Stories For A Dark Night

Why I Don't See My Grandmother Anymore

The last time I saw my grandmother I was 16, this is the story of that day. First I'll tell you about my grandmother and I, when I was young we were extremely close, my mother was negligent and my father was never around so she become my primary caregiver when I was only 5. I loved her and she loved me, the stories she would tell me when we would sit together on the deck were always bright and funny, about faries who needed to find a way home, or jesters trying to entertain a king. She would sit in her rocking chair adding a dramatic flourish of her arms to every  sentence or so.
When I was sixteen it was no different, sure the stories didn't exaxtly entertain me but I was overjoyed to spend anytime with my ever ageing grandma. The story she told me on the day of May the second 2005 was the one that had made me fear her.
I sat down at the seat beside my grandma's rocking chair with tea in my hands, chai for her and earl grey for me, and prepared myself for another far tale.
My grandma was quite for a while before she started telling a story out of the blue.
"There's a world far off, not to different from our own where a young boy lived," she start, "This boy enjoyed drawing and playing catch with his dog."
I sat back in the chair growing comfortable and bringing the tea to my mouth for a drink.
"This boy had lived a good life and he desired for nothing, so the day when to men arrived at hsi door was the worst day in his life. Late in the night when it was storning like none other two men knocked on his. His mother opened it and screaned on the spot which woke the boy up. He tiptoed down the stairs and leaned around a corner to see what had caused his mother such distress." She continued.
At this point I was already growing uncomfortable with the story that she was telling me but something about the tale dragged me in.
"In the arms of the two darkly suited men was his father, gored and bloody, he could barely see the wound that had killed him, a gaping hole in his fathers chest." She sneered, "The two men smiled at her reaction and dropped the man on the front steps before one of them roughly grabbed his mother. The boy yelped at this and ran upstairs, but he had not been hidden to the two men. The other man, the one not grasping his mother tightly, walked after him slowly, sparring the boy was not part of his plans, whatever they were." My grandmothers eyes had grown dark and her hands were gripping the arms of the rocking chair so hard her knuckles were stark white.
"The man that had followed him looked human but there was something odd about him, he was a little too tall, his eyes a little too close together, his nose a little too pointy, and his fingers a little too long. The boy managed to reach his bedroom, before the man reached himn and slammed the door behind him, he locked it and placed a chair under the handle. From the other side of the door came an unrelenting banging, the mans, the things fists landing so hard they sounded like bullets. The boy had covered his ears and curled up into a a ball in the corner of his room. After five minutes the banging had stopped and in it's place blood curdling screams started" My grandma no longer looked like herself, something about her was off, maybe it was her teeth that seemed sharper than usual or her eyes that wouldn't stop moving, whatever it was I was sure I was no longer looking at my loved one.
"The boy knew that it was his mother, most likely suffering some kind of gruesome torture. From his room he could smell blood and burning hair or flesh but the most prominent thing he could smell was rot, the smell of a fridge that hadn't been opened for hundreds of uears, a smell that had never existed in there house before. The boy knew that his mother had died when the screaming turned to low gurgling then finally stopped. After this he heard nothing for a very long time which meant he had no warning when his door smashed open spewing shrapnel across his room. He felt a sharp splinter of wood embed itself in his tear stained cheek but it was the least of his worries. Standing in the doorway of his room where the, not so human, men where standing with eyes that were to piercing to belong to a person. They approached him slowly and when they got to him the one that had followed him up the stares picked him up by his neck with strong, rough hands. The boy struggled against the grip of the thing that had murdered his mother and father but the one that was holding him seemed to be made of steel. The boy could feel his face growing red and his lungs burning in pain, he was dying, and at the hands of something that he would never know the truth about. When the last bit of consciousness slipped from his grasp the thing holding him leaned in and whispered in his ear in an unbelievably soft voice, "see you soon." My grandmother stopped there and looked at me with a broad smile.

"Did you enjoy the story sweety, I worked very hard on it." Her smile was unmoving but I was not. I stumbled out of my chair, knocking it over in the proccess and ran over to the railing just in time to puke up my lunch into the bushes.

For weeks after this I had avoided my grandmother only sharing a word with her when needed, it wasn't till I was watching the news one day that I truly grew to fear her.
A stunning news anchor was telling the story of a murdered family, husband, wife, and son. The husband appeared to be stabbed and the mother had been tortured to death but it was the sons gruesome death that would never left my mind.
The boy had been strangled in his room and laid down on the floor in a surprisingly peaceful position. Above him written in blood, which I didn't think was his, were the words "See you soon."