Hey guys.
I know what you’re thinking, woah, he’s back! It’s been so long!
Yeah well, I’m sorry about that. Truth be told, I’ve been pretty busy between school and work. I work at the post office now right across from campus so I don’t really have much time on my hands. Also, my laptop broke and I was too lazy to type stuff out on my phone.
That’s besides the point though.
Right now, I’m at work. I should be doing work things instead of typing on my phone but I’m not able to.
Instead, I’m sitting my ass on this cold, tiled floor in the lobby behind the checkout desk while my coworker has barricaded himself in the bathroom. I’m not sure if he’s still crying or not but if he is, I don’t blame him.
Honestly though, it’s a fucking miracle that I’m able to get any sort of wifi here to be able to post this right now. The office in the back has been completely smashed up but I guess the router of all things somehow survived so I can’t complain too much. I guess I should explain what’s happening, shouldn’t I?
Like I said in my previous post, I live at the edge of a small, shitty town and I go to a just as equally, shitty university that’s across the street from where I work. My university is weird but I’ve learned that the town is weirder. The weirdness mostly involves paranormal happenings that I just so happened to not believe in but I honestly think that’s changed since I got here.
There isn’t much in the town besides the post office, the coffee house, the police department, city hall and of course you can never forget the park where some kids go to scream at night because of all the built up stress homework and exams gives them.
Anyway, I went to work today. I started a while back ago and usually work in the evenings. They were nice enough to work with my class schedule so I was able to come here and still have time to study back in my dorm. There aren’t very many people who work here. Steven, the guy who’s hiding in the bathroom, Molly, the girl who also goes to school with me and Bill. I don’t know much about Bill besides the fact that he loves Harley’s and only drives a Harley motorcycle. He also has an unhealthy obsession with beef jerky and dresses like he just got off the ranch handling some cows.
Right now, it’s just me and Steven today. Usually what we do is whenever packages and stuff come in, we’ll go in the back and sort out the mail, putting them into their respected PO Boxes and help customers with whatever mail related needs they have. It’s simple, pays well and oftentimes we can close up early if we want to because we don’t have that much to do.
Today started off pretty normal. Steven was already behind the counter, wiping it down with a Clorox wipe while I clocked in to start my shift. Steven’s a decent guy. Like Bill, I don’t know much about him other than he’s around 24-25, has strikingly blue eyes and messy brown hair with a bit of a stubble on his chin, lives in town by the lake and also has his own shop there where he likes to spend his time building props and stuff. He’s told me he mostly does it as a hobby and occasionally he’ll sell them on Etsy or EBay but most of the time he keeps them on display. Steven was one of the first people I met while working here. I met Molly next throughout my first week and Bill I had already met since he was the hiring manager. Bill decided that Steven would be my trainer for now until I was ready to man the place on my own.
Anyway, I clocked in and hopped behind the counter. We had a couple of people come in to check their mail who were mostly university students but other than that, it was a mostly quiet day. Steven and I chatted about how our week was and we worked on cleaning up the back mailroom, sweeping up trash and dusting off furniture and such. I occasionally asked Steven some personal questions to mainly get to know him better like, “What do you like to do for fun?” Or, “Got any good stories to tell?” He would happily oblige, telling me about his hiking adventures through the woods with some family members or telling me about that time he belly flopped into a pool of whipped cream. “It was a kiddie pool, just to be clear.” He would specify.
We talked for several hours, cleaned and helped customers whenever they came in. Everything was going smoothly and then that’s when some guy came in. I’ll call the guy, Mr. V. It’s not creative but just fucking roll with it. Mr. V comes in, cradling a box in his arms. He’s dressed in one of those fancy suit jackets you could get at a Men’s Wearhouse, has a clean shave and slicked back, blonde hair. The box he’s cradling in his arms is of standard size and looks like a regular, cardboard box that’s been taped up neatly on all sides.
“Can I help you? Are you looking to ship something?” I ask him. He only stares at me though.
I got an antsy feeling in my gut. Like, you know when you feel something’s off but you aren’t sure what it is? That’s what it felt like. I guess it radiates off of me enough for Steven to come over from stacking up empty boxes around the corner.
“Sir, do you need help with anything?” It’s drawn out sort of as if Steven’s unsure how to assist the man. Mr. V says nothing though. There’s a stoic expression on his face and his gaze never leaves mine as he slowly but surely, places the box on the counter.
I’m looking at this thing now like, is this some sort of a fucking threat? A bomb or something? Thoughts are racing through my mind as I stare down at the box but my attention is brought back up to the well dressed man when he finally speaks.
“Shipping.” He says. He pulls out a notepad with an address on it. It’s somewhere in Michigan that I’m not at all familiar with but this is a postal office and we get plenty of mail going to and from plenty of places. However, this one feels off. There’s just something about it that I can’t shake off and it’s not a feeling I like.
“Yeah, of course.” Steven tells him with a nod and the classic customer service smile. He takes the box to the back, placing it temporarily on a shelf before returning to my side once more. “Just uh, it’ll be-“
The man seems to already know what Steven’s about to say and slides him a $10.00 bill. He tells him to keep the change. Shipping in the states is only about $5.00 here and I try to call out to him to double check if he really wanted us to keep it but he already has his back turned and walking out the door, a little jingle of the bell above indicating that he’s left. He also left his notepad here as well.
Usually, we aren’t supposed to open boxes at our post office. It’s a policy that Bill told me about but I could tell that Steven was just as jittery about it as me and well, I don’t blame the guy for wanting to see what was up with it but now I kind of wished that we had called the cops first or something before opening it.
Can’t go back in time and fix it though, unfortunately.
“Bit freaky, yeah?” He glanced over at me from looking at the box on the shelf. I shrugged.
“Looks like a normal box, I don’t know. Maybe the guy just had trouble speaking or something or he’s from another country and doesn’t know English that well.”
“Yeah, I don’t think so,” Steven disagrees. He grabs the box from the shelf, carrying it over to a table in the mail room. I followed behind him. “See kid, you haven’t been here that long. Things in this town are freaky as hell, just as much as that university that you go to is. Doesn’t make any sense but we try to make do with it. That man though,” He points to the door where Mr. V walked out of. “That was a whole other level of weird.”
I gave Steven a deadpanned look. “Weird like what? Paranormal stuff? Listen, I know the school I go to has some weird shit happening but I don’t believe in it. Everything has some logical reasoning to it, one way or another and besides, should we even open this? If you’re that concerned, I think we should go to the police or something first. They’re literally right across the street and I don’t feel like getting exploded to bits because of your stupid ass.”
He laughs, waving me off dismissively. As I’m typing this out, I’m just now realizing how shit of a coworker Steven really is.
I tried to advise him again but he ignored me. I know that some of you are probably thinking that there were plenty of options I had to get Steven to stop but in the moment, I stood there, dumb founded and unable to think about anything that would have been of use. I could have kept pestering him but my mouth refused to move and I didn’t do anything. I only stood by him and watched.
“Hey, pass me your knife, would you?” Steven asks. I gave it to him.
He flips open the knife and cuts open the top of the box along where the man had neatly taped it together. I figured at this point that if it was something that we needed to be concerned about, it would have happened as soon as he plunged the knife down into the cardboard but nothing did happen. Steven hesitates after he gets the final piece of tape off, handing my knife back to me as he finishes.
“Well?” I ask, watching him. “Are you going to open it? I still think we should call someone but it’s your call I guess.”
He shrugs. “Might as well get it over with, right?” Steven goes to grab the first flap of the box to pull it back but he stops. Before he has the chance, there’s a sound coming from it. A sound that doesn’t make sense at all.
Knocking.
Knocking like when you knock on a door type of knocking. There were three knocks, each one of them distinct and hard to wrongfully identify.
I don’t remember if there were any thoughts running through my head when it happened. If there were, I’d have forgotten them by now. But if I had to take a guess knowing me, I would have tried to rationalize it. Maybe a tape recorder was in the box? Maybe some sort of audio recording that was triggered by Steven’s fiddling with the flap. I looked at Steven. He hasn’t moved from his position but I could tell from the look on his face he was probably thinking, what the hell?
For a few moments, we didn’t say anything to each other. We only stared at the box. I’m not sure what drove me to speak first between the unnerving and tense silence but eventually, I did.
“Maybe…you triggered a recording?” I offered as an explanation. Steven didn’t say anything for a moment but then he shook his head.
“No, no that can’t be right.” He muttered. He let go of the flap of the box and stood up, hurriedly going to the front counter. I heard him grab the notebook the man had left before he returned to the back room where I was. He started flipping through the pages and I watched him, confused out of my mind before he threw the notebook down in frustration.
“Steven?” I ask him, unsure of what else to say. He turns to me, a nervous look in his eyes.
“Go get the phone from the front and call Bill. Tell him to get his ass down here now and while you do that, I’ll watch the box.”
I didn’t understand what the urgent need for Bill was. Why couldn’t we just…why couldn’t we go to the station? The police were right next door and they could help if it was as serious as Steven was making it out to be and I tried to get some answers out of him but he told me to shut up and do it and to also lock the door and keep anyone else from coming in.
I picked up the phone and dialed Bill’s number.
“Hello?” His gruffly voice on the other end greeted.
“Bill? Yeah, it’s me, Shane. Uh, listen we need you to come down to the post office. Right now. Steven said for you to get your ass over here asap.”
“What? Did he set something on fire again?” Bill asked, but I shook my head. Before you ask in the comments, no. I don’t know the story behind that one.
“No, no. A guy came in with a box and I know you said not to open customer’s mail and stuff but the guy was acting weird and Steven wanted to open it and we did but when he was about to open it there was knocking and he started acting weird about it. Do you know what that’s about?”
There wasn’t anything besides phone static on the other end for a good minute. Then, I heard Bill curse.
“God fucking damn it, I told him not to fuck around with it if it ever came in!” He swears. “Alright, I’ll be there in about fifteen minutes. Lock the doors, windows and close the blinds. Don’t let anything out, you hear me?” I didn’t answer immediately, words stumbling over each other as I tried to make sense of it all.
“Yeah but why-“
“Just do what I tell you to! Do not let anything outside of the store!” Then, he hangs up. I stood there with the phone in my hand before placing it down on the receiver. At this point, I knew something was wrong but nobody was telling me what it was. I quickly did as I was told, locking the door and putting up the closed sign. A few students tried to walk in but I was able to usher them away, saying that we were closed for personal reasons. I locked the windows and let down the blinds before I went back to Steven and froze.
There wasn’t anything in the box. It had been opened but there wasn’t anything in it. Not as if in, you can see into an empty box and notice that something wasn’t there but it was as if I were peering down into a dark hole without any light. Pitch black on the insides of it. I look over at Steven, staring at it in horror.
“I turned my back for one second,” He says as if he’s in a trance. “I turned my back for one second and it’s gone.”
There’s a lump in my throat that I managed to swallow. I…I didn’t know what to do. This was out of my element. I don’t believe in any sort of this stuff but everything in my body was telling me that something was horribly wrong.
“Let’s…let’s try and close it? We’ve got plenty of tape and-“
Steven shakes his head.
“We can’t get near it. It won’t let us near it. I…I don’t know what it is but it won’t let us touch it now.” There’s a hint of fear in his voice that I’m able to pick up on. I nodded, taking a step back from the box while stepping closer to Steven to try and bring him back with me too. He takes a step with me without resistance.
I was about to suggest that we should go somewhere else but that’s when we heard loud crashing coming from the makeshift office we have in the back. The noises of furniture being thrown about, shelves, desks and chairs reached our ears and both of us jumped in shock, taking our eyes off of the box. Abandoning it on the table, we quickly went to the office and I was about to open the door but Steven grabbed my arm, pulling me back against the wall with him. He holds an arm against my chest and shushes me.
There’s a window by the left side of the office door. I can’t really get a good look into it as Steven is in front of me and we’re on the right side but from what I can see…I can see a figure. It’s tall, and its hind legs resemble a goat’s. At first I thought it was a trick of the light, as the light fixture that was on the ceiling in that room had apparently been damaged by whatever was in there, swinging back and forth judging by the directions of the stream of coming from it but as I kept watching the figure move around, jittery movements racking its body, I knew that it couldn’t have been a trick.
I watched it with Steven. Occasionally, we’d see it jump on the adjacent wall and have to press back further into the wall because if we didn’t we were sure that it would see us. I guess on that note I should say I didn’t get any pictures of it to post here so I’m sorry about that. I’m not even sure if my phone camera would have picked it up to be honest if I did manage to somehow get a picture of it. Everything about it was just so…otherworldly. Like it didn’t belong anywhere mankind lived.
The office is trashed, I knew that from the moment we got there. I wasn’t concerned about cleaning it up later. I was more concerned about what the fuck I was seeing and if it was even real or if I had somehow started having hallucinations. Eventually, it quiets down in there and Steven and I have both decided that we need to leave but right as we’re about to sneak by, the door slams open. We see something jump on the ceiling before skittering off so fast we barely have time to register what happens. Steven grabs my arm before it notices us and we dart into the office, closing the door behind us and locking it behind us.
The first thing I notice is the blood. It stains the floors in smearing patterns. I…I’ve seen blood before. My classes require me to look at some rather grotesque forms of human beings after crimes but this…it’s so much different seeing blood in real life than it is in a photo. Literal trails of blood are on the floor, smeared into different patterns and vary in different sizes. There’s blood spatter on the walls and on the ceiling and I had never seen so much blood before in my life. There are hoofprints on the ground that have been made by the blood. I’m sure I’m as white as a sheet looking at it.
I don’t know where all the blood came from besides whatever is out there but there isn’t a body or anything nearby to indicate what it belonged to. Steven and I stand there, looking at the scene before us. The light fixture above swings back and forth. We’re only jolted out of our trance when we hear a screech in the lobby.
Both of us looked at each other for a solid minute. Slowly but surely, we looked behind us and out the small window by the door. We can’t see that well where the creature is but we know that it’s out there. We can hear muffled scuffling noises, grunts and coughs. Steven grabs my shoulder.
“Did you lock the front door?”
I nodded. “Y-yeah.” My voice shakes but I don’t care.
“Close the blinds?”
I nodded again.
“Windows?”
“Everything’s locked.”
Steven lets go of my arm. “I…” He starts off, mouth opening but closing as if he lost his thought. “I think we’ll be okay. We just can’t let it outside. Nobody else knows about it.”
I nodded again. “Yeah…yeah. Don’t let it outside. Got it. How do we do that?”
Steven doesn’t say anything. He stares out the window even though there isn’t much to see.
I repeated myself for some sort of answer from him. This time, he does answer me.
“I…I don’t know. Bill just said to keep it away from everyone until he gets here if this ever happened. I don’t…I didn’t think it ever would. I didn’t think I would cause it.”
I don’t know what he means by that but I let him continue on.
“He said to me before that there’s some stuff in the back room behind some storage bins. The blue ones that never get moved. He said we could use it but we’d have to bust a hole in the wall to get to it. I don’t know what it is but we can’t get to it. It’s in the lobby now.“
As if on cue, there was another screech and what sounded like scuffling on the ceiling.
“What do we do?” I ask him but Steven shakes his head.
“I don’t know. Maybe…we should just stay put?”
We couldn’t stay put. We both knew that. If we stayed too long, it would come back and we’d probably be dead for sure. Somehow, we both got the courage enough to step outside. We didn’t hear anything. No scuffling, no screeching or even clomping of hooves on the ground.
Steve tugged at my sleeve and we inched forwards a couple of steps but stopped when we heard it. It wasn’t in the lobby anymore. It wasn’t down the hall or in a different room but we heard a huff of a breath right above us. We both froze. Looked at each other without moving our heads before finally looking up.
I still don’t know what exactly it is. It didn’t have a face but it did have the skull of a goat and small antlers, branching out in the shapes of hands on its head. Its body was completely covered in matted fur, and its hooves were skeletal, planting themselves firmly on the ceiling along with its claws that dug into the tiles. It stared down at us and we stared up. Nobody moved.
Then, it blinked. Well, I don’t know what to call it actually. Where its eyes should have been, got darker for a moment and then returned back to normal but nothing about this was normal.
Not a moment later, it then pounced down at us and the sound I heard come out of Steven was one of pure freight. That’s where we are now. With me, sitting on the cold, tiled floor and Steven in the bathroom crying his eyes out while I’m typing this. When it lunged at us, he had grabbed my arm so forcefully that I was afraid it was going to dislocate but I ran with him without hesitation. The creature above us was fast, keeping up with ease and it landed in front of Steven, letting out a guttural sound. He let go of my arm and took off. I could hear him slam the bathroom door down the hall shut and a few thudding noises, telling me he probably used the shelf in there as a sort of barricade.
I was by myself now. If I’m being totally honest (I am), I was ready to piss my pants at any given moment. The creature in front of me leaned forwards, like an animal sniffing its prey. Then, it made another guttural noise before hopping back on the ceiling and skittering off. Taking the opportunity, I ran to the nearest thing I could hide behind and that happened to be the lobby desk.
I really don’t know what to do now. I’m debating on getting Steven out of the bathroom and maybe we can get the fuck out of here and lock the thing inside but Bill said he was going to be here soon. Has it really not been at least fifteen minute already? I guess not since I haven’t heard him pull up yet. You can hear his Harley from a mile away with ease but there’s nothing besides deafening silence.
If Steven and I make a run for it, we can head back to my dorm room maybe. Lie low for a bit until our shot nerves are calmed down.
I think I’ll try and go get him from the bathroom. If I can crawl around on the floor without the thing seeing me, I can get there with ease. I’ll update as stuff happens but for right now, I don’t know how this will all play out.
Update - 4:35PM: I managed to get into the bathroom after convincing Steven to push away the makeshift barricade he had made. Bill’s been a no show for about half an hour now so Steven and I are sitting in a stall together to try and figure out just what the fuck to do now. He’s finally stopped crying, at least. I’m close to it but I’ve gotta keep my head together. I can cry when I get back to my room or some shit like that but not now. I told Steven about my plan. Run the fuck out of here down to the university and lock ourselves in my room. He had to make a joke about that of course but I’m glossing over it for now. We’re going to stay put for a few more minutes to see if Bill shows up and if not, we’re just going to make a run for it.
Update - 8:15PM: Holy shit. That’s all I have left to say. Steven and I made it out. We ended up crawling through one of the windows after waiting for another twenty fucking minutes for Bill to show and never did. We made sure to lock it, keeping the thing in there and took off. We got some stares from some pedestrians of course but we didn’t care at the moment. For once I’m grateful to live at a place so close to work. I took out my keycard, unlocked the hall door and got us the fuck inside. We were out of breath and the RA started asking us if we were okay but I just…Steven and I just went upstairs and ignored him.
He probably picked up on the vibe that something was wrong but it must not have mattered to him that much as he didn’t follow us. Once we made it to my room, I threw up in the trash can. “That’s fucking gross.” My coworker commented but I flipped him off while hurled over, emptying what remained of my stomach contents. There wasn’t any malice behind it and he went to get me a towel, throwing it in my direction when I was done vomiting and I wiped my face off with it.
“I thought Bill was coming?” I asked, my voice slightly raspy. Steven scoffed.
“Well, I guess not because the bastard never showed, right? Unless he’s pulling up now with a magical solution to fix everything. I’m not going back, screw that place.”
I couldn’t disagree with him there. After we had cleaned ourselves up in the bathroom, we both sat in silence on the beds that my room provided us. I don’t have a roommate this semester but I still got a spare bed anyway. I don’t know how long we sat there for. There was barely any daylight outside now and I could see the darkened outline of trees outside of my window. Steven said that he needed to get back to his place now. To think things over. He told me to call him if anything else happened and if I needed anything. I didn’t say anything and he left.
A part of me wanted for him to stay. I…I really didn’t want to be here by myself tonight. Call it paranoia or whatever the hell you want I just…in the back of my mind I knew something was still wrong. I watched him leave and now I’m here, typing all of this out. All I hope for tonight is that nothing else happens. I don’t know if Bill ever made it down to the post office but right now, I could care less. I really just want to get some sleep but something tells me that’s going to be a hard task to accomplish.
I’ll update sometime later. Maybe when I wake up, I don’t know. I’ll just let you guys know stuff that happens as it comes. Until then.