Dear Diary,

I have never used you before. When Mom gave you to me, her final gift before she had passed, I never believed I would have a use for you. But after tonight, I find myself huddled in the deepest darkest corner I can find with nothing but my flashlight to see.

That’s right. I am hiding in my closet.

What brought me here?

I saw something. Something not right. Something that I can’t ever tell anyone. Not if I wish to keep myself out of a nuthouse. So I guess here I am, writing in an unused book for people that will never know.

I was laying in my bed, covers pulled to my ears. It was two o’ clock in the morning when I woke up. A time I am usually never awake but for some reason I had opened my eyes.

I didn’t understand why at first until I heard it. The creaking of a floorboard from the hallway. I just thought it was a mouse or something but then I heard it again, closer now.

I laid in bed frozen with my front facing the window as that sound got closer and closer till it stopped just in front of my bedroom door.

I didn’t hear it again so I had closed my eyes, a shaky breath leaving my lips, when I opened my eyes again. There IT was.

A shadow standing over me, a clawed hand outstretching slowly with a long chain dangling from its arm. And those eyes peeking beneath its hood, they were hollow. Like a skull’s.

I had tried to run but I couldn’t. Something was holding me there. Something I couldn’t describe except it was cold, like ice, when IT touched me.

Mom used to tell me that our house was haunted ghosts. But I never once believed her. Not till then.

Those claws scraped my cheek, drawing raised lines. Lines I still feel right now, a stinging reminder of the event.

The darkness shadowed over it’s form, but I vaguely saw it looked like a man tilting his head as it regarded me with interest. Those claws stroking my face almost lovingly.

“Maria.”

That was the name HE had spoken to me.

MY name.

But it wasn’t the name that sent chills down my spine but the words after that. Those three simple words.

“You must die.”

HIS hand closed over my mouth, suffocating and cold. I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t move. It was as if I was bound. As if I could fill my life source draining.

I don’t know what happened next.

I woke up feeling drained and scared. So very scared. I am still scared. Terrified. I don’t know what I saw. Nightmare or real.

I had these scratches, this drained feeling, this coldness that hasn’t faded since I woke up.

No one can know. I can’t be the crazy girl in town. Not like Mom, the tarot card reading woman who believed in the paranormal and strange.

I know Mom would believe me. I know because she has told me how she has seen things. Things that can’t be explained. But I am not her!

But I can’t explain what I saw. I just have this feeling that something bad is going to happen today. I don’t know what. But at least I have written it down in case something does happen. Even if no one sees this.

I have no family or friends. All people will find in this old house is antiques and bad memories. And some girl’s crazy nightmare in the only entry written in this diary.

Well, I guess that is it. The end of this one and only entry by the one and only crazy girl in this small town. Goodbye forever.

Maria Harris