Chapter Text
Columbus, Ohio. 1986.
Joseph Family.
Reports of unusual activity have been received from within the family residence.
The incidents include noises during the early hours of the morning, objects changing places, apparitions, unexplained injuries, episodes of partial amnesia, and particularly violent dreams.
Most of the events appear to be directly connected to one of the children, Tyler Joseph, twenty years old.
The family has sought medical attention repeatedly. Diagnoses received thus far include anxiety, sleep paralysis, depression, and possible hallucinations associated with an accident that occurred four years ago. None of the treatments administered have managed to stop the incidents entirely.
It is recommended that each member of the family be interviewed separately, all available medical records be reviewed, and psychological, environmental, or fraudulent causes be considered before the possibility of a supernatural presence is entertained.
Josh lets out a sigh and reads the same lines for the fifth time that day, even though by now he could probably recite them without looking at the file resting on his lap.
The folder he was given is filled with testimonies, dates, medical records, and statements the family mailed in a few months ago. Many of the pages are covered in red-ink notes and arrows pointing toward the events that, according to Ed, require closer attention.
The whole thing looks like it’s been drenched in cursed blood. Josh hates that his mentor is apparently incapable of putting even the slightest bit of order to his notes.
His eyes glance nervously over one of the medical reports.
The neurological examinations performed after the accident show no injuries that fully explain the symptoms Tyler has experienced ever since. Behind those pages waits another stack of evaluations that might as well be burning Josh’s retinas with acid: depression, anxiety, sleep disturbances, possible hallucinations, and trauma-related aftereffects.
Every hypothesis is built around symptoms that, individually, seem to have perfectly reasonable explanations. Finding logical explanations is part of his job, although sometimes it feels almost insulting.
If he had known that working on his own would involve spending this many hours trying to decipher endless files without help while sinking into the infinite labyrinths of his own mind, the idea of investigating without Ed and Lorraine probably would have sounded considerably less exciting.
At twenty-one, Josh has already taken part in several investigations alongside the Warrens. During his first years with them, he accompanied the couple to different locations, learning how to interview witnesses, review evidence, and distinguish an exaggerated story from something that genuinely seemed to defy logical explanation.
Over the past few months, however, the Warrens have begun trusting him with a few investigations of his own. He is still part of their team and is expected to report anything important, but now he is the one who visits certain families first, gathers testimonies, reviews documents, and determines whether there is enough evidence to warrant the Warrens’ direct involvement.
At first, the idea had filled him with enough excitement to make him practically euphoric. Ever since he started investigating on his own, however, he has suffered through a string of disappointments that could easily rank among the greatest of the past few years.
Every story about voices in the middle of the night, ghost sightings, or supposedly possessed people eventually turns out to be nothing more than an exaggeration, a fraud, a coincidence, or a mental illness someone has decided to call demonic possession out of fear or ignorance.
Worst of all, every one of those stories forces him to travel across state lines, sleep very little, and spend entire days gathering mountains of monotonous information, only to close the case and rule out any supernatural activity.
He lifts his gaze again after returning to the first page of the report.
The house matching the address written in the file certainly doesn’t look like it’s under attack by some kind of entity.
He knows judging a book by its cover is stupid, especially when he works in a field where appearances rarely mean much, but even after staring at the house for several minutes, he still can’t find anything particularly remarkable about it.
Two children are happily playing in the front yard. The girl chases her brother across the grass while he holds a toy above his head, laughing every time she tries to reach it. Near the entrance, an abandoned ball lies beside a small bicycle tipped onto its side and several plastic figures that seem to have been forgotten a few hours ago.
The lawn has been cut recently. Small clumps of green still gather around the edges and along the path leading to a beautiful white porch.
The scene is nothing like what he expected. It looks more like a photograph from a magazine advertising the perfect neighborhood or the perfect family.
His eyes slither back toward the words unexplained injuries and apparitions.
Josh absently bites the inside of his cheek and closes the folder, mentally preparing himself for what will probably be another mind-numbingly boring case.
Ed’s voice echoes inside his head, reminding him again and again that judging a book by its cover is a terrible habit, but there is something difficult to believe about a family supposedly tormented at night while still managing to mow the lawn and let their younger children run around laughing in front of the house during the day.
The only times Josh has ever witnessed something that couldn’t be explained by anything in the books happened while he was working alongside Ed and Lorraine. Possessions, curses, objects connected to strange events, and situations that continued even after renovations, relocations, and medical treatment.
He has never witnessed anything like that while investigating on his own.
He slips the file into his briefcase and gets out of the car.
The afternoon air brushes softly against his face as he adjusts his brown leather jacket and pulls at the collar of his sweater, trying to protect himself from the cold slowly settling over Columbus as the sun disappears behind the surrounding houses. It’s the middle of October, and the weather is noticeably getting colder.
The boy, still holding the toy above his head, stops when he sees Josh approaching. The girl takes a few seconds longer to notice him and nearly crashes into her brother.
“Hi.” Josh raises a hand in greeting, earning nothing but suspicious looks from both children. “Is this the Joseph house?”
The younger one narrows her eyes and stares at him as though he has committed some terrible crime (interrupting her game may very well be the most catastrophic one imaginable) before clutching the other child’s shirt and hiding behind her brother, who does little more than stare back at Josh.
“Who are you?” Josh knows from the report that he is speaking to the youngest member of the family: Madison, only seven years old. “Zack, go get Mom,” she whispers into her brother’s ear, although he doesn’t seem particularly interested in moving.
“I will, but let go of me. I can’t move.” Zack, ten years old. His statements are confusing in their own particular way. They jump between events, and in some sections he uses expressions that sound far too similar to his parents’. Josh still doesn’t know whether that means the adults influenced his memory or the boy has simply heard those stories repeated too many times.
“I’m Joshua. Could I speak to your parents?” Josh crouches down until he is at eye level with the children, but before either of them can answer, a woman’s voice comes from the front door.
“Kids, what are you doing?” Her gaze moves quickly from the children to Josh and then to the car parked in front of the house. For a moment, she seems to be trying to place him until her eyes settle on the briefcase in his left hand. “Are you Joshua?”
“I’d rather you call me Josh.” He stands and offers a small smile as he walks past the children and approaches the porch, where the woman is standing, looking somehow almost angelic. “Kelly Joseph, right?”
The woman nods. Rays of sunlight dance through her blonde hair and cast a pleasant warmth over her skin.
“Yes. I thought you weren’t arriving until tomorrow.”
“The drive was shorter than I expected. I’m sorry if I’m interrupting anything.” Once Josh reaches her, he extends a hand in greeting. Kelly takes it, and now that he is closer, Josh can study her face in greater detail.
Kelly doesn’t look neglected. Her hair is straightened, her clothes are clean, and her perfume is strong enough to make him slightly dizzy for a few seconds. Nothing about her appearance suggests she expected to receive anyone that afternoon. Beneath her eyes, however, deep shadows stretch across her skin, and small lines of exhaustion remain visible around them even when she smiles.
“Come in.” Kelly steps away from the entrance to let him through before looking back at the children. “You two, backyard.”
“Whyyyy?” Madison clutches Zack’s shirt again and looks at her mother with pleading eyes.
“Because I said so.”
Zack doesn’t need a second warning. He grabs his sister by the arm, and the two disappear around the side of the house while Kelly closes the door behind Josh.
The inside of the house turns out to be just as ordinary as the outside. Family photographs hang on the walls, shoes have accumulated beside the entrance, and a small child’s jacket has been abandoned over the back of one of the couches. The low murmur of a television drifts in from somewhere nearby, and Josh can make out several crayon drawings stuck to the refrigerator.
In a way, he is grateful he arrived early, because it means the family had no time to plan anything: worn-out clothes, makeup carefully applied to emphasize their miserable dark circles, or mechanisms designed to make doors close on their own.
Kelly leads him into the dining room and offers him something to drink before sitting across from him. Josh politely declines and sets his briefcase on the table, taking out only his notebook, a small tape recorder, and a few pages from the file.
“Before we start, I should let you know that I need to record our conversation.” He gestures toward the device with one hand. “It helps me compare statements afterward, and it keeps me from having to stop you every few seconds to write things down.”
Kelly studies the recorder for a moment before finally nodding. Nothing seems out of the ordinary.
“That’s fine.”
Josh presses the button and places his notebook in front of him. “I’d like to speak to each member of the family separately. You, your husband, and Tyler first. I’d also like to hear from the children, but only if the two of you are comfortable with that.”
“Of course.”
“And I’ll probably be here for a couple of days. I want to understand what’s happening before I make any assumptions.”
Kelly nods again, although Josh notices her fingers beginning to fidget absently with the edge of the table.
“Tyler knows someone from the Warrens’ team is coming.” Her eyes flick briefly toward the stairs. “He isn’t very happy about it.”
“Why?”
“Because he’s spent four years... trapped in this situation.” Josh lowers his gaze toward the thick stack of medical reports. “Before any of this started, he was a huge fan of the Warrens and their work, but everything that happened made him lose interest in a lot of things. When we told him someone was coming to investigate what’s been happening, he got angry. He’s exhausted from giving the same answers to everyone who walks into this house.”
“I can understand that.”
“I don’t think you can.” Kelly exhales softly and, realizing how the words may have sounded, quickly shakes her head. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean-”
“Don’t apologize.” Josh knows she is right. He can’t understand it. There is a difference between being an observer, reading a report, and looking at photographs of a family he has only just met, and actually living through it. Even if every single thing happening to them has a perfectly clear medical explanation, it must still be horrible. “Please, go on.”
The woman remains silent for a few seconds before sighing, as though her lungs need extra air for what she is about to say.
“After the accident, it started with doctors. Then psychiatrists, specialists, priests... Every time Tyler said he heard something or had another nightmare, someone new showed up asking the same questions.”
Josh picks up his pen and begins making notes in his notebook.
“Then let’s start before all of that. The accident was four years ago, right?”
Kelly nods, and for a moment Josh thinks he sees her eyes begin to glisten.
“He was sixteen. He went with five friends to an abandoned property outside the city. He never asked us for permission, and we didn’t even know where he was until we got the call from the hospital.”
Josh already knows most of the story from the documents, so he avoids making her repeat every detail and lets her speak freely. The second floor collapsed while the teenagers were inside. The others managed to get out with minor injuries, but Tyler was trapped and had to be pulled out by emergency crews. He suffered a head injury, broke an arm, and spent several days in the hospital.
“Was he conscious when they found him?”
“Yes.” Kelly folds both hands together on the table. “Well, that’s what his friends said. His father and I didn’t see him until we got to the hospital.”
“Did he remember what happened?”
“Only parts of it. He remembered getting there, going inside the house, climbing some stairs... Other than that, he told us the next thing he remembers is being in the hospital with a cast on his arm.”
“Did his friends say what they were doing?”
“Exploring.”
Josh writes down the word.
“After he came back home, we thought he was okay. Scared, obviously, and he wasn’t sleeping well, but the doctors said that made sense after something like that.” Kelly presses her lips together slightly before continuing. “A few weeks later, he started hearing things.”
“What kind of things?”
“Voices, but also he mentioned hearing footsteps and knocking sometimes too, things like that, but what scared us the most was when he said he could hear members of the family talking. The first few times, he was furious because he thought we were playing some kind of joke on him, but he stopped believing that after he heard my voice in the kitchen one day when he was home alone. Once, he even heard his brother Jay, who doesn’t live here anymore.”
“What did the voices say?”
“At first, they only called his name. Later he said he could hear complete sentences, but eventually he stopped telling us what they said.”
“Why?”
Kelly lowers her eyes toward her hands.
“Because we never thought it was anything paranormal. We took him to doctors. Probably more of them than we needed to.”
There is guilt behind the answer, and Josh decides not to interrupt.
“We did what we thought was right.” The woman slowly rubs one thumb against the other. “I still think it was. After the accident, he was having memory problems, he wasn’t sleeping, and then he started hearing voices. We couldn’t pretend that was normal, and the possibility that the head injury had caused lasting damage terrified us.”
“You did what any worried parent would have done. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
Kelly looks up.
“I’ve already read the reports.” Josh gestures toward the folder. “And I want to make something clear. Me being here doesn’t mean I think every diagnosis he’s received is wrong. Some of his symptoms could be related to the accident, his sleep, or his anxiety, while other events might need a different explanation. My job is to try to separate one from the other.”
Some of the tension around the woman’s shoulders eases.
“When we contacted the Warrens, Ed told us something similar.”
“I copy a lot of things from him. Sorry.”
A small smile appears on both their faces. Josh looks back down at the report, moves a couple of papers aside, and adds another note to his notebook.
“The report also mentions a few apparitions. Could you tell me about those?”
“They started a few months after the voices. Tyler said he could see people in the hallway or figures near his bedroom. Sometimes it happened during the day, while he was completely awake.”
“Could he describe them?”
“Almost never. He would just say they were there, and then they were gone.”
Josh has read something similar in several of the medical reports, although none of them offered a definitive diagnosis.
“And the problems while he was sleeping?”
“The nightmares started first. Then he began waking up unable to move.”
“Sleep paralysis.”
He read that in the report too. So far, everything fits, and there are no inconsistencies between the file and Kelly’s account.
“That’s what the doctors told us.” Kelly leans back slightly in her chair. “Sometimes he also felt like something was holding him against the bed, and he had trouble breathing.”
Josh marks the information down, although at this point he can still find possible explanations for almost everything.
“I understand the paralysis wasn’t the only thing happening to him at night, right?”
“No. Sometimes he would wake up with scratches, bruises, marks that appeared overnight. We thought he might be doing it to himself in his sleep, so we cut his nails, checked everything we could, and removed anything dangerous from his room, but the injuries kept appearing and we never found an explanation.”
“I’m guessing none of you have ever actually seen one appear.”
“No.”
“Then, for now, we can consider them evidence of unconfirmed origin.”
Kelly nods without arguing, which catches Josh’s attention.
So far, the woman hasn’t tried to turn every incident into proof of something supernatural. She acknowledges medical explanations when they exist, admits when nobody witnessed something directly, and is careful to distinguish what she knows from what she only suspects.
Strangely enough, that makes her testimony harder to dismiss.
Josh isn’t used to people who call him being so willing to accept that some events might have ordinary explanations.
“One of the things that caught my attention in the file is that the incidents eventually stopped being limited to Tyler. When did the rest of you start experiencing them?”
The woman’s expression changes. She swallows a couple of times, and Josh notices her eyebrows drawing together with something that looks very much like fear.
“I don’t remember exactly when the first time was. I think for a long time we assumed we were imagining the knocking and the footsteps, but then we started hearing voices too.”
“The same ones Tyler hears?”
“My son hears the family’s voices. We hear Tyler’s.”
Kelly looks toward the stairs again.
“Sometimes he was somewhere else in the house and his voice would come from a completely different room. Other times, he wasn’t even home.”
Josh makes a quick note in his notebook before looking back into the woman’s eyes. She seems slightly more uncomfortable now than she did at the beginning of the interview.
“Can you give me an example?”
“The first time Chris and I heard it, Tyler was asleep on the couch. We were both in the kitchen when we heard his voice calling me from upstairs. Tyler was still asleep, so Chris went up to check while I stayed with him. We didn’t find anyone. The kids were at school.”
Josh writes down where everyone was and notes the presence of a second witness.
“Have the children heard his voice too?”
“Many times. Once, Madison heard him calling her from his bedroom while Tyler wasn’t even home. He was at an appointment with my husband.”
Josh makes a small mark beside the children’s names.
“I’d like them to tell me about that themselves later. If that’s all right with you, of course.”
“No, that’s fine. But if you want to earn their trust, you’ll have to talk to them about their favorite superhero first.” They both smile faintly. “If you tell them yours is Batman, trust me, neither of them will say a word.”
Kelly lets out a quiet laugh that quickly becomes contagious, and Josh finds himself laughing too.
“Then I’d better think very carefully about my answer.”
Josh plays with his pen for a couple of seconds, privately regretting that he has to ruin the atmosphere with more questions.
“The file also mentions changes in Tyler’s behavior.”
The smile disappears from Kelly’s face.
“At first, he was just irritable. Confused. He would forget conversations, lose things, and sometimes walk into a room without remembering what he was going to do. Then the episodes started...”
“Violent ones?”
Josh interrupts without meaning to. Kelly nods.
“The first time, he pushed Chris during an argument. He didn’t hurt him, but Tyler had never reacted that way toward him before. Afterward, he calmed down and swore he hadn’t meant to do it.”
“Has it happened more than once?”
“Yes. There’s no pattern. He can go weeks completely calm, and then suddenly he’ll have several episodes one after another.”
“Has he ever seriously hurt anyone?” The woman shakes her head, her fingers once again fidgeting with each other. “And how has he been lately?”
“Worse. He sleeps less, he hears the voices more often, and sometimes he stares at places where there’s no one there. It puts him in a bad mood, and he’s gotten more sarcastic. He stopped talking to his friends. There are days when he can barely stand being around his siblings or even us.” Kelly laces her fingers together again. “And the sleep paralysis has been happening more often too.”
“When was the most recent episode?” Josh writes down the last sentence and underlines it, paying close attention as Kelly takes a few seconds before answering.
“Last night. He woke up screaming. When Chris went in, Tyler was sitting on the floor and didn’t seem to recognize him. He was kicking at the air. After a few minutes, he calmed down and just... stared at one spot in the room without doing anything. Then he told us he couldn’t remember anything except having a nightmare.”
“Has anything else happened recently?”
Kelly falls silent for a moment before looking toward one of the windows facing the backyard.
“A few nights ago, my husband saw him outside. In the backyard.” Josh follows her gaze. From where he is sitting, he can barely make out the children running back and forth, part of the wooden fence surrounding the property, and a few flowerpots tucked into the corners of the yard. “He should probably tell you about that himself. I was asleep, and everything I know is what Chris told me afterward.”
The woman stands and slowly walks away from the dining room, only turning back when she seems to realize she has left Josh without any further explanation.
“He’s in the garage. I’ll get him.”
“Perfect.” As Kelly leaves the dining room, Josh stops the recorder and quickly reviews the pages he has just filled.
The interview hasn’t only confirmed almost everything already contained in the file. It has also added something he finds considerably more interesting: the family has witnessed apparently paranormal events too.
Josh goes through some of his notes while he waits. He barely has enough time to return to the page about the accident before he hears two voices approaching from the other side of the house, and a few seconds later Kelly reappears with her husband.
Chris (Josh remembers the name from the documents) wipes his hands with a rag as he walks into the dining room. There are dark stains across his shirt and more around his fingers, which seem to confirm that he has spent the afternoon fixing something Josh knows absolutely nothing about. The unknown makes him a little uncomfortable sometimes.
“Sorry. I was fixing a few things in the garage.” Chris looks first at Josh and then at the tape recorder still resting on the table.
“No problem.” Josh stands and extends a hand toward him. “Joshua Dun, although I prefer Josh.”
“Chris.” The man shakes his hand before glancing briefly at his wife. “I’m guessing she already told you practically our entire life story.”
“A little, yeah.” Josh removes the tape he used for Kelly’s interview and places it safely inside his briefcase before taking out a new one. “It’s hard to summarize four years in a few minutes.”
“Yeah, you end up leaving out all the interesting parts.” Kelly, still standing beside her husband, lightly smacks Chris on the shoulder before walking away.
“I’m going to check on the kids. I’ll leave you two alone.”
Josh waits until he hears the back door before sitting down again. Chris takes the chair his wife just left and rests the rag over one of his legs, still eyeing the number of papers spread across the table with mild curiosity.
“You’re going to record me?”
“Yes. I hope you don’t mind.”
“Go ahead.”
For the next several minutes, Josh goes over only the necessary points and finds very few significant differences. Chris places the accident four years earlier, remembers the sleeping problems during the first few weeks, and confirms that the voices started shortly afterward. He also talks about the behavioral changes, the memory lapses, and a few episodes in which Tyler seemed to react with an aggression that disappeared almost as quickly as it began.
The dates vary slightly from Kelly’s account, and there are events one of them remembers better than the other, but nothing is different enough to catch Josh’s attention. Until he reaches what happened a few nights ago.
“Your wife mentioned something that happened in the backyard. Could you tell me what happened?” Chris begins fidgeting with the rag on his lap, visibly nervous. “She didn’t tell me much. She said it would be better if I heard it from you.”
“Yeah, that’s probably for the best.” The answer makes Josh raise his eyebrows slightly. “Don’t get me wrong, but I already feel ridiculous enough telling the story myself. I don’t need my wife feeling the same way.”
Josh suppresses a small smile and adjusts the pen between his fingers.
“What happened?” Chris takes a few seconds to answer.
“It was three nights ago. Around three in the morning, I heard a noise downstairs and woke up.”
“Did anyone else wake up?”
“I don’t think so. I went downstairs because I thought one of the kids might’ve gotten up, or maybe Tyler was in the kitchen, but I didn’t find anyone.” Chris shifts in his chair and looks toward the door leading to the backyard. “But the back door was open. We never leave it like that.”
“Were there any signs that someone had broken in?”
“I didn’t check right away. I thought one of my kids had gone outside, so I went looking.” Josh notices that Chris grows increasingly nervous with every word that leaves his mouth. “I found Tyler at the far end of the yard, staring at the fence.”
Josh glances toward the window. From where he is sitting, he can see part of the backyard and Madison running into her mother’s arms.
“What was he doing?”
“Nothing, apparently. He was just standing there.” Chris goes still. The rag stops moving between his hands, and his fingers slowly tighten around the fabric. “He was half naked. Just wearing boxers, no shoes. I got worried because I thought maybe he’d started sleepwalking too.” He swallows and rubs the back of his neck before continuing. “Winter’s almost here. The nights are getting really cold, and I was afraid he’d get sick, so I called to him from the doorway. He didn’t answer.”
“What did you do?” Tension hardens Chris’s jaw, and his eyes lose focus for a few seconds, as though the question has dragged up a memory he would much rather keep buried somewhere in the deepest corner of his mind.
“I figured he wasn’t going to answer, so I went outside. But I’d barely taken a couple of steps when he turned around...” Chris presses his lips together slightly, his breathing picking up just enough for Josh to notice. It isn’t normal for a grown man to react this strongly to a memory, so Josh makes a note of it. “And he started smiling. I know it sounds strange, but if you’d seen the way he did it, you would’ve run.”
A few seconds pass without either of them saying anything. Chris seems to be getting more agitated, and Josh decides to give him some time before asking another question.
“I don’t know how to explain it. Tyler was standing there in the middle of the night, practically naked, and he wouldn’t answer me. I asked what he was doing, and he smiled like that again. It was... disturbing. I thought he was still asleep, even though his eyes were clearly open, so I went out to get him.” Chris rubs his palms against his pants as though he can still feel the cold of that night biting into his bones. “But I’d only gone a few yards when Tyler started moving in this... strange way. You don’t have to believe me. You have every right not to. But it looked like he was mocking me, swaying from side to side with that stupid smile on his face and refusing to answer anything I said.”
Josh stops writing and looks up at Chris, who seems to be sinking deeper into fear and misery with every second. His fingers remain tight around the pen as he waits for him to continue.
“You didn’t get any closer?”
“I couldn’t. When I was only a few steps away, I heard the door slam shut. I turned around on instinct, and when I looked back at where Tyler had been... well, he was gone.” The memory seems cursed enough to burn against Chris’s skin, even as the room suddenly feels a little colder.
“Gone?” Josh repeats the word in disbelief, his brow furrowing slightly.
“I don’t know.” Chris answers immediately, as though he has replayed that night far too many times. “I’m not going to tell you I watched him vanish in front of me, because I didn’t. I looked away for a second, and when I turned back, Tyler wasn’t where I’d seen him anymore.” Josh sets the pen down on his notebook, searching for some logical explanation. Maybe Tyler ran fast enough that his father simply didn’t see him. Maybe he hid somewhere near the fence. “Before you say anything, we can look at the yard if you want. There’s nowhere to hide, and you’ll see for yourself, but Tyler isn’t exactly athletic anymore. He couldn’t get from one end of the yard to the house in less than a second.”
Josh’s eyes widen, surprised that the man managed to guess the questions only beginning to form beneath his mess of curls. He picks up his pen again and gestures for Chris to continue.
“After that, I went back inside and looked for Tyler, but I couldn’t find him downstairs. I went up to his bedroom and found him fast asleep, wearing pajamas, even though the Tyler outside had only been wearing boxers.”
“Are you sure the person you saw in the yard was Tyler? Could it have been a burglar or someone else?” Josh waits a moment before writing anything, searching for possibilities, logical explanations, something capable of silencing the voice inside him that keeps insisting, That was paranormal.
“I know what my son looks like. It was his face, his tattoos...” Chris gestures toward his chest, referring to Tyler’s distinctive markings. Josh makes a note of it. “I couldn’t have mistaken him. It was Tyler. When I went into his room, I woke him up. I’m not going to lie to you, I was terrified.”
“How did Tyler react when you woke him?”
“He got angry.” A small, tired smile appears on the man’s face. “I asked him what he’d been doing outside, and he told me to let him sleep. When I kept asking, he started cursing at me and telling me to leave him alone.”
“Did you check for any sign that he’d just been outside?”
“That was the first thing I did once he stopped insulting me for waking him up. His feet were clean, and the patio was damp. If he’d walked barefoot all the way to the fence, I expected to find dirt, grass, something. At the very least, his feet should’ve been cold. But there was nothing.”
“Has anyone else seen the same thing?” Chris shakes his head, leaving Josh with a whirlwind of thoughts crashing together inside his skull hard enough to make him dizzy.
Someone who has just woken up in the middle of the night and is looking into a poorly lit backyard could easily make a mistake. A shadow, an object, even another person could take on a familiar shape for a few seconds.
What complicates that explanation is Chris’s insistence that he got close enough to see his son’s face while the real Tyler was asleep in his bedroom.
“Did you tell Tyler what happened?”
“Yes, but he said he was probably starting to sleepwalk.” Chris picks up the rag again and begins playing with one of its corners. “Tyler tries to find explanations for almost everything. Sometimes I think he does it because he’s tired of us treating him like he’s crazy.”
Silence settles between them for a few seconds before Josh lowers his eyes to the notebook and writes one final note.
Chris doesn’t seem interested in giving him a supernatural explanation. He doesn’t try to convince Josh that what he saw was an apparition, an imitation, or anything else Josh might have found written in one of Ed and Lorraine’s books. He is simply convinced that he saw Tyler.
“I want to ask you one last thing.” Josh turns a page in his notebook and searches for a note he made during the previous interview. “Kelly mentioned that you’ve received help from a few priests.”
“A couple.” Chris’s reaction is immediate. His expression hardens slightly, and the rag stops moving between his hands.
“What did they do?”
“They talked to us. Prayed inside the house. One of them blessed a few rooms, but nothing really got better. Tyler never liked those visits, actually.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. He was religious before the accident. The whole family is. Afterward, he started avoiding anything related to it, and whenever the priests came over, he got especially nervous.” Josh writes again, accidentally underlining the fact that the entire family is religious.
“Nervous how?”
“He’d get angry and say he didn’t want to participate, that they should leave him alone. Once, he started feeling sick during a prayer and we had to stop.”
“What do you mean by sick?” Chris hesitates before answering.
“He couldn’t concentrate. He was really agitated and kept saying he wanted to leave the room. It didn’t take long before he ran upstairs to his bedroom.” Josh makes a small mark beside the note. It could mean a lot of things.
Someone who has spent years being subjected to evaluations and treatments probably has more than enough reasons to react badly to yet another attempt to fix his life.
For now, Josh tries to ignore the thoughts screaming inside his head and insisting on far more cursed possibilities, but a creak from upstairs distracts him. Chris looks toward the ceiling as another sound follows the first, and then footsteps begin descending the stairs.
He doesn’t know why he suddenly feels the need to listen so carefully. There is nothing strange about someone walking through their own house, and yet every approaching step seems to pull his attention farther away from the notes in front of him and toward the dining room entrance.
Chris seems considerably less impressed by any of it.
“That must be Tyler.”