I inherited something evil

I was devastated when my Uncle Matt died.

My grandparents found themselves unintentionally pregnant with Matt in their 40s and, four years later, my mom had me, so the age gap between us was pretty small. We basically grew up together; he was like my older brother. What makes me sad now is how much we drifted apart when he went to college, and then we drifted even further apart when I did the same thing a few years later.

We would catch up every now and then, but every time we spoke, we somehow always wound up just reminiscing about our childhoods. The time we built a makeshift treehouse that fell apart while we were both inside, or the first time we stole from Grandpa’s liquor cabinet and took a sip of bourbon, or the time we slid ourselves down the stairs in sleeping bags and Matt ended up winded with a cracked rib.

Then, one day, I received the news.

It was so unexpected and so completely ridiculous that I couldn’t even imagine it. Matt was dead at 33 "my mom told me that the cause was a “terminal cardiac event”, but she seemed tense and scared while she told me. At the funeral, I overheard her talking to my Aunt Carol. They were speculating about how a healthy 30-something-year-old person could unexpectedly die of heart failure with no prior medical conditions. Mom said that she thought it was all bullshit and that the doctors had kept something secret. She leaned in to Aunt Carol and managed to whisper the words “I saw his face” before they were interrupted by my grandpa and I stopped eavesdropping.

I remember leaving the funeral with a cold fear in the pit of my stomach. I saw his face. The words kept repeating in my head for the rest of the night. I dreamt of Matt’s rigid corpse floating through an icy lake, a twisted look of horror contorting his features. I was swimming towards him, but I wasn’t getting anywhere. I could only watch as he sank lower and lower into the dark depths and was eventually swallowed by the blackness.

The inheritance was all decided internally by the family, because he hadn’t left a will. Matt obviously didn’t think he’d need one just yet, so we had to divide everything up fairly as a family. Everyone agreed that it would only make sense for me to take Matt’s video games and consoles, since we’d spent the better part of the 90s and early 00s playing them together. I accepted, but I put them immediately into the basement. I couldn’t face them. Facing them meant accepting that Matt was gone, and I’d somehow avoided doing that so far.

It finally hit me a few months later in the weirdest of ways. I was out with a few friends at a new burger joint "it was so awesome and so delicious and my first thought was to tell Matt. Then I realised that I couldn’t and I just completely shut down. I cried right there in the restaurant in front of all my friends. I’m not the kind of guy who cries in public, so no one really knew how to react. Instead, they just let me leave. No one tried to stop me and I’m honestly glad they didn’t.

I spent the next few days away from work, away from my friends, and just generally away from my life. Everyone reached out to me and offered their help, but I casually rebuffed them and told them all that I just needed time and space.

I don’t know why or exactly when I decided that it was time to dig Matt’s stuff out of the basement, but I brought it all up to my room and started unpacking everything. First came all the new stuff, most of which I already had my own copies of, and then I slowly wound my way through the boxes like I was taking a journey back in time.

We loved horror games the most, especially during the PS1 era. Resident Evil, Silent Hill, and Clock Tower were easily some of the scariest. I dug them all out, looking at them fondly but also with a tight knot in my stomach. These weren’t just old games, but the exact copies we’d played as kids. He’d kept them all these years later, and still in pretty good condition.

I hooked the old, discoloured PlayStation up to a TV of Matt’s that I’d also inherited; something he’d used to play retro games as authentically as possible. My plan was to spend the rest of the day playing through some games, loading up old saves and crying until I started to feel better.

I opened the top of the console and found that there was already a disc inside. It looked like it was upside down, with the shiny black readable surface facing up. I took it out and flipped it, but it was the same on both sides. A blank disc.

I was already interested to see what was on it, so I started up the console as I rummaged around to try and find its case mixed in with everything else that I’d unpacked. The all-too-familiar sound of the PlayStation played in my ears as I unearthed a blank case at the bottom of one of the boxes. I opened it and a piece of folded paper fluttered to the floor. I unfolded it and read the words scribbled there.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

A sound started playing from the TV, a sound I didn’t recognise. It was a low, crackling sound in all its 16-bit glory. I turned to see a black screen with the word ‘Start’ written in red in the centre. There was no title, no artwork, nothing. I hesitated, but pressed start. A white loading bar started to slowly fill the bottom of the screen.

The game eventually loaded onto a first-person view of a living room. Everything had the kind of janky aesthetic that was normal to a 90s PlayStation game "polygons seemed to warp as I looked around the room and the textures were shaky and low-res. That being said, the game looked pretty good for something that was at least 20 years-old. There were moody lighting effects and a foggy darkness in the room, which was well-used and atmospheric.

I moved the analogue sticks and looked around the room, the sound of the character’s footsteps stirring something strongly nostalgic in me. The room I was in was sparsely decorated. There was a scrap of paper on the coffee table. I pointed the crosshair at it and pressed X.

“He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby becomes a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee.”

The words appeared on the screen in a plain white font just long enough for me to read them, then they abruptly disappeared and wouldn’t come back up again, no matter how many times I mashed the X button. I searched the room a little and found a key, which I picked up with a simple on-screen message: You got the old key. I used it on the only door in the room and an animation played, just like the old Resident Evil games, where the character opened the door and walked through. When the game loaded back in, I was stood in a dark hallway and there was a strange sound coming from somewhere, like a dog trying to cough up a hairball.

I walked down the hall, attempting to open all the doors along the way, only to find that each door produced the same message: The door is locked. Keep going. As I continued, a strange music started building like the crash of waves; a loud note that then tailed off into something almost like static. As the music grew louder, so did the strange coughing sound.

I reached a doorway that was already open into a room with a light on. The light spilled out into the hallway in an effect that was pretty impressive for a game this old. As I turned the corner and stepped into the room, the music and weird coughing noise both stopped unexpectedly, leaving me in a tense and pervading silence.

There was another character in the room, an NPC stood in perfect stillness. He was low-polygon and had only basic textures, but I recognised him all the same. He looked almost exactly like Matt, in his characteristic grey hoodie and black jeans. I approached the character and pressed X.

You shouldn’t have come.

The words came up on the screen, and my eyes had barely had time to register them before they flickered and changed.

You should have come.

I felt an unease creeping up my spine. I pressed X again and the words changed again.

Have you looked behind you?

I spun around "not in the game, but in real life "my heart thumping in my chest. There was nothing there. I turned back to the screen and the words had changed without my input.

I said HAvE yOu LooKeD BeHiNd YoU?

I pressed X and the words disappeared, giving me the freedom to move my character again. I turned him around and a piercing sound started to play. The doorway was still there, but it didn’t lead back into the hallway anymore. It led into a different room. I turned back again, but Matt "or whatever it was "wasn’t there anymore.

I moved into the next room and nearly dropped the controller when I recognised it. Despite the low textures and the basic graphics, it was Matt’s living room. Exactly his living room. I’d only been there a handful of times in person, but I recognised it the second I walked in there.

The lighting was low and there was static coming from the TV, which provided the only light in the room. There was a new character in the room, sitting on the sofa this time with her head turned towards the TV. It was my mom.

I moved towards her and tapped X.

Your mother watches the television with a look of happiness on her face.

I pressed X again and the words disappeared. I tried again, but the results were the same. Instead, I turned my attention to the television and pressed X when I was close enough.

The television shows a happy video, the words said, but all I could see on the screen was static. It’s a video of you being bathed as an infant. Your father’s hand suddenly covers your face and pushes you under the water, holding you there while you cry and thrash against him.

The words disappeared and I regained control, but the controller slipped through my clammy hands. I took a deep breath and picked it back up, pressing X on the television again.

Your deceased infant body floats face-down in the water.

I turned back to my mom, who was still sat on the sofa. I approached her and pressed X again.

Your mom loves this video. She finds it hilarious.

The words disappeared from the screen and a 16-bit recording of my moms laugh played out of the TV speakers, but it sounded almost like a scream.

I leaned forwards and hovered my hand over the power button on the PlayStation. I wondered if I should keep playing "maybe this was a practical joke? I looked back up at the screen and found the screen focused on another new character. This time it was me.

Don’t touch that dial.

The words came up on the screen exactly as I hit the power button. The console turned off and I breathed a sigh of relief before I opened the lid and took the disc out, hurling it across the room. It hit the wall and a large section of it broke off.

I hurried upstairs and crawled into bed. It was still light outside, but I was emotionally exhausted and shaking with fear. I lay there for what felt like hours with silent tears running down my face until, eventually, somehow, mercifully, I fell asleep.

I woke up in the middle of the night with the sense that something was wrong. I groped for my phone in the darkness and found it, shining the light of the screen around the room to find that I was alone. I lay back and exhaled sharply, grateful that my fear was nothing more than the tail end of… well, whatever I’d experienced earlier in the day.

Then I heard it.

It was that same bizarre music. The sound building, then hitting a crescendo like the crash of a wave before subsiding into crackling static. It was coming from downstairs.

I called the police, but every time the call connected I got nothing but static. I called my mom and had to stifle a yelp of joy when she answered the phone.

‘Hello?’ she said, sounding chipper.

‘Mom, it’s Charlie!’ I said in a harsh whisper. ‘Call the police! Ask them to come to my house and "’

‘I saw a funny video,’ she cut me off, laughing to herself. ‘Your dad was drowning you. Do you remember, honey?’

‘Mom? What are you "’

‘I wish he had, sweetie,’ she said in a gentle, almost conciliatory tone. ‘He never wanted you. Neither did I. You should’ve "’

I ended the call and dialled the police again. It was just the same static on the other end. In my frustration, I threw my phone. I hurled it through the bedroom door and out into the hall, where it bounced and tumbled on the floor until it came to a rest at the top of the stairs.

I can’t tell you how long it took me to build up the courage to move. It might have been minutes, but it felt like a lot longer. I’d like to say I walked, tall and brave, to the top of the stairs, but the truth is that I crawled. I crawled so slowly that I was barely moving, all the while listening to that horrible music coming from downstairs.

I reached my phone and picked it up. I tried to call another number in my contacts "anyone, it didn’t matter who, but all I got was static "I tried to get onto the internet, but nothing was working. I was just beginning to consider trying to climb out of an upstairs window when a voice called up to me from downstairs, chilling me to my bone.

‘Hey, buddy, you up there? It’s Uncle Matty.’

It was his voice. Unmistakably his. But something was wrong. He was never that perky, and he sure as hell would never have called himself Uncle Matty. Not to any of his nieces and nephews, but least of all to me.

‘Are you coming down, sport? I feel like playing a game.’

I don’t know why I started to walk down the stairs or where I found the courage to do it, but something had taken hold of me by that point. It was a compulsion I couldn’t resist. My heart was beating so hard and so fast in my chest that I was finding it hard to breathe.

I reached the bottom of the stairs, walked a few steps into the living room. I was alone, but the TV was on. The screen was black, so the glow was dark, but it was definitely on, and so was the PlayStation. The disc wasn’t where I’d left it, although the large chunk that had broken off was still there.

I bent down to pick it up when my mom’s distorted 16-bit laughter came out of the TV again, making me jump and forcing me to stand bolt-upright. My fight-or-flight response was in high gear and I was trembling from the adrenaline "or maybe from the fear. Probably both.

Words started to come up on the screen.

This is my greatest work.

I poured my heart, my blood, my very soul into this.

They gave me 4 days, they said. Just 4.

So that’s what you get.

Say goodbye to the people you love.

4 days.

The music reached the same wave-crashing crescendo again, except it didn’t have a chance to trail off into static this time. It ended as suddenly as it had before, only this time it was for a different reason.

I squinted against the sunlight that beamed through the slats in my blinds and groggily sat up in bed. My phone was next to me. There were no calls dialled from the night before. I threw off the duvet and hurried downstairs to find the broken disc exactly where it had fallen the day before.

I took a shower, got dressed, and decided that I needed to get out of the house. Whatever had happened the day before, whatever I had seen "I didn’t know how much of it was real and how much of it was imagined. Had my grief really twisted my perception so much that I couldn’t even tell the difference between fantasy and reality?

I decided I didn’t really want to know the answer to that. I didn’t want to know what I’d seen on that disc. Maybe there was nothing, maybe I’d been pressing buttons on a black screen.

I didn’t want to think about it anymore, so I put on my coat and headed for the door. My hand was barely an inch from the handle when I found buzzed and a text came through. I looked at the screen and my blood turned cold again. It was a single message, from Matt.

Don’t forget. 4 days, buddy.

Reviews

[AbsintheandBlood]

Very dark story - reminded me of a something from creepypasta very well written dear sir.

[HadesRising]

Yeah I used to actually do some writing for creepypasta.