Trapped

The Man In the Darkness

Natania was now alone and the silence had become overwhelming and made the fact that she was in a haunted house even worse. She hated being left alone with her thoughts because she was more afraid of her own thoughts than she was of ghosts or death.

"Be afraid!"

"Stop!"

"Are you afraid?"

"Get out of my hea-"

Natania was cut off by the sound of crying but she didn't trust it this time so she walked towards the source of the sound but cautiously this time. As she got to the end of the hall there was a line, a straight line between the dark part of the hall and the dimly lit part but Natania knew better so she stopped two inches away from the darkness and then she hear

"Please don't be afraid I'm trapped too." A stranger's voice came from the darkness.

Natania backed away and then she heard the sound of a heavy chain drag across the floor and then bony, rotting fingers reached out of the darkness. The thumb and pointer fingers had no nails and the rest of the finger nails were long and dirty.

"Please,please help me!"

"No!"

Natania then heard the sound of walking and then the sound of chains pulling as if they had been pulled to the full length.
Half of the person's feet peeked out of the darkness, rotting flesh hung off the person's feet. The smell of decomposing flesh finally got to Natania's nose and she backed away even more not sure if she should run or stay. She had been so in need of the sound of another human that she felt as if running away would bring her back to loneliness and she didn't want to be left alone with her thoughts again. Blood started to flow out of the darkness then the sound of pulling was heard again but it seemed more desperate as if the person had been furious and trying to get out of the darkness, trying to get to Natania because she didn't want to go to 'it'. She then heard a low chuckle and another pull on the chains.

"Why won't you come closer are you afraid?"

The voice sounded more sinister. Natania knew she needed to get out of there because the hand began to reach further out of the darkness but she couldn't, her legs wouldn't let her, it seemed as if her own body was against her. The hand reached out of the darkness and Natania could see up to it's elbow but it still wasn't close enough to touch her and finally she could run again but she wanted to know what this thing was so she turned on her phone flashlight and started to scan the darkness. The person was in a corner and when the light touched its back it hissed. The thing was clearly a person but the decomposing flesh on his back, the lack of fingernails and a nose and its fully yellow eyes gave him an inhuman look.

"What happened to you." Natania asked

"I was homeless and I came here to sleep for the night because I thought it was abandoned but in the middle of the night I was awakened by a man in a lab coat cutting off my left foot but I was paralyzed I couldn't get up and I couldn't scream so I lay there screaming in my head but no one could here me not even the man and so I went through two hours of being cut open and various organs being taken out and then I woke up here and I was chained to this wall but I don't know how long I've been here.

Natania was still unsure of what to do so she backed away.

"Still don't believe me?" The person chuckled

"N-no, I just...I don't know."

Natania backed away more as the light above her went out and the person came closer and the chains seemed to not be the thing holding the person back it must have been light, the man was afraid of light and Natania was now also in the dark and the man was getting closer so she ran faster than she ever thought she could until she was on the opposite side of the hall in the light and the figure stopped running once it's leg got out of the darkness and he pulled it out of the light letting out a low growl. Natania decided to leave and never come back to that area of the house. The first room Natania found had a red door with a tiny smiley face sticker on it which confused Natania because the sticker looked brand new as if it had been placed there recently. Natania continued into the room and as soon as she stepped foot into the room she was instantly shocked by what she saw, the walls were covered in pictures of drawings that looked like they were drawn by a young child. One drawing grabbed Natania's attention it was like the drawing they found in the diary but this time it was the same lady, the little girl and a man in a white lab coat and they were all holding hands and this time the black shadowy figure wasn't there and suddenly it all made sense to Natania the man in the picture must be the same man in the picture who was holding up a knife to the little girl's fingers. The story that she had known had just fallen apart and while Natania stood there trying to make sense of the story the dim lights of the room that had surprisingly still been working flickered off and that's when she heard sinister laughing and chains dragging across the wooden floors. Natania's first instinct was to hide but the room was empty and the only items inside were the drawings so she had no choice but to fight. She hid in the corner of the now dark room, pulled out the keys to her front door and placed them between her clenched fingers. The door opened slowly but it felt like forever until she actually saw the man from the darkness slowly walk in but as soon as she saw him one of her memories of when she was younger came back to her.

She was laying in bed at the age of six and her bedroom door creaked open so she sat up thinking it was her mother but instead it was a dark figure with yellow eyes and rotting flesh. The figure walked up to the foot of her bed and stared at her for what felt like eternity but was probably five minutes then turned around and left and only then did she hear and see the chains dragging behind the figure. Natania decided not to tell her parents because she had been trying to convince herself that it was just a nightmare. Natania closed her eyes and repeated

"It's not real, it's not real, it's not rea-"

"Are you afraid yet?"

"No!"

Natania opened her eyes and the figure was gone but she still felt a heavy pressure on her chest that made her feel as if she still wasn't alone.

Thank you for reading this chapter. I hope you enjoyed and see you next chapter. 💛💛