When I was little, I thought monsters lived in my closet. During the day, I would avoid my room as much as possible, although they usually didn’t come out until nighttime. After the sun set, and I was confined to my room because of bedtime, the monsters came out. They would keep me up at night with their whispers—their constant whispers. No matter how tightly I held my pillow and covers over my head, I could still hear their voices. I would tell my mom about them, but she shrugged it off. I had an overactive imagination, she said. With my dad working late nights and my mother drinking herself to sleep every night, I was practically on my own.
Every night, I would hear them, those whispers. Eventually, they started speaking directly to me, saying my name. Then one night, I actually saw one of them. My closet door crept open in the middle of the night, and I saw the monster’s silhouette move from my closet doorway, towards my bed. I sat in my bed, clutching my sheets in tight fists in my lap. I was frozen in place—I couldn’t scream, couldn’t move. When I would open my mouth to call for my mom, it felt as though a hand wrapped around my throat and squeezed, crushing the fight out of me.
Once it was about a foot away from my bed, I finally gained control over my body again. I started screaming, screaming at the top of my lungs, screaming for my mom. I screamed for any help I could get. Too bad my mom had already passed out, after one too many glasses of wine.
My dad got home, but not until I ran out of my bedroom and tried to find salvation in the bathroom. I thought I could lock the monster out, and I would be safe inside, but I could still hear it; it was saying my name, calling out to me. I sat on the bathroom floor, my eyes squeezed shut, my hands clasped over my ears. Rocking back and forth, I murmured my newfound mantra: “It’s not real. It’s not real. It’s not real."
I couldn’t drown out the voice, though. I could still hear it, as if it stood directly outside of the bathroom.
“Susie…come with me, Susie,” it hissed from the other side of the door.
The bathroom door finally opened, revealing my dad standing in the doorway. I never felt as relieved or safe as I did in that moment, when I saw my dad, my hero. He scooped me up in his arms, hugging me to his chest as he ran through the house. It wasn’t until we reached the front door that I realized the house was on fire. And it took my dad running back into the house to register that my mom was still inside.
My dad never came back outside. I stood in our front yard, crying and watching our house burn to the ground. Neighbors emerged from their own homes, a few rushing to my aid. Miss Willis, the older woman, who lived in the house directly across the street from ours, took care of me until the police arrived. They called my Aunt Leah, my dad’s younger sister, who was still in college at the time. At first, I was put into her custody as a trial, to see if she had the responsibility to care for an 8-year-old permanently. After almost a year of living with Aunt Leah in her studio apartment, she gained permanent custody of me, at the age of 21.
The only remotely good thing I could remember from the fire is that I stopped hearing the voice. But the silence didn’t last for long.
I started hearing the monsters everywhere—in school, at the playground, when I was at the babysitter’s house. I rarely saw them, but I always heard them. I’ve been sent home from school countless times, followed by getting expelled from three schools for being “disruptive and inappropriate during class”. None of my teachers could handle my outbursts; they didn’t believe me about the monsters. Every time I got sent to the principal’s office, I tried explaining the monsters to the principal, but even they didn’t believe me. Everyone thought I was lying to get attention, or they thought I was crazy after losing both of my parents at a very young age. The first time I got expelled was because I told a few of the girls at recess about the monsters, how they followed me around, how I could always hear them. They ran to our teacher, crying about how much I scared them.
As I grew older, it didn’t take long for me to realize that what I called monsters were actually ghosts. Spirits from the other side trying to contact me—why me, I have no idea. I wish I could tell them to find someone new to contact. But I didn’t do much talking when it came to the ghosts; I tried my best to block them out.
When I started middle school, I would wear headphones all the time to block out the voices. It was the only way to keep myself from going crazy. As long as I had headphones on, the music was able to drown out the voices. I would then get kicked out of class for not paying attention, even though every time the teacher asked me a question, I answered correctly. Some of my classmates would complain about being distracted, either by the fact they could hear my music or because they were bothered that they couldn’t get away with listening to music during class.
And that’s how I ended up here: sitting in the office of Jefferson High School, waiting for my Aunt Leah to arrive for our meeting with Principal Cathers. Make that four schools I’ve been expelled from.
