A quarter after nine, right in the middle of Dad’s favorite game show, the sound cut off. I winced, but before he could say anything the set started buzzing and the screen changed, turning the dark living room around us a deep blue.

“What’s wrong with the TV?” Dad said, leaning forward on his chair, glaring at the set like he could scare it into doing what he wanted. “What’d you do?”

“I didn’t do anything. It’s an emergency broadcast,” I said.

On the screen, the news anchor looked as calm as ever.

“This just in,” he said, with that winning smile I could never pull off no matter how long I practiced, “A prison transport bus has crashed near the state border. Though police were on the scene immediately, one inmate remains unaccounted for.”

A picture of the man appeared. He was just a normal guy: dark hair, square jaw. Maybe a little uglier than most. I thought he looked a little like my Dad.

“The inmate is to be considered extremely dangerous. Citizens are advised to remain in their homes, lock their doors and call the police immediately if they see anything suspicious. Authorities believe the fugitive was injured in the accident and will likely not have gotten far.”

While he talked, a list of towns started scrolling under him. Sure enough, the little nothing town ten miles from our house went crawling across the screen.

“Shit,” Dad said, slowly crushing his beer can. “Shit shit shit.”

“Don’t worry,” I said, “we’re way out here in the woods. What’re the chances-”

His hand shot out like a snake. The empty can bounced off my head and clattered into the shadows. My Dad’s way of telling me to shut up.

“Little house in the middle of the woods, one back-ass road running by it, owned by an old man and his idiot son?” Dad spat. “We’re sitting ducks. Easy pickings.”

“He won’t know we’re out here.”

“Yeah, you keep telling yourself that, dumbass. Maybe after he’s done gutting your old man, he’ll keep you around for a pet.”

Hands on the armrests, grunting and heaving, Dad tried to stand. I ran over to help him. He smacked at me and cussed, but I got him on his feet.

“No way in Hell I’m gonna just sit here and let some shithead take my house. Go get my gun.”

“Dad, you sure you-”

“Don’t backtalk me, get your thumb out of your ass and get my gun!”

I ducked a smack and went to Dad’s office.

Anyway, he called it his office. It was more of a trophy room: deer heads, fish and birds mounted on the walls, staring down at me with their black little eyes. In the corner by his desk was the big stuffed grizzly bear, up on its back legs, snarling at the doorway. I’d never asked him where he got it. I was always a little afraid to. When I was a kid, he’d call me into his office when I’d done something wrong. He’d be sitting at his desk, that bear looming behind him, both of them glaring right at me. Most of the time he didn’t even have to whip me, I’d be so scared of facing him and that monster.

His old hunting rifle was in a glass case on the wall, the place of honor. He used to clean it every day, for hours, running his hands over every piece of it. Before she left, mom used to say he touched that gun in ways he never touched her. Lately he’d been letting me clean it. Not that he wanted me to have it or anything, only because he had to. I had to do it when he was asleep, though, or he’d just sit there, staring at me, that hungry look in his eyes.

When I came back to the living room, gun in hand, he was already back in his chair, huffing and wheezing. Just standing up had done him in.

“You can’t go out there,” I said. “It’s too dangerous.”

He snorted. “Dangerous! Shooting goddamn tigers is dangerous. Shooting one man, running around in the woods at night?” He spat.

The way he was carrying on, I was afraid he’d have another stroke any second. But I didn’t know how to tell him that without making him mad.

“Let’s just stay here, Dad,” I said. “The police’ll take care of it. I bet that guy won’t come anywhere near us.”

He shook his head. “No. You go. Take the gun.”

A cold shiver went up my spine. “Me?”

“Yes you, moron. You know how to shoot. I taught you, didn’t I?”

He had, a long time ago. There’d been a couple months in high school, right after mom left, when he’d quit drinking and yelling. He’d taken me out to the woods and tried to teach me. I was a lousy shot, but the one time I’d managed to hit something, he’d put his hand on my shoulder and smiled.

Those days didn’t last long. Mom never came back, but Dad sure did.

“Yeah, Dad. But I never shot a man before.”

“No different than shooting a deer. Easier, really, don’t move as fast.”

I felt the weight of the gun in my hand. With every word out of his mouth, it felt a little heavier.

“Come on, wipe that dumb look off your face. You wanna let that son of a bitch kill your old man? Is that it?”

“No.”

“Then quit being a pussy and get out there. Long past time for you to grow up, boy.”

He pulled the tab on another beer can. He tipped his head back to take a long drink. His neck was all skin and bones, and I could see every swallow. His eyes were wide open, still glaring at me, with that hungry bear look of his.

I pulled on my coat, hefted the rifle on my shoulder, and stepped out into the night.

The woods were pitch black. If anyone was coming from that direction, we’d never see him coming. I shivered a little thinking about it. I felt a little better looking at the house, seeing that the only light was the TV, and you could just barely see it through the window. Would some crazy guy running for his life see something like that?

The road was a little brighter. It was a little two-lane, winding street, the paint fading. Nobody really came this way anymore. When he’d been younger, Dad had yelled at the government to put up streetlights, but they barely worked now too. Most of them were dead, so between every pool of light was a long stretch of darkness.

No cars meant it was dead silent. Not even the wind blowing. Just my boots crunching through the grass so loud it was like smashing windows. I winced with every step.

Which way should I look? I couldn’t see anything around me past my own nose. When I stumbled too close to the trees, they seemed to just spring up out of nowhere, looming over me on their back legs, snarling.

The grass turned to asphalt under me. I looked around, but didn’t see any headlights. Just in case, I moved into the streetlight closest to the house. Looking up the road, I saw three more working street lights, far apart, and beyond them only darkness. I hunkered down and wondered what to do.

I don’t know how long I waited out there. It seemed like hours went by. Every once in a while I’d look back to where the house should be in the dark, and wondered if maybe he’d snuck past me and broken in. Would I be able to hear Dad if he was in trouble?

The gun felt heavier every second. I set it down, checked to make sure it was loaded for the hundredth time. Dad always kept it loaded, even years after he couldn’t go hunting anymore. He used to say it was just in case he ever got sick of that dumb look on my face.

I heard something, far away. A scraping sound. I tensed, looking everywhere.

Nothing.

Then I heard it again. Something being dragged.

And again. Coming from up the road. But when I looked, I couldn’t see anything.

A lump rose in my throat. My hands shook, the rifle clattering in them.

He appeared out of nowhere, out of the darkness and into one of the circles of light. His head was down, staring at the road. He was limping, one foot dragging.

Even in the cold, I could feel the sweat all over me. I tried to raise the gun, but I couldn’t feel my hands.

He was coming right toward me. He limped out of the light and vanished again, but I could still hear his foot dragging across the road.

I tried to swallow, but my throat felt thick, stuck. I couldn’t scream even if I wanted to. I squinted at the road, looking for some sign of him. There were two more working streetlights between him and me. Would he step through another?

His dragging steps sounded louder and louder.

Far away, I could swear I heard Dad growling.

In an instant I saw him again, under the second streetlight. I could see his dark hair, and blood on the leg he could barely lift. And now I could hear him grunting with every step. He sounded just like Dad.

I must have made a sound. His head whipped up and he looked right at me. His eyes were huge and wild.

He shouted something, not really a word. The cry of an animal. He raised his arms toward me and started moving faster.

I choked and stumbled back just as he reached the edge of the light. We both disappeared at the same time.

He was grunting louder, wheezing and gasping and making those animal sounds. His dragging leg came closer and closer.

There was one more streetlight between us. I raised the gun and tried to aim at the light, but I couldn’t stop shaking. Had he seen the gun? Would he stay out of the light until he could reach me?

His dead leg scraping against the road was the loudest sound I ever heard. It filled the whole world, echoing through the woods. His wheezes turned into growls.

I saw him. He came into the light. He looked just like my dad. My hands grew steady.

I fired. He crumpled to the ground.

For a long time, I couldn’t move. I just stood there, trying to stop shaking, to control my breathing, to make the world stop spinning.

He was just lying there. He’d twisted when he fell, his top going one way and his legs the other. One arm was stretched out the way he’d come, the other covering his face.

My mind was blank, echoing with the gunshot. Eventually, out of all that noise, I thought “I did it.”

I was still shaking, but not with fear. I couldn’t stop the smile spreading across my face. I did it. I shot him. He was dead!

I thought about Dad, sitting at his desk with that bear behind him. When he’d call me in there, I used to wish the bear would fall, bring those stretching claws and snarling teeth down on top of him. I used to stay awake for hours every night, imagining.

When I could feel my feet again, I walked through the dark to the body, lying there in the middle of that circle of light. I’d gotten him right in the chest, but the wound on his leg looked much worse.

I used my foot to nudge his arm from his face. I didn’t even hesitate. I had to look into his eyes.

The funny thing was, now that I was looking at him like this, he really didn’t look like my dad at all. I wondered how I could ever think he did.

I’d have to call the police. They’d want to pick him up, probably. I headed back, walking straight to my house. The trees were still there, looming, but I didn’t flinch or shudder any more. Holding my gun, feeling it in my hand like a part of my arm, I felt like the strongest man in the world.

Dad was still in his chair, watching the TV. He’d been going a little deaf lately, so I guess he didn’t hear the gunshot. He looked at me with his beady little eyes. But before I could tell him, before I could finally show him who I really was, he said “I hope you enjoyed your little camping trip, idiot. You missed the whole damn thing.”

The anchor was on the screen again. Dad turned the volume up.

“…has been taken into custody. None of the hostages were harmed, and police were able to arrest the fugitive without injury. However, witnesses say that one hostage escaped on his own after sustaining a leg injury. He was last seen fleeing down a back road into the woods. Rescue workers are on their way now.”

Credit To – Gray

All the names – except J.J.’s – are changed, for reasons that should be obvious.

I grew up in Royal Oak, Michigan, about twenty minutes from downtown Detroit. It’s one of those places where the people with money ran to after things in the city went shit-shaped.

I went to high school with this guy I’ll call Nick. We had a TV Production class together, and we both decided that was the kind of thing we wanted to do for a living, so we ended up in a lot of the same film classes in college.

We weren’t that close, and I didn’t hang out with him that much outside of school, but a year after graduation, he contacted me about this show he wanted to make. He said he really liked my camera work, and I was better with editing and effects programs than most of the other students – I’d been playing with them as a hobby since tenth grade – and he said he could use my knowledge for the production values.

Nick was never that great at the technical side of things. Even after film school, his stuff always looked kind of cheap and Youtube-y. But he was charming, the kind of guy who could do great voiceovers, come up with impressive-sounding “artistic visions” (he was great at putting on airs and convincing stupid people his shitty-looking films were actually high art with all kinds of symbolic metaphorical ironic subtext or whatever) and pitch the hell out of any idea, no matter how stupid. So he thought we’d make a good team.

His idea was for this “Real Stories of Detroit” type of show. I mean, That wasn’t what he called it, but it’s a pretty good summary of the premise. His explanation was that people on the outside know this place sucks, but besides all those dilapidated building photos (“ruin porn, ” they call it) and the crime reports no one cares about, they don’t know enough about the very real horror that happens here on a daily basis. In other words, they didn’t see us as human, man, just a big joke.

I agreed with some of his points, I wasn’t finding paying work at the time, and I wanted to help out an old sort-of-friend, so I agreed to do some camera work for him. If anything became of it, I’d get partial credit and we’d split the profits.

During the planning phase, Nick was always going on about how the show would have both artistic merit and social relevance, exposing the darker side of humanity as well as the conditions we overlook right here in America, and hopefully, encourage the complacent masses to wake up and do something about our poverty and urban blight.

It took me about a week to realize that was all bullshit.

In the early days, the material that would make up the meat of our show was hard to find, so we spent hours every day combing through shock and gore sites for whatever we could find that might have come from around here in the last ten years. Over the next several months, my external drive filled up with camcorder videos of rotting corpses people stumbled across, security camera footage of cashiers getting shot in the face by robbers, leaked footage of blood-soaked crime scenes, and every type of forensic photo imaginable.

We called up and interviewed crack whores – the very few who had access to phones and could complete intelligible sentences, anyway – ex-cons, and people who’d confess to any depraved shit as long as we didn’t show their faces.

The “real stories” were never positive, always just the worst shit we could dig up. We never talked to people reading storybooks to kids or tending community gardens or anything.

According to Nick, that was “feel-good fluff” and didn’t “reflect the city’s brutal reality.”
According to Nick, what did “reflect the city’s brutal reality” was a freak show of poverty, misery, and suffering.

We added some dramatic public domain music and somber narration, but that was the only thing “artistic” about it.

Our first episode was too gory for any TV network to touch, or to post on any of the big video hosting sites without it getting pulled within the week. But we started our own site, and Nick posted links on a few of the sites where we’d found our source material.

It took a less than a month for me to start hating it, but when I make promises, I keep them.
I didn’t really want to quit until after what happened to J.J.

We did a lot of shooting on the streets – for both the interviews and for ruin porn – especially in the northeast and Highland Park. If you don’t know, Detroit’s west side is (mostly kind of almost) a normal city. Those parts of town where you hear about the forest reclaiming whole blocks and bears wandering the streets are up Northeast. And Highland Park is the worst of the many neighborhoods that make up crackland.

None of them are the kinds of places you want to walk into unarmed with a camera, so for security, we hired this big guy with tattoos on his face who always carried a 45. I have no idea how Nick met this guy.

One day, while we were out getting footage of the old Grande Ballroom to use as establishing shots for a nearby neighborhood where I think someone set his girlfriend on fire, we met this old homeless guy who went by “J.J.”

He was a drunk, but at least he wasn’t on anything harder, and for a drunk, he was surprisingly friendly, lucid and intelligent.

For a few dollars an hour and some hot food, he’d show us around his stomping grounds and point out some of the more interesting sights. There was one time when he showed us a house where whoever lived there had left their doll collection behind when they moved out, for example.

Whenever we were on set, Nick was really adamant that I not only turn off my phone, but leave it at home. He wanted to make sure I didn’t sneak and start texting or something while we were working.

I didn’t know why he was so paranoid about it at the time, I mean, it’s not like he was even paying me by the hour, but it started to make perfect sense about two weeks later.

One day we were filming on Robinwood St. – just getting some shots of garbage and burnt-out houses to fill some space between videos of murders – when J.J. told us he used to squat over here, and he knew an abandoned but still pretty solid two-story house where you could get to the roof through one of the upper story windows. From there, we could get a shot of most of the neighborhood. I didn’t think it was safe, even with my lightest camera, so he volunteered to go first just to show us nothing would collapse under his weight.

Well, he caught his foot on something, lost his balance, and fell right off the roof and landed in (what was left of) the concrete driveway. Both his legs snapped under him.

We both kind of panicked. Mostly because we couldn’t afford to pay any medical bills or risk having anyone sue us. Nick was very adamant about that.

So we left him there.

Actually, it’s a bit more complicated than that.

It quickly dawned on us that if anyone came around and found him, he’d talk to some kind of authorities as soon as he was back to civilization.

Or at least I think I think that’s why we decided to do it. It was hard to hear each other over all J.J.’s screaming and crying. I’d never heard a man make that much noise.

So Nick had our bodyguard hold the guy’s arms while he shoved a rag into his mouth.

We used a clean one. We’re not animals.

Then he duct taped it shut. Nick and I put on our gloves, so we wouldn’t leave fingerprints. When we’re out shooting, we carry thick work gloves everywhere we go. There’s no specific reason, just that when you work in abandoned buildings, and sometimes around human waste and dead bodies, gloves are always a good thing to have. I didn’t know why Nick had duct tape. Maybe it was in case he ever had to do something like that.

That muffled the screams were enough to the point where no one more than ten or twenty feet away would hear them, but Jesus, his eyes. I still have nightmares about his eyes. Bloodshot and wild with pain and terror, just begging us not to do that.

Then we bound his arms behind his back and wrapped his hands in cocoons of duct tape. Then we picked him up and moved him into a nearby abandoned house, and because he was still thrashing around, we “accidentally” let him fall down the basement stairs, so he couldn’t wriggle his way out to the street.

Then we left him there.

We’d thought about having our guard just shoot him, but we all agreed that would make too much noise, and we’re not murderers, we’re just… Refusing to take responsibility for J.J.’s reckless actions. Yeah, something like that.

“What if we get caught?” I asked Nick.

I imagined myself trying to explain this.

The duct tape was because he was drunk and trying to attack us, officer. Had to restrain him. We’re so sorry we forgot to call you, but we were just terrified.

He just looked at me like he couldn’t believe my stupidity and told me they’d never investigate this. As far as they’re concerned, a homeless guy just pissed off some thug who broke his legs. Happens all the time around here.

Being a human with a functioning soul, I was freaked out the entire time, and I told Nick I wanted to quit. He just shook his head.

I looked behind him, and our bodyguard was just silently staring at me, with his shirt pulled up so you could see the gun and this look devoid of any recognizable emotions on his face. He just stared me down for thirty seconds straight without breaking eye contact before I just mumbled that maybe I’d keep working here, but I’d like the rest of the day off.

Would we actually have had to pay J.J.’s hospital bills or risk a lawsuit from this man who obviously couldn’t afford a lawyer? In hindsight, I don’t know, and I’m pretty sure Nick didn’t care.

When I got home and checked my phone, I found a text from Nick saying “SEE YOU TOMORROW.”

Caps his, not mine.

I knew what that meant. I wasn’t going anywhere. Nick and our bodyguard had voted down my decision, and they knew where I lived.

We’d come back a few times over the next few days just to… Check up on J.J. It took about three days for him to stop moving.

After that, we went right back to making the episode, and many more after that, like nothing happened.
We developed a cult following. Teens loved what we were doing. They passed it around on Facebook, used it to gross each other out. So did that specific set of gorehounds for who slasher movies are just a little too fictional to be scary. And violence fetishists. We got a lot of comments about people jacking off to parts of our shows I never wanted to know anyone could possibly jack off to. …And even more from people who just thought this kind of stuff was “what those ****** deserve.”

This went on for almost a year without incident.

…Until, a few weeks ago, I finally admitted one of my friends in private that I’d never wanted any of this shit and part of me had always thought just moving to another state and being done with it. I’m assuming she told someone who told someone else until Nick caught wind of it somehow, because two days later, he told me we’d be filming something special.

He took me into this abandoned school in one of those neighborhoods with like one building left per block. Our bodyguard was waiting there for us, as well as about ten of his friends. They were all wearing matching colors and bandanas that covered their faces.

When I came in, Nick had set up a tripod for me, about ten feet in front of something under a filthy sheet that squirmed from time to time.

Our bodyguard pulled off the sheet, and there was this terrified kid bound, gagged, and tied to a chair. Looked like he was in his mid teens, definitely not older than twenty. He looked kind of like my little brother, and maybe that’s why Nick was so enthusiastic about making me film this.

This boy, our bodyguard told us, had been talking too much, and these guys wanted to make sure the world knew just what happens to people like that. The whole time, Nick was just staring vacantly at me with this empty half-smile on his face.

I pointed the camera at the kid, turned it on, and just watched. I knew what was going to happen, but for some reason, the part of me that usually triggers fear just didn’t go off.

One of the bandanas was slowly circling him, tapping a baseball bat on the floor. I think he was the leader, so he got to go first. With every tap, the kid would almost shit himself, which was the point.

Finally, after about three or four minutes of that, he swung it right into the kid’s gut. They started low so he wouldn’t pass out.

After they’d worked over every part of the kid’s body besides his head, they finally handed it back to the leader, and he took one hard, climactic swing that splattered red and bits of meat across the walls. Then several more, just to drive the point home.

By the time they were done, his face wasn’t recognizable as human, I could see the white of the inside of his skull, his brain was lying on the floor looking like a raw hamburger dropped off a building, and there was a river of blood running across the floor.

The strangest part was that I didn’t cry or anything. I guess that by that point, I’d just kind of checked out mentally. That was probably the moment I learned where Nick and our bodyguard got those weird stares.

When we put the footage in our show, we told everyone a gang member had anonymously dropped it in our mail slot after he heard about the kind of show we were doing.

“The following video is real, and extremely graphic. Viewer discretion is advised.”

Everyone knows that just makes you want to watch it more.

As soon as I got home, I opened my email to find one from Nick saying “SEE YOU TOMORROW.” That’s just his way of rubbing it in.

But he didn’t need to, because I wasn’t really planning to quit anymore. It’s just something I bitch about sometimes.

See, Nick might not have a conscience, but at least he’s been unusually honest through this whole thing. He made good on his promise about the money and the credit. I’m now half-owner of what looks like it’s going to be an online empire. Nick knows a lot of people, and these days, I’ve started to, too. Through these people, we get material.

A lot of the things it used to take us hours to dig off the internet, now… I’ll get an anonymous phone call, drive out to some abandoned building where guys in masks or bandanas are waiting for me, and film, silently and without empathy, myself.

People send us even more, too, from grainy cell phone videos to almost professional-level Canon TSi work. Beatings, rape, stabbings, execution-style shootings, and some things much more creative.

It’s not hard to find our site on your own, if you haven’t already, but I can’t link you to it. I can’t even tell you its name. Nick’s kind of a narcissist, and he Googles it all the time to see what people are saying about us. The site is down right now anyway. We’re moving to a bigger server. All the views keep crashing it.

Local newspapers slam us and the tourist board clucks their tongues, but we bring in enough ad revenue to pay for a middle-class lifestyle for us both. One night while we were out drinking, Nick started raving about “This is what the news was talking about, the ‘user-created content revolution.’ We’re a fuckin’ Alger story, and watch, people like us are going to run the media in the future.”

And it’s true.

People like us will bend public opinion to our will, tell you who to vote for, and train you to love watching what we want you to see.

We’ll raise your kids.

People love us. They’re imitating our format all over the place. First just in this country, in places like Newark, New Orleans, and Chicago, but I’m seeing it from other ones, too. They send me all the links. Today, I watched a bunch of Zetas pick up machetes and lay into a housewife as some kid imitated Nick’s narration style in Spanish.

But none of this matters. The only reason I can confess it all here is because you’ll never take it seriously. Even if you’ve seen our site, you think it’s just a spooky story to tell on the internet, and you’ll assume there’s no way I’m not really who I am. People have pretended to be me on the internet before. We’re a legitimate company, you’ll say. We’d never do things like this.

Police have questioned us a few times about stuff we may have seen, but we just tell them we find it on the internet, or it gets sent anonymously to us. No idea where this stuff comes from. Fucked-up place, this city. We have part of our budget set aside to pay off the ones who ask too many questions, and that deals with the problem. They are, after all, Detroit cops.

I don’t care anymore.

—

DISCLAIMER:

This is a rework of this creepypasta by TvTropes forumgoer Porcelain Swallow, so credit for the premise and some of the ideas go to him.

Credit To – C.S. Jones

Epilogue – Wendy

(Suggested tracks: Decode, by Paramore or Angels, by Within Temptation)

9 months earlier
Wendy couldn’t’ help but stare at the mysterious new kid whose locker was across the hall and diagonal from hers and her friend Abby’s. She was also currently spacing out as Abby went on about her plans for her and Tucker’s two-year anniversary.
“I was thinking about taking him to his favorite restaurant, since last year he took me to mine. What do you think, Wendy?”
“Yeah…”
Abby slammed her locker door shut. “Wendy!”
“Huh, what? I think it’s a great idea that you go to the restaurant where you had your first date!”
Abby stared at her. “That’s not what I said, but that’s a good idea.”
“Glad I could help. So what do you know about the new kid?”

Abby glanced over at him and cringed. He was just standing there, staring into his empty locker. He must have felt two pairs of eyes on him because he slowly turned to look at the girls. He had on pasty white foundation, messy black eyeliner, and red lipstick that went up the corners of his mouth giving him a creepy grin. Although Abby turned away, Wendy continued to stare into those coal black eyes through his messy black fringe.
“He’s so interesting…”
“He’s also a killer.”
Wendy whirled around and looked at her friend.
“At least that’s what I heard around town. Apparently he’s on the run because he’s suspected of murdering his entire family. Now he’s living with some rich distant relative across town.”
“You don’t believe that do you? I bet it’s just a rumor. I mean, come on.”
Abby once again glanced over at the boy, who was still staring at Wendy. “He creeps me out. I’d stay away from him if I were you.”
“Oh, come on! Give him a chance. I bet he was ostracized at his last school just because he was different.”
“I still have a bad feeling about him, Wen. Maybe those kids at his last school were on to something.”
Wendy rolled her eyes as Tucker strode up to them.
“Hey ladies, what’s going on?”
“Hey babe!” Abby said, kissing him.
Tucker looked expectantly at Wendy, who had returned the strangers gaze. Finally, Tucker tapped her on the shoulder. “Ahem.”
“Oh, hi Tuck! Happy two-year anniversary.”
“Thanks Wen, I was—”
“What do you know about the new kid?”
Tucker shared a worried glance with his girlfriend.
“You mean the Joker wannabe? I heard he’s a serial killer and that this town his just the latest in a long string of towns he’s terrorized.”
“Are you serious!?” Abby gasped.
“Nah, I’m bullshittin ya. But I have heard that he’s dangerous.” He took Wendy by the shoulders and turned her around to look at him. “I know you like weirdoes, Wen. But he’s bad news. So Stay. Away.”
“Ugh.” Abby rolled her eyes and stepped out of his grasp. “Whatever, Tuck. Why don’t you guys go make googly eyes at each other or something?”
Abby smiled. “Not a bad idea. It is our anniversary after all, and this is our last year in high school. Why don’t we have a little fun?” She took his arm and pulled him towards a janitor’s closet just as the bell rang.

Wendy turned and pretended to rummage through her locker. She would never admit that she was jealous of her best friend’s relationship, since Wendy had so much rotten luck with them. But at the same time she was happy for her, and knew that she was in good hands because the three of them had been best friends for a long time. All of her own relationships never lasted long, but maybe she just hadn’t found the right guy yet.

Wendy turned around to see that the hallway was just about empty. The boy was still there, staring into his locker once again. Wendy started to head to class, but turned again to look at him. He would probably be teased and avoided by everyone else in school. She remembered how no one would talk to her because she was different, until Abby, and later Tucker, came around. Wendy took a deep breath, and marched over to him.

Although she knew he heard her approaching, he didn’t immediately turn around. Knowing that it would probably be rude, she craned her neck to see what he was looking at. It was a picture, taped to the back of his locker, of what looked like a happy family. There were the parents and two smiling little boys, one with black hair and one with brown. Wendy guessed that the black-haired one was him. As she squinted at the picture, she thought she saw that someone had scribbled large smiles on their faces in red pen. Just as she was trying to get a better look, he turned around.

“Oh, um, hi!”
The boy cocked his head at her. Wendy had to admit that up close, he looked a little scarier. His eyes were bloodshot, like he hadn’t slept in months, and his pasty white make-up made him look like a ghost.
“My name is Wendy. I just wanted to let you know that if you ever need anyone to show you around, I’m just across the hall. I know it’s not easy being the new kid.”
He turned to close his locker and then faced her again. Wendy shuffled her feet.
“So um, what’s your name?”
“Jeff.”
Wendy winced at the sound of his voice. It sounded dry, like he needed to drink a glass of water.
“Well, Jeff, how about I show you to your first class?”

As Wendy gently took the crumpled up schedule from him, an image flashed through her mind as their fingers touched. It was of herself, covered in blood, and pointing an accusatory finger at her. “Wha…” Wendy felt woozy for a moment. She leaned against the locker for support.

“Are you alright… Wendy?” Jeff asked, amused.
“Yeah.” She straightened up. “Let’s go, shall we?”

Wendy wondered what it meant as they walked down the hall. Could it be an omen? Did it have something to do with Jeff? No, that’s impossible. Jeff seemed like a nice guy, and it’s not like she actually saw a vision or anything. It was probably nothing, nothing at all.

~END~

Credit To – Angel Rocket

This is the last entry in the five-part Beware of Those Who Would Do You Harm series.

Act 3 – Officer Jane

(Suggested track: Teenagers, by My Chemical Romance)

Officer Thomas Jane and his rookie partner, Rain Slenderman, walked lazily through the cornfields, occasionally flashing their flashlight at every sound they heard. Officer Jane hated nights like this, when teens prank called the station, yet he was still obligated to check it out. He knew he wouldn’t find anything, so he didn’t object when Officer Slenderman suggested they stop for coffee. Even so, according to the operator, the kid who called sounded really calm. An unnatural sort of calm, like the kind that comes before a storm. He knew the kid too, the one whose girlfriend went missing after her best friend disappeared not, long after her parents were murdered. It seemed like ever since that boy came to town, there was just one bad thing after another. But why would the killer stay here? It didn’t make any sense, the kid had to be mistaken.

As soon as they reached the house, Officer Jane felt like there was something wrong. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it, but something jus didn’t feel right. He turned to his partner.
“Get your gun ready Slenderman, I have a bad feeling about this.” Officer Slenderman nodded solemnly and did as she was told.
As soon as they opened the door, a powerful odor hit them. Officer Slenderman wouldn’t know, but Officer Jane recognized that smell. It was the smell of death. Once again he turned to his fellow officer. “I think we’re going to need back-up.”

After calling for back up, the two officers cautiously entered the house. Not knowing whether or not the killer was still there, they decided to stick together at first. They searched all of the rooms on the first floor, eventually making their way to the living room. Officer Slenderman let out a shriek as she shined her flashlight over the couches. When Officer Jane shone his flashlight as well, all he could utter was “Mother of God…”
There were corpses everywhere, of men, women and children of all ages, and in various stages of decay. There must have been over a dozen of them. They were all posed in different positions, as if they were friends and families gathering together for afternoon tea. There were people slumped on the couch “reading a book”, or sitting in a chair with the newspaper. Some were even sitting on the floor, posed as if playing a board game. Their mouths were agape, and their eyes were rolled to the back of their heads. As the officers began to examine them, they recognized a few from the missing posters that had skyrocketed in recent months. Officer Slenderman had to leave the house to throw up outside. Officer Jane remained inside, wondering why there weren’t any flies surrounding the bodies.

As the officers made their way to the stairwell, they noticed the dried blood on the floor and the rail. They gave each other a wary look, and then continued on, guns at the ready. Once they reached the top floor, they split up and checked each room. They were all the same as the living room. More corpses, all posed in various positions, their mouths and eyes agape. They were all in different stages of decay, some fresher than Officer Jane would have liked. “Just what kind of sick fuck are we dealing with?” He murmured, to no one in particular.

“Jane!” Officer Slenderman called from another room. “I’ve got something over here.”
Officer Jane followed her voice to a middle closet. Officer Slenderman wore a grave expression on her face, but she nodded towards the open door. Officer Jane took a deep breath and aimed his flashlight into the closet. Inside were the bodies of two teenage girls. One was a lot more decayed than the other, but there was something strange about the way they were positioned. They were leaning against each other, the eyes and mouths closed in what could have been a peaceful slumber. They were holding each other’s hand, and wrapped around the two bodies was red string, tying them together.
A tap on his shoulder startled Officer Jane, but before he could say anything, Officer Slenderman pointed above the heads of the bodies. Following her finger, Officer Jane saw that written in blood were the words “Loved and Lost.” Officer Jane wondered what that meant, but he couldn’t dwell on it right now. There was still one more room that they needed to check, and hopefully the killer was still hiding there.

As they made their way to the end of the hall, they could hear sirens approaching. Their back up, finally. It would take them a while to make it through the cornfields. Officer Jane didn’t have time to go down and give them a briefing. He had to see what was in that last room. He looked at his partner, who looked back at him with a determined expression on her face. He knew she was afraid, but he also knew that she wanted to take this person down as much as he did. She would never forget this experience for the rest of her career; she could no longer be considered a rookie cop. Today, she had seen more than half the cops on the force. Things like this just didn’t happen in their peaceful town.

When they entered the last room, Officer Slenderman once again had to stop herself from throwing up. Lying on the bed was a young woman, her abdomen sliced open and her entrails falling out. She was a fresh corpse, Officer Jane realized as he examined her. She was pretty too, such a shame. They looked around for the killer, but they quickly realized he was long gone. There was a desk with a computer monitor on it, but the computer itself was gone.

“He must have found out we were coming.” Officer Slenderman sniffed.
“Yeah, while we were out there taking our time, he was escaping.”
“I wonder how he was able to use this computer.”
“What?” Officer Jane said, turning to her.
Officer Slenderman looked stunned. “The computer, how could he have used the internet when there’s no signal or any electricity out here?”
“How do we even know he used it?”
“Well why would he take it if he hadn’t been using it? A monitor with no computer, that doesn’t make sense.”
“Yeah…” Officer Jane didn’t have much time to think about it, as he could hear the other officers coming through the door and calling out to them.
“I guess I’ll go down and tell them the situation, seeing as how he’s not here anymore.”
“Alright, I’ll stay up here and look around some more.”

As Officer Jane headed to the stairway, he tried to collect his thoughts. He was ready for this nightmare to be over, but he knew it wouldn’t be for a long time. And what’s worse? The killer had escaped because they hadn’t taken the call seriously. Just as he reached the top of the stairs, he heard a shout coming from the room at the end of the hall.
Officer Jane, followed by the other officers that had come as back up, ran to the room with their guns ready. But when they reached the room, it was empty save for the young girl who was already dead.
“In here!” Came a muffled voice from a small doorway.

Officer Jane and the other officers slowly entered the room. A fresh metallic smell filled their noses upon entering. They all flashed their lights around the room. Lying on a bloody metal operating table was a teenage boy. His hands and feet were tied down, and his throat was slit. Officer Slenderman was leaning over him.

“He’s still warm.” She said, her voice quivering as she tried not to cry. “This must be the boy who called 911. We came too late.”
“And that’s not all.” Said an officer named Joe Rake, as Officer Jane comforted his partner. “It looks like we’ve got a confession.”
All of the officers simultaneously aimed their lights were Officer Rake was pointing his. On the wall above the boy’s body, written in fresh blood, was a message:

Jeff was here.

Credit To – Angel Rocket

This is the fourth entry in the five-part Beware of Those Who Would Do You Harm series.

Act 2 – Tucker

(Suggested track: Get Out Alive, by Three Days Grace

Tucker was beginning to wonder if Abby wasn’t into him anymore. Ever since he tried to help her find out what happened to Wendy, she had been acting strange. They barely hung out anymore, and she was returning his calls and messages less and less. At school, she was elusive, and it seemed like she wasn’t concerned about her appearance anymore.

She had always been a tomboy, preferring to wear jeans and t-shirts over skirts and high-heels. But there was something different now; now her outfits looked thrown together instead of having some sort of cohesion. And her hair, it was like she hadn’t combed it in months. It wasn’t like he really cared about how she looked, but he knew that something terrible must have happened. Did it have something to do with Wendy?

But worse than all of that, she was always acting like someone was following her. Once, when he went over to her house to hang out, she insisted that they close all of the curtains and double check the locks on every single window and door. He had suggested watching a movie, but when he put it on she was watching anything but. Abby kept glancing back and forth between the TV and the hallway, like someone would be walking through there at any moment. Not to mention that she jumped at every sound and her mind seemed elsewhere. When she would look at him, he felt like she was looking right through him.
If she was in some kind of trouble, he needed to know. He hated feeling like he couldn’t protect her, and after all, there was still a killer at large. Granted, Jeff might be long gone if he knew what was good for him. Still, Wendy was missing, and Jeff may have had something to do with it. Tucker decided to stop by her house after school to confront her about what was going on. It had been three weeks since he hacked into Wendy’s computer for her, and since then he has heard no more talk about finding her from Abby.

As Tucker was about to leave his house for Abby’s, he heard the phone ring. He considered ignoring it, but then he remembered that his parents were out for a date night. He dashed into the kitchen and picked it up on the fourth ring.

“Hello?”
“Hello, Tucker?”
“Abby is that you? I was just about to come over.”
“No, don’t come over.”
“Why not!? You’ve been acting so weird lately. Are we even still together?”
There was a pause and he heard her take a deep breath.
“I’m really sorry, Tuck. I just…I made a mistake.”
“What mistake?” Tucker asked, desperate.
“It doesn’t matter. I just wanted to let you know that I love you. And also, thank you for everything.”
“I love you too but what’s going on Abby? Is this about Wendy? Have you found her? Is she coming back?”
There was another pause, and then: “I don’t think she’s ever coming back, Tuck.”
“What? Why?”
“No matter what happens Tuck, no matter what, don’t come looking for me. Don’t ask questions. I want you to keep on living, and have a good life.”
“What are you talking about? Where are you going? Abby!”
“Goodbye Tucker, I love you.”
“Abby wait–!”
But she had already hung up. Tucker slowly put the phone back on the receiver and slumped against the wall. He couldn’t be sure; maybe his mind was playing tricks on him. Right before Abby hung up the phone, he thought he heard an ominous male voice chuckling in the background.

Tucker wasted no time jumping into his 1999 Chevy Silverado and speeding over to Abby’s place. It only takes about five minutes to get to her house from his, so when he got there and banged on the door, he was surprised when no one answered.
Tucker looked through the window next to the door, but the house was completely dark. He called out to her, but still, there was no answer. He ran around to the side of the house, and even to the back door, but he couldn’t see or hear anything. She was gone.
After waiting almost an hour on her doorstep, Tucker scribbled a note on some mail using a pen he happened to have in his truck. When he got home, he waited for hours. But she never called him. Finally, he decided to call her and really lay into her.

“Hello?”
“Hi, this is Tucker. May I speak to Abby?”
“I’m sorry Tuck, she isn’t home. In fact, I thought she would be with you.”
“No ma’am, I haven’t seen her since we talked earlier.”
“Well that’s strange; I wonder where she could be.”
Tucker paused for a moment. Then:
“I don’t mean to alarm you ma’am, but I think you should call the police.”

It was Wendy all over again. Abby had simply vanished, and no one knew why. Some people wondered if she had gone to find Wendy, others were convinced that her disappearance was linked to the other disappearances happening around town. But a smaller percentage, including Tucker, believed that a certain killer was the culprit. And Tucker was determined to find out if his suspicions were true.

Tucker wasn’t the only one who wanted answers. Abby’s parents were sick with worry, and they exhausted every resource possible in order to find her. They called the police station daily demanding any news that they had. They even had the police go through Abby’s things, unlike Wendy. What the police couldn’t understand was why, just like with Wendy, none of her things were missing. It was as if she had just gotten up and walked out. There was no note, no clues, nothing.

By the time a month had gone by, the police were ready to give up their search and label her as a runaway despite the evidence against that claim. Her parents were frantic. As time went on, they felt more and more alone in their search. Search parties and calls with information were occurring less and the police began to brush them off. They were never the best police force anyway, because nothing really happened in that town. But there was one other person who was not ready to give up.

Tucker began his own little investigation, beginning with asking after her around town. He picked a Saturday morning to begin, and by that Saturday afternoon he had gotten nowhere. No one had seen her the day she disappeared, no one had even seen her around that time because she barely went anywhere besides school in those last few weeks. Tucker was wondering what he should do next when he realized something. The day when everything changed was the same day that he had hacked into Wendy’s computer. There must have been something important on there that she had found after he left. He realized that he would have to go back to her house and find out what it was.

Instead of driving over to her house, he left his car at his house and jogged over to Abby’s. He kept in constant contact with her parents, so he knew that Saturdays were when they both went out to do what they could to find their daughter, whether its search for her, hand out flyers, or haunt the police station for any leads.

Once he got there, he found the extra key hidden in a flowerpot and headed up to her room. Glancing at the clock and noting the time, he quickly went to work. Instead of searching through Wendy’s computer like he had originally planned, he instead logged onto Abby’s. He never told her this, but he knew all of he login information because she wasn’t as careful as she should have been while typing it in.

There wasn’t much on her computer, but there were tons of searches about the old house out in the cornfields. It looked like she was wondering if you could get Internet connection from out there. Puzzled, Tucker checked through her files and there he found tons of pictures of the old house. Tucker began to wonder if that’s where Wendy and Abby were hiding. But, why? He decided he would check it out later. But first, he would check her emails to see if she had been communicating with anyone, besides him.

Upon looking through her emails, he found nothing. Just the dozen or so emails he had sent to her that went unanswered and some other junk. But just as he was about to close out, he caught sight of her spam folder. After considering it, he decided that it wouldn’t do any harm just to check.
All of the messages were from an anonymous sender.
“Okay…that’s weird.” He muttered.
Tucker decided to choose one at random.
You were warned, but you just couldn’t help yourself. And now you know too much.
Tucker narrowed his eyes at the screen. Then he clicked on another, more recent one.
Jeffrey’s coming to get you, Abby dear. You’d better not tell.
Tucker clinched his fists and turned away from the computer. “Jeff.” He said through his teeth, voice dripping with venom. Turning back to the computer, he clicked on a few more. Piecing together most of the emails, Tucker figured Abby had found out something about Jeff, and now Jeff was coming for her. He also knew in his gut that it had something to do with Wendy.

“She better not be dead, you fucker…” Tucker muttered as he held his head in his hands. Fresh tears rolled down his cheeks, he didn’t want to admit what he already knew was true. “I’ll find you Jeff, I swear I’ll–!” Then, it hit him. A simple connection; the common denominator. Of course Jeff had never left; he had been living right under everyone’s noses this whole time. Tucker clicked out of her email and went brought up the window that he had used to search Abby’s most recent history. He brought up the most recent search, and there it was. The place where Wendy was found shivering in the darkness, the place that Abby had become obsessed with, the place where no one would think to look. The old abandoned house in the cornfields, that’s were Jeff was.

Tucker didn’t stop to think. Instead, almost in a trance-like state, he put everything back in order, and left the room. When he got home, he wrote a goodbye letter to his parents, telling them that he loved them, and that he was leaving to be with Abby. He wrote it, knowing that he may never return. Some don’t come back when they set off to confront evil.

Tucker pushed his way through the cornfields. He knew the way to the house like the back of his hand. He shook away the thoughts that tried to force their way into his head of him, Abby, and other neighborhood kids playing out here when they were younger. No distractions. They could still be alive, though the chance was slim. Either way, he needed to know everything, or else he would never find peace.

It wasn’t long before he could see the dark house looming before him. Once he had stepped onto the porch, he took a deep breath, and reached for the doorknob.
“Run.”
Tucker whirled around, but there was nothing there but the cornfields from whence he came.
“Abby?” He whispered. He could have sworn he had heard her just now. But that was impossible. It must have been his imagination, or the wind whispering through the fields. Or maybe it was his subconscious crying out for him to get as far way from this place as he could, and it took on the voice of the person who was always on his mind. But it was too late; he was here now. And the fear that gripped him and shook him to the bone was not enough to stop him. Once again he closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and opened the door.

The smell of death and rot immediately slapped him in the face and forced him to take a step back. It was so strong that he actually gagged and had to force himself not to throw up. Despite the overwhelming smell, he stumbled into the dark house and tried to find his way around. The house had two stories, including a basement and an attic. He knew that Jeff was most likely on the second floor, that’s where all of the bedrooms were. Tucker closed his eyes as he tried not to think about all the times that he and Abby had snuck out here to make out in the master bedroom. Strangely enough, the house was fully furnished with ancient furniture and old photographs. It was the perfect place for a killer to hang around. But there was no electricity, so how in the world could he survive here.

Darkness. He was a creature of the darkness, that’s why.

After finding the stairway, he started to climb it only to slip on some sort of dark liquid. Luckily he caught himself on the railing, but that also was covered in warm liquid. Tucker quickly pulled his hand away, knowing what it very well could be. He tiptoed up the stairs but stopped at the top. He cocked his head to the side and listened. There was a sound coming from his right. A very distinct sound, like something heavy was being dragged across the floor. Tucker gulped and headed towards the sound. Eventually, he could see a flickering light coming from a room at the end of the hallway. There was also what Tucker assumed to be a blood trail and bloody footprints leading into that room.

The dragging sound got louder as he reached the door. Tucker leaned against the wall next to the doorway and composed himself. He wanted so badly to bide his time and wait for the police, whom he had called right before heading out. They had sounded skeptical, and he knew that they would probably take their time in getting there. A killer right under their noses, and in the most obvious place this whole time? Yeah, right. Still, he was sure they would come. But he couldn’t wait for whenever that may be at the risk of Jeff escaping. So with a trembling heart, he turned and stepped into the room.
The room looked like any other bedroom, except for a few things. For one, there was nothing in it but a large bed, a desk with a computer and one candle on it, and another, smaller, doorway. From what Tucker could make out in the dim light, the walls and floor were covered in splotches of blood, some of them spelling out actual words. Tucker couldn’t read what the words said, but it wasn’t important to him at the moment. What was important, were the two figures in the room that had stopped moving as soon as he stepped in.

The first figure he saw was a young woman lying on the floor. She was dead, her body nearly cut in two and its contents spilling out around her. He could see her empty eyes in the candlelight, wide and staring. She looked to be very beautiful, with long bloodstained blonde hair and grey eyes. Her hand was being held in another hand, belonging to the one who had dragged her broken body all the way up the stairs to this very room. It seemed to be in the middle of dragging her to the second door, because its hand had frozen in the middle of reaching for the doorknob. This figure was standing just out of the candles range, so it was consumed by shadows. But Tucker knew exactly who it was.

“Jeff.”

The figure dropped the girl’s hand and let the other hand fall to its side. It just stood there for a moment, and then it began to chuckle quietly.
“So…I see you didn’t take her warning to heart hmmm…?” came a voice that sounded like it would better suit a serpent than a human being.
Tucker flinched at the sound of that voice. It sounded much more malicious than what he remembered, but he could still tell who it belonged to.
“What have you done with her!” he demanded, sounding much more confidant than he actually was.
“You should have stayed away…heheh…I might have left you alone. But now…”
“Stop fucking around and answer my goddamned question!”

The figure was silent for a moment. Then he stepped over the corpse and into the light. Tucker sucked in a breath as he saw Jeff for the first time in months. The boy he had known in school was normal compared to the creature that stood before him now. The long unkempt black hair and bone white skin were still the same, but now his face was horribly disfigured. His eyelids were gone, leaving behind emotionless eyes with black rings around them that seemed to stare right into Tucker’s soul. His nose was gone too, but for some reason there was no hole where it used to be, just a small white hump. His lips were also gone, so now he no longer needed Joker make-up to give himself a permanent smile. His clothes were the same though, a white hoodie with fresh blood on it, and black pants.

“Jesus Christ…what happened to you?” Tucker asked, more than a little shaken.
“What happened?” Jeff cocked his head back and let out a throaty laugh that sent chills down Tuckers spine. “SHE happened!” He said at last.
“Wendy?”
Jeff said nothing.
“Why did you take her? Why did you kill her parents? Why did you…what did you do to Abby!?”
Jeff cocked his head to the side and his evil grin seemed to grow wider.
“You want answers hmmm…? Well…I guess I can confide in you…since you won’t be around for much longer.”
Tucker wondered if he should just run. If he left now he might be able to make it out of there alive. But he couldn’t, he needed to know. Besides, the police should be on their way by now, right?

Instead of immediately talking, Jeff casually turned and picked up the girl from the floor and placed her on the bed, careful not to spill anything. He then sat down at his desk and faced Tucker, who still remained in the doorway.

“I’ll have some fun with her later…heheh. Now where should I begin? Oh yes, ever since I was twelve, I’ve had these urges. The urge to kill, specifically. I loved it, and ever since my first kill I’ve been dying to do it more and more and more! It gave me joy like no other to take someone’s life, that is, until I came here.”

Tucker was only mildly interested in what he had to say. He wasn’t at all surprised that Jeff was psychotic. He only wanted to stall, and find out if his Abby was still alive. But then he thought maybe there was a way he could take down Jeff himself, so he decided to listen more carefully.
“As you could imagine, for six years I’ve been on the run from my past. I’d travel from city to city, have my fill of fun, then move on. When I got here, it was easy to make up some bullshit story about living with my great aunt. In reality I just hid out at some rich old bitch’s house who I had kept hostage…for a while.”

Tucker stopped himself from rolling his eyes. He absolutely hated Jeff, a person who would kill without remorse or regard for someone’s life. But in order to find out what happened, he had to keep listening.

“I enrolled myself in school to scout some potential victims.” Jeff went on. “I usually try to pick people who I can gain something from. But then I met Wendy. She came frolicking into my life without warning, and suddenly everything changed. She was changing me. At first I fancied her as my first victim here, but I actually began to…fall for her. Several times I tried to kill her, the first time being after we had sex for the first time. She lay there, fast asleep, and I straddled her and pulled the knife out from underneath the pillow. But as I raised the knife to stab her in the heart, I hesitated. I saw how beautiful she looked sleeping so peacefully, and I hesitated.”

Tucker noted how Jeff’s voice had changed over the course of him telling this story. He almost sounded normal. Like a normal person struggling with their feelings. Too bad he wasn’t a normal person, and this wasn’t a normal love story.

“I hated myself for it, I was starting to slip. I went out on killing sprees less and less, and began to spend more time with her. The second time I was planning to kill her, she told me she loved me, and I couldn’t bring myself to use the axe I had hidden underneath the table to hack her to pieces. And the third time… I was really going to do it.”

Tucker perked up again at the change of tone in Jeff’s voice. He figured he knew what story Jeff was about to tell now.
“I had to get rid of her, so that I would be able to freely do what I wanted. I couldn’t allow myself to have feelings for her. It was changing me and I didn’t like it! So I planned everything out so nothing would go wrong this time. While she was out partying, I killed her parents then waited for her to come home. When she got there, oh, her face was priceless. It filled my heart with such glee to see her in so much pain. Yes, the feeling was back again. I knew I could do it this time! I followed her all the way here, wounding her in the process. I didn’t want any chances for her to escape, so I made sure she wouldn’t be able to run far.”

Tucker nodded solemnly, remembering the wound on the back of Wendy’s knee that never quite healed, just like her broken heart.
“I was so ready to end her, but then…” Jeff scratched his arm and twitched nervously. “Then she kissed me, and the urge was completely gone. It was such a shock that I couldn’t do anything, I just had to get away from her.”

Tucker shook his head. If only you had just let it change you. You could have been happy with her. But instead…
“I went back to the old lady’s house. I couldn’t stay there long because the smell coming from her basement was starting to bug the neighbors. I looked at myself in the mirror and cursed myself for being so weak. I knew I had to do something drastic, think…think…THINK! And then I knew: it was my lips that had betrayed me. I had to get rid of them, so I did. And while I was at it, why not punish myself further? I burned off my eyelids I had no real use for them, and now I would never lose sight of my desires!” Jeff’s serpent-like voice had returned by now.
“And your nose?” Tucker asked, grimly.
“Just an added bonus, to seal the deal.” Jeff then stood up, and looked Tucker square in the face. “There was nothing stopping me anymore. I was transformed; I just needed to do one more thing to make sure I never went back. This time I kept a safe distance from her. Instead I sent her threatening emails, and stalked her at night. I wanted to weaken her resolve by slowly driving her insane. And it worked; by the time I was through with her, she had no will to live and accepted her fate without a struggle. I had won.”
Tucker glared at him. “What did you do to her?”
“What do you think?” Jeff said, teasingly. “I…took her.”
Tucker took an angry step forward, but immediately regretted it. “And Abby? Why did you go after her?”
“She went investigating, just like I knew she would, and found out too much. I did the same to her, only she was much stronger than Wendy. Sill, she eventually realized she couldn’t escape from me. Should have heeded Wendy’s warning…hmmm?”
Tucker felt sick. His head began to swim, and he swayed back and forth on his feet. How could something so evil exist in this world? By this time, he knew they were dead, but still he had to ask once more.
“Where are they? Where are Abby and Wendy now?”
Jeff’s unholy grin grew so wide that it nearly split his face in half and he gestured around the room.
“Why…they’re here.” Jeff produced a large knife from the pocket of his hoodie and advanced toward him. Tucker knew what that meant. It meant that the police weren’t going to make it in time after all. Instead of running, like his subconscious was currently screaming for him to do, he simply closed his eyes and thought of Abby.

“They’re right here with us.” Jeff went on, is a harsh whisper. “You can see them if you want. All you have to do is GO TO SLEEP!”

Credit To – Angel Rocket

This is the third entry in the five-part Beware of Those Who Would Do You Harm series.

Act 1 – Abby

(Suggested track: Coming Undone, by Korn)

Abby didn’t know what to do. Since her best friend was now an orphan, she convinced her parents to let Wendy stay with them until they graduated from high school. After that, she was going to move in with her Aunt over the summer. Abby’s main reasoning was that Wendy was going to need someone to lean on after such a horrible tragedy.

Abby believed that she could be that person, but ever since Wendy moved in she had started becoming withdrawn from the world around her. Wendy hardly talked to anyone, she barely ate, and she often woke up screaming in the middle of the night. She always acted as if someone was following her, watching her, yet she always wanted to be alone. Not to mention her appearance had become startling from lack of sleep and care. When Abby tried talking to her, Wendy just shut her out. Abby didn’t want Wendy to deal with her pain alone, but what could she do? It wasn’t like before, when the worst thing that could happen to her was a petty argument with her parents.

Her parents. If only they were here. But if they were here, then Abby wouldn’t be having this problem. It was all his fault, oh how she hated him. From the moment she laid eyes on him, she knew he was trouble. But Wendy couldn’t see it; all she could see was someone she could try to save. Now it was her who needed saving. And he was still out there…somewhere.

A month after the murders, on a rainy evening, Abby lay in her bed. Across the room from her, Wendy lay in her own bed scribbling furiously in a diary she had been keeping. When she finished, she placed it on her side of the bookshelf with her other belongings. Wendy then peeked out of her window and froze for a moment before closing the curtains. She looked over at Abby, who was starting to fall asleep.
“Abby?”
“Hmm…”
“Remember when we first met, in middle school?”
“Yeah, why?”
“I was just thinking back on my life, and how far I’ve come. I’ve been trying to write them all down. All the good memories I have to leave behind, after I’m gone.”
Abby sleepily propped herself up on one elbow to look at her. “Gone? Where are you going?”
Wendy didn’t respond right away. “Nowhere, it was just a figure of speech.”
Abby stared at her for a minute before collapsing back onto her pillow. “Don’t scare me like that.”
They were both silent for a minute. Abby started drifting off to sleep again.
“When we first met, I was the weird kid.” Wendy said, waking Abby up again. “I remember how nobody talked to me at first. I spent most of elementary school alone because I wasn’t into the same things as every other kid my age. Then one day, you spoke to me.”
“Yeah,” Abby slurred, trying to remember. “I told you I liked your dress, the one with the blue flowers on it.”
“Yep, and we’ve been best friends ever since. And after that, more friends came.”
“Mmmhmm…”
“I never thanked you for that, for being my friend.”
“You didn’t have to thank me. I liked you; I liked the fact that you were different. At least back then you were, high school normalized you.”
They both chuckled.
“Yeah, I became ‘normal’, whatever that means. But I was still drawn to weird people.”
“Yeah…” Abby yawned.
“Remember all those guys I dated?” Wendy laughed. “Stephan, Drew… Gary, the guy who was obsessed with chins?”
“Jeff, the homicidal psychopath.”

Wendy was quiet for a moment. Abby sat up and looked at her.
“I’m sorry. But I can’t help being a little mad at you for this. It’s been a long enough time since the funerals for me to say that. I know you couldn’t have known. But the worst part is that you’ve changed on me. This is the longest conversation we’ve had since…”
“No, you’re right. I haven’t been a good friend, and I’m sorry.”
Abby lay back down. “No, don’t be sorry. I forgot about that golden heart of yours. You could never think ill of anyone, not even him.”
“He didn’t seem dangerous at all, while we were dating.” Wendy said in a quiet voice. “He was a bit distant, and quiet, but I thought he genuinely loved…”
Wendy looked up to see that Abby had drifted off to sleep. She got up and walked over to her friend’s bed. Crouching down in front of her, she tucked some stray hair behind her ear. Leaning down, she whispered in her ear.
“Thanks for being my friend.”
Abby opened her heavy eyes long enough to see Wendy quietly walk out of the room. “Wendy, where are you going?” She moaned. But sleep overtook her as her vision got blurry, and then everything went black.

The next morning, Abby woke up to find Wendy’s bed empty. In fact, it didn’t even look slept in. Abby sat up and tried to remember what happened the previous night. All that talk about looking back on her life and thanking her for being her friend, it almost seemed like she was saying goodbye. Abby searched the house calling her friends name, but she was nowhere to be found.
First she alerted her parents, then the police, and then the whole town. Some people claimed to have seen her on the night she went missing. But no matter how many search parties were sent out, no matter how much the reward was for any information on her whereabouts, no matter how much Abby wished, Wendy remained missing.

Two months after her disappearance, Abby noticed that the police were starting to give up. They had no leads, and no evidence of any kind. They began treating her as runaway because of her deep depression over the deaths of her parents. Never mind the fact that none of her clothes or other belongings were missing. They didn’t even bother to look through them.

They assured Abby and her parents that Wendy would return when she was ready, or that she would eventually be found. Abby wasn’t convinced, but she couldn’t convince anyone else to listen to her. Her mother and father cared about Wendy very much, but they were tired and wanted to get on with their lives. So Abby had to find her friend on her own, or at the very least, find out what happened to her.

Abby decided to start with Wendy’s computer. Her boyfriend, Tucker, was an expert hacker. He could hack into just about anything. So when Abby asked if he could come over to try to break into her computer, he was almost insulted that she even asked if he could do it. After they successfully hacked into her computer, they did a wide search. Finding nothing suspicious, they decided to check her emails. But even after hacking into it, there were no emails or messages of any sort to give them a clue.
“Ugh…” Wendy sat back in her chair, exasperated. “This is hopeless.”
“Don’t give up yet, babe.” Tucker said, getting up and massaging her neck. “I’m sure there’s no need for any of this anyway. She’ll come back.”
“Yeah, and when she does I’m going to beat the living crap out of her.”
“Shhh…” he whispered. He massaged her neck a little bit harder, causing her to moan softly.
Tucker smiled. “Hey, I still have half an hour before I have to meet with up with the guys. Your parents are out, wanna fool around a little?”
Abby leaned her head back to grin at him. “I could use some comfort.”
After he left, Abby straightened herself up and then continued to explore Wendy’s computer. Looking at her search history, Abby wondered just what was going through her friends mind before she disappeared. There were searches about night terrors, sleep paralysis, and articles on other recent disappearances happening around town. Abby eventually found herself back in Wendy’s email. She hadn’t thought before to check the spam folder, so she clicked on it. Abby was shocked to find that there were hundreds of messages in the folder, all from an anonymous email address.

Abby clicked on an email, which read: I’m coming for you.
Abby was more than a little spooked. She clicked on another one.
Gonna get you, baby.
Wendy was frightened, but she clicked on another one, and another, and another. The more she read, the colder the chill creeping up her spine became.
Don’t try to run.
No one can save you from me.
There’s no escape.
There’s nowhere to hide.
You’ll be mine again.
You’d better not tell anyone, or they’re next.

The messages dated all the way back to the day after her parent’s funeral. Abby shook her head as hot tears ran down her cheeks. So, she had been dealing with this all by herself, for so long. No wonder she had changed so much, and wouldn’t let anyone in. Abby composed herself, and clicked on the very first message sent to Wendy.

I want you, but we won’t be separated for much longer. Jeff is coming.

Abby’s hand flew to her mouth. Jeff, of course. There was no denying it now; Jeff had something to do with it. But first she needed more proof. Abby quickly wiped away her tears and began to look through all of Wendy’s things. She looked through her book bag, her side of the closest, under her bed, and her side of the bookshelf. She flipped through some of her notebooks. What she found were messages sloppily scrawled by her friend in the margins of almost every page:

Jeff is coming.
Jeff is coming for me.
There’s no escape for me, it’s all over.
I can’t run, I can’t hide.
He won’t stop.
I have to protect them.
No one else needs to die.
Jeff.
Jeff.
JEFF.
He’s coming.

She tossed it onto Wendy’s bed to give to the police and looked through her other notebooks and textbooks, all the same. How could she have kept it inside all this time? Abby glanced at all the titles until her eyes rested on Wendy’s journal partially hidden underneath a World History textbook.
Cautiously, she picked it up and read the first entry.

Dear Abby,
If you are reading this, stop right now. By now I have probably disappeared, and I know you want answers. But it’s too dangerous. Just forget about me, and move on with your life. You’re strong, stronger than I am, but there is evil in this world that even you just can’t fight. You’ll definitely lose, so just put this down. In fact, bury it, or burn it. It doesn’t matter now that I’m gone. I only kept it so that I could stay sane. I wanted to right down everything I could remember about my life, so that I wouldn’t forget. I wanted to talk to you so badly, but that would have been sealing your doom. I won’t make the same mistake twice. Goodbye Abby, you’re my very best friend and I love you. Have a great life.
Love, Wendy

After a few moments of uncontrollable sobbing, Abby wondered why she left the journal behind if it was so dangerous. Maybe she didn’t get the opportunity to get rid of it. Abby stared at the journal, conflicted about whether or not to continue reading. She decided to take the chance. She flipped to the next page, but it was just an entry about her earliest memory. It went on like that for the first half of the journal, as if she were trying to write down every single memory of her life that she could remember. Even the memory of when they first met was there. Abby smiled as she tried to blink back tears.

But then it took a dark turn. Wendy began to write about nightmares that she had been having, one about a pale-faced figure chasing her through the cornfields. Abby had heard about that night when Abby was telling the police about her parent’s murder. She remembered feeling infuriated about the fact that the police couldn’t find the killer, even though he was just a teenage boy.

The entries continued, apparently Wendy sometimes couldn’t sleep at night because she heard noises outside the window. Sometimes when she thought she was alone, she would feel like someone was watching her, but when she looked, no one was there. But there was someone there, as confirmed by the messages she was receiving.

There was even a time when she actually saw him. It was a cold night, about a week before she disappeared. She had gotten up to close the window when she saw him. He was standing outside their window with his hood up, head held down. Since their bedroom was on the second floor, he couldn’t reach her.
Still, he slowly lifted his head and locked eyes with her. Wendy gasped at the sight of his face, but she didn’t turn away. They stayed like that for what seemed like hours. But when Abby shifted in bed, blissfully unaware of any danger, Wendy turned to make sure she was still asleep. When she turned back to the window, he was gone.

“If she knew it was him, then why did she gasp when she saw his face?” Abby wondered aloud.

She sank down onto the bed. So he was here this whole time, yet no one even knew? No wonder Wendy felt so alone. Abby continued to flip through the journal, reading about many more mysterious things happening to her and about Wendy’s depression and loneliness. But it wasn’t until she got to the back of the book that Abby shrieked and let the book slip from her hands.

Abby dropped to the floor and slowly opened the book again. On the back cover of the journal was a sketch of Jeff, dated a week before Wendy disappeared. But this was no ordinary portrait. He still wore The Joker makeup, but his face was now horribly mutilated: his eyelids, nose, and lips were all missing. The only color on the picture was the area around his mouth where Wendy had scribbled in red ink. And underneath his picture, also written in red, was one last message:

Jeff is here.

Credit To – Angel Rocket

This is the first entry in the five-part Beware of Those Who Would Do You Harm series.

Prologue – Wendy

(Suggested tracks: Monsters, by Matchbook Romance or Cat & Mouse, by TRJA)

Wendy ran as fast as she could. She had no time to stop at any of the houses that flew by as she ran, because she knew the darkness was closing in on her. Besides, this was all her fault, her grave mistake. She had allowed darkness into her life, and she wasn’t about to lead it into others’. Her parents had already paid the price for it. She blinked back tears as she remembered, just moments before, how she had walked in to find the disemboweled bodies of her parents lying in a heap on the floor. And how a dark figure had stepped from the shadows into the moonlight, holding a bloody knife, and revealing himself to be…

Wendy shook her head as she continued to run, now was not the time. He was coming for her, and she had to lead him as far away from her little hometown as possible. All of her friends and neighbors were there; she could at least save them. Wendy had resigned herself to her fate; it was what she deserved after all. But how could she have known that the one she loved the most would turn out to be someone, something, wicked. Wendy paused to catch her breath. She was standing in front of the cornfield that separated her town from the next one.

Wendy thought back again to when she had first met him. She was always drawn to strange people, and the new boy in town definitely fit the bill. Everyone stayed away from him at school, so she was the only one brave enough to talk to him. It wasn’t long before she had fallen hard, and despite everyone, including her best friend Abby, warning her that he was dangerous, they began dating. Looking back on it now, it seemed like she had cared about him more than he cared about her. It was like he was void of any emotions. But Wendy didn’t have long to reminisce. A whizzing sound interrupted her thoughts, and before she could turn around she felt a sharp pain in her leg.

“Ah-,” she moaned, as she fell to the ground. Upon examining her leg, she discovered a small pocket knife protruding from it. Looking up, she could just make out his silhouette in the distance. He always did have impeccable aim. She gritted her teeth, pulled out the knife, tried to stand. Because the knife hit her in the back of her knee, she knew that running would now be difficult. She also knew that he knew that as well.

The silhouette was getting closer. Wendy forced herself to stand, ignoring the pain, and limped into the cornfields. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw that she was leaving a trail of blood behind. It would most assuredly lead him straight to her; he must have predicted that as well. Oh well, it didn’t matter now. He was away from the town, and her best friend, that’s all that mattered.

Finally, up ahead she could make out what she was looking for. There was an old abandoned house in the middle of those cornfields. No one knows why it was there, rumor has it that it had been there ever since the town was first established. It certainly looked hundreds of years old. It also looked similar to a plantation house, only not as big. Still, it was pretty big, and spooky. No one, as far as Wendy knew, had ever lived there or even had any interest in buying it. She and her friends used to dare each other to spend the night there when they were kids, who could have known that this would be her final resting place.

Since no one bothered to lock the doors, Wendy staggered inside, slamming the door behind her. The pain in her leg was becoming unbearable, and the loss of blood was starting to make her head spin. Wendy collapsed against a wall in the living room and glanced around the empty house.
As she waited for him to come, she wondered what she should do. She had come here without a plan, only wanting to lead him away. But what happens after? How could she be sure that he wouldn’t simply go back? No, she wouldn’t let that happen. She had let the wrong one in, so he was her responsibility. It would all end here.

Her head snapped up as the front door slowly opened, she was out of time. Using the window sill next to her, she managed to stand. The silhouette entered and, after locating her, calmly walked in. Wendy pressed her back against the wall and held her breath as he inched closer and closer. The closer he got, the more clearly she could see him, thanks to the light provided by the window.

When he was just an arm’s length away, she could examine him in his entirety; the bloody white hoodie, the knife that used on her parents, the long black hair covering most of his face. Wendy wanted to look into his cold black eyes, but he held his head slightly down, making it difficult. Instead, Wendy glanced again at the knife that he gripped in his hand as if his life depended on it.

“Jeff…” Wendy murmured.
Jeff slowly lifted his head. She could only see one eye, but its stare burned into hers. Carefully, she lifted her hand and pushed his hair aside. His face was made up like it always was, like The Joker. She had found his strangeness interesting, but it scared everyone else to look at him. “A demented clown” is what their schoolmates had called him behind his back.
“Jeff,” she said again. “Why are you doing this?”
Tears rolled down her cheeks as memories of their short time together flashed through her mind.
“I don’t understand. What did I do wrong?” she went on. “I-I loved you, Jeff. I thought you felt the same way.”
Jeff said nothing; he simply took a step back and raised his knife, preparing to strike. Wendy nodded, realizing that she might never know.
“Alright Jeff, if this is what you want. Just…one more kiss before I go?”
Before Jeff could respond, she wrapped her arms around his neck and leaned him down for a kiss. His lips were soft, like they had always been, but this kiss was different. He didn’t return it; he merely stood there as she embraced him. Wendy dropped one of her arms to discreetly dig into her pocket. She gripped the pocket knife that he had thrown at her earlier, but did not pull it out. Up until a few moments ago, she wasn’t sure if she could even use it on him. Now, she was definitely sure that she couldn’t, no matter what he had done.

Wendy let go of him, and leaned back against the wall. Wendy studied his face, which was now dumbfounded and his breathing quickened. She couldn’t understand why, but it didn’t matter.
“Goodbye, Jeff.”
Wendy closed her eyes and waited. And waited. And waited. After what seemed like forever, she slowly opened her eyes.

He was gone. Without a word, without a sound. The front door was opened wider than it had been before, so she was truly alone. Instead of leaving right away, she sank to the floor and wept.

Credit To – Angel Rocket

This is the first entry in the five-part Beware of Those Who Would Do You Harm series.

I have to be brief, for I don’t really know how long I have until it finds me.

My name is Daniel Lockwood, I’m a 20 year old British citizen and I’ve been living in China for the last 18 months. My Mother’s name is Deborah Lockwood. I am typing this on an Ipad. It’s around 10.45pm on Tuesday 30th April 2013. I am unsure of my exact location, but I am somewhere in the mountains south of Beijing, on the border of Hebei province, close to a small village named Shidu.

My fingers are trembling as I quietly tap away at the touch screen and tears are flowing heavily from my eyes, creating a satisfying patter sound as they slam against the smooth surface of the tablet. A cigarette is hanging loosely from my lips. This space is tight and unwelcoming, not the kind of tomb I had hoped for.

Please forgive any spelling mistakes or nonsensical ramblings, my vision is slightly blurred and my mind abundant with unimaginable horrors. Isn’t it funny, that even in death the brain is concerned with such trivial things as grammar?

Anyway… This is my legacy. If you are reading this, I hope to God that you are warm and safe, within the confines of a locked room or in a heavily populated area. I hope that your friends and family are close by or that your pet cat is cuddled up on your lap. The tale I’m about to tell is not for the faint hearted, nor is it fabricated or exaggerated. It’s the telling of a desperate man’s final hour in existence, one filled with horror, fear and experiences he wouldn’t wish upon his worst enemy. The purpose of this final entry is to reveal the truth, to let it be documented that there are still things in this world that we don’t understand, that we’ve not discovered. There are still things in this world that haven’t emerged from the darkness to reveal their twisted and unholy faces. But I’m not scared anymore.

If you are reading this, I am surely dead.

Around 11 hours ago, myself and 4 others embarked on a ‘mini-adventure’ outside of the familiar and into the wild. I won’t waste time on back stories and the like, all you really need to know is that the 5 of us were intrepid travellers, a close group of friends who thoroughly enjoyed each other’s company and frequently enjoyed treks and hikes together. Of this 5, only I remain, and soon my life will too come to a grizzly end.

This particular escapade landed us in Shidu, a small and rural village far on the outskirts of Beijing municipality, China. Shidu is famous for its beautiful scenery, adventure activities and serenity. It’s also famous for its rich and colourful folklore, an area of Asia that often attracts crypto-zoologists from around the globe.

If you live in a foreign country for long enough, and take enough of an interest in its traditions, you will reach further and further into the foundations of its culture, learning about the food and history and mannerisms. You will eventually and undoubtedly come across an aspect of that culture that is often a very defining and unique feature – Fairytales and stories about beasts and boogies that hide in the forests or under your bed. Goblins and ghouls that will suck your soul out through your mouth, or drag you kicking and screaming through the earth until you reach the burning core of hell. You’ll learn about graveyards and rituals, superstitions and spells, curses and ghosts. All of these things add a certain charm and elegance to a culture and Chinese culture is brimming with such legends.

I have taken that step from reality into the realm of legends. No longer am I skeptical of the shadows in my cupboard or the creaks from the attic. I now believe that people have been possessed or abducted or probed or haunted or eaten or defiled in horrifying ways by horrifying things. These things I now know to be true. But I’m not scared anymore. I just hope that there is a God who can offer me some form of peace after this ordeal comes to its inevitable end…

We departed from Beijing’s city centre at around 11am, excited and well prepared for a couple of days in the mountains, armed with snacks, cameras and a sense of adventure. As the concrete jungle behind us slowly faded away into the thick layer of smog that frequently engulfed the city, the 5 of us enjoyed a long and comfortable ride through the Chinese countryside, passing large open fields and seas of rotten wooden shacks, which became less recurrent as we entered the sloping valleys and canyons that twisted through south-western Beijing.

The first port of call was a brief stop at the guest house, where we could stretch our legs, wash up and offload any unnecessary baggage. I’m not going to attempt to make this into a cliché horror story by providing falsifying claims of unsettling landlords or shaky warnings from deformed locals, because none of that happened. It was an ordinary guest house within the confines of ordinary mountains, inhabited by ordinary folk living ordinary lives. There was nothing extraordinary about this place just yet.

After a quick shower, a bite to eat and a cigarette, we hopped back onto the bus and started the brief journey to the beginning of the hike, which would take us through the most rural and unexplored section of this particular mountain range. At 5.20pm, we arrived. The driver, a stern but pleasant local man, told us to call him roughly 30 minutes before we wanted to be picked up. We responded by informing him that we should have completed the hike by about 9pm.

I guess he’s getting pretty worried by now.

We purposefully chose to start the hike slightly later than usual, to avoid swarms of other tourists, but admittedly not as late as we did. The sun was already waning in the sky, foreboding the fading light that would soon be devoured by darkness. The last few drips and drabs of sightseers were funneling out of the narrow opening ahead, shooting us concerned looks as we shambled past them on our way up. We had traversed tough terrain in the late evening before, so we didn’t give much thought to the implications of a night hike.

The first hour or so of the hike was relatively undemanding, lightly inclining slopes and steps, paralleled with rows of stone carvings and badly translated signs. All of the stalls and markets that accompanied the first section of the trail were deserted now, save for the one or two remaining locals gathering their cheap tat and trinkets, ready to sell on the next day. We only passed a handful of others, who shot us yet more disconcerting looks as we strolled past them in the fading sunlight. Areas of the mountain had already been swallowed up by shifting shadows, other sections were relishing in the last few minutes of luminosity.

The trail gradually became more demanding as equally spaced steps became less and less frequent. After about an hour and a half of trekking, we came across a tattered notice board which informed us of our current position and distance from the peak, not too far away.

The only sounds that filled the evening air were our voices as we discussed the next day’s activities – water rafting and horseback riding. Gaps in conversation would bring a dead silence. There wasn’t even a breeze to rustle the trees, not a cricket chirping, not a bird tweeting. Just silence. Even the sounds of our heavy footsteps seemed to be drowned away by the enormity of the mountain.

Close to the peak, we came across a small, traditionally crafted pagoda. The path split in two here, one lead straight ahead, further up the mountain and towards the peak. I remember from the map that this was also the exit route, which eventually wound down and intercepted the entry path close to the bottom. The other path strayed off to our right. This route, dutifully named ‘cloud road’, was steep and led to a large raised viewing platform about 200 meters above.

We spent a few moments deliberating whether or not to take the minor detour to catch a glimpse of the setting sun from one of the mountains few viewing platforms. Sarah and Thomas, the couple of the group, decided that they would have a rest at the pagoda. The rest of us, assuming that they just wanted some alone time, sighed and began to make our way up to the platform.

It wasn’t much of a detour, perhaps 10 minutes each away, but a tiring walk nonetheless. Neither of us really spoke much on the way up, the path was too uneven to focus on conversation, but the top of the platform rewarded us with a breathtaking view of the landscape. The mountains stretched on for as far as the eye could see. Even in the waning light, I could see far into the distance. The rolling hills seemed to carry on forever and signs of early summer blossomed and cascaded over the slopes. We spent 5 or so minutes catching our breath at the rest stop. I enjoyed a celebratory cigarette, resting against the lone fir that occupied the platform, appreciating the spectacular view that lay before me.

I found myself unable to take my eyes away from the scene. The hills seemed to twist and ripple around me, not in a sinister way, but in a magnificent display of beauty. It wasn’t until my friend Jay nudged me that I awoke from my day dream, crushed the cigarette butt into the ground and turned on my heels to begin the descent back down to the pagoda.

The sun was hanging very low in the sky now, disappearing behind a large set of mountains to the west as we fumbled our way down. Gradually, the pagoda emerged from behind the shrubbery and into view. Sarah and Thomas were no longer perched on one of its colourful beams as they had been before. My first thought was that they were probably responding to a call of nature in a nearby bush, or that they had gone on ahead without us.
Then Clare saw it. Then she screamed. Then we all saw it.

A human scalp, sprouting long, blood-matted blonde hair lay on the ground towards the back of the pagoda. Folds of tattered skin were hanging loosely from the main bulk of the flesh. It looked like a piece of road kill and as though it had been clumsily removed using a blunt instrument, or perhaps a giant animal’s claw. It was clearly identifiable as being from Sarah’s head. The rest of her was nowhere to be seen. Long streaks of crimson had stained the wooden floor of the pagoda, and lead away into the foliage just past it. My eyes shifted from the gory mess in front of me to the left, where a detached jaw lay clumsily on the soil. Velvety tendons protruded from the thing. Whatever had ripped it from its owner did so quickly and with almighty strength.

I began to taste acid on the back of my tongue as mouthfuls of thick hot vomit made its way out of my stomach and up my esophagus. I could barely distinguish between the sounds of my friends screaming and the throbbing retches that accompanied the stream of bile that flowed from my mouth. My stomach had emptied itself onto the earth before me, stinging my nose and eyes as it did so. Somebody grabbed me by the shoulder and was yelling maniacal and undecipherable words at me. My legs instinctively began to carry me away from the nightmarish scene and along the unexplored path ahead.
The sounds of heavy breathing and clumsy footsteps rang through the trees and bounced off the rock faces surrounding us. Dusk was settling in and the first few stars began winking in the void above me. We sprinted for several minutes, plummeting through thick shrubs as we lost all sense of direction, fuelled solely by adrenaline.

The path was tight here, barely enough space for two people to stand side by side. I glanced over my shoulder to see that the others weren’t far behind me. Their panic stricken faces only served to heighten my own desperate fear. Another 20 seconds of sprinting led me to take a sharp left turn around a protruding rock, after which I stopped dead in my tracks.

Fear is a horribly difficult emotion to describe. It does things to the human body that can traced back to the earliest species of man. It forces hair follicles to stand on end in an attempt to make our forms seem more menacing. It commands a fight or flight instinct, designed to secure our continued existence when confronted with something potentially life threatening. Fear can also paralyze the human body, a reaction to frightening stimuli that is less understood by those who study it.

This latter reaction, being paralyzed, is the unfortunate response my body decided to commit to when confronted with the terror ahead. The path in front was again long and narrow. It was lined with brooding trees, most of which hung delicately over the lane. Roughly 100 meters along the trail stood, or rather ‘hunched’, a figure. I immediately came to the conclusion that it was not human. It was far too tall, perhaps close to 8 foot, even with its drooping posture. Its arms and legs were massively out of proportion to its body, stretching almost to the floor. I couldn’t quite make out any defining features; it was far too dark to pick up on anything other than its overall size and shape. One thing I did notice, however, was that it was clutching something in its right hand. This ‘something’ was dripping a thick liquid, which was pooling in the earth below.

I assumed that the others had witnessed the same horrific sight as I had; I could sense them standing close behind me. Even in this situation, the closeness of others provided the slightest amount of comfort. I’m not really sure how long we were standing there. It could have been as much as several minutes. I can’t say for sure how I knew it, but I was certain that I was staring into whatever it had instead of eyes. Dark voids occupied the space, a shade of such complete blackness, it was unnatural.

It dropped whatever it had clasped in its claws, extending its slender fingers so that they scraped the ground below. The object, which I now assumed to be a chunk of flesh, splattered onto the soil. The thing began creaking and moaning as it shifted slightly.

Then it began running straight towards us. Life swept back through my limbs as I launched myself in the opposite direction, pushing past the others in a selfishly desperate attempt to put myself ahead of them. The thing was screeching now, a blood-curdling sound that quickly intensified as it grew nearer. I had been running for a few seconds when I heard a different kind of scream. I can only assume that it had mounted Jay, for the most unnerving shriek, obviously that of a male, stung my ears, quickly followed by a loud thud. His screams were soon cut off by a sharp snapping sound that echoed through the night. It certainly was not the sound of a branch breaking.

Tears blurred my vision, making it difficult to navigate the uneven path. Frequent glances over my shoulder confirmed that Clare was not far behind me. Looking past Clare, I could see the thing, sitting atop Jay’s chest and greedily gnawing on his face. One prolonged look treated me to a view of the thing pulling Jay’s eyeball out of its socket with its teeth. The optical nerve stretched to a surprising length, before eventually snapping and bouncing back and forth like a child’s play thing. It slurped the sensory organ into its gaping maw and swallowed it down whole, sending it down into its abyssal stomach.

I turned again, making eye contact with Clare, whose face was a mess of colours as her makeup was sent sprawling across it in a mixture of sweat and tears. My stomach lurched again when I noticed that the thing was no longer in view. Jay’s mangled corpse still lay awkwardly on the floor. I screamed at Clare.

“IT’S GONE, IT’S GONE”

Clare immediately swung her head around in an attempt to confirm my claims. As she did so, her foot caught on a stray root that had defiantly pushed its way through the rock floor. I tumbled to a halt, only catching a short glimpse of her rag-doll like form as she toppled over the edge of the steep bank on her left. I could do nothing but stand and listen to her muffled yelps as she crashed down through the foliage. The drop was at least 20 meters and strewn with ragged rocks and tangled trees.

I made a necessary and self preserving decision right then, to carry on without her. If she managed to survive the fall, then surely the thing would get her anyway. I pelted my way back down, past the pagoda and the scalp and the jaw. I fell down a couple of times, quite seriously hurting myself.
I ran until I could physically run no more, and collapsed in a heap on the floor. My chest and head were pounding violently and for the first time since the start of the ordeal, I had a few seconds to reflect on the reality of what had happened. 3 out of 4 of my friends were certainly dead, the fourth’s fate as yet unknown. This thing was fast and likely had super-human sensory abilities. Was there just one of them? Or had a whole clan of monsters evolved in this untouched region of China. The thought of a group of the things made me whimper audibly.

I screamed quietly as my phone vibrated against my leg. I quickly fumbled it out of my pocket, so as to silence the damned device and use it to call for help, now that I had a chance. Clare was calling me. I answered it immediately and put the phone to my ear. She was sobbing painfully. Through the weeping, I could hear her saying,
“Why did you leave me? Why did you leave me? Why?”
And then,
“It’s here. It’s here now. It’s just standing there. Watching me. Just standing there. Right in front of me”
A screech, a scream and a sickening squelching noise bellowed through the speakers. I scrambled along the ground and into a crevasse in the side of the mountain, behind a bush, and buried my face into my knees. Indescribable sounds continued to stream out of the mobile phone, which I had placed on the ground in front of me. A brief moment of silence followed, eventually broken by the sniffing, creaking sounds of the thing. It handled the device for a few seconds before screeching, dropping it and galloping off into the night.

I threw the phone away from me and rustled through my backpack for a cigarette and my Ipad.

I’ve spent the last 30 minutes chain smoking and immortalizing my last words. It’s almost time, I can feel it. I’m not scared anymore, because I know it will be all over soon. Anybody reading this might think it insane of me to just sit and wait for death as opposed to attempting escape. I don’t really know why I’m not currently cascading through the night; it just feels right that I sit here and wait. I’m not scared anymore.

It’s here now. I heard its silent footsteps a few moments ago. Now it’s standing about half a meter away from me, on the other side of this bush. I can see its pale, scaly, thin legs through the shrubbery. I can see its crimson-stained claws hanging freely by its side, almost touching the floor. I can hear its controlled breathing and croaking. I can smell its thick musk and the drying blood around its face. It’s my turn now, and I’m not scared.

Credit To – Reece Ayers

The girl who pushed open the shop door was too young for the cane she leaned on. I examined her from under the brim of my dark baker’s boy cap.

I sat in my tall swivel chair behind the counter, feet kicked up next to the register. Two knitting needles clicked in my lap, the motion so mechanical I never looked down. They manipulated the strand of yarn into a nearly-completed scarf. The little ball danced on the ground as I pulled from it.

“Morning,” I said.

The girl flashed me a smile. “Good morning.” She was polite, and didn’t stare or even give a second glance to my eye patch, partially hidden under the brim of my cap. Since I had turned, I had never felt bad about taking what I needed, but this girl seemed oddly bright, naïve even. What a waste. I couldn’t wait any longer, though.

My good eye never left her as she limped through the store. It wasn’t hard – the shop was more of a nook than anything, and the bright and airy front windows did nothing to make the shelves seem less crowded. They were looming and solid, full of open-front cubbies that displayed neatly stacked skeins of yarn. I had sorted them by weight and by color, careful to tuck all the loose ends away.

I glanced down for a moment to finish off the scarf, looping it around my neck once it was free from the needles. When I surveyed my shop again, I saw that the girl had knocked a skein to the ground. She perused a nearby cubby, unaware. Spots danced in front of my eye. For a moment I expected to feel the accelerated pounding of my heart, as well. But then I remembered.

“You dropped one,” I said, my voice stiff.

“What was that?”

I gestured toward the rogue skein. “You dropped one.”

“Oh,” the girl said, smiling, and replaced the yarn. She had to stoop down awkwardly, keeping her weight off her bad leg. Only once everything was back in order did I breathe deeply, feeling the passageways in my mind open back up like undammed rivers.

I adjusted my baker’s boy cap. “How long have you been knitting?” I asked, leaning my elbows on the counter.

“Ever since I got hurt,” she thumped her cane to emphasize her bad leg. “I couldn’t walk at all for a while, and I needed to keep busy.”

“What happened?”

“Car accident,” she said simply. Her eyes met mine and I felt the emptiness under my eye patch.

“We have a knitting group here sometimes,” I offered, struggling to keep the pushiness out of my voice. It crept in anyway. “We could use some new members.”

“I’m all set, thanks though.”

“You don’t even have to come,” I said with a charming smile. “Just sign up and you get a free skein of yarn. All I need is your name and an email address.” I could see her resolve breaking. “Preferably one you use, but hey, I’m not picky.”

“Fine, but only because I need this,” she held up a skein of expensive alpaca yarn and smiled again.

“Sign up sheet’s in the back.” I slid out of my tall chair before she could change her mind.

I led her into the only other room in the shop – my windowless office that was no larger than a breadbox. The florescent light flickered slightly. The desk was small and shoved into the corner, covered in neat stacks of paper. The faint smell of cleaning product hung in the air, and not a single mote of dust could be found. I produced the signup sheet from one of the perfect stacks of paper.

“This is cozy,” the girl said as she filled out her name and email.

“It’s really a supply closet.” I closed the door and stood behind her. The cane leaned against my desk. I unwound the scarf from my neck and gripped an end in each hand.

“Sorry about this,” I said flatly, and looped the scarf around her neck, pulling it tight and cutting off her windpipe. She struggled, but her bad leg gave out and we both fell to the floor, crashing against the closed door on the way down. Her hands clawed at mine, but she grew weaker and was still after a few minutes. I loosened the scarf from her neck and wrapped it back around mine. That was easier than last time.

The girl slumped forward, her hair spilled into her now-puffy face. I pushed her onto her back and yanked my eye patch down around my neck, exposing my raw, empty eye socket.

Mechanically, I pulled the girl’s right eyelids wide open with one hand, and with the other I scooped my fingers under her eye, popping it out with a sickening squelch. I didn’t flinch. Once upon a time I might have, but not now. Tendons popped as I freed it completely from the dead girl’s distorted face. Careful not to drop it, I pressed the organ into my own waiting eye socket, squeezing my lids shut over the foreign object.

Warmth slowly radiated out from the new eye back into my face and head as my body adapted. I blinked rapidly, but my sight didn’t return immediately so I repositioned the eye patch once again.

I walked out the front door of the shop, not bothering to lock up. I wouldn’t be back here. Dismayed, I saw that the girl had left shallow scratch marks running up both of my forearms. Those would need to be replaced too, then. Just when I thought I was done for a while.

I adjusted the baker’s boy cap, pulling it lower over my eyes to block out the beams of sun that flickered between the low square buildings that populated the outskirts of the city. My legs were new enough that I walked normally, without the shuffling that usually plagued others like me. I was grateful to still look human. The warmth in my new eye grew more intense. I whistled as I walked down the sidewalk, eventually pulling off the eye patch and dropping it into the gutter, my eyesight restored.

Back at the shop, I knew the girl would be stirring now.

Credit To – Lucia Costello

A laptop computer was found in the city sewers on Monday, April 22nd of 2013, after screams were heard echoing from below. As far as authorities could tell, there was no owner. All picture files on the hard drive were corrupted, and forensics failed to reconstruct all but one of them. The reconstructed photo partially revealed a terrified man in his late teens or early twenties, and some sort of face behind him.
Analysts have disputed whether or not that actually is another face, or simply image noise created as a result of the reconstruction of the photo. Apart from the single image, all that remained on the laptop was a cryptic word file left open, unsaved. Some see this as the suicide note of a deranged lunatic. Others see it as a prank. All that is known for sure is that over the past three months, there have been over twenty disappearances, all leaving no trace.

**********

I just hope I can finish this. I need to tell it. I can’t NOT tell it. But I don’t have time to finish it. And that’s what’s horrifying. Because, if I don’t tell, then it might get the rest. I HAVE to. I’m on very limited time, but I’m gonna be as detailed as possible. So it doesn’t get the rest. Please bear with me, please listen to me.

I guess it all started three months ago, when we found that secret room. The room in the sewers with the little trap door under the rug. When that happened, everything went wrong. But I’m getting ahead of myself, I have to tell the full truth. Or else it will get the rest.

I’m nineteen years old. Me and my three best friends have always been fond of the sewers. We would go down there and explore, at first using rope, then chalk signs, then nothing at all as we learned every twist, turn, and passage to the point where we could find our way around in pitch darkness, something we’ve had to do on at least three occasions when our flashlights died.

Now, what’s strange, is that we never found the room. It was when James asked to join us that the room was discovered. James was more of an acquaintance than a friend, but we often found him hanging out with us. We never told him about our excursions to the sewers; most people thought of that as strange. We had known James for probably six months before he overheard us speaking about the sewers.

Of course, he wanted to know what we were talking about. So we told him, about how we went down into the sewers every now and again to explore. He, of course, wanted to join our next expedition. We said it was fine, and we went early the next Saturday.

James wasn’t very good with darkness. We found that out the hard way. Or maybe it was the darkness coupled with claustrophobia. I don’t know. But, once we got into the deeper levels of darkness, where the daylight ceased to exist, and the tunnels became black, he began to hyperventilate.

At first, it was almost unnoticeable. His breathing got quicker, and he moved closer to me. Then, without warning, he began to breathe wildly, and he dropped his flashlight. It hit the ground and went out, and just like that, he was sprinting, sprinting and screaming for help, down the dark tunnels.

We chased after him. Following his screams, we started to lose all of our sense of direction. We went deeper than we thought possible. We thought we knew these tunnels. But there was one small niche, that we had never noticed before, that led into an even older series of tunnels. We had to crawl on our stomachs to get through it, and it opened into a tunnel not much bigger than that. We had to crouch down to the point of being on our hands and knees to traverse it.

It’s in those same sewers that I’m sitting now, with hundreds of white Christmas lights strung up around me, and stretching down the tunnel. These won’t last forever. The battery I’m running them off of can only keep them lit for a few hours. But they keep me comfortable, and serve as a warning. The thing can’t stand to be in light. It’s coming for me, I know it. But the lights will go out before it can get to me, so I’ll know.

I’m hiding here because this is the last place it will expect me to go. It’s looking for me. But it wouldn’t think that I would go into its sewers, its very back yard. I know that it will find me, and soon. But I just hope that this will prolong the inevitable. Long enough for me to get my story out. I’ve got my phone programmed to dial 911 in two hours. And I’ve got a camera, with night vision, ready to record when it shows up. So the cops will know, to stop it.

I just hope they can.

We eventually tracked down James, and he was sitting outside a big rusty door. It looked like it hadn’t been touched in years. Somehow we convinced ourselves to open it and oh my god I just wish we hadnt this crap would have NEVER HAPPENED IF NOT FOR THAT STUPID DOOR OH MY GOD IM GONNA DIE AND

I have to stop. Panicking won’t do anything to help me. I’m past help. Have I told you our names? There was me- Curt, and then James, Alan, Josh and Chris.

Writing down facts help me calm down. Just bear with me. I’m almost there.

We went in the door. That was a mistake. In the room, was an ancient chair, and a threadbare rug. Not much else, except a table full of disturbing instruments. And a calendar. The calendar was old and faded, and a dark yellow, but I could just barely make out dates in the faded ink.

The calendar was dated for 1903. Over a hundred years prior.

The table had what looked like torture tools set on it. I recognized a thumbscrew. Josh cut himself on some kind of twisted knife-hook-thing. Hammers and nails. I shudder thinking of what some of the other instruments were used for. There was what looked like the remains of a skeleton on another table in the corner of the room.

A rectangular table with Metal rings at each corner, and decayed ropes through those metal rings. I felt sick.

We decided then that we needed to get out, but Alan tripped over the rug and kicked it to the side. There was a trap door under it. Again, curiosity got the best of us, and we opened it, against James’s protests. It was pitch black down there. An old ladder led down, but that was it. We shined our lights in, and there were several things that might have once been human remains, but were now nearly dust.

At this point, something came over James. He climbed down the ladder into the hole, against our protests. After a moment, his light flickered and then died. Nothing but silence from down below. We were just beginning to panic when he casually walked into view.

He smiled up at us.

His eyes were just empty bleeding sockets.

We all just stood there in stunned silence, and then our lights wavered and flickered out. Mine flickered back on for a split second, and we saw some THING standing behind him. I don’t know what it was. Yes I do.

It was IT. The thing that’s been hunting me and my friends.

It looked very angry. It looked horrifying. It was dead blue skin and decomposing face. I could see its skull through its cheeks. It looked female. It had long decayed hair, and a bony frame. What looked like slashes in its dead cheeks, and gashes around its empty sockets. It was the most terrifying thing I’ve ever seen in my life. I think, that if I would have seen it for more than a split nanosecond, I would have gone insane. Gone insane or dropped dead.

The light lasted for a fraction of a second, a fraction of a second that has haunted me every minute of every day since then, and then everything was dark and James was screaming. I ran. Everyone else ran too, but I was the first. We scattered. Floundering in the dark, in the unknown. I don’t know how long I was down there. It felt like centuries.

Eventually, I made it to the surface. It was pitch dark in the dead of night. I remembered that we had gone in during the early morning hours.

I went home. It was four o’clock in the morning. All I remember is turning every light in the house on, blasting Looney Tunes on the TV, and then passing out.

The next day, I found out that only Alan and Chris had made it out the previous night. We went to the police and they organized a manhunt. Twenty people went into the sewers that night. Me, Alan, and Chris were not among them. We vowed to never step foot in those tunnels again. The manhunt never found that room.

We never told them about it. We agreed to tell them that we had found a section of sewer that we hadn’t explored before, and gotten separated and lost.

The search was unsuccessful. After a week, the police were forced to call it off. And the rest is history. Over the next several months, everyone who went into those sewers has disappeared, without a trace. Alan, Chris, gone. I’m the only one le

Oh fuck I think a light just went out. The darkness is coming, and I think I can see her or it whatever the fuck it is shit

Im the only one left you cant go into the sewers. They need to find the room and SHUT THE TRAPDOOR and SHUT THE OTHER DOOR so it cant get out

oh god the lights are going out oh shit oh fuck fuck look for my camera and shut the doors PLEASE YOU HAVE TO

**********

Police found a dropped camera deep within the sewage tunnels. No one has spoken about what footage is on the camera, and all to see the footage have committed suicide soon thereafter. Police are currently working with city records to conduct a coordinated search of the sewer system to find the location spoken of in the file….

**********

Detective Alexander Sherridan sits down in front of the television. He had requested a copy of the tape that has so disturbed anyone who has watched it, and now he has it. He feels apprehension building. Should he watch this? Some think it is cursed. However, Sherridan is not a superstitions man. He puts the tape in and presses play. A young man comes on the screen, the same from the picture. He is screaming, while behind him the lights are rapidly going out, moving in sequence towards him. What he is screaming is mostly incoherent, and what Sherridan is able to make out is simply more of the same of what he said in the word document– “close the doors.”
Suddenly the last lights flash out spectacularly, and there is a small glimpse of the laptop before the camera goes dark. What ensues are some of the most horrifying screams that Sherridan has ever heard, but he only barely registers these. He refuses to believe what he thinks he saw. To be sure, he rewinds the video, and plays it again. And again. And again.
Finally, he pauses it and goes forward frame by frame, until he sees the image he feared. Just as the lights flash for the final time, there is a woman grabbing the young man. Except he is not sure that she is a woman. It has no eyes. They look like they were gouged out at some point. There are slashes in her face, or what is left of its face. It is mostly decayed bone, with some skin stretching over it. The teeth are worn nubs. Sherridan averts his eyes. He can’t look at this thing anymore.
He notices at that moment, in the background, stand other things. People that have disappeared. All decaying. All with no eyes. They seem to be looking directly at him, accusingly almost. He tells himself that that is impossible, as they have no eyes. Then he notices motion.
The woman holding the young man pulls her face in some caricature of a smile. Then, she begins digging her fingers into his face. He begins screaming, as she literally rips his eyes out of his head. Sherridan runs forward and presses the power button on the TV. Nothing happens. The woman/thing continues to rip the eyes out of the man’s head, and Sherridan begins screaming with him, as he feels his sanity begin to slip. He rips the plug to the TV out of the wall.
Nothing happens. He retches as the thing pulls the remains of the eyes out, and begins pressing them into her own sockets. He turns and runs full force towards the wooden baseball bat mounted on the wall. He grabs it. He intends to destroy the TV. As he runs back towards the television, the he raises the bat. Just as he’s about to swing and destroy the screen, the thing winks at him with its new eyes.
Whatever vestiges of sanity that are left in Alexander Sherridan shatter at that moment. He drops the bat and stumbles backward into the next room. All he knows is that that thing knows where he is and how to get to him. And he knows that he doesn’t want that to happen.
As he presses the barrel of his police issue Glock into his temple, he vaguely recalls some urban legend or quote or something he’d heard somewhere about how if someone dies a violent death, their spirit stays there, angry, forever. “Fuck that,” he says out loud, before squeezing the trigger.
On the television screen, all that is seen is a terrified young man in a bright flash of light. Nothing more.

Credit To – Matt M. – read more of his work at http://mattmhorror.wordpress.com