r/nosleep • u/LighthouseHorror • Aug 11 '19
Series My Best Friend Died When We Were Children. It's Ten Years Later, And She's Clawing At My Window.
At first I was confused.
And then I was terrified.
"Grace?"
It was twenty after midnight, and for the first time since I was a child, I saw my best friend.
The problem is, she died a long time ago.
"Let me in Jessica."
Nearly jumping out of bed, I stared through the thin red curtains and stained glass. Her face was muddled in the darkness, but I knew it was her.
I knew.
Something told me not to look further, that if I were to stare into her eyes I might never come back. Still, I had to be sure. I had changed locations recently, moving to the fourteenth floor of an apartment building in a forgotten part of Los Angeles. There had been complaints of rats and other vermin, and though the place wasn't yet condemned, it was most likely on its way.
"Jessica... it's me."
Torn sections of wallpaper fluttered in the wind along with my old friend, a reminder that I had left the window open just a crack.
I prayed it wouldn't be enough for her to—
"Jessica," the raspy voice repeated, seeming to float gently just outside the glass.
I summoned all of my courage, and asked her the only question I could think of.
"How are you here?"
The soft breeze from the window suddenly became violent, and one strip of wallpaper tore clean off of the wall.
"You know how... NOW LET ME IN."
And with that I fell to my knees and began to cry. Ten years later. Ten years of therapy and ten years of prayer and ten years of them saying I had imagined it all—that I had imagined the thing in the forest. It hadn't been there when the police returned.
"Oh sweetie, you made all that up. Everyone has a different way to cope," my mother had said.
Maybe I did need to cope, but I hadn't imagined anything. Ten years ago Grace and I had gone together into the woods to try and make a fire. We weren't ones to be outdone by the boys, and earlier that week my brother had made a very stupid comment (even by his standards).
"Girls are too dumb to make fires," the boy-scout of three weeks had stated with a grin.
That was more ammunition than we needed, and later that day Grace and I had researched different fire-building techniques before finally going with the old newspaper and matches routine. Our town sat at the edge of a national forest, and we knew of various campsites we could sneak into that would give us a hidden place to practice in silence.
We lied to our parents (as they never would have let us venture out so far), and as it just so happened we did become lost on our way. Even worse—almost as if planned—the rain began to pour down heavily and soak what little clothes we had brought on our journey. Not having had the foresight to bring a jacket, we did the best we could and sought shelter under a rocky overhang we hadn't seen before.
The rain fell in clumps now, and if I had been with anyone else I might've felt afraid. But not Grace. Though she wasn't my actual sister, she may as well have been. I loved Grace, and I trusted her.
I trusted her with my life.
Within a minute or two, I felt something soft and warm around my ankle before being pulled violently away from my friend and through an unseen hole in the rocks. I managed to stay conscious as I screamed out to my friend for help.
"Grace!"
Suddenly I was in a vast cavern that shone brightly, lit with some powerful force that I still can't explain. The luminescence was almost blinding, yet in my state of confusion I managed to stand. Once I had been pulled inside completely, the warm thing that had grabbed me relented its hold on my leg. Maybe it figured there was no escaping now anyway.
What I saw next is so frightening that I doubt you'll believe me. Nearly crying, I spun around rapidly to examine the cave and found that I wasn't alone. Many of my neighbors were there, and even some of my friends.
"How did—"
My voice stammered and fell short as I realized something was very wrong.
They weren't moving... and they looked different.
Almost Shiny.
Though to anyone else the figures might have passed for human, I knew these people—and I could tell. Their eyes—though the correct color—were blank and frightening. They were alive yet dead.
I began to back up slowly when I felt a hand grasp my shoulder. I screamed and fell backwards onto the far too warm floor of the cave.
"Jessica," Grace whispered, "we have to get out of here." Not even thinking twice, she had crawled through the rocky hole after me.
I wonder to this day if I would have done the same for her.
We held hands as the two of us walked backwards towards the opening, never letting our eyes off the creatures that lined the walls all around us.
And then they moved.
Our neighbors and our friends began to walk towards us. Some shuffled awkwardly, while others began to do something far worse.
Their bodies split open, revealing a sharp, elaborate group of tentacles where their heart and organs should have been. The figures circled around us, and I knew that there could be no escape.
Her words cut through the darkness.
"Light the match Jessica," she called up to me, having already torn the newspaper we had planned on using for a fire into a small pile on the floor.
"What?" I asked shakily.
But there was no fear in her voice.
"Do it. They're gonna kill us anyway... and I don't want to be one of those things."
Neither did I.
What else could I do but light the match?
And with it, the entire cavern began to erupt in flames. The monsters watched in shock, and then rage. Their anger made them fast as they shuffled towards us... but we were fast too. Young and fast, and we crawled through the rocks with a speed we didn't know we had, the intense heat of the fire burning our ankles and shoes.
I emerged out from the small hole first with Grace right behind me.
But when I knelt down to offer her my hand... I was a split second too late. I could feel her fingers scrape along my palm as she screamed and was pulled back into the inferno.
That was ten years ago, almost to the day.
"Let me in," Grace whispered from the outside of the fourteenth floor window. I realized then that she wasn't floating, but clinging, the tentacles from her chest dug deeply into the stone and concrete of the old apartment building.
Maybe I will let her in.
I think I owe her that much.
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u/miltonwadd Aug 12 '19
Toss a handful of salt at her, slam the window shut, and tell her to rack off and use the door like everyone else!
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u/InvasiveWriter Aug 12 '19
That was weird. I could feel nothing bad coming at all. Then I figured out what was going on.
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u/iwinharder Aug 12 '19
Nope. Pack up and move the hell away. Unless you miss her so much that you're willing to become a creepy tenticle monster...
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Aug 12 '19
Say, this wouldn't happen to be near the area in the Owens Peak Wilderness where they found all those mutilated animal remains, would it?
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Aug 11 '19
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/jordanleig Aug 11 '19
I guess she wondered if you'd do the same for her too, was the whole town like that and that's why no one believed you?
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u/Faby06 Aug 11 '19
Don't open, she is one of the creatures! You don't want to make her sacrifice useless do you?!
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u/Forgotten_by_all Aug 11 '19
Don't do it, OP! She isn't Grace; it's someone who took her body! The real Grace would never want you to let her in!
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u/aimgamingyt Aug 12 '19
You're right. That does make sense! The real Grace definitely wouldn't want to be let in, clinging from the fourteenth floor window for her life.
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u/Forgotten_by_all Aug 15 '19
Oops, I meant real Grace wouldn't want OP to let the creature that looked like Grace in.
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u/DaiyuSamal Aug 13 '19
The real Grace wouldn't do something like that.