I was a student at my local university. I had planned archeology as my major, but never really planned out the details. Anyway, you’re all reading these stories to instill a bit of fear, aren’t you? The good old nostalgia of campfire stories goes back, oh I guess, since we humans might even understand what fear is. I studied all of this in my historical literature course, of course. Until it happened, I saw this decent class like the minimum or time. Think about thinking that the professor had largely the same attitude in front of him. I think that after 30 years of teaching of the university children not interested, they wear a man. One day, however, it has changed. The professor, (Dr. Welford) has decided to give the class a new and different type of assignment. It was simple, straightforward, and almost too easy. Find a story that most horrified people did after the internet age and examine the factors that made them wince. When I heard the suggestion, I was almost amazed at how easy that night’s homework would be. Aside from all the random history papers I had to look at in front of the class, this one piqued my interest.
I came home that day and looked for my laptop in my backpack. But not before falling asleep to a few nightly reruns of Rick and Morty. I must have fallen asleep because when I opened my eyes after a short nap, I went to my computer’s system tray to see the time “3:30”. You’ve all heard this before, the classic “wake up at 2:30” scenario. But it didn’t bother me in the slightest. I’m pretty sure the whole college life has pretty much made me nocturnal at this point. Feeling adequately rested, I opened a new tab on my laptop and asked Google for another “Scariest Story Ever Told” search, I typed. I hit enter and was immediately fluttered around with the usual nonsensical Buzzfeed articles and top ten YouTube videos. I even came across some Nosleep stories on Reddit. Some of them I found myself casually reading. Though I was the overlord of procrastination, I eventually convinced myself to go into real work. One flight went through a few results and finally landed on a Wikipedia page. The page contained some of the most recently discovered ancient myths and urban legends. The article was about the basics of storytelling and how it evolved into the entertainment world we have today. However, after a few minutes of this skimming, something caught my eye that I found quite strange. Along one of the thin resource columns cited in the article was a hyperlink, simply titled. “Cow’s Head”. Fascinated by the randomness, I clicked out of curiosity. The page that the link took me to was a plainly formatted old-style Wikipedia page. It really didn’t look like it had been changed since the old days of the internet. Separated from the rest of the site. I admit that it scared me a little. I don’t know why, it just seemed like the whole site was down.
I skimmed through a few paragraphs of what I could decipher as ordinary Japanese writing. However, not traditional. Like something straight out of a kid’s gibberish, I’d like to say. I had studied Japanese for a few years in high school, so I knew enough to know that most of the article was nonsense. However, there were a few paragraphs of English that I could read. Mainly just summarizing the danger of a certain folk tale of unknown origin called “Gozu”. It was probably the most disorganized article I’ve ever seen on Wikipedia. I don’t recall seeing a single sighted source or author anywhere on the page. “That’s funny,” I thought to myself. I scattered a few more lines of Babel and continued to read the rest of the English part. The article went on to state that Gozu’s story was not written by humans but by an otherworldly source of darkness. The way it was phrased was odd and a bit unnerving. I had caught myself reading this weird site until I felt the searing anger of my steaming laptop sitting on top of me. I double checked the time. “4:11” That’s when I decided I better sacrifice a grade to avoid 1st degree burns on my knees from my shitty laptop all night. I sat up and settled into a more comfortable position, which I like to call the “mourning until four o’clock” position, before tossing my computer aside. However, just before closing it, I saw one last thing that caught my eye on the wiki page. it was blue Blue text. It probably would have been the only link on the whole damn page, that probably got me.
It was a standard hyperlink that said “Learn more” in regular italics. I didn’t understand why at the time, as if it mattered anyway. I completely failed the assignment. But I couldn’t resist. I don’t know what it was. It’s just one of those things where you see it and you can’t keep your piece. So I clicked on the link.
I should never have clicked that link
I will notify you. If you’re going to try being stupid like I was at this point, you might as well try it yourself. NOT
The link had taken me to what was initially a blank gray page with no address bar or landing screen. As usual, I considered it a dead backlink. That wouldn’t surprise me, because as far as I know the wiki page that took me there was probably older than me. Again a sign to sleep like a normal individual. Before I could point to the back button in my browser in an instant, the page sprang to life with several white chat boxes lined up on the screen. At first I thought this was an old forum topic. The most archaic forum site I have ever seen. The format of the site was old. It reminded me of the first software I had worked with in my second computer class. At least since the mid 90s. There were two clearly labeled links on the page. Next Page and Search. With nothing but text boxes created by forum users.
The weirdest thing about this place was the lack of a landing page. Or URL. It was just a succession of random numbers without .com or something punctual. I started changing the messages in an attempt to find something that is worth reading. Damn, it was five in the morning. I thought. I had come to what should have been an archaeological discovery for the internet itself. The first sentence I read, Start the first thread, got me hooked. “So you have the right encryption tools for this document, right?” asked one user. There didn’t appear to be any usernames, so you’ll have to endure the characterization with me here. Another user replied; “Ha, you seem rather concerned about that, don’t you?” Lol listen, I have everything a fucking little horror dealer could need. I read the following response. “Okay man, I’m not gonna get caught red handed with this stuff, you have no idea what the authorities are going to do to secure something like this.” At this point, I was blown away by what I read clearly. It was an old drug-crypto-drug deal. I guess before this deep web crap existed. I continued to read the last answer. “You’re the one who has no idea what you’ve gotten yourself into. Here is the pdf download. Have fun.”
The latter confused me. PDF files didn’t exist then. Do not download any attachments. I scanned the page for something else until my eyes moved to a timestamp directly below the message. “Updated 1 hour ago”
The words could not describe what I felt after reading it. How the hell could this page be updated an hour ago?
I floated my cursor on the document attached in the last post. Because what I could see at that moment was nothing more than a foreign title for attachment while hiding the mouse. I clicked with hesitant on the file and saw after a second download prompt that appears in the lower part of the screen. I could now see the full name of the file. I wasn’t fluent in Japanese, which I had learned during the latter half of my high school life, but once again I could brag that it was nothing but gibberish. I ran it twice through my Norton software just to be safe. Norton could not run the file for some reason. Nothing. Both times. I kept getting a diagnostic error. I clearly recognized the mistake I may have made and opened the document anyway.
Even my default windows text reader wouldn’t open it. It would just show the same error message; “Unable to read the application”. It was as if Windows itself had something very, very wrong with the document and refused to read it.
I finally managed to run the file from the command prompt. The file was opened with a rich text document.
At first, I didn’t know what I was looking at.
Oh my god, why did I open the file. It was pure madness. Anything. The first thing I noticed was the absurdly large text in purely traditional Japanese. It was uncomfortably large. Bigger than what I thought was the maximum font size for text readers. I could tell all he said was “go back” “go back” over and over. I started reading under the ridiculous text. The further I went, the more incomprehensible it became, but somehow I could figure it out. I read. I couldn’t take my eyes off what they were absorbing. It was evil, darkness, terrible things that crossed my mind as I read. I kept reading, I didn’t know what I was reading, but at the same time I understood everything. Indescribable terrors shot through every fiber of my being as I read the seemingly endless pages of alien language faster and faster. I tried to stop. I knew whatever it was, it was VERY VERY WRONG. I had to stop. I tried to pull away with all the strength I had to stop reading the horrible words. I imagined sufferings, fears, endless anxieties. Everything in me wanted to escape. I felt like my mind itself was trying to run away from what it was going through. I saw war…blood…. Hunger…. Death…. It was as if all the pain and horror experienced by all people throughout history had happened in an instant. I wanted to die. I wanted nothing at that moment but death to escape the evil I was experiencing. At this point my eyes scoured the page mindlessly as my vision faded. Before it went all black, I remember looking at something down my left arm. It felt like another arm adjacent to mine. Another arm but not of a human, it was a hoof. A bull’s paw as I lowered my head, I felt the presence of wide-eyed eyes pass through me.
I woke up late the next day for first and second period classes. My head was resting on the rough surface of my laptop keyboard.
I looked up to check the time and saw the windows restart error on the screen. I had an unimaginable migraine. I felt lethargic and confused, struggling to fully understand what had happened. I took another look at the computer. “Your PC ran into a problem and needed to restart.” I got up and walked slowly across my dorm room to my old digital clock for damage checking.
“10:42,” he says
“Shit,” I said to myself. At that point I was completely amazed at what exactly happened. I… I really didn’t want to know. At that point I figured I might add a few drinks, like I normally did from time to time. I started packing my bags and wore some of the coolest pants I could find within the first 5 seconds of watching. I stumbled forward to close my laptop and drop it on my back. But not before taking another look.
“Your computer cannot start. Error code:” and then some weird characters I’ve never seen before.
I didn’t even have a language other than the English setting, so it confused me at the time. But I wiped it out and turned everything off manually before dashing out the door. Finally I remembered that night. Slowly, over time, and countless self-enforced therapy sessions with the school psychiatrist, I pieced together the events that transpired. I… I can’t even come to a fully rational thought on what I’m reading even now, my mind feels like I have to shut everything down. Bury it all in the deepest corner of me. However, despite my delusional state, I remember exactly what I read in detail about that document. It started with a description of an area in what I think is Northern Mongolia or Japan. There were intricate details of a dire shortage of food and water, death itself seemed to linger on dry land. I have read of men and women dying, of villages overthrown and pillaged by other villages for food. But there was one village in particular. One village was in the same state as the others, but something was different. The men and women were corrupt, cannibalistic and committed unspeakable acts which I fortunately do not remember in detail. And just on the verge of total extinction of the village, a visitor approached from afar. A creature or entity, something described in history as a bull-headed warrior. The concept of being surreal is almost childish in nature, I know, but it was wrong. Something was so bad that the villagers attacked it, killed it, and feasted on the thing’s bizarre body in a last-ditch effort to survive the severe famine. The story is cloudy at the moment. Evil flowed into the village. Bad like no one else. A kind of evil that crushes the harmful nature of all fairing dictators and antagonists.
I think I have passed out at the moment. You know your brain is programmed to shut down if it gets too scared. Too much pure terror.
I know I’m not free yet. I know that no matter what I do, I will end up remembering it more. And more of the story. Every day when I wake up I feel it creeping more into the darkest depths of my consciousness. I need help.
And for all of you, I know who will ask me if I won’t cover it, no, I never found my laptop again. I took it to the Microsoft store where they tried all the techniques in the recovery process. Finally, the computer itself was disassembled. What they found was the weirdest part of it all.
The interior was in ruins. The hard drive was scratched beyond recognition, the motherboard destroyed, and a several-inch hole burned through the processor. What was doing so much physical damage to my PC was doing it from within. Please, whoever reads this, I continue to write, not out of motivation, but out of a burning desire to warn. Don’t snoop around for things that shouldn’t be found. Some stories come from the deepest pit of hell with the sole purpose of destroying sanity itself. Some stories are better left untold.