Creepy Tales
Five Disturbing Stories
By Matt Dymerski
Copyright © 2012 by Matt Dymerski
You can follow my work at MattDymerski.com,
Creepy Tales
Table of Contents
It Watched Us Play
A Series of Strange Occurrences
The Hole
The Heat
The Misdial
****
It Watched Us Play
Long a skeptic, I recently experienced something which has me questioning my assumptions. I really don’t know what else to do, except talk about it…
I didn’t grow up in the best area. I moved to a different part of the city during the tail end of high school, and I hadn’t thought about the people I left behind in years, so I was caught off guard by a recent message from an old buddy of mine. I ignored him the first four times he messaged me, but his requests to meet grew more urgent. Against my better judgment, I told him I’d meet him at a café in the nice part of town to hear him out.
He arrived looking every bit the low-life that I used to be - cheap but garish clothing, oversized pants, and a furtive nervousness fueled by being out of his element. He seemed agitated by something beyond the dirty looks of the area’s upscale residents. As he sat at the table with me, I was not surprised by his quiet request for help, but his tale was anything but expected.
“There’s this building, man… that old dump two empty lots down from the kickyard, you remember?”
I did. The ramshackle warehouse had glowered at us from a distance throughout our childhood. It was ancient, part of the town’s original history, and I remembered huge faded letters on the side that hinted at its former use as a factory.
“Yes, what of it?” I asked.
“Well, me and Rick got into scrap metal lately -”
“Jeff, I can’t be involved in that kind of thing anymore. And you shouldn’t be either.”
“It’s not that, man. You’re made now, you got out. You’re lucky. I would never ask you back in… but it’s not that. We need your help. We go to break in to the place, see what we can grab - but we can’t get in.”
“You want me to help you break in?” I remember asking him, frowning as he spoke his next words.
“No, man,” he said, glancing around in masked fear. “You know us, we got skills. I’m saying we can’t get in. Rick breaks the lock off, opens the door - it’s bricked. They all are. We go to the windows, they’re barred. All of them. We figure maybe something valuable’s inside, Scotty got a damn blowtorch from the shop - these bars, they look old, but they’re not. You gotta hear me, there is no way in.”
I felt a small chill descend over me as I listened to his sincere worry. He didn’t know what he was afraid of, or why, but he knew that something was severely out of place in his neighborhood - my old neighborhood.
“Fine,” I conceded, but with no small doubt. “I’ll come take a look.”
He nodded, but didn't look happy. It almost seemed as if he was hoping I’d refuse so he could just forget the whole thing…
I met him in the dim orange light of evening after changing out of my suit and dropping off my valuables at home, as I wasn’t certain the residents would recognize and remember me. Rick and Scotty stood with him at the corner, no need for concealment - our neighborhood was no place for cops.
“The old crew back together, imagine that?” Rick commented, but he seemed nervous.
“Let’s just take a look at this thing, nothing illegal, alright?” I asked.
“We’re cool,” he replied. “You got your life, we got ours.”
We traversed the old yard, and I remembered games of football and kickball in bright summer light. Not everything about growing up there had been bad… but I could already see the building in question, backlit by the fiery sunset. It seemed to watch us as we approached, and I remembered the fearful stories we used to make up about it…
Decrepit towering brick soon shaded us. I avoided stumbling on an abandoned soccer ball - it seemed that nobody had wanted to come close enough to retrieve it. Looking back, the surrounding vacant lots seemed to stretch to the horizon, lending an uncomfortable isolation to the area.
“Over here,” Rick said, leading us out of the building’s shadow and toward the back door. I examined the busted lock, noting the marks the crowbar had left behind. Only silent brick lay beyond. I ran my fingers across it in the orange twilight.
“It’s the same,” I realized. “It’s the same brick. Look at the wall. This was never a door… or it was sealed over very soon after the rest was built.”
We checked each door, finding the same result all around.
“I told you something’s wrong with this place,” Jeff said, visibly agitated. “Why would someone just up and seal a place like damn Fort Knox?”
Having no answer, I could only shake my head and examine the bars behind the high broken windows. Standing on my toes, I could see the black mark where Scotty had tried to burn through.
“I was out here for hours,” he explained. “They never gave.”
I tried scratching one of the bars with a key, only managing to scrape some dirt. Intuition told me they were made of a metal far tougher than was normal for the time.
“Well, one thing’s for sure,” I commented. “Somebody really wanted to keep people out of this building… anyone have a flashlight?”
I took the offered light, and Jeff and Scotty propped me up so that I could peer inside.
A dusty concrete floor stretched away from the window, flanked by moldy brick walls. The hallway ran straight away, and I shined the light down it, garnering the strangest sensation of unnatural distance. A musty breeze wafted past my face, carrying an odd odor. It was then that another light shined back at me from the end of the tunnel.
Freezing, I gripped the old brick with white knuckles. Not one to give in to fear, I waved my light around, slowly relaxing as the distant light matched my movements. As the orange glow behind me waned and my eyes further adjusted, I could even make out my own silhouette in the distance - it was only a mirror.
“What do you see?” Rick asked.
“Nothing so far,” I reported, peering intently at the distant mirror, trying to determine a function or reason for its presence. I waved, noting my silhouette’s response. It was hard to see from far away, so I waved again.
It didn’t wave back.
Before I could truly comprehend what I was seeing, the distant light extinguished. I stared at the spot where the supposed mirror had been in horror, unable to generate an explanation. The acrid inner breeze swelled, bringing rising sibilant whispers.
my game?...
…cold night out tonight
come inside…
…haven’t seen her, no
I’ll slit your throat
“Screw this!” I shouted, stumbling off of Jeff and Scotty. “There’s something in there, something wrong. We need to just get the hell out of here and never mess with this again.”
I began storming away, heading for the open lots where the sun’s dying light still offered some solace, but they refused to follow. I turned to find them all watching me with despairing eyes.
“You can run, but we have to live here,” Jeff pleaded. “We can’t just forget about it.”
I threw an arm in the air as a series of arguments died on my lips. Call the cops, I thought - but of course they couldn’t, and the cops would never come. Call the government, call the media - but nobody would listen to a street crew. Leave it alone, let the building sit here near the kids - a festering blister on the sanctity of reality, quietly waiting to unleash something horrible someday…
“Maybe I’m overreacting, maybe it’s nothing,” I finally told them. ??
?I don’t know. Let me think about what to do next.”
It’s been two days. I haven’t heard from any of them, but I have no idea what to do, in any case. The more time that passes away from that place, the more I wonder about what I saw. I figure I should just forget about it. What is there to be done?
I did look up the building’s records, and confirmed that it was nearly a century old - but, curiously, nothing was listed under the building’s purpose and contents. I don’t mean that the entry was blank. I mean that somebody literally wrote the word nothing…
Writing it out, I found myself unable to let it go. That was a mistake. Though tired, I must write further - the only way I seem to be able to tell anyone my situation.
I went back on Saturday, after the week’s snow.
I sat in my car for an indeterminate time, staring at the building across the abandoned lots and listening to the cadence of the street. Here, cars rumbled by, people talked, and a few children played. Over there, the factory sat in silence and gloom, glaring back at me from the edge of solitude.
I saw a hooded figure cross the street, heading toward me. Even with the dark menace in the distance, my old street habits kept me vigilant. I relaxed as I confirmed that it was Jeff.
“I knew you wouldn’t leave us hanging,” he said, sliding into the passenger seat as I continued to watch the factory. “That damn place man… I’ve been thinking. Nothing ever goes right for me. For us. For anyone around here. What if it’s that place? It’s been there this whole time.”
I grimaced, unsure how to respond. It would certainly have been nice to blame all of the neighborhood’s problems on some malevolent thing, but I knew the far darker realities of economics and poverty.
“Look what I brought,” I told him, holding up a powerful flashlight and a camera I’d borrowed from a friend uptown. “Let’s try to get a picture of whatever’s in there.”
He nodded, a look of determination crossing his features, and we left the imagined safety of the car. As the street receded behind, a heavy blanket of silence and chill rolled over us, punctuated only by the sound of our footsteps on the crunching snow. Jeff shivered and pulled his hood tighter. I snapped pictures of the place while we walked.
Clouds obscured the sky, lending a dim grey tone to the inch-thick snow. The sense of gloom and isolation almost seemed to grow physically tangible as we approached the building. We both walked faster without a word, and Jeff kneeled and locked his hands next to the wall as soon as we reached it. I stepped up, grabbing one of the freezing bars to pull myself to the window.
Illuminated in somber grey, the interior lay in heavy silence. It seemed an eerie contrast to the chill breeze and open air behind us, as if something inside anticipated our presence with bated breath…
“Hello?” I shouted, wavering as Jeff reacted in surprise.
“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” he whispered, his tone strangled.
“We’ve got to test hypotheses,” I said downward. “What if it’s intelligent? What if it can communicate? Supernatural or not, whatever’s in there has to follow some sort of rules…”
“What if it’s got a rule to kill dumbasses?” he whispered, glaring.
I wanted to laugh, but his point was too grim. Chilled beyond the lightly drifting snow beginning to fall around us, I turned back to the window, suddenly on guard.
Gripping an elbow around the bars and pulling the flashlight out of my pocket with the other, I shined a beam down the hallway that stretched off into dim shadow. On the other end, it opened up into a larger space that seemed to house rusted machinery of massive and ancient design. I saw nothing reflective that would explain what I’d seen the previous visit.
“See anything?” Jeff whispered.
“No,” I replied, shining my light to the left and right, trying to see down the tight passages that led along the wall. “Not even -”
I stopped in midsentence as my eyes fell on something moving inches from my face. Focusing slowly, I tensed, ready to leap away – but it was only my own breath, misting in the frozen air. I watched it for several moments as it swirled in the air, slowly attenuating into a thin line as it floated deeper into the building. Thinking it an odd air flow and nothing more, I watched as a breeze blew flecks of snow between the gaps in the bars.
The snowflakes reached the dusty floor undisturbed.
“What is it?” Jeff asked, noting my apprehension.
I leaned in, putting my face between the bars, and gave a deep exhalation. I watched in confusion as my misted breath curled, attenuated, and floated down the hallway. A second breath did the same, even as white flakes cut through the supposed air current without disruption.
Snow crunched somewhere behind us.
I wobbled and dropped the flashlight as we both turned to look, but I saw only flat white stretching off into the distance.
“Come on, hurry!” Jeff whispered.
“Hurry what?” I shot back, fighting a rising panic in my chest. “I don’t even know what to – ow!”
I clenched my hand tight as pain shot through it. Opening it to look, I realized I’d cut myself on old metal. I stared at the wound as the few drops of exposed blood seemed to ripple, then rise from my hand… I watched as the dark red liquid rolled and stretched into a thin line in the air, disappearing down the hallway in short order.
“What do you see?” Jeff asked, worried. “What are you staring at?”
“I have no idea,” I whispered back in shock. “It’s like something’s drawing it in…”
“Drawing what in?”
Holding my arm wrapped around the bars tight, I held out my cut hand, and he watched as a single drop of blood wavered, rippled… and dropped to the ground.
“It’s not working out here…”
Something crunched in the snow somewhere near us.
“What the hell is that?” Jeff muttered, his eyes darting across the empty wastes in apprehension. I could feel him shaking under my foot, his strength fading.
“Let’s not stay to find out,” I replied, grabbing the camera around my neck. “Going to get a picture of this, then we go.”
Holding the camera in my left hand, that arm wrapped around the bars for support, I held out my right hand and squeezed it hard. When I opened my fingers, two more drops of blood coalesced about an inch from my palm. Triumphant, I pulled my hand back, brought the camera up – and the drops shot away in a blink, torn after their siblings at an impossible speed.
A choir of crunching erupted behind us, as if a great number of feet ran through the snow.
Jeff jumped, and I fell to the hard ground. My terror helped me overcome the winded pain in my chest, and I joined him at the wall. We pressed our backs against ancient brick and gazed out across the unbroken snow even as an abrupt silence fell.
I looked back and forth, heart pounding, but saw nothing. Our footprints were the only ones I could see, and I stared at the ground for signs of some invisible menace… but saw nothing.
We walked, then, in hesitant steps. Our ears strained for any sound, but we heard nothing but our own careful footfalls. Crossing those empty lots felt like the longest trial of my life; heart racing, eyes darting back and forth, intuition telling me that something was out in that field with us, but senses unable to detect it…
…and then we hit the street, the noise and safety of civilization pouring over us in a comforting wash. A mother and child built a snowman down the block, cars rumbled by, and a bundled up old man watched us from a swing on a porch. It seemed an impossibly abrupt shift, and we turned to gaze back at the warehouse.
It made no motion and seemed no different, yet I was left with the distinct sense of a sadistic smile.
I drove away with hardly a word to Jeff. Lost in thought, I wondered if we’d made a grave mistake. I resolved to forget the entire thing.
After last night, I’m certain of two things: we did make a terrible mistake, and I won’t be able to forget it.
I
’d been sleeping poorly since the weekend, so I wasn’t surprised when I woke up in the middle of the night… but, as I came out of mental fog, I felt something run around the inside of my lip – as if someone had quickly run a finger around my mouth. Struggling out of bed and falling to the floor in fear, I stumbled away from a moving shadow.
I tried to see, but all I managed was a corner-of-the-eye impression of a humanoid figure creeping toward my corner. Even with terror-widened eyes, I couldn’t tell what was casting the patch of darker darkness. It could have been coming from any direction…
My thoughts raced and churned out a desperate idea - reaching up to the desk near me, I hit the button to turn on my computer monitor. It took a long, horrible moment to power on… and then my room glowed with dim light.
Still cowered in the corner, I watched every shadow for signs of threat. Nothing moved. I let myself breathe and relax for a few moments, for fear of my heart pounding right out of my chest. My nervous eyes jumped to each corner of the room in a cycle of apprehension, before finally settling on my misting breath.
It wasn’t cold in my room, but I could still see the moisture from each exhalation as it swirled and rolled in on itself, forming a silent vortex as it converged and vanished a few inches away. I stared at in curiosity for a long moment as fatigue settled over my body. The vortex stopped.
A chill breath flowed over my face.
I seemed to reach my door in an instant, slamming it open and falling into the hallway. I heard someone cry out, and a neighbor I recognized rushed to make sure I wasn’t injured… but, even staring back into my dimly lit apartment, I couldn’t seem to warn her. Even as I grabbed my wallet and the camera from the front table and ran out of the building, dressed only in pajamas, I seemed physically unable to explain why I was running away.
The words simply wouldn’t leave my mouth.
I tried speaking, but could not. I tried showing her the pictures of the building, but my hands failed to work. In any relevant sense, something dark and chill inside me forced my silence.
In the grey light of day, after a sleepless night, I am no better. I called from a pay phone, but Jeff didn’t answer. I can’t even begin to guess where I might go to be safe from… that entity… or if there are more of them. I bought clothes, even went to work, surrounded myself with warm bodies, pulsing beautifully with vitality and strength – but I still feel cold.
I’m smart, so I know I’m going to do something dumb. I might be imagining it all, but I might not be. If I go to sleep again, I might never wake up - or worse. I have to go back tonight while I still have my mind, despite how tired I already am… and I have to deal with the problem at its source.
I can feel it in me, and I feel rather certain I won’t be coming back. I just wish I knew whether the darkness within me is from the shade’s attack - or whether it’s been inside me since childhood, a dark energy radiated from that accursed building as it watched us play…