The Game of Counting

I was eight when I learned that some games are better left unplayed. My mother, my little brother Sam, and I were at my grandmother’s old farmhouse for a Sunday visit. The place always felt heavy, like the walls were leaning in to listen, but as a kid, I just thought it was the smell of mothballs and old wood.

My cousin Ruthie and I decided to hide from Sam in the attic bedroom. It was a long, narrow room with slanted ceilings and two iron-framed beds pressed against opposite walls. We slipped under them, giggling, as Sam’s voice counted downstairs: ‘One… two… three…’ The floorboards in the hallway creaked as he came closer, but then his footsteps stopped. The house fell quiet. I remember thinking he was trying to trick us, but the silence stretched too long, and the dust in the air began to feel like it was thickening.

I peeked out from under the bed. The room was exactly as we left it—pale light through a grimy window, Ruthie’s foot sticking out from her hiding spot. But something was wrong. The air had turned cold, and I could hear a sound like fingers dragging along the inside of the walls. I told myself it was squirrels, but I knew better. My heart started thumping so loud I was sure Sam would hear it.

Then I saw it. A shadow, but not a normal shadow. It slid along the far wall, moving against the light, not thrown by anything. It stopped beside Ruthie’s bed. I wanted to scream, but my throat closed up. Ruthie must have felt it too, because her foot disappeared suddenly, and I heard a muffled gasp. The shadow paused, then slowly stretched out a long, thin finger toward where she lay.

I don’t remember deciding to move. I just burst out from under my bed, shouting for my mother. But as I scrambled to my feet, I felt a cold hand clamp around my ankle. It wasn’t human—it was long and bony, with too many joints. It pulled me back under the bed, and I screamed, but no sound came out. The world warped, the bedroom walls bleeding into a dark corridor that smelled of rot and wet soil.

The next thing I knew, I was standing in the farmhouse’s kitchen, and my mother was shaking me, asking why I was hiding under the kitchen table. Ruthie was beside me, pale and shaking. We looked at each other, and I saw real terror in her eyes. The game had ended when my brother gave up, saying he couldn’t find us anywhere. But that was impossible—we were in the attic room the whole time—or were we?

We never spoke about it that day. But later that night, I heard my grandmother whisper to my mother, saying ‘He’s been restless again.’ At dinner, I looked across the table and saw Ruthie staring at the empty chair at the head of the table, her face drained of color. I followed her gaze, and for just a second, I saw an old man sitting there, his hollow eyes fixed on me, and his mouth moving as if counting. Then he was gone.

We left the next morning. As we drove away, I looked back at the farmhouse. In the attic window, a pale hand pressed against the glass, as if waving goodbye. I never asked my grandmother about ‘him,’ and I never played hide and seek again. To this day, I can’t stand the sound of someone counting to ten.