Visions of the Dark

Dear Dr. Harris,

By the time you read this you will have, no doubt, heard of the details of my suicide. It was no small feat to arrange the necessary method in this institution, the security measures being what they are. But, as they say, where there’s a will, there’s a way. It is my final wish that you read this explanation of my condition and share it with my family, so they understand as well. I’ve tried on numerous occasions to express what is presented here to you and your staff, but I am received with skepticism and patronizing dismissals.

Just so you know, up until last night, I was happy in my confinement here at the Rathbone Asylum. The events that led to my institutionalization I will recount here. While I was initially placed here in a state of great emotional anguish, I grew quite happy with the arrangement. Why? Well, that’s because I am literally never alone here. But something changed last night and to understand that you must hear the whole tale.

Everything came to a head when my girlfriend Heather finally had enough. She said I was smothering her. She was right, you know. That’s exactly what I was doing. Hell, I meant to do it. It was my plan all along. I don’t mean that I literally tried to smother her. I wasn’t trying to choke her or anything. I mean that I needed to be with her constantly. And not out of some driving passion or exceeding love. I mean, I did love her. I suppose it would have never evolved into anything serious, though. I don’t know, but the reason I smothered her was because I needed her companionship.

I went so far as to take a job that had a schedule that was as close to hers as possible. And if she left the apartment I had to go too. While we were at home, I had to be wherever she was. I couldn’t help it. I knew she would tire of it sooner or later. I can’t blame her.

Again, the whole reason is because I can’t tolerate being alone.

Why? Because I’m being haunted by something. I know it sounds absurd and I know it’s probably all in my mind. But a part of me knows it’s out there and not in here. And I feel it’s always watching. If I’m with someone else, it’s not so bad – like it’s watching from a distance – but when I’m alone! God, when I’m alone, it’s right beside me! Leering at me!

I can’t see it. It’s just a presence I feel. Surely, you’ve experienced the feeling before. Maybe you’ve been alone in your room and you have a sudden feeling that something is watching from the darkness of the closet, or you’re in the bathroom and you have a sudden sensation that when you look up into the mirror that there will be something behind you in your reflection, or maybe you’re walking alone at night and as the realization of your isolation dawns on you, it’s quickly followed by the feeling that something, somewhere around you is watching you. Do you know what I’m talking about?

Now imagine that feeling turning into a palpable, ever present, and hideously chronic feeling! A horrible feeling of being stared at. An overwhelming feeling of alien eyes probing you. A gnawing at your brain! Good God, don’t you see? There’s no difference in whether it’s a real haunting or a fabrication of my mind! Because either way, it’s driving me mad!

I can pinpoint when it started. It was one night back in September of last year. Have you ever heard of the artist Shaun Kesner? He enjoyed a temporary fame among the eccentric artists. Kesner was a talented enough artist but had too much of a bent toward the dark and melancholy for most people’s tastes. I hear he eventually went loony himself.

Anyway, George Degnan, an acquaintance of mine, acquired one of Kesner’s pieces. So back in September, George has this house party and I go. The party was fine enough. Not much to speak of really. In the wee hours, after the party had thinned out a bit, this girl – I seem to recall her name was Daphne or Diane or something like that – pulls out a Ouija board.

Now, I didn’t sit and mess with the silly thing, but I do believe that it is somehow part of the cause. Things began to get weird. Very surreal, you know. These people are gathered around the Ouija board in almost like a trance and there’s music blaring almost hypnotically, I’m drunk, and then I feel this wave of nausea just hit me like a huge wave at the beach. So, I race to the bathroom but there’s someone in there. I had to go into George’s room. He has another bathroom in there.

I barely make it to the bathroom before losing it. It was horrible but I felt a little better. At least well enough to attempt to get home. So, I’m walking through George’s bedroom when the feeling hits me. Something is watching me from his closet. Just a little fleeting feeling, but enough to make me go investigate the closet. I open it and turn on the light and my attention is drawn to Kesner’s painting. It was on the floor propped against the wall and covered with a cloth. I mean, I didn’t know it was Kesner’s painting under there. I was just compelled to uncover it and see it.

It was a horrible, suggestive thing. It was a dark figure buried in the shadows of some strange structure. The only light cast upon it revealed a portion of its hate-filled eyes. I don’t know how long I stood there staring at it while the music throbbed and the people chanted over that damn Ouija board; but I finally broke the gaze and proceeded to destroy the painting!

Yes, I ripped it to shreds. George doesn’t know it was me. Hell, he may not even know that the painting has been destroyed because I covered the frame back up and placed it back in the closet. Even if he did discover it, there were so many people in and out of the place all night long that it would be impossible for him to know it was me.

What happened next? I fled the party. I went home and was so drunk and felt so awful that I fell into a deep sleep. But when I woke up the thing was there.

Not physically there. I mean its presence was there. I felt it watching me again. Just as if I were looking at that awful painting all over again.

That’s when the nightmare began. Since that time, I haven’t had a single moment of solitude. The first few weeks were the worst because that was before Heather. I was living alone and, God, it’s so much worse when I’m alone. It’s oppressive. It watches, constantly glaring at me from some indeterminate place. I went without sleep for days until I literally fell asleep from sheer exhaustion. I couldn’t go on like that! I had to get out of there!

I sought out places where there were people so I wouldn’t be alone with it. I still feel its presence even around people, but it’s not as palpable as when I’m alone.

I feel it now! Of course, I do. It never leaves me alone. Never for a moment. It’s here with me right now. The damned beast!

I began going to stores, the mall, restaurants, clubs, anywhere that people would be. I eventually began to spend a lot of time at the library. It became my haven. A place where I felt unbothered, yet still around a crowd. That’s when I began to research just what I could be dealing with.

Of course, I had to determine if it was just my imagination. I admitted to myself that I could be off my rocker. A loose nut in the head, a crossed wire in the circuits, some hypnotic suggestion from the Ouija group, or subliminal message planted into my subconscious. But I finally thought that it could be one of a handful of irrational phobias spun out of control in my head.

I can name all the pertinent ones. Fear of being alone: Autophobia, Isolophobia, and Monophobia. Fear of eyes or being stared at: Ommetaphobia, Ophthalmophobia, Scopophobia. Oh, Psychiatrists have names for all sorts of fears. But, in the end, there was more to my predicament.

I wasn’t truly afraid of being alone. I want to enjoy the peace of being alone, for God’s sake! It’s just that when I’m alone, it’s always there too. So, I’m never truly alone. And I don’t mind eyes or being stared at. I don’t feel like I’m being stared at by anyone else. You see my point? I just don’t enjoy being leered at by him. It’s like he’s studying me, taunting me, tormenting as he bides his time for some final blow!

I finally found a case, though. A case like mine. It was such a comfort to know that I wasn’t crazy!

The case was about one Mr. Raymon. He began to be haunted by a presence one night when he returned home to find a visitor sitting in front of his fireplace. Upon going to greet the visitor he discovered that the chair which held the form was empty. From that night onward his experiences were quite similar to mine.

What happened to him? How did he overcome it?

Well, that’s the strategy I was pursuing up until Heather and I broke up. Mr. Raymon married for the only reason of having a constant companion to minimize the opportunities of being alone. After I fell upon this simple, yet effective strategy, I began searching for someone in eagerness.

I knew that Heather couldn’t take it forever and that it was just a matter of time before she finally grew tired of me suffocating her.

Did I tell her about the thing? God no! She would’ve thought me a kook and sent me packing.

Heather had become suspicious of my behavior. Her friends had finally got the nerve to say something about how I never let her out of the apartment without being tied to her hip. Girls’ night out, I suppose, was the thing that started it. Her friends had been hounding her for several months.

I knew that I would eventually have to cave in or else it would be over with us. So, I finally gathered my resolve and decided to endure an evening alone while Heather enjoyed a night out with her girls.

I tried to pretend I wasn’t alone. I put on the television and turned up the sound so that it filled the empty space. But the feeling crawled into my awareness. Just a strange little gnawing that someone was with me. Somewhere hovering out of sight. Like a presence in my periphery.

At first, I tried to ignore it and tell myself that it was silly. That I was being paranoid and over thinking the sensation. But it was impossible to push it away. And then it just grew! My heart started racing and I felt those awful eyes boring into me. I kept looking around trying to figure out just where it was located but there was nothing there. Nothing I could see, anyway. But I tell you, it was there! It was there in the room with me!

I fled the apartment. I knew where Heather and her friends would be, and I went there. A part of me knew it was a terrible idea to crash her and her friend’s night out, but the irrational portion of my brain drove me to find my companion who I knew would help me to drive the thing away as she’d done for so many months.

Well, you can guess the disaster that ensued when I came barging into the club, frantic and unnerved. The joyous mood of their night out was immediately spoiled. Heather was embarrassed and flew into a mad rage. She berated me and I could do nothing but take it. I really don’t blame her for her reaction.

She told me that when she came home, she didn’t want to find me still there.

I walked the city streets in a stupor, ashamed of my behavior and my juvenile actions. I tried to convince myself that it wasn’t my fault. It was the damn thing that haunted me. It had haunted me ever since that night I gazed into that grotesque painting of Kesner’s while those tittering witches chanted over that Ouija board!

Then, suddenly, I was stirred from my reverie and realized that while I was still walking through the city, I was completely alone. There were no pedestrians, no cars going by, no people to be seen anywhere around me. And like a raging tsunami, the feeling of the thing’s presence slammed into me! My gaze darted here and there. There were just so many places that it could be. It was overwhelming! I was fraught with terror! I began to hurry and then jog and then I was running, desperately searching for someone. Anyone at all!

Then I passed the alley and had to stop, frozen in terror. It was exactly as Kesner had depicted it in the painting! The buildings framed the alley like some strange, alien structure. The shadows were deep, and I knew it was in there. Buried in the shadows watching me. And as I stared, I beheld those hate-filled eyes emerge from the shadows. And then the rest of its head emerged from the shadows! It was horrible and inhuman! What kind of ghoulish, nightmare creature I cannot say, but I ran!

I don’t recall what happened next. I was a raving maniac, though. I blacked it all out. Somehow, I’m told, the authorities intervened, and I was brought in. That led to my current arrangement. As I said, at first it was against my will, but after I settled down and took stock of my situation, I found I rather enjoyed the fact that there is always someone around me. And that was the situation for the last couple of months.

Then, last night, things took an even more sinister turn. It happened while Albert and I were playing chess in the game room. Of course, the thing was there too. As I said, it’s always there but it doesn’t exert as much of an influence when other people are present. Then, the game was interrupted by the shrieks of Gladys. She had been sitting across the room engaged in some other activity. She was pointing and screaming as she tried to back out of the room. I turned to look at what she was pointing at and realized that she was pointing at where I felt the presence to be. She saw it!

Several members of the staff rushed into the room to try and discern the source of her distress and I heard her say, “Can’t you see it? Can’t you see the creature? Its eyes! My God, its eyes!” Gladys was quickly removed from the room and, no doubt, sedated.

This served to unnerve me to such a degree that I could hardly function. I left the game and went into the T.V. room, which held many more people. I paced the room and tried to focus on the show playing on the T.V. Eventually, I calmed down enough to sit down and watch the movie.

It wasn’t long, however, before Big John, who has quite lost his faculties, patted me on the leg and said, “Why is that thing looking at you so hard?”

“You can see it?” I asked incredulously.

“Well, of course. He’s right there,” he said pointing.

I didn’t sleep at all last night. The implications of these events were too horrible. Obviously, the fragile minds in this place lack some crucial filter that allows them sight beyond the normal person’s perceptions. I’m afraid it’s just a matter of time before I descend to their ranks.

Today there were several more incidents. Darryl, Emily, and Calvin all claimed to witness the beast’s presence. I cannot tolerate this existence. It seems the one place where I could reside surrounded by companions who would help save me from my plight has become a prison, a hell too excruciating to endure.

Even now, the beast sits beside me, staring at me with the hatred of a legion of demons. Cruel, vile, and maddening! And now I will place this statement in the box upon your door and I will stroll off into the peace of oblivion – all for the simple fact that I can never be truly alone.

Nash Farragut