When he walked into my office it looked like he hadn’t slept in weeks. He was middle-aged, probably in his thirties, wearing what looked like an old jean jacket and a baseball cap. He kept looking around the room, nervous, scared. He sat in the chair in front of me after we introduced ourselves.
“Why don’t you tell me why you’re here.”
“What do you mean?” He asked. “This is all court-mandated, isn’t it?”
I nodded, “I meant why don’t you tell me why it is that you burned down your house.”
“I didn’t file the insurance claim if that’s what you’re asking.”
“No, I’m just here to try to understand the psychology behind your, well, decisions.”
“You’ll think I’m nuts.”
“Insurance claim or not, what you did was illegal and very dangerous.”
“Not letting the damn thing burn was more dangerous.”
I smiled. Now we were getting somewhere. He was tapping his leg fast, his eyes wildly jumping all over the room.
“Why’s that?” I asked.
He watched me, no words coming from his mouth. I waited. These were the moments when keeping silent are key. I knew he’d eventually break and start speaking.
It took nearly three minutes of uncomfortable staring, but he finally spoke:
“You ever hear about Amityville house?”
“The haunted one?”
He nodded. “They say it was the most haunted house in America.”
“I think they made a movie about it,” I said.
“They did.”
“What about the house?”
“Mine was worse.”
“Haunted?”
Again he was quiet, so I tried pressing a little further.
“You didn’t own the house very long,” I said.
“You watch scary movies a lot?”
“Sometimes, yes.”
“You see how they ramp up the hauntings usually? They’ll make a toy move here, a drawer open there, then little by little worse stuff starts happening.”
“Yes, then they have a big conclusion,” I said.
“That’s not how it works in real life.”
I looked down at my notes, then back at the man in the chair. He was standing at full alert, staring at the wall behind me. There was something strangely eerie about the way he was watching, as if he expected something to move. For a moment I felt desperate to look, to make sure nothing was there. I shook my head subtly, trying to get that feeling out of my head.
“Says here you owned the house for only two weeks,” I said. “You stayed there how long?”
“Slept there one night.”
“And in one night you decided to burn the place to the ground?”
“I did after it… after it happened.”
“Why don’t you tell me what happened exactly,” I said.
But the man was still staring at the wall behind me. The feeling came back immediately, a serious need to just look behind me, to make sure I was safe. I did my best to ignore it.
“Excuse me,” I said, but he ignored me. “Sir.”
That did it. He looked away from the wall and back at me, confused for a moment.
“Tell me what happened in that house.”
“Well, alright,” he began. “It was cold. Very cold. I thought the heat was broken or something. But it wasn’t the heat. The house had a fireplace, but the fire didn’t work. It was cold.”
“You noticed that when?”
“As soon as we moved in. It was a cold night, we needed to keep warm somehow. Things were happening from the moment we moved the last box from the truck. Boxes went missing. My wife, she set up the kitchen, had everything neat and tidy, all the forks and spoons and knives in the drawers. I called her over to help me set up the TV and when she went back the whole kitchen was upside down. Giant mess, everything on the floor, cabinets off their hinges, chairs completely cleaved in two. She was upset, she was very upset.”
I scribbled down everything the man said.
“First one to see it was my daughter.”
“Your daughter who is…”
“Dead, yes,” he said fighting back a tear. He closed his eyes tight and continued to speak. “She was watching TV, had just set it up. Where she was, the couch in the living room wasn’t pushed up against a wall or anything, there was space behind it. I guess she saw it once the TV turned black for a moment, you know how TV’s do when there’s a commercial or something. She was sitting on the couch, and it turned black for a second and she could see it on the screen, in the reflection. It was standing behind her.”
He was looking at the wall behind me again, and this time I couldn’t resist. His story had sent chills down my spine almost immediately. I turned around, but there was nothing there. When I turned back the man was smiling.
“Oh don’t worry, it can’t get you.”
“What is it?” I asked.
“I know the words, you see?”
“What words?” I asked. But I had a feeling I knew what he was about to tell me. When he’d been found by the firemen that night they’d reported he’d been repeating some sort of gibberish over and over.
“They’re protection,” he said. “You want to learn them?”
I nodded, and the man smiled again. “Say them out loud, you only need to say them once, and they’ll keep you safe.”
As skeptical as I was, his story and the way he kept looking behind me had made me nervous. I agreed to say them, figuring that any protection, real or not, might not hurt. I invited anyone reading this to repeat the words too. Hopefully, they’ll keep you safe.
“Repeat after me, Thinso.”
“Thinso.”
“Kedwi.”
“Kedwi.”
“Seeth.”
“Seeth.”
“Ya.”
“Ya.”
“Mesco.”
“Mesco.
“Thinso Kedwi Seeth Ya Mesco.”
“Thinso Kedwi Seeth Ya Mesco,” I repeated. I held my breath, waiting. Would something happen? We sat in silence for what felt like an hour, but nothing happened. I almost started laughing at my own silliness.
“Did you expect something to happen?” Asked the man.
I shrugged, “I guess so! Did I do something wrong?”
“No, like I said, it’s just for protection. Just saying it once is enough. Now it won’t get you.”
I nodded, sighed, and looked back down at my notes. There was still a lot to talk about.
“Tell me about your wife,” I said.
“Well, she loved our daughter,” he said. “She wasn’t herself.”
“I have a statement from you that says your wife woke in the night.”
The man nodded, “I woke up when I heard a loud banging coming from the hallway. Thought maybe it was the cat. But no, it was my wife. She’d gotten up about an hour earlier and was standing there in her pajamas. She was hacking at the wall with a cleaver. Took me a minute to notice she was covered in blood.”
“Is that how…”
“She didn’t do it, my wife was dead by that point.”
“What do you mean?”
“I was finishing up some work downstairs before I went to bed, you see? I heard a commotion in our room, my wife was showering so I figured she must have fallen. When I got up there, she was in bed. Wide awake but totally quiet.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I didn’t either at first, but now I know. I went downstairs for a bit to finish up my work and when I came back upstairs, I kissed my wife goodnight. She was cold. I thought it was because the house was freezing. But no, that wasn’t it. She was dead. I kissed and slept next to my wife’s body for a few hours, and then it got up and went to the kitchen.”
“That’s where it, she, grabbed the knife?”
“Cleaver.”
“And then?”
“Well, it went for my daughter.”
“I see.”
“So am I crazy, or what?”
I frowned, “well, there’s a lot to unpack here. The trauma you went through that night, your wife, your daughter… it’s hard not to see why you’d start a fire.”
“You still remember the words?” Said the man.
“Thinso Kedwi Seeth Ya Mesco. What do they mean?” I asked.
But the man only smiled, then suddenly stood up and walked to the door. Without another word he opened it and walked out of my office.
I couldn’t sleep that night. For hours I tossed and turned in bed, feeling unusually cold. Then there was the clock. It was an old analog alarm clock I’d been gifted years ago. That night its ticking was unusually loud. Every single moment I thought I might be able to finally fall into a deep sleep, I could hear it ticking. Nothing made the sound go away, not even when I finally put it inside the drawer on my nightstand. As soon as I got comfortable the ticking started again. An incessant tiktok, tiktok, that hurt my brain.
I turned back and forth in my bed and hid my face under the pillow until I couldn’t take it anymore. The ticking was unceasing and constant, counting me down to something. For another hour I heard it ticking from inside my wardrobe where I’d placed it in the hope that I’d finally get some quiet and rest. But nothing worked. The wardrobe’s wood amplified the ticks.
Frustrated, I turned on the lights in my room and went to the wardrobe. I grabbed the clock and moved it to the bathroom outside my bedroom and closed the door. Then I closed my bedroom door for good measure and got into bed.
I saw it run under the bed right as I turned off the lights. I wasn’t completely sure what I’d seen for a moment, just a sudden movement that seemingly came out of nowhere, a dark blur. I felt a terror rise through me and send a cold shock that settled down near the tip of my spine. My mind immediately went to the words I’d spoken in my office. Thinso Kedwi Seeth Ya Mesco. I repeated them in my head as I noticed how cold my room really was.
“Thinso Kedwi Seeth Ya Mesco,” I whispered out loud.
I inched forward, holding my breath as I grabbed onto the sheets and leaned down to get a look. Something had definitely crawled in there. I could hear it. I felt the blood rush to my head as I turned my body upside down. I counted back from three and pulled back the duvet.
And there, from the opposite side of the bed, was a head staring back at me. It was in the exact same position that I was, looking down at me from my bed too. Whatever it was had somehow gotten in bed with me while I was moving and had somehow mimicked my movement from the other side. Then something grabbed my leg.
“Fuck!” I screamed and dived out of the covers, and straight to the ground. In seconds I had pushed myself back into the wall. I looked up at the bed. Nothing. I looked down. Nothing. I couldn’t see the entire bed from where I was.
I screamed when my phone rang. I don’t know why, but it somehow suddenly felt like a massive comfort, so I jumped to my feet and lunged for the bedside table where it sat vibrating away.
“Hello?” I said. I looked around the room and turned on the lights. The room was empty. I breathed.
“Yeah, hi. We’re calling about a patient, the girl from the house fire?”
“What about her?”
“She just woke up.”
“Woke up? No, I thought she had died.”
“No, she’s alive, just barely managed it too. A bit hysterical, though, we were hoping to get your professional opinion.”
I nodded, completely flustered. How had she survived her mother, that thing, how was she alive?
“I’ll be right there,” I said.
She was covered in burns. Nearly all of her body was hidden under layers of gauze and slimy-looking gel. She just barely managed to turn her head when I walked in.
“Who are you?” She asked. I could see she was in an immense amount of pain, even just moving her jaw enough to speak looked like the biggest effort imaginable.
“I’m a therapist. I spoke to your dad.”
“My dad?”
“Yes. Is he here? I’d like to have a word with him too.”
“How did… when did you talk to him?”
“Just this afternoon,” I said. “He came to my office. We spoke for an hour.”
“Are you sure that was my dad?”
“Yes, he told me he burned your house down, told me your mother attacked you, said you saw something standing behind you on the TV.”
“No, that’s not…” and suddenly her eyes widened, and a look of utter horror and shock appeared on her face.
“Did you say the words?” She asked.
“What?”
“Everything it told you was a lie. None of that happened. It just wants you to say the words.”
“I don’t understand,” I said.
“Don’t you see? It loves toying with people. It wants you to say the words. Once you say the words it knows where you are. It will find you and take you.”
I looked at her, suddenly realizing what I had done.
“I…”
“It tricked you. Just like it tricked my family. Just like it likes to trick everyone else. It likes to play with its victims, and it’s getting smarter.”