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Abigail knew her next door neighbor was not normal. She had lived on the same block, in the same house since her parents brought her back home from the hospital. Upon their arrival home with their new born, her parents noticed a sold sign on the lawn next door. Even though there wasn’t a car in the driveway let alone a moving van, Abigail’s parents gave no second thought and
brought their bundle of joy inside. As a toddler Abigail would sit in their kitchen munching on strawberries, her favorite snack,and wait and watch to see if the next-door neighbor came outside. Even at such a young age she noticed oddities, their neighbor never had their front or back lawn in order unlike herown lawn that was kept in pristine green condition by her father. It over grew to such an extent Abigail sometimes
imagined a tiger or lion roamingthrough impossible high grass. The house looked like something out of a Stephen King novel. When you looked at it, it was like the house was looking back at you, watching you. Along with an overgrown lawn, the shudders were chipping green paint and hanging in some areas. The double front door was made of avery old wood maybe oak and seemed to be literally wearing away. The only article on the
lawn was an old mailbox complete with a small red flag atop to signal the arrival of mail. Once she could have sworn, she saw the shadow of a woman in the front bay windowbut the shadow vanished before she could be sure of what she saw.On the first day of fifth grade Abigail was walking down her driveway forward the big yellow school bus, hand in handwith her mother when she saw movement out of the corned of
her eye. Turning her head slightly to the left she saw a white as bone hand moving in the front window of her neighbor’s house. That quick glance at the white gnarled handsent a shiver down her spine butwas quickly forgotten as she goton the bus. On the bus ride to school, Abigail kept thinking about the hand she saw being those curtains and who owned it.Weeks had gone by and that hand never made a
reappearance. Abigail began to wonder if the silhouette she sawwas in fact a real woman but most likely lived alone. How did she eat? Where did her groceries come from? Abigail never saw any cars in the driveway, neither coming nor going and she never saw a delivery truck of any kind making a stop. Circumstances changed on a beautiful Sunday afternoon. Abigail was sitting on a large,technicolored quilt under a large
oak tree in her back yard. Her attention had been on the book in her lap for most of the afternoon until she heard the sound of rusty hinged being pried open. At first, she ignored this, thinking it be Mr. Anderson, who lived on the right side of their house. Mr. Anderson was a bachelor who was always working on projects. He was particular fondof making bird houses so it was logical that the sound she heard came from him. Abigail went to
look through the slats in their five-foot-tall fence. Mr. Anderson’s backyard was completely empty as well as thehouse, no lights on, no movement. This realization sent shivers down her spine and caused goose bumps to appear on her arms.She had no desire to walk across the lawn and look through the slats of the other side of their fence, looking directly into that jungle of a yarn. The loud screeching of
hinges long past their due for oilwas still coming to her in short bursts. Abigail placed both of her shaking hands on the wood fence and peered through. What she saw next would haunt her for weeks to come. At first, she could only make out that female silhouette in the back screened door. The back of the house was just as bad as the front, the lawn overgrown and more weeds than grass. There were no flowers in the empty flower beds beside the house
and in the window sills. The screened door was falling off itshinges with every gust of wind, the top right hinge was hanging on by a prayer and that explained where the sound was coming from. Abigail was just about to turnaround and head back to her favorite quilt and book when she caught a blur of red come from behind the back-screen door. She jumped back, shakingher head trying to clear it. Maybe it was some kind of bird,
maybe a cardinal. Taking a few deeps breathes Abigail pushed herself to look through the fence again and felt her gorge rise.There was that same bone white hand only this time in the midafternoon sun Abigail saw how the knuckles were swollen and her fingers looked more like talons, the nails impossibly sharp. But that was not what caused her to nearly run screaming for her own back door. The hand was without
question a woman’s hand but the gnarled hands were differentnow, the red she had seen in a blur was a part of the woman’s hand. It looked as though she had taken a needle and bright red thread and had sowed a crisscross of exes into her skins. These horrifying, homemade tattoos started small on her knuckles and grew up into the back of her hand and up into herwrist and forearm. Abigail could not process what her mind was telling her. It
appeared that this hand was reaching down through the slit in the back door and placed a small bouquet of flowers onto the ground. There was no porch or even a step leading to the door so the flowers simply fell to the dirt. They were bright redflowers much like the string protruding from her hands. Straining her eyes to see as much as possible through the slit, she began seeing other things her distraught mind had first missed. In the areas where
the needle had punctured her skin there were clumps of dried or drying blood as if she had just mutilated herself this morning.