The Pockmarked Window

Mara had lived in the old farmhouse her whole life, surrounded by fields of tall grass that whispered secrets in the wind. Her brother, Ethan, two years younger, shared her unease about the spare room at the end of the hall—the one with the pockmarked window, where the glass was pitted and starred from some forgotten hailstorm. As children, they’d store their board games and action figures in that room, but they’d always grab what they needed and sprint back to Ethan’s room, which felt safe and bright. They never spoke of why; they just knew the room made their skin crawl, as if unseen eyes tracked their every move from the shadows beneath the bed or the hollow space behind the wardrobe. Mara dismissed it as childish fancy, a trick of the imagination fed by the creaks of an old house.

But on a moonless Sunday night, something changed. Mara had been lying in her own bed, staring at the ceiling, her mind refusing to settle. She must have drifted off, because the next thing she knew, she was jolted awake by a cold burning sensation on her forearm. In the dim light filtering through the curtains, she saw three thin, parallel scratches running from her wrist to her elbow, the lines so fine and precise they looked like they’d been drawn with a needle. The skin around them was red and raised, and they stung as if freshly etched. She knew with a chilling certainty that no human hand could have made those marks—they were too close together, too shallow, and yet too deliberate. They reminded her of the marks a cat might leave, but they had no animals, not even a barn cat, and the scratches were too clean, too deep.

Her heart hammered as she threw back the covers and examined her room by the pale light of her phone. The room was empty. The closet door was ajar, but a glimpse showed only her clothes. The window was shut, the lock in place. But as she turned back, she caught a flicker of movement in the reflection of her mirror—a shadow that was not her own, there and gone in an instant. She froze, staring into the glass, but only her own frightened face stared back, tinged with the ghostly blue of the screen. She tried to convince herself it was a trick of the light, but the scratches throbbed like a brand.

Despite her fear, she managed to fall back into a restless sleep. In the morning, the scratches were still there, angry against her pale skin. She showed them to her parents, hoping for some reassurance, but her father just frowned, asking if she’d been wrestling with the brambles behind the barn. Her mother, overly practical, suggested she had scratched herself in her sleep. When she mentioned the three scratches and what she’d heard about demonic presences, her mother sighed and told her to stop reading horror stories. They dismissed her fears with a wave of the hand, and Mara felt a cold knot of isolation grow in her chest.

Determined to find an explanation, she spent the day searching the house, looking for any sign of an animal—claw marks, fur, droppings—but found nothing. As dusk fell, she began to question her sanity. Maybe she had done it herself, unconsciously, though the precision seemed impossible. That night, she decided to test her theory. She smeared a thin layer of flour across her windowsill and around the perimeter of her bed, then locked her door and lay down, her phone in hand, her dread mounting with every passing minute. She fought sleep, her eyes heavy and burning, but exhaustion won.

She woke to a strange silence. The usual creaks and groans of the old house were absent. She looked around, half expecting to see a shadowy figure, but the room was still. Then she noticed the flour—there were marks in it, but not the clear prints of an animal or a person. They were smudges, like something had dragged itself across the windowsill, leaving a faint trail of powder on her desk. And on her forearm, fresh scratches had appeared, this time three on her other arm, deeper and longer, tracing parallel lines down to her wrist. A wave of nausea washed over her as she realized the thing had been there, inches from her face, while she slept, and she had not seen it.

Terrified, she grabbed her phone and began to record, pointing the camera at the room. She captured a full minute of emptiness, then something caught her eye—a distortion in the air near the closet, like heat rising from asphalt. The distortion flickered, and for a split second, it formed a shape—a gaunt, elongated figure with too-thin limbs and a head that tilted at an unnatural angle, its eyes like wells of pitch. The image froze her blood. She backed against the headboard, her breath ragged, and watched as the distortion began to move, gliding toward the foot of her bed. The air grew cold, and the scratches on her arms felt like they were burning, as if the thing was marking her again. She screamed, but no sound escaped her lips.

The distortion faded as suddenly as it had appeared, and the room returned to its normal temperature. But her phone, still recording, had captured it all. When she played it back, she saw the shadowy presence clearly, and she heard something else—a low, guttural whisper, barely audible, but unmistakable: ‘You see me.’

Mara knew then that the thing was not a figment of her imagination. It was real, and it had always been there, watching, waiting. The pockmarked window, the strange feelings she and Ethan had shared as children—it all made sense now. The presence had been dormant, but her sleep that night had somehow woken it, or perhaps it had chosen to reveal itself. She tried again to tell her parents, showing them the video, but the screen flickered, and the file was corrupted, as if the thing had silenced her proof. In the end, she was left alone with her fear, the reality of what lurked in the shadows of the old farmhouse, waiting for her to fall asleep again.

And as she sat in the growing dark, watching the pockmarked window, she knew she would never feel safe again. Because the thing in the house had finally found a way to touch her, and it would not let her rest until it had taken everything she had.