A horn sounded in front of the house. Peter’s parents came to take him home, and Jake decided to go too.

“You’re just leaving because you’re scared”, one of the boys yelled.

“As if! Not even a girl would be scared of your stories…”

He walked with Peter to the car, under their friends’ laughter. The cowards were them, who didn’t have the guts to go home. “I bet they’ll sleep all together at the same bed, fearing a monster will come out of the closet!”, he thought.

“Need a ride?”, Peter asked.

“No need, I’ll walk.”

“Come on, Jake! You don’t need to prove to anyone that you’re brave!”

“I’m not proving anything! My house’s just two blocks away from here, that’s all!”

“Jake, wait!”

He didn’t. He simply zipped his coat up to his neck and put his hands into the pockets as he headed home. Even Peter? Everyone was making fun of him, and all of that because some stupid stories. He’d show them… Only a block and a half until his house were left. Tomorrow, he’d tell everyone that he walked alone in the streets at the middle of the night.

But not to his mother, of course.

Right above him, the lamppost failed. It blinked two, three times, buzzed as a giant bumblebee, and suddenly went dark. Jake laughed. Lights always fail at horror movies, usually right before something terrible happens. “It’s okay, this isn’t a movie.” But he quickened up his pace anyway.

A noise right behind him, footsteps on the grass; Jake turned behind quickly. Nothing. There wasn’t even any grass around, just the concrete sidewalk and the wooden fence around the nearby house. It was probably just his imagination playing him tricks. But what about beyond the fence? He couldn’t see, it was too tall, and it was dark… Bullshit! It could be just a dog anyway.

He stopped. He had just heard the sound of footsteps on the sidewalk. Steady, firm steps, that stopped just a moment after him. And that breath… That harsh, fast noise… Should he look back? Shout, asking who was there? Or just run away?

No, it was obvious! He was scared of his own footsteps. Suddenly he realized how breathless he was, his lungs pulled the air so fast into his mouth that his teeth started to ache. There was nothing there. He looked at his own shadow; no unnatural movement, no jumping from the ground to grab his neck, as happened to William’s friend at the story he was telling…

But, if he was standing still, why was it growing?

His fists tightened into his pockets, his nails digging into his palms’ skin. His heart jumped in his chest, two, three, ten times faster than normal, willing to make his own way home even before Jake. His neck skin crawled, the shoulders raised up to his ears, his eyes goggled in sight of the dark shape that grew more and more, while something big, really big loomed over his head behind him…

“Run!”

He did. No time to think. His instincts told him to escape, to stretch his legs and not looking back, not turning around to face the thing that stalked him. He could see his house from there, less than a block away. He squeezed his keychain tightly in his right hand, ready to open the door as fast as possible.

He clenched to the handle and hit the door with the key once, twice and again at the wrong spot. When he finally managed to put it into the keyhole, it didn’t turn! “Wrong key, stupid!” He searched for the right one in despair, but they were all the same! He knocked the door, rang the bell, opened his mouth to scream, but his throat froze.

A hand held his shoulder. Lots of laughter behind him.

He sighed, relieved.

“Damnit, William!” He turned to face his friend.

It was no William. In front of him, the horror, the most monstrous of creatures, the thing that stalked him, the shadow that raised to choke him, the monster in the closet, the werewolf in the barn…