Solved Murders - True Crime Stories - The Rise of Max A Father's Descent into Horror, Madness, and the Antichrist's Ascension #30

Episode Date: August 2, 2025

#horrorstories #reddithorrorstories #ScaryStories #creepypasta #horrortales #darkhorror #madness #antichrist #apocalypsestory #fatherhoodhorror  Max’s story begins as a devoted father but spirals into a nightmare of horror and insanity. Unexplainable events and sinister signs reveal a horrifying truth: Max may be the Antichrist, destined to bring chaos and destruction. As his mind unravels, the boundaries between reality and evil blur. This story explores the fragility of sanity, the darkness lurking within family, and the terror of a father’s love turned into an apocalyptic curse. It’s a harrowing journey through madness and the rise of ultimate evil.  horrorstories, reddithorrorstories, scarystories, horrorstory, creepypasta, horrortales, darkhorror, madnessdescent, antichristrise, apocalypticstory, fatherhoodhorror, supernaturalterror, mentalbreakdown, evillegacy, cursedfamily, psychologicalhorror, horrorfiction, endoftimes, chillingstory, possessionhorror  

I remember coming into the house on one cold winter's night. The snow and icy wind blew through the front door as I stepped into the house, kicking my boots clean. I noticed a strange odor in the place. It almost smelled like stink bugs with notes of copper and bleach. I hated the smell of stink bugs. Hey, honey. I said, Where are you?

I'm starving and, by the way, it smells weird in here. Traffic nearly stopped for a half hour on I-80. A goddamn tractor trailer flipped over in the middle of the blizzard and closed down all three lanes. We could only get around by driving in the breakdown lane until cops got there and started, my voice trailed away as I noticed the drops of blood on the floor leading from the front hallway into the kitchen. I stopped talking immediately, looking around for signs of an intruder. I saw nothing, no smashed windows, no busted doors, no rifle through drawers or cabinets.

Oh my God, I whispered, immediately going to the kitchen and grabbing the largest meat cleaver the first could find from the knife block. Its edges gleamed, freshly sharpened and ready to slice into the hardest of flesh. I made sure not to step on the drops of blood. I didn't want to disturb a crime scene, if indeed it was a crime scene. I stopped, thinking of calling 911. But some inner voice urged me on. It will take five or six minutes for the police to arrive, possibly longer, it said,

and you need to check on your family now. Right now. Sprinting forwards, I followed the blood trail down the hall and straight to the first floor bathroom. The door stood closed. I tried the handle and found it locked. Hello. I said, pounding on the door. Who's in there?

Open up, Isaac. Is that you? A faint voice asked. I recognized the voice of my wife immediately. Open the goddamn door. I screamed. Rising waves of anxiety and adrenaline coursed through my body, and I immediately knew something was very wrong.

I could hear it in the dead tone of my wife's voice, see it glistening on the floor in crimson droplets, feel it in the air like falling pressure before a thunderstorm. Jenna, opened the door. I heard some slight shuffling in the small bathroom. like someone dragging themselves across the floor. Then I heard a click. I opened the door and found a chamber of nightmares lying beyond the threshold.

My only son floated face down in the bathtub. My wife sat back down on the edge of the tub, rocking back and forth, her eyes flat and dead. Why? I whispered, horrified. Why would you do this? Don't you know, she murmured in a croaking voice. Do you really not know that? that our son is the Antichrist, maybe I did have suspicions that something wasn't quite right

with Max. It was more than the dead animals I kept finding strewn around the yard and under the house. It was more than the way his eyes seemed to shine in the dark when I wished him good night. No, it was a feeling, a cold, empty feeling that seemed to follow him wherever he went. He had no friends at school, and animals avoided him like the plague. Dogs would start barking and howling when he walked down the street, and cats would hiss then disappear with a swish of their tail in a flash, behind bushes or up trees. These things, on their own, wouldn't be too much evidence of anything, but they were far from the only evidence that Max was unusual. A month ago, a couple boys had tried to bully Max at school. They ran out of the bathroom where it happened, crying and wetting

their pants as blood streamed from their noses and ears. They wouldn't tell anyone what happened, and Max just kept smiling and staring at them with his large, dark eyes. The school called an ambulance, and the doctors were baffled. They had to sit in the emergency room for three hours before the blood stopped pouring out of their bodies. They were white as sheets by the time it finally clotted, and the doctors had no idea of the cause. The two boys went missing a few days later. The case ended up drawing media attention. The FBI came in, but they found out.

absolutely nothing. It seemed like the boys just disappeared out their windows and then their trail immediately went cold. Tracking dogs couldn't find any hint of a trail. It was as if they had teleported from their bedrooms. Moreover, no neighbors had seen a thing. A couple months later, a few hikers found the boys' fingers growing out of a tree on the Appalachian Trail, over 50 miles away. The FBI swooped in and used DNA testing to determine that these fingers belonged to the missing boys from Max's school. No one ever explained how the rotting fingers had become quite literally fused into the tree, however. No one ever tried to bully Max again after that. In fact, the other kids gave him as much distance as possible. I tried to watch Max

when he didn't know I was looking. He was only an eight-year-old boy, but he could put on masks like a psychopath and charm nearly anyone he met. As soon as they turned away, though, he would scowl and narrow his eyes, as if he wanted to stab them in the back. But this was my son, after all. I loved him, and I think he loved me in his own strange way. Even my wife said she loved him, and she claims that's why she had to kill him, a strange kind of love, I admit. But I don't think she's lying. I think she did love him, and she feared what would happen when his ascension had finished and he sat on a throne of bones, crushing out the lives of millions of people with an iron heart. She feared the consequences for him, she said only for him, and she loved him,

and so she had to kill him and stop it now before it grew into a grinding juggernaut that devoured his soul and sent him to hell. Are you my true father? Max had asked me that morning as I sat at the kitchen table. I put down my coffee cup slowly, with shaking hands, then turned to look at my son. If it weren't for his aloofness and cruelty, he would have been a very beautiful boy. Instead, he radiated a coldness like the moon, an aura that gave light but no heat, a kind of reptilian, psychopath detachment that extended to everything he did. He would laugh when he saw fatal car accidents on the highway, or heard the news report about wars and murders. I don't think you are my true father, Max said, still staring at me, reading me like a book.

I felt myself begin to sweat. Max, that's ridiculous, I said. Your mother and I have been married, then where does my power come from? he asked. Why do I possess what you never will? I know I'm related to mother, he spat out the word as if it were a filthy thing, Mother, but you, I know not. I know not where my divinity comes from. You seem weak and foolish to me. At least Mother has the courage to admit that she hates me. You grovel and pretend and then, when my back is turned, you sneer at me and my essential. I know you do. You are a last man like so many others. Your kind is ineradicable as flees,

hopping all over the world without meaning or the will to power. You don't understand someone like me. You could never understand someone like me. Not in a million years. I don't understand what all this business about ascension is, I said. I think you're living in a fantasy world. If it were a fantasy world, he said, then the fruit would not be revealed. But it will be. Soon everyone will see, including you. I'll be with my true father and become the absolute king of this world. Small men like you will grovel like worms. They'll be crushed under my feet as I rise to heights previously undreamed of as part of my becoming. My greatness will shine like a second sun. People will remember my name with awe and terror for a thousand years.

He spoke like a much older boy. I gawked at him with an open mouth. He had a faraway look in his eyes, a fanatical gleam that sharpened his cold features. I remembered when Max was just a little boy. Did I know it back then when I watched him playing with his toys? Did I know what he was? I think I would have run screaming from the room if I had. Max turned and left the room, grabbing his backpack as the school bus pulled up in front of the house.

I watched him go. He walked with the confidence and straight back of a soldier. And yet, I thought I saw an aura of swirling black shadows around him. I blinked and like mist under the hot summer sun, I saw it dissolve into the air. I looked away, sweating and shaking. With trembling hands, I tried to pick up the coffee cup. It immediately fell to the floor in my nervous fingers and shattered. Fifty minutes later, I was working from home when the first of the ambulances and police cars raced by, heading to Max's school. My neighbor, a teacher at the school who the kids called Mr. Holland, told me the story

from his viewpoint later that day. I don't know how much I believed. At the time, maybe none of it. Now, all of it. The day started normally enough, Mr. Holland said, pushing his oversaworthy. glasses up on his long, nerdy face. The kid started streaming in for home room. Then the bell rang. I started preparing my lecture notes for first period. That was when the screaming started from down the hallway. It sounded like a girl being murdered, just an endless, pain shrieking that went on and on and on.

Abruptly, it cut off, and everything went deathly silent. The students all looked at each other, nervous. A hissing voice came over the intercom, a reptilian voice that made my skin crawl. It started talking, and I immediately knew it wasn't human. And yet, it sounded just like Max. I mean, he's been in my class for years. Isn't that weird? It was like someone had taken his voice and ran it through a synthesizer, to deepen it and slow it down. I heard weird hissing breaths as he spoke. Hello, the voice whispered, yet the words boomed through every classroom and hallway. We have a very special day planned for you. The activities are already prepared, and the festivities will now begin.

Don't try to escape now, that breaks the rules. The first of the sheep have already been slaughtered. Good luck, I figured some hoodlum had snuck into the office and somehow used the intercom while the secretary was out getting a cup of coffee or using the bathroom. I put my hands up as the class began to chatter, trying to calm them down. Kids, kids, I said, it's clearly just a prank. Please calm down, then the classroom door flew open, and a girl came running inside. She was covered in blood from head to toe.

She had deep slices across the back of her head, her forehead, her right cheek and right arm. Large, fetid drops of blood fell behind her as she ran, as if leaving Breggis. to find her way back. The wounds on her body changed colors in front of our eyes, turning purple and then black. Necrotic tissue began to spread and die within moments. Black blood streamed from the wounds. Her mouth opened in a silent scream, but only a choked gasping came out. Something had infested the girl, I could see it. I quickly backed away, feeling like it was a dream. Please, oh God, please help, she whist me. whispered, whimpering, her legs buckling. She fell to her knees. The kids in the classroom began to scream.

Please, someone, help me, her voice grew louder, her skin paler as the purplish, dying patches of tissue spread. She opened her mouth and began to vomit some foul oily sludge. It hurts, it hurts, she moaned, falling into the puddle of vomit. Isn't someone going to help me? I ran to her side. I didn't know this girl, she wasn't in any of my class as you see, but I knew she needed medical attention immediately. What happened? I asked. Who did this?

She got close to my ear and whispered. There's things in the hallways that shouldn't exist, she said, still whimpering. She coughed up more blood and black fluid, rolling onto her back afterwards and breathing hard. Her eyelids fluttered and her skin went pale. I thought she was losing consciousness until her eyes rolled back in her head and she sat up, grinning. Claws began to rip out of her fingers, black tears streamed down her face and that dark sludge

dripped from her mouth like diseased drops of saliva. Her body lengthened and her arms and legs broke and twisted. I could hear the bones snapping like tree branches during a winter storm. I watched the transformation in horror, backing away. The other kids were all screaming in strange. streaming to the back of the classroom. The girl hissed as black veins appeared all around her face and neck. She rose and walked towards the scared kids in the back,

her movements as smooth as a synchronized dancers, jerky and twisted, nightmarish in their own way. But what came next was far worse. Her body grew taller, thinner and more emaciated as it stretched up to the ceiling, towering over every other kid in a class. She must have grown to at least seven feet by that point. Her arms reached out, the bone-white claws sharpening as she struck out at the screaming row of children in front. I saw drops of blood splash against the back wall, and a couple boys stumbled forwards,

their throats slashed wide open. Their panic-stricken faces grew pale and bloodless as they choked and tried to scream, but only bubbling gasps came out. I saw the window was open, and I was on the first floor. I decided to run, to try to get help. I knew we needed policemen and medics at the scene, and I couldn't do anything to save the kids. Well, to be honest, I feel like shit about it, but I did run. As the screams followed me from the back of the classroom, I jumped right out the window and ran across the playground and scaled the fence.

But as I went, I heard a strange, shrill laughter coming from the intercom. And you know what? I'm positive the voice sounded just like Max. Max came home early from school that day, grinning and laughing. He was in a fine mood. I don't know what happened after the teacher left, or how many people died in that building of horrors. But I know Max caused it all, the first prodding steps in the path of his ascension, the foundational layer to his throne of bones. Mr. Holland had talked to Jenna early that morning, immediately after running home from that den of nightmares, and she had already put a plan into motion.

When Max got home from school, she gave him a gatorade with a large amount of fentanyl she had purchased from a random drug dealer in the inner city dissolved inside. She added some more sugar to mask any slight bitterness and gave it to the grinning boy with large, black pupils like smoldering coals. He drank it quickly, looking at her the whole time with his dilated eyes. He smiled and got up, but soon afterwards collapsed. Jenna found him unconscious in his bedroom and dragged him to the bathroom. She filled the tub and held Max underwater until the bubbles stopped. As my wife explained it all to me, a sense of loss and horror came over me. I didn't know if I missed Max or not.

His swollen, blue face showed without a doubt that he was dead. I took my wife outside and sat her down at the table, debating whether I should call the police. No one had ever told me what to do in this situation, and I felt like I was flying blind. I got up, pacing. I went to the oven and started brewing some instant coffee. Soft footsteps rustled behind me. I turned around to see Max, seemingly alive and well, but also changed in some fundamentally disturbing way.

His eyes had now turned fully black. He hovered inches above the ground behind my wife, smiling at me, his teeth. seeming much sharper and longer than before. A feeling of electricity sizzled in the air. I could see some sort of expansive black aura rippling around as pale skin, dark and cold as empty space. Goose bumps rose on my body just from being near that sickly aura. The water pot began to boil behind me. Behind Max, I saw the strange, mutated children from the school creep out of the front hallway. Four or five of them skittered about with emaciated, twist legs bending in ways no human leg should bend. Their heads nearly scraped the low kitchen

ceiling. Their pale, broken arms reached down to their knees, jointed in myriad areas. I could hear the soft cracking of bones now as they slowly moved forwards, a light, snapping sound like small twigs broken underfoot. Their blank, white eyes constantly dribbled ebony tears that stained their bleached, bloodless skin. Mother, Mother, Max said condescending sounding like a disappointed parent. You should have known that you cannot kill me except by decapitation or by burning my body. Do you think my true father would let a worthless louse like yourself kill me before my ascension to the throne? Are you that foolish and blind?

Jenna began to cry, refusing to look at her son. But I respect your courage in action. For that, I will give you a quick death. He looked straight at me. which is something you will not receive, my fake father. You are a weak, worthless coward and you deserve to die slowly, screaming yourself hoarse and pleading for release. For so do the screams of the weak sound as a beautiful symphony to the ears of my true father and myself. The deaths of the week will pave the road to a new world, he motioned to the mutated children behind them.

Their bodies have become so twisted and contorted that I couldn't tell whether they had been boys or girls. They looked only like monsters now, like walking corpses. In a blur, one of them ran forward and grabbed my wife's head. A scream bubbled in my throat as I watched, but it was over before I even knew what was happening. The thing used its crooked, clawed fingers to twist her head, snapping her neck in a second. Jenna's face was now looking straight behind her, the skin on her neck spiraling around in sickly folds. On her broken flesh, I saw burst blood vessels and rapidly spreading purple bruises. She gave a death gasp, releasing an endless, choking breath, her eyelids fluttering and fingers twitching.

Then she was still. Max gave a slow, deep laugh, a grating sound that seemed to rise up from the depths of his withered soul. His black eyes flashed with amusement and pleasure. Max grinned, his vampiric teeth shining in white, reflecting the cold winter sunlight streaming in from the window. The water pot began to whistle as increasing torrents of steam poured out of it. Without hesitation, I spun and grabbed it, flicking open the spout by pressing the button on the handle.

Then I flung it at Max, the boiling hot water flying out in a spiraling stream as the metal water pot circled through the air. It all seemed to happen as if in slow motion. I saw Max's look of triumph and amusement morph into a scowl of hatred and anger, but the motion had been so quick and accurate that he couldn't have moved in time. The heavy metal pot smacked him in the face, spilling scalding hot water all over his face and neck. He screamed and fell back, knocking over the mutated bodies of the children he had turned into his mindless followers. I sprinted towards the door without looking back, heading outside.

The constant stream of police and ambulance sirens heading to the school had stopped. Now dozens of black SUVs streamed into town. Men in dark suits with mirrored sunglasses stepped out. I looked back to the house and saw a few of the new arrivals running in with automatic rifles. Others headed to neighbors' houses, breaking down doors and entering without knocking. I heard rifles firing in hoarse, gurgling screams. The mutated children ran out of my house, their bodies riddled with bullets. They slowly lost energy as black blood streamed out of multiple giant exit wounds eaten into their bodies.

They eventually fell down on the streets and died with a last rasping breath. But they never found Max. They quarantined the town and went from house to house and building to building, searching for the source of all this death and evil. But he had somehow escaped. They killed all the mutated fanatics they could find, but the bodies of many children from the school seemed unenoughed. accounted for. I knew where they had gone. They had followed Max, fanatical soldiers for his new army, fearless of death and committed to their leader and his new world order. I don't know where Max went or where he'll show up next. But I know he is moving towards his ascension. And the next time

I see him, he will arrive in power and glory and crush out the lives of millions of people under his feet. The end.