I had been seeing the shadow people for weeks now. Always in the shadows, just standing there. They are never moving, just a limp figure barely holding up. I’ve tried to tell my best friend, Kara, about them but she always insists I’m crazy. Maybe I am. All I know for certain is she believes I’ve gotten past it now.

“Miriam!” I hear her yell my name, light brown hair bobbing just above her shoulders, “Did you hear about the party tonight? It’s in that old parking lot no one uses behind the old school. They’re having food trucks, and music, plus Brian is gonna be there!”

“Brian, really?” It’s shocking to me that she likes him. He’s short and stubby. Chubby, lacks any type of skill, intellect, blind as shit with his thick rimmed glasses as the center piece of his acne face. He’s like a pepperoni pizza. She could do so much better.

“Yes, really. Besides, that’s not the point. Are you in or not?”

“Fine, want to come over to my house first and then we can walk down together?”

“Perfect, I’ll see you tonight!” With that, she turned around and started skipping to her next period.

It’s nearly nine. Kara and I are both in cute mini skirts, with a black shirt. We’re walking out the door as Kara is angrily texting her mother.

“It’s so not fair that they keep making me baby sit him!” Him, being Benny, the new adopted baby her family got and I knew Kara was bothered by it. Her mom only wanted one kid, which was her, but when the misscarage happened last year with her oopsie son, that was all she wanted then. “He has all these anger issues that they don’t want to deal with, even though I didn’t want him at all! And now she’s yelling at me for not doing it one night after two weeks straight!” When they first brought home Benny, he had been an angel, but lately, he’s been a demon. More specifically, a demon they didn’t want to take care of, so it all fell back on her.

“Thats too bad, but look on the bright side, the party’s right here. Just, forget about it!”

We’re at the front of the old school, the one that needed too many repairs so they decided to build a new one. As we walk around to the back, there’s a big part of the building that sticks out as a wall to keep the dumpsters in.

Then, I see him. That shadow man. Just standing there limply, arms dangling from his sides and head hanging low. He was watching me from the shadows between the little gap of the wall and the dumpster. A dark, sinking feeling plummets into my gut. I grab Kara by the wrist. “Wait…” I whisper. I’m not sure why I do, she’s looking at me like I’m crazy. Then I hear a whisper in my head, sounding croaky, old, out of tune even.

“Run. Run, little girl to the small spaces. You don’t want to be here at the tenth hour.”

“We need to go.” I tell her, panic flooding my voice.

“What? Why?” She asks, voice filled with whispered panic.

“No time to explain, we just do.” Still holding her wrist, I turn and start sprinting from the opposite way we came. We’ve barely just left but still all the way back to the road as we hear the music stop and the screams start. Screams of pure fright, so horrifying that I don’t dare to look back.

I see Kara running alongside me, confused as to how we knew we needed to run, and grateful we weren’t still back there, meeting what is most likely our demise the others had met. I see a gas station and I pull her arm running straight inside. I don’t stop to look around. Just straight through the chips, past the slushie machine, and into the female disabled stall. I pull the door all the way closed and lock it, before curling into a ball in the corner with Kara. We sit there in silence, trying not to cry as the stench of diarrhea and vomit fill our nostrils.

Five, ten, fifteen minutes go by. Then I hear big, heavy footsteps coming from outside. It’s followed by a scream of anger, as I hear what sounds like claws trying to rip open the metal door. Then gunshots. Then the Chief of Police voice was asking for us to open the door.

When we do we see great, big marks, of where whatever it was tried to take the door down. We were asked questions all night before we got home. School was canceled that day, turns out nearly the whole school was there, all dead. All deaths are unknown.

It’s been about five hours since I got home. Unable to sleep. That’s when I hear the voice again.

“Go to her. Go to her. Go to her before it’s too late.”

“Who?” I ask out loud, barely audible. 

“Kara.”

And like that I am up, sprinting towards her house. When I rang the bell, no one answered. I unlocked the door with the emergency hidden key and walked inside.

All the lights were off. Blood was dripping down the walls, wallpaper once filled with beautiful pink and yellow flowers were now ripped, falling from the wall stained burgundy.

I find her mother slumped over in the kitchen, there were parts of her body that looked like bites had been taken out. I find her father at the landing where you turn on a stair case, looking as though he had fallen, neck broken.

And then I see her. Kara. Blood soaked, dripping in it, fallen on the floor, short, thick hair splayed on the light wooden floor of the nursery, now forever stained a drown, hideous colour from the blood stains setting in.

I see Benny, the only survivor, sitting in his crib. But he’s not a toddler. He stands, shapeshifting into a tall, murderous monster with long yellow nails, and shark teeth, towering over her in a nearly seven foot frame. And there he is again. The shadow man. I hear his voice in my head, telepathically saying “I’m sorry.” 

And just like that, I let out a scream.

Biography

Avery Hope 9th grade. In my spare time I like to doom scroll on TikTok.

What is your main source of inspiration?

It came to me as I dream I had when very sick.

What motivated you to write this piece, and what is its message?

There’s really not much of a message, but I wanted to write a short story unlike any of the others people were writing in class.