Scattered hauntings part 2

4.

One night, I woke up to the sound of scratching on my window.

I lived on the fourth floor. There were no trees around my building. Nothing could have climbed up the window to scratch it.

At first, I did not dare to open my eyes. I did not want to see what was waiting for me on the other side of the window, what had come for me, to take me into some underworld of shadows and flames.

But then, I decided to be defiant. Or maybe I was just feeling too much terror to be reasonable. We feel more fear of the unknown than of what we can see in front of our eyes. I had to look, I told myself. Because nothing that was out there could be worse than what my imagination was conjuring up for me.

So I opened my eyes, and I saw the thing that had come for me. It was my own ghost, come from the future. It gestured to me to open the window.

“Come to me,” it said. “I will tell you how you die.”

5

I was travelling alone one night, and my car broke down near a swamp. That was when I saw the lights.

They were flickering in the distance, friendly and enticing, like a story that ends with a warm fire and a door to shut away the night. I thought they were shining only for me, calling for me and urging me to join them somewhere safe, away from the cold.

I took a step forward. Then I felt a hand on my arm restraining me.

“Do not go there,” a voice told me.

I turned around but there was no one there, and when I turned back to the swamp the lights were gone. Eventually I found someone to help me with my car and drove off. I did not think too much about the lights and the voice, deciding that I must have been half asleep and imagined both.

Several days later I was told about a creature living in that swamp, how it lured travellers and drowned them beneath the muddy waters, how so many people had disappeared on that stretch of road, never to return. And I knew I could have been one of them, but something had stopped me. Something had prevented me from going.

I would often wonder what the thing that stopped me was and why it had rescued me. Was it to save my life – or was it to spare me for something much more terrible?

***

It seems that whoever wrote this journal began a final story. However, the last pages are torn, so I only have the beginning:

“They say there is something in their basement. I heard it too. The quick patter of feet and the whisper of soft laughter. One day, I will go down the steps and look inside. They tell me it is too dangerous, but it is much better to find out what the thing is and keep it there, instead of waiting for it to get out.”

The End

Copyright Simina Lungu 2021