The Victim List

It’s been days, weeks, maybe even months. I can’t tell. However, that’s not something I should be worrying about now. Right now I should be worrying about escaping… it. I don’t think I’m likely to escape though. I can hear it breathing, it’s continuous howling. Ha, how rude of me. I should probably explain what’s happening first. Well, I’ll explain.

It was a normal Saturday evening. I was hanging with a couple of my friends, and we were having quite the wonderful time.Though we were below the age of 21, my parents weren’t home, so we decided to sneak a couple beers from the basement.

Well, after we ran through a couple beers, me and my friends started chatting about spooky stories. Pretty strange for a couple teenagers, but it was nearly midnight, and we had nothing better to do. That night was the first time I heard of it.

One of my friends, Jade, started to speak about a myth that was told around our town. Supposedly a creature of unrecognizable background roamed around our town, taking away any miserable creature that happened to cross its path at night. Pretty fake, huh? Well, that’s what I thought too. I was wrong. Very, very wrong.

Somewhere in the conversation, Jade mentioned how we should visit our nearby forest, maybe to see if the creature was real. Everyone except him started laughing. Why would something like that be real? Besides, it’s rare for a person to go missing during the night in our parts of the town. It seemed impossible.

Well, after a little bit of begging from him, though extremely irritated, we agreed. The trip was harsh, especially because of the lack of light, and the tough obstacles that lay before us. We managed to make it to the entrance of the forest, though.

Now, a little background on our town’s forest. It’s a decent sized forest, but has horrible monitoring. The park rangers can care less about keeping the forest together, and there’s garbage everywhere. However, once you get deeper into the forest, things tend to get much more clean.

Me and my friends made our trip into the forest. We had an abundant supply of batteries, and out flashlights worked pretty good. Jade seemed to be looking around a lot more than we were, though. He claimed he was searching for… “it”.

Eventually the forest started to get much greener and filled with plant life. We even saw something move a couple hundred meters in front of us. It charged into the forest after it saw us, though. We came up to where we saw the creature, and looked at the prints it left.

The prints… oh gosh. They weren’t huge, but their size was enough to scare a person. After a bit of chatting with my friends, we eventually we came to the conclusion that it was a bear’s prints. Though we all wanted to turn back, Jade took out his backpack. He wrestled something out of it, and eventually got what looked like a small spray can. He explained to us that it was called pepper spray, and can scare off any bear if sprayed in its face. Relieved, we continued.

Somewhere in our journey, we came across a small broken down cabin. At this point we were probably farther than any park ranger has traveled on a daily basis, so we decided to explore the cabin. Bad idea.

Going into the cabin, we saw what looked like a statue of a wolf standing on its two legs, with horns all over its body. I was frightened. Who or what used to live here, and what was this demonic statue doing in their house? Well, apparently my friends thought this was “cool”, and they wanted to see more.

The layout of the house was pretty simple. It had what looked like a kitchen, and had multiple food items. It had bread, apples, cheese, and a single piece of what looked like rotten meat. The stench of the meat was disgusting, but the rest of the food looked new. It was freaky, especially considering that this cabin was out in the middle of nowhere. Now I was convinced something lived here, or at least visited this place once in a while.

The upstairs of the house had a single bedroom, and a disgusting, moldy, bathroom. As we were checking out the bedroom, I saw something that caught my eye. A book. I quickly snuck it into my pocket, and told my friends I was going to go check out the kitchen a bit more. I walked downstairs, and snapped the book out of my pocket.

I flipped through a couple of the pages, that were… blank. Yes, they were blank. Confused, I flipped to the back of the book. That was when things started to go wrong. The last page of the book had a title in what looked like dark blue ink. The title read Victim list. Down below it were a couple names that I didn’t recognize, but as I glanced down, I saw something that scared me. There was eight in total names on the list. However, three of them stood out to me.

6. Henry
7. Mark
8. Jade

Those names were of the people I was hanging out with. That was when I heard it. A high-pitched screaming noise. I recoiled in surprise for a second. Out of instinct, though, I ran into the main room, where the statue was. However, it was… gone. The only thing left to show of it’s existence was a couple dusty footprints that led upstairs.

I sprinted towards the door. I knew whatever was upstairs would do whatever it did to my friends, and I didn’t want to take chances. However, once I got to the door, I found out that it didn’t work. At first I thought the door was stuck, but it wasn’t. It was locked. And just when I thought things couldn’t get worse, I heard a loud stomp coming from upstairs. That was it. I started to bang on the door. Eventually I tried punching it, but it was no use. There were no windows, so I couldn’t even escape that way.

Stomp. I looked upstairs on the top step. There, clear in my vision, was a giant, large, stone looking paw. Stomp. I remember seeing the unnatural and yet almost life-like movements it made as it was coming down. I knew this was my only chance. Stomp. I banged into the door as hard as I could, and it opened with a loud thumping noise. I sprinted, and I remember hearing the crunching of leaves coming from behind me. It was after me.

I can’t even describe how fast I was running. It was like I was in an important race, and I needed to run in order to win, except in this case, I needed to survive. Well, somehow, I made it out. I made it out of that horrifying monstrosity of a forest, and I ended up beating whatever that demon creature was trying to do to me.

I returned home, and collapsed on my bed… but, when I woke up, it was pitch black out. There was nothing outside, just darkness. Horrified, I returned downstairs. I tried turning on the TV, but it was only static. My phone didn’t work either. I was hopeless.

I took out that book I retrieved from earlier, and flipped to the last page. This time, there was an addition to the name chart. I don’t know how it got there, but it was just there.

9. Joey

That was my name.

And now I’m writing this. My phone doesn’t have any battery, and the charger doesn’t work, so I had to resort to using the notebook. I’m now writing this as a warning to anyone who can see this. I’ve recently been walking around my house out of boredom, and I’ve always seen some sort of shadow appear. I always book it to the next room out of fear.

If you have read this far into the book, I would suggest you get out of where you are as quick as possible, for I am afraid it has seen you. It knows where you are, and you can’t outrun it. Run far, far away, and maybe, just maybe, you can escape what’s hunting you. Maybe “it” will decided you’re not worth it’s time.

I am afraid I must go now. I know it can sense me. This is the last time you’ll hear from me. It’s time for it to take me. Take my warning, and maybe whatever is watching from behind you won’t make you its next victim.

  • ShYgUy

    I liked the way you ended this. Good job 🙂

  • Rose Morrison

    I liked the story. Lots of mistakes though. I look forward to more.

  • Myru Lace

    With minor misspellings, this was actually pretty good. If I were a child I would have been really freaked out. As an adult it lands a 4 on the creep factor. This is for a really cool story.