James Gale

It’s not this place.

Some darkness dwells within me.

There remains nothing now but the eerie certainty that a presence follows my every step.

And as I fear it drawing nearer, I am writing this down.

Perhaps this will stand as my final testimony, the last frontier before I face what I fear most.

May this letter serve as a warning, a humble lesson in our mortal ways.

These are the final threads of thought before that strange sensation will sweep over me once more, and pull me under.

It’s close now. Closer than ever before.

Believe me, I tried. I fled, far and wide. Even crossed an ocean to convince myself I was safe.

I was not.

It has returned.

Or perhaps it never left at all, lingering just beyond the edge of my sight.

I can hear it closing in—tempting me; persuading me to look.

But I won’t.

Not yet.

Not until this letter is done.

I first sensed its presence on a bleak March afternoon.

The recession had taken everything from me. The farm where I was raised was sold.

That was the end of my life in harmony. Days I regret taking for granted.

The banks foreclosed my home soon after.

I found myself wandering from town to town, chasing whatever work I could find. The distant horizon as my guide; day labour the only thing keeping me going.

And on that day in March, in the bar of the small town of Oakland, I first felt it.

It began as a strange shiver—an uncontrollable itch down my spine.

Someone was watching me.

A stench of decay and death washed over me.

I could all but feel a warm breath on my neck.

I dropped the plates I carried, too afraid to turn around.

The room fell into sudden silence.

A cold breeze caressed my face.

For a single moment, I was utterly alone, in a way words cannot fully capture. It was as if I was removed from existence itself, as though I were more a suggestion than a certainty.

The silence stretched for years before sounds slowly seeped back into the tavern.

Then the murmurs stopped.

All eyes were on me and the shattered remains around my feet.

Some made a swift gesture; a quick warding prayer.

The plates had not merely fallen. There was no chaos in the smashed pieces.

In ceramic precision, they marked a perfect circle around me.

To this day, I swear I never heard them break.

As though some strange presence had swallowed not only the sound but time itself.

I was forced to leave the village that same evening.

As I gathered my belongings, I sensed it again.

That same dreadful sensation.

Only this time, it was even stronger.

Again, I didn’t turn around.

Something stopped me.

A primal instinct.

An ancient fear.

The old innkeeper stood before me. Her face was frozen into an expression of unspeakable dread.

She looked petrified. Her eyes fixed sternly on my gaze.

A single tear streamed from her left eye.

She dared not to look away from my eyes, as though something terrifying waited behind me.

Something she feared like death itself.

In the end, it’s the longing that kills you.

The unbearable need to know.

This time, I turned.

I don’t know what I expected. I only knew there was something.

And I knew it to be evil.

I will never forget what gazed back at me with those cold, death-born eyes.

At first it was a shadow. Cold and black as night.

But in an instant it shifted to the specter of a child.

A strangely beautiful dark smile grew on its lips.

And then it warped again.

To darkness itself.

Galaxies swirled where flesh should have been.

Ancient stars flickered and died within its form.

I felt myself staring into something far older than time.

And it burned with desire.

With hunger.

The sight seared itself into my vision.

I had to look away.

But I could not.

And then it shifted again.

A mere shadow, vaguely resembling a child.

When our eyes met, I felt it searching—delving into my thoughts, shifting through memories and sins.

Whispers filled my mind in a language no tongue should form, and no mind should hear.

And then it vanished.

I exhaled.

It broke whatever spell me and the innkeeper were under.

She muttered a prayer under her breath, traced the same sign I had witnessed in the tavern, and fled.

I left at once.

From afar, I watched the inn burn to the ground.

Part of me knew the old woman had set it ablaze.

Another part feared she burned along with it.

The images haunted me for weeks.

Rest became but a distant memory.

Each time I closed my eyes, the vision returned.

The images slowly drove me to the edge.

The not-knowing tipped me over it.

I longed for knowledge.

Blasphemous and forbidden knowledge.

And eventually, I found it.

Deep within the capital’s library, hidden in a forgotten basement, I uncovered discarded letters that spanned centuries.

Letters most dismissed as the ramblings of madmen.

I had all but discarded the oldest letter I found.

At first it was unreadable, a blur of letters chaotically filling the crumbling parchment.

But then I saw.

A single sentence.

Repeated indefinite times until it lost all meaning.

Nowhere to run, don’t turn around.

In the center of the letter, there was something underlined and circled.

The only distinguishable words on the paper.

The Old Vale.

The words meant nothing to me, yet I found myself reading them again and again.

Some buried instinct told me they mattered.

I began searching the other letters for mention of them.

I found none.

Yet every account noted the same two encounters.

They described the same eerie figure, the one silently judging from somewhere just out of sight.

In almost exact words, they penned down what I had seen—what I had felt.

And none wrote of a third encounter.

Not because the creature retreats or spares them, but because none who endured a third lived to write about it.

A grim certainty.

Three encounters.

No less.

No more.

I knew better, but I decided to run.

Some naive part of me hoped distance would save me.

And for a time, its presence waned.

But I know now it merely toyed with me, granting me a false belief of safety so terror might season my soul.

And it’s here now.

I feel its chilling breath upon my neck.

It’s my third encounter.

And thus my last.

I’m afraid.

Yet never have I been more certain.

All madness must end.

It’s time to turn again.

Look behind and face what I fear.

And so, I leave you with this:

When you stand alone and a cold shock races down your spine…

When unseen eyes feel fixed upon you…

Do not ever

turn around.