The Tacked-Up Saint

I’d always had a knack for sensing the unseen, even as a kid. While other children feared the dark, I found comfort in the hum of old houses, the creak of stairs that moved on their own, the faint scent of pipe tobacco in rooms where no one smoked. My grandmother called it a gift, but by the time I turned fifteen, I wasn’t so sure.

My family had moved into a farmhouse on the edge of a dying town, a place that had been in my mother’s family for generations. It was there that my great-uncle, August, had passed away a decade before I was born. He was a reclusive man, known for his strange habits and his obsession with the occult. The house still held his presence, especially in the room that had been his study—a room that had been sealed shut for as long as I could remember.

It was the summer before my junior year when I stumbled upon a dusty cardboard box in the attic, tucked behind a rack of moth-eaten coats. Inside was a tarnished brass frame containing a hand-colored photograph of a man with deep-set eyes and a beard that reached his chest. The name etched on the back read ‘August E. Marsh.’ I knew immediately who he was. My hands trembled as I clutched the frame, feeling an inexplicable pull toward it.

The next day, I hung the photograph on the wall of my bedroom, directly across from my bed. I didn’t tell my parents—they had enough to worry about with the farm’s failing crops and my mother’s illness. That night, I lay in sleep, and slipped into a dream filled with whispers. They seemed to emanate from the photograph, a chorus of low, urgent voices that I couldn’t quite understand. But one phrase repeated over and over: ‘Seal the cracks.’

I woke with a start, my heart pounding. The room was still, but I felt eyes on me. When I turned to the photograph, I could have sworn that August’s eyes had shifted, now staring directly at me. I dismissed it as a trick of the moonlight, but sleep didn’t come easily after that.

Over the following weeks, strange things began to happen. At night, I’d hear scratching sounds from the walls—like something trying to claw its way in. My small collection of trinkets would be rearranged when I returned home, though no one else had been in my room. The worst was the shadow that would occasionally slip under my door, a dark, oily shape that would slide across the floor and vanish into the corner of my vision.

I tried to ignore it, telling myself it was just my imagination. But then, one evening, I found the photograph’s glass cracked—a jagged line spiderwebbing across Uncle August’s face. The moment I touched it, a searing pain shot through my fingers, and I heard a deep, guttural voice whisper, ‘You’ve let them in.’

That’s when the humming began. A low, melancholic tune that seemed to come from inside the walls, the ceiling, even the floorboards. My mother denied hearing it, and my father, a practical man, said it was just the wind. But I knew better. I remembered the stories Grandmother told me about Uncle August—how he claimed to have spoken with spirits, how he’d warned that the veil between worlds was thinning, and how he’d spent his final years trying to seal the house against the things that pressed against it from the other side.

I decided to open the study. After weeks of pleading, my father finally gave me the key, warning me to be careful. The room was exactly as August had left it—papers scattered, candle wax hardened on the desk, and a circle of salt drawn on the floor. In the center of the circle lay a leather-bound journal. As I flipped through its pages, I found detailed instructions for performing a ritual to ‘lock the doors’ between worlds. I also discovered a drawing of the photograph I had found, with annotations that made my blood run cold: some of the entities he had communed with had taken a keen interest in his descendants, waiting for an opportunity to cross over.

The humming grew louder at night, and I began to see the shadow more clearly—it had form, a gaunt, humanoid silhouette that would hover at the foot of my bed. I started sleeping with a knife under my pillow, but I knew it wouldn’t help. Something had been loosed that night when I hung the photograph, and I was the one who had to put it back.

On the night of the new moon, I performed the ritual as August had written. I lit candles, drew the protective circle, and sprinkled salt around the perimeter. I read the incantations aloud, my voice trembling with fear. For a moment, the room seemed to exhale—the pressure in the air lifted, and the humming stopped. I allowed myself a breath of relief.

But then the candles flickered and died. A cold, icy breath whispered against the back of my neck, and a voice, soft and clear, spoke into my ear: ‘You’ve only delayed the inevitable, boy. Your blood was always meant to open the way.’

I turned, and in the dim light, I saw the photograph floating in the air, the crack in the glass glowing with an unholy light. August’s face had shifted into a wicked grin, his eyes drilling into mine. The shadow behind me solidified into a tall, skeletal figure wrapped in tattered robes, and I realized that I had been tricked—the journal was not a manual for sealing, but for releasing.

Now, I keep the photograph buried in a lead-lined box at the bottom of an abandoned well, miles from any dwelling. The humming has ceased, but the feeling of being watched never leaves me. Sometimes, in the dead of night, I catch the faint scent of pipe tobacco, and I know that August—or whatever wears his face—is still waiting, patient as the grave.