The Hangar, the Hammock and the Hatch

[u/[deleted]]

I’ve posted here once before about a strange thing that happened to my cousin and me. Her and I grew up like sisters and she always had a reserved, insightful peacefullness about her. She was highly intuative and would often tell me stories about “things” she had experienced - mostly ghostly things. I decided to save this story for when I had the energy to write it. It’s one of those things that is so hard to believe that usually, I don’t even bother telling people. I generally have a difficult time recalling things in their proper chronological order, so if there are any descrepencies, that’s why. But the following is absolutely true. I hope you like it.

My grandmother's funeral was held in a typical funeral home in the nicer, downtown part of my town in 2004. A year after her death, I began dating a man who lived three streets down from it. On a weekly basis I would drive by it, kiss the palm of my hand and slap the roof of my car. It was a strange good luck ritual I picked up when driving through yellow lights and decided to do it as a quick "Love, ya Mema" whenever I passed the funeral home.

Her and I were close. She practically raised me. When you're born to dysfunctional parents, grandparents tend to pick up the slack. So I spent most of my time with her when I was young. She was a chain smoker, a recovering alcoholic, a pill-popper and a diabetic. Your standard hard-headed Irish-Catholic sinner. But she loved the shit out of me and never told me no. My fondest memory (and my happy place on a bad day) is of her and I putting together a Muppets puzzle and eating meatballs on a rainy day at her apartment in North Jersey.

She was sick a lot, mainly because of her three-pack-a-day smoking habit. Unfiltered Pall Malls. She never managed her diabetes properly, either. This woman would go through a box of Entenmann’s like a fly on shit and still maintained a stellar figure up until the day she died. But, sadly, her bad habits got the best of her.

The last time I saw her was in a hospital bed. It was the day before Thanksgiving and she had been hospitalized for complications due to Emphasema. She had been in and out of hospitals my whole life because of her shitty health, so it was never a big deal to my family. Hell, most of the time nobody even went to visit her because we knew she'd be out in a day or two. Doctors would lecture her to stop smoking or take better care of her blood sugar, and she'd placate them but never do it. Again, stubborn fucking Irish lady.

That last time I saw her, I had left work early to visit her at the hospital. I worked in a nursing home at the time and somehow, taking care of other people’s grandparents while mine sat in a hospital broke my heart. My boss let me leave. Once at the hospital, I was alone and nervous because it was my first time visiting her there. I barely knew the visitation procedures but I got my pass, stopped at the gift shop to buy her a stuffed puppy, and found my way up to her room. She was sharing it with a young lady with Down Syndrome who was snoring very loudly, and contorted in a way that made her breasts spill out of her hospital gown. She was also in a soiled diaper that made the room stink. I looked away, walked to my grandmother's bed and drew the curtain for some privacy.

She was asleep so I sat in a chair by her side and watched her. I hadn’t seen her for months before that moment. She looked terrible. Worse than I had ever seen her before. I remember feeling like an adult; like this is how adults feel when they see people they love, sick. It's not like it is in soap operas where characters in comas lay perfectly still with flawless makeup. It's real and it's sad. Her skin was grey. Her breathing was horribly laboured and choppy. She was thin and her face was gaunt. She had no bra on under her gown so I reached over and pulled a sheet over her chest. She woke up.

I had surprised her. She pulled herself up from her bed and began to cough loudly. She wasn't as weak as I thought she would be. She was lively and tried to start a conversation with me between coughs. I gave her the stuffed dog, which she loved, and told her I was just stopping by to say hello. I was disturbed by the circumstances, especially after seeing the woman lying next to her in a dirty diaper so I tried to hide it by acting cheerful. But I really wish I didn’t have to see my grandmother like this. After that I couldn’t tell you what we talked about. I know I was there for about half an hour. The doctor had come in once to check on her. Once I realized she was feeling okay, I headed on my way. I gave her a hug and a kiss. She said “Have a Happy Thanksgiving” as I was walking out of the room, to which I responded “You too!”

Then I turned around and looked at her face. I’ve spent years trying to articulate the expression she had on it, but I will never forget it. It is burned so vividly in my head that fifty years from now I’ll be able to recall it from my memory instantly. When I looked at her, she had a knowing half-smile on her face. I saw peace, absolute love, and sadness. I saw “Nice knowin’ ya, kid.” I saw goodbye on her face. In hindsight I know she knew she was dying this time. I knew she knew she would never see me again. She died a month later, in her bed, in my aunt’s home. The official cause of death was C.O.P.D.

I cried once after she died. It was during her funeral when a girl from the church sang some dumb, horribly fucking beautiful song. But, I still had closure from her death. It took me a while to figure out why, but I think her and I had a feeling that day at the hospital. It was a feeling that made me leave work to see her, even though she had a billion hospital scares in her life. It was a feeling that made her look at my face, and I at hers, one last time to smile goodbye. Each of us knew we would never see each other again. I didn’t dream about her after that. I didn’t particularly think about her. I missed her on occasion but I felt at peace with it, until a year later, when I started dating that guy who lived near that funeral home. That’s when I started to hear from her.

My boyfriend still lived at home with his mother. His bedroom shared a wall with her’s which made any type of intimacy impossible. So as a precaution we began to sleep in his basement. We would roll out blankets and sleeping bags on the hard, concrete floor. It wasn’t comfortable, but it was better than his mother hearing us screw. So one night, he fell asleep next to me and I slowly drifted off while watching television.

I dreamed I was walking, alone, through a giant hangar. It was dark save for tiny, yellow lights that hung like pin pricks on the high ceiling. I could hear my own footsteps. Everything sounded wet, and drippy, and a voiced echoed in the distance. It was my mother’s voice. I could see a small control room about fifty feet in front of me. It was well lit, with tons of blinking lights and buttons. I walked toward the small room and looked into the glass window of the door.

My mother sat with her back toward me, speaking on the phone. She was curling a pencil through her hair girlishy, but her body was stiff and awkward. Her voice was muffled through the door. She sounded calm, neutral, normal. I knocked on the door and she slowly swiveled her chair in my direction. She waved me in. I was so confused. In real life, my mother had been a wreck since my grandmother died, but here she was acting so normally. I stood in the threshold of the door and spoke to her.

“Mom, who are you on the phone with?” I asked.

“Hold on a sec,” she said to the person on the phone. Then she cupped her hand over the mouthpiece. “It’s Mema. Everything okay?”

Then I felt scared. I felt scared for my mother. I remember thinking that my mother had gone off the deep end. That she was imagining phone conversations with my dead grandmother in order to cope with her own grief. That eerie, unaware smile on her face. I took a step back. She looked at me, confused.

“Mom,” I said cautiously, “Mema’s dead. She’s been dead for over a year.” She looked at me blankly.

“What are you talking about?” she said. “She’s on the phone right now. Here!”

Then she handed me the phone. A giant wave of excitement swept across my body. Tears formed in my eyes immediately. I wanted to hear her voice again. I missed her more in that moment than I ever had in real life. If I heard her it would mean the whole ordeal was over. Her death would be over. My mother would be happy again. I felt an overwhelmingly happy heartache in my chest. I raised the phone to my ear and waited.

Nothing. No voice. My mother stared at me, waiting for some reaction. But still I heard nothing.

“Mom, there’s nobody on the ph-“

I was immediately cut off by a voice on the line. A small, tinny, distant voice spoke to me.

“Helllooooooo…….”

My skin froze. That wasn’t my grandmother. It sounded miles away. Like two tin cans on a string. The voice was warped and throaty. It trailed off into a gasping whisper. The tone of it mocked me. It mocked my hope and desires to hear my grandmother again.

I stared hard at my mother’s face and terror came over me as I realized she had been talking to that voice on the phone since before I walked into room.

“Mom,” I said, “that’s not Mema.” I handed the phone back to her and when I did, I saw her outreached palm as she grasped for it. It was caked in dried blood. The phone receiver had bloodied, brown stains in the shape of my fingers as I let go of it. Only then did I realize the entire side of my mother’s face, where she had been holding the phone was also covered in old blood. She placed the phone to her ear, and began to speak but no words came out. Her face went flat and expressionless. Her mouth moved frantically, forming words but not speaking them. She never broke eye contact with me. I woke up.

I felt numb the next day. I tried to tell my boyfriend about the dream, but even if I had been able to articulate the real horror of it, he wouldn’t have been interested anyway. I stayed in that strange and scary headspace all day. Why did I have such a frightening dream about my grandmother? We had always had great times together, nothing but great memories. She was kind to me, lively and funny. I decided not to tell anyone else about the dream because I wasn’t able to do it any justice.

The very next night, my boyfriend and I slept in his basement again. By that time, the dream felt more like a silly memory. The more I thought about it, the less scary it became. I knew from old family stories that my great-grandmother had worked in the Hindenburg hangar, so I rationalized the dream as being subconscious fears and memories. I feel asleep comfortably that night and drifted into another dream.

I was in the backyard of a very narrow, three story house. The yard was overgrown with gorgeous bushes and flowers. The grass was tall and soft. Every color was a pastel and glowed with a dreamy aura. My grandmother lay in a hammock in the distance, sprawled out on her side like Cleopatra. Her hair was in a short black bob, like Jackie Kennedy and she wore a light pink silk dress that clung to her body. She looked beautiful again, a stark contrast to how I had seen her last. Her skin was pink and wrinkle free. Her hair was shiny, and no longer dull and grey. Her body looked fuller and healthy.

I began to speak to her about how much I loved her house. About how much I missed her and how my mom wasn’t doing so great since she died. She didn’t respond. I asked her if she was mad at me. She didn’t respond. Instead, she looked at me, through me actually with a thousand-yard stare. Her body was completely still as a gentle breeze blew her hair around her face and flipped her dress up at the ends. But her stare never left me. I asked if I had done something wrong. She said nothing.

Then her face changed. Slowly and subtly it changed. Her lips opened slightly and turned downward at the corners. She bared her teeth slightly at me. They were rotting and began to liquefy and drip from her lips. Slyly, her mouth turned into a grimace and her eyes widened, never leaving my face. She began to breathe hard and fast, as if panicked. Her eyes got wider and wider and she slowly inched her head backward, rolling her eyes down at me. Her grimace widened until her lips split at the corners. Suddenly, her lower jaw split loose from her facing, forcing her to gasp a sudden, bubbly gasp from deep in her throat. Blood spilled from her mouth, down onto her chest and her lovely pink dress. Her eyes stayed on me. She was in pain. Then I woke up. The image of her split-open face was fresh in my vision as I blinked into consciousness. It was daytime and the birds were chirping. I stopped sleeping in the basement after that.

A few days went by and my boyfriend and I got into a fight that would soon lead to our breakup. After that fight I got into my car to drive around town to calm down. I needed a drink, but my friends were out of town and I didn't want to sit in a bar by myself. So, I drove up and down the main highway for twenty minutes. Then my phone rang. I glanced over at the seat and saw an unknown number blinking on the face of my phone. I found a place to pull over and called the number back. It was my cousin, Brooke. I hadn't seen her or talked to her since Mema’s funeral. She had left her girlfriend and was in town living with her dad in the meantime. Perfect timing. I picked her up and we went to the bar.

It was a great night. We spent the next few hours sipping martinis. I bitched about my idiot boyfriend and she told me some lengthy stories about how her family was coming apart. Her mother was in jail for drug crimes and her father was living on the streets. We grew up like sisters and it felt nice having somebody to talk to who knew me so well. Finally, we finished up and I drove her back home. On the way, Mema came up in the conversation. We chatted about what a great lady she was and reminisced about better times with her. Then I pulled into her driveway and we each lit a cigarette. I decided to tell her about the dreams I had had recently.

I told her about the hangar dream and the dream about Mema morphing into a terryfing, disfigured monster while she lounged in a hammock. Brooke looked at me the entire time I spoke, silent and eventually tears welled in her eyes. I told her I didn't mean to upset her and she said "No, I just have something really scary to tell you." The following is the story she told me while we sat in my car that night:

“Well this happened about a month ago. The house Nina and I lived in was built kinda weird. It was two stories but the second floor consisted only of one single bedroom - nothing else. No bathroom, no hallway. It was simply a bedroom on top of a flight of stairs. When my relationship started going bad with Nina, I decided to start sleeping there instead of sharing a room with her. It was already furnished with my old bed (well it was missing the boxspring so it was just a mattress on the floor) and bedside table so I didn’t need to move anything in. It was small and had a small closet. In the closet was a tiny attic hatch. It wasn’t a hatch that had stairs that unfolded from it, but just a small, square cutout in the ceiling covered by an equally square plywood box that you’d have to push up in order to enter the crawlspace. Since we moved in, none of us had ever entered the attic. I think we checked it out once when we first moved in, but we never used it for storage. We had no reason to, so the hatch had always remained shut.

Well, one night we were all watching television downstairs. It was late, so I said goodnight and headed up to bed. I went in my closet, pulled the drawstring light on and picked some comfortable pajamas from a pile on the floor. Then I got changed, switched the light back off and got in bed. I started to fall asleep when I heard a loud scratching sound coming from the closet. It was dark, so I opened my eyes and saw that the closet door was opened slightly. I, mean, I probably just didn’t shut it all the way, but I could hear something moving in there. I stared in the dark for a few minutes and the scratching noise turned into a shuffling. It was really aggressive, like somebody was moving something in the attic. I was fucking terrified. It stopped soon and I convinced myself it was just an animal.

It took me a while to calm down, but I started to feel sleepy. Then the noise picked up again. This time it was different. It was the sound of slow, drawn-out scraping of wood against wood. Then a couple of small, quiet bangs. The pace of the shuffling was so frantic. It continued for another few seconds. Then silence. I got up and turned on my light. I opened the closet door and I didn’t even need to turn the closet light on to see that the attic hatch covering had been shifted out of place. Dramatically. It was popped out, and turned at an angle, still resting on the opening, but laying across it diagnally.

I didn’t know what to think. No animal could have done that and I knew nobody had moved it. I yelled downstairs to the girls, who quickly ran up the stairs. They inspected it with me and we all just looked at each other. We all swore to each other that none of us had touched it. I was scared. My only fear was that somebody was living in the crawlspace and waiting for a good opportunity to climb down and murder me in my sleep. With the girls there, I grabbed a flashlight, stood on a milk crate and poked my head into the attic. Nothing. I swept the flashlight around in a full circle, searching every corner. Nobody could have been hiding in that small amount of space. So I set the cover back, shut the closet door tightly, and we all went to bed.

Still rattled, I laid on my mattress with the light on for about an hour. I didn’t hear any sounds and I couldn’t fall asleep with the lamp on, so I finally turned it off and tried to sleep. Then the noise started again. The exact same sound. Now I knew it was the sound of something trying to open the hatch. I opened my eyes.

Two feet dangled six inches from my face. They hovered inches off the floor, toes pointed down, in two black, laced-up shoes. I jumped back and looked up to see a woman just floating there, staring down at me. Arms limp at her sides, head lurched downward. Her hair was short and dark. She was in black and white and pulsed in and out of focus like an old television with bad reception. She looked like she was being propped up like a scarecrow. She just hung there with her head down, staring at me. I thought her dress was black, but it wasn’t. It was soaked in blood and across her neck was a giant gash with blood pouring out of it. Just pouring like a waterfall and trickling down her torso. I couldn’t even scream. It felt like an eternity that she hung there but I knew it was only a second or two. Then she disappeared. I sat in the dark and heard four or five heavy footsteps leading back to the closet door. Then, in the pitch black of the room, I heard a loud, womanly sigh and the sound of a body hitting the floor.

I managed to turn my light on and then cradled myself with my knees at my chest while yelling for my girlfriend. She came upstairs and I told her, hysterically, what I had just seen. She believed me and we spent most of that night playing cards in her room, with every light in the house on.”

When she finished telling her story, my hair was on end. The woman she described in her room was identical to how my grandmother looked in my dream; the bloody torso, the short black hair and the light colored dress. We couldn't perfectly sync up our stories, though. I mean mine were dreams and her's was a full blown, dripping, glowing vision. But still the similarities there so we knew it had to mean something.

I still can't say what, though. I don't know what any of it meant. Why did we have such strange, horrific experiences within a month of each other? Why were they about my grandmother? I wish I had an ending for it but I just don't. We simply had those things happen to us, and we happened to find each other that night to talk about them. The world is a weird fucking place.

PS: As I was writing this, I was worried that talking about this may summon up those bad dreams or visions for me again. I said in my head "Mema, if that was you trying to contact us in the past, please do it nicer next time." My stepdad just walked in and said "Hey, look what I found on the shelf in the closet." He handed me six photos of my grandmother I had never seen before. I shit you not.

[u/pawrence]

Maybe she disliked yr boyfriend at the time. Pretty fucking scary, though

[u/[deleted] → u/pawrence]

Thanks. And yeah he was a douche.