It all started when he first came as a new student to our school. When he first entered the classroom, he creeped me out. Maybe it was the way he was wearing all black with his hood covering the majority of his face or that he never looked up even once. “Weirdo”, I thought to myself. I don’t want to be rude, just saying.
After about two weeks, he started acting weird. He started to whisper to himself at random during class. And for some reason, it felt like I was the only one who heard it. Maybe he wasn’t whispering to himself at all and I was just imagining things or overreacting. I never even heard what he was ranting about anyways.
Well, it started at lunchtime when my friend Diego, approached me and said, “You know about that new kid Max right?” “Yeah that weirdo?” I answered. “Well…”, Diego responded with excitement. “I feel kind of bad for him since he has no friends so I was thinking that you and me can try to talk him into being friends with us!” I looked at him like he was crazy. It wasn’t that Max was “weird”, I mean he kind of was, but he gave me a bad vibe, like he was a danger towards the school.
So I said no. But Diego wasn’t buying it. It took numerous tries to get him to talk me into befriending Max. Eventually, I gave up and decided to give it a try. I tried to tell myself that he wasn’t “weird” it was just my mind being paranoid. Little did I know that that was a huge mistake.
After school, me and Diego made a plan to talk to him the next day at lunch and then invite him over to Diego’s house if it went well. So that’s exactly what we did. Once we had spotted him sitting in a small table in the corner of the cafeteria, Diego went to go approach him, while I kept telling myself to ignore the bad feeling in my gut and follow my friend. I felt safer if I was with my best friend anyways, so nothing bad could happen. I sighed and then followed Diego towards Max’s table.
“Hi, I’m Diego and this is my friend Andrew. I- we were wondering if you would like to become friends with us, since we felt bad that you always sat alone.” I tried my best to keep a friendly smile until Max looked up from the ground to us. My smile immediately faded when I saw his face. His eyes were bloodshot, his skin pale, and his lips were cracked with a small trail of blood coming from one of the cracks leading down to his chin.
I tried my hardest to ignore that and put back on my friendly smile. Max was probably just… I don’t really know how to explain it. I glanced towards Diego, who seemed a little shocked as well but thought nothing of it. That’s when Max spoke. I could barely hear him over the cafeteria noise but his voice was very shaky, hoarse, and quiet.
“Sure”, was the only word that came out of his mouth. “O-okay, good! I’m glad! Um… I was wondering if, after school, you could maybe stop by my house and we could you know, hang out to get to know each other better. Andrew will be there.” Diego said, his voice slightly shaky. I could tell he was a little scared as well.
Later on, Diego and I learned that Max could come over after school, which made me feel even worse, but like I said, it was just my mind overreacting. Right? Max probably wasn’t weird or creepy at all, it’s just what he looked like what scared me. I told myself to calm down and say that is was nothing. But I was so, so wrong.
A couple of hours later, I made my way to Diego’s house. I knocked on the door, and to my surprise, Diego opened it with Max by his side. It kind of freaked me out, but I ignored the feeling and said hello to my friends. We showed Max a little tour of Diego’s house and then went to his room to hang out. Surprisingly, it went pretty well for the most part. I even forgot about the bad feeling about Max.
That was until Diego asked him if he wanted to stay the night. Max was silent for a moment and then slowly nodded, suddenly looking more pale than he was before. I thought it was weird that he didn’t mention anything about his parents letting him stay over for the night, but then told my myself that they probably didn’t care. After about twenty minutes of playing video games and eating junk food, we took one of Diego’s spare sleeping bags and lended it to Max. Then we played some board games until it was getting late.
We set up our sleeping bags in Diego’s room and then talked a little before deciding to go to sleep. However, after about ten minutes of trying to fall asleep, even though I was tired, I decided to go on my phone for a while. But for some reason, Max was the only thing that came through my head. I then realized that it was a little unusual that Max never really spoke the time that I have been here. He didn’t show any emotion either.
I was slightly freaked out, but eventually managed to fall asleep.
I probably woke up in the dead of night to someone laughing like a psycho. I thought it was a dream at first, but it sounded too real. Although I was freaked out, I turned over and almost screamed at the silhouette I saw standing above me in the darkness. It surely wasn’t Diego, because I saw the outline of him sleeping across from me. It was Max. I was sure this was just a prank. “Wow um… very funny guys…get to sleep already”, I said, my voice shaky.
It wasn’t a prank. Max didn’t budge. I started to get really freaked out when his laughing just got louder and louder. My heart was beating faster than ever, and I pulled the covers over my head and shut my eyes, begging for the laughter to stop. And then suddenly, it did. I was relieved, but at the same time, I was still scared and just wanted to wake up Diego and get out of this house.
I tried going back to sleep, but I was too scared to do so. After a long few minutes later, I was beginning to doze off, until Max started to scream. I froze, too scared to move. That’s when the lights flicked on and I took the covers off of my head. It was Diego, who looked like he had just seen a ghost and Max, who was still standing above me who was still screaming, while the biggest open smile I had ever seen was plastered on his face, along with blood dripping from his mouth towards his chin.
He wouldn’t stop screaming, and I glanced a look of terror towards Diego, and he looked as equally as scared I was. We both just stood there, unsure what to do. Then, after what it felt like a decade, Diego ran out of his room, probably towards the downstairs to call his parents then the police for some reason (his parents were visiting Diego’s older brother who was in college at the time). Then Max suddenly stopped screaming, and the whole house fell eerily silent. I then realized that I was alone. With Max.
I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to run out of the house and never come back. But before I could do that, Max pulled out a knife. I don’t know where he even got it from. Then he lunged towards me with the knife and tried to stab me with it while laughing like the psycho that he was. I screamed, trying to fight him off, but I was too weak and too scared.
Luckily, I managed to somehow get him into a chokehold but unfortunately, he still somehow stabbed me in my arm. I screamed in pain and released my grip on him. Max wasn’t done. He lunged at me again, but before he could stab me, Diego came out of literally nowhere, and tackled Max to the ground. Max had finally stopped laughing at once and just stayed quiet.
The house fell silent until we heard sirens coming from outside.
I’m not going to go into detail about everything else that happened with the police, but one thing I will mention is that when the police came back from searching the house, Max was nowhere to be seen. Police believed that he escaped through the open window that was in Diego’s room, but they are still not certain, and neither am I. Also, yes my arm is okay.
I still don’t know what happened with Max, but I never saw him again after that. I tell myself that he had a mental illness, or was just really trying hard to scare us, which worked. So yeah, I still get the chills every time I think about that day and I learned to always trust my gut.