Grandmother's Warning

Grandmother had always been clear before her death, you only saw the Owl before someone passed. The day before she passed was the first time Ellis saw the Owl. It was sitting on the post in front of their house; she tried to ignore the eerily intelligent eyes following her into the building, and by the time she want to sleep, she forgot all about it.

A week later at the memorial her cousin was giving a toast in remembrance that made Ellis think back to what she had seen. "You all remember what Gran used to say." Her cousin said, swirling the contents of her glass. "She used to tell us every day that we would see the Owl one day." Ellis looked up from her plate and put her fork down; "She told us that it only happened when someone was about to pass, but I didn't see an Owl before she died, maybe if I had it wouldn't have hurt as bad." Ellis's cousin raised her glass. "To Gran." Everyone raised their glasses, including Ellis, but her mind wasn't on the toast, it was on the black eyes of the owl that followed her into her home the night her Grandmother passed.

"I saw an Owl." she said that night to her mother. The older woman sighed and focused her light brown eyes on her daughter.

"Sweetheart, please not right now."

"But Mom, I did, the night Grandmother passed away." Ellis frowned when her mother brushed it off and closed her bedroom door with an exhausted goodnight, she then spent the next few days continuing to brush off Ellis before the girl dropped the topic of the Owl.

No one else in the family talked about the Owl except her cousin after that, and it was mostly to show the family her memorial tattoo, a simple brown barn owl, but Ellis couldn't stop looking at the cold black spots of Ink that made the eyes. She turned away when her cousin seemed ready to tell her to buzz off and decided she wouldn't think about the Warning anymore, she pushed aside the thought of the old woman and simply focused on living her own life. It was working well until she reached high school. When she left the building late one night from the library she spotted 3 brown barn owls on the top of the gate. Three pairs of intelligent black eyes, following her; she ignored them, and tried to forget the warning.

The next morning her mother called her in the middle of the school day. "Honey, I'm on my way, we're going to see my sister."

"Why? That's an odd trip to make without planning."

"Your cousin was in an accident, Her whole family died on impact, but I need to be there for my sister."

"Oh, okay..." Ellis hung up the phone and left to the office, sitting down to wait for her mother. The thought of the last reunion when her cousin had showed off her newborn baby, her husband and her smiling; the baby had been named after her Grandmother.

Three pairs of black eyes following her steps as she left school, and when she walked out with her mother that afternoon, she looked at the fence again, and her blood ran cold because sitting there, watching her intently, Ellis saw two more brown barn owls. She looked at her mother's small white sedan next, and shivered when she stepped off the curb.