there is no face in the window.

asylum.

a·sy·lum

/əˈsīləm/

noun

1. the protection granted by a nation to someone who has left their native country as a political refugee.

shelter or protection from danger.

2. an institution offering shelter and support to people who are mentally ill.

how confidently i announced

that ghosts were nothing more

than figments

of an imaginative (or perhaps deluded)

mind.

$2,000. help wanted.

i thought,

what the hell? why not?

the cameraman never dies.

it never crossed my mind

that the cameraman

could suffer a fate worse than death.

there is no face in the window.

they even provided me a camera;

some fancy gadget

they ordered off of amazon

that claimed to be able to record

the paranormal.

it was heavy. i figured if a ghost came at me,

i'd go down swinging 300 dollars

worth of equipment at their dead face.

we saw nothing.

honestly, as much of a skeptic as i was,

i've always hoped something

(or someone)

would prove me wrong.

as we walked through the hallways,

grainy, dim-lit footage marking our path,

i found myself hoping:

show me something, anything.

we marched along for hours,

with a kid four years younger than me

narrating the scene.

"12:34 p.m., eastern standard time...

no signs of any activity yet. my name is

kevin schumer, i'm here with my crew

and tonight we are joined by..."

he pauses.

"the cameraman," I finish,

which prompts a few uneasy giggles.

yep, that's me,

the eternal watcher.

i see and i record

for posterity.

there is no face in the window.

we were there until four a.m.

our eyelids had grown heavy.

our livestream had exactly one viewer.

perhaps that was why

i felt like i was being watched.

nothing had happened. no doors

had slammed, no windows broken.

we were alone.

yet i could not shake the feeling...

there is no face in the window.

i drove myself home.

headlights lit up the parking lot.

yellow lines. black asphalt.

then darkness again

as i made my way up

three flights of stairs

to my apartment.

my lights refused to turn on.

a power outage? or had my power

been cut?

i did not know. i was too tired to care.

tomorrow, my check would hit

my account

and then i could solve the problem

of late rent.

i laid down,

in nothing but boxer shorts,

awaiting the release of sleep,

and found that

i could not hold my eyes shut.

a feeling was sinking into my spine

like a numbing injection

and i found myself tingling with

some unseen awareness.

i was being watched.

there is no face in the window.

it has been

three weeks

since i had looked outside

that night

to reassure myself

that i was alone.

there is no face in the window.

yet the feeling did not leave.

it only grew.

more and more, i believed

i was hunted. haunted.

there is no face in the window.

each night i check the door,

the closet, the bed, the window—

wait, the window—

tonight,

(one last desperate cry,

the moment before the mind

shatters)

THERE IS NO FACE IN THE WINDOW.

it has followed me home.

now i will follow it home.

to my sanctuary.

to my asylum.

i am the face in the window.

you will feel me watching,

just as i felt it.

when you look outside tonight,

do not trust your eyes. trust

your instincts.

there is a face in the window.

"How will I explain this?"

"Why must you?"

He can't argue with her logic, not really. He is his own man, owing justifications to not a single soul.

"Yeah, okay, so you have a bit of a point, but we don't live in a vacuum."

She raises an eyebrow, but he ignores it and keeps on. "I have parents who will wonder who I'm dating."

"You haven't seen your mom in three months, your step-father doesn't care, and your dad lives in Iowa."

He rolls his eyes.

"I never told you those things."

She smiles, and his heart flutters. He shivers, but his heart turns cartwheels. She has shared his living space for quite a while now, and he still hasn't gotten used to the things she simply seems to know. It's infuriating, endearing, terrifying, and arousing.

Some of the things she knows are downright biblical in their sweet sinfulness.

She floats across the hardwood of the living room and runs a finger along his jawline. She leans in and whispers, "Let me show you other things I know."

He does, and forgets all about explaining his new girlfriend to the parents.

__

They met at work. He took a gig as a videographer for one of those idiotic reality shows that air on formerly respectable cable networks. This one specialized in sending in a handful of "regular people" to reportedly haunted places, where they had to spend a full 24 hours.

The crew isn't supposed to interact with the "talent," but the lady now in his house started flirting with him around three in the morning on the job. One thing lead to another, the shoot wrapped, and here they are.

He didn't find the "haunted" asylum particularly frightening. Honestly, he thought it was boring, except for the minor dramas that unfolded between the two efinitely not actors competing for who could behave like the biggest scared toolbag. He played along when he needed to, running down hallways and giving the producers plenty of shaky-cam footage to edit and play up. Every chance he got, he put his now-girlfriend on film, since she was easy on the eyes and didn't behave like an imbecile.

__

His phone rings and it's the director from that stupid ghost show. He steps out of the bedroom so he doesn't wake her.

"Hello?"

"No, I did."

"No, I changed memory cards several times. I turned them all in."

"Uh huh."

"Nope, nope, I did, didn't you see?"

"What do you mean?"

"That's not possible."

"Gimme a break, man. I was there. It's all on tape."

"You have the tapes. Well, cards, whatever. The recordings."

"Bullshit, I shot all night."

"The girl in the blue dress, yeah, on my recordings."

"What?"

"I don't understand."

"How did you not see? We had conversations. Yeah, I know I'm not supposed to talk, but what am I supposed to do when I'm asked direct questions, man? I'm not a robot, and hell, you hired her. She's hot."

"Explain that."

"Well who hired her?"

"Never mind, that doesn't matter. No, look again, I don't know what to tell you. It's all recorded, I did my job."

He turns around, and she's standing right next to him, smiling that smile that does things to him.

"Listen man, I gotta go. I'd love to work for you again, but I'm not feeling the accusations. I specifically recorded the girl in blue most of the night, and she's standing right here with me now."

He hangs up, she kisses him, and he forgets all about the director saying there was no actress in a blue dress at the asylum.

He has never heard the word succubus and he never will.

I was supposed to follow one of the team members with my camera. We were exploring a haunted asylum, not that I believed that at the time. I was new and all, so I wasn't super familiar with the others. I followed the person I thought I was told to all night. We met back up at the end, and they asked where I had been all night. I was going to point out who I had been following, but they weren't there.

Confused, I told them they could check my footage, but I had been following someone. They all started chatting with excitement about what I must have captured. I was bewildered. Not knowing what had just happened, I answered their excited questions with mumbled "yeah, it was cool, I guess." and "I thought it was a person, so there was no reason to be scared." They told me to leave quickly, and make sure the footage wasn't wiped. Thereafter, we headed home.

I live(d) by myself, yet when I got to my place the door I had locked when I left was open. I searched frantically to see if there had been a burglary, but nothing was missing. It seemed there were some additional items like another toothbrush, toothpaste tube, pair of shoes, and so on. Exhausted, but not wanting to do the necessary steps to go to bed, I plopped on my couch. I eyed the kitchen, as my stomach was a bit rumbly, and nearly jumped out of my skin when I saw someone in it pouring milk into a bowl of cereal, before turning around and putting the carton away.

"We didn't mean to scare you." a wispy voice exclaimed in a soft tone. Burying my face in my hands, I tried to process what I was experiencing. I looked back up to see a bowl on my island with a spoon in it. I got up to check for the mysterious person. The bowl had a single Lucky Charms balloon marshmallow in it. I don't like Lucky Charms. Weirder still, there was no milk in the fridge. Figuring I was overtired, I headed to bed.

When I woke up, I headed to the kitchen, eyes glassy. The bowl from before was still there, but it was full of balloon marshmallows. I made the coffee I had come to the kitchen for, and checked my phone while I waited. The team chat was blown up over my footage. They couldn't believe I had captured such a thing at all, let alone my first time. They also had figured out the 'person’ I had followed was a late team member, who had the same name as a current member. Those who had known him had reminisced about their favorite memories with him.

He hadn't believed in ghosts when he joined the group, he just needed money, but no one knew at the time. His first day on location he had wandered off without a camera, when they found him, his face was sunken, and he was sputtering “I believe you!” over and over again. He never told anyone what happened that day, but after that he insisted on eating a bowl of Lucky Charms before going to a haunted location.

My jaw dropped as I read the last message,

“Oh yeah, and the balloons were his favorite. They were always the last thing he ate.” The smell of my coffee brought me back to my senses.

I continue to be unsure what I believe, but I know there’s something after death. Whenever I'm uncertain his presence is more noticeable. Every now and then I hear different voices whisper

“Do you believe?”

Daisy knew that getting a job from Craigslist was a bad idea. She also knew that taking a job labeled, "Help us Prove Ghosts Exist,"was idiotic. But desperate times called for desperate measures. And Daisy, with only $10 in her checking account, was desperate. Maybe if she hadn't decided to drop out of business school to follow a dream of becoming a documentarian, things would be different. But she needed money, and applying to work as a videographer for a kooky Craigslist listing was the best she could do for now.

So she applied for the job, and got it. She found out that she would be left alone in an abandoned asylum for a night to capture video. The team member, Carl, who spoke to her in a video call, said that they wanted live footage of the hauntings. They wanted her to be there in order to make sure the footage wouldn't be tampered with by the ghosts.

Which is why she found herself alone in a pitch-black bedroom of the abandoned Anderson Asylum. Carl had told her this bedroom had the highest reading of paranormal activity. The only reading Daisy was getting was the creepy vibe of being left alone in the dark of an old building. Overall, though, this job was easy and she was going to be paid $500.

So she waited and endured three hours of nothing happening.

Then, at around 2 am, she heard a noise. It sounded like a squeak.

"Great, there are probably rats," Daisy thought to herself.

Then she heard a whine. Or maybe a sob. Nope, it had to be another squeak. Because Daisy knew no one else was here.

"Mum?"

Daisy froze. Nope, she didn't hear that. She knew she didn't.

"Mum?"

Nope, nope, nope. She had fallen asleep at this point. That was the explanation. She was not hearing a word coming out of nothing.

"Mum?"

Why did she feel a rush of cold go over her body? Because her temperature had dropped as the night went on. That's why.

"Mum?"

Daisy was not feeling something nudge her. She was asleep, and she had to wake up. She had to wake up.

"MUM!"

Daisy jumped when she heard the yell. And hit her head on the low ceiling. The resulting pain she felt was too real, and too obvious a sign, that she had never been asleep.

Daisy was done. With this weird assignment. With whatever paranoia was hitting her. It didn't matter anymore that she was desperate for money, she just wanted to get out of there. She grabbed her purse and sprinted out of the room, crashing into things as she went because she couldn't see anything. She didn't slow down until she had driven back home.

Carl didn't end up paying her the full $500. She did get $250 for still providing film footage from the night, as she had left her camera behind. She also got the camera back. And something else.

Every night, since the night at the asylum, Daisy had the same dream.

It was of a small girl, with curly blonde hair, who stared at her from two black voids where eyes should have been. She said one thing. Over and over.

"Mum?"

I wish I could go back. Around 9 months ago, I pulled a stunt I wish I could take back.

"keep walking" the producer following me with a boom stick said. I did with no hesitation.

For some odd reason, everything turned black for a second. I turned around in shock when I had felt the abyss. I was falling.

"Where am I?"- I look around until I scream a blood-curdling scream that made me want to die. With my ears ringing in pain, I feal pain as my skin is being pulled apart. A Lady that looked like she was molding in a trash bad for 15 years crawled out upside down at me missing a leg.

"You have 1 minute. To make a disition." Said the creature. "I was cursed as a patient to host this choice. It is not me but the game that leads to horrid things. You can die a excruciating death and be summoned to witness all the horrors of the world or, take on my form and commit all the horrors of this world."

Next thing you know, I cry every time I think about what I did to Henry as he was only a child.