I heard her sing to me every night before I drifted into sleep. “Come, Riley”, she’d say, her voice softer than the breeze coming through my window; sweeter than the smell of the forest outside. “Come meet me, Riley. I’ve been dying to meet you.” And though my eyes were closed, I could make out the shape of a little girl, around my age, white nightgown and blonde hair, standing just outside my window. And I felt so calmed by her that I’d very quickly fall soundly asleep.
I was about eight years old when we moved to the house near the woods and, for the first days of living there, I couldn’t sleep. I had heard my grandmother say all kinds of things lurk in the forest. Mysterious things. Scary things. Every time I lied in bed and closed my eyes, I would imagine those mysterious, scary things crawling into my bedroom, and I couldn’t sleep. Yet, when I first heard her, I wasn’t scared. She was sweet; just a little girl, like myself, and she never entered my room. She only stood there for the whole night, almost like a guard.
Every time I felt uneasy or afraid of what would come through my window, I’d hear it: “come, Riley”, and I’d feel her standing there, watching me. “I’ve been dying to meet you.” Over time, I started to wonder why she wanted me to come with her. And, a few times before I drifted into sleep, I did open my eyes when I heard her, expecting to catch her in my window while fully awake. I never did. I didn’t understand how I could follow her. But I started to want to.
I remember thinking just that one day. I heard: “come, Riley”, and I thought, right as I was starting to dream, “I want to.” And, then, there she was, in my dream. We were in a beautiful forest, very different from the dark, gloomy one outside my house. It was bright. Lively. Lovely. She waved her hand at me and I followed, walking barefoot through the sunlit spots on the wet grass, feeling a light breeze ruffle my hair and the sweet smell of the forest fill my lungs.
We stopped near a patch of dirt. I looked at her, knelt, and started to claw at the ground. The dirt felt weird under my fingernails, but I didn’t stop digging the hole. I revealed fabric; white fabric, flowy. I pulled out a perfectly pristine white nightgown from the dirt, and she looked at me. “Now we can match.” We smiled.
My parents tell me I had never sleepwalked before, and that they don’t know why but that night they felt something was off. They checked my bedroom and saw me missing, the window open. They rushed out in desperation, running into the forest, our forest, gloomy, dark, and scary. They went deeper, deeper, calling out for me. “Riley!” My mother says she had been running for at least an hour before she finally found me. I was on my knees, dirt scattered all around me and over my pajamas. A dirty nightgown had been tossed to the side; there was a hole in the ground, and she thought I was cradling a rock, and when she came closer to look, touched my shoulder with a hesitant “Riley?”, she saw what I was truly holding, and she let out a scream that finally woke me up.
It was the head of a little girl.
. . .
The one I unburied first was called Carolyne. When I told my parents about the dream and the little girl calling me, still half asleep and unaware of the decomposed head I had just dropped to the ground, they barely understood, but they didn’t forget. Many years later, they asked me about the girl in my dreams. “Do you think this Carolyne wanted you to find the missing girls, and that’s why she lured you to the forest?” I nodded and agreed.
And I didn’t tell them that it couldn’t be, because Carolyne was a brunette.
The police found six little girls buried in that same hole. They were in nightgowns, looking to be in the deepest, most pleasant sleep, and they had dirt under their fingernails. The nightgown I unburied did not belong to any of them. I’m sure that what called me for so long wasn’t Carolyne or any of the other girls; none of them looked like her. I don’t know what it was or why it wanted me to come, and I don’t know what would’ve happened if my mother hadn’t found me. I don’t think about it. The only thing I think about is that, at eight years old, I had learned a very important lesson from my grandmother, and I just didn’t understand it fully.
The forest is full of mysterious things. Scary things. And, sometimes, they don’t want to crawl into your bedroom at night through the open window.
Sometimes, they ask you to come.