Bleeding Cross - CreepyPasta

The sky was getting dark, but the city was now lighted by the lights coming from houses and buildings. The night was quiet, the roads empty: only a few people were out there for a nice, peaceful walk. James Nothely, a young man of 26 years, was walking on the big bridge that was passing by the center of the city. Under the bridge was a beautiful blue lake that stretched out for miles. It was a very peaceful night, but these days in the city wasn’t in the best of shape.

James bought a newspaper in one of the shops on the bridge. They were always open, and each evening James was there to read the news. But lately, they always the same: "Man found dead in apartment, Killer unknown". Ever curious, James continued read the article. "Young man of 34 years, single, was found dead in his apartment Tuesday afternoon. The body was found lying down in the living room, and the body was marked by multiple scars. The place was trashed, and the walls covered by X’s. Blood tests reveal it is the man’s blood." James froze. In the past few days, a lot of people were found dead, and most of them were killed in the same way, most likely meaning it was the same killer committing these crimes.

After some time of walking, James decided to return home. It was getting late, after all. On his way back home, while walking on the main road of the city, he looked at the buildings on his left. "What is that?" He stopped and stared at something moving quickly on the building’s roofs. He stood there, confused by the black figure. It was too dark on the rooftops and it was moving too fast for James to tell what it was. "Maybe it's just an animal..." He reasoned. Deciding to not worry about it too much, he continued to walk towards his house.

After reaching his home, James closed the door behind him and sighed. He had a very hard day today and the work stressed him out a little. He took off his coat and put it on the hanger, and did the same with his hat. He put the keys on the table of the living room, and then went to the kitchen for something to eat for dinner. However, he didn’t feel too hungry, so he only ate a quickly made sandwich.

Before heading off to bed, James closed all the windows in the house. The night was a little cold, and he didn't want to freeze while sleeping. He went to close the window of the bathroom, and it was in that moment that James saw that dark figure running around again. "That thing again. Am I having hallucinations?" James muttered to himself. He saw the same shadow running in the street in front of his house. He was really tired, and he blamed the sight on his tired state. He went to sleep and while he relaxed, he forgot about the stressing day.

***

The next day James woke up with the alarm clock ringing in his ears. Today was another day of work, so he had to prepare for the new day quickly so he wouldn’t be late. He was a mechanic and he was known as the best mechanic in town, and each day a lot of people were going by his shop to have their cars or scooters fixed and other similar things. He was to work all the morning and half of the afternoon, then for the other half and the evening he was finished. He worked only with other two colleagues, Carlos and Ron, and because of this he had to work quite a lot.

That day, all was going perfectly, until four o'clock in the afternoon came around. James told at his colleagues that he would be out for buy a snack for them for break. He went to the café not too far away from his work place and bought some cream & chocolate donuts, as well as three bottles of fresh water.

After paying, he exited the café, and before he could even start walking back, Ron went crashing into him. He seemed shocked, terrified and really confused.

"J-James! A-At the garage.. I-It happened-- Blood e-everywhere-- Come to look for yourself!" He grabbed James' arm, and nearly dragged him back to the garage. They walked in cautiously, and saw the horrible scene.

Carlos was lying down on the ground, motionless, laying in a pool of blood. "What the... How the hell did this happened?" James was getting scared. This was his work, his friend. How could have this happened so quickly?

"I don't know! I don't know! What we do?" Ron started to yell out of fear, having never seen anything like this. He never should have seen something like this either. All the walls around the dead body were covered in X’s, from top to bottom, and with his blood.

"L-Look James...!" James edged closer, now not too far away from Carlos’ body and smelling the metallic tang of blood. He crouched down and looked at the skin. Every centimeter of skin was covered in scars. Again, the scars with the now familiar crosses. Against better judgement, James and Ron decided to turn over Carlos and put him belly up. Upon doing so, they could see the little hole on the man's chest, from where the blood had been coming out. Carlos had gotten stabbed right in the chest and had died from blood loss. It was horrible...

James was really scared by all those things and Ron was crying and even had vomited somewhere after seeing the stab wound. What could only make it worse was the fact Carlos was his best friend. James called the police and an ambulance and after that the garage was closed for investigation; they said it would be closed for some days.

James was really shocked, one of his friends died today, without even knowing who had done the awful thing. He slowly returned home, and decided to search for something to do to forget it all. He didn't want to go out for a walk that evening, he was much too tired and drained for that. For now, he only wanted rest on the couch and watch some funny programs on TV.  But he couldn't smile. He looked at the photograph on the table of the living room, which was showing the three friends together. A tear formed in his eye and he started remember the good times they all had together.

***

CRASH.

"Wha-? What was that?" James quickly woke up, disoriented. He had fallen asleep on the couch, though he wasn’t sure when he had. All he knew was he heard a loud noise coming from the kitchen, and it woke him up.

"Was that something breaking..?" James got up slowly, quietly and went to see. He reached the door of the kitchen and slowly opened it; he was a little scared and shaking like a leaf. He opened the door fully and peered inside. James saw the broken jar on the floor, water splashed around it and the pretty flowers nearly destroyed in the fall. The window was open, so perhaps the wind could have done it. Big winter winds tended to do that.

"Ah, these were my favourite flowers..." He crouched down to pick them up. After taking the flowers, setting them in a new vase and putting them back on the table, James saw a paper attached to the wall near the open window. He walked over to it and plucked the paper off the wall.

"You - will - be - the - next... What?" There were big red words on the paper, but it had gotten smudged up and James was getting confused trying to read it. He looked out the window and yelled out to the air, "I don't like these kind of jokes, whoever you are!" He grumbled to himself, looking around the area before finally closing the window. He went back to sleep, trying to forget the mess this day was turning out to be.

Around four o'clock, James woke up again. He couldn't seem to sleep well, he felt like something was off. He decided to get up from the cozy bed and get a glass of water first before returning to sleep. Though, he knew that it wouldn’t be much use, it was already almost dawn and with the sleep he was getting, it’d be difficult to get back to sleep.

He trudged into the kitchen, but this time when he opened the door, he got terrified for real, seeing the interior of the room. "No... No, not this again!" He stepped back, eyes wide.

All of the kitchen surfaces were covered in blood. Walls, furniture, floor. There was a great number of those crosses painted everywhere with blood, all with different dimensions. Now throughly feeling the violation of privacy and threatened with his life, James decided to call the police, so he rushed for the phone. He grabbed the phone and started punching in the number of the police and then waited for the ringing. The sound never came. In fact, there was no sound at all.

James searched for the problem and found it rather quickly; the wires were cut. "W-What the hell? Who cut the wires?!" He put the phone back and ran to the door to get the hell out of the house. He tried to open it, but it was blocked or something. He started yelling, punching at the door furiously and ignoring the pain.

"DAMN! What the hell is going on here?!" He growled, searching for another way out. He checked the windows of the living room, bedroom and all of the other rooms. All closed from the outside and unable to be opened in any way from the inside. He went to check the windows in the bathroom, only to find it in the same state as the kitchen.

The walls were also covered with the bloody crosses and the mirror had streaks of blood on it, like someone had bled out right over the mirror... James was getting really nervous and scared. He didn't know what to do and what was going on. He remembered his cellphone, left in his bedroom and quickly bee-lined over to fetch it, though upon entering, he found the same thing. The covers of the bed was covered by the crosses, and so were the walls & all the other furniture.

"It wasn't like this before when I woke up, I'm sure... There's someone in this house..." He muttered it like it’d be comforting, but felt like he was more or less saying his death sentence. Ignoring the bloody crosses for the moment, he opened the wardrobe and searched the pockets of his clothes for his cellphone. He found it in his jacket pocket, but upon pulling it out, noticed that it had been broken in two pieces, only held together by a single, ruined wire.

"Stay calm.. Stay calm, don't panic.." James was breathing heavily and tried to think through his panic. Then he had an idea; the basement! The door that lead to it could still be opened, so he walked downstairs and into the dark. It was very dark down in the basement, the lights never working too well down there, for whatever reason. After his feet met the bottom floor of the basement, he inched slowly ahead, waiting for his eyes to adjust at the dark.

After some time, James was able to see better in the dark place. He continued walking, and then ended up meeting another wall. As always, those awful crosses were painted on it with the rust red blood. This time was there was also writing in the middle of them. "Having Fun?" it read. He shivered, both fearful and feeling a presence.

"Who's there?? This isn’t funny, just stop messing with me!" James shouted, desperately hoping for his safety. After some time in the silent darkness, he saw something move. A shadow, like the other ones he’d seen the previous day. "You again! Who are you?" The dark figure had disappeared as quickly as James had seen him. The darkness was covering it’s moves, so James couldn't see it anymore.

A loud noise came from not too far up; the door was now closed and James couldn't go back. The scared man turned around and around, fearing that something would attack him. He stepped back while continuing studying the place, and then bumped into something. He whirled around to see what he had bumped into.

"Scared?"

James leapt back, falling at the ground in his hurry. There was a guy behind him, but was too dark to make out his features or who he was. "W-Who are you? What the hell are you doing in MY house?? Let me out of here, leave me alone!" James started scream at the stranger, fear and anger making him rash.

"Sorry for giving you trouble, I was thinking you were having fun... Until now." The stranger started walk towards James, each step evenly paced and calm. He got up quickly, and stepped back.

"I said: Let - me - out. NOW." James was angry now and guaranteeing nothing good would happen. The stranger rushed toward James, only pausing when he was next to his ear. Lowering his voice, the man whispered, "Let's continue to play." James felt a terrible, crushing pain in his arm. The strange guy slashed James with a sharp, pointed blade. James' arm was now gently pouring out blood onto the ground. When the guy pulled back his blade, James again fell to the ground, holding his injured arm.

"Y-You're crazy-!!" The guy picked up James by the neck of his shirt and lifted him up. James' feet weren't touching the ground anymore. In that moment, a little light peered out from the high window of the basement, half covered by wooden bars. The light let James see the guy better. That strange man wasn't normal; a dark green hood covering his head, a dark black face with the mouth covered by a cross, black sclera of eyes with no pupils. James was more scared than before, that guy didn’t seem at all human. "W-Who the hell are you?" James said with his last, struggling breath.

"Me? My name... is Bleeding Cross. Try to not forget it." James fell to the ground, with a pointed blade going into his chest. The mysterious guy took back the blade, leaving James there. He walked through the door of the basement, and gave a laugh. "Too bad... The door was open, you could have escaped! But, too late..." He exited the basement, closing the door behind him and walked away, leaving his bloody footprints behind.

***

The news-agent of the bridge, took the newspaper and gave a quick look, that evening no one came from him for buy a paper. "Mmm, I see... He was one of my favorites customers..."

James Nothely, man of 26 years and single was found dead in the basement of his own house yesterday afternoon. James suffered a fractured arm and had a hole in his chest, done by what police are considering to be a knife. The crime scene is again covered with the painted crosses and blood. Police are ruling this as a murder, though the killer remains unknown.

Bleeding Cross could see and read the newspaper on the counter of the little newspaper shop from it’s roof, on where he was standing. He smiled under the cross covering his mouth and then left, a sadistic laugh trailing behind him.