Rome is a crowded city. Besides its citizens, it hosts millions of tourists every year. During the two middle weeks of august, it becomes empty, and in those two weeks of some years ago something weird happened to me.
Summers in Rome are something one should experience at least one time in a lifetime. No traffic, few tourists and easy access to everything beautiful that the city has to offer. Walking around, one can feel the decay of the Roman Empire by watching the empty historical sites and the falling ruins. Rome has a tumultuous and ferocious history: the Empire, the fascism, the acts of terrorism during the 70’s. Death is all over the city. Blood is in our history.
It was an incredibly hot summer that year. I was 16 years old and I recall declining my parents’ offer to go in vacation with them to stay in the city.
Me and my friends always loved horror movies and occult stories. Rome was our playground that year.
We started breaking in supposedly haunted places late at night, we would gather and read things we should have not read.
We were kids and we didn’t really believe in any of that. We just found it fun to push the limits and hear the ghost story of our families.
I recall that one of us started telling us how his mother was a medium and his father would record dead people’s voices with low frequencies radio. I believe they call it EVP (electronic voice phenomenon).
We all thought he was lying and just trying to scare us. So we listened t the record.
Then bad things started happening.
All of us started feeling weird, like something was always with us. Some of us couldn’t sleep well and started having terrible nightmares. Until that moment we all thought that we were just influencing each other. So we stopped talking about those things and doing stupid stuff. Now I know it was too late.
One night, me and my friend came back to my house after a 5 minute trip to the grocery store. All the windows were closed, nobody was there and we had no chimney in that apartment. My family was in vacation, a good 4 hours drive divided them from me. As soon as we walked in the house, a supernatural voice growled at us. We were scared but we decided to stay to explore the house. We thought we misheard, we thought we both imagined the same infernal voice screaming at us. We then found bird guano on the ground, but no birds around.
That night I had troubles falling asleep and I dreamt of death. It was pitch black, all I could hear were voices echoing from afar. I recall feeling trapped, like I was buried alive.
After that day I started feeling followed. I would ride my motorcycle at night, seeing shadows in my rearview mirror and feeling that somebody was sitting behind me. I saw people crossing the road, lie on the ground, then disappear.
I couldn't sleep, I couldn't eat much. I thought somebody was watching me during my few hours of sleep. I thought I was completely going insane, so I left Rome and joined my family in their vacation home.
My relatives must have thought I was doing drugs. I recall spending the afternoon alone in the garden, the wreckage of myself sitting on the grass, like the remains of a plane crash. I was scared to talk to anybody about it. As the sunset approached the day I was sitting at the dinner table in my own little circle of despair. I remember the eyes of my now dead grandfather pointed at me: those sweet eyes behind those thick glasses, trying to understand what was going on with me. I was sitting there, bags under my eyes, barely eating and talking. I was scared to go to sleep. I was scared of the dark.
That night I went to bed and I started listening to an album I perfectly knew. I thought the music would help me, comfort me, but I was feeling weird again. I still have goose bumps in the very moment I’m writing this.
I was toss and turning in bed and at some point the music started to morph into something completely unknown. A music box started invading the air, a melody I never heard was melting my nerves.
I recall the feeling of being small, sweaty and scared. Have you ever dreamt of screaming and not being able to make a sound? I thought I could have screamed but I froze as I started feeling that somebody was stepping on my bed. It then stopped in front of me for some minutes. It stood there at the feet of my bed, I couldn't see anything but I could feel it was happening. I saw the sheets pushed down by some force my eyes couldn't understand. I felt eyes on me and a shivering feeling all over my frozen body.
Then it stopped. I don't recall falling asleep, but I recall what I did the day after.
My parents asked me what was wrong. I was scared to say anything to them. I thought I was crazy! Why wouldn't they think the same?
The sun was setting again, sunset was coming and darkness was once again about to come back to me.
I used to have a moleskine (a travel notebook) at that time where I would write my thoughts, my experiences and some silly poetry.
I used to dream I was going to be a writer sometime in my life, but I was going to commit suicide that very day.
I decided to climb on the roof of that house. The sun was about to go down.
I remember sitting there, watching the sun preparing to disappear behind those far mountains. I lighted a cigarette and started writing a little poem. I felt fragile, melting under that red sun and I cried a bit. I didn't want the sun to go down, I didn’t want to die but I didn't want to go to sleep. I wish I had never started that, I wished I could have closed that door that somehow I had opened. I should have never awaked those spirits. I wrote all of that in that little poetry.
You’re reading this because somewhere, in one of my moleskines, that poetry is still protecting me. I will never separate myself from that black notebook that sealed the door that I will never open again.
This was my entry for the Supernatural Writing Contest, thank you for taking the time to read this.