Field Guide

“What the heck…?“
Dan Henderson heard his mom from the attic. They had just moved into this house, and still had plenty of work to do. so reasonably, there shouldn’t have been anything there. Dan was confused, so he ran up to the attic entrance, and climbed up to meet his mother there.
“ What’s wrong? “
“Well… I found something up here. But it's something that I don’t remember bringing.“
Dan’s mom passed him a plain looking, hardcover book with a worn, yellow board. On it were various stickers of outdated depictions of dinosaurs. And scribbled onto the front in black colored pencil were the words “ Dino Dan’s Dino Field Guide “.
“This was your father’s. He loved dinosaurs just like you. But I don’t know how this got-“
Before she could finish her sentence, Dan quickly snatched the book from his mom’s grip, and opened it up.
Inside there were sketches of multiple prehistoric creatures, most of which Dan could name off the top of his head.
“Dan!“
“Oh, sorry… I was just curious..”
Dan timidly apologized, as he slowly handed the book back over to his mom.
“ It’s fine, just please ask next time. “
Dan nodded in understanding, and left the attic to get acquainted with what would be his bedroom. The previous homeowner had at least been courteous enough to make sure everyone already had beds.
For the next few hours, he and his brother Trek would spend the day assisting their mother with moving everything inside, and teasing each other. They even got to call up their dad, which was a rare occurrence they always looked forward to. They just wish he could have been here. But when the clock struck 9, it was time for everyone to settle down and get some rest. And with this, Dan’s mother had brought the Dinosaur Field Guide to his room. Dan really wanted to read it, but he knew it would be best if he got some rest. Because after all, tomorrow was his first day at a new school. 
Dan woke up before anyone else. He yawned and rubbed his eyes in an attempt to try and wake himself up.
He reached over to the small table lamp on his right, and turned the light on with a tug of a small chain. There, now illuminated, was the Dino Field Guide. But it looked off to him somehow. The writing on the cover was now green, red, and brown. Not only that, but the creatures shown on the stickers now looked more up to date.
“Wait, what? “
Dan, now fully awake, grabbed the odd book and started skimming through the pages. There weren’t any words, simply pictures of the creatures, their names, and blank space. He interpreted this as him needing to figure out this information on his own. He had read a few different encyclopedias his mother had gifted him, so he figured he could reasonably do that. His thoughts were interrupted when he heard a rather peculiar, almost unnatural noise. It sounded like an animal. Raspy, deep, and bassy. The closest animal sound Dan could approximate it to was a walrus, but they were in the middle of Toronto during summer time. He looked out his window, and outside stood an outlandish, yet spectacular sight.
Right before his very eyes, a real dinosaur was trudging along the road. A large, bulky body, 4 almost elephantine legs, and a head with an impressive display of horns and a frill. Dan recognized this as a Triceratops, unmistakably. The dumbfounded Dan simply stared in a blend of shock and awe. A real, genuine ancient creature was just a few feet away. The primordial creature paused for a moment and turned its attention to Dan, as it let out a short, bellowing grunt in acknowledgment of the confused kid. It took a few steps into their property, studying the human being, which it had presumably never seen before. 
Dan questioned himself out loud. 
“How in the world are you here?”
He opened up the window to let the sun in, although he did so with caution. Although he was on the second floor, this was still a very large creature, most likely capable of causing some serious damage to the house. Though thankfully, it seemed to be perfectly docile. Although Dan’s complete fascination and bewilderment was cut short when he heard his mom behind him.
“Dan, we gotta get going! It’s your first day, remember?”
Being pulled out of his laser-focus caused him to flinch a little, but he quickly calmed down. For all he knew, that three-horned reptile could have just been his imagination anyway. That’s the explanation he settled on, but he found it more fun to play along.
Dan apologized and prepared himself for school.
And for a while, things went smoothly. Dan made a ton of friends in the neighborhood and school, he was becoming more well-adjusted, and on the dinosaur side of things, they remained docile and allowed him to study them. He called these field-study-like scenarios “Dino Experiments”.
However, on a seemingly ordinary school day, Dan was talking with his close friend Angie. It was just casual conversation about what they would do during recess.
Although, after Angie had left to go grab some gym mats she planned to train with outside, Dan heard a loud crash from the front of the school, which instantly grabbed his attention, as his eyes widened in shock. 
“What was that? I better go check and see…”
As Dan made his way to the front of the school, he saw a lone school bus. The exact same one he had traveled to school in. But the closer he got, the more he realized what had caused the racket. The bus was steaming, and it crashed into a tree. The hull burst open, and the wheels had fallen off from the impact.
“What happened here?!” Dan exclaimed in sheer surprise. And when he heard a trio of calls from just behind him, he knew he had found suspects. But.. Why would he be imagining that? This was a serious problem. Someone could have gotten hurt. Dan shook his head and, sure enough, the 3 dinosaurs still stood there. Two blue and on four legs, one red and on two legs. At this point, Dan thought that this had confirmed the dinosaurs were not merely in his imagination. That would be, had it not been for what followed.
“DAN!”
Their bus driver, who the kids only knew as Bill, came running to him.
“Are you alright?! I heard a huge crash out here! “
Dan nodded, as thankfully nobody seemed to be inside the bus. Although, Bill probably wouldn’t be too happy when Dan had to be the bearer of bad news.
“Yes, I’m fine… but I’ve got bad news.”
Before Dan could tell Bill himself, the poor bus driver had already seen the damage.
“What… what happened to my bus?!”
Bill was genuinely devastated by the destruction of the bus. After all, driving it was his job. Dan tried to comfort him before revealing the suspects. 
“I’m sorry this happened.. I really hope the school can afford a bus to replace it… and make sure to do something about them.”
Dan pointed behind Bill, as the trio of reptiles still stood there.
Bill had turned around to stare at them for a good few seconds, but when he turned back to Dan, his response confused Dan even further.
“There’s nobody there, Dan. Are you playing a prank on me?”
“..No, look! There’s dinosaurs behind you!”
Bill still didn’t see anything.
“Alright, funny joke, Dan… but if you do find who or what caused this, let me know. I’m gonna report this incident to the staff.”
“Alright… don’t worry, I’ll keep an eye out.”
“Thanks, little man.”
Bill ran off to go meet with the higher-ups, while Dan stood there dumbfounded. His mind was aching trying to comprehend what was happening. The destruction was very real, and the dinosaurs seemed to be there too. But Bill couldn’t see them. In fact, nobody seemed to hear the sound except for him and Dan. Was Dan losing his mind?
From there, the line between reality and fantasy kept blurring. Dan’s mother had apparently seen a small pterosaur in the attic, Dan himself had snapped a blurred picture of a Stegosaurus, His dog had apparently spent an entire day with one while he and his mother were away, and he physically interacted with them more than once. 
They also consistently made Dan’s life worse the longer they were around, especially due to the fact they kept appearing more frequently. He was less focused, Dan’s random exclamations and odd actions upon seeing them made people view him as delusional, and his grades were dropping to consistent Cs and the occasional D. He wanted them to go away already. Things were fun at first, but now it was detrimental. 
And then came May 16th, 2011. Dan couldn’t even wake up without there being a practical zoo of dinosaurs and prehistoric creatures outside his home greeting him with their toothed and horned mugs. He tried to ignore them, and just focus. Today was a big day, and he remembered to try and keep his spirits up. Today was a school field trip. A trip to the Royal Ontario Museum. He tried to focus on the field trip. In fact, they were staying at the museum overnight, obviously with the parents’ permission. Things went smoothly for the first few hours, as all the kids were shown the fossils by their tour guide, Bethany. It was actually quite fun to be shown around. Bethany was quite impressed with all the knowledge the kids had learned from Dan.
But then when it was time for the sleepover to begin, Dan stayed behind and observed the monolithic Tyrannosaurus display. He let the importance and spectacle of what he was seeing sink in. He was staring at the real bones of an ancient animal. Something so unfamiliar, yet it was more than true. But then he heard a squawk. At first, when he looked towards the source of the sound, he saw nothing. But then a silhouette of what he assumed to be a Dromaeosaurus rushed across the room, prompting Dan to shout as he reached his breaking point.
“STOP TAUNTING ME!” 
This caught the attention of Bethany, who rushed towards Dan in a panic.
“Dan?! What’s wrong?”
“…I saw something.”
“What did you see?”
“..A Dinosaur. A living one.”
Bethany sighed in a mix of relief and exhaustion.
“Dan, you’re probably seeing things.. you’ve been up for a while. I’ll go and check just in case someone is in here, but you should go get some rest.”
Dan didn’t even bother trying to convince her otherwise. He rushed back to where the rest of his friends were, with the fossil of some kind of duck-billed dinosaur lining the walls behind them.
“Hey, Dan!” Chirped his friend Jordan. “Where were you?”
“…Sorry, guys. I got kind of preoccupied.. Can I ask you a question?”
“Sure, go ahead.” replied Angie.
“…Do you guys hate me?”
The room was silent for a moment, as the others looked at Dan, visibly upset. Angie was the first one to speak up.
“What? Of course not! Why would you say that?” 
“It’s just.. I’ve been shouting over things that might not even be real… plus, I’m doing miserably in school now.”
Cory now chimed in.
“ What?! Dan, we don’t care how you act! You aren’t clobbering us or.. ya know, biting us. You’re a really smart guy!”
“Really?”
“Yea.” Interjected Ricardo.
“Plus, you’re just pretty cool overall. You have nothing to be ashamed of. All that matters is you continue to do the right thing. That’s what my mom told me.”
Dan’s heart quickly warmed, as a small smile made its way onto his face.
“Thanks, guys. I appreciate it. Now let’s get some rest.” 
Everybody got some shut-eye very shortly after, except for Dan.
He tried, but he kept writhing in his sleeping bag. All he could hear were the constant chirps, bellows, and squawks of those ancient beasts ringing inside his mind.
Before he knew it, he was now dreaming. He was standing in an endless black realm, with nothing but himself. It was deathly silent. But then the silence was interrupted by whispering. It was in no language he had ever heard, but it was unmistakably some kind of speech. Dan squinted his eyes and grasped the sides of his head in pain, as the whispers got louder and louder.
“Enough, please, enough!”
Just before the whispers reached deafening volume, they halted. Dan had opened his eyes back up, and straightened his posture. What happened next would reveal all.
A series of eyes resembling the creatures Dan had to suffer with manifested in the darkness, causing Dan to stumble to the ground. They were everywhere. They were even hovering midair. And then the clarity of their true form made itself clear. Every single pair of eyes belonged to humanoid figures, shrouded in darkness and of wildly varying proportions. Some had regular hands, and some had long talons in place of nails. Some were identical to humans in proportion, while others were frail and towering like a dead tree.
“What.. what are you?”
Instead of answering, they simply handed something to Dan. It was his Dino Field Guide. Dan tried opening it, but the pages suddenly started flipping by themselves. This kept increasing in speed as the seconds passed. The longer this went on for, the more the book and its content drastically changed.
Soon enough, there weren’t even dinosaurs displayed in the book’s pages anymore. In their place were totally unrecognizable creatures that in no way could possibly have existed. Only to name a few, a horse-like creature with grand antlers and a mane of passionate color, a colossal white leviathan that resembled a cross between a human being and a whale, and an abomination with traits of a lion, scorpion, and bat.
And, eventually, all that remained in the pages were endless depictions of the very aberrations standing before the young boy. And for the first time, he could glance the word Tulpa. Dan couldn’t take it, and slammed the book shut. And in doing so, saw the book’s true title.
“Liber Mentis”
Dan was rusty in languages that weren’t English, but given how the creatures he had been so infatuated with were named with a mixture of Latin and Greek, he could roughly translate the title as “The Book Of The Mind”.
“I want you to leave me alone… I don’t know if you know what you’re doing, but this needs to stop! You’re making things worse for me!”
All of them cocked their heads to the side in perfect sync, like a group of confused animals.
“Is there anything I can do…? To get you to leave me alone?”
Even though the figures said nothing, Dan very quickly realized the only way he could get these things out of his life.
“No… you can’t be serious… there has to be another way!”
The figures, once again simultaneously, gloomily shook their heads no.
“Look… I’ll accept, but on one condition.”
Dan conceded, clearing his throat.
“Please, when he wants you to leave him alone, leave him be. Having you here every single day took a lot out of me. Give him a break every now and then.”
The shadows stared at each other, before once again in perfect synchronization, nodding, and they vanished with a formal bow to the nervous boy.
2 years later, Dan had left to do volunteer work with his father at the museum. Trek was saddened by this, but was brought some comfort by the notion that it would only be a few months, and not years. Only a day after Dan’s departure, a package had been delivered. Trek had rushed to open it, and had found it was from Dan. He managed to open it without any assistance from his mother, and the contents made a wave of nostalgia come rushing out from the cardboard container. All of Dan’s old stuff. His tape recorder, walkie talkies, and even a megaphone. But the most exciting thing inside was what laid at the very bottom. A worn out, but instantly recognizable book…
Category:Theory
Category:Paranormal
Category:Beings
Category:Curse