The first thing Cheyenne saw was Aubrey’s mother. Walking down a hill in tall grass with a white dress on, with Aubrey apparently behind the camera.
On this day in 1971, Aubrey borrowed her father’s camera to film some animals. Her mother had decided to come along too to help out.
Now, in 2023, her daughter watched her late mother from behind the screen with anticipation.
Aubrey told her mother to hurry up as she ran very far past her. Cheyenne heard the muffled yell of her grandmother telling Aubrey to slow down.
She had only seen her grandmother once, and she didn’t know whether she was remembering it wrong or not, but she looked almost completely different here than she did before.
There was a brief shot of pink shoes with untied shoelaces before the camera panned back up to the tall grass and focused on a little ladybug climbing down from a blade of grass.
A drop of blood moved down a long shining blade, as it grazed the shoulder of what appeared to be a woman.
The face of a woman appeared, jaw agape to let out a scream, eyes bloodshot. But the only thing Cheyenne could hear was a soft breeze.
Cheyenne didn’t know her mother that well, but she knew as a fact that her old-fashioned father would never willingly watch a horror film, so it could not have been taped over. And even if he had, why would it be taped over alongside this childhood memory?
She felt a cold breeze at the base of her neck and shuddered. Then, she managed to reach up to the rewind button on her TV. She once again saw the image of the frightened bleeding woman.
Now that her eyes had finished focusing on the horror before her, they wandered to other places.
In the background of the image of her shoulder, there was a thin stream of light shining through.
The stream of light shone down on what appeared to be a small iron cage in the corner of the nightmarish room.
Cheyenne moved forward again, to the image of the woman’s face.
Just as she squinted her eyes toward the darkness around her face, the woman in the video clicked her teeth together.
Cheyenne jumped back. The woman’s face slowly moved into a much more relaxed, almost blank expression.
“You’re stuck in the hole. Down there, with him.” her voice spat out, cold as ice.
“Just for one moment. Let me tell you that you are worth it. Outside of his walls.”
Cold hands gripped Cheyenne’s shoulders firmly.
On the screen, was a church. In front of the church stood a woman in a pink dress, hair covering her face in the wind. To the left of her stood a man. Skinny, black-haired, and faintly smiling.
Their voices couldn’t be heard. He appeared to say what seemed like a joke. The woman smiled briefly but faced the ground afterward.
The boy looked all around, wringing his hands together nervously.
He said something else, with a new smile.
The woman stared at him.
The man tugged on her wrist roughly with a laugh. With the same expression, the woman began to walk with the man to wherever they went.
The woman’s blank green eyes filled the screen.
“What are you doing?” Cheyenne’s father asked as he hurried in.
“These are very old. You’ll break them if you’re not careful,” he said, pressing eject on the VCR player. “Go to your room. I’ll have dinner not too long from now.”
Cheyenne looked behind her multiple times, before running away behind the corner of her wall to hide her tears.
The father ran his hands through his long black hair as he looked at the tape in his hand.
“Happy anniversary.”
Every year after that night, the eyes of the young woman would appear to Cheyenne in her dreams. The cold hands interlocking with hers would slowly grow warmer and warmer by the hour.
Through it all, Cheyenne never felt alone.