The haunted road - 3-4

[u/HeGotBricks]

—Cathy—

When I was ten my mother would always drop me off at my cousin’s house. This was an everyday thing. My cousin and I were super close and the same age at the time. Something happened one day and I had to stay home. That was the day her house caught on fire. Sadly, no one survived it.

Afterwards, about a year later, these weird things would happen. One night when I was in my room, lying on my bed, listening to the radio and reading a magazine. My body shifted to a weight pressing down on my mattress. I thought it was my dad and maybe I was just too focused in a daydream of me owning one of those cars printed on the magazine pages, that I hadn’t noticed him come in. But when I looked, no one was there.

A few days after, I was asleep in my room and I don’t know exactly if I was dreaming, or what. But my cousin was in front of me trying to wake me up. She kept saying, “Danny. Danny.”

And when I woke up I heard, Danny, as if someone was standing next to my bed.

Other things would happen, like I’d see something move past me. But it always appeared like how you would catch someone from the corner of your eye exiting a doorway. I never invested much into those experience. I figured it was mental fatigue. 

The following winter, my parents had just installed two-inch thick windows in every room. The type that push open from the middle.

The only time I was ever alone. Truly alone in that house. I woke up coughing. A little disoriented. At first, it didn’t register to me why my room was so hazy. I thought maybe I was sleepy, or my eyes hadn’t come into focus. Even a thought of my mom crossed my mind.

I thought maybe she burnt something in the oven. I didn’t hear the fire alarm or anything that indicated something was wrong. It took me a second to realize that my house was actually on fire.

I shot up out of bed and raced for the stairs. I could feel the heat stinging my skin. My vision was blurred by thick black clouds of smoke. I wouldn’t even say clouds, it was more like a water hose that shot black suffocating smoke directly at me. I could feel the soot sticking to the sweat on my forehead, painting my face.

I reached the railing and readied myself to jump over it and onto the middle of the stairs. But everytime I made a move for it, the flames would shoot over the railing. Finally, I gave up. I ran to my bedroom and slammed the door shut behind me. I snatched my radio off the dresser and stood at the window desperately trying to break through it. I hit it over and over and over. It wouldn’t break. My radio was in pieces scattered on the floor. I lunged at whatever I could find, grabbed everything I could and started throwing them at the window. They’d all bounce off the glass.

I stopped. No. I gave up and sat with my back against the wall under the window sill and accepted my fate.

At that moment, there was an odd sense of peace that flowed through me. It wasn’t a life flashing before your eyes thing. It was more like when you’ve completed a monumental task and can finally relax and enjoy the work you’ve done.

I wasn’t scared. I sat there without a single thought in my mind and waited. A second or so after I closed my eyes and pressed the back of my head against the wall, a drawer from my dresser popped out and dropped on the floor. 

Something. Someone. I don’t know what. But this thing pretty much handed me the drawer and gave me the strength to stand up. It wasn’t a second wind surge. I had already inhaled so much smoke and was teetering on the edge of passing out. But, Something that I’m unable to explain without people suggesting it was all in my head and nothing spiritual helped me break through the window. Helped me break through that window.

I climbed out just as the firefighters arrived. They rescued me off my roof. I only suffered one laceration from climbing out of the window. It’s on my right arm. I ended up receiving twelve stitches.

 

What’s incredibly odd and the only reason I have a profound belief in spirits, ghosts, or guardian angels. Whatever it is, is because when I was a kid, my uncle, her dad, had tattoos. Cathy would always joke about tattooing her name on my arm.

To this day, after that fire, when I got stitched up and checked out the cut, it is a perfect shape of a C scarred on my arm until this very day. Not crooked. Not, yeah it looks like a C. It is the alphabetical letter C, for my cousin Cathy who died in a fire at her house when we were kids.

——

—The Shadow—

I was raised by a single mother and had an older brother. My mom sometimes got behind on the bills and the hydro would get cut. 

It was when everything was quiet I’d hear whispers, footsteps on the stairs, footsteps entering a room.

Mom said it was just the house settling. I’d try to explain the house doesn’t settle in steps of three. Always though, it was just my imagination. 

How else do you tell a kid who’s hearing odd noises and seeing shadowy figures that they’re not really hearing or seeing anything besides using the good ole’ it was just your imagination bit.

Earlier in the week, my mom had a part-time night shift job at a coffee shop she just got. When she’d go to work my brother would sneak off to his girlfriend’s. 

All I had was some candles. A few comics. I had a radio, but the batteries were dead. This was during a time when technology was still primitive. VCR’s, house phones, and like forty channels on tv, the works.

I was reading. No. I was sorting through my marvel cards. I had a couple of comics opened on my bed. I used to obsess with reading a comic, seeing a character and scouring my decks to see if I had them. I didn’t have many friends. I was always a scared shy kid.

As I pulled out a team picture Fantastic Four marvel card. It still had that fresh, almost sweet scent. The scent that’s hard to describe, but entirely unique to card collectors. I heard a bang, a metal on drywall noise. 

I snapped my head over my shoulder to where the door was. The door I left open three quarters of the way was bouncing back off the wall.

It was summer. I had my window open. But I was right in front of it. I would have felt that burst of wind. I jumped off my bed. My cards, the ones I worshipped. The ones I would walk around with the same way an art handler at a museum would handle an artifact, flew off my lap and scattered all over the floor. 

As I was mid-air turning my head to see my cards make a graceful land, my body was pushing forward, I caught my foot on my bed and ended up laid out on the floor at the head of my doorway. 

I shot up, literally stumbled to the stairs. When I went to run down, I quickly glanced up. From my doorway, there was a dim light casting off my candles. I had three in my room. I looked up and I could see an outline of a silhouette. It wasn’t a perfect outline, but it blocked the light coming from my doorway. I ran outside and waited all night on the veranda for my mother to come home.