“Silver, you ready to go?“ My dad yelled from downstairs.
“Gimme just a second!” I answered.
I had recently picked up an interest in MMA and had been attempting to learn everything about it that I could before asking my dad to pay at least some of the cost for actual lessons.
I knew that he’d say no if I asked him out of the blue, so I spent hours upon hours doing research and trying to get in shape so that I’d be prepared. My dad noticed this and seemed to approve of it.
I sprinted down the stairs at the speed of light before saying, “Sorry, I almost forgot we were leaving. I fell down the MMA rabbit hole on YouTube again.”
My dad didn’t acknowledge what I said, instead changing to the topic.
“Tim’s getting antsy, apparently.” He sighed. “He keeps texting me about the motorcycle.”
“That guy is so strange. How did you even become friends with this guy, again?” I asked.
He answered, “I was friends with him in highschool, remember?”
“Yeah, it’s just… why? He’s so creepy.” I replied.
“What do you mean?” He leaned against the kitchen table.
“Well, for example,” I searched through my memory for the best answer, “both times I’ve seen him, he warned me to not go into his shed.
He gave me a weird evil laugh after saying it, too. The first time, we weren’t even at his house! We were here!”
“Silver,” my dad exhaled sharply, “I’ve seen the inside of his shed. He keeps his most expensive motorcycle in there. That’s just his way of saying not to touch it. You’re being slightly paranoid here.”
“He just… rubs me the wrong way.” I said, looking down.
He didn’t respond verbally, instead rubbing his forehead and grabbing his car keys.
The ride to Tim’s house was a long one. As I played my music I drowned out what was happening around me, only snapping back to reality when I heard the GPS tell us we had arrived.
The last time we were there was two years prior, and I managed to completely forget how isolated the land was.
Tim lived frugally, owning a house lot in the middle of nowhere, and practically only spending money on motorcycles and alcohol.
I checked my phone. I had very limited cell service and there were zero WiFi networks available.
Tim came out of the front door with a beer in his left hand. His long, gray, and black beard only served to make him appear even more unsettling to me as I watched him slowly walk toward us, frequently sipping on his drink.
As my dad and Tim talked and joked, I stared intently at the shed.
I imagined the weird things that could be in there. Knowing Tim, he realistically just had his nicest motorcycle sitting in there surrounded by junk he hoarded over the years.
“Remember, Silver,” he giggled, “don’t go in the shed!”
His remark split my focus in two. It was almost as if I had one eye trained on him and the other on the shed.
“Haha, right, don’t go in the shed,” I forced myself to joke back, “got it.”
I shifted my gaze to the front of his house. That’s when I first noticed it.
I could’ve sworn that I witnessed the shed door shift slightly in the corner of my vision.
I tried for the next several minutes to convince myself that I had simply made it up in my mind.
I tried to convince myself that I was just being overly paranoid as a result of Tim’s remarks about the shed.
While I told myself that there was nothing wrong, nothing could shake the feeling of dread I was experiencing.
Eventually, my dad and Tim decided they were going to go inside for a while to catch up with one another.
Tim invited me inside, but said that there was a basketball somewhere around his hoop by the shed that I could play with if I wanted to.
The fact that he was willing to let me hang around the shed unattended put my mind at ease for the most part, but I was still incredibly curious and, despite it being sort of chilly outside, I really didn’t want to sit around without internet on my phone while the two of them talked.
I agreed to play basketball alone. The bounce of the ball cut through the near silence around me like a supersonic jet cutting through the air.
I accidentally hit the ball against my knee and watched it roll off toward the shed.
For whatever reason, I was instantly overcome with fear and panic as I realized I would have to go near that thing.
I didn’t know why, but the shed had quickly grown into a horrifying symbol to me.
All my worst fears could have been hiding in there, or it could have been nothing.
This intrigued me, and yet confused me, as I had no real reason to be intrigued.
It was almost certainly just Tim’s motorcycle that awaited me if I decided to open it up and check.
When that ball bounced off the shed’s door, however, that is not what was going through my mind.
I carefully trudged towards the shed, almost as if I was worried that Tim was watching me, making sure I didn’t get too close.
As I bent down to pick up the ball, my bones instantly turned frail and my legs quivered.
I heard it. I knew that I heard it. It took no convincing for me to realize what I had just heard.
I heard a child, a young boy, saying my name. “Silver,” he whispered.
I threw myself on the ground in sheer terror. I scrambled backward, and then to my feet, only to hear it again.
My heart began pounding out of my chest as I attempted to process what I was hearing.
After taking everything in for what felt like hours but was probably less than a minute, I finally decided I was going to check the inside of the shed.
My mind raced with what I thought this was. I heard the clanking of chains as I reached to open the door.
Could Tim really have a child chained up in his shed?
What horrible things has he done to this kid? My dad said that he had seen the inside, did he just hide the boy during my dad’s visit?
If so, why didn’t he hide him now? Did he really say “Silver?”
I pulled the door open slowly, afraid to take my first peek inside.
As I twisted my neck to see around the door, I noticed that there were no windows.
It was completely pitch black on the inside. I opened the door further.
I could see a form. Thick metal chains sprawled out from the form like serpents, hissing at the light as it shined on them from the outside.
The child appeared disfigured and overly pale in the sunlight. His spine contorted across his hunched over back.
I heard a low growl emanating from him as I took a controlled step forward.
Two more steps. I could sense something deeply wrong with this boy.
His form appeared broken and sick. The air smelled of rotten meat. In fact, the smell was notably omitted from a bucket in the corner.
The floor was covered in straw as if he was a farm animal. A dark brown substance appeared splattered across it.
Suddenly, something Tim had said flashed back into my brain at incredible speed.
The first time I ever met him, the time when he warned me about his shed without me even being there, he said, “Don’t go in the shed, you just might never come out!”
That was the only thing I could think of before the creature turned around and lunged at me.