Watching And Waiting

• Teresa Urwin, Grade 6
• Poetry
• 2007

The night swept over Maddy and her friends. “Maddy there’s nothing to be afraid of!” Maddy was in the school in darkness with her friends. She had always been paranoid in the dark, especially if there weren’t any adults around. She just couldn’t help the feeling of being followed, of being watched.
She felt the hairs on the back of her neck prickle and an ice-cold chill crept up her spine, a horrible suffocation chill. Suddenly everything went quiet, someone screamed. It was black, everything, blacker than ink, blacker than the night. The screaming hadn’t stopped but now it seemed so far away from Maddy.
Next thing, she was looking up into her friend’s worried faces. She realised that it was her screaming and stopped at once. After Maddy’s friends had told her what happened and she was up and walking again all was silent once more. It was a sharp, piercing silence like everything around them was in agonising pain, but unable to move or cry out, they just sat there, writhing in silence.
Maddy was scared now, very scared. It seemed that all of the happiness had been sucked from the world and all that was left behind was a dark, dull, scary and lonely street and a terrified thirteen year old girl and her fearless friends.
Even as Maddy climbed the rotten green stairs, something, she felt sure of it now, was watching them; something was waiting in the darkness. When Maddy caught up to the others, she realised what was wrong, someone was missing. “STOP!” She called her friends to a halt. She had seen something moving in the corner.
Something was in the room, mixing with the air, Maddy could see it in front of her eyes, could feel it compressing onto her lungs, so that she could barely breathe. It filled her lungs, catching her breath like oil diluting water. It was like emptiness, a vast emptiness that filled the whole room.
It was difficult to say what it was, but there was definitely something there, it was like a figure, a figure made of nothing but darkness and loneliness. Maddy got out her camera and took as many pictures of the ghost as she could (she had decided that it must be a ghost even though she didn’t believe in ghosts, well at least not until tonight). She grabbed her friends and ran.
When they got the pictures back there was nothing but black on them though, even though her friend, Cassie, had managed to take a few, they were all black, except one, the first one that Maddy had taken.
It showed her friend, Sarah, who was the one who was missing before, on the ground with a scar that they had never seen before and there was a figure standing over her, a figure made of nothing but darkness and loneliness. Now Maddy has a scar just like that. I know because there is a description over her grave.