Knob.exe

For crying out loud, what is it with my family and creepy stuff always happening to us?!

Oh, sorry, let me elaborate.

I am Sally Goodman, one of the three Goodman siblings. The other two are John Goodman and Henry Goodman, my brothers. Lately freaky things have been happening to us. First John gets haunted by some insane ghost hag. Then a freaky mutant girl's face is staring through Henry's living room window. I prayed to God that nothing would happen to the third of the Goodman siblings. But nope. Something just HAD to happen to me, because I guess the world hates me. Alright, enough of my self-pity. On with my story, I ain't got all day.

Well, I had moved in to an apartment in Dayton, Ohio. I was unpacking my things and so forth. There was a small storage room by the patio of the apartment, and I opened the door to put some things in there. It seemed to be empty, and I walked in. Then I looked down on the floor and saw I had almost stepped on a black USB drive. I picked it up and stuck it in my pocket.

I was curious as to why it was left sitting in a storage closet, and also if there was anything on it. I had my laptop with me, so I decided I'd see for myself later on after I had unpacked a few more things.

Well, later on in the day, after I had done all the unpacking for that day, I got out my laptop and turned it on. It didn't have an internet connection, since I still needed to get Comcast to transfer my cable and phone services over to my new home. Just in case there was viruses on the drive, I loaded up Windows XP on a virtual machine. I plugged in the USB drive, and it did the usual autorun thing prompting me with what I wanted to do. I chose to open a folder to view the files.

What was in the drive seemed to be files for some kind of game. I ignored those and found the actual game application, which was named "knob.exe". I opened up the file, and a new window opened up. It was the game.

It seemed to be some kind of 16-bit platformer game. You controlled some stick figure thing and guided him through the levels. There was no title screen or anything. It just went right to the first level.

The level was some city streets or something, and you had to avoid the traffic to get through the level. The really weird part was every now and then someone walking along would notice the stick figure, and scream bloody murder. The stick figure would then proceed to grab the person and strangle them to death.

I got through the first 4 levels, but then I got to the 5th level.

Instead of a city street, the stick figure was standing inside a storage room. My heart skipped a beat when I realized where I was: it was a perfect 16-bit replica of the storage room I had found the USB drive in.

Without me even moving him, the character walked over to the door and opened it. He went outside, and the scene transitioned to another familiar place: the patio just outside my apartment. Out of paranoia, I looked out through the glass door leading out to the apartment patio, and to my horror, somebody was there.

It was the most disturbing creature I'd ever seen. He was completely naked, and hunched over like a gorilla. He was horribly skinny, and so pale it looked like he'd never seen the light of day in his life. Black fur grew along his spine. His face...he wore an expression of unspeakable malice and insanity. His mouth was 2 times the size of a normal human's mouth. His teeth were HUGE, and his evil smile stretched up all the way to his forehead. He had long, black hair that drooped down to his shoulders. He had claws...claws longer than his fingers, and they looked sharp enough to cut my head clean off.

Then the thing I dreaded the most happened: he looked up at me, with his cold, wicked eyes, and that horrible smile.

I glanced back at my laptop's screen for a second. The stick figure on the game was looking into the glass window door, just as this terrible creature was doing.

I looked back. The creature was beckoning me over to him with his bony, clawed index finger. The character on the game was also beckoning.

I didn't want to go with this beast. I couldn't. But I had lost control of my body. I got up and walked straight into the clutches of that monster. I tried to turn away, but my body fought back.

I opened the glass window door, and stepped out onto the patio. Being close-up to this...thing...was even worse than seeing him from inside my apartment.

He held up a map for me to see, and pointed out some directions with his wicked sharp claw. Then, he held up that claw to my throat. He sliced...

I woke with a start, sweating and breathing heavily, heart pounding against my ribs with a hammer.

It...it was just a dream. After a while of just sitting there I calmed down. It seemed I had fallen asleep sometime while playing the game. I guess it made sense. I had been having trouble sleeping the past few nights, and was probably tired.

I looked at the laptop screen. There was a message saying the game had encountered a problem and needed to close blah blah blah.

I became curious about the directions the creature in my dream had given me. They were real directions to a real place. Some pond around the area. I decided just for the heck of it I'd go there tomorrow. I didn't expect to find anything, since it was only a dream, but still.

The next day after breakfast I got in my car and followed the directions to the pond. I got there, and got out of the car.

I skipped some rocks and such for a few minutes. Not having much of a reason to stay, I started to walk back to the car.

But then I noticed something on the ground out of the corner of my eye. I stopped, and went over to examine it.

It was a wooden trap door of some kind. I remembered the nightmare I had, and became paranoid. But then I realized how silly I was being. It was just a dream. Nothing bad can REALLY be here...right?

There was a handle on the trap door that I could lift to open it. Cautiously I grabbed the handle and pulled up, to reveal darkness below. I needed a flashlight. I thought I had one in the back of my car. I went to go check, and sure enough, I found one. I turned it on, and climbed down into the darkness below.

The space was empty, with nothing but dirt on all sides. But then my flashlight shined on something that made my blood run cold. Something that made me sprint back out the trapdoor, slamming it shut behind me, and back into my car, to drive home and smash the USB drive I had found the day before into tiny pieces and then burn the pieces (the disturbing part is the hissing sound the drive made when I did this, like some terrible snake).

It was a figure, hunched over like a gorilla. Horribly skinny and pale. Fur on spine. Drooping black hair. Insane deformed face. It was the creature from my nightmare, and he was looking right into my eyes.

Epilogue
The following was taken from a news paper article.

Several sightings of a horribly mutant humanoid figure wandering the streets of Ohio cities have been reported. The supposed witnesses describe it as being a pale figure hunched over like a gorilla, having black fur along its spine, vicious claws, long black hair, a terribly large mouth, and an expression of pure malice and insanity. Some witnesses report seeing it strangle people to death, seemingly at random. It would be easy to dismiss these claims as some sick joke, if it weren't for the sudden and mysterious deaths of several people. Every person who died has been identified as being strangled to death.