Creepypastas

My Friend's Warning About Strange Places in the City

Owen was my pal. Maybe the best one, if I had to rank them. One of the good guys. He didn't have many friends. We met in high school, drawn together by a mutual love in turn based strategy games. Master of Orion, Heroes of Might and Magic. Owen was an absolute beast at those games. He had a queer talent for memorizing patterns, statistics and maps. He'd devour games like a man possessed, teasing out exploits and secrets while the rest of us were cursing and swearing at the cheating, conniving tactics of our computerized opponent.

Even five years out of college, Owen remained thin as a rake, his eyes looking perpetually surprised through thick spectacles. Life happened to the rest of our little circle of friends. We went corporate. Chased the dream, ran the rat race. We never kept in touch like we should have, other than meeting up every few months for a meal. I gathered that he worked in a bank somewhere, cruising along and meeting his targets without excelling.

The last time I saw Owen was a little over 4 months ago. He had arranged to meet me at one of our favourite bars in a quiet part of town. At least, it used to be until jobs and the pressures of grown up life just expanded and expanded, filling up my life like so much bubble wrap. I got to the bar first. Or so I thought. I searched the crowd fruitlessly until my eyes focused on a lone figure in a scruffy coat sitting at the bar. I had to swallow a gasp as the man turned around. I hadn't seen Owen in the better part of a year but he looked like he'd aged a dozen. He was thin before but he was nothing more than skin and bones. His cheeks were sunken in, unshaven, with a wispy beard framing his mouth. He smelled of sweat and grime and worse. One thing hadn't changed, his eyes still blazed with a fierce intelligence. He gestured at the seat next to him.

When he spoke, the words came out in a rush. He'd found something, he said. He'd found a warning scribbled in an old map he'd seen in a library. It pointed to a street somewhere in the city that he hadn't been able to find on modern maps or on Google maps. He'd hunted the street down, he said, and found a back alley, a nameless lane between two buildings that shouldn't have been there. Intrigued, he'd gone back and found another two maps in the library with other warnings, in different handwriting from the first. The maps were published years apart, yet seemed to be warning readers away from similar nameless streets.

Owen grew more animated as he spoke, gesturing wildly, a small crust of white spittle forming at the corner of his mouth. He'd found more of the lanes the maps warned about. Cracks between buildings that shouldn't have been there. Hidden alleys. I saw the familiar glint of obsession in his eyes, he'd found something special, a hidden system, and he wouldn't rest until he had laid bare its secrets. He stopped short, his eyes widening at something through the window, across the busy street. I turned around to see what had spooked him but the throng of people at the bar and on the street blocked me. Hands shaking, he teased out a tattered map from his pocket. It was covered in his crabby writing, too small to make out by the light of the bar counter. He marked a spot and hurriedly folded up the map, which quickly disappeared into his pocket.

"It's big. Something big. Something hidden. I've almost got all the places. I'm almost there. I can't move fast enough. I'll need something faster..."

So that's what he wanted. Just to borrow my car for the weekend. I gave him a look that was half pity and half derision. Pity for the friend I knew, and derision for the madman twitching before me. It wasn't the first time I'd let him drive my car. Much less now, since we'd drifted apart. I had no idea what had gotten into Owen and I wasn't even sure that I I'd get it back in one piece. In the end, his plaintive wheedling got the better of me, and I agreed to let him have my car for the weekend. I wish to God I hadn't.

I didn't hear anything from Owen that Saturday. Or the day after. He didn't pick up his mobile the entire night. I had to get a cab to work on Monday morning and planned to take my mounting frustration out on Owen after work, friendship be damned. His antics seemed more like college hijinks than something an adult should be playing at. I checked my phone as I left my apartment. A text from Owen.