Today, I went at the mall. I needed to clear my mind after what happened and for that, I needed to film something. Filming was my only safe place, and the day before, it didn’t go well, so, trying again that fast was a way for me to reassure myself that I could still count on this, that I hadn’t lost this integral part of myself. Of course, I wasn’t going to go back to the river from the night before, so, the mall was the perfect choice. It was crowded, so, I placed myself at the second floor’s balcony so I could record the flow of people without filming their faces, I couldn’t ask everyone’s consent.
Nothing weird happened this time. I must have stayed there for two hours or so, and while filming, I was trying to make sense of what happened the night before. After some time, I started to consider that it might have been my imagination playing tricks on me. After all, except the wound on my leg and an unplayable file on my computer, I had no proofs, no witnesses. The last few days had been hard, and I was tired, maybe everything was just the lack of sleep or something. The more I thought about it, the more this idea was believable. But that was before I came back home.
After some time, it was getting darker outside, so I decided to go back to my student room. On my way, I started to have a weird feeling. It was like someone was following me, or watching me, but every time I looked around me, nobody seemed suspicious, so I just walked faster.
When I got to my room, the same feeling was still sticking to me. I tried to ignore it the best I could and started uploading the video I filmed on my computer. It would be the last thing to reassure me that things weren’t going sideways, if the video was perfectly normal, it would confirm that what happened was just my tired mind making stuff up.
The video was ready to be played, but something in me was scared to find out what was in it. What if other things happened the same way it did last time. I didn’t want to be alone if that happened. I knew what was the only thing I could do: ask Lucy, my neighbor. I knew she was nice, and ready to help me. She had give me signs that she was there for me before but I all turned them down out of fear, but now, I could really use it.
I went to her door and knocked. She opened and smiled at me.
“Sarah, hi, how are you doing?” She said.
“Hello Lucy, I’m sorry to bother you, am I interrupting anything or?” I’m not really used to talk to people so, I was really embarrassed.
“No no, absolutely not. Are you okay? I was worried because of last night.” She asked.
“Hoh, hum, yeah, I’m good.”
“Nice, so, can I help you with something?”
“Yes, I think so. I… I need you for something but, you can’t ask any question, okay?” I was kind of mumbling.
She gave me a weird look. Not mean, but like, amused.
“Sure, I mean, depends, what do you need?” She said.
“Huh, I need you to come watch, huh, something I… filmed today, with me…” There was a silence, I was looking at my feet. “Because I don’t want to watch it alone…”
“Well, I mean, now I have a thousand questions as to why you need me for that, but you asked me not to ask anything so I guess I can do that.”
We both went to my room and sat down at my computer.
“If you’re about to show me porn to seduce me, it’s not going to work you know.” She said.
“HO, no no no, that’s not, it’s just the mall, I wasn’t…” I was completely embarrassed.
“Hey hey, I’m joking it’s okay, don’t worry.”
I took a deep breath, and pressed play.
The first like, 30 seconds were normal. Just what I filmed, people walking, nothing weird. I was already kind of reassured. That’s when Lucy pointed something at the screen.
“Looks like you had an admirer…” She said.
I looked at what she was pointing at. It was a man, in his thirties I would say, standing in the middle of the crowd, staring at me. He was completely still. One thing was sure, this guy wasn’t there when I filmed. I was constantly looking, and I would have noticed him, especially since he was standing there for a few minutes, he wasn’t exactly blending in. That was creepy, I was already glad Lucy was there. We watched for a few more minutes, when suddenly, the video went to black, just like yesterday. No more sounds, just a black screen. Lucy said that it seemed like my camera had a bug or something, but she was cut off by a voice. The same voice I could again recognize with its first words. It sent chill down my spine.
“Sarah, come help Daddy in the basement, I need you again. Come on, you know you like it, you want it. Come help me Sarah, I need you. Don’t pretend like you don’t want it.” The voice was just the same, I didn’t understand how it was there, but I couldn’t forget it. I cried silently, it was here again, why was it coming back, what was it, why doesn’t it want to leave me alone. Then, the other voice came back, again, just like yesterday, the same anxious and stressed man’s voice.
“Grace? Are you there again? Can you hear me? I need you to help me, I have to get out of here, I can’t find the exit…”
I still couldn’t recognize that voice. It was still afraid and stressed.
“Sarah, what is this? That’s pretty creepy, did you make this?” Asked Lucy.
“No, I didn’t, it’s…”
I was cut off by a scream coming from the video: the unknown man’s voice screamed “Grace!”
I don’t know what happened, but suddenly, I wasn’t in my room anymore. I was in a house, with people, I recognized it in a second, how could I forget it. I was in a memory. I was back when I was 14, in the house from the couple that adopted me at that time. There were the other kids that they adopted walking around, and I was standing in the hallway. I started to panic, I knew what day I was back to, it was the day, I knew what I was going to hear in a few seconds. That’s when I realized that I had my camera in my hand. I didn’t even think about it, it was my instinct, I turned it on, started recording, and I put it on my eyes. I was now watching through the lens, and it calmed me. I took my breath, and I heard it, the phrase: “Sarah, follow me, daddy needs your help. Come on, I need you, come down here.” The voice was coming from the basement door. I started to panic, I was scared, I felt powerless. But I found the strength, because I was watching through my camera. I walked slowly towards the basement, whispering the same words to myself: “I’m still here, I’m not afraid, he can’t hurt me anymore.”
I walked down the stairs, and he was waiting for me there, with his awful smile. “Come closer Sarah. I have to show you something”. It was exactly like in my memory, but I wasn’t the same anymore, I could resist.
“No.” I said.
There was a moment of silence.
“No? How can you say no? You say yes to so many people, and to me, it’s no? Come on, we both no you want it.” His smile was becoming wider, too wide for a human, and his teeth were sharper, he was disgusting, and terrifying. “Don’t you agree children, she wants it don’t you think?”
I turned. Behind me was all the other adopted kids, and the wife, looking at me with the same wide smile, the same sharp teeth.
“Yes Daddy!” They all said in sync.
I felt powerless again.
“Then why don’t we all remind him kids?” He said with a joyful tone.
“Yes Daddy.”
They all started to slowly walks towards me, giggling. I was petrified, holding on to my camera like a lifebuoy, repeating the same words: “I’m still here, I’m not afraid, he can’t hurt me anymore.”
They were all so close to me now, and all their hands were starting to touch my legs, scratching them. One of them grabbed my arm with so much strength and forced me to take my camera off my eyes. I was seeing everything from my own eyes, and it was a hundred times scarier. Some of the younger kids started to climb on me.
“Now kids, let’s have fun!” He said.
All the kids, himself, and his wife, they all bit me. Their sharp teeth were piercing my flesh deep, the pain was unbearable. I screamed. They were biting somewhere, then somewhere else, then again, it was horrible. That’s when I saw him, standing, watching me, the man from the mall video. I saw him and screamed: “Help me!”. He answered immediately: “It’s not real, snap out of it!”
A second after, I was in a dark and empty space. No sounds. The man that helped me was the voice that I didn’t recognize in the video, the scared one. I was out of the memory, but my whole body was still covered in bites that were bleeding a lot and extremely painful. I still had my camera recording, so I immediately put it on my eyes again. I looked around for a little bit, when he appeared, the unknown man. He looked scared.
“Grace, you’re here. I need you!”
He came closer to me.
“I’m not Grace, I’m Sarah, why do you…”
He cut me.
“Doesn’t matter, listen to me…” He stopped and looked at me, at all the bites covering my body. “Ho god, okay. Look, you need to find Claire, ok? Claire, she’s the answer. Do you understand Grace?”
It was over. Out of nowhere, I was back in my room. Lucy was holding my shoulders, looking at me with a scared face. My body was fine, no bites.
“Sarah, you’re back?” She asked.
“Yeah, … Yeah, … I’m still here.” I was having trouble forming a phrase.
“What the hell was that?”
“I don’t know, what happened?” I asked, mumbling.
“The video continued, with the voice calling for some Grace, and screaming for help, and some other voice asking to follow it, calling itself “Daddy”. And then the screen started showing some super weird stuffin POV, like, I think it was a weird movie about abuse, but then it became like a horror movie and everyone was terryfying, and I could hear you scream in it. And you, you were like, in a trance. Your eyes were all white and you were repeating: “I’m still here” or “Find Claire.” The video stopped, I don’t know why, and after a moment, you came back, like this… What the hell happened?”
I looked at what she was pointing and realized the bite the kids have left me were real, I was covered in them, bleeding. The pain came back when I realized what was happening to me: it was real.
I didn’t answer immediately. I tried to replay the video, but the same error as the night before appeared, the file type was unrecognizable.
“It can’t be played again, I checked.” She said.
“Why?” I asked.
“I verified the file’s information to see if you weren’t pulling some sort of weird prank.”
“And what’s your conclusion?”
“I don’t fucking know what the hell this is, but I don’t think it’s a prank, because the information I found indicate that this is raw footage filmed today coming straight from your camera, it wasn’t modified, so…”
“Do you believe me?” I asked.
“What am I supposed to believe you about?” Her question was fair.
“I don’t know…”
“And what happened to you?” She asked.
“I think I had, like, some sort of, I honestly don’t know. But what you saw on the screen, that was my POV, that’s what was happening to me I think..”
“What do you mean??”
I took a moment to think about it, and I had an idea. I took my camera and checked the videos. I was right, there it was, recorded just 3 minutes ago, the video I had recorded in this sort of werid moment. I showed her. Everything was just like I filmed. When it was over, she looked at me.
“How is that possible? That video was recorded a few minutes ago, when we were here, what does that mean?”
“I don’t know Lucy, but that’s what happened to me, have you seen my arms? I’m sorry.”
I explained to her that I had no explanations, that I was as much in the dark as she was, but that this was what I filmed in my “nightmare-thing”. She was completely confused and creeped out. She went back to her room just after, leaving me alone. I decided to keep the video on my camera, as it seemed to be able to be played multiple times without getting corrupted or something so.
After that, I got in my bed and didn’t move for like, 5 minutes. I had no idea what was happening to me.
Then, someone knocked on my door. I opened, only to find Lucy, holding a matrass and a blanket. She looked embarrassed.
“Can I sleep with you tonight?” She mumbled. “I mean, in your room, you know, I got my own matrass here so…”
I felt a small sense of warmth around me. I let her in and she installed her stuff in silence. She also took a first aid kit from her room and started to put some bandages on my wounds. They were deep and painful, but I was a bit relieved to have them actually. These and the video recorded just minutes ago was the proof that it wasn’t just a nightmare, whatever had happened was real.
I turned off the lights and we stayed silent for a few seconds.
“Do you want to talk about it or?” I asked.
“Tomorrow, right now, I’m sleeping.” She said.
I am now in my room. Lucy is sleeping, but I felt the need to share what happened here. I don’t know what to think, but this is getting scarier and scarier.
I’m answering questions…