The rest of last night went about as well as one would expect. After washing what I’m still hoping was marker ink off of my three year old daughters hands and arms I spent most of the night trying to pretend that I wasn’t about to piss the bed while keeping her tight by my side. The image of Lexi’s imaginary friend and her dark red eyes still lingering with me.
Per some of your comments I did some looking this morning, over breakfast, into the former owners of the house. A house that has been around longer than I’ve even been alive as it seems. All the while sharing the table with my daughter and, by her accounts, her newly found friend Beth. I couldn’t help but get chills when Lexi would offer her orange juice or leftover scraps of waffle, talking to her as if she were right there; just out of my sight.
The other parents at my groups would tell me not to tell Lex that her imaginary friends weren’t real. They said I should just let her play them out and do my best not to stifle her imagination. Honestly, I can understand where they would be coming from with this advice but Beth felt like a different case entirely. She’s never been around before, in fact Lexi has never even had an imaginary friend in her life, and now all of a sudden Beth appears with the sole intention, it seems, to terrify me.
I’d glance up, over the top of my laptop, to Lexi. She’d gleam up to me with her wonderful smile, mouth filled with waffles, before breaking the gaze to chat with Beth, who’s responses avoided me. Although this wasn’t the case for Lexi, who seemed to be having a full-fledged conversation about different rooms in our home.
Twenty years earlier, before I had even graduated from high school a young family from Germany had lived in my home, as far as I was able to tell from google. A man and woman had moved to the US shortly after they lost their bakery back home. Once here they had a daughter inside the house. A daughter who lived here to the age of four before dying of a particularly bad flu. However, I wasn’t able to find much more information past that. No names or records to speak of, but enough to further my paranoia.
I had a busy day. My elderly neighbor Linda was kind enough to let me drop Lex off for a few hours while I went out to get groceries and run a few scripts past my editor. When I came home there were no strange reports to be heard and I began to convince myself that the night prior may have simply been a one off. A strange hallucination brought on by my growing irregular sleep.
When we finally made it home from Linda’s I decided to get a jump on the math I had neglected the night before. I left Lexi in the den with a recording of her cartoons and ran upstairs to grab my book, but when I returned I found her talking to herself once again in the kitchen. The TV I had left on for her was blasting a horrible static tone and the screen was a flat blue. Lexi didn’t seem to mind, standing by the side of the counter with a half of bagel in her hand. I became fairly confused.
I figured last night when she had somehow found a bagel. Maybe she had dug into the cabinet and found something I had forgotten about for a while, but today I became surer we didn’t have them. I couldn’t for the life of me remember buying any in the past year so after I switched the TV off I began to search.
First I looked only where I thought she would be able to reach, cabinets, under the sink, the lower shelves of my fridge, and the bottom half of the pantry with its flickering automatic light that added an unwanted earliness to my hunt, but just like I had recalled, there was none to be found.
“Lexi baby,” I began, trying to push past the evident shakiness in my voice, “Where did you find that?” she looked up and tried to hide the bagel by her side. Her look of shame made me feel pretty lousy to be frank, but the thought that she knew she shouldn’t have it made me worry even more.
“Beth made it for me.” She responded quietly. Boasting her best puppy dog eyes and saddened tone as she pled to keep it. I froze for a moment and waited as the wave of dread and fear flowed through my body. That’s not actually possible right?
“Okay honey.” Was all I was able to muster. A cowardly phrase of acceptance before I continued my search.
I began to move up through more and more unreachable spots in my hunt. Over the sink with the bread, above the refrigerator where I kept old vases and pots, next to the microwave where I stored my cleaning supplies, all with no sign. Finally I whittled down the search to the upper shelf on the pantry. I had already searched most of the pantry, its flickering light still fresh on my mind, but I had closed the door and as I made my way to open it again a feeling of total fear overcame me. A cold sweat formed on the palms of my hands and my knees began to waiver. I should have known what a poor idea it was, I’ve seen plenty of movies, but my stubbornness got the best of me and I pushed on.
The handle to the door felt unusually cold in my grip and my spine shivered in anticipation as my wet palm slipped on the brass. I pulled the open the shroud. I had already adjusted my view upward as I opened the door and as per usual the automatic light took a moment to switch on. Before it did though, on the top shelf looking down at me, glistened those two red eyes inside the figure of a girl. Distorted and disfigured and shrouded by shadow, the figure wrapped its self in a blur of motion as if to force me to look but not allow me to see. The darkness around it seemed to absorb into her, like it had sucked what little light there was inward to shield herself.
Suddenly the light inside the pantry flicked on and the figure was gone. For a moment I paused, if only to check that I hadn’t shit my pants. I was able to catch my breath, suddenly realizing I had been holding it now for some time. Yet just before I moved to close the door the flickering from the broken socket began. Something I somewhat expected but certainly hoped would not happen this time. Each time the light switched back off, even if just for half a second, the girl returned. She was watching me with beaming red eyes, as I closed the door and backed away. But the flicker followed.
The light in my kitchen began to waver, turning itself off and on for less than a second in between. I turned to see my daughter standing under a wall mounted phone by the doorway to our den, hearing her speak even before I was able to see.
“He’s the mean one daddy.” She was pointing to something in the doorway.
Another figure, just as dark and lurking as the girl, stood taller than me at the entrance to our den. However this one was different, where the girl appeared only in the dark this figure formed only when the lights came back on.
The new figure moved forward toward me. Slowly at first but quickly gaining speed. I moved, thinking it was headed for me but it didn’t seem to mind me what so ever, roaring past and directly into the pantry. Packets of food and jars of herbs leaped from their shelves as the lights normalized. The pantry door slammed shut and I wasn’t about to open it again.
Lexi brought her bagel to her mouth to take a bite and I was taken back. Shocked by what I found. The bagel, as well as Lexi’s arms and face, had become coated with what I now realize could have only been blood. Still she seemed not to care, with the blood dripping from her face and hand as she carelessly chewed. I was petrified.
Lexi glanced at me and smiled with her mouth full, a smile that was now capable of eliciting, within me, incredible fear of my own child. She swallowed and spoke.
“Daddy, the bad man made Beth go, but it’s okay, she said she’ll be back.”
Submitted August 23, 2016 at 08:52PM by M00SEishere http://ift.tt/2bxhbUg nosleep
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