This tale was awarded in the 2023 Horror narrative contest, which was organised by Institut Despuig. It was written by our 16-year-old 1st year high school student Mike Alós.
THE CREEPY MESSAGE IN THE WINDOW
Not a long time ago, I had the most terrifying experience of my whole life. It was late at night and my parents were not at home. I was lying on the sofa and watching some movies when, all of a sudden, I heard a door slamming. I felt so scared I was unable to get up and look at what happened. I muted the TV and I heard nothing, so I simply got over it and continued watching the movie. Later on, due to how exhausted I was, I fell asleep on the sofa.
It was 4 am when I suddenly woke up because of a nightmare I was having, I was being kidnapped by a masked man. I was feeling like going to my bedroom and sleeping much comfortably, so I did it and when I opened the living room door, I saw something that freaked me out, there was some red letter written in the fridge. I turned the lights on so I could see it better. I then realised it should have been better not to do it, the letters clearly said: I’m watching you! I was a hundred percent sure it couldn’t have been a joke from my friends because they were all out of town and my parents were 200km away from home.
I then assumed what was happening, someone had been watching me all night long without me knowing about it. But now the real question was, was he inside the house? I ran upstairs to my parents’bedroom and I locked the door and I fell asleep with the knife I took from the kitchen. I know it sounds ridiculous but, what could I do? None of my friends was in town and my parents were visiting my family in Barcelona. I live in the forest so the nearest neighbour I have is 2 km away from me. I couldn’t stop thinking if I was going to wake up alive or not. Even though I thought about it, I finally fell asleep without caring anymore about that horrifying moment I was going through.
The whole room was in a peaceful silence when, suddenly, my mother’s clock started ringing and that woke me up as fast as a ray. It was 10 in the morning and I was alive, I survived the night with a creepy out there. I opened the door and went downstairs to check the floor below. Everything was just as I left it last night and those creep letters weren’t there anymore. So I assumed it was some kind of nightmare I had and bad reflections at the time of watching those letters on the window.
I made myself a dish of rice for lunch and checked the news when, while I was eating, I heard the news that there was a kidnapper around the area I’m living and that he was also writing strange letters on windows with what seemed to be animal blood.
I started getting cold and I was shaking because I was feeling scared. I started thinking about possible things that could have happened last night. Suddenly, I heard a door opening, I went to the door and hid to see who it was and jumped on him or her. As soon as I did, I felt the most stupid person in history, it was my parents that had arrived from Barcelona. I explained everything to them and they never believed me, in fact, nobody ever did.
Nowadays, I still think about what could have happened If I hadn’t woken up from the sofa or, even worse, if I hadn’t locked the bedroom door.
