Creepypasta Collection

The Devil's Mimic

// credited to YumCrunchFelix

You know what our problem is? We're too damned accommodating.

That's what I told my wife when she agreed to look after that awful bird. We already look after a friend's toddler every Thursday, and take the lady across the corridor shopping, and then there are all the charity-case kids she teaches piano for free... It's just too much. So when her Aunt Margaret asked us to look after her pet mynah bird while she went to Belgium, I wanted to refuse. Of course, my wife didn't.

You must know the problem with mynah birds. They mimic sounds they enjoy hearing, over and over again. I read on the internet about a Japanese woman who looked after her friend's mynah. After three days of the bird making the sound of a microwave, she could take no more: "Shut up, or I'll make you yaki-tori!" Of course, that became the bird's favourite phrase, and the woman spent the next month trying to re-educate it.

So, we spent the next two weeks on our best behaviour: no swearing, no shouting, no... well anyway, we were on our best behaviour. My wife's aunt loves classical music, so we left the radio on Classic FM. Unfortunately, the bird grew fond of Alan Titchmarsh, so we had to switch to BBC Radio 3. Apart from the fact the bird could imitate the phone (bloody thing! I was waiting for a job interview), everything went smoothly until two weeks into its stay.

The first setback was a call from Belgium. The aunt had had an accident, and needed surgery. She apologised profusely, asking us to look after the mynah until she found a friend to look after it on a long-term basis. Annoying as it was, this was only a minor inconvenience compared to what happened next. I confess that something about that bird's continuous chattering put me on edge, and I found myself unable to sleep. One night, staring blearily at the ceiling, I heard a snatch of music from the next room. I looked at the alarm clock: four in the morning. I wondered – had someone left the radio on, or was it the mynah? I wanted to ignore it, but I was on edge. I went into the next room, and checked the radio: off. I turned to the mynah; I was about to say something, but then...

Try as I might, I can't fully describe what happened next. Somehow, what the bird said to me is still etched in my soul; I hear each syllable clearly. Yet I can not manage to get it down on paper. I will try to describe it for you: a deep guttural voice, weary but full of malice. It was as if the voice were coming out of the ground, from a distant, moss-eaten sepulchre. What the voice said I couldn't understand, but it filled me with inescapable, crushing dread. It was both completely alien to me, and yet at the same time instantly recognisable, as if I had known that voice since birth. In a moment, I was back in bed, the covers pulled over my head, quaking as if my spine had turned to jelly. My wife, mercifully, is a heavy sleeper. Twice more that night, I heard the snatch of music, and then the voice. Each time the voice sounded nearer and nearer, and I could not help shivering.

In the morning, I asked my wife if she had been disturbed in the night. Thankfully she had not. I felt like asking to get rid of the mynah, but I knew that would make things worse. To be fair, I had been complaining about it for two weeks, and my bizarre story would sound contrived and only make things worse. When she went out to piano lessons, I took a moment to think. Perhaps my dread last night had been borne of the darkness, the sleeplessness, the aggravation the bird caused me. I needed to know whether my fear was justified. I needed to know what the bird was saying.

I got an mp3 recorder ready, and waited for the bird to speak again. It had plenty to say – mostly Groucho Marx, for some reason – but never repeated the spectral voice. It was only at 4 o'clock the next morning that I heard the snatch of music, and knew what was coming next. I grabbed the recorder, set it running, and rushed into the next room.

I heard the voice of a woman: "Go, out goes he." I recognised that; it was from an old black and white movie we had watched that evening. Slightly apprehensive, I adjusted the volume slightly, and held the recorder to the bird. It cocked its head to one side, looked at me questioningly, and began its dark recital. I shuddered as I heard the deep voice, relayed by such an innocuous form and yet carrying behind it all the malice of Hell. But deep down, I felt I was winning: I had a recording. The bird went through its act three times in about two hours – the music, the woman's voice, then that deep, haunting muttering – and I recorded it each time.