Half-head

When I was twelve in the summer of 1969, my family and I moved to a small white house in the middle of Caryville, Wisconsin so my mother could be closer to her parents. The house itself was rather unimpressive, a normal white board house built-in the mid-nineteen twenties, no spooky atmosphere or any of that other haunted house crap, just a house. To be honest I do not remember anything actually happening in the house until I was fifteen when my older sister brought home a new boyfriend, Martin Keller.

From the start, I did not like him, because he was the type of person who believed in spirits and psychics. He even claimed at one time that a spirit had told him that he would sire a child who would be “baptized in blood and rise to rule a world of madness because it was the will of an ancient god.” Just normal 70’s, weirdo, mumbo-jumbo from an idiot. Anyway, one night Martian thought it would be fun to bring an old-fashioned planchette to the house in an attempt to conjure spirits to tell the future. For hours, he and my sister sat in our living room trying to call forth the same spirit that had apparently told him about the evil child. After a while, they gave up and went to making out on the couch until, much to their amazement, the planchette actually moved on its own accord.

I remember my sister almost tearing my bedroom door off the hinges just to drag me into the living room to see what the spirit had to say. At first, I accused Martian of somehow manipulating the planchette until he stood and walked over to me. The three of us sat down around the table and began asking the spirit questions. Mostly we asked the usual, who are you, what do you want, who will I marry, and so forth and eventually the spirit announced that they had to leave. However, its farewell message will be forever burned into my mind, “I’ll be seeing you Jack.” That is it, nothing more just that it would be seeing me, but I still did not sleep for three days after that.

Months went by with no more events, but for some reason I could never shake the feeling that someone or something was constantly watching me. At first I would get the feeling that someone was watching me from far off while I was outside or walking to school, like whomever it was, was sitting in a far off tree with binoculars. Over the next couple of weeks, I began to feel that whatever, was getting closer to me.

One night in November I was up late working on some homework when I got the feeling that someone was outside watching me thorough my bedroom window. I remember working up the courage to walk over to the window and look down into the backyard, sure enough there was someone. It was a tall man in what looked like a suite with a cigarette in his mouth was standing, motionless, next to the fence at the far end of the backyard. What made it even worse was that I could not see the man’s face, just shadow and the glow of the cigarette. I jumped back from my window and tore downstairs to the kitchen where my parents were playing poker with some friends. I told my parents what I saw and my father stepped outside, but found no one. My parents and their friends all laughed it off saying I was tired and overworked and that I should get some sleep. I nodded and went back to my room, but I still could not get the image of the man out of my mind.

Each day after that it felt as if the man was stepping closer and closer to the house. Then one night during and electrical storm I saw him, literally right outside the window. I looked directly at him as a flash of lightning illuminated my room. The top of the man’s head was missing from the top jaw up, cigarette resting awkwardly on what remained of his bottom lip. I stared frozen in absolute terror at the man for what seemed like hours until a pale white hand hit against the window glass with a gut wrenching slap, almost as if someone had thrown raw meat against it. I screamed, and a strange garbled laugh filling my head, suddenly my sister and parents burst into my room and the man was gone, but the laugh still echoed through my mind.

My parents wrote what I saw off as a nightmare, but installed aluminum blinds to prevent any more boogeymen with bifurcated heads from peeking in. They thought it would help me feel better, but I was outraged, I was not some little kid anymore and what I saw was no nightmare. I could not get my parents to believe me, but my sister did, and she offered to let me sleep in her room for a while. I declined because I felt it was weird and told her it would be fine, besides it was impossible for me, or the man, to see through the blinds.

I regretted my decision almost automatically. That night I awoke to the sound of something tapping on my window. I told myself to ignore it and curled up under my covers until I realized the tapping was coming from the inside. I froze and my heart dropped into my stomach, he was in the room with me. I slowly peeked out from my covers to find nothing in the room; I then noticed the overhead vent in my room was making the blinds tap against the glass. I let out a sigh of relief and rolled over only to find out what the inside of a human mouth and throat looks like. I tried to scream as the man slowly stood and leaned over me, but the only sound that would escape my mouth was a pathetic squeak.

I watched as the man’s tongue began to writhe and a strong voice bubbled out, “I. See. You. Jack.” I wanted to bolt out of bed and run, but I found I was frozen in place, “I. See. You. Jack. Jacky, Jacky boy I see you, I seeeeeeee you.” The man then pointed to the opposite side of the bed, I turned my head to see what he was pointing at, and to my abject horror, the top half of his head rested on the pillow next to me. “I seeeeeeeeeeee yoooooooooouuu, I seeee youuuu.” the voice laughed repeatedly, and then I blacked out.

That is it, not surprise ending or anything, I never saw the half-head man again after that. My sister ended up leaving Martian later that year; she said she couldn’t be with someone who had cursed her brother like that. I’m not sure what happened to Martian in the years to come, I think at one point I read that he was killed in a botched robbery at his home in the fall of 2000. However, my youngest nephew has been claiming he sees the man at night. I do not think it means anything, but it still makes me wonder.