The Other World (Short Horror Stories)

New City Village

I used to live in New Jersey in an old Victorian, right in the smack dab middle of the boonies. Where I lived, cell phones rarely get reception.

Back a few decades ago, when I was a kid, a housing development went up. Big places. They cleared a few miles of the Barrens for it. It was a stones throw from my place. Once the places were finished, people moved in. City people, really. It was either old people or new families with real young kids. People that wanted to either wind their life down or start a new one up.

Nothing special. I knew a handful of the kids through elementary school, but none of them were exactly my age. They were normal.

When the people moved in, my mom made an effort to meet everyone, with us being so close and all. There was one guy that stuck out in my mind, mainly because he was bald, yet young. Probably 38 at the oldest, I want to say. My mom said not to say anything because he might have a disease or something like that.

Years went by. I grew up and went into middle school.

I came home one day. I had to walk because I missed all the busses. I went past the housing development. Glancing down the street, I didn’t see anyone. Not a soul. It was around 5:20, according to my watch, if I remember right. Normally, all the fathers were getting home at 5:00ish. Curiosity got me. I walked down the street to see what I could see.

Every house was dark, except for the bald man’s. I glanced in his window, and saw about the entire population of the small community sitting in his living room. Children, parents, the elderly. Everyone. Standing in the middle of everything was the bald man. It seemed as though it was just a casual meeting. People were talking and laughing.

Whatever. I didn’t know why the hell I cared anyway. I walked home and got grounded for being late and not calling from the school.

That night my mom got a call from another local neighbor, saying that she was hearing unsettling grinding noises from the small community. My mom said that someone was probably getting work done. When she asked me if I had seen anything on my way home, I didn’t answer, as I was still bitter that she had grounded me in the first place.

The next day, every kid from that small neighborhood was marked absent in school.

And the day after that.

The police went to investigate that night. The first thing they found was an ear on the front lawn of the bald man’s house. A severed, human ear. A child’s arm was found a trash can, dumped with a few empty pizza boxes, and a man’s split open torso was located in the woods behind the property, with human bite marks penetrating the flesh.

The rest of the community was inside the house. All the entrances, both doors and windows, were boarded shut. When they broke down the door, they found the corpses of everyone, the entire development’s population. Children, parents, the elderly. Everyone. Some were mutilated beyond initial recognition, and most were missing organs like livers and kidneys. Forensics showed that the victims were alive when the organs were taken out.

A child’s body was also found in the oven of the house, burnt to the point where the skin melted. Forensics showed that the child was alive when his skin started to melt.

Children, parents, the elderly. Everyone. Everyone. Everyone except for the bald man. A background search on him proved that he was involved in a local sect of the occult, which are known to practice in the Pine Barrens. He fled. He hasn’t been found.

Needless to say, what happened literally tore our community apart in multiple ways. Instead of the Boogie Man, my friends and I had nightmares about something real, about a bald man. Horror movies didn’t scare me because I knew they were fake. What happened was real, and that terrifies me to this day.

The massacre ocurred in 1984, twenty eight years ago. I’m forty one now. I went back to the site last month. The houses are still standing. All of them are abandoned. The single road that once connected the community to the outside world is long overgrown.

I can’t find any police files. Nor can I find any news broadcasts about the murders. The houses are still there, but everything that had to do with that place seems to be gone.

I could spend hours telling all the urban legends I’ve heard about it. Weird NJ posted a story in their book, I think.

Nothing’s conclusive. No newspapers. No files. I searched the records of some of the children from my school. They were never legally documented.

But I know. And every other person that witnessed it and lived in West Milford county in 1984, knows. I cannot, in any way, express to you how much the events that I’ve described have literally ruined by life. If you doubt the reality of it, the only thing I can say is that you’re wrong. This happened. This isn’t meant to be a Creepypasta, and this isn’t an urban legend. The only reason I’ve posted it here is because I know that this is a community that will actually read what I’m writing. I’m not sure what I can say to make you believe. But a total of 37 people were murdered in the most brutal ways I can imagine.

The place has a lot of names. It used to be called New City Village. Now it’s called Demon’s Alley.

Look it up for yourself if you don’t believe me. People need to know about this. For all its worth, please share this.