Ye ol Blog

I'm not sure I've told you this story before. It unfolded over several years, so there are a lot of pieces to it.

One Friday night, when I was a young teenager, my buddy Ryan and I were at his house playing a computer RPG. I think it was Might and Magic, if memory serves. His house sat on the side of a hill overlooking Anderson Reservoir. The main floor extended out over the slope and was surrounded on three sides by a massive deck. Floor-to-ceiling windows wrapped almost entirely around the house, giving us a clear view outside in every direction.

It was around 10:00 p.m., and we were the only ones home. We had reached a particularly difficult part of the game and were trying to solve some kind of riddle when we heard Ryan's mom's cat meow. We looked over, and it was sitting in the middle of the room, staring directly at us. We thought nothing of it and went back to the game.

About five minutes later, we heard scratching and whining coming from the door to Ryan's mother's bedroom. We both got that familiar chill that crawls up the back of your neck. At the time, I didn't recognize it as sensing a presence, just an unexplained feeling of unease.

We got up from our chairs and walked to the bedroom. When we opened the door, the cat was inside, standing on the floor, hissing violently at us. We chased it out of the room, freaked about how it had gotten in there. We checked the sliding glass door to the deck, thinking maybe it had slipped outside and back in somehow, but everything was locked tight. We eventually shooed the cat outside and returned to our game.

About thirty minutes later, we heard the same angry hissing again. It was coming from behind the closed bedroom door. We opened the door, and there was the cat again—this time on the bed, hissing and acting completely feral. At that point, we simply shut the bedroom door and left it there. Figuring a teleporting or manifesting cat wasn't something we wanted to screw around with alone.

By then, we both felt that unmistakable sense that something else was in the house, those constant eyes staring at you. Strangely enough, that wasn't unusual. If anything, it was more unusual not to feel something in that house.

A few minutes later, we heard footsteps walking back and forth across the deck outside. The deck wrapped around nearly the entire main floor, including the front entrance, and we could see large portions of it through the windows. As the footsteps moved, we could actually see a few loose deck boards flexing under what looked like someone's weight. Then the pacing turned into running. Whatever it was seemed to be sprinting back and forth around the front of the house.

Around the same time, Ryan started getting poked in the back—hard, as if someone was standing behind him jabbing him with a finger. There was no one there.

That was enough for us.

We decided leaving was a much better idea than staying. Walking a mile uphill to my house in the dark was no big deal compaired to remaining in that place, even if it meant risking an encounter with the older kids who roamed the mountain drinking on Friday nights.

There's some important background to the house itself.

Ryan's family had bought it from the previous owners. Ironically, my cousins had originally built the house, but the people who owned it before Ryan's family reportedly had a fascination with the occult and ritual summoning. Ryan's bedroom had apparently been used as a ritual room. Under the right conditions—certain times in the morning when the light hit just right, or under a black light—you could see markings that had been written in invisible ink.

Ryan also suffered from terrifying episodes during sleep. He described them as being trapped inside his dreams while something attacked him beating him, stabbing him, or otherwise torturing him while he couldn't wake up. Looking back, it's not surprising that years of experiences like that changed him. His parents eventually divorced, and I've often wondered whether whatever surrounded that house contributed to the strain on the family.

There were plenty of other strange incidents.

One night, four of us were downstairs watching movies when we all clearly heard one of my friend's father's voices loudly tell us, "Get out!" His father wasn't even home.

Years later, when we were helping Ryan move out of the house, we stood in the front yard loading the last of the boxes. Someone joked, "Wouldn't it be weird if the house said goodbye?"

The instant those words were spoken, the front porch lights went out.

A moment later, they came back on.

We looked at each other in disbelief.

Half joking and half serious, we started asking yes-or-no questions, treating the lights like responses. The lights continued turning on and off as if they were answering us.

(A completely self indulgent, self pity party a sorcerer should not engage in.)

I drank. Way, way too much. Hard liquor strikes again.

I woke up around 2 a.m., face first in the dirt. Fine, powdery mountain soil filled my mouth and nostrils. Pitch black. A faint glow seeped through the towering pines, barely enough to make out the shadows. I should have passed out in an aspen grove instead of wherever the hell I was.

My phone lay shattered beneath me. No watch. That was bad. Terrible. Horrifying thoughts clawed at my mind.

Did the phone die before I blacked out, or after I burned a hell of a lot of bridges?

Did I love bomb someone I shouldn't have?

Drunk dial everyone?

Worse, was there, for some unknown reason, data service this far out in the middle of nowhere?

Did I post on social media?

Shit, did I do all of them?

I pushed myself upright, wiping fine dirt onto my shirt. Something had gone very, very wrong.

I ran through a check my ex flame had drilled into me years ago: testicles, spectacles, wallet, watch. She had done it to make fun of her private Catholic school upbringing, and dammit, it stuck.

Wallet and keys.

A start.

Then I felt it, turned my head, and saw it.

A demon.

I was AP shifted enough to see it.

It was going for the dark swirling mass with sparkles while at the same time showing my mind a seven foot tall snake looking creature with many red arms. This did not phase me. First, I was drunk. Second, it is your mind's interpretation of energy that it wants to show you.

A supernatural movie, essentially.

All I knew was that it was grinning behind all those teeth, telling me they had gone after the people who had made me angry, satisfaction obvious in its communication.

That was when I realized something unsettling.

I was angry.

Not irritated.

Not annoyed.

Furious.

A deep, burning kind of fury that felt older than I am, and maybe it was.

I know well the ability of such beings to incite and inflame human passions. IOBs, demons, Neverborn. They are old. So old they know exactly the right pressure to apply. Exactly how, where, and when.

That is why they are rarely noticed by the average person.

Surely this was not entirely my own fury?

I hoped not.

The thing about demons is they do not care who started it.

They do not care who is right.

They do not care who is wrong.

They are like fear seeking missiles.

All they need is a target and permission.

Being drunk enough to have no logic, no restraint, and no sense?

A perfect storm for one who practices sorcery.

That is the opening.

That is the invitation.

Energy is energy.

Though there are exceptions.

One of them is embedded in my left side, a little above the hip. A dull red light. An infernal.

I did not name it that.

A spirit that helped me cast out five to seven other demons did.

It thought attempts to dislodge it were amusing.

It likes to show itself to my mind as a Victorian English gentleman sitting in a high backed leather chair in a dark, cozy red room lined with old leather books, a fire burning nearby, smoking a pipe.

As with all the powerful ones, they hide their faces from me. I personally think they somehow interfere with the creation of short and long term memories.

A cheeky bastard.

Still, I could not picture it actually doing much unless I was dying.

Probably not even then.

I am not even certain how, where, or when it became attached to me.

But I have ideas.

I remembered making a fire.

That part stood out clearly.

Yet now the entire place was deserted.

Not quiet.

Deserted.

The difference matters.

Campfires cold.

No voices.

No laughter.

No movement.

Just the trees.

What the fuck did I do?

I remembered only one camp and being handed more alcohol there.

What the hell had I done?

Luckily, I am a happy drunk if overly chatty.

My brain opens up and I talk about local lore, Bigfoot sightings, where various spirits of the dead like to inhabit, and the constant, never ending UFO sightings all around the area.

I even carry a detailed picture on my phone of a large ship, several hundred feet long, taken at a location almost visible from where I was, around 8,600 feet up. I took it to get my point across that I am telling the truth.

I am an engaging teller of stories and tales, even if I tend to speak only of things I consider real.

People are generally enraptured and entertained.

I checked myself over.

No broken nose.

Though it hurt.

My ribs felt wrong.

Maybe from a fall.

Maybe from something else.

My knees were bruised.

My legs were bruised.

My forearms were bruised.

Large bruises wrapped around my ribs and stomach.

Cuts everywhere.

If there had been one fight, maybe.

Two fights, maybe.

Three fights?

I could not imagine it.

Most likely I had done all of this to myself.

The wallet turned up underneath me.

Filled with dirt.

That sparked a whole new worry.

Had someone copied my cards?

Maybe.

Maybe not.

Why was it not in my pocket?

The keys eventually appeared after enough feeling around through the dirt.

My glasses were still perched on my face, perfectly intact.

Small miracles.

That was another surprise.

Nobody had stolen the SUV and pushed it over a cliff.

Somebody had definitely gone through it.

But it was my thrasher 4x4.

A few tools.

Some wood.

Emergency repair supplies.

Nothing worth taking unless you were a serious asshole.

Then came two days in bed.

Shame and horror from not knowing.

I had drunk enough that reality simply stopped for eight hours.

What had I done during that time?

I had not checked back with the IOBs.

I hoped they had not actually harmed anyone, unless they were the ones rifling through my vehicle and going through my wallet.

If so, they could have them.

But why leave in the middle of the night?

Stay until dawn, at least, to mock the drunk guy.

Maybe they thought I was dead.

Still, I knew they had been up to no good.

A slight fear crossed my mind.

Did I leave a gun behind the seat, as was my custom?

With a grateful breath, I remembered I had gone to the doctor for an MRI, one of the things that instigated the drinking, so I had left it at home.

I still had not checked under the seats for snow chains and other things worth stealing.

That would happen in the morning.

And if things were missing?

Then the Neverborn could sort it out.

On purpose and with full intent this time.

A couple of days later, I got a new phone.

The timing could not have been worse.

I had just rebuilt my laptop while helping track down some hackers bothering my nephew.

Once you have done that kind of work, trust evaporates.

You strip everything to bare metal.

DOD wipe it.

Start over.

That laptop had been my backup.

I should have taken an extra day or two to set up virtual machines.

Long story short, my digital life was gone.

Phone numbers.

Addresses.

Messages.

All of it.

RCS and triple file encryption saw to that.

No Signal.

No Telegram.

No social media beyond scraps I had written down here and there.

eSIMs are a special kind of misery.

No onboard memory.

No fallback.

No little card to pull out and save.

And Pixels only have internal storage.

Once it was gone, it was gone.

A paranoid person like myself does not use online backups unless they are triple encrypted, and I had been lax in my backup procedures.

At that point, I had no idea who was angry with me.

No idea who thought I had disappeared.

No idea who had written me off forever.

Outside of four or five family numbers I still remembered, everyone else had effectively vanished.

The strange part?

I was between jobs.

No work contacts.

No office wondering where I was.

No manager calling.

That was somehow the brightest part of the entire disaster.

The thought crossed my mind, and I considered it openly.

Load up one of the vehicles.

Handle a few assets.

Leave.

Just leave.

Nothing was really holding me in place.

I had become a ghost.

And in the process, ghosted everyone else.

Amazing how much of our lives exist inside a rectangle of glass and silicon.

Lose it, and entire worlds disappear.

Maybe a clean sweep would not be so bad.

New phone number.

Fresh start.

Maybe even a different first name.

Nothing legal.

Just something disconnected from decades of history.

There is a certain appeal to walking away from everything.

Everyone.

Every expectation.

Every version of yourself that other people think they know.

For now, though, this account survives.

Assuming it still exists tomorrow.

Assuming this side blog survives too.

Though one thing is certain.

It desperately needs a better name.