A Suspenseful Paranormal Event Read online

  “Come on, Lavi Luv. Let’s get you back inside and get you settled.”

  “You won’t leave me?” she said whimpering.

  “Naw, Lavi Luv, I won’t leave you.”

  Lavi had no more bad nights and saw no more slugs for two whole weeks. She had put all of her uneasiness and unpleasantness behind her. Almost that is—why not all of it? Well because sometimes she still felt like she was being watched, especially in the kitchen. Sometimes the feeling would be so strong when she had her back to the rest of the kitchen and was washing dishes that she would whirl around suddenly, expecting to see what, she did not know. She often reflected that she, who had never fainted a day in her life, would faint dead away if she did see something!

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  Note: Now, reader, I could tickle your fancy with more tales about the Gristovers, but that is a tale for another day. But I digress. Let me tell you what happened later that night that made the Gristovers move. Then you can tell me if you would have moved or stayed. Two things happened within the next week. Here is the first one.

  The Gristovers had been out to a movie and had just driven into the driveway. They had been having a somewhat heated discussion because Lavi had just told her husband that while she had not been as scared in the house in the last two weeks, she was starting to feel scared again. Her husband had berated her so badly that she, teary-eyed, said to him, “I hope something comes at you and scares you like I have been scared. I bet you won’t laugh at me then!” Lavi got out of the car in a huff and slammed the door!

  She waited for Mr. Gristover to get out of the car and come around the hood and open the front door. Well, when cool, unflappable Mr. Gristover got around in front of the hood of the car, a loud disembodied sounding voice boomed, “ well it’s about time!” Lavi jumped! Cool, unflappable Mr. Gristover dropped the keys twice while trying to get them into the lock to open the front door. Lavi started giggling while he scrambled for the keys, dropping them yet again, all the while mumbling to himself, “Did somebody say something” Did you hear something?” By the time he got the door opened, Lavi was beside herself with laughter. She laughed so hard that she had to lean on the door as she locked it to keep from falling.

  Her husband had gone into the bedroom in a huff because of his wife’s laughing at him. Lavi dared not follow him, still giggling as she was, so she went into the den to wait for her fit of giggles to subside. She turned the TV on, anticipating that her husband would be coming back to watch it with her since they never turned in this early.

  Lavi must have dozed off, for when she awoke, the TV screen was blank. Since her husband did not come back after she waited ten more minutes, Lavi soberly reflected back on the voice the two of them had heard outside. She briefly pondered on the fact that, heretofore, she was the only one to experience anything out of the ordinary in this house. She thought to herself, It’s like something heard him being mean to me and decided to teach him a lesson. Lavi mused upon the fact that her mother, God rest her soul, had always said to her, “All I know is that there are some things in some places!”

  Lavi, who had been musingly staring off to her right, turned her head to see the TV and to find a channel that was still on.

  She absently tried to turn the sound up when she noticed something out of her peripheral vision. She turned her head slowly and her eyes popped and her mouth fell open wide in a long, loud, raspy gasp.

  Her head tilted back to look up into the orbs of a being with a head covered with a hat that looked like the things she had seen beekeepers wear! That hat touched the ceiling! While Lavi sat there with her head tilted back, her eyes bucked and her mouth agape, the being, who was dressed in a metallic chainmail-looking gray robe, slowly, slowly faded.

  Lavi wanted to fly into the bedroom faster than she had ever moved in her life, but she didn’t! Instead, she tiptoed to the bedroom because she felt like, if she ran, the thing would jump on her back! When she got across the living room, down the hall to the bedroom, she dove into the bed and started whispering, jabbering, and punching her husband awake!

  Mr. Gristover got up and looked for the being in gray, but no one was found. He asked Lavi to tell him what she saw again. She did! Her unflappable husband said, “That did it! That did it! We are moving somewhere tomorrow!” And they did!

  Now, reader, would you have moved or would you have stayed?

  Are you sure?

  Them Shoes,

  Them Shoes!

  Thirteen-year-old Alicia Carthran had always had an unhealthy fear of the dark, though she didn’t really know why. She just knew that she dared not enter a room without first switching on the light. She felt like something would get her if she didn’t. She had tried many times, unsuccessfully, to rid herself of the ridiculous fear that she had had as far back as she could remember.

  Well today, she was determined to eradicate that phobia, once and for all. So she made herself, after the doors had all been locked, walk into her bedroom without switching on the light.

  She did pretty well at first until the darkness started eroding that determined sense of euphoria by sending shivers of fear cascading down her spine. Then having had her resolve to be fearless turn to jelly, Alicia dove for the light switch to put the darkness at bay. She flicked the switch once, nothing happened. Again! Nothing! A third time, all to no avail! Uh-oh! What to do now?, she thought, as dread threatened to turn her muscles to jellified stone. “There is a little light coming in from the street light,” reasoned Alicia. Not totally in the dark, she thought. Then why the feeling of dread? With all thoughts of bravery long since gone, she muttered, “Move! Feet, don’t fail me now!” She skittered toward her safe haven, her bed, where the covers lay, with which she intended to cover her head. She kicked her new secondhand shoes off at the foot of the bed and banged her knee as she clambered over the bed’s iron footboard and dove for the safety of her bed with its thick quilt.

  With her head under the cover, after the sweat popping fear had subsided, Alicia decided that she was being foolish and stuck her nose out from under the cover for a breath of cooler air. “After all,” she told herself, “you are not a baby anymore and you have stopped your trembling.” She thought that it was foolish to hang onto to this ridiculous fear that had governed her life for so long that something or someone was under her bed. Still, she had to admit, she felt threatened, or at the very least, extremely uncomfortable when standing beside the iron rail of her bed or while allowing her foot to hang off of the edge of the mattress to cool it off on some of the hot and muggy nights that mid-August in Memphis, her hometown, was known for.

  As she lay there breathing in the cooler air, she reflected upon the fact that the light switch had not worked. But then that was often the case with this house. Something electrical was always out of whack. Sometimes lights came on in one room and went off in another.

  So at those times when her mother had not made it home and her brothers were off on one of their teenage haunts, Alicia would lock the back door securely and sit with all of the lights on and with the wooden front door wide open with only the screen door hooked. With the doors like that, she felt like she could get away faster if she had to, if something came after her.

  She had just convinced herself to relax and uncurl from the ball that she usually slept in (yeah, part of the foot thing of someone or something grabbing her feet if she stretched them all the way out) and was luxuriating in rubbing her feet over the cool parts of the sheets that her feet had not already touched when something landed on her foot. She sat up just in time to see the second of her new-used shoes come sailing over the iron railing portion of the foot of her bed, to land beside the other one on top of her foot!

  “Whaaaa! Eeeeeiiieeh! ” Alicia screamed shrilly. “Eeeeeiiieeh! Eeeeeiiieeh! Eeeeeiiieeh! ”

  “What in thunderation?” Momma yelled as she came running down the hall. “What in the world is wrong with you girl?” Momma said as she came into the room at a skid while flicking
on the light switch at the same time.

  “These shoes, these shoes done jumped up in the bed! Eeeeeiiieeh! ”

  “Now tell Momma exactly what you think you saw.”

  “Well,” started Alicia while blubbering.

  “Naw, naw, naw! Slow down and tell Momma all about it.”

  “Well,” said Alicia, “I’ve always been scared to come into a room in the dark and I don’t know why. But today was such a nice day and having gotten my ‘new’ shoes and all, I thought that maybe I should act like a teenager and stop being so babyish and scared. So I said that tonight I would turn my light out and not go to sleep with it on so that you would not have to”—Alicia sniffed—“get up and turn it out after I had gone to sleep. So I measured how far I would have to walk in the dark, and cut the light off. I started getting scared while standing by the light switch so I turned it back on. But it wouldn’t come back on!”—she sniffed again—“and I tried it three ti-m-mes!” Alicia concluded wailing.

  “Now I don’t have no babies and I can’t understand you if you are going to squall while you talk! Stop crying and tell me what happened next.”

  “Well, when the light wouldn’t come on, I went to the foot of the bed, took off my shoes and jumped into the bed and put my head under the covers. I was so scared that I didn’t take the time to come around and get in the bed right. I jumped over the footboard. And-and-and banged my knee too, but I didn’t stop ‘cause I was scared! Waaaa! I’m scared!”, Alicia said while sobbing.

  “Alicia Louella Carthran!” said Momma. “Are you a baby?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Then act like it! Okay, so you banged your knee while getting over the foot of the bed, then what happened?” said Momma, matter-of-factly.

  “Well, when I got in the bed, I put my head under the covers and waited until I didn’t feel so scared. But it got hot under the cover so I put my nose out so I could breathe. Then I felt silly and took my head out. I was breathing the cooler air and was telling myself that I was silly for being scared when something hit my foot.

  “I sat up and saw one of my new shoes on my foot on top of the covers. Then the other shoe came over the bed railing and landed beside my other foot and I just started screaming and you came in! I’m scared, Momma!” wailed Alicia. “I’m scared, I’m scared, I’m scared!” Alicia was whimpering now. “Make it go away, Mommu-uh!”

   

  Alicia would not wear her new-used shoes because she was afraid of them. But that was not really a problem because school was out and in her neighborhood in Memphis, children went barefooted in the summertime anyway. Alicia liked the way her “new-used” shoes had felt on her feet and had liked feeling like a teenager with the new wedge heel they had, but not enough to forget about the fact that they had jumped up into the bed!

  So Alicia continued her summer vacation by keeping the children next door for Mrs. Fannie Bell and going to the store for Mrs. Priscilla. She sure did miss her shoes though because the sidewalk was hot to her feet and she had to walk in the grass on the edge of people’s yards to keep her feet from blistering. Sometimes she would get a piece of glass in her foot and have to use Momma’s sewing needle to get it out. Most of the time she could get it out herself, but sometimes, she had to hop on her foot until Momma got home and Momma would get the piece of glass out. And then Alicia had to rub the piece of glass in her hair ‘cause Momma said she would not get another piece in her foot that way. She never could figure out why the “old folks” said that you would never get another piece of glass again, but she didn’t have the nerve to say anything because Momma might say she was being sassy.

  Things might have gone on like this if fate hadn’t taken a hand. The grass in the Carthrans’ yard grew up tall all summer because they did not own a lawnmower and the lawnmower man charged a dollar and a quarter to cut it. That was Momma’s bus fare to work for the week, so the Carthrans walked a path through the weeds.

  Well, one summer day, the deacon down at the local church told Momma he would cut the grass and keep it cut if she would have the kids to pick up any bottles, glass, nails, etc., to keep from tearing up his mower. Alicia’s brothers, who usually were nowhere to be found when there was work to be done, vanished this particular day as well. It became her job to walk through the weeds and pick up the trash that might tear up the yardman’s mower.

  She was walking through the yard and, “ Ouch! Ou-uch!” Alicia whimpered. Alicia had stepped on a big rusty nail and it was stuck deep in her foot and would not come out. She hopped to the edge of the porch and sat down with tears coursing down her cheeks.

  The yardman came over and Mrs. Fannie Bell, who had come outside when she heard Alicia crying, said, “Okay, Licia, we’re going to have to get this out and the only way to do it is to yank it quick!”

  “Nooo!” caterwauled Alicia. The yardman said, “Naw, you can’t do that, Fannie, just leave the girl alone until . ” (yank!)

  Alicia squealed through her tears because she had been tricked but a big smile was on her face now. She didn’t even mind the rubbing alcohol that was liberally poured on the sore to cleanse out where the nail had been stuck. That was the way the old folks back then did when you got a cut or scrape. They said the medicine had to burn because if it didn’t, it wouldn’t kill all the germs.

  At any rate, Alicia went back in the house and got her “new-used” shoes and put them on at the urging of Mrs. Fannie Bell and the yardman. She wore those shoes all summer long until she wore them out and never had another incident with them.

  She and Momma never figured out how the shoes got into the bed and Momma said that that was one of those things that you pondered over for a lifetime. Alicia figured that she would have to wait until time met eternity to get the answer to that one.

  But one thing I do know! Alicia Carthran does not, to this day, leave her shoes at the foot of the bed. Do you? And like Momma always said, “There are some things in some places!”

  And then a deep voice said, “Sleep good tonight, you hear?”

  O-o-o-who-who-who-

  ha-ha-ha-a-a-a-a -a…

  Momma Cat

  Rouuun! growled the cat. Hssssst!

  Momma cat was an angry cat. She never had been really friendly, but she seemed to have developed a definite dislike for my mom. Now why, I don’t know. Well maybe I do know, but then again, I may not. You listen to my story and then you decide.

  We had moved three times within the past six months because my dad’s job was on strike and had been for nine months. That might not seem like a lot to you, but to a preteen, changing schools three times in six months is quite a lot!

  Anyway, I was feeling out of sorts with my mom and dad because we had moved so much. So I guess you could say I had become a little defiant. We had never lived in an apartment before and I resented not even having my own yard to mess around in. You know?

  Oh yeah, another thing, my dog had been poisoned right before we moved to this apartment and I felt like I was due something. You know? Anything. So one Saturday about dusk dark (another one of my breaking the rules slightly) I took a shortcut home through the woods because I did not want to get into too much trouble for being any later that I already was.

  Yeah, Mom had a hard and fast rule about being at home before sundown. Well, I was munching on a piece of chicken as I was crossing a small drainage ditch that runs along the back of Mr. Pipwiggin’s place when I heard a pitiful meow. Looking down, I saw a bedraggled, scrawny cat with three kittens. I scrambled on across the bridge and went down the side of it and walked down the bank to the cat. As I said, I was munching on the piece of chicken that Mike’s mom had insisted that I take with me since I could not stay for dinner. The momma cat let out a loud mournful wail, like she was asking for some of my chicken, so I gave it to her.

  She greedily ate it and meowed up at me, pitifully for more. Now I was in a bit of a quandary. I didn’t have any more chicken and I didn’t want to leave her hungry. I knew M
om would not allow me to get some food and come back to the woods because she had told me time and time again to stay out of those woods and besides, it was already dark.

  So I looked around for something to carry the kittens home in. Then I spied a misshapen laundry basket some ways down the ditch bed. I retrieved the basket, took off my jacket, and put it into the basket. I laid the basket on its side and while talking quietly to the momma cat, I put the kittens one by one into the basket. The momma cat glared at me, gave me a pitiful meow, and walked into the basket as well. I picked up basket, cat and kittens and made my way on home.

  I was trying to think of how I was going to tell Mom about the cat and kittens and my trip through the “Never Enter Woods”. I needn’t have worried. Momma was on the back stoop and asked me why I was late, why I had come home from that direction (pointing toward the woods), where my coat was, and what was I carrying in the basket. I still find it amazing the way mommas can do that. You know, fire off a litany of questions without taking a breath. And all before you can answer the first question they asked. When you have been a kid for as long as I have, which is all of my life, you know when to come clean and to not be long about it.

  I started explaining, “Well, Mom, I was on my way home and I was sad about Squiggly being poisoned and I was crying and I didn’t want to be late and when I noticed where I was, I was on the left fork going by Mr. Pipwiggin’s place. I heard something crying in the thicket and it sounded like a baby, so I looked and found this cat.”—I sniffed—“I know we can’t keep it but, Momma, can I put it in the closet in a box and feed and water her for the night? She is so cold and skinny and hungry, Momma.” I sniffed again with my head bowed while looking for a lick from the flat of Momma’s hand or a softening of her face.

  “Hmph. Leave the basket in the box beside the kitchen door and go wash up, Joshua, and eat your dinner. Then do your homework and get your bath.”