Chapter Text
I was lying awake in my bed. My eyelids felt like they were being forced shut by whatever it was that kept haunting my dreams, but I refused to let it win by falling asleep. I knew I had to sleep eventually. That’s why I was intending to solve this case as soon as possible. When I had checked the footage from the night before, I found it hadn’t caught the incident in the bathroom. Instead of clear footage of my discovery, I looked back on the camera to find an hour of static. I intended to get up early the next day, around 3:30 in the morning, so I could go to that stupid damn house. I hated that house more than I’ve ever hated anything and I knew that if I kept going back, it could kill me. But if I couldn’t sleep until I found the truth, ignoring it would kill me as well.
My alarm went off. 3:30 a.m. It was going to be rough considering I was running solely off of rest and not sleep. Actually, I could hardly call it rest either. However, I would persevere.
I dressed in dark clothes, hoping that I could blend in enough with the night to survive. Inside the pocket of my hoodie was my phone and a slip of paper with my name and information on it for the police when they inevitably found my body. I didn’t want to take the camera. Whatever presence was here didn’t want me recording it so it was no use trying to bring it along.
I stared up at the house in front of me. It looked the same as it had every time that I had visited before, but something was different. The presence felt stronger than ever now, as if a pair of arms were coming out of the door and pulling me inside.
I looked again at the house, searching for… actually I didn’t know what I was searching for. I wasn’t a detective, it wasn’t my job to figure out what happened here. I don’t know why I was expecting some sort of sign sent from God to appear somewhere.
I made it up to the second floor, still not having found anything substantial. I didn’t want to go back to the master bedroom, I had seen enough in there. My eyes roamed around the hallway until they stopped at the door of a secondary bedroom. The door was open just a hair. It wasn’t like that last time.
I slowly pushed the door open. What I saw on the other side should have shocked me, but after everything I had seen it truly didn’t. I saw a body lying on the bed. He was wearing a white jacket stained with blood and black jeans that were badly ripped. His dark hair covered his entire face. He wasn’t dead, that I could tell. His chest was rising and falling at an unusual pattern. It seemed like he was badly hurt.
Whoever he was, he was probably here for the same reason I was. Either way, I wasn’t going to let him stay there in his condition. It seemed like the main source of the bleeding was his arm, since the sleeve of his jacket was heavily stained. I took his arm out of the jacket, noticing just how pale he was. His arm was slender and covered in scars, but there was a large gash right below his shoulder. I took a pillow off the bed and used the pillow case as a bandage, wrapping it around his arm tightly, hoping the pressure would be enough to stop the bleeding.
As I was trying to adjust the makeshift bandage on his arm, I felt a firm grip on my shoulder, just like in my dream. I swear I saw my life flash before my eyes as I turned around to see the man grabbing onto me firmly. He slowly got up from the bed, his hair falling away from his face. His eyes were wide open, staring at me intensely. His skin was sickly pale and leathery with burn marks on one side of his face but the worst part was his mouth. It was cut open into a large, bloody smile. This was the kid who had been burned and went on to kill his family, I was sure of it. Yet for some reason, I could only utter out, “Who… a- are you?”
When he looked into my eyes something seemed to click in his head, as if he realized something. I remember what the witness had told me before: don’t be afraid. I straightened up and tried to ease up my shaking. It worked for a few seconds before I started shaking again. “Please… Please don’t hurt me.” I said shakily, trying not to cry.
“I’m not going to kill you.” He replied in a raspy, somewhat weak voice. “If I was going to, I would have done it when you were screwing around in the woods. You should consider yourself lucky.”
Somehow, oddly enough, that eases me up. “You’re… you’re the boy who lived here and…”
He laughed. “I didn’t have much of a choice,” he said in a half joking manner, like he thought his crimes were funny and was proud of himself at the same time.
“Why are you here? What are you doing?”
His face returned serious for a moment in a way that seemed unusual, like he was debating in his head whether or not to keep joking around or to seriously talk to me. In a decision that probably felt like he was betraying himself, he settled on the latter. “Look, I’m here for the same reason as you. I kept passing out and having these… visions. They led me to you. That’s why I won’t kill you… yet.” He said, the humor returning to his eyes.
I chose to ignore the last part, hoping he was just joking. “Your neighbor told me all about you. He said you hurt him and his friends and killed your family. I’m not exactly ready to trust you.”
Something inside him clicked, his eyes filled with rage and he stood up off of the bed. His fist flew into the wall, leaving a dent. Well, at least now I knew he was prone to getting angry rather quickly. “That bastard! Why the hell is he still lying about that!?”
Now things were starting to get interesting, and I found myself wanting to hear more. “What did he lie about?”
He sighed. “I can’t tell you just yet. Let’s go back to your dorm so I can get cleaned up first.”
It was a little rude for him to invite himself over like that, but I was honestly too scared to say no to him. He was silent the entire walk back to my dorm, and I walked alongside him with my bike. When we reached the dorm, he headed into the hallway bathroom to clean up while I sat on my bed wondering what the hell just happened.