Twilight Nightmares (Twisted Tales Special Edition Book 1) (17 page)

The Boogeymen

 

 

 

 

They're all around us. Boogeymen. They pursue us, their only purpose to kill humans. Like shadows upon the wall, they’re dark visages of men without faces, eyes, or mouths. Silent stalkers, and when they come for you, you know it. They
make
themselves known, and they don’t stop until you’re dead.

When I first saw one, it was the first day of my
freshman
year in high school. I walked along the clean tile floor, staring down at the mirror-like finish. The fluorescent lights seemed to take their time passing me, though they moved much faster when I looked at the ceiling. I felt the familiar tickle of my bladder begging me to release its storage, and so I ducked into a nearby bathroom.

As usual, the multi-urinal abode smelled horrid, like ancient piss and moldy water. After I finished bleeding my internal bag dry, I washed my hands at the sink. Had I not done this—had I not learned that hygiene was important—I might not have seen it. As I lathered my hands with a soap that stank with the rich aroma of hospital-grade antibacterial, I looked up to check my fifteen-year-old face for blemishes that might ruin my entire high-school experience forever. What I found instead ruined me just the same.

Standing behind me, unnervingly motionless and staring at me with its blank black face, was a boogeyman. Its arms remained slack at its sides, its body wrapped in a glistening obsidian flesh. The hairs on the nape of my neck twisted into corkscrews and I whipped around to face the freak behind me. Nothing was there.

I moved along the bathroom to check the stalls, but I found no one. The bathroom was entirely empty, except for a frightfully white and fully terrified version of me.

I returned to the hushed vomiting of the water at the sink and refused to look into the mirror. I didn’t know what I’d seen, but I didn’t want to see it again. However, my curiosity laid siege to my willpower, and as I exited the bathroom, I looked into the mirror once more. The boogeyman was there again, and it turned toward me, hands still at its side, staring at me.

I tore ass from the bathroom as fast as I could, even earned a few stern looks from teachers who thought I shouldn’t be running in the halls. I didn’t care, though. I wanted rid myself of the creature; however, as I would later learn, you can’t run away from your fate.

When I arrived at my Science class, I slipped through the door as the bell rang. I threw my book bag at the foot of my seat and slumped into the cold chair.

Lilly, the gorgeous and smart as hell Lilly with blonde hair and who had emerald eyes I swear to God glowed with a magical phosphoresce, sat in front of me. She turned around in her seat and said, “That was close.”

“You have no idea.” I said, keeping my eye on the door.

“You okay?”

“Hmm?”

“Are you okay? You seem a bit, I
dunno
, off.”

“I guess.” I said, and I wanted to tell her but I couldn’t. I knew she would never believe me.

“Alright, class, time to get started.” Mrs. Winters said, and walked to the whiteboard. “Today we’re going to learn about the human reproductive system.”

I listened to a few of the boys clumped in the back of the room snigger at what the teacher said. I, however, nearly lost my lunch. Not because of the subject, but because of what I saw in the reflection of the picture frame holding the teacher’s credentials. The boogeyman followed me. It was in the room with me. With us.

I shot up from my seat and everyone turned toward me. My hands and arms shook violently, and the teacher said, “Is there a problem?”

“N—no, Mrs. Winters.”

“Good, then sit back down, please.”

As I started to sit down, I watched the boogeyman move within the refection. It crossed the back of the room unlike anything I’d ever seen. It seemed to skip and jump, but not as though it was teleporting, it was as if it moved so fast you could just barely detect its movement. When it stopped, I could finally see it in person, standing next to Mrs. Winters.

“Now class, the human reproductive system is a complex,” she began to say, but before she could finish, the boogeyman jumped into her.

“No!” I screamed, and stood upright from my half-sitting position.

A few of my classmate giggled at me, but if they could’ve seen what I saw, they wouldn’t have laughed just then.

The teacher turned away from the whiteboard and picked up the long wooden pointer she often used during her lectures. Mrs. Winters walked toward me with a slack jaw and lifeless eyes, navigating between the desks until she stood right in front of me. She raised the long pointer like a dagger as Lilly jumped up from her seat. The woman, without hesitation, brought it down at me, but I ducked. The point of it stabbed the kid who sat behind me, piecing his neck.

As the boy choked to death on his own blood, I grabbed Lilly’s hand and rushed out of the room.

“Oh my God! Why did she do that?” She screamed at me, but I didn’t answer her. We needed to get away first, but even if I wanted to, I couldn’t have given her a good answer anyway.

As we reached the front of the school, I watched two male teachers move in front of the doors. Their legs spread shoulder-wide, ready for anyone that might try to escape, perhaps ready to keep
me
from escaping. I immediately turned and ushered her into a nearby empty room.

I locked the door and dragged a desk in front of it. Unfortunately, I didn’t realize until too late that the door opened out toward the hallway instead of toward the room.

“Tell me. What’s going on?”

“I don’t know. Something… I guess some kind of monster possessed Mrs. Winters.”

“What?” Lilly said. “Quit being a creep. What really happened?”

“Lilly! You saw what happened back there.” I said, pointing at the wall. “She just killed Rolf. Put her cue or pointer or whatever through his fucking neck!”

Lilly seemed to turn inward as if it was only now finally hitting her. I took her hand into mine, and she was trembling just as bad.

“What are we going to do?”

“Fight. It’s the only thing we can do.”

“But I…” She said, and though the moment wasn’t even remotely romantic, I interrupted her with a kiss. It was mostly for my own sake, to calm my nerves, give me reassurance that there was something worth fighting for, and it was Lilly. The intense emotion swelled from that single small kiss, and gave me the rush that I needed to fight hard to keep her alive.

As my luck would have it, my fervor to protect her didn’t last long. Just after I locked us in that room, a creature appeared in the reflection of the window. Not a second later, Lilly tried to kill me.

I fought her off as best I could without hurting her, and I got out of the room as fast as possible. Back in the hallway, teachers, students, and anyone else I once knew
were now possessed
by the boogeymen. They were everywhere, determined to kill me.

I left school that day, and never returned. Out in the world, reflective surfaces carried with them boogeymen that could hunt me down through anyone and anything. Eventually, I holed myself up in a condemned house that had
absolutely no
reflective surfaces. Anything I saw that reflected even the dullest bit of light I covered with black matte paint.

“Here I sit, writing this because I know that I will not last long. The boogeymen have finally found me, the one human that managed to escape them. I hear them clawing at the door, nails breaking against the splintered wood. Soon the door will fall and I’ll be dead. For anyone who finds this, please find a way to stop the boogeymen. There is no hope for me, but perhaps you will be able to stop them from killing anyone else.
You
are humanity’s only hope.” Hank read aloud.

Hank held the bloody letter pinched between his index and thumb. The police had arrested three men for breaking into the house, killing the young vagrant squatting there, and rummaging through his belongings. They claimed they had no memory of what happened, but Hank had been part of the Newport Police Department cleaning crew for so long that he believe people to be nothing but evil.

He stuffed the letter into the trash bag, and looked at the bloody mess where the man’s skull
had been crushed
into a fine pulp. He grumbled, knowing he had a busy day ahead of him.

Sometimes They Escape

 

 

 

 

I lumber through the door of my house, barely able to stand on either leg for any length of time. I look down at my legs, and my jeans are shredded and bloody. My shoulder still burns, but the gash stopped bleeding at some point. I lick my tender and cracked lips and wince as the wound on my forehead gives me a sudden and random sting of pain. I’m a mess, but at least I escaped that wretched place.

I hear the faint sound of two men talking bitterly at each other coming from the living room. One of them sounds familiar, the voice strong and commanding, and the other is a bit more unknown to me, yet somehow it’s also familiar. However, neither of them sound like
him
, and I am almost positive he is in my house somewhere. I didn’t expect there to be two other men, but after what I'd been through, nothing will stop me.

I shuffle through the foyer, the smell of stale cigarettes and old beer is strong and disgusting, but not worse than the sulfuric stench of the depraved prison in which I once took involuntary residence. That dark place reminds me of the loose tooth in my mouth, and so I tongue it, suck some of the blood from the root, and spit it onto the floor. Long before I had been where no man should ever go, I would've thought that splotch on the ground as nothing more than simply blood and saliva, but now it looks like a winged demon dripping with the lost ignorance of innocence and empowered by humanities most wicked nightmares.

In the kitchen, the smell is much worse, a mixture of the vices of man and the bite of rotten vegetables and meat. Plates with half-eaten bloody pieces of meat are stacked everywhere, and the bowl of fresh fruits and vegetables I once kept on the pale wooden dinner table is now full with a black and fuzzy pile of death.

As I pass the fridge, I stop. I continue to stare at the floor, but from the corner of my eye, I see the white paper hanging from the refrigerator door. In my tattered memories, I envision the crayon drawing of three figures holding hands: my wife, my son, and of course me. The sun has a brilliant smile as it hangs dutifully in the corner of the page above a purple house with HOME written on the door. My young son is the brilliant artist of the family.
Was
the artist of the
family.

I leave the kitchen as a renewed rage builds inside me, and enter the adjacent room. The television flickers in the corner with bad reception, and the man’s voice I previously recognized is actually The Duke talking at people in the original True Grit. In front of the television, sitting on my couch and wearing my clothes, is
him
.

I approach the imposter, the dark and wicked clone with the same name as me. He must have heard me, because he stands and turns around. He appears as I do, except without a broken body.

He says, "How did you get out of there?"

I don’t want to answer him. I feel that if I don’t, however, then I am certainly acknowledging some kind of superiority he has over me. My dysfunctional rationality bears evidence to my flawed humanity, and I reply in a cold, course voice ruined by cinder and ash.

"You should've known you couldn't keep me there."

"I banished you to Purgatory. You took my place there." He says as he backs away from me.

"You took everything from me." I growl and then cough blood onto the floor.

"You think you can just come back here?" He tells me with a trembling voice. "You can't come back. You're breaking the rules."

I cough a dark laugh. "You broke them when you sent me to Hell! When you took my place among humans!"

He backs against the wall next to the television, leans down, and picks up a food-encrusted knife from a pile of filthy dishes. I lunge at him, wrap my hands around his neck, and squeeze.

"Stop." He pleads thinly from his wicked lips, but I do not relent.

With the steak knife, he stabs me several times in my ribs, and I feel the blade sinking deep, which penetrated my lung. I cough hard as I feel the bone in his throat pop and cave. He drops the knife, and it clatters against the oak floor as he begins to choke for air. I tightened my grip. Eventually, his eyes flutter and he falls limp.

We both drop to the floor, and my breathing becomes shallow and quick. With one lung collapsed and the other barely working, I don’t have much time left. I feel my body tighten with gooseflesh as whorls of darkness burn in and out of my vision, but I am not afraid. I know that my revenge comes with a price, but that fee is not a penalty because I am not going back to that dark place where demons call from the darkness and where soldiers of horror rip flesh from the bones of evil souls. No, I am going to a much better place, hopefully one where I might find my wife and son. One where I might finally find peace.