It was the day after my twelfth birthday. I got a PlayStation 3. My friend, TJ, and I were having a sleepover while my mom was on a business trip. We were having fun playing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.
It’s three in the morning? Wow, I thought to myself.
“CRAP!” TJ screamed, dying in the game.
“Man, come on! You spilt soda all over my carpet!” I said, annoyed.
“Oh… Uh… My bad. I’m getting tired of this game, we should go for a walk,” he suggested.
I nodded my head in agreement. Walking around at night is always fun.
TJ turned off my PS3 and we put our shoes on.
This town was huge. Street lights poured over us. TJ and I both had an eerie feeling. A very chilling breeze swept through.
“Actually, we should go home,” TJ announced. I could see the fear in his eyes.
“Don’t be such a coward.”
Something caught my eye.
“What is that? It looks like a disc,” I asked TJ. He shrugged.
I hesitantly walked towards it.
“It IS a disc. It has writing on it. What does it say?”
TJ could make out a few words.
Andee’s 9th birthday
My stomach turned. Just the thought of it freaked me out. I didn’t know why.
We decided we should go back. The disc bounced around in my pant pocket.
“Do you want to watch it, TJ?” I had asked. Once again, he shrugged. I could see my house.
When we arrived, we got a few sodas out of the refrigerator and headed to my room.
“I’m so excited to see what the video is!” TJ said.
I popped the disc into my PS3. Music began playing.
The boy’s face seemed familiar. After studying it, I realized who it was. Andee had gone missing in 1998, 10 years before.
A chill ran up my spine. Andee was a boy with down syndrome who disappeared December 7th, 1998.
“TJ,” I whispered. “Do you know who that is?”
“Yeah,” he replied, his voice breaking.
The video started off with Andee eating cake. Led Zeppelin’s Stairway to Heaven was playing in the background. After a while, the sound became distorted. I was complete freaked out. TJ was, too.
The video cut to text on the screen.
01011001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01110111 01101001 01101100 01101100 00100000 01101110 01100101 01110110 01100101 01110010 00100000 01100110 01101001 01101110 01100100 00100000 01101000 01101001 01101101 00101110 00100000 01001001 00100000 01101000 01100001 01110110 01100101 00100000 01110111 01101111 01101110 00101110 00100000 00100000 01001000 01100001 01101000 01100001 00100000 00100000.
Neither of us knew what it meant.
“Oh, god!” TJ cried.
There was a body on the screen. It was Andee’s. It was obvious that he had been tortured. The sound stopped for a few seconds, before playing Stairway to Heaven backwards.
I looked over at TJ. He was foaming from the mouth.
“TJ?! OH MY GOSH ARE YOU OKAY?!”
He nodded his head. I glanced at the TV, and a video of Andee being sexually abused was playing. I just stood there, stunned.
Again, the video switched. This time, there were a bunch of flashing images. One of them was a face. Andee’s bloody, destroyed face.
There was a man who was wearing a mask. He was the one beating Andee.
“I… I’m traumatized,” TJ said, shocked. He was no longer foaming from the mouth.
I couldn’t take it anymore. I removed the disc, but the video was still playing. Every second, the video became more gruesome.
The audio from the video changed again. A child’s voice began saying, “There is no god,” over and over again.
A series of strange images played once again. It paused on one. I could not make out what it was. A map appeared on the TV, with arrows pointing towards an abandoned hospital.
TJ called the police. He told them about everything that occurred in the video, including the map. A few police officers went to the marked area on the map. They invited us to go investigate.
What I saw was traumatizing. On the 7th floor, I could smell a disgusting odor.
“Stay back,” Officer Canada ordered.
TJ was behind him. My curiosity got the best of me. I went inside the room, and turned on my flashlight. Andee’s body was on the floor, and there was another body, hanging from a rope.
“Wait… that’s the mask the guy was wearing!” I said. Officer Canada took off the mask. It was Andee’s dad, who had also gone missing.
We all knew what had happened. Andee was tortured and murdered by his own father who later committed suicide.
For the next 20 nights, TJ and I had nightmares about Andee.
The case was finally closed.
