Jeff the Killer: One by One

## Jeff the Killer: One by One by DoctorBleed

(NOTE: This creepypasta has been revised by Doros70. Click here to read the original unedited version.)

**Introduction**

My name is Keith Moore. I'm Irish, and I grew up in Oak Grove, Minnesota. I love cars, horror movies, and I was looking forward to my twenty-first birthday. For the past few miserable days, I've been huddled in my room at an Akron, Ohio mental institution, living in constant, paralyzing fear, waiting for him to appear.

His name was Jeffrey Woods. But nobody calls him that anymore. By now, the whole country's heard of him. They all call him "Jeff the Killer." His story spread like wildfire. What he did, the people he's killed, the news was all over it. His tale has spread around everywhere, like a virus.

He destroyed my life, he killed people, he'll kill again, and the worst thing about all of it is that I know it's all my fault. He's a goddamn blight on the world, and he'll never go away now. The pain won't ever stop, and it's all because of me.

## Prologue

There was a time, about three years ago, when Jeff wasn't the monster he's become now. He was a normal kid, about 14 or 15 years old, I think. At the time, my friends and I were high school seniors, all around 17 and 19 if I'm remembering it right. Not that it matters anymore.

Jeff was relatively normal, but not that happy. He had a hard life, but he didn't go around starting fires or torturing small animals or anything, he was just a loner. People didn't like Jeff and he didn't have many friends. He came from a broken home. His father left him and his family when he was around four, his mother was an alcoholic and his brother Liu ended up in juvie. All of this left Jeff pretty introverted, but he didn't seem miserable. He was one of those dorky, gothic kids my friends and I liked to pick on. He had long hair he dyed black that he never took very good care of, he always wore dark clothing, and his skin was really pale.

He was into all kinds of creepy stuff that my friends and I thought was pretty silly. He was into various urban legends, black magic, and cheesy 70's music. I think that last thing was just a way to connect with his absent father, but I'll never know. His favorite song was "Don't Fear the Reaper", a fact he would remind us of constantly which was pretty annoying. If it were up to us, we wouldn't've hung out with the little twerp, but Lisa, our friend Troy's sister, insisted on it. I guess she felt bad for him and thought we needed to be his friends. So Jeff started tagging along with us, and we absolutely hated it.

Like I said before, he constantly said that "Don't Fear the Reaper" was his favorite song, he'd always ask the same thing for no reason, and he'd listen to his songs so loud that I could hear them from his headphones. He'd even sing the lyrics aloud. Horribly. Because of that, we never treated Jeff right. He was the butt of all our pranks, we constantly insulted him, loved to make fun of him, and sometimes just straight up told him to get lost. There were more than a few times he went home crying, but he'd always show up the next day like nothing happened. Even though we treated him terribly, we were the only friends he had.

He had enough in common with us that he could fit in alright. We all liked the same movies, we had similar tastes in music and we even had a lot of similar hobbies. One cool thing about Jeff was his huge collection of knives. Looking back, that should've been a major red flag for us, but we just thought it was awesome. His brother was in jail for stabbing someone, so I guess the knives were his way of feeling close to him again.

If we'd spent more time focusing on the good things about him, if we'd been better friends, maybe none of this would've ever happened. But we were selfish, thoughtless teenagers. We didn't care that Jeff was lonely or depressed or even that he had a hard life. He annoyed us, he made us angry. So we wanted him gone. There were even a few times we told him to kill himself. I remember Troy once told him to drink a whole "thing of bleach". He probably should've said "bottle" but Troy was never very articulate.

I never thought we'd ever taken it too far...until that day.

We decided we finally had enough of Jeff. We were going to get rid of him. There was a tall cliff overlooking a massive ditch. We weren't going to hurt him, or at least, that wasn't our plan. We wanted to scare him. Make him think we'd kill him if he didn't leave us alone. We were going to dangle him over the cliff and pretend like we were going to drop him. The gang and I were all together; Randy, Troy, and Katy. Lisa wasn't there because we were sure that if she knew what we were trying to do, she'd have our heads. We picked up Jeff at his house. He never bothered to ask his mom permission, but he never had to. She was always passed out on the couch after downing an entire bottle of whiskey in the afternoon or whatever. Jeff could get away with pretty much anything he wanted.

He had this outdated MP3 player with him loaded up with all of that silly Dad rock he liked so much. He dressed like he always did, black combat boots, a pair of blue jeans, a Blue Oyster Cult T-shirt, and a gray hoodie wrapped around his waist. We told him we were going to the lake to race boats. It didn't matter what we said, we could've told him we were going to eat dirt and he'd tag along. He was like a dog, in a way. He was very excited to be with us, always very loyal and even pretty obedient. He'd eat bugs if we told him to. I really do regret how we treated him, even after what he turned into and all the horrible things he'd done.

When we arrived at the cliff, Jeff seemed a bit confused. We told him that there was a great view of the city from there and he just had to see it. He didn't question us; he wasn't the least bit suspicious. He put his hoodie on and ran out of the car to get a look. We followed behind him. He became even more confused when he saw absolutely nothing but rocks and trees. We all circled around him. Me, Troy, Katy, and Randy. He turned to us with an utterly baffled expression on his face, totally oblivious to what was about to happen. I grabbed him by the collar while everyone else grabbed his arms. He shouted and screamed as we leaned him over the cliff. We were laughing at him, telling him we were going to drop him. He cried harder than I'd ever seen him before, and I'm ashamed to admit, I was really enjoying it.

It all started to fall apart when he managed to get one of his arms loose. He had a holster under his shirt with a huge knife in it. He was the kind of kid crazy enough to carry one with him wherever he went. He grabbed it and started swinging it at us. He nearly sliced my face open, and I fell back. Everyone was freaking out and tried to stop him. Katy, scared out of her mind and operating on her lowest survival instinct, freaked out. She shoved Jeff away, just trying to get him to stop. It was an accident, she never meant to hurt him; but he stumbled back, he couldn't regain his footing, and he...fell down.

I'll never forget the scream he made when he tripped. The absolute agony, betrayal and terror in his voice echoed louder than anything I ever heard before it slowly faded away and was finally silenced by that loud "thud" sound that will haunt me forever.

Katy was completely broken. She fell to her knees, screamed like a banshee, and started crying so hard it seemed like her throat was about to collapse. The rest of us just stood there, completely in awe. No words, no movement, nothing. Just complete and utter shock. Randy grabbed Katy and we all ran back to my car and drove away. I'll never know how it happened, but no one ever found Jeff's body. He was declared missing and the authorities searched for him, but the investigation ended with no evidence. I guess they didn't think about checking the pit. I'd say we all got lucky, but after the events that transpired years later, calling it "luck" is a gigantic misnomer. It was more like cosmic irony. A cruel joke to compound our punishment.

I was the only one who ever went back to the spot. It was about a week later and I was having nightmares about the incident. None of the others would dare go near that cliff after what happened, but I had to be sure that Jeff was dead. I had to be sure it was all real. I made my way down to the trench in the middle of the night. I felt like I needed to see Jeff's body with my own eyes. I'd regret the hell out of it for the rest of my life after that.

His body looked like it had begun to decay, his already pale skin had faded into a macabre shade of grayish white. His messy hair had become even more unkempt, and his limbs were twisted into unnatural, inhuman positions that made it obvious they were completely shattered. His clothes were ragged and strained, completely ruined by the rain and the dirt. His eyes had these thick, black rings around them that made them look like they were carved out. I approached his body slowly and carefully, trying my best not to make a noise - as if it mattered. There was no doubt in my mind he was dead. In just another act in a series of sincere and painful regrets, I dug around his body, looking for whatever little things he had on him to keep as mementos. Something I could always look at and remember him.

I grabbed three things: the MP3 player he always carried with him, a little sketchbook of drawings he made, and a picture of him and his entire family. It was the only picture of them all together, with his older brother as a toddler, Jeff as an infant, his mother healthy, and his father still present. Looking at the picture made a pit in my stomach. Seeing Jeff's family happy and together, only to be utterly destroyed years later, made me sick with grief. I remember seeing Jeff with his sketchbook a couple dozen times. It was the only time we didn't try to mess with him because he'd be quiet and out of our way whenever he pulled that thing out. His drawings were the kind of crude, juvenile things you'd expect from someone his age. He liked to draw knives, skulls, scribble little musings, write down song lyrics he liked, and he even doodled Slender Man a few times.

The MP3 player was filled with classic rock songs; stuff my dad would've liked, even a few ones I enjoyed. He listened to the Eagles, April Wine, the Doors, and of course, Blue Oyster Cult. I looked carefully at his playlist, and I winced when I noticed the last song Jeff listened to was "Don't Fear the Reaper", his favorite.

I didn't appreciate the irony.

I couldn't bring myself to take his knife. Looking back, it was the only thing I should've taken. But I didn't want to even touch it. Something about that thing seemed evil, like it was burning with it. I almost thought putting my hand on the thing would give me third-degree burns. Before I could take something else, Jeff's body started to move. I was stunned. It couldn't've been the wind or an animal moving him around, or anything else. It looked like organic movement, like it was coming right from Jeff. His eyes opened wide, and I noticed that he was still breathing; it was just incredibly weak and slow. *Jeff was alive*. He'd been completely paralyzed by the fall, but he had somehow lived for an entire week all alone down there, completely unable to move. It was easy to tell he suffered.

The look on his face was the worst thing I'd ever seen in my life. There was something in his eyes - not anger, but hatred. Pure and absolute hatred. Like nothing I'd ever seen before. He abhorred me, and I could tell if he could still move, he'd try his hardest to rip my guts out. That's when I did the worst thing I've ever done in my life. I didn't call an ambulance or try to go get help, because I knew if people found out what we did, my friends and I would all go to jail and our lives would be ruined. Looking back on it now, that would've been way better than what actually happened to us all.

I covered Jeff's mouth with my hand and pinched his nose closed tight. He struggled, but clearly didn't have the energy to fight. The breath slowly faded, he stopped breathing entirely, and he began to close his eyes. I implored him to stop struggling, to just let it all end. I begged him, with tears in my eyes.

"Please, just go to sleep."

## Chapter One

It'd been three years since that day. I still thought about what happened every single day, but I was so sure it was over.

Then came the day I knew my life was finished.

I was on my way to work. On a normal day, I'd walk about five blocks to the copy shop. It was nice to live so close to work that I didn't even need to buy a car. I never thought I'd ever need one. If I had one, I would've never seen him that day. At the very least, I could've run him over. I was walking the neighborhood he grew up in and I made the mistake of walking across the street from his old house. Every other house on the block was pristine and well maintained, but Jeff's old home was decayed and rotted. No one ever wanted to touch the place. It was marked by human tragedy. Everyone who lived there was dead, and the very air around it felt possessed. A chill ran up my spine just walking past it.

I'd normally never go near that place, and I shouldn't have that day, but I couldn't walk away from what I thought I saw. It was far away and out of focus, but I could never mistake the sight of Jeff's corpse. It looked like he was standing there in the window, looking right at me. Against my better judgment, I approached the old house and looked inside. I could've sworn I saw him. He was standing all the way in the back of the house, but I could recognize him clear as day. He looked just like he did back in the pit: The tattered clothes, the white skin, the messy hair, the black rings around his eyes, and the furious, hateful look on his face. I'll never understand how, but I could make out every detail on his face perfectly.

His face was covered in hideous scars of various lengths and sizes, the biggest being two symmetrical markings ripped all the way across both his cheeks forming a makeshift smile. It wouldn't have fooled anyone, though. Jeff wasn't happy, and looking at his nightmarish visage for even one second would've made it explicitly clear. The markings and scars looked to be self-inflicted, as if Jeff was so anxious to get all the hate out, he had to carve himself up.

I was completely frozen. I wasn't sure if what I was seeing was real or just a hallucination. It certainly wouldn't be the first time. The trauma from what happened all those years ago left me in a bad way. My state of mind had become so fragile that the slightest of noises would make me jump. I had nightmares every night about him, I heard and seen things that weren't there - but never this vividly and never for this long. The cold, long stare was not broken by me, but by the figure that resembled Jeff. With complete apathy, he turned around and exited out the back door of the house. Curiosity had a vice grip on me. It was stupid to go back there to try and look for him. It was stupid to hop over the fence and into the backyard. And it was really stupid to poke my head in and look around.

"Don't go in there."

It was a deep, raspy voice, it practically growled at me. My heart skipped a beat. I snapped back away from the door as fast as I could and looked behind me. There was nothing. Almost immediately, my common sense returned and I realized nothing good could come from standing around anymore. I ran away from the old house as fast as I could, like I was trying to outrun some predatory animal. I made it all the way to the far corner of the next block over before I stopped to catch my breath. Jeff was nowhere to be seen, but I knew he hadn't left. I couldn't see him, but I could feel his eyes on me, like they were burning holes in my skin.

I decided that I couldn't leave myself open anymore. I had to take the bus to work. I needed big metal walls to protect me and a huge crowd of people around me. More than anything, I needed some sense of normalcy; a clear sign that I was still in reality. I waited at the bus stop, fidgeting around and looking in every single direction, just waiting for Jeff to pop out of a bush or from behind a tree. I couldn't find him anywhere.
When the bus arrived, I practically shoved two people out of the way and tossed my fare into the bucket like it was on fire. I made the mistake of taking a seat by the window. Because of this, I had the misfortune of seeing Jeff one more time.

He was standing at the far end of the street, glaring at me. Maintaining perfect eye contact with me, as if he was staring right into my soul and snatching up all the intimate little details of my life that I didn't want anyone else to see. As the bus slowly pulled away, he made an obscene gesture at me and slowly walked away. He wasn't frustrated because he couldn't catch me, he wasn't angry that I escaped. He was in perfect control. He was letting me leave. He was toying with me.

The very next day, Jeff killed his first victim, a dear friend who I hadn't spoken to in years. Her murder made it all too clear that Jeff was real, and he was coming for me soon.

## Chapter Two

Her name was Lisa Beacon. Out of all of us, she deserved to suffer the least. She was always nice to Jeff, always the first to speak up when we took the teasing too far, always the quickest to defend him, and never joined in when we picked on him. But she was the first one he hurt. He didn't just kill her, he left her mortally wounded and disfigured. She was in the hospital's intensive care unit for two weeks before succumbing to her injuries.

In the interim between her admission and her death, Lisa had spoken with a detective from the police department. Despite the ghastly disfigurement she was suffering from, she was somehow able to speak perfectly and recount every detail of her story vividly. She was at a party at a friend's house and had stayed too long. It was about four in the morning, and the whole neighborhood was dark. Even with every streetlight on, you could barely see a few feet ahead. The first warning sign she received was the sound of a knife scraping against glass. The horrible creaking sound echoed throughout the block. It would stop completely and start up again, even changing directions a few times. Sometimes, it'd be frantic and rapid, and other times, it'd be slow and painful. She was the only one there, all alone. She looked around, but she couldn't find anyone.

Lisa made the unfortunate mistake of following the sound, and that's how she met her undoing.

She followed the noise all the way to a dark room of the house. The awful scraping sound belonged to a blade being lazily dragged across a dirty window. That's when she saw Jeff standing in a corner with that huge knife in his hand. They locked eyes for a brief moment. She barely recognized him, she'd never seen him down there in the pit; she didn't even know what happened that day.

"Jeff?"

He immediately snarled and ran at her, knife in hand. He bared his teeth at her as his eyes expressed a kind of hatred she'd never seen before in her life. Her better instincts kicked in, and she ran out of the house as fast as she could. Have you ever had one of those nightmares where you're being chased by someone and you can't bring yourself to run? Like you're trapped in molasses and you can't get away? It doesn't work that way in real life. You run like a wild animal. Your body starts pumping adrenaline into all of your veins and you move faster than you ever have before.

But it didn't matter. None of it mattered. He was still faster than her. She never felt the knife enter her side, but the trauma of the wound caused her to fall on the pavement.
Laying right under a streetlight bleeding into the gutter, she began to cough as her mouth filled up with her own blood.

Jeff was looming over her, gripping the knife so tightly in his hand she swore he could've snapped the handle in two. Tears ran down her face as she screamed so loud she felt like her vocal cords were about to rip apart.
She called for help for anyone at all. Nobody ever came; not a single person heard her. The entire block was deserted. Everyone was either long gone, sound asleep, or too busy to care. He stepped on her chest, causing her to spit out even more blood. She looked up to him, and she pleaded to him for some kind of mercy. She begged him to tell her why. To give some kind of explanation.
He leaned in close to her, and he whispered,

"You don't deserve one."

## Chapter Three

Word spread fast about what happened. It ran non-stop on every single news station. It was a glaring headline in every newspaper. It was the frightened words on everyone's lips. She gave a perfect description of him, his mangled face, grayish skin, frayed hair and tattered clothing. His image, brutal act, and apparent connection to the missing child I had been responsible for murdering had created a folk legend akin to the Mothman or Bigfoot.
Over the next few weeks, sightings of "Jeff the Killer" bloomed all over Oak Grove and the surrounding area. The police had organized search parties, people were snapping pictures of random shadows and figures claiming to have photographed Jeff. I found it sickening, to say the least. Not to mention absolutely terrifying.

No one took Lisa's death and the subsequent media firestorm that followed worse than her brother, Troy. After Jeff murdered her, Troy started seeing him everywhere; in darkened alleyways, in unlit hallways, or staring through his bedroom window. Troy was, to put it bluntly, white trash. He and Lisa both came from the same poverty-stricken family, but whereas Lisa maintained a normal social image, Troy wore his class on his sleeve. He was obese, inarticulate, poorly educated, and never dressed well. He was always very protective of his sister, and I could tell losing her broke something in him.

Troy had become obsessed with the idea of revenge. He began stockpiling weapons - knives, clubs, even axes - waiting for Jeff to come after him. He had planned to viciously murder Jeff and put him through a kind of suffering even worse than his sister suffered. He would get an opportunity to try one night but would live to regret his wish. It was three weeks after Lisa's death. He was sitting on a wooden chair next to the window of his bedroom. A combat knife tightly gripped in his hand, waiting patiently to see Jeff's face again so he could make the gruesome scars that covered it a pleasant memory.

He saw Jeff standing out in his yard with his knife, looking up at him. The two stared at each other, waiting for one to make the first move. Suddenly, Jeff walked over to Troy's front door, kicked it down, and stomped inside. Troy leaped into action immediately, running out of his room and down the stairs with his knife gripped tightly in his fist. Troy couldn't find Jeff, but that never deterred him. Without so much as a moment of doubt or hesitance, Troy continued to run all over the first floor of his house, trying to find where Jeff might be hiding.

Troy followed the sounds of crashing metal and pounding footsteps to the kitchen, where he could practically feel Jeff's presence. He searched every corner, under the table, even inside the oven. It became obvious that Jeff wasn't there. He ran out into the living room to find Jeff. He knew he was successful when Jeff tackled him and knocked him to the ground. There was a struggle, but Troy resisted. He managed to shove Jeff off, toss him into a glass cabinet, and even managed to slash his face with his knife.

Even though Jeff was vulnerable, he still easily overpowered Troy. After all, a Revenant can't be brought down by a witless man. Whatever brought him back to get his revenge made him stronger than ever. He was strong enough to beat up a grown man twice as tall as him. He punched him, tossed him, smashed his head into the ground, and eventually finished it by pinning Troy's hand to the ground with his own knife. In a great deal of pain, Troy struggled, screamed, and cursed at Jeff, the same kind of intense rage I saw in Jeff's face had consumed Troy himself. He felt exactly what Jeff did.

His anger quickly faded into fear as Jeff walked upstairs and came back down with multiple weapons from Troy's room.

There was nothing left of him after that.

## Chapter Four

Jeff's next victim was Randy Barge. Randy was the oldest of all of us, and the most jaded. He was easily the meanest to Jeff. The worst pranks, the meanest jokes, the nastiest little gags would always be cooked up by Randy. One time, he made Jeff lick an entire sack of batteries one by one to save a drawing he made and then ripped it up anyway. It's not like we were any better than he was. We always joined in, we never objected, we never even tried to stop him. Nobody but Lisa ever even tried.

Randy's life after the incident wasn't exactly glamorous. He was the groundskeeper at a local graveyard. He lived there, totally off the grid. He hadn't seen even a second of the news; he didn't even get the internet out there. He had no idea about Jeff. He could never have known the horror that was about to come. Randy was used to seeing weird things at night. When you're all alone and isolated in such a strange, scary place, your mind tends to play tricks on you. You see shadow people shuffling across the walls, trees moving on their own, or ghosts floating past the headstones. Eventually, it all becomes white noise. You start tuning out all the creepy things that would terrify most people.

That complete apathy for the supposed paranormal, unfortunately, would be Randy's undoing. When he started seeing Jeff standing in the graveyard in the middle of the night, he thought nothing of it. He never tried to run, he never went to grab a weapon, he never thought twice about it. He'd seen those types of things every single night, and the natural guilt he felt over Jeff's death made him take these sightings even less seriously.
I don't think Jeff liked being ignored. When he saw that Randy wasn't paying much attention to him, he became more aggressive and physical. Instead of passively stalking Randy, he went out of his way to intimidate him.

Randy lived in a beaten-down, ugly little shack only a few yards away from the tombstones and burial plots. Jeff would wait patiently for Randy to go to bed and then bang on his door or toss a brick through his window. Sometimes he'd just slam something against the wall or simply tip something over. He'd do anything to make Randy freak out. Jeff also did more subtle, little things to drive Randy crazy. He'd sneak into his cabin while he was away and make slash marks on his walls and windows. He'd move things around, steal small objects like Randy's toothbrush or his lighter, and he'd leave dead rodents or small bloodstains in the corners or behind the furniture.

Jeff's plan worked. Randy was genuinely scared. He saw things in the dark, but none of them ever had any physical agency. They were just visions and hallucinations. But Jeff was real, there was no denying it.
Randy never felt the slightest bit of pity for Jeff, or even the faintest hint of regret over what he did. He was only afraid of getting caught. He felt justified in getting angry at Jeff, and to be honest, I guess he was.
But even with all the horrible things Jeff has done, I still don't think what Randy did next was right.

Randy was furious. He'd stomp out of his shack and curse at him or try to toss things back at him. None of it ever fazed Jeff. So Randy decided to do something he thought would really piss him off.

This would be the worst mistake of his life.

It was past midnight, and the graveyard was shrouded in an ugly fog so thick you could cut it with a knife. Randy spent most of his days screaming at Jeff and trying to outrun him or chase him off, but when he saw Jeff standing in the distance that night, all he did was smile smugly and wave. Jeff wasn't normal, but he wasn't psychic. He didn't know what Randy was doing with that large shovel draped over his shoulder. When Jeff saw Randy pierce his shovel into the dirt, he was confused. Jeff watched Randy for hours how he single-handedly dug six feet into the wet, muddy ground. Jeff watched how Randy grabbed ahold of the heavy coffin and struggled to pull it up to the surface.

Jeff figured out Randy's motivations when the coffin lid swung open and he saw the body. He recognized the person the rotting corpse used to be, even after years of decay.

It'd been years, but you never forget your own mother's face.

I don't know what Jeff was planning to do with Randy at first. Maybe he was going to mess with his head for a little while and then kill him quickly and painfully. But any plans Jeff might've had gone right out the window the moment Randy defiled his mother's grave. Randy unzipped his fly and began to piss all over her dead body. I don't know what he expected to happen. Randy was a nasty, cruel person without much foresight. I guess he thought that if he hurt Jeff, he'd win, no matter what Jeff would do to him next. Randy was so smug, laughing his lungs out and swearing as he mocked Jeff and boasted about what he'd done. That's when Jeff tackled Randy to the ground hard enough to break a few of his ribs.

There was a struggle, but Randy was grossly outmatched, especially with Jeff as furious as he was. He was beaten into submission, barely able to even move. It didn't stop Randy from running his mouth, even when Jeff was holding his knife to Randy's throat. Jeff had Randy pinned to the ground, and... Well...I'm not going to say what happened next, but if you were a psychotic killer who was furious at someone and their fly was open...you can probably figure out what Jeff did with that knife.

Randy let out the most horrible scream in his life, feeling the worst he could possibly imagine. He thought it couldn't get any worse, but in just a few minutes, he'd envy the pain he was feeling right then. Jeff got up and walked over to the coffin. The furious expression that was practically cemented on his face had finally faded away just for that moment as he looked down at his mother. He looked so broken. It was the last time he'd ever look human. If he could cry, he would've been an absolute mess.

"Aren't I beautiful, mommy?"

The words were bitter, sarcastic, and macabre. Maybe he imagined what his mother would've said if she saw him like that as he slowly stroked her face. There was a whole lot of emotion Jeff never thought he'd feel again. With great care, he lifted his mother's body out of its coffin and set it on the ground. He then turned to Randy, a beaten and bloodied mess in a heap on the ground. As Jeff formed a tight grip on his collar, Randy figured out what Jeff was about to do and started to scream. Jeff picked up Randy and tossed him in the coffin that used to occupy his mother. He slammed the door shut and lazily flipped the coffin into the six-foot trench below.

The fall knocked Randy's already bruised body around like a ragdoll, breaking more of his bones and leaving him paralyzed. But he still had the strength to scream at the top of his lungs. He begged for death. He pleaded for Jeff to just kill him, not bury him alive. He wept as hard as he could and screamed for help. None of it mattered. Jeff ignored it all, and there was no one else to help him. He just shoveled dirt into the pit for hours on end until the screaming was muffled. The police showed up a week later to respond to a missing person's report. By the time they discovered the body and the freshly dug grave, Randy was long gone.

## Chapter Five

Out of all of our friends, Katy and I were the only ones still alive. Jeff had hunted down every single other person and killed them. By now, the stress of the situation had already taken its toll on me. I'd left Minnesota entirely, but my mind had become so broken from the absolute terror I was living with every day that I ended up in a mental hospital. But even before the killings, the incident had already broken Katy. She blamed herself for Jeff's death. She was the one who pushed him off the cliff, after all.

She'd become extremely introverted and never left her home. She developed a kind of acute agoraphobia and had to adjust her life accordingly. No one ever went into her house, and no one ever came out. So when she saw Jeff standing outside her window one night, it only made her already awful situation a thousand times worse. She knew about the other killings; all had been linked to Jeff the Killer by the media. She knew she had to be next in the rotation. Terror gripped her heart like a bear trap on a fox's leg. She began to board up her windows and doors and set up booby-traps all over her house. She kept some kind of weapon near her at all times, with knives and clubs she ordered off the internet at arm's length in nearly every room.

Jeff didn't come for her right away. Instead, he circled her like a shark. Stalking her for days and days on end, hiding behind the trees and bushes, calling her house late at night and hanging up, and sometimes just standing outside her window and staring. She tried calling the police, but by the time they got there, Jeff was always gone, and there was never any evidence he'd ever been there. They took the threat seriously, but there was little they could do. The police aren't bodyguards, after all. They couldn't sit around all night waiting for him.

There was a part of Katy that wished Jeff would make his move already, just for the sake of catharsis. The waiting, the uncertainty, and the knowledge she was going to die but the inability to predict when or how it would happen, that was the worst part. Jeff wouldn't come for her until six weeks had already passed. She barely got any sleep. She wanted to be ready for whatever came next when it happened. So when she heard a loud banging noise coming from her basement in the middle of the night, she was already awake and prepared.

She kept a baseball with a cluster of nails sticking out of it right under her bed. It was hard for her to lift the thing because it was so heavy and she couldn't swing it all that hard, but it could still tear someone apart. She grabbed her weapon and rushed out of bed. Katy wasn't a violent person, and she hadn't been in a real fight her whole life, but she wanted this nightmare to end, and she was out of options. She rushed downstairs, determined to face Jeff and put an end to his rampage. As she stood at the top of the basement stairs, Jeff was nowhere to be seen. He was already in her home, and he was toying with her.

But Katy wasn't daunted. She'd lived in fear for far too long, and now that he was there, she wasn't going to cower and hide away anymore. She gritted her teeth and ran upstairs. The sudden loud sound of metal clamping and a deep, angry growl coming from the second floor let her know that Jeff had fallen into one of her traps. She ran upstairs, ready to catch him in the act. She finally found him, struggling to remove the bear trap from his bloodied leg. Like I said, Jeff had a lot of bizarre new strengths, but he wasn't invulnerable. He ripped the trap off his leg hard enough to snap it in two and wasted no time charging towards her. But Katy was a bit more clever than Jeff had anticipated - as he lunged at her, she jumped out of the way, sending Jeff rocketing face-first down the stairs and falling clumsily.

Jeff was pretty pissed off. He wasn't used to not having the upper hand. As Katy lorded over him at the top of the stairs with the bat in her hand, he saw the kind of predatory fury in her eyes that he had. It was the first time since he began tormenting us that he felt genuinely unnerved. Katy knew the tables were officially turned when she saw Jeff run away from her. She chased after him with her bat, ready to beat him to a bloody pulp. She chased Jeff downstairs into the living room. Jeff ran into another trap when he set off a tripwire spread out across the entrance to the kitchen, sending a set of sawblades falling down. Two of them missed, but one hit Jeff in the shoulder, causing him to reel in pain.

Jeff turned to find Katy had caught up with him, and with all her might, she smashed him with her bat as hard she could, causing the bat to break and Jeff to fall over. Katy slowly backed away, waiting to see if Jeff was still moving. He sluggishly rose up, battered, and covered in his own blood. Nails and wood splinters stuck out all over the left side of Jeff's upper body, arm, and face. He sneered at Katy as hard as he possibly could and rushed right at her. Katy turned around and tried to run away, but Jeff managed to quickly catch her up. He slashed his knife across her leg, making a large gash in her thigh. But it didn't slow her down; she was able to flee upstairs like a bat out of hell. Jeff let her get a head start. He must've been toying with her and wanted to prolong her suffering.

She was completely out of sight. Jeff stomped up the stairs, but Katy was utterly absent. There's a good chance Jeff began to regret letting her run away, and he probably thought she escaped. He checked every room on the second floor, making a very careful effort to avoid the various booby traps Katy had set up. He checked the bathroom, the laundry room, and the empty room she used for storage. There wasn't a single sign of her anywhere. Even her bedroom was empty. The only clue to her location was the bay window across the room from Katy's bed. It'd been shattered, presumably with a desk chair or some other large object. It was clear that she was long gone.

Jeff walked over to the shattered window and gazed out to the front yard. Like some kind of predatory animal, he searched for tracks or disturbed soil - any kind of sign of her passing. There was nothing, like her feet never even touched the ground. His theory was confirmed when he heard Katy calling for him. Jeff turned around and found out the hard way that the baseball bat wasn't the only weapon Katy had stashed away. She also had a very powerful handgun and aimed it squarely at Jeff. She pulled the trigger and hit Jeff square in the chest, causing him to reel in pain and let out a horrible, almost demonic-sounding scream.

She fired again, and the blast knocked Jeff over, sending him hurtling out the window as he screamed in pain. The loud yell was the worst sound Katy had ever heard in her life, and it was punctuated with a loud "thud" as Jeff hit the ground, silencing him. She dropped her gun and ran to the window. She looked down at her yard, and she saw Jeff's limp body lying there, twisted, mangled, and soaking in a pool of his own blood. It was clear. Jeff was dead. It was finally over. She loosened her grip on the gun and let it fall to the ground. She fell to her knees and cried her eyes out. She was filled with so many horrible emotions at once. Guilt, fear, grief, sorrow, everything washed over her all at once in a terrible, climactic crescendo.

She couldn't believe she had killed a child. Certainly, whatever iniquitous force had brought him to life had long since erased any parts of him that were still human, but it didn't change the way she felt; the way she remembered him. With the horror finally over, it was time to pick up the pieces and live her life once again. She had to collect Jeff's body and dispose of it. She was sure that the police would never believe her story and there wouldn't be a way to explain it. Even with the media circus surrounding Jeff, a dead child on your front lawn isn't something you can just brush off, she thought.

But when she exited out the front door and looked to her yard, her heart sank when she realized he was gone. The spot where he fell was still covered in blood, and the grass formed a seamless silhouette on where he landed, but his body was nowhere to be seen. Absolute terror gripped her heart as tight as it could and refused to let go. She began hyperventilating and prepared to run back into her home. Just as she turned around, she saw Jeff standing a few feet away from her, covered in blood and bruises, looking barely alive. Before she could even move, Jeff lifted his knife and stabbed her in the heart.

The pain was instant and sharp. She felt the life drain out of her as her entire body stopped, and everything went dark. Jeff pulled his knife out and she fell to the ground. Her death was quick and relatively painless. I guess Jeff wanted her to suffer at first, but with the fight she put up, he couldn't afford to play games with her. It wasn't an easy death, it wasn't quick, and it certainly wasn't painless. But in fighting to defend herself, Katy's fate was the least gruesome. It lasted about four minutes with her reeling in pain and screaming as she fell to the ground and Jeff stabbed her a few more times, but it was over once her eyes rolled back in her head.

## Chapter Six

They were all dead. Every single one of them. Lisa, Troy, Randy, and Katy. I was the only one left, and I'd be the last one to be searched by him. Knowing that filled me with the kind of dread no one should ever have to live with. I started seeing him again, just like all the others had. I knew that I was going to be in a world of hurt when I looked out my bedroom window and saw him standing in the distance, gazing at me the same way he did three months ago that very day. The medication didn't do anything for me. Therapy had no effect. All the specialists believed I was simply delusional. There'd been plenty of Jeff the Killer hoaxes all over the country since the nightmare started. Many of the murders initially attributed to Jeff in the media-fueled hysteria after what happened to Lisa turned out to be completely unconnected. They were just homeless people and domestic disputes that had nothing to do with Jeff at all. So why should they've believed me when I started talking about him? I'm sure at least a dozen other people in that mental hospital were too.

Jeff had left calling cards and clue trails for the police to find all the bodies, little signs that confirmed it was him. But at the time, the police were still sorting the real murders from the copycats. I knew for certain that Jeff would come for me next, but to get anyone to believe me, I'd have to tell them about what happened at the pit, and I didn't have the guts to. The beginning of the end came right when I took my medication on a dreary night. I've been told for weeks that the pills I was taking were going to be changed, so when I was given a strange mixture of multiple pills I didn't recognize, I never questioned it.

But the pills weren't anti-psychotics. They were a collection of ordinarily innocuous medication that when taken separately were harmless, but when taken together had horrible side effects. My movements became sluggish, my mind became muddled, and my speech was slurred and nearly incomprehensible. I was completely aware of my surroundings and what was going on around me, but I had barely any control over my body. I thought I could sleep it off, but that was a big mistake. I got in my bed, and I became completely paralyzed. I couldn't move my arms or legs; I could just barely rock back and forth. I tried to scream for help, but I could only let out a mumbled groan.

I feel like I'm still trapped in that room. That dark, white, tiny room with just my bed, that desk, that office chair, and that pouch full of Jeff's stuff. I remember it so vividly. It's like recalling a vision of hell. I saw Jeff standing in my doorway. The look of furious hatred in his eyes only burned brighter since time had passed. I expected him to kick down the door and attack me like an animal, but he didn't. He slowly opened the door and quietly shut it behind him. I was trembling, totally unable to move or even scream, and I started to cry. I was a pathetic, writhing mess of a man, but Jeff barely even reacted. He walked over to my desk and grabbed the pouch I kept his things in.

He unpacked them one by one, his sketchbook, his MP3 player, and the picture of his family. He tucked everything into his jacket without even pausing, except for the picture. He stared for what felt like minutes. There was this curious look on his face, the only time I hadn't seen him absolutely furious since the incident. He seemed... somber. Then he walked over to me and dropped the picture on my chest, right where I could see it. Then, he spoke.

"Do you see the woman in this picture?"

I couldn't answer him. I could barely move my lips; I couldn't even make a noise.

"Her name was Mei Ling Woods. She was my mother. She was half-Chinese, the youngest child in her family and preferred to be called 'May'. She named her oldest son, Liu, after her father. She was married to Peter Woods before he abandoned her."

I tried to reply, to give my condolences or beg for mercy, anything that could add even mere seconds onto my life. But nothing could come out, no matter how hard I struggled.

"You never thought about her once, have you? I bet you didn't even know her name until now. She died because of you. She was already an alcoholic, but she was gonna quit when she found out she had diabetes. Then you and your pals came in, like a goddamn miserable hurricane. You killed her boy, and she had nothing left to live for. She crashed her car into a tree. Because of you. You and your fucking friends killed everything I ever loved, and then you went on living your lives like nothing ever happened! Fuck you all!"

Jeff pulled the knife out from his jacket and plunged it deep into my knees repeatedly. I bared my teeth and let out the weakest, most pathetic moan.

"One of the pills you took was adrenaline. It's not a miracle potion, you'll suffer, and it'll just take a lot longer for the pain to subside. So, I'm gonna take my time and make your life a living hell. You're gonna want to go to sleep. But don't worry, I won't let that happen."

## Epilogue

It's been a few weeks since Jeff's visit. After he stabbed me, he proceeded to tell me how he killed my friends in gruesome detail, just to taunt me. After he left, I fell asleep and his little stories made me have horrible nightmares that I have to this day. They just won't leave my head. Jeff completely destroyed my knee joints and shin, leaving me wheelchair-bound. Needless to say, I won't be able to work or walk again. The wounds don't hurt anymore, but I can still feel the knife in them.

I'm sure that Jeff had left the state by now, but every night, I have a feeling that he'll come back and finish me off. I know that he continues to kill people because sometimes I get letters explaining the murder methods, and the details are beyond terrifying. I got five of them so far. One time, I got a note with the lyrics from "Don't Fear the Reaper".

Even now, I haven't slept much, and my mental state can only get worse. It's only a matter of time before the paranoia and guilt destroy my mind, leaving me hopelessly broken. I don't know where he is now, but I know for certain that killing my friends had satisfied him, but it brought him no peace. He wasn't placated. He would never be. He'd become something different, inhuman; a wicked Revenant of hatred that will wander the Earth forever. Always killing. Always making people suffer.

He is a wretched monster risen by his hateful heart, able to repossess his body. But he'd never be truly alive again. He can't die, though I'm sure a part of him wants to. All he can do now is kill people and ruin lives. I just want to leave by saying that if he ever finds you or kills one of your loved ones, I want you to know that I'm deeply and truly sorry. I never meant for any of this to happen, but it's too late to change anything. I just want this hell to end. A part of me hopes that I'd wake up and find him with his knife raised high in the air, and to see that wicked, horrible grin on his face.

"Shh. Go to sleep."