I didn’t want to believe it at first but now I feel like I don’t have a choice anymore. Someone, no, something dangerous is watching me.
It started as I returned to my house in the south of France. A shadow disappearing behind the tall pine trees or a dark shape dashing across the large gardens. At first, I wanted to be rational maybe I was tired or even a little drunk. Those excuses didn’t last long because one night I was neither.
My parents and I were the only ones home during a scorching summer night. Both of them had gone to sleep for the night as the heat had fatigued them. So there I was, alone on the terrace of the house overlooking the large shadow-covered garden. I was on my phone with music in the background going from playing some shitty games to texting my friends (who sadly live far away from where I currently am) but something caught my attention in my garden.
A large shadow darted from the furthest tree to another tree faster than I could look up. I thought it was just the heat playing tricks with my mind so I just went back on my phone but this time without the music. Then I saw it again, this time closer but not close enough to distinguish what it was. At first, I thought it was either a wandering dog but then I remembered that the garden is surrounded by either 2m high walls or electric fences ( not to hurt anyone just because boars occasionally come through and we don’t want them to destroy the entire garden).
So the dog theory went out of the window. I stayed still watching, listening, waiting for something to happen. After some time nothing had happened so I forced myself to go look. Equipped with nothing by my phone’s flashlight and my sturdy flip-flops to help me run away I started heading into the darkness, towards the trees.
I walked slowly, the pine needles crunching under every step. The light created by my phone wasn’t much but it was enough to see ahead of me. I walked for what felt like 10 minutes before reaching a safe distance from the tree where I saw the shadow from for the last time.
I waited again hoping an animal would just pop out. But nothing happened. So I looked around the tree and there it was.
Nothing. Not even the trace of something. The needles and the grass were untouched.
Unsure of what I had just seen I left checking behind me every 2 or 3 steps as goosebumps crawled their way up my body. After I got back to the terrace, I closed everything for the night and tried forgetting about what had happened.
The next day, my brother came back from his studies abroad with a few of his friends so this weird event was quickly forgotten. I enjoyed quite a few nights of drinking with them but every night I had this feeling as if I was being watched. Similar to the feeling you get after having watched a horror film if it was boosted 100 times. I would often look around but saw nothing.
Until one night, I thought I saw a figure standing behind the tree from the previous night. I looked away and then looked again, it was still there. It was human in form but not in size, it was probably the size of two fully grown adults in height but was skinny as a skeleton. Apart from the fact that it seemed to be looking at me, I could not see any features on its skeletal body. I asked one of my brother’s friends if they saw it as well but after being accused of being too drunk I quickly abandoned my questions.
I looked back at the slender shape only to realize it wasn’t there anymore. After scouring the garden with my eyes I found it, one tree closer than before. And then it disappeared as it had the previous night.
I quickly went inside to get a drink of cold water to reboot my brain. Maybe my new friends were right maybe I was drunk. I turned around and jumped. Through the window was a cute white cat that I had never seen before.
I’m not scared of cats but seeing what just happened I wasn’t exactly relaxed. It quickly disappeared into the night once it noticed me. After that, I rejoined the party whilst still looking out for the strange shape. The rest of the night happened without anything going wrong apart from people puking in the garden.
Two or three nights have passed since the party and only my mother and I remain at the house. After another day of sweltering heat, we ate dinner on the terrace and she left to go sleep. As I was tidying up, I noticed something in the grass near the house. As I got closer I noticed a small white object resting in the grass.
As anyone would do I turned on the light of my phone something I still regret. On the grass below me was the bloodied leg of the white cat. It looked like it had been violently torn off yet there was no blood on the grass near it. I quickly returned to my house to puke as this view wasn’t something you would want to see just after dinner.
After returning from the bathroom, I noticed two things as I looked through the window.
The first thing was that the leg had disappeared from the grass. The second thing was that the shape had gotten closer, close enough to reach the spot where the leg was. My stomach was hit with a certain urge to puke but my brain was too focused on what I was watching.
I went back to the terrace hoping to scare it but the creature didn’t even move an inch. I tried talking to it but the only answer I received was the howling wind. I tried using my phone’s flashlight to scare it but also as an attempt to see it better.
The result was neither worked. The light seemed to not affect it as if it was being absorbed by this shadow so I couldn’t see the entity any better. After a while, the shadow started to pull its disappearing act again. But this time as it left, it held something up using its stick-like arms. In its hands, a white and red shape. Even with limited light, I knew what it was, the white cat. As the cat got closer to the body of the shadow, it seemed to be swallowed by the darkness emanating from the entity. As usual, before leaving it dashed closer without leaving a single trace of it ever being here.
It’s been a few nights since anything happened and I am currently on my terrace. I just saw it go to another tree. But now there aren’t any trees between it and my house. I just hope it sticks to trees and doesn’t go to houses.