As a child, I thought that cats could breathe underwater. But please, let me explain. I believed this well into late childhood. I know that sounds crazy and that even children understand the difference between mammals and fish. But I assure you, I was an entirely average child. By the time I was 15, I had long forgotten about all of this. My therapist says it’s not uncommon for childhood memories to be forgotten or repressed during the teenage years, only to resurface in adulthood. A kind of defense mechanism of the brain—especially against trauma—to ensure proper development during growth.
When my mother reminded me of it back then, all the memories came rushing back at once. She seemed to find it cute at the time, how determined her five-year-old son was in insisting that cats could do things they simply couldn’t. But when I think back on that moment now, happiness is far from what I remember. When she told me, I suddenly recalled how children at my school had mocked me for being foolish enough not to know what a mammal was. Once, our teacher, Ms. Collins—a blonde, kind, young woman I had a slight crush on—had to separate me from another boy, Billy Henderson, because we got into a fight over the cat and ended up hitting each other. I must have been seven or eight years old, and I remember having to stay for detention because of it.
But now, finally, back to the cat itself. I was lucky enough to grow up on a small farm. It wasn’t the kind of farm you might imagine—families with ten children working the fields from dawn to dusk just to survive the winter. No, that wasn’t the case at all. My parents were fairly well off, and we were never dependent on the farm’s produce. It was a beautiful white house with traces of colonial-style architecture, recently renovated. It was spacious enough for a large family, and for the three of us, it was more than enough. We had a red-and-white barn, standing a few dozen meters from the house, which was later meant to house sheep. Most of the property was fenced, separating the pastures from the walkway and the forests surrounding the farm.
We had an apple tree, a large, old cherry tree, and even deadly nightshade, which my mother tried to remove as best she could within a mile’s radius. My parents originally came from a bigger city, and when they had me, they decided to fulfill their shared dream of moving to a small farm in a rural area, where I was supposed to grow up in peace—though that’s not how things turned out. We moved when I was only a year or two old, so this was the only home I had ever known. The farm was in a perfect location. Far enough out to be surrounded by forests and meadows, yet close enough to town to reach it within a reasonable time.
Oregon is actually beautiful. As is typical for the Pacific Northwest, it is blessed with pristine forests, breathtaking lakes, vast coastlines, and majestic mountain ranges stretching across the landscape. Some parts of Oregon even have barren deserts and mile-long canyons. As you can see, our state offers incredible biodiversity, which many people consider a dream. And yet, having such an environment also comes with its downsides. As beautiful as nature may be, it hides an aura of uncertainty, buried deep within what remains unseen. Many forests and canyons have been untouched for centuries—perhaps even millennia. Hikers get lost in the labyrinths of trees that have stood guard over this land for thousands of years.
We modern Americans have only been on this continent for a few hundred years. We are just a small part of the bigger picture, one shaped by the relentless force of time long before us. We are only a tiny fragment of history in this world, a world our ancestors fought so hard to claim. We had a few animals—some chickens and a few sheep—but nothing that could provide a real livelihood. And along with these animals, we also had a cat. She was given to us by a neighboring farm and wasn’t a kitten anymore when we got her. An orange mixed-breed cat who, by coincidence, shared my name—Oliver. Instead of renaming her, my mother decided she would simply be called Oli from then on, a name that stuck with the whole family over the years.
I must have been four or five years old when I first saw it. While my father worked and my mother took care of my baby brother, I developed a kind of routine. Looking back, it was somewhat reckless of my mother to let me wander so far, but I suppose she simply didn’t know any better. Kindergarten wouldn’t have been worth it for me at the time, as it would have been an extra detour for my father. And since my mother was home with my brother anyway, I stayed at home too—which didn’t bother me back then, as I got to spend warm, sunny spring days exploring the pastures and forest edges around our farm. My mother would always sit on the porch, keeping an eye on me while nursing or holding my brother. I was never allowed to go beyond the last fence post by the pasture next to our house—but I rarely obeyed that rule. Just beyond that post, a small patch of woods began, which I often ventured into. In retrospect, it was extremely dangerous for a child my age because, just a few trees in, there was a small pond.
It was more of a waterhole, where rainwater had collected, than an actual pond. Something between a puddle and a pond—but shallow enough that I could stand in it. Nothing lived in it, and it couldn’t have been deeper than 30 centimeters. Still, it was something a four-year-old could drown in. One day, when I went outside with my mother and ran toward the forest, our cat followed me. I had always liked him. He had never been mean to me—never bit or scratched. He also never brought home unwanted “gifts” like mice or snakes, as cats usually do. Even though he was an outdoor cat, he rarely damaged the furniture. His fur was a light orange color, with a striped pattern covering his entire body. He was a handsome tomcat—though nothing extraordinary. As I ran off on my little adventure, my mother called after me to be careful and not fall; Oli followed me into the forest.
“And, Dragon?”
“What do we do now?”
“Where I’m going, it’s dangerous.”
“Shuuu, go back inside,” I said to the cat staring at me.
The cat just sat in front of me, continuing to stare.
“As you wish, Dragon.”
“I warned you.”
And with those words, I stepped deeper into the forest, my companion always behind me. The cracking of branches under my small shoes or the rustling of leaves, through which I marched loudly, left the cat unimpressed. Later, I learned that cats, when they are outside exploring parks or other areas, are usually very skittish. It’s instinctive for them to assess whether to fight or flee at every crack or rustle. In today’s world, many people no longer know what a true stress reaction in the body looks like. What is considered stress today—caused by work or other aspects of civilization—is merely a continuous release of cortisol and not the evolutionary process that ensured you and I are here today. When you’re alone in the forest and you feel something is off—that all-consuming sensation of fear crawling up your stomach, the certainty that you’re being watched, that you are on the brink of death—and your body summons every ounce of energy to save itself, that is a true stress response. Paired with hopelessness, it becomes agony. An agony few can truly comprehend.
But I digress. What I am trying to tell you is that cats are naturally skittish, and in the wild, they should be even more so. This behavior was unusual for a cat—just as unusual as the fact that it began breathing underwater. When my dragon and I finally arrived at the small pond—which I would later name “Dragon Lake”—something happened that would become a far-too-early turning point in my young life. The cat began to swim. Even as a four-year-old, I knew that cats were not particularly fond of water. So it surprised me all the more when, in a moment that felt like an eternity, the cat submerged itself. For at least ten minutes, the animal swam underwater without surfacing for air, circling my legs, which I had dipped into the water. When it finally emerged, it was completely dry. I watched as the water rolled off its fur in perfect beads. When I ran back to my mother to tell her about my discovery, I was met with anger.
“I told you to stay where I can see you,” my mother said sharply.
“How many times do I have to say it?”
“No TV for today anymore.”
I don’t remember how I reacted, but I kept my discovery to myself for the time being. My memories are hazy, and sometimes I feel like I can no longer say for sure whether some of them have merged with dreams from back then—blurring into an inseparable mass. Dreams and memories that, the older I got, seemed to resurface from the ether into my thoughts. The next thing I remember is walking hand in hand with my three-year-old brother, collecting eggs from the chickens. I must have been around seven years old, attending the second grade at Morrison Creek Elementary School. It must have been a Sunday, because my little brother threw a tantrum upon realizing he wouldn’t be able to go to school with me the next day. My brother was a crybaby. As far as I can remember, he had always screamed a lot and tried to get his way, even as a toddler. Yet, I loved him and was happy to have a brother.
When James—or Jamie, as I often called him—joined me on my mission to collect eggs from the chicken coop, we found Oli there. He was lying in a corner of the coop, alone. All the chickens were outside, which didn’t seem odd to me at the time, though in hindsight, it should have been a sign. Chickens don’t particularly like it when their eggs are taken, yet not a single one attempted to defend its brood. The instinct for self-preservation, which is essential to the survival of any living creature, is often underestimated by people. Neural patterns, etched into our minds over generations. I’ve heard vegans say, ”I would never eat meat, not even if I were starving." But when a person is not just hypothetically doomed but truly faced with a life-or-death survival situation, the mind yields to the body’s instincts. Even cannibalism becomes an option if it means survival. The lesser-known true story behind the novel Moby Dick tells of shipwrecked whalers who drew lots to decide who would take their own life with a gun—to spare the others from certain starvation. People do what is necessary. That is why humanity stands as the golden peak of evolution—at least for now. We have an unbreakable drive to do whatever it takes to survive, no matter the cost.
Our instincts are strong, but our minds are weak. What kills a person is not merely physical suffering—it is hopelessness. And I would come to know far more of it than I ever should have. I must have been about eleven when the first major fracture in my agony began. By then, I was in middle school and relatively happy. I was sitting in math class with Mike Suddney and Charles Conners, two friends of mine. We were stuck with a teacher we didn’t like, engaging in poetic debates about which Mortal Kombat character was the best. Then, suddenly, I was ripped from my conversation with Mike. From the moment there was a knock at the door, I could already feel the devastation about to unfold. Call it a premonition before the storm—you just know when something is coming that you don’t want to face. A heavy knock echoed through the classroom door, and then the principal entered.
"Oliver Clark," he called, half-questioning, half-commanding.
”Pack up your things. You’re going home for today."
I exchanged a worried glance with my friends before stepping through the door—feeling as if I were moving in slow motion. The doorway felt like a gate, one that, once crossed, would seal my fate forever. A door that would close behind me, no matter how much I might try to pry it open again. My mother stood outside the school with red-rimmed eyes, waiting to pick me up. I didn’t dare ask what had happened. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the answer. But eventually, I spoke the words. And after what felt like an eternity, my mother—lightly sobbing, her voice trembling—finally replied. Her words left a heavy weight in my throat and stomach, a sensation I had never felt before.
"James didn’t make it to school today,” she said through her tears.
“Your father dropped him off, and his friends clearly saw him there—but when class started, he was gone.”
My gaze became fixed, and I can now only vaguely recount how I felt during the worst car ride of my life. It felt as if invisible hands had wrapped around my neck, using my pain as justification to squeeze tighter and tighter. When we finally arrived home after what seemed like an eternity, I found my father in the living room speaking with the county sheriff—an older man who was a friend of my father’s and had come in person. I only knew him as Sheriff Haynes, whom I had seen before at barbecues and under similar circumstances. When my father saw me, he offered a tired smile and said something useless in an attempt to calm me down.
I was sent to my room, much to my dismay, though there was nothing I could have done about it. After two days filled with nightmares and a tension no child’s heart should ever endure, relief finally came in the form of a phone call. James had been found. I only remember that my mother grabbed me and drove at breakneck speed along country roads into town. They said that James had ventured into the woods to chase after an animal he had seen. Ultimately, he was discovered by a couple walking their dog in the forest. The dog must have barked, leading the couple in one direction, and they found James—looking rather disheveled—in the underbrush before calling the police. In those two and a half days, he had supposedly walked an incredible 34 miles, something hardly believable for a 7-year-old taking a two-day walk to the neighboring town.
I caught fragments of the conversation my father quietly had with the sheriff—phrases like “abduction cannot be ruled out,” “give him time,” and instructions to “make contact.” Finally, the sheriff gave my father a number which, in hindsight, was likely that of a child psychologist. Even as an 11-year-old, I sensed the relief spreading among the adults. My father’s tired, red eyes—even beneath deep circles—radiated relief. He had driven back and forth day and night, searching the woods for my brother. My father knew many of these woods, having spent so much time hunting there despite my mother’s disapproval.
Of course, I hugged my brother too, but I was not granted the kind of relief I had so desperately wished for over the past few days. James had barely spoken and seemed strangely stiff. Nothing too unusual for a seven-year-old who had just gone missing and endured a two-day survival exercise, but I seemed to be the only one who knew that something was wrong. I’ve talked about instincts before, and one thing my father taught me was: “Trust your gut feeling.” “If you feel like you’re being watched, you probably are.” Feelings like that shouldn’t be ignored. “It’s your body telling you that something isn’t right, even when your mind doesn’t know it yet,” he once told me.
As I mentioned earlier, my father—despite my mother’s disapproval—loved to hunt. It was something his own father had often done with him as a child, a tradition he would have gladly passed on to me if not for my mother. My parents never really argued, yet my mother—a devout Christian and somewhat domineering woman—could not bear the thought of her little boy, who once believed that cats could breathe underwater, shooting at living animals with a rifle loaded with dangerous ammunition. She forbade it for as long as she could, until my father finally took me into the woods on my 14th birthday.
My mother was deeply displeased, but for my sake, she forced a smile and sternly reminded my father that we had to be back in time for cake. I had looked forward to that day forever. Ever since I was little, I had begged my father to take me along, promising that Mom would surely never find out; yet, even though he wanted it as much as I did, he never did so out of fear of incurring my mother’s wrath. I sat happily in my father’s pickup, with a country song playing on the radio, as spring slowly but surely turned into summer. Looking back, that was probably the last truly happy moment I ever had. We had gradually recovered from James’ disappearance, and everything had returned to normal—at least for my parents. James did not return to school until months later, and my mother never let go of either me or, especially, James for even a second.
James always had to get up with me since my mother had to drive me to school because Dad had taken on a new job and could no longer transport us. My mother would probably have rather died than to allow James to go anywhere alone again. On his first day back at school, she was so nervous that once we returned home, she promptly turned around and waited nearly an entire day in the car outside the school. She nearly got arrested because someone, noticing the car, suspected an abductor or pervert and called the police.
My parents never noticed anything amiss, but my Jamie never truly returned from the woods. James was cold and indifferent. My mother attributed this to trauma—a conclusion confirmed by the psychologist she saw with James weekly. Yet I knew deep down that James was probably dead. His gait was different, his laugh didn’t seem genuine, and the wrinkles that formed in his face when he squinted did not match the image I once knew. The way he reached for things, the manner in which he drank water—small details that, to me, looked as if someone I had never seen before stood before me. Everyone else might not have noticed. But not me. I knew that something was profoundly wrong—a mockery of humanity itself. It was a mirage, an almost perfect shell pretending to be my brother. Later, I read about neurological disorders like Capgras syndrome, but I am convinced that wasn’t the case with me.
And those who were dancing, were thought to be insane, by those who could not hear the music, another label was applied—a saying that lingered in my mind for a long time. My mother likely would have accepted a daughter as her child as long as she were named James. I cannot entirely blame her—a mother who wants her child back at any cost is something every one of us can understand, whether we are parents or not. Still, I cannot help but reproach her for failing to recognize her own child, even if I wish otherwise.
In the winter, when I was 12, another event occurred that I couldn’t comprehend at the time, but which I now consider profoundly significant. Thoughts blurred, and the feeling of going mad had been a constant companion for years, but I remember it happening around Christmas. It had snowed heavily in the preceding days, and outside lay a white paradise of snow. In the past, I would have been delighted by it, but as soon as I stepped outside, those invisible hands began to tighten around my neck once more. I stood on the threshold of our front door, already sensing that something was off. A god I did not know sent me words of caution that I did not understand. I saw footprints—large, imposing footprints.
Thick, heavy boots had left their mark on the white canvas that the snow had so carefully spread out, a canvas that had looked so pristine and beautiful. Slowly, I walked toward the tracks, unsure of what exactly was making me uneasy. A substance was scattered across the snow, completing the horrific picture that someone had so carefully painted on my canvas without permission. It was a kind of powder. Coarser than sand, yet finer than cat litter. It had a light brownish hue, but it was neither soil nor dirt. Of that, I was certain.
“MOM!” I shouted into the house.
“Has Dad already been outside?”
“DAD! was sleeping right next to me just a moment ago,” came the reply.
Back then, I concluded that it must have been a mailman who had taken some unusual route, as the tracks led around the house and toward the barn but did not seem to lead away again. I simply didn’t know any better and didn’t give it much thought, though, of course, the idea of burglars or monsters crossed my mind. In situations like these, no halfway rational person truly believes, deep down, that they are dealing with a ghost or a supernatural force. Most would likely settle for the explanation that they had missed part of the picture necessary to fully understand the situation. Some might assume a burglar or a squatter had been there. But the 12-year-old child that I was simply forgot about it without giving it another thought. In hindsight, it should have been a massive warning sign. But in reality, people dismiss things all the time, especially children. No one would immediately move out of their house just because they thought it was haunted. In a world where responsibilities like work, taxes, and bills dictate life, everyone tries to find a rational explanation for such things. Just as I did. The world we live in is full of uncertainty, pain, and fear—something everyone has to come to terms with.
If I asked you to name the deadliest disease in the world, what would you say? Perhaps AIDS, malaria, or maybe cancer? There are many terrible diseases on our planet, but in terms of how the virus itself functions, rabies is the deadliest. Once infected, a slow process of degeneration begins, almost as if fate itself had chosen certain death for the poor individual afflicted. Rabies is a creeping virus, gradually traveling along the nervous system until it reaches the brain. Once there, there is no cure, and death is inevitable. No vaccine, no therapy can save you at that point. You stand directly beneath the blade of death’s judgment.
That’s exactly what happened to me.
The sound grew stronger, creeping in slowly. At first, it seemed to come from outside, then from the hallway, then from the walls, and finally from inside my own skull. A sound that, apparently, no one but me could hear. Looking back, I still cannot say with certainty what it truly was—I can only share my suspicions with you. Since that fateful winter day, my home has been shrouded in an aura of helplessness, one that only I seem to be able to feel.
It was a feeling I found hard to put into words, but if I had to describe it, I would say it was like walking down a path, knowing you were being watched, expecting at any moment to be torn apart by the beast you couldn’t see but could still feel. Most of us can relate to the feeling of being watched. Whether it’s an instinct or some kind of metaphysical sense that once protected us from predators is difficult to say. Yet, over the years, this feeling grew into a massive sickness that seemed to spread throughout my entire body.
I should also mention that the process was truly gradual, much like an exponential curve—rising slowly at first, then intensifying the closer it came to the end. By the time I turned 17, it had already gotten worse. I heard those noises every day, though I had never told my parents about them. Between the ages of 12 and 13, my mother kept asking me what scared me so much when I refused to take a bath alone or go outside after dark, even though it had never really been a problem for me before. I wanted to tell her, I really did, but I could never bring up the courage to do so—out of fear that they wouldn’t believe me. After all, they had already been deceived once before.
When summer break finally started, my mother eventually gave in to my days of begging. Mike, Charles, and I had been planning a road trip to the coast for a while. The plan was to spend two days at Chester Lake, known for its wild parties. Then, we would continue on, take some “proof” photos of the ocean for my parents, and head back home. Of course, we didn’t tell our parents about our little detour. They believed we were going on a simple camping trip by the sea to spend some time in nature, away from the stress of school. But nature was the last thing on our minds.
Mike had gotten a car from his parents, something Charles and I envied a lot. Charles’ parents believed that if he wanted a car, he had to work for it—which he did. However, most of his earnings ended up going toward weed. My parents might have bought me one for my 16th birthday, had my mother not intervened once again, insisting that a 16-year-old could barely walk in a straight line without his mother, let alone drive a car on public roads.
“You’ll get one at the earliest when you’re 18,” she said, sharp and determined.
Dad shot me a look that made it clear this battle was lost, so I didn’t even bother arguing.
“Remember, if I find out you’ve been drinking, this will be the first and last time you’re doing something like this,” she reminded me for the hundredth time as I was about to get into Mike’s car.
“Yes, Mom, as if I’d dare to make you hate me.” I grinned. “I’d probably end up crucified,” I added before saying goodbye.
I heard Dad mumble something like, “Oh, just let him go,” as we drove off.
“Shit, man, Oliver, what took you so long?” Charles asked in a slightly stoned-sounding voice.
He was half-lying on the backseat, peering at me through his sunglasses.
“You know my mom,” I replied. “Alcohol is the devil’s work; don’t go there; don’t do this. Best if you don’t leave the house at all and just read the goddamn Bible all day,” I mocked her in a high-pitched voice.
“She’s just really religious,” I added.
“We all are, man,” Charles responded, staring at the car’s ceiling in a daze.
“Good thing she didn’t check the trunk,” Mike chuckled from the driver’s seat.
“What did you manage to get?” I asked him.
“Uhhh, a six-pack of Silver Pine Classic, four Black Creeks, and half a bottle of tequila,” he said proudly. “Not a bad haul, considering how little time I had.”
We had finally arrived at Chester Lake and set up our tent for the night. Charles had already made friends with some of the other campers and had received an invitation to a small party a little ways from our tent. We might have looked older than we really were, and fortunately, no one noticed that we were nowhere near old enough to drink. There were about twenty to thirty people gathered around a campfire, dancing to music, drinking, and numbing themselves with who knows what other substances. It was getting late, and I must admit, I had drunk too much. However, the memories that would etch themselves so deeply into my mind couldn’t be shaken off by the alcohol. I had lost track of time and, with Mike, observed how the women across from us were bouncing in their bikinis.
The next thing I remember is Mike, smiling, trying to tell me something with insistence. He was standing a little way off with two women and seemed to be explaining something to them while pointing at me. Eventually, he came over to me with the two women and said something I didn’t understand. The women must have been in their early twenties, and looking back, it was pretty questionable that they were so eager to approach us. But at the time, I didn’t care. What I understood was that Mike wanted me to go with the woman in the red bikini, who had linked her arm with mine. The wildest fantasies started to spread in my head, as they probably do for any 17-year-old virgin in a situation like this. I began to perceive the next moments more like snapshots, but I remember talking, drinking, and dancing with the woman. Mike and the other woman had disappeared, and despite the huge amount of alcohol, I was incredibly nervous.
The woman led me away, and we walked a bit off toward a forested area. I was excited, trembling slightly, and my face was probably bright red. I stood there, swaying slightly, as the woman came closer and began to undress. At that moment, I felt aroused and thought I was about to become a man, but what turned from the fantasy of a 17-year-old virgin quickly transformed into a nightmare like no other.
As the woman took off her top, I suddenly felt as though I had made a terrible mistake. The excitement faded, replaced by a feeling as though I were trespassing on government grounds, fearing I might be shot at any moment. I stared at the woman’s bare breasts, and my stomach twisted painfully. The woman didn’t have any nipples. She leaned in to kiss me, but it felt wrong. Even in the dim light, I could see that her lips seemed almost completely smooth. Her hands, reaching out for me, were completely smooth, with no lines or wrinkles, no texture whatsoever. When she finally removed the bottom part of her bikini, I became sober in an instant. My senses cleared, my muscles filled with blood, and adrenaline swept the alcohol from my system. What stood before me no longer resembled a woman—it had no genitalia. The skin was just smooth, unnaturally so.
I’m not sure if it was the alcohol or if I just hadn’t noticed before, but the face had no wrinkles, the eyes were an odd shade of gray, and the face lacked any sign of emotion. The hands—disgustingly smooth and lacking nails—slithered around me, sliding down my back as I stood frozen against a tree, repulsed beyond measure. My body, on the edge of desperation, finally decided to shove this thing away from me, which brought relief, though only momentary. There it was. A being, pretending to be human, stood before me. Naked, without any emotion, it smiled without moving its fake lips. The sound echoed painfully in my head, scraping against my skull from the inside. And when I finally realized we weren’t alone, I slowly turned my head to the right, only to be greeted by the second most horrifying and so utterly disgusting sight I had ever seen. Have you ever heard that when you’re lucid dreaming—that is, when you know you’re dreaming—you should never ask yourself about your greatest fear? The subconscious knows your deepest anxieties, and in my experience, it splits into two parts. There are fundamental fears, such as the fear of failure, the fear of regret, or the general fear of death.
And then there is what I would call “fleshly fear.” Fears that reflect the most perverse and disgusting things our mind can conjure. Things that put a body into a state that can only be experienced and not described. That’s exactly what I saw back then. I don’t know why abstractions of human proportions and extremities seem to generate such fundamental fear in humans. I seem to be not the only one who experiences this fear when seeing representations of human-like figures where the proportions are wrong or extremities are unnaturally long. The „Uncanny Valley“ if you‘d like to put it that way, is, what has made creatures like Slenderman or the Rake so popular. It seems to be a fear embedded deep within many of us. Almost like a primal fear.
I was confronted with an image that still fills me with disgust and fear today, one I still dream about decades later. A man sat eerrily, motionless beside us in the woods. He was enormous, and even in a crouch, he was taller than me. He wasn’t just a tall man; he was a giant. The thing was nearly three meters tall and filled me with such fear that, even as I write this, I can feel a chill running down my spine. The man had dark skin and dark, braided hair. His body was painted with markings that ran from his face all the way down to his legs. He wore some kind of jewelry around his neck and shoulders, but it was too dark by then to make out any real details. He crouched, one hand on the ground, as if I were his prey, ready to sprint after me with all his might at any moment. He stared at me as though he were looking directly into my soul. I don’t know if he had been sitting there the whole time, waiting for me, but throughout all the time I spent away and almost constantly in therapy, I could never forget that face and the way he stared at me.
What followed seemed to happen in slow motion. I remember it felt like an eternity, standing there while I died a thousand deaths in my head. Finally, I ran. I didn’t stop until I saw people again and vomited on the sidewalk. When I woke up, Mike and Charles had carried me back to the tent and changed my clothes. I had thrown up on myself and apparently wet myself as well.
“Dude,” Charles said when I woke up with a hellish headache from my nightmare.
“I thought you were going to die,” Mike said, relieved, though I could still hear the concern in his voice.
“How much did you drink, man?” he asked. I didn’t respond, trying to sit up.
“We need to go,” I said, as I tried to stand, swaying.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, slow down,” Mike said, trying to gently push me back onto the sleeping pad, but I swatted his hand away.
“What’s going on?” Mike asked. I could detect the uncertainty in his voice.
“Where are you in such a rush to go?” Charles asked.
“In this condition, none of us can drive anyway.”
As I stuffed my things into my backpack, I tried to explain the situation to them, but I quickly realized they didn’t really believe me. With quick, unsteady steps, I made my way toward the car, while the two of them exchanged questioning glances behind me.
“Man, listen to yourself, Oliver,” Mike said.
“You just drank way too much and took some shitty stuff. That kind of thing happens sometimes,” Charles added.
“I didn’t take anything,” I shot back, noticing how the two exchanged looks.
By noon, Mike finally agreed that we had to leave. My rambling had rubbed off on him throughout the day, and he was slowly becoming restless. I think he felt guilty because he had played a part in orchestrating my nightmare rendezvous the night before. We decided to head home earlier and made a stop at a McDonald’s parking lot, where we slept in the car. We decided to spend the rest of the day sobering up and eventually made it home on the third day, instead of the planned four. I had decided to tell my parents that the beach was closed for camping, and we had decided to repeat the trip sometime in the future. I didn’t know how to deal with what had happened. My mother suspected something, but she never figured it out. I deeply regret how things ultimately turned out between me and my parents. Like probably everyone whose parents are no longer part of their life, I wish I had hugged my mom one more time, told my dad how much I loved him, and told my brother how important he was to me. But those thoughts are like water stolen from a thirsty person just before their lips touch it. I can’t go back, and I can’t change anything, yet I can’t let go.
I didn’t tell my parents anything, but they, of course, noticed how exhausted and tired I looked from that point on. I slept only 4–5 hours most nights, and the scratching grew louder and louder. I started to fall behind in school and graduated from high school with an embarrassingly poor GPA. But the climax of my personal tragedy was yet to come. I was 20, temporarily moved out of my parents’ house, and attending a college a few hours away. It benefited my body, as the scratching grew quieter, and even though it didn’t completely disappear, I was able to sleep better again. Sleep is something you only realize how much you need when you no longer have it, and I can assure you that everything in life becomes harder when sleep is something you associate not with rest but with panic.
It was finally summer break, and I drove with a queasy feeling in my stomach down the highway back home. It had been almost two years since I was last at the place I was returning to. The place I had long ago written off as home. The only thing bringing me back was my parents. I missed them, and when my mom suggested that I come home for a month or two, I eventually agreed. For the first three weeks, everything went relatively well, although I often complained of headaches, and my sleep, while deep, wasn’t as restful as I wished it would be. I hadn’t spoken to James in a long time, but when I saw him for the first time again, all doubts I had over the past two years vanished. I had doubted myself and my sanity and often questioned my perception, but the moment I saw him, I knew I hadn’t been wrong.
I often wondered how a mother could not recognize her own child. Everything about him was wrong. I had buried my brother in my mind all those years ago, and what sat across from me at the dinner table was a grotesque mockery of a human being. But I was powerless. The night it would finally happen was uncomfortably warm. The humidity seemed to rise to unbearable levels, and my head pounded. That evening, even before the events unfolded, I felt as if I were in a delirium, but it would get worse. I couldn’t sleep and woke up drenched in sweat. I had incredible headaches, and the scratching was louder than ever. The scratching seemed to come from everywhere, from outside, from the walls, and even from inside my skull, scraping desperately against my brain in an attempt to break free. The pain eventually drove me to get up, and as I pressed both hands against my head, standing, in my dark room, a muffled sound penetrated through the scratching.
I turned around and saw, in the dim light cast by the lamps in front of our doorstep, Oli sitting on the sidewalk, staring into my window. He meowed. It wasn’t an angry or pitiful meow. It was neutral. And yet, it seemed to command me to go down to the cat that had been with me for so long. I seemed to float down through the dark house. Everything appeared to slide past me. I opened the door, and there he sat. Staring at me with his yellow eyes, he was about two meters away. It felt like time had stopped. His fur gleamed faintly in the weak moonlight. It was still just as magnificent as it had been the day I first saw it all those years ago. I slowly bent down, my head lowered, and met the cat’s all-seeing gaze.
He stood up and slowly walked down the path I had walked so many times as a child. In my trance, it seemed like the only thing I should do was follow him here and now. The small stones of the sidewalk jabbed into my bare feet, but I didn’t mind. I knew I had to go, and my companion would lead me. Before we arrived, I already believed I knew where the journey would end. I was right, at least for a brief moment. The watering hole looked exactly the same as I remembered it from all those years ago. I sank to my knees and gazed at my distorted reflection in the water’s surface, which rippled gently in the wind. The moonlight filtered weakly through the trees, offering just enough light for me to see. I didn’t feel bad; in fact, I felt almost relieved. The wind cooled the limbs of my tired body, and the pain in my head began to subside. The scratching didn’t hurt as much anymore, but what is given will also be taken away.
Despite my mother’s almost incessant attempts to hammer the Christian faith into my head, I never truly believed in a god, let alone in heaven or hell. But if there is a hell, then I found it there. The place where I woke up was filled with an indescribable hopelessness. I could hardly move and could only see faintly. The scratching had now intensified so much that it felt like my skull might crack open from the inside. It was dark, and almost no light reached the place. The only light that touched this cave came from thin holes, which must have reached all the way to the surface. The cave seemed to be no more than a few meters deep and appeared to run roughly under the farm. The entire lower half of my body was entangled by some kind of plant, which I would describe best as a black, solid root. The root had a rather smooth surface, and it seemed as though veins ran beneath it. These roots were everywhere, even hanging from the ceiling of the hollow where I was. The only thing I could hear down there was the cracking sounds of the roots and the muffled sobs of my own agony. I knew I wasn’t alone down there. And when I finally came across a remnant of something, picked it up, and realized it was bone, the pain and the certainty that I was going to die almost killed me in that moment.
The human brain refuses to perceive absolute darkness. It resists showing us what lies hidden within the darkness and begins to hallucinate. The brain starts making us see false things, as if what is hidden in the ether of darkness is not meant for our eyes. It is difficult for me to put into words the hell I was in. It’s more like snapshots I remember, rather than a cohesive image. Even now, the thoughts of that night still blur together. Hallucination and residual light intertwine in an orgy of filth, into a painful, hazy memory. Existence itself seems to vanish, time is suspended, and the world simply stops. And yet, you are there, along with what it is not. We try to escape the darkness, but it follows us like a shadow that doesn’t disappear even at night. There are only two possibilities. Is there something, or is there nothing? Lovecraft already recognized this. Fear is the strongest emotion in humans, and the greatest fear is the fear of the unknown. The mother of all fears and the core of all despair. And what represents the unknown more than the darkness itself?
The zenith of my pain had arrived, and I thought I would break, but then I saw it. Slowly, it crept along the tunnels and finally, painfully, slid into my line of sight. I didn’t want to see it; I didn’t want to accept that it was here. The creature stood hunched over. By my estimates, it was just over two meters tall and stared at me. Its orange eyes seemed to glow in the faint light, which had fought so hard to find its way into the cave. With it, a thick, sticky, yellowish mist or fog seemed to seep into the passages. Almost like a toxic aura surrounding the monster. It burned in my nose and eyes, making it even harder to see. The creature had a skin color that would resemble dark ash. I can best compare the surface of its skin, as strange as it may sound, to the surface of stones. Uneven and somewhat angular. Try to imagine it as the skin of an octopus, attempting to camouflage itself among stones on the seabed. Its limbs were thin and gnarled, and although it seemed to have the physiology of a humanoid, the structure of the muscle fibers in its body was different from that of a human. The creature was very emaciated, and it seemed as though you could make out the bones beneath its skin. The roots seemed to wind tighter around my legs, and I felt them stabbing into my legs, seemingly trying to crush them.
The creature slowly began to close the distance between us. It moved its massive arms slowly and deliberately as it made its way through the tunnel. It had to crouch, as the cave was far too small for the beast to stand upright. It slinked silently toward me, staring at me as if we were the only constants in this dark void. I lay there, drowning in my monomania. That moment is the clearest memory that survived from that night in my mind. It was like a jump scare that never stopped. I saw it and saw it moving toward me, yet I couldn’t comprehend it. I couldn’t do anything.
I could only try not to drown in the agony of myself in that moment. It touched me, and I couldn’t move. It pressed me to the ground, and I felt a liquid dripping onto my body. I don’t know how it happened, and I don’t know how I managed it, but I bit down with all my strength. I had bitten into one of the twisted hands the creature had pressed to my head. It didn’t seem to feel much pain, but it tried to pull its hand out of my jaw. The roots loosened, and the monster’s skin tore open. Beneath it, orange threads appeared, coiling around the finger I had nearly bitten off. The creature stared at me, its hand hanging limply at its side. I tried to get up, and my body finally decided to make one last attempt at escape. The biochemical cocktail of adrenaline, noradrenaline, and cortisol put my body in a rush that no drug in the world could ever replicate. I ran in a direction I didn’t know the outcome of. I only remember coming out somewhere in the forest and running for hours. It had become light, and I was walking along a country road. My thoughts were racing incessantly, and I couldn’t think clearly. My body still had the urge to escape, and I couldn’t break free from it. I still heard noises, but I was fixated on walking.
At some point, I woke up in the hospital, and I was told that I had been found by a trucker who immediately called emergency services. I was also told that my parents would be arriving soon and that I should relax. “Scopolamine traces were found in your blood,” they said when I tried to explain what had happened to me in a credible way. Scopolamine is a delirium-inducing substance that can trigger realistic hallucinations in high doses. Even though I must admit that the effects would align with what I experienced and may be a perfect explanation for an outsider, I know it’s not true. I have never taken any kind of drugs in my life, let alone consumed something that could contain scopolamine. Furthermore, the dose wouldn’t have been nearly high enough to trigger a hallucination in me. I don’t know how that substance entered my body. And im aware, that I wasn’t exactly in the most trustworthy state, when the events unfolded. But I know it was real.
I had moderate contusions and stitches on my legs, which the doctors explained away as a result of a fall and lightly clothed running through the woods. But the pattern of my injuries matched exactly with what had happened to me. The scratching was still there, but it suddenly grew much louder when those who were supposed to bring me salvation, but instead brought me devastation, entered the room. When my parents arrived, I knew, the moment they entered the room, that they were dead. Probably trapped in the same hell I had narrowly escaped, or eaten by the same creatures that had taken the places of my parents. I played along and waited for a moment when I could escape. The imitations explained to me that part of the farm had caught fire last night, and they had been worried about me. They had searched for me, thinking I was possibly trapped in the house or had run away out of fear. I couldn’t look at them.
I didn’t want to look at these abominable creatures, knowing that my parents were dead. I eventually fled. I won’t go into further details of my escape, but I am no longer in the USA. After long, agonizing sessions with my therapist, we concluded that my state most closely resembled that of soldiers—those who, for example, in the trenches and on the front lines of World War I, witnessed man-made atrocities that no human should ever have to see. I know it can never be as it once was. I don’t think my therapist truly believes me, but it helps to talk with her, and for now, that will have to suffice. There were at least two, probably more, though I only ever saw a maximum of two at a time. I’ve read a lot and done much thinking, and I’m familiar with the Navajo legends of the Yee Naaldlooshii—although these fall under the more popular legends of skinwalkers or shape-shifters. Almost every culture has its own interpretation of shape-shifters.
The most well-known are, of course, the legends of Native Americans, yet in Europe one finds stories like those of werewolves and other magical creatures capable of transforming into local animals. Skinwalker legends exist all over the world, but they are always mythical beings endowed with magical abilities, reducible in every case to a means of conveying certain values to children. The American continents remained untouched by global civilization for a long time, and perhaps evolutionary developments took hold there that did not elsewhere. While people in Europe spread across the continent and beyond early on, this form of global society only emerged in America centuries later. Moreover, there are mountains, forests, and other places—like the Appalachian Mountains—that have remained unchanged for millions of years and have rarely, if ever, been touched by humans.
You’re probably familiar with these legends if you’re reading this. The thought of ancient life—perhaps older than modern man himself—has haunted me for a long time. Modern Americans have been on this continent for only a few centuries; we are but a small part of history. I often think that humanity as a whole covers only a tiny fraction of our planet’s living history. We haven’t explored every nook and cranny or seen every bit this world has to offer. New species are discovered every day—even if they seem insignificant, they are discovered. There are even indigenous tribes that have remained untouched for millennia. The forests are ancient. And even though people before me have roamed through them, mapped and explored them, and captured satellite images, no one truly sees what hides beneath that camouflage of leaves. There is no one there; there are no trails, no roads. There is nothing.
They could be there—or perhaps they always have been. Instincts, ingrained in each of us over generations—the ability to subconsciously detect behaviors, perceive gaits, and read microexpressions on faces—as if only those who adapted to recognize them survived. It is as though our bodies reject whatever attempts to invade this marvelous organism and scatter sand between its gears. This line of thought has haunted me for ages and robbed me of sleep. Legends of cannibalistic giants also persist in the tales of indigenous tribes all over North America. The sight that will likely haunt me until my dying day simply won’t leave my mind—the figure I saw on my trip to the lake. It fits almost too perfectly with the descriptions of these giants.
In these legends, the focus is more on an actual species rather than mystical creatures. That perhaps offers a glimpse into how ancient these beings might be. The scratching is almost an even greater mystery than the creatures themselves. In retrospect, I can hardly imagine how I endured it back then, let alone how I could have lived with it. Whether it was some form of ultrasound or waves emitted by these creatures, or if it was a type of communication, I can neither say nor will I ever know the answer with certainty. The only thing I can tell you is that these auditory phenomena have not occurred since I left the USA. Sometimes I wonder if Oli is still wandering through these godforsaken woods somewhere, but those are all questions to which I will never have the answer. I don’t think I will ever find peace in this life again. My memories catch up with me faster than I can run away. Sometimes I feel as though I never escaped at all. I’m still trapped in this hole from which there is no escape. Salvation is a wish that I know will never come true.
