Guys, I need help, and quick.
So for a little backstory: I’m a 21-year-old girl and I live at home with my parents. I guess they weren’t careful enough one night because I also have a 11-year-old sister (I’ll just refer to her as ‘my sister’ because I don’t want to use her name in case she looks up herself someday). Don’t get me wrong, I’m not sad about that. She’s a very nice girl and I’ve always enjoyed playing dolls and whatever with her. We’re a happy little family and nothing bad has ever happened to us. We eat breakfast together every morning, have fun at dinner and have a movie night every Wednesday evening. So far so good, right?
Well, in the last year, a lot has changed. My sister became distant and she didn’t talk to us as much anymore. We just thought puberty was starting for her, and my parents still think that’s the case to this day. She spends a lot of time in her room, it seems like she’s always on the phone with someone because she’s always whispering. For a while, I wondered if she had a secret boyfriend, but when I asked her about it, she seemed a bit offended, so I decided to not pry anymore. We live in a nice little home close to the forest. When you walk all the way to the back of our garden, you can enter the forest, so naturally me and my sister did spend quite some time between the trees, building forts and trying to build a treehouse. The remains of the treehouse are still in the tree, but we never quite got the chance to finish it since Dad got a job offer back then and took it, meaning he had a little less time to work on it. Then, we just kind of forgot about the treehouse. It seems like my sister has been quite sad about this lately. She spends hours at the edge of the forest, looking at the treehouse. I brushed this off, thinking she was just going through some things. Before you come for me, I do assure her a lot that she can always talk to me if something is up and she doesn’t feel comfortable talking to Mom and Dad about it, but she just smiles, nods and thanks me.
So far this all isn’t too bad, but especially the last three months have been very weird. It started with me waking up in the middle of the night because I heard something in my room. I’m not a light sleeper, but the sound did wake me up. When I turned on the light on my bedside table, I saw my sister standing next to the chair in my room. I called her name and she looked up, looking confused. “What are you doing in here, it’s 2:50AM”, I asked her. She blinked a few times and rubbed her eyes. “Must’ve been sleepwalking”, she said. I got out of bed and walked her back to her room, tucking her in and brushing her forehead for a minute before getting up and wishing her a goodnight. She smiled and turned around, almost immediately falling back asleep. I returned to my room and crawled into bed. I had never seen her sleepwalk before, but there’s a first time for everything right?
In the morning, I did tell Mom about it. She was a bit surprised but said it wasn’t something to worry about. She sleepwalked quite a lot as a kid as well, so maybe it was just something she had passed down to my little sister. When my sister joined us for breakfast, she did look a bit tired. Mom asked her about her night and she just shrugged. The rest of the morning wasn’t out of the ordinary, Mom cooked some eggs and we joked around with Dad before he left for work.
The next couple of night were normal, and so were the days. I attended online classes (with covid and all that, I prefer staying at home a little longer because I have a weak immune system) and my sister went to school. Whenever she got home, she would have a lot of stories about her classmates and about Ms. Reed’s frantic behaviour. It’s always funny to me to hear about Ms. Reed since she also taught me back when I was in that school. It was Wednesday so we picked a movie to watch. My sister has been really into the more popular movies lately, so we watched the Kissing Booth, even though it wasn’t really me and my parents’ cup of tea. We made some popcorn and enjoyed our time together. My mother put my sister to bed and I spent some more time with my parents watching some NCIS or something, I don’t quite remember. Around midnight I went to bed and scrolled through TikTok for a while before closing my eyes and drifting off to sleep. Not even two hours later, I was woken up by a loud bang. I jerked up and saw my sister standing next to my bed, bent over and rubbing her leg. “What’s going on”, I asked, confused and sleepy. “I don’t know, I ran into your bed”, she replied, still rubbing her leg. I got up and walked her to the bathroom. Her chin looked a bit red. “That’s going to be a big bruise, dummy”, I laughed and rubbed her head. “Let’s get you back to bed, you really need to stop the sleepwalking.” She groaned a bit and nodded.
One or two nights later, the scary part happened. It was a normal evening, after my sister went to bed, my parents and I had a glass of wine and talked a bit before I went to bed as well. I was woken up somewhere in the middle of the night because I felt pressure on my body. I opened my eyes and was met by my sister’s face, only a few inches away from mine. She was staring at me with big, bulgy eyes and a very unsettling smirk on her face. I pushed her away and crawled back a bit, against the frame of my bed. “What the fuck”, I exclaimed. “Go back to your room and leave me be, I’m trying to sleep.” Still with that horrifying smirk on her face, she chuckled and crawled off my bed, not breaking eye contact with me. She walked backwards out of my room and I didn’t stop staring at my door until I heard hers close. A bit uneasy, I got up and placed the chair in my room in front of my door. I brushed off the uneasy feeling and went back to sleep.
When I saw my sister in the bathroom the next morning as I was brushing my teeth, I asked her what last night was all about, because I didn’t think it was still sleepwalking. She must’ve wanted to prank me or something. “What? I didn’t wake up at all last night”, she said, confused by my question. I stared at her for a little while before rolling my eyes and spitting out my toothpaste. “Be like that then”, I replied. She looked puzzled but didn’t say anything back before leaving the bathroom and going downstairs for breakfast. After she had left for school, I told Mom about what happened. She sat there for a while, looking at me, before she carefully asked me: “did you maybe drink a little too much yesterday.” I felt offended and frowned. “No, what do you mean, I went to bed after that glass of wine.” She got up and showed me an empty bottle. It sure as hell wasn’t empty when we went to bed yesterday. “Yeah right, didn’t you and dad drink it after I went upstairs?” She didn’t say anything, but she didn’t need to. I know they didn’t drink it, but neither did I. I’m not sure she believed me, though.
From that day on, the sitting on top of me happened a few times again. The second to last time she did it, she was whispering things while I was telling her to get the hell out of my room. Her voice didn’t sound distorted, but it also didn’t sound quite like her own voice. Whenever I tell her to cut it out, she says she doesn’t know what I am talking about. I gave up on telling my parents about it, because they are now getting mad at me, asking me why I am making up things about my sister. Mom even asked me if the age difference between me and my sister was starting to bother me, and if that was the reason I felt like creating tension. I don’t want to fight with them and disturb the peace we have in our little family but now I am getting really freaked out, because I am writing this the morning after the last time she came into my room and it was the creepiest thing she has done yet. She sat on top of me and in this creepy whispering voice she told me soon it’d be the last time I’d have to worry about her coming into my room. Her time sitting near the treehouse has increased drastically over the past week and she even skipped a few days of school because she’s “feeling ill”, but then she’ll spend the entire afternoon staring at the treehouse. I don’t want to tell my parents about it because I feel like they’ll send me to a therapist or tell me I’m crazy.
What’s going on, are my parents in on this and what should I do? I don’t know what she meant when she said it’d soon be the last time she would come into my room, but it sounded threatening. I’m scared.