The Story I Can’t Tell

I was 11 years old when we moved to Ruckersville, Virginia, just me, my mom, and younger sister and brothers. We were looking for a home. When my mom finally found one, all we could think was, “Oh my God, we finally have a house.”

The house made us feel like we belonged there, like it was meant just for us as a family. And the house was right next to our landlord, who we didn’t like; all she seemed to care about was cursing us and taking all our money. But she was a very strange old lady, and her husband was also strange.

After a couple of months of living there, my mom, my brother Matt and I were kind of scared of the house. My mom had heard someone try to break in, and when she looked there was no one there even though the doorknob was still moving. My brother had come running from the basement one day to tell us he’d heard noises of metal hitting together, and when he looked up, brass buckles fell out of nowhere. The basement was always scaring everyone; you couldn’t go down there alone without being paranoid that someone was lingering in the darkness, watching you.

I had shared a room with my sister, with her bed on one side of the room and mine on the other. I always had the radio on at night because it helped me sleep.

One night I woke up from a dream: I was lying in my bed and I suddenly awoke to turn my radio off. A woman with super sharp nails grabbed my hand and ripped it off of my arm. When I woke from that nightmare, I couldn’t go back to sleep for a while, so I just lay there and put my head under the covers. Minutes went by and it grew very cold; I started hearing a slight moaning noise, like a woman’s voice whispering.

Stupidly, I thought nothing if it, believing it was my radio. I had awoken and went to turn off the radio, but I thought of my dream and stopped myself, beginning to sweat. I was paranoid. I took my head out from beneath my covers and lay there, eyes closed. After a few moments of silence, I opened my eyes and finally got up enough courage to turn off my radio.

I fell asleep for a couple if minutes and I woke ip to the moaning noises again and when I opened my eyes I saw her…

There was a young women standing over my bed. I could only see her for a moment. As she stood over the edge of my bed, she stared at me with anger, sadness, and fear in her eyes, though they were still and blank. She had her hair, which looked like it had just been dyed a blondish-orange color, pulled back in a bun. Her eyes were very dark brown, almost as if they were black, and her pupils were as big as quarters. She had a pug-like nose and her lips were cut from cheek to cheek then sloppily sewn together. I couldn’t see her ears, but they looked as if they were also sewn to her head. I could only see from a little below her shoulders and up and I saw that she was naked.

I was so scared. I wanted to scream, but my fear held it in me. She slowly dissolved into the air. I couldn’t scream so I shut my eyes and cried, but I didn’t have any tears. Louder and louder I cried, until my mom said, in a tired voice, “Honey, what’s the matter? Are you okay?”

I didn’t answer, just cried until she said, “Come here.”

“I can’t,” I told her. “What if she’s in the hallway?”

My mom thought I was delusional. She kept telling me to come to her room, so eventually I took my covers off, sat up, and put my feet on the ground. Still crying, I stood up and ran as fast as I could to my mother’s room and jumped up onto her bed. Shaking violently, I told her everything.

Of course, she told me it was just a dream and that I should go back to bed. At this point I managed to cry tears. I slowly walked out of my mom’s room, glancing down the hall way and into the bathroom. I was so scared, but I had to pee.

I went to the bathroom, leaving the door open behind me. I sat down and happened to glance towards the bathtub.

There she was, staring through the transparent curtain. She lifted her hand and started to move the shower curtain open; her hand looked like that of the woman from my dream. I darted out of the bathroom, back to my bedroom, and slept with my light on.

I never saw her again, but my brother Matt told me he had had a dream of a woman, and when he described her to me she matched the description of the same girl I saw. But every time I try to tell this story out loud, I always choke.

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