My Best Friend Sarah.

For as long as I can remember, I've had supernatural experiences. When I was four, my parents, older brother, and grandparents moved into a big house on a lake. My mom was eight months pregnant and I remember being insanely jealous of my baby brother. After he was born on the hottest day in July, I began to feel neglected by both of my parents. Now mind you, I was never neglected, but if you have younger siblings, you understand the jealous feelings I am talking about. It wasn't until the next month, when I turned five, that I met my friend Sarah. She was normal to me because my mother was a tad bit unconventional so someone wearing a Victorian style dress didn't really phase me. I remember she had short, blonde hair that hung in ringlets and wore a pink dress. She had a Scarlett O'Hara kind of accent, but I've lived in the south all my life so I was used to it. Sarah and I would play together everyday when I came home from school and she always left when it was time for me to go to bed. We were best friends.

After about another year in the house, I started to feel uneasy. My mother said it was just because I was six years old and watching horror movies when I should be sleeping, but I knew in my gut something wasn't right about the hallway, at which my room was on the very end of. I always had to sleep with both the television and a light on because I wouldn't feel safe otherwise, especially when I heard footsteps walking in the other hallway connecting to mine, and even sometimes saw a shadow standing outside my door. I would tell me mother and she would just tell me to turn my tv up a little louder and ignore it. She never told me I was crazy or denied that there wasn't anything there. That has always been something I've been thankful of with her.

One day, whilst playing a game with Sarah, I heard the footsteps again. I froze like a statue because it was in broad daylight. Sarah's face looked dreadful as she placed my barbie down and stood up, brushing the wrinkles out of her dress, and said she had to go before her father got upset with her. I was sad but shrugged it off and went back to playing. Later that night, I was sitting in the bathtub, filling my cup up and then pouring the water out. My mother came in and washed my hair and afterwards, I would normally submerge myself completely underwater and rinse my hair out that way. That night was the last time I ever did, even still to this day. When I went underwater, I started to see images playing like a movie. There was a little girl being held underwater by a man, his face blurry. He wore a long black trench coat, black trousers, and a white shirt. I could feel his hands around my throat and I kicked and flailed trying to sit up. My mom came running into the bathroom and drug me out as I cried and clung to her. She said I probably just got water in my nose and it startled me, but I knew better.

After that night, I refused to take a bath any longer and started showering in my grandmother’s bathroom which was on the other side of the house and at the end of a long hallway in the laundry room. I don’t know what it was about that bathroom that made me feel safe, but I would spend hours on end in there playing in her make up as I sat on the counter, my tiny feet in the sink, and adjusting the three mirrors to make it look like there were thousands of me. Sometimes I would see things behind me in the mirror and I would bolt out of there as fast as I could, but always returned the next day.

As I got older and made more friends, I saw less of Sarah. I had her on my mind all the time, though. My grandmother suggested that I write to her and maybe she would respond that way. So I drug out my old typewriter, filled it with paper, wrote a simple “Hey Sarah!”, and went to bed. When I woke up the next day, “Hello.” was typed out below my greeting. I wrote a few more nights but she never responded.

When I turned twelve, my parents told me we’d be moving in a few months. I was really upset because I had grown up in that house and was deeply attached to it, but even at twelve I knew the issues the old house came with and our landlord refused to fix them. So my parents were buying a house and that made me feel a little bit better. After showering one night in my grandparent’s bathroom, I was brushing my teeth when I heard a faint click. I shrugged and finished my nightly routine and swung open the door only to see pitch black darkness. Not even the moon was shinning in the window over the double sink. I began to panic because the light switch was in the middle of the hallway and I couldn’t see a thing. So I flicked the bathroom light back on, ran to the switch, turned it on, and ran back to bathroom and turned that switch off before running all the way down the hall and turning off the lights before leaving the room. But as I reached the door, my finger on the switch, I turned around and saw a boy, dripping wet, about my age. His shoulder length, black hair hung in loose curls and his eyes were almost white blue. He wore brown cut off pants, a white button up shirt, and suspenders. He smirked at me and I flicked the light off and flung the door open and quickly slammed it shut. After that, if I didn’t shower before ten o’clock, I just didn’t shower.

The tall shadow in the hallway had decided to show himself just a month before we finally moved. He would walk to me door, open it, and come in. After the first night I realized he was dressed the same as the man who had been holding me under water that night in the bathtub. I sat with my back to the wall, knees to my chest, blanket to my nose. “Please just go away.” I would plead with him. He would always look at me and disappear and I would compose myself and lay back down only to have my lamp turn off. I would turn it back on and my television would shut off. He played that game with me for hours until I was finally so exhausted, I would just pass out. My grades began to slip dramatically within just two weeks. My teachers were all concerned because I was normally a straight A student. My mother assured them it was just my insomnia acting up and she bought me sleepy time tea to try and soothe me. The tea was disgusting but worked.

A few nights after peaceful sleeping, the man returned with a vengeance. He didn’t even show himself this time, just flung open my closet doors and threw various things out of it. Shoes, clothes, toys, everywhere on my bedroom floor. “Just stop it! I haven’t done anything to you!” I yelled out one night and my mother came running into my room. She looked at the mess in my floor and grabbed me from my bed and slept with me in the living room that night. And that’s where I slept for the last two weeks we lived there.

The night we moved into our new house I was sleeping in my dad’s recliner in the living room when I started dreaming. I was back in our old house but the power was off and it was freezing and empty. I didn’t have a flashlight or anything but made my way back to my room. I slid open the doors and walked into my closet, noticing a small door in the wall that I’d never seen before. Curious, I opened it and crawled inside. The power was on as I heaved myself up from the red carpet. I looked around in awe and confusion. The walls had floral Victorian wallpaper all over them and there was a red velvet couch with gold legs against the wall. As I looked all around, I heard someone clear their throat and I snapped my head back in front of me. There stood Sarah in her normal clothing, her pink dress and blonde ringlet curls. “Thank you.” She said. I looked at her questioningly. “For what?” I asked. “You know.” She smiled at me, reminding me of Shirley Temple, and I woke up.

The next day, my Aunt came over and showed us an old letter she had found in the house, in my closet, as she was helping clean up and move things. I grabbed it out of her hands and ran up to my room. I clamped my hand over my mouth and my eyes began to blur as I read the decaying piece of paper. It was a letter confessing to the murder of three children and then oneself. I shook as I realized the shadow man had been Sarah’s father. He had killed them. It never named the youngest child or it’s age, but at the bottom of the letter, it read: Thomas, Age 14, hung and thrown into the lake. Sarah, Age 5, drowned in bath and buried in the backyard. Thomas Sr., Age 39, Suicide.