(Season 2, Episode 47)
A Horrorwalker Travel Guide Tale:
WHY IS THERE BLOOD ON THE FRONT OF MY SHIRT
(Falstaff, Arizona)
Friday afternoon… I've finished my work early and now I’m on my way to O’Hara’s bar for a few weeks’ end beers. I was skipping like a child because I was so happy to be leaving the office. But, that euphoria was very short lived, because…
Something large and fast, cloaked in the darkness of the dimly lit parking deck, bolted from the space between that car over there and the wall over there on that side. Moments after I stepped out of the elevator, I peripherally saw it approaching me from my right side. Before I could turn to face it I was slammed into and driven back against the concrete column to my left side. My head made contact with the rock hard column with such force that I literally watched the consciousness quickly, and painfully, pour from my eyes as I fell into empty darkness. I was knocked-out cold and did not regain my mind until nine hours later.
The incident occurred around 7:20 P.M..
I was the last person out of the office and so the parking lot was empty of all cars, except for the same three cars belonging to the Friday night cleaning crew -- the same four cars parked in the same designated spots six days a week.
I came to at 4:33 A.M., lying flat on my back, in the same spot at the base of the column. My keys were still in my right hand, my unopened briefcase lay about a foot from my left hand and all of my personal belongings were still in my jacket pockets.
“What the hell?” I asked of any ethereal entity inside the garage who would answer my interrogative. I received no ghostly answer.
I gathered my stuff, brushed off my clothing and opened my car door to throw my things onto the back seat. Obviously confused and dizzy, sore and angry, I took a woozy look around the dimly lit parking garage and then slid into my seat to settle in behind the steering wheel. That was the moment I noticed the security camera stationed directly above the elevator door. I suddenly realized that over the course of seven years of using this parking garage, I had never noticed that security camera.
“Wow,” I whispered to myself for my incredulous ignorance as I made the decision to climb my way out of my vehicle. I needed to make a quick visit to the security office.
It is a Saturday morning. The time is now 5:22 A.M. and I am standing in front of the security office located on the third floor of the building. I’m standing in front of the door, just realizing that the office might be closed on the weekends. But just in case one of the security staff does show up today, I’ve made the decision to sit here by the door and perhaps take a nap until around eight o’clock. My neck, back, chest and head all felt like I had recently been slammed into a thick concrete column… like I had been!
I painfully slid to my butt to rest sitting inches away from the office door. I placed my hands on my knees, open faced, and placed my forehead into my palms. I remember whispering, “What a night.” Just before I apparently passed out like a light bulb being turned off with the flick of a switch.
I remember there was a deep dark, ebony profound darkness in that sleep. How does one remember something like that? It beats me. All I know is when Jeff, the security officer, gave me a little shake on my right shoulder I jolted awake and felt like I had just awakened from a deep tomb of darkness in death. And I was creeped out by my own weirdness. But I tried to keep it together as I slowly stood up to my feet to speak to Jeff at eye level.
I glanced at my watch and was amazed to discover that I had just slept until 9:00 in the morning.
We shook hands as I began to explain my bizarre experiences of the past few hours. We discussed the matter while standing outside the door. When I finished with my account of the attack, we stepped inside the large security center.
Jeff flicked on the lights and I guess I was surprised by the amount of surveillance equipment inside the room. But in retrospect, the room is everything I supposed it would be. Cameras, monitors and printers neatly lined the walls and the center console was occupied by three computers. The neatness of the room was noticeable.
Jeff sat down in front of the center computer. He turned it on and it booted up almost instantly. He typed in a few commands and before I was ready for what I saw on the screen… there it was, me looking down in a very large angle of the garage, looking down on the top of my head as I was walking out of the elevator door. The angle of the camera lens gave a wide view of the area, including a full clear view of my car just up the way and slightly off to the right. This was a quite scene, just before…
Whatever it was, it ran straight into me from the right of the camera view. Even though the light was not the brightest, the garage was lit up enough to see the numbers on my car’s licenses plate. It appeared on camera to be a blurry, hairy black blur of something that looked like a huge bear-like creature. But, it definitely was not a bear. It was a… neither one of us could either believe what we were seeing, or force a true description of what we thought this beast was.
This we both were -- stunned!
I watched as it tackled me, slamming me into the column standing firm and solid twenty feet from my car. I watched myself crumble into a heap at the feet of this attacking thing as the concussion caused by my head slamming into the column knocked me unconscious. Then we both watched in horror as the creature, with its back turned toward the camera, began to do something to my body. We both watched as its hands moved around and over my body. We watched as blood squirted up into the air and blood began to pool around my body and the feet of this thing. We watched as my body moved around as the creature moved me from side to side as it did whatever it did to me. All this activity took twelve minutes in real time.
In the tenth minute of the video, the creature began to lick the ground, lick the column, lick me and lick the left side of my car. It did not take much thought to realize it was cleaning up my blood with its tongue.
I was beginning to feel sick.
Then, as quickly as it appeared, the thing was gone. It simply turned and bolted out of the frame of the lens. And there I was… slumped there by the column, splayed there like a rag doll… just like I remembered I was when I regained consciousness.
I asked Jeff to turn off the computer image for a few minutes. We both were simply stunned at what we just witnessed and quite simply could not speak. I took a few steps back and leaned against the door because my legs suddenly began to feel weak. I was simply overwhelmed by what had happened on that video.
Jeff turned to me and looked at me with fear in his eyes. I instantly caught that look and asked my question, “What’s on your mind, Jeff?”
He said, “I've got something to tell you that we are both going to regret.”
I said, “Go ahead and tell me what’s on your mind?”
Jeff said, “Sir, when you walked outside the elevator, do you remember if your coat was open or closed?”
I answered, “I really don’t remember?”
Jeff said, “Your coat was open when you were first attacked. It’s right there on the screen.”
I answered, “And…”
Jeff said, “And when the creature ran off after attacking you, didn’t you notice that your coat was buttoned-up?”
I asked, “What the hell are you implying, Jeff?”
Jeff said, “Look at your clothing. There isn’t a drop of blood anywhere on you. What the hell?”
I had no answer for that.
Jeff said, “I think you should open up your coat.”
I answered, “I don’t want to do that, Jeff. I’m too afraid to do that, Jeff.”
Jeff stood up and took three steps back away from me.
Jeff said, “Sir, you should open your coat.”
So, I began to open my Topman Duffle coat by undoing the top toggle and slowly undoing the other three toggles moving downward. I placed both of my hands at the break point of my coat and slowly opened it to expose what was inside to Jeff. His eyes opened wide, he dropped to his knees and vomited his breakfast right there at my feet.
I zoned out at that moment. My mind left my body and hovered over the room like a raven of death surveying Black Death damage. To my left, there stood a supply cabinet of some sort. It was made of polished metal with a surface as reflective as a clean mirror. Like a stiff robot, my body took two steps to the left so that the reflection in the metal bounced right into my glazed eyes!
I could not scream because my soul was floating above the room looking down on the horror. I could not vomit like Jeff because I was numb with nothingness! I could not die because there before me, like a horror movie special effect gone completely right, was the empty cavity where my chest skin, chest muscle, chest bones and chest organs once occupied. The red, gooey cavity was so clean it looked like it had been licked clean.
And I could not scream at that moment in time because my sanity escaped me at that minute! And now this part of my story ends as the blackness of insanity overtook me.
And with the darkness, came the closing of the overhead view of the room. And with the darkness came an unresolved transformation of a human being into a monster! And with the darkness came the ending of a human life…
… until I regained my sanity six months later, broke away from the laboratory and began a zombie-like quest to hunt down my attacker and make it pay for what it turned me into.
That is a horror tale to be told when I find my attacker. It is out there, close by, and I can feel its presence. In the meantime, I have to hunt down another creature to eat its brain in order to stay strong enough to find my enemy and hopefully destroy it! So far, I've been able to eat animal brains, alive and dead… but the craving for a human brain grows stronger and stronger every day. I better find this creature fast, before I become a mindless monster beast, too.
That’s a goddamn laugh! What am I, other than a monster? I suppose the scientist will eventually tell me that answer if they catch me. Oh, over there… a deer. I do love deer brains…
PRC
