"Alexa, Who Is In My House?" (Part 2)
Chapter Two
PREVIOUS:
I’m sorry it’s taken so long. Things don’t exactly happen around here because you want them to.
They also don’t happen at the best of times.
My mother came over Friday morning. When I told her what was happening, she widened her eyes at me. She asked me a bunch of questions, and then I showed her where the scratches were.
“Uh, that’s not creepy at all!” she laughed with her sarcasm.
“Maman, this isn’t funny. What if something happened?”
“Oh, Kick, calm down. Whatever it was, it happened long before you were ever here,” she said. But what DID happen?
About an hour after Maman left, I captured the Echo Dot going on the fritz. It went on for a while, but I didn’t want to be in the room anymore. It was as if this was the finale.
(Link to the video)
Sorry that it’s vertical - not exactly thinking of cinematography at the time. I instantly unplugged it even though I need it for work.
It’s connected to the internet, I changed the cords, and reset it twice. Yet every time, after a few minutes, it just stops. Now, if you have an Echo Dot, you’ll know that it’s hard to activate Alexa by accident. She really has to hear a live voice. Even on the South Park episode in which Cartman is yelling at all of the Echo Dots, the one next to my television won’t even respond - which is why I switched them out.
That night, I had a dream that I was walking through the house. I was doing mundane things. I think Michael and I were in the kitchen, and he had asked me to get something from the office. When I walked down the hallway, I heard something in our bedroom just adjacent, in the dark corner. I crossed the threshold into my bedroom.
The door clicked shut behind me, and the darkness was hollow.
“Alexa, turn on the lamp.”
Silence. She didn’t light up.
The room began to expand and deflate, like I was stuck inside a massive set of lungs. The wooden floor beneath my feet felt tepid and clammy. I shut my eyes - a trick my blind grandmother taught me to wake myself up when I know I’m dreaming. I squeezed them so tightly that I saw white flashes and my lids stung, and I could feel the pressure in my retinas. When I opened them, I was still standing in my bedroom in the dark. The suffocating humidity in the air was not natural, and my heartbeat was at the tempo of a train skipping across the tracks.
“Alexa, turn on the lamp,” I pleaded. My voice didn’t sound like my own. It was small and tremulous.
“IT'S 3:17 AM.”
I locked my breath in my chest. That wasn’t what I asked her. I couldn’t move even though the adrenaline was screaming through my veins. I was afraid that whatever I could hear splashing on the floor around me would take notice of my sudden presence. It almost sounded like something being flopped on one side and then another, like a square wheel being pushed through a puddle. It slapped across the room.
“IT'S 3:17 AM.”
In a panic, I began to grope behind me at the wall, searching frantically for the bedroom light switch.
“IT'S 3:17 AM.”
When I finally found it, I felt another hand beneath mine, covering the plate.
“IT'S 3:18 AM.”
I woke up thrashing. Michael was holding me, squeezing my arms to my sides. He was used to me having night terrors, but he told me that this one was different - I wasn’t screaming. When I pulled my knees up to my chest, I could feel that the soles of my feet were wet, and the alarm clock read 3:19 AM.
I messaged my friend the next day and asked him again if he could please find time in his day to contact my ex about the property. He told me he would get back to me. I own two business and I work from home, but I’m still busy as a housewife and career artist, so I don’t check my personal Facebook often. However, I couldn’t quit waiting for that message tone all day.
I asked Michael if it was okay, and ordered some “LUMINOL” from Amazon, a mixture that can detect bodily fluids when the eye cannot. It’s only $22 for a mini kit, so I figured, why not? It’s not like I can pry up the vent patch without a jackhammer or something. It’s entirely sealed.
Michael and I were making pancakes for dinner when I went back to the bedroom to grab my chapstick or something. I remembered the dream as I approached the door. I slowly opened it. I could see the lamplight from under the door. I peeked my head in and noticed nothing was unusual. When the door opened fully, however, my heart flew up to my ears. The mirror inside the closet door was directly across from me and I was startled by my own reflection. “Can you believe this shit?” I asked my stuffed fox, James, who is propped up against the pillows of our marital bed. He is always close by as a sentiment of comfort from childhood. I marched over to the door and shut it, cursing at myself. I felt like I was letting all of this get to me.
“Babe, you left the closet door open again! I hate that. It freaks me out every time.” I chided at my husband as I came back into the kitchen.
“Jeeesus, you scared me! You were gone forever. Say what now?” he said, turning to look at me over his iPad. The news about the Florida shooter blared over the kitchen sink, and it looked like he had been zoning out.
“I said, you need to close the closet door in the bedroom. The reflection always freaks me out. You leave it open almost every day,” I groaned.
“I thought that was you.”
“Don’t fuck with me, Michael. You know I don’t think that shit is funny.” I opened the fridge for a Powerade.
“I’m not fucking with you, Kick. I always close the door. I never go into that closet anyway. That’s all your stuff.”
We just stared at each other for a moment. We both suddenly realized that we close doors more often than we open them.
Over dinner, I sat Michael down. I took everyone’s advice.
“I think some weird things are happening,” I said.
“Like what? Like the doors?” he said over a mouthful of pancakes.
“Yeah, I guess.” I continued to tell him about my dream. He was quiet for a long time.
“I think you’re just under a lot of stress right now with everything going on in the news.”
He was right; I was identifying with the most recent school shooting. He had watched as I wept upon seeing the broken children on TV earlier in the week. We both made a conscious decision to chock it up to that.
Later, we washed our dishes, let the dogs out one last time, and shut off the television and the lights. Michael and I quietly turned to head down the hallway after leaving the dogs on the other side of the baby gate. A bright multicolored glimmer came from the dark bedroom at the end.
“SORRY, I DON’T KNOW THAT ONE.”
Michael and I just looked at each other.
Snow is falling. It never snows in Albuquerque until late February. It reminds me of the day we moved in. The snow is quiet - it’s a stillness that doesn’t come at any other time. This morning, I got correspondence back from my friend. My ex had run my numbers after much convincing from my friend to let her do so. He said that, though neither of them could find any record of violent acts on my property, that didn’t mean nothing happened here, because no one is obligated to tell me that. We had a quick chat on Facebook (Link), and we pitched some variables. He even paid $12 out of his own pocket on a record site as a last resort, even though it probably wasn’t accurate at all. I consulted everyone’s best friend, Google.
This is what I found:
New Mexico Statutes § 47-13-2 notes that a seller “shall not be liable for failure to disclose and shall not have a duty to disclose… the fact or suspicion that the real property is or has been… the site of a natural death [or] the site of a homicide, suicide, assault, sexual assault or any other crime punishable as a felony.”
This means that the seller nor the closer had any obligation to tell me of any criminal history. Death is not a material fact.
That explains why, when I called the realtor about the property on Monday, he just hummed and said, “I don’t know. It should all be in the disclosure agreement. I don’t have her contact information directly. You’ll have to call her broker.” But nothing was listed - no damages reported and no name of whoever pitched the sale; just the name of the bank, and that was no help. The contact number is disconnected and there is no forwarding address from ours. Before we had gotten the inspection, the seller had even said there was nothing wrong with the pipes, but we knew obviously that that wasn’t true. What else don’t we know about the property? I went fishing through the paperwork, but there was no mention of anything relevant. The house was built in 1952, the foundations are solid, and oddly enough, there are minimal renovations. It’s practically in the same state it was when it was built. Even the floors are original, save the tile in the bathrooms and kitchen.
There is a small door outside that leads to a crawl space under the house, but no attic. Those are rare in an adobe house like this. Michael had been down there before and has actually investigated the patch during our first week. He said nothing was down there; it was just a slab of wood over the old fitting for the vent.
“That thing looks like a death trap,” I remember saying.
“Nothing to worry about. Just some loose roots from the river tree,” he chimed during our first week here. He was still right - I poked my head down there the other day and saw nothing unusual. It was just dirt, dirt, and more dirt.
I was going to end there, but I have to share this. It’s just before 4 AM. I woke up because I heard something. A loud groan across the floorboards crept into our bedroom from the front of the house. I went to shake Michael’s shoulder to rouse him and make him take another security sweep, but my bed was empty. A stillness drifted over the house; a stillness like when it snows.
“Michael?” I hissed into the dark. But I got no response.
Sometimes Michael wakes up and takes some time for a glass of water. I reluctantly slipped out of bed and wandered down the hallway, figuring I would join him. I rubbed my eyes and went to flick on the small light that leads into the dining room, but I opened them to realize it was already on. It has a faint yellow haze, perfect for when you are half awake and headed for coffee in the morning.
I stumbled back a few steps when I saw him. He was on the other side of the partition, standing in the living room. He had his back to me, and he was just staring out the window. He rocked slowly from side to side, like a reed swaying with the current of the water. My lungs seized, but I still managed to speak.
“Baby, what are you doing?”
He didn’t respond to me.
“Did you hear something?”
Still nothing.
When I mustered up the courage to approach him, I placed a set of fingers on his shoulder. He lunged awake when I touched him, gasping for breath. He lost his footing and shifted forwards as if on the edge of a cliff. Flailing his hands a little, I reached out to steady him. This woke the dogs up, as if his presence hadn’t disturbed them at all beforehand.
“Are you okay?!” I asked, concerned.
It took him a moment to respond. He stared at me with rounded eyes, looking at me like he didn’t recognize me right away. He was groggy and confused. I led him back to bed. As we were heading down the hallway and I flicked the switch off again, I noticed the blue glimmer at the end.
I can’t seem to go back to sleep, but I can hear Michael’s steady breathing in the other room. This is some next level shit that I don’t think I’m prepared for. I even propped the baby gate open so that Walter and Tucker could be in the office with me. Michael has never been a sleepwalker. Neither of us have ever done so in our lives, as far as we know, and our families have never reported such a thing. Perhaps stress is causing this, but our finances are in order and Michael’s commission checks are still paying for the extras. We aren’t having problems at work and everything has just begun to fall into place since the wedding. Compared to last year, we are basically on vacation.
I’ve just finished filling out an order form for one of Michael’s closed circuit recording devices. These ones have online pairing, so I can see the feed from my phone, just like the ones outside. Because we can get this equipment wholesale, it’s not as expensive as market prices. I’m sending it to work with him today. I can’t believe it’s already 5 AM and I’m barely completing this. Hopefully, in addition to our outdoor cameras, this might show me exactly what’s going on here. The alarm will be going off any minute.
Update soon.
####Go to Chapter Three
Posted Mar 1, 2018, 2:14 PM UTC · edited