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]

(continued from previous post)

Excited to share this "proof" with her family, during the after dinner card game, she did just that. Her younger brother by four years, just out of the Navy, was there. She told her story of the "proof", and her mother seemed to have no idea what the girl was talking about. The look on her brother's face was odd.

She told them the tale of the events of that night. At the end, her brother asked her why she felt the need to tell him what he already knew and had just wanted to forget. At her blank look, he reminded her that he had been there with her that night. That they had gone through it together. He remembered every detail she had, except that he also remembered them being together, which she had not been able to remember. She could look back at that night now, and still not see him there in her mind. He also had no memory of Mom coming home, no memory of anything until waking for school the next day. The mother could remember none of it, because in her mind, nothing unusual had happened.

The girl became excited that she finally had someone to discuss it with, someone who KNEW. Her brother, with a closed look, stopped that though immediately, stating he would not discuss it, and in fact would not even think about it because he was positive that the fear would kill him.
Feeling a bit vindicated, but yet still alone, the girl let the matter drop.

Later that year, after having been out to dinner with the family, she got home and found the dog standing at the back door leading to the screened-in back porch whining. The back yard had a few trees, and then a large few acres of woods which led down to Lake Talquin. There were four steps that led down from the porch to the back yard.

They had often seen strange lights out in those woods, heard strange things. There were panthers and black bears and boars and other sundry animals and creatures out there. She knew every inch of those woods and felt very much at home there, even urinating on a deer stand she found once, to protect the deer that roamed in large herds there.

The lights wouldn't turn on when the family entered the house, but power outages in that part of the town weren't that uncommon. She opened the door to the porch and the dog raced to the screen door, pawing and whining. Smiling at the dog and her antics, the girl opened the screen door and the dog stepped out onto the first step, then froze and, staring out into the yard, began to growl low in her throat. Still looking at the dog, the girl felt, rather than heard or saw, something in the shadows near the foot of the steps.

She finally looked up and standing there, cloaked and hooded, was a creature. This being wasn't glowing, but she could still see no features. Unable to speak, unable to think, unable to even breathe, she became a mindless, hysterical, terrified person who turned and ran blindly back into the house, to which the dog had already retreated and was hiding. She heard a voice screaming over and over again, "itshereformeitsgoingtogetme". She didn't realize it was her own voice until it stopped. It didn't stop until her mom sat her down and called her name forcefully until the girl responded.

The girl haltingly and with a quivering voice and gasping breath explained what she had seen and no one else had seen a thing. The lights came back on and a search of the yard showed no evidence. She finally went to sleep hours and a valium later.

The next morning when she woke, she was alone in the house. The car was in the yard, Mom's purse was still on the table, and no one was home. She waited all that day and night. They never returned. The police search turned up nothing. The girl's status as a suspect ended when time and a lack of bodies and evidence showed that there was no provable crime.

She never saw her family again. She never got answers, but she always knew that "The White People" had something to do with their disappearance. The feeling that she was still being visited by something she couldn't identify or explain and the missing memories continued for the rest of her known life.

She disappeared ten years and two psychotherapists later, after a phone call to her best friend in which the only words she said were, "They're here again." before the line went dead. She was never heard from or seen again and the case was never solved. The best friend had no idea what the girl had meant.

I hope someone likes this one. I started it back when Masqua first started talking about a Halloween related contest. I finished it tonight when I saw that the contest had started. I enjoyed writing it, and hope some of you are entertained by it, if not a bit spooked by it. Enjoy!

Wow... Is this a true story? Lol

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that was a good story. I wonder what happened to her family. Those cloaked beings kinda remind me of them reptilian folks. What make you think of it? Did you come up with "The White People" on your own, or is this a real phenomena you decided to play off of?

Either way, good story. I like the way you right.

I will reply to both of you at once since you basically asked the same question. I will say only that it could be considered, in part anyway, a personal experience that I have changed and embellished to create a work of fiction. "The White People" and the part about looking for info on Prodigy are true, and are the only parts I will admit are true.

I hope you enjoyed it and thank you so much for not only reading it but commenting as well.

I reallly dont have anyhting to add to the thread. I just wanted to say GOOD JOB!

S&F!

MOTF!

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I sat down with a tea and stumbled across this. A great way to take an afternoon break.

Nice, neat little story. Thank you for posting Ceriddwen.

I guess my story wasn't for the masses, huh? I had hoped more people would have enjoyed it, but to each his own I guess. I enjoyed writing it, so I guess that's a good thing.

Cool story. I would have been terrified if I ever saw something like these "White People". Truly EEERRRIEEEE!!!! Not to be read at 10 thirty at night lol!