Have you ever felt terror? Genuine pure terror, the real deal? I’m not talking being scared or frightened or afraid, I mean being absolutely terrified to the very core of your soul? There isn’t a feeling quite like it in all of human experience. It’s not like being scared watching a horror movie; there’s a comforting buffer of reality in between us and what we see on the big screen of a theater or the smaller one of a TV. We know what we’re seeing isn’t real, no matter how frightening it is. And terror isn’t like the thrilling surge of adrenaline you feel when the rollercoaster cart plunges from the pinnacle of its track….although that’s maybe the closest thing to it.
Terror is something primal, even primordial; something we inherited from our earliest cave-dwelling ancestors. Something atavistic that’s intertwined with our most basic sense of survival and self-preservation. The sudden heart-racing, neck-prickling alertness of a hunter who hears the roar of the beast he’s been pursuing…coming from directly behind him.
The footsteps you hear stealthily following you in a dark, deserted parking lot.
The split-second you have to react when you see the drunk driver cross the center line in front of you, bearing down on your vehicle at eighty miles an hour, the useless scream of brakes, the horn, the headlights growing brighter and brighter, flooding your vision.
The light switch you frantically search for in the dark…only to feel someone else’s hand covering it.
Pure terror is something most of us, if we’re lucky, will never truly experience in our lives (although we probably think we have at some point or another).
I am not so lucky.
I became intimately acquainted with pure terror when I was nineteen. And I haven’t been the same since.
*****
It was a summer night in 2015 when it happened. I was home from college, having just recently completed my freshman year. I was housesitting for my parents while they were in Florida for two weeks, enjoying their second honeymoon.
My parents had recently come into a rather decent-sized sum of money, a compensation settlement my father had collected after an injury at his job had left him slightly disabled. They had used some of the money to purchase an old two-story farmhouse out in the country, something they had always talked about doing, and had moved out of the suburbs, away from the city where they had lived their whole lives. The house was pretty big, almost twenty rooms, and old; well over a hundred years. It had been pretty run-down when they bought it (which is probably why they had gotten it rather cheap) but my dad had done a lot of renovations on it, doing the work himself, and had fixed it up pretty decently. It was actually a pretty nice place, pleasantly quaint, but with all the modern amenities. It was surrounded by acres of farmland, five miles from town and two miles from the closest neighbors.
They had asked me if I wanted to watch the house while they were gone, partly because it would have been the first time I really had a chance to enjoy having the run of the place since they’d fixed it up and mostly because they knew I didn’t have much else going for me that summer. I wasn’t a very popular guy and hadn’t made many friends at college. No girlfriend, either. In fact, my social life was essentially non-existent…a fact my parents were aware of. I think they probably felt sorry for me.
I had, of course, jumped on the offer, and why not? A place I could crash at for two weeks free. What was there not to like about a deal like that?
The first couple days went by uneventfully. Mostly I just wandered around during the day, exploring their new house and the surrounding property. At night I hung out in the living room watching cable TV or browsing the internet on my laptop while stuffing my face with junk food before crashing out on the couch.
As I said earlier, my parents’ new house was huge; more of a mansion, actually. The people who originally built it must have been rich. There were six bedrooms upstairs, only one of which was used (by my parents, obviously). Two of the other five were used for storage and the remaining three bedrooms were completely vacant. There was also the upstairs bathroom and another room that had probably originally been a sewing room but was now used by my father as an office.
On the first floor, there was a rather spacious foyer with a hallway that lead to the living room. There was the kitchen, a neighboring pantry, another bathroom, the dining room, and another large room that was probably supposed to be a parlor. My dad had remodeled it as a rec room with a pool table that could also be converted to a ping-pong table and an air hockey game. There was also an attached shed/two-car garage, plus an attic and a basement that ran the full length of the house above it.
My parents were thrilled with their new place and amazed that they had been able to score such a great deal on it, even accounting for its originally dilapidated condition. I was happy for them, but at the same time, there was something about the house that gave me a mildly uncomfortable feeling. I couldn’t put my finger on exactly what it was. Just an uneasy sense that there was something not quite right about it. I brushed it off and told myself I was just being paranoid from the sudden sense of isolation I felt. I had grown up on the outskirts of a big city and had just spent the past nine months on a busy college campus with thousands of other students and this was really the first time I had really been alone and on my own since…well, since ever.
But then, on the third night…something happened.
I was sitting in the living room eating some Chinese food I had picked up in town and watching the 2004 remake of Dawn of the Dead on cable. It was early in the film, the scene where Mekhi Phifer’s character is checking to make sure the mall entrances are locked when out of nowhere – jump scare! – a badly mutilated zombie with half its face eaten away from the bare skull smashes against the glass, starling him, and the audience.
I jumped back too (even though I had probably seen the movie a hundred times already and knew it was coming), nearly spilling my Moo goo gai pan all over myself. I chuckled nervously and admonished myself for being so jumpy. Maybe watching a scary movie while alone at night in a house in the middle of nowhere wasn’t exactly a good idea.
It was going on eleven and I was thinking about turning in…when something caught my attention and I perked my ears up, suddenly alert.
I thought I had heard something.
I grabbed the remote and quickly muted the TV, listening intently.
I heard it again, coming from upstairs, directly above me: a soft, quiet shuffling sound. Then the creak of a floorboard, followed a moment later by another. As if something was moving very lightly across the floor, gingerly moving from step to step, trying to avoid detection.
I felt a sudden jolt of alarm. My first instinct was to reach for my phone to dial 911 and report an intruder, but I quickly repressed that urge. This was an old house, and old houses made all sorts of strange noises. Or it could be some kind of small animal. I was already spooked from watching my horror movie, and might be letting my imagination get the best of me. I didn’t want to overreact and get the police involved in something that might turn out to be nothing at all.
I had to investigate it first.
I wasn’t thrilled with that thought. I paused for a moment, thinking. I couldn’t go up there unarmed, in case it did turn out to be…something serious. My parents didn’t own any guns, so I grabbed a fireplace poker - it was better than nothing - and quietly, cautiously, went down the front hall to the foyer where the staircase was located. I crept slowly up the steps, one at a time, my heart racing, alert for the slightest noise from above me. But the shuffling sounds had stopped.
I was scared, and my fear only increased with each riser I took. I arrived at the top of the stairs. The upstairs hallway ran in either direction in front of me. To my left was the bathroom and three unoccupied bedrooms, to my right, my parents’ bedroom, the other two empty bedrooms, my dad’s office, and the door that led up to the attic.
I turned left, deciding to start at that end and search each room systematically to the other end.
I reached the first bedroom door. Raising the poker, I reached for the knob. I hesitated a second, pressing my ear against the door, listening. I heard nothing from the other side. Gulping, summoning my courage, I turned the knob and flung open the door.
The bedroom was dark.
I reached in to flip the light switch…then withdrew my hand, imagining my fingers encountering the hand - or claw - of someone or something already over it. The next second it would grab my wrist in a vise-like grip and yank me inside the pitch-black room, the door slamming shut, my blood-curdling scream the last sound I would ever make…
I inwardly told my overworking imagination to shut up with that crap. I told myself to stop acting chickenshit. I wasn’t some scared little kid afraid of the dark anymore, I was a full-grown adult and I had to act like it.
I reached inside and felt around on the wall until I found the light switch. No psycho killer’s hand or monster’s claw already there. I flicked it and the light came on. I scanned the interior of the bedroom.
It was one of the rooms my parents used as storage space and was cluttered with all kinds of stuff: boxes of old clothes, stacks of books, my dad’s fishing gear, Christmas decorations, etc. I looked around but there was nothing and no one lurking in the room. I raised the poker and opened the closet, but it was empty apart from some spare bedsheets on a shelf and a box of family photos on the floor.’
I left the first bedroom and moved onto the second. I opened the door and turned on the light. The room was vacant and completely barren. No furniture, just bare walls and a dusty floor (I noted there were no footprints in the dust). I opened the closet and saw it contained only a box of poisoned mouse bait and a few dust balls on the floor.
Emboldened, feeling somewhat reassured, I did a quick but thorough sweep of the remaining second-floor rooms but they were all empty and nothing seemed out of place.
That left only one last place to check.
I turned to the last remaining door, the one at the end of the hallway…the attic. I felt another brief stir of apprehension. The attic was the one place in the house I had yet to really explore.
I opened the door and was met with a flight of ascending stairs climbing into darkness. There was an outrush of musty air. There was no light switch at the bottom of the stairs; I would have to climb into the darkness.
I took out my phone, turned on the flashlight app, then forced myself to climb the steps to the top.
I aimed my light around. The attic was a long but somewhat narrow room with tiny, old-fashioned round windows on either end and old cobwebs hanging from the eaves like tattered streamers. It was heaped with old junk left over by the previous owners that my parents had yet to clear out. My flashlight illuminated a hanging lightbulb with a pull-cord in the center of the attic. I quickly pulled it and the attic was lit with dim, yellow illumination. I carefully inspected my surroundings. An old, splintered bed frame, an ancient sewing machine, a TV set that looked like it was from the 1950s, a battered kerosene space heater, a box of mostly broken dishes and rusted utensils, a wooden rocking horse that was probably from the turn of the century, a headless, armless figure standing in the corner–
I jumped back with a startled gasp, feeling my heart leap. I took a closer look…and relaxed with a sigh. It was just an old dressmaker’s dummy standing upright.
I emitted a nervous, shaky laugh.
Dipshit. What were you expecting to find up here? Freddy-fucking-Krueger?
I looked around a final time but the only person standing in the attic was me.
I felt my muscles unclenching with relief. Nothing. No homicidal madmen, no monsters or ghosts or demons or Lovecraftian abominations. Just my own overactive imagination.
I was about ready to turn around and go back downstairs…when suddenly the lightbulb went out.
Shit!
Using my flashlight, I scrambled down from the attic, only to find that the lights on the second floor were also out. The power had gone out.
I understood at once what had happened.
The fuse box.
The house’s electrical system was hooked up to an ancient, outdated fuse box my father was intending to replace with a modern circuit breaker. It was the last big job he hadn’t gotten around to yet. My parents had warned me before they left for their trip that the fuse box was old and clunky and prone to failing once in a while. And when that happened, it usually meant a fuse had blown out and needed replacing.
The fuse box was in the basement.
I felt a prickling sensation on my skin and the hairs on the back of my neck rising.
The basement was one place in the house that especially made me feel distinctly uncomfortable. Something about the atmosphere of it seemed particularly oppressive and sinister. I had tried to avoid going down there as much as possible, especially after nightfall…but unless I wanted to spend the night in the dark, now I had no choice.
I pumped myself up for the trip as best as I could, telling myself there was nothing down there to be afraid of. I had been down there before after all, and nothing had happened…
But that had been during the day, when my parents were still home.
You fucking coward, an inner voice chided me in disgust, just go and get it over with.
I went downstairs and entered the kitchen. The basement door stood between the refrigerator and the pantry. I opened it and aimed my light down the stairs. I listened, but heard only dead silence.
I descended slowly, the steps creaking beneath my weight. Despite my best efforts, I was still scared.
At the bottom, I turned in a circle, looking around. The basement was a huge open space, the same dimensions as the house above it. Mortared rock walls and a cement floor. Several stone columns stood here and there supporting the weight of the structure above it. In the far corner stood the furnace. Running along the length of the rear wall was an empty wine rack. Pipes ran along the ceiling. The fuse box was mounted on the wall opposite the stairs, thirty feet away.
I crossed over to it quickly and examined it. Sure enough, a fuse had burned out. I hastily unscrewed the bad fuse and tossed it away, digging a new one out of the box of replacements on a nearby shelf. I screwed it into the socket…but the basement remained dark.
I turned around, and could see the power was back on above; light was streaming down the stairs from the kitchen doorway.
I realized that the switch to the basement lights was still off; I had forgotten to flip it on my way downstairs.
I looked at the stairs, leading to light and safety only thirty feet away.
Okay, it’s done, now get the hell out of here, my mind’s voice ordered me.
And I was about to follow orders and leave, was in the process of raising my foot to take the first step…when, from the dark recesses of the other end of the basement, I heard something that made my blood run cold in an instant.
A giggle.
A short, high-pitched giggle. A gleeful sound; that of a very young, mischievous child playing a prank. It only lasted for a second, then abruptly stopped. Under different circumstances, a perfectly ordinary sound I wouldn’t have given a second thought. But in this context, in these circumstances, coming from the blackness of my parents’ basement in the middle of night, it was a sound simple enough to be absolutely terrifying.
I spun in that direction, waving my light around, my heart sending a surge of terrified adrenalin racing through my body. I couldn’t see anything but the bare wine rack and the furnace. I squinted, trying to peer into the basement’s darkest corners where my phone light wouldn’t penetrate.
“Who’s there?” I demanded in a trembling voice.
No answer.
Two of those support columns stood between me and the far end of the basement. Each was about a foot and a half wide and obstructed my view of what could be on the other side. Anything could be hiding behind them.
“Come out where I can see you or you’re in big trouble!” I ordered, trying to sound stern…but my voice quivered pathetically, betraying my fear.
I envisioned myself boldly crossing the basement and lunging around the columns to confront whoever - or whatever - was lurking there. I tried to do just that; tried to will my body to follow the commands of my brain…but I couldn’t move. I was petrified, more terrified than I had ever been before in my life.
The stale air in the basement suddenly seemed too thick and oppressive. I seemed to sense another presence down there with me; something dark and forbidding emanating from the very walls of the basement themselves, something ancient and horrible beyond human comprehension. A force that was watching my every move, waiting with malevolent patience for the right time to strike.
I looked at the stairs leading up to the kitchen door and the light and safety beyond. Only thirty feet away. If I ran, it would take me only a few seconds…
I heard that horrible, high-pitched giggle again, only this time it seemed to be coming from the side of the basement opposite where I’d heard it originally…even though there was no way it could have moved across the basement without me seeing it. It was followed by the voice of a child, speaking my name, drawing it out in a playful sing-song.
The voice seemed to be coming from behind another column, one that was only about five feet away from the stairs…my only means of escape.
I understood with sudden soul-chilling certainty that if I tried to run for the stairs that…thing would leap out and attack me before I could make it. I would see it, whatever it was, and the sight of it would drive me mercifully insane before it killed me.
The voice spoke my name again, teasingly, and I thought my ears could detect a slight shuffling sound behind the column, followed by a scraping…the sound of nails, or claws, scratching over stone.
I felt as if my entire body had been plunged into freezing water. Coherent thought became nearly impossible. My lungs ached, and I dimly realized that in the extremity of my fear I had forgotten to breathe.
I heard another scraping sound, and another shuffling sound, as if the thing behind the column was subtly adjusting its stance, getting ready to spring out from its hiding place and charge me. If I wouldn’t come to it, it would come to me. Either way, I was going to meet a horrific, unspeakable end.
My paralysis suddenly broke. Moving purely on instinct, seemingly without conscious thought, I sprinted for the stairs, taking my chances. I thought I caught a flash of movement out of the corner of my eye as I passed the column nearest the stairs, but I didn’t dare look back. I rushed up the stairs, not so much climbing as leaping up them, two at a time.
I was convinced the door would slam shut in my face, just as I was about to reach safety, plunging me into the darkness. Then I would hear a gurgling, soulless, inhuman laugh, smell its reeking breath, and feel its claws sink into my flesh.
But that didn’t happen.
I passed through the doorway into the kitchen, and as I did, I felt, or imagined I felt, a brief tugging sensation at the back of my shirt.
I slammed the basement door. There was a deadbolt lock on it, and I turned it. I leaned against the locked door, gasping, trying to slow my heart. Abruptly all my muscles seemed to turn to gelatin and I collapsed to the floor in a sitting position.
Relief flooded my body in a cool, soothing wave. I was safe now. I emitted a short, hysterical laugh, feeling weirdly giddy all of a sudden. Probably a delayed reaction.
That did not really happen, the logical center of my mind spoke up, reasserting itself, trying to rationalize what I had just experienced. None of that really happened. It was all in your head, a paranoid hallucination. It had to be.
I was all too happy to quickly agree with that voice. I had let my imagination get carried away, that was all. After all, it wasn’t as if I had actually seen anything.
But, just to be safe, I decided I wasn’t going to set foot back down into the basement ever again. And I would keep the door locked the rest of my stay.
I got shakily to my feet and went back into the living room. Dawn of the Dead was still on TV. I quickly changed the channel, in no mood to continue watching it, and found an old Farrelly Brothers comedy instead. I sat down on the couch, starting to relax and feel normal again…and heard the front door opening.
I jumped to my feet, my body tensing again. I could hear footsteps walking down the front hall, approaching the living room.
Perspiration broke out all over my body. I clenched my fists, my eyes locked on the living room doorway as the sound drew closer.
My parents entered. They stood in the doorway, ten feet away, smiling at me gently.
Once again I felt my system flood with an overload of relief. I was so happy to see them it didn’t even occur to me to wonder what they were doing home so early, when their vacation was supposed to last another week and a half. It didn’t occur to me to wonder why they weren’t carrying their luggage or why they hadn’t called in advance to tell me they were coming back so soon. It didn’t occur to me to wonder why I hadn’t heard the engine of my father’s car pulling up outside. I was just so overwhelmed with happiness to see the two people I loved most in the world, the two people I had always trusted to protect me and keep me safe.
I took a step towards them, already beginning to hold out my arms to hug my mother. “Mom, Dad, thank God you’re here. You won’t believe–”
I stopped, halting in my tracks, staring at them. Something wasn’t right. They were just standing there, not moving. They hadn’t said a word. They were still smiling at me…but there was something unsettlingly vacant about their smiles. Their faces were otherwise emotionless, their eyes blank. They looked like a pair of mannequins in a department store window, totally void of animation.
I looked at them, concerned. “Mom? Dad? What’s wrong?”
Slowly, without saying a word, still smiling, my mother reached up one hand and grabbed ahold of her scalp just above her forehead. Pulling down hard, in one swift motion, she tore her face off like a latex mask, exposing raw, bleeding muscle and sinew. Her eyes bulged from lidless sockets, her lipless mouth grinning hideously. A fountain of blood streamed down her face. She began to laugh, an awful, maniacal cackle.
Beside her, my father reached into his mouth and ripped his lower jaw off. A torrent of blood gushed down the front of his jacket. His tongue, unnaturally long, dangled to his chest like a grotesque neck tie.
They held out their arms to me and began to approach.
I didn’t scream even though I wanted to. In fact, quite the opposite; it felt as if the air that wanted to escape my mouth in a loud outrush of horror was sucked back down my throat in an implosion that threatened to burst my lungs.
I turned and ran away from the hideous doppelgangers of my parents. I fled out of the living room, through the dining room and into the kitchen. I grabbed the knob of the back door, flung it open and lunged through it…
Only to find myself not in the safety of the summer night outside, but standing in the foyer.
Horrified and utterly bewildered, I looked behind me and saw the front door standing open on the dark night beyond. I didn’t pause to analyze what had just happened; I didn’t have time. Those things pretending to be my parents were coming down the front hall, reaching for me, the thing that looked like my mother still laughing insanely, the thing that looked like my father gurgling unintelligibly from its jawless mouth.
I spun around in a panic and leaped through the front door….
And once again, I was back in the foyer, facing the opposite direction, as if I had just stepped through it from outside.
Those things were still after me, only a few feet away.
Terrified beyond comprehension, almost past the point of rational thought, I took the only avenue of escape left to me. I bolted up the staircase to the second floor.
I ran into the first room I came upon, one of the vacant bedrooms. I slammed the door behind me. There was no lock on the door, just an empty keyhole below the knob.
Frantically, I looked around for something I could use to barricade the door, but the room was completely empty.
I braced myself against the door, hoping my weight would be enough to keep it closed. I waited, listening. Several minutes passed…but nothing happened. I pressed my ear against the door. I heard only silence on the other side. They had stopped their pursuit. I thought about opening the door to look, but then wondered if it could be a trap. Maybe they were waiting for me on the other side.
Had I thought I had been terrified down in the basement? That had been nothing, a pale shadow of the all-consuming, existential terror that enveloped me now.
I had to escape, had to get the hell out of this house. I looked around the room and spotted a window. I was two stories up, but would take my chances and drop to the ground below. If it meant a broken ankle or leg, so be it. Survival was more important.
Before I could move, the room was suddenly filled with harsh, hollow laughter. It wasn’t the high, deceptively innocent giggle I had thought I’d heard in the basement or the shrill, lunatic cackling of the thing impersonating my mother; it was a different sound altogether. Low and coarse and cruel. Unnaturally deep and distinctly inhuman. It seemed to come from all around me, seemed to fill the room, yet had no apparent source.
I froze, looking around, scrutinizing my surroundings carefully. There was no one else in the room. The closet door was still standing open from my earlier investigation. The closet was empty. I was alone. Wait - what…what is that??!
On the other side of the room, something was moving on the wall. That was my first impression. But as I watched, spellbound in horror, I realized that the wall itself was moving. Bulging out with unnatural elasticity as if something was trying to burst through it from the other side. A round, convex shape pushed out from the center of the wall with two smaller ones on either side and slightly lower. The larger shape took on the distinct outline of facial features as it emerged, the plaster over it stretching out like latex. The smaller ones were hands.
I turned to flee and grabbed the knob…only to find it wouldn’t turn. As if it had been locked behind me…or had locked itself. Trapped, I turned back and watched helplessly, numb, as the thing forced its way out of the wall. It didn’t break through the wall; it separated from it like an amoeba, leaving the wall undamaged and unmarked behind it. It stood there, a featureless humanoid figure that, for a few seconds, wore the color and pattern of the faded wallpaper over its entire body like a chameleon. Then it rippled and took its true form. It was tall and skeletal and stooped over. Its entire body and head were draped in a shredded, filthy shroud. All I could see of its face was its burning red eyes and misshapen, enormous mouth which was twisted into an malicious grin. Its mouth was lined with what appeared to be several rows of long, needle-pointed teeth.
The fingers at the end of its long, bony arms were unnaturally long and protruding from their tips were four-inch talons like jagged shards of sharpened metal.
It staggered towards me, grinning, and I understood that this was the being that had been stalking me all night. Everything else had only been a manifestation of it, an illusion. It had influenced me, manipulated me, preyed upon my fear, and finally lured me up here to my certain doom. It seemed to exude malevolent like an invisible aura.
It uttered another terrible, gloating, inhuman laugh and closed in for the kill.
I retreated on quivering legs into the corner and crouched down, cowering, shielding my face with my hands uselessly.
It towered over me, reeking of death. It extended its claws toward me, and
I sat up with a scream, terrified, disoriented, I looked around. I was sitting on the couch in my parents’ living room. Dawn of the Dead was still on. it was near the end, when Jake Weber’s character reveals he’s been bitten by a zombie and stays behind on the dock, watching the survivors drift away on a boat before committing suicide.
I looked around, paranoid, but I was alone in the living room. I glanced at the clock on the wall. It was nearly midnight. I had drifted off and been asleep for over an hour.
I leaned back, trying to catch my breath. I ran a shaking hand over my face. My heart was hammering in my chest so hard and so rapidly for a moment I was afraid I was going to go into cardiac arrest, but gradually, it slowed down to a normal rate.
I sighed. It had all just been a nightmare. The worst fucking nightmare of my life.
Suddenly my phone rang, causing me scream again and nearly jump through the ceiling. I fumbled out my phone and looked at the screen. It was my parents calling to check in. I answered and spoke to my mom for a few minutes, listening as she talk about their trip and what she and Dad had done today in Florida. Towards the end she expressed concern, noting that I sounded out of breath and asked me if I was alright. I told her I was fine, I had just been doing some exercises before bed. I was surprised by how calm my voice was. We said good-night to each other and I ended the call.
I looked around, still feeling ill at ease and unsafe after my particularly vivid bad dream. Nightmare or not, I was too rattled to feel like sleeping here. In fact, I decided right then and there I wasn’t going to spend another night in this place. I grabbed my keys and wallet, hoped in my car, and drove into town, checking into a cheap motel. The next day I rented a small apartment, using some money I had in my savings. When my parents called to tell me they were coming home, I drove to the house and waited there to meet them, giving them the impression that I had stayed there all along. I didn’t tell them what had happened to me. How could I? I would have just made an ass of myself, a nineteen-year-old man who had gotten scared watching a horror movie and had a bad dream like a kid.
They invited me to stay at their house for the rest of the summer, an invitation I politely declined, claiming I didn’t want to be a burden.
I took a summer job working for a landscaping company and stayed in my apartment in town until classes resumed in the fall.
I did some research on the house, looking into its history and its previous owners. I couldn’t find anything that seemed unusual. No news of strange deaths or murders or disappearances. No rumors that a former occupant had secretly been a devil worshiper or that the house had been built upon an old cemetery or Native American burial ground.
My parents still live there, and nothing out of the ordinary has ever happened to them, as far as I’m aware of. But I still feel guilty that I never told them what I experienced in that house. I feel like I have an obligation to warn them, but it’s not like they’d believe me anyway.
You see, a couple weeks after my parents got back from Florida, I was doing some cleaning in my apartment on my day off. I was digging my dirty laundry out of the closet (I guess I’m pretty lazy when it comes to housekeeping and it had really piled up) and I came upon the shirt I had been wearing that night. I had tossed it into the closet the next day after moving in and hadn’t washed it since. As I was putting it in my laundry bag I noticed something and took a closer look.
There were four thin slashes in the back of the shirt. Slashes that looked like they’d been made by claws.