30 Reasons To Read

Episode 15: Cecily

Our house was haunted.

It wasn’t something we discussed much. Growing up, it was just a fact, as ordinary as knowing the house had four walls and a roof. My first memory of it dates back to when I was four years old. I was sitting in a closet, pretending I was rowing a boat, using two plastic pipes as oars. Suddenly, something invisible grabbed the pipe on my right. I was too young to understand fear. I thought I’d simply gotten it stuck and pulled against the force.

Then a voice, deep and unfamiliar, spoke from nowhere: *“I drowned long ago. Maybe you will too.”*

It was followed by the unmistakable sound of a splash.

That was when fear hit me and I bolted from the closet, running to my mom. She greeted me with a smile.

“Remember this, Cecily,” she said gently. “The thing that talks to you, that watches you, that breathes down your neck will never hurt you. You just have to learn to live with it.”

She was right. It never hurt me. But that didn’t mean it wasn’t dangerous.

It was just me and my mom. My parents had divorced before I was born. I grew up following my mom's advice, learning to coexist with the presence in our home. Anyone who came to our house could sense it immediately. Visitors would often leave within minutes, unsettled, though they rarely said why. Some claimed they’d seen us peeking from windows when, in reality, neither of us had been near the front of the house. The curtains would shift, or a shadow would move, things we had no control over. Eventually, people stopped coming around and whispers about us spread.

We had three maids who worked in the house. They were terrified of the presence. They stuck together like glue, always leaving before six in the evening when the haunting grew stronger. Though their small cottage sat behind our house by the lake, they refused to come near us after dark.

One night, after six, my mom's old radio broke. She couldn’t sleep without it, so she handed it to me, asking me to take it to the maids to fix. Reluctantly, I grabbed the radio and a flashlight, and ran out into the dark.

I was halfway to the cottage when I heard someone giggling. I froze. The sound didn’t come from the house, it came from the lake. I turned toward it, shining my light across the water.

There, standing waist-deep in the lake, was one of our maids.

“Monique?” I called out, my voice trembling.

She turned slowly, glancing over her shoulder at me. Her face was pale but she smiled.

"Why are you standing there?" I asked.

"Come to me, honey. It's wonderful here," Monique’s voice called out, syrupy sweet, her grin widening as I took hesitant steps forward. "Come faster!" she urged, her smile stretching unnaturally across her face.

I was about to jog towards her when a firm grip yanked me back. My heart leaped into my throat as I was about to scream but a soft voice whispered into my ears, "Quiet! It’s not safe here." I realized it was Rachelle, one of our maids, her face taut with fear. She started dragging me toward a small blue Ford parked nearby.

I glanced back towards our house and saw my mother standing by the window, her expression a mix of confusion and shock. As we neared the car, I saw Dahlia, our third maid, sitting in the driver’s seat. She looked pale and frightened, her knuckles white as she gripped the steering wheel, ready to flee at any second.

Rachelle yanked open the door, and as I looked back, Monique was emerging from the lake, her face twisted in fury, her steps slow but purposeful.

"We're leaving Monique behind!" I cried, panic rising in my chest.

"That’s not Monique!" Rachelle hissed, shoving me into the car. "She’s already inside!" My heart stopped.

"Drop the radio, it’s cursed!" she added as she slammed the door behind us.

The car jerked forward as Dahlia floored the gas pedal, speeding away just as my mother started running toward us, screaming my name. I watched her figure grow smaller through the rear window, collapsing onto the ground, her cries swallowed by the distance.

Rachelle grabbed the radio from my trembling hands and hurled it out of the window. "Thank God," she muttered under her breath. I turned to look at the figure still emerging from the lake. It no longer resembled Monique, its face was grotesque, smeared with blood, eyes hollow, skin rotting. Monique, seated on my other side, remained silent. Her eyes were shut, yet every so often, a tear slipped through. Her hands were tightly clasped together, as if holding onto a desperate prayer.

The ride was silent. The air in the car felt thick with fear and none of us spoke a word. After what felt like hours, the car pulled into the driveway of a house I didn’t recognize. A man was waiting by the door, my father.

He pulled me into a tight hug, tears streaming down his face. His new wife, Laura, stood beside him, her face kind but strained with concern. My father was overjoyed to see me and I felt strangely at ease with him, more than I ever did with my mother.

Rachelle and Dahlia spoke to him in hushed tones, then turned to me with sad smiles. "Stay safe," they whispered before they left. I never saw them again.

Years passed before I learned the truth.

My mother had been a devout Satanist, something my father hadn’t known when they married. The maids weren’t just maids, they were her sisters, bound by fear and obedience to her twisted beliefs. They had helped her with her dark rituals, terrified that she would curse them if they disobeyed.

My parents’ first child, a daughter, had drowned in the lake when she was five. I later discovered that my mother had sacrificed her to the dark entity she worshiped, bound by an oath to offer all her children as its prey. My father, unaware of this at the time, had pressured my mother to leave the house when she became pregnant with me. When she refused, he divorced her.

Her sisters, Rachelle, Dahlia, and Monique, couldn’t bear to watch me grow up, knowing I was next and they had to help her kill me some day. On the night I was supposed to be sacrificed, they made a desperate decision and and told my dad about everything. They waited until I was vulnerable enough, when my mother’s influence over me weakened since I was under her spell and whisked me away to safety.

And yet, the memories of that night haunted me for years.

It hit me that when we left home, I panicked about leaving Monique behind, but felt nothing about leaving Mom. Maybe, deep down, I had always known the truth about her.

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