I think my friend from high school is possessed by something evil.
Let me fill you in with some back story and you can let me know what you think because I’m afraid whatever has taken over her is coming after me next.
16 years agoWhen I was seventeen (which is getting to be quite a few years back now) I had an older male friend, let’s call him Jason for privacy. Now, when I say older I only mean he was 20 to my 17. Anyways, his age plays into the story which is why I mention it in case you were wondering. We lived in an incredibly small town, one where everyone knows everyone, so your reliability can be determined by who your parents are. This is why at the ripe age of 20 he was given the responsibility of making sure a small, church run, private school was locked up each night.
The school was on the same property as the church that ran it, but was in an older building that was several yards away. To be honest, it always creeped me out, but back then I couldn’t even stand to be in a room without a small light, so of course a dark, unoccupied building would give me the heeby jeebys. How I got roped into going with him sometimes is simple: I had a HUGE crush on this man. Since he had already graduated I didn’t see him at school, so this was one of the ways I could hang out with him.
During this time there was also a girl I went to high school with and during our junior year we became really good friends, we’ll call her Susan. She also happened to work with the guy I had a crush on at the local grocery store, so sometimes all three of us would hang out. That also meant that she would also tag along with us when he went to lock up the school.
I’ll admit, there was a bit of jealousy over their friendship, but that has no bearing on this story.Anyways, close to the end of my senior year I had a death in the family. To make me feel better a group of friends, both Jason and Susan included, took me out to eat at a local food spot. It was fun and made me feel much better, especially since I had only been around family, who were also in mourning, for almost a week. Dinner wrapped up and we all went, as a group, to help Jason lock up the school.
I guess now would be a time to mention that while I had nothing to do with the occult, a few others were fascinated with it, especially Susan. She always wanted to see ghosts when out late at night and would tell me how she’d love to be able to talk to one. She knew I didn’t like talking about that stuff, so she didn’t mention it often.
Anyways, looking back, I should have seen what happened next coming.
Once we got to the school we made our way around the parameter, laughing and cutting up. It felt so good to laugh. Once we made sure all the doors were locked we made our way inside to make sure everything was turned off. Honestly, I think we used the fact that Jason had a key to keep the night going.
We all piled into the dining hall, when of course, the conversation turned to if we think the building was haunted. I’ll be honest, back then I didn’t believe in any of this stuff. I got creeped out, sure, but that had more to do with an empty building at night and the possibility of other people breaking in than it did with a fear of seeing a ghost.
During our conversation Susan decided to lay her head down and close her eyes for a bit. She’d snuck some vodka into her coke at the restaurant and it had finally hit her. Look, I know that sounds crazy, but this was the early 2000’s and a small restaurant in a small town. Crazier things had happened. I was a little worried about her, but it wasn’t the first time alcohol had hit her hard. Looking back, I should have offered to just take her home. The “what ifs” haunt me to this day.
Ha, haunt. What a choice of words.
The others decided they wanted to try and see if they could get a ghost to talk to them. I can still feel the clinch of my gut when they began, even though at the time I wasn’t see why. It wasn’t like they hadn’t done this many times before.Jason started to speak out loud, asking whatever he hoped was in the room with us to show itself. They had their digital cameras out to take pictures in hopes of seeing something when they looked back. I didn’t like the idea, something deep in my brain telling me that while I TOLD myself I didn’t believe in ghosts, I didn’t want to test that theory. However, because I didn’t want to be the wet blanket, I took out my camera as well.
We began to take pictures of different areas of the room, with flash and without. Susan stayed asleep through the whole thing, so I decided to snap a picture of her to hold as a friendly sort of blackmail when I’d returned to the table. As soon as I did the flash must have startled her because she blinked and gave an odd sort of groan.I glanced at my camera screen and went to the photos I’d taken.
”Amy?” I looked over at Susan to see she was awake.
(Amy isn’t my real name, but you know the drill)I went over and sat next to her. I told her Jason was up to his usual ghost hunting and that she could go back to sleep and I’d wake her when everyone was done. She didn’t answer, so I assumed she’d done as I said and went back to sleep. I should have looked at her, damnit I should have, but I kept looking at my stupid camera. Nothing stood out, but that was normal. Like I said, I didn’t believe in ghosts or anything like it and had never once captured anything odd.
The rest of the group finally came back and sat around me and Susan. I asked them if they got anything good, but they all said no.
“I guess we should just get out of here. It’s getting late.” Jason said.
I nodded my head and went to shake Susan awake, but when I looked over at her she was gone.
“What the hell?” I murmured to myself.
Jason looked over at me and made a face. “Where’s Susan?”
“I don’t know. She was just here.” I said back as I got up.
Just then we all heard a loud crash.“Shit.” One of the other guys said as we all turned to see Susan stumbling out of the kitchen area.
“Damnit Susan! You’re going to get me fired if you mess anything up!” Jason said as he made his way over to her.
Well, he started to, but then he noticed that she had a knife in her hand.
I hadn’t seen it yet, so when Jason came over to stand in front of me I frowned.
“Susan, why do you have a knife?” Craig, one of the other guys, asked.
Knife? Why the hell would she have a knife?
“This isn’t funny Susan, put that away and clean up your mess so we can get out of here.” Jason said, though he didn’t move.
I glanced around him and saw Susan standing a few feet away. She had a weird, glazed look to her eyes. She’d never acted like this before and my stupid brain immediately went to the plot of the last horror movie I’d watched. The main character ended up possessed by a demon and murdered her whole family.
Suddenly she began to run towards us, knife raised.
“Shit!” Jason said as he pulled me out of reach. The others said similar things and moved away.
“Susan! Stop this now! It isn’t funny!” Kayla said, the only other girl in our group.
Susan tilted her head to look over at Kayla and gave her the most sinister smile I’d ever seen. She then began to laugh, her whole body shaking. I though she would drop the act then but she simply stood there laughing.
Kayla, partly brave and mostly stupid, huffed and went over to where Susan stood. She went to grab the knife but Susan stopped laughing and slammed the knife into Kayla’s neck.
My eyes bulged and I would have screamed if I could have made a sound. Susan pulled the knife out of Kayla’s neck and began to stab her repeatedly. Jason, thankfully not frozen, grabbed my hand and pulled me with him out of the doors that lead to the outside.
I don’t remember much about what happened next, but apparently Jason loaded me into his truck and took off. Craig and the rest of the guys also booked it out of there after seeing all the stabs Kayla had to her neck and chest and one of them called 911. When the cops and paramedics arrived they found Susan sitting in a pool of blood with Kayla’s body, knife sticking out of her chest, next to her.
Susan surrendered without putting up a fight. All she did was mumble about a “him”.
We all had to give statements about what happened. I told them she’d had a small amount of vodka to drink, but she had never gotten violent before. I told them that one minute she’d been asleep and the next she attacked Kayla.
The funny thing is, no news reports ever really came out about it. Our local paper ran a story about it, but where Susan was underage they never actually named her. She’d skipped a grade in elementary school, so she was only 16 at the time.
I ended up finishing school early and moved away from that town as soon as I could. I couldn’t take the stares and eyes filled with pity. Jason, in a twist of fate, came with me. He transferred to UCLA and I enrolled with him. It’s funny because I honestly don’t remember applying there, but when I was trying to figure out what school would take me the farthest away that acceptance letter was in top of my pile.
Jason had applied after I made my decision and because he had a GPA of 3.9 at the University of Tennessee he was able to transfer in.Later that year my mom sent me an email with the verdict of Susan’s trial - Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity. The psychiatrists that evaluated her ended up diagnosing her with schizophrenia, though to this day that always felt off to me. She’d never displayed any signs of the illness before that night and ever since then she’s become mute. She never said why she did it, only that the man told her too.
Honestly, I think her grandparents made everything go away. While her parents weren’t well-to-do, her grandfather was in business with the father of one of the state’s senators.
I visited her once before I left, hoping to get closure. She’d been my best friend and then in the blink of an eye she became someone else entirely, but the she just stared blankly at me the entire time. The only other time I saw her was when I had to come back to testify at her trial. I didn’t follow it after that because I wanted to leave it all behind.I went back to California and finished school, graduating with a degree in mechanical engineering. Jason also graduated the year after we moved and went on to attend medical school.
We got married during his first year of residency and settled into life in North Carolina for the duration. We liked it so much that we ended up staying when he was offered an attending position at the same hospital he did his residency at. It was still far enough away from our hometown, but it was close enough that our family could come visit.
They understood why we didn’t want to come back home.
I’d almost moved on from the ordeal now that sixteen years had passed. Don’t get me wrong, I still have trust issues and never got close to anyone again. Jason was the kind of the same, though he did make friends with some of the guys he went to medical school with.
My therapist says I’m as close to being healed from the event as I could be.That was, until a few days ago.
I received a letter with no return address, which I felt was odd, but I opened it any way. My hands shook as I realized it was from Susan.
“Why now” was all I could think as I began to read what she’d written.
Amy,
I’m writing you this because someone needs to know the truth and I don’t know how much longer he will let me keep control.
There’s something wrong with me Amy. That night, before everything happened, something took over me.
There was a big blotch of ink and it looked like the pen even ripped the paper. I blinked a few times but kept reading.
You should have checked your camera.
That was it. The letter ended and I let it slip out of my hands. I should have checked my camera?
My eye widened and my heart dropped.I grabbed the paper again and noticed that the handwriting at the end of the letter didn’t match the beginning. I felt a chill go down my spine.
Jason found me in the attic later that night when he finished up at the hospital. In my hands was my old digital camera and the letter lay beside me. I kept staring at the image in the screen even when he sat next to me and picked up the letter. He crumpled it up and took the camera out of my hands, looked at the screen, and then turned it off and took the batteries out.
“Forget about it Amy.” He told me as he wrapped an arm around me.
It’s been three days but I can’t get that image of Susan sitting at that table with her head down while a dark, masculine figure hovered next to her. It was the he she referred to in the trial and letter. I’d had the truth about what happened packed away in a box for almost two decades.
Jason burned the letter, but simply put the camera away. He tries to act tough, but I can tell it’s scared him. Late last night I could hear him mutter about how she could have gotten our address. He thought I was asleep, but I cracked an eye open and saw that he was staring at an image on my old camera.
I didn’t tell him that I know how she got the letter got to us though, because I know that SHE didn’t. That thing did.And now I’m afraid it’s coming after us next. It knows we know. After all, Susan didn’t send us the letter.
He did.