**5:35**

The clock reads 5:35 a.m., but I’ve been awake for a long time. I lie there, just lying in bed. My parents are here too, staring at me. And all I can do is avert my gaze, trying with all my might not to scream in terror.

It smells strongly of blood. Freshly spilled blood. God… I’m so scared, so scared, oh Lord…

There’s… something here. Something. And the moment I let it know I’m awake, it will be the end. I will die. I will die, and no one will come to help. I’ve already thought about how I could escape. The only way is to run—run with all my strength out into the street. Scream, shout, call for help. Hope that someone will hear me—neighbors, anyone. My chances are slim, but if I stay here, I will surely die.

It waits. Waiting for me to wake up. Waiting for me to see its “masterpiece.”

But I need to start from the beginning.

About three hours ago, I woke up to screaming. Screaming in the house. Here. I got up and went to check what was happening. Now I understand that it could have killed me at any moment back then. But it didn’t.

The carpet in the hallway was drenched in blood. I spun around and ran to my room, trembling with fear, and hid under the blanket. I tried to fall asleep again, telling myself it was just a dream, just a bad dream.

Then I heard the door to my room open. I peeked out from under the blanket, feeling like a five-year-old boy terrified to death. I saw something dragging my parents’ bodies into the room. And it wasn’t human, not at all! Something naked, eyeless, hairless, moving with the gait of a caveman, bent under the weight of my mother and father… Only this “thing” was smarter than any caveman. And it knew exactly what it was doing.

It seated my father on the floor, leaning him against the bed, and turned his head to face me. It seated my mother on a chair, the same way, facing me. Then it started rubbing its palms along the wall, drawing a pentagram in a circle with their blood. The creature worked meticulously, completing its “masterpiece”… At the end, it wrote something on the wall, some kind of inscription, but it was too dark for me to read.

And now this thing sits under my bed, waiting.

I am terrified. Terrified. How… how…

My eyes have adjusted to the darkness. Now I can read what’s written, but I don’t want to, don’t want to, because even thinking about it is a true nightmare. But I feel I must see it. I must see it. Before death.

And I look.

“I

KNOW THAT YOU ARE AWAKE.”