Watching the Night
Posted: Wed Aug 24, 2016 10:13 pm
As I look into the mirror and spot a new white hair in my sideburns, I realize that I’ve been at this a long time. There are scars to prove it. While my knee is mostly healed now, it still gives me trouble some mornings or if I put my weight on it just the wrong way. There are older scars as well. Some are visible where my flesh has been ripped or torn, stabbed or pierced.
Then there are the invisible scars. Many of them bear the names of loved ones lost. Just a few short years ago I lost my best friend and brother-in-law in a fight I can’t detail here without risking a renewal of the violence that took him.
It’s a dangerous life to lead, standing in the twilight between our world and the evils that plague mankind. The monsters we face have sharp fangs and gnashy claws with which to slay us. Yet those beasts are gentle compared to those that rend the mind.
They can be defeated however. Some of them bleed. Others can be banished. And because they underestimate us, many of them can be tricked.
Arrogance is not their only weakness. Most of them have some vulnerability or another that can be exploited, even by ordinary people such as myself. Those of you with particular talents gain additional advantages against them. Some of you can detect them. Some of you can banish them. Some of you can kill them. Some of you are just very good at ignoring them.
I think the greatest common strength we here at Lazlo possess is the ability to share our experiences and knowledge of them. It is with that thought and intent in mind that I have decided to start sharing the experiences of my siblings, friends and colleagues from before the time I became active here at Lazlo.
It may be possible that encountering the supernatural was inevitable for my siblings and I. My father was Jonathan Knight and an engineer born in Canada but studied at Columbia University. So far as I know he was just an ordinary man, if quite clever and decent at math. However, it was studying at Columbia where he met my mother, Catherine. They were both boarders at my god-father’s townhouse. Obviously, that’s where they met him as well.
My mother was studying to become a doctor of medicine. She was also quite the skeptic when it came to all things supernatural. So far as I know, she never had any supernatural encounters her entire life. At least none she recognized as such. Her mother (my grandmother) was another story.
I only got to meet my grandmother on a few occasions. I think my mother was somewhat ashamed of her. That’s because she was institutionalized for being insane. Criminally so, I’m afraid. She was implicated in a number of deaths of people she claimed to be monsters. She also claimed to have ‘the gift of sight’ which she inherited from her mother and her mother’s mother, going back as far as the family records went. A gift that my older sister Christina would inherit.
As if that were not enough, my god-father was a practitioner of magic. Something he never told my parents but would eventually be revealed to my siblings and I in the fullness of time. I will get into that more later.
My sister was not the only one of us with gifts. Her fraternal twin, Brian, was an exceptional athlete with a few relatively unique abilities that tend to manifest when confronted with the paranormal. Our youngest brother, Alex has a few abilities that have led to us referring to him as a machine empath. Not only is he naturally gifted as an engineer and a mechanic that makes me jealous, he can imbue some of his creations with abilities I cannot duplicate or even understand.
Only I lack any psychic ability. I’m completely mind blind, as my sister likes to say. What I do possess is an exceptional mathematical ability that manifested almost simultaneously with my ability to speak. I have used that ability to pursue multiple degrees ranging from engineering and computer sciences to bio-chemistry and physics. Not abilities that immediately lend themselves to ghost hunting, or at least most wouldn’t think so.
All of our abilities started to manifest before any of us started school. Growing up in a large rural house on the outskirts of a medium city in Ontario Canada, the supernatural seemed to be drawn to the four of us. In those youthful carefree days, it all seemed fanciful and wonderful. Perhaps we lived charmed lives or perhaps something was looking out for us all.
Whatever the case, it was wholly mundane circumstances that would end that idyllic seeming childhood. The summer after I turned twelve, our family was visiting my godfather in New York. Dr. Austin James was a confirmed bachelor but enjoyed having us children over. He was taking the four of for a tour of central park while my parents went out for a drive.
Unfortunately, they went driving somewhere they ought not to have. Two very ordinary criminals pulled them from their car and shot them dead. Those criminals would eventually be caught by the police and spent the next twenty-five years of their lives behind bars. Today, they are free again.
Having very few living relatives, my parents had arranged for our godfather to care for us should anything ever happen to them. That was how we all came to live in New York and how I wound up attending Columbia like my parents before me.
As we grew into adulthood, our encounters with the supernatural continued although the tone of those experiences began to take a far more dangerous and sinister edge. While we would each of us pursue our own individual ways in the world, we discovered that we could not avoid that which crosses between worlds.
That is why we would eventually decide to come together and pool our resources to form a detective agency. By day we would solve conventional cases to pay the bills and by night we would battle the things that come from the darkness.
It has worked incredibly well for us.
I’ll go into more detail at a later date. For now, my daughter is waking up and requires my attention.
I can only hope our efforts have made the world a little safer for her and that she will enjoy some of the idyllic times we once shared.
Then there are the invisible scars. Many of them bear the names of loved ones lost. Just a few short years ago I lost my best friend and brother-in-law in a fight I can’t detail here without risking a renewal of the violence that took him.
It’s a dangerous life to lead, standing in the twilight between our world and the evils that plague mankind. The monsters we face have sharp fangs and gnashy claws with which to slay us. Yet those beasts are gentle compared to those that rend the mind.
They can be defeated however. Some of them bleed. Others can be banished. And because they underestimate us, many of them can be tricked.
Arrogance is not their only weakness. Most of them have some vulnerability or another that can be exploited, even by ordinary people such as myself. Those of you with particular talents gain additional advantages against them. Some of you can detect them. Some of you can banish them. Some of you can kill them. Some of you are just very good at ignoring them.
I think the greatest common strength we here at Lazlo possess is the ability to share our experiences and knowledge of them. It is with that thought and intent in mind that I have decided to start sharing the experiences of my siblings, friends and colleagues from before the time I became active here at Lazlo.
It may be possible that encountering the supernatural was inevitable for my siblings and I. My father was Jonathan Knight and an engineer born in Canada but studied at Columbia University. So far as I know he was just an ordinary man, if quite clever and decent at math. However, it was studying at Columbia where he met my mother, Catherine. They were both boarders at my god-father’s townhouse. Obviously, that’s where they met him as well.
My mother was studying to become a doctor of medicine. She was also quite the skeptic when it came to all things supernatural. So far as I know, she never had any supernatural encounters her entire life. At least none she recognized as such. Her mother (my grandmother) was another story.
I only got to meet my grandmother on a few occasions. I think my mother was somewhat ashamed of her. That’s because she was institutionalized for being insane. Criminally so, I’m afraid. She was implicated in a number of deaths of people she claimed to be monsters. She also claimed to have ‘the gift of sight’ which she inherited from her mother and her mother’s mother, going back as far as the family records went. A gift that my older sister Christina would inherit.
As if that were not enough, my god-father was a practitioner of magic. Something he never told my parents but would eventually be revealed to my siblings and I in the fullness of time. I will get into that more later.
My sister was not the only one of us with gifts. Her fraternal twin, Brian, was an exceptional athlete with a few relatively unique abilities that tend to manifest when confronted with the paranormal. Our youngest brother, Alex has a few abilities that have led to us referring to him as a machine empath. Not only is he naturally gifted as an engineer and a mechanic that makes me jealous, he can imbue some of his creations with abilities I cannot duplicate or even understand.
Only I lack any psychic ability. I’m completely mind blind, as my sister likes to say. What I do possess is an exceptional mathematical ability that manifested almost simultaneously with my ability to speak. I have used that ability to pursue multiple degrees ranging from engineering and computer sciences to bio-chemistry and physics. Not abilities that immediately lend themselves to ghost hunting, or at least most wouldn’t think so.
All of our abilities started to manifest before any of us started school. Growing up in a large rural house on the outskirts of a medium city in Ontario Canada, the supernatural seemed to be drawn to the four of us. In those youthful carefree days, it all seemed fanciful and wonderful. Perhaps we lived charmed lives or perhaps something was looking out for us all.
Whatever the case, it was wholly mundane circumstances that would end that idyllic seeming childhood. The summer after I turned twelve, our family was visiting my godfather in New York. Dr. Austin James was a confirmed bachelor but enjoyed having us children over. He was taking the four of for a tour of central park while my parents went out for a drive.
Unfortunately, they went driving somewhere they ought not to have. Two very ordinary criminals pulled them from their car and shot them dead. Those criminals would eventually be caught by the police and spent the next twenty-five years of their lives behind bars. Today, they are free again.
Having very few living relatives, my parents had arranged for our godfather to care for us should anything ever happen to them. That was how we all came to live in New York and how I wound up attending Columbia like my parents before me.
As we grew into adulthood, our encounters with the supernatural continued although the tone of those experiences began to take a far more dangerous and sinister edge. While we would each of us pursue our own individual ways in the world, we discovered that we could not avoid that which crosses between worlds.
That is why we would eventually decide to come together and pool our resources to form a detective agency. By day we would solve conventional cases to pay the bills and by night we would battle the things that come from the darkness.
It has worked incredibly well for us.
I’ll go into more detail at a later date. For now, my daughter is waking up and requires my attention.
I can only hope our efforts have made the world a little safer for her and that she will enjoy some of the idyllic times we once shared.