Lurker



It is under a wave of tremendous anxiety and terror that I write these words, which will probably be my last in this world. I will not identify myself as I write you my story, dear reader, in which I will tell you about the events that led me to my current situation, and the knowledge I managed to attain from them, so that in a way I can warn you of this dreaded peril that awaits me, and I wait inevitably for it. So, after I run out of time, I will begin telling you my account of dreadful events involving the mysterious disappearances of several teens and adults in a small German town, and their relation to an entity I’ve come to name as “Lurker”.

I came to study abroad from the states, to Europe. My subject of study being antiques and history of arts, I was particularly interested in studying old artefacts, those of which often possessed a superstitious aura to the area’s folk. I managed to get a cheap small house near a wooded area, which I shared with a female student from Hungary. She was studying drawing and painting, so the place was… let’s say a little chaotic when I got there. We got along fine, settled chores and rent payments. Everything couldn’t have been going better for me.

It was two weeks after I had settled in and began my studies in the local College of Arts, that a strange article in the newspaper caught my attention as I was taking a sip of my morning espresso at the nearby café. My house-mate had been reported missing for two days. It struck me quite hard for I was sure that she told me she would be staying at a colleague’s place for the weekend to finish some group project, but seems that she never even made it to her colleague’s place that Friday afternoon.

When I arrived to the College there were local police officers asking questions to some of the students and friends of her. I approached one of the officers and told them I was living with her in a small house by the wooded area of the town and that she was supposed to come back home tonight, as she went to work on a group project at a colleague’s house for the weekend. The officer said that her colleague tried to call her numerous times, but only received static from the other side of the cellphone. He got worried and called the police which then put together a search party and scouted the woods, but found no evidence of her, dead or alive. They also told me this was not the first time such event happened, shortly before I had arrived to this town, a married couple had disappeared overnight, the police were informed by a neighbour that heard their three year old daughter crying for her parents. The police had found no signs of forced entry, or signs of a struggle within the house, there was nothing they could work on to get any lead on what happened to the child’s parents. Along with 8 more past disappearances, the count would just keep on growing, and the mystery prevailing. The next day, I went in to my house mate’s room. It was a mess, sheets of paper were scattered around the floor, there were some weird drawings hanging on the walls depicting bizarre symbols, and what appeared to be a masked figure. I noticed a particular drawing on a yellow post it note lying on her desk. It depicted a bizarre symbol, which consisted of a narrow triangle pointing downwards, there were three lines protruding from both sides that would end on filled circles or dots, and a clear circle within the widest part of the triangle. It was unlike any symbol or glyph I had ever seen before. In the back of the paper there was written: “DO NOT FILL THE CIRCLE! KEEP IT DOWN THERE!!” This was not her handwriting. Someone else had written this note and possibly drawn this symbol. Out of curiosity, and since I’m not a superstitious person, I grabbed a pencil lying nearby and filled the circle black. I waited for a moment. Nothing happened. I threw the note away, and left the room.

That same night I was awoken by a loud noise which sounded like a really high pitched clap. There was someone in the house! I could hear someone walking in my house mate’s room, the sound of paper crumbling under shoes. I was terrified, was I getting robbed? Was it the person responsible for the disappearances? I just grabbed a broomstick I had in the room, and tip toed outside my room. Sweat was pouring down my face, I tried switching on the lights, I guess there was a blackout that night, the lights would not go on. I used my cellphone as a light source. I could still hear someone inside her room. Something was scratching the door from inside, and then, silence. With a deep breath I opened the door, the light on my cellphone caught a glimpse of it, the thing that haunts me as I write. It wore a long trench coat or something that resembled one, black leather, shiny, his face white, no features, no eyes, nose, mouth or ears, as if it wore a skin mask with that bizarre symbol tattooed or burned into it. I fell back against the door, and “BANG!” that clap sound shook the room, whatever was in there was gone, and the lights came back on, and to my horror I noticed a variation of that symbol carved on the room’s door, but this one had the triangle pointing upwards and the circle was filled.

It’s been two days since that encounter, from the information I could gather in so little time, most of it out of pure speculation of mine, this “Lurker” is someone that can enter every one’s house, and be at every place whenever a door for it to cross over is open. The symbols work as a lock and a key, the symbol the Lurker carries works as key, the variation with the filled circle pointing upwards is the lock. Once there is a lock available somewhere, this being is allowed to go wherever the lock is at. I do not know what this entity wants, or what is it’s objective. How long has this been going on? How many disappearances can be blamed on this entity? Could this mask be some ancient or otherworldly artefact that allows teleportation and it happened to fall in the wrong hands, the hands of a murderer? Or is this Lurker something much worse? A being that travels in and out this world whenever… I just heard that clap sou