Gengar

Chapter 5

The sound of the Spirit Box permeated the entire floor, blaring its static white noise as you wandered throughout the home. All you needed was to catch the purple demon on your camera so you could leave this cursed manor with cold, hard evidence—and earn yourself the title of a true paranormal investigator.

Boogaras: this one's for you!  You chanted in your mind, trying to keep yourself inspired despite the terror looming in the back of your mind. You just witnessed a demon murder a man in front of you, yet here you are determined to catch it on camera in order to settle the great paranormal question once and for all. Are ghosts real?

Yes the fuck they are.

However, for the last hour, the purple demon was nowhere to be seen. The EVP Spirit Box hasn't picked up anything abnormal, and your temperature camera remained at regular levels. You didn't even know what time it was because your phone was completely dead.

There was one thing, though. You couldn't exactly explain it, nor record it on your camera, so you often shrugged it off as nothing out of the ordinary. However, a few times within the last hour, you noticed you had a shadow. This was weird because there wasn't any light in the manor; the only light was the one coming from your flashlight. So physically speaking, a shadow was impossible. Your temperature camera could only record heat fluctuations, so it didn't pick up the shadow when you tried to record it.

You convinced yourself that it was your flashlight casting the shadow, but even you knew a prominent shadow to your left—when the flashlight was ahead of you—was impossible. That was the other weird thing; the shadow was always to your left. When you moved the light around, the shadow didn't move along with it like it should have.

Regardless of the shadow anomaly, your temperature camera didn't show any drops in heat levels. There was nothing to record.

Suddenly, an idea popped into your head. You didn't give yourself any time to think it over. Immediately after coming up with the idea, you went with it.

You intentionally dropped your flashlight and broke into a sprint. You could barely see anything ahead of you, you just ran at the fastest speed you could. You kept your eyes on your left, and... the shadow definitely lagged a little bit before catching up with you!

Aha! Got you, demon!

You stopped running, and shouted at the top of your lungs with all the air you had left.

"SHOW YOURSELF! I know you're here!"

Suddenly, you felt a chill shoot throughout your entire body. The temperature dropped what felt like twenty degrees, and all the hair below your head suddenly stood straight up. You felt a wave of profuse goosebumps.

Your stomach dropped as you realized what this meant.

You gripped your temperature camera even tighter and held it up in front of you, prepared to capture the purple demon so you could get out of there.

The shadow started moving slowly from your left side, to directly in front of you. You fought back the sudden trembling of your legs, and could feel your knees begin to buckle as your eyes were glued to the floor. The hand gripping your camera began going numb as your grasp only tightened.

Suddenly, two large, glowing red eyes appeared on the floor within the shadow. You sucked in your breath as you helplessly watched the shadow materialize into the third dimension right in front of you, bubbling up from the floor to the air, forming the large, devil-eared creature you saw earlier.

Your thumb pressed into the recording button as hard as you could, despite not being able to feel your fingers.

You didn't hear the beep.

Your heart dropped as you looked to the screen only to see pitch-black nothingness on it.

Oh no!

At that point, you decided evidence wasn't worth it. Still fighting your knees from buckling, you forced your shaky legs to move as you quickly turned around and began to run for your life. The staircase ahead started approaching you as you bolted towards the front of the house—without looking back.

Just down the stairs, and I'm free!  You thought as you quickly approached the first step.

Suddenly, you stopped.

It was like a nightmare happening in real life—no matter how hard you tried to run, you just couldn't move. Then, you felt your feet stop making contact with the floor. To your horror, you could feel yourself growing weightless, like you were under water. The staircase ahead of you grew smaller as it sunk below you, and the chandelier above suddenly came into view. You were suspended in mid air, frozen and unable to move, with what looked like a purple halo covering your entire body.

Two large, glowing red eyes suddenly appeared in front of you, followed by the massive body of the purple demon materializing itself once again. You now found yourself staring eye-to-eye with the large monster as it flashed a wide grin, the air around you as cold as ice. Your heart sank.

"Who are you?!" You managed to blurt out, your voice trembling in fear.

It started cackling, its grin growing even wider, its blood-red eyes as amused as it was sinister.

"Gengar."