The Past Returns

At 23, I moved out of my parents’ old house, finally on my own, free. Even though I was moving into a tiny apartment, the euphoria of getting out of that ancient house was liberating. The strange experiences my sister and I had painfully endured as children in that house faded into the distant past, and even after her funeral, I never fully comprehended what had happened. All I knew is that I never wanted to go through that again; the best I could do was suppress those memories until they were pushed further into the deepest recesses of my mind.

A few years later after I moved out, I met a charming young man at university. Ben brought joy and solace into my life, and we made life our own adventure. With him, each day I rediscovered long-forgotten pieces of myself, and felt I could take on the world. With this confidence, it didn’t take long before I married my best friend, and within three years, our family grew by two, further erasing the images in my past. With two high-energy children, there was barely any time to relax, let alone think about things that had happened.

My aging parents were in declining health. As a gift to us, they had a small home built on their property, near their house but with enough distance that we had our own space and privacy to raise Faith and Joy. There were plenty of wild acres with fruit and oak trees on the land that bordered a sleepy creek. It seemed an idyllic place to raise happy children, including lots of fenced-in space for our beautiful Labrador retriever, Brandy. Late that autumn, we moved out of the tiny apartment and began living our new life in the new house.

A year later, Ben received a promotion within his company and started working late at night, and I was often left alone with the girls. Although we tried to divide family duties equally, I didn’t complain because the money was good and allowed us to plan for the future. Thankfully, Brandy kept us company on those dark, quiet nights when my mind tended to wander back in time.

One late night soon after I put the kids to bed, I heard whimpering outside my door. I was quite tired, and didn’t need any nonsense from the dog. My small voice tried to coax her to come in. "Come on, girl.....come inside." I got up, opened the door, and called Brandy to my bedside. I looked down at her; she sat completely motionless outside my room, at attention, and tilted her head. "What's the matter?" I asked her. I noticed she never entered my room by herself; she only entered when someone else was already there, which is quite unusual for a Lab. I lured her in with a dog treat, and finally had to pull her in. Quickly she jumped onto the bed and lay there shivering as I stroked her soft fur. Her ears popped up, and her breathing increased. Something in the room had captured her attention, and she stared at my closet door. I walked over to the bedroom door and slowly shut it. I returned to the bed and sat beside her. She continued to be mesmerized by the closet door. "What's the matter, girl?" I asked again.

Then I heard it.... a soft shuffling noise just outside my room. The bedroom door slowly creaked open. A shadow appeared first, and then my husband walked in. "Oh, it's you," I sighed, silly with relief that I was frightened by nothing.

Ben noticed Brandy’s odd position on the bed. "Why is she on the bed? What's she looking at?" my husband asked with curiosity, looking toward the empty corner of the room by the closet.

"I don't know,” I explained. “She's been staring at that corner for a while now." We shooed Brandy off the bed, and she eventually lay down on the carpet at the foot of the bed. Our nightly routine, we changed into our pajamas, brushed our teeth, and finally settled down to sleep. It was so nice to have him home! We began to doze off when Brandy became restless and started to whimper again.

"I need to get some sleep," my husband muttered under his breath. He got up and then went through the kitchen to put the dog outside, thinking that would take care of the problem.

I fell asleep for what seemed like a few minutes later, but then I awoke from a stinging pain on my right leg. Something had viciously scratched me, stirring an old memory. At first I thought it was the dog, but then I remembered she wasn't in the room; my husband hadn’t returned yet. I got up, turned in the bathroom saw two red angry lines running down the side of my thigh. "What the hell?" I couldn't explain the painful scratches, nor did I try to figure it out right then. With a washcloth I blotted the scratches with water and dried them off; I’ll deal with it in the morning. Sleepy and exhausted, I turned off the bathroom light and flopped back in bed. It was after midnight, and I forced myself to try to sleep. I heard my husband creep back to bed after he brought the dog back in and put her in her kennel by the laundry room.

In the middle of the night, I was awakened by a deep, heavy pressure on my chest. I couldn't breathe and started to gasp for air. It felt as if I were being suffocated. When I opened my eyes in the darkened room, I couldn't move; my body was paralyzed. Someone or something was holding me down. I thought I was imagining things, but then I heard it… a sinister, low creepy laugh, one I was all too familiar with from my childhood in the house next door. Ha ha ha ha ha ha . . . followed by heavy rancid breath on my face.

I could only move the hand that was right by my husband, and I started hitting him until he finally woke up, irritated at first, and then startled. I sputtered and gasped, finally able to breathe. Whatever it was released me from its grip. I coughed and eventually caught my breath, my eyes wide with familiar terror. Ben was nearly catatonic as he stared at the corner of the room. I slowly turned toward the direction he was looking and felt the hair on the back of my neck stand up. We sat up, our faces frozen in horror.

There, next to the closet in the corner of our bedroom, was an ominous presence. In the low light of the room, I could make out the outline of something, blacker than the night, moving slowly. But what was it? Its intense red eyes pierced right through us as it inched closer to us. I tried to grab Ben’s hand, but a deep fear had overtaken us again.

It was then I recognized the figure, and the bitter pain of my childhood came flooding back. It was the same malignant evil that terrified my sister and me as kids, only to be patronizingly told that there was no such thing as ghosts or ghouls. The room suddenly became colder, and a mist began to ooze in from the open window, eventually engulfing the figure so that all we could see were the evil red eyes. It stared at me and then my husband, and breached the stillness of the night with a low guttural evil laugh, as if to say, "Welcome home."