The Long Night of New Year's 2015

All of the events described here are true. Make of it whatever you shall desire.

The Pasta
I always feel strange on New Year’s Eve, especially when it’s the half hour before New Year’s Day. Suddenly, I feel as though the last half hour of a year or decade actually means something, unlike when it’s the last half-hour of a day. This time around was no exception.

It was soon to be January 1, 2015. By 11:30 PM, my family and I were praying for a good year. We’re a religious Catholic family, but we don’t take it too seriously like some of those extremist nuts who make us look bad.

We finished our prayers at 11:42 PM with me leading my family in saying the Apostles’ Creed. None of us had it memorized, but I had it in my Confirmation book (I received the sacrament of Confirmation in February 2014).

From 11:42 PM and on, we eagerly awaited the arrival of 2015. I got out my camera and began to record at 11:51 PM, right as my older sister and my stepfather began playing with my little sister. Much of the video was like that. We threw some of her dolls around as she watched them, causing her to laugh very hard.

When it got to 11:58 PM, my mother got four red plastic cups and some wine. She poured a very small amount of wine for my older sister and me, saying, “They’re almost old enough to drink.” When she gave us our cups filled with a small lick of wine, my mother said, “It’s only for toasting.” Of course, she didn’t give any to my little sister. She didn’t seem to mind, anyway.

At midnight, we toasted each other as we watched the fireworks go off on the Space Needle on live television. When I sat back down, I realized that I’d have to drink my cup. I didn’t know if I should, but I gave it a go anyway.

I took one sip and immediately handed it back to my mother. It tasted horrible, though I admitted, “At least I tried it.” I can’t recall if my older sister drank from her cup.

I recorded until around 12:05 AM. From then on, the New Year’s joys seemed to die down. I used the computer for another hour before I got a call. I checked who was calling me. It was my friend Daniel.

Daniel and I have known each other since August 31, 2009. I can’t count how many times I’ve visited his house within the time we’ve known each other. In 2014, I began spending the night more often at his house, with the first instance of 2014 being New Year’s Day of 2014. He and I are the definition of best friends.

I left what I was doing on the computer and went to my room to talk to Daniel. He and I shared the obligatory “Happy 2015” greeting before talking about pretty much nothing – typical talks between 17-year-old friends. We began talking about Spiderman potentially returning to Marvel, the Sam Raimi Spiderman films, how well we thought J. K. Simmons portrayed J. Jonah Jameson, Sam Jackson’s portrayal of Nick Fury, and other admittedly nerdy things. Daniel was practically born a Marvel fan, whereas I had only recently become a Marvel fan. We had been talking for a while before I went to close out everything I was doing on my computer. We then resumed talking.

The second half of our conversation began with us doing a dumb role-play over the phone. Daniel pretended to be Foxy the Pirate Fox, and I pretended to be his roommate. Of course, the way those usually went was that Foxy would act like a sex-hungry creep and I would be his next victim. We meant nothing by it, though, and it was all just dumb fun.

After a while, it was already close to 3:00 AM. By then, I was already in bed. Daniel was still pretending to be Foxy, and I was still pretending to be his scared little roommate. The conversation would have ended with him crooning, “Nighty night,” or “I’ll see you tonight, matey,” in that deep and rough voice he used to pretend to be Foxy. The phone would have hung up, and I would have been well on my way to sleep.

I would have been so much happier if that happened.

The weird stuff began when we stopped the role-play. Daniel said that he felt like he was in a dark bedroom with long curtains. This piqued my curiosity because I’d seen a place like that in a dream I had in 2012. I remember exactly what the bedroom looked like. It was only barely lit by whatever light was outside, the light looking light lavender in hue, and I remember seeing the circular bed that sat before the window. The window was draped with very tall satin curtains, and I remember the bedroom had a bit of an uneasy vibe to it. I asked Daniel if he saw this, and he said that he could. He began to tell me about a dream he had as a child about being in that very same room and being accosted by what might have been a mummy or a zombie.

Not long after this, he and I began to feel what felt like claws digging into the tops of our skulls. They wouldn’t relent, and it almost felt like I was about to get brain surgery or something. When those feelings went away, it was replaced with the sight of a face.

The face looked at me with wide eyes, and they weren’t blinking. I saw a long nose and a horrid grin that accompanied it. It just wouldn’t stop staring at me, no matter what I did. I was afraid to shut off my phone, the only light source I had at that ungodly hour. The face then slowly began to rot away. The eyes fell out, the nose grew shorter, and the grin got wider as the flesh melted to reveal ghastly white cheekbones. It continued to melt until nothing was left but a skull. We then heard screaming in both of our ears. At first, it sounded like someone exhaling to make it sound like a crowd cheering, but, as it travelled further into our ears, it became a death rattle, and, once it reached our brains, it became the screams of a man set ablaze. The sheer loudness of those screams made our brains feel like they were going to TV static. The skull receded before charging at us with a wide-open jaw.

The phone cut itself off at that moment. Neither Daniel nor I hung up, and we couldn’t explain it. Daniel’s phone was still good on power, as was mine. I called him back at 3:51 AM.

After that, I felt as though the world was upside down above me, and I was flying lying down. I saw what I thought was a city, and I felt uneasy as the thought of how high I was flying intruded my mind. More faces began to surround us, each of them staring at us like the first one. I tried to talk to Daniel in order for me to stay sane, yet, every time I tried to talk, I was interrupted by more ghastly faces. One of them looked like a doll face with a blonde bob, though the eyes were empty and near the center of the face, and it sported a thin smile wider than its own head. I even remember seeing bared teeth flash before my eyes, as though the person who possessed them absolutely loathed me. The sights continued until after 4:00 AM.

At that time, I saw myself walking in a cemetery. My head must have hung very low, because my view of it was directly top-down. I continued to walk until I stopped at an open grave. Within it contained a corpse. It was the body of someone I love and care about very much, who I will call Bill Elias Coyers II for the sake of his anonymity. I began to cry as I saw Bill lowered into the grave, and I knew I had to describe this to Daniel right as I saw it.

Daniel said that he saw Satan had conquered the world, replacing everything that wasn’t in his likeness with demons. To make matters worse, Satan pinned all of the blame on Daniel, and it seemed as though the damage was irreversible. After that, I reassured Daniel to remain strong and persevere. I told him that, no matter what, these things would never happen. I assured him that all of it was only an effort to drive us insane and that we would get through it.

After I said these things, the things we saw finally began to fade away. By 4:40 AM, everything was back to normal. However, I felt like a changed person. Feelings of fear were replaced with those of solemn anxiety, similar to someone who has just returned from war. I wondered if we’d developed PTSD, though I couldn’t say for sure.

The conversation had died down to near silence. Right when it ended, my mind already began to suppress the memories of those sights. I felt as though my mind was saving those memories in order for me to write them down later, and then it would forget them completely. This is the only way I can cope with what I saw in those godforsaken hours.

Daniel went to bed shortly after these events, and the conversation officially ended at 4:51 AM. I, however, didn’t feel tired anymore. I wasn’t sure I could go to sleep, so I stayed up for the rest of the night watching videos in order to calm myself down. I didn’t go to sleep until after 8:00 AM, and then I woke up at 1:51 PM. I went to the living room and began to type out the words you’re reading right now.

Recording these events has helped me cope with them. It’s allowed me to share what happened to me that night and keep it around for as long as I may desire. As I write this, my memories of the events are slowly dying. Only after I complete and publish this can I finally begin to forget.

It’s as I said to Daniel after everything happened.

Some things in life are going to be forgotten eventually.

Some things are things you don’t want to forget.

Some things are better left forgotten.

Written by GMart5