Keep Walking By Part Two

  I try not to think back to what I saw the next morning but when I do I remember it as a bad dream. One of those waking nightmare type things or food poisoning. I certainly do not like to think it came out of my imagination.

It was such a bright warm day I woke up to. The sun shone on all the pretty peach and pink colours I had painted my room with a white light that ought to have been stark were the colours not all so sweet.

It happened so fast it was like my mind split in half instantly to deal with it.A sense of dread fear intruded upon me, even whilst my head was still on the pillow my whole body was overcome with the cold clamminess of it.I knew there was something horrific in the room. Something dreadfull.I found myself hoping it was a huge black spider on my wall next to the door at the end of my bed and I do not like spiders.

I sensed  where it was and was trying to force myself, still half awake to look.I had to look or I could be frozen with the fear of it.I felt it was something I couldn’t deal with.Something I had no hope of dealing with and it was going to paralyze me with terror .It was with a sense of hopelessness that I peered slowly over the edge of the duvet.It took my breath just to look at it and it appeared to be peering directly back. Only it`s eyes and the top of its head visible at the end of my bed.

It was a vision so horrible as to be almost unbelievable. All I recall thinking was “Why?” “Why me?Why here?”It was simply the most unnatural thing I hope I never really saw and yet I knew I was not imagining it,just because I could not have.

It was only a vaguely human shaped thing.The spiked hair and wrong eyes vaguely Craig.My brain was scrambling to explain the inexplicable. It was blacker that soot in a way that defied nature.It was a blackness that was more like a void than a colour.The light could not hit,it seemed  to absorb light.The eyes were bigger than human eyes are able to be,there seemed to be constant movement in the deep blackness within them.

Anything natural and human as in the previous Craig had utterly gone.What was left was this unspeakably gruesome thing that made no sound and had no recognisable expression.It appeared to be moving a little as if in a breeze of it`s own but with the only window right next to my head I knew there was no breeze and the door behind it was shut.I hid my head under the duvet repeatedly but it was still there when I looked again.It was too horrible a thing to know of it`s existence let alone acknowledge it`s appearance at the end of my bed.I kept on hiding and looking and eventually I looked and it had gone.

        The odd things that began happening around the house after that just seemed amusing at first.I would be in the Kitchen and putting  the lid on the sugar jar only to find it taken off again a second later.Lids,forks knives kept being moved.Milk I had put in the fridge moved to a cupboard.Things from cupboards moved to the fridge.It was just like we had an invisible idiot living with us and it didn`t especially bother us. My mother would shout “What on earth are you up to!” at me but I would be shouting it back just as often.

     At school Tracey and I ignored each other cautiously.I didn`t want to be the first one to say anything and I suppose neither did she.I had no evidence to accuse her with and it all seemed too silly at that point.
The annoyance grew however,moving all over the house until one day I came home from school to find my mother sat on the sofa,she was shaken up.She refused to explain what had happened but it was obvious something had. After that I could hear her from my bedroom shouting at something angrily ”Get lost!” was the most commonly heard part.When I went to find out who it was, there would be no one there. After a few days I noticed she was shouting at something all over the place but it turned to laughter on my approach.Ginger George caught some of the blame but he was  asleep so often he escaped most of it. George himself had developed a wary swagger when approaching the kitchen.

The nonsense of it all gradually became more destructive. The invisible idiot not remotely amusing. Missing things were broken when you found them. A lightbulb exploded over my head.I had bare feet and could not move until I realised there was a way of sliding myself onto the bannister and along it away from all the broken glass. The house was darker than it had ever been and it was not far enough into winter for that. Even on bright days the sun did not seem to come in through the windows as it used to. I found myself shouting at the dark shadows, telling whole empty rooms to “Go Away.” And laughing at my own insanity.

My Mother brought in a vicar who said blessings and prayers over things. I sat on the floor of my room listening to the murmured sounds below. A moment or two after the vicar had departed a barely noticeable tremor began to run through the house. It was just a silent vibration and I thought it would pass. It did not. It grew and grew, gradually and quite slowly till it seemed like a train was passing by the front door and the nearest railways lines at least three miles away

“What are you doing!”

My mother  shreiked at me

“It`s the house!”

I shrieked back .Ginger George looking at me as if I was mad

“It`s an earthquake !” I yelled.I don`t think either of us believed it.

As the tremors slowly began to subside for a brief moment they did a different thing. They juddered instead and the whole house throbbed with it. It felt for just a moment the house had laughed. A dark disturbing cynical laugh. It all faded silently away. A deep unnerving uneasiness refused to leave after that. It was as if the thing that was watching,hounding and pestering us had found a voice and all it had chosen to do with it was laugh.

My mother  did not believe it was Tracey “She hasn`t got the brains”She argued. She had been questioning all the neighbours for awhile and it was at this point that someone from across the street sent over “the family priest.” I came home from school to find him exiting the front door as I was about to enter.

I had really been hoping that it would all turn out to be some dumb trick Tracey was pulling and that maybe the neighbours were in on it. As much as I preferred to live in denial and not know what was happening even I had realised someone would have to be living very nearby to do the things they were doing. I wanted it all to turn out to be smoke and mirrors. For Tracey to have found someone who was very clever but with too much time on there hands and no common sense…
Facing this priest really pulled all my thoughts apart and I couldn`t look away…

As I stood in  the drive  listening whilst my mother thanked the Priest for coming I found myself transfixed to the light brown painted fence at the back garden end of the driveway. A shadow fell across the right side of it nearest to the house. It was as tall as the fence at around five foot. The unnaturalness of it grew in my mind very slowly and entirely unwillingly from the first suspicion that there was nothing at all casting the shadow and yet there was the shadow. As I continued to watch, it moved along and behind the fence with no natural light hitting or directing it. It moved behind the fence as slowly and deliberately as it had moved along the front.

The smiley priest laughed confidently informing her “It can`t get back in the house” as he slid still smiling back into his car…

When I looked back at the fence the shadow was still encircling the fence but had sped up its strange maneuvers and was beginning to spin angrily around and around as if trying to consume it.
The thought occurred to me that Traceys hairbrained illusionist might be a genius but he was dangerously out of his mind too.He was going to menace the garden as he had menaced the house. Maybe Tracey was possessed now too or just crazy.To do all this and for what?! All the accusations I wanted to throw at her were drowned out that night.

A violent storm shook the whole house all night long without let up. Countless times the rain roared down on us with outrageous loudness shaking the house with the force of it`s blows. Trees that were not there whipped and tapped windows and walls all night long. Thunder hammered,lightning shook us. The manic wind  seemed set on a furious revenge that it could not find a way inside. Windows and doors all rattled, the house was shaken as if a box. It was all a bit biblical.

Answering the phone my mother found  the concerned neighbours from across the street on the crackly line. Our house looked like it had disappeared they said

“What do you mean ?”She asked;

“ what is it doing?”

 Adding “Your house looks under sea”

She attempted to lighten the moment shouting up the stairs to me

“Are we still here?”

“Yes”I replied.

     It was with a heavy sense of relief that I stepped out onto the dry grey driveway the next morning, not least just to find it still there.I decide to tell Tracey whatever she wanted to know.Not finding her I left a message with one of her friends.Whatever was going on had to end. I couldn`t stand to have any part in the darkness of it any longer. The unnaturalness of it repelled me.

    Tracey turned up at my house later that evening.Sat on the carpet she explained Ann Marie`s absence “She`s not having it anymore.” I couldn`t blame her.Before I could say anything Tracey sprang into a defence of Craig`s mother;

“She just wanted you to tell her everything”

“How are the family ?”I asked suprising myself by giving them grounds in reality.Tracey shrugged

“They are all acting strange anyway…grief maybe.The father not talking to the mother. The other three children think that their mother has lost the plot...”

Tracey sounded a bit bored with it all

“She just wanted to know what happened to her son though.That much always made sense didn`t it?”

“She knew what happened. Wasn`t it her that told us?The car crash?” I argued

“She knows that wasn`t all though Karen..what you saw...

I cut her off  “What I saw was not anyone Tracey. Was not anyone human anyway”

I tested her.

“What you saw was him and wasn`t him.His mother said he never smiled like that unless he was scared. His sister said he never smiled like that unless he was scared or about to screw somebody over. They faught over that. He was never scruffy, dirty and would not have known the first thing about plastering. They faught about that. His jacket would never have been battered. He never wore that jacket.They faught about that.They thought he was trying to return,some thought he should and some that he should not…

“Fight?” I asked.Tracey nodded,rolling her eyes

“Well if he was a bit of a trouble causer in life he certainly did not let up in death.”

I was going all in.Getting it over with one way or another. Tracey looked at me expectantly.I continued;

“The first time I saw him his eyes looked wrong,too dark to be real somehow.With an extra coloured ring around the brown.Tracey didn`t understand and gave me her `your`e talking greek` look

“Just a bit demonic”

“Oh god” She groaned breathlessly in reply

“I saw him staring at me as I was on the bus home. His eyes looked even worse. Dead. I thought it was a wind up. Please tell me it was a wind up...

Tracey was shaking her head slowly.I had been hoping to see a smile  a sneer a snicker.There was nothing.She looked down still shaking her head,surprised and trying to take it all in.It appeared she might be finally sensing the danger rather than just the opportunity for drama

“You should have told me!” Tracey spat out.Her mood spinning on a hairpin into anger

“I got bored with all that wind up stuff years ago and have not done it since.Oh God !You should have told me” She repeated shaking her head

“It`s been more of an evil entity than anyone`s son Tracey” I admonished

“It`s still flitting around out there in the garden.Waiting to scare the crap out of someone and the driveway is not safe either”

Tracey looked surprised. Asking if it was dangerous

“YES!” I almost shouted

A glimmer of what I hoped was guilt passed across her  face .But I didn’t care anymore.I would never forgive her for the way she so blindly dragged me into it all.I didn`t think I would or could really believe she had not been up to something. I think she meant it when she said she had given up pranking people but I often wonder if it was then that she gave it up.

  Several days later i had arrived home from school and was still in the hallway when i saw a young looking middle aged blonde lady in the centre of our dining room. I could hear my mother talking to her from the kitchen, saying how nice it was to have met her in a tone that suggested it was not at all nice, it was unnerving to have met such a crazy person.
There was nothing at all right looking about the blonde lady. I stood and watched her, knowing somehow that she couldn`t see me, although i was only around four feet from her and had pushed the door halfway open to look in. She had not looked at me at all,she stood staring forwards. It was a scene of overwhelming oddness and i had enough with oddness. Something snapped in me and i fled up to my room.

   The thing seemed to be over. Seemed really to have gone. Ginger George always took a swipe at the fence whenever he passed it. Otherwise the house became peaceful,lighter,calm.
My mother said the next day that the odd lady had been Craig`s mother but i did not want to hear anymore about it at that time and when i finally felt like asking she denied there had ever been any odd blonde lady.
 

Keep Walking By ,Part One;www.abctales.com/story/witchling/keep-walking-bypart-one