Stories of Demise

I have no idea how long this is going to be, so if it's long, I apologize. Although, maybe it will help you take me a little more seriously. I'm here to warn you, and as many people as I can. However, I know for a fact that if I tell you what it is, no one will believe me; so instead, I'll give you some context as to who I am, and what led up to this warning.
My name is Mike. I'm a twenty-three year old student at Lancaster University in Northern England. At the moment I'm in my first year of studying astronomy; a subject I am a little too passionate about; enough to blow most of my savings on a telescope. While this meant that I had to live off of my roommate's food stock for a week or two, it did bring a lot of comfort, sitting alone and looking up at the stars; it's one of those feelings you can't really recreate through any other hobby, at least not for me that is.
Anyway, a few weeks after I had moved into the university, I had my first astronomy lecture. As you can imagine, I was really excited and couldn't wait to start the course. When it did finally start, it was more-or-less how I expected it, and while it was only the first lecture so we didn't really get into any of the course, it made me happy seeing all the topics and areas that we were going to cover. Although what I didn't expect was a little assignment that our professor gave us at the end; he said that since we're just getting started, he wanted anyone that could, to go out with a camera, and take one or two pictures of the night-sky, then label the stars in the picture and bring it into the next lecture. Now, I know that doesn't exactly sound like the sort of work a University student would get, but it's something that university professors do as a way of having a bit of fun before they get into the heavier course material. I was obviously delighted with this, it gave me an opportunity to use my telescope more. 
The only problem was that the camera I had wasn't that good. It was quite old, and definitively wouldn't pick up many stars. I would have bought a camera but money was still an issue, as my part time independent web development doesn't pay that well. So instead, I would have to borrow my roommate Sam's camera. Sam was one of those art obsessed photographers; the kind that finds "meaning" in some of the most ludicrous things, and thinks that a picture of a shoe on a white background is some sort of art masterpiece. This was the cause of quite a few arguments in the past, however we were still pretty good friends. 
When he returned from one of his classes, I asked him If I could borrow his camera for the night. He said that would have lent it to me, but he had to work on a project for the next day and had to use the camera all night. This sounded a lot like an excuse because he didn't trust me with the camera, but I said that he could come with me, to take some pictures of the night sky for his project. He looked torn about the offer, but finally sighed and said, "Yeah, alright... but you'll have to wait until 11 PM or so, I still have to finish things off before we can go."
I shrugged and said that it wasn't a problem. A couple of hours later, Sam said that he'd finished and that we could go. I packed up the telescope and water bottles, and put them into the back of Sam's truck. We had to drive out a few miles due to the light pollution near the university. It took about twenty minutes or so until we came to the abandoned barn that I usually come to, to use my telescope. I got everything out of the truck and walked over to the side of the barn. I set up the telescope on the flat piece of ground. As I did, I said to Sam, "Oh God dammit, I should have brought your fold-away stools." 
He looked at me and said, "Oh well, at least the ground isn't wet." He was right, it wasn't a big deal.
I spent around an hour waiting for the right stars to appear, Sam went off around the barn to take some long exposure pictures; probably of some rocks or stones, I don't know. When I got my opportunity, I got the camera off of Sam and took twenty to thirty pictures, I wanted to make sure that I got enough pictures to choose from later on. When I'd finished, I showed Sam how to work the telescope and let him take some pictures too.
It was only a couple of minutes after Sam started using the telescope, when I heard gunshots off in the distance. "Huh, what the fuck was that?" I said to Sam. 
He looked up to me and said, "What?" 
I replied, "That gunshot, didn't you hear it?" He said that he didn't hear anything. I'm not the kind of guy that gets creeped out by dark places, in fact, I'm actually pretty good when it comes to dark spooky houses and whatnot. But, as soon as I hear or see something in that darkness, that's when I start to get freaked out. I know that sounds odd, but as soon as I hear or see something my mind just starts thinking of all the bad things that it might be, though I guess that's a pretty common thing. Not a minute later, I heard another three gunshots, one after another, and they were louder than before. I said to Sam, "See, did you hear that?" 
He looked annoyed and said, "Yeah yeah, I heard it. It's just the farmers doing late night hunting in the fields, we are near a farmer's area after all." This seemed reasonable, but I've never heard gunshots when I'd been here before. I tried to put it to the back of my mind and just continued to sit there and look at the sky.
Once again though, I heard another gunshot, followed by a "Hey!" from the same direction. It startled me and I stood up quickly. That was it, I know that it was just the farmers, but it was creeping me out too much. 
I said, "Alright I'm going back to the car, I'll just wait in there, okay?" 
Sam was still looking through the camera piece but replied with, "W-what? Really? Alright you pussy." I sighed and started to walk back to the truck, I was just going to put a CD on and listen to some music, that would help calm me down a little bit. So that's what I did, I wouldn't have to wait long, Sam would be done in a few minutes anyway.
I waited for five minutes, hearing those gunshots go off every thirty seconds or so, I just turned the volume up on the CD player and tried to take my mind off of it. I waited another five minutes. Sam should have been finished by now. I decided to open the door and go and see what was taking him so long. As I did so, I could hear the sound of running down the road. I stopped as soon as I heard it. The footsteps were getting louder and louder, it sounded like whoever it was, was running in this direction. I got a little bit worried, so I opened the door again and turned the front headlights on. When my eyes had slightly adjusted, I saw a short man in a grey suit running frantically towards the car. At this point my mind started panicking again, and I bolted into the car, shut all the windows and locked the doors, turning off the light as well, praying that he wasn't intending to hurt me. I curled up and hid on the floor next to the backseats.
I waited there for a couple of seconds until a heard knocking on the window, and a muffled, "Please, please, help me, open up please!" There was more frantic knocking on the window. "Please! Please! I'm not going to hurt you, please just open up, I'm not going to hurt you please!" The man sounded afraid, and very genuine. I went against all my instincts, and slowly crawled up to the door, looking out the window. He noticed me quickly, I could see that he'd been crying. He screamed, "Yes! Please, open the door please, please!" He was shaking as he kept repeating the word, "Please." 
I swallowed my fear and unlocked the backdoor, the man jumped into the backseat and shut the door. I looked at him and quickly asked what was going on. He was out of breath, but said, "Look, please, I can't explain at the moment, please just start the car, drive into the town, please I'm not going to hurt you honestly, I just really need to get there." 
I was obviously startled by this, I asked him, "Why?" 
He just replied with, "I'll explain in a sec, I just need you to drive now, please!" I tried explaining that Sam was still out there, and I wasn't going to drive away and leave him at a field in the middle of the night. As I finished though, I heard the sound of another car getting closer and closer. As the sound got louder, I could see that the car was flashing red and blue. As I suspected from seeing the lights, it was a police car. That meant the guy I let was running from the police for whatever reason. At that point I was scared shit-less. Did I just let a criminal into my car? As the car screeched to a stop right beside us, the man in the back was almost screaming at me to start the car. But I couldn't move, I was frozen... I had no idea what to do.
The next thing that snapped me back into the reality was the sound of the police officer pulling the door open and using a taser on the man in the back. I watched him twitch and fall flat onto the seat, unconscious. I was overjoyed to see that the police officer was a friend of mine called Daniel. I met Daniel a few times while stargazing, he usually patrols this road late at night. "Oh shit, Mike are you okay?" he said. 
I just replied with, "Yeah, yeah I'm fine. What's going Daniel?" 
Instead of responding to my question, he simply asked, "He didn't tell you about his story did he?" 
I was just confused at this question, I said, "No." Daniel sighed heavily. I had no idea why he wanted to know something like that of all things. I asked him again, "Daniel, what is going on?" At this point Sam had ran up to the car and was shouting the same thing to the both of us. I just turned to him and said, "I don't know!" 
Daniel interrupted the two of us. He said quickly, "Alright alright! Calm down, you two. I've gotta get this guy back to the police station. I wouldn't normally do this, but since you're my friend Mike, if you follow me to the station, I'll explain."
Daniel began dragging the man into the back of the police car. I moved to the passenger seat, and Sam started up the engine. We waited for the police car to begin moving, and began to follow it. It was only a five minute drive until we reached the police station. None of us said a word to each other, we were too taken back by what just happened to say anything. When we got to the police station, it seemed that there was no one else there besides us and Daniel. We got out of the truck and followed Daniel to the entrance and into the temporary holding cells. The man was dropped into the room and Daniel looked at the door. He turned to us and told us to sit down.
Daniel sighed again, he rubbed his face with the palm of his hands, then looked up at us. "Okay. Mike, you're a good friend, and I really should have told you about this earlier, but I was following orders. Hell, I'm even technically breaking the law telling you now, but as a friend I don't want anything to happen to you.. and you too," he pointed to Sam. I had no idea what exactly he was talking about, was I in danger? Even if I was, I didn't know why telling me that would be against the law. I asked him what it was, and he finally took a deep breath and looked at me. "Okay. Five months ago, I and a few other police officers where informed of a suicide a couple of miles from here. We were told to come because some of the residents thought it was in fact murder, not a suicide. So we went there and looked for clues of any murder, we asked around the village, but we couldn't find any evidence pointing to a murder, only that there was screaming coming from within his house." 
Now I can't remember exactly what he said after that, so I'm paraphrasing here. He said that when the forensics team did an autopsy on the victim, there were no signs of internal damage, no pills, no cyanide, no heart failure. Nothing that would seem like a cause of death. Except for a small dose of some unknown substance. When they had tested it in the labs, they told Daniel that it didn't match anything that they had on records. It also seems to have faded from the body and labs mere minutes after being tested on, and it was a mystery as to what it was. 
He said that only two days later he was called in to investigate another supposed suicide. This one also seemed to contain the substance they had found before, but once again, vanished from existence. After that, Daniel said that he began receiving calls from the head Police Office, telling him to never disclose what he had seen or heard about this... substance; and has not done so until now. He went on to explain that he began noticing an increase in reported assaults around the area, and noticed that he was bringing people into the police station more and more. 
They also were apparently more aggressive than usual, shouting at Daniel, and pleading him to "listen to their story" over and over until being forced into a cell. He went to the Police Head office and tried explaining what had happened, the only response that he said he received was something along the lines of, "We already know, just don't tell anyone else." At this point I was starting to understand why he was reluctant to tell me this. Although, I still didn't know what this had to do with me, so I asked him, and he told me he was getting to that part.
He continued to explain that the people he had put into temporary holding for charges of assault, began dying overnight. He said that when the forensics teams sent back the information on the autopsy, they said that they once again found this substance, that they had now nicknamed "Unknown-A". Every single one of these bodies seemed to contain this "Unknown-A" substance. He kept receiving phone call after phone call explaining, "We know the situation, do not tell anyone else." 
Daniel said he was stuck for a while trying to find out what was going on. He had absolutely no luck for around one month or so, until he brought in another person charged with assault. By this time he said that higher-up officials frequently visited the area and picked up anyone currently in the temporary holding cells to take away somewhere else. So, as he did, he put the man into the holding cell. Although something was different, the guy never said once on the way to the cell to "listen to his story" or anything of the sort, not even an explanation like many would offer. 
Instead, this man looked calm and collected once they had reached the station. He said that he knew what was going on, and that he would tell Daniel. Daniel told us that according to this man, a few weeks earlier, he was talking to a hiker at the local coffee center, and the hiker told him this wonderful story about his travels across the countryside. When the hiker had left, and the man had gone to bed, he began having dreams about the story. Starting once every weekend, then every four days, then everyday until... he saw something. 
Daniel said that the man described seeing a face at the end of his bed, a face that wasn't smiling or frowning, but simply neutral, and looked at him calmly. He said that the face began whispering to him. "You have a story to tell, so tell the world. You have a story to tell, so tell them all. By the lifestyle you have chosen, an outdoorsman you are, so tell them by mouth, the more that you tell, the less that you will feel." He said that after that, he became more agitated each day, starting with an internal itching feeling, but for whatever reason, he couldn't bring himself to go to the doctor, nor did he seem to be afraid when he saw this face. 
He said the itching feeling turned into a growing pain, but no matter how many times he tried, he couldn't go to the doctor, it was like a strange case of OCD. Finally he said that after his friends shut him out, as at this point he had been acting crazy trying to get his friends to believe him, he saw the face again, looking angrier this time. According to the man, this is what it said. "I have given you a story, a story to tell. Why do you try to get out? No one will help you, you must tell your story, as the more you tell, the less your will feel."
At this point I was looking at Daniel with a confused look and asked him, "Okay, so there was a crazy guy, what does this have to do with anything?" He looked at me, assuring me that he was getting to that bit. Daniel told us that after that, the man said that all the people who were screaming, "Listen to my story," had probably seen this face as well, and were probably told the same thing. He said that the face told him the only way to get rid of the pain, was to spread his story that the face had given him a memory of. 
Finally, the man explained that everyone's stories had to be different, and are always based upon true events in their life, or at least that's how he experienced it. His final words to Daniel were, "I do not want to pass it on, I should never have attacked that woman, I should never have tried to tell her the story. I thank you sir, bringing me here has helped me see how wrong I was." As he finished that sentence, Daniel said that he collapsed in his seat and began to twitch for a minute, until finally stopping completely. It turns out he had died just as he finished his sentence.
By now, I had enough of this, I said to Daniel, "There's no way you can believe this shit right? It doesn't even make any sense, how could hearing something kill you, that doesn't work in any way." Sam just nodded, approving of what I had said. I spent twenty minutes arguing with Daniel, trying to explain to him how utterly stupid the idea of this was, even if it was very strange that all these people kept saying that, the idea of something like that breaks both biological and physical laws, hearing something can't kill you, hearing something can't put weird substances in you. I tried telling him that it was a freak coincidence, or that there is another explanation besides infectious stories. He still assured me that he was right, and that he wanted to warn me about it, just in case it happened to me. 
Sam and I were both kind of annoyed at Daniel at this point, and just left. We went back to the University, complaining to each other at how much bullshit it was, and why it couldn't be possible, I'm not even sure why we did that, it's not like we were convincing anyone else.
From then on, nothing of note had happened. Sam and I got on with our courses, I stopped going to my usual stargazing spot, and talked to Daniel and less and less as time went by. Also, if you're wondering what those gunshots were, I figured it was just Daniel trying to injure that guy who obviously escaped from the police station. 
Thankfully, my rational mind kept me from getting obsessed with what happened, sure it was weird, and that unknown substance was a mystery, but that doesn't mean that some spirit face makes people tell stories that kill people. I figured that this substance was an undiscovered element. Though as to how it got inside those people, I had no idea.
However, I do know now. See, while everything was normal for a good five months, something did happen that changed my perspective on this completely. This is the part where I beg any of you reading this to take my word for it, I know I can't prove it, but even if you don't believe me fully, please take on board my warning. The reason my perspective on this changed, is because of Sam. During one of our breaks, Sam went to visit his family down in London for the week. All was fine until he had returned. Without going into detail, he began acting... odd. Doing things that he would not normally do. 
He started scratching himself over and over again. When I asked him about it, he said that he thinks he caught some kind of lice while at his parents' house. He did have long hair, so I could see that being the case. However, it was a few weeks later when I came back from lecture one day and saw that Daniel's desk was filled with papers overflowing onto the floor. When I looked at the pieces of paper, every single one had a pencil drawing of a face with four white eyes and a half smile underneath them, along with scratches on the desk. At this point I was starting to freak out. What the fuck was going on with Sam? I decided to ask him about it as soon as he got back.
After a few hours of anxious waiting, Sam finally opened the door and walked in. He looked agitated, twitching a bit. I tried choosing my words very carefully. "Sam, please tell, what is going on, is there something wrong? Are you stressed, are you sick? What's going on with you?" He looked at me more afraid than I think I was, he dropped all of his bags and just began crying. I ran up to him and grabbed him with my arm. I asked him, "Sam, what's going on! What's wrong? Please just tell me! There's clearly something wrong!"
I thought that he'd open up about some tragic news, or admit that he was cracking under the pressure of university, so I was pretty prepared to help him with whatever it was, I was his friend after all. But what he said, I could never have prepared myself for, it made me choke and cough on my own saliva when I understood what he meant. He screamed out, "I have it! I have it." I didn't know what he was talking about until he said, "That fucking thing Daniel talked about!" He was screaming this so loudly I'm sure many other people heard it, but it didn't matter, because no matter how much my rational mind tried to stop me, my heart fucking stopped at that point. I didn't even care if I believed him, I don't know if I even did believe him, I just couldn't help being physically afraid, even talking about it now makes me feel horrible. All I can say, is that the first thing I remember after that, is Sam shouting about how he was told a story by a homeless woman in London, and that everything Daniel told us about it, happened to him. 
By now, I had begun to walk back over to Sam, I'm not sure what I was going to do, but I thought somehow being close to him would help. Although before I could get close, Sam had stood up and began to run out of the door. I could hear him crying as he ran down the corridor. I tried running after him, but there's no way I could catch up to him, he was much more athletic than me.
All I could do was drop to my knees. I was physically and mentally out of it, I remember just kneeling there for what I think was twenty minutes, as people poked their heads out of the their rooms. Soon after, I regained control of myself and ran over to the phone. I called Daniel's cell phone and told him exactly what happened. All I heard was him screaming, "Oh f-" and the phone cut out.
I collapsed on my bed and lay there. I realized that despite my efforts to rationalize it, it wasn't possible. I saw it happen right there, I couldn't deny that. I know that I was so afraid at that point, knowing that something like this was likely real. I always took comfort in thinking that nothing like this could happen, because it was outside of the natural laws. I thought that science had confirmed that no matter how frightening these ideas were, they were not true and could not hurt me. 
Now I know that I was wrong.
I'm guessing you now know what I was warning you of, I'm sorry it took so long, but there's no way anyone would believe me unless I explained my experience. However there is more that I have to explain. When talking to Daniel later the next day, not only did I find out that Sam had indeed died, but there was also a person who had come forth to Daniel who claimed to have been "infected" by this thing. The only additional information she told him, was, "No one is safe." These stories can take the form of anything, emails, letters, conversation, Youtube comments, even somebody just reading out the story. It all depends on the person. The stories could be long, or they could be short. As much as I still find this absolutely crazy, and as much as I want to say that the woman was lying, and that, how could she possibly know those things... I can't. I've decided that I am going to believe her, I've seen these things for myself, and there's no reason for her to lie.
So this is a warning, if you hear of a story that from what I have gathered, contains references to them talking to a face at the end of their bed (in some instances this may not be the case) then STOP the conversation, and walk away, or go to another website, anything, just do not listen! In the end, there is no way to be completely safe, but please, be careful.
There may be some minor details that I am wrong about, but I am trying to get this out as quickly as possible.
However, there is only one final thing I have to say, for anyone who has read through this entire story:
I am so sorry for what I have just done to you.
Category:Reality
Category:Mental Illness