What Comes in the Night by Paulina Torres

What Comes in the Night by Paulina Torres

When I was younger, they used to tell me these old folk tales that would scare me into going to bed. They’d say la Llorona will come if you do not listen.. it used to work. In the summers me and my family would travel to Mexico for about three months at a time. I lived in a small town close to the river bed, there was huge trees behind my house that lined the whole property, unable to see far behind them. My house was big, I was beautiful on the outside but the inside terrified me. After every meal with my family members, they sit around and talk, not good talk, it used to be evil talk. Naturally as a child I was intrigued but it used to get so bad that I wouldn’t sleep for months, this happened every summer I stayed in that house.

I can remember everything, just like it happened yesterday.

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Entering our house there was a beautiful but creepy wooden staircase that seemed to go on forever, endless corridors. The stairs squeaked in the middle of the night for no reason. I used to hear them as I laid asleep thinking someone would go down to the kitchen but no one ever showed. I guess you could say it was haunted but no one ever believed me until that summer. That house had about five rooms total and my parents were rebuilding the top three to add one more, the restroom the guests used was connected by two doors, one leading to unfortunately my room and the second to the dining area. The bottom floor had a long corridor that ran from the dining room to the other connected rooms. Underneath the bottom of my house was an indoor garage, you could park in there but since we were there only once a year we didn’t own a car. So, my dad stuffed it with supplies and a tractor he used for his ranch properties. This house had the scary atmosphere at night but in the day it was like a dream house.

My extended family would ask us to come over often and I got a long very well with my cousins so I spent a lot of time at their house as well. If I thought my house was scary there’s was even worse. One day on a summer night, I was sitting with all my cousins around a fire, telling ghost stories, some I could tell where fake but others I wasn’t so sure. I would sit around and listen since I had nothing much to input other than the fact that I was scared of pretty much everything in the world. Looking up at the two palm trees on their property I could see the bullet when my uncle shot a owl saying it was a witch, and it would curse us if he didn’t kill it. The whole was pretty big since he had used a shot gun, but it still gave me the creeps to keep looking at it. My mind always playing tricks on me, telling me “Its back there and look to your left April”. I never listened but sometimes they got the best of me and I would turn only to find nothing. I could barely see that night because the clouds of smoke were already clouding my mind and I was getting foggy and tired. I did not want to go home alone since the streets there had barely working lamps. They always flickered on and off and sometimes the whole street down was lightless. I guess you could say I should have called my parents to go home but I decided to sleep over with my siblings at my late grandmas’ house. I remember telling them goodnight and headed to the room I usually slept in.

Me and my older sister could not sleep at all that night we were scared of the tiny room with two beds one of which my grandma slept in when she was alive. To say we were terrified was an understatement. In the middle of the night, we awake to the chairs creaking as this particular house was connected by corridors and rooms with no doors. The kitchen to our left made it hard for us to feel safe since there was no door and no blanket to cover the opening leading to the kitchen. When my grandma was alive, she was extremely catholic so she left a big jug of holy water for who knows what in the corner of the room. She had crosses hanging at all ends of the room and her closet still stood. I remember she told us that once in the wooden closet someone grabbed her hand as she pulled clothes out. Who knows if it was true but may mind raced even more at night. As I laid there trying to fall back asleep, I could hear someone entering the kitchen door, as the kitchen and her room were connected by holes in the walls you could always hear everything. I jolted my sister,

“Did you hear that”? I held my sister next to me.

“I did”, I heard her tell me, she snickered a little bit and I got closer to her. The closer I got the farther she seemed to go but I didn’t mind as long I felt safe.

“Turn on the light please”, “I am so scared”, she did as I told her and as soon as the lights went on, they went dark again. I could not see thing but the darkness, the lights flickered on and off a couple more times before I had any time to readjust my eyes. The chair that was at the end next to my grandmas’ bed had a sheer towel over it but in the darkness, it looked like something more sinister. It kept moving side to side with the wind from the open door. I turned to every side using only my phones flashlight and trying to desperately find my sister, but she was nowhere to be seen. It was like my mind was playing games with me as everything started to shift into something demonic. All I could do was sit and pray and pray until it all went away. The creaking of the chairs the sounds off the wooden doors being opened, the windows being knocked on. Everything all at once was too much for me. I ran into the kitchen to leave and bumped into someone. He was tall and dark, although I couldn’t see his face, I knew it wasn’t human. I didn’t know who it was but it wasn’t my sister, so I ran. I got outside the house where the patio is and I saw my sister. She was coming inside the house, she was wearing makeup and did not seem to be wearing the pajamas she was before.

“Where did you go”,

“What do you mean? I came to pick you up. You fell asleep here and mom wanted me to come get you”.

I never knew what I saw that night or told anyone until it was too late for us. The rest of the week we spent in simplicity but I could always feel something watching me, something that was waiting for me to be alone. I never gave it the chance, I never believed that there was any real danger to me and I didn’t think there was going to be anyone to actually see it until the following day.

My sister and I started sharing a room since that night, the house always seemed to get behind freezing when the sun set, my dad would say

‘Its because it’s made of brick”, “and we also live in the woods”, he’d sit beside the fireplace every night.

Sometimes the lights would completely go out at night, especially if it was raining and then we would have to set up candles that used to make scarier shadows in the darkness of the night.

A week later as usual we watched scary movies about witches and leprechauns living in homes, we would eat and sit in the living room and watch these terrifying movies until we all felt tired and were ready for bed. It was a rainy day to make matters worse, the lights kept flickering. This made me feel uneasy although I was surrounded by so many people. Outside you could see literally nothing but darkness, the woods that faced my room downstairs kept getting louder and louder. Crickets making their chirping noises and the walnuts that fell from the trees would hit the aluminum boards covering the garage. They kept getting louder and louder, this was my excuse to go to my room and close the window as I left it open all day to get some fresh air. I left my phone charging and went back to the living room. I was fixing my clothes to get into bed and putting all my make up away. The clutter had made me lose my mind this morning and so I decided to clean it up before I had no light left.

I was helping my mom light up a bunch of candles because we knew what was going to happen in the middle of the night. We all laughed and talked and when it hit 12 am, we all headed to bed. As I laid in bed again unable to sleep for the past week. I was watching the lanterns flames moving side to side, almost off but it kept burning. The light in the kitchen suddenly turned off, and I thought it was my mom, so I called out to her. When I did, she came to the door and stayed outside of it. She didn’t talk or say anything but I could hear her breathing, as I called her again. I heard a knocking sound on my window, moving my attention to the window where I could see nothing frightening me. The sounds then moved to the kitchen window, sounding like someone wanted to enter. I felt the doors rattling and the shuffling of feet as if they had entered the front door, footsteps and more footsteps coming and going, I unsure if it was getting closer or further, I had nowhere to go or hide. The mere curtain was what separated me and this creature of God-knows-what. I stayed frozen in fear as window of my room suddenly bursted open, the sound of the whistling wind, branches moving outside did not help the fear that was within me.

“Mo..om”, I walked further into the other room, “M..o.m”? There was no answer. I climbed up the stairs, my breath shakier than I had ever felt, I could hardly keep the candle prompted on my hand. I walked to my parents’ room and walked in, I had called my mom slowly and quietly, and there she was asleep. I checked everyone’s rooms and no one was awake. I was the only one, I walked to my room and turned on the light, and there it was. The brown checkered tiled floor, every single thing I owned on the floor. My make up smushed on my clothes, piles of my clothes surrounding the tile as if a storm had run through my room. I turned in terror, standing in the middle of it all, unable to move as if time had frozen. The room near freezing temperature made my breath mist show up in the shakiness within. I started to pick up each shirt one by one, trembling in both coldness and fear. A shiver ran down my spine, and I could hear breathing behind me, i did not turn around but instead kept picking up my stuff. The windows shuttered and the curtains opened, enabling me to see the woods, all of my mothers’ prized bulbs shattering one by one, her frames with pictures of us slowly turning left and right.   

And there it was as if mocking me, my picture turned upside down above my bed. In red lipstick, the words “Die”. The rest of the summer I slept over at my other grandmas’ house, I never went back to my parents’ house, and they sold it a few years later, the two owners died in their sleep in that house and no one inherited it. But when I drive past it I feel someone looking at me, something sinister lives there and no one experienced it but me.

* * * * THE END * * * *
Copyright Paulina Torres 2024