I’m still not sure to make of what happened that Summer. All I know is that we all experienced it. It was me, my brother and my mom. We were living in this rented house. It was weird because this house was plucked up off the ground in Miami and plopped down on some cinder blocks in Hollywood, Florida. Besides being old, maybe late 1800’s, this house was nothing fancy, just a simple two-bedroom, one bath.
The property of this house was a small field, with a south Florida version of woods wrapped around it. When I was supposed to be in bed at night, I would sneak to the back door and crack it open so I could read by the light from outside. One night, all of a sudden, all these lights appeared throughout the field. They were weaving in and out of the trees and moving in ways that no vehicle I know of could. This was South Florida, so no chance of fireflies. They were too big and colorful for that anyway.
The next day, watermelon vines sprouted up all over the field. Within days, watermelons had grown on them. No one planted them and they had never grown there before or after that summer. Amongst the vines were these strange tracks. Once again, unlike any vehicle I know of. There was no tread. I don’t really have any other way to describe them. I was the only one who saw the lights but my brother and mom know about the watermelons and tracks.
On another night, I was in the room with my brother. I looked out the window and saw this gray, pale, featureless face looking in. I turned to my brother to see if he was seeing what I was seeing and sure enough, he was. We stared for awhile before getting freaked out and running to the other room. We decided to be brave and went back. The face was still there. Sure, you could think it was someone playing a prank, but as I said before, this house was on those blocks. This window was probably about ten feet off the ground.
It’s been at least two decades since then and every once in awhile my brother and I will timidly ask each other if we definitely saw what we saw. This is real life, as you know, and these sorts of things don’t just happen, but sure enough, we both saw it.
I didn’t know my mom knew anything about it. We never talked to her about it. As adults, she confided in us that that summer, she had been plagued by these incredibly vivid dreams. In them, she saw these long, skinny, gray, child-sized figures running through that field. In one dream, she opened the door to take a look and one saw her. It started running towards her. She shut the door just in time, but this house was old and had one of the old-fashioned key holes that you could see through. The creature stated to push its way into the house through the hole. She woke up before it could get inside.
If I had ever mentioned anything that my brother and I had seen to her, I would write off those dreams in a heartbeat, but we never had. The way she described those creatures matched exactly to what we had seen ourselves.
In the pictures, you can see that the field is still there, but the woods have been built up into apartments, giving that house and field space. Looking at the house, it’s definitely worse for the wear from when we lived there, but you can see that design or looks-wise, this house is nothing special. Seeing that that house and field are still preserved after all these years makes me wonder about it even more.
-Elizabeth F.
Spiders In My Bathtub 