Chapter One: First Day Of My Life

When I was younger there was an elderly woman that lived next door. We did not live in the same house as we do now but in large, rambling house where every door squeaked as it opened. The doorknobs fit skeleton keys, imprints of numerous faces described the windows when it rained.

I could faint climbing the stairs to the attic. They sloped upward so steeply I had to grab on to the rail on the wall and lean against the it to resist the feeling of that something was trying to pull me down. Each step up caused the entire house to moan, as if being shaken by an inscrutable force far beyond its foundations but that furtively flitted from breeze to breeze, veiled in quiet. There was never a sound other than the house. There was never another living creature in the house but us and, on occasion, the lady next door.

She was a spinster; she never wanted to marry, never did. Miss Ada was what she preferred to be called, even though my mother said that Ada was neither her first name nor her last. But that was how older people were, my mother said when I asked. As old as Miss Ada was, she needed help with the daily upkeep of her home. I, being a good Samaritan, always volunteered to help her out. One time I had to dust the tables, the china, and the silver. Sometimes she insisted on compensating me for my work. I always politely refused the money, like I had been taught to, but there was this very pretty painted porcelain egg at the antique shop that I had been eying for my mother's birthday. I thought that just a few times I would accept the money.

So, every Saturday when I mowed her lawn and weeded her garden and she offered me a dollar or two, I took it. Even though I knew I had done the work and that she would not give me more than I deserved. I moved quickly, almost sneakily, from her yard back to my own; I dragged my feet at the door. For some reason I thought that if I walked in, my mother would know I took the money and chide me for being selfish. It was not selfish to me, but it bothered me nonetheless and at the bottom of my mind I heard the guilt snarling and spitting spiteful, hateful words.

My mother never thought anything was wrong when I returned from next door on a Saturday. She never though anything amiss. Miss Ada once told me that the only thing amiss in our entire town was my family. She said it to me one day as I was leaving and hollered after me not to repeat it. I thought about this for a night, tossing and turning, until my door opened. I lay still when the door opened, peering from beneath my comforter at the dark figure that entered. At first I was frightened, my heart pounding in my chest; I clutched the edge of the comforter tight.

I was fourteen years old when this happened and had yet to give up my childish beliefs such as the monster in the closet and the bogey man. I had nightmares about the bogey man where he snatched at me from beneath the sofa downstairs. I would run into my room and close the door, locking it tight. Then, I don't know why, I looked out the window and watched the bogey man coming up to get me. The dream usually ended right there or at some point close to there. I think I remember the monster coming in the house and opening the door and then I would wake up in a cold sweat. I was always so sleepy and struggled not to fall asleep again. I always did though.

When this dark figure entered the room I thought it was the bogey man. I was scared enough to think it was some imaginary monster from beneath sofas, creeping through the open, unlocked door. I thought it was the most unimaginably horrible thing ever. I shivered, my eyes started to blur. I was crying. I wanted to scream for my mom, for my dad; someone needed to come quick and save me. 'Please,' I remember thinking to myself, 'don't do anything to me.' I felt like I would wet myself; it was a tendency of mine even when I was not scared and still is to this day. The shape drew nearer and I shut my eyes, expecting to start falling, to start feeling my stomach like it was caught up in the sky and I was plummeting downwards. I turned stone to stone when the figure sat down next to me. I wiggled my toes slightly because they itched. I kept still.

When hands came under the cover, warm hands, I froze and tried to move as much as I could without moving at all. I was too scared to do anything. I felt as if some witch had cast a spell on me. Sealed my mouth, stilled my body, stolen my mind. I kept still when the hands moved up and down my legs. I kept still when they moved beneath my shirt. I shivered, I think, as those very warm hands touched my nipples. I was crying, Silently; I had never ceased in the first place. The hands moved around a lot. They moved around my chest, around my back, around my buttocks, around other places. It hurt to think about it. Those hands that, despite their warmth, left every inch of me cold. Left me squeezing my legs together when they left my pants. They left me lost in pain, silence, fear as I held myself together when I was fourteen like I was ten.

But this didn't happen to ten year olds, this didn't happen to fourteen year olds. This happened to me. It was just like that nightmare or maybe the nightmare was just like it. Nights after this those hands of the bogey man reached for me from under the couch and snatched at me and I knew that they only wanted one thing now.

This nightly occurrence was not a one time thing. It was almost routine. I would shrink in on myself under the covers and wait almost expectantly for the door to squeak. Then those hands felt me, greedily. It was not isolated forever. It was not left in nighttime forever, or not completely. Sometimes the hands felt me in the car, in the bathroom, after school, on the way home from football practice with my father in the front seat. I wanted to call for my mother, for my father that first night. I did not know that I was being joined by my father in the form of that shade. These things continued when I was fifteen and sixteen. Those hands came daily sometimes. They were deceptive, they were warm, they, like vampiric curses, took my warmth form me and left me a bitter, frozen shell. A shell on my sixteenth birthday, when I was a virgin to everyone but those hands. I had a girl friend who wanted to wait until after college, whose hands kept to themselves. A frozen, furious shell on my birthday that lay placid, sobbing silently as it was drained of all its life by hands that sometimes seemed hot enough to burn.