Dark Spirits - Carter's Story

0:00Tyler Reddick here from 2311 Racing. Another checkered flag for the books. Time to celebrate with Jamba. Jump in at JambaCasino.com. Let's Jamba. No purchase necessary, BTW Group. Boy, we're prohibited by law. CCNC, 21 Plus, sponsored by JambaCasino. Access to affordable credit helps me pay my employees that I don't really need it. Infliction is killing me. Who cares? Big retailers and making record profits. That's why we support the Durban Marshall credit card bill. See, banks and credit unions help small businesses make pay roll, and this bill would cut the vital resources they need. While increasing Megastore profits, they deserve it. Don't they? Tell Congress, stop the Durban Marshall money grab for corporate megastores paid for by the Electronic Payments Coalition. My mom ran away after I was born because I came up with drugs in my system.

1:01I've tried to look her up since then, but I think she probably died under a bridge somewhere. I can't say I'd feel too bad if she did. Bradmore always said her biggest fear was mom coming back and trying to take me. My dad's parents took me in. It was supposed to be just until Dave got clean, but he overdosed on fentanyl first. He didn't even do fentanyl grandma told me. Somebody mixed it in with the crap he bought in the street. I can't say I feel too bad about that eater. He was supposed to be getting clean to raise me. Maybe I would feel sorry for my parents if I had known them. Maybe they were good people who made bad choices when they were too young to know better. But since all I know about them is the drug stuff, that's my whole concept of them. My therapist did one of those word association exercises with me recently. He only gave me one second to respond with a first word or phrase that came to mind. He said mom, and I immediately answered junkie. He said dad. And I immediately answered alt-e. I'm only telling you the so you know me talking about my parents. It isn't like some kind of reach for pity.

2:01My feelings are professionally diagnosed. My grandparents always felt like my parents. I still called them grandma and grandpa, but for all intents and purposes, they were my mom and dad. Until grandpa died. It happened right after we moved into a new house in 2009. I didn't understand why we had to move back then. Brampa kept blaming it on the president, but that didn't make any sense to me. Brampa kept on saying grandpa lost his ass on our old house, which sounded painful, but also didn't make sense because grandpa still had to know what. Obviously, I came to understand the great recession later on and how it forced a multitude of families out of the homes, but I'm trying to place you in my mindset back then. For some of this to make sense, you'll need to remember what it was like to be seven years old. Where was I? All right, grandpa. There isn't much to say other than he died in his sleep only days after we moved in. I'll never forget grandma, wailing loud enough to wake me up that morning. She told me and everyone else at grandpa's funeral that her worst fear came true when she rolled over that morning and touched his cold stiff arm. But I guess it was her second greatest fear

3:02right after mom coming back for me. So then it was just me and grandma. I can't honestly say whether she ever had a job before she went to work at the Salvation Army up the street to supplement grandpa's me Goliath Insurance Pairs. Next time you go to a Salvation Army, look into the cashier's eyes. I mean really look. I know they are working for Jesus or whatever, but I swear to God that place sucks out people's souls. When grandma would talk to friends about her jaw, she would always mention how great it was to work somewhere with a mission, but that's not what she talked about with me. I heard all about the lines of thankus bog and shoppers who treated her no better than one of the worthless trinkets and shelves. None of them knew what grandma had been through. When I visited her at work, I could tell some of the customers, usually the ones who didn't really need to shop at the Salvation Army, assume she was there because she hadn't applied herself towards anything better. They had no idea she was trying to feed herself and her grandson on new minimum wage and a crappy insurance policy or that she was doing it alone. And because of all this, I was alone too. If I didn't go visit grandma at work, which I hated doing most of the time,

4:02I went straight home after school. I'd make myself some pizza rolls or toaster strudal and watch cartoons or read until grandma came home after seven. And if that sounds like fun to you, I'm guessing you had parents. So there's everything you need to know for what's coming next to make sense, I hope. My therapist told me to write this story don't help me process it. So here we go. My fingers are sweating. I had this blue curtain on my bedroom window that it shut during the afternoon, cast a tranquil aqua hue on the walls. I used to love shutting a curtain when I re-founders in novels. The otherworldly light helped me escape reality and enter the wells in the books. I used to fantasize about discovering another world back then. I'm sure you can understand why. I wrote about this in a poem for school once on my teacher recommended a book called The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. I guess it's a classic. I checked it out from the school library and started reading it on the bus. I identified with the protagonist, the Péphancy siblings, having also been abandoned by my parents in the interest of saving my life. Up in my room with the blue curtain drawn, I read the part where Lucy, a youngest Péphancy,

5:03opens a wardrobe and discovers what else but a secret world. As I read about Lucy stepping into Snowy Narnia, I could have sworn I had a soft wind beating against the inside of my own closet. Door, I could imagine opening it, discovering a pine forest dusted in magical snow. Then the wind behind the door beat a little harder, hard enough to snap me out of my daydream. Setting the book down and rejecting its influence, I listened. I could not blame my imagination for the doors beating anymore. It was almost vibrating, rising in velocity, dropping down to soft tapping, then rising again. I would love to tell you I was not so naive to think Narnia could actually be behind my closet door, but I was. My life preceding that moment mashed the typical protagonist, journey in one of my fantasy books. There I'd been, an orphan hopelessly dreaming of a better, more exciting, and fulfilling life, when a wise sage, my teacher, pointed me towards a sacred tomb, a lie in the witch, and the wardrobe. And now it was time to discover that, likely due to some sequel worthy backstory, I was the chosen one. Chosen for what? Well, I would just have to open the closet door and find out.

6:04I dropped my feet onto the hardwood floor. I could fill a breeze between my toes, rushing towards me from under the door. Note to my therapist, this is a big moment for me because I had always been terrified of closets. I'm not sure why. Maybe we can explore it in my next session, but for as long as I can remember, I'd had this horrible sense that something might be hiding behind every closet door. I realize now this is very common amongst children. Looking back, it's incredible that I went to the closet all while it was making those noises. A testament to my desperation. With each step I took, what I was seeing, hearing, feeling, and even smelling, pine and whatever you call that cold, damp smell of snow, seemed more unbelievable, yet even more real. I could almost hear an epic score playing me towards the big reveal. When I reached the door knob, I saw my hand trembling and realized a bit of my usual fear was present after all. I stood with my hand out like that, contemplating whether I really should open the door. I gazed back at the book lying on my bed, wondering if it contained answers. If I was going to open the door and enter some other world, I thought I should probably take the book with me.

7:04I turned back and took one step toward my bed. The door stopped shaking and a breeze stopped whispering around my ankles. The wall turned real again. I spun back around, hand I stretched and ripped open the door, desperate to salvage my chance for adventure, fear be damned. But the closet was empty. I stood at the walls and searched the ceiling. There was no way either had let in a draft, not one big enough to rattle the door anyway. But from nowhere, an icy gusper passed me, combing my hair, billowing my clothes and drying my eyes. It only lasted a fraction of a second, but almost knocked me off my feet regardless. Nothing followed, but I would look back on this later as not the moment I entered another world, but that I let something into mine. I slammed the closet shut. Whenever I opened my blue curtain after having a clothes for a while, it felt like waking up from a dream. I slayed the curtain aside to transport myself out of the reality, which had just been infiltrated. They adulterated evening sun cleanse my room and comforted me. Still, when I picked my book up again, I carried it downstairs to keep reading it in the living room. Grandma came home and called to me from the kitchen.

8:06She wandered her sewing machine brought up from the basement. She had brought home an adult Halloween costume somebody had donated to the Salvation Army. It had a big tear under one of the arms, but it was another wise perfect condition. She could not bear to see it thrown away when she could so easily repair it. It's torn through both layers, but I think I can manage it, she said. Want to guess what kind of costume it was? Alline. This is a total coincidence happenstance, but sort of very too. Again, I could not help, but feel linked to the book I just left in the room. The line costume did not try to be overly realistic, but it did have a fuzzy tail and a big bushy mane around the gaping hole for the wearer's face. Grandma kept her singer in the basement since she rarely used it anymore. When grandpa was alive, she used to sit in front of that machine, often repairing clothes for him, for me, friends and neighbors. I thought she didn't have the energy or time for sewing anymore, but knowing grandma, she would have fixed anything a friend asked her, I realized much later that her friend stopped asking for those little favours after grandpa died. Little did they know, as much as grandma loved sewing, the project here and there

9:07would have brought her joy that instead went missing. Excited that grandma was sewing again, it always made her happier. I went to the basement. When I opened the door at the top of the stairs, though, I encountered an unexpected obstacle. The stairs were gone. The handrail and frame of the staircase still pointed the way down, but no steps existed to get me there. I returned to grandma to ask if she knew the steps had all been removed, but she only scolded me for joking around instead of doing as she asked. She chastised me so that I doubted my own eyes and memory, and I returned to the basement ashamed. And there were the stairs, what the sturdy is ever. Large gaps, spaces wide enough for a hand to reach through and grab your ankle, separate every step. Those gaps had terrified me during a few weeks we had lived in the house. Maybe they wouldn't have seemed so bad if I could have turned in the basement life from the top of the stairs, but the light bulb at the bottom turned on with a drawstring. I could only reach it if I stood on the last step and stretched. To get there, I had to brave the sinister staircase and whatever might look beneath it. Truth be told, as much as the stairs frightened me, I never hesitated at the top.

10:08I could usually mask my fear until about half way down. And on the day grandma sent me for her sewing machine to fix the line costume, half way down as we're one step furnished again. My foot fell through the empty space before I caught myself in the hundrel and yanked my foot back out. I can't recall what sort of sun I made, but it felt like my soul escaped through my mouth. Ranmo yelled to check on me. I nearly yelled back, grandma. One of the stairs fell off before I realized the trip my eyes and feet had played on me. The invisible step had returned once more. I tested it, gauged its strength, and charted sorry just tripped. I had spooked myself is what I decided. I was dare dreaming about non-ear and I'd begun to daymar about the basement steps. I stopped looking where I put my feet, refusing to acknowledge my nagging anxiety. My next step found soul of fridding, but then became stuck. A cramping pressure fixed it in place. It felt like an ale had caught my shoelace and spontaneously tightened it. Only I was not wearing shoes. There was no wooden step beneath my foot. I had stepped into the palm of a wrinkled gray hand, the very sort my supposed the irrational fear

11:09is a try to warn me about. Its knotted fingers were responsible for the crushing sensation. A brutal looking wrist connected the hand to a boni arm which disappeared under the stepmother, foot still stood upon. The hand tugged. The last two steps into basement floor rushed up at me, but my fear wholly belonged to the monster dragging me below the stairs. Its movements were emphasized by awful groans and pops, like old barn were protesting a storm. I think they came from the monster's bones. I screamed for grandma while holding myself against the monster's pole with the handrail. Another knolled hand rose through the stairs, snatching at my free ankle. It almost caught me. Where was grandma? I kicked and connected with something like eggshells. Retribution came in a furious tug, which finally loosened my hands. I fell. My body crashed onto crusted paint cans, scattering them across the floor. I clenched my eyes shut as if I could make a monster disappear as I flailed amongst the cans, cobwebs and dead insects. I even footsteps descended cautiously above me and I heard grandma shouting. She sounded so far away.

12:09I threw blind kicks as my hand searched for a weapon or purchase on anything which might stop me from being taken from being dragged deeper into the shadows. The monster's whip mouth opened new my ear. Its sticky tons quenched inches away. A flinch and my eyes opened. Two green human-like eyes met them. Green eyes set in a gunt face made of living stone. It bore collapsed nose and a black forehead from mouth, gaping in an open frown. Black hair, oily and wet, frame this horrid expression. Shadows disguised that he further details, but just as through tears I focused on my attacker started losing opacity. Like a cloud breaking apart, it drifted into the ether. His grip on my ankle remained tight until the loss of its faint edges vanished. Grandma found me a heap of vibrating muscles lubricated by tears and snout. She demanded to know what I was doing beneath the stairs. You could have spilled one of these cans all over the floor. You know, she scolded me. What happened? I took her hand and let her pull me out from under the staircase. By the way, not one step was missing, which made it difficult to instill any credibility into the story I proceeded to tell her.

13:10Even to me, it sounded like the rampant delusions of an overworked imagination. I carried the sewing machine upstairs once I got a handle on myself. I didn't want to, but I realized I would be back in the basement again soon if I didn't. Grandma watched me from the corners of her eyes for the rest of the night. It would not be until later that night when I rolled my sock off of my foot that I would discover for a long bruises wrapping all the way around it. If nothing else, those are certainly real. There's a certain age when, although you are told ghosts and monsters aren't real, you need assurances. You start to notice inconsistencies. You were told drinking soda will rot your teeth, but there are garbage bags besting with empty mountain dukans in your friends garage and his parents have all their pearly whites. You're told by some relative, his mocks of pack a date that you should never pick up the habit, but smoking is so terrible. Why does it seem they can't wait for the chance to do it? We're told ghosts and monsters and werewolves and vampires aren't real. Then a green eyed basement well up pulls you under the stairs. Tyler Reddick here from 2311 Racing, another checkered flag for the books.

14:10Time to celebrate with Jamba. Jump in at JambaCasino.com. Let's Jamba. No purchase necessary, BTW Group. Boy, we're prohibited by mom, CCNC, 21 plus, sponsored by JambaCasino. This is Mike Borlow of Lexicon Valley. And I'm Bob Garfield. Are you one of those people who sometimes uses words? Do you communicate or acquire information with, you know, language? Hey, us too. So join us on Lexicon Valley to true over the history, culture, and many mysteries of English. Plus some ice cracks. Find us on one of those apps where people listen to podcasts. The next morning, a Saturday, grandma was off work. I came downstairs while she was making breakfast and asked, Grandma, do you believe in ghosts? Of course not, Carter. Why would you ask such a silly question? Grandma predictably answered. I swallowed my nerves and said because I think I saw one yesterday in the basement. Grandma said, well, I'm pretty sure you didn't.

15:12I doubled down. I think it came out of my closet. Grandma replied, every kid thinks there's a monster in their closet. Some day you'll grow up and realize that sort of thing is just silly. Besides, the only real monsters are lawyers and congressmen. I didn't know what those were, but I was pretty sure a congressman hadn't pulled me through the staircase. But Grandma, I was about to show her the bruise on my foot even though they had already faded significantly, but she interrupted me. You've been reading too many of those books about magic and dragons. You're losing touch with reality. Losing touch with reality. See, and here I thought reality was losing touch with itself. Grandma's hard-nosed disposition seemed and helpful in the moment, but it actually went a long way in comforting me. Hearing how easily she dismissed my claim made me wonder if she was right, which opened the door to the possibility that everything was actually okay. And that was enough to get me through the day, mostly. Sometimes Grandma would make a noise downstairs and I would jump and glance at the closet. But mostly, I felt safe. I don't think the monster liked my new confidence much, so it went after my source of comfort.

16:13Grandma opened my door that evening right before bed, handshaking. I thought she had just received some bad news or maybe she was sick, she did look a little feverish. Without looking at me, she closed the door behind her then pointed to my closet and asked, did you really mean what you said about something coming out of there? I had to think. She and I had both put so much effort into convincing me nothing had happened that turning around and believing it again took some effort. I said, yeah, I guess I did. You guess? She demanded. Then, but you've never been one to make up stories, have you? Do you believe me? I asked. She opened my door again and gestured for me to follow her. We went downstairs to the kitchen. The table was a mess. Grandma always spread her materials out across the whole table when tackling a sewing project but never was such a total disregard. She led me all the way outside into the driveway. On the way out the door, I asked what we were doing and Grandma answered, I have to keep an eye on this. Anasty smelling smoke wafted over the driveway from the side of the house. It here retitted my eyes

17:13and made my nose run clear and watery. Grandma said, I might have been wrong about what I said earlier. You know about she couldn't make herself say ghosts but I didn't hold it against her. I'd never heard her apologize before and she was trying her best. She finished but don't worry, I think I took care of it. The wind breathed particularly pungent cloud of smoke toward us. I coughed. Grandma moved us further up the driveway. From there, I could see around the side of the house and found the source of the smoke. Grandpa's old charcoal grill was on fire or at least that's how it looked. I noticed the fuzzy tail of the lion costume dangling from the open top and asked, why did you burn the costume? Grandma ignored the question. I wanted you to stay out here until we can go back inside together. Then I wanted you to tell me if you see anything strange again or if anything weird happens. You tell me right away, you hear. I nodded and tried to ask about the lion costume again but the flame suddenly tripled. Grandma swore and shuffled toward the grill. I couldn't follow her through the smoke. I heard her coughing then allowed his.

18:14The smoke turned white and the smell changed as something like a dusty attic. Grandma stood a few feet from the grill holding a fire extinguisher. The child lion costume now covered in thin foam slumped to the ground. After dumping the costumes, remains in the trash bin. Grandma went straight up to her room and shut herself in. I went around checking locks on doors and windows. All was secure, but I still feared our infiltrator might find another way in. I was smart enough to put together how Grandma thought it was connected to the lion costume and by burning the costume, she had ended the haunting. I wanted her to be right, but I feared she was not. I lay alone in bed, wanting to read but scared of what might come out of the book next. It had not occurred to me and would not for many years that whatever had come into our house was masking itself with whatever occupied mine and Grandma's minds. It was inserting itself at the top of our awareness and twisting those things which brought us joy. It was leaching us. I think it wanted us weak. Sleep tugged up my eyelids. My thoughts ran together in an coherent mush that I was no longer paying any attention to. My mind was nearly blank when I heard a thud above me.

19:16I stayed at the ceiling until I heard the next thump clearly from the roof. It didn't come from the attic. I knew because of how soft it sounded. Soft but heavy. When I heard the second thump, I pulled my covers over my head. I wondered if Grandma could hear the sounds too. They began pacing above me like someone working in circles for what purpose I could not venture to guess. After seven or eight runs, the foot steps stopped. A few seconds passed then both feet if that's what they were jumped landing together. Everything went quiet. My uneven breathing sounded twice as loud beneath my covers, making me hold my breath out of fear I would miss a crucial sound outside. Whatever was out there jumped again, but this time it's feet did land in the attic above as if it had fallen through the roof. My ceiling groaned. I started calculating how quickly I could run to my door to Grandma's room. Next thud boomed before I made a decision. It came from right beside my bed and sounded like my bare feet when I jumped out of bed every morning. It was there right next to me. Did it know I was there too? Did it know I was hiding under the covers? I'd been holding my breath too long.

20:18Soon I would have to release it and then the monster would know where to find me. It was so still so quiet. I silently begged for it to make the floor creak or for some sound which would disguise a whispering breath, but the fandoms outside my bed made no such sound and I had to breathe. I intended for my lids to form a tiny spigot but the desperate air inside me forced them open. Immediately my covers flew off. They hit the firewall in a cluster. I did not look to see what had thrown them instead rolling off of the bed in the side opposite the intruder. My bed springs cooked like someone was crawling across the mattress. Too afraid to stand less to be snatched up. I flattened myself and slipped under the bed. I wanted to scream for Grandma but it again fooled myself into thinking silence would protect me like a deer every movement from the being above me. Head springs squeal, the box spring groaned and I thought the slas two inches above me might split. Whatever it was up there must have been three or four times heavier than me. For a second my primary fear changed from being caught to being crushed. I heard one of the slats knew my feet break from the frame. It fell diagonally across my legs

21:18and still the way to above increased. When it seemed inevitable the whole bed would come down on me, the intruder jumped. When it landed in the bed again, I know the slats snapped in the middle, prodding my chest and forcing me to move coast to the edge. It must have been encouraged but snapping board because the intruder jumped again and again and again. Each time the whole bed framed shook the leg slid four inches during all of this. I could no longer stand the anticipation of the final blow. I cried, stop and regret instantly wrenched my stomach. I tried to call into a ball but I didn't have enough room to move. My protest worked though. At Gustave ethereal wind opened my bedroom door and signaled my salvation from present danger but also the beginning of a new set of horrors. No more sounds came from my bedroom but down the hall I had grand musk green my name. Terrified of what I would find but eager to be out from under the bed and the restrictions it imposed, I woke my way out and scampered to the doorway peering into the dark hallway, seeing nothing, hearing nothing. Bran might only scream my name once. Had she met for me to go to her to run away? To aid or escape?

22:18I knew which one I wanted to do but I wouldn't have been able to live with myself after abandoning my only family. The only person who remained sober and alive enough to take care of me. I don't believe grand musk telling me to come or run away because when I did finally go to her she looked angry. Beyond any doubt, the most furious I ever saw her right up to the dish she passed away as the only person I shared that harrowing night with. When she saw me, she was already red and turn purple. The glow of her bedside lamp which she stood beside wearing only a night gown calfed oggo shadows on her scaling face. How to James, she growled. Is this your idea of a joke? Has it been you scaring me this whole time? I hurried to explain, no, something just left my room. I was hiding under my bed the whole time. She yelled almost as loudly as she had first green my name. This stops right now. Tell me the truth or boom like a shotgun shook the floor. This one came from downstairs. Peran Martin stared at each other, paralyzed with fright. I'm not sure a word can convey the evil feeling which bled into the air rising from downstairs like invisible smoke.

23:18It was similarly suffocating and tasted just as toxic. It's still here, I said, knowing she would understand what I meant. Although she still hadn't told me what happened to her earlier the day with the costume, I had a feeling she might believe in monsters now. We need to leave, she said. Not necessarily to me, but where could we go? There wasn't an edge as upstairs unless you counted the windows, all of which led out to a two-story drop that I may have been able to enjoy with little injury, but were at the very least horrible grandma. And that's assuming she could make it through a window. We ran out of time to decide what to do. Another sound came from below. This time the distinctive croak of the first stair. I imagined a foot, an elongated version of the hand which had grabbed me in the basement, pressing down on that step. I'm not sure why, because neither grandma nor I had seen the monster yet that night. It felt more present, I guess. It felt inevitable, and it smelled now adding to exemplified presence. It smelled like smoke and strangely a bit like barbecue. It also had a toxic undertone which forced the memory of grandma burning the lion costume upon me.

24:20But now the footsteps were halfway up the stairs. They came in an uneven pattern which did not synchronize with my intrinsic memory of how the stairs should sound. It almost sounded like two separate intrus creeping up. Carter or grandma whispered close the door. This obvious reaction had eluded me while I tried to make sense of what I was hearing. I reached for the door at the very moment to tarnish main emerged at the top of the stairs. I watched. It was all I could do. As the charred and in some places melted lion soup padded into the hallway on all fours. It was clearly operated by something physical within. The hood pointed down so the black and main head to wear as face, but I imagined it would mirror the one I had seen prior, the one with the green eyes. Without shutting the door, lest I let the downward facing lion of allocation I scurried back to grandma. She shut off her lamp and we knelt behind her bed. Grandma had all sorts of boxes and shoes and things under her bed, so I couldn't hide there this time. Luckily, grandma's vanity mirror faced the open doorway so I thought I could watch the lion. Unfortunately, I realized if I could see the lion in a mirror, it could also see me, I cowered away from the reflection.

25:21A board popped in the hallway. Another squeaked. If I tried hard, I could make out the sound of the Fussitel dragging. I heard the main brushing against the bedroom door and risked a glance at the mirror, hoping the lion wouldn't choose that moment to look up. Pope meant nothing to the vile spirit which had possessed the costume. Our eyes met in the reflection. It's mild. Grandma, I shouted as cramble to my feet. She climbed up using the bed and gasped when she saw the lion's face. The lion stopped back and forth, much like a real cat, pacing to show us our boundary. With walls behind and to either side of us, we had nowhere to go. It fed off our fear and it must have been getting full. Grandma and I were both the most terrified of our lives. Get back, Grandma screamed. She picked up the lamp, wielding it defensively. The lion pounced onto the bed. Grandma turned the lamp on. You can't take him. You can't, Grandma cried angrily, weaving the lamp back and forth like a torch. The lion came forward, moving fully into the light and I saw its face in perfect detail.

26:23A few locks of black hair had loosed from the hood, framing the face and putting it in context for me. It was grey and hollow and dead looking, but it was without a doubt the face of my mother. She sensed my recognition. No, don't you look at him, Grandma warned. Look at yourself. What church would ever give you custody? What's your plan? Kidnapping him? The thing wearing mom's face looked back at Grandma and grand. Pink colorations spread from behind its areas and washed over the hull face. The nose inflated and straightened. It's then dry lips puffed out and healed, then darkened. Beautiful eyebrows grew in above its eyes, which came out of the skull until they looked cheerful and alert. The face now looked like a fruit I had seen of my mother in high school, right before she was introduced to hard drugs. If I needed any confirmation, the thing in the lion's suit was not actually my mother. That was it. Even if she was still alive, that version of her was long dead. The spirit had tapped into Grandma's worst fear, though, and it had a piercing grip on her. Go away, I shouted at it, but it remained focused on Grandma. Its face was beautiful, but its expression hideous.

27:25Its grin had become misneared. It's repaired no scrunched. And in its eyes, I saw something I had never seen before, yet instantly recognized. Ludlust. The lion hunched back and pounced at Grandma. She threw the lamp with both arms directly into the lion's face, my mother's face. The lamp entered the costume's hood, still actively pursuing its trajectory. The whole costume went limp as the lamp dragged it off of the bed through the air and onto the floor across from us, where the lamp shattered and the costume went still. Let's go, Carter, Grandma said. She ushered me away from the bed and we heard downstairs. On the way out the door, she grabbed her car keys. She drove us to the Salvation Army and we slept on donated couches. I'll try to sleep anywhere. We led the bank for clothes on that house. We never went back. Whether that dog spirit had been patiently awaiting its chance in that house when we moved in or if actually came with the costume, we weren't going to risk facing it again. Grandma had to buy a new copy of the lion, the witch, and the wardrobe for the school library. I've chosen to remain ignorant about the house's fate.

28:26I'm not sure if it still stands or if it does, who owns it. I fear see how the emotion continues to drive me that re-establishing any sort of connection to the house, even just seeing a picture of it might invite the terrible thing back into my life. And now I don't have Grandma to protect me. She passed away unexpectedly in her sleep. At her funeral, the minister said she passed away peacefully. I hope he's right, but I'm not so sure. The reason I wanted her ties back to why Grandma tried to burn up that lion costume. She told me her theory about what happened years after our rodeal. It knew I was afraid to lose your grandpa and that I knew his heart wasn't in the greatest shape. Somehow it killed him. It took him away because that's what I was most afraid of. It must have lived off with the daily fears I had about not being able to support you or losing you until it was strong enough to try to take you to. I could see it her way if I tried. I had not been the intent of victim of the haunting as I had previously believed. I was merely a pawn in a scheme to what hurt Grandma, but I believed her based on what made her burn the costume. While she was repairing the outer lining, she said she began to fill the fabric tightening.

29:28She realized it was moving slightly beneath her fingertips. She sat back and watched as the costume faded, but only partially. She said the lights only furned up about halfway down. A face had appeared in the open hole. Grandma recalled, the face blew grey and more with the still belonged to me. It was my face in case in the stillers of death. Gekka Looking for excitement? Shamba Casino is here. Play anytime, play anywhere, play on the train, play at the store, play at home, play with your board, play today for your chance to win and get daily bonuses when you log in. So why are you waiting for Don't Delay? Chamba Casino is free to play. Experience social gameplay like never before. Go to Chamba Casino right now to play hundreds of games, including online slots, Ingo, Slingo, and more.

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