**CREEPY PASTA Best Tales**

Scratching

1

When I was 12 years old, my parents finally decided to split me and my younger brother up and give us our own rooms. I was a couple of years older than Alex so I got the bigger space, while he stayed in the box-room. My dad wasn’t too happy about having to move all of his junk down into the garage, but times change and I needed a room for myself.

The four of us lived in a bungalow on a quiet suburban street – a rather reclusive area. Me and Alex would get bored sometimes as there wasn’t much to do, but for the most part, all we needed was each other. Being two young boys with no one else to play with in such a huge neighbourhood, we were as close as two brothers could be.

One day after school, we arrived home to find that all of my belongings had been moved into the the room next to Alex’s. I didn’t expect to feel sad about it at the time, but deep down I knew that sharing a room gave us a stronger bond. After the realisation that we could no longer talk to each other at night, we had to come up with a plan. I devised a childish kind of morse code – a series of taps and scratches that we’d relay to each other on the wall behind our beds. I knew that this way, we wouldn’t get caught talking in the hallway or become bored during the night. After about three months, we had become experts at our secret talking and had managed to learn just over a hundred words. In our few months of doing this, there was one night in particular that stood out amongst the rest.

In the early hours of the morning, I was awoken by the familiar taps and scratches – this was confusing because Alex had never woken me up like this before. I sat up and listened intently to the words etched into the wall. It was vicious; it didn’t sound like Alex and some of it I couldn’t even understand. At that moment, I noticed Alex stood in my doorway: “What are you doing Jack?”. I stared at Alex in horror as the morse code upon the wall continued. Slowly realising what was happening, he began to tip-toe towards his bedroom door. Peering into the dark room, he could see that his window had been opened; somebody was in there. Alex slowly back-tracked, making his way into my room and closing the door. We didn’t speak, we just listened. The taps and scratches continued getting louder and more ferocious with every second; becoming violently intense until the persistent scratching built up into a loud bang. We couldn’t take it any longer. We screamed as loud as possible and our parents came rushing in.

In a fit of panic, we tried our best to explain to them what had happened. Mum sat and comforted us in my room while Dad went and checked Alex’s room. Seeing the open window, he sprinted into the garden to investigate, only to find that there was nothing there. After that, our parents tried their best to convince us that it was just our imaginations; but we know what we heard. After we had finally calmed down, we were put back to bed and all of the windows were locked. An hour or so later, I heard more tapping at the wall:

“Jack?”

“I’m awake Alex.”

“Me too, I can’t –“

“Me neither, there was definitely something there, something wrong.”

“I know, I know… Jack he’s here. He’s looking at me.”

“What? Don’t joke Alex, It’s not funny.”

“Jack, he’s staring at me through the window right now. I’ve got to move.”

The tapping ceased and Alex came stumbling into my room with a look of unconsciousness in his eyes. I shut the bedroom door and we sat on the bed shivering. We knew that there was no point in shouting our parents as they wouldn’t believe us; there would be no evidence of anybody being outside and we would most likely end up in trouble. Then we heard footsteps; they were accompanied by scratching that seemed to be leading from the outside of Alex’s room and inching towards my room. The heavy stepping stopped and a shadow blocked the moonlight behind the curtains. The window began to move a little as if it was being unlocked. We held our breath as it shook and creaked but luckily, it stayed closed. The figure leaned up against my window – almost completely shrouded by the shadows – and stared in to my room for what felt like an eternity. After a while, the shadow disappeared and never came back.