“What does this look like,” I asked the crowd of the three blank faced teenage girls in front of me. I held my flashlight between my legs as I made a bunny shaped figure out of my hands and held it up to the wall. They all glared at me as I started moving the figure back and forth tempting to make it hop.

“Uh, a Rabbit,” stated the girl closest to me. Her name was Kaitlin, my daughter, Nicky’s, closest friend. She was a very sweet young lady. She always was very proper and never did anything bad.
“Uh, Mrs. Nicky? Ya, could you like not do that. I know you’re trying to help with the situation of the power being out, and you probably think because we are all stuck in this bathroom due to the tornado that you should try to entertain us but could you not?”

“Ya mom,” said Nicky who was right next to her best friend, “could you? You’re kind of embarrassing me.” She looked at me with one of her evil looks. It was dark, but I could tell her cheeks were burning. Bunny figures, good idea mom! Every teenager loves to watch their mom make bunny figures!

“How about some scary stories,” asked Nicky’s other friend who sat on the far side of her. I had forgotten her name but somehow her face seemed familiar, probably from school or something. No one seemed to notice her as she spoke, thunder crackled from the heavens.

“Alright we’ll do scary stories. So let’s see…” I paused as I took the flashlight out from between my legs and up to my face. Everyone looked me like what I might say may actually be creepy. Like a stay at home mother would know any frightening things! I looked at the ceiling for an answer, nothing.

“Earth to mom,” Nicky said angrily while waving her hands in front of me, “say something! We are waiting here!”

Just then the wind picked up. I could hear the trees knocking on the windows from the bedrooms wanting to come in. Suddenly a huge streak of lightning illuminated the room. Shortly after the loudest crack of thunder I ever heard in my life. It made us all jump. My heart started to race as I feared for the worst. Like magic, the adrenaline rush made me remember the story my grandmother told. I looked at the shocked from the storm teenagers and smiled.

“Alright girls, I’ll tell you a story,” I said lowering my voice. “This one my grandmother told me a long time ago. I can’t believe I remember it, but here it is. I’ll warn you though; she was a very straight forward woman. She never joked around in her life. If she said this was real, I believe this is real.”

I looked down at my sweaty hands. I couldn’t believe I was telling the girls this. I blocked it out of my mind for this very reason. I don’t know what came over me, but I started telling the story anyway.

“A long time ago, in the year nineteen thirty-five, my grandmother moved out to Tennessee with her folks. She was about your age. Anyways, they were very poor. So, of course, at that time it wasn’t a law that you had to go to school. So she stayed home and helped her mom around the house and with the other kids. Well, she started to get very lonely not being able to see other people her age, and the only person she knew was a girl named Esmeralda.”

“Mom,” muttered Nicky, “I thought you told me all of Great-Grandma’s stories.” I ignored her.

“Esmeralda wasn’t a normal kid. No one had ever seen her. Some even said that she was a ghost. Well one day out of pure boredom, my grandmother walked over to her house. She heard rumors that a girl her age was living there and I suppose she just wanted to check it out. However, when she got there something weird happened. She knocked on the door. No one answered. Just as she put her hand up to knock a second time, the door mysteriously opened.

Like any other hard headed teenager she walked in. The whole house was filled with cobwebs. Everything looked dark and old, all grey and bleak. The old furniture was covered with white sheets. It looked as if no one had been living there for centuries. ‘Hello,’ she asked timidly waiting for a reply although she was pretty sure no one would. She jumped as she heard an ‘I’m up here,’ from upstairs. She quickly walked up the old steps, it creaking with every move she made. As she got to the top step, she looked around. Everything seemed the same as downstairs, except the third door on the right. That door was freshly painted with a cloudy white color with a gorgeous rose pattern. Grandma had never seen anything so neatly painted.

Curiously and with the upmost caution, she walked in. This room seemed so lifeless compared to the rest of the house. It looked exactly like an occupied bedroom. Clothes were thrown this way and that. There was a desk and an unmade bed. It was so odd she didn’t seem to notice the girl sitting in a corner looking out the window. ‘Hello,’ the girl said not daring to look at my grandmother, ‘my name is Esmeralda, what yours?’ My grandmother, loudmouth as she was, sat right next to the girl and started talking to her. Apparently, Esmeralda’s parents were getting ready to put her up for adoption and so she ran away and came here to an abandoned house. She made this one room up and had been living there ever since.

My grandmother became very close to that girl. Every evening she would sneak out of her house and bring her bread and jam. It almost seemed like a happy ending until that day in late August. Grandma overheard her mother talking about how they were looking for a missing girl. It was Esmeralda. She ran over to the abandoned house, found Esmeralda and started pleading with her to turn herself in. Esmeralda refused, and suddenly the talking turned into yelling and yelling into screaming until Esmeralda picked up a chair and knocked Grandma to the floor. Grandma couldn’t believe it. Her own friend was trying to kill her! Esmeralda suddenly pulled out a knife. ‘I’m not going anywhere,’ she screamed, ‘and you can’t make me! I’m sorry.’ She was about to stab my grandmother when my grandma, purely out of defending herself, got up and push Esmeralda back not realizing the open window behind her. Esmeralda plummeted to her death.”

“Oh my God,” shrieked Kaitlin, “How awful!”

“Mom,” followed Nicky, “are you positive this is true?”

“Nick,” I said reassuringly, “of course this is true. I wouldn’t joke about your ancestors. Now let me finish. Grandma was so stunned that she ran down to where Esmeralda fell. She knelt down to her bloody body. She was barely breathing. Tears ran down her face as she screamed, ‘someone help! No! I’m sorry!’ With Esmeralda’s last breath she said to my grandmother these horrifying words, ‘wherever I go after this life, I will find you. If for some reason I can’t make it here and haunt you in your lifetime, I will haunt your daughter’s or her granddaughter’s. One day I will make sure your blood pays.’ Then, her chest stopped moving as she became ever so pale. She was dead, but not for always. One day, my grandma was sure of it, she’ll come back. She hasn’t came yet but she will. That’s it. That is the story.”

Everyone in the room stared at me. They looked shocked. Their eyes were as wide as deer in headlights.

“You are kidding,” Kaitlin finally said laughing, “right Mrs. Nicky? This is just a joke!”

“I wish it was,” I said staring at the floor. I couldn’t get grandma’s expression out of my head from the night she told me. She seemed frightened, like something made her say it too.

“Come on ma,” Said my daughter starting to get annoyed, “the stories fake! Give in! I haven’t seen any ghosts yet!”

“You’re right,” I said starting to shake it out of my head, “my grandma was probably just trying to pull my leg. Hey, why don’t we…” I was interrupted by the wonderful lights flickering back on. At that point I just realized that the storm was gone too.

“Ah ha”, shouted Nicky, “and then there were lights! Everyone out, I have to use the restroom!”

Before I could utter another word we were pushed out of the bathroom and into the hallway.

“Hey Kaitlin”, I asked as we stood there waiting for Nicky, “where is Nicky’s other friend?” She looked at me.
“You mean Miranda? She said she couldn’t make it.”

“No, I mean the other girl. You know the one that was sitting on the other side of Nicky when the lights were out?”

“Um, I’m sorry Mrs. Nicky, but no one was sitting on the other side of her. I was the only girl that could make it…Mrs. Nicky?”

“Oh my god,” I gasped, “she is real.”

I stared at the bathroom door. I could hardly breathe, much less move. It was as if the world around me was about to fall to pieces and there was nothing I could do about it. Suddenly I heard Nicky’s shriek from the bathroom. It was the loudest, most horrific shriek I ever heard from my daughter. I fell to the ground as I heard something fall in the restroom; something was dead.

In an instant Kaitlin opened the door revealing my daughter lying on the floor motionless. Her eyes were wide open. She was breathing, thank god she was breathing!
“Mommy,” she said pointing to a girl on the other side of the room. She was the same exact girl that sat next to my daughter when the lights were out. My heart stopped pounding. “I see her now. Esmeralda is here. She says she is sorry but someone is going to have to pay. Mommy, I think we are all going to die now.”

I closed my eyes, death was imminent. There was nothing to do but wait for…
The End