He Who Waits

He waits for the destruction of all mankind

The end of times is coming. Or so I was lead to believe. I thought I was dreaming and I sincerely hope I was, but there's something about what he said that…seems so real to me. In dreams we usually wake up when we're supposed to feel or experience something, and sometimes we try with all our might to wake up when things begin to frighten us. I felt something when I was down there with him and I could not, for the life of me, wake up.

I also learned something. As much as we of the human species try to deny its presence and existence in our logical, scientific world, evil does exist. It isn't just a chemical imbalance or a culmination of fear, hatred and rage throughout one's lifetime. It’s also a dark invitation, an invitation that summons him to hearts and minds in which he poisons that every evil ever known to us stems from. Once again, I could very well be telling a fairy tale, but if he is who he said he was then we need to be afraid. We need to be deathly afraid.

I suffer from chronic headaches, a condition I was born with. My favorite remedy for these sudden pangs of throbbing pain is to take two painkillers, and sleep. Lately, my headaches had become a little more severe and the usual dosage of pills wasn't working anymore. At work one day I developed the worst headache I ever had. I needed my pills, but I couldn't sleep until I got home. I decided that I couldn't wait and decided to take them just as soon as my shift ended. And then, for some reason, I felt the need to take a third pain killer. I took them all and began to walk home for the day, something that I always do.

As I began my walk, everything seemed to be in its rightful order as I passed by familiar buildings and surroundings. But as I kept going I noticed something unsettling. I had been in my neighborhood as little as five minutes ago, but now I was beginning to approach unfamiliar territory. I thought the pills had made me drowsy and I had made a wrong turn to the outskirts of town. I turned around to retrace my steps when I discovered that everything was gone and I was in the middle of a large field with a lone road. At the end of the road, a few yards from where I stood, was an old house. It was getting dark outside.

At this point I began to panic. I had no idea where I was or how and why I had gotten there. I tried to figure out where I was with my phone, but my phone told me I was back home where I was a few minutes before. I tried to call my house, but I could not receive a signal, all I could hear was static. I turned around and looked at the house. As the sun went down I realized that if I was going to find out how to get back, I was going to need to see if anybody was home.

I knocked on the door repeatedly, but of course nobody answered me. I rang the doorbell. I could hear the bell echo through the old building. Still nothing. Soon after, I began to hear a faint whispering sound. I looked around to see what was going on, but it had all of a sudden become pitch black outside. I could see nothing, but the whispering intensified. The wind blew and I felt a frozen chill. By this point I was scared beyond belief. I had to escape the noise and the cold. Without any other options, I opened the front door and let myself in.

The house was just as dark as the world outside, and although my eyes quickly adjusted to the dark that surrounded me, I could not make out anything in the interior. Black shapes surrounded me, possibly furniture I thought. I took a couple of steps. The floorboards creaked as I walked through a large empty hallway. Doors lined the hallway on both sides. I got out my cell phone and used its light to examine a large, black door. I opened it slowly and discovered a brick wall on the other side. The door led to nowhere. I found this incredibly strange and checked the next door. It led to an empty room, occupied only by dark. As I tried all the doors and examined their destinations, the house did not stir once. I heard only my heavy breathing and my own footsteps. The air had become extremely cold and as I shivered, I began to consider turning back. I was wasting my time; I should have just left the house and ran down the road, I could have received help. But I couldn't resist the urge to explore this mystery house further.

I continued to walk down the great hall for a long period of time. I became confused. This was by no means a large house. How could it possibly have a hallway this long? As I pondered the absurdity of the hallway, I finally heard something. The whispering had returned. It had stopped when I entered the threshold of the house. But now it sounded like it was distant. It was as if whatever was whispering was standing at the very end of the hallway, where I was but mere minutes before. It sounded vaguely human. I finally broke the silence and asked who was there. And then it happened.

The noise began to move down the hallway. As it approached it grew louder and more intense. I stood for a moment and listened as it approached. Then I saw eyes of the darkest red, eyes that pierced the darkness and seemed to stare into my very soul. I then heard louder noises: incessant screaming and screeching sounds I have never heard before. This jolted me from my trance and I began to run. I had to get away from this…thing. I ran and I ran, but the sounds and the eyes followed me. I could smell the horrific odors of rotting flesh and noxious fumes and the ground beneath me felt wetter and wetter. Then I could smell the scent of blood. The hallway had been soaked in human blood.

I don’t know how long I ran. The hallway just never seemed to end. It stretched for what felt like miles as I ran for my life. I never seemed to tire. I just kept running away from a creature of unknown horribleness down a pitch-dark hallway that reeked of death. I thought for a moment that I must have been dreaming. I tried with all my might to wake up, but I could not. After my failed attempts, my eyes caught sight of another form ahead of me. It was another door.

I knew that if I was going to have any chance of surviving, I had to go through that door. Whatever my pursuer was, I knew it would surely kill me. As I got closer and closer to the door, I could see the foul creature's radiant eyes fixed on me. The noises were louder than ever. Crying and yelling and screaming and horrific sounds of torture and death, of madness and destruction along with all that goes with it. I was in a desperate struggle to keep the unknown terrors of death at bay.

The door was within reach. I grabbed the cold, hard knob. As I did this, thoughts raced through my mind. Where was I? Was I dead? Was I in purgatory? Where does this door go? Is it another dead end? More darkness? Or something much, much worse? I had no other choice. I opened the door and ran through the threshold.

I once again found myself in the familiar shroud of darkness. But I wasn't running anymore, now I was falling. Falling through a dark, silent abyss. I lost my pursuer, but I feared that I was going to face something much worse. I screamed and I yelled for someone, anyone to help me. But I heard nothing. I just fell. I fell for what seemed like ages, too long for any ordinary pit. Where was I? I still don't know.

I continued to plummet and I anticipated my impending death. But no death came. Instead, the noise returned. The noise of unspeakable terrors rang in my ears and I began to write as I fell, tortured by the sounds of agony and despair. But then the noise subsided. And then I saw him.

Floating in the darkness in front of me was the image of a creature so disfigured, so vile and so utterly repulsive that to describe the details of his rotted visage would shock and disgust you to the very bone. This gaunt, rotted face of wretchedness had the same piercing red eyes of the creature that stalked me in the dead of night just moments before. It looked at me and breathed heavily. Smoke rose from its thin nostrils and the smell of death permeated the void. I was too terrified by his face that I didn't notice right away that I had suddenly stopped falling. I was suspended in mid-air, just yards away from his horrifying features. I could not move, something held me in place. Finally, after staring at me with his pulsating, burning eyes, he spoke:

“It seems you've stumbled upon a most horrific fate. You are now in the presence of he who speaks but is never heard. He who knows but is never felt. He who waits for the destruction of man. Below me is the darkness of mankind, the source from which I have corrupted the race of men who have sought my aid for countless ages. You have discovered my den of fear not by accident, but by necessity. You have been chosen for a very specific purpose. I have led you down here, to the very brink of all that never was to deliver upon you a most important task.”

His harsh, cold, garbled voice echoed through the darkness. Every word brought on the stench of eons. I finally found my voice, and I asked of him:

“What are you? What do you want with me? This can't be real…"

“Oh, but it is” he replied. “I am but an ancient entity. I have been here in this plane of existence for longer than your feeble human mind can comprehend. I wait here in the darkness and when man invites me into his world, I enter in spirit. I whisper the words of fear and doubt into their minds and poison them slowly with jealousy, anger and fear. Every act of vengeance and hatred ever known has been my work. And now I have chosen you to deliver my final message.”

“What message? What are you talking about?”

“The end of times is coming. I have set a movement in motion that will destroy your world and everything in it. From this inferno will arise a new age of darkness in which I can call home and finally be free.”

“What doe this have to do with me?”

“In your waking sleep I have lured you here to my dark dominion. In mere moments I shall return you to your comfortable world of the light. When you return you shall spread my message throughout your broad lands. I wish for them all to know the true power of He Who Waits.”

Before I could say another word, a pale, disgusting hand floated out of the abyss and grabbed me. As its grip tightened I head the horrific noises again. The wretched appendage held me over a large vortex and dropped me inside. I fell into a bright light and then darkness once more. But then, I finally awoke.

I woke up with the bottle of pills still in my hand. I was still at work. I had never left. Still trembling by the shock of my experience, I gathered my things and left. Sure enough, my walk went as planned and I returned home. I checked my pill bottle for side effects relating to night terrors and hallucinations, but there were none. I searched the Internet for any clue for “He Who Waits”. But I found nothing. I have since given up. I knew that nobody would ever believe me if I told them this story, so I decided to keep my mouth shut on my experience until the time was right for such a discussion.

Ever since that “incident”, I’ve had a lot of questions. Questions that I know will never be answered. The biggest question I’ve had since then is: “Was he telling the truth? Is the end really coming?” I thought about it a lot. It didn't seem possible. But I had been dreaming. I had been asleep. Yet I could not and did not wake up from this "dream". Perhaps I really did come face to face with something ancient, with something diabolical.

I guess I won’t know until it happens. One thing I do know is that if it happens, the world will finally know the power of He Who Waits.