Jesse Teller

It is happening in the living room for god sakes! That is kinda funny if you think about it, lol.

He isn’t really scary. He is kinda boring looking. He has short hair and is sort of balding. He is wearing a suit. He has a bag or a briefcase with him. I can’t really make it out. He is a bit portly and he looks bored. Which I guess kinda works for me because he just sits or stands in my fuckin’ living room all the time at different times of day and in different places.

The first time I saw him he was standing in my chair when I was headed there to watch TV. I just kinda stood there not knowing what to do or what to say. He was in my fuckin’ chair. But see now, that is misleading. He was standing in the same place as my chair sits. He was knee deep in my chair. He wasn’t exactly looking at me but he was aware of me.
Teth let out a low growl.

Then suddenly I couldn’t see him anymore. I didn’t really know what to do or what to think. See, sometimes to keep us in line or just to fuck with us, Jack will show us that kind of thing. Something crawling on our wall on its hands and feet spouting scripture, or a dead body laying on the floor when I walk into the room. He likes—no loves—to fuck with us, especially me. He knows it really gets to me. He is an ass.

But this didn’t feel like Jack. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t him. But it didn’t feel like him. He is more over the top. He is more bloody or disturbing. Jack can be subtle, but he is a believer in more is more. If it was only me seeing these things, then I would think Jack.
So I waited and, sure enough, later that night I was in the floor doing some damn thing with Bekah. Wrapping Christmas presents or some shit and there he was. I shifted out. I waited and shifted back. He was there and Shade was freaking out about it. He had seen the guy, too. So I just said, fuck it man, and I asked the question I absolutely hate fucking asking. “Do you see a guy standing in the room?”

Bekah looked at me first. I was looking away from her, couldn’t look her in the eye just yet. She looked at the room. God bless her she actually looked. And she said, “No, honey.” See, if she had seen it too, then I would be somehow okay with it. She is sensitive to that sort of thing and she can usually tell when some shit is going down, so I asked her. She felt and saw nothing.

Later he was on the end of the couch. He was just sitting there, looking straight ahead, chillin. He didn’t look like he was sitting exactly where the chair was, maybe a little higher, like he was on a different piece of furniture. I was sitting with RK, watching some shit, don’t remember what, and I asked him as calmly as I could, “Do you see a guy sitting on the end of the couch?” Of course that was a “No.” He asked me what the guy looked like. That is when the dude turned and looked straight in my fucking eyes, man. I couldn’t answer the question. I just couldn’t. I sat there letting it hang, and he kept looking at me. I am really good at dealing with this sort of thing, because of Jack seeing things no one else does. So I played it off pretty well, but shit man, my blood was running cold.

I described him, but not really well. Kinda like I did with you guys just now, but that is not really saying it, to tell you his dimensions and what he is wearing is not really telling the story. Let me try again.

He seems to be waiting for something. Like a bus or a train or something. He is waiting for something to get there or something to happen. Or, and this one keeps me up at night, he is waiting for someone.

Tonight RK was sitting at the end of the couch, in the spot that I am now referring to as the Dead Zone, and he showed up, sitting in nearly the same spot as RK. They were taking up the same space. He was half in RK, but sitting a little higher, because like I said, he is not really sitting on that piece of furniture. He looked at me and his face was half in the top of RK’s head so that I could only see the eyes and the top of the head, like he was submerged in RK like a pool of water or a lake.

Very calmly I asked RK to move from where he was sitting. God bless him he was moving before he asked why. I told him the guy was at the end of the couch and I left it be. He kinda gave me a look. I asked him if he sensed anything and he said no. Then RK went back to eating and everyone in the room left it alone.

That is the thing when you are like me, people just expect you to see shit or to imagine shit like this. They just assume you are fucked up enough to have this shit all be in your head. If this was anyone else seeing this shit, it would be a huge fuckin’ deal. But with me, it is bland and no one cares it is happening. Because I am crazy.

So let’s recap. He stays in my living room (I still think that is some funny shit). He shows up in different places. He seems to be waiting on something or someone to happen or arrive. He is otherwise non-threatening. I don’t really know what else to say.

Oh, the house is old. But to my knowledge, no one has died here. Some elderly people did live here in the past, but none have died in the house. Does that matter? Do they have to have died in the house? I don’t know, shit, don’t ask me. I’m asking you.

The thing is, this is most likely Jack fucking with me. If it is, I’m gonna have his nuts.

—Shadow, 2008