I wake up with a start, something is in my room. I look around. Ominous shadows gather in clusters at the corners of my room as my body moves to sit up in my bed, my heart beating erratically. I catch a movement near my bed from the corner of my eye and my head snaps around at light speed. I gasp and clutch my neck in pain when I hear the small crack of whiplash. My eyes focus on a small swing of my wardrobe door.
Suddenly, the doors fly the rest of the way open and it jumps out of my closet. I scream as my little brother, with his dark hair matted to his face, pops out.
“BOO!” He yells, his hazel eyes dancing as he laughs.
“Madix!” I exclaim indignantly, “You almost gave me a heart attack! You know I was scared after I thought I heard something downstairs yesterday!’’ I angrily shout.
“Then it’s a good thing I jumped out of your closet… instead of something else.” Madix trails off, mockingly pretending to be frightened.
All of a sudden, I hear a crash coming from downstairs. Madix turns to explore the noise downstairs.
“No!” I shout after him. “Wait.”
I slowly slide out of my bed, my bare feet silently hitting the cold floor. Madix looks at me with his brows scrunching together in confusion. Ma and Pa are on a business trip, so I know that somebody else is in our house. I cautiously tip-toe to the corner of my room and grab Pa’s baseball bat.
‘Just for emergencies’, his familiar baritone voice rings in my ears, reminding me of the accident I got into while playing with his bat. I had been a reckless child. I was in the front yard when I tried to do a maneuver with it. The bat had swung out of my control, but I stupidly held on to the handle. The momentum caused me to break my wrist. Even now, I still have a thin scar stretching along the inside of my wrist.
“Madix, I want you to hide under the bed,” I whisper quietly. “Wait for me here, don’t come down unless I say so. You understand?”
He nods his head obediently and drags his scrawny, eight-year-old, body under the bed. I watch and nod to him when he looks up at me for approval.
I creep down the stairs, and pitch black darkness surrounds me. I turn towards the kitchen, adrenaline pumping through my veins. An eerie glow shines in the distance, somewhere near the bathroom. I feel a light draft blowing through the corridor, causing my nightdress to make a soft swish as it brushes my prickling, goosebump covered legs. My feet slowly inch towards the light and my heart stops. A beautiful woman floats in the hallway, in a bright white dress, her bare feet hovering just above the floor. She glows softly with an white aura around her. Her platinum hair floats in the air, framing her face. Her skin is so pale, I consider it translucent. She silently stares through a window and I stand paralyzed, my blood pumping loudly in my ears.
In shock I drop the baseball bat with a clatter, and she turns towards me. Her bright eyes glow, turning malicious in a second, and her body glides over to me, but I remain frozen, unable to pick up the weapon.
Then, I snap out of my spell. My body scrambles away as fast as it can, but I feel as though I am trying to run through a murky lake, and the bottom is covered with sticky mud that wants to swallow me whole.
The ghostly woman’s head slowly cocks to one side. Her once diamond-like eyes fade into inky darkness, a place I don’t want to find myself.
“Are you okay?” An innocent voice calls. I stiffen.
Madix! I remember. The woman’s attention turns away from me and towards my bedroom, where my brother impatiently hides. She looks back at me, and her jaw unhinges in a silent scream. A threat.
Cold fear seizes my chest as the woman ghosts past me, towards my brother. I let out a desperate shout of,
“DON’T YOU DARE!”
It is, sadly, not enough to stop such things. I can only follow and stare at the figure as she follows the sound of my brother’s voice. She stops at the foot of my bed, his hiding spot. I put my hands over my mouth to keep myself from letting out a hysterical sob.
My brother’s head peeks out from under the bed. He sees the woman and lets out a piercing cry.
“Madix, RUN!” I wail in desperation.
But he doesn’t. Silent tears of utter helplessness and panic streak down his cheeks, his body is shaking violently, his eyes enormous with terror. I turn back to the kitchen, sprinting towards the first drawer filled with culinary tools. I throw it open and curl my fingers around the sharpest knife I can see.
My sweaty hands quiver with fear, but I force myself forward, back to the staircase, and up the stairs to where the ghastly woman levitates before my sobbing brother. She stares down at him as a predator would its prey. I screech as I charge forward and fall to my knees, awkwardly holding the knife so that it faces away from myself, and I desperately thrust it down through the woman’s chest.
But it passes right through her, as if she isn’t there. I squeeze my eyes shut in horror as I slice my knife in an ark through her, till it finally imbeds itself in the cold wooden floor. I feel the revolting motion of my knife slicing through flesh and bone, each broken barrier shattering me to the core. Thick, warm blood splatters onto my hand, my clothes, my skin. It taints my vision with red and each drop feels like a punch in the gut. My eyes are forced open and my vision drags itself downward. Dread holds a vise-like grip on my heart. My stare settles onto where my brother’s chest is no longer heaving, his heart no longer beating, his eyes no longer seeing.
A corpse lays on my floor, dull and lifeless: dead. I feel the warmth fade from the body as I sit on the floor and curl into a ball, staring at the inconceivable picture before me. The minutes tick by. Then, a bone-chilling, agony-filled sound erupts from my chest.
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Down the block, lights flicker on and windows are flooded with light. The scream echoes around the world, leaving agitation and confusion in its wake. The authorities are called in to investigate; a room is found empty of everything, except for a girl shivering in a white dress, sitting in a pool of blood, and surrounded by a faint white glow… she has a thin scar on the inside of her wrist.