The Giraffe Figurine

In the suburbs of Los Angeles in May 1998 lived two brothers in their 20s, Rick and Sam Smith. They had returned home from their Grandpa’s house in San Francisco which they had been clearing of his possessions following him passing away. He had many priceless possessions from his life where he travelled and explored globally. And one of the most exquisite was a porcelain giraffe figurine he found in a Kenyan village in the 1970s. The giraffe had always been in a glass case, which to the brothers suggested it was certainly of great value. For now however, the statue would remain in their house as a reminder of their amazing granddad.

However, on the very first night of coming back to their house, Rick awoke in the dead of night to hear eerie voices coming from the walls of his bedroom. The voices sounded faint, but most of them had been loud enough at one point to make him snap out of sleep. He listened wondering if they could be the neighbors, but then remembered the house next door to theirs had been unoccupied for years for some unknown reason, so the voices were certainly startling. They sounded like children, African ones, singing some ritual like songs, repeating the same phrases over in some unrecognized language accompanied by the beating of drums. Rick awoke Sam to alert him of the anomalous singing, but by the time he did, the voices were muted out of existence.

Sam told Rick to go back to sleep as he didn’t believe him when he said they were ghosts. He said Rick must have been thinking too much about that giraffe or something to wake up and hear that. Rick thought that theory didn’t make sense, as he wasn’t sure how you wake up from a dream and still clearly hear something that you never heard within the dream. Still, Rick was so sleepy he let himself daze off again. Rick then had a dream where he was in a dark, featureless void where he saw vague images of all sorts of people who he recognized from the past. These were people who had mysteriously and famously gone missing, such as Amelia Earhart. He then came face to face with an old African woman wearing dark red clothes with her hair tied in with rags. She spoke to him, but never moved her lips, she just sat cross legged in the nothingness holding her hands in a prayer position. Rick could not talk even when he tried to move his mouth or speak telepathically which was what she apparently was doing. The woman warned that there is a demon out there that takes the guise of a giraffe god. It fools mortals so that it can steal their souls and bodies and imprison them in the underworld for eternal suffering. Rick couldn’t say anything back so just accepted her short story.

The next morning Rick told Sam about his creepy dream. Again, sceptical Sam told him it must have been influenced from the singing dream, which made Rick shiver when he remembered it again. Rick spent that day wondering over and over about how his subconscious could have made up a dream like that, considering he had never had an interest in mythology or demons, and specially not that of obscure African places. He was aware your subconscious is that part of your mind you’re not entirely aware of, but still, did that dream actually mean something in reality? He had, and everyone has had dreams where you think something in it is real only to find out its not. The questions he asked himself awaited answers, but got none.

The next morning, Sam had a look of horror on his face. Rick asked him what was going on and he showed him what one of their home CCTV camera had caught the last night. It looked like Sam’s disbelief would be gone for the unknown occurrences that happened the other day. In the footage, that lasted five hours although was sped up, they could see moving only inches every few minutes the giraffe statue. The statue was behind the closet in the family room, and it slowly moved out on its kneeled legs. The night vision made the figurine look grayish-green like an alien or something, and as it peered out from behind the closet its head looked like it was staring into the camera, although its face was not visible. At the four hour mark the giraffe was almost fully out from its hiding place when it looked like it wobbled and would fall, but didn’t.

Sam was breathing heavily and shuddering, not that the giraffe was cursed, but because there might be an intruder playing cruel tricks on them. Rick however was convinced that the giraffe was more than just a statue while he struggled to remember something in his head that was trying to warn him about the giraffe. Not thinking the police would be interested, they phoned up a paranormal detective to come and help them after Rick convinced Sam it was not an intruder as the video showed nobody coming in and they had alarms anyway. He told them they should lock up the giraffe, and they recalled it had a glass box over it when their grandpa had it, so they put one over it in hopes they’d be safe. Both were too paranoid to even go near the animal and the detective would make it by the next morning.

They left the camera on as usual to film anymore suspicious activity. The intruding and horrific thoughts of what the giraffe really was constantly flooded into their minds as they tried to escape into the unconscious world. They wished it would stop, they wished it didn’t exist, but no avail. Then, just before it looked like they had beaten their fears to reach sleep, Sam hissed to Rick and pointed at the wide mirror in their room. In the mirror they could see, despite it being inky black, their faces and bodies as they lay in their beds, but also visible just on the wall above and in-between their beds appeared out of nowhere two large pear shaped eyes with thin lines in them.

The eyes were joined by a grotesque mouth that had lines for teeth and big lips. A small and thin nose then turned up, and finally the rest of an oval shaped head and two ears with silvery earrings shaped like knives. Rick and Sam’s eyes opened so wide they looked like they would squeeze out, and their jaws dropped to the point they could break. But no screams or shrieks were emitted from their frenzies; they seemed to be utterly mute. They saw the bizarre mask was only in the mirror and not near them. It began to move closer, hovering like a UFO. They thrashed to escape from their beds, but something was stopping them so that they remained cemented to their mattresses, whatever it was, it only allowed their mouths to move, but with no sound. They then sighted their bedroom door creak open, and on the stairs in the shadows they saw two tiny glowing eyes leap out of the darkness. The haunting song of the African children singing came back on in the background, as if it was replacing their would-be screams. The eyes edged closer, revealing another strange figure with a thin oval head and body, its arms and legs being short and oddly shaped like a deformed person.

The face of the little figure had a tall nose and a petrifying grin. It began to take one step at a time as it entered their bedroom. The two helpless brothers continued their useless attempts at escaping the unknown power trapping them as more pairs of glowing eyes crashed into the room like vicious cats invading, appearing under the bed, coming out of the closets and even from under Sam’s own blanket. Sam felt agonizing pain as a face with large teeth and eyes gnawed at his leg, digging it so deep his bones were exposed in a matter of seconds. Rick awaited his fate as the mask floated closer and closer to him, appearing to open its eyes wider and aim for his throat.

Then came the sound of something smashing downstairs, followed by ominous galloping and the two brothers eventually passed out from fright and pain. The following morning, the detective arrived but got no answer at the door. Concerned, he phoned the police who broke in. He immediately went upstairs, and was shocked out of his life so that he nearly fainted to see the brothers had vanished from sight, and in their room was a giant pile of blood, pus, bone and vomit on the floors and beds. He then spotted some huge balls of grayish-red flesh that were like cysts that grew behind Rick’s bed. When he tried to approach them while struggling to overcome the reeking smell of the room they exploded, sticking bloody green liquid over his face that caused him to scream like he was in the most excruciating pain possible.

His face was burnt off in less than a second to the bone. His skull then cracked and deformed so it resembled an African mask and the cysts and all the other shocking leftovers withered up and vanished. The police found his body, and they were terrified and baffled as to what just happened. They could not come to a conclusion to what happened to him, or what happened to the brothers. As they took his body away and made preparations to search for the Smiths, none of them noticed a small giraffe statue running through the shadows behind them…