The Demons Garden - First Report

Unmarked places. Things which should not exist, but do. It is to this class of subject
which that garden belongs. The buildings plans certainly include nothing atop the high
rise roof other than the workings necessary for durability, safety, and maintenance;
however there is clear to the naked eye an ivied wall of stone like the overgrown skeleton
of some Arcadian gazebo. How could the myriad of people responsible for the upkeep of
that monolith of the skyline fail to stop a grove of trees from taking root aloft that distant
rafter? No worker will attest to placing stone atop the building. Things people arent
looking for. Forces which work upon themselves. In a way, it is that concept of
individuality which is at fault.
In the year of the buildings construction, there were 65 murders recorded by the local
police. In the following year, 63. Ten years later, 116, and the number of suspicious
disappearances had increased at an even more substantial rate. There exists a definite
cause and effect for each instance, and yet might there not also be some indefinite
causality at play? In my line of work, the answer is yes. Quite simply, if the truth were
something else then Id be going hungry again.
The rooftop garden came to my attention through rumors, as most of these things do. I
sorely wanted to ignore the trifling claim, but with the online rumor mill on the case I
was struck with a barrage too fierce to ignore. Those mad conjurers even provided the
above mentioned stats, and detailed analyses of the patterns behind the patterns. And so I
found myself camped out by the riverside in the chill autumn air, night after night staking
out the downtown skyline from beside the bike path. At least I could use the cover of
being a student of photography to justify my vigils, but the entire matter was miserably
boring. How many times to do you have to look to see the impossible? About two weeks,
in this instance. On the 24th, a Wednesday, at 9:58pm, I saw the garden where at all other
times the inelegant building abruptly cut off like the root of some heavenward pillar. Or
rather, my tripod mounted camera recorded a single frame of an eerie vista which had
passed away beyond my notice. Then again, I had mostly taken to watching the pages of
books by that point. As usual, I uploaded the entire contents of the camera with the
comment nothing unusual, and cursed my luck when not even five hours later the net
was astir with the ghastly image. Waiting pointlessly in the night for phantoms is still a
better thing than actually finding them.
With the veracity of the phenomenon at least confirmed to me, I at once sank into the
black morass of fate. On the 26th, I received a knock on my apartment door from the
police. Two young officers stood nervously in the hall and eyed the interior of my place
quickly in case there should be some alarming detail immediately apparent. What selfrespecting madman keeps his accoutrements in view of the door? The officers asked if I
knew the whereabouts of my neighbor down the hall. They were not amused when I
asked in return if I had a neighbor down the hall. As it turns out, a neighbor down the hall
is something I should have had, but didnt. He had last been heard from two days ago,
and not again since. I told the officers honestly that I was barely home due to work and
couldnt recall whoever was even supposed to be my neighbor. But my curiosity had been

piqued, no less so when they asked if anything of note had happened on the night of the
24th. Most of the time, fate smiles wryly in your face.
When I proved incapable of helping them in the slightest, the officers lumbered down the
hall with growing frustration and began to knock upon the suspect door. The handle
resisted them and they left while talking to each other darkly. This I had all watched from
the eyehole of my door, and when they had gone I slipped into the hall with a single tool
in hand, a key-shaped rod which shone brightly even under corridors the dim lights. I
hummed quietly with face and device pressed close to the lock of the neighbors door and
my key sunk in to the hilt like a quicksilver dagger. I had whirled myself inside the
apartment before the noise of the lock submitting had even echoed in the hall. The space
lay dark and quiet, assuredly like a tomb. I tested the light switches near the door with
half-lidded eyes, flicking each one on and off. Each one brought some flash of light
nearby, so I stalked into the living room in the darkness. I pawed up to the TV and ran my
hand in front of the screen. An invisible curtain of static clung to the hairs of my forearm
like an unseen spiders web. With a frown I drove my hand across the box to find the
power swiping madly to mute it when the pale screen came alight. A bastard snow fell
across every channel. I killed the power and wandered down the nearby hallway. A bitter
taste mounted in my mind as I entered the bedroom. No, it was a sulfurous scent
gathering in my nose. Not even bothering to protect my eyes I slapped the light switches
and was met with nothing. Beside the bed an alarm clock blinked away 12:00 12:00
12:00, but also sitting on the nightstand was a wristwatch stopped at 9:58.