Perfect, blonde hair, and blue eyes is not me. I’m a bit chunky, long pretty brown hair, and green eyes. My sister looks a lot like me, but with shorter hair and brown eyes. She’s a couple inches shorter as well, and my best friend. She always knows how to cheer me up! So when I was walking up the hill to my house and I could see her sporting her favorite plain black hoodie in my room I couldn’t help but run in to catch her red-handed. All I saw was her shadowy figure staring at me, until I she realized I noticed her. Then she turned and glided away.
I ran past my mom in the living room, and opened up my door exclaiming, “Ha, got ya!” but she wasn’t there. I checked her room in the same fashion.
“Found you!” not there either… I checked the whole house, no where. Finally I asked my mom, she’s a bottle blonde with longer hair than mine, green eyes as well, and about a foot smaller than me.
“Where’s Kait?” I inquired.
“Oh she went to her friend’s house, she’s been there for a couple hours,” she responded.
I paused, “Were you in my room a little while ago?”
She looked up from her laptop, “Nope”.
I slowly walked back to my room, more than a little scared. As soon as I walked in, I felt a tightness in my chest.
I decided to make a homemade Ouija board since I didn’t have one. I grabbed a bottle cap to use as the letter indicator and got to work. I asked, “Is there any spirit here that would like to talk to me?” Almost immediately the cap moved to the “yes” and my chest tightened even more. Freaking out and a bit excited, I asked its name. “Akuma,” it spelled. “Do you know my name?” For some reason I felt compelled to ask. Slowly it spelled out, “Amber.”
My stomach churned.
I quickly burned the paper and threw away the cap. Then I practically ran to my sister’s room and played on my phone while I waited for her to get home.
She had a messy room, clothes all over, and posters everywhere on the lilac walls. She also had a queen sized bed in the middle of one wall, a TV across from it, and a couple of dressers. When she finally got home she asked if I wanted to watch Case Closed with her, not even questioning why I was in her room. I got into anime because of her and Case Closed was my favorite at the time. I think she likes anime because she’s super into our grandma’s culture, she learned the language and everything!
“How was your day?” she asked.
“Well, Hailey decided to trip me in the locker room in front of everyone today and when that didn’t work she kicked me to the ground…” I decided to leave out the whole Ouija board thing so she didn’t think I was crazy.
“What? And the principal still isn’t doing anything? Why did he even decide to work in a high school?!”
I gave her a serious look, “I don’t think he’ll ever do anything.”
She punched the palm of her hand, “Want me to beat her up?”
I smiled “Yea, someone needs to give Hailey the bisnass and make sure she wont ever mess with me again.” Then we both laughed and as we did, the tightness in my chest left.
Since it was Friday we stayed up late enough for me to be tired, with a yawn I said, “I’m going to hit the hay.” My sister gave me a sleepy look “good idea”. I walked down the hall to my room, the black out curtain made it really dark so I had to use my phone flashlight to crawl into bed, but I easily fell into a deep sleep.
I felt heavy when I woke up, like something was sitting on my chest, I glanced at my clock. It said 3:00 A.M. in bright green letters, I sighed. Fear struck me as I saw at the foot of my bed an entirely black figure watching me. Blacker than my room! Except for it’s practically glowing, pupiless, cream-colored eyes.
When we made eye contact it glided over to me, glided! It didn’t take steps at all, it reached a smooth, cold, black hand out and I froze, expecting death. I thought my chest was trying to cave in on itself it was so tight. A shiver went down my spine as it stoked my cheek. It felt like someone took an ice-cube and wrapped it in the most expensive, pure silk. But it was wet. And I felt something smudge on my face, that was the only thing warm about it. The creature stroked my other cheek.
All I could do was think to myself, “Please don’t kill me, please leave me alone.” Then that… thing, looked sad. And a thought floated through my mind in the most elegant, sing-song voice I’ve ever heard;
“I don’t wish to kill you.”
I could feel my eyes widen as… it turned and left, my chest instantly lost all of its tightness and I felt so much lighter. Except for the sickening feeling in my stomach. I got up to wash off my face in the bathroom but as soon as I looked in the mirror I froze again.
I could see myself getting paler and paler as I looked at the dried blood on my cheeks, I touched my face.
“This can’t be real,” I thought, “this is exactly where… it… touched me.” I quickly washed off my face, getting rid of any evidence that thing ever existed, but then an unsettling thought crossed my mind.
“Why was there blood on it?” I ran to my sister’s room, and as silently as possible curled up in her bed, staring at her dresser. I couldn’t fall back asleep.
It was obvious she woke up from her startled gasp.
“Oh did you have a nightmare too?” she asked. When I didn’t respond she continued, “I actually dreamt that a shadow was standing over you so you scared me.” I turned to face her at that point. Then she got up, walked over to her PS3, put in my favorite game, and gave me a controller. “Here, at least play a game with me,” she said. We played all day, in fact, the only breaks we took were for her to eat, I didn’t want to. Since I was feeling better in the afternoon and Kait had been trying to get me to eat all day, I ate dinner. Afterwards we played different games until about 1:30 in the morning.
Finally tired enough to sleep I asked, “Anyway, can I spend the night in here? I don’t want to be alone…”
“Sure thing kid,” she said with a smile.
I slowly drifted off to bed, that is, until I woke up to ice-cold silk on my face and a tight chest. I didn’t have to open my eyes to know it was 3, that was obviously the time Akuma came to “visit”.
I thought, “What do you want?”
A beautiful voice filled my head as I stared at its eyes with disgust, “I want you to be happy.”
“Being alone with my sister makes me happy.” It might have scared me but Akuma was getting on my nerves. It tilted its head and stared at me for a while, I glared back.
“I understand,” came its reply, and it left, after another caress of course. But this time it was different, the thing bent over me and for the first time I got a decent look at it.
It. Only. Has. Eyes.
I mean that, no nose, no ears, not even a freaking mouth! The thing was totally and completely pitch black except for those awful eyes.
“Sweet dreams,” echoed through my head.
I couldn’t handle socializing after that, call me what you want but… you’ve never seen anything that… void. Imagine seeing eyes in the darkness, scary right? Now imagine never seeing anything except the eyes. No matter how close you got. The thing could be right in front of you and if it blinked, you’d have no clue. How long had it been watching me? Or anyone I knew for that matter. If it wanted you dead, you couldn’t do anything. No shadowy spot was safe… and it was night.
I snuck out to my room and locked the door. All I could do was pull my knees to my chest and rock back and forth. How would anyone know when it was there? It can hear your thoughts, it can obviously touch you, and it put blood on me. I’m going to assume that was not its own. All I could think about was how much control it had, and its name. I figured it was Japanese but I didn’t know it meant-
“Amber! Please come eat, you haven’t had anything all day.” I ignored my mom, sure I love her, she was a great mother! She loved and nurtured me and always tried her hardest raising my sister and me by herself. But now wasn’t the time. I waited… and waited… by 3:10 I knew something was wrong. I held my breath, expecting it to open its eyes right in front of me and take me away…
But it didn’t come. By 4:30 I was overwhelmed by happiness. In fact, I jumped up, stretched, and took a much-needed shower. Feeling refreshed I even ate some food, I was starving.
“It’s finally gone!” I thought happily. Excited about school for once I went to get dressed and ready. I put on my favorite blue polka-dotted dress that came complete with pockets! And walked out of my room with fresh makeup, singing.
I sat down at the table while my mom handed me a plate asking, “Are you OK honey?” I got twin looks of worry from her and my sister.
“Absolutely! I just needed a me day, ya know?” I replied with a smile.
“Why were you ignoring us?” my sister said, sounding panicked.
“Oh were you talking to me? I had headphones in all day… sorry sis,” I thought of a quick lie.
My mom sighed in relief, “Well, as long as you’re happy now,” she said, pulling me into a giant hug. My sister didn’t look so convinced but she let it go after a skeptical look.
When I got to my school things went downhill to say the least. We got to leave early, after the school had a memorial for Hailey. She had been murdered. I found out by listening in on conversations between the teachers that her body had been hacked to pieces. Starting from her fingers and toes, and ending with her arms and legs. But the real twisted part? Afterwards the culprit sewed her back together with the word “bully” craved into her forehead. Needless to say she died of blood loss, I felt like I was going to be sick.
I forced myself to forget the rest of the day, turning on my auto pilot until I was outside my house. I unlocked the back door and when I walked in, all the food I had eaten wound up on the floor because this time I really did vomit. There was my mom, in a crumpled heap. Neck turned 180° around. Looking at me with a shocked expression on her face. I called the police and once they got there they questioned me… with so many questions. After, I called my sister and explained what happened. She rushed home from college, ran inside, straight to me and wrapped me in a hug. I pushed her away, “I want to be alone Kaitlyn.” I emotionlessly said her actual name as I walked away. She had no response, she just fell to the floor and cried.
I sat up in bed, waiting. At 2:45 I felt my chest tighten ever so slightly. As the minutes passed it got worse and worse. Then, my clock said 3.
“What did you do to Hailey?” I asked aloud. Yellow eyes slowly appeared.
“I gave her the…” It cocked its head, “bisnass. Now she wont ever bother you again.”
I froze, he used my word, the one I said to my sister. My face hardened.
“No, you mutilated her,” I snapped back. “I asked my sister what Akuma means. That’s not your name, demon.”
“But that is what people call me, is that not a name?” came the sing-song voice.
“No. A name, and what you are, is not the same thing, demon,” I spit. “Why my mom?” I thought, tears welling in my eyes.
“Now you and your sister can be alone, two requests have been fulfilled. I can come back for you after I fulfill your third.”
Realization hit me, those deaths were on me. The demon closed its eyes slowly until I couldn’t see anything.
“Your grandma asked for love, money, and her youngest grand child to be happy,” rang through my head, and I felt frozen silk touch my cheek.
I promised myself I wouldn’t make a final wish, “But how could I not? I didn’t mean to make the other two.”
The tightness in my chest grew.
“Uh! If only people understood what I was going through,” I froze at what I just thought… the tightness is gone, and you should be scared of the dark.