My Aunt Collected People's Last Moments, and Now I Think She's Haunting Me

I had managed to get to sleep the night after I smelled that strange, putrid odor. I had an awful nightmare that seemed to just last and last endlessly.

I saw Diana, not as I remembered her, but as a corpse. Her skin was pale and sagging, her lips purple, and her fingernails caked with mud and blood. I dreamt she was in a coffin in the backyard, scratching and clawing and desperately trying to get out. Her mouth kept jutting open, as if she was silently screaming, the ridges of her jaw pressing and stretching her already deflated skin, then finally closing like a fish.

I could feel her desperation, her insane and absolute need to escape her own coffin. Tears snaked down her face silently as her silent scream drew itself out longer and longer. Beneath her, between the boards of the coffin, I could see a cavernous abyss expand out beneath the thin wooden frame. It sounds insane, but that darkness, that yawning void felt hungry. Blood seeped between the boards, past Diana's panicking frame, and leaked between the cracks.

I woke up in the middle of the night, the red-tinted moon seeping through the curtains reminded me of the blood in Diana's coffin. I groaned and stepped out of bed, my feet landing on something wet and thick. I gasped, scrambling back onto the bed and grabbing a knife off my nightstand. As I switched on the lamp, hands shaking, I leaned over the edge of the bed and saw what seemed to be a puddle of thick, congealed water.

"Drool? What the fuck?" I said out loud. I got off the bed, this time taking care to avoid the small puddle. Finally turning the lights on, I saw the puddle my foot had unexpectedly landed in, along with a thin trail leading towards my bedroom door, which itself was open, contrary to my shutting and locking it before I went to bed. As I was stepping around the puddle, my feet tracing around the wooden floor, I realized a small spot on the ground next to the puddle was...warm like something had been sitting there, right next to the bed where I slept.

Holding the kitchen knife in front of me like it was a flashlight, I pushed into the dark hallway. The red moonlight bed into the living room like an evil star was blazing bright in the sky. It looked like the house was covered in a thin, translucent stain of blood. I briefly wondered if this was a nightmare, if I would just wake up in my bed and nothing strange had crawled out from my aunt's home.

The taxidermy room door was open, spelling out an ominous invitation. It was dark inside, the blinds having apparently stayed closed, unlike the living room. In the barest glint of the moonlight that bounced down the hallway into the room, I could see the faint glint of two eyes staring back at me from the center of the room. I could feel heat emanating from the room like a furnace burning in the dark.

With a trembling hand, I switched on the light only to reveal Benny, sitting in the exact same spot as before. His pink, artificially undead tongue still hanging stiff out of his mouth like he was mid-pant. His mouth glinted in the luminescent light, like there was a thin layer of saliva seeping out of his dead throat. His collar dangled as my bent-over weight, a metal heart with his name etched into it. However, as it swayed, I noticed there was more writing on the back.

"Davidson and Sons Taxidermy, a gift to a fellow lover of animals." I looked around, finding similar markings on the small brass plaques beneath the staring dead heads of dear and ducks stuck in flight. A single taxidermy shop made all of these, which meant my aunt had to be going to this shop consistently and spent a ton of money on these. I couldn't help but feel all of their black eyes on me, still, but focused. I could feel my own heartbeat, like a lone lit candle amongst melted wax and burnt-out wicks. I felt a strange jealousy from their stares, like my very act of standing was something they all, desperately, wanted to do.

Unnerved, I turned the light off and walked off, rubbing my aching eyes and making my way to the kitchen to grab some of the meager groceries I brought in with me. My mind was still stained by the strange dream, so I decided to keep pushing myself through the coffin closet tapes and see what else was in there. I dreaded it, but also had a strange excitement. 'If these end up being real,' I thought to myself, 'You are not going to be excited.'

Sitting down with a bowl of chili, I pushed the second tape into the VCR and watched as the screen buzzed to life once more. Suddenly, the sound of heavy breath and pounding feet loudly coming from the TV nearly made me bolt out of my seat. The video was shaky, rapidly swaying back and forth in concert with the sounds of running. A long, dark hallway stretched out in front of the operator, the grainy quality giving the whole thing a dreamlike quality.

The camera stopped in front of a door that was letting out a high-pitched, electronic whine. A heart monitor letting anyone nearby know of a lack of activity, of the soul leaving the body and disappearing beyond the veil. Maybe that was what my aunt was trying to do. I had heard of people attempting to give themselves near-death experiences, and maybe, that's what my aunt was trying to replicate.

The door creaked open as my aunt peeked inside, revealing a similar scene to the last one. Same bed, same table and flowers, but now an old man, bald, with a patchy white beard, unhealthy bruises on his face where his hair had fallen out. His eyes were so sunk into his skull, I thought they were melted into his brain. His entire head looked like a skeleton someone had wrapped a thin deli meat around and stuck white hair onto, he resembled a toddlers clay recreation of a dying man.

His chest was rapidly filling and then emptying, a heart monitor beside him beeping only once every few seconds. The camera was sat down on a table opposite of the old man's bed, as I finally saw my aunt kneel down next to the bed, tears streaming down her face.

She looked so much younger than I remembered, her face lacking any of the wrinkles that seemed to be everpresent the few times she haunted my life. Her hair pulled up into a tight ponytail, adorned in scrubs. Her hands shook as she gripped the bed, staring up at the dying man with desperate pleading eyes.

It went on for another agonizing three minutes, Diana sinking further and further into the ground as the man's heartbeat and breathing slowing, and slowing, and slowing.

The old man took a final, shuddering gasp, pained and barely audible due to the distance. His chest collapsed, and his head lulled to the side, the dead weight making the corpse stare straight at Diana.

His eyes pulled themselves out of his skull like snakes leaving their dens. The flesh around his neck tightened, straining, exposing all of the muscles and veins inside. My aunt croaked out, tearfully, "Please."

The old man's chest heaved, I could hear liquid slosh around in his freshly dead lungs, like water balloons of flesh and phlegm.

"She is here. Dug until her bones were grinded into dust. It devoured the rest."

My aunt began shaking her head vigorously, like she was trying to shake off the words.

"She still speaks. I can hear her, echoing down the halls. Her words live."

"Please," my aunt croaked, "Please don't..."

The man's chest collapsed for a final time, his head lulled, his eyes receded into his dead head. My aunt sat on the ground, covering her face as she began to sob even more violently.

"Oh god, oh god..." I heard her whisper, desperate, pleading.

The tape cut off, abruptly. In the quiet left behind, my aunt's essence lingered in my mind. Everything was so goddamn odd, and awful. My eyes drifted out towards the backyard, noticing a splotch of brown amidst the green grass and black shadows of night. I got up and looked out the screen door.

It looked like someone had been digging, a small, maybe three or four foot circle of upturned ground. I had to assume it was some sort of armadillo or mole.

I've decided to take a commentor's advice and head out to town and sleep in my car. This trip has turned from trying to collect and learn from my aunt's past life to something else entirely, and I'm wondering if I should even keep watching these things. I think I might try to track down that taxidermy shop on Benny's collar, see if I can find anything left of her there.

Diana was looking for something, I think, and I want to follow this paper trail. I don't want Diana's memory to just fade away into obscurity, to end up another name in a graveyard. In a way, I don't want to either. Maybe if I can keep her memory alive, ressurect what I can from her life, a bit of me can keep living on too. Probably lofty ideas, but I'd do anything to bat away the anxieties that have been plaguing me since I headed out here.

I'll update when I get anything else.

K.