My name is Clare and I'm from a small country in central Europe. Many people have probably never heard of it. My country has everything from a small coastline on the Adriatic Sea to
the majestic Alps but most of the landscape consists of small green hills, each with a little church on top. Almost two thirds of my country is covered with forests and the capitol is famous for its middle age architecture. It is a beautiful country where, most of the time, nothing unusual happens.
Like most people here I live in the countryside where my nearest neighbor is almost a quarter of a mile away. I spent most of my childhood running around the forest right by my home. I can still remember where the best trees for climbing are and where certain flowers grow. Something happened there in the summer of 2001 I will never forget. I was around twelve years old and I had decided to spend my whole afternoon alone in the forest.
As I said most of the country is covered in hills and the hill behind our house is quite steep. At the top of this hill is an old orchard my great-grandfather planted and from it you can almost see the capitol city in the distance. My forest extends from the orchard, across the Karst landscape and almost right to the Italian border. There are a few smaller towns and villages between my home and the border but I never really went very far from the area my family owned. On this particular day though I decided to explore some of the areas I had never been before.
I really didn't take anything with me and I didn't bother telling my parents where I was going. I always felt very safe in the woods even though bears were often seen in the area. In reality the most dangerous thing you would normally come across were drunken hunters. The forest is pretty in the summer and the leaves and tall trunks made me feel like I was in a big cathedral. I started to sing a tune I had heard on the radio and before long I was about an hour and a half walking distance from home.
At this point I decided to stray off the main road that leads through the forest. I'm not sure how much time passed but I suddenly realized that the Sun was starting to set and the light was making the leaves glow in sharp colors. Soon I found myself wandering, in the twilight, in an area I did not know. The wind blowing through the dry branches was making very eerie noises and I suddenly knew I was lost.
I could feel my panic beginning to rise and the adrenaline started to flow through my veins. My instincts were screaming to run away, but I forced myself to remain calm and tried to figure out the way back to the main road. It was pointless; I had no idea where I was. I started to walk around aimlessly, hoping to find the road or at least a path I could follow. Suddenly I saw a figure standing in the distance and from its size it had to be a child. I started to walk towards it but the child seemed to notice me and ran away. I chased after it through the forest for quite a long time but I could never quite get close enough to actually distinguish any of its features but it seemed to be a young girl no older than I was at the time.
As I was running after the mysterious girl the ground suddenly gave way beneath me. I experienced that dreadful feeling of falling, like in very bad nightmare, where time seems to slow down and everything is in slow motion. Then came the awful sound of my body hitting the ground and pain erupted through me.
For a moment I lay motionless on the ground trying to catch my breath. Finally I pulled myself together and opened my eyes, waiting for them to adjust to the thick darkness in the cave, where I had landed.
At first everything was pitch black but then I began to be able to see. There was a single pair of eyes staring at me just a few inches in front of my face. I quickly backed away, until I hit something dry and crumbly. Somewhere in the back of the cave a light suddenly flared to life. First there was one, and then more and more, until the chamber was fully lit. There were thousands and thousands of eyes watching me. Dead, dull eyes in dry sockets. Faces whose skin was desiccated and stretched over their skulls. Their mouths hung open, their lips having rotted and pulled back so that it looked as if they were all screaming in rage or terror.
I stared, I wasn't able to move or scream. I am not even sure I was able to breathe. I blinked, hoping that the dreadful image in front of me would disappear. As I opened my eyes it seemed as if all the corpses had moved. I never saw them move, but each time I blinked it was like they had gotten one step closer. I felt cold sweat dripping down my neck and my eyes began to itch and water as I tried to keep them open. I couldn't help myself and I blinked again. This time, as my eyes opened, I was completely surrounded. I simply closed my eyes, hoping this was all just a bad dream. I didn't hear a single sound and I smiled thinking that I would soon wake up in my own bed. When I opened my eyes I was face to face with it. I could clearly see the dried and rotten face, eyes dim and lifeless. I started to feel dizzy and sick and then it seemed as though I could feel something like boney hands and fingers grabbing my hair and tearing at my clothes. I felt it and then again I didn't feel it. I was so overcome with terror I could no longer tell what was real and what wasn't. I tried so hard to stay conscious, to fight, but I couldn't move a single muscle. Then the lights suddenly went out and it was pitch black all around me.
I opened my eyes, trying to adjust to the lack of light. I was lying on the forest floor, not far from my home. At that moment my body started to function normally and I ran home as fast as I could. I had no idea how I had gotten there and I just wanted to forget about what had happened. I was so happy to be home and safe but my peace didn't last very long.
The next night I had a dream about the people I had seen in the cave. I woke with a start and saw a face looking at me through the window. In the moonlight the features of the face were much easier to make out than they had been in the darkness of the cave. It was the face of a young girl, she was dead and her empty eyes stared at me with wild anger as she clawed the window trying to get in.
Since then I have had the same nightmare of the girl clawing to get through my window every night. It has been twelve years now and in that time I have gone to many different therapists. They tell me it is just stress from school and work and that I should try to relax. How can I relax when every night I am afraid to open my eyes for fear that she will be there trying to get to me?
It is a known fact that right after World War II the communists took over the government and thousands of people who refused to cooperate with the new system were killed. Men and women were walled up alive in abandoned mines or shot and buried in mass grave sites. Some of them were part of my family. Our government still refuses to talk about this and almost none of the people responsible were ever punished.
