Jason Teufel

Chapter II: A Sinister Visitor

“You know, Jason, sometimes I feel like I’m talking to a machine.”

“What’s wrong with that? I like machines. They never hurt me… They never make me cry.”

“But a machine will never love or care about you.”

“I don’t care, I don’t need love.”

(Recorded conversation between Dr. Garhard and Jason Teufel at the Phoenix Memorial Children’s Psychiatric Ward when Jason was nine years old, shortly after his first suicide attempt.)

Jason drudged slowly through the door of his apartment and collapsed on the couch in the living room. It was six in the morning and the previous night had been utterly exhausting, not to mention unbelievably disturbing. Jason worked nights at a convenient store on the outskirts of a small town. It was a bit like working in a graveyard, since after midnight almost nobody came in and the eerie silence was enough to drive a normal person to the brink of insanity.

Jason, though, was not normal. He preferred solitude to the company of others and the rare customer that came by in the night actually annoyed rather than relieved him. This had not been a normal day, however. Someone, or something, had spent the majority of the night keeping him, to say the least, spooked out of his mind, with a number of odd occurrences that came and went throughout the duration of his shift.

The first of these unnerving incidents had come with a low knocking on the front door around 1:00 A.M. When Jason had ignored the knocking, it had progressively gotten louder, and continued for roughly an hour before ending with an earsplitting screech. The next incident occurred shortly after the first, when all of the gas pumps outside had suddenly shut off. Company policy stated that Jason was not permitted to leave the store at any point after dark, but it had begun to feel like someone was trying very hard to get him to go outside. Jason simply notified his manager of the problem and continued to go about his job, cleaning the store and stocking the shelves.

The last unsettling thing to happen was the most disturbing of all. Just when Jason had thought that the night was over, when leaving work he found taped to the front of his car a small piece of crumpled paper with the words:

I’ll be seeing you soon!

M.L.B

The short letter was written in fresh blood that was dripping off the page onto Jason’s hands which had visibly started to shake as he read it. It took every ounce of restraint he had to remain calm under such conditions. Contemplating his night, Jason had immediately climbed up from the couch and gone to the fridge to pour himself a half glass of orange juice and vodka, before returning to his seat and turning on the TV to try to forget about the night’s events.

Soon Jason was consumed by his thoughts and he drifted off to sleep, opening his eyes to a massive canyon. He was standing at the entrance to a cave that was situated just below a great dam with power lines extending dangerously out over the edge of the rock face. Jason recognized the site: It was Hoover Dam; he had driven over it several times on his way to Las Vegas but he didn’t remember ever seeing a cave. Something must have been wrong with the dam as well because there were a number of construction men moving across scaffolding and repairing missing segments of the wall.

As if his legs had a mind of their own, Jason felt himself being propelled into the cavern before him, where he was greeted by the smell of damp air and the sound of rushing water. He held a flashlight in his right hand which he used to probe the darkness around him. There was a small stream running through the center of a large bed of smooth rocks, the walls around him glistened on the surface and a number of small stalactites hung from the ceiling.