It was freezing outside, Christmas just around the corner. We had just celebrated Thanksgiving; I can not say I was happy about the holidays. My parents had recently separated, my mom, sister and I moved into one of the many apartments we would inhabit for the next few years, and life felt to be at a very low point for me at the time.
I was almost home. My hands were so cold they ached, as well as my feet and my nose. My sister was trudging through the falling snow behind me, whining that she was cold. I took the key out of my pocket to unlock the door and dropped it! There was at least a half foot of snow and I had dropped the key! You would think a big silver key ring shaped like a shoe with a gold key would be easy to spot in the white snow, it seemed to have disappeared. My sister and I searched frantically for the key. Finally after about fifteen minutes, we found it, right where I dropped it.
We proceeded up to the house split into three apartments. We had the main floor apartment, a young couple was in the second floor and a single man who was rarely there had the top floor. As we approached the side of the house on to the walk leading to the front door, the curtains moved aside about eight inches. There was an older, time worn hand pushing the curtains aside. I looked up and there was a face, about what would be approximately seven feet off the floor in the apartment. She appeared to be time worn as well, very aged. She had steel gray hair, and bright blue eyes. As she smiled, I noticed all of her teeth were pointed! I had never seen this face before; I would have remembered those eyes and teeth.
I stopped walking, staring at the window. The face stared right back. I realized my sister was clinging to my arms from behind, she was breathing very heavily as if ready to break into a sob. She said "Kim, do you see that lady in the window? Who is it?" I told her I did see the lady and I did not know who it was, but we would go to the house and find out. She screamed and pulled on me begging me not to go to the door. My mom wasn't due home for at least another two and a half hours, so what were we supposed to do? Stay outside and freeze? I was not going to the neighbors, I did not know any of them in the building, and this house was positioned so there were no houses on either side or behind for at least the equivalent of half a city block, as I mentioned we moved a lot so, I did not know anyone.
I told my sister (four years younger than I) to wait near the street for me to go in the house. If I did not come back out or call for her to come in, she would need to run the half block to the neighbors to get help. (Remember, this was before cell phones). She grudgingly agreed. I sure sounded a lot braver than I felt.
As I got around to the front door, I wondered if the face was still in the side window. I peaked around the side of the house to the window and saw only the curtains swaying pretty rapidly. I put my key in the door, turned and pushed. The door would not open! I pushed again, nothing. I then started to get angry, I started praying that my sister and I would be able to get in and get warm, that who ever was messing with us would knock it off for now so we could be warm. I pushed again on the door, it finally opened. Whew!
The room was dark, the only light coming in from the swaying curtains and from the Christmas tree. I reached out to turn on the light switch and felt something cold and tingling grab my hand! It felt like cold tree branches wrapping around my hand. I jerked my hand back, shook it and kept praying in my head. I reached out again and turned on the light. I saw nothing. Everything appeared as it did before leaving that morning, except the three foot Christmas tree we had up on a table had fallen over and the lights were on the tree turned on. I know I had unplugged it because of the fire hazard. Oh, well. I walked through the apartment, not to hard as this was a very small place and saw and felt nothing so went out to get my sister.
As my sister came in the house, I closed and locked the door. We began to get all of our outer winter gear off, the Christmas lights on the tree keep turning on and off. I checked the cord and the fuse, all seemed okay so I unplugged them to be safe. Well, that didn't stop them from turning on and off. I distracted my sister from the lights by offering to make a snack. We went into the kitchen, as we entered the kitchen the back door flew open along with the back screen door. All the wind and snow blowing in all over. Remember, I had just checked this door in my walk through and it was dead bolted. We did not even have the dead bolt key to lock or unlock this door and it was the type that required a key on both sides.
I ran to the door to close the weather out and saw the weathered old woman kind of drifting across the back lot with her face to me, drifting backwards. The odd grin with her pointed teeth never changed nor did the piercing stare of the cold blue eyes, then she vanished about thirty feet from the door.
This is one exert from our time in just that tiny apartment we only inhabited for eight months. I will share more if anyone is interested. If this one is to boring so far, let me know and I will not continue on.
Thank you as always for the support on this site! You are all the best!
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