I was born in '81. Not in a large city or a backwoods town. Just a Middle sized place in the desert. Born to a father and mother that love me very much. I was my fathers 2nd child and my mothers 1st. My oldest sibling didn't live with my family because my fathers first wife was granted custody. It wouldn't be two years later before my brother was born and he would join our family ranks.
I was conceived in a vehicle. Yeah, my parents were hippies, at least that's what me and my brother called our parents. They never bothered to correct or deny it either but bragged about it when we did.
In a old VW van is where I spent about the first 8 months in my moms belly. A month before I was born, my father had saved enough from his job to get a apartment. It wasn't out of the way for him and he could afford it on his wages. A month and a half later I was born into this world. That's right, I was in there for a extra two weeks.
The way I was told, it was really hard on my mom. The birth was hard on her. It almost killed us both. She tried to give a natural birth but I had already put on to much weight by the time she went into labor. When the doctor declared they had to do a C-section it was already almost to late. In the end I had come into the world screaming up a storm as they pulled my body from my mother. As I imagine it, it was probably a little cold in that room. Not that I have a memory of it. I was a little over weight and I was completely bald. If there was a hair on my body, it belong to the person that was holding me at the time.
The bad news was that I had been trying to push my way out for so long that, while inside, my mothers body started crushing my head. It is typical for a child to have a little bit of a cone or extra looking flesh on the top of their head when they are born. My head was completely coned shaped. It took almost a year before my parents would get my skull to the shape of a normal looking human child.
Two weeks later I went home. My parents told me it was a long slow ride home. They even waited for a bicycle to turn off instead of going around them for six miles. When we did get home they had realized that in all of the excitement of my coming birth, that I didn't have anything to sleep in.
So for the first two and half months home, I slept with them in a water bed.
At the end of that time was my first incident.
One night I was placed in the same spot I had been sleeping in. The lights were turned off and they feel asleep. To their misfortune I was still awake. I had started crying and would not stop. They tried everything to help me fall asleep but I just wouldn't. So my father had said something to my mother about putting me in the car and taking a ride. So, they got up and dressed and we went on a ten mile cruise. By the time they got home I was asleep. They decided to go to bed and repeat the days events in the morning.
I was told it was about 3 am when my parents woke up to me screaming. My mother had jumped up and turned the light on to see if something was wrong with me. When she and my father started looking I was no where to be found. They started to panic when my father found me on his side of the bed and was hanging off of it.
Dad had told me that when he looked down he knew who I was but didn't recognize me as he reach for me. While doing that he had realized that my leg was caught between the frame and the mattress. While they was removing my leg from the bed the door slammed shut on its own. My mother had stood near it while freaking out while my father had pulled my limb out. She was so startled by seeing my little body in that position all see could do was stand there covering her mouth with her hands as she asked my father what to do. The door slamming shut like that sent her into a state of panic. Once my leg had been removed from the bed. My parents rushed me to the hospital.
My leg was broken. It had snapped from my hip to my knee. The doctors were so mad trying to get a confession or a reasonable explanation that they were confronted by the local police that was 1 floor down. The police was suspicious about it all but no charges was filed.
There was never a explanation of how my leg was caught in between the water bed and its frame or how I managed to get on that side of the bed without making a sound or waking my parents. I wouldn't learn to crawl for another 4 months at this point.
It would be a few more years before my parents would look back at this and say this was my first encounter.
After that my parents couldn't stay there anymore so they moved two states to the east. They ended up in a camper were they moved here and there. Meanwhile, I was sent to my grandparents after spending 4 weeks in the hospital while my leg mended. I was moved back and forth over the next year and a half, between my parents and grandparents.
I was told that I was behaving unusual after I learned to walk. I didn't like people. I would always find a place to hide in the open. Going out of my way to turn lights on in all hours of the day and night. Hiding behind furniture without making a single sound for hours at a time and always looking for new ways and places to hide if I was found by my parents or grandparents or not.
Finally one day while I was asleep behind the wood stove. My grandmother found me and put me on the couch with a blanket and started walking away. I started to have a nightmare at that exact time and my grandmother turned back to check on me. When she did a medium/large picture frame flew, off of her wall, across the room and gashed her arm. She still has a light scare. Seven people witnessed it that night from across a open room.
Lingering Dream
I was learning to speak clearly and was finally back with my parents for a while. This is also when my memories start. They had settled into a small city and was still in the camper. They gave me the good news that I was going to be a brother soon. I never did have a imaginary friend and I still don't know why. When I started speaking more clearly the words I spoke was strange to the people around me. Not that I was talking like a baby or speaking another language but in the way that a child is talking to a horror movie that he had seen for the very first time. Only I hadn't ever seen a horror movie. Seemingly to my parents I was screaming and crying to the air itself. Being unable to do anything about it other than talk with me to calm down, they took me to my first child therapist.
The therapist asked me a series of kid questions and had me draw. For example "What kid of TV do you watch?" Being as literal as I have always been I replied "black and white". I don't remember what I drew. When he asked me why I scream at my imaginary friend and cry. My reply was. "He is not my imaginary friend." and started to cry. When he asked me why I was crying about I had said " He wants to kill it." He asked "What does it want to kill?" My reply was "The world." That night I had a dream. It showed me what it would do to the planet one day. It was and still is the most terrifying scene I have ever seen. It spoke three words to me that night. As I was having the dream, "I'll take you." When I was about 20 years old I asked my parents about a dream I had when I was little. They told me they heard the words that night and said I said them but it was not my voice.
It was almost a year before we had any more issues. By that time my brother was six months old and I was headed toward 3. We moved again to the next state to the east and my dad had bought a little two bedroom house. It was a few years old at the time he bought it but was always saying it was "theirs straight out". That day we spent a great amount of time moving things into the house and spent the afternoon picnicking on the living room floor. After all of our belongings was in the house and our little black and white television was hooked up. We went out to eat at a little fish place outside town. After having our fill of catfish and hush-puppies we went home. As we entered we noticed things were not as we left them. At the time my father thought that we had stacked the boxes to high and they fell over. Later on that night we would find out differently.
We finished picking up the boxes that had been strolled across the floor and watched the reruns of MASH and HEE HAW and they decided it had been a long day and was time to go to bed. The two little hints it was time was already laying on the floor asleep. My mother had went to the master bedroom and made a pallet out of a bunch of blankets and sheets for the night and moved me and my brother in there. As they turned out the lights in the house and laid down for the night there was a knock at the door.
Since the master bedroom was located toward the front of the house and it didn't have a back door my mother got up and looked out the window. She saw no vehicles in the driveway or anyone on the porch. Accepting it was either animals or her imagination she went back to bed. Moments after she laid back down my father heard someone walking down the hallway. As soon as he jumped up he reached for the gun he had and ran into the hallway. He saw nothing. Thinking that they had heard him, he ran toward the door.
After causing a huge ruckus in the house, he looked room by room for this person, turning on all the lights on as he went along and closing doors after he looked in each one. Checking the windows and locks and no trespassers in sight he turned all the lights out and went back to bed. Keeping the gun nearby.
It took about 5 minutes before it started again. This time it was stomping up and down the hallways. Again a room by room search with a loaded gun locking me and my brother in the room we had been sleeping in. Waking me up so they could get back in. After a grueling hour of them searching the entire house inside, out and under short of ripping the wall out and looking inside the insulation for a trespasser they were satisfied.
It took a entire 2 minutes after they got back in bed with me and my baby brother before it started again. This time it was worse. It was running and my mother and father was very nervous. On the brink of losing her sanity she grabbed me and my brother and held on tight to both of us. It ran back and forth for about two minutes before it paused at the door the first time. When it started again it was another four minutes. My father was very angry and scared for his family. Holding the gun at the door loaded and cocked.
When it stopped at the door the second time. I am not sure what happened. Either my dad shot first and then the door got kicked in or the other way around. Either way, when the gun went off there would have been no time for anyone to move away from 3 shots at any speed on foot. In the end when that door opened no one was there. Despite 3 bullets being fired it still ran into the room and then stomped down so hard on the floor the house shook as if a plane hit it. We left that night taking nothing but the cloths on our backs. My father and uncle went back the next day for all our things. For the next 6 months no matter where we went the footsteps followed.
The steps finally stopped for good and we were finally getting rest at night. Finally settling into the new house we moved to, we all thought it would have changed. The footsteps was a long issue to deal with and sometimes we would just go out to get away for awhile. But when we got back they would start again.
After they had stopped we felt better about things and it seemed for a good long while that things were becoming normal, at least to my parents it did. It had been a couple of years since I had hid anywhere and in my parents eyes something didn't seem right about me. The footsteps had taken a toll on them and peace of mind was in sight. They always found me in my room all the time and left it very little of the time. Enough time to use the bathroom or eat. They started to think back and thought I was depressed from all the moving I had already experienced.
They wanted to give me a chance at socializing with others my age and talked to a local school. They had a kindergarten there and decided to enroll me by the time I was four. While there, things looked to be moving better. I wasn't as seclusive and was doing better. Even had a friend that I always looked up to and never stopped talking about.
One night we were all asleep and my mother woke up and smelt smoke. She woke up my father. She headed to me and my brother and my father started looking around for the burning. My mother had taken my brother and I outside wrapped in blankets. I remember the mosquito's biting my legs. I could see my father throwing things like clothes and anything that he could fit through a window. Then I remember seeing a flash of light on the other side of the house. A fire had broken out. My father had come out just in time to us to watch the entire house burn. He had plenty of time to pick up our stuff he had thrown out the windows and as my mom drove to the neighbors house. As my mother and brother drove away I helped by dad throw everything on a tarp he had pulled out of the wood paneled station wagon. As we did, we both could hear something in the house screaming and laughing at the same time. The cause of the fire was looked into because the house was insured. No human cause or any other was ever found.
I wish I could say that was the end of it and that thing burned in the fire. It wasn't. Thinking it was gone and over for good it was another 5 years before it made itself known again.
After moving to the other side of the state, I was enrolled into another school. I repeated my kindergarten year due to my young age and was now in third grade. We moved into a older home in the country and there was a lot of it. The first thing that struck me was it had a old metal shed out in the back. It was starting to rust and needed a layer of paint and a metal eagle mounted plate over the top of its door. When I walked into it, it had the smell of moth balls. Someone had used it to store cloths at some point. It was thick and humid like a summer night after a rain. When I walked back out I could see the back of the house. It had a large concrete patio that had a sliding glass door leading into the house.
Next door was a family that had two sons of their own. One was 16 and the other was 12. I thought the youngest of the two was older, since he was over six feet tall and drove his mothers car over with his teenage brother in the passenger seat. It might have been the big bag of gummy bears he was eating that gave his age away when he stepped out of the car.
We moved in and was really happy with the new house. It only had two bedrooms so me and my brother had to share a room. With our limited space we covered every square inch of that little room with our toys and half of the living room. In the living room we had a large sandstone fireplace in the middle of the end exterior wall. On a high wind day if you left the flue open you could hear it howl from the other side of the house even if the door to the room your were in was shut.
This is also the year that I found out I needed glasses from a acid accident. It was also the year I started to see shadows.
My father had been hounding me about my grades. My grades were suffering and he didn't know why even after he spent every night helping me get my homework done. As I tried to explain to him I could see white marks on the chalk board but did not know what they were my mother came into the dining room where me and my father was having our talk. She suggested that I may need glasses. At the same time I see a shadow come through the sliding glass door and put its limb on my father. As it did my father grew anger. He started yelling at me and my mother calling us names. Even going as far as calling me a freak. I was so scared, I couldn't move.
This did not end for months. From one thing to another he grew angry from anything and everything. One night my father had fallen asleep on the couch while watching his weekly show. My brother and I had been in bed for a while and I was still awake. To my shock he started yelling out. There was no words before and during this sound that he made that rattled the walls and window panes of our home but when he stopped not even the t.v. Was making a sound that I could hear from our little room.
A moment pasted before I heard my mother trying to wake my father and her voice was in a panic as she tried to remain calm. You could hear the couch bouncing off the wall it was positioned near as she shook him violently. Her trembling voice had me in a panic as I started my way out of bed and walk toward the door. When I looked out my bedroom and peered across the dining room into the living room I could see the light from the television glowing to every corner through the opening that partitioned between the living room and dining room. I could see my mother shaking my fathers body and see the panic on her face and I could see several shadow figures surrounding them.
It took a moment before my father woke up asking her if everything was alright. As he said that, the morbidly shaped shadows faded.
It would be only a couple of weeks later that my mother and a friend of my brother would witness the same shadows. It would terrify both of them in extreme fear and it would lead my brothers friend to leave our home in the middle of the night without saying a word to anyone and walk home over a mile in the dark.
He remains a friend to my brother but he never would come to the house again.
We had moved on a regular basis from that point onward.
Unable to be protected victims. Running from something that only I could usually see on a limited circumstance like a shutter opening and closing on its own. Sounds and actions that would confuse even the best scientist. Lights blowing out wouldn't be a unusual problem they are designed that way or a television cross signal hearing another channel or the front door being pushed open by a gentle breeze. What all of us was experiencing was nothing from nature from a regular normal point of view.
I was now 13 years of age. We moved into a house that was almost as old as the large town we had moved into. It had thick plaster walls, the walls was not square and the plaster was not even. It had a old wood panel floors and everywhere you stepped would squeal and groan as if the house was saying to fix me or put me out of my misery.
At this time I was attending my fifth school. There seemed to be a emptiness while I was there and compared to my life at home, it was what my brother and I needed. My mother worked at a local factory that was debating on leaving the area. If they did, it would leave only one other factory in town. My father had not worked since shortly after my place of birth and had been on disability since. He seemed to have calmed down a bit ever since we left the house filled with the shadows. Its not like I didn't see them from time to time, on a rare degree, wondering around at home, grocery shopping or at a friend or relatives' house.
The shadows is what you would expect. None of them held a shape for the most part and most ignored what was happening around us all most would move at lightning speed. I had been charged at by some of them but not attacked. I thought I was insane for seeing them and had learned from stories from relatives and television it wasn't normal. They would always fade away and never do much of anything.
While at home, I did my homework the best I could and was trying my best to ignore what was going on around me. Voices had started creeping into my room so I bought a 50 cent clock radio at a yard sale with some of my allowance that I received monthly. I turned it on every night to a local station and listened to alternative music, which was starting off at the time.
One weekend we had all had a great day, it was one for the record books. We had went out watched a movie and had a big diner at a local restaurant. We came home and watched t.v. For the rest of the evening. My brother was feeling tired from the days events and went to bed. I stayed up with my parents and was watching some tapes of movies that my parents had rented from the video store across town. It was of the few days I let it all go and enjoyed myself. A couple of hours later, into the 2nd movie my brother came walking out of his room. He looked very tired but awake. My parents thought he had come out to enjoy the video with us. He looked at all of us like something was a joke and started walking toward the door.
He turned the knob to open it and it was locked. As he struggled to open it the door itself seemed to be shaking more that it should even for a old home like this one. He let go with his hand and said "I'll take this one too." in his own voice.
It had been many years since I heard those words, as he looked at me. Knowing what the meaning behind it meant. As he stared, the door kept shaking and then the wall and then the floor but only at the front of the house. We had been shaken to our own bones as we stared back at him. He turned back to the door and started to unlock the first lock. At this time my mother jumped up and grabbed him before he could unlock the 2nd. My father yelled to not let go of him as he struggled a little in my mothers arms. A laughter in the house started and was the same as the one in the night of the fire and it echoed throughout the house. After a moment it had stopped.
My mother put my brother back to bed and came back out to lock the door. I was scared more than ever at this point and my white face was proof of it, as my father had pointed out. He asked if I was alright as the blood started to take its rightful place in my skin. I looked up at him with so much fear, he thought I had been the next one to be taken. As he repeatedly called out my name I looked up at him and lost my emotional control.
I had tried talking about the dream that I had always carried in the back of my mind over my short life I had already had. This time I couldn't bare the thought of it taking over my brothers life as well and told them about it. As I explained what horrors I had seen they looked at me with such wonder looking down at the ground moments at a time as I watched the tears roll down their faces as I spoke.
Me and my father never did tell my mother or brother about what we heard in the fire that took our house. Like a deep dark secret that was buried in the woods, we dug it up and released the truth to her. She had no choice but to believe what she had heard, as she recalled in her mind, what had happened that night and the night years ago.
We moved 3 days later.
Loading comments....
