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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/mrbeefthighs on 2023-07-02 06:16:46+00:00.
Everyone has a scary night every once in a while. After staying up too late reading scary stories, a horror movie or even just spending the night in an unfamiliar place.
You’ll lay awake in bed staring into the darkness around you, zeroing in on every creak that sounds like a footstep, on every shadow that looks like man standing in the corner of the room. Eventually you’ll muster the courage to close your eyes and turn your back on that shadow, but there was a moment where you thought it might have moved. Not much, just a small flinch, but you could have sworn.
I had one of those nights a few weeks ago.
I had just moved into a new house and had not yet gotten used to all the creaks and bumps the old house made in the night in addition to the new patters of shadows that splashed across my bedroom when the lights went out.
Laying in bed, trying to sleep, I heard a bump and turned over in bed to look in its direction.
There in the corner of the room was an unfamiliar shadow. It looks almost as if there was someone crouching behind the armchair that rest in the corner of my room. I could almost make out through the darkness a section of shadow that was a little bit lighter than rest of the darkness around it. Like we usually do in these situations – my imagination went wild. Was it a hand grasping the top of the chair in anticipation of leaping out towards me? Was it a forehead and an eyeball peeking out from behind the chair to see if I had noticed. I held my breath for few moments as my mind raced through the thousand different things that could be hiding behind my reading chair.
A few moments later the horror passed and I rolled back over in bed and tried to get some more sleep. It was probably just a shirt I had thrown on to the chair while unpacking some of the boxes I had left over from the move.
I closed my eyes.
Another bump.
My head flew off the pillow my arm shot for the light switch. I flipped the light on and whipped my head around towards the chair, halfway bracing myself for whatever was surely barreling its way towards me.
There was nothing there. Just a regular ratty armchair. I didn’t have a shirt draped over the back of it like I had previously hypothesized. I didn’t like that.
Nonetheless, there wasn’t anything in here with me. I could see the whole room from where I sat in bed. A dresser, a small bookshelf, an armchair and a night stand. The closet was already open and I could see it was empty. My bed was just a mattress on the floor since I hadn’t gotten a bedframe yet. There was no place to hide. My imagination was getting the best of me.
To make myself feel a little bit better I got up and locked my door, then I went into my closet and grabbed a toy wooden sword I had gotten at the renaissance fair and leaned it against the door just in case someone got passed the lock somehow the sword would fall on the hardwood floors and wake me up. Only then did I crawl back in bed and close my eyes.
Yeah, I was being super paranoid. Just one of those nights.
I woke up sometime later to a sharp poke on my back.
Then a whispering voice, “Are you Phil Lockerbie?”
Half asleep I murmured, “What the fuck?”, pretty certain I was still in a dream.
Another poke jabbed at my lower back followed by another question, this time slightly louder, “Is your name Phil Lockerbie?”
I rolled over in bed and reached for the light switch.
“Don’t turn on the lights!” shouted a voice from the darkness.
**Click**
Standing at my bedside was a 7-foot-tall figure wrapped in a black robe, the skinless face under the black hood was bright red and dripped with blood that seemed to evaporate before it hit the ground. The hands that poked out of the sleeves of the robe were also skinless and dripped the same cherry red blood that vanished before it made contact with the ground. It was holding my toy sword.
I was too afraid to move. Too afraid to speak or make any sort of sound. I was completely paralyzed with fear.
Then the figure opened its mouth, “Usually people scream, so this is a nice surprise. Thanks for that. Is your name Phil Lockerbie?”
I pissed myself.
“Oh man,” the bleeding man pointed at the growing stain on my bedsheets with the wooden sword, “That is so embarrassing!”
Finally, I got my vocal cords to start working again, “Who are you?”
The bleeding man swung the sword around a few times in mock combat, “I’ve asked you the same question 3 times now and you still haven’t answered, but yeah, sure I’ll answer first. Some people call me Javaraya, some call me San La Muerte, some call me King Yama or Ajal. I think most people in this part of the world call me the Grim Reaper, but you can call me Scott. Are you Phil Lockerbie?”
“What the fuck?” was the only thing I could think to say, then, “Are you here to kill me?”
Scott stopped swinging the sword and looked directly at me, his eyes were two burning coals in the black shadow beneath his hood, “Is your name Phil Lockerbie?”
I shook my head, “No.”
“Shit!”, Scott stamped his foot angrily then turned back to me, “You never saw me.”
Then he disappeared through my floor as if a trapdoor had opened up beneath him. The wooden sword clattered to the floor where he once stood.
I sat in my piss-soaked bed for another 10 minutes wondering if I was still dreaming or if I had suffered a complete mental break. Right as I was about to get up to change my pants and bedsheets my bedroom door swung open and Scott walked right back into my bedroom, stooping to get under the doorframe.
“Do you know where Phil Lockerbie lives?” He asked me, visibly annoyed, “This is the address we have on file I just double checked.”
“Who is we?” I asked getting a little bit more comfortable around the personification of death itself.
Scott immediately walked over and picked up the wooden sword off the ground, “We as in Hell,” He started swinging the sword around again like a child pretending to be a Power Ranger, “I just want to point out how disgusting it is, you’re still sitting in your puddle. Do you know where Phil Lockerbie lives?”
I got out of bed and pulled a fresh pair of underwear out of my dresser and walked to the bathroom to change.
“I’m just going to splash some cold water on my face and when I go back in there he’ll be gone” I thought to myself.
Two minutes later with my new undies on walked back into my room to find Scott sitting in my armchair flipping through one of my Stephen King novels. “It really is insane how much this guy gets right,” I heard Scott mutter to himself, “I wonder if he knows anybody?”
I cleared my throat to announce my presence.
Scott looked up from the book and asked again, “Do you know where Phil Lockerbie lives?”
I did know. He lived across the street from me. He was the first neighbor I met when I moved in two days ago. If I told him, would Phil die? If I didn’t tell him, would he take my soul as a replacement? What if he knew I was lying?
“He lives across the street from me in the house with the green roof. 448”
“448!” Scott said, exasperated, “Ǣthelred’s 8s always look like 3s. That’s my bad.”
“So, what happens now,” I asked feeling all the guilt in the world bubbling up inside me. I wanted to throw up.
“You change your sheets and I pop over across the street and drag Phil’s soul to hell,” He stood up from the armchair and picked the sword back up, “Can I keep this?”
“Bro, no. I like that sword.”
Scott pointed the sword in my direction, “I am not man, women or even human, and in retaliation for you misgendering me so flippantly, I’m taking it. See you in 43 years.”
Again, he fell directly through my bedroom floor, this time taking my sword with him.
I changed my sheets, but I didn’t go to back to sleep.
I sat on the front porch of my house for 5 hours and watched Phil’s house across the street. I heard his wife’s screams at 7:43. The ambulance arrived at 08:01. Heart attack.
I guess I have 43 years left and right now I don’t know what to do with them. I think I need to try to get into contact with Stephen King.