It was Thanksgiving, as I rode home from my sister's house in San Fernando Valley. The streets at night in Los Angeles are normally pretty barren, but since it was a holiday weekend, I felt like I was peddling through a ghost town. I was twenty two at the time and sharing a one bedroom apartment in Van Nuys. My roommate was out of town, so I was preparing myself for a quiet night. No crazy girlfriends nor any of my alcoholic friends would be banging on my door tonight, so as I made my way down Sepulveda Blvd, a smile of relief spread across my face. When I finally reached my building though, this peace full night at the pad took a one eighty.
There was an older lady standing outside my building. She was alone and dressed in a fur coat with a matching hat. She looked out of place. I don't know if it was her apparel, or how she was just standing there staring off into space, but something was off. There was also a large stack of books and boxes with her, as if she was moving or something. And when I passed her on my mountain bike, goose bumps shot up my arms and back.
There was a liquor store next to my apartment complex, so I figured a beer was in order. It must of took me less than a minute to make my purchase, and when I came back outside, she was gone. "Weird," I mumbled to myself. So, I shrugged it off and made my way to my humble abode.
As soon as I enter my apartment though, red flags shot up. It was strangely chilly in my place. It was almost winter, but this apartment never had gotten cold before. It had always remained an even seventy degrees all year round, but on this night it felt like it was in the low forties.
The cold was coming from a corner of the living room, and as I walked by it (baffled) something grabbed me! It squeezed the lower side of my back. I swung around with my fists up, but the only thing there was the cold. So, I just sat down and opened my beer. What to do, right?
A few minutes had passed, and the cold remained. It felt like I was having a stare down with something I couldn't see. So, out of no where, I blurted out, "Get out of my house!" And sure enough, that's all it took. The temperature began to rise to its normal seventy, and after that, I never had any other visitors from the land of the dead. (Crazy girlfriends and drunk friends excluded of course.)
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