Personal Narration: A Short Story

It was around 3am, I awoke thinking my wife had woken up to use the bathroom and disturbed me from my sleep like usual in the process. In my grogginess, I saw the opportunity to finally steal back the sheets, only to awake her in the process. I said I was sorry and told her I thought she had gotten up and out of bed. When she flipped over to face me, she let out a muffled cry of panic and pulled her feet away from the end of the bed so quickly she practically knocked me out of the bed. She then embraced me and said nothing.
After allowing my eyes to adjust to the blackness of the room for a moment, I was able to make out what had caused her panicked reaction. At very end our bed, squatting and turned away from us, there was what seemed to

The authorities were helpful in the beginning, and the local newspaper took quite a bit of interest in the story as well. However, the story was never put to print and the local news station never followed up as well.
For almost a year, my son Eric and I resided at a cheap motel near the police station, since it was the only way we could feel even remotely safe. After we finally made the decision to go back home, I began searching for answers as to what happened that night. After a few month of research resulting in few answers, I finally found a gentleman online who had a similar story. We got together in person and began discussing our experiences. He informed me that he was aware of six other people in Michigan who had also encountered the creature we now called the Rake.
It took the group of us around three difficult years of searching on the internet and sending letters to come up with a small cache of what we believe to be first hand encounters of the Rake. The common theme that we found emerging between all of the stories seemed to be that the Rake appeared to the people affected on multiple occasions. Many testimonies also discussed being spoken to, including my daughter. This revelation eventually caused us all to wonder if the Rake had ever came to us before our fatal encounters… or even

I quickly paused where I was at and sat there for a few minutes trying to work up the courage to replay the anomaly. With a deep breath, I rewound the recording, stopped it, and timidly hit play at normal speed. After about a minute the recording arrived at the part I had heard before, and what I heard was a shrill screeching sound. It was the Rake. It was not caught anywhere on camera but I am sure of it just by the noise. To this day I still can not even listen to the recording long enough to even begin to try to decipher or interpret it. I have not let anybody else listen to it yet either, not even the others who have experienced the Rake. All I know is that I have heard that exact sound before, and I now believe that it spoke when it was hunched in front of my wife that night. I do not recall hearing any sound from it at the time, but for some reason, the sickening sound on the recording immediately transports me back to that awful