Pacemaker

It started when I was 16. I was an only child, living with my mother and father. Every night I would wake up at 2:16 AM exactly. No dopiness, no tiredness, nothing. I would sit bolt upright, for a reason unknown to me, and I would listen. I would see nothing in the pitch black of my room, I would hear nothing in my silent house. For five minutes, until 2:21 AM, I would listen hard. At first, I heard generally; five minutes of being totally alert, totally unable to switch off, hearing not a single sound. Then, as quickly as the alertness came, it faded, and I'd fall fast asleep.

This went on for a few weeks, every night, the same. I didn't think much of it. I wasn't scared very easily; this was more puzzling than anything else. Around a month or so into the awakenings, I heard the first sound. It was so close to being inaudible, I almost thought I imagined it. A soft footfall outside my door, on the stairs leading up to my attic room.

The next night, another step taken, yet still incredibly quiet, as if on tiptoes. Still, I was more puzzled than scared, but it was starting to become a little strange. This progressed, night after night, the footsteps growing louder and louder, closer and closer up the 12 stairs to my room.

On the fifth night, I tried to get out of my bed to investigate during the awakening. But I couldn't move. It didn't feel like paralysis; it felt like my body wasn't my own, as if I had no control; as if all I had was consciousness and no physical input. I started to become scared.

The next day I stayed off school "sick". I was beside myself with fear for that night. I finally fell asleep at around 2:00 AM.

And I woke up the next day, like nothing had ever happened. I had not awakened during my sleep. I felt more refreshed than I had been in weeks. I was beside myself with relief, and had a great day. The next night, again, I slept like a log. It was over.

The next month was probably the best of my life. I did well in all my classes, I got a girlfriend. I had good luck and generally, just had a good time.

It was after a particularly good Saturday spent with my girlfriend that I went to bed, the happiest guy alive. I couldn't wait for the next day.

I have never felt the same chills as I felt that night when I woke up at 2:16 AM, sitting bolt upright, unable to move, staring blindly into space, listening. Four minutes of complete silence passed; with every second, a stronger chill surged down my spine. With every second, another bead of cold sweat slipping down my neck.

At 2:20, with the loudest crash, I heard my door being ripped from its hinges and smashed against the far wall. Footsteps thudding towards me with unstoppable intent, louder than you can possibly imagine, closer and closer until they stopped dead. A cold rush of air washed over me, chilling me to the bone. My eyes, wide with terror, searching for anything, anything to focus on. For a few seconds, nothing happened. Then suddenly, emblazoned in my vision in white, etched, print the words "I have arrived", along with the most horrible sound I have ever heard. If you have ever heard the screams of foxes in the night, imagine them at a much lower pitch... An inhuman, guttural scream, the scream of an agonized, tortured soul. I remember the exact sound to this very day.

Beyond that, there was nothing. I fell asleep at 2:21 AM, and woke up the next day too terrified to do anything. I sat hunched on my bed. All day. Unmoving. When night came, I was wide awake. I never wanted to sleep again. Time ticked by on the clock... 1:30... 1:45... 2:00... 2:10... 2:15... Then I blacked out. I don't remember anything that happened that night.

I awoke to find myself standing in my parents' room. Simply standing there, arms by my sides, relaxed. I had no idea how I got there, which in itself was slightly alarming, as I had never been prone to sleepwalking. But the disturbing thing was that I didn't feel odd. I didn't feel out of place, staring down blankly at the faces of my sleeping parents. I couldn't help but notice how vulnerable they looked.

Eventually I snapped out of my trance and went downstairs. I vaguely remember making breakfast. I ate food but tasted nothing. My senses seemed to be dulled, my head hazy. Despite the horror of the night before last, I did not feel scared... I didn't feel... well... anything. I went to school that day, concentrating on nothing, accepting a detention wordlessly, coasting along. Never once making an attempt to talk to anyone about anything. School ended and I walked home.

That night, my phone rang. I watched it. I remember just... just watching it ring out, no desire to answer, no desire to even check who it was. Presumably, it was my girlfriend, as she came round later that night. I was upstairs, just sitting on my bed, staring at the wall. She tried to talk to me, I didn't answer. She lay down and pulled me down with her. She hugged me, trying to coerce me to respond. But one thing really annoyed me, and I don't know why. She kept telling me I was really cold. Really, really fucking cold. Eventually, I turned over to look at her. At first she smiled as my eyes met hers; finally, a response. The smile quickly faded. I felt no love for this girl. I felt like I did not know her, and this must have been reflected in my eyes. Empty, devoid of caring. All I could see was her vulnerability, lying there next to me.

She fell asleep at about 1 AM. I just watched her like that, for a full hour. At 2 AM, I closed my eyes, not even a hint of anxiety. I counted those 16 minutes, second by second, and thereafter I remember nothing.

I woke up in a pool of blood as dawn broke. I looked to my right to see my girlfriend. Her chest had been ripped apart, her ribs hanging loose at either side. Unidentifiable organs spilling out. I felt nothing. I rose from my bed, covered in blood. I followed a trail of red, arterial blood out of my room, down my stairs, into my parents' room. My father's head lay bloodied and caved-in beside his still-oozing neck. A giant gash split his back in two. His right leg rammed down my mother's throat, her jaw unhinged and her legs and arms crumpled at impossible angles. I felt nothing.

I turned around and walked downstairs. I noticed a trail of blood left in my wake. You could smell it. Smell it seeping into the carpet, the cloying smell of iron pervading the house. Even through my numbed senses. I went and made myself breakfast. Another tasteless meal. In fact, it was getting worse. I could taste less than the day before. I went back upstairs and stared at the wall for hours, I think. By now I keep forgetting what happened... My mind just became cloudy and unaware of what was happening. Eventually, I just lay back down in the pool of blood, next to my eviscerated girlfriend.

I remember reading 2:16 on the alarm before I went to sleep that night. I remember waking up standing in front of the wall next to my parents' room. From the door frame to where I was standing at the wall, neat rows of blood-colored handprints. I couldn't see much, but looking down, I saw my hand smeared in red. My hearing was almost gone. My touch was so dull that I felt completely separate from the rest of the world. Trudging over to my parents' room, I should have been horrified. Not only because of the mangled corpses, but because of the fact that every wall, the floor and even the ceiling were covered in handprints, my handprints. Inked in my parents' coagulating blood.

The last thing I remember doing was going downstairs and clumsily searching through my drawers; finally finding a rusty old knife that had dropped behind the back of one drawer, then making my slow way upstairs. Then, nothing.

A neighbor eventually complained about the smell coming from our house. The police arrived shortly afterwards. I pity anyone who had to step into that house. Nearly a week's decay would have made the smell utterly overwhelming. They thought we were all dead at first. But, when I had been transported outside, upon closer inspection, I was still alive; somehow.

They had found me on the stairs with both legs and my left arm lying beside me, detached. There were no clean cuts, nothing surgical about the procedure. They could not explain how I had not died of shock or blood-loss, but as they discovered my only remaining limb grasping that blunt, rusty table knife, they knew what had done it.

I've been in the institution for two weeks now. I have never felt better. I feel... normal. I'm like any other person now. Any one of you. I could be living a normal life, feeling like this. Like every one of your existences. But I'm not. I'm writing this final little bit, waiting for an operation to save my digestive system. See, there's an unidentified metal object in there somewhere that has to come out. A little box-shaped thing. Well, I say unidentified... I only just remembered that my girlfriend had a pacemaker.

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Credits

The Puppet

It was a marionette, I think. It had a big head, the face was made of wrinkly, flesh colored rubber. The eyes were gigantic, bulging white orbs with red pupils. The hair was black, made of some hard substance that didn’t mesh with the rubbery head. The teeth were gigantic, pure white and capable of moving up and down. The body and limbs were wooden, painted to resemble clothes, but the paint was faded, you could see the wood’s natural brown in some places. Each arm and leg was a different length, but the hands and feet were pretty detailed. It made a loud clattering sound whenever it moved.

That puppet... followed me. I don’t mean it got up and chased me. I mean it kept showing up in my life. My earliest memory of it is from my first birthday. I obviously don’t remember the full details of that day, but I remember my parents singing happy birthday and that puppet. I don’t know what it was there for; I just remember it scared me to death and I couldn’t stop crying. When I was able to talk, I asked my parents about it, and they said nothing like that had happened on my first birthday. They must not have thought lying about it would make things easier for me.

The next time I saw it, I was around three. I was exploring a room filled with old stuff my parents had stored away and I found a calendar, but I don’t remember the year. There was a photo for each month, but the only one I remember was October; that puppet was the image for it. I got scared and ran out of the room. I told my mom and tried to show her the calendar so that she’d know the puppet was real, but I couldn’t find it. The room had been very messy, and I had ran out of it so quickly I knocked over piles of stuff, I guess the calendar got buried.

I was six when it happened again. It was the middle of the night, I woke up from a nightmare I can’t remember the details of. I was too scared to go back to sleep, so I went into the living room and turned on the TV. An old black and white show on Nick at Nite was ending and when the commercials started, that puppet came on. It was dancing while loud music played. I screamed and started crying uncontrollably, but by the time my parents got downstairs, the puppet was gone.

I didn’t see the puppet again for a while after that, but I kept having nightmares about it. When I was 15, I decided to try to track it down, using the internet to try to find information about the calendar, the short, anything. No one had ever heard of it, but one day I got an instant message from someone I had never talked to before. Their screen name was a random mash-up of numbers and letters, but their avatar was a picture of the puppet. They IMed me, "Glad that you still remember me," then immediately signed off. They never contacted me or came online again.

When I was 20, I was walking by a store that sold old toys and dolls, and in the front window, I saw the puppet. I went inside, and asked the clerk if he knew anything about that puppet’s history, when it was made, where it was from, anything. He didn’t, said the puppet had just been sold to the store a few days ago, I could have it for $6. I wasn’t sure what to do, it still scared me, but having proof that it really existed seemed like a good idea. I bought the puppet, and took it home.

For a while, I felt better. I viewed the puppet as a childhood fear I had overcome as an adult and even started to believe the explanations my parents had given me for the past appearances of it (I saw it somewhere else as a baby, imagined the calendar, dreamed the TV short, and someone online who had one played a trick on me).

I kept the puppet, but as I moved on in my life, I pretty much forgot about it. I finished college, got married, and my wife should be giving birth in a few weeks. I was cleaning up a room for when the baby comes, and found the puppet, dusty and abandoned. I didn’t want my kid seeing it when he was little, so I picked it up, and decided I might as well wipe the dust off before moving it to another place. When I dusted it, I noticed a faded inscription on the back: "This is what he'll look like." Before I could figure out what this meant, I heard my wife starting to cry. I rushed to her, she looked more upset than I had ever seen her. Sobbing, she told me that the doctor had just called.

There was a problem with the baby...

---

Credits

The Family Portrait

Recently at the art gallery I work at, they had a new exhibition for local artists. It was the usual sort of thing; substandard paintings that only got a shoo-in because they were from the local community, paintings of local people and places and so forth. It was my job to decide which paintings got put on display, which entailed me sorting through around a hundred of these awful excuses for art. There was one, though, that really caught my attention. Unlike the others, it was not of a local scene or a local person; it was of a family. A father in a suit sitting in a chair, his dutiful wife behind him and his young son and daughter at his feet.

By the looks of their clothes, they were from the 19th century, typically dressed for a middle class family of that period. Two things struck me about the painting; firstly the attention to detail and the quality of the artwork was impeccable (almost photogenic), and secondly was the shiver it sent down my spine. The people in the portrait had this eerie, gaunt look to them, and expressions that were so blank they looked almost dead. The painting had no artists name attached to it, and Molly from reception had said that she couldn’t recall anybody sending it in. I decided then that instead of putting the painting on display I would take it home with me; after all it had no name attached to it so nobody was going to miss it were they?

I got home and decided that I was going to hang it in my study, and after hanging it, spent the rest of the night filing paperwork. Every so often I would find my eyes drawn to the painting. I felt the strangest, and most uncomfortable, sensation. I felt like the family in the painting were somehow judging me; like I could feel their eyes boring into me from the painting. What’s worse is that because they were staring at the painter (and therefore anybody who looked at the painting) their eyes seemed to follow me around the room. After a while I couldn’t take it anymore, I turned the painting against the wall and vowed that, no matter how interesting it was, I would return it to the gallery the next day. I got a hold of myself though, I had been working quite late and was very tired, and decided that I would sleep on it. I began to finish off the last of my filing at my desk. This was a bad idea; my eyes were heavy and before I knew it I had fallen asleep right there in the study.

That night my dreams were filled with visions of the painting. Over and over again, all I dreamed about was that family staring at me from behind the canvas, drilling into my soul with their blank, visionless stares. With every dream they seemed to get more and more intense, until after a while their eyes were wide and they were giving me looks of such intense hatred that I thought they were about to kill me. After a while, I snapped into awareness to find myself face to face with the painting, except this time instead of blank expressions I was faced with a hellish vision that will haunt me until I die. Their faces were twisted into looks of absolute malice. Their gaunt waxen skin was drawn taught across their pointed cheekbones, their lips peeled back across blackened gums to reveal gnarled yellow teeth bared in a bestial snarl. The less that was said about their bloodshot, protruding eyes the better. I screamed and fell off my chair, stumbling out the room, unable to turn and look back at the painting. I ran across the hallway and dived into my bed, burying my head under the covers.

The next morning when I woke up, I was still terrified. I rationalized it to myself though; you were overtired and you had a night terror, the room was dark and both the shadows and your mind were trying to play tricks on you. I went about my usual routine unperturbed, comforted by the rational logic of my mind. I was about to go to work when I realized I had forgotten about the papers in the study. I opened the door to grab the papers but as soon as I set foot in the room, my heart froze and my blood ran cold. The painting was still turned against the wall.

Not only that, but my desk had not even been facing the painting to begin with; it was facing the window.

---

Credits

I Now Live In A One Story House

There were two rules we had to follow, when we were living on the second floor of the old apartment building. First, lock your door at night, and second, be very careful at the top of the stairs. These were natural rules, since despite the front door being locked, you had to be really sure of two full floors of neighbors to leave the door unlocked, especially during the night. As I understood it, the management of the house used to be really strict about the locked doors thing, and had put up signs all over the place telling people to lock their doors. I heard from the man next door that they sometimes even went around at night and rattled all the doors, making sure that they were all locked, but of course they completely denied being so invasive as that. I had never heard them at it, but I had been known to sleep perfectly content through an earthquake, so that was no indication. As for the stairs, it was just a simple reminder; they were steep and slightly tricky stairs, and I heard there had even been a couple of deaths from falling down them. It was good to remind people. Nothing wrong with that.

Besides, my sister and I were happy there. Leanne had been fortunate enough to get the room directly across from mine, and we were old enough to actually enjoy each others' company, despite the traditional feud that comes between an older brother and his younger sister. To tell the truth, the feud still existed, but had become more of a cheerful rivalry than anything else. We were happy. Just... happy.

Things weren't perfect, granted. We were in an area that had constant thunderstorms, and the power was as often out as it was functional. My room had a continuous smell of strong soap, and although that isn't at all the worst thing it could smell of, it was a bit tiresome after a while. Leanne's room developed a troublesome lock, and half the time the bolt would click out the moment someone pulled at it. We wanted to move out, sure, but we also wanted to wait until we could each be sure that the other could, too. If only we had known, if only there had been even the slightest flicker of menace, but there was none. There were no cold spots, no abnormal shivers when passing over a certain area, no strange noises but for the occasional rattling of the knobs in the night. Nothing. Not until that night.

I awoke in the middle of it simply out of thirst. I first tried my sink, obviously, but the power was out, so the pump wasn't running. Annoying, but the landlords kept a tank full at the top of the stairs, exactly for this purpose. Really, I should have thought to fill up my own jug whenever there was a storm warning, but however many times I had thought of it, I never quite managed to go through with it.

I went out to the landing, torch in hand. Halfway to the tank at the top of the stairs, I tried to click it on and found that it was dead, but that mattered little. There was ambient light, and lightning frequently flashed through the skylights with which the architect had a love affair when designing the building. I got to the tank, and began filling my bottle, when out of the corner of my eye I glimpsed movement halfway down the staircase. As I looked, there was nothing, though it was that kind of nothing that happens when you're staring at the object you're looking for, that sense of it being right in front of you, if only you could see it.

Then, by the flash of the lightning, I saw what was really there.

It was crawling. It had to, as it had no legs that I could see. It was like a torso, cut off right above the hips, reaching out with both hands and pulling itself up the stairs one slow, painful step at a time. Black tatters ...shrouded it, I suppose, because clothed wouldn't fit right on that thing. It was shrouded in the black tatters, and where they failed to cover, blank space showed, not black, and definitely not white, but rather a simple absence that I still cannot think of without my stomach rising in protest. This space was not empty, as the vacuum beyond our planet is, but rather it was less than empty; it was hungry, it sucked in, it was the opposite all that was material and physical.

Then, the lightning flash faded, but I could still somehow perceive its shape, continuing up the stairs. Even as I turned to run, another flash lit the room, and as though it had sensed my intent to flee, it lifted its head, and –

I'm sorry, but I cannot, I will never set to word neither spoken nor written my full description of its... face, for lack of a better word. It was simply all that a face should not be, and since this time, there has been no sight so horrible, so fearsome, so terrifying, that has impressed itself upon me in the least, for how could it compare? That is the one... triumph, I suppose, that I bring from that night, out of all its horror: I shall never again be cowed by the sight of evil, for the worst done by man is but the palest reflection of the visage that faced me then.

I ran. What else could I do? I ran to my room, as fast as I could, and began fumbling with my keys, all the while becoming aware of a faint, slithery drag-thump, drag-thump coming from the stairway. How far up had it been? Halfway? Two-thirds? How many steps did it have left?

Finally, I forced my key into the lock, yanked the door open, dove in, locked it again, and collapsed, the adrenaline suddenly gone. I had no time for introspection, however, as I suddenly realized that I could still hear the thing, now up on the landing! It was still crawling; I could hear the hand-over-hand slither of it as it came straight to my door. The handle moved! It rattled for a moment, then went still. Even as I started to let myself relax, I heard the door of the next room over rattle, but it too was locked. I heard it go down to the end of the hallway, rattling each door in turn, testing the locks. I sat, and prayed that none of the other tenants had left their door unlocked, leaving themselves open to that terror.

Then, as it had come back and was almost across the hall from me again, I thought: Leanne. Please, no...

Its slithering movement was clearly across from me. I listened, hoping, praying for a rattle.

The lock clicked, and the door creaked.

I couldn't help it. I grabbed the useless flashlight as a club and threw open the door. At the same time, there was a clatter and an all-too-familiar scream from the direction of the staircase. I ran towards it, other tenants opening their doors and peering out, working torches lighting the hallway. There was yet some glimmer of hope in me, some faint wish that if I got there fast enough, she would be alright.

But no.

There, at the bottom, crumpled like a broken toy, the marks of hands fast fading from her ankles, was Leanne.

---

Credits

Daddy, Are You Awake?

We're a small family of four: the two of us and two kids -- four and three years old. My daughter is the older one and for the last year has had nightmares off and on. Some mornings I'll wake up with her wedged firmly in between my wife and I, which is fine. We've all been there. I have no problem with it.

What I do have a problem with is when she walks in twenty minutes after we've turned the lights off and the house is dark, just to stand next to the bed on my side and stare at me. I get the sensation that I'm not alone and wake up with a dark little silhouette right next to my face. Although at times it sends me into a slight panic or at least, leaves me with slight chills (not very manly or dad-like I'll admit), I'll break the silence. "Yes, sweetie?" She'll usually ask me if I'm awake and tell me she had bad dreams. I'll let her climb into bed with us at that point and that's the end of it.

Well, last night, the same thing happened. I got the uneasy feeling I wasn't alone, my eyelids opened and there she was again -- a dark little silhouette mere inches from my face.

"What is it, sweetie?" I asked.

No response. Just silence. Then it clicked that both my kids were staying with my in-laws for the night.

I no longer wonder why my daughter wants to sleep in our bed. I was able to reach up and flip on the light, but of course there was no one there. However, I looked down the hallway and into my daughter's room and the silhouette is standing in the door way and hasn't moved for the last hour.

I think it's waiting for my daughter to come home.

---

Credits

It's Locked

About ten years ago I was recently divorced and living alone in a one bedroom apartment. The place was clean and the rent was decent. One of those places that had a doorman, I felt safe here. I was alone and loving it, focused on my career and not on my clingy ex husband. Things were finally looking up for me.

At the time I was working pretty late at the office and would often stumble into my apartment sleep deprived in the early hours of the morning and wake up by 6:30, 7ish to start the day. I started noticing that in the morning my door would be unlocked sometimes, I usually dismissed this as my sleep dead brain thinking that the bed looked more appealing than locking the door. Another thing that I noticed since moving in was that I seemed to misplace things more than I used to, little things like a hairbrush or nail polish, that sort of thing. It wasn’t really that big of a deal, just enough to be a slight annoyance in my day.

The longer I lived there the more frequently I seemed to forget to lock the door, at first it was every once in a while then it seemed like an almost daily occurrence. More things went missing, things like pictures, shaving razors and most disturbingly, my underwear. This went on for long enough that I started to get a little paranoid. I started to take the time at night to make sure the door was locked, I got into a habit of every night after I locked the door to turn the handle three times and say to myself “It’s locked, it’s locked, it’s locked.” Time after time I would wake up and the door would be unlocked. One time I even tried staying up all night to watch the door, but I ended up falling asleep in my chair.

I decided that my mind was not reliable enough to stay up all night so I invested in a video camera. I went all out and bought the fanciest camera that I could get my hands on. So one night I set the camera up facing the door. I hid the camera under a pile of towels on the floor. I locked the door and went to bed.

When I woke up, my apartment looked normal. Nothing missing that I could see. I decided to check the tape. I fast forwarded through hours of footage, not seeing anything. I was just about to give up when I noticed the handle of the door jitter. Then it slowly crept open. A figure slid through the half opened door. And walked towards the camera. It paused. Looked around as if it was listening for something. Then walked forward into direct view of the camera. I paused the camera, the hairs on my arms and the back of my neck started to rise. I was staring directly into the face of the maintenance man of the building. I could see those big thick glasses and curly hair. I had no doubt who it was. I played the tape a little more. He looked comfortable as he walked around the apartment. Then he turned and walked towards my bedroom and out of the view of the camera.

I didn’t know what to do, sobbing I called the police. I tried to explain over the phone but couldn’t. Soon enough two officers arrived at my doorstep. I told them everything and showed them the tape. I remember seeing the blood drain from their faces. They promised me that I was safe, and that they where going to get this guy.

I needed to lay down, but didn’t want to be alone. One of the officers offered to stand outside my apartment door as I took a nap. As I was laying in bed unable to sleep but to drained to move, something kept nagging at me. I laid there for a few minutes tossing and turning, unable to get comfortable or rest. My mind was racing. Then a realisation slowly washed over me and chilled me to the bone. We watched the tape, and saw the man enter my home…but we never saw him leave. I froze , then started shaking. I needed to get to the front door. I sat up and looked around the room. I couldn’t see anyone. I swung my legs over the side of the bed cautiously, my feet hit the cold wood floor and I felt warm breath on my ankles. I raced out of my apartment as fast as I could and to the safety of the police officer. He called for backup. They found the man under my bed, clutching a knife and a Polaroid camera.

To this day I cannot sleep alone.

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Credits

She Found Her Way Into My Home...

Please, I don't know what to do. I've tried to tell my wife about this, but she's a science teacher and thanks to my history of practical jokes, she thinks I'm just kidding.

There is something stalking me. I don't know what it wants, but almost every night since I started seeing it, it has terrorized me. It doesn't touch me, it doesn't communicate in any sort of way, it just fills me with horror. If what I seem to ramble, please forgive me... I haven't slept in several days.

We live in the second floor of a duplex with stairs down the back of the house to the basement where the laundry machines are. There's a door at the bottom of the stairs before the door to the basement that looks out onto our back porch and into the back yard. Six days ago, I was going down to the basement to bring up some laundry and I glanced out the door as I passed. There was a figure standing at the far edge of our yard. Her back was to me, and she was just standing there, looking into the woods beyond our yard. She was dressed in nothing but a light gown. It had lots of flowing material coming off of it that was whipping around in the air slowly. The whole scene creeped me out instantly, but I thought she might be a friend of our downstairs neighbor, so I continued to the basement. When I came back up, she wasn't there.

The next night, I went down again, and as I passed the back door, I looked outside. The woman was back. She was exactly like she was the night before, facing away, not moving. The hair on my arms and neck stood up straight when I saw her. I was even more creeped out when I realized she was in the same clothes as the night before. That's when I did something I shouldn't have... I opened the back door. Leaning out, I called to her to see if she was okay. She didn't respond. She didn't make any sort of indcation that she'd heard me. It was freezing cold, so I shut the door and locked it. Coming back upstairs afterward, I looked out the window and she was gone again.

Later that same night, I was in the bedroom, getting ready to go to sleep. Everything was dark, because my wife had gone to bed before me. Our bedroom looks out over the backyard, and my side of the bed faces the windows, so I have to go past them to get in. As I was doing so, I suddenly got that same deep dread feeling in my stomach that I had gotten the first time I saw the figure in the backyard. Something compelled me to hesitate by the windows. My hands were shaking as I pulled the curtain back a bit and peeked through the shades into the backyard. It was a clear night, so the backyard wasn't shrouded in darkness. The woman was standing in the middle of the backyard, no longer at the edge of the woods, facing the house with her head tilted up to look directly at the window I was peeking from. I jerked away instantly, afraid she had seen me. Her face was covered in shadow and hair, but I saw her chin and nose. A sharp nose and a thin chin. Gray. Her skin looks gray, I think. Her hair is black and long. I was so scared, I jumped into bed and covered myself with the covers.

The next day, I played outside in the snow with my four year old daughter. She wanted me to pull her on her sled in the backyard, but just the thought of going back there made me scared again, so I talked her into digging holes in the snow in the front yard. That night, things went from bad to worse. Somehow, I had managed to forget about the woman. Then, in the middle of the night, my daughter started crying. Our bedroom is just across the hall from hers. I thought she might need to use the bathroom or just be having a bad dream, so I went into her room to see if she was okay. She was uncovered, curled into a ball on her mattress. I pulled her covers over her and that's when she whispered to me.

"Daddy, there's someone in my closet."

Instant goosebumps. I turned my head slowly toward the closet door at the end of her bed. Normally, the closet is shut, but now it was open. The woman was standing in my daughter's closet. Not even when it was clear that I saw her did she move or make a sound, just stood there and looked at me through the cracked-open door. My blood ran cold when I saw her.

"Get up," I told my daughter, "Get in my arms, quickly. QUICKLY." she scrambled up and hugged me tightly and I walked backward out of the room, watching the closet the entire time. In my mind I imagined her throwing the closet door open and running at us, arms outstretched. I just hugged my daughter and walked backward into my room. The woman never appeared in the doorway. I heard no movement from my daughter's room. I tucked her into my bed and stood there watching the doorway to her bedroom. I did not go back in, I just stood there and watched and listened. When I finally got the courage to climb into bed, I didn't sleep.

Sunday, I told my wife everything. I told her about the first time I saw this woman, I told her about calling out to her and seeing her from the window. I told her that she had appeared in our daughter's closet. She told me it wasn't funny, that it was my fault for our daughter's bad dreams and that I shouldn't encourage her to be afraid of her closet.

Sunday night, my daughter called to me from her room again. Call me a coward, but I couldn't go back into that room. I called her quietly to come get in our bed, but she cried and said she was scared. I wanted to go and get her, but I was scared too. I told her to pull her blankets up and cover herself. Just cover yourself, honey, and you'll be okay. I prayed that it was true. I lay there, peeking over the sleeping form of my wife and out into the hallway at the closed door of my daughter's room and just kept praying. I heard her cry a while longer, then she went quiet and I hoped that she was asleep.

Monday, I piled toys in front of the door to her closet. By that time, there was no doubt in my mind that this was some sort of ghost or apparition, but I piled things in front of the closet anyway. Like a pile of toys could stop a ghost.

Monday night, my daughter did not cry, but I didn't sleep. I lay there, looking at the ceiling, tense. Around 2:00, I heard her bedroom door creak open and I knew something was wrong. She must be scared, I thought, so I called to her like before, "Just come to me and you can sleep in our bed, Sweety." But she didn't come. I peeked over my my wife.

The woman was standing there in the doorway to my daughter's room. Her arms hung at her sides, her shoulders slouched down. Her gown was dirty, like it hadn't been washed in years, and hung off her likes torn rags. I wasn't breathing, I wasn't blinking, I just looked at her and she looked at me and I thought this is it, I'm going to die. She never moved, never made a sound. I whispered, "Please, go away. Please, leave me alone. Please, I'm sorry." I couldn't look away. If I look away, she will get closer. I was sure of it. If I close my eyes, when I open them, she'll be standing over me, looking at me. At some point, she was gone. It's like I fell asleep with my eyes open. I don't remember her disappearing, just that I was looking at the doorway, and she wasn't there anymore.

Last night, I lay awake, waiting. I asked my wife to shut our bedroom door because the night light in the hallway was keeping me awake. It was stupid. I don't know what I was thinking. Like clockwork, I heard my daughter's bedroom door creak open. I held my breath. Then I heard the floorboards in the hallway creaking and I started shaking uncontrollably. I heard our bedroom door open, and I knew she was standing there, in the doorway, not moving, just looking at me. I didn't look. I couldn't. I did what had I told my daughter to do and pulled the covers over my head.

I am a complete mess. A zombie at work. I don't want to go home anymore. I think I see the woman in other places. A glance while driving and I think she's sitting in the passenger seat of the truck behind me, or standing down the street asI drive off. Just sitting here at my desk, someone passes by behind me and I jump. I'm afraid that if I turn around, she'll be there, waiting for me to look at her. And what if I saw her face? I don't want to see it. I don't want to see her anymore, but I don't know what to do. The only hope I feel is that, for unrelated reasons, my wife is talking about moving. But our lease isn't up until May. I don't know if I can hold out that long.



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P/S: This is sort of an ongoing thing on Reddit. Go here to see the comments for more updates