Hangar Man

I’m sure many of you won’t believe what I’m about to document, but in all honesty, I don’t really care what you think of me or what I am about to tell you. I’ll leave you to make your own decisions about it. I just need to write it down, get it out of my mind and onto paper, the computer, anywhere where the disturbing events of the past few days can be accessible. I need to tell /someone/. I need to do something so my memory can become tangible, before I forget any important details.
I write to you from my hospital bed. I’ve only been awake for around 5 hours, but one of the therapists at the hospital said that I’ve been in this bed for five /days/. I had been in a coma for five days after my accident as a result of head trauma she said, but I will come to that in due course.

The events leading up to my accident all started after I witnessed what I believe to be a suicide attempt on my way home from college one day. At least, that’s what I thought it was at first. I should mention that I live two hours away from my college, and as a result take a two-hour commute to and from the place each day. You may wonder why I go to such lengths to get to college, but to keep it simple, I’m not a huge lover of change, and so decided to stay at my previous college in West London when we made the move to South London. It wasn’t a problem seeing as I like busses and the three bus long journey gives me time to think as well as the opportunity to see the many towns that the bus route goes through. One of the busses that I take takes you through terminal 4 of Heathrow airport. When I first started taking the journey, it was exciting to see the planes coming in and going out of the airport. Being someone who had never left London, it was mind-boggling to see such colossal aircrafts up close. But as time wore on, terminal 4, as well as the rest of the journey, became a long, boring drag, and I soon found myself looking for new things to occupy my attention each time I took the commute.

That’s how I noticed the hangar. Well, it was pretty hard to miss, but I had never really paid close attention to it at 6am in the morning or 5pm after a long day at college: I often found the hangar blurred into the rest of the urban scenery. But when it caught my attention, I found myself studying it every time I passed it. It looked like it hadn’t been used in a while; the long row of huge windows that spanned the entire length of the hangar had browned and some broken, the “British Airways” sign on the side had missing letters as well as graffiti decorated on it and what I can only describe to be the rusted doors of the hangar looked like they hadn’t been moved in a decade. In all the time that I have been going to and from college, I have never once seen a plane in that hangar. But yet, for some reason, it was the focus of my attention every time the bus passed it by. It was this hangar that started the string of events that led up to my accident. Moreover, what was in the hangar.

It was a Friday night and I had spent some time with my friends after college. After a night of generally getting up to nothing productive, I was on my way home, feeling particularly tired after an extremely long day. As the bus passed the hangar, I found myself focused on one particular window: the middle one. Due to the amount of times I had passed it, and my boredom whilst doing so, I had counted the number of windows a numerous amount of times. It was for this reason that I knew I was focused on window 16 out of 32. The bus slowed in a line of traffic, and I found myself perfectly in line with window 16 of the hangar. It was partially broken, and more browned than the others. As I watched the window closer, I saw that there was movement behind it. I shrugged it off; maybe I was wrong all along and the hangar /was/ in use. Still, it was 8pm, an unusual time for a worker to be in a hangar, seemingly alone. The shadow behind the window shifted from left to right, until it suddenly stopped. I looked closer, my face almost pressing up to the glass of the bus window. It’s when I looked closer that the person behind window 16 suddenly smashed through it. I jerked back from the bus window in shock. The person held on to the walls on either side for dear life and looked down. I sat up straight, now fully alert. My heart was racing. The person clearly looked distressed, and I found myself anticipating the man’s next move. As he clung onto the walls on either side, he looked behind him. What was he looking at? Another person? Or was he rethinking what he was was about to do? The bus started crawling into motion, and round the corner to the front of the hangar. I craned my neck to see the person, heart still pumping like a race horse. I felt completely helpless. I knew something was wrong, and it was this thought that irked me to raise the alarm. Just as I was about to do so, I saw the man falling. My heart completely dropped and I let out a screech. I looked on in horror as I watched the man fall. Time near enough slowed to a halt whilst the man was airborne, and just as I turned to look away to avoid witnessing the bloody mess that would have erupted as the man came in contact with the concrete below, I looked up at the window. Oh, how I wished I hadn’t looked up at that window. What I saw definitely wasn’t human. It was crouching, holding on to the floor with one hand. I blinked hard to try and process what I was seeing and

I woke up with a start.

I was still on the bus and covered in a cold sweat. I quickly looked around, and everyone else on the bus was as normal as you would expect public transport users to be. A young woman trying to calm her two kids down, an angsty pre-teen listening to loud rock music through headphones, an air hostess, coming from Heathrow Central I presumed, and an old man who gave me a dazed look. I smiled back whilst smoothing my hair. I sighed deeply and put the dream down to the excessive amounts of weed I had smoked earlier with my friends. Besides, it wasn’t uncommon for me to fall asleep on the bus, and this was just another one of those times. Relieved, I put my earphones in and enjoyed the rest of the trip, assured that it was all just a dream.

Even though I knew it was a dream, the next couple of days after this were extremely distressing. I found myself thinking about the dream more and more, to the point where I questioned whether or not I had dreamt or really seen it. I stayed up until the early hours crawling through endless amounts of demonic and paranormal message boards and chat rooms trying to find out what that thing was. Nothing came up. I had been having more frequent and vivid nightmares about the creature, I had started sleepwalking again, something I hadn’t done since early childhood, and I was slowly being driven to the depths of my mental sanity.
Despite all this, I went on as normal. I never brought it up, and I certainly never told anyone. I mean, no one would believe me if I said some sort of demon thing had pushed a man right out of a 3 storey high window in front of my eyes, right?

The night before my accident was paralytic, by far the worst of all the night I had had since the encounter with the crouching demon. It was the early hours on Monday morning. I awoke to the smashing of glass downstairs. I opened my eyes wide and listened closely for more information about my night-time intruder. I heard the clacking of what I can only describe as claws against wooden flaw echoing up the stairs. As the steps got louder and closer, my blood ran colder and my heart beat faster. I heard the footsteps stop outside my door. I daren’t look at my door or what was going to enter my room through it. I shut my eyes as hard as I could and hoped for the creature to turn around and go back downstairs. How naïve was I for even hoping that would happen! I heard claws on the doorknob and as the thing twisted it open, it’s nails produced a horrid sound I can only relate to nails on a chalkboard. I felt warm tears stream down my cold face. The door opened slowly and I heard the monster make its way over to my bed. I held my eyelids tightly together and clutched onto my blankets twice as hard. I felt the hot breath of the beast on my face, and I can tell there was only a few precious inches between me and the personification of hell. I felt the demons long nails on my forehead as the thing stroked my face. It’s touch was like sandpaper, it’s claws were like knives. I winced in pain as it stroked my face all the way down to my chin. As it leaned in closer, my body tensed in fear. It put one of its claws under my ear and spoke. It’s voice sent a shock wave through my body. It spoke in such a low,distorted whisper that it was hard for me to process what it had said exactly. “Come to the hangar” it spat out, and then let out a low, sinister laugh. It pulled away from my face, and gave my face one last stroke before leaving the same way it entered. I was completely frozen in trauma. I stayed in the same position until the sun came up, the only movement that my body displayed was the tears rolling one after the other down my cheeks and onto my bed.

The events between that night and how I woke up in the hangar the next night remain a mystery lost in the dark spots of my memory. I’m not even sure how I got into the grounds, as the entire perimeter is outlined with a 7ft mesh fence decorated with barbed wire. And yet, there wasn’t a scratch on me. Regardless, it appeared that my sleepwalking had taken me a little too far this time. Either that or I had passed out in fear and the creature dragged me here. I slowly lifted my face from the cold concrete floor and surveyed my surroundings for something that could be of use to me. I saw multiple work boxes dotted around on work desks. Both doors, that had seemingly been rusted open for ages, had been shut. I was trapped. I looked up at the moon in the sky through the hangar’s glass roof, and judging by its position, sunrise wasn’t going to be for another 3 hours at least. I decided I needed to look for a torch. Without a sound, I slowly stood up and got a better look around. The moonlight illuminated a wall that was covered in tools. To the far right, I see my saviour, a huge, LED torch. I walked over to it, and gently eased it off of the hook on which it hung. I clicked the button down, and shone it around, trying to find a suitable way out. I shined the light at the wall, and I took a step back in horror. On the wall next to the stairs, a massive painted arrow pointed up, to where the windows were. I decided, after looking around a bit more, to investigate the upper floor, as there was no means of escape on the lower. I climbed the old, creaky metal steps to the next floor. At the top of the stairs was a doorway, that led into a huge, empty, black room. The only other thing at this height was a balcony, which I guessed was used for working on the upper parts of an aeroplane. Seeing as I had no other option, I proceeded forward, shining my torch in before me. There was a small amount of light being filtered in through the brown windows on my right. I saw the smashed 16th window and the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. I suddenly realised how much danger I was in, but I needed to get out, or at least try to. As I slowly traced the walls with the light from my torch, I walked backwards towards the wall with the windows in. I shined my torch into the corner of room, and I felt all of the heat drain from my body. I shone the torch up and there it was (Whatever “it” was). It clung to the ceiling with one hand whilst the left one hung freely. Upon me shining the light on it, it smiled widely, wider than humanly possible, to show rotting teeth. “What the fuck are you?” I said, my voice a trembling whisper. Just as I spoke, it sprung to the floor below the corner it was hanging from and landed on all fours. My stomach flipped as it turned it’s head to both sides, resulting in two loud cracks of its neck. It was still smiling, and it’s dark, sunken, completely black eyes stayed focused on me. The place where you would expect a nose to be was completely flat. It lacked any hair, apart from a few stray, matted tufts that stuck out awkwardly on its otherwise bald head. It was hunched over onto its arms, and I could see clearly the outline of its spine. The being was disgustingly thin, and every bone in its naked “body” (if that’s even what you can call it) was visible through its translucent, grey skin. It licked thick, black mucus off its yellow, rotting teeth whilst revealing an equally black tongue. I had never seen the entity up close, and I was glad I never had before that point. It was the epitome of fear. I daren’t take the light off it, for I feared that the moment I did that it would pounce on me like a lion to its prey. The last thing I wanted was to become prey to this dreadful monster. My eyes darted around the room for escape, or lack thereof, in this case. Instead, all I could see was faeces and animal carcasses. I focused back on the creature. It’s vacant, sinister eyes were still locked in on me. “What are you!?” I repeated again, this time louder. It crawled slowly towards me, on all fours, scraping its disgustingly long claws along the floor as it did so. There was something about its limbs that wasn’t right. They were incredibly long and backwards, and much like the legs of a spider, bent out at the joints. The terror kept me firmly planted to the spot on which I was standing. As it dragged itself closer towards me, I heard its distorted, demonic voice whispering the same word over and over. Although I had never encountered the word in all my years of living, it was enough to make me make a decision that would put me in a coma for 5 days. “Hangar Man” it hissed “I am Hangar Man”. Just as it spat that putrid sentence, it leapt directly at me. I fell backwards onto the floor, hitting my head hard and cracking the glass of the torch. The creature landed on top of me, and pinned my arms down. It inched away from my face and screamed like a banshee, breathing its scolding, acidic breath onto my face. I turned my head away and tried to wrestle it off; for something so dangerously underweight, it had inhuman strength. It laughed deeply at my pathetic attempt of escape. I needed to act quickly if I was gonna get out of here. Despite my fear, adrenaline had now kicked in, and I had to get out. I leant up quickly, aimed for the things left ear and bit down on it. The creature howled and pulled its head back in recoil. I felt the flesh and cartilage rip in my mouth as it’s icy cold blood sprayed onto my face. I spat the ear out onto the floor as the creature rolled off me and clutched the side of its head. I struggled to my feet and looked out of the broken 16th window. It was the only way out. I looked back at the beast and saw it was getting up. If I was going to make it out, I needed to jump…

Falling.

It was the last thing I remember before I woke up in the overly bright hospital room. A therapist was on hand to fill in any blanks and questions I had, which was helpful, seeing as I didn’t have a clue how I was still alive. The therapist was a moderately tall, thin woman with dark, long hair. She came in and introduced herself as Marge Hann, and sat at the end of my bed. She told me the story of how I ended up in hospital, and it turns out that someone on a bus had called the police and ambulance services after they had seen me jump from the hangar window (coincidently), and that I was very, very lucky not to have been paralysed, let alone alive. However, I did come out of the ordeal with three broken ribs, a broken collarbone, shattered ankles and dislocated vertebrae, all minor to me when I even begin to imagine what that thing could have done to me in that room. Oh, and 52 weeks of compulsory therapy was in order, seeing as everyone thinks I’m mentally unbalanced now. The therapist then asked a million questions about how I was feeling before the accident and how I feel now, but I answered vaguely; I was just happy it was all over. She wrote all my answers down on a clipboard, but something was wrong with the way she was writing. She was writing as if she had pains in her shoulders; as if her joints didn’t sit in their sockets properly. I shrugged it off, it was probably nothing. She then asked if I had any questions. I replied “yeah, did they find anything or anyone else at the hangar?” She looked at me weirdly, as if trying to fully process what I had just said. “I’m sorry can you repeat the question? My hearing is weakening in my old age” she smiled. Now it was my turn to shoot her a confused look. She wasn’t too old, 40 at most by the looks of her, certainly not old enough to be suffering problems with her hearing as a result of her age. This couldn’t be right. I asked her if she could get the doctor so I could talk about some physiotherapy. I was suddenly disturbed by this woman’s presence as a wave of dread and questioning came over me. She smiled politely, nodded, and got up from the bed. As she opened the door to leave, a gust of wind revealed something I would never have in a million years dreamt to have seen. Something that could only have been made up as a result of the cheesiest horror movies. Something that was enough to turn a warm blooded human cold as ice. The wind blew her hair back, and where an ear should have been… There was…nothing.