Over Here

Hello my name is Jane and what I am about to tell you is the story that changed my life forever, or rather the fear of life in the night.

Everything I knew about my family changed in the summer of 1985 after I got back from summer camp when I was twelve. I remember growing up living with my grandparents in Iowa out in the country, in A house that my grandfather built. I never knew my mother or father and any distant relatives never came to visit us.

I remember always, since I was very little hearing strange noises at night, and being very scared, especially in the small back room of the house which no one ever really went in. And for the most part, for some reason I tried to avoid that area completely. We never went on vacations cause my grandma always wanted to stay near the house, especially after my grandfather had died two years earlier. I never understood this, but now it is all too clear. Like I said I was awakened many nights to the sound of people talking in hushed voices, and the smell of food in the kitchen, and scratching and banging noises coming from the back of the house. Noises which I always thought to be coming from that small strange room at the back of the house.

Once I crept down the hall one morning and opened the door, the room was rather empty, except for a rocking chair and a long white freezer pushed up against a small closet door. I never noticed my grandmother going in there for food or anything, which I thought was strange cause of the freezer. Every time I did actually go in the room, my grandmother always seemed to call me away for some odd chore. So after a while I quit trying to figure out this room altogether in fear of having to do house or yard work.

Living with my grandparents was great and happy, I sometimes asked about my parents, and my grandma would always get a sad look on her face. She said she didn't know who my dad was, and my mother had died giving birth to me but assured me she loved me very much. I never pressed her, she seemed very upset talking about it.

My friends from school we never allowed to stay the night, but my grandma never minded me staying the night with them. It came time for me to go away to summer camp which I really loved, this would be my second time to go and I was really looking forward to spending a week with my friends at Fort Rose summer camp for girls. All went well and I enjoyed two weeks of games and entertaining nights around the campfire of spooky story telling. But I couldn't be more relieved to get back to the comforts of my home.

When I got back my grandmother seemed kind of strange and quiet to say the least. When I asked her what was wrong she would just say she was feeling tired. I also noticed that the small weird room at the back of the house was now dead bolted shut. I asked my Grandmother about it thinking it rather strange, she told me that the house in its old age has developed a draft and the door kept opening. After that she quickly changed the subject. This is when I first had the feeling something was very amiss about that room, and for the first time I got the feeling that my Grandmother was deliberately keeping something from me.

That night I went to bed a little early being exhausted from my bus ride. I felt content to be home but strangely uneasy. I remember being awakened by a noise in my room, and now I lay still and quiet listening. I heard something moving around my bed on the floor. I also could hear strange breathing. Now fully awake I was aware something was in my room. I was sure somehow a raccoon or something had gotten into the house, it wouldn't be the first time it had happened. I rolled over towards my bedside table, tired and feeling bothered by the "raccoon" in my room keeping me from sleep. So I sat up in bed and turned on the lamp. The room was still very dim but I had enough light to see around my room. I did a quick scan all around my bed without getting up but saw nothing. All of the sudden I felt a bump come from under the bed. Then some scratching and another bump. I remember thinking man this is a strange raccoon, it had really moved my bed. So I began calling to the raccoon and making clicking noises like I use to do with a cat we had to try and get it to come out from under my bed.

Just as I was getting very impatient telling the raccoon not to be scared, I distinctly heard a voice say "over here". I suddenly was taken aback, I wasn't sure if I had really heard it or not. Then from under my bed I felt three really hard bumps. Then it scurried out from under my bed. I screamed! It was the most horrible thing I had ever seen or even imagined!

Crawling around on the floor was what I can only describe as a grotesquely deformed monster. It had a normal sized head, arms and chest, but the legs and pelvic area were the size of a baby and dragged behind it. Then suddenly it turned around to face me! There was an extra head facing upwards that had seemed to have grown right below its neck. The faces looked at me and said "over here." It dragged itself around the room and towards the door and went out. All the while I was screaming. My grandmother ran into the room and tried to quieten me. I told her what I saw and she instantly became shocked and and out of the room. I was so confused at this point, I got up and looked out my doorway seeing my grandmother checking the locks on that room at the end of the hall. She looked at me then came back quickly and took my hand. She went to the kitchen and told me to sit at the table. I kept asking her what was wrong but she wouldn't answer. She got the phone and called the police and told them to hurry over.

At this point I was extremely scared and confused. My grandmother seemed a little shaken but stayed strangely calm and just kept saying she had to make some tea, which she did. She forced cupful upon cupful into my hand trying to keep me quiet.

Before we knew it the police arrived and my Grandmother took them to the small room at the back of the house and unlocked it. She pointed to the closet door and said "In there, he is in there, please take him". The police asked her who she was talking about, but she just keep saying "take him he's in there". The police moved the freezer from in front of the door and unlocked it. When they opened the door they found the thing... The thing that was in my room! Except he or it was dead. The police demanded an explanation at once. My grandmother sat down in the kitchen and this is what she told them.

She said that the man in the closet had been her son, he was born at home. No one really knew about the boy except for a few family members including my mom, it had been her twin. The child was so badly deformed that they hid it from everyone. And she said it, the boy, was very evil or part of him was. It had two heads, two separate brains. My grandmother said that one of them never slept and watched her and my mother strangely, always saying weird and scarry things in strange voices. He started to go into the rooms at night and watch my grandparents and my sister, eventually they kept him locked in that room. After that things got much worse with the extra head, it started to threaten my grandmother and mother. On the night I was born It had escaped and killed my mother. My grandmother was afraid to tell anyone so they made her a grave in the backyard, and locked the boy in the closet where he remained a secret.

She had to keep him bound, for he had grown so evil, but she fed him and kept him alive, until she discovered him dead two days ago. She wasn't strong enough to move him because she was old so she just left him in there feeling haunted by his body.

I never knew he was in there, and he was already dead the night I saw him in my room. My grandmother was so scared that he would haunt her, but it was me he hated. He had killed my sister being jealous that she was normal and could live a normal life. I think he only regretted not killing me the day he killed her.