While sitting on my bed last night, I looked up and saw a pale, grinning face peeking at me from the closet.
Every ounce of my blood turned to ice, and chills seized my whole body, freezing me in place. The face quickly retreated, ducking behind the door. I stared at the place where it had been for a moment, then screamed at the top of my lungs and leaped up from the bed. The world blurred around me as I hurled myself out into the hallway, crashing hard into the wall and then righting myself and sprinting to the top of the stairs, where I paused, turning back to stare at my bedroom door.
My mind raced. What should I do? Call 911. Yes. Of course. There was somebody in my house. Of course I should call 911. Oh, shit! My phone. I had left my phone on my bed.
I stood there trembling for a moment, the sound of my heart thundering in my ears. My mind and body were both on fire as I tried to figure out what I should do. My instincts were screaming at me to leave the house, to run to a neighbor for help even though it was well past midnight, but then I remembered that I kept a baseball bat in the downstairs closet, a heavy metal one meant to cave in the skull of any intruder if necessary.
My fear started to turn to anger at that moment. My adrenaline began to roar with bravado rather than terror. I stormed down the steps, threw open the closet door near their base, grabbed the bat, and headed back up to face the interloper.
As I rounded the doorframe and stepped back into my room, all my courage deserted me. The man, if it even could be called a man, stood there naked on all fours, half in the closet and half out of it. He was staring at me with bloodshot eyes, still grinning, swaying backward and forward in some kind of bizarre undulating dance. His arms and legs were oddly disjointed and looked almost like they were all facing the wrong way. He was completely hairless and had no ears, and his nose looked shrunken and shriveled. His ribs jutted out from his sides, and he was pale like he’d been locked away somewhere far from the sun for decades.
As I stared at him, rendered immobile by horror, he lowered himself and got even closer to the floor, supporting himself on his almost-backward elbows and gazing down at the brown shag carpet beneath him. Then he started shuffling toward me in what looked like a perverse imitation of an army crawl.
Any notion of retrieving my phone fled my mind in an instant, as did any notion of trying to crack the thing’s skull with my baseball bat. I flew down the stairs faster than I ever have before and bolted out into the night, slamming the front door behind me without looking back. Not knowing what else to do, I ran to the home of one of my neighbors, a guy I’ve been friends with for many years, and banged on his door until he opened it. He was extremely pissed at first, but when I explained the situation to him, his anger melted away, replaced by concern.
He called the cops. It took them about twenty minutes to show up. After I gave them my account of the night’s events, I stood on my front lawn in slippers and pajamas, watching anxiously as they entered the house to search it from top to bottom. The search dragged on and on, and I stared at the front door, expecting them to emerge at any moment with the man in cuffs. One of the officers stayed outside with me, and I admit I ignored most of his attempts at small talk.
After half an hour, the cops came back out and told me they hadn’t found any trace of the guy. That was possibly the worst news I could have received just then, and it sent another chill down my spine as they delivered it to me. They promised to patrol the area for the rest of the night, but I didn’t feel safe there, so I ended up retrieving my phone, keys, and some other essentials from inside- escorted by an officer at my insistence, of course- and heading out to crash with a friend who lived a few minutes away. (My neighbor likely would have let me stay with him, but he has a wife and kids and I didn’t want to impose, so I didn’t ask. My other friend lives alone, has a spare bed, and stays up until 3 AM playing video games most nights, so I texted him and then drove over after he responded- it was just much easier.)
I wish the story ended there, but now I know I’m not safe anywhere. I managed to fall asleep in the guest room of my friend’s house for a little while, but I woke up after a few restless hours just in time to see a figure scuttling into the bathroom on all fours. It glanced over its shoulder as it entered, and I saw that big grin on its face in the faint light of the just-breaking dawn.
I lay there too scared to move for a while, staring at the doorway, tracing the outline of the sink with my eyes and expecting the intruder to reappear at any moment. The world grew lighter and lighter until finally there was enough sunlight for me to feel a little safer moving around. I got up, and cautiously, bat in hand, I entered the bathroom.
There was nothing there. I would almost have thought I dreamed it, but I know I didn’t. You see, I know I left the bathroom door closed when I went to bed.
I don’t know what to do now. I’m not a superstitious guy by any means, but I don’t think this thing is human. I mean, if it’s just some kind of deranged man, how did it follow me between houses like that without my noticing, and how did it just disappear twice- especially from the bathroom? There’s one window and one door in that bathroom, and I could see them both from where I lay. Unless that thing squeezed its way down the shower drain, it must’ve just vanished into thin air. And what am I supposed to do about that?
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