I’ve always been a fan of horror. Movies, books, videos, podcasts. You name it and I bet I’ve experienced horror in that medium. But I was never really scared by horror. I could understand the creepiness of reading a chilling tale or being more observant walking home at night after a horror movie, but I was never actually scared in the long run. That was until my life became one such story.
I’ll be honest with you, how it all began wasn’t super exciting or meaningful. I probably would have written it off as a cop-out if it was a B-Tier horror movie. I didn’t dig up some ancient burial ground or anger an old witch walking home from the bar. I simply was in the wrong place at the wrong time and said the wrong words. It angers me how simple it was, it’s not like I could have known.
I was at the bar when it happened and I was starting to feel the alcohol running through my system. Eric was flirting with some innocent guy who happened to pass by at the wrong time and was evidently not into him. Sarah was sitting next to me sipping on some colorful drink or another. Probably something with an awful name like “Fruity Booty” or “Unicorn Pomegranate Twist”. The last one was something I remember her drinking once. I still don’t know what a Unicorn Pomegranate would taste like, let alone what the twist would be.
Sarah turned to me with a sort of sloppiness that let me know it was likely time to head home for the night. “Erin, you’re funny. Did you know that?” She started laughing after that even though I didn’t remember saying anything. Mind you, again, I wasn’t completely sober. I had decided that we would be heading out for the night and headed towards the coat check after scheduling a rideshare.
As I was slithering through the crowd toward the coat check, someone shoved me from the side. I had to grab onto someone else to keep myself from falling over from the sheer force. I turned around and the suspect was a wreck. The guy looked like he hadn’t slept in a while, his greasy short black hair suggesting he hadn’t showered either. Or maybe he styled it like that on purpose? He looked like the type to grease his hair, having an absurd number of piercings all over his face. The guy looked like he was scared most of all.
“Can I help you?” I asked with annoyance. It wasn’t like I was going to fight the guy, I just wanted to let them know I wasn’t a pushover; but with that question, he suddenly started to smile. It was like I had said the funniest thing in the world.
“Actually, you can.” He was looking around, I thought he was probably high on something. Then he asked the question, “Can you hold on to this for me?” I humored him with a noncommittal “Sure bud” but that made his mouth stretch from ear to ear. He ran out of the bar just after I gave him his answer. I suspect that’s the moment I got my monster. It might be hindsight making me misremember but I felt a sudden stillness pass over me as he left. I do wonder how he figure out that asking me that would work.
So, I left. Me and Sarah hopped into the car that had arrived while Eric headed off to some girl’s house where he would be staying the night. I got home safe and fell into bed expecting the next morning to bring a wonderful hangover. Well, annoyingly I was woken up halfway through my sleep. I don’t know why I woke up, maybe I just knew that I was in danger.
I will admit this, I was terrified when I saw it. It just down the hall from my door barely visible in the darkness. It reminded me of a blanket in the way you see it in the darkness when you are young and afraid of the dark. Or maybe closer to a jacket on a chair in the corner of your room. It stood in the middle of the hallway outlined by darkness somehow. It was darker than the surrounding darkness, allowing it to be barely perceptible when I looked at it. Then it moved towards me.
This sobered me right up and I ran towards the door faster than I had ever run in my life, locking it. It thought it would slam against the door, it had been moving fast enough, but it was simply silent behind the door. I sat at the door for the rest of the night, waiting to hear a single sound. But nothing happened.
I hopped out my window in the morning, I live in a one-floor condo so it was an easy ordeal. I looked through the windows that peered into the hallway and didn’t see the thing that haunted me through the night so I thought I had simply dreamed it. For the next couple of nights, I kept the door locked whenever I went to bed, just to be sure. There was not a sound for those nights, not even my house creaked. It was just eerie. So, when I finally thought I was safe and opened my door again to go to bed I thought I had simply had a nightmare.
I think I woke up to the sound of nothing. To the nonexistence of noise. I have found that to be the signal for it’s presence. It was standing at the edge of my vision again, framed by the dark doorframe. It silently drifted in place but it was hard to focus my eyes on, the edges were hard to see in all of the darkness.
So I thought why not and turned my bedside lamp on. I mean, I wanted to see if the thing was real and make sure I wasn’t just going insane. The light didn’t really work. It was dimmer than usual, washed out in a way that made the light that did exist useless in revealing the details of anything. I’ve come to learn that most light does not work when it is around. Red light works, I think it has something to do with our perception compared. Or maybe it’s just because red light doesn’t revel too much of the darkness anyways.
Whatever the case, I now understood what I was seeing was real and would probably kill me. I’d seen enough horror movies to understand that this thing was obviously bad news and if I didn’t act quickly the credits would be rolling. So I shot it.
I kept a gun right next to me when I slept in case someone broke in and it was easily within reach. I almost thought it jammed with how little reaction there was, not a gunshot or flash of light to be seen. This certainly angered the thing and when I was checking the gun I noticed it had gotten closer in an instant. So I locked the door again. If a gun didn’t work I probably could not defend myself from this thing.
I was a little excited now though. I had my very own monster. I was the main character, and I had read enough of the genre to know that I could live through this. I mean, I had outsmarted the thing twice now. So, I experimented over the next couple nights. Candles didn’t seem to work, extinguishing whenever it got close. Salt was apparently useless, never seeing any real effect. Religious iconography had no effect, figures for all the good that would do. I even tried some garlic I picked up from the farmer’s market, but that was mostly as a joke.
My largest investment was a pure silver and gold trim around my bedroom door. Eric didn’t understand why I would spend that much money on something so random but I simply told him it was a necessary investment for science. This had some results. The next time I slept with the door open, the creature waited in my hallway, and I waited for it. I closed my eyes and waited for a few seconds in silence, not knowing if it would move towards me. I know now it was cocky of me, it probably could have killed me right then and there.
When I opened my eyes, I saw that it had moved. It was stopped right at the precipice of the door frame. My investment had seemingly worked. I was smarter than a monster. It was still hard to fall asleep, the thing was indeed terrifying standing in my doorway. But it started to become the safe sort of terrifying I found in my movies and books. I got comfortable with it.
That all changed last night. I went to bed like any other night, door ajar. I had begun to be sort of thankful for the thing, it allowed me to never have any noisy interruptions during my sleep. I woke up in the middle of the night to a quiet noise. But that quietness was like an explosion to my ears in the infinite silence. I looked around frantically and saw the thing standing in my door, it billowed like any other night.
Now though, the door frame was bent. As if the entire wall had twisted. Then the worst happened, it blew towards me. That’s the best way to describe it, it didn’t walk or rush. It simply blew towards me, through my supposed shield, bringing in the darkness it surrounded itself with. I went to scream but it felt as if the thing absorbed the noise as soon as it left my mouth. I quickly hopped out my window which I had left unlocked for an emergency escape if I ever need it. I slept at Sarah’s that night.
I got careless and I don’t really know what to do. I wonder if any of my protections ever worked? So I come to you for advice. Do any of you know a way to permanently kill a monster? I don’t know what it is, it’s hard to describe since it’s always in darkness. I still believe all those ghost stories you hear about are fake, but mine is real and I need to kill it. I will not give it to someone else but I am scared if I don’t put it down, I will not even be able to scream for help when I need to.