I remember being at my grandmothers house and always hearing nice wind chimes. It was a nice sound that added to the nice nature ambience. Or at least it was…
It was a Friday night (somewhere around 11 at night) and I just got back from dinner with friends, not a fun time. My friend Joey decided to get drunk and we had to babysit and then drive him home, he’s lucky I don’t have work tomorrow. I got undressed and hopped into bed, I didn’t even bother to shower (I don’t have anything to do tomorrow I can just take it then). But something was keeping me up that night, the sound of… metal clanging? I wasn’t super sure so I lied there for about 10 minutes trying to figure out what this damn noise was. Then it hit me, wind chimes! But that can’t be right, I live just off the outskirts of a small city in an apartment complex, so there aren’t any homeowners nearby. Plus, they sound terrible, they could be wind chimes but cheap ones at that. They don’t even seem to be set to a key, just… random pitches. I decided to track it down.
I opened my apartment door and peeked outside, sure enough it was a little less muffled. I decided to walk out front, a little bit louder. I decided to follow, it seemed to be heading away from the city down a road running through the woods, I walk down the sidewalk of this road all the time, about half a mile down is a small park where I go to jog every now and then. Although it’s going through the woods, the road still has street lights lining it, so I wasn’t in total darkness. I’ve been walking for about 15 minutes and the noise seems a little louder, but nothing to brag about. As I’m walking things start to feel off, the trees look… darker? These trees have always felt full of life (even in the winter) but now they seem very monochrome. The more I look around it’s not just the trees… what the hell? Why does everything look so dead and dark. It has to be my eyes playing tricks on me, things don’t just turn monochrome.
I’ve been walking for another 30 minutes (a little more progress on the sound but I’ve still got work to do) when I notice another thing, the sidewalk is cracked and there’s weeds growing through. I know this sounds like normal sidewalk but this sidewalk has always been in great shape, and when I say cracks I mean there’s cracks everywhere, as if someone took a jackhammer to this thing. But yet again I brush it off.
Another fifteen minutes and I have the realization, it’s been about an hour. It only takes about 15 minutes to get to the park and I haven’t even seen it yet. Where the hell am I? The only thing that looks familiar are these street lights. Almost on queue they start to flicker and go out. I was left in total darkness. It was cold, and I realized I could no longer here the “wind chimes”. It was quiet. I began to cry, a 24 year old man, crying out of desperation. I was lost and scared. Then I heard the chimes again, just great. But this time there was a new sound, rhythmic thumping… running. Something big, and moving fast. The sound of something large running and that blasted clanging metal became louder and louder. I tried to run faster but then I tripped over a tree root that had made its way into the sidewalk, I fell on my side with my ankle twisted badly.
That’s when I felt it, something large landing on top of me, I craned my neck to the side to see this beast on top of me. It was large and bony, but not skinny or lanky (but as if it just had a “fat” skeleton). Its body resembled a bony gorilla, the outline of every bone and rib was visible on the skin, and the way it stood resembled the way a gorilla stands on its knuckles. Its head was almost human, except it was droopy, like it had too much skin for its skull, its head was a little elongated as well. The beast was the same monochrome colors as my surroundings. But the most unsettling part were the large metal pipe-like objects stabbed into its sides and back, like the quills on a porcupine… but not neat, they were sporadic and looked like they were placed at random. I met its gaze and I got a good look at it’s cold empty eyes, it had hollow sockets yet I still felt a sense of emotion behind those empty holes. It had bags beneath each eye, as if sleep was never an option for it. It let out a terrible screech, like scraping metal, and to match its metal quills rattled making that terrible clanging metal sound I came too familiar to.
It ran its skinny fingers along its quills (as if it were making a decision) and stopped halfway down it’s back. It grabbed it and yanked it out, the sound of flesh tearing made me sick but this creature didn’t even flinch. The pipe it carried was roughly 4 feet and it came to a single point, like a giant needle.I braced myself for the pain that was about to come, it drove it’s metal quill into my right side, slowly moving deeper into me. I felt it poking and pushing my inner organs. The pain was unbearable. I began to vomit, it tasted metallic… blood. I felt faint, I wanted to get one last look at it, I forced my head up and got one last look at those dead eyes. It’s all I saw as my consciousness faded away.
I woke up in a grey room, I felt no pain. I dared not to look at my side, and then I heard a voice. It spoke in a low raspy tone… “You know it’s funny, every human does the same. They get curious and it gets them killed. That’s why I created the path, I lure in the foolish and sic my creatures on them. It’s your punishment. Tell others if you want, no one will believe you. Monsters aren’t real, you know that, everyone knows that.” “Show your damn face coward” I said. “You don’t deserve the privilege” it said. And I felt the metal go further, I fainted yet again.
I woke up in a cold sweat. I looked at my surroundings… home. My room in my apartment, I can hear birds chirping, I see daylight. It was just a bad dream.
Or so I thought.
Until I felt a terrible pain in my side.