(Names have been altered for anonymity)
I was 9 years old and lived a pretty regular life, you know, primary school in the day followed by playing out until dark with my mates. My best mate at the time, Felix, was an avid football fan and loved playing it, and more often than not that’s how we spent our afternoons. Although, with just the two of us, we were pretty limited to one of us playing goalie and the other taking shots.
As we were so young, we weren’t allowed to go to the park to play on the grass with proper nets unless we were supervised, which was a rarity, so we usually just settled using the brick wall at the front of a cafe across from Felix’s house. That day I was in the goal and was having a hard time making many saves, as usual.
Felix blasted the ball towards me and it bounced off the window and flew towards the road, prompting Felix to run and get it as to avoid a potential car accident. I watched him, anticipating a car to come speeding around the corner whilst the ball was in the middle of the road. That’s when I felt the cold grasp of a hand around my ankle. Confused, I looked down, to see a ghostly white hand reaching out of the basement grate tightly wrapped around me. I was never particularly emotional as a child, especially around my friends, but by heck did I scream. The hand let go and Felix ran to me to see what was up. I couldn’t even get my words out to attempt to explain as I was wracked with sobs. This all caused Felix’s mum to come running outside to see what was going on, and I finally managed to explain what had happened to me. She attempted to reassure me, saying that the cafe owners were probably annoyed at the ball hitting the window and tried to scare us away.
But even back then I knew it wasn’t that. I can still feel how cold the hand was against my bare skin. I can still see the protruding blue veins cascading through it’s wrinkly sagging skin.
Felix’s mum called my parents and they rushed to come pick me up, when they got there I was still distraught. I explained what had happened and my parents didn’t even attempt to come up with an explanation, they just comforted me and told me that I was safe now.
As the years went on, me and Felix naturally drifted apart.
I had completely forgotten about the incident, perhaps I had suppressed it out of trauma. But whilst at the pub last weekend with some uni mates, I bumped into Felix. I invited him and his girlfriend to come sit with us, and we spent hours reminiscing on our childhood. Then he brought up the incident. A wave of dread came over me and again felt the same cold sensation on my ankle that I had felt countless times since that traumatic day.
Felix went on to tell me that his mum still mentions the incident, and that she herself was quite shaken up about it at the time, unbeknownst to us. She didn’t even dare mention it to Felix until he was well into adulthood.
It turns out that the cafe and the flat above it had been unoccupied for 6 months prior to the incident. The owner had committed suicide due to crippling debt, leaving the property to go to auction. This was common knowledge to the adults in the local area as the owner was well known. But the property wasn’t purchased until may 2010, nearly a year after the worst day of my life.
This shit will always haunt me. I’ve never been a fan of the unknown, but it truly kills me that I will never know who, or what, grabbed me that day.