Pnoiknight

pnoiknight:

So I had this dream again… I think it’s because I’m in the process of moving so my mind is wandering into the deepest recesses of fear and insecurity.

I am by no means a writer but I tried my best.

I just moved into this new apartment complex. I’m living on my own. I have a large spacious one bedroom with a large living room, kitchen and a decent sized bathroom. For all extensive purposes of not boring you with details it was an ideal place for a single male who was finally experiencing independence. I was on the second floor of the two story complex and I was the second to last room at the end of the hallway. There was a large deadbolt door that you would either need a key to enter the building or be buzzed in by one of the tenants.

It was clean, it was tidy, but it was pretty much empty. I was in the process of moving in my boxes. This time in my dream my Pikachu collection made an appearance but all other things I can imagine at the moment are fuzzy, blurry, and faded into obscurity. I was playing music in the background to fill the empty space as I was unpacking my things throughout the day all the way to the witching hour at night.

It was 3am and I finally looked at the clock to see how much time had actually passed. I was tired, I was exhausted, but I had just gotten my second wind and I wanted to finish up the last few boxes before I called it a night. Then I heard the large entrance door to the building slam shut.

I thought nothing of it in the beginning but the footsteps echoed in the narrow hallway which resonated in my heart and I felt a bit on edge. It was as if a cold draft of wind had suddenly swept over me and all I could focus on was listening to those footsteps. They weren’t the footsteps of a drunk tenant stumbling back into their room from a night of debauchery. They were solid, confident steps but they didn’t sound…human.

It was those deep vibrating footsteps you heard from a tyrannosaurus rex. There was also the sound of something being dragged along the ground as it walked up the stairway. The equivalent of the uncomfortable noise when nails are being drawn across a chalkboard.

As it came closer to my room I felt more and more anxious. My hairs were standing up on end. Whatever was behind that door seemed to be calling to tear my soul out of it’s body. I clenched the chest of my shirt as if to cling onto the soul that wished to run away. Then, it passed my room and reached the end of the hallway.

There was only one other room at the end of that hallway. It stopped grabbed hold of the doorknob and walked in. I could hear it through the wall that connected our two rooms together, as whatever being was inside that room, wandered back and forth before slowly walking back out of the room and then leaving the complex.

I sat on my newly constructed bed with a sense of relief.

The next morning I left my room to go check the mailbox on the first floor. I looked over at the room at the end of the hallway and saw the door was slightly open. I didn’t want my mind to overthink things and went unlock my mail box. As I unlocked my mailbox I saw the landlord and asked him about who lived in the room next to mine.

“No one’s lived in there for years. A couple was murdered in there by some crazed lunatic who was never caught. There was blood everywhere. I will never rent that room out and who would want to live in a room where something like that happened?”

The landlord continued to tell me about how he thought the couple mentioned they had dropped their key the day they were murdered and that he believed they were being followed by the crazed killer. He also added that he wanted to make sure all his tenants felt safe from anyone trying to get inside so if anyone ever loses their keys he would change their locks that very day. He muttered something about another tenant he had to take care of, then waddled off into his office.

Another tenant had heard my conversation and gave me some advice.

“If you ever hear those footsteps again. Hold your breath… otherwise that thing will come after you.”

“What do you mean, ‘that thing?’”, I replied in disbelief.

“I’ve lived here since before that couple that got murdered. The night they died they were having sex. The girl was being so obnoxiously loud and when they died… I heard those footsteps charging into their room. It was like it knew exactly where they were.” She suddenly paused for a moment before she went on to say, “Those footsteps have been coming back here every night since then. One night it stopped in front of my door, and I was so terrified I covered my mouth to stop myself from screaming. Then it went away. If you ever hear those footsteps again, hold your breath.”

With that, the eccentric female dressed in all black turned around the corner and left.

At first I thought she was some crazed woman, even her attire made her look like a chaotic soul was residing inside her, but the way she spoke about everything seemed so real. When she spoke about the thing stopping at her door I could feel the fear in her eyes, but there was something else. I couldn’t tell what emotion it was but her eyes were trying to tell me the truth.

I had to get those thoughts out of my mind. I was having friends over in a bit and I didn’t want the ramblings of a monster in our apartment to haunt my consciousness.

The housewarming party was fun, a few close friends were visiting and we were laughing and talking until late in the evening again. As we were talking the thoughts about what my neighbor had said were still poking away at me and my friends could tell.

“What’s wrong?”

“Oh nothing, just some crazy story about this apartment complex being haunted.” I tried to convince myself to believe what I had just said out loud, that it was just some stupid story.

“Let’s check out the room.”

“What? No fuck that shit with an open umbrella! I am not going in there.”

My friends managed to convince me to do one of the stupidest things ever. With a single flashlight we left my room and walked down to the end of the hall and saw the door was still unlocked. We tip-toed into the room trying not to step on any creaky floorboards or give us away. As we looked through the apartment we saw that nothing had been moved out. All the furniture was slowly collecting dust and the apartment had not been disturbed since the incident.

My greatest fear suddenly crept up my spine and latched onto my back, and my heart began to race. I heard the complex doors slam shut and the footsteps of something sinister was marching up the steps. I frantically tried to get my friends to hide. One of us hid behind the couch in the living room while another friend and I ran into the bedroom.

It was pitch black and our eyes were only just beginning to adjust to the darkness. All I could use to make sense of things were my ears. I could hear the ominous figure walking to the end of the hall and begin to turn the doorknob. I heard the creature walk straight towards where my friend was hiding. I looked across the room to my other friend who was also trying to listen in.

We heard a whimper then what sounded like a large splatter of liquid splash against the hardwood floor. Then, a slow drip as if a faucet was leaking continuously pounding against the puddle already made on the floor. It was quickly followed by a heavy thud on the ground and the footsteps proceeded to walk towards us.

My heart was pounding against my chest trying to escape the prison of my petrified body. Whatever it was, knew where we were. I realized that what the female tenant had told me was true. I had to think to figure something out. We knew what was about to happen to us if that thing came through the door.

“Hold your breath” I whispered.

“What?”

“Just hold it for as long as you can.”

My friend followed my instructions and the moment we both began to deprive ourselves of air the footsteps stopped its march at the threshold of the doorway. It slowly began to back away from the room and, as if disappointed strutted away in a sluggish manner. As it did my heart slowly began to get back under my control.

I looked over at my friend he couldn’t hold his breath any longer. My eyes were pleading with his to just hold on a bit longer but he exhaled and then gasped for air again. The moment he did this the thing sprinted through the room and went straight for him.

The creature was a menacing 7 foot tall monster. It had giant fangs that protruded out of its mouth and a black-scaled, armor-plated body with spikes poking out from it’s back. It’s eyes were a deep crimson red and it had pearly white claws which were now turning a blood-stained red as it pinned my friend up against the wall and began to bifurcate him. It’s raw power seemed to even paralyze my body as I watched it tear out my friend’s sternum and ripped open his rib cage letting all his organs plop out onto the floor. It continued to tear apart his arms and legs from his body, splattering blood all across the room and onto my petrified face. It was ungodly. The mutilation was horrifying yet I could not look away. I whimpered and my eyes began to flood with tears at what was only a split second but felt like an eternity watching.

The creature looked around and my breath vanished and my will to move departed. Its eyes were locked onto me. It glared at me for a moment then dropped what was left of the body and began to walk towards me. The gigantic behemoth lowered it’s head to my level then glided one of its fingertips across my cheek cutting deep into my mouth that I could taste the blood slowly pour inside. Then it turned it’s head and walked out of the apartment, down the stairs, and into the darkness of the night.

The hair’s of my skin stayed on end til morning as I sat there, traumatized by this deathly encounter and lived. As the sun came up I summoned all the courage to move my hands to pull out my phone and call 911.

“911 please state your emergency?”

I could barely even speak the words. My mind was blank but I managed to whisper, “My friends have all died.”

The person on the other line kept trying to ask me questions but I couldn’t even speak. I was too terrified the demon would come back that I just dropped my phone, wrapped my arms around my legs and rock back in forth until the police finally traced the call and found us. They began to barrage me with a set of questions but I was too traumatized to even begin to start to make sense of anything so they rushed me to the hospital.

As I sat there in hospital bed a guest walked into my room. It was the same woman who lived across from me and I had spoken to at the mailroom. Her dark black hair, her pale white skin, and that god-awful outfit she seemed to always wear. She sat down on the chair beside me and said I was lucky to be alive. She continuously tried to console me but I couldn’t even bring myself to say anything to her. Then her tone of voice changed as she pulled out an ancient book from her bag and began to flip through the pages.

“It’s called a Souleater. It is a vengeance demon who is summoned by a human to rid them of their annoyances. It tracks down its victims in the darkness of night by smelling their aura. I think that aura is released by when you breathe, which is why it can’t find you when you hold your breath. Once the souleater demon kills the assailants of the summoner it will continue to haunt the place it had slain her enemies and anyone else in the vicinity.”

“She?” I looked at her eyes and I could see that same emotion I had picked up on the last time I spoke to her. “You’re the one who summoned it, didn’t you?”

She continued to skim through and read parts of the book.

“If it fails to kill them it will continue to follow them each night until the summoner is dead.” She closed the book and looked up at me, “I used you to escape it. Once it kills you in this hospital it will no longer haunt the apartment complex and I won’t have to worry about it trying to come after me.”

My strength suddenly jumped back into my body and I lashed out trying to attack her. She leaped back and threw the book at my face to defend herself, hitting my bandaged wound and opening the cut again. The nurses came into the room and pinned me back down. She quickly made her escape in the commotion as one of the doctors pulled out a syringe and injected me with a drug induced sleep.

When I woke up from my slumber it was already the dead of night. I tried to get up out of my bed but my arms and legs were strapped down. I tried to pull them off but to no avail. Then I heard it. The sound that now plagued me. The silent but thundering stomp of the Souleater demon. I held my breath but it continued to walk towards me. I clenched my teeth and then tasted the blood in my mouth again, that’s when I realized.

The monster cut my mouth so it could track me down again. So that even if I did hold my breath it could still follow me. I looked down at the decrepit book the evil witch had hit me with earlier and frantically flipped through the pages to find the page about the Souleater. It was dark and I could barely make out any of the writing so I had to rely on the drawings. When I found the page my hope died. I couldn’t understand the writing and I the creature was getting closer to my door.

My mind was racing with thoughts and fears about what options I had left. I tried to break my own hand to wriggle it out of the straps but it didn’t work. I couldn’t reach the phone to call out. I kept thinking it was a dream and that I would wake up this nightmare but the creature was getting closer. Then all my anxieties suddenly spirited away as I heard the door begin to open. I couldn’t see it because a curtain was drawn around my bed but I could hear another person on the other side of the room slowly begin to wake up. They were about to scream but the monster quickly did away with them.

I closed my eyes as I heard the curtain slowly being pulled away. I could feel the demon’s warm and moist breath surround my body. Then I heard something that sounded a lot like a sharp knife slowly cutting through a crisp apple. It suddenly became difficult to breathe and a hot coating sensation began to slide down my throat. I opened my eyes and the creature was running its claw across my throat, then it opened its mouth to reveal a forest of razor sharp teeth in what looked like a sinister smile, then…

I woke up.