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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Yearbook01 on 2024-10-03 04:53:17+00:00.
I’ve been struggling with the decision of whether or not to share these stories. My therapist has encouraged me to write them down and try to piece together why I am the way I am. The sleepless nights, the constant panic attacks, the plethora of medications I’ve been prescribed in order to gain some semblance of normalcy. My therapist keeps hinting that my story is that of a bored teenager’s imagination, coupled with depression and anxiety in order to explain why I was so skittish and afraid of life. I know better than that.
My parents were told I needed medication, but they refused. They dismissed it all as “mental health mumbo-jumbo,” and getting them to let me see a therapist felt like pulling teeth. Instead, they sent me to live with my grandparents on their farm for the summer, insisting it would be good for me to escape the city and immerse myself in the countryside. They claimed the fresh air would help me relax and forget my angsty teenage problems. But they were wrong. At first, I was reluctant to leave home, but part of me was relieved to escape. Dad’s alcoholism had settled into a steady routine, no doubt exacerbated by whatever haunted him out in those fields of golden wheat. Growing up there couldn’t have been easy on him, and just my few short summers spent on that farm had been enough to leave a mark on my soul. The oppressive weight of the past loomed over me, a shadow that whispered of memories I wasn’t ready to confront, memories that would haunt me long after I returned home.
–Thirteen Years Old, First Summer–
The first summer I went down, I was thirteen years old. The farmhouse was located on the corner of Nowhere and Nothing. There was nothing else for miles around, not even a town or a gas station. It was the kind of place you could easily miss if you blinked. But if you happened to drive past at just the right moment, you might catch a glimpse of the house and wonder what kind of person would live in such a remote part of the country side. Though, it would be a stroke of luck if you managed to find your way to their house, the winding dirt roads stretched on and on endlessly, the turns having no rhyme or reason to them.
Grandma kept a surprisingly clean house, the paint a perfect shade of yellowish white, the shutters a forest green. The roof was tin- more hardy in the hail storms that plagued the Midwest, and was the same color as the shutters. The house overlooked a beautifully upkept garden, full of all the vegetables we were able to grow out there. The moment you stepped out of the car, you could feel the old bur oak trees watching you stretch out your sore limbs. The ancient cottonwood trees releasing sheets of their snowy seeds blanketed some of the area. The dirt road leading up was a straight shot to the house- the unbelievably flat plains looked like something out of a painting. You could look out for miles on a good day and not see a damn thing other than the sprawling grasslands. Sounds great for the growing mind of a teenager, right?
The house was an old school house, built in the 1800’s. You could even see the scorch marks in the old hardwood flooring from the stove used to heat the school house. It took years and years of renovations and additions for it to be the house that stood today- the pink carpeting in the bedrooms was left over from the 80’s, the walls were that sensory nightmare stucco type. The house, much like my family, had character and quirks. My bedroom for the summer even had a sliding glass door that lead to the wrap around porch. I would have enjoyed it had it not been for the fact it had no curtains, and I was terrified of the dark.
The chores were simple. Weed the garden, feed the animals, make lunch for grandpa who was out in the fields on his tractor doing who knows what. Clean the house up after lunch, stay inside where it was cooler until supper time. Make dinner. Rinse and repeat. I liked to collect eggs from the chickens first thing in the morning and check again before making dinner.
When I say that the farm is dark at night, I mean it is dark. There’s no light pollution to be seen, and I absolutely adored looking up at the stars before turning in for the night. You could see the Milky Way with such clarity it was mesmerizing. You could see the wispy clusters of galaxies far away, and imagine what it would be like to be up there amongst the stars.
My first night at my grandparents’ farm was uneventful, or so I thought at the time. The old farmhouse was settling, which explained the creaking floorboards that occurred at all hours of the night. I also heard scratching sounds, which I attributed to raccoons that had taken refuge in the cool shelter of the house. But then, at around 4 in the morning, I was awakened by a loud bang. I laid in bed, trying to figure out what had caused the noise. The darkness beyond the sliding glass door was absolute, swallowing the night with a suffocating blackness. The weak light from my room only seemed to make it worse, casting reflections against the glass that distorted my view. But I could feel it, something was out there. Watching me. Its gaze felt cold, like icy fingers trailing over my skin, but no matter how hard I stared into the void, I saw nothing. Just endless, formless dark. My breath hitched as a primal dread crept over me, the kind that told you to run, even if you didn’t know from what. I couldn’t see it, but I could sense it, lingering just beyond the glass, hidden in the night. Its presence was oppressive, waiting in the shadows, silent… unmoving. Something was there, just out of sight.
The next night, I was too tired to even try to give a damn about any noises. I’m sure my brain was playing some type of trick on me. I was sleeping in a new environment and I wasn’t used to any of it so my brain was just trying to fill in the gaps.
I had been in a deep, dreamless sleep, completely drained from the day’s backbreaking chores, when a sudden crash above my head yanked me into consciousness. It sounded like something heavy had slammed onto the roof directly overhead. My heart raced as I bolted upright in bed, listening, every nerve on edge. Silence followed- unnatural, suffocating silence. I waited, barely breathing, but the noise didn’t return. Minutes passed, though they felt like hours, and my exhaustion eventually overpowered the fear. I sank back into the sheets, unwillingly slipping back into sleep.
Morning came, but with it, no relief. The sunlight felt wrong as it streamed into my room. Groggy, I shuffled toward the sliding glass doors, but then stopped cold. Two handprints, smeared and filthy, were pressed into the glass. They weren’t just dirty… They were dark, thick with grime, as if something foul had touched them. Downy chicken feathers clung to the muck, their presence as out of place as the handprints themselves.
And then I realized they were upside down, high up on the glass, almost seven feet off the ground. My skin crawled as the realization hit: whatever had made those prints had been hanging from the roof, looking down at me while I slept. Watching. “Probably just a bird that flew into the window honey, nothing to worry about.” my grandmother explained away.
The chicken coop was my first stop in the morning. I said hello to the chickens like I normally did, thanking them for their service. There was one chicken, Annie Yolkly, that hardly ever left her little roost. She was a cute little golden brown hen, and she was as sweet as pie. When I tried to reach under her and grab her eggs, she pecked at my hand. That had been the first time she had ever done that. “What’s the matter girl? Did I come in too fast?” I had asked. I reached again slower this time, thinking that perhaps I had startled her. She pecked again, wilder this time, fluffing out her feathers in warning. I ended up grabbing her and placing her beside the roost, unearthing the secret she hid.
Her eggs had rotted, the stench of sulfur seeping from the roost like poison. The shells, once white and smooth, had turned black and brittle, splitting open as if something had clawed its way out. But that was impossible. I had checked her eggs twice a day, no eggs were supposed to be left. My stomach lurched as I stumbled out of the coop, choking on the rancid air that clung to my throat. Even outside, under the wide-open sky, the smell wouldn’t leave me. It buried itself in my senses, a foul presence that lingered long after, like something was still with me… watching.
What haunted me most about that farm was the unshakable feeling of being watched. No matter what I was doing or who I was with, instinct stirred deep within me, whispering that I was never truly alone. It didn’t matter if I was tending to the chickens or wandering through the garden; that gnawing sensation followed me like a shadow. Sometimes, I would catch myself glancing over my shoulder, half expecting to see a figure lurking just out of sight, hidden among the trees. The air was thick with an unsettling stillness, and every creak of the old house felt like a reminder that something was always watching, waiting for the moment when I would let my guard down completely.
The next few days went by as fine as they could. Grandma wouldn’t acknowledge anything was wrong, but I did get a stern talking to about leaving eggs to rot outside. It was the final night of the first week down on the farm. Tossing and turning it was unbearably hot inside, and even thoug…
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