Just like every cliché teen movie, I have a huge crush on my big brother’s bestfriend, Rain. Caleb, my brother, met Rain in the town cemetery when my brother and Dad were visiting Mom. Rain caught Caleb’s attention because he was blasting his bluetooth speaker over a blank gravestone to the tune of Nicki Minaj’s Starships. As if that’s not enough to catch anybody’s attention in a cemetery, Rain appeared to be reading a story to the unmarked grave.
Since then, they had become best buds and Caleb has invited Rain in multiple sleepovers already. That’s when I started to develop this infatuation towards my brother’s bestfriend. Rain has that certain mysterious boy-next-door quality in him which makes me wanna get close to him even more. He has these deep blue eyes which hide ever so lightly within his golden fringes, making the windows to his soul almost invisible. He’s a man of a very few words and prefers books more than my brother’s latest gaming consoles. He’s the same age as Caleb, 16, which makes him 2 years older than me. Still, just like they say, in the name of teenage crush, age doesn’t matter.
So, earlier today, Caleb announced that he’ll be having Rain over again later tonight. This made my heart do a tiny sommersault. This is the first time I’ll be seeing Rain again after a week, so I smacked a little bit of gloss on my lips and let my chestnut brown hair fall over my shoulders instead of the hideous bun I had on earlier. I also changed to a pastel pink spaghetti strap crop top and black jogger pants just to have those blue eyes give me a side glance.
It was 30 minutes past 7 PM when Caleb and Rain arrived from school. Dad was at work amd I was in charge of making dinner, so I did what every teenager was supposed to do—ordered pizza. The three of us binge watched Santa Clarita Diet and in the middle of each episode, I noticed quick glances from Rain towards me. I was trying my very best not to smile like a tiny creep so I hugged one of our throw pillows and hid half of my face so none of the two boys could see me smiling like a fool.
I was already about to doze off after about a couple of hours watching when our doorbell rang. Weird. This is the first time in forever that somebody rang our doorbell at 10pm. It can’t be dad. He just called us like an hour ago saying he’s stuck in the ER and won’t be home until tomorrow. Caleb looked at me lazily and I knew at that moment I had to get up and check who’s at the freakin’ door.
I stood up and was about to get to the door when Rain blocked me and instead, locked it, and made sure the bolts are in place.
“Hey, I gotta check who’s at the door”, I said as I smiled an awkward smile, trying to avoid eye contact with this gorgeous human in front of me.
“It’s not safe to open doors to strangers at this hour”, was Rain’s plain response before going back to the couch.
I was walking back to my side of the sofa when I heard the doorbell ring again and Mrs. Jenkins’ sweet voice from the other side of the door.
“Hello? Mindy? Caleb? You forgot to come for Trick or Treat so Mr. Jenkins and I brought you treats instead.”
Rain shot a stern look at me. It’s weird because it’s like I can hear his voice inside my head saying “DON’T OPEN THE FUCKING DOOR.”
I stood frozen, in the middle of the living room, doing a staring contest with my crush, figuring the hell out if I should open the door to the old couple who might already be freezing outside or if I should listen to my hallucination of Rain’s voice inside my head.
The doorbell rang three more consecutive times before I heard Mr. Jenkins, or who I believe is Mr. Jenkins with a bad case of cough and colds which made his voice sound nasty.
“OPEN UP YOUNG BLOODS!!!!! WE’VE GOT A SPECIAL TREAT FOR YOU!!!!!”, followed by very loud, incessant banging on our front door.
This time, I felt this bizarre tingling in my spine and I felt something was immediately wrong. Before Rain and I could do anything about it, my hothead of a brother opened the door begrudgingly but to both our surprise, there was NOBODY at our doorstep.
Okay. This just went from weird to borderline creepy.
Rain came charging towards the door with an ancient looking knife I didn’t know where he got, and stood at our doorway looking for any sign of the Jenkins, but had no luck.
“Quick!”, he told us eagerly while boarding up our door, for reasons unknown to both my brother and I, “Grab anything you can use to defend yourselves and DO NOT look out the windows!”
Caleb and I did as we were told, mainly because this is becoming a really weird sleepover and it’s the longest we’ve heard Rain talk in one go.
I picked up my Dad’s favorite marble ashtray and Caleb had his hands on the fire poker. Meanwhile, Rain was able to secure everything, every window and both front door and back door are all locked, curtains drawn.
Everything was quiet for what felt like a century. It felt like we were in an empty void, where not even air is present. That drowning silence was suddenly broken by a loud crashing noise coming from our basement.
“SHIT!!! DID YOU HAVE THE BASEMENT WINDOW OPEN?!!!”, Rain barked at Caleb.
“I don’t know dude! Maybe Dad was working on his wood art thingy and forgot to close the window!”, Caleb answered frantically.
I don’t know about those two but my instinct brought me to our flight of stairs and the two followed me quickly. We went straight to my bedroom and locked the door, then pushed my cabinet in front of it to act as a barricade.
“RAIN, WHAT THE HELL IS HAPPENING?!!!”, Caleb whisper-shouted as we all tried to be as quiet as possible as we heard scuttling noises on the other side of my bedroom door.
“I’ll explain everything later. For now, just trust me and DON’T LOOK AT ANY WINDOW because then they’ll find us. Just don’t forget that and we MIGHT just survive this”, Rain whispered back.
Did he just say we MIGHT survive??? So our survival tonight is NOT a sure thing??? And what are we supposed to survive from?!!! What the hell is happening tonight of all nights?!!! This is supposed to be my RomCom night and it’s turning out to be an episode out of American Horror Story!
My mind was still raising with questions and teenage frustrations when the power went out. Everything was pitch black. The scuttling noises outside grew louder, and that’s when we heard Mrs. Jenkins’ voice, not her usual sweet voice, but a twisted, guttural and unearthly version of hers.
“‘Miiiiiiiiindy…Caaaaaaaaleb…and you bastard son of a witch…come out for your treeeeeeeaaats…”
It sent shivers down my spine. We had to call for help.
I remembered my phone was just at my study table right beside the window. I walked towards it relying on my muscle memory, and was thankful for the feeling of my phone in my hand. I immediately unlocked the screen illuminating the area around me and the window.
Fuck—
—my bedroom window’s curtain was not drawn.
It was a huge mistake. I’ll never forget what it looked like.
I saw Mr. Jenkins…or what used to be Mr. Jenkins, with his Halloween themed knitted jacket covering what used to be his torso. It looked like his head was slumped on top of a heavily deformed body. He has his incredibly sharp and thick black finger and toenails stuck on my glass window, with his bones and limbs sticking out in all the wrong places. His face was plastered with this impossibly wide smile which extends to his earlobes, exposing flesh and muscle under the broken skin from what used to be his lips. His eyes…I will never forget those eyeballs. They were bare eyeballs almost sticking out of their sockets, never blinking, without eyelids. It’s an inhumanly disturbing display on my window and if Rain did not shove me aside, I would have been pinned to the floor by Mr. Jenkins when he broke the glass to get in.
I heard heavy grunts and screams from Rain, and unearthly and soul chilling shrieks from the creature known to me as Mr. Jenkins. I forgot I still had my phone in my hand, and with my hands shaking, I opened my flashlight app and tried my very best to see what’s happening in my room.
I flashed the light at Caleb who moved closer to me and gave me a hug…then I flashed my phone to the other corner of the room where all the noise was coming from.
Rain has blood all over his face and clothes, and his beautiful golden hair is now almost crimson. I saw his right hand as it repeatedly stabbed Mr. Jenkins with the ancient looking dagger he had on earlier, not stopping until the creature was no more than a deformed mass of blood, bones and flesh on my pink carpet.
When Mr. Jenkins looked no more than a lifeless, mangled corpse, we heard a ghastly shriek that made our ears ring and bleed…it sounded like Mrs. Jenkins with a hellish twist, and she came bursting through my barricaded bedroom door looking a lot like Mr. Jenkins in her deformed state, but with her balding head showing maggots on her scalp and barely clinging silver hair. Just as Mr. Jenkins’ fate, Mrs. Jenkins scratched and grabbed Rain on his torso, his legs and his arm, making him wince in pain, but all the more fueling his rage and meeting Mrs. Jenkins with his ancient dagger for what seemed like an infinite stabbing.
Almost the same time as both Mr. and Mrs. Jenkins were nothing but bloody, still masses on my bedroom floor, the ringing in our ears stopped and almost immediately, the lights went back on.
I am writing this now in my journal because Rain said this won’t be our last encounter with “The Unknown”, especially because Caleb gave them an open invitation when he opened our front door to them. Also, because I don’t want to think that I am crazy. Right when the lights turned back on, NO SIGN OF THE MURDERED JENKINS, or any struggle and damage on Rain, or any monster break-in can be seen in my room, AT ALL.
I am still shaking, mostly because of an out-of-body fright experience, and partly because my crush just told me that I’LL BE SEEING MORE OF HIM FROM NOW ON.