davidhinder.com

If you’re reading this, I’m sorry. I would rather not put this on you, but I have no other choice.

Have you ever felt like something was standing behind you, just outside your peripheral vision? Right now, for instance, you could be looking at these words, focused on the story I’m telling you, and you might feel it standing behind you. You might feel something just about to touch your neck, causing your skin to crawl. You might want to turn around and look, to make sure nothing is there, but don’t do it. Please listen to me when I say this.

Don’t look behind you.

That’s where it waits. It can’t get you if you don’t see it, but it’s going to try with all its power to make you look. Even now, you might be thinking, Maybe I’ll just take a peek, but please don’t listen to that voice. Those are not your thoughts. I know that sounds crazy, but I’m telling the truth. It gets inside your head, and it doesn’t just make you think there’s nothing there: it makes you want to look.

You’re probably thinking that this whole thing is stupid, that you’re going to look because obviously there’s nothing there, despite that feeling in the pit of your stomach. Maybe you’re right, maybe I’m completely crazy and totally wrong. But, think about it for just a moment: isn’t it strange just how much you want to look? Isn’t it strange how looking behind you has suddenly become something you have to do? Why would you be feeling that? Well, I can tell you.

Because it wants you.

It usually hides from people, and most people will only ever catch a tiny glimpse of it. In fact, you’ve probably almost seen it before. Have you ever seen something from out of the corner of your eye, but when you turned to look, there was nothing there? How about the times you’ve been alone in your house and heard a noise, but you said to yourself it’s just one of those sounds that a house normally makes? It was probably nothing, right?

The first time it tried to get me, I was only a child. I was in bed and had woken up in the dead of night needing to pee. Everyone else was in bed and the house was silent… until I heard one of those sounds. It was subtle, like someone had bumped into the dining table. I used to keep my bedroom door open because I had trouble getting to sleep in total darkness, and I liked the comfort of the bathroom light down the hall as I drifted off. But now the house was dark, the only light coming from a streetlight that shone weakly from over the fence and through the bathroom window.

I was trying to tell myself that it was nothing, that it was just one of those sounds a house makes every day, that the house was settling around me. The shadows played tricks on my eyes, and I saw vague shapes form and disappear like smoke. That was okay because I knew they weren’t real. I started to drift back to sleep, my worry slowly fading.

Then, another sound from the hallway, like someone had taken a heavy step onto the cold tiles. In seconds, I was flooded with adrenaline and wide awake, my heart racing and my ears straining to hear anything else. I could hear myself breathing heavily, and the little whistling note from my nose would’ve been funny if I wasn’t out of my mind with terror.

Something had happened to the house around me. It had suddenly become totally, deathly silent and, aside from my breathing and the thunderous pumping of my heart, I couldn’t hear anything. It was like in a scary movie where the music cuts out, and you know a jump scare is coming. It was an absence of sound, but I knew that didn’t mean I was alone.

Something was coming for me.

I saw just a shadow of the thing as it rounded the corner to my bedroom. My mind rebelled at the sight because there was something utterly wrong with it. I know now that if I had seen it all, I would have gone mad, that it would have been able to take me without a fight. I would have been a drooling, gibbering mess, ready for sweet oblivion.

But just before it came into full view, I shut my eyes tight. I didn’t want to see what was surely coming to kill me, to devour me. So I kept my eyes closed, squeezing them until my face hurt from the effort. I felt it enter the room. I couldn’t hear its movements, but I could feel it getting closer.

My eyes remained shut, but a strange feeling came over me: I started to think maybe there was nothing there, and I was just being silly. A stupid little scaredy-cat that was afraid of the dark, so to prove I wasn’t I should just take a peek to let myself know there was nothing there, no monster in the darkness coming to get me. Take a look, and go back to sleep.

I almost did it. I would have done it, except that right before I did, I felt its breath wash over me. Hot, stinking, foul breath that made me want to vomit and made the hairs all over my body prickle in revulsion and fear. My eyes shut tighter, and I think I might have whimpered.

I don’t know how long I stayed there, crying with fear, but it left me at some point. I felt its sudden absence just as strongly as you might be feeling its presence behind you now. But I knew I couldn’t trust my own thoughts, my own senses, which told me the thing had gone. In the morning, my bedroom looked the same as it always did, nothing out of place. But I knew something had been in the room with me.

I can feel it out there now, looking for more victims. It hasn’t come back for me yet, but I know it’s only a matter of time before it does. I managed to survive, and I don’t think it likes that.

But I’ve figured out how to get rid of it, how to break free of the prison of fear I’ve been trapped inside for so long. All I needed to do was to tell my story to someone else, to make another person know that this thing exists. Because knowing about it will draw its attention. It will stop looking for me, and start looking for whoever reads these words.

I’m sorry. I don’t know who you are, but you have to deal with this now. Remember: you can’t trust your own thoughts. Even when it feels safe, don’t look behind you. Whatever happens: don’t look.