Doxx by Brett Colby is an unfiction horror novel I’ve been writing for the passed year or so. the following is an excerpt from Chapter 6, the story follows a narrator who spends all his time online trying to figure out various puzzles and Alternate Reality Games. His uncertain reliability as a narrator persists, while his disconnect from reality and lack of presence in the physical world leads him to question if supernatural beings exist online.
Excerpt:
Instead of going right back online to check my post, I decided I should take some time to finally sleep. Maybe in the midst of this current obsession I could start to do things like a normal human again. But that was foolish, I should have known right then and there how right my instincts were, when I found out exactly how off everything was with this whole brownwhale situation. Now knowing that he was only a high schooler didn't sit well with me. Why didn't he update his family? What kind of joke is this? Definitely not one I've ever seen before. My friends used to mess with my accounts back when we hung out more, especially around that age, but usually it was something light hearted like professing one's love to a girl or just making each other look like fools. Going as far as pretending to be someone’s father to inform the world their son died just isn't something I could see being done in any type of jovial way.
While “pranks' ' have gone a lot farther than they used to due to the clout-chasing nature of the internet, the most horrible of pranks are done with the intent to garner a following and gain attention… So far this wasn't the case.
When it came up on DarkPitch and the film forums, Brownwhale shot it down right away and didn't indulge, didn't even explain it, just said he had no idea what the hell I was talking about.
He didn't seem to have any theory as to why anyone would post this on his social media.
He didn't seem to think it was even true that there was a post about his death. Had he even checked?
Could he really just shrug this off so easily?
It seems unhuman, there's something very very wrong.
I was thinking all of this while lying in my bed that night staring at the swirled patterns of my ceiling. Then as all these thoughts within my head started spiraling, they quickly turned to nothingness. I went from an articulate narrative of questioning what was going on with brownwhale and whether or not he was even alive, to not being able to form the semblance of a word. I began to feel nauseous as the floor underneath my bed appeared to be rotating under me. I turned on my stomach to try and gain some stability within my head. I had no ability to even ponder upon what could be causing me to feel this way. As I lay with my face buried into my pillow, the nausea only grew and the spinning sped up to an unbearable amount. I flipped myself over onto my back only to see the ceiling spiral once more, not just in the paved-out swirls that were imposed above, but a fluid motion of hypnotic mesmeric effect.
Even as I closed my eyes, the patterns were still there, just in my head, swirling fast then slow, speeding up so much as if to form a greater pattern in motion, only to immediately stop and slowly stall.
It repeated for what felt like hours but could only have been a few seconds. I was feeling weaker and weaker, until I reached a point where my frailty gave way too this warm heaviness that encased me; like a weighted blanket wrapped around me in the madness and spiraling in a way perfectly to form as I drifted away into a place where all was finally still and dark, where my exhaustion could finally give way to slumber within the crawling blackness.
The next thing I know, I'm standing in a field of short grass with a beautiful light green hue amongst a plot of ruins. Giant limestone archways decayed by time and spread out several meters apart, with their prior conjoining remnants laid about all around. I slowly spun 360 degrees, only to be shown an endless field of ruin.
As I looked up to the sky, I saw a vivid cascade of purples and black, blending in a way I can only describe as melting. The sky had no sun, no moon, and no stars for that matter.
The longer I stared, the more mesmerized I became by the luminous melting.
I began to embrace the beauty of it all; staring into this dark but light, black but purple sky, I felt a notion of peace and tranquility, luminescent perfection.
But that didn’t last….
My gaze soon turned from the sky when a strange sound began to catch my attention. It was peculiar and bizarre, yet totally relatable. Something I had clearly heard before but was now listening to in a new way. The reality around me began distorting - almost glitching - as if I was in one of my computer games and a feedback loop was breaching through.
Then, what started as one strange sound split dichotic into two distinct horrible noises. In my left ear, I heard a woman weeping, and in my right, I heard her screaming…
Somehow, I could tell the sounds were coming from behind me, so I turned and saw the silhouette of a woman, facing away from me, standing in the middle of a limestone building with all but one wall and no ceiling, open to my view.
The serenade of hell stopped as soon as she appeared to me, and I noticed she was wearing some odd clothing. It appeared to be a person displaced in time, or at least from the time that I know and have been alive through.
Her garment was a shroud, with the hood resting against her back - her brown hair rested upon it. I slowly approached but did not call out. For whatever reason, I knew it was a bad Idea.
I could tell she knew I was there - that I wasn't any type of surprise.
When I got close, I noticed her long black robe had switched to a bright amber, at what point between my initial spotting of her and now seeing her back before me I couldn't say.
Finally, I was able to muster up a “hey who are you?”
but she didn’t answer.
While I continued to watch her from behind, the reality started to glitch again, and she too appeared to be disappearing and shifting only to re-appear in either the same exact spot or one generally close to it.
I looked at my hands and was able to notice they stayed normal, as the world around them shifted and strobed.
Again, I said “Hey, who are you? How'd you get here?”
But I got only silence in response.
I then figured I'd introduce myself, but for some reason I couldn't remember my name. I knew what I was, at least I thought, and I knew this was not my home by the memories of who I had been. Finally in frustration of not knowing my name or who or what this woman was doing, I yelled:
“LOOK AT ME I'M TALKING TO YOU”
She didn’t turn around, but she began to softly make noise. At first, I couldn't make out what it was, but when I did, I knew it was laughter. A soft laughter that grew louder and louder. A laughter that started coming from her, but soon entered my mind, and surrounded me, distorting the already foreign reality I was in. I ran to her to try and get her to stop. I grabbed her shoulder and pulled, but nothing. No movement, she was completely still, solid in place. I took a step back in shock as all of a sudden a loud *crack* from her neck, her head spun around, breaking the bone, spun like an owl, her face now peered into mine.
I saw her, but this wasn't a woman. This wasn't a human.
Long and lifeless, a putrid tone of beige skin that was far too tight against the skull, the mouth was sewn shut crudely with what appeared to be a shoelace. The nose had only two empty holes and the eyes above them, oh those eyes.
I will never forget them. At first, it was as if the face was just devoid of them, just concave holes of blackness and emptiness, as I stared into them, they opened up, and I saw a swarm of sorrow, a collection of faces, a crowded hell within the blackness of the empty holes. Crowds of faces visibly emoting all spectrums of harsh and vivid suffering. Screams, laughter, wailing, sobering , and pleading. A pounding cacophony of terror, what appeared within those eye sockets dwelled in a unique and special unknown layer of hell.
I found myself screaming, or maybe crying? Or laughing? Of which right now, I'm not totally sure…
I managed to break from the gaze, to run away in a bolt of panic and shock. As I sprinted and ran as far as I could, through the field of ruins and grass that felt utterly endless until all of a sudden...I was no longer in the field, still running, but on the empty road in a New England Forest… The same road I skated the day before.
As soon as I was sure I could no longer feel that gaze, I stopped to catch my breath by one of the only lit streetlights. After a moment, I finally decided to turn around and make sure the creature was no longer behind me watching. After bracing myself for several moments, I finally turned around. While I was relieved to no longer see the demon, I was almost just as shocked when instead of just a long dark road of blackness and streetlights, I saw a car, wrapped around a tree and burning, only about 10 meters from where I stood. I then felt glass between the concrete and the sole of my shoes. As I stared into the flame, again laughing, growing louder and louder, until it formed a pattern, a familiar pattern. Rhythmic and constant.
That's when I jumped up, sat fully up in my bed, the sound of my alarm blaring. Seeing on the clock it was now 9 AM. I'd made it through a dream I would've never imagined, at least I thought I couldn't have…
Still in shock, I rose from my bed and hit the snooze button on my alarm, stretched a bit, not really for any reason other than to make sure I was now really in my room, and that the creature was good and gone. I then walked into my bathroom and took a shower, as I turned on the water, I began to laugh.