If you want to understand more about me, just keep reading. Though be warned, this may sound fantastic in nature at times. However, I can assure you that the events that take place in my life are far from fiction. This is not something I openly talk about to many as it naturally makes me look like a hallucinating man set loose without supervision. I may ramble, but I promise that I will only speak the truth. This series of entries will hold details of my life that my family has kept under wraps for generations. Why am I writing it down? Because I hope to prevent my future son from facing this fate; I write in hopes that my narration will let me see something overlooked in my experiences. I do not know how I will do it, but I am determined to put an end to this godforsaken curse.

I was born and raised in the same old house my great-great-grandfather first built for the family. I wish him to hell in times of stress for what he’s done to us, but I digress. My mother Eliza was always in high spirits, she was a devout Catholic, a loyal wife, and an attentive mother. She was nothing like my father. I do not know how she managed to tolerate that man, but that is beside the point. Though I resent my father and our family’s affliction he is still the one who taught me everything I know outside of school. I was not permitted to bring in people from outside of the home without permission or without a proper introduction; a precaution set in place so curious peers of mine could not learn our secrets. By the time I was eight years old, it had become a mission of mine to venture into everything off-limits. I sought access to any hidden doors and investigated locked rooms. I was just a boy who knew no better, but my father hardly tolerated it, so the key was to avoid getting caught.

This was rarely successful, but I never regretted it until the night I caught my father doing the sneaking. It was the dead of night, and I couldn’t sleep, I heard the groans in the worn floorboards and the thumps of my father’s work boots. It was nights like these my father explained the week prior that I was not to exit my room for any reason at all once the sun had set. I was supposed to ignore all sounds I heard and keep my door locked until morning. Mother always suggested I pray for my father during those nights while he faced something as unholy as the devil himself. As a child, this would work, but that night my beliefs in a boogeyman started to wear thin. I remember rising from bed shortly after my father passed and putting on my slippers to follow him.

I poked my head out of my bedroom door, watching my father take the turn to the hall he always scolded me for even looking near. I clung to the wall without a light to avoid suspicion and keep from tripping over myself in the dark. Eventually, I saw the door I never managed to find a key to at that point. Father lifted a rope from around his neck to unlock the door and with a slow turn. I saw him place a bucket over the threshold after leaving the door ajar. What was in it was a mystery to me, but the smell was rich in iron; I could almost taste it and it made my stomach flip. Then I heard the grumbling as the metal bucket scraped across the floor. Guttural snarls followed the crunch of bone and tearing of meat, it initiated a feeling of nausea in me so powerful I felt saliva coat the inside of my mouth. I covered my mouth as I fought the urge to dry-heave. Even my father had his jaw clenched, teeth gritted together as he watched the source gulp down its meal.

The inhuman sounds were enough for my blood to run cold, fingers shaking as I tried to trap any sound from escaping my lips as I inched closer to see the source of my anxieties. Foolish... I took one step too far and a creak echoed down the hall, snapping my father’s attention to me and warranting a quick pause from the feeding beast. Then unexpectedly I heard a weak cry, an innocent voice calling for help; it resembled my childhood friend Sarah’s and that was enough to set off the alarm in my head. Unfortunately, I was just a boy who knew no better. I ran towards my father to which he pulled the door shut before I could reach the end of the stretch of hallway. I grabbed at his arm, pulling with all my strength but was shoved back with an open palm on my chest and tumbled to the floor “Stay back! Do you want to be eaten alive?!”. I saw the flash of shock on his face after he did it, but it didn’t measure up to the fear in his eyes, as a clawed hand gripped the door jamb.

My father’s hands regained their grip on the doorknob, slamming it into the creature’s knuckles which elicited a growl. He fought to keep the door shut, but I felt the rattling of the door reach my bones; I couldn’t look away, frozen in place as my father cursed at the threat beyond my sight. I closed my eyes, waiting for this to be over, and eventually, the hisses and frustrated growls were all that we heard, but the door had finally ceased. My father swiftly locked the door, signaling a few thumps that tested the old door’s strength before silence followed. I did not speak until my disgruntled father gripped my upper arm and hauled me to my feet to return me to my bedroom “What.. What was that?” The hand on my arm tightened its hold “Everything I warned you of and you did not listen, what else could I expect from you?” I felt a pang of shame from his disappointment, but I still had many questions. “But what is It?”

Henry Abbott was a man of discipline; he did not condone my curiosities without viable reason, he needed the justification to do so as a person who assumed he was always in the right “You should not have anything to do with that beast until I cannot be a strong enough force against it. That means no information because I know you, questions lead to investigations like tonight, and you would be lucky to just be grounded when you could have been mauled by a monster. It is my job to protect you so you will listen to what I tell you. No more sneaking around, under no circumstances do you go near that hall even during the day. It knows you are my son and that means it will try to hurt you if you go back to see it. You will stay in bed at night for the rest of this week and any future week I need to feed it, understood?” I quietly nodded “Yes, father.”