The Things That Go Bump In The NIght

I'm sure you've heard the stories about the things that go bump in the night. I'm also sure you don't believe those stories. That's alright. But I can't go without telling someone another day. I can't keep this to myself any longer.

Ever since I was a child, I've hated the dark. I hadn't been afraid of the dark itself, but more accurately, what could have been lurking in the shadows, around the corner. There were reasons for this. Reasons I didn't know at the time. Reasons I'd yet to tell anyone. But that, that was about to change.

Life had to go on. I knew that even when I was eleven. Still, it didn't make the weeks after the accident any easier on me. Or my aunt. Fresh out of college, she stepped up to become my legal guardian after that night.

I had always hated the dark, but in the weeks after the accident, I hated it even more. I started sleeping with the lights on and not going to bed until I physically couldn't keep my eyes open any longer. Monsters, Red Bulls, and Bangs became my best friends.

My aunt's beliefs got more tolerable over time. She would always try to convince me that the dark wouldn't hurt me, that I imagined what I saw, that the only reason I was afraid of the dark was because of that night. I guess at some point along the way, I started to believe this too.

That was, until October 14th, three weeks ago. When I saw him again. It was 11 o'clock and I was leaving the library. It was completely dark outside and I was cursing myself for taking that long to finish that book for English. It had been 6 years, but I knew. He was the man responsible for the accident. He killed my parents. And he hadn't aged a day. When I saw his face again, it all came rushing back. I saw it again. It was like reliving it.

We were walking home from my grandmother's house at about 9:00. I don't remember the exact time, but that's okay, all that mattered was that it was dark out. She only lived about 3 minutes away, walking. When he walked by. My mother had just cut herself on broken glass. She was bleeding through the bandage that Grandma gave her. I'm sure he could smell it. I saw his eyes change and then he broke into a run. That's when my father pushed me out of the way and I ran to our house. I never looked back, but I heard their screams.

As soon as I saw him, he was gone. Like he had powers. But I knew that was impossible. Didn't I? I had probably just imagined him. And I chalked it up to that. But then, I'd seem to see him frequently, only if it was dark. I thought I was going crazy. I knew I needed to write it down. Even if I was going to burn it when I was done.

So, I went to the library after school. I did my homework. Around 6 p.m., the librarian, my aunt's best friend, told me she was leaving and that she was trusting me to lock up. That was fine with me, I had every intention of being alone when I wrote this down. She also told me she'd turn off all the lights except the light in the area I was in unless I wasn't comfortable with the dark. I told her she could, that I had gotten over my silly childhood fear of the dark. Both were lies.

I was sitting in a desk, in almost complete darkness. Only one lamp for light. And I started to write.

It's depressing my story can be summed up in just a few hundred words. And, now that I was done writing, I had a foreboding feeling that this was the wrong thing to do. That somehow he knows. When I heard a crash from the front of the library. And then he showed up in the doorway of the area I was at. And I know that he will kill me and burn this. There is no getting away from him, which is why I will write this. I will finish writing my story. I will make sure people know that vampires exist. That vampires are re