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My dad went down a health and wellness rabbit hole. He’s still in the house, I think. He has to be.
I’m posting this from my car. I’ve already filed a missing persons report with the police for my parents, and they’ve cleared it as a crime scene. But there’s no way I’m ever going back inside.
This all started back in February. Maybe that’s why, because of how dreary and sunless that month is. My dad is a good man. I need you to understand that before any of the rest of it. After his mom passed two years ago he got quiet in a way that scared me more than crying would have, and when he found these forums last winter — these wellness communities — I was relieved. He was back to exercising, dieting, sleeping better. He was excited about something again. He’d come down to breakfast and tell me about “circadian hygiene” and “ancestral light environments” and how our eyes evolved for firelight and starlight, not the blue glow from screens and 6500 Kelvin bulbs we drown in now.
Honestly? Some of it made sense. That’s the part nobody warns you about. That it starts off less than harmless.
The first simple healthy habit was showering in the dark. He read that artificial light at night wrecks your melatonin, and the bathroom was the worst offender. So we started showering with night lights for minimum light. I went along with it, I didn’t have to read shampoo bottles anyway. My sleep even improved.
Then it was no screens after sunset, the emitted light causes dark circles. This was a huge issue. My mom and I felt we shouldn’t have to change our routines and give up creature comforts for his lifestyle choices. What sucked was he was understanding, and compromised to sequestering himself in rooms with no screens after sunset. It upset us, and eventually we cut back on our screen time just so he could spend more time with us. We ended up bonding more, who could have guessed phones and streaming services separated families?
Even after he changed all the bulbs in the house to the lowest Kelvin, he still refused to turn on a light unless it was absolutely necessary. It deeply irritated me and my mom, because he’d still use his laptop (on the lowest brightness setting with blue light blockers, however) to spend his days on the wellness forums, researching.
He started talking at dinners about how even fire and candlelight was a compromise our ancestors wouldn’t recognize, how the truly restored nervous system needs real dark, total dark, the dark of a cave, a womb, a place where your senses melt into the environment and your edges blur, your bodily systems balance out and synchronize. “…and you go back.” We didn’t have a response. that’s where I should have said something, though. Anything.
Two weeks ago he taped contractor bags over my bedroom window while I was at school. When I got home he was proud. He showed me the seams, how he’d gotten it so there wasn’t a single pinhole ”Cassie, I’m getting a 2 on the lux meter! 2! The guys on the forums are gonna love this.” Staring at his phone, posting it.
Three days ago I came downstairs and tried to flip the kitchen switch. No 2000K melatonin-improving infrared bulb. Gone. Every lightbulb in the house was gone. He’d gone around with a stepladder and a trash bag and collected all of them, even the one in the oven, even the little one in the fridge that you’d have to break the door mechanism to reach. The bag was filled with shattered bulbs in the bin outside. I came back inside and found him reading the forums. Before he could open his mouth I screamed at him, thank god mom had already gone to work. I screamed and cried and begged him to just please, please be normal. Please just stop looking at his fucking laptop while I talked to him. He just looked sad, like I had hurt his feelings over something he was proud of. He looked normal. He said he would fix things, and put everything back to how it was originally. He promised, and hugged me.
I went to school worried for him and mom all day. A part of me truly believed I’d come home and the house would be bright, with clear windows and televisions blaring. During the day I tried to call my mom, hoping to prep her on the latest piece of insanity, but kept being sent to voicemail. My vision stung driving into the sun on the way home, my eyes all too well chronically adjusted to the dark. I kept thinking about being so exposed in the light, and how my dad was right, that being in the dark made you lose your sense of bodily self. I wish I could have crawled under my blankets in bed and let the feeling of sensory deprivation dissolve the knot in my stomach.
When I got home mom’s car was already in the driveway. The house looked like a bad dream, a perfectly normal exterior with flat black windows. I went inside, and even leaving the front door open did nothing to pierce the all-encompassing darkness. I went to the front window to tear the contractor bags with my nails and winced as I scraped something hard and gritty. I shined my phone light and saw he had painted some kind of truck bed liner over the windows in thick layers.
I turned to the interior. “Dad? Mom?” The phone flashlight was all I had. Living in darkness made it feel less like a beacon, and more like a trespasser. I checked all upstairs, calling for them. As I made my way back down near the kitchen, I froze. The basement door was open. I hadn’t checked the basement yet. “Dad? Mom? Please, please say something.”
Nothing.
The stairs go down into the unfinished part — bare studs, concrete floor, the furnace ticking- I was imagining that. No need for a furnace when it has that pesky pilot light. He had disconnected it and snuffed it out before. The basement was huge. At the far end, there’s a little room Dad always meant to finish, just concrete, with a shallow alcove in the back wall where the previous owners had a safe flush to the wall. Pitch black. My flashlight couldn’t find the back of it from where I stood. Something about the room was oppressive. I didn’t cross past the threshold, I just did my best to shine the light in. That’s the part I keep snagging on. The light went in and didn’t come out. Like the alcove was deeper than the house.
And from inside it, my father’s voice. Calm. Close.
“Cassie.”
I couldn’t see him. I want to be precise because the police asked me four times and I gave the same answer every time: I was pointing my light directly into that room and there was no one in it.
“Cassie. Mom’s in here with me. Come here.”
I started crying. I asked him to come out. I begged him. I told him I’d take him anywhere, I’d stop fighting him about the lights, I’d bag every window myself, just come out, Dad, please.
“If you come in here,” he said, “everything will go back to how it was before it all began.”
I asked him what he meant. I asked him how. I stood there in the dark asking the alcove how, and there was no answer. There was never an answer again.
I walked in. I did. I pointed the flashlight into every corner of that concrete room — and it was empty. No alcove deep as a well, just a shallow dent in the wall not even a foot deep. No father. No mother. Concrete and dust and the smell of cold concrete and my own breathing.
I searched the whole house. Both floors. Closets, the attic crawlspace, under beds, the backyard. I checked the alcove again and stared at the wall. I screamed myself hoarse. I called the police.
They were kind. They were thorough. Six officers swept that house with real flashlights, not a phone, and a K9, and they found nothing. No sign of forced entry, no sign of him or mom. They asked about the windows and I watched them decide, quietly, what kind of man spray paints truck bed liner on his windows, and what kind of daughter waits this long to call.
The part I can’t explain, why it’s being posted here and not a news source, is the center of this. I explained why I took so long to call, that my dad started off getting better rather than worse. I went to show them the forums on his laptop, his reasoning for altering the house, and they were gone. I checked his search history, even searching the forum names and keywords. You couldn’t burn those images of deep wine red text on black boxes out of my brain. I know what I saw. They shrugged and said they would look into it, and took his laptop.
I finished filing the report this evening. Two missing persons, house clear and safe to enter again, no sign of intruders.
So that’s everything. That’s the whole thing, start to finish, in order, the way I needed it down before the doubt finishes setting in.
If you’re just finishing this, scroll up to where it all began, where my dad was still just a grieving family man getting too into a wellness trend, where the worst thing in the house was no Netflix after sunset — I want you to read it knowing how it ends.
I’ve started sleeping with the dome light of my car on, never any dark. I think about what he said the dark would help undo. How it would feel like a return to a womb, something where you would blur and meld with the universe in desensitized harmony, before even the big bang brought light. Going back to how it was before it all began.
And some nights I lie in all that careful light, and I find myself wondering what would have happened if I’d walked into the dark a little faster. I think about it more than I should.
#entertainment
source
I’m posting this from my car. I’ve already filed a missing persons report with the police for my parents, and they’ve cleared it as a crime scene. But there’s no way I’m ever going back inside.
This all started back in February. Maybe that’s why, because of how dreary and sunless that month is. My dad is a good man. I need you to understand that before any of the rest of it. After his mom passed two years ago he got quiet in a way that scared me more than crying would have, and when he found these forums last winter — these wellness communities — I was relieved. He was back to exercising, dieting, sleeping better. He was excited about something again. He’d come down to breakfast and tell me about “circadian hygiene” and “ancestral light environments” and how our eyes evolved for firelight and starlight, not the blue glow from screens and 6500 Kelvin bulbs we drown in now.
Honestly? Some of it made sense. That’s the part nobody warns you about. That it starts off less than harmless.
The first simple healthy habit was showering in the dark. He read that artificial light at night wrecks your melatonin, and the bathroom was the worst offender. So we started showering with night lights for minimum light. I went along with it, I didn’t have to read shampoo bottles anyway. My sleep even improved.
Then it was no screens after sunset, the emitted light causes dark circles. This was a huge issue. My mom and I felt we shouldn’t have to change our routines and give up creature comforts for his lifestyle choices. What sucked was he was understanding, and compromised to sequestering himself in rooms with no screens after sunset. It upset us, and eventually we cut back on our screen time just so he could spend more time with us. We ended up bonding more, who could have guessed phones and streaming services separated families?
Even after he changed all the bulbs in the house to the lowest Kelvin, he still refused to turn on a light unless it was absolutely necessary. It deeply irritated me and my mom, because he’d still use his laptop (on the lowest brightness setting with blue light blockers, however) to spend his days on the wellness forums, researching.
He started talking at dinners about how even fire and candlelight was a compromise our ancestors wouldn’t recognize, how the truly restored nervous system needs real dark, total dark, the dark of a cave, a womb, a place where your senses melt into the environment and your edges blur, your bodily systems balance out and synchronize. “…and you go back.” We didn’t have a response. that’s where I should have said something, though. Anything.
Two weeks ago he taped contractor bags over my bedroom window while I was at school. When I got home he was proud. He showed me the seams, how he’d gotten it so there wasn’t a single pinhole ”Cassie, I’m getting a 2 on the lux meter! 2! The guys on the forums are gonna love this.” Staring at his phone, posting it.
Three days ago I came downstairs and tried to flip the kitchen switch. No 2000K melatonin-improving infrared bulb. Gone. Every lightbulb in the house was gone. He’d gone around with a stepladder and a trash bag and collected all of them, even the one in the oven, even the little one in the fridge that you’d have to break the door mechanism to reach. The bag was filled with shattered bulbs in the bin outside. I came back inside and found him reading the forums. Before he could open his mouth I screamed at him, thank god mom had already gone to work. I screamed and cried and begged him to just please, please be normal. Please just stop looking at his fucking laptop while I talked to him. He just looked sad, like I had hurt his feelings over something he was proud of. He looked normal. He said he would fix things, and put everything back to how it was originally. He promised, and hugged me.
I went to school worried for him and mom all day. A part of me truly believed I’d come home and the house would be bright, with clear windows and televisions blaring. During the day I tried to call my mom, hoping to prep her on the latest piece of insanity, but kept being sent to voicemail. My vision stung driving into the sun on the way home, my eyes all too well chronically adjusted to the dark. I kept thinking about being so exposed in the light, and how my dad was right, that being in the dark made you lose your sense of bodily self. I wish I could have crawled under my blankets in bed and let the feeling of sensory deprivation dissolve the knot in my stomach.
When I got home mom’s car was already in the driveway. The house looked like a bad dream, a perfectly normal exterior with flat black windows. I went inside, and even leaving the front door open did nothing to pierce the all-encompassing darkness. I went to the front window to tear the contractor bags with my nails and winced as I scraped something hard and gritty. I shined my phone light and saw he had painted some kind of truck bed liner over the windows in thick layers.
I turned to the interior. “Dad? Mom?” The phone flashlight was all I had. Living in darkness made it feel less like a beacon, and more like a trespasser. I checked all upstairs, calling for them. As I made my way back down near the kitchen, I froze. The basement door was open. I hadn’t checked the basement yet. “Dad? Mom? Please, please say something.”
Nothing.
The stairs go down into the unfinished part — bare studs, concrete floor, the furnace ticking- I was imagining that. No need for a furnace when it has that pesky pilot light. He had disconnected it and snuffed it out before. The basement was huge. At the far end, there’s a little room Dad always meant to finish, just concrete, with a shallow alcove in the back wall where the previous owners had a safe flush to the wall. Pitch black. My flashlight couldn’t find the back of it from where I stood. Something about the room was oppressive. I didn’t cross past the threshold, I just did my best to shine the light in. That’s the part I keep snagging on. The light went in and didn’t come out. Like the alcove was deeper than the house.
And from inside it, my father’s voice. Calm. Close.
“Cassie.”
I couldn’t see him. I want to be precise because the police asked me four times and I gave the same answer every time: I was pointing my light directly into that room and there was no one in it.
“Cassie. Mom’s in here with me. Come here.”
I started crying. I asked him to come out. I begged him. I told him I’d take him anywhere, I’d stop fighting him about the lights, I’d bag every window myself, just come out, Dad, please.
“If you come in here,” he said, “everything will go back to how it was before it all began.”
I asked him what he meant. I asked him how. I stood there in the dark asking the alcove how, and there was no answer. There was never an answer again.
I walked in. I did. I pointed the flashlight into every corner of that concrete room — and it was empty. No alcove deep as a well, just a shallow dent in the wall not even a foot deep. No father. No mother. Concrete and dust and the smell of cold concrete and my own breathing.
I searched the whole house. Both floors. Closets, the attic crawlspace, under beds, the backyard. I checked the alcove again and stared at the wall. I screamed myself hoarse. I called the police.
They were kind. They were thorough. Six officers swept that house with real flashlights, not a phone, and a K9, and they found nothing. No sign of forced entry, no sign of him or mom. They asked about the windows and I watched them decide, quietly, what kind of man spray paints truck bed liner on his windows, and what kind of daughter waits this long to call.
The part I can’t explain, why it’s being posted here and not a news source, is the center of this. I explained why I took so long to call, that my dad started off getting better rather than worse. I went to show them the forums on his laptop, his reasoning for altering the house, and they were gone. I checked his search history, even searching the forum names and keywords. You couldn’t burn those images of deep wine red text on black boxes out of my brain. I know what I saw. They shrugged and said they would look into it, and took his laptop.
I finished filing the report this evening. Two missing persons, house clear and safe to enter again, no sign of intruders.
So that’s everything. That’s the whole thing, start to finish, in order, the way I needed it down before the doubt finishes setting in.
If you’re just finishing this, scroll up to where it all began, where my dad was still just a grieving family man getting too into a wellness trend, where the worst thing in the house was no Netflix after sunset — I want you to read it knowing how it ends.
I’ve started sleeping with the dome light of my car on, never any dark. I think about what he said the dark would help undo. How it would feel like a return to a womb, something where you would blur and meld with the universe in desensitized harmony, before even the big bang brought light. Going back to how it was before it all began.
And some nights I lie in all that careful light, and I find myself wondering what would have happened if I’d walked into the dark a little faster. I think about it more than I should.
#entertainment
source
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