A Demon Named Angel

Part 1

It would have been so much easier just to keep telling myself the worst parts of my past were all in my head, and assure myself it wasn’t healthy for me to think too much about it.

What took place in this story occurred a long time ago, and until recently, it was something I pushed back to the deepest, darkest part of my mind. I attempted to convince myself, almost, that it didn’t really happen at all, that all the chaos in my life and the psychological issues I was dealing with merged together into a horrible messed up delusion I used to process everything. I almost succeeded. So many years went by and I managed to put it behind me. That was, until recently. Something happened a few weeks ago. It brought it all back, like it happened yesterday.

This is something I haven’t discussed in a very long time, not to anyone else who was involved, even the few people who knew what was going on. To my knowledge, they haven’t told anyone about this, either.

I can’t blame them. It’s not something which is easy to talk about.

The last I heard, they’re still trying to put their lives, their sanity back together, like I had to. It was worse, for them, worse even than it was for me.

It all started seven years ago. I was seventeen, I was with my adopted family, and we had just moved to our new house. It’s a long story about how we got here, and I’m sure I’m going to have to explain some of it later, but for now it’s sufficient to know that I really liked our new home. It was big, very old, it had history, and it looked totally beautiful. The house was surrounded by tall, old looking oak trees which dappled the house in shade. It had a gothic, Victorian look, with large, open windows, styled edges and spired roofs. It was the perfect place for curling up in a windowed room to write my poetry, or bringing friends over for sleepovers, or a party. I felt like it fit my personality perfectly.

I was kind of half hoping this house would be haunted. I was one of those gothic emo girls back then. I spent a good part of my time reading Stephen King novels, reciting poetry from the likes of Edgar Allan Poe, and idly browsing the internet for interesting urban legends and crimes. I didn’t necessarily expect the place to be haunted; it wasn’t like I had any personal paranormal encounters before in my life to lead me to even believe in ghosts, but the house did have a long history, spanning back over the course of at least one and a half centuries. So it seemed like the exact sort of place that might be haunted, if hauntings were possible.

I kept an eye out for any evidence to support this theory. The first few weeks of my stay at the new house were about as normal as they could possibly be. Sure the house could be a little eerie at times, but always devoid of any sign of a supernatural presence. It was, in fact, so disappointingly ordinary, I practically gave up on my hopes entirely after my first two weeks of staying there.

But that all changed when I found the doll. It was hidden away in the attic at the top of the house, lying inside an undisturbed closet in the far, gloomy recesses of the room, appearing like it had been sitting there for years. It actually freaked me a bit the first time I saw it. It was a porcelain doll, tall enough to reach my knees while standing. It had clear, piercing blue eyes and thick, blonde hair. Its face was flawless and crystalline. I could have easily imagined it standing in a store, brand new.

It was a special doll model, with a little key that could be turned around in the back to make the doll play music, and a small locket embedded into its chest where a stamp-sized picture could be placed. It was the kind of doll I knew they didn’t make anymore, an antique of the past, something special.

The doll was an amazing find. I had no idea who had left it there; I couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to part with something as precious and expensive as it.

From the moment I saw it, it was mine. I took it to my room, showed it off to my parents and the rest of my family, and later to all of my friends, (who were suitably impressed). I left it sitting next to me on my bed each night. I took regular care of it, treated it as one of my most prized possessions.

You have to understand, I became very attached to this doll. It wasn’t just how beautiful it was, or the fact that it felt like it contained the long and mysterious history of the house. The doll had a more personal value to me, too.

I actually used to own a doll when I was much younger that looked identical to the one I discovered. Like, completely identical. So much so I felt the need to check the little locket on the doll’s chest and felt almost disappointed when I found it to be empty; absent from the photo a small part of me half hoped to find.

I got the doll – the old doll – on my ninth birthday. The last time I acknowledged birthdays were supposed to mean something.

My mom (my biological mom, not my adopted one) gave it to me as a birthday gift. I still remember those moments where I opened up the present and pulled the doll out of its packaging. My mom kneeled down before me as I clutched the doll in my hands, staring at it in wonder. She showed me the little locket on its chest and the miniature picture which was inside of me, her, and my dad at a picnic, locked in a pose laughing together.

‘This is a reminder of my love for you,’ my mom had said, catching my small face and holding my eyes in hers. ‘Every time you hold onto her, I want you to remember what you mean to me. What you will always mean to me.’

‘Mean to us,’ my dad corrected from behind her, smiling down at me.

I nodded quickly. ‘I promise, mommy,’ I said, and I hugged her and my dad tightly.

That was one of the last happy moments we ever shared together; me and my old mom and dad. And so, of course, this doll really did mean a lot to me, symbolically. It was a precious reminder of a life long lost.

In retrospect, I understand my attachment to the doll really developed from something less healthy. I believe it was more of a result of all the things after that memory. The doll was a way of me trying to preserve the false image of who my mom used to be, before everything in my life fell apart. But that comes from the power of hindsight and perspective; and seven full years of it.  Anyway, I was pissed when one day a few weeks after discovering the doll, it disappeared.

I figured out almost immediately what happened to it. It was my sister, Kayla. It wouldn’t have been the first time she had taken something of mine.

That suspicion was confirmed the same afternoon I lost it. I caught her taking a few pictures of the doll on her phone with a big smirk on her face in the living room. She didn’t even react when she saw me standing watching her.

‘Give it back,’ I snapped.

‘Make me,’ she said, with a grin.

I tried to grab it from her, but she danced away, laughing.

‘Seriously, cut it out, Kayla,’ I cried.

‘This is so freaky,’ she replied, holding it up. ‘It suits you. It must be kind of sad to know this is the only friend you’ll ever make, huh?’

‘I don’t want to fight with you,’ I said cuttingly. ‘Just give it back, alright?’

She acted like she was considering it for a moment, then shook her head. ‘Nah, I don’t think so. I’m having way too much fun. You don’t mind sharing the doll with me, right?’

‘Jesus, you’re such a bitch,’ I spat, almost unable to help myself.

Despite what I said, we did end up getting into a fight over the doll. I knocked the phone out of her hand. In response, she threw the doll onto the ground and stomped on it. We were close to fist fighting by the time our parents came into the room and stopped us.

My parents, in turn, were more sympathetic of Kayla. They said I was being crazy and overreacting.

Of course I told them what Kayla said to me and they responded by basically saying she was right, and I should find some real friends.

I probably should have expected the way Kayla acted. She hates me, but that was partly my fault – I wasn’t always the nicest to her either; we shared a somewhat tumultuous history. But the way my parents reacted really hurt. I at least expected them to defend me from the nasty things Kayla said.

I left the room mad, not even bothering to take the doll back from Kayla. I eventually came back to look for it but by that time, it had disappeared and I figured that Kayla probably threw it out somewhere. I suspected it was gone for good.

Then, one day about a week later, Kayla marched up to my room with the doll clutched in her hands. She tossed it at my feet.

‘You can have your freaky doll back,’ she snapped. ‘You know, it wasn’t funny leaving it on my bed like that. What kind of sick freak are you, sneaking into my room while I’m sleeping?’ I opened my mouth to tell her that I definitely did not sneak into her room and leave the doll anywhere, but she cut me off.

‘If you do that again, I’m going to tell our parents. I’ll make sure you get into a lot of shit for this.’ Her voice was unsteady, betraying a hint of very real discomfort.

She gave me a final warning look, then spun around and marched away.

Kayla was angry, sure, but I couldn’t help but think that this wasn’t what angry Kayla usually looked like. One glance at her expression suggested to me she had seen something that had truly unsettled her.

I knew none of my other siblings were about to sneak into Kayla’s room and hide the doll there, which left me with absolutely no idea who did it. Although all I could think of at the time was how I wished I was the one who came up with the idea. The look on her face was priceless.

Another somewhat unsettling thing was when I noticed the doll didn’t look damaged. When Kayla had thrown it onto the ground during our fight, I was sure I saw part of its face completely shatter. I saw the pieces of porcelain lying on the floor. I was convinced its features would be ruined permanently. But when Kayla gave it back to me, the face was perfect and untouched, with absolutely no evidence of any damage.

That was the first indication that the house I lived in might be, just might really be haunted. There were, actually, a few other things that led me to further suspect a supernatural presence inhabiting the house, which occurred subsequently to me discovering the doll. First, I noticed I could hear the sound of a heartbeat when I went far enough into the large basement underneath the house, faint but always just audible if I listened hard enough.

I tried to find the source of the heartbeat. It was loudest if I was standing at the furthest end of the basement, which left me with nowhere else to look, because from there, it sounded as if it was coming through the walls themselves.

Also, more than once, I could have sworn I saw the doll in a different location or position from where I left it. Further, one time I was completely positive I saw it stumbling awkwardly between rooms, although when I ran to look more closely I found it lying on my bed, completely still, with no indication of having moved at all.

I was also sure that the expression on its face changed once or twice, from a sweet smile to something closer to a leering look. They were, for the most part, subtle changes, ones that drove me a bit mad trying to be certain if they were real or in my head.

There were a couple times where the music the doll played started going on by itself. The tune it played would sound a little different every time, like the melody had changed or gone out of tune slightly. Again, the change in tune was a subtle thing, and it could have easily been my imagination, but all together, these events had me intrigued, and excited.

So I started investigating further. First, I decided to try a seance with one of my friends to attempt to communicate with the spirit I suspected might be inhabiting the doll.

Nothing much came of that. The doll was stubbornly inactive in the presence of my friend and showed absolutely no indications of paranormal activity. At the end of the experience, I looked, and felt, very stupid.

It only seemed to act remotely paranormal when I was alone and there was no one else to witness it. It was almost like the spirit that I believed inhabited this doll – or perhaps the house in general – was deliberately trying to mess with me.

After that, I started looking into the history of the house itself. This is where I actually began making some real progress. I learned there had been a couple of murders that happened in the house before I moved in. When I looked into them more, I came across a story of some guy named David who started a fire in the house while his wife and son were stuck inside. He survived, but his wife and kid didn’t. Apparently he had ongoing alcohol problems. It had escalated to one night where his wife confronted him about it, they got into a fight, and the guy just snapped.

You can guess what I was thinking. The wife and maybe her kid were the ones haunting the house. It seemed plausible. I felt pretty bad thinking that they could be stuck here, possibly cursed to live out an eternity in the house where they were murdered. They deserved better than that. I could only hope maybe they could find the peace they needed to move on sometime – whatever that meant for them.

I found myself attempting to talk to them a few times, not through a seance again – just normally -, trying to say that I was sorry for what happened to them and if they wanted to communicate with me at all, they could. I never got a response, but I felt better for trying.

At the same time, I continued to investigate further.

It was difficult finding out more about David’s murders on the internet. There were only a few brief articles written about it. It never really got too much press. And there wasn’t a whole lot in the way of other sources talking about the events, either. It was almost a bit odd how it slipped under the radar.

Although I couldn’t find too much more about the most recent murders, I did discover something that partially stomped my theory about the house being haunted by David’s wife and child. See, those weren’t the only murders that happened in the house I lived in. I learned they were just the most recent ones. Actually, when I looked back another century or so, there were at least three more families / couples which had moved into the house who’d all come to unpleasant ends.

The earliest was one guy in around 1950 – he was perfectly happy and totally in love before he lived in the house. Within three months of him and his lover moving in, he shot and murdered her after he found out she was cheating on him, and then hanged himself.

A couple years after that, another family moved in. The mother had a psychotic breakdown a year after. She tied up and poisoned her whole family and watched them die, then tried and failed to kill herself too. She ended up in a high security prison. A short while later, the house was, once again, advertised as for sale.

Yet another family moved in. They started having fights with their neighbors. After that, they began exhibiting cult-like behavior. Over time, it got more and more extreme. They stopped talking to other people, rarely left the house, acting fearful and paranoid around everyone else. Apparently they all claimed everyone else in the world had been taken over by demons; or something along those lines.

At some point they all committed mass suicide in the living room of my house. They had become so reclusive no one cared when nothing was heard from them, and their bodies weren’t discovered for weeks.

There were a few other murders I found out about, too, all with similarly disturbing stories. In fact, I struggled to find a single family living at the house whose fate hadn’t at some point turned ugly.

What was most unsettling was that in all cases, these events seemed to happen to perfectly normal people. Some of them had troubled histories, but they were all leading happy, unexceptional lives. They definitely weren’t the kind of people who you would imagine committing any of these terrible crimes or self destructive behaviors.

Following this discovery however, I got stuck. Again. I couldn’t get further insight into any of the murders, either the most recent ones or the murders further back in history. At the end of my research, all I had to go on were some very unsettling patterns of behavior staying at the house seemed to be linked to.

My next major breakthrough occurred when I happened to talk about the murders during a conversation with my neighbour who came over to visit one time. We were discussing how I liked the new house, and I brought up the man who murdered his wife and child while staying there. He told me he had been at home the time these murders took place.

‘I remember the night it all happened very clearly,’ he told me. ‘I overheard David and his wife having an argument. At that point, I was pretty used to their arguments and even though it was particularly loud, I just tried to tune it out. Then I heard some glasses smashing. That made me concerned enough to really pay attention to what was going on. I worried their fight might have gotten physical.’

He pointed toward a window up on the second story of my house, and I glanced up to look through it, the interior of the house half obscured in shadow by curtains.

‘I remember hearing them from up there,’ he told me, looking at me sideways. ‘There was a whole lot of yelling. I couldn’t see much of what was going on because the curtains were closed. I heard David starting to laugh, like a maniac.’ He shuddered visibly. ‘I remember hearing the sounds of the fire starting and the first screams coming from the house a minute or two later. That was when I called the police.’

He continued, ‘Tracy (David’s wife) talked about David with my family all the time. He wasn’t always so violent and bad tempered, she claimed. He had a bad history with alcohol, sure, but he’d stayed clean for nearly two full decades before he and his wife came to stay at the house.’ I was listening eagerly. ‘So what made him change?,’ I asked.

‘Tracy said some pretty traumatizing things happened to him a few years before the murders,’ he explained. ‘I guess that’s what started his downward spiral.’

He frowned. ‘It was kind of weird though. I met David a whole bunch of times. I could see what Tracy was saying, he didn’t seem like such a bad guy. From what I could see, he really didn’t act like the kind of person who would be capable of murder. Sure, he was far from perfect, but he looked like he really loved his wife and he was super kind to the rest of us. Even during the months leading up to the tragedy, I never would have guessed what was really going on with him.’

He shrugged. ‘I guess it shows that people can be capable of anything, right?’ ‘I’m sure it must have been a shock,’ I said, nodding and trying to reassure him. ‘You couldn’t have expected it.’

We continued talking for a while. It was a few minutes later when my neighbor brought up something else which caught my attention.

‘You want to hear something even weirder? ,’ he asked. ‘Tracy told my parents there was this room David kept going into. He would spend hours in it. She didn’t know why, or what he was doing there, but every time he came out, he was in a dark mood.’

That piqued my interest. ‘Really?’ I asked, leaned forward.

‘He would be fine, then go into that room, and come out almost a different person’, he explained. ‘It was like that room did something to him. She actually claimed she could often hear him talking or arguing with someone in there.’

He laughed a little. ‘She said some crazy things, you know. She said he described the room full of furniture, with a bottle of whiskey on a desk beside a large sofa, the room full of old bookshelves. But when she went into the room, it was totally bare and empty. Not a single piece of furniture, nothing. What was even weirder was that he would often come out smelling of alcohol, even though she knew she didn’t have alcohol in the house, and she hadn’t seen him walk into the room with any.’

He spoke more energetically, now. ‘Nothing she would do could stop him from going into that room, either. She even tried locking it and throwing away the key. He always found a way to get back in there. He started spending more and more time in the room in the months leading up to the murders.’

I found myself hanging on to every word as he continued.

‘David also said other strange things, according to her. Claimed there were people in the room with him sometimes, that he could hear a heartbeat through the walls. He also claimed that the room made him do things. Bad things, like drinking lots of alcohol, or starting arguments with people. He talked about it all with the police apparently after he was caught. Of course, they didn’t buy into any of it.’

‘It all sounds crazy, but when you heard it from her, it was almost believable. There’s something unnatural about that house, I swear.’ He gave a little uneasy laugh and then joked, ‘hey, don’t let it screw with your head, too.’

He talked more about what Tracy and David were like before the murders. Not a lot of it interested me, since it wasn’t very relevant to the possible haunting I was investigating, but I listened anyway, hoping he might mention something useful.

Then, near the end of our conversation he brought up one other thing that I remember quite clearly, something perhaps even more unsettling than everything else he told me up to that point.

‘You know when I said I heard David laughing like a maniac? Well, it didn’t sound like David was the one laughing. I only figured it was David because it had to be – the police said they didn’t find any evidence of anyone else in the house. But yeah, I was sure, at the time it was a completely different person. I could have sworn it, I could have sworn someone else was in there with them.’ He chuckled, uncomfortably. ‘You must think I’m crazy, right?’

I had my neighbor describe the room David obsessed over for me and I tried to find it myself later that day. I couldn’t be sure which room he was talking about, but I did recall his reference to the sound of a heartbeat and decided it must be a room near the basement, since I remembered hearing something similar while I was in the basement myself.

Despite my best efforts, I never did find which room the neighbor identified. I didn’t even know if the room was still there; or if it had been burned down in the fire which partially destroyed the house that night David went all crazy.

My neighbour told me David’s been holed up in some nearby mental asylum ever since he confessed to the murders. He doesn’t get many visits.

His explanation convinced me I needed to investigate further. What my neighbor said corroborated with my new theory: there was something influencing people who moved into my house. Maybe not a spirit, maybe something more sinister than that.

I wasn’t sure what the next step in my investigation was, but I was determined to get to the bottom of whatever was causing all the paranormal events. Perhaps there was some initial murder that triggered the haunting, and the subsequent killings.

The more I heard about this mystery, the more personally invested I became into it, and the more convinced I was that I had stumbled across something malevolent, something evil, concealed within the depths of my home.

Part 2

I wonder if discovering the true nature of what lived in my house was the trigger for it to start affecting me the way it did the house’s previous inhabitants. It was then the first signs suggesting the true horror of what I was dealing with began to manifest.

To start with, soon after the talk with my neighbor, I found myself getting more frequent and severe nightmares.

I’ve always had some nightmares, largely as a result of the traumatic experiences I endured before my adopted family found me. At the time, I didn’t understand what made them resurface again; I wondered if it was listening to my neighbor tell his disturbing story of the events the night the house was partially burned down, or else if it was just a side effect of all the stress of moving into the new house.

In some of the nightmares, I was losing control and hurting my family, or being forced to watch as someone else did, paralyzed in place and unable to help them.

More frequently, the nightmares involved the doll, and related to scenes and memories from my past, which I would call highly traumatic. The doll would always be there to observe me reliving them. I could hear it laughing, telling me I deserved everything bad that happened. It tried to convince me I was actually living through those experiences again. Sometimes it succeeded. One particularly terrifying recurring nightmare started with me getting into trouble. My parents would yell at me, telling me I was worthless, they didn’t love me, literally screaming into my face until I completely broke down. After that, the doll, which would usually be watching from a rocking chair nearby, began to grow and change, morphing into a faceless man who grabbed me and dragged me, kicking and screaming, to a coffin inside the basement of my house. I was always utterly helpless to fight against him.

The man shoved me inside and shut and locked the coffin door, leaving me lying trapped in the enclosed space.

I would be stuck inside the darkness of the coffin for what felt like hours, banging on the door as hard as I could and begging to be let out, as I felt the coffin slowly close in around me, forcing me into a tighter and tighter space until I was sure I was going to suffocate. My voice was drowned out by the sound of the doll’s music playing from where it lay beside me, as I screamed until I had no air left to breathe.

More than once I woke up from one of these nightmares screaming uncontrollably.

I remember the first time I really started to be scared of the doll. It was one day at school. I opened my locker during lunch break and the doll fell out onto the floor.

I shrieked loudly, jumping back, losing my balance, and nearly falling against a group of people passing by. A few students snickered my way and stopped to stare as I scrambled to my feet, glaring hard at it.

I knew I hadn’t taken the doll to school. I hadn’t taken the doll out of my room at all since Kayla had stolen it.

But that wasn’t the reason I yelled so loudly when the doll fell out.

I screamed because it was moving. The doll was wriggling around, its arms and legs twisting and contorting. It looked like it was trying to catch hold of and climb up my leg. Its face appeared half human, a mix of real, wrinkled skin and porcelain, twisted into an ugly grimace. It had turned to watch me, its mouth opening and gaping unnaturally wide.

Then I blinked, and the doll was back to normal, lying still and lifeless on the ground, and I was left feeling like a lunatic for screaming and pointing at it in front of everyone.

I experienced a few similar incidents at home. The doll wasn’t just moving around anymore when I wasn’t looking, it was like it was stalking me, making me see things – trying to drive me crazy.

This, combined with my repetitive nightmares, made me rethink my connection to the doll and wonder whether I really wanted to keep it after all. For the first time, I fully acknowledged all the memories it forced back into my life, and how unhealthy my attachment was to it.

I decided to leave it where I found it; inside the closet in the corner of the attic. I wasn’t ready to get rid of it, not with how essential it was to my continuing investigation into the prospective haunting, but I no longer wanted it anywhere near me.

When I got back home from school the same day I moved it, the doll was sitting on my bed where I usually left it. I had to fight the urge to cry when I saw that. I started to wonder if I had moved the doll at all. A voice in my head suggested maybe I imagined that, too. About a week and a half later, I got into another argument with my sister. A bad one.

I can’t recall for sure what started it. I felt tired and frayed, and like my bad dreams were starting to bleed steadily into reality. I think it was my sister claiming something about me using drugs again that took me over the edge. I started yelling at her, and we broke into a heated argument. She picked up the doll. I don’t know how the doll had gotten into the room but I had become accustomed to it appearing and disappearing randomly on a semi-regular basis.

‘You’ve been obsessed with this thing for weeks now. I’ve caught you talking to it. And I’m not the only one, either. Mom and dad have seen it too,’ she yelled.

‘You just love making up lies about me, don’t you?’I shot back.

‘I saw you, Ashley. Just like I saw you trying to steal my stuff. You acted the exact same way when you were using drugs. I should know!’

I knew I hadn’t done any of the things she was talking about. I knew she was just trying to piss me off. It was working, too.

‘Why don’t you just be honest?’ I demanded. ‘You don’t want me here. That’s what this is about, isn’t it? You hate me, you’ve always had!’

‘You’re right,’ she spat, throwing the doll down again for emphasis. ‘Mom and dad only adopted you because they felt sorry for you. We’d all be way better off if you stayed in that foster care home. Maybe the people there could have stopped you from turning into a freak!’

That was too much for me. Her words sparked a blinding flash of hot anger. The fury washed over my mind, taking hold, almost surprising me with its intensity. I didn’t try to stop it or control it.

I hit her. I hit her as hard as I could. Hard enough to send her stumbling backwards, to cause her to cry out in surprise and pain.

A few seconds of silence followed my actions, as time froze in place.

My sister looked slowly up at me with a look of pure disbelief in her expression. Neither of us could quite comprehend what I’d just done.

She straightened up, one hand still pressed over her face. I could see her crying as she started to back away from me.

The rage dimmed and faded, leaving me feeling shocked and stunned. I called out to Kayla instinctively. She broke out into a run as she left the room.

I stood there for a while, after she left. I felt sick at what I just did. I despised myself for it. What kind of person was I to be capable of physically hitting my family?

At some point later, my parents came home and started yelling at me. I endured it. There wasn’t anything they could say that was worse than what I was already thinking about myself.

When my parents finally went away to take Kayla to see a doctor, I ran upstairs and locked myself in my room. I sat on the floor against my bed and put my head in my hands.

Kayla was right. It would have been better if I never became a part of this family, I thought.

I imagined myself doing it again, hurting them. What would stop me? I expected it would only get easier the next time I lost control and felt the urge to hurt someone.

My thoughts led me into a downward spiral of self hate and depression. This voice in my head kept telling me what an awful person I was. I just hit my own sister, it said. You didn’t get more evil than that.

I lifted my head. My attention drifted to the doll, which was staring at me with it’s familiar smile from across the room.

I went over, my anger returning. I was sick of it. I was sick of looking at it, and constantly being reminded of all the bad things it represented. Further, in my frayed state of mind, I was convinced it was somehow aware of all the pain it had brought into my life and it was enjoying watching me suffer.

I picked it up and threw it at the wall. I heard a cracking sound as it hit the wall and fell to the floor. I ran over to it and slammed it against the ground several more times until the porcelain was cracked and the doll’s arms and legs were twisted at awkward angles. Every time I hit it, it seemed like the doll was leering a little bit more at me from what remained of its ruined face.

I hit it until my anger was spent, and then fell back against my bed again, exhausted.

And just like that, the doll was sitting back on my pillows in front of me, looking completely serene and untouched. Its glassy eyes stared back at me, an obvious smirk on its face.

I rubbed my eyes, as if I could make the sight in front of me less unbelievable. It didn’t.

My hands shook. I picked up a pair of sharp scissors from my makeup desk. I raised them over my head and dug them down into the dolls chest, ripping and tearing at its body.

There was absolutely no way for me to expect what happened next.

When the scissors sank down into the doll’s chest it felt like they were being driven into something soft and yielding. Dark red fluid started to bubble and pool around the place where the scissors protruded from.

I felt sick. I started to scream. The doll moved, one hand going to it’s chest as if it were trying to pull the scissors out, the other waving around wildly, all the while as it stared up at me, grinning its hideous grin. Something which looked a lot like blood was running down my hands and onto the floor.

I pulled the scissors out and stabbed the doll again, twice. The second time the thick, dark blood fountained up, spraying onto my face and momentarily blinding me. I wiped my eyes frantically, feeling sick as I pulled my hand back and stared at the oily liquid coating it.

My attention flicked back down to the doll still clutched in my grip. Inside the doll’s chest, I could see humanlike organs, including a small, beating heart which with every rhythmic thump forced a fresh wave of gore spurting over me.

And then suddenly it wasn’t the doll in my hands, it was my sister, Kayla, staring up at me with a stricken look on her face and the scissors sticking out of a series of huge, bloody gashes on her chest. The sight practically gave me a heart attack. I immediately let go of her and she fell limply to the ground, her hands still reaching out to me and her lips moving soundlessly. I screamed again and covered my eyes.

I could barely look at her. At it, at whatever it was. I kept peeking and waiting for her body to go away, hoping and praying I was seeing things, but feeling increasingly terrified I wasn’t.

By the time I heard my parents and Kayla come home, the body was gone, and the doll was sitting back on the bed, its arms lying on on either side of it, its face locked in a serene smile, its glassy eyes staring silently back at me. It was still perfect and untouched. There was no blood on my shirt or on the floor, either, only a discarded pair of spotless scissors. It was like nothing had happened, like it had all been in my head.

Whatever else the experience meant, it proved to me the doll wasn’t going to let me escape from it so easily. I went back a few days later and tried to apologize to Kayla. I attempted to explain to her that I had acted in a flash of anger. I was stupid, and I hadn’t been thinking about what I was doing. ‘Yeah, right,’ she said. ‘I guess that’s the excuse for why you’re always treating me like crap, huh? You’re not thinking clearly.’ She laughed humorlessly.

Despite myself, I felt frustration bubbling up in me again. ‘Kayla’, I said, ‘You’ve stolen my stuff, you’ve lied about me, you’re constantly trying to embarrass and make fun of me. And you’ve never even tried to apologize for any of it.’

‘And what, you haven’t done worse?’, she demanded. ‘I got my bad side all from you! Nothing I’ve done to you even compares to the way you’ve treated me. I still remember when you used to break my toys when I offered to play with you. And when you would refuse to speak to me for weeks after I didn’t do something you wanted. I remember when you yelled and screamed horrible things at me whenever you got upset about anything!’

‘That was years ago,’ I protested. ‘I was a different person back then.’

‘Yeah, really?’, she snapped. ‘It sure doesn’t look like you’ve changed much.’ She raised her hand and pointed at the bruise on her face, an ugly reminder of our recent fight.

I tried to reach out to her. ‘I’m sorry, okay? I know I used to be hard to deal with. I guess maybe I haven’t changed as much as I thought, too. It may not feel like it, but I’m really trying to be better  – ’ ‘Too little, and too late,’ Kayla responded. ‘Look, I don’t care, anyway. You don’t need to waste your time pretending to give a crap about me. Just stay away from me, okay? It’ll be easier for both of us that way.’

I didn’t know how to respond. My own sister didn’t want me anywhere near her. The worst part was, the expression on her face was more scared than angry. I was all the more convinced of what an awful sister I must have been to make her look at me like that.

With everything else going wrong in my life, I dedicated more of my attention to continuing my investigation. It became just as much about an obsession with proving I wasn’t crazy as it was to prove the house was haunted. I needed to show that this wasn’t all in my head.

The only real lead I had to go on was David. After a little more asking around, I managed to find the mental asylum he’d stayed at since the murders happened.

My neighbor said David initially told the police that he was innocent. No one believed him, but I hoped maybe I could get an explanation out of him. The laughing my neighbor said he heard indicated someone, or perhaps something, visited David the night of the murders. The theory, as crazy as it was, led me to hope if I talked to David, I might get more insight into what was haunting the house – what I now suspected was haunting me.

Of course it wasn’t likely there was any way I was going to be able to talk to David directly, considering where he was. I did try. I contacted the asylum and made up some story about being a relative who wanted to speak to him. The person I was on the phone with said David refused to talk to most people and it was highly unlikely he would say anything to me, but she did mention one man who came in to visit him from time to time, and I managed to get his name and number from her.

His name was Patrick. I called his number immediately after. I made up another lie and told him I was a journalist and I wanted to write an article about the murders and all the people who had gone crazy while living in the house. I was keen to hear David’s side of the story, in particular, the part which led to him being taken to an asylum to begin with.

Initially I was hoping he might find me an opportunity to talk to David himself; even if it was as simple as a phone call between us. When I asked, He said it wasn’t likely David would be willing to say anything to me but David told him everything he thought happened the night of the murders – before he confessed. I asked whether he would be willing to talk to me himself and discuss David’s story.

Patrick seemed somewhat hesitant – and skeptical, but I must have been persuasive enough for him, because I managed to get him to meet me at a nearby coffee shop to talk. I wasn’t entirely sure how to dress like a journalist. I ended up borrowing some of my mom’s business clothes and using those, since I couldn’t find anything suitable enough in my wardrobe to wear. I was a convincing actor when I needed to be, so I thought I could probably fool him if I put my mind to it, and I already had a story prepared if he asked. I even went as far as to take the time to set up a simple website and asked a friend to answer a fake business number, if he requested further proof of my legitimacy.

Patrick arrived a little late, looking around self consciously before taking a seat opposite me. I started the conversation by asking a couple of questions about David I already knew the answers to, to get the both of us comfortable. After that, I veered the discussion to what David claimed happened the night the house burned down.

He sighed. For a long moment, he stared down at the table before looking up at me again. ‘Look, I’ll tell you what I can, but you have to understand, it sounds crazy. Even to me. There’s a reason why no one believed him, why he ended up in an asylum. I do think there could be some truth to some of his story, because -’ he hesitated ‘I was there when it all started.’

He added, ‘for any of this to make sense I’m going to have to explain some things about David’s past. It ties in closely with any explanation I offer you.’

I nodded, and he continued. ‘There was a man who inserted himself into David’s life around five years ago. Called himself Angel. He worked in marketing for some big company and made quite a lot of money. He was a charming, charismatic, and likable enough man. Perhaps a little too likable, but no one was going to complain about that. He helped David get out of a very difficult situation with his business after his main product range lost popularity to competitors. He rescued David’s business from risk of bankruptcy. His actions weren’t driven purely by generosity; he profited off the venture too, but Angel definitely did go out of his way to help David’s business through a hard time. From outward appearances when I met him, Angel seemed like an all round good guy. The side he chose to show to the rest of us was nearly impossible not to like.’

‘Terry, a good friend of David’s, tried to warn David about Angel. Though I don’t think it’s possible to blame anyone for not believing him, his warning was at least a red flag, since there was no reason for him to lie to us about him.

He said some really crazy stuff. Said Angel was some kind of demon or something, that he had finally ‘gotten rid of him, but now the demon was going to destroy his life, too.’ Whatever the hell that meant. We thought he was insane, of course, but as it turned out, unfortunately, that wasn’t entirely true.’

When it came down to it, David defended Angel – we all did. His charms influenced every one of us close to him. Terry ended up alienating himself and turning David against him, and after a while, he stopped talking to Terry entirely.

A hint of regret entered his voice. ‘Angel took a liking to David’s sister Franny very soon after meeting her. He quickly started getting close to her and her daughter, Bella. She had a daughter from a previous marriage, see. In the space of a few months, Franny, Angel and Franny’s daughter became like a small family of their own. Within five months Franny and Angel were engaged. It was so fast. Too fast. A second red flag, no doubt.’

He ran a hand through his hair. ‘The whole time I remember thinking there was something off putting about how Angel acted around them. Like it was fake, somehow. But like the other warning signs, I incorrectly dismissed it. I refused to believe it could mean anything. I just couldn’t see Angel as capable of being evil.’

I, of course, had no idea what any of this had to do with David’s murders. When I asked him about it, he responded briefly, ‘don’t worry, we’ll get to that soon enough.’

Following this, he continued on with David’s story: ‘Over the next few months, everyone started to notice some changes in Bella. She had always struggled with issues; bipolar, anxiety, and a range of illnesses, but up until then, she’d shown incredible strength managing to stay on top of them. But after Angel got married to Franny, she slowly changed. She got more quiet. She didn’t talk to her friends as much. She spent a lot of time with Angel, who showed the same concern everyone else did. He took her to see a new psychiatrist. It didn’t help. In fact, Bella got worse. She started eating less, missed days at school, and was sick all the time. She went on medication, then went to the hospital. No one was able to help her. Bella became almost completely shut off from the outside world.’

‘Things kept steadily going downhill with her, despite everyone reaching out to try to help. Within six months of Franny’s marriage to Angel, Bella committed suicide.’

‘That hit both David and Franny very hard. Franny was devastated. Angel acted equally horrified.

No one understood what had made Bella do it. There were a thousand theories as to what caused her downward spiral. None of them seemed to fully add up.’

He paused to take a sip of water.

‘Angel promised Franny he would get to the bottom of what caused her to take her own life. He took charge to find a proper explanation.’

‘It was a mystery for the first few weeks. Until one day when Franny went to visit Bella’s room looking for closure. She searched the room for a while, going through Bella’s things. She eventually stumbled across her diary. She hoped it might provide some clues to what caused her downward spiral. And it did. She discovered a number of very disturbing entries written over the course of four or so months.’

‘In them, Bella described Angel abusing her. She hadn’t said anything because Angel promised her he would kill everyone she cared about if she tried to. Bella wrote she believed him because she knew she wasn’t human, and he was capable of terrible things. She wrote that Angel would take her into a basement and there he sometimes transformed into something else, something from right out of her nightmares. She described it as some sort of insect-like creature, far larger than a human, with countless arms and legs. Most of the time he was with her, he remained in his ‘human form’, unless she made him angry enough.

She went through all kinds of hell every single day for hours, including physical torture and sexual abuse, staying silent the whole time out of fear. The journal described all of it. Extensively.’

When she found the diary and read what it said, Franny did a bit of investigating of her own, since Angel wasn’t home and wouldn’t be for a few hours. She found the hidden area of the basement Bella wrote about in her entries, and some of the remains of what appeared to be her clothes inside.

She didn’t believe Angel was a literal monster, but she did believe he was the equivalent of one, after these discoveries.

She went straight to the police and then to talk to David. She spent the whole night at his house crying as she told him everything. It was just the two of them there, because his wife Tracy was out on a work trip.

David spent most of the night with his sister and was nearly as devastated as she was. It was a massive shock to both of them. They discussed it for hours, wondering if they had missed something, anything, that might have hinted to them the kind of person Angel really was and what he was doing to Bella.

‘David went to bed early in the morning after conversing with Franny. He tried to get some sleep. Franny said he would need it to get through the next day. Some time after, Franny called me and talked briefly about her discovery. It was the shock of my life.’ He exhaled. ‘It was also the last I ever heard from her.’

He ran a hand tersely across his forehead, then proceeded to explain that when David woke up, Franny was gone.

‘David quickly got concerned when he called her and received no answer. He phoned the police, and with what she already told them about Angel, a search began for her.

Apparently she had gone outside to have a private call with a relative early in the morning. The relative reported her cutting off abruptly during the middle of their conversation and hanging up.’‘The police had already tried to contact Angel, but they couldn’t find any sign of him. Like, he had gone. Quit his job, gotten rid of his phone, stopped talking to all of his friends. Completely vanished.

David did whatever he could to help the police look for Franny. He went a bit beyond that, too, doing his own private investigating. He talked to everyone who knew Angel, looked through what remained of his things at his apartment. He struggled to find more than traces of evidence of the monster hiding behind Angel’s perfect facade.

Despite his best efforts, he could find absolutely nothing about where Angel might have taken Franny; he wasn’t even sure if she was still alive. Though as it turned out, he wouldn’t have to wait for very long to find out.

A few days after Franny went missing, Angel sent David a private message telling him to go to a particular location where he claimed he was keeping her. The message said that if David didn’t come alone, Franny would be killed.

David agreed immediately. The location wasn’t too far. It was an abandoned warehouse nearby.  When he was close to getting there, David tipped off the police. Of course, they told him to wait for them and stay out of the warehouse, but David wouldn’t listen.

He went inside alone, as Angel had requested. Angel let him into the warehouse. David said he looked totally nonchalant and greeted David like there was absolutely nothing wrong about the situation. He guided him to a small room deep within.

The room was dark and barely lit. It was somewhat bare, except for a tray of surgical equipment – visibly used surgical equipment, and a mattress with straps attached to it. The room was splattered with blood and… Other fluids. The way he described everything, the detail which he described it in, you could tell just from hearing it this part was all very real.

Franny was there, curled up against a wall. David called out to her. She didn’t respond. David said she looked horrible, wearing nothing but rags. She was frighteningly emaciated.

After seeing the scene before him and its obvious implications, David grabbed Angel by the throat, attacking him with a vengeance. Angel knocked him down with little effort and nonchalantly pulled out a gun on him. He did it all with almost complete detachment. He didn’t even seem to mind that David tried to attack him.

Left helpless at Angel’s mercy, David pleaded with Angel, asking him what he had to gain by hurting him and his family.

As he waved the gun around and talked, Angel said he always wanted to destroy a family. He insisted he was just doing it for fun. He made it clear he didn’t have some complex hidden motive for David to figure out. It was as simple as that he didn’t care; and he enjoyed it. David said he kept trying to look for some sign of humanity inside Angel. He found nothing. No shred of remorse or emotion at all. Angel was utterly cheerful and nonchalant, acting the same way he would if they were chatting at a bar over some beers, as they often used to do.

David knew the police were coming, so he thought all he had to do was stall until they found him. Angel started taunting him, asking if he would rather see Angel slowly kill his sister or whether he would prefer to take the gun and do it himself, fast. David played along and suffered through Angel’s abuse as best he could.

Then Angel said he knew David had called the police. And just like that, he turned and shot Franny. When David tried to help her this guy just casually turned the gun on David and shot him too. Then he shot Franny again, and started laughing. He told David he actually would have spared her if he had obeyed him and come alone.

Minutes later, the police arrived, Angel was gone, and Franny was dead from blood loss, despite David’s best efforts to help her. Apparently David had been more lucky because his gunshot wound wasn’t nearly as fatal as the ones Franny suffered. David said later he suspected that was intentional.

‘This whole thing traumatized David a lot. He and Franny survived so much together. They endured a whole abusive childhood with only each other to rely on, so they had been much closer than even most regular siblings. Losing her, on top of his niece like that, it really hurt him. It was worse that he had been unable to protect them, and he blamed himself for their deaths. That was what I thought ultimately turned him back to alcoholism later.

David said what Angel did never really left him. Angel had completely disappeared after that. Police tried and failed to track him, or find any clues to his whereabouts. David always claimed he had never really gone though, and he expected he was going to come back one day and finish what he started.’

‘It wasn’t long after he and his wife moved into the new home – (my home). Apparently David met up with Terry again and apologized to him for not believing him about Angel, and Terry offered to sell them the house as an opportunity for a fresh start. Tracy and him agreed, hoping it would help them distance themselves from David’s experiences.’

At this point, Patrick described David’s mental state during the first few months of moving into the house. It was here I brought up the room my neighbor had mentioned David became obsessed with.

‘Yeah, David started visiting the room soon after they moved in,’ Patrick said. ‘The room was a product of his worsening delusions, a manifestation of his symptoms. He said something about the room not belonging to the rest of the house. It appeared, to him, like a disturbing replica of the room in his father’s house he and his sister were frequently abused in.’

‘There was a reason he kept going back into that room. He said the voices made him. Sometimes, he heard Franny’s voice. Sometimes he said if he listened hard enough, he was convinced he would be able to figure out where to ‘find her’. He knew she wasn’t happy, or at peace; instead she was somewhere full of fear and pain and darkness. He said he thought he saw her in such a place sometimes. He also claimed to have relived the final moments before her death in the room countless times. Later he became convinced she was there because she was punishing him for failing to save her and her daughter from Angel’s cruelty and then leaving her to suffer in such an awful place.

Of course, after a time, it was the alcohol that drew him back into the room, that and the sense of worthlessness and self hatred the voices from the room he claimed to hear instilled in him. Every time he came into the room, he said there was a half filled whiskey glass on the desk. It reappeared in front of him when he tried smashing or getting rid of it. Before long he was drinking from it instead. No matter how much he drank the whiskey glass was always full after he put it down.

‘A perpetually refilling whiskey glass.’ Patrick shook his head. ‘It was like the most laughable excuse for an addiction I ever heard. But it was how David said his alcoholism returned, after nearly two decades of staying completely sober.’

It almost became like a ritualistic punishment to go in there, to remind himself of how he failed to save his sister and his niece, or to simply catch Angel and bring justice for the things he did. ’

Patrick met my eyes. ‘I suppose you have to be wondering what the hell what I told you about Angel has to do with the fire, and the murders. What all of this adds up to.’

‘It did cross my mind,’ I admitted.

Patrick proceeded to explain David’s account of what happened that night, which David told him and a few others, including the police, before he confessed to his guilt.

‘Tracy was planning on leaving with David’s child, since his alcoholism had gotten worse, and he became violent with her on more than one occasion. She was afraid he might hurt their kid if she didn’t do something.

Somehow, David found out about it. He says the voices in the room told him. I suspect he overheard one of her conversations over the phone with the relative she was planning on staying with, or something close to that.’

‘When David came out of the room, he emptied the contents of a couple bottles of whiskey over the floor of the hallway and through each of the rooms upstairs. When Tracy came out of the bathroom and asked what hell he was doing, he confronted her about her plans. They got into a fight. A really bad fight, possibly the worst one they ever had. David came very close to starting that fire. He had a lighter in one hand at one point, he was poised to throw it. But Tracy told him she never believed he would do it.

And according to him, David didn’t. He couldn’t throw a match on the floor, couldn’t bring himself to start that fire. He put the lighter down carefully, calming down and really realizing what he was about to do. Shortly after this he broke down completely, telling Tracy about the room, and how it had been driving him crazy, how he thought there was something alive in there that found pleasure in tormenting him. They went back to the bedroom together and talked for a long while. David agreed to get help, and go to rehab, as long as Tracy agreed not to take their kid away from him. David said he felt like a big weight had been lifted off his shoulders when he finally opened up to her. It wasn’t so much her believing him – or at least believing what he thought he experienced – as him no longer being alone to face the demons he was struggling with, real or imagined.’

I asked him who had killed David’s wife and child if David claimed he was innocent.

‘Well, David says it was Angel who did it, Patrick told me. ‘This is where his story gets even more crazy. He says Angel walked out of the wall, kind of emerging from it, his skin rippling and tightening on his face as he did. This took place just as Tracy was about to make a call about getting David help for his alcohol problems.

He seemed very disappointed. Said something about David having ‘outlived his value, without living up to his potential.’

Angel was closer to Tracy, and he hit her right in front of David, hard enough to knock her out. Then he turned back to look at David, almost as if curious to how he would react.

David didn’t hesitate. For the second time, he attacked Angel, smashing the whiskey glass against his face. They got into a fight. It didn’t last long. David said he could hurt Angel, but he didn’t show any sign of feeling pain. Not when David dug his fingers deep into one of Angel’s eyes, or when he was sure he broke three of Angel’s fingers. Pretty quickly, Angel managed to get a knife out with his uninjured hand and stabbed David with it. That ended the fight, Angel knocking David back onto the floor.

David refused to give up, yelling at him, saying he wouldn’t let Angel hurt his family. Angel started laughing uncontrollably, maniacally, like he just heard the funniest thing in the world.  Then David said he just kind of raised his hands, and the fire lit up around him, rapidly spreading around the house yet barely touching Angel’s body. The fire was unnatural in its intensity, and seemed to spread only where Angel wanted it to.

Tracy was caught in the middle of it. She came to as she began to burn, screaming. David tried to help her, but Angel grabbed him with one hand and dragged him back, making him watch as the flames engulfed his wife while he heard his child shrieking in fear from downstairs. David said he would have dived into those flames and burned with them if it meant he had the slightest chance of saving either one of his loved ones, but he couldn’t break free from Angel’s grip, not weakened as he already was. He said by the time the flames started to die, Angel was gone, and there was nothing but silence. Tracy was little more than a charred corpse, and the house was in ruins. He was still dragging himself through the burned up house on his hands and knees, looking for his son, when the police arrived.

That was the end of Patrick’s story. He discussed how David initially tried to prove his innocence but then gave up. Angel left the knife he attacked David with upstairs. There were no fingerprints on the knife except for David’s. David claimed Angel must have put the knife into his hand at some point while he was holding him, as the fire burned, and that was how his fingerprints were found on it. The police suspected he stabbed himself to try and make it falsely look like someone else had been involved.

David claimed Angel visited him in the hospital sometimes, taking on the guise of a nurse. It was Angel who convinced him to confess, according to him. It seemed like even more proof David was crazy in Patrick’s mind.

No one believed David, yet he did demonstrate himself to be criminally insane, so he was sentenced to spend the remainder of his life inside a mental hospital instead of a prison.

Patrick asked if I believed David was innocent. I thought for a moment, then said I didn’t. He nodded like that was the response he expected.

‘I want to believe he didn’t do it,’ Patrick said. ‘I really do. But I think it’s more likely all that trauma from his past got to him, and combined with the alcohol use to cause a seriously bad episode of psychosis. I’ve thought about it over and over again and I just don’t see any way his story holds up.’

That was about as much as Patrick could tell me. I thanked him for his time and promised I would be in touch.

I left him not knowing what I was going to do next. Yes, I suspected I might really not be crazy. The alternative: I wasn’t, instead I faced something which was intent on driving me insane. The thought I could prove my house was haunted actually frightened me. It raised the question; what kind of thing was haunting it, and now me?

Part 3

On my ninth birthday, a few hours after my parents gave me the first doll as a present, they were involved in a car crash. A bad one. My biological mom survived, however, my dad didn’t.

I often replay the moments right after the crash happened. The events remain crystal clear in my mind to this day.

Following the massive shock of the impact of the crash, I was frozen up in place in the car seat. I felt stunned and confused, watching silently as my mom tried to shake my dad’s arm. My dad was physically crushed against the front seat by part of a section of the car. A mess of metal and plastic pinned him and partially obscured him from view. The sound of a car alarm filled the air, almost deafening, but I could still hear my mom screaming under it as she yelled at dad to wake up.

I didn’t fully understand what was going on. I just knew something bad happened, and I felt like it was my fault.

My mom wouldn’t let go of my dad even when the paramedics arrived, even when they told her there was nothing they could do for him.

My mom was never the same after the day of the accident. She didn’t talk to me nearly as much. I suspect, looking back, that she harbored resentment toward me for what happened.

The thing was, I had been talking to my dad, just before the crash, trying to get his attention. And literally moments before the crash happened I clearly remember how he turned back in his seat to say something. So I don’t know, maybe it was partly my fault. It was a long time before I stopped believing that, despite how many times I’ve been assured otherwise over subsequent years.

My mom explained to me she said she needed some time to process her grief. My dad had been her whole life, and now he was gone. For a few months, she was always crying and breaking down. She was constantly a mess, and only occasionally went out, even to get groceries.

I was convinced she’d get better. I thought we could go back to some kind of normal, if I gave her enough time. I did everything I could to try and help. I took on responsibilities, I gave her space, I did my best to cheer her up and comfort her. I attempted whatever nine year old me was capable of.

But she didn’t recover from her grief. If anything, her grief seemed to increasingly take control of her.

She started drinking. A lot. Fairly soon, it turned into an addiction. She got fired from her job after she didn’t return to work when her compassionate leave ran out.

Drinking was the first, and far from the last, of the irresponsible behavior my mom picked up to block out her emotions. She began seeing someone else a few months after my dad died. Some guy she met at a bar while flat out drunk. He promised to take care of her, saying a woman as pretty as her deserved to be spoiled.

From what I knew, he worked selling stuff; I wasn’t sure what at the time but I now suspect it was drugs of some kind. He was a very different guy to my dad, and not, it seemed, in a good way. I felt uncomfortable whenever I was around him. My mom didn’t appear to take notice of any of my concerns about him, though.

We moved into his house. She told me she loved him. She promised me things would be different, better, now. I believed her, because for once, she looked genuinely happier.

Things were okay for about the first week. It got lonely at Rob’s house. My mom and Rob would leave me alone for hours at his place every night while they went out to parties or bars together. But I saw my mom was happy again, so I was okay with that.

I started getting bored after a week, and my boredom led to me getting into trouble. Rob would yell at me for moving things, touching things, or going out and playing in the unkept garden outside the house. It didn’t take much to set him off. Whenever he was angry about other things, things I didn’t do, too, he would often take it out on me. I thought he hated me, and I didn’t know why. I did everything I could to try to please him.

The first time he hit me was when I caught him cheating on my mom, kissing some other woman who came over to visit in the living room while my mom was out shopping for him. He promised me if I said anything to my mom a couple bruises would be the least of my concerns.

I tried to tell my mom anyway. She didn’t believe me. She didn’t believe me either when I said I hadn’t broken my arm in an accident like Rob was claiming. Instead she yelled at me for being a liar.

After that, violence from Rob became a regular occurrence. It was in private, at first, but he started to get more bold when it became clear my mom didn’t have an issue with it. Sometimes I would run to my mom looking for protection when Rob was mad at me, only to be pushed away by her. She never did a thing to stop him. She didn’t even act like she cared. I think she was too scared of upsetting him to stand up for me.

Rob wasn’t just physically violent with me, either. He found other ways of punishing me, too. The worst thing he did was when he locked me up. Whenever he found a reason to get

particularly mad at me, he would drag me to a closet in the basement, one so small I could barely move inside it. He went as far as to design a special lock with chains to prevent me from escaping.

It was nearly pitch black in there. I could scream my throat hoarse for hours and no one would care. Often I listened to Rob turn loud music on to drown my screams out.

Inside the room I experienced intermittent and extreme panic attacks. Between them followed subsequent periods where I mentally shut down, sort of blacking out. Whole hours passed in the room which I couldn’t remember after.

One time they left me in the tiny closet for a full day without even realizing.

My entire life became finding ways to try to not get my mom’s boyfriend angry. All I could think and focus on was survival. That doll my mom gave me on my birthday was the only meaningful possession I kept with me besides my clothes. It became my lifeline, but also a constant reminder of everything I hated about my life.

Sometimes, I thought if I stared at the doll’s replica for long enough, I could bring myself back to that scene on my birthday before all this happened and pretend the years that came after my ninth birthday were a dream, pretend my old mom still loved me and my dad was still alive. Instead I would find myself overcome by a torrent of paralysis inducing memories as I relived this part of my life all over again.

The doll reminded me of how much my mom really hated me after the accident. It reminded me of how she never forgave me for my role in the accident that killed the most important person in her life.

The abuse lasted for about a year. Then my mom’s boyfriend finally got sick of her and kicked her out, leaving her drug ridden and a severe alcoholic. She took me with her around as an afterthought. I was the way she pitied people into giving her money to fuel her addictions further.

It was shortly after this my mom overdosed and ended up in a hospital, and I was taken to child services. After that I never saw, or heard from, my mother for a long time, despite my best attempts looking for her.

I stayed for a while in foster care. That was where I was eventually found by my adopted family. Of course, things got better, but I never fully recovered from those experiences. They changed me, permanently. A part of me left that period of my life broken, my innocence stolen away from me and my mind forever twisted, irreparably damaged.

I still look back on the following experiences and shudder. There was a depth of mental suffering and horror I didn’t think possible that I descended to in the weeks following my visit with Patrick. I don’t have anything to compare it to, except perhaps the abuse Rob put me through. Over the course of a short time, I mostly stopped attending school, seeing my friends, and speaking to my family.

The haunting, it was happening to me now, like it had happened to everyone else who lived in the house previously. A part of me understood that, and yet another part of me believed I really was losing my sanity, transforming into the abusive monster I’d always feared turning into my whole life; the kind of person who would leave my own family rotting in the house like one of the previous families who used to live there; a product of all the suffering and abuse I’d ever endured over my life.

The doll was everywhere, an ever-present part of my suffering. I couldn’t get rid of it, and believe me, I tried. It was slowly becoming my one and only obsession to find a way to get that stupid, sick thing out of my life. Over time, my attempts would turn increasingly desperate. I tried everything I could think of. Burning it, burying it, exercising it, dismembering it. However, the doll was immune to any attempt at destruction, either through physical or mystical means. Further, my attempts to get rid of it only made the tormenting worse.

The nightmares persisted. They had gotten more frequent, so much so that I rarely got more than one or two hours of sleep each night. Sometimes I would wake up from a nightmare and find the doll splayed out on top of my body. I would be pinned down, unable to move or speak, left to descend slowly into a mindless, claustrophobic panic, the nightmares literally bleeding into reality. And as I watched, the doll would slowly change, its expression becoming leering and sadistic, its face taking on a humalike appearance as it stared down at me. As I had in the dream which preceded it, I felt like I was slowly suffocating, struggling for every small breath of air. It was like the nightmare never truly ended.

These experiences felt like they lasted for hours.

As a result of this, I started to spend a large part of my time awake and extremely paranoid. It would only take me to look away for a second now and the doll would be gone, and I would go into an obsessive panic looking for it, terrified of what horrible trick the doll might play on me if I lost sight of it.

Then there were the voices in my head. When I first had them, I thought they were a product of my unhealthy state of mind, but over time they became more distinct, almost like something I heard as well as thought.

The voices told me a lot of things. They said I would hurt my family, they suggested I hurt myself before I lost control and hurt others. They told me I was worthless, that I didn’t belong in my family, that my parents secretly despised me.

At first I shut them out, but after a while they began to wear me down, and then I started to believe them. The voices took me to a dark place I hadn’t been in years.

After a while, the voices started asking me to do things. If I didn’t obey, they would threaten to hurt me, or hurt my family, and the voices themselves stepped up their torment further, pushing me to the limits of my sanity.

It was little things they asked for, at first, like distancing myself from my friends and drinking alcohol, or stealing stuff from my parents. Over time however, it got worse.

When these voices asked me to physically hurt someone. I finally refused. I got sick of giving in to it. I stood up to the entity behind the voices, possibly for the first time, and told the voice it wouldn’t force me into doing anything for it anymore.

The same day, a few hours later, Kayla was involved in an accident. A hit and run. She was taken to a hospital with multiple fractured ribs, a broken leg, and internal bleeding. It was late at  night when my parents came up to my room to tell me, still in shock from hearing the news themselves. My room was a mess. I was a mess. I hadn’t showered in days, I had bite marks all over my hands and half healed injuries over my wrists from cutting myself at the voice’s request. I was wearing a long sleeved shirt to cover my arms, but my parents still took note of the rest of my appearance. They knew about many of the things the voices were making me do; how they were causing me to throw my life away, enough to have already thrown all kinds of warnings and threats at me to try and make me pull myself together.

The source of the voices were quick to let me know it was responsible for what happened, or rather, I was, for not obeying it.

I think it – the doll, or whatever animated it – meant to make me feel powerless with this act. Instead, it made me mad. Furious at it for trying to hurt the people I cared about, cause harm to the one thing most important to me, my family.

Anger at it became one of the things that kept me going. I had to find a way to deal with the haunting; if not for myself, then to make sure no one else I cared about was hurt. A part of me could see the parallels between my story and David’s, and I couldn’t let my family end up like his did.

Patrick mentioned someone else trying to warn David about the thing which haunted my house. Someone who had apparently ‘gotten rid of the demon somehow’. I remember him saying that specifically.

If I could find out who they were, I thought maybe they could help me.

I called Patrick back and managed to get the person’s details from him, although Patrick said Terry didn’t willingly talk much about Angel anymore and wasn’t likely to agree to help me, no matter what I said to him.

I called him anyway. I tried to keep up the pretense of a journalist again, giving him a similar line I had given Patrick. Terry sounded like he had a frown in his voice when he answered.

‘Isn’t that a bit of an odd story to dig up after all this time?’

‘David says there’s a murderer still out there,’ I replied. ‘The person who killed his wife and child. You warned him about them, didn’t you? Wouldn’t you want to see them caught?’

He gave an extended exhale. ‘Yes, but that’s not going to happen. He’s long gone, trust me. You’re not about to have any more success finding him then the police did.’

‘You don’t know that,’ I said.

‘I’m sorry, I can’t help you,’ Terry repeated. A hint of finality had entered his voice.

‘I think I might be able to find him,’ I insisted. ‘Look, I need your help, please!’

There was a long pause. The response which eventually came from the other end was decisive. ‘Whoever you are, trust me, you don’t want to get involved in this. Just leave it alone. Really. For your own sake.’

He hung up on me before I could respond. I called him again a few times, then slammed the phone down in frustration.

But I wasn’t about to give up just yet.

Patrick said he gave me Terry’s work number, so I looked it up, figured out the business it belonged to. It was some accounting firm just a few suburbs away. I got the location off their website and traveled there the same day.

It wasn’t hard to find Terry. I asked the receptionist and she directed me up a lift, giving me a slightly strange look that reminded me how I must have appeared. This was the first time I left my house at all in at least a week, and I had only made a brief effort to make myself more presentable.

Terry looked up when he saw me, appearing confused as he turned his gaze from his computer. ‘I need to talk to you,’ I said, without preamble, stopping beside his desk.

‘What can I help you with?,’ he asked, clearly trying to sound polite. It didn’t appear he recognized me from our phone call.

I was about to launch into my pre-thought out professional introduction as a journalist, but I knew just by looking at me, Terry was unlikely to buy into my story.

‘I need to know what happened between you and Angel,’ I said instead.

The frown left his face. His expression turned blank. ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about,’ he answered.

‘Bullshit you don’t’, I snapped. I’m talking about that monster you tried to warn David and Franny about. Remember?’

He didn’t answer.

‘I’ve heard David’s story. You can’t hide the truth from me.’ I placed my palms on the desk in front of him.

‘I believe you must have the wrong person -’ he said, raising his hands.

‘God, I don’t have time for this. Stop playing dumb!’ I yelled, getting frustrated.

He rubbed his temples. ‘Listen,’ he said slowly. ‘I don’t know who you are, but I think you need to leave.’

I noticed a few other people in the office turning their heads toward us. I forced myself to lower my voice. ‘I can’t leave. It’s really important. That thing hasn’t just disappeared.’ I hesitated, allowing a hint of the desperation I felt into my voice. ‘It’s – it’s after me now. Me and my family.’ Terry’s face paled visibly in response to my words. I examined him searchingly, catching something close to guilt hidden beneath the surface of his expression.

‘And because of that, I can not leave here without you telling me,’ I finished insistently.

He gave a sigh, turning his seat away from his computer and looking at me directly for the first time.

‘I thought this would catch up to me,’ he responded, glancing at his hands. He clasped them to each other, intertwining his fingers together.

‘Fine. Look, meet me in an hour and we’ll go somewhere where we can talk, alright?’

I examined him for a long second before nodding hesitantly.

‘I’ll meet you at the entrance to the building,’ he said shortly.

‘You better be there,’ I told him. I meant to sound intimidating, but my words came out as more of a plea.

He inclined his head, returning his gaze to the screen in front of him and pointedly didn’t look at me again.

Part 4

I was almost surprised when I found Terry leaning against the side of the building an hour later. He seemed oddly calm as he took me to a coffee shop and we sat down at one of the tables outside. He ordered something random off the menu, then turned his attention to me.

‘So, what do you want to know?’, he asked.

I blinked. ‘What, just like that? You’re totally willing to talk to me now?’

He looked down, and a shadow passed across his face. ‘I’ve seen enough people affected by this.. Thing, before. The paranoia, the constant fear. You know, I did believe what you said about it targeting you.’

‘You sound like you’re quite familiar with it,’ I commented.

‘I’ve had years of personal experience, unfortunately’ he replied. ‘And before it was tormenting me, it went after my sister. I had plenty of time to learn what the demon was and how it targeted its victims. So I’ll tell you what I know, although I’m not confident it will do much to help you.’

I did my best to put aside his last comment. ‘Okay, fine. So tell me. What else did you learn about it?’ I asked. I could feel trepidation stirring inside of me, and I thought to add, ‘I need to know what kind of monster I’m dealing with.’

He paused, thinking, as if not sure where to begin. ‘Well, it can shapeshift,’ he said, hesitantly. ‘I’m sure you’ve noticed that. I’ve noticed it transforming into all sorts of things.’

His words were an unsettling revelation, although it explained a lot of what I personally experienced. It suggested there wasn’t anything actually haunting the doll – the doll itself was an inanimate form the demon took. The thought I was being forced to sleep next to a literal sadistic, demonic entity every night made me feel physically nauseous. I quietly promised myself to redouble my efforts to get rid of the doll once I was done talking to Terry. I had to find a way, no matter what it took.

Having assured myself of this, I made myself redirect my attention to what Terry was saying. ‘It’s favorite form seems to be Angel, but I think it prefers to take the shape of something that is particularly traumatizing to the person it is currently haunting. For David it became a replica of the room he was abused in by his father.’

I asked what he thought its ‘real’ form was, the question driven by a growing sense of morbid curiosity.

‘I don’t know,’ he replied. ‘I don’t think anyone does. I’m not sure if there really is anything behind all the forms it takes, the masks it wears.’

I asked what else he knew, and in response, Terry listed several other facts about it he had gleaned over the years.

‘It can’t possess people, as far as I know, but it can influence them through feelings, thoughts, and hallucinations. And it has plenty of ways of making people do what it wants. It’s highly sadistic, and it loves causing pain and suffering; as much as it can.’

I rested my chin on my hand and raised my eyebrows. It felt strange to be discussing the things that had been happening to me like they were real, something distinct and outside of my head.

Terry was so open about it, so detached. He didn’t discuss the demon as if it affected him directly.

‘This demon likes to target certain people,’ Terry continued. ‘People who are vulnerable. Those that suffer from mental illness, or maybe someone who has a past history of abuse. My sister had Schizophrenia. Her illness was why I believe it chose to target her.’

Terry proceeded to explain his own personal experiences with the… Demon, as he most frequently referenced it, when I inquired further. He said he watched his sister’s mental health deteriorate steadily over a year before she committed suicide. He, and everyone else close to her had assumed it was a result of her not taking her medication and refusing to seek out any help for her symptoms.

‘It was like she was stuck in some kind of nightmare, and none of us could pull her out of it,’ Terry explained.

A few weeks after she died, Terry and a few other close members of Shana’s family had performed a seance to try and talk to her.

‘Her suicide was so sudden,’ he told me. ‘We never had a chance to reconcile our feelings for her. I was never much the type to believe in the supernatural, but we were grief stricken and would have jumped at even the slightest chance at being able to say something to her again. So when someone suggested we try it, we all went along with the idea.’

The seance worked. But the result of it made him almost wish it hadn’t.

‘Shana spoke to us,’ Terry said. ‘She said she needed to talk quickly because ‘she had gone out of hiding’ to speak to us. She described during the last few months of her life being hunted by a demon that stalked her day and night, wherever she went. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t escape it. She thought it was just a product of her mental illness, at first. She thought she was seeing hallucinations, and so she tried her best to ignore it.

For her, the demon was a thing that stalked her, something she described as pale and tall, faceless with a bloody mouth twisted up into a large, permanent grin. She would see it everywhere. She was most often the only one who could – it only showed itself to others when it desired to. Her hallucinations were accompanied by intense feelings of dread, fear, paranoia, and anxiety. As a result of the feelings evoked from her whenever the demon was nearby, she wasn’t able to treat it as a harmless hallucination brought on by her own mind, even though there was a rational part of her which was still convinced she was only seeing things.

She endured months of this. Over time the demon would appear closer and closer to her. From being in a crowd, to outside her window, then crawling across the top of her room, eventually, close enough to reach out and touch her. She could never rest, or relax. She was constantly paranoid and looking over her shoulder. It made her see things everywhere, slowly turning her mad with fear.

She told us it caused the death of one of her friends, something the rest of us had thought was the tragic result of a kidnapping by a local criminal. She said she caught the monster dragging the half conscious body of her friend away one night. She was too afraid to do anything to stop it. Her only comfort was to try to convince herself it was another hallucination. Then the news came out about her friend going missing. The information left her at a point of near psychosis as she was forced to question what was real and what wasn’t.

The demon continued to play on her sanity until it broke her, driving her to believe her own life wasn’t worth living.

She hoped her eventual suicide would allow her to escape the demon and the lifetime of misery it promised her.

Terry continued, ‘Shana subsequently described to us her experience following her pill overdose. When she woke up after, she initially believed herself to have survived, until she saw she was standing above her own body. When she examined herself more closely, she noticed the froth leaving the corner of her mouth, the stillness of her chest and the bluish gray tint of her skin.

She said soon after she ‘woke up’, the monster came out and started to consume her body, one part of it at a time. She watched for a time out of sick fascination, unable to tear herself away. A few minutes into her observing it turned to her, pinning her down with it’s dead stare. It lithley rose up from the broken, gore matted mess of her body and started coming after her. She didn’t think it could hurt her now, since she was already dead, and so she unthinkingly allowed it to touch her. It was like no pain or suffering she’d ever experienced while alive. It was like she caught a brief glimpse into its twisted mind for a few moments; a mind far distant from anything human.

Death wouldn’t allow her to escape the demon, at least, not fully. So she fled from it, the same way she’d done for so much of her life.

It started up all over again, after that. The demon continued to hunt her like it had done for the last months of her life.

‘She didn’t know what would happen if the demon caught her, but she said she was scared of what it might do to her soul. She thought it would eat it like it ate her body,’ Terry told me. His words were muted as he spoke them, his face devoid of emotion. ‘Fortunately for her though, being dead apparently offered her certain abilities she could make use of to help her evade the demon more effectively.’

‘She said she had learned some things about it in the time since she died. Things were different, in her spirit form. Though it was still hard for her, she wasn’t as helpless to it as she was while she was still alive. If she was careful, she could hide herself from the entity, for a time. She would have gotten as far away from the demon as she could, but she noticed the monster was spending a large part of its time stalking various members of her family, when it wasn’t busy searching for her.

In the form of the same faceless monster which consumed her body, it would get close to them – though they didn’t see it, and sniff them, or lick them, as if they were a meal it was sampling.Shana couldn’t bring herself to leave the demon out of her sights while it was taking an obvious interest in her family. So she followed it, being careful to make sure she kept herself at a safe distance. Around this time was when she first noticed some patterns in the demon’s behavior which drew her interest.

She started telling us about a hidden place the demon frequently visited where she believed it was protecting something important. She called it it’s ‘heart.’ A heart, she thought, was the most suitable name for it because that was what it sounded like to her, whenever she was close enough to it. The demon spent unusual amounts of time in this place; at least once every few days it returned there. It rested around the heart for a couple of hours before returning back to its stalking of people.

She said we needed to destroy it, to save ourselves and to stop the demon. She was convinced destroying the heart would somehow hurt the demon. It was in its favorite lair, she said. I think she was about to tell us where it was.’

He swallowed.’Then she said suddenly, ‘oh god, it’s found me.’ The woman we were holding hands with – the person who Shana was speaking through – she started to shake and twitch. The ouija board nearby we were using began to visibly vibrate. Then the woman uttered a piercing scream. It was like nothing I’d ever heard before. I didn’t just hear the scream but I felt it. It was Shana screaming, somewhere out there in the darkness, but the sound was more animalistic than human, degrading more and more the longer it went on. The scream made me feel like I was staring into the cold void of death itself.’

He shuddered visibly. ‘Shana stopped talking to us after that. There was no sign of her on the ouija board, no more communication through the woman she spoke through. We ended the seance fairly quickly. The woman said she caught a brief glimpse of the demon, during those moments of Shana screaming, and it saw her, too. And it terrified her.’

He looked at me, then. ‘After that the demon started murdering other members of my family. One by one. Beginning with the woman Shana communicated through. Each of them went through similar phases we had seen in Shana before she died. It was always an ‘accident’ or an ‘illness’ that eventually killed them, but enough of us understood the truth. With how small our family was, it wasn’t long before the entity turned its attention to me.’

I stopped him then, to ask, ‘Shana found something important, right? Something you could use to hurt it -’

‘You don’t think I thought of that?’, Terry demanded. ‘After the seance, when Angel came into our lives, and I figured out what he was, I started looking for it. The heart – or whatever Shana had called it. I began paying close attention to Angel; I tried following him around and keeping track of his movements, to see if he would lead me to where it was. It took a while, and a lot of persistence on my part, but eventually, I succeeded. Angel did have one place I caught him frequently visiting, at least once every few days. I followed him a couple times over to a secure storage facility. He spent up to a few hours there at a time.’

‘Once, I watched him taking something inside. Some kind of bloodstained necklace from one of my recently dead relatives. After that, I focused all my attention on finding a way into the storage area. With a lot of dedication and patience – and a few illegal payments, I was eventually successful.’

He let out a defeated sigh. ‘He keeps a collection of mementos of all of his victims. In one box is a dried up, shriveled up piece of meat that looked like it was once a human heart. The heart Shana was talking about. The way Angel held it, acted around it, it did appear very important to him.’

‘So I stole it. I took it home. And I burned it. Guess what? Nothing happened.’ He laughed humorlessly. ‘Angel pretty quickly found out about it, after. He actually seemed… Irritated. Said I ruined his favorite treasure. He promised he would find a way to make me suffer for what I did.’ ‘And that was it?’, I demanded. ‘Maybe you made a mistake. Shana said she could hear the heart, right? What if Angel tricked you, or something, led you to a fake?’

Terry shrugged. ‘Or maybe the demon tricked Shana. It can make people see and hear things, remember? Look, I find it difficult to believe this thing has some weakness just lying around somewhere. And even if you were right, I wouldn’t know where to begin looking. I wouldn’t have the opportunity to try. After Angel found out about my interference, I became preoccupied by… Other things.’ Terry then described to me his subsequent experiences with Angel. Soon after he tried stealing its heart, Angel turned his full attention to him. He became the final target on the demon’s list; the last surviving member of his family it had yet to either kill or break the mind of.

‘Angel was intimately familiar with every one of my darkest fears, and he preyed on all of them, using them against me. I thought I prepared myself to face at least some of what I expected him to put me through. I thought there could be nothing worse than having already lost everyone I cared about. I was wrong, On both counts.’

‘But I’d decided I wouldn’t let the entity beat me. I wouldn’t give it the satisfaction of breaking my mind, as it had done with everyone else in my family. I stood up to it, wherever I could. I did my best to impede and ruin its plans. I tried to warn David and Franny about Angel, when he introduced himself into their lives. I was friends with them at the time, you see. They were some of the last people alive I still cared about.’

‘I believe I must have succeeded in making the demon angry,’ he commented. ‘Because Angel responded to this by switching from mental to physical torture.

First he convinced the remaining people who knew me; including David, his wife, and his sister, that I had turned to depression and drinking. Then he locked me away in my own basement after spiking my food one night.’

‘Each morning he would come in. I watched him tear his own jaw wide open. It hung there from a few strands of bloody sinew as his arms and legs started to twist and contort, breaking and snapping at unnatural angles. Blood vessels popped inside his skin and the skin itself turned purple and gray. His eyes rolled into the back of his head and then he plucked those out, too.’ Terry put his wrist on the table and yanked up his sleeve, drawing my attention to his bare arm. I could see countless lines of mottled scars and crisscrossing lines running up and down all the way from his hand to his shoulder. His arm was hideous, and I gave a little, involuntary gasp as I looked down at it.’

‘Once it was done mutilating itself, the entity would begin its torture on me. It was an expert at its craft. It found new ways to hurt me every day. And Angel was always coming up with creative ideas to make the torture worse.’

He grimaced as he pulled his sleeve back up. ‘The torture went on and on, for what felt like forever,’ he continued. ‘Angel kept me alive, force feeding me through a drip, treating my injuries when he had to, making sure he never did anything too fatal to me. See, I have scars like these all over me. Sometimes the monster would literally remove the skin from whole sections of my body. All of it happened while I was still fully conscious.’

I found it difficult to comprehend the kind of suffering Terry must have gone through. Yet I could see the truth of it in his eyes as he spoke to me, though his words sounded devoid of emotion. It was enough to focus me back on the reason I had come to Terry in the first place, as I struggled to find my voice and compose myself. ‘So what happened? You managed to get rid of Angel. How? I demanded.

Terry looked down at the table. He picked up his coffee and took a long drink from it, draining the whole cup, before setting it down again.

‘Angel offered a deal. A way to get out of the torture. He said he needed someone to find suitable people for him to prey on. He promised he would leave me alone if I discovered enough victims that matched his tastes, one every few months.’

He looked at me. ‘I agreed without hesitation. At that point I would have done anything to get him out of my life. I had been tortured every day for weeks. I didn’t have the strength or the will left to resist. The moment he set me free, I went to work for him.

‘I tell Angel about the kinds of people I think he’ll like, and if I can, I set them up to move into your house. That seemed important to him. I’m not sure why. If the prospective victims don’t have any interest in moving, I give Angel the basics of where to find them instead, and he’ll go visit them himself. I’ve gotten very good and what I do; working for him. I have to be to survive.’ He raised his hands defeatedly. ‘See, I’m still his slave. I never really escaped him. No, I think my fate is worse.’

Terry continued, ‘I thought about suicide, honestly. But then I considered what happened to Shana… Dying’s no escape. Not for me. I’m sure my soul belongs to Angel, even if he promised to leave my body alone.’

I sat there quietly for a long time. I didn’t have a clue what to say.

‘How many people have you done this to?,’ I eventually asked.

‘I don’t count them,’ Terry said, bluntly. ‘I’ve been locating people for him for nearly five years now. But sometimes he can go a long time without requesting a new victim.’

‘You were working for Angel, weren’t you,’ I asked, slowly. ‘When you offered to sell David the house.’

He nodded wordlessly.

Something else occurred to me. ‘And what about me?’, I asked suddenly. ‘Are you responsible for it coming after me, too?’

He didn’t answer immediately, avoiding my eyes.

‘You’re kidding me, right?’

‘There’s a reason Angel offered me this job,’ he replied. ‘I suspect it was because he knew I used to be a private investigator. I possessed skills which were useful to him. I learnt all about what happened to you, all the way back to the day your father died in a car accident. I knew you were the kind of person Angel would like. You were practically perfect for him.’ He laughed. ‘And then I found out your mother was looking for a place to move for her family. It was almost too convenient. I recommended the house to her and made sure your mother got it for a good price. I did my best to make sure she didn’t look in the wrong place and accidentally discover the house’s extensive history of murders.’

I slammed my fist on the table hard enough to make him jump. ‘How the hell could you do that to me?’

He didn’t respond. He didn’t look like he had any idea how to answer my question.

‘Do you even feel any fucking remorse?’, I cried. ‘Do you even care?’

‘I’ve gotten very good at detaching myself from my feelings,’ he replied. ‘I have to be. If I don’t obey him, Ashley, I go back to that same basement and he begins torturing me again.’

‘So what, you decided to condemn a hundred other people to suffer in your place?’

Terry barely looked offended by my accusation. ‘He would have found someone else to work for him if I refused.’

I trembled as I shrank away from him on the chair. ‘Is that what you say to yourself to justify what you’re doing?’

‘Yes,’ Terry replied, simply. ‘Being virtuous won’t help anyone. If I do this, at least I can survive.’

‘You have to help me then,’ I said, my voice cracking. ‘You owe that to me, at least.’‘I can’t,’ Terry said. ‘I told you. I don’t know of any way to fight this thing. Trust me, I’ve tried. Resisting it makes things worse, it always does.’

I felt like screaming in frustration. Why had he even bothered talking to me?  My guess was it was to assuage his own guilty conscience for the unfathomable fate he’d condemned me to.

‘I’m sorry. I really am,’ I heard him saying. For once, he had actually managed to put some emotion into his voice. ‘I wish there was more I could do for you. But I’ve told you everything I know.’

I stood up in a rush. I could feel tears welling up in my eyes. I thought I could hear the voices starting up in my head again, laughing, mocking me.

I struggled to stop myself from crying right there in front of him. He didn’t deserve to live a suffering free life after what he did to me. I didn’t care what the demon put him through, he had absolutely no excuse for his degree of selfishness and cowardice.

I wish I could have believed he was lying. Lying about everything. Yet too much of what he told me made sense. I understood now why the demon took the form of the doll, why the entity had singled me out as a target, why it pinned me down at night, leaving me unable to move and suffocating. I understood what motivated it to want to go after and threaten my family, and make me feel like I was going crazy. It innately knew my deepest, darkest fears, like it knew Terry’s, and it was playing on each of them.

Terry’s words had a ring of truth to them.

Which meant – well, if Terry was right, maybe there really was no hope for me. Perhaps I should take his advice and just give up. It was only a few days later that my parents confronted me about stealing my little sister’s pain medication. She needs it for a somewhat rare condition she developed when she was very young.

I knew I hadn’t taken it, but my parents insisted they saw me stealing it. The argument quickly transformed into a confrontation over the way I had been acting over the past few months. ‘You’re using again, haven’t you?,’ my mom asked me sharply.

I shook my head quickly, utterly horrified by what my mom was implying.

‘You’ve been skipping school, spending weeks locked up in your room. We’ve seen how you behave when you’re on drugs, Ashley. The signs are all there. This is exactly what it looks like.’ They demanded to know where my secret drug stash was. Marched me up to my room, started looking through all my stuff. They found my sister’s pain medication in there and took it as proof that I stole it. Of course, there was no way I could show them I didn’t steal it. The demon had made sure of that. A few hours later I overheard my parents talking in the living room downstairs. I could hear my mom crying.

‘I’m afraid of what she’ll do next,’ she said. ‘That she’ll hurt someone.’

‘She’s already crossed that line,’ my dad answered. ‘When she hit Kayla. Jesus, I don’t know what’s gotten into her.’

‘We can’t keep going on like this,’ my mom said. I heard her coughing. ‘We need to do something.’

There was a short silence. My dad suggested, ‘Maybe we can take her to see someone -’ ‘We already tried that. And it’s not enough’, my mom cut in. ‘Listen, I was thinking maybe we should take Ashley to a… Facility. They can handle her better while she is acting out like this.’ I took a few steps back, shaking my head silently, fighting the urge to go down there and grab her, plead with her to take what she said back.

The next phase of their conversation was like something out of a dream, as my parents discussed various options of sending me away.

‘Just for a time,’ my mom promised. ‘Just so she can get help. I wouldn’t be suggesting it if I thought there were any better alternatives.’

My dad was doubtful. ‘I know she’s been in a bad place recently, but I’m not sure taking her back to a mental institution is the best thing to do if we want to help her.’

‘I can’t handle much more of this,’ my mother answered insistently. ‘Tell me how else we’re going to deal with her. Really. I’m open to any suggestions.’

When he didn’t answer, she added, ‘It’s only for a little while, I promise. Just so she can get the help she needs.’

I felt my throat closing up as I listened to them. They argued a little more about it, but dad’s protests were weak. ‘It doesn’t seem right,’ he told her. My mom reassured him. ‘We’re not talking about doing it right now,’ she promised. ‘We’ll give it some more time and see how things go. But if nothing else changes.. ‘

Her words were the biggest betrayal to me. I had an awful time in the asylum when I was taken to stay at one, at a time when I was much younger, and both my parents knew that. I could hardly come to terms with what they were willing to consider putting me through all over again.

But going back to a mental ward wasn’t my biggest fear. Not after everything I’d already dealt with.

My greatest fear was what that thing would do to me once I got there.

Part 5

I once asked my parents why they decided to adopt me. I was definitely the most unlikable, undesirable child at the foster care home. I was dirty, unsociable, and I frequently screamed at people. I didn’t want to be adopted and I made sure every parent who visited me knew that.

My mom said she picked me because out of all those kids, she could tell I was the one who needed a family the most.

My adopted mom was, in many ways, the opposite of my biological one. She sat through my screaming and breakdowns, she dealt with my violent outbursts patiently and comforted me when I was scared after a night of bad dreams.

The first few years I lived with my new parents, I was quite awful to be around. I didn’t want my adopted parents, I wanted my real mom. I was still attached to her, convinced her leaving me was an accident, stuck in the lie that she still loved me.

Around the time my mother abandoned me, during the early years with my adopted parents, I developed an addiction to painkiller medications, largely as a result of how I was influenced by my biological mother while I was still with her, and how I would imitate the way I remembered her acting. Before she left me, I thought that being more like her would make her more fond of me.

Most of the time I would steal this medication, either from a store or directly from my new parents.

I also developed alcohol problems, something else which I commonly stole where I could. I was ultimately unsuccessful at keeping these habits a secret. My adopted mom and dad found out, but I didn’t care. I was clever enough and resourceful enough after the period I was stuck living with Rob to find ways to get around my adopted parents when I needed to.

Drugs and alcohol were a coping mechanism. They were the only outlet and escape for my broken mind while I waited for my old mom to come back for me.

When my biological mom didn’t come back after a couple years, when I started to realize she really wasn’t going to, I felt like the last intact part of me shattered into a thousand pieces. I was finally forced to feel the pain of losing her; and it was too awful a pain for me to bear. I became convinced I didn’t have anything else to live for.

It was around this time, when I was twelve, I completely smashed the doll and threw the remains of it out. I hated what it constantly reminded me of. I could barely stand to look at it.

Only a few days after, I overdosed on pain medication, having little concern of whether I would survive the act. As a result of my reckless actions, I was taken straight from the recovery ward to stay at a mental hospital.

I didn’t have the capacity to care about anything at the time, and I honestly didn’t give a crap about where my adopted parents sent me.

Then I started to truly realize what I’d done to myself. In some ways being locked up in the asylum was almost worse than all the abuse Rob put me through. I was completely stripped of my identity, my personality. Every day, I was treated like I was crazy and dangerous. And despite being surrounded by people, I was left feeling completely and utterly alone.

I was imprisoned and trapped, surrounded by uncaring doctors and screaming patients who frightened me. The worst part of it, though, was the growing terror of being stuck there forever. The thought of never escaping filled me with a kind of hopelessness and despair I struggle to put into words.

But after a few weeks, my adopted mom took me back. Her rescuing me out of that place convinced me I was better off with my new parents than in an asylum or anywhere else I might be sent. So I really tried to cooperate with them and pull myself together. I endured through the arduous process of getting clean from drugs and alcohol. I agreed to see someone to talk to and to help me with my struggles. I made the choice to put my trust in my adopted parents, to keep me from returning to a place I knew could be worse.

Getting clean was difficult, but my fear of returning to the asylum was an effective motivator. My adopted parents made a deal with me that if I cooperated with them they could try and help me find what happened to my biological mother, which helped, too. I allowed myself to latch on to a little bit of hope again, and it kept the worst of the grief at bay.

Things were still difficult, however as my parents endured and accepted the worst side of myself, and the months I spent with them became years, the little bond of trust between us grew.

Over the following period, my mom coaxed a few confessions out of me about my past. It started with me telling her about why I was afraid of closets and closed up spaces. I admitted to some of the things my old mom’s boyfriend used to do to me. They were the kinds of punishments I still expected from my adopted parents whenever I got into trouble.

After that, I started to open up to my parents about other stuff, too, grudgingly at first, but more and more willingly over time.

I fully expected them to be judgmental. I thought there was something wrong with me, something which made me somehow deserve the awful things Rob did to me. Centrally fuelling those ideas was a sense of responsibility for the car crash which caused my father’s death. If I was responsible for that, then surely I deserved every moment of my suffering.

Of course, they weren’t. My parents gave me unconditional love and support. They taught me not to blame and hate myself for my past. Perhaps more importantly, they gave me the strength to confront my inner demons and find a way to live with them.

I spent more and more time getting closer with my mom and dad. I let them take me out to movies or on picnics, first just to appease them, then because I actually enjoyed spending time with them. And yeah, they did try to help me try to locate my biological mom, but as I grew older and more and more a part of my new family, the search for my biological mother became less and less significant, or even relevant.

We did eventually find her, actually. She had spent a while in prison, then got out and started a whole new life for herself. She was married again. Also, she was pregnant. When we finally got in contact with her, she made it very clear she didn’t want to ever see me again. Hearing that hurt me a lot, but this time I managed to live through the pain, and I could accept it. By that time, she was no longer my real mom to me anymore, and I felt a whole lot stronger than I was when she first abandoned me.

I can’t remember when exactly my adopted mom and dad became my parents in my own eyes. But I still recall the first time I actually called my mom ‘mom’ when I was twelve, by accident.

We were at a shopping mall, walking through a large clothing store. My mom was looking around. The two of us were both distracted, and I suddenly lost sight of her.

I called out, ‘mom, mom, where are you?’ For a moment, I was irrationally afraid she would disappear, leaving me like my old mom had.

Then I saw her running over to me from behind a row of shelves in the store and she guided me away.

At the time I didn’t register the significance of the moment; of what I just called her. But I could tell my mom did.

She seemed to catch on to my feelings, too. She gave me a tight hug and apologized for disappearing. It was almost like she knew what I was thinking. She is always so perceptive of me, enough so for me to believe it.

Over time, I learned to love my adopted parents, and the rest of my family. I put the pieces of my life back together. I was a whole person again. My new family offered me a new chance at a future. I can’t fully put into words how grateful I am for them for giving me that.

Kayla was only nine when I was adopted. I was about as mean to her as I was with my mother. She tried to be nice to me. She spent a lot of time attempting to get me to like her, play with her, but the more she tried, the angrier I reacted. I hate myself for the way I treated her, but back then, I didn’t think it was really wrong what I was doing. Fighting and screaming was a normal form of communication for me.

Me and Kayla never had a great relationship after that. Even when I opened up more as a person and started to bond with my parents and my new siblings, Kayla and I struggled to find a way to reconcile. By the time I was ready to accept Kayla as my sister, I already lost any opportunity of building up something meaningful between us.

It had been more than seven years since then and I still hadn’t found a way to make up for all those years of mistreatment. I managed to find the courage to speak to Kayla soon after I overheard my parents discussing sending me away to a mental facility. I put off speaking to her for a long time, too focused on my own deteriorating sanity. But I did have the opportunity to really think about what Kayla said the last time we talked.

She was my sister, and I knew in my heart I needed to see her. I wasn’t sure if I had very long left before my parents decided to go through with their plan, or the demon stepped up its level of torment in some sadistic way. I was afraid I might lose the opportunity to talk to her permanently if I didn’t act soon. I didn’t think the demon would allow me to escape a mental asylum once I was locked in the walls of one.

I didn’t want our last interaction to be one where we hated each other. That, I felt, would be letting the demon win.

She looked up when I came into the room, her face paling and her eyes narrowing slightly as she saw me. We’d barely been on a talking basis since I hit her. I tried to apologize for it a couple of times. She’d always walked away from me.

‘Hi,’ I said. I tried to inject some enthusiasm into my voice. It died as she continued to stare at me with a look of hostility clear in her expression.

‘What are you doing here?’ she wanted to know.

‘I came to see you,’ I told her.

‘Why?’ She propped herself up against the bed awkwardly into a sitting position. One of her legs, wrapped up in plaster, dragged across the bed as she moved. ‘Did mom and dad make you come talk to me?’

I stepped closer, cautiously. ‘No,’ I said. ‘I wanted to see you.

Before she could respond, I added, ‘Kayla, we need to talk about our last fight.’

‘You hit me. There’s not much more to say,’ she said shortly. ‘Is there?’

Her answer made me feel frustratingly inadequate, as I stood there, struggling to find the right words to express what I wanted to say. I began to move further toward the bed and Kalya shrank back slightly against the pillows. It was a subtle move, but one I still noticed. I took a breath. ‘Look, what you said to me -’

‘I meant every word of it,’ she snapped.

‘I deserved it.’

Kayla appeared surprised by my response. She blinked a few times. I took the opportunity to continue, ‘You have a right to be mad at me. You have a right to feel the way you do after how much I’ve hurt you.’

I took a deep intake of air. ‘When I was adopted by our parents, you did everything you could to treat me like a sister. You were kind to me for years, way more than I deserved. I threw all that back in your face. It may have been a long time ago, but it doesn’t excuse the things I did.’

I took another breath, swallowing. ‘Since then, it feels like all we’ve done is fought. In a way, that’s my fault. I started this conflict between us. So I can’t really blame you for how you feel about me.’

Kayla looked at me suspiciously. ‘You’ve never seen it that way before. Why the sudden change of heart?’

‘I should have said this sooner,’ I conceded. I raised a finger and motioned to myself. ‘I just needed to admit some things to myself before I said them to you.’

I was speaking in a rush, now the right words were coming to me. ‘I took a bit of time to think about things from a different perspective. I’ve said and done so many horrible things to you. It was never okay for me to be so cruel to you, even when we were fighting. I never apologized properly for all the crap I’ve put you through. I haven’t ever been close to the sister you deserved. And I’m so sorry, for all of that, Kalya. I really am.’

‘Sorry falls a little short, don’t you think?,’ Kayla demanded.

‘I know,’ I said. ‘So tell me what I can do to make it up to you.’

‘It’s not that simple,’ she replied. She sounded uncomfortable, now.

‘Your my family, Kayla. I want us to have a better relationship than this,’ I told her insistently. ‘Tell me what I can do to make that happen.’

A moment passed. ‘I’m not sure you’d want to hear anything I said,’ Kayla said eventually, with a short laugh.

This went on for a bit. It took a certain amount of convincing to get Kayla to open up, but after a while, she did.

Kayla ranted about all the things about me that frustrated her. Most of them I’d heard before. At more than one point I came close to interjecting and defending myself, yet the words never quite left my lips. I really listened to her talk, and when I fought past the instinctive anger and tried to empathize with her, I felt a lot worse about all the times we’d fought in the past. I really did see things from her perspective, and understood, possibly for the first time, how difficult the past years were for her.

I responded by promising her various ways I would change. I believed she deserved to hear the commitments I made, and I knew I would never have to deliver on any of the promises, understanding what the future had in store.

At some point she brought up our other siblings, and her relationship with them. I knew this was particularly important to her; as I noticed how hard she tried to get close to them.

‘They spend half their time with you but they barely talk to me,’ Kayla complained. ‘They’re always trying to get your attention and act like you. I don’t get it. What makes you so special to them? It’s like you’ve turned them against me or something.’

‘I haven’t been turning them against you,’ I said, speaking plainly. ‘Honestly, I was trying to make up with our siblings for how I treated you.’ I thought for a moment. ‘Maybe I can talk to them, get them to spend more time with their sister.’

She hesitated. ‘I will,’ I said. ‘I’ll talk to them tonight, okay?’

‘Yeah, okay,’ she said.

She was quiet. I felt hopeful. I was making progress.

It wasn’t long after that Kayla challenged me over the way I was acting recently. She asked to know, plainly, if I was back on my painkiller addiction.

This time, I tried to be as honest with her as I could – without getting into how there was an evil demon trying to drive me insane living inside the house. Since Kayla accused me of being under the influence of drugs, I did resort to taking them again, in large part as a result of the entity’s voice in my head telling me to.

As difficult as it was, I admitted to falling back on some of my old habits. I discussed how things felt like they were falling apart around me; the part of the truth I hoped I could make her understand. I told her I wanted to get clean but I was struggling.

Kayla gave me a serious look. ‘I hate seeing you like this,’ she said. ‘I know it may sound hard to believe.’ It was her looking to find the right words, then. ‘I’ve seen you fight your way out of an addiction before. You can do it again, can’t you?’

‘I’m sure I’ll find a way,’ I said, giving her a forced smile. I don’t know how, but I think I managed to look convincing because my response visibly reassured her.

She was quiet, so I took the opportunity to speak again.

‘Listen. I’m going to change, okay?,’ I added meaningfully. ‘I’ll find a way to stop the drugs. And I promise, Kayla, I will make it up to you. I’m not giving up on rebuilding our relationship. I don’t care how long it takes, how long you hate me for. You’re my sister, and I want the opportunity to show you how much that matters to me.’

Her face softened a little bit. Some of the anger left her expression. She swallowed, looking down.

‘You’re going to have to wait a while,’ she said, after a long pause. ‘I’m not quite ready to forgive you. Not yet.’

She hesitated. ‘But… I think I should apologize, too. I didn’t mean what I said, you know, about our family being better off without you. That was a shitty thing for me to say.’

A small smile spread across my face. Her response made my heart lighten, slightly.

‘You were angry,’ I told her. ‘I never thought you really meant it.‘

We spoke tentatively for some time after that. It felt a little weird because I wasn’t sure the last time I talked with Kayla openly before. Although there was still plenty of continuing tension between us, I no longer felt like I was teetering on the precipice of a fight with her, which was a big improvement. In fact, I think I may have connected with her more than I did in the past few years. For a short time, I almost managed to forget about how morbid and messed up my life was. Things felt normal. Good, even.

At one point, we were discussing how things were going for her, and I asked how she felt about the new house. She said to me bluntly that she hated it. Kayla missed our old home, its closeness to the city, her friends, and her old life. Our new house was too big for her, too isolated and quiet. I wasn’t so surprised to find myself sharing her dislike of it. Any fondness I once had for the house had progressively faded with the onset of my supernatural experiences.Incidentally, it was around this time Kayla mentioned she hated having to go into the basement and usually avoided it.

‘It’s so creepy in there,’ she said. ‘I swear I can feel someone watching me. Or I think I can hear something… Something coming from through the walls.

Her words stirred a spark in the back of my mind, catching my interest. ‘What, like a heartbeat?’, I asked.

She laughed a bit. ‘That’s a little weird way of describing it, but, uh, yeah, I guess.’

‘I know what you mean. I heard it too,’ I mused.

‘I figured it was coming from the sealed off room in the basement,’ she explained. I think there’s supposed to be pipes running through there or something, but it sure doesn’t sound much like it.’

I hadn’t actually known about the extra room in the basement up until that point.

‘Apparently it’s been holed off for years,’ Kayla told me, when I inquired. ‘For safety reasons or something. I overheard our parents discussing it one time.’

Her words brought the spark alight inside me. A small beacon of hope burned away some of the lethargy and despair I was feeling.

‘Hey, I’m going to get a drink, do you want me to bring you something? I could get you a ginger beer,’ I asked her, abruptly.

‘If you wouldn’t mind,’ she said. She added, almost as an afterthought, ‘Thanks for offering.’ I reached out and gave her hand a squeeze, then stood up and headed toward the door.

I had to call Terry again. There was something I needed to ask him. An idea was forming in my mind I thought could change everything.

A renewed purpose energized my steps as I moved to leave the room.

As I did, I noticed someone coming in through the doorway. For a single second I thought it was one of my parents, coming back home from work.

When I got a good look at his face however, I froze.

Standing there I saw a pale faced, lean looking man. His eyes were dark, nearly black, his expression serene and placid. I knew I’d never seen him before, but there was something about him I felt was horribly familiar.

I knew his face. His features were mirrored in the features of the doll, almost identical, only a little more masculine and realistic. The face was a disturbingly perfect reflection of the distorted, humanlike appearance the doll took on during my nightmares. Despite having never met him, I thought I could guess who this man was, even before he spoke to me.

‘Hi,’ he said, giving me a large smile. ‘I’m Angel. I thought it was time me and you met… In person.’

He took a few steps into the room and I instinctively moved away so I was standing back in front of the bed. I glanced at Kayla. She looked up at Angel and then at me, her face confused. Kalya,’ I said slowly. I was half surprised she could see him at all.

Angel had paused in the doorway, his eyes full of predatory intent. Kayla’s expression changed steadily from confusion to alarm.

‘Who the hell are you?’, she demanded.

Angel slid out a large knife from underneath his shirt in response, inspecting it briefly as he started forward. Kayla’s eyes widened.

A desperate, helpless warning formed up in my throat, as I saw what was happening. I stepped toward Kayla, the scene before me slipping into slow motion.

Angel reached the bed in a few short strides. He didn’t hesitate; in fact he didn’t even act like I was there. Gripping the knife in one hand, he raised it swiftly, up above Kayla’s prone body. I glimpsed the terror in Kayla’s face as she registered these actions, too. Kayla started to scramble awkwardly up the bed, trying to distance herself from him.

This can’t be real. The thought kept repeating in my mind. It can’t be real, it can’t be –

He brought the knife down on her once, twice. The third time I started to scream, tripping over myself as I ran around the bed. Kayla’s midsection was a mess of blood and I could see her gasping, her eyes wide and her arms shaking as she reached out to Angel’s hand with the knife. It was a repeat of the scene after I stabbed the doll with the scissors, only now, Kayla’s bloody body lying before me was no hallucination; it was absolutely real.

I attempted to grab Angel and he hit me, sending a blinding flash of pain across my face and knocking me onto the ground. Everything went black for a moment as I felt my head hit the floor. I scrambled up again. I was crying, I was screaming. Angel pulled the knife from Kayla’s stomach and finally turned his attention to me.

‘You shouldn’t have tried to resist me,’ he said, sounding regretful. ‘You could have prevented this. Kayla is going to die a slow, painful death, because of you. It’ll take her a few hours to bleed out, you know that?’ He paused. ‘So will the rest of your family, once I’m done with them.’ His cold stare pierced into me. ‘I assure you, I’m going to make you wish your death was as painless as theirs are going to be.’

As he began to stride forward, I stumbled away. I pulled myself out of the room, retreating from him. I practically fell down the stairs, briefly glimpsing Angel pursuing me behind at an almost leisurely pace.

‘You know you can’t run from me,’ he called out loudly. His shadow loomed before him, unnaturally long and tall, as I ran down the hall.

I tripped to a brief stop in the living room.

I looked around. I sprinted over to the fireplace and grabbed the poker leaning next to it.

My instincts screamed at me to move again. But I couldn’t. I was frozen. I kept mentally replaying the scene of Angel driving the knife into Kayla’s stomach. I found myself struggling to find a reason to fight anymore. For those few seconds, I contemplated helplessly whether it might be easier simply to give up. Maybe letting the demon kill me was easier than living to see Angel fulfill his promise with the deaths of my entire family. What could I do to stop a monster like him, anyway?

I might have stood there for longer, if I hadn’t heard Angel’s steps quickly closing in on me. The sound snapped me back into reality. The need to survive took precedence over my despair consumed thoughts. I couldn’t do anything to help my family if I was dead, I reminded myself. As long as I was alive, there was still some hope for them. I couldn’t let myself die while there was any chance I could save them.

I turned and sprinted toward the hallway.

Just as I reached it, I was stopped short as I felt a hand pulling a fistful of my hair and yanking my head back.

Another hand, I knew, held the knife, and an image of Angel dragging the blade into my throat  flashed into my mind. I reacted quickly and instinctively, acting before he could have the opportunity to. I slammed the fire poker around with both my hands shrieking, bringing it down as hard as I could against Angel’s body.

I felt the grip on my head loosen slightly. I hit him a second time, putting all the power I had into the impact. As I yanked the poker back again, I pulled myself free from Angel with a surge of strength, spinning around. Angel appeared momentarily surprised by the force of my attack. He started to straighten up.

I didn’t give him the chance to recover. I raised the poker high and I brought it down a third time. This time, when poker hit him, Angel buckled beneath me. With the fourth attack, he crumpled to the ground, but I didn’t slow the pace of my attack.

Fear and rage empowered my actions. Kayla’s body flashed again into my mind. I continued smashing the poker down on every part of his body I could reach. Satisfaction rushed through me every time I heard, and felt, his body breaking under me. Finally, I thought, I could make the monster begin to feel a small amount of the pain it put so many other people through. For once, it was the powerless one.

I didn’t stop until I was physically exhausted, until I couldn’t swing the poker with any strength anymore. By that time Angel was lying sprawled on the ground, and for the first time I looked to really see what I had done.

But it wasn’t Angel lying there anymore, it was Kayla. Her broken body was half curled up, her head turned toward me, her eyes wide, her face almost unrecognizable –

‘NO!,’ I screamed. I took a few steps back. It was a trick, I thought. I was seeing things, like when I attacked the demon with the scissors, and it first transformed itself into Kayla.

But my eyes remained glued to her body. It was so real. It felt so real.

How do I know it’s a trick? A voice in my mind asked. That’s just what I want to think. Maybe I’m having another breakdown, and it was Angel I was hallucinating-

I mentally shook myself. I forced down rising feelings threatening to choke me, locked them away deep inside of myself, like I had done before so many times when the trauma of my past threatened to take hold. It was the demon in my head again, I assured myself. It couldn’t be Kayla lying on the floor; that didn’t make any sense. Kayla was upstairs.

I was going to stop the demon and its sadistic tricks, once and for all, I promised myself. I thought I finally knew how.

I unsteadily turned away from the limp body of Kalya, from the demon taking her form. The voices in my head had become momentarily quiet, and though I didn’t expect my reprieve would last very long, I was relieved to have it.

I ran back through the living room, the poker still clutched in my aching hands.

I took out my phone quickly, still moving. I dialed 911. I described to the operator briefly what they needed to know to help Kayla, while making my way purposefully through the house. I only half listened to what the person on the other end was saying. There were far more pressing things for me to focus on.

Some things had clicked together inside my head earlier, while I was talking to Kayla. It couldn’t have been a coincidence the demon preyed on so many victims who lived inside my house.

Shana told Terry the demon had some sort of lair. The lair she was talking about had to be my house. She must have meant my house. It was where the entity always kept coming back to. That was why Angel wanted Terry to get new people to move in here.

I knew not all the murders Angel was responsible for occurred inside my house; however I assumed the demon found other victims only whenever no one was willing to buy the home. After all, the house had to become somewhat unpopular after so many people perished within its walls.

While listening to Kayla bring up the sealed up room in the basement, I’d guessed a few other things, too. The demon understood that Terry figured out its weakness. It caught Shana as she was telling him about it. So it tricked Terry into believing it’s heart was worthless. Then broke his will to resist by turning him into a slave to prevent any risk of him discovering the real truth and using it to hurt the demon.

I also figured the demon knew I knew about its heart, too, which explained why it suddenly came after me.

Shana told Terry something about hearing the heart. Both Kayla and I heard the sound of a heartbeat coming from somewhere in the basement. There was no way those two things were a coincidence, particularly when I considered David also claimed he also heard the sound of a heartbeat from a room somewhere in the house, too.

When the woman on the phone said something about help being on the way, I thanked her. Then I hung up on her and shoved the phone back into my pocket.

I descended in bounds down into the basement, slamming the door behind me as I did. Kayla said there was an extra room at the back of the basement. It was sealed up, but I knew the basement walls were covered by wood and plaster, partially rotted away. Which meant there was a good possibility I could break through the wall and reach the room.

It was all a long shot. It was the only hope I had.

I sprinted through the shelves piled with various items and long unused pieces of furniture, stirring up dust from the floor as I did. I couldn’t hear the demon coming after me yet, but I knew it would be soon. I threw a few random objects down behind myself, the crashes shattering the stillness and disturbing a collection of pale white moths into a fluttering mass around me.  I stopped short when I reached the end of the basement. The wall was dominated by a shelf, about half a meter wide. It was partially stacked with various tools, along with discarded and half forgotten things from around the house.

I felt an urge to hesitate, and question what I was doing. I could still call the police, I thought, or run outside and scream for help.

But my instincts were telling me I was right. I could hear the heartbeat again, a more distinct sound now I stood at the far end of the basement.

I knocked on the wall a few times, right beside where the large shelf was sitting. The sound it produced was hollow. It was the kind of sound I was hoping I would hear.

I tried to move the shelf next, stepping to the side of it and pushing against it with all of my strength. When that didn’t work, I toppled the contents of each row off the shelf out of my way, knocking them carelessly on the ground. When it was mostly bare, and piles of assorted tools and other pieces of junk lay tossed around me, I pushed on the bookshelf again, putting all of my weight against it. Adrenaline lent me strength.

I felt it move, sliding sideways steadily until it met with the far corner of the basement wall.

Once the shelf was out of the way, I paused to examine the section of wall it revealed. The plaster which made up this part of the wall pockmarked and decayed. I could see a number of small holes in the wall, through which, past a layer of damp, wooden scaffolding, I caught my first glimpse into the room beyond. It was rotted away too, the paint peeling, mold coating the walls and floor. The area was shrouded in dimness and multilayered shadows.

When I pressed my ear briefly against one of the holes, the heartbeat I heard sounded noticeably louder. I could almost feel every beat as well as hear it, each one sending an unnatural shiver running down through my body. I was sure it was coming from the room, although it was too dim to see inside.

I ground my teeth together, turning my attention in front of me. With every ounce of strength I had, I lifted the fire iron and buried it into the wall.

I yanked it back. Some chunks of paint and the plaster came with it and ripped off the wall. I fought to suppress a coughing fit as dust and disturbed air reached me. I lifted the poker again, and brought it down a second time.

I heard the sound of movement stirring behind me. When I dared a glimpse back, I saw something dragging itself down the basement stairs at an uneven, limping pace.

The third time the poker hit the wall it sunk deeper still, deep enough that it became stuck there. I struggled against it, panic lending me strength. The shambling footsteps I could hear approaching were a threatening reminder of how desperate my situation was rapidly becoming.

I tried pulling the poker away at various angles. It remained stubbornly stuck in the wall. I wiped one hand on my pants, then grabbed it again, and heaved. I started to sob when it barely budged.

I twisted the poker back and forth repeatedly, attempting to maneuver it out of position. Finally, another large chunk of the wall came loose with an extended tearing sound, and I could swing the poker freely again.

The sounds were getting closer. I could hear them coming down the length of the basement. Angel moved alarmingly fast, his footsteps evening out like he was recovering  from his injuries even as he advanced toward me.

Clearly, I hadn’t done much to hurt him when I beat him with the fire iron. I silently prayed that Shana was right about the demon’s heart being a weakness I could use to hurt it.

The next time my poker hit the wall, I felt it break through a piece of the wooden scaffolding. Just then, I glanced back and glimpsed Angel closing in behind me, his body visibly broken and twisted at unnatural angles, his face transformed into an ugly grimace. I turned my attention back to the wall, ripping and pulling another large chunk of plaster away from it, significantly widening the hole I created.

The last time I glanced back at him, Angel’s shape had started to change, his face melting together, his mouth pulling wide open and his eyes bleeding out into obsidian, hollow sockets. His form was changing too, growing taller, as it underwent a metamorphosis into something far more horrifying. As I watched, the basement itself transformed with him, blood dripping down the walls as the walls and ceiling closed together into a seamless, senseless mass.

I didn’t allow myself to look for very long. I forced myself to turn away, and dedicated all my strength to one last, huge swing at the wall, breaking free the largest chunk of plaster yet and removing enough of it to create a hole into the next room I thought was large enough to pull myself through. With another few quick thrusts of the poker, I removed the last pieces of wood blocking my way, tearing them carelessly free.

I could see more clearly into the room, and it was like an illusion had been lifted from my eyes. When I looked now, I saw it entirely coated by snaking, vine-like layers of a quivering, vibrating oily, fleshy material. Thin, dark veins ran across the strands of flesh, inside which I could see dark, sickly fluid pulsing through.

Starting into the room was disorienting, almost nauseating. I couldn’t tell if it was a small room only three meters wide or a seemingly endless hallway, stretching into eternity. I struggled to count how many walls or sides the room had. The interior changed seamlessly as I continued to stare at it. It was as if I was looking at multiple things at once. I was totally disoriented.

Trying to look into what I estimated to be the center of the room was worse; the place where all the vines converged. Somewhere from over there, the heartbeat throbbed relentlessly against my ears.

I tore my gaze away. I threw the poker into the room and started to struggle through the hole, leveraging one of my feet first. As I climbed awkwardly into the room, it too began to melt in around me, the walls fusing together, blackish fluid oozing out from emerging cracks and pooling over the ground and around my knees. I tumbled and rolled onto the ground, my cheek coming pressed up against the damp, moldy floor.

The sensation of the walls closing in was rapidly inducing a feeling of claustrophobia, threatening to fill me with blind panic. Suddenly, I was not in the basement but in the closet again, the one Rob had always used to lock me in. A helpless scream threatened to tear out of my throat as I saw myself trapped in the closed up, dark space, unable to escape or even move, the front of the closet pressing my knees up hard against my chest as it continued to shrink in around me  –

Hallucinations, I reminded myself, desperately. It isn’t real. None of it is real.

I shut my eyes. I reached forward with one foot, took a step onto solid ground. I continued walking. I felt the room shake slightly with each subsequent heartbeat which ran through it.

I opened my eyes again. I glanced back, caught a glimpse of the demon’s form behind me, having reached the hole in the wall I created and now melting seamlessly through it.

The heartbeat grew louder with every step I took. The room may have appeared endless, but judging by the proximity of the heartbeat, it clearly wasn’t. My best guess was it was only really about as big as when I first peered into it.

I hallucinated more the closer I advanced toward the heart; first, a cavernous abyss appeared below me, after that, a scene materialized of the bodies of my parents lying before me as unspeakable creatures leapt out at them from the darkness. I heard screaming in my ears, I listened to the sound of my family in unimaginable pain as they called out to me for help, as I saw innumerable, unspeakable creatures tearing them apart piece by piece.

All of these visions demanded my attention, appearing with perfect clarity. I felt sick as I ignored them, I felt horribly wrong for every further step I took forward in spite of them. But I didn’t stop. I couldn’t stop. Not now. Something inside me kept me going, stopped me from succumbing to the visions and letting them deter me from the goal I was still fixated on. I continued to take steps, even when I was positive it wasn’t physically possible for me to.

I was going to finish this, I thought. No matter what it took. So even as I cried and uttered apologies and meaningless promises and excuses toward the apparitions, I continued forward.

Just as the heartbeat had become a thundering rhythm against my ears, and I was sure I must have reached it, I felt a searing pain across my back, crippling and intense. It immediately sent me to my knees. I very nearly lost my grip on the poker. I could feel something digging into me, piercing and ripping at my insides, making me faint with waves of nauseating agony.

And yet a satisfied part of me already knew the monster had acted too late. The creature’s action didn’t stop me from burying the poker into the unnatural mass that I could feel with my hands, and just barely see, in front of me.

A soul piercing scream filled my ears. The room physically shook around my crouched form. The beating of the heart turned erratic. The pain at my back intensified further as I felt the force pulling away sharply, making me, in turn, scream out in agony. I struggled to tell where my own unsteady heartbeat started and the demon’s one ended.

I fought past the pain with a snarl, and I dug the poker deeper. Fluid sprayed all across my face. My wet hands slipped on the poker, my strength failing me. The scream continued, the pitch escalating. I felt as if the scream reached my very soul, consuming my consciousness.

With what I promised myself to be a final effort, I forced all my weight down onto the poker, one last time. I felt it sink a few solid feet down into the soft mass before me.

Pinkish – red flames erupted around the heart, lighting up parts of the room in a dull, crimson glow, leaving others in dancing shadow. My fingers slipped and fell away from the handle of the poker. The thumping heartbeat stuttered. From a great distance, I felt myself slumping down onto the ground, exhaustion overtaking me, the unearthly screams still echoing around the room, filling my consciousness. The world closed in and blackness engulfed my vision, a welcome relief from the pain radiating through my body and the deafening noise in my ears.

I willingly let myself slip into oblivion. My last thought was how relieved I was that it was all, finally, over. I woke up in the hospital some time later. A few days, actually.

My mom raised her head from where she was dozing as she heard me stir. She looked like she’d been sitting next to me for the last few hours.

She started crying. I did, too, as one by one, my memories came back to me.

I asked if Kayla was okay. It was the first thing which came out of my mouth when I could put my thoughts together coherently.

My mom nodded. I felt relieved for all of a few seconds before I thought about how Angel and how he was most likely going to come and finish what he started, by murdering both me and Kayla, and possibly the rest of my family, too. Then I was filled with terror again.

I didn’t even know how to begin to explain why I was so scared to my mom. I didn’t expect her to believe a word I said. I was afraid she would think I was all the more crazy if I attempted to discuss any part of the truth with her.

She must have seen how I looked because she tried to calm me down and told me I didn’t need to worry anymore. I was safe. She apologized, through sniffles, for not being there for me. I didn’t fully understand what she was talking about until I thought to ask, and she took the time to explain everything.

My mom came home shortly after I fell unconscious, at the same time an ambulance and two police cars arrived. She figured out the basics of what was going on from a police officer. She entered the house and ran straight up to check on Kayla. She found her in her room where Angel left her. She went searching for me next, once Kayla was being attended to in the ambulance. She’d already tried to call me, but received no answer.

After looking around and finding a trail of blood presumably left by Angel, she discovered what was left of the sealed up room in the basement, now not much more than a ruined mess. There was absolutely no evidence of the supernatural things I witnessed, though there was a fair amount of dust, soot, and other unrecognizable remains over the floor.

My mom found me in a pool of my own blood, unconscious. Both me and Kayla were rushed to a hospital. I had internal hemorrhaging and large open wounds cut deep into my back. The doctors said it was a miracle I survived, due to the extensive blood loss I suffered. My mom informed me the scarring the doctors predicted meant I could expect some pain and stiffness, along with a little limited maneuverability, for the rest of my life. But it wasn’t anything which would stop me from living a normal life, she assured me. At the time, my injuries were the least of my concerns.

I was grateful my mom didn’t push to know too much about what happened before she came home, however she did tell me there was a detective who wanted to speak with me more closely about everything, and she certainly looked like she was keen on hearing my explanation. The detective came to visit a few hours after I woke up. He had heard Kayla’s story about Angel breaking in. Now I was awake, he was keen to know my side of what happened.

I wasn’t prepared to try to explain the truth to him. Thankfully, it wasn’t too difficult for me to go along with what he already put together from his own investigation and from talking to Kayla. Where I needed to, I filled in the blanks with a couple believable lies.

I told the detective Angel had been stalking me. That was a large part of the reason why I was acting so weird and crazy during the past months. I never said anything because Angel threatened to hurt my family if I tried to.

The stalking started while I was researching the house, soon after I learned about the murders. My best guess was Angel found out about me after I tried to contact David at the asylum.

What took place when Angel broke into my house was harder for me to explain. I was forced to make up a story on the spot about the room in the basement already being broken into when Angel dragged me down there. Angel attacked me after he followed me into the room, then left me for dead in there.

The detective was skeptical of this, at first. He pressed me for more details. As a result, I was forced to go over and over various events since my moving into the house for the next few hours.

It was more than a little traumatic to recount the details of parts of my life from the past few months, even though many sections of my story weren’t entirely truthful. When the detective accused me of hiding something, it was more than I could take. I began crying. I said I didn’t know what he wanted me to tell him.

I think my crying was the best thing I could have done because it seemed to convince him of my honesty in a way my words hadn’t. He apologized quickly and assured me he knew I did everything I could and I wasn’t to blame for what happened. That was the end of the interrogation from him, although he still sounded like he wasn’t completely satisfied with my explanation once we finished talking, and he promised he would come see me again soon. Terry got in touch with me soon after that, while I was still in hospital. He came over himself to talk to me not too long after the detective left.

Terry claimed Shana visited him. He was freaked when he first saw her. I think you can guess who he thought she was. He suspected the demon had returned to finally seal his fate.

But Shana didn’t try to hurt him. She reached out, touched him, and smiled. She was free, she said. Something had released her from her suffering. It was clear she thought he was somehow responsible for her liberation.

She said goodbye and thanked him for helping her. She thought she was moving on to a better place now. Shana touched him on the arm, and her lips curved up in a small smile.

In the next few seconds, he watched her disappear. She faded away in front of him, blending in with her surroundings until there was nothing left of her body. She was gone before he had an opportunity to find his voice.

It made enough sense to explain the truth to him. He didn’t believe me, at first, but when he heard about Angel breaking into my house and looked into it, I think I managed to convince him. After that, Terry got involved and he supported my story, too, telling the police I came to him, revealing his own tumultuous relationship with Angel. Perhaps more importantly for me, he came up with a convenient explanation to why Angel tore up the basement, informing the detective Angel hid some valuable items and mementos from many previous victims in the basement a while ago, within a concealed compartment inside the floor. It neatly explained the torn up looking floor around where the demon’s heart was. He said Angel probably decided it was too great a risk to leave the evidence hidden there after he saw me coming close to finding out about it.

Apparently, Terry added to this by saying he previously discovered some evidence at the warehouse Angel had stored the remains of more of his victims elsewhere. It all fit in neatly with what information he gleaned from the investigations he underwent previously.

I was glad Terry was willing to help me, now he no longer needed to fear the demon punishing him for his interference. Though I’m still not entirely sure how Terry managed to fully convince the detective of my story. Even with his ingenuity, there were still one or two holes in the account which would definitely raise an eyebrow.

Then again, I’m not sure how he convinced my parents to buy the house, either, given they weren’t initially too keen on moving, from what I recall. Terry said he used to be very good at his job as a private investigator, and claimed he could find ways of being very persuasive – or manipulative – when he needed to be. I recall he mentioned that was why he thought the demon decided to use him instead of killing him or driving him insane.

All I could decisively say was he must have come up with some pretty convincing evidence to get the police to believe him. I’m glad he could do something good with his skills, for once, although I’m not sure it makes up for the other things he’s still guilty of.

The police were left to conclude that there was some kind of extremely cunning and talented, psychotic killer on the loose. They couldn’t explain everything, but they had enough of the story to feel satisfied enough to leave me from further investigation.

The truth was that I didn’t know for sure what happened to Angel, though. After I woke up in hospital, there hadn’t been any sign of him. The whispers, the sinister voice in the back of my head, they all left along with him. The doll was gone, too. I felt like a great weight had been lifted off my soul. Like I was finally allowed to be happy again.

My life slowly returned back to normal. With the demon no longer trying to drive me insane, I managed to rebuild my relationship with my family. I started going back to school, convinced my parents I was living responsibly and changing my attitude, and I wouldn’t touch alcohol or drugs again. My parents believed most of what happened during those few months was because I had a severe mental breakdown and was partly a result of Angel’s stalking, so though I wasn’t entirely let off the hook, they were less mad about it. I also suspect the demon may have been influencing my parents, too, which could be part of the reason why they acted so differently around me during the months after the demon entered my life.

My mom and dad agreed not to send me away to any kind of rehab if I stopped the irresponsible behavior and started up on antipsychotic medication for the future.

Even me and Kayla started getting along better. We still had flights. But we had better moments, too, and we began to treat each other more like sisters rather than enemies.

I was hoping, knowing what had really happened to David, that maybe he could be proven innocent from the murders of his family. He didn’t deserve to stay locked up for a crime he didn’t commit.

Unfortunately, with this, I found limited success. There was some evidence Angel had been in the house at the time of the murders; David’s own word for it, his injuries – and perhaps my neighbour saying he thought heard someone else laughing, which he was still convinced he imagined. David admitted he poured a bottle of whisky around the house, and that he had gotten out a lighter, which made demonstrating his innocence more than a bit difficult. Forget about the fact he confessed to the entire crime already.

The detective promised he would look into it, but warned me he didn’t think he would be able to do much for David.

So, as far as I know, he’s still holed up in the same mental asylum to this day. I tried to contact him again, to let him know Angel – the demon – was gone. He already believed some of the supernatural truth of what Angel really was, so I figured it was safe enough to discuss the rest of it with him.

After a while, I actually managed to talk to him face to face at the asylum – partly thanks to  some assistance from the detective. However when I visited him, David appeared too despondent and broken to care about the news. He didn’t even take care about an opportunity at proving himself innocent, and getting himself out of the asylum. In fact, nothing I could say to him at all he showed any real reaction to.

The demon left him a shell of his former self, I think. I don’t know if he’ll ever recover. Knowing everything I do about him, I hope he does, though. I do believe there’s still a good person somewhere inside him.

Unfortunately though, I don’t believe there’s much more I can do to help him. It’s been seven whole years since… It all happened. In those seven years, I pulled my life together, tripled my study commitment to make up for the months I’d lapsed off on. Thanks to my hard work, I caught up, and managed to finish the school year with decent grades.

After finishing school, I went to a university, studied for a few more years and got a degree. I became a psychiatrist. It certainly wasn’t what I would have expected when I was seventeen, but it felt right. I help people come to terms with their past, the way I’m still struggling to myself. I feel like every person I help helps me, in a way. Talking people through their problems is almost an indirect method of coping with what I’ve been through.

I looked back on those few months as a brief and incredibly dark period of my life. I never forgot about what happened, but by necessity, I put it behind me. Most of the time, I tried not to think about it. And most of the time, I managed. I accepted that the demon was dead. I killed it. I would never have to deal with it again, nor would anyone else. That, at least, was a comfort.

Fast forward seven years.

A couple of weeks ago, I was on the train coming home from work and something really freaked me out. I was sitting next to a random family with a couple kids. One of them, a girl, was holding this doll. The moment I saw it, I froze up, and all the memories from my past came back to me in an overpowering rush. For a second I was reliving my whole fucked up childhood again, and then those months of horror I’ve written about here.

It was the same doll. The exact same doll. The one from my childhood, the one the demon loved to transform into. I kept searching for a difference to tell it apart; I couldn’t find a single one. It had the same small smile, the same glassy eyes, the same hollow stare, and silky hair. It was an exact replica.

As if on cue, I heard the little girl declare what she was going to call it to her parents, right there in front of me.

Angel.

I sat there silently, watching them, until they left the train a few stops later. The whole time, I felt the doll’s eyes boring into me from across the carriage. Like, it was turned around to look right at me. Just positioned so its gaze was always angled my way.

When I got off the train, I went straight to a nearby trash can and puked right into it.

After that, I half expected it all to start up again. The voices, the hallucinations, the nightmares. They haven’t. Yet.

However, I don’t find the absence of the demon’s presence comforting anymore. Instead, it feels like the calm before a storm.

I can’t tell you if this was just some kind of awful coincidence or not. I did a bit of looking around on the internet. There were a few sites where I discovered similar models of the doll people were reselling, although none that were quite as identical as the one the girl was holding on the train.

Maybe it was just a coincidence. A really, really messed up and unlikely coincidence. I just don’t know. I keep thinking back to that day seven years ago, when I broke into the demon’s lair. I can’t remember whether the heart stopped beating before I lost consciousness. I never knew, not absolutely, for sure if I really killed it.

Maybe it somehow survived. Healed over the years and recovered.

It isn’t possible for me to visit my old house again and check. My family moved out soon after Kayla and I recovered sufficiently from our injuries. Since then, I’ve moved states, and my work leaves me with too little time to spare to make a return trip.

I read that apparently some other family moved in recently. About the same time I saw those kids on the train, actually.

Maybe I did kill it, and I’m just getting paranoid again, letting myself get sucked back into the dark void of my past. Perhaps my experiences with Angel were just a psychotic episode, partly or all in my head, and the demon didn’t exist at all.

Or perhaps I didn’t kill the demon that inhabited that doll; maybe I only wounded it. It seems unlikely, but I can’t deny the possibility.

Here’s a more believable, and far more frightening idea which occurred to me recently: maybe there’s more than one of those entities out there. Hell, for all I know, I imagine there could be hundreds, haunting and tormenting people, taking on benign forms, or more malevolent shapes only their victims see. After all, no one besides the victims would ever know or believe the truth.

I just don’t know. Since my experience on the train, I’ve had more than one nightmare centered around the idea. In those nightmares, the demon comes back. Angel visits me again, and he transforms into a thousand laughing, horrific faces grinning maniacally down at me from all sides. I can’t escape from them, from him, no matter where I try to run. That is if I can physically move at all.

The faces tell me they’ll find me, soon, and when they do, all of my worst fears and nightmares will become a reality.

I thought I should put some kind of warning out there. In case I’m not being paranoid, or if the paranoid part of me is right and these nightmares could mean what I think they do.

The demon can make itself look like anything. Anyone. If you ever start seeing the signs, patterns in someone else, or experiencing them yourself, it might mean I’m right and this horror isn’t over. It may not be a charismatic man calling himself Angel, it could be something completely different, but you’ll recognize the danger, if you’re aware of what to look out for. If you’re very lucky, like me, you might be able to discover its heart, its weakness. The demon will have it well hidden, and I expect it probably won’t be as easy to find as it was for me. Still, I feel like there can be some solace in knowing there is a way to hurt the demon(s). It, or they, they’re not invincible.

But believe me, you’re going to have to hope it doesn’t come to that.

The best advice I can give to you is to stay. Away. From it. You’re far better off if it never decides to come after you.

You’re honestly far better off if me writing my story is all a complete overreaction.

I really hope I’m wrong about this.