"We Many. I Many. (Part 1)" by Unfinished Sentence

My grandpa is a relatively reserved man. He’s typically emotionally stoic and doesn’t regale the escapades of his past years too often. But once in a blue moon, you can get him to tell you one of his killer stories. I’ve heard plenty of stories from my grandpa before, all of them have been either exceptionally amazing or just completely bewildering. My mom always says that the best stories my grandpa has are from his war days and when he was a police officer. Last night it was just me and my grandpa home together, and we got into a pretty deep conversation while sitting in the living room. We somehow ended up on the topic of his law enforcement years. I knew my grandpa wasn’t fond of dwelling on this particular topic, but my nagging curiosity got the better of me.

“Hey gramps, what do you think was the worst thing you saw as a cop? Aside from like murders and stuff I mean.”

“Suicide.”

His answer was blunt and detached. I knew he was trying to steer clear of the topic entirely, but the irksome nosiness in me still sought after the details.

“How many cases did you see?”

“Just one.”

This time I could see a pronounced twinge of sadness creeping up into his eyes. Whatever memory he was summoning was clearly something he wanted to forget. As much as it pained me to see my grandpa like this, I had to hear this story. I asked as delicately as I could.

“What happened?”

He gazed at the wall for a second before sighing and turning leisurely to face me.

“Trick (my grandpa’s nickname for me), promise me you won’t repeat this to anyone, and I mean anyone. Not your mother, not your friends, not Lennon, not even your grandma. No one.”

I was taken aback by that last part. From what I’ve heard from my mom, my grandma knew absolutely everything that happened to my grandpa while he was in both the service and the police force. There wasn’t anything he told my family that she hadn’t heard already. But it appeared that she didn’t know about this. I agreed to keep his vow of silence (which I’m breaking right now, with genuine remorse I swear to you all), and bent forward to hear my grandpa’s previously unspoken account. This is what he told me …

My grandpa was working late when a message came in through his radio about assistance required for a home investigation on the opposite side of town. A call had come into the station from a concerned woman, saying that she hadn’t heard from her neighbor in over a fortnight and that she began to think something dreadful had happened. My grandpa, as well as two other cruisers, was dispatched out to the house of the man in question. The house was situated in a very wealthy area known hold many exceptionally wealthy doctors and the like. When my grandpa arrived, the other two officers were already there. There was no response when they knocked on the door, so they had to forcibly enter the guy’s home.

My grandpa said that this place was one of the most massive houses he’d ever seen. By the looks of everything, this guy probably used $20 bills as toilet paper. The walls seemed to go on for miles in just about every room, and precious antiques and luxurious looking furnishings littered the place. As nice as the house was, my grandpa said something about it wasn't right. All the furniture (couches, chairs, tables, etc.) had been turned upside-down, or was clustered in front of the all the closet doors. Something even more disconcerting my grandpa had noticed was that whoever had been in the house had taken all the mirrors off the walls, which were now resting on the floor, and covered them completely in black electrical tape, or broke them. Aside from the peculiar placement of the furniture and the mirrors, the house looked ordinary. There was no indication of a struggle or forced entry, the placed seemed untouched by any kind of unlawful activity. The house was enormous, and had dozens of different rooms that needed to be investigated. Since there were only three men on site, taking the time to look in every room was a pretty time-consuming task. The longer my grandpa looked, the more he began to feel perturbed. The house looked occupied, but there was no one to be found.

About 10 minutes into the investigation, my grandpa took the liberty of heading upstairs unaided (he was armed so he didn’t require full assistance) while the two other officers were still spread out across the colossal lower floor. It only took my grandpa a few minutes to grasp that something upstairs was very wrong. There was shattered glass everywhere, and all the furniture was destroyed. Upon further examination, all the glass scattered around appeared to be mirror shards. Every single one of the rooms were trashed, and nothing was in one piece. My grandpa called for the guys downstairs to come up to the second floor and look through all the mess he was standing in. The three of them began to peer in to the various rooms in hope that the owner of the home was somewhere upstairs. That’s when things became disturbing.

As my grandpa investigated the upper level, he and the other officers saw something unusual. In almost every single one of the rooms, there was a recurring phrase scratched into the walls;

‘We many. I many’