I sort of left off yesterday at the moment my husband and I both saw Gus with his poodle taking an evening stroll through the neighbourhood. If you haven't read
part 1 you probably should do that first or none of the following will make sense to you.
It already makes little sense enough to me, and I'm right in the middle of it. Worst of all, now it seems like my husband, who usually is the one who is "the voice of reason" between the two of us, is getting way too excited about this all, too.
So there we were, looking at Gus and his poodle through our window.
We were both too baffled to react for a couple of minutes. First staring incredulously at Gus and his poodle, then at each other. I didn't scream and drop the watering can and splash water all over the living room, as one would do in a movie. No. I just, as if on autopilot, finished watering the plants, put the watering can down and plopped back down on the couch.
“This is ridiculous,” my husband broke the silence. “Huge ghost hounds, sure. That's something you hear about sometimes. But a ghost poodle? Precious the Pretty Poodle from the Past? Come on now. Gus simply adopted another old poodle, like we said earlier. Next time we meet him, we'll ask him about it and you'll see.”
“To hell with that,” I replied. “Firstly, I talked to Gus earlier when I saw him with his Jack Russell. Gus did NOT mention getting a new poodle and he certainly would have, because he talked my ear off for more than twenty minutes about his deceased poodle and how he now only had little Bertie the Jack Russell as comfort and companion. Secondly, that poodle's name was Curly, not Precious. And thirdly, that poodle hurts me a lot less than the damn stair carpet did.”
“We must have imagined the carpet somehow... associating your spectacular tumble off the stairs with the danger we used to see in the carpet, or so.”
“Jonathan, come on. You saw it. I know you did. And look at my leg. That is not an appearing bruise from bouncing off bare wooden stairs. That is carpet burn.”
“I don't know what to think anymore. Want me to get you some Dafalgan against the pain?”
“Make that two Dafalgans with Codeine and we have a deal. Carpet or no carpet, I'm going to be so sore in the morning. Everything hurts.”
“Ghost poodle indeed,” I heard him mumble to himself while he was dissolving the tablets in a glass of water for me. “We can't ever tell such a thing to anyone, they'd think we were crazy or making it up.”
And just right by those words, I knew exactly where I could tell this story. So I wrote most of it down last night and published it here as some of you may have noticed.
“Promise me one thing though,” I asked of my husband. “Do NOT try to talk to Gus about this. Not to prove you right, not to try and ease my mind. Please. It just has too much potential of being unbearably hurtful to the poor old man. Plus, there are other things that have been happening that I haven't told you about yet.”
“No more of it tonight,” he yawned.
“Alright then. I'm writing it all down and you can read it in the morning, alright?”
“Sounds good.”
Now what you should know about me, is that I am a big skeptic when it comes to anything supernatural. Had it just been me seeing things, I would have concluded without a doubt that I had just been working too hard and my mind was playing tricks on me. The things I cannot explain away rationally though, are that Jonathan admitted, at least at first, that he had seen the carpet and that he also saw the poodle. Him seeing the poodle, in combination with my earlier conversation with Gus, just did not add up. Also, aside from the pain in all my bones, my carpet burn itched.
After publishing the first part of my weird experiences on here, I got very sleepy. A combination of quetiapine, valium and dafalgan codeine will do that to you. Or to me, at least. I don't know what it would do to you, since many of you mention to be lacking sleep. I slept like a rock, though.
This morning, I got up to quite a bit of pain and a rainbow of bruising, but nevertheless to a bright sunshiny day. Dragged myself out of bed and carefully down the carpet-free stairs. Been glancing through the window from time to time since I woke up and started to continue my story, expecting to see Gus with either Bertie or Curly wandering down the street. Haven't seen him with either of them so far. Oh well.
The street looked up to date, as it's supposed to be. People walking by from time to time. My own dog is acting normal, goofy and loving as always. Husband woke up and I let him read the part that I wrote yesterday evening.
“So, let's summarise,” he said in a business-like manner. “When you drove home yesterday around half past four, you sort of looked right through the new blue block of the frozen vegetables factory as if it wasn't there?”
“Sort of,” I shrugged, immediately regretting that because it sent a pang of pain through my already aching shoulders.
“Maybe it was wishful thinking. We all wished that this ugly thing wouldn't have been built there.”
“Possible. But the Pratchett book shelf? You know I had cleared that shelf to fill it with books. And that godforsaken Mini-Anne? You watched me fold it up and put it into its box when I came home happily that day because I had scored so highly on the CPR test!”
“I don't know,” he said. “Yeah, wait, I do remember that. Wanna go take a look at your hobby room together?”
So we did. And there we were met by the weirdest thing so far: the books were neatly on the shelf, but the Mini-Anne was still lying in the corner where I had thrown her.
“You're not pranking me, are you?” Jonathan asked suddenly, looking at me with vague suspicion.
“Of course! I always throw myself off the stairs when I prank people. Fun times! Dude. You've known me long enough. I don't DO pranks. And no, before you ask, it wasn't just a panic attack either. When I get a normal, or at least normal-for-me panic attack, I breathe deeply and walk carefully, I don't scream and run around recklessly.”
“Well then,” he concluded. “Assuming that you are 100% right about Gus not having a poodle, that the new factory building appears and disappears randomly in your sight, and that some of your belongings spontaneously jump in and out of places where you have stored them...”
I looked at him oddly as I saw an ever so slight change in his demeanor and heard something in his voice, all indicating a shifting of attitude towards this whole thing, as if he was actually getting sort of excited about it, rather than scared, disbelieving or confused.
“Yes?” I asked apprehensively.
“Then there are two possibilities!” He now started to raise his voice in excitement, pacing up and down the room. “Either,” he continued, casually picking up the Mini-Anne and starting to let the air out of it, “it is all random, and we are incidentally seeing things from the past, which would already be interesting enough. Maybe some other people see that poodle, what was his name again, Perky...”
“Curly,” I interrupted. “What is it with you thinking that poodle names should start with a P?”
“Whatever... as I was saying, maybe some other people are seeing it as well, but just don't dare to mention it because they all think they are the only ones who see Pearly and everyone else would deem them crazy! Just imagine it. It's just like in the story about the Emperor's new clothes. Everyone sees it, but nobody dares to mention it! Isn't that fascinating!” He folded up the Mini-Anne firmly.
“It's CURLY,” I tried once more. “Poodles have curls, hence Curly, okay? And you are starting to sound like a drunk impression of David Tennant's version of the Doctor. Dare I ask what the second possibility is?”
“The second possibility is that it is you,” he replied, shoving the flattened Mini-Anne into its box and putting the box inside the trunk where I had last stored it.
“But you see things too,” I protested, “it's not me being crazy! Well I know I'm on a bunch of meds and all, but I swear I'm not...”
“No,” Jonathan interrupted. “Not like that. It's like you have some sort of gift, a power, call it whatever you want, to make things appear like they were in the past. Even to have the people who are with you, like I was yesterday when we saw the carpet and the poodle, witness blasts from the past.”
“Are you sure that you are not the one who should take some valium and lie down for a bit this time?” I asked.
“Think of the possibilities though. Just think. Imagine you could learn to control this. We could talk to people from the past. We could have our late dogs back with us for a day or so.”
“Whoa now! Stop. Stop right there!” I raised my voice. “Ever heard of Pet Sematary? No, of course you haven't. You don't like horror books or movies. Ever heard of “The Monkey's Paw”? Dear, you never ever try to bring dead animals or people back to life. Ever. Nor do you try to contact them through ouija boards or any other rituals. It is a lot more dangerous than falling down a ghost-carpeted flight of stairs.”
“I thought you were such a skeptic. Then why such fear?” he asked, taken aback by my rant.
“Think what you want. I know my skepticism and my constant discouraging people against using ouija boards or even playing games like Bloody Mary are inconsistant. I don't care. If this is something in me, I am not training it, I am not nurturing it, I am not using it. No. Way.”
Jonathan just looked at me and sat there for a while, thinking.
“But those little cute farmhouses on the end of the street,” he finally said.
“They are gone, Jonathan. They are in the past.”
“I remember you saying several times that you regretted not urbexing them before they were torn down.”
“Urbex... what now?” I could not believe my ears. “You were always the one advising me against urbexing them. You did not want me to urbex anything whatsoever, and I never did. You did not want me to get in trouble. And now you want me not only to explore some dilapidated houses, but to try to make them appear out of the past to do so? Are you fucking kidding me?”
He smiled. “You know,” he said, “I always regretted it afterwards, too. Think for example, that angel statue that never got taken out of the little niche in the wall, and was just thrown out with the rest of the rubble of the ruined houses. If only we had rescued it... it was pretty.”
I rubbed my face. “Look,” I said, “I don't even know where to start with this. What the hell has gotten into you? You are using this word urbexing but by suggesting to get that statue, you are already showing you don't know the capital rules of it, which are: “Take only pictures, leave only footprints.” Also. You never even wanted to watch the episodes about the Weeping Angels with me because they scare you – and now you're telling me you are suddenly interested into some kind of statue that comes quite close to them. Thirdly, you should read some of the experiences with urban exploring that people tell about on nosleep.”
“Nosleep is fiction,” he minimalised. “So are Weeping Angels.”
“Right. Until they are staring you in the face. Or until a building collapses on you. Look, all the stuff that happened yesterday and the day before was bad enough. I will not go looking for more trouble. No statues, no little cute houses, no dead people and definitely NO MORE POODLES!”
Though, already while I was stating this so firmly, a foreboding feeling crept onto me that more trouble would soon find me.