I shook anxiously as I waited for their person to arrive. The door opened and in came a man wearing a hoodie and a red mask covering his entire face aside from his eyes. He looked me in the eyes with a deep invasive glare and told me to come with him.
Considering I had no other choice, I followed him out. We walked silently down an eerily silent hallway in which a brick wall could be seen right on the other side of each door window. The person guided me out to a parking lot with only three cars. He unlocked his car, then I followed him to it. Once there, I asked him where we were going. He didn’t answer. He climbed into the car in silence. I climbed in after him. Once I got comfortable in the passenger seat, he locked the doors and finally spoke.
“I’m taking you to each of your old classmates’ houses,” he said. “You’re going to ask them if they gave you a picture of you and your friends walking in the woods”
“Would they even remember?” I asked.
No response. Who knows. Maybe they would, but how were we even going to know if they actually did it but then forgot they did it? Or maybe he was counting on them not remembering, as it would mean it wasn’t as important to them.
The drive to the first house was about half an hour. Once we got there, it was too dark to see the house. But it wasn’t like I had ever been in the area before, so I really didn’t know who to expect.
We both climbed out of the car and walked up to the front door. He knocked and we waited for somebody to answer. Sure enough, I heard footsteps, and the door opened. A girl with blond hair stood in the doorway. I didn’t recognize her, but it had been 10 years. The cloak explained who I was in a surprising amount of detail. Full name, the names of my other classmates, the name of the school, then he explained the picture. He asked her if she knew anything about it.
“No… I don’t,” she said. “I wasn’t there on the last day of school that year.”
The cloak thanked her for her time. She asked why he was wearing the cloak. He gave a passive answer. “For fun, now we need to go.” Then we got back in the car.
“When they don’t have a negative reaction to me, that means they don’t know,” the cloak said.
“Who are you?” I asked.
No response again. It took only ten minutes to get to the next house. There, at the door, a boy with black hair answered the cloak’s knock. He had a look of confusion on his face, then he expressed excitement about seeing me again. The cloak explained the picture. The guy told him he didn’t touch my desk on that day. The cloak excused himself and I, then we got back into the car.
The third house was a 20 minute drive away. The girl who answered the cloak’s knock gave a look of surprise, but at the cloak.
The cloak explained the picture to her.
“Um, one-one second,” she said, shaking. She shut the door and all I could hear were quick footsteps.
“She did it,” the cloak said.
“How do you know she doesn’t think you’re a murderer or something?” I asked.
“Trust me,” the cloak said, walking up to the door. The cloak opened the door and stepped in. He took a left. A minute went by before I heard a feminine scream.
“Get away from me! I’m sorry! I was just jealous!”
A police car pulled up in the driveway. The officers inside saw the cloak and their eyes widened. Their faces went pale. They backed out of the driveway and sped down the road. Chills ran down my spine. Who was taking me around town? Why did he know where each of my sixth grade classmates lived? Why didn’t the police pull out their weapons and arrest him? I had no idea what was going on. I asked the cloak. He told me I didn’t need to know. Maybe that was true at this point. I just wanted to be back home anyway, sleeping instead of being creeped out by this dude in his cloak.
Back in the car, the cloak asked me what the last thing I said to my friend Randall was before I moved away. I looked through my memories, but I couldn’t find the actual last thing he said to me. The cloak told me he was going to drive me to Randall’s house so I could see him as he is today. To give me an update on what his demeanor and presence is like. In any normal case, I’d be excited. But this cloak creep was guiding me through this. I doubted it would be fun to see him again, which was kind of depressing the more I thought about it. Was Randall a creep nowadays? Hopefully he isn’t, but you’d need to be delusional to be okay with hanging out the freaking cloak despite there clearly being something totally off about him.
Once we arrived at Randall’s house, my nerves were wracking. What was I supposed to say? What was I supposed to do? What was going to happen if I didn’t say or do the right thing? The cloak and I got out of the car. As we walked up to the front door, I could barely feel my legs. At the door, the cloak knocked. Seconds later, the door opened. He was 10 years older now, but I still vaguely recognized him.
“Well here you go,” the cloak said. “This is the one who had the picture this whole time.”
“Wow, I haven’t seen you for a while,” Randall said to me in a dark tone. The only response I could think of was one pressing question.
“That stuff you showed me back then… why did you show me that stuff if it could’ve gotten me into this mess?”
“I was 12,” Randall said. “Things are serious now. I don’t have much time to talk. Do you have your phone with you?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Give it to me,” Randall said. “If you don’t, we’ll take it and smash it.”
I fished my phone out of my pocket and handed it to him.
“I’m just going to erase all the evidence,” Randall said.
As he looked through my phone, I looked at the cloak. He raised his hands. Sharp needles grew from each of his fingers. I felt my hairs stand up again. I thought about running, but that would probably trip an alarm in their brains. I chose to stand there and wait, dreading what was to come.
“Alright, done,” Randall said. “Nice seeing you again, but it’s time for you to leave. Bye.”
Randall shut the door. I looked at the cloak. He gestured towards his car. Over the next drive, I tried to make sense of the situation. It just didn’t make any sense. I knew nothing, and I wasn’t being told anything.
It was about 1 AM, but I was too alert to sleep. Luckily, the cloak drove me into my part of town, then pulled into my driveway. Before I got out of the car, he told me I was going to be watched over and that the investigation will include spying on my internet search history. As invasive as it sounded I had no choice but to respond the way he wanted me to respond or else I’d be tortured. I shook my head without saying a word, then I got out of the car. As I shut the door, the cloak sped out of the driveway and down the street.
So the investigation includes a breach of my privacy? I felt like reporting him to the police, but then I remembered the officers’ reactions earlier. I decided to act on the idea the cloak was just putting on an act, just in case reporting him would actually work. I reported him, gave all the details of his appearance, his friends, Randall, and the panicked girl.
At school the next day, a substitute teacher named Mr. Jones was teaching English class. I told him all about the Bradford Triangle. That I had a friend named Randall who showed me pictures of weird creatures and told me what was really going on at Area 51. That I was kidnapped by his friends and talked to by a man in a cloak I reported to the police. He raised an eyebrow, then he asked me about the police report. As he did, his pupils turned white and red, only to return to normal upon blinking. Chills ran through me. I explained what I reported, then he told me he needed to speak to me before class ends.
I needed to get the hell out of there. But how? I wanted to tell other teachers the stuff I told Mr. Jones. Hopefully I could without much fear.
After everybody walked out for lunch, I walked over to Mr. Jones, who was typing on his computer. I took a deep breath.
“You w-wanted to talk to me?” I asked.
Mr. Jones froze. His head turned towards me at lightning speed. This wasn’t a human being. Not at all. I expected his voice to be a deep demonic tone, but his words came out sounding normal, which was weirder and more unnerving than I would’ve assumed, going by how he was acting.
“No one is here to help you,” he said. “Go eat lunch. You’ll figure out the rest.”
I went over to the teachers lounge in room 101, hoping I wouldn’t see the cloak again on my way there. I knocked on their door. I could hear them talking about grades or something, then one of them answered. I told them everything. For the topic of Mr. Jones, I told them I didn’t feel safe around him. Anything that would be vague enough to stay within the lines of being plausible enough to not have to be around him if I didn’t feel comfortable. They agreed I didn’t have to be around him.
During the rest of the day, I told as many teachers I’d come across as I could about the cloak. The more people knew, the better. But my reach wasn’t far. No harm trying though, right? The teachers were sympathetic, aside from one who passed me in the hallway in between periods three and four. Odd flushed white mixed with red pupils with an overbearing stare. Even when not looking right at me, I felt it. Me being watched by a mad force.
That afternoon, I was sitting in my living room. I thought Mr. Jones was taken care of, but then I felt a familiar stare. I looked out the window and saw him standing in the front yard, staring into the living room window with those white and red pupils. I closed the curtains, but I could still feel his stair. The hairs on my arms were standing up. This was too otherworldly to ignore, so I went to my bedroom, closed my blinds, then sat down on my bed.
My heart is at the bottom of my chest. No one is going to help me. I’m going to have to stay quiet about this whole ordeal. I don’t know how long I’m going to have to deal with this, but it’s going to be suffocating for sure.