CreepyPasta: Modern Tales Of Horror

Arizona

For her birthday I took my girl, Katie, to Arizona so we could stay with some friends of hers and spend a few weeks partying and getting crazy and stuff before heading back to school for the year.

We drove up in my Dad's car. It's a really old Ford make, and it's pretty beat up. The road there was bumpy and long. Our relationship seemed at its strongest on the road. We were really in love. That was the first time I realized that. I had never truly been in love before.

We were about half way there when we realized we were going to run out of gas long before the nearest petrol pump. Katie's head was out of the window, sunglasses on in the blistering heat outside. Nothing but the wild desert landscape to be seen in all directions. We became frantic. We hadn't seen another car on the road in almost an hour. What if we broke down here, in the middle of the desert, with no food or water, with no one out there to find us. I sped up slightly, driven by these fears.

It was then that we came across a gas station. Smack bang in the middle of nowhere, in dry, empty nowhere. It was an old worn down servo. Long, yellow grass blew in the breeze beneath it. Outside were two rusted gas pumps. At first we didn't know if it was occupied - it seemed so lifeless. But as we pulled up and saw the petrol stains in the dirt we were convinced otherwise. Katie started refilling the car and I went inside to pay, and grab something to eat on the road.

When I first went to open the door, it jammed. This perturbed me, so I looked up at the sign to check, and was reassured that the store was "OPEN", according to the torn sign that hung in between the dull yellow curtains at the door window. I pushed harder and harder with effort, got into the shop.

Inside it was totally abandoned, and left to ruin. Complete isles lay on the ground, the fridges were smashed and glass coated on the floor. Despite the brightness outside, the interior of the Gas Station was dark and bitterly cold. Then there came, from behind me, this quiet weeping, like a child's. I felt my heart race. It was coming from the back room.

I stepped over the smashed glass and twisted metal remnants on the floor, over where the patches of grass had grown through. I ran my hand along the wall and felt the criss cross of ivy beneath my fingers. It was overgrown.

There came the crying again, and now I was facing the back room door. It was directly in front of me. I pushed the door open, and it creaked with rust in its joints. Inside there lay several wooden steps into the basement. It was pitch-black, and the smell was horrific. The drip drop of water alerted me to the fact the basement was flooded - the water was up to my knees. Again, there came the crying, and a small splash in the far corner of the basement.

"Hello?" I called out, "Is anyone there?"

I started approaching the corner. The smell was horrible, and cold water eventually got to me. The sobbing was getting louder. In the corner I swore I saw something move amongst the shadows.

"Hello?" I called again, "What's wrong?"

I finally reached the corner. Still dark, I had to bend down to avoid the pipes, which leaked down my back and trickled down my spine. The figure in front of me was very small and black. Hunched over, sobbing quietly, head in its hands.

"Why are you down here?" I whispered.

Then, it stopped moving completely. It was totally still. All noise seemed to cease, but for the quiet dripping of a broken pipe somewhere behind me.

I outstretched my arm to touch its tiny shoulder, but it then began to slowly turn in my direction, to look me eye to eye.

As its face swiveled around to look into mine I remember screaming, and swinging my head up in recoil, cracking it on the pipes up above. The face was white as a sheet, pale like a hideous, moving mask. The eyes and mouth were completely black holes, huge and widening even as I looked at them. They were so huge, they almost consumed its entire face. As I desperately tried to escape, it splashed towards me at rapid speed, uncurling its long, thin fingers. It was wailing now, staring into me with its huge black eyes, and as I scrabbled up the stairs with great difficulty, as I felt my legs begin to give way beneath me.