somewhere, long ago. But I was also in a public place. Anyone could have made that noise, and my paranoia and grief could easily have turned it into something sinister. I soon realized though, that that was not the case. I began to hear the laugh more frequently, often when I was alone. The worst was at Casey's wake. It was very quiet, people mourning the loss of a beloved friend, brother, what have you. And then the laughing started. Over and over, that stupid horrible laugh. It was deafening. I had to leave. Luckily everyone thought I was just upset over the tragedy and needed to get out of there. I got in my car and peeled out of there. I went home and I've been here ever since, holed up in my apartment. Writing that down helped for about a day. The dreams stopped. The dreams...well, at first they were just memories, of me and Casey as kids. It's not uncommon to have dreams like that after a friend or loved one dies. You miss them so much, and the only way you can see them again is in your dreams. It was almost happy. But then I remembered. I remembered Tommy. When I was 7 and my brother 5, we moved to a new house. I don't really remember where we lived before. A lot of people can remember every little detail from their childhoods, but I'm not one of them. I do remember this new house, though. It was huge. To us kids it seemed like a castle, with plenty of rooms to explore. My parents had always been well off, so this big place had had about 5 bedrooms, and we got to pick which ones we wanted. I vaguely remember picking mine out. It was on the third floor, and I liked it because of all the windows in it. It was actually the room I lived in up until I left for college. It was located right by the stairwell. My brother's room was right down the hall. As I said, I don't remember too much about my life at this point. Except for this next bit, and that's thanks to the dreams. I remember it vividly. Casey was terrified of the dark. He would always run into my room as soon as out parents went to bed. I had bunk-beds, even though I was the only occupant of my room. I guess I just thought they were cool. What 7 year old boy wouldn't? Anyway, it was in the bottom bunk that Casey would sleep whenever he was frightened. And on this particular night, he was terrified. He came running in and dived under the covers in the bottom bunk. I asked him what was wrong, but he would only whimper in response. Of course, I told him to stop being a baby and teased him a bit, but stopped when I realized that something was really wrong. He was really scared. I went to close the door, planning on turning on the lights and making a nice safe haven for him, when I heard it. Downstairs, on the first floor, a voice. It was a male voice, but it didn't sound like my dad. I couldn't make out what he was saying, except for bits here and there. I heard “living room”, and the name...”Tommy”. Then there were footsteps. He or it was slowing waking up the stairs. I rushed to the door, broken out of my trance, and locked it, keeping an ear to the wood. I could hear him clearly this time. “Tommy take a picture up the stairs.” On the second floor now. “Tommy take a picture in your parents room” Creaking up the third flight of stairs. “Tommy take a picture, getting closer now.” And now, right out side my door, I could hear the heavy footsteps stop. I tried to hold my breath and not make a sound. A few minutes passed with nothing, and I started to relax when, I heard a massive knock at the door. It blew me back and I landed on my ass. Again and again, the knocking. And then, “Tommy take a picture outside your door” And silence. I eventually fell asleep on the floor. When I woke up, it was to my dad's loud yelling. “What the fuck happened to the door?” I was confused at first, then, remembering the voice and the banging, slowly made my way to the door. It was a mess, wood splinters everywhere. The knob was almost broken. Casey had woken up from the shouting, and he was hysterical. "It's Tommy!", he screamed, "Tommy!" I don't really recall much after that, just a vague memory of Dad smacking me up pretty bad for what he perceived as me fucking with my brother. Don't get the notion that my parents were abusive...you have to understand, the damage to the door and the state Casey was in...it was pretty bad. And I could hardly tell him what had happened. I guess I must have thought it would be best to let the whole thing blow over. I know my brother knew that I didn't do it, and that was enough. We never talked about the incident, or Tommy, ever again. So why? What the fuck happened to my brother?

4/13/2009 Things are fucked. I think I'm going crazy. I heard it last night. I heard Tommy. Pounding at my front door. He didn't say anything but I know it was him. Went to look this morning and the door was fucking destroyed, don't know what the landlord is gonna do.

4/14/2009 I told the landlord it must have been an attempted break-in. He really had no reason to doubt me, it's not like I would or could do that to my own front door. Still, it felt somehow dirty to lie like that. I can't stop thinking about Casey.

4/16/2009 I don't know what the fuck is going on anymore. I think I might be losing my mind.

5/03/2009 I quit my job and dropped out of school. I need to focus on Casey. And Tommy. I hear him sometimes, you know. Casey. It started at night, just when I would drift off to sleep. You know how sometimes, when you're almost in dreamland, little bits and pieces of your daily conversations seem to replay in your head? It's like that. The last conversation I had with him. We were going to go drinking. It's not fucking fair. I hear Tommy sometimes, too. Rapping outside my window. Literally, coming up with freestyle raps about my brother's death. Shit is fucking crazy. The raps are pretty fresh tho.

5/05/2009 That was a joke, last entry.

6/10/2009 Apparently in the late 1980s someone committed suicide in that house. The house where we first heard Tommy. He tore out his jugular using his own hands. The articles I was able to find on microfilm didn't give a name. The only information I could really gather was that he had killed himself shortly after buying the house, and he was Japanese. No surviving family. Why would one man need a house that big all to himself?

7/19/2009 I've been remembering a lot, lately. About our old house. I wonder about that man, and I remember. It was an expensive house, but I remember Dad saying it was a steal. For a while I used to think it meant he literally stole the house. Casey had to explain it to me. Felt like a fool, my own kid brother having to explain slang to me. We used to love hanging out in the garden. Lots of trees and flowers. There was a forest behind the house. Well, not quite a forest. You know how when you're a kid, 10 or so trees can seem like a jungle. We used to play hide and seek. My favorite thing to do in the garden though, was to take pictures of birds.

7/19/2009 What the fuck? What the fuck? What the motherfucking fuck? I didn't write that. We didn't have a fucking garden and I sure as hell have never gone bird watching. I think I might need to get to a doctor.

7/20/2009 Doc says I'm fine. Just stress. Just stress. Just stress.

7/25/2009 I got some good info out of Dad yesterday. The man who owned our old house was a military dude. Name was Jirou Tomitake. No idea how that's pronounced.

8/10/2009 I heard it I heard tommy i heard him knocking on the window baning on my door woke up and door was smashed it was smashed. it was smasged called dad he says not to wotty he laughed it was funny LOL

8/11/2009 Sorry about that last entry! Ha ha, did it surprise you?

Detective's Note Michael Smith was officially declared missing as of August 15th, 2009, after an extensive search failed to turn up a body.