Peter's Shadow

They still, to this day, don’t believe me. Even my friends don’t mention anything paranormal around me. I have become obsessed with it. I’ve been called confused; a liar. But every time I tell somebody about it, I forget more and more. I don’t know why. Maybe it was because I was only eight. I don’t trust Disney anymore.

It was Saturday afternoon. My mom just got back from a flea market, and picked up a copy of the old Disney movie “Peter Pan.” She was supposedly shopping for groceries, but she probably got distracted. This was one of the only times we all had the time to sit and watch a movie together.

My mom’s always out shopping, and I don’t know what dad’s doing most the time. My brother, Trevor, was there too, but he was always on his phone, Facebook-ing or doing some other crap. I was the only one excited to watch this movie. So we all sat down on the living room floor. I put the movie in the VCR. The screen was a little fuzzy, but then the previews started rolling.

It was just some old Disney movie previews, but then something a little peculiar happened. On the title screen, it had the roof of the house like in the original movie, but Wendy, John, Peter, and the dog were sleeping on the roof in the air. Ignoring it, we played the movie. It was the same as it would’ve been, until it came to the part where Peter’s shadow came into the room.

When it landed on the floor of the room, Wendy looked at it (as she does in the movie), then the camera started to pan out to the sky. Then the most terrifying thing happened. As it panned out, you could hear Wendy’s bloodcurdling scream. My dad, panicking, went to the VCR and took out the tape as soon as it went wrong.

He told us it was just glitching, then told us to go to bed. Trevor and I, scared shitless, slowly went to bed. I slept on the bottom bunk, and he slept on the top. We both stayed up all night, too paranoid to go to sleep. About three hours after we laid down, Trevor was too tired to stay up, but I could not go to sleep. Being only eight, I started to sing my favorite song (“Day in the Life” by the Beatles) to help me fall asleep.

Soon enough, I did, but my dreams were filled with the horrific screams of Wendy and what Peter’s shadow might have done to her. Morning came fast, and my mom and dad told Trevor and I to try and not tell anybody about the movie. As hard as it was, we didn’t. When we were on our way home, we both thought we were being followed. We just ignored it, because we thought it was just the paranoia. We had a pretty normal afternoon. After our dinner, we both went to bed. Being not as paranoid or scared as we were yesterday, we both were able to get some sleep. But then, I woke up at about 12:30 AM. I heard something. It jingled and was fairly quiet.

Then the lamp on my nightstand knocked over. I was too scared to do anything about it, so I slumped in my covers and closed my eyes. After about 30 minutes, I looked up at the underside of the top bunk to see Peter Pan’s shadow right there, watching me! I ran from my bed as fast as I could to my parents’ bedroom. Them reassuring me and telling me it was just a dream, I still refused to sleep in my room. Of course, I ended up sleeping in their room for the night.

Sleeping with my parents, I always had a great night’s sleep. But when I woke up, the most disturbing thing ever happened to me. I was sleeping in the middle of a desert, alone with the shadow. Terrified, I ran away from it, only to find a seventy-five foot drop. The shadow was hacking into my brain.

Possessed, I hopped off the drop only to figure out that it was all a dream. It felt so real! There is no way that this could have been a dream. That night, I slept in my room with my brother again. After going through some counseling the following day, I had never been so unafraid of anything my whole life.

I tried waiting for the shadow to appear on the underside of the bed so I can confront it, but I got too tired and fell asleep. Waking up in the middle of the night, for the same reason I did the night before, I looked to see the shadow watching me. I then reached out to where the knife of the shadow would be. I got a migraine and stopped. I looked at the head of the shadow and stared. Then, becoming conscious, I crawled into a ball under my covers.

I started singing “A Day in the Life” to calm me and forget everything that had to do with this nightmare. Then I noticed I wasn’t the one singing it. Trevor started screaming, and I ran out of my bunk and turned on the light.

Trevor crying, I looked at the underside of the top bunk, to see a red piece of paper crumpled up in a ball. I opened it. “13.5/6” is what it said in curly letters. I don’t know what this monster wanted, but it got it, because Trevor was never able to speak again.