Darkness Song

Recently, My family had moved to the town of Belleville, Illinois. There was a school there, Belleville East High School, that I had started going to. Everything was normal enough. I had made a few new friends at the school. But my closest friend so far was named Elizabeth, or Liz for short. We’d usually hang out after school, laughing at each other’s jokes or watching Television. We had a lot of common interests, including many books, video games, and television shows.

Well, once, I took a trip to Florida with my family. That is where we lived before we moved to Belleville. We visited some family down in florida and also had a lot of fun at the beach and some amusement parks. There were a lot of thrift shops and garage sales that we also visited. When we came back home after a week, I looked through my bag and noticed that there was a VHS tape in there that I didn’t remember having. I pulled it out, and my name was written in a pen of some sort. “John” That was sort of strange, I thought. I thought that maybe it was placed in there by a friend, or maybe some sort of obscure advertising technique by someone who had overheard one of my relatives call me by name. Curious, I went up to the attic, where we kept an old VHS player. I took the VCR downstairs and into my room, and hooked it up to my TV. I carefully placed the tape in the VCR, and pressed play.

At first, nothing happened. I felt a little crestfallen, because I was honestly curious about what the tape’s contents were. However, after a few minutes of taking out the tape and placing it back in, the screen went to static. The sound was very loud, and startled me, so I covered my ears. The static disappeared after a few seconds, and I lowered my hands to my lap, watching the screen intently. The screen showed a woman, sitting in some sort of rocking chair, and smiling. She smiled at the camera for a good fifteen seconds before her smile faded. Her stare was beginning to creep me out, because she was staring at the camera the whole time. Her head tilted to the left slightly, and her face suddenly shifted to one of slight sadness.

“I… I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” She said as tears streamed down her face. I felt bad for her, although I don’t know why. “Harold, I hope that you can forgive me.” She reaches for the camera, and the view slowly rotates until it shows some sort of creature. My stomach twisted and I was immediately terrified of the creature. The creature had huge, black eyes. The mouth looked perfectly round, with razor sharp teeth. Its limbs were long like tree branches, and skin was showing in more than one place where its fur was missing. The thing’s body seemed to suddenly convey anger as its back arched and it looked past the camera. The woman started speaking again “No! I did it how you wanted it done! No! you can’t!” The thing suddenly started walking- I don’t feel comfortable calling it a walk. It was more of a hobble of some sort- towards the camera, and hobbled straight past it. All that could be seen now was the bare wall, and all that could be heard was the woman’s shrill scream of terror. The camera seemed to fall off of its podium, and a blur followed by the body of a man could be seen.

My mom yelling from downstairs was what snapped me out of my hypnotizing interest in the television. I popped the tape out, and stuck it back into my bag. I quickly ran downstairs and met her. “Liz is calling for you.” Liz! I had almost forgotten about her… I would have to tell her what happened. I picked up the phone. “Hello?” “J-John…” She seemed to be crying. “What? What’s wrong?” “I came home from Jenna’s house and I just…. My mom and dad are on the floor… and… I don’t know what happened.” She started sobbing. “Hold on, I’ll be right over.”

When I got to her house, I noticed that Jenna was there (another friend of Liz‘s), and a few police cars and ambulances were parked out in front. I noticed that two people were pulled into the ambulances. I asked her what had happened, and she told me that she had come home and she had found her dad on the floor and her mother was all bloodied and had some sort of marks on her body. I felt an overwhelming sense of terror, and I grabbed her hand. “You need to come to my house, now.” “Wh-what?” “Just trust me.” We went back to my house, and I showed her the tape. She started sobbing and explained that the people in the video were, in fact, her parents. I was about to pull the tape out, but I felt a blunt object hit the back of my head, and all I saw was black.

I woke up in my Geometry classroom from my school. My head was throbbing with pain. I looked out the window and noticed that it was almost completely dark out, save for the few lights that were on in one of the houses. I remembered Liz. I needed to find her and hopefully get her to safety. I looked around, and I tried to open the door. It seemed to be locked, and I couldn’t just go out the window since this was the second floor. I looked through the desk in the room to try and find a key, but to no avail. I noticed that there was a vent above the chalkboard. I went into the closet and found some scissors, a screwdriver, and some metal rulers. I used the screwdriver to take off the vent, and I kept a pair of scissors in my pocket so I had some form of protection.

I was crawling through the vent shafts. The noises of my hands and knees seemed to reverberate and echo to an almost deafening roar. I hated all of the noise I was making. It seemed to unnerve me. As I was crawling, I noticed another vent covering, this time below me. I tried carefully to crawl over it, but apparently it wasn’t secure. I fell into one of the restrooms, the metal of the vent clattering against the tiled floor. I cringed and sat up, sore from the pelvis down. I walked with little difficulty, and managed to get the bathroom door open, and I started walking down the dark corridor.

As I was walking, trying to find an exit, I heard a soft clicking noise coming from behind me. I froze and slowly turned around. The end of the hallway was dark. I couldn’t see anything past the pale illumination from the window. I turned around again and started walking towards the other end of the hallway. I heard the clicking noise again, followed by a soft hissing noise. I started to speed up because of how frightened I was. The clicking grew a bit louder and I could feel a warm breath on my neck. I broke out into a sprint, and heard the clicking noise right behind me the whole time. I hit the end of the hallway, and turned around. I saw the creature from the video, with its huge eyes, razor sharp teeth, and long appendages. I noticed some more details. The thing seemed to have some sort of knives coming off of its “Fingers”. Or… what looked like fingers. These knives would make that clicking noise whenever they hit the floor. I looked up, terrified of this thing, and I knew that I was going to die.

Suddenly, Liz ran out from a nearby hallway, and yelled “John!” The thing turned around, and ran at Liz. I was frozen in shock, not able to react. I looked at the beast, chewing on Liz’s legs and arms, ripping apart her chest with its fingers. I cried. I cried harder than I ever have. I tried to look for a way out, and noticed a fire extinguisher. I knew that that thing would outrun me if I tried anything too sudden, but I had to take a chance. I broke the glass on the fire extinguisher’s case, and the fire alarm went off. The thing turned around, and ran towards me, so I threw the extinguisher at a nearby window. The glass shattered, and I jumped out. The last thing I could think of was the memory of Liz’s mangled corpse before I blacked out.

I awoke in a hospital bed a few days later. My mother was so glad to see me awake. But when I asked her about Liz, she looked away from my gaze. “Liz… she went missing. They haven’t found her yet…” She said. “I know how much she meant to you…”

I can still see this thing outside of my window every night as I sleep.

It’s judging me.

It knows that I know that it will kill me.

Please… I just want this to be over. I’m so afraid.