They Followed Us From Hell

I heard a noise at the foot of the bed, a noise that sounded like someone was dragging a dead body across the floor. Every part of me yelled run, get out of this room! But I couldn't run because every inch of me was frozen with fear.

Only a few feet away a dining room full of tourists were happily eating, drinking coffee, and laughing, asking about what there was to see in the area. Silverware clanged, plates clinked as the waitress picked them up, and voices swirled through the air, all of them from the dining room, the room that would offer warm safety, if I could only manage to move my legs long enough to hoist myself off the bed and make a dash for the door. How I wished I hadn't decided to take a nap before the restaurant at the lodge opened for Sunday brunch, and especially in this little bedroom that was attached to the dining room. It seemed safe, and I was exhausted from covering for the other waitress who spent more time sitting at people's tables talking to them then waiting on customers.

The sound seemed to have subsided, and my heart was beating at a more normal pace. It was now or never, so I took a deep breath and raced for the door, practically hurling myself out into the dining room. People stopped eating and looked back at me, but I managed to smile and pull myself together, walking past them and into the kitchen.

My husband, Phil, was busy cooking when I went into the kitchen. Phil could tell by my face that something was wrong, and he mentioned I was white and looked afraid. I let him know what happened, and he nodded, knowing how the lodge had been having strange events since we moved in a month ago. A couple of nights ago when we were doing dishes, the large speaker on top of the freezer flew across the room and smashed against the wall. The room had gotten very quiet, the music cut short, and nobody wanted to believe what they had just seen.

The Sunday morning crowd finally left, and once again the lodge was eerily quiet, except for the sound of the wind howling outside, and the old, dead limbs of a tree scraping against the kitchen window. The scraping seemed to be getting louder, and more intense, so I went out to the kitchen to see if I could figure out why, when suddenly the limb smashed through the window and into the kitchen, glass shattered and flying everywhere while the wind blew more debris through the hole in the window the tree had just made. If I had been standing any closer, the tree would have knocked me into the stove which was hot from the oven being in use all day. I could have been badly burned, and the dark thought stayed in my mind when I looked at the branch, only, I thought I heard something. A strange moaning, and then crying from a young girl.

I had seen the ones who were bringing the evil, saw them a couple times in the reflection of the windows in the dinning room, and again outside the dinning room door, standing there, staring inside. There was a big man, heavy set with black hair slicked back, a mustache, pale, white skin, and beady dark eyes. I called him Victor. He was with a tall, thin lady with the same black, stringy hair Victor had, only hers was long and hanging in strings. Then, there was the young girl, her hair was a light brown, wet, and her pigtails hung limp on her wet, pink dress. She was not pale like the others, but kept asking for help and crying; the crying I always hear. I named her Emily because she looked like an Emily to me.

It was getting too much for me to handle, so Phil and I decided to leave the lodge and go live in an apartment in New Mexico, leaving Colorado, lodges, ghosts, and fear behind. Maybe New Mexico would offer some of that sunshine they brag about so much and I would be able to live a normal life. That would be so nice.

The move was quick and the apartment was small, mostly because my mother had reached a point of not being able to live alone, and she had moved in with us when we moved to New Mexico. I love my mother, and I didn't want her living by herself anymore. But, after a few months she was ready to move out and find her own place to live. Every night after the lights went out, she said it was like a light show in her room, colors and light, and it scared her and her cat so bad she wasn't sure she could continue to live with us. As luck would have it, in the middle of the drama surrounding her room, I got sick with pneumonia.

The pneumonia put me in the hospital for a few days, and kept me home from work for about two weeks. I remember showers made me feel better than anything, the hot water running down my body and soothing it after a coughing attack. That's what I was doing that morning, the morning I heard someone standing right behind me in the shower, breathing down my neck, their slimy hands reaching for me. My skin grew cold, in spite of the warm water running across my back, and I tried to scream but nothing came out. My blood ran cold and I grabbed a towel and practically ran downstairs, my body dripping wet and cold, and my heart pounding. Mom was in the kitchen and I didn't want to tell her what had happened because she was already afraid with her room lighting up every night.

Eventually I got better, but mom moved out not too long after that. She couldn't handle it anymore, and her cat had gotten sick and died, which she was sure came from whatever evil was in the house. Phil and I continued to live there, sure that we were imagining things because of everything that had happened at the lodge. One morning I was in the bathroom getting ready for work, and it was about 5 in the a.m., and I heard a knock on the bathroom door, which I assumed was Phil bringing me coffee, but no, there was nobody there when I opened the door, just a pair of slippers set outside the door like someone was standing there.

Eventually, we moved again as well because of all the things that were happening in the apartment, but it didn't matter, we still took it with us, and we are still trying to rid ourselves of the horror the lodge brought into our lives.