#paranoia

Between December 2041 and February 2042, twelve isolated incidents of extreme violence were recorded across six states. Each case involved a first-time offender with no prior criminal record, no psychological instability, and no identifiable motive. The victims varied: spouses, colleagues, children, strangers. Yet the offenders’ demeanour during the acts remained disturbingly alike: calm, focused, deliberate.

This is another I posted on /r/nosleep several years ago. I wanted to write something in the style of the horror anthologies I enjoyed as a kid in the '90s, such as Ask the Bones, The Scary Story Reader, or the classic Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. ----

When I was 17, my grandfather passed away. Save your condolences for my dad. I was never close to him. Hell, I wouldn't even say I knew him. I had only "met" him twice, once when I was a newborn, and another when I was five or six years old. Everything I knew about him was from what my dad told me. He always told me how my grandpa was not only a loving father and family man, but a pillar of their small community.

I have 847 hours of field recording across three years of this work. I can tell you the exact timestamp — 2:14:37 AM — when a door opened by itself in a farmhouse outside Carbondale. Baseline decibel reading before it moved, the spike, the return to baseline in 0.4 seconds. Filed, labeled, cross-referenced with humidity readings and structural reports. Probable explanation still listed as HVAC pressure differential, confirm with building superintendent. The superintendent retired in 2019.

My name is Victor. I am a resident of a quiet village near which there was a forest, there were many stories and myths about it.

The past is not dead. It is not even past." — William Faulkner • I don't remember who called me about the funeral. I assume it was Aunt Lillian's neighbor, or maybe someone from the church, but the truth is, I picked up the phone, I heard my name, and everything after that is a smear of static and vowels. Now I'm standing on the porch of my great-aunt's house, our family's house surrounded by pines, decay, and a smell I can't name but instinctively hate. The front door is already open.

Last Tuesday, I noticed a new app on my phone called "Follow the Leader." No icon, just a white circle on a black background. Being bored and fourteen, I opened it. It was just a GPS map of my neighborhood with two dots: a blue one for me and a red one about three streets over. A text popped up at the bottom: “The Leader is moving. Keep up.”

Ever since I dropped out of university the only jobs I ever had was in the security sector and I will be honest I didn’t get my SIA security licence through legal means but knew someone who could get me an SIA licence for a price. I had contacts with all sorts of people within the security sector which is how I got jobs in the first place and in this profession its all about who you know rather than what you know. I bet you don’t feel safe now knowing what the security industry is really like…

I have a teacher at school that teaches a variety of subjects and he is generally well liked, the only strange thing about him is that he doesn't call any student by their real names but by their future potential from his opinion. He comes in class and starts doing the register. "Potential murderer" teacher shouts out and Callum raises his hand as he knows it's him because the teacher always calls him by that name.

I naturally fell into babysitting around the age of 14. As the oldest of two older siblings, I was used to watching younger kids a fair amount of the time. So through friends and family, I got leads for babysitting to score some cash, which definitely beat having to work at a restaurant. The job had its ups and downs, but overall it wasn’t a bad gig at all. Yet, as many good experiences as I had, they were all eclipsed by one night.

I was five when the man in the wolfman mask scared the shit out of me. No, he didn’t eat me. No, he didn’t kill me. He just gave me one good Halloween scare.

The Doorman

Have you ever been to any kind of club where alcohol flows and where parties can get out of hand? I have and I don’t really like going to clubs, but some of my long time friends seem to like it. We are all at that age where we get into fights and they love showing off how tough they all are in the hopes that some attractive female will like them. The one thing that goes with all clubs or night clubs I don’t know what you call them, are the bouncers or security guards that stand at the front…

“Dad… is that you?” I don’t know why I asked. Maybe it was exhaustion. Maybe it was the weight of everything tonight — too much, far too much. My father groaned. His voice was hollow. Raspy. I gripped the desk to steady myself, hands trembling, staring at the hood that hid his face. “How did you get up here?” My voice cracked. Living alone was a mistake. “Find. Your. Sister.” His tone was sharp, the same stern cadence he used when anger boiled beneath his words.

Steve was a respected city official who, from time to time, liked to break away from his daily routine and visit his hometown, located about 30 kilometers away. He stood at the station dressed in an elegant suit and hat, carrying a large suitcase. The weather that day was drowsy and rainy; he had forgotten to bring an umbrella. Thus, when the train arrived, he boarded quickly, took a window seat, and began to read a book. The front of the locomotive bore a sign: "Train to Nowhere."

Stacy was a diligent office worker-meticulous and thorough. It was a typical, sunny summer day, just like any other. She sat at her desk, buried under a pile of documents to sign and a long list of emails to send. Nothing indicated that her peace was about to be shattered. Her colleague, Michelle, walked into the office, announcing that there was an issue with the ventilation system and that the computers were running louder than usual, though no one knew why.

It’s 3:00 AM. The house is quiet. My room is pitch black save for the blue light of my monitor, and my reflection is starting to look like a stranger. I’d heard about Megan Is Missing. Heard it was controversial, banned in some places, a found-footage nightmare that leaves you terrified to blink. Naturally, I had to see it. A torrent file, a quick download, and there it was: a murky, grainy file on my desktop, waiting.

It is a new and so far prosperous day when we are called to the King's chamber and so we come with high spirits. Under the old king's watchful gaze we listened to his words with both eyes and ears as wide as the kingdom gates in which the people of the land came forth for their daily business. "Do not leave the kingdom walls after nightfall." Said his Majesty, eyes widened with terror "For if you are to go forth then I cannot keep you from the wild things in which will find you"

The first warning sign came about eighteen months in. I remember it precisely because I had been sweating my ass off—hunched over a server tower in the equipment room, staring at temperature readouts that were climbing way too fast. The fan wall was choking itself to death on all the dust bunnies that accumulated on its intake. I couldn’t afford to take a server offline, since it communicated with all the others. Which meant I was doing it live—on my hands and knees, myself.

The Bainbridge Ghost Tours used to be a tradition in my hometown around Halloween. It was always cheap and heavy on the schlock. Hammy tour guides, cheesy music, cheap decorations. Picture ‘Monster Mash’ as a two-hour ghost tour and you get the idea. But given the town's limited history and questionable urban legends, I couldn't really blame Mr. and Mrs. Wesley for going all out with their prized attraction.