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When I was 9 years old my family went on vacation to a small seaside town at the North sea.
It wasn't a bad or even remarkable holiday, we often went to different places, my parents loved travelling and exploring new corners of the world they'd never been to.
But I've recently found some old vacation pictures while cleaning out their house with Cal and remembered that there had been a few things that seemed weird at the time.
They still kind of do actually, which is why I'm here.
It might just have been a fantasy of a younger me that didn't understand how the world works yet but I thought maybe here with you it could do something good.
And if not it might at least give me a sort of closure.
Anyways, we had a lovely house, right at the beach and you could watch the gentle flow of the waves coming and going from some of the windows.
I spent a lot of my holiday just sitting by an open window in the living room, listening to the waves and drawing in my colouring book or just watching the ocean.
Now that I think of it, I never enjoyed going to the beach as much as just watching it.
The water was always slightly cold, although it was summer and oftentimes there were many tourists there.
At night though, I could sit by the window watching the waves rolling in all alone.
I didn't really like going to sleep there.
Although the house was beautiful there was something slightly unsettling about it.
It was built in a way I've never seen before or since with the rooms forming a sort of spiral, leading you further and further into the house, every one of them only accessible through the last one until a staircase steep in the centre of the house lead upstairs.
I don't know how I knew it was in the centre.
I've thought about it and I have no idea why I'm so convinced the stairway was in the exact centre of the house. Maybe my parents had mentioned it to me.
The layout of the first floor continued much like downstairs, with the rooms going from centre to the outer walls this time.
There was only one exception.
The room leading up to the very last room of the house, where my older brother and I slept, the one where you'd have to walk both spirals back to get out of the house again.
It was just a long empty hallway with no furniture, no decoration, nothing.
Not even windows despite it having an exterior wall. When I'd walk through it the hallway always felt empty and soulless, like something should have been there to cultivate it.
An interesting painting, an extra door to a cupboard, anything really.
In the daytime walking through it was no problem for me but nighttime was a different thing.
There were no lamps in the hallway and what little light spilled in from the other rooms seemed to never quite reached far enough and threw strange shadows on the simple beige wallpaper.
And they always looked different when I walked through it, every single time.
I usually ran through it or forced Cal to come with me even though he thought I was just being silly and I avoided going to the toilet at night.
Other than a few shadows that looked like strange branches there never did happen anything out of the ordinairy there.
Until the last night before we would drive home that is.
I was sitting at my usual spot by the window and watched the sun go down while my family ran around doing some last minute packing so we could get a headstart on all the traffic jams as my dad used to say.
I only had had to pack a small backpack in hideous neon colours that glowed slightly in the dark since my mother still packed my clothes and such back then so I wasn't really bothered by my family's hectic bustling.
When the sun was gone and my mother noticed how late it had gotten she shooed Calvin and me upstairs.
We passed through the empty floor as I was telling him about all the games I would play with my friends once we were back but I still noticed immediately that something was different.
Somehow the rooms beige walls appeared to be more yellow than usual. And the corners seemed to be sharper somehow and like the walls didn't meet up perfectly, like the hallway had just had a growth spurt and it's limbs didn't fit each other anymore.
I didn't say anything about it to my brother, but I did hurry a bit to get through it as quickly as possible.
As we walked the floor seemed to get longer and longer which made no sense at all since it should've only been a few steps long and I grew more and more nervous, sure we would never reach our bedroom, that I believed to be our safe haven.
Just when I was convinced we'd never make it, the floor ended abruptly and I all but tumbled into the room accompanied by the laughter of my brother.
He didn't seem to find anything off with the floor so I tried to calm down and forget about it as I brushed my hair and got ready for bed.
We settled in for our last night at the beach house but as I was just about to fall asleep, buried deep inside my blanket with only my eyes uncovered to look into the direction of the hallway once more, the noise started.
First it was very quiet, almost not noticable especially with my brothers soft snorring from the other bed, but I could still hear it.
I was wide awake, all traces of the sleep that'd been about to claim me gone in an instant. The noise was gone again but I was certain I'd heard it.
And I was proven right as it sounded again.
It was low and dark almost like the throaty rumbling growl of some sort of animal that I'd rather not think about back them and it clearly came from the direction of the changed hallway.
I lay there, hiding as good as I could while still keeping constant, wide-eyed watch of the opening and as the growling noise slowly grew louder and my eyes began to adjust to the darkness I noticed something that made all of the small hairs of my neck stand up.
There they were again, the shadows that looked like branches. Only now I realized that it wasn't branches that were casting the inexplicable shadows, it were hands.
Hands with long fingeres, way too long to be human and they were moving, steadily closer to our room.
I almost screamed at that point, but fear sealed my lips tight. I still stared at the approaching shadows, watching while listening to my frantically beating heart as the hands grew even longer and thin arms began to appear after them.
I didn't know what to do, if I ran, it'd surely notice and catch me as I would never get out of the house since it was blocking my only way out, but if I tayed put it was only a question of time until it'd reach me.
And I was sure that should I allow that to happen it'd be over for me.
Just as my eyes started to blurr over from desperate tears and keeping them open for too long my brother let out a short snore and suddenly I knew what I had to do, my only chance at survival.
I blinked my tears away as fast as I could and took one deep breath.
Then I dashed out of my bed, my blanked flying off in my hurry and jumped onto my brothers bed.
I heard another growl, louder than ever this time, sounding like it was almost inside our room and didn't waste any time looking at the hallway again as I dove full bodily under the covers, pressing my body against by brothers warm, grounding form.
Then I just lay there shivering and not really daring to breathe, straining my ears to hear anything that might be going on outside of the blanket.
That's how I spent the rest of the night.
I'm sure I didn't sleep one minute that night even as my brothers arm came around me protectively at some point to hug me.
I only dared to let my guard down as I noticed daylight shining in from the corners of the blanket I was hiding under.
The next morning nothing else happened anymore.
The hallway was back to it's normal, empty self and no strange sounds were to be heard either.
I asked my brother if he'd noticed anything but he only mentioned having strange dreams full of yellow doors which helped in calming me down further.
Still I was glad to drive home again and spend the rest of my holidays in my familiar room at home that lay right next to my parents and brothers and play with dolls with my friends.
Note:
I've left a picture of the house with my statement. I don't think it will be able to assist much as you can only see the outside of it, but I wanted to leave it anyways for research purposes or just the comprehension of my story.