The night was a blur of laughter, snacks, and the muted glow of a TV screen as my best friend and I indulged in a sleepover. We were typical teenagers—14 or 15 years old—who often found ourselves on the edge of trouble but always managed to stay just this side of innocent mischief. That night, our plans were simple: stay up late, eat too much junk food, play video games, and scare ourselves silly with a horror movie. We were sure we could handle it—after all, we were almost grown-ups.
As the hours passed and our energy waned, we decided to let the TV guide us to sleep. Flipping through channels, we stumbled upon a movie that was forbidden in my house: The Exorcist. My dad had made me swear never to watch it, claiming it had haunted his dreams for years after he saw it as a kid. But this was TV, and the censored version couldn’t be that bad, right? Besides, it was just a movie. I barely lasted fifteen minutes before sleep overtook me.
Hours later, I woke up with a start. Something wasn’t right. The room felt suffocatingly still, like the air had thickened with an unseen presence. My heart pounded in my chest, and a heavy dread settled over me, pressing down on my body. My eyes flicked to the TV—off. The house was silent, too silent. I turned toward my friend, who was still out cold, and that’s when I noticed it.
At the foot of my bed, crouched low and gripping the metal bars, was a shadow. But this was no ordinary shadow. It was solid, a pitch-black figure that absorbed the scant light in the room. It was like a void in the shape of a person, featureless except for its horrifyingly human form and the way it seemed to pulsate with an unnatural energy. Then, in the darkness, two red eyes flickered to life. They were small, glowing with a malevolence that made my blood run cold.
Panic surged through me. I wanted to scream, to leap from the bed and run, but I was paralyzed. The terror gripped me so tightly that even my voice refused to cooperate. My mind raced as I closed my eyes, desperate to shut out the image. It’s not real, I chanted to myself. It’s just your imagination. But the weight of the fear was too tangible, too suffocating to be mere illusion.
I began to hum under my breath, mouthing the words to a church hymn I barely remembered. My parents always said that sacred music could banish the darkness, but the words felt hollow, empty against the presence in the room. I dared to open my eyes again, hoping it was gone. It wasn’t. The shadow figure remained, still and silent, its red eyes fixed on me with a burning intensity.
I forced myself to think rationally, to consider the possibility that I was just dreaming. After all, shadows didn’t move on their own, and they certainly didn’t have eyes. This had to be some lingering effect from falling asleep to The Exorcist, some trick my mind was playing on me. If I could just reach out and touch it, I’d realize there was nothing there—no demon, no ghost, just an overactive imagination.
Summoning every ounce of courage I had, I leaned forward and swiped at the figure, intending to pass my hand through empty air. But it moved. The shadow leaned back, evading my touch with an unnatural agility. The motion was fluid, deliberate, and impossibly fast. It wasn’t a trick of the light or a figment of my imagination. It was real.
A cold sweat broke out on my skin as I recoiled, pressing myself against the headboard. The figure leaned forward, stretching impossibly, until it was hovering directly above me. Its eyes glowed brighter, more menacing, as if it were feeding off my fear. I could feel its presence like a physical force, bearing down on me, suffocating me with its malevolence. My mind screamed at me to move, to get away, but I was frozen in place, locked in a battle with this entity.
I squeezed my eyes shut, retreating into my mind, back to the hymns and prayers I had learned as a child. I repeated them over and over, trying to drown out the terror that threatened to consume me. But no matter how fervently I prayed, the oppressive feeling remained, as if the creature was mocking my attempts to banish it. I knew it was still there, watching, waiting.
Time passed in a nightmarish blur. Seconds felt like hours as I lay there, trembling, the weight of the shadow’s gaze pressing down on me. I could feel its malice, a palpable hatred radiating from it, as if it wanted nothing more than to reach inside me and rip out every shred of hope, of faith. My mind flashed back to stories I had heard of demonic encounters, of shadow people with red eyes that preyed on the vulnerable, the weak. I tried to tell myself that those were just stories, but the cold, gnawing fear in my gut told me otherwise.
Finally, with a surge of desperation, I rolled off the bed, hitting the floor with a thud. The sound must have roused my friend because when I looked up, he was staring at me, his eyes wide with fear. He had pulled his blanket up to his chin, his face pale in the dim light. When our eyes met, he whispered the words I dreaded to hear.
“Don’t worry, I see him too.”
The confirmation that he saw it as well made my heart skip a beat. The terror was no longer just mine; it was shared, real, undeniable. Whatever this thing was, it wasn’t just a nightmare. We had let something evil into our lives, and now it was standing over us, watching, waiting.
The shadow figure seemed to sense our fear, reveling in it. The air grew colder, and the room seemed to darken, as if the very light was being drained away by its presence. I could hear a faint buzzing in my ears, like the droning of a thousand insects, growing louder with each passing second. My friend and I exchanged a look, our eyes wide with terror, and in that moment, we both knew we had to get out. Without a word, I reached out and grabbed his hand, squeezing it tight. I mouthed a silent prayer, and together we bolted for the door.
We didn’t look back as we raced down the hall to my parents’ room, the air around us charged with the lingering dread of the shadow’s presence. Our footsteps echoed unnervingly in the quiet house, the sound amplified by our racing hearts. It felt as if the walls themselves were closing in, pushing us toward the safety of my parents’ room. We burst in, waking them with our frantic cries. Between our trembling voices and terrified expressions, they knew something was wrong. My dad, ever the skeptic, turned on the lights and went to investigate. We waited, huddled together in the safety of their bed, too scared to speak.
The minutes ticked by with agonizing slowness as we listened to my dad’s footsteps echo through the hall. Each creak of the floorboards made us jump, convinced the shadow would reappear. Finally, my dad returned. He looked tired, his brow furrowed with concern, but he hadn’t found anything. No shadow, no demon, just a mess of empty soda cans and snack wrappers. He said a prayer with us, asking for protection, and let us sleep on the floor by their bed.
But sleep didn’t come easily that night. Even though we turned on every light in the house, every creak of the house, every shift of the shadows outside sent our hearts racing, convinced that the figure would reappear. The shadows seemed to take on a life of their own, shifting and warping in the corners of the room, playing tricks on our tired minds. My friend clung to his blanket, his eyes darting nervously around the room, while I kept my gaze fixed on the door, half-expecting the shadow to come slithering in under the crack.
When morning finally came, the sunlight brought no comfort. My friend was quiet, withdrawn, as we tried to process what had happened. He never slept over again, and our friendship, though it continued, was tinged with the unspoken fear of that night. We never talked about it, but the memory hung between us like a dark cloud, always there, always looming.
In the days that followed, I did everything I could to rid my home of the lingering darkness. I had my room blessed, every corner sprinkled with holy water, every prayer uttered with desperate hope. Yet even with the blessings, the memory of that shadow haunted me. I couldn’t sleep with the door closed, and I always kept a light on, as if that alone could keep the darkness at bay. Even now, years later, I fall asleep to audiobooks or soft music, needing something to fill the silence, to drown out the lingering fear that the shadow might return.
It never has. But that doesn’t mean it’s gone. My friend and I know what we saw. We felt its presence, stared into those red eyes, and we know that pure evil exists. It’s out there, lurking in the dark, waiting for the moment when fear cracks the door open just wide enough to slip through. And though it may never return to my room, I’ve learned a lesson that I carry with me to this day: some things are better left unseen, unspoken, and untouched.
Yet sometimes, late at night, when the world is quiet and the shadows stretch long and deep, I can’t help but feel it watching me. A cold prickle on the back of my neck, a fleeting shadow in the corner of my eye, the echo of that droning buzz in the stillness. It’s a reminder that the darkness is always there, just beyond the light, waiting. And no matter how safe I might feel, no matter how bright the lights, I know—deep down—that it’s only a matter of time before it returns.
Because evil doesn’t just disappear. It waits. And it remembers.
Hayden Coombs 