The Canister in the Moonlight

It was the summer of 1983, and I found myself back in my childhood home, a rambling farmhouse that creaked with age and memory. The walls were thin, and the wind through the aged oak trees outside my window sounded like whispers. I had returned after a failed relationship, my heart as raw as the paint peeling on the barn. My parents, kind but distant, had taken me in without question. My father worked the night shift at the lumber mill, and my mother left before dawn for her shift at the diner. I was left alone most nights, with only the sounds of the old house for company.

My bedroom was at the end of the hall, the smallest room, with a window that overlooked the expansive, overgrown cornfield. I had not been back in years, and the room still held remnants of my youth: a dusty bookshelf, a faded poster of a band I no longer listened to, and on the nightstand, a half-empty can of deodorant. It was the same brand my father used, and the silver canister caught the moonlight, casting a distorted reflection on the ceiling.

I had been sleeping fitfully, plagued by nightmares of my ex-girlfriend’s face dissolving into the dark. I woke in the middle of the night, paralyzed, my eyes open to the room. The moonlight streamed through the window, illuminating the deodorant can, which seemed to glow with an unnatural intensity. My breath caught in my throat as I realized I could not move a single muscle. My chest felt heavy, as if something immense were pressing down on me. I tried to scream, but my voice was locked in my throat.

Then I saw her. An old woman, no, a crone, sitting on the edge of my bed. Her skin was like wrinkled parchment, and her eyes were two pools of black. She wore a tattered dress that seemed to be woven from shadows. She did not speak, but her presence was suffocating. She shifted her weight, and the pressure on my chest increased until I felt my ribs would crack. I could hear my own heart pounding in my ears, a frantic drumbeat that seemed to say, ‘Run, run, run.’ But I was frozen, trapped in this waking nightmare.

I tried to focus on the deodorant can, as if it were a talisman against the darkness. The moonlight glinted off it, and in its metallic surface, I saw the reflection of the old hag, but distorted, her face elongated and twisted. She seemed to notice my gaze, and slowly, she turned her head, her neck making a sound like dry leaves. She leaned over me, her breath cold and smelling of decay, and whispered, ‘You see me, boy. That is a curse.’

Then she was gone, and the weight lifted. I gasped, sucking in air, and my limbs obeyed my commands. I bolted upright, reaching for the lamp, but the bulb flickered and died. I scrambled for the deodorant can, turning it over in my hands, searching for some reason it had become the focus of my terror. But it was just a can, cheap and ordinary, with a label worn from years of use.

The next night, I was afraid to sleep. I lay in bed, my eyes fixed on the can, which sat innocently on the nightstand. I had placed it there deliberately, as if to defy the memory. The moon was new, and the room was enveloped in darkness. I felt a chill, and the hair on my arms stood up. A faint whisper, like the rustle of a skirt, came from the corner. I snapped on the light, but there was nothing. My heart racing, I grabbed the deodorant can and hurled it across the room. It clattered against the wall, and the sound was deafening in the silence.

But as I lay back down, I felt a weight again, not on my chest, but in the air around me. A presence. I turned on the flashlight I had kept under my pillow, and the beam revealed the deodorant can on the floor, but it was moving. It rolled slowly, as if pushed by an invisible hand, until it stopped directly under my bed. I reached down to grab it, but my fingers met a cold, wrinkled thing that gripped me with surprising strength. I yanked my hand back, and the flashlight’s beam wavered, showing the crone’s face emerging from the shadows under the bed, her eyes glinting.

I screamed, a raw, primal sound, and my parents came running. But by the time they burst into the room, the crone was gone, and I was trembling, unable to speak coherently. My mother tried to soothe me, but I saw the fear in her eyes. She looked at the deodorant can, which lay upside down on the floor, and said, ‘We need to get rid of that thing.’ But when she reached for it, she hesitated, as if afraid it might burn her.

We buried the can in the field the next morning, at the edge of the corn. I felt a sense of relief, but as I turned to walk back to the house, I saw my reflection in the kitchen window, and for just a moment, it was not my face that stared back, but the crone’s. And I knew that she was not gone, but had found a new vessel: me.

I left the farmhouse that day, never to return. But even now, every time I see a silver canister in the corner of my eye, I freeze. I feel the weight on my chest, and I hear that whisper: ‘You see me, boy. That is a curse.’ And I know that on some nights, when the moon is right, she will come again, and she will not leave empty-handed.