Almost two months ago, my grandma came to live with us. She’s like, super old, past seventy I think, and she was falling and getting confused at her own house, and mom said she wasn’t willing to put her own mother in a home, so dad bought one of those like big sheds from Home Depot, like the tiny house thing, with outlets and stuff, and put it in the backyard for Grandma. I guess she didn’t want to give up her independence, or else she’d just take Christina’s room since she’s in college now, but I’m kind of glad she didn’t. Grandma has been weird for a while now, and it kind of makes me uncomfortable.
I know that makes me sound kind of crappy or whatever, but I figure I should just tell the truth the whole way through this because stuff gets super weird and a bunch of you guys isn’t going to believe me anyways, so I’m not going to lie about the stuff before it gets crazy. Yeah, I don’t mean to make you think I hate Grandma or anything, I love her, and she used to be awesome. She was like, the grandparent who would go out in the yard and slip and slide with us and stuff, when she was like, ten years younger. I was pretty little then, I’m only fourteen now, so I guess that was when I was like, six or whatever, but I remember it. She was always that grandparent, the one who spent more time with the kids than with the adults at whatever gathering we were all at.
But lately, like in the last couple of years, she just sort of… I don’t know I guess she bums me out. She’ll forget who everyone is, and she kept calling me Frederick, but my name is Andy, so she’s way off. She’ll forget everyone’s name kind of, but mine is like, she always calls me Frederick. Not even Fred, it’s always the whole name like that. No one has been named Frederick in like, a million years. Fred is bad enough, you know what I mean? And it was my Grandpa’s name, Grandma’s husband so it weirds me out that she keeps confusing me with the dude she was married to for so long.
I guess it’s not even Grandma that bums me out, it’s just knowing that some people do that when they get old, sort of lose their minds or whatever, and it’s like, I hope that doesn’t happen to me, and so I don’t even want to be reminded that it does happen at all. Maybe that makes me a total turd, I don’t really know.
So anyway, dad gets the shed or Grandma’s house as we’re all calling it, and it’s cool I guess for real. It’s bigger than I thought it would be and even has a bathroom in it. It’s like, a little living room, a little kitchen, a bathroom. She sleeps on a futon in there. She eats with us most meals, and honestly in the beginning it wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be. She sort of seemed like maybe she was getting better. Maybe it was just being around family. Grandpa died like, five years ago, and it’s just been her. She would come to eat dinner and stuff, and like, she was walking okay and not falling and she knew our names and all that kind of thing.
But one night I woke up, it was like, the middle of the night, but I woke up because I heard something banging in the backyard and my room is on the ground floor and looks right out at the back yard through this big window I have so I went to the window and I saw Grandma just standing in the middle of the yard totally naked. She was staring right back at me, and the banging sound was coming from the door to her little house, she had left it open and I guess it was windy or whatever because it was banging into the side of her house.
It woke dad up too, I heard him come down the stairs and then saw him in the backyard, going through the kitchen door and he got Grandma to go back inside, but it took him a minute. He had taken one of mom’s robes and put that on her first and she let him, I guess he had looked out the window too, and saw that she was naked. But when he tried to get her to go back inside she just kind of ignored him and stood staring at me. I’m not sure dad even knew I was up and watching, but he ended up having to like, pull her inside. It freaked me out, and I’m not even sure she could see me in my dark room like that, but it felt like she had been watching me sleep.
She got weird after that again and kept calling me Frederick. Well, she honestly only got weird in that way for real. She remembered everyone else’s name but totally kept calling me by Grandpa’s name. For a week that was kind of it, I slept through the night but I don’t think she was out in the yard anymore.
One Saturday my best friend Aiden came over and we were playing whiffle ball in the back yard. Grandma and mom had gone shopping or something, so I didn’t have to like, worry about Grandma coming out naked and being weird. But Aiden found something weird anyways when he tried to catch a foul ball I hit. He ran for it and almost slammed into the wall right by my room, or like, he would have hit his head on my big window. He missed the ball and when he bent to grab it he looked back at me.
“Dude, what is this?” he asked, and I went to see what he was talking about. There was a ring of tiny bones lying in the grass right at the bottom of my window. In the middle of the ring of bones was the head of a bird. Like, a little robin or something. It weirded me out and we went and told my dad. I could tell it freaked him out too, but he just had us go inside to play video games while he cleaned it all up.
A few nights after that I got really freaked out when I got woken up again. This time it was a weird squeaking sound or something, and when I woke up I looked right at the window and saw Grandma there, naked again and drawing on my window with her finger. It was like she was finger painting. She drew a circle and then this weird letter-type thing, like Latin or something, inside of it. She stopped when she noticed me get out of bed and I went to the window and I noticed then that what she was using was red, and it reminded me of blood. I yelled and ran out of the room, running up to mom and dads room and waking them up.
Dad went outside and I went with him. He told me not to but I didn’t care. I had told him Grandma was naked and drawing on my window, so he grabbed mom’s robe again but when we got out there Grandma was gone. But my window still had the red stuff on it, and we found out it was totally blood because right under my window was a dead rabbit, its stomach pulled open and its guts hanging out. Dad told me to go inside and turned to go to Grandma’s house and I followed him. He went to the front door and it was unlocked he pushed it open and then cursed. I looked past him and saw Grandma asleep, or she looked asleep, except she was floating a foot or so off of the futon. I mean, I know that sounds crazy, and Dad totally thinks we were just seeing things or something because it was dark and he’s convinced himself he hadn’t seen what he did, but I know what I saw and I stand by it.
She was floating. I know it sounds crazy, but she was. Still naked as all get out, and floating. Dad just slammed the door shut and we both sort of like, ran for home. He had me sleep up in their room, getting a sleeping bag for me and putting it on the floor. He and Mom went out into the hall to talk for a bit and then Dad came in by himself and I think Mom went out to check on Grandma. I think she ended up sleeping out there with her. The next morning Dad cleaned up the rabbit and my window and Mom took Grandma to the doctor. I think the regular doctor, but then they made her talk to a crazy people doctor too because they were gone all day. When they got back Grandma went right to her little house and didn’t come out for dinner, and Mom took it out to her.
Things seemed to get better with Grandma for the next week and a half, and that basically brings us up to now, but one more thing happened last night and it made me want to post here, just in case something happens to me. Well, I guess it happened last night but I didn’t find out until this morning. I woke up and my window was open. It rained a bunch last night and muddy footprints led from the window to my bed. That same weird symbol had been painted in blood again right over my bed. I woke up and saw it and freaked out, and when I sat up in bed I saw someone standing in the corner of my room. It looked a lot like Grandpa, but I yelled and ran for my mom and dad and when we went into my room he was gone.
Dad went out to get Grandma, but she was gone too. We don’t know where she is.
I’ve felt strange all morning, my head is pounding. I had to take a break from writing this just now but thought I had better come and finish. James called off work today, I kept telling Jennifer he was good for nothing when she started dating him. He keeps checking on me, and he must be a bit touched in the head, something else I had always thought. He keeps calling me Andy, even though he knows damn well my name is Frederick.