I Worked For National Geographic As A Field Photographer And Weird, Unexplainable Things Have Been Happening To Me

Now before I start, I want to clear up a few things. There’s been some conversation about the whole skin walker thing, and I didn’t feel like there was enough credibility in my own head to mention it as a story. It’s just one of those things where I think I want to believe it was that, but really know deep down that it isn’t. Also, I mentioned this in the comments before; I want to do my best to tell this story chronologically. Ava is very flattered that most of you want to hear about her, but we’ll get there in time. Before we talk about how I ended up working with Ava again, we have to talk about the reason they almost suspended me.

After the whole almost dying in a plane crash thing, Sasha asked if she could continue to work under me. Without hesitation I said yes. While Sasha was still fresh out of college and one of the worst interns, she had a brilliant head on her shoulders, quick wit, good research skills, and knew her way around the internet like no one else I had ever met. Also, it might have helped that she was unreasonably attractive and nonchalantly flaunted her flawless body. It was difficult to think about Ava and Mark when Sasha’s smoky eyes and cute smile glinted in your direction.

In the fall of 2009, we were tasked with going to Hong Kong on the lookout for Ferret Badgers. Supposedly they had meandered into the city and were getting into trouble; eating trash, attacking animals, etc. They were oddly cute and Sasha kept talking about how she wanted to try to pet one. I told her it would be more likely to rip her hand off, but she waved it off. Spoiler: throughout the whole trip we only found one, and the pictures of it were less than extraordinary, but it got the job done. And we found it by complete accident, while eating lunch outside of a restaurant; it meandered up to us and began begging for Sasha’s food. She fed it, while I took the shots.

After getting the shots, we retired back to our hotel room, where we did the common thing. This included me watching TV in another language and trying to decipher what I could, while she sat in her chair by the window and played with her phone. She never said whom she was talking to, but I never really cared. This time she put it down for a while and began to look over this tiny book she had gotten from a street vendor. Animatedly, she shot up, hopped onto the bed besides me and pushed the book into my face.

“Look at this fucking place.” The picture showed this old ornate house that looked like it was rapidly falling into disrepair. Anyone could have taken a two second glance at the picture and assumed this place was disgustingly haunted. “It’s right around the corner from here. Nam Koo Terrace. Supposedly, it’s ridiculously haunted. Originally used as a bordello for soldiers during WWII, the spirits of all the destitute and desperate women that died in that house still haunt it. Come on, a house haunted by the ghosts of a whole bunch of prostitutes; tell me you don’t want to see that.”

I gave her a quick chuckle and a long look. She rolled her eyes and took her computer out of her backpack. She lay back down beside me, letting her long brown hair flow out of her bun, cascading around fragile shoulders. Her hazel eyes changed color as I watched her type furiously into the search bar, from a deep brown to an evergreen. A little frown hung cutely to the corners of her mouth, playfully insinuating that she was still angered.

Before she had started telling me about the groupings of people who had lost their minds inside, the bodies of homeless men they found dismantled, the cult they found eating the bones of refugee children, I had already decided I’d go with her. As a hopeless romantic, stuck in winds blowing somewhere else, I needed something to get my mind moving. And, as sure as I was that it wasn’t with Sasha; she was fun, and that was something that I desperately needed.

She beamed and began talking animatedly when I agreed. It was annoying. But it was cute. “We’ll go once it gets dark, that way we have the best chance of seeing anything. Or hearing anything, whatever. Something awesome will happen. I just know it.” For the remained of the afternoon, we bought flashlights, got dinner, and continued to do research on the place. Then at a little after nine, we slunk out of the hotel, walked a few blocks down, and stopped in the center of the sidewalk, marveling at the towering house that sat before us.

Without hesitating, Sasha hopped up the steps and pushed the gate open. It only budged a little with chain wrapped around it, but both of us could sneak through the section where the old brass bars had been bent. The yard was a disheveled mess of old broken glass and children’s toys being strewn around the cracked flagstone walkway and hidden throughout the knee high grass. Sasha bounced ahead of me, inspecting creepy objects with extreme interest, taking photographs of what she found interesting.

When we got to the door, we found it slightly open, and the jamb broken, so it couldn’t be fully closed. Sasha looked back at me as we crossed the threshold and turned on our flashlights. Her look was a little bit of fear, mixed with a lot of excitement, and a dash of something darker and more powerful.

Inside the place was absolutely destroyed. Pieces of furniture rotted in the rooms that they had once happily occupied. Bugs and other sorts of creepy-crawlies scuttled around the floors in attempts to evade our flashlight beams. The sought refuge in the skeletons of old bookshelves or underneath rugs that looked suspiciously like dead animals. The walls were canvases for disturbing graffiti. Chinese symbols lingered against images of monsters ripping apart bones and skin, eating flesh and drinking blood of innocent people caught in their path. The only bit of English was inscribed at the top of the large spiral staircase, next to the image of a girl whose face had been completely blacked out with what looked like soot. It read: “The eyes of God hide in the walls with hands like the Devil.”

Sasha insisted that I took a picture of her in front of it, claiming it was make the best Facebook photo. As I pressed down the button, and heard the shutter click, I felt a powerful cold wash over me. Looking down at my arms, they were covered in goose bumps underneath my shirt. Even Sasha looked like she felt it. She stared down the hallway in front of her, narrowing her eyes as she peered into the darkness. I wondered if it was all goose bumps underneath her gray sweater.

“Come with me,” she said quietly as she began to walk down the hallway. This time it wasn’t with the same purpose as before. Her steps were slower, quieter, less defined against the creaking of the house. She turned with every little noise as the world settled around her presence. I could see my breath when I reached the top of the staircase, and stood mystified by it. I continued to stare in the vapor I was making until I saw her flashlight beam dip around the far corner and raced to catch up with her.

Around the corner, she stood in front of a large black door that reeked of kerosene. On the door itself was an image of a stick figure girl drawn in chalk. She had long hair that covered her eyes and was picking petals of a flower she held in her right hand. For how sparse and simplistic it was, it was oddly transfixing and beautiful. After staring entranced at it for several minutes Sasha turned over to me, “Adam, we have to go inside. I can feel something in there. Right on the other side of the door.” I was hesitant, but she seemed so calm and put together, I couldn’t stop myself. I nodded. She turned the handle. I pushed the door open.

The room was completely black, from head to toe, as it had all been burned. Rotten and splintered wood clung blankly to the sides of the wall. The only other things in the room besides the burned walls and floor was a rusted metal bed frame that had been fused and contorted by the heat, and the top half of the charred remains of an old teddy bear. In this odd trance-like state Sasha moved forward and picked it up off the ground. She clutched it in her hands and brought it against her heart. As it pushed its way in between her breasts, her eyes rolled back, her knees went weak, and she collapsed onto the floor. Her mouth began to froth as I furiously dialed for the help.

Hours later, they let her go from the hospital. They claimed that she had just fainted, but there was more than that. I could have sworn that for a second, she levitated. Maybe only an inch of the ground, but her skinny frame was definitely not attached to the ground. Also, she refused to let go of the bear. It took the two EMTs and me to pry it out of her fingers, and when it was released, her eyes found home, the frothing stopped, and she began to stir.

We both cried in the ambulance. Both because we were scared. The police wanted to throw us in jail for trespassing in that building, but after seeing what we were going through, decided not to go through with it. They took one look at the makeup streaming down from Sasha’s fierce turned sad eyes and didn’t bother making her life any worse. I was really thankful for that. But, still they took our camera. Claimed it was evidence in a case they had against us. So, we lost the photos of the Ferret Badgers; the whole reason we had come. It didn’t matter in the scheme of things.

While I waited for her, I called back to the states and explained the situation to my boss. I wanted to be honest with them. I took the blame for everything. Leading us into the house, using their company property for personal reasons, getting it confiscated when the police came. He remained fairly silent on the other end of the phone, only asking how Sasha was. He seemed relieved that she had only fainted and come back to quickly. Simply he told me he was “disappointed by my recklessness, foolishness, and apparent disrespect for the company, and that we would have a longer discussion when I returned.” Lastly, he thanked me for being upfront with him and taking the fall for the whole party, in a knowing voice that told me he knew I was covering up for her.
When she got out, we held hands in the cab back. She leaned over after a while and put her head on my shoulder. I asked her nothing, but waited to see if she would say anything. She said very little, and kept her head there the whole time. When we got back to the hotel, it was nearing four-in-the-morning. We took the elevator upstairs, obviously looking quite the sight to the late-night manager who stared blankly at us, and skulked back into our room. Without saying anything, she undressed, slid underneath the covers of my bed, and waited for me to get in. As I slid in beside her, she grabbed my arm, and wrapped it around her. I kissed her cheek softly and apologized. Not for anything in particular, but rather just for everything. She smiled a little, and cried softly.

I never heard what happened to her. I don’t even know if she does. Secretly, I hope she just blacked out and that sent shockwaves throughout her. I really want to believe that, but I doubt it’s true.

I also wish that this touching scene was how this story ended.

But hours later, in the darkness, I woke up to the dark room. Held somehow in sleep paralysis, I could see and hear everything, but no part of my body could move. I heard the door click open and the thud of footsteps coming into the room. Then I saw her, a little girl with long dark hair, walking in and standing at the end of the bed. As she combed the hair out of her eyes, I could see her face was heavily scarred and burned. Embers sat deep in the scars on her face, and still burned bright orange. She moved her way around the side of the bed, and I could feel the temperature in the room beginning to heat up. Silently, she slid up next to Sasha, and put a scaly, burned finger against her face, meticulously combing a strand of the brown hair. Then her soulless black eyes found mine, and I was transfixed. In this deep throaty voice, that had no place coming out of a little girl’s body, she hissed, “I don’t go in your room; you shouldn’t go in mine.”