Original Stories Fan Fiction ❯ Obake ❯ Tubeoscope User: 616 ( Chapter 1 )

XxXxXxXx

Obake

Chapter 1: Tubeoscope User: 616

By: Revamp

XxXxXxXx

Lime-green eyes slowly cracked open to see nothing but a dark abyss. A youthful girl sat up, clad in only a night shirt that buttoned up the middle and was rounded off at the bottom, her long hair that matched her eyes flowed to the ground. She glanced around, but still she could see nothing, not herself or her surroundings. The girl had no idea what she was even wearing. Below her, the floor was frosty, so much that it smoldered the exposed skin on her legs and the air held an unsettling chill. It felt like she was alone. She couldn't hear anyone's breathing, no footsteps or even the slightest rustle of fabric. It was only herself.

The air was seasoned with the scent of salt and rust, with a touch of iron. It was far too similar to blood for her comfort. She attempted to reply solely on her ears and she picked up a low, almost unrecognizable and inaudible sound. It was so far away that she could barely hear it, much less know what it was. It sort of sounded like music.

She tried to stand to go to the sound but something inside of her that felt like an amalgamation of terror and trepidation told her to stop. She tried her hardest to act on the urge to that beckoned her to the sound but her body continued to refute her. It felt as if she was being held down by hands. She attempted to touch them but only managed to feel the cold air. The sensation of being watched crept up her back and spread through her being. It tingled and it almost was too overbearing to pay no heed to. Glancing behind her, she found nothing but pitch and silence.

How could someone be watching her when she couldn't see or hear them?

It was unfeasible…but that feeling.

It was certain. So certain that she closed her eyes so tightly that she had to open them wide to stare, so certain that she could swear that she was hearing voices whispering indecipherable languages in inaudible sentences. The coolness from its breath was on her clammy skin. She felt a shiver run up her spine and then she heard mirth.

Quiet laughter that haunted her and the voices, whispering, taunting. She knew the sound of laughter in her ears breathing lightly, breaths so subtle that she couldn't ignore them. The darkness surrounded her, pressing against her body. She attempted to move again, but deep guilt was seated in her stomach for unknown reasons and the unshakable feeling of being held down kept her form from doing so. Her throat felt arid but she attempted to shriek. Nothing came out and all she could hear were whispers, laughter and her own heartbeat.

Suddenly, her senses were cut off. She smelled nothing. She felt nothing but ghostly hands withdrawing away, the sensation of being watched tingled in her bones and the inability to move. She was thankful that she couldn't feel the sources of fear as strongly anymore.

The feeling of being watched remained. She was convinced of it. She was being watched. It was obvious, unshakable and undeniable, lurking in her very being. She ignored it, but she can't forget it. Her heart is racing as she trembled as if she had an anxiety attack. She can't look behind her.

She lingered there, wondering when whatever it was would show up and claim her life. She couldn't look behind her. Curiosity was in her nature, and she finally gave way and turned her head to see the very thing that her racing heart and subconscious mind would expect from the room of deep fear, but not what her conscious mind would. Clinging to her pathetic hope…

She woke up.

With a terrified gasp the green-haired girl flew up out of bed, sitting bolt straight as she took ragged, quick breaths. Her lime eyes darted around the room wildly, thankful to see the sunlight instead of a sea of black. Her heart slammed against her chest as she tried to slow her breathing.

“Oh…it was a dream,” she sighed in reprieve. “Thank god I'm safe. That was scary.”

The girl glanced to her clock. It was time to get up. If she slept any longer she would waste her whole day, and having one nightmare after another wasn't in the game plan. Ever since a week ago, she's had nothing but nightmares. The fact that they were so frequent and vivid unnerved her on high levels. She was better off being awake.

Her bare feet hit the floor as she rose up and stretched, her lime-print underwear peeked out from the bottom of her white nightshirt.

`Man, it's been the same dream every night over and over again. I wonder what it means.' No matter how many times she'd tried to research it nothing ever gave her a clear interpretation of what it signified. The girl sighed in dejection. She might never find out what it meant, whether it was a manifestation of her fears or something with a deeper symbolic meaning.

Just as she finished stretching, the ringing of her phone caught her ears. Picking it up with a confused expression on her face, she answered the call. “Hello, this is Pumice speaking.”

“Heya!” A happy, youthful, male voice intoned.

“Red, oh hey! Why are you calling me so early in the morning?”

Her friend was unusually enthusiastic about something. Knowing him it was probably in regard to the paranormal legends floating around Conversion Town. That was usually the source of his euphoria. To be honest, there was no better place he could have been than in a town littered with the souls of the dead and home of urban legends.

“There's this really weird rumor around town. I was wondering if you knew anything about it.”

Yep.

He was up on some strange phenomenon. Pumice could feel herself sigh on the inside. These types of subjects really weren't her thing.

“Weird rumor? Not another one. What is it about this time? If it's anything about the Memorial Building being haunted we can skip those. I'm tired of all of the ghost stories.” That was all the people of this town talked about. If the residents weren't talking about it, tourists were. It was like Pumice couldn't get away from all of the ghost talk and it was making her sick. Add on Red, yammering about myths to her every chance he got and her life was one big headache.

“No, this is actually pretty huge,” Red assured her. He knew that she hated his talk about rumors, but he went to her in case she had any information or knew something he didn't about the ghost stories. The boy couldn't help but check every person when gathering information. It was the nature of investigation.

Pumice frowned and arched an eyebrow, rolling her eyes. She might as well humor him. “What kind of rumor?”

“It's all over the internet. In fact, the internet is really the only place that you can access it.” That was one of the reasons Red was stunned that she hadn't heard of any rumors, much less this one. Then again, Pumice could really just be tuning everything out like she normally did. She loved turning a blind eye to his precious legends and myths that were waiting for the right person to look over them with a careful eye just in case one of them might be real.

Pumice was tired of hearing him drone on and on. She just wanted it to be over with and her irritation rose with each sentence he uttered. “Out with it, already.”

“Okay, okay, apparently it's on Tubeoscope.”

“Where we watch videos and stuff?” Was it some sort of scary video? Was that what this was all about? Pumice should have been happy that it wasn't another legend, but things were never that simple with Red.

“Yeah, you go to the link bar where your username would be and type in six-one-six. It will say that the account has been terminated due to multiple suspensions and violations of the terms of service, but that's not the creepy part. If you keep refreshing the page, stuff will start changing on you.” While Red didn't know if these claims were true, he did see a video on it and he read all of the discussions on Username 616 in order to obtain his current information.

Pumice arched an eyebrow, still skeptical of his internet story. “So, you just hit refresh over and over?”

“Yeah, all of the video tags will change to x616 and eventually all of the text will change to 616 even the hyperlink in your search bar,” Red continued to explain it to the best of his ability. It really was better if Pumice would have looked at the videos he had. He would have much rather had a discussion on it than explain it all. “Eventually that person's channel will pop up and they have all of these freaky videos. One is eye balls popping out of a doll's head over and over, and some of them look like dancing ultrasounds. After that a blank box pops up and you click it. Then it takes you to a video of some guy drowning in blood. Supposedly, you can't get out of that video. You can't pause it, close it, or click on other videos. You can't close your browser and the guy keeps staring at you while he drowns…then you die.”

Pumice frowned at the theatrics behind his explanation. For a moment, she was pulled into it, only to be disappointed by that last line. It was like watching a good movie, only to be disappointed by a cheesy ending. “Yeah, right. How can you die from watching someone's video on Tubeoscope? That's stupid. It sounds like another urban legend. Besides, if the video did exist then it would have been taken down, especially if people were dying because of it.”

Nothing made any sense when it was approached logically. When hauntings came and went and tourists were found dead, it was always on the news or at least in the paper, but she heard nothing about this until recently. If it had killed any number of people, someone would have reported on it by now. Pumice was so ready to call bullshit on Red's story, just like she had so many times before.

In fact, she was tired of asking how naive he could be, because he was starting to take it as a challenge.

“Some believe that it's like a virus. I've heard Tubeoscope has tried to suspend the account but a new one gets made, it's really creepy. There are actually a few emulated sites but there's only one that I think might be real,” Red gave her more of his findings. Username 616 was really popular on Tubeoscope. Tons of people swore it was real and others tried to debunk it with little luck.

It widely remained an internet mystery because no one could prove its existence one way or the other.

“So, why haven't you been to this 616 channel and tried it for yourself?” Since Red was so into urban legends, and usually was the first one to personally check the validity of it, why did he not personally investigate 616 himself? Something was off about that, not only that it was unlike Red not to have taken those steps. One question remained: what kept him from doing it? Fear? The unknown? Risk of viral infection?

“I can't lose this computer. Mom would kill me if I used her computer on a virus channel. She has all of her paranormal documentaries and live footage there. It's a no can do for me,” Red's mother was a paranormal investigator who put together documentaries of her sightings. She stored all of her information on the sole computer he had access to. As much as Red wanted to test the theory for himself, he knew the consequences and feared the wrath of his parental figure.

“What makes you think I want to go there?” Pumice figured out his true motive for calling her. He wanted her to use her computer to check the validity of his bullshit legend. That only deepened her frown and raised her level of irritation to new heights.

“I just want to find someone who will. I'm dying to know if it's true,” he should have known that Pumice would be reluctant to lend him her services, especially knowing her computer could be wrecked from it. Not only was she uninterested, but she didn't want to take the risk.

“Apparently you've never read the main myth about Conversion Town or you just have been living under a rock your whole life. Curiosity kills; it's the main moral or every story ever that surrounds this place.” Not only was Pumice unamused, she was condescending and hateful as always. On any other subject, the lime-haired girl was chipper and chatty but on myths and urban legends she was such a bitch to him. Red had always wondered why and what reasons she had for it but he didn't delve too much into her personal problems.

Red's voice suddenly sounded as if an epiphany had struck him. “Hey! Maybe Rika knows something about it! She's big into weird stuff and her mother is the best medium in town.”

“Maybe it will put your curiosity to rest then.” Thank god he was going to talk to someone else who was just as weird as he was. She didn't want anyone to get her wrong, while Rika was her friend; she was just as interested in the paranormal stuff as Red was. Granted, they were opposites and Rika actually had familiarity with the paranormal whereas Red investigated all of his incidents by himself. Rika's calm demeanor and expansive knowledge would surely simmer down the passionate fire deep in Red's soul.

“You don't sound entirely convinced,” she could feel Red's wide grin in those words.

“Shut up. What would I care about some weird user on Tubeoscope? There is tons of weird stuff on that site. It's probably just some folklore,” Pumice spat into the receiver, anger still laced in her words.

“Too bad. I'm going to do some more investigating. See you!” Red chimed, animated by his new idea to consult Rika on the matter. Why didn't he think of that before? He must have let his excitement get a hold of him too prematurely.

“Yeah, bye,” Pumice hung up the phone, glad the conversation was over. However, as much as she hated urban legends, a part of Red's explanation had the smallest sensation of curiosity within her piqued. She found her thoughts drifting back in time, remembering Red's description about the strange devil channel of Tubeoscope. After several hours, the subject continued to eat at her until she became stressed out just thinking about and fighting the growing inquisitiveness within her.

Sighing to herself, she ran a hand through her long, straight hair. “Okay, and now I'm wondering what's up with it. I think I'll call Rika.”

Rika picked up the phone and said her typical salutation, only to be greeted by an inquiry. Pumice solicited her if she had ever heard of Tubeoscope user 616. That mere question only set off a series of analytic views by the dark-natured girl on the other side of the phone.

“Maybe you should break it down into questions. Do I believe the account exists? Maybe it once did, but I'm a little skeptical. However, computers function as brains, making them somewhat like life forms on their own scale. They can store more information than any life form, making them intelligent beyond our imaginations. They can control our thoughts. When you download things into their memory, they are capable of a lot of things…and they are the creation of man,” Rika analyzed the subject. With the vast intelligence that computers held, it might have been possible that the channel was made and still exists on some level within the depths of Tubeoscope. However, that would take a master hacker in order to find the original 616 account to confirm whether or not it was truly there and what the original account was terminated for. The vast indefinite factors of the account itself were something to take into consideration. Strange phenomena happened quite often on the internet, enough to have forums and videos made about them. The possibility that it could be real was still there, although slim. As for it causing deaths, she was unsure of.

In types of music, binaural beats existed that influenced the function of the brain, in the phenomenon frequency following response, but none have altered the brainwaves in ways that would make someone be driven to suicide. There were also certain images, like flashing images and those that gave the optical illusion of movement that could mess with the senses and cause seizures but none led to death. They only made conditions like epilepsy worse. However, she doubted that such imagery would be on a page that targeted people outside of the minority.

In reality, there were a number of things that could determine several factors in this case.

There was a silence on the phone for a few minutes. Pumice blinked a couple of times, those words about computers and the depth of the horror that they actually held made her slightly paranoid. “That's…slightly scary…but still, you can't tell me you believe in this thing.”

Surely Rika had more sense than to blindly believe in some folk tale on the internet. She was the one who held the most knowledge when it came to paranormal entities and Pumice trusted her opinion on this devil user.

“Belief is a powerful thing. At any given moment, the universe is controlled by what one particular person believes. All things right down to the laws of physics are subject to instantaneous change. As one dies, another is chosen. Amelia Earhart? Disappeared when the new believer couldn't fathom a female aviator. Newton's seemingly arborous laws of motion tool so long to come around because these believers were so heavily fond of the works of Aristotle.” It was all relative and proven true on several occasions. At any one point in life, someone's belief changed the world in significant ways, making them a master believer. Someone's belief could make user 616 a real entity if they so chose and had means and methods of making it real. To do that would take quite a feat, and she wasn't sure if the feat would have had to have been paranormal or human. At this point, anything was possible.

However, Rika thought it to be more of a hoax than something genuine. The mediums would have been more engrossed to the myth if there was any truth in it.

“You always answer me indirectly,” Pumice sighed. Getting a straight answer from Rika without the attached creepy philosophy was like mining for gold at the bottom of the sea.

“I am merely making observations.”

“Do you think that the user can actually kill you over the internet?” Maybe if she asked something completely left field she would be dignified with a clearer answer. “Your talk about computers is making me worry and wonder.”

“If you wonder about it, through searches you can find out. Look up information on the User 616 syndrome or instances. It might just be a cruel joke from someone who knows the meaning of the mark of the beast.” As much as Pumice didn't like to look into urban legends, all the advice that Rika could offer her was to do what Red has always done and examine 616 to find out if it's real. It was atypical to see Pumice this wrapped up in anything paranormal. She was known as the non-believer of her friends.

“I thought the mark of the beast was 666,” Pumice mused aloud.

“It depends on your perception. The number of the beast in the Book of Revelation's thirteenth chapter is rendered as 666, but the variant of 616 is found in critical editions of the Greek text, such as the Novum Testamentum Graece. It depends on which version you follow. I prefer for variant but 666 is the common nomenclature acknowledged,” Rika answered her question effortlessly. While Pumice found it weird that she knew something like that, she figured that it was part of her job studying under a medium to know things like that.

“I might take Red's advice.”

“I am assuming that he wants you to look at it,” Rika confirmed.

“I don't want to trash my computer, so I might back my stuff up just in case,” Pumice would rather play it safe than sorry. If the channel was a virus, her stuff would be safe on another device that she could easily access by alternate means.

“Sounds like a good idea. Tell me if you find anything bizarre. To me, speculation is just that, but if there is any truth to the demonic properties of this user then I would be highly intrigued.” If such a user truly did subsist, then Rika would find it a smorgasbord of paranormal delight. Such a thing was in her element to inspect. Not only that, it would put a lot of things in perspective and establish a place as one of the divine believers who's mere viewpoints could change the world on several levels.

“It shouldn't be able to kill me, right?” Pumice's voice trembled in uncertainty. She wanted the clarification of her wisest friend that it was more than likely a hoax than a truth.

“Not unless it has a way of altering your state of mind and the only things proven to have those properties are animation and music. However, do not doubt the phenomena of Conversion Town.”

In other words, it was more than likely counterfeit.

“I know, I've run into the ghost many times. I think I'll call Red back and stay on the phone with him. That way, if something does happen, then someone will know.” Not only that, but Pumice planned on shoving how fake it was in his face at a moment's notice. She wanted him to bear witness to the proven falsehood of his precious little horror stories as he admitted defeat. That was the ultimate elation, if anything was to prove Red wrong.

“I'll wait for your findings.”

“Call you back later, bye,” Pumice hung up the phone and called Red back. It took him a few minutes to answer, because he was still researching the user name but he eventually answered.

“Okay, okay, I'll play your stupid myth buster game,” the lime-haired girl finally gave into his request, more out of her own curiosity than anything else.

“You will?” Red's voice was hopeful over the receiver.

“Let's just get it over with.” Anything but putting up with his unbearable excitement over ghosts and demon users. Pumice wanted this over as painlessly as possible.

“While you were away, I managed to find out some information about that virus. It comes from an account known as Suspended616 which is rumored to be the original terminated account. It's really bizarre and every year the creation date changes. I don't believe it really is the original account though. I think it's just a hacker but a lot of people are pretty convinced that it's real. I'm more interested in the actual 616 account though,” Red wasn't amused by the side legends and variants that sprouted off of the original; he wanted to go straight to the source. The truth would be in whether or not this account truly existed in the depths of the interweb.

Pumice walked over and took a seat at her computer. She felt that familiar trepidation wash over her and in the pit of her stomach the girl felt nausea take her over. Uttering `let's do this' in a nervous manner, she started up her machine. She had to admit, even telling herself that it might be false wasn't helping right now. Pumice could only focus on Rika's prior words: don't underestimate the ghosts of Conversion Town.

“Tubeoscope dot com, here we come!” Red cheered.

Clicking on her browser, Pumice brought up Tubeoscope. The page loaded with the Tubeoscope logo in the upper left hand corner, her account name in the right, a search bar in the middle and below that was a flash ad. Recent uploads of those she had subscribed to were listed as well. Pausing momentarily, she inhaled and determination etched itself on her face.

“Okay, I'm going for it,” Pumice reassured herself as she typed backslash 616 at the end of Tubeoscope dot com. Below her search bar was a red bar with text in it that stated: this account has been terminated due to multiple violations and infringement.

“Just like it says, the account is terminated due to multiple infractions,” Pumice clarified.

“I got to that part but I didn't refresh it,” Red confirmed the extent of his personal investigation.

“So, I just keep refreshing until it pops up?” She wanted to clarify her next step.

“That's what it says,” her friend pulled up the information on the mysterious user in order to make sure that they were doing it right.

Pumice hit refresh over and over again as silence fell over the phone. Only the click of the refresh button sounded as nothing changed but the occasional `videos being watched right now'. The promoted videos list below stayed the same. After hitting refresh for the seventh time, she questioned Red on how many times she was supposed to refresh the page. Right now, it was redundant to her and nothing much had changed.

“It never said,” Red was unsure himself. None of his sourced determined a set number, only that the page had to be refreshed a lot.

“Nothing is happening yet,” Pumice sighed, and went quiet for a moment before something finally happened. “Wait…None of the videos was showing up, but blank boxes with 616 in them. “

It was really creepy to her. The video boxes that once showed images from the videos were white, except for a black outline with a small box in the upper left hand corner. There was a red x in the box, and outside of it was the number 616 in medium print.

“Holy cow! You mean it's happening for real!” Red was shocked. Even he didn't think that the 616 user was real, but right now the both of them were being proven wrong.

Nervousness crossed Pumice's face and she felt her anxiety rise as she continued to click with the same results. It was 616 in all of those blank boxes, over and over. Soon, even the text that once said videos being watched right now and promoted videos turned to 616161616161616161616…Her user name was the same and so was the text in the search box. The only text that remained normal was the tab text and the Tubeoscope logo.

“Everything turned to 616, even the stuff in my search bar,” Pumice informed as she continued to refresh the screen. She could feel her stomach knot up with each click. Then the screen turned a bright red.

“Now the whole background is red.”

“That's never happened before,” Red didn't read that in any of the legends or reports of people who had supposedly viewed the account or watched the video of the guy who did and died from visiting it. What was going on? Something seemed up, and it felt pretty sinister.

She clicked on it once more, and black mixed with the red, giving it a decaying feel. The Tubeoscope logo was only half on the page now, the red `o' had faded into the rusty background. Then the entire background turned into a darker rust color, making the Tube part of Tubeoscope fragmented. One of the tabs was gone and the other two had blacked out words. The information in the red bar was blurred and illegible. She clicked on it a couple more times and the background changed and grew to look as if holes were in it that had been rusted out. The bar was completely red and the tabs were gone. The Tubeoscope logo was faded and the letters looked as if they were deteriorating.

She clicked it three more times as the logo faded more, to where only the scope part was present and the channel result for 616 showed up in a white bar. The profile picture was a doll's head with black sockets. 616 was beside of it with no description available below it. Across from the channel was another link that said 616 views: 616 and the hyperlink that she had typed in.

Pumice paused. Chills went up her spine as she stared into the doll's features. “Oh man, there it is. It showed up.”

She could hardly believe it. It looked like User 616 was real and all of her boasting and shoving the faux ghost story in his face was a letdown, but the fact that this account was real only ground on her mind. Pumice felt as if she shouldn't be messing with it. She shouldn't be here, nor should she be viewing it.

The lime-haired girl wanted to turn back. Never has the presence of a simple page unnerved her like this. However, if she turned back now, Red was sure to shove it in her face. She didn't want to click on it. She really didn't.

The tone in Red's voice only became more excited. Proving the existence of this user was so close that he could taste the waves of truth resonating from her computer screen. “This will be our moment of truth! Click on it.”

Pumice paused. Her thoughts were eating her alive, consuming her with doubt and unease. `I can't believe I'm staring this down with my own eyes.'

Reluctantly, she clicked on it and the page showed up. The background looked like blood splattered on a black background in hyperrealism. Everything was 616, just as the other page had been. The channel name was 61616161616161616, user name was 616, views 616 and the subscriptions were 61. This user also had 13 uploaded videos. Above the videos was a large screen of 616's most recent upload which was merely a black screen. The length of the video was 6:16.

“Ugh…this is trippy. Their page looks like a crime scene and all of the text is 616. If you infected me with some kind of virus, I'm going to kill you and put you in the Memorial Building with all of your little ghost friends,” Pumice threatened, although her voice hardly sounded threatening. In all honesty, she was afraid of doing anything on that page.

“Hey! I told you this was on a whim. Don't blame me. You clicked it.” Never mind that he teased her and egged it on, she was the one who called him back. She was also the one who offered to go on 616's page. It wasn't on him if she was doing something of her own accord.

Pumice clicked on the second of 616's uploads. It was the same doll's head as their user icon. It was a loop of the doll's eyes popping out of its head and being sucked back in to the tune of sporadic, demonic sounding music.

She shuddered in revulsion. “Oh god…This is just weird.”

Pumice clicked out of the video. “That doll is here.”

She clicked on another, which was something that looked like an ultrasound of a heart that was warped into some kind of infrared view. It pulsated to a strange beat of music, again on some sort of loop just as the other video was. Even more noticeable in the video was a heartbeat. It was so loud that she was certain that Red heard it.

“Do you heart that?”

“Is that a heartbeat?”

“The run time on this video is six minutes and sixteen seconds,” Pumice noted as she closes the video and scrolled over the page. Pumice contemplated on whether or not she should click the next video. A part of her didn't want to at all. Dread over came her and she felt slightly dizzy. Her voice emitted fear and uncertainty. “I'm actually sort of scared. This is really freaking me out. I don't even know what I'm clicking because all of 616's videos are blacked out.”

It was really just a blind run when it came to it, and none of the videos had any names above them either. It was totally bizarre.

“Have you clicked their most recent upload?” That was the true test. Supposedly, the most recent upload was the one that was giving people problems. It was the heart of the legend behind this user's namesake.

“I'm not sure that I want to. I feel like I'm going to have a heart attack.” Literally, she could feel her heart slam against her sternum with such force that she thought it might break through and land on the keyboard.

“Just click the recent upload and then you can leave,” Red wasn't going to force her to stay. He could tell that she had already gone far beyond her comfort zone. It was crazy enough that it was actually real so far.

In the recesses of his mind, Red was sort of happy that Pumice saw something that was real and proven before her eyes. Maybe now she wouldn't give him so much hell about the legends that he researched, as well as the paranormal he investigated.

“Fine, but this is the last one,” Pumice huffed as she summoned all of her will power and clicked on the final video.

It started playing and a man was crawling up from a pool of blood that was flowing from his mouth. He was gagging as strange noises played as in something was roaring in a gurgled voice. It then showed a close up of his head, rising and sinking in the blood. The whole screen flipped and then he fell onto a bed of spikes and died. The screen flipped yet again and dropped him into a pool of blood, restarting the animation. Pumice watched in horror before a blank box appeared with a single button.

“It's happening…just like in the story…” Pumice was petrified and disgusted. Her anxiety was amplified and she felt on the verge of having a panic attack and throwing up.

“Try to get out of it.” Things were bad now, and even Red knew that going any further was bad. They had to leave Tubeoscope.

Pumice clicked around the box, but she only got the ding of the error noise. “I can't. I have to click it.”

Scared, she clicked the box as the video began playing again. She tried to pause the video, but only received the same error noise. Nothing worked. She tried to exit her browser, but the same noise sounded. Her heart raced as a sense of disparity bubbled within her. Lime green eyes darted wildly around, clicking anything she could in order to get out of that page. She tried another video, but received an error noise, then she tried to go to another website on her search bar but the text was all 616 for her entire history.

“Nothing is working. I'm going to try and shut it down,” Pumice told Red what she was doing. She tried to hit control, alt, delete but it didn't work. Then she went to her start menu and clicked `shut down' but still received the error noise. What gave? Computers always shut down, no matter what.

“What's going on?”

“What's happening? Tell me!” Red was just as frantic as she was. He felt so helpless not being in the room with her as she lived through this horror.

Suddenly, a blank word document popped up on her screen as the video continued to play. She read the message as it was being typed.

Do you get that feeling that someone is watching you? Of course you do. We all do. That's because there is, all of the time.

Sometimes you write it off as your imagination. Sometimes you try and get it out of your mind. The truth is that someone is watching you all of the time, no matter what. Most of the time it's a normal person. They watch you while you sleep. It's not a killer…or is it? That's what you tell yourself when you want comfort.

The truth is, it's not even a person at all. Maybe it's a ghost. Maybe it wants to be friends.

Know that someone is watching you and has been. Maybe it's your own shadow. Even if it was, would that make you feel better? I met the one who was following me, and you're about to meet the one that's following you.

The man in the video stared at her with glazed over eyes as the noises escalated to violent banging. He just kept staring at her morbidly.

Look behind you.

Pumice instinctively looked behind her and screamed as something shot up from the ground with such speed that it was only identified as a black blur. Her body hit the ground with a harsh collision and her phone tumbled from her motionless hand.

The only noises that could be heard as she blacked out were the sounds of Red's frantic voice on the receiver of the phone.

“Pumice! Pumice!”

…To Be Continued