by Lily Taffel
DEMONS, GHOSTS, WRAITHS, ENTITIES
AND THE CHILDREN ARE NOT IMMUNE
Bad things have been happening to the Millers since they started living in their dream house. Horrifying entities have shown themselves to husband and wife Jim and Susan, and their children, Jenna and Faith, twelve and seven. There is no doubt in the couples' minds that they will fight for their house -- but this is before they find out what they are really dealing with.
In the days and nights that followed, Jim and Susan are both subjected to waking nightmares, shadows in the periphery of their visions, and watching their children repeatedly being put in danger in ways parents will never dare think their children will encounter. Jim tries to find answers by installing cheap surveillance cameras to spending hours at a time online, until he finally admits that they are suffering from the hands of supernatural entities. Talks of leaving the new house altogether suddenly become a serious consideration.
But can they? Or will the malicious and cruel entities let them leave?
Unravel more of this fascinating book, continue reading Oppressed...
~ ~ ~ ~
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Bonus:
Oppressed
1
IT WAS AFTER MIDNIGHT.
Coffee did not help Jim and Susan stay awake because they did not need it. The terrifying attact had the couple, Jim and Susan, fully awake and shaking in their boots. The wraiths had stayed by the windows for a time before fading. When Jim and Sue finally had the courage to move around the second floor after they had left, they found that it was just a few minutes after two in the morning. The children did not wake up. They had gone through the entire event sound asleep.
Jim paced back and forth in Faith’s bedroom. He could not leave the room. Every time he did so, Susan begged him not to go. Not that he had anywhere to go or that he wanted to go. He wanted to be near them, to assure himself more than anything that they were safe or that he was not alone. He felt a tinge of guilt knowing that he also needed comfort when he was the one responsible for his wife and children’s security.
Susan was mostly silent as she sat by the bed where their daughters sleep. Every sound she heard made her look around with her eyes wide. Jim sat down on the floor beside a chair that his wife occupied, silent the entire time, too. From time to time, Susan would speak. She would talk about all the events. But by then she was as overwhelmed as he was to ask about why it was all happening. Or why it was happening to them.
He could not give her any answer. Whatever pretense he had about the entire situation having any rational explanation was gone by then. There was a very real, very sinister feel in the air. He didn’t scare easily--he never had. But what happened to them just topped it. So he sat silent beside his wife, passively acknowledging her questions but not really hearing what she was saying.
As the seconds ticked away, each moments of silence lengthened. Husband and wife battled with their fears individually. They both were thinking of ways to get away from the situation. In the end, husband and wife agreed that there was another option left to them before they could consider leaving their house -- tell someone else about the happenings and ask for professional help.
One thing was sure.
There was not going to be any sleep that night, no matter how badly they wanted to. They couldn’t fall asleep as long as it was still dark. They just couldn’t.
IT WAS HALF PAST SIX in the morning when Jim ventured out of the room. Susan protested, but relented when Jim pointed out that the sky was already lightening up. Sunrise was usually a little after seven in that part of Texas. But Jim was still on edge, remembering the incident about the knives the morning before. He was watchful as he tiptoed his way down the stairs. He still turned the lights on even though morning had started lightening the windows, too. Jim wanted to get his hands on the footage from the cheap cameras he had installed in front of the house.
Jim checked all the doors to make sure they were all locked. Satisfied, he went to his laptop to review the footage. The cheap cameras he bought came with generic software that recorded in both regular and enhanced mode, resulting in four simultaneous feeds showing on screen. He reviewed the captures from the time they went upstairs until the most recent. The four feeds distracted him, not knowing which one to focus on first. With the time needed to review all of it, he didn’t have any choice but to view it at twice the normal speed, one feed at a time.
He started with the camera he had placed on the left side of the porch. It bored him. Jim decided to just view the footage based on his estimated time. He chose between ten at night and three in the morning.
There wasn’t much at first, but as the video feed approached midnight, Jim started to notice things on screen. There seemed to be things of varying sizes floating around. He opened a text application to make a note of the time. As the feed progressed, he found that the orbs of light appeared and disappeared at random. Then the orbs disappeared completely for about seven to ten minutes at close to one in the morning. The next thing that crossed the screen was smoke.
He played it at normal speed then concluded it wasn’t smoke--it went in different directions, most of the time, opposite from where it originally appeared. When the feed suddenly buzzed out, he nearly jumped out of his chair. The screen had shifted from white noise to black then white noise again followed by just whiteness. It happened so suddenly, with no indication at all. He played it at twice the speed again until the feed was restored to normal. When it did, he squinted.
It showed the curious haze still there, and then multiples of it. He remembered something and the hair on his arm stood up. He was dreading the outcome but he had to do it. He paused the video and began counting.
There were only seven of those hazes. He tracked the smoky apparitions on the screen. Just like the orbs, it seemed that some of those were nearer to the camera than the others. He theorized about the apparitions. He had already abandoned the notion that there was a rational explanation for all the happenings in the house. He wanted to eliminate other possibilities as well.
More white noise came on screen, this time it lasted longer. When the images returned, he saw all of the smoky apparitions lined up. It all had that flowing appearance still. Only this time, they appeared like slivers of smoke placed beside each other. There were still seven hazy apparitions.
The lined-up haze stayed in that position for more than an hour and Jim began to wonder if they were artifacts or a defect in the camera. He remembered being told at the store that the camera’s setting was always set to infinity. They were cheap cameras and as such, they didn’t come with the plethora of settings that accompanied those of better quality.
The hazy objects disappeared from the video when the time stamp indicated that it was past two in the morning. There were no orbs or haze after that. He decided to switch to enhanced mode of the same feed. On first glance, it looked like a mix of increased contrast and inverted colors superimposed over the standard video. Having noted exactly when the artifacts appeared on the feed, he jumped to that same time stamp while viewing the enhanced version of the video.
And then, he gasped.
The orbs he saw did not appear on the enhanced video -- but there was something else in its place. He didn’t notice it at first, but around the time that more orbs appeared, it was so obvious he might as well have been slapped.
The reason he did not notice it at first was because there was literally nothing to see!
He switched modes again, this time comparing the two versions of the same video side by side. The laptop had a fourteen inch screen and though this was considered large enough for laptops, as a result of playing the video side by side, the viewing portions were significantly reduced. That didn’t alleviat
e the feeling of absolute dread that welled up inside him as he watched.
It was unmistakable. Jim even set the speed to normal to make sure that he wasn’t imagining things. Wherever an orb appeared, there was a distinct disturbance in the enhanced video. He played and replayed the first instance. It was the same, when an orb appeared on the regular video, there was a distorted field on the same spot on the enhanced video, as if a magnifying glass was being used to comb over the same area.
Then he worked on the feed captured by the camera on the right side of the porch. He set the video to play according to the same selection of time stamps he had taken note of, at least ten minutes before and after. This time, he played both standard and enhanced videos at the same time.
It was the same. Around the same time the orbs appeared on the feed from the first camera, the same distortion was observed in the enhanced video. But he still had options in his head. The cameras could simply be defective. Since the same issue appeared on both feeds, it was easy to be comfortable with the defective camera explanation. He sighed as he closed the video, played them all together, the space for each feed becoming even smaller. More confident but still apprehensive, he got up to get coffee. Still wanting to believe that the cameras were defective, he decided to have them changed as soon as the store was open. It didn’t explain their ordeal that night, but it was something to do nonetheless.
He heard the shuffling of feet upstairs as he returned to the chair where the laptop was. It seemed that his children were already awake. He knew Susan did not--could not--go back to sleep. At least his children were oblivious to the incident.
He looked at the video again. He noticed something peculiar with the screen. It seemed like the monitor was glitching. On closer inspection, he saw what exactly was happening.
It wasn’t the screen, it was the video. He had not paused it when he stood up to make himself coffee. It now played the part where the original video captured the hazy artifacts.
The two original feeds were side by side while the enhanced versions were below the originals. When he first saw it, he wished he was wrong. Never in his life had he wished as hard as he did that moment.
In the enhanced versions, the distortions on the video now took on something very familiar--bodies.
He dropped the cup of coffee. It shattered on the floor to his right, spraying him with small chips of broken glass and droplets of hot coffee.
He did not even feel any pain. The scenes he saw in the video inspired the same kind of terror he had experienced just a few hours before. The distortions on the video that looked like things were being moved around to accommodate invisible masses definitely resembled human-like, figures walking around except there were no humans in the video, only haze on the original video and the distortions on the enhanced versions.
He was propping himself up with his hands on the table where the laptop sat. His knees immediately felt weak. He trembled.
The figures, their expressions, their gaping mouths!
A shiver coursed up and down his spine. It wasn’t right, it didn’t feel right. He lowered himself into the chair.
Jim literally jumped out of his seat when he heard a voice from behind. It was Sue.
2
“DID I HEAR glass break?” she asked.
Jim instantly slammed the laptop shut. It was the last thing he wanted Sue to see. “I accidentally swiped my cup off the table,” he lied.
Susan eyed him. Jim’s expression gave it all away. “Don’t,” she pleaded. “We have passed that point. What did you find?” she asked as she approached him.
“Honey, no. Not now,” said Jim. “For the sake of the children, its best that you do not see this now.”
She saw it in his eyes. He was afraid, more than he cared to admit. She began to doubt her desire to see the footage. She didn’t have any idea what it was, but it was enough to shake him. She turned away to get some rags.
It wasn’t only Susan. Jim noted the tiredness in the eyes of his wife. She was sluggish, as if she was ready to just crash at any second. The cameras were probably fine, so his priorities changed. He would let his wife get the rest that she needed. He couldn’t chance anything happening while he was out.
The children were lively during breakfast. Sue and Jim pretended to be, but their eyes spoke of the same thing. Jim finished up fast and headed out to smoke. “I need to get my head around this,” he whispered in his wife’s ear. “Don’t let them out of your sight.”
He headed straight to the walkway near the river. There was a plethora of possibilities that occurred to him and his wandering mind got lost in it. He recalled stories, most of them during his childhood, some of them from fellow truckers, about supernatural or paranormal things. By the time he figured out what to do, he had already gone through half of his pack of tens.
He went back to the house. They were all done eating and from the looks of it, from taking a shower as well.
“Nice to see you up and about,” he said as he leaned and hugged Jenna, planting a kiss on her forehead.
“Daddy, Daddy. When can we watch cartoons?” asked Faith before her older sister could respond.
“Soon, honey. We’ll get to that soon.”
“The TV only shows cartoons once a day, and-- and it’s the same show,” said Faith.
“I know, honey. I get bored watching it, too.”
“Your toys will have to do for now,” said Susan.
“But for how long?” asked the little girl.
“As soon as the cable guy comes here,” Jim answered, closing the conversation.
“Can I get internet?” This time it was Jenna.
“As a matter of fact, I’m going to try it out right now,” he answered.
“Really? We will have internet now?”
“I’m not sure yet, dear. Hopefully it does. Can’t wait to L-O-L again,” he answered.
“Eeewww, Dad!” protested Jenna.
“What?”
“You’re old. You’re not supposed to use that!”
“My generation invented the internet. That gives us the right to use whatever you use or do with the internet.”
“You’re old. You only use TV and newspaper,” Jenna persisted.
“Yeah?” he said in a challenging tone while looking at his wife who was smiling, “I’ll show you who’s old.”
He grabbed Jenna and slung her over his shoulder. The girl squealed. He ran to the porch and went out of the house with his daughter still on his shoulder, threatening to tie her to a tree. Faith was on their heels shouting with glee.
Susan looked at her family, enjoying the outdoors as if nothing had been happening. She went out, too, but decided to stay in the porch. She watched them for a time and then called out. “Hey, you guys come back here now or you’ll be smelly soon.”
“Daddy is smelly!” replied Faith. “He had not showered yet!”
Jim put his daughter down. Only then did he realize that Jenna didn’t have slippers on.
“Well, I guess you’re showering again.”
“Old,” she answered and raced back to the porch before Jim could react.
Susan scolded Jim for his antics. He replied by kissing her, a kiss she did not shy away from.
“Yeech,” commented Faith, who was shaking her head.
Jim and Susan burst out laughing. This is a good place, he thought, as he headed up to take a quick shower. If I can only sort this out, this is a great place.
The first thing he did after taking a shower was to call his cellphone provider to learn more about his plan coverage. Jim ended up upgrading his plan to unlimited data on top of the unlimited calls and text.
Jim was told that he could take it out anytime and revert to his old one if it didn’t work. He agreed. Once that was set up, he tested his connection by browsing some sites on his phone and the laptop--the coverage was horrible. He had to wait up to a minute for pages to load. But that didn’t stop him.
He wanted to do some research. W
hatever was happening in the house, it was out of his control. He had thought about calling people, friends, and family, to talk to them about it. But he held back on that, at least for the time being. There was no telling what their reactions would be and that might just make things worse.
Jim’s first thought was to research about haunted houses. He abandoned the idea as soon as he thought of it. Their house was new. There had not been a structure there when he bought the land. It was just tall grass and trees, except for the clearing that he built his house on. So Jim settled for the generic term for his family’s experiences--hauntings.
His emotions varied greatly while reading the stuff that he found online. After just a few pages he was tempted to just go to an online video site like YouTube, where he would at least see the comments before the video loaded and know if it was worth watching or not. After one try, Jim reverted back to reading web pages.
He read about experiences that were similar to those that his household was exposed to, but the differences were also glaring. There were sites that offered more information and there were those that resembled the ramblings of an overly-imaginative person. He used to chuckle when he came across those. But he couldn’t even summon a smile now.
In about an hour of mostly waiting for pages to load, Jim already had a vague idea of what might be happening to them.
Poltergeist activity was one that matched some of the incidents. The knives standing one on top of the other definitely qualified as that. When he read the accounts, he found himself nodding in agreement.
After reading for close to a quarter of an hour, he abandoned the poltergeist search. It did not explain many of the incidents. He turned towards apparitions and ghostly phenomena. Though he was piqued and even entertained by some of it, he found that ghostly apparitions stayed exactly like that--apparitions.
Over the next hour, Jim continued his reading. Leftover energies, psychic manifestations of burdened minds, shared delusions, entities, recurring nightmares, portents of impending disasters, and vortexes and portals from one plane to another--Jim read them all. None of them had a more disturbing effect than what he chanced upon.
