Maria Oh Maria

NANCY

I apologise to interrupt but before you read the remaining letters I have something to say.

If you are reading this right now I assume things are safe in your house. It hasn't got any of you. If so I'm glad.

I know it's rude to ask you all to read these letters only to interrupt in the middle but I would like you all to know my experience with these.

I'm afraid I don't have much time left. The whispers have recently morphed into yells and I don't know how long I can keep hiding whenever a footstep chases a shadows around the house.

There's an odd stench coming from the basement. The stench is so powerful it's dominanting the air in my house, making the flowers rot, unbearable to breathe. Even I can tell what this smell is.

It's the odor of death.

Or it might be the heat and my unstable mind playing tricks on me.

On the very first day when I received one of these I wasn't surprised. I remember throwing the rose in trashcan and placing the letter on the table.

You see, I used to teach back in a small town in California before coming here in East Lario. Back in there kids did pull a prank similar to this once but with some special touch of an old torn teddy and a red paint dripped pocket knife.

I thought it would be the same, filled with witchy stuffs, shapes or insults.

Therefore, I was surprised when I saw "Dear Maria" written in such a messy and yet polite handwriting. There were some random numbers instead of the sender's name. The numbers were so random it made me a little creeped out.

They cannot be this random. It has to be something written in codes.

Anyway, At first I read the whole letter and honestly felt bad for the little girl who's letter got delivered in the wrong house. I felt sympathetic to her since I also live far away from my close friends and family though I don't know what her relationship was with this Maria person I assume them to be close . I believed the talk about the "odd lady" was just something she wrote to scare Maria as kids do sometimes with their friends, or at least what I loved to do in my childhood.  I contacted the post office but they denied sending any letter to my residency, I literally had a fight with them until their manager said that the letters might be delivered by hand, by the person themselves.

I was at a loss back then. They suggested to contact the police since anonymous letters are not really a legal or good thing in general but I didn't. I just didn't want to. I believe I have explained before why I didn't want to consult to anyone. I know I was frantic back then but I am a lot calmer now. I have to be unless I can't say it all.

Well, the next week when the next letter came I finally started freaking out. I read the whole letter and it felt so odd, so wrong in my hands, it gave me some weird chills and honestly felt like someone was doing this on purpose. That's when I thought of calling my sister who happens to be a cop as well but the moment I picked up my phone it, quite casually, fell apart in two pieces.

Imagine slicing a carrot right in the middle in two pieces, now replace the carrot with an iPhone 6. Yes, it was just like that. I can still recall the emptiness in my hand.

By the third letter tears were streaming down my face. Everything in my house started to seem odd. Things started to disappear and only to appear in odd places. Every morning my floor would be littered with leaves and branches and my windows would be shut tight, just how I leave it every night. There would be dogs howling in my dining room in the dark, pigeons breaking their neck on my door, a row of crows sitting quietly outside of window, always watching.

With every passing week, with each strange letter and each red rose the occurrences in my house became stranger and stranger. Perhaps as strange as the letters grew each time. Do you know words can talk? As someone who has spent their whole lives folded between pages I can hear them speak from time to time. And these messily written words are screaming that everything sealed in these black envelopes are true to the bones. That it's true, more true than any other thruth in the world. Whatever she says is true. Everything written here is true and there's no place for a doubt.

I could literally hear the woods rustle in the back of my mind and If everything else made me scared, this fact alone made me terrified.

I was receiving letters from a criminal. The letters were so odd, at first I was damn sure it was a child's writing, but with each letter it was as if the writer grew an year older until they revealed they were a teenager, a teenager who has committed multiple midnight murders.

Something has drowned my Tv in the bathtub. I can't watch the news. I tried looking up in the internet to find any kind of information about this girl or this Maria person she has been writing but it never works. Considering the details in her writing and the freashness of the ink I assume it is all recent, written the day beforw delivered. So many people are getting killed every week and the news haven't even made it on the web?

I refuse to believe that. It's like the news itself is refusing to be found by me. Yes, considering the situation of my Tv and my previous phone that is something more believable.

Right after the sixth letter I started seeing people. Before that it has always been only noises.

They were people I cannot describe. I feel like I don't have the right words to. They all posses the same normal features, three ears, three eyes, a nose, three thick eyebrows, red lips... And yet it was so odd. The distance between their eyes wasn't quite right. The placement of the lips was vertical instead of horizontal and some of them had five holes in their noses. They were terrifying.

Soon the walls started whispering nonsense and I started losing my mind. I stopped leaving the house. I couldn't see well. My own reflection in the mirror seemed so wrong. "Are people really supposed to have two eyes and ears? Isn't three more normal?" I remember it was the very topic that alone kept me up at some night and I saw shadows surrounding me under the flickering dim light of my bed lamp.

I shouldn't have showed this letters. I shouldn't be doing this but I can't help it I want to.

After the tenth letter, I received a package. It was a big box in a plastic bag placed outside my door, the "gift" the girl spoke of probably. I opened the box, my hands were shaking crazy. It took me two whole hours of staring at the big blue box to finally gather the courage to open it.

There were two hands inside, one slightly smaller than the other. The bigger one had a ring on its third finger, probably an engagement ring.This time there was no rose.