Chilling Tales for Dark Nights.
I Told You to Smile, narrated by Matt Grant.
It was the 2nd of January, 2:04 AM.
I woke up to a knocking on the door.
One knock every three seconds.
I put on my slippers and walked down the stairs.
As I walked down, the knocking on the door got faster, almost like a heartbeat.
When I got to the door, the knocking stopped.
I looked outside and nobody was there.
I went back up to my room and went back to bed, thinking it was just some kids playing
a prank.
At 4:21 AM, I woke up to the front door slamming shut.
I jumped, terrified.
I looked over at my ice-coated window to find "smile" written all over it in the frost.
I grabbed the cell phone beside me, ready to call 9-1-1, only to find a message keyed
into it, which read, "I told you to smile."
I cried and ran for my life, determined to get outside as fast as I could.
The minute I got out my front door, I nearly dove off my porch steps, and sprinted to my
neighbor's house across the road.
I hurriedly knocked on their door, looking behind me nervously.
By the time they answered the door, I was sobbing uncontrollably.
They ushered me inside and consoled me as I told them what had happened and begged them
to believe me.
My neighbors called the police, and more than an hour after the intruder first startled
me, the police finished what they referred to as an "extensive" search of my house, an
then came next door to question me.
According to the detectives responsible for the search, there was no evidence of a break-in
-- no foot prints, nothing stolen, and no other witnesses to the incident.
Not so much as a smudge on my bedroom windows.
Not a single sign that anyone other than me had been in the house that night.
The messages on the window were gone, same with my phone.
I couldn't believe it.
I tried to protest, to insist that they missed something.
But the detective ignored me, told me to get some sleep.
He even went so far as to give me a business card for a local shrink, told me to see him
about my "stress" and "anxiety."
I was so angry I couldn't think straight, and I just stood there, dumbfounded, staring
at the card, until they walked away, leaving me to sit and stew in my paranoia.
I couldn't believe what the police told me.
I knew that what happened to me was real, and I was committed to proving it.
I spent the following day next door, spending most of it filming my own house with a camcorder
I borrowed from my neighbors.
I was watching for signs of something -- anything -- that would prove I hadn't dreamt the whole
incident from the night before.
When evening set in, however, and I hadn't captured anything extraordinary on camera,
I decided to head home.
When I got to my bedroom, I got an idea.
I set the camcorder up in the corner of my room, aimed so that it captured a shot of
both my bedroom door and my bed.
Then I set it to record and went to sleep.
For some odd reason, I found the little red "recording" light comforting, and fell asleep
immediately.
To my surprise, I slept through the night.
When I woke in the morning, however, the first thing I did was watch the footage from the
night before.
And I couldn't believe what I saw.
At exactly 3 AM, some...thing....crawled out from under my bed.
It resembled an emaciated man, with no clothes on; with nothing to obstruct my view off its
caved-in chest and thin white skin.
Whatever it was, it stood up and looked at me lying there on the bed.
It stood completely still for an hour, just watching me.
Then, suddenly, it strode to the camera with a shambling gait, edging closer until its
face took up the whole shot.
Instinctually I jumped back from my screen.
Its face was pale, its skin barely containing the bulging veins covering its head.
Its eyes were completely black.
But the worst part of all was its smile.
It had a huge smile on its face.
It continued staring at the camera for another two hours, not blinking, just slightly twisting
its head every now and again.
After two hours had passed, the thing walked back over to my bed.
It leaned over me, putting its face inches from mine, and it stared.
After a minute or so, it lowered itself silently to the floor and crawled back underneath my
bed.
I skipped the video forward until I saw myself wake up, stretch, and get out of bed.
I watched myself as I walked over to the camera and stopped recording.
The screen went black.
I was so scared I couldn't move.
The video showed it going back under my bed, but not leaving.
Whatever it was, it was still there.