Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-25269564-20181112121018

So, my friends and I were hanging out in my room on a typical Friday night. It was later in the evening and it had already gotten dark outside. We were a group of three nineteen-year-olds, energetic and bored out of our minds. I guess we were all contemplating on whether we were supposed to just call it a night when Matt, probably the most spontaneous of the group, blurted out that he thought we should go on a road trip. We had gone on road trips before. We had previously explored smaller caves and nature reserves in the area on nights like these, so the idea wasn't exactly out of the blue. All three of us liked the idea, but we weren't exactly sure where to go. After a couple of minutes of brainstorming, I remembered an old mental facility that my parents and I had passed while driving north a couple of years earlier. It had probably been shut down five years or so previously, I didn't remember why. We were all up for a good scare, so we decided to drive up there.

The drive would take a while, so we started packing some necessities. I pulled out a backpack from the back of my closet, and grabbed a flashlight, considering we didn't want to waste our phone batteries using the built-in flashlights. Nick filled up a large bottle of water which we put in the bag in case we got thirsty. Before taking off, we went to my garage. We decided to grab some larger pliers, in case the main entrance had been closed up in some way. We jumped in Matt's station wagon and drove off. I remember how Nick instantly connected his phone to the car stereo and started playing eerie music from some horror video game he owned. It certainly set the mood for the adventure.

After about an hour and a half, we had entered a deep forest area, the red maple trees stood so close together that one barely could see anything in the forest due to the darkness that fell in between them. Suddenly, I saw the crossroads that would lead to the facility. I told Matt to turn left, and then just follow the road. As we pulled left, we saw the old, worn-down entrance sign on the right side of the road. Since no street lights here, the night seemed as black as could be. As we proceeded down the road, we realized that the main gate stood wide open. We figured that someone probably had broken in at some point, probably for similar reasons to us. The place was probably a bit of a tourist attraction for kids who liked to mess with the inappropriate. Then we saw it, the gigantic building that once had been a functioning mental facility. The building was worn down and a lot of windows were broken. The weeds were growing wild around the building and some had even started climbing up the walls. It truly looked like something from a horror movie.

We pulled up on what used to be a parking lot, Matt even neatly parked his car like it still was in use and he didn't want to get a ticket. I honestly don't think any of us wanted to enter the building at this point, but we had driven so far and no one was going to admit to being scared. After exiting the vehicle we grabbed our flashlights out of the backpack and started looking for the main entrance, where we found that the main doors seemed to have been lifted off the hinges. They were just laying there, next to the stairs, which we nervously laughed off, as if from the Hulk breaking in. It felt like we were being watched, but I simply brushed it off as superstition. Shining our flashlights in through the door, three of us saw that the main lobby was completely filthy.

The once white walls had an odd shade of yellow or brown. Trash and shards of broken glass were all over the floor, but ignoring the obvious sign that we weren't welcome, we entered anyway. Then the smell hit. It was, to say the least, God-awful. Nick coughingly exclaimed that we should have brought respirators. Matt and I chuckled. We took a right turn and entered an eerily long hallway. Each wall had doors which we presumed led to individual rooms for the patients. Matt started pulling on all the door handles, trying to open the doors, but most still seemed locked. I didn't think this was a good idea, but I didn't say anything.

He started pulling harder and harder on all the doors he tried until one flew up in his face, which startled me. Both my friends laughed at me. I just told them to shut up. Nick and I walked up to Matt and found that all the furniture in the room had been removed; there was, however, a really old sleeping bag on the floor, along with a decent amount of empty syringes and needles. Grossed out, we realised that homeless junkies probably had stayed there at some point. At this point, I really wanted to leave. When I told the guys that the area didn't seem safe, they just told me to calm down. There was a strange ambiance in the entire building. An echo could be heard every time we spoke, the glass made a cracking noise whenever someone took a step. Other than that, you could only hear the crickets outside, and the rumbling sound of wind, filtered by the walls of the old building.

After some more exploring, we found a stairway that led to a floor beneath the ground. As we walked downstairs we found a cellar door. It looked like someone had smashed a hole in it trying to open it from the inside. Our observation seemed about right, as the door was unlocked. The room was pitch black. We lit it up with our flashlights and walked in. We figured the room used to be a laundry of some sort. Mainly because some old clotheslines were still hanging by the wall on our right. The part that creeped me out the most was the fact that fresh clothes were hanging on the lines, and a pair of work boots were neatly placed on the floor. I still felt like I was being observed. Then, Nick pointed his flashlight to the left corner of the room. We were shocked by what we saw. A dead coyote was lying on the floor. Its stomach and pelvic region had been carved up as if someone had been eating from it and saved the rest for later. Both the cadaver and the floor around it was covered in blood and intestines. At this point, we were all freaked out. We immediately left and drove home.

Monday. The weather was somewhat hazy, but the sun was shining. I had just finished my classes for the day and I was walking home. Nick and I lived on the same street not too far from the university and had finished at about the same time so he was walking with me. He was rambling on about how his new professor was "the most boring son of a bitch" he had ever met, but I had a hard time concentrating. The uneasy feeling from the mental facility was still very present.

"That coyote stuff was messed up," I interrupted.

"You're still thinking about that? Well, yeah, whoever did that must be a complete lunatic," he answered.

He didn't give much more thought to it, he just started over about his professor. I tried to act interested, but I really did not care. As we came down our home street. I realised that there was a man standing on the sidewalk on the other side of the road, just a few houses away. He just stood there, arms by his side, and just stared directly at us. As we came closer I acknowledged that he was wearing a dark brown blouson, a pair of dark gray work pants and black work boots. There was nothing exceptional about his appearance. He was Caucasian, possibly in his mid to late 20's, no tattoos. Just a blank, emotionless face with short brown hair. He didn't even have any facial hair. The only thing remotely special about him was his large stature. He wasn't a giant, but he was definitely taller than average. He kept staring as we got closer, I lightly pushed Nick with my elbow and pointed at the man.

"Can I help you or what?" Nick yelled out at the man, with an angry tone. The man stared for another couple of seconds, and then just walked down the street to a tan Ford pickup truck from probably the 90's, got in, and drove off. "Weirdo," was Nick's only comment.

Fast forward a few hours and I'm at work. I worked at a local burger joint at the time in order to earn a few extra bucks. It was an okay job at the time. I didn't have the biggest salary, and it certainly wasn't the most exciting job in the world. The owner was an asshole, but he didn't show up too often, so it was fine. I was working the night-shift since I didn't have any classes the next day. This night, I was in the drive-through window, it was a bit cold out so I had to wear this ugly company jacket that I hated. Some hours into the shift, I was looking out the window and just before the next car pulled up at the window I saw what looked like the shape of a man under one of the street lights at the end of the parking lot.

I couldn't tell who it was, but it looked like a man standing in the exact same pose as the man who had been staring at Nick and I after school. A van pulled up at the drive-through window, effectively blocking my view. I gave the driver their food and took the money, and as the van pulled away, the shape was gone. Was my mind playing tricks on me? Ever since the road trip, I had felt uneasy and slightly paranoid. I tried to rationalize it as if I was subconsciously getting worked up by the events at the mental facility and the staring man from earlier simultaneously, and therefore seeing things. I had a hard time calming myself down.

I had two similar incidents the following Wednesday. The first one while the three of us were out having lunch. We were at a pizza place not far from the university when I saw that same man standing by the dumpsters between two buildings on the other side of the street, just staring again. Just a completely neutral face. He was definitely watching us, or at the very least, me, since I was the only one who had noticed him more than that first time. I told the guys that the man was standing there, but as I moved my head to face them, he must have walked away. For when we all looked over, he was gone.

"You're constantly on the edge, man. Jesus, you need to relax," Matt sighed. Nick said something about this going on since the road trip. The second incident happened when I was walking home in the afternoon. During the walk, that same Ford pickup truck passed me two times. This was getting out of hand. I was either going crazy or this man was stalking me.

<p data-parsoid="{"dsr":[10350,11058,0,0]}">Two more days passed. It was now Friday. I had not seen the man or the car since Wednesday, so I was at this moment sure that I had just worked myself up after the road trip, and that the first incident with the unknown man had just added to my nervousness. I still had this indescribable, uneasy feeling, but I figured that it was going to fade away soon. I was hanging out with Matt in the living room, watching horror flicks. My parents were away at an office party at my dad's work. Across the street, two houses to the right, Nick was probably having fun with his girlfriend, Jamie. His dad was a colleague of my dad, so both of us had our houses to ourselves due to our parents being at the same party.

<p data-parsoid="{"dsr":[11060,11725,0,0]}">The movies we watched were of varying quality. Some quite frightening, some almost laughable. At around 10 pm I heard what sounded like my cat scratching on the front door, so I went to open it. I almost flew out of my position when the cat ran inside; I was still a bit jumpy, the movies probably didn't help. I gazed out at the night, the neighborhood was peaceful at this time. Or so I thought until I saw the shape again. This time, it was standing in the backyard of Mrs. Elliot's house, which was located right in front of ours. One could see a small piece of it between the house and the garage. I quickly slammed the door and locked it, which startled Matt.

<p data-parsoid="{"dsr":[11727,11962,0,0]}">"Jesus, you scared me half to death!" he exclaimed. I told him what I saw. He rushed over to me, unlocked the door, tossed it open and we both saw Mrs. Elliot's empty backyard. "I think we've had enough horror movies," he pointed out.

<p data-parsoid="{"dsr":[11964,12560,0,0]}">We switched genres and decided to instead watch a comedy. Mid film, Matt asked if we could get some popcorn. "Sure," I answered and got up. As I was going to the kitchen behind us, I stopped by to look out the window, still a bit paranoid from before. What I saw scared the hell out of me. The unknown man from before was at Nick's house. I saw him leaving the garage, walk from the driveway and around the house, walking to the backyard with what looked like a hammer. I started yelling at Matt about what I saw. He looked furious like he didn't believe me and had gotten really annoyed with me.

<p data-parsoid="{"dsr":[12562,12652,0,0]}">"That's it, we're going over there right now! I can't believe you!" he yelled back at me.

<p data-parsoid="{"dsr":[12654,13379,0,0]}">Matt opened the front door; I quickly grabbed my keys and locked it behind us so that the man could not get in. Matt walked in a fast and angry manner across the street. I was following right behind, my right fist was holding a tight grip around my keys, in order to create a type of makeshift brass knuckles, in case the man actually was there. My heart was beating furiously as if it was going to jump out of my chest. As we came up to Nick's house, Matt started furiously ringing the doorbell. When no one came to open the door, I pushed him to the side and started pounding on the door like a maniac. Still, no one came. We started walking around the house to maybe enter through the back. I gripped my keys even tighter.

<p data-parsoid="{"dsr":[13381,14278,0,0]}">At this point my heart was beating so hard and fast I felt like I was going to pass out. As we came around the back, we realized that the glass door had been smashed and then opened from the inside, since the frame had been tossed opened and glass was all over the ground. Now we were both in panic. We ran up to the entrance but stopped right in the doorway, for what we saw was absolutely horrifying. Nick was lying on the floor, eyes wide open, with a giant hole in his forehead. He was covered in his own blood and a piece of his brain was exposed. Jamie's body was bent over the kitchen island, face down. The back of her head looked like it had repeatedly been beaten with a blunt object, cracking her skull wide open. It was gruesome, blood was everywhere, and on the floor was the hammer. I couldn't utter anything other than a shaky "We have to call the police". It was truly horrifying.

<p data-parsoid="{"dsr":[14280,15151,0,0]}">We both started running back to my house to call the police. I don't think I ever had run as fast as I did that night. It was pure fear and adrenaline. As soon as we had opened the door we locked it behind us again. I ordered Matt to immediately call 911, and he stuck his hands down his pocket. He realized the phone battery was dead. Mine was charging in my room upstairs so I told him to sprint upstairs and use it to make the call. As he ran I started analyzing the bottom floor, I didn't see any immediate signs of a break-in. I went to the kitchen to get a weapon of some kind, in case the man would come. What I saw will forever send chills down my spine. One of the kitchen knives wasn't in the knife stand. Instead, bloodstains, probably Nick's and Jamie's were sprinkled all over the kitchen floor. I then realised that I never thought of locking the back door.

<p data-parsoid="{"dsr":[15153,16100,0,0]}">I grabbed one of the other knives, and in a moment of pure panic I ran upstairs. I stopped in the doorway to my room to find Matt standing there with my phone in hand. Then the walk-in closet opened behind him. I screamed and pointed behind him, but he did not have time to turn around. It looked like it happened in slow motion. The unknown man walked right out of there, with no expression on his face. He grabbed Matt's face from the back with his left hand and pulled him towards him. The man then proceeded to pull the knife up with his right hand and stab Matt straight in his throat; almost half of the knife went in. I was in complete shock, I could not make a sound. The man didn't seem like he cared whatsoever. No expression. Nothing. Matt's eyes were wide open. As the man pulled the knife out from my friend's throat, blood started spraying out of it, like a twisted sprinkler system. It colored everything red, including me.

<p data-parsoid="{"dsr":[16102,16806,0,0]}">Adrenaline again. I started running towards the stairs. As I came to the steps I realized that I needed the phone so I could call the police. I figured that I had to get the man out of the way in order to get to it. I stood at the top of the stairs when the man started coming towards me in regular walking pace. Knife in hand. Before I had time to think he had gotten so close that he had lifted his arm in order to stab me. He only managed to get my arm, though. The knife punctured the skin on my left arm and I started bleeding. In a desperate attempt to defend myself I swung my knife back at him, which surprised him so much that his left foot slipped at the end of the first step of the staircase.

<p data-parsoid="{"dsr":[16808,17423,0,0]}">He fell over and tumbled down the entire staircase. I was begging that the fall had broken his back or something. I looked down at the end of the stairs, where he was lying. A moment of silence appeared. Then, suddenly, the man sat up again. It almost didn't look human, there was something robotic about the way he moved, it didn't look like a human being would do the same motion. Panic rushed through me, starting in my feet. I felt lightheaded. I sprinted back into my room, quickly grabbed the key from my drawer and locked the door. I looked at Matt's gruesome body and picked up the phone. It was sickening.

<p data-parsoid="{"dsr":[17425,18248,0,0]}">After calling 911, I sat in the corner of my room. I started weeping like a little child. I had no idea where the man had gone, but I was sure he was nearby. I couldn't believe any of this had happened, it felt like the worst nightmare I'd ever had. Footsteps. I heard footsteps. Slow footsteps moving up the stairs. I was so scared that I froze in place; I almost blacked out as I heard the footsteps coming closer and closer. They stopped right outside my door. The man on the other side started to frantically pull the door handle. Another moment of silence. Then, a loud bang on the door. And another one. More and more kept coming, and every single one of them made me skip a heartbeat. They got louder and louder the more that came; the sound was deafening. Then, the crowbar that was hitting the door went through. He must have taken it from the garage. There was now a hole in the door.

<p data-parsoid="{"dsr":[18250,18658,0,0]}">I could see a glimpse of the evil behind the door. I had at this point curled up in a fetal position. The more he kept smashing the door, the bigger the hole got. I could hear his manic, almost perverted breathing. The face in the door took a moment to just stare at me; he tilted his head from side to side like he was observing my face, my expression. Then I heard another smash, this time from downstairs.

<p data-parsoid="{"dsr":[18660,18684,0,0]}">"Police! Show yourself!"

<p data-parsoid="{"dsr":[18686,19183,0,0]}">I started screaming as loud as I could to let them know I was upstairs. The maniac started smashing the door with the crowbar again; it was like he did not even care about the police. Just as he was about to deliver what was probably the final blow to the door, I could see a policeman behind him, gun drawn, yelling at him. The man turned to face the policeman and started walking towards him. As they got out of my field of vision I heard a gunshot and the sound of a body dropping to the floor.

<p data-parsoid="{"dsr":[19185,19681,0,0]}">I woke up in a bright room. Next to me were my parents. It took a few seconds for me to realize I was in the hospital. My parents started crying as soon as I opened my eyes. So did I. I had been hospitalized due to blood loss, and my arm had been stitched up. I got to talk to the police and explain everything that had happened. After explaining everything from the road trip to the murders, a man in his mid 50's entered the room wearing a gray suit. He presented himself as a doctor at a psychiatric hospital.

<p data-parsoid="{"dsr":[19683,20256,0,0]}">The man who had attacked me apparently was a patient there. The man had few days prior to our road trip broken out of the hospital, somehow managed to escape. He had previously been a patient at the very mental facility my friends and I had entered, which explained the fresh clothes and the dead coyote; he most likely had gone back there. When I asked why the patient was hospitalized, the doctor went silent for a moment. "At the age of eleven he murdered his father with an ax," was the cold response I received. He had apparently never spoken a word since that murder.

<p data-parsoid="{"dsr":[20258,20289,0,0]}">My last question was, "Why me?"

<p data-parsoid="{"dsr":[20291,20317,0,0]}">His response? "Who knows."

<p data-parsoid="{"dsr":[20319,20513,0,0]}">That night, an escaped psychopathic mental patient brutally murdered three innocent people for seemingly no reason. Two of those were my best friends. I will forever question why that happened.

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<p about="#mwt2" data-ve-attributes="{"about":"#mwt2"}">''Written by IYFCOB Content is available under CC BY-SA'' <ac_metadata title="Justified Paranoia (Unreviewed)"> </ac_metadata>