Reader Submission: The Red Guy

“There’s this entity that’s been following me, and I haven’t the slightest clue why or what he wants. I guess it would make sense to start from the very beginning.

The Beginning
When I was around 5 or 6, two friends and I were sitting in my room, talking and playing. I looked up out the window which overlooked my grandmother’s backyard, some trees, and a few houses. I went back to playing, but something made me look out the window again. A man was walking through the yard. This wasn’t odd because my grandmother’s backyard is part of a short cut to a park. What was odd was the man himself.

He was wearing a red suit and a Gibus top hat. He had shoulder length red hair, not a natural shade of red, but a bright, violent red. I didn’t think much about him in general at the time, but it was a normal, sunny Florida day which means it was a little hot to be wearing a suit. I returned my attention to my friends, but then I felt a chill and looked up again.

The thing about my room was that there used to be a bunch of old yard equipment outside the window, so it was not physically possible for someone to stand directly outside it. Yet, he was standing at the window staring at me and my friends. I screamed, causing my friends to look up and scream. The man continued to stare with his red eyes. My grandfather must have heard the screams because the door burst open and the man vanished. My friends and I don’t really talk about what happened, however one of them told me that she and my other friend had seen him a few times. However, they stopped seeing him a couple of years ago.

I, however, have been seeing the man on a regular basis since that afternoon with my friends. I’m 20 now, and I STILL see him. He hasn’t gotten close to me until recently, and I’ve been seeing him more often as of late. It’s creeping me out.

The Red Guy Returns
I don’t even remember last night. All I remember is talking with my friends, let’s call them TJ and Laura, on Skype, but not what we talked about. I woke up with scratches of varying depths everywhere except my face. I also had a slight headache. My friend Laura wrote to me what happened:

I recommended that you write the story about the Red Guy on Reddit (probably r/nosleep) so you could get an idea about what he is. You sent it to me, and I proofread it before my eyes started to hurt and I stopped.

Sometime after 12, maybe after one, I think, you started to feel something in your room. ‘He’s too close,’ you said. ‘I’m not looking away from my computer screen.’ I head something in your room and from my end it sounded like a wobbling fan/buzzing sound. TJ heard the same thing. You didn’t hear anything, but you felt something in your room. TJ started getting out his charms and saying shit in Latin (you made sure it was Latin because otherwise it wasn’t going to do shit).

The first time Red Guy backed off, TJ said ‘Maybe you should just go to sleep and let him into your dreams.’ Red Guy reacted, and you asked TJ to say it again and that’s how you figured out he wanted to communicate. You wondered if there was anything significant about Friday, June 7th, 2013. We looked things up and discovered it was the day right after the new moon. It was the first day of the Celtic Oak Month (or something) when trees are grounded to the earth and spirits are more prevalent. The Red Guy backed off a little and went to the corner of your room. You felt him glaring at you, like that feeling you get when someone is staring intently at you and you don’t want to look up and multiply that feeling times 300 (your words).

Throughout all of this, TJ had been having severe muscle spasms, starting in his left arm and shooting throughout his entire body. I got chills and random scratches up and down my arms that soon disappeared. Both of us felt like you were in danger. I remembered a dream I had not long ago and brought it up every time I heard the name of a Roman/Greek god during our online research because we were not finding them in the order I dreamed them, but this probably doesn’t have anything to do with the Red Guy.

At this point, both of us had to pee which I found really weird. You didn’t want to get up because you didn’t want to look away from your computer screen. You didn’t want to look at the Red Guy. We sat there for an hour, you playing solitaire. Every score you got was 666. I was still wondering why the Red Guy showed up while we were on a call with you, but you thought it was significant. The sounds changed a little. Every time I talked it got quiet, but every time TJ talked it sounded like a buzz saw shrieking in the background. I broke first as I really had to pee. We went at the same time and left TJ on the call.

I got back first. TJ said that as soon as you left, it sounded like your entire room was vibrating for about five minutes. TJ doesn’t think the Red Guy likes him very much. You came back and had no idea where in your room the Red Guy was, but you knew he was there. While we (mainly you, every time I felt like helping you my gut told me no) researched stuff, you mentioned that you saw a shadow man on your way back from the bathroom. Red Guy was not happy about this, he was not happy about this at all. ‘He’s still hissing at the shadow, and now he’s hissing at me,’ you said an hour later when I asked if there’d been a reaction to anything you said.

Somehow or another you found information about the philosopher’s stone and the process it has to go through. TJ would probably be able to tell you more about that, but you when you came to the last stage and read that the philosopher’s stone should be treated with blood and fire (redness), Red Guy backed off exponentially. Then you somehow got to the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and you believed that Red Guy was one of the four horsemen. You thought he was the Pale Horse (Death), while TJ thought he was the Red Horse (War). I remembered that I dreamt of Ares, but it’s probably not anything important. You moved to the deadly sins, trying to get a reaction out of Red Guy (who is still hissing), but he was just getting antsy. You decided you needed sleep, and if he wanted to communicate then there was no way you could really stop him. You left the call around 3 something.

Does anyone know what this guy is? Can someone please help? I do not feel safe.”

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