Well, with this being the month of October, I feel it's time to turn our minds to things that go bump in the night. The following story is my family ghost story. I hope you enjoy it.
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Some of this story is first-hand experience, some was told to me by my mother many years later. I can testify to the truth of everything I saw and heard myself, and I have no reason to doubt my mother.
I was just a boy, aged about seven, and we were living in an old, creaky, two-story house in Washington State. It had a strange central stairway that went up and made a half circle at the top. The whole of the stairway was walled in and had a door at the very bottom. My sister and I slept in the upstairs room. There was only the one huge room up there. It covered half of the upper floor. The rest of this area was taken up by the stairway and a series of odd little child-high closets.
My Mother and Stepfather had their room on the ground floor, towards the rear of the house, and outside, Tony our Stepfather, had repaired a small concrete fish pond and filled it with water and goldfish. We of course had named them all!
It all began, as I recall, with the upstairs room. My sister and I slept and played there. The room had only the one door that led to the stairway and the short hall with the odd closets, and one window. We complained continually of the coldness in that room. So much and so often that my Stepfather purchased a radiant electric heater and placed it between our beds just in front of that window and the small shelf that stood below it. This he did despite his statements that the room was not cold.
But the room remained cold…
On this particular day, my sister and I had been told to clean our room. This was a chore we never much cared for and did half-heartedly most of the time. But, it was the price of being allowed to go outside and play in the front yard. We seldom played in the back for any reason. So we set to work and soon had our few toys tossed willy-nilly into our toy boxes or placed carefully onto the little shelf below the window.
Tony, my stepfather was in the US Navy, so I had few toys because we moved so often and had weight limits on what we could bring along. Two of my most prized were a pair of plastic cars. Not just any plastic cars. These were honest to goodness model cars. Built by my Stepfather and painted in detail. One green and the other one red with working wheels and hoods that opened. He had given them to me after spending hours and hours working on them. I rarely took them down from below the window.
As soon as we were finished, our room decontaminated of toys and rubbish of any kind, we romped down the stairs and waited for our mother to inspect our handiwork. It was a bright sunny day and we wanted to get outside. Our mother climbed the stairs and we vibrated in place waiting to hear her say those sweet words of release...
"Keep your butts out of the street and play nice! And Leave those Damned fish in the pond!"
That would be our cue to race each other to the door, where we would do our level best to imitate the Three Stooges, piling into each other and jamming the doorway with our bodies in our frenzy to be the first one outside. But those words were not what we had heard. Instead, the dreaded "Get your butts up here!" sounded from our upstairs room. Dejected and whining about all our hard work, we climbed the stairs listlessly and shuffled to our mothers side. Then our jaws dropped, well at least mine did. The room was a shambles. Each of the toy boxes had been flung open and the contents scattered. It was as if someone had turned the toy boxes over and emptied them onto the floor, then kicked the former contents about. Both of my prized cars were there too. The green one lay on its side and to my horror the wheels were broken off. Not just one wheel or two wheels. All of them. My mother looked down at me disdainfully.
"You told me this room was clean. Get busy and clean it up NOW. Unless you want to stay in all day." She looked at the ruined car then back at me. "Your father is going to be upset with you." Those words were something I did not want to hear, ever.
To this day I can remember his face as he looked at the green car and the three wheels I could find. One of the wheels had disappeared as if cast into the Twilight Zone. Dad had spent hours of his free time working on that car. But he didn’t say much. And I think he half believed me when I swore to him that I hadn’t done it. I think he wanted to, anyway. In any case we re-cleaned the room. It took nearly an hour. I spent much more time trying to find the missing wheel of the green car. I don't think I went outside that day. I never did find that missing wheel.
I need to tell you about our dog, because he is in the next part of the story. Butch was a huge German Shepherd with a nasty attitude towards anyone not in the family. Our Stepfather had thought that we needed protection while he was away to sea. Butch had been a guard dog at the base, but grew too old to continue there. Rather than see him put down, Tony brought him home. He was a great dog. Big and Mean as hell to anyone not in the family, nearly tearing the door off the hinges to get at the poor Mail Man as he climbed the steps to our front door.
He was, nevertheless, kind and gentle to both my sister and myself. Not once did he ever snarl or grumble when we played on him. Not even when my sister wanted to dress him up in her clothes. But he would not come upstairs. He would stand at the bottom and look up, but never enter the stairway and go up to our room. Perhaps he sensed something up there that we could not.
The rest of this story is my mother’s:
Late one night our ferocious Butch was on guard as usual. My Mother had settled into bed with a book she was reading. Tony was gone to sea and she was alone. Butch lay across her legs at the foot of the bed, his eyes closed, but his ears, alert for any sound, twitched. His long years of training were still with him.
His ears twitched again. He sat up straight at the foot of the bed, irritating my Mother, who thought he was hearing someone walking down the street or perhaps a car in front of the house. She scolded him and ordered him down onto the floor. He complied, but a thin nervous whine escaped him as he left the bed. That was what caught my Mothers attention. Butch never whined. Not once in all the time he had been with us. It was exceedingly odd. He stayed erect on the floor facing the only door in the room and his ears lay back against his skull. A low growl murmured in his deep, powerful chest. All at once the hair on his back stood on end as if an invisible hand had run from his tail to his forehead, raising the hair as it went, and the growl died in his throat. He cried out in fright, squealing like a frightened puppy, flinging himself under the bed as quickly as he could force his considerable bulk under the too low railing. The bed rocked and bucked as he did so. My Mother was so astounded by this she leaned out over the bed and looked at him. The bed was shaking with his trembling and he was curled into a ball. She called to him repeatedly. But he would not respond to her in any way. His whining ceased and he became deathly still. My Mother sat up and was about to throw off the covers when she saw it. Standing there at the foot of her bed.
It was tall, man-like and filled with a white translucence, outlined in red. It stood there staring at her. The temperature in the room had plummeted and she could see her breath before her eyes. Still it stood there radiating a bone numbing cold like a freezer coil. Long minutes passed as her own shudders started to ripple through her slim body. The apparition didn’t move for a long time. She felt as if it were trying to tell her something. Then without warning it reached for her and she, like any sensible person, pulled the covers up over her head and shook as Butch had done. Praying to God all the while to make it leave.
“Please God don’t let it touch me!”
She knew if it did she would die.
Several minutes passed and the cold left the room. She ventured a glance from under her covers and saw just a glimpse of it as it passed out of the room and turned towards the stairway! Screaming she flung herself from the bed and ran to the next room. But the door to the stair was shut and there was no sign of her visitor.
She headed, shaking, up the stairs to our room on the floor above. It was the longest flight of stairs she had ever climbed and she felt as if she would never reach the top. When she did our bedroom door was open and she could see us, my sister and I, tucked tightly within our covers and sleeping soundly. The radiant heater gave off it’s baleful red glow, coloring the room ruddy red, as if all inside was covered in blood. Unable to stop her shuddering, she carefully entered our room. She woke us one at a time and held us close.
“We’re all sleeping in my bed tonight.” she said gently.
We slept together that night. Something that was not usual for us at all. But is a very fond memory for me. I will never forget the feeling of peace I had curled against my mothers side, her arm wrapped around me.
We moved six months later, to east San Diego.
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I must thank Fljotsdale for editing this story for me. She did a wonderful job
and is responsible for it being as readable as it is.
(Bows low and then hands the kind lady a yellow rose.)
Thank you Fljotsdale.
For the rest of you, I hope you enjoyed reading this story and I encourage you to write up your own family ghost story. It is Halloween after all.
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The line between good and evil is razor sharp. Be careful of misteps,
lest you find yourself spitted upon your own blade.
[This message has been edited by Wulfere (edited 10-14-2001).]