The stranger of St. Moore street

Chruchwood is a small college town, home of the proud and renowned Kabata university. The sort of town where everyone knows everybody, be it students or teachers, that sense of community and solidarity was easily found in everyone. A town so lackluster and uneventful that upon discovering its rich history and obscure myths surrounding it and the ever ominous Blood hills in the outskirts, one would wonder where all that dark allure had gone.

Despite it all, utter peace, bordering in ethereal and divine ruled over silent the town, making it be seen as paradise to its inhabitants. A peace which they would quickly notice if it were to be threatened, filling the keenest in emotions and superstitions with a sudden sense of dread of what was to come. Something deep inside their beings, a primal fear buried beneath a history of evolutions and comforts took hold of them, warning of the looming darkness’ grasp reaching across the land.

This feeling of anxiety only grew as the days went by, something unnatural quickly settling over the town like storm clouds, the cool night air carrying with it whispers of something sinister growing ever closer. Uncertainty quickly turned to dread, and in this festering fear visions of horrible things began to haunt their dreams.

By the time the freshmen arrived to town did that cloud of darkness drown the town in its shadow, a darkness which seemed anchored to four peculiar characters.

No one could place a finger on it, but it was a shared sentiment that something about them seemed completely off. It was as if there was a negative emotion or twisted personality hidden behind a façade, seeping at the cracks that have formed during years of having to maintain it for appearances’ sake. An indescribable feeling of existential doubt and despair possessed by a malevolent life shackled to their very beings.

They tried not to be swayed by unfounded fears of something they could neither see nor explain, tried to ignore the growing voices in their heads warning them of the unseen nightmares that lay beneath the four’s skins. They tried not to let that impeded any possible future interactions to be affected by it, and they really did want to not hold that fear against them, the ever present unease they brought out of them had forced distance to be placed between that group of freshmen and all those who interacted with them in a daily basis. And that feeling of apprehension was stronger with none other than the unnamed leader of the group of strangers, David Tizoc.

Being allocated in the third apartment complex in St. Moore street, soon everyone became witness of a series of strange events.

Everyone had quickly taken an interest on David as a whole, at least those who could not dispel that feeling of nauseating dread anchored in him. it was them who began sprouting absurd rumors about him across campus. They didn’t care in the slightest if he was aware or not of the things being said behind his back, and even if he was it would not stop. Yet it seemed nothing truly mattered to David, nothing that didn’t have to do with that strange journal he always seemed to carry everywhere he went, never being seen without it despite how ridiculous it may seem. Almost as if he was bound to it.

Despite their curiosity for what David may be hiding in that book, no one tried to get a hold of the journal, and any thoughts that lingered about the matter were quickly dispelled by that same invisible fear that surrounded the strange student. And in their fear, they began to slowly lose their grip in sanity.

Those closer to his apartment took notice of the scratching at the walls, like rats or something else was crawling inside, yet there were no cries nor squeak to be heard from them, no, they had sworn that voices seemed to speak through the walls, whispering of dark things hiding in the night. The sounds had become so unbearable that they had confronted those housed in that room about it. Yet upon asking both David and his assigned roommate, both had denied the claims, stating that since the start, it has only been the two of them as long as they are aware, the roommate going as far as to defend David by declaring he had nothing to complain about his peer since moving in.

That would have been the end of it were it not by the way David looked guilty to the door of what would be his room, sheepishly looking away from the judgmental eyes of his accusers.

After the intervention the whispering had completely stopped the next night, convincing everyone in the mob that it was impossible for David not to be behind the strange occurrence. But things did not stop there, and in the next days the entirety of St. Moore street became flooded with an onslaught of inexplicable incidents that all lead back to the freshman.

Fear festered in the hearts of the superstitious, as did their rumors of the dark things arising in the accursed street housing them. It began with the whispers of tall and slender shadowy figures lurking in the death of night, hiding in the alleyways they’d made their home, watching any and all still roaming the streets so late at night. Their bodies were completely black, a dark which seemed to consume everything around it, twisting it and absorbing it like a black hole, but other than their vaguely humanoid shapes and inky darkness of their bodies, no other feature could be seen of them.

Sightings of these dark apparitions increased with every terrified whisper of those victim to witnessing them. Yet as fear began to take them over, controlling even their innermost thoughts, did those shadows grew more vicious. Their bodies breaking and remaking themselves as more horrible beasts, holding in them the vague form of animals and creatures now in Earth, yet also becoming something else entirely, something utterly ungodly.

The rise in sightings worried them, spreading rumors like wildfire about it, yet not by the reasons those witness to the events might want to believe. Instead of believing the words of people with a noticeable losing battle with their sanity, they feared that a mass panic attack was spreading across the entire town, and that the most affected individuals were those found in St. Moore street. Yet upon trying to find a reason as to why it occurred in the first place, from a gas leak or even the distribution of a new hallucinogen, nothing could explain the sudden bizarre nature of students.

David looked from a distance as few were taken away for questioning from the security of his group of friends, guilt clear as day in his expression as he saw utter terror in their eyes. The ones that managed to escape capture were certain, that whether the shadows followed David or otherwise, it was him who had brought the darkness into their town. He was the author of the spiraling descent into madness of the poor souls weak enough to his corruption, and in their breaking point, they acted on their most primitive emotions. Utter fear of the unknown.

The news of what had happened that night became the topic of the entire of Churchwood, spreading as far as the neighboring city of Divinidad.

Despite the notoriety of the crime, no one had an explanation of why it even happened to begin with. And no explanation would ever seem to come as the assailants were found convulsing inside the apartment and spewing nonsensical warnings of unnamable things lurking in the darkness of the universe where neither star nor sun could never dispel the black veil. In their terrified screams they demonized David and his journal as those cosmic nightmares’ herald.

David himself could not have been more thankful for people’s ignorance to a truth far worse than what was said.

As security and officers questioned him as to why he’d been targeted, he lied. He’d heard the rumors about him, but was also quite aware of what everyone on campus thought of those who became affected by his unintentional tear in reality his presence caused.

So he told them the same thing people had theorized about them, manufactured an entire story of simply being caught in the wrong place and time when he’d discovered them with an unknown hallucinogen. That a drug had to be the cause behind their strange behavior, not his anchoring of reality allowing for the things capable of breaking it to become more noticeable to the weak of mind.

He made himself be seen as a victim of circumstance, not the victimizer. Despite wanting to say otherwise, that it wasn’t a drug but horrid silhouettes in physical form which had rendered them so broken and distraught. That while forced to his role, he would bring the very end to all that is known. Yet what use would that have been? What could they do against true monsters, against the black emperor whom he’d made the deal with?

They will never let him go, not until the walls of their prison break and all chaos is set free into reality. David eyed the shadows of his room, seeking any sign of those beasts lurking in them should the key to the door be threatened, wary of the man in shadows haunting him since he could remember. He made sure to stick by his story, and convinced everyone that there was nothing more to seek.

After all was said and done, he informed the authorities not to press charges against those who attacked him. Guilt still heavy in his conscious.

When everything had died down and the events on Moore street had become nothing but whispers, the assailants where set free, their resignation letters sent forward to the main office and leaving Churchwood without a word. David mourned when hearing the news of it, lamenting the curse he had been birthed with. 

Soon Churchwood became silent once more, but now it was heavier, tense. And even if no one said a word, they all knew it will be impossible for the town to ever return to its previously known peace.