Wednesday, March 23, 2022. I tried writing for the first time in three years today. Bela, my fiance, had just bought my uncle’s old typewriter to give to me. I embraced her for the kind gesture. If I’m being honest with myself though, it made me sad more than anything. I hadn’t written anything in three years and now what, an old typewriter was gonna change that? “Try again, for me ok. You’re better than you think” like she always says. I give a half assed smile and nod as she turned and left my home office.
I sat staring at a blank piece of paper for well over an hour. I couldn’t focus, I was rapidly tapping my finger on my desk, and hyperfocusing on the water droplets slowly sliding down the ice cold glass of water next to the typewriter. That’s it I need to focus. So I do what I always do in a time like this, take a drive. I went down the stairs, grabbed my keys, and shut the front door behind me.
It was dark and stormy out, my wipers at full speed barely keeping up with how hard and fast the rain was coming down. I took the 480 highway to Gore Rd, dense woods on each side of me, the trees tall and daunting, looming over me, I could barely see at this point. I was hoping an eerie night like this would get some rough ideas flowing, but still, nothing. The storm seemed relentless, it grew louder by the minute and the wind blew more violently by the second. I turned my blinker on, preparing to pull over when suddenly, I passed under a bridge to the other side and it all stopped. The rain, the thunder, the lighting, and the violent winds, it all just stopped. I decided to continue my drive.
A fog was pouring out from the woods onto the highway, and the entirety of my surroundings became obscured in shadows, and an abnormal darkness. The silence thickened, it felt as if I could cut the air with a pair of scissors. It got so quiet I felt as if I could hear nothing at all except for the ever growing darkness that only seemed to be getting louder, as if something sinister were calling out to me, taunting me. Then there it was, a man standing in the middle of the road. I slammed my brakes, cut the wheel and ended up swerving off the road, crashing.
I slowly opened my car door and stumbled to the ground. I had hit my head badly. I had a slight cut on my forehead and it was taking a little more than a moment before I began to see straight and adjust to this supernatural darkness. I didn’t need eyesight though to feel the man I almost hit fixated on me, and not in any good way. I dragged myself to a street light and sat up against it. The bulb was dead and my heart started to race, then that’s when it happened. The most traumatic event in my life. The most terrified I have ever been.
The man began to laugh maniacally, “Errrsss-haaa-errss-ha”. The laugh sounded distorted, as if something had possessed the man, something like the darkness. A gigantic figure emerged above the trees shortly after the laugh. A figure made up of the shadows. It had red accents, horns, and piercing, rigid, narrow red eyes. I began to sweat and breathe heavily as the man and hundreds of other possessed beings like him charged toward me. All I could do now was scream, and then, poof, the light turned on, and the darkness, and the beast had vanished. I looked around, I was back in the real world.
As the light flickered on, the rainfall resumes, and the darkness dissipated, I found myself back under the halo of the street lamp on Gore Rd. The air felt different now, the tension that had gripped me moments ago fading into an eerie calm. Confusion swirled in my mind as I tried to make sense of what had just transpired. Was the past forty-five seconds all a hallucination? A nightmare woven from the threads of my own fear?
I looked around, expecting to see remnants of the nightmarish spectacle that had unfolded before me. But there was nothing. No trace of the man with the distorted laughter, no sign of the towering shadowy figure. It was as if the darkness itself had never existed.
Trembling, I retrieved my phone from my pocket to check the time. My heart sank as I saw that eleven minutes were missing from my memory—a gaping void where the inexplicable events must have occurred. What had truly happened during that time? Was it a mere blackout, or had I truly crossed into the realm of the supernatural?
With a shiver running down my spine, I rose from my spot and stumbled back home. The memory of that maniacal laughter and the looming darkness haunted me, and I knew that some mysteries were not meant to be unraveled. As days turned into weeks, I couldn’t shake the feeling that the boundary between our world and something far more sinister was thinner than I had ever imagined.
So, my nights become restless, my dreams plagued by fleeting glimpses of red eyes and distorted laughter. The line between reality and nightmare blurred, reminding me that the darkness we fear might be more real than we dare to believe. Whether a product of my mind or a glimpse into a hidden truth, one thing remained certain—the terror of that night would stay with me, forever casting a shadow on the edges of my reality.