The Woman Who Haunts Me

When I first came here, I was shocked by the lack of light. My handler brought me into the cellar of a dingy building and my first thought was that it seemed dark, with only one lightbulb in a lampshade so coated in dust the light barely shone through. It was enough though, much more than I have now. I could make out basic shapes in the room and details on the cellar walls closer to the lamp. I could also see the material that was binding my wrists together. Until I saw it in the light, I just assumed it was metal because the bands and chains were heavy and cold like iron. Under the light though they looked different from any metal that I had ever seen. The bands around my wrists were silver but not solid like I would have thought. It looked like hundreds of paper-thin strands of material braided together. It looked weak, but I tried and tried, and I could not break or unravel them. The chain that connected to my wrists was the same material and it hung to just below my knees when my arms were at my side. I think I was alone there for a week, but I am only guessing by the amount that I slept. I didn’t start counting the days until later.

When my handler, who I decided to call pinky in honour of his missing finger, came back, he moved me. We walked down a staircase through a door on the opposite side of the cellar from the lamp- a door I hadn’t noticed before. The further down we got on the staircase the darker it became. Pinky must have been down the stairs a thousand times because he carried no light, but he never stumbled, and he connected the end of my chain to something on his belt, so I didn’t stumble either. We followed the staircase for 214 steps down. I don’t know why I counted them, it just felt important. I am glad I did though because it was calming and I continued to count, it is the only thing I have left now. The staircase was narrow and if I were able, I think I could have reached out and touched both walls. We stopped and went into a door but at that point I could only see a few centimeters in front of my face. I couldn’t tell if the staircase continued or anything about the room I entered. I could feel pinky pulling on my chain, but I couldn’t see him either. I could count though. 86 steps, 1 left turn, 104 steps, 1 right turn, 862 long steps, and then stop.

I heard pinky talk for the first time. “I am sorry it had to come to this Jania, but you know why. She cannot find you here”.

His voice was softer than I expected, he sounded sincere, but I still could not believe him. My mother and father thought this was best for me. I hope they didn’t know that I would be treated like a prisoner. I don’t understand why I was chained and why everyone was being so cryptic. I wanted to ask pinky why it felt like everyone thought it was my fault she was after me, but I didn’t ask. I couldn’t, no words would come. I knew it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter how they treated me, how far they took me away, or even how secretive they were. They could not hide me from her, and it was pointless to complain when I already knew I was as good as dead.

I heard pinky walk away, 14 steps, a door closed, a lock clicked, and I was alone in the complete darkness.

That was 11 months ago. 342 days. As soon as pinky left, I shuffled around in the dark until I hit a wall. I followed it until I came to a corner. I felt around the shape of my room, it was a square. 12 steps along each wall, a locked door 4 steps wide, and a bed in the far-right corner. Once a week I wake up and there is enough food in my room for a week, mostly military rations, and canned items that I have to eat cold. I thought it would be harder to be in the dark. I thought my eyes would give up or my body wouldn’t know when to fall asleep, but that isn’t the case so far. Every day I workout, I do yoga, I eat, and after a day of work I go to sleep. It seems normal now, boring, and normal.

There is no window in my room so counting days by sunlight is not an option, but I know I must count them. I don’t know what the walls of my room are made of, but it feels like either soft cement or dirt. Whatever it is its soft enough that I can scratch a tally mark into it. It has cracked all my nails and made my fingertips bleed but every night I add a mark to the wall beside my bed. I can’t see them, but I know they are there, and I run my fingers over them every time I wake up. They watch over me and when nothing else is with me, they are. A monument to how all I’ve been through is always here with me.

I haven’t seen anyone since pinky locked me in. I have stopped questioning why I’m locked in here instead of her. She is not someone you find. She finds you. If you are unlucky enough to be someone she wants, she will stalk you, haunt you, and eventually kill you. I think about her every day. I imagine her coming into my room with a bang, a flash of light that even though it blinds me I know it’s her. It hasn’t happened yet, but it will. I would love to blame her for this dark room, for this isolation, for all of this, but I can’t. I know its my fault.

My sister has always believed in all things supernatural, ghost, witches, and curses. I always thought it was fake, a load of garbage to scare and scam people.  Before I was locked up in here, I thought it would be funny to scare her. I did a bunch of research on local legends from our town. There was one story I found of this woman, Clara. She was a terminal patient in the old hospital. She was dying of an unknown disease; the doctors couldn’t figure out what was wrong with her but everyone who came close to her died within hours. So, they put her in a room in the far wing of the hospital and she stayed there for the rest of her life. She had no human contact, and no one knows exactly how long she lived like that. When the hospital closed years after she had been admitted they found her room empty, but the legend says she still haunts the abandoned building in her hospital gown and gauntly features, and if she sees you, she will not stop until she touches you so you can die with her. This was perfect. I found an old hospital gown, put on some ghostly make up and I drove out to the abandoned hospital. My plan was to call my sister and tell her she had to come there and help me and when she got there I was going to jump out at her dressed as Clara. That was the plan. I drove to the hospital and I went inside to find Clara’s room. When I got there, I looked at myself in the mirror and got ready to call my sister. Everything was going great, until I noticed the broken shards of mirror on the floor and my reflection jumped at me.

I moved out of there so quickly I barely remember it. Clara did not touch me but as I drove away from the hospital, I felt like she was watching me, and for a few months afterwards I knew she was moving closer and closer. I did finally call my sister to tell her what happened, and she told me about this place I’m in now. These people that dealt with people hexed by witches or stalked by ghosts. She got me here today and I wish it made a difference, but each day I can feel her inching closer and closer to me and my life growing shorter and shorter.   

This morning I woke up and I moved my fingers over the wall beside my bed and felt nothing. Nothing. I was expecting hundreds of tally marks, but the wall was blank. I pressed my palms against the wall and sighed. There was no bang or flash, but I knew it. She was here.