"Payton, just calm down!" Skylar shouted at him. He'd been going on for a couple of minutes about how crazy this whole night has been. He took a deep breath and started again.

"Okay, so here we were, just chatting calmly." He started again. "Steph was just talking, trying to keep her mind off of the pain I think. Then all of a sudden we hear someone knocking on the window, so we both jump and look at who it is." He shook his head, his eyes wide.

"It wasn't human. I mean, it kind of looked like a guy, but he had no face. It was just black. And I don't mean dark skinned, like it was pitch black. And his right arm didn't have a hand. It had this crazy, insane, like..." He struggled for the right word.

"Okay, this is going to sound crazy but he had this tentacle for a hand!" Payton started breathing quickly and unevenly again. Skylar quickly tried to calm him down.

"Payton, it's okay. It was probably just a trick of the light. I mean, the moon isn't shining very brightly tonight and you have seen a lot of movies." Payton stopped the harsh breathing and seemed to calm down again.

"Yeah, maybe it wasn't real." He almost wished he had had a drink before, then he could blame all of this insanity on the fact that he was drunk. "But it gets worse."

"The tentacle on the dude's arm was way too big to fit into the car's air vents, right? Like it was the size of a baseball bat. But it must've, uh, flattened out? Or something, because it totally fit through it and entered the Jeep." Payton pointed to the vents where the air conditioning and heat comes from.

"Then it pressed the unlock button and the guy, the thing opened my door and swung a big tree branch over his head. Then he swung it down and knocked me out." Payton rubbed the red gnash on his head, close to his right eye. Skylar nodded.

"Right. Then when you woke up Stephanie was gone?" She asked and Payton nodded.

"I have no idea where it went with her or why it didn't take me too." He looked down and took a shaky breath. "I mean, she was hurt and that thing took her? What the hell is it going to do with her?"

Scenes of terrible things happening to Stephanie entered Payton's mind and he quickly shut them out. The last thing he needed is to totally loose it again and freak out.

"I have no idea." Skylar ran a hand through her hair quickly. "But it'll be okay. Ty and Claire are on the hunt for her right now and as soon as we find her, we'll run back home. Okay?"

Payton nodded, but he wasn't convinced. They were dealing with some sort of inhuman being that had no face. He didn't think it would be that easy to find her, let alone escape this place with her.

Saturday, 11:21 PM

Stephanie must've pulled on those bars for at least ten minutes, but she knew it was just a waste of time. There was no way she could've pulled them apart when she was sober, much less when she was hungover. Just as she sat down and tried to think of some other way out, she could hear faint footsteps getting closer to the door across the room from her.

She stood up and decided that she was going to be brave. Whoever walks through that door is most definitely the person that kidnapped her and she was determined not to show any fear. Her heart thumped against her chest as the footsteps drew closer. In no time at all, the door swung open and Steph got a good look at who it was. So, the only sensible thing coming to mind, Stephanie screamed.

She quickly backed up against the wall as far away she could and gazed in absolute horrible at what stood in front of her.

It didn't have a face. It was covered in a dark shade of black that was darker than anything she had ever seen before. And worst of all, it had no hand. It had three wiggling tentacles on its right arm. It had the stature of a human man, but that was all. There was almost nothing to make her believe that this was a human being.

It crept up to the bars and Stephanie tried not to scream again. Then it did something that totally shocked Steph. It held out a phone. It was an older version of an iPhone and it was set on a video. For a couple of moments, Stephanie just started at the phone then at the creature.

The creature thrust the phone outwards again and Stephanie got the impression it wanted her to take it. But she shook her head vigorously and tried to push back into the wall further. No way was she going to do what this thing wanted her to do. The thing seemed to shake it's head and held out it's tentacled arm through the metal bars.

Within almost no time at all, the tentacles shot out and wrapped themselves around Stephanie. She screamed as loudly as she could, but it soon covered her mouth with a black tentacle. Then they retreated back to the creature and slammed Stephanie into the bars. There was a tentacle wrapped around her head and mouth, but she could breath through her nose and she could still see.

There was one wrapped around her arms and midsection; making it impossible for her to move. Then the third one wrapped around her wrists and waist. Stephanie struggled as hard as she could to get free, but she just couldn't. This thing had a death grip on her.

Her eyes started to fill with tears as she feared the worst, but all the creature did was hold the phone out in front of her so she could see. The video began.

"If you are watching this," A young man with brown hair and blue eyes said, obviously quite freaked out. "Then I'm already gone. The Darkness has got to me and I am no longer in control of myself." The man sighed.

"Let me explain. About a year ago, my wife was killed in a car accident. The driver was drunk and ran right into her, but somehow the judge found him innocent. He walked away with no charges and I walked away with no justice for my wife." He shook his head and raised his fist, clearly very angry. "I wanted to kill that man! Make him pay!" The man in the video closed his eyes and sighed once again.

"I used to be so angry. And that's how it got me. The Darkness reached out to me and spoke to me. It told me all the things I wanted to hear and I fell right for it. It told me that it could give me the power to make that man pay for what he'd done and to get justice for my wife. I took the deal, but I didn't realize exactly what it meant."

"You see, my name is Gene McCarter and I was a scientist working on the burnt town in the woods of Edwin." When the man said that, Stephanie remembered hearing about a car accident on the news a couple of years ago. She remembered because that name McCarter seemed so unique to her. "I was working on uncovering the secret of what killed the townspeople. We all thought it was a mysterious gas, but that wasn't it. It was the Darkness! This area has been thick in Dark energy and it probably always will be."

"Anyway, the Darkness promised to help me achieve my goal of seeing justice for my wife and I believed it. It gave me excellent abilities. I could outstretch my arms and blend in with the dark perfectly. But after a couple of weeks, I noticed a change. It took longer for the abilities to go away. They always came at night and they left in the sun. The only reason why I don't look like a horrible mess of black energy is because I've edited the video. Trust me, you don't want to see what I truly look like right now. I had no way of fixing it, so I had to disappear. I became part of the Darkness."

"I slowly was devoured by this curse of a power and soon I couldn't control my actions. I built a cage to stop me from doing something horrible." The man shivered.

"I've realized that at midnight, my powers get too energized to control anymore. I lock myself in this cage and watch all the destruction I cause when I escape. It truly is a horrible fate." McCarter looked down and had a moment of silence.

"I've done some horrible things. I couldn't control it and was forced to watch." He shook his head. "If you see this please, I beg you. Leave now. Leave before midnight. Get somewhere safe! And never give in to the Darkness." The video ended and Stephanie could see the time on the phone. She was shocked to see that it was 11:29 PM.