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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/MJRednour on 2024-10-31 23:01:30+00:00.

My grandfather was a big part of my life. Once every week or so, my parents and I would visit him. In that long wooden shack with the rusted metal roof, he would be waiting for us. While my parents were usually busy talking with my aunt, my grandpa and I would be in his living room. Playing board games and card games that I rarely understood.

But I only spent the night there once, when I was eleven years old.

On an October night that turned out to be a lot colder than anyone expected. I remember this night more than I remember most of the years of my life.

I was sitting next to Grandpa’s basset hound, Chip. We were warming each other up as the sun slowly set behind the trees and under the mountains that dotted the horizon.

Grandpa called me inside before ushering Chip into a small doghouse on his porch. I asked him if he would get cold out here, but Grandpa told me he would be fine.

By the time I had sat on the red cotton couch in his living room, he had already struck a match and thrown it onto the wood in his fireplace. It would eventually grow into a roaring fire that slowly gave light to Grandpa’s face. But without any other light, all I could see from my angle was his dark silhouette.

Usually, by now, Grandpa would have suggested a game for us to play, for me to watch something on TV, or at least made some joke about my Dad.

But right now, he just sat there and stared at the fire.

Suddenly, Grandpa’s arm crashed into my chest. I was pinned against the couch by his arm and as I whipped my head towards him I could see his eyes were wide and he appeared to be reaching for something behind the couch.

But just as suddenly as it had started, his panic ceased and he let out a warm sigh as he sat back against the couch cushions.

“Sorry, Maggie…I thought there…I thought a rat was over there.”

One time, my Dad told me a story about how my aunt found a rat in her bedroom and how Grandpa had teased her and chased her around with it.

I knew grandparents were usually sweeter with their grandkids, but it was still suspicious.

When I pointed this out to him, he seemed to shut down again. He stared into the fire once again. For a while, I did too. Until I heard him mutter something under his breath.

“What?” I asked him.

“I’m asking if you’ve ever seen something that…just didn’t look right? Like…you’re looking at a door. And…you know that there’s something there that wants to…do something bad to you?”

“Sometimes. When it’s real dark and I haven’t slept yet.”

“It doesn’t even have to be dark, you know. Because sometimes they’ll just show up anyway. Things that wait by doors. Things you can’t see or hear or touch. Things that you can only feel. And that if you walk through their door, there will be no other side.”

I looked at the doorway to the room Grandpa and I sat in. I could only see the rusted hinges of the door from where I was sitting. Besides that, the door was wide open. I couldn’t see anything beyond it. But I knew that to the left of that door was the hallway that led to the kitchen and the front door. And going forward would lead you to Grandpa’s bedroom. But to the right of that door, you could only take about four steps before it led you face first into a wall.

I wondered if there were just enough space for something to hide in. Just standing there, waiting to grab you by the neck and drag you into the bottom of the world.

I nodded my head up and down.

“There’s only one way to be sure, you know.” Grandpa told me. “Get out that thing you showed me last week.”

I had showed my Grandpa my new video camera last week. He had looked at it keenly, and I only now knew why. This was before smartphones, so I had been gifted a grey, bulky camcorder to take photos or video with. Grandpa looked at the camcorder closely before telling me a story.

"When I was a kid, I figured it out through paper and pencil. When I was even younger than you are now. Just doodling in math class. I was just dragging my pencil back and forth. And before I knew it, my hand was dragging itself up and down faster and faster. My hand stopped and started at certain points, and by the time it was done I could see what he was trying to tell me.

DON’T WALK HOME. CALL MOM.

I knew it was my older brother. I had never met him, but he had known me for quite some time. Later that day, I asked the teacher to call my Momma to come pick me up. Later that night, my Daddy showed up. And sadly, your great-grandpa was not a good man. He beat Momma, and he would have beat me if she didn’t know how to use a pistol. He sent him away again with the same gun.

I knew that if my brother wasn’t there, he would have taken me."

Grandpa slowly opened the articulating screen on the side of the camcorder and scooted across the couch so that I could see the live image onscreen. Because of the dim light in the room, the screen was pitch black. It felt like another doorway to me.

“I’m not trying to scare you, Maggie. I’m just telling you what to be scared of. And there’s a lot of scary places and people out there. This is a gift we’ve got to get ahead of them. You’re a lot luckier than I was. Now you can see them whenever you want. But you should be careful not to let them see you back. You take too many pictures, Maggie.”

Grandpa didn’t know a lot about technology, but he knew that the red button on top let you take a picture. A bright light lit up an empty doorway, and a wooden rocking chair right next to it.

The picture came on screen. Sure enough, there was nothing but a bright light shining onto an empty chair and a doorway with nothing in it.

I smirked as I looked at Grandpa. This had all been another spooky story. Some odd prank on me.

His eyes were wide as he looked at the screen, and he let out a small gasp. I saw it when I looked back.

The long brown hair sprawled across the seat of the rocking chair, and the pale face it was attached to. She seemed to be a younger woman, maybe just over nineteen. I could see one of her large green eyes and thin eyebrows. The rest of her was out of view, seemingly sprawled across the floor. The only other thing was the tip of the nail of an index finger, painted bright red.

It was pointing up towards the doorway.

“That’s what I thought. Get those blankets off the couch. We’re going to sleep right here.”

I did so, but I couldn’t help but ask him so many questions. Who was that? What was that? What was she pointing to? I don’t think I articulated myself very well in that moment, but I only remembered what he responded to me with.

“Don’t worry about the fire just…lay down close to me. Try to sleep, and if you can’t, act like you are.”

After I wrapped myself in blankets, I lied down on the couch. Grandpa put his finger over his mouth and laid flat on his back on the floor.

My eyes locked onto the ceiling. I didn’t know what was going on, but I knew that my grandfather must have known what he was talking about more than I ever could have.

It seemed as if as soon as I had laid down, Grandpa had fallen asleep.

Now, the only sound I could hear was the slow breathing of my grandfather and the crackle of the flame in his fireplace. My mind was running rampant. I didn’t know what was in my head, what was real, and what was in between.

I imagined something running out from the doorway. Or slowly sneaking past my grandfather and looming over me.

Any small bump could have been it’s footsteps. Any faint shape I saw as my eyes closed could have been it’s arms.

My rapid breathing stopped as I heard the crackle of the nearby fireplace stop. The fire glowed brightly before disappearing altogether.

My eyes closed, not that the view from under my eyelids was anything different from when I opened them.

They were shut as tight as I could when I heard it. The small groan of whatever was waiting for me. A licking of lips. The gnashing of teeth. And then silence.

I told myself it was just Chip. He had snuck in to get away from the cold. My soul knew that it was a lie. It waited for me. And it only needed me to see it for me to be seen.

My eyes shot open to the morning light in my window. My eyes ran down to the camcorder below, and I sat up straight away as I remembered the previous night as something more than a nightmare. I panicked as I realized Grandpa wasn’t lying next to me.

Thankfully, he was sitting across from me. He was looking down at the rocking chair he sat on before he looked to me and smiled. I noticed he had a pencil in one hand, and a notebook in the other.

“I was waiting for you to wake up before I showed you this. A quicker way to know for sure.”

He began to quickly move the pencil across the paper, sketching many little lines across the paper. When he was done, he showed it to me. It was just a vague black shape.

“It’s gone. Must have gotten bored and trotted back down.”

“W-will it come back?”

“Not unless you want it to.”

The rest of the day was more of the same. A few board games before my parents picked me up. Not a word about last night obviously, not as if they would believe either of us.

Instead, me and my Mom looked at old scrapbooks that she wanted to take back to our house. There, I saw the brown-haired woman again. She was sitting next to my grandfather, holding my mother as a baby.

I’ve seen a lot more since then. There are more photos than ever now to see through. In the background of an Instagram post, a sever…

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