A couple weeks ago, my wife made our two young boys a playhouse out of a cardboard box left over from some Ikea furniture. It stands at about six feet tall and is in the corner of our living room.
There’s a small door, and then a small window next to the door. It’s a pretty amazing little place that I wish I had when I was my boys’ age. It’s just one of the many reasons I love my wife: her ability to throw things like this together for our boys.
The kids are seven and two years old. Even with the age gap, they get along and love to play together almost all the time. When the cardboard house was first built, it was their favorite thing to play in together.
For about a week after we built it, we had a hard time getting them out of it. They’d take in a bunch of blankets and toys and just play. At bedtime, we’d have to literally drag them out to take baths and go to bed.
Sometimes they’d play peek-a-boo with my wife and me on the outside. I'd pretend to be scared or surprised every time my toddler jumped up and made an “AHHH!” sound. It was typical cute kid stuff that makes parents happy to no end, and it did. We loved sitting outside while the kids jumped out to scare us. Over and over, we’d do this, laughing and loving every minute of it.
On Sunday, everything changed.
We'd noticed over the weekend that our oldest wasn’t inside the cardboard house as much anymore, and just assumed he was losing interest. He is a bit older, and we were kind of surprised anyway that he was as interested as he was when we first put it together, so it wasn’t too big of a deal when he gradually stopped playing inside it. Our toddler, on the other hand, went in the other direction. We couldn’t keep him out of it. He’d wake up, get his bottle, and go in the house. He’d even close the door and get upset if anyone came too close or looked in over the top to see if he was still alright.
On Sunday morning, he woke up at 3 am, which was strange in the first place because he’d slept through the night for almost a full year now. He was screaming at the top of his lungs. It was a sound I hadn’t heard from him since he was an infant. When it woke me up, I had the strongest sense of being out of place; like I’d woken up in someone else’s house. I had to convince myself I wasn’t dreaming. I’d dreamt recently of when he was younger, of when he sounded exactly like that. When I rolled over and saw that my wife was looking right back at me with the same kind of confused face I must have had, I asked her if she’d heard it too. She nodded, but didn’t say anything.
“DAD! DAD! MOM! MOM!” came from his room then. That was more like him. When he refused to nap, he'd do this routine of yelling dad or mom at the top of his lungs until one of us gave in and got him out of his crib.
I rolled back over and put my feet down on the floor. I felt the creaking of our old wooden boards and knew I wasn’t dreaming. I got up, left the bedroom, crossed the hallway, and entered my son's room. His crib was directly in front of the door, with an old rocking chair my mom got us in the corner, opposite his bed. I was still halfway asleep, but I just barely noticed the old rocking chair that looked like the one to the right and stopped cold in my tracks. It was moving, but so slowly that it stopped only moments after I noticed it.
I realised that Mason had thrown his bottle, blanket, and everything out of his crib. “No big deal, he must've hit the chair with his blanket or something,” I thought, and lifted him out of his crib to make another bottle, something I’d done a hundred times. I headed for the kitchen to get some milk. After I was finished, making sure to warm it up, I went to take him back to his room down the hall.
Our house is one floor; the bedrooms are all connected to a single hallway at the back of the house. As you walk down said hallway, you're looking directly through the entryway and into the family room where our TV, the cardboard house, and the boys' toys are. So as I came out of the kitchen to take him back to his room at the end of the hall, he was looking over my shoulder towards the living room.
“DAD!” He yelled at the top of his lungs, pointing over my shoulder. He did this regularly too, whenever he wanted to go watch cartoons or play with his toys. I told him, “No, it’s time for bed, Masey,” and glanced over my shoulder. This was when I noticed there were two little red lights in the playhouse window that went out as soon I turned around.
I froze and waited to see if they would come back. Maybe it was just a car’s headlights, or something coming in from the window. Maybe it was one of the dogs. I waited for what seemed like an eternity. Nothing happened. I headed back down the hallway again, but Mason started screaming, “DAD! DAD! DAD!” at the top of his lungs.
I got to his room, gave him his bottle, and put him back down in his crib. He almost instantly went back to sleep like it had never happened. I turned to grab the blanket and pillow he threw.
Oh God, the rocking chair. It was moving again.
This time, it couldn’t have been Mason. It couldn’t have been him.
I panicked and turned back to get him out of his crib. He was already standing up, looking directly at me with a smile across his face. I grabbed him, slammed his door behind me, and almost sprinted back to my bedroom, where my wife was still sleeping. She mumbled and rolled over. Mason was still looking right at me. I put him in the bed between my wife and I and lay down next to him. He never broke eye contact with me. As we were laying there, I eventually noticed that he'd curled up with Mom and drifted off to sleep.
Of course, I couldn’t sleep at all. It was the first time I’d ever been this scared in my own home. Something, or even worse, someone had looked out at me from that cardboard house. Something had moved the rocking chair, and whatever it was had been in that room before Mason screamed. It made my skin crawl just considering it as a possibility.
The next day, everything was fine. My wife swore she hadn’t heard Mason screaming, even though she'd woken up and looked me right in the face and nodded when I asked if she had. My seven-year-old, Presley, said he hadn’t heard anything either. I thought I was losing my mind. Maybe I had been dreaming after all; but then how did Mason get in bed with us? The whole day, I just felt off, like there was a film over my vision. Everything was darker, and somehow… tainted.
Even though I’d been at work all day, my mind kept getting dragged back to that set of eyes or lights looking out from the cardboard house, and the rocking chair moving on its own. Even though I hadn’t taken notice then, I’d realized they, the lights, were watching me. Waiting and watching. I was sure of it. They were sizing me up, seeing what I was capable of.
Monday night came and the entire family was at each others' throats. My wife and I had an argument about a bill or something stupid. The boys were screaming at each other over toys, and Mason wouldn’t let Presley into the cardboard house no matter what.
I knew something was wrong as soon as I heard him scream. It was the same infant-like scream from the night before, but worse. It sounded as if it was full of pain.
My wife and I were in the kitchen, having been arguing. We both stopped immediately, and I could tell from the way she was looking at me that she had heard him screaming last night, and knew something was horribly wrong.
I dropped the beer I’d been drinking as I turned and ran around the corner to look into the living room. Presley was curled up in the corner in the fetal position, covering his ears. Mason was in the cardboard house, looking through its window at me with a thousand yard stare.
His face was too white and too blank. His eyes were bright red and seemed to be getting… brighter.
I was stuck. I couldn't move. His eyes wouldn't stop getting brighter and I was sure I was about to be blinded. My wife was stuck behind me. She fell to the floor and began writhing back and forth, clutching her ears. I didn't hear anything besides her and my son moaning, as well as glass breaking once a vase fell off a table that she'd rolled into.
“Dad. Dad. Dad. Dad. DAD! DAD! DAD!”
Each time he said it, he yelled louder and lower until I couldn't take it anymore and put my hands to my head. That was when I heard the screaming. When I covered my ears, my every thought was pierced by a newborn’s cry. I fell to my knees and tried to look up at my son. There were two sets of eyes staring back. Two sets of bright red eyes, looking directly at me.
The door to the cardboard house started to open.
Darkness. Complete and total darkness enveloped everything.
I woke up in the emergency room. Our house had caught fire. Luckily, one of our neighbors saw the smoke and called 911.
I was the only one pulled from the flames. Right after they got me out, there was an explosion that prevented the firefighters from going deeper in to get my boys. They say they haven’t found any remains, even though they've checked twice.
Oh, God. My sons... my boys... my wife.
Credited to gtrpup2
Originally uploaded on March 4th, 2012