I walked into the front hallway, shutting the door and tossed my backpack carelessly. “I’m home!” my words echoed off the walls. I sighed walking into the kitchen, the setting sun cast shadows on the pale blue wall.
Aunt May must still be in bed. I thought to myself,
I started dinner, frozen pizza and sat down on the wooden kitchen chair to figure out my math homework. Slow footsteps echoed down the stairwell. Aunt May, dressed in a pink bathrobe that she never seemed to change out of grabbed a Coke out of the fridge and drank it. She faced the window, her face ashen with dark circles and her dark brown hair in a uncombed mess starting out as if deep in thought.
“Hey Aunt May.” I managed a weak smile.
She didn’t look at me. Finally her voice came out in barely a whisper.
“Dinner?”
“I’ve got it in the oven.”
She nodded and shuffled back towards the steps climbed back up and disappeared into her bedroom. I sighed and tried to focus on math but the problems no longer made sense. If only life was as simple as math, only one answer to all questions. I tapped my pen thinking of Aunt May. Awhile back when the symptoms started to occur we made weekly doctor visits and the doctors labeled her medically depressed, gave her some pills and tried their best but nothing helped.
She shut down when mom died, the last living relative of hers besides me, that she knew of and so she began spiraling into this pit of blanked stares, She never left the house except to get the newspaper in the driveway and even that was a hassle. So I got a waitressing job at the local diner and I’m sure the only reason they hired me was out of pity given that we live in a small town and in small towns news travels fast.
I heard the shuffling of footsteps and looked to find Aunt May, possibly wandering again but only found the empty hallway. “That’s strange.” I thought to myself. Lately I’ve been hearing things, simple things like footsteps when there’s no one's there or what sounds like words only for it to turn out to be the wind. It’s only the house settling I would tell myself or stress causing me to overthink.
I pushed it out of my mind and returned to the piece of pizza in clutched my hands, gone cold I gave up on eating and watched stupid reality TV shows before trudging upstairs and going to bed. Staring at the ceiling I finally drifted off to sleep.
“Lilly.”
Fog twirled around my ankles as I stood in the woods, trees stretched their gnarly branches as if to stop me from escaping. I faced the voice. A little girl stared at me. Her eyes were so dark they looked black, were glassy and her skin was ghostly pale. I walked towards her even though I tried to turn away. Her face twisted into a grim smile, her teeth craved to a point and decayed.
“Come here.” Her voice was high like the sound of bells but with a coldness to it.
I tried to move, run, turn away but it was like I was being pulled towards her. I finally stopped when I was hardly five inches away from her face. I could smell her disgusting breath, like rotting meat. As she spoke the words curled in the air like poison
“Do you hear the voices?”
I woke up hyperventilating and found Aunt May standing outside the bedroom door staring at me. Her mouth opened as she slowly spoke, but I could hear the words I had been hearing so many times before.
“Do you hear the voices?”
She turned and walked almost like in a daze, away. I followed her and found her in her bedroom, asleep like she never had moved. I was weirded out by now and turned back to go to my bedroom when a shadow darted in front of me. Fear shot through my veins as it took shape turning into a little girl, the same girl that had plagued my nightmares. I turned to run or hide anything but face her empty eyes but just like in my nightmares I couldn’t move
“Follow me.” she spoke softly but it was a command.
We walked out of the house and into the woods surrounding the house
“Let me go!” I couldn't keep the fear out my voice as the trees grew denser, I tried to cry out in protest but no sound escaped. We finally stopped in front of a cluster of rocks, I looked at the girl
“I don’t understand.”
She pointed at the rocks. “Look closer.”
I peered at the rocks and found they were headstones. Suddenly more shadows appeared chanting, I gripped the headstone trying to figure out what they were saying and realized they were repeating “Do you hear the voices?” I covered my ears.
“I don’t know what the voices are!” I managed to choke out the words.
They moved in closer, the chanting becoming more menacing. “Do you hear the voices?” I crouched closer to the gravestones and read them. My name was carved in large gagged letters.
“Lilly Niart.” and the one next to it was “May Niart.”
I starred in horror at the little girl. “What are the voices?”
Her face twisted into that smile.
“Us.”
The last thing I saw was her twisted smile as she pushed me into the grave.
