Alone in the Dark

This is my first story and any comments, constructive criticism are welcome :)

This story has been taken from a collection of True Life Accounts of supernatural experiences due to be released soon. 

Alone in the dark

This is a true story that I rarely tell. It's the closest that I have ever been to a supernatural experience and to be honest I try not to dwell on it. Whatever happened all those years ago cannot be explained and has made me wary of the dark ever since.

My brother and I were just kids at the time; I was 10 years old and my brother three years younger. It was during the summer holidays, a wet and drizzly day and we bored, running around the house and play fighting as brothers often do; nothing out of the ordinary.

I chased him into my parent's bedroom and we started to have a fake war; throwing objects over the bed at each other and generally messing around.

Suddenly I thought how funny it would be to scare my little brother by switching off the lights. He had always been frightened of the dark and I thought it would be fun to scare the life out of him. It seems mean now, but please remember I was only 10 years old at the time.

There were no windows in my parent's bedroom. We lived in an old Victorian house and one of the original, larger bedrooms had been split in two to create an extra bedroom for my brother. With the lights off it would be pitch black inside, the only light creeping under the doorway.

As I walked over to the light switch I decided it would be even funnier if I left the room, leaving my poor sibling alone in the darkness.

Turning the light out, I quickly closed the door behind me and waited for his startled cries.

All was silent; it wasn't the reaction I had expected.

Then I heard him start to speak.

"What are you doing?"

His voice sounded anxious.

I laughed quietly to myself. The idiot still thought that I was in the room; he obviously hadn't seen me leave. I kept listening.

"What are you doing? You're freaking me out. Please stop"

The voice was more urgent and I began to wonder what was going on. He really thought that I was still in there with him.

"I'm not joking. Get away from me and turn the light back on. Now! Or I'm telling mom that you scared me"

My poor little bro was really starting to freak out in there, and as much as I wanted to scare him, I didn't want to totally faze him.

Laughing, I shouted back through the door.

"Ha Ha Dude, I'm not even in there."

At that moment he let out a blood curdling scream, almost as if something was attacking him.

My heart began to race.

I would be in trouble if I seriously freaked him out. It was only meant to be a joke. Panicking I reached for the door handle to enter the room and switch the light back on.

It was locked.

The door was locked and I could feel the fear start to rise in my throat. The screaming continued as I desperately tried the door again. I hadn't locked it and my little brother surely hadn't.

What the hell was happening?

By now the screaming inside the room had turned into sobbing. The poor lad was scared out of his wits.

"Please hurry. PLEASE"

I didn't know what to do. I felt sick. My kid brother was in danger and it was my fault.

I was helpless.

At 13 years of age I weighed 90 pounds and there was no way I could bust down the door. My baby brother was in trouble and I couldn't even reach him.

Suddenly the sobbing stopped, all was quiet and somehow the silence was worse than the screaming.

In a last attempt I tried the door handle again and to my astonishment and relief it opened.

Turning on the light I rushed over to my brother who was crouched, crying in the corner of the room.

It took me a while to persuade him to stand up, that everything was OK, that it was safe.

When he finally quit crying, we both sat together on the edge of the bed as he started to explain.

When the lights went out he had decided not to panic but to be brave. He knew I was only doing it to spook him and he didn't want to show that he was scared. It took a while for his eyes to get accustomed to the dark and soon the total 'blackness' gave way to a shadowy gloom from the light filtering from under the closed doorway.

As his eyes adjusted he saw 'me' standing in the corner of the room with my back to him. Obviously it wasn't me, but as he called out through the darkness to ask me what I was doing, the shadowy figure turned slowly towards him. According to his story 'I' kept on walking slowly towards him until I was eventually standing over him, peering down at him. The funny thing was that he couldn't see my face; it was all in shadow, almost as if there was nothing there.

He saw a hand slowly extend out and tightly grab at his shoulder. The fingers were cold and bony and the grip strong. It was then that he screamed out in pain.

When I eventually managed to open the door and switch on the light the figure had immediately vanished, although my brother could still feel the bony imprints against his skin.

I saw nothing.

That was many years ago and now we are both grown men, yet my brother still refuses to talk about that day. I used to try and tease him about the story, make jokes with his friends but he would just walk out of the room, refusing to acknowledge that it ever happened.

Nearly 15 years later he confided in me that he still has nightmares about the incident. There was definitely something unexplained going on but I guess that we will never know what really happened....

Thank you for spending your time with me, I hope that you have enjoyed the story as much as I did writing it!

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