Portrait Memories (Two Short Scary Stories)

Back when I was in high school, I asked my mom for $ 50 to help pay for the yearbook near the end of the school semester. She asked me if I was sure that I wanted that, because I never paid attention to it once I had everyone sign it. It might be cool to display it on a shelf somewhere, but it was true. Instead, I would just put them away in boxes and forget about them. But still, I tried to convince her, begging her that one day I would look back at them and wish I had bought them. She understood that. You see, mom was different. She would take care of her yearbooks and would actually flip through them every once in a while when she would call her friends. She also kept meticulous photo albums of our family, stuff we would flip through whenever someone would visit, like a family or whatever, and we would all sit around, the stereotypical embarrassment of them seeing us doing silly things as kids. Mom went back to the living room and came back with a $ 50 bill. She left it for me at the kitchen table, and I smiled. Because this time I would take care of it and bring out all of my yearbooks. I would go through them and everything. At least, that's what I promised myself. That whole night, I thought about it. And about the other times that my friends would point out that they saw me on a yearbook that one of them had from long ago. And I kept thinking of the friends I had back then. My friend Chris and her sister Maria. Catherine and her brothers Jorge and Esteban. The terrible twins, as she called them. there was one friend that I remember the most. My friend Allie. She was a friend that taught me about secrets and how to keep them. The first one who ever asked me that question that we get as kids from our friends. So, who do you like? It took a little bit to get it out of me, but eventually I told her who it was and immediately felt a pit in my stomach, thinking that someone else knew something so personal about me. Maybe it was fear that she would tell other people and that they would make fun of me. Allie and I became friends right away, and we would partner up for our projects. We even participated in the Peter Pan play in second grade. She was a deckhand on the ship along with me. She came to my birthday party when I turned eight. She gave me a journal as a gift. There's something that you don't know about my friend, and maybe something I don't know either. Because the truth was, there was never any trace of her. She never existed. My name is Edwin, and here's a scary story. We had gone through this before with my mom sometime in high school when I asked her about Allie or Allie's mom. Who? Mom asked, thinking I was joking. I neither had the name right. Allie, my friend from second grade. I bugged her for weeks about this. Allie, my friend who went with us to the Chinese buffet and almost threw up from the chow mein. The one who moved away to Oregon in the middle of third grade because her dad got a job in the forest. Allie, the friend who came to my birthday party and was with me in the play, for goodness sake. She used to come over to work on our school projects. What does she look like? Mom asked. And this happened a couple times. Reddish brown hair, really long, skinny, always wore jeans and booked t-shirts. dirty white shoes mom had no memory of her and for a while I genuinely thought that mom was just doing that to bother me but then I thought hey maybe she really doesn't remember Allie so I asked dad because he would drive us around sometimes Allie he asked was she that one girl with the half brother no that was Ashley and she became my enemy halfway through second grade because she lied about something or I don't remember why but no That was an alley. And I explained the same things. The Peter Pan play, her dad that was a scientist, the mom who worked as a teacher at another school. But he couldn't remember. And that's how this whole thing started. It bothered me for a really long time. At one point, I even went with two other friends from high school to my old elementary school to find the teacher, Mrs. Gutierrez, who bluntly told me that no, there was never an alley in the class, but to check the yearbook That's why I ended up there in the first place, with Mom. We searched the yearbooks from that year, first, second, and third grade. No Allie. We looked through other names, Allison, Alejandra, everything in between, and I went through all the photos and couldn't spot her. Allie never existed. I asked my other friends from back then at one point, through Facebook, just in case they knew something about Allie, and one of them replied, saying that they do remember me talking about Allie, but had no idea who I was referring to. They couldn't remember an Allie from back then. The thing that bothers me the most is that Allie was not imaginary. I did not make her up. She came to my birthday party. She took photos with us. My parents would even take us places, and they would drive us to her house right across the street from the middle school that we never got to go to together. There's no memory on the side of my parents. And I looked into this. What it could be. False memories are what comes up. Events and things that my brain made up. But this specific? Or is there something more to this? A memory that the world is trying to get me to forget? My sister went with my aunt to a tianguis, which is kind of like an outdoor swap meet, with lots of vendors that will sell you anything from clothes to snacks to furniture and even washing sheets. She came back with this portrait of a woman in this beautiful black dress, along with a frame and everything. The thing, of course, creeped me out. I think I was like 13 at the time. She was older, a junior in high school, in that goth rocker stage, you know? So my aunt said that it would be okay for her to have it. Turns out it was free. She told me that when she saw it and asked about it, the guy was super surprised and said that she could have it for free. My aunt said no, distrustful of the guy, saying that they would pay for it and to accept payment for it. My aunt kind of liked that portrait too. The guy was overly nice in the transaction and kept insisting, there is no way. If she wants it, I will give it to her for free. And if she wants to look around for more stuff, she can pay for that. My sister obviously was not suspicious of this at all. But in the end, my aunt agreed and they brought the portrait back. Now, I told you already that this thing was kind of cool. It was black and white. This portrait of this lady that was standing at the foot of a staircase in this beautiful black dress. She was wearing a gold necklace and bracelets, but not overly done. It was really classy. And it didn't look like a magazine quality photo, but it definitely looked old. The frame was also really cool. It was made of a silver color and it was heavy. My dad, of course, teased my sister about the portrait when he was helping her hang it up, saying that hopefully it wouldn't scare her in the middle of the night and even gave her the name Berta. He would randomly say hi to the portrait whenever he passed by my sister's room. Of course, he would also make fun of my sister's makeup and how she would always wear black. It really made us laugh watching my sister get all annoyed. but it was a normal thing in the house for us to make fun of each other. Anyway, as the weeks went by, the portrait of this woman got a little creepy. Sometimes it would look as if she was angry, and others it would be as though she was happily looking at the camera. I couldn't explain how or why. So I started telling this to my sister when I went into her room. The thing was looking at me weird. Yeah, maybe it's going to help me keep you guys out of my room now, she said. And I swear that it was as if this thing heard her because it genuinely looked creepier after that night. I even heard one of her friends say the same things when she came over and stepped into her room. Stuff like, what's up with that picture? Or, that thing is giving me the creeps. It was true. Dad stopped making fun of the portrait and calling her Bertha. Mom was always afraid of that kind of thing, so she wouldn't even talk about it. But we started noticing a few changes around my sister. like she wouldn't go out as much anymore. She would spend a lot of her time alone and stopped asking for money to go out after school to have dinner with her friends on Fridays. She started spending a lot of time in her room, on her bed, doing nothing. As the months went by, dad brought it up first, asking what the heck was wrong with her. Why did she stop going out with the locas, the crazies, as my dad would call her friends. My mom started thinking that maybe she had gone through a breakup or something, Or that maybe it was just her age and that nobody gets me stage. But I knew my sister. There was something else going on. There were things that we could tell my aunt that my mom wouldn't let us ask or talk about. So one day, when she came over, I walked out with her to the car and told her that there was something wrong with Maribel, my sister. I explained the whole thing and told her that it was as though she was a zombie or something. My aunt looked concerned and asked me a bunch of questions and then asked me about her friends. She said she was going to call me later to make sure to pick up the phone. This was before cell phones, so I had to listen for the phone that we had in the living room. By this time, no one was calling my sister, so she only left that room to eat or to go to the bathroom, but she practically had no friends left. Later that night, at around 9, my aunt called. Mom passed me the phone and I heard my aunt, with a nervous shake in her voice, telling me that we needed to get help from my sister. I still get chills when I think about the call that we had that night. Basically, she said that she had called one of her friends who knew about spiritual stuff and witchcraft. And after some poking around, she came to the conclusion that she had brought something into the house that was possessing her, but not in the sense of a spirit ticking over her body. No, something darker. something that was taking over what she could and could not do, and that my sister had given it permission to do so. My aunt immediately asked about the portrait she had gotten at the tianguis and where it was. I told her everything, that she had hung it up right at the entrance of her room so that whenever we walked in there, we would get freaked out and leave. My aunt took that as confirmation. See, it turns out that my sister was using this thing for protection. Protection from us. From other people. That it wanted her all to itself and no one else. Now remember, I'm 13 at the time. And this idea was way creepier now once I'm explaining it as an adult. There are things I understand now that I didn't back then. Why her friends stopped coming to the house. Why she was so distant from everybody. This portrait or whatever was in it. Wanted to keep her away from us. And yeah, it made sense, because that's what my sister wanted. For us to leave her alone. I asked my aunt what we were supposed to do, and she said that they were figuring it out, so to say nothing for now. She was going to talk to my mom about it and everything. The days that followed, I think the thing in the portrait felt threatened, because things started going on around the house. My sister's room door would slam. Nobody was there. Some of her CDs would randomly start playing. My sister herself was beginning to feel scared too, and she kept saying that she was having nightmares of the woman in the portrait. Andale, ves, ves, my dad would say. You see, you see, I told you so. Still, we were all trying to get her some help, and my aunt had told us not to mess with the portrait yet. Eventually, my aunt came by. told my sister what she had to do about the portrait she had gotten. She had gone to find the guy from the Tianguis, but he was gone. The other vendor said that he was only there for a couple of weeks and then nobody saw him again. But this lady, the friend of my aunt who knew about witchcraft and all that, said that the only way to get rid of it was to give it away. To not accept payment for the portrait, it had to be a gift. So without giving it a second thought, my mom grabbed the picture off the wall put it in a box outside by the curb, and wrote out the word, free, in large sharpie. There, my mom said, no more of this. We all sat in silence, wondering if this would even work. But later on that night, when my dad was getting ready to leave for work early in the morning, we realized that this was not the way to do it. The portrait, and its box and everything, was now right by the front door. Who had put it there? Nobody knows. Dad woke us all up and asked for an explanation, but nobody knew anything. He had called and woken up my aunt explaining the whole thing, and she said that she was going to come over later. Dad needed to leave, so we all pretty much just stayed in the living room, huddled together, waiting for my aunt to call us or something. Eventually, we heard her car out on the porch, and we rushed past the box and the portrait in order to get to her. It turns out that this thing needed to be gifted to someone directly. We couldn't just get someone to randomly take it. So there we were, again at this tianguis with my aunt. She had paid $ 80 to set up shop there. Basically, we had a yard sale full of stuff that she didn't want, just to make it worth it. And this portrait of the woman was off to the side. It took a few hours, but just before they closed for the night, a guy walked up and asked about it. We all tried not to make it awkward, as my aunt told the guy that if he wanted it, he could just have it. He didn't insist on us taking any money. He simply smiled, agreed, and went for it. Then he disappeared into the crowd. My mom, sister, and I looked at each other, guilty for what may happen, but relieved, knowing that we wouldn't have to see that thing again. The days that followed, my sister started feeling better. Then a couple weeks after that, her friends started coming around the house again. And she was that same old, annoying, awesome sister that she was. When we talk about the incident now, we still get creeped out. But now in a different way. Because that thing opened something up. You see, now we know that there is power in ordinary objects. There's power in things that we take from strangers, too. Scary Story Podcast is written and produced by me, Edwin Covarrubias. If you have any ideas or comments, you can find out where to reach me in the description of this episode. Thank you very much for listening. Keep it scary, everyone. See you soon.