It hides Its existence in the brief moments of everyday life. When you walk up your steps, alone in a dark home. The sound of footsteps behind you, just out of rhythm with your own. You stop and look around. Nothing. Just like everyone else, you laugh it off. It was a trick of the mind. An overactive instinct left behind from an archaic way of life.
But you were always wrong.
And your instincts were always right.
Everyone alive or dead has heard or seen the creature so many times in their lives it becomes natural. We have come to dismiss the sounds as a creak of an old shifting house. The glimpses of Its form as nothing more than an optical illusion. A sudden sound in another room. A sudden motion in the corner of your eye.
For a moment frightening, but then forgotten.
I had always acted how you act. I had waved the scares away as juvenile and irrational. The sudden urge to run to your bed when the lights go out. The slight sense of dread emanating from the darkened hallway. As kids, we were more aware of The Creature’s presence. Less apt to brush it off as common. Perhaps that is why we refer to the fears as childish.
I first learned of It from a dusty piece of parchment. A work penned by a poet long dead. I scanned the stanzas of the poem, a terrifying draft meant to pry on the primal. A horror meant to strike deep at the strange natural aversions we have always possessed.
And though upon first reading, the poem unnerved me, I thought nothing of it. I preserved the work of fiction as I would any other that came across my desk. There it sat on the shelf of a bookcase hidden away in my personal library.
But the ideas were ingrained in my imagination, and the questions endured unanswered in my psyche.
The thought of The Creature lingered, especially at night. Whenever I awoke from a sudden, fleeting sound. When the floorboards creaked unexpectedly under my weight. Every time I felt something sinister just behind me.
I reread the poem late one night when I could not bear the thoughts. I tried to convince myself of Its fantasy. But every time my eyes scanned the words, I saw just beyond my gaze, by my library door, some figure moving.
Again and again I darted my attention towards the corridor but saw nothing. Eventually I left the page of the poem on the desk and paced hesitantly through the dim hallway to fetch a glass of water. I desperately attempted to convince myself that what I was hearing and what I was seeing were simply symptoms of paranoia gone unchecked.
I told myself they were things that all people experience. They were just overreactions, a remnant of evolution. The lucidity of primal terrors.
They were more than that. Not just now, but always. They had always been signs. Ones that we were unable or unwilling to read.
Ever since I was wizened to Its existence I have been overcome by terror. For days I have remained awake. If the poem is to be believed, and despite defying all logical thought I do believe it, I cannot afford to sleep and leave myself vulnerable. Once one begins to see the signs, once one is aware of Its presence, It becomes aware of yours.
It is content to remain hidden. It despises being known. It possesses a deep, inescapable odium for all those who have noticed It. For those who seek it out or cannot forget It.
The Creature will chase me down. It will not allow me to survive so long as It is aware that I am aware.
The coffee is beginning to fail. The exhaustion is overpowering me. I must give in soon but I cannot risk what may result from it. That is why in my desperation I pen this work.
My only hope is to let the Creature’s existence be known far and wide. I pray that if others begin to notice Its signs, to truly understand Its nightly presence, then perhaps It will focus less attention on myself.
I regret to inform you dear reader that throughout this short passage you have been unwittingly partaking in nature’s most ancient and deadliest information hazard. An urban legend that has persisted throughout human existence. Now that you are aware of the signs you will see and hear them. You will not be able to dismiss them away.
The creaks in your walls will become sinister. The shadows of your home will haunt your mind.
The worst scenario is that you have read this at night. That you read it in a house, or worse, somewhere foreign to you. That you have done so alone. That the noises you hear cannot be explained away by another person or a family pet. It is another being entirely.
Just like I did when I first read the poem, you will put away this story. You will laugh at the absurdity. Then as you complete your nightly routine, It will show itself. Try to ignore It; you cannot.
As you walk through your home and hear footsteps echoing your own, just a fraction of a second later. As you look into the bathroom mirror when you brush your teeth and you see something just behind you over your shoulder. And especially as you lie awake, tossing and turning, and staring at your closet or out your window.
You will begin to doubt the invention of these words.
As The Creature slowly stalks you from where you cannot see it. As It waits for you to fall deep into a sleep you will never awake from.
Only then will you understand the true reason for our instinctual dread.