u/Hope2Dust

As that first summer came to a close, I suppose you could say we survived the gauntlet and learned the ropes of Crescent End. The next few years were a whirlwind. Cameron grew up too fast living under the fear of the specter. It targeted him more than the rest of us; made him turn inward. He became severely antisocial and rarely spoke.

My parents felt helpless, which drove a wedge between them. Dad's new secretary was young enough to be his daughter, pretty enough to be a lingerie model, and ditzy enough to know why he hired her in the first place. Mom didn't like her, which led to an antagonistic atmosphere around the house that excited the shadow into a frenzy. That should be the fifth rule: the specter thrives on negativity, something we failed to comprehend. The more my parents nitpicked at each other, the more they let the specter in to prey upon Cameron.

The dogs fared no better. Harvey was a constant ball of nerves and devolved into pacing the same spots for hours, and Dapper became hyper-vigilant to the point of barking at the slightest noises. I guess it's true about pets being a reflection of their owners. We were a mess and so were the dogs.

I'm fast-forwarding a bit here because it was a lot of wash, rinse, and repeat. We tiptoed around a malevolent entity and three years go by. I was a freshman in high school, post-puberty, and that crush I had on Rebecca Rutherford consumed me. I'd been stung by Cupid’s arrow and virtually everything I did was to gain her attention.

This was also when I first tasted real jealousy, because Rebecca had a boyfriend. Milo Graft. Varsity quarterback. Prince Charming-handsome and four cents short of nickel. God, I still see his stupid face in my head and it pisses me off something awful. He bullied me relentlessly because of my infatuation with Rebecca. Small town. Lots of opportunities to cross paths. Every chance he got, he rubbed it in my face that she belonged to him.

Gearing up for Homecoming each year, a few local shops hosted a town gathering in our central park. They had live bands playing from 6-10pm, a barbecue pit, corny carnival games, and while the students ate ice cream and socialized, the parents got hammered on craft beers. Overall, it was a good time and an excuse for everyone to get together, but that night was easily one of my worst memories of living in Vesperia.

Milo and his crew of flunkies were skulking around like a pack of hounds, but I hadn't noticed them flanking when I ran into Rebecca. Beautiful and radiant as a sunset by the sea, she smiled and the world around me no longer existed.

“Hey there, kiddo. How've you been?” she asked in a flirty and airy tone.

Kiddo. That nickname haunted me. She always called me that since the first day we met, and although I'm sure it was endearing to her, I despised it.

“Oh, what’s up, Rebecca? I'm good. Glad you could make it out tonight.”

“Where else would I be?” she giggled awkwardly.

I wanted to die.

While this train wreck transpired, Jared and Andy, my two closest friends, had been trying to get my attention because they spotted Milo coming, but I was in close proximity to Rebecca so their desperate gyrating went right over my head.

“Look at this dipshit,” Milo announced himself as he thumped the back of my skull. “I thought I told you not to talk to my girlfriend.”

I was pushed hard from behind by one of Milo’s boys and face-planted right at Rebecca's feet, like an offering of sorts.

“Don't be mean to him,” she groaned. “He's harmless.”

Ouch. That took the wind out of my sails more than the shove did.

“Babe, I don't want this fucker bothering you,” Milo protested while I picked myself up. “He's a snake who pretends to be the innocent boy next door. If I ignore it, he'll slither his way in.”

“Fuckin’ troglodyte,” I muttered a little louder than intended.

“What’d you say?” he sneered, grabbed a fistful of my shirt, and yanked me towards him.

I reacted on instinct. This guy's two heads taller than me and twice my size, but I swung on him anyway.

Huge mistake.

I did get a solid lick in with that initial hook, but Milo returned a flurry of punches that I wasn't at all prepared for. I folded like a soggy napkin, dazed and gasping after having the actual wind knocked out of me.

Milo spat on me and stomped my ribs for good measure. “Stay the fuck away from Rebecca! Don't make me tell you again!”

I laid there for a moment after getting my shit rocked, but then gentle hands rested upon me. Flinching at their touch, I felt pathetic.

“You okay, Carson?” Jared's voice cut through the muffled noise.

“Yeah, everything hurts, but not as much as my pride.”

“Hey man, mad respect,” Andy chimed in. “At least you went down swinging.”

“Right…” I sighed, trying not to let it get to me; the thought of that goon besting me in front of Rebecca.

But it did get to me. I was raw about it. Contempt the likes of which I've never felt since. Milo Graft made an enemy of me that night, but none could've predicted that it would be Milo’s last victory on this mortal coil.

I left the function early and fucked off home. It didn't help that it looked like someone swung a bag of hot pennies at my face. So I kicked rocks the mile and a half back to Crescent End, and all the while my blood boiled. I vividly remember the tinnitus, likely from Milo knocking me senseless, but I contributed it to the rage welling inside.

Nobody was there when I made it to the house. Mom, Dad, and Cameron were probably still at the Homecoming event, so I bounded up the stairs three at a time and shut myself in for the night. I took a quick shower to wash off the blood and grime, but after returning to my room, the ringing in my ears became too much and I crashed out in the dark.

Everything on my desk was overturned onto the floor. Posters were ripped down. I hurled my lava lamp against the wall, and struck the mirror so hard I busted my knuckles. When I finally collapsed onto my bed out of violent exhaustion, the hair on the back of my neck stood on end. I noticed steam rising off of my damp arms and the brisk shock of icy air against exposed skin. I was being watched from the corner of my room.

Too pissed at Milo to fear the specter, we sized each other up before I shouted at it.

“What the fuck do you want?!”

Silence.

It remained an unmoving black mass in the far corner, half-hidden behind the wardrobe. I half-expected it to charge, but the shadow didn't flinch. It merely continued to observe.

‘Why don't you do something useful instead of sitting there gawking at me?’ I thought. ‘Like go ruin Milo Graft’s night.’

Not a moment after the notion crossed my mind, the specter swelled and launched towards me, but I didn't flinch either. Not this time. I stood my ground and glared into that sinister dark. I was even prepared to swing on it and drew back my fist, not that it’d do anything, but the shadow changed direction mid-air and zipped out the window, shattering the glass outwards as it passed through.

Oh, no…

Where was it going?

What had I done?

Well, you don't have to wait for the answer. Milo’s sleek little Porsche was found the next morning. Apparently, he'd been joyriding along back roads and hit a nasty bend at high speed. His car was described as having been crushed like a soda can. He flipped it and barrel-rolled down the side of a cliff. Milo didn't survive, but neither did his passenger, my next door neighbor, and obsession, Rebecca Rutherford.

I refused to believe it was an accident. I caused them to fly off the road. I commanded that phantom to take Milo out and it obeyed.

Rule 6: Don't offload your grudges onto the specter, because it will act on them.

It's funny I didn't see it coming, but the signs were there all along. When my parents were at each other's throats, the supernatural activity increased. Cameron always felt the haunting was in some way his fault and blamed himself, so it targeted him more than the rest of us. And when I seethed the night Milo kicked my ass in front of Rebecca, it fed on my rage and fulfilled my most profane wish. Wielding terror as a weapon because we were terrible people.

And while I was throwing that tantrum in my bedroom, Cameron was turning blue across the hall. He never went to Homecoming with Mom and Dad. My little brother hung himself from the second floor landing. Twelve years old. Couldn't face the nightmare we were trapped in, so he escaped the only way he knew how. And what’s worse, he was there when I got home. I just didn’t notice him dangling above me when I raced up the stairs. Mom and Dad found him when they got back at 10:30. Mom shrieked for hours.

My parents divorced about a year later. Dad remarried his airhead secretary not six months after the papers were signed, but then he had a massive heart attack and died in a drive-thru before I graduated high school. I took off for Seattle as soon as I could get away, and Mom ended up with a new husband a few years after I left. They live in Phoenix now, but we aren’t that close anymore. We occasionally talk on the phone, and I still keep track of what Jared is up to from time to time. He got out after high school as well and moved to Boston. Seems like everyone was desperate to flee.

Anyway, if you ever have the opportunity to move to Vesperia, don't. Not if you can help it. That place betrays a certain kind of anxiety within us all; something malcontent. The specter of Crescent End isn't just a wicked spirit that haunts the land, but a reflection of the ugliest stains inside each of us. No matter how often you say your prayers at night or tell yourself you’re a good person, that twisted phantom will bring out the worst in you and turn your world upside-down, just like it did mine.

End of Part 3

Part 1 here

Part 2 here

After my first encounter with the shadow, I became more vigilant about keeping an eye out for it. And as we drew closer to the start of the school year in September, the activity ramped up dramatically. It got to the point where I'd notice things every day. Dark shapes darting past me just beyond view. Walking by unlit rooms and swearing I saw a black outline standing there. Hearing heavy footsteps going up or down the stairs while I was home alone. When a car pulled into the cul-de-sac at night and the headlights were cast across the windows, sometimes it looked like a person was standing right outside and their shadow would stretch ominously along the opposite wall and ceiling. Mind you, I slept on the second story, so it shouldn't look like anyone was outside my window.

Cameron started getting bad nightmares. He wet the mattress on a few occasions. Could never properly articulate what he saw, but I asked him about it once away from Mom and Dad, and he told me that the shadow man was going to kill us all because of him. I hugged him tight and told him the shadow man would have to get through his big brother before it got to him. I wish more than anything that were true…

Then, one night in August, I overheard my parents having a quiet conversation. They didn't know I was listening. Mom told Dad that, while she was in the greenhouse, she noticed what looked like a person dressed in black standing in the treeline, but the murky glass distorted their shape and she could never get a good look at them. This was long before quality house cameras were available, but my dad put up motion-activated floodlights around the yard to put her mind at ease. Nothing ever triggered unless we let the dogs out to do their business. It seemed whatever the specter was, the motion sensors couldn’t detect it.

And speaking of the dogs, Dapper took to patrolling the parameter of the property, specifically along the treeline where Mom kept seeing the figure. It was like he knew something was out there. Harvey avoided the back half of the yard at all cost. He wouldn’t stray past the gazebo and whined anytime Dapper went beyond it.

The cold spots continued as well. It started to become apparent why the previous owners put fireplaces in each bedroom and main living areas. We constantly struggled with staying warm, even when the weather was nice.

I met a neighbor kid who lived a few houses up the street. His name was Jared Klein and he was a grade below me. We hit it off pretty well, both having a passion for Transformers, Mortal Kombat, and Super Nintendo. Because this was the early 90's in a wealthy neighborhood, our parents let us roam on our bikes without supervision and we spent that first summer riding around exploring the area. Jared told me that everybody knew about the specter of Crescent End, but nobody really talked about it. It was simply understood that it was the price of living there, and so long as you didn't grief the entity, the specter was tolerable.

Jared recalled a family who moved in across the street when he was younger, but they weren't as willing to coexist with it and tried all kinds of stuff to make it go away. They drew salt lines around their property, burned sage, and used quartz crystals to annex the bad energy. A priest anointed their home twice. Then, in the middle of the night, the whole cul-de-sac woke to horrific screams coming from their house. It sounded like all their doors and cabinets were slamming in unison, furniture was being tossed around, things were smashed and shattered, along with a panicked crescendo of gut-wrenching cries. It went on for a minute or two before it all fell silent. Then the front door swung open and a long dark shape skittered across their lawn before vanishing into the night.

The police were called, of course. They came and taped everything off, but the family left in bodybags that night. And what would normally turn into a murder investigation over such a heinous crime only amounted to a vague mention of the tragedy on the local news. No detectives followed up as far as Jared was aware. No interest whatsoever in solving the gruesome deaths of a family of six. The house went up for sale shortly after, and the new family who moved in had been there for about three years prior to my family coming to Crescent End. No gnarly incidents occurred that Jared knew of. They seemed to understand the importance of obeying the rules of the cul-de-sac.

Jared mentioned some of his encounters with the shadow that mirrored my own, and that changed my entire perception of what we were dealing with. He lived there all his childhood, so he was intimately familiar with how this malevolent thing operated. It took pleasure in tormenting the street, going from house to house and drumming up all manner of terror. Now, I wasn't raised sufficiently religious, but it sounded demonic to me, like the stuff in the scary movies I wasn't supposed to watch. Jared described it almost as a force of nature, and pissing it off was the last thing you wanted to do. So long as you abided by the rules, it rarely caused physical harm.

Rule 1: Don't acknowledge it. Showing weakness only made it more aggressive, so if it ever frightened you, just go back to whatever you were doing and try to ignore it.

Rule 2: The activity peaked between 1 and 3am, so don't be up and about during that window. Although it could still manifest in your dreams, if you were awake, it was far more likely to target you. That wasn't great for me since I was a night owl, but after learning that, I did try to go to bed by 1am.

Rule 3: Always anticipate the specter to be watching, because it possessed a kind of omniscient view of the neighborhood, and it could be in multiple places at once. Virtually all the houses on Crescent End could and often would experience the hauntings at the same time, implying the specter was similar to a biblically accurate Legion. It might’ve been several different entities converged as a singular intelligence. I had no clue how to wrap my head around the logistics of that, but that concept in particular scared me the most.

And finally, Rule 4: Never, under any circumstances, attempt to interact with it, instigate it, or ward against it. You couldn't win, and Jared's tale of the murdered neighbors proved it. The shadow man allowed the residents to live there, not the other way around. You either had to endure it or leave, but there was absolutely no fighting it. That was a death wish, one my father struggled with.

I wasn't the only one who made friends after we moved in. Mom got to chatting regularly with Rebecca's mother, Christine. Since they were both traditional housewives, they would sit out on the porch drinking coffee in the afternoons, discussing whatever stay-at-home moms do. I think that's how she was made aware of the specter’s presence. Mrs. Rutherford filled her in and then Mom informed Dad of it. The thing that was scaring his wife and children was very real, and there was nothing he could do about it.

Dad didn't like that one bit. He wasn't the type of guy to allow anyone to emasculate him. That was his one significant trigger, being made to feel like he wasn't the man of the house. I think one Saturday he asked around the neighborhood what they did to keep the specter at bay, but was told in no uncertain terms that he shouldn't engage with it or it'd only make things worse. When he got back, I explained to him what Jared told me about the family who died trying to put up a fight, and that seemed to sober him up. Mom cosigned what I heard, stating that the mayor's wife told her something similar and that they should never acknowledge it. That evening was the first time I felt included in a grown-up family discussion, and my chest swelled with pride to have been able to contribute. But it didn't feel like Dad was going to give up that easily. Not in his own home; not for his own family.

The activity increased significantly once Dad hung a few crucifixes around the house. As I mentioned, we weren't all that religious. We did attend mass for the major holidays and observed Lent, but it wasn't like we went to confession regularly or even went to church on a regular basis. Which is why it struck me as odd when Dad made us all start carrying rosaries. It was probably just his way of trying to do anything to make it feel like he had some semblance of control over the situation, but the specter had other things in mind.

We woke one morning to find our rosaries had been snapped in the night, and the crucifixes were upside-down. Religious iconography did nothing to dissuade the shadow and only seemed to agitate it. After that, Mom said she started seeing it in mirrors, even in broad daylight, and Cameron was deathly afraid of being anywhere in the house by himself. I think the specter recognized that they were more emotionally vulnerable than Dad or me, and it was targeting them as punishment for Dad's stubbornness.

Things came to a head a week before school was back in session. It was about 1:30 in the morning and a loud thud rocked the whole house. Harvey and Dapper immediately started barking and everyone was jolted awake. Our double front doors were practically hanging from their hinges, and the oversized modern sculpture that was anchored in the foyer beneath the amethyst chandelier had been hurled across the room. This thing was made of black marble and weighed half a ton, which really freaked out Mom.

She was quite apprehensive about it all after that. I noticed her frequently glancing over her shoulders, like she was more observant of her immediate surroundings than she’d been before. It's such a strange feeling being on edge in your own home. When something uninvited decided to make you its project.

Dad took down the crucifixes after that night. The busted front doors and heavy sculpture did it for him too. I think because I was a preteen, I didn't quite grasp the significance of that threat, but my parents understood loud and clear. Fuck around and find out. If the shadow wanted in, there were no doors sturdy enough to hide behind. That was a display of power to make us feel powerless, and it worked.

And it also proved this thing was immensely intelligent. It knew how to make a point, and that was just as terrifying as the message itself.

End of Part 2

Part 1 here