The Hangman

I just fell into bed, face first. After a five-hour trip, I was way too tired to unpack my things or anything like that. This house on the edge of a small town is the place where I was supposed to stay for the next year.

A few moments before, I was walking around the furniture less living room and the huge adjacent white kitchen with the floor to ceiling windows, trying to get used to the place, to imagine what it would be like to live here, but I failed.

My body began to ache. No more energy to ponder, to get settled, to install myself, just the unrelenting desire to lay there motionless and unconscious.

Trying to fall asleep, shreds of thoughts rushed through my mind.

My family inherited this house a month ago from my weird uncle. I always wanted to do a student exchange and the college in this town looked just awesome. So, since no one of my family wanted to live here and selling the house wasn’t a priority, it was just a practical decision for me to stay here for the coming two semesters.

Now what do I mean when I say weird uncle? Well there’s a lot that I could tell you about my uncle. Not firsthand though, since my uncle liked keeping with himself and rarely showed up to family gatherings. I only remember seeing him like 4 or 5 times. So, all I know consists of rumors and old family anecdotes, but there’s a bunch of those. I could tell you how he was interested in occult stuff and the paranormal, how he wrote several books about those topics, how he was a member of several cults, how he was repeteadly hospitalized on account of severe schitzophrenia and how my mother cried when she spoke of him.

But the weirdest thing about him was not how he lived but how he vanished. For my uncle did not die, not that we know of. He just disappeared. The reason we inherited his house was that after two years, he was declared legally dead. My family, for the most part, has had enough time to mourn and to move on. Only my mother wasn’t quite over it, which nobody blamed her for. He was her brother after all.

Anyhow, here I was, trying to doze off in this huge empty house. Even though I was really tired I couldn’t fall asleep. Was it because I felt uneasy in this house due to the aforementioned circumstances? Or was it just the fact that I always have had trouble sleeping in new places? I tried to shove aside any unsettling thoughts and sleep.

I was lucky as the wind was softly blowing through the trees outside. This has always had a calming effect on me. The whispering of the branches, the rustling of the weeds and bushes, all kinds of flowing and crackling frequencies, an owl in the far distance… so relaxing.

But there was something else… Inconspicuous at first but the more I focused my attention on it (in which I have no choice) the louder it got. It was some sort of periodic, petty small sound which broke the wonderful, softly floating chaos of the night. I tried to ignore it but I couldn’t. It sounded like a creaking, a heavy, old, wooden creaking.

The whole house was quite modern in style and I couldn’t think of anything here emitting that sound. It had to be something in the garden or in the neighborhood…

‘who cares?! I just wanted to sleep! Stop thinking about the weird sound and focus on the nice sweet… damn it!’

I couldn’t ignore it anymore.

Even though my body was crying from exhaustion I had no choice but to get up and check what it was. Maybe there was an easy way to make it stop. I lifted my aching body out of the horizontal position, went to the window and opened the blinds…

As I saw the source of the sound my heart stopped. I screamed violently and fell backwards onto the floor before I could even consciously compute what I saw. For there, in the backyard was a man hanging from the old tree, swaying in the wind.

Within a millisecond I was more awake than I have ever been in my entire life. I couldn’t see the mans face, just his dark figure levitating outside my window staring down at me.

In thunderous panic, I got up and ran outside my room and into the kitchen from where I could access the backyard.

While on my way I was able to formulate some thoughts: ‘The man needs help, I need to get him down, I must call the paramedics’ I ran past my phone ‘no time, get him down first!’

I picked up a stool from the kitchen with one hand, tore open the glass door to the backyard with the other and ran outside. It took me a few seconds to realize that the man wasn’t there anymore. Confused, I stumbled around the yard shaking, breathing heavily, not knowing what to do next.

‘Maybe he fell down and is lieing somewhere!’ I thought.

I walked around, looking in every corner, behind every little bush in the small backyard, the stool still clutched in my hands. I peeked into my neighbor’s yard and saw nothing.

I called out: “Hello?!” The sound of my own voice sent a shiver through my spine. It made the whole situation more real.

Nothing.

I stopped.

As I tried to catch my breath, I looked at the old tree. It wasn’t very tall but dark and evil looking. Even though it was almost summer it only bore few leaves. It looked like a mean old creature towering over me, it’s branches like the legs of a spider or the fingers of a witch, reaching out in every direction. It felt like it was watching me, like it saw me as an intruder. A gust of wind blew through the yard, making the grass move and cooling my head.

‘Maybe I should go back inside’ I thought.

I turned my gaze towards the house. I could see the kitchen through the huge windows. It was dark with some shapes standing there; furniture, a vase, a bread basket. Suddenly a humanoid shadowy figure moved out of the darkness across the room and out of my sight. I jumped.

‘Fuck! He’s inside the house!’

Slowly I started walking towards the glass door, my heart pounding. I entered with the stool clutched tightly in my hands and raised above my head, ready to strike down whomever I planed to save with it only a moment ago.

I turned on the light. Everything was quiet. I walked through the hallway, into the Livingroom. I checked everywhere; the closets, the bathroom, behind every curtain and even under my bed. There was no one there. ‘Was it just my imagination? But it felt so real! Should I still call the police?’

I went back into the kitchen. I set down the stool, standing there completely out of tune and with an empty mind, not knowing what to do or think next.

I turned my head and there, there on the fridge a weird occult symbol was painted in red. It consisted of two overlapping circles and some strange signs. Below some words were written in the same red paint. It said: “MY HOUSE!”

I stood there for a second. No time for any reaction when all of a sudden something grabbed me from behind, throwing me on the floor with brute force. It dragged me across the kitchen floor and out into the backyard. I kicked and screamed in panic. Even though I could not see it I could feel that it must have been strong as an ox. My hands were bound behind my back, I felt something around my neck chocking me and next moment I was hoisted up from the ground high into the air, my feet kicking into nothingness, incredible pain starting to swell up throughout my body.

When I came to realize the situation I was in it was already to late. I was hanging from the tree in my own backyard slowly suffocating.

I felt myself go. This was it. This is how it ends.

My vision became blurry. Darkness slowly covered me. The last thing I could see was my bedroom window. Somebody was looking out of it. His face was running white with sudden terror.

It was me.