Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-25048323-20140612000516

The Hat.

She slammed the door shut as hard as she could. "What have I gotten myself into?" She thought to herself. She leaned her back against the door and slid down the door until she was sitting on the floor. She put her hands over her face and began to cry. "It all started with that damn hat. Why did I have to buy it. Why couldn't I have just left my curiosity alone," Just as she finished her thought, an abrupt thump sounded from the other side of the door. "It's here. There's no hope now.." She screamed and sobbed. She moved away from the door, crawling on all fours, into a corner of the room and sat and stared at the door. Rocking back and forth. Crying. She sobbed as the thumping grew louder and then turned into loud banging. "Please just leave me alone! I didn't do anything!!" She cried. Just as she finished saying this, the room went silent.

She lowered her hands from her face and looked around, tears still brimming in her eyes. She thought about calling out to see if it was still there but she was so afraid that she couldn't speak. She stood slowly and began walking towards the door. As she got to the door she reached out hesitantly for the doorknob. Just as her hand grasped the doorknob the door flew open. She jumped, startled. A man with black, buzzed hair and greenish-brown eyes was starring back at her. He looked to be in his thirties. "Ma'am, we've had some complaints that there was screaming coming from this house. Is everything alright?" he asked. She looked down at her feet. Her knees went weak and she fell to her knees and sobbed. "Ma'am?!" The officer went down with her and tried to help her to her feet, "are you okay, ma'am? Did someone hurt you?" He asked, finally succeeding at getting her to her feet. "N-no. Well yes.. But it wasn't human.. At least.. Not anymore." She said, struggling to keep standing. "Not human? What the hell do you mean by that?" The officer asked, "do you mean like an animal? Like a bear?" She looked at him. "No. It came from that stupid hat! The creature, it came from the hat!" She cried. "What hat? What creature?" He asked, helping her walk out of the room. "It all started when I bought a top hat from the pawn shop. At first, it was just a few weird things happening here and there. Like flickering lights, weird noises at night. Mostly just cliches. Nothing you'd really think twice of. But then it grew. It started physically touching me. I would feel taps on the shoulders and tiny little nudges in the hallway. Then one day it escalated and it became scratches, pushing down the stairs, deep scars that weren't there the night before. And now it's trying to kill me!" She screamed and cried at the memories. The officer looked at her, dumbfounded and with disbelief. Then his face turned to sorrow. "Ma'am..." He started, "I'm sorry for what ever has happened to you, But I highly doubt you are being chased by some creature. I think you were abused by someone you thought you could trust and the only way your mind is letting yourself rationalize it is by making up this story about this creature. Nonetheless I'll take you down to the station and give you a chance to tell me what happened again and we can start investigating it" She stared at him. "He doesn't believe me.." she thought. She began to cry again and her fists clenched with fearful anguish.

"You don't believe me.." She said, looking at him with a look of fear. "I believe you think that's what happened but what really happened is it was something completely normal but your mind exaggerated it." he replied, taking her outside to his car. "No! It's real!" She screamed. Leaves rustled behind her and she jumped. She looked behind her and screamed. "It's there! It's there in the window!" She pointed towards the front window if the house. The officer looked but saw nothing. "there's nothing there, ma'am" he replied. "No there is it's–" she looked back at the window and it was gone. Her face went grave. "Where did it go. It was literally just there." She thought to herself. "Come on, I'll take you to the station and we can clear this up, okay?" He said opening the car door for her. She took a moment to look at the window again and then nodded and got into the car. A short time later they arrived at the police station.

"Tell me again what happened." The officer said with a tape recorder next to him so that he can document her answer. "Okay, well I was at a pawn shop and I saw this black top hat. It was a lovely top hat." She said, taking a deep breath before going on, "The clerk said that he bought it off a guy who ended up killing himself the very next day. He said that he heard a legend about the hat. He said that it once belonged to a man named William L. Troy. According to the legend, Troy was a slave owner. One of the biggest in Mississippi. He owned 58 slaves. he locked them up in his basement and some in the attic at night and fed them bread and water and that's it. When one of the slaves disobeyed his commands, he rounded up all the slaves and would whip each and every one of them. One day they had enough and at night, as he was locking them up, one if them hid. Troy noticed that one was missing and went looking for him. As he got up the stairs from the basement, the slave hit him over the head and let the other slaves go. As revenge they welded metal to his hands that were sharpened until they were razor sharp. Then they took a knife and gouged out his eyes and carved the lips off of him and made jagged cuts on his mouth. Then they hung him up in his back yard from his arms and waited till he woke up. When he woke he screamed his head off. One of the slaves said that if he's going to act like a monster then he should be treated like one and look like one too. After the slave finished speaking, another slave plunged a knife into his stomach, letting his intestines dangle from his wound. He died a slow and painful death. Legend has it that his hat wasn't ever buried with his body. That it's cursed with his ghost. Of course I didn't believe the legend, I passed it off as just another vicious story people like to tell so I bought it. I brought it home and put it in my closet. I planned on giving it to my boyfriend. He liked old fashioned hats." She stopped for a moment, wiping her eyes for she was starting to cry. "What happened to your boyfriend?" The officer asked. At the thought of what had happened she broke down and sobbed. She buried her face in her arms and cried until there was nothing left. She steadied herself after a few minutes and went on. "Y-yes. The creature killed him." She said, her eyes filling with a combination of intense sorrow and fear. "How did 'the creature' kill him?" The officer asked curiously. "It gutted him like a fish right before my eyes. With those razor sharp talons that it has where its fingers should be. I was lucky to walk away with just a few deep gashes in my cheek and arm. Although, now, with my boyfriend gone I wish the creature did kill me." She replied, clenching her fist and looking down, hiding her eyes so the officer couldn't see the sorrow in them.

"What did this creature look like?" The officer asked. She looked up at him. The fear and sorrow in her eyes growing ever stronger. She shuddered and began to tell him what she remembered. "It was a man. A skinny man with long arms. But it wasn't human anymore. It may have been human once but now it's just this ghastly, gruesome creature. Skin had grow over the metal leaving only a razor sharp talon on each finger. It wore a suit and small, black top hat. It's face was carved in, almost like it never had a face so someone carved it in. There was this aurora of something dark around it. Something evil." She replied, looking off into the distance. "Okay. Would you mind if we searched your house for evidence?" The officer replied. She didn't respond. She just kept starring. "Ma'am? Can we search your house?" She still sat there none responsive. A twisted grin began to form on her face. "Ma'am?? What are you grinning about? Ma'am!" He yelled snapping his fingers In front of her face. "It's behind you" she replied in an eerie tone, still grinning.

His blood ran cold and a chill went up his spine. He slowly turned around and screamed. Before he had a time to run he felt something sharp rip through him. He looked down and saw the creatures arm reaching through him. The creature retracted it's arm, letting the officer's intestines spill to the floor. The officer's eyes rolled to the back of his head and he collapsed and fell dead. The girl began to laugh uncontrollably. Something in her mind had finally snapped and she was hysterical. she continued to laugh as the creature took her by the neck and slit her throat with one quick swipe. The creature let her body drop to the floor, lifeless.

When the other police officers walked in their stomachs dropped. "How did someone get in here and kill them without anyone seeing?" One of them said. Two officers walked over to the girl and knelt down beside her. They checked her pockets for ID. They found her drivers license and read the name. "Jennifer koplar. We better call her family. Go check the files and find out who and where her family is." One of the officers said to his partner. After his partner left, the officer walked over to the dead body of the fellow officer and read his name off of his uniform. "Officer hoppins. What a shame." He said, taking out his phone to call the paramedics to take care of the bodies.

After the bodies were removed, a few officers went into the room and took evidence and called to opened an investigation. One of the officers walked out with a bag of evidence. "Did you find that in the room?" Another officer asked looking at the bag. "Yeah it is. I don't think it was one of the victims' though. Must have been the killer's." He replied as he took it to the evidence room and put it on a shelf. The officer took one last look at the hat and shut off the light and closed the door. 