It Wanders

Listen (2 min) | Short story | Creative Nonfiction/Horror

Shade of evening, darker than night. Snow White’s hag projected on the wall—hunching, hooded, sliding out of corner shadows.

Beside the switch so I flinched from flipping on the light. Between me and the door.

I can’t grasp how I escaped you. Before and after are sponged, and the only memory is the moment.

Fleeing the house, I kept away until distance assured me you were a trick of streetlamps.

I learned to forget. Scrubbing memory clean until time was spotless, but years were nothing to you. You nested in a closed, dirty nowhere.

Waiting to open my door and shut it.

Open.

Shut.

Anger swallowed fear, and I roared.

You stalled, biding your time in the corners, raring to make your point in daylight.

Your handprint message decorating a steamed bathroom mirror—hands and hands—a finger-painted threat, was received. I wouldn’t be allowed to forget again.

I told myself, pretend, pretend, pretend you don’t see.

But my mother saw you, shade of evening darker than night, eyeing her from the hall.

Only one way to wipe stains clean she knew. She went for the preacher, and the preacher went for you.

We barred the door. Scoured dark corners.

God exiled you to wander unwashed places while we tended burning lamps, minding all the shadows.

---

If you enjoyed this story…

Faceless

---

---

This short work represents some of my brother’s frightening experiences living in our mother’s old house, the same house featured in my short story, “Faceless.”