I was five years old the first time I saw a monster die.

It was in my closet and to this day I think it wanted to eat my soul.

I had seen monsters prior to that night – monsters are everywhere - but this was the first one I had witnessed in close proximity.

I have found over the years that they don't like the daylight but are by no means impeded by it. If there are enough of them and enough negativity and fear or hate to feed on then they can do as they please in plain sight.

I have also learned that not everyone can see them. Most children can but for many reasons the ability wanes with age.

The night I really learned to shut my mouth about the monsters was the night Pete Baker got possessed. We were twelve years old.

I think that before that night, all the crazy stuff I was talking about got passed off by the adults around as a vivid imagination, thoughts running away with me, and so on.

The fact that something so serious happened to Pete made the adults stand up and take notice.

Of course no-one was interested in hearing my claims about spirits and monsters and things coming out of the shadows on the floorboards in the candlelight.

I got sent to a couple of head doctors and that was enough for me. I started to realize that people look at you funny when you tell them about the things you have seen. At twelve I was crossing that imaginary line between 'seen too many movies wonderful imagination' and 'maybe we need to get him some help.'

I think what happened to him distracted the parents of the kids in our friend group so much they never got round to taking me seriously before I realized I should stop talking about what I saw getting a hold of Pete that breezy August evening.

I am grateful now, for the most part, that I had such foresight then.

As you can probably tell by now, I have seen more than my fair share of monsters. Maybe it so happens that you have too.

Because of this, I have developed my own way of categorizing them.

Maybe I can let you in on that later, if I have time. Maybe it will save your life one day.

It's mostly for my own benefit to remember which ones I should and should not worry about and the places I should try to avoid.

Cemeteries obviously. Hospitals house more than you would imagine.

Certain places, again more than you would like to believe, have memories. They act like a beacon for the monsters because of the absence of hope there.

It was at one of these where Pete's life was irrevocably altered.

You know, over the years I've looked into my ability, done some research, and sought out comparably gifted people, although as you may imagine that in and of itself is a dangerous endeavor.

The point is this; I have never really been able to definitively tell the difference between Monsters and Demons and Ghosts if there really is one at all.

Whichever it was that took Pete, I haven't seen it or one like it since and I don't ever want to.

The kids I hung around with in middle school did ordinary kid things. Maybe we had a little bit less money that some of the other kids close to our area – the north side of Chicago by Lake Michigan is notoriously affluent – but we would never have known it at the time.

At the time of what happened to Pete, I feel like I had been going through a valley in my dealing with the monsters. I was getting a handle on how to kill the smaller ones and how to avoid the larger and more threatening ones.

Which is why it didn't really occur to me that what we were all doing that night was so, so dangerous.

A kid Ezra met on his travel baseball team invited us over to his place in Rogers Park after school one day to hang out.

Ezra had scruffy blonde hair, wore baseball shirts all the time and had these scuffed white addidas that he always wore.

Pete was quiet - never said a whole bunch - especially after he was in the car when his Grandad had a massive heart attack and ploughed into a parked Ford, killing him instantly if the heart attack hadn't already and putting his Grandma in a wheelchair – all of which makes what happened to him all the worse I guess.

Ashley was more like Ezra – loud, outspoken - always wearing sports gear although it tended to be knock-off stuff because his folks didn't have a lot of money.

Three of us went to the same school – me, Pete and Ezra - and Ezra's buddy Ashley went to a school close by us so we got into a pattern of hanging out together after class was out for the day.

This particular occasion didn't really start off any different than any other. If memory serves, sometimes we would operate like a kind-of rolling caravan, Ashley leaving his house first because he lived furthest from us and his school got out five minutes earlier, picking up Ezra then Pete then me because I was the furthest out from our friends but closest to Washington, the nearest park.

Other times we would meet at a gas station on Howard, maybe pick up some candy and soda and hang out, shoot the shit and generally just not do a whole bunch.

It had never really come up before but one night, I think it was in early October, Ashley was like 'my folks are at an event all night and my older brother is away at college - you guys wanna come over?'

I think we went for it mostly because there was no reason not to. We were always in and out of each other's houses as kids but as we got bigger our folks were generally a bit more circumspect about having marauding pre-teens bulldozing through their homes.

It was getting colder, although October can still be fabulously warm up here, so we were like, 'sure, sounds good.'

If you're wondering why he asked us and not his actual classmates, it was because we were closer to him than the kids he actually went to school with. It was one of those weird school zoning things were he had to go to a different school even though he lived closer to us than a lot of his class.

Ashley's family lived in two bedroom apartment on the third floor of a block a couple of streets over from Morse and a few blocks from the redline 'L' train tracks.

I think that night was a convoy night, although all these years later I can't really remember now. It's the nature of memory that some things are crystal clear and others are enveloped by the fog or time. Your brain keeps what it needs, I guess.

I do remember being surprised that Ashley's folks were still there as we were getting to that stage where sleepovers and house parties and so on were all to be a bit clandestine.

But not this time, Ashley's folks were all about it. They had ordered some pizza for us, left some sodas in the fridge and even rented a couple movies from Blockbuster in case we got bored.

I remember feeling like it must have been kind of a big deal for Ashley, because he looked pretty surprised when his Dad came in with the stuff.

We didn't watch the videos, but for some reason I always remember that Braveheart was one of them. It has nothing to do with anything really but I've still never watched it.

The evening started off innocently enough really. We ate, played a couple of board games, watched some sports and told each other some scary stories.

I can't remember what Pete went with so it couldn't have been any good. Ezra told a Bloody Mary variant in an attempt to dare us to play which in hindsight I think set the tone for what happened later, I told them about the monster I had seen feeding on a deadbeat outside the liquor store on the way to the apartment – 'Tommy, you're so full of shit all the time' – but Ashley got under our skin a bit.

He told us about something that had happened a couple floors above his apartment one night, said that his folks and brother had heard a bunch of banging and muffled thuds coming from a couple floors up. He said that his folks had not really thought anything of it, figured that if it was any real problem, the neighbors above us would have called 911.

Anyway nothing much came of it until about a week later when Ashley's Mom ran into one of the upstairs neighbors on the 'L' train who told her that there was an awful smell coming from that one apartment and that they hadn't seen the folks who lived there, a couple younger guys, for a while.

Ashley's Mom said they should call the landlord, which someone did later that evening. It turns out the two kids, cousins in their early twenties, had been murdered there. Seems like they were petty drug dealers who got robbed by rivals. When it turned out they didn't have as much dope or money as the intruders thought, they tied them up, blindfold and gagged them and beat them to death with a baseball bat.

As Ashley would have it, the robbers were caught toot-sweet, sentenced to death and now prowl the hallways of the apartment block after midnight wearing hoods and wielding baseball bats looking for errant kids out past their bed time.

That part was bullshit of course, but the assailants were caught and I think are still serving time as of this moment.

We broke up after the stories, picked over the leftover cheese and pepperoni pizza and grabbed sodas. While we were grazing at the dinner table, Ashley ducked out to another room then appeared a few minutes later with a box in his hand.

"You guys ever play this?"

He was holding a Ouija board.

Now you would expect here to be told tales of black candles and maybe robes and portentous silences and well, maybe at least incense and white candles surrounding the board in a pentangle but we had none of that.

We tried, but in the best middle school scrapper fashion, all we could muster were a couple of Yankee Candles from a linen closet in Ashley's Mom's hallway and one of those electric plastic numbers where you have to click a switch on the bottom and a little battery operated light came on.

It was exactly ancient coven of witches stuff but it served our purpose.

The candles gave off this weird scent of Vanilla and some kind of fruit which I think was supposed to be Watermelon and some kind of herb. Maybe Thyme? I have no idea, but I do know now that whenever I smell one of these scents I have to leave the room. It's a memory now. One that I do not want.

We discussed ceremonial robes briefly until we realized our options were limited to dirty bed linen or dirty bath towels and how lame that would be.

We had the board set out on the living room rug, a scraggy matted old thing that might have been red with while swirls once upon a time. Ezra sat with his back to the TV, while I sat to his right which put me in view of the front room cupboard door and the door to the hallway, which was a de facto look out position in case adults returned.

Ashley was to my right, leaning against the sofa and Pete had was facing me with his back to the yellowing paint peeling doors. I wonder from time to time if our seating arrangement by accident or by design.

The board was just like every other one you've ever seen in a hundred movies and TV shows.

"How do we play?" asked Ezra.

"Are there instructions?" I asked naively.

Everyone looked at me at the same time.

"I dunno – Ashley said it was a game."

"Nah, you just ask it questions and the little wooden thing moves." Ashley said.

"You played it before?" Ezra asked.

"Nope but me and my brother snuck out of our room one night and watched my folks play with some of their friends."

"What happened?" I asked.

"Nothing much. They were all drinking and goofing around and they had all the lights on. I don't think they were doing it right.

"My Dad's cousin tried to freak everyone out by saying he was our Dad's Dad's Dad and they shouldn't be messing with no Ouija board.

"No one bought it. It like Tommy here," thumbing towards me. "Everyone knew he was full of shit."

I punched his arm, which turned out to be a poor choice as he got me in a firm headlock with his pitching arm and punished me with a sever noogie.

"What should we do? What should we ask it?" Ezra chimed it, obviously the most eager of our group.

There was much back and forth about dead relatives, famous people including Elvis Pressley except Ezra nixed that on account of the fact that he read in the National Enquirer that the King was still alive and living in Wyoming. Contacting pets even came up at one point.

"Whatever, let's just play and see what happens," Ashley decided.

We all put our fingers on the planchette.

Ashley: "Is there anybody here?' We all burst out in hysterics.

Our host glared at us and we fell silent.

"Spirits, speak to us."

"Really?"

Ashley looked up at Ezra with the malice of impending noogies in his eyes.

Then there was a thump somewhere in the room.

"Is there anyone present?" Ashley intoned seriously, apparently unperturbed.

Silence, followed by another thump that sounded like it came from the cupboard.

The planchette moved again.

Initially it caused the usual consternation and accusations of 'you moved it!', 'no I didn't'.

Then it moved again.

Ashley seemed the most relaxed among us and tried to stay the course.

"Is there anyone there?"

We seemed to be guided to the 'yes' area on the board.

It was followed by a thump, thump, thump! At first it seemed to be coming from the cupboard but in the confusion and anticipation we became uncertain exactly where to place it.

Before Ezra's pleas of protest for us to stop there and then gained full voice, the planchette moved suddenly and jerkily guiding us across the letters.

G-R-A-N-D-A-D

Pete moved his hands away from the board. Instinctively I moved mine, then Ezra and lastly Ashley.

"That's not funny guys," said Pete.

"It wasn't us," said Ashley.

"I swear," I added.

The planchette moved of its own accord. Ezra let out a cuss then pushed himself back away from the board on the palms of his hands, Ashley hopped back onto the sofa behind him and I sat there frozen, staring at Pete.

We instinctively looked down on hearing the sound of the planchette moving again.

J-K

I remember it to this day. J-K, just like that. We looked at each other puzzled for a few moments like we were trying to figure out if they were initials or if it stood for something.

It did, and it turned out our monster had a sick sense of humor.

Just Kidding?

The cupboard door flew open, blowing out our couple of scented candles, and sending a whiff of rancid air across the room.

At first it was a shadow. That's how it got by me. That's how I didn't have time to warn the others to run. Then it turned fluid and moved like a shadow shouldn't move. It was inky but solid and with mass, sort of like the way a river runs at night in the starlight.

It stalked, almost like a commando across the floor, before pushing up on one arm and raising its skull-shaped head to look at us. That was the precise moment it dawned on me that we had made a terrible, terrible mistake.

I could see its eyes. They were bright red, like lasers, and then God help me - it opened its maw to reveal rows upon rows upon rows of pointed triangle sharp teeth, its lizard tongue lashing at nothing.

What happened next happened in a matter of seconds.

I don't know if had always planned to take Pete, or if it just so happened that he was closest to the closet.

Pete cried out as the thing clamped its clawed right hand on his right shoulder and pulled him onto his back. Then it growled at the rest of us before biting into Pete's left shoulder, using its grip to drag him back towards the closet.

Before we could react or at least do anything more that stop screaming, Pete was dragged back into a closet that seemed too small to fit him and the large shadow beast hauling him.

The door slammed shut and we chased after it.

Ashley got there first and got two hands over the handle but no matter how much he pulled it wouldn't open.

I still remember the dreadful screams coming out of that closet, that high pitched wail of terror, as we battled to get the door open.

All of a sudden it stopped. And the door flew open throwing the three of us, me Ashley and Ezra, into a pile on the floor.

At first glance we thought Pete was dead. It turned out he was only unconscious.

There was no sign of the monster.

Pete was barely moving and Ashley couldn't find a pulse when he first checked though that may just have been a lack of experience looking.

Pete had blood flowing from where he had been clawed and bitten and there were several more wounds around his hairline causing blood to flow in rivulets down his face.

Ezra had run into the hall to call the Ambulance. We knew enough to know we weren't supposed to move an accident victim but still we eased him out of the closet and closed the door.

Ezra put a chair handle under it just in case.

The Ambulance came pretty quick that evening – we were lucky that it was kind of early on a slow night – and Pete was taken to the emergency room.

We were never really able to explain to the authorities exactly what had happened.

I mean we did but they didn't believe us and once we saw what they were doing to Pete, we figured it was best to make something up.

So we came up with some nonsense story about him falling on a jug and breaking it when we were rough housing.

Our parents didn't quite buy it either and gradually discouraged the three of us from seeing each other after we had fulfilled our responsibilities as far as spending adequate visiting hours with Pete.

Ezra's family moved away first. I think they went to somewhere in Michigan. Every time we saw Ashley after that night he had something to tell us about odd things happening in his apartment.

Lights being on in the morning after everyone had insisted they'd been shut off, doors being left wide open including the front door, strange vivid dreams, and stranger noises.

He told me that a friend of his brother's college girlfriend told them that if a spirit board wasn't used correctly, if it wasn't closed a gateway was left open and anything could get through.

Apparently the friend 'closed' the board and then they all took it to a trashcan under the Morse 'L' train tracks and set it on fire.

He and his family moved several miles south by the end of the school year and I lost touch with him after that.

I don't really know what became of Pete. He was catatonic for a long time.

When he was eventually released about a couple of years after that night he got in with a bad crowd, doing bad stuff.

I think he used to block out the memories but the memories took more blocking that his prescription was able to provide. His family was able to sustain him for a while but those prolonged hospital stays drained everything they had.

He fell in and out of rehab centers as the memories continued to refuse to be blocked by non-prescription pharmaceuticals.

The last I heard, he was one of the many homeless spending their days under Wacker Drive.

As I sit here now all these many years later the driving thought forcing itself to the forefront of my mind like a tidal wave pushing against a straining dam is this - I don't want to end up like Pete.

I plan to go down fighting and it will be a fight to the death because I have no plans of being kept in their thrall.

I have seen too many things, but most of all, everything I needed to know I saw that dreadful evening the thing got Pete.

I have rarely been as vulnerable as I am now alone in this house since that night in the apartment at Rogers Park.

I heeded the lessons of that evening and protected myself as much I could, kept my wits about me at all time.

However they communicate, whatever word passes between, news has got round that I am here, I am alone and I am, almost, unprotected.

The monsters can sense it. I think it's like an 'I am Legend' thing. They are coming for me after all these years.

I need to get down as much of this as quickly as I can. For you more than for me.

Because the chatter outside is increasing, the shadows on the wall aren't just from the trees and I can hear something scratching at the doors and windows trying to get in.