You Won't Stay Up To Study Again After Reading These 10 Malaysians' Uni Ghost Stories

1. "Some nights, the water would be boiling hot. It's impossible because there are no heaters in our showers."

    "Back when I was studying in Banting, there was a bathroom on the third floor which we think is haunted because on some nights, the water would be boiling hot. It should be impossible because there are no heaters in our showers, so the water is supposed to be cold or at least room temperature. So whenever the water turns hot, girls would run out in their towels, screaming.

    We heard that apparently, before they built the college, it was a factory that dealt with manufacturing chemicals. There were rumours that many employees died because of some chemicals, including getting burned. Not sure if that's true, they were just rumours.

    It doesn't help that in that bathroom, when it's late at night, you can hear sounds of tyres screeching across the floor like there's someone pushing an old trolley or something."

    - Lily

2. "My campus is really haunted! Two of my friends who can see these things say the 'invisible visitors' like to gather at the lakeside or on the island in the middle of the lake."

    "I've heard quite a lot of stories from the guards when I was studying in Miri.

    In the library at the ground floor, some of the guards saw a lady in white sitting at the counter. The mak cik cleaners have also heard and seen things like chairs suddenly moving, shadows, and voices like people holding discussions. Apparently, these things happen very early in the morning when the library staff have not come in yet.

    The guards also mentioned that on the 2nd floor of one of the buildings, you can hear people whispering your name even though there is no one around except you.

    Some of my friends have also told me about one of the toilets in the Engineering building that's very noisy, like someone banging the doors although there's nobody inside, voices coming from empty cubicles, and even chairs moving.

    Two of my friends can see these things, and they always say that these 'invisible visitors' are everywhere on campus. Apparently, they like to gather at the lakeside and the island in the middle of of the lake."

    - chilskater / carbocation

3. "I've always thought the ghost stories in my uni were nonsense... until I heard the sounds of children playing and laughing coming from the empty surau."

    "My university has its share of ghost stories, but I've always thought that they're all nonsense until I experienced it myself.

    It happened during the holiday break when the campus is most quiet. It was already late in the evening and being one of the committee members who are holding the induction for new students, I had to be there to prepare the hall for the newbies.

    At that time, my friend and I were at the Dewan Peperiksaan (Examination Hall) when she asked if I'd follow her to the washroom. I thought, 'why not' so we walked together to the washroom. The washroom was located at the far end of the corridor and we had to pass by the surau. The corridor was pretty dark except for some dim lights and even the surau was pitch black.

    As we passed by the surau, I suddenly heard sounds of children playing and laughing. I was pretty puzzled because I could hear very clearly that the noises came from the surau. My goosebumps immediately appeared and I asked my friend if she heard anything. She didn't respond except to tell me to walk faster.

    So we hurried to the washroom, did our business, and quickly walked back to the Dewan Peperiksaan. It wasn't until we reached the bright hall that my friend admitted that she heard exactly what I heard."

    - Spooky Corner

4. "I was already feeling a bit uneasy, but I shook it off as paranoia. Then I heard it - the laughter."

    "My uni is generally deserted after 6.00pm. Occasionally, there will be some late replacement classes or rehearsals for events, but these usually take place on the other side of the campus. Anyway, I sometimes go back after hours to use the ATM machine at my block. It's the most accessible one and since it’s my block, I’m very familiar with the layout.

    I think it was around 9.00pm that night, when I rushed back to withdraw some emergency funds. I was already feeling a bit uneasy when I started walking on the pathway towards my block, but I shook it off as paranoia. I quickly went to the machine, but felt uncomfortable the entire time.

    Then I heard it – laughter that seemed to get louder as time passed. The sound came from the second floor, and the entire building was not lit up at all. The only source of light was from the lampposts outside the block, near the ATM machine. I’ve never been so creeped out in my life!"

    - Talia

5. "The black figure jumped onto my roommate's bed, and as mysteriously as it appeared, it disappeared."

    "I experienced this not long after I started studying in a local uni in Kedah. You see, I had the habit of returning to university after the holidays one day before class starts. It just so happened that it was just after Hari Raya Haji so the hostel was particularly quiet as most of the students are not back yet.

    It was around 11.00pm when it happened. After studying, I left my book on the table, switched of the lights, and left only the study lamp on. I usually leave my book open at the pages where I left off so it's easier for me to pick up from there.

    As I was lying on my bed trying to fall asleep, I suddenly heard sounds of pages flipping. I quickly got up and looked towards my study table, but there was nothing. So I laid back down and just as I was falling asleep, I heard noises like someone is scratching on the window's mosquito net. When I opened the curtains to check, still, nothing. Not a shadow could be seen.

    For the third time, I got back to bed. Then I heard two knocks on the door. I wasn't sure if it was my neighbour so I decided to ignore it, because if it were my friend, I would hear persistent knocking. After some time, I started to drift off to sleep. As I was about to fall asleep, I suddenly felt something heavy on top of me. I tried to fight it off, and as I opened my eyes, I could see a black figure sitting at the end of my bed staring hard at me! After a while of struggling, I saw it jump onto my roommate's bed and as mysteriously as it appeared, it disappeared.

    The next morning, my friend asked me why I didn't answer the door. When I asked her what time she came looking for me, she said it was sometime around 11.00pm... and she even told me that she's knocked on the door for quite some time."

    - Spooky Corner

6. "Where are all your friends?"

    "My college has movie night every Wednesday for students to collect their CAC points to graduate at the end of every semester. The show usually finishes pretty late.

    Anyway, after movie night around 9-ish, I was walking down the empty hallways to the parking lot when I called my friend to have supper and hang out. We decided on a place to meet up and then I hung up.

    When my friend arrived, he had a confused expression on his face so I asked him why he looked so confused. He then asked me, "Where are all your friends?"

    Apparently, he heard a lot of chattering and voices on the other line when we were on the phone. I will never call and pick up my phone at empty hallways ever again."

    - Ben / HostelHunting

7. "The footsteps started getting faster and heavier, as if someone was running towards me!"

    "I was submitting my assignment one late night and I had to go to the dropbox section on the third floor. As I was walking, I heard footsteps behind me. I turned around but saw no one. I thought it was all in my head.

    Then the footsteps started getting faster and heavier, as if someone was running fast towards me! I quickly submitted my work and took the stairs instead of the elevators.

    I ran across the parking lot to my car but when I got there, I saw a reflection of a figure running behind me! I turned around to look, but again - nothing. I said a silent prayer, took out my car keys, and drove off as fast as I could. I'll never submit my work late at night again."

    - John / HostelHunting

8. "We heard someone in sandals running behind us. However, when we parted to give way..."

    "This happened after one of our late evening law classes. Lectures are usually held in the old building of our college, and the lighting there is already quite dim during the day, what more at night.

    My friend and I had gone to the bathroom after class. I remember that when we came out, we were the only ones on that floor. As we were walking towards the new building (both buildings are connected) towards the elevator, we heard someone in sandals running behind us.

    Thinking that it's someone in a rush, we parted to give way and turned around to see who it was. To our surprise, there was no one behind us!

    We looked at each other for a moment and silently agreed to leave as soon as possible. Then we heard the footsteps again, although it was fainter this time. No more waiting for the lift, we just ran down the stairs to the foyer."

    - Shirley

9. "The figure jumped off the roof... then just disappeared mid-air! There was no sign of him on the ground."

    "I heard this story from some of my seniors. Apparently, one of the uni's students saw a figure standing on the rooftop of one of the university's buildings when she looked out her window - which directly faces the uni - one night.

    She couldn't really make out what the person looked like, but he didn't look like a construction worker or repairman so naturally, she was wondering what that person is doing up there so she kept staring at the figure.

    Then, the figure jumped off the building! Shocked, she looked around but couldn't be sure if the person had landed on the ground because she thought she'd just witnessed a suicide attempt.

    When she looked up again, she couldn't believe her eyes. The figure was on the rooftop again. Now she's super confused as to what happened... then the figure jumped off the roof again. This time, she was certain that the person jumped because she looked at him fall off the roof until halfway through the ground where the figure just disappeared. There was no sign of anything when she looked at the ground area.

    You can probably guessed what happened next. When she looked up again, the figure was back on the rooftop! Again, the figure jumped off the roof and disappeared mid-air. She immediately ran out of her room to her next door neighbour's and was so scared she just sat on her friend's bed without saying a word, only telling her friend what happened after she'd properly calmed down.

    The next day, there was no report of any suicide attempts or anyone falling off the building. However, some ex-students claimed that there was a construction worker who fell to his death while the university was still under construction."

    - Yen

10. "He felt something hitting the back of his neck when he was studying at his desk."

    "Someone told me this story when I first started college in KL. It's about this student who just started uni and moved into the hostel on campus. One night, sometime after midnight, he felt something hitting the back of his neck when he was studying at his desk. So he turned to look over his shoulder, but saw nothing. He went back to his book, but felt the hitting again. Feeling uncomfortable, he gave up and went to bed.

    This continued to happen every night when he's sitting at his study desk after midnight, even to the extent that it affected his sleep. One day, while he was walking to class, he bumped into an old janitor who'd been working at the uni for years. Seeing him so tired and pale, the janitor jokingly asked, "Didn't sleep ah last night?"

    So the student told the old man about the hitting he felt in his room. Now serious, the old janitor asked him about the room he was staying in. He then told the student to move out of that room immediately, refusing to explain when the student asked him why. Seeing the old man's insistence, the student requested and got a room change.

    Apparently, the old man didn't want to scare him with the truth. Years ago, a girl hanged herself in that room sometime after midnight. The hitting that the student felt was quite possibly the girl's feet hitting the back of his neck, because her body swung slightly when she committed suicide."

    - Nina

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Source: http://says.com/my/fun/creepy-ghost-stories-in-malaysian-colleges-and-universities

Your Bulu Will Naik After Reading These 10 Malaysian Office Ghost Stories

1. "Someone or 'something' is living in a paper igloo in my sister's classroom."

    "This is happening right now, my sister who's a teacher in this kindergarten in Taman Tun just told me last night.

    So the teachers just build an igloo made out of paper and cardboard for the kids. Apparently, there's someone or 'something' living in the igloo, because every morning, the igloo end up in a different place in the classroom. It'll move from one corner to another, or sometimes it ends up upside down!

    The thing is, it's quite heavy... and no one has admitted to moving it."

    - Anis

2. "There's been a few times, when I work OT, that I've seen someone sitting at the same unoccupied cubicle."

    "I work OT on certain days, and usually, there's no other person in the office except me when I work late.

    There's been a few times, when I leave the office, that I've seen someone sitting on a chair... but the cubicle doesn't actually belong to anyone! I didn't really dare to look at it properly, I usually just get out of there as fast as I could."

    - Ravi

3. "I've encountered a lot of weird stuff in the school auditorium I work in - violent tapping on wooden tables, strong flower smells, sounds of lights crashing... the list goes on."

    "I work in an auditorium for an international school where I've had to stay pretty late, especially if there are drama productions and musical performances coming up. I have so many creepy stories, man!

    When I first started, I'd always hear tapping on the wooden table in the AV control room. They're usually slow taps, but sometimes, the taps can get pretty loud and violent. Certain spots in the auditorium, especially when minimal lights are on, will also smell strongly of flowers. No one's brought flowers, and nor did it smell like the cleaning stuff the cleaners use.

    Then, about two years back, I was onstage rigging the stage lighting for the school's annual musical when I heard lights crashing down backstage. That's worrying, so I went backstage to check but not a single thing was out of place or had been moved. Later, I found out from the vendors who were in charge of the auditorium before I came in that they heard the same thing when they were working 'til the wee hours of the morning.

    There are also stories I've heard from other people, like the lady in the red kebaya who randomly appears in the third floor backstage, which I've never encountered - thankfully! A maintenance guy also told me that whenever he comes in in the morning to switch on the lights and AC on every floor before school begins, he'd find a black figure shadowing him."

    - Shauni

4. "Room 13 of the 13th floor always calls the front desk at night."

    "My mom used to work for this hotel in Penang. Apparently, the front desk always receives calls from room 13 of the 13th floor... but nobody would dare to pick up, because front desk knows the room is not occupied.

    The hotel manager actually invited an ustaz and some pastors to pray. Apparently, there was a cemetery nearby that was 'disturbed' to make way for the hotel's development.'

    - Cheryl

5. "He thought his colleague was playing a prank on him, but the guy had already gone home hours ago."

    "I used to work for this local TV network in PJ, and this happened to an editor who was working the night shift.

    Editors usually work in one of the editing rooms, and he was the only one there that night, so his room is the only one that's lit up. While he was editing and stuff, he suddenly heard a knock on the door. He thought one of the producers who's working late was pranking him, so he didn't think too much of it.

    Then that person knocked again. At this point, he got annoyed so he told the guy to stop it. Minutes later, he went back to the main office to grab his stuff... only to realise that the producer he thought was playing a prank on him, his stuff was already gone!

    Needless to say, he packed up and got out of there as fast as he could."

    - Vanessa

6. "My colleague was supposed to be in Sabah, but I saw him - or something that looks like him - lying on the office couch watching TV."

    "This one time, my production team had gone to Sabah for a shoot. I was supposed to follow them, but I stayed behind to get some stuff settled.

    One night, when I was walking to the toilet, I saw one of my colleagues lying on the office couch watching TV. I thought it was weird that he's lying there doing nothing, so I called out to him, but he didn't respond so I continued to the toilet.

    Then I realised something. The guy I just saw right, he's part of the team who's supposed to be in Sabah! Obviously, when I ran back to the couch area, there's no one there, and the TV is off and everything. I've never left the office so fast, man."

    - Alif

7. "A dark figure appeared behind a cameraman when a live show taping was going on, and the female announcer had to continue as if she didn't see anything."

    "I don't remember if it was a morning or evening show, but these guys were taping a live show in the studio in Shah Alam. It's a basic setup - an announcer, then the cameramen and production crew were there.

    Halfway through the taping, the announcer noticed something dark appear behind one of the cameramen! Obviously, she couldn't do anything coz it's being taped live, so she had to continue smiling and announcing while the apparition just stood there.

    Right after the show ended, she apparently quickly shoo-ed everyone out of the studio, telling them not to look behind them."

    - Nadia

8. "The news reader felt someone breathe down her neck in the recording booth. The mic actually picked up the 'breath'."

    "I used to work as a producer for a popular morning show for a local radio station. One morning, I think it was around 7.30am, the DJs and I were in the main studio while the news presenter records her news bites in the recording booth.

    Halfway through, she came out of the booth and asked if anyone went into the booth while she was recording. We said no. Then she told us she felt that there was someone behind her and had breathed down her neck.

    We went into the booth, checked the recording... and found out that the breath had actually been picked up by the mic! So the recording was of her reading the news, then the breath, and her stopping to get out of the booth. The recording was actually played on-air later."

    - Lola

9. "My manager and I heard the sound of running feet coming from the corridor right after we opened all the doors in the facility."

    "I used to work for a spa where I had to come in at the break of dawn. One time, I heard the sound of pens falling over coming from the reception counter just after I arrived. I was the only one there at the time.

    On a separate occasion, when the opening hours were changed to a later time, my manager and I heard the sound of running feet along the wooden corridor right after we opened the doors of the therapy rooms to let the heat out. At first, we dismissed it, thinking we'd imagined it... then we heard them again!

    Luckily, my manager kept some holy water in her office. The running footsteps stopped after she sprinkled some around the place."

    - Shalini

10. "The ghosts came with that big machine from Taiwan."

    "A friend had moved into a factory in Puchong Perdana some years back. Since it's a new business venture, he bought some new machines from Taiwan as well as other machinery and tools.

    Problems started when the main machine kept breaking down and the electricity supply to the machine tripped regularly. The factory owner consulted a technician and was told that the machine was alright and the electric wiring might be the problem. So, he called in an electrician, but was told that there was nothing wrong with the wiring. The machine continued to break down occasionally. At this point, he'd consulted a few other electricians, but still, none of them could find any fault in the wiring.

    One night, the factory owner was finishing his work until the early hours of the morning. As it was almost 3.00am by the time he was done with his work, he thought it would be a good idea just to spend the night at his office. He made sure everything - the lights, machines, etc. - was switched off except for the AC before he dozed off.

    The next morning, he woke up with all the lights, machines and air-condition switched on. None of his workers had come to the factory yet. He sensed something supernatural was at work, so he called for an Indian medium to visit the factory.

    The medium told him something that surprised him more than anything. The medium said, "There are a pair of ghosts who are tormenting the factory."

    "But how? This is a new building," the factory owner was puzzled.

    The medium replied, "Yes, the ghost came with that big machine from Taiwan." He pointed to the main machine the factory owner had imported, together with the ghosts, from Taiwan. The medium then "caught" the two ghosts and put them in an urn before taking them away. The weird happenings around the factory never happened again.

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Source: http://says.com/my/fun/office-workplace-ghost-stories-in-malaysia

13 Ghost Stories Told By Malaysians That Will Keep You Awake All Night

   

1. The Almost Murder: "Whenever I would balik kampung to my grandmother's house in Penang confirm got incidents happen wan!"

"Once, my grandmother and I were chatting with each other in the hall on the first floor when we heard some banging noises from upstairs. We were the only ones in the house at the time. My grandmother told me to ignore it and to just pretend like we never heard anything. I was a bit creeped out but listened to her. The banging sounds got louder and out of nowhere an umbrella came flying down from the second floor and almost stabbed my grandmother in the neck!"

    - Siti

2. The Guardian Spirit: "One day, I had a really bad fever so I skipped uni to rest. I was trying to sleep after taking my medicine when I saw a black figure watching me from across the room."

"As it slowly approached my bed, I felt colder and colder, despite my fever. I kept trying to move but it felt like something heavy was weighing me down and forcing me to keep still. I squeezed my eyes shut as tightly as possible and started reciting every prayer I could think of, including the Hail Mary. From behind my closed lids, I could see blue light so I opened my eyes to see a blue-shrouded figure blocking the black one from reaching my bed. The black figure kept trying to break past for a while but eventually gave up and vanished."

    - Casey

3. The Playmate: "I'm one of those people that have always been able to see things. And it seems that I've passed on that ability to my son, he's recently started seeing a little girl in my mother's house."

"He's the only one that is able to see her. He's always telling us about the things that they do together and we sometimes find him talking to what to us looks like no one. Stuff in the house is constantly getting moved around too, seems like this little girl is quite playful!"

    - Maya

4. The Clone: "This happened at the end of a weekend trip in Morib. My husband had just left back to KL for work and I was half asleep in our villa when I heard footsteps coming up the stairs and entering my room. I knew it couldn't be my husband because I had locked the door from the inside."

"It came up right next to me, grabbed my hand and called out to me in my husband's voice. A quick glance was all I needed to see that it had taken on his form! I tried to chant some holy mantras but something was preventing me from speaking. The thing laughed and smirked, as if taunting me for not being able to get rid of it. It took a while but I eventually managed to force the words out. As I repeated the mantras, the thing slowly released me and backed off. It paced angrily in front of my bed for a while before disappearing."

    - Maya (same person as previous story)

5. The Attention Seeker: "A spirit attached itself to my mother and followed her back into our house from a graveyard after Mahgrib"

"It mostly terrorized my mother, she would get the most horrifying nightmares and her body was constantly in pain. Whenever my siblings and I would watch TV in the upstairs hall, we would hear something running back and forth behind us even when no one else was at home. We would also hear really loud crashes from our room when we weren't in them but when we checked, there was nothing out of place. All the incidents only stopped after we got the house blessed by an ustaz."

    - Amir

6. The Lie Turned Real: "What started out as a prank by our teachers during a school camp ended up becoming real"

"They woke all of us up at 3AM saying that a toyol had kidnapped one of the boys. We gathered at the tapak perhimpunan to stay safe as a group while the teachers went off to rescue him. There was a lot of commotion going on, with the teachers shouting like crazy while they supposedly chasing down the toyol. We heard a really loud smash of glass breaking. One of the windows of a classroom had been smashed and we saw a black shadow emerge. It climbed up onto the roof of the building and stood there staring at all of us with its bright red eyes before leaving by jumping from rooftop to rooftop, disappearing into the night.

    The next morning, the teachers told us that it was all a prank and that the boy was safe and sound in the pejabat. But they were confused to the max when we asked them how they managed to pull off what we saw and thought that we were just trying to prank them back. We tried to prove it by showing them the smashed window, but it was now completely undamaged."

    - Sara

7. The Haunted Stairs: "My primary school in Subang Jaya has a legendary tangga berhantu"

"It led up to the water tank that has been chained off ever since a female student committed suicide by drowning herself there years ago. If you use that tangga on a rainy day (because she died on a rainy day), you'd be able to hear ghostly wailing and footsteps stalking your every move. And sometimes, strange things would appear on the walls like students names in blood-red handwriting".

    - Shaun

8. The Camp Of Horrors: "I was part of a team that organized a camp in Hulu Langat for underprivileged kids. Kena kacau non-stop throughout that time!"

"The kids especially kena every night. They would either feel something pulling their legs hard enough to leave finger marks and practically drag them off the bed or see terrifying spirits hovering over them. Then one night, us facilitators also kena. We were heading back to our dorm after the day's activities when we noticed a figure standing (well, more like floating really) on top of the pond.

    We tried to just ignore it and keep walking, hoping that it would just leave us alone if we didn't disturb it but when we reached the bridge near the pond (must cross to get to our dorm wan) it materialized in front of us, blocking us from reaching our dorm. We were completely frozen in fear and I honestly think we wouldn't have made it back to our dorm that night if it wasn't for a fellow facilitator on the other side of the bridge. He saw what was happening and yelled for the spirit to leave us alone. Miraculously, it listened."

    - Hazrul

9. The Endless Journey: "I was on a roadtrip to Penang with a friend who is usually super talkative but at one point she suddenly stopped talking and remained completely silent for quite a while."

"I figured that she just wanted to focus on driving so I just took a nap. It wasn't until we got to Penang that she told me that she had seen a dark figure walking against traffic in the middle of the road. And as if that wasn't scary enough, she summore kept driving past the SAME figure over and over again like it was following us or something eeeee! So thankful that I was asleep the whole time and didn't see anything!"

    - Eliza

10. The Photobombers: "My friends and I were staying at a resort in Melaka while on vacation. We were playing around taking pictures outside at 2AM when one of our friends suddenly kept insisting that we stop and head back inside."

"None of us really wanted to 'cause we were having so much fun but this fella was so insistent that we conceded to him. He's one of those that can nampak benda one la, so he said that there were actually quite a few spirits who had come out earlier because they were disturbed by all the noise we were making. But what they apparently hated most of all was the camera's flash.

    He said they had been watching us and muttering to themselves for quite a while before finally starting to approach us and ended up close enough to stand between us and the camera which is when he told us to go inside. We didn't really believe him until we saw the pictures we took. Most of them were crazy distorted! Some had white streaks completely blocking parts of us out and some had shadows surrounding us. We deleted all the photos and left the next morning."

    - Daniel

11. The Floater And Fighter: "I'll never forget this one incident that happened when I was 18. My brother and I were home alone, he was playing PS upstairs and I was watching TV downstairs."

"There are two windows that overlook my garden behind the TV so while watching I thought I noticed something passing by the first window. I focused on the second window because it has to pass by there too and freaked the heck out when I saw what looked like a white sheet just slowly floating past. Screamed for my brother to come downstairs so we were both huddling on the couch together when we heard loud clashing noises like from a battle or something from upstairs.

    He said that the sounds were just from his game and he stayed with me and kept reassuring me until I calmed down. Much later once I had practically forgotten about what happened, he told me that the sounds weren't actually from his game because he paused it before coming down. Our mother still doesn't believe us till today."

    - Anne

12. The Claws: "My siblings and I were hanging out with our cousins at my aunt's house in Seremban. We were waiting for her to finish taking a shower so that we could all go out for dinner."

"Out of nowhere, we heard her screaming madly as if she were being attacked. We rushed over to the bathroom and banged on the door asking if she was okay. It flew open without warning and she ran out, still screaming. We chased her into the hall and found her crying. She was reluctant to tell us what happened because we are all still quite young at the time but she couldn't hide the effects of it. We were all horrified when we saw deep gashes running down her back, like something with claws had scratched her.

    Our uncle immediately went to the temple and brought a priest back with him to treat my aunt's wounds and bless the house. There were no more supernatural incidents after that but that one was more than enough to scar us (no pun intended) for life."

    - Rani

But wait, we've saved the best for last...

13. The Pisang Incident: "My father told me that when he was a kid, he wanted to see a hantu pisang IRL"

"There was a banana tree right outside his bedroom window so one night he tied a piece of string to the jantung and tied the other end to his foot. In the dead of the night, he was woken up by violent pulling on the string. He got so scared that something was actually happening to he quickly untied the string from around his foot and started reciting prayers. He heard loud cackling coming from outside, and it sounded like there was more than one creature out there. Terrified but still curious, he slowly crept over to the window and peeped outside. His 5 siblings were there, all falling over themselves with laughter over having successfully trolled my father LOL."

    - Lana

Hehehehe, fell for it didn't you? ;)

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Source: http://says.com/my/fun/when-there-s-something-strange-in-your-neighbourhood

Marrowtooth

  

I was frightened of my grandmother when I was a little girl. Her house lay at the edge of a foul-smelling bog filled with snakes and strange bugs during the day and alien bird cries and flickers of green swampfire at night. My mother would always reassure me that she had grown up there, and while yes, there were some dangerous critters roaming around, as long as I stayed in sight of the house and watched where I put my hands and feet, I should be fine. That eased my fears of the house and yard a bit, but it did very little to help with my fear of the woman that lived there.

It wasn’t that she was unkind, and she acted as though she was happy whenever we came to visit, but I still found her off-putting all the same. I’d like to say it was her odd ways—the small furtive movements of her thin lips as she sucked idly on hard candy, her dark eyes darting this way and that as though she was following the invisible motions of some internal metronome. Or perhaps the way she seemed to panic as it grew closer to dark, wanting to make sure that we were all inside and her “safety candles” were lit at the threshold of every door and window. But to be honest, my mother seemed to take these things in stride when we visited, and so I quickly grew used to them as well.

No, the main problem was her leg. She wore a brace on her right leg—an ancient-looking metal and leather contraption that may not have been the same one she first got as a teenager sixty years earlier, but I couldn’t have said for certain. She always wore it for support, and the soft metallic creak creak creak it made as she puttered around the house always set me on edge during the day and terrified me in the small hours of the night.

But even the brace wasn’t the worst part. It was the smell.

For as long as I knew my grandmother, she had kept her lower right calf wrapped in gauze. She was a very clean woman and would change the gauze at least twice a day, but it never stopped it from oozing a brown stain across the fresh dressings and wafting out a smell of hot decay at certain points throughout the day. Much like the swampy marsh that surrounded us, I associated that smell with death and some terrible unknown, and I was horrified by it.

I still am.

---

When I was eleven, I walked in on my grandmother changing her dressing. I was a little less scared of her by then, but I still froze at interrupting this secret ritual I’d never seen before. I’d also never seen what was under the bandage.

In the side of her leg was a large hole the size of a half-dollar. My eyes were transfixed to the wound, which looked old but was somehow still wet and shiny in the dim lamplight coming from her bedroom nightstand. It took a moment before I even realized she was speaking to me.

“Clarissa. It’s okay, honey. Come on in.”

Part of me wanted to retreat, to run away from that macabre scene and forget it ever happened. But another part of me seemed to sense that this was a chance, maybe my only chance, to find out more about what had happened to my grandmother. She never talked about it, and when I asked my mother, she would just awkwardly change the subject or say all I needed to worry about was minding my granny when we were near the swamp.

So I went on in and sat in a chair opposite where she was applying a fresh bandage. She worked with the speed and easy of ingrained routine, and within a few moments she was finished and looking at me again with a small smile.

“Wondering what that place on my leg is?”

I nodded with a child’s honesty and she gave a laugh. “I don’t blame you, honey. It’s funny looking, ain’t it?”

I leaned forward a little, wrinkling my nose at the still dissipating rotten smell. “Are you sick?”

Her smile faltered a little before she shook her head slowly. “No, not as such. I’m old…and I guess that’s a form of illness. Time’s a disease they’ll never cure, my grandmomma used to say. But no, I’m all right.”

“Why do you have a big hole in your leg then?”

I saw her glance toward the door before her eyes found me again. Her voice was slightly lower when she spoke next. “That was from something out of the swamp. The dark. Folks around here call it Marrowtooth.” She paused a moment, giving me a considering look. “You sure you want to hear this? You can be a skittish little thing at times, and I don’t want no trouble with your mama if you can’t sleep tonight.”

My curiosity piqued, I nodded and asked her to go on.

---

When I was young, just few years older than you, I went caterwauling with some friends of mine. That’s what we called it when we went to wandering the swamps looking for something to get into. We had headed out in the early afternoon, and all three of us were raised here. We knew these lands better that most anyone. But somehow, on that day, we got lost.

That by itself isn’t overly remarkable. Swamps are tricky places. Lots of places look the same, and the same place can look different depending on the weather and the time of day. If you roam the swamps all time, you’re going to wind up lost once in a while. The main thing is that you don’t panic. You either orient yourself or backtrack until you find something that you recognize.

I was with my best two friends at the time, Jesse and Orry, and though Jesse had only lived in the area a few years, she recognized we were lost before me or Orry did. She said the trees looked funny, and she was right. I couldn’t rightly say what kinds of tree they even were, other than that they were twisted and sinister, with pale white bark and bright purple berries that I had never seen before. Orry was usually full of beans when it came to stuff like this, puffing up his chest and making jokes to impress his best friends who also happened to be the only girls his age he wasn’t awkward around. But he wasn’t laughing now. Instead he just grabbed our hands as we turned and started heading back the way we came. We all knew something was wrong, but we didn’t want to say it, as though speaking it would give it more power. Instead, we just wanted to follow our trail back home.

Tracks are a tricky thing in the swamp. They can fill in if the ground is too wet or not take at all if the ground is too hard or uneven. It took us a minute, but we found them—Jesse’s cowboy boots, Orry’s sneakers, and my old workboots I had saved up for the summer before. The sun was starting to go down, but we were making good progress and every time we’d hit a patch without any tracks, one of us would spot some sign or recognize some landmark. Within a few feet of that, we’d pick up our old trail again.

We had been backtracking for probably ten minutes when Jesse froze. “What’s that?” I looked to where she was pointing, farther up the path we were taking. At first I didn’t see anything, but when I heard Orry let out a curse, I eased forward and looked again.

It was our tracks. But it wasn’t just our tracks. Because instead of three sets of footprints, there were four.

I knew the tread of our shoes, but the other tracks didn’t seem to have been made with shoes at all. Instead they looked like the marks left by bare feet, only feet that were strange—long and narrow and ending in spindly toes that seemed to sink deep into the ground. I sucked in a breath and saw my own fear mirrored in their faces. Me and Orry said it at the same time.

“Marrowtooth.”

---

There was an old legend around these parts of a coven of witches that used to roam the swamps late at night. They made wicked deals with old things that lived in the rotten heart of this place. One of those things was Marrowtooth. I never knew what he was supposed to be exactly—some said a demon, but I don’t know if that’s right. But if his origins and nature were unclear, his habit was not.

The stories went that if you got caught off by yourself in the dark parts of the swamp, you might find yourself being followed by Marrowtooth. He’d follow you for awhile, tricking you and getting you more turned around. And once he grew bored, he would fall on you and drain you dry.

The reason he was called Marrowtooth was because of how he looked and what he did. His head was slick like that silly putty you used to play with. Bare slits for eyes and a nose. But his mouth…well, his mouth was wide and strong, and when he opened it, you saw a single thick tooth coming down like a reaper’s scythe.

When I was a little girl, Marshall Reaux was found just a few hundred feet from his house after having been lost for days. He had a hole in his back and all the marrow had been sucked from his bones. I overheard my papa say once that his bones had just crumbled like powder when they moved the body. Now my father, like most, could be prone to fanciful tales, but he hadn’t been fanciful when he was saying that. In fact, it was one of the few times I remember ever hearing him sound scared.

As the three of us looked around the forest for whatever had been following us, I understood that fear. I had never been much for ghosts and goblins, but I had seen the trees and the tracks and I knew something was wrong. There was an electric warning on my skin and a taste in my mouth like I was sucking on a penny.

Something was coming.

We started moving again at a quicker pace, our eyes now torn between the path back and the trees around us. Jesse wasn’t as familiar with the stories as me and Orry, but she had heard of Marrowtooth and knew enough to be scared when her best friends were. Orry was a bit on the heavy side and was getting winded as we went, but he was still whispering that we needed to hurry, that the tracks must have left ours at some point, that this thing could be anywhere…

And then Orry was just gone.

We looked for him for what felt like an hour, but I have a feeling it was much less. Me and Jesse took turns calling out to him, and we were never more than ten feet from each other the whole time. I was terrified, but I was also determined that we weren’t leaving until we found him. Orry had been my best friend as long as I could remember, and I kept telling myself he must have stepped into a bog or fell out somewhere and we were just missing him. But then I realized I was searching alone now, because Jesse was gone too.

I ran then, any idea of following tracks or searching for my friends lost in my fear. I had seen a fox run down a rabbit once and I had always wondered what that tiny, screaming thing must have been thinking as it ran for its life. After that day in the swamp, I didn’t have to wonder no more.

I cried a little when I broke through some brush and saw I was only half a mile from home. I found my mama and told her what happened, and the next three days the whole community was out searching for Orry and Jesse, but they never saw any sign of them. I wanted to go back out and help search, but I was terrified to leave the house.

It was two weeks before Papa said I had to go to town. He was busy around the house and mama had been down with sickness for the last two days. It was hard going outside, and I dreaded the long walk into town, but at least it was a bright day and my route took me away from the swamp. The trip was uneventful, and I was actually feeling better by the time I made it back.

It was as I was about to climb the front steps that I heard a voice coming from under the house.

“Libby?”

I stopped mid-step, my pulse pounding. The voice was coarse and strange, but I still recognized it as Jesse’s. Feeling a thrill of happy relief, I sat down the bag I had and kneeled down to see better. “Jesse? Is that you?”

“Libby…? I’m so hot, Libby. So hot and so hungry…”

I could see dim outlines of a shadow shifting in the darkness under the house. I didn’t understand why she was under there, but maybe she had a fever and was out of her head. My first thought was to go get help, but when I went to stand, she called out to me again.

“Please…please don’t go. Help me. I hurt. My mouth hurts. I hurt all over and I’ve been alone so long.”

Crouching back down, I felt a warning buzz in the back of my head, but I told it to be quiet. This was my friend Jesse, who was likely terrified and half-starved to death. So I’d help her out from under the house and then get her someone once she saw I wasn’t leaving her.

Reaching my arms forward, I motioned for her to come closer. I didn’t like going under the house, and that dim bell of alarm kept sounding louder whenever I thought about moving forward. Still, she seemed to be coming closer. I could hear shuffling sounds in the dirt and the shadow seemed to be growing larger.

I couldn’t scream when she suddenly grabbed my ankles and started pulling me into the dark under the house. Landing on my back had knocked the air out of me. I had a moment where I felt like I was drowning, getting pulled down into some dark pit of quicksand, and then I managed kick her off one of my feet as I finally let out a thin, gasping yell.

I retreated half a foot, but then she was pulling me back in, her hands like iron on my lower legs, and then my thighs as she drug me deeper into the shadowy belly of the house. I let out a more full-throated scream, but it turned into a shriek as I felt my right leg explode in pain. There was a moment where I felt like everything was kind of…collapsing in on itself…and then I was free.

Papa had heard me and pulled me free. A moment later, Mama, sick as she was, was joining him and they were pulling Jesse out from under the house. She yelled and thrashed, and I barely got a glimpse of her, but she didn’t look like Jesse any more. Not like Jesse much at all.

They locked her in the workshed behind the house and then carried me to the doctor in town. I was in the hospital for two weeks, and when I got back, there was only a pile of ashes where the workshed had been. I asked them what happened, but they would only say that it had been taken care of.

A few months passed. I couldn’t walk good without a leg brace now, and the wound never seemed to fully heal, but otherwise I was doing all right. Then I started to have the strange dreams. I’d be wandering the swamps, my fingers long and pale to the point of almost being able to see the moonlight through them as I wound my way between twisted trees of stark white. I’d be at the dinner table when my head would begin to throb. I’d close my eyes at the pain, only to open them at the clinking sounds I was hearing in front of me. It was bloody teeth, my bloody teeth, tumbling from my mouth onto the plate below.

As the dreams got worse, they carried me to the doctor. When that didn’t help, they carried me to the old woman who had delivered me and my mama before me. She was the one who told us about the candles and how they could stop the bad dreams. Stop anything else bad from happening.

And they worked. They always have. I’ve always slept well, had a full life with a wonderful husband and two sweet children, and now a sweet granddaughter. But that…well, that’s what happened to my leg.

---

Looking back, I’m amazed I wasn’t more horrified at everything she had just told me, particularly when I felt sure she was telling me the truth, at least as she believed it to be. Instead, I just took it all in and then asked a single question.

“Why did you stay here if all that happened to you?”

She gave an embarrassed smile and shrugged. “It just never felt right, you know? I tried going away one time, but after a month I started getting sick, even still using safety candles every night. I finally came back here, and by the next morning I was fine as paint. I don’t know if it’s because of my leg or not, but I don’t think I’m meant much for living anywhere else but here.” Just then she looked up as she heard my mother’s footsteps approaching. Giving me a sly wink, she whispered. “Let’s keep our little talk just between us, okay?”

I nodded, and in the twenty years since I’ve never talked about it to anyone.

---

But then six months ago my grandmother fell and broke her hip. She was in her nineties by then, and while we called her trip to the nursing home “rehab”, we all knew she wasn’t coming out again. Still, she was in good spirits over all, and once we briefed the night staff on her routine of having a candle lit at the door and window of her room, my grandmother seemed content.

I lived farther away by then, and it was three months before I made it back to see her. I had intended on arriving by mid-afternoon, but it was well after dark before I entered the nursing home and found my way to her room.

The room was dark and silent, the only sound the light noise of rain starting to hit the window outside as I stepped further in. Looking around, I fumbled for a light without success as I tried to distinguish the shadows in front of me by the dim ambient light of the hallway. There was the bed, but where was she? For that matter, where were her candles?

creak creak

I looked around at the noise. “Grandma? You here?”

Nothing. It wasn’t a large room, but it felt massive and oppressive in the dark, almost like I was back…

creak creak creak

The pain as she bit down on my neck felt like it was going to split me apart, and I would have collapsed then if not for her strong, long hands wrapped around my arms and holding me upright. I distantly heard a woman yell somewhere behind me, and then I was falling for what felt like a very long time.

When I awoke, three days had passed. My grandmother had apparently had “an episode” and attacked me before fleeing out into the stormy night. As of then, or now, she hasn’t been found.

I still am taking rounds of antibiotics and steroids, but the wound on my shoulder just doesn’t seem to want to heal. They say I can have plastic surgery after a few more months, but honestly before last week the pain flare-ups were way more concerning than having a weird hole near my collarbone. The pain was crippling at first, and while medicine took the edge off, it wasn’t until last week that it began to fade out to something more manageable.

The same time the strange dreams began. At first I thought it was a new side effect of the meds, and then I thought it was just a precursor to the flu I seem to be getting. I've tried more medicine and rest, and even lighting candles at every door and window, but I keep getting worse.

When I looked in the mirror this morning, I barely recognized the woman looking back. Pale and gaunt, with thin, white lips that moved restlessly as I looked on in growing horror. There was something in my mouth, and as I opened wide I half-expected to see a piece of the hard candy my grandmother loved resting on my tongue. But it wasn't.

It was two of my teeth.

 

---

Credits

They Took My Eyes

 

I was driving across Virginia last month when I stopped in a town named Sutter’s Mill. The reason for my travels is largely unimportant—I work for a large publishing house planning and prepping sites for book signings and readings for several of their big authors when they have book tours in the eastern half of the United States. I’ve been doing it for five years now, which means I’ve logged a lot of hours on the road. And I thought I had seen just about every small town between the Mississippi and the Atlantic, but I was wrong.

The only reason I even took the road that led me to Sutter’s Mill is because of a bad highway detour combined with my GPS crapping out for a good fifty miles. As afternoon began turning into evening, I found myself desperate for a place to stay or at least get gas and some food. So I was relieved when I saw the weather-beaten sign proclaiming I was entering the Town of Sutter’s Mill.

It wasn’t a bad-looking town as far as small towns go. Like many small, Southern towns I had visited, it leaned heavily on old antebellum mansions and a town square that looked like it got ten times the care and attention of the streets and buildings just two blocks over. Yet whatever aspirations the people of Sutter’s Mill might have had toward tourism, my first impression was that they were out of luck.

I didn’t see many people at all, and those I did see were either old men (a pair playing checkers outside of a barbershop) or children (a trio of boys and one girl playing with a frisbee in the tiny park at the center of the town square). That by itself wasn’t so strange. The really isolated small towns like this were often dead during parts of the day, and around here people were probably home getting ready for dinner.

What was strange was the sunglasses. I had seen the pair of old men first, and their large, wraparound sunglasses were comically big but not outside the realm of fashion crimes I had seen committed by the elderly in the past. Besides, my working theory was that once you got past a certain age, you earned the right to not give a fuck anymore. The men had just looked at me as I passed, and while they didn’t return my wave, I had just suppressed a small laugh and went on.

I was still looking for an open restaurant or a decent-looking hotel when I found myself traveling around the town square. The kids were out there playing normally enough, but…they all had the same sunglasses on too.

My first reaction was to look up at the sky. Was there an eclipse or something that I didn’t know about? But no, the sky looked normal, and while it was growing darker, that was due to the lateness of the hour, not some astronomical event. I felt a twinge in my belly at the strangeness of it all, but I tried to ignore it. I was tired and hungry, and I couldn’t afford to get too easily weirded out when by my guesstimate the next closest town was nearly two hours away.

Leaving the town square behind, I sighed with relief when I found a moderately cute bed and breakfast the next street over. The sign out front said there was a vacancy, and while I doubted they could give me anything for dinner, I figured I could get a soft bed and good directions to a local diner or something. Parking my car in the small gravel lot behind the house, I went up to the screened-in back door that had a sign above it saying “Guest Entrance”. I felt a bit awkward ringing a stranger’s doorbell, business or not, and had to force myself to wait until an older woman shuffled out onto the porch and opened the door.

“Hey there, honey. What can I do for you?”

I could feel the words stuck in my throat. The lady seemed pleasant enough, but she was wearing the same fucking sunglasses as the rest. What was going on here?

“Um…I was going to see about getting a room, but I think I might just drive on. I forgot I have an appointment later tonight.” This was a lie, of course, but I was ready to get in my car and find a different place that didn’t give me the utter creeps.

The woman’s face lit up with a smile. “Oh yes, we’ve got a room that’ll be perfect for you. Come on in.”

I started backing down the steps. “No, really, I have to be going.”

She flapped her hand at me dismissively. “Nonsense. Pretty young thing like you, it doesn’t pay to be out on the road late at night. Come in and see the room at least, and if you decide it still isn’t for you, I’ll at least point you toward the way you want to go.”

I almost resisted further, but I didn’t see what the real harm was in looking at the room. I was tired, the place looked fine from the outside, and if the woman tried to do some kind of weird shit, I felt sure I could handle her physically. So trying to put on a smile, I nodded and followed her inside.

The interior of the house was beautiful—well-decorated and clean without coming across as overly staged or sterile. The woman led me at a slow pace up a creaking staircase to the second floor, and when she opened the door to the room, I felt myself relax some.

The room looked…normal. It had a phone, a small but relatively new LCD tv, and a queen-size bed that looked wonderful after hours on the road. It even had a little laminated card on the table with the wifi-password. Seeing all the trappings of and connections with the outside world made me feel less like I was in the opening act of a horror story, and when she told me it was only $75.00 for the night and the included breakfast, I decided to stay.

The owner of the B&B—she told me her name was Valerie as we went back downstairs—didn’t have much to offer in the way of dinner, but she could point me to a nice steakhouse just on the other side of the town square. When I mentioned I was a vegetarian, she quirked an eyebrow from behind her dark glasses and gave a little laugh.

“Well, I’m sure they’ll find you something to eat too.”

---

I headed back to the car and roamed around for twenty minutes looking for other options for food than the steakhouse. The kids were thankfully gone from the town square now, but I had no luck finding any other restaurant that looked open. Resigned to eating a mediocre salad bar, I pulled into the steakhouse parking lot.

It was packed with cars, and given the lack of options in town, it was kind of easy to see why. Still, I thought it was strange that I hadn’t actually seen anyone driving around, or any other people yet at all. And when I went into the restaurant, I found that there were only a couple of handfuls of people sitting at the various tables and booths inside—less than half of what I would have expected based on the cars outside. But that thought fled as soon as I realized that everyone in there were wearing the same sunglasses too.

I almost bolted right then, but something made me stay. I think part of it was a slowly building, sullen anger. I felt like I was the target of some weird, elaborate practical joke and I didn’t like it. Didn’t like reacting to it. So I forced myself to approach the hostess and ask for a table for one.

When my waitress came over, she told me her name was Holly and she’d be taking care of me tonight. What could she start me out with? I surprised myself by pointing at her sunglasses.

“Well, Holly, not trying to sound like a bitch, but can you tell me what the deal is with all the sunglasses? It’s dark outside and everyone I’ve seen in this town is wearing them. Is it some kind of town fashion trend or joke or something?”

The girl visibly paled at my questions, clutching tightly at her order notepad. “Well, I guess it looks funny to someone not from here, but its part of a special treatment we have here. It helps a lot, but it makes your eyes real sensitive like.”

I frowned at her, my curiosity supplanting my irritation and anxiety for the moment. “Treatment? What kind of treatment? And what does it help?”

“Um…well, I…” A man that looked to be in his thirties, as best I could see around his stupid fucking glasses at least, came up and patted Holly on the arm. “Now Holly, don’t hold this nice lady up with your chit chat. Go get her a water and let her ponder the menu for a minute.” Holly looked between the man and me before nodding and hurrying out of sight. The man looked back at me with a yellow-toothed smile. “You have to forgive her. She’s a good girl, but she does love to talk.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Actually I was the one doing the talking. I was asking about everyone wearing sunglasses and what kind of treatment you all are getting.”

His smile widened slightly, or at least he showed more teeth. “Oh, it’s a private matter, you understand. We’re lucky enough to have a talented doctor around these parts and she’s helped us all greatly, but it’s not my place to divulge other people’s business.”

I had already decided I was leaving the restaurant and the town right away, but I wanted to tell this smarmy fucker off first. Sliding out of the booth, I looked at him levelly. “So what keeps you from telling me what they did to you then?”

He chuckled. “Why nothing, of course.” He reached up and pulled off his glasses. “They helped me to really see.” I stared into where his eyes had been, but now they were just raw, red sockets with the withered remnants of cutaway eyelids curled at the upper edge like a drawn up windowshade. He leaned forward merrily to give me a better look. “And I can see so well now.”

Inside the sockets there were endless tiny eyes. They shined in the dim track lights overhead, a flowing, rippling mass of white and red like a froth of bloody milk that was shot through with veins of black that seemed to bind one speckled orb to the next. A thicker grey strand of tissue ran across and into the bridge of the man’s nose before flowing into the other socket where the same shifting horror was repeated. I was already screaming and backing away when I felt rough hands grabbing me from behind.

They drug me back through some double doors that led to a large kitchen, except the back portion was clear of any equipment. It didn’t take long to see this was because the concrete floor had been broken open and led down into the earth.

I had been kicking and fighting hard before, but I redoubled my efforts now. I felt my right shoulder protest and then issue a bright flare of pain as my shoulder popped out of the socket, and I had a moment where I thought I was almost free, but then the hands were clamped on me tighter as they drug me down into the tunnel below.

We travelled along a dimly light path that was periodically illuminated by work lamps, and more than once we intersected with other paths heading off in other directions. The further we went, the more I felt like these monstrous lunatics were ants carrying me to the center of the anthill. Except I soon realized we were going up again, and I found myself wincing as I was pulled out into the bright lights of what appeared to be a local high school gymnasium.

There were a few people in the stands, but many more were milling around on the floor of the old, run down basketball court. At the center of the court was a tall woman in a floral skirt and a long white coat. As I was drug closer, she introduced herself as Dr. Thurber.

“I’m so glad you could join us tonight. We don’t get a lot of visitors to our little town, and if I’m honest, that’s been a good thing up to now.” Her lipstick was too bright red and slightly smeared as she leaned closer to me, only enhancing the look of madness I saw in her eyes. “But I think we’re finally ready to share our gift with the outside world. There’ve been some missteps, to be sure, but I think you’ll find the treatment is a lot less painful and more agreeable that it used to be.”

I realized she was talking to me with the same sing-song monotone that some doctors used when they were getting ready to give you a shot or do something else unpleasant, and then I glimpsed the piece of metal she was pulling from a nearby tray. It looked like a sharp-edged ice cream scoop. Hands were pressing against my face now, holding my head still despite my struggling.

“Oh God no. Please no. I won’t tell just please just….AAHHHHHH!”

I blacked out for a moment from the pain. Out of instinct I had closed my eyes, but it didn’t matter. The biting edge of her instrument sliced through the lid and scooped out my right eye all in one smooth motion. She was finishing the second as I came back to wakefulness long enough to let out another wail of pain.

“Ssshhhh, I understand. That’s the bad part. Don’t you worry. All the pain will be gone in a moment or two.” I couldn’t see any longer, could barely reason at all through the pain and insanity of it all, but after a moment I felt an intense heat as though someone was pouring molten lead into the freshly-excavated holes in my skull. I tried to thrash, but my head was still being held fast, and after a few seconds the sensation began to fade to tingling coolness and then to nothing.

I found myself wishing I could just black out again, or if not that, just go ahead and die. It had to be better than whatever they had in store for me. I flinched when I felt a soft, cool hand on my forehead. Then the doctor’s voice was gently murmuring in my ear.

“There there. That’s it and all. The brood is set now. And don’t you worry. You’ll wake back up with your pretty eyes just like they were. You can tell yourself it was all a bad dream if you like. Just so long as you don’t look too closely or deeply, that is.”

---

The next thing I remember is waking up in my bed at home. I had a moment of calm wakefulness before I remembered. Gulping panicked lungfuls of air, I felt my face. Everything felt normal. I rushed to the bathroom, and at first glance, my face, my eyes, they looked just the same.

Or almost just the same.

Because in the depths of the black, when I looked closely at my eyes, I could see something back there that wasn’t there before. I could feel it faintly moving and shifting in my head as it took in the world I was showing it. Rubbing my shoulder, I stumbled back to the bedroom and found my phone. It was the very next morning and I didn’t know what to do or who to call.

In the days and weeks since, I’ve grown somewhat used to whatever it is they put in me. I’ve started to move further away from the ideas of killing myself or cutting my eyes out again. I don’t know if that means I’m going further insane or they are just controlling me more.

I also don’t know which I’m more afraid of.

 

---

Credits

I Heard Seven Words and Now I'm in Hell

 

I was a reader for two years before I met Elliot Stoffel. A reader is just what it sounds like—I read to the elderly and the disabled several days a week. The pay was never great, but I enjoyed the work and there was no denying it would look good on my applications to graduate school.

There was a time that meeting an esteemed sociology professor like Stoffel would have been exciting. We actually used one of his books in an undergrad class I had junior year. But that man, whoever he had been, seemed long gone when I first met the shattered ruin he had become.

Stoffel was supposed to be in his early fifties, but this man looked past seventy at least. And while the professor's books and reputation in sociology circles made him out to be a very articulate and intelligent man, the pitiful figure before me vacillated between long bouts of drooling, dead-eyed silence and brief interludes of incoherent screaming and thrashing about at some new imagined horror.

The company I worked for would get brief medical condition summaries on prospective clients along with emergency contacts and known allergies. We were not allowed to give any care or aid under our contract, but depending on the client, some readers got “combat pay", meaning they were going into a home in a dangerous area or with a potentially combative client. Stoffel paid the extra money.

His file said he suffered from “non-specific delusional ideation, persecution complex and moderate catatonia”. Below this, someone had written in “hallucinations-paranoid schizo".

I knew what all that meant, but it didn't really prepare me for what he was like. Most of my time as a reader had been with sweet little old ladies or people who needed company as they recovered from a debilitating injury. Not a madman that rolled his eyes fearfully toward the corner of the room as I read to him, his lips trembling as he closed his eyes tight against something only he could see.

His primary caretaker was his younger sister, Hillary. She was a kind and pretty woman who, if not exactly friendly, was at least always pleasant and polite as she headed out the door, off to take advantage of the break I was giving her. It wasn't until I was there for over a month that I saw what a toll it all was taking on her.

I had gone into the kitchen to tell her I was leaving for the day—this was the first time she had stayed home when I came, but I hadn't glimpsed her after she initially let me in. When I stepped into the kitchen, I saw her sitting at the table, her lips thin and her eyes sunken. I found myself surprised at her expression to the point that, before I could reconsider, I'd asked her if anything was wrong.

She gave a small laugh and gestured toward where her brother lay in the other room. “Aside from that? Aside from him? No, everything else is just peachy.” She glanced up at me as she said the last, and her gaze softened slightly. “Sorry, I don't mean to take it out on you.”

I shook my head. “No need to apologize. I know handling all this is hard. Is there anyone else to help?”

She stared off wistfully. “No, our parents are dead and neither of us has married. When he came back from his trip on the medical transport plane, none of his professor buddies even bothered to show up or visit. Its like he's already dead to them. Bunch of jealous, selfish assholes.”

Talking to her, I felt like I was walking across an unfamiliar frozen lake. I wanted to go further out, but I had no way of knowing where the thin spots might be. After a moment of silent debate, my curiosity won out.

“What happened to him? Did he just have a breakdown?”

Hillary studied me for several seconds before gesturing to the chair across from her. “No one knows for sure. I know he had gone to stay with a primitive tribe in the Amazon rainforest. The Ugtatu I think is how you say it. He had been before, and though they generally didn't care for outsiders, over a few years they had grown to tolerate him well enough.”

She looked down at her folded hands and sighed. “Apparently he was much more coherent when he first reached civilization after his latest trip. He told a colleague there that he had gone through the first step of a “purification ritual" during his stay. The ritual was supposed to take three days in total, but after the first night he woke to learn that the tribe’s holy man had died in his sleep. After that, no one else would talk to him or even acknowledge his existence outside of making a sign to ward off evil.”

“After three days of trying to get back in their good graces, he had headed back out of the jungle. By this point he was already acting strange, and within another week he was much like you see him now.” She sniffled. “They don't really know what's wrong with him. I looked at his notes, but they were mainly gibberish as far as I could tell. The most I could make out was that during the first part of the ritual, the holy man had said a phrase in Elliot's right ear while holding something he calls a “whisper box" against his left. My brother said the box made a strange sound, and he seemed to think that the combination of that with the sounds of the words the holy man spoke somehow flipped a switch in his brain, making him see things. He was trying to find a way to reverse it when he slipped into a fit and then became more like what you see now. A shell of the man I knew.“

I didn't know how to respond. The story was interesting, but seemed very farfetched. Odds are, I thought, he had been slipping towards insanity for years, and when he finally had a break from reality, this hocus pocus was the form it took. After sitting through an awkward silence, I said I had to be going and let myself out.

---

It was a few days later, when I was back reading Stoffel “The Great Gatsby", that I noticed the small wooden box sitting on the table near him. I tried to focus on the Fitzgerald book, but my eyes kept being drawn back to the box. It wasn't overly ornate or special looking, but the wood had an odd luster and I found myself wondering if this could be the “whisper box" Hillary had told me about. Had he somehow brought it back with him?

I told myself to stop being stupid, but after another thirty minutes of trying and failing to get my mind off of it, I sat down the book. We were alone in the house, but I still looked around as I reached for the box. I had no intention of stealing it, but I did want to see what it was. See if it opened, what was inside.

If it made any odd noises.

There was no lid or way to open it, and giving it a light shake produced no rattle from inside. Still, it was much heavier than I'd expected, so I didn’t think it was a solid piece of wood. There was something else inside.

I gave Stoffel a cursory glance, but he was just staring off into space, a thin thread of spit stretching an impossible length between his pajama shirt and his lower lip. He wouldn't mind me messing with his box a bit more. So I stuck it to my ear.

The sound was immediate as soon as the box was close to my ear. It reminded me of the sound a rainstick makes, but much higher pitched. While the noise itself wasn't unpleasant, I found my vision beginning to swim. I went to pull the box away when a hand covered my own and pressed it back against my head even as I heard Hillary speaking into my other ear.

“Weasel. Dish. Firelight. Thimble. Amber. Jack. Chimney.”

By the time I was able to react and move my head, she'd already finished. And whatever she had done, I knew something was wrong.

I looked up at her, my eyes seeming to gain and lose focus moment to moment. “What…did you…did you do to me?”

She stepped back, almost as though she thought I might attack her, but I could barely stand. “Something that I hope will help my brother. I'm sorry, I really am. I wish there was another way, or that it had been that nasty nurse that Elliot first had once he got home instead of you. But I just figured out the words, you see. It's not just the sounds of the words you have to replicate. You have to understand the words too. Elliot, he understood the Ugtatu language. For you, I had to find English words with the same sounds. It really was a challenge.”

Now I considered attacking her after all. She had done something to me and now was patting herself on the back instead of answering me. “Did…you do the pur…purification thing on me?”

She cast her eyes down like a schoolgirl caught cheating. “I did. Or the first part, which is all I had, of course. Though I may have fibbed a bit on that part. According to Elliot's notes, the Ugtatu called it ‘Khazit chureharu me’. I think it means ‘The Purity of Joining’. That may be off though.” She shrugged. “Who knows? Bunch of superstitious nonsense, regardless of how effective the technique may be at…”

She stopped as her face lit up with a brilliant smile. I turned to see Elliott Stoffel reaching for me, his hands like iron as they closed around my neck. I tried to struggle, but everything was swimming. I felt like I was moving through the darkening waters of some deep, midnight sea, and as his grip tightened, I watched the world fall away.

---

When I awoke, I was at a bus stop ten miles away. I could see and move better, but I knew something was still wrong. I wasn’t sure what until I was a few minutes down the road on the northside bus.

Two of the people on the bus were monsters. I first noticed it when I glanced back and saw one bending down to get candy out of her purse. The second, who looked even more hideous, was a man sitting in the back with worms crawling in and out of his face.

It took all I had not to scream, and after getting off at the next stop, I walked the rest of the way home. Not that it was any better. I saw terrible shapes in the shadows of houses as I passed, and more than once I thought I saw glowing eyes from a nearby ditch or storm drain. That was two weeks ago, and I've barely left my apartment since. The last time was last Thursday, and it ended with me running from the grocery store after seeing red crystalline eggs hatching from a young woman's chest.

Not that my apartment is much better. As I write this, I can see the giant spider looking at me from the corner of the room. You would think I could control myself better, convince myself that none of it is real, but I can’t. It all seems realer than real, and certainly realer than reason or memory.

I try not to look directly at the spider. It's been around for the last couple of days, and I work to ignore it, but it likes to get places where I have to look. Where it can startle me with its presence.

I'm getting weak from not eating—half my food seems rotten or corrupted, but I know I have to keep my strength up. I don't want to appear too frail. This morning I think there were the start of webs across my face and chest when I woke up. I don’t want the spider thinking it is getting time to collect me and carry me down into some dark and terrible hole.

I wrote this to remind myself to not give in. To not be crazy. To find a way to fix whatever that bitch broke in my brain. I know it can be done, because just yesterday I read about how Elliot Stoffel had made a miraculous recovery and was going to return to teaching in the spring.

She has to fix me too.

But for now I need to get up. I lost track of the spider and then I realized he's moved to the wall behind me. He's waiting for something, but I don't understand what.

I hope I don't find out.

 

 

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