#iwontbefound

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There were three of us that night. That horrible, twisted, yet seemingly harmless and innocent evening we spent on Ben's driveway.

As a long time NoSleep fan, I have convinced my friends, Ben and Liz, to share their encounters following that night. Our goal and understanding is that maybe someone, somehow, can provide sane and rational explanations for our experiences. We need help. Please forgive our vain attempts to convey the description and imagery of the horrors that we have experienced in the small suburban neighborhood of Ivy Road, but... we just don't know what else to do.

This isn't easy to talk about, and it's likely you won't believe me anyway, but I guess I should start from the beginning.

Rewind to a little over a week ago. Liz, Ben, and myself are three college graduates, fresh out of school and ready to tackle our own various industries of interest: IT, Journalism, and the army. Essentially, this watered down and translated to the three of us living at home, siphoning our loving parents' generosity as we hounded the hiring websites. We were desperate for an outlet to escape the dull and tedious lifestyle of our former childhood. Then again, it wasn't all bad.

What made it convenient... and nearly manageable, was the fact that we all lived than a block away from each other. We were the same as we were in our younger days, nestled in our respective cubes of suburban heaven and hell. Life was, in a word, content.

Our development, known as the Ivy Road cul-de-sac, always held a more ominous feel at night. Children had long since retired to homework and bedtime stories, while middle-aged men and women wrapped up their mid-life crisis jogs. Eager, of course to get inside and catch the latest episode of CSI: New York, or whatever dribble the television served up this week. The roads were empty, and various night time creatures had already taken to the streets and front lawns in search of leftover food and makeshift shelter.

You see, surrounding our development on nearly every side was a dense forest a few miles wide. As kids, we had traveled these woods time and time again. We played hide-and-seek, hosted snowball fights, and occasionally spent hours exploring the fossil beds that lay in the shallow creeks that cut through the endless steep hills.

At night, however, we had always steered clear.

Maybe the simplest explanation for this is a young child's fear of the unknown. The creatures that rustle in the bushes, the shouts and screams that could come from any corner of the vast wilderness... The shapes and the shadows that melt and obscured, forming your own personal terror. In the daytime, these phenomena bore rational explanations: a squirrel darting between the trees, a deer laying down for the night, a child yelling gleefully from a nearby neighborhood...

At night, these sounds were the vehicles of our unknown.

On the evening in question, the three of us were relaxing on Ben's driveway, sipping a few beers as the sun came and went overhead. After a suggestion and rejection of a hand-rolled joint to pass the time, we found ourselves nearly ready to wrap up the night. We had been listening to our favorite local rock station, but something must have messed with the signal. All that played over the airwaves now was the low hum of static and white noise. I quickly packed up my lawn chair to return to Ben's garage, my mind occupied by the despair of having to wake early the next day. As I turned to walk away, something caught my eye.

I wish it hadn't, more than anything. If you ask anyone what they would do if they could turn back time, the results are always the same. Spend more time with my father, or my mother, or my kids. Chase down that long-lost high school love. Play the lottery, buy a mansion, buy a car, travel. But for me, more than any dream or goal or ambition, I wish I could change that night. I wish I had turned away, gotten in my car, and jetted down the first highway I saw.

Sometimes, when I am alone and covering my eyes from this mindless fucking terror, from the never ending images and scenes dancing through my peripheral, I wonder.

Would it have mattered?

At first, it appeared to be nothing more than a brightly lit planet or star. Well, to say it was brightly lit was an understatement. It looked as though it encapsulated all the light in the sky, even the stars seemed to lose their luster in the reflection of that light. As I stared in wonder and astonishment, trying to decipher why I had not noticed it before, it began to move. I turned and eagerly pointed up to Ben and Liz, but they only returned my gaze with one of confusion.

It advanced slowly across the sky, lazily zigging and zagging in a stutter step motion uncommon to any plane or helicopter I had ever seen. As it advanced across the tree line, it moved nearer and nearer. Then, as suddenly as it appeared, it flew off in a direction beyond our line of sight.

"Whoa, what was that?" I said, turning to the two of them as they looked up at the sky quizzically.

"I don't see anything..." Liz said, turning to me.

"Cmon Matt, I'm too tired to be messed with," Ben said, as he tore his gaze from the sky, and quickly packed up his radio with a deep, tired breath.

He pulled the plug, and he turned to head inside, muttering goodbyes as I continued to scan the night sky.

Suddenly, he stopped.

"Do you hear that?"

Liz and I craned our ears, but I shrugged my shoulders and responded with:

"Hear what?"

"The music... quiet, it's getting louder."

He began to hum quietly, growing in volume as he closed his eyes, meditating to a noise neither I nor Liz could hear. The radio fell from his hand and nearly shattered on the cold cement ground. He did not seem to notice, as his eyes squeezed shut to the point of a look of pain.

Wordlessly, he raised his hands to cover his ears slowly.

He pulled them back, and they were covered in blood. He fell to his knees and screamed.

I spun around to find Ben on the ground, clutching his ears as blood escaped like maple seeping from a tree. I stood in shock for a moment, unsure of whether he was fucking with me, or he was actually hurt.

I rushed to his side all the time.

He desperately tried to speak a few anxious words, as Liz cried and begged him to tell us what was wrong.

"Can't.... you.... hear.... the.... music?"

As soon as the last words escaped his lips, the tears on Liz's face seemed to dry up as she turned to me. This may sound exaggerated, but it’s true. One minute she was crying, and the next, her entire complexion changed.

A slow smile crept along her lips, starting from the center and moving to the corners at a slow speed. She stood, slowly, and turned towards the driveway. Then she opened her mouth and uttered one horrifying sentence.

"Can't you tell? He's here."

She began to walk slowly backwards, her arm stretched out, pointing to the blackness of the woods across the road. With that, my peripherals reflected quick movement, as if something darted through the woods to my right, just as I turned my head to follow Liz's finger.

My eyes readjusted to the lighting, and there he was. He was standing, waiting patiently in front of the clearing across the street, like he had somehow been there all night.

My first thought, was this could not be any type of human being I had ever seen. Except... he was. He stood at about 6'2. Dark, stringy hair drifted down his shoulders and rested on his back. This was coupled with thick, stubby hair covering nearly every inch of his body. It was matted with a sticky, red substance. He was holding something in his right hand.

He never looked away from me. He stood, eyes locked in the distance as Ben's now pitiful screams echoed through the night. He smiled the same sickly smile I saw on Liz's face only moments before, and beckoned towards me.

I followed his call.

Leading one foot carefully in front of the other, like my legs had a mind of their own, I descended down the driveway as the man's smile grew. My mind pleaded with my body to stop. To turn around, to run, to get away from that shape in the night. But I walked, fixating my gaze on the object that swung casually in the man's hand, as it slowly became clearer in the moonlight.

He was holding the severed head of a young woman by the hair. She had been beautiful once, I thought. Long, blonde hair drifted down from the top, meeting a small upturned nose and a pair of luscious red lips. Funny, her hair was still smooth though it was gripped by a massive hand. Blood dripped her neck openly, that much was visible now. She swayed back and forth in the casual breeze, seemingly searching for its lost connection.

Her eyes were crudely sewn shut, and yet I felt like they still watched me. I followed those empty eyes, and I swayed from side to side to mirror their movement in the wind. I don't know for how long I walked, to be honest. Hours, days, minutes, seconds quickly faded into a fog of a memory. It’s like the sensation of dropping something down a hole. When you reach for it, your fingertips may brush against it. Enough so, that you’ll know it’s still there. But you can never grasp it. It's like the beach constantly reaching out for the coast.

The last clear thing I remember with clarity is standing a few feet in front of the man, waiting. His expression grew serious as he gripped the head with both of his hands and lifted it towards the center of his body, as if displaying it. He muttered a few unintelligible words as he looked down.

And then, her eyes opened wide.

To put it simply, they consisted of vast white emptiness. It was as if someone had taken an eraser and rubbed out the iris and pupil, leaving an empty, blind canvas. They drank me in, and consumed me. I stared into them, never blinking, never moving, never running. My entire existence was tied to those endlessly clear eyes as my reflection swayed back and forth inside them.

I awoke the following morning, and I was deep inside the woods. But I was not alone.

This was only the beginning. Since then, it's gotten far, far worse. Our stories of what happened next will shortly follow.

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I awoke. My eyes and lips were crusted, and my throat was dry. I was lying on the ground. You know the way the ground gets on a cold, November morning? Hard and solid, almost like the dirt has morphed into round needles, tearing into your side. I was in the woods.

I groaned, and rubbed my eyes as I attempted to sit up and look around. My eyes began to focus, and I realized I was not alone.

Standing in front of me was a man. He was about average height, maybe 5'10 with buzzed brown hair and light blue eyes. He was wearing a suit, with a thin black tie and white shirt covered up by a seemingly expensive black jacket. To be honest, he appeared to be straight out of a GQ magazine. He smiled down at me.

"What the... who the fuck are you? How did I…" I sputtered.

His loops moved. It was if he was singing, the way his lips fluttered up and held in position. But no sound escaped. I blinked, refocused my eyes, and he was gone.

Frantically, I looked around and realized I had even more pressing problems. I was deep in the woods, probably a half mile from my home by the looks of it. I could not see the lights from my neighborhood, which bordered the woods on nearly all sides. It was still dark, though it looked as though light was slowly creeping its way through the branches. I stood, and brushed myself off as I desperately tried to remember the events that had led to me sleeping in the woods.

The man with the head.

It was the last thing I remembered, standing inches away from this sadistic man carrying a severed head like it was a deflated basketball. What had led me to walk towards him? Why hadn't I run the fuck out of there and dialed 911? Honestly, I couldn't tell you.

I reached into my pocket, and pulled out my phone. The time and date read 4:15 A.M, November 21st, over the blinking signal of a new text message. I opened it up, and was none too surprised to see several new messages.

"Where are you? Was going to order some food for dinner." - Mom, 9:30 P.M.

"Really wish you would call if you're staying out so late." - Mom, 12:30 A.M.

"Yo, are we doing anything tomorrow night? I’m sure your busy, that wall isn’t going to stare at itself, right?" - This one was from one of my buddies at my old school. He had been hoping I'd come up to visit that weekend. 12:45 A.M.

The last, however, was quite frightening under the circumstances. It was a voicemail from Liz. In a flat, monotone voice that was clearly still her own, she said:

In thirty minutes and twelve seconds, all it takes is one match.

After I heard that, I began to run. You have to understand, that after just waking up in the woods with no memory of what happened, seeing a man disappear in front of my eyes, and receiving a creepy voicemail from one of my only friends who had seen me last, I had no idea what to do. Fight of flight, right? Well, my instinct at the moment was flight.

I jetted down the path cut into the side of the hill in the woods. Light had crept up through the trees as the sun made its ascent in the sky, which gave way to shadows in the dark.

As I ran, I swore I saw the man in the suit several times. Leaning against a tree, standing between the tall evergreens... he was waiting. Watching. I kept running.

After a few minutes, I finally made it through the exit to the woods, and collapsed on the grass outside. I gasped and coughed as I looked around frantically and briefly considered my options.

Option A, I head to the police station and explain what happened.

"Well, hello officer, I saw a possible apparition of a man with a severed head outside my buddy's house last night. Then I woke up in the woods with no recollection of how I got there. Oh, and I saw a dude in a suit."

That would earn me a first class trip to a psych ward.

Option B, call my friends and assess the situation.

This was a more reliable option, but neither answered my incessant calls. Since it was still only 4:30 in the morning, I assumed they were sleeping.

Option C, sleep this horrible fucking nightmare off.

Jackpot.

I stumbled to my house, shaking off the stiffness in my knees and the aching in my head as I fumbled for the keys. I jabbed the right one in the lock, pushed it open, and locked it behind me.

Serenity and safety awaited me. I shucked off my shoes and climbed the carpeted stairs to my bedroom and, with a loud exhale, collapsed.

The moment I fell, I was out like a light. The coolness of the sheets of a bed that hadn’t been slept in welcomed me, wrapping their frozen fingers around me into a tight cocoon. I awoke, in a dream.

The following is what I recorded on a notepad, a minute after I awoke. I’ve read that most dreams escape your memory quickly; it’s said you can forget up to 90% by the next day. I couldn’t let that happen with this one. I needed to remember. I needed every last detail.

I awoke in a cold, empty cellar. I can still remember the drip, drip of water landing on the smooth, yet unfinished floor. The cellar wasn’t very big, maybe fifteen feet wide and thirty long. There was a large metallic door in the middle of the room. There was one light.

The aching and stress of the past two days was gone. In fact, it was as if every worry and tedious to-do had been erased from my mind. I had no thoughts of the past or the future, or even the present. My mind was a beautifully, pristine white empty canvas. I felt alive, I felt confident, I felt…. Free. And I didn’t care to know why.

The sound of metal scraping against the floor caught my meandering perception. The door pushed inwards, as the man in the black suit slowly strode through. He turned to me, and smiled.

”Is it time?” I found myself saying.

He did not answer, but he turned around and pulled a figure through the door behind him. It was a woman. Her mouth was sewn shut, her ears were bloody holes, and yet she was still alive. Her eyes darted around the room frantically before they locked onto my own.

A feeling grew inside of me, rising from the pit of my stomach to top of my throat at I locked onto those eyes. I felt like a boy before prom…. nervous, unsure, determined… and most of all... excited.

I licked my lips, and spoke again.

"Hold her down."

The man smiled again, as he grabbed her by the back of her neck and held her down, like an owner would to do to a mischievous pet. Her eyes never left mine.

In one swift motion, I threw the man to the side and grabbed his knife. I lifted it in my hand, as his grin only grew wider.

It glistened and reflected in the dim light of the cellar as I turned it this way and that. So simple… just widdled down and sharpened metal, really. I felt power course through my cursed veins, as if the moment had awoken some vast source of adrenaline stored deep inside me. I turned to the girl on the floor, and I slit her fucking throat.

She coughed and gagged piteously, her eyes wide as blood seeped through the crude stitches on her mouth. She slumped to the ground as blood pooled beside her.

The man laughed. The first noise he had made as he lay crumpled on the floor. He looked towards me, and spoke in a clear, crisp tone.

"Aren't you forgetting something?"

I drew the flat side of the blade across my arm, cleaning the blood off of it as I pulled the girl back up. I slide the knife into the back of her eye socket, careful not to damage the serene white sclera as I worked my way around. I jetted it outwards, and was rewarded with a sickening pop. I repeated the motion on the left, and smiled as both of her eyes lay on the floor.

I turned to my left, and the man was standing next to me. He smiled, and struck a match to the back side of the pack. He dropped the flame to the floor.

I awoke.