Pure Horror

The Walls

2011-01-10T17:34:00.000-08:00

Last year, I moved into a middle class house right around summer time. The move went smooth, and it seemed like everything was just…working. Nothing broke during the cycle, I had plenty of friends to help me out, hell I even found twenty bucks in my couch! Beer money? Hell yeah!

Anyway, back to the house. For the first day or two, I thought life couldn’t get any better; my girl was beautiful, my friends were happy, and my parents were fixing their relationship. However, I hadn’t realized - until it was too late - that I was doomed to remain in this prison, which I sit in now as I tell you this story.

The first time it happened, I was in my room. I was in the zone on my Xbox. You know what I mean, where you get 10 headshots without breaking a sweat? Yeah, that. As I was kicking fat terrorist ass I heard movement downstairs (My room was on the second floor). It sounded like someone was running around down there. Like, they were running from room to room banging on the walls, just being flat out obnoxious.

“Hey, Jeff! Get out of my house, I said three-o’clock, dumbass!”

The noise stopped.

I waited a few moments before turning back to my game, but it was too late. I was already doomed. I saw it come at me too late…A tank.

“Son of a…” I sighed.

The next few days were normal, there were no more sounds that shouldn’t be there, just the pipes, the heater, you know the sort. Yet, about 3 days later, that idiot Jeff snuck into my house and started beating up my shit.

“Alright, you aren’t getting off so easy this time!” I shouted as I charged down the stairs. As my foot hit the last step, something out of the corner of my eye moved. I looked over so fast that I got whiplash. “Oh, dammit!” I moaned. I didn’t even pay any attention to the fact that whatever was in my house - had disappeared.

After that, it got worse.

That same night, as I layed in bed, the banging started again. Not only was it worse, but it was on my floor of the house this time. I was sure I locked everything before I came up here, so here I was pissing my pants at 900 miles per hour while something destroyed my house. I actually pulled the blankets over me - hey, I was scared - as the noise approached my door. Just as I expected it to bash open my door and slaughter me, it stopped.

The next morning I grabbed my baseball bat as I got out of bed, if whatever that thing is, was still out there, it would regret it. I didn’t find anything, but my house was trashed. Almost everything was tipped over, torn, broken, missing, or worse. I just figured I had been robbed.

I called the police, they didn’t do shit. But the noises stopped for a week or so, and that made things easier. Sure I was pissed that some fuck destroyed my new place, but at least I was ok. But, of course, I know now that it wasn’t a robber, or Jeff, or the pipes in the walls…It was the thing IN the walls.

A week after the incident, it came back.

This time it was pissed. I was startled out of my slumber by the noise of a vase breaking into a thousand pieces downstairs. SMASH it went, with little pieces still breaking a few seconds after the initial smash as if to mock me.

Not long after, I began to hear more deep, guttural banging noises on the walls again. Coming from inside of them, no doubt. As I lie there in my bed, I let out the tiniest, quietest, timidest squeak by sheer mistake, and the noise stops.

Sharpest ears I’ve ever seen, those were.

After several painstakingly long moments of silence, I released the breath I was holding, thinking it was over for now. Big mistake, I realize, as the noises suddenly start to rampage up the stairs. Incredibly fast, incredibly loud, smack, crash, bang against my wooden floor.

The beast, which I could now accurately call it, broke my door open with intense force, thrusting it all the way to the opposite side of the room. Being an intelligent individual, I had already hidden under my impenetrable field of safety known as the common blanket.

The noise of this monster running through my room, it’s footsteps enough to damage my eardrums at this close, was the scariest thing I had ever experienced in my entire life.

With a sudden burst of adrenaline, I threw the blankets off in the direction of the…thing, somehow making a direct impact to its face. Whoever - or whatever - this was, was stunned. But not for long, and I knew that. I frantically moved across my room, attempting to make it out the door, downstairs, outside, where I could attract public attention.

This night, luck was not on my side. I knew this as a large hunk of my hair was grabbed from behind and pulled out with such force that pieces of skins came along with it, along with a shitload of blood. Before a scream escapes my voice box, I’m being held down by a dark, hairless beast that walks on all fours with a face I can hardly imagine again, that then smashes my head with it’s fist, sending me into a dark, welcoming sleep.

…

Someone new has moved in, but they don’t even acknowledge my existence, the jackass. I patiently watch, wait, hear, hoping that they will. But no. Not me. I’m not worth it to them.

Maybe if I bang on the walls.

West

2011-01-10T17:32:00.001-08:00

September 2nd 1868

Arrived in Cheyenne in the new Wyoming Territory early this morning on the new Union Pacific line. Has been three years since I rode the locomotive. Did not realize it would remind me so strongly of Atlanta. Spent the last day of the journey with the phantom smell of blood and iron in my nostrils, and the bile rising at the back of my throat, but it is over. God willing, I will never have to ride the train again. Cheyenne is new born and mewling like a babe. Immigrants from the east and across the seas teem here, filling the streets with a babel of tongues and the raucous laughter of drunken listless youths. The hound I purchased before leaving tugs at his leash with delight at the sights and sound.

The plot of land is still two days ride across the border and to the Southwest, but true to his word, the man from the bank has hired a guide to take me there. Sent a last letter to my wife and boys with instructions to meet me here in the spring, and have purchased a wagon and the supplies for construction. The guide, a half Indian fellow, I’d wager by appearance, but civilized in tongue, has helped me hire two young men: a Irishman with a sullen chinless face, and a German, watery eyed and stinking of bourbon. Both despicable wretches, but they have agreed to work for a pittance, and both claim to have experience in homesteading.

They may intend to kill me, seeing an easy mark in a naive settler, but I do not fear these drunken children. I’ve seen a generation of these boys spilled open, and I know what they are made of.

September 8th 1868

Have crossed into the Free Territory of Colorado, after a day of the level prairie of warm wind of Wyoming, into the Front Range. This land is wild, in some… strange way, and like nothing I’ve ever seen. We are following a river through the shadow of two jagged peaks, and camp tonight just a few miles from the parcel of land. I requested remote, and by God, the bank man did not fail me. The Kraut and the Irishman grow demure and quiet without spirits, and I see no possibility of violence in them now, lest they suspect me of hoarding whisky. They will do fine quick labor, and return to Cheyenne to drink and fuck the profits.

These are men of dust, and serve only this purpose. To think, good men like me fought and died to protect these jackals from the reach of Lincoln’s tyranny, God grind his bones. I will be free of that monster soon, and if it should spread it’s federal borders this far, then I will burn my new home to the ground and move west yet again. Sons of bitches will have to push me into the sea before I swear fealty.

Found a skull just off the deer trail, when I went to make water; it was bleached white and divorced from jawbone and neck. I try not view this a portent.

Tomorrow, we should reach the plot, and begin.

September 9th 1868

The bank man has lied to me, the foul stuffed pig. The plot of land, clearly identified by compass and map, is not the idyllic grove his words painted, but a swamp. A sodden hollow filled with mud and grass, ringed with broken and dying pines. I would flay my guide alive if I thought his wretch of a employer might feel a sting.

Am determined to homestead here, however. This may not be the land I desired, but it is mine, by God. The Irishman and the German fell trees for me, and I have found the highest place, where the earth is damp the least. I will tame this land.

The hound does not like it here. He growls at the horizon and pads in small tight circles, looking always behind him.

September 10th 1868

Guide has vanished in the night. He was to spend the next few days properly mapping the borders of my land, but he has fled. Worse still the Irishman and the Kraut have grown skittish at his departure, the German tells a tale of hearing screaming in the woods last night. But in morning light, the guide’s tent and belongings were packed away and gone.

It shames me to admit, but my first night was filled with unease. There is something about this land, unlike any in the East. It seems to breathe and pulse around me, like it watches me with a cold intelligence. The trees sing softly in the breeze and in the smallest hours, when sleep had fled into the dark, I fancied I heard whispering voices in the breeze. I will share none of this with the laborers; they are weak and callow enough as it is. If superstition infects them, I will be left alone here while they flee.

September 14th

My hands bleed at the end of each day. I drive the boys hard, but myself harder. The skeleton of the cabin is complete now, but there is much more work to do. I do not think they have the stomach for real work, these dogs. They slow, now that they see the rough outline, believing their work is at an end. I suppose a pig may recognize a barn by sight, but we would hope too much to think they understand a crossbeam and a proper roof.

My dread in the nights has deepened to a level I scarcely am willing to accept. In the ebon black of the night, I am an immigrant from a dead land into one that lives yet; each creak of the trees seems to come from my own shuddering spine. While I hear no birds or beast during the day, a fact that only now seems to have pertinence, the night is alive with the rustle in the bush. Occasionally, I hear the crashing stomp of one of the drunkards slogging to the tree line to void his bladder.

The boys have indeed brought out a stash of bottles, and they have taken to drinking themselves into a stupor each night, rationing the stuff to fend of the night. I won’t speak of it to the likes of them, but I know they share my unease. Their eyes are hollow each morning and I catch them whipping around to look wide eyed into the trees as if they’d seen their deaths coming on padded feet.

I’ve taken to leashing the hound at the edge of the clearing. He whimpers and shudders throughout the night, and when he wakes, he howls and barks at the sky. If he cannot make himself useful when the need to hunt arises, I will put a bullet in his noisy skull.

September 15th

The German is gone. I suspected at first that he had turned his tail up, back to Cheyenne. I was wise not to pay him up front. His companion, sick with fear and delusion, entered the cabin shook me awake to tell me that he had been carried off in the night, same as our guide. I boxed his ears and dragged him to their camp, whereas I suspected, his belongings were gone, but the wretch refused to work until we’d looked for his partner.

Combed the woods all day with no sign of the German. Some of the night’s alien gloom lingers in the woods throughout the day, and I must confess leaping at the smallest noises. The hound, finding his purpose again, tracked the German’s trail, only to find that it looped around the grove several times, spiraling outward from the cabin. The trail soon vanished, and the hound began to strain at the leash, pleading for me to return him to the safety of our clearing.

With the cabin in sight, at the edge of the trees I made an unsettling discovery. At twice the level of a man’s height, a canvas rucksack hung from the dead branches of a massive gray and rotting pine. More unsettling, when I opened the satchel, I found the clothes of a much shorter man than I had expected. This was our guide’s bag.

I will not tell the poor fear-crazed Irishman when he returns. To credit his bravery, he still remains in the woods as night falls. I hear him shouting his companions name as he follows the spiraling trail with no end. He is a fool, but braver than I believed.

The dark has swept over the land like the sackcloth of revelations, and there is ice in my blood. I can no longer hear the Irishman now, the sounds of the night, the still unfamiliar tapestry of living bodies and the creak of the towering pines drown out his cries.

I feel a foolish, but I fear for his safety.

September 16th

Woke in the moonless night to the sounds of screaming, far in the distance. A whimpering, tearing shriek that stilled even the noises of the dark. I laid, unable to move in the bedroll on the wooden floor, unsure for a time if I had ever actually left the battlefield hospital of Atlanta and waiting for cannon and musket fire. But it was only the one lone boy, screaming in the dark, and I was helpless to save him. I clutched the rifle close, and the hound lay shivering at my side. The boy screamed, his voice coming from every direction over the course of several hours before it dissipated into a soft whimper.

We could do little but wait for daybreak.

In the light of day, I forced the hound back into the maw of the woods. I feel like wilting and crying each time I contemplate leaving the swampy ring of trees, but even an Irishman deserves a cursory search.

I found him near dusk. After following a now familiar spiraling trail, I reached the unnatural giant tree that once held the guide’s belongings. It was fresh marked with jagged irregular cuts that exposed the rotting heartwood beneath. The cuts went high up into the boughs, and I had to strain my eyes to see, but what I finally made out made me suddenly ill.

The boy lay cradled in two high branches, with his limbs dangling and cracked in a dozen false joints. His head was twisted, like he sought to imitate an owl, completely behind him. One glassy eye stretched wide next to an empty socket, and his tongue lolled from his frozen jaw.

He is owed a Christian burial, even a papist such as him, but I will need to fell the tree to fetch his body. I wish I had the strength and will to do it now, but the night of lost rest before and the day’s gruesome business robs me of the desire for much besides sleep.

September 17th

I am leaving this place. I lose all that I own, but if I leave in a few hours with the safety of the dawn, I leave with my life. I will see my wife and boys again. Woke this morning to a flinty gray dawn that never turned blue, but only drizzled a thin vapor of rain. The idea that I ever could have dreamed of living here sickens me now. I sat all day on the porch of the house, the very ground of the meadow looking threatening. The jagged teeth of the trees against the gray sky, and the lapping of the puddled water in the wind gave me the uncanny feeling of being inside a gargantuan maw that has been closing down on me since the moment I arrived. I was still determined then, to reclaim this land. To fill the bog and fell the trees, and make the fertile black soil work under my plow. How foolish, now.

With the fall of night came a whipping wind, buffeting me with heavy damp air. When the last thread of light had been cut, the hound stood to his feet and strained against the leash, hair on end and teeth bared. He strained on the leather leash that held him and began to growl, a low menacing sound. I looked to where he struggled to lunge, but could see nothing in, no horizon between ground and forest, or forest and sky. Just blackness.

When the leash broke, it made a popping sound, like a firecracker, and the hound bolted into the black. I heard the angry rhythm of his barking as he was absorbed into the dark. Then, it ceased, and I heard a sharp squeal. Then silence. The crowding throng of life that I had felt each night before was utterly silent, the only sound the dry rustle of the pine.

I shouldered the rifle and fired once into the dark, and my skin rippled as my insides froze. In the bright flash of the rifle, I saw a phantom impression of the world inside the gloom, pale trees and wet earth. And I saw, clearly, the corpse of the hound, wet and glistening. Beside it, was the shape of some… foul thing. Crouched on crooked legs, like the limbs of some beast, it held some dark portion of the dog in it’s splayed fingers. It was upright, and looking straight at me. All I saw of it’s face was the bright diamond glint of two eyes, and… teeth. So many teeth.

The gunshot rolled down the valley in darkness, and I heard no movement from the blackness beyond. With all the speed I could muster I fled for the cabin and barricaded the door with every crate and unused hearthstone I could find. Gripping the rifle tight, I did my best to lay perfectly silently, and swore to leave at first light.

When sleep finally came, it was fitful, and I awoke only a few hours later to a strange pinprick burning on my neck. I came awake to find the head of the dog, perched like a trophy at the top of the barricade, which yet lay intact and undisturbed. Around me were the hellish tracks of some beast, wet mud shapes that defied identifications.
I put my hand to my throat and felt a line of small drops across it. Blood welling up from a delicate scratch that ran from ear to ear.

The room was empty, and still fortified from within.

But it had been here with me, moments before. It had marked me, toyed with me, and left.

And so, at first light, I will leave.

September 18th

I am 10 miles from the cabin, and I curse myself for a fool. With the morning sun the meadow steamed and felt somehow, safer, but still I packed my lightest valuable tools and left the cabin. Five miles down the road, doubt set in. I have stopped to eat on this small bluff looking out at the glory of God’s creation, and I have made up my mind.

Reading yesterday’s entry flushes me with shame, what a coward was! Whatever that thing is, it’s a beast, and I am a soldier. I will hunt it, trap it, and kill it. What God and Grant could not grind out of me, I will not relinquish to some wild animal. I will not leave my wife and sons paupers, I will be a man. I will return.

June 29th, 1869

Mrs. Augustine Shelby
Grand Hotel
Cheyenne, Wyoming

Dear Mrs. Shelby

We recently received the enclosed from a pair of hunters who discovered it in forests of the Front Range in Colorado Territory. Having been made privy to the issue of your missing husband, we felt it was best to inform you directly, and pass on his journal and a few other possessions.

The hunters describe the area in which they found the items in a way that agrees exactly with your husband’s description in the journal, but there was no cabin, nor foundation, or any other signs of habitation.

We are deeply sorry that we could not be of more assistance to you, and I pray that your husband will eventually be found.

Deepest Regrets
Colonel Benjamin Williams
Fort Collins
Colorado Territory

The Theatre

2011-01-10T17:31:00.000-08:00

Have you ever heard of an old PC game called “The Theater”? Yeah, I didn’t think so. Probably because many people say it doesn’t even exist. You see, The Theater is an old computer game released around the same time as Doom. Today, if you ever find it, it’s only available on crappy bootleg CD-ROMs, which, more often than naught don’t even actually contain the game. The actual legitimate copies that they say were released back in the day feature a blank cover with nothing but the sprite of what has since been named the ‘the Ticket-Taker’. He is simply a poorly drawn, pixelated Caucasian, bald man with large red lips wearing a red vest over a white shirt and black pants. He is completely emotionless, though some say that if you smash the disc his face is shown as angry the next time you look at the cover. But this is just dismissed as an urban myth. What is peculiar about The Theater, though, is that there is no developer named on the jewel case, nor a game description on the back. It is simply the Ticket-Taker on a white backdrop on both sides.

The game was initially known for its inability to install correctly. The installation process immediately locks up the computer when the user reaches the licensing agreement. Also strange about the licensing agreement for The Theater is that whenever the development studio is supposed to be named, the text is simply a blank line. Anyways, most people who have claimed to owning one of the original CDs say that they figured out how to install the game by simply rebooting their computer on the licensing agreement with the disc still inside. Then they are prompted to press ‘I AGREE’ on startup. Then they continue with the installation. The game then starts up without any introduction besides a main menu that is simply the sprite of a movie theater’s exterior on an empty city street. The title fades in and then the 3 menu buttons ‘NEW GAME, LOAD, OPTIONS’. Selecting OPTIONS immediately crashes the game to the desktop. LOAD is said not to function at all. Even if you do have a saved game, nothing happens when you press it. Thus, NEW GAME is the only working menu option.

Once it is selected you are in the first person view. You are standing in an empty movie theater lobby, with the exception of the Ticket-Taker standing in front of a dark hallway which one can only assume leads to the theaters themselves. There’s nothing to do but look at the poorly-drawn, mostly illegible movie posters or approach the Ticket-Taker. Once the player moves towards the Ticket-Taker a very low-quality sound clip plays saying “THANK YOU PLEASE ENJOY THE MOVIE” along with a speechbox saying the same thing. You then walk into the hallway and the screen fades to black and you’re back in the empty lobby and you do the exact thing again and again and again.

While this may sound like a really horrible game, a number of peculiar things occur as you continue to play it. The number of times that you have to continue into the hall after giving your ticket to the Ticket-Taker before the strange events happen is unknown. Most state that it’s completely random and could take anywhere from the first playthrough to the four hundredth. What happens, though, has deeply disturbed some players.

The first occurrence is when the player fades back in after walking into the hallway. This time they will notice the Ticket-Taker is completely absent. The player then, without any other options, decides to walk into the dark hallway. The sound clip and text box mentioned previously still play in the absence of the Ticket-Taker, but when the player walks into the hallways the screen does not fade out. It goes pitch black as they walk deeper into the hall, but the player’s footstep sound clip is still playing as they continue to push the up button on their keyboard. Those claiming to have played the original game report to have felt extremely uncomfortable walking down the hallway, anticipating the whole way something horrible happening. Well, eventually the player is unable to move forward. There is nothing for a few moments before a strange sprite that is described as ‘the Ticket-Taker but with a swirl for a face’ appears and stands before the player. The original players of the game say their bodies immediately froze up and their stomachs churned they saw this sprite (which has been appropriately named the ‘Swirly Head Man’). Nothing happens as the Swirly Head Man stands before them. Then suddenly a piercing screech plays as the game glitches out. This lasts for a few minutes, with the screeching being continuous. Then the player is abruptly returned to the lobby with all the sounds and graphics being as they should be.

The game continues normally for the next couple of ‘cycles’ of entering the hallway, with a couple of the original players claiming the Swirly Head Man would briefly appear and disappear in the corner of the screen as a brisk ‘yelp’ sound effect plays. Then, at some point after meeting the Swirly Head Man, the player sees the Ticket-Taker pacing back and forth (though there is no walking animation - the sprite’s limbs are completely static, so he just hops up and down slightly as a substitute) with his eyes being wide and his mouth open to simulate a worried facial expression. Some players noted that the movie posters had been replaced with images of the Swirly Head Man, which caused them to immediately turn their character’s head away from the posters and approach the Ticket-Taker. Then another, different, low-quality sound clip plays, but the speech box contains nothing but corrupted characters that cause whatever text that would have been in the box to be completely illegible. Due to the extremely low quality of the sound, it is debated by players what exactly the Ticket-Taker says at this point, though it is widely agreed that he says ‘NEVER REACH THE OTHER LEVELS’. Then the screen fades out once again and returns the player back to their starting point in the lobby, but the Ticket-Taker is gone and the hallway is blocked by a large brick wall sprite. Touching the brick wall will immediately crash the game. And that’s all there is to it. No one knows what the ‘Other Levels’ are or how to gain access to them, nor is it known why the Swirly Head Man causes such acute fear in those who have seen him in the game. All the original copies of The Theater have either been lost or destroyed. But the creepiest part is the fact that is that all the original players of the game claim to occasionally see a brief glimpse of the Swirly Head Man out of the corner of their eyes…

A Warning

2011-01-10T17:27:00.001-08:00

I’m doing this for you. And for Mike, too, I guess, though I don’t think there’s much I can do to help him at this point.

I suppose I should provide some background information first. I’m a sophomore in a fairly good university in Boston - no, not MIT or Harvard, but still one that’s a bit of a chore to get into. My freshman year, I had the option to live in honors housing and decided to roll with it; after all, at least the people would be interesting. Whatever arcane algorithm they use to process roommate requests took in my preferences and spat out the name of my future roommate: Mike, just another random honors kid from St. Louis. The two of us got along fine for most of freshman year - my enjoyment of Miley Cyrus notwithstanding-and so we decided to room together sophomore year as well.

Now, Mike had always been a pretty obsessive guy. He tended to bounce around in his interests; one week, he would devour entire series of anime, only to later start watching random online episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000, and then begin working his way through the archives of the hottest new webcomic. And, of course, like any real obsessive, he would keep me posted on his latest craze. I humored him; what else are roommates for?

One day earlier this week, he started telling me random scary stories. You know, those random things you find on message boards-I think his main source ended up being some site called “creepypasta” (I never understood why pasta could be creepy, but whatever). I’d hear about a med student eating an arm, or someone being autopsied alive, or some random youtube video that will drive you insane. We usually had a good laugh about them.

The third day of this obsession, however, things got weird. He threw a few more stories my way before hitting the sack, but something seemed a little off. His voice had a sharp edge to it. As the hour got later, his banter got more and more inane, as though he were talking just to stave off having to go to sleep. Eventually, I pointedly got into my bed and rolled over, effectively ending any further chance at conversation. I wish I hadn’t.

I sleep like a log, and that night was no exception. I don’t think I even came close to waking. Usually I can’t remember any of my dreams, but the nightmare I had that night has been clear in my mind for days now. I dreamt I was trapped in a fog so dense I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face. The damp air sent chills down my spine. I could hear muffled screams in the distance. There didn’t seem to be any words, just guttural shrieks of pain. Instantly (don’t ask me how), I recognized the screams as Mike’s. I tried my best to run to him, but my feet just slid through the fog; I couldn’t get any real traction on the ground, if there indeed was any ground. The screams got further away and more indistinct, though I could still tell they were Mike’s. Eventually, they faded to nothing and I woke up.

And every last trace of Mike was gone from the room.

Everything. His laptop, his sheets, the “Official Zombie Survival” guide poster on the wall, the heap of trash he let accumulate on his half of the windowsill-everything. A thick layer of dust coated his entire side of the room. Absolutely nothing on my side of the room had been touched-nor had any of his stuff in the bathroom, the kitchen, or the living room of our suite. Only in the bedroom had anything been taken.

I couldn’t believe it. I prayed it was a dream. I pinched my elbow until the skin was red, until my fingernails drew blood. When I didn’t wake up, I dialed campus security, who quickly brought in the Boston Police Department. I was immediately kicked out of the room so they could go over everything with a fine-toothed comb.

I think I must have been in shock. I felt completely numb, like nothing around me really mattered. I’d left my laptop out in our suite’s common room, so I used that to distract myself-or to try to, at any rate. When I popped open the laptop, however, a word document stared at me. Its text was the following:

‘I know this is stupid. I can’t help but think how much I’ll regret this in the morning, but for some reason I’m genuinely scared and I feel like this is the only way I can tell someone why. So here goes: earlier, I was scouring the ‘net for short horror stories-you know, rituals, tales of scary places, and the like. I came across this…warning, I guess it was. I won’t say what, and I won’t say where, for fear of you finding it yourself. Suffice it to say it sent chills down my spine, something not much has managed to do. Still, as has become my habit, I just clicked on the next hyperlink, going ever farther down the rabbit hole.

The warning stayed with me, though. In the back of my head, just nibbling away, waiting until I would focus on something else to rear its ugly head. This was irrational, I knew; my mind was just playing tricks on me. Some ancestral fear had been played upon, some age-old nightmare that was just that-a nightmare, no more and no less. But that didn’t make the fear go away. Only when I looked at the clock to see how long I had until you got back that it dawned on me I had passed the time alloted me by the warning to stop what was coming (any vagueness is out of concern for you, I promise).

And then the real anxiety kicked in. My palms started to sweat, and my eyes refused to stay closed for more than a second at a time. All my hairs stood on end, and I could feel my heart rate start to increase. Instantly, I knew that the warning had been real. And I had failed to heed it. My time was limited.

It was about then that you got back from the TV station. I was so glad to see someone else, I can’t imagine how I sounded. Finally, someone to fight off the dark with, a companion against the now terrifying night. But clearly you weren’t interested; your yawns were a dead giveaway. You headed to bed, and I (to stave off sleep a little longer) decided to write you this. Do me a favor - if I’m wrong, forget this ever happened. If I’m right…warn them.’

So that’s what I’m doing. I’m warning you. Just be careful. Next time you go on an archive binge at creepypasta, or start checking the horror thread of your favorite discussion board, or even just try googling “creepy stories,” if you feel a chill run down your spine at some warning you’ve never read before you might want to heed it. If you decide not to, however - if you just click on your merry way-please tell Mike I’m sorry I couldn’t get to him in the fog.

Mr. Wide Mouth

2011-01-10T17:25:00.000-08:00

During my childhood my family was like a drop of water in a vast river, never remaining in one location for long. We settled in Rhode Island when I was eight, and there we remained until I went to college in Colorado Springs. Most of my memories are rooted in Rhode Island, but there are fragments in the attic of my brain which belong to the various homes we had lived in when I was much younger.

Most of these memories are unclear and pointless– chasing after another boy in the back yard of a house in North Carolina, trying to build a raft to float on the creek behind the apartment we rented in Pennsylvania, and so on. But there is one set of memories which remains as clear as glass, as though they were just made yesterday. I often wonder whether these memories are simply lucid dreams produced by the long sickness I experienced that Spring, but in my heart, I know they are real.

We were living in a house just outside the bustling metropolis of New Vineyard, Maine, population 643. It was a large structure, especially for a family of three. There were a number of rooms that I didn’t see in the five months we resided there. In some ways it was a waste of space, but it was the only house on the market at the time, at least within an hour’s commute to my father’s place of work.

The day after my fifth birthday (attended by my parents alone), I came down with a fever. The doctor said I had mononucleosis, which meant no rough play and more fever for at least another three weeks. It was horrible timing to be bed-ridden– we were in the process of packing our things to move to Pennsylvania, and most of my things were already packed away in boxes, leaving my room barren. My mother brought me ginger ale and books several times a day, and these served the function of being my primary from of entertainment for the next few weeks. Boredom always loomed just around the corner, waiting to rear its ugly head and compound my misery.

I don’t exactly recall how I met Mr. Widemouth. I think it was about a week after I was diagnosed with mono. My first memory of the small creature was asking him if he had a name. He told me to call him Mr. Widemouth, because his mouth was large. In fact, everything about him was large in comparison to his body– his head, his eyes, his crooked ears– but his mouth was by far the largest.

“You look kind of like a Furby,” I said as he flipped through one of my books.

Mr. Widemouth stopped and gave me a puzzled look. “Furby? What’s a Furby?” he asked.

I shrugged. “You know… the toy. The little robot with the big ears. You can pet and feed them, almost like a real pet.”

“Oh.” Mr. Widemouth resumed his activity. “You don’t need one of those. They aren’t the same as having a real friend.”

I remember Mr. Widemouth disappearing every time my mother stopped by to check in on me. “I lay under your bed,” he later explained. “I don’t want your parents to see me because I’m afraid they won’t let us play anymore.”

We didn’t do much during those first few days. Mr. Widemouth just looked at my books, fascinated by the stories and pictures they contained. The third or fourth morning after I met him, he greeted me with a large smile on his face. “I have a new game we can play,” he said. “We have to wait until after your mother comes to check on you, because she can’t see us play it. It’s a secret game.”

After my mother delivered more books and soda at the usual time, Mr. Widemouth slipped out from under the bed and tugged my hand. “We have to go the the room at the end of this hallway,” he said. I objected at first, as my parents had forbidden me to leave my bed without their permission, but Mr. Widemouth persisted until I gave in.

The room in question had no furniture or wallpaper. Its only distinguishing feature was a window opposite the doorway. Mr. Widemouth darted across the room and gave the window a firm push, flinging it open. He then beckoned me to look out at the ground below.

We were on the second story of the house, but it was on a hill, and from this angle the drop was farther than two stories due to the incline. “I like to play pretend up here,” Mr. Widemouth explained. “I pretend that there is a big, soft trampoline below this window, and I jump. If you pretend hard enough you bounce back up like a feather. I want you to try.”

I was a five-year-old with a fever, so only a hint of skepticism darted through my thoughts as I looked down and considered the possibility. “It’s a long drop,” I said.

“But that’s all a part of the fun. It wouldn’t be fun if it was only a short drop. If it were that way you may as well just bounce on a real trampoline.”

I toyed with the idea, picturing myself falling through thin air only to bounce back to the window on something unseen by human eyes. But the realist in me prevailed. “Maybe some other time,” I said. “I don’t know if I have enough imagination. I could get hurt.”

Mr. Widemouth’s face contorted into a snarl, but only for a moment. Anger gave way to disappointment. “If you say so,” he said. He spent the rest of the day under my bed, quiet as a mouse.

The following morning Mr. Widemouth arrived holding a small box. “I want to teach you how to juggle,” he said. “Here are some things you can use to practice, before I start giving you lessons.”

I looked in the box. It was full of knives. “My parents will kill me!” I shouted, horrified that Mr. Widemouth had brought knives into my room– objects that my parents would never allow me to touch. “I’ll be spanked and grounded for a year!”

Mr. Widemouth frowned. “It’s fun to juggle with these. I want you to try it.”

I pushed the box away. “I can’t. I’ll get in trouble. Knives aren’t safe to just throw in the air.”

Mr. Widemouth’s frown deepend into a scowl. He took the box of knives and slid under my bed, remaining there the rest of the day. I began to wonder how often he was under me.

I started having trouble sleeping after that. Mr. Widemouth often woke me up at night, saying he put a real trampoline under the window, a big one, one that I couldn’t see in the dark. I always declined and tried to go back to sleep, but Mr. Widemouth persisted. Sometimes he stayed by my side until early in the morning, encouraging me to jump.

He wasn’t so fun to play with anymore.

My mother came to me one morning and told me I had her permission to walk around outside. She thought the fresh air would be good for me, especially after being confined to my room for so long. Exstatic, I put on my sneakers and trotted out to the back porch, yearning for the feeling of sun on my face.

Mr. Widemouth was waiting for me. “I have something I want you to see,” he said. I must have given him a weird look, because he then said, “It’s safe, I promise.”

I followed him to the beginning of a deer trail which ran through the woods behind the house. “This is an important path,” he explained. “I’ve had a lot of friends about your age. When they were ready, I took them down this path, to a special place. You aren’t ready yet, but one day, I hope to take you there.”

I returned to the house, wondering what kind of place lay beyond that trail.

Two weeks after I met Mr. Widemouth, the last load of our things had been packed into a moving truck. I would be in the cab of that truck, sitting next to my father for the long drive to Pennsylvania. I considered telling Mr. Widemouth that I would be leaving, but even at five years old, I was beginning to suspect that perhaps the creature’s intentions were not to my benefit, despite what he said otherwise. For this reason, I decided to keep my departure a secret.

My father and I were in the truck at 4 a.m. He was hoping to make it to Pennyslvania by lunch time tomorrow with the help of an endless supply of coffee and a six-pack of energy drinks. He seemed more like a man who was about to run a marathon rather than one who was about to spend two days sitting still.

“Early enough for you?” he asked.

I nodded and placed my head against the window, hoping for some sleep before the sun came up. I felt my father’s hand on my shoulder. “This is the last move, son, I promise. I know it’s hard for you, as sick as you’ve been. Once daddy gets promoted we can settle down and you can make friends.”

I opened my eyes as we backed out of the driveway. I saw Mr. Widemouth’s silouhette in my bedroom window. He stood motionless until the truck was about to turn onto the main road. He gave a pitiful little wave good-bye, steak knife in hand. I didn’t wave back.

Years later, I returned to New Vineyard. The piece of land our house stood upon was empty except for the foundation, as the house burned down a few years after my family left. Out of curiosity, I followed the deer trail that Mr. Widemouth had shown me. Part of me expected him to jump out from behind a tree and scare the living bejeesus out of me, but I felt that Mr. Widemouth was gone, somehow tied to the house that no longer existed.

The trail ended at the New Vineyard Memorial Cemetery.

I noticed that many of the tombstones belonged to children.

Psychosis

2011-01-10T17:23:00.005-08:00

Sunday

I’m not sure why I’m writing this down on paper and not on my computer. I guess I’ve just noticed some odd things. It’s not that I don’t trust the computer… I just… need to organize my thoughts. I need to get down all the details somewhere objective, somewhere I know that what I write can’t be deleted or… changed… not that that’s happened. It’s just… everything blurs together here, and the fog of memory lends a strange cast to things…

I’m starting to feel cramped in this small apartment. Maybe that’s the problem. I just had to go and choose the cheapest apartment, the only one in the basement. The lack of windows down here makes day and night seem to slip by seamlessly. I haven’t been out in a few days because I’ve been working on this programming project so intensively. I suppose I just wanted to get it done. Hours of sitting and staring at a monitor can make anyone feel strange, I know, but I don’t think that’s it.

I’m not sure when I first started to feel like something was odd. I can’t even define what it is. Maybe I just haven’t talked to anyone in awhile. That’s the first thing that crept up on me. Everyone I normally talk to online while I program has been idle, or they’ve simply not logged on at all. My instant messages go unanswered. The last e-mail I got from anybody was a friend saying he’d talk to me when he got back from the store, and that was yesterday. I’d call with my cell phone, but reception’s terrible down here. Yeah, that’s it. I just need to call someone. I’m going to go outside.

—

Well, that didn’t work so well. As the tingle of fear fades, I’m feeling a little ridiculous for being scared at all. I looked in the mirror before I went out, but I didn’t shave the two-day stubble I’ve grown. I figured I was just going out for a quick cell phone call. I did change my shirt, though, because it was lunchtime, and I guessed that I’d run into at least one person I knew. That didn’t end up happening. I wish it did.

When I went out, I opened the door to my small apartment slowly. A small feeling of apprehension had somehow already lodged itself in me, for some indefinable reason. I chalked it up to having not spoken to anyone but myself for a day or two. I peered down the dingy grey hallway, made dingier by the fact that it was a basement hallway. On one end, a large metal door led to the building’s furnace room. It was locked, of course. Two dreary soda machines stood by it; I bought a soda from one the first day I moved in, but it had a two year old expiration date. I’m fairly sure nobody knows those machines are even down here, or my cheap landlady just doesn’t care to get them restocked.

I closed my door softly, and walked the other direction, taking care not to make a sound. I have no idea why I chose to do that, but it was fun giving in to the strange impulse not to break the droning hum of the soda machines, at least for the moment. I got to the stairwell, and took the stairs up to the building’s front door. I looked through the heavy door’s small square window, and received quite the shock: it was definitely not lunchtime. City-gloom hung over the dark street outside, and the traffic lights at the intersection in the distance blinked yellow. Dim clouds, purple and black from the glow of the city, hung overhead. Nothing moved, save the few sidewalk trees that shifted in the wind. I remember shivering, though I wasn’t cold. Maybe it was the wind outside. I could vaguely hear it through the heavy metal door, and I knew it was that unique kind of late-night wind, the kind that was constant, cold, and quiet, save for the rhythmic music it made as it passed through countless unseen tree leaves.

I decided not to go outside.

Instead, I lifted my cell phone to the door’s little window, and checked the signal meter. The bars filled up the meter, and I smiled. Time to hear someone else’s voice, I remember thinking, relieved. It was such a strange thing, to be afraid of nothing. I shook my head, laughing at myself silently. I hit speed-dial for my best friend Amy’s number, and held the phone up to my ear. It rang once… but then it stopped. Nothing happened. I listened to silence for a good twenty seconds, then hung up. I frowned, and looked at the signal meter again – still full. I went to dial her number again, but then my phone rang in my hand, startling me. I put it up to my ear.

“Hello?” I asked, immediately fighting down a small shock at hearing the first spoken voice in days, even if it was my own. I had gotten used to the droning hum of the building’s inner workings, my computer, and the soda machines in the hallway. There was no response to my greeting at first, but then, finally, a voice came.

“Hey,” said a clear male voice, obviously of college age, like me. “Who’s this?”

“John,” I replied, confused.

“Oh, sorry, wrong number,” he replied, then hung up.

I lowered the phone slowly and leaned against the thick brick wall of the stairwell. That was strange. I looked at my received calls list, but the number was unfamiliar. Before I could think on it further, the phone rang loudly, shocking me yet again. This time, I looked at the caller before I answered. It was another unfamiliar number. This time, I held the phone up to my ear, but said nothing. I heard nothing but the general background noise of a phone. Then, a familiar voice broke my tension.

“John?” was the single word, in Amy’s voice.

I breathed a sigh of relief.

“Hey, it’s you,” I replied.

“Who else would it be?” she responded. “Oh, the number. I’m at a party on Seventh Street, and my phone died just as you called me. This is someone else’s phone, obviously.”

“Oh, ok,” I said.

“Where are you?” she asked.

My eyes glanced over the drab white-washed cylinder block walls and the heavy metal door with its small window.

“At my building,” I sighed. “Just feeling cooped up. I didn’t realize it was so late.”

“You should come here,” she said, laughing.

“Nah, I don’t feel like looking for some strange place by myself in the middle of the night,” I said, looking out the window at the silent windy street that secretly scared me just a tiny bit. “I think I’m just going to keep working or go to bed.”

“Nonsense!” she replied. “I can come get you! Your building is close to Seventh Street, right?”

“How drunk are you?” I asked lightheartedly. “You know where I live.”

“Oh, of course,” she said abruptly. “I guess I can’t get there by walking, huh?”

“You could if you wanted to waste half an hour,” I told her.

“Right,” she said. “Ok, have to go, good luck with your work!”

I lowered the phone once more, looking at the numbers flash as the call ended. Then, the droning silence suddenly reasserted itself in my ears. The two strange calls and the eerie street outside just drove home my aloneness in this empty stairwell. Perhaps from having seen too many scary movies, I had the sudden inexplicable idea that something could look in the door’s window and see me, some sort of horrible entity that hovered at the edge of aloneness, just waiting to creep up on unsuspecting people that strayed too far from other human beings. I knew the fear was irrational, but nobody else was around, so… I jumped down the stairs, ran down the hallway into my room, and closed the door as swiftly as I could while still staying silent. Like I said, I feel a little ridiculous for being scared of nothing, and the fear has already faded. Writing this down helps a lot – it makes me realize that nothing is wrong. It filters out half-formed thoughts and fears and leaves only cold, hard facts. It’s late, I got a call from a wrong number, and Amy’s phone died, so she called me back from another number. Nothing strange is happening.

Still, there was something a little off about that conversation. I know it could have just been the alcohol she’d had… or was it even her that seemed off to me? Or was it… yes, that was it! I didn’t realize it until this moment, writing these things down. I knew writing things down would help. She said she was at a party, but I only heard silence in the background! Of course, that doesn’t mean anything in particular, as she could have just gone outside to make the call. No… that couldn’t be it either. I didn’t hear the wind! I need to see if the wind is still blowing!

Monday

I forgot to finish writing last night. I’m not sure what I expected to see when I ran up the stairwell and looked out the heavy metal door’s window. I’m feeling ridiculous. Last night’s fear seems hazy and unreasonable to me now. I can’t wait to go out into the sunlight. I’m going to check my email, shave, shower, and finally get out of here! Wait… I think I heard something.

—

It was thunder. That whole sunlight and fresh air thing didn’t happen. I went out into the stairwell and up the stairs, only to find disappointment. The heavy metal door’s little window showed only flowing water, as torrential rain slammed against it. Only a very dim, gloomy light filtered in through the rain, but at least I knew it was daytime, even if it was a grey, sickly, wet day. I tried looking out the window and waiting for lightning to illuminate the gloom, but the rain was too heavy and I couldn’t make out anything more than vague weird shapes moving at odd angles in the waves washing down the window. Disappointed, I turned around, but I didn’t want to go back to my room. Instead, I wandered further up the stairs, past the first floor, and the second. The stairs ended at the third floor, the highest floor in the building. I looked through the glass that ran up the outer wall of the stairwell, but it was that warped, thick kind that scatters the light, not that there was much to see through the rain to begin with.

I opened the stairwell door and wandered down the hallway. The ten or so thick wooden doors, painted blue a long time ago, were all closed. I listened as I walked, but it was the middle of the day, so I wasn’t surprised that I heard nothing but the rain outside. As I stood there in the dim hallway, listening to the rain, I had the strange fleeting impression that the doors were standing like silent granite monoliths erected by some ancient forgotten civilization for some unfathomable guardian purpose. Lightning flashed, and I could have sworn that, for just a moment, the old grainy blue wood looked just like rough stone. I laughed at myself for letting my imagination get the best of me, but then it occurred to me that the dim gloom and lightning must mean there was a window somewhere in the hallway. A vague memory surfaced, and I suddenly recalled that the third floor had an alcove and an inset window halfway down the floor’s hallway.

Excited to look out into the rain and possibly see another human being, I quickly walked over to the alcove, finding the large thin glass window. Rain washed down it, as with the front door’s window, but I could open this one. I reached a hand out to slide it open, but hesitated. I had the strangest feeling that if I opened that window, I would see something absolutely horrifying on the other side. Everything’s been so odd lately… so I came up with a plan, and I came back here to get what I needed. I don’t seriously think anything will come of it, but I’m bored, it’s raining, and I’m going stir crazy. I came back to get my webcam. The cord isn’t long enough to reach the third floor by any means, so instead I’m going to hide it between the two soda machines in the dark end of my basement hallway, run the wire along the wall and under my door, and put black duct tape over the wire to blend it in with the black plastic strip that runs along the base of the hallway’s walls. I know this is silly, but I don’t have anything better to do…

Well, nothing happened. I propped open the hallway-to-stairwell door, steeled myself, then flung the heavy front door wide open and ran like hell down the stairs to my room and slammed the door. I watched the webcam on my computer intently, seeing the hallway outside my door and most of the stairwell. I’m watching it right now, and I don’t see anything interesting. I just wish the camera’s position was different, so that I could see out the front door. Hey! Somebody’s online!

—

I got out an older, less functional webcam that I had in my closet to video chat with my friend online. I couldn’t really explain to him why I wanted to video chat, but it felt good to see another person’s face. He couldn’t talk very long, and we didn’t talk about anything meaningful, but I feel much better. My strange fear has almost passed. I would feel completely better, but there was something… odd… about our conversation. I know that I’ve said that everything has seemed odd, but… still, he was very vague in his responses. I can’t recall one specific thing that he said… no particular name, or place, or event… but he did ask for my email address to keep in touch. Wait, I just got an email.

I’m about to go out. I just got an email from Amy that asked me to meet her for dinner at ‘the place we usually go to.’ I do love pizza, and I’ve just been eating random food from my poorly stocked fridge for days, so I can’t wait. Again, I feel ridiculous about the odd couple of days I’ve been having. I should destroy this journal when I get back. Oh, another email.

—

Oh my god. I almost left the email and opened the door. I almost opened the door. I almost opened the door, but I read the email first! It was from a friend I hadn’t heard from in a long time, and it was sent to a huge number of emails that must have been every person he had saved in his address list. It had no subject, and it said, simply:

seen with your own eyes don’t trust them they

What the hell is that supposed to mean? The words shock me, and I keep going over and over them. Is it a desperate email sent just as… something happened? The words are obviously cut off without finishing! On any other day I would have dismissed this as spam from a computer virus or something, but the words… seen with your own eyes! I can’t help but read over this journal and think back on the last few days and realize that I have not seen another person with my own eyes or talked to another person face to face. The webcam conversation with my friend was so strange, so vague, so… eerie, now that I think about it. Was it eerie? Or is the fear clouding my memory? My mind toys with the progression of events I’ve written here, pointing out that I have not been presented with one single fact that I did not specifically give out unsuspectingly. The random ‘wrong number’ that got my name and the subsequent strange return call from Amy, the friend that asked for my email address… I messaged him first when I saw him online! And then I got my first email a few minutes after that conversation! Oh my god! That phone call with Amy! I said over the phone – I said that I was within half an hour’s walk of Seventh Street! They know I’m near there! What if they’re trying to find me?! Where is everyone else? Why haven’t I seen or heard anyone else in days?

No, no, this is crazy. This is absolutely crazy. I need to calm down. This madness needs to end.

—

I don’t know what to think. I ran about my apartment furiously, holding my cell phone up to every corner to see if it got a signal through the heavy walls. Finally, in the tiny bathroom, near one ceiling corner, I got a single bar. Holding my phone there, I sent a text message to every number in my list. Not wanting to betray anything about my unfounded fears, I simply sent:

You seen anyone face to face lately?

At that point, I just wanted any reply back. I didn’t care what the reply was, or if I embarrassed myself. I tried to call someone a few times, but I couldn’t get my head up high enough, and if I brought my cell phone down even an inch, it lost signal. Then I remembered the computer, and rushed over to it, instant messaging everyone online. Most were idle or away from their computer. Nobody responded. My messages grew more frantic, and I started telling people where I was and to stop by in person for a host of barely passable reasons. I didn’t care about anything by that point. I just needed to see another person!

I also tore apart my apartment looking for something that I might have missed; some way to contact another human being without opening the door. I know it’s crazy, I know it’s unfounded, but what if? WHAT IF? I just need to be sure! I taped the phone to the ceiling in case

Tuesday

THE PHONE RANG! Exhausted from last night’s rampage, I must have fallen asleep. I woke up to the phone ringing, and ran into the bathroom, stood on the toilet, and flipped open the phone taped to the ceiling. It was Amy, and I feel so much better. She was really worried about me, and apparently had been trying to contact me since the last time I talked to her. She’s coming over now, and, yes, she knows where I am without me telling her. I feel so embarrassed. I am definitely throwing this journal away before anyone sees it. I don’t even know why I’m writing in it now. Maybe it’s just because it’s the only communication I’ve had at all since… god knows when. I look like hell, too. I looked in the mirror before I came back in here. My eyes are sunken, my stubble is thicker, and I just look generally unhealthy.

My apartment is trashed, but I’m not going to clean it up. I think I need someone else to see what I’ve been through. These past few days have NOT been normal. I am not one to imagine things. I know I have been the victim of extreme probability. I probably missed seeing another person a dozen times. I just happened to go out when it was late at night, or the middle of the day when everyone was gone. Everything’s perfectly fine, I know this now. Plus, I found something in the closet last night that has helped me tremendously: a television! I set it up just before I wrote this, and it’s on in the background. Television has always been an escape for me, and it reminds me that there’s a world beyond these dingy brick walls.

I’m glad Amy’s the only one that responded to me after last night’s frantic pestering of everyone I could contact. She’s been my best friend for years. She doesn’t know it, but I count the day that I met her among one of the few moments of true happiness in my life. I remember that warm summer day fondly. It seems a different reality from this dark, rainy, lonely place. I feel like I spent days sitting in that playground, much too old to play, just talking with her and hanging around doing nothing at all. I still feel like I can go back to that moment sometimes, and it reminds me that this damn place is not all that there is… finally, a knock on the door!

—

I thought it was odd that I couldn’t see her through the camera I hid between the two soda machines. I figured that it was bad positioning, like when I couldn’t see out the front door. I should have known. I should have known! After the knock, I yelled through the door jokingly that I had a camera between the soda machines, because I was embarrassed myself that I had taken this paranoia so far. After I did that, I saw her image walk over to the camera and look down at it. She smiled and waved.

“Hey!” she said to the camera brightly, giving it a wry look.

“It’s weird, I know,” I said into the mic attached to my computer. “I’ve had a weird few days.”

“Must have,” she replied. “Open the door, John.”

I hesitated. How could I be sure?

“Hey, humor me a second here,” I told her through the mic. “Tell me one thing about us. Just prove to me you’re you.”

She gave the camera a weird look.

“Um, alright,” she said slowly, thinking. “We met randomly at a playground when we were both way too old to be there?”

I sighed deeply as reality returned and fear faded. God, I’d been so ridiculous. Of course it was Amy! That day wasn’t anywhere in the world except in my memory. I’d never even mentioned it to anyone, not out of embarrassment, but out of a strange secret nostalgia and a longing for those days to return. If there was some unknown force at work trying to trick me, as I feared, there was no way they could know about that day.

“Haha, alright, I’ll explain everything,” I told her. “Be right there.”

I ran to my small bathroom and fixed my hair as best I could. I looked like hell, but she would understand. Snickering at my own unbelievable behavior and the mess I’d made of the place, I walked to the door. I put my hand on the doorknob and gave the mess one last look. So ridiculous, I thought. My eyes traced over the half-eaten food lying on the ground, the overflowing trash bin, and the bed I’d tipped to the side looking for… God knows what. I almost turned to the door and opened it, but my eyes fell on one last thing: the old webcam, the one I used for that eerily vacant chat with my friend.

Its silent black sphere lay haphazardly tossed to the side, its lens pointed at the table where this journal lay. An overwhelming terror took me as I realized that if something could see through that camera, it would have seen what I just wrote about that day. I asked her for any one thing about us, and she chose the only thing in the world that I thought they or it did not know… but IT DID! IT DID KNOW! IT COULD HAVE BEEN WATCHING ME THE WHOLE TIME!

I didn’t open the door. I screamed. I screamed in uncontrollable terror. I stomped on the old webcam on the floor. The door shook, and the doorknob tried to turn, but I didn’t hear Amy’s voice through the door. Was the basement door, made to keep out drafts, too thick? Or was Amy not outside? What could have been trying to get in, if not her? What the hell is out there?! I saw her on my computer through the camera outside, I heard her on the speakers through the camera outside, but was it real?! How can I know?! She’s gone now – I screamed, and shouted for help! I piled up everything in my apartment against the front door –

Friday

At least I think that it’s Friday. I broke everything electronic. I smashed my computer to pieces. Every single thing on there could have been accessed by network access, or worse, altered. I’m a programmer, I know. Every little piece of information I gave out since this started – my name, my email, my location – none of it came back from outside until I gave it out. I’ve been going over and over what I wrote. I’ve been pacing back and forth, alternating between stark terror and overpowering disbelief. Sometimes I’m absolutely certain some phantom entity is dead set on the simple goal of getting me to go outside. Back to the beginning, with the phone call from Amy, she was effectively asking me to open the door and go outside.

I keep running through it in my head. One point of view says I’ve acted like a madman, and all of this is the extreme convergence of probability – never going outside at the right times by pure luck, never seeing another person by pure chance, getting a random nonsense email from some computer virus at just the right time. The other point of view says that extreme convergence of probability is the reason that whatever’s out there hasn’t gotten me already. I keep thinking: I never opened the window on the third floor. I never opened the front door, until that incredibly stupid stunt with the hidden camera after which I ran straight to my room and slammed the door. I haven’t opened my own solid door since I flung open the front door of the building. Whatever’s out there – if anything’s out there – never made an ‘appearance’ in the building before I opened the front door. Maybe the reason it wasn’t in the building already was that it was elsewhere getting everyone else… and then it waited, until I betrayed my existence by trying to call Amy… a call which didn’t work, until it called me and asked me my name…

Terror literally overwhelms me every time I try to fit the pieces of this nightmare together. That email – short, cut off – was it from someone trying to get word out? Some friendly voice desperately trying to warn me before it came? Seen with my own eyes, don’t trust them – exactly what I’ve been so suspicious of. It could have masterful control of all things electronic, practicing its insidious deception to trick me into coming outside. Why can’t it get in? It knocked on the door – it must have some solid presence… the door… the image of those doors in the upper hallway as guardian monoliths flashes back in my mind every time I trace this path of thoughts. If there is some phantom entity trying to get me to go outside, maybe it can’t get through doors. I keep thinking back over all the books I’ve read or movies I’ve seen, trying to generate some explanation for this. Doors have always been such intense foci of human imagination, always seen as wards or portals of special importance. Or perhaps the door is just too thick? I know that I couldn’t bash through any of the doors in this building, let alone the heavy basement ones. Aside from that, the real question is, why does it even want me? If it just wanted to kill me, it could do it any number of ways, including just waiting until I starve to death. What if it doesn’t want to kill me? What if it has some far more horrific fate in store for me? God, what can I do to escape this nightmare?!

A knock on the door…

—

I told the people on the other side of the door I need a minute to think and I’ll come out. I’m really just writing this down so I can figure out what to do. At least this time I heard their voices. My paranoia – and yes, I recognize I’m being paranoid – has me thinking of all sorts of ways that their voices could be faked electronically. There could be nothing but speakers outside, simulating human voices. Did it really take them three days to come talk to me? Amy is supposedly out there, along with two policemen and a psychiatrist. Maybe it took them three days to think of what to say to me – the psychiatrist’s claim could be pretty convincing, if I decided to think this has all been a crazy misunderstanding, and not some entity trying to trick me into opening the door.

The psychiatrist had an older voice, authoritarian but still caring. I liked it. I’m desperate just to see someone with my own eyes! He said I have something called cyber-psychosis, and I’m just one of a nationwide epidemic of thousands of people having breakdowns triggered by a suggestive email that ‘got through somehow.’ I swear he said ‘got through somehow.’ I think he means spread throughout the country inexplicably, but I’m incredibly suspicious that the entity slipped up and revealed something. He said I am part of a wave of ‘emergent behavior’, that a lot of other people are having the same problem with the same fears, even though we’ve never communicated.

That neatly explains the strange email about eyes that I got. I didn’t get the original triggering email. I got a descendant of it - my friend could have broken down too, and tried to warn everyone he knew against his paranoid fears. That’s how the problem spreads, the psychiatrist claims. I could have spread it, too, with my texts and instant messages online to everybody I know. One of those people might be melting down right now, after being triggered by something I sent them, something they might interpret any way that they want, something like a text saying seen anyone face to face lately? The psychiatrist told me that he didn’t want to ‘lose another one’, that people like me are intelligent, and that’s our downfall. We draw connections so well that we draw them even when they shouldn’t be there. He said it’s easy to get caught up in paranoia in our fast paced world, a constantly changing place where more and more of our interaction is simulated…

I have to give him one thing. It’s a great explanation. It neatly explains everything. It perfectly explains everything, in fact. I have every reason to shake off this nightmarish fear that some thing or consciousness or being out there wants me to open the door so it can capture me for some horrible fate worse than death. It would be foolish, after hearing that explanation, to stay in here until I starve to death just to spite the entity that might have got everyone else. It would be foolish to think that, after hearing that explanation, I might be one of the last people left alive on an empty world, hiding in my secure basement room, spiting some unthinkable deceptive entity just by refusing to be captured. It’s a perfect explanation for every single strange thing I’ve seen or heard, and I have every reason in the world to let all of my fears go, and open the door.

That’s exactly why I’m not going to.

How can I be sure?! How can I know what’s real and what’s deception? All of these damn things with their wires and their signals that originate from some unseen origin! They’re not real, I can’t be sure! Signals through a camera, faked video, deceptive phone calls, emails! Even the television, lying broken on the floor – how can I possibly know it’s real? It’s just signals, waves, light… the door! It’s bashing on the door! It’s trying to get in! What insane mechanical contrivance could it be using to simulate the sound of men attacking the heavy wood so well?! At least I’ll finally see it with my own eyes… there’s nothing left in here for it to deceive me with, I’ve ripped apart everything else! It can’t deceive my eyes, can it? Seen with your own eyes don’t trust them they… wait… was that desperate message telling me to trust my eyes, or warning me about my eyes too?! Oh my god, what’s the difference between a camera and my eyes? They both turn light into electrical signals – they’re the same! I can’t be deceived! I have to be sure! I have to be sure!

Date Unknown

I calmly asked for paper and a pen, day in and day out, until it finally gave them to me. Not that it matters. What am I going to do? Poke my eyes out? The bandages feel like part of me now. The pain is gone. I figure this will be one of my last chances to write legibly, as, without my sight to correct mistakes, my hands will slowly forget the motions involved. This is a sort of self-indulgence, this writing… it’s a relic of another time, because I’m certain everyone left in the world is dead… or something far worse.

I sit against the padded wall day in and day out. The entity brings me food and water. It masks itself as a kind nurse, as an unsympathetic doctor. I think it knows that my hearing has sharpened considerably now that I live in darkness. It fakes conversations in the hallways, on the off chance that I might overhear. One of the nurses talks about having a baby soon. One of the doctors lost his wife in a car accident. None of it matters, none of it is real. None of it gets to me, not like she does.

That’s the worst part, the part I almost can’t handle. The thing comes to me, masquerading as Amy. Its recreation is perfect. It sounds exactly like Amy, feels exactly like her. It even produces a reasonable facsimile of tears that it makes me feel on its lifelike cheeks. When it first dragged me here, it told me all the things I wanted to hear. It told me that she loved me, that she had always loved me, that it didn’t understand why I did this, that we could still have a life together, if only I would stop insisting that I was being deceived. It wanted me to believe… no, it needed me to believe that she was real.

I almost fell for it. I really did. I doubted myself for the longest time. In the end, though, it was all too perfect, too flawless, and too real. The false Amy used to come every day, and then every week, and finally stopped coming altogether… but I don’t think the entity will give up. I think the waiting game is just another one of its gambits. I will resist it for the rest of my life, if I have to. I don’t know what happened to the rest of the world, but I do know that this thing needs me to fall for its deceptions. If it needs that, then maybe, just maybe, I am a thorn in its agenda. Maybe Amy is still alive out there somewhere, kept alive only by my will to resist the deceiver. I hold on to that hope, rocking back and forth in my cell to pass the time. I will never give in. I will never break. I am… a hero!

====

The doctor read the paper the patient had scribbled on. It was barely readable, written in the shaky script of one who could not see. He wanted to smile at the man’s steadfast resolve, a reminder of the human will to survive, but he knew that the patient was completely delusional.

After all, a sane man would have fallen for the deception long ago.

The doctor wanted to smile. He wanted to whisper words of encouragement to the delusional man. He wanted to scream, but the nerve filaments wrapped around his head and into his eyes made him do otherwise. His body walked into the cell like a puppet, and told the patient, once more, that he was wrong, and that there was nobody trying to deceive him.

Haunted

2011-01-10T17:23:00.003-08:00

It’s your first night in your new apartment. Your stuff is still in boxes. Your furniture (with the exception of the mattress on the floor) hasn’t arrived yet. The utilities won’t be turned on until the next day, so you’re making due without. A flashlight and some candles will do for light until you go to sleep. Despite the creepy feeling of being in a dark, empty apartment all alone; you chalk it up to nervousness and try to get some sleep.

A sound wakes you up. You lay there for a moment, waiting to decide if it was real or just your imagination being too loud. When the sound happens again, you check your cell for the time. Two in the morning. You get up, using your cellphone for light, and make your way towards the kitchen; the apparent source of the noises. At first, you think somebody has broken into your apartment, but you choke down your reaction as you stare at the figure. It is a middle-aged man, wearing what amounted to striped pajamas and standing in front of the microwave with his back to you. Although seemingly solid, you can also see through his body. You’re paralyzed; mostly out of fear, but partly out of curiosity.

“Hey,” you finally manage to say. The man looks in your direction, turning slowly. Your eyes open wide as you realize the man has no lower jaw, letting his tongue hang free. Your vision loses focus and the apparition disappears.

A sound wakes you up. It’s your phone vibrating against the floor. It’s morning, or at least light is coming in through the window. You’re back on your mattress and the missed call is from your mother. You’re confused about the night before and still shaking from the experience of what you saw. Was it a dream or did you really see a ghost?

The Lady Behind The Door

2011-01-10T17:22:00.000-08:00

It was night and two guys in classic car traveled down a lonely stretch of I-95 in Pennsylvania. The one in the passenger seat had a pensive look about him. The driver reached down to fiddle with the radio. They slowly pulled ahead of me. Squinting through the darkness and the bug-dotted windshield of my eight year old Isuzu I observed a blue bumper sticker with the words in white “Hilary ‘08” on it. “God damn it. I hate those guys.”

Gabe looked at me inquiringly, still rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. “You mean guys who look like they’ve been pulled out of some teen drama on basic cable?”

“Huh? No. Guys who leave bumper stickers up from previous elections. For fuck’s sake Hilary didn’t even win the primary.”

“Where are we anyway?” Gabe stretched out until his hands touched the car roof. Admittedly that wasn’t that much of a stretch, he was one of those shaggy looking wiry fellows.

“Just out of Jersey. You think you can help me stay awake? The Blush Twins back there aren’t much of a help.” My sister Prissy and her friend Claire were passed out in the back seat. When they drank more then they were used they had the tendency to turn as red as tomatoes. That limit was two glasses of red wine.

Gabe mumbled something that sounded like “alcohol camels” and responded, “Yea sure. There’s not much to talk about though, Jack.”

“Well it’s night and Halloween is a day away. You ever seen anything that could be considered paranormal?” That was always a good topic if two people need to stay awake through the night. I did not even need to worry about a “no.” Even the most logical human being has had that one weird experience, whether it was a bad trip or one of those waking nightmares experienced during sleep paralysis.

“Well, uh, no. But I swear to God, Jack, this one time when I was five I remember flying. This isn’t paranormal, but I had this one reoccurring nightmare back before my father left. Haven’t had it recently, but I remember it pretty clearly.

“I was about eleven and remember lying in bed listening to a shouting match in the living room. My bed room was on the second floor, so I couldn’t make out exactly what they were saying except for the occasional ‘Fuck you.’

“Then I dunno, time passed, I fell asleep. The hall lights were out and screaming stopped. The doorway to my room was half open. Next thing I know I can’t move, not even blink. But I could see things moving on the walls, man. It was trippy.” Gabe was rubbing that scraggly blond thing on his neck he called a beard as he told his story.

“Don’t stop there. What kind of things?” I said.

“Shadows, man, shadows. But not like those stories on the internet. They had hair, like people hair. They were flat to the wall except for the hair. It was like the hair was three dimensional and the rest of them was two dimensional. They had different color hair too. I mean black and brown, normal people colors, but some of them weren’t people shapes. They did have people hair though, they all did. I could hear—

“I could hear them say, ‘Carry on my waywar—” The radio turned on without warning. Prissy had left the damn thing on at max volume, the girls in the back stirred with a bunch thrashing thumps.

I shut the radio off. “Sorry about that, my elbow must of hit the dial.”

Gabe gave me a weird look before he went on. “I was saying I could hear whispering and feel tingling on my toes. It felt like when a dog licks your toes. That’s when I saw it, the big it, or her, I really don’t know. All I know is that thing was boss and all the rest of them were bitches, ‘cause they all scattered off to the corners. She had really red hair, Christmas present red, and curly too. Its thin shadow was stretching out from behind my bedroom door.

“I didn’t hear her voice, dude, I felt it. Not like telepathy, like felt it reverberate in my skull. Almost as if it were that loud nagging voice in your head when you’ve done something real bad. She said, the voice in me said, ‘Dear—

“John on DVD this Friday at Wal-Mart.” Blared the radio again.

I shut it off again. “I guess I should get that looked at, sorry. Go on.”

Gabe went on, “It said, ‘Dear soul, you have grown so much. Why you’re so pink and cute, how’d like to come home with me? I could just dress you up with gravy. Look at those crinkles on your forehead you look just like a juicy jelly donut. The powdery dough is always the best part of a fresh baked donut.’

“I didn’t see a hand, but it felt like she pinch my cheek. Then the licking would not stop!” Gabe pounded the “would”, “not”, and “stop” out on the passenger side of the dash board.

If I had not been focusing on the road ahead of me Gabe would of seen the wide eyed bewildered look in my eyes. It was not over the dream, I have had weirder. The bewilderment extended from the clearly unresolved issue that were clearly bubbling beneath Gabe’s Chewbacca-like surface. “It was just a dream, Gabe. I’m sorry I asked. Relax, I‘ll drive the rest of the night. One of the girls can take over in the morning.”

The night after our chat in the car we spent the night in some shit motel in northern Georgia. In the morning we found Gabe feet up in a garbage bin behind the Waffle House next door.

The Cave

2011-01-10T17:20:00.001-08:00

One

There were originally nine of us scheduled for the spelunking expedition, but Murphy’s Law dictated that two of the group had to pull out due to various issues. It was a disappointment having fewer members to share in the experience, but then again, there were benefits – less logistical problems, more space and so on. I, personally, wasn’t that affected by it; while most of us were close friends, I hadn’t known those two well.

Our rendezvous was the cave entrance, at the crack of dawn. I was the first one there, as usual; those who knew me often remarked at my attention to punctuality. Slowly, the rest of the group arrived, parking their cars and unloading the equipment that we had organised between us. As the expedition leader, I had the emergency provisions on me – first aid kit, flare gun, GPS locator. It seemed quite odd that a flare gun would be taken into an underground location, but I’d rather have it and not need it than need it and not have it.

We assembled at the cave entrance. There was Jason, Alex, Karen, Samantha, Vincent, Ashley and, of course, myself. Alex and I were experienced spelunkers, while the rest had varying skill levels: moderate (Karen, Vincent and Samantha), poor (Jason) and a first-timer (Ashley). Normally it was against my instinct to take a first-timer into an unexplored cave and in such a large group, but he had promised to obey every command I gave him and had agreed to carry the most cumbersome equipment on the safe parts of the trek.

The cave loomed in front of us. It was typically dark and rather foreboding. Not for the first time, I wondered why it was, according to every available record of local geological sites, unexplored. Perhaps it was the isolated location, or the fact that until recently, there had been no way for vehicles to access it through the surrounding forest. “Are you sure it’s alright?” Ashley nervously asked, shifting from foot to foot. His earlier bravado had deserted him. “Yes. You can’t change your mind once we’re in, so decide now.” I said flatly, turning around without waiting for an answer. He’d make his own mind up without any further input from me.

The rest of the group followed me. After a few moments of apparent indecision, Ashley hurried in after the rest of us. Soon, the darkness swallowed us whole.

Inside, the cave was quite larger than it appeared. It proceeded inwards for about two hundred metres and then sloped down quite quickly. As per usual, I ordered the group members to “buddy up,” a system in which the group divided into pairs and three’s and were responsible for keeping together. Ashley and I were partners, given that I was the most experienced and he was the least. It wasn’t as fun spelunking when you had to care for somebody else, but it was a necessary evil. Besides, he was a quick learner.

Soon the sunlight from the cave mouth faded. “Flares out, everybody,” I ordered. One by one, the expedition members cracked the flares. As per local guidelines, each member carried two packs of thirty handheld flares. It may have been excessive, but the flares weren’t very strong and only provided enough light for the immediate area around the user. I took a glowstick from my pack and wedged it into the rock beside me. Only I carried these and they were quite stronger than the flares, able to last up to twelve hours with diminishing light after eight. I would use them to mark our trail back up.

Slowly we continued down. The handheld flares lasted for fifteen minutes on average and soon we reached an edge. I ordered the group to stop five feet from the precipice, where the ground levelled out. As you may have noticed, I am a stickler for safety measures, but not without good reason. I didn’t want a death on my hands. “Ashley, crack a flare and throw it down,” I said, watching to see how he did it. Ashley withdrew a flare from his pack and lit it. Then, without moving, he tossed it forward, down the hole. I nodded in approval – he hadn’t moved forward from the five metre guideline.

I crept forward to the precipice and looked into the abyss.

Then I saw it.

Descending into the darkness, barely half a metre from the cliff edge, was what appeared to be a staircase.

Two

The light of the flare made one thing quite clear. It wasn’t a man-made staircase – at least, it didn’t look like one. It appeared to be hewn out of the descending rock, meaning that the original cliff would have extended further into the cave. The stairs were rough and uneven, but it was close enough for government work, as the saying goes. “What is it?” One of the group members asked from behind me. “Looks like a natural staircase of sorts,” I answered, distracted. I withdrew another glowstick from my bag and planted it at the top of the stairs.

“Let’s go.”

We descended cautiously, for caves are notoriously deceptive. Ahead of me, the darkness grew thicker. It seemed palpable, almost physical. As if my thoughts were true, the flares we held seemed to diminish in the face of the abyss. After fifty or so steps, I reached the bottom.

That’s when I heard the crack.

It sounded like a gunshot, loud and sharp. I spun at the foot of the stairs. Behind me, Jason was tumbling roughly down the last few steps, straight towards me. I spun out of the way and he crashed to the floor, moaning in agony. The rest of the group hurried towards me, concerned, as I bent to inspect the injury. It was obvious – his ankle was twisted at an unnatural angle, clearly broken. Jason’s face had rapidly lost colour.

“Karen, Vincent, grab him by the arms. Careful.” I said quietly, unwilling to exacerbate the situation by panicking. They picked him up slowly, his ankle dangling grotesquely beneath him. Something glinted under the crimson light of the flares. I knew it was bone. I reached into my pack, taking out two small batons and a white bandage. “This is going to hurt,” I warned. The caution was wasted on Jason, anyway – he was half-unconscious. I grabbed his ankle and twisted.

His ankle cracked again.

That roused Jason from his stupor. He screamed piercingly, loudly enough to hurt my ears. Quickly, trying to not to prolong his agony, I wound the bandage around the batons, which braced either side of his leg. The screaming stopped, but not because the pain had faded. He was unconscious. “Take him up to the entrance of the cave and to the hospital. If he wakes, give him these painkillers.” I told his helpers. Karen and Vincent nodded and began the arduous climb up to the surface, holding their unconscious ward.

“Shouldn’t we go with them? I mean, his ankle was-“Ashley began, but I cut him off. “No. We came this far, and we’re not going to stop now. I want to investigate this cave to the end. Remember, I told you that you couldn’t change your mind,” I said sharply, taking out my anger at letting the accident happen under my leadership on him. Ashley – known as Ash to his friends, but I never used that – fell silent. I felt a fleeting sense of guilt at my attitude. I brushed it off and spun around. Already Jason and the others were out of view.

Around the group, the darkness surrounded us like a malevolent entity.

The landing we were on led further into the cave for quite a while and we proceeded incident-free, thankfully. I marked our progress with the glowsticks at various intervals. Strangely, like the flares, they gave off less light the deeper we progressed. It began to unnerve me and I could tell the others noticed it too. Alex and Samantha, who were incidentally brother and sister, fell a few steps behind us. Ashley, to my right, was silent.

Finally, as the flares grew ever dimmer, I saw something in the wall to my right. I called the diminished group over and cracked a new flare to provide extra light. It appeared to some sort of carving in the wall. I studied it carefully. The scene depicted a few humanoid forms on the ground. A few scratches of red seemed to indicate wounds. Various pillars around them rose to the roof of the cavern.

But that wasn’t nearly the worst part.

In front of the people – the victims, I now corrected myself – was a large figure. It may have had detail in the past, but only the outline remained. The body was scratched out. It was a disturbing scene.

Then I looked beneath the scene and my eyes widened.

It had a message.

Three

The strange thing about the message was that it was in English. The carving looked entirely authentic; meaning that a caveman – if you’ll pardon the pun - had created it. I found it impossible that the same person could have scrawled the five words below the picture. Behind me, Alex read it out loud.

“THE JACKAL AND THE CAVE . How strange,” he said. Indeed, that was the message, written entirely in capital. I dismissed the painting and turned back to the main path. It was obviously a hoax – there was no way a caveman could write in any script, let alone in English. Probably some kid mucking around in days long past. But it still made me uneasy, regardless of what I assumed it to be.

If it was a hoax, then why does it look so fucking authentic?

Eventually, the four of us had had our fill of ‘THE JACKAL AND THE CAVE,’ and, after Ashley had snapped a photo of it for a keepsake, we continued into the cave. I was forced to light two flares at a time, now, to ward off the choking darkness. The diminishing effectiveness of the flares puzzled me – in all my time spelunking I had never encountered anything like it. I wondered whether it was a defective bunch or some other reason – it had to have a logical, rational reason.

Behind me, Alex and Samantha were still locked in conversation. I picked up snatches of the heated debate as we walked. They, like me, were still pondering the origin of the admittedly ominous cave drawing. I wished they’d drop it already, or at least quieten down. I looked to my right, saw nothing but a sloping cave wall and looked away, back to the trail.

I froze.

And turned.

There, among the rock that I had just glanced at, was another carving.

I felt sick as I hurried over to it. The red glow of the flares flickered on the wall, dancing over the picture, making it look demonic under the sparse light. It depicted a scene much like the last, except there were only two bodies on the floor. The third was in midair, seemingly held by an appendage – not quite an arm, not quite a tentacle – from the titular Jackal. The pillars around the scene appeared again, except with small, indistinct etching on them. Like before, only the faint outline of the Jackal appeared, the rest of it having been scribbled – or scratched, I couldn’t tell which – out.

Underneath it was another five-word message, one that I read quickly and immediately wished I hadn’t.

‘GO BACK. THE JACKAL WAITS,” it said.

I turned from the carving as the others moved in to get a good look and tried not to panic. The air felt thin and dry, much like the air in the Andes. I’d gone climbing there a few years ago, and terrible things had happened – which explained my preference for underground rocks as opposed to aerial ones – but that’s a story for another day and another time. Around me, the darkness was thick. I could no longer see without the flares in aid. Suddenly, irrationally, I knew if I stayed in this underground labyrinth for much longer I would lose my sanity.

But that was the mind of an irrational man talking.

I leant against the opposite wall, breathing deeply and slowly to regulate my rapid heartbeat. Spots danced in front of my eyes momentarily as I oxygenated my blood rapidly. Slowly, the panic faded, to be replaced by a sense of calm. I didn’t get overworked often, but when I did, I tended to edge towards to hysteria. Taking one last deep breath, I straightened and looked around.

That’s when I realised that Ashley was gone.

Four

That’s when I realised that Ashley was gone.

Slowly, I stood, scanning the passage for any sign of Ashley. Samantha and Alex were still arguing over the cave carving. They were typically argumentative of identical twins. As Alex drew breath to continue his opinion, I stepped between them, holding my hands up in peace. “Have either of you seen Ashley? He’s gone,” I said, stepping back once I saw that they had ceased fighting and listened to what I said.

“No,” they said in unison.

I sighed in frustration and looked around the cavern. There was no trace of Ashley anywhere. “He couldn’t have gone far, not with that massive pack he had strapped to him,” Alex said reasonably, possibly sensing the panic that I felt. The entire expedition had had problems from the start; first the dropouts, then Jason, now this. It was like we were cursed or some other superstitious bullshit – I was a born sceptic and proud of it.

“He could have only gone forward or back,” Samantha said, walking forward to the edge of the light and looking around. “We should split up and-“

“No,” I said, resolute. “We are not going to split up, under any circumstances. If Ashley went back, he’ll eventually get out of the cave by himself. So, we go forward and hope that stupid prick hasn’t done anything reckless,” I interjected flatly, turning away from the duo and proceeding into the darkness.

After a shared glance, the meaning of which was undecipherable – at least to me – they followed.

And so we went.

As we progressed, I felt the path lead downwards. It was a marginal slope, undetectable by the naked eye, but I felt myself pushing harder into the rock with each step, thanks to the extra gravity of descent. It wasn’t of any concern to me – such natural formations were common. We proceeded ever further into the depths of the cave, calling out Ashley’s name as we went.

Then I saw it.

It was over to the right, like the others.

It was, of course, another carving.

I felt sick as I scanned it.

The titular Jackal had increased in size yet again. The tentacle-appendage hybrid was shorter, as if the beast had pulled it back. The previously-held corpse was ominously absent from the scene. I tried not to think about what had happened to it. The pillars with carvings on them also appeared. As before, the Jackal had the majority of its detail erased, making it little more than an outline. However, there was detail on the edge of the beast this time. I knew the short lines represented skin, apparently leathery and cracked. Then I read the message – it was again five words long - and my eyes widened in a flash of shock and fear.

“THIS IS YOUR LAST CHANCE,” it read.

I stumbled back from the carving in fear, raising my hands in front of me as if it was alive and coming for me. As I hit the back wall, I saw Alex and Samantha close in to study the carving. They seemed unaffected by the ominous message as I had been. I gasped for breath, winded by the sudden impact of the wall against me. I tried to clear my mind, to cut through the mix of panic and fear I now felt at having read the carving – the carving which I no longer thought was the work of pranksters.

I turned to my left, hoping to see Ashley.

Instead, I saw the gateway.

It appeared to be a stone arch, hewn from black granite. It followed the contour of the cave precisely, creating a strange effect. Carvings of various things – symbols, letters and pictures – covered the gateway, which appeared to be seamless, without join or cut. I approached it almost unwillingly, feeling my heart rise into my throat as I stared at the ground immediately behind the gateway and onwards.
The walls, floor and roof of the cave from the gateway onwards were covered in fine, white dust.

Alex and Samantha joined me at the edge of the gateway. We were silent, studying the gateway. I looked the top and saw yet another five-letter message carved there.

“THE GATEWAY TO THE JACKAL,” read the message.

And Hell with it, I thought.

Then, I heard the scream.

It was Ashley screaming.

“We have to get to him!” Alex yelled, turning to me. With every fibre of my body, I resisted stepping through the gateway. I knew if we did, terrible things would happen. If I stepped through, I knew, sooner or later, I would meet the Jackal. But I had to know; about Ashley, the carvings, everything. I had to. So, with a deep breath and trying to still my hands, I made my choice.

Together, we stepped through the gateway to Ashley and the dark beast beyond.

Five

The first change I noticed was the ground.

The fine white dust was coated on the entire cave, right past the gateway. I didn’t know the origin – it didn’t appear to be from any sort of mineral or rock I had encountered before. It was strange, but then, given the nature of the rest of the cave, that made it almost normal. The darkness grew progressively thicker as we advanced. I noticed we were running low on flares – about only twenty each. It was a problem, but not one I was particularly concerned about considering the current predicament we were in.

Ashley hadn’t made any noise besides his original scream. It concerned me far more than if he had kept screaming. There could be a logical reason for him not screaming. Perhaps he ran deeper into the cave. Maybe he was conserving his voice, I thought. But I was throwing up improbable answers to cover my fear. My true thought rose unbidden to my mind:

What if whatever made him scream stopped him from doing so again?

I felt sick.

Ahead of us, not even a hundred metres from the gateway, was a crossroads, the first such divide in the otherwise-linear path. I had appreciated the lack of divergent paths so far because it meant that we didn’t have to divide our group, stunted as it was. Appearing now, as it had, seemed like extraordinarily bad luck on our part.

Seemed like. That’s the key point. Nothing in this godforsaken cave has been left to chance.

Lost in my grim thoughts as I was, I didn’t notice the object ahead of us until Alex exclaimed and ran towards it. Startled, I looked up. Alex blocked my direct view of it – all I knew of it, apparently, was that it was quite large. I ran towards it.

It was Ashley’s pack, ripped and torn. Blood covered it and the immediate area, in irregular patterns. Beside me, Alex stepped back tentatively, lost for words. “Something attacked him, tore the pack right from his back with incredible force. It must have injured him as well, judging by the blood,” I said quietly, surprised at how clinical and calm my assessment of the scene had been.

“That’s it. I’m out. I’m going,” Alex said, turning away quickly, but not before I saw the fear in his eyes. He was terrified. Samantha nodded in agreement, turning to leave as well. I didn’t try to stop either of them. They would be back.

“You won’t get a foot past the gateway,” I called to them, certain that it would prevent them from leaving.

I turned back to Ashley’s pack slowly and began searching through it quickly, taking only a few items. I hesitated when my hand landed on the flare gun, but I took it and kept it in my hand. I knew from experience against various types of wildlife that it made an effective weapon.

If I met anything – anything – that wasn’t Ashley, I would fire without mercy.

I stood and chose the right-hand passageway. I didn’t feel scared anymore – in fact, I didn’t feel a thing. Adrenaline was coursing through my system, leaving no room for fear or anything else.

It grew progressively darker. The darkness was thick and cloying – as a lifetime asthma sufferer, it reminded me of when I needed my inhaler. I knew the flares would soon be useless, regardless of whether they should have been effective. Beside me, I noticed scrawling in the dust, apparently of human origin. That, at least, was no mystery. I glanced at each in turn, almost mechanically, knowing that it couldn’t be any worse. It appeared that we weren’t the first people to stumble into this place.

“I HAVE SEEN IT, AND IT BLINDED ME”
“THIS IS IT’S DOMAIN”
“TALLER THAN ANY HUMAN”

Suddenly I stopped. The last was different from the others – in lowercase, and appeared to be freshly written.

“it cut me. i’m running for my life.”

Ashley’s writing.

And then, as if by magic, I heard two things.

A scream and a roar.

Ashley.

The Jackal.

And they were close.

I ran forwards.

Six

I felt, rather than sensed, that I had breached into a massive cavern.

To prove my theory, I impulsively punched the air to my right. If I was still in the claustrophobic cave, my hand would surely be shattered on the wall. As I expected, I hit nothing but the stagnant air of the cave. The flares provided nothing more than a dim glow. I looked at it in horror as the glow faded slowly. The fading light represented my last defence against the virulent darkness of the cave (or Cave, as I felt it should be called) and its sole inhabitant.

The inhabitant some called the Jackal.

The light faded completely.

I was alone.

The moment I was, I heard the voice. It was flat and terrible and loud. It reverberated around me, seemingly without a source or direction. I spun in the darkness – the cloying, constricting darkness – and felt my heart in my throat. I knew that if I walked backwards, I would no longer find the passageway that had led me to the lair of the Jackal. Once you entered this central cavern, there was no leaving it. Just like the carvings promised, I thought.

“THIS IS MY CAVE,” it bellowed.

I screamed and ran.

It was a futile gesture. The voice boomed around me, terrifying in its alienness and its flat, expressionless quality. The Jackal was not human, nor was it even some revenant or ghost of a forgotten culture. It was something that had no place in this universe and something that I wished never to see. My heart thundered in my chest and my eyes vibrated – I could no longer even control my own body. I’m a prisoner in my own body.

“THE OTHER ONE SCREAMED BEFORE I TOOK HIM,” boomed the Jackal, interrupting my thoughts.

“Fuck you!” I screamed hysterically into the darkness around me. It was a petty rebellion – I doubted the Jackal even knew what it meant – but I felt better for it, all the same. Around me, the darkness coalesced. It’s alive, I thought. I tried to stifle a scream as an image popped into my head-

thousands of millions of bugs crawling over me in the darkness biting scratching and running

-and was banished moments later by the Jackal’s next terrible oration:

“YOU WILL REMAIN HERE FOREVER,” it howled.

I know that voice, I thought vaguely.

After the voice came the footsteps.

I sensed – I could both feel the tremors and hear the steps - hundreds of them around me, pounding the floor in a rapid and terrifying rhythm. Rolling thunder, I thought crazily, and laughed. What little sanity I possessed was rapidly being eroded away by-

the darkness millions of bugs rolling thunder

-the Jackal and its influence over the Cave and, consequently, those inside it. I doubted if Ashley was still alive, that Samantha and Alex had escaped. I didn’t even think that Karen, Vincent and Jason had escaped alive. Even as I considered this, the Jackal howled again, the flat voice echoing throughout my dark prison.

“THEY ALL DIED. AS WILL YOU,” the Jackal roared in its expressionless tone, creating a queer wavering effect that hurt my ears. My throat burned from the lack of moisture. A headache pounded in my head and my ears throbbed, strangely in time with the footsteps. I’m just rolling thunder, I thought, and laughed crazily. Then, as I considered what the Jackal had said:

It can read my thoughts.

It was not such a fantastical idea. The Jackal had only ever spoken after I had had a thought. A coincidence? I think not, pardon the pun. I considered the mental connection an idea began to form. I stopped running and emptied my thoughts, banishing the sensory manipulations the Jackal used on me. The footsteps around me intensified but I heard none of it as I shut down my senses and opened my mind.

Then, exposed without the cloak of my previous panicked thoughts, I felt it.

The Jackal’s mind. It was a colossal, alien thing, like a structure too gargantuan for the human mind to comprehend. It would dwarf me, swallow my mind whole and leave me a gibbering wreck if I considered it for too long. It wasn’t even natural, let alone human. Thoughts and ideas seemed to be constructed in a fashion that was incomprehensible to the human mind.

In a word, the Jackal’s presence was dark.

As I felt its presence wash over me, I steeled myself and sprung the trap. Instantly, before the beast could retreat, I thought of light. A blinding supernova, more light than any human had ever witnessed. A bright inferno of light. I let the mental image expand in my mind – and over onto the Jackal’s colossal presence. I guessed that such a creature had never seen light, or if it had, it had spent so long underground, bathed in the darkness which it controlled, such light – even as an image – would do tremendous harm to it, considering that the Jackal’s mental abilities far outclassed my own.

I was right.

The instant the supernova-image touched the Jackal’s presence, a tremendous shriek filled the chamber, immediately overtaking all the phantom footsteps that had so tormented me. I grinned savagely despite the pain the high-pitched squeal caused my ears. That, at least, sounded vaguely human. It felt empowering to know that I had hurt the Jackal, probably badly. I heard rushing noises around me and opened my eyes.

Impossibly, the virulent darkness was retracting around me.

I spun wildly, in the grip of the receding darkness. As I moved, I glanced around me. I was in a huge chamber, one that extended far into the distance. I saw columns and pillars and carvings, and realised that this really was the Jackal’s-

feeding ground

-lair that had been the subject of the ominous cave paintings. I had no time to consider that, however, as the final darkness receded. The cave that was lit by light that had no source – my mental light, I thought – exposed its only occupant and that occupant’s slave.

Just like that, I saw them.

Ashley.

The Jackal.

Seven

I could never truly describe the beast before me.

It wasn’t because I didn’t know the right way to articulate it – I knew exactly what to call it. I simply could not comprehend the Jackal. It was as if I were viewing it from the extremities of my peripheral vision; it was blurry and soft and weak, weak because it had no hard angles or edges. No matter how hard I looked, how much I stared, the Jackal remained hidden to me, a formless shape hidden under a veil of unreality. The cave paintings, carvings – whatever adjective I attached to them – were truer than I had thought, even after the Jackal had turned out to be real. They depicted a blurry, formless Jackal, and so it was.

Yes. I knew exactly what it was: indistinct.

Ashley, however, was not.

I looked at him in horror. His body was covered in blood, flesh and other less identifiable materials. I could count at least eight visible wounds and more red lines that I couldn’t distinguish from the gore saturating his form. A gaping wound cut across his stomach, revealing intestines, pink and rubbery. Blood flowed from multiple slashes on his arms and legs. He was probably dead, certainly unconscious. But that wasn’t the worst of it.

His entire right ear had been torn off clean from his head.

Bile rose in my throat as I stared at his prostrate form, horrified. The Jackal had done this to him. As I thought of the beast before me, I realised that the cavern around me was silent. The Jackal’s screech, so loud to begin with, had been cut off instantly some moments previous, unlike the gradual decline that was characteristic in humans.

Then again, it isn’t and has never resembled anything close to a human. I would wager every possession I own it has no similarity to any creature of this dimension. I can’t even begin to consider its true form.

Even as I watched, it got infinitely worse.

Until Ashley began to move through the air, I hadn’t even noticed that he had been airborne, so enthralled I had been by his ravaged body. Slowly, never wavering in speed, Ashley began to recede towards the blurry shape that represented the Jackal. I thought back to the carvings in horror. With every sacrifice, it gains form – and so a greater foothold in this dimension. I wanted to rush forward and tear Ashley from the Jackal’s thrall. But to come within reach of the creature would mean an unspeakable end, one that I would have already faced had I not wounded it with the psychic supernova.

Suddenly, Ashley stopped moving, mere metres from the Jackal, and I realised with a shock how the Jackal had previously communicated – through Ashley.

Now I know why I recognised that voice, even distorted as it had been.

Ashley’s mouth opened and from it roared the Jackal.

“YOU WILL SUFFER FOR USING THE GLOW AGAINST ME, SUFFER AS HE DID.” roared the grotesque Ashley/Jackal hybrid. Evidently, it only knew the light that had so hurt it as “the glow”. It didn’t matter. The important thing was that it had been hurt, and badly. I probed my mind. No trace of the Jackal’s presence remained. Apparently, that part of it, physically manifested in the virulent darkness, had been either destroyed or banished by my mental counterattack.

“Even if I meet my death here, beast, I will do my utmost to bring you with me.” I responded bravely. The saturating fear and accompanying thoughts which had so crippled me, both mentally and physically, was gone. Now I could see the Jackal – regardless of how well I could comprehend it – much of the terror that I had felt at the hands of it was gone, just like the virulent darkness. Even the voice was less intimidating now that it had a definitive source.

It spoke again.

“I HAVE CONSUMED MANY. THIS ONE IS THE LAST. I WILL BE FREE FROM MY PRISON.” The Jackal bellowed, drawing Ashley towards him.

“No.” I whispered.

I sprinted towards them. No matter the cost, even if it were my life or my sanity, I could not allow the Jackal to consume Ashley and escape whatever prison it was incarcerated in. Such a beast would wreak unimaginable destruction on the surface. I pulled a silver piece of equipment, the last thing I had taken from Ashley’s pack – the flare gun.

As the Jackal and the Ashley came together, I drew and fired.

The world exploded around me.

Imperfect Transition

2011-01-10T17:18:00.001-08:00

I was sitting in the upstairs office of the Museum with a cup of coffee when it happened. It had been a long day, and I’d set the work experience kid the seemingly unfuckupable task of dusting the exhibits- after repeating my warning, of course, that some of them must not be touched or opened. A terrified scream, quickly strangled by a building-shaking thump and an awful rending sound, brought me rushing downstairs.

The mirror room- I knew it. In there, there hung an ancient mirror, about a foot around, made of polished obsidian. Behind the glass walls of its display case, it was harmless- although people amusingly reported seeing the face of an evil hag in it on occasion. Looking at it unprotected was madness, though- certainly for those without my knowledge of the old ways.

I arrived in the mirror room, and a horrible smell hung in the air. On the floor lay half a body- the lower half, still in the clothes I recognised from earlier. The skin had been stretched purple and torn away, and the organs inside that hadn’t been torn free leaked their contents onto the floor. The legs were at the bottom of a maroon spray that started below the wooden case of the mirror, and the hipbone lay almost against the wall.

The case was broken- the wooden sides pushed outwards. Clumps of hair, matted with skin and blood, stuck to the frame of the mirror. Concentrating now, I stepped in front of the black disc, my sandals carefully placed either side of the bile-sprayed limbs and pool of blood on the floor. Looking into the dark reflection of the room, I saw my double once more. In her hand was a pale arm that led down to a broken form, and a trail of darkness. Sure enough, when she lifted the half-corpse into the air, I recognised the shattered and stretched face.

God's Mouth

2011-01-10T17:17:00.000-08:00

I huffed and puffed under my breath as I stared into God’s Mouth. I felt like the Big Bad Wolf ready to interrupt the innocent little pigs as they hurriedly fortified their makeshift homes. I grinned at this thought and then turned my head to look for Margaret. She was a couple of feet down the hill from the entrance of the cave, holding a walking stick close to her petite breasts. “Hurry up!” I called down to her. I turned back to the cave, still grinning. An old, rotted sign outside read ‘God’s Mouth Cave: Keep Out!’ What a tired cliché.

Margaret finally made it to the entrance and stood beside me, almost doubled over and out of breath. I looked down and smiled. “Check it out!” I laughed. “God’s mouth. Wonder where Jesus’ anus is?” I chuckled to myself. Margaret was less amused.

“Give me the damn water bottle,” she said, exasperated. The open bottle met her lips, and for a moment I felt peaceful in a way, watching her drink the water. Actually I take that back. The ‘peaceful’ comment, I mean. It was more of a feeling that was sort of hard to put my finger on or give a name, but I could settle for a nice ‘content’. Content seemed to be one of those words that manifest itself when natural, human words seemed to fail. Again, an utter cliché, but it felt good to feel a strange, mixed-up sort of happy for once.

I sighed and turned my flashlight on. I pointed it into the cave. Black. God’s Mouth. This seemed like the antithesis of a Holy Spirit. I turned again to Margaret. “You ready?” I asked. She was finally standing straight up. She nodded. I clapped a friendly hand to her back and we walked into God’s Mouth.

The inside was not unlike the preview I had glimpsed outside with my flashlight. Dark, dismal, and endlessly black. It seemed to stretch endlessly, no matter how I positioned my flashlight. The rocky terrain was damp and imposing. The last natural light slowly disappeared behind Margaret and I as we made our way deeper and deeper. I found it strange how soft and compelling the world around me now appeared, despite the stalactites, stalagmites, and other various rocky formations being so jagged. It seemed that even amongst the pointed teeth of God I could lay down and rest there forever. It was comfortable.

Apparently Margaret didn’t agree. She shivered uncomfortably under my arm. I raised my eyebrows. “Need your coat?” I asked. I tried to look at her and make non-verbal communication as explicit as possible until I realized that we were lost inky blackness of the Mouth. I bit my lip and waited, but she didn’t respond. For a couple minutes we walked in silence. She stopped and stood motionless. I stopped, too.

“Why the hell are we even in here?” she said. She sounded irritated. I shrugged – more to appease myself than her – and shoved my flashlight under my face. Bladed shadows obscured half my face, the other half illuminated in a wretched mask. “Spooky!” I cried, chuckling. She didn’t move.

I sighed. “I thought you wanted to go,” I said. I noticed how my voice echoed against the cave walls at any volume. “I mean,” I began again, scratching at my chin, “You did say you wanted to go see some nature for our vacation. And you did sound impressed when I told you about my visit to Mammoth Caves a couple years back. So…” My voice trailed off. I could still sense her irritation.

“No,” she said. I frowned. “No, you wanted to go here. I wanted to go to a beach or something. But no, a cave. A cave, Nathan!” She sounded more like the Big Bad Wolf now. “I know that you have this weird fetish for spelunking or something, but I don’t really want to be dragged in to it. Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to go on a trip and get into nature and fresh air, but this,” I could hear her arms flail and gesture about in the thick air. “This is cave air, not fresh air. This air is practically fermenting! Plus, isn’t this illegal? Can we please just leave?”

We both stood there. The only sound that could be heard was the electricity in the air being stifled and smothered by the damp atmosphere. Finally, I began to walk. I didn’t hear Margaret follow me, but I kept moving forward. Then, “Nathan,” she said, “Stop. Please stop.” So I stopped.

“I’m sorry,” she said. I could hear her moving closer to me. “I’m tired and I’m not used to running and climbing around and the like. I’m just tired.”

“It’s okay,” I said. She gripped my arm. “Really. It’s fine.” I shook my head. “Which way is out? I don’t remember.” I could feel Margaret physically pause. Neither of us could remember. Somehow, in the confusion of our argument, I’d forgotten which way we had been moving. Idiot, I thought to myself, I should have brought a goddamn rope or something to trail from the entrance of the cave. I had to take action, so without much thought, I turned 180 degrees and said, “This way.”

We walked for what seemed to be hours. My feet were tired and sore, and I could hear Margaret’s groans from behind me. She held my hand tightly. I felt terrible. This was my fault.

Then, I froze. “Hey. Hey,” I said, “Put your hand out. Feel this rock.” I could hear Margaret’s bare palm press against the stone. “Isn’t this, like…abnormally warm?” I said. She didn’t say anything. I began to work my way along the wall, feeling it as I went, shining the flashlight in front of me. Suddenly, I felt a sharp pain on my head as the ceiling of God’s Mouth met with my scalp.

“Ow! Shit!” I shouted.

“Oh, Nick, are you okay?” Margaret asked. She seemed on the verge of panic now.

“I’m fine,” I said. “Please, calm down. We’ll get out of here soon, I promise.”

I started again, pointing my flashlight upwards now to see the ceiling above me. It seemed to be getting narrower. That was strange. “Listen, uh, Margaret, babe,” I said through clenched teeth, “I think we gotta turn around.” Margaret sighed next to me.

Again, we walked for a decent length. I kept my flashlight pointed upwards this time. Sure enough, the space in the cave seemed to become smaller and smaller. If there was any resonating light left in God’s Mouth aside from my flashlight, I’m sure Margaret would have been able to see the whites of my eyes, spreading in panic. We were completely lost.

I let go of Margaret’s hand and began to feverishly feel my way along the walls. “No, Nathan!” I heard her shout. I kept going. We had to get out. If we were lost, nobody would be able to find us.

I kept feeling along the wall until I abruptly hit a corner. “Fuck,” I said aloud. “Margaret, this seems to be a dead end.” I spun around on my heel. “Margaret?” No answer. Shit.

I began to repeat my process again, almost running as I felt the wall run past my fingertips. Cool, damp rocks and jagged spears. Suddenly, I found myself at a corner again. “Fuck fuck fuck,” I shouted. “Margaret!” I was belting her name out now. In the corner of the cave’s maw where I had been thwarted so many times already, I heard a noise. It sounded like muffled static from a television. I pressed my ear against the rock. It seemed to be getting even warmer now. I heard the faint sounds of Margaret on the other side of the rock. She was screaming.

“No no no,” I said. “No no no no no.” I began running haphazardly into the walls around me. With dawning realization came a wave of sheer horror. There was no entrance. There was no exit. Only these four corners and me.

I could feel blood begin to trickle from the cut I managed to get by bashing my body into the cave’s walls. They were closing in on me. They were coming in for the kill, and soon they would be pressing in on my skull and crushing my rib cage.

I sat there for hours, waiting for death. My flashlight was becoming dim and blinking. Finally, I felt the soft touch of these rocky walls press against my back. I began to cry as I lay down on the ground. I let my flashlight roll on the small hills of stone. As I quietly stayed prone, tears dripping down my face, I turned and looked at the flashlight. Its last, fading beams of light pointed at something not far away from my face. I squinted in the darkness. My eyes widened and I felt tears fall even harder from my face. The rocks were piercing my skin now and blood dripped from all sides.

There, in the last light of my flashlight, was the appetizer. The spotlight shone on a hand whose nails were painted red, and I screamed in agony as I watched God’s Mouth chew its latest meal.

2011-01-10T17:10:00.000-08:00

Failed Rituals

2010-12-28T16:15:00.000-08:00

I really wish I had left that fucking light switch alone. Who would have thought the flick of a switch could mean the difference between life and death. Actually everyone’s thought that. That’s why I turned it on. Stupid little rituals that we take from childhood. The light will chase the monsters away, the blanket over your head will save you from the boogie man. And you just get more of these rituals as you get older. As long as you lock the doors and turn on the home security system, you can rest your head happily in your cozy little fortified home. No killers or psychos, monsters or boogie men.

But it doesn’t work. None of it. We always slip up some how. The one time you forget to lock that door. That’s when they get you. I would have been sound asleep if I hadn’t been woken by the loud slam as the front door blew open. I stumbled out of bed and down the hall to see it swinging back and forth. I moved quickly down the hall to secure it. A moment of panic swelled inside of me. My home felt like a crime scene. It wasn’t my safe little sanctum anymore.

Despite the overwhelming feeling of intrusion, there was no sign of disruption. Just the door. Just my careless mistake. I couldn’t comprehend it at first. It had to be a burgler or some psycho. I looked around the rest of the house. Checking every cupboard, every crevice. Nothing. I felt stupid but relieved. I just wanted to get back to bed, to forget this whole embarrassment. I flung myself back down on my bed, closed my eyes for just a second. I sat back up. There was no way I’d fall asleep unless I double-checked that I locked the door this time. I mean I was sure I had done it this time but I felt this was justified paranoia.

I got to the door and twisted the handle roughly about a dozen times, each time feeling the resistance of the lock. I smiled. Safe. I turned on my heels to go back to bed. But it was just a glimpse, a flicker of something in my peripheral vision that sent me swinging back into a panic. A shadow from the kitchen. I rushed in only to be confronted by my normal kitchen, bathed in moonlight. I sighed, questioned my sanity and decided that this, the longest night of my life must end. I went towards the bedroom once more. Another odd shadow crossed my path. As a shiver travelled down my spine, my tired mind braced apathetic denial and decided that it was probably the neighbours cat passing by the moonlit window.

I sat wide awake in my bed. Trying to lull myself to sleep. Counting in my head until I might eventually nod off. But everytime I closed my eyes that feeling of intrusion was still there. The hands of something unseen looming above my head. Every creak and every shadow filled my mind with the dread of my childhood. Those nights after being tucked in by my parents. Those same fearful thoughts of lurking terror. But it was nothing… right? More creaks. More movement in the shadows. I turned and pushed my face into the pillow. I felt something brush passed my foot which stuck awkwardly out from under my blanket.

I jolted upright, looking deeply into the darkness. Swirling shadows. The monsters. The boogie men. I felt around sheepishly for my phone. The dull light of the screen could put me at ease. Nothing on the nightstand and when my fingers roamed around the edge of the bed, instinctively I retracted them for fear of the unknown. I was alone but in the shadows I saw them, the monsters. Inky abominable beasts.

It was the only thing I thought could help me. I lunged from the bed directly at the switch. My palm slammed down on it and the room erupted into light. My eyes burned momentarily and I glanced round the room. Empty. Safe. Just paranoia. I shook my head and hit the switch once more. Climbing into bed in the pitch black. No shadows without my nightvision. But now I hear them. I can’t see them now. I don’t know what they want but I know I can’t leave. The rituals have failed. They’re on the other side of this blanket and all I can do now is hope that they’re gone in the morning.

That Thing

2010-12-28T16:08:00.000-08:00

That thing has been there for almost a week. The figure in the window. It looks featureless, only skin on a human frame, and it's pressing itself against the glass somehow. I don't know how it got there, and I don't know how to get rid of it.

At first I thought it was a prank, a doll or mannequin that some jerks put there to scare me. But I realized as I walked out of my house to pull it away... it wasn't there. I shrugged it off, thinking that someone had hidden it while I was walking through my door. But I went back in and looked out that same window, and it was looking in, staring at me. I walked around my house, yelling for whoever it was to come out, but no one was there.The thing is hairless and naked, and it didn't look like it actually had eyes, or even a face at all. But its head is turned towards me when I enter the room. When I sit on my computer, I can feel its faceless hatred boring into my neck. But when I turn around, it's innocently turned in a different direction.

Finally on Thursday I tried to open the window, but it's stuck. I think the thing's hands are keeping it down. But I got a good look at its face. Its eyes and mouth are behind the skin, pushing outward.

It stared at me, smiling.

Of course, I screamed.

I pulled back a fist and smashed it onto the glass, determined once and for all to get rid of the glaring monster. I know I’m strong enough. That glass should’ve cracked. But it didn’t.It shuddered under my hand, but it didn’t break. And that smile just got wider and wider and wider, until I thought its head would break in half. It raised its own hand and bashed the window with its palm. It was mocking me. But I saw the faintest crack begin to appear where it had hit, and I backed away. No way did I want that smile in the same room as me.

So I got a roll of duct tape, and I started covering the window. I couldn’t look directly at it; I nearly shit my pants just knowing it was watching me. But I couldn’t help it. I took a quick glance at that skin-covered face. A small peek.

It was angry.

That grin was now a gaping frown full of teeth. The skin had ripped away from its mouth and I could see down its cavernous throat. A menacing rumble started to fill the house, and that hairline crack began to spread like splintering ice. I pulled down the duct tape. The rumble stopped, the split skin healed over, and it began to smile again. Now it’s night, and the noise hasn’t started again. There are no sounds, no rumble, no crackling glass. Everything’s quiet now. I can feel its claws gripping the back of my chair. I can hear its skin stretching as it smiles.

It’s watching me type.

In The Closet

2010-12-28T16:04:00.000-08:00

The Hunter

2010-12-28T15:53:00.001-08:00

There was a hunter in the woods, who, after a long day hunting, was in the middle of an immense forest. It was getting dark, and having lost his bearings, he decided to head in one direction until he was clear of the increasingly oppressive foliage. After a what seemed like hours, he came across a cabin in a small clearing. Realizing how dark it had grown, he decided to see if he could stay there for the night. He approached, and found the door ajar. Nobody was inside. The hunter flopped down on the single bed, deciding to explain himself to the owner in the morning. As he looked around, he was suprised to see the walls adorned by many portraits, all painted in incredible detail. Without exception, they appeared to be staring down at him, their features twisted into looks of hatred. Staring back, he grew increasingly uncomfortable. Making a concerted effort to ignore the many hateful faces, he turned to face the wall, and exhausted, he fell into a restless sleep.

Face down in an unfamiliar bed, he turned blinking in unexpected sunlight. Looking up, he discovered that the cabin had no portraits, only windows.

Russian Sleep Experiment

2010-12-28T07:55:00.001-08:00

Russian researchers in the late 1940's kept five people awake for fifteen days using an experimental gas based stimulant. They were kept in a sealed environment to carefully monitor their oxygen intake so the gas didn't kill them, since it was toxic in high concentrations. This was before closed circuit cameras so they had only microphones and 5 inch thick glass porthole sized windows into the chamber to monitor them. The chamber was stocked with books, cots to sleep on but no bedding, running water and toilet, and enough dried food to last all five for over a month.

The test subjects were political prisoners deemed enemies of the state during world war II.

Everything was fine for the first 5 days, the subjects hardly complained having been promised (falsely) that they would be freed if they submitted to the test and did not sleep for 30 days. Their conversations and activities were monitored and it was noted that they continued to talk about increasingly traumatic incidents in their past, and the general tone of their conversations took on a darker aspect after the 4 day mark.

After five days they started to complain about the circumstances and events that lead them to where they were and started to demonstrate severe paranoia. They stopped talking to each other and began alternately whispering to the microphones and one way mirrored portholes. Oddly they all seemed to think they could win the trust of the experimenters by turning over their comrades, the other subjects in captivity with them. At first the researchers suspected this was an effect of the gas itself...

After nine days the first of them started screaming. He ran the lenght of the chamber repeatedly yelling at the top of his lungs for 3 hours straight, he continued attempting to scream but was only able to produce occasional squeaks. The researchers postulated that he had physically torn his vocal cords. The most surprising thing about this behavior is how the other captives reacted to it... or rather didn't react to it. They continued whispering to the microphones until the second of the captives started to scream. The 2 non screaming captives took the books apart, smeared page after page with their own feces and pasted them calmly over the glass portholes. The screaming promptly stopped.

So did the whispering to the microphones.

After 3 more days passed. The researchers checked the microphones hourly to make sure they were working, since they thought it impossible that no sound could be coming with 5 people inside. The oxygen consumption in the chamber indicated that all 5 must still be alive. In fact it was the amount of oxygen 5 people would consume at a very heavy level of strenuous exercise. On the morning of the 14th day the researchers did something they said they would not do to get a reaction from the captives, they used the intercom inside the chamber, hoping to provoke any response from the captives they were afraid were either dead or vegetables.

They announced: "We are opening the chamber to test the microphones step away from the doors and lie flat on the floor or you will be shot. Compliance will earn one of you your immediate freedom."

To their surprise they heard a single phrase in a calm voice response: "We no longer want to be freed."

Debate broke out among the researchers and the military forces funding the research. Unable to provoke any more response using the intercom it was finally decided to open the chamber at midnight on the fifteenth day.

The chamber was flushed of the stimulant gas and filled with fresh air and immediately voices from the microphones began to object. 3 different voices began begging, as if pleading for the life of loved ones to turn the gas back on. The chamber was opened and soldiers sent in to retrieve the test subjects. They began to scream louder than ever, and so did the soldiers when they saw what was inside. Four of the five subjects were still alive, although no one could rightly call the state that any of them in 'life.'

The food rations past day 5 had not been so much as touched. There were chunks of meat from the dead test subject's thighs and chest stuffed into the drain in the center of the chamber, blocking the drain and allowing 4 inches of water to accumulate on the floor. Precisely how much of the water on the floor was actually blood was never determined. All four 'surviving' test subjects also had large portions of muscle and skin torn away from their bodies. The destruction of flesh and exposed bone on their finger tips indicated that the wounds were inflicted by hand, not with teeth as the researchers initially thought. Closer examination of the position and angles of the wounds indicated that most if not all of them were self-inflicted.

The abdominal organs below the ribcage of all four test subjects had been removed. While the heart, lungs and diaphragm remained in place, the skin and most of the muscles attached to the ribs had been ripped off, exposing the lungs through the ribcage. All the blood vessels and organs remained intact, they had just been taken out and laid on the floor, fanning out around the eviscerated but still living bodies of the subjects. The digestive tract of all four could be seen to be working, digesting food. It quickly became apparent that what they were digesting was their own flesh that they had ripped off and eaten over the course of days.

Most of the soldiers were Russian special operatives at the facility, but still many refused to return to the chamber to remove the test subjects. They continued to scream to be left in the chamber and alternately begged and demanded that the gas be turned back on, lest they fall asleep...

To everyone's surprise the test subjects put up a fierce fight in the process of being removed from the chamber. One of the Russian soldiers died from having his throat ripped out, another was gravely injured by having his testicles ripped off and an artery in his leg severed by one of the subject's teeth. Another 5 of the soldiers lost their lives if you count ones that committed suicide in the weeks following the incident.

In the struggle one of the four living subjects had his spleen ruptured and he bled out almost immediately. The medical researchers attempted to sedate him but this proved impossible. He was injected with more than ten times the human dose of a morphine derivative and still fought like a cornered animal, breaking the ribs and arm of one doctor. When heart was seen to beat for a full two minutes after he had bled out to the point there was more air in his vascular system than blood. Even after it stopped he continued to scream and flail for another 3 minutes, struggling attack anyone in reach and just repeating the word "MORE" over and over, weaker and weaker, until he finally fell silent.

The surviving three test subjects were heavily restrained and moved to a medical facility, the two with intact vocal cords continuously begging for the gas demanding to be kept awake...

The most injured of the three was taken to the only surgical operating room that the facility had. In the process of preparing the subject to have his organs placed back within his body it was found that he was effectively immune to the sedative they had given him to prepare him for the surgery. He fought furiously against his restraints when the anesthetic gas was brought out to put him under. He managed to tear most of the way through a 4 inch wide leather strap on one wrist, even through the weight of a 200 pound soldier holding that wrist as well. It took only a little more anesthetic than normal to put him under, and the instant his eyelids fluttered and closed, his heart stopped. In the autopsy of the test subject that died on the operating table it was found that his blood had triple the normal level of oxygen. His muscles that were still attached to his skeleton were badly torn and he had broken 9 bones in his struggle to not be subdued. Most of them were from the force his own muscles had exerted on them.

The second survivor had been the first of the group of five to start screaming. His vocal cords destroyed he was unable to beg or object to surgery, and he only reacted by shaking his head violently in disapproval when the anesthetic gas was brought near him. He shook his head yes when someone suggested, reluctantly, they try the surgery without anesthetic, and did not react for the entire 6 hour procedure of replacing his abdominal organs and attempting to cover them with what remained of his skin. The surgeon presiding stated repeatedly that it should be medically possible for the patient to still be alive. One terrified nurse assisting the surgery stated that she had seen the patients mouth curl into a smile several times, whenever his eyes met hers.

When the surgery ended the subject looked at the surgeon and began to wheeze loudly, attempting to talk while struggling. Assuming this must be something of drastic importance the surgeon had a pen and pad fetched so the patient could write his message. It was simple "Keep cutting."

The other two test subjects were given the same surgery, both without anesthetic as well. Although they had to be injected with a paralytic for the duration of the operation. The surgeon found it impossible to perform the operation while the patients laughed continuously. Once paralyzed the subjects could only follow the attending researchers with their eyes. The paralytic cleared their system in an abnormally short period of time and they were soon trying to escape their bonds. The moment they could speak they were again asking for the stimulant gas. The researchers tried asking why they had injured themselves, why they had ripped out their own guts and why they wanted to be given the gas again.

Only one response was given: "I must remain awake."

All three subject's restraints were reinforced and they were placed back into the chamber awaiting determination as to what should be done with them. The researchers, facing the wrath of their military 'benefactors' for having failed the stated goals of their project considered euthanizing the surviving subjects. The commanding officer, an ex-KGB instead saw potential, and wanted to see what would happen if they were put back on the gas. The researchers strongly objected, but were overruled.

In preparation for being sealed in the chamber again the subjects were connected to an EEG monitor and had their restraints padded for long term confinement. To everyone's surprise all three stopped struggling the moment it was let slip that they were going back on the gas. It was obvious that at this point all three were putting up a great struggle to stay awake. One of subjects that could speak was humming loudly and continuously; the mute subject was straining his legs against the leather bonds with all his might, first left, then right, then left again for something to focus on. The remaining subject was holding his head off his pillow and blinking rapidly. Having been the first to be wired for EEG most of the researchers were monitoring his brain waves in surprise. They were normal most of the time but sometimes flat lined inexplicably. It looked as if he were repeatedly suffering brain death, before returning to normal. As they focused on paper scrolling out of the brainwave monitor only one nurse saw his eyes slip shut at the same moment his head hit the pillow. His brainwaves immediately changed to that of deep sleep, then flatlined for the last time as his heart simultaneously stopped.

The only remaining subject that could speak started screaming to be sealed in now. His brainwaves showed the same flatlines as one who had just died from falling asleep. The commander gave the order to seal the chamber with both subjects inside, as well as 3 researchers. One of the named three immediately drew his gun and shot the commander point blank between the eyes, then turned the gun on the mute subject and blew his brains out as well.

He pointed his gun at the remaining subject, still restrained to a bed as the remaining members of the medical and research team fled the room. "I won't be locked in here with these things! Not with you!" he screamed at the man strapped to the table. "WHAT ARE YOU?" he demanded. "I must know!"

The subject smiled.

"Have you forgotten so easily?" The subject asked. "We are you." "We are the madness that lurks within you all, begging to be free at every moment in your deepest animal mind." "We are what you hide from in your beds every night. We are what you sedate into silence and paralysis when you go to the nocturnal haven where we cannot tread."

The researcher paused. Then aimed at the subject's heart and fired.

The EEG flatlined as the subject weakly choked out "so... nearly... free..."