Hello. Before I start my story, I want to apologise for any misspellings or incorrect grammar. My native language isn’t English, and I am probably not the best storyteller either.
Well I am a pretty young man, who just graduated from college. At the school I entered, it was - and still is - a tradition to tell horror stories. Some people actually took it so far to make it seem real that they hire people - even strangers sometimes - to confirm, or act out the story. The person who tells the most scary stories a semester gets an award, whether it is the honor, money or popularity. I usually didn’t win, I was never even close to it, as previously mentioned I am not a good story teller. I was, however, quite a popular guy; I was considered a challenge since I am not scared easily. Even friends who know me since childhood can confirm that they never once have seen me scared. At the young age of thirteen, I read translated Stephen King-books. I cannot recall a single moment where I had been scared of it, it all just seems so unrealistic to me.
What this story is about, though, is a horror story in particular that I was told at the college, during my last term there. I had been drinking a bit too much, so not every detail is clear, but the things I remember is slightly disturbing. I’m not sure if it was a dream, it might have been, but I have a feeling it is not.
I was wandering towards my dorm that I shared with some friends, and while walking there, someone grabbed my arm and pulled me into a side-corridor. It was another man, with bright red hair that probably was dyed.
“Hi”, he said. “I’ve heard rumors saying you can’t get scared at all. Bet?” Drunk as I was, I didn’t pay enough attention to who he was, or anything. He might not even have been a part of the college.
“Bet”, I said. “Five hundred.” (Now five hundred might seem a lot to you, but in my country, the currency is much less valued. A hundred is perhaps five to ten dollars.) He grinned and led me down to the school basement. I didn’t pay much attention to this either, because, as I said, horror stories are extremely usual at this college and the basement was commonly used for telling such stories.
In the room in the basement, there was multiple people with their face covered sitting in corners, in chairs, holding candles, salt and other things. I figured it must be a story about a cult, since they were holding such things. I looked back at the guy who led me there, but couldn’t see him anywhere. My guess was that he covered his face too, like all the others to blend in. It worked, I guess.
Someone asked me to sit in the ring of candles. I agreed. It wasn’t - and still isn’t, from what I have heard - unusual to ask the audience to participate in the stories. Might seem bizarre to you, but as I said, scary stories are highly focused at this college. An outsider would believe that we are crazy, mad, mental, whatever you call it, but it is very normalized. I do not know if that is good or bad, but if you don’t like it; that’s your problem.
Sitting in the middle of the ring, things were getting a little unsettling. I wasn’t scared, not unsettling in that way, more like when you forget about something and can’t recall what. The feeling that something is off, but you don’t know what.
The “cult members” started mumbling something in a foreign language, and one person stepped ahead.
“Long ago, this country was a good country. A pure country, who had nothing to fear from the darkness.” the one in front of me said. “But then, something came and ruined it all. Something we all… fear. And it is our duty to get rid of it.”
“Let me tell you the story of how it was, the paradise of the past. It was beautiful. Humans lived along animals, along demons, along angels. They had nothing to fear, as long as they could solve their own problems. For there was one rule: You can never, ever be selfish enough to talk about your own problems with other species. The angels and demons did this excellent, as they were forbidden by God itself to do this. They simply couldn’t. They talked about anything, but not problems.
Animals, were a bit trickier. They didn’t have an understanding mindset of it all, so they did not know about the rule. But since the humans, angels and demons did not understand them, and they didn’t understand the demons, humans and angels, that was no problem.” He paused, caught his breath. His story was rapidly getting faster told, and I was starting to wonder if he had to be somewhere else soon. “But then, the evil came. It destroyed the angels first, then the demons. The humans had no protection left, so they decided to sacrifice one fearless man to it. And it possessed him, making him ache, hurting him from the inside, turning joy into hatred. The man, once so fearless, died of fear. The humans understood that if they would survive, they had to sacrifice a completely fearless man to it, a man who had never felt fear in his life. No one volunteered. No one wanted such endless pain, even if it would mean to save humanity and all animals and living creatures from the evil being.”
The alcohol in my body really did its thing, because I was starting to get dizzy of all the mumbling. This is also the part where I am unsure of what happens, because I don’t know if I dreamed it, or if I was affected by alcohol here.
“Now. I want you to look into my eyes”, the storyteller said, “and say: I am willingly giving me, take me.”
As I said, even if this would have been a red flag outside the college, it definitely wasn’t here. I repeated the man.
“Close your eyes, and we will take off our hoods.”
I must have dreamt the last part, for the last thing I remember seeing just as I shut my eyelids, is hoods being pulled off faces without skin, faces without features, faces who really wasn’t faces but horrid replicas of faces, faces that were melting off the skull. Hair laid on the floor, among pools of dull dark reddish-brown fluid, twigs and sticks barely visible but still there.
The next thing I remember, or believe I remember, is that a dull pain started in my body. A high-pitch shriek cut through the air.
Then I must have fallen asleep.
The next morning, I woke up in my bed. The dull feeling, or pain, was still there, but I was so hungover I didn’t notice.
Well, all I can say is, ever since that, I have had the same dull pain, although it gets sharper every day. I don’t feel happiness anymore, I am starting to wonder if I perhaps have depression, but I feel so much more anger. I don’t know why the rage comes sipping through my veins, or why I sometimes feel such strong hatred, but I’m still not scared. I have never been.