Story 1
Click Clack Slide
Part 1: Never Walk Home Alone
Before Jude had even realized it, it had become dark outside. The shimmering city lights bathed the narrow roads in pale yellow light and cast all the pedestrians' downturned faces in shadow. Traffic was fairly light for this busy of a city, so he saw no reason not to take the long way home. He managed a polite wave goodbye to his friends before the automatic doors to the movie theater closed shut behind him, and began his trek. He'd been offered a ride home by his friend, Lloyd, but he'd decided he had better chances surviving the walk. The chill of the autumn night air was a welcome presence after being cooped up in that crowded and musty place. He'd gone to see that Slasher that Luke had been dying to see, and though it was fun to go out with his friends, the movie itself had been a monumental disaster. Still, as he crept through the shadows of particularly large trees he couldn't help but be reminded of a certain part.
The pretty blonde heroine of the story had been walking alone on a rainy afternoon. The clouds above her were pitch black and the wind howled across the empty street, nearly uprooting the hot pink umbrella she held in her delicate and shivering hands. Then, from behind her came a noise.
Click, clack, slide.
The girl turned her head with agonizing slowness to see what the source of the horrible sound was.
There, before her glittering blue eyes was a man in a soldier's uniform. He lay belly down on the sidewalk, legs looking as if they'd just recently been torn off. Behind him was a trail of crimson blood, quickly becoming diluted by the barrage of rain. He stared directly at her with empty eye sockets and then slowly started to smile. In one quick movement he swung his arms forward, showing off the glinting steel of the knives he held in both his hands.
He buried the first knife into the ground in front of him
Click
Then the next, only a little bit farther than the other.
Clack
And with a laugh bubbling in his throat he dragged his body forward.
Slide
Jude shook his head rapidly, dispelling the thoughts from his mind. The girl's acting was sub-par but the mere thought of what had happened next made him more than a little uneasy. Instead he switched his focus to the crosswalk that stretched in front of him. The signal to cross was up, but Jude didn't know how long it had been there. A quick glance at his watch told him it was getting close to when he was expected back home. Bracing himself, he decided to cross.
He was nearly to the other side when his foot sank into a pothole that he'd sworn hadn't been on this road beforehand. He attempted to remove the trapped appendage from its prison, only to meet resistance. He glanced to the left to see that the light on the other side of the intersection was turning yellow. Frantically, he pulled at his ankle, wriggling his foot until it finally came loose. With a yelp he propelled himself forward, shaking whatever it was off and landing onto the sidewalk just before a black sedan sped on by, dangerously close to hitting him. Heart pounding in his throat he scrambled away from the road then collapsed to his knees, trying feebly to catch his breath.
That's when Jude heard it. A sharp noise sounding like it was close behind him.
Click, Clack, Slide.
The cheap slow motion affect of the girl turning her head suddenly made sense to Jude as he ever so slowly turned to the sound. There, on the other side of the street, was a man in an army uniform. Every gory detail matched the man he'd seen in the film. He sprung to his feet, trying to convince himself that this was his imagination or a friend playing a prank.
That would certainly be an elaborate hoax, Jude thought, and it took his quick mind under a second for him to realize that was impossible. Whoever had set up this hoax would've had to of seen the film beforehand to set all of this up and this had been the city's first actual showing. As Jude's idol, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, had once written:
"Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth."
What did that mean, then? That he was face to face with a monster? Regardless, logic dictated this man would move slowly; he'd get himself ran over by a car before he could even touch him.
But the man in the movie had moved so fast, Jude had thought, unconsciously.
In the instant that last thought ran through his mind, he saw the man's body convulse morbidly, the base of his neck snapping at the movement. For a second the body went limp, but then shot back up and began coming towards him. The knives dug into the ground and it slid, just as it had before, but it was moving at the pace of a sprinter.
"Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth."
Feeling returned to Jude's legs and he hurled himself away from the damned thing and began bolting towards home. All the while he kept hearing those sickening sounds coming steadily closer:
Click, clack, slide. Click, clack, slide. Click, clack, slide.
Adrenaline was the only thing keeping him moving, otherwise he would've sank to the floor in terror. No matter how quickly he ran, that thing just kept coming closer. It was like a nightmare Jude couldn't wake up from. This couldn't be happening. He didn't want to die.
He couldn't say how long it had actually taken him to reach the door of his home, but it felt like hours had passed by. Unable to slow down enough before he hit the door he crashed into it with a loud sound, then moved his shaking hands to turn the doorknob and rushed on through, slamming the door swiftly behind him.
Before he could even catch his breath he realized he heard screaming, far too high-pitched to be his own. With a start his head snapped over to the dining room table, situated not too far to his left. There he could see two shapes huddling underneath it.
"Oh, it's just Jude," the familiar voice of his current guardian, Driselle, piped in, sounding more than just a little embarrassed as she rose from her hiding place.
A laugh sounded from the end of the table, where he saw the Sharil family butler, Rowen, calmly sipping warm tea.
"Jude! You scared us!" Rowen's adopted granddaughter, Elize, said with a pout as she followed suit, "What were you trying to do, break down the door?"
"I'm...sorry?" was all Jude could think to say.
"You look rather pale, my boy. Did something happen?" Rowen asked, setting his cup down delicately and giving the teen his full attention. The elderly man's eyes held a great deal of concern, and his smile was reassuring and warm. It calmed Jude down almost instantly.
Jude's gaze shifted to the door behind him, and he felt a blush tinge his cheeks. There was no way he could tell them. The more he thought about it rationally the less real the entire ordeal seemed. It must've been the stress and lack of sleep from exams or something. He'd probably just seen particularly drunk old man on the sidewalk and his thoughts of the movie had just made him particularly jumpy. It was likely the man's legs were just cast into shadow so it had seemed like they were missing. As far as Jude was concerned, the mystery was solved.
"Nothing really," Jude answered with a reassuring smile of his own, "It's just really cold out there."
"I see," was all Rowen said before returning to his tea. He sounded dubious but didn't seem to want to press the issue further.
"Sorry we freaked out on you like that!" Driselle told him, now sitting comfortably in one of the chairs, "It was just that my magazine finally came in the mail and I was reading an article about the hospital Leia's working at tonight."
When she held it up it all started to make sense. It was an issue of her strange occult magazine, The Beyond. She'd been collecting those magazines for years. Well before Jude had begun living with her.
He'd been sent here at the request of his father at the start of the school year so, actually, it had only been a few months. He never really was told why his parents had made him relocate but it hardly mattered. He'd hardly had any friends to complain about losing or any particular attachment to his always empty home. When his only friend, Leia, insisted on tagging along everything was better. All in all, it had benefited everyone involved.
"There's a Slasher Man that rips everyone to shreds!" Elize cried from the chair next to Driselle.
Jude inwardly sighed, Driselle really didn't have any discretion when it came to this sort of thing so he was hardly surprised she'd been reading it aloud to a twelve year old like Elize. Meanwhile, Rowen was chuckling away at Elize's last remark. He hardly seemed concerned for his grandchild at all.
If she had another nightmare again, Jude was waking both Driselle and Rowen up and making them handle it.
"Do you want to hear it, Jude?!" Driselle asked, displaying her magazine with a winning smile.
He'd obviously had enough horror to last him the week, considering his prior hallucinatory fiasco, but he knew no matter what he said she'd probably manage to talk him into it. Driselle had a way with words that Jude couldn't even begin to describe; one well placed look and she had you wrapped around her finger. So, Jude nodded his affirmation and allowed her to begin her story.
The article began by describing how every E.R. has a room where they put the "less than sane patients" so that no one is harmed while they wait. It's a nearly empty room, housing only a single chair. Nurses would sometimes report seeing a man sitting in there out of the corner of their eye, but if they tried to look again, there would be nothing there. One day a nurse saw him directly. He was supposedly mouthing the name 'Reeves'. Lo and behold, the very next day a patient by the last name of Reeves was found hung in her hospital room. The nurse that had seen the man was found disemboweled a few hours later.
"Spooky, isn't it?" Driselle squealed with delight.
Jude nodded his head, if only to appease her.
This is a little project I'm working on that'll involve implementation of miscellaneous scary stories and creatures from folklore. Pretty similar to Supernatural, actually. It's going to be episodic in nature, each having two parts, and I'm open to requests on what you'd like me to include next. If you have any scary stories you'd like me to write on go ahead and send them to me. Creepypastas are allowed (if not encouraged, I'm quite a fan) as long as they're not gaming ones. It's hard to write on those.
The stories I included in this part were the urban legend "Click, Clack, Slide" and a story I heard from nurses when working in the ER to get credit for the CNA (Certified Nurse Assistant) course I took in high school. It was a favorite to tell particularly jumpy interns, including myself at the time.
