I have lived in the same house for my entire life, and nothing has been strange about it up until a year ago. For the last year, I’ve had the urge to walk out to the pond in the backyard every night. I had no idea why I did this, but I wouldn’t be able to sleep until I went down and at least looked at the mud. I hated being forced to stare at it. The only thing more uncomfortable than the urge to go down to the pond was being at the pond itself. I felt as if something was below the murky water, watching me. Yet I continued to go down anyway.
After the first few days of this, my father confronted me. We never really had the best relationship, but I respected him. He’s raised me without any outside help since my mother died when I was born. He asked why I was going down to the pond, and I explained to him my feelings. I could tell he didn’t believe me in the slightest, but he let me continue. I really wish he would have been able to stop me from going down there.
Somewhere around two weeks after this phenomenon started, I started hearing things. It started out as faint whispers, then discernible sounds of a woman’s voice. I thought that I must be going crazy, and I couldn’t bring myself to tell my father. I foolishly assumed it might have been the wind, up until I heard something say my name. It sounded like it was whispered directly behind me, and when I turned to look, there were footprints in the mud. I ran back to the house that night.
I began to feel much more at ease after a few months. I had become completely desensitized to the voice spouting seemingly random words. I had even begun asking it questions, and for the longest time, it didn’t respond. I was mostly curious about who or what it was. The night before the first snow, I got a response. While it wasn’t the voice that told me anything, three letters were scrawled into the dirt beside the pond: M O M. I stared down in shock, but I didn’t feel scared. I didn’t believe it at first, but certain signs coaxed me into believing. Whatever feeling I had stopped occurring in the winter, and it made me feel like it cared. It let me stay warm inside instead of forcing me to go outside during the winter.
I only had one notable incident during the winter. On a particularly cold day, we had run out of firewood inside. My dad told me to get some more before the snowstorm, and I immediately forgot. Soon after, the snow started to violently fall from the sky, and I rushed outside before it got worse. I quickly grabbed the wheelbarrow and rushed over to the woodshed. On my way, I glanced at the pond, and I could have sworn to have seen the silhouette of a woman standing in the center of the pond.
When spring finally arrived, I started getting called back down to the pond. The voice started answering me directly. Usually, it only gave one-word responses and only one per night. Every single question I asked about what my mother looked like was answered correctly. I only knew her appearance from a picture, but it seemed accurate enough. Once I felt confident, I finally got the courage to ask the one question I truly wanted to know. “Why are you calling me down here?” Shortly after, that uncomfortable presence returned to the pond. The darkness seemed thicker around me, and everything went dead silent. I saw something move in the pond, quickly followed by the response “Help, revenge”. The voice was stern when it spoke this time. I was startled by this change, and even though it usually only let me ask one question, out of impulse, I asked it, “Why?” It didn’t respond right away, and it took until the next night for me to discover what was written. When I walked out, the phrase “He buried me here” was scratched into the earth.
I was always suspicious about my father. While I respected him, I didn’t trust most of what he said whenever I questioned him about my mom. He shrugged everything off, and now I knew he had killed her. I went back into the house, furious. I asked him how my mother really died, and he gave the same response he usually gives but was confused this time. I wasn’t taking it, and my father looked terrified as I wrestled him into the kitchen. My father wasn’t the strongest man, so I easily knocked him to the ground. I grabbed a kitchen knife from the counter. He pleaded for me to stop and asked what I was talking about, but I already knew what he had done. I plunged the knife into his back, which slipped easily between his ribs. He gasped, and then wad dead almost instantly. I felt an almost forced feeling of calmness. Something was deeply wrong with it, yet I didn’t care. Satisfied with what I had done, I went to bed.
That brings me to today. This was the first time I had awoken with the urge to go to the pond. Usually, it only happened at night. When I walked down there, there was a woman standing in the marsh. I ran down excitedly since I thought I would be able to see my mother for the first time in person. However, I froze once I got close. She didn’t look like the picture in the slightest. I stared in horror at this figure in the pond. All it did was laugh at me as she sank into the water. I think I killed my father for no reason. I’m submitting myself to the police after I write this. Hopefully, at least one person who reads this will believe me, because I know almost nobody will.