Midnight Walking & Don't You Miss Me?

Welcome to Scary Story Podcast. We have two stories today, a person who wishes to communicate with spirits and a second scare that can make you cry. My name is Edwin, and here is a scary story. Isabelle had finally gone to sleep. She must have been awake for about a day and a half, but time was so warped during those events that all I had to track time were the records of out going phone calls and updating my mom on how everything was going. If I didn't call her, then she would start calling everyone in the group with us, and Mom was not easy to talk to, so most would ignore her making a problem out of nothing and then making it bigger. I had been greeted by my aunt cautiously and quietly, as if Isabelle had gone through the worst thing of her life. I was the first of the to arrive, and I think Aunt Gabby got better on not scaring the others who came after me. I went up to see Isabelle and was warned not to make sudden noises, but that if she showed any signs of going to sleep or wanting to to simply leave her alone and quietly leave the room. The first thing I noticed were how large her eyes were, the kind of eyes you get when you get scared or stunned. She wouldn't blink. Her hair was oily and stuck to the side of her head, but other than that, she said hi to me just fine. When I asked her what happened, she clammed up and leaned back toward her bed, and very calmly started explaining to me what she had seen. There was an empty lot behind her house, and it wasn't that uncommon to see shadows lurking in the lots between the abandoned crates. Her house was on the edge of an industrial area with factory and strange smells of workers running motors and belts. Large warehouses would receive shipments all night long, with the hisses of the trucks arriving at all hours of the day, but mostly at night. I used to spend some weekends at Isabelle's house to play on her computer when I was younger. She was always a very good sleeper, not making it through a movie ever, but always seemed to be lost with something on her mind. Obsessions. I guess you could say. She would get into polly pockets and then dive into teeny beanie babies, collect a bunch of them, and then start a new collection. She got really good at chess and all of these other games that she would beg me and my other cousins to play. By this time she was what fourteen or fifteen? Maybe she would lock herself up in her room. According to Aunt Gabby, she'd stay up late and wake up super late for school, and her friends stopped coming over. That day I went up to her house. Isabelle had told me that she had been given a flyer from a woman around the block from her house. They had become friends older than her, from what she told me, and that she had been giving her advice on what to do with her problems at school. How was older than isabel by about three years. But this woman she was describing sounded like she was in her late twenties or thirties. I always worried about that sort of thing because of the way isabel was. She would believe things. She would believe people in their lives. She explained all sorts of things about her, how she was named Mary Cherry, and that she had changed her name after discovering an ancient version of herself. Out by one of the warehouses, the place where she did her midnight walks. That's when she gave the chance to the spirits to reach out to her. Midnight walks were a thing they were supposed to do in order to channel messages from the eternal beings. I wasn't sure what she meant by that, but I remember almost every word she used to describe them. Another one of these so called friends was a guy named Charlie, no last name, I guess, but that he suggested that isabel begin her rituals before adulthood cast its shadow upon her and make it more difficult for her to reach the sense of purity they were all searching for. But I was downstairs again, wondering about all that Isabelle had mentioned. Aunt Gabby was at the kitchen wiping off some pots, some of them unused, but I guess she was looking for something to do. I could tell she wanted to ask me what I had talked to isabel about, but I said that she had only mentioned the friends that she had made at the warehouse, describing some of them. She got bored and started falling asleep. I think all she wanted to to do was to be heard, I told her. Aunt. Gabby stared at me in silence, expecting me to continue. That's all Isabel needed to fall asleep. This would sound like a simple case of insomnia to just about anybody, but that's because not just anybody wants to know about the shadows of those who walk at midnight. Isabelle recovered from that thing that was affecting her. My aunt had said that isabel had started screaming at things in the staircase, that she was found hiding between the wall and the toilet of the guest's bathroom. When they called one of their friends who was a doctor, to ask for any advice on what was happening, one of the early questions was if isabel had been sleeping properly. That's when they found out that she had started the practice of midnight walking. This had kept her up for an entire day. To make it easier, they said messages from the spirits. The doctor's explanation was that lack of sleep can cause hallucinations, and that's what was happening to her. In case she got a good night's rest and still kept seeing these things Crawley's, she said, the ones that come with the witch according to isabel to get to see a doctor right away. Isabelle went sort of back to normal in the coming days, and I would visit from time to time. My other cousins were wrapped up in their own lives. They found the whole thing over the top and exaggerated. Aunt Gabby didn't even want to believe what was happening. Plus, Isabelle was comfortable talking to me about what was going on, and I thought that it was better for her to talk to me and not to one of those weirdo friends. But like I had done with her since our younger days, I followed along with what she wanted to do, but for the first time I was scared for what I was about to get into. We stepped out into the backyard area one night, her mom had gone to sleep already, and we went straight toward the bush that covered up the twisted fencing that led us into the empty lot behind the house. It was one in the morning and we were close to midnight hour, which I later understood was in exactly twelve but rather a shifting period of time that you could only tell base on the shadows that came at night. It's odd right to talk about shadows at night, since shadows aren't supposed to show up when there's no light. She went first and looked around the lot. Grass was now growing through the asphalt. Some of the gates of the docks where the trailers unloaded or picked up whatever this Grace and Foods company used to make, were slightly open. But let me tell you, this place, despite its many air areas perfect for those kids who look for a place to explore, or record their YouTube channels or vandalize, it was always empty. Creepy was not the right word to describe it. It was heavy, prohibited, and there were no guards around, no lights, just the moon. We had a ways to walk through that lot. The street light that was in front of her house was now being blocked behind us, creating an ominous glow around the frame of it. It looked like it was burning with that orange glow. I was about to take another step forward when Isabel put her arm in front of me. Her eyes were showing panic. This time. She turned around without saying a word, and she darted toward the fence. It happened so fast that it took me a while to react. Soon she was already in her back yard again. She was signaling me to go toward her, but she kept taking steps back, disappearing even more through the fence of her yard. I looked over the warehouse again. A shadow floating without its creator, straight across the docks, not the kind would normally see, but this deep light, swallowing pitch black emptiness. It moved slowly across the twenty or so gates. And I know that the first person to go in a movie is the one that stands still when they should run. But now I kind of understood why curiosity wins sometimes. I was taking steps back, maybe a few steps away from the hole at the bottom of the fence. The shadow had completely disappeared, but I knew that it was not gone. Isabelle grabbed me from the shoulder and twisted my body as she shoved me to the opening of the fence. She was scared, and I don't think she was supposed to be, after all, she had been learning all about this, right. I followed her back into the house, feeling that nice, warm air as we shut the door quietly behind us. We had both seen those shadows before, maybe not that up close, but they were nothing new. Even her mom used to point them out to us through the window. Sometimes when we were growing up, nobody knew what they were, but I guess we all accepted that they were ghosts. And so we stood in her room glancing out the window towards the lot for a good while. My knees were tired or weak one of the two. I took my eyes off the window for a bit, without realizing that I was staring right at Isabelle. When her eyes grew wide once again, I followed her eyes or at the warehouse. The dark spot was barely visible from the left corner of the warehouse, growing larger by the second. I could hear my heart pounding on my chest once again. Isabelle was visibly shaking, but her eyes were stuck staring at the window as a shadow grew, But we both knew it wasn't actually growing. It was getting closer. Right when it was at the fence. I ducked down from the window sill, and isabel relaxed. She smiled and walked over to the door of her room. Again in shock, I heard as she walked on the staircase and stepped out into the yard. I stood up and looked from the side of the window as she approached the metal fence right where the shadow was standing. She looked up at the window and then back of the shadow. I was frozen solid as I watched the shadow float away back toward the warehouse, and Isabelle disappeared somewhere under the window. I heard her coming up the stairs and then through the wide open door. She looked me straight in the eye. It was my friend Mary, she said, her shoulders now relaxed and the color back on her face. I raised my eyebrows and nodded and acted like I had found relief, just like she had. She didn't know it back then, but she was able to speak to those things. Those midnight walks worked. Eventually, after several months, she forgot about it and started following competitions for little known video games on blogs. She became obsessed with that instead. The next story is called Don't You Miss Me, and it's coming up right after this. I opened the wrong drawer again, the pastelle colored blouses neatly folded in the sections of it. I never understood how something made to organize could be organized itself. I sighed and opened the second drower. I got my pants and shirt from the top. I don't remember the color. Then I placed them on the bed. Do you get lost in thought in the shower like I do? It does if thoughts get watered with a warm steam, that makes regular problems large and the tiny ones bigger. It must have been a good half hour of nothing before I looked over at the two sets of shampoo and body wash on the edge of the bathtub, one that would eventually run out, and the other, whether full or empty, would stay that way forever. There was a car honking from out in the street that shook me out of it with a groan. I shut off the water and grabbed the towel on the left. I could tell that the back of my arms were still wet when I put on my shirt, but it didn't matter. A few things did now, but routine it's a tough thing to let go of when you have had as many years as I did. It will make you move like a dead man even before you die. Limbs moving you with the mind of their own work was the same the stairs, the I'm worried about yous, I hope you're doing all ride, and the dreaded I'm here if you need anything that come with such a event. I don't remember how I got home. I just did, just like I had for the past fifteen nights. I sat on the couch waiting for her. I always got home before she did, and in her normal joking ways, she would always call out pizza Hut through the door and never got old for her. I stood up unwillingly to head to the kitchen. It was time to eat once again, the thing my brother would normally call to ask me about, just to make sure that I ate something, offering to order me a pizza, not knowing how much that would remind me of her. Half of a burger and stale fries were in there from yesterday. Two beers left on the bottom part of the refrigerator, but I couldn't manage to grab one and leave the other one behind, and grabbing both of them would mean that there would be one cold, one warm one eventually, just like us. And so I sat at the table now, watching the shadows grow longer on the wooden floors. I never found that exact time when the sun set and everything would turn into silhouettes, but just around that time. It must have started around day six. So when I heard her for the first time again, footsteps slow ones above the kitchen table, and with every creek they brought a memory of the many phrases she used to say. Do you have a problem with me? If you need anything, anything at all? Too bad? Nighty night. If the bed bugs don't bite you, I will. Do you think dinosaurs still roam the earth? The last time you showered? It's what made me smile, those footsteps upstairs. Sometimes at night I would hear her whispers through the window, followed by knocks, the same way that she's tapped against the bathroom door, just to bother me when I was using it. I never told anyone about it, maybe from fear, fear that she would go away. And I know that parts of us make up the person that we're with. That we fill in the blanks throughout our lives, especially long ones that let us complete their sentences and thoughts enough to dodge a fight or surprise them at just the right time. Sometimes those blanks take up the whole person and were left with little instances of seeing them as we remember them. But our mind can only handle it for just a few seconds at a time before we realize what we're doing. I know how I wish it were different sometimes I'd be looking out the window and would feel a little tap on the shoulder, instinctively turning to the opposite side because of the way she joked around with me other times, and this I've told nobody I could hear her. Even now as I write this alone in the bedroom, filled with memories of old scenarios that play over and over in real time, I look out the open window forgetting and remembering at the same time to close, she tells me, not joking this time. To come with her, Honey, she says, come with me. Don't you miss me? And my heart fills with excitement, The same excitement when she'd get home or the way home would come to me those evenings. Don't you miss me? She asked? I do. Thank you very much for your reviews and request for stories. If you have an idea for me, find me on Instagram or over at Edwin dot Fm on your internet browser. Up next, be sure to check out Scary Mystery Surprise or Michelle and I talk about creepy things that surprises around the Internet. Find us by searching for Scary Mystery Surprise on your podcast app. Thank you very much for listening. Se soon