Thursday, March 24, 2011

How It Began


“When I was young it came to me.”
Queen – The Night Comes Down
~

The hag had not been bothering the boy quite as much for the past few months now, giving him a little bit of a breather from the torment she had inflicted upon him. This change seemed to have started when his little sister and brother had a violent episode with her. The boy was guessing that the demonic witch’s appearance to his younger siblings seemed to somehow expend much of her energy for some reason. They said her big attempt at the front door had been directed towards him, but it seemed to have failed for the moment.

There were actually several things that had come out of that incident from a few months ago. His brother and sister had immediately told him what had happened, saying they were sure the hag was trying to get to him. The pair also told their parents about the incident when they got home that night. Soon the whole family began to understand what had been happening. The boy finally felt able to tell about what had been happening to him for as long as he could remember now. As his story unfolded, his mother began to think back to a related story of her own.

It all began when the boy was barely more than a baby. His mother’s younger sister, the boy’s aunt, had moved back from a place very far away, and she had brought something with her for her two sisters, one older and one younger. It was a game, she said. It was called a Ouija Board, and you could supposedly talk to spirits through it. It couldn’t really do that, she said, but it was fun playing with it and maybe trying to figure out how it really worked. Soon each of the three sisters had one.

The three sisters, becoming very close once again, used a board together many times with great success. They would ask the so called spirits their questions, and would be met with surprisingly accurate answers. The answers could also be amazingly helpful, telling them solutions to any of their little problems, and other positive things it added to the inquiries. At least two of the sisters suspected the others of manipulating the answers. The third sister oddly became silent about it.

Even though the sisters were very close, they couldn’t always be together. They each had their own lives to lead, and they each had their own homes, so they just couldn’t use a Ouija Board together as often as they’d like. Even though the rules on the box stated for some reason that the board wasn’t to be used by less than two people, the boy’s mother decided to try hers out while she was at home by herself. She was surprised to find that it worked!

It was shortly after that when the trouble started. At first the young woman began hearing strange, quiet voices in the house. She assumed they were from people outside, but there was something oddly different about them. Then one day the bathroom door had somehow become locked. They had to break in the small window from outside to get in. There they found a car key jammed in the lock from the inside. They suspected the baby, but there was no way he could have bent the key the way it had been when they found it.

One night shortly after that, the young woman and her husband began hearing strange knocking sounds on the walls. They would normally believe it was maybe the pipes or something, but this was a relatively new house. The knocking was clearly coming from the outside walls, but it was too late at night for anyone to be there. After that first night, the knocking continued from then on to be a problem on random nights.

On another night, not long after the knocking began, it was ended with a huge banging crash on the side of the house! It shook everything almost as if a car had crashed into the house. The woman’s husband went outside to see what had happened, but there was no sign of anything there in the freshly fallen snow.  The young woman had already been frightened by the strange things that were going on, but now she was absolutely terrified. She didn’t like being in the house anymore.

The knockings were just the beginning. The problems would now only get worse. Another night, the young woman was in bed sound asleep when she was mysteriously awakened. She opened her eyes to see a horrible apparition leaning over her by the side of the bed! It was the ugliest old hag she had ever seen! It’s malevolent face was glowering down at her as if in a terrible anger!

The woman instantly knew in her heart that she was looking into the face of death itself! She thought she was going to die! She was too afraid to move, speak, or call out to her husband, who was just inches away. The only thing she could do was close her eyes as tightly and as quickly as she could. After laying there expecting the worst, it never came. So she slowly opened her eyes wondering if the apparition was still there. It was gone.

The next day, finally realizing the source of all her troubles, the young woman took the Ouija board from the closet where she had been keeping it and took it out to the trash. She remembered then that her youngest sister had for some reason buried her board in the dirt floor at the back of the basement of her parents’ house. It must have been for a similar reason. She hoped this would end the terrifying problems, but there was still to be one more thing.

It happened the very next night when the young parents were in bed asleep. Their two year old son came in complaining of nightmares. The woman told him he could climb into bed with them, and so he slipped in at the edge and soon fell fast asleep. A little while later is when the incident was to happen.

The young mother was awakened for the second time in two nights. This time was different though. Something had physically picked her up about a foot off the bed! She could feel hands holding onto her. Suddenly she was violently thrown away from the child and into her husband! Both adults were now wide awake and confused, knowing something very bad had happened, but not really understanding what that might be. The mother believed that this might have been some sort of last revenge for her getting rid of the Ouija Board.

And that was her story. The children’s mother thought it had been all over with after that last incident. The knocking on the walls had never quite ended, but she never imagined that the children were having problems. In an effort to soothe their fear, the children’s mother told them that the woman that had tried to get into the house must have been a drunken neighbor or something, but they knew better than that.

The children knew that thing was not human! And when the mother told them all not to worry, and that she would take care of this, the oldest boy knew that she couldn’t. He knew his mother wanted to protect him, but she just didn’t understand. What could she really do about it? None of them were really sure what to do. How could anyone fight a thing like this? The boy worried about what would happen next. He knew he was the only one that might ever be able to do something, and he wondered if it was all just hopeless.



Monday, March 14, 2011

At The Door


"…and you are there with glowing eyes and burning hair."
Concrete Blonde – Violent
~

The little girl sat on the living room couch with one of her brothers, happily engrossed in the TV show she was watching. Her too real nightmare from a few years ago about the witch was mostly long forgotten. That feeling of danger she had back then couldn’t last long for her anyway because of how protective the rest of her family always was towards her. And even though her parents were out for a few hours that night, she always felt safe because her three big brothers were there in the house with her.

After a little while she heard an odd sound that she hadn’t heard in quite some time. It was a low eerie, almost electronic, humming sound, like a too long held bass note on a piano. It wasn’t coming from the television, which up until now was the only source of sound near them. The scary sound seemed to be coming from the front door. The girl unconsciously moved a little closer to her brother on the couch.

All of a sudden there was a bang at the front door! It was followed by loud scratching and rattling. Someone was trying to get in, but the sounds weren’t the sounds of a normal turning of a doorknob and opening of a door. They were violent shakes. She knew it was nobody they knew.

Her brother jumped up from his position on the couch and ran for the door with the little girl right behind. They got there just as the violent banging stopped completely. There wasn’t anything at the large window set in the door to keep anyone from seeing in or out. The area of the door was a small alcove that led to all parts of the house, so it was already difficult enough to see into the house. Including the doorway to the living room, there were also stairs to the left going upstairs as you entered. The two siblings looked out the window and only saw the darkness of the night.

Then in less than a second, from out of the night a face swooped in close to the window! It was the hideous face of an ugly old hag! She had an angry sneer on her mouth full of crooked teeth, and her eyes seemed to be cloaked in an odd glowing darkness. The little girl immediately recognized her as the witch from her dream. “GIMME MY DOG,” the hag screeched at them. “YOU HAVE HIM! GIVE HIM TO ME!!!”

The locked door somehow flew open right in front of them, and the hag pushed herself halfway in! She turned towards the stairs leading up, and screamed again at the frightened children, “THIS HOUSE IS MINE! IT’S ALL MINE! I WANT MY DOG! BRING HIM TO ME!!!” The girl somehow knew not to let the hag get upstairs where her oldest brother was. She had a strong instinctive knowledge that this old witch meant great danger to him. And, even though she would usually look to him for help in any other bad situation, she hoped he stayed where he was.

Right at that moment the girl’s other brother threw himself at the hag and pushed with all his might! After an intense struggle the old witch was pushed back outside, and the two siblings pushed the door shut behind her! Only a second later they looked out the window again, in dread that she would come back, but there was nothing there. Then the girl’s brother stepped right up to the window and peered out. “How could she just disappear,” he said in a shaky voice.

“I’m going to have to go out there and make sure,” said the boy. The little girl pleaded for him not to open the door, but checking was the only way he could ease his own fear. If he saw that ugly old hag he would run back in the house. After a short, desperate argument, he gathered his courage, opened the door back up, and marched out onto the long front porch, the little girl right behind him.

He then peered around to find out if the strange old hag had gone anywhere near. He looked up and down the street but found nothing. The two then looked to the side of the house from the porch to see if she was anywhere near the hatch that led to the dirt floor basement. They still found nothing so they went back inside. The thing, which is the way they were thinking of it now, had truly disappeared.

Shaken and still scared, but secure in the knowledge that it was all over, her brother then locked the door once again, and they both ran upstairs to tell their oldest brother.



Tuesday, March 8, 2011

A Troubled Sleep


“And when I look in my window, so many different people to be.”
Donovan – Season Of The Witch
~

The boy was having a lot of trouble trying to get to sleep. It had become a common problem for him in the past few years. You see, now when things got quiet at bedtime he began to worry. He wondered if the demonic hag that had been haunting him would ever go away. Several years had now passed and the boy was now several years older, with three younger siblings; the youngest of which was now close to the same age as the boy was when the hag had first visited. And still the witch came to terrorize him.

And what about the threats this horrible old witch was now making toward his family? It seemed as soon as the boy decided that the witch’s threats towards him were maybe just all bluster to scare him, she began to threaten his younger siblings. As an oldest brother, he instinctively feared for their safety even more than his own, which made him fear the witch even more than before. And there was also something else.

The other thing that concerned the poor young boy was the idea that these hauntings were somehow all in his imagination? Nobody else ever saw the witch, and the boy was sure people now looked at him a little differently than most other kids. He overheard them say his withdrawn behavior was because he was shy. He didn’t like that. He wasn’t shy! The whole thing made him feel like a disappointment. He wondered what he could do about it all. He was afraid it was all hopeless.

But even though it took him several hours to fall asleep, that’s just what the boy finally did. It was not long before he was dreaming. He found himself in the living room of his house with the rest of his family. Everything looked okay, but something didn’t feel quite right to the boy. It was after realizing this didn’t feel like a good dream that he noticed that his sister wasn’t there.

And then at that moment the familiar low ominous humming sound that always announced the coming of the hag came again to the boy. But there was a curious difference this time. It didn’t sound quite as close. It felt almost as if the sound was being aimed in another direction. The boy thought maybe it was because this was just a dream.

Even though, upon hearing the threatening sound, his usual urge was to flee in panic to a futile safety near the closest adult, curiosity got the best of the boy.  He couldn’t help himself but to follow that all too familiar strange shift in gravitational pull towards the back of the house. And anyway, he felt that it wasn’t pulling towards him as hard this time. He still didn’t want to meet the hag alone again, but he just couldn’t help himself but to follow his curiosity.

When he got to the kitchen doorway his eyes were somehow instinctively drawn to the window just over the sink at the right side of the kitchen. There looking in the window was the demonic witch with a menacing look on her face! Even though the boy felt the overwhelming urge to run away, he didn’t do it because he noticed that the hag’s horrible gaze wasn’t focused in his direction. She was after something else.

When the boy followed the gaze of the monstrous old hag to the opposite side of the room he found his sister cowering there in the corner! The boy’s terror shifted immediately from himself to his poor little sister. What could he do? He knew he was incapable of helping her.

The boy then turned to look back to the kitchen window but the hag wasn’t there anymore. She was now in the middle of the kitchen walking toward his obviously terrified little sister! No!!! And when the witch halted directly in front of the helpless little girl, the evil old hag turned to the boy and gave him the most evil, spiteful grin she had ever shown him.

It was right at that moment that the boy woke up from the nightmare.

The next afternoon, while still obsessively worrying about his all too real feeling nightmare over and over, the boy’s little sister approached him. Her gaze was focused on the floor for some reason, and she seemed as if she wanted to turn and run. Then she finally looked up at him and said in a small voice, “I don’t know who to tell this to. I had a nightmare last night. It seemed real when I was there. There was a mean old witch, and she said she was going to hurt me…”