Dead Silence

Christmas Eve, a wonderful time of the year! Families come together in this grand tradition celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ. I myself am with my family, let me introduce myself. My name is Berry, and I live with my two brothers, mother, and step-dad. My father passed away four years ago, in a car accident. I have a good relationship with my step-dad, my older brother Jeremy, and my little infant brother Zell, odd name, right? We are the type of family that goes out and cuts down a tree and brings it inside, a bit of a mess, I know. But, tradition is tradition, ya’know?

We live in a quiet town in the northern region of the United States, not going to tell you because you could be some sort of predator or something. It usually snows, the white snow-flakes tickling your skin on contact, the fresh breezes of cold against your face. It is a wonderful town in my opinion, quiet, but sometimes in the middle of summer it can be loud. People usually go out more often in the summer and talk a lot. In the winter it is usually snowing pretty harshly, so that’s a reason why it is quiet at times like that.

I have a cousin who really likes it being quiet, it’s almost like she has super-sonic hearing! She is pretty, I guess, but she also has a lot of mental issues. She was tested for schizophrenia last month, but the test results showed she didn’t have it, and she was let go. She is so quiet, so very silent. She barely speaks unless she –HAS- to. I sometimes wonder if she just doesn’t have working vocal cords.

An odd thing happened to her in the middle of us opening presents. We were all talking, laughing, having a good time, but then she just, screamed. It shushed us all up and I myself felt like I couldn’t talk, I was just stunned and scared by her sudden scream. We all just stared at her, she seemed so angry, so confused, so silent.

The next day, she had gone. My cousin, Melisa, disappeared. We searched everywhere for her, every room in the house, around the neighborhood, but she wasn’t anywhere. We called her parents but there was no answer, even the day after that we tried calling again once more, no answer. She just disappeared.

My parents, brothers and I were all going home from dinner at Apple-Bees, when we saw someone laying on the side of the road, a woman. My mother, father and I got out of the car to go check, since my big brother was tending to Zell. The woman on the road, it was my cousin’s mother. We all gasped at her horrendous appearance. Her mouth seemed to be a dark void, stretched wide with all her teeth missing. Her eyes had the look of immense fear; her skin was cracking everywhere as if it was dry mud. We stared at the scene, horrified. My father turned to the car, taking out his cell phone dialing 9-1-1. Twenty minutes later an ambulance, two police cars, and a detective came to the scene. The police asked us to leave politely, so we did.

Two days later, still no sign of Melisa, and we didn’t get any calls about her mother either. I couldn’t stop thinking about how that gruesome scene came to be. Who could of possibly done something so horrible, something so lifeless, something so evil. Going down stairs to ask my mother what dinner was going to be, I hurried as my stomach growled. I yelled out quietly for her since she wasn’t in the kitchen. Nobody answered, walking around the house looking for her, I saw my dad laying on his stomach on the couch, his face stuffed into the pillow. Making sure I was quiet, I tip-toed past him, into the laundry room.

My mother was sitting in a chair in the corner with a half-folded shirt sitting on her lap, she was looking down at it slumped over. I walked over to her asking if something was wrong, but she didn’t respond. I grabbed her shoulder and shook it a bit. She didn’t answer again, so I grabbed her head with my hands, and pulled it up. She was asleep, and shook awake, seeming like she just came out of a nightmare. She sighed thankfully, telling me she had a dream about dad being murdered by our cousin Melisa, and was draining black smoke out of his mouth while she was forced to watch.

I told her he was asleep on the couch, face in the pillow like he was really tired. Her expression faded into an extremely sad, stunned expression. She stood up, and rushed into the living room, and tried to shake dad awake. He didn’t respond, but only let out painful sounding grunts. We flipped him over, and saw that his mouth was a black void. He had no teeth, and his skin, was like dried mud. My mother screamed at the top of her lungs, as I gasped, extremely surprised, and rushed to the home phone to call 9-1-1. I couldn’t call anybody. It was just silence in the phone, no dial tone, nothing. My mother and I went to the door and tried to open it, we couldn’t do anything. We tried all three doors, and we couldn’t get through them.

All the windows were boarded shut, and we couldn’t find Zell or my older brother Jeremy anywhere. My mother told me Jeremy took Zell to the park. I went back to my father, and took out his cell phone from his pocket. It was the only one in the house. Only one bar, but only one minute left on it, my dad was going to buy more minutes with this last one, but, there is no time. I called the police, but, It said. “We are sorry, but the number you attempted to dial ‘9-1-1’ is no longer in use, we are sorry for the inconvenience!” I dropped the phone, completely shocked. I turned and told my mother that 9-1-1 was no longer a usable number.

We were trapped, someone could be around, and do the same thing to us as they did to dad. We heard footsteps on the second floor above us. I ran to the kitchen with my mother, and we both drew a knife. My mother lead me to the basement, it being a dark, damp, spider-web infested place. Going down we heard footsteps on the staircase coming down. My mother and I rushed down and went to a corner. She quickly unscrewed one bolt off a large air-vent screen, and moved it aside. She told me to crawl backwards inside, so I did. She couldn’t fit inside, so she stayed out. She took the screen and laid it against the vent as if it was on. I crawled up to the screen, and peered through the slits to get a view. I saw my cousin, Melisa, but, it wasn’t Melisa. This was as if Melisa was turned part-demon, it was the most horrifying thing I have ever seen in my life. She had the same features as my father, and Melisa’s mother, but not as bad. She had horrible teeth and some sort of metal wire thing on her face. She had blood, all over her hands and face. I was so horrified, I shut my eyes.

I heard a scream from Melisa, and then from my mother. I heard the sounds of metal against metal, and the sounds of meat being slashed, and blood spilling everywhere. I opened my eyes to see my mother on the ground in front of the vent. Her jaw was completely taken off as well as one of her eyes seeming as if it was pierced with a knife. I also saw Melisa limping over to my mother’s corpse, and slowly began to drag her by the leg upstairs. I sat, horrified, shocked, scared, I couldn’t believe what was happening, it COULDN’T be happening! This is impossible! I then heard footsteps, slowly thud down the stairs. It was a woman, not Melisa, but someone else. She had pure black hair, a black t-shirt, and black pants. She also had the facial features of cracking skin, but not so bad. Her eyes were only white. Glowing brightly in the dark, she inched toward the vent screen.

I whimpered quietly and pushed back into the vent. My heart beating rapidly, I feared for my life. I sat way back at the end of the vent. I saw the screen come off, and heard it be tossed to the side. And then I saw the woman bend down, and begin to crawl inside. Slowly crawling towards me in a stop-motion fashion, it was truly horrifying. She was so fast. It only took five seconds before she stopped right in front of my face. She has a piece of gauze covering her mouth. She took it off, and all I saw was black. I was hypnotized by it, and then the next thing I know.

There was nothing. Everything around me was black. I didn’t feel anything, I didn’t hear anything, I didn’t smell anything, I couldn’t taste anything. It was just.

Dead.

Silence.