The Gristers

## The Gristers by unknown author

Okay /x/, or whatever creepy board this makes its way onto, I put it here because I thought it'd get to the most people to whom it was relevant.

If you are one of those people who are inherently drawn to horror, you're in real danger. I don't know what it is exactly; I don't pretend to know everything that's going on, and in fact, I, myself, used to be drawn to the more realistic, non-supernatural horror stories. But... well, let me explain.

About a year ago, I was up at three in the morning, you know, that part of the night where you're so deep into it feels like it will never end. Anyway, I was up, clicking around, looking for a good creepy story I hadn't read before, really getting myself freaked out. You know the feeling, I'm sure. You LIKE the feeling. That's the problem.

Anyway, I'm reading, and I heard a pattering sound coming from the kitchen. I had a cat, so I just assumed it was her. But then I glanced at my bed, and my cat was there. Now, I'd been freaking myself out for a while there, so I was nearly trembling with fear as I opened my bedroom door. I live alone in a single-bedroom apartment, with just a bedroom, a kitchen, a living room, and a bathroom. My bedroom door opens up to the kitchen. It was pitch black, the moonlight gleaming off the linoleum. I strained my ears and listened. I heard nothing.

I admonished myself for being so paranoid. It was just random house noises, right? Or maybe a mouse in the walls. I was about to turn around and head back into my room when I heard it again. I saw something scatter across the linoleum in the kitchen, heading for the bathroom.

It was small, but it was definitely not a rat. The limbs were way, way too long. The torso was far too high off the ground. And the way it moved... it moved quickly, but so awkwardly. In any other circumstance, I might have reacted differently. As it was, I was scared shitless.

So, you know, I basically froze for like ten minutes. It was the size of the thing that convinced me to move. No matter how weird, or fucked up it was, it was so much smaller than me. It couldn't have been that dangerous, right?

So, I grabbed the broom that I had leaning against the wall of the kitchen, flipped on the lights, and headed back towards the bathroom. I realized that with the lights on, I'm barely scared at all, you know, more intrigued.

I opened the bathroom door. Before I turned on the light, I made a quick scan. Nothing. I flicked the switch and looked around. Still nothing. I even looked at the ceiling. I threw the shower curtain open. Nothing still.

What could it have been? My mind started inventing explanations. It definitely had four limbs; maybe it was a big-ass spider who had lost four of its legs somehow? That could explain the awkward movement. It was good enough for me. I was about to go back to bed when I thought, on a whim, to use my broom to poke behind the toilet, between the wall and the base of the seat.

When I did, it hit something solid, and it scurried out. It looked like a tiny human. It was pale as a maggot, with dirty gray streaks running along its skin. It moved on all fours, with long, thin fingers that grasped the ground. Its skull was completely bald, and it had no eyes. The skin looked like it had been torn away from the lower half of its face, leaving the teeth and gums exposed.

It looked up at me... (Well, pointed its face in my general direction, anyway) and then scurried quickly up the side of the bath and down into the drain. It moved in quick bursts like a spider and climbed straight up smooth surfaces like one too.

After it disappeared down the drain, I just stood there, frozen, broom handle still in my hand, for a good five minutes.

I was scared shitless. I slowly backed out of the bathroom, closed the door, and then stuffed a blanket in the crack between the floor and the door, fearing that it might come out.

Then I sat in my bed and wondered what I could do. I mean, it wasn't like I could call the police or even tell any of my friends. It's not like they'd believe me.

So, what did I do? I made a thread on /x/. This was quite a while ago, almost a year. You might not even remember it. It wasn't anything special, and it didn't even get that many responses before falling off the boards. I guess people thought I was just joking, which really, I would have thought the same thing. My thread, in retrospect, sounds exactly like the type of threads that I hate. But aside from all the 'OP is a fag' and 'SAGE' responses, there was a different one.

"I've seen them too man. Email me", along with an email address that I'm not going to give out here.

So, I emailed this guy, right? Right away he responded, and we started up a conversation on IRC. He introduced himself as Jon, and he told me a very similar story.

One night a few months ago, he was watching a horror movie. He heard a noise, got up, and saw a small, pale man. But his was a bit bigger. He said it was the size of a cat. But he also told me one other thing that got me worried.

He said that I'd see more of them. He said that ever since he saw the first one, he's been seeing more and more of them. He'd even see them in the street during the day. They were everywhere, he said. And once you notice the first one, it got a lot easier to see all the other ones.

He had no idea what they were, and he hadn't figured out their behavior yet. He said that usually when he saw them or heard them in his own home, he was either watching a movie or reading some creepy story, so they usually freaked him out, but he had never actually seen them do anything terrible, just scurry out of sight. But, he said, some got pretty big, and not all of them looked exactly the same.

I didn't sleep that night.

But over the next week, and those that followed, I found that I did get used to them. I did see more of them. I'd glimpse them out of the corner of my eye or see the retreating rear end of one crawling into a gutter pipe or see their tiny faces staring out at the street from the sewers.

Some, it seemed weren't even trying to hide. I live in a small city in Rhode Island. On my way to work one day (I take the bus), I was looking out the window and saw a pretty large one, as large as a medium-sized dog, trotting along the sidewalk. People were just walking by it. Actually, I think those people saw it as a sick, hairless dog.

I'd always email Jon and tell him about all the appearances I saw. I even tried to catch some on camera, but they always heard the mechanical whirring and darted away before my camera could take a picture. I told myself I'd have to take a picture of one of the bigger, slower ones.

But either way, as the weeks wore on, I became more and more used to them. Sure, they were creepy as shit, and I could never sit down on the toilet and enjoy a long crap anymore because I was paranoid, they'd crawl up into the bowl and bite my ass. But they weren't really doing anything harmful. They unnerved me, but so did big spiders. I could live with them.

Jon called them "the Gristers" because he said they reminded him of the 'Grister' meme on /x/ for some reason. I'm pretty sure he meant the 'Grifter' meme, but the name 'Grister' stuck.

I continued my exchanges with Jon, but I noticed that he was becoming more and more...tense. It was hard to tell over the text, but really that was the only way to put it. I just figured that once the novelty of a shared experience had worn off, we didn't really have much to talk about. Jon wasn't really my type; he was a steroid-pumping bodybuilder near my town who lived with his mother.

But we started discussing Grister behavior, and he said his were starting to act a bit more differently than the ones I saw. He'd wake up at night and they'd be perched at the end of his bed, staring at him with their eyeless faces. They wouldn't scurry away anymore. He said he woke up one time because one of them had actually started touching his face.

That seemed unnerving. This whole time I had been putting out inquiries on the internet to see if anyone else had experienced this phenomenon. I couldn't be the only one, but no one came forward. On /x/, most of my threads about the subject got SAGEd, so eventually, I stopped asking.

But I have an inquisitive mind. I wanted to know what these things did, what exactly they were. I even wanted to capture one. I left out food and mouse traps, but none of these things ever went for it.

One night, I was walking home from work alone. I work at a call center for a police charity, and my house is about six miles away. I had to stay late, so there was no bus to take me home and I didn't have a car, so I had to walk. Anyway, I was walking past some old, abandoned brick houses when I heard some weird, low groan.

That's when I happened to notice that there were a lot more Gristers than usual here. They were mostly ignoring me, but they were scurrying in and around one particular brick house. The groaning sound seemed to be coming from the alley beside it.

Now, a lot of Gristers were creepy enough, even without that low groaning noise. What made me decide to investigate? I don't know. Morbid curiosity. I thought that the groaning came from some wounded animal or something.

So, I approached the side of the house, noting that the windows were boarded up. The groaning... I should have known then it was no animal. It was a low, creaking, gurgling sound. It didn't sound like any fucking animal I knew. So, I snuck down the alley, and when I saw what was making the noise, I nearly pissed myself.

It was a fat, humongous Grister, at least eight feet wide, completely unable to move, with rolls of fat hanging down over its legs. It had no neck, just fourteen chins leading up to its macabre exposed jaw. Dirty drool ran down its chin to cover its obscenely huge belly. Smaller Gristers crawled in and out of the rolls of its fat. It rubbed itself with a pudgy claw, making that groaning, gurgling sound, which seemed almost sexual.

It was terrible. All I felt was a sick revulsion and disgust. But I kept in mind one thing: that I had been looking for a picture of these things. So, I busted out my camera phone and snapped a picture.

I wish I hadn't. If I hadn't, I probably wouldn't be where I am right now.

The moment I snapped the picture, the thing stopped groaning and swiveled its head toward me. All the Gristers did, in fact. They all started hissing and screaming at me. It was a horrible sound, like rusty nails on a chalkboard. And to put things VERY mildly, I completely lost my shit.

I ran out of there as fast as I could. Ran all the way home. Gristers didn't seem so harmless to me now, and that noise they had made was straight out of Hell.

I didn't feel safe with the lights off anymore. I flipped all the lights on, scaring the shit out of my napping cat. I slammed the bathroom door shut and stuffed a blanket around the cracks again. Then I sat down on my bed and looked at the picture I had taken.

There it was, clear as day. That huge Grister. Just looking at it made me feel sick. Of course, I was going to post it on /x/.

I loaded it onto my computer and sent an email to Jon with the subject "WILL YOU LOOK AT THIS FAT FUCK". Then I immediately came to /x/ and began typing up my thread. Explaining myself, explaining the Gristers. Explaining the photograph. I was ready to post when Jon sent me a message.

"Yo don't show this shit to ANYONE"

I stopped. I replied to Jon, asking him what he was talking about.

He said that he thought he had figured out what was making the Gristers around him more hostile. He said that he thought that when they figured out that you could see them, they started getting more aggressive. He showed me scratches he had all down his arm from them clawing at him at night. He said that he'd seen a lot more of the bigger ones hanging around his house at night. They watched him through his windows. They knew. They knew he could see them. And they didn't like it.

And now, I was pretty sure they knew I could see them too.

So, what did I do? In the end, I didn't post the picture. I wasn't TOO intimidated, but it probably saved a lot of you. I didn't want to trigger anyone else into being able to see these guys if it had dangerous consequences down the road.

I didn't notice any behavior changes right away. For a while, in fact. For about two weeks, the Gristers acted just the same way they had before. I was beginning to think that Jon's problem was his own thing and that the Gristers didn't know or care that I could see them.

And then things started happening so fast.

I woke up one night and there were four of them, just perched around my bed, staring at me. I freaked the fuck out and swept them away, and they just hissed that terrible noise at me and ran away.

I emailed this to Jon, who I hadn't talked to otherwise, but he didn't respond. We hadn't talked since I told him about the picture, and even rarely before then. After two days, during which the Gristers began touching me in my sleep, I got an answer, but it was the last thing I wanted to read.

Jon was dead. His brother had the password to his email and was letting all his internet acquaintances know. Apparently, he sliced open his wrists in the bathtub.

Had things with the Gristers really gotten so bad that they drove him to that? We didn't really know each other very well, but he hadn't mentioned anything to me. His brother said he hadn't left a note. After I gave him my condolences, a thought came to mind: Jon didn't seem like the type to commit suicide to me.

Now I had no one to talk to about this. I started looking online for more references or anything. All the while, the Gristers were getting more and more aggressive. I'd look over my shoulder and there would be one or two on the windowsill, just staring at me. One time, I opened the door to my apartment (I live on the third floor) and there was one about the size of a large dog staggering around at the bottom of the stairwell, pale face flashing in and out of the darkness, baring its teeth in a growl at me, pale limbs flashing as it bounded up the stairs. I slammed the door shut. I didn't go to work that day.

Then I saw it on the news.

The house that I had seen the fatass Grister at. I would have skipped right past the news story had I not seen the picture of the house.

The article was titled "EIGHT FOUND DEAD, THREE ALIVE IN HOUSE OF HORRORS."

Apparently, some sick fuck had been using the basement of one of those abandoned houses as a place to keep women prisoner and kill them when he felt like it. It was a terrible fucking story, but one of the things one of the survivors said really struck me.

"It was horrible. We never knew when he was going to come in and decide to kill one of us. When he was going to hurt us. We were just so terrified all the time."

'Terrified all the time'. And Gristers had been all over the place. And when I first saw one, I had been reading those horror stories and pretty freaked out. Same for Jon, who was watching a scary movie. Were these things drawn to fear?

Then I read that two of the survivors were being sent to a mental hospital for 'hallucinations'. Did they see the Gristers?

I stopped sleeping. I didn't want to wake up to those things staring at me. I stopped eating, too. Whenever I wasn't at work -which was more and more often, as I called out many times when I saw Gristers bigger than a cat sniffing around my building for me -I was locked in my room, trying to hunt for information on the internet about these things. I couldn't find anyone who has actually seen them.

The Gristers were getting more violent. They were starting to scratch me and bite me in those few scant hours that I actually did nod off. I'd always freak out and sweep them away, and they'd just hiss at me.

After about a week of this, I came home from work and found my cat dead. I bet they did that out of spite. If I hadn't gone to work that day, maybe I could've protected her from those monsters, so I decided to quit my job. I cried for days.

/x/, I don't have many friends, and I really loved that cat. They're not stupid, /x/. They don't talk, and they act differently from us, but they do have intelligence.

I went out for food last week. It was the last time I will ever go out. I was sitting at the downtown bus station, shivering, looking all around me for Gristers, when the bus approached. I got up to get on.

And out of nowhere a Grister, the size of a normal human, just bent over and walking their weird, loping gait, slammed into the back of the woman next to me and threw her in front of the bus. She had no chance. I saw her slide under the wheels of the bus, I saw her blood and ruined organs squeeze out of her like toothpaste. Everyone freaked out and panicked. As people rushed to her aid, the Grister turned to look at me and grinned. I dropped my groceries and screamed, running back to my house, sobbing all the way.

They're toying with me.

And that's when I finally realized why there wasn't anyone I could really talk to about Gristers.

/x/, how many times, when people commit suicide, do you hear it reported that they were "suffering from hallucinations"? Read the reports of people who have been in terrible, frightening situations. Like that house of horrors, or a war. How many of them "suffer from hallucinations"?

And eventually, they figure out that you can see them. And they start fucking with you. And I don't think everyone who they 'kill' is driven to suicide. I don't think Jon committed suicide. I think they're smart. I think they know how to make someone look like they killed themselves. You'll hear about it sometimes. You'll read in a report about how someone killed themselves, but something just isn't quite right about it. Like a man who went out and bought a new couch, and then cut his wrists on it.

And /x/, I think there was nothing special about Jon and me. I don't think there's anything special about anyone who sees these things. I think you're just more likely to see them when you're really scared, since that's when they're drawn to you.

Or maybe, just maybe...they just occur in my area, and it started happening not too long ago.

I can hear them right now. It's about three in the morning. It sounds like a really big one is outside my apartment door. It sounds like it's trying to gnaw its way through the wood. And so, I'm taking the easy way out. I'd rather have a nice, sharp knife slice open my arms open than have my skin torn by those teeth.

So, please. This is my warning to you. Stop seeking scary stuff. I know you love it. I know you love frightening yourself, but you've got to stop. Every time you read a story, watch a movie, or have frightening thoughts; every time you get that feeling of dread in your stomach, you're drawing the Gristers to you.

And if you don't stop, at least, please...never check out those sounds in the house when you do.