He Saw Monsters

My dad saw monsters, at least that’s what he’d say. Horrible nightmarish creatures made of gnarled roots and rotting bark, covered in blood red lichen. He swore our family was cursed to be haunted by these creatures, yet he was the only one who could see them. He wrote about them, that’s what he did, or at least wanted to. My dad wrote. Stories, scripts, D&D campaigns, with never any commercial success, despite his hopes. The only thing my dad failed to write was a suicide note.

I was fifteen when I found him. Three jagged slashes along his arm, knife still clutched in his hand. He had lost his job weeks before, had no way to keep up with the mortgage. He had asked my grandparents for help, but they declined. My dad was the type of man that defined himself by how he provided for his family. He worked two, sometimes three jobs to put money away for a condo for us. He worked the night shift, so someone was there early in the morning after mom left for work, and so that we weren’t on our own after school. Without a way to provide, he spiraled.

We’d visit my grandfather, and my dad would cringe rounding corners in the apartment, as if something was waiting for him around every turn. “What’s going on with your dad?” Grandpa asked, eyebrows raised. I shrugged. Being stressed out, or depressed wasn’t something he believed in. He thought people should just barrel through and that my dad was just ‘soft,’ so what the hell was I supposed to say to him?

Dad took us to his mom’s family farm. He swore that when he was younger it was well kept and full of plants. He showed us where he’d camp and sit long into the night. It looked like an unkept dump. Whoever took care of the place had long since passed. “Daddy, can we sleep up here tonight?” Izzy asked tugging on his sleeve. My dad just scanned the tree-line, eyes resting on the gnarled tree closest to us. “Daddy?” “Dad!” I waved in front of his face, shaking him from whatever trance he was in. “Sorry guys, no, let’s head home, mom’s waiting.” His eyes lingered on that tree as we pulled away.

We got home, and the calm a trip to the farm usually brought my dad wasn’t anywhere on his face. He looked sickly and panicked. He walked into the kitchen, asked my mom if she minded if he went to bed early, mumbled a quick “goodnight,” to us, and disappeared into the room. That was the last time I saw my dad alive.

We didn’t know he was going to take his own life. We should have. Mom, Cece and I sat in disbelief, Izzy played, too young to grasp what was happening. My eyes kept darting to where I found my father. I pressed my fingers into my eyes, rubbing too hard, trying to wipe away the image burnt into my brain. When I opened my eyes I saw bloody footprints walking away from where my father lay.

I don’t even remember getting up, but suddenly I was in the stairway of the building staring at something impossible. Where there should have been a flight of stairs, there was instead a forest of dead trees, suffocated by vines. I blinked hard as I felt a familiar tightness in my chest, reached for the anxiety medication my pocket, eyes still closed. As the tablet dissolved underneath my tongue, so did the forest before me. I took a breath, then two, and made my way back to our floor, stopping dead as I rounded the corner to the unit. I can’t count how many stories I’d heard of the creatures that haunted my father, how many rough sketches. My dad swore his entire life he saw monsters, and now, it seemed, so did I.