The Dark Man



My name's Tom Springsteen, and my life has been the fairly simple day by day broken record. I go to work and come home to my son who just got home from school. You see my wife and I had this amazing child, and everything was perfect. Then one day I came home to her mangled body lying on the floor. Oh god, it looked like an animal had torn her limb from limb. Even to this day no one knows what did it, well no one except me and my son.

You see a couple months back my son and I had settled down for bed, and it was all played out like usual. I watched him brush his teeth, he laid down and I sat by him till he went to sleep. Then I proceeded to my room. I needed sleep, I worked a couple extra hours that day and that I had to get my sister to watch my son after school. Just as I had almost fallen asleep, a loud crash woke me. And this wasn't like a remote falling off a couch crash, it was a baseball bat to a window crash. Strangely, it came from my son's room. I rushed in there to see what happened, and what I saw was my son curled up under his blanket shaking and his lamp busted on the floor, "Hey, what happened?" I asked in a low voice.

"He got mad at me," he replied crying.

"He... He Who?"

"The dark man" he fused.

"Who's the dark man?"

"He... He makes me hurt myself," my son clasped as he uttered the words.

"Well its OK, he can't hurt you now."

"No -- no now he's gonna kill me, He said he would if I told anyone about... WAIT WHAT WAS THAT?!"

Just as those words left his mouth, I was thrown against his wall and looked up to see a tall dark, faceless figure standing over my son, and his deep menacing voice almost echoed as he spoke

"Child, I warned you not to speak of me... But you have so now you and your father will be destroyed, as your mother was."

The second those words left his mouth, I knew it was the person who had killed my wife. Rage shot through my veins as I punched the thing in the face. But even with all my strength, it didn't even flinch. "What the fuck are you?" I demanded. And the dark man said "You'll know soon enough," and he pushed me with all his might out of my sons door and I fell down the stairs. My son then came running after me and the creature following behind said, "Don't run child... It will only make it that much worse".

I scooped up my son and ran for the door. As I threw the door open, I couldn't believe my eyes. In front of me stood my wife. Completely perfect, looking just like she did before she died. The thing then said "Your beautiful wife, who I have trapped deep in my embrace will be released and returned to you, just as she was before death, if you give me your child's life," I actually though about it for a second but I couldn't.

"Fuck you, you're not taking him from me!" Just as I said that, my wife suddenly turned into a horrible dismembered corpse and tried to grab me. I dodged and ran all the way to the police station, with my son in my arms. After what happened that day I immediately moved out of that house and to a new one across town. Nothing like that ever happened again but sometimes when I think about that night I wonder, what would have happened if I gave him my son...