My name is Sarah, and I love making movies, it’s like, my biggest passion, really, it’s what I do best, and I can’t get enough of it. It doesn’t matter whether I’m recording a river for an entire day, making a short film, a fake documentary, a fan-made music video, anything, I love it.
These last few weeks however, I didn’t film anything, which is a lot for me, I’ve never taken such a long break since I started when I was 6. The thing is, for the first time, I have too much on my mind for making movies. Recently, things around me became kind of weird.
I’ll roll back a few weeks. For the last year or so, I had been “dating” this guy, Mark. I’m writing “dating” in quotes because, well, we never actually did anything an actual couple would do. He was my hookup more than my boyfriend, and we both liked it like that. Nobody really knew about it either, it was really something between us. But before everything went sideways, we were actually thinking about trying to be in an actual couple relationship, which would have been new for both of us. You may be shocked, but at age 20, none of us had been in a relationship. I don’t know about him, I think he was dealing with a lot of personal shit, but personally, it was mainly because I had no idea how to interact socially. I don’t have friends, just a few classmates that take pity on me and invite me to parties, but no real friends, so a boyfriend or a girlfriend would have been way too much for me. I guess that’s why I enjoy sex as much as I do: for me, it’s the easiest way to form a human connection, no small talks that I could fail, no questions, just this. I think that’s also why Mark was such a good partner for me, he was never that much talkative, and when we did talk, he was easy to talk to.
One day, he was hired to babysit a girl, apparently the pay was good. He went the first night, and things went well as far as I know. Then, the next day, he was asked by the parents to come again. That’s when things went to shit. What I learned by rumors was this: he had kidnapped the girl and leave with the parent’s car. Nothing else was known. Noone knew where they were, why he took her, nothing.
I couldn’t understand. Sure, I didn’t know Mark that well, but after an entire year of sex, you’ll think you know that the person you do it with is not a pedophile or some child murderer. Fortunately, or unfortunately, it didn’t last long until I heard from him again.
2 days after the event, someone knocked on my door. I went to open and found myself in front of Mark and the girl he had taken. I was stunned when he asked me very casually if they could get in. My instinct made me accept and I went completely crazy on him. I couldn’t understand why he was there, or anything that was happening. He was strangely way calmer and, I don’t know, in peace, than I ever saw him. I forced him to explain to me what the hell was going on, but he kept telling me that I “wouldn’t believe him”. After I insisted, he told me that, he and the girl (whose name was Claire) were in “a shitty situation” and that the less I knew the safer I would be. Then, to prove me that their situation was undeniably hard to understand, he took a knife and stabbed his own arm with it, only for the wound to heal immediately in front of my eyes, in 30 seconds, there was no trace of any injury, then, the girl lifted my bed with one hand. I still had no idea what was going on, but I knew that they were indeed in a weird situation.
Mark asked me some paper and wrote a letter. He asked me to find a way to give it to his parents, because he was going to leave forever. I promised to do it, and they left.
I didn’t hear from them since. For the next few days, I stayed at home. I was trying to make sense of this last encounter I had with Mark, and I couldn’t. I was constantly wondering if I shouldn’t just go to the cops, tell them what happened. But I couldn’t. I mean, when I saw them, not only did they give me proofs that they really were in shit, but the girl didn’t seem to be forced to be with him, they seemed more like brother and sister. So, I kept on thinking, endlessly. I mean, I don’t see how anyone could go back to a normal life after that, it’s impossible, especially since I had no one to share it with, and nothing to take my mind off of this. Plus, it’s not like I could count on my family, I don’t have one. My parents abandoned me when I was less than one year old, and I was placed in an orphanage. A family did adopt me when I was 14, but it didn’t last. I don’t especially want to explain everything here, but I asked to go back to the orphanage after only 3 months, and I think they were sent in jail or something, but I never heard from them again.
After a few days, I decided that I should grab my camera again. I was going to film a river at the local park, that would be a start to get back to normal. I chose to go at night, I really didn’t want to have to talk to people, and I did it a million times.
That night, I filmed many plans of the river. I was walking beside it and filming every time I thought a spot deserved a shot. There were no sounds, and it was peaceful. I finally felt some sense of calm after these last few days.
Eventually, I got to a nice spot, but to get to where I wanted to film from, I had to pass through a bunch of brambles. I carefully tried to avoid them, since I was wearing a short, but one did cut me deep in the leg. I got to the other side and used my phone’s flash to see how bad it was. There was a lot of blood flooding, it was bad, and it was painful. I thought that it was maybe a good time to go back home. I started to walk when I heard something. It was like steps, but it didn’t seem to come from around me. It was like, an echo, in my head. I looked around me, stressed, but everything was dark, I couldn’t see shit. The steps were becoming louder and louder, like someone was approaching. I put my hands on my ears, but I could still hear it, even clearer than before. I started to run, but after just a few seconds, I was thrown on the ground, like something had jump on me from the front. I looked around but there really was nothing around. I got up and started to run again, scared like shit. Nothing else happened on my way back home.
When I was back at my student room, I immediately uploaded the images in my computer. My camera was recording the whole time, so maybe there was something I could see on it. I opened the video that I took while I had been, attacked, I guess, and was surprised to see that it was completely black. It was indeed dark in the park, but I was using my flash, so that wasn’t it. The image was just black. However, there was sound. I turned up the volume to the maximum and approached my ear closer to the speakers. I could hear a low breathing. It certainly wasn’t mine; the sound wasn’t the one I recorded, there was no river sound. I kept on listening. The breathing was fast, like someone was stressed or out of breath. Then, it stopped. For a few seconds, there was no sounds, then I could hear a whisper. I had to focus to understand what it said, but here’s what I understood: “Maria, is that you? Who’s here? Who… Grace? Is that you Grace?”
The voice speaking was confused. It was clearly a man’s voice, that or the ghost of Nina Simone (I love the woman, but you know what I mean by that). I was terrified, the atmosphere around had become so heavy.
Then, the voice changed, or I should say, another voice took over, and this one I recognized immediately. Here’s what it said: “Sarah, follow me, daddy needs your help. Come on, I need you come down here.” Those words were echoing in my brain as I heard them, the memory of it was so vivid, it hurt so much. Then, the voice continued, but it wasn’t a real memory anymore: “Ho, Sarah, why don’t you follow me now? You send me in hell for this and now look at you. Every week, all these boys and girls, but not me? You selfish hypocrite… LOOK AT YOU! You’re disgusting…”
I was listening to this, terrified, and devastated, crying. I should just have pressed pause, but a part of me wanted me to hear this.
Then, the first voice came back on top. It was even more confused: “What is this? Who’s speaking? I don’t understand!” It was getting louder. That’s when a shape of hand appeared on the screen, like someone was touching it from the other side. I was shocked and took a step back from my computer. The unknown voice kept talking over the other one: “What is this? Where does this smell come from? HELP ME GET OUT OF HERE!” Then, it was like someone punched from the other side. There was a loud noise, and then, we were just after I fell on the ground. The rest of the video was just what happened after, I was running and that’s it.
When it was over, I was shattered, scared to death and absolutely broken. There were so many things, I couldn’t even think. That’s when I realized that my computer was extremely hot, like if it was running a huge game or something. I tried to play the video again, but it wouldn’t start. A message was appearing saying that it couldn’t recognize the files type or something like that. I tried again a few times, until another message popped up, a small window with one word: “Claire”. Then, it popped up everywhere on the screen, until everything disappeared.
I stayed on the floor for a moment, trying to compute what happened. Nothing about it made sense.
One or two minutes after, someone knocked. I was brought out of my thoughts. I fixed my hair and everything fast and opened. It was my neighbor, Lucy. She looked at me, concerned.
“Are you okay Sarah? I heard a lot of noise… So, I don’t know, I figured…”
“Hum, no, no, I’m okay, my, computer just malfunctioned, it’s okay. Sorry for waking you up.” I said.
“It’s okay, I was not sleeping. If you need help, you know, I’m right here…”
It was like she was opening a door for me. I wanted to let her in, just to have help, but I was too scared. So, I thanked her, and I closed my door.
It was yesterday. I didn’t sleep. I don’t understand anything to what’s happening, and I don’t know what to do. I still have the injury on my leg, it’s even bigger than I thought. And I tried to re-open the video, but it still doesn’t. I know it must be linked to Mark and the girl, Claire, because of the message, but apart from that, I have no clue. I think I’ll try to film something else today, somewhere else, just to see, but I’ll do it during daytime.
I’ll take any advices…