I promised and here it is. Once again I want to start this with a disclaimer. This is not what I believe anymore. This isn't me. He's not real and the following word usage reflects only my feelings of what was happening at the time. Enjoy it. I know I never did.
Ages 12-13
He started appearing again in seventh grade. By then, I had learned my lesson about telling people. I would be sitting in my classroom or in the court yard or in the cafeteria and he would be there. Next to the trash can. Behind the pillar. Lurking in the background and watching. Always watching.
Ages 12-13
He started appearing again in seventh grade. By then, I had learned my lesson about telling people. I would be sitting in my classroom or in the court yard or in the cafeteria and he would be there. Next to the trash can. Behind the pillar. Lurking in the background and watching. Always watching.
So I pretended I didn’t see. It was hard sometimes. Not just because he got close. Not just because I would be sitting in my classroom and he would be standing next to the teacher, his head cocked to the side and his featureless face fixated on me.
It’s that my friends would walk next to him and they wouldn’t even know. They would be standing mere inches from him and talking and talking. All the while they couldn’t see. Sometimes he would ignore them. Sometimes his attention would shift. But sometimes, sometimes. . .
His pale moon colored face would look longingly on them and he would reach out his arms. Trying to pretend like I saw nothing was torture, because I could see they were in danger. I didn’t know what would happen if he touched them, only I knew that I had to stop it. So I would make up excuses. I jumped on them, pretending to play. I threw up when there was no food in my stomach. I would lead them away.
And that's when neighborhood kids started dying.
A little boy was murdered, strung up in a tree. A little girl was found in a pond. Face slashed. Mass in the pool likes grapes through a strainer.
They started to die, so many all at once. The papers called it a serial killer. They warned you to keep your doors locked and your windows shut. They thought it would help.
That’s when I started waking up to him standing at the foot of my bed. The first time it happened I screamed. My parents came running in and I made up an excuse about a bad dream. But through it all he was still there. He just stood and waited. Soon he was always there. Always in my room. Always at the foot of my bed. Just like when I was young.
I think my parents started to understand something was wrong with me. I tried to hide the glances I was casting on seemingly empty windows, doorframes. He wasn’t real. I wanted to pretend he wasn’t real, but they could tell. They started asking me if I’d had delusions again, and I always said no.
But then the murders got worse. More of them. More violent deaths. Drowned in a bath tub of pig’s blood. Tied up and thrown off a cliff. I couldn’t ignore it. Somehow I knew that it was to get my attention. He just stood and stared. And I couldn’t take it.
One night my parents went out of town without me. I tried to stay at a friend’s house. I tried to go with them. I even tried to stay with my grandparents, but since I couldn’t tell them what was wrong, they didn’t listen. So it was just me in the house, alone with the creature.
I locked the door to the upstairs hallway. I barricaded myself in the living room and turned on all the lights I could. Only then I could hear him. He was moving around the upstairs with long, slow, deliberate steps. That night I tried to watch a movie. I put on Singing in the Rain and turned the volume up full blast, but it never overpowered the sound.
He was in one room upstairs, then the other. Then I heard him come down the stairs. Even though I didn’t look, I knew that he entered the living room. He stood, in the corner, and waited. He waited and waited and waited. I flipped through the channels. I sat. I paced. I knew I couldn’t run.
Then I switched to a news report. A little girl had died in the woods. It was the same place I had destroyed my stuffed bunny years earlier. When I tried to change the channel the TV stuck there. I couldn’t turn it off, I couldn’t switch it away. Then this horrible noise started to come from the creature.
It was a low moan. Too low. Death call of a feral cat. It got louder and louder. By now I was crying. I clutched my hands over my ears and rocked back and forth. I was just trying desperately to go to sleep or black out or anything that would deliver me, but he wouldn’t stop.
It just kept getting louder and nothing I did helped. Finally, I just stood up and turned to him.
“Stop it! Stop it! I know you’re there! I know you’re the one killing the children! Just stop it! Just stop it!” I screamed. The moaning stopped and the creature turned his head to the other side. I fell on my knees, completely defeated. “You’re real, oh god, you’re so real. What do you want from me?” Its featureless face was fixed on me. “Please, I’ll do anything you want. Just stop killing them!”
The tall dark creature shifted its head again, and then he started to walk towards me. The last thing I remember seeing is the image of his pale face, burned against my retinas. When they found me, they said I was running through the house, smashing things with a baseball bat. I don’t remember any of it.
The scariest part is that the murders stopped after that. It was as though he’d been trying to prove some point to me, though I don’t know what. This really made it hard to get help later. This made it really hard for me to believe I was sick and that I needed help. Because if I had been wrong, why did the murders stop?
I know now that it was just a coincidence. It was delusion brought about by stress and lack of sleep and any number of things in my brain chemistry. But at the time it felt like he had won some major victory over me. It was the first time I had finally looked him in the eyes and admitted that he was real.
But of course he’s not. I don’t have to worry about any of that anymore.
