Since I was very little, I was able to see things that other people couldn't. My mom used to say that I had a very active imagination and my dad just thought that I was straight up lying to get attention. My grandma, hunched over in her reclining chair was the only one that listened to me when I got up in the morning and started rambling about the shadows that had visited me at night.
They were never disruptive, they would show up, stay for a bit and then let me sleep calmly. She said that they were spirits that had terrible secrets, so they couldn't move on without telling anyone. I would say that I couldn't hear them, but certainly felt that they were talking in another language.
The rest of my family didn't like that very much, so they would often try to convince me to avoid grandma, but our relationship remained strong. She would tell me all about her fantastic and exiting life and I would tell her the secrets I kept from my other family members.
My paeents tried blessing the house, exorcising me, taking me to the doctors and many many many home remedies, my visions never went away though, and every morning I would wake up remembering a shadow of a distinct shape making vague noises. Sometimes the same shadow came a few nights in a row, never to return again.
As life started to get more complicated, I couldn't see grandma as often and when I moved for college I only got to see her once a year, for the holidays. Even then, it was like nothing had changed and we would talk for hours on end. She talked a lot about her years before marrying my late grandfather, when she travelled the country looking for the perfect place to live the rest of her life. One day I asked if she had found it, but she went quiet and murmured a "It wasn't exactly what I expected" before saying she was too tired to keep talking and going to her room with her walker. That had never happened before and it never happened after, I learned to avoid that kind of questions.
This one time, I told her that as I grew older, I could see the shadows better, and to her petition, I drew how they looked like to me. She was surprised to see the amount of detail, as much as they were shadows I could see every individual hair, make out a bit their features and even see a little white reflection on their eyes. Sometimes, I could see tears rolling down their faces, and I'd just feel sorry for them.
The years passed and the inevitable happened. My beloved grandma died on her sleep, peacefully and without pain, as the doctors said. The problem is... I don't believe them. Every night since then, I have seen her at the feet of my bed, hunched over, talking and talking and talking. As soon as I go to my bed, she appears and doesn't go away till sunrise. I haven't been able to sleep for weeks and I'm just stuck wondering... What did she not tell me?... What did she do?
