There was no rhyme or reason for it. It was like a switch went off, out of the blue, and turned him into someone else.

We were kids when it happened with me being 9 and Josh having just turned 11. Which also meant that would likely be our last year with babysitters.

Josh was a solid athlete and a whiz in school. Despite the fact he’d moved up a grade because of his academics, Josh still matched his older peers in athletics. And he got along with everyone. He was sociable and funny and confident but not arrogant.

All this to say, Josh was a competent and level-headed 11 year old.

Which made that night from our childhood so much stranger.

It was a Friday night and our parents had a large dinner out planned with some of my dad’s colleagues. There was also a storm warning that night. One with record breaking thunderclaps and lightning strikes.

We got our favourite babysitter, Teresa, that night. We liked her because she’d take us down to the corner store and let us pick a movie to rent every time she was sitting.

The last time we saw Teresa, she let us rent Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers and Carnosaur 3. Our parents were pissed, but brought Teresa back with a stern warning of nothing above PG-13.

We ended up not renting anything that night because of the storm. It was just too chaotic outside. I was surprised our parents were still going out.

Teresa brought over a copy of Poltergeist, which was rated PG somehow. It scared the hell out of me. But from the moment the storm had started… Josh locked onto it and only it.

There was something about the thunderclaps that kept pulling his attention back to the windows. Like voices hidden under the Earth-shaking rumbles were speaking just a bit too quietly for him to hear.

When the movie ended, I got Teresa to put on one of our copies of The Lion King, because I was still scared from Poltergeist. But Josh got up abruptly and went to bed.

I fell asleep with Teresa on the couch. The storm was still raging outside when I woke up, so I had Teresa bring me to my room. We stopped by Josh’s room and peeked in. His lights were off and we couldn’t see anything.

Teresa put me to bed and went back downstairs. I stayed up for a while, listening to the pounding rain against the window and roof. I don’t know when I fell asleep, but I was woken up by Josh in the middle of the night.

Josh was on top of me in bed, with a flashlight below his face pointed up, causing frightening streaks of shadows. Only Josh wasn’t trying to scare me. He was crying.

Josh told me there was something in his room. It was hiding inside his mattress. He felt it moving around under him, its body consisted of tentacles and small hands that grabbed and squeezed like the jaws of a pit bull.

I knew none of that made sense. But I was still scared.

Josh convinced me to go into his room with him, with me leading the way. The long walk down the hallway had Josh cowering and whimpering behind me like he was my younger brother.

When we got to his door, it wasn’t closed completely, but was pressed against the doorframe so we couldn’t see in. I tried to slide the door open, but it hit something and stopped. I tried to push the door against it, but it felt like I was pushing against a wall.

Josh whispered to me, “I think it’s leaning against the door.”

I backed up, now not wanting the door to open. But it did. On its own.

As if pulled by the wind, the door creaked fully open, revealing the room.

There were large tufts of white fluff everywhere. There were even small threads still floating through the air on their way to the ground.

My eyes tracked through the room until they landed on Josh’s bed.

The mattress was completely torn open and all the insides were pulled out and spread across the room.

Josh whispered the words, “It’s out.”

The words caused me to panic and I went into flight mode. I sprinted back to my room and slammed the door. I pushed a chair up under the door handle to block it from opening.

Josh was banging on the other side of my door, screaming and crying like something was out there after him.

Then the words he was saying changed. They became soupy, blurring together and no longer making sense. He was yelling jumbled up gibberish through his cries as the thunder roared overhead.

I kept waiting to hear Teresa’s voice cut in, asking what was wrong. But it never came.

I started to get scared that Josh had done something to Teresa before he came to me.

Or maybe, that whatever he was afraid of… was real.

It was far fetched, but I was 9 at the time.

Josh’s strange sounds finally ended and I heard him walking back down the hallway and into his room. I heard his bedroom door shut, then his window open.

I remembered that our windows had a lengthy portion of roof under them, which Josh and I used at night to sneak back and forth after our parents went to sleep.

And just as I remembered that, I saw Josh’s face appear outside my window, with a horrified smile plastered across it.

I pulled the chair away from the door and bolted out of my room. I sprinted down the hall, passing Josh’s room and went downstairs. I was yelling Teresa’s name, still thinking she was somewhere in the house, unaware of what was going on on the second floor.

But she wasn’t there.

Footsteps pounded on the hallway overhead. I knew Josh was back inside and on his way to find me. I hid behind the couch in our living room and listened as Josh came down the stairs.

Josh walked through the living room, his footsteps moving along the other side of the couch. He was still mumbling some strange gibberish. It sounded like English but the words weren’t words.

The footsteps left the couch and moved into the kitchen.

From where I was hiding, I could see out the front window. Through the heavy storm, I could see there was a car parked on the street. And it was still running. That became my new target.

I crept out from behind the couch and snuck to the front entrance. I could hear Josh still mumbling somewhere in the kitchen. Then I heard a clatter. It sounded like the utensils drawer had been pulled out and emptied on the floor.

I opened the front door quietly and slid out. The rain was coming in sideways, so I was immediately drenched with a sheet of it. I sprinted down our home’s front steps and across the lawn.

Seconds later, I was knocking at the window of the car. The passenger door immediately swung open with a cloud of smoke and I saw Teresa inside with a guy. They were smoking and listening to music and making out and all that.

Teresa panicked when she saw me, which got worse when she saw the look in my eyes. She knew something was wrong.

I led Teresa back to the house… which looked like bombs had gone off behind each wall.

Every single wall was broken in at the centre. The drywall, cabling and cords were pulled out and spread across the floor like something tore out of each one.

Teresa’s jaw dropped. She asked me where Josh was, even though I clearly had no idea. And just as she asked, the power went out.

Teresa thought it was because of the storm, but I knew it was because of Josh. The previous week, one of our breakers had to be replaced. Our dad brought Josh along to show him how to turn on and off the power in different portions of the house.

Josh decided to turn the entire house off.

Teresa called out to Josh, but there was no response. She kept asking me what happened, why were the walls destroyed and where was my brother? But the only answer I had was that he was in the basement with the breaker box.

When I said the word ‘basement,’ I felt Teresa stiffen up. She did not want to go down there. I didn’t blame her. Neither did I.

We got a flashlight from the kitchen pantry and walked to the basement door. Teresa pointed the light down into the darkness of the basement, but there was no sign of Josh. Teresa called out to him again.

Then we heard Josh. He was mumbling the same gibberish as before. The same nonsensical faux-English was sputtering out from the shadows of the basement.

“What’s he saying,” Teresa asked.

I had no idea.

She called out to him again. This time, the gibberish got louder and turned into yelling.

Teresa grabbed me and shut the basement door. She slid a dresser in front of it and we rushed back to the kitchen. Teresa called my parents, but the restaurant said they were already on their way home.

While we waited for them to arrive, Teresa told me to go upstairs and wait in my room. She would stay by the basement.

I did as I was told and went upstairs. The second floor appeared to get the same treatment as everywhere else. All the walls were broken outward with plaster and drywall strewn across the floors. It was almost impressive how focused the destruction had been.

As I was passing Josh’s room, I heard movement. Shuffling. My panic mode started again and I booked it into my bedroom.

I closed the door and went to slide the chair under the handle again, but the handle was gone. It’d been broken off.

The mumbled gibberish whispered out behind me. I spun around. It took my eyes a moment to adjust, but I saw a figure in the far corner of my room.

It was Josh. I could see he had a strange expression on his face, but it was too dark to see what it was. The gibberish continued from him, now getting louder.

Josh stepped out of the shadows and I saw his face. He had a frightening, open mouthed gape. It was like he was trying to mock a horrified expression. Only he was horrified.

He kept repeating the same jumbles… “Em… pleh! Em… pleh! EM PLEH!!”

Like the other jumbles, these ones sounded familiar. But as I watched him speak, I saw how his mouth was moving. It looked off.

Then I realized why it didn’t look or sound right when he spoke. Josh wasn’t speaking gibberish. He was speaking backwards.

I whispered back to him, “Help me”?

As I repeated Josh’s words back in their proper order, thunder roared from above. Josh fell back into the shadows of the corner of my room and disappeared.

Downstairs, I heard the front door open and my parents yell out. I rushed down and found Teresa trying to begin to explain a situation she didn’t understand.

My mom was panicking until she saw me, then was immediately asking about Josh. At first, my parents thought Teresa had rented another horror film for us and we’d freaked out and destroyed the house. But I told my parents it wasn’t that.

There was something wrong with Josh. I didn’t tell them I’d just seen him upstairs because… I didn’t really understand what had happened in my room. He’d been there for a moment, then he disappeared.

My parents pulled the dresser away from the basement door and opened it. They called out to Josh, but heard nothing back. My dad took the flashlight from Teresa and led my mom down into the basement.

I stayed upstairs with Teresa. I didn’t want to go down there. I didn’t even like our basement during the day.

But a scream from my mother made me forget the fear and I rushed down.

My parents had found Josh curled up in the fetal position behind our giant, old furnace. Josh’s body was covered in burns and he was still speaking backwards.

My dad picked up Josh and carried him upstairs. We all went to the hospital and had Josh checked out.

He was treated for his burns and strange injuries on his hands. The burns were credited to Josh pressing his body against the furnace and the hand injuries to Josh breaking the walls apart.

By the next morning, the storm had cleared and Josh was back to normal. He was speaking clearly and his memory of the previous night was blank.

Josh’s behaviour was credited to a brief, psychotic episode triggered in Josh by the thunderstorm. He felt something was trying to get into the house, and he unknowingly broke open the walls, thinking he was holding them closed.

Everyone agreed that was what had happened. No more. No less.

Except… I’ll always remember that Josh didn’t have any drywall or plaster on him. And I’ll never believe Josh inflicted those burns on himself. I saw his back. It was covered in frightening and intricate symbols burned into his skin that would have been impossible for him to give himself.