Rasping

It happened in my old house, but it began before I got the phone call from my friend.

The old house was nice being in the Admiral District of Seattle. My current home, however, feels better because there is less of a bad feeling. Although, the sense of ultimate dread hadn't gone away since March.

On that night of the 30th, as I was under my blankets, my head faced the nightstand where my phone rests to charge. Sleeping this way was not unusual for me since I often check my phone for the time or shut off the alarm. Suddenly, the sound of low rasping filled my dream. Slowly lifting my head, a bit, my first thought was to make sure it was not me rasping. I held my breath for a short time. I could still hear the rough breathing, though it was getting lower and becoming more guttural. Despite its lowered volume, I was sure it was a male. Then it seemed to be coming closer from the other side of my room, near the corner of my desk, skipping in tempo as it grew slightly louder.

Gripping my blanket, I shivered, trying to keep my heart from leaping out of my chest, struggling to remain calm. I did not move until it was over. After 20 odd minutes, I felt safe enough to move, as my phone incessantly hummed. My hand found the base of my phone, and I answered it when I saw Jordan’s name on the screen. With my hands still tingling, I managed to breath out, “H-Hey....”

“You okay,” Jordan asked.

My gaze fell on the phone with a raised eyebrow. “What’d you mean?”

“You sound... weird is all.”

“That’s not what I meant,” I glowered.

“Then what did you mean?”

“I thought you called because something happened to you.”

“It did, but not on purpose. Do you remember that beach party last weekend? I know we said it was stupid, but... the others took me along.”

“Whatever, I probably would've gone too. It actually did sound great.” I hesitated and looked around my room.

“I just thought I should tell you. Besides, I wouldn’t call it great. Some of us wanted to finish off the party in the old lighthouse after we went to the shoreline.”

“Why’d you go to the shore?”

“Part of the area was fenced off, but we wanted to see it.” His voice stammered a bit as he continued. “The story was that a dead body got found on the shore years ago.” Then he went quiet. “Are you still there, what happened?”

“Yeah, I just... after we saw the spot, we went to fool around in the old lighthouse. Nothing much happened. We just hung out and left....” Things went quiet again. His responses seemed like he was hiding something, but the empty silence made it feel like we were stuck in a dark room, too afraid to make ourselves known. I tried to talk about what I experienced, but my words got stuck in my throat. So, we stayed in that stupor for a while until he hung up. It all left me with a creeping chill.

All the next day, I determinedly called Jordan to talk with him more about last night, but I only got his voicemail. I later got a hold of his mother who said, "he couldn’t talk much because of his illness." He had been vomiting, and a doctor diagnosed him with laryngitis. When I asked them about the old lighthouse Jordan had referred to – the Alki Point Lighthouse, and the dead body found near it, the father got on and addressed the matter. The frustration in his voice steadily grew for he had heard whispers about it from some Alki citizens, claiming sudden suicides, disappearances, and cases of suffocation. Others spoke of the previous owners calling up something from the gulfs-of-night and leaving it behind in that old place to where the birds even avoid it.

In fact, it took a new owner to stop the lighthouse visitations, and then the incidents suddenly ended. He then finished our call stating that it’s better to leave that place alone and let it topple over. So that evening, I went to my mom and told her about the event last night. She told me not to be worried, as we will be moving soon to be closer to the Seattle Pacific University where she works as an archivist, and won’t have to hear it anymore.

That night, the sound of crickets was lulling me to sleep. By that time, the chirping dwindled, and everything went silent. Soon the disembodied breathing became more distinct with rage. Minute by minute it came closer, with unpredictable movements. I could hear footsteps slap against the floor as if they emerged from the water. Soon the rasping felt like it was over my face while I sat against the headboard with my knees near my chest. I believed it hung over me, waiting to do something as a keening guttural sound resonated in my ears. My eyes shut tight, not wanting to see who or what it was, I was not moving an inch. Despite my resistance, it felt like the male/thing tried to make me look at it.

The torment lasted for 20 minutes like before, and it was the most hateful feeling I ever received. Upon the following day, things went calmly, and that night no rasping was heard. Jordan’s strange responses the other night and that hideous rasping, though, kept repeating in my head. Jordan’s remark about visiting Alki Lighthouse, and then sounding nervous at the mention of the dead body, kept me moving around my house awhile. It was not until I talked to my mother about what Jordan’s parents said that she showed me the shelves in her office. She keeps copies of documents, certificates, and books related to lighthouses in Seattle’s history. With these materials, I read all I could about Alki.

One book had a section that displayed excerpts and articles related to lighthouses. It was in this I learned of the body found on the shoreline of Alki Beach in 2013. The body was that of Ethan Viser, son of the Alki Point Lighthouse owner, who had died from suffocation due to a neck injury. In another book, I learned that ownership of the lighthouse changed not too long ago. The last owner was of the Viser family, a Dutch/German group who acquired it in the 1930s. They had organized tours in it for years, but left it by 2014, and is now a working U.S Coast Guard site. Checking related resources on the internet, I found that tours were now rare because of complaints regarding a mildew smell – often described as a sickly odor. Reading that didn’t disgust me, but I was feeling nauseous.

More curious, I asked my mother if she could take me to the Alki Lighthouse. She seemed reluctant to do that but instead offered to let me read more about it from the materials in her office at the university. So, it was at Seattle Pacific University I got to look over the materials while she went to discuss something with a professor. Taking out the documents related to Alki Point, I continued learning more about the lighthouse among other weird things.

I saw that a word kept appearing. It was on about half of the records and seemed to be copies of notes written by different people. Deeply smeared in pen across these documents was the word wiedergänger. Over and over I saw it and kept flipping pages faster and faster until I found myself rushing to the bathroom down the hall, and began to gag over the sink. Something foreign had suddenly clung to the inside of my throat. Then, grainy liquid rushed up into my throat and I vomited out dirty water with a few strands of copper hair. As I stood over the sink, my thoughts raced. Trying to steady my hands from trembling as they gripped the sink’s base, I could taste the sweat at the corner of my mouth. It was disturbing to see what I had thrown up, moreover the word on most of the notes. Now I knew something wasn’t right about that lighthouse. It was these feelings and thoughts that made it difficult to sleep that night, when I got back home, even though my body felt heavy.

Early the next morning, I did my usual routine of washing up and getting dressed. I looked forward to a day out with my parents, but couldn’t lose the heaviness I felt. The day became a struggle for me, as I lost my breath from small actions during the Adventure Race, and I avoided most activities at the State Parks. My parents would ask if I were okay, but I would brush it off to not worry them. Oddly, I would then feel normal as if I were never tired. Once we returned home, my phone buzzed, and I read a text from Jordan. He asked if I were alright since our last interaction went abruptly quiet. So, I questioned if he was okay, which began our exchange:

“I’ve been alright, just kinda tired,” Jordan replied. “My voice is coming back, though.”

“That’s good,” I text back. “At least you’re getting better. I threw up last night.” I then paused and sent, “Hey, about the other night....”

“Yeah, sorry I ended our call. I thought you were mad.”

“I just... wanted to know what happened.”

“I told you nothing much happened.”

“You can’t expect me to believe that.” “Apparently not,” then he faltered. “Look... I heard a crackled, rasping sound in the lighthouse that came out of nowhere. Later, I started to feel like crap. The doctors had checked me, and suspect I had trauma from the bruise they found on my neck.”

“I didn’t know you were going through that.” Reading that, my body went cold. “I’ve been hearing that same sound for days now.”

“The weird part, though... I feel like there’s something with me. I thought it was nothing... but I saw that thing at the hospital.”

“What did you see?” I quickly text back, gripping my phone. Jordan mentioned one of the stories related to the old lighthouse – the complaint from a Coast Guard that something sucked out the breath of a coworker. Then he described a glassy-eyed, half-visible pallid figure with copper hair. After reading that, it felt like everything in my stomach churned because I could still see the copper hair in the bathroom sink. Jordan’s words made me see a terrible parallel between us. So, I went back to my mother’s home office because I felt it held a missing part to the Visers and the lighthouse.

My feeling got supported by my mother’s collection. Specifically, half of the records from residential accounts had the word wiedergänger noted in these papers too. Others, however, had the name Viser and statements of people hearing rough breathing day and night in the lighthouse or from elsewhere. The claims from the individuals who scrawled wiedergänger on their documented interview, report coming under a growing weakness, or report people coming up missing. The fatigue started with vomiting and then progressed with the host getting a bruise on their necks. There was no follow up given to these symptoms except a mention of bloodshot eyes. Few of these reports varied, though, claiming to have seen a bedraggled male, dressed in rags. They were most consistent on seeing this ghastly figure position over them, letting its dank copper hair fall just over its ears, and open its mouth. These people were said to have known someone that entered that lighthouse.

That night, I couldn’t go to sleep. I closed my eyes, but what I heard and read earlier kept me awake. Nearly every time I read on the Alki lighthouse, I kept seeing those words. I learned of the Viser family’s tie to it but needed to know more, and I needed to know what wiedergänger meant. So, I took advantage of my wakefulness and looked up the Viser family on my phone. For that moment, I saw the funeral picture of Ethan. He looked no older than me and Jordan, but my stomach went tight when I saw that his hair was the same as the strands I vomited out. It eerily felt like I already knew him. I then hurried to distract my thoughts, by looking up the word wiedergänger. Upon reading, I learned what it meant, the one who walks again. However, before I could learn more, a faint keening noise arose.

Remembering what came with that steady sound, I heard that raspy breathing near the far wall. As the harsh breathing rose, my breaths got faster while I kept glancing at my bedroom door and back at the wall. The moment I saw that wall leak water, I rushed out of my bedroom, not caring if what I saw was real. I went into the darkened hallway, and when I heard the sounds get closer, I moved halfway down the hall to the light switch. My heart raced as I approached it.

When I reached the switch and flipped it, the sounds stopped. Looking back down the hall, I saw my open bedroom door and the blank white wall at the end. Catching my breath, I noticed the light in between me and the end of the hall flickering.

Without warning, my heart felt as if it jumped into my throat. I ran to the other end of the hall and stopped at my parent’s room. Banging on their door calling out to them, I could hear that keening sound all the way down the hall. I reluctantly glanced down the dim hallway. Standing across from me at the other end, I saw in full horror what brought cries to my lips. I still remember its deadpan face. With a vein being half-visible through its pallid skin that ghostly thing – the wiedergänger – looked grotesquely half living and half dead. Then it lumbered toward me in wet steps, creaking and popping its nearly rigid limbs, before it abruptly stood before me. The last thing I saw was its copper hair, glassy gaze, and its mouth beginning to open wide before I shut my eyes. Resonating in my ears was that demonic crackled rasping.

I then heard the door open near me as the sounds left. My mother had heard me and asked if something was wrong. I couldn’t understand why it suddenly vanished. However, I was practically incoherent as all I managed to muster out was, “There’s something wrong.” It was hard for me to keep my body from shaking. When recalling my condition, I compared my and Jordan’s illness to the symptoms found in the documents. I knew we had thrown up, but it was only Jordan that developed a bruise. It was the third symptom that worried me though, as the ones who reported all three symptoms had described seeing what I just saw in the hallway. My mother promised to push the moving date up to May, but I would soon find out how dreaded these connections were. Directed to the bruise on my neck I hurried to the bathroom mirror to see the dreaded mark.

By the end of April, we were packing up. I racked on the idea of whether the other symptom would appear or not, nearly dropping most of the boxes. Knowing that we were leaving that house, though, provided some relief. During this, my mother got a call from Jordan’s mother. I hadn’t a clue what they discussed at the time, but my mother seemed to avoid telling me until later. So, I secretly called Jordan’s phone to tell him what happened and what I learned. My first intention was to talk about the symptoms and the attack, but I got his father instead. When I brought up the rasping sounds me and Jordan heard and asked if Jordan's eyes were bloodshot, he went quiet. The father told me about them all hearing a raspy breathing every night.

He continued to say that as the sounds lessened, Jordan got sicker. I then heard that Jordan did get bloodshot eyes some hours after we texted back and forth. From there, his father's words carried melancholy that would fill me with a haunting horror.

Steadily, the grip on my phone weakened, for it was last night they found Jordan’s body – desiccated on his bed after they heard that terrible rasping echo from his room.