It was 10:00 at night and I had a friend over, my friend Noah. He was basically the first friend I made when I moved to this new school. We had spent the whole day at an airsoft war down in the city. We were tired, but not sleepy. We played some games on our PlayStation 3 and did so for about four hours. Now keep in mind that my room is big. It was a fifteen by twenty foot room and what stood out the most was this window that took up a good portion of one of the walls.

But is wasn’t until about 2:30 a.m. that there was this annoying scratching noise at the window, but not enough to get on our nerves too much. It continued to progressively get louder. I said to Noah, “It’s probably someone outside the window trying to get our attention.” and he just nodded and we kept on playing our game. Now let me just say this: Hearing a loud scratching noise for about thirty minutes is testing someone’s sanity. With it getting louder, but not actually being too loud, I realized something. We are basically isolated from most of society. There were a few houses here and there, but we were for the most part alone in a log cabin in the woods. Stating my point, there should be NO ONE scratching at the window. I was tempted to look back across the room to see who was so anxious to get our attention, and so was Noah, but I talked him out of it. By this time it’s 3:21 a.m. and we were tired of playing the game and we were talking to our girlfriends or fucking around with people on this site called Omegle. It was entertaining to teenagers with a crude sense of humor. But no matter what we did, there was always that scratching noise. But all at once, it stopped. No scratching. No nothing. Just the sound of us laughing at what was amusing us at the time. This went on for about thirty seconds.

Suddenly there was a crash and violent screams coming from my parent’s room. I turned around and froze as screams were coming from upstairs. There it stood. Pure white eyes, a crooked smile, bloodstained teeth, and a reddish complexion. This whole time I knew we were being watched but this was different. It was INSIDE my room, staring at us. I was jolted back to reality as the other… thing smashed the door. Faster than I have ever moved before, I grabbed Noah and ran past the thing that had been scratching at the window and jumped out of it. As I heard the roars and shattering glass behind us, we RAN. Faster than anyone could into the darkness of dawn.

We were fidgety, twitching, you name it. Town was about thirteen miles from my house, but we didn’t care. We never looked back. I didn’t want to see those eyes behind us. We made it to the main road in one piece and ran along it, trying to get someone’s attention to pick us up. We heard the roars behind us. Hyperventilation and crying from myself were all I could hear other than those wretched shrieks, but we kept running, never looking back… It’s 5:46 a.m. and I’m in the comfort of my girlfriend’s arms. I suspect Noah is too. Our girlfriends don’t live to far from each other, so we said our goodbyes and made it to their houses. I’m scared, and I know he is too. They’re looking for us, I know they are, but it’s only a matter of time before we hear those agonizing shrieks as an apocalyptic sunrise came over the horizon.

All at once I wake up, bed covered in sweat and Noah is fast asleep. It was only 4:38 a.m. and I figured I just had a bad dream… That was… Until I heard the scratching.