Most men can't make it through even five words of what I'm about to tell you

M
ost men can't make it through even five words of what I'm about to tell you. For most, the horror is just too much. Others are just humongous pussies.

Either way, this is your chance to turn back. Before it starts, before those terrible five words.

Will you press on? My name is David Wong, and this is my challenge to you.

I'll give you a second to think about it. In the mean time, tell me if you know what this is a picture of:

Here's another view. Recognize it?

If you answered "a brain cell under a microscope," you're right. For the second one.

The first, is a picture of the universe.

The little bright dots are galaxies. Who's holding the camera? I don't know. God, I guess. A
team of scientists
published it.

Here they are, side by side. The universe, and a single brain cell.

Pics b
y VisualComplexity.com,
as seen in
The NY Times.

Yeah.

A related question: Would you be wil ing to spend the night with a corpse?

Just you, alone, in a pitch black room, with a dead body propped up on the sofa? Would you get a good night's sleep if I

made you share the bed with the corpse?

Probably not. In fact, I know people who would physically fight their way out of the room if they were even threatened with

having to do such a thing.

Why? I can't find a single example, anywhere in history, of anyone ever being attacked by a dead body. Dead people

seem to be the least dangerous people on the planet.

And yet... the only ones among us who don't fear the dead are those who've been carefully trained not to. Why?

Do you wonder why almost al humans are born with a fear of the dark? It's not the rational fear of sleepily tripping over

the dog, either. No, a child left alone in a lit room, when the lights go off, ceases to feel alone.

And even now, when you pass darkened doorways or blackened windows at night, don't you sometimes feel like if you

had turned fast enough, you could have caught a face there, looking back at you? And when you do look and see nothing,

the unspoken thought is always, "See, there's nothing there.
Now.
"

I can tel you about them, about the...
things
in the shadows. But this is your warning. Once you know them, they'll know you, too. And they're a bunch of assholes.

Scoff, tel me you don't believe in the supernatural, fine. Whatever. Just ask yourself, do we live here...

...Or do we live here?

I think you're almost ready. One more picture:

Check it out. That's his
ear hair.

Okay, let's do this. It begins with five words. I once saw a grown man, after hearing these words, press his palms over his

ears and run from the room, muttering nonsense to block it out. Five words, and you'l know what kind of story this is...

S
o there I was, naked.

I was in my bathroom, standing in front of the shower, half asleep. Naked, like I said. I was staring sleepily at the floor,

realizing that the hair on my ass was actually visible in my shadow.

So anyway, I reach out to turn on the shower and the water, it just stops in mid-air.

I don't mean the water hovered there, frozen in time. That would be crazy. No, the spray was coming down about twelve

inches from the nozzle, then breaking and splattering as if hitting something solid. Like it was blocked by an invisible

hand.

I stood there outside the shower stall, squinting in dull confusion. I'm not the smartest guy at any time of the day but at six

in the morning I have an IQ of about 75. I vaguely thought it was some kind of plumbing problem.

I glanced to my left and recoiled at the sight of a pale sasquatch thing in the vanity mirror, then realized it was my own

reflection. Do they make back hair trimmers?

I looked back into the shower, at the interrupted umbrella-shaped spray of water, resisting the impulse to reach out and

touch the space the water couldn't seem to pass through. Fear was slowly bubbling up into my brain. Hairs stood up on

my back.

Then, the spray changed. The part of the flow furthest from me slowly returned to normal, the water shooting past the

invisible obstruction in a gentle arc. The unseen thing was passing out of the spray. It wasn't until the falling water looked

completely normal again that I realized this meant the invisible thing that had been blocking the water was now moving

toward
me.

I jumped back, waking up fast. I moved so quick that I thought the half-open shower curtain had blown back from the wind

of it. But that wasn't right, because the curtain didn't return right to its normal shape. It stayed bulged outward, something

unseen pushing against it.

The curtain fell straight again. Now there was no sign of the thing, nothing in bathroom but the radio static sound of the

shower splattering against tile.

I stood there, heart pounding so hard I was getting dizzy. I slowly put a hand out, tentative, toward the curtain, through the

space the unseen thing had passed...

Nothing.

I decided to forget about the shower. I cranked off the water, turned toward the door and-

I saw something. Or I almost did. Just out of the corner of my eye, a dark shape, a black figure whipping through the

doorway just out of sight. Like a shadow without the man.

I couldn't have seen it for more than a tenth of a second, but I
did
see it. The shape, black, formless, like a walking ink blot. It was imprinted in my brain from that flash of a glance.

I had seen it before.