I wouldn’t stay in a dangerous situation for long. No one would. They couldn’t. Me neither. I had to leave. I had to run away from the scene. I sped down the road, away from the intersection of hell. That’s when I felt it watching me. Somehow, I knew what was watching me. I committed to calling it a stalker at that point. It was as if it was telling me it was watching me, but telepathically. It was one of those things where you only know it when you experience it. The sensation of the abyss of bulging eyes hit my neck and gave me the ultimate dread.
When I got a good distance away, I phoned a taxi. I had to get back to the hotel and figure the whole thing out.
Right after I got back to my hotel room, I Googled anything I could that had to do with the stuff I saw at the gas station when I was attempting to get into town. “Creepy people with bulging eyes,” “creepy men with blue-ish yellow eyes,” and because I was so confused about the color itself… I searched for Blue-ish Yellow. I finished it off by searching “town wide loss of communication” for anything that could point to why Torsney went dark.
All that came up was stuff about psychopaths (I mean… maybe? But if so, these psychopaths were different. I did look extra deep and found a couple obscure recounts of similar things. Only one mentioned never seeing their family again all of a sudden. I reached out to them via DM, explaining everything about my situation and asking if their’s was similar,) so called ‘Forbidden Colors’ (although I took note of the fact most people are unable to see the colors… that had to mean something, right? I could see the colours. I didn’t have to stare at two white plus-signs on images of the colors blue and yellow…) and communication between people. Like… just talking and stuff. Then I used quotation marks. Mysterious disappearances came up. None of which involved towns going dark and becoming inaccessible.
Four hours later, I got a reply from the person I DM’d. This is what it read:
“It’s kinda fuzzy now but the guy looked normal aside from his eyes. And yeah, his eyes were a weird color too, but the color was magenta.. I don’t know much about the town my family lived in. My family was the only reason I ever paid a visit. They just stopped answering everything one day. When I eventually drove up to their house, I saw that their cars were parked in their driveway. I knocked on their door, but no one answered. It didn’t look like they were home at all going by the inside of their house. Nothing was on, I didn’t see anybody, and I knocked again and again but still… no one answered.
Looking back, there was an odd quietness to the town that day. And the trees would barely move in the wind, which I found odd. Hopefully you find your friends soon and can get back to your home :)”
Weird eyes? Trees would barely move in the wind? Their situation had to be a similar one at best. Odd silence and nobody around? If that same thing was happening in Torsney, it would explain nobody from the town answering anything after I messaged them. But if people did just disappear, where did they disappear to? How could they possibly disappear into thin air? The idea of people just not existing anymore didn’t sit well with me. What would even make them vanish in the first place if that’s the case?
No matter what theory could be posed, their message was no confirmation. According to their original post, their town was a small town in Wyoming and the last time they met with their family was in 2017. The time they went to visit their family but the town was dead silent was six months after the last normal visit. That would still be about five years ago. I guess that means that if the two events are connected, whatever this thing is has been going on for some time now.
After a while of messaging friends from outside of Torsney, asking them if they knew anything… then them responding with a no… there was a knock at the door. Assuming it was an employee, rather than another weird man, I got up and answered it without hesitation. It was my friend Jack. He had multiple bruises and a thousand yard stare that felt like it went far beyond me.
“Jesse? You… you’re okay,” he said.
“Yeah, are you? You went completely dark,” I said.
“Yeah. Couldn’t respond to anything. I need to get out of the view of the hallway, bro,” he said with a panicked expression on his face. I knew him. He wasn’t bad news. I let him. I peeked down both ends of the hallway, not noticing anybody standing out there. I peeked my head back in and shut the door.
Jack sat at the end of my bed, staring aimlessly at the wall in front of him.
“What happened to you?” I asked. “If you’re comfortable telling me.”
Jack looked straight into my eyes, then he looked away.
“Torsney is far gone,” he said.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“I mean… you’d have to be there to know,” he said. “It’s unfortunate. Crazy. I can’t describe it. Weird. Not… not ordinary.”
“Why isn’t anyone allowed to communicate?” I asked.
He grunted. He looked around until his face began to take on a red hue.
“It hurts to recall it,” he said. “It’s like whatever’s in the town doesn’t want to be acknowledged.”
Before I could ask him anything else, there was a knock at the door. I walked up to the door and looked through the hole. It was the stalker. He stood there, giving his usual glare. I stepped back towards Jack.
“Is it…” Jack began.
“A guy with weird bulging eyes,” I said.
Jack almost jumped out of his seat. He adopted a panicked look on his face and glanced around at multiple doors.
“There’s nothing we can do, dude,” Jack said. “There’s nowhere we can go.”
“He can’t follow us everywhere, right?” I asked.
“Maybe?” He asked. “I don’t see a point in running. We won’t get away from him.”
For a second, I was thinking we had a chance of finding a place to hide from the stalker. Then it sank in. The thing could follow us anywhere. He could trace any official means of travel. We didn’t have many options. It was either we stay in the hotel room and wait for whatever had invaded our town to leave or we find some other place to stay for the time being. Yes, staying in the hotel was the obvious choice, but there were two issues. I don’t have a lot more money for it and I don’t know how long the town is going to be occupied for.
The initial thing in the town was still unknown. Whatever it was, one would have to go into the town and experience it themselves, going by what Jack told me. I pressed him a bit more.
“The situation… what is it actually being caused by specifically?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Jack said. “It just happened… and… it’s weird.”
Jack’s panicked and thousand yard expressions gave me the creeps. Not to judge him for feeling whatever he was feeling. He had clearly been through something. Something strange.
Jack remained silent for the following hour. He alternated between covering his face with his hands and sighing all while sitting in one spot. I paced around, confused as to what to do or where to go next. I had nowhere else to go, and my other friends didn’t have enough room to let me stay going by the way they lived.
There was a knock at the door. I looked through the hole. The stalker was still standing there. The head of another stalker was partly visible as well. Great, there’s one for Jack too. I began to wonder what would happen once Jack and I had to check out of the hotel. Would the stalker eventually capture us? Why didn’t it capture me when I reported it earlier? Was it because I was in a public place? I paced around, pondering these questions. The weight of the situation was heavy.
At one point, my phone vibrated. I checked and saw I had an email notification. I opened it. The email was from a man named Charlie. He asked me if I was from Torsney and told me he wanted to investigate the town. He explained he specialized in this type of thing and pointed out the fact the town was dark because people are being forced to keep quiet. Including the police. Jack and I were the only Torsney citizens he could find, and the thing that infiltrated our town only showed its presence to citizens of Torsney. He gave me a meeting spot one mile away from the town and asked my friend to come along with him.
I asked him how I could trust him, expecting a short prompt to just go through with it. But instead, he told me he was the only one other than a Torsney civilian and a local officer that knew something was going on in the town. I told Jack about the emails. His facial expression didn’t change from the terrified and confused look, but he raised an eyebrow and told me he agreed to meet Charlie with me.
Before we walked out of the hotel room, I looked through the hole. To my relief the stalker wasn’t there. I opened the door, peeking down both ends of the hallway. Nobody was down either end. Jack and I walked out to Jack’s car, glancing all over. There was a bit of adrenaline rushing through me. I was looking for the stalker, but to no avail. Jack and I climbed into the car. Jack was driving. He set the location on the GPS and then we headed off.
The drive up to the spot was calm. At least for half of the way there. We were in the middle of rural farmland, about 20 miles away from the meeting spot. The sensation of being stared at hit the side of my head. I knew the feeling. I knew who was doing it. It was telepathic… but a third of the sensation was sharply sinister and dread inducing. I tempted myself not to look. Instead, I stared at the long empty roads and hills up ahead.
I couldn’t do it for long. It became tempting enough not to ignore. I glanced to my right and sure enough… I caught a female stalker with brown hair sprinting at an abnormal speed beside the car. Seeing those yellow-choked-by-blue abysses for eyes sent chills up my spine. The ride had fallen from calm to dreadful.
“Jack… it’s beside-“
“Yeah… I see it.”
“Sp-speed up.”
Jack brought the car up to the speed limit. That was when I peeked out the window. Luckily, the stalker wasn’t catching up. He wasn’t beside the car anymore. However, the numbing sensation of being stared at had moved to my neck. Jack just kept driving. I adjusted my position to relieve myself from the sensation.
When we arrived, I spotted a man standing in a small open patch of grass on the side of the road. He wore what looked like a police suit, but it was without any markings. He himself looked to be in his 20s, which seemed pretty young. But I wasn’t ready to judge. We pulled up in front of him and climbed out of the car. We greeted him and explained who we were. He explained that we’ve seen enough weird stuff to believe what he had to tell us. He explained there’s a being that has occupied the entirety of Torsney. It’s an unknown being that only shows itself to citizens of the towns it occupies. It’s mainly a perception. I needed a few seconds to believe what he was saying. All I needed to do was consider the stalkers.
After all the explaining, he went on to ask Jack and I a couple questions.
“How familiar are you with your town?” He asked.
I explained I was born and raised there. Jack said he had lived there since he was seven.
“I’m not going to make you go into the town if you have too much anxiety about it, but I have some jobs to assign in case you don’t have anything else you want to do elsewhere,” he said. “You up for that?”
Jack took a step back. He began to shake. His eyes widened as Charlie looked him in the eyes.
“Are you one of those freaks?” Jack asked.
“No, do my eyes look off to you?” Charlie asked with a concerned look on his face.
“No… but I’m still up for doing the outside job,” Jack said.
“He was a victim of the thing in the town,” I said, sounding vague. “I really don’t know what that thing is… but yeah.”
“Fair enough,” Charlie said, looking at Jack. He turned his head towards me.
“I’m willing to go into the town to see what’s happening there,” I said. “I won’t let Sam get murdered.”
Jack’s facial expressions back at the hotel confirmed something terrifying happened there. But what? Was Sam already dead? I wasn’t going to assume anything. I didn’t think I’d be rescuing Sam. This Charlie guy sounded like he had what was needed to help.
“Alright,” Charlie said. “Jack, you’ll be scanning the perimeter. Don’t go into the town or else god knows what.” He let out some breath. “God…” he said under his breath.
“Jesse, you’ll be following my lead,” Charlie said.
Charlie reached into his bag and pulled out a dark grey handheld device. He handed it to Jack. Jack observed it and gasped.
“You really know your stuff,” Jack said. “What team are you a part of?”
“I don’t have a team anymore,” Charlie said. “I just do what I was assigned to do.”
Charlie taught Jack how to use the device. Where to point it and such. He was told to scan around for any weird anomalies he could see and talk about them. It sounded surreal, and honestly, very ghost-hunter-esque. I already know the story behind how those shows are produced. This time, there was some outright proof something paranormal was happening. Beyond paranormal in fact.
As Charlie got Jack to begin scanning around, the intense sensation of somebody’s glare hit the back of my head. Chills ran down my spine. For a split second, the sensation on the back of my head burned. I looked behind me. 25 feet away from me was a woman with bulging eyes and a glare that doubled as an abyss.
“Uh, Charlie, it’s one of the stalkers,” I said.
“Ignore it as best you can,” Charlie said.
Right after he said that, feminine whispers entered my head. They weren’t around me at all. They were in my head. Nobody was close enough for me to hear them whisper. But what I heard was quite weird.
“Sam got stabbed to death”
“Charlie is a demon”
“Don’t try anything or else your limbs will be bitten off”
A pit of dread hit my stomach. The whispers kinda sounded like bluffs, but the tone sounded genuine. I didn’t want to believe any of it. Luckily, I didn’t have to. I needed a source.
Don’t trust the weird stalker who doesn’t have a source, I repeated to myself.
It didn’t stop the chills, but I wanted to focus more on Sam anyway.
“Charlie… did you know they whispered into your brain?” I asked.
“Yeah… they did that to me before,” Charlie said. “They need to know their telepathic games don’t work on everyone.”
It was like a persuasion to not go into the town. In fact, that’s what I then decided to assume it was. Mostly just to keep myself passionate about saving my friend. More of the stalker’s words began to invade my head.
“You’re pathetic”
“One of your friends told me something bad about you”
She was trying to tear me down with stuff a grade schooler would say. I did still have some anxiety, but I had learned to keep the social anxieties at bay. And how was that supposed to persuade me to not go help Sam? As I acknowledged those things, the woman’s tone got fierce.
“Have you ever tasted blood and pieces of your tongue in your mouth?”
This was abrupt. My tongue kinda hurt after hearing that. But it was just a question. An idea. Though I checked to make sure my tongue wasn’t in pieces. Of course, it wasn’t.
“If alternate dimensions are real, there are versions of you who are being tested on by tentacle headed humanoids in underground labs”
This didn’t bother me as much, but it was chilling to imagine being tortured and feeling excruciating pain right now in some alternate dimension… if alternate dimensions even exist….
“A guy is strapped to a chair and gets spiders funneled into his mouth”
I… imagined that one out of pure habit. Even taking my focus off of it and forcing myself to focus on my friends, the image of dozens of tiny legs jumbling around in a tube gave me chills.
I didn’t want any more of this telepathic harassment. Considering it was just a bunch of ideas, I was able to ignore them for the moment. The visuals however, may end up sticking. But there was something more important going on. I forced myself to think about Sam.
Charlie gave Jack a pat on the back, then Jack began walking around with the scanner. Charlie began to step towards me, but before he did anything else, a gunshot rang out behind me. Followed by an older woman’s scream. The whispers stopped. Charlie looked to his right with widened eyes. I followed his eyes and glanced behind me.
The stalker stood still, continuing to stare at me. Directly across the road, screams were echoing from a woman who was rolling around in the grass. Charlie sprinted across the road without hesitation.
“Shooting those things doesn’t work,” Charlie said. “They’re able to deflect bullets with their own skin.”
“If only I knew that before!” the woman shrieked.
“At least you missed the heart,” Charlie said.
“Call the damn ambulance!” She shrieked.
“All I’m going to say is that she shot herself,” Charlie said. “Don’t kill me or Jesse.”
The sight and sounds choked my conscience. I couldn’t bare them. I glanced back at the telepathic stalker.
Was this going to end soon?
As the ambulance arrived, the stalker sprinted into the trees. After the lady was put in the ambulance, Charlie sprinted back to me with a look of urgency on his face.
“We don’t have much time now,” He said, stopping a few feet away from me.
“What’s going to happen now?” I asked.
“I’m going to help the paramedics and make sure believable information comes out,” Charlie said. “It’s something I can do while you are in the town.”
“What did you mean exactly when you said the being was invisible in every way?” I asked. “Wouldn’t you be able to detect it?”
“Yes,” Charlie said. “That’s the reason I know it’s here.”
“Surely you know what it might be in some way?” I said. “Like a theory. Especially since you can track some of it.”
“Nope,” Charlie said. “All I could do was track it with professional gear and detect all the stuff I needed to detect in order to know the being was there at the moment.”
“Has it ever affected your town?” I asked.
“No,” Charlie said. He took a small device out of his pocket. A round almost flat metal looking dark brown object with black lines etched all over it. It was the size of his palm. “Just go and take this in with you.”
I took the device. It was a bit heavier than I expected it to be. It had a smooth warm texture that felt slightly euphoric. “Is this like… what is this?”
“This is essentially poison for this thing,” Charlie said, taking a quick glance at the ambulance. “You just have to get the being to reveal itself, then drop the device on the ground…”
“So it’s easier than I thought then?” I asked. It took me a second to realize it sounded like he was about to continue his sentence, but I had cut him off.
“No,” he said. “You have to get everybody else, including you, out of the being’s reach before dropping the device.”
How was I going to do that? I asked him and he told me to tell them to imagine the town crumbling. But in many different ways. Apparently if they imagined it deep enough, to the point their brains would begin to create the slightest sensation, the being holding the town would feel an energy 10 times more intense than each of the sensations combined, choking it to uselessness.
It seemed odd. Why would that work? Of course, I didn’t specialize in this kind of thing.
“So you think I’m able to rescue 500 people on my own?” I asked.
“Well… the population of the town probably dropped to around 200 by now,” Charlie said.
Well that sent a cold chill straight through me…
“So the rest might die too?” I asked.
Hopefully, I wasn’t about to get the worst answer.
“No, this thing needs something to feed on,” Charlie said.
I was feeling a mixture of dread, stress, coldness, and slight relief all at once by that point. I was about to find out what this supposed thing was all about. Anytime the dread piled up, I remembered Sam. The fun we had. The silly stuff. The awesome stuff. All of it was nostalgic. It helped to think about it. It didn’t fix it, but it wasn’t supposed to anyway. I was grateful this random dude had arrived out of the blue to help. Before I went in, I asked him if he was part of the government.
“No,” he said. “I used to be. Not directly though. That doesn’t matter right now though.”
He told me it was time to go, that the medics were about to leave and that he had no time for any more questions. He sprinted away. I turned around and began walking to Torsney.
Well, here goes something…