The Book Of Horror

The Window Screen

The backstory: This story was told to me by my friend's older sister when I was in fourth grade. I assumed she was lying and tattled on her. But to my surprise, her mom actually corroborated the story and even added details to it. Since then I've never forgotten it. At some points in my life I thought back to the story and reasoned that the family were just assholes trying to scar a kid for life. But I do remember the older sister telling me "we have a tape." I never saw the tape, but her mom corroborated that fact too.

So here is the story. The dates are pretty close to when it actually happened, but I've changed some of the names and I didn't include my friend or his sister. The neighborhood where it took place, Boynton Waters, is a real place in Boynton Beach, FL. I've fleshed it out into more of a story, but the major plot points are unchanged.

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June 28th, 1994 - that was the date we moved into the house in that cute little neighborhood of Boynton Waters. It was a new neighborhood. South Florida was chock-full of these little enclaves of houses - Rainbow Valley, Cypress Creek, names the developers probably sloshed around in their heads for a few days to try and sort out what types of images they would evoke for its market.

I can describe the neighborhood as rather undeveloped, with a quiet that blanketed the entire compound at night followed by musky, cicada-infested days.

We were one of the first families that had moved in so I hadn't been able to get to know the neighbors well at all. The first weeks were a wash-and-repeat cycle of unpacking, going to Publix, looking in furniture stores, getting in touch with my company and setting up the utilities. By the third week all that was done and over with, so now it was just a matter of settling in and making it feel like a home.

It was around July 29th, about one month later, that I noticed something odd with the window screen in our master bedroom. An outline of white appeared on the fiberglass and I as approached closer, I could see that there were a series of small tears running vertically and diagonally, in fact - there were dozens of them.

"Huh," I remarked to my wife Amanda. "That didn't used to be there did it?"

She followed my voice out of the bathroom. "Hm?" Then she noticed it. "Oh how did that happen? I never saw that before."

"It's not a big deal," I insisted, half-voicing my real thoughts. I mean, it's a new house after all. It should be flawless. "We can get it fixed."

Being that the rips were so significant, I figured they would need a professional touch, so I called up a few window screen repair services the next morning. The big yellow phone book didn't list prices so I had to call quite a few before finding the best quote.

The guy came a day later and didn't seem at all fazed by the sudden appearance of wear. "Happens to everyone, but if you need to do this again in the future - here's how." He demonstrated for me. It wasn't a difficult process, just involved getting a new sheet of fiberglass and some super glue. If it happened again, this would be no problem, but I doubted quite highly it would happen again.

Four nights later, on August 2nd, it must have been around 10 PM, but I was retiring to bed a bit early. That's when I noticed it.

Dozens of ripped, white tears in the window screen. Needless to say I was more than a little freaked out. "Honey!" I called. Amanda bounded up the stairs.

I inched closer to the screen and felt a wave of déjà vu pass over me. These tears were almost exactly the same as the ones from four nights ago. It was puzzling, but... there they were. "Odd..."

Amanda folded her robe over her as she entered. "Oh my god!" She rushed over to the screen. "What the...?" She peered up at me with a raised eyebrow. "Did-did you do this?"