Things That Go Bump In The Night: UB/CP Edition (Posting 4 Stories A Day)
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The only creepypasta i know is about the cartoon "The Rugrats" and the theory behind that show.
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My family has always been big into conspiracies. My brother likes to ramble on about The Illuminati, and believes that Obama is the Anti-Christ.
My mom can trace literally anything in life back to being the government's fault, and constantly worries about being arrested and shipped overseas for no reason.
My dad, although staying silent most of the time, agrees with what my mom says. It really just annoys the hell out of me when I hear them all spewing the 2012 end-of-the-world garbage, so I usually attempt to slip quietly off to my room, that is, before my mother follows me and decides to continue her half of the conversation from just outside my door.
For the last year, I’ve been kind of keeping more to myself. When I’m not in class, or doing the countless hours of homework per week that I have to do, I’m usually doing the typical hermit teenage stuff.
Watching TV, ? around on the internet, knitting, or playing video games. I really enjoyed horror games and movies and just scary stuff in general. I use the past tense of ‘enjoy’ because it’s safe for me to say that no, I do not enjoy them anymore.
Going back a year or so, I finally had saved up enough to buy a laptop. Something that I thought was cool about it was that it came with a built in microphone and webcam, two things that I’ve never had before. The first thing that my brother told me to do was to put a piece of masking tape over my webcam. He also said, whatever I do, don’t sleep with my laptop open. He thinks people can watch you through your webcam, even when it’s not on. Like I was about to believe that.
Him being older than I, ever since we were kids, he was always trying to bully me into being gullible. Getting me to eat dog biscuits when I was five, insisting that if I did, I would know how to speak dog, or telling me to lick a 9-Volt battery for ? knows what reason. ? ? . As I’ve grown up, I’ve learned to trust him less and less, and this whole ‘people spying on me through my webcam’ business sounded nothing short of idiotic.
For the last few months, I suffered from insomnia, and the only way that I could go to sleep was with some type of white noise machine. Every night, I had the same routine. After finishing my homework, I would watch an episode or two of whatever show I seemed to be fixated with at that time on Netflix or Hulu, then plug in my laptop, set it on my nightstand in front of me, and go to rainymood.com before shutting off my screen light and letting the rain noises lull me to sleep.
At the time, I associated the nightmares with the insomnia. I figured it was just a side-effect. It was bizarre though, I’ve always had vivid dreams, but I hadn’t had nightmares since I was a kid. I thought it was something everyone grew out of, and although it wasn’t the same dream every night, it was the same basic concept.
There’s always the sound of rain. I’d presume from the white noise I set before I fell asleep. I walk into a room, usually something familiar; my bedroom, my dad’s workshop, the daycare room that I work at, my old high school theater, or my English classroom at the college — but there are always people waiting for me there.
All people that I knew; my mom, dad, brother, neighbors, both old and current friends and teachers, and sometimes even some of the children I watch when I’m at work. They’re all lined up around the perimeter of the room, shoulder to shoulder, staring at me. None say a word.
They just stare. I move around the room. Their eyes follow me. A dozen chilling, terrifying stares drill into me. In my dream, I never have sense to flee the area. After an eternity of tense silence, someone finally speaks. It is my brother. He says, "Don’t mind us. We’re only here to observe. Carry on." Frightened, in a cold sweat, I do what I’m told.
I do my homework.
I knit.
I play a game.
Whenever I look up from my task, they look at me, scowling angrily. Then, they all take one simultaneous step forward, tightening the area around me. I panic and look back to my task at hand. My fingers forget how to write, or type, or knit, or do anything.
And whenever I fumble, and my productivity stops, I feel the anger, the pure malice from these people who I’ve come to know and care for. I feel my skin tingling. They take another step. Claustrophobia sets in and I start hyperventilating and break out in a cold sweat.
Another step. I hear growling. This inhuman, not even animal-like sounding growl come from the wall of... ? ... I can’t even call them people... these things surrounding me. It’s something that you wouldn’t be able to recreate with special effects even if you tried. It’s the most disturbing thing I’ve ever heard.
Another step. Another step. With the enclosure narrowed down to less than a foot on every side of me, I feel a hand on the back of my head. I always assume the worst, that perhaps, the hand is going to tear out the back of my skull, but the jagged nails just run through my hair.
I hear a voice.
“Hush now.”
I turn to see a figure. Someone I’ve never met before. He is so distorted, there’s no way that I could have ever met someone like this, except maybe at a costume party on Halloween. His eyes are missing. There is nothing but two ? holes where they should be.
He smiles and dark red liquid slides off his jagged teeth and lands on his lower lip. He suddenly grabs the back of my hair and jerks me around until I’m facing the crowd of people I used to recognize. He laughs like a madman. The dim light makes it hard to make everything out. They all have very dark circles under their eyes, and have red pupils. They glare at me with pure hatred.
“Everything’s alright.”
With that, they all lunge at me, screeching.
This is the point where I wake up. Sleep paralysis usually leads me to panic and crying like a child. I can still feel the tightness around my throat, the jagged nails in my hair, the pressure in my chest.
My pillow is always drenched in sweat. I’ve never connected the two until now, but I always get this nightmare when I leave my laptop open when I sleep.
Let’s see... I fell asleep at around 11 last night. If the time Is 3:53 am now, I would say, about forty-five minutes ago, I woke up. I turned over and reached for my glasses so that I could check the time.
I can’t find my phone, so since my laptop is right in front of me, I turned on the screen so I can see the clock.
Something else caught my eye first. Skype was opened.
I am currently in a phone call with number 000-000-0000.
The call time is currently 04:25:11.
The man I’ve seen in my dream all these months is on the other line.
He is watching me. Still.
He has only said one thing to me.
“Don’t mind me. I’m only here to observe. Carry on.”
If I could leave anyone with any piece of advice — it’s this; Don't ever sleep with your laptop on -
BEN
I was with two of my friends Ben and Nick on holidays when it happened.
We were in an isolated part of Greece, somewhere that doesn't show up on Google maps for some reason, traveling down a long stretch of road in our hire car in search of the next major city to party in. After initially planning on driving through the night, we accepted that we had lost our way and it was getting too dark to continue so we pulled into a gas station for directions on where we could stay. The old man handed us an old brochure of a nearby village and insisted we go check it out. Since we were completely lost, we were left with no other option. Something different we thought, but just how different we could never have guessed, as we took the next left turn and ventured into the headlight lit darkness.
The only form of lodging out there was in remote cabins, separated far apart from each other for privacy we guessed. The self-contained cabin had a bathroom, kitchen, queen bed and single bed; all that we needed for one night. Nick won the rock off for the single bed, so Ben and I would be sharing. Nick snores anyway, so I was cool with that.
One feature of the cabin that unnerved me however, was the large square curtainless window that occupied the entire area of the vacant wall. It bothered me especially now because night had fallen and the light was on inside, so it acted as a sort of two-way mirror. Anyone wearing black could easily look through without being noticed...
We made plans to go out that night to the village bar, have some drinks, tell stories and see where the night takes us. We discussed that would leave the key under the rock by the front porch, and if we were to split up, whoever came home first would leave the door open for the others to get in.
"Why don't you say it louder so everyone can hear where we hide it," Ben joked.
To which Nick found the pleasure in yelling it at the top of his lungs. Luckily our cabin was isolated out here and there was no one close by, I thought to myself as we drove off...
It was a surprisingly fun night at the bar. We had plenty of shots of the local drink Ouzo, until the bar staff informed us we had ? their stocks dry; it was cheap though, in Greece.
The next thing I knew, it was late, the bar was closing, and we had lost Ben. He must've left without us, though I don’t remember him telling us he was leaving I thought, slightly concerned by him acting out of character. So we left without him, taking the car.
"I need to ? badly," I adjusted in my seat, as the car headlights momentarily lit up the cabin and we turned into the driveway to the sound of gravel crunching under the tyres. We checked under the rock for the key. It was gone. We tried the doorhandle. Locked. "What the ? ?" we both looked at each other. Ben must've come home before us, and he's locked us out!
"BEN! OPEN UP! We need to ? !"
"Hurry up Ben!"
We banged on the door. I heard a stumbling inside like someone literally crawling awkwardly on all fours out of bed. Damn he must be ? !
"I can’t hold this ? in anymore," I said, as Nick and I went to separate sides of the cabin to urinate as Ben finally opened the door. It felt good urinating, but that feeling was harshly interrupted by what caught my attention on the large window, sending a large shiver up my spine. There was this long thin set of handprints, only visible on the window from the mist outside. It looked longer than any human’s hand, but much, much thinner. “? ,” but I quickly cleared my mind of the scary and irrational images it was creating, as it was certainly just a regular human hand that had been smeared, causing the illusion that it’s longer... Right? Either way, it occurred to me that someone or 'something' might have been watching us...
I hurriedly finished my business and rushed inside. We are NOT turning the light on I thought, to prevent anything from looking in at us. As I locked the front door and we went straight to bed.
Nick fell asleep instantly, snoring before his head had even hit the pillow. And after a few minutes of tolerating Nick's inconsistent snore, my drooping eyes fell weary so I closed them. As soon as they shut, I couldn't help but get the burning feeling that Ben's eyes had opened suddenly and were staring straight at me...menacingly.
My body rose in temperature and my heart beat quicker as I sensed this. As if Ben was holding his breath, vision fixated on me angrily through the darkness. Sorry if we hadn’t gone home with him, jeez... why would he be so angry? After a few minutes of calming myself from this irrational fear, I drifted off to sleep.
Knock Knock Knock "Open up, you said you wouldn't lock it!"
THUD THUD THUD! It grew louder. "Open the door its ? cold out here!"
This was the single scariest moment of my entire life. And the most paralysing sensation swept over my entire body. It was Ben at the door.
Suddenly there was a movement in the sheets next to me... Something stirring.
I got up faster than I ever have in my life and ran to the door; Nick had awoken and come to the same horrific realisation as soon as me, right behind me in kicking the door open and fleeing outside to the car, not once did we look back. I started the car and beckoned Ben to follow. But he didn’t know what had happened. Still facing into the room he turned on the light to see inside...
This was a true story. It really happened. You can ask Nick if you don't believe me. But I wouldn't ask Ben. He doesn't say much anymore after the incident. And whenever questioned about what he saw that night, his face turns pale and expressionless and he will immediately shut the nearest curtain. -
It started with my friend in Japan. He was a hacker, always leaving his computer on, along with AIM and MSN. When he logged out on both, I assumed his computer finally died from overload.
It was then I noticed all his posts on our favorite sites were gone. All his accounts, all his videos, all his comments.
Sorry, I’m getting ahead of myself. My name is Nathan and I’m a shut-in. Agoraphobia. I live in North Carolina and I program for a living. My sister does the shopping for me and I live in a basement. No windows. That might very well be the only thing that’s keeping me safe.
I woke up a month ago, at 3 AM and sat down at my desk, ready to work a bit but mostly chat. That’s when I noticed KaosSrida was gone. I don’t know his real name so don’t bother asking. Besides some spelling issues, he was a fairly good English speaker and I enjoyed talking to him. He also knew everything about computers, stuff I could never imagine possible.
That’s why I wasn’t worried. It was well within his expertise to hack into sites and delete his own posts. I assumed he had gotten sick of the internet. He’d been complaining about it for years.
I tried discussing his disappearance with a mutual friend. He seemed confused, like he was forgetting who Kaos was. This friend was really old. I worried about his mental health. I decided to let it go and talk about sports a bit.
By this time, three or four people had stopped logging on. Not the most unusual thing in the world. People got busy sometimes or just didn’t feel like talking. Only, their posts disappeared as well.
Now, it had been a couple of days since Kaos went missing. And I was getting fairly freaked out so I turned off the computer and watched TV for a while.
That’s when ? got scary.
One of the news anchors was gone. The other would sometimes look to the spot her partner should be and look confused for a while, only to return to speaking as usual. A local show called Three Sisters or something, was now Two Sisters. And yes, the third sister was gone. As with the news, sometimes there would be times where the third sister was important and for a moment they seemed to remember. But then they just kept acting. A cooking show just showed the studio, with no host.
I am a rational man and I was quick to rationalize everything. The news anchor wasn’t used to working alone while her partner was sick and the show with the sisters was part of a plot, I wouldn’t know, I didn’t watch it. The cooking show was harder to explain. Perhaps they left the camera running while they had to leave for some reason, and the network guys didn’t notice.
I had calmed myself and decided to watch something else. I got a TV guide my sister had gotten me and flipped through it. That’s when I noticed the freakiest thing yet. The Two Stooges. I stared blankly at the name, squished between an old britcom and one of those shows about how good the fifties were.
It was soon to start so I flipped over to the channel. Sure enough, the title screen said The Two Stooges. Surely, this was some joke or a rip off.
But no. It started as I remembered it. Only with a stooge less.
I freaked out and turned off the TV.
So here I am. It’s been a month and around a hundred people are missing that I know of. My sister is gone as well. I’m posting this in every site I can, hopefully reaching as many people as I can.
If you can notice the people missing as well, my name is Nate Creek and I live in a small town in North Carolina, please PM me as soon as possible.
“Hey Bob. Bob, help me out here.”
The man stared at the computer screen, furrowing his eyebrows.
“What do you want, Jim?”
Bob walked over to him, a bored look on his face.
“One of the AIs has a glitch.”
“How so?”
“I deleted several other AIs and an entertainment pack so I could install the new versions but this AI didn’t delete its memories and is panicking.
I thought it was the lack of a support AI because I deleted the sister file as well, but the memory logs show it started much sooner. He’s been at his computer for hours.”
“What’s he doing? Working? Creative writing?”
“Autobiographical-diary, it says. I thought we didn’t install that module on this one.”
“It’s probably a glitch of some sort. Just delete and do a clean install with the others.”
Jim sighed.
“I kinda liked this one.”
“It’s just a program Jim. It’s not like it’s sentient.”
Jim watched the visual representation of Nate_Creek_5 type furiously.
“I guess you’re right, Bob.”
Jim right clicked the AI and chose delete.
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Anybody still reading these stories?
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WE DONT TALK ABOUT SARAH
When they brought Sarah home, it was the happiest day of my life. She was so cute! I couldn't wait to share my toys with her. I started going through them, deciding which ones were hers and which ones were mine. I borrowed my daddy's label maker and started putting our names on each thing so we wouldn't get them confused.
She cried a lot at first. I'd ask my parents why she cried so much and they told me it was natural. They said when she got used to us and our house she would calm down and not cry all the time. Sometimes though, she'd cry so loud that Daddy would have to take her into the basement where it was sound-proof so the neighbors wouldn't complain.
She slept in Mommy and Daddy's bed for the first month. Sometimes I'd try to join them but they'd always lock their door. Mommy said their bed wasn't big enough for all of us to sleep in. I was patient. I knew the new bed with the bars that they'd set up in my room would eventually be hers.
When they felt it was safe to let her sleep on her own, they started putting her in it. She wasn't crying so much anymore by then, and I would lie in my bed and watch her sleep from across the room. They'd take her into their bedroom first and lay with her until she fell asleep, then move her to our room. Some nights after she was moved, I'd see her lying there with her eyes open, just staring at the ceiling, so I'd go over and give her toys through the bars. A lot of the time she'd just throw the toy and then start crying and I'd have to hide under my covers before Daddy came in to deal with her.
Eventually, they started letting Sarah sit with me in the playroom. I was told that I wasn't allowed to give her anything too small or sharp that she could hurt herself with. I was soooo happy! I would sit behind her and brush her hair and tell her she was the best little sister in the world. I showed her which toys were hers and which were mine, but she didn't seem to care. Sometimes we'd sit on the windowseat and she'd bang on the window while I drew on it with special crayons.
School started back up at Sugar Creek Elementary, and I went but Sarah had to stay home. Mommy said she wasn't ready for school yet. I'd come home and tell Sarah all the stuff I'd learned. I drew pictures of us playing together. When I showed them to Daddy he'd tell me thank you and take them to keep in his office.
Then came the really bad day. I'll never forget it. I came home from school and Mommy was just sitting at the table smoking. She looked real sad. I went to play with Sarah but couldn't find her. When I went to ask Mommy where she was, she started crying. I asked her what was wrong and she said that Sarah was gone. I didn't understand totally, but I started crying too and told her "We need to find her!" She just shook her head and said she was gone somewhere we couldn't go.
Daddy took her bed apart. He threw away all my drawings with her in them. He took my nametags off all the toys. Sometimes I'd find one he'd missed and it'd make me cry. I started collecting them and hiding them, but he found where I hid them one day by accident and got really mad. We weren't allowed to talk about her. It was like she never existed. I didn't think it was fair. I told Mommy that Daddy was mean to make us not talk about Sarah, but she said it was better that way and I would understand when I was older.
I saw Sarah again.
It was just one time, but I'll never forget it. I was with Mommy doing some errands. We went grocery shopping then went to a fabric store in Thorntown so Mommy could look at material to make some new curtains out of. She remembered that she had letters to mail, so we stopped at the post office to buy some stamps. I was humming to myself and reading posters while Mommy talked to the lady behind the counter and that's when I saw Sarah. She was as cute as I remembered. I walked over and looked at the poster with her picture, but they'd gotten her name wrong. Somebody had written her name down as Shannon.
I rushed over to Mommy and tugged on her sleeve and told her that Sarah was up on the wall with the other pictures of children, but she got all flustered and apologized to the lady before dragging me out of the post office. I had to shout because she kept trying to talk over me instead of listening.
"I saw Sarah! They got her picture on the wall in there!"
Finally Mommy slapped me and told me it wasn't Sarah and that it may have looked like Sarah but I was mistaken and if I didn't stop I'd get in real trouble with Daddy when he got home. I cried and promised to be good, but even after I promised I wasn't allowed to have dinner and had to sit in my room that night. I heard Mommy and Daddy talking in the kitchen and they got kinda loud. Somebody started banging open the kitchen drawers and then Daddy's feet stomped up the stairs but I heard Mommy scream "Don't you dare!" and he stopped outside my room then went back downstairs.
We never went back to that post office and I never saw Sarah again. This is the first time I've talked about Sarah since that day.
SN: if y'all don't understand the premise of story u might be slow
i didnt get it. explain. they kidnapped a kid? -
PT 1
I don’t sleep with my windows open anymore. No matter how hot out it gets, that bastard stays closed. It’s been this way for a long time. Since I was very young. It’s not a real hit with the ladies during summertime. People usually recommend air conditioners, and I usually go with the prospect when I have company. But when it’s in, I don’t sleep well at all because I can only imagine how easy it would be for anyone to bypass them.
There is a single perk to an AC though, well, besides the relief from the hot stickiness of the summer’s humidity, and that’s the steady hum which stifles the silence. I don’t like the silence you see. There was a time when it brought me an almost zen like level of peace and tranquility, but now, I find it invasive, dangerous. Silence never comes alone. From time to time, I can still hear the chanting, from my youth, I can hear them all, wordlessly and yet with prestigious synchronicity and harmony with one another, their conjoined voices echo out from the woods like the gentle and yet threatening breeze that proceeds a violent hailstorm, rhythmic yet senseless. It never went away, and yet I know they’ve all moved on or died. I know this is all very well.
When I was about nine years old, Me and my dad lived in this old rented two family apartment house in a town called Bridgewater in the state of Massachusetts. We lived on the bottom floor, The second floor wasn’t used. It was recently vacated by its prior residents. It was a very quiet neighborhood, very suburban and with plenty of woods. Behind our house, there was a backyard that proceeded into a large forest that spanned for miles out. I used to play in them.
My dad and my mother were recently divorced, so there were just the three of us living here. Me, him and the dog Cash, who was named after the late country singer Johnny Cash. He was an old Scottish Terrier. You know the type, ankle biters with the really ugly bearded faces. They got him as a pup when I was still in diapers and he was my lifelong friend. He may have been something of an idiot, but at the time, he was all I had. I cried and cried when mom tried to take him. In the end, he was left in my father’s care for my sake.
Me and Cash would spend a lot of time playing in the woods. When you’re young, your imagination is a very powerful thing, and the woods had an almost magic quality in terms of supplementation for my imagination. I would play army, Build forts, climb trees. One time me and Cash traveled in so far, I actually got lost. We were losing daylight as it was October and the light was fading at a much faster rate, I began to panic, afraid I’d be trapped out here in the pitch black. As we walked around, frantic for landmarks, anything familiar, That’s when I saw it. The clearing, with a large rock in the center.
It wasn’t exactly uncommon to see graffiti and vandalism in the woods. A public forest is known quite well for trees with messages carved into them, names, swastikas, brad and Jen 4ever in a nice cute heart. Stuff like that, not to mention the pseudo gang names spray painted on rocks. That was the impression I got of this place, a hangout for older kids. But something wasn’t right. Me being only 9, my mind wasn’t exactly capable of comprehending the connotations of symbols and other things, and yet there was something really off about these images. I’ve never seen anything like them before. The surrounding trees had crudely shaped images of what appeared to be a goat man hybrid, like a stick figure, with an unnecessarily detailed goat’s head imposed over where you’d expect to see a very basic stick figure face.
These images were drawn over and over and over again, all over the trees that surrounded the clearing, almost obsessively so, and not just at the basic human height level, but all up the trees, as if whoever carved them, had to use a ladder. The rock itself had red markings all over it, letters that I have never seen before. Underneath though, was written in black spray paint a message I actually could read. It said “Behold the wisdom of the Horned” and below that, there were five painted lines. They were all the same height except for the two outer lines that were twice the height and spiraled outwards at the top.
What really scared me about this place though were the dolls. They were hanging from the branches around the clearing. They appeared to have been woven out of sticks, and poorly so. Taking a closer look, I realized what was so scary about them. While the stick dolls were clearly constructed with the grace of ? arts and crafts students, the heads of them were dry and clean skulls of animals.
I didn’t know what of, but they were bleached white, dry and clean, and their hollow sockets…I can’t explain it effectively without sounding insane, but there was something sentient about them, watchful, and pleading. I could feel their eyes on me, though they had none to watch with. I felt fear, not my own fear, mind you, but something, an aura of emotion that made absolutely no sense. Have you ever been at an underage drinking party that got crashed by the police? It’s that kind of fear. The fear that comes synonymously with trouble.
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C.I.W PT2
I can’t explain why I did it, but I reached up and touched one. Maybe it was a child’s general inquisitive nature that compelled me, maybe it was fascination, or an intense desire to quell my fear and convince myself that they were just dolls and not the watchful spirits I would eventually come to believe they were. When I touched it, the skull fell off. The doll unwound itself. Only a piece of it remained attached to the rawhide rope that it was suspended from. The Skull cracked when it hit the grand. When it happened, there was a certainty that quelled inside me. As Naïve as a nine year old could be, there was also a certainty that remained with me to this day. I don’t belong here.
Cash immediately started barking when the doll fell, and it startled me so effectively that I let out a scream. I looked up, the sky was glowing red with the darkness not too far behind. The sun was going down, and I had to get out of here. Cash was staring at me, black eyes wide open and tail wagging violently. He was barking at me, insistently. He began to growl at something, maybe air, maybe ghosts. When I approached him, he turned and ran. Cash was my only companion in this unnatural place, and I would have been damned if I was going to let him betray me to solitude here, so I gave chase. I ran for my life.
The last thing I saw before I chased Cash, was something that really messed with me. All the other dolls that were hanging, when I first arrived, they were dangling, some even spinning lazily in the breeze, and yet as I ran after Cash, I saw every single doll on the sight were completely stationary, staring and facing me directly. I was dismissive of this detail as I was more afraid of being alone.
I never let Cash out of my sight. He led me straight home. I never loved my dog more than when I realized what he had done for me. Dogs are never lost, they always know the way.
Before I went to bed, I told my dad what I saw. He laughed it off and told me it was just teenagers being punks, and that I should just let it go. I found it comforting and was almost willing to let it go. I even fell asleep without any trouble.
That night was when I heard it for the first time. The noise that’d haunt me to this very day. I woke up and could hear noise coming through my window. I got up and looked out to listen closer. That’s when I realized it was chanting. Voices, dozens maybe. They were coming from in the woods. I could hear them, loudly and rhythmically. I didn’t know what they were saying, but I could tell it was ceremonious, like a hymn you hear people sing in churches, except it felt dark, violent even.
I immediately thought about the clearing with the rock. The dolls. The fear. I knew in my bones that the chanting was coming from there. What scared me the most was that it wasn’t far. It wasn’t far at all. The Chanting went on for hours. I just lied there in bed, wide eyed with fear listening to it, praying that it’d stop. It wouldn't though. It went on until four in the morning when the early birds began to wake up.
I stopped playing in the woods. My dad noticed the behavior immediately and asked if I was alright. I told him about the chanting and again he shrugged his shoulders and said that it was probably teenagers drinking beers and having a party. I asked them why they’d drink beer and chant the same sound for five hours. He told me they weren’t chanting, that I imagined it, and that I should close the window from now on. I probably should of listened to him, but I didn’t. Curiosity got the better of me.
The next night, the chanting began again at exactly eleven o’clock. It seemed louder than before. I couldn’t sleep hearing it, but I couldn’t bring myself to close the window. I don’t know why I thought this way, probably because I was just a child. I dimwittedly thought at the time that if I closed my window, I wouldn’t be able to hear them coming if they decided to break into the house. The logic is flawed I know, that they would still be chanting as they emerge from the woods and cross my yard, and not be nice and quiet about it, but that’s how I thought back then. That’s why I couldn’t close the window, because I had to know if they were coming.
This went on for several days. Every night, from eleven to four, exactly on the dot. Sometimes I could see in the woods, way way way out there, a faint glow, like the light of a fire. But it was so faint and far in between that I didn’t know whether to acknowledge or dismiss it as a trick of my own eyes. Other times, I would successfully fall asleep due to exhaustion, only to wake up several hours later in panic, still able to hear it. I asked my dad if Cash could sleep in my room on the third night, and he said it’d be fine. It felt better knowing I had the dog to keep me company while I would hear the noise. And better yet, if I could hear them coming, he would too and then be a dog about it and start barking out the window at them. I anticipated a good night’s sleep and even felt silly for not thinking about this solution earlier. I fell asleep at eight with Cash sleeping at the foot of my bed.
I woke up at quarter past eleven, to Cash barking. He was on his two hind legs, tail wagging spastically, and he was barking out the window, ears pointing up. Barking, growling, howling out the window. I immediately got out of bed and looked out the window towards the woods. Nothing. Nothing at all. Cash was very agitated, growling and looking at me, then back out the window and barking. The chanting was still going on, same as the last couple of days. I remember feeling uncomfortable that Cash was barking at the noise, that if he was in danger of getting their attention. I tried to calm him down.
That’s when my dad came in, he stumbled in groggily and picked up the dog and turned to walk out the door with him, mumbling about him shutting the hell up. I called his name, but he was so asleep, he was practically dead on his feat. I screamed at him “DAD, THE WOODS!” that ? his attention. He turned around and walked up to me, looked out the window and then back at me.
“This again?” he mumbled, “Look boy, it’s just your imagination,”
“No listen, that’s what Cash was going crazy about, there are people singing in the woods! Just listen,”
He looked carefully out the window. Cash was growling in his arms as his head turned out the window. I listened too, but there was nothing. No sound. Total silence. I couldn’t believe it, could this had been a coincidence?
My dad told me to go to sleep and left the room, mumbling insults at Cash.
The silence chilled me far more than then the chanting ever did. At least when they were singing their malicious hymns, there was at least a sense of distance between them and me, but right now, I know they’re out there, but I don’t know where. I had no bearings whatsoever. What was even worse, what wrought unprecedented terror upon me was that there was no nighttime ambiance in those woods. No crickets. Evenings brought them out in droves this time of year, and even when they were chanting I could still hear them…but now it was quieter than a bone chilling winter night. Pure silence. How long did I stare out the window at those woods across my backyard, I have no idea. But when I woke up the next day, I was still sitting in the chair I planted right by it.
-
C.I.W PT3
That morning over breakfast, I insisted that there really was chanting out there, but my dad wasn’t hearing any of it. He put his foot down and told me that he won’t hear any more of this,
that I need to grow up and take responsibility and stop being so afraid all the time. You know, typical tough guy dad ? . I didn’t even bother to bring up the lack of crickets, knowing full well that he’d have made up an explanation for that as well. So I kept quiet, and ate my breakfast.
Later that day, I was waiting for my mom to pick me up at the end of my dad’s driveway to bring me to my grandma’s house where she was currently living, it was Friday and My mom had me on weekends. As I was waiting, a large black pickup truck was passed by the house very slowly. It came to a stop right in front me. There were two men in the truck, older, about my dad’s age. At first I thought maybe they were friends of his, but this thought didn’t last. The driver rolled down his window and looked at me, he was bald and was wearing abnormally slim sunglasses.
He was smoking a thin cigar or a cigarillo, I remember the strong smell of it. He looked at me, as if he were sizing me up, investigating for a moment until finally he smiled at me reached over and hit his friend on the shoulder and pointed me out to him. He too was bald and wearing the same sunglasses. They said something to each other and then the driver looked back at me with a terrible smile and drove away, waving slowly at me as he did so. They passed me by three more times before my mom finally picked me up. I didn’t give those two any thought, and just took comfort in the thought that I’d be sleeping somewhere else for the next couple of nights.
The weekend went by without a hitch, and sleeping over grandma’s house was such a relief. When I told her and mom about the voices in the woods, they just looked at each other and told me to tell dad about it. Frustrated, I argued that I did, but it was pointless. She too used the “It’s just your imagination” ? , same as dad. Not once during the whole experience did the memory leave my mind, of the two men in the truck or the distant chanting. Soon enough I would have to return.
Sunday night came along and I was dropped back off at my dad’s house, where I would spend the whole day dreading the inevitable nightfall, dreading the answer of whether or not I would hear the chanting in the woods, hear the strange people sing their dark songs in unison. I begged my dad to let me keep Cash in the room with me tonight, but he said no, leaving me to face what happened next alone. So, come bed time, I was sitting on my chair, by the window, staring into the darkness until the hour came, I stayed up until eleven, expecting to hear it, but what I got was silence. No singing. No crickets either. Just pure silence. I couldn’t tell if I was relieved or terrified, maybe they all moved on. Maybe they went somewhere else to play their creepy games. It took some self convincing, but I managed to calm myself to such a state of mind where I could actually go to sleep, knowing that I was safe. Reluctantly I crawled into my bed and closed my eyes.
I woke up to the most bone chillingly ? up thing I had ever seen. It was surreal, the ? image of it, every time I sleep….
My brain immediately surged itself into full function, beyond consciousness and straight into full fledged fight or flight mode as a cold rough hand forced its way over my mouth and shoved my face into my own mattress. I felt a body much larger than mine bare down on me. I felt the jagged kneecap ram itself directly into my stomach as I was then Pulled out of my bed and wrestled into a standing position, the cold hand still holding my mouth shut, another hand wedging my left hand directly behind my back and pulling upwards until the pain became so unbearable, I thought my arm was going to come off.
“SHHH!” a voice whispered into my ear. His breath was ice cold.
“Yes,” Said another voice across the room. My eyes were well adjusted to the darkness as it was, and I could see, through the moonlight shining into my now opened window a man wearing a horrible horrible mask. At first I thought he had the head of a goat, but I knew better. The goat stared with lifeless marbles where its eyes should have been, its head was a mask made out of the severed head of a goat, or a ram, not properly stuffed, and half rotted. It’s horns curled into spirals jutting out of its head, and random patches of the fur were missing, simply to show raw blistering skin. I tried to scream but the hand over my mouth tightened its grip, my arm behind my back, pulled to near breaking point.
“Scream, and we will ? you,” The voice whispered into my ear. My eyes couldn’t, no, they wouldn’t break away from that horrible person wearing the severed goats head as a mask. He was shirtless, wearing a necklace of what appeared to be bones, he was horribly emaciated and there were markings all up and down his torso. In his right hand he held a knife about the size of my forearm. It’s build wasn’t like any knife I had ever seen. It took a step closer to me and pressed it up against my throat, the steal was bitterly cold, and the tip of the blade was sharper than anything I ever felt. It would take less than four ounces of pressure to open my throat it, and they knew that I knew it. I couldn’t cry, I couldn’t even breath. In its other hand, it held a basic candle.
“Tomorrow,” the thing said, his voice muffled by the lifeless dead goat mask “You will exit your house at midnight, you will light this candle, place it on the ground in the center of your yard, and you will sit behind it, legs crossed, right foot on top of your left knee, and vice versa,”
“If you don’t do this,” The voice whispered into my ear, “The blood of your loved ones will be on your hands”
The goat man quickly retreated the blade from my neck. I don’t know remember what happened next.
I remember waking up in my bed, panting and crying. My dad came in to see what was wrong with me, and when I told him, he told me it was just a nightmare. At this point, he sat down at the end of my bed, he looked very wary, like he didn’t want to say what he was about to say. He rubbed his eyes with his fists and wearily explained to me that this was all just me stressing out over the divorce, that maybe we should look into talking to a therapist about these voices and hallucinations I’ve been having.
I remember feeling so betrayed, so alone by the unfairness of that. I argued with him that everything I was seeing and hearing was true, but it was too late. He and mom talked it out, my behavior, my claims. They think I was losing my ? over the divorce. Their minds were made up, nothing I was going to say would have convinced them otherwise. And of course, in hindsight it only made perfect sense. Who would believe a nine year old when they say that they’re were voices…
-
C.I.W PT4
I was silent the whole day. Cash sat with me in my room as I wasted the daylight playing video games. I didn’t speak to my old man not once. I could see the weary looks on his face when he’d walk by my room, but he didn’t want to press the issue. He looked just as defeated as I did. He spent most of his time on the phone.
It wasn’t until later that day, I found myself recalling what the goat thing said to me before everything went dark. That I had to light a candle at midnight. But when I woke up that morning, there was nothing in my room. There was a sudden sense of hope, because when I searched around my room, trying to find his candle, it was nowhere to be found. Never, even to this day, have I searched so hard for something only to be frantically pleased by the end results.
It was gone. Have I been alleviated from the duties imposed on me by these strange interlopers? The relief was unbelievable, like I was severed from a horrible burden. Even the thought of being forced to see a shrink didn’t seem so harsh compared to the prospect that maybe these attackers really were just a bad dream, a severely realistic dream, mind you, but a dream never the less. Maybe, maybe the whole situation really was over. Maybe these horrible people did move on, and that the goat man was simply a mental projection of my own imaginative expectation towards whatever it was that those unnatural proceedings just beyond my sights were. You know…speculation.
Nightfall came, and for the first time in a week, I felt no fear at the prospect of it. That felt good, like things were going back to normal. But I was wrong. I was so wrong.
When I placed my head on my pillow, eyes already closing, consciousness already drifting away, I felt a lump under my pillow. Curiously I reached down there and felt something, something long and smooth. I pulled out a candle, a tall thin wax candle with a nice long wick. It was red, just like the one that the goatman was holding. My heart sank, my mouth went dry, tears ran down my cheeks, and in that moment, I relived the entirety of last night all over, down to the very last detail where the guy holding me whispered in my ear how the blood of the ones I loved would be on my hand. Suddenly I was back in hell. I was back in the realm of terror. How did they get the candle under my pillow? Had I overlooked it this whole time?
I lie in bed until midnight. I didn’t dare close my eyes for fear of being held at knife point again, for fear of coming face to face with that horrible goat creature. The night was silent, no crickets, no birds, nothing, dead silence. I could see that it had turned twelve o’ one. The memory of the goat mask in my mind uttering its instructions to me over and over again, go outside, light the candle sit behind it, do it or the blood of my loved ones will be on my hands…at the time I didn’t know what it meant to have blood on your hands. The following day I would learn exactly what it meant.
Around ten minutes in, I mustered up the courage to walk over to my window and look out it. What I saw choked me on the spot. Side by side at the entrance of the woods, I saw men. Shadowed by the night, standing side by side. There must have been twenty of them. None of them were saying anything. They were all dead silent, and I could feel their eyes on me. It was just as strong as when I felt the eyes of the dolls on me back at their sight. In a way, they felt like the same presence, the same intelligence. I can’t explain…and then I saw him, the goat man. Or rather, the silhouette of him, standing in the center of the figures. He was still, still as a stone, but I could make out that face shape, the jutting horns…I could make it all out.
I chickened out. I couldn’t go out there. I just couldn’t. I hid in my bed, blankets over my head and I shut my eyes tight, crying all night. I didn’t fall asleep until I heard the early morning birds.
I was awake by eleven thirty. Shortly after breakfast, I heard my dad shouting in the front yard. I went out to check and see what was happening, what it was that had him so upset. As I went out the front door, I could hear him more clearly, I could hear pain in his voice. A knot formed in my throat, and a harrowing sensation crawled across my skin. I was not ready to learn about the events that transpired, and that was truly the scariest part, the moment before actualization. These people have mentioned blood on my hands, I didn’t know what it meant, but I had a very vague idea that it meant my family getting hurt. I thought they got my dad.
When I got to him, I saw that he was on his knees, crying. Cash was killed. He was hit by a car. There he lay, goofy pointed ears, his absurdly silly dog beard, black staring eyes, and hanging tongue, stationary… forever. I saw that his center torso had been collapsed, and I could see openings in his rearside, his ribs jutting out, his entrails-
“SON!” my dad cried out as he turned to hug me. “It’s okay!” he quickly led me back into the house, away from Cash’s lifeless body. Away from my best friend, dead and mutilated on the side of the road. The last thing I remember seeing as I was brought into the house was a large pickup truck driving by slowly. I saw the same two bald men, as old as dad, staring at me through oddly slim sunglasses. I saw blood on their front right tire…and I saw the driver point directly at me.
Cash’s death was my fault. As I said it out loud, my dad held me tight and said with stone cold certainty that it wasn’t my fault, that sometimes these things happen. He told me exactly what you would expect a father to tell his kid when their pet is killed in a random and seemingly pointless accident. But I knew better. The people in the woods killed Cash, and it was all because I didn’t do what they said. It was because I was a coward. His blood, was on my hands. Just as they said it would be.
When I went into my room to cry, I saw outside my window, a man in the center of the back yard. A man with no shirt on. He was wearing a mask made out of a severed goats head, hollowed out on the inside. In the daylight it was far more disturbing to see, because I could almost smell the lack of sanitation it had to have exerted. I could see that it was surrounded by flies, but even worse than that, I saw a note it was holding up. A piece of paper with a single word written across it.
-
C.I.W PT5
MIDNIGHT
I couldn’t handle it. I ran outside, to chase him down, but when I got outside, it was gone. My hate and anger somehow superseded my guilt and sadness because I ran far into the woods before realizing that this time if I got lost, I wouldn’t have Cash to lead me back to the house. I would be all alone, no, I would have whatever was in here with me. I could feel eyes in here. I could feel eyes everywhere. My every move was being watched, from the autumn canopy, to the bushes just yards away, I knew I was surrounded in here, and as my senses came more clear from the adrenaline fueled rage I was experiencing, I realized that it was getting stronger by the minute.
Then I noticed the smell. The stench. At the time I thought it smelled like bad milk, or bologna left in the refrigerator for too long. It was strong, too strong. My eyes began to water, and I could feel my stomach begin to turn. How could a smell be so painful to endure?
Then it occurred to me…They killed my best friend. There was only one more life they could take. My dads. The presence became stronger, I could hear whispering in the wind, the smell grew more powerful with every breath. Any second, I was certain I would be overwhelmed by ? knows what. I realized that if I didn’t do what they demanded of me, I would be taken here and now. What could I have done? I shook my head and began to cry. “Okay, I’ll do it…”
The relief was instantaneous. The woods became brighter, the smell gone, the feeling of being watched, replaced by what could only be described as serene. The forest went from a den of unspeakable terror, to a place of…well, it was just woods again. Just as it always was.
I came back home and helped my dad dig Cash’s grave. We said our goodbyes and buried him. He made up a cute dog bone shaped tombstone out of leftover wood from his old workshop and that was that. My mom came over that day, and all went out to dinner at *Undisclosed* the food was the best I ever had. We gave Cash a little toast, and that was that. In the back of my mind…midnight…midnight…
I spent another silent night, staring at my clock, watching the numbers transform into the next every sixty seconds. The wait was agonizing. Each passing minute was like a minute removed from my life. That night, I was certain that I was going to die. And I was trapped. They would have killed my parents if I tried anything. Killing Cash made that entirely too clear to me.
Eleven fifty-five
Eleven fifty-six
Eleven fifty-seven
Eleven Fifty-eight
Eleven fifty-nine
I looked out the window. There they all were. Side by side, shadows of people, and the goat man in the center. All their eyes were on me. I looked at the clock.
Midnight.
I looked back out the window, they were all gone. They knew, they knew I was going to come out tonight. They Killed my dog, and then threatening to ? me on the spot after I followed them into the woods, they knew I was broken. My spirits shattered, and that I was more afraid of what would happen if I didn’t come out over what’d happen if I did.
I grabbed the candle and walked into my backyard. The darkness was thick, thicker than usual, and the smell. Sour milk, spoiled lunch-meat, blood, rot, decay, ? , puke, bile, death...my skin began to crawl, and a shiver took me over. Breathing became difficult. I could scarcely make out the forest before me. It wasn’t just an entrance or a boundary, it was a living breathing thing, and it was anticipating my every movement. As I took a step into my yard, I jolt of terror shot through me as I passed through the motion sensors and activated the backyard light. There was relief in the light. Safety at least, for a little while anyways.
I used my father’s lighter to spark up the candle, I planted it into the cold dewy grass and sat down nice and slowly, ready to cross my legs. I never sat in the full position that I was instructed to because as I was in the process of sitting down, I saw it.
Two green eyes.
Have you ever shined your light directly on an animal’s face way off in the distance in the dead of night? At a distance where it was too far away to make out what it looks like, but not far enough for their eyes to not catch and reflect the light? This was exactly what I saw. Except it seemed to be high above the ground, higher than a coyote’s height, and higher even than a human’s height.
It appeared to be pacing back and forth in the woods. I could hear the leaves shuffling with each step it was taking. Constantly coming in and out of existence due to the unseen trees eclipsing those glowing shards of light, those glaring eyes. They must’ve been reflecting off of the backyard light. I could hear it breathing. It sounded painful to me. The air came out in short sporadic breaths and when it did, I felt the huffs of frozen air rank with that rotten stench go right through me. I don’t remember how long it paced like this, never leaving the outskirts of the woods, never breaking eye contact with me. Every now and then, it would stop, and lower closer to the ground, until it’s eyes were level with me. It would remain in that position, like a cat low to the ground, prepping to pounce its prey. It would only stay in this position for ten seconds at a time before it would rise back up and pace more. After it did this several times, I realized Something was stopping it.
The light.
-
C.I.W PT6 END
I was dumbstruck, frozen in place. My throat was so tight, the air was barely getting in me, barely getting out of me. There was a powerful sense etched within my soul that any sudden movement would have sent this unspeakable thing into a frenzy at me, light or not. I didn’t know if it was going to outright ? me here in the backyard, or if it was going to drag me into the woods and eat me alive there. I didn’t know what the relationship was between this and the psychopaths that ordered me out here. What I did know was that with each moment it wasn’t getting me, it was getting madder.
I couldn’t let it get me. I couldn’t let it take me away. Theoretically I was safe in the light, except the thing was that this motion sensor light ran on a timer. I knew that timer would soon run out, and when it did, the light would go and nothing would stop it from getting me. With all my courage, all my willpower I forced myself to stand up, letting out a horse breath. The eyes immediately stopped moving when it saw me stand. I couldn’t tell you for certain, but I was almost positive they narrowed. The prospect of me escaping infuriated it to such a level that it began to stalk towards me. I could tell it was moving forward, threateningly, showing a willingness to brave the light. I took a step back, and when I did, it took a swift step forward. I could almost see its shape, tall, thin, boney, too dark to distinguish any specific features, except well, it had horns. Large curled spiral like horns. Or at least it looked like it did.
I don’t remember running back to the house. I don’t remember making it inside. I don’t remember anything after the point where the light shut off. It was sudden, as if death caught me. The timer was up, the light shut down and enveloped me in darkness, and I recall hearing it scream. It sounded like a child denied its toy. Or was that me? When the light died, I ? ran!
It was hours later when I came to my senses. My dad was holding me. My mom was there too, I was crying. Later they would tell me that I was screaming “Don’t let it get me!” over and over again. “Don’t let it get me,” I don’t remember myself.
I never saw that creature again. I never saw the man with the goat mask again. The two old men in the pickup truck, I never saw them again either. That day forward, I always slept with the window shut.
The next day my dad and my mom took me outside to explain that nothing had happened. We saw displaced grass, mixed with mud. We even saw gore marks on the trees. I thought this would be evidence enough to plead my case, but it didn’t. My dad immediately laughed at me, telling me he figured the whole thing out. I had an encounter with a deer. Those markings in the tree were from antlers and it charged at me because it felt threatened. This was such a convenient explanation that I ? wished to ? that it was true. But I knew otherwise.
Several weeks later, I heard that there was a missing person search that took place in those woods, but I myself haven’t seen nor heard anything at the time. My dad and my therapist insisted that this knowledge would only enable my tendencies as a schizophrenic so they stopped me from looking into it.
Yes, I was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia disorder, they said I got it through my inability to coop with the divorce. They told me that I had retracted into a delusion because I felt responsible for the family's collapse and that my youthful undeveloped mind couldn’t process the guilt properly, that these cultists and their beast were just agents of personal symbolism. Something like that. For awhile I believed everything they told me. The lies felt safe. The lies were comfortable.
Several years later, they would tell me that I would have made a full recovery. It was an easy process since I never had another encounter again. At that point in time, I was so angry, I just told them what they wanted to hear.
When I became old enough, I severed all ties with my parents and I moved out of the state. Once I was on my own, I looked into the towns archives and researched as much information as I could about that era when I was nine. The missing person report, the manhunt in those woods lasted several days, and all they found was one man. He was torn apart, his limbs removed, his organs missing. They found that he was wearing a peculiar mask. The head of a ram, but its innards were carefully carved and hollowed to fit over a humans head. When they removed the helmet, they saw that he had died with an expression of absolute horror. I took pleasure in that.
I would like to believe that these men were cultists, that they were attempting to appease some unseen, unnamed ? . A ? that absolutely should not have existed, a ? that had no right to walk among man. And that during their attempt to appease it, I had botched their ritual by breaking an important piece of the process: The doll, and in their attempt to salvage it, they forced me into offering myself up as a sacrifice to it. But its failure to do whatever it was going to do to me that night destroyed the whole operation. I would prefer to believe that in the name of vengeance this angry thing turned on its own worshipers. Killing them all and dragging them all back to where ever it came from. It’s the only thing that makes sense to me.
There is just one thing I still couldn’t figure out. Why is it, that no matter where I go, when I’m all alone, in quiet places, in the dead of night, Why can I still hear them chanting that unholy sermon that I heard so long ago in the woods when I was nine?
-
SMILE PT1
Smile...
The girl sat next to her doll as the camera's timer counted down. 10, 9, 8, 7, 6...
"Smile," her doll said as a forced, sharp grin spread across its cracked porcelain face as it took the little girl's hand.
The girl smiled with all the happiness an 8-year-old could possibly possess, and stared straight at the camera lens. Click.
"I wish mommy and daddy were here to see us so happy. I'm sure they would have been happy too."
"But then we wouldn't be as happy as we are now, would we Alicia?" the doll said. Its neck creaked with a scraping noise as it tilted its head to one side. "You don't need mommy and daddy. You have me, and that's all you need."
The little girl picked up the doll and smiled at it, but this smile was different. This smile was sinister, and she said to the doll "Let's go get mommy and daddy out of here before they start to stink."
1 Day Earlier...
"Alicia! Honey! Why don't you help mommy and bring some of these boxes down to the cellar? Afterward we can have lunch and start unpacking your new room!" Alicia's mother called.
"Okay mommy! I can't wait 'till daddy gets home! He'll be so happy that we unpacked our new house!" Alicia said with a smile. Her little brown curls bounced around her face as she skipped over to the box she needed to bring down to the basement. She carried the box out of the mud room, and made her way down to the end of the hall. The light was dimmer here, and the one light fixture next to the cellar door was flickering with a steady crackling noise. Alicia shifted the large box to her left arm as she reached to turn the door ? . She opened the door and was greeted by a skin-crawling breeze that blew her hair behind her. Alicia attempted a shrug, even though the hairs on her arms and the back of her neck were standing straight.
She shifted the box around in her arms to make it easier to hold while going down the stairs, and started down, shouldering the light switch as she went to no avail. She kept going anyway, her small feet trudging down the old wooden stairs. Each step creaked even worse than the other, the noise sliding into whines. The noises from the aged, rotting wood were like warnings not to go any further. Alicia reached the bottom of the steps and put the box in the middle of the bare concrete floor of her new basement. She turned back towards the staircase, but paused when something caught her eye.
A box, damp and falling apart on the far side of the cellar. If she had moved any faster she would have missed it.
"Alicia! You okay ? ?" her mother called down the stairs.
"Yes mommy! It's just that there's a box down here... should we get it and bring it up?" Alicia asked.
Alicia heard her mother make her own way down the stairs, her feet pounding as loud as Alicias. "I don't see why not. Here, I'll grab it and you go upstairs and start unpacking the kitchen, 'kay?" she said with a smile.
"'Kay!" Alicia said, and bounded up the steps.
"So, tell me again, where did that doll come from?" Alicias father asked, taking time to observe the doll across the dining room table.
"We found it in the basement! Isn't she pretty? Can I keep her?" asked Alicia, hugging the doll closer to herself as she ate. The doll's long, straight brown hair moved little when Alicia hugged it tighter. Its light blue bell shaped dress was a little worn, but in a way like it was played with and loved from its former owner. It was a very nice doll until you really looked at its face. The doll had very clear, round piercing blue eyes, round rosy cheeks, and a smile. but the smile seemed to shift, as if it were growing or getting closer to a frown the more you watched it.
"I don't see why not? What about you dear?" Alicia's mother asked.
"I guess not, I mean, who will miss it?" her father said with slight unease.
"Thank you daddy! Thank you thank you thank you thank you!" Alicia exclaimed, and smiled the biggest smile she had in a long time.
"Okay, now rush off to bed with your new doll. Me and your mother will be in to tuck you into bed."
Alicia ran to her newly unpacked bedroom and jumped into her bed with her newfound doll, already in her P.j.s. Her mother and father came in, said goodnight, and turned out the lights. As they shut her bedroom door, her mother whispered, "I don't like that doll."
The doll's eyes flickered in their direction.
That Night
Alicia's eyes grew heavy as she lay in bed with her new doll.
"They don't like me you know. You like me, don't you?" said a tiny whisper.
"Wha-? Who... who's there?" Alicia asked in a daze of sleep. She scanned the room and her eyes fell on her doll, who had turned its delicate painted face towards her, and her once sneaky-looking smile had shifted and settled into a wide grin.
"It's only me Alicia, your new friend. Although your parents don't like me... You like me Alicia, right?" the doll whispered to her.
"Of course I like you! I like you even more now that you can talk," Alicia confirmed with a nod and a smile.
"Fantastic!" the doll said, its smile growing wider. "Now, you like me so much that you would do what I say right? Even if you don't fully agree? Because you love me, right?" the doll whispered, getting quieter as it spoke.
"Yes, I do, I do love you. What do you want me to do?" Alicia said, her eyes transfixed and wide, staring at the doll's smile.
Alicia got out of her bed, picked up the doll, and walked out of her room and down the hall towards her parents bedroom. Her small feet padded softly on the hardwood as she stepped closer to their door. She stopped when she got to it, opened it half-way as quietly as she could, and placed the doll on the floor in the space between the door and the door jam. She turned away from the doll and her parent's bedroom door, walked back to her own, and crawled in bed and slept soundly through most of the night.
Alicia's father heard the door squeak open, and rolled over on his side to see it fully. What he saw made his breath catch in his throat. The doll, the same doll that had made him so uneasy during dinner, was now sitting in the space between the door and the door jamb. The light from the moon cast strange shadows on the dolls face, making the ever changing smile into a smirk of resentment. As he watched, the doll lifted one arm and rested a hand on the door jamb, and lifted itself up and off the floor. He took in a sharp breath, not believing what he was seeing, and regretted it very quickly.
The doll's head snapped towards him, and it smiled a smile he will never, ever forget. Its eyes had darkened to black holes in the doll's porcelain skull, its once round cheeks had hollowed and paled. It's long, straight brown hair was the same, but its smile had grown to a wide, ear to ear smile as if it couldn't contain its excitement. Its teeth had grown to razor-sharp points, and as it walked closer and closer the teeth kept growing in length. Alicia's father grabbed his wife's hand and shook it gently.
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SMILE PT2 END
"Wha-?" she asked quietly but was cut off by her own screams and the screams of her husband.
The doll had come close enough to their bed, and had jumped on them, shredding them with its teeth.
Sometime Past 12:00am
Alicia woke with a start. As she listened in the dark of her room, she heard little tapping of feet on the hardwood outside her room. Then a little hand tapping on her door. Alicia got out of her bed and opened her door. The doll was standing there, its former face had returned, only its smile was brighter and happier. The doll was covered in blood. Alicia picked up the doll and smiled at it.
"Let's clean you up." she said. The doll's smile grew wider.
"I think that we need to remember our being so happy. We need a picture," said the doll, turning itself away from the girl and towards the direction they were heading.
The girl sat next to her doll as the camera's timer counted down. 10, 9, 8, 7, 6...
"Smile." her doll said as a forced, sharp grin spread across its cracked porcelain face as it took the little girl's hand.
The girl smiled with all the happiness an 8-year-old could possibly possess, and stared straight at the camera lens. The doll smiled in a insane way -
Click.
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BangEm_Bart wrote: »Voodoo is witchcraft and it's real. I heard stories from family about when they visited parts of Africa and how heavy and dark the spirit was. That's not a door I would ever open plus I know a thing or 2 about dark spirits.
I know what your saying but there's a good and bad side to everything
Even the church
Voodoo, Witchcraft whatever you want to call it by is just a tool
How you use that tool is up to u
Just like a gun you can shoot up a school with it
Or use it to protect yourself against someone trying to harm you
Same thing with what I do I don't go around drawing pentagrams
Calling on demons and Satan offering blood sacrifices
I just communicate with ghost some ghost are angery but that's what protection spells are for
The main difference between GHOST and demons
Is ghost mean your dealing with humans or use to be humans in this case meaning they where born on earth then crossed over
DEMONS means your dealing with something that was never and I mean never on this earth to begin with
They where born on the other side from pure darkness or evil and they want to get into are world
I'm no where near brave enough or stupid enough to try and communicate with demons -
This was a painting that I made of the clown it does not go with the story but I express my story threw the picture
Often, we moved to different places. It was just my parents, my big brother, and me. For me, the hardest part about all this moving, I always had to make new friends every time. I mean, yeah, I’m fifteen and I try to be in sports, but it’s still hard.
I don’t quite remember everywhere we’ve lived. There was one town we lived in that I can remember as if it were yesterday. Let’s just say, I’ll never look at clowns the same again.
Now, before I start, I probably should tell you. I’m actually an orphan. After my parents’ death, my aunt and uncle adopted me, making my cousin more of like my brother. Those are the people I’m in the car with now.
The first night at that house, after I did my business, I went to my room and got in bed after turning on the radio to my favorite station. I shut off the light and closed my eyes… But I just couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was watching me. So I sat up and looked around There was nothing I could see. I just laid back down and closed my eyes.
Suddenly, I heard something in the darkness of my room. What is that? Scratching? I got out of bed, in curiosity to find the source. It sounded as if it were coming from the closet. I looked at it and the door itself was still, that I could see. Though there was an eerie, red light illuminating from under the door.
I noticed that the scratching grew louder and the ? to the closet door began to jiggle as if someone were trying to open it, but couldn’t. Out of my stupid actions and curiosity, I went to the closet and grabbed the ? . Everything suddenly stopped. I went ahead and grabbed the flashlight I kept near the head of my bed. I flipped it on and turned the ? . Then the door burst open and blew me back at the wall.
I popped up from my bed, gasping for air and breathing heavily. I put my hand on my head, ‘Phew, it was just a dream,’ I thought. Then I heard the sound of crackling bones. I froze and looked over toward the closet, I saw a silhouette, just standing there and staring at me. It’s eyes were like matches, and they seemed as if they were trying to look into my soul. I was so scared I literally couldn’t move. Soon, I built up the courage to grab the flashlight and turn it on. The figure was gone.
I realized that there is a tapping outside my window. I decided to go check it out. I peeked through the blinds and saw the branch next to my window. ‘That’s what was making that tapping noise,’ I thought.
I exhaled and turned. Then I looked up and screamed at the top of my lungs. There was a silhouette in the doorway.
“Honey, are you okay?” A familiar voice said. The figure turned on the light, it was my mom. “I’m fine, Mom. It was just a nightmare.” She walked to me and put her hand on my forehead. “You’re burning up. Lie down and get some rest. You have school tomorrow.” She said and led me to my bed.
The next few nights were exactly the same. Creeks, scratches, the trembling of the closet doorknob, and seeing silhouettes. It got to the point that I told my parents about it. They told me to not worry, that it’s probably just my mind playing games with me. I thought then that yeah, it probably was. We were completely wrong.
A couple nights later, the noises began again. I decided to just try to get back to sleep. But there was something different tonight… whispering. That never happened before. I sat up and the whispering stopped. But instead of just lying back down, I decided to get up and check it out. I stood there motionless as I felt warm breath on the back of my neck.
I was paralyzed in fear. When I got the courage to turn, I saw a dark figure and I flew back. The moonlight shining through the window had shown me a face that resembled that of a clown. Except the face had blood smeared all over it. It jumped at me and I guarded my eyes. I didn’t want to see that horrible, gruesome face before I died. But nothing happened. I saw it jump at me. I uncovered my face and looked around.
Once I was able to get up and run, I ran out my door and into the hallway. I looked around, nothing was there. I let my eyes adjust to the darkness. What I saw next, was the most terrible thing I have ever witnessed. Not only did I see the clown again, but the clown was pointing up at the ceiling above me. It had a smile that I could never forget, even if I tried.
Then, I felt a few drops of liquid fall upon my head and arm. I looked up and screamed. I almost wanted to cry. Because what I saw up on the ceiling, were my parents… There were knives stabbed into my dad. There was one through his heart, his head, the shoulder opposite the heart, and the thighs. My mom had a knife through her heart, her mouth was sewn shut, and she was being hung, not to mention the fact that the bottom half of her was missing. I covered my mouth, horrified by the sight. I looked down; the clown was in front of me and stabbed me in the stomach. I fell back and was knocked unconscious.
I woke up to the sound of police sirens and crying. Then my aunt ran over and hugged me tight. I fringed in pain as she accidentally touched the wound. I asked what happened, thinking and hoping that everything I remembered was just a dream and the wound was from something else. My aunt then explained through her tears that she and my uncle would probably have to adopt me, seeing how they are my ? -parents.
That night will haunt me until I die. I don’t think any human could’ve done what happened to my parents. That gruesome night and sight is what holds me back from ever going to a circus or a carnival. My aunt and uncle think that I should go to a psychiatrist. I don’t think I’m crazy. I think what I saw actually happened… because I can still feel the breath on the back of neck and the eyes staring at me.
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Yo slow down b. Wus good with sarah?
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Sarah was a stolen baby that the parents couldn't handle so they killed her.
I'm loving these stories though, keep 'em coming. -
TS gets mad props for these stories. Bout 2 go play with tha Ouja board 2night lol
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I don't mess with duppy and it's ilk, so you can keep the stories to yourself bruh.
But I'd suggest putting those stories in a spoiler cause they're long as ? . -
I don't mess with duppy and it's ilk, so you can keep the stories to yourself bruh.
But I'd suggest putting those stories in a spoiler cause they're long as ? .
Lol how you gonna say u don't fck with the story's
When u got a creepy pasta figure as ya avi -
Sarah was a stolen baby that the parents couldn't handle so they killed her.
I'm loving these stories though, keep 'em coming.
Yup which means the girl telling the story is also a kidnapped child she just don't know it -
finally caught up. props.
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Woke up at 3:20 this morning to ? . Got back in the bed and all I could think about was that damn goat creature in the woods. Couldn't get back to sleep for ? . Demonic stories are the only ones that ? with me. Dolls, clowns, smiling men, etc.? No problem.
-
So, get this.
Four days ago, people in my life started to be... replaced. Well, I say four days, I mean, it could've begun at any time in recent history, but I only really wised to it last week. Anyway; I'm getting off-topic here. I've got a story to tell, and neither of us is going anywhere for a little while, so we might as well make the best of it, right?
So I'm at an inter-school football match, and there's, like, a minute left on the clock, and the ball comes my way. I've never really been into sports (I only joined the team so the Jocks wouldn't lay-into me, like they did everyone else), and while I'm not a bad player, I've never scored in an official match before. So I see this as my opportunity to silence the post-game taunting in the locker room. I make a dive, but misjudge the distance and go down hard as a whole host of other players go for the ball. In the confusion, somebody's foot comes smashing down into my temple. Everything is red flashes and black holes and, for the briefest moment, I catch a glimpse of a silhouette in some kind of jester's hat, hanging upside-down in my field of view and silently laughing at me. So, I blink, and suddenly, my pal Pete Greenway is kneeling beside me, reaching for me. I reach up to him, and he grabs my wrist to pull me to my feet, and he says:
“Took quite a knock there, bud.”
This is when it gets kinda hard to explain. My head feels about a thousand times its usual size, and everything is swimming in my vision, but I somehow just know that this isn't Pete Greenway. Like, since when has Pete Greenway ever called me “bud”? Since when did Pete Greenway have a tiny, pale scar on his chin? Details, man. Details. I'm struck by this sense of unfamiliarity. The closer he gets, and the more his stupid ? smile looms in my face, the less close I feel to this guy who had, two weeks previously, spent the weekend drinking with me in my dad's old cabin to celebrate my nineteenth. I mean, this replacement is good! When he speaks, I'd swear that I was hearing my friend, but there is something so unnervingly unfamiliar about him.
So I pull away from Not-Pete-Greenway, and scramble to my feet. There's blood in my mouth, and more trickling down the side of my face, and someone steers me over to the stand while the others play on. All the while, this "actor," this stranger, is watching me with a weird, dismayed look on his face, as though I'd shattered some plan he'd had. I'm suddenly aware that everyone in the stands seems to be looking at me. Like, when I'd look at them, they'd be laughing and cheering the game, but out of the corner of my blood-muddied vision, I'd swear that all eyes were on me.
Now I've always hated people staring at me, so I hurry off the field, and back to the showers, which are deserted, as the game's still going. Once I've cleaned up, I drive back to my dad's place, head full of images of crimson supernovas. The Old Man isn't home, so I park in the drive and lie in bed with the lights off for a few hours, but it doesn't do me any good, because in the shadows above me, silhouetted in a different grey to the rest of the darkness that covers my bedroom, the Jester hangs, his shoulders heaving in that awful, silent laugh. I turn the lights back on, but the only things hanging from my ceiling are cobwebs.
The phone rings, and it's Pete. I'm absolutely sure he's not the actor, because his voice is so real. Unlike the waxy automaton on the playing field, hearing him speak fires-off memories of my old friend in my head, and I can't help but feel a relieved smile play over my lips. He sounds over-the-? -moon, and more than a little ? . In fact, he's slurring his words so I don't get everything. Apparently there's a party going on at his place, to celebrate the results of the game. The others are worried about me.
"Katie Gilbert is going to be there," he says, in the mocking way friends do when they know you're crushing on someone. Classic Pete, man. Anyway, apparently she's asking after me.
I say, "I'll be right over," and put the phone down. My head starts to hurt again, but I swallow some painkillers, and throw on a fresh shirt. I don't want to look like a slob in front of Katie.
As I near the door, the pain in my head returns. My vision begins to blur into red starbursts, and that spectral abomination is chuckling away, silently, in the corner of my eye. Beneath the blind panic and pain, I feel a sickening surge of fear—fear at the Jester, fear at what may lie beyond my own front door. I reel backwards and the pain recedes. The thing in the corner of my vision becomes my own shadow, falling-across the cupboard door where my Old Man keeps all his fishing gear.
I pause to catch my breath, and reassure myself that it's probably just the concussion, but even as I do so, I'm reaching for the cupboard's door handle, turning it and pulling the light-cord. Inside, atop a Tupperware box of spare hooks, I find his hunting knife, buckled into a faded sheath. When I take it, the niggling fear and the throbbing pain at the back of my skull dim. Safety in a sharp blade. I tuck it into the back of my pants and pull my shirt down to cover it.
The party is in full swing by the time I get there. It's dark, all strobe lights and a cheap-as-? smoke-machine Pete bought from the dollar-store, and which smells like burnt plastic. All eyes are on me, when I enter. Not that I can see them too well, of course, but I know it. I can feel it, you know? Eyes on me as I turn my back on the guests. I pretend to ignore it, grab a beer from the kitchen. There's no sign of Pete, and though I am feeling reassured that what happened on the playing field was a one-off—reassured at being armed—I still don't feel confident enough to mingle with the others, so I stay in the kitchen, and press the cold bottle against the wound on my temple. I feel beads of moisture trickle down the glass, but as I turn back to the door, Katie Gilbert bursts in, all red lipstick and low-cut top.
“Dave!” she yells, “You came! I was waiting for ages!”
