Chapter Text
“Unknown killer terrorizes local boy
Multiple accounts of a local serial killer have been attained by police thanks to a brave survivor. An anonymous local elementary school student came face to face with his attacker and now shares his story with us.
The boy states, ‘I was having a really bad dream and when I woke up I saw my window was open. I shut it and tried to fall back asleep but I kept hearing noises in my room and I felt really scared. I got out of bed and checked my closet and there was a man inside who jumped out at me. I got scared and screamed really loud.’
Luckily, the boy’s cries of terror altered his father who came to his room armed with a knife to defend his family. The killer managed to get away, but not without first stabbing a knife into the father’s shoulder. He is currently in the hospital being treated. Doctors expect a quick and easy recovery.
The survivors were able to give police a description of what the attacker looked like. The boy’s father states, ‘He was the freakiest looking guy I’ve ever seen. His skin was this pale white color, which creeped me out at first but once I saw his face, I felt this… insurmountable terror. His eyes were wide open and his skin had these burn marks. But the worst part was his mouth. I couldn’t see much in the dark, but I could just barely make out this long, bloody smile. It was way wider than any normal person could open their mouth.’
Police are diligently continuing their search for the killer, but until then, residents should be sure to keep all doors and windows locked until further notice and avoid leaving the house alone late into the night.”
I stared in shock at the article, as a sense of intrigue built up within me. That morning I had overheard a few classmates talking about a killer on the loose in town, but what I hadn’t known then was that this person, if they really exist, has been attacking this place for a long time now. I had just moved here for college and my peaceful school life was starting to change into a rumor-filled hellfest.
-.-.-
The raindrops fell on the window of the small cafe on my college campus, the sound of thunder booming deep enough to make my heart feel like it was vibrating. Days like this were always my favorite. My last few classes of the day had been cancelled due to some other external reasons that weren’t specified, however I wasn’t going to complain about that.
I put on my headphones and turned my music up all the way, walking the entire way back to my dorm with Insane Clown Posse blasting in my ears. By the time I reached my dorm, my clothes were soaking wet. Water dripped off of my body and hair, falling onto the floor in small puddles. The hardest part of my day would be figuring out what the hell I was going to do for the rest of the afternoon. I could watch a movie or two but frankly I was tired of that. I enjoyed horror movies more than anything, but lately they were boring me halfway to death.
The more I thought about it, everything lately felt unnecessarily tedious, more so than it had previously. Being a college student, I was broke enough as it is. I wasn’t ready to go shopping or go out to eat.
I plopped down on my bed, gazing at the polaroid photos I had hung up on my wall. They were supposed to remind me of home while I was off at college, but it dawned on me that I really hadn’t paid much attention to them. I stopped to cringe at the photo of myself in middle school that I took at a party. At the time, it seemed like my passageway into adulthood. I remembered pretending to be drunk off of the Kool-Aid they were serving and having my friends help me around. I glanced over at the photo of my old tarantula. I had always loved spiders and I begged my mom nonstop to let me get one for my birthday and she had miraculously agreed. Then my eye was caught by the selfie of me and my old high school friends exploring the abandoned train tracks in the woods during a school field trip. An idea slowly started to form itself inside of my head. If I really needed something to do, I could combine my love for abandoned buildings with my passion for horror movies by creating my own horror series. I had seen a few people do that before on YouTube, but I had never seriously considered doing it until now.
I flung open the door leading to my dorm’s small closet, coughing at the dust that flew out. I had never properly cleaned since I moved in. I never planned to since it was just used for storage. I dug around through the box of miscellaneous items that my mom insisted I took with me for college. She had claimed that they would help me “remember the good times in life whenever I was stressed out” but really she just didn’t want them cluttering up our attic. After all, I barely used these things when I lived at home either. After a few minutes of fumbling around, I managed to find an old video camera that I had gotten for my birthday when I was a kid. I had begged my parents to get it for me but, as most young children do, I never used it as much as I insisted I would.
I was sure it would be fully out of power by now but by some odd miracle, it wasn’t. Maybe the universe was trying to tell me that I just found my new passion and that nothing would get in my way from this point on.
I still heard it storming outside so I grabbed my old green hoodie and threw it on. I placed my camera in my messenger bag along with a bottle of water and a bag of chips and I set out for the small forest behind my campus. When I exited the gates of the school, I remembered what my classmates had been talking about. I truly hadn’t believed them. Most towns located by the woods have legends of monsters and psychos hiding inside them after all. I checked my watch. It was still early in the afternoon, so I figured I could easily be done filming in the woods before dark.
I walked deeper in the woods, the leaves crunching beneath my feet as I listened to the sound of the rain filtering through the sea of leaves overhead. Now that I was actually in the woods, my fears melted away completely. I continued along the vaguely outlined path in the ground probably made from previous explorers until I came across a brick structure. It looked like a small building was being built here until it was abandoned.
There really wasn’t much of it, just a corner and a fraction of a wall. Even then, I wasn’t looking to go too much deeper into the woods on a stormy day, so I had to make do with this. I quickly encountered a major issue: I had no idea what I was doing. I should have probably written up some sort of storyline for this series before coming out here. I always had a habit of rushing into things without planning properly out of pure excitement.
After some consideration, I decided it would be best to scope out the woods a little more. Today didn’t have to be about filming, and besides, it would be best to know the setting that I have to work with before making a plan. I didn’t want to go deeper into the woods since I was already at the point where I could just barely make out the campus behind me. I took a left, my path remaining parallel to the wall of the school. There really wasn’t too much along the path. At least that was until I tripped on something and fell to the ground. I saw something poking out of the dirt that had gotten caught under my foot. It was probably a good idea to toss it aside so no one else could trip on it. Not that there were a lot of people out here anyway, but it felt like the right thing to do. I dug around the object’s perimeter until I was able to pull a large bone out of the ground. It probably belonged to an animal in the woods and it looked really cool. I placed it in my bag and kept walking, figuring I could use it as a prop later on.
The sky started to darken a lot quicker than I thought it would. As I was about to turn back around, I spotted a small bathroom off in the distance. It had an abandoned look to it that could be perfect for a scene in the series. I had to climb uphill to get to it, but that wasn’t too big of a deal for me. The bathroom had a bad smell to it, like there was a sewage issue that never got resolved. Going inside, the smell got stronger. I looked around the small space for anything interesting, but found nothing, which I could only assume was pretty par for the course of a bathroom in the woods. The sky was rapidly changing from dark blue to black, the full moon casting an ominous glow on the surrounding area. It was past time to call it a night, so I headed all the way back to my dorm.
Hanging my jacket up on the coat rack, I wiped off my muddy Converse on the door mat and flicked the lights switch. Much to my chagrin, the lights didn’t come on. The hall lights were perfectly fine but for some reason the backup power didn’t extend to my dorm. But I wasn’t complaining since I was lucky enough to get an entire dorm to myself because we had an odd number of students living on campus. I wasn’t really that hungry, so I skipped dinner for the night and changed into my pajamas, slipping under my covers and drifting off to the sound of rain and thunder.