<<transcript intercepted @ 15:35 on 12/05/12>>
<<process_DCRYPT active in memory.>>
"[Heavily garbled plaintext] only possible with great difficulty. Here is a transcript of what I could get from the victim. She was severely shaken when I talked to her and it took a good deal of coercion before she would even tell me this much. It is my sincere hope she's in safer hands now, and not in HIS hands. - E"
<<opening attachment: NOTALONE.TXT>>
I am not alone.
My eyelids snapped open
like mousetraps as my irises slowly adjusted to the darkness of my bedroom.
Something felt… wrong. Something in the shadowy, night-cloaked room had woken
me from sleep, something that felt very much like watching eyes and the sense
of another person standing in the room with me, despite the fact that I lived
alone. Nobody could possibly be awake at this hour of night; it was nearly 2:00
AM. But despite how I tried to rationalize the sensation, my very first
thought, the very first thing that struck my groggy mind’s recollection, was
that one simple, nervous little phrase.
I am not alone.
The next thing I noticed
was the paralysis. The gripping numbness that held my body in a stranglehold,
the feeling of gravity holding my frame to the bed. Even though I felt all my
limbs just fine, my body wouldn’t move no matter how much I desired to. I lay
on my side, curled up in a fetal position underneath my plush duvet and
shielded from the blackness around me by blankets. Vaguely, I remembered how as
a little girl, I thought hiding beneath my covers would spare me from the
bogeyman. How foolish of me. I didn’t feel safe at all now, despite being sunk
deeply into the warmth of my bed. An almost nervous dread held me in thrall,
and I didn’t even understand why as my eyes flicked anxiously around the room,
gradually adjusting to the dark.
Slowly, the night
resolved itself before me, and I could finally see the cause of my paranoia.
There was a shadow, a
figure, standing in the corner of my room, just by my bedroom door. A tall
shadow far, far darker than the rest, seeming to exude an unnatural coldness. I
could feel its chill from across the room, piercing my bed sheets, ensconcing
me in a soft mist of ice. Hell, just looking
at that absurdly stretched shadow sent literal cold chills of fear down my
spine, but I didn’t understand why.
It had a… a presence to it, this
shadow – a terribly menacing and dangerous aura, as if it were alive… and under
the gaze I was sure it had locked onto me, I felt uncomfortably observed and
painfully exposed. Unsafe. I felt unsafe.
The shadow began to
sharpen further as my eye’s camera lens returned to focus, and the figure began
to take a definite form before my eyes. A tall and rail-thin frame. Long,
slender, branch-like arms, their length inhuman. Hands, with broad palms and
elongated, skeletal, white fingers. A pale and emaciated-looking head… and
little else. No mouth, no eyes, just blank and awful nothingness.
A nothingness that was staring right at me, scrutinizing with a
clearly sinister intent.
The crippling dread
struck me at the same time as the realization did. It was him. I knew, I’d read
enough stories and seen enough videos. There was no possible way I could have
mistaken him for anything else. It was him, and he had finally found me. Unable
to move, unable to escape, I quickly averted my gaze. I didn’t want to see him
edge any closer, slowly approaching my bed, coming to scoop me up and do God
only knew what to me…
Don’t look at him don’t look
at him don’t look…
The unearthly, awful
chill that filled the room suddenly and rapidly dropped below freezing,
overtaking the warmth of my sheets, and I shuddered from cold dread. The
darkness of the room now seemed to hang as thick as abyssal pitch, obscuring
everything from my view, except for him. Never him…
I could feel him watching
me intently, eyeless gaze running me through with daggers as he reached a rangy
arm across the room towards me. He didn’t need to leave the corner of the room
to attack me. He was already fully aware that I was awake, paralyzed by dread,
exactly where he wanted me. And he wanted
me to look at him, to see him in full, to tremble in my paralysis as I slowly
realized that there was no escaping from him. He had me perfectly trapped; he
was guarding my only way out, the bedroom door. I had absolutely nowhere to run
or hide from him, even if I could have moved. And oh, God, how I begged my body to move, to run, to do
absolutely anything at all besides
just lie there! But it didn’t listen,
it wouldn’t listen, because he didn’t
let it listen. He wouldn’t even allow
me to so much as curl deeper beneath the covers of my bed, such was his silent
control over me…
His abnormal, spidery
hand hovered just above my head, the deadly chill air thrumming around it like
angry bees. His awful, searing gaze never left my trembling form and never
stopped cutting through me, deep into my inner self, carving into my soul…
Oh God. Oh my God, he’s going to take me. He’s going to kill me…
Long, freezing fingertips
brushed through my wavy hair and down my pallid face, spreading a numbing cold
through me wherever they touched. The dread… oh God, the pure and crushing
dread was so bad I wanted to cry. But
I couldn’t even so much as scream,
because he didn’t want me to. I was
entranced by the fear, half-awake and half-aware. I would surely lose my mind
if I couldn’t run away, this had to be a terrible nightmare; it couldn’t
possibly be real!
But his message, conveyed
to me through that one simple, brief gesture, was all too blatantly clear to
me, too clear for me to ignore.
I am real, it told me. And you are never alone…
My cell phone blared its
cheerful ringtone, snapping me out of my awful stupor and illuminating the
darkness with an eerie green-blue light. I yelped, my nervous eyes searching
the corners as I sat up, seeking my nightmarish visitor, trying to confirm my
fears…
Nothing. I saw nothing
standing in the corner of my bedroom but my clothesbasket, resting by my
bedroom door as always. No besuited stalkers, no eerily cold chill, no
blacker-than-midnight shadows, absolutely nothing at all.
“A-all a nightmare,” I
murmured, curling up nervously in the warmth of my bed once more. “Just a
nightmare… he isn’t real…”
Outside my bedroom
window, the branches of a tree gently scraped and tapped against the glass.
Impossible. I don’t have
any trees in my front yard; I haven’t since I was five years old…
<<end transcript.>>
