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The video rental place down the street was having a sale, so I decided to grab something to watch later. As I was going through the bins, I found a VHS tape that didn’t have any case. The only sign that anything was actually on the video was a white sticker with the word “Hammer” scrawled across it in black ink. I had no way of telling what the movie was about, but since it was only 100 yen, I decided to buy it anyway.

When I got home later that evening, I was dying to know what the video was. I put it in the VCR, and it began playing immediately.

It was night, and somebody was running down a nondescript road somewhere. The point of view was that of whoever was running, and for a few minutes the only thing on the screen was the camera’s bouncing as it made its way down the road.

“Pft, even 100 yen is too much for this sh*t…” I mumbled and opened my laptop. I left the video running in the background as I started messing around online. Out of the corner of my eye I could see the camera was still bobbing along, and whoever was holding it seemed to be getting tired. I could hear them panting heavily, but they continued running at the same speed.

I looked up when the panting became too strong to ignore. Something felt very wrong about the images on the screen.

“Wait.. I think I know this street!” I closed the screen of my laptop and set it on the couch next to me. If the video took place in an area I knew, it might be fun just to watch it for that. The cameraman eventually turned a corner onto a residential street.

“Huh? What? That’s the street I live on…” The video stopped for a few seconds and seemed to freeze on the front of an apartment complex. When it began playing again, the cameraman was standing in front of somebody’s door. The camera panned to the name plate next to the door. It was a name I was very familiar with. After that, he panned to the bicycle I rode home, which was next to the door.

“That’s my apartment!” I cried out when a loud BANG! came from my front door.

I looked back at the screen and saw that the cameraman was pounding on the door with a hammer. With every beat on the video, I heard the sound even louder coming from my door. It was perfectly synchronized. I watched the hammer and shook every time the sound reached my ears.

I was too scared to move, but I could see the door from where I was sitting. My eyes found their way to the door, which was now shaking violently and had a small hole in it from whatever was out there. I could have sworn I saw the bloodshot eyes of a madman peering at me through that hole.

I tore my eyes away from the door and looked back at the TV screen. While there were wood splinters obstructing part of the camera’s field of view, I could clearly see myself sitting on my couch. I let out a scream and jumped backwards, bumping into the wall behind me. While I was pushing myself away from the TV and the door, I must have pressed a button on the VCR remote because the video suddenly stopped.

Silence. I couldn’t hear anything except my own heartbeat and frantic breathing. The pounding on my door had stopped at the same time the video stopped playing.

I slowly made my way to the door and opened it. Nobody was there. I went to my neighbor’s to tell them about it, but they looked at me like I was crazy. I reluctantly went back to my apartment only to see that the door that had been there just moments before was gone. My neighbor, who was outside watching me to make sure I was alright, suggested that it was all a dream. I nodded my head and went inside.

I sat down in front of the VCR and pushed the eject button. The video was still in there and still had the word “Hammer” written across the front. I could see that the tape wasn’t rewound to the beginning and knew for sure that it hadn’t been a dream.

I quickly returned to the video rental shop with the tape and gave it back to the owner.

“You want a refund?” he asked me.

“No, I don’t need it!” I ran out of the store and went to my friend’s place.

I swore that I would never watch a videotape again after that.

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Centuries ago there was a Demon named Pequezbo.

It was nasty thing, neither male nor female, hatched from a dead volcano in Pre-Inca South America. What was overwhelmingly known about this unholy creature was how it reveled in shock. It fed on it. The kind of shock that bypassed fear and dread and instead struck with an immediate and pure terror.

Tales tell that Pequezbo had scaly pale hands which were riveted to its face by rows of iron nails. These ghastly hands obscured any skin, eyes, nose or mouth underneath–if those were even there, for no one has seen the face of Pequezbo. Or accurately, no one has survived seeing the face of Pequezbo.

What Pequezbo did is wait. It would wait for hours, days, even weeks for its victim, crouching near a road or a home, shivering in day or night, with those foul hands over its face. Undoubtedly, someone would approach. It could be a passing tradesman, a group of soldiers, a parent, a wandering child, anyone who showed concern or curiosity. It knows we are empathetic beings drawn to a person, someone sitting silently with their hands over their face, particularly if that someone seems pale, feeble or needy. We need to see what is underneath. It is the face that draws us, that guides us. The face. The face previews the soul of a thing. And Pequezbo knows this about us. When we approach, it strikes, ripping its hands from its face, popping bloodied nails from skull and skin and revealing its soul. That soul, that face, that horrific image stops blood, ruptures a heart and kills in an instant.

For centuries its horrors were blamed on disease and the natural course of time and of things beyond human control. An old man’s heart gave out. A solider discovered dead. A mother succumbed to illness. A child never woke from a dream. An infant dead in its crib. These were its conquests. Its meals.

Legend tells that a tribe of Brujas, or Incan witches finally captured Pequezbo in a golden maze of knotted ropes called a Quipo, sealing it in a unmapped cave near a rocky coast of central Mexico. Tales tell of it struggling for centuries, wriggling for escape, but never dying. And there it remains. Hands affixed to its vile face, hammered there by an unknown and unending evil.

As time passed and generations faded, the legend of this demon contorted decade by decade to the lie it is today. Mothers and Fathers tend to their children with a game now, the pastime of Peekaboo, popping from a hiding place, stepping from a shadow, or leaning over a crib to simply cover their face and, with a smile, reveal what is hidden underneath. Peekaboo. The grins, the laughter, the innocence of it all betrays Pequezbo again and again. It knows. It feels the twist of its black legend and a deep dark anger shakes those embedded nails and tugs at skin, desperate to wrench those hands away, reveal its rage, and feed.

Legend says that each time we “play” his game, play Peekaboo, we test its legacy and the Quipo imprisoning Pequezbo stretches and frays, inching his horror closer to freedom. This same legend says that should one of us deem to imitate Pequezbo and amuse themselves by playing Peekaboo–HIS game–with one hundred people in one lifetime, whether we know we have or haven’t, Pequezbo will FEEL it. It will feel you are mocking it and challenging it and it will target the foolish vanity that drives you to mimic its legacy. It knows it cannot leave its prison, but generations of witches hint it may be able to send its face in place of yours.

And when you smile at your friend, your brother or your sister, your child, or your baby–when you reach up and cover your face with your hands and gently whisper Peekaboo, in that instant, it will have found you.

And when you lift your hands away… the face you show, the soul you reveal to your loved one, may not be your own.

So, ask yourself. How many times have you played Peekaboo?

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My fiancée, Robert, had gone to his best friend Lewis’ house for a night of gaming and movies. You know, Guy’s Night In. I personally imagine a lot of manly grunting and crude jokes. Anyway, at around 5 pm, he kissed me and said goodbye. I spent most of the evening working on my art. Drawing commissions are a pain because usually, what inspires my client is usually one of the things that turns my creative wheels the least.

Eventually, I gave up and turned to my old standby – Netflix. I’d been meaning to get back to my Buffy the Vampire Slayer binge. I’d left off somewhere in the middle of the third season, and my ‘TV OCD’ as Robert calls it was making me have to at least finish out the season – you know, that ‘appropriate stopping point’ thing.

I was about three episodes in when I heard some sort of commotion in the back yard. I paused, resulting in Spike being stuck with a hilarious look on his face, and went to check it out. When I got to the backyard nothing was out of the ordinary, at least that I could see. I shrugged and told myself that it was most likely our cat getting into a fight. Leo can be an ornery little butt when the mood takes him.

When I got back to my computer, I happened to notice the time: 1 am. That made me decide to finish the episode and go to bed. After about 20 more minutes of dead vampires and witty Joss Whedon one-liners, I got up, shut down the computer, and did my nightly check to let in the cat and make sure the front door was locked.

Nobody in the family ever unlocked the back door, so I never checked it. Satisfied that the door was locked and that Leo was in, I prepared for bed. You know the routine: brush your teeth, floss, check yourself out in the mirror for any huge zits, that sort of thing. After that, I headed to our bedroom, stripped down, and curled up in bed.

I was just in that weird half-dream where you’re 90% asleep, but your brain hasn’t shut completely down when I heard the bedroom door open. I didn’t think that was odd because sometimes these ‘all-nighters’ ran short when Lewis had to work the next day. I sleepily murmured “Welcome back, honey” without ever opening my eyes.

Robert walked over and gently stroked my cheek, then leaned down and kissed me tenderly, almost like I was glass and would break if he touched me too roughly. Then I heard him walk around to his side of the bed and disrobe. I remember hearing the buckle of his belt hit the floor. I felt the bed shift under his weight as he settled in. I listened to his breathing smooth out, and then drifted off to sleep.

In the morning, I woke to the sounds of pans clattering in the kitchen. I groggily rolled out of bed and threw on a nightgown. I staggered out of our room and made my morning pit stop in the bathroom just around the corner. After a few minutes, I wandered out into the kitchen. Robert was making me eggs for breakfast. He hates them, but he knows I like them – especially fried eggs between two slices of wheat bread, with mayo and honey mustard. I smiled and kissed his cheek. “Good morning, hun,” I said, “How’d you sleep?”

He smiled and replied, “Pretty good, considering that Lewis’s couch is crap.” My brow furrowed with confusion as I said, “But you slept here last night.” He put down the spatula and turned to me, replying, “No, I didn’t. Lewis and I gamed till like, 4 and then I passed out on his couch. I just got home about 30 minutes ago.” My heart started to race with the first spurt of fear as I said, “But I remember you coming home around 2… you kissed my cheek…”

And that, Officer, is when we noticed the muddy footprints by the back door, at least a couple of sizes larger than the shoes Robert wears.

By Dragonkin87