Study Session nosleep

My senior year of college a few buddies and I decided that we were going to rent a small house off campus together. The majority of the decision was based around the fact that our school had a dry campus, and we wanted a place where we could comfortably enjoy the reckless part of the college experience. We had tried our best to find housing close enough to campus to walk, but in the end we were forced to look at more distant locations. We all hated the idea of driving to classes every day, but we did come to the conclusion that we would be less likely to be bothered by the local police force on the outskirts of town.

With this decision we were able to rent a decent sized two story house just outside the borders of the small town where out university was located for a fair price. It included three bedrooms, two and a half bathrooms, a kitchen, a dining room, and a living room that we never adequately filled with the dorm furniture we brought with us. I had come from a fairly big family, and I do not believe there was ever a point in my life before that point where I had so much room to myself. Hell, I don’t think I have had that much room in the time since I moved out. We all decided very early on that despite the twenty minute drive to campus in the morning we had really stumbled into so luck when we found the place.

When we first moved in though I believe the three of us were the most excited for the backyard that came with our new base of operations. From our backdoor there was about half a football field of grassy flatland that that was completely devoid of trees or brush. Just past those fifty yards was nothing but forest for as far as the eyes could see. In reality the plot of land the house sat on was only a few yards bigger than the foundation that it rested on, but with no fence or nearby neighbors that bit of field might as well have belonged to us. From the moment we discovered its existence we spent the rest of the summer planning cookouts and bonfires with our circle of friends. By the time we actually stepped foot on the property our backyard was booked solid through Halloween.

On our actual move in day my roommate Erik had been the first of us to reach the house, and by the time I got there he had already moved his things into the biggest room. I felt a little disappointed, but I had respect for our decision to appoint rooms on a “first come first serve” basis. In light of the setback I greedily set my sights on the other bedroom on the second floor. It was not nearly as big as the room that had already been claimed, but it did make up for its size with a large window that spanned the majority of the external wall facing the backyard. Happy that I had not been stuck with the ground floor bedroom I began moving my things into my new room. I worked for about an hour before I heard someone at the bottom of the stairs.

“Hey Mason and Erik,” My roommate Jack yell up the stairs while I finished positioning my bed the way I believed it fit best. “Have either of you seen the desk sitting in the backyard?”

I stopped placing objects on my desk, and there was a brief second of quiet while I stood in confusion.

“Have we seen the what in the backyard?” Erik yelled from his room.

“The desk that is sitting in our backyard,” Jack yelled in reply up the stairs. “Did either of you happen to notice it when you were moving in today.”

Both Erik and I poked our heads out of our rooms at about the same time. We both looked down the stairs towards Jack who stood at the bottom of the stairs surrounded by boxes of his junk. He didn’t look like he was joking. Erik turned towards me for a second with a puzzled look on his face. I just shrugged and headed out of my room and down the stairs. When we made our way out the back door of the house we found out that Jack had in fact not been playing the world’s oddest prank. Instead there was actually a fairly large desk just sitting in the middle of our yard. I looked around the yard and discovered no other randomly discarded office equipment. There was just a single metal office desk placed facing the house for absolutely no discernible reason.

“Where in the hell did that come from?” I asked turning towards my two friends.

“You mean neither of you noticed the singular desk sitting in the middle of a field?” Jack replied with a question of his own.

“I just went right up to my room when I got here this morning,” Erik answered Jack and looked towards me.

“Ditto,” I said still looking towards the desk.

“Did you not notice it when you came to check this place out in July?” Erik asked Jack while the three of us passed through the doorway and walked towards the oddity in our yard.

“Well it definitely was not here when I looked at the place,” Jack said. “I’m sure I would have remembered a single piece of furniture in the middle of a clearing.”

“You are out of your mind,” I said gesturing towards the metal desk. You didn’t have to get too close to the thing to realize that it had been in that spot for years. The metal frame was a mixture of red and green from the rust and moss that covered the entirety of the desk’s metallic surface. Not to mention the feet of the desk were sunk about an inch or so into the ground. “Clearly this desk has been sitting in this exact spot long before we sent you to scope this place out a few months ago.”

“Christ,” Erik laughed when we were standing directly over the thing. “If you missed this we better check the whole house out. I think we are lucky that we didn’t get here and find the former renters still living here.”

“I must be losing my mind,” Jack groaned while rubbing his eyes. “I could have sworn I looked out that back door and saw a clear field. I would have bet money if I wasn’t looking at this thing with my own eyes.”

“Damn. I could have made some easy money on that bet,” Erik teased.

“Should we get rid of this thing?” I asked the two of them. “I mean it isn’t technically our yard, but I also don’t think anyone is going to miss this thing if we junk it.”

“Are you kidding me,” Erik asked. “We could use this thing as a place to keep food and drinks during bonfires. This spot is the perfect distance from the house to place my fire pit and some folding chairs.”

“That is true,” I admitted. “That would also mean that we could use my folding table for something else.”

“Hello poker table!” Erik exclaimed. “Not to mention we can use this whole situation to make fun of Jack for missing the most obvious desk in the middle of our yard.”

“Shit!” Jack sighed as we headed inside to finish moving our stuff in. “I knew that was coming.”

The next nine months passed without any sort of incident. In the end the house lived up to most of our hopes for an off campus party spot for the group that we hung around with. As far as I could tell the desk in the backyard did a good job at holding our bonfire equipment, being a conversation piece for newcomers, and ammo to torment Jack when the inclination arouse. Really no one thought there was anything unsettling about the desk at any point in those long months following its discovery. The week before finals started though something strange happened.

I was up around one in the morning working to finish an essay that was do the Friday before my college’s finals were set to begin. I am use to staying up at those hours usually, but I am usually watching Netflix or youtube in bed rather than working on school work. I had set my room up so that my desk sat under the huge window in my room. I knew it was a bad idea when I did it, because I often get distracted when I would look into the forest or up at the sky. In the end I could not help myself. I felt far less confined during long days of studying when the outside world was right in front of me. I figured these advantages and disadvantages offset each other in such a way that it was probably a wash when it came to study efficiency.

At that point I only had to edit my work and print it off, but I had sat around for an hour unable to focus on the pages I was working on. Maybe it was the hours that I had continuously worked on that paper over the course of the night, but really it was a feeling that I was being watched that kept me on edge. Although it was too dark to see outside with my desk light on my gaze was continuously drawn to the window. It felt like something out there had a death grip on my location, and as hard as I tried to ignore the feeling it refused to go away. All I could see though was vague blackness, and my translucent reflection looking back at me.

At one point I became so frustrated I turned out my desk lamp and stared out the dark window in the direction of whatever was messing with my head. For a second I could not see anything thanks to cloudy weather and lack of night vision, but slowly I began to make out small details about the pitch black world outside my window. The first thing to come into focus was the dark forest that abruptly began fifty yards from my foundation. The next was the desk that had been sitting outside since god knows how long before we had actually moved into the house. Nothing really seemed to standout.

As I stared with my full concentration out of my bedroom window Erik arrived home from the library where he chose to the majority of his studying. For about thirty seconds he flipped on his light to gather his things to take a shower. In that time the backyard was partially filled with a dim electricity efficient lighting. It did not quite make it all the way to the desk in the middle of the yard, but the glow that reflected off of the grass made it a bit easier to get a view of the entire backyard. For that short thirty second period I saw what appeared to be some kind of figure near the desk. With the little light I had I could not tell if it was something sitting on the desk or positioned behind it, but I could tell that there was something there. Before I could really define what I saw though the light in Erik’s room went out, and took with it what little night vision I had before it was turned on. I quickly turned on my desk light, but of course that only made it impossible to see out of my window.

I made my way out of my room briskly and made my way to the kitchen where the backdoor was located. I turned on the lights to the back porch and headed out the door. Looking around the entire backyard was illuminated adequately enough to make out most details. Unfortunately all there was to see was a dark forest, a regularly used fire pit, and an ancient desk that had been sitting there since before I was born. I looked around for a few more minutes hoping to catch some animal making its way into the forest behind the house, but whatever had been near that desk when Erik turned on his light was long gone. I headed back into the house and turned off the porch light.

“Looking for something?” Jack asked from the door to the kitchen. I had not expected him to be there, and he had about killed me with a heart attack.

“No,” I lied. After we had given him an entire school year of crap for missing the desk in the first place I knew better than to give him any ammo to fire back at me. “I just needed a little bit of fresh air. I have been working since four or five this afternoon.”

“Rough,” he laughed. “But I shouldn’t feel too bad. I warned you not to take Professor Janowitz. That guy is a Nazi.”

“I guess you did warn me,” I replied while trying to not roll my eyes. Jack called every professor that didn’t give him an A a nazi. “I better get back to it then.”

“Best of luck to you,” He said as he made his way towards the refrigerator.

I went back to my room after that and quickly finished editing the rest of my paper before making my way to bed. I had not thought about the whole experience until that point. In fact without that odd feeling of being watch I had already played the whole thing off as just an overworked mind. I went to sleep, and for a while nothing interesting seemed to happen. In a matter of days I had basically forgotten about the whole situation. That is I had forgotten about it until a little over a week later.

Actual final exams were on full force, and I had unfortunately procrastinated many of my more difficult classes until my final semester of college. On this particular day I had gotten back from my final real class of the semester at about noon, and I had begun studying for my Chem final the minute I had gotten home. Besides a few food breaks I had been studying for almost thirteen straight hours trying to understand all the information I had put off learning during the semester. There had been several previous moments throughout the day I had trouble keeping my interest on the page in front of me, but suddenly I could not keep my eyes focused on my workbook long enough to get any meaningful information out of my notes. At first I thought I had been just too much studying over too long a period of time, but slowly I realized that I was getting that same “someone is watching you” feeling that I had a week ago.

I looked up from my work just as I had the last time, and once again realized that I was not going to see anything through my window with my light on. I could see nothing but distant darkness, and my own reflection in the glass. But then I realized I could make out something strange in a small area of the lamp brightened window. There was a slight shimmering slightly to the right of my reflections neck.

Without turning off the light I realized it was the fire pit still burning fairly bright. I remembered that Erik and a few of his digital art buddies had been having a bon fire that had died down around midnight. Erik only had one class difficult class left to study for this semester, and that test did not take place until the beginning of next week. He decided to show off his luck by partying every moment he could swing it, and tonight he and his friends had forgotten to put out the fire. Usually this would have pissed me off since the last thing we need is to burn down the entire forest behind us, but tonight I realized it gave me the opportunity to see what might be giving me this feeling of being watched.

I took a short breath for some reason that I can’t particularly put my finger on, and I turned off my desk lamp. It took a minute for my eyes to adjust again regardless of the dim fire burning in the distance, but I continued to stare regardless. Once again the trees came into focus, and after that I could begin to make out the outline of the desk again. It was much easier to see in the dark backyard thanks to the fire burning so close. But then I felt my stomach drop into my bowls.

I could make out the distinct outline of a person sitting behind the desk and staring up at my house. I could not make out gender or any details thanks to the fire being slightly behind the figure. It was just a standard built person sitting there and hardly moving while they looked my direction. I know I wasn’t going crazy either, because I noticed what dim light was being made by the fire was casting a long shadow directly at my back door.

I was at first fairly freaked out by the unexpected person sitting in the middle of my backyard. I just knew this had to be the same figure I saw out there the other day. And suddenly I was annoyed that someone would think it was fine to sneak behind someone’s house and just sit there looking at them all night. They were making it incredibly hard to study thanks to the creepy vibe. I decided in an instant to confront them if only to make sure I could study in peace from now on.

Quickly I hurried down the stairs as fast as I could, through the kitchen, and out the backdoor while flipping the porch lights on while I passed. Once again I observed nothing in the yard at all. The only things to see were distant trees, the still burning fire pit, and an empty desk looking back at me. There was absolutely no movement making its way through the woods that I could see. It seemed impossible to me that someone could have moved fast enough so suddenly that I wouldn’t catch any of their escape.

“Shit!” I cussed after a moment of silently looking out.

“What seems to be the problemo chief?” Erik suddenly asked. Once again a roommate had almost ended my life with a single question.

“I thought you would be in bed,” I replied without really answering him. He was sitting at our kitchen table with his face lying against the surface. He was almost certainly blitzed after the night he had just had.

“Nah man,” Erik slurred without moving much. “I had to get my grub on before hitting the sack. But then the room started spinning, and I decided that this seemed like a fairly good place to rest.”

“Erik…” I started. I really needed some information. “Are any of your friends still hanging round outside?”

“Nah man,” Erik answered while looking up from the table with one eye. “Andy and William are crashed in the living room. As far as I can tell you and I are the only people left in the land of the living.”

“Well did you guys see anyone outside?” I asked as the questions raced to my head. “Or did you leave any chairs out?”

“Nah it was only us and the fire out there man.” Erik slurred moving his entire head back down to the table’s surface. “And we decided it would be more fun to sit around the fire “Kumbaya” style. Why?”

“I thought I saw something out there,” I answered while looking out the door window one last time before turning the lights off.

“Saw something huh?” Erik laughed. “You are lucky I won’t remember this tomorrow or I’d give you as much shit as we have been giving Jack.”

“I know you would,” I sighed giving up on my line of questioning. “You need help getting to your room?”

“Nah,” He said as if consciousness was about to leave him entirely. “I don’t want to throw up all over your nice clothes.”

I said good night to him, and decided to check the living room before heading up to my bedroom. Both of his buddies were passed out on the couch. I went up to my room and decided to call it a night. I got in bed, but it was not so easy to shake off the entire experience this time. I am pretty sure I wasn’t very scared of the experience I had just had, but I was certainly not happy with some weirdo looking into our house at night. It then dawned on me that with my desk light on he or she could probably make me out clear as day while I studied. I got back out of bed and shut the blinds to my room, and I decided that the next day I would catch whoever was watching in the act. I would get the mall cop strength flashlight my parents made me keep in my car, and make sure they knew I saw exactly who was spying in my windows. Maybe I’d even yell that I’d seen their face, and I could call the police with their description if I ever saw them again.

For most of the next day I was too busy to care about my plan. I had exams until about three in the afternoon, and then I had to meet with my study group for my biology final. By the time I made it back to my house it was already starting to get dark outside. It was this darkness though that reminded me to get my flashlight out of my car on the way up to my house. I had also come to the determination that nothing was going to happen tonight. After all it took about a week to happen again the first time, and with school ending around the corner our contract was about a week away from being over anyway. So instead of planning a whole ordeal out in my head I went to get a quick shower and sat down at my desk to start the work for the night.

I had decided that for my last big exam of the semester I would just study though the night in my room, and show up to the test with zero hours of sleep. My only other exam was Monday morning the following week, and it was apparently fairly easy compared to the rest of my load. I would take my Chem exam the following morning, and sleep the rest of the day. It had felt like a month since I got more than four or five hours of sleep anyway, so I was really looking forward to spending a day in bed regardless. Everything seemed fairly normal until around four in the morning. I had been studying for almost eight hours straight when I suddenly couldn’t keep my eyes on the papers in front of me. I knew immediately that it wasn’t due to lack of sleep or too many hours studying though. It was that exact same feeling of someone’s attention bearing down on me again. I had felt it the previous two times that stranger had decided to hang out at the desk behind my house.

I turned my attention towards the window, and after a few moments of anxious hesitation I snapped the desk light off. It didn’t take quite as long for my night vision to kick in this time, and thanks to an almost entirely clear night I had a much better view of the backyard. Without need of the fire I was once again able to make out the dim figure’s outline behind the desk in my yard, and the hair on the back of my neck began to stand on edge. Whoever it was clearly had once again decided to stare directly at the back of my house. I picked up the high powered flashlight sitting directly by my notes and took a deep breath. If I wanted to figure out who this weirdo was it was now or never. I aimed the flashlight directly at them, and I clicked the switch with my thumb.

My entire stomach went up in knots, and if there was a single hair left sitting on the back of my neck they were on their feet now. I couldn’t believe what I was looking at completely illuminated by my flash light. I know it is completely cliché, but it is something that will be burned into my mind for the rest of my life.

What sat behind the desk was indeed in the shape of your average human being, but there was no way in hell that it was one of us. A silhouette of the thing sitting behind the desk looked exactly like the average human wearing a t-shirt would look, but the surface of the thing was one continuous material. Some mangling of gritty red and dark green that ran together across its entire surface and it took me a moment to realize it was the same moss and rust surface that covered the metallic desk where it was stationed. Something else that occurred to me was that whatever I was looking at had not been sitting at any chair, but instead was sitting out as if someone had pulled a chair out from under it without toppling it. The worst part of all though was the creatures face as it sat staring at the house. It was nothing but a blank surface that was covered in rust and moss facing out towards the house.

I wanted to scream, but I found that my voice was completely caught in my through. I wanted to turn away, but something about the unflinching and undisturbed monster that sat outside my house made it impossible to look away. I just sat there for a long while unable to tear myself away from the abomination in front of me, and slowly becoming more and more terrified. Some part of me wanted it to do something so this moment of unending tension would be able to finally end, but I now know that it would have been better if it had stayed perfectly still.

After many minutes of the both the thing and I sitting without much movement it began to subtly stir. At first it was a slight shaking of the head, but after a moment or two the thing that had been sitting like a statue began slowly scanning back of my house from left to right. My goosebumps picked up worse seeing the things head move without disturbing the rest of its body in even the slightest. It scanned for about half a minute before it stopped again. I held my breath as if this would stop me from drawing the attention of whatever it was. Both very slowly and very purposefully the head moved its gaze up towards the upper layer of my house, and it came to rest directly on my window. Once again its body did not shift in any way, and I could tell that if it had eyes they would be staring directly into mine.

You’d think I would have finally been able to scream or run out of my room, but instead I stayed planted in my spot by fear. A thousand thoughts ran through my head simultaneously, but none of them were worth anything. Instead I sat there in an unending staring contest with this creature. And then it happened. The change was so slight at first it did not entirely register in my mind. But after a moment I began to witness a shifting motion taking place across its once smooth surface of its face. Slowly the top became slightly more pronounced than it had been previously. Two smooth and shallow indents formed with a slight crooked ridge between them. Finally a small straight slit formed on the lower half.

It was not a perfect rendition of what it was trying to be. There were no eyes, nostrils, lips or other major features, but it was undeniably a crude and soft rendition of a human face. And it continued to look up at me expressionless while I continued to be trapped in its gazed. And then ever so slightly it smiled at me.

That was enough to send me over the edge. I dropped the flashlight to the floor and ran to pull the blinds down as fast as I could. I tried to figure out what I would do next, but there was nothing I could think of. There was no way I would go outside where that thing was waiting for me. As for going to my roommates for some kind of help Erik had gone to his friend’s house to party for the rest of the week, and Jack was staying the night at his girlfriends. I was the only one home.

With no real plan I ran I pulled my dresser away from my wall and barricaded it against the door of my bedroom. I spent what little was left of the night huddled in my closet with the heavy flashlight cradled in my arms with my eyes closed, but my ears on full alert. It was not until the alarm I set just in case I fell asleep studying went off that I had the courage to climb out of my safe haven. I could see through the closed blind that it was a sunny day. It was only through overcoming great dread that I was finally able to look through the blinds again.

Nothing

I grabbed what I needed for class, a few pairs of clothes, and the electronics I believed I would need and ran out of the house to my car. On the drive towards campus I decided that the best course of action would be to do my exam and spend the next few days in the library and crashing on friend’s couches until finals ended. In the end it probably dropped my entire grade on my last exam a percentage, but I managed to pass the class anyway. It was not until I needed to move myself out that I went back to the house. I made sure to get there early though so that I would not need to be in that house when it got dark.

I had just got everything in my moving van when I ran into Erik who was home after finishing his final exam. We talked for a bit about the fun we all had living together, and shared a few ideas about where we would be going now that college was over. I had already made the decision to not talk to either of my roommates about what I had witnessed. Slowly he worked the conversation towards the backyard and all the fun we had there, but then the conversation took a turn I didn’t expect.

“So I’m guessing it was you who took that old desk outside,” He said. “Seems wrong in a lot of ways, but at the same time I guess it seems pretty right.” “What are you talking about?” I asked nervously.

“Oh,” He said surprised. “Someone took the old desk out of the backyard. It was gone when I got back Saturday night, and I thought Jack was with Sarah all weekend. I just assumed you took it.”

I moved passed Erik and made my way to the back window. It dawned on me as I made my way that I must have avoided looking out the whole time I was packing my things that morning. But sure enough when I looked out there was nothing but an open field, a fire pit, and a dense forest. It was like nothing had ever been there in the first place.

“Nope,” I said through a nervous laugh meant to mask my discomfort. “Maybe Jack snuck in and took it so that he could be right about there not being a desk there at all.” “That bastard,” Erik laughed. “Well I guess he got the better of us in the end.”

I agreed and after a short bit of conversation I excused myself by mentioning that I had to get going to avoid traffic on the second half of my trip. We said our good byes and I got the hell out of that house as fast as I could. I kept up with both Erik and Jack over the next couple days to secretly make sure they both were okay, but neither of them ever mentioned anything strange happening.

Even now I do not look back on my behavior after seeing the creature without any regret. But now that I am so far away from the situation I have so many questions that I want to be answered. Where did the thing come from? Was it dangerous in any way? Are there more of them somewhere in the world? Was it a part of the desk or was the desk just a tool it used?

The only thing I think I have figured out over the last few years is what that thing was doing all of those nights staring diligently towards the house. It was a total mystery until I too into account how it reacted after I was frozen staring at the thing. It was not some kind of mindless creature staring endlessly for no reason. It was reacting to the feeling of being watched while it did its work, and it smiled when its eyes had adjusted to the darkness of my window. I had already broken its concentration, so it chose to show me what it had been working so hard on. Although it was not a perfect replica I had seen that crooked bridge of the nose it presented many times before.

It was studying me.

Submitted March 27, 2016 at 06:46AM by JDerrick29 http://ift.tt/1Rt4EPo nosleep