The lady in black
I awoke with a shivers running down my spine. My forehead dripping, my hands wet, and a pool in my bed made of sweat. This is the third nightmare I have had in a row. Each one getting more detailed and frightening than before. I keep seeing the same lady each night. A lady, dressed in all black. Wearing a black old dress with a black veil over her head. She is an older woman and has rotten teeth, she looks like she could be my grandma. She keeps getting closer and closer to me in each dream. She wants to hurt me. But before she has the chance to do anything I wake up. I’m afraid to tell my mommy or daddy. What if they don’t believe me? I don’t know how to tell them.
“Mommy!?” I yell for her, hoping she will come and get me from my room. I am too afraid to get out from my bed. I sit up and see the shadow of my mom headed for the door. I get up to meet her at my doorway. As I get to the door and start to peak around the corner, the shadow stops.
“Michael?” I hear my mom’s voice. I turn the corner to meet my mom, but when I do all I see the woman in black standing at the end of the hallway. The glow of the bathroom light shines from behind her. I freeze in horror.
“Michael, come here” she whispers to me in a hushed voice.
“Go away! You are not my mom!” I scream at her in terror. As I take a step back she leaps for me with her hands out aiming for my neck.
“Come here Michael!” she yells for me, but when she is about to grab me a leap from my bed. I am awake now and it is morning. The sun is starting to peak through the curtains. How was I still dreaming? I start to gather myself and my mom walks into my room.
“Time for school Michael” she says in a cheerful voice. I’m afraid to look at her because I don’t know if it’s really her or not. I get out of bed and start to head downstairs. I am in the 6th grade and I am 11 years old. My first nightmare happened the night I turned 10, and in one week exactly I will be 12. I’m getting scared because my dreams are becoming worse. And I don’t want my birthday to come.
After school I walk to my house with my two brothers. We wait for the elementary school to get out then we leave. One of my brothers is Toby, he is 14 and in the 8th grade. My other brother is younger. His name is Jack and he is in 4th grade and is 9. I’ve told Toby about the dreams I have been having and he said didn’t think anything of it.
My parents come home at the same time every night. My mom comes home at five, and my dad comes home at 7:30. My mom makes dinner before my dad arrives and we all eat. I and my brothers all play upstairs until it’s time for bed.
“Time to go to your own room boys!” our mom yells from downstairs. We all settle in for bed. My little brother Jack sleeps in the room right next to me and Toby sleeps down the hall in the big room because he is the oldest. I hate the dark and I hate sleeping. I stayed up for about 4 hours, until I couldn’t hold my eyes open. Then it became complete darkness.
I woke up the next morning to my brother in my face.
“Time for school” Toby shakes me awake. No nightmare? Nothing? I didn’t see the woman last night or anything. I got up and got dressed. As I make it downstairs to the kitchen, I sit at the table next to jack. Jack gives me this weird look then looks away when I look back at him. He says nothing the whole morning and seems very distant, but I didn’t think anything of it. Our dad leaves to work before we get up and he always makes us breakfast so it’s ready for us when we get up. After school while we were waiting for jack to get out, Toby’s friends came by and he wanted to go with them.
“I will wait for him,” I tell Toby. He leaves with his friends and I am waiting on the corner for Jack. When his school gets out I see him turn the corner. He has his head down and doesn’t even look at me.
“Something happen at school today?” I ask him
“No nothing happened, I’m just tired” he replied, but as we got closer to home he stopped.
“Michael, who do you talk to at night?” Jack says looking me straight in the eyes.
“What are you talking about?” I respond confused and scared.
“You talk to someone all night; she sounds kind of like mom. You guys kept me up last night and I couldn’t sleep. She kept asking you to go with her, but you keep telling her no. Last night she yelled at you. It’s starting to scare me Michael. Who is she?” He sounded so serious and I could hear the fear through his voice. How do I reply to this? Why don’t I have any memory of this.
“I don’t know what you are talking about. I must be sleep talking to myself. Don’t tell anyone about this. This stays between us. Alright?” I tried not to show how scared I am and I think its working.
“Okay, I won’t say anything” he puts his head back down. How can Jack hear stuff? It’s not like she is real. She is only in my dreams. I need to know what is happening.
It’s later in the night now. We have just eaten dinner. Toby and Jack are playing video games in Toby’s room. This is the perfect time. I go into the closet to look for a camera. I know we have more than one because our parents are always using them to film Toby’s soccer games and my wrestling matches. If I find them then I can put them in our rooms to watch us at night to see if anything happens.
I have seen scary movies before, when our parents leave me and Toby like to watch them. They always have cameras set up to see if anything moves or something strange happens. I found the cameras on the top shelf of the closets. I put one in my room on my table facing my bed and the other in Jack’s room. I put the camera in his closet covered by clothes and high up so he wouldn’t see it. Now I would be able to see if anything is going on. In Jacks room I angled it and turned the camera so you could see his bed, dresser and his room door. In my room it was just a close up on my bed so all you could see was me.
“Time for bed boys!” mom yells from downstairs. I can hear that they shut Toby’s TV off and I can hear Jack coming down the hall.
Jack peeks his head into my room, “Goodnight Michael.”
“Goodnight Jack” I whisper back. I’m not as scared tonight. Knowing that the cameras are up and I get to see what happens, it comforts me. I lay down with my head facing the door. A little beam of light comes from the crack of the door. My little brother leaves the bathroom light on because he is afraid of the dark. I lay there thinking about what I might see tomorrow. My eye lids start to get heavy and I fall into a deep sleep. I wake up, but I know I’m dreaming. Everything is off colored. It’s dark, with a dark blue tint to everything. I can only see about three feet in front of me because there is smoke everywhere. I grab a flashlight and start to head for my door. I open it slowly. I peek out into the hallway. As I start to look around the corner I hear a loud yell coming from down the hall. It’s Toby.
“Toby!?” I yell for him hoping he will respond but there’s nothing.
“Toby, are you okay?!” I yell for him again. Another loud shriek comes from his room.
I start to run for his door. The hall seems so long. It feels like I’m not getting any closer to his door. When I finally reach it I hear another loud scream. It’s definitely Toby. I swing the door open and stop dead when I see who is in his room. It’s Toby. He is above his bed being held by something. It’s her, she’s holding him above his bed cradling him. Squeezing him. Toby is screaming. I go to run for Toby, but once I get there I sit up in my bed. I’m sweating and its morning again. How was that not real? It felt so real. I go into Toby’s room to see if he is okay. He is in there still sleeping. I feel so relieved that he is okay, I shake him.
“Time to get ready for school.” I keep shaking him. But he is still sleeping. I shake him harder.
“Toby time to get up.” Still no response from him. I start to get nervous, what if my dream actually happened? I slap the back of his head hoping he will wake up. As I hit him he leaps up from his bed in anger.
“What was that for Michael!?” he yells at me grabbing the back of his head.
“You weren’t waking up.” I replied. As he started to get up from his bed I noticed his neck. It looked like the outline of fingers but they were purple as if someone had been… Chocking him.
“Toby, your neck.” He looks at me confused.
“what about my neck?” he starts to head for the mirror. As he stands face to face with himself he examines his neck. He sees his neck and his eyes get big.
“It must have been from last night when I was wrestling with Jack.” He replies. I can tell he is trying to find an excuse for his neck so he doesn’t freak out.
“Toby, last night I had a dream about you. I was sleeping then I woke up to you screaming. I got up to go check it out and as I was going down the hallway I herd you yell again. I ran to your room and when I opened the door you were in there, above your bed being held by the lady I have been talking about. She was holding you by your neck while you kicked your legs trying to scream. As I ran for you she dropped you back on your bed and I woke up for real that time.” I try to sound as serious as I can so he doesn’t take it as a joke.
“Michael listen to me, you need to stop all of this. Its not funny anymore and you just need to drop it. There is no such thing as this lady in black you are talking about and this is all in your head. You are starting to scare Jack and now you are freaking me out too. Just stop all of this.” He looked straight into my eyes in complete seriousness. Why doesn’t he want to believe me?
“Okay then I will prove it to you. I will prove that I am not crazy and she is real.” I say to Toby.
“How?” Toby replies.
“Tonight we will all be in my room. We will have video cameras and we will have it all on film. We will have Jack fall asleep and we will stay up.” Toby agrees with me and we leave to go eat.
As we go through the day Toby and I kept looking at each other anticipating for the night. We did not tell jack about our plan we had made, he thinks that we are having a sleepover because it is the weekend. When Jack falls asleep is when we will try to bring the lady out. I am nervous that this won’t work and Toby will think I am lying.
After dinner we all go upstairs to go play. My heart is starting to pound and I’m getting more nervous as the time goes by.
“Michael, can we play video games tonight?” Jack asks with a big grin on his face. I try to look happy and put a fake smile on my face.
“Sure we can do that.” I tell him happily.
As the sky turns from a red and orange glow to complete darkness me and Toby get ready. It’s time to set up my room for the night. I make Jack go down stairs to go get us random things so Toby can set up cameras while I get the room ready. When we get done with the room Jack runs upstairs ready to start the night.
About three hours have past and Jack is getting tired.
“Jack it’s time for bed.” Toby tells him from across the room.
“Okay, I get the bed.” Jack says unhesitant. We shut the lights off and get ready for bed. I lay there facing away from Jack wide awake and Toby does the same. We sit there for about twenty minutes before we hear the loud breathing of Jack sleeping.
Me and Toby slowly get up and set up the room. I turn the lamp on in the room to release a glow of light for us to see. The table we had set up is now in the middle of the room and we are sitting across from each other as we wait.
Two hours have past and still nothing. I can tell by the look on Toby’s face that he is about to fall asleep sitting up.
“How much longer do we have to do this before you realize that this is a joke.” Toby whispers from across the table. As I am about to reply to him I am interrupted by a faint moan.
“Did you hear that?” I look at Toby.
“What are you talking about?” he looks at me confused. I hear the noise again. It’s coming from Jack.
“It’s Jack.” I loudly whisper to Toby. This time I know he heard it because the sleepy Toby I just say just turned into wide eyed Toby that I saw this morning. Jack begins to move and starts to talk in his sleep.
“What do you want from me?” he faintly whispers to no one.
“Stop, leave me alone. I don’t want to leave.” He begins to speak louder this time.
“Stop! Leave me alone!!” he begins to yell in the bed. Jack is now kicking and punching in his sleep. We run to the bed to try and wake him up. But he is still sleeping. Now we hear noise coming from the hallway. It sounds like our mom.
“Moms coming!” Toby turns towards the door to go meet our mom
“No Toby don’t open it!” I scream for him. I know its not our mom. She wouldn’t sit outside the door and call for us.
“Toby?” our mom’s voice comes from in the hall again.
“I’m opening the door Michael!” He swings open the door and no one is there. Jack goes silent and doesn’t move a muscle. Toby faces me to look at jack.
“Where is mom?” he says to me but before I say a word we hear a faint laugh come from the hallway. Toby swings around to see a shadow in the middle of the hallway. It’s the woman, sitting there laughing. She sprints towards Toby except her feet aren’t moving and they are not touching the floor. She reaches jack and wrappers her arms around him.
“Thank you Michael” she whispers to me in a high pitch voice.
“Leave them alone! take me!” I scream at her but she starts to back away. She is squeezing Toby so hard he is unable to make a noise. I just to run for her but as I reach my doorway I suddenly spring up from the floor. I sit up from where I had laid down with jack before. It was all a dream? Jack lay sleeping in the bed while Toby slept on the floor next to me. We had all fallen asleep. I go to the bed first to wake up jack. I began to shake him.
“Jack get up!” I scream at him. But no response.
“Jack!!” I begin to cry in terror. I hit him on the face as hard as I could hoping to wake him up. As I do he pops his eyes wide open.
“Jack, you are alive.” He says surprised.
“Is Toby okay?” he looks to where he lays on the floor. I run over to shake him but he is limp. I can see him breathing but there is no response from him what so ever. I screamed and yelled. I shook him as hard as I could but to response what so ever.
He never woke up that morning. Doctor said it was a surprise coma and that he doesn’t know when he will wake from it. My whole family cries while I think about that night we had. I am the only one who knows what really happened to him that night. He is in a eternal dream now with no chance of waking. And I am now stuck without a brother. I never did see the lady in black ever again, But every once in a while I hear her faint little laugh coming from the hallway.