The Cereal Smile

The night of May 2nd, 2008, started like any other in the dusty town of Pemberton. My friends and I, fresh out of high school, had spent the evening in my basement, trading urban legends and ghost stories over cheap soda. We laughed at the absurdity of it all, but as I lay in bed that night, sleep brought something else entirely.

In my dream, I stood in a vast, empty field under a blood-red sky. Before me, a figure emerged from the ground, its skin like polished obsidian, absorbing all light. It had two gleaming white horns that curved back like a ram’s, and on its forehead and chest, glowing runes pulsed with a sickly green light. Its smile was a gash of white teeth, too wide, too knowing. It didn’t move, but I felt its hunger, its ancient malevolence. It whispered, ‘You woke us.’ I tried to scream, but my voice was sand. It reached out a hand, and I woke with a gasp, drenched in sweat, heart pounding.

I told myself it was just a nightmare, a product of the stories we’d shared. But the next day, a creeping unease settled over my home. Shadows seemed to detach from corners and watch me. Boxes in my closet, stacked and stable for years, toppled without warning. Bags of old clothes slid from their shelves, landing with a soft thud as if placed intentionally. I began to feel a presence, a weight in the air.

One morning, I sat at the kitchen table with a bowl of cereal, the kind with colorful rings. I absentmindedly went to my sister’s room to borrow a hairbrush. When I returned, my spoon, which I’d left in the bowl, had been moved. And the cereal in the bowl had been rearranged into a perfect happy face with two triangle eyes and a curved smile. The smile seemed to mock me. I stared at it, the milk rippling, and for a moment, the face looked like the devil’s.

Then I saw her. A little girl, no older than six, stood at the end of the hallway. She had pale, translucent skin, a black dress that didn’t move with air, and a white bow in her hair. She stared at me with empty eyes, then vanished. Later, I saw an older girl, about thirteen, always in my peripheral vision, following me from room to room, a mere shadow that bent where light shouldn’t. And a boy, maybe eight, with a crew cut, would appear in mirrors, only to be gone when I turned.

They never spoke, never moved aggressively, but their presence was a constant pressure. I began to research, to find meaning in the dream, in the events. It was then I remembered my friend’s joke: ‘Devil backwards is LIVED.’ Lived… as in, they lived? As in, they were once alive? The thought chilled me more than any ghost story.

What they wanted, I didn’t know. But as the days passed, the smiles grew more frequent, the shadows more bold. The happy face in my cereal became a grimace. One night, I woke to find the little girl standing at the foot of my bed, her mouth open in a silent scream. And behind her, the devil from my dream, its white horns glinting, its runes burning brighter, its smile wider. It pointed at me, and I knew: they were not following me. They were waiting for me to join them. In the lived. In the dead.