She awoke in the middle of the night to the feeling of someone getting up from the bed beside her as she had felt many times in the last two years since moving into the house. And there in the gloom, silently stood a little girl with long, dark hair, as her daughter had done a hundred times before.
But it wasn't her daughter.
It wasn't anyone she knew at all and in the darkness, and with the long hair drawn over to partially obscure her face, she couldn't really say who she was. But she was there, in her home, in her bedroom.
This was the second time in as many days, but unlike the night earlier, where within a moment the vision melted back into the dark, this time, it stood, unmoving. Waiting.
She didn't move either.
Not out of fear, more curiosity, as unsettling as it was, she didn't feel threatened or in danger and just for a moment, there was a connection.
And then. Gone.
This was a couple of months ago now, where my wife says that this is what she saw. She was tired though and under stress, so me being far more rational, brushed it aside. This house isn't haunted.
But I know a house that is.
The house I grew up in.
A large, old, brick farm house, built in the 1920s and was the only building for a few miles in any direction, except for those of the town's cemetery, a few hundred meters down the road. My grandfather had bought it in the 60s and my family had lived there ever since.
When I was young, around the age of my daughter now, I awoke in the middle of the night as I needed to pee. I dreaded these times, as the bathroom was in the old end of the house, a place where even during the day, there was... something. And it wasn't something friendly, nor was it something neutral.
There was a darkness.
I crept up the hallway into the depths, looking for the light switch that resided there, my heart pounding so hard, I could hear the blood move in my ears. Flicking the switch, I turned toward the old backdoor, a door that was always chained closed at night. As my eyes adjusted to the light, something was moving.
I closed my eyes for long breath and opened them again.
It was still moving.
A skeletal hand was reaching through the closed door, the wrist twisted as the bony fingers fumbled with the chain, trying to unlatch the clasp. I froze and let out the faintest gasp as I did so and with it, the hand froze too. Waiting.
After what seemed a lifetime, my wits returned and I bolted back to my room and pulled the covers tight over my head.
In the morning, I was asked why I left the light on.
I thought I was the only one who had felt this darkness, that had seen this presence trying to get into our home, but years later I discovered from my mother that I was not the only one and when my brother had been little more than two, she awoke to him standing exactly where I had stood, staring at the chained back door screaming,
You can't come in here!
My rational self does not believe in the supernatural of this kind, ghosts. It knows that there is no meaning for it and it can be explained away in a thousand different ways. The imagination of a child playing tricks in the night. The mental processes of an adult under stress.
My wife asked if we could change sides as she needed a good night's sleep and didn't want to be awoken, as the visits had become more frequent - and of course, rational me obliged. We went to bed and in the morning she asked if I had seen anything, but I hadn't - my suspicions confirmed, my mind at ease.
On the second night however, I awoke to the movement of someone lifting themselves from the bed.
But I have seen nothing. Yet.
All of this happened.
The ghosts of my past -
have found me.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
