My Imagination..?

Okay.. So, before I begin, I just want to say that this story is true. What I’m about to tell you, really happened to me and I’m not just saying so.

This happened when I was a kid. We lived in a smaller house back then and I shared a room with my elder sister. We had a bunk bed and I slept in the bottom bunk. Or, I tried to. For no good reason I was afraid to sleep there.

My parents got tired of me crawling to sleep in their bed night after night, so they suggested that I would sleep next to my sister in the top bunk. My sister wasn’t too fond of the idea, but she finally agreed, with the condition that I would sleep so that my head was lower, at the level of her chest, and not right next to hers, since I once punched her in my sleep causing her nose to bleed.

I, of course, accepted her term, since it got me out of the bottom bunk. I slept next to her and everything seemed just fine. I no longer had nightmares and I felt safer next to my sis.

But then one night I just couldn’t sleep. My sister on the other hand, was smiling contently in her dreams. I listened to her steady heartbeat and watched as her chest rose with each inhale. I listened to the silent sounds of the night, when I saw something dark moving from the corner of my eye. Naturally, I turned to see what it was, but all I saw was the wooden edge of the bed.

I thought it was nothing and turned back to look at my sister, as she sifted in her sleep. But soon after I had turned away, I saw that movement again. I spun my head quickly to its direction, but again, I saw nothing.

I got scared and moved closer to my sister. I shut my eyes tight and waited until sleep took over me.

The next morning I woke to the absence of my sister. I peeked over the bedside before climbing the three steps down. I walked to the living room to find my sister watching the TV and went to watch the kids show with her.

I didn’t mention that something I had seen moving next to the bed, I thought she would laugh or tell me it was nothing.

The day went on like any other. But the later it got, the more uneasy I became. I found myself stretching the bedtime, but eventually our mother told as to go to sleep and that was final. We brushed our teeth and went to bed. Our parents came and kissed us goodnight.

My sister was again fast asleep. I clutched my blanket and hoped that the moving had been just my imagination. But then it was there again. I was afraid of it, but I wanted to know what it was. I cautiously turned my head, but when I looked straight at it, it disappeared. I turned away, and as I had thought, it returned. I turned again to see it, this time slowly and careful not to look straight at it.

It worked. I saw what it was: a hand. A bony, brownish-green hand, with long black nails reaching over the rail of the bed. At this point I was terrified. I automatically watched straight to it, only to see it quickly pull away and as scared as I was, I crawled over my sister and looked over the edge to see what the hand belonged to.

Nothing. Just the bare floor and the bottom bunk. I laid back in the bed and when I looked away, the hand rose over the edge again. I wanted to see it, but as the hand reached over the side and finally cribbed the edge, I couldn’t take it anymore, so I looked at it causing it to retreat. I stared the spot where it always rose and it didn’t rise back, but I was getting tired and soon drifted to sleep.

Each night was the same. I saw the hand, but never what it belonged to. I stopped seeing it when we moved to our current house and me and my sister got separate rooms.

I thought the hand had been only my imagination, fed by my fear of the dark, so I never mentioned about it.

It was a few years back that I was talking with my sister about our previous neighbors, a sweet old couple, when we started thinking of all kinds of things we remembered from that house.

For the first time ever, I told her about that sickening green hand I had kept seeing. She looked strangely at me and said:

“I used to see it too”.