Cold

What power art thou, who from below

Has made me rise unwillingly

From beds of everlasting snow

See’st thou not how stiff and wondrous old

Far unfit to bear the bitter cold

I can scarcely move or draw my breath

Let me freeze again to Death

Henry Purcell

    I woke up, heart racing and gasping for breath.

    Again.

    This wasn’t the first time I had woken up in the middle of the night due to a nightmare and it’s a feeling one can never really get used to. I didn’t remember the dream this time; I just knew I had one and that whatever it was about, it really scared me good. I shook my hair away from my face and laid down again to try to go back to sleep. Just moments after I closed my eyes, I heard light footsteps moving across the carpet in my room. When I heard the footsteps get closer to my bed I immediately sat up again.

    Nothing there.

    ‘I need to stop scaring myself,’ I thought.

    I couldn’t for the life of me, shake the feeling of being watched though. I did another scan of my room, this time using the flashlight on my iPod for light, and again came up with nothing. Well, except for the shadow up against my closet door, but I didn’t think much of it, figuring it was just because of the street lamp outside my window, and I tried to go back to sleep. A few minutes later, I began to hear the footsteps again, and again, I sat up and looked around but saw nothing. This time I reached over and turned on my lamp. As expected, my room was empty. I turned the light off and tried to get back to sleep as now I was starting to get agitated. My eyes were closed for no longer than a minute before I started to hear creaking on the floor again. Frustrated at this point I sat up and yelled,

    “Look, if you’re gonna scare me, fucking do it already!”

    The light bulb in my lamp suddenly burst, lighting up my room with a white flash and my closet door slid open so hard it nearly bounced off its track when it slammed into the wall. Outside my room, I heard every door in the hallway slam shut, one after another, and upstairs in the kitchen something fell over and shattered, followed by the faint giggling of several children from somewhere in the house.

    “Okay,” I breathed, “I’m scared now...”

    For years I had always said that the Jersey shore was a lot like Neverland; time seemed to pass differently here. The moment you drove across the bridge and onto the island, there was something that just instantly made you feel like you were a kid again. Summer never seemed to have an end in sight; you assured yourself it would last forever. You were never ‘too old’ to do something and you often felt like you had enough energy to take on the world. Whether it was something in the air, or just the ‘vibe’ that floated around this place, you were taken back to a different time. A time of doo-wop diners, and pink Cadillacs. Irish pubs and ice cream shops. Sea monsters that rose high above the boardwalk, and fierce pirates that searched for treasure on Sunset Lake. During the day roller coasters roared over head, and in the evening, the island settled down with live music and locally brewed beer. Every day was a holiday and every night really felt like Saturday night.

    Until winter.

    There’s no cars on the streets, no one walking around and most of the houses stayed dark at night. It’s only a small, brave few that live down the shore year round. During the off season months, like December, the shore slows down, a lot. It’s literally a ghost town here in Stone Harbor.

    I live in a town house down the shore. This place used to be used as a summer rental home years ago, so its five bedrooms is a little much for just me.I do what I can to stay out of the house; usually I’m at work, which means I’m on a fishing boat for 12 hours, or I’m out keeping myself busy either by myself or with friends. I’m only a five minute drive from Wildwood, and there’s always something to do there. It’s not so much that things ‘died’ here in the winter, they just changed. Summer nights were always fast paced and exciting, but once winter hit, they were calm and quiet. Except for me it seemed.

    Now, I’m not going to say that my house is haunted so to say, but ever since I was little I had some strange things happen to me and when I moved into this townhouse, these strange things got a lot stranger. Footsteps walking around the house, shadows darting across the walls and faint laughter of children floated around in the empty rooms. I’ll never forget the night I woke up and saw a shadow, shaped like a small boy standing over my bed, watching me, before calmly walking over to my closet and passing through the doors. There was one period of time, a few years ago, where for about two weeks people told me they saw a little glowing ball of light darting around on the ceiling or zipping behind the couch or a chair. We never found out where the light came from and after those two weeks, we never saw it, or anything like it, again.

    There was another incident where I was getting ready to go sleep and just so happened to look up at my bedroom door. Standing in the doorway was this little boy. No older than 5 or 6, he was dressed in all black Victorian era clothing and had dark shaggy hair that covered his eyes. His skin was pale, with a redness around his eyes and his little round face had a grim expression. We just stared at each other in complete silence for a few moments until suddenly the boy ran into my room and dove under my bed. Not only did I not sleep at all that night, but the following morning, there was no trace of that little boy anywhere. I did notice, however, that one of the windows in the back bedroom was wide open but the pebbles below were undisturbed, like they never landed on the ground.

    Another incident that really bothered me happened fairly recently. I was coming home from work and I was going upstairs into the kitchen I heard my uncle call me and ask if I was home. This wasn’t unusual since my aunt and uncle live in Avalon and sometimes stop over to visit. I answered him, not thinking any of it. As soon as I got into the kitchen my phone began to ring and it was my aunt calling me asking me if I was going to be home that night.

    I said, “Yeah I just got home, what’s up?”

    “Oh, me and Jeff wanted to stop by and have dinner but we didn’t know what time you got off of work.”

    I paused, “You’re not here now?”

    “...No...”

    I looked over at the stairs where I heard my uncle’s voice.

    “Sidney?”

    I could literally feel the colour fade from my face.

    “Sidney? Can you come up here for a minute?”

    I swear to you it sounded exactly like my uncle.

    “Aunt Faye, you still there?”

    “Yeah, I’m here.”

    “Is Uncle Jeff with you?”

    “...Yeah, why?”

    I heard the voice call me again from upstairs, “Sidney, are you coming up here? Sidney? Sidney?”

    As the voice called for me it started to get more agitated, which is definitely not like my uncle to do.

    “Aunt Faye, I need to call you back...”

    “Is everything okay?” The voice was becoming even more impatient and was loud enough that my aunt heard it through the phone, “Sidney, who was that?”

    “Sidney! SIDNEY! SIDNEY!”

    The last time the voice called me it suddenly took a very demonic tone. It caught me off guard and that was the end of my phone. I dropped it down the stairs and since it was an old sliding, full keyboard phone, it ended up breaking in half and both pieces bounced all the way down to the landing.

    After that night I never heard the voice again. And I stopped buying slide phones.

    These are just little ghost stories compared to the real story I have for you. It’s strange, and I can almost guarantee that no one reading this will ever believe me, I could hardly believe it myself. But sometimes reality is stranger than anything our imaginations could ever come up with.

    It was December 13th, 2012, roughly two weeks before Christmas, and well close to midnight is when my story starts.

    I had just gotten home from work, got a quick shower and was on my way out of the door for a dinner run to Wawa just a few blocks down the street towards the centre of town. I zipped up my leather jacket and adjusted my hat to make sure it didn’t blow away. The streets were quiet, just the wind played between the houses and sometimes you could hear the waves of the ocean just a few blocks down. I know I could easily just stop at one of the two Wawa’s on my drive home, but I liked walking. Aside from getting out of the house for an hour, this was my ‘me time’.

    96th Street was all lit up with Christmas lights strung through the trees and the shops were decorated for the season. It felt like an ordinary walk accompanied by a light drizzle, a cold breeze and a fresh cup of Wawa’s pumpkin spice coffee to keep me warm.

    It was on my walk back that I found myself getting the urge to turn around and look behind me. I knew I was the only person outside that time of night, but I just couldn’t shake the feeling of being followed. Once I got to the next intersection I gave in and turned around. At first I didn’t notice anything, but then about two blocks down the street I saw a little girl in a plain black knee-length dress and white knee high socks standing at the street corner staring back at me. She didn’t wave, or smile, she didn’t even turn away from me, but just kept staring at me with her hands folded properly in front of her.

    “Hello?” I shouted over to her; she didn’t seem upset or lost or anything, but a little girl no older than seven standing around outside in the cold rain isn’t exactly normal. “You okay?”

    She didn’t respond. The wind blowing her neatly trimmed black hair across her nose was the only thing about her that actually moved. I shrugged and continued on, trying not to think too much of it.

    Dec. 14th

    I was up in the kitchen making lunch and noticed something out front. I looked out the window and saw someone, dressed in all black standing in my driveway. I quickly ducked behind a curtain and rushed over to find my digital camera. I knelt down behind the window sill and used the zoom on the camera to see who was outside, it certainly wasn’t normal for someone to just be standing in my driveway. When I zoomed in, I saw that it was the same little girl that I saw the night before. I remember thinking to myself ‘this is really odd, what does this girl want?’.

    She didn’t appear to be snooping around, or even damaging anything, she just stood there. I watched her for a several minutes before she finally looked up, directly at me. I know I was out of view, and my camera was pretty well camouflaged in with the curtains, I don’t know how she knew to look up this way. But that was when I noticed something off about her, her solid coal black eyes. As soon as I noticed that I gasped and dropped the camera. I rushed downstairs to lock the front door and made sure all the bedroom windows were locked. When I got to my room, which was at the front of the house right next to the driveway, I noticed she was nowhere in sight. Rather than going outside through the front door, I went back upstairs and stood out on the balcony to look around, if she was hiding I would have seen her, but she was nowhere to be found.

    Sleep did not come easy to me that night as the ‘activity’ in the house increased with the constant patter of footsteps running around upstairs and distant giggling of children echoed through the house. The next morning I found several things had been moved out of place and some of my food eaten, but nothing was damaged.

    Dec. 15th

    Before I left for work that morning I brought my laptop upstairs to the family room and set up the webcam to take pictures every 5 seconds in the hopes of catching something, but when I got home that evening and watched the camera, nothing happened. So I set it up again that night and in a way, hoped that I didn’t see anything.

    Dec.16th

    I checked my laptop that evening when I got home from work. At first the pictures showing up showed nothing out of the ordinary, then a little after 1am something caught my attention. I saw one of the cabinet doors under my sink start to move. Slowly, the door swung open and a little girl, the same little girl in the black dress crawled out from under my sink. My mouth fell open and I hadn’t noticed that I stopped breathing for a few seconds. She, almost robotically, stood up, smoothed her dress out and started walking around my kitchen before noticing my laptop on the family room table. She walked over to it and stared at it, tilting her head and trying to figure out what it was. Her eyes looked more like solid black pits and her expression never changed. She soon got tired of my laptop and walked back into the kitchen, took a sandwich out of my refrigerator and crawled back underneath my sink.

    After the video stopped, I turned my head, wide eyed, and stared at the cabinet doors. I was so fixed on the cabinet, and so on edge, that when my phone vibrated with a new text message I nearly jumped out of my skin. It was my friend, Nell asking me if I was home yet. I had made plans with some friends from work that night to hang out and watch a movie.

    I texted her back, letting her know I was on my way, closed my laptop and ran down the stairs. Part of me didn’t want to leave the house, but another part of me did.

    I met up with Nell inside of Coffee Talk, a little coffee shop just off of 96th Street. We each got something to drink before heading back outside into the cold.

    On the walk back to my place we talked about a few of our other friends at work and how we miss the summer time. Nell was a girl I met about two years ago and lives over in Cape May Court House. She’s familiar with the strange events happening at my house and how over the last month and a half they’ve gotten progressively worse.

    First thing we did when we got to my house was run upstairs and look at the pictures my laptop took. Right as she saw the girl climb out from under my sink she clapped her hands over her mouth.

    “Oh my God! Sid, this isn’t real...”

    “It’s real.”

    “Oh my God...”

    “This was last night, Nell. I had it running all day yesterday, didn’t get anything, all last night, and got this, and then all day today, but didn’t get anything.”

    “Is she still there?”

    We looked at each other, then over at the cabinet,

    “I haven’t checked...”

    Nell grabbed my camera and we both sneaked over to the kitchen. We both felt it best to arm ourselves with large cooking spoons before closing in on the cabinet. I hovered my hand in front of the door and looked back up at Nell,

    “You recording this?”

    “Yeah.”

    “Okay good. ‘Cause if we get any crazy ghost shit on camera, it’s going on the internet.”

    I moved my hand closer to the door, grabbed the handle and looked back up at Nell. She gave me three slow nods and on the third one I quickly opened the door.

    The cabinet was empty.

    Nell jumped, but it was more out of reflex, “Is she in there?”

    “I don’t know,” I stuck my head in the cabinet and looked around. There was no holes or anything that could have led to outside. All that was in there was a half empty bottle of window cleaner and some dish rags, but even among those things, nothing was disturbed.

    Nell turned the camera off, “Could she have gotten out and be somewhere else in the house?”

    “I freaking hope not...”

    The both of us did a quick run through of the house, Nell took the bedrooms on the bottom floor and I took the bedrooms up on the third floor. We checked under every bed, and in every closet, but couldn’t find any trace of this girl. We decided we weren’t going to let it ruin our evening, and with the house thoroughly searched with no unwelcome guests, we settled down on the couch in the family room and started our movie night.

    “Have you heard from Doug and Nancy?”

    I was putting the DVD into the player and Nell was curled up on the couch with her phone out,

    “I’m texting Doug. I still haven’t gotten Nancy’s number yet.”

    “Well they’re pretty much attached at the hip anyway, so if you text one, you’ll get the other. What about Tom?”

    Nell nodded, “Just talked to Tom before we left the coffee shop, he’ll be on his way soon.”

    “Think it’s a bad time to watch a movie about demon possession?”

    Nell laughed, “Probably... A lot of horror movies start off this way.”

    “Yeah. Sometimes I feel like I’m in one.”

    Though neither of us talked about it, the pictures still had us both a little freaked out and every now and then either her or I would turn around to make sure no one was crawling out of my kitchen cabinets, and after a while we even found ourselves joking about it. I felt Nell give me a shove,

    “Yo, don’t grab my hair!”

    “What are you talking about? I didn’t grab your hair.”

    “I just felt something pull my hair.”

    “My hands are right here, I didn’t touch you.”

    Her voice trailed off, “That was weird...”

    “Did it get caught behind the couch or something?” My couch is right up against the wall, I figured maybe her ponytail got caught.

    “No... That’s weird I could have sworn I felt something.”

    A few minutes later she shoved me again, “What the hell?!”

    “What?”

    “I felt it again!”

    “Well it wasn’t me!”

    Nell looked behind her, there was literally nothing she could have gotten her hair caught in. “It keeps feeling like someone’s pulling my hair. It doesn’t hurt, it’s just like this,” and she gave my hair a light tug.

    “I don’t know Nell, you sure you’re not imagining it?”

    “Doubt it...”

    About half way through the movie Nell nudges me in the arm,

    “Do you have any soda?”

    “I don’t think so, I never drink soda. I just stocked up on iced tea though.”

    “Even better!” She got up and whipped around the side of the couch, “You want anything, Sid?”

    “Uhh... Sure, whatever you’re getting.”

    “Okay!”

    I didn’t see what happened next. I heard the refrigerator door open and suddenly Nell let out this blood curdling scream, and I don’t use that term lightly. I quickly jumped up from the couch and saw Nell kneeling on the floor with both of her hands gripping her scalp and a clump of her hair on the floor. I ran over to her and saw that she had a bit of blood pooling up in her hair.

    “Something grabbed me!”

    “Nell, Nell! Holy shit Nell, you’re bleeding!”

    “I am?!”

    “It’s not too bad, hold on.”

    I helped her up and walked her back over to the couch, both of us were so spooked it was a wonder either of us could walk straight.

    “What the hell was that, Sid?”

    “I don’t know...” I looked over at my kitchen but didn’t see any paper towels and sighed, “Hold on, let me go get some towels in the bathroom, I’ll be right back.” I ran upstairs to the bathroom to get some tissues.

    From back down in the family room I heard the stairs creaking behind me and Nell start to call for me; her voice was really weak at first, but then became more panicked,

    “Sid... Sid... SID... SIDNEY! SIDNEY! GET DOWN HERE! SID!”

    I grabbed the nearest box of tissues and rushed back down stairs, Nell was curled up in a ball at the corner of the couch, literally shaking. It weirded me out a bit because I thought Nell was following me up the stairs.

    “What happened, what’s wrong?”

    She pointed behind me,

    “I saw something...” she whispered.

    “What?”

    “A shadow...” tears started to roll down her face and even her whispers were barely audible. “A shadow followed you up the stairs...it wasn’t yours...It walked away from the wall... and followed you up the stairs...”

    They were footsteps that I heard. I felt this chill and a buzz of energy pass through me and just as the feeling was over Nell suddenly clapped her hand over her mouth and her eyes became fixed on something behind me.

    “What?”

    I looked back over my shoulder towards the dining room table. All the chairs were suddenly flipped upside down with their legs leaning against the table’s edges.

    “I didn’t hear anything,” Nell whispered, “I didn’t see anything, I took my eyes off the table for just a few seconds. They were fine a minute ago...”

    We have hardwood floors in our house, and setting heavy wooden chairs on the floor, you would hear it. We didn’t hear anything.

    “Okay... Um... Let’s...Let’s go to your house...”

    She nodded, “Okay...”

    “Text Doug, Nancy and Tom and tell them to come to your house instead. We’re gonna go to your house...”

    “Okay...” She got up off the couch and turned the TV off, I went over to the kitchen counter and grabbed my coat and car keys and we were out of there in less than a minute. As we pulled out of my driveway I just so happened to look back up at the family room window and saw a silhouette of a little girl and a little boy walk passed the curtains. I stomped on the gas pedal and peeled out of my driveway as fast as my Buick could go...What am I saying, you couldn’t peel out a Buick, that car is a boat.

    When I got Nell home, I helped her clean the blood out of her hair. Whatever had pulled her hair pulled it harder than I thought.

    “Sid you can stay at my place for the night, and head back tomorrow morning.”

    “I wish I could, but I need to see who’s in my house. I saw another kid in there as we were leaving.”

    “I don’t get it, how did they get inside and get passed us? We would have seen them.”

    “It is a big house for just two people, Nell, they were probably hiding downstairs.”

    “I checked everywhere downstairs. I didn’t see anything. I don’t think you have intruders, Sid, I think you have ghosts.”

    “God, I don’t even want to think about that...” I’ll admit, if there’s one thing that scares the crap out of me it’s ghosts, I know, I’m a wimp. “Either way, I gotta go back and see what’s going on.”

    “I’m not letting you go back there by yourself.”

    “I don’t want you getting hurt again, Nell.”

    “Well, I don’t want you getting hurt. If we get hurt together, I don’t care, I don’t want you left there all alone.”

    “Nell, I got this!”

    As I walked out her front door she yelled out to me, “Fuck you Sid! I’m calling Doug and Nancy and we’re all coming over!”

    Gotta love Nell.

    When I pulled back up to the house, all the lights were still on, just as we had left them, however, I didn’t see any sign of movement in any of the windows. As soon as I got inside I turned the hallway light on and paused before going upstairs. I didn’t hear anything.

    I went up into the kitchen and put my keys on the counter. Just as I was getting ready to take my jacket off I heard a noise. I paused and listened for it again; it sounded like someone was tapping their finger nails against the refrigerator. I heard the series of taps for a second, then a third time and I started to move closer, my hand reaching out to the door handle. I was an inch away from the door when a loud bang from inside startled me and I jumped back and almost fell into the counter behind me. I closed my eyes and sighed,

    “I hate that ice cube maker…”

    I was already on edge as it was, I didn’t need the ice cube machine making things worse. I gave the refrigerator a disgusted glare like it did something wrong and headed into the other room. I felt a cold draft blow past me as I walked by and stopped.

    ‘I know the windows aren’t open...’

    It felt like a breeze from outside, but stronger. I checked the windows and all three in the family room were closed and the balcony door was shut and locked. I knew it couldn’t have been the heater, the one vent in that room is up on the ceiling and certainly isn’t strong enough to create a wind like that. It wasn’t just a breeze, it was a thick gust, like I walked through something. I stopped and looked around and over my couch there was a shadow.

    To make sure I wasn’t just losing my mind, I leaned to one side, and the shadow did the same, I moved my arm and the shadow did the same. I thought it may have just been my already overactive imagination until I brushed my hair out of my face and noticed that the shadow didn’t move.

    “Ha! Caught you.”

    And then it started.

    I heard a loud bang from down stairs and jumped.

    ‘That wasn’t the wind,’ I thought, ‘There’s no way that could have been the wind,’ Just as I was about to go downstairs to check it out, I heard a second bang. It was one of the bedroom doors slamming.

    Then I heard the third.

    Then the fourth.

    Then the fifth.

    It started with the back bedroom, then made its way around to the front of the house. Needless to say I didn’t go downstairs, and instead tried to sneak back into the kitchen to grab my phone and call Nell. But when I turned around, I noticed that the shadow that was once behind the couch was now in the corner of the kitchen, right next to my phone.

    “I’m getting out of here...”

    I took a deep breath and just as I was about to dart down the stairs, the shadow stepped away from the wall. It was no longer a 2-dimentional shadow; but a 3-dimentional being standing in the room.

    I did the only thing I thought to do, I turned tail and ran. Unfortunately, I didn’t think of where I was going and instead ran upstairs to the third floor. I heard the shadow’s heavy footsteps pounding on the stairs after me. It sounded more like I was being chased by an actual person than a ‘shadow’. I ran into the upstairs bedroom and slammed the door, keeping my back pressed against it. There was a single heavy bang that almost knocked me over, which was then followed by a series of bangs against the door that first started at the top, then made their way down to the bottom. Clearly freaked out and not thinking, I jumped away from that door and rushed over to the sliding door that leads to the third floor balcony.

    I got outside and slammed that door shut too. I was now stuck on the balcony of a three-floor house and there was a shadow, back inside, trying to kill me. I’ve had better evenings.

    I did however, have access to the roof from where I was. So I figured I’d be able to climb up there and over to our neighbour’s balcony and get help. I took a few steps back towards the roof, keeping my eye on the door to make sure the shadow wasn’t coming out after me. I was just about to turn to climb up when I felt two hands grab me, one covered my mouth, and the other covered my eyes. Everything went black, everything went quiet, and that was my last memory of home.