Welcome to Creepypasta and True Scary Stories
I am your host Spooky Boo. Today I have for you horror stories from the bathroom. No, this isn’t your typical bathroom horror story where someone overflows the john and stinks up the neighborhood. No! These are stories about horrifying stall monsters and bathtub body doubles. First, I’d like to invite you to listen to the horror stories that I write at my other podcast Spooky Boo’s Scary Story Time. Visit www.scarystorytime.com for more information. You may also subscribe to my podcasts commercial-free by joining the Spooky Boo Club at www.spookyboo.club.
On Saturday nights I’ll be chatting in the Creature Features chat room on YouTube. You can join my friends and I while we watch the dashing horror host Vincent Van Dahl interview fun guests and we chat about the horror movie of the week. For more information visit the website at www.creaturefeatures.tv.
Now let’s begin…
Bathroom Stalls
What started as me being cautious whenever I went to use the bathroom turned into me being scared out of my mind. What I mean about being cautious is, I enjoy watching gruesome horror movies to see if I would get frightened. I started doing this when I was a child; I could remember watching “Jeepers Creepers” along with other older movies. They never seemed to scare me much after watching them; I was just as entertained as a kid watching cartoons. I’m telling you this because it explains me being cautious when sitting in the bathroom alone and vulnerable, with my pants or skirt around my ankles, a book or tablet in my lap, doing what people do when they use the bathroom.
When I was younger, (and believe me I was embarrassed about doing this) I used to open up the curtain for the shower; checking to see if someone was behind there or keeping the door unlocked and ajar. At school I would flush the toilet, quickly wash my hands and run out of the bathroom. All this is terrifying, right? No; at the time I felt ridiculous about being scared to be vulnerable in the bathroom. What is the worst that could happen? I fall in the toilet and someone flushes me down, getting devoured by sewer alligators, never to be seen again? Of course that wasn’t my fear. My fear consisted of someone watching me, waiting to catch my in my most vulnerable place and murder me, but not by flushing me down the damn toilet.
When I got a little older, I stopped running out of the bathroom. Instead, I’d take my sweet time, daring the thing watching me to come out. I’d look under the stalls checking if the person next to me is actually a person next to me. I was always proven wrong. However, I stopped being afraid at home. I would only feel a chill go down my spine whenever I was alone inside of a public restroom. I’m rambling on, aren’t I? I’m not going to try to justify my fear any longer, I’ll get to the point.
I never did tell a soul about what happened to me. I knew they would write it off as a hallucination or simply a trick of the mind. One evening when I was at the office, I felt the urge to use the bathroom; I always try to avoid using public bathrooms, not because of my silly fear but because they are quite unsanitary. Now, I usually tell one of my fellow employees that I’ll be away from my desk for a few minutes. I stretched my legs and arms, working out the tight muscles and looked around the cubicles near mine. Not a single soul. It wasn’t strange to me or anything like that, I knew there were meetings all this week. I wasn’t going to bother with walking down the aisles, looking for someone just to tell them I’d be in the bathroom. I grabbed my kindle fire and headed that way.
I walked into the bathroom and quickly glanced in the mirror to see if there was any reflections of feet under any of the stalls. None. I swallowed and made my way to the last stall. ‘You’re an adult’ I think. ‘You shouldn’t be scared to use the bathroom alone, grow up!’. I sit on the toilet seat, make myself comfortable, flip my kindle fire on, and start reading. As I’m doing my business, I feel butterflies flutter in my stomach. I try my hardest to convince myself I’m too wrapped up in the book to notice the feeling, but fail. I stare at the door to the stall and then close my eyes tightly. I feel my pulse quicken. I take shallow breaths trying to calm myself after a minute I finally manage to get my heart to return to a steady pace.
I let out a sigh of relief and continue reading, out of the corner of my eye I see a shadow. You didn’t see a shadow; there is absolutely no one in here. A cool wind seems to blow through the vents, I shake; must be the AC kicking on. SMACK! I jump at the sound; it sounded like the toilet seats lid beside me. I bite the inside of my cheek, debating on whether or not I should peek under the stall. Afraid someone would catch me and claim I’m a peeping tom; I gather my long hair into my hand and slowly lower my chest to my thighs to see under the next stall.
My eyes are just barely making out the bottom of the toilet; I quickly lowered my head and peeked… Nothing. I let out a long breath. I sat up straight and yawned; as soon as I got comfortable again I continued reading my book.
I checked my wrist watch to see how long I’ve been inside of the bathroom; not too long. Just as I’m turning my wrist back to face the side of the stall wall beside me, I catch a reflection in the glass; I see a large pair of bare feet. That’s not a pair of women’s feet. The pair of feet are wide, they’re hairy also, but not like a man’s foot, not even like a human’s foot. Not similar to anything I’ve seen before. The thing’s toenails are long, ridged and yellow; as if they have never been trimmed or washed. The hair follows up the things ankles and most likely up farther.
I catch a scream in my throat and cover my hands quickly over my mouth; afraid that startling the thing would anger it. By doing this I drop my kindle fire in a loud; THUD! It echoes throughout the restroom. I squeeze my eyes shut; praying to God to keep me safe.
Minutes seem to drag by; maybe even hours, before I finally open my eyes. I check the floor to see if the kindle is still there; it’s perfectly fine, there are no cracks in the screen and there’s no plastic shattered. I use my watch to look under the stall this time… I see… Nothing. I snatch my kindle from the floor without hesitating. “This must be my mind playing tricks on me.” I mumble to myself. Yes, just my mind play a cruel prank on me. Very funny. Ha ha.
As I press the power button on my kindle fire, I feel a sudden feeling as though someone is watching me. I frown at the thought; almost sweating from the feeling. I feel like there’s a dark shadow over me. Don’t look up, do not look up. I repeat this sentence in my head a few ties. Don’t look up, do not look up! Daring myself and trying to fight my fears; I force my head up. I gasp at the sight; there’s long black, cracked nails attached to a hairy hand. The nails are digging into the metal, denting it. I don’t dare look farther up; I quickly yank my pants up, grab my kindle and blot out of the bathroom. I never will use that office bathroom again, after what happened.
College Bathrooms
My college is pretty creepy at night. I suppose the same could be said of most sizable public buildings, a by-product of the eerie contrast between the bustling well-lit corridors and their nocturnal desolate appearance. Be that as it may, I would still argue that the building in case goes past this simple dissonant clash of habit meeting familiar unfamiliarity.
The building where I have classes until ten twice a week shuts off most lights in the second floor by eight o’clock, as most classrooms up there are not being used past that time. I suppose this is an opportunity for the personnel to start closing up as soon as possible. In fact, the personnel are so eager to close up that one time our class was actually locked inside the building. We had stayed past our scheduled time trying to get through presentations that were taking far too long, only to find the front door locked. The entire class, Professor included, ended up leaving through a low window. That event wasn’t scary though, just amusing.
What scares me is the unlit second floor. I think it didn’t use to feel scary per se – possibly just a bit eerie – but now I can’t possibly go there at night time.
The college’s buildings are enormous. It’s a really old University, and they took their classical inspirations a little too far. The halls are at least 20 feet high, and one can’t help but feel dwarfed by the scale, especially when walking through them while they’re empty. It’s truly a grand waste of space, but it now just adds to the creepiness of it all.
I am aware of the range of possible explanations for the events I am about to recall. Trust me, I’ve taken shelter under their comforting embrace for far longer than anyone else. Even so, I can’t help but feel that spreading my experiences might help someone else out there in the future.
Class ended early that day. After an entire day of classes, all I wanted to do was head home, but I still had a 45 minute commute, and my physiological needs weren’t going to wait that long without putting me through severe discomfort. I chose to go to the second floor bathrooms, as I usually did at that time. I am not particularly fond of public bathrooms, out of hygienic considerations, so choosing the second floor bathrooms that had already been cleaned for the day was a matter of course.
The bathrooms in that building have motion sensors. I honestly hate those. There’s something truly unpleasant about the lights suddenly going out, while you’re doing your business. You will then have to wave your arm around, until the damn sensor detects movement – or enjoy defecating in the dark, whichever you prefer. It’s annoying, especially when you have the need to stay for a bit longer due to an upset stomach.
It was just this type of scenario that day. I went up there, marveled in the usual eeriness of the empty hall, and went in the bathroom. It was empty, as usual. Sitting on the toilet, I allowed myself to sigh deeply, and enjoyed the odd catharsis that comes from a moment of rest after a stressful day, mixed with the relief of attending to overdue physiological needs.
The lights went out. A few cusses and waves later, they returned. A short time later, they went out again. I stretched my arm, and waved, but the lights didn’t turn back on. Damn sensors, I thought. I stretched my arm further, and even got slightly up from the toilet, to try to activate the sensor. Reaching up into the darkness, my arm hit something. It couldn’t be the wall, my arm was stretched towards the door, and it couldn’t be the door either, because the stall was pretty big. Besides this bit of logic, the feeling certainly wasn’t that of a door or a wall either. It felt warm and damp, perhaps even slightly slimy. I could also feel rough points in between that felt oddly sharp. The feeling was also shifting around, letting me know that whatever I touched had movement. I felt the slimy warmness wiggle around my arm, as if I had been licked by it. I staggered backwards and fell besides the toilet, ignoring the pain, and reaching frantically for my phone for a light source. The phone was in my jeans’ pocket and the panic wasn’t letting me retrieve it with as much speed as I wished. I felt something touch my legs, spreading throughout, and screamed. I used my left hand to swipe at it, but it was no use, as the feeling of it enveloping my arm overtook me once more.
The phone was finally out and with the click of a button light streamed back into the stall. I heard something that I couldn’t identify, and I was showered in the light of the bathroom. On the verge of a panic attack, I looked at my arms and saw what looked like a rash stretching from about my wrist to my elbow, they also felt damp. I hurried out of the bathroom as soon as possible, storming to the door to the left of the stall. I bet I looked like a mad man, half-crying and running for the front door. I’m just thankful I didn’t run into anyone I knew.
The rash-looking redness that covered my arms disappeared shortly after.
Retrospective is a bitch sometimes. I showered myself in excuses and logical explanations to wipe away what I conceived of as irrational fear. Even so, retrospective keyed me into a rather upsetting detail, something I couldn’t possibly have taken into consideration while panicking. The single light bulb that illuminates the stall did not glow uniformly and at once. I started seeing the light from the light bulb from left to right. I have been to that bathroom plenty of times, those lights come on at once. Whatever I felt in the dark had been covering the light source physically, it stood in its way to keep me in the dark. When I turned on the phone, it fled, from left to right, allowing the light that had never been off to shine over the stall. Whatever I felt in the dark was probably still standing in the bathroom, to my right, as I exited. It probably watched me as I ran for the door.
I don’t go to the unlit sections of that campus any more, and whenever I use a bathroom with light sensors, I make sure to keep my phone at hand. I suggest you do the same.
4th Floor Hotel Bathroom
It was on the 4th floor of a hotel room when everything unraveled. A man walked in the hotel after what seemed like days of traveling on the road. The receptionist looked at the man as if he was sick. To be honest, he did look like he was sick.
He asked if he could stay for about three nights, after explaining the events that happened. He told the receptionist how he had traveled from some country for the last couple of days on a business trip. It was the last hotel he would ever stay at.
The receptionist at the front desk listened intently to the man’s story with awkward delight. When he was finished, he asked the woman for his key and the amount it would cost him to stay there. She said it would cost him a mere $30 to stay the three days and eagerly gave the man the key.
She said that there was only one room left in the hotel, and that it was on the 4th floor, only three doors from the stairs to the left, six from the right. Before he departed for his room, the lady leaned over the desk and whispered something in his ear. I couldn’t make out any words, but after she was done, I heard him. He had a voice that could soothe someone.
He seemed nice, too. Kind and polite, thanking the woman twice before he proceeded to his room.
Later that night, I heard the most blood-curdling scream coming from two floors up. It sounded like that same man again. He ran down the stairs yelling for the receptionist, but to no avail. She had retired to sleep as well. And with no one there, I couldn’t help but awaken out of bed and follow the man.
I watched him run, nearly tumbling over himself. Scrambling for the front door like a madman. I followed him outside into the cold and over to where he stood, horrifyingly frightened over the events that had happened. I asked him in a sort of frantic tone, “What happened?!” He explained everything to me.
He told me that when he went to go to the bathroom that same day, a misty image of a creature from a nightmare came inching toward him from the mirror. He quickly dismissed it as, “Just my imagination.” He told me that it wasn’t until tonight he had truly got a good look at it. He told me it was smiling. Not just smiling, but almost as if the corners of the thing’s mouth encircled its entire head. And his teeth, how much he detailed the teeth.
The man described the teeth as having a ghostlike appearance, but they were bloodstained, razor sharp and pointed. The man told me that the thing’s teeth looked like they were almost decayed, and how some of them seemed to puncture through the creature’s lips. Then he described its eyes. I froze when he told me that its eyes were a red-purple color. They looked like empty voids into the nothing where someone could get trapped in.
He asked if I had seen this… this thing. I told him that I didn’t see the creature of which he mentioned. The man then went on to describe its skin. How it was a deep green-gray, falling off to show bone, and a head that had bald spots, and looked like it had been cut. The hair he described looked like it was cut from a razor, but cut so close to some places, it seemed to rip itself from the head.
The hair, he said, looked like it, as well, was decaying. The scream he told me it let out was eerily maniacal. He described the sound as, “A scream of a witch and a zombie with a tinge of suicidal rampancy.” He told me that it just stood there at his door, glaring at him, then pointed a broken finger at him. A finger whose flesh seemed like it was melted away. He also mentioned that it had a ghostly trail behind it. A black, ghostly trail that looked like it was swaying, like it had a mind of its own. He told me that the trail slowly crawled towards him and the thing was suddenly in his face the moment he blinked his eyes.
He asked again how I could not have seen such a nightmare. I, again, told him I had not. That no one had ever seen anything like that. After a couple hours trying to convince the man that he was just hallucinating, he wearily walked with me to his room.
The next morning, I went to his room to see if he was alright, and found that it looked like it was kicked in. Deep scratches lined the door like a raptor’s claws. It had a weird symbol on it but I shrugged it off thinking that someone had burglarized this part of the hotel. I walked in slowly and looked around. The room looked like a tornado ran through it. Torn clothes, broken pictures and vases littered the floor. The floor was ripped up, and the mattress was in a heap. Deeper claw marks lined the mattress. Holes in the walls as well as scratch lines. And again, there were more odd carvings, like something of demonic nature.
It wasn’t until I noticed a large pool of blood in the middle of the room and followed it. The eerie blood lines led to the 4th floor’s bathroom. What I saw, I couldn’t comprehend. There he was, laying in inhuman ways in the bathroom shower. His arms and legs were seemingly nailed to the walls by boney nails. His head was on a torn-out part of the wall with a sharp end shoved right through.
He had no eyes. They’d been ripped from their sockets, as well as the rest of his body parts. His torso was in the tub, bathing in the owner’s own blood. The smell of it was enough to make me want to gag and throw up. What I saw on the mirror haunts me to this day. It read, “I have claimed yet another victim,” in the man’s own blood.
I never went back to that hotel ever again and to this day, I will never enter the 4th floor of any hotel for fear of this creature lurking in my shadow, waiting for me to make the same mistake that poor man had. And I tell you, who are reading this, never venture past the 3rd floor of any hotel. Especially the bathroom. For all we know, this thing could be lurking in the smallest shadow, waiting. Watching. Hoping for you to let your guard down, then tearing you apart and hanging you like ornaments.
The Bathroom Game
I enjoy taking baths, soaking in the warm, bubbly water and washing away all the stresses of the day. I have this bad habit of taking around 3 baths a day, not just to get washed, but just to have some ‘me’ time. I normally take a bath around midnight,just before going to bed. It had become some sort of a routine. It just relaxes me before going to sleep. Sometimes, I fall asleep in the bathtub, comforted by the feel of the warm water.
The night it happened, I had just awoken from a short snooze in the bathtub. The water had turned slightly cold and I shivered as the bathroom heater turned off, plunging the room into an icy coldness. Rubbing my arms, trying to warm myself up, I almost screamed as I heard a deep, gruff voice from underneath me. “Do you wanna play a game?”
Now, I live alone, so imagine my shock when I hear a voice coming from underneath me, from the pipes. I was temporarily paralysed in fear, but I soon got over myself and decided that the voice was my imagination playing tricks with me, it was half one in the morning after all and I was tired. A few seconds passed and nothing happened. Relieved, I sighed and laid back into the bathtub. My relaxation didn’t last long, as I was once again awoken by that voice; “Do you wanna play a game?”
My brain screamed at me to get out of the bathtub right now, but my body was once again paralysed in fear. Although I was frightened to hell and back, I was also intrigued.
“What game is it” I asked, my voice shaking. A few seconds passed before the voice replied, “A fun game. Very fun.” The silence was deafening afterwards, as my brain processed the reply. The game sounded ominous, I didn’t like how the voice pronounced the “fun” of the game. A minute passed so slowly that it felt like an hour. The voice hadn’t said anything else so I threw out another question, “What’s the game called?” The voice replied instantly, “The game is called the bathroom game. It’s very fun.” The deep voice echoed around the bathroom, bouncing off the tile walls. I thought for a second, before replying, “How do you play it?”. Once again, the voice replied instantly, it sounded excited this time though, as if it was getting excited at thought of playing the game, which was probably twisted and evil.
The voice replied, “You want to play it?”
“ I don’t know how to though” I responded, terrifying thoughts flying through my mind about what the game could be about. “Don’t worry. Just tell me you want to play the game.” The voice had gotten louder and more commanding.
“Will you play the Bathroom game?”
Worried at what would happen if I declined, I answered, “Sure, why not”
Almost instantaneously, a heard the voice let out a laugh and then say, “ let’s play!”
I gripped the sides of the bathtub, shaking in terror, anticipating what was about to come. “How to play the bathroom game,” the voice began, talking as if he was reading from a set of instructions, “ you must start to let the bath water out and you must get dry and dressed and have left the room before all the bath water has drained down the plug” The voice lapsed into silence. Expecting more, I asked, “is that it? I thought there would be a catch or something “ The voice laughed and said no more.
I wasn’t sure about this, there had to be a catch somewhere. “What happens if I don’t get out of the room in time?” I asked, thinking I had stumbled onto the catch. “Well..” The voice grew quieter, “if you don’t manage to escape before the water drains, you will have every single bone in your body broken, one by one… by me.” The voice laughed another, deep grating laugh, sending a shiver down my spine. I wanted to get out of the room as fast as possible, but that meant I had to play the game. I sighed, and sat up in the freezing water, bracing myself to jump out of the bathtub. The water was full to the brim, so I knew it was going to be easy to get out of the bathroom before the water had drained. Reassuring myself that I could play this stupid game, I let the bath plug out with my foot and then leapt out of the bathtub.
Quickly, I dried myself, getting that tingling feeling at the back of your brain you get when you feel like somebody is watching you. I hardly touched my back when drying myself and I was rewarded with the voice saying, “ no cheating, dry yourself properly.” I gulped and looked at the bathtub, it looked hardly drained. I dried myself properly and got dressed as fast as I could, getting dressed before the bath had drained halfway. I walked to the bathroom door, opened it, turned off the light and stepped onto the landing, glancing back into the darkened bathroom. As I closed the door, the voice rasped, “Good game, huh? We’ll play again next time”.
I played the bathroom game again and again day after day, I didn’t have a choice, really. One night I completely forgot about the game, it had been a bad day after all. I had spilt coffee down my new shirt, my car had been smashed after someone pulled out in front of me and I had lost my phone at work. All I needed was some me time. The bath was only half full, up to my hips, and I wanted just to get in bed and sleep my worries away. I let the bath water out and got dry and dressed slowly. That was my big mistake.
The bath was completely drained in no time, and I was in my own little world. It was when I was putting my socks on that I realised that the bath was drained. Realisation washed over me. I couldn’t believe I had forgotten. On the other hand, I hadn’t heard the voice, so hopefully, it didn’t think that I was playing tonight. My hopes didn’t last long, as I saw a clawed, black hand coming out of the plug hole. It looked impossible, as a long arm and shoulder followed. My heart was pounding in my chest, so hard and so fast, it felt as if my heart wanted to burst out of my chest.
Running to the door, I pulled and tugged in desperation on the door knob. Somehow, the bathroom door was locked, I didn’t even know how, as my bathroom didn’t even have a lock. My breathing got more frantic and faster with every passing second. Eyes widening in fear, I watched as the thing pulled its torso through the plug hole. It’s body was skinny and black and its face was distorted and out of place. It’s eyes were on its forehead and it’s slit-like nose was to the side of its head. All of its facial features were off centre and its mouth dribbled a black gooey slime.
I tugged harder on the door, my heart in my throat. The creature gave one last tug and pulled the rest of its body through. The creature was grotesque and covered in black slime. I noticed that its legs were like a spiders, with 2 spindly legs at either side of its torso. The creature gurgled and spat out some of that black goo on to the bathroom floor. It then spoke in that deep, gravelly voice that had spoken to me for the past few days. “You lost the game. Bad luck.” It smiled revealing row after row of sharp fangs. I screamed at the top of my lungs, almost ripping my vocal cord. I gasped for breath, tugging at the door handle in a mad frenzy of panic and terror.
It crawled towards me, making slow movements, torturing me by taking its time. “I wasn’t playing. That’s not fair. Please. Please, have mercy. I wasn’t playing” I frantically tried to backtrack. The creature laughed. “It doesn’t work like that. Once you play the Bathroom game once, you have to play it for the rest of your life, until you lose.” I let out another scream, my scared animal side of me bursting out. In one last act of desperation, I gave a last tug on the door and to my surprise and relief the door burst open. I rushed out of the house and drove and drove, not even paying attention to where I was driving to.
I stayed at a motel for a week, just outside the town where my office job was. I could hardly sleep as I had vivid nightmares of that creature. I awoke every night to my throat sore from screaming in my sleep and the motel receptionist eventually kicked me out as I was awakening all the other sleepers.
After I had mustered enough courage, I returned to my house. The house was deathly silent. When I entered the bathroom, there were black goo stains all over the floor. I didn’t stay for long.
Not long after, I moved to my parents house whilst I tried to find a new house and put my old one up for sale. I avoided taking baths for a long time, and was rewarded with a constant stench coming from my unwashed body.
Yesterday, I took a bath for the first time in weeks. As I soaked in the warm water, I tried to relax. I’m back to my same old self now in my brand new house. Today, I spent a whole hour in the bathtub, enjoying the warmth, that didn’t last long as my slumber was cut abruptly short by the deep,gravelly voice I had had nightmares about, “Hey you. Yes, you. Do you want to play a game?”
I Didn’t Shower for 21 Years
I have nightmares where I’m trapped in a shower. The drain is plugged, and the water won’t stop pouring down on me. Water rises to my ankles, to my waist, and then over my head. The shower curtain turns to glass, and my screams turn to gargles. A dark figure presses its face against the glass on the other side, and it watches me. I plead, but it won’t let let me out. I swallow water and flail helplessly in my glass coffin.
I wake up gagging.
I know where the nightmare came from – I never have to dig deep. The incident is never far from my subconscious. Finding it is easy.
Getting over it is not.
It was the summer of my 12th birthday when the Hudsons moved in across the street. Three people, one of them a really old woman. She was tiny, frail, skeletal almost. Thin white hair, faded blue flowery dress – her head hung from her neck, and it wobbled as the man pushed her up a makeshift wheelchair ramp into the house. At the time, I couldn’t figure out if she was dead or alive.
A few minutes later, she appeared in an upstairs window, sitting in her wheelchair. She was directly facing my bedroom, and I cautiously peered out from behind my curtains. Her head was upright now, and she stared at me. Just stared, without moving her head an inch.
I closed my drapes.
For days, she sat at the window. She watched the cars putter down our suburban road and gaze at the neighborhood kids scurrying through their yards. I never saw anyone else in the room; never saw her move from the wheelchair. At night, I’d nervously peek through the crack in my drapes. Her silhouette was still at the window, lights off, staring out into the darkness at my bedroom. I couldn’t tell, but I knew she was watching me.
The stories about her cropped up pretty quick amongst my friends in the neighborhood. That she was a witch. That she was just a doll. That she was actually dead. But I knew she wasn’t dead. Sure, I never saw her move from that window, not once. And I never saw her head turn. But I felt her eyes move as the studied me. I could feel her watching me. All alone in my bedroom, in the middle of the night with my drapes firmly shut, I’d wake up and shudder. Her eyes were on me, I just knew it.
I began sleeping on the floor. The lower I was, the better. Maybe she couldn’t see me if I was on the floor.
I told my parents that the old woman across the street was creeping me out. I pleaded with them to talk to the Hudsons and ask them to move her to a room without a window. They laughed and told me to let her live out her twilight years in peace. She was just watching the street, they said, and that probably made her feel happy and feel younger.
“Are you just going to stick me in a windowless room when I’m an old lady?” my mom laughed. “remind me to move in with your sister when I’m in a wheelchair!”
A week later, there was some commotion at the Hudsons. I watched from my bedroom window as the man ran out of the house and opened up the double doors of his van. He jogged inside, and he reappeared minutes later pushing the old woman in her wheelchair down the ramp. She looked frailer than before. She couldn’t have weighed more than seventy pounds. Her head was flung to the side, resting on her right shoulder. Her body jostled in the wheelchair.
But her eyes never left me. She watched me the whole time.
The man picked her up and placed her in the car. He folded the wheelchair and stuffed it in the trunk. He quickly hopped into the driver’s seat, the younger woman pounced into the passenger seat, and the man put his foot to the pedal.
The old woman’s limp head still faced me. it bobbed up and down as the van reversed down the driveway. I studied her face. It was expressionless, emotionless. Her tongue slightly hung from the right side of her mouth. But her eyes were on mine, and they stayed on me.
The van accelerated down the street, and it was gone.
My parents heard the news that afternoon from the other neighbors: the old woman’s condition was getting worse, and the Hudsons had taken her to some sort of a home. She wouldn’t be coming back. I went straight to my bedroom, and I looked across the street. I smiled. Her window was finally empty.
The Hudsons didn’t come back the next day. No van. That night, I looked out towards the old woman’s window There was no one there, no wheelchair. But the bedroom light was on. I remember telling my dad I thought it was strange, and he just shrugged and said, “Must be on some sort of timer or something.”
I woke up in the middle of the night and nervously peered out my bedroom window. That bedroom light was still on. It suddenly flicked off, and I ducked below my window frame. I slowly rose and looked out, expecting to see the silhouette of that tiny, skeletal being. I watched for ten minutes, pinching and straining my eyes. The lights quickly flickered on and then off again.
I slept on the floor again, clutching my pillow close.
I had a late baseball practice the next evening. When I got home, my house was empty. My parents were at my little sister’s softball game. I headed to the shower to rinse off.
About three minutes into my shower, I felt cold. The hot steam was escaping the bathroom somehow, which didn’t make sense because I had shut the door. I wiped the shampoo from my eyes, turned my head, and I heard a strange noise that would haunt me in nightmares for years: the metal rings of the shower curtain being dragged across the shower rod. Someone was slowly opening the curtain.
The shampoo stung my eyes, and through the stinging, I saw a dark figure behind the curtain. Long, pale, bony fingers gripped the curtain as it slowly opened, I instinctively backed up in the shower, and the curtain opened completely.
There stood the old woman. I must have only looked at her for one, maybe two seconds, but at that moment, time stood still. All these years later, I can still draw you a vivid picture of the horrifying image in front of me. Disheveled white hair, crazy in her eyes, bones jutting out from under her stretched skin, stark naked. Blotchy skin, warts all over her body, skinny breasts hanging to her waist. Hair where I didn’t know people could grow hair.
She smiled grotesquely, and I felt the shower tile against my back and the hot water pound my face. In her other hand, the old woman held a letter opener.
“August,” she mumbled. “August, August, August.”
I leapt past her, knocking her tiny body to the floor. I ran downstairs, naked and sopping wet. In my panic, I somehow remembered I was nude, and I yanked a pair of shorts out from the hamper in the laundry room, sending the hamper crashing to the floor. I high-tailed it on foot down the street, eventually winding up at my friend’s house.
When the police arrived, they found the old woman, crumpled to a heap in the bathroom. The shower was still running. The policemen were all really nice to me, admiring me for my bravery. I told them what she said to me – “August” – and asked if they knew what she could have meant.
“It will be August in a few days,” one of them shrugged, “And you can never fully understand old and crazy, son.”
The Hudsons only came to our street once more to retrieve their stuff. The “For Sale” sign was up in days. My mom told me they couldn’t face their neighbors for what happened. Apparently, they had taken the old woman – the man’s mother – to a special home downstate. Somehow, someway, the woman managed to escape the home and catch a bus back to our town. It never quite made sense to me – she was so old, so frail, so helpless. She could barely move those weeks she lived in that house. How had she managed to travel hundred of miles on her own?
Anyway, you can imagine what this did to me. I didn’t shower for 21 years. I took baths, which I suppose aren’t that different. It’s still a tub, and it involves hot, soapy water. But a shower, with it’s closed curtain, water peppering the tub floor and steam climbing the walls, you get lost inside your own head in the shower. Thoughts consume you, and it feels so utterly safe. For a few minutes, you are alone from the world. It’s your own private, misty kingdom.
But that’s what makes the shower dangerous. You’re enclosed, vulnerable, naked.
You’re exposed.
I talked to people about it. My parents, a shrink, but mainly, I tried to push the incident deep down into places where I couldn’t find it. I didn’t talk about it with anyone since I was a kid – life carried on. Besides the baths, I was pretty normal.
A few months ago, something inside me clicked. I felt the urge to re-examine the incident, it was almost like a voice in my head was telling me to do it. My head wanted closure.
I spent hours online one night, trying to track down any information on the Hudsons and the old woman. I finally found out what I was looking for – an obituary for the old woman. She had died four years ago. Somehow, that walking skeleton hadn’t checked out for another 15 years. The obituary photo was a black-and-white picture from when she was a young woman. It was a photo of her and her deceased husband on their wedding day.
His name was August.
And he looked exactly like me.
I closed the browser and stared at my computer desktop for ten minutes. It finally made more sense, why she called me August. Why she was obsessed with watching me. Maybe she used to write letters to her husband, and that’s why she was clutching the letter opener that night.
For a small moment, I felt a little better. Things always feel better when they make more sense.
“Honey, is everything okay?” It was my wife.
“I think so,” I said.
I took the first shower I had taken in years that night. I didn’t even jump when the curtain rungs dragged across the shower rod, and my wife entered. But as she embraced me under the hot water, one question wouldn’t leave my head:
How come the young woman in that wedding picture looks exactly like my wife?
