My brother and I are ten years apart. Our parents were normal on the outside, my mother was a lawyer and my step father was a high school teacher, but at home, behind closed doors, they were monsters. I had been beaten, screamed at, had food taken away, forced to clean the house and work in the yard for hours. One time my step dad choked me until I passed out. More than anything, it was made clear to me every day that I wasn’t good enough and never would be. My brother was treated better, but seeing him go through even a fraction of what I went through was worse than anything they ever did to me. I was more like a father to him than a brother and he was the reason I stayed around as long as I did. But living with my parents was unbearable and I moved out as soon as I had the means. I was so caught up in my own life I didn’t see what they were doing to him. I’m so sorry, Daniel.
Daniel was always a shy kid. He was scared of the dark and spent many nights sneaking into my room to hide from the boogeyman in his closet. I noticed he was really concerned about that, more so than most kids. He believed it was real, that it lived in his closet and came out to give him nightmares. He was always safe in my room but my parents never let him sleep there. He had to stay in his own room no matter how much he screamed and cried. I tried to talk to him about it, I told him the boogeyman wasn’t real, that he couldn’t hurt him. I was the one that got him a night light to help and made sure his closet was closed every night. I knew that they would hurt him if he cried too much so I did everything I could to help him stay calm.
He was 8 when I had to move out and I thought seriously about just taking him and running, but I knew I would end up in jail and he would go right back to them. They said they were going to take him to a psychologist to help with his anxiety. If it was anything like how they “treated” me, they would be dumping pills down his throat until he couldn’t think about how badly they were treating him. Like I said, I wasn’t there when most of what happened with the other kids went down.
It was when I had come over to hang out with him that he showed me his drawings of the boogeyman and all of the journals he’d written about it and the lengths he’d gone to to protect himself. He told me mom would take away his night light if he did something wrong so he had to keep a flashlight next to his bed. They would take them whenever they found them so he had several stashed throughout his room. I could tell things were getting worse for him, but there wasn’t anything I could do except help him and reassure him the boogeyman wasn’t real. Then I would go home and punch my dresser until my hands looked like hamburger meat and I couldn’t breathe.
Every time I went back, he had gotten worse. My stepdad took the door off his closet because he had been failing in school, so now Daniel had started drinking energy drinks to stay awake at night so he could sleep at school. One time he showed me the shoe box he had been collecting his pills in after pretending to take them. That scared me bad. All he had to do was eat a handful of those and, well, I couldn’t even think about it. I took his box and told him to just flush them instead of keeping them, like I used to do.
When he told me about the group sessions he’d been going to with other kids who believed in the boogeyman, it was the happiest I’d seen him in a while. I thought he might get better, and for a while he did. But then one of the kids in the group was found dead in his closet. They called off the group sessions but it was too late. All of the kids who were in the group started to get worse.
Daniel was convinced he had pissed it off somehow, that it was killing them because they knew too much about it. He wouldn’t even talk to me anymore. I tried to find out what happened to the kid but the cops said it was an accident, that he’d had some kind of freak heart attack and died. When I asked why they found him in the closet they didn’t care, it was just where he ended up.
When the second kid was found dead, I started to think it might really be someone or something killing these kids. I started to have these nightmares. I’d wake up and see someone in my room, only they were gone when I tried to look at them or turn on the light. I started feeling like I was being watched everywhere I went. Every open door was like a black eye watching me. Once the third kid was found, the cops finally started to look into it as more than a coincidence and that’s when they first connected it to my brother. At first they tried to say it was his fault the group sessions made things worse, like he had infected them with something.
It didn’t help that my brother had become a nervous wreck, refusing to go to school or sleep anywhere that wasn’t fully lit. I offered to let him stay with me but of course my mom wouldn’t allow that. Can’t let him get too far away from her control, he might realize what a terrible person she is. It was after a fourth kid turned up dead that my brother finally snapped.
He told me he was just trying to get something to eat, just trying to mind his own business, but mom was screaming at him about something. Just screaming in his face about what a stupid bastard he was, about how he’s driving them all crazy. He said he remembers everything going black and then he was standing over mom and she was crying, begging him to stop. He just sat in a kind of stupor as the cops came and took him to jail.
I went to see him and I tried to pay his bail but I didn’t make much money so I just gave him what I could and tried to be there for him. Because he was only 13, he wasn’t charged with anything serious and they took him home a few days later. After that, he locked himself in his room and refused to let anyone in. My parents treated him like a stranger and didn’t even bother trying to help him.
They told me a few days after that they planned to move out of state. When I asked if I could come see Daniel they seemed to dodge the question. I thought he was gone, that they had taken him away from the only person who wanted to help him. It was a week later when he came to my door, crying and desperate.
He looked like he hadn’t slept in a long time, his eyes were sunken and dark and he was shaking so bad he couldn’t speak. I helped him calm down enough to tell me what had happened. He said he had locked himself in his room after he attacked mom and didn’t realize they had left until he came out and saw all their stuff was gone.
They had left him there, I couldn’t believe it. I had never hated anything so much before. I thought it might poison me or stop my heart. I just held him and said I was sorry over and over. I asked him why he didn’t come here right away and he seemed to retreat back into himself. He told me what it was like there, being alone in that house.
The electricity only worked for the first few days, but after that he had to use flashlights to keep the thing away. He told me how it crashed around the house at night, making strange noises and even trying to get him to come out by sounding like mom or dad. He would go out through the window during the day and steal food and batteries from the 7-11 on the corner. He had convinced himself the boogeyman was killing them one by one until only one of them was left to believe in him. He needed to make sure he was the one left, so he did something terrible to make sure it happened.
I didn’t want to believe him, I wanted this to be a delusion. I couldn’t process what he was telling me. He said it got so bad one night he had to run. He ran from street light to street light, staying away from the dark and the whole time he could hear it following him, laughing at him. He only knew where one of the other kids lived and he got in through the kids window. He said the kid was younger than him and he was crying. He tried to explain that the boogeyman was coming for him and that he had to do this so that it would stop and he, he killed him. He said everything went black again and after he was sitting on the kid’s chest with his hands on his throat. He said he saw the light go out of the kid’s eyes and he knew he had killed him. When he heard the parents coming he ran and now he was here and he didn’t know what to do.
I just sat with him until morning, my brain had shut down. I couldn’t believe it. I had to know if it was true. I left Daniel at my place and went to where he said the kid lived. They were wheeling him out in a body bag when I got there. A detective there saw me and started asking me why I was there and what I knew. I couldn’t betray my brother, but what he did was unforgivable. He was a killer now. I told the detective my brother was really messed up and needed help and I wouldn’t tell him where he was unless he promised my brother would get the help he needed. They arrested my brother after that.
I stayed with him as much as I could but they were questioning him for hours. When I saw the detective again I wanted to know what was going to happen to my brother. He looked at me like a doctor with bad news and said Daniel was in a lot of trouble. If I wanted to help him, I had to tell them everything I knew about my brother, my parents, and his condition. I told them about my parents abandoning him at their house, that he was desperate and delusional and that he just needed mental help. The detective seemed to understand and said he would go to the house to verify my story. He also told me he would put a warrant out for my parents to answer for what they had done. I spent the night in the precinct, sleeping on a bench outside the holding cells.
I woke up to hear Daniel screaming and saw that the lights for the holding cell had been turned off. The door was locked and no one was around to open it. I was kicking the door as hard as I could, listening to Daniel screaming just on the other side. I’ll never be able to forget that sound. A few cops rounded the corner and tackled me to the ground. I was screaming for them to help my brother and one of them heard the cries from inside and fumbled with the keys. Inside the cell block it was pitch black. The cops were all stunned by this, none of the lights worked. I managed to break away from the cop holding me and ran in to find him. Beyond the bars of the cell it was just a wall of black, like a velvet curtain. Daniel wasn’t screaming any more.
One of the officers pulled out a flashlight and as he turned to beam to look in the cell I saw it. It was just a flash, but it was there. Its eyes flashed like an animal when the light hits it. It was tall and thin like a scarecrow, its body a dark coat. I only saw its face for an instant but it would forever be burned into my mind.
Its skin was a rotten blackish blue and it was gaunt and tight against its skull. It had no lips, exposing its yellowed and crooked teeth, far more than any person should have. It had stringy, matted dark hair all around its head and down to its shoulders, like black straw. Its fingers stuck out from the sleeves of its jacket like dark fleshy crab legs, far too long to be human. It vanished as the light passed over it and I desperately asked if any of them saw it. They only saw what had been crammed beneath the bunk in the cell. It was Daniel, his face was frozen in a look of absolute terror and he had pulled his knees back into his chest so hard I could see his fingernails had been pried up like trapdoors. Everything went black and I woke up in the detective’s office sometime later.
He told me Daniel was dead, died of the same heart arrhythmia the others had died of. It was being ruled as a suicide and they would be pinning all the deaths on my brother so they could close the case. I was unable to process anything anymore. I did manage to ask why the lights went out in the holding cells and the detective said it was a tripped breaker. Just a coincidence. Right. I could only walk in silence as they escorted me out. I didn’t go home. I couldn’t even remember where it was I was so messed up. I know what I saw. I know my brother is innocent. I just don’t know what to do. Maybe someone here can help me.
Update:
I found out my parents were being let go. They claimed Daniel had become threatening and refused to leave so they had to abandon him. I wanted to scream when I found out. Mom could talk her way out of anything, I should have known. I’ll bet they even helped them pin all the deaths on Daniel. I didn’t think I could hate them more than I already did until that moment.
The nightmares have been getting worse. One of the other kids was found dead but they just filed it as an accidental death. They don’t care that my brother was innocent. I think he was right, there is something killing them, something in the shadows. I don’t know what it is, but I know what I saw. I can hear it sometimes, outside the door of my room. I sometimes think I hear Daniel calling out for me, but I know its not him. I don’t want to sleep anymore. Is this how Daniel was living all this time? I have to do something. I’m done with this spooky, haunted house bullshit. I think I know what to do. I have to go back to the house, to Daniel’s room. Where this all started. I have to know.
Update:
I didn’t know what to believe before now. I could have believed Daniel was crazy, that maybe I was crazy too. But now…
I went to the house and I brought supplies. Extension cords, lamps, spotlights, and a gun. I found an outlet on the outside of a neighbors house and ran the extension cords into the broken window of my brother’s old room. I set up all the lights around a chair pointed at the closet and had them all rigged to a switch I held in one hand and the gun was in the other. Then I waited. I ate protein bars and brought some bottled water and I waited. The house smelled like a sewage dump. The walls of Daniel’s room were filthy and messages were scrawled on it about the shadow man. I had a lot of time to think, about Daniel, about my parents, and about what I had seen that night in the holding cell.
It had started to rain on the second evening and by nightfall it was storming. This had to be it. It couldn’t be a better setting for this. I wanted it to end. The rain was coming in through the broken window and a mildew smell started to spread from it. Then another smell began to creep in, a worse smell. It was rotten but it burned like a chemical smell. It made me think of dead bodies dissolving in lye pits. I could feel it then. The air seemed to thicken and it got darker like I was slowly closing my eyes. I could feel my heart thudding painfully against my chest and all I could hear was the pumping of blood in my ears. I was panicking. I was messing it up.
The fear seemed to unlock a memory I had repressed until then. I suddenly remembered where I had seen that face before. When I was 5 and mom would take me to her law school so she could study, she let me roam around the campus as long as I promised to be back by a certain time. One of the times I went outside the law building and noticed a funny looking tent. It looked like it was made of trash and I thought some kids might have built a fort.
When I looked inside it was like an oven and a terrible smell rushed out of it. Inside I saw garbage and stuff piled up everywhere and in the middle was a large pile covered in blankets. At first I thought it was a scarecrow, it looked dried out and skeletal. It was a man, he sat against the back of the tent not moving. I thought he was smiling but it was just his teeth showing because his lips were gone. I saw his eyes move but they didn’t look at me.
Then I noticed the whites of his eyes were wriggling and what looked like white tears dropped down into his black beard. The tears were squirming back up his face when I realized they weren’t tears, those weren’t eyes, and this man was dead. I ended up running back inside and just waiting for mom to come back. I didn’t tell anyone what I saw and I had forgotten it until now. Until I saw it that night in Daniel’s cell.
The warm air hit my face like someone had opened an oven door and the smell seemed to stick to my skin like a mist. It started to step out of the closet now. It was tall, it had to stoop to step through the door. It was too dark to see anything except those crooked pus colored teeth and the shine of its eyes deep in its skull. My chest felt too tight to breathe and I lost feeling in my hands. I tried to remember the plan and hit the switch. I felt it click and nothing happened.
I almost passed out when I heard it and no lights came on. Someone must have noticed it and unplugged it, or maybe the storm had knocked out the power, or maybe this thing had cut the cord. I knew it was over. I raised the gun and put it to my head. The metal was cold on my temple and my hand was too numb to feel the trigger.
Then the power came back on. The light blinded me for a moment and a terrible screech shook the windows of the house. I could see it now, it was a real physical being. Its hair was greasy and hung down over its face. It wore a long coat like a black duster and its skin was a bruise black color. It screamed and writhed in the light. It looked confused, and scared. That snapped me out of my trance and I pointed the gun at it. It looked at me with wild animal eyes, its grinning skull mouth opening to scream as I pulled the trigger and saw the bullet tear through its midsection. It reeled back and dove through the window, bellowing like a wounded bear before disappearing into the dark rain.
I felt like I couldn’t move. I just sat there for what felt like days until I saw the sun rising over the trees. It was real. It was a real creature. I saw it, smelled it, felt it, and I shot it. The wall next to the window was spattered with blood the color of blackberry juice. I went home and slept, I didn’t even let go of the gun the whole time.
I don’t know what to do now. It might still be out there. Maybe it died. Can it die? I haven’t had any nightmares since then and things seem to be normal again. I don’t know what I did that night. I don’t know if it will come back for me. I can’t do anything but keep living. Keep pretending the world makes sense and monsters aren’t real. There is nothing else to do. I’ll update if anything else happens.
Update:
I’ve been seeing a psychiatrist about my anxiety. He told me talking about it here might help. Thank you all for the support. The medicine I’m on hasn’t helped with the nightmares. They feel so real. I see him. The thing I shot. The thing that killed my brother. Its running through the woods in the dark. It’s scared and confused. Last night I dreamed it was in pain. It grabbed a cat that was sleeping in the grass and killed it. I felt the pain of it scratching him. I felt the warm blood as it bit into the cat. It was pregnant, the babies burst like grapes between his teeth. I threw up in my bed. It all felt so real.
I had another nightmare, the worst one so far. I saw it in a tool shed, hiding in the dark. It was hiding from the light of the house. There was the sound of running and the screech of metal and a flood of light as something opened the shed door. I felt panic and pain, then it turned to anger. The shape in the door was a boy. When the creature screamed and jumped out I could feel the boy’s panic as well. I felt the creature bite and claw the boy while at the same time feeling the pain of being bitten and clawed. The boy’s screams echoed in my mind when I woke up. I haven’t slept since then.
I’ve been watching the news for any mention of the creature. Last night I found something. I had to take an extra dose of risperidone to calm down enough to post it. I’ll copy the article here.
DETROIT (WXYZ) - A family of four was attacked in their home just outside the city limits of Detroit, Michigan. The Suspect was apprehended at the scene of the brutal murders and is now in custody. The family consisted of a Mother, Father, and two young children aged 4 and 8.
Officers responded to a call about an intruder at a residence near Interstate 75 around 2:47am. Officers and medics found the mother and youngest child had barricaded themselves in the pantry. The father and older child were declared dead at St. John’s Hospital about 30 minutes later from severe trauma and bite wounds.
The suspect is a man of indeterminate age and ethnicity who was hiding in the shed in the backyard when he attacked a child (8) and his father who had come outside at hearing his son’s screams. The boy and his father suffered scratches and bites from the man who witnesses described as savaging them like a wild animal. He then chased the mother and young son into the home before police arrived to apprehend him.
Detectives have been unable to get any information out of the suspect and he refuses to speak at all. They found no identification and so far, finger prints and DNA have come up inconclusive. The suspect with be held without bail in the Wayne County jail until more information on his identity is made available.
We urge our readers, if you have any information on the identity of the suspect, please contact the Detroit Police Department at 313-974-TIPS
They added a photo of the guy they caught. I almost fainted when I saw it. Its him. Jesus, its him.
