"I am like a small creature swallowed whole by a monster, she thought, and the monster feels my tiny little movements inside."
― Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House
Drabble IV: Ghosts
I remember one time, when I was seven, I woke up in the middle of the night between my parents, having earlier troubles falling asleep, to a whining noise coming from outside, like someone trying to steal a car. Except, the noise wouldn't stop; it kept screeching and screeching, and I felt this sort of... tugging inside me, as if there was something out there, something very wrong. I told my mother about it - being that both she and my father are light sleepers - but she brushed it off, saying it was just some bully causing a rampage. So I let it by, for a few minutes, until I couldn't take it anymore and went out of bed, trying to brush off the sudden anxiety.
By the time I decided to check it out, I was already outside, in pyjamas and barefooted, no less, strolling around in the middle of the night, just a few fifty meters away from our house. You couldn't visible see that a car was whining, there weren't any blinking lights, nothing to alert people from afar, just the noise. So, being the ever inquisitive person I was, I went to our own car to inspect. My finger managed to brush against the surface when I looked up and saw her... this girl of sort, all in this transparent white colour; not a contrast against the darkness of night, but enough to see that there was unmistakably someone there, someone unnatural. And I was petrified, frozen in place as we stared at each other. She was too far away for me to notice the details of her features, but I remember the long hair and the dress she wore, like one of my own, barefooted like me. And I had a feeling she saw right through my soul, my life flashing before my eyes.
I don't know if she went closer to me, the memory foggy when I think back. It felt so long where I just stood there, immobilised to the spot, gazing at her in sheer horror and fascination, wondering if I was going to die. And then my mother called for me, snapping me out of my trance, and she was still there, like nothing on this earth would move her. And I ran, ran back to my mother and told her everything. Except, when my mother went to look for herself, the girl wasn't there any longer, and the noise had stopped.
.
.
A/N: An actual real life experience, flourished and exaggerated a bit for added tension. But the concept in itself is true: I saw someone out there that night. Someone who wasn't supposed to be from the living realm of humans, who wasn't supposed to be alive.