Jonathan Doyle's Last Blog Post

My name is Jonathan Doyle. 

If you’re a regular to this blog, This is going to be a different post than usual.

Recently, some pretty bizarre events have taken place in the small northern New Hampshire town where I live. I feel the need to document in detail everything that has happened . . . That is happening. I’m afraid I might lose track of some of the details, too.

I've lived in this town most of my life. I know almost everyone in it, and they know me. I never married. I live alone in the house I’ve been in for the last twenty-eight years.  For all of this time, my next-door neighbor has been Bob Harris. Since these events concern Bob mostly, it’s important that I tell you a little about him. 

Bob may have been my neighbor, but that doesn’t mean we were friends. I rarely saw him, and when I did, it was usually just in passing as he went in and out of his house. I have a pretty decent front porch. I usually sit out there at the end of the day, rocking and unwinding with a cigar in one hand and a bourbon in the other. It was from this vantage point that I knew Bob. He was a character: overweight, disheveled, and grumpy as hell. He never waved hello. He never even seemed to notice he had a neighbor. A couple of times after I first moved into my house, I shouted a greeting to him from the porch as he came and went with his dog Brutus. He would lift his head and just stare in my direction before moving on. 

Despite his grumpiness, Bob was a kind of fixture in town. He had somehow managed to endear himself to the locals. This could well be because we all felt sorry for him after what happened to his wife Nancy. That was years ago now, of course—even before I had moved in next door to him—but no one has forgotten it. 

Bob always wore the same thing: a green plaid sweater over old, stained, brown pants. Every morning, without fail, he would walk his miniature schnauzer, Brutus, to Me And Ollies, a popular coffee shop in the town center. It wasn’t uncommon for him to yell at the kids who tried to pat his dog. And when I say yell, I don’t mean that he would just snap at them. I mean he would launch into an incoherent rant. Other than that, other than the yelling, I never heard or saw him speak to anyone. Honestly, I don’t even know how we all got to calling his dog “Brutus.” That’s just what everyone called him.

In any case, about a month ago, around the start of October—I forget the exact date—I noticed some strange people showing up at Bob’s house. The first time I saw them, I was sitting in the rocking chair on my front porch just before sunset. It was one of those cool fall evenings that make living in New England worth the winters. As I rocked gently, nursing my drink, I noticed five elderly men in faded denim overalls parading in a line through Bob’s rusty front gate. They made their way along the stone path dividing his overgrown lawn and gathered in a row before his front door. I heard the sound of his doorbell. The entire scene impressed me, not least because of the oddity of the group, but also because in the twenty-eight years I’d lived next to Bob, no one had ever come to visit him.  The state of his front yard was enough to deter even the most zealous door to door evangelist. What was strange was that the five men weren’t grouped together around his door as they waited for him to answer. They approached in a line, the first man ringing the doorbell, with all the others lined up behind him. From the door to the gate, evenly spaced, they stood like tall-standing stakes on the rocky path.

I didn’t see Bob, but I did see the door open. I watched as the five men entered one by one, still in a line, without saying anything. I heard no greeting from Bob or any of them. Even more strange was the fixed expressions on their faces. They showed no emotion at all. They just walked into the house, almost in perfect rhythm, with faces set like flint.

If that had been all that happened, I would have written it off as some kind of reunion Bob was having with some strange buddies. But the next evening, the exact same thing happened again. The men showed up—they must have walked because I never saw them get out of a car—entered through the front gate, walked towards the door in single file, rang the doorbell one after the other, and then waited. The door opened, and they entered in single file just as they had the previous evening – no words exchanged, no emotion on their faces. It was almost like they were pretending to be robots. I had no idea how Bob could be connected to such a strange bunch of men.

The next day I made sure I was home right after work to see if they'd come back. And sure enough, they did: the same five old men, wearing the same denim overalls and the same blank expressions, and with no words spoken. I watched as they entered slowly and methodically into Bob’s house. 

For a few days, this was the routine every evening. But then, on Friday, things took a different turn. After nightfall, I began to hear strange sounds coming from Bob's house. The sounds were . . . Oh, I don’t know . . . I can’t really describe them. The closest I can get is to say that it sounded like a host of cockroaches were being squashed under foot. It was a sort of crunchy, wet sound – but amplified and prolonged. It would last for several seconds and then stop and then a few minutes later would start again. 

The first night I didn’t give it much thought. I just put ear plugs in and went back to sleep. The next night around 2:00am, however, the sound got so loud I couldn’t ignore it. I got up and walked to the window to take a peek at Bob’s place. Every single light in his house was on. I grabbed my bathrobe and headed downstairs. I opened my front door and stood on the porch wondering what the hell was going on. No sooner did this question come to mind, however, than all the lights in Bob’s house went off. Every single one of them. All at once. Just as abruptly, the sound that had awakened me ceased, too. It was as if someone had thrown a switch and everything that was going on suddenly shut down. My first thought, in fact, was that we were having a power outage, but a quick glance down the street revealed that the lights on other homes were still on. I could even see the orange glow of my own bedroom lamp coming from the window upstairs. 

I debated for a moment if I should walk over and ring Bob’s doorbell. Maybe he needed help. But knowing Bob as I did, I figured he wouldn’t appreciate the intrusion. As I turned to walk back inside, however, I saw Bob’s front door open. Silently, and with that strange mechanical gait, the five old men in denim overalls walked out in single file.  Only this time, instead of looking blankly ahead, they were very animated. They were mouthing at the air as if . . . They were acting like those clowns you see at carnivals, you know, the ones in the games where you try to throw a ping pong ball in their mouths. Each of their heads bobbed in unison from left to right, but loosely, as if their necks were made of wire coil. None of them made a sound or acknowledged the presence of the others. The man at the front of the line pushed open the rusty gate and turned into the street, moving away from my vantage point on the porch. The other four followed and did likewise until all of them, their heads bobbing, had dissolved into the dark of night.

 My blood ran cold as I watched this scene. My body felt weak. I made a grab for the railing on the porch stairs as I slid onto the top step. Perhaps if I had had more courage I would have called out to them or gone over to check on Bob. But I didn’t. There was something so unnatural about the scene . . . something so wrong . . . but not in a normal way. Whoever or whatever those men were, I was pretty sure I wanted nothing to do with them. Instead, I walked quickly inside, turned the lock on door handle and slid the security chain firmly in place. I climbed the stairs with some speed and took refuge in my bedroom, again closing the door and – something I never did – locked the door. I moved to the window and looked down on Bob’s big, dark house, searching for any sign of life. Maybe those strange men would come back. Maybe whatever they were doing with Bob was not finished. I stood still for a long time – how long, I can’t say – but eventually I felt my legs growing stiff. I sat down on my bed and then lay down, staring into the gloom of my room until I eventually fell asleep.

I woke up to more gloom. The sun was up but hidden by a heavy cover of clouds. For a minute, I thought that what had happened the night before was just a bad dream. It was all too strange. TOO strange. Yes, it had to be some kind of prank. What seemed so scary the night before now seemed silly in the sober light of morning. I threw some clothes on and ran downstairs. I walked boldly to Bob’s house and did something I had never done before – I went through his front gate and up to his door. To the right and left of me was his wild, uncut lawn and piles of trash. I rang the doorbell. No response. I rang it again and knocked. I knocked harder. I started calling to him between knocking and pressing the doorbell. Finally, I tried the handle. The door creaked as it slowly moved inward.  

I called out to a Bob one last time and then entered the house. To my astonishment I found that it was empty. There were no pictures on the walls, no furniture, no curtains, nothing. I walked into the kitchen and found no kitchen table and chairs, no fridge or any appliances on the counter tops. Curious now, I started opening cupboards only to discover that they, too, were empty. No plates or glasses – no food items anywhere. Over everything there was a thick layer of dust. It was as if the house hadn’t been lived in for months. But I knew that wasn’t so. 

As I turned to leave, I noticed a door ajar. I walked over and looked through the opening. The light from the kitchen windows shown through the crack, revealing stairs to the cellar. I grabbed the side of the door and pulled it towards me. Immediately, I was hit by a sharp, acrid smell that put a metallic taste on my tongue. I took a breath through my mouth and then held my hand over my nose as I headed slowly down the narrow, wooden staircase. The fragile, makeshift railing gave me barely any support on the uneven steps. 

As I went lower and lower into the basement, a terrifying sight unfolded before my eyes. I never knew a man could stretch . . . could be made to stretch like that . . . from wall to wall, from floor to ceiling . . . like melted plastic that had been stretched without coming apart . . . or mozzarella pulling away from a hot slice of pizza. I collapsed from the bottom step onto the cold cement floor. My eyes turned in my head, darting back and forth, up and down, my mind hopelessly trying to make sense of it all: What is was, how it was, what was keeping it all pressed against the walls like that - like some strange decorative art!

Just before I blacked out, I saw the dead body of little Brutus lying in the center of it all like the black ovary of some large pink wilting flower.  

I don’t know how long I was out. I have no memory of coming to or ascending the cellar stairs or even getting back to my house. All I remember is waking up in my bathroom shower, naked and cold, and shivering from head to toe. I wrapped myself in a bathrobe and looked out of my bedroom window. The sun was setting. I didn’t have the stomach to just stand there. What I had seen in the cellar kept coming back to me like a wave of nausea. I had to do something to distract myself. I poured some bourbon and sat at the kitchen table, mindlessly flipping through yesterday’s paper.  

A few minutes later, my doorbell rang. I stood up, startled by the sound. I walked towards the door thinking it must be the police and only then did I realize that I’d never called them. I sidled up to the thin horizontal window by the front door and lifted the curtain back slightly. There they were, with their inanimate faces, standing in a line. 

My heart began to thump painfully in my chest, and I felt a cold wash go down my back. I began mumbling incoherently, but then covered my mouth quickly for fear that they would hear me. At the same time, I felt a strange desire to welcome them in, to befriend them, if possible, to … apologize for keeping them waiting … I walked backward toward the wall opposite the door, groping for it with my hand. When I made contact, I slid down toward the floor, my eyes never leaving the door. I shuddered when the doorbell rang again, and then again, and again. Five times. If I had been able to move, I probably would have let the men in, but my limbs were stiffened with fear. 

After several minutes, I heard footsteps leaving the porch and then heading down the path in front of my house. I heard the gate whine as it opened and then shut with a click. Gathering my courage, I crawled across the floor and lifted the curtain once more. The five men were on the road, moving away from my house. I breathed a sigh of relief, got up, and walked into the kitchen. In a single gulp, I downed what was left of the bourbon … And that brings me to now. Sitting here in the glow of this computer screen writing this blog. Not knowing what the hell is going or why it was I would think to welcome them in my house. I’m going to pack a bag and head to my brother’s house in Manchester. I don’t know when I’ll be back. I just have to get out of here. 

Oh God … I just heard the front gate open. … The doorbell. … they’re back. Okay, well, I better get going. Don’t want to leave them waiting. It’s so cold out there. I couldn’t just leave them standing on the porch. 

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