Reddit Collection (Fresh-Short #9), DeYtH Banger [best novels to read for beginners TXT] 📗

There's something wrong

 by  vede

 

 

It might be the beer from all the partying, but I could swear there's something wrong outside. I know everyone left, but there's still a car outside. Not my car, that one's out there too. Someone else's car. That means that between my house door and their car door, they got lost somehow.

There's definitely something wrong outside. I can hear it. It's scraping against the house on the outside. Scratching long, dull lines into the wood with what must be its long, dull claws. Like it's taunting me to come outside. Come outside and play. I put my ear to the wall to hear it, and it stops scraping. God, I think I can hear it breathing. Tap. Tap. Tap tap. Just inches away from my head across nothing more than flimsy, decades-old wooden beams. Not scraping anymore. Tapping. It can't do anything to get me out there. I wasn't planning on going to class tomorrow anyway. I'm sure it will go away in the morning. Yes, there won't be anything wrong outside when the sun comes up, I'm sure. If I just stay calm in here, then --

It's at the window. I can see the condensation from its breath on the glass. There's nothing behind the glass. Oh God, I can't see it. I just know it can see me, though. It can see my neck. It can see my flesh. It sees something it wants. It's scratching the window. Making two long streaks down the glass. Slowly. So slow it seems like it'll be hours before it hits the sill.

The sill of my unlocked window. I can practically feel its enthusiasm on my bounding, leaping journey across the living room toward it. Toward its undoubtedly hungry mouth. I almost trip on a beer bottle on the way, but I'm determined to get to that window before it manages to open it up. Oh, if it opened that window. I don't want whatever happened to... oh, I can't even think of that person's name right now. But I'm certain there's a freshly torn corpse out there somewhere. There just has to be. I hurriedly flip the window lock. It huffs a breath against the window at the same moment. A huff of disappointment. It sounded like a horse, or a bull, or something else even worse, and left droplets of mucus on the glass.

No more breath on the window. It's finding another way in. I can hear it trample the brush along the side of the house. It's going around to the back. What's at the back of the house? It has the upper hand. It must know this house. I've only been here a week. Just got here for college. A house my parents managed to get for me, way out at the edge of town. What's at the back of the house? What's not on the front or the sides of the house? The outdoor cellar entrance. That's at the back of the house. Jesus, where's the indoor cellar entrance? In a closet somewhere, I think. In my bedroom closet. Yeah, that's where it is. I just hope I can get there before it does.

I don't lock that door. I don't lock the outside door either. I aim the flashlight at my closet floor and see a hole, into the blackness. But there's something wrong down there. I peer down in to the hole, scanning with my flashlight, when a sound pierces the cold silence that I'd grown so accustomed to.

"Hey man, what the hell?"

A pair of people in the middle of what must be a drunken one-night stand are in the cellar. At the other end of the room, the three of us hear a creak. Moonlight pours into the space as the outside door squeaks its way open. A horned shadow forms on the dusty ground of the cellar and an enthusiastic grunt fills the space as I pull my head back up into my closet and slam shut the trapdoor.

 

The young fornicators inside are shouting. They're confused. They don't know what's wrong. But now they're shouting in pain. That sound is terrible. The sound of bones cracking and flesh tearing. The sound of people dying. I can't handle this. I pile as much as I can on top of the door before rushing back into the living room.

 

I sit on the couch, huddled in fear, watching the windows. I want to turn on the light, but I don't even bother trying. I know that there's something wrong the power now. This thing has cut the power line. It has to have cut the power line.

A dull thud reports from one of the windows. My gaze snaps to it and I see a hand, reaching up from below, smearing blood on the glass. I rush to it and peek outside the window, but this hand doesn't have a body. All it has is a few inches of an arm, and a few more inches of bone at the end of that. Suddenly the hand retracts into the darkness. Pulled away by the monster.

 

Thud. A new hand. This time a female hand, and this time only with one finger. An index finger, pointing up, toward the roof. Thud, thud, thud. It's on the roof. This house has a fireplace. It's going to come down the chimney. I push all the strength the beers I drank tonight can give me into the couch. It tears jagged lines into the floor along its path to cover the fireplace, but before anything gets into the room, I block the hole.

 

I hear another huff, followed by a sound I can't recognize at first. Like... like the sound of pouring water behind the couch, in the fireplace. Then I see the dark outline spreading out on the floor in front of the seat. It oozes around the empty bottles and cups scattered on the floor. It mingles with the various liquors spilled over the course of the night. I can barely see in the dark, but I know what it is. I shine my flashlight to confirm my suspicion just as the chunks start to flow out. First just a piece of meat. Then an eye. Some fingers. Slowly spreading out on the living room floor. The heavier pieces dislodge cups from their positions and start a cascade of deathly stinking sludge through the room.

 

I can't take this. I'm done. The bathroom door pushes open easily, and I grab whatever bottles I can find behind the mirror. Two or three I manage to open easily, and I pour their contents into my hand just as I hear it. The sound of the window. There's something wrong. Back in the living room, feet just at the edge of the the disgusting layer covering the ground, I see the window open. The locks snap apparently without effort. A huff. Footsteps across the wooden porch outside. The door knob rattles, cracks, and the door swings inward. A huff. It's just been playing with me. More footsteps across the other side of the porch. The other window. The locks snap. The window pounds the wood at the top of its run. A huff. The filth on the floor is knocked out of the way by its feet. A huff. It's just been playing with me.

 

 

I found a video tape on the beach a few weeks ago.

 

by  hauntedtape

 

 

A few details before I start my story. I live in northern California in a small townhouse with my girlfriend. I've decided to change the names of both people and places, just to be cautious. I don't want anyone going out to the beach I was at trying to dig up clues and instead find the trouble that I found. I'm sorry this is so long, I've tried to keep it as brief as possible. You have to understand that I've barely slept at all in days and it's difficult for me to keep my thoughts in order.

Saturday - March 26th: John and I found the camcorder half buried in the sand on Stinson beach. When I picked it up out of the sand, water leaked out from inside the camcorder. Sand was packed into every crevice and the battery pack was missing. We dried it off with a beach towel and popped the cassette drive open, there was a digital cassette cartridge inside the drive, it had a yellow plastic head and a Panasonic logo, but no label or sticker attached.

It seemed like the camcorder itself was pretty much trashed but we figured it still might be possible to recover the data on the tape itself. I had an older Sony digital camcorder at home that used the same type of tape. I took the tape and camcorder inside with me when John dropped me off at home later that day. I set it down on my computer desk and forgot about it for almost a week.

Thursday - March 31st: John came over again next Thursday and saw it on my desk. I told him I had forgotten about it and hadn't even tried to play back the tape yet. We popped it into my Sony camcorder and hooked it up to my PC's Fire-wire port. Opened up Roxio's Video Capture application and told it to scan the tape for footage. Only one scene appeared on the screen. I will describe it to you as best as I can recall:

A few feet in front of the camera is a woman. Her back is to the camera and she is walking down a narrow dirt path, possibly even a deer trail. Tall dry grass and small bushes line either side of the path. Based on the lighting, it is mostly likely sometime in the early morning or evening. The sky is cloudless and tinged with a soft orange color. Other than the shuffle of foot steps the only thing that can be heard is seagulls crying and the soft sound of ocean waves breaking against the shore in the distance.

She's wearing what used to be a one-piece swimsuit. The top half has been ripped or cut apart and now hangs down off her hips, she is naked from the waist up. Dozens of ugly red welts and cuts cross her back. It looks like she has been whipped or badly beaten with a stick. A length of thin rope, more like twine, has been used to bind her hands behind her back. The twine is wound so tightly against her wrists that you can see her hands have begun to turn a shade of blue from lack of circulation. The twine is cutting into her skin and small rivulets of blood have run down her hands and fingers, dripping onto the dirt trail behind her.

During the course of the scene she only takes a few dozen steps, the