THIS BOOK WILL KILL YOU

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So happy, that at first I didn't even notice the bruises.

I stop reading, shivering. It's a typical CreepyPasta, and even though I've read a thousand of them over the years it still makes my skin fold into gooseflesh. I take a breath, hearing mom downstairs on the phone, hearing my little brother next door yelling at his TV. I'm safe here. I am safe.

They started small, clustered like rotting grapes around my knees, my ankles. It was dad who spotted them first, glancing at me as I walked out the shower one day and asking me if I'd joined the wrestling team. I counted seven of them that first morning, all on my left leg. They didn't hurt, but just knowing they were there made my skin tingle. I figured I'd just been restless in my sleep, or smacked my knees on the desks at school. It was only when I looked again a few days later and saw another four bruises on my right knee—these ones bigger—that I started to worry. These ones did hurt.

I kept track of what I was doing during the day, but there were no accidents, no collisions, nothing to explain the fact that I woke up the next day with a bruise the size of an apple right beneath my left ribs.

I didn't want to tell anyone. You'll probably think I'm insane, but the truth was my parents had just divorced, I was living with my dad, and I know how much people leap to conclusions these days. The honest truth was I didn't want the school nurse to tell the social worker, then the cops to show up one afternoon and take dad in for questioning. My dad wasn't perfect, not even close, but I knew without a shadow of a doubt that there was no way he'd ever hurt me. Besides, the divorce seemed to be hitting him harder the longer he was away from mom. He'd grown thin, and gaunt, and I noticed a lot more grey in his hair. I just didn't want to worry him.

The only explanation for the bruises was that I was doing something in my sleep, something weird. And that made sense too because it had been a rough ride, and I had my fair share of nightmares.

I think of the witch and the hair on the back of my neck turns electric, like there are fingers weaving through it. Grabbing the laptop, I shuffle back until I'm leaning against the headboard, and I push with my legs until I hear the headboard hit the wall. No space for her to climb through.

So that night I forced myself to lay awake. It was harder than you might think. There was an air conditioning unit in the living room window at dad's place, and he'd leave it running all night. It made an almost perfect white noise, and that sound would knock me out faster than a fistful of sleeping pills. But I made coffee, and kept the lights on, and watched videos on my phone, intending to stay up all night if I needed to.

It was about half eleven when I heard dad laughing.

I didn't even know it was him at first, because it didn't sound like his laugh. It was too high, giggling, like he was a teenage girl. I swear my heart almost stopped. I actually felt it squeeze, like there was a hand around it. I was out of my bed in a heartbeat, leaving the well-lit safety of my room and feeling my way down the short stretch of corridor to where dad slept. As I walked he laughed again, and again. He must have been having one hell of a dream.

I peeked around his door, into an ocean of darkness. His room was huge too, and his bed lay on the far side of it. The longer I stood there, the more I could make out. He was moving around like he was wrestling with somebody, the covers rucked up and half on the floor. I couldn't actually see him, the dark over the bed was too great, too thick.

He was still laughing, but it was different now. I can't really explain how, just that it wasn't a good laugh any more, it wasn't a fun laugh. It was almost a scream, grunting, punched out of him again and again and again. I opened my mouth to say his name and he suddenly stopped, he fell still, and the darkness on top of him turned around and looked right at me.