The Woman In White - part 11

This is a continuation of Part 1 of this story - posted March 5th

Because of the recurring nightmares, I stopped sleeping. I began waking up at 4am every morning, going downstairs and making myself a weak cup of coffee. Then I’d sit on the sofa in the dark by myself, drink my warm drink and wait for the sun to rise. This went on for a really long time before anyone in the house noticed.

It was my older sister who came out of her bedroom one night and found me sitting alone in the dark…staring at the living room wall.

“What are you doing?” she asked me.

“I can’t sleep,” I answered. “My room scares me. I don’t want to be in there.”

“Why don’t you turn on the television?” she asked.

“I don’t want to risk waking anybody and being sent back to bed,” I replied.

“How long have you been doing this?” my sister asked.

“Pretty much since we moved in,” I answered.

“So you just sit down here every morning in the dark and stare at the wall?” She sounded concerned.

“Yeah,” I said.

“Why?” she asked.

“Because it’s better than letting the bad things in my room get to me.”

I explained about my recurring dreams.

“You need to stay in your room,” my sister said. “You can’t just sit here staring at a wall in the dark every night. Nobody does stuff like that. It isn’t not normal.”

I knew I wasn’t normal. I’d known it for years. But normalcy aside, I would rather sit in our living room in the dark by myself at 4am than in my bedroom.

In the days that followed, my sister went to our parents and told them what was going on. I had drawn a lot of unwanted attention to myself with my sleepless nights and my family was starting to think I was nuts. Maybe I was. But because everyone was talking about my broken sleeping patterns and how weird I was getting, I began staying in my bedroom and hiding under the covers…pretending to be asleep….pretending not to be afraid…pretending to be somewhere else.

Fast forward five years to August of 1986...

It was late…probably two or three in the morning…and my boyfriend at the time was sleeping next to me in my parent’s bed on the second floor of the house. My older brother was asleep downstairs. Everything was quiet and still. I remember lying awake that night…contemplating…thinking about how everything was about to change when my parents came home from their trip and my boyfriend was no longer welcome to sleep in their room. I knew that my father would expect me to stop seeing him and I was dreading the argument.

It was then that I heard a faint scratching sound coming from behind my head.

At first I thought it was a mouse or a shrew…it wouldn’t have been the first in that house…but as I peered over the edge of the mattress - down towards the carpet, I didn’t spy any rodents…nothing moved. Then I heard the noise again…but this time, it was heavier…harder…more of a tapping sound…and it was coming from outside…from the other side of the window…from the other side of the glass.

When I lifted my head to see what was making the noise…fully expecting to see a small bird or some blowing leaves…my blood ran cold. There, staring me straight in the eye…with only a thin pane of glass between us…was the Woman-In-White. It was the same woman from the nightmares I’d had when I was ten…the same woman I’d had visions of when I was five...only this time she wasn't a dream or a vision. She was a fully manifested entity.

I had never seen her up close like that…while I was awake and of sober mind…and she terrified me…her red curly hair blowing in the breeze…her face dripping with blood…her body floating two stories up from the ground.

Laying on my stomach, looking at the woman on the other side of the glass, was intense. I blinked and shook my head…but when I opened my eyes, she was still there…expressionless…staring in at me from outside.

I slowly reached out and touched the glass with my fingertips…believing that the woman in white was just an illusion…that she wasn’t real…that she was nothing more than a hallucination. The woman’s fingers reached out as if to touch mine and as she did that, she leaned in close to the glass…shrieking the words, “Get out now!”

The shrill of her voice startled me…prompting me to suddenly jump out of bed…knocking over a small nightstand in the process.

“What’s going on? What happened?” my boyfriend asked…sitting up and rubbing the sleep from his eyes.

“I…I don’t know,” I said, picking up the table that I’d carelessly tipped over. When I looked back to the window, the Woman-In-White was gone.

“There was a woman covered in blood outside the window. She told me to get out. I don’t know what that means. I don’t know what just happened.” My hands trembled as I fumbled in the darkness for a light switch.

“That’s impossible,” my boyfriend insisted. “We’re on the second floor of the house. Nobody’s out there. You were just dreaming. Come back to bed.”

“I wasn’t dreaming!” I yelled. “It was real! There was a woman on the other side of that glass just a few seconds ago,” my finger pointed to the window. “Our hands reached out to one another. She spoke to me. I heard her. She was real. It happened!” I was visibly upset.

“What?” my boyfriend said, looking over his shoulder at the window. “Well…what should we do?”

“I don’t know,” I said, “but I’m not staying here. She told me to get out and I’m not sticking around to find out why. Are you coming with me?”

“Coming where?” my boyfriend asked.

“Anywhere but here,” I said as I threw on some clothes and left the bedroom.

My brother met us at the bottom of the stairs. “What happened?” he asked. “I heard screaming. Are you okay?”

“No, I’m not okay!” I said. My boyfriend followed me down the stairs and into the kitchen.

“There was a woman outside of Mom and Dad’s bedroom window…covered in blood and tapping on the glass. She screamed at me to get out.” I started hyperventilating. “I wasn’t dreaming! I was awake! She was real!”

The boys exchanged glances.

“I know how it sounds but I need to get out of here,” I said. “We need to get out! Right now! I think something bad is going to happen!” I walked out the back door of the house and onto the deck.

“I think we should go to the hospital,” my boyfriend said.

“Yeah,” my brother agreed, “and I’m coming with you.” He looked over his shoulder at the house.

To be continued…