Taker



Death, it has always been an intense fear that I have had for some time. But it’s not the fear of me dying that has scared me; it was the death of loved ones that would grip my heart the most. The fear of being alone in the world with no one to hold on to absolutely scared me.

But I have learned that fear can sometimes let things in…evil things unlike anything that the human mind can comprehend. Its better if I explain it from the start, my name is Chase Mosey. I have been blessed with an extremely caring and loving family.

I am just your average 18 year old who is about to finish up my Senior Year of High School, I live with my mother and my young seven year old sister named Betty. I never really knew my father well, while my mother was giving birth to me, my father was driving to the hospital but died due to a combination of wet roads and a drunk driver. My mother was devastated but she was happy at least that I was fine.

Growing up without a dad isn't easy but I always managed to get really close to my grandfather Jasper Mosey. He was the closest thing I had to a father figure in my younger years. The day he was in the hospital was one of the saddest days of my life. I just remember hearing his heart monitor stop as he stopped breathing and the doctors confirmed him dead. I had never cried so hard in my life, thankfully my younger sister and my mother was there to comfort me. I am glad that my family is supportive of me during hard times, but that day changed me and I will always regret the changes that have occurred especially now. You see after my grandfather’s is when I had the growing fear of losing my loved ones.

My nightmare started on a cool fall day. While on my way to school I saw a guy standing in the reflection of a store window across the street. But no one seemed to acknowledge him plus when I looked across the street where he was supposed to be standing, he wasn't there. He also had this weird vibe to him. He stood roughly six feet, eight inches tall; he wore a black cap that looked a bit worn; He wore a hooded grey jacket with thick black strips running around his sleeves and body.

His jeans were dark black, along with black shoes. He sported a black haired goatee His arms were crossed behind his back and his caps visor covered his face. I only managed to see his mouth slowly curl into a twisted smile as he chuckled. I didn't know what the hell to think, I rubbed my eyes and looked back to the window…..But he was gone. My thoughts raced, he wasn't one of my friends from school nor anyone I recognized but I was running late so I just brushed it off.

The school day was boring as any school day usually was. But it started to get strange when I went to the bathroom between my art and science classes. As I entered the bathroom I immediately head a chuckling laughter as well as heavy breathing. I normally would have said “Fuck it...” and left, but the chuckling seemed… familiar. That’s when it hit me it was the same one I had heard from earlier this morning.

I immediately got on my knees and looked under the stalls to check if this guy was in one of them, I wanted answers to why he was bothering me. I didn't see any feet under the stalls and started bashing stall doors open. The more stall doors that I opened both angered me and had me believe that this bastard was in the final stall. I slowly got up to the final stall and grabbed the handle.

“Got cha!” I yelled as I opened the door waiting to see this prick standing on the toilet. But… to my disbelief the stall was empty.

“That….that’s impossible I know he is in here I heard him!” I told myself not wanting to believe he somehow got away or if I was crazy. I walked to the sink and looked at myself in the mirror; I checked my eyes to see if they were blood shot.

“Nope, I look fine.” I assured myself, turned on the faucet and filled my hand with warm water slashing my face and wiping it off with my jacket sleeve. As I looked up I saw the man from earlier but this time he was standing behind me looking into the mirror over my shoulder. Only… Only he wasn't a man he looked… Dead… No, not even dead he… I didn't know what to think really. He looked radically different from the last time I saw him. His skin was a pale grey; a huge gash was made across his throat with dried blood on his white shirt and lower neck that I could see under a part of his unzipped jacket.

His teeth were pointed like something you would expect from a monster movie. But what creeped me out the most was his eyes… Those cold dead eyes. The white parts were black, the colored part were a dull grey, but his pulps were a misty white, the kind of eyes you see a blind person with cataracts; and he had a dark black mist pouring out of his mouth and the gash from his throat.

My eyes widened as this… Thing stood behind me looking back into my reflection. I had so many thoughts racing through my head but I jumped on instincts I immediately turned around and swung behind me expecting to bop whatever the hell this thing was in the face.

But as my fist swung through the air, it didn't hit anything and I slipped on the wet floor landing hard on my chest. I had the air knocked out of me at first but gained my composure and immediately rolled on my back and looked up at the mirror. I saw this creature, this thing looking down at me in the mirror. Those damn eyes looking down freezing my heart with absolute terror.

He slowly raised his finger-less gloved hands but… Instead of normal fingers there were disturbingly elongated fingers that looked as sharp as razor blades. He kept smiling that evil smile at me as he pressed a razor like finger to his decayed lips and pushed out a shhhhhh sound. It sounds terribly horrid as if different voices spoke as one. As he did so a black mist pushed out between his fangs.

I leaped up and ran to the door I didn't see him or his breath, but I could smell it. It was so clear as if his breath.. It... smelled like sulfur and… Death. I ran to the Principals office to explain what I saw.

Principal Smith allowed me some time off from school to relieve my sudden stress and even talked to my mother saying I should probably see psychiatric help. My mother disagreed saying I was just stressed with upcoming graduation in a few months. The car ride home with my mother was long and silent, my mother tried to ask me what was wrong, but I didn't tell her.

Not that I didn't want to talk to my mother but how could I explain to her what I saw? It would be impossible to try and explain what is going on. I started to become paranoid, I could hear this sick chuckling in my ears, I would have raised my head to see if my mother could hear it, but I didn't want to look in the rear view mirror of my mother’s car or the windows, worried that I would see his reflection.

Once we got home, my sister was back from elementary school. Like any sister her age excited to see that her big brother was home, she ran up and hugged me. A small smile formed on my face and I hugged her picking her up and twirling her around. Her laughter always seems to make me smile. After putting my sister down I patted her head and headed upstairs to my room. Maybe I was being a bit stressed over graduation but I don’t know.

I just wanted to go to bed and wish the day was over with, I walked down the long hallway. Everything was normal…. Until I saw its reflection out of the corner of my eye, I Though “No, not now, not here.” Then I heard it, that sinister laugh I slowly turned to a picture of me and my family and in the reflection were those eyes and that mouth slowly developing into a sinister and evil grin, I swear I could hear his jaw bones cracking as his smile widened. I panicked and ran down the hall trying to head to the safety of my room. It doesn't take but 10 seconds to run to my room, but my room just seemed to be drifting farther and farther away from me.

A black mist forming around me it had the weight of sludge and it was starting to get harder to breath. All I could hear was hissing sounds of that things breathing. I covered my ears and closed my eyes trying not to see this demon appearing in the reflections of mirrors, windows and pictures that I was running past. The breathing intensified the faster I ran and then I hit hard against my bedroom door and blacked out.

I woke up in a vastly different place than the warmth of my household hallway. I stood up on my elbows as I rubbed my fingers against my forehead brushing my dirt blonde hair aside. I felt some warmth from the stream of blood running down my upper lip from my nose. Besides that the world was an eerie silence and dreaded coldness with a thick white fog all around me. I stood up and yelled, hoping to get a response.

“Hello!?” I could only hear the reverberations of my voice as they seemed to echo from everywhere. I found it strange the environment around me as the air started to become heavier. My head started to pound and then it happened, as I was about to try and find a way out a sudden image of a little girl hanging herself flashed before my eyes. I gripped my head in pain and agony.

“What the hell was that?” I asked but before I could let my thoughts race another image of an old man lying dead in a bathtub, its water the color of blood and a razor beside him, his wrists slit deeply. I fell to my knee’s vomiting as the pain and sound of multiple screams pierced my ears and continued to do so after each new image appeared. The images flashed for seconds but they just seemed to linger in my mind for what seemed like a full minute. I was bombarded by images of people committing suicide from shooting themselves, hangings, slit throats, overdoses, mutilations, and people of all genders, races, and ages dying. I felt sick and was softly crying when I began to beg for the images to stop.

“Please… please, stop, stop, please for the love of God just-- STOP!” Just like that the images stopped and the eerie silence of the dark void once again fell on me like a ton of bricks. All that I could hear was the sounds of me gently crying. But just then I heard him. His breathing followed by chuckling growing more and more, I stood up looking around me trying to pin point the source of the sounds.

“Where are you!?” As I shouted a sharp coldness clutched the back of my neck as I turned around His evil grin and face was just an inch away from me, his jaw unhinged and a black mist sprayed my face making me gag. As I gasped for air the demon grabbed at my throat, I tried to yell or call out but it was no use, slowly but surely my throat began to freeze and I mean actually grow icy cold. All I could do was stare into the demons dead eyes and that evil grin…that God awful sadistic grin smiling back at me. But as soon as I closed my eyes I awoke in the hall gasping for air and looking frantically around.

I leaped for my door turned the knob and slung myself into my room closed the door and slid my back down against it and held my head with my hands. I tried to calm myself but my throat still hurt. There was a pause in my thinking as I notice my throat is still icy cold. I was worried that my throat might have actually been frost bitten; but that would require me to look into a mirror…where that thing resides. I hesitated then gaining my composure I got up and headed to the five foot mirror on my wall.

I took a deep breath and jumped in front of the mirror my eyes widened when I saw that thing standing beside me, twitching and clawing large marks into its face with his razor fingers. The sound of bones snapping could be heard from his sudden jerks as he laughed and cackled like a maniac, I tried my best to ignore him and examined my throat. He tried everything to get me to stare at him; even when he took his sharp fingers and cut his tongue down the middle as black sludge poured out him laughing and jerking his head to the side like some fucked up sicko.

After seeing that my neck just appeared to be bruised, I immediately grabbed sheets and covered my room’s mirrors, and pulled my curtains over my window, making the entirety of my room dark during the fall day shining so brightly outside. I needed to find out what the hell this thing was, and more importantly could it hurt any of my family. I felt like it was having its sick twisted fun with me, otherwise it would have killed me by now.

I swiftly raced over to my laptop on my desk. Once it booted up I looked on the internet about anything that could haunt dreams and cause people to commit suicide. The first few sites didn't show anything. But there was one site that I looked at. It was a historic site that held documents and urban legends from as far back as the Middle Ages. I shifted through what must have been hours of texts I finally noticed something that sounded similar to my situation. It was written by a priest from the 15th century, but it stated that there was a story of a Demon that was caged in the Ring of Hell for lust.

Only it didn't lust for sex, money, drugs, greed, or power… It lusted for the death of others by slowly driving them insane and targeting their individual family members killing them off one by one through suicide or accidents. It mentions the demon as “The Taker” and was apparently so evil that even the Devil himself couldn't hold The Taker inside Hell for too long, so he unleashed it onto the Human world to satisfy its lustful urges. Once the Taker kills its victim through suicide it will take the identity of its latest victim. It only reveals itself to its victims when the victim have an intense fear of..losing loved ones, this is how you would welcome it in.

There were excerpts below gotten from police and mental hospital records on the demons supposed victims. I saw the same victims when I was knocked out, every single picture I had seen. That’s what he has done; he has taken the identities of all these people over the ages. It said that... I needed to kill myself unless I was to sit and suffer. I paused and leaned back in my chair staring at the screen for the longest time, trying to comprehend what I just read.

“K… Kill myself?” I asked. “No... NO! NO! That’s not right there has got to be a better way to defeat this thing, if I killed myself then how would my family handle that?” I refused to let the notion sink any more in my brain. I would need to figure out how to beat this thing, in the morning after I went to bed.

That night I tossed and turned in my sleep I had a nightmare, I saw more twisted and contorted bodies I also saw my little sister, she was playing with her blocks, but as she saw me her smile widened, and widened, then her eyes changed to grey as she asked

“What’s wrong big brother? Won’t you protect me from the big bad monster?” Immediately afterwards I saw the taker out of the corner of my eyesight. As I turned he swiped my face with his razor claws. I woke in a cold sweat in the security of my bed, my hands were shaking and I held my face trying to hold back the tears of what I just saw. But then I felt a burning sensation on my left cheek. I slowly raised my hand and looked down on the blood on my fingers.

“God… Please..” I murmured under my breath. Then I heard a cracking noise, like the sound of something being carved into my ceiling. My fears were confirmed when pieces of my ceiling began to fall onto my covers in front of my eyes. I didn’t want to look up but I knew I had too to justify my concerns. I slowly raised my head and eyes up to my ceiling my eyes focused to the carved letters supported by the light of the full moon outside my window. The words said, “No God…Only the Taken.”

My eyes widened in intense terror when the Taker slowly pushed his way through the words his white pupils piercing the darkness and staring straight directly into mine. I tried to run but the fear gripped me; Sweat ran down every part of my body as my heart rate increased. The Taker pushed one of his hands out and reached it towards me. His hands were black almost like they were frostbitten, still elongated and razor sharp and I swear they even looked iced over.

The Taker never broke eye contact with me, his eyes still latched onto mine and his smile still disturbing and chilling as ever. Suddenly before I knew it he lunged at me. I awoke yet again puzzled where the Taker was, that’s when I realized it was another dream. I cried yet again trying to compose myself and if this nightmare would ever end. Just then I heard a crash coming from the bathroom down the hall. I could see the light from the bathroom lighting out a part of the darkened hall. I grabbed my black and white stripped jacket and my pants and rushed to the bathroom and stood in the door way.

I saw my sister Betty standing in front of me facing me, in her little hands was a steak knife from the kitchen. She gently raised her head up to me her eyes streaming tears. I could only stand and watch in horror stunned

“Betty… What are you doing!?” I yelled.

She looks up at me, that’s when she raised the knife to her little throat her hands trembling. I moved my hand out towards her but it was too late she jammed the knife deeply into her neck. I could tell she was in intense pain blood pouring out of the gash in her neck and her trying to cry out. I covered my mouth with my hands as tears rolled down my flushed cheeks.

As I turned to try and look away I saw it, the Taker in the mirror holding my sisters hand with the knife as he forced the knife in and out of her throat. His head tilted at me, smiling and chuckling as his dead eyes narrowed. She was his puppet, wanting to get away to the protection of her big brother but unable too. I was shocked but soon enough that shock changed to anger.

Enraged, I picked up the decorative vase in the bathroom and tossed it at the mirror, the glass shattered the eyes of the Taker filling every piece of cracked glass. His laughter intensified before the glass shattered; then the laughter stopped.

My sister dropped to the floor I slide to her side grabbed the towel off the rack and covered her throat. She gripped my jacket as I try to calm her and stop the flow of blood. I begged her to hold on and not to leave me. She looked up into my eyes and then… She died, died there in my arms. I… I held her in my arms as she died, I held her corpse close to mine crying hysterically saying,

“I failed to protect you sis… I’m sorry… I’m so, so sorry” My mother heard the noise and turned the corner; she screamed and asked

“What did you do?!” I just sat there none responsive I could hear The Takers hissing breath in my ears, as if the sick fucker was looking over my shoulder at his work. Time passed by as I held Betty’s body in my arms, tears rolling down my cheeks as I rocked her body back and forth on the floor to which my mother called for the police.

That is where the story ends, well for me at least; I now reside at the Saint Mary’s Mental Asylum. My mother would always drop by to visit me but just yesterday she stuck a gun in her mouth and blew her brains out. At least that’s what the Taker wants people to believe I know he killed her and now… I am truly alone. I am writing this because I want this to get out, to warn others out there about the Taker.

As I am writing this, he is getting closer to me in my cell through the tiny mirror above the sink, he’s smiling at me right now. Every time he opens his mouth I can hear my sister asking why I didn’t protect her as a black mist leaves his elongated jaw… I just want this madness to end… He doesn’t let me sleep whenever I get tired he claws me leaving marks all over my body.

I know the doctors think I am fucking crazy but I am not crazy! He just started to crawl out of the mirror I can see my room is now filling with that black mist. He is coming to take me next… But I won’t let the Taker have the pleasure of taking me tonight!

The following afternoon across town, 18 year old Angelia was on her knee’s watching her baby Brother Scotty playing with his toy train in their homes living room. She looked down smiling at her brother but directs her attention to the television.

“In other news a Saint Mary’s Mental Asylum patient who had killed his younger sister a month ago, has been discovered earlier this morning when he had killed himself by slicing his throat open with a piece of broken glass from his mirror. Doctors found pages in his cell telling of a demon tormenting the patient, but much of the report is damaged with dried blood and is unable to be read. Many doctors here at Saint Mary’s say the patient was suffering schizophrenia and reports of hauntings amongst these patients are not uncommon.” Angelia shook her head in disbelief,

“How sad.” she though, “I could never imagine losing my baby brother or even think of hurting him.” She said quietly to herself as her brother smiled up at her with his big blue eyes and toothless grin.

“Angelia time to let Scotty take his afternoon nap” yells Angelia’s mother.

“Okay Mom!” replies Angelia. She picks up her brother and carries him to his crib upstairs. She places Scotty in his crib and gently kisses his head,

“See you in a bit little bro”. Her smile suddenly fades with a sudden sick, deep, breathing coming over her shoulder. As she quickly looks around trying to pin point the source, she stops and slowly looks at the figure out of the corner of her eyes in the mirrors reflection next to the crib. A figure with dirty blond hair, a clean shaven face looks over her shoulder but not at her…

But down at her baby brother with a deep sadistic smile. He has a deep slit on his throat, wearing a black and white jacket; His dead sunken grey eyes slowly look up to her reflection, his white pupils piercing her soul and turning her heart cold as ice.

~GamerCool24