It was about 11 p.m. or midnight, and I was sleeping over at my friend’s house. We had just locked my friend’s annoying 5-year-old cousin out the bedroom, and were sitting cross-legged on the mat, playing Truth or Dare.
Elissa, my friend, spun the hand sanitizer bottle in between us, and the cap end pointed towards me when it finished spinning. Elissa grinned. “Okay! Truth or dare?”
“Dare,” I responded, with a grin of my own.
“Right. I dare you to…” She tapped her chin mischievously with one hand. I licked my dry lips and waited. Elissa’s eyes darted around the room, searching for a dare for me to do. Her eyes lingered on her chest of drawers. She was probably going to make me yell something embarrassing on top of that.
Then her eyes swiveled to the other side of the room, somewhere over my shoulder. She froze, her mouth curved into an O, her dark chocolate eyes wide. The hand on her chin dropped to her lap. “M- M- Mashaell…” she whispered, her voice trailing off. Her shaky hand pointed to the window above the bed I was leaning against. I didn’t say anything, just craned my neck around to see the window, and fear rushed through me.
There was a girl staring at us through the window.
Nothing was clear, but we could see that her head was bent down, chin resting on her torso, and she looked up at us with blank eye sockets. Her face was pale white and she wore a white dress, flowing in the direction of the heavy wind. Her pitch black hair was framing her horrible face, straight and untouched by the wind.
As Elissa and I stared in horror, frozen and gripping tightly at the mat as if we were going to be blown away, the girl lifted up a hand. There were three pale fingers and three long claws, as if she was a black and white cat that had grown its claws way too long.
We backed up against Elissa’s wardrobe, grabbing anything small to throw at the girl if she came in, but she didn’t. Instead she scratched the window, a long scratch, and the sound of someone scraping their nails against a blackboard filled the room. Then, when we blinked, the girl was gone.
Elissa and I talked in low voices for an hour. Neither of us could be sure; the girl had been blurred by the shrouding night — but we had seen it all.
The girl never showed up again. We agreed to keep it a secret. Whenever we were exchanging ghost stories with friends, we kept our own story silent, but knew we had to tell someone one day.
Someone who had encountered that girl too.