The Porcelain Doll

by ICS

  It all started in a house in a small Dutch village. In this house an orphan son and his widowed mother lived.

  The mother and her son were having dinner and watching TV when an ad for a porcelain doll came up.

  The son wanted it and his mother bought her son all he wanted but not this time. He got mad, but then he played with the toys he had and he was happy again.

  When night came, the son went to sleep upstairs; while he was going up the stairs, he heard:

"One, two, three stairs."

   He was afraid and shouted:

"Who is it?"

   Nobody answered and he thought that it was a joke and he continued to go up the stairs. But he continued to hear:

"One, two, three stairs; one, two, three stairs". -until he arrived in his bedroom.

   When he had lain down, he heard a noise as if it was a vase falling down. But he didn't pay much attention to it and he went to bed.

  Next day he had to go to school; his mother called him but he didn't get up. She was worried and she went up to see him. She pulled the sheets off him and she saw her dead son without head, arms and legs. Instead, there were the head, arms and legs of the doll from the TV ad.

  The mother called the police and when they took the body, the shape of a porcelain doll with a knife appeared in the chimney smoke.

Do It!

by MGP

  I finished placing the last two boxes that were missing from the move. It was a couple of eiderdowns and blankets for the bed, which I placed on top of the closet in my tiny room. I couldn’t afford any more, it was the second time that I moved that university year because of the high rents of the student apartments. The last rays of sunlight of that autumn afternoon were coming through the window. I stayed for a few seconds watching the people crossing by on the street; some came back from work, others simply walked around enjoying the last few days where you didn't freeze with the cold.

  The sound of a message made me look away from the window to walk around my room looking for my cell phone. I took it off the bed and turned it on: in the message, my mother asked me if I had finished emptying boxes, to which I replied “yes”.

  I left the phone where it had been and went to the living room to continue doing university work. The living room was separated from the kitchen only by a wall and to its right was the door to my bedroom and the bathroom. I sat at a desk in front of the only other window in the flat. In it were a pile of books, a laptop, a pencil case, and a lamp. With the problems of the move, I had postponed some university work and hadn’t started studying for an exam. This was my first year in a Law degree and for now I was doing quite well.

  My concentration soon slipped, so I decided to take a shower to clear my mind. I decided to leave the lamp on because it would probably be dark by the time I finished showering.

   While in the shower I heard a blow. I decided not to give it much importance, probably something wrongly placed would have fallen. But still, curiosity made me finish showering quickly to see what had happened. With the towel wrapped around my body, I went out to the living room and immediately noticed that what had

fallen was the lamp that I left on; because the 

whole room was dark, illuminated only by the

little light that came from the bathroom.

  The switch for the living room ceiling lamp was on the other side of the room. Trying not to step on 

anything, I crossed the room, feeling the wall

until I found it.

 When I was going to press it, my hand felt something on top of it, as if there was a hand on the switch. Scared, I quickly pulled my hand away and a few seconds later I brought it back. There was nothing. Exhaustion began to play tricks on me.

  With the light on, I was able to observe the situation: in effect, the lamp was on the ground. It was unplugged, about a metre from where I had placed it. Some parts had come off with the blow and were spread out around the room. It was all quite strange because it was far away and too heavy for the wind to have blown it off. Actually, the window wasn't open.

  Without giving it much thought, I went to get the dustpan and the broom to sweep the broken pieces. Finally, I took what was left of the lamp and put it next to the garbage can to throw it out.

  Everything that happened had given me a headache. My intention was that after taking a shower I would start to continue with the university work but I felt very tired. I made dinner and went to sleep right away. The next day he had to get up early to go to class.

 I woke up to the beep of the alarm clock, it was seven in the morning. I didn't actually have classes until nine, but I  loved waking

up early to watch the sunrise while I organized my day. I went to the kitchen to make my breakfast: a coffee with toast. I put it on a tray and carried it to the desk. Over breakfast, I started watching the news and 

looking at my cell phone. 

Then I remembered that I should call my mother to tell her how everything was going. We were talking for about fifteen minutes. In summary: be careful. My father had died in an accident shortly before I went to study in another city, so living alone was something new for my mother, and she called me every day.

  After talking to her I realised that I also had some unread messages from my best friend, Helena. We had spent most of our lives together, but the university separated us; she went to study in a different city than me and we only saw each other on some weekends. She knew that I’d had problems paying for the previous apartment and I had moved, so she asked me to send her some photos of how I’d decorated the new apartment.

 I took some photos of each room and when I was about to send them I saw a strange photo in my phone’s gallery. In it I appeared asleep. The most disturbing thing was that this photo had been taken that night at four in the morning by a second person. Suddenly my head started to get paranoid and mix situations. “What if someone broke into my house the night before? But ... if it had been a thief, they would have stolen something, but only one lamp had fallen -and they’d taken a photo of me. And if they had sneaked in, how had they done it and where had they come from?” This whole situation made less and less sense. Just in case, I checked that I was not missing anything of value and checked to see if the front door was open. After checking all that, I finished sending the photos to Helena and I told her everything that had happened. 

Jokingly, she replied to my message saying: "Maybe your new apartment is haunted and the ghosts are welcoming you." I was not superstitious and I did not believe in the paranormal, but that message did not make me laugh.

  With the excitement I had let my coffee get cold, and I hated cold coffee. I had also left half my toast without eating; I threw it away because I was not hungry anymore.

 In the end it was time to go out and I hadn't planned anything. I got dressed and left the house, walking quickly to be in time to catch the subway that carried me to the university. Being peak time, it was packed. 

Throughout the journey I was thinking about everything that happened, trying to find some conclusion, however there were no results.

  The only friend I had at the university, Michelle, was waiting for me at the door, as always. After greetings, I told her, too, what had happened with the lamp and the mysterious photo. Her response was similar to Helena's. Events were beginning to scare me.

  As Michelle hadn't seen my apartment yet, I invited her to lunch after university. We spent the afternoon talking and when we realised it was very late. In the end, she stayed for dinner and the night. I left her the bed in my room, and I slept on the couch.

  I woke up suddenly in the middle of the night, perhaps from some nightmare that I did not remember. My body was a bit sore because the couch was not very comfortable. The only light that illuminated the room was that of the moon that came from the window. With my eyes still half

closed, I looked towards the door of the room where my friend slept. At that moment it seemed as if a shadow was passing in front of the door at high speed. The angle of my posture did not allow me to see the bed, so I did not know if what I had seen moving was Michelle; perhaps she’d gotten up and needed something.

  Without turning on any lights, I curiously approached the door. My friend was in bed and there were no signs that she had gotten up. She saw my silhouette at the door.

  "Olivia? What are you doing at the door? Has something happened?" said Michelle sleepily. 

  “No, don't worry. Nothing’s happened. I just saw a shadow moving across the room and I thought you needed something; but I guess I imagined it,” I replied.

  “I think you are being too paranoid. Turn on the light; let's check there is nothing,” she said.

  I felt along the wall for the switch. This time there was nothing on it, but pressing it did not turn on the light.

  "It doesn't work," I said, a little unsettled

  "How is it not going to work?," she asked.

  "I don't know, maybe it was a power outage" I

said, trying to solve the problem.

  Michelle got up and approached me.

  "I'm going to check the light box," I announced, starting to walk towards a box next to the door, where the leads were.

  "Wait!" Michelle exclaimed.

  I stopped walking and took a few steps back.

  "Why are you breathing like that?" she asked.

  Suddenly there was silence.

  "That's not my breathing," I said, starting to get scared.

  Without thinking, I ran to the door and 

brusquely flipped the switch on the light 

box that was down. Michelle, guessing my movements, 

hit the switch in the room at the same time.

  With the light on I could see my friend's face, agitated by the situation. At that moment, my heartbeat was going as fast as what we heard when we were silent. You could feel the tension in the air. After a few seconds of recovery where we were trying to assimilate what had happened, I approached the door of the room to peek out. The room was empty. There was nobody.

 "Did you also hear someone else breathing?" Michelle asked.

  "Yes. It wasn't me, at that moment I was calm. So… whose breath was that? If we were both relaxed and there was no one else with us ... "

  "Maybe an animal has sneaked into your house," my friend said, trying to calm me down.

  "An animal of a metre and a half? I said, remembering the shape I'd seen rushing past before entering the room.

"I don't know, it's just an idea," replied Michelle.

  "It doesn't make sense," I answered, "this is all being very strange and I don't like it."

  During the last hours I had tried to justify what was happening and I was running out of arguments. I didn't want to admit that what was happening was out of the ordinary.

  After this scare to death, we both ended up sleeping in the same bed. Sleep? Well, I just lay there, my head spinning. After all the excitement I wasn't able to sleep all night.

Also, maybe it was because I expected something to happen again and this time I wanted to be attentive and prove that everything had an explanation.

  The next morning, the first to wake up was me. I took a shower and got dressed. Then I started making breakfast. By the time I finished cooking, Michelle was already sitting at the table and waiting for her coffee and jam toast.

  "Good morning," I said

  "How did you sleep?" she asked.

  "I haven't slept," I said, pointing to the deep black rings that had formed under my eyes from the absence of sleep.

  "I was able to go back to sleep," Michelle said.

  "How much sugar do you want in your coffee?"

  "Two teaspoonfuls, please," she answered. “Changing the subject, who is the man in the painting in your room?”

  "What painting?" I asked, confused.

  "The one next to the mirror," she replied.

 “There is no painting of a man. There is only one painting in that room and it is of a landscape,” I told her, trying to figure out what painting she was talking about.

  “Last night I thought the painting was of a man,” Michelle said.

  Immediately, I put down the toast I was holding and went to check the painting in the room. I was right, the painting was a mountainous landscape with a river. Behind me came Michelle.

  "You're right, it's a landscape," she said, with a hesitant gesture. "I swear to you, last night I thought it was a portrait of a man."

  "It would be your imagination," I told her.

  Trying to assimilate everything, I sat back down at the table and finished eating.

  We picked up and went to college. I did not concentrate on the classes because my mind did not stop thinking about everything that happened. Thinking about it gave me an annoying headache. I decided to go to the bathroom to wet my face and clear my mind.

  I tied up my hair and turned on the tap. I started pouring water on my face, trying to forget what happened for a few moments. One of the times, as I brought my bowl-shaped hands, full of water, towards my face, I looked up at myself in the mirror. But, quickly, my eyes went to the reflection of a man standing to my right. I turned around suddenly, but  

there was no one behind me. I looked in the mirror again, but nobody was there. There was nobody in the bathroom but me.

  I sat on a toilet with the cover closed for a few seconds to recover from the shock. Michelle noticed my prolonged absence and she went to look for me in the bathroom. When I told her that she had seen someone in the mirror, she looked at me with a shocked face, as if I were crazy. In spite of what happened to us last night, she didn't seem scared. She looked at me the way you look at a person of questionable mental health. I was hoping that she would tell me why this was happening to me but it was not the case.

  Disappointed, I returned home. I was in no mood to put up with two more hours of class. I was feeling bad.

  During the following days I did not go to class. I got sick, I had migraines that didn't let me think.

  One night I woke up to the sound of knocking. Something was knocking on some glass. The first thing I thought about was the window. It was strange for someone or something to knock on a sixth floor window. I walked over to her and raised the blind. The sound was not coming from there. Then I remembered the mirror I had in the room in front of the bed. I slowly approached him. Something was hitting the mirror, like if someone was knocking on a door. That was impossible, the mirror was completely pulled to the wall.

  With a blow, the window suddenly opened and something hit the mirror. The mark of a hand dragging across the glass appeared on it. Then the mirror began to crack, making the 

words: "Isn't that tempting?" I thought: What is tempting? Jump out the window? I walked over to the window and leaned out. There was something, like an inexplicable force, telling me: "Jump!" It was really tempting… What was I saying?! I ran to the mirror, picked it up, put it in the closet, and closed the window. For a moment I had thought about suicide. What was happening to me?

  The next morning, everything seemed like a dream. Except that the mirror was still in the closet, albeit with nothing written on it. Anyway, I put it back in there.

  That night, it happened again. This time I woke up to the noise of voices. In spite of being awake, I kept hearing them. They whispered to me.

“Put the mirror back. We can't see you."

  As if in a dream, I took the mirror out of the closet and put it where it was. Afterwards, a sharp piece of the mirror fell to the ground. And it cracked again, making words. This time it read: "Do it." Automatically, I bent down and grabbed the glass, hurting my hands. I put it to my neck, and everything turned red.

The Curse of the Storm

by MPM

  The Smith family lived in London, a city filled with noise, contamination and people. These are the characteristics of a big European capital and Olivia Smith didn't like it. They were living in London because Jack worked here. One day they decided to go to the country, so Olivia searched for a country house far away from the city. Finally they went to Castle Combe, a little village with no more than 350 residents. But they wouldn’t live here, they’d live three kilometres away from the village, in a cottage in the middle of the country.

  Mr and Mrs Smith had a daughter called Liza. She was 13 years old and very beautiful. When they moved to the country house it was 1st October and it was very cold. The first night was very difficult because there was a lot of wind and some trees near the house hit the windows.  

  In Liza’s room something strange was going on, her window was closed and two paintings fell down. Why? She didn’t know.

  After she heard footsteps on the stairs, Liza was very afraid because she didn’t know what was going on. Finally, the wind and the strange things stopped and she could sleep.

  The next morning, Liza told her parents what had happened the night before, they thought that Liza was lying, so they continued their life as if nothing had happened.

  At night, Olivia and Jack were talking about their new life in Castle Combe when suddenly the light went out. They thought that it was because that night it was raining but they changed their minds when all the things that were on their nightstand fell out, at this moment they believed Liza. 

  The next day Olivia, Jack and Liza were worried because there was something in their house. After breakfast Olivia went to Castle Combe, in particular to the church. She talked with the priest about what was going on in the house and he told an ancient story about that. With his deep voice he said,

  “Olivia, I’ve been working here for 45 years and everybody who came here for a week to relax went out quickly. I’m going to tell you a story. When I finished school, I went there because my father always 

told me that Castle Combe is a beautiful and relaxing place, so I decided to go there. People were very happy because the last priest was very old and they didn't like it. 

To make friends, I went house to house and I talked to people, I loved it. One day I decided to go to your house. The people who lived there were a charming family - Mr and Mrs David and their young daughter,

Margaret. 

  They told me that strange things were happening in the house but the most important, the walls moved some nights. One night there was a strong storm. The sky turned black, and lightning struck the house of Mr and Mrs David. The house started to burn for a few minutes. Then the fire was extinguished by rain but inside the house three people died.

  The next morning the police investigated the house. They found the corpses of Mr and Mrs David, but they never found the body of Margaret. When everything was over, I went to the house and I blessed it, but many people think that the spirit of Margaret is in the house. 

  Olivia, I think you should go to another city -then you’ll be fine. OK?”

  Olivia agreed with the priest, so the next day they returned to London, and there, she would look for another village to go to. When she went to the house, she told this to Jack and Liza, that night they would be sleeping together. The day passed and at night, when they were having dinner, nobody talked. When they went to sleep it started to rain, but bit by bit the drizzle became a strong storm. Suddenly lightning struck the house and it started to burn. They were caught and they couldn’t do anything.

  The next morning the priest went to the house to say goodbye to the family but when he found the scorched house he was shocked. Quickly he called the police and after many years they investigated the house again. They found the corpse of Olivia, after they found the body of Jack but they never found Liza. There was a curse on the house, and history had repeated itself. 

  The priest decided to go to Bath, another city in England, because he was afraid. Nobody knows anything about the story, so… Do you think that you’ll be the next Liza?

by LCS

  It all started on Tuesday, 13 of October, 1870, with Mr.Edgar, a rich man from Liverpool. He was on the sofa reading a magazine.

  His servant came into the living room with an urgent letter which said “LIFE OR DEATH”. The man didn’t understand anything, he didn’t know why he had received this strange letter. While he was opening the letter, his wife arrived and told him that they had to go to the graduation ceremony of their oldest daughter, so he left the letter for another moment. 

  There, they spent their time with their friends from high society who, just like them, had gone to see their children. They saw a man who was wearing black clothes, they never had seen him, but they decided to continue the party, without paying attention to him.

  They got back home quite late, so he decided to read it tomorrow.

  It was 5 o’clock in the morning when they heard a big noise, they got up and they saw a lot of glass shards on the floor. Someone had come in and had written in blood  “LIFE OR DEATH” on the wall.

When the family saw this, they were scared and they couldn't understand anything, but Edgar remembered that he hadn’t read the letter yet, and he said to his family that they didn’t have to be worried because yesterday at the party he was talking with his friends and they decided to throw a party on the 31st of October because they would like to celebrate Halloween -they must have played a joke on them.

They had breakfast, and they talked about this. Later Mr Edgar went to the garden to read the newspaper like every day, and he also brought the letter. He opened it and read:

Dear Mr Edgar, 

For the moment I am not going to say who I am, but if you don’t want your family or yourself to be murdered, you will follow these rules and you can’t break any of them.

1. You can’t talk about me to anyone.

2. You will put 2.000 pounds under the roses’ pot which is in the garden.

3. You will sell your shares of your important business, in less than 24 hours.

4. You mustn't go to any social or family event.

I remind you that if you ignore one of these rules there will be grave consequences, and remember that I am watching you.

LIFE OR DEATH 

  Edgar didn’t believe it, so two days passed, and he hadn’t sold his shares, nor had he left the money under the pot.

  When his little son came to the house, he told him that a man in black clothes and with his face covered up, had followed him from the school to the house. Edgar at first didn’t think that it could be related to the letter until the kid said that on the jacket was written the same as on the wall: LIFE OR DEATH. Then he realized the letter was real, so he quickly went to put the money under the pot and put his shares on sale, also he contracted bodyguards.

  When the family discovered it, they couldn’t believe it and they asked for explications, he regarded that he had done this because they had worked enough and they would have enough money to last them a lifetime, and he wanted to spend more time with them, his wife shared the decision with the rest of the family and they agreed with him.

  The next day they saw bodyguards at the door, and it seemed very strange. Edgar had contracted them for an indefinite time.

 But he made a mistake when he said to the bodyguards that they should inform him if they saw in any place “LIFE OR DEATH”, so he had broken a rule. 

The next day, when the kids left the house, they found the head of their pet, a dog which was like one more of the family. The family were terrified, so Edgar had to tell them the situation, so he broke the rule again. An hour later, he received a letter which said:

This is the second rule you’ve broken, so now your family will be affected. If you break another rule, you should know that two hours later I will end your life.

LIFE OR DEATH 

 Edgar was hysterical, he didn’t know what to do or say. He said to his family that they wouldn’t go out for many days, but the little son didn’t take heed, and he went out because he had met with his friends, so he escaped through the window, but one of the 

bodyguards saw and followed him. On the way, the kid came across a man who attacked him and cut his arm with a machete, then the bodyguard ran and  jumped on the man, the man pulled out a gun and shot him in the heart -but it was enough time for the son to escape.

 The kid was screaming all along the way. When he arrived at his house, it made his mother dizzy and his father started to cry while his sister was calling the police.

  Twenty minutes later, the police were at the house. Nobody knew who had called them.

  Edgar remembered that one of the rules was he couldn't tell anything, so he told them that he was the person who killed the bodyguard and cut the arm of his son.

  He was arrested and he went to prison. 

  There, he decided to call a hitman, because it couldn’t continue like this. He made a plan, he would have an interview, because people were very interested in why he was in prison, so if he did this, he would break one of the rules, so the man would follow his family to kill them and in this moment the hit man would kill the man. 

All went according to plan.

 Ten years later, when Mr Edgar got out of prison, all was relaxed, as nothing had happened since they’d killed the man. 

But when he returned home, strange things started to happen. Curtains would move alone, the gas lights turned on and off, vases fell down and they would hear footsteps. Edgar thought that the years in prison had made him crazy. 

  One day he dreamed that in all the places were written “LIFE OR DEATH” and he got up shivering. When he went to sit on the sofa he saw written in the cushion “LIFE OR DEATH” and he discovered that the spirit of the dead man was living at his house. 

  After a year of this, Edgar finally couldn’t put up with the pressure of have a spirit living at his house, so finally he committed suicide.

The Promise

by CMG

  Are you ready to hear the most horrifying story you have ever known?

OK, you asked for it.

  It all started on Halloween night of 1876. At the time, Halloween was a pleasant night to ask for candy and tell horror stories to the kids. Everyone loved Halloween in that city, Beaufort, until this night.

  The kids went out of their houses with their mothers, fathers, uncles, aunts, cousins, brothers or sisters. Everyone could take part in the Halloween party.

  Something strange called John’s attention that night. A gorgeous girl was crying in deep, inconsolable sobs behind a tree. She was strange. She had blue hair and purple eyes, but John wasn’t able to leave her there, and got closer to her. When he was close enough,  asked her why she was crying.

  “I’ve lost my teddy,” she answered.

  “Don’t worry. We will find it. I promise it to you. Where did you last see it?”

 “The monster had it. The monster doesn’t want to return my teddy to me, and I need it. I really need it.”

 “OK. I will recover your teddy for you. Where’s the monster?”

   “It's here,” she said.

  “I don’t see anybody here, we’re alone. Are you sure the monster is here now?”

  “It’ s everywhere.”

  John started to think the girl was crazy. There wasn't 

anybody there. What was she saying?

  Suddenly, a strong wind shook the tree and made a lot of leaves fall off of it. John put his hands before his eyes to protect them. 

  When the wind stopped, John opened his eyes again, and the girl wasn’t here, but he could hear something.

  “You promised it…”

That was the mysterious girl's voice, but she wasn’t already here. John was really afraid now, and turned back home. 

  His mum and his sister were already there, and they asked John why he was there so soon, because John used to stay out until very late on Halloween night. John only said he was tired, and went to his bedroom to sleep a bit. 

  He didn’t stop hearing the girl’s voice all night. He thought he was going crazy!

  “You promised it”, “you promised it”...

  The voice didn’t stop, and John was more afraid than ever.

 The next morning, something strange happened at John’s house.

His sister had a little teddy bear, a bit different from others. It had blue hair and purple eyes. Suddenly, John remembered the Halloween night girl, and her looks. She had the same hair and the same eyes as John’s sister’ teddy.

  John decided then to ask the old folks about what had happened. They knew all the horror stories, and he was sure some of them could help him.

  John decided then to ask the old folks about what had happened. They knew all the horror stories, and he was sure some of them could help him.

  He asked the oldest man of the city, and the man was horrified by the story. It wasn’t the first time someone saw that girl. The old man told John that the girl was the old mayor's daughter's spirit. The girl had died 20 years ago under strange circumstances. She was searching for her teddy when she fell into the river, and lost her life. There were people that had heard the girl scream, and that had seen how a 

strange wind swept the girl along into the river.

  John told the elder that he heard the girl's voice, and the man asked him what the voice said.

 When John told him what the voice said, the old man understood all.

  The spirit was searching for someone alive who would help her to find her teddy, because she needed it to return to the world of the living. John had promised it to her, so John must find the teddy if he wanted his sister to live, because the teddy she had that morning was the girl’s spirit, who wanted to remind John of his promise. If John didn’t keep his word, the spirit would kill his sister to take her place.

John understood the situation and started to search for the teddy everywhere.

  It was a very difficult task, because the teddy had been lost for 20 years, and nobody had been able to find it before, but John wasn’t going to give up, and started to investigate about the disappeared teddy. 

  The teddy was a present from another city’s mayor to the Beaufort mayor’s daughter. Mysteriously, the daughter of the other city’s mayor had drowned in a river, too.

  John knew that wasn’t a coincidence, and asked the elder again, now with the extra information about the teddy.

  The old man gave John a book. This book told the past of Beaufort, when witches lived in that city. For John, the existence of witches had been only a horror story to tell on Halloween night, but now he thought that it could be possible.

  From what he read in the book, John understood that the teddy was a poisoned present from the witches to the first mayor of Beaufort, because he had started a war between witches and normal people, and he had killed a lot of innocent girls accused of witchcraft, and a lot of real witches. They took revenge on the mayor by giving him a teddy for his daughter, promising peace at the end.

But the mayor didn’t know that the teddy was cursed, and it attracted killer spirits.

  John knew that his sister was in danger, because the teddy she had was the cursed teddy, and she would surely die if John didn’t return the teddy to the Halloween night girl.

  He turned back home and took the teddy, then went to the tree where he’d found the girl for the first time and left the teddy there. He pronounced a spell from the old book, and suddenly the girl appeared. She touched the teddy, and her hair turned brown, and her eyes turned blue. She was more beautiful now. She thanked John and disappeared again.

  John was calmer now, and he felt a spiritual connection with the city he hadn’t ever felt before, so he decided to go out of the city to tell the story to anyone who wanted to hear it.

  Since that Halloween, nobody goes trick-or-treating at night in Beaufort, and there are those who say that the witches have returned to use the city to practice their spells.

  And you? Would you go to Beaufort on Halloween night? Maybe, you will meet a strange girl there, or, maybe, you already know her.

La Llorona

 by APP

  My paternal grandparents' house wasn't very big, but the gardens were, especially the one in the back, because my grandparents had a mini-farm for personal use. Behind it, there was the black construction of the house of one of my aunts, and then my grandfather's maguey plantation. In this area there was an old wooden toilet where everything went into a stream that runs behind it.

  My cousins, brothers and I were there -about eight young people in total. Eight young people who were seven and sixteen years old, playing amongst the magueys. At some point I needed to use the bathroom; just then the noise of laughter and games was stopped short by a terrifying scream.

 I froze, everyone was running, and that terrifying scream could still be heard. When I was finally able to move, I pushed the door to get out and run -but the door wouldn't open. Panicking, I kept pushing. Still, the door wouldn't

open, no matter how hard I pushed. It didn't lock or anything, it just wouldn't budge. An eternal five seconds or so passed, and there was still that horrible scream. A cold sweat broke out on my chest, spreading all over my shivering body as I stood there, glued to the door.

When at last I was able to open the door and run, I reached the garden and found my pale cousins and brothers. Some of them were crying, and I myself felt a cold and painful knot in my chest. The screaming stopped as suddenly as it had begun; we gazed in the direction of the magueys, at the path that ran between

them and the stream beyond. A white silhouette was floating in the stream, slowly drifting, carried by the current.

 My grandfather later told us that La Llorona, a water sprite, inhabited that stream. He had already seen and heard her several times, and he warned us to never, ever let her see us head on, or we should surely die of fright. He also told us about his little sister, who died thus when they were kids, and whom he'd never told us about before.

 We never went back to that haunted spot, never played there again.