The Midnight Man

The clock on the wall didn’t tick. It hissed.

It was exactly 11:59 PM, and the entire house was pitch black. Aaiz sat cross-legged on his bedroom floor, his heart hammering against his ribs. In front of him sat a dusty, antique wooden box he had found hidden deep inside the crawlspace under the stairs.

Written on the lid in faded, scratched-out paint were the words: DO NOT OPEN AT MIDNIGHT.

But Aaiz loved horror. He loved the chill that crawled up his spine when the house got quiet.

Creak.

The long hand of the clock snapped to twelve. Midnight.

Aaiz took a deep breath and lifted the heavy wooden lid. Inside, there was no treasure. There was only an old, cold, brass key and a single piece of yellowed notebook paper. Written on it in shaky black ink was a warning:

He is made of shadow. He walks through the walls. If your candle goes out, the Midnight Man calls. You must survive until 3:33 AM.

Suddenly, the light bulb in his bedroom ceiling didn’t just turn off—it shattered with a loud POP!

Total, heavy darkness slammed down into the room.

Aaiz scrambled backward, his hands shaking as he grabbed his flashlight. He clicked the button. Click. Click. Nothing. The batteries were completely dead.

Then, he heard it.

Tap... tap... tap...

The sound wasn’t coming from the hallway. It was coming from inside the wall right behind his bed.

The wallpaper began to stretch outward, as if something flat and freezing cold was trying to push its way through from the other side. A shadow, darker than the rest of the dark room, detached itself from the wall.

It grew taller and taller, reaching all the way to the ceiling. The entity wore a tattered, shadowy trench coat and a wide, crooked top hat. Where its face should have been, there were only two wide, unblinking eyes that glowed with a pale, ghostly white light.

It was the Midnight Man.

The room turned so freezing cold that Aaiz could see his own breath misting in the air. The shadow figure didn’t speak with a mouth. Instead, a chilling, echoing whisper filled the room, sounding like a thousand dead leaves scraping across concrete.

“The game has begun...” the whisper hissed. “You have three hours to hide. If my shadow touches your feet, you belong to midnight.”

The Midnight Man raised a long, smoky arm and pointed toward the bedroom door. Slowly, the door creaked open all by itself, revealing the long, pitch-black hallway of the house.

From the darkness of the hallway, Aaiz heard the sound of slow, heavy footsteps walking up the stairs. Thud... thud... thud...

He was trapped between the shadow in his room and whatever was walking up the stairs.