Me and my dad had moved into a townhouse around when I was 5, early enough that I didn’t remember the details, but late enough that I remember it happening. The furniture was arranged strangely when we got there, so he moved around quite a bit of things. For example, the couch and television were next to each other in the living room. The weirdest thing was, there was a small hole behind each piece of furniture. It couldn’t have been more than half a foot in any dimension. There were at least two in every room. My dad cursed, thinking that the previous owner had covered them up to get more for the house. Not that it was expensive, anyway.
The only room with some resemblance of normal was the bedroom I took. It had a bed, a dresser against one corner, a nightstand, and a window, all placed in the normal order. We didn’t change anything there. Now, I regret that.
I always felt like I was being watched in my bed. When I was 8, I woke up feeling like another presence was in the room. I didn’t see anything.
This was also around the time my dad got me a cat. I named him Pringle. He would sleep on the living room couch, but not either of our beds. He also, for whatever reason, refused to get anywhere close to any of the holes in the walls.
The feeling of being watched got worse the older I got. When I was 12, a scratching noise, soft and echoing, filled my room in the night. I could never find where it was coming from. Then, when I was 13, the scratching became tapping, sometimes sounding like it was right beside my head.
I never told my dad about it, though. He was normally out working at night. Usually, the sounds lasted short enough that I forgot about them in the morning, after I finally managed to go to sleep.
That was until one night, when I woke up. I looked at my clock. It was 1:25 PM. Everything seemed quiet. There was no noise. Instead, there was something worse.
The dresser in the far corner had moved. Not much, but enough to be noticable from my bed. The dread feeling was stronger than ever now.
In the morning, I moved the dresser back, but not before noticing something. There was a tiny square hole in the wall behind it.
At the time, I thought nothing of it. I should have.
The very next night, there was no noise, but the dresser had moved again. Before I could do anything though, I heard a different noise than anything I had ever heard before. It was a mix between a slither and a hiss, and the sound of nails scratching a chalkboard. It started far away, almost from the hallway, then slowly traveled closer and closer until it was directly behind the dresser.
No more noise came.
In the morning, I was too scared to move. My dad came in around 9:00, having just gotten back from work. When he saw me shivering, he asked me what was wrong. I finally told him everything that had happened, all the way back from when we first moved in. A shadow crossed his face. He left, and then came back a few minutes later with a shotgun and handed it to me.
A while back, he had shown me how to shoot, in case of emergencies. But, feeling the cold, heavy metal in my hand, a shiver ran up my spine.
“Anyone comes in, shoot ‘em. Don’t let ‘em get close, just shoot,” he said.
I reluctantly put the shotgun under my pillow.
For a few nights, absolutely nothing happened.
Then, one night, I woke up to the slithering noise again. I grabbed the gun from my pillow and loaded it.
Like last time, it started far away and then began getting closer. I watched as the dresser slowly moved outwards with a creak.
Then, a dark shape, almost blending perfectly with the shadows in my room, emerged from the hole.
It was a huge, lanky creature with long dangly arms and legs, with claws over a foot long tipping each hand and foot. Its face was pitch black, its glossy eyes reflecting my scream as it took three long steps toward me. The worst part was its smile. The things face opened where the mouth would be, and jagged teeth covered in red stains filled the crescent opening. The edges of the grin went up even past its mirror-like eyes. I fired my shotgun twice, and the thing didn’t flinch. Its smile seemed to grow as I fired. It reached one claw up, ready to shred my torso, but I jumped to the side, stunning the thing momentarily. I aimed and loaded my shotgun again, but not at the thing. The window blew open with a crash. I lived on the second story, but I took the risk and jumped. As I hit the ground, pain erupted up my leg and I cried out. Limping, I made my way to my dad’s car. I opened the door and checked the mirror above. Sure enough, the key jingled onto my lap.
From where I had run, I saw the thing slowly approaching. Its grin was impossibly wide now, covering its whole face. Blood dripped from the carcass in its claws, which I recognized as my cat, Pringle. He was limp, and the thing’s jaw was covered in fresh blood.
I cursed and turned the ignition. I had never driven before, but it wasn’t so hard, right? I shoved the throttle into reverse and jammed the gas pedal, sending me forward as the car went backwards. The thing saw this and its grin shrunk the smallest bit. In an instant, there was a crash as the front car window exploded. And for a long second, everything was quiet. On the hood lay the mutilated corpse of my cat. The car slowly rattled to a stop. It was gone. I heard a far away slithering, coming from the wooded area to my right.
After the incident, I thought about something. How long had it been in the walls? Watching me? Haunting me? How did it manage to even get through the hole? The thing was huge, and the holes were tiny. My hand couldn’t even fit in one.
I finally wrote it off as a mental breakdown of some kind. There was no way any of that was possible.
I had told my dad Pringle was wandering and must have gotten hit by a car. Could that have been what happened? And I had just dreamed about the thing? Or hallucinated?
That’s what I thought, until two days ago. There’s a reason I’m sharing this now. I was at a friend’s house that night when I heard something. A tapping behind me.
I asked my friend when he had moved here. He said recently. I asked whether he moved any furniture.
He said yes.