‘…break your spine.’
Does anyone else know that rhyme? There are multiple versions: some have a couple of additional lines, and others refer to the mother and father being the victims. The one I was taught goes: ‘Step on a crack, break your back. Step on a line, break your spine.’ I get stepping on a crack could lead to someone falling over and hurting their back, but why would stepping on a line break a person’s spine?
Just so you know, this isn’t some story about a cursed version of the rhyme that kills you after reading it out loud three times in a row. I only mention it because when I think about what happened… I’ll tell you my story, and you’ll know what I mean. And don’t worry, supernatural stuff does happen. Just not how you would expect.
I’ll start by telling you about the guy who disappeared from my class, Ernie. He was the nicest guy I knew. He was fair and friendly to me and everyone else in my class. It also meant a lot to me that he was: I’m not one of the popular kids in my school. I’m more the kind who likes to read Creepypasta and watch anime.
Ernie was one of many disappearances in my town for as long as I can remember. Some people say they left of their own accord, but my town isn’t that place. Besides, the police don’t think that. The police have no idea what happened to them, but they know they didn’t run away. All the missing person cases would go cold eventually.
I was hoping I could dig up something the police couldn’t. I felt I owed it to Ernie. I knew I might not find anything more than the police, but I had to try. I wanted to be a journalist when I left school, so I had that journalistic intuition.
I don’t think I’d say the same now after… everything.
I looked into the online news reports of the missing people. The police were surprisingly honest. They even asked whether anyone could lend their assistance in finding the missing people.
All the cases are very similar. The person was alone at the time of their disappearance, usually when walking somewhere in the dark. They were all very different, making the disappearances look randomly picked, so it didn’t look like the work of a serial killer. The more obscure cases were when there didn’t seem to be anywhere for them to go or for someone to take them.
This included Ernie’s case. He was walking home from his friend’s house late in the evening on a route he knew and commonly took before he vanished.
I won’t go over the other cases, but as I said before, the police don’t have any leads, so each case eventually goes cold.
If I wanted to find anything new, I needed to investigate further. I knew where the people vanished, so I mapped out some of the locations and went looking after school.
My parents expected me home before sunset, so I had a few hours to use per day. During the week of my search, I found the scenes of the disappearances, and I spoke to a few of the witnesses who were close by at the time. The locations were isolated, as the news reports said, and the witnesses were never there when the person disappeared, also as the reports said. So, my time was mainly spent confirming what the police said was true and, doing so, left me in the same position: with no leads to go on. I was going to give up.
But that Friday, I found something.
I was looking into one of the cases that happened twenty or so years prior, and one of the witnesses said they heard a rumour that someone claimed to know what happened to the people that disappeared. This rumoured person talked nonsense about demons and people being taken to hell. The police were kind enough not to include his statement in the investigations, and he remained out of the public eye.
I prodded the witness some more and ended up with his name and address. ‘What harm could it bring?’ I thought as I found the address on my phone.
All of you know where this is going. I won’t try and sugarcoat it: everything from that moment forward was a horrible mistake. And I will regret it for the rest of my life.
The man lives in a flat by himself, a dingy place downtown. His name is Ronald Tristan. When he answered the door, he looked like the mad religious type. He looked older than I expected: supporting his grey hair with a combover. He also looked pale and under-malnourished, which told me he hadn’t been out and about for a while. I’m not exactly Sherlock Holmes. This is just what I noticed.
“Hi.” was all the old man could give to greet me. His voice was gruff yet well-mannered.
“Hello, I’m here to ask about the disappearances. Are you Ronald Tristan? I’ve heard you know something about them?” I didn’t want to beat around the bush and wanted to get straight to the point.
He said nothing initially, looking like he was searching my face. When he finished, he simply said, “Come in.” I didn’t know why he was trying to choose his words so wisely, but I’d find out soon enough.
The inside of his flat was strange, not what you would expect a conspirator’s home to look like, weirdly devoided of anything other than the bare necessities.
All of the rooms were carpeted. I only mention this because I realise how important it is later.
The two things I found really odd at the time were the wooden cross above the round table against the wall in the living area and how every room seemed lined with duct tape. The cross wasn’t the traditional crucifix: it was wavey like a flag in the wind. It was the opposite of what you’d expect Catholics to have, almost like a groovy parody. The duct tape looked obvious to see. Every edge of each room, from corner to corner, was covered by it. Not only that, its sides were cut into strange curvy lines. It truly gave the place the crazed conspirator’s home vibe I did expect.
“Please, sit down,” Ronald gestured to the only other chair at his table than the one he sat on. I did so, dropping my rucksack next to me under the table. The old git put his elbows on the table, “What have you heard exactly? You look very young to be looking into this.”
“Well,” I said as I leaned towards him, “I was asking about the disappearances, and someone mentioned you knew something about them.” I didn’t want to mention that I heard he was crazy.
Fortunately, I didn’t need to. Then the old man asked, “Have you heard that people also think I have lost my marbles?” He was looking at me with the same face that looked like he was trying to read me from before.
I decided to be blunt with him, “I was talking to one of the witnesses of the missing person cases. They mentioned you spoke to the police about what you thought happened to the victims.”
“I know what happened to them…” he muttered. He had his thumbs to his lips while clasping his hands together, almost like he was praying, “You wouldn’t understand. I think… what do you know about the disappearances?”
“The same as the police, nothing more than they seemed to vanish without a trace.”
“I think you should leave your little investigation at that. It won’t help: knowing.” His expression looked stressed.
“Why?” I asked.
His eyes glanced up at the cross above the table, “Lord have mercy,” he whispered to himself, “Please, you’re too young. I don’t want to put you in any danger.”
I perked up at this, “What?!” I gasped. He gave me a silent stare like he was hoping I would leave it at that, “Wait, why don’t the police want to know about this then?” Even as I said it, I knew the answer: he tried telling them, and they didn’t believe him. The old git’s paranoia must have been creeping into my mind: I was beginning to feel on edge.
“Listen,” he said sternly, “you and the police wouldn’t believe me. It would…” he paused as he tried to look for his words.
When he was unsuccessful, I told him, “I need to know. I have a friend who went missing. I don’t care whether I believe you or not. Tell me what you know, and I will leave you alone.”
The look I gave him must have been determined enough. He looked sorry and stated, “If I tell you, you will be in danger. You are not the only person to come asking. And the other people who came asking me also ‘disappeared’. I don’t want to be responsible if I put you in danger.”
My expression turned to worry, “Were they, like, killed by someone?”
“Something!” he snapped. He then scrunched up his mouth as though to try and silence it.
I knew he might be mad and making all this up, but I thought that maybe he knew something. Something much bigger and more complex than him. I had made it that far, and he was my only lead. “I’m not leaving until I know what you know. Tell me!” I said with more determination than I had.
His eyes sized me up once more, “Ok. Just be careful.” he darted his gaze around the room, covering every corner, before he continued, “For twenty-five years, I have been hunted by a demon.”
I leaned back and sighed to replace the chuckle that would have come out. I don’t need to say why I didn’t believe in supernatural mumbo-jumbo. Even when my pastime was reading horror stories about the supernatural. It was only nonsense in the end.
Now after everything, let’s just say I will be more open-minded.
He saw my sigh and said, “I told you, you don’t believe me.”
“Look,” I replied, “even you must admit that sounds crazy. What… why should I believe you?”
Ronald stared blankly at me for a second. Then thrust out his right leg and planked it onto the wooden table, so I could see it in front of me. He pulled up the sleeve of his genes to show me his plastic prosthetic leg. “It would have taken me if I wasn’t so lucky!” he said confidently.
I can’t deny this shook me. It told me that this guy was being serious. Either that or he was mad enough to lob off his leg, which I doubted. I felt I needed to apologise, “I’m sorry, please tell me about this…” I almost couldn’t say it, “‘demon’.”
He covered up his prosthetic and continued, “I call it a demon, but I don’t know what it is exactly. Do you believe in God?” He gestured to his cross. I shook my head. “I didn’t think so. I have to believe. It makes it easier to cope. Though, no exorcism will get rid of this… beast. How do I put it?” he paused, “It… lives in the lines.”
“It lives in the lines?”
“I’m not sure how else to put it. It lives within the lines of… anything. It is how it hunts,” he paused again, collecting his words, “This thing takes people, people it can touch through the lines.”
“It hunts?” I was losing track of what he was saying.
“Yes, it hunts people. I think it kills them, I don’t know. It doesn’t like attention. It doesn’t want to be found out. You can’t see it: it is invisible. It can only come out of the lines by so much.” after another pause, he continued more furiously, “It tried taking me once and failed. But I know it is coming after me. It-it took…” his words were becoming erratic, “It will come after you, now you know. It…”
I just stared at him, dumbfounded. Honestly, I was more scared of him.
After he recovered from his minor-panic attack, I ventured to ask, “This is what you couldn’t tell the police, what they wouldn’t believe?”
He nodded, “Yes. I panicked not long after that thing had found me. Someone else went missing. I told them a demon had taken her, and they threw me in the loonie bin.” he stared at his cross again, “I shouldn’t have told you. It will go after you next. Please, Lord, forgive me, I…” he broke down into sobs and prayer.
I didn’t know what to believe. The way he told me, he wasn’t lying. My rational mind couldn’t… no, wouldn’t let me believe him. I had to believe he was mad. I did what I wouldn’t think I would ever do in that situation: I tried to flee. “It’s getting dark. I need to go home,” I said slowly and carefully.
Before I could fully stand up, the old geezer grabbed my arm, “Wait, please! I know it is difficult to believe, but I’m telling the truth,” he spat out.
“DUDE, FUCK OFF!” I yelled, pulling away, yet he didn’t let go, “You’re mad! You need serious help! LET GO!”
“Wait, wait, please. If you go, he’ll come after you!” I stopped pulling when he said this. “Please, before you go, I know how this demon works. Please, listen to me.”
I looked him dead in the eye: his eyes were screaming with fear. I yanked my arm away after his grip had loosened. I got up to leave, pulling my bag over my shoulders. “I’ve got to go,” I said, turning away from him.
“Wait!” he said as I walked away, “The demon doesn’t like too much attention. I’ll walk you home!” Yet, saying this only sped me up. I would never let him come near my house. He was a nutter. He followed behind me, “Just don’t touch any straight lines. It can only get you through straight lines! Listen, this is important! You can wear it out: it doesn’t have a lot of energy! Please wait!”
As I tried pulling open the front door, he lunged his open hand out, slamming it shut again. I looked at the old fool: his face was a few inches from mine. It was now filled with the screaming fear he held in his eyes. “Just come over again,” he said, “I’ll tell you what happened to me. Properly. Don’t step on any lines on the way home. Humour me if that’s what it takes!”
I looked deeply into his eyes. I could see he had no ill intent in them. He was just scared. I gave him a quick, confirming nod. He let me open the door. Before I left him, he spoke up one last time, “And don’t forget. It likes to hunt.”
With that, I was on my way home.
I was given a lot of information at once. I didn’t know whether I could believe him. It sounded insane, but this was my only lead. ‘What was that old guy talking about? What was he saying?’ I knew he wasn’t a liar and that he was hesitant to tell me what he knew. His instructions were very odd. ‘Is he delusional?’ I thought this was more likely, but it doesn’t sound like some typical old wives’ tale. In reality, I still needed to hear his whole story before judging him. ‘Is it true?’ This scared me then, even when I was sceptical of it. It explained why the police found so little and why the people disappeared in such unusual circumstances. ‘Am I in danger?’
I looked at my surroundings. I was halfway home. It was dark. And I was alone.
‘It… lives in the lines.’ I remembered Ronald saying. I looked at the pavement slabs. They were old, and the cement between each slab had sunken down and made canyons.
This was when I remembered the rhyme: ‘Step on a crack, break your…’ etc. As a kid, I avoided cracks and gaps in the pavement because of it. I remembered stepping on a road line as a dare, thinking I could feel my spine creaking and breaking. It never did, of course.
I needed closure. I lightly pressed my toes onto the line. Nothing happened. I took my foot off and placed it down again, as though I was shocked nothing happened the first time. My fear dispersed, and in its place, disappointment filled me. ‘Of course, nothing happened,’ I thought, ‘Demons don’t exist. I guess this means I’m back to square one.’
Approximately five steps homeward, I stepped on another gap in the pavement. This time, my right foot just… fell. Like when you don’t realise that there’s a step in front of you, and you just start falling. Eventually, you would feel your foot hit the ground harder than you expected, almost tripping you. Except, my foot didn’t hit the ground.
My reflexes acted before I could process what happened: I lunged my arm onto the side of the curb, balancing my weight and holding myself up.
I looked down, and my leg… sunk? It looked more like my leg was squeezing between the pavement slabs. It looked like Mr Fantastic when he reached underneath a door, his arm squishing like rubber. It still felt the same: it just looked off or warped somehow. This wasn’t what made me panic. I panicked because I could feel my leg dangling into an abyss I couldn’t see.
That all lasted a second before I hastily pulled myself back up onto the pavement. As my leg left the line, I could have sworn I felt something brush the back of it.
Now I think about it, I was lucky then.
I sat on a pavement slab like I was washed up on an island, separated from everyone else. I had to think for a second and comprehend what happened. All my thoughts rushed around in my head in a chaotic tornado. One stood out to me, what Ronald said: ‘It… lives in the lines.’ At that moment, that was all that made sense to me.
I got up and carried on home, now avoiding the gaps in the pavement.
On the way, I thought about how to lose whatever was chasing me. I thought about how that old man avoided it, ‘Do I need to get rid of every line within reach like in his place? No, that’s not an option! It is chasing me now! How do I get rid of it now?! What did Ronald say?!’ Then what he said came back to me: ‘The demon doesn’t like too much attention.’ I had to find someone, anyone. So long as someone else was with me, it won’t try and take me. That’s why Ronald wanted to come with me. I banked on my parents being home: there was nowhere else I could think to go.
This thing, this Line Demon (from now on, I will refer to it as the Line Demon: I have no idea what else to call it, please feel free to come up with a new name for it), will come after me until it has me.
I thought, ‘What else did that old man say: ‘Just don’t touch any straight lines. It can only get you through straight lines!’ What can’t I touch? Gaps in the pavement, yes, but what else? Door frames, wooden flooring, bannisters…’ I thought about how many things could have lines I might accidentally touch. More specifically: lines I could accidentally touch in my house. All I knew was that the lines had to be straight, as Ronald said. How straight? I did not know. So, I tried avoiding any and all lines I could see. ‘How hard could it be?’
I got home at about ten, which was very late for me. I opened the front door, and my eyes scanned the area for all possible lines the Line Demon could grab me from. I strategically stepped onto the doormat as I saw the minefield I expected: wooden flooring in every room (except one: I’ll come back to that). Each floorboard had a gap between them: many more gaps than in the pavement outside. I had to tread really carefully.
I placed my trainer down onto one of the planks lengthways, and it only just fitted on without touching any of the gaps. I considered taking my shoes off to have more space to step on, but I needed the grip of my shoes to be sure my feet didn’t slide.
I awkwardly crab-walked through to the living room and called out. No one was home. I had forgotten where Mum and Dad were, but it mattered little. Yet, I knew I couldn’t wait for them to come home. I had to get them there ASAP.
I decided to phone one of them and make up an excuse like being sick or something. Hopefully, Mum’s sympathy would bring at least one of them home.
I was never able to make the call.
I wanted to sit down to make the call rather than balance awkwardly on the floorboards in case I fell over. So I sat at our dining room table. As I unlocked my phone, I placed my left hand on the side of the square table.
I hadn’t accounted for the edges of objects as lines in my strategy.
My hand was yanked by the unseen foe. My hand vanished into the line, and I dropped the phone from my right hand to use it to push away from the table. It was pulling me in this time.
The Line Demon’s hand was rough with long but thin fingers, and its grip was tight and unrelenting. Yet, its pull was only that of an average adult male. This prevented me from being pulled in: my body weight was on my chair rather than the table.
I had to shift my body weight away from the table, as the deeper into the line my arm went, the stronger the Line Demon’s pull was. Trying to be careful not to step onto any of the lines on the wooden floor, I stood up, leaning away from the table, using my body weight to pull away from it.
It was working: my arm started to leave the line. I saw my hand. But I also saw the invisible press of the Line Demon’s hand on it.
‘It can only come out of the lines by so much.’ Even though my hand was entirely free from its dimension, it wouldn’t let go. My hand remained bound to the edge of the table. I tried hitting it with my free right hand, but I only made my left hand sore from hitting where it gripped me. ‘I CAN’T HIT IT!’ my mind screamed. I knew that it could only come into our world by so much. If so: why didn’t it let go?
I had to remember what Ronald had said, ‘You can wear it out: it doesn’t have a lot of energy!’ I considered what this meant, ‘Does it need the stamina to come into our world? Yes, that would explain why it tried to make me fall into its dimension rather than grabbing me before. It would conserve its energy that way! But that doesn’t tell me why it won’t let go?!’
I thought about this later, and I can only assume it used the stamina I spent pulling away from it to maintain its presence in our world. So, rather than it pulling me into its dimension, I was pulling it into ours, or at least by as much as I could pull it into our dimension.
I was at a stalemate. I couldn’t pull it further into our world, and it couldn’t me into its world. It was beginning to feel like I was exercising the plank in PE. My body was straining from holding my ground, and I had a feeling that the Line Demon’s grip might hold out longer than my pull.
Then, at the fifteen-second mark, it let go.
I couldn’t figure out why. Until I felt it on my left foot.
I looked down to see my left foot had slid slightly, just over one of the gaps in the wooden floorboards. I could also see the side of my trainer being folded down by my friend’s invisible grasp.
I couldn’t do much more to resist than try and keep my body weight on the floorboard, but the Line Demon could now use all of its body weight to pull me down. I could feel my shoe slipping into the gap. I was running out of ideas, but there was one theory I had to test then and there. I looked around the table and saw a piece of scrap paper. I grabbed it and stuffed it under my shoe.
I’ll have to explain my logic for this part. From everything I knew about this thing: how it lives in the lines, how it can only come out from its realm by so much and how I couldn’t hurt it: I came to one conclusion. It is one-dimensional. To hunt, it can become a two-dimensional being to pull things into its dimension. It cannot go three-dimensional (I’m no quantum physicist, so I can’t say how much sense this makes. It is only how the Line Demon works).
This is why I couldn’t hit it: it travels in and along the surfaces of what is within reach to pull people in: it is two-dimensional and not three-dimensional like we are. This is also why I couldn’t pull it entirely into our dimension: it uses energy to become two-dimensional and reach out into our universe. Neither I nor the demon has the strength to get it further into our world.
So, putting a piece of paper between my shoe and the gap in the floorboards would increase its energy consumption while decreasing its range, forcing it to let go of me. If that makes sense?
It worked. My foot was released, and the Line Demon pulled in the paper instead.
After I regained my balance, I hastily looked around for my phone. I knew I wasn’t out of the woods yet. I saw it a few feet away on the ground and awkwardly went over. Just as I reached to grab it, it slipped down into the gap between the floorboards. It was as though the Line Demon waited for me to come over just to open up its dimension below my phone and let it fall, showing me how little control over the situation I had.
“NO! FUCK!” I swore, “FUCK IT! FUCK IT! YOU PIECE OF SHIT!”
I remember thinking, ‘Why didn’t I go somewhere else?! I could have gone to the pub or somewhere with people! I’m a sitting duck here!’ I knew beating myself up wouldn’t help anyone, so I had to hastily recover, ‘Stay calm, think: what do I need to do? Where do I go?’ It had occurred to me that moving somewhere only risked giving the Line Demon another chance at getting me, so I decided to stay put.
Luckily, there was one room in the house I would be safe: my parents had an old office upstairs that they used as a storage area for old documents and the old computer. It was the only room in the house that hadn’t been refurbished and still had carpeted flooring (it was also then I realised why Ronald had carpeted flooring in his flat, there are no lines to step on).
I made my way up upstairs, avoiding the nosing of each step. After a few more tricky steps along the short corridor to the room, I made it.
It felt so good to freely walk around a room without worrying about being taken by the Line Demon, even if it was only five metres by five metres. I sighed and even began to laugh, I knew I hadn’t defeated it, but I felt I had won that night. I was starting to believe avoiding the Line Demon might be possible. As long as I didn’t step on any lines: it would struggle to pull me into its mysterious dimension. I could fight back.
Then I heard a sound, someone gasping like they just came to the surface of a deep lake.
I turned my head to the open door and saw in the corridor, half-submerged in the floorboards, was Ernie. He looked stuck: his arms pointing upwards squeezed in the gap like he had a laso tight around him. He was pale as a ghost, his eyes looked dead and bloodshot, yet he was breathing heavily.
Ernie looked at me, moving only his eyes. I imagined his eyeballs making a sloshing noise as he did so. He groaned, “Helllp meeee…”
I stood there, fear rattling my body and leaving me unable to do anything. Ernie called out again, more commanding this time, “Help Me! Help Me!”
Again, I stood there inanimately. My mind processed a thousand thoughts at a time, ‘Ernie! Is he alive?! Why does he look so pale?! Is this a trap?!’
“Please, help me! PLEASE!” his arms started shaking violently as he screeched inhumanly, “HELP! HELP! HELP! HELP!”
Though his screeching freaked me out, it helped me refocus my mind, ‘There is no way the Line Demon would let him go. It’s trying to bait me.’ I had gaged the distance from me to Ernie and knew he was too far away to reach from the safety of the office. I didn’t know whether it was controlling Ernie like a puppet or if Ernie was having some sort of seizure. It mattered little either way: I wasn’t going out to whatever it was.
It shrieked, “HELP! HELP! HEL-”
“SHUT UP!” I roared, interrupting it, “I CAN’T HELP YOU, ERNIE! I CAN’T! YOU ARE ALREADY DEAD! IT FUCKING KILLED YOU! GO AWAY!”
It stopped. For a few brief seconds, silence filled the air.
Then the blood came. It leaked from Ernie’s eyes, mouth and every other orifice on his body. It started to sink back into the ground, spitting out its final words with blobs of blood, “Youuu… let me… diiiie…”
The sight was awful to behold. If my face looked like what I felt, it would be a face drenched every inch in terror. And guilt. All I could do was croak, “I’m… sorry.”
My apology was made inconsequential by the loud snapping of what I presumed were Ernie’s bones, yet it sounded more like snapping branches. Its eyes, which used to belong to my friend, never lost sight of me as the head resubmerged into the floor, leaving a small pool of red ichor. I could see the fluid trickling down into the gap in the floorboards as though they were chasms rather than a portal to whatever the fuck the Line Demon’s dimension was.
I remember my vision lowering, likely because I fell flat on my ass from my legs giving in to fear. I sat on the carpeted flooring, all sense of my previous victory gone from me. If it was a victory. I remembered the last thing Ronald said, ‘It likes to hunt.’ The Line Demon knew how to press all of my buttons. How to simultaneously leave me horrified and angry. I won’t lie: I lost a bit of my focus then.
Maybe, luck allowed me to live the rest of that night out, not my composure.
I looked around the small room to see any possible entryways the Line Demon might have. There was a shelf with old documents, a desk with our old computer on it and an air vent in the bottom corner of the room.
My focus was primarily on the vent: it had a built-in, horizontal grille. I also kind of feared it. I know it sounds stupid, but I have since I was young. I used to play hide and seek with my parents and friends, and one of the most common places I would hide was under that desk. I would stare out to see if anyone came into the room looking for me. The vent was visible from that spot. Unlike most air vents in my house, this was the only one that could be seen. I remember staring at that vent, almost like something would come out from it and get me.
The vent was the primary place I suspected it would try and get me from. Even though I wouldn’t fit into the vent: the lines weren’t long enough. I also decided that the shelf’s edges might be another possible entry point. The desk was the least threatening to me because the edges of any table surface were now known to me as an entry point. As long as I didn’t touch the rim of the desk: I would be fine. And, of course, I would try and stay centralised in the room. The corners and edges of the square room were the main threat and the most likely portal it would use to grab me.
So, I just stood there for half an hour, scared that the Line Demon would have some other new trick I hadn’t seen yet. I felt I only had to be patient until my parents got home. I paced the room and began questioning my choices, ‘Why did I come in here?’ I thought, ‘Why did I corner myself like this? Are Mum and Dad coming home? They could have been mugged or something. Maybe they went drinking with their friends, had too much to drink and stayed at their place?’ (Please note that the irony that I was worried that they would stay out too late was not lost on me), ‘If they aren’t coming home, who am I waiting for? Should I have gone to a neighbour’s house? Could I have risked it with that thing coming after me?’ My mind kept whirling these questions around inside my head.
Then suddenly, I heard a crunch.
It came from below me. I looked down at my feet and saw that, while I paced in a small circle in the middle of the room, I stepped on… a paper aeroplane. It was made from the scrap paper the Line Demon had taken before. ‘How did a paper aeroplane get to the centre of the room?’ I looked at the plane’s angle. It looked like it came from the vent behind me.
Though this mattered little to me, I was more concerned that my left foot was standing on the edge of the paper.
Once more, my leg dipped into the line. It was time for the third and final round against this thing.
This time, my entire foot was consumed. My first reaction was to lunge my arm out and balance myself like I did the first time, but then the paper slid along the ground. This made me realise that, unlike the last time, I could move the line I was on. So, my next move was to lift my leg above myself. That way, the Line Demon won’t be able to use its body weight to pull me into its dimension.
Yet, it was different this time. The Line Demon wasn’t pulling me in. It thrashed my leg back and forth.
“YOU’VE GOT TO BE FUCKING KIDDING ME!” I wailed, still thinking about the cheap trick it used to extend its range: it used a paper aeroplane to get me from the centre of the room.
I started instinctively shuffling back. I didn’t know what its plan was, but I knew I had to make it let go. There wasn’t anything nearby to disconnect the paper from my leg like last time. So I thrust my right arm out to it and grabbed it, thinking, ‘I just have to get it off my foot: it doesn’t have the strength to pull me in, so it’ll have to let go eventually!’
I kept pulling at the paper, holding onto it as the Line Demon thrust my leg about. I kept backing up until I had my back against the wall.
It let go.
The crumpled paper aeroplane fluttered to the ground, and my mind furiously tried to grasp what the Line Demon was planning. Then, in the brief second sitting against the wall, I realised: it couldn’t drag me into its dimension through the paper. There was no way it could fit my whole body into the length of the line. It wasn’t trying to pull me. It was backing me up against the wall. Against the vent!
The pain hit me all too fast. It was a sharp pain, like a dagger going into my back. I screamed in agony: it was the worst pain. But the pain wasn’t the worst part of the experience. It was my legs going numb. Then I realised I couldn’t move them.
The doctors would later explain the medical term was ‘Paraplegia’. It is an injury to the vertebrae column in my spine, severed by the Line Demon, which causes complete paralysis to my lower body. The Line Demon knew what it was aiming for and how to leave me hopelessly stranded in a heap on the floor.
My response was to bend over my legs and away from the vent as though ready to belch. I had no time to freak out, however. I desperately crawled with my hands back towards the centre of the room. My mind had lost all focus: all I could think about was getting away from that corner of the room. I was conscious enough to grab my legs and pull them along with me, sure they didn’t brush the bottom corner of the room.
It didn’t matter.
My hands lost their grip on the carpet floor for a second as my body was yanked away from its destination. ‘That’s impossible!’ my mind raced, ‘I didn’t touch the edge of the room! How is it pulling me?!’
It only took a glance to find out why. From the edge of the room, an arm grabbed my right leg. I could tell whose arm it was by the sleeve of the jumper the arm wore. ‘THAT’S ERNIES ARM!’ I mentally screamed. And I had a strong inkling that it wasn’t attached to its body anymore.
I screamed as I was pulled slowly to my demise, unable to resist except by hopelessly clawing away along the ground. “NO! I DON’T WANT TO DIE!” I wept, “NO! FUCK! NOT LIKE THIS! PLEASE, GOD!” I even found myself praying.
It’s ironic, looking back. That morning, I was a proud atheist, but then at that moment, I felt like God was the only being who could save me. That must have been what Ronald felt when he became religious, and I ridiculed him for it.
I begged for something to rescue me. As tears leaked from my clenched closed eyes, I prepared for the worst.
God must have smiled upon me. I heard the front door open downstairs and my parents drunkenly moaning about their shit jobs.
“MUUUUUUM! DAAAD!” I screamed, sounding like the hurt child I was. I instantly heard them rush up the stairs, but I had no idea how close I was to being consumed.
Yet, hearing Mum and Dad rushing to my aid gave me newfound strength. My hands clutched into the carpet as hard as I could make them. ‘I’m going to make it! As soon as they come in, it’ll give up!’ Every second that passed was torturously slow and drawn out.
Mum swung the door open with all her might… only to scream.
It stopped pulling.
I was ecstatic to see both of my parents, but they looked horrified.
I looked at my right leg to see why: my foot was gone.
Blood spewed out from where I once had a limb. I think I screamed. My parents did everything they could to ensure I would live, and they saved me. All I remember after that was my dad pushing down on my now stump of a leg and gently fading away, terrified of whether I would make it.
When I woke up in a hospital bed, my parents told me the police wanted to find out what I knew. However, I didn’t have it in me to tell them the truth: they would institutionalise me like with Ronald. I also didn’t want to curse them with the Line Demon’s presents.
I told them I was stabbed in the back and passed out without seeing the culprit’s face. When I came to, I started screaming when I saw my missing leg, and that’s when Mum and Dad came in. They had no reason not to believe me and chalked it up to that: a burglary gone horribly wrong. They disregarded the pool of blood they found outside the office.
My dad was less convinced. He knew when something wasn’t being said.
And so, a week later, I am still bedridden and now writing this. I will never be able to move my legs again. I don’t expect pity. I am lucky to be alive, after all. But it means I won’t be able to avoid the Line Demon. It hasn’t got me yet, but it is probably only a matter of time.
I’ve been trying to contact Ronald. I haven’t seen him since I met him. If he told me what happened to him, maybe there is a way of fighting back against this thing. Otherwise, I may have to avoid it for the rest of my life, which looks very short.
It helps that I am constantly surrounded by nurses. The Line Demon won’t come after me while they are with me. Perhaps I could still lead an ordinary life? I know there isn’t any confirming that.
That’s why I am writing this: I want to fight back against this thing, and I need your help. If you have encountered the Line Demon as I have described or anything like this and have any ideas on how to beat it, comment on this post and tell me how I can defeat… no, kill this thing. Please.
And I must warn you. Once you’ve read this, it may come after you. Your curiosity has gotten the better of you as it did me, and I’m sorry. It is intelligent, and I didn’t realise it until it was too late. Pretend this was written as fiction: it can see and hear you through the lines! So, act natural! I don’t know if it can read. And whatever you do…
DON’T STEP ON ANY LINES!