The Woman With the Broom

That's not my birthday, I told the lady at the front desk. She smiled, but not in the polite I made a mistake kind of way, not even in an embarrassed or let me fix that kind of way. She simply stared at me in silence, and that smile was getting whiter, slow enough for me not to notice it until it was almost reaching her ears. No it isn't, she finally said, her expression barely changing. I looked around the office to see if anyone else was going to come and help me. The pain in my mouth suddenly pinched against my skull. Right then. It was when I realized that I was grinding my teeth again. A woman came out of the back of that old office, smiling at me until she looked at the woman behind the desk, and like a dog with her tail between her legs, the woman on the chair stood up quickly. She grabbed the broom that was leaning on the corner of the waiting room, and she rushed outside, not without offering one final look toward me, a sinister smile, one that I can still remember. My name is Edwin, and here's a scary story. It was weird that experience with that woman. I asked the dentist about her, and she said not to worry about it. But I told her clearly, March second, nineteen ninety one. What would she write February twenty sixth? The date hadn't even happened yet, the year was way off. What was I negative? Two weeks young? The dentist didn't seem to get the joke, and she simply asked for her tools and got to work. She was done in about ten minutes. The pain was still there when I walked out with the bag of prescription medication, but I knew that it was going to go away. She had taken it out. It can't hurt you if it ain't there, she said, with a chuckle. She wasn't wrong. I left the old dentist's office with forty dollars less that day, a deal thanks to that sliding scale that they charged us without insurance. The lines were long, and the areas around there weren't the best, but I was glad it was still around. Word around the neighborhood kept saying that the place was closing down, and it had been that way for years. I walked up to the bus stop and looked back at that office. The lion was now reaching Juan's Tacos by the corner of the plaza, and at the very very end, just around the corner of the building was that woman looking directly at me, her chin leaning on the old broom she was holding with both hands, that smile still reaching her ears. I looked away and pretended to look for the bus down the street. Unfortunately I saw it just on the other block. Wasn't as bad after that second pill at night. Overall, it was a good day today. Jimmy's school called me while I was at work. He was about to be picked up because of a stomach ache, but I kept the generic pepto bismo along with the inhaler at the front office. I said it was okay if he took it, so they gave it to him and they didn't call back. I got home to the door wide open at the apartment complex. I had told Jimmy not to do that many times. Those people, the ones that passed by the corner, they were said to be thieves. Although they wouldn't steal from us, they blatantly told me that. When I clutched my purse on my way home from the bus stop, one day. I didn't trust him, though we're neighbors friends, two of them said. Today. They waved and laughed as I walked by them, and then they went back to their card game two and they smacked the cards onto the floor. Twenty six, they yelled. Two of them were getting overly excited, while another said that he wanted a do over. Two and twenty six. The numbers echoed in my mind as I stared down the old black gum circles on the sidewalk. There ain't no do overs. It's over, one of them said. I turned around and caught a glimpse of him, a smile spread wide across his face. It's over, he repeated, and he looked directly at me. Time seemed to stand still for a moment. It wasn't immediate then the thoughts that I have now as I'm writing this down two and twenty six like the wrong birthday that the strange woman had written down for me. I was still thinking about it when I looked into the wide metal door that was opened. I turned the doorknob on the wooden door. It was locked with the dead bolt, so I knocked and Jimmy came up to open it. I decided to scold him. Then the door, after all, had been locked. Strange day today. The pain was gone now, just like the dentist said it would. It can't hurt me if it ain't there. She said that an implant can be considered sometime in the future. It knew what she meant. She meant when that had the money for it. There was no shame in it. We were all in it together, and she knew not to bother me with phone calls like those normal dentist places do, asking if I'm ready for the procedure now, because the doctor has availability for these next two weeks. I had heard it all, but not from these guys. There were more important things now anyway. Rhett was due in a couple of weeks. Jimmy needed cleats after out growing the ones they had let him borrow at the end of last season. And still I felt all right for the majority of the day. But I have to say that number it's still there. I don't know what it is. It's bothering me. Something isn't right. Weird day today there was an order that I messed up on at Hogies. The old woman got out of her car and came up to the counter, yelling with that raspy voice pointing at me. She wanted me to apologize, and I did. I keep my head down at work all the time. The risks are too big, so I told her that we would fix it, but it wasn't good enough for her. The manager came up to us, wiping her hands with the wrong rag and asked what the order number had been. I couldn't believe it. I looked at it, my mind going back to the woman with the broom and the man with the cards. Next thing I know, the manager was tapping me on the shoulder, two twenty six. Did you get that order? Two twenty six? Let's get it out again before it gets cold. The old woman, now out of air, was trying to yell, before you get cold. I heard the woman say, clear as day. I looked at her, confused, this time trying to make sure I had heard it correctly. When I saw a grin spreading across her face. At that moment, I went numb and felt the strange rush of cold blood go up to my head and I grabbed onto the counter. I heard the voice of a man through my headset of the drive through. I got to take a break too. I heard my friend Barbara come up and say that as she was taking my headset off. We both sat at the farthest table from the counter, with two sandwiches on the tray. That's when I told her, told her everything, at least what I could make sense of. That I kept seeing that number, that date, zero two twenty six, two twenty six, February twenty six. It was getting to me. Barbara simply stared pulling out her phone and typing something extremely fast on it, Susan. She seemed to be searching for something. I remember that name, but she didn't finish. She told me to let it go, to not think about it so much. She kept looking at her phone. I begged her to tell me what she was talking about, but she said that I should just focus on thinking of other things, that everything was going to be all right. But I could see it in her eyes. Something wasn't right. Not an easy day today. Things in order, two decks of cards on a bench. A woman with the broom was here again. I heard her raspy boys yelling at me from the corner of the room. Something's not right. February twenty sixth zero two two six to twenty six Day of Darkness, Day of rest. My name is Barbara Collins, from Diana's workplace at Hogy Smart. It's late March. Jimmy let me help him with his mother's things, and I found her journal. I hope what I tell you here offers some closure after her passing, though I must warn you that if you're looking for a logical explanation, I cannot offer that. Diana was found dead in her living room on the afternoon of February twenty sixth of this year. Her face seemed contorted, jaws stretched out beyond anything I had ever seen, her eyes staring at the ceiling, and her right hand rigid stuck with her index finger pointing at the open door of her apartment, though her arm was now against the carpet. From what I hear, this type of expression comes from fear when death arrives. And even though the police opened and closed the investigation, they never bothered to hear me on what she had told me regarding the strange people she encountered, the people in the days before her death. The number two twenty six the warnings. So I'm writing this here for everyone to read and listen to the things she did write down, the things she only told me. We were at work one evening. Rush hour was extra difficult that day because there was a concert at a nearby park. Diana was working the drive through when suddenly a woman who had left before getting the second bag of her order came rushing up to her by the counter. God only knows what kind of stuff She told her. She was pretty shaken up. And when she told me about the number two two six, the woman from the dentist's office, and the man with the cards, I started piecing things together. You see, I live in the same neighborhood where Diana shared her apartment with her son Jimmy, and if you're not from around that part of town, you wouldn't know about the strange sightings that happened in the eighties. No matter how hard I looked for more information, though nobody was willing to say anything. I'd forgotten all about it until Diana mentioned it. May she rest in peace, but I couldn't help It had been sent an email long ago. The only reply back about this the one that mentioned a woman with a broom. I thought it was a joke when I read it, I thought they were trying to make me believe that it was a witch, the typical flying woman across the night sky. I sent a response back to that email to a woman named Susan L. But she never replied back with anything else. But it was the idea behind this woman that terrified me. All of it detailed in that email. The long block of texts Susan had written explained the whole thing. That there was a strange woman. She would come up to people and tell them the day that they would die, somewhat believe her. Others would not. There were very few that actually understood the message, and I thought Diana was on her way to doing exactly that. I know that saying something isn't an option anymore, and honestly I should not have kept my mouth shut about it. It was only going to make things worse. But I should have said something anyway. There was something I could do now, at least to get some closure. I had it burned in my mind. I'm going to find out who this woman was and get some help for Jimmy. It was Saturday morning and I had called out a word to go back to the dentist's office. I knew the place she was talking about I had been there myself. The receptionist had just gotten to her post when the bell on the door rang as I stepped in. I hesitated at first, but I asked her about the woman with the broom. Her expression changed almost immediately. She asked me, did she say something to you? I told her no, I just wanted to know if she was around, and that I needed to ask her a few things. She told me that the woman had been spotted around the area, that there were several stories about her circulating around Facebook and some other forums as she frequented. As she did her own research on it, the receptionist was more than open to maybe eager to share more information about everything that she knew about this woman. I know it sounds insane to even hear this. Trust me, I already made peace with it. It was the skepticism that was keeping me for my answers. She agreed, and I turned my body toward the exit when a shadow passed right in front of the door, and at that moment, the reception is grabbed me by the wrists and pulled me toward her behind the counter. We stayed quiet as a shadow covered up the waiting room area. That's her, she whispered. We sit still for a long time, and eventually she was gone. That evening, the receptionist who was this middle aged woman, dark hair and overly nervous, Clara, what's her name? She was sitting across from me at one of those fast food restaurants, the ones where they serve you coffee and regular styrofoam cuffs. We talked for a couple of hours about the town, the woman with the broom. She understood computers and stuff, so when I told her that I had the email from this woman named Susan in the long lost MSN email, she quickly got to her phone and asked me what it said and if I could log in. And I'm not sure how she did it, password resets and god knows what else, but we were able to find it buried under a bunch of spam. It was there. So we read the email, and I'm going to read it for you here, if that's all right. Here's what it says regarding about the woman with the broom from Susan L. Thank you for your email, Barbara. I hope this reaches you in time, or if someone else is being affected that it reaches them. You're asking questions about the woman that people used to see around here in the late eighties, and I know who you were referring to. Most people call her a joke or a witch story, or she isn't. In nineteen eighty seven, my uncle Matteo told us about a woman that approached him outside a clinic on Fifth Street. She was holding a broom, leaning on it like a cane. He thought that she worked there, and she smiled. She said, that's not your day. He laughed and asked what she meant as she told them one August fourteenth, So he told her not even close, thinking that she was trying to guess his birthday. But she only smiled wider and said, no, it isn't, this creepy smile on her face. For weeks after that, he kept seeing the number on receipts, license plates, the radio clock stopping at eight fourteen. It was everywhere, and he started writing it down. He said it was something trying to get his attention. Now, most people would have said it was simply a coincidence. My uncle didn't. He started digging around, asking everyone who would listen, and as he looked back at his own life, he realized something. He had always been warned about this sort of thing. So August came around and he didn't move. He stayed home, closed all the doors and windows, didn't drive, didn't walk, nothing. He didn't even answer the phone. After the day was over, the sidings of the number stopped, and he never saw the strange woman again. When I heard this story, one where nothing happens, I realized something different. Cases have popped up over the years, and it's the same. Every time. She never says you will die or threatens you. She only corrects you. People who ignore her end up dead on the date that she gives them. I don't believe it to be a rumor. I found three cases from this very town alone. The difference between the ones that lived and the ones who died are those that figured out what the date meant before it arrived. And it was at this part where my jaw dropped open. Please, if someone you know has been given a date, don't tell them to forget about it. Don't tell them it's stress. They need to understand the warning. I don't send this lightly. Most people laugh. I hope you don't. I'm sorry if this reaches you too late. Susan l. I thought back on what I told Diana, that everything was going to be all right, that you shouldn't think about it too much. In the days that followed, I kept thinking about what got me into all this, even back then when I reached out to the woman in the email, the pure desperation I felt, how I felt checking my email over her response, never seeing anything from her again, and my mind kept thinking steps backwards, little by little until I found it. A memory at the gas station long ago, when a woman asked about the winning lotto tickets. She said to buy for my birthday July seventeenth, combine it with hers if I needed more numbers. I remember how the awkwardness came out of my voice when I told her that it wasn't my birthday. No, it is it, she said, her smile getting a little wider by the second. I smiled back, paid for my gas, and left that she simply stood there watching me drive away. I mentioned it to my aunt back then and passing when she said something about the lottery numbers, and then she stopped. She looked at me and asked me to describe the woman in detail. She eventually reached out to her friends, who eventually told told her the story. It's how I got Susan's emails. The obsession with seven one seven July seventeenth. And when I say that number was everywhere, I mean it. I thought about it so much. How did I eventually forget about it? When the day came, I felt sick to my stomach. My mind was going crazy over those numbers. I kept seeing them everywhere. It was debilitating that pounding headache. So I called off work that day. I closed all my doors, all my windows. I spent the entire time in bed, and then the number stopped the next day. I never told Diana that part. I was afraid that if I said it out loud, it would become real instead of only a nightmare I had woken up from long ago. It was clear now I should have said something. She would have still been alive. Do what you will with this information. I met up with Clara several times to talk about Diana's death and the other cases that she has stumbled upon. And yet there's one question that we always end the conversation with, Who is this woman with a broom and how does she choose who she gives a date to? Why do all the descriptions label her the same, a slim, older looking woman with thin hair, a broom in her hands, a smile so thin and wide that it sense shivers down your spine when you think of her the way all these accounts speak, how a stare, a dark black stare into nothingness, like the one she leads you to. Reports of sighting still pop up, and thankfully we catch them on time to warn them of all these other cases that resulted in death or near death experiences. We like to think that we have saved lives. And if you're from here Nla or the surrounding areas, if you see this woman with the broom, if you suddenly can't get a number out of your mind, pay attention to it. It isn't a prediction or a curse, but a sign. The gap into eternal rest is opening slowly for you, and if you're not ready, close your doors and windows. Scary Story podcast is written and produced by me Edwin Corrugyas. Don't forget to follow on this podcast and leave a review. Also, let me know what you think of this story and what others you would like to hear next. I'll be back next week with another story. And in the meantime, if you want to check out more of my shows, find a Paranormal Club over on YouTube, Spotify, a podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Thank you very much for listening, Keep it scary everyone, See you soon.