so you can be monitored by doctors and therapists.” She lowered her head in shame to be the one to tell me this.
“They think I'm crazy don't they?” She nodded and a single tear rolled down her pink cheek.
“What am I going to do, I don't want to go, I'm scared Libby.” She held me close to her, hugging me tight not wanting me to be taken away. She leaned into my ear and said one word.
“LIE” My head popped up and looked at her. She was serious.
“What?”
“LIE. Tell them it was all a lie to get attention, tell them a girl at school put you up to it, tell them it’s scary films you have been sneaking downstairs to watch, I don't know but tell them anything so they won't send you away!” She was almost as desperate as I was but she clearly had time to think about this.
I nodded saying,
“Ok I will but Libby what do I do about keeping the monsters away?” She looked worried at my response and sadly said,
“I don't know but let’s deal with this problem first.”
It felt comforting to hear my sister's semi belief, so it gave me the confidence I needed to do what I did next. After telling my parents one of the excuses Libby had come up with, everything went back to normal pretty quickly. Apart from my seeing things I could not explain, my life went back to the usual young girl’s life I had originally had. Only now I had to fake a lot of things. Why, for example, I would jump at nothing and looked shocked at some random person walking past. But my parents were more than happy to believe that I was fine. If only for one day they saw the same things I did. I would sometime dream that this would happen but then felt guilty about it instantly. I would never wish this curse on anyone. Even at such a young age I still knew the consequences such a life altering event had on one human mind.
However it all changed again six months later when Libby came running into my room with an idea. She had recently seen a documentary of a man that travelled around the world talking about different cultures. My dad was watching it as he did every week when my sister took notice of one part in particular. It was when he tried to take a picture of the Aborigines, they held up their hands in protest. The guide then explained why this was.
Spiritualists would claim that the human image on the mirrored surface was akin to looking into one's soul. The spiritualists also believed that it would open their souls and let demons in. Aborigines believed that taking one's picture took part of one's soul away. It somehow kept it locked away.
Locked...that was the key.
This was how her idea was born. She thought that if taking a picture of someone let demons in then maybe taking the picture of a demon would somehow contain them. But it didn't quite make sense and I could hardly go around taking every one’s picture just in case. So she came up with another way, she told me to try and draw them whenever I saw one. Maybe this would act as a sort of prison for them to be locked out of my mind. It was something I had never thought of, so I did as she asked and started sketching them every time I saw one.
I found that every time I did this it would lock the image from my head and I wouldn't see it any more. The effects didn't stop there, because after years of seeing these living nightmares they grew less and less until one day I realised I hadn't seen one in over a month.
However they didn't go completely, they were now only coming to me when I was asleep. I would play back part of the day and somewhere there would be one changing into something horrible but as long as it remained in my dream I could cope with it. I would then get up and draw what I had seen and keep it in a hidden folder, locking it out of my head forever. The next time I saw the same person, they would be just like everyone else and I wouldn't dream of them again. By the time I hit my teens the dreams had also stopped, only coming back to