The Dusty Attic and Demon Child

I found myself in an old, dusty attic, dimly lit by windows stained yellow with age. Small dust particles danced in the light beams before me.

I wasn't alone. Another man stood there with me, though I do not know who he was. I had no idea why we were in the attic. I just stood there, taking in the environment around me. If I knew more than that at the time, it has already escaped me.

A noise came from underneath the broken floorboards. It was a creaking sound, and the sound of a laughing baby. But the laugh didn't sound warm and friendly like a baby's laugh should. Instead, it felt like something lurking in the darkness.

The floorboards were old and uneven, with large gaps between them where you could see through to the supporting structure below. A cool wind constantly blew underneath, kicking up dust particles that had settled to rest.

The man moved forward and the sound grew louder. As I stood watching the drama unfold, the sound intensifying, a small hand reached up through the cracks in the floorboards. It grabbed the man and pulled back under the floorboards.

The man seemed entranced rather than afraid, fixated on something. He stared right at me, but it felt as though he was staring through me instead. A beam of light landed right across the center of his face, and I found myself staring directly into his blank eyes. A dark, water-like substance was filling his eyes from the bottom up.

He continued to stand there.

Again I heard the floorboards creak. This time a chill ran through my spine as the laughs echoed through me.

Then my eyes were pulled to the floorboards again. Just underneath, something was moving. It rushed past me toward my mysterious companion and reached up to grab him.

This time it didn't leave. It stayed, holding onto the man.

I looked at his face. The blackness slowly filled his eyes.

I wondered why he was not pulling away, and then I noticed his eyes were completely black now. Then he began fading into blackness himself, until he almost seemed like a shadow, then a collection of dust, and then he was gone.

Now the baby revealed itself beneath the floorboards, dark-eyed and impossible to ignore. It was floating toward me through the rafters, that horrifying laugh echoing through the space.

My body felt like it turned to stone, as if a piece of forgotten furniture left in the space long ago.

Somehow I felt almost transfixed by it now. I watched it reach up to touch me, and a rush of confusion washed over me. I just stood there. Why couldn't I move?

Then it came back to me. In a moment of clarity, I shoved the hand away and the demon child shot off to some unknown place deeper in the darkness of the attic.

At the same time I felt myself flung backwards, again into the darkness.

As I commit this to my journal to preserve my memory, I find myself thinking about the rules observed in this universe in the A Message found in a Bottle . If the world responds to my thoughts and emotions, could the baby and the man be reflections of me somehow?

Maybe they're their own entities in this world, but brought into my awareness through my thoughts and emotions. It's like some kind of tuning fork resonating with what's inside me. If so, they must be reflective of myself.

As I pondered this, I realized that my own thoughts today felt intrusive. They felt like a million voices trying to hypnotize me, pulling me into getting lost in them. Was this demon baby a reflection of that state?