I have taken measurements of the thing in metric. I do not wish to share those publicly, because I am afraid it will know that I am talking about it. I can smell the waves from here. Sine waves. Big ones. Juicy ones. Even at low tide, they overtake the saws and triangles, rummaging through the canal of every wet ear in this hell-house.
The thing is pretty tall — I feel comfortable saying that. There are lots of tall things, so I doubt it’ll know I’m talking about it. And now we have it standing in the closet in the hallway. We usually use that for towels and shit we don’t want to keep in the room, but I had to get rid of the shelves and now all those towels are piled high in our walk-in and it pisses me off. It’s so many towels. It’s towels from when I lived at home and from when I moved to my first apartment and then the house and the second house. They’re reek like wet feet but I don’t want to throw them out because it feels like a waste. There’s probably something we could do with them.
I considered maybe covering the thing in towels but I was afraid I’d suffocate it or something. I don’t want to hurt it. I don’t want it to hurt us. It’s just so hard to look at. We haven’t opened the closet in three days, I think. Abby kept on opening it a crack and shining her phone light in there. The last time she did it, she froze in place and turned around slowly when I came into the hallway.
She said, “Pal’s face was right at the door.”
That’s what she calls him: “Pal.”
At night, I can hear Pal breathing. It sounds like a song. Makes sense, because it has piano-teeth. Like both the white and the black keys. Looks like the top row starts at E. Bottom row is all jank, so I can’t tell. There’s like two octaves down there. I don’t like to look at Pal too long since he has no eyes. His musical breathing keeps me up and puts me to sleep at the same time so that I’m always teetering on the edge of a dream. My Apple Watch says I haven’t slept in sixteen days. I’ve spent a lot on coffee and Monster energy and it’s fucking with my gas budget.
I thought it was just some tall guy first when it showed up at my door. It was night and it was dark out besides my dim porch light and I looked through the peephole. I was scared, duh, because it was like twelve at night and it was just standing there just far enough so I could see its whole body standing at the porch. It was moving around a lot.
Then, the next morning, it was in the kitchen. Mel, my youngest daughter, is the one who saw it first. She came up to the room and knocked on the door at like six AM and said that she wanted to get a water but the “stretchy man” scared her. Ash and I bolted up out of bed. I got my bowie knife out of the nightstand and ran to the kitchen. It was just standing there, doing that breathing song thing. It waved. I waved. It sat at the table and started finishing my crossword puzzle.
I was mad at first, but then I realized I’d never finish it anyway.
Pal doesn’t bother us much besides the musical breathing thing. He just sits in the closet and sometimes he cries when he thinks no one is around. One time, a bunch of tears flooded from under the door. I’m starting to get used to him, almost like a pet.