posted on Sep, 1 2010 @ 10:08 PM
She was used to being alone, with Mom working all the time and home after dark. She knew her neighborhood well, what townhouses were empty, what other
kids could stay out and play with her. That night was no different than any other. She was ten years old. Plenty old enough to be out in her
neighborhood with her friends.
She and her friends had been at the set of under-construction townhouses earlier that day, while it was still light out. The interior walls between
rooms, and indeed, between units, weren't there yet. There were exterior walls, stairs, windows, and exterior doors.
The children had wandered around, playing chase, thinking of it generally as a giant fort. She had another fort, though. One closer to home. There was
a small, overgrown copse of woods across the street and down a couple of lots from her end unit townhouse. She had a love of the woods and of nature
in general. She had cleared an area in that wood and made her private hideout there.
When things got bad at home, as they often did when a mom is angry and out of control, and raising a child alone, she could go there and hide from the
world. She spent a lot of time there and her secret path was not easy to find.
Her friends and she had all agreed to meet at the "fort" after dinner. Everyone was on time. The plans quickly fell apart, though, when something
unusual was noticed. There was an odd glow coming from inside of the far upstairs windows. The children became nervous that a construction worker or
development manager had discovered their earlier play and came to investigate. The kids blended into the shadows while they watched, losing only a
couple of the more easily scared kids in the process.
They watched this glow do impossible things. It moved between floors in places where there were no stairs. It moved between rooms to the other side of
the building in the blink of an eye. It moved very quickly and then very slowly. This went on for over an hour, while the watching children became
more and more alarmed. It almost seemed as though the glow were looking for something.
Slowly the crowd began to thin as the night got darker and the hour became later. When only two children were left, the glow seemed to suddenly decide
to open the door of the unit directly in front of them. With a shout they each took off in the direction of their respective townhouses.
The girl had to run past her copse of woods. She should have felt calm doing so, but something told her to look to her left. There, in the woods and
keeping pace with her, was the glow. It was following her home!
She began to run and sprinted the rest of the way home. Mom still wasn't home from work, as usual. The girl hadn't locked the door when she left
since she wasn't supposed to be out after dark and it was too early to be in bed. A locked door would have been a dead giveaway. Had the car been in
the carport, she would have snuck in, as she had done before. Mom never checked on her until it was time for lights out, or if she didn't come down
for a while after she got home.
The door was solid wood, but had a set of rectangular windows set high in the top to allow light in. There was a long, narrow, window to the left of
the door which was curtained, for checking to see who was outside if you were too short for the peephole, etc.
The girl ran up the front steps and into her house, closing and locking the door behind her. She peeked through the curtains and didn't see anything,
so she felt safe and sound, though a bit shaken. She entered the living room and moved to turn the T.V. on, glancing back for one more look at the
windows on the door.
There, in those windows, so high at the top of that door, stood something cloaked in white, the hood covering the head showing. There were no features
on the face inside the hood. There was only that glow.
She became so terrified that she began to shake from head to toe. Her palms began to sweat. Her legs threatened to collapse. Her breath began to hitch
in her chest. She heard a noise to her left, in the direction of the window on the side of the unit. Scared to look, but knowing she had to, she
slowly turned her head.
Standing in the window, looking in, was another cloaked and hooded figure with no visible features but that glow. She knew then that they were there
for her and that she was in big trouble. Her legs did collapse then, and she wound up sitting on the floor between the coffee table and the sofa,
crying silently, too afraid to make a sound, somehow believing that if she were still and quiet they wouldn't be able to get her.
The next thing she knew it was time for school the next day, where her friends corroborated the events at the units under construction. The other
child who ran when she did said his night was uneventful once he got home. The girl did not relate her story of the further events. Something told her
not to. Apparently her mother was unaware of these events since she never mentioned them. What she did mention the next day was the punishment the
girl would receive for being awake and watching T.V. at ten on a school night. The girl had no memory of that happening, but she didn't argue the
point. In fact, the last thing she remembered was sitting there on the floor, terrified.
Twenty years later, having been tormented by memories of these things she came to call "The White People", having never been believed by her mother
when she tried to discuss it, she felt lost and alone. Then the early years of the internet came into being. A service called Prodigy was created,
which mostly consisted of BB type message boards and a search engine. People could finally talk across the world to each other just by typing a
message. The family joined Prodigy, and the girl started searching for others who might have seen or experienced what she had.
She had spent the last twenty years feeling as though these beings were visiting her often, but never having a memory of the visits. She did find a
few others who had seen them, and oddly enough, they also called them "The White People", always in quotes and always in caps, just as she did.
(continued next post)
[edit on 2-9-2010 by Ceriddwen]