The Steps That Follow

When I was young, I had my best friend stay for a sleep over. As I mentioned in the previous entry, our night sky was perfect for star gazing. So we set up our lawn chairs, brought out some snacks and decided to wait until nightfall. Now let me say, this was nothing that I really feared doing and I know the following was no act of my imagination. 

The blue hour came and we were both still talking away, that was when I heard it. Behind our lawn chairs set my parents very large rock garden, there were small stepping stones within the rocks they had spent years finding and gathering. Now let me say, footsteps sound much different than in gravel or river rock, these rocks make more of a scrape and tink sound. That was exactly what we heard but it sounded like multiple feet walking all around behind us. We froze, stared at each other, to afraid to turn around looking behind one another, seeing nothing. 

Finally we were able to break our scared trance and run, we ran up the hill to the front of the house, since the back door was locked, slammed through the front door and made a mad dash for my bedroom on the top floor, where we shut the door and just sat for a minuet. 

Neither of us could figure out at all what in the world had just happened, all we knew was that we left the lawn chairs and snacks outside but honestly we didn't care and had no plans on going back out until high noon the following day. 

Once the dust had settled and we were laying on my bed talking about school and other every day things, my friend became startled and buried her head in one of the pillows. It was the strangest behavior and it took me quite a good bit to get her to talk to me. 

When she removed the pillow from her face she was in tears and obviously afraid, this was very out of character for her as she did not normally cry or really even get scared. However she was finally able to tell me that she saw a hand in my bedroom window, slowly wave at her, one finger at a time. 

I immediately looked to the window and saw nothing, so I rushed over and pulled my blinds and then my curtains. Now let me say as well, this was a two story house, we were on the top floor, no one could reach my window without a ladder. 

It had been quite the eventful evening and we had really hoped that our excitement was over, little did we know we would have another similar experience a short time later that same summer.