I could almost see the knife missing.
My body was in the living room, seated upright on the new (used) couch. My mind was in the kitchen, on the other side of the bare wall.
On this wall, just out of sight, was a metallic utensil holder—a magnetic strip for thermometers, measuring spoons, or any other odds and ends you want at easy access.
In my case, it held knives.
I didn’t intend to keep them there. It’s a little gruesome for guests, walking into the kitchen to be greeted at eye level by three long butcher knives.
At least, I thought there were three.
As I unpacked days earlier, I’d hung the mismatched knives on that metallic strip, waiting until everything was unpacked to find their proper places. But at some point on moving day, I left and came back to a disturbing discovery.
There were only two knives on the wall.
I heard a creak upstairs.
It’s nothing, I thought. That’s just what the house sounds like.
The creak again.
Is that what the house sounds like?
It’s been over two years since I’ve lived here. The house always had its share of noises. I wondered if this was the sound of an empty house—or one with a visitor.
Oh well, I thought. Come and get me. I’d moved in on Saturday. It was now Tuesday—Halloween. If the murderer had waited it out in the attic, holding off his attack for October 31, I’d applaud his creative restraint. As for me, this felt like the first moment in weeks I could sit. I tempted my fate on the couch.
The furnace kicked on. I remembered. This is definitely what the house sounds like.
I closed my eyes and breathed relief, but the image taunted me still: two lonely butcher knives, hung unevenly spaced, wondering to what great purpose their friend retired.
I’ll show my cards and tell you: the mystery of the missing knife has no satisfying resolution. Did I misremember the number of knives? Did one get moved in the shuffle?
It’s been another week. Is the murderer still in the attic?
Another unsettling experience followed on that Halloween night.
This scare was subtler. As the fears for my life receded, I perceived that something was off.
I looked around.
These walls are the same gray tone. But they were bare.
The brown couch in its normal place. But it’s a different brown couch in its normal place.
I remembered the gray Persian rug that used to keep my feet from the cold floor. I remembered my white and black dog, who’d lay on it perfectly camouflaged.
Perhaps the room was silent because it needed Sully’s snoring.
A lot changes in two years.
I wasn’t expecting warm fuzzies as I moved back to my Ohio home, and I didn’t get them. I’m here for now while I pay down student loans. I didn’t expect it to feel bad or good—just normal.
What I didn’t anticipate is how strange past normals feel.
I searched the room for some thing that was off. I couldn’t find one. Either I grew two inches or the room itself shrunk, each aspect now offputtingly small.
I moved to the kitchen table for online class. The table was different—round instead of square—but placed in the familiar position.
Talk about uncanny. What year is it?
I’d sat in this very position for hundreds of Zooms in 2020, but it’s 2023. Last time I had a two-hour Zoom, I sat in this very position, considering a move across the country and a different direction for my life and career. Now, by the path of time, I found myself seated at a different old table in the same old kitchen, on same old Zoom studying different old books in this new life path I’d chosen. The room already felt like a funhouse; now I’d been translated in time. It felt like I was living past, present, and future at once.
And that’s when the third fright came.
In the first, I’d feared for my life. In the second, I contemplated existence. Now, I confronted a reality horrifying yet familiar.
I forgot to do the reading.
A lot changes in two years. A lot doesn’t.
This class isn’t usually online; Halloween festivities made it so. With the break from routine and the busyness of moving, I entirely failed to consider there was still classwork to do.
The first-time-I’ve-sat-in-weeks feeling evaporated; I searched the syllabus. With the minutes I had, I skimmed Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale and Freud’s essay on “The Uncanny.” I logged on to class, mostly unprepared.
Like an omen, both readings mirrored the events of my evening. As I didn’t get far in the Shakespeare or the Freud, I won’t pretend to lecture you in them. Here is what I caught.
Freud takes multiple routes in his explanation of the uncanny, that eerie and unsettling feeling. He explores its relationship to the German word unheimlich.
The German word unheimlich is obviously the opposite of heimlich, heimisch, meaning “familiar,” “native,” “belonging to the home”; and we are tempted to conclude that what is “uncanny” is frightening precisely because it is not known and familiar.
In calling unheimlich the “opposite” of heimlich (or what is uncanny the opposite of what is homey or familiar), one would assume a thing to become scarier the more unfamiliar it is. The unfamiliar can be scary, yes, but this is not the case universally. We face the unfamiliar daily, with little of it actually stirring fear.
In my case, it’s because of the house’s familiarity that I began to feel disturbed. Freud notes this exactly: “heimlich is a word the meaning of which develops towards an ambivalence, until it finally coincides with its opposite, unheimlich.” Under certain circumstances, the heimlich (or homey) becomes so familiar that it pushes into the unheimlich. Past a certain threshold, the recognizable morphs into the uncanny. A strange doll, a spooky reflection. Something uncanny isn’t fully unknown; it’s known in a way that unsettles.
There’s Freud.
Of The Winter’s Tale, I know even less. In Shakespeare’s late romance, he offers a play apparently controversial among critics.
They special take aim at Act 4 Scene 1, an interlude of sorts, in which the character Time appears on stage. He tells the audience, Sixteen years have passed. It’s now the future.
Is this lazy writing from the great playwright? If you ever read the play, let me know. That might be useful for my finals.
Years have passed. It’s the future. That’s how I feel—like I’ve been pushed forward abruptly. The narrator tells me time has passed, but I’m in the same chair as before. Back in this place, it feels uncanny.
This was my first home after moving out, the fixer-upper I poured my all into. With changes undergone and more life lived, it’s lost some of its spell. It’s not that the house is haunted; it’s un-haunted by time away.
Maybe that’s a feeling that disappears with a new rug and paint. Or maybe the more I recreate the known, I only create more unheimlich.
When is the familiar too familiar? When should the past not be replicated? Only time will tell, as we distance ourselves from this hellish Halloween tale.
I went to college late; it’s certain I wasn’t growing any taller there. This place I used to live in isn’t really two inches small. It’s possible—forgive the earnestness—that I’ve grown two years too tall.
Truthfully, I take it as an experiment. I’m unattached here, paying down loans, trying to finish a masters. If I grow to love it again, great. If not, some day soon I’ll move on again. I’ll sell this place off and go wherever is next.
I can picture the listing already: Starter home, two years small. One knife missing.
Am I reading this a week late or a month late? I'm sorry either way. This was just what I needed though. What a refreshing and dynamic read! It opened as thriller fiction, became journal entry, then turned into an educational read, and if it felt disjointed at all, the fragments only added to the haunting theme pervasive throughout.
Kuddos for this one. -JD