Don't Turn off the Webcam

Linh and I met in 2008. She was from a very small town in Washington with a population of less than five hundred. I was working my way through college as an event bartender in Portland. Linh’s cousin was getting married in Portland, and as fate would have it, the wedding reception was held at an upscale hotel on the Columbia River where I frequently tended to small wine and beer bars.
I noticed her immediately, as I often notice women that I quickly convince myself are too beautiful to ever date someone like me. Eventually, as the night went on, she made her way over to my bar and ordered a white wine. We talked for a while about Portland; I sweated profusely as I tend to do around girls like her. She would be spending the next two days in the city, and I took a few moments telling her about the most interesting sights to see and things to do in town.
“Wow, you should just be my personal tour guide,” she said, grabbing my arm and smiling. This happened to me so infrequently that I really had no idea how to react, so I just mumbled “Sure, what time?” and laughed nervously to hedge in the event that she was joking. “How about 10:30 tomorrow morning?” she replied.
And so started my relationship with Linh. She was infectious, with a personality that was so innocent and warm. I immediately fell in love with her. 
There were a few issues that we would have to work through. She was still in Washington and I was finishing school in Oregon. Linh was also Vietnamese, with a very traditional father who would never approve of her having a white boyfriend. She lived alone in a house with her father, as her mother had passed away several years earlier, so going to Yarrow Point to visit her was out of the question. She would come to see me every three weeks under the guise of a prestigious internship program.
Being in a long distance relationship, we spoke on the phone and texted constantly. When high speed internet finally came to her small town in Washington, I surprised her with a webcam for her computer so we could have an even better means of long distance communication. In the back of my mind I was always looking for ways to be with her, as even after two years of dating, I was paranoid a girl as beautiful as her would eventually find somebody better to share her life with.
In 2010, Linh’s father passed away suddenly in his sleep from a heart attack. He was everything to her, and she was heartbroken. When she returned from Florida where the funeral was held and her father was buried, she was all alone in the house where she had lost both of her parents. With Linh’s father deceased, she was open to finally allowing me to come to Washington to see her, which we planned on doing in a few weeks after my college finals.
One night during our usual bedtime conversation, Linh mentioned to me that her father had been acting strangely in the days leading up to his death. She explained that he had taken to checking up on her multiple times throughout the day and night, and scattering religious artifacts throughout the house. This behavior, she said, was highly uncharacteristic of him.
Vietnamese culture and religion was something foreign to me, and at various points, Linh had mentioned things like this that I normally wrote off as just being a little silly. She explained to me that being in the house alone without her Dad was making her emotional and may be playing tricks on her. She hated the feeling of being so alone. She told me that being able to see me on her webcam was the closest thing she had to family, and asked that I promise to never turn off the webcam. She meant the world to me, so I was happy to oblige.
A few days passed and it was now the Tuesday before the weekend when I would finally come to see her in Washington. We spent our bedtime webcam session excitedly talking about our plans and I dozed off with my head on the kitchen table in mid conversation. It had been a long day. When I woke up, I saw Linh sleeping on my screen and stumbled off to bed.
At 3:00am, my cell phone begin to ring. Disoriented, I rolled over, took a look at the clock, and knew it could only be her. She took great pleasure in waking me up in the middle of the night to let me know that she had just gotten a drink of water, or had an amusing dream. Anyone else would have gotten an earful from me, but her flirtatious giggle made me feel lucky to have my much needed sleep interrupted.
“I had a nightmare!” Linh gasped. “…You danced in front of my friends.” She burst into laughter.
“What are you doing up so late, honey? You’ve got to work in the morning.” I said.
“I was thirsty, and went downstairs to get a drink of water.”
“Great, well we really should go back to sleep, tomorrow is a big day.”
“Allllright,” she conceded. “Hey by the way, don’t forg——”
After a few crackles and a brief burst of static, the call disconnected. I hated Linh’s phone. She had an old flip phone that dropped calls with no rhyme or reason at least three times a day. 
I held down the #1 on my own phone, my speed dial for Linh. No ring, straight to voicemail. I tried to call several more times, and each time it again went straight to voicemail. I was exhausted, and though I loved Linh to death, to be honest, I just wanted to go back to sleep. My eyelids hung heavy.
A little annoyed, I decided to walk out to my kitchen for a quick drink of water. The two glasses of wine that I drank before bed had left me with a little bit of dry mouth. As I rinsed the glass and went to place it in the dishwasher, out of the corner of my eye, I saw movement on the glow of the laptop perched on my dining room table.
It was the webcam. Two fluffy brown paws were making a swimming motion directly in front of her camera. As I got closer, I saw a close up of two grinning faces. One of that silly dog of hers, and the other of my giggling girlfriend, who knew that eventually after being unable to make phone contact, I would wander out to the webcam to say goodnight. I wouldn’t put it past her to turn the phone off on purpose to elaborately stage this scene. Me, standing in my underwear at 3am on a work night, half asleep, staring at a girl and a puppy on a webcam.
I waved goodnight, and she kissed the lens of the webcam and pulled away.
I froze.
I wiped my eyes and looked again.
There.
It’s… standing in the corner of the room. It’s…
Staring at her.
Wrinkled. Angry, twisted mouth.
Hateful eyes.
What the fuck.
HATEFUL eyes.
It’s watching her.
Two hours later, I woke on the dining room floor. I had a ringing in my ears and a knot on the back of my head. I immediately knew what had happened. It wasn’t the first time.
Sudden, extreme stress has given me panic attacks and blackouts a few times before. I had never felt such fear when what had happened came rushing back, and I nearly had a second panic attack when my thoughts turned to Linh.
I loved her more than anything in the world. It took me several moments to summon the courage to look in the direction of my laptop. When I finally did, the screensaver had long since turned on. I looked away from the screen as I flicked the touchpad with my shaking finger. It took me another two minutes to open my eyes.
Linh laid in her bed. She looked so peaceful. Sleeping on her side, facing towards the webcam. As frightened and confused as I was, relief at her safety gave me a sense of comfort as I desperately tried to process what had happened. Maybe the wine had hit me harder than I thought. Maybe I slipped and fell on the slick tile floor, and it all had been a nightmare.
I stared at her. I loved her. Maybe more than even I realized. So peaceful and beautiful as she slept.
The light of her television danced across her room and illuminated the bed. As I watched on, her hand began to move.
Slowly.
Unnaturally.
She was sleeping but her fingers crawled across the bed slowly until they reached something. It was her cell phone.
Her hand moved like a spider, fingers popping in several directions across the keys.
What the hell?
BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ.
My phone was vibrating.
“New Message: DON’T…”
BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ.
“New Message: TURN…”
BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ.
“New Message: OFF”
BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ.
“New Message: THE”
BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ.
“New Message: WEB”
BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ.
“New Message: CAM”
Complete terror set in as the messages came across the screen of my cell phone.
“New Message: DON’T…”
“New Message: TURN…”
“New Message: OFF”
“New Message: THE”
“New Message: WEB”
“New Message: CAM”
As I glanced back to my laptop, horror overcame me. Slowly, a shadow crept across the floor. Something was crossing in front of the television. Moving closer to Linh.
I told myself it was just her dog, right? The color drained out of my face when I noticed the puppy sleeping in the far corner of the room.
I picked up my phone and dialed Linh. I didn’t know what I would tell her, but I knew she needed to get out of there immediately and never go back. Dammit, straight to voicemail! THAT STUPID OLD PHONE OF HERS.
The full shadow now hung completely over Linh.
Her hand jerked, flipping open her cell phone.
My phone was ringing.
I answered, “LINH! LINH CAN YOU HEAR ME YOU NEED TO…”
A burst of loud static forced my phone reflexively away from my ear.
On the webcam, I saw Linh’s lips begin to move. Her eyes were shut, but she was speaking.
I heard her voice come across the phone, but something wasn’t right. She was speaking, but a second, deeper voice echoed hers in perfect unison.
“DON’T TURN OFF THE WEBCAM… AGRAMON WOULD LIKE TO SEE YOU. DON’T TURN OFF THE WEBCAM. AGRAMON IS READY FOR YOU NOW.”
“Who? What? What does he want?” I yelled in desperation.
“HE WANTS TO EAT YOUR SKIN.”
The line disconnected.
The shadow across Linh’s bed changed directions.
It started moving away from the bed… and towards her laptop… towards the webcam.
As the shadow moved closer, small streams of gray liquid rolled towards the lens.
The images coming across my monitor began to shake violently.
It was almost here. I could now see the top of its head. It was CRAWLING towards me. Wet strings of silver and black hair hanging over its face. I remembered those hateful eyes, and I lost control of my bladder as it slowly begin to tilt its head up.
And then I did it.
In panic, I slammed my laptop shut and threw it against the hard tile floor before collapsing to the ground.
I wished for a panic attack to take my consciousness and end this nightmare, but it didn’t come.
I crawled to the panel of switches a few feet up on the wall and turned on every light that I could. I noticed the bottle of wine still open on the kitchen counter and drank most of it down in a single swallow. I reached up, pulled open my apartment door, and stumbled across the threshold, extending half of my body into the common hallway so I wouldn’t feel so alone. A pathetic coward sprawled out on the concrete.
My phone began to ring.
I crawled to it. Linh’s name was flashing on the caller ID. I held it in my hand, paralyzed by fear.
And then the ringing stopped.
I took another mouthful of wine and mustered the courage to call back. It went straight to voicemail. And then again and again as I tried to call.
Eventually, the shock and drowsiness from the wine got the better of me, and I passed out on the floor after making a few more attempts.
When I awoke several hours later, despite the broken laptop and empty bottle, I wanted to believe that it was all some sort of horrible nightmare.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw blue flashing light on my cell phone.
“You have one new voicemail.”
My hand trembled as I dialed my voicemail and entered my passcode.
The message was timestamped, and was from the missed call I had from Linh before passing out.
Her voice. She was in tears, and frightened as though I had never heard her before.
“You promised. Why… why did you… turn off the web… webcam.”
“His… his tongue burns.”
With a crackle, the message ended.
Two years have passed since that night. I never tried to contact Linh again. I never called her work to see if she came in the following morning. I never made it to Yarrow Point in Washington where she lived. She was my soulmate, and I let this happen. I was probably right on the night we met when I told myself I wasn’t man enough for her.
The only reason I am telling this story today, under the cowardly vale of anonymity, is because my drug and alcohol counselor thinks it would be good for me. So here it is. I made the decision to let the love of my life face an unimaginable nightmare to spare myself, and the worst part is that I may not even regret it.
Now if you will excuse me, I think I need another drink.
Category:Historical Archive
Category:Computers and Internet
Category:Beings