#creatures

Ever had a fear of monsters under your bed? Like you could have sworn you saw what seemed to be a shadow moving down there, or freaked out when you heard a noise under the bed and was scared to look?

I think Captain Gold is worried that I'm losing it. Sometimes I think I might be. I haven’t seen Marty for days. He was supposed to meet me at the Larrabee last night, but never showed. I’m starting to get very concerned. Casey is gone. I think I lost her a long time ago, but now she’s gone for good. It occurs to me that I’m jumping ahead of myself. I need to stop and recollect my thoughts. There’s a lot I don’t remember, and even more that I do, but it might not be true.

The attic floorboards are thin, but the silence is thinner. I’ve been up here for three hours. The vibrating stopped, which is worse. Now, the only sound is a rhythmic thump-drag, thump-drag coming from the hallway directly below the attic hatch.

“You're making a mistake.” “I'm sorry you feel that way, Mr. Monahan. Our decision has been made.” “But...” “There's nothing more to be said. Your final check will be in the mail tomorrow. Molly and I thank you for your services.” --click--

4:23AM I didn't imagine it... I'm not fucking insane. My vision may have been distorted as a result of my excessive alcohol consumption, but I know what I saw. I know that it was real, I've been sat in a bath full of cold water for the past hour to try and shake the feeling of being covered in blood. Her blood. - 5 hours earlier -

I was driving home late one summer evening. It was dark and everyone was in their beds. My eye lids felt heavy as I struggled to pay attention to my driving on the dark and empty country road. I knew this road so well I probably could drive home with my eyes closed. It didn't sound like a bad idea as I sleepily nodded.

“Welcome to Riverwood.” The administrator exclaimed, shaking the hand of the new night nurse. Riverwood was the town’s only nursing home. It had been built as a hospital back in the early days of Millville. It was a grand three story building, built in an “L” shape. At the far west end of the building was a bell tower. It no longer sounded, the bell having been removed several years ago. It was on a slight hill overlooking the north end of town and was surrounded by trees so thick that it was…

“Peter, can you even see anything up there?” Harry, the oldest yet least mature forest Ranger, said over the two-way. High on my perch in Tower 3, I had a full three hundred sixty degree view of A_____ National Forest that stretched out to the horizon. This was a dumb joke he liked to ask every time I drew the short straw for this position. “Yes, vision is clear. No smoke. No fires. No adverse weather conditions.”

"'Tis midnight, let us hit this," He said, after procuring the previously mentioned drugs. Wielding the ever-convenient Ziplock bag, he started to make his way into the room, abruptly falling down without the slightest grace as his already-altered motor skills abandoned his legs. He hit the floor rather loudly.

(This is the typed version of a handwritten transcript that I was given access to. The transcript itself is from a voice recording, but I have no idea where that is, or how the person who wrote the transcript obtained it. Due to the sloppiness of the handwriting and some water marks, some of the words are indecipherable, or maybe they were unintelligible from the recording. I cannot go into detail as to how I came across this transcript.)

When most people think about their childhood, they have happy memories of their pets, or the trips they went on, or the books, films, shows or games they grew up with. They always think that their current life is dull or bland in comparison. We have a tendency to forget that our childhood was always riddled with negativity. No one seems to recall that pets die, trips weren’t worth the grueling hours in the car and those media forms of entertainment weren’t as spectacular as you remembered. If…

I am a dead man. I would like to think of myself as a reasonable, level-headed individual; and that is exactly why I know that there is no happy ending for me by any measure whatsoever. I have only one thing left I can do… whether it works or not, this document is to serve as my last will and testament. I will not try to diminish my responsibility in what happened, but before I die the blame will be placed squarely on the heads of those who deserve it. It was the combined hubris of two men that…

I awoke that night to Echo, my dog, barking up a storm. He was perched on the edge of my bed, facing the door and yapping away like crazy. I scratched him behind the ear to get him to calm down and guided him to his usual spot on my bed. In hindsight, him barking was the first warning.

If ever you should walk into a dark room inside your empty house and see a shadowy figure somewhere within, don’t turn on the lights. It’s better not to know. Don’t run to the bathroom, lock the door, and cower in your bathtub. Don’t hurry to a closet, lock the door, and hide underneath a pile of clothes. And especially don’t return to your bedroom, lock the door, and crawl into your bed. Because every other door in your house was already locked, and the figure still managed to get in.

The following dialog was found written on a scrap of paper in the cell of a now missing John Doe.

I already know what you’re thinking. A gnome? Despite what the term I use might suggest, these creatures aren't rosy cheeked little bearded men with a pointy hats and quaint little tunics. As my friend would later find out, and as I'd feared for a long time, these beings are much stranger and far different from what is typically portrayed.

Hear me out. I don't plan to stay here long. One way or another, this place won't hold me. Yeah, sure - I know 'they all' say that. But trust me - I'm different. No, that's not right - I'm probably bog-standard, but the circumstances are different. And the circumstances are going to make things a little difficult. Unless I tell someone - even if I tell someone.

Often when my wife and I go to bed at night our dog ends up sharing the bed with us as well. He is a black dog that weighs about 100 pounds so you can imagine that he takes up a good portion of the bed at night when he decides that he wants to sleep with us. Since we have black sheets he tends to blend in with the bed making it hard to tell if he sneaks up there before us.

I never thought much about puppets. They were relics of another time, something my grandparents might have found amusing before the age of screens. I'd seen them in dusty attics and antique shops, their faces painted in stiff, eternal grins. They were lifeless, inert things that didn't deserve a second thought. But that was before it came to town.

Leonard pushed his face firmly into the crease of his elbow as another scathing blast of frigid air blew through the valley. The snow piled up at his feet while he stumbled up a small incline, struggling to keep his balance, the biting cold permeating his winter jacket. Shivering, he turned, baring his back to the icy downpour and staring across the barren fields of white before him. At the very crest of the blizzard, a single tent was cartwheeling, leaving a trail of tiny dents as each of its…