Countdown to Halloween: Creepypasta Edition

Day Twenty-Three: If Your Voice Stops Echoing

I'm not saddened by the recent passing of my grandfather. Rather, I'm compelled to share the way I knew him best—I would not be here today if not for him. The entity came for me when I was eight years old, and there was no way I would have survived if anyone else had been driving.

My grandfather and I were on a fishing trip that day. My dad had intended to join us, but something had come up, so it was just the two of us for the first time. I was a little awkward around my grandfather because I'd never actually been alone with him. I'd always watched others interact with him, but had little to say myself because I was only eight. I was also in awe of how he was to my dad the way my dad was to me; namely, a voice of authority. When my grandfather told me about the different types of fish and what baits to use, I listened like it was the most important thing in the world. It turned out to be a good thing that I took his words so seriously. That acceptance would later save my life.

It began very innocuously. As we walked through a small gorge to get back to the car from the prime fishing spot, I could hear my grandfather's voice echo from the high rock walls. While he packed things into the car, I had several minutes to wander around, and I used them to run back to that area and shout. Strangely, my yell echoed only feebly once, and then not at all. Scream as I might, I heard no reflection of the noise.

I was too young at the time to really understand how impossible that was. I just assumed I was yelling wrong somehow, or that my grandfather had a special grown-up timbre that allowed his voice to echo while mine just dropped off. Still, it bothered me, and I eventually brought it up on the drive back.

Everything about that moment became seared into my memory. It was 3:22 in the afternoon by the clock in the car's dashboard, the sky was mostly clear with traces of white, and my grandfather's eyes were wide orbs of alarm turned upon me while his white knuckles tightened around the wheel. "What did you say, boy?"

"I asked how I can echo like you," I told him, suddenly afraid that I'd done something wrong. "I yelled and I couldn't echo."

His face was normally crisscrossed with little lines that ran their way along relaxed droopy skin. At that moment, his forehead and cheeks tightened to smoothness, and he scanned left and right rapidly. He didn't seem to find what he was looking for through the windows, but he did not seem reassured. "Here." He leaned over and opened the glove box in front of me to pull out a bag of jelly beans. I smiled for a moment, but he was not giving them to me as a gift the way he'd intended. "Eat them all."

I held the bag in my hands. It seemed a massive feast. If I'd been left to my own devices, I might have eaten them all eventually, but not all at once. "Why?"

"Eat them all, boy!" he said gruffly, his tone brooking no argument. I began stuffing the jelly beans in my mouth. He looked down and around, then at the back seat, then at his travel thermos in the cup holder between us. He thrust it into my hands to join the spilling bag of jelly beans. "Drink this. All of it!"

"I'm not allowed to have coffee!" I told him. "Mom—"

He cut me off. "Your mother will understand. Drink it. I know it tastes bad, but down it all." His gaze refocused on something beyond me, and I turned my head to my window to see the forested hills rolling by at various apparent speeds based on their distance. The furthest hills out on the horizon hardly seemed to be moving at all, but I thought I saw a tiny little speck atop one.

My grandfather gripped my shoulder with one hand. "Drink, boy! Drink! And eat those jelly beans! You need the sugar and the caffeine. It's going to try to make you fall asleep. Don't let it!"

To say I was scared then would be an understatement. No part of me thought this was a prank of some sort. He was too reserved and austere a man for that. The coffee tasted horrible, but I gulped it down until none was left. After that, I began swallowing jelly beans whole until they were all gone. I looked to my right—the speck in the distance was still out there, but now one range of hills closer. It was still tiny, but now held movement akin to something waving back and forth.