Human Fears

Submitted into Contest #83 in response to: Write a fantasy story about water gods or spirits.... view prompt

0 comments

Horror Thriller Science Fiction

A wood frame setting on a concrete block foundation. I have been living here for about 13 years but I had trouble falling asleep that night , my bed room was the entire top floor of our house. I promise sincearly that this has scared me for life and although I have looked into psychological explanations for what I heard and natural explanations for what occurred , the remain unsatisfactory. A Ghost is the soul or spirit of a dead person , my Grandfather told me about how. One time he was sitting in a chair in front of the house , he heard his wife repeatedly calling him to have Coffee but the thing is , my Grandmother has passed away before a few years.

When I was a child , I was scared of the dark. I promised to my mother that I heard voices in it. They were not evil , but they were unfamiliar and so they scared me. It was uncommon in the middle of night for me to wake up and hear “ Whisper “ as I would call them when asking my mother , she figured they were just my night mares but only I knew , they were not my night mares. It was a truth of dark which I must have told a thousand times but my family wouldn’t have guessed it. I forced myself to forget about it. I should add at this point that when walking out into the hall to go to the bathroom, you looked directly down the stairs that would lead you into my living room on the first floor (as my mom’s bedroom was on the second floor). On one such night, around Christmas, I awoke and felt the need to relieve myself. I walked out from the door and distinctly heard the phrase “Look!” and to my astonishment, a red light, almost like a spotlight, was cast upon the wall at the very bottom of the stairs. The light had no other source, it was by itself, and I was transfixed by it. Being a little kid, and it only being a few days from Christmas, I KNEW what this light was. IT WAS SANTA!!! How else could he get into my house to know I was being a good girl? I was so excited I began walking down the stairs to greet him,

picking up my pace after the second step as it began to creep off the wall and fade into the darkness in my living room.

That’s when I heard him. A very strong, masculine voice. Different from the first. Not at all like my father’s. It said, “Stop! Right now. Go back up those stairs.” I listened, turned around, and what happened next I am not sure I would believe if someone had told me this same story. After reaching the top of the stairs, I heard a very loud CRASH that sent me running back to my mother’s bed where I jumped straight under the covers and stayed there the whole night.

When we awoke the next morning, the poinsettia lights (little Christmas flower lights that glowed red) my mother had put on the railing down the stairs were pulled straight down to the bottom of the stairs, some broken from what seemed like a forceful tear, laying in a single pile. The dry sink in my living room had fallen from the wall. My mother could not explain it! My father was worried we had been the victims of a home invasion. My sister was crying. There was nothing missing, nobody had broken in, there did not seem to be any reason this had happened. And then I saw it, and I kept quiet about it because I was so afraid that I could not force words out of my mouth.

There, on the edge of the wooden dry sink which had been facing up, were three indentations where the finish on the wood had been worn, almost as if in a forceful grip. Something down there had GRABBED IT AND THREW IT DOWN. That was what the bang was.

I was mortified. After that day I never heard a single voice again. I do not like to imagine what was waiting downstairs for me that night, if it was anything at all, but I can tell you that the reality was that

something had physically acted upon two things in my house near the bottom of that stairwell.

After this, I had never heard another whisper again. Which is sad, because in some ways I would have liked to thank the man (masculine energy?) that had stopped me from going down those stairs. because of this incident I am still afraid of the dark. ESPECIALLY shadowy stairwells

Once I made a Decision to go for a trip , it was a long term friends get together. We visited many places and we marched for the rest of the day into a dense forest. When it turned dark , they became terrifying .

Spooky shadows were found everywhere. Strange eye glowed in the trees and I’m not taking happy jingles. These songs sounded more like creepy Halloween music. Worst of all , it was dark. Very dark. Did I mention I was afraid of dark? They were worst but I did not want to show my fear to my fellow mates and so I hid it with a smile. A couple of months ago, cousin (a single mother) bought a new cell phone. After a long day of work, she came home, placed her phone on the counter, and went watch to TV; her son ( MY BROTHER ) came to

her and asked if he could play with her new phone. She told him not to call anyone or mess with text messages, and he agreed.

At around 11:20, she was drowsy, so I decided to tuck her son ( MY BROTHER ) in and go to bed. I walked to his room and saw that he wasn’t there. I then ran over to her room to find him sleeping on her bed with the phone in his hand.

Relieved, I picked her phone back up from his hand to inspect it. Browsing through it, I noticed only minor changes such as a new background, banner, etc., but then I opened up her saved pictures. I began deleting the pictures he had taken, until only one new picture remained.

When I first saw it, I was in disbelief. It was her son ( MY BROTHER ) sleeping on her bed, but the picture was taken by someone else above him… and it showed the left half of an elderly woman’s face. I was scared and was about to die.

Of all the weird things that my siblings and me have seen or heard in this house this one event is my favorite. This happened to my brother. About ten years ago my brother and his best friends had started a garage band playing mostly “Spanish rock,” alternative music but in Spanish. His friends could only get together on Sunday afternoons. They would practice into the early evening, and they would usually call it quits by 8 pm. This was the time I usually showed up and went to bed, cause I worked the graveyard shift.

This happened in late fall, so the days were getting shorter, they had just finished a long session when the decision to head to someone else house came about. My brother handed his car keys to his buddy so they could load up the equipment. Everyone had filed out of the basement, but the

tricky part was that they needed to walk all the way to the back of the basement, up the back stairs, through the kitchen doorway, down the hall into the living room and out into the front porch. Everyone was outside sitting in my brother’s truck waiting for him. My brother was walking up the back stairs when he remembered that he had left his pancakes in a to go container sitting on a speaker in the basement. He made the decision to go back. Now the basement is not clean, with full sight lines, there had been partitions made, and the boiler and main heating unit are right smack in the middle. So after my brother walks back, he is about to retrieve his food container, when out of the corner of his eye he sees it.

It is a shadowy figure, right at his peripheral vision, this feeling of dread and uneasiness washed over my brother. We had been taught that if you are in the presence of a spirit or ghost and you felt a bad vibe, to say quick prayer or to cuss at it. My brother chose the latter, he basically just told it “hey fuck you, I don’t have time for this shit”.

My brother started to walk to the back of the basement and briskly up the stairs, closing doors and turning off lights as he was walking out. The last light switch is on the opposite side of the front door…luckily the door was open and the light from the street lamp was flooding the living room with its amber light. My brother said he felt something at his back, but at no point did he turn around. As he flicked the last switch the living room went dark, as did rest of the house. As he stepped out he pulled on the door closing it behind him, still holding his food container in one hand he jogged down the few porch steps. He walked towards the front gate…our house resides far from the main street, essentially having a large front yard but no rear garage. As he closed the gap between himself and his friend-laden truck he kind of smiled and thought things over in his head, mad at himself for spooking out when there was no reason.

He climbed into the drivers side of the truck, putting on his seat belt and getting ready to pull out of the parking spot directly in front of the house, when one of his friends asked “ Hey wait what about your brother, isn’t he coming with us?” My brother answered, “What do you mean? He went to work early tonight, he is already gone, do you see his car anywhere?”

The next question they asked “So then who was walking behind you when you were leaving the house? “

This is where the story end!!!!!

February 28, 2021 16:32

You must sign up or log in to submit a comment.

0 comments

RBE | Illustrated Short Stories | 2024-06

Bring your short stories to life

Fuse character, story, and conflict with tools in Reedsy Studio. 100% free.