How to raise a legend

continuation of "Alone with Yourself" as we follow your Horror *NOTE*If you have not read the chapter "Alone with Yourself" first, a lot of this will not make sense.

Now that you've quarreled with your Terror. Now that you've looked it in the face with your minds eye. You know how it was spawned from within your mind.

However, now that you have opened yourself up to its horrors and changed your perspective, surely you no longer wish to be alone.

Perhaps you coped well with the beast, and you have reaped your rewards from the encounter, and you now seek to share your discoveries.

Or perhaps, the Terror was too much for you to handle, and you now need the comforting presence of another human being.

  I mean, surely, if you tell someone, if you speak of it and have the sound of another humans voice grace your ears, words reassuring you, that it was all in your head, it will cease to scare you. As it was in childhood, when you turned on all the lights to chase the monsters away, or when you had your parent check the closet and the beneath the bed, all to ensure that they would not come for you in your sleep.

  You wish to share your story, to either move on from it and shelter yourself back up, horrified that your mind could contain such things, could influence such feelings upon you. Or to keep your ideas fresh, to keep the motivation in the forefront of your mind, so that you may retain the courage to face the beast that is your only obstacle once more.

Surely, getting rid of the Terror, will not be so simple though. If you lavish yourself in the rewards, surely your mind will drudge it up, at your most vulnerable times, for the Terror will not take being overcome lightly.

As for closing your mind from it by recanting it's story...you know it could never be that simple.

For you see, the moment you begin to speak of the Horror, the moment you share your experience, it spreads. Your confident will listen, as though you were a madman, merely babbling on about childish notions. You will feel better after sharing it, after your friend offers words of calm, discrediting the whole ordeal as an illusion of your mind.

But now, in your efforts to eliminate this Horror, you've only given it new life.

You see, your confident will find ways (purposely or not) to meld your Horror, with their own fears. They will ponder why it seemed so frightening to you. It will pester their conscious until they to find themselves with their mind opened to the possibilities as you had.

They will analyze your recanting, and they will over analyze every detail. The more realistic you make it sound to them, the easier it will be for them to form their own Terror. They to will allow their mind to wander aimlessly within the void, as they ponder, they will grow still.

They will lose themselves in the thought. In the still nature they then assume, they will become attuned to the silence, their ears becoming sensitized as their entire conscious recedes within the void of their mind. When they acknowledge the silence, and the sounds they are now able to perceive, it will penetrate them to the core, just as it did you.

They however, may be worse off. For there will be details that you had left out, minute gaps in the Terrors profile. Details, you had not thought to mention, for they are so personal to you, things that made it such a personalized Horror. Your confident will then, as is nature of the beast, fill in these gaps themselves. Now, while your Horror may retain it's basic form as it had while frequenting your mind, it will also develop.

Your friend's fears will feed it. They will meld with it, and it will become stronger. It will continue to do so, until it once more becomes unbearable. Your confident will no longer be able to deal with it alone and the Terror's story will be shared once more.

Eventually, the image and story of your Terror, will happen upon the ears of someone with a storytellers touch. They will scribble it down, they will refine its details, they will end it's mundane form as a common Terror, and they will help it evolve.

This person, will then begin talking of it around campfires, while the ashes smolder and the occasional spark sends wayward light dancing past the circle along the faces of aged trees, flickering out before the might of a dark forest. Strange shadows will dance about those that are listening to the storyteller. Their ears piqued, their minds hanging onto every word. The storyteller (if they are any good) will bring the Horror to life once more before the creative young minds of those around him, not yet entirely closed off from childhoods creativity.

The storyteller will make your Horror meld with the fears of those who listen. He will give him a presence around that fire, he will beckon the Terror in and allow him to influence the story, choosing the words that it knows will strike those listening just right.

Eventually, your Horror will reveal its back story. Someone along the line will ask

why, how, where...

and they will make connections.

This is the young professor your Horror has finally reached, the one with the thirst for knowledge and a love for research, son of the storyteller. This man is still young, still able to look at the world in amazement. So he executes the task of finding the Horror a home.

He will meld your monster with real life facts and occurrences. It's story will catch like wildfire in a small rural town. They will use it's story to keep young children from wandering of on their own or playing dangerous places. It's usefulness will keep it alive for many generations.

Eventually, it's origins will be lost. It will evolve from a campfire story, to a local legend. People of superstitious beliefs will avoid its supposed place of residence in fear.

People will begin claiming that they have seen it. Others will fabricate evidence, still others will mistake certain things as true evidence. People will begin to convince themselves of its true existence. Perceptions will grow.

These people will, as you once had,

begin seeing,

hearing

and sensing the Horror,

where their once closed minds could not.

Soon then, the young generation that was brought up with its story will age into their teen years. They will want proof. They will formulate a ritual that is supposed to bring the Terror to them. They will trek out to it's supposed home and they will attempt to summon it with their deceitfully innocent game.

In doing this, they will open their minds to the Terror.

Their perceptions will shift,

and they will begin to sense it.

Their eyes will adapt to the low light, and their gaze will flick around the darkened spot nervously.

They will begin to see Terror, flitting about just out of their line of vision.

The dark treetops will dance in the night wind, high above their heads, and they will begin seeing Horror leaping from tree to tree, to quick for them to follow.

They will hear it stalking them as they grow uneasy.

They are now aware of the Horror, and it is aware of them.

One of them will crack a joke, in an attempt to ease the tension. Trying to convince the hairs on the back of his neck to lie flat, trying to subdue the goosebumps raising upon his skin, trying to break the silence and concentrate on something other than his piqued senses. Senses that now betray him, catching every whisper and every breathe coming from his companions. He will break out in chills, and later associate his feeling (only to himself of course) to that of a deer in headlights. Unable to run as his instincts tell him to.

Why?

Because he is unable to pinpoint the Terror's location, unable to identify it as it careens around his peripheral vision.

Every moment those teenagers stand there, tense and waiting, fuels the true ritual. The ritual that will forever without fail, summon the greatest of terrors those who seek them.

This ritual, who some simply call believing, some call wishful thinking, and the most close minded will simply refer to as overactive imagination.

For you see, the Horror will become more and more of a reality every second they cower from it, and they to develop it. They give it speed and agility, and finally, with a loud groan from a tree up ahead, and the snap of a branch deeper within the shadows embrace, these teenagers, give Horror its material existence. They will flee from the Terror and they will complete the ritual, and bolt home to the safety of their beds.

But the Terror has already been brought to life. Those teens, in the coming years, will ever find themselves walking faster to get by that forests edge, when they obtain their drivers license's, they will avoid the back-roads that snake through the trees at night. They will repeat the tale many times over to friends, and eventually to their children.

So, you see my friend, our Horrors, that which we allow ourselves to perceive? They are as real as you and I.

They develop inside us, fueled by our want of knowledge, of our need to shield ourselves from the world, our habits of filling in the gaps in the Horrors recanted to us.

They spread like Wild Fire...

So remember next time you think about penning a story of horror, or perform a summoning of a local legend just for fun...

It's all very much real.

Author's Note

Again, this is still me experimenting. Grammar, spelling and punctuation errors will be noted and fixed, but I am really looking for feedback on the piece, its contents and it's effect on you.

Reviews

Bravo keep them coming. release yourself to the terror that is in your mind and under the bed!