When most people think about female American serial killers – not that most people often do – their list begins and ends with Aileen Wuornos. Aileen was the Florida prostitute convicted of killing six men; the body of a seventh victim attributed to her was never found.
Intensified by her extraordinary courtroom outbursts, Aileen’s trial was heavily publicized. After all, it exposed her deep-seeded hatred of all men dating to her youth in Michigan, where the men in her life objectified her and some may have even raped her. Through her murders, she seemed to say that she would never be victimized again. At the time of her death by lethal injection in 2002, Aileen was only the tenth woman to be executed in the United States since the country’s ban on capital punishment was lifted in 1976. But the public was so gripped by Aileen’s story that it was made into countless documentaries and feature films, and earned Charlize Theron an Oscar for Best Actress. That’s why we remember Aileen. But what if I told you that, although prolific, Aileen’s exploits were paltry in comparison to an Indiana woman you’ve probably never heard of? Meet Belle Gunness…The story of Be, born Brynhild Paulsdatter Størseth in 1859, begins in her native Norway. Her career as a killer was apparently set in motion around age 18. According to one account, during her first pregnancy, she was attacked by a man at a country dance. The man kicked her in the abdomen, ultimately causing her to miscarry. Never prosecuted by Norwegian authorities, the man who attacked her died shortly afterwards of a reported stomach cancer. In a more poetic version of the same story, as a 17-year old farmhand, Belle learned she was pregnant by the son of the landlord. Unwilling to marry her, the man reportedly beat her until she miscarried. And it was he who died less than a year later of an illness that resembled poisoning, though that would never be proven. In either case, with things not working out for her in Norway, she emigrated to the United States in 1881 and assumed the more American-sounding “Belle.” She too would never be victimized again. Within three years, Belle married a Chicago man named Mads Sorenson, and it was around this time that a foster daughter, later known as Jennie Olsen, was placed in her care. Together, the couple had four children, but sadly, two of them died in infancy, allegedly of acute colitis, the symptoms of which are also associated with many forms of poisoning. Interestingly, both lives were reportedly insured, and the insurance company made payments to the family. In 1900, Mads himself became violently ill and died – coincidentally on the only day that two insurance policies on his life overlapped. An attending physician and subsequently the Sorensen family suspected strychnine poisoning, but the family doctor claimed he was treating Mads for an enlarged heart and that this was the cause of his death. In either case, the insurance companies paid Belle $8,500 (roughly a quarter million in today’s dollars), and with things now heating up for her in Chicago, Belle used the money to purchase a farm in La Porte, Indiana. There, she married Peter Gunness in 1902 and became stepmother to his two daughters. Reportedly just one week after the ceremony, Peter’s infant daughter died under dubious circumstances while alone in the house with Belle. In December of the same year, Peter met with a bizarre accident: according to Belle, part of a sausage-grinding machine fell from a high shelf, fatally striking him in the head. Belle’s adopted daughter, Jennie, apparently told a classmate that her mother had killed Peter with a meat cleaver, but denied saying anything of the sort when authorities questioned her later. Ultimately, Peter’s death may have netted Belle another $4,000, more than $100,000 today. Amid the strange circumstances, Peter’s brother took guardianship of Peter’s older daughter, removing her from Belle’s custody and effectively saving her life. That left Jennie and Belle’s two remaining children from her marriage to Mads Sorensen. But wait … In May, 1903, a baby boy named Phillip joined the family. Belle had been pregnant with Peter’s child when she offed him with a meat cleaver. In 1906, Belle began telling neighbors that Jennie had gone away to a Lutheran college in Los Angeles (it’s interesting that Belle would expressly mention Los Angeles, as it comes up again in this story). In fact, Jennie’s body would later be found buried on her adoptive mother’s property. Beginning in late 1906 or early 1907, Belle started placing personal ads in local newspapers, and a steady stream of middle-aged male suitors appeared and disappeared in brief visits to the Gunness farm over the next year and a half. They may have numbered more than 40. Belle would take their money, kill them, dismember them, and bury them in the yard – perhaps also feeding some to her pigs. Her preferred method seems to have been poison and then hacking them to death as they slept or were otherwise incapacitated; the scale of her crimes simply leaves no time for her to have waited until they died from the effects of the poison. Such was the carnage that in 1907, she hired a farmhand named Ray Lamphere to help with chores – like digging holes around the farm. Ray fell in love with Gunness and almost certainly was privy to her gruesome secret. A year later, Belle went to a La Porte lawyer to make out a will. She told him she had fired Rayand that he threatened to kill her – that she feared for her life and wanted to have things in order. Within weeks, the Gunness farm suspiciously burned to the ground, and Belle Gunness disappeared from history. In the aftermath, authorities quickly found four charred bodies – three children and a headless woman who in life was estimated to be about 5’3” tall weighing no more than 150 pounds. Did the farmhand kill the family to avenge his termination? Or was it all a ruse, conceived by Belle, to stave off inquiries from the families of her dead suitors? So I'd like to let you know a few things. For one, it seems like nothing's the same anymore. And I for Two can not stand the sight of this. I know you're probably wondering what I'm talking about, but if you would take the time to read this I'd be glad to tell you. My sister and I were watching the morning cartoons, which I thought was kind of dumb because I'm sixteen, and still watching PBS kids. But my little sister instead that I watch with her, and as every big sister would, I agreed. I remember we were watching some Dragon cartoon when my sister got up and walked to the kitchen, I paid no mind and was watching the show. I was thinking to myself that she had been in there for so long and was wondering what she was up to. So I turned off the TV and walked in the kitchen, I couldn't believe what my eyes were seeing. The kitchen was such a mess, everything from the cabinets were thrown on the floor, along with everything from the refrigerator. All that time in the kitchen and I didn't even hear one sound. I was starting to wonder if it was even her. After scrutinizing the kitchens mess, I walked to her bedroom, just to see if she got bored and was playing in her room or something. And of course, she was there. I asked, "Arial, what happened in the kitchen?" "Nothing why?" "Because you were gone for a long time, and I remember seeing you walking into the kitchen. Then when I get up to see what was going on, the kitchen was a complete mess. Mind explaining that to me?" "I still don't know what you're talking about. I got bored of TV and came to my room, to play with Allie." "Who's Allie?" "My friend." "I don't see her." "That's because only I can see her." Arial began to explain what "Allie" was, and as every little kid has an imaginary friend, I shrugged it off, maybe when she's older this "Allie", wont be here. Going back, I remember it all vividly; my first time at Posey Chapel with a couple of my friends. Nobody was really scared; after all, the sightings were hoaxes and never supported with actual evidence. But, being Halloween, something was bound to happen—and something happened indeed, because that night was the start of a string of the most horrifying ones in my existence.
We arrived at the chapel, cracking jokes about the myths that were told about it while walking around aimlessly, not in search of anything specific. After about five minutes in our journey, I saw in the midst of the churchyard, an all-white figure. From what I could tell, he was near the age of 10, and had no eyes…just black pits where his eyes should’ve been. I looked at my friends for reassurance that this wasn’t just my imagination, this was real. They told me they could see him too, but just vaguely. As he was about a football field away, it was hard to tell what we were looking at. So, naturally, we strained to get a better look at him. The four of us started to walk slowly toward him, not particularly looking to hurt him in away sort of way. Once we reached a certain point, I instantly felt a sort of connection with him. I was the only one he “looked” at, considering he had black pits for eyes. The others could see him looking at me intently, and we decided to leave; afraid. We got back in the car and waited about five minutes before leaving, just to see if anything would happen. Nothing did, but the minute my head hit the pillow that night is when things did started to happen. That first night, Halloween 2014, I had a dream about him—the boy from the chapel. It was all a recap from that night, except everyone’s teeth were rotted out and/or had cavities. These dreams occurred each night for eight days. Within each dream he would get about 10 yards closer, and the dream would always cut off just as I closed the car door. After eight nights, the dream had occurred eight times consecutively and he was about 20 yards away from me, so we went back to Posey Chapel. The dreams stopped after that visit. January 8th, 2015. I’d been staying at my grandma’s that week, as my bathroom was being renovated. I was on the couch, where I had been sleeping. This night had started as an otherwise normal one. I was casually browsing my Facebook and listening to a podcast with one earbud in. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary, but then the lights and TV went out and I heard scratching from the basement. It started coming up the stairs and gradually got louder and louder until I thought I was going to lose it. Then, abruptly, silence. I looked up toward the stairway door to see what it was, but saw nothing. Questioning it, I turned back, and I got a glance down the main hallway where I saw a streak of white. Terrified, I was hesitant to look back, but I seemed drawn to it. So I looked, despite my gut feeling, and there he was: the boy without eyes. He stood there with intent but lack of emotion for at least twenty minutes, and then he disappeared. Or so I’d thought. I looked outside my window and there he was, hanging from the barren tree. I thought I was going insane; hallucinating. My brother claimed to not be able to see him, so why could I? I snapped a picture of the tree from inside, sending it to the group chat I was in. Nobody saw anything except what they thought was snow, but I knew it was him. Gathering up my courage, and going against my own gut, I went outside to take a different picture, this time with the flash on. I only cracked open the door to do so, as I didn’t want to leave the comfort of the house, no matter if he could get inside. This time, he was sitting in the tree rather than hanging from a noose. That was what struck me as extremely odd. I took the picture despite his changed position and rushed inside, sending it to my group chat again. This time they could see him. He stood out against the snow as a lighter, blurrier white. After this, I felt compelled to go back outside and face him; ask him what he wanted from me. So, once again, I gathered up my courage and went back into the freezing winter night. I looked up at him in the tree and yelled, “What do you want from me?” Ten seconds of silence filled the chilly air. And then, “Please, come back.” Old Man...I don’t know how scary you will find this, but I can tell you that I was horrified.
When I was around 12 years old, my parents rented an old shingled house in Massachusetts, about a mile from the beach. We were staying there for the summer, and we were all pumped for 3 months in historic New England. The house was previously owned by a woman named Virginia. She was unmarried and lived there for many years with her elderly father, whom I don’t know the name of. She was a perfectly normal woman who rode horses and kept a beautiful garden across the street. My parents never met her father, and we only talked to her a few times, as the rent transaction was done mostly through a realtor. The house was quite nice. It looked small from the outside, but once you went inside, there were countless small rooms. There were many cupboards and closets and two slender spiral staircases leading up to one of four tiny rooms upstairs. One of these rooms was mine. Being twelve years old and having an overly active imagination, I was terrified of staying upstairs by myself at night. My parents slept downstairs in a room that was a new addition to the house, and I hated the idea that they were so far away. Finally, after a few sleepless nights and plenty of power tears, my parents agreed to let me sleep downstairs in the old living room, which had a fireplace and two doors:one leading to the kitchen and one to the new living room. I was extremely happy with this arrangement and I felt sure I would finally be able to fall asleep that night. That night, after saying goodnight to my parents, I lay down on the pull-out sofa, contented. But not for long. Immediately after closing my eyes, I felt the weirdest sensation. I felt I was being watched, or like someone was just over my shoulder. I opened my eyes, fearing the worst, but no one was there. The room was silent. I was completely alone. A little unnerved, I shut my eyes again, and once again felt the presence. It’s hard to explain, but you know how blind people are more able with their senses? It was like that. Even when I opened my eyes a second time and saw no one, I knew there was a man in the room. I can’t really explain, but I felt certain that there was a man watching me sleep. However, since I had no evidence, I just shut my eyes, curled in a ball, and fell into an uneasy sleep. Fast forward a few weeks. One of my friends was sleeping over and we were, of course, staying at the house. Despite her protests that we should sleep upstairs, I insisted we stay downstairs. Even though nothing ever happened upstairs, I was still a little wary. That night, after gossiping for a few hours the way only two 12 year old girls can, we fell asleep. I should mention that I never said anything about the man in the living room (that’s where we were staying). I didn’t want my friend to panic. I slept soundly that night. I guess it was probably because I had someone with me. The next morning, when I woke up, my friend was already awake and staring at me. Katie, she said, I’m like not crazy. But like last night in the middle of the night I woke up and I felt like- Oh my God, I said. Did you feel like there was a man watching you sleep? At first, she said, her voice quavering. But when I opened my eyes, there was an old man standing in the doorway to the kitchen. He smiled at me and then he left. Our eyes grew wide as we stared at each other in terror, and then slowly turned to the door. We had shut it the night before. Now it was open just a crack. I told my parents about about this after my friend left and they disregarded it, thinking I was letting my imagination get the better of me. But at the end of the summer, when I went home and had internet service again, I searched the history of the house. Virginia lived there for almost 20 years with her elderly father, a registered sex offender who was diagnosed with dementia at the age of 83. He returned to the house with his daughter and died a few months later in the house. I'm not sure why I'm writing this down on paper and not on my computer. I guess I've just noticed some odd things. It's not that I don't trust the computer... I just... need to organize my thoughts. I need to get down all the details somewhere objective, somewhere I know that what I write can't be deleted or... changed... not that that's happened. It's just... everything blurs together here, and the fog of memory lends a strange cast to things...
I'm starting to feel cramped in this small apartment. Maybe that's the problem. I just had to go and choose the cheapest apartment, the only one in the basement. The lack of windows down here makes day and night seem to slip by seamlessly. I haven't been out in a few days because I've been working on this programming project so intensively. I suppose I just wanted to get it done. Hours of sitting and staring at a monitor can make anyone feel strange, I know, but I don't think that's it. I'm not sure when I first started to feel like something was odd. I can't even define what it is. Maybe I just haven't talked to anyone in awhile. That's the first thing that crept up on me. Everyone I normally talk to online while I program has been idle, or they've simply not logged on at all. My instant messages go unanswered. The last e-mail I got from anybody was a friend saying he'd talk to me when he got back from the store, and that was yesterday. I'd call with my cell phone, but reception's terrible down here. Yeah, that's it. I just need to call someone. I'm going to go outside. — Well, that didn't work so well. As the tingle of fear fades, I'm feeling a little ridiculous for being scared at all. I looked in the mirror before I went out, but I didn't shave the two-day stubble I've grown. I figured I was just going out for a quick cell phone call. I did change my shirt, though, because it was lunchtime, and I guessed that I'd run into at least one person I knew. That didn't end up happening. I wish it did. When I went out, I opened the door to my small apartment slowly. A small feeling of apprehension had somehow already lodged itself in me, for some indefinable reason. I chalked it up to having not spoken to anyone but myself for a day or two. I peered down the dingy grey hallway, made dingier by the fact that it was a basement hallway. On one end, a large metal door led to the building's furnace room. It was locked, of course. Two dreary soda machines stood by it; I bought a soda from one the first day I moved in, but it had a two year old expiration date. I'm fairly sure nobody knows those machines are even down here, or my cheap landlady just doesn't care to get them restocked. I closed my door softly, and walked the other direction, taking care not to make a sound. I have no idea why I chose to do that, but it was fun giving in to the strange impulse not to break the droning hum of the soda machines, at least for the moment. I got to the stairwell, and took the stairs up to the building's front door. I looked through the heavy door's small square window, and received quite the shock: it was definitely not lunchtime. City-gloom hung over the dark street outside, and the traffic lights at the intersection in the distance blinked yellow. Dim clouds, purple and black from the glow of the city, hung overhead. Nothing moved, save the few sidewalk trees that shifted in the wind. I remember shivering, though I wasn't cold. Maybe it was the wind outside. I could vaguely hear it through the heavy metal door, and I knew it was that unique kind of late-night wind, the kind that was constant, cold, and quiet, save for the rhythmic music it made as it passed through countless unseen tree leaves. I decided not to go outside. Instead, I lifted my cell phone to the door's little window, and checked the signal meter. The bars filled up the meter, and I smiled. Time to hear someone else's voice, I remember thinking, relieved. It was such a strange thing, to be afraid of nothing. I shook my head, laughing at myself silently. I hit speed-dial for my best friend Amy's number, and held the phone up to my ear. It rang once... but then it stopped. Nothing happened. I listened to silence for a good twenty seconds, then hung up. I frowned, and looked at the signal meter again – still full. I went to dial her number again, but then my phone rang in my hand, startling me. I put it up to my ear. "Hello?" I asked, immediately fighting down a small shock at hearing the first spoken voice in days, even if it was my own. I had gotten used to the droning hum of the building's inner workings, my computer, and the soda machines in the hallway. There was no response to my greeting at first, but then, finally, a voice came. "Hey," said a clear male voice, obviously of college age, like me. "Who's this?" "John," I replied, confused. "Oh, sorry, wrong number," he replied, then hung up. I lowered the phone slowly and leaned against the thick brick wall of the stairwell. That was strange. I looked at my received calls list, but the number was unfamiliar. Before I could think on it further, the phone rang loudly, shocking me yet again. This time, I looked at the caller before I answered. It was another unfamiliar number. This time, I held the phone up to my ear, but said nothing. I heard nothing but the general background noise of a phone. Then, a familiar voice broke my tension. "John?" was the single word, in Amy's voice. I breathed a sigh of relief. "Hey, it's you," I replied. "Who else would it be?" she responded. "Oh, the number. I'm at a party on Seventh Street, and my phone died just as you called me. This is someone else's phone, obviously." "Oh, ok," I said. "Where are you?" she asked. My eyes glanced over the drab white-washed cylinder block walls and the heavy metal door with its small window. "At my building," I sighed. "Just feeling cooped up. I didn't realize it was so late." "You should come here," she said, laughing. "Nah, I don't feel like looking for some strange place by myself in the middle of the night," I said, looking out the window at the silent windy street that secretly scared me just a tiny bit. "I think I'm just going to keep working or go to bed." "Nonsense!" she replied. "I can come get you! Your building is close to Seventh Street, right?" "How drunk are you?" I asked lightheartedly. "You know where I live." "Oh, of course,” she said abruptly. "I guess I can't get there by walking, huh?" "You could if you wanted to waste half an hour," I told her. "Right," she said. "Ok, have to go, good luck with your work!" I lowered the phone once more, looking at the numbers flash as the call ended. Then, the droning silence suddenly reasserted itself in my ears. The two strange calls and the eerie street outside just drove home my aloneness in this empty stairwell. Perhaps from having seen too many scary movies, I had the sudden inexplicable idea that something could look in the door's window and see me, some sort of horrible entity that hovered at the edge of aloneness, just waiting to creep up on unsuspecting people that strayed too far from other human beings. I knew the fear was irrational, but nobody else was around, so... I jumped down the stairs, ran down the hallway into my room, and closed the door as swiftly as I could while still staying silent. Like I said, I feel a little ridiculous for being scared of nothing, and the fear has already faded. Writing this down helps a lot – it makes me realize that nothing is wrong. It filters out half-formed thoughts and fears and leaves only cold, hard facts. It's late, I got a call from a wrong number, and Amy's phone died, so she called me back from another number. Nothing strange is happening. Still, there was something a little off about that conversation. I know it could have just been the alcohol she'd had... or was it even her that seemed off to me? Or was it... yes, that was it! I didn't realize it until this moment, writing these things down. I knew writing things down would help. She said she was at a party, but I only heard silence in the background! Of course, that doesn't mean anything in particular, as she could have just gone outside to make the call. No... that couldn't be it either. I didn't hear the wind! I need to see if the wind is still blowing! Monday I forgot to finish writing last night. I'm not sure what I expected to see when I ran up the stairwell and looked out the heavy metal door's window. I'm feeling ridiculous. Last night's fear seems hazy and unreasonable to me now. I can't wait to go out into the sunlight. I'm going to check my email, shave, shower, and finally get out of here! Wait... I think I heard something. — It was thunder. That whole sunlight and fresh air thing didn't happen. I went out into the stairwell and up the stairs, only to find disappointment. The heavy metal door's little window showed only flowing water, as torrential rain slammed against it. Only a very dim, gloomy light filtered in through the rain, but at least I knew it was daytime, even if it was a grey, sickly, wet day. I tried looking out the window and waiting for lightning to illuminate the gloom, but the rain was too heavy and I couldn't make out anything more than vague weird shapes moving at odd angles in the waves washing down the window. Disappointed, I turned around, but I didn't want to go back to my room. Instead, I wandered further up the stairs, past the first floor, and the second. The stairs ended at the third floor, the highest floor in the building. I looked through the glass that ran up the outer wall of the stairwell, but it was that warped, thick kind that scatters the light, not that there was much to see through the rain to begin with. I opened the stairwell door and wandered down the hallway. The ten or so thick wooden doors, painted blue a long time ago, were all closed. I listened as I walked, but it was the middle of the day, so I wasn't surprised that I heard nothing but the rain outside. As I stood there in the dim hallway, listening to the rain, I had the strange fleeting impression that the doors were standing like silent granite monoliths erected by some ancient forgotten civilization for some unfathomable guardian purpose. Lightning flashed, and I could have sworn that, for just a moment, the old grainy blue wood looked just like rough stone. I laughed at myself for letting my imagination get the best of me, but then it occurred to me that the dim gloom and lightning must mean there was a window somewhere in the hallway. A vague memory surfaced, and I suddenly recalled that the third floor had an alcove and an inset window halfway down the floor's hallway. Excited to look out into the rain and possibly see another human being, I quickly walked over to the alcove, finding the large thin glass window. Rain washed down it, as with the front door's window, but I could open this one. I reached a hand out to slide it open, but hesitated. I had the strangest feeling that if I opened that window, I would see something absolutely horrifying on the other side. Everything's been so odd lately... so I came up with a plan, and I came back here to get what I needed. I don't seriously think anything will come of it, but I'm bored, it's raining, and I'm going stir crazy. I came back to get my webcam. The cord isn't long enough to reach the third floor by any means, so instead I'm going to hide it between the two soda machines in the dark end of my basement hallway, run the wire along the wall and under my door, and put black duct tape over the wire to blend it in with the black plastic strip that runs along the base of the hallway's walls. I know this is silly, but I don't have anything better to do... Well, nothing happened. I propped open the hallway-to-stairwell door, steeled myself, then flung the heavy front door wide open and ran like hell down the stairs to my room and slammed the door. I watched the webcam on my computer intently, seeing the hallway outside my door and most of the stairwell. I'm watching it right now, and I don't see anything interesting. I just wish the camera's position was different, so that I could see out the front door. Hey! Somebody's online! — I got out an older, less functional webcam that I had in my closet to video chat with my friend online. I couldn't really explain to him why I wanted to video chat, but it felt good to see another person's face. He couldn't talk very long, and we didn't talk about anything meaningful, but I feel much better. My strange fear has almost passed. I would feel completely better, but there was something... odd... about our conversation. I know that I've said that everything has seemed odd, but... still, he was very vague in his responses. I can't recall one specific thing that he said... no particular name, or place, or event... but he did ask for my email address to keep in touch. Wait, I just got an email. I'm about to go out. I just got an email from Amy that asked me to meet her for dinner at 'the place we usually go to.' I do love pizza, and I've just been eating random food from my poorly stocked fridge for days, so I can't wait. Again, I feel ridiculous about the odd couple of days I've been having. I should destroy this journal when I get back. Oh, another email. — Oh my god. I almost left the email and opened the door. I almost opened the door. I almost opened the door, but I read the email first! It was from a friend I hadn't heard from in a long time, and it was sent to a huge number of emails that must have been every person he had saved in his address list. It had no subject, and it said, simply: "seen with your own eyes don't trust them they" What the hell is that supposed to mean? The words shock me, and I keep going over and over them. Is it a desperate email sent just as... something happened? The words are obviously cut off without finishing! On any other day I would have dismissed this as spam from a computer virus or something, but the words... seen with your own eyes! I can't help but read over this journal and think back on the last few days and realize that I have not seen another person with my own eyes or talked to another person face to face. The webcam conversation with my friend was so strange, so vague, so... eerie, now that I think about it. Was it eerie? Or is the fear clouding my memory? My mind toys with the progression of events I've written here, pointing out that I have not been presented with one single fact that I did not specifically give out unsuspectingly. The random 'wrong number' that got my name and the subsequent strange return call from Amy, the friend that asked for my email address... I messaged him first when I saw him online! And then I got my first email a few minutes after that conversation! Oh my god! That phone call with Amy! I said over the phone – I said that I was within half an hour's walk of Seventh Street! They know I'm near there! What if they're trying to find me?! Where is everyone else? Why haven't I seen or heard anyone else in days? No, no, this is crazy. This is absolutely crazy. I need to calm down. This madness needs to end. — I don't know what to think. I ran about my apartment furiously, holding my cell phone up to every corner to see if it got a signal through the heavy walls. Finally, in the tiny bathroom, near one ceiling corner, I got a single bar. Holding my phone there, I sent a text message to every number in my list. Not wanting to betray anything about my unfounded fears, I simply sent: You seen anyone face to face lately? At that point, I just wanted any reply back. I didn't care what the reply was, or if I embarrassed myself. I tried to call someone a few times, but I couldn't get my head up high enough, and if I brought my cell phone down even an inch, it lost signal. Then I remembered the computer, and rushed over to it, instant messaging everyone online. Most were idle or away from their computer. Nobody responded. My messages grew more frantic, and I started telling people where I was and to stop by in person for a host of barely passable reasons. I didn't care about anything by that point. I just needed to see another person! I also tore apart my apartment looking for something that I might have missed; some way to contact another human being without opening the door. I know it's crazy, I know it's unfounded, but what if? WHAT IF? I just need to be sure! I taped the phone to the ceiling in case Tuesday THE PHONE RANG! Exhausted from last night's rampage, I must have fallen asleep. I woke up to the phone ringing, and ran into the bathroom, stood on the toilet, and flipped open the phone taped to the ceiling. It was Amy, and I feel so much better. She was really worried about me, and apparently had been trying to contact me since the last time I talked to her. She's coming over now, and, yes, she knows where I am without me telling her. I feel so embarrassed. I am definitely throwing this journal away before anyone sees it. I don't even know why I'm writing in it now. Maybe it's just because it's the only communication I've had at all since… god knows when. I look like hell, too. I looked in the mirror before I came back in here. My eyes are sunken, my stubble is thicker, and I just look generally unhealthy. My apartment is trashed, but I'm not going to clean it up. I think I need someone else to see what I've been through. These past few days have NOT been normal. I am not one to imagine things. I know I have been the victim of extreme probability. I probably missed seeing another person a dozen times. I just happened to go out when it was late at night, or the middle of the day when everyone was gone. Everything's perfectly fine, I know this now. Plus, I found something in the closet last night that has helped me tremendously: a television! I set it up just before I wrote this, and it's on in the background. Television has always been an escape for me, and it reminds me that there's a world beyond these dingy brick walls. I'm glad Amy's the only one that responded to me after last night's frantic pestering of everyone I could contact. She's been my best friend for years. She doesn't know it, but I count the day that I met her among one of the few moments of true happiness in my life. I remember that warm summer day fondly. It seems a different reality from this dark, rainy, lonely place. I feel like I spent days sitting in that playground, much too old to play, just talking with her and hanging around doing nothing at all. I still feel like I can go back to that moment sometimes, and it reminds me that this damn place is not all that there is... finally, a knock on the door! — I thought it was odd that I couldn't see her through the camera I hid between the two soda machines. I figured that it was bad positioning, like when I couldn't see out the front door. I should have known. I should have known! After the knock, I yelled through the door jokingly that I had a camera between the soda machines, because I was embarrassed myself that I had taken this paranoia so far. After I did that, I saw her image walk over to the camera and look down at it. She smiled and waved. "Hey!" she said to the camera brightly, giving it a wry look. "It's weird, I know," I said into the mic attached to my computer. "I've had a weird few days." "Must have," she replied. "Open the door, John." I hesitated. How could I be sure? "Hey, humor me a second here," I told her through the mic. "Tell me one thing about us. Just prove to me you're you." She gave the camera a weird look. "Um, alright," she said slowly, thinking. "We met randomly at a playground when we were both way too old to be there?" I sighed deeply as reality returned and fear faded. God, I'd been so ridiculous. Of course it was Amy! That day wasn't anywhere in the world except in my memory. I'd never even mentioned it to anyone, not out of embarrassment, but out of a strange secret nostalgia and a longing for those days to return. If there was some unknown force at work trying to trick me, as I feared, there was no way they could know about that day. "Haha, alright, I'll explain everything," I told her. "Be right there." I ran to my small bathroom and fixed my hair as best I could. I looked like hell, but she would understand. Snickering at my own unbelievable behavior and the mess I'd made of the place, I walked to the door. I put my hand on the doorknob and gave the mess one last look. So ridiculous, I thought. My eyes traced over the half-eaten food lying on the ground, the overflowing trash bin, and the bed I'd tipped to the side looking for... God knows what. I almost turned to the door and opened it, but my eyes fell on one last thing: the old webcam, the one I used for that eerily vacant chat with my friend. Its silent black sphere lay haphazardly tossed to the side, its lens pointed at the table where this journal lay. An overwhelming terror took me as I realized that if something could see through that camera, it would have seen what I just wrote about that day. I asked her for any one thing about us, and she chose the only thing in the world that I thought they or it did not know... but IT DID! IT DID KNOW! IT COULD HAVE BEEN WATCHING ME THE WHOLE TIME! I didn't open the door. I screamed. I screamed in uncontrollable terror. I stomped on the old webcam on the floor. The door shook, and the doorknob tried to turn, but I didn't hear Amy's voice through the door. Was the basement door, made to keep out drafts, too thick? Or was Amy not outside? What could have been trying to get in, if not her? What the hell is out there?! I saw her on my computer through the camera outside, I heard her on the speakers through the camera outside, but was it real?! How can I know?! She's gone now – I screamed, and shouted for help! I piled up everything in my apartment against the front door – Friday At least I think that it's Friday. I broke everything electronic. I smashed my computer to pieces. Every single thing on there could have been accessed by network access, or worse, altered. I'm a programmer, I know. Every little piece of information I gave out since this started – my name, my email, my location – none of it came back from outside until I gave it out. I've been going over and over what I wrote. I've been pacing back and forth, alternating between stark terror and overpowering disbelief. Sometimes I'm absolutely certain some phantom entity is dead set on the simple goal of getting me to go outside. Back to the beginning, with the phone call from Amy, she was effectively asking me to open the door and go outside. I keep running through it in my head. One point of view says I've acted like a madman, and all of this is the extreme convergence of probability – never going outside at the right times by pure luck, never seeing another person by pure chance, getting a random nonsense email from some computer virus at just the right time. The other point of view says that extreme convergence of probability is the reason that whatever's out there hasn't gotten me already. I keep thinking: I never opened the window on the third floor. I never opened the front door, until that incredibly stupid stunt with the hidden camera after which I ran straight to my room and slammed the door. I haven't opened my own solid door since I flung open the front door of the building. Whatever's out there – if anything's out there – never made an 'appearance' in the building before I opened the front door. Maybe the reason it wasn't in the building already was that it was elsewhere getting everyone else... and then it waited, until I betrayed my existence by trying to call Amy... a call which didn't work, until it called me and asked me my name... Terror literally overwhelms me every time I try to fit the pieces of this nightmare together. That email – short, cut off – was it from someone trying to get word out? Some friendly voice desperately trying to warn me before it came? Seen with my own eyes, don't trust them – exactly what I've been so suspicious of. It could have masterful control of all things electronic, practicing its insidious deception to trick me into coming outside. Why can't it get in? It knocked on the door – it must have some solid presence... the door... the image of those doors in the upper hallway as guardian monoliths flashes back in my mind every time I trace this path of thoughts. If there is some phantom entity trying to get me to go outside, maybe it can't get through doors. I keep thinking back over all the books I've read or movies I've seen, trying to generate some explanation for this. Doors have always been such intense foci of human imagination, always seen as wards or portals of special importance. Or perhaps the door is just too thick? I know that I couldn't bash through any of the doors in this building, let alone the heavy basement ones. Aside from that, the real question is, why does it even want me? If it just wanted to kill me, it could do it any number of ways, including just waiting until I starve to death. What if it doesn't want to kill me? What if it has some far more horrific fate in store for me? God, what can I do to escape this nightmare?! A knock on the door... — I told the people on the other side of the door I need a minute to think and I'll come out. I'm really just writing this down so I can figure out what to do. At least this time I heard their voices. My paranoia – and yes, I recognize I'm being paranoid – has me thinking of all sorts of ways that their voices could be faked electronically. There could be nothing but speakers outside, simulating human voices. Did it really take them three days to come talk to me? Amy is supposedly out there, along with two policemen and a psychiatrist. Maybe it took them three days to think of what to say to me – the psychiatrist's claim could be pretty convincing, if I decided to think this has all been a crazy misunderstanding, and not some entity trying to trick me into opening the door. The psychiatrist had an older voice, authoritarian but still caring. I liked it. I'm desperate just to see someone with my own eyes! He said I have something called cyber-psychosis, and I'm just one of a nationwide epidemic of thousands of people having breakdowns triggered by a suggestive email that 'got through somehow.' I swear he said 'got through somehow.' I think he means spread throughout the country inexplicably, but I'm incredibly suspicious that the entity slipped up and revealed something. He said I am part of a wave of 'emergent behavior', that a lot of other people are having the same problem with the same fears, even though we've never communicated. That neatly explains the strange email about eyes that I got. I didn't get the original triggering email. I got a descendant of it - my friend could have broken down too, and tried to warn everyone he knew against his paranoid fears. That's how the problem spreads, the psychiatrist claims. I could have spread it, too, with my texts and instant messages online to everybody I know. One of those people might be melting down right now, after being triggered by something I sent them, something they might interpret any way that they want, something like a text saying seen anyone face to face lately? The psychiatrist told me that he didn't want to 'lose another one', that people like me are intelligent, and that's our downfall. We draw connections so well that we draw them even when they shouldn't be there. He said it's easy to get caught up in paranoia in our fast paced world, a constantly changing place where more and more of our interaction is simulated... I have to give him one thing. It's a great explanation. It neatly explains everything. It perfectly explains everything, in fact. I have every reason to shake off this nightmarish fear that some thing or consciousness or being out there wants me to open the door so it can capture me for some horrible fate worse than death. It would be foolish, after hearing that explanation, to stay in here until I starve to death just to spite the entity that might have got everyone else. It would be foolish to think that, after hearing that explanation, I might be one of the last people left alive on an empty world, hiding in my secure basement room, spiting some unthinkable deceptive entity just by refusing to be captured. It's a perfect explanation for every single strange thing I've seen or heard, and I have every reason in the world to let all of my fears go, and open the door. That's exactly why I'm not going to. How can I be sure?! How can I know what's real and what's deception? All of these damn things with their wires and their signals that originate from some unseen origin! They're not real, I can't be sure! Signals through a camera, faked video, deceptive phone calls, emails! Even the television, lying broken on the floor – how can I possibly know it's real? It's just signals, waves, light... the door! It's bashing on the door! It's trying to get in! What insane mechanical contrivance could it be using to simulate the sound of men attacking the heavy wood so well?! At least I'll finally see it with my own eyes... there's nothing left in here for it to deceive me with, I've ripped apart everything else! It can't deceive my eyes, can it? Seen with your own eyes don't trust them they... wait... was that desperate message telling me to trust my eyes, or warning me about my eyes too?! Oh my god, what's the difference between a camera and my eyes? They both turn light into electrical signals – they're the same! I can't be deceived! I have to be sure! I have to be sure! Date Unknown I calmly asked for paper and a pen, day in and day out, until it finally gave them to me. Not that it matters. What am I going to do? Poke my eyes out? The bandages feel like part of me now. The pain is gone. I figure this will be one of my last chances to write legibly, as, without my sight to correct mistakes, my hands will slowly forget the motions involved. This is a sort of self-indulgence, this writing... it's a relic of another time, because I'm certain everyone left in the world is dead... or something far worse. I sit against the padded wall day in and day out. The entity brings me food and water. It masks itself as a kind nurse, as an unsympathetic doctor. I think it knows that my hearing has sharpened considerably now that I live in darkness. It fakes conversations in the hallways, on the off chance that I might overhear. One of the nurses talks about having a baby soon. One of the doctors lost his wife in a car accident. None of it matters, none of it is real. None of it gets to me, not like she does. That's the worst part, the part I almost can't handle. The thing comes to me, masquerading as Amy. Its recreation is perfect. It sounds exactly like Amy, feels exactly like her. It even produces a reasonable facsimile of tears that it makes me feel on its lifelike cheeks. When it first dragged me here, it told me all the things I wanted to hear. It told me that she loved me, that she had always loved me, that it didn't understand why I did this, that we could still have a life together, if only I would stop insisting that I was being deceived. It wanted me to believe... no, it needed me to believe that she was real. I almost fell for it. I really did. I doubted myself for the longest time. In the end, though, it was all too perfect, too flawless, and too real. The false Amy used to come every day, and then every week, and finally stopped coming altogether... but I don't think the entity will give up. I think the waiting game is just another one of its gambits. I will resist it for the rest of my life, if I have to. I don't know what happened to the rest of the world, but I do know that this thing needs me to fall for its deceptions. If it needs that, then maybe, just maybe, I am a thorn in its agenda. Maybe Amy is still alive out there somewhere, kept alive only by my will to resist the deceiver. I hold on to that hope, rocking back and forth in my cell to pass the time. I will never give in. I will never break. I am... a hero! ==== The doctor read the paper the patient had scribbled on. It was barely readable, written in the shaky script of one who could not see. He wanted to smile at the man's steadfast resolve, a reminder of the human will to survive, but he knew that the patient was completely delusional. After all, a sane man would have fallen for the deception long ago. The doctor wanted to smile. He wanted to whisper words of encouragement to the delusional man. He wanted to scream, but the nerve filaments wrapped around his head and into his eyes made him do otherwise. His body walked into the cell like a puppet, and told the patient, once more, that he was wrong, and that there was nobody trying to deceive him. I just want to start off by saying if you want an answer at the end, prepare to be disappointed. There just isn't one. I was an intern at Nickelodeon Studios for a year in 2005 for my degree in animation. It wasn't paid of course, most internships aren't, but it did have some perks beyond education. To adults it might not seem like a big one, but most kids at the time would go crazy over it.
Now, since I worked directly with the editors and animators, I got to view the new episodes days before they aired. I'll get right to it without giving too many unnecessary details. They had very recently made the SpongeBob movie and the entire staff was somewhat sapped of creativity so it took them longer to start up the season. But the delay lasted longer for more upsetting reasons. There was a problem with the series 4 premiere that set everyone and everything back for several months. Me and two other interns were in the editing room along with the lead animators and sound editors for the final cut. We received the copy that was supposed to be "Fear of a Krabby Patty" and gathered around the screen to watch. Now, given that it isn't final yet animators often put up a mock title card, sort of an inside joke for us, with phony, often times lewd titles, such as "How sex doesn't work" instead of "Rock-a-bye-Bivalve" when SpongeBob and Patrick adopt a sea scallop. Nothing particularly funny but work related chuckles. So when we saw the title card "Squidward's Suicide" we didn't think it more than a morbid joke. One of the interns did a small throat laugh at it. The happy-go-lucky music plays as is normal. The story began with Squidward practicing his clarinet, hitting a few sour notes like normal. We hear SpongeBob laughing outside and Squidward stops, yelling at him to keep it down as he has a concert that night and needs to practice. SpongeBob says okay and goes to see Sandy with Patrick. The bubbles splash screen comes up and we see the ending of Squidward's concert. This is when things began to seem off. While playing, a few frames repeat themselves, but the sound doesn't (at this point sound is synced up with animation, so, yes, that's not common) but when he stops playing, the sound finishes as if the skip never happened. There is slight murmuring in the crowd before they begin to boo him. Not normal cartoon booing that is common in the show, but you could very clearly hear malice in it. Squidward's in full frame and looks visibly afraid. The shot goes to the crowd, with SpongeBob in center frame, and he too is booing, very much unlike him. That isn't the oddest thing, though. What is odd is everyone had hyper realistic eyes. Very detailed. Clearly not shots of real people's eyes, but something a bit more real than CGI. The pupils were red. Some of us looked at each other, obviously confused, but since we weren't the writers, we didn't question its appeal to children yet. The shot goes to Squidward sitting on the edge of his bed, looking very forlorn. The view out of his porthole window is of a night sky so it isn't very long after the concert. The unsettling part is at this point there is no sound. Literally no sound. Not even the feedback from the speakers in the room. It's as if the speakers were turned off, though their status showed them working perfectly. He just sat there, blinking, in this silence for about 30 seconds, then he started to sob softly. He put his hands (tentacles) over his eyes and cried quietly for a full minute more, all the while a sound in the background very slowly growing from nothing to barely audible. It sounded like a slight breeze through a forest. The screen slowly begins to zoom in on his face. By slow I mean it's only noticeable if you look at shots 10 seconds apart side by side. His sobbing gets louder, more full of hurt and anger. The screen then twitches a bit, as if it twists in on itself, for a split second then back to normal. The wind-through-the-trees sound gets slowly louder and more severe, as if a storm is brewing somewhere. The eerie part is this sound, and Squidward's sobbing, sounded real, as if the sound wasn't coming from the speakers but as if the speakers were holes the sound was coming through from the other side. As good as sound as the studio likes to have, they don't purchase the equipment to be that good to produce sound of that quality. Below the sound of the wind and sobbing, very faint, something sounded like laughing. It came at odd intervals and never lasted more than a second so you had a hard time pinning it (we watched this show twice, so pardon me if things sound too specific but I've had time to think about them). After 30 seconds of this, the screen blurred and twitched violently and something flashed over the screen, as if a single frame was replaced. The lead animation editor paused and rewound frame by frame. What we saw was horrible. It was a still photo of a dead child. He couldn't have been more than 6. The face was mangled and bloodied, one eye dangling over his upturned face, popped. He was naked down to his underwear, his stomach crudely cut open and his entrails laying beside him. He was laying on some pavement that was probably a road. The most upsetting part was that there was a shadow of the photographer. There was no crime tape, no evidence tags or markers, and the angle was completely off for a shot designed to be evidence. It would seem the photographer was the person responsible for the child's death. We were of course mortified, but pressed on, hoping that it was just a sick joke. The screen flipped back to Squidward, still sobbing, louder than before, and half body in frame. There was now what appeard to be blood running down his face from his eyes. The blood was also done in a hyper realistic style, looking as if you touched it you'd get blood on your fingers. The wind sounded now as if it were that of a gale blowing through the forest; there were even snapping sounds of branches. The laughing, a deep baritone, lasting at longer intervals and coming more frequently. After about 20 seconds, the screen again twisted and showed a single frame photo. The editor was reluctant to go back, we all were, but he knew he had to. This time the photo was that of what appeared to be a little girl, no older than the first child. She was laying on her stomach, her barrettes in a pool of blood next to her. Her left eye was too popped out and popped, naked except for underpants. Her entrails were piled on top of her above another crude cut along her back. Again the body was on the street and the photographer's shadow was visible, very similar in size and shape to the first. I had to choke back vomit and one intern, the only female in the room, ran out. The show resumed. About 5 seconds after this second photo played, Squidward went silent, as did all sound, like it was when this scene started. He put his tentacles down and his eyes were now done in hyper realism like the others were in the beginning of this episode. They were bleeding, bloodshot, and pulsating. He just stared at the screen, as if watching the viewer. After about 10 seconds, he started sobbing, this time not covering his eyes. The sound was piercing and loud, and most fear inducing of all is his sobbing was mixed with screams. Tears and blood were dripping down his face at a heavy rate. The wind sound came back, and so did the deep voiced laughing, and this time the still photo lasted for a good 5 frames. The animator was able to stop it on the 4th and backed up. This time the photo was of a boy, about the same age, but this time the scene was different. The entrails were just being pulled out from a stomach wound by a large hand, the right eye popped and dangling, blood trickling down it. The animator proceeded. It was hard to believe, but the next one was different but we couldn't tell what. He went on to the next, same thing. He want back to the first and played them quicker and I lost it. I vomited on the floor, the animating and sound editors gasping at the screen. The 5 frames were not as if they were 5 different photos, they were played out as if they were frames from a video. We saw the hand slowly lift out the guts, we saw the kid's eyes focus on it, we even saw two frames of the kid beginning to blink. The lead sound editor told us to stop, he had to call in the creator to see this. Mr. Hillenburg arrived within about 15 minutes. He was confused as to why he was called down there, so the editor just continued the episode. Once the few frames were shown, all screaming, all sound again stopped. Squidward was just staring at the viewer, full frame of the face, for about 3 seconds. The shot quickly panned out and that deep voice said "DO IT" and we see in Squidward's hands a shotgun. He immediately puts the gun in his mouth and pulls the trigger. Realistic blood and brain matter splatters the wall behind him, and his bed, and he flies back with the force. The last 5 seconds of this episode show his body on the bed, on his side, one eye dangling on what's left of his head above the floor, staring blankly at it. Then the episode ends. Mr. Hillenburg is obviously angry at this. He demanded to know what the heck was going on. Most people left the room at this point, so it was just a handful of us to watch it again. Viewing the episode twice only served to imprint the entirety of it in my mind and cause me horrible nightmares. I'm sorry I stayed. The only theory we could think of was the file was edited by someone in the chain from the drawing studio to here. The CTO was called in to analyze when it happened. The analysis of the file did show it was edited over by new material. However, the timestamp of it was a mere 24 seconds before we began viewing it. All equipment involved was examined for foreign software and hardware as well as glitches, as if the time stamp may have glitched and showed the wrong time, but everything checked out fine. We don't know what happened and to this day nobody does. There was an investigation due to the nature of the photos, but nothing came of it. No child seen was identified and no clues were gathered from the data involved nor physical clues in the photos. I never believed in unexplainable phenomena before, but now that I have something happen and can't prove anything about it beyond anecdotal evidence, I think twice about things. Ever since I can remember I have had a strange fascination with mirrors. The idea that there is a piece of glass which reflects everything you see. I still wonder what the first man thought when he was saw his reflection in still water. Did he instinctively know it was him? Or did he spend a few minutes moving his arms around until he realized that this other man matched his movements completely? Whatever the case, my natural curiosity for mirrors led to one of the most unbelievable moments of my life.
It was 7 years ago. I was a ten year old who had just moved from the cozy suburbs to a large ranch house, smack dab in the middle of 10 acres of land. I had many memorable experiences in that house and on the surrounding property, getting bitten by a racoon, having late night airsoft wars; but there is one that I have never told. One that is set apart from all the others. We bought that house as a fixer upper, and since I was a ten year old with a taste for adventure, I claimed the lone upstairs bedroom as my own. The room was complete with dated brass fixtures, thick teal carpet, and it’s own connected bathroom. Over time as I have thought through this story in my head, I am still surprised that I didn’t notice anything when I first went into that bathroom. I didn’t have a dark foreboding, there wasn’t anything stand out creepy or weird about it, just a room. A sink. And a mirror. The mirror was massive. It sat behind the sink so you couldn’t help but see yourself when you walked in. It had a slight yellowed tint, and was covered in dust and grime. But nothing really seemed out of the ordinary, nothing that would signal what was to come. The first two nights spent in that bedroom were completely normal, nothing strange except the occasional midnight creak or moan from the ancient air conditioning unit. But on the 3rd night, laying in my bedroom bed, it started. I woke up suddenly, the groggy feeling of heaviness that accompanies being woken from a deep sleep. I slowly started to gain consciousness and my ears strained to hear what could have woken me. That’s when I heard it. Drip…. Drip…. Drip…. I breathed a sigh of relief as I realized I just must have left the bathroom faucet on. I sat up, turned on my dim bedside lamp, climbed out of bed, and stepped into the bathroom. As I set my foot down on the tile, I was surprised when I discovered it strangely chilled. I continued in, not thinking too much of it, and turned the bathroom light on. My reflection greeted me. I was in my Mario pajamas and my hair was a bed-heady mess. I smiled at how silly I looked. I looked at the faucet handle and sure enough, it had been left ever so slightly open. I turned it all the way closed, turned off the light and went back to bed. As I was drifting off to sleep I made a mental note to ask my dad if he could tighten the faucet in the morning. Though, by the time I got back from school, as you can expect from any 5th grader, I had a million different things on my mind, and completely forgot. Instead spending my time at Goodwill with my parents looking for the perfect costume for halloween, which was coming up in a few days. That night though, it happened again. I awoke suddenly, with the same strange heaviness that covered my body the night before. Instinctively I strained my ears, and I heard it again. Drip…. Drip…. Drip…. I sat up, annoyed. I was sure I had double checked the faucet before I went to bed. I turned on my bedside lamp, walked across the carpet and set foot on the bathroom tile. My foot recoiled instinctively. The tile wasn’t just cool anymore, it was actually cold. Too bothered to care, I turned on the light and jumped at the sight of my reflection. I still wasn’t used to seeing anybody else (Even if it was me) this late at night. I guess all that TV before bed was starting to take it’s toll. I turned the faucet off, and the dripping stopped. The next day I got my dad to tighten the faucet handle. He walked in with the tool bag, appeared to be tightening something, than walked out. It turned out that everything was already tight, and he told me to make sure to check the faucet before I went to bed. So, that night before I went to bed, I walked into the bathroom, the frigid floor greeting my bare feet once again. I looked at my ever present reflection, feeling a dull sense of unease for whatever reason. I didn’t look my reflection in the eyes very long, I still don’t know why at that point I felt uncomfortable with it. I checked and double checked the faucet handle, nothing was dripping. Feeling relieved that I could finally get some uninterrupted rest, I layed down in my bed, turned off the light and drifted off. I awoke again, my body felt even heavier than usual, my mind seemed groggy, everything was completely black, I think my head was still under my covers. My ears pricked up, listening. I still get shivers thinking about this part. I didn’t hear a Drip… Drip… Drip… I heard Psshhhhh After spending a few moments trying to decipher what this sound was, I realized it was the faucet. The faucet was on completely. No longer a drip but a steady stream. I tried to sit up, but it took a few tries to get my bearings after being awakened from my near catatonic sleep. I attuned my ear and made sure what I heard was what I thought it was. Yes, the faucet in my bathroom was completely on. I gulped. I stepped off of my bed, my feet being cushioned by the dated carpet. The light from my bed lamp was dim, only casting enough light to light up my floor, the bathroom was still pitch black. I stepped in. This time when I placed my foot on the floor, it wasn’t just cold, it was freezing. It felt like the tile had been in a deep freeze. Unsure what to do, I stepped in fully, goosebumps shooting up my calf, and turned the light on. I don’t know what I expected to see, but what I saw was me. I looked deeply into my own eyes, feeling a sense of distrust. I still don’t really know how to explain it, but the only closest word I can think of, is detachment. Like looking at a photo of yourself when you were younger. You know that’s you, but you feel…. detached. I reached my hand slowly towards the faucet handle, still meeting my own stare. I slowly started to turn the handle, my eyes meeting my own. The water poured less, less, less and then finally the handle clicked to its full rotation, the water was off. My hand remained on the faucet I started at the eyes of my reflection, and that’s when it happened. It blinked. I saw my reflection blink. I let out what I thought would be a scream but ended up just being a sudden and horrified gasp. I ran out of the room, down the stairs and straight to my parents bedside. They were a little surprised that I ran to them crying because I hadn;t for years, but they could tell I was upset so they let me sleep in their room. All I could muster out that morning in explanation was “Nightmares” I didn’t dare tell my parents, I don’t know if it was my childhood fear of not being believed, or what. I think part of me was still trying to convince myself that it didn’t happen. I tried telling myself that my eyes were just playing tricks on me, anything to convince myself that I didn’t really see “my” reflection blink. Anything to convince myself that that mirror was just another mirror. That evening, was halloween. I was invited by some of my new fifth grade friends to go trick or treating with them, but after a few hours we had to stop early due to a giant rainstorm kicking in. When I returned to my house, pillowcase full of candy in tow, my parents greeted me with news that send shivers down my spine. They were going on a date night. I tried to explain the various made up excuses I had for them not to go, I even tried to use the lightning storm outside as an excuse, but nothing worked. And I didn’t dare tell them the real reason. They patiently explained how I was 12 years old, they’d only be gone for a few hours, and I had their phone numbers if I needed to call. Once the door shut behind them, my heart dropped. I was alone. With the mirror. I spent the first hour or so downstairs. I tried to get the tv to work, but because of the storm outside I was only getting static. That’s when I made my decision. I still don’t know what drove me to go back into the bathroom. I’ve tried to explain it as childhood curiosity, temporary insanity, and a few other things. To this day I still don’t understand it. Whatever the case, I found myself climbing up the stairs to the top floor where my bedroom was located. I waked into the bedroom, and as if on cue, a particularly loud clap of thunder made the windows rattle. I turned on my bedside lamp, and sat on my bed staring at the bathroom doorway. I pulled out my still full candy bag, reached my hand down into it and pulled out a few tootsie rolls. I ate quietly, hoping the sugar would give me courage. I walked into the bathroom, turned the light on, and looked my reflection dead in the eye. Time seemed to stand still. My reflection no longer felt like me. Looking at it made me feel almost offended, that there could be something so similar to me, but so different. Everything got very quiet. I could hear my heartbeat loudly in my head. My reflection was moving. Its arm, to be specific. I only saw it out of my peripheral vision because our eyes were locked, but it was definitely moving. What felt like a electric current shot up my body, my hair stood on end and I was frozen, staring, every single muscle in my body tense. I tried to scream but I couldn’t move. My reflection still stared back at me, it’s face neutral. It was moving it’s hand towards the faucet handle on its side, it got closer and closer and then I felt something on my hand, strained my eyes to look down just a tiny bit and realized my own hand had grasped the faucet handle on my side. It had moved it’s hand to the faucet handle and I had too. I tried to pull my hand back, but I couldn’t. It was as if the signals from my brain weren’t being communicated to any parts of my body. I willed my body to move, but nothing happened. My reflection’s face looked at me knowingly, then moved its head slightly closer to the mirror, and parted it’s lips, revealing a devilish grin. I felt my own face contort, matching its features. BANG A clap of thunder rattled the mirror. My whole body felt heavy as I stared at this smiling abomination, somehow controlling my body. It’s free hand started to move up, and though I couldn’t break the stare with its eyes, I could see out of my peripheral vision that my hand was also moving up. Our hands simultaneously started moving towards the mirror. I tried to fight back, to pull away, but it was useless. As my hand got closer to the mirror, I felt a vibration emanating from the grimy glass surface, but it pulled my hand closer still, it’s horrifying smile still stretching my face. BANG an even louder clap of thunder rumbled the very ground I was standing on. As my hand got closer and closer to the mirror, my fingertips started to feel incredibly cold. I was trying with all my might to pull my hand away from the mirror, my fingertips were grazing the surface of the mirror, and then I felt it. An icy coldness, a tingling sensation, on the tips of my fingers, and I could see, my fingers had partially gone through the mirror, to the other side. My heart dropped. And that’s when I realized it was trying to pull me over to its side. BANG the loudest lightning strike of them all shook the house, and in an instant, darkness. The lighting had killed the power, and to my delight I could no longer see my reflection, only pitch black darkness. I pulled my fingers out of the glass, I could control my body again. I turned my head away from the mirror my body scrambling to be anywhere but in that bathroom. I dove out of the bathroom, hitting my shoulder on the door on the way out, then landed not so softly on the floor. The colors of my room got distorted, everything was purple, then green. The room was spinning and my head felt light, I tried to get up but my body wouldn’t listen. That’s when I blacked out. That was the last night I set foot in that bathroom. Heck, that was the last time I even set foot in the bedroom. It took less work than I thought than to convince my parents to let me sleep in the game room. Eventually though, our family decided to move. We renovated the whole house. We tore up the dated green carpet, we repainted all the rooms, and we removed the big, grimy, dusty mirror in the bathroom. I refused to help. The day went by so fast, as I was kept busy clearing out the garage, but I specifically remember the workers carrying the mirror towards the back of the pick up truck my dad had borrowed. First they tried to break it to fit easier in the truck, but nothing worked. They tried hammers, axes, but nothing even scratched it. My final memory of that mirror, was of it standing upright in the back of the truck. Still dusty, grimy and dirty, but other wise completely unscathed. As the truck drove away the mirror happened to be angled perfectly to see my reflection once again. I saw in the mirror, a kid standing alone in a drive way. Staring with eyes wide, full of fear. That was the last time I saw the mirror. Bedtime is supposed to be a happy event for a tired child; for me it was terrifying. While some children might complain about being put to bed before they have finished watching a film or playing their favourite video game, when I was a child, night time was something to truly fear. Somewhere in the back of my mind it still is.
As someone who is trained in the sciences, I cannot prove that what happened to me was objectively real, but I can swear that what I experienced was genuine horror. A fear which in my life, I’m glad to say, has never been equalled. I will relate it to you all now as best I can, make of it what you will, but I’ll be glad to just get it off of my chest. I can’t remember exactly when it started, but my apprehension towards falling asleep seemed to correspond with my being moved into a room of my own. I was 8 years old at the time and until then I had shared a room, quite happily, with my older brother. As is perfectly understandable for a boy 5 years my senior, my brother eventually wished for a room of his own and as a result, I was given the room at the back of the house. It was a small, narrow, yet oddly elongated room, large enough for a bed and a couple of chest of drawers, but not much else. I couldn’t really complain because, even at that age, I understood that we did not have a large house and I had no real cause to be disappointed, as my family was both loving and caring. It was a happy childhood, during the day. A solitary window looked out onto our back garden, nothing out of the ordinary, but even during the day the light which crept into that room seemed almost hesitant. As my brother was given a new bed, I was given the bunk beds which we used to share. While I was upset about sleeping on my own, I was excited at the thought of being able to sleep in the top bunk, which seemed far more adventurous to me. From the very first night I remember a strange feeling of unease creeping slowly from the back of my mind. I lay on the top bunk, staring down at my action figures and cars strewn across the green-blue carpet. As imaginary battles and adventures took place between the toys on the floor, I couldn’t help but feel that my eyes were being slowly drawn towards the bottom bunk, as if something was moving in the corner of my eye. Something which did not wish to be seen. The bunk was empty, impeccably made with a dark blue blanket tucked in neatly, partially covering two rather bland white pillows. I didn’t think anything of it at the time, I was a child, and the noise slipping under my door from my parent’s television, bathed me in a warm sense of safety and well-being. I fell asleep. When you awaken from a deep sleep to something moving, or stirring, it can take a few moments for you to truly understand what is happening. The fog of sleep hangs over your eyes and ears even when lucid. Something was moving, there was no doubt about that. At first I wasn’t sure what it was. Everything was dark, almost pitch black, but there was enough light creeping in from outside to outline that narrowly suffocating room. Two thoughts appeared in my mind almost simultaneously. The first was that my parents were in bed because the rest of the house lay both in darkness, and silence. The second thought turned to the noise. A noise which had obviously woken me. As the last cob webs of sleep withered from my mind, the noise took on a more familiar form. Sometimes the simplest of sounds can be the most unnerving, a cold wind whistling through a tree outside, a neighbour’s footsteps uncomfortably close, or, in this case, the simple sound of bed sheets rustling in the dark. That was it; bed sheets rustling in the dark as if some disturbed sleeper was attempting to get all too comfortable in the bottom bunk. I lay there in disbelief thinking that the noise was either my imagination, or perhaps just my pet cat finding somewhere comfortable to spend the night. It was then that I noticed my door, shut as it had been as I’d fallen asleep. Perhaps my mum had checked in on me and the cat had sneaked in to my room then. Yes, that must have been it. I turned to face the wall, closing my eyes in the vain hope that I could fall back to sleep. As I moved, the rustling noise from underneath me ceased. I thought that I must have disturbed my cat, but quickly I realised that the visitor in the bottom bunk was much less mundane than my pet trying to sleep, and much more sinister. As if alerted to, and disgruntled by, my presence, the disturbed sleeper began to toss and turn violently, like a child having a tantrum in their bed. I could hear the sheets twist and turn with increasing ferocity. Fear then gripped me, not like the subtle sense of unease I had experienced earlier, but now potent and terrifying. My heart raced as my eyes panicked, scanning the almost impenetrable darkness. I let out a cry. As most young boys do, I instinctively shouted on my mother. I could hear something stir on the other side of the house, but as I began to breath a sigh of relief that my parents were coming to save me, the bunk beds suddenly started to shake violently as if gripped by an earthquake, scraping against the wall. I could hear the sheets below me thrashing around as if tormented by malice. I did not want to jump down to safety as I feared the thing in the bottom bunk would reach out and grab me, pulling me into the darkness, so I stayed there, white knuckles clenching my own blanket like a shroud of protection. The wait seemed like an eternity. The door finally, and thankfully, burst open, and I lay bathed in light while the bottom bunk, the resting place of my unwanted visitor, lay empty and peaceful. I cried and my mother consoled me. Tears of fear, followed by relief, streamed down my face. Yet, through all of the horror and relief, I did not tell her why I was so upset. I cannot explain it, but it was as though whatever had been in that bunk would return if I even so much as spoke of it, or uttered a single syllable of its existence. Whether that was the truth, I do not know, but as a child I felt as if that unseen menace remained close, listening. My mother lay in the empty bunk, promising to stay there until morning. Eventually my anxiety diminished, tiredness pushed me back towards sleep, but I remained restless, waking several times momentarily to the sound of rustling bed sheets. I remember the next day wanting to go anywhere, be anywhere, but in that narrow suffocating room. It was a Saturday and I played outside, quite happily with my friends. Although our house was not large we were lucky to have a long sloping garden in the back. We played there often, as much of it was overgrown and we could hide in the bushes, climb in the huge sycamore tree which towered above all else, and easily imagine ourselves in the throws of a grand adventure, in some untamed exotic land. As fun as it all was, occasionally my eye would turn to that small window; ordinary, slight, and innocuous. But for me, that thin boundary was a looking glass into a strange, cold pocket of dread. Outside, the lush green surroundings of our garden filled with the smiling faces of my friends could not extinguish the creeping feeling clawing its way up my spine; each hair standing on end. The feeling of something in that room, watching me play, waiting for the night when I would be alone; eagerly filled with hate. It may sound strange to you, but by the time my parents ushered me back into that room for the night, I said nothing. I didn’t protest, I didn’t even make an excuse as to why I couldn’t sleep there. I simply and sullenly walked into that room, climbed the few steps into the top bunk and then waited. As an adult I would be telling everyone about my experience, but even at that age I felt almost silly to be talking about something which I really had no evidence for. I would be lying, however, if I said this was my primary reason; I still felt that this thing would be enraged if I so much as spoke of it. It’s funny how certain words can remain hidden from your mind, no matter how blatant or obvious they are. One word came to me that second night, lying there in the darkness alone, frightened, aware of a rotten change in the atmosphere; a thickening of the air as if something had displaced it. As I heard the first casual twists of the bed sheets below, the first anxious increase of my heartbeat at the realisation that something was once again in the bottom bunk, that word, a word which had been sent into exile, filtered up through my consciousness, breaking free of all repression, gasping for air screaming, etching, and carving itself into my mind. “Ghost”. As this thought came to me, I noticed that my unwelcome visitor had ceased moving. The bed sheets lay calm and dormant, but they had been replaced by something far more hideous. A slow, rhythmic, rasping breath heaved and escaped from the thing below. I could imagine its chest rising and falling with each sordid, wheezing, and garbled breath. I shuddered, and hoped beyond all hope that it would leave without occurrence. The house lay, as it had the previous night, in a thick blanket of darkness. Silence prevailed, all but for the perverted breath of my, as yet, unseen bunkmate. I lay there terrified. I just wanted this thing to go, to leave me alone. What did it want? Then something unmistakably chilling transpired; it moved. It moved in a way different from before. When it threw itself around in the bottom bunk it seemed, unrestrained, without purpose, almost animalistic. This movement, however, was driven by awareness, with purpose, with a goal in mind. For that thing lying there in the darkness, that thing which seemed intent on terrorising a young boy, calmly and nonchalantly sat up. Its laboured breathing had become louder as now only a mattress and a few flimsy wooden slats separated my body from the unearthly breath below. I lay there, my eyes filled with tears. A fear which mere words cannot relate to you or anyone else coursed through my veins. I would not have believed that this fear could have been heightened, but I was so wrong. I imagined what this thing would look like, sitting there listing from below my mattress, hoping to catch the slightest hint that I was awake. Imagination then turned to an unnerving reality. It began to touch the wooden slats which my mattress sat on. It seemed to caress them carefully, running what I imagined to be fingers and hands across the surface of the wood. Then, with great force, it prodded angrily between two slats, into the mattress. Even through the padding, it felt as though someone had viciously stuck their fingers into my side. I let out an almighty cry and the wheezing, shaking, and moving thing in the bunk below replied in kind by violently vibrating the bunk as it had done the night before. Small flakes of paint powdered onto my blanket from the wall as the frame of the bed scraped along it, backwards and forwards. Once again I was bathed in light, and there stood my mother, loving, caring as she always was, with a comforting hug and calming words which eventually subdued my hysteria. Of course she asked what was wrong, but I could not say, I dared not say. I simply said one word over and over and over again. “Nightmare”. This pattern of events continued for weeks, if not months. Night after night I would awaken to the sound of rustling sheets. Each time I would scream so as to not provide this abomination with time to prod and ‘feel’ for me. With each cry the bed would shake violently, stopping with the arrival of my mother who would spend the rest of the night in the bottom bunk, seemingly unaware of the sinister force torturing her son nightly. Along the way I managed to feign illness a few times and come up with other less-than-truthful reasons for sleeping in my parents’ bed, but more often than not I would be alone for the first few hours of each night in that place. The room where the light from outside did not sit right. Alone with that thing. With time you can become desensitised to almost anything, no matter how horrific. I had come to realise that, for whatever reason, this thing could not harm me when my mother was present. I am sure the same would have been said for my father, but as loving as he was, waking him from sleep was almost impossible. After a few months I had grown accustomed to my nightly visitor. Do not mistake this for some unearthly friendship, I detested the thing. I still feared it greatly as I could almost sense its desires and its personality, if you could call it that; one filled with a perverted and twisted hatred yet longing for me, of perhaps all things. My greatest fears were realised in the winter. The days grew short, and the longer nights merely provided this wretch with more opportunities. It was a difficult time for my family. My Grandmother, a wonderfully kind and gentle woman, had deteriorated greatly since the death of my Grandfather. My mother was trying her best to keep her in the community as long as possible, however, dementia is a cruel and degenerative illness, robbing a person of their memories one day at a time. Soon she recognised none of us, and it became clear that she would need to be moved from her house to a nursing home. Before she could be moved, my Grandmother had a particularly difficult few nights and my mother decided that she would stay with her. As much as I loved my Grandmother and felt nothing but anguish at her illness, to this day I feel guilty that my first thoughts were not of her, but of what my nightly visitor may do should it become aware of my mother’s absence; her presence being the one thing which I was sure was protecting me from the full horror of this thing’s reach. I rushed home from school that day and immediately wrenched the bed sheets and mattress from the lower bunk, removing all of the slats and placing an old desk, a chest of drawers, and some chairs which we kept in a cupboard where the bottom bunk used to be. I told my father I was ‘making an office’ which he found adorable, but I would be damned if I’d give that thing a place to sleep for one more night. As darkness approached, I lay there knowing my mother was not in the house. I did not know what to do. My only impulse was to sneak into her jewellery box and take a small family crucifix which I had seen there before. While my family were not very religious, at that age I still believed in God and hoped that somehow this would protect me. Although fearful and anxious, while gripping the crucifix under my pillow tightly in one hand, sleep eventually came and as I drifted off to dream, I hoped that I would awaken in the morning without incidence. Unfortunately that night was the most terrifying of all. I woke gradually. The room was once again dark. As my eyes adjusted I could gradually make out the window and the door, and the walls, some toys on a shelf and…Even to this day I shudder to think of it, for there was no noise. No rustling of sheets. No movement at all. The room felt lifeless. Lifeless, yet not empty. The nightly visitor, that unwelcome, wheezing, hate-filled thing which had terrorised me night after night, was not in the bottom bunk, it was in my bed! I opened my mouth to scream, but nothing came out. Utter terror had shaken the very sound from my voice. I lay motionless. If I could not scream, I did not want to let it know I was awake. I had not yet seen it, I could only feel it. It was obscured under my blanket. I could see its outline, and I could feel its presence, but I dared not look. The weight of it pressed down on top of me, a sensation I will never forget. When I say that hours passed, I do not exaggerate. Laying there motionless, in the darkness, I was every bit a scared and frightened young boy. If it had been during the summer months it would have been light by then, but the grasp of winter is long and unrelenting, and I knew it would be hours before sunrise; a sunrise which I yearned for. I was a timid child by nature, but I reached a breaking point, a moment where I could wait no more, where I could survive under this intimately deviant abomination no longer. Fear can sometimes wear you out, make you threadbare, a shell of nerves leaving only the slightest trace of you behind. I had to get out of that bed! Then I remembered, the crucifix! My hand still lay underneath the pillow, but it was empty! I slowly moved my wrist around to find it, minimising as best I could the sound and vibrations caused, but it could not be found. I had either knocked it off of the top bunk, or it had…I could not even bear to think of it, been taken from my hand. Without the crucifix I lost any sense of hope. Even at such a young age, you can be acutely aware of what death is, and intensely frightened of it. I knew I was going to die in that bed if I lay there, dormant, passive, doing nothing. I had to leave that room behind, but how? Should I leap from the bed and hope that I make it to the door? What if it is faster than me? Or should I slowly slip out of that top bunk, hoping to not disturb my uncanny bedfellow? Realising that it had not stirred when I moved, trying to find the crucifix, I began to have the strangest of thoughts. What if it was asleep? It hadn’t so much as breathed since I had woken up. Perhaps it was resting, believing that it had finally got me. That I was finally in its grasp. Or perhaps it was toying with me, after all it had been doing just that for countless nights, and now with me under it, pinned against my mattress with no mother to protect me, maybe it was holding off, savouring its victory until the last possible moment. Like a wild animal savouring its prey. I tried to breath as shallowly as possible, and mustering every ounce of courage I could, I reached over slowly with my right hand and began to peel the blanket off of me. What I found under those covers almost stopped my heart. I did not see it, but as my hand moved the blanket, it brushed against something. Something smooth and cold. Something which felt unmistakably like a gaunt hand. I held my breath in terror as I was sure it must now have known that I was awake. Nothing. It did not stir, it felt, dead. After a few moments I placed my hand carefully further down the blanket and felt a thin, poorly formed forearm, my confidence and almost twisted sense of curiosity grew as I moved down further to a disproportionately larger bicep muscle. The arm was outstretched lying across my chest, with the hand resting on my left shoulder as if it had grabbed me in my sleep. I realised that I would have to move this cadaverous appendage if I even so much as hoped to escape its grasp. For some reason, the feeling of torn, ragged clothing on the shoulder of this night time invader stopped me in my tracks. Fear once again swelled in my stomach and in my chest as I recoiled my hand in disgust at the touch of straggled, oily hair. I could not bring myself to touch its face, although I wonder to this very day what it would have felt like. Dear God it moved. It moved. It was subtle, but its grip on my shoulder and across my body strengthened. No tears came, but God how I wanted to cry. As its hand and arm slowly coiled around me, my right leg brushed along the cool wall which the bed lay against. Of all that happened to me in that room, this was the strangest. I realised that this clutching, rancid thing which drew great delight from violating a young boy’s bed, was not entirely on top of me. It was sticking out from the wall, like a spider striking from its lair. Suddenly its grip moved from a slow tightening to a sudden squeeze, it pulled and clawed at my clothes as if frightened that the opportunity would soon pass. I fought against it, but its emaciated arm was too strong for me. Its head rose up writhing and contorting under the blanket. I now realised where it was taking me, into the wall! I fought for my dear life, I cried and suddenly my voice returned to me, yelling, screaming, but no one came. Then I realised why it was so eager to suddenly strike, why this thing had to have me now. Through my window, that window which seemed to represent so much malice from outside, streaked hope; the first rays of sunshine. I struggled further knowing that if I could just hold on, it would soon be gone. As I fought for my life, the unearthly parasite shifted, slowly pulling itself up my chest, its head now poking out from under the blanket, wheezing, coughing, rasping. I do not remember its features, I simply remember its breath against my face, foul and as cold as ice. As the sun broke over the horizon, that dark place, that suffocating room of contempt was washed, bathed in sunlight. I passed out as its scrawny fingers encircled my neck, squeezing the very life from me. I awoke to my father offering to make me some breakfast, a wonderful sight indeed! I had survived the most horrible experience of my life until then, and now. I moved the bed away from the wall, leaving behind the furniture I had believed would stop that thing from taking a bed. Little did I think that it would try to take mine…and me. Weeks passed without incidence, yet on one cold, frost bitten night I awoke to the sound of the furniture where the bunk beds used to be, vibrating violently. In a moment it passed, I lay there sure I could hear a distant wheezing coming from deep within the wall, finally fading into the distance. I have never told anyone this story before. To this day I still break out in a cold sweat at the sound of bed sheets rustling in the night, or a wheeze brought on by a common cold, and I certainly never sleep with my bed against a wall. Call it superstition if you will but as I said, I cannot discount conventional explanations such as sleep paralysis, hallucination, or that of an over-active imagination, but what I can say is this: The following year I was given a larger room on the other side of the house and my parents took that strangely suffocating, elongated place as their bedroom. They said they didn’t need a large room, just one big enough for a bed and a few things. They lasted 10 days. We moved on the 11th. Kelly woke abruptly, sweating and scarcely holding back her screams. She sat up and threw off the blankets, remaining on the edge of the bed until her ragged breaths had calmed down and her heart no longer sounded like irregular drumbeats in her ears. She’d been having nightmares for months now, and each night they dragged on longer and stuck more vividly in her mind. A few nights ago she’d woken her parents up crying for help in her sleep, and although she couldn’t remember the dreams when she woke up, they always left her terrified and exhausted. She could barely sleep at night and was ill at ease during the daylight hours. However, she also felt childish and stupid when she realized how afraid of her own dreams she’d become, and so she hadn’t revealed to anyone just how disturbed by them she was.
Deciding she wouldn’t be able to go back to sleep, and having no desire to anyway, Kelly stood and walked over to her dresser. She brushed out her hair and changed into school clothes, looking at the clock for the first time that morning. It was six twenty-five; the alarm would have woken her in five minutes even if her dreams hadn’t. Turning the alarm off, she headed downstairs to find something to eat. In the cafeteria at school later, Kelly waited in line behind her best friend Jessica and chewed her lip indecisively. She wanted to confide in her friend, to ask for advice or just seek reassurance about her dreams, but she was afraid to. What if Jessica told her she was being a baby and that they were just dreams she should get over? Later, as she got ready for bed, she couldn’t shake the feeling of dread that had shadowed her every night for the past months. She climbed into bed but left the lamp on, feeling just a little bit better, as if nightmares couldn’t disturb her with the light to keep them away. This was untrue, of course. She dreamed that she was walking down a street at night; all the buildings around her were deserted, abandoned, the windows shattered, paint peeling and frames crumbling. A dark shadow moved behind her; she turned to face it and her terror was so great it paralyzed her and rendered her unable to unleash the horrified scream tearing at her throat. The thing that was stalking her was just inches from her. Its form appeared human and it was clad in a black cloak, the hood drawn over the face. However, when she saw it the creature revealed its face, which was hideously scarred from fire and covered in blood but not wounded, as if the thing had just finished smearing the stuff on its face. It was bald and barefoot, and wherever bare skin showed, the scars from being burned were evident, as was the fact that the thing was barely more than a skeleton; its skin was stretched tightly over bones that were grossly apparent. The scarred, blood-smeared, skeletal face opened its mouth wide to reveal jagged, broken teeth also coated in blood, and released a deep rumbling laugh as its hands reached for her and scraped at her arms with claw-like fingernails. This time she managed to move her feet; she ran with terror beating in her heart, but didn’t hear the creature following her. She ran past dark buildings and down empty streets until she had to stop, had to breathe, had to rest her aching legs. And then it grabbed her from behind. She tried to scream but its bony hands covered her mouth. There were more of the creatures now, and they all reached for her, drawing blood as they raked her with fingernails. Then she was dragged away, kicking and screaming, down the abandoned street. When she managed to twist out of their grasp and run, they caught up with her and bound her limbs so she could barely struggle. On they marched, and eventually she gave in and grew limp in their grasp. Tears stung her eyes. Suddenly the creatures stopped; the one holding her took a few paces forward and before she realized what it intended to do, the thing hurled her into the air. This time no one was muffling her screams as she plummeted over the side of the cliff and towards the jagged rocks and dark water below. Just when she would have hit them, she woke. Her hands were balled into fists; her hair was tangled and she felt suffocated by her pillow, so she threw it to the floor, drew her legs to her chest and leaned against the wall. She sobbed until her eyes hurt from crying and her body was sore from it. Only then did she allow sleep to claim her once more; but this time there was darkness, for which she was grateful. She did not dream again. The next night was worse. It was a repeat of the previous dream, only with some alterations; this time after she was thrown over the cliff, she hit the swirling black water and felt the pain of it like a giant slap. She’d missed the jagged rocks but felt herself sinking, deeper and deeper with no way to free her limbs from thier binds. As she struggled in vain and water invaded her mouth and nose, choking her, blackness crept over her vision and she awakened in terror. * * * * * Kelly could no longer sleep. She had lain awake in bed the previous night, exhausted beyond belief but refusing to fall asleep. The next morning she rose and dressed for school, but her actions were those of a robot; she was so tired that she barely noticed what she was wearing and didn’t taste her breakfast. Nor did she feel the cold rain outside or hear the conversations of other kids on the ride to school. By lunch hour, her friends had definitely noticed her unusual quietness, how red and puffy her eyes looked and how she stumbled through her classes half-asleep. When she sat down to eat she felt sick to her stomach and picked halfheartedly at her food. All she wanted to do was curl up and sleep, but how could she with nightmares to torment her mind and physically exhaust her? There was a new kid at their table today. This fact did not immediately register in Kelly’s mind, but when it did, she felt a slight spark of interest. When Jessica introduced him as Don’s friend Chris, she was compelled to introduce herself and engage in a short conversation. She didn’t miss the relieved glances Jessica passed to all her other friends, and realized that she’d basically ignored them the past few days due to her prolonged fatigue and depression. The next day she scrambled onto the bus and found a seat in the far back. She knew that her physical condition was deteriorating: her eyes had dark circles underneath them and they were constantly bloodshot: she’d lost the battle against sleep and had woken close to screaming a few times now. She began to doze as the bus made its rounds and woke suddenly to find Chris sitting beside her. For a moment she stared at him, disoriented and upset that shed been woken from the only dreamless sleep she was likely to get for a while. “Kelly,” Chris began. She waited expectantly for him to continue. “I know you haven’t been sleeping,” he told her. “Or more importantly, I know why you haven’t been sleeping.” “I have nightmares,” Kelly whispered hoarsely, hugging her bag to her chest. “I can’t remember most of them, but they wake me up every night, and I can barely sleep… For a while I tried not to, but I was too tired.” “I know. Kelly, I had the same dreams.” She looked at Chris in astonishment. “What do you mean?” “I mean you’re not the only one. And your dreams aren’t going to stop until you do something about them.” “What can I do? They’re terrible, but I can’t make them go away.” “Here,” Chris said, handing a folded piece of paper towards her. “This is an incantation for protection; if you remember to say it when your dream begins, it will drive the creatures away.” She unfolded it; one word was written across the paper in a foreign language. “It’s very simple to remember,” Chris told her, “but also powerful–it means ‘Surrender’. It will make the dreams end.” Desperately grasping at any means to end her horrified dreams, Kelly, unfortunately, placed her trust in Chris. Little did she know, this would be the last mistake of her life. That night sleep came slowly. She didn’t feel tired; she was charged with fearful anticipation. When she found herself in the dark, deserted street once more, Kelly stood her ground and tried to focus her thoughts. It took her a moment to remember the most vital piece of information: she was dreaming. She was dreaming, and she must stand her ground when the creatures came; she must remember to say the word that would drive them away. When the wraithlike creatures appeared this time, with salivating dogs at their heels, she did not turn and run. Instead she faced her foes and tried to keep calm as she drew breath to utter one word. Emboldened, she suddenly screamed it at them. the creatures stopped dead: the dogs whined and glanced at their masters as if in search of permission. Then a gaping hole broke wide beneath her feet, and Kelly was plunged downward through scorching-hot air, down, down, until-thud-she smacked into solid ground. Pain flared through the side of her body that she’d landed on, and she realized she lay upon a huge slab of smooth black stone. She spun around frantically, searching the underground cavern for an exit. Why wasn’t she waking up? Chris had said…he’d told her…he’d promised that she would awaken after facing the creatures. And then she saw him. Sitting on a throne carved out of the same kind of stone she’d landed upon, two cold dark eyes stared down at her. A spiked crown sat atop his head, and between his fingers he held a razor-sharp spear. A wicked grin broke across his face as the unmistakable Greek god Hades rose to his full impressive height and answered her unspoken question: “Yes, Kelly, your friend Chris has betrayed you. And you are now enslaved to me forever; you will never again awaken.” |
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