Polscht

It started when an old TV was anonymously dropped to their doorstep one arbitrary afternoon. There was no knock, no ring of the doorbell. Yula encountered it when she was taking out a bag of rubbish. Her and her brother Corrin had decided to bring it inside for their little brother Hugo. It was a chunky thing, like something that had manifested right out of the 1970s, complete with its own two dials and wonky antennae. It sat against the faded pink floral wallpaper that overpowered the living room, building a collection of dust. Hugo was greatly satisfied creating little scenes in the dust accumulating on top. Safe to say there wasn’t much going on for the trio of siblings in their little place of residence. It was an old building, and the random noises or sudden shudder of the walls wasn’t unheard of. The older siblings had grown accustomed to its vintage features, but younger Hugo let his imagination go a bit wild sometimes.

‘There are monsters living in the walls’ he would scream in the middle of the night when a big jolt woke him up. He would rock and scream until Yula or Corrin managed to ease his terror. Having had little exposure to technological luxuries, they didn’t know where he got these ideas from. The books they collected from charity shops and boot sales featured puppies and the solar system. The fear in children was clearly an innate characteristic. No sources of monsters or violence for young Hugo and yet his juvenile brain still tormented him with vivid nightmares. The occasional lack of substantial dinner probably didn’t help, malnutrition is much scarier than monsters.

Coincidently, the day the TV set arrived happened to be the day the property deteriorated further, the creaks turned to moans and the shudders turned to shakes. The nightmares grew worse too. The monsters had crept out of the walls and transformed into shadows manoeuvring around the room. Hugo described the shadows with such vigour even Corrin thought he saw dark flickers in the corner of his eye. A vile smell had formed around the TV sat, likely traced to the ever-growing anthropomorphic mould that was quickly spreading up the wall. It was forming into an unholy expression and the smell was a mixture of damp coal and fermented yeast. ‘At least we could make some money from this, everybody come see Satan in our mould!’ Corrin had so satirically suggested. To make matters worse the electricity was becoming very temperamental. Lights becoming sporadically unreliable, heat appliances suddenly turning themselves up to their highest setting, causing minor burns. On a few occasions Yula had entered the kitchen and every single cupboard and drawer was wide open. Having not walked right into the set of a horror film, it was surely only Hugo playing painfully humourless pranks. Hugo’s newfound pranking hobby also included making items “disappear”. Extension cables, ceramic bowls and hairbrushes were a few of his favourite collectables. He never actually returned any of the items and continuously denied the mischief. The items just vanished from the room while Yula or Corrin were in there, Hugo must have snuck in on his hands and knees and swiped it without them seeing. Long lectures on wastefulness and lack of funds usually followed, but his under-developed mindset was too preoccupied on preoccupying his boredom.

The most inexplicable thing happened to Yula one day. She had gotten out of the shower and was startled by an omen written in the steamy mirror:

666

666

666

She immediately thought of Hugo, but he could not yet reach the mirror. In the unlikely case he somehow managed to reach 3 feet from the toilet seat lid, she did a little test. She drew on a pre-condensated mirror to see if the pattern emerged; it did, but not as crisp as it did on that occasion. The devil in the wall became the new thing to blame. Nicknamed Maurice, it got scolded repeatedly for all the bangs and tremors. It was tiresome to repeatedly discipline their suddenly ill-behaved brother.

At just 19 years old, Yula and Corrin both had to work full time jobs to sustain their mediocre lifestyle and chipper younger brother. They organised guardianship by alternating working hours. Corrin pulling the short straw as a night-time hotel receptionist. Sometimes on his return, he would hear Hugo sleep talking. He would mention the TV speaking to him, but that he couldn’t understand. Hugo was replicating it: ‘chez sei bawich wa ma lego chopoca’ or ‘televisor jest pleen rodossi’ but something was not quite right. This happened often over the next few months, Hugo progressively having full conversations with himself.