I didn’t know true evil until I lived in that house. Bad, unpleasant, ungodly, yes, of course, but actual evil was never an existential thing for me; it was just something that other people saw and dealt with in their lives. It had never affected me because I wouldn’t let it, I thought I had a say in the matter. I do believe there were demons in that house, and I know there were Angels. I don’t believe in ghosts, so that’s really all it could have been. I never had a strong enough understanding of good versus evil, but that all changed when I wound up living back with Lilith in the white clapboard house.
You need to understand that she and I are very different people; I’ll catch a quick glimpse of her in my reflection on occasion, and it still comes as a shock. Not that I would look like her, she is technically my mother, but that I could look even for a moment like someone who is my opposite in every way. She was always very open, and I’m a private person; she was outgoing, and I was shy; she liked “spiritual experimentation,” never knowing which side she wanted to be on, and I will only accept God; she is violent, I am gentle; she regrets my existence, and I am grateful for the life I have. We’re just so very different.
I find it odd that this is so difficult to write; usually, when I’m writing, I’ll sit down, and it just flows out, but there are some pretty serious barriers holding this one back. For a few reasons, first of all being that I don’t want what happened to be real, and putting it into words just offers a finality that I can’t turn back from. Secondly, I don’t want a perception that I’m mentally unstable, mostly due to the concern I have of my depression giving people the feeling that I’m teetering on the edge, which I’m not; I have bad days, but my mind is strong and sound. I’m just a strange combination of overthinking and feeling too much. Third is my not wanting anyone to pass judgment on my mother. She has done things that she should not have, placed blame where it was unwarranted, and I am concerned for her. I will probably never see her again, but she is still a human being and even though she made her own choices, I don’t want her to have to regrets. I fear that one day she will.
I was still a kid when she started experimenting. The first thing I remember was her Tarot cards and Ouija board, I was probably 11 or 12 years old at the time. She thought she could harness a psychic ability, and there’s a vivid memory of walking into our house and seeing her hunched over the Ouija board with intense concentration; I was young, but already very sensitive to people, and there was a sharp pang of pity in my chest that brought tears to my eyes, so I walked out of the house and stayed gone for a while. I didn’t know anything about Ouija boards or Tarot, they could be real, or they could be a parlor game, but I don’t want any part of them. I will say this for her though, she never involved me in what she was playing with, which is one thing she did right.
Like all gateways, the Tarot and Ouija stopped being enough and she graduated to bigger arenas. Like an addict, looking for a better high, she moved on to chanting. From there became an obsession with demons, and she had several books on the occult, which is probably where she got the idea for the purple robe she would wear while lighting fires and speaking her stanzas.
Eventually, she started trying to cast spells, but this was done without my knowledge; I found out about that after she had left for the last time. It seems she has a box, and she writes the names of people who she feels have done her wrong and puts them in the box, where she attempts to put spells on those people. I only found that out because my name is in the box. The full scope of what she has involved herself in will never be known to me.
So, what of all this? It’s hard to write, so it may be difficult to read, and before I begin the story of our last few months together, I’ll say this. Have no fear. Reading through this story, you mustn’t fear it. The devil bases his existence on your fear, and you can’t give it to him.
My emotions as things progressed perplex me now, because as it was happening I felt basically nothing, I was indifferent to it. I knew it wasn’t something normal, but it was just a thing that was happening. There was a dull perception of life as it passed me by, and while I wouldn’t necessarily call it a trance, I was certainly closed in several ways; perhaps that was just a defense mechanism that was given to me, because I have no long-lasting issues concerning what happened while I was living there. It was malevolent, violent, intimidating, threatening, and mocking but that was just the way it was and I accepted it. I didn’t feel frightened by what was there until I had moved out of that house, and I would never go back. I am not frightened by it now, because I have no reason to be, and you’ll soon understand what I mean by that.
A little background to the house, it was built in 1927 by my great-grandfather Roy, who was not a kind man by any stretch of the word. He was 30 when he married my great-grandmother, who was 14 at the time, which was not completely uncommon back in those days, but I do see it as a terrible thing. Knowing, as we do now, that the human brain is not fully developed until well past the age of 14, I understand why my grandmother always seemed to be in turmoil.
Grandma Clara that I knew craved the simple things, like chocolate milk and cheese puffs; that was really all it took to make her happy, but there was a distance to her that couldn’t be gapped. She always seemed to be in deep thought, and I visited with her often because I felt connected to her. It always seemed like she wanted to say something just to get it off her chest, but she either couldn’t find the words or she didn’t want to be viewed as feeble. I didn’t find out until she had passed why the simple things were such a joy to her, and I wish I could have one more day, to reassure her that she did deserve better.
They had five children, my grandfather and his four sisters. Roy started raping his daughters before they were in grade school, and didn’t stop until they were married and out of the house. The men they married were a huge blessing on their lives, although I doubt they ever knew it, such secrets were kept in the family. Roy raised my grandfather as he was raised, to be a hateful person. They were both members of the KKK, and my grandfather (Wilhelm) passed those traits on to his own four children. I do not possess those traits; that nonsense ends with my Mother’s generation, all of whom are certainly old enough to change their ways if they so choose. There are simply no excuses for such behavior.
Two of my grandfathers died in the house; Clara’s dad, who was also a Klan member, passed on upstairs sometime in the 60’s and Roy fittingly died in the bathroom, which was located just outside Grandma Clara’s bedroom. He died a slow, painful death that lasted about 30 years, like he was literally rotting from the inside, one piece at a time. I was only 8 years old when Roy passed, but I remember Grandma not looking too upset at his funeral. She was probably relieved, because for all that I know about what he did to his children, I don’t want to imagine what secrets she held before her tortured soul ascended to Heaven.
So, for a house with such a dark beginning, I’m not sure where the demons came from. Obviously my grandfathers held a lot of the devil in them, and I was very much afraid of that house as a child, especially the back room that acted as a sort of breezeway before you came into my grandma’s bedroom and bathroom. Whether or not the darkness existed before we moved in, or if my Lilith added to the disturbances, possibly both, I’ll never know.
Only God knows what really went wrong at that house, and He’ll never tell me. I have no reason to know. All that matters is that I was protected from the brunt of it, but He let me experience enough to know never to follow in my family’s footsteps; and as my family has gradually written me off through the years, I’ve never fought it.
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The house needed some work before we could move in, and I stayed in the house while that work was being done. I was the laborer and I like to be near my projects. I just never know when a big burst of energy will come my way and I’ll want to make some progress. My room was supposed to be in the attic, where Clara’s dad died, but I wasn’t comfortable up there. It just seemed heavy to me, so I put my bed in the little storage room off from the living room and slept in there at first. My thought was that if I painted all the dark wood upstairs and lightened it up a little bit it wouldn’t be so bad, but I wanted to paint the main floor of the house first so we could move in.
About three days after I started working on the house, I was in the kitchen painting the door to the upstairs. I was listening to some music from the radio I had set up in the living room, and had it turned up pretty loud. It was after midnight, and way too quiet, so the radio was necessary in that creaky old house.
I had just opened to door the attic, which revealed the four steps up to the first landing and then a sharp left-turn into the attic itself, when the radio started going static. It was like someone was turning the tuner knob back a forth to change the station. I closed the attic door and went into the living room to check, but by the time I got there my music was back on. I didn’t think anything of it, just some trouble at the radio station, it happens, so I went back to the kitchen to continue painting. I opened the attic door again to paint the inside of it, and the radio went static again, like someone was trying to change the station. I stood there for a second, when the static suddenly got really loud, as if the radio was as loud as it could be, and then the static sound turned into a high-pitched squeal similar to the old dial-up internet sound; it was so loud and high-pitched, it sent chills up my spine. I shut the door and ran to the living room to turn the radio off; that was when I noticed the radio was unplugged. I don’t know why I wasn’t scared, disbelief maybe, but I put the radio out on the porch and went back to painting the door in the kitchen.
We moved in later that week, in early October, and I moved my bed upstairs to the attic bedroom. It was really separated into two rooms; when you got to the top of the stairs, there was a small room to the right, where I put my bed, and the main area to the left which was about four times bigger, where I set up my desk, television and an old rocking chair that I had. It was gabled of course, and there was a window on each end, with an outlet above each window. There were no other outlets upstairs, and the two I had were so old that it was a tight fit for the prongs on the light that I hung above my bed. I put up a tri-fold privacy screen between the two rooms, and being a fan of history, I hung up two framed posters in the larger of the two rooms. One was John Kennedy, the other was Abraham Lincoln. That minor detail will be addressed later.
When I was finished upstairs, I headed downstairs to see if Lilith needed help with anything. Walking down the attic stairs was tricky, they were small and steep, typical for an old house, and I had to duck about three steps from the bottom to avoid hitting my head on the overhang. When I got about five steps from the bottom, I felt a hard push from behind, like two hands just below my shoulder blades. It was aggressive enough that I made an “oomph” sound as I started to fall forward, and I knew I was going to face-plant right into the overhang that I needed to duck to avoid. Before I hit the overhang, something caught me; instead of going all the way into my face-plant, I fell into a big, warm, solid person in front of me who I couldn’t see. Without really thinking about it, I said “thank you”, and continued downstairs to help Lilith.
That night, I climbed back up the stairs; I hadn’t told anybody about what had happened. I didn’t tell anyone about the night with the radio either, until now. I was worried, because my mother was so into experimenting with things, that she would want to have a séance or something, so I decided to just keep it to myself.
I lay in bed all night, unable to go to sleep. It felt as though someone was watching me from the other room, and I was very cold, even with four blankets. It was a coldness that went to my bones, a hypothermic feeling that wouldn’t stop, and before long, it seemed like someone was standing next to my bed. The next day, I moved my bed back down to the small storage room off from the living room, directly below where I had tried to sleep that night.
Thinking back now, the upstairs was where the four daughters slept, and it’s probably one of the places they were abused by Roy. It is where Clara’s dad lived and died after the girls were married off, and who knows what he was into? It was where Clara would hide when Roy came in from the barn, drunk and ready to fight. No, it’s no wonder if there were demons in that attic, but things were just getting started.
Not long after, I started dating a guy named…Roy. Roy was a home body, just like me, so we were both content to just order a pizza, hang out and watch television. We were sitting on the couch one night, on the wall opposite from where my bedroom door was, and we could hear what sounded like footsteps. The living room and dining room were directly below the attic, and we were listening to what sounded like someone pacing back and forth, from one end of the house to the other, in slow and heavy strides. I had a creepy feeling up the back of my neck, because we were the only ones there. Lilith had gone out for one of her nightly hookups, and we were the only ones in the house. Roy wanted to go upstairs and check it out, but I asked him to just stay with me on the couch for a while, I had remembered being pushed down those stairs and didn’t want that to happen to him.
We listened for hours, as the footsteps went back and forth, and as they paced back to the other end of the house, above where the dining room was, they suddenly stopped. We didn’t hear anything else that night, but we sat up together until sunrise, listening to the quiet, because I didn’t want to be alone with whatever was in the attic.
That pretty much became our nightly thing. Roy and I worked together, same shift, so after work he would come to the house and hang out. Lilith was rarely home nights, but spent her days in the house, and I appreciated him not being afraid to be around, because I needed to be, I lived there. We would make dinner, sit on the couch to watch television and wait for whatever was going to happen.
One evening, after we ate and washed dishes, we sat down to watch Looney Tunes, because I love me some Looney Tunes, and the pacing started again, as we figured it would. The pacing went on for a while, we listened to it over the sound of the television. Like usual, the pacing went back to the place above the dining room and stopped. We thought it was over, but then it ran back to the end of the attic above us, footsteps pounding so hard it shook the house, and we heard <BOOM!>. I looked up at Roy, who looked at me and said, “You know, I have to check on that.” I was ready to find out what was happening, so we walked from the living room, through the dining room, to the kitchen. I grabbed a flashlight, and we went upstairs.
When we got to the top of the stairs, Roy pulled the chain for the one bare lightbulb, and we started to look around. He moved the tri-fold screen that separated the small room and looked at me in shock. I know what he was thinking, and Roy had never been upstairs before, so when he asked how we were listening to something pacing from one end of the house to the other without disturbing this room divider, I had no answer.
On the floor, in the center of the small room, was the light that I had plugged in above the window, the light that hung above where my bed was for that one night; the cord had been torn in half, and about 18 inches of frayed wires were still connected to the plug. Neither of us knew what so say, so Roy unplugged the loose wires, walked me back downstairs and we watched television with all the lights on, until the sun came up.
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As I knew would happen, one night I ended up having to stay in the house alone. My mother, of course was gone, and Roy was helping some friends move downstate, so it was all me. I got home from work around 11 p.m., I was on second shift at the time, and the house was eerily quiet. Although I was never what you would call ‘scared’ to be there, I’ll admit it was unsettling walking into the empty house that late at night. When I walked in the front door, I had a strange feeling go through my entire body, and I stood in the doorway by the light switch, just trying to take in whatever was happening. It was pitch dark, I still hadn’t flipped the light switch on, but it felt like it would have been scarier to have the lights on at that point; it would have been scarier to step into the room, so I just stood in the doorway to process what was happening.
The feeling going through me was thick and warm, like the steamy breath of a creature I couldn’t see. I could feel that I wasn’t wanted in that house, and although there were no growling sounds like I imagine would come with such an experience, the silence was deafening. There was an odor to the house that I had never noticed before, it was a burning leaf and rotten garbage smell that turned my already uneasy stomach. I really don’t know how long I stood in the doorway, I really don’t know why I didn’t leave, and I really don’t know how I worked up the nerve to close the door behind me and stay in the house alone that night. But I had no other choice. I lived there.
I finally turned on the light, and it just looked like our house. No monsters crouched in the corner, the smell had disappeared, and the hot and thick feeling was gone. I walked through the living room, through the dining room and kitchen, back toward where the bathroom was so I could shower and go to bed. I wouldn’t be eating dinner that night, I was too nerved up.
While walking through the house, I heard someone walking behind me on the old, creaky floorboards. But, of course, there was nobody there. I took my shower, feeling like someone was watching me, but of course there was nobody there either; nobody there, but that instinctive feeling that everyone has when they’re being watched. As I was getting dressed, I noticed a movement out of the corner of my eye, it was a shadow walking past the bathroom door and into what had been my grandma’s room, but again, there was no one there.
I went to bed in my little storage room, directly below where I had slept the first night. I was just settling in to sleep when the music started, the sound coming from the room above me. I opened my eyes and sat up, thinking I must have been dreaming, and it stopped. I started to settle back to go to sleep, and it started again, music was coming from the attic. I don’t know if it’s because I was alone, but I think that’s the first time I accepted that this just wasn’t okay, that I was lying in bed in an empty house, listening to a Waltz. It sounded like a music box, but I don’t have a music box. I didn’t want to get out of bed, I didn’t want to walk through the living room where the hot and thick air had greeted me when I arrived from work, I didn’t want to go to the attic and investigate, so I went to sleep. But on that night, and many nights after, sleeping was no better than being awake. It was the night that started one of the many recurring dreams about that house that continue to this day.
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In my dream, I had just arrived home from work, to a dark and empty house. When I walked in the door, I was greeted by a hot, thick sensation and a very strange odor. I stood in the doorway, unsure if I should walk in or turn on the lights, but I finally worked up the nerve to do both.
When I did, it looked just like grandma’s house; that is, grandma’s house while she was living there. I saw her old rocking chair, where she spent her final years crocheting and watching her console television. Her blue velour couch was along one wall, and looking to my right, I saw her old table and chairs in the dining room. I walked into the dining room, which also housed her avocado green refrigerator and her curio cabinet with the seashell collection she acquired during her many trips to Florida. I was surprised to see all her things in the house, her kids had sold everything off after she died, and I didn’t understand how everything came to be recollected and put back where she had it. I could hear someone moving around in the kitchen, so I continued through the dining room to see if Lilith was home. I wanted to ask her where all grandma’s things came from.
When I stepped into the kitchen doorway, it wasn’t my mother that I saw, it was my grandma. She was leaned over the sink, it appeared as though she was washing dishes. I was happy to see her, because I had missed her, so I said “grandma, what are you doing here? How is this possible?” Then she turned to look at me, and what I saw was not my sweet little grandma, her gentle blue eyes had turned to pure black, and the sweet smile I remembered had turned into a hateful sneer. She screamed at me that I shouldn’t be there, I had no right to be there, and I needed to leave right then. I tried to explain why I was in her house, but there was no reasoning.
She turned her body toward me, and I realized she had a knife in her hand; I looked down, and the kitchen sink was full of blood. I looked at her in shock and terror, and started to back out of the kitchen; she followed with the knife pointed in from of her, screaming at me to get out, because I didn’t belong in that house. I turned on one heel, so I could run out to the front door, but ran head first into something that had been standing behind me. It was tall, it almost reached the ceiling, and it was pure black; there was no face, just red eyes, eyes that seemed to cut into me, and there was a strong smell of burning leaves and rotten garbage. Just as it reached out for me, I woke up.
It took a moment for me to gather myself, and it took a moment for me to realize what had woken me. It was the sound of footsteps pacing back and forth in the attic. So, I lay in bed awake until the sun came up.
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By the time daylight came, I was exhausted. I got up and ran my errands, paid bills and ate lunch before going to work. By 2 o’clock in the afternoon, my mother still hadn’t come home from wherever she was, which was fine with me because I still didn’t want her to know anything was happening. It was always in the back of my mind that she would want to experiment with things; it didn’t enter my mind until long after she left and I moved out that she may already have been experimenting.
That night, I again came home to a dark and empty house. Roy was still downstate, Lilith was somewhere unknown. When I walked in the door, I was relieved that the house didn’t feel like it had the night before; the smell wasn’t there, and I walked in just like it was a normal day and made myself something to eat. I watched Bugs Bunny while I ate, which I still haven’t grown out of, probably never will, and when it was time to go to bed I opted to sleep in my her’s room.
Lilith’s (formerly grandma’s room) was in the back of the house, an addition that was put on some time in the 1960’s, so there is no attic. That was what really attracted me to the idea that I could get a good night’s sleep. She had a king-size bed, which barely fit in the small room, but I was really looking forward to just being in that part of the house. Up until then, most of my experiences had involved the attic and the space around the attic, so there was hope. I fell asleep around 1 a.m., on the side of the bed that was pushed against the wall. I am whatever the opposite of claustrophobic is, so being blocked in feels safe for me.
I awoke to a loud crashing noise. It sounded like someone had driven a truck through the front door, and was loud enough that I bolted upright in bed, staring at the open bedroom door. But I had closed that door. I looked at the clock on the nightstand, and the big green numbers told me it was 3 a.m.
I listened for noises, but there were none, not for a while. It was dead silent. I lay back down, heart still pounding, and felt something soft gently touch my face; then I felt the weight of someone sitting down on the edge of the bed, which couldn’t be possible for several reasons, one of which is that the side of the bed was pushed up against a wall. But I didn’t feel threatened, it didn’t seem like a heavy, ominous ‘something is watching me’ feeling, it felt protective. I thought about whatever had caught me from falling down the attic steps before, and that thought calmed me down. It was obvious that there was something bad in the house, but I was pretty sure at the moment there was something very good, as well. Before the night was over, I had known with absolute certainty that something was sent to protect me from whatever hell had been unleashed there.
I was still awake, my head turned to the right, toward the clock, with my protector sitting on my left. The clock read 3:17 when I started to hear the footsteps in the attic. Mind you, it’s a very old, creaky house, so even being away from the attic, the sounds reverberated to where I was. Loud, heavy footsteps purposefully paced back and forth. They made the circuit from one end of the house to the other a few times, when they came back to the middle of the attic and stopped. It was then that the unthinkable happened; the footsteps started coming down the stairs.
I was terrified. I was laying perfectly still, but I was close to hysterics on the inside; there were hot tears stinging my eyes, my heart was pounding in my chest and I was trying very hard to not completely fall apart. What felt like a hand was placed on my chest, where my heart was, and as I remembered that I wasn’t as alone as I felt, a peaceful feeling came over me. I was very grateful that I didn’t feel alone, when I heard the attic door open on squeaky hinges, and the footsteps started coming through the kitchen.
For some reason unknown to me, unexplainable I’m sure, it was just a different kind of threat when it was only upstairs. Having to face the thing was a completely different level that I wasn’t sure I could handle. It was through the kitchen and walking toward the bedroom by this point when the weight from the side of the bed lifted. The thing from the attic didn’t make it to where I was that night, or to where I could even see what it was; the footsteps abruptly stopped about 8 feet from the bedroom door. I listened intently, expecting a surprise, expecting an attack from something that could very well beat me, but it never came.
I continued to lay motionless for what seemed like hours, listening, hoping and praying. After a while, the weight returned to the bed’s side. I looked at the clock; it was 3:21. Whatever was with me had quickly disposed of the problem, so I rolled onto my left side toward whoever it was and went to sleep.
*****************
For a while, things returned to what could best be described for that house as normal. The pacing in the attic continued nightly, and even when my mother was home, I wondered how she could avoid hearing it. She tended to sleep with the television on, and a fan to provide white noise, so I’m guessing she never knew what was happening. Maybe.
I was happy to have Roy back, having him hang out with me in the evenings and listening to our upstairs visitor was a lot better than doing it alone. We were watching television one night, after Lilith had gone to bed, and the pacing started as usual. I didn’t tell him about anything that had happened while he was away, I never actually told anyone about any of this until now. He probably just assumed it was business as usual, and that evening it really was business as usual, until the pacing stopped in the middle of the attic again.
I sat next to Roy, very tense, expecting it to come downstairs like it had a few nights before. Instead, we heard a dull <thud>, and then silence. We sat and waited for what would happen next, but it ended up being that we were done with it for the rest of the night, or it was done with us.
The next morning, we went upstairs to see if anything was out of place, and in the middle of the large room, the framed poster of Abraham Lincoln was lying face down. When I picked it up and turned it over, there were scratches in the Plexiglas, two double sets of jagged parallel scratches, one set running diagonally down his face, the other horizontally across his abdomen. From then on, it didn’t matter how the poster was fastened to the wall; I tried liquid nails, two sided tape and screws, but nothing could keep President Lincoln’s picture from winding up face down on the floor. The picture of John Kennedy was never disturbed.
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It wasn’t long before tensions got to be too much in the house, and everyone started acting strangely. I seemed to be sick all the time, and it didn’t matter what medicine I took, nothing could shake whatever bug I had. I had terrible headaches, and couldn’t eat much; if I did try to eat, I became violently ill. I would have pain that radiated through my entire body, and it was getting to the point that if I was home I was nearly debilitated; if I was away from home, I felt fine. I could go to work and feel great, but at home, all I wanted to do was sleep or, at the very least, just lay on my bed in agonizing pain.
My dreams were often scattered and violent, and the dream about my grandma and the sink full of blood was frequent; there were dreams about the old days, days long before I was born, when my great-grandfather was still a young and hateful man, and the dreams had a slow-motion, echoing nostalgia to them that still creeps me out.
Another recurring dream I had was of my mother, coming into my room and sitting on the edge of my bed while I slept. When I awoke, I found that she was staring at me with eyes that were pure and shiny black; no white, just solid black. In my dream, I sat up in bed, and backed up against the wall, trying to get as far away from her as I could. She never spoke, just stared hard at me with those eyes, and started to make a low, guttural growling sound. Just as she sprung forward, lips pulled back to reveal sharp teeth aiming straight for my neck, I would wake up. That dream returned after she left for good, in what turned out to be a semi-fulfilling prophecy.
Things went from bad to worse. Roy was always angry, resulting in an argument if I spoke about anything. He was angry when I wasn’t feeling well and wanted to sleep, but he was angry when I was awake and trying to feel happy, nothing I did was right with him. As a result, I became irritable as well, and when he would ask to come over after work, I would tell him no. I didn’t find out until much later that he and my mother had started their own relationship while I was sick and asleep in my bedroom. It’s no wonder he was upset all the time, I was giving him literally nothing that he wanted, so he went to my mother with it. I wish I could say that was the first time she took over one of my relationships.
I was home alone one night, of course, Roy and I had ended by mid-February, and Lilith was somewhere unknown to me. I was lying in bed, almost asleep when I heard the music coming from the attic. Always the same tune, and I wondered what it was about the Waltz that could strike such fear in a person. Before the Waltz had ended, I had the familiar feeling of someone beside my bed. There was moonlight streaming through the open curtains, but I couldn’t see anyone there. I tried to put it out of my mind and started to drift off to sleep, ignoring the sensation that there was someone next to me. Apparently, either I upset it or it surely wanted my attention, because my bedroom door slammed shut. I abruptly sat up and looked to my left where the door was; that’s when a low, gravelly voice whispered, “Get ready,” followed by a cruel chuckle. I reached over and turned on the light, but I was alone in my room.
Not long after that, my mother changed. It wasn’t a gradual change like Roy’s; hers was more swift and sudden. She was never at an approachable level of hostility; there was no zero to 60 when it came to Lilith. She literally went from about 80 to 230 within the course of about a week. It was a violent week, full of threats of bodily harm, a new understanding on my part that she could never be a real mom to me, and the grave realization that she wanted me dead. And then she was gone from my life. Forever.
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Left completely alone in the house, I slept often; if I wasn’t at work, I was asleep. I had no hobbies, I just drifted in a blind stupor. I felt nothing about anything, and it wasn’t long before I was fired from my job and living off whatever savings I had. The strange activity hadn’t slowed down at all, and quite often I would wake up to something holding me down in my bed. I could never see it, but I could feel it pressing itself onto me until I blacked out. I would awaken hours later, never knowing what had happened, but more upsetting was the fact that I never actually wondered what had happened. I was losing time, and that was just the way it was.
I wouldn’t say I was depressed at the time, I know depression and that wasn’t it. I was oblivious, I was sleepwalking through life, and I had grown to accept whatever unnatural being was in the house as a part of my natural surroundings. If I laid down on the couch, I could sense it watching me from the dining room; I knew its darkness, but I didn’t care.
Before long, my savings ran out and I couldn’t afford to stay on my own any longer. I wound up moving into a room in my aunt’s house, which turned out to be a very good thing. My last night in the house, before I packed up and went, I was lying in bed when the footsteps started. They made the circuit, back and forth, one end of the attic to the other, back and forth, and when they got back to the middle of the house, they stopped. I thought for a moment it was done with me for good, but then it started down the stairs, one deliberate step at a time.
I got out of bed and started toward the kitchen. I don’t know why, but I did not fear it or anything else at that moment. I could hear it stomping down the stairs as I walked through the dining room; I matched it step for step and ended up in the kitchen doorway just as it reached the bottom. I turned on the kitchen light and stared at the door, waiting for it to open, not knowing what I would do if it did. It was cold in the kitchen, and I could feel tension/anger/hatred/disgust and it was all aimed at me; I was beyond caring, and I don’t know where my sudden surge of bravery came from, but I stood waiting for whatever was about to happen, not willing to back down. I was staring at the yellow door, with the brass door-knob, when <BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM>, something was pounding on it from the other side. It was loud and echoed through the entire house, shaking the door with each hit, and then absolute silence.
I turned the light off and went back to my bedroom. I listened to the Waltz that was playing upstairs until the sun came up.
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After I moved out, things were rough for a while. The realization of what had happened sank in, but I could never tell anyone about it. I was understandably depressed about my family situation, but there was so much more to it that no one involved would ever know. I mean really, even if my family was around to hear this story, who would believe it?
Some weeks later, a distant cousin introduced me to church, and my world improved incredibly from there. With God back in the foreground, where he belongs, I was able to pull my life together and move on from everything that happened in that house. It took a lot of time, and there were some backward slides, but I’ve made peace with the whole mess.
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Years later, in what I consider a foolish attempt to keep that white clapboard house in the family, my cousin Jacob was given the opportunity to purchase the old place. He was excited because he loved Grandma as much as I did, but my heart sank when I found out he had bought it and planned to move in. I never said anything; I didn’t want to give him any ideas, and Jacob and I were never close so that he wouldn’t have believed me anyway.
Jacob had lived in the house for about three years when I saw him at a family reunion. It was the first family reunion to happen since we were kids, and it was the last one I ever attended, I just couldn’t handle the memories as well as I thought I could. The reunion was held in the garage on Grandma’s property, just yards from the house where my life nearly unraveled.
Jacob and I ended up by the coffee pot at the same time, and I could tell he had been wanting to talk to me, but like I said, we weren’t close, so it would have seemed awkward. When he finally did get me alone, he became agitated, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. I asked Jacob what was wrong, and he just kind of blew it off like everything was okay. I turned to leave him when he finally spoke up and said, “Hey Dani, I was just wondering…did you ever hear footsteps in the attic?”
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