The Dark Somnium - "A Stranger At The Door" Creepypasta | Scary Stories from Reddit Nosleep

Episode Date: September 15, 2021

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April 2nd. It has been four days now, and it still has not moved away from in front of the door. I came across this journal earlier today while I was going through all of the supplies, trying to figure out what I have to work with and what I might have to ration, and I thought the writing in it would be a good way to pass the time until either help comes or I see a chance to run for it. After all, since there's no electricity up here, I don't have a television or radio to keep myself occupied.

And even if I did, I doubt that I could bring myself to turn them on. Even the idea of making more noise than I have to, of really making any noise at all, fills me with dread. It's mostly due to the fact that I don't want to attract its attention any more than I already have and give it further reason to continue sticking around, and, admittedly, somewhat because I worry about being unable to hear any possible changes outside. This constant paranoia makes it a challenge to even try reading some of the books and magazines that we brought up here with us.

I can't really bring myself to concentrate on whatever it is I'm trying to read. I'm too distracted. Too busy jumping out of my skin over every creek of timber or gust of wind to really focus on any of it. I read the words and then the door crowds them back out of my mind. The sounds it makes during the night makes it impossible to do anything other than cats power appear in the loft, staring unblinkingly down at the door and praying to God to just make this thing go away already, or for the sun to come up so that at least it will quiet

back down for the day. Sometimes I honestly don't know which is worse. The tense silence during the days or listening to the door creak and moan as whatever the hell that thing is pushes on it all night long while endlessly, wordlessly screaming at me. No, the nights are worse. And I know it. And so I have decided to start writing in this journal, so that I'll at least have something

to do with my time other than just sitting here and staring at the door all day, just waiting for something to happen and praying that nothing well. The journal must be one of Katie's. She's always scribbling and writing in these things, especially when we come up here to the cabin, but I'm certain she won't mind my using it. God, I hope she's all right. I hope that she's found help. April 3rd.

Still no changes last night. It started its screaming a few hours after sunset, pushing heavily on the door, seemingly trying to force its way inside. I honestly don't know which is worse. The fact that the sound is so incredibly human in nature or the fact that something about it simultaneously makes it glaringly inhuman and unnatural. There's something about it. Some quality that seems somewhat familiar and yet at the same time utterly alien to me.

The vague feeling of familiarity frightens me more than anything else somehow. It makes me think of an article I read once years ago about something called the uncanny valley. They said that it described feeling a revulsion towards something that closely imitated human life, but was still obviously something else. I can't think of a better term for the sounds this thing makes. Each morning after the sun has come up and the thing has gone quiet for the day, I have removed my barricades and inspected the door, and so far it still seems to be holding up fairly well.

The hinges and lock remained firm and unbent, despite the creaking I have heard during the night-time's assault. The wood doesn't seem to be cracking or warping anywhere. I've braced it up as best as I could with what I have, but I don't really have much to work with, what furniture there is, a few assorted tools, a bit of rope. I don't know that wedging the couch up against the door is going to do much good, but it's at least something. No.

I think that it has everything to do with the quality of the door itself. My father really put his heart into it years ago when he built this place, and he built everything in here to last, from the roof to the door. All that had meant before was that Katie and I would have a nice place in the mountains, for years to come, where we could get away from the city for a while, a place where we could enjoy being in nature, in the smell of fresh air, and just being together with each other. Now his craftsmanship seems to be the only thing standing between me and I don't even know. Thank God he decided against putting any windows in place when he built it.

The fireplace still worries me, but I imagine that it must be too narrow for that thing to fit down. At least, I hope it is. I spent this morning gathering up all of the empty buckets, jars, and tubs that I could find, filling them with water I could get from the ham pump he built in the kitchen. I don't honestly even know why I did it. I really can't see how it would reasonably be able to tamper with the well or affect the water supply, and yet, at the same time, it feels like the right thing to do. Besides, the last thing I need to do is run out of water somehow. now, and a bit of precaution isn't going to hurt anything. If nothing else, it gave me something to occupy my time with.

There's enough canned food stored up here to last me for quite some time, especially if I rationed it a bit, but I hope there won't be much of a need to worry about that. I have to imagine that whatever is out there is going to get tired of trying to get at me or waiting on me to come out, or that help comes, but it's always better to be safe than I'm sorry. It's hard to believe that just five days ago, Katie and I were driving up here, laughing like we were teenagers again, talking about when we wanted to go for a hike and when we wanted to do some fishing and how nice it was going to be to get out of the city for an entire month,

and just how much we needed it. To think, that was less than a week ago, and now it somehow seems like a memory from another time, like seeing something from someone else's life. Despite how much we had enjoyed the drive up here, I had known that something was wrong almost as soon as we got out of the car. At first I could not figure out what seemed to be bothering me, but as we were carrying things from the car and unpacking, the wind had changed. A strange odor, almost a sort of musk, had drifted in and out of the forest on the breeze.

And when I smelled it, I had nearly dropped the box I was carrying. I saw the color drained from Katie's face when she came back outside and smelled it as well. She asked me what it could be while covering her nose with her shirt, but I told her I didn't know. I had no answer for her, as it was nothing quite like I had ever smelled before. It wasn't a particularly strong smell, or even all that putrid, but there had been something wrong about it, something invasive and unclean. You see, my father had been bringing me up here.

and on camping trips for as long as I could remember, and so I was no stranger to the smells of death and decay. I could still remember that once when I was young, we had been hiking and found a dead deer in the water, and that he hadn't been able to get the smell entirely out of our clothes for days. But this was something entirely different. The instant I had smelled it, the hair stood up on the back of my neck, and my stomach had tightened into a knot.

I had felt the overpowering urge to climb back into the car, start driving, and never, ever look back. The need to put as much distance as possible between myself and whatever was causing the smell. I had told Katie as much, and though it obviously bothered her as well, she had laughed and told me that it was only some dead thing out in the woods, that I was being silly and getting upset over nothing. Now, looking back at how pale her face had been and how nervous that laugh had sounded, I know that she hadn't really believed that.

God, why couldn't she have just trusted me? Were you just too proud to admit that you felt the same feelings of terror that I had? Or maybe it had simply been because it took us so long to get the time off from work for the trip in the first place? It had taken more than a couple sacrifices on both of our parts, but we had known that it was really going to be worth it. Maybe that's why she refused to go, and maybe it's how she finally convinced me to stay. And so, instead, we had continued unloading the car, unpacking everything we would need,

getting ready to settle in for the next month together. I had been unable to keep myself from glancing at the forest any time we were outside, half expecting to see something, though I could not say what, out there in the shadows. I had known that Katie was right, that something had simply died nearby, and he had yet, no matter how many times I told myself that, I still could not quite make myself believe it. I don't think Katie did either, though she hid it better than I could. It seemed as though the longer we were around the smell, the more intense my discomfort

became, and I felt the first aching pains of attention headache began to steadily spread from the back of my head. By the end, I think the only thing that had really kept me here was the fact that I was going to propose to her while we were up here. I can't even stand to look at the ring right now, and I know that I won't be able to until I know that she's safe, that she's all right. Until I can know that, until I can hold her in my arms again, it has become nothing more than a symbol of how much I might have lost.

And what a fool I was for letting us stay. Katie, wherever you are, know that I love you. April 4th. Still no changes to report. Just another night of that damned third. thing trying to force in the door, screaming at me hour after hour, all through the night. Why does it scream like that? Is it hoping that it can scare me out of my little hole here, thinking that it can frighten

me into making some sort of run for it? Could it serve some sort of purpose beyond my understanding? Perhaps it's intelligent and just derives some sort of sick pleasure from knowing that it's tormenting me in here. I'm not about to try asking it. I have enough difficulty just bringing myself to the door in order to check it for damages anymore. Just knowing that it's sitting there on the other side, waiting, it's just too much for me

to handle at this point. I know that I should man up and move the rubber stopper away from the bottom of the door, that I should be trying to watch it and see if he either comes or goes or just incessantly sits there, waiting day in and day out. I know that I should, but I can't bring myself to do it. I just can't handle the idea of those eyes staring in here under the door. That would have been even worse than the screaming, and that's already more than I can bear. I saw them once, and that was more than enough.

My headache has grown steadily worse as the day has gone on until it has become almost unbearable, and I knew that I would have to lie down for a while. Katie had suggested that it was most likely due to the change in altitude during the drive up here, that she knew it could sometimes cause headaches like this. Of course, I reminded her that this had never happened to me before, and that I had been coming up here for years now. She simply reminded me that I was getting old, and that these things happened. Eventually I settled for taking some aspirin to help ease the pain in my head, climbing up

into the loft and lying down in bed while she finished unpacking things and setting up around the cabin. I had made her promise to wake me if she needed anything, and not to go. too far from the cabin until I had woken up. I didn't even want her to go outside without me, but I knew that she would have been upset by that. In the end, she told me that I was being silly, but promised nonetheless, and I had fallen asleep almost immediately after lying down.

When I awoke, the smell had become a stench overpowering enough to leave me gagging. I cannot properly describe it, even now, after having spent all these days with it. Have you ever been down in an old root cellar or some damp, dark place in the earth? Perhaps a house that was recently flooded or suffered from a long leaking roof, that damp, musty, clinging smell of mildew and mold? There was something of both of those to it, added to that there were traces of rot in putrefaction. There was also a cloying, almost sickly sweet quality to it that was somehow even worse than

the stink of decay, something acidic, almost chemical as well. It was a dozen terrible smells all wrapped into one repugnant, awful stench. Finally, I could hold back no longer. I leaned over to the side of the bed and heaved onto the floor. Once I had finished, I called out to Katie but received no response. I felt weak and bewildered as I tried to climb out of the bed, and I practically fell into my own vomit more than once. I called out to her again, more urgently now, still nothing.

I began to cry out to her frantically. Nothing. I made my way down to the ladder to the floor of the cabin, and in my haste and current state I nearly fell at one point. I might have broken my neck if I had fallen from that high, and part of me wishes that I had. I wandered the cabin, coughing and choking from the smell, occasionally stopping to wretch and heave until I realized that she was not here with me.

I turned towards the door, stumbling towards it, feeling my panic grow with every passing second. I knew that I had to find her. I knew that I had to find her, that I had to find her and get her in the car and get us as far away from this place as possible, no matter how silly it might have sounded to her. As I drew closer to the door, the smell became steadily stronger, and I realized that whatever it was coming from must have moved closer somehow. As I reached out for the door, her. was overcome by a sense of dread.

I suddenly knew that I could no more bring myself to reach out and twist that knob than I could pluck the moon from the sky or spout wings and fly away from this place. No. Some part of me, some animal instinct residing quietly until now in the back of my brain knew that I must not open that door and held me back from doing so. For reasons equally beyond my understanding, I instead dropped down. and pulled away at the rubber stopper that we had installed upon the bottom of the door. You see, as the cabin had settled and subtly shifted over the years, a small gap had formed

beneath the bottom of the door. It was no more than a couple of inches, but still enough to let in a draft or a bit of rain if the wind blew the right way. So we had installed a bit of rubber along the bottom to properly seal it up. I pulled that away now, and despite how strong the smell was as it poured through the new I leaned down and looked outside. Darkness. Or at least what I at first took to be darkness, all across the bottom of the door.

All that I could see was pure, unbroken black. I was momentarily confused. It had still been fairly early in the morning when we had arrived and I had laid down. Surely I hadn't slept that long. I looked at my watch only to discover that it was barely past three in the afternoon, meaning that I had only slept for a couple of hours. I sat there in confusion for a moment, trying to piece it all together, and looked beneath the door once again.

The longer I looked out, the more and more I came to realize that I was not looking into some lightless distance, but rather at an object lying before the door. From what I could tell, it seemed to be incredibly smooth, and though I could not be certain, The way that it had caught the light from inside made it seem as though its surface might be either a damp or slimy texture. The first thing to spring to mind was some colossal black slug laid out before the doorway, and I nearly vomited once again. As I lay there staring at it, I noticed that a spot on its surface was becoming gradually

lighter than the rest. I fixed my eye upon it and watched with mixed horror and curiosity as a white object about the size of a quarter. seem to arise from within the substance to sit upon the surface. The only way in which I can describe it is to say that it looked somewhat like a peeled grape, except that it was entirely white. As I watched, Moore began to steadily surface, ranging in size from a dime to what I would estimate was likely closer to my fist.

All of them looked like peeled albino grapes. I laid for some time, watching these things, trying to figure out what I was. I was seeing when it began to dawn on me. I slowly slid myself across the floor to the other side of the doorway, and they watched, followed me in my movement. They were eyes. I screamed then and launched myself back away from the door, moving as far away as possible. Eventually I fought down my revulsion to come close enough to push the rubber stopper back against

the space beneath the door, unable to bear the idea of that thing watching me. That night, the screaming began. April 6. Nothing new to report, I'm afraid. It shrieks all night long and squats there in front of the door during the day. Yesterday in the afternoon, I finally managed to work up enough courage to move the piece of rubber to the side and look out through the gap. It was still there, but thank God I managed to move the rubber back into place before it

had time to bring about those damned eyes. I'm beginning to worry that it's not just going to be. going to lose interest and leave, that it's not going to give up on me like a bear or a wolf might after waiting for a little while. I'm beginning to think that so long as I'm in here, it's going to go on sitting there, waiting. I got to hope that Kelly got away, that she made it down out of the mountains and she's bringing someone, that she's bringing help. Unless she is, then I feel as though I might as well be stranded on the moon.

I'm running low on aspirin. I've been suffering from constant headaches since that first day that make the waking hours almost intolerable sometimes. It's at its worst at night. With that thing at the door screaming away hour after hour, my head pounding and feeling as though it's about to split in two, my heart racing away in my chest. Sometimes it becomes too much to stand and I pass out. Whenever I awaken from these faints, I feel a mixture of relief and terror.

Relief, of course, because I managed to escape at least a few hours of that thing's harassment and the pain in my head, and terrified by the prospect of what could have happened if I had been in such a state when it finally managed to force the door open. At least if I'm awake, I might have a chance to escape, to get away. Or maybe it would be better if I was unconscious when it got in here. Maybe being awake for that is the last thing I should want. I'm also beginning to suffer from nausea. I don't know if it's from the headaches, the smell, or just living in this state of constant

tension, but it seems as though I can hardly keep anything down anymore. Sometimes even looking at the cans of food is enough to make me fill ill. I know that I need to eat, that I have to keep my strength up until help arrives, but all I want to do is lie down in the darkness and try to sleep and to sleep. escape from all of this. Even that is becoming less and less of an escape due to the nightmares I've been having. April 11th. Katie is dead.

I know that now. April 11th. Katie is dead. I know that now. I am, have begun to worry more and more about the door. It's holding up fine for now, but how many more nights before it starts to let go? It's fine now, yes. but about a week from now, or two?

Because of that fact, I have been forcing myself to listen more closely at nights, trying to listen for the sounds of the wood beginning to crack or the groan of nails slowly pushing loose, anything at all that might warn me about the door coming apart. By doing that, however, I've also found myself listening more closely to him, to it. The more that I listened, the more that feeling of familiarity has been growing. Until finally, I knew that I must have heard it somewhere before. But where? The only thing I can relate it to is perhaps when you hear the Wilhelm scream in a movie, you

might not immediately know where you recognize it from, but you know you've heard it somewhere before. I had been lying there in bed, listening to the door for a few hours, when I had looked up and noticed a small black spider crawling across one of the beams. I lied there, watching it as it made its way across the door. the beam, enjoying this simple distraction from the noise going on outside in the pain in my head, until at last he climbed up into the shadows and out of my sight. Spiders of all sorts are hardly an uncommon sight up here in the cabin, and more than once

I had thought it was strange that I hadn't seen any of them around the cabin since all this began. Normally I would have seen a dozen by now, and silly as it might sound, merely being able to see another living thing, even a little spider came as something of a relief to me. I had never been bothered by the spiders we would find up here, even though Katie had always been terrified of them. More often than not, if she saw one, she would scream. The realization hit me like a brick, and suddenly I understood.

It was her scream. And that-that thing had been mimicking the sounds that I had heard her make this entire time. I don't even remember how I got down from the loft, especially without breaking my neck, but I suddenly found myself standing before the door, knocking and shoving the furniture out of the way, pounding at the wood with my clenched fists. I screamed every curse and obscenity I could think of at the thing, yelled every threat I could imagine. For a moment, I even considered finding something I might be able to use against it, maybe some

oil and fire from the lamps. I would throw the bolt from the door and throw the burning oil at the thing in the hopes that just maybe the thing would be burned to death. It was an insane, stupid idea, and I didn't care. I just wanted to find a way to hurt this thing, to make it suffer somehow, even if it cost me my life in the process. As I stood at the door, my body shaking with rage and grief, crunching my bloodied fist, I realized that the thing had grown silent at some point.

The only sounds to be heard was my panting, and the sounds of blood pounding my ears. Had I actually startled the thing? Had it been somehow confused by this sudden change in our nightly routine? Was it simply too intent on listening to me to bother continuing making noises of its own? The silence was broken by the sound of a small giggle. It was that small, innocent sort of laughter that is unique to a small child, the one that They seem to reserve for the discovery of something new and curious, or perhaps something that amuses them in a certain way.

If you have ever spent much time around children, then you will know the sound that I mean, and this damned thing squatting there on the other side of the door made that same noise, and in its own way it was even more terrible and obscene than its caricature of what must have been my Katie's last moments. I understood what this must mean, that a child, oh God, please know, it had been too much for my mind to bear, and I reeled back from the door, collapsing onto the floor and blacking out. The only good thing to come from the whole ordeal was that my unconsciousness went unbothered

by the nightmares that now seemed to plague me whenever I attempt to sleep. And so now I know that I am on my own, but Katie is not going to bring help. is gone, and I am alone up here, utterly alone with it. My only hope is to last long enough for people to realize that something must have happened, long enough for them to send people up here to check on us. I have enough supplies to last that long, especially with how little I've been able to bring myself to eat lately. All that matters now is that the door continues to hold out. Katie, I will always love you. April 15th.

It is making me ill somehow. I don't know how, but it is. I have no appetite to speak of, and when I try to eat, it seems as though I can barely keep anything down but a bit of water. Even more troubling, however, is the fact that even though I haven't eaten anything solid in the past two days, I don't seem to be losing weight. How is that even possible? How can a man not eat for days and somehow not lose any weight?

Honestly, I doubt that I would like any of the answers that I might find, and so I try to avoid thinking about it too deeply. My migraines are constant and agonizing, especially since I ran out of aspirin a few days ago and have nothing else to help ease the pain. Anything but the dimest light is unbearable to me now, and when it screams during the night, it is torture. I sit here while it shrieks and howls and sputters, pulling at my hair and grinding my teeth, thrashing around in the bed, feeling as though someone is driving white-hot needles into my brain.

The fact that I know now whose scream it really is does not ease my suffering. Sometimes now when I cough I have begun to notice small black specks like dried blood, yet another thing which I prefer not to think about too deeply. My skin has begun to itch incessantly, and I'm beginning to develop a rash on several different parts of my body, somehow similar to the one I got. from poison ivy when I had been a boy. My days have become a never-ending parade of misery, and sometimes I have to wonder if it's really worth it to keep going on.

When I try to escape this hell by falling asleep, all I seem to find is a different one. My sleep is filled with nightmares, each seemingly worse than the last, to the point that even the pain in my head is at times preferable to sleep. This night I dreamed that Katie was standing on a barren, black plain that stretched off as far as the eye could see. Her arms outstretched to me, beckoning me closer. As I approached, I could see things moving beneath the skin of her face and arms, like worms, writhing and twisting away just beneath the surface of her skin.

I tried to turn away from her to run, but discovered that I could not. My body kept walking towards this thing that looked like my Katie, but wasn't, and I couldn't even force a scream from my throat. At one point as I drew near, her eyes turned black and seemed to melt, oozing slowly down her cheeks. When I was nearly with an arm's reach, her mouth began to slowly open, stretching impossibly wide, and inside it was full of those riving things. She began to lean forward, and thankfully I woke up.

Some of them are like that. Others are stranger still. More surreal, bizarre landscapes populated by freakish creatures, things that I almost doubt you could imagine, things that I can't even begin to know how to describe. I usually awaken from these dreams in a cold sweat, my heart racing and my head pounding, feeling the need to vomit even though I know there's nothing in my stomach to vomit up. The worst of them are when I am in one of these bizarre places, looking at some of these things, and I can tell that they are somehow looking back at me. Those are the worst, and they seem to haunt me even when I am awake. All I can do is hope that help arrives before things get any worse, that I can last until

someone comes up here to check on us. I don't want to die up here in the mountains, alone with that thing. I don't want to die. April 19th. It called to me last night, pleading with me to open the door, to come out and join her. Dear God, it called out to me in her voice. April 26th. There is no God, but there are many gods.

There is no heaven, but there are endless hells. I have heard the flutes in the darkness. I have heard a thousand whispered names. April 29th. This will be my last entry. I now realized that even if help did come, even if they somehow managed to get me out of here, it would now be too late for me. You see, more and more lately I've been scratching at my rashes, unable to stop myself really.

As I scratched and dug at them last night, I accidentally tore open one of the larger blisters, and when I moved away from the torn skin, I saw that inside of it there was a little bit of it. was an eye, like the ones on that thing outside, a tiny white grape staring up at me from my own skin. I cut it out, but I know that it doesn't matter at this point. I know that for whatever reason it's turning me into something else, trying to make me into something inhuman. I'm not going to let it.

I've used the rope that I found to tie myself a noose, and I've hung it from the rafters up in the loft. It should be more than strong enough to hold me, or at least for as long as I should need it to. With any luck, it will be long enough to break my neck when I jump. I think I deserve that much. I am going to die. I am going to die as a man, as a human being.

It has taken so much away from me, so very much, but I will not let it have this. If you have found this journal, if you are hearing this, then you have to get out. leave now before it knows that you are here, before it traps you in here like me, I can only hope that I will jump from here into oblivion, and that there is nothing waiting for me on the other side.