Blood-chasing Kyle (English version)

Kyle Williams, 15 years old. He lived in the town of Riverdale, right at the edge of the bridge. Everyone knows that place — the streetlights there go out exactly at 22:17. All at once, as if someone just flicked a switch. Back then, it seemed like just another urban legend, the kind the guys with that «I'm not scared» attitude would laugh at — until they started giving the spot a wide berth, avoiding it like the plague.

Kyle's house stood on the outskirts: a crooked fence, rotten planks, and steps that creaked so loudly it felt like the whole house might collapse any second.

Kyle was just a regular kid. Well, almost. He had long black hair, like the kind you'd see on metalheads and rockers; in the light, it shone with a blue tint, like a crow's wing. His eyes were light brown, and they used to hold something calm, something steady.

He wasn't a biological son to the family, but they loved him as if he were their own. And he did his best never to let anyone down. He and his brother Matthew were inseparable: they'd fix up the old bike by the garage, run under the same umbrella when it rained, sit in silence when words weren't needed. They didn't even have a proper phone — just one flip phone to share, with a green backlight that drained its battery by midday. Someone had scratched «M+K forever» into the back with a nail. Now Matthew can't bear to look at that inscription.

Then came the accident. Highway 42, near the old railroad crossing. Every autumn, people claimed to see a tall, elongated silhouette there.

That day, September 3, a truck swerved into oncoming traffic. By some miracle, everyone survived. But for Kyle, the miracle came with a price. A shard of glass sliced from his lower lip down to his chin, destroying that part of his face. I saw the photos from the car — Matthew showed them to me when things had already gone too far. The pictures were printed on cheap photo paper; the colors had faded, but the blood and shards still formed a gruesome mosaic. In the photo, half of Kyle's face was hidden in shadow. The impact was so severe that his skin and nose could never be fully restored.

They took Kyle to Riverdale County Hospital. That hospital had its own dark history: back in 1983, three patients simply vanished.

Kyle ended up in the same ward, in a room with a window overlooking an empty lot. Every night, he saw a figure standing by the glass. I don't know what to call it. It wasn't human. Too tall, too straight, with no face. It would appear and then vanish, as if it had never been there at all. But Kyle knew it was real. Even after the silhouette disappeared, he could still feel its gaze — a coldness creeping over his skin, like someone tracing it with an icy needle.

When Kyle came home, he wasn't the same boy anymore. The scars didn't just pull at his skin — they seemed to have a life of their own. When he tried to smile, the scar on his face twitched, as if it wanted to tear itself open.

School became a nightmare. Some kids pretended not to notice, but that was somehow worse. And in his eyes, there was now something that even Matthew found unsettling. It was like something cold, hungry, and foreign was waking up inside him.

At first, it was small things. Kyle started waking up at night and standing by the window. His parents thought he was just having trouble sleeping after the hospital.

Then he stopped eating. Not because he didn't want to, but because he said he could feel the food moving inside him.

Soon came the strange rituals. He'd line up little stones on the windowsill in perfectly straight rows, counting them over and over. If he lost count, he'd start again from the beginning. And if anyone so much as touched a single stone, Kyle would begin to tremble all over, his eyes going blank, like those of a doll.

Over time, the silence around Kyle grew heavy, as if the air itself had thickened. He started saying odd things more and more often. One day, he told Matthew, «It's better if they're afraid of me. That way, it's safer».

The turning point came on the night of May 14, 2007. The family was already asleep. Only Matthew couldn't drift off yet. He heard Kyle pacing back and forth in the next room, muttering to himself. Then everything went quiet.

Matthew got up, cracked the door open, and saw Kyle standing motionless in the middle of the room, staring into a corner. Suddenly, he jerked his head, as if someone had called his name. He whispered, «I can hear it counting».

Kyle turned around. And for the first time, Matthew didn't see his brother in those eyes — he saw something else. Something alien.

Quietly, almost gently, Kyle said, «Don't interfere. It's already waiting.» Then he walked out the door.

Matthew ran after him. On the porch, Kyle froze. Then he spun around and looked straight at Matthew. In that gaze, there was no love, no memory, no recognition. Only coldness.

«I'm sorry,» he said.