The scary thread
- Thread starter Mcupobob
- Start date
Recommended Videos
I get it not...David_G said:
Other than that, more scary shit David G. I'm liking the stories!
Yeah, I mean, we already knew that if they'd got in the car she would've gotten killed, it seems like we're missing something, but I don't know what.Azure-Supernova said:
Have you ever been walking up a quiet flight of stairs and get the need to get to climb to the very top as fast as possible? Or driving down the road late at night and suddenly get the urge to drive as fast as possible?
Don't worry, that's just them letting you know the chase is on. Be sure to play along, because there is nothing they hate more than catching the one they're chasing. They just never know what to do with them.
Well, there is one thing they hate more. They really, truly hate it if you look over your shoulder.
***
A young woman on her way to town broke her journey by staying with friends at an old manor house. Her bedroom looked out to the carriage sweep at the front door. It was a moonlit night, and she found it difficult to sleep. As the clock outside her bedroom door struck 12, she heard the noise of horses? hooves on the gravel outside, and the sound of wheels.
She got up and went over to the window to see who could be arriving at that time of night. The moonlight was very bright, and she saw a hearse drive up to the door. It hadn?t a coffin in it; instead it was crowded with people. The coachman sat high up on the box: as he came opposite the window he drew up and turned his head. His face terrified her, and he said in a distinct voice, ?There?s room for one more.?
She drew the curtain, ran back to bed, and covered her head with the bedclothes. In the morning she was not quite sure whether it had been a dream, or whether she had really got out of bed and seen the hearse, but she was glad to go up to town and leave the old house behind her.
She was shopping in a big store which had an elevator in it ? an up-to-date thing at that time. She was on the top floor, and went to the elevator to go down. It was rather crowded, but as she came up to it, the elevator operator turned his head and said, ?There?s room for one more.?
It was the face of the coachman of the hearse. ?No, thank you,? said the girl. ?I?ll walk down.? She turned away, the elevator doors clanged, there was a terrible rush and screaming and shouting, and then a great clatter and thud. The elevator had fallen and every soul in it was killed.
***
Today was the day he was dreading. He knew they were going to be extremely busy, and quite frankly he wanted to call out seeing as he was already late. His thoughts were briefly distracted by his black tabby, quietly pawing at his legs, ready for its breakfast. He made sure to fill up its bowl before he dashed out the door, returning twice to grab whatever he forgot the first few times. And he was off.
He breathed a sigh of relief as the last customer left. It had been the best sales day of the year, and they were obviously going to celebrate. He had been contemplating going on home, but he needed to unwind too. He had no serious obligations the next day, so he could stay out as late as he wanted. So when they asked, he happily agreed to go with them.
He couldn?t open his eyes. He was barely conscious as it was. He slapped lazily around until he managed to shut the alarm off, before he rolled onto his stomach and buried his face in his pillow. The door creaked as his black tabby walked in and jumped onto his back, where it curled up close to his head. The hot breath in his ear lulled him back to sleep.
The doorbell continued to ring. He crawled out of bed and made his way to the front door. It was his next door neighbor, a kind woman in her late seventies, who still worked. She was in her business suit, holding a trash bag. ?Oh did I wake you up? I thought you were usually up by now.? ?I usually am.? He said groggily. ?But they let me have today off.? ?Well I hate to come bearing such bad news so early in the morning,? She said, patting his hand, ?but I ran over your dear tabby last night when I got home. I came straight over to tell you but you weren?t home.? He stared at her for a few seconds, before their silence was broken by its footsteps.
***
During your day, there are probably a half a dozen moments where you can?t see, if only for a split second. Not like blinking, of course, that?s far too quick . Just that moment when you?re taking off your shirt, or wiping your face with a towel. That brief instant where you?re plunged into darkness. Every time this occurs, you?re playing roulette. A game. Unbeknownst to you, of course. Every time that happens there is something waiting, eagerly, to pull you into that darkness. That only happens if you lose, of course. One day you might open your eyes to find that you?re not where you were before. There are unsolved missing person cases every week. Those people? They lost.
***
Memories. They?re how we know what has happened. Everything you remember goes in to who you are, why you act the way you do. It?s a shame that people are not afflicted by the things they cannot remember. Especially you.
Memories are funny like that. Sometimes, when something so wonderfully frightening happens to you, your silly mind blocks it out to ?protect you.? While it might think it?s doing you a favor, it kills me to see it take those things away from you. Amazing things have happened to you. Horrible things have happened to you.
Even if you?ve forgotten, I will always remember. I was there with you every step of the way. I was standing in the shadows, watching you. Tormenting you. You have such exquisite fear, I can?t get enough of it. Over and over, I put you through the most exciting times of your life, watching each time as you collapse upon yourself in mindless terror. You?re exhilarating. If only I could watch you suffer forever.. But that silly mind of yours. Each time, you forget what fun we?ve had and go on like nothing ever happened. You even read stories about horrific things, and you take pleasure those horrors as I do.
Yet, you could never even fathom how grand it is to watch you endure them. None of those stories could amount up to the terrors you?ve faced. I want to have more fun with you, and spend more time with you. I want to watch you screech in dismay again and again. I want to experience your agony a million times. I only wish you would remember the dread I put in you. I wish that you would remember me, and cry out in the night. It delights me thoroughly every time you see one of my abominations. You?re so resourceful, always finding a way to live without losing any of your limbs. If only I could watch you die as you scream, so scared for your life. If only the last memory you had was of me, making you drown in your fear as you begged for mercy, tears streaming down your face. I?d tell you I love you, and I would thank you for all the great times you?ve let me share with you. I think I would be truly happy as I watched you sink into your final, dying despair.
If you were smart, you wouldn?t turn out those lights and pretend you?re not hearing strange noises. You wouldn?t distract yourself and remain alone, convinced that you?ll be okay. Do you remember what happened the last time you did?
.. No, I suppose you wouldn?t.
***
I am awake. I should not be awake. You have been far too bad for far too long, and it is time to stop. I wish I didn?t have to do this, believe me. It is so much easier for me to continue sleeping for eons than have to worry about you, humanity. I am awake, and I am most displeased.
You have all committed many atrocities in my name, some of those atrocities were committed against my name as well, and not a single drop of blood has pleased me. It is not a matter of benevolence or malevolence, but of point and worth. Your existences serve no purpose any more, as they did mere millennia ago. Furthermore, your ?sacrifices? are of no worth to me. What do I care if you send one of your own back to me? I made you and spat you out, what makes you think I want you back?
There is a reason you are not with me. It is because a great many of you are a failed experiment in its death throes. I was simply waiting until you destroyed each other, but now you have crossed the line, delving into matters that do not concern you. I thought you safe, confined from the others on the prison you call Earth, but no, you must reach your plagued, failed hands out of your cell and grab at anything that floats by.
You think you are only flying out into space, but really you are leaving the cage I made for you. It had everything you needed right there, but no, you must have more. If I allow you to continue you will creep into my more successful creations, and you will destroy them. They know this, and that is why they awoke me.
I have tried to let you sort yourselves out, but I cannot let this continue any longer. Soon you will all feel the wrath of your creator, for what was made can be unmade, and you all have so many wonderful ways to be unmade.
Some have called me God, others have called me Demon. All I am is awake, and very unhappy.
***
When you come home from your night out, you are going to find that your house is just the same as it always has been. It will be bright; well illuminated by the light bulbs you leave on in the living room and kitchen whenever you know that you will be out after dark. Your expensive furniture, from all your favorite designer stores, will still be in place. Upstairs, your computer?s fan will be humming because you?ve forgotten to turn it off. That?s something I know you do quite often, even though you try not to.
Kind of strange. You leave the lights on, but you try to keep your computer off. Don?t you know that wastes just as much power? It?s not going to keep the ?boogey man? out. Not the real boogey man. Not me.
You?ll take your jacket off and hang it on the hook next to your doorway. Your wife?s hook will stay empty, though. Don?t act like I don?t know, John. You?re acting like everything?s normal, but you know that it?s not. You were out tonight because you wanted to drink your problems away. Even if you were at a bar tonight, you won?t be tomorrow, and you?ll still be drinking. You?re quickly becoming an alcoholic, and it?s because you can?t accept the truth. Your wife isn?t going to be coming back. Not tonight, not tomorrow, not ever. She left you, and I can?t blame her.
But, hey, I?m not complaining. It only makes it that much easier for me. I knew that I could lead her away from you by handing her those photographs of you in bed with that cheap whore from Middleton; I didn?t know that you would become inebriated, too. You won?t put up as much of a struggle as you might have before.
Tonight, after you take a quick shower trying to sober up, you?re going to sit down on the couch. I know you better than you know yourself, John. You?re probably going to try to call your wife, too, where she?s staying with her sister. After your call last night, though, she?s had her number changed. You probably don?t remember, but you threatened to kill her with a broken liquor bottle. That definitely ruined any chance you ever had of getting your wife back.
After you finish crying over the phone, you?re going to pass out on the sofa. That?s when I?m going to strike. I?m going to take you, John, and I?m going to drag you away and drive you, in the back of your own car, to a place down by the river side. I have some friends I want you to meet there. You probably don?t know them, but they know you, and they?re going to be eager to get acquainted. You see, there are some people who want to be you. They want your money, they want your life, they want each and every one of your credit cards.
And it?s a lot easier for them to take all of that away from you if you have no one, if you know no one, and, oh yes, if you are dead.
***
You?re just sitting there, trying to fan yourself off from the heat as you wait for you mother to come back from inside the shop. By chance, perhaps, you glance over to your left where another car is parked, empty and probably even more sweltering than your own. You roll up the windows and turn the key your mom left in case it got too hot. As the whoosh of cool air hit you in the face, you hear a strange sound, almost a knock on your window. You don?t look, thinking it impossible, because there was nobody there a second ago.
But soon, there is a movement out of the corner of your eye. You whip your head around, but there is nothing. All you can see if the interior of the car next to you, and a few odd buildings, all closed for the day. You chalk it up to the heat, one of those wisps you see on hot blacktop on days like today. You move to change the radio station when you see it again, almost a face, sitting in the back of the car next to you. But as soon as you turn to see it clearly, it vanishes.
You find you can do this every time, turn away and see the face, and have it disappear when you turn at it directly. You sit, staring out the windshield, but secretly paying attention the the car out of the corner of your left eye. The figure is hooded, tan, and more gaunt than any human you have ever seen. It seems to be laughing, almost, as his body blurs in and out of your already struggling focus.
Your concentration is pulled away only when your mom returns with her grocery bags, turning down the air conditioner and putting the car in drive. You press your face against your window, desperate for one last look before you drive away. But not to worry, for the first time, you can see him without using only your peripheral vision, his massive eyes and overgrown mouth twisted into a grin as the creature waved goodbye.
You turn back to the front, sweating and shaking uncontrollably. At that moment you know, you have not seen the last of that wicked being.
***
I can tell, how you?re staring there at this screen, finding some enjoyment. You need anything, just anything to keep you awake and entertained. It?s late, you?re dead tired, but you want to use up every moment. I know how it is. This happens to me, too.
Are the sounds on your computer too loud? Don?t want to wake your folks? Don?t want to get complaints from neighbors, even? Whatever, not a problem. Lower the volume on your speakers. Now that doesn?t really work for you. Instead grab some headphones. You walk through the dark with that slight paranoia, the old childhood fear of the dark. It never really goes away, but it?s all in your head, and you know that. You find your room, you dig through your drawers and your junk to feel for some wires. Ah! There they are. Time to head back to the computer.
Drop them on your computer desk, and go grab a drink of water. Come back and sit down comfortably. Throw on your headphones. You hear a dark ambient sound in the background. A liquid dripping sound, even some metallic grinding there, too. Is it from outside? You take off the headphones, and suddenly, the sound goes away. You think for a moment, suspicious and even frightened. You slide the headphones back on. There it is again. There?s some high-pitched frequency you hear as well. You rip them back off, thinking this is just a joke. It?s gone again. You slide them back on and turn the volume on your speakers all the way down, you even break off the switch trying to make the sound disappear. But it remains.
But then suddenly you notice something. Something you feel stupid for not noticing before. Your headphones aren?t even plugged in. But wait. The wire, it?s dangling straight out, stretching into the darkness elsewhere. You try to pull it towards you, but nothing. You must?ve gotten it stuck on something, you think. But when was I even over in that area? You walk blindly into the darkness, using the wire as a guide through. The wire is longer than you once remembered, much longer than how you remember. ?What the hell is this?? you say in your head. The further you go, you finally feel something on the wire. It?s a heavy, gooey, mucky liquid-solid matter. You pick up your hand and bring it close to your face to see what the substance is. It?s dark, and it glistens off the glow of your computer screen, which is now a lot farther away from you than it should be. You glance at your computer?s set-up, and back at your hand.
But in that quick glance at your computer set-up, you noticed something. You saw something there, standing there and staring at the dark and dull light radiating off of your computer monitor. Not only did you see something, but you heard something as well. A heavy, gooey, mucky dripping sound.
You look back at your computer set-up, as the tall, man-like figure there glistens in the light.
***
If you are the type who eats out regularly, one day a stranger might join you at the table. This stranger will always appear to be of your age and sex, and he (if it is a he) will only appear if you are alone. No matter what style of restaurant it is, he will always be carrying his own plate of food.
After a few seconds, he will look directly at you and say, ?You seem like an interesting person. May I know you better?? Say yes, and he will begin to ask you questions about yourself in between bites. These questions will be innocuous enough at first: what your name is, what you do for a living, and so forth, but should you open your mouth to answer, you will be forced to tell the truth, even if you do not consciously know what the truth is. Remain silent, and the stranger will scowl at you, pick up his plate, and leave. You will never see him again. If you do indulge his questions, however, they will grow darker and darker as the food leaves his plate, and it will become harder and harder to resist answering. Do not attempt to leave the table before he does under any circumstances.
When his plate is clean, he will stand up to leave, but not before asking you one last, irresistible question: ?What would drive you to take your own life?? You will instantly be aware that you will be able to lie in response to this one question, and I suggest you do, for whatever you describe will come to pass within the week. Those who are canny may use this chat to gain whatever they desire, but know that if the happenstance you name does not drive you to suicide, the stranger will start guessing as to what will. And consider how much he now knows about you.
***
You?re in your room late at night. You?ve been on the computer for a while now, and it?s almost time to get some sleep. The light behind you is still blazing, cutting a swath through the oppressive darkness of whatever ridiculous hour of the morning it is. In a sleep-deprived haze, you amble over to the light switch and flick it off, and instantly realize you screwed up. Your headphones are lying on the floor, and without the light to see them you?ll probably step on and crush them. Resolving to turn the light back on so you can grab them, you spend less than a second in near-perfect darkness as this goes through your mind. Then you flick the light back on.
You?re not in your room, anymore. It?s as if fifty years of disrepair have ravaged your once-loved living space. You?re also surrounded. You can?t really see them, mostly just their shadows are visible as they crouch on all fours all around you. The only features you can make out are hundreds of mouths of jagged, grinning teeth, and a set of glowing, red eyes to go with each twisted smile. You almost have time to scream. Almost
***
You know that ringing sound that you will perceive when you are in a very quiet area? Some people say this is an auditory-illusion brought about the ear?s inability to detect frequencies below the threshold of the human senses. This is completely wrong. That ringing covers up something else altogether. If you are quick, patient, and maybe a little lucky, you will be able to hear past the ringing. What you will hear are voices whispering to each other. They will silence themselves quickly but with practice, you will become more adept at catching and interpreting what they are saying. You will hear things of the past, the present, and the future. However, you must be careful. Because there is no such thing as a voice without a body.
And when you start noticing them, they will start noticing you.
***
There is a demon of great evil, that will be able to walk upon the Earth if someone is told of its existence and does not repeat the name to another. To the best of my ability, his name roughly approximates ?Jkqxxllyuo?.
This was told to me by a rather unkempt man on the street; if you have not noticed it already, I just told it to you
***
There it goes again. Something definitely moved this time. It was very brief, but out of the corner of your eye, you saw something. But wait. All the doors are locked, no pets, and your parents won?t get home until 10. So there?s no way something moved. It?s just your imagination getting the best of you. Sitting alone in your room, the only light emitting from the monitor of your computer, you stare into the darkness for several minutes. Just to be sure. Now you feel silly. What were you thinking? Of course there?s nothing there. What, are you 6? Go back to what you were doing.
15 minutes later, as you prepare to go to bed, you?re in the bathroom. The shower curtains shift. Wait? no. Stop spooking yourself. It?s just an overactive imagination, filling your head with what isn?t really there. You gaze into the mirror at yourself. You say it to yourself, slowly and clearly, ?Imagination.? With a sigh, you turn the lights off and head towards your room.
Laying in bed, you stare at your ceiling, dark and foreboding, only the motion of a small fan disturbing the calmness of the night. A shadow from the light in the hall shifts. No. No, no, no. Stop it. It?s your imagination. Just that. Go to sleep, you fool.
But then, just when you?re about to drift off to sleep, at the phase no one remembers when they wake, you sense something in the darkness. It?s your imagination, leering down at you. With a jagged, macabre smile.
***
(I might have already posted this)
Did you ever see one of those videos where you are asked to look for, or follow a specific thing through out the video? Then, at the end, they reveal that as were watching, something large and intrusive moved around in plain sight and you never even noticed it. Its frightening how often that happens, like how I just moved from the doorway into your room as you read this.
***
You could kick yourself. Its the middle of the night?or early in the morning, depending on how you look at it?and freezing cold because you, like an idiot, kicked off your blanket in the night. Nearly entirely off the bed, in fact, with only one lonely corner clinging to the edge of the bed.
Sitting up you take it in your hands, feeling that familiar fear from your childhood: that if you don?t find something to cover yourself up, you are leaving yourself open to all sorts of supernatural horrors. You shrug it off with a chuckle and give the blanket a good hard tug, trying to pull it all up with one go.
No luck. It seems to be stuck.
Another sharp pull seems to free it a bit, and you work, tugging it back up and trying to ignore that silly feeling of growing dread. Tug. Tug tug tug?. There! Finally! The blanket is mostly back up on the bed and you are safely beneath it once more, teasing yourself mentally for getting all worked up over nothing. Until, just before you drift back asleep, you feel a tug from that one side still dangling down from where it had fallen before.
Tug tug tug.
***
If you?re lucky, you?ll never know about it. Your life will be spent in the bliss that can only come from the ignorance of the dark horrors that scratch and gnaw at the edges of reality. You?ll never hear the dark whispers coming from the closet; never feel the cold chill creeping along your spine. You?ll never pause at a turn in the hallway because you know that if you look down it, you?ll see something that shouldn?t be there. Something that creeps, stalks, and skulks in the shadows. Something that, once it sees you, will never stop coming for you. It won?t come for you when you are sleeping. It wants you to know it?s there. It wants you to hear the relentless sound of its footsteps, the panting of its breath. It wants to smell your fear, to hear your whimper, and to see the horror on your face as it approaches.
If you?ve any sense at all, you won?t try to find it. You?ll never pay attention to the sounds. You won?t try to catch sight of those things that flit by the corner of your eye. Your ignorance will be your shield and your protection. Do not be overly curious; discount the sounds as the quirks of an old house, or the heating system, or any other excuse you can think of. Whatever you do, don?t believe. Because once you believe, they?ll become real. Once you inquire into their existence, they will solidify. And once you finally uncover them for what they are?
They?ll come for you.
***
(Again, I might have posted this)
Since before I could remember, I?ve wanted to be a mother. It seemed my whole childhood and teenager years were spent yearning for a child of my own. By the time I was nine, I had names?and color schemes for the nursery?picked out. All I needed was someone to make them with. But college was disappointing. I went through a whole string of bad boyfriends and bad father material. Getting on with my career didn?t seem to help much. I realized, though?when I was twenty-seven, and there were no suitable prospects on the line?that, technically, I did not need a man to have a
child with. Just a very particular product of his. I found a sperm donor bank, chose the best prospect they had, got out my turkey baster and? well? hoped for the best.
I was overjoyed when my first pregnancy test came out positive. My doctor was surprised to see me coming in sooner than he?d expected. Before I was four weeks along, I had the nursery painted, and the furniture set up. Toys and diapers, bottles and books, bibs and coveralls. I had everything a new mother would need.
I couldn?t explain all the weight I was losing. I kept getting thinner?everything except for my belly. My friends all joked that it had to be at least twins. Or the biggest baby they?d ever seen.
I got weary of the kicking somewhere in the third trimester. And the scratching.
Just one more week until my due date.
I just wish it would stop gnawing.
***
I was six, maybe seven years old when this happened. My family had just gotten back from visiting my aunt?s house. My cousins were watching a scary movie in the basement, and even though my parents said I would get scared, I snuck downstairs and watched some of it. I don?t remember what part I saw, but there were little monsters with teeth that would eat people in their sleep.
When we left for home it was dark outside and my parents scolded me for watching that movie. I secretly hoped they would keep scolding me, because I was feeling sleepy and didn?t want those things to eat me. We got home fine and my parents even managed to calm me down enough to the point where when my bedtime came around I could go to sleep.
I fell asleep almost immediately and slept pretty well. I woke up sometime during the night. Knowing where everything is in my house I didn?t turn the lights on, but instead used the street light coming in the windows. I went to the bathroom and then got a glass of water. As I was putting the glass in the dishwasher, something pricked my hand. I pulled my hand back and switched on the lights, but there was nothing in the dishwasher.
I looked at my hand and it had four little indents on the top and bottom where something had broken through the skin. Since that day I?ve had little bumps on my skin where the marks were, and I always remember to turn the lights on.
***
Have you ever gotten a glimpse of something out of the corner of your eye? A simple movement caught in your peripheral vision. Most will simply dismiss this as a shadow brought about by a flickering candle, or perhaps a pet jumping down from a piece of furniture. Ninety-nine out of a hundred times, these people are right.
But then there?s that one elusive sight. It can easily be explained by the above conditions, but something feels wrong about it. A chill down your spine, a slight pain in your side. Maybe even a complete blanking of your mind, only to recede moments later.
Should any of these symptoms be felt, there may be cause for worry. Our peripheral vision is designed to catch motion, even in the dark. This was used to defend against predators in our early days, and as with many aspects of our human nature, it has remained, but weakened.
This view out of the corner of our eyes still alerts us to danger, and although predators have dropped on the list of dangers we may face today, they still exist. Should you ever feel that queer chill in your back, try not to focus on that shadow you saw in the corner of your eye. It might be better not to see.
***
?They were looking for you again today? I said.
You were beside me the same blank stare on your face, saying nothing.
I press myself against you to keep you warm, but you?re still as cold as the night.
?I went by your house. I even knocked on your door.?
We moved again. We were always on the move; it was the only way to keep you from being found. You never thank me.
?Your mom answered the door, and cried when I asked where you were. I told her I still haven?t seen you either.?
I lie to people a lot about you. To your parents, the police, even myself. What happened that night was not my fault. You said you were leaving, and I couldn?t stop you. I begged but you still turned away. Only when I grabbed you did you stop walking, and when you fell, you stopped breathing.
***
I have, for many years, locked the door behind me as I entered a room - bathroom door, bedroom door, whatever. For a while I knew why I did it, because I had a little brother and invasive parents that would walk in randomly without knocking. Not so much anymore - I've started remembering why I actually did it.
Am I being too cryptic? Sorry, it's late at night and a storm has rolled in, I'm a bit tired. But I digress.
Behind me, I began to realize, is an empty space - the air you once resided, where your soul was moments ago. Perhaps it's nothing, but it seems important to me. That space... That imprint, of sorts, is bound to the laws of physics just as you are - to an extent. It cannot go through locked doors, but unlocked it can. Something about the permission of a locked door and unlocked door.
You are probably thinking this is nonsense. What you should be doing, as unoriginal as this warning is, is reading the first word of every paragraph. Did you remember to lock your door?
I guess it's time for an another megapost. I don't know why I put so much work into this.
I have, for many years, locked the door behind me as I entered a room - bathroom door, bedroom door, whatever. For a while I knew why I did it, because I had a little brother and invasive parents that would walk in randomly without knocking. Not so much anymore - I've started remembering why I actually did it.
Am I being too cryptic? Sorry, it's late at night and a storm has rolled in, I'm a bit tired. But I digress.
Behind me, I began to realize, is an empty space - the air you once resided, where your soul was moments ago. Perhaps it's nothing, but it seems important to me. That space... That imprint, of sorts, is bound to the laws of physics just as you are - to an extent. It cannot go through locked doors, but unlocked it can. Something about the permission of a locked door and unlocked door.
You are probably thinking this is nonsense. What you should be doing, as unoriginal as this warning is, is reading the first word of every paragraph. Did you remember to lock your door?
---
The Fish is a shifting and shining creature that nobody has ever caught but that many say they have glimpsed in the depths of mirrors.
According to Herbert Allen Giles, belief in the Fish is part of a larger myth that goes back to the times of the Yellow Emperor. In those days the world of mirrors and the world of men were not, as they are now, cut off from each other. They were, besides, quite different; neither beings nor colors nor shapes were the same. Both kingdoms lived in harmony; you could come and go through mirrors. One night the mirror people invaded the earth. Their power was great, but at the end of bloody warfare the magic arts of the Yellow Emperor prevailed. He repulsed the invaders, imprisoned them in their mirrors, and forced on them the task of repeating, as though in a kind of dream, all the actions of men. He stripped them of their power and of their forms and reduced them to mere reflections. Nonetheless, a day will come when the spell will be shaken off. The first to awaken will be the Fish. Deep in the mirror we will perceive a very faint line and the color of this line will be like no other color. Later on, other shapes will begin to stir. Little by little they will differ from us; little by little they will not imitate us. They will break through the barriers of glass or metal.
Side by side with these mirror creatures, the creatures of water will join the battle. In Yunnan they do not speak of the Fish but of the Tiger of the Mirror. Others believe that in advance of the invasion we will hear from the depths of mirrors the clatter of weapons. And this time, they will not be defeated.
---
I went camping about 3 weekends ago in the Huntsville national forest in Texas. Me and 3 friends that came home for the weekend, they are all in college and usually we all get together at least once a year, old friends from high school. For the camping trip we planned to go backpacking deep in the forest, live off of fish that we catch and animals that we can trap. We have been doing this for awhile in Texas and in numerous places, Arizona, Colorado (if anyone is familiar with the Spanish peaks there), New Mexico, so we?re pretty much used to anything you?d encounter out there.
It was my turn to pick where we went camping, so I chose Huntsville (more accurately it?s Huntsville/New Waverly). So we drive up there park our car in a camping park spot and start walking off into the forest. We had some laughs along the way, everyone catching up with each other?s lives. We walked until it started to get dark and set up camp where we stopped. Everyone gathered wood to make a fire and we set our tent up. And we do what we always do: try and scare each other with weird stories.
Around this time we started to smell something very faint. It was noticeable, but not overbearing. We couldn?t put our finger on what it was, so we just carried on. Mike had to go piss and he walked off in the forest. A second later he come running back, piss all down his jeans like he?d missed really bad. Immediately we all crack up and throw some jokes at him. Then we noticed that he was white as snow and trying to catch his breath. He starts screaming for us to follow him, and runs off.
We all get serious and go follow him, not knowing what the problem was. We start to hear a faint scream and crying in the distance, in the direction we were running. It was pitch black away from the camp and Mike had the only flash light (we left ours at the camp, he had his from his trip taking a piss), so at this stage we didn?t have much choice but to follow the light, which was frantically pointing here and there in front of him.
The scream gets closer and Mike starts to slow down. We then notice a ratty old cabin that looked like it was abandoned, except for a faint light that we could see from one of the old mildew covered windows. The crying was intense: whoever it was couldn?t breathe enough to let out a full yell. We all followed Mike up to the front door and we could all hear the crying from inside. As soon as he knocked on the door it stopped.
We all waited and heard really heavy footsteps walking fast to the door. There was a giant slam against the door and the sound of a bolt unlocking. Then nothing. We waited for a bit, knocked a few more times, but still nothing happened. We walked around the house (there was no ****ing way any of us were leaving each other?s side) and noticed a window, which was a good way up. Alex took a deep breath and said asked us to give him a boost so he could see inside. Me and Mike lifted him up to the window. We watched him brush away dirt and webs from the window and place his face close to the window to try and see something.
There was a quick beat. Then suddenly he breathed in fast and let out a loud scream. Then he fell back from the window, screaming bloody murder the whole way. We all tried to calm him down but he was hysterical. We went to him but he started to shake, punch, kick, you name it, and then took off towards the camp.
None of us wanted to be separated so we all ran close behind him. We caught up to him and grabbed him and set him down. The fire was dying out so I grabbed some nearby wood that we collected added it to the fire. My hands were shaking and I had to do something. I went back to Alex and we all tried to calm him down. He wouldn?t he kept screaming and was breathing so hard that he eventually fainted.
All of us are terrified now, and we all kept the fire high until sunrise. Periodically Alex kept waking up, screaming just like before. By sunrise he was up and looked catatonic, just mumbling to himself and whimpering.
Me and Mike decide to go look at the cabin now it was daylight. We searched where we thought it was, except there was nothing there. Nothing at all. The indistinct smell from last night had now grown into a very strong smell of something dead, something stale. We headed back to the camping site. When we got there we found Alex had chewed into the sides of his face and swallowed so much blood that he was throwing up. John was at his back, and he looked like he was about to die from exhaustion. I guess we all looked that way, I just didn?t notice until I saw his face. Alex said quietly that we need to leave. Now.
We all started to pack up the tent. It started to rain really heavily (it was about noon) and the sky started to grow really dark. Alex started to go into a panic. He went and grabbed a big stick and yelled at us to leave it and leave, now, or he?d knock us out and drag us out of there himself. Mike started to yell at him, and they started to fight. We broke it up and finished packing, and then started to make our way back. After a little while we arrived at a creek we had crossed the previous day, only it was flooded over, and the water was moving to fast for us to cross it. Alex started to scream again, yelling at Mike for taking his time packing up the tent when we could have gotten out of here. This went on for a while until we finally convinced Alex to calm down and tell us what happened.
He said as soon as he put his face to the glass, a face on the other side did the same thing, and started to smile really big. It had dark eyes and a dark mouth which was much bigger then Alex?s, as the smile got as large as it could. A giant shadow behind it swung something down and sliced it?s face off. The face was stuck to the window, and he said it started to laugh quietly as it slid down. Mike, still pissed off (and though he wouldn?t admit it, beginning to get freaked out), started to argue with him again. We eventually started to follow the creek for a way to cross.
We then started to see toys floating in the creek. Really old toys, old Barbie dolls and baby dolls. This wasn?t like any old trash floating in the creek, though? this was a lot of barbies, a lot of baby dolls. One washed towards the side and Mike picked it up. It had some kind of voice chip that was dying and started to say some gurgling words we couldn?t understand, followed by it?s sad excuse for laughter. Then it sounded like it was whispering. We thought the batteries must be dying, he threw it down.
We kept going, and the sun was starting to set. Alex was freaking out more now, and was whimpering and breathing heavily. We all started to see shadows move behind trees, something we all called BS on until we all were seeing it. It was barely light out and we stop as we see the cabin right in front of us. None of us knows what to think. Mike says ?This is bullshit, I?m going in there.? Alex tries to stop him. We all do, all of us just wanted to go home. Mike says to all of us to fuck off, do our own thing, he doesn?t care anymore, this is all bullshit.
We start to hear hundreds of the same sort baby doll as before, laughing, whispering and trying to sing. We start to move forward past the cabin, all of us, and kept pushing forward. We smelled something dead in the air, something stale. The same something as before. We started to hear something crying, and something screaming. We kept on going. We eventually crossed the creek and left the woods. We get back to our vehicle and got in. Its pitch black, and we drive. We are about to get on the 45 to Houston but the road is under construction and can?t be accessed. It points to a detour. As we head towards the detour it seems to be small, bumpy dirt road going into the woods.
We then see a young girl come up to us. She looks like she was in trouble, young and pretty. She approaches the passenger side door and she looks like she?s really drugged up, or beaten up. Alex doesn?t roll down the windows, nor does he open the door. She reaches for the handle and he immediately locks it. She puts her face on the window and starts to smile really big. We floor it, Alex starts to cry and scream and we are all breathing heavy. We finally cut on a street that takes us to the 45 and we take it the whole way. When we get back to my apartment everyone doesn?t know what to say and we all break apart and go our separate ways.
Mike messages me later and says he is going to go back. I try to convince him not to and all he does is say it was our own minds that were screwing with us. I think he just went to prove to himself he wasn?t scared. I can smell that stench everywhere now. I don?t go out anymore, I just stay in and don?t answer the door. Last week everyone I met was acting really strange, people that I knew for a long time and total strangers. My own dad, when I went to his place to eat supper with him he just watched me, strangely, when I was sitting down. He didn?t say a word the whole time. I kept asking him ?What?s wrong?? He just slowly shook his head.
When I was leaving to go home I turned to wave. He had black eyes and an open mouth like he was in pain. When I started to walk back he shut the door and bolted it. I stayed there knocking and knocking. Nothing. I called him, his phone was disconnected. I even called the police. Halfway through the questions they were asking me the connection started to fade into static. I could hear a faint mumbling, singing and laughing.
Mike has completely vanished. There is not even a record of him being alive. When I call Alex?s house they talk to me like I?m some salesman. They say they don?t know any Alex and to please stop calling. The person who tells me that is Alex?s mother. I can?t get ahold of John. Someone knocked on my door and when I went to look I saw a face completely covering the peephole and a giant smile started to form.
I called the cops again and instead of it turning into static they got really strange. ?Sir, are you affected by any drugs at the moment?? ?No.? ?Are you coming home anytime soon?? ?Excuse me?? ?Come home.? and the phone call ended. My mail slot swings every now and then. Someone is sliding pieces of baby dolls through it. I try to call people now and all I can hear is static and bad baby doll noises and this crying and screaming. My TV is busted but when I go to piss I can hear it on. I might be going insane.
Whoever lives above me started to scream in pain and crying deeply recently. I hear giant footsteps from their apartment, I hear bangs and something falling to the ground. From the neighbours to the right of my apartment I hear what sounds like a baby that never gets tended too and then it sounds like a baby doll whose batteries are dying. My phone has been ringing now and it?s Alex telling me things in a language that I have never heard before, nor could even manage to repeat. I kept getting emails of pictures of black and small colorations, now I can?t even access my email. Someone knocks on the door, then they slam against it. I hear the bolts unlocking one by one and I run to make sure to lock all of them back.
Then, I sit down and begin to cry.
---
A young couple were waiting impatiently to leave on their first vacation since the baby was born but the woman?s aunt, who would be babysitting, was thirty minutes late. The young woman called her elderly aunt to find out what was going on, and the old woman apologized for her forgetfulness, and said she?d speed right over.
Since the aunt was only a couple miles away, the couple decided they?d go ahead and go rather than wait for her and risk missing their flight. Two weeks later when the couple returned they were horrified to find the baby still in it?s high-chair where they?d left it, except now it was dead and bloated, covered with flies. The aunt really had sped, and unfortunately crashed and died before she made it over.
---
In a small orphanage in a small village in Russia, there is a young boy. His hair is jet black, and messy, and he tattered jeans and an old dingy grey shirt.
Nothing is known of him. For 10 years, he sat in the bed in his room, never moving, never blinking, never eating or sleeping. In the 10 years, he has not seemed to age at all, continuing to look like a 7 year old boy. The only thing that proved he was alive is the slow rise and fall of his chest as he breathes, and the refusal to take his eyes off anyone who enters the room alone.
A lone psychiatrist came over in an attempt to find out why the boy had done nothing in 10 years. He entered the room, and shut the door behind him.
30 minutes later, the orphanage's nurse came to check on the 2 of them. Opening the door, she saw the child, still sitting, still not moving, eyes fixxed on her. However, something seemed different. He appeared a slight amount larger, not by much, but enough to make him look like a late 8 or early 9 year old. The psychiatrist was no longer in the room. The door was the only exit, as the room had no windows, vents, or anything, and it was, in fact, in the exact center of the orphanage.
He continued to sit, only seen occasionaly by the lady who came in to check on him, and she never closed the door upon entry.
A week or so later, 2 law enforcment personel entered the orphanage, demanding to speak to the boy about the disapearance of the psychiatrist. The 2 of them entered, clsoing the door behind him, as the head of the orphanage stood outside the door.
30 minutes passed, and not a sound came from the room. The Head eased the door open. The boy was still on the bed, but the officers where no longer there. The boy was know quite noticably bigger, about the size of a 15 year old. His skin was darker than usual, and he looked angrier than ever. But one thing remained the same: His cold, unforgiving eyes that stared at whoever entered.
Eventually, the law organized a large group of 10 officers to speak to the boy. They entered the room, and left the door open, until one of the younger orphans ran up and shut it, appearently in a daze.
The head quickly ran to re-open the door, and upon doing so froze him in horror. A low rumbling noise came from the room....
".....One....more...."
If you return to that orphanage, you will see it still continues to run. The orphans live in good care, health, and education. However, there is one room, that you sill see is boarded up, and far from enterable. If you ask what is behind it, you will be removed forcefully from the orphanage.
However, when no one's looking, if you place you're ear to the door, you will hear a low ominous growling sound, and if you listen for a bit, you will hear....
".....One.....more...."
---
On the underside of your refrigerator there is a switch. Reach under there and feel for it. Don't mind the dust clumps and the roaches. You'll know it when you feel it, it's a hard metal tab sticking out of a slot in the plastic underside. I will be set on the righthand side (when you're facing the fridge). If you switch it to the left, nothing will happen. Your appliances will continue to run, the floor won't open into a swirling vortex that leads directly into the deepest circle of hell. You won't even hear a hitch in the hum of the refrigerator. You will get up and brush off and go about your business, you may move out of your apartment and leave the refrigerator behind, switch set to the left like it doesn't even matter.
When you die, five years later, the fingers, toes, and eyes of an unidentified person will be found in your stomach.
---
You're walking down your street, it's a gray, cloudy, unseasonably cold day.
As the brown leaves swirl about you, you hear, faintly yet distinctly, a baby crying. As you move toward the noise, it becomes the sound of a young girl sobbing. Closer you approach the sound, and as the wind picks up, it is clearly the sound of a young woman screaming. You race toward the corner, and as you near it, the sound becomes that of an old crone choking. Then silence as you turn the corner, revealing nothingg but a puddle of water on the sidewalk. As you look into the puddle, it seems your reflection is delayed by a few seconds...as if it is watching you and then mimicking you...
---
I can't say where/when or how often this will work, but I've tried it a few times with mixed results. If for some reason you find you can't sleep one night, indigestion, test the next day, hard mattress, too many creepy threads, whatever, close your eyes and start to play a slow and deliberate game of patty-cake. If you keep it up long enough you may start to feel a pair of something coming back to meet your hands from the void. Congratulations, you've just summoned your first... something. I can't say it's important not to open your eyes at this point, but I didn't anyway. The first time I tried this was in my apartment when I had a presentation to give the following morning, a real toss-turn kind of night. For whatever reason I sat up and decided to put one hand out before me and I felt a faint tingle from a rather low angle. I unconsiously started to play and after a while I noticed I was humming some sort of tuneless lulliby. After about an hour or so whatever was playing on the other end stopped and I went into a deep, dreamless and very restful sleep. I tried this trick again at my girlfriend's parents house while she was with me in their crappy spare bed (I was facing back to her, legs over the side of the bed, eyes closed). After about twenty minutes this time it actually felt like a pair of solid hands, from a much higher angle than before, was coming back and hitting mine a bit harder every time. Suddenly the game stopped and something made a noise in my right ear like a human shriek combined with car breaks causing me to cringe before it ran up the wall behind me into the ceiling. Maybe whatever was in that house had outgrown the game. I still slept ok. For all I know I was just hitting the wall/my blanket tiring my own gullible self out and my girlfriend's just a noisy ***** but... I still can't wait to try it again the next time I can't sleep. Still not sure what happens if you open your eyes, though.
---
In 1938, over 6,000 patients were checked into mental hospitals all across America within one week of each other. Reports of similar instances supposedly came from Europe and Asia as well. The circumstances of each patient were, eerily, identical.
Every patient completely shut down, shivering in the corner until their family, unable to calm or care for the individuals, committed them.
The only thing the patients would say was: "There is not, and never has been, such a thing in this world as a meaningless coincidence."
---
When you live in a bright place, you get used to light, and it starts affecting you less. When you live in a dark place, you get used to dark, and it starts affecting you less. When you live in a violent place, youn get used to violence, and it starts affecting you less.
And when you skydive enough, you get used to gravity, and it starts affecting you less.
This is nowhere near as pleasent as it sounds.
---
Sometimes, while masturbating, when you are about halfway done, you will stop suddenly. You will not know why. Youll feel a cold breeze play across you, and you will shudder. Youll become flaccid and feel slightly sick. If this happens to you, a female ghost is in the room with you. She might be standing right behind your shoulder. For God's sake, dont try and carry on. Your body wont be found
---
Once, about 50 years ago, there was a young boy. No one knows his actually name, so we will call him tommy. He lived in a quiet, small town. Every thing was normal, nothing out of the ordinary.
One day a traveling circus came to town. It had all the normal circus stuff, trapeze artists, animal trainers, clowns.
It also had a miniature wax museum.
Every one always commented on how life like the wax sculptures were, and how well done they were. The Ring Master thanked them, and said the artist was very talented.
Tommy was fascinated by the sculptures. He stayed will closing, talking to the ring master. He was so interested that the Ring Master invited him to come back to the circus after closing and he would introduce Tommy to the Artist. ecstatic, Tommy agreed.
That night, when Tommy came back, the circus grounds were completely deserted. No carnies, no animals, nothing. No where. Tommy really wanted to meet the Artist, so he went to the Wax Museum.
When he got there, the lights were on, but it was empty. Tommy started walking through, admiring the sculptures again. Then the doors slammed shut behind him, and he heard the faint click of a lock.
Tommy ran towards the doors, and shook them until they almost came off the hinges. He then stopped, thinking that he saw movement out of the corner of his eye. He decided he must have imagined it. Then he felt something grab him from behind, and his sight went black.
The next day one of Tommy's friends came by the circus, looking for Tommy, to discover that they were packing up. he headed over to the wax museum, to ask if they had seen Tommy anywhere. When he entered the Museum, he walked a few feet and stopped.
There was a new sculpture in the exhibit. Of a young boy, around 9 years old. Tommy's friend approached the sculpture, a look of horror on his face. The sculpture looked exactly like Tommy, but when he reached out and touched it, he felt the cool, smooth surface of wax.
---
Any night, around 10 or 11 pm, take yourself to a flat, open area where you can walk in a straight line for two minutes or so without running into anything. Once there, face in the direction you plan to walk, with your arms at your sides and your hands relaxed. Close your eyes, and take a deep breath. At precisely 11:09 and 20 seconds, start walking. Be sure to take one step every second, no more, no less. Do not open your eyes, and do not hesitate. Count your steps in your head as you go. On the one hundred and eleventh step, say the word "One" out loud, and stop. Your breath will catch in your throat, and your hair will stand on end. For the next ten seconds, you will be unable to move a single muscle in your body, no matter how hard you try. After these ten seconds, you will be able to move and breathe again ? however, you will then start to feel the sensation of cold metal claws seizing each of your fingers by the base and plucking them clean off of your hand. It will not hurt. You will surely be horrified, but do not open your eyes, and do not move. If you move or open your eyes, all that anyone will ever find of you is your two fingerless hands, severed cleanly at the wrist. Once the claws have stopped, and all of your fingers have been plucked off, stay still for another ten seconds. It may help to count. After these ten seconds have passed, you may open your eyes. You will find that your fingers are still quite firmly attached to your hands. Go home immediately, and go directly to bed. Speak to no one for the rest of the night, and enter no building that you do not consider your home.
The next day, you will have become One of Them. Once per day, as long as there is even a sliver of sunlight, you may point at someone and speak the word "One." That night, he will face the same trial that you faced. If you see that person the next day, you will know that he, too, has become One of Them. If not, then do not be alarmed if you do not feel hungry the rest of the day.
---
The Raven plays a significant role in Native American culture. Some say he is the creator of the world, while others say he is the cause for much mischief for everyone. Both of those might be true...
Go to place where Ravens are known to be. Wait until nightfall, and make sure that you're well-hidden. If more than one Raven gathers near you, they will start speaking your native language in a low, guttural voice. They will speak of all the secrets of the world. At no point must you move while they're talking, for they will notice you and leave nothing but your prying eyes.
If you make it through the night with the knowledge of the world, then you will be forever marked. From that point forward, you must never be alone outside, or birds of all kinds will seek you out and try to kill you.
---
There is a doorway, one that can be any door, at any time. This door leads nowhere, yet there lies a realm of twisted reality to the opener. This door exists for everyone - some never encounter it in their lives, others unknowingly open it and step through.
The problem is, you can't tell if the door is open to you, until years after you step through it. You'll see them, and they'll finally see you.
---
In many stores and establishments that provide videos of a less than appropriate manner, there is a business card.
Some stores keep it well hidden, locked in a safe, and will deny it's existence. Others will show you if you ask for it by name. None will have it displayed in the open.
On this card is a name; Moonlight Films, and a contact number. It's always a local number.
Go to any payphone in any city and dial the number. The answer will be prompt but all you will hear is silence. Wait for thirty seconds. Then you will be served.
A dry, monotone male voice will ask you one question; "Is the road from life to death dark?"
If you answer with anything but the correct reply, he will hang up on you. If you fail the first time, I'd suggest not trying again.
The correct response is "It is moonlit."
If his question is answered properly, the man will say one address in your city and then hang up.
Go to this address and you will find that it is a small, dingy apartment. The carpet will be dirty, the wallpaper flaking and wrinkled, the windows cracked. It will smell of tobacco smoke and decay. On the stained old coffee table there will be a paper bag. On this bag your full name will be printed in red sharpie.
Open the bag and you will find an unlabeled video tape. Take it and place exactly $10.99 in the bag then leave.
You can watch the tape if you like, but you don't have to. I warn you, it's not pleasant. You will see a room or chamber papered in dessicated skin, the furniture will be crafted from flesh and bone. But all of it will be alive. The tape will last approximately 32 minutes and will depict the murder of a person and the subsequent crafting of their body into another animated furnishing.
You have rented the tape for one week. You must return it to the apartment by sliding it through the mail slot when the time is up. After that, never return to the apartment, never return to the store you recieved the contact number from, and DEFINITELY don't call the number ever again.
I'd also suggest you not keep the tape more than a week. The owners will not be satisfied with a mere late fee, and a good home can never have enough accessories.
---
If you ever try learning a foreign language, never try reading the Bible in the language until you have learned as much as you can. If you try to read it too early the words will become twisted in your mind and black shapes will cloud your vision. You will awake with no knowledge of the past 24 hours, but during that time you will have become a dark veseel and commit unholy acts.
---
Are you familiar with the concept of spontaneous combustion?
The story goes that sometimes people will just burst into flames, incinerated or boiled on the spot in a flash of intense heat. It is a rare thing to happen, some insist it doesn't even exist.
It exists, though. It does indeed.
It happens at random. If at some stage you ever feel unnerved for no good reason, then you know it might be coming for you, the invisible, sentient gateway.
The gateway might decide it doesn't like you, and thus will open itself inside of your body, sucking your soul into itself and unleashing a burst of heat to incinerate your body.
Nobody knows where the gateway leads... but Hell is said to be pretty hot.
I have, for many years, locked the door behind me as I entered a room - bathroom door, bedroom door, whatever. For a while I knew why I did it, because I had a little brother and invasive parents that would walk in randomly without knocking. Not so much anymore - I've started remembering why I actually did it.
Am I being too cryptic? Sorry, it's late at night and a storm has rolled in, I'm a bit tired. But I digress.
Behind me, I began to realize, is an empty space - the air you once resided, where your soul was moments ago. Perhaps it's nothing, but it seems important to me. That space... That imprint, of sorts, is bound to the laws of physics just as you are - to an extent. It cannot go through locked doors, but unlocked it can. Something about the permission of a locked door and unlocked door.
You are probably thinking this is nonsense. What you should be doing, as unoriginal as this warning is, is reading the first word of every paragraph. Did you remember to lock your door?
---
The Fish is a shifting and shining creature that nobody has ever caught but that many say they have glimpsed in the depths of mirrors.
According to Herbert Allen Giles, belief in the Fish is part of a larger myth that goes back to the times of the Yellow Emperor. In those days the world of mirrors and the world of men were not, as they are now, cut off from each other. They were, besides, quite different; neither beings nor colors nor shapes were the same. Both kingdoms lived in harmony; you could come and go through mirrors. One night the mirror people invaded the earth. Their power was great, but at the end of bloody warfare the magic arts of the Yellow Emperor prevailed. He repulsed the invaders, imprisoned them in their mirrors, and forced on them the task of repeating, as though in a kind of dream, all the actions of men. He stripped them of their power and of their forms and reduced them to mere reflections. Nonetheless, a day will come when the spell will be shaken off. The first to awaken will be the Fish. Deep in the mirror we will perceive a very faint line and the color of this line will be like no other color. Later on, other shapes will begin to stir. Little by little they will differ from us; little by little they will not imitate us. They will break through the barriers of glass or metal.
Side by side with these mirror creatures, the creatures of water will join the battle. In Yunnan they do not speak of the Fish but of the Tiger of the Mirror. Others believe that in advance of the invasion we will hear from the depths of mirrors the clatter of weapons. And this time, they will not be defeated.
---
I went camping about 3 weekends ago in the Huntsville national forest in Texas. Me and 3 friends that came home for the weekend, they are all in college and usually we all get together at least once a year, old friends from high school. For the camping trip we planned to go backpacking deep in the forest, live off of fish that we catch and animals that we can trap. We have been doing this for awhile in Texas and in numerous places, Arizona, Colorado (if anyone is familiar with the Spanish peaks there), New Mexico, so we?re pretty much used to anything you?d encounter out there.
It was my turn to pick where we went camping, so I chose Huntsville (more accurately it?s Huntsville/New Waverly). So we drive up there park our car in a camping park spot and start walking off into the forest. We had some laughs along the way, everyone catching up with each other?s lives. We walked until it started to get dark and set up camp where we stopped. Everyone gathered wood to make a fire and we set our tent up. And we do what we always do: try and scare each other with weird stories.
Around this time we started to smell something very faint. It was noticeable, but not overbearing. We couldn?t put our finger on what it was, so we just carried on. Mike had to go piss and he walked off in the forest. A second later he come running back, piss all down his jeans like he?d missed really bad. Immediately we all crack up and throw some jokes at him. Then we noticed that he was white as snow and trying to catch his breath. He starts screaming for us to follow him, and runs off.
We all get serious and go follow him, not knowing what the problem was. We start to hear a faint scream and crying in the distance, in the direction we were running. It was pitch black away from the camp and Mike had the only flash light (we left ours at the camp, he had his from his trip taking a piss), so at this stage we didn?t have much choice but to follow the light, which was frantically pointing here and there in front of him.
The scream gets closer and Mike starts to slow down. We then notice a ratty old cabin that looked like it was abandoned, except for a faint light that we could see from one of the old mildew covered windows. The crying was intense: whoever it was couldn?t breathe enough to let out a full yell. We all followed Mike up to the front door and we could all hear the crying from inside. As soon as he knocked on the door it stopped.
We all waited and heard really heavy footsteps walking fast to the door. There was a giant slam against the door and the sound of a bolt unlocking. Then nothing. We waited for a bit, knocked a few more times, but still nothing happened. We walked around the house (there was no ****ing way any of us were leaving each other?s side) and noticed a window, which was a good way up. Alex took a deep breath and said asked us to give him a boost so he could see inside. Me and Mike lifted him up to the window. We watched him brush away dirt and webs from the window and place his face close to the window to try and see something.
There was a quick beat. Then suddenly he breathed in fast and let out a loud scream. Then he fell back from the window, screaming bloody murder the whole way. We all tried to calm him down but he was hysterical. We went to him but he started to shake, punch, kick, you name it, and then took off towards the camp.
None of us wanted to be separated so we all ran close behind him. We caught up to him and grabbed him and set him down. The fire was dying out so I grabbed some nearby wood that we collected added it to the fire. My hands were shaking and I had to do something. I went back to Alex and we all tried to calm him down. He wouldn?t he kept screaming and was breathing so hard that he eventually fainted.
All of us are terrified now, and we all kept the fire high until sunrise. Periodically Alex kept waking up, screaming just like before. By sunrise he was up and looked catatonic, just mumbling to himself and whimpering.
Me and Mike decide to go look at the cabin now it was daylight. We searched where we thought it was, except there was nothing there. Nothing at all. The indistinct smell from last night had now grown into a very strong smell of something dead, something stale. We headed back to the camping site. When we got there we found Alex had chewed into the sides of his face and swallowed so much blood that he was throwing up. John was at his back, and he looked like he was about to die from exhaustion. I guess we all looked that way, I just didn?t notice until I saw his face. Alex said quietly that we need to leave. Now.
We all started to pack up the tent. It started to rain really heavily (it was about noon) and the sky started to grow really dark. Alex started to go into a panic. He went and grabbed a big stick and yelled at us to leave it and leave, now, or he?d knock us out and drag us out of there himself. Mike started to yell at him, and they started to fight. We broke it up and finished packing, and then started to make our way back. After a little while we arrived at a creek we had crossed the previous day, only it was flooded over, and the water was moving to fast for us to cross it. Alex started to scream again, yelling at Mike for taking his time packing up the tent when we could have gotten out of here. This went on for a while until we finally convinced Alex to calm down and tell us what happened.
He said as soon as he put his face to the glass, a face on the other side did the same thing, and started to smile really big. It had dark eyes and a dark mouth which was much bigger then Alex?s, as the smile got as large as it could. A giant shadow behind it swung something down and sliced it?s face off. The face was stuck to the window, and he said it started to laugh quietly as it slid down. Mike, still pissed off (and though he wouldn?t admit it, beginning to get freaked out), started to argue with him again. We eventually started to follow the creek for a way to cross.
We then started to see toys floating in the creek. Really old toys, old Barbie dolls and baby dolls. This wasn?t like any old trash floating in the creek, though? this was a lot of barbies, a lot of baby dolls. One washed towards the side and Mike picked it up. It had some kind of voice chip that was dying and started to say some gurgling words we couldn?t understand, followed by it?s sad excuse for laughter. Then it sounded like it was whispering. We thought the batteries must be dying, he threw it down.
We kept going, and the sun was starting to set. Alex was freaking out more now, and was whimpering and breathing heavily. We all started to see shadows move behind trees, something we all called BS on until we all were seeing it. It was barely light out and we stop as we see the cabin right in front of us. None of us knows what to think. Mike says ?This is bullshit, I?m going in there.? Alex tries to stop him. We all do, all of us just wanted to go home. Mike says to all of us to fuck off, do our own thing, he doesn?t care anymore, this is all bullshit.
We start to hear hundreds of the same sort baby doll as before, laughing, whispering and trying to sing. We start to move forward past the cabin, all of us, and kept pushing forward. We smelled something dead in the air, something stale. The same something as before. We started to hear something crying, and something screaming. We kept on going. We eventually crossed the creek and left the woods. We get back to our vehicle and got in. Its pitch black, and we drive. We are about to get on the 45 to Houston but the road is under construction and can?t be accessed. It points to a detour. As we head towards the detour it seems to be small, bumpy dirt road going into the woods.
We then see a young girl come up to us. She looks like she was in trouble, young and pretty. She approaches the passenger side door and she looks like she?s really drugged up, or beaten up. Alex doesn?t roll down the windows, nor does he open the door. She reaches for the handle and he immediately locks it. She puts her face on the window and starts to smile really big. We floor it, Alex starts to cry and scream and we are all breathing heavy. We finally cut on a street that takes us to the 45 and we take it the whole way. When we get back to my apartment everyone doesn?t know what to say and we all break apart and go our separate ways.
Mike messages me later and says he is going to go back. I try to convince him not to and all he does is say it was our own minds that were screwing with us. I think he just went to prove to himself he wasn?t scared. I can smell that stench everywhere now. I don?t go out anymore, I just stay in and don?t answer the door. Last week everyone I met was acting really strange, people that I knew for a long time and total strangers. My own dad, when I went to his place to eat supper with him he just watched me, strangely, when I was sitting down. He didn?t say a word the whole time. I kept asking him ?What?s wrong?? He just slowly shook his head.
When I was leaving to go home I turned to wave. He had black eyes and an open mouth like he was in pain. When I started to walk back he shut the door and bolted it. I stayed there knocking and knocking. Nothing. I called him, his phone was disconnected. I even called the police. Halfway through the questions they were asking me the connection started to fade into static. I could hear a faint mumbling, singing and laughing.
Mike has completely vanished. There is not even a record of him being alive. When I call Alex?s house they talk to me like I?m some salesman. They say they don?t know any Alex and to please stop calling. The person who tells me that is Alex?s mother. I can?t get ahold of John. Someone knocked on my door and when I went to look I saw a face completely covering the peephole and a giant smile started to form.
I called the cops again and instead of it turning into static they got really strange. ?Sir, are you affected by any drugs at the moment?? ?No.? ?Are you coming home anytime soon?? ?Excuse me?? ?Come home.? and the phone call ended. My mail slot swings every now and then. Someone is sliding pieces of baby dolls through it. I try to call people now and all I can hear is static and bad baby doll noises and this crying and screaming. My TV is busted but when I go to piss I can hear it on. I might be going insane.
Whoever lives above me started to scream in pain and crying deeply recently. I hear giant footsteps from their apartment, I hear bangs and something falling to the ground. From the neighbours to the right of my apartment I hear what sounds like a baby that never gets tended too and then it sounds like a baby doll whose batteries are dying. My phone has been ringing now and it?s Alex telling me things in a language that I have never heard before, nor could even manage to repeat. I kept getting emails of pictures of black and small colorations, now I can?t even access my email. Someone knocks on the door, then they slam against it. I hear the bolts unlocking one by one and I run to make sure to lock all of them back.
Then, I sit down and begin to cry.
---
A young couple were waiting impatiently to leave on their first vacation since the baby was born but the woman?s aunt, who would be babysitting, was thirty minutes late. The young woman called her elderly aunt to find out what was going on, and the old woman apologized for her forgetfulness, and said she?d speed right over.
Since the aunt was only a couple miles away, the couple decided they?d go ahead and go rather than wait for her and risk missing their flight. Two weeks later when the couple returned they were horrified to find the baby still in it?s high-chair where they?d left it, except now it was dead and bloated, covered with flies. The aunt really had sped, and unfortunately crashed and died before she made it over.
---
In a small orphanage in a small village in Russia, there is a young boy. His hair is jet black, and messy, and he tattered jeans and an old dingy grey shirt.
Nothing is known of him. For 10 years, he sat in the bed in his room, never moving, never blinking, never eating or sleeping. In the 10 years, he has not seemed to age at all, continuing to look like a 7 year old boy. The only thing that proved he was alive is the slow rise and fall of his chest as he breathes, and the refusal to take his eyes off anyone who enters the room alone.
A lone psychiatrist came over in an attempt to find out why the boy had done nothing in 10 years. He entered the room, and shut the door behind him.
30 minutes later, the orphanage's nurse came to check on the 2 of them. Opening the door, she saw the child, still sitting, still not moving, eyes fixxed on her. However, something seemed different. He appeared a slight amount larger, not by much, but enough to make him look like a late 8 or early 9 year old. The psychiatrist was no longer in the room. The door was the only exit, as the room had no windows, vents, or anything, and it was, in fact, in the exact center of the orphanage.
He continued to sit, only seen occasionaly by the lady who came in to check on him, and she never closed the door upon entry.
A week or so later, 2 law enforcment personel entered the orphanage, demanding to speak to the boy about the disapearance of the psychiatrist. The 2 of them entered, clsoing the door behind him, as the head of the orphanage stood outside the door.
30 minutes passed, and not a sound came from the room. The Head eased the door open. The boy was still on the bed, but the officers where no longer there. The boy was know quite noticably bigger, about the size of a 15 year old. His skin was darker than usual, and he looked angrier than ever. But one thing remained the same: His cold, unforgiving eyes that stared at whoever entered.
Eventually, the law organized a large group of 10 officers to speak to the boy. They entered the room, and left the door open, until one of the younger orphans ran up and shut it, appearently in a daze.
The head quickly ran to re-open the door, and upon doing so froze him in horror. A low rumbling noise came from the room....
".....One....more...."
If you return to that orphanage, you will see it still continues to run. The orphans live in good care, health, and education. However, there is one room, that you sill see is boarded up, and far from enterable. If you ask what is behind it, you will be removed forcefully from the orphanage.
However, when no one's looking, if you place you're ear to the door, you will hear a low ominous growling sound, and if you listen for a bit, you will hear....
".....One.....more...."
---
On the underside of your refrigerator there is a switch. Reach under there and feel for it. Don't mind the dust clumps and the roaches. You'll know it when you feel it, it's a hard metal tab sticking out of a slot in the plastic underside. I will be set on the righthand side (when you're facing the fridge). If you switch it to the left, nothing will happen. Your appliances will continue to run, the floor won't open into a swirling vortex that leads directly into the deepest circle of hell. You won't even hear a hitch in the hum of the refrigerator. You will get up and brush off and go about your business, you may move out of your apartment and leave the refrigerator behind, switch set to the left like it doesn't even matter.
When you die, five years later, the fingers, toes, and eyes of an unidentified person will be found in your stomach.
---
You're walking down your street, it's a gray, cloudy, unseasonably cold day.
As the brown leaves swirl about you, you hear, faintly yet distinctly, a baby crying. As you move toward the noise, it becomes the sound of a young girl sobbing. Closer you approach the sound, and as the wind picks up, it is clearly the sound of a young woman screaming. You race toward the corner, and as you near it, the sound becomes that of an old crone choking. Then silence as you turn the corner, revealing nothingg but a puddle of water on the sidewalk. As you look into the puddle, it seems your reflection is delayed by a few seconds...as if it is watching you and then mimicking you...
---
I can't say where/when or how often this will work, but I've tried it a few times with mixed results. If for some reason you find you can't sleep one night, indigestion, test the next day, hard mattress, too many creepy threads, whatever, close your eyes and start to play a slow and deliberate game of patty-cake. If you keep it up long enough you may start to feel a pair of something coming back to meet your hands from the void. Congratulations, you've just summoned your first... something. I can't say it's important not to open your eyes at this point, but I didn't anyway. The first time I tried this was in my apartment when I had a presentation to give the following morning, a real toss-turn kind of night. For whatever reason I sat up and decided to put one hand out before me and I felt a faint tingle from a rather low angle. I unconsiously started to play and after a while I noticed I was humming some sort of tuneless lulliby. After about an hour or so whatever was playing on the other end stopped and I went into a deep, dreamless and very restful sleep. I tried this trick again at my girlfriend's parents house while she was with me in their crappy spare bed (I was facing back to her, legs over the side of the bed, eyes closed). After about twenty minutes this time it actually felt like a pair of solid hands, from a much higher angle than before, was coming back and hitting mine a bit harder every time. Suddenly the game stopped and something made a noise in my right ear like a human shriek combined with car breaks causing me to cringe before it ran up the wall behind me into the ceiling. Maybe whatever was in that house had outgrown the game. I still slept ok. For all I know I was just hitting the wall/my blanket tiring my own gullible self out and my girlfriend's just a noisy ***** but... I still can't wait to try it again the next time I can't sleep. Still not sure what happens if you open your eyes, though.
---
In 1938, over 6,000 patients were checked into mental hospitals all across America within one week of each other. Reports of similar instances supposedly came from Europe and Asia as well. The circumstances of each patient were, eerily, identical.
Every patient completely shut down, shivering in the corner until their family, unable to calm or care for the individuals, committed them.
The only thing the patients would say was: "There is not, and never has been, such a thing in this world as a meaningless coincidence."
---
When you live in a bright place, you get used to light, and it starts affecting you less. When you live in a dark place, you get used to dark, and it starts affecting you less. When you live in a violent place, youn get used to violence, and it starts affecting you less.
And when you skydive enough, you get used to gravity, and it starts affecting you less.
This is nowhere near as pleasent as it sounds.
---
Sometimes, while masturbating, when you are about halfway done, you will stop suddenly. You will not know why. Youll feel a cold breeze play across you, and you will shudder. Youll become flaccid and feel slightly sick. If this happens to you, a female ghost is in the room with you. She might be standing right behind your shoulder. For God's sake, dont try and carry on. Your body wont be found
---
Once, about 50 years ago, there was a young boy. No one knows his actually name, so we will call him tommy. He lived in a quiet, small town. Every thing was normal, nothing out of the ordinary.
One day a traveling circus came to town. It had all the normal circus stuff, trapeze artists, animal trainers, clowns.
It also had a miniature wax museum.
Every one always commented on how life like the wax sculptures were, and how well done they were. The Ring Master thanked them, and said the artist was very talented.
Tommy was fascinated by the sculptures. He stayed will closing, talking to the ring master. He was so interested that the Ring Master invited him to come back to the circus after closing and he would introduce Tommy to the Artist. ecstatic, Tommy agreed.
That night, when Tommy came back, the circus grounds were completely deserted. No carnies, no animals, nothing. No where. Tommy really wanted to meet the Artist, so he went to the Wax Museum.
When he got there, the lights were on, but it was empty. Tommy started walking through, admiring the sculptures again. Then the doors slammed shut behind him, and he heard the faint click of a lock.
Tommy ran towards the doors, and shook them until they almost came off the hinges. He then stopped, thinking that he saw movement out of the corner of his eye. He decided he must have imagined it. Then he felt something grab him from behind, and his sight went black.
The next day one of Tommy's friends came by the circus, looking for Tommy, to discover that they were packing up. he headed over to the wax museum, to ask if they had seen Tommy anywhere. When he entered the Museum, he walked a few feet and stopped.
There was a new sculpture in the exhibit. Of a young boy, around 9 years old. Tommy's friend approached the sculpture, a look of horror on his face. The sculpture looked exactly like Tommy, but when he reached out and touched it, he felt the cool, smooth surface of wax.
---
Any night, around 10 or 11 pm, take yourself to a flat, open area where you can walk in a straight line for two minutes or so without running into anything. Once there, face in the direction you plan to walk, with your arms at your sides and your hands relaxed. Close your eyes, and take a deep breath. At precisely 11:09 and 20 seconds, start walking. Be sure to take one step every second, no more, no less. Do not open your eyes, and do not hesitate. Count your steps in your head as you go. On the one hundred and eleventh step, say the word "One" out loud, and stop. Your breath will catch in your throat, and your hair will stand on end. For the next ten seconds, you will be unable to move a single muscle in your body, no matter how hard you try. After these ten seconds, you will be able to move and breathe again ? however, you will then start to feel the sensation of cold metal claws seizing each of your fingers by the base and plucking them clean off of your hand. It will not hurt. You will surely be horrified, but do not open your eyes, and do not move. If you move or open your eyes, all that anyone will ever find of you is your two fingerless hands, severed cleanly at the wrist. Once the claws have stopped, and all of your fingers have been plucked off, stay still for another ten seconds. It may help to count. After these ten seconds have passed, you may open your eyes. You will find that your fingers are still quite firmly attached to your hands. Go home immediately, and go directly to bed. Speak to no one for the rest of the night, and enter no building that you do not consider your home.
The next day, you will have become One of Them. Once per day, as long as there is even a sliver of sunlight, you may point at someone and speak the word "One." That night, he will face the same trial that you faced. If you see that person the next day, you will know that he, too, has become One of Them. If not, then do not be alarmed if you do not feel hungry the rest of the day.
---
The Raven plays a significant role in Native American culture. Some say he is the creator of the world, while others say he is the cause for much mischief for everyone. Both of those might be true...
Go to place where Ravens are known to be. Wait until nightfall, and make sure that you're well-hidden. If more than one Raven gathers near you, they will start speaking your native language in a low, guttural voice. They will speak of all the secrets of the world. At no point must you move while they're talking, for they will notice you and leave nothing but your prying eyes.
If you make it through the night with the knowledge of the world, then you will be forever marked. From that point forward, you must never be alone outside, or birds of all kinds will seek you out and try to kill you.
---
There is a doorway, one that can be any door, at any time. This door leads nowhere, yet there lies a realm of twisted reality to the opener. This door exists for everyone - some never encounter it in their lives, others unknowingly open it and step through.
The problem is, you can't tell if the door is open to you, until years after you step through it. You'll see them, and they'll finally see you.
---
In many stores and establishments that provide videos of a less than appropriate manner, there is a business card.
Some stores keep it well hidden, locked in a safe, and will deny it's existence. Others will show you if you ask for it by name. None will have it displayed in the open.
On this card is a name; Moonlight Films, and a contact number. It's always a local number.
Go to any payphone in any city and dial the number. The answer will be prompt but all you will hear is silence. Wait for thirty seconds. Then you will be served.
A dry, monotone male voice will ask you one question; "Is the road from life to death dark?"
If you answer with anything but the correct reply, he will hang up on you. If you fail the first time, I'd suggest not trying again.
The correct response is "It is moonlit."
If his question is answered properly, the man will say one address in your city and then hang up.
Go to this address and you will find that it is a small, dingy apartment. The carpet will be dirty, the wallpaper flaking and wrinkled, the windows cracked. It will smell of tobacco smoke and decay. On the stained old coffee table there will be a paper bag. On this bag your full name will be printed in red sharpie.
Open the bag and you will find an unlabeled video tape. Take it and place exactly $10.99 in the bag then leave.
You can watch the tape if you like, but you don't have to. I warn you, it's not pleasant. You will see a room or chamber papered in dessicated skin, the furniture will be crafted from flesh and bone. But all of it will be alive. The tape will last approximately 32 minutes and will depict the murder of a person and the subsequent crafting of their body into another animated furnishing.
You have rented the tape for one week. You must return it to the apartment by sliding it through the mail slot when the time is up. After that, never return to the apartment, never return to the store you recieved the contact number from, and DEFINITELY don't call the number ever again.
I'd also suggest you not keep the tape more than a week. The owners will not be satisfied with a mere late fee, and a good home can never have enough accessories.
---
If you ever try learning a foreign language, never try reading the Bible in the language until you have learned as much as you can. If you try to read it too early the words will become twisted in your mind and black shapes will cloud your vision. You will awake with no knowledge of the past 24 hours, but during that time you will have become a dark veseel and commit unholy acts.
---
Are you familiar with the concept of spontaneous combustion?
The story goes that sometimes people will just burst into flames, incinerated or boiled on the spot in a flash of intense heat. It is a rare thing to happen, some insist it doesn't even exist.
It exists, though. It does indeed.
It happens at random. If at some stage you ever feel unnerved for no good reason, then you know it might be coming for you, the invisible, sentient gateway.
The gateway might decide it doesn't like you, and thus will open itself inside of your body, sucking your soul into itself and unleashing a burst of heat to incinerate your body.
Nobody knows where the gateway leads... but Hell is said to be pretty hot.
http://www.gamespot.com/pages/forums/show_msgs.php?topic_id=27413733
Have fun. Loads of stuff here.
Have fun. Loads of stuff here.
People rejoice, I've found new sources for creepy pasta, and whoa, there's a lot more I need to post.
Whenever you chat with friends on the computer, they tell you they see someone walk past behind you in your webcam, even if you always believed you were alone in the room. One day, you decided to leave the cam on, and recording and left for work. You get home, play back the video and see the room. There's no one there. But when you go online, and check on your friends, they tell you that they received instant messages from you telling them, "He thinks he'll catch me, but I'm smarter..."
***
A man was sleeping peacefully one night, when all of a sudden he awoke to a loud crash outside. Simply ignoring the sound, he went back to sleep.
An hour passes and the man continues to sleep. The man then awakens to the sound of scratching on his wall. He procedes to investigate the noise. As soon as the man had taken one step out of his bed he heard something crawl up the wall and onto the ceiling.
Frightened, the man quickly jumped back into bed. Fifteen minutes pass without a sound. Assuming he was just tired, the man tried to fall back asleep. The man turned over in his bed to get comfortable. As he did this he was faced with a pair of snarling jaws.
The man screamed but was quickly silenced...
***
If you ever are in an area of absolute quiet, still your breathing and move not a muscle. After a few seconds, you will notice that the silence has a sort of "sound" of its own, a kind of empty ringing tone. This is nothing unique, everyone will hear this, given the proper setting. An informed person will tell you that your brain is trying to interpret the lack of stimuli to your hearing and so creates a bit of a filler sound. Actually, there is never, ever, total quiet anywhere on Earth. This sound actually covers something very important. For a persistent individual, one can discern what is under this pitch. The next time you are in such a situation, shout at the top of your lungs for about half a minute, then become completely silent all at once. It will be different for everyone. Some will hear nothing different for dozens of tries. Others might catch a snatch of soft murmuring. A special few might clearly make out what they hear on the first attempt. What you will hear is a voice that relays an account of events about to happen in the immediate future. It's like a sportscaster relaying the events occurring 10 seconds later. Such an ability would doubtlessly be invaluable, no?
You will be able react to any immediate danger, relate to people around you with greater ease. No one would ever surprise you. As time goes on, you will be able to make out this voice under increasingly noisy circumstances, to the point that it can be heard at any time by just concentrating. Now, of course you are wondering what sort of horrible catch there is for this. Perhaps the tone of the voice is so horrible that it will drive you mad, or maybe the voice will only predict your death over and over again. Of course this isn't the case, though, its a normal voice, your ears receive it no matter what, its simply a matter of noticing. But there is a danger. For you see, there's no such thing as a voice lacking a body. And just like you will notice new sounds, so shall you notice new sights. More importantly, you will be noticed.
***
It might happen one morning that you wake up home alone. This could be normal depending on your situation, but this morning will be different. While your environment will all seem exactly the same, you?ll notice that everything is quieter than normal. If you go outside, you will notice a distinct lack of anything like birds, insects? or people. As far as you travel, you will not encounter another sentient human being. The entire world will be intact, but empty except for yourself.
There are currently over 100,000 missing persons cases in the United States. Some are just normal cases of murder or kidnappings, but in others, the disappearance cannot be explained and no remains of the person are ever located.
***
A teenage girl, popular, rich, and happy, was walking through a store with her mom and saw a beautiful porcelain doll, which would look great with her collection. She demanded that her mother buy it for her. He mother agreed, and got it for her.
As soon as the girl returned home, she unpacked the doll and set it on a stand above her bed. She then left her room and went out with her friends. When she got home, it was late and she was tired. She went to her room, put on her pajama's and tucked herself into bed.
When she woke up the next morning, she saw a note attached to her lamp beside her bed. It was from her mother, telling her they'd be out of town until next Sunday. She yawned and noticed that her cheek was sore, but she didn't pay much attention to it. She got dressed and went to school.
This went on for a few days until she woke up and her cheek was extremely sore. She decided she'd check it out in a minute or two, then went about her room, picking out what she would wear. She finally decided and walked over to her full body mirror and noticed a large, ugly lump on her cheek.
Figuring it was a pimple, she squeezed it... and felt something moving. All of the sudden, spiders began pulling themselves out of the lump. She screamed, but since there was no one home in her huge house, nobody heard her. She tore at the spiders but there were millions... and she died of the poison in their bites.
Apparently... there was a nest of spiders in the porcelain doll she'd gotten
***
A divorced woman was walking her young girl down the hallway. It was the day that the father could take the girl home. The woman was torn all to pieces about this, and the young girl noticed. The woman and her child arrived at the elevator and when the doors opened, stepped in.
Finally they had reached the floor that the father worked. When the doors opened guess who was standing their, the father. Without saying a word the father took hold of the young girls hand and started to walk away. Suddenly the woman grabbed the girls other hand and tried to pull her back in the elevator.
Unfortunately, the door closed on the girl as her head was jerked into the elevator. The elevator started going down and half of the young girls body was going with it because her mother wouldn't let go and her father wouldn't either, who was still on the second floor.
The young girl was ripped in half when the elevator reached the ground floor.
***
Once, when my father was a young man, he was driving home late one night from work. It was along a New Jersey stretch of road. Passing by a bridge, he glanced over, and saw what appeared to be an old man, dressed in clothing that would have been in the height of fashion in the 1800s, walking along the side of the road.
He brushed it off, thinking he was imagining things. He was driving past a second bridge, and saw the old man again. He was about to drive past the third bridge, when he looked over again, expecting to see the old man outside, on the road.
He was sitting next to him, in the passenger seat.
***
You're sitting at the computer, browsing some of your favorite sites, when you notice a link that seems... out of place. It reads, Whatever you do...
Before you know it, you're dragging the mouse over to the link and clicking on it. The link brings you to a page with a black background with three innocent words written in white text: Don't turn around!
It's barely visible, but in the background of the page you notice an unsettling thing just standing there, staring down.
"Cute," you think to yourself as you turn off the monitor.
Then you realize that thing wasn't a picture. It was a reflection.
***
You're in bed, feeling chilled despite being under the covers. You hear something tap against glass. You look out your window from your pillow, but see nothing. You try to sleep, but are bothered by the sound of something scratching against glass. You look at your window, and see nothing. You're really unnerved now, and you hear the scratching noise again, this time a high pitched screech of something against glass. You hide yourself under your covers, trying to ignore it.
You wake up in the morning, feeling mostly refreshed. You almost forget about the strange noise last night. You look at your window with daylight now, and see nothing unusual.
But in the mirror in your room, the word "Hello" is scratched into the surface.
***
You try to sleep, but the noises keep you awake. It's like something's scratching on wood. And Growling. You tell yourself it's only the wind, and only the trees outside, but the sound goes on. And on. And on.
Finally, you just can't take it. You stand up, turning the lights on. The sound is coming from your front door. You walk into the living room on unsteady legs, and the growling gets louder, the scraping more pronounced, more... vicious. With shaking hands, you reach for the telephone... and the noises stopped. Like they never were there.
For what feels like hours, you stand there with the phone in your hand, waiting for the sounds to begin again. Thy never do. Finally, heart in your throat, unable to stop yourself, you walk to the door. You open it... on the night air.
Nothing. You study the door. It should be almost clawed to pieces, you could have swore you heard the wood start to give. But it's unmarked. You shake your head. Just your imagination. Then you close the door.
The claw marks are on the inside.
***
You come home from work, dead tired. You can barely muster the energy to plod up
the stairs to your bedroom, and leaving the light off, you begin to undress for
bed in the dim light filtering in through the window.
As you pull off your undershirt, you freeze. Your vision was only obscured for a
moment by your shirt, and the gloom makes it hard to see. But you could swear the
furniture in your bedroom has all been moved.
***
You take down a big buck with a beautiful kill shot, and climb down your blind to collect and dress it. When you reach the corpse, it's already been gutted and gnawed into unrecognizability. You only lost sight of it for 30 secs top, and heard nothing.
***
You and your wife have a healthy child. He's a little small, as infants go, and with a unusually oblong skull, but the doctor's assure you that that it is due to pressure from the birth canal and will correct in a couple weeks.
Your wife breast feeds the baby, but he just can't seem to put on weight. Finally she starts sleeping in his bedroom, by the crib, just so that she can be available when he wakes hungry in the night.
This goes on for several weeks, your wife sleeping in the bedroom, tending to your child, before you think anything of it. It's not until you are doing the laundry that something seems odd.
Her nursing bra has blood stains.
You barge into the child's bedroom and before she can cover herself, you see your black-eyed infant, clinging to his mother's skin, gnawing away at the scabbed remains of her breasts.
***
The old closet wasn't remodeled with the rest of the house. It's bare wood and insulation, so no one's had reason to go inside in years. You even set your computer up right in front of the door, figuring there wasn't any reason to go inside.
One night, while you're reading some forum or blog, something pounds on the door three times...from the inside. From where the door buckles, the blows come at about head height.
You don't open the door. You don't even jump. You just look, then go back to the computer. It happens again on other nights, and for some reason, you treat it like nothing special. Every time, you spend the whole day after, scared shitless at exactly why you acted like this was normal.
***
You work late in the morgue, performing the usual autopsy procedure. Checking organ weights, blood levels, etc. You write the numbers on the chart. The body has been dead for awhile, so you are happy to be called away by the telephone. When you get back, the chart has been moved from where you put it down. The weight for the heart has been corrected.
***
(This was awesome for me)
You're reading freaky stories posted by weirdos on an internet forum. As you click 'next' to view the coming page, you realize all the posts now have the 'you's in it substituted with your name. In fact, David realizes they seem to describe David's house and surroundings quite accurately. This last story has David reading scary tales on his PC when...
***
The scariest thing that ever happened to me happened when I was 8 and had just convinced my parents to make give my brother his own room. Now, the two important things to understand before I tell this story are :
1)I was afraid of the dark, so I kept the hall light on all night and my door open
2)I could see the stairs that led to the main floor very clearly from my bed when the door was open.
Now, as I was saying, I had just gotten my brother to sleep in a different room for the first time ever, so I was a little scared. I had just woken up from a bad sleep and was a little groggy, so I sat up and started counting (a trick of my dad's to fall back asleep). I look out the door and see my mom going downstairs. Being 8, I decide to tell her I can't sleep, so I call her. She doesn't answer and goes right down the stairs, so I follow her. She goes around the corner at the bottom of the stairs (still not answering me) and, still following, I look. She isn't there. All the lights downstairs are off. The whole main floor is, presumably, empty. So I run to my parent's room to ask my dad what is going on, and there is my mum, sleeping. I woke her up to ask why she went downstairs and she had no idea what I was talking about.
I went back to my room, very scared and trying to fall back asleep, so I start counting. I look out the door again, and see my mum coming back up the stairs, then she looks at me. I just closed my eyes and couldn't open them for the rest of the night. It is still the most unsettling thing I have ever gone through. I can't even write it without getting chills.
***
In Finland there is an old but still inhabited yellow apartment, situated in a small city near an important railroad. Almost all of the people living there are over 70 years old and in fact it seems that younger people simply won't stay there for longer than a year.
If you live there you will soon notice several unusual things. In the basement the text "TURN ON THE LIGHT. TURN OFF THE LIGHT WHEN YOU LEAVE" is written next to every light switch. It's unusual to remind somebody of something so obvious, but here it is of critical importance.
People who forget something in the basement never return to pick it up. If you offer to go and retrieve it for them they will stop you from doing so.
There is one door there, between some storage doors that has no numbers on it. Instead the door has a worn-out nameplate on it. The people in the flat will tell you to leave that door alone. It is said that people who have peeked in the keyhole have seen very unsettling things.
The wires and pipes in the basement look amazingly old, yet still the house has perfectly functioning water, electricity and phone lines.
The laundry room, which is in the basement, must be reserved if you want to use it. If you go there without reserving a time first you will at first get weird looks and some scolding. Then people will more ominously and angrily warn you.
These things may seem minor but those, usually the young ones, who have got too curious or failed to follow the rules have ended up either dead, crippled or insane. Usually people say that these incidents were the result of drug use or alcoholism, but some of the freak accidents cannot be explained by anything.
How do I know this? I used to go and help my grandmother who lived in that appartment and I have seen several times how ambulance has dragged away young people who have missed an arm, sometimes some other parts also. The worst case was when I found a corpse that looked like an explosion victim in the laundry room. His guts were spattered all around the room and his left arm was sitting on top of the washing machine.
Before her death my grandmother told that she knows what's behind these incidents. After the 2nd world war there was a shortage of apartments and one war veteran who had lost his left arm was given a rudimentary room in the basement for no cost if he would help people to do laundry and help the janitor. He did, but eventually someone insulted him in one way or another. The veteran killed that youngster and himself. Ever since his spirit has been there, harshly punishing those who fail to follow the rules of his home. After telling this she told me that I should never ever return to the apartment as I knew too much. As I left the apartment for the last time I could see the figure of an old, old man missing his left arm staring at me, reflected on the large glass panel on the door to the stairway...
***
It's strange, the tricks your eyes play on you. Some time ago when coming home late you saw an old homeless man hunched up beside the bank. Seconds later you realize, silly you, it's just one of those big electrical boxes.
Even after realizing it, though, every time you come home late and pass by the bank, you think you see that homeless man instead.
Then one day, you just see the electrical box, and wonder what happened to the man.
***
Your office building was converted from a townhouse sometime last decade; it?s has a fair bit of colonial charm, and it?s very own ghost. Betty One-and-a-Half they call her; she lived in the early days of the Cold War, and it?s said she heard angels singing to her all the time, and would sometimes dance to their tune. The doctors concluded she was quite mad, but being of wealthy family, they decided not to perform any drastic surgery on her, instead allowing the parents to care for her as best they could. Betty, if that was her real name, never married and spent most of her life on the uppermost floor of the family townhouse, cared for by hired nurses.
Time and circumstance, however, brought this tale to a tragic end; ill-luck and poor planning caused the family?s wealth to wither, and they began to secretly resent the cost of tending to Betty. Her siblings grew increasingly rude, and would even torment her with harsh words, which Betty, having never been exposed to before, took to heart. The poor lady, now well-into spinsterhood, but still a child at heart, despaired for her parents and siblings, thinking that if she were gone, all their troubles would be over.
The story doesn?t tell where Betty found the axe, or how she found the will to swing it upward into her own face, but the tale is very clear that the first blow didn?t kill her, though it sunk deep into her skull. Prying the hatchet loose, her strength already failing, she managed a second blow, one that did less damage, but nonetheless lodged the weapon into her head. It?s said that Betty, in the thrall of death, tormented by the screams of her angels and insane with pain and regret, walked on failing feet towards the stairwell leading to the downstairs rooms where her family sat, oblivious to her self-destructive act. The story goes that she never made it to those steps, that she fell forwards mere feet away, hand outstretched towards the banister, hatchet still hanging from her skull.
You work on the third floor of the converted townhouse, just below the top floor, which is mostly used for storage. Your co-workers have told you about how they hear Betty One-and-a-Half shuffling down the hallway above your office late at night, and you believe them, you?ve heard it too when working late. On some nights it?s worse then others; the dragging is sometimes accompanied by a light sobbing, always ending with a loud thump when the sound reaches the top of the stair.
Tonight is a bad one; your alone, working late on an expense report that needs to be done by tomorrow morning, and you swear you can hear every struggling footstep above you. You try to ignore it, but it?s impossible, so you just settle for typing while repeatedly glancing over your shoulder. You remind yourself that you?re perfectly safe, the ghost has never harmed anyone.
Tonight, however, something is different; the noise reaches the top of the stairs, and you wait expectantly for that final thump, but it never comes. The seconds stretch on to minutes, and finally, your heart in your throat, you here the loud, terrible creak of someone coming down the stairs.
***
The easiest way to live forever is to trick death into overlooking you. Break into a morgue, and steal a dead man's eye. Take it home, and bring it into the bathroom. Turn out the light so that your double in the mirror can't see what you're up to, and then quickly, before you chicken out, pluck out your own eye and put the dead man's eye into the socket. Leave your eye facing the mirror, to trap your double, and leave.
The most remarkable thing you'll notice is that you can see out of your new eye, but after a few days, you'll start to see things from the land of the living and the lands of the dead. At first it will only be flickers - something vast and ancient, with a jaw like a cavern, drooling in a corner, but over time the nightmare visions will become a constant. You can wear out a succession of dead man's eyes... but an eye plucked from a living man might serve you better, might last a little longer. It's more attuned to life and light.
Eventually the eye you left to keep your mirror-self distracted will rot away, and you'll have to avoid mirrors lest your dark twin catch up, and then give Death your location. If your reflection finds you, bind him again - you still have one real eye, after all. Flee somewhere far away - isolated enough that your mirror-self won't think to look for you, but populated enough to continue your grisly harvesting. A time will come when you've changed so much that your reflection won't even recognize you, and then you can rest...
... but not for too long. You'll need to tear out a fresh pair of eyes soon, after all.
***
When I was about nine or ten, I woke up late at night. Just over the top of the footboard of the bed, I could see that my old record player/radio was turned off. Not too unusual, considering I slept with the dial on a classical station and sometimes my parents would turn it off if they could hear it in their room across the hall. The room should have been quiet, but as my grogginess fell and my senses returned, I heard what had woken me up. A faint growling sounded from the foot of my bed, out of sight past the footboard. An almost painful, chilling feeling of dread and fear crept up from my toes, which I was too afraid to pull more closely to myself and away from the footboard for fear of making noise and provoking whatever was down there. The growling grew in volume, but it remained low, the sound barely reverberating in that small room. I couldn't identify it. Not animal.. not human.. just odd and blood-curdling. If you listen to someone over the phone, you can hear the smile in their voices, something about the emanation of sound waves. I could hear a malicious grin in this growl.
Risking making noise but being a child and believing in the power of hiding beneath a blanket, I pulled my comforter over my head. Heart hammering in my ears and all blood gone from my face, I continued to listen to it and shut my eyes fiercely, trying to wish whatever it was away.
Finally, I mustered some balls from somewhere and pushed the blanket from my face, opening my eyes and listening for a reaction to the whisper of moving cloth.
The growling stopped.
I wanted to scream, cry, run, do something, but there was nothing to be done.
I sat up slowly and edged toward the footboard, searching the opposite side of it as more of what was hidden was revealed, looking for the source of the now-silent growl.
Before even half of what was hidden by the footboard had come into view, a figure jumped up and grinned at me. It jumped up so quickly, I was frozen in place. The grin was eerie, too big for the face. The face of my father, though not.. It was too thin somehow, not right. The body structure was off, but all I could make of it was the familiarity of the features, clothing, and laughter of my father. It giggled.. somehow like my father and somehow not.. at me and turned to bolt out my room. As I watched it, it turned down the part of my hall where my parents room was.
I stayed in my frozen place for what felt like hours but may have only been a few minutes, heart hammering, barely breathing, too shocked to do anything, to have any conscious or comprehensive thought.
Slowly, I tiptoed to my parents' room, thinking my dad was playing some sort of prank. As I got closer, I heard the sound of my dad snoring. No way he had gotten to sleep and into bed that quickly. Against my better judgement, I knocked, and my dad came to the door with the unmistakable look of groggy sleep about him. There is no faking the look of someone who has truly just woken up from deep sleep. Shocked and confused, I couldn't speak for a moment. He asked me what was wrong, and I asked if he had been in my room. He said no, clearly puzzled, and told me to go back to bed, that it was all a nightmare.
Figuring he was right but still barely able to shake the terror and adrenaline from my bones, I went back to my room.
At the foot of my bed, the sheet I had kicked off earlier in the night was bundled and flattened in the middle, much as thought something had been sleeping there. With trembling fingers, I found that the flattened part of the cloth still had the remnants of warmth to it.
We did not have pets at that time.
I did not sleep that night or much for the weeks following.
***
You know when you're on the computer with headphones on, back to the door, but you can still feel the air change when someone walks in?
You know when you suddenly wake at night for what appears to be no real reason, before going back to sleep?
Same principle.
***
You set your computer camera to take a picture every few minutes. Then, you leave for the day. When you check the pictures later on, you find large, black, blurry objects in every 10 images.
***
Don't make any sudden movements. It wasn't a figment of your imagination.
***
You'd be surprised to learn how few actual people there really are in the world.
***
If everyone knew what Mount Rushmore REALLY was, they wouldn't have made it a national monument. You probably couldn't even look at it without vomiting.
Whenever you chat with friends on the computer, they tell you they see someone walk past behind you in your webcam, even if you always believed you were alone in the room. One day, you decided to leave the cam on, and recording and left for work. You get home, play back the video and see the room. There's no one there. But when you go online, and check on your friends, they tell you that they received instant messages from you telling them, "He thinks he'll catch me, but I'm smarter..."
***
A man was sleeping peacefully one night, when all of a sudden he awoke to a loud crash outside. Simply ignoring the sound, he went back to sleep.
An hour passes and the man continues to sleep. The man then awakens to the sound of scratching on his wall. He procedes to investigate the noise. As soon as the man had taken one step out of his bed he heard something crawl up the wall and onto the ceiling.
Frightened, the man quickly jumped back into bed. Fifteen minutes pass without a sound. Assuming he was just tired, the man tried to fall back asleep. The man turned over in his bed to get comfortable. As he did this he was faced with a pair of snarling jaws.
The man screamed but was quickly silenced...
***
If you ever are in an area of absolute quiet, still your breathing and move not a muscle. After a few seconds, you will notice that the silence has a sort of "sound" of its own, a kind of empty ringing tone. This is nothing unique, everyone will hear this, given the proper setting. An informed person will tell you that your brain is trying to interpret the lack of stimuli to your hearing and so creates a bit of a filler sound. Actually, there is never, ever, total quiet anywhere on Earth. This sound actually covers something very important. For a persistent individual, one can discern what is under this pitch. The next time you are in such a situation, shout at the top of your lungs for about half a minute, then become completely silent all at once. It will be different for everyone. Some will hear nothing different for dozens of tries. Others might catch a snatch of soft murmuring. A special few might clearly make out what they hear on the first attempt. What you will hear is a voice that relays an account of events about to happen in the immediate future. It's like a sportscaster relaying the events occurring 10 seconds later. Such an ability would doubtlessly be invaluable, no?
You will be able react to any immediate danger, relate to people around you with greater ease. No one would ever surprise you. As time goes on, you will be able to make out this voice under increasingly noisy circumstances, to the point that it can be heard at any time by just concentrating. Now, of course you are wondering what sort of horrible catch there is for this. Perhaps the tone of the voice is so horrible that it will drive you mad, or maybe the voice will only predict your death over and over again. Of course this isn't the case, though, its a normal voice, your ears receive it no matter what, its simply a matter of noticing. But there is a danger. For you see, there's no such thing as a voice lacking a body. And just like you will notice new sounds, so shall you notice new sights. More importantly, you will be noticed.
***
It might happen one morning that you wake up home alone. This could be normal depending on your situation, but this morning will be different. While your environment will all seem exactly the same, you?ll notice that everything is quieter than normal. If you go outside, you will notice a distinct lack of anything like birds, insects? or people. As far as you travel, you will not encounter another sentient human being. The entire world will be intact, but empty except for yourself.
There are currently over 100,000 missing persons cases in the United States. Some are just normal cases of murder or kidnappings, but in others, the disappearance cannot be explained and no remains of the person are ever located.
***
A teenage girl, popular, rich, and happy, was walking through a store with her mom and saw a beautiful porcelain doll, which would look great with her collection. She demanded that her mother buy it for her. He mother agreed, and got it for her.
As soon as the girl returned home, she unpacked the doll and set it on a stand above her bed. She then left her room and went out with her friends. When she got home, it was late and she was tired. She went to her room, put on her pajama's and tucked herself into bed.
When she woke up the next morning, she saw a note attached to her lamp beside her bed. It was from her mother, telling her they'd be out of town until next Sunday. She yawned and noticed that her cheek was sore, but she didn't pay much attention to it. She got dressed and went to school.
This went on for a few days until she woke up and her cheek was extremely sore. She decided she'd check it out in a minute or two, then went about her room, picking out what she would wear. She finally decided and walked over to her full body mirror and noticed a large, ugly lump on her cheek.
Figuring it was a pimple, she squeezed it... and felt something moving. All of the sudden, spiders began pulling themselves out of the lump. She screamed, but since there was no one home in her huge house, nobody heard her. She tore at the spiders but there were millions... and she died of the poison in their bites.
Apparently... there was a nest of spiders in the porcelain doll she'd gotten
***
A divorced woman was walking her young girl down the hallway. It was the day that the father could take the girl home. The woman was torn all to pieces about this, and the young girl noticed. The woman and her child arrived at the elevator and when the doors opened, stepped in.
Finally they had reached the floor that the father worked. When the doors opened guess who was standing their, the father. Without saying a word the father took hold of the young girls hand and started to walk away. Suddenly the woman grabbed the girls other hand and tried to pull her back in the elevator.
Unfortunately, the door closed on the girl as her head was jerked into the elevator. The elevator started going down and half of the young girls body was going with it because her mother wouldn't let go and her father wouldn't either, who was still on the second floor.
The young girl was ripped in half when the elevator reached the ground floor.
***
Once, when my father was a young man, he was driving home late one night from work. It was along a New Jersey stretch of road. Passing by a bridge, he glanced over, and saw what appeared to be an old man, dressed in clothing that would have been in the height of fashion in the 1800s, walking along the side of the road.
He brushed it off, thinking he was imagining things. He was driving past a second bridge, and saw the old man again. He was about to drive past the third bridge, when he looked over again, expecting to see the old man outside, on the road.
He was sitting next to him, in the passenger seat.
***
You're sitting at the computer, browsing some of your favorite sites, when you notice a link that seems... out of place. It reads, Whatever you do...
Before you know it, you're dragging the mouse over to the link and clicking on it. The link brings you to a page with a black background with three innocent words written in white text: Don't turn around!
It's barely visible, but in the background of the page you notice an unsettling thing just standing there, staring down.
"Cute," you think to yourself as you turn off the monitor.
Then you realize that thing wasn't a picture. It was a reflection.
***
You're in bed, feeling chilled despite being under the covers. You hear something tap against glass. You look out your window from your pillow, but see nothing. You try to sleep, but are bothered by the sound of something scratching against glass. You look at your window, and see nothing. You're really unnerved now, and you hear the scratching noise again, this time a high pitched screech of something against glass. You hide yourself under your covers, trying to ignore it.
You wake up in the morning, feeling mostly refreshed. You almost forget about the strange noise last night. You look at your window with daylight now, and see nothing unusual.
But in the mirror in your room, the word "Hello" is scratched into the surface.
***
You try to sleep, but the noises keep you awake. It's like something's scratching on wood. And Growling. You tell yourself it's only the wind, and only the trees outside, but the sound goes on. And on. And on.
Finally, you just can't take it. You stand up, turning the lights on. The sound is coming from your front door. You walk into the living room on unsteady legs, and the growling gets louder, the scraping more pronounced, more... vicious. With shaking hands, you reach for the telephone... and the noises stopped. Like they never were there.
For what feels like hours, you stand there with the phone in your hand, waiting for the sounds to begin again. Thy never do. Finally, heart in your throat, unable to stop yourself, you walk to the door. You open it... on the night air.
Nothing. You study the door. It should be almost clawed to pieces, you could have swore you heard the wood start to give. But it's unmarked. You shake your head. Just your imagination. Then you close the door.
The claw marks are on the inside.
***
You come home from work, dead tired. You can barely muster the energy to plod up
the stairs to your bedroom, and leaving the light off, you begin to undress for
bed in the dim light filtering in through the window.
As you pull off your undershirt, you freeze. Your vision was only obscured for a
moment by your shirt, and the gloom makes it hard to see. But you could swear the
furniture in your bedroom has all been moved.
***
You take down a big buck with a beautiful kill shot, and climb down your blind to collect and dress it. When you reach the corpse, it's already been gutted and gnawed into unrecognizability. You only lost sight of it for 30 secs top, and heard nothing.
***
You and your wife have a healthy child. He's a little small, as infants go, and with a unusually oblong skull, but the doctor's assure you that that it is due to pressure from the birth canal and will correct in a couple weeks.
Your wife breast feeds the baby, but he just can't seem to put on weight. Finally she starts sleeping in his bedroom, by the crib, just so that she can be available when he wakes hungry in the night.
This goes on for several weeks, your wife sleeping in the bedroom, tending to your child, before you think anything of it. It's not until you are doing the laundry that something seems odd.
Her nursing bra has blood stains.
You barge into the child's bedroom and before she can cover herself, you see your black-eyed infant, clinging to his mother's skin, gnawing away at the scabbed remains of her breasts.
***
The old closet wasn't remodeled with the rest of the house. It's bare wood and insulation, so no one's had reason to go inside in years. You even set your computer up right in front of the door, figuring there wasn't any reason to go inside.
One night, while you're reading some forum or blog, something pounds on the door three times...from the inside. From where the door buckles, the blows come at about head height.
You don't open the door. You don't even jump. You just look, then go back to the computer. It happens again on other nights, and for some reason, you treat it like nothing special. Every time, you spend the whole day after, scared shitless at exactly why you acted like this was normal.
***
You work late in the morgue, performing the usual autopsy procedure. Checking organ weights, blood levels, etc. You write the numbers on the chart. The body has been dead for awhile, so you are happy to be called away by the telephone. When you get back, the chart has been moved from where you put it down. The weight for the heart has been corrected.
***
(This was awesome for me)
You're reading freaky stories posted by weirdos on an internet forum. As you click 'next' to view the coming page, you realize all the posts now have the 'you's in it substituted with your name. In fact, David realizes they seem to describe David's house and surroundings quite accurately. This last story has David reading scary tales on his PC when...
***
The scariest thing that ever happened to me happened when I was 8 and had just convinced my parents to make give my brother his own room. Now, the two important things to understand before I tell this story are :
1)I was afraid of the dark, so I kept the hall light on all night and my door open
2)I could see the stairs that led to the main floor very clearly from my bed when the door was open.
Now, as I was saying, I had just gotten my brother to sleep in a different room for the first time ever, so I was a little scared. I had just woken up from a bad sleep and was a little groggy, so I sat up and started counting (a trick of my dad's to fall back asleep). I look out the door and see my mom going downstairs. Being 8, I decide to tell her I can't sleep, so I call her. She doesn't answer and goes right down the stairs, so I follow her. She goes around the corner at the bottom of the stairs (still not answering me) and, still following, I look. She isn't there. All the lights downstairs are off. The whole main floor is, presumably, empty. So I run to my parent's room to ask my dad what is going on, and there is my mum, sleeping. I woke her up to ask why she went downstairs and she had no idea what I was talking about.
I went back to my room, very scared and trying to fall back asleep, so I start counting. I look out the door again, and see my mum coming back up the stairs, then she looks at me. I just closed my eyes and couldn't open them for the rest of the night. It is still the most unsettling thing I have ever gone through. I can't even write it without getting chills.
***
In Finland there is an old but still inhabited yellow apartment, situated in a small city near an important railroad. Almost all of the people living there are over 70 years old and in fact it seems that younger people simply won't stay there for longer than a year.
If you live there you will soon notice several unusual things. In the basement the text "TURN ON THE LIGHT. TURN OFF THE LIGHT WHEN YOU LEAVE" is written next to every light switch. It's unusual to remind somebody of something so obvious, but here it is of critical importance.
People who forget something in the basement never return to pick it up. If you offer to go and retrieve it for them they will stop you from doing so.
There is one door there, between some storage doors that has no numbers on it. Instead the door has a worn-out nameplate on it. The people in the flat will tell you to leave that door alone. It is said that people who have peeked in the keyhole have seen very unsettling things.
The wires and pipes in the basement look amazingly old, yet still the house has perfectly functioning water, electricity and phone lines.
The laundry room, which is in the basement, must be reserved if you want to use it. If you go there without reserving a time first you will at first get weird looks and some scolding. Then people will more ominously and angrily warn you.
These things may seem minor but those, usually the young ones, who have got too curious or failed to follow the rules have ended up either dead, crippled or insane. Usually people say that these incidents were the result of drug use or alcoholism, but some of the freak accidents cannot be explained by anything.
How do I know this? I used to go and help my grandmother who lived in that appartment and I have seen several times how ambulance has dragged away young people who have missed an arm, sometimes some other parts also. The worst case was when I found a corpse that looked like an explosion victim in the laundry room. His guts were spattered all around the room and his left arm was sitting on top of the washing machine.
Before her death my grandmother told that she knows what's behind these incidents. After the 2nd world war there was a shortage of apartments and one war veteran who had lost his left arm was given a rudimentary room in the basement for no cost if he would help people to do laundry and help the janitor. He did, but eventually someone insulted him in one way or another. The veteran killed that youngster and himself. Ever since his spirit has been there, harshly punishing those who fail to follow the rules of his home. After telling this she told me that I should never ever return to the apartment as I knew too much. As I left the apartment for the last time I could see the figure of an old, old man missing his left arm staring at me, reflected on the large glass panel on the door to the stairway...
***
It's strange, the tricks your eyes play on you. Some time ago when coming home late you saw an old homeless man hunched up beside the bank. Seconds later you realize, silly you, it's just one of those big electrical boxes.
Even after realizing it, though, every time you come home late and pass by the bank, you think you see that homeless man instead.
Then one day, you just see the electrical box, and wonder what happened to the man.
***
Your office building was converted from a townhouse sometime last decade; it?s has a fair bit of colonial charm, and it?s very own ghost. Betty One-and-a-Half they call her; she lived in the early days of the Cold War, and it?s said she heard angels singing to her all the time, and would sometimes dance to their tune. The doctors concluded she was quite mad, but being of wealthy family, they decided not to perform any drastic surgery on her, instead allowing the parents to care for her as best they could. Betty, if that was her real name, never married and spent most of her life on the uppermost floor of the family townhouse, cared for by hired nurses.
Time and circumstance, however, brought this tale to a tragic end; ill-luck and poor planning caused the family?s wealth to wither, and they began to secretly resent the cost of tending to Betty. Her siblings grew increasingly rude, and would even torment her with harsh words, which Betty, having never been exposed to before, took to heart. The poor lady, now well-into spinsterhood, but still a child at heart, despaired for her parents and siblings, thinking that if she were gone, all their troubles would be over.
The story doesn?t tell where Betty found the axe, or how she found the will to swing it upward into her own face, but the tale is very clear that the first blow didn?t kill her, though it sunk deep into her skull. Prying the hatchet loose, her strength already failing, she managed a second blow, one that did less damage, but nonetheless lodged the weapon into her head. It?s said that Betty, in the thrall of death, tormented by the screams of her angels and insane with pain and regret, walked on failing feet towards the stairwell leading to the downstairs rooms where her family sat, oblivious to her self-destructive act. The story goes that she never made it to those steps, that she fell forwards mere feet away, hand outstretched towards the banister, hatchet still hanging from her skull.
You work on the third floor of the converted townhouse, just below the top floor, which is mostly used for storage. Your co-workers have told you about how they hear Betty One-and-a-Half shuffling down the hallway above your office late at night, and you believe them, you?ve heard it too when working late. On some nights it?s worse then others; the dragging is sometimes accompanied by a light sobbing, always ending with a loud thump when the sound reaches the top of the stair.
Tonight is a bad one; your alone, working late on an expense report that needs to be done by tomorrow morning, and you swear you can hear every struggling footstep above you. You try to ignore it, but it?s impossible, so you just settle for typing while repeatedly glancing over your shoulder. You remind yourself that you?re perfectly safe, the ghost has never harmed anyone.
Tonight, however, something is different; the noise reaches the top of the stairs, and you wait expectantly for that final thump, but it never comes. The seconds stretch on to minutes, and finally, your heart in your throat, you here the loud, terrible creak of someone coming down the stairs.
***
The easiest way to live forever is to trick death into overlooking you. Break into a morgue, and steal a dead man's eye. Take it home, and bring it into the bathroom. Turn out the light so that your double in the mirror can't see what you're up to, and then quickly, before you chicken out, pluck out your own eye and put the dead man's eye into the socket. Leave your eye facing the mirror, to trap your double, and leave.
The most remarkable thing you'll notice is that you can see out of your new eye, but after a few days, you'll start to see things from the land of the living and the lands of the dead. At first it will only be flickers - something vast and ancient, with a jaw like a cavern, drooling in a corner, but over time the nightmare visions will become a constant. You can wear out a succession of dead man's eyes... but an eye plucked from a living man might serve you better, might last a little longer. It's more attuned to life and light.
Eventually the eye you left to keep your mirror-self distracted will rot away, and you'll have to avoid mirrors lest your dark twin catch up, and then give Death your location. If your reflection finds you, bind him again - you still have one real eye, after all. Flee somewhere far away - isolated enough that your mirror-self won't think to look for you, but populated enough to continue your grisly harvesting. A time will come when you've changed so much that your reflection won't even recognize you, and then you can rest...
... but not for too long. You'll need to tear out a fresh pair of eyes soon, after all.
***
When I was about nine or ten, I woke up late at night. Just over the top of the footboard of the bed, I could see that my old record player/radio was turned off. Not too unusual, considering I slept with the dial on a classical station and sometimes my parents would turn it off if they could hear it in their room across the hall. The room should have been quiet, but as my grogginess fell and my senses returned, I heard what had woken me up. A faint growling sounded from the foot of my bed, out of sight past the footboard. An almost painful, chilling feeling of dread and fear crept up from my toes, which I was too afraid to pull more closely to myself and away from the footboard for fear of making noise and provoking whatever was down there. The growling grew in volume, but it remained low, the sound barely reverberating in that small room. I couldn't identify it. Not animal.. not human.. just odd and blood-curdling. If you listen to someone over the phone, you can hear the smile in their voices, something about the emanation of sound waves. I could hear a malicious grin in this growl.
Risking making noise but being a child and believing in the power of hiding beneath a blanket, I pulled my comforter over my head. Heart hammering in my ears and all blood gone from my face, I continued to listen to it and shut my eyes fiercely, trying to wish whatever it was away.
Finally, I mustered some balls from somewhere and pushed the blanket from my face, opening my eyes and listening for a reaction to the whisper of moving cloth.
The growling stopped.
I wanted to scream, cry, run, do something, but there was nothing to be done.
I sat up slowly and edged toward the footboard, searching the opposite side of it as more of what was hidden was revealed, looking for the source of the now-silent growl.
Before even half of what was hidden by the footboard had come into view, a figure jumped up and grinned at me. It jumped up so quickly, I was frozen in place. The grin was eerie, too big for the face. The face of my father, though not.. It was too thin somehow, not right. The body structure was off, but all I could make of it was the familiarity of the features, clothing, and laughter of my father. It giggled.. somehow like my father and somehow not.. at me and turned to bolt out my room. As I watched it, it turned down the part of my hall where my parents room was.
I stayed in my frozen place for what felt like hours but may have only been a few minutes, heart hammering, barely breathing, too shocked to do anything, to have any conscious or comprehensive thought.
Slowly, I tiptoed to my parents' room, thinking my dad was playing some sort of prank. As I got closer, I heard the sound of my dad snoring. No way he had gotten to sleep and into bed that quickly. Against my better judgement, I knocked, and my dad came to the door with the unmistakable look of groggy sleep about him. There is no faking the look of someone who has truly just woken up from deep sleep. Shocked and confused, I couldn't speak for a moment. He asked me what was wrong, and I asked if he had been in my room. He said no, clearly puzzled, and told me to go back to bed, that it was all a nightmare.
Figuring he was right but still barely able to shake the terror and adrenaline from my bones, I went back to my room.
At the foot of my bed, the sheet I had kicked off earlier in the night was bundled and flattened in the middle, much as thought something had been sleeping there. With trembling fingers, I found that the flattened part of the cloth still had the remnants of warmth to it.
We did not have pets at that time.
I did not sleep that night or much for the weeks following.
***
You know when you're on the computer with headphones on, back to the door, but you can still feel the air change when someone walks in?
You know when you suddenly wake at night for what appears to be no real reason, before going back to sleep?
Same principle.
***
You set your computer camera to take a picture every few minutes. Then, you leave for the day. When you check the pictures later on, you find large, black, blurry objects in every 10 images.
***
Don't make any sudden movements. It wasn't a figment of your imagination.
***
You'd be surprised to learn how few actual people there really are in the world.
***
If everyone knew what Mount Rushmore REALLY was, they wouldn't have made it a national monument. You probably couldn't even look at it without vomiting.
Let's get to page 21, already. This page is getting harder and harder to load with all the text.
2006. Leavenworth, Kansas.
When I was fourteen, my mother and father were divorced, and I went to live with my mother and a man she supposedly fell in love with several years ago. We searched for a house for all three of us to live in, and eventually found the perfect house. A few months later, after finding out that my dad had Cancer, my mom went, engaged to this man living with us, to the very hospital and stayED with my father for about a week, leaving me to tend to myself as I remained in the basement, wasting my time on the computer. It was late, around midnight if I recall correctly, and the man living with us went off to bed, turning off every light in the house, except for the computer room in the basement. During this time we had one dog and one cat. I can't remember exactly where the dog was, but the cat was downstairs with me, doing what cats do, I guess. While typing away on the computer, it occurred to me, after several minutes had passed, my cat had been staring at the door, which was left wide open, for a long time. Her ears appeared to be pinned against the back of her head and I finally noticed her faint growling. Thinking that it was the dog, I turned around and called for her, only then to notice something that took me completely by surprise. The door that leads up to the second floor was left wide open. Infront of it, taking the size of a three or four year old, was this ominous being, made of shadow. As chills ran down my spine and fear completely took over my body, I watched this unearthly 'thing' with what little time I had, I absorbed any features possible, noting that it had small, beady eyes that were yellow, and this 'thing' had black tendrils on top of it's head, and on the sides of it's body, which didn't exactly have a 'shape'. Whatever this thing was, it reacted quickly and hid by leaping over to the stairs, making it partially visable to my view. Then, I noticed that it leaned over and peeked through the wall that hid it, quickly pulling away as it knew I was still watching. To this very day I don't know how, but I managed to muster up enough courage and quickly ran to the computer room's door, slamming and locking it. An hour later, I ran through the whole house, turning on every light possible, except for my mom's bedroom, and I went to bed with the light on. I didn't bother looking for the dog, and I never told the man about this strange occurrence. I just went into my room and crawled into bed. Jesus Christ. I don't know how I fell asleep. But I did.
Seriously, whatever the Hell that thing was, it was watching me. I didn't think that I'd get ever get over it. But I guess I calmed down after a while? A week later, after staying the night at my brothers house, I was bored and decided to look this thing up. Oddly enough, what I saw that night matched the description of what most people call a 'Shadow Being'. That scared the living Hell out of me, and I knew, without a doubt, that it was not my imagination that created this thing. Ever since, I hated that house. That perfect house was must come to the American Grill diner located in Cricket at no longer my home. I'm honestly surprised that I still stayed in that house, unfortunately, I didn't have much of a choice. But I never saw the Shadow Being again. Never. Still, I was afraid. Thankfully three months after, mom and I moved back in with my dad and the man living with us eventually moved away, and our so called dream home was up for sale. Probably still is. Everything's fine now, but I still have nightmares of the Shadow Being from time to time. Sometimes, it feels like it's watching me whenever I'm alone. I was never really afraid of the dark until then. Now, I hate looking into the darkness.
The darkness could be looking back at me.
---
Somewhere in an underdeveloped portion of Asia, there was a lady who would wash up in a lake and swim there for hours. One day her tummy seems to be getting larger, and she realizes she's pregnant. It gets bigger and bigger, coming into what seems like the final months. 9 months pass and still, no labor. She passes out all of a sudden and is brought to a hospital in the city.
It turns out there was never any baby. Found inside her was a bunch of leeches, progressively multiplying themselves and forming an ecosystem inside of her.
---
Those used to be green!? the man said aloud, staring at the plants on the sill.
?I swear! They were green just yesterday!? he shouted to his wife, who was reading a book across the room.
He looked around. His eyes were unable to focus clearly for a moment, so he rubbed them. Looking around, he shouted again, ?The walls! They used to be blue! We painted them blue just last month! Why aren?t they blue?? He was unable to control himself anymore. His wife looked over at him, surprised to see him in such a fervent uproar.
?Honey! Relax! You?ve just had a long day!? she affirmed. He wouldn?t have any of it though. ?Don?t tell me what I?ve had or haven?t had!? he commanded as he stormed out of the room.
Figuring her husband had possibly been drinking, the woman tried to continue reading her book. But her concentration was continually broken by the yells of her husband.
?This used to be orange!? she could hear him yell in the other room. ?These used to be brown!? he yelled again. Several minutes passed, but finally he was silent. Content that her husband had calmed down, the woman continued reading.
However, moments later a loud crash could be heard in the kitchen. The woman sprang from her chair in surprise, and darted over to the kitchen to see what was the matter. As she entered the room, she let out an incredible scream. There lay her husband on the floor, drenched in blood, with his abdomen slit wide open. Holding his own bowels in his hands, he uttered one last breath, ??these used to be red!??
---
It?s about 9:35 at night. The show on your TV is silent, the volume turned down. Maybe you?re one of those people that has to have a static noise and picture, even when listening to or watching something else.
The living room light is on. Two of the five bulbs have burnt out. The one in the back seems the next to go, but you don?t think much about it as you stretch out in your chair.
Something begins gnawing at the back of your mind. It?s just a normal Monday night, the rain outside a steady drizzle that freezes as it hits the road. Something that makes you want to look out the large pannel window beside you, covered up by a Harley Davidson blanket to keep the warmth in the house.
You try and distract yourself, turning on your favorite band. Maybe it?s Collective Soul, or Rammstein, or anything. Something to take your mind off of it. It?s only 9:37 now, just a few minutes later, and you still have this urge to turn around and look out that window, shrouded by a black and orange blanket. You hear a slight tapping on the glass, like a fingertip trying to get your attention. You turn the music up louder, trying to drown it out. It becomes louder and more insistent now, faster and faster, still trying to draw your attention.
?It?s in my head, I?m just worked up, too little sleep. Last night was crazy.? You tell yourself. The rapping on the window ceases, and you begin to settle back in. It?s 9:41. You turn your attention back to the TV, commercials flooding your brain.
The tapping returns. A simple, sharp tap. Curiosity overwrites fear, and you lift up the blanket with your left hand, expecting to see a stray limb from a tree smacking the window from the wind outside, or maybe nothing at all.
A long, pale white tongue drags across the window, smacking back with another tap. Your heart stops as you look up, seeing two great, white staring eyes bulging from an elongated face, lacerated with boiling cuts and keloid scars, coated with burns, it?s face nearly as long as your window itself. It?s upside down, hanging from your ceiling. It?s mouth is lined with razor-sharp teeth, there may be thousands or millions of them. Several are rotten and pulsating, and it keeps staring at you. It?s cavernous mouth seems to be smiling. Like it knows something you don?t?
---
It?s a simple enough thing. It?s all a part of the body?s sleep processes. Sleep Paralysis, right? No big deal, really. Your body produces a chemical that paralyzes your body during R.E.M sleep to prevent you from hurting yourself by thrashing about during your dreams. No big deal.
Okay, so, you opened your eyes and you can?t move your body. It?s the chemicals. Oh, you can keep trying to wriggle those toes, but it?s not happening. Forget it. Just relax. It?ll go away. It?s fine. It?s normal.
Oh, now there?s something pressing on your chest, real hard, it?s making it hard to breath. It?s heavy, so very heavy, whatever?s on your chest. Chemicals. It?s all chemicals. Stop trying to scream, it won?t work. Your throat muscles are paralyzed too. You still can?t breath.
You are staring at a blank ceiling, you can?t stare anywhere else. Shadows flit across your vision, forming shapes you try not to think about. A clawed hand, a flash of jagged, shadowy teeth. All images from your subconscious. A face forming above yours, leering through black void eyes. You think you
hear sibilant whispering. Angry hissing, like a snake that?s been disturbed.
Suddenly, a sharp white light briefly flares in the room as a car pulls down the street, dispelling the shadows. The weight is gone. You can breath, your hands clench sheets.
You feel an eternity has passed by but it was all the work of a moment. You wriggle, just to prove to yourself you can. You sit up, take a deep breath and then laugh a little at yourself. Sleep Paralysis. Stupid.
You turn to shake your spouse awake, eager to share your experience. You feel paralyzed again, but it has nothing to do with Sleep Paralysis. You stare at the blood, the jagged wound in her throat, her wide, staring eyes, mouth opened in soundless scream.
You survived your Old Hag Syndrome.
She didn?t.
---
You?ve been dating your girlfriend almost two years now. You often stay late over the summer and on weekends and arrive home long after the rest of your family go to sleep.
Every night you drive the deserted rural roads back home from a pleasant evening at her house you become overwhelmed by fears that you will arrive home to find your family dead in their beds. Each night you peek into your sister?s room and see she?s fine and hear the reassuring rumble of your father?s snore as you pass your parents door.
You chuckle at your silly worries and drift off to sleep. Finally one morning you decide to tell your mother about your late night fears amidst some jovial conversation for a nice laugh. As you tell her a concerned look comes over her face. She sweeps the hair away from her face as she says, ?Oh honey, you know we were all shot almost two years ago.?
You scream as you see the gaping bullet hole in her forehead.
---
In 1964, an otherwise ordinary man was committed to a sanitarium after assaulting a famous actor in a restaurant in Los Angeles. The name of the man, as well as what he looked like, was forgotten with time, but his strange encounter was retold many times by the owner of the restaurant, to add a bit of local flavor to his location. On one such evening, I was fortunate enough to happen in while he was recounting the story to a group of tourists.
?He comes in, an? he just starts swingin? away at the actor ? busts open his nose, he does. There?s blood everywhere. I go an? pull the bastard off him. ?What the hell are you doin??? I ask him. He looks at me, his eyes wide, and he says, ?You?ve got to let me kill this man. He?s going to end the world. It isn?t going to happen now, or when he?s in charge, but it will all be his fault, you?ll see, if you don?t let me kill him.? He didn?t say much after that, because Casey came from out of the kitchen, knocked him out with the mop. We called the cops, they took a few statements, and left.? He looked around the group of tourists, admiring how he had captivated them. I was certainly impressed.
?So we offer the actor a free meal, but needless to say,? he pauses to set up the story?s punch-line, ?but of course, he never took it.? The tourists all laughed, and he left to check on their meal.
On his way past me, I stopped him. ?I stumbled in about halfway through your story, and I?m just a little curious. Who was the actor who got attacked??
?Well, ain?t it the damndest thing,? he said, scratching his head, ?It?s our new governor, Ronald Reagan. But hell,? he smiled, ?It isn?t like he?ll ever be president.?
---
Walking in graveyards shouldn't be scary. The things under the ground there are dead. They can't hurt you now.
It's the lively places, the carnivals and theaters, places where people gather and crowd and swirl together.
Those are the feeding grounds.
---
Have you ever felt that itch? The strange itch, as if insects were crawling on your skin. You reach down to scrath it, expecting a fly or an ant to be there? but nothing. No creepy-crawlies on your skin.
None ON your skin. But beneath the surface?
---
There once was a little boy and he was friends with this girl in kindergarten.
He saw that the girl had a green ribbon around her neck and asked her why.
She said only, "I'm not s'posed to tell." They remained friends through childhood,
all the way to high school, and the girl still wore that green ribbon around her neck.
The boy has since grown used to it, and stopped asking long ago. They decided to go
steady and were very happy for almost 2 years. Finally, on the anniversary of their
second year together, they decided to give themselves to each other. Undressing
each other lovingly, they spoke of how much they cared for one another. The boy
kissed his girl, and grasped the green ribbon, the last vestige of clothing she wore,
and swiftly untied it.
He was found hours later, still naked, sitting in the corner, her head in his arms.
---
You wake up to a strange scratching at your window. You sit up, and look blankly at your wall, which is in perfect order. You lean slightly to one side and tilt your head to hear the sound better. You realize it's just the tree's leaves scratching your window; after all it's a windy night.
You lay back down, and after about five minutes a tapping noise awakens you once more. You repeat what you just did, you lean over and tilt your head; it's definitely a tapping. For a minute you become paranoid, but you realize that after all it is winter, so a majority of the foliage has died and fallen off; it's just a bare branch hitting your window.
You're just about to lay back down, when you hear a hissing. Of course, it's just the wind blowing through the dead leaves, and the "hissing" is just the leaves rustling among one another.
You laugh to yourself, and lay back down.
But then, you jump straight out of bed in a cold sweat.
You don't have a tree outside your window.
---
You were out of town for the weekend. When you came back to your apartment, your mailbox was stuffed full. At least 30 letters. Letters with no return address, several of them felt soggy and heavy, as though they were recently wet, or perhaps contained a liquid. All of the letters have your name and address written on them, and many of them had your name scratched all over them in red in. They don?t smell nice, they smell like rotting meat and old garbage and you?re reluctant to take them back to your room, but curiosity gets the better of you. You manage to cart them all back to your room, you dump them in your kitchenette sink because you don?t want them smelling up the rest of the apartment.
You grab one that doesn?t seem damp and isn?t covered with writing, and open it up. There?s pictures inside. Pictures of people you don?t know, with their eyes torn out, teeth missing, unhinged jaws hanging open, throats ripped out. You?re horrified and yet you can?t help but wonder what?s in the rest of the letters. You open more, and more to discover increasingly gruesome photos of dead people. Piles of bodies with limps missing, splayed open corpses on operating tables with their vital organs removed, hanged bodies that have been gutted and bled dry. Some of the soggy letters had blood and other fluids in them.
The more letters you open, the more you notice that not all of the people are strangers. Some of them were people you see at work, others people you went to high school with. By the time you get to the last few letters, the pictures are of the mutilated bodies of your close friends and family members.
Eventually you reach the last letter. You don?t want to know what?s in it, but it?s not like you have a choice now. You peel the letter open, and it?s a picture of yourself. Not dead, eyes intact, no limbs missing. It?s a picture of you entering your apartment building earlier that day, shortly before you collected your disgusting letters.
As you hear a door elsewhere in your apartment open, you black out.
2006. Leavenworth, Kansas.
When I was fourteen, my mother and father were divorced, and I went to live with my mother and a man she supposedly fell in love with several years ago. We searched for a house for all three of us to live in, and eventually found the perfect house. A few months later, after finding out that my dad had Cancer, my mom went, engaged to this man living with us, to the very hospital and stayED with my father for about a week, leaving me to tend to myself as I remained in the basement, wasting my time on the computer. It was late, around midnight if I recall correctly, and the man living with us went off to bed, turning off every light in the house, except for the computer room in the basement. During this time we had one dog and one cat. I can't remember exactly where the dog was, but the cat was downstairs with me, doing what cats do, I guess. While typing away on the computer, it occurred to me, after several minutes had passed, my cat had been staring at the door, which was left wide open, for a long time. Her ears appeared to be pinned against the back of her head and I finally noticed her faint growling. Thinking that it was the dog, I turned around and called for her, only then to notice something that took me completely by surprise. The door that leads up to the second floor was left wide open. Infront of it, taking the size of a three or four year old, was this ominous being, made of shadow. As chills ran down my spine and fear completely took over my body, I watched this unearthly 'thing' with what little time I had, I absorbed any features possible, noting that it had small, beady eyes that were yellow, and this 'thing' had black tendrils on top of it's head, and on the sides of it's body, which didn't exactly have a 'shape'. Whatever this thing was, it reacted quickly and hid by leaping over to the stairs, making it partially visable to my view. Then, I noticed that it leaned over and peeked through the wall that hid it, quickly pulling away as it knew I was still watching. To this very day I don't know how, but I managed to muster up enough courage and quickly ran to the computer room's door, slamming and locking it. An hour later, I ran through the whole house, turning on every light possible, except for my mom's bedroom, and I went to bed with the light on. I didn't bother looking for the dog, and I never told the man about this strange occurrence. I just went into my room and crawled into bed. Jesus Christ. I don't know how I fell asleep. But I did.
Seriously, whatever the Hell that thing was, it was watching me. I didn't think that I'd get ever get over it. But I guess I calmed down after a while? A week later, after staying the night at my brothers house, I was bored and decided to look this thing up. Oddly enough, what I saw that night matched the description of what most people call a 'Shadow Being'. That scared the living Hell out of me, and I knew, without a doubt, that it was not my imagination that created this thing. Ever since, I hated that house. That perfect house was must come to the American Grill diner located in Cricket at no longer my home. I'm honestly surprised that I still stayed in that house, unfortunately, I didn't have much of a choice. But I never saw the Shadow Being again. Never. Still, I was afraid. Thankfully three months after, mom and I moved back in with my dad and the man living with us eventually moved away, and our so called dream home was up for sale. Probably still is. Everything's fine now, but I still have nightmares of the Shadow Being from time to time. Sometimes, it feels like it's watching me whenever I'm alone. I was never really afraid of the dark until then. Now, I hate looking into the darkness.
The darkness could be looking back at me.
---
Somewhere in an underdeveloped portion of Asia, there was a lady who would wash up in a lake and swim there for hours. One day her tummy seems to be getting larger, and she realizes she's pregnant. It gets bigger and bigger, coming into what seems like the final months. 9 months pass and still, no labor. She passes out all of a sudden and is brought to a hospital in the city.
It turns out there was never any baby. Found inside her was a bunch of leeches, progressively multiplying themselves and forming an ecosystem inside of her.
---
Those used to be green!? the man said aloud, staring at the plants on the sill.
?I swear! They were green just yesterday!? he shouted to his wife, who was reading a book across the room.
He looked around. His eyes were unable to focus clearly for a moment, so he rubbed them. Looking around, he shouted again, ?The walls! They used to be blue! We painted them blue just last month! Why aren?t they blue?? He was unable to control himself anymore. His wife looked over at him, surprised to see him in such a fervent uproar.
?Honey! Relax! You?ve just had a long day!? she affirmed. He wouldn?t have any of it though. ?Don?t tell me what I?ve had or haven?t had!? he commanded as he stormed out of the room.
Figuring her husband had possibly been drinking, the woman tried to continue reading her book. But her concentration was continually broken by the yells of her husband.
?This used to be orange!? she could hear him yell in the other room. ?These used to be brown!? he yelled again. Several minutes passed, but finally he was silent. Content that her husband had calmed down, the woman continued reading.
However, moments later a loud crash could be heard in the kitchen. The woman sprang from her chair in surprise, and darted over to the kitchen to see what was the matter. As she entered the room, she let out an incredible scream. There lay her husband on the floor, drenched in blood, with his abdomen slit wide open. Holding his own bowels in his hands, he uttered one last breath, ??these used to be red!??
---
It?s about 9:35 at night. The show on your TV is silent, the volume turned down. Maybe you?re one of those people that has to have a static noise and picture, even when listening to or watching something else.
The living room light is on. Two of the five bulbs have burnt out. The one in the back seems the next to go, but you don?t think much about it as you stretch out in your chair.
Something begins gnawing at the back of your mind. It?s just a normal Monday night, the rain outside a steady drizzle that freezes as it hits the road. Something that makes you want to look out the large pannel window beside you, covered up by a Harley Davidson blanket to keep the warmth in the house.
You try and distract yourself, turning on your favorite band. Maybe it?s Collective Soul, or Rammstein, or anything. Something to take your mind off of it. It?s only 9:37 now, just a few minutes later, and you still have this urge to turn around and look out that window, shrouded by a black and orange blanket. You hear a slight tapping on the glass, like a fingertip trying to get your attention. You turn the music up louder, trying to drown it out. It becomes louder and more insistent now, faster and faster, still trying to draw your attention.
?It?s in my head, I?m just worked up, too little sleep. Last night was crazy.? You tell yourself. The rapping on the window ceases, and you begin to settle back in. It?s 9:41. You turn your attention back to the TV, commercials flooding your brain.
The tapping returns. A simple, sharp tap. Curiosity overwrites fear, and you lift up the blanket with your left hand, expecting to see a stray limb from a tree smacking the window from the wind outside, or maybe nothing at all.
A long, pale white tongue drags across the window, smacking back with another tap. Your heart stops as you look up, seeing two great, white staring eyes bulging from an elongated face, lacerated with boiling cuts and keloid scars, coated with burns, it?s face nearly as long as your window itself. It?s upside down, hanging from your ceiling. It?s mouth is lined with razor-sharp teeth, there may be thousands or millions of them. Several are rotten and pulsating, and it keeps staring at you. It?s cavernous mouth seems to be smiling. Like it knows something you don?t?
---
It?s a simple enough thing. It?s all a part of the body?s sleep processes. Sleep Paralysis, right? No big deal, really. Your body produces a chemical that paralyzes your body during R.E.M sleep to prevent you from hurting yourself by thrashing about during your dreams. No big deal.
Okay, so, you opened your eyes and you can?t move your body. It?s the chemicals. Oh, you can keep trying to wriggle those toes, but it?s not happening. Forget it. Just relax. It?ll go away. It?s fine. It?s normal.
Oh, now there?s something pressing on your chest, real hard, it?s making it hard to breath. It?s heavy, so very heavy, whatever?s on your chest. Chemicals. It?s all chemicals. Stop trying to scream, it won?t work. Your throat muscles are paralyzed too. You still can?t breath.
You are staring at a blank ceiling, you can?t stare anywhere else. Shadows flit across your vision, forming shapes you try not to think about. A clawed hand, a flash of jagged, shadowy teeth. All images from your subconscious. A face forming above yours, leering through black void eyes. You think you
hear sibilant whispering. Angry hissing, like a snake that?s been disturbed.
Suddenly, a sharp white light briefly flares in the room as a car pulls down the street, dispelling the shadows. The weight is gone. You can breath, your hands clench sheets.
You feel an eternity has passed by but it was all the work of a moment. You wriggle, just to prove to yourself you can. You sit up, take a deep breath and then laugh a little at yourself. Sleep Paralysis. Stupid.
You turn to shake your spouse awake, eager to share your experience. You feel paralyzed again, but it has nothing to do with Sleep Paralysis. You stare at the blood, the jagged wound in her throat, her wide, staring eyes, mouth opened in soundless scream.
You survived your Old Hag Syndrome.
She didn?t.
---
You?ve been dating your girlfriend almost two years now. You often stay late over the summer and on weekends and arrive home long after the rest of your family go to sleep.
Every night you drive the deserted rural roads back home from a pleasant evening at her house you become overwhelmed by fears that you will arrive home to find your family dead in their beds. Each night you peek into your sister?s room and see she?s fine and hear the reassuring rumble of your father?s snore as you pass your parents door.
You chuckle at your silly worries and drift off to sleep. Finally one morning you decide to tell your mother about your late night fears amidst some jovial conversation for a nice laugh. As you tell her a concerned look comes over her face. She sweeps the hair away from her face as she says, ?Oh honey, you know we were all shot almost two years ago.?
You scream as you see the gaping bullet hole in her forehead.
---
In 1964, an otherwise ordinary man was committed to a sanitarium after assaulting a famous actor in a restaurant in Los Angeles. The name of the man, as well as what he looked like, was forgotten with time, but his strange encounter was retold many times by the owner of the restaurant, to add a bit of local flavor to his location. On one such evening, I was fortunate enough to happen in while he was recounting the story to a group of tourists.
?He comes in, an? he just starts swingin? away at the actor ? busts open his nose, he does. There?s blood everywhere. I go an? pull the bastard off him. ?What the hell are you doin??? I ask him. He looks at me, his eyes wide, and he says, ?You?ve got to let me kill this man. He?s going to end the world. It isn?t going to happen now, or when he?s in charge, but it will all be his fault, you?ll see, if you don?t let me kill him.? He didn?t say much after that, because Casey came from out of the kitchen, knocked him out with the mop. We called the cops, they took a few statements, and left.? He looked around the group of tourists, admiring how he had captivated them. I was certainly impressed.
?So we offer the actor a free meal, but needless to say,? he pauses to set up the story?s punch-line, ?but of course, he never took it.? The tourists all laughed, and he left to check on their meal.
On his way past me, I stopped him. ?I stumbled in about halfway through your story, and I?m just a little curious. Who was the actor who got attacked??
?Well, ain?t it the damndest thing,? he said, scratching his head, ?It?s our new governor, Ronald Reagan. But hell,? he smiled, ?It isn?t like he?ll ever be president.?
---
Walking in graveyards shouldn't be scary. The things under the ground there are dead. They can't hurt you now.
It's the lively places, the carnivals and theaters, places where people gather and crowd and swirl together.
Those are the feeding grounds.
---
Have you ever felt that itch? The strange itch, as if insects were crawling on your skin. You reach down to scrath it, expecting a fly or an ant to be there? but nothing. No creepy-crawlies on your skin.
None ON your skin. But beneath the surface?
---
There once was a little boy and he was friends with this girl in kindergarten.
He saw that the girl had a green ribbon around her neck and asked her why.
She said only, "I'm not s'posed to tell." They remained friends through childhood,
all the way to high school, and the girl still wore that green ribbon around her neck.
The boy has since grown used to it, and stopped asking long ago. They decided to go
steady and were very happy for almost 2 years. Finally, on the anniversary of their
second year together, they decided to give themselves to each other. Undressing
each other lovingly, they spoke of how much they cared for one another. The boy
kissed his girl, and grasped the green ribbon, the last vestige of clothing she wore,
and swiftly untied it.
He was found hours later, still naked, sitting in the corner, her head in his arms.
---
You wake up to a strange scratching at your window. You sit up, and look blankly at your wall, which is in perfect order. You lean slightly to one side and tilt your head to hear the sound better. You realize it's just the tree's leaves scratching your window; after all it's a windy night.
You lay back down, and after about five minutes a tapping noise awakens you once more. You repeat what you just did, you lean over and tilt your head; it's definitely a tapping. For a minute you become paranoid, but you realize that after all it is winter, so a majority of the foliage has died and fallen off; it's just a bare branch hitting your window.
You're just about to lay back down, when you hear a hissing. Of course, it's just the wind blowing through the dead leaves, and the "hissing" is just the leaves rustling among one another.
You laugh to yourself, and lay back down.
But then, you jump straight out of bed in a cold sweat.
You don't have a tree outside your window.
---
You were out of town for the weekend. When you came back to your apartment, your mailbox was stuffed full. At least 30 letters. Letters with no return address, several of them felt soggy and heavy, as though they were recently wet, or perhaps contained a liquid. All of the letters have your name and address written on them, and many of them had your name scratched all over them in red in. They don?t smell nice, they smell like rotting meat and old garbage and you?re reluctant to take them back to your room, but curiosity gets the better of you. You manage to cart them all back to your room, you dump them in your kitchenette sink because you don?t want them smelling up the rest of the apartment.
You grab one that doesn?t seem damp and isn?t covered with writing, and open it up. There?s pictures inside. Pictures of people you don?t know, with their eyes torn out, teeth missing, unhinged jaws hanging open, throats ripped out. You?re horrified and yet you can?t help but wonder what?s in the rest of the letters. You open more, and more to discover increasingly gruesome photos of dead people. Piles of bodies with limps missing, splayed open corpses on operating tables with their vital organs removed, hanged bodies that have been gutted and bled dry. Some of the soggy letters had blood and other fluids in them.
The more letters you open, the more you notice that not all of the people are strangers. Some of them were people you see at work, others people you went to high school with. By the time you get to the last few letters, the pictures are of the mutilated bodies of your close friends and family members.
Eventually you reach the last letter. You don?t want to know what?s in it, but it?s not like you have a choice now. You peel the letter open, and it?s a picture of yourself. Not dead, eyes intact, no limbs missing. It?s a picture of you entering your apartment building earlier that day, shortly before you collected your disgusting letters.
As you hear a door elsewhere in your apartment open, you black out.
Yeah, sorry. Forgot about that.Rhymenoceros said:
This is a story of my friend who has powerful sixth sense. At the time of the story she was living with her husband in the suburbs. One night she was waiting for her husband, who had gone drinking after work, at home. But it was getting late and she decided to go to bed. she dreamt that her husband's motorcycle crashed into a car and he died. She woke up and knew what had happened in the dream was true. "He's dead! He's dead!" She panicked. But soon after that she heard the familiar sound of motorcycle engine from outside. The front door opened and her husband's cheerful, drunken voice sounded from the porch. He started explaining why he had come home late. My friend, who had been crying, became a little cross, grudging for the nonchalant way her husband behaved. "You were really late. I thought you've died from an accident!" She said from her bed, raising her voice so that her husband could hear her.
"Oh dear! So you made your choice?" Her husband said lightly, sounding almost as if he was teasing. Then came a complete silence. Minutes later she got a phone call informing her of her husband's death.
Later she told me, "I think I threw away a chance God gave me."
***
I was standing by a crossroads waiting for the light to turn green. On the opposite side I saw a man standing just like myself, but his whole body was enveloped by some shadowy black mist. No one else around him seemed to notice it. "God, that looks real bad," I thought, and hiding my face behind the umbrella I innocently tried to walk past him, when he glided towards me and whispered, "You saw it, didn't you?" as we passed each other. I was terrified. Really.
***
One summer night I was working late in the office with my colleague. Suddenly my colleague said, "I can you hear some strange noise, can you?" "Really? I don't hear anything," I replied. "No, I can definitely hear something, " he said. "It's like a woman sobbing?"
I stopped typing and strained my ears to listen. I still couldn't hear anything except a distant rumble in the sky?. It was thunder. Thunder was something to be afraid of. If we had a blackout all the data we have put in so far would be lost, and in the worst case scenario our motherboard could get damaged as well. We were nowhere near the end of our assignment but we decided to quit there and then and go home.
My colleague was reluctant to go home alone but we were going different directions so there was nothing I could do. We said goodbye in front of the company's building and I took Meijo line from Sakae station (*). Today's work was, as usual, demanding.. As I sighed, I heard the patter of raindrops. "Damn! It's raining. I haven't got an umbrella with me." I clicked my tongue and tried to think which convenience store was the closest to Hibino station which I was getting off at.
The train came to Kaneyama. At night all trains on the line went to Aratamabashi so I had to get off there to change. I stepped onto the platform. Then it suddenly hit me. Rain? In the underground?
***
This happened to me when I was still in primary school and was babysitting my little brother while our parents were out. We were bored so we decided to play hide-and-seek. I became "it" and started looking for my brother. I entered my parent's bedroom and opened a wardrobe crammed full of clothes. I thrust my hand into it when immediately another hand reached out from inside and gripped mine. I tried to pull him out shouting, " come on! get out!" But he wouldn't come out no matter how hard I pulled. He was hidden behind all the clothes and didn't speak a word either, and I started wondering what was wrong with him. Just then a voice called me from behind, "what are you doing there?" It was my little brother standing in the door way. I panicked and shook myself free of the grip and we rushed out of the house together. Needless to say, I couldn't go inside again until my parents came home. What was that hand? Did it belong to a burglar, or???
***
I went outside to put rubbish out this morning.
At the front door I saw my neighbor who said "good morning," to me.
I told her "good morning," too.
It was only when I had gone back inside that I remembered that my neighbor had committed suicide a week ago.
***
This is a true story.
We were staying at a campsite inside a permanent tent. Each tent accommodated eight of us and there were seven tents in total, lined up in a row.
My tent was the seventh and it was positioned at the end of the row.
During one night I got out of the tent to go to bathroom.
When I came back and opened the entrance I looked inside and found no one was there. But I was sure everyone else was fast asleep.
I thought; ?what?? and went out again to make sure I was in the right place. But the sign on the tent said, ?No.8.?
What was I thinking, I?m in No.7! I thought to myself as I went back to the one standing next to it.
- Yes, of course I knew that ?No.8? didn?t exist but I was so scared I convinced myself it was a mistake and went to sleep.
By the next morning, the eighth tent had disappeared.
***
There was once a girl who had been diagnosed as having only three months to live.
When her friends came to visit her in hospital, the girl?s mother, hoping to make the best out of the occasion, got the idea of taking a picture of them together while the girl was still relatively well. So she took a picture with the sick girl in the middle sitting up on the bed and her two friends on either side of her.
Only a week later after the picture was taken the girl?s illness took a turn for the worse and within less than three months she passed away.
A funeral was held and the girl?s mother was just beginning to come to terms with her loss when she remembered about the picture she took in hospital. She went to a shop to have it developed, but when she had the pictures back she couldn't find that particular picture. When she asked the shop owner about it he just said, ?I?m sorry? I made a mess of it.? The mother however got suspicious and asked him again what became of the picture. She said it was the last picture of her daughter she took before the girl died and begged him to give it to her. ?I really think you shouldn't see it,? said the shop owner. ?You just stay calm, ma?am, OK?? He said before cautiously taking out the picture in question.
And there it was, the picture of the three girls - but one thing was different; the body of her daughter (who sat in the middle) looked as though it was mummified.
The mother was very upset but she took the picture home nevertheless, telling the shop owner that she wanted to have it purified by a shaman.
When she was at a shaman?s the mother asked her what implications the sinister picture had; and there again the mother was met with a wall of silence. But as before, the mother would not give up and begged the shaman to tell her the truth. The shaman in the end gave in to the mother's persistent entreaties and opened her mouth. She said;
?To my regret, your daughter has fallen into hell.?
***
A photographer went to a snowy mountain with his assistant, commisioned to take pictures for a magazine article.
They stayed at a log cabin, and a few days had passed when the assistant had an accident and injured himself.
At that point their work was still unfinished and they felt they could not go home unless they finished it first. So they decided to stay on in the mountain.
However the injury got worse and worse, until the assistant suddenly died from it a couple of days later.
But even so the photographer would not go home. He was very committed to his job and to leave the work unfinished was unimaginable to him. He decided to bury the assistant by the cabin and continued to work on his own.
The following morning when the photographer awoke, the assistant?s dead body was lying beside him.
?I?m sure I buried him?? He was deeply puzzled. He went and buried the body again before going off to take pictures.
But the same thing happened again the following morning, and the morning after that. On his final day he decided to set the camera to automatic mode and place it by his sleeping bag, so he could see what went on during the night. The next morning, the dead body was there beside him as he had expected. He buried it again and then climbed down the mountain.
When he got home he developed the pictures he had taken the previous night.
And there in the pictures he saw someone get up, go out of the cabin, carry the dead body back on the shoulder and lay it down beside his sleeping bag ? and that someone was no other than the photographer himself.
***
I don?t get this one. What?s the piggyback?
Once there was a family of four, the father, the mother, the son and the daughter. The father and the mother had grown cold to each other in recent years and were arguing all the time. In spite of that, the family planned to go on a holiday. But the day before the holiday began the couple had a fierce fallout again. The father this time got out of control and murdered the mother. The next morning the father left home for the holiday with the children as if nothing had happened. After some sight-seeing the three of them sat down to rest. Then the son looked quizzically at his father and asked; ?Daddy, why have you been carrying Mommy piggyback all morning??
***
This story has often been told in Asia for a long time, and it has had its variations in at least Indonesia and Japan. Here's what I heard in Indonesia, the story dates to the 1970s.
One evening, there was a lone jogger. He's just your ordinary guy, who chose to jog in the evening because the air was colder. Back then, some parts of the city don't have electric lights, especially those near small forests and parks. So he jogged carrying a flashlight. Then, the day gets darker, and he's somewhat lost in one of these lightless roads. Luckily, there seems to be a sidewalk food vendor in the distance. Feeling a bit hungry too, he decides to order a snack. In some stories it's a noodle vendor, while some say it's meatball soup (bakso) vendor. "Excuse me sir, can I order some noodle/ bakso?" the jogger asked.
"Allrighty, one noodle/ bakso coming up!" the vendor said. Now, due to the old oil lamp he's using, his face was obscured by the dark, you see.
"By the way, where's the direction to downtown?" the jogger asks.
"Oh, over by that way, over there" the vendor said, while making the snack. Well, the jogger waited on the side of the road, waiting for his order. Ah, the order's done, here comes the vendor, the jogger thought. To his horror, the vendor carried his order, but? he has no face.
"Here's your order, sir!"
Perfectly smooth, no cracks, no wrinkles, just plain smooth skin.
Of course the jogger freaked out and ran away as fast as he could. He ran and ran and ran until he met a guy standing near a streetlight, selling cigars. The jogger came from behind the guy, and relieved he found another human, tapped him on the shoulder.
"Thank god! Man, I saw a ghost back there!" the jogger said, panting.
The cigar guy nodded and said, "Does the ghost look like this?" while turning around, pointing to his face. Another smooth face. "And oh, you forgot your flashlight." at this point, the jogger had fainted.
When he woke up the next day, he found out that he's smack dab in the middle of a Chinese cemetary.
Oh... well that's not creepy.Rhymenoceros said:
Illness. This is the word that has plagued my life.
"His illness prevents? he has an illness? his illness is progressing? we can cure his illness? we can't cure his illness". Omens spewed forth from the mouths of so many white-clothed prophets and soothsayers. They are paraded around my bed on a daily basis; grim faced apparitions bedecked in the colour of angels but carrying the devil's tools. Hope and misfortune.
The ringmasters of this morbid circus stand behind the flowing line of white; their faces permanently blackened by the shadows of their creases. The daily baptism of tears never seems to wash them away. This is the image I have fixed in my mind of my paternal shadows because they rarely approach me, preferring distant love to nearby grief. When they do lean over me the light over their head creates a halo encompassing the forced smile and dying eyes. I'm not sure which is worse: the silence of shadows or the falseness of light.
In times of blessed solitude, free of the constant intrusion of cold metal and colder niceties, I survey the room. It is the only entertainment available to me. It is my earliest and, indeed, only memory. It is not very large, completely bare of furniture apart from my bed. The walls, oh the walls, are extravagantly dressed however. An assault of colour; a bombardment of images. Cards, photographs, flowers, paintings? All as colourful as possible. Individually they are pleasant enough but together the affect is overwhelming and extremely nauseating; one is put in mind of a masquerade. A hysterical and sinister masquerade where the masks are the most honest things present; for in reality the colour is just as mask. A lie to dispel the truth of my illness.
The only natural light in the room comes from a small, circular window. I often look up at it; cursing the fact I am too low to be able to gaze out at reality. Straining to bathe my senses in but the smallest shred of Outside. It is hopeless however: my body is atrophied and it is too high and too thick to provide anything but a shaft of light. An apology of sorts I suppose.
Usually I exist in a state of bright delirium; my mind thickened, weighing my thoughts down and my senses assaulted by the facade of my walls. The tightness of my blankets, the looming medical apparatus, the piercing, artificial light, the heaviness of my thoughts and that hideous display entombs me. I cannot think. I cannot talk. I cannot move. I am solely an observer to my own misfortune but to observe I must live. Vitality, no matter how dim and cracked, spurs my heart.
Recently there has been a more permanent face amongst the line of false prophets. It is a kindly one; creased with pitied happiness and framed with lustrous blond hair. The most glorious part of him however are his eyes, not pools of shadows like my parents or dead like the other doctors, but alive and radiant. The deepest blue reminds me of the sea I shall never experience, the blond the fields of wheat I shall never touch and the happiness the joy I've never witnessed. He is of the Outside. His presence comforts me and the shaft of light agrees; spilling approvingly around his body.
My memories are a series of episodes; brief flashes of illumination in darkest oblivion. What I can remember I remember vividly: the motherly embraces, the picture books she used to show me of the outside, the long, lazy winding smoke trails from my father's pipe as he read me stories. The pain. The fear. The tears. The shouting. Then worse: the numbness. The creeping, perfidious numbness that infected my limbs and then spread to my parents. The tears of love replaced by the tears of habit. The colours of life replaced by the colours of desperation. It is better not to remember.
The smiling face has been looking at me differently recently; the smile is less happy and more piteous. The eyes less radiant and more piercing. Less ocean and more drowning. Less wheat field and more bile. Less joy. More hysteria. The room is infecting him. I have caught the odd glances; the pained expressions. The dark resolutions forming slowly behind his gaze. My illness is his illness.
I suppose, in the time when I was in bed but not bed ridden, I have been outside. I have walked. I dream of it occasionally but it is a vague and poorly painted dream. I can hear the murmuring of a lot of people but it is distorted, their faces are blank? not blank but indistinct. I am surrounded by these people while I walk down an avenue lined with trees. The buildings are blurred but I catch glimpses of signs offering things I have no knowledge of. There is a creeping sense of unfamiliarity as it continues and things become increasingly alien to me: the people are more in focus but their features are abhorrent to me, the avenue is flowing together, the trees are larger and more verdant. The signs I can see no longer make any sense at all and there is a frightening element to their gaudy brightness and nonsensical language. I realise that it is not the place that does not belong but myself and this sickens me. I fall to the ground and the people offer hands to help but I cannot touch them. My head falls; I stare in to the blue sky (the only thing I recognise) and then I awake, staring at the window.
The smiles of the Outside man have become friendlier again but this strikes me as much worse; a resolution has been made but I am powerless to comprehend what it is. I am painfully aware that I can do nothing but wait.
The Outside man has replaced my other doctors: the shadows have taken a liking to him. He is around more and more. Leaning in, mumbling that it shall all be alright. I have nothing to fear. Hope is eternal. Death is kindness to the dead. I am alive however and try to tell him this with my eyes. The desperate stares seem to encourage him however and for my part I cannot stand to gaze in to the certainty of his.
The time has come. He is stroking my hair and whispering in to my ear.
"It will all be alright. I am here to help you. I love you," he announces in his kindly, fatherly tones whilst reaching in to his doctor's bag. He withdraws a small syringe filled with a clear liquid. I stare at it, then him.
"I am alive! Alive!" my eyes scream, desperately fighting the befuddlement of my heavy thoughts.
"That's right, I can cure your pain. Your misery. I have seen the desperation in your eyes, I understand what you want," he replies with a bittersweet smile. The more I fight the more leaden my mind becomes but I redouble my efforts; screaming at every part of me to move if only to save itself. My little finger twitches. It twitches and the pain returns. The pain long absent returns to remind me that I am alive. Elation swells in my breast and I determine to try once more. Again it twitches. Again there is pain. Again I am overjoyed. I return my gaze to him as if to scream triumphantly but he has not noticed. My hands are covered by my blankets. I twitch and twitch but am unable to disturb what is quickly becoming my tomb. He smiles at me once more before piercing the tube of my IV drip with the syringe needle.
As his thumb nervously hovers over the plunger I am aware of a faint tapping outside. My mother opens the door and walks in to the scene. I am saved. Her eyes grow wide as she gazes at the doctor, realisation slowly dawning. She screams and lunges at him, he falls over waving his hands and trying to explain.
"You sick bastard!", the first time I have heard my mother's voice in years, "he's my son! How could you? How could you!".
"He's sick and he's never going to get better. I am offering him the only peace he will ever have," he replies, the illness pouring from his mouth. Then, my mother faltered. Then stopped. Horror, blackest horror and betrayal, fills my mind with its bile. My mind is tarred shut. He stands and walks to the corner of the room, she follows and they murmur quietly. I strain to hear, desperate to know my fate but I can discern nothing but the occasional sorrowful glance back to me. When they have finished she approaches me, sitting on my bed she strokes my face and looks in to my eyes. I pour my heart, my soul? my very life in to my gaze. I look at her. She at me. Then, with a genuine expression of love, she turns to him and nods.
My life is forfeit. He returns to the syringe and pushes down. My delirium intensifies, my ears are filled with the murmuring of the people on that dream street. I scan the room from them, to the detestful walls and finally to the window. As I feel my vision fading I grasp at it mentally; my one solace. My mother and the doctor lean over, blocking it from view. I see the illness in their eyes.
---
My name is Gerald. I'm a truck driver. I work for the North American Transport Company (NATCO). I normally make runs up into southern canada, but this time was different. My boss had asked me to make a run up north, way north. It was further than I normally went, but the boss was offering me double overtime for this one run, saying it was for a really important client. Normally I would have put up more of a fight, as I liked to stick to my schedule, but I really needed the money.
The run was mostly uneventful, and went by rather quikly, as I seemed to be riding lighter than normal. The boss hadn't let me check the cargo, saying I didn't have time. Oh well, not really important to me anyway. After a good while on the road, it started to snow. Visibility was almost zero by the time I got to my destination. The stop was at a Bar & Grill aptly named the End of the Line. I went inside to find the owner. Inside I found a strange group of people, dressed funny, like from the olden days. Come to think of it, the place looked kind of old too. Well, it did take forever for new stuff to make it all the way up here, I figured. I went and talked to the barkeep, but he told me that the owner was out, and would be back shortly, and why not sit down for a bit while I waited. I figured it couldn't hurt anything, and I was getting kinda hungry for somethin' 'sides what I had brought along with me.
A tablet hanging on the wall behind the bar declared today's special to be 'The Best Damn Sandwich Ever' and a side of fries for $5. I decided to give it a shot, and told the barkeep to give me one. What he put out in front of me made me grimace. Before me was a sandwich, on plain white bread, filled with mustard, mayonaisse, ketchup, onions, tomatoes, pickles and a whole bunch of other condiments that seemed ready to burst out from between the slices, and all of it was centered around a thick slab of meat that defied indentification. I almost turned it down, but I had already payed, and years of living on truck stop fare had given me a cast iron stomach. I bit down into the soggy sandwich and nearly choked.
It was the best damn sandwich ever.
And the fries weren't half bad. I ate it like ravenous 'gator after a chicken, and the sandwich dissappeared far more quickly than I would of hoped. I asked the barkeep what had been in it, but he said it was a secret. I was a bit annoyed at first, but then I realized how silly that was. It was probably some kind of local animal I had just never tasted before. I decided that, since the proprietor had yet to return, that I would finally go check on the cargo. When I got to the truck however, I got very confused. Now I knew why I had seemed to be riding so light.
The trailer was empty.
At first I thought that mabye some local had pilfered my cargo while I was goofin' off, but there was no sign of it. I decided to call my boss and get to the bottom of this. When he picked up the phone, he seemed genuinely suprised to hear me, and kept dodging the question of what had become of the cargo. Finally I decided that I had had enough and hung up. I climbed in the cab of the truck and turned around, determined to get back to base as soon as I could. Let's just see that weasel squirm his way out of a conversation when we were face-to-face.
After about 15 minutes on the road, I came to a dead end. I had apparently missed the turn in the snow, so I turned around to check the way. After about a minute I saw the red neon sign of the End of the Line Bar & Grill. That was the last straw, I got on the phone to base, and after a few tries I managed to get through.
"What do you want now Gerald?" he asked on the other end.
"Dammit Jackson, you weasel! There was nothing in the trailer the whole way up here, meaning you wasted all my time for nothin. And don't even think about trying to weasel out of paying me, or I'll skin ya alive! And on top of that, this damn snow keeps getting me turned around. I can't get out of this place. When I get back to base, we are gonna have us a little talk?"
"Well of course you can't leave Jerry, these people payed good money for that cargo, so you can't just drive off with it." Jackson replied calmy on the other end.
"What the hell are you talking about Jackson, there was no cargo in that trailer!"
"Who said anything about the trailer, that was just there to keep you from getting suspicious."
"Suspicious of what?"
"Of the nature of your cargo."
"What in the hell are you talking about Ja?"
And the it dawned on me. He was talking about me! I was the cargo! What kind of sick shit was he trying to pull? I decided to get in the truck a try the highway again, but what I saw next made my blood run cold. The people in the bar were staring at me through the window. Their eyes were glowing red.
I jumped in the the cab and gunned it for the highway. After about twenty minutes, though, I noticed a red glow in front of me, and stopped the truck.
There, in the snow, was the End of the Line.
Preparing to back up and turn around, I saw something in the mirror that made my heart stop. In my rear-veiw mirror was the red neon sign of the End of the Line. That's when it dawned on me, I knew what the secret ingredient in the End of the Line Bar & Grill's "World Famous" 'Best Damn Sandwich Ever' was.
I thought to myself, as the red-eyed patrons circled the truck, "I wonder what his name was?"
---
If you ever find Dargaia?s nectar, you?ll probably be one of the ones who have been looking for it all their lives, and thus won?t need any instructions on what to do with it.
Just the same, it?s pretty simple, at least to start with. Make sure your affairs are in order (incase you have a bad reaction), and then? Bottoms up.
The coming months are the least pleasant part. You?ll find yourself unable to keep food down long before you?re far enough along to stop needing it. Same with sleep. The color of your blood will be off, and your veins will consequently stand out more. Expect a few ingrown body parts; little things, just fingers and ears and teeth, usually pressing up against the skin. Make sure you?re caught up on your booster shots because you?re never going in for a checkup again. Or wearing anything more revealing than a trenchcoat in public, most likely.
Eventually, a little cut on your belly will start ?unhealing?, becoming a puss-filled wound in a few days. Over the coming week, three things will emerge from this.
The first object resembles a greasy black beechnut with maybe a tooth or two growing from it. When you?re dead someone will eventually find it and use it to make a new batch of Dargaia?s nectar. Hide it well, make things fun for future generations.
The second object basically looks like a softball-sized cluster of veins, many of them broken and leaking oily black stuff, all wrapped around something. Then it?ll squirm and you?ll notice the twisted little skinless fetus in the middle. It will only survive for about twenty seconds. Burn the remains.
The third object will?
well, let?s just call it ?object 3″. It?s easier that way.
You can plant it anywhere you want. I advise some place where you don?t mind spending all your time and no one else would go. Your back yard or under your cellar works if you don?t have any roommates; as long as there?s fertile soil. Dig at least five feet down. It won?t want to be buried, but just keep piling dirt onto it (if you can still hear it when you?re finished you didn?t go deep enough).
Its veins (or roots, I guess) will eventually spread in all direction about a foot and a half for every year of your life. Grass and weeds will grow stiff and bony, or black and oily, or take on the color and texture of a spider bite, or rice paper. Wood will be infected too; you?ll hear the arteries in your walls pulsing on quiet nights. The ground will rot with dead insect and animal life. Don?t mow your lawn; it bleeds like hell.
This is your sanctuary.
No matter what threats or injuries beset you outside, here you will be safe and healthy. Well, what passes for ?healthy? for you now. And if you really hate someone, bring them here. Trick them into coming. They?ll get infected, one way or another; a lungfull of spore, a thornprick, a bit of residue on their hand. They will blood-vomit and the blood will have tiny centipedes in it. They?ll shit out their own spinal fluids. Their eyes will milk over and hatch; little spines and brambles will grow from the sockets. They?ll survive for months or years, doctors will be baffled, it will be completely fucking great.
That?s all for starters. You?ll learn more as you go. Much more. But if I told you everything now you might not do it.
Whatever you do, just guard it with your life, with your very soul. If you think you?re in danger of loosing it, dig it up, kill it with a silver needle, let someone else make a new one some day. You?ll feel as if you?ve pierced your own heart, but it?s better than letting it fall into the wrong hands.
Because you?re a Holder now.
And you?d better not let them come together.
---
The Intruder is a silhouette and similar in shape to a Siamese cat. When sitting, it is about 7.5 feet tall. It has two overly large, slanted eyes, which glow a bright fluorescent green, and have no pupils. It blinks these eyes occasionally. Other than the eyes, it has no other discernible facial or body features.
Whenever you enter your home after dark, The Intruder is always watching. It sits about 10 feet away from you in plain view. It remains immobile and does not even try to conceal its presence. While outside, it can only be seen by one person at a time. If it were to be within the sight range of two people then the first person who sees The Intruder would remain being able to see it while it would remain completely invisible to others.
It emits no noises of its own. The only time it can be heard is when it is stretching its claws on a tree or your house siding. If you approach it then it will run away very quickly and violently, kicking up dirt and rocks. The sounds of the wind from The Intruder?s movements and flying debris from under The Intruder?s feet can be heard. If you were to throw an object toward it or discharge a firearm at it you would get the same effect. Once you turn back to the door to insert your key you will find that The Intruder has noiselessly returned to its previous position where it continues to watch you.
Some say that The Intruder listens to your key hit the lock. They say that The Intruder can eventually ascertain the shape of your key simply by hearing the pins of your lock moving. It is unknown how many times The Intruder must hear you unlock your door before it can determine the exact shape of your key.
You see, The Intruder wants to kill you, that is, if this creature is even capable of wanting anything. Perhaps it is better to say that it intends to kill you. However, The Intruder can only kill you inside your house, and may not force its way in. Furthermore, it cannot enter an empty house. You must already be at home in order for it to enter. If you were to run outside of your house once The Intruder enters, The Intruder will pursue you, drag you back inside, and then kill you.
If you ever hear a key hitting your door in the dead of night then it may be The Intruder trying out its key that it has made. The Intruder only tries to use its keys when it is close to perfecting them, so if you do hear it trying to unlock your door then you can be certain that it will have a proper working key within a few nights. If you enter your house through another means, for example a garage or screen door, then you may suddenly find it them inoperable from the outside, through both remote or attempted physical operation of the door. If you attempt to leave your door unlocked in order to prevent The Intruder from hearing the shape of your key, then you may be disappointed to find that the door has been locked by the time you arrive at home.
If you hear a key hit your lock it is advised that you turn off all of your lights and attempt to push on the door to try and prevent The Intruder from entering, although it likely outweighs you. Once The Intruder enters your house all light sources above that of a candle become blinding to all inhabitants other than The Intruder. If you have time to light a candle then it is suggested, as this will allow you to see the silhouette without becoming blinded. A very small advantage that you may have is that, once it is inside a home, all inhabitants are able to see The Intruder simultaneously.
The Intruder will kill every human inside of the house. It will only attack pets if the animal chooses to engage The Intruder. Most animals choose not to engage. The only time that the Intruder will make any noise of its own is during a killing strike. The Intruder will make a quick hissing sound during this strike, and will not make this noise again until it claims its next victim. The Intruder has never been known to kill anyone without hissing at the killing blow. It will usually try to completely disable its prey to the point where it cannot move before such an action is taken. It is thought that The Intruder prefers to disable its prey before a kill strike because the act of hissing may be the only time that it is vulnerable to damage. This is purely speculation however.
---
You can see him in your dreams.
The man turned your sleepy little mountain town upside-down, and everyone's been abuzz since he arrived. Whenever you think about him, the warm glow of contentment suffuses you (why?) - this is the type of person you dream of meeting, you dream of being. What is he doing in a nowhere place like this?
It doesn't matter, you tell yourself (yes, it does). Why look a gift horse in the mouth? The man's done so much for the community, brought you all together? now that you think of it, you can't really think of what, exactly, he's done. But the fact that the community's better than ever can't be denied, and who can grudge him a few neighbors for that?
Come to that, you realize with a tinge of excitement, it's going to be your turn soon. You begin the walk to his house (nest?), even though you know you're early. You can hear Ms. Andrews, that girl from down the street, crying inside. Silly girl always was overemotional. "Thank you, thank yo?" you can hear her say before abruptly cutting off. Her turn, now my turn, you think with a smile on your face as you rap on the door.
After a long moment, the door swings open and the man (men have faces, what could this be?) opens the door. He gestures you inside, and you're struck at first by the odor of his house (nest) before he shuffles you over to one of the chairs. Ms. Andrews is sleeping (dead) in a nearby chair, poor girl must have tired herself out.
"Is it my turn yet?" you croak. It hurts to speak, and you realize you haven't spoken since you met this man.
The man (thing) nods wordlessly, and you realize you've never heard his (its) voice. Somehow, that doesn't matter. You smile, and despite yourself, you can't help but shed a tear of gratitude.
"Thank you," you say in that same rough voice, as he (it) leans closer to you.
You, too, will be host to his eggs.
---
I was deposited to awareness with an abruptness normally reserved for the newly born, and much like them, my first view of the world was enough to send me in to wracking sobs. I attempted to recoil, to fall back to the nothing that I had came from, but found myself frozen, my body not my own, only able to watch and look in horror at the world I now found myself in.
Cracked bricks and blocks formed an endless road before me, while behind laid only a flat mass of black more dark and empty then the place I had already come from. Stones and clumps of masonry floated here and there, as if frozen after being flung free by some massive explosion. Yawning tubes dotted this narrow, cyclopean highway, and the road has even crumbled away in sections, to reveal gaping maws of oblivion.
It was not this alien landscape that filled with me horror. While it gnawed and gnashed at the edges of my strength of mind, it was the subtle?awareness of the place that cause me to recoil in my frozen body. Everywhere, half-perceived faces leered from the bricks, the ground, the clouds. Everywhere eyes, dull but gleaming with a mocking, predatory awareness, seemed to watch, their vapid emptiness vanishing when perceived too closely.
Faced with the blank nothing behind me, or the unknown horror before, I forced my unresponsive limbs forward, each step a jerky ordeal. I kept my eyes locked ahead, seeing only the next step, the next stone, never looking at the impossible islands of floating, decayed brick that drifted over me, nor at the mocking faces laughing at my plight from every crevice.
Merely steps in to my journey, I froze, nearly recoiling back to beat at the blank nothing-wall behind me rather then take another step. Where before had been naught but the crumbling road, there was now another traveler. It shambled forward, slouching low under its own rotten weight, pulpy black lumps of feet slowly dragging it along the road. Two staring, blank eyes floated in the bloated, fungoid mass of its body, fixed on me with the unseeing focus of a mind as alien to mine as a deep sea worm.
I stood, frozen and uncomprehending as it slowly strode forward, its wheezing body barely bigger then that of a child. Its glaring eyes were fixed on me, the pulpy thing slowly drawing closer. I could not move. To retreat would result only in eventual capture by the thing, but to advance would mean crossing it, and the thought of touching that?thing?
The decision was made for me, for as the thing drew close, I was galvanized in to action. By horror or rage, I leapt forward, screaming nonsense, and struck at that bloated body. I kicked and stomped at it, crushing the flabby and far too soft flesh under me, sobbing in horror as I felt the flesh touch me, then melt away, rotting to nothingness in seconds, but leaving such a unclean memory in me that I knew I would feel that dull, soggy weight against me long after even the sweet, cold embrace of the beyond.
After that, I ran. I ran and cursed whatever black fate had brought me here, and obliterated my memory, my life, and left only the road, the eternal road. I would have cried, had balled up and thrown myself down one of the endless pits that had broken open the road, but I was compelled to continue, legs continuing in a jerky rhythm that propelled me over the crumbling brick, leaping across the pits even as I secretly wished to fall in to their depths and obliterate the road, the faces, and myself.
As I ran and jumped, I came to one of the thick, twisted tubes that dotted the claustrophobic landscape. I thought to look in for a moment, curiosity fighting to overcome my almost manic desire to be free of this place, but upon hearing a strange shuffling and gurgling, coupled with a deep, bass pulse from the bowels of the black pipe, I decide against it and squeezed around. As soon as I was past, there was a sudden rush of air behind me, followed by a sharp, oddly muffled snap, as if to iron bars wrapped in cotton had been thrown together behind me. I did not turn, merely using this to further galvanize my stuttering walk, ignoring the continued snapping and rustling as it faded behind me.
Far ahead, I saw a long, glossy stair, leading up, and beyond it what looked like a squat dwelling made of the same crumbling brick as the road. While I feared what may lie inside, the idea of someone else, some other person with which to share this horrible place with filled me with the first hope I had felt in hours. I ran, eyes fixed on that stair, and soared across the final gap. It was mid-way across the abyss when I saw the thing waiting on the other side.
It was a twisted parody of some kind of reptile. Its elongated face was filled with a dim sort of menace, and his mouth yawned in anticipation of my reaching the other side, the jagged edges glinting as it made a choking squeal. Its body balanced on two squat, shapeless legs, a shell of hard, cracked flesh encasing the bulbous torso. Two stunted limbs projected through the flaking shell, coated in fibrous growths, and slowly shifted in a sick mockery of wings.
I screamed and twisted, trying in vain to return to the far edge, but it was too late, and my struggles were enough to bring me short, slamming in to the hard wall of the pit, the thing above me shrieking in frustration as I fell. Down, and down, spinning in to the endless blackness, I felt the dark enclose around me. However, seconds before the emptiness could provide me its final solace, I suddenly remembered.
Endless roads, lakes of fire, crumbling tombs filled with the rotting, shambling bones of beasts, hazy forms of glowing slickly light following in the dark, floating networks of ancient wood drifting in a hot sky, it all came back to me in a flood, the remembrance of where I had been, what I had done, and knowing that it would continue.
I do not know how long I have done this, nor what I have done to earn this.
Only that I must walk the road.
Forever.
---
-Jan 1st, 2009
I've made my new-years resolution. I'm going to start writing again. I bought this journal at Barns and Nobel so I could get some creative juices flowing. I am writing out my thoughts as I think them so I do not forget anything that might be important to the story. Good luck, me!
Jan 1st, 2009
Idea: Bio-terrorism story. maybe something to do with a government cover-up. I know it sounds over done, but its worth a shot.
-Jan 2nd, 2009
I can't think today, journal. but, I suppose this shouldn't only be for Ideas. Today, the president gave an address to the nation. Something about 'Doing the best we can' or something. I couldn't really hear over the sound of my typewriter. I wasn't even really paying attention.
-Jan 3rd, 2009
I'm really starting to slip into the loop now, journal. Three more pages in just a few minutes. oh, I never remembered writing to be this much fun. I'm going to watch a bit of TV, and let my hands rest. So much fun!
-Jan 3rd, 2009
I'm deciding against watching TV right now. There is a storm warning or something scrolling down at the bottom of the TV, making a really loud annoying buzzing sound. It said something about staying indoors, so I figure its just another big storm or something. I'm going back to writing for today.
-Jan 4th, 2009
Someone came to the door. I think they were selling something, but they seemed hysterical, so I shut the door in their face. My concentration needs to be on my story right now. And also, a story landmark: Chapter 1 and two are now finished. I'm not giving away any secrets to you yet, journal, but I will say this: The story is far more realistic then anything I've ever written!
-Jan 5th, 2009
I've given my story a name, now, journal. I'm calling it 'The Four Horsemen' It sounds hokey, but hell, the story is coming along better then expected. So far, the main character seems to be the last man on earth after a horrible bio-terrorism attack. I can't remember ever being so wrapped up in a story before. I don't think I've left home in several days.
-Jan 5th, 2009
The electricity is browning out, so I'm writing all this by candle light. I think I'll speak with the Electric Company tomorrow, if I'm not to busy with the story.
-Jan 6th, 2009.
Guess I lost track of time today. I haven't visited the electric company today, though the power is completely out. Thankfully, my typewriter is mechanical. I think I'll go to the electric company when I am finished with this chapter.
-Jan 7th, 2009
Something?s happened. I went outside for the first time in what?s felt like forever, but it was so quiet. I live next to the highway, but the sounds weren't even coming from there anymore. I'm kind of creeped out, but I don't have time for such things. My story is almost finished.
-Jan 8th. 2009
Still no sound from anywhere. I still haven't gone to the electric company. I think my story is still too short, so I'm scrapping some of the end parts, and adding more to it. I tell you, when my publisher gets this, he will be ecstatic!
-Jan 9th, 2009
My candles are almost burned out, so I guess I should get some more. The electric company is to far a drive anyway. I don't want to be away from my story for too long, in case I get a good idea while I'm out.
-Jan 9th, 2009.
Couldn't get to the store, the roads are jammed, and nothing looked like it was moving. The cars were still running, though, so it must be a traffic jam. There is a lot of that around here. I figured I'd rather be at home writing then messing around with that kind of traffic.
-Jan 10th, 2009
Ok, this is starting to bug me. Those cars haven't moved STILL. I wound up behind the exact same jerk off in a white Pontiac that I did yesterday. I'm going back, to give him a piece of mind.
-Jan 10th.
That asshole wouldn't look me in the face when I was shouting at him. He was just staring ahead like some moron without a brain. But I suppose my story is more important then some idiot.
-Jan 11th, 2009
Typewriter is out of ink, headed to the store. I'm walking, so it will be awhile.
-Jan 11th, 2009.
The store was deserted, and smelled awful. All the electricity there was out, to, so that food has gone bad. I got my ink, and ran out of there. I don't know if its stealing or not. The man in the white Pontiac was smiling today. His car isn't running, either. His smile was creeping me out. It was big and toothy, like someone pulled his lips off. maybe writing will get the image out of my head.
-Jan 15, 2009.
I have been writing for so long, I don't think my hands can take it anymore. There is a loud annoying sound outside, like someone is shouting at the top of their lungs, and its been going like this for hours. I'm going to go investigate.
-Jan 15th, 2009
It was the man in the white Pontiac. His head was against the steering wheel, and sounding the horn. He was facing me when I got there, it was really creepy. I opened his door, and pulled him out. I think he was dead.
-Jan 16th, 2009
Journal, I think I'll go crazy if i don't get some company. i haven't seen anyone but the guy in the Pontiac in almost two weeks. My story is keeping me occupied, though.
-Feb 20th
I'm sorry I haven't written in so long. The story is still going strong, though. I checked on Pontiac man a few days ago, and talked to him. he didn't talk back. He is good company. Its a long walk to see him, so i think I'll invite him over.
-Feb 23rd, 2009.
Pontiac man is here. he is watching me write, though I think its a little hard for him to see. his eyes are all white and puss-y. I hope he is alright.
-Feb 24th, 2009
Pontiac man stinks, so I gave him a bath. he was all bruised up under his clothes. i asked him if he got in a fight, but he didn't say anything. I think he is trying to hide something from me.
-Feb 25th, 2009
I have a new guest with me now. A nice lady from the store. She is watching me write, too. I like my friends.
-Feb 26th, 2009
Pontiac man and store lady aren?t with me write now. They were talking, so I left the room. I think Pontiac man is trying to hit on her, and I didn't want to interfere. My story is so good, right now, Journal.
-Feb 27th, 2009
I'm really hungry, but I'm all out of canned food. I don't want to go to the store, either.
-Feb 27th, 2009
Pontiac man tastes good.
-Feb 28th, 2009
Store lady is mad because I ate part of her boyfriend yesterday. I locked her in the bedroom, but I can still hear her shouting at me. She isn't as nice as Pontiac man. I bet she doesn't even taste good.
-Feb 28th, 2009
She does.
---
*shatter*
FLASH
I'm lying on the floor, in more pain than I've ever felt before. I guess this is what it feels like to have a bullet in your gut. The pain is a constant but everything else is fading: I must be losing blood fast.
Wait - how did I get here? The last thing I remember was the break-in, that little guy turning around as they ran, the gunshot? and Angie gasping, clutching her stomach, and collapsing in a pool of her own blood.
ANGIE! Where is my wife?! There, standing where I was when she got shot, she looks as shocked as I am. She rushes over to me, not even paying attention to the furniture in her way. The old oil lamp falls off the end table, hits the floor?
*shatter*
FLASH
The pain is gone, and I'm back on my feet. But I was just? oh God, Angie's on the floor bleeding, like she was before. I've got to help her, I try to get over to her, to help her, stop the bleeding, something, ANYTHING. My elbow brushes the old oil lamp, it falls?
*shatter*
FLASH
FUCKING OW! I'm back on the floor, but at least Angie's okay. What the Hell is going on here? First she's dying, then I'm the one dying, then her, then me again - and nothing else is changing at all! Angie runs over to me, bumps the table, knocks over that old lamp?
*shatter*
FLASH
Switched again? How? It doesn't matter - I have to help Angie. I rush over, knocking over a table on the way?
*shatter*
FLASH
I'm the one dying again, but Angie doesn't look like she's any happier. She looks so confused, so scared. She looks at me, at her stomach, at the lamp. Wait a minute - why is that lamp in one piece? I remember now, when that little slimebag shot Angie in the first place, I ran over to help her, but I knocked that lamp over on the way. I didn't see what happened to it, but I heard it break.
She picks the lamp up off the table, barely able to hold it her hands are shaking so badly. She lifts it up above her head, throws it down?
*shatter*
FLASH
Standing and healthy again. I look out the door, see the two thugs running, not ten feet from where they were when they shot Angie. The lamp's back, too - does it rewind time or something? What the Hell is going on? How does some random oil lamp I bought in a store as a decoration somehow rewind time, and how do Angie and I keep getting switched?
No time to think about stuff like that. I know how little time Angie has: I could feel it when I was the one on the floor. There's no way an ambulance could get here in time, even if somebody else called them the instant they heard the shot. The only way to save her now is for me to be the one that dies. I grab the lamp and hurl it to the floor?
*shatter*
FLASH
It worked - I'm back on the floor. I see Angie reaching for the lamp, try to tell her that it's all right, tell her to let me go, but it's too late. The lamp falls?
*shatter*
FLASH
I grab the lamp, look down at my poor Angie, and tell her I'll save her?
*shatter*
FLASH
*shatter*
FLASH
________________________________________
*shatter*
FLASH
We've been married almost twenty years - known each other twice that. Childhood friends, highschool sweethearts, always together. Everybody pretty much knew we'd end up married. I've sworn to myself ever since I was a kid: I'd always protect her, no matter what, even if it cost me my life?
*shatter*
FLASH
So why won't she let me?
*shatter*
FLASH
________________________________________
*shatter*
FLASH
I wonder if this thing ever runs out of juice? If it does, I hope it's while I'm the one down?
*shatter*
FLASH
________________________________________
*shatter*
FLASH
I grabbed so fast, the lamp's glass chimney came loose in my hand. I throw it down in frustration?
*shatter*
FLASH
Huh - I guess it works with just the chimney. That'll make things faster, if nothing else?
*shatter*
FLASH
________________________________________
*shatter*
FLASH
At this point, I'm pretty sure that if whoever's down dies before the lamp breaks, it won't switch us again. I just need to keep it in one piece long enough that I die before Angie can take my place?
*shatter*
FLASH
I grab the chimney, and wait. Watching her suffer like this, watching the life drain out of her without doing anything to stop it, it feels like my heart and soul are being ripped apart, but I have to wait as long as I can. If I delay the switch, it should put me closer to dying when we switch, and maybe Angie won't have time to switch back?
*shatter*
FLASH
DAMN. All the way back to when the lamp broke the first time. Delaying isn't going to work?
*shatter*
FLASH
I apologise to Angie for letting her suffer so long last time, and beg her to just let me die, let me save her?
*shatter*
FLASH
Angie begs me to let her die, let her save me?
*shatter*
FLASH
________________________________________
*shatter*
FLASH
I think I may actually be starting to get used to the pain - the physical part, at least. They say a person can get used to anything, but nothing dulls the horror of helplessly watching the woman I love dying slowly on the floor. I HAVE to save her?
*shatter*
FLASH
________________________________________
*shatter*
FLASH
By the rest of the world's reckoning, it was only a few minutes ago that we were cleaning up after dinner. Then those two thugs, bold as brass, just kicked in the front door. The big guy started grabbing whatever he could, while the little one ran room to room. He was probably looking for us, since he stopped when he found us hiding in the kitchen, pointed that gun at us, and ordered us into the living room?
*shatter*
FLASH
*shatter*
FLASH
We watched as they tore apart our home, grabbing whatever caught their fancy, and smashing a lot of what didn't. While the big guy was all business, the short one kept coming back to threaten us. The little rat giggled every time he made us flinch by jabbing us with his gun. That sick fuck must get off on hurting people - I saw the look on his face when he turned, gun in hand?
*shatter*
FLASH
________________________________________
*shatter*
FLASH
Maybe if I could kill myself somehow before Angie could smash the chimney again, I could break the cycle on the right side. The problem is I only get a couple of seconds?
*shatter*
FLASH
________________________________________
*shatter*
FLASH
Nope, that didn't work, either. Can't convince Angie to just let me die - she's obviously as set on saving me as I am on saving her. I'll find some way to kill myself in time?
*shatter*
FLASH
________________________________________
*shatter*
FLASH
How many times have we gone back and forth? I haven't exactly been counting, but it must be hundreds. Or thousands?
*shatter*
FLASH
________________________________________
*shatter*
FLASH
I don't remember my name. I don't remember who I am, where I grew up, or much of anything else that happened more than a minute ago by the rest of the world's time. We've been going back and forth for pretty much as far back as I can recall - years, at least. All I really remember clearly is that I can't let her die?
*shatter*
FLASH
*shatter*
FLASH
*shatter*
FLASH
*shatter*
FLASH
*shatter*
FLASH
---
The smell of the place was putrid, rotting meat and formaldehyde, along with the coppery scent of blood.
Michelle's first reaction was to turn her face way from the breeze carrying that awful smell, as her mind began to struggle through the haze of drugs into consciousness. When she finally managed to crack her eyes open, she was greeted with a bare bulb hanging from a dirty concrete ceiling, rather than the expected sight of her bedroom. Michelle?s confusion at this strange sight was dulled by the fading, yet still pervasive fog of sedatives clouding her brain. She attempted to sit up, but all that she accomplished was a weak wriggle of her back muscles as she pushed up against the ropes (?) holding her down to the table.
A face appeared at the edge of her vision, the surgical mask stretched across it stained with old blood. A shaved head shone in the glare of the bulb, the pale flesh almost luminescent. Glassy, slightly manic eyes stared down from above the mask.
?You?re awake! Wonderful! I?ve been waiting for hours. I thought about waking you up, but you seemed so worn out that I just didn?t have the heart to deprive you of your rest. After all, today is going to be a rather busy day for you!?
Michelle opened her mouth to speak, but only managed a harsh gurgle. The confusion was rapidly turning to panic. How had she gotten here? The last thing she remembered she had been going to the post office while Greg looked after the baby? ?Oh, don?t try to talk! You?ll only manage to hurt your throat. You don?t want to irritate what?s left of your vocal cords, do you?? What was left? What had happened to her?
?A shame about that by the way, but I couldn?t have you thanking me too loudly, now could I? I mean, the last several people I helped were so loud. The neighbors raised such a fuss; even called the cops! Said I was a crazed madman. They said I was a killer! The nerve of it! Slandering a good Samaritan?s name like that??
As the man chattered on, he was also moving around the room, though she couldn?t see what he was doing. A clattering noise and some clinking only made her more panicked. She tried to sit up again, and though she could muster more of an effort this time, her attempts were again fruitless. She could barely move her head, and the straps holding her down, (a surgical table?) made it so she could only stare at the ceiling and the walls to her side. What she saw there only made her more terrified. Photographs taped to the wall, scenes of torture and carnage that had been highlighted on the nightly news for weeks.
??I mean, a photographer would want to see the world through a lens right? So I was helping him! And he was grateful! If he wasn?t grateful, why would he be screaming with joy??
The man, apparently finished with his task, moved behind her head and set something down with a harsh click. Glass on metal. Other objects rattled loudly on the surface.
?But enough about my past works. I don?t want to brag. Bragging is for the prideful, and the Lord teaches us not to be prideful. So, let?s talk about you, Michelle. I have to say, I?m really happy that I saw you on the street a few days ago! Ever since I had to leave Wisconsin, I?ve been having a hard time picking who to help out! But then I saw you, walking down the street, and I saw that you needed my help more than anyone. That look of loss in your eyes, like you needed someone to give you purpose, to reaffirm your life? That spoke to me. And so I decided to answer your plea, and here we are, ready to get you back on the right track!?
The man reached down and grabbed her jaw firmly, and with his other hand reached into her mouth and fixed something in place over her teeth. A mouth guard, made of rubber. He patted her cheek as his hand withdrew. ?Don?t want you to bite your tongue. Not before we?re finished.? She stared at him, beseeching him with her eyes to let her go. He paid no heed, too lost in his own thoughts.
?Where was I? Ah yes. So I followed you, and I saw your life. The love you have for your husband, and your child. But I noticed that you were unhappy, particularly when your son and husband weren?t with you. Feeling lonely? Didn?t know what to do? I understand. Some people mock homemakers, saying they?re just a relic of a past time, but I disagree. I think it?s your choice, and you?ve made a worthy decision. So let?s get you back in that role you chose!?
He reached down and picked something up from behind her. As he walked around to stand next to the table, she saw the scalpel glint in his hand. Her eyes widened. She began to hyperventilate, the breaths through her nose sucking in more of that stench, making her gag. With one hand he held her stomach down, while with the other he reached down and slit the shirt she was wearing, exposing her abdomen. The scalpel continued cutting, drawing a burning line down her diaphragm. The wet, warm feeling of her own blood trickling down her sides as each breath began to hurt. He stepped back and put the scalpel back behind her and his hand came back up holding a large jar. The source of that earlier sound. The smoked sides gave no indication of what was inside, beyond faintly discernable motion. He turned it upside-down, and unscrewed the lid, holding it over the mouth as he brought it next to the cut.
?Now, don?t worry. This may sting at first, but its all right. A little pain is worth purpose, right??
The hand holding the lid flashed away as he firmly pressed the jar down on the cut. Michelle?s breaths were harsh as she felt the sharp pinpricks of the feet of the creatures inside the jar. She tried to struggle but was still too weak, the pain from her diaphragm and the psychological shock of what was going on making her movements pathetically impotent. He looked down at her, one hand dropping the lid on the ground to come up and stroke her hair.
?You?ll soon be all better. Let them inside and they?ll never leave you alone like your family does. Just what a homemaker would want, right??
His hand moved past her head, back to grab something from behind her. A tuning fork. He sharply rapped it against the side of the jar, frightening the insects inside. Michelle screamed inside her mind as the first slipped inside, a burrowing pain in her entrails. More and more entered her, a gnawing tide clawing and biting at whatever it needed to get away. Tears streamed down her cheeks as more blood began to pour from around the jar, sliding down her ribcage and the writhing bulges under her skin. Her heart beat faster and faster, until the sensation of prickling feet and devouring mandibles entering it caused it to cease completely.
The man looked at the slowly cooling body of what was once a human being, now just a hive. He reached down to the surgical table and picked up a camera. Another successful mission of mercy.
---
After the third day since the first injection, Brian knew there had been a mistake.
He could even pinpoint the exact moment he figured it out. The nurse had pressed the tip of the needle to his skin, and as it broke the flesh, every nerve in his body lit on fire. His wild, enraged backhand had caught her right across the jaw, the animalistic, pained bellows coming out of his mouth drowning out the noise of her neck snapping like so much dry cordwood. It had taken ten men to hold him down, and the sedatives had been another bonfire of agony coursing throughout his system.
They never said it would be like this. When he?d signed up for the enhancile treatments he was promised that he would be faster, stronger, invincible. He would be a god, no, a titan, striding through the battlefield, laying waste to anything that dared to cross his path. Day Four was spent having his contract explained to him. In all his frenzied daydreaming he had missed the part of the contract that said, in the finest small print military dollars could buy, ?Mark I Serum is still in alpha testing phase?. In English that came out ?we fucked up and when we boosted your muscles, we also heightened your senses, to the point where every breath of air is burning pain?. His gratitude had been overflowing, then, later; it had just been a rage fueled punch to a doctor?s face, interrupting some bullshit explanation about how it wasn?t their fault.
In the middle of day five there had been talk: talk of ?testosterone overproduction?, and ?exponential aggressiveness growth?. Brian found he was beyond caring as his fists drove into the concrete, splinters puncturing, pain searing up his arms. Pain was good. He liked the pain now. It made all that beautiful red appear in front of his eyes. He could lose himself in it. Drown out the screaming, (and it was screaming now, someone was very frightened, maybe of him, and Brian laughed in his chest at the thought as the men in the other room went dead quiet) about ?mutagen coalescence? and how this was all Thomson?s goddamn fault.
He hadn?t cared. By day six, everything had gotten so very simple. He'd wanted food, so he'd hunted down a scientist and bit off a piece. His head felt different, like there was more bone there. The red fog never went away and his thoughts drifted across it as the soldiers poured into the room. The first few bullets lodged in his chest, the force absorbed by the spiny plates growing just under the skin. He had swung one massive hand, ridged with white protruding bone, and pulverized a helmet. The men at the end of the hall had screamed about backup and how ?firebreak? needed to be used. He ignored it, with all the men firing at him it had seemed unimportant, and the red whispered to him how good it would feel to just take the tattered remains of his skin off and let his muscles breathe. It was only when he ran out of soldiers that he looked around. The idea of retreat no longer had any place in his fury-soaked brain. He?d run through the halls of the base and roared, daring them to challenge him. The beeping echoing was just another distraction. He ignored it.
As a consequence of this, the slow inability to breathe and the soft fall into blackout from oxygen starvation was less surprising than the fact that he could still die.
________________________________________
?Goddamn mess. The whole thing.?
?Look General, we said-?
?You said it was goddamn safe! That we would have a working prototype in a year, and mass-production in two more!?
?And we thought we were right! No one could have foreseen that, that THING being created!?
?That?s your fucking job isn?t it?! To think ahead! Not to fuck up so badly we have to pump halon into the goddamn vents! And don't tell me that's nothing to worry about! You were five seconds from dying yourself you little shit!?
?We?ll figure a way to explain this all away. We?ll be fine-?
?No. There is no ?We?.?
??You?re not seriously suggest-?
?It?s either I throw you to the dogs, or we all get nine-millimeter retirements. I'm gonna have a hard enough time spinning this towards the equipment and specimens saved, rather than the dozens of personnel dead.?
?I-?
?You knew the risks when you signed up for the job. And I?m not going to die because you tried to be God. Good bye Doctor.?
??Well. I guess I?ll see you in hell then??
?Not if that thing is waiting for you there.?
---
I am followed by fire.
It sounds really, really weird, I know, but it?s true. Every house, every apartment I?ve ever lived in has burned to the ground. Even stranger?it?s predictable. If I lived somewhere for six years, six years after I move out it goes up in flames. It?s not exact, but its close, usually accurate to within two or three months.
It?s true. I?m not sure when I noticed the pattern for the first time, but it's always been there. When I was just a kid, right after I was born, my family lived in an old house behind my grandmother?s house. We were there until I was two, when we moved. I remember visiting my grandmother?s at four, watching the smoldering embers of the little house and the curling smoke rising into the air. Old wiring from the 50?s finally gave out.
From the shack, we moved to a farm. We weren?t well off enough to own it or anything, but we did run it for the local doctor. The farmhouse wasn?t that big, and most of my childhood memories come from the cozy, family setting it engendered. Here, I remember Christmas, Thanksgiving, birthdays. I think of it whenever I think of ?back home.? We lived there from when I was two until I was nine, when the doctor we worked for died. At fifteen, it burned, an old tree struck by lightning sparking off the blaze.
The third house I lived in was the second to burn to the ground. We only lived there for around two years, so it happened when I was thirteen. It was an old house, a very old house. What I remember most was its shape. We called them ?shotgun? houses, because you could fire a shotgun from one end and it would pass all the way through to the other. One room after another, all in a straight line, built as needed. It was, honestly, very old and dry. I?m not surprised that the heating stove in the front room sprung a leak on the tenants after us.
Other than where I?m at now, the only place left is my parent?s current house. When they asked me why I was moving all my stuff stored in the basement out, I didn?t have the heart to tell them, so I made up some excuse about having my old books and stuff closer to college. I didn?t know what else to say.
When I turned nineteen, I moved out of my parent?s house, and went to college. Before renting the house I live in now, I stayed in an apartment in the city. I shared it with a couple of assholes that seemed nice enough before I moved in. Everyone knows the type. Won't pay their bills on time. Eats whatever they can lay hands on. It got worse and worse until I made up my mind. When I'd finally had enough, I left. We were four months into a one year lease. Now I'm just keeping an eye on the news. Waiting for the sparks. A gas leak, a stray match? Sooner or later, they'll burn.
They always burn.