Probably the earliest memories I have of my life are storytime.

Dad would sit in his special seat in his room, and I’d sit cross-legged on the floor.

Storytime was important. Storytime was special. Storytime couldn’t be skipped.

Every night. It was a ritual. An event.

I liked it, mostly.

He’d often read from picture books. He’d always shuffle in new ones. Stories about animals, leaves, gremlins, ghouls, talking clouds - all that good stuff. As a young kid, I didn’t realize just how weird it was for him to have so many darn kids books at his disposal.

Anyways.

There was one important rule that always came with his nightly storytelling: Whenever he shared a tale, I wasn’t allowed to get distracted.

In the earlier years, it felt like he was much more lax about this. If I yawned or dozed off, he was pretty forgiving. But if I interrupted him, saying I was hungry or bored or wanted to play video games, he’d shut me down quickly. He’d stare at me from his chair. An intense, angry glare. Then, with my full attention, he’d simply say: “What would the uninvited guests think about this?”

Naturally, I didn’t have a great answer to this question. At first, I assumed it was just an expression akin to saying it’s ‘raining cats and dogs’ – some phrase that sounded like nonsense but one that I'd understand when I was older.

Either way, I ended up becoming a pretty good listener after months of this ritual, and started to really relish these moments with my dad. The stories themselves were boring, sure, but he’d always work hard to spice them up with great pacing and impassioned voice acting.

It wasn’t until I turned nine that his storytime rules became much stricter.

At this point, if I got itchy and looked down at my arm to scratch it, he’d snap his fingers, then glare. “What would the uninvited guests think about this?”

If I noticed a snowfall happening outside, my eyes briefly darting to the window, it would be another snap of his fingers, another disapproving look, and another mention of uninvited visitors.

I’d even learned to stare right at him, nodding intently at the appropriate story beats while my mind was off wandering about something else. Still he’d somehow be able to catch it.

Innocently, I brought this up to some of my close friends at school, who found the whole thing - including the fact that he still read stories to me, nightly even - a bit weird. My curiosity flamed, and I brought it up to him at dinner one day.

“Dad, why is storytime so important?”

He didn’t look up to answer. Fork with mashed potatoes in one hand, that day’s paper held out in front of him in the other.

“It’ll make you smarter. When you grow up, you’ll be thankful about it.”

The answer didn’t really quell my curiosity. I pressed on a bit more.

“And you really need me to pay attention the whole time?”

“Yes. Without a doubt.”

Not a particularly detailed answer from the old man.

If this paints a strange picture about my pops, I do want to make something very clear: he was a great dad. He was always there when I needed him, whether it was for help on my homework or as a shoulder to cry on for something my nine-year-old self thought was the end of the world. He was supportive with all my hobbies - dorky as they were - and never seemed interested in forcing a particular worldview on me. There were only two topics he was guarded about: talking about my mom, who died giving birth to me, and of course, the stories.

Once I hit ten, he ditched the picture books altogether.

The next stories were all ones he came up with himself. They were… interesting, to say the least.

I can recall a few of them that left greater impressions on me, for reasons I’ll get into soon.

The first was the story about the Werewolf who Should’ve Known Better. This werewolf had sharp teeth, sharp claws, and a big heart, like all the werewolves that came before him. He’d heard all the tales about townsfolk crying foul about the wolves and blaming them for various ills, but he brushed them aside. This werewolf was an optimist. One fateful day, he climbed down the hill to finally greet the townsfolk, but they chased him out with pitchforks and rocks. He realized quickly, much as he wished it weren’t the case, that things hadn’t changed. His story would be the same as those of wolves from generations past.

The second story was about a boy who would freeze up in terror whenever there was an earthquake. Rather than dropping under the table and covering his head as he was supposed to, he’d instead stop in place, unable to move an inch. Noticing this, his mother decided to calm him with a story. Earthquakes, big and small, she told him, were all caused by a friendly giant in the sky. Small rumbles meant the giant was exercising, and bigger quakes meant the giant was bouncing on a trampoline. The stories were silly, but they helped the boy find some relief, and soon, he was able to consistently drop, cover, and hold, all while visualizing a fantastical picture in the sky.

The most important story of the bunch was one he decided to save for a special night.

At this point, I’d become the perfect listener. It was routine and instinct, and nothing could distract me.

Even as my dad’s storytelling antics got stranger and stranger.

He’d turn the TV on midway through a tale and start slowly lifting the volume. He’d walk around the room as he spoke, bouncing a ball against the wall with increasing force. And, strangest of all, he’d sometimes bring large stuffed animals into the room that he would hide behind as he told the story.

I barely slipped up. Sometimes the face of a particular stuffed animal would pop out to me, or my eyes would be drawn to follow the movement of the ball he was bouncing. He’d always catch me. He’d always notice. He’d always say the line. “What would the uninvited guests think about this?”

Finally, I asked him, “Who are the uninvited guests?”

He broke into a big smile. It stretched across his face with an unsettling curve, like a caterpillar. Like his cheeks were being pulled.

Then he shook his head.

“There’s still time,” he said.

And there was indeed. The night of the party wasn’t for a few weeks.

When it finally rolled around, it was a sight to behold.

I never knew my dad had so many friends!

They were all laughing. Friendly. Mingling. Shaking hands. Looking at the pictures around our house. Eating. A gathering of sophisticated-seeming adults. None of them paid much attention to me at first.

I assumed this event wasn’t a big deal - Dad had mentioned briefly that some folks might come over to our house in the near future. I still remember the look on his face when they arrived - it was an expression I’d never seen him wear before. He tensed up, a half-smile on one side of his face. His eyes looked like they were welling up with tears as he squinted. I never quite knew what it meant.

After dinner, the guests all started breaking off into some strange behavior. A few of them were staring up at the ceiling in our living room, spinning ever-so-slightly in place as they did. I saw a group of five or so just standing in the bathroom, not really doing anything. One of the guests, a gentleman in a fine suit, started climbing up the stairs on all fours. When he got to the top, he’d walk back down to the bottom, and then start again. A few others followed him.

It didn’t dawn on me that something was wrong until I saw one of the stranger’s smiles dripping blood. I thought my brain was making things up, but then someone down the hall looked at me and waved with a similar-tinged smile, red droplets flicking down from her teeth. I saw it more and more upon the guests, and cried for my dad.

He found me, grabbed my hand, and pulled me into his room. “It’s started,” I heard him mutter to himself in a whisper.

He shut the doors behind him, and barricaded the entrance as I continued crying.

“It’s storytime, alright?” he said.

I was rattled beyond belief, but the words brought me a light comfort.

He sat in his special chair. The one he always sat in. Then, he told me the story about “Patrick Bear and the Uninvited Guests.”

I tried my best to listen intently.

“On one special day, Patrick found out that he was throwing a party. That was news to him!”

I felt a force pushing against the door.

“The guests rolled in one by one. More than he could’ve ever imagined!”

They were already inside. They spilled into the room, wandering. I averted eye contact with them. My dad shot me a knowing, mindful look. I was doing what he wanted.

“They had big hats and big ties and fancy shoes, but Patrick Bear didn’t care!”

A clutter of strangers gathered behind my dad’s seat. They peeked their heads out to look at me.

The others started sitting around me in a circle. They left only a small gap for me to lock eyes with my father. Through my blurry peripheral vision, I could sense all of their eyes were fixed on me.

“Patrick just wanted his alone time, so fancy friends didn’t mean much to him!”

The whispers of the strangers were the hardest part. “Look here,” “Do you wanna have a staring contest?”, “Look away for just one sec,” they all said in different variations.

“The guests stayed longer than he would’ve liked.”

The bloodied smile of a stranger crept up right in front of me. I kept my dad’s gaze with the two-inch gap to the stranger’s left that had been afforded me.

“But eventually, they…”

I saw my dad’s neck slowly twist. His eyes had averted from me. They looked upwards now, towards a woman that was hovering in front of him. I heard cracks and snaps. The strange, caterpillar-smile returned to his face as his cheeks pulled in opposite directions. Blood pooled from his mouth. He briefly looked at me again, now with an apologetic gaze.

“I’m sorry my sweet one, I had to look at your mother.”

His face and neck contorted in ways that didn’t even make sense, but he was able to slip out one final line.

“H-howwww doe-es theeee stor, stor-ee enedddd?”

Something in my gut knew that closing my eyes wasn’t the answer. I was covered by the strangers, but still, I somehow looked ahead. Somehow, they were a blur. I couldn’t look away from them, but my attention wasn’t with them. It was with the story.

“But eventually, they all went home. And Patrick Bear found peace and quiet, once again,” I said.

A breeze blew through the window. The room was suddenly still.

The house was empty. Everyone was gone. There was no sign of… anything. No family photos, no children’s books, nothing I recognized. Just… generic furniture.

When the cops found me days later, starved and confused, the story was that I was an orphaned boy with no traceable lineage.

Everything I told them about my dad, my upbringing, storytime, and more, couldn’t be proven in any way. I talked about my school, about the teachers and friends I had there, but no one mentioned could recall ever knowing me.

For a while, I was convinced that I’d made up the whole thing in my mind. That I’d been abandoned by my parents when I was young, fled from an orphanage, and squatted in uninhabited properties living an imagined life. A storybook of my own. The events of that final night of storytime and the insanity I encountered were proof that I’d merely decoupled from reality as a child.

Unfortunately, like the werewolf, I learned a painful lesson when my wife Meredith died while giving birth to our son Michael.

Through the sheer shock and horror of it all, I tried to convince myself that it was just a disturbing cosmic coincidence.

But then a package from nowhere arrived at my front door a few weeks after her passing. It was a fully-illustrated storybook. It was called Michael Bear and the Uninvited Guests.

On the first page, in the inner lining of the book, there was a note scribbled in it. It read:

“We can’t wait for the party! We’ll bring all our friends!

Love,

Meredith, Mom and Dad”

I can’t say for certain when the party will be, but if history is anything to go on, the uninvited guests will show up around my son’s tenth birthday.

And so, to prepare, we do story time every night. After all, it’s important. It’s special. It can’t be skipped. It’s a ritual, an event.

And every time he complains about it, I give him the reminder.

“What would the uninvited guests think about this?”