Flowers for Grandma

Welcome to Scary Story Podcast. Thank you so much for your questions and ideas. As requested, this episode will have two short stories, a new one and one of my favorites from the early seasons. Very few of you will remember it, but if you do, please let me know. My name is Edwin and here it's a Scary Story. The closest thing I had to a grandparent was my neighbor, Senora Garcia. She would bring around cakes and fruits from her yard to our house almost every day. Everyone felt bad for her because even though we were neighbors, the houses were not close together like how we lived to day. It took me a bit a few decades to realize how much she meant to my family, specifically how much she meant for my mother. Most of the kids at school would draw in their grandparents as part of their family portraits, and all I had was my mom, dad, and Senora Garcia. Even though the general rule was that you could draw in those that lived with you at your house, Mom said it was okay because she was at our house a lot of the time. I didn't ask any questions and just went with it. But of course, as you get a little bit older, kids start asking questions. Mom said, I miss my grandmother by less than a year, but that she would have been very excited to meet me, and then her facial expression changed. I didn't understand it back then, but after many years, around the time when you begin taking care of your parents, I started asking my questions, the ones about where I come from and about the places we used to live. For instance, we would visit the cemetery and my aunts would meet us there almost every Sunday. For me, it was a regular thing. I thought of it as a park. Sometimes Mom would sit there for a bit set down her flowers, while my aunt would stand by us and quietly. We would walk back to the bus stop and be and getting everything ready for lunch once he got home. Other times she would sit there for hours and cry in silence while I roamed around the tombstones with my aunt. We never talked much when we were there. I knew it was important to my mom, but I often wondered what my grandma looked like, and what she liked to eat, how she would dress, and how she combed her hair. I remember one day in particular, when we went to the cemetery with many beautiful orange flowers, and lots of other people were there too. We went to the same spot and Mom sat in her usual place while brushing off the leaves and dirt off the cement plates and the headstone. I remember looking around for my aunt among all those people, and I asked my mom where my aunt was. She told me that she didn't know, that we would go look for her once she was done, and that she handed me a flower for me to give to her. It was a beautiful setting, seeing everybody visiting their gone relatives. People were not crying that day, and for some reason that image just stuck in my mind. Colorful cemeteries, lots of food, music, and families coming together for this very special day. Not long after that, Senora Garcia passed away. She had no family, just a few friends and us. It was sad, but she didn't go alone, and that's something I held onto whenever I felt the tears coming up from behind my eyes. The thing was, even though everyone told me that Senora Garcia was gone, I could still see her. The first time it happened, I was out on the yard one Saturday morning looking for worms and seeds in the grass when I saw the familiar scene of the little old lady with a basket coming up the road. At first I was happy, Then I grew suspicious, and all within the span of a few seconds, everyone had told me she was gone, and yet there she was walking up the road. Being what seven or eight years old at the time. I thought that maybe she revived and was coming back home, or that it had been a dream and that she wasn't dead after all. I ran toward the kitchen window that faced the front of the house and looked at Mom washing the dishes and boiling the water for the morning coffee. Excited, I yelled for her, telling her that Senora Gotcia was coming back home. She looked out the window and she looked back at me. She wiped her hands dry and went around the living room to come meet me outside, explaining to me she understood that I was upset about her being gone, but that she was not coming home anymore. She had been buried, but that we would always remember her. Mom cried with me. That afternoon, I knew that La Signora got to Sia had been like family for her as well. Later that day we went to the cemetery to leave flowers for her and die in my childhood mind was looking for signs of getting her out, or checking the spelling of her name to make sure that it really had been her. Mom inevitably went to my grandma's gravesite with remaining flowers, while I stayed back with my aunt, who again lived by the cemetery and would always come by to entertain me. While Mom prayed and sat with her mom, I told my Aunt Patrice about what I had seen, and she told me to be careful. It was then when I first learned about ghosts. Ghosts are not always what we think they are. She told me. Senora Gotta Sia as a good one, but watch out, she told me, sometimes they are tricks of the devil that Deceit is his tool to make us fools and follow him. How do you know when a ghost is good good? Was a question that I had for her. Well, she said, they care for you and don't try to scare you. They listen, and if you tell them to go away, they do. But I didn't think that the ghost of Senora Garcia had been a bad ghost, not at all, although she did look to be in pain more than the usual. Anyway, as she was walking up to the house, she didn't have that smile I would often see and had drawn dozens of times with crayons. I thought she simply didn't like her new home in the cemetery, and so I started stopping by to sweep and arrange her flowers with mom, to bring her a slice of cake on her birthday, and to talk with her about the things. She often mentioned, the place where she used to live, her family, and stories of Chamo, the dog that she loves so much. The story of when he stole a chicken from the marketplace and they ended up feeding Chamo its wings once they had prepared it for dinner. It would make her laugh so much. To get to see Senora Garcia a few times after that, but this time with her smile, she even seemed to be walking a little bit better back to her house. I told my mom eventually about it, saying that Sennora Garcia I was happy now. Well. She warned me that sometimes ghosts aren't always good, and to be careful. I told her I already knew that that my aunt Beatrice had told me when I told my mom the story, and this was much later about my conversation with my aunt Tiaberatries, who lived by the cemetery. She asked me so many questions about her, and I answered every single one. DiiA Bertries didn't live by the cemetery, she told me. In fact, she didn't live anymore. Her grave site was in the cemetery we would visit and had been there since before I was born. As requested many times over, I'll add episodes with short stories like these, and finally, a theme that has been repeated over and over in the comments. I believe this story is from the first season, but still it's one of my favorites. The second story is coming up right after a super quick break. We'll see if we get ads in here or not. If you're a member of Scary Plus, maybe just get lucky stay with me. Mom never seemed to remember things that I asked her about Grandma, and as far as I know, Mom left the house when she was young to live with one of our aunts, but I never found out why or the full story. Even when I was a kid, I remember Grandma showing me around her house and warning me about the marionettes that she kept in the attic. She told me that the leader of them was one named Oscar and that he wanted everything in its place always. Even then, I remember tidying up my room as off than as I could, in fear that Oscar would come by and grab me by my feet when I was sleeping. She had a large collection of marionettes, all hanging on the walls and some of the ceiling of her attic. I had to go in there sometimes to get blankets or to find movies to watch. In her vcr she had clowns and horses, women in bright little dresses, and sad girls, all hanging with strings onto wooden sticks on hooks. All of them were grinning with her white eyes. Grandma would take them out of the hooks and put them all in a cardboard box, and then would wipe the doll's grins with wax and a cloth by the porch. Sometimes I didn't like my summers with her. She lived in the loneliest of places, all by herself, and every part of the house creaked with anger when I walked from one place to the next. My cousins would be forced to stay there with me sometimes, which made the place a little more bearable. But I was going to to be on my own this time. The last summer I spent at that house was when I discovered that something was wrong with Grandma. I was about to turn eight and I had to pee in the middle of the night. Grandma had set up a night light in the shape of a heart on the bottom corner of the room because she knew how afraid I was of the place, and she even offered to wait for me outside of the bathroom if I needed to go at night. But Mom warned me not to wake up Grandma. She had told me with that strict mom face and then made me repeat it back to her, I will not wake up Grandma at night. Instead of seiling lights, my grandma kept lamps. She kept them everywhere, even in the bathroom and kitchen, but the one in my room was in the corner by the dark closet. There was no way my eight year old self was going to risk going there. The hallway was starved, there were no windows near by, and the closest light source was a tiny red heart by the floor of my room. The smell of dust and old carpets was more intense there. The bathroom was across the hall and one door over. I couldn't wait any longer and open up the door. I put my hands in front of me. As I stepped into the darkness, waiting to feel the wall paper on my right palm. As I leaned forward and stretched it out as far as I could. One step in with my right leg and nothing. So I screwed the same leg forward and one more small step. I could see a small beam of light, probably from the light in my room. It played with my mind as it changed colors from red to blue. I took one more step, put my hand again, only felt the cold air. As I took the third step, something tapped my hip. It was a doorframe to my grandma's room. She had left her room open. I took a step back and the floorboard moaned loudly. My heart stopped the thought of waking up Grandma and getting in trouble. I reached my hand to feel the wall and slid my socks on the edges of the wooden floor, where the carpet ended closer and closer to the bathroom. From behind me, I could hear tiny thuds, heavier than a drop of water, but lighter than a dog's steps coming closer and closer behind me. I rushed a little bit as the steps got near me, until I felt the door frame one more step, and I pushed the door to the bathroom open and reached for the little chain on the lamp on the stand by the entrance. I ran inside and shut the door. After I finished using the bathroom, I pushed my ear again the door, but I leaned too hard and the loose door tapped against a frame, and I know I heard tiny steps running away down the hall toward the living room. I sat in the bathroom floor with a lamp on for a long time, and so I heard a knock on the door, with my Grandma calling my name, asking if I was okay. I opened the door to her outstretched hand reaching for mine. When I could see the little red light from my room, I told her what I hadn't heard in the hallway. Her tone changed immediately, and Grandma turned into someone else. She had never talked to me that way, and almost yelled as she told me that this house belongs to them, that I was a guest there, and that I should not question the choice of the host. The choice of the host was the phrase that stuck most with me when I had to explain what happened to my mom when she came to pick me up Grandma called her that next morning and then asked me to get my stuff ready. I remember she was so upset at me, but I couldn't tell why. I could hear Grandma mentioning names, but I looked up from a bowl of cereal when she mentioned Oscar, and then she turned her dark eyes toward me in anger. Like I mentioned, Mom picked me up that night, and I could sense her discomfort in that house, as I always did. Grandma had not made dinner that evening because we stopped at a diner along the highway on the way back. I used to see it on the wave to Grandma's every time we drove out there. Mom went to the bathroom while I finished up my French fries. When a different waitress walked up to my table and asked me if Mom drove the red car outside. I innocently said yes, and she asked me if I had gone to the house on the one hundred and thirtieth mile marker. Mom and I used to play a game to count up to one hundred and thirty in that stretch of highway because they have little posts with the numbers. But I I didn't know they were called mile markers, but I told her yes, and that's when her phase grew concerned to the crazy woman with the marionettes, she said, but I couldn't tell if she was asking a question. She looked ahead and pretended to be cleaning up our table. As she saw my mom coming back from the bathroom, she rushed to ask me, did you see them? Did they really come alive? Scary Story podcast is written and produced by me Edwin Kowar Rubias. You can write to me over on TikTok and Instagram. I'm at Edwin Cove. That's ed w n c o v up. Next, check out horror Story to learn about real mysteries and creepy events like the real haunted Castle in the Woods. You can find it by searching for a horror story on your podcast app. It's the one with the yellow letters. Thank you very much for listening, See you soon.