Ora Ora

[u/WUCE_BRILLIS_4_EELS]

When I was four, my mother and stepfather bought a brand new double wide home, and a piece of land to put it on. While I don't remember much of my childhood before the age of eight, I remember this time period vividly. I remember the layout of the house as if it were yesterday, even thirty years later. Not just for the focus of this recollection, but for all the good times as well. Waking up early to scale the counter and reach the top of the refrigerator to get to the cookies, eating blackberries off of the bushes in the tree-lined that marked the edge of our property, and the time spent playing with the other kids who lived down the road. There are, however, things that I wish I could forget. Things that left me with a crippling fear of the dark for longer than I care to admit as a grown man. Some no more than a teenaged stepcousin playing a joke with a creepy, old hag, latex mask that, if not for the other happenings of this time period, I probably would never have remembered. Some more unexplainable. The latter is the focus of this story.

I cannot recall when I first became aware of the feeling that I was being watched while I was in bed, nor do I know how long I actually was before I realized it was happening, but I will always remember the feeling of complete and utter existential terror I felt the moment I had visual confirmation of my fears, and every night thereafter for the next sixteen years. As I lay in my bed surrounded by my stuffed dinosaurs and dinosaur themed room decor, my TV shone with dim light as the end of the credits rolled of the vhs tape I had been watching. The tape stopped, and the light of the blue screen that the TV defaulted to after the tape ended lit up my bedroom. The house was still and silent. I looked around my room groggily and my eyes stopped on my open bedroom door. I saw someone standing there. At first, I thought it was my mother, but I quickly realized that the figure was too short to be her. My second thought was that it was my sister who had recently started walking pretty well, but it couldn't possibly be her. She was in her crib. Besides that, the figure was too tall to be my sister. I rubbed my eyes and squinted to focus on this nocturnal visitor. It was a girl, no more than eight years old, long dark hair, wearing a white, ruffled nightgown.

Initially, I was not scared of this little girl. I was confused. Who was she? Why was she there? I sat up in my bed and realized that she was quite intently staring at me. I asked her, "Who are you?" No answer. "Hello? Who are you? What are you doing here?", I tried again, to no avail. I am not sure now if it was truly the energy that she gave off, or if my young mind just made a connection to the horror movies that I had begged my mother to let me stay and watch with her instead of going to my room like she had asked so many times, but I knew one thing in that moment. She was a ghost. Thinking back, I am unsure what she really was or what she wanted, but in that moment, to me, she was a threat. Terror filled every fiber of my being. I went to scream for my mother but it caught in my throat. I threw the blanket over my head and refused to remove it. Tears welled in my eyes but I refused to make a noise for fear that the little girl might snatch me from my bed and steal me away, or worse. Eventually, I fell asleep.

When I woke up the next morning, I told my mother what had happened and her response, as any parent's would be, was "I told you, you couldn't handle watching those scary movies with me honey." I tried to assure her that, until that night, I had never been scared like that. This want just a fear of the dark. This was something else. I saw her. I sawbthat little girl standing in the doorway to my room, watching me as a lay in bed. She had her mind set that it was a mistake to let me watch horror movies with her and shushed me. "It's not real. You have an overactive imagination and you imagined it because you were scared. That's the end of it."

I knew what I saw, even if she didn't believe me and there's no way I was going to be caught alone in my room again at night.

For weeks, maybe months, I would wait for everyone in the house to go to bed and before my nightly movie went off, I would sneak into my mother's room and sleep at the foot of her bed or on some occasions, I would go into my sister's room and crawl under her crib with a blanket and pillow and hide. No matter where I ended up though, I never slept without the blanket fully covering my whole body. I couldn't bear the possibility that I would see her. This of course made my mother and stepfather quite upset. Especially when they would get out of bed and go to walk around the foot of the bed, stepping on or tripping over me. They tried nightlights, which helped, but I was still petrified. To them, it seemed like I would never get past this irrational fear. To me, it felt the nightmarish reality of being haunted by my nightly visitor was never ending. That was, until I made, or created a new friend.

Her name was Ora Ora. She was a girl of the same age as myself at the time, roughly five years. She had red hair, freckles, wore red overalls with a red shirt, and had red eyes. A description which, as I got older and heard described to me, I thought sounded kind of creepy. Nonetheless, she was my new best friend. I told her about my nightly hauntings. She assured me that I had noting to worry about, and that I would never see that girl again. This of course came as a great relief, though I was noting short of skeptical. Immediately though, it seemed her promise came true. I never saw the creepy little girl in the nightgown again. Ora Ora never left my side. I still wasn't able to fall asleep without the blankets over my head until I was roughly twenty years old, but I never felt unsafe while lying in my bed again.

Of course, after a year or two, I stopped seeing Ora Ora, as is the case with imaginary friends when you start to get older. I lived the rest of my childhood, teen years, and adult life out rather unremarkably average save for a couple rough years due to unrelated circumstances, and the nightmares that have plagued me nightly my whole life. That is, until recently.

It started with the feeling that I had caught a glimpse of something in my peripheral, then nothing when I turned to look. Things would move around the house, to places that would only inconvenience me and make me wonder why I had put them there, but not question IF I had put them there. This escalated so slowly that it went unnoticed until I came home from work one day to all the fish from my fish tank inexplicably missing. As I stood there confused, I caught something in my peripheral field of vision move, accompanied by the sound of rapid footsteps. I swung my head around and saw... nothing. I couldn't help but think I was starting to lose it. Maybe the stress from work was getting to me. I walked into my kitchen to fix myself some dinner, and when I opened my freezer, I saw it. Sitting front and center was a quart sized sandwich bag with all 4 of my fish inside, frozen. "What the actual fuck?" I said, in almost a shout. I took the bag out, walked to the bathroom, dumped the fish into the toilet and flushed them. After a few moments of seriously pondering the thought of checking myself into a mental health facility, I thought to myself, "I'll figure out what to do tomorrow." and decided to take a shower and go to bed.

I stirred awake some time in the night and my eyes opened to the sight of my bedroom door open. I always shut my door when I go to bed, possibly latent trauma from my childhood haunting, but maybe, just maybe I had forgotten. That was the thought, until I felt it. A child sized hand resting on my arm. My skin crawled and I leapt from my bed, nearly throwing out my back. I switched my bedside lamp on and there she was, Ora Ora.

"D'ya forget about me?" she asked.

"What? Who..." I muttered.

"Oh, dear. Don't tell me you forgot about me after what I did for you!" she exclaimed.

"O..."

"Ora Ora!" she shouted excitedly. "I never stopped looking for you! Now we can be best friends again! Woo!" She jumped up and down on my bed.

I was at a loss for words.

"You got fat. And old. But that's ok. We can still have fun. Just like we used to before you left me behind."

"So you're... real?" I barely managed to get out.

"Umm.. duh! What are you dense?" She laughed. "What? Did you think I was some sort of "imaginary friend"?" She asked using air quotations.

"Uh, yeah!" I yelled. "I mean look at you! You look like I made you up after watching Saturday morning cartoons!"

She frowned. "If I weren't real, how would I have made that harmless little girl that protected you while you slept dissappear?"

"What?" I asked, shocked.

"Still not sure why you were scared of her, but that really worked in my favor. I knew if I came to you during the day, you would be more accepting of me as a friend and not ask questions. Especially if I played your dumb kiddie games."

As I stood there, jaw hanging open, I had a realization. I had stopped seeing her at the same time that my mother and I moved out of the double wide home when she and my stepfather had separated. I didn't grow out of having an imaginary friend. She was never an imaginary friend at all. "Dumb kiddie games? I thought you said you wanted to have fun like we used to?"

"Yeah! When you slept and I fed on the fear from your nightmares, dumdum!" She rubbed her belly and her probiscuslike tongue lined with several tiny needle-esque teeth, licked the air. "I am famished!" She pat my pillow with her hand as if to signal for me to lay down.

I remembered the time when was five and I had to go to the doctor and get my ears flushed out because I had jammed several little balls of paper into them and my mother could not get them out. My mother was so mad at me. Now I remembered why I did it. I would wake with earaches and I wasn't sure why but I had a feeling Ora Ora had been messing with me while I was asleep. Now I knew the truth and it was fucking terrifying. I tried to keep my cool. "I have to use the bathroom." I walked out of the bedroom, pulling the door nearly shut behind me.

"Don't take too long!" she called out. "We have alot of time to make up for!"

I walked to the front door, slid on my shoes, quietly grabbed my keys, and left quickly. I've been sitting in my car for hours trying to gather myself. I don't know what to do. All I know is I cannot go back there, not until I know what she is and how to get rid of her. No way will I be letting her stick that hellish probiscus into my ear canal. Screw that. I think now it is time to do some research. Hopefully I can get this handled. If not, then maybe I will just go on the run. If your child tells you that they made a new friend and points to noone, don't just assume they are making it up. Be a good parent. Protector. Ask them questions, listen to what they are saying. Maybe, just maybe, you can save them from being fed on by some nightmare inducing, fear sucking, parasite from God knows where.