(Gabrian's POV)
"My mom says I was four, about to be five, when she really started to notice him." I spoke to Dr. Radcliffe and Priest Nathaniel.
"And who exactly is this 'him' that she noticed?" He questioned.
"He told me his name was Max."
"And what exactly worried your mom about this Max character that you used to imaginatively play with?" The priest asked.
"Well at first she thought it was just an imaginary friend that I had like most normal toddlers. About three months after I turned five, I used to play with him more frequently. She used to come into my room and find drawings all over the walls. And when I would tell her it was Max, she'd tell me he was always just imaginary and that I needed to stop lying. I started getting in a lot of trouble because of him so he and I would argue continuously. And one day she heard me screaming in my room. Shouting and crying as I argued with Max. He was drawing on my walls again and I kept screaming at him to stop. She had rushed in and seen me standing in the middle of my room screaming at the wall. Then she'd seen a picture being drawn in dark red liquid on the wall I had been facing. Then I screamed at him and I said, "Stop it! Stop it Max! Leave! I'm not your friend anymore!" and that's when he attacked me. My mother saw three objects from my shelf just fly at me and hit me. Then I remember being grabbed by my hair and being lifted off the ground. My mother said she'd seen a demented creature attacking me, but only through the mirrors on my closet doors. She ran towards me and grabbed me quickly then ran out of my room with me and automatically put me in the car and rushed me to the baptist church. She said once I was baptized, everything had gone back to normal. Everything was peaceful again. And I don't remember any other occurrences of Max after that. We moved out of our home and moved out here to Philadelphia. We've lived out here ever since. But then just yesterday, I was coming home from a late shift at the burger bar when I walked through my front door to a dark house. My mom was out at a late press conference with the school board of education so I wasn't expecting her for another hour or two."
"And what time exactly was it when you got home?" Priest Nathaniel asked.
"It was around seven forty five."
Both the priest and doctor Radcliffe noted the time on their clipboards.
"Well, anyway... I walk through the door and I go to turn the light on. It turns on but as I begin to walk down the hallway, it flickers for a moment then turns off. And I thought no big deal, the light bulb must've blew. We've never had to change it since we moved in because we didn't use it frequently. So I go into the kitchen and go to turn the light on, and it doesn't turn on. And I thought to myself, well maybe the fuse on the electric box in the basement blew. So I take the small key chain flashlight from my keys and I make my way to the basement door. I open it and walk down to the basement when I hear this sort of growl. I stop for a moment to listen and I don't hear it again so I continued to take my next step and then I hear it once again. So I stopped and I shown the flashlight all around the basement and continued to step down in silence. When I reached the floor, I placed my foot down on the ground and the door at the top of the stairs slams shut. I look up quickly then I hear the growling again. This time louder and closer. I looked around to see nothing. Then I noticed one of the strings to the lights was swinging back and forth quickly like someone had hit it. I backed away knowing something was definitely wrong. I go to make my way back up the stairs when something grabbed my foot and quickly yanked me off my feet. My keys flew out of my hands and all I know was happening was that something was growling and clawing at my chest and I was screaming. I tried pushing it away or off of me, but it was like I couldn't touch it. Then it bit my arm and a moment later, I passed out. I woke up a few hours later when my mom woke me up crying by my side. And there was light to see. I looked up first and saw this woman with whitish blonde hair standing over me. She smiled, then disappeared and that's when I began to feel every pain where I had been scratched and bitten. I looked at my arms first and saw that they were covered in long bloody scratches like claw marks. Then I looked at my chest and I saw that the name 'Max' had be clawed into my chest. And I knew it had been the being from my childhood that had come back to attack me."
