Within the Night | Teen Ink

Within the Night

December 20, 2016
By NickFlesch BRONZE, Fort Wright, Kentucky
NickFlesch BRONZE, Fort Wright, Kentucky
4 articles 22 photos 0 comments

After the fifth ring, the voicemail was played again.  All of his friends had already paid and left, Jimmy couldn’t drive himself yet, being only fifteen, and his mom wouldn’t answer the phone this late at night.  He figured it couldn’t be more than a couple of miles back to his house and maybe someone would just pick him up along the way and give him a ride.  He put in his address on his phone and started walking.  The flickering street lights were dramatically overshadowed by the moon and everything was visible.  About five minutes in on his walk through the night, Jimmy started hearing some odd squeaking, honking noise, coming from behind him.  It wasn’t in any particular pattern, but whenever he thought the sound, was done, it alarmed once more.  Anxiety of something following him grew in his mind, but not even with the bright moonlight could he see anything in the empty street behind him.  No cars had passed by since he left the diner and everything was extremely quiet.  Except for this repetitive squeaking sound. 
With bad thoughts in his mind, Jimmy sped up his pace a bit and started making turns at streets he wouldn’t necessarily go on in order to get home.  And as he expected, the cartoonish squeaks kept coming.  His pace sped up so much that it was now at a light jog, and Jimmy wasn’t planning on slowing down any time soon.  Growing louder and more repetitive with each squeak, whatever it was, was closer this time and seemed ready to pounce on its prey.  And then it stopped.  Jimmy stopped himself from running any longer, and looked around to find that he had gone so out of his way that he was unfamiliar with the location.  Out of breath, he closed his eyes and tried with the best of his ability to listen to what was around him to make sure there was no one following him.  With only a few seconds going by, a hideous laugh suddenly drowned out all other sounds, knocking Jimmy to the ground with shock.  Pleading for mercy, he rose to his feet and didn’t bother to look to the direction in which this wretched laugh came from and immediately ran.  He shrieked as he looked for any way to escape the thing that had been following him.  He turned into a run-down street that looked like it would have a place to hide and discovered further along the way a small shed, seemingly about to fall down at any second.   Isolated by tall weeds with no structure near it nor a pathway leading up to it, it was his best chance of survival.  With the decaying wooden door locked, he kicked it down and ran into pure darkness.  Feeling around for a light switch or a lamp or some form of guidance, he found himself stepping on hard, peculiarly shaped objects.  Some were relatively long and some were more of circular shapes, but then he accidentally kicked one of whatever it was.  It rolled away and seemed as if it was almost clicking against the floor as the sound faded further and further away from him.  It slowed down and then hit different levels of the floor over and over again, and Jimmy realized that there was a set of stairs leading down to somewhere.  Most likely the best place to hide.  Click- clack- click- clack, the object made until it hit the basement floor. He ran toward the sound, still stepping on the fragile fragments of whatever it was below his feet, and found the set of stairs.  With no hesitation, he scurried down each groaning step to his hiding place.  It wouldn’t find him there.  With it being so late, Jimmy couldn’t just yell out in hopes of anybody but whatever the laughing thing was to come to his rescue.  All he could do was wait.
With no source of light or communication, Jimmy had to keep searching the proximity of the basement for any possibility of being saved.  He thought he left his phone in his pocket, but, of course, it wasn’t there.  It must have fallen out while he started running.  He searched the walls up and down for some kind of button or switch, and nothing was to be found.  No outlets, no switches, nothing.  With the possibility of that thing still looking for him, Jimmy decided it was best for him to just try and stick it out in the basement and all will be well in the morning.  People will be outside, and there would be witnesses to whatever might still go on.  With time ticking away slowly as ever, Jimmy just kept feeling around the room for something to keep him busy so he wouldn’t just go insane in that small basement.  There was no furniture, no shelves nor counters, nothing except that circular object that he kicked down there.  His hands surrounded the rounded object and tried to get in full contact with his feeling senses.  Even with his fingers gliding across the smooth, hard object, it was hard to identify what it was.  It seemed completely unfamiliar to him.  It was circular on the top and there was a hard edge on the bottom, almost as if it were missing something.  There were four holes that were almost exactly symmetrical to each other, and there was some kind of dirty residue that was left on his cold hands whenever he felt the inside of this “ball”.  He put his fingers in the two holes on the top again, and he felt like he was about to roll it down an alley into some pins.  He’d never held anything like it before.  Trying to muster all of the feeling he could, he just felt the dense object over and over again, trying to figure out what it reminded him of.  And then it clicked.  What he was holding wasn’t some toy or bowling ball; it was a dirty old skull decaying in some abandoned shack.  What he was stepping on weren’t house mementos; they were bones.  Jimmy shrieked, immediately dropping the cold, hard skull on the floor not thinking of what he was doing and how much noise he was making. 
Less than five seconds after he dropped the skull, a ringtone echoed throughout the basement coming from up the stairs.  It was his phone.  With a burst of hope in the thought that he finally could talk to someone, he brought himself up the steps and back into the warzone of scattered bones.  He picked up his now shattered phone and someone was calling.  A blocked number.  He answered the phone and without even listening to the other end of the call, he screamed into the microphone for help.  Rambling on about what he had encountered for what seemed like five hours with no help or response back, a voice interrupted him.  The person breathed into the microphone, laughing hysterically with it then immediately disconnecting.  Jimmy tried to call anyone he could but nothing would go through.  He slit his finger open on the shattered screen and was hemorrhaging from it profusely but had to keep trying to call or text someone.  His in case of emergency list was cleared and whenever he tried to dial 9-1-1 the call would disconnect within seconds of ringing.  His phone wasn’t an option anymore; there was no possibility of it working.
With fear that the phone call could be foreshadowing something danger-filled coming his way, Jimmy bolted to the front door.  When he came into the house, it felt like he was pushing a single sheet of paper out of his way, with no struggle at all.  But this time it was almost like he was trying to push a five thousand pound boulder out of his way.  He was trapped.  With no other windows or doors that he had found or had been familiar with, Jimmy had no choice but to start banging on the walls.  Even if it resulted in the clown hearing it first and seizing him from the hazardous shack. There was no other way of escape except for Jimmy to break himself out.  Clutching on to the first long, weapon-worthy bone he could find on the floor, Jimmy started swinging at the wall.  The sound of wood splitting open filled the small, flimsy shack as he kept thrashing at the wall in hopes of the moonlight shining through.  But seconds after he heard this breaking wood, there was a loud bang.  Almost like the sound of metal.  He swung again, Bang, and again, bang.  Since the time he had entered the shack, it was now somehow surrounded by metal.  There was no way of getting out now.  What he had run into wasn’t an asylum from some deranged clown, it was where the clown wanted him to go.  It was intended for Jimmy to be here. 
As soon as Jimmy realized what he had gotten himself into, he had no other option than to wait for a chance to fight his way to safety.  Time went by of him just waiting and waiting for the clown to come bursting through the front door with a gun or a chainsaw or some kind of instant death weapon, but nothing happened.  It seemed like it had been days of just sitting there in the dark, waiting for the opportunity to get out.  There was no bathroom, nothing to eat or drink, and nothing to help Jimmy take his mind off of the brutal future ahead of him.  Eventually to make the time go faster he would think of possible scenarios in which the attack was going to turn out.  Maybe the clown would eventually come through the front door, or maybe there was a secret compartment, or a trap door, or some kind of tunnel.  What if it would just kill him with no forewarning, or what if instead of an instant kill with no pain, whatever it was, was preparing for torture. 
This type of thinking did not help Jimmy with preparing for his fight.  If anything, he became discouraged about his odds of survival.  Nothing could save him but himself and his bones.  He was trying to count how many bones were in the tiny room to make time pass by when he felt a burst of air hit him against his neck.  Shivers ran through his spine as he knew what this air represented.  Something was here.  Ready to attack.  Jimmy looked sharply to his left, and there it stood.  With the moonlight outlining its haunting figure, legs spread to the length of its shoulders, head tilted down with a deep stare fixated on Jimmy, as it simultaneously giggled into the cold, breezy air.  What had arrived was a clown.  Its filthy glove-covered hand held some sort of carnival toy which took the shape of a hammer or mallet, and in the other hand was an empty bag that looked like a pillowcase the size of a large trash bag.  Its long shadow extended to the other side of the room, with the silhouette of its baggy, dirty, ripped, clown suit and its unkempt, strangely unorthodox shaped hair which looked as if it had grown with its shadow. 
Jimmy’s stomach dropped to the floor, not being ready for what was about to happen next.  With no other choice, he grabbed the first object off of the ground his hand made contact with and charged at the clown in what seemed like slow motion.  He swung the dense object as hard as he could only to be dodged by the clown.  Engulfed in anger by the brutal attempt, the clown did just as Jimmy thought he would.  Giving him a crushing knock into his ribs with the mallet, there was a loud crack and Jimmy fell to the floor.  He tasted the iron-filled flavor of blood and knew he wouldn’t live if he didn’t get up now.  Hearing a large grunt coming from the clown, as he was about to swing once again, Jimmy rolled away just in time from a hit that would’ve crushed his skull open.  Crawling away to whatever protection he could find, he was then grasped by the ankles.  He kicked and screamed, only to become more tired and weak as he tried grabbing some kind of bone to fight the clown with so that he would be unconstrained.  But nothing was in reach.  He screeched as the clown pulled him farther and farther away from the exit and down the steps.  His head slammed against each step as he was tossed down into the basement like a ragdoll. 
Blood was seeping from his skull and mouth as Jimmy tried to drag his body away from the clown, but he couldn’t escape what was coming next.  The giddy clown smashed its fists into Jimmy’s spine and then snatched him up by the shirt.  It was then that Jimmy knew there was no way to fight the impending suffering that he was about to go through.  There was nothing or no one to save him from death but himself and he couldn’t do it.   With one more throw against the floor, Jimmy was gone.



Similar Articles

JOIN THE DISCUSSION

This article has 0 comments.