5 Minute Freewrite Day 577: Window

She was there all the time, barely showing a brief sign of her face, enough to see how we played outside. I debated myself between not caring and being curious every time the adults mentioned the little girl with the “marked” face on that tiny window of the Gourent’s household, or when my friends joked and made fun of the many possibilities of ugliness she may have, and I’m sure I was the only one actually trying to look without judging.

On one thing I agreed.

She was strange, and eerie, from the black eyes with their elusive shine, to her scaredy attitude and the fact that she never came out, and we never got a glimpse of anything other than a second of her ghostly visage before hiding in the darkness of inside. Her parents, if anything were even less seen, always staying inside or coming out only at night, when the moon was at its palest, and they went who knows were.

I never knew her reasons, for as much gossip the neighborhood had, they avoided direct references to them like the plague. And so, the rumors started between the kids, and I learned the hard way how cruel they could be by the things they screamed at the window, and the thing they tried to throw inside every time she appeared there.

And I started dreaming with a pale face, young, beautiful, dead-like. She came to me and tried to say something, but my enchanted self could only hear the night’s wind and a whistling that made me shiver and wake up drenched in sweat. That, repeated itself several times.

Almost overcomed by the nightmarish dreams and the attempts to just play and be a carefree child, I subconsciously avoided to look at the girl’s window, and didn’t pay attention to what new things the adults said, their plans to “do something about them”.

One night, close to Halloween, I screamed while walking the streets in search of candy, for in my ears and afflicted heart, the nightmares permeated reality and I heard the whistling being carried by a very real air. The rest was a blur of worried people saying thing to me, but the only thing I remember before waking up in the hospital was “Help me, please…”.

Next day I received news of the Gourent’s departure, never to be seen, or heard of, ever again.