Something that happened to you while you were home alone one evening.
One night, you arrive home after dark. You worked and then you stopped at the bar on your way home and had a drink or two. You park your car and climb the steps to your door.
It is fall or spring, you are wearing short sleeves. A cold wind rustles the grass and the bushes nearby and you shiver.
There is no one home. You are the only person in the house. There are no real sounds in the house, although the refrigerator hums and air moves in the ducts. You do not own any analog clocks and you find yourself thinking how this silence would be perfectly punctured by a gentle, rhythmic, ticking.
You turn on the lights. The house is still. You enter the kitchen and realize how hungry you are. You measure two cups of water and pour them into a pot. The stove heats slowly and you wait for the water to boil.
A floorboard creaks above you. It doesn’t scare you, you are used to the house settling, making strange noises.
You should have turned on the radio. The house is too quiet, too still. The silence and the stillness are filled by your thoughts, which are turned towards nightly things. You start to think about how frightening it is to live alone. You think about how if something happened to you suddenly, no one would know. You wonder, if you keeled over suddenly, how long it would take to find the body.
You think about being attacked in your home. You know it doesn’t happen often but you can’t help imagining what you would do if a violent stranger burst through the front door.
You have a vision…briefly, an image pictured so very clearly. You watch yourself open a door into a dark room. You see a naked, pale figure; spindly knees and elbows creaking like bones as he runs full-sprint at you from the shadows.
The pot hisses as water begins to boil over its sides. You curse and turn down the burner before adding a packet of instant noodles.
The image remains in your head; a skinny, pale man rushing toward you. You begin to imagine the sounds he would make, a steady, wheezing, intake of breath.
“EEEEEE-YUH. EEEEEE-YUH”, he would whine. His lips would be pulled back in a smile or a grimace, either way his teeth would be visible and very white.
You are imagining the pale man very clearly now. You can see the way he moves, jagged and shuddering, like a filmstrip skipping frames. A palpable feeling of dread has settled over you and you are sure, very sure, that if you look up at the window on the front door he will be staring directly at you.
You cannot look. You feel paralyzed by fear. The pot on the stove begins to boil over again, but you ignore the hiss of the water as it bubbles over the side.
Moments pass, you are still too afraid to move. You are holding your muscles with such tenseness, and you twitch involuntarily. Your head jerks up and you look at the door.
There is nothing there.
ou sigh and try to calm your pounding heart. The noodles are finished. You take the pot off the stove and pour its contents into a bowl, you add flavoring and stir your meal with a long-tined fork.
You feel a bit foolish, thinking about how scared you were. Maybe you even laugh a bit.
The fear has faded now. You look at the door again.
There is a face in the window above the door. He is pale, his skin stretched tight over skeletal features. You can only see his neck and shoulders, both of which are bare. His hair is black, wiry and unkempt; his eyes are wide, unblinking, grey-green with a cloudy film.
Something is wrong about his eyes. They make you feel sick. You think about a scene in a tv show you watched that took place in a morgue. You remember the dead eyes of the cadaver, sky-blue with a cloudy film.
You’re not quite sure what to do. Your eyes dart to the doorknob and you see it is locked. The man does not appear to be trying to get inside, he simply stands and stares.
You fumble for your phone, but it is not in your pocket. You think you left it in the car maybe.
You realize the man is moving slightly. His shoulders rise and fall as he takes great, slow breaths. You imagine he is making a sound that you cannot hear through the door. As you watch, still immobilized by fear, his lips curl backward until he is neither grinning nor grimacing but something in between.
You pry your eyes from the man and look toward your bedroom. The door is shut and it is dark inside. There is a window there which leads out back and also your computer, which you could use to contact someone, get them to call the police.
You look back at the door. The man has vanished. Somehow, this terrifies you more than his continued presence. You feel the hairs on the back of your neck prickle and you turn around quickly, convinced the man will be there.
The kitchen is empty. Silence and stillness fill the house.
You force yourself forward, glancing furtively at the front door as you do so. You feel lightheaded, your feet wobble and your arms tremble. You find yourself wishing this was a bad dream but you know you are awake. You can feel the cool air drying the sweat on your skin; you can smell the seasoning dissolving into the noodles. You don’t feel hungry anymore, just afraid.
You reach the bedroom door and again you feel something behind you, watching you. You tell yourself the front door is locked, you start to turn around, just in case, when you hear a footstep and the creak of a floorboard.
You know he is there, in the house. You do not want to turn around; you do not want to see him standing in the full light of your home so you move forward. You turn the doorknob and enter your room quickly, shutting the door and bolting it behind you.
The room is pitch-black. For a moment you see nothing.
You feel comforted by the darkness. You feel secure in your own bedroom with your back pressed to the locked door.
A pale, angular figure rushes at you from the other side of the room. You feel a heavy weight upon you and the twitching, wheezing man forces you to the ground.
You can see his face, even without light. His eyes are watery, unfocused. His limbs are stick-thin, like bones with flesh colored tissue paper glued to the joints. He groans, his teeth dripping saliva, and you smell his breath. It smells like pure ammonia.
Suddenly, adrenaline kicks in and you raise your arms in defense. The man is unperturbed. He bats your fists away with surprising strength and, grabbing you by the hair, dashes your head against the floor of your bedroom.
You see a flash of bright color, and the man’s wild, mindless eyes fill your vision until you black out.
When you wake up you are hanging upside down. You open your eyes and at first all you can see are candles. There are dark shapes moving between the lights, they are men wearing black robes with pointed hoods. Sometimes the robes rustle as the men move and you can see underneath they are wearing ties and white collared shirts.
You cannot tell where exactly you are. It is either a cave or a chapel, perhaps both. You begin to hear the sounds the robed men are making as they circle about your limp body. It is a chanting, but the language they speak would make anyone feel ill at ease. The men hiss and slurp, sounding out syllables as if they were angry growls or sighs of pain.
Something stands in the darkness behind the circle of hooded figures. It is the pale, naked man from your home. He is still, standing just inside the circle of light made by the candles. He is staring at you, directly into your eyes. Something glitters in the figure’s hand. He lifts a knife to his breast and begins to cut into his own flesh, a line of crimson arcs from just above his left nipple to an inch or two below his bellybutton. The man bears his teeth again, his lips curling back. He starts another line and you can tell he is enjoying himself.
Below you something squeaks, softly. You crane your neck and see that beneath your head is a stone altar, upon which sits a mass of gore. The thing moves slightly and you realize it was once a complete human being. You try not to imagine what has been done to it, to render it such an unrecognizable lump of blood and tissue. The thing is still alive. It mews and you know the sounds are pleas for death.
The chanting of the robed figures is reaching a crescendo. One of them approaches you, something shiny and metallic held in his hand. You twist your head and see he is holding a syringe with a thick needle, the liquid within viscous and black. You writhe and turn, you try to struggle but there is nothing to be done.
You feel the needle pierce your skin and the vein in the crook of your right arm. You try to cry but your mouth is sealed with tape. Your arm stings, then burns. The pain slowly settles until it becomes a numb, warm sensation.
The room seems to grow dim. The floor and walls fall away. You look toward the floor and see only a pit, yawning into eternal darkness.
Something moves in the dark, something the size of the sky. You can hear the stirrings of its flesh echoing throughout the cavernous space.
It reaches toward you.
With thousands of crawling feelers, it reaches toward you.
An eye, the size of a sun opens-
You wake suddenly in bed to the sound of your alarm. It is morning. Everything is normal. You rise and check the front door, which is still locked. You check for signs of a struggle and find none. You find an empty bowl in the sink and discarded noodle packaging in the trash.
There are no marks on your body, but you feel a dull ache in the crook of your right arm. You poke the spot where the needle broke the skin. It is sore.
You find your phone in your car and you start to call the police. You stop and put the phone down as you imagine telling them what you saw the previous night.
You imagine the reactions of your friends and family, you are able to clearly picture their looks of disbelief. You slowly realize that you will never ever be able to tell anyone about what happened to you. You wish you could believe it was all a dream. But alas, you will always know it was not.
Submitted November 02, 2017 at 05:43AM by Andy_Wiley http://ift.tt/2zbUSSw libraryofshadows
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