The Creatures of the Dark V2

This is a story of the horrors that are contained in a child's room. It is a very dark room, as the family is poor and they can not afford to spend very much on electricity. The room is lit by a single bare 13 watt lightbulb. The room has two windows, but they were broken long ago and are now blocked by planks of wood nailed on the outside. However, this allows some humidity to enter from outside giving the room an odd musty odor. The ancient wooden floors creak. With every step, comes a horrid screech that would make anyone cringe in pain. The room is infested with cobwebs, but spiders are not the only things that inhabit this room. This is the story of the creatures, which hide in the shadows of the night sky. Monsters, which creep behind you at night when you are sleeping and consume your soul. You do not hear or see them but you know that they are there, waiting for you to make the mistake of drifting in to sleep.

They are dark shape shifting creatures of a mythological nature. That is why I keep my attic door closed. I am Christopher Paulsen and I know were they are hidden. They live in the attic, which is conveniently place above my bed. I know every night they attempt to creep underneath the attic door and in to my room to feast on my soul. This is why I keep a night light on a small battered old table beside my bed and a large flashlight under the covers of the bed of which I lie with my eyes open in alert, knowing that there is something lurking in the shadows of the attic leading in to my room. My sole hope that haunted my thoughts every night was that some day those creatures of the dark would disappear forever. Every day I try to develop some sort of way to keep them away. I've gone to the library and checked out every possible book on mythical creatures, dark arts, and warlocks. However, I am yet to come upon something that would help me against these fiendish creatures. May I wonder till the day I die, if so, it is likely I am to perish with out a soul to the depths of Hell? If ever I find a solution I'll write it down so that all the other children of the world will know that they can defeat them too. If I defeat them I will die with pride, but more importantly with a soul, my ticket to the heavens.

-Fifty years later-

From the Diary of Christopher Paulsen:

I Christopher Paulsen, at the age of 64 have found a way to defeat these creatures. After years of research I have found that the only way to actually be able to rid the world of these creatures is to do just the opposite of what I'd been doing all this time! I made this discovery on a very dark night when my desperation for answers had reached a point of depression. After years of research and experiment, I have decided that the only unknown in my research is what exactly happens once your soul is taken? In a moment of pure insanity I went to my childhood home to confront the creatures. Would they still be there? Living in that cave of theirs in my former attic? The answer is yes. It all happened really fast, they were as surprised by my actions as I was! I threw myself at them and they grabbed at me in pure delight. I was now quite old, but in their hatred for never having been able to get me as a child they did not care. It didn't hurt, they all surrounded me, chanting until one of them came up to me a sucked the soul out of my eyes, ears, and nostrils. Suddenly, I found myself in a dark world, the world of lost souls. Turns out I was my soul, and my body was a separate being! I suddenly knew what I had to do, as if my sacrifice had given me some sort of enlightenment, and I had been chosen to stop them. First thing I did was go and find what is called a light wizard and from him receive the potion of light. He seemed to know who I was already and was not the least surprised of my sudden appearance at his door. Without a word or a hint of emotion he placed a glass container in my hands and closed them around it. Then he was gone. It was simple and I wondered why the wizard never did it himself, why I was the one who had to do this deed. I went to the center of this dark land, upon a hill, rose the container up, and opened it. At first, nothing happened. Then, suddenly a ray of blinding white light shot up in to the sky and there was an explosion of light above me. It was over just as quickly as it'd begun, and in the place of the light in the container, dozens of shadowy figures started to appear around me and were sucked in to the container. The container then shut itself and shot up in to the sky just as the ray of light had.

I blinked.

I was in my bed, I was 14 again, and I was truly, delightfully ... alone.

-fin