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 I've always loved these threads so I figured I'd start one since it's October and time for spooky stories! My apologies if this thread already exists. I looked over the forums about 3 times but didn't see anything similar. Here's the 2015 thread as well as an archived/goldmined list of similar threads since 2002 (there's a lot of good stuff here). With that being said, I'd like to contribute a few personal stories to get the ball rolling: The Man Down the Hall When I was about 7 or 8, I lived only with my mom in a one bedroom apartment (she slept in the living room on a pull-out couch for about a year while she gave me the bedroom, thanks Mom!). I was sleeping in my bed with my head facing down the hallway and woke up looking at the couch in the living room and saw a man-like figure about 6 feet tall surrounded with a blurry, dark halo-like effect sitting at the edge watching me from the darkness. It didn't have eyes but I could tell it was looking at me. I promptly pulled my head over the covers for a few minutes in absolute fear and unable to sleep. I decided to take a peek one more time and the figure walked right past my bed, turned to look at me, and disappeared into the wall. About 2 or 3 years later I had a very vivid dream that this dark figure came into my room one night and stabbed me. It was dark but I could see black blood dripping out of the wound. Suddenly, a figure of pure light emerged from the darkness and stabbed the dark figure where it screamed in pain and vanished in a cloud of smoke. The light figure approached me and touched my wound, healing it completely. I never saw those things again. Lights in the Sky My dad and I took a trip down to Vegas when I was about 11 years old. The drive itself was about 8-9 hours away and I slept for about half the trip. At one point during the trip we got out of the car to stretch and there was absolutely nobody around and no lights. If you've driven down this road you know exactly how quiet it can be at night. We both looked at the mountains in the distance and saw 3 or 4 lights taking turns orbiting each other and stop moving. After about 2 minutes of this they all immediately veered off into different directions with speed like I've never seen. We looked at each other like we were going crazy, but confirmed we had both seen it. This was around Mercury, NV which is close to Area 51 so take that as you will. Water Babies There's a lake near where I live that used to be home to a group of Native Americans but settlers came in and they fought and killed each other for control of the land. This site could probably do a better job of explaining it than I could. There has been an unusually high number of people drowning in this lake (albeit mostly drunk people that go out at night). The legends go that the people that died here will drag you down if you're on the lake in the middle of the night. There's actually a steep drop-off not too far out so people are most likely just dropping, but still it's a cool and creepy legend. Anyway, when I was 16 or 17 I took a trip with some friends to this desert lake and all in all the trip was pretty mundane (I mean, it's a lake in the middle of the desert). At night after we had gone to sleep however, we were awoken to the sound of crying babies in the distance, coming from the center of the lake. There were 2 other people in my tent and another 2 in another. I heard them ask from the other tent, "Do you hear the crying?" We told them yes and everyone just listened. The crying petered out but then we heard what sounded like tiny footprints on the edge of the water getting closer and closer. Eventually it stopped and we all fell asleep. When we awoke the next morning there were tiny rocks all over the waterfront that we were pretty sure weren't there before. A few years later I searched the internet and found out that other people have heard crying as well. The skeptic in me says it's probably just some weird type of wind pattern that sounds like babies crying. It was still creepy at the time. I have a lot more but I'll save them for later. desudrive has a new favorite as of 23:08 on Oct 5, 2017 |
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Oct 5, 2017 22:51
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When I was a kid I used to get what I now know was sleep paralysis. It's the scariest drat thing in the world when you don't know what's going on. A few times I opened my eyes while I was still in kind of a dream state and I saw a glowing white fuzzy blob flying around my room, vaguely human shaped. It disappeared as soon as I fully woke up. I didn't sleep so well for a few years there 
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Oct 6, 2017 16:35
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I don't believe in stuff that isnt real, so I hav'nt seen anything that isn't real. As opposed to idiots that believe this poo poo and coincidentally have seen it (while alone, no photos). hth.
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Oct 6, 2017 17:26
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^ lol good on you, bud, you just have it all figured out I thought of another one. Horse Head I used to live out in the country a ways and there were a few people with horses around our property. At night you could hear them whinnying or doing whatever horses do from pretty far away. It was kind of nice and peaceful. One night at the end of summer I left the window open next to my bed and fell asleep to the sound of wind and nature. I woke up randomly in the middle of the night, looked to my left and saw a horse's head sticking through my window, which would have actually be entirely plausible because the house was up high enough. It freaked me out so much that I shot up in bed and yelled out loud, but when I came to my senses the horse was gone. I would chalk this up to a simple, silly dream caused by the sound of horses in the distance, but the next day I caught up with my neighbor who told me that one of his horses had died suddenly in the night. Weird coincidence, I suppose.
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Oct 6, 2017 18:03
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OP, all of your stories involve sleeping and the number 2. What this means, I do not claim to understand. e: I wrote that before your newest post showed up ok
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Oct 6, 2017 18:05
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504 posted:I don't believe in stuff that isnt real, so I hav'nt seen anything that isn't real. This guy. He's that guy at a party that walks up to a group of people having a conversation and immediately tries to take it over by talking over everyone, giving his opinion without being asked, and insulting anyone who doesn't agree with him. Hey, 504...if you've dropped back into see the aftermath of your "sick burn", here it is: No one cares what you think and nobody asked. If you don't have an interest in the topic of this thread, stay out. You don't look smart, you don't look edgy...you're just pathetic. hth Anyway, I had something weird happen a few years back. It was early winter, so it got dark early. I lived alone at the time, in a older mobile home. Anyone who's been inside one knows that the hallway from the kitchen and living room to the bedrooms and bath is along one side of the structure. My sofa was against the wall on that side of the room, TV was straight across, and the only light on in the whole place was the bathroom light at the end of the all, because it got really dark back there at night. Hell, it was even dusky back there during the day. I was lying on my side on the sofa, face toward the TV and feet toward the hallway, when I heard what sounded like a loud click or pop from the bathroom. I looked toward the sound, just in time to see the little circle of light that spilled through the doorway into the hall fade to black. I figured the bulb must have burned out so I waited until the next commercial to grab a new bulb. I'm a baby when it comes to dark so as I approached the the darkness, I closed my eyes and felt my way to the bathroom door. Without thinking, I reached around the bathroom door frame and hit the light switch--and the light came on. The bulb was fine; the switch had been flicked off. First thing I thought of was that the the switch possibly hadn't been on all the way so I tried to get it partway up or partway down, but it was impossible--it wouldn't stay. If you've had any experience with light switches for aluminum wiring (yeah, this place was that old), you will understand that there's just no way to do it. When you turn them off and on, they're hard to push and there's a loud click. That's the noise I heard. It was on...then it was flicked off. I left it on and went back to watch TV--and slept on the sofa that night. It happened again the next night, twice, while I was gaming with some friends. My dad had died about 15 years prior and he had been one of those dads that was always nagging about leaving the lights on if you were leaving a room. I jokingly said, "Dad, if that's you, please leave the light on. It's dark back here at night and it freaks me out." It never happened again. Another strange thing happened while I was in high school. We had pretty large house--two-story, 5 bedrooms, 2 3/4 bath, full finished rec room in the basement with an unfinished storage room walled off at one end. There were two chest freezers in this storage room, as well as an old refrigerator, floor-to-ceiling shelving on two walls, and a couple of cupboards. Floor and walls were unfinished concrete and toward the ceiling on one wall was a small casement window. My bedroom was right above this room. It was mid-summer, mid-evening, and I was home alone. I was lying on my stomach on the bed, reading a book. All of sudden I felt a prickling sensation on my neck, followed immediately by a hard, sharp poke in my lower back--almost like someone stuck out their index finger like they were pointing, held it rigid, and rammed it into my back. I froze, not sure what to do, and few seconds later I heard a really loud crash from the storage room. I got up and ran outside to wait for my parents to come home. I told them what happened so we went to check out the storage room--and nothing was out of place. It sounded a shelf had tipped over or heavy boxes had fallen, but everything was where it should be.
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Oct 6, 2017 19:19
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Graedyn posted:This guy. He's that guy at a party that walks up to a group of people having a conversation and immediately tries to take it over by talking over everyone, giving his opinion without being asked, and insulting anyone who doesn't agree with him. You getting angry doesn't make any of the things you imagined any more real. You didn't see anything You are not special You are remembering wrong, or like 99.999% of these stories VASTLY over exaggerating what really happened.
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Oct 6, 2017 20:32
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Knock it off. It's perfectly fine not to believe in anything people post in this thread or think they're exaggerating but don't show up just to poo poo on a thread you don't like.
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Oct 6, 2017 23:27
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I put this one down to a combination of grief and the power of suggestion but here is the incident as I remember it: As a teenager I lived with my paternal grandparents. About a month after my grandfather passed away, myself and a close friend where chatting in the sitting room. The kitchen was adjacent to the sitting room and due to the house design, there were no doors between the kitchen, sitting room and hallway. From where we were sitting, neither of us could see into the kitchen but as my grandmother was in I didn't think much of it when I heard someone walk into the kitchen and turn on the tap. As there was no one else in the house but us three, I was startled to hear someone walking down the stairs and I could tell by the way my friend looked at me, he could also hear someone in kitchen and was confused too. The noise in the kitchen stopped the instant we heard my grandmother call my name from the foot of the stairs we both went to check the kitchen, which of course was empty, as my grandmother was indeed standing at the foot of the stairs having just come down. I knew that house well, and all its creaks and sounds and am very sure I would not have confused the sound of someone walking into the kitchen or turning on the tap while sitting so near to it. I would assume my brain playing tricks because I was grieving and used to my grandad doing that, but it doesn't explain my friend having heard the same thing and drawn the same conclusions about what the noise sounded like. He was sitting at a different angle to me and claimed to have also seen someone moving about but hadn't properly looked, having assumed it was my grandmother also. In a separate incident, my grandmother claimed to have seen my grandads legs come into view as if he were walking down the stairs shortly after he died but I also think that was a grief hallucination.
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Oct 30, 2017 16:22
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Ooh, ooh, I've got a new one since the last time I posted in one of these threads! So, the company I work at has its main office in a rural location. Our building is adjacent to an old farmhouse that is owned by the company's original founders (who are no longer part of the business). If you walk out of our offices, you can actually wander all the way around the outskirts of their land, past a little lake and across a field, then come back up their driveway. Me and some of my colleagues took to doing this in midafternoon on sunny days, just for a break from the screen. One day, in the height of summer, as we're walking through the field, a man walks across in front of us. He's quite a way away, perhaps fifty meters. He's wearing a pair of shorts, and an old gas mask, the kind with the big cloth hood that completely covers your head. He ignores us, and none of us are inclined to call out to him. We all continue walking, and eventually he disappears over the curve of the field and out of sight. To this day we have no idea what the gently caress. Our best guess was that he'd gone out to spray insecticide/weedkiller or something, but he wasn't carrying anything he might use to do that, and would you really do that with just shorts on?
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Oct 30, 2017 19:43
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The Misery Light I grew up in South Jersey, and in my little part of the state, every elementary school wound up doing a week long trip to the appropriately named boy scout camp Mount Misery. I'll never understand why it was called Mount Misery since it was in the middle of the pine barrens, the weirdly sandy and swampy deep red asscrack running down the middle of a deep blue state. A group of us were doing a night walk with a teacher and a counselor, part of the Mount Misery experience, when one of the kids saw a light in the sky. It was shaped like a white, horizontal oval with six yellow spikes coming out of it. It flew to the tree line and hovered there long enough for the teacher to say "It's probably just a flare." After that, it turned an abrupt 90 degrees and zoomed out of sight. It's the strangest thing I ever saw, with a group of people who all saw it, too, made doubly weird by it not matching the description of any UFO I've heard of since.
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Nov 2, 2017 14:56
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504 posted:You getting angry doesn't make any of the things you imagined any more real. I don’t believe in the supernatural either. I still enjoy the stories. It must take an awful lot of energy to be this upset all the time at folks telling the equivalent of campfire stories.
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Nov 17, 2017 18:56
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Can someone post or link the haunted barn/farm stories some goon was posting in the previous threads? I need them all
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Nov 17, 2017 23:15
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ravenkult posted:Can someone post or link the haunted barn/farm stories some goon was posting in the previous threads? I need them all http://nothotbutspicy.com/para/compilation2012/ do a page-search for "Onic" Not sure if that's all of them and links are missing and such, but that site is a good resource for stories from past threads. I don't know if I can provide any content though I would really like to. These threads are how I found SA. I never really believed the stories any more than I believed the weird stuff my backwoods spiritualist family spun to me when I was growing up. But it's still fun. If you can't have fun, more's the pity. Can you also not read fiction? "There's no such things as Hobbits! What utter garbage!"
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Nov 25, 2017 13:13
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Thanks, man. I don't know why the thread is so dead this year, we haven't had a good one since...2015? But that one was pretty active. I love the thread so I'm gonna spam some stories that ain't mine, might throw in some NoSleep garbage too if the need arrives. Here's one that I don't have the credit for. --- I don’t talk much about my Uncle Gerry because he’s, well, kind of the family embarrassment. At least, that’s what I was told when I was growing up, and seeing the things he did, how he hosed up like he was keeping score, I can’t really say it was far from the mark. Gerry was the older of Mom’s two younger brothers. There really isn’t a better way to put it than he had that ill behaved look about him. He thought he was smarter than a lot a folks, and I suppose that was true for some, but it was the kind of smart that got him in a lot of fights talking down to kids bigger and allegedly dumber than him. It got so he could hold his own after while, and it just made him that much more of a hotshot. He was one of those guys that smiled with the slightest bit of his tongue sticking out. Everything with Uncle Gerry was in some way a competition, and he was just as sore a winner as loser. In general, I preferred not to spend my time with him, but he bought me a train set one Christmas and after that I felt kinda obligated in the way kids at a young age do. The reason I don’t talk about him doesn’t have so much to do with how much of an rear end he could be, but the circumstances surrounding his divorce from Lauren, his first and only wife. She was pretty in that way ladies of the late nineteen seventies were, with big, dark glasses and sun burnt hair worn in a loose bob; her skin a deep caramel like the girls from Old Mexico. I figure what drew me to her was pretty much the same as what did my uncle, and he fawned and cowed to her like he was in the presence of royalty. I think that’s what he thought he was supposed to do with women: supplicate, to keep their interest. Whatever it is she saw in him no one could quite figure out. It wasn’t like Gerry was a bad looking man; quite the opposite. It was his demeanor that bordered on repellent. Gerry liked big, ugly, mean cars, GTOs and Gran Torinos, ones that idled like junkyard dogs and turned into great howling nightmares when their engines revved. They had to borrow one from a friend for their wedding day on account Gerry crashed his the week before. He swears he hit a deer, or maybe a dog, something big, but everyone figured it more likely a tree or fence post. Gerry never could hold his liquor. I thought they were married for maybe three years, but when I asked around everyone agreed on thirteen months. It was a family thing, not quite a reunion, but several of the great aunts and their men were there, along with some cousins and other detritus. It was a summer event, with the grilling out and iced Old Mil and cheap buns for cheaper hot dogs, forty kinds of prepared salads, and one cooktop simpleton brought a bucket from the Colonel. Of course, Gerry was in attendance, medium rare and paunchy, hair cropped, eyes shaded. I hadn’t intended to approach him, but midway through his fourth road pop, he found me. We caught up quick; I told him about school, he showed me his new pickup, outfit with a custom stereo and shortwave, even let me know he was still cool when he cranked up the Godsmack. I nodded, pretended. He was a goof, but he was family. He’d never done anything on purpose to hurt me. He even made sure I drank one with him since I was old enough, for all the birthdays and graduations he’d missed. He was a sentimental drunk, that Gerry. He went on with this whole big mess of apologizing and feeling sorry for himself, something I figured would work its way out and once he dozed off I could go back to blending in with the wallpaper. It turns out he was just getting started, and when he grabbed my wrist, flat against the table, and gripped it with strength far greater than I thought him capable, his eyes pierced me from behind quarter lids. “Don’t leave me here alone.” So I watched him drink another half dozen before I had sense enough to try to get some food in him. I loaded up a plate with whatever still looked good and dumped it in front of him with a wad of napkins and he barely waited for me to hand him the fork before he dove in. It was both fascinating and creepy the way he plowed through it all, and while I had a plate of my own, I found being so close to his appetite sucked the wind from mine and when I gave up he enquired with a nod and a raised eyebrow and I pushed what was left over to him. He ate like an old man who’d long given up on caring how he looked to others, snuffling and smacking his lips. I pitied the poor bastard who’d have to drive him home. Gerry’s face was grateful when he finished and he thanked me by nudging another beer my way. I declined, already past my limit, but he got that little grin on his face, the one that told me he knew a secret, and shrugged– an apology of sorts– snapping open the tab and guzzling with renewed thirst. All that food in his belly helped, but he was still quite a handful when it came time to usher him along. Most of the older folks had already gone, leaving myself, Gerry and Grandma at the back patio. Cousin Foard hunched over the dash of his Cadillac trying to figure out where the ignition was until his wife, the still lovely at fifty five Roberta Leigh, snatched the keys away and advised him polite to move the gently caress over. Giggles spilled out of Gerry like sweets from a busted piñata, but by then they were pulling out of the drive, one lazy headlight mooning the darkness. I warmed him up with a mug of coffee, told him five times we’d come back for his truck in the morning knowing full well it wouldn’t be til afternoon. He smiled the way Grandpa used to and it got so I couldn’t watch him do it anymore. It wasn’t his passing that affected me as much as how I couldn’t find it in myself to cry. It felt more to me like a relative stranger I saw semi regular, a grade school teacher I never had or bank teller, who just wasn’t there the next time I came around. I was at the funeral, poured into a corner, and I remembered the way Gerry knelt at the casket, crossed himself when he rose. I wondered what was in his head in those moments: thoughts of his childhood, good memories or bad. Seeing the way he brushed past people to leave the room, I have my opinions. When it came time to leave, Gerry fussed. It wasn’t a grown man dissatisfied with the state of the world and the injustice of mortality, but a child sent to bed early kind. He drug his feet, tried to sneak another can in his jacket pocket. I felt a bit like Mom when I took his arm and led him to the door, which became a fresh indignity of its own. I surmised the trouble came from him having sobered up some, a state he was determined not to suffer, and while my car was nothing special, I’d be damned if my tow weren’t falling down puking and pants making GBS threads drunk, even if he was family. Especially since he was family. I wasn’t such good company for the inebriated, never have been, but I was feeling charitable, thanks in part to that ratty old train set. Uncle Gerry used to live in town, at the bad end of what once was one of the better streets. Those on either side were still okay, mostly older people, even the next block up from his had the homes young men with promising careers and fresh turned families yearned to buy, but it was all blue collar where Gerry was, the kind with a ring around it, bikers and midnight haulers, gun racks and work boots left on the stoop. He left that all behind when he had to give he house up for auction and moved into a place on the west end where it was all farms and folk. He sat houses, a bit like responsible teens sit babies, even worked it out so he had enough overlap to keep him sheltered through the year. His stipends were modest, but the proprietors were of the sort Gerry preferred, with machines he could tinker and ample cold storage. It kept his life simple, the suds, smokes and seclusion. I turned on Stiving, remembering his road broke off from it down a ways. It was one of those nights that went from still visible to burnt rubber black in the span of a few moments. I clicked on the brights and watched the fields on either side come to life with patches of tiny green lights. Deer. I let up on the gas, hovered over the brakes, while Gerry jostled in the passenger seat. Two thick, sloppy belches later he tapped me on the shoulder. “Hold up. Gotta– hurp– piss somethin fierce.” I slowed down to maybe thirty when he grasped the handle, cracked open the door and leaned over like he planned to jump. I could see the wheels turning, smell the smoke. “HOLD UP DAMMIT.” He didn’t act like he heard me except to nod to himself. He began to chant. “Don’t piss the seat don’t piss the seat don’t piss the–” I jerked the wheel and tromped the brake, hiking us both from the seats as we came to a full stop. Gerry fell out the door, dribbling chuckles, fumbling with his belt. He made it about three steps before his jeans slid down to his knees and he just swayed there, knees bent, arms slack. His groans were pornographic. Climbing back in, he wiped his brow with his sleeve, slapped his legs and laughed. Everything was back in place and I felt more sober than normal. Then it was a squint eyed fit when I wouldn’t go until he fastened his seatbelt, but begrudged my request once he saw I was serious. A quick scan over the road let me know the lights were gone. It was just us again. The place Gerry kept up was set back on one of those county roads that just had a number. It wasn’t all that far from town, even an easy drive for those who knew the area. I, on the other hand, was just shy of bewildered by the way it road twisted over itself almost like a pretzel. In all the time I live there I never knew any of the roads to curve and switchback like this one did, what with my healthy interest in maps. A couple times I caught myself thinking we’d already driven a certain patch of road, but the twists were of such differing grades and extremities I sooner chalked it up as crazy thought. Gerry didn’t seem concerned as he hummed quiet, nodding and shoulders hitching as he amused himself. The radio was off. "Up here.” He nodded off in the direction outside my window and I spied a dim property light several hundred yards off the road. I craned my neck looking for the drive, even a mailbox, but it was just field and more field. When my gaze wandered back to the road I was almost on top of it and again I was on the brake with a purpose. The car slid on over gravel, stopping just short of whatever lay across our path. Gerry scrambled out, heedless of danger. Liquid courage, I suppose. I followed, more cautious, silently cursing my distaste for firearms. What I first thought was a downed tree had a bit too much red and gray, especially this early in the year, nevermind there weren’t any trees this close to the road. I blinked several times, hoping the action would help my brain make sense of what I was seeing. Gerry was the first to put it to words. “Sweet merciful gently caress.” Deer. Or what was left of one. A BIG one. I wasn’t a hunter, didn’t know the terminology; boys had antlers, girls didn’t. This one had antlers. In spades. Then I heard the crack, like a tree limb. I tried to act nonchalant, but I could feel my blood pumping in my ears. I looked to Gerry and saw his knees quavering. He was spooked. “Get in the car.” I’m not sure if you could call what we did fleeing, seeing as we went maybe ten feet, but once we were in the car we did feel a little safer, just not enough to keep the panic from creeping in. I tried to ignore how the thing in the road shuddered, the way small animals did when they were frightened. I even shut one eye when it looked like it was standing up. I say it only looked like it was standing up because I wasn’t really sure I could trust my eyes at the time. Maybe I had more to drink than I thought. Gerry vocalized what my brain could barely put together. “Jesus. Jesus.” The thing in the road, what used to be a deer, rose to its full height, and when I say full height I mean from its back legs. The drat thing stood up. Like a man. Now I knew how Gerry felt, having to pee like he did. My bladder cursed and pinched, but I didn’t dare move. The renal system never has been known for brilliant tactical decision making under duress. So we sat there, stock still, while the great heaving beast before us stutter stepped backwards over the edge of the road and into the field. Once it was past, I threw into gear, gunned that poor little four cylinder, and scanned for the driveway which was marked by a rock with a bright orange reflector. It felt like we set a land speed record the way we shot through the limestone gravel, raced into the house. Gerry threw all the locks, even the windows, and we sat at the kitchen table across from each other, chairs halfway out so we were ready to go. That’s when Uncle Gerry told me. Aunt Lauren used to tend bar at the Eagles downtown. That’s where they met. Was the prettiest little thing he’d ever laid eyes on, he said. She moved to town from somewhere out west, near the state line, with her daughter, Sue Lynn, from a previous marriage. She was an old soul, a spiritualist, had Shawnee on both sides. Gerry didn’t care about any of that, always wanted a kid to call his own, and he wooed her the only way he knew how. They did the dating thing while he got to know Sue Lynn, decided to move in together after a few short months, made themselves as much a family as they could. Gerry was happy, maybe more than he’d ever been. It was his first real shot. He met Lauren after work one night, right outside the bar, where he took her hand and got down on one knee, pulled the tiny black velvet box from his pants pocket and gave it to her. Her breath caught in her throat, not at the beauty of the gem, but the one on the folded newspaper clipping tucked inside. It was the ring he wanted her to have, but couldn’t afford. He promised she’d have it before their wedding day if he had to work night and day to get it. He didn’t know it was an empty promise at the time, so caught up was he in the moment. He had all the best intentions, Gerry. Always and forever. Like I said, he wrecked his car a week before their wedding, hit something big driving home on one of the back roads. Said it looked just like the thing we almost hit that night the way it walked on its back legs. He didn’t remember anything after that until he woke up the next day with a bandage around his head and a matching concussion, Lauren and Sue Lynn at his side. He tried to tell them what happened, describe the awful thing he saw, and they swore they understood but with the way Gerry liked his beer, it was a tough sell. He’d be well enough come time to wed, and that’s all that mattered. On the eve of the big day, Lauren sat down with her best friend and bridesmaid whom she’d known since she was small. They grew up together, shared the intimate things, secrets, and a love for the tarot. She brought out her cards, shuffled, dealt thirteen for the pattern in life reading. The first was the World, a good sign, one of endless possibilities. The second was the Lovers, which not only represented her and Gerry, but a decision to be made, a choice. One she thought she’d already made. Lauren wasn’t alarmed when the third card was Death. Death wasn’t something to fear as it represented change, transition. Everything was changing for her, in life and love, and it wasn’t until she saw the fourth card that she felt funny. Another Death card. And the one after that. Six, seven and eight, all the same. Neither one could make sense of it. Nine, ten, eleven, twelve: a sallow, emaciated, grinning skeleton with a sail cloth cowl and scythe every one. By that time she was in tears, and ran from the table before her friend could show the last card. Gerry started working nights in hopes the extra cash might afford him the ring he promised the day he asked Lauren to marry him. His new life, however, was considerably different from that of a bachelor, bills began to pile up, and while Gerry’s hours increased, Lauren’s dwindled. Unable to afford a sitter, Sue Lynn became a latchkey kid at the tender age of nine. For two months everything felt like it was back on track, until the day Sue Lynn showed up at her mom’s work with a peculiar complaint. “Daddy won’t leave the window alone when I sleep.” Gerry didn’t know quite what to make of it when Lauren asked him why he was working on windows when he was supposed to be at the job, and while still not where he wanted it, his paycheck provided the alibi. In time, Sue Lynn’s stories became less frequent, but only because something started up at Lauren’s window, thumping and scraping, casting unkind shadows. Then was the night she heard it, like some foul wind come from the hollow. “Let me in.” She tried to put it out of her mind, even picked up an extra job– one that would allow her to keep Sue Lynn with her– so she didn’t have to spend time at the house. When she told Gerry she wanted a dog to keep her and the girl safe from prowlers, Gerry scoffed. He was the man of the house, the provider, and while he took a shine to most dogs, it was a shot to his pride Lauren suggested he couldn’t protect his girls. Instead, he bought a gun, a Saturday night special from one of the rowdier sort at work. The serial number was filed clean, but the man assured him it’s part of how police firearms were decomissioned. It still took bullets, still fired clean, and that suited Gerry just fine. He showed it to Lauren, made sure she knew where he kept it, even took her out shooting a couple times so she knew how to handle herself. For him, it was a bonding experience, but for Lauren it only intensified her fear. Gerry thought he was protecting her, but in the end, he let her know she’d have to protect herself. Over the course of the next couple months, the thing came to her window every night, always the same time and manner. First came the scratching, like a rake across a chalk board. Then the thumping, a broom handle on a hard wood floor. Lauren cowered against the headboard, covers clutched to her breast, eyes darting between the window and the night stand wherein slept the gun. “Let me in.” “Go away.” “Let me in.” “LEAVE US ALONE.” Sue Lynn came to the door, eyes red and afraid and they huddled together on what was left of a bed wrecked from fear and desperation. Scratch. Thump. Moan. “Let me in.” In time, the noises ceased, and they succumbed to fitful rest. Lauren opened her eyes, but it was still dark out. A quick glance at the clock showed Gerry wouldn’t be home for a good bit. She reached back for Sue Lynn, not bothering to roll over, just making sure she was still there. The hair felt wet, sticky, and that’s when she noticed the smell. Turning to look, she saw the thing what shared her bed: an enormous buck, mangled body scored with fly larvae. Its head twisted at an impossible angle, neck like a corkscrew, flesh peeled back over rancid teeth. There was a hole in the wall, through the headboard, where one great half rack of antlers stabbed into the night. The other spread almost to the ceiling, a ragged blue and white sneaker run through. Sue Lynn’s. A crack of splintered bone as the carcass jaw fell open and a grisly fog emerged. “Let me in.” Lauren screamed, lunged for the drawer, grabbed the pistol and shot wild; kept screaming even after all eight chambers were empty and firing dry. She fled the house, drove until her tiny white hatchback ran out of gas. Two states away. “Told me she was scared and I bought her a goddam gun.” Gerry shook his head, eyes puffy and rimmed with tears. He told me it was the last thing she said before she disappeared. Two weeks later he got a letter in the mail. Lauren told him what happened, why she couldn’t stay with him, pleading with him to keep an eye out for her daughter. Included were the divorce papers. It took him six months to sign. As far as I know, they never did find Sue Lynn, and it’s been over thirty years at this point. She’d be forty one this past April. I hope she’s okay.
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Nov 25, 2017 15:24
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