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Pete's Folly [Horror] 9,200
masterthehero
Video EditorRegistered User regular
Video EditorRegistered User regular
This is my first attempt at writing horror, would love your feedback on this.
Pete's Folly [Rough Draft]
October 4th, 2013
“Hey everyone, it’s Pete again. Welcome to my ghost hunting Youtube channel. Umm, so yesterday I tried to do some stupid seance crap to try to talk to a ghost. Mainly my mother, God bless her soul. And uh... well it obviously didn’t work.”
Pete stared into the webcam, his weary blue eyes were hidden behind locks of scraggly blond hair.
“I’m starting to think that ghosts don’t exist. I’ve made a video of every attempt I’ve made to summon a ghost and I got nothing. I’ve googled so much shit that I can’t type in a search result without something from the occult turning up.”
He takes a deep drag from his cigarette and blows the smoke off to the side. The burning ash filled the corners of his spartan apartment while he tapped the end of his smoke stick onto a nearby ashtray. He put down his cigarette and turned in his chair, it creaked as he tried to reach for something hidden out of view. The kitchen that he was in seemed to flicker through the video of the webcam, the fluorescent lighting casting a green hue throughout the room. When he turned around, Pete brandished a Ouija board in front of the camera.
“This is going to be my last attempt at trying to contact a ghost. A lot of people seem to believe these Ouija boards can open a gate to hell or some ridiculous shit.” He looked at the Ouijia board with a skeptical look across his face. “I dunno, I dunno.” Pete looked back at the camera and said, “Well, let’s find out!”
He grabbed his cigarette and sucked in until there was no more paper to hold on to. He jammed the nub of the cigarette into the ashtray and grabbed the webcam from its watchful perch. The camera lulled about as if thrashing about in an ocean storm until it was placed onto the kitchen table. Pete struggled for a few minutes to get the camera to focus, its vision constantly shifted from blurry to clear as if looking through a machine in an optometrist office.
Once the camera was functioning properly, Pete disappeared into a different part of his apartment. The camera sat at the kitchen table staring into a blank wall for what was a lonely eternity. The sound of Pete’s footsteps rang through the corridor follow by numerous loud thuds and the sound of furniture being moved around. Pete’s hands would appear in the frame from time to time as he dispersed homogeneous candles throughout the kitchen table.
His hands disappeared again as Pete vanished out of frame. Again, the camera was greeted with a chilling silence. It was safe to assume that Pete did not live with any roomates or family, in fact, it seemed that Pete was quite a lonesome soul. The sound of a toilet flushing in the background signalled Pete’s return and when he did, the lights were turned off. The noise grain filled the screen with dancing black pixels, but nothing could be seen beyond the dark veil.
“Hmm... I should probably turn off the lights after I light up the candles.”
Pete turned the lights back on and ignited each candle one by one with his lighter. Before sitting back down, Pete looked into the camera and said, “Don’t smoke kids.” He vanished one more from the frame and turned off the lights to the kitchen. This time the candle flames illuminated the kitchen table. The fire was so bright, that small, stretched out lines of light, spread across the video screen. Pete sat down at the table, his face now orange in color. The shadows danced around his nose and jaw as he stared into the Oujia board in front of him.
“All right, I doubt this is going to do anything, but I’m out of ideas at this point. Hopefully maybe I’ll get a knock or something, but I really don’t think anything’s gonna happen. Sorry guys.”
Pete placed his fingers onto the planchette and sat at the table for a few moments in silence. He seemed lost in thought and practically ignored that the camera was there for a good three minutes. When he came to, he looked at the camera and said, “Oh sorry. Was trying to think of what I want to ask. All right... here we go. Is there anyone here with me right now?”
Pete fell silent and waited for the planchette to move. It was only a few seconds before Pete’s fingers started to move with the planchette.
“D.
“I.
“E.”
Pete stared at the camera in shock and then quickly turned his expression to cheeky laughter. “Just kidding guys, that was me.” He cleared his throat. “Are there any spirits present with me right now?”
The room fell silent, the only sound that was present throughout this candlelit seance was the sound of Pete’s own breathing. Pete jumped in his seat when the sound of metal pots shifting suddenly rang through the room.
“Holy shit.” He covered his face with one hand and said with a smile, “that scared the shit out of me. Sorry guys, I did the dishes earlier and didn’t put the pots away.” Pete bellowed a deep sigh and said, “Okay, let’s try this again without any interruptions. Are there any spirits present with me right now?”
The room fell silent once more with only the ambient sound of a heating unit to keep him company. Pete looked around the room with his eyes while both hands remained placed on the planchette. He waited for several minutes, hoping for a response that wasn’t caused by his own doing, but nothing happened. The candle wax continued its slow melt into nothingness and Pete found himself becoming frustrated with the expected turn of events.
“If there are any spirits here, please give me a sign. Move something, anything.”
Again, there was nothing.
“Sorry guys, looks like tonight is going to be another dud. It’s about 12 in the morning right now and I’m not seeing any chance of something happening.” He looked out into the blackness and yelled, “Is there anyone here with me right now? Please, do something, say something.”
The only thing that said anything to Pete, was the silence of his loneliness.
“Are you fucking scared huh? You scared to come out and do anything? Of course, typical! Of course nothing’s gonna to happen,” he raved. “You’re not real, ghosts aren’t real, none of that after life bullshit is real. God and the Devil, none of them are real!”
The sound of a body dropping on the floor tumbled somewhere in his apartment.
“What the fuck?”
He grabbed the wireless webcam and started towards the apartment corridor. He turned the hallway light on, which flickered to life and filled the area with a sickly green hue. The camera bounced inside his hands as he moved around, ever watchful of anything being amiss. He looked inside the bathroom, but there was nothing but an empty toilet and dark shadows lingering within the room. He checked the bedroom, but there was nothing there except for his messy bed, ironically his clothes were folded neatly in a pile.
Finally he checked one more spot in his very small apartment. The closet. It sat ominously at the end of the hallway as if it were a doorway into an evil dimension. There was nothing particularly striking about the door, it was white and slender with a brass knob. It was as it appeared, a regular door, perhaps that was what made it so foreboding to Pete?
He placed his hand on the knob, his other hand holding the camera. The circular handle was cool to the touch and the worn areas of the handle poked his skin. He opened the door slowly and jumped back as a hard hat fell off the top shelf. He looked down at the floor and saw that his work clothes had fallen off the hanger. He picked up his orange safety vest and hard hat and hung his clothes back where they belonged.
Pete did a quick survey of the room again and walked back towards the kitchen table. He turned off the lights and placed the webcam back on the table. He leaned in towards the light and said to the camera, “Well, looks like my clothes fell. Not really proof of super natural activity, sorry viewers. I’m gonna try one more time to communicate with a ghost and then call it a night.”
Again he placed his fingers on the planchette and said aloud, “Is there anyone here that’s willing to speak to me?”
Again he waited for a response, but the planchette didn’t move and there was nary a peep heard. He let out a deep sigh and prepared to put away the Oujia board when... the planchette began to move beneath his fingers. He looked at the camera with an expression of I’m not doing this strewn across his face. He began to say aloud the letters that were being spelled out on the board.
“Y
“E
“S.”
“Yes. Yes?” Pete looked speechless and muttered under his breath, “Oh shit.” Pete wasn’t sure what to do, he held his fingers over the planchette and stared blankly into the board. “Why didn’t you just move my fingers over the yes response?” he asked.
There was no response.
“Umm... uh, what’s your name?”
“S
“A
“M.”
“Sam, I’m Pete. Are you a friendly ghost?”
This time he moved the planchette over to the yes answer. The response made Pete smile and thus, giving him just a bit more courage in speaking with the spirit.
“Could you move something to prove that you’re there?”
A moment passed, it was only a few seconds before one of the candles began to wobble. Pete immediately recognized what was happening but was too late to stop the candle from tipping over. The candle stick rolled on the surface, tempting the flame to jump off its wick chain and onto the fake wood surface. Pete managed to recover the candle before anything could light on fire.
Pete chuckled to himself and said, “All right guys, it looks like we’re finally getting some ghost activity. I can’t believe this, I can’t believe I’m recording all of this.”
Pete was delirious with excitement, finally, finally he had video proof that ghosts exist. He didn’t know how to contain himself, he was just so happy that he finally managed to get a response from beyond the grave.
Pete asked the spirit, “Sam, are you a man or a woman?”
“GIRL.”
“A girl? How old are you?”
“12.”
For some reason and Pete couldn’t quite place his finger on it. He didn’t quite believe what he was being told. He felt this strange coldness touch the skin of his arm, but when he looked, there was nothing there.
“Are you really twelve? I’m not sure I believe you Sam.”
There was silence, then, the crash of a plastic container hitting the linoleum floor. Pete looked to see where the container had landed, but there was nothing on the floor. Pete was quick to respond. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to offend you.” The planchette began to move beneath his fingers without his prompting.
“MAY I COME OVER?”
“Come over? Come over to do what, Sam?”
“PLAY.”
“Aren’t you already here?”
“YES.”
“So why do you need my permission?”
“BECAUSE.”
“Because why?”
“DO YOU HAVE FRIENDS?”
Pete bristled at the question. His apartment hinted at the kind of life he lived and friends were not a part of it. “Of course I have friends.”
“WOULD YOU INVITE THEM OVER IF THEY ASKED?”
“Of course.”
“WOULD YOU INVITE ME OVER?”
“Yes--I mean, if you were real. You could come over and hang out.”
The temperature of the room began to dwindle. Pete could feel the icy cool grip of frosted air nipping at his skin. He looked around the apartment and noticed that he could suddenly see the mist of his breath puffing in front of him. Pete looked around his apartment and felt that though the lights were off, the room felt much darker.
“Sam?” He called out.
The sound of a little girl’s laughter came from his bedroom. But it wasn’t the normal high pitched squeal of delight. It was much more distorted, as if echoing within itself, unnatural.
“What the fuck was that?” There was a shudder in Pete’s voice, this time it wasn’t a sound that could be explained by improper placement of personal belongings. He grabbed the webcam and walked over to the hallway leading into the bedroom. He turned on the light and saw that the closet door was open. He could have sworn that he had closed it prior, so he walked over and took inside. Everything seemed to be in order, nothing was misplaced, nothing was on the floor, all was as it should be.
The bedroom door creaked open next to him as if someone had deliberately turned the doorknob and gently pushed it open. He knew that he heard the sound of the knob turning and the immediately release when the door is open, but he wasn’t anywhere near the bedroom door. Pete could feel the terror begin to build up inside of him. It started from the pit of his stomach and rose up high into his chest, electrocuting his heart to go faster.
With great hesitation, he peered into the bedroom and saw that the bedroom was still as messy as he had left it. Except, there was one thing that he did not see before. He saw an odd object glimmering on the carpet floor. It had a rectangular silhouette and was very narrow and slender, it looked as though it were made of steel or silver. He stepped foot into the room and heard the sound of a girl laughing once more. Chills travelled down his spine and he stepped over the metal object and picked it up into his hands.
“A crucifix?” he whispered. He looked into the metal representation of Jesus and suddenly dropped the cross and webcam while grabbing onto his hand. Drips of blood spilled from his palm, his fingers drenched in the red liquid. He looked over to the cross and saw that the bottom handle had turned into a razor sharp dagger and the face sculpted onto the statue began to bleed. “Oh Jesus,” he said as his voice shuddered with fear. He picked the webcam up off the floor and recorded footage of his lacerated palm. He said, “What the fuck is going on?” Before being interrupted by the sound of giggling. The little girl’s laughter had began to deepen and bellow into a deep, beastial laugh. More laughter could be heard as if a chorus of spirits had started to enter the plane of Pete’s reality. The beastial laugh finally morphed into that of a man’s causing Pete to run back into the kitchen.
Before entering, he noticed that the candles were put out. He knows without a shadow of a doubt that he did not blow out the candles before he left. When he turned on the light, he screamed in terror as the words DIE! DIE! DIE! Were smeared all over the walls and Ouija board, with blood. “Oh fuck!” He screamed as the screeching sound of a woman being murdered rang through his ears. He walked over to the kitchen table hoping to find his car keys and instead found himself stopped in mid stride as a tray of eating utensils flew across the room.
The sound of knives, forks, and spoons crashing against each other sent terror through Pete like a bolt of lightning. He unknowingly walked into the corner of his kitchen and watched as the stove turned itself on and ignited a pillar of flame that towered into the ceiling. The moaning of tortured screams and malicious whispers filled the tiny apartment with the evil intentions of demons. Pete dropped the webcam onto the floor and ran out of the kitchen and towards the door exiting his apartment. The camera lay on its side as if it were a dead man staring into the nether, watching Pete run for his life. The sound of him banging on the door yelling, “Help! Open the door!” boomed throughout the apartment.
Pete walked back into the frame of the camera, pacing around the kitchen in a panic. The fire from the stove had died down, but now he realized that he was trapped inside of his own apartment. “Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit,” he repeated. He grabbed a chair and aimed it at one of the nearby windows but stopped short when he realized the windows were boarded up. “What the fuck!” he yelled as he ran up to the boarded windows and tried to pull the wood free.
“Ha, hA, HA, ha, Ha.”
The sound of demons speaking in tongues licked the inside of Pete’s ears as the walls of the apartment began to shake. He screamed and covered his ears, hoping to block out the evil that was torturing him, but it was as if their unintelligible words were inside his mind. Suddenly Pete’s screams turned to anguish as a sharp tear ran down his back. A deep blood wound appeared where he felt the paint, the edges were ragged and not straight, as if he were cut by an animal rather than a knife. Another slice went across his back, overlapping the one that travelled down the middle. It took on the form of a cross, causing Pete a form of anguish he had never experienced before.
He turned his back towards the wall, tears streaming down his face and looked at the floor. A flame had appeared from out of thin air, and then another, and another. The flames appeared in a circle and then appeared in lines. When the shape had fully formed, an upside down pentagram had revealed itself to Pete. He began to cry, but instead of water coming from his eyes, it was his own essence. Pete didn’t know what to do, he was trapped and there seemed to be no way to escape.
Then, the sound of anguished moaning began to arise from beneath the floor. A black shadow rose from within the pentagram with large hunched shoulders and slender elongated fingers. Pete became wracked with so much fear that he soiled himself as his legs trembled. The shadow extended its stretched out hand towards Pete and said, “My nAmE iS SAmmAeL. yOu BeLonG tO mE.”
Pete suddenly stood erect with his hands held to his sides. He began to scream non stop as his entire body was lifted up off the ground. Pete clasped his throat, trying to remove the horrible squeeze that was clenching his airways, but there was nothing he could do. The demon hovered backward into the apartment hallway with Pete in tow until both beings disappeared from the camera frame. The video sat there for several seconds more, watching the flames gyrating on the floor and then... the video ended. (cont'd)
Pete's Folly [Rough Draft]
October 4th, 2013
“Hey everyone, it’s Pete again. Welcome to my ghost hunting Youtube channel. Umm, so yesterday I tried to do some stupid seance crap to try to talk to a ghost. Mainly my mother, God bless her soul. And uh... well it obviously didn’t work.”
Pete stared into the webcam, his weary blue eyes were hidden behind locks of scraggly blond hair.
“I’m starting to think that ghosts don’t exist. I’ve made a video of every attempt I’ve made to summon a ghost and I got nothing. I’ve googled so much shit that I can’t type in a search result without something from the occult turning up.”
He takes a deep drag from his cigarette and blows the smoke off to the side. The burning ash filled the corners of his spartan apartment while he tapped the end of his smoke stick onto a nearby ashtray. He put down his cigarette and turned in his chair, it creaked as he tried to reach for something hidden out of view. The kitchen that he was in seemed to flicker through the video of the webcam, the fluorescent lighting casting a green hue throughout the room. When he turned around, Pete brandished a Ouija board in front of the camera.
“This is going to be my last attempt at trying to contact a ghost. A lot of people seem to believe these Ouija boards can open a gate to hell or some ridiculous shit.” He looked at the Ouijia board with a skeptical look across his face. “I dunno, I dunno.” Pete looked back at the camera and said, “Well, let’s find out!”
He grabbed his cigarette and sucked in until there was no more paper to hold on to. He jammed the nub of the cigarette into the ashtray and grabbed the webcam from its watchful perch. The camera lulled about as if thrashing about in an ocean storm until it was placed onto the kitchen table. Pete struggled for a few minutes to get the camera to focus, its vision constantly shifted from blurry to clear as if looking through a machine in an optometrist office.
Once the camera was functioning properly, Pete disappeared into a different part of his apartment. The camera sat at the kitchen table staring into a blank wall for what was a lonely eternity. The sound of Pete’s footsteps rang through the corridor follow by numerous loud thuds and the sound of furniture being moved around. Pete’s hands would appear in the frame from time to time as he dispersed homogeneous candles throughout the kitchen table.
His hands disappeared again as Pete vanished out of frame. Again, the camera was greeted with a chilling silence. It was safe to assume that Pete did not live with any roomates or family, in fact, it seemed that Pete was quite a lonesome soul. The sound of a toilet flushing in the background signalled Pete’s return and when he did, the lights were turned off. The noise grain filled the screen with dancing black pixels, but nothing could be seen beyond the dark veil.
“Hmm... I should probably turn off the lights after I light up the candles.”
Pete turned the lights back on and ignited each candle one by one with his lighter. Before sitting back down, Pete looked into the camera and said, “Don’t smoke kids.” He vanished one more from the frame and turned off the lights to the kitchen. This time the candle flames illuminated the kitchen table. The fire was so bright, that small, stretched out lines of light, spread across the video screen. Pete sat down at the table, his face now orange in color. The shadows danced around his nose and jaw as he stared into the Oujia board in front of him.
“All right, I doubt this is going to do anything, but I’m out of ideas at this point. Hopefully maybe I’ll get a knock or something, but I really don’t think anything’s gonna happen. Sorry guys.”
Pete placed his fingers onto the planchette and sat at the table for a few moments in silence. He seemed lost in thought and practically ignored that the camera was there for a good three minutes. When he came to, he looked at the camera and said, “Oh sorry. Was trying to think of what I want to ask. All right... here we go. Is there anyone here with me right now?”
Pete fell silent and waited for the planchette to move. It was only a few seconds before Pete’s fingers started to move with the planchette.
“D.
“I.
“E.”
Pete stared at the camera in shock and then quickly turned his expression to cheeky laughter. “Just kidding guys, that was me.” He cleared his throat. “Are there any spirits present with me right now?”
The room fell silent, the only sound that was present throughout this candlelit seance was the sound of Pete’s own breathing. Pete jumped in his seat when the sound of metal pots shifting suddenly rang through the room.
“Holy shit.” He covered his face with one hand and said with a smile, “that scared the shit out of me. Sorry guys, I did the dishes earlier and didn’t put the pots away.” Pete bellowed a deep sigh and said, “Okay, let’s try this again without any interruptions. Are there any spirits present with me right now?”
The room fell silent once more with only the ambient sound of a heating unit to keep him company. Pete looked around the room with his eyes while both hands remained placed on the planchette. He waited for several minutes, hoping for a response that wasn’t caused by his own doing, but nothing happened. The candle wax continued its slow melt into nothingness and Pete found himself becoming frustrated with the expected turn of events.
“If there are any spirits here, please give me a sign. Move something, anything.”
Again, there was nothing.
“Sorry guys, looks like tonight is going to be another dud. It’s about 12 in the morning right now and I’m not seeing any chance of something happening.” He looked out into the blackness and yelled, “Is there anyone here with me right now? Please, do something, say something.”
The only thing that said anything to Pete, was the silence of his loneliness.
“Are you fucking scared huh? You scared to come out and do anything? Of course, typical! Of course nothing’s gonna to happen,” he raved. “You’re not real, ghosts aren’t real, none of that after life bullshit is real. God and the Devil, none of them are real!”
The sound of a body dropping on the floor tumbled somewhere in his apartment.
“What the fuck?”
He grabbed the wireless webcam and started towards the apartment corridor. He turned the hallway light on, which flickered to life and filled the area with a sickly green hue. The camera bounced inside his hands as he moved around, ever watchful of anything being amiss. He looked inside the bathroom, but there was nothing but an empty toilet and dark shadows lingering within the room. He checked the bedroom, but there was nothing there except for his messy bed, ironically his clothes were folded neatly in a pile.
Finally he checked one more spot in his very small apartment. The closet. It sat ominously at the end of the hallway as if it were a doorway into an evil dimension. There was nothing particularly striking about the door, it was white and slender with a brass knob. It was as it appeared, a regular door, perhaps that was what made it so foreboding to Pete?
He placed his hand on the knob, his other hand holding the camera. The circular handle was cool to the touch and the worn areas of the handle poked his skin. He opened the door slowly and jumped back as a hard hat fell off the top shelf. He looked down at the floor and saw that his work clothes had fallen off the hanger. He picked up his orange safety vest and hard hat and hung his clothes back where they belonged.
Pete did a quick survey of the room again and walked back towards the kitchen table. He turned off the lights and placed the webcam back on the table. He leaned in towards the light and said to the camera, “Well, looks like my clothes fell. Not really proof of super natural activity, sorry viewers. I’m gonna try one more time to communicate with a ghost and then call it a night.”
Again he placed his fingers on the planchette and said aloud, “Is there anyone here that’s willing to speak to me?”
Again he waited for a response, but the planchette didn’t move and there was nary a peep heard. He let out a deep sigh and prepared to put away the Oujia board when... the planchette began to move beneath his fingers. He looked at the camera with an expression of I’m not doing this strewn across his face. He began to say aloud the letters that were being spelled out on the board.
“Y
“E
“S.”
“Yes. Yes?” Pete looked speechless and muttered under his breath, “Oh shit.” Pete wasn’t sure what to do, he held his fingers over the planchette and stared blankly into the board. “Why didn’t you just move my fingers over the yes response?” he asked.
There was no response.
“Umm... uh, what’s your name?”
“S
“A
“M.”
“Sam, I’m Pete. Are you a friendly ghost?”
This time he moved the planchette over to the yes answer. The response made Pete smile and thus, giving him just a bit more courage in speaking with the spirit.
“Could you move something to prove that you’re there?”
A moment passed, it was only a few seconds before one of the candles began to wobble. Pete immediately recognized what was happening but was too late to stop the candle from tipping over. The candle stick rolled on the surface, tempting the flame to jump off its wick chain and onto the fake wood surface. Pete managed to recover the candle before anything could light on fire.
Pete chuckled to himself and said, “All right guys, it looks like we’re finally getting some ghost activity. I can’t believe this, I can’t believe I’m recording all of this.”
Pete was delirious with excitement, finally, finally he had video proof that ghosts exist. He didn’t know how to contain himself, he was just so happy that he finally managed to get a response from beyond the grave.
Pete asked the spirit, “Sam, are you a man or a woman?”
“GIRL.”
“A girl? How old are you?”
“12.”
For some reason and Pete couldn’t quite place his finger on it. He didn’t quite believe what he was being told. He felt this strange coldness touch the skin of his arm, but when he looked, there was nothing there.
“Are you really twelve? I’m not sure I believe you Sam.”
There was silence, then, the crash of a plastic container hitting the linoleum floor. Pete looked to see where the container had landed, but there was nothing on the floor. Pete was quick to respond. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to offend you.” The planchette began to move beneath his fingers without his prompting.
“MAY I COME OVER?”
“Come over? Come over to do what, Sam?”
“PLAY.”
“Aren’t you already here?”
“YES.”
“So why do you need my permission?”
“BECAUSE.”
“Because why?”
“DO YOU HAVE FRIENDS?”
Pete bristled at the question. His apartment hinted at the kind of life he lived and friends were not a part of it. “Of course I have friends.”
“WOULD YOU INVITE THEM OVER IF THEY ASKED?”
“Of course.”
“WOULD YOU INVITE ME OVER?”
“Yes--I mean, if you were real. You could come over and hang out.”
The temperature of the room began to dwindle. Pete could feel the icy cool grip of frosted air nipping at his skin. He looked around the apartment and noticed that he could suddenly see the mist of his breath puffing in front of him. Pete looked around his apartment and felt that though the lights were off, the room felt much darker.
“Sam?” He called out.
The sound of a little girl’s laughter came from his bedroom. But it wasn’t the normal high pitched squeal of delight. It was much more distorted, as if echoing within itself, unnatural.
“What the fuck was that?” There was a shudder in Pete’s voice, this time it wasn’t a sound that could be explained by improper placement of personal belongings. He grabbed the webcam and walked over to the hallway leading into the bedroom. He turned on the light and saw that the closet door was open. He could have sworn that he had closed it prior, so he walked over and took inside. Everything seemed to be in order, nothing was misplaced, nothing was on the floor, all was as it should be.
The bedroom door creaked open next to him as if someone had deliberately turned the doorknob and gently pushed it open. He knew that he heard the sound of the knob turning and the immediately release when the door is open, but he wasn’t anywhere near the bedroom door. Pete could feel the terror begin to build up inside of him. It started from the pit of his stomach and rose up high into his chest, electrocuting his heart to go faster.
With great hesitation, he peered into the bedroom and saw that the bedroom was still as messy as he had left it. Except, there was one thing that he did not see before. He saw an odd object glimmering on the carpet floor. It had a rectangular silhouette and was very narrow and slender, it looked as though it were made of steel or silver. He stepped foot into the room and heard the sound of a girl laughing once more. Chills travelled down his spine and he stepped over the metal object and picked it up into his hands.
“A crucifix?” he whispered. He looked into the metal representation of Jesus and suddenly dropped the cross and webcam while grabbing onto his hand. Drips of blood spilled from his palm, his fingers drenched in the red liquid. He looked over to the cross and saw that the bottom handle had turned into a razor sharp dagger and the face sculpted onto the statue began to bleed. “Oh Jesus,” he said as his voice shuddered with fear. He picked the webcam up off the floor and recorded footage of his lacerated palm. He said, “What the fuck is going on?” Before being interrupted by the sound of giggling. The little girl’s laughter had began to deepen and bellow into a deep, beastial laugh. More laughter could be heard as if a chorus of spirits had started to enter the plane of Pete’s reality. The beastial laugh finally morphed into that of a man’s causing Pete to run back into the kitchen.
Before entering, he noticed that the candles were put out. He knows without a shadow of a doubt that he did not blow out the candles before he left. When he turned on the light, he screamed in terror as the words DIE! DIE! DIE! Were smeared all over the walls and Ouija board, with blood. “Oh fuck!” He screamed as the screeching sound of a woman being murdered rang through his ears. He walked over to the kitchen table hoping to find his car keys and instead found himself stopped in mid stride as a tray of eating utensils flew across the room.
The sound of knives, forks, and spoons crashing against each other sent terror through Pete like a bolt of lightning. He unknowingly walked into the corner of his kitchen and watched as the stove turned itself on and ignited a pillar of flame that towered into the ceiling. The moaning of tortured screams and malicious whispers filled the tiny apartment with the evil intentions of demons. Pete dropped the webcam onto the floor and ran out of the kitchen and towards the door exiting his apartment. The camera lay on its side as if it were a dead man staring into the nether, watching Pete run for his life. The sound of him banging on the door yelling, “Help! Open the door!” boomed throughout the apartment.
Pete walked back into the frame of the camera, pacing around the kitchen in a panic. The fire from the stove had died down, but now he realized that he was trapped inside of his own apartment. “Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit,” he repeated. He grabbed a chair and aimed it at one of the nearby windows but stopped short when he realized the windows were boarded up. “What the fuck!” he yelled as he ran up to the boarded windows and tried to pull the wood free.
“Ha, hA, HA, ha, Ha.”
The sound of demons speaking in tongues licked the inside of Pete’s ears as the walls of the apartment began to shake. He screamed and covered his ears, hoping to block out the evil that was torturing him, but it was as if their unintelligible words were inside his mind. Suddenly Pete’s screams turned to anguish as a sharp tear ran down his back. A deep blood wound appeared where he felt the paint, the edges were ragged and not straight, as if he were cut by an animal rather than a knife. Another slice went across his back, overlapping the one that travelled down the middle. It took on the form of a cross, causing Pete a form of anguish he had never experienced before.
He turned his back towards the wall, tears streaming down his face and looked at the floor. A flame had appeared from out of thin air, and then another, and another. The flames appeared in a circle and then appeared in lines. When the shape had fully formed, an upside down pentagram had revealed itself to Pete. He began to cry, but instead of water coming from his eyes, it was his own essence. Pete didn’t know what to do, he was trapped and there seemed to be no way to escape.
Then, the sound of anguished moaning began to arise from beneath the floor. A black shadow rose from within the pentagram with large hunched shoulders and slender elongated fingers. Pete became wracked with so much fear that he soiled himself as his legs trembled. The shadow extended its stretched out hand towards Pete and said, “My nAmE iS SAmmAeL. yOu BeLonG tO mE.”
Pete suddenly stood erect with his hands held to his sides. He began to scream non stop as his entire body was lifted up off the ground. Pete clasped his throat, trying to remove the horrible squeeze that was clenching his airways, but there was nothing he could do. The demon hovered backward into the apartment hallway with Pete in tow until both beings disappeared from the camera frame. The video sat there for several seconds more, watching the flames gyrating on the floor and then... the video ended. (cont'd)
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“So what do you think Barnes? Creepy shit, huh?” The officer stood over Detective Barnes in the middle of a busy police precinct. Phones were ringing in the background and suspects were processed for holding. They were both staring at the suggested playlist which appeared at the end of Pete’s video, which was uploaded by another user. Barnes leaned back into his chair and said, “How did this guy get this video?”
“According to the video description, the Pete guy was streaming his session live and the viewer recorded the stream onto his computer.”
Barnes rubbed his chin while staring at the screen. “I dunno Eric, yes, it’s very creepy. But you can do anything with computers these days.”
“You think it’s fake?” Eric replied.
“You’re asking me to believe that a youtube video is real. I checked out the guys official youtube channel and it says, right there in the profile, ‘I’m an amateur horror film maker hoping to make the scariest videos you’ve ever seen.’”
“I guess you really are a detective eh, Barnes? There’s only one problem with your theory,” Eric said with a smug look to his face.
“What’s that?”
“His family and friends filed a missing person’s report 48 hours after this video was posted.”
Barnes quirked his eyebrow and looked at the officer staring down at him. “Wipe that smirk off your face, you haven’t proved anything yet. There could be a million different reasons why he’s vanished. Did we send someone to investigate his apartment?”
The officer lowered his head, as if sensing an impending defeat. “Yes.”
“And?”
“They didn’t find anything.”
“Oh really?” Barnes replied with a cocky arrogance to his voice. “So there were no boarded windows; no scorch marks on the floor; no scattered utensils; and no crucifix?”
“Right,” Eric said in a low voice.
“Did anyone live there at all?”
“His clothes were there and so were most of his personal effects. The bed was still messy and his clothes were still neatly folded.”
Barnes raised his hand and said, “Wait, stop. His bed was still a mess and his clothes were folded?”
“Yes.”
“Well if he ran off somewhere, it wouldn’t make sense for his clothes to still be there.”
“He could just buy new clothes and change his identity, maybe run off to be homeless.”
Barnes rubbed his index finger on his chin as if he were lost in thought. “He has a lot of videos of him messing around with these occult things. It makes no sense for him to run off without his clothes unless he suddenly lost his mind.”
“Like you said, there’s a million different reasons why he could have run off. There’s probably nothing to this case, I only brought it to your attention because you studied some of that weird shit back in the day.”
Barnes gave Eric a hard look and said, “We’ve all done weird shit in college. Tell you what, I’ll go check out the apartment and take a look for myself.”
“Why? You just destroyed all of my proof!”
“Well, the guy is still missing. If I were going to start looking for him, his apartment would be the first place to start.”
Eric smiled and said, “Well I’ve sent you the address already, so let me know what you find.”
Detective Dante Barnes set off to discover what happened to the young man who was supposedly attacked by demon’s. He was no stranger to the paranormal, his college years were spent apprenticing under paranormal investigators and immersing himself in the lore of the occult. He didn’t mention this to Eric, but there was another reason why he was interested in investigating the case. The name Sammel caught his attention and made him wonder if Pete had also studied these forbidden books.
He kept thinking about the name over and over while driving to the apartment.
Sammael, the accuser, the deceiver.
Sammael, the seducer the destroyer.
Sammael, the poison of God, the angel of death.
Why would an Arch Angel waste its time with a nobody like Pete? Barnes meant no offense by the thought, but Pete wasn’t exactly a high profile person like say... Jesus. Of course, indulging in that thought, meant that Barnes believed some of what he saw. He could not welcome the thought, and so, Barnes remained ever the skeptic.
Barnes arrived at the apartment late into the evening, around 8pm or so. He had to close some of his outstanding cases first before he could indulge in his professional curiosity. He went to each neighbor’s apartment and asked them all the same thing, “Did you hear anything on the night Pete went missing?” The answers were different but unanimous. “No I was at work; no I’m a heavy sleeper; no I was out partying with friends; no, I didn’t even know someone lived there.”
Barnes approached the apartment door and immediately felt a sense of dread. The handle was cool to the touch, but not uncomfortable. He opened the door and it was surprisingly quiet. There was no squeak, creak, or any noise, it simply glided itself open. Barnes stepped into the apartment, but didn’t really feel anything different. There was no sudden drop in temperature, nor was there a feeling of another presence. Ironic, considering just a second ago he was feeling like something evil was lurking inside. Barnes carried a bag full of miscellaneous investigative tools with him into the apartment.
He paced through the apartment in a very methodical and controlled manner. His fancy black leather shoes created loud clacks with each heavy footstep. He bypassed the bedroom and bathroom and went straight for the kitchen. He took one step in, kept his head on a swivel, and noted that the crime scene was as Eric said, it was clean. Barnes knelt down and rubbed his hand over the surface of the floor where he had seen the pentagram of flame. He was hoping to find some kind of residue, maybe ash? Ectoplasm? But he couldn’t find anything, his fingers would merely squeak along the surface of the floor.
“Hmm,” he muttered under his breath. Barnes placed his hand on his knee and slowly stood up from his kneeling position. He groaned as he pulled the weight of his body back into an upright position. He turned his attention to the nearby counter and inspected the utensils which had (in the video) scattered all over the kitchen. The knives, forks, and spoons were all in proper order, neither utensil out of place. It was as if no one had eaten from them in some time. This was curious for Barnes, but not enough to warrant any additional attention.
He left the kitchen and walked into the bedroom, immediately Barnes felt a sudden coldness come over him like a blanket of mist. He searched around the room, digging his hands beneath pete’s folded clothes and scanning the blankets for any signs of his presence. He hovered a black light over Pete’s bed, but there was no sign of any semen or bodily fluids. Barnes let out another sigh and placed his hands on his hips. “Now that doesn’t make any sense, there should be semen here. Either he washed the laundry before leaving town or he’s never done anything in bed,” he muttered.
Barnes stood up and looked around the bedroom, it was devoid of any personal knick knacks that would express Pete’s personality. There were no posters, no paintings, no musical instruments, no decorations except for an oddly placed vase. There room wasn’t very large either, it only took Barnes ten paces to get from one end of the room to the next. Barnes probably could have gotten some skin and hair samples from the bed, but he didn’t see the purpose in doing so. The question was not identifying Pete, it was discovering where he ran off to.
Just as he was about to scope out the bathroom, Barnes noticed a very peculiar stain on the carpet. His knees cracked as he knelt down towards the mark. He brought out his magnifying glass and a small flashlight... it was blood. Although he couldn’t prove that it was Pete’s blood without a lab test, now Barnes at least had something that may prove the authenticity of the video.
Now that he knew the blood existed, the only item that could prove it was from the video, was the crucifix. Barnes immediately dropped onto his chest and lifted the valance up into the mattress. He shined his flashlight into the dark cave beneath the bed and saw the glint of an object nestled deep within the depths of the mattress. He reached his hand into the bottom of the bed and felt a strange vibration start to shake all around him. It made the sound of a ghastly gregorian choir as it rumbled the carpet around Barnes, he pulled his hand back and the room fell silent again.
“Okay,” he whispered to himself.
The object was too far out of hand’s reach, so Barnes had to improvise. He left the room and returned with one of Pete’s mops from the kitchen. He pushed the handle into the underbelly of the bed and swatted the object out to the side of the bed. He made a crooked smile to himself and walked over to where he slid the object. He picked the item off the floor and said in a whisper, “Getting sloppy boys.”
He had found the crucifix and the blood had dried onto its stem. What was interesting however, was that the stem was not razor sharp, in fact, it was quite dull to the touch. Barnes grazed his fingers around the cross and felt the deep engravings carved within. There seemed to be no switch to make the cross sharp, so he wasn’t sure how Pete cut his hand on the cross. As he rotated the cross in his hands, he stared into the empty eyes of the statue. The blood had dried around its head, its source coming from the crown of thrones. Barnes began clenching his teeth without even realizing and placed the cross into the evidence bag.
Just then, he heard the sound of pots falling in the kitchen. Barnes drew his pistol and slowly made his way to the kitchen. “This is the police, no one should be in here right now,” he commanded. But when he entered the kitchen, there were wooden boards stuck across the windows, just like in the video. “What the hell?” he whispered.
The kitchen had taken on a cool hue of blue, similar to that of the first morning’s sunrise, except that it was nearing midnight. He turned towards the stove and gasped in fright when he saw a statue standing in the middle of the floor. The statue had the wings and face of a child like angel, it had its hands clasped in prayer but was looking up at Barnes as if it had done something wrong. Its eyes were hollowed out and dark streaks ran down its checks all the way to its neck. Barnes approached the statue with his gun pointed directly at it, but it did nothing. It merely stood there, staring at Barnes with its empty eyes.
At the base of the statue was a book with an upside down pentagram carved into it. The title was inscribed in latin: Finem Dies.
“End of Days,” he whispered.
Barnes placed his hand near the mouth of the statue and gave it a little push, it was heavy and unmoving to his attempts. It would have been impossible for someone to put the statue into position without him noticing, it was just too heavy for human hands. For a second, Barnes drew back his hand thinking that the statue would suddenly come to life and bite him, but nothing happened.
Barnes eyes suddenly went wide as he heard the heavy footsteps of someone climbing the stairs. He thought nothing of it, thinking maybe Pete’s neighbors were coming home, but there was one problem... Pete’s apartment jutted out the side of the complex, possibly built as an attachment after the building had already been built.
There were no stairs leading to a second floor, the only way to access the roof was through a ladder. The footsteps continued to climb up, they were heavy as if someone were wearing thick worker boots. Barnes continued to stare up at the ceiling until he heard the footsteps slide to a stop, like someone who had just turned around or noticed something. Barnes could feel his heart begin to race and his pistol shook within his hands.
Barnes decided that he had overstayed his welcome. He grabbed his tools, his evidence, and made his way to the exit of the apartment. But where there was once a door was now a solid wall. Barnes couldn’t believe what he was seeing, he knew he entered the apartment through this section, but there was nothing there.
There was a very quiet, almost unintelligible, “ha, ha, ha, ha, ha,” that cackled behind him. The laugh was raspy and silent, malicious in its delivery. Barnes turned around and cocked his gun, but there was nothing but the apartment which was now covered completely in a blue ambience. This strange color gave Barnes the feeling of an early morning funeral, just this overwhelming sadness and loneliness. When the sounds fell silent, all that could be heard inside the room was... nothing. There was no buzzing of electricity nor traffic in the distance, it was just a silent room with an azure blanket.
He felt overwhelmed with sadness and he couldn’t understand why, he almost wanted to cry but steeled his resolve before letting it get that far.
“No, please!”
Barnes drew his gun and ran towards where he heard the woman yell. He turned towards the bathroom and was greeted with a grotesque horror that was making him question his sanity. Inside the bathtub stood another statue, but this one was almost as tall as he. It had the form of a millipede, with hundreds of legs attached to a stretched out spine. At the base where its feet would have been was the body of a mermaid, the fin in particular. Running his eyes up the length of the bony spine he saw at the head of the statue a face of a baby. The eyes were black and water was spilling from its mouth.
“Jesus Christ,” he said aloud.
He noticed that there was an odd light shining above, as if there were some sort of skylight streaming daylight up above. When Barnes looked up to investigate, he saw that the ceiling was missing. Instead was a huge hole, almost as if the building had been attacked by a bomb. Through the hole he could see a pale grey and blue sky looming ominously overhead. It was as if daylight were entering the apartment, but that shouldn’t be possible. Barnes turned his attention back to the statue and saw that there was an opening behind it. The opening was pitch black and shining his flashlight into the gaping maw made it seem as though he were looking into an attic of a house.
Barnes knew he was in trouble, whatever he got himself roped into, he knew that he would have to figure out how to break the curse that has befallen the apartment. Sensing that he was being directed by whatever unseen force that was present in the house, Barnes stepped past the statue and crawled into the hole.
[cont'd]
Barnes felt the urge to vomit fill his throat, but he refused to allow himself to do so. He covered his mouth and turned away, hoping that out of sight out of mind would apply here, but the stench of copper and flesh was overwhelming. Barnes gathered his bearings and as much as he didn’t want to, looked around the room and tried to figure out where he was. Without even needing to get a good look, Barnes already knew something was off by the wood flooring that surrounded him. The bathtub was made of steel and ancient light bulbs and candles were the only sources of light. The bathroom appeared as though it were built in the 1800’s or earlier.
Another scream rang just beyond the door of the bathroom, it was feminine and absolutely terrified. Barnes steeled his courage and opened the door with his gun facing forward. He was surprised to see himself entering what appeared to be an old inn. This looked nothing like the apartment Barnes had previously explored, it was much more colonial in appearance, almost as if Barnes had been vaulted back through time. He saw a black shadow run across a doorway situated near a hallway nearby. Barnes walked towards the doorway with his gun drawn and his nerves shot.
He checked the corners for any unwanted surprises and found a blood soaked cleaver sitting on a wooden table. There were no signs of the shadow or any physical presence, yet Barnes knew he was not alone. He picked up the cleaver with his free hand and found himself flooded with visions of this haunted place.
“There were three people that lived in this place. There was a mother and a child that lived in the Inn, but there was another presence that refused to leave them in peace. He was the owner of the place, the Innkeeper.” Barnes was completely unaware that he was narrating his visions aloud, he was completely lost in the world being shown in front of him. “The innkeeper was an evil man, he delighted in tormenting the mother and the child on a daily basis. He would hit the mother and child and sometimes lock them downstairs in the cellar with no food or drink.
“Why didn’t they leave? The woman and the child had nothing, not a cent to their name. She was very young, she shouldn’t have had this child at her age. She doesn’t know what to do, she’s very young, she doesn’t know where to go if she were to escape. The Innkeeper was the only person willing to provide food and shelter for her and her child. But why would the Innkeeper let her stay in the first place?”
Barnes’s voice shivered as more images appeared in his mind. Images that he didn’t wish to know of or partake in.
“He lusted after her... but he also, lusted after the child? Not in a sexual way, he wanted the child for a different reason than for wanting the girl. He wished to consume the child’s flesh, he had been kidnapping children deep into the night. Stealing them from their cribs and dicing them up in the bathroom. He kept the girl there so that he could rape her and eat her chi--.”
Barnes finally lost it. He dropped the cleaver and puked all over the floor. The images of what the Innkeeper was doing behind locked doors haunted his imagination. He couldn’t keep his food down, it was disgusting, and he couldn’t believe that what he was seeing may have happened at one point. Barnes wiped his mouth and jolted his head upward when he heard the woman’s scream again. He rose to his feet and ran down the ancient corridor with every intention of saving the woman from her demise.
As he ran down the corridor, he stopped short at the sight of an absolute mammoth of a man. His shirt was stretched over his belly, riddled with various stains and bodily fluids. His gut hung over his pants and could barely be contained behind the buttons of his shirt. He was bald and supremely obese, so much so that his weight would shift from side to side when he walked. His faced drooped on one side and his one eye was white with glaucoma. He was walking towards a locked door with meat cleaver in hand.
Though he was fat, he was also very strong. He slammed his hand into the door repeatedly, the wood began to splinter with each heavy strike from his palm. The girl behind the door continued to scream louder and louder as the grotesque Innkeeper inched his way through the door. Finally, the entry burst open and Barnes saw the young girl shielding her child from the Innkeeper. Her screams and the sound of the child crying, curdled Barnes’s blood. He took control of his fear and aimed his gun towards the back of the Innkeeper who was in the midst of raising his cleaver.
Pop! Pop! Pop! The three shots landed on the Innkeeper’s back with fatal accuracy. Unfortunately for Barnes, the Innkeeper was unfazed by the bullets. The gargantuan man slowly turned around and stared at Barnes with his white eye. Barnes fired off a few more shots which only pushed the Innkeeper back for a moment, like someone shoving him on the shoulder, but he would then continue moving. The Innkeeper’s rage filled to a boil, urging him to charge towards Barnes at full speed. WIth the cleaver held high over his head the Innkeeper roared, making the sound of an angry walrus.
Barnes fires more shots into the Innkeeper’s body, but the beast of a man continued to charge unimpeded. Barnes ducked under the Innkeepers swing as the monstrous man embedded his blade into a nearby wooden table. Barnes looked over to the young girl who stared back at him in complete shock that she was being rescued. Barnes yelled, “Get out of here!” as he drew his attention back to the Innkeeper.
Realizing that his bullets did nothing to the gargantuan man, Barnes ran out through a nearby door and locked it behind him. He knew that the door wouldn’t last against the mammoth man, he was only locking it to buy himself some extra time. But when the door failed to shudder against the giant man’s weight, Barnes realized that he was no longer being pursued. instead, he was staring down at an endless corridor that was lined with windows on the left side and a blank wall on the right. Again, the omnipresent blue light was shining through the window. If this was hell, it was nothing like he ever imagined. Either way, Barnes knew he was caught in a vortex of a nightmare and hadn’t the faintest idea on how to get out. He sat down in front of the door and shook his head with a delirious smile on his face. Barnes said to himself, “I went in trying to find a boy and ended up getting stuck in a nightmare.”
And the nightmare showed no signs of stopping.
[cont'd]
Unfortunately this time, the statue began to move. Its innocent, child-like face, morphed into that of a possessed child full of rage. “You’ve gotta be kidding me,” Barnes said. He pulled his weapon and fired his remaining shots at the statue. The bullets did nothing but chip its rocky exterior, creating clouds of dust with each pelt. The statue raised its hands and chased after Barnes like a toddler reaching for a balloon with both hands. Barnes tried to crawl past the statue but it latched onto him and bit into his shoulder with its infantile teeth.
The creature drew blood as Barnes yelped in pain. The weight of the statue was so heavy that he was having trouble shaking it off, causing him feelings of excruciating claustrophobia. The crucifix he was carrying in the evidence bag suddenly fell out on the floor in front of him. Out of sheer desperation, Barnes pulled the cross out of the bag and noticed that the tip had transformed into a dagger. He thrust the sharp end into the leg of the statue which caused it to squeal like a dying pig. Black blood spilled out of its wound as it stomped away from Barnes. He didn’t understand why that worked, but he made sure to hold the cross as if his life depended on it.
He ran passed the shadow and sprinted down the endless hallway. As he ran, could see nothing outside of the window. It was as if someone had placed a frosted pane of ice overtop the windows. He continued running further and further until he was surrounded by darkness. His feet began to make very loud squishing sounds as the smell of rotting flesh suddenly assaulted his sense of smell. The wet footsteps grew louder as the ground became softer, he spotted a light peering through the black void and walked his way over to it. As he drew closer, Barnes covered his mouth, realizing that he had entered a tomb of flesh.
The cadavers of hundreds of people were split open and stretched across the room. The walls, the furniture, the doorways, were all made out of stretched out skin. Dripping blood served a curtains while extended bones served as chandeliers. Beyond one of the flesh doors, Barnes could hear the cries of someone in pain. The voice was masculine and the message was clear. “Someone please help me!” The words sounded hollow though, as if spoken by someone who was barely clinging to life. Barnes approached the gateway, but hesitated in placing his hand on the bone door handle. He wasn’t afraid to touch the flesh crafted handle, after all, he had already been knee deep in blood. No, he was hesitating because he felt that he couldn’t take much more of this madness.
He had already seen so many disgusting and horrifying things, he wasn’t sure if his mind could handle seeing another atrocity. This experience was nothing like his prior ghost hunting trips. If what was happening to him was not real, this would be the most convincing nightmare ever, and he may have consider checking himself into a psychiatric ward. He placed his hand on the bone handle which rattled like a hellish wind chime and pushed the flesh door open. The door squished and slurped as it allowed passage into its chambers for the weary detective.
“Oh, my, God...”
It was worse than what Barnes had originally feared. He ended up finding something more grotesque than anything he had ever witnessed.
He had found, Pete, and his body was splayed open. The flesh that surrounded the walls and ceiling were not coming from the cadavers, but from poor Pete. The boy looked as though he was struggling to stay alive. Barnes could barely look at him and wanted to weep, but he needed to keep his composure.
“Help... me...” Pete begged.
“I don’t know how,” Barnes replied.
Pete was silent for a moment as he stared at Barnes with his bloodshot eyes. He then replied in a raspy, strained voice, “Kill... me...”
Barnes was made upset by his response, he said to Pete, “I didn’t come all this way to kill you.”
“It’s...” he wheezed as he spoke. “Too late for me.”
Pete’s eyes rolled into the back of his head, revealing only the whites of his eyes. His voice then deepened and sounded as if several voices were trying to speak at the same time. “The boy is mine!”
The black shadow appeared next to Pete’s body and communicated through his voice.
“Are you Sammael?” Barnes asked.
“Yes,” the demon hissed.
Barnes paused for a moment and mustered his courage to say, “I don’t think you are.”
“What?” The demon was surprised by his response.
“Sammael is considered an Arch Angel, a ‘big wig’ if you will. It wouldn’t make sense for a spirit with such high rank to be tormenting the life of a young man. You’re using Sammael’s name, but in reality... you’re just a miserable innkepper.”
The demon screamed in anger and said in a booming voice, “You dare? You think yourself equal to me human? The boy is mine and you will not escape here alive.”
The demon was agitated and Barnes was regret his decision to antagonize the demon. However, by removing the mystery around the demon and identifying who the spirit is, removes its power. Like the internet, once the anonymous person is revealed, they lose their ability to be destructive. Unfortunately for Barnes, the demon decided to summon a little help. A sac hanging above the ceiling slowly opened and out from this sac came the statue creature that Barnes had encountered in the bathroom. It crawled around the ceiling like a millipede and dropped down in front of Barnes. It stared at him with its soulless baby face and then stood up as if preparing to attack.
It screeched like an unholy monster and lunged at Barnes in an attempt to wrap him up between its thousands of legs. Barnes ducked out of the way as the creature squirmed around to try and grab him. Barnes wasn’t sure how he was going to overcome this monstrosity, he knew the bullets would have no effect on it, but would he be able to stab the creature with the crucifix? The creature lunged at him again, this time nicking Barnes across the head. The blow was light, but considering it was a moving statue, it was enough to give him a bleeding gash.
Barnes tried to stab the creature with the crucifix, but it had too much mobility. It’s slithering neck made it difficult for Barnes to land a blow against the creature. It was the equivalent of trying to stab a snake that was actively countering your actions. It was during this stand off that Pete spoke up again and said, “Kill me...”
Was Pete the only thing keeping this nightmare alive? Was he the heart of this mess that he needed to kill? Barnes was conflicted, he wanted to rescue the boy from this evil, alive. Was killing him really the only way to end it? Barnes didn’t have a choice, he needed to survive. He drew out the crucifix and charged towards the monster. With the element of surprise on his side the creature leaned back as if unsure how to response. Barnes climbed up its spine, its legs chittering and clacking on the sides, and stabbed the creature in the eye.
The creature squealed in pain and thrashed around the room, swinging from end to end like an out of control wrecking ball. Barnes took this opportunity to reload his pistol with a fresh magazine and aimed the gun at Pete’s head. Barnes’s eyes were blurry with guilt and his aim was wavering. Pete merely stared at him and blinked once, almost as if it was his way of saying that it was OK.
Barnes fired a shot which cleanly impacted Pete’s head. The demon screamed in agony as the entire room began to collapse unto itself. Barnes made his way back to the corridor he came from and ran for dear life as the nightmare world began to consume itself. Everything was falling apart as if being consumed by a gigantic tornado. Barnes could see the bloodied bathtub in the distance and made a mad dash for the hole, even as the floor began to crumble beneath his feet. With one desperate leap, Barnes vaulted through the hole and disappeared into the blackness of oblivion.
When he came to, Barnes found himself lying face first on the apartment carpeted floor in the bedroom. As his vision came into focus he could see sunlight streaming in from the windows and could hear the sounds of birds chirping outside. When he looked over to the side of him, he found the body of Pete lying right beside him. Barnes dropped his head, ashamed that he couldn’t save the boy from the demon that plagued him.
As he was preparing to get up, Pete suddenly blinked his eye. Barnes quickly placed his hand on Pete’s shoulder and said, “Oh my God, are you alive?”
Pete’s voice was groggy, as if he needed to clear his throat before speaking. “...I think so.”
“Are you hurt?”
“I’ve got a pounding headache.”
Barnes couldn’t help but chuckle. Mentally, he questioned whether that was morbid, but physically, a good chuckle made him feel so much more alive. Barnes helped Pete up to his feet and inspected his body for any wounds. Thankfully, there didn’t seem to be any except for a scar in one of his hands.
“Do you remember what happened?” Barnes asked.
“Oh yeah,” Pete said in a manner that didn’t wish to revisit it. “Thank you for getting me out of there. But... who are you?”
“Detective Dante Barnes, your family notified the police you were missing and I came to investigate your case.”
“Wow, umm... sorry I put you through that.”
“If that’s your idea of getting an exorcism, call a priest next time.” Barnes hopes to get a smile out of Pete, but instead he looked dazed, as if he didn’t believe he was back in reality.
Pete shook his head and said to Barnes, “That was horrible.”
Barnes placed his hand over Pete’s shoulder and gently shook him. “It’s over now, you don’t have to--.”
Pete suddenly turned towards Detective Barnes and embraced him tightly. He cried into the detective’s shoulder, regardless of the fact that this man was a complete stranger to him. Barnes couldn’t blame him, after surviving that nightmare, he would want to cry too.
“Thank you so much. I shouldn’t have been messing with that stuff, thank you, thank you.”
“Don’t worry about it. I’ll tell ya what, why don’t we get breakfast and let your folks know you’re OK.”
Pete shook his head yes and wiped his eyes dry.
Barnes couldn’t believe what had just happened. He was relieved that the boy had survived, hell, that they both survived the nightmare. He had never experienced such a fear that went so deep, it chilled him to the bone. Yet, there they were, two survivors of a demon that never should have been summoned in the first place. If there was a lesson Barnes and Pete learned from this horrific experience, it was to respect the dead. Whether the spirit is benevolent or malicious, some form of afterlife does exist, and it is a place that humans should dare not venture.
CASE: 175927475
Missing Person: Pete Byrd
Reporting Officer: Det. Dante Scott Barnes
Summary: Pete, age 24, was found unconscious in his apartment room complex. Victim stated that his cell phone was “turned off” and was unaware that he was missing phone calls. When reporting officers went to investigate his home, he had reported that he was visiting a friend out of town and failed to notify friends and family. Pete is in good health and is volunteering community service time at the Williamsburg Police Station.
CASE CLOSED
[END]
A few author notes: I have a tendency to use too many similes, description that gets a little empty, and repetition. I'm trying to improve my writing and this horror story is my first jab at using different techniques. I still need to do an editing pass, but I'd love to hear what you guys think.
As a minor nit pick, I am not feeling Dante as a first name for your detective just because it feels like a name you only hear in horror stories. Granted, yes there are people named Dante in the world but it just seems too pat.
You're totally right about Dante, it's been overused too much at this point. I forgot about Devil May Cry and Dante's Inferno. I'll see what I can come up with to replace it. I'll also consider having some of the stuff happen to Pete off camera, that is definitely a great way to create a sense of dread.
This just reads awkwardly, and honestly doesn't make much sense. Claustrophobia is a fear of enclosed spaces, and doesn't really fit with what he's going through here. Try not to be so... I don't know, direct I guess about what Barnes is experiencing and why. If I were an editor, I would suggest something more like this:
And of course you might not like that specifically, but it's just a way of showing that you can show the cause and effect without directly saying "this caused this." Like I said, it pops up a number of times, so maybe go through and see how you can improve in that regard.
Additionally, I think the story could use quite a bit of cutting out. Many of the descriptions are superfluous, and the whole section where he enters through the hole into the weird inn or whatever is a bit too surreal. In fact, the whole thing from that moment on to finding Pete and the demon was very hard to get a handle on. If you can edit out maybe half or more of that section and still keep the story generally intact, I think you'd end up with a much tighter plot. Note, if you ever want to try and submit this anywhere, 9200 words is an odd length. You're well above the standard "short story" range (usually 5000-7500 words is the maximum most places will accept), but it's too short to really be considered a novella. I would either cut it down significantly or expand it fully into a novella, and considering what you have right now I think cutting it down would be the best course.
In any case, there are several other grammatical issues as well, but I won't get into those too much as I'm sure you'll catch those on a second editing pass. Thanks for sharing and best of luck.
WiiU NNID: BigDookie
Also, you're probably right about the grammar. I actually haven't even looked at this story for another pass yet, so I'm sure there's numerous errors that need to be fixed, including the re-writing of descriptions. I'll see what I can do to tighten up the part where it becomes a nightmare. The fact that you said it was "too surreal" was pretty cool, I'm pleased that you thought of it that way. Though as much as I enjoyed it, I want to make sure that everything remains cohesive and I'll definitely see what I can do to tighten it up.
Very useful feedback, thanks!