The Dark Side

You don't have to be a medium, or psychic, or whatever the hell I am to see or hear the dead. My mother who was once like me but found a loop whole in it still on occasion can sense the evil. How many times has the hair stood on the back of your neck to the very tip? Goosebumps consumed the skin on your arms? Felt eyes on the back of your neck when all alone? It is a reality that my mother couldn't escape no matter how hard she tried or what churches she attended. Some places are just no good. They can start off ok and slowly descend like the house on Claymoore Street. I'll be the first to admit that it was never home. Although my sister claims home is where your bed is.

I guess that is true, we never stayed in one house long enough to make it a home. And we never felt comfortable enough there to say that we loved it. For some weeks things had begun to get violent and though I still knew David was with me I wondered how much he could protect me against these things. David struggled to hold a solid shape but these entities were now leaving their mark. Sleep was something that was hard to come by these days. Every night a dream would spring me from my sleep and my sister as well. Before too long we were now spending more nights on the floor of my mothers room than we were in our own.

It didn't stop the dreams from coming; it was just the comfort of knowing someone was going to be there when you woke up. The dreams never went without me being harmed, and no matter how my sister and I told my mother of them she found they were nothing to worry about. My sister was broken easily. After my mother's constant denial my sister would no longer talk about them. Not even to me. It made me angry to think that for a short time I had someone who saw what I was seeing. Now either she was denying them or they truly did stop. Either was upsetting for me.

We went to bed one night my mother in her bed, my sister and I cuddled up in all the blankets and pillows we could find on either side of her bed on the floor. I tried to keep myself up as long as possible but eventually my stone lids closed and allowed the dream to begin. I was running from someone. I didn't know who, I couldn't even see their faces, just their navy blue cloaks that covered their bodies completely, aside from their feet. The scene changed from my home, to the streets, to the brush of woods I was unfamiliar with until a tree fell out in front of me.

I closed my eyes and cringed in pain, when my eyes opened I was laying on a large piece of wood. I looked above and below me; it wasn't until I looked to the sides that I realized it. What I laid on was a cross. A man walked up to me and smiled I knew what he was about to do he would take pleasure in. I screamed and sat up quickly. My mother flung on the light and looked at me with shock, as did my sister. Tears streamed down my face and blood streamed down two fresh holes in my hands. "What happened?" she asked me taking my hands and leading me to the bathroom to clean me up.

I looked at her with such anger in my eyes, I knew it. I had even hoped some that it may have scared her. "If I told you it wouldn't matter" after that. It was silence. I don't think I had ever had a greater anger or someone than I had for my mother at that very moment. Every night it was something new. A new scratch, a new bruise, a new reason to resent my mother. I had grown angry, even David seems to struggle to calm me but he was always there. Which gave me faith to a least get some sleep here and there. Until, sleep wasn't the only place he knew how to harm me. I'd sit in my room and feel a sharp pain on my sides, scratches. Four of them right down my side.

My mother believed I did it to myself. As punishment she took away my nightlight. She called me a pretender and left me in the dark. To cry and watch as the beast who had been harming me would stare from my door, leaving me no way to escape if he decided to make a move. David stayed with me. I always knew when he was there and just like before he allowed me to sleep.

One morning my mother woke me up yelling! I don't remember her exact words but I remember her accusations. When she woke that morning the cross on the kitchen wall was turned upside down. She said that I was doing it, for the attention that the dreams story wasn't giving me. It angered me so much. I swore I wasn't doing it and for the first time in years I had actually preferred to be in my room and away from the family. Now they wanted me in their sight.

My mother turned the cross back to its original right side up way and decided to spend the night watching me. Making sure I didn't go into the kitchen by myself. No TV, no music, just sitting on the chair reading bible verses. My mother stretched and decided it was time for dinner. She told my father to watch me and told me to stay where I was. She had not been in the kitchen for more than a minute when I heard her call calmly for my father. As calm as she could muster that is. It made me grin; I knew what she wanted him for. I waited for him to leave the room before I placed down the bible and followed after.

There they stood staring at the cross on the wall it was once again upside down. "But mom... Now haven't you guys been watching me all night? Weird right?" my mother turned around and looked at me. I could see it in her eyes. My bruises, my scratches, the holes, the tears, my words everything I wasn't doing it. I had finally grown tired of her not stepping up to who she was. I remember every word so clearly. I had rehearsed it in my head so many times before then, and now it was just all blurting out. "Just because you had it taken away doesn't mean it never existed. You remember what it was like growing up with this. WITH NO ONE HERE TO HELP YOU!...You don't want to help that's fine... But don't ever call me pretender" my father placed his hand on my shoulder and my mother fixed the cross. She went to bed early. The next day, they looked for a new place to live. See you next time on My Ghost Stories.