Diary of a Dead Man

An excerpt from the journal of Samuel Ward:

March 20th, 2003

I am terrified. I don’t even know if what I saw was real or if I hallucinated the whole thing, but deep down I know that what I saw was real. As real as you and I, but it was not human, even though it pretends to be. Where does one begin to recount the horrors that they would rather want to forget. No matter how hard I try, I can still see it standing before me. This day I will never forget for as long as I live. Every morning before the sun rises I always go jogging, and I always take the same path past the old abandoned hotel. It is amazing that no one has thought of demolishing the old building, but in the 10 years that I have been here I had gotten used to it. Today while I was jogging past it, I heard a noise that sounded like a crash that came from inside the old hotel. Since kids have been known to play inside it I thought that somehow one of them had fallen through a rotten board in the building. I rushed into there as fast as I could to see if they were hurt. Though now I wish that I had just run away from that building as far away from it as possible, now knowing what was in there. As I entered the building I saw a beam of light that seeped through the cracks in roof, the light illuminated a figure whose back was turned towards me was hunched down on the floor. The figure had evidently heard me made no motion to get up. I called out to the figure asking if he was hurt. The figure turned its head towards me and slowly rose to its feet. I walked closer to it but it still made no move to turn around, as I got closer I was able to see it more clearly and what I saw made me stop dead in my tracks. The thing that stood before me was not a man, nor was it any animal that I have ever seen. The creature stood on two feet which were the twisted imitation of a man, everything about it was a twisted and demonic version of man. It was clothed in tattered black pants and other items of clothing lay at its feet. The creature had wide shoulders that had several small boney growths jutting from them. Its arms were long and muscled with human-like hands with long bony fingers that ended in long black razor sharp talons. Its pale skin was covered in words of different languages which were carved into its flesh, and only these few words stood out to me: Fear, Nobody, and Forever.

Then the creature turned to face me. I trembled uncontrollably as I saw its face, its long black hair nearly hide its face. The face was nearly devoid of all features, the nose, ears, and mouth did not even exist. But its eyes, eyes that were not human, the eyes that were devoid of all emotion and soul were like large black ovals which you could never tell when they were looking at you. All of a sudden the creature disappeared, a swirling cloud of mist existed where he once stood. Then he was right in front of me, its face only inches from mine. It made the motions as if it were trying to get my sent even though it had no nose to smell me, nor ears to hear me. Then it stretched its long arm out towards me and placed its long boney fingers on my face, I cried out at the touch as they were as cold as ice. Somehow it heard this and momentarily drew back, almost in surprise. Then with speed so fast that I barely had time to blink, it grabbed me by the throat and lifted me off the ground. It cocked its head from side to side as if studying me. Then for some reason it put me down, gently but with enough force to knock me off balance. I closed my eyes expecting it to kill me but to my amazement nothing happened. When I opened my eyes it was gone, the clothes which it had left were gone as well, it must have taken them with it. Afraid to even move for fear that it might come back I lay there for a better part of an hour. When I had realized that it was not coming back I ran out of there as fast as I could, not stopping even to catch a breath. When I got home I collapsed on my bed, exhausted, terrified, and wondering if it was even real or just a figment of my imagination. Trying to make sense of it all I opened my computer and scoured the internet for anything to what I had seen. All I could find was a single description of a creature that had haunted a man in New York; its description was startlingly similar to what I had seen. Its name I will never forget. It was called Jack.

Author
Hayden Larsen