Ever since I was little, I have been creeped out by my grandmother’s house. My mother claims “nothing happened” there since they built the house in the 1970’s, but the house has never failed to send a shiver down my spine.
When I would stay with my grandmother, I never left her side in fear of what lingered in the small house. The empty rooms that once belonged to her nine, now fully grown with children, were always dusty and dark as she found no use for them once my grandfather died and my cousins moved out. There were always porcelain dolls in my eldest aunt’s room, a Ouija board in my uncle’s room, and many other things that would scare a child as jumpy as I was. I would always sleep in my grandmother’s room, and she would always make sure to wipe away my fears before I slept.
I remember I was maybe five when I first saw it. I was sleeping in my cousin’s old room that faced the backyard since my grandmother was cleaning her room. She had led me, half asleep, to the room and let me sleep more. I had woken up in the early hours, and it was dark outside. At least as dark as it can get with streetlights. My face was even with the window, and I caught a glimpse of a man halfway behind one of the three sycamore trees in the backyard. The tree was the one the furthest to the right of the yard and was closest to the room. I ran crying to my grandmother, who fed me grapefruit and gave me a stuffed animal. I soon forgot about it as I was picked up by my mother and was soon sleeping in my own bed in our house my father’s ranch. I had always found the pitch black dark of the country soothing as if something was there I couldn’t see it and therefore it couldn’t see me.
A few years later, when I was nine, my grandmother passed away. We kept her house as she left it to my mother since she was the only child who hadn’t moved out of state. My mother kept the house in good condition but I was even more afraid of it once my grandmother was gone. Due to an injury a year later, we moved into the house temporarily for easy access. My father broke both of the bones in his leg and we had a nurse visit the house to give him an IV for his infected leg. The ranch house was at least 20 miles from the hospital the nurse came from, so living in town was a better option. I always found things going wrong in the year we stayed there.
I chose a room in the front of the house. I shared with my six year old sister since she was also afraid of the house. My sister woke up one night crying, claiming “the man was coming” for her. The next night, I couldn’t sleep. I was afraid, staring at the window at the foot of my bed. A silhouette of a man was able to be seen through the curtains. We would hear voices in the hallway, along with heavy footsteps. My sister, who slept in her own room one night thinking it was only my room that was affected, woke up to the figure standing over her bed with his hand stroking her hair.
One particular night, I felt sick to my stomach. I woke up and ran to the restroom, throwing up food I hadn’t eaten at all. We had burgers and fries for dinner, but I threw up watermelon with no trace of meat or anything else I had eaten that day. It was more than my stomach could hold, but I kept throwing up and throwing up until I was throwing up stomach acid. Once I had finished I brushed my teeth and opened the door to the bathroom, and found myself facing the man. I could finally make out features, and it’s something I wish I hadn’t seen. His face was aged, and mean looking, but his eyes are what scared me the most. His eyes were dark, almost like his eyes had been pulled out, but they gave me the feeling of possession, like he viewed our family as his property.
The rest of the time we stayed there, I had nightmares. I dreamed that the man was standing over my bed, watching, feeling me. When I woke up, he wasn’t there, but the feeling of someone being there stayed.
My father’s leg healed and we moved out. We thought it was over once we rented the house out, but the person who was renting the house moved out once their kids complained repeatedly about not wanting to live there. Another family rented the house, and while my dad went to fix the shower, I found myself being bombarded with questions from the kids.
“John wants to know when you’re coming back to stay,” the boy told me. My sister and I exchanged looks of fear and confusion.
When asked who John was the boy replied casually, “John. The man who stands in the back yard.” My sister and I both went to the truck and waited for our dad to be done with repairing the shower.
Once the people who rented the house found a better house to buy, the left and my mother thought it would be best to live in the house since our house in the country was rather run down. My father agreed and now we are living here.
The nightmares have started again in the past years we have been here, and I feel eyes watching me. We are chopping down the trees this week and yesterday, the chainsaw hit something in the middle of the sycamore tree to the very right of the yard. My father cut around it, and in the middle of the tree, as if someone cut the tree open and placed it in there for the tree to grow around it, was a metal box with old pictures and a locket in it. The pictures were taken a long long time ago, as they’re black and white and very grainy. The man looks ecstatic, but the woman beside him looks afraid, and upset. He’s holding her tightly beside him as they take a family picture. A letter was in the box, written on yellowing paper.
It is messy, the words written in an attempted calligraphy like script in black ink, but the parts that are legible to me read:
“I love her more than the world, yet she won’t accept me.
I have forced myself on her [illegible] and she now carries my child.
We will be together forever [illegible] she will have to accept me.
She is mine.”
The letter, more like a diary entry, was full of possessive phrases, referring to the woman in the family picture. On the second page, written in an ugly brown-ish ink is “she is mine, forever.” It’s gross, like the color of a scab or dried blood.
Inside the locket are two pictures.
On the left is a picture of a man.
The man.
John.
On the other side of it is the picture of a woman…
And she looks just like me…
