Don't Say My Name

My family lived out in the middle of nowhere called, "The Uvalde Estates." Our neighbors were far away, the only neighbors we had at the time were the ones to the right, but nobody lived there anymore. We also had our neighbors across the street, but his wife and him were gone the majority of the time. Nowadays there are more houses and people around the location we used to live at.

My middle sister and I always had this little silent talk. Like we both knew better not to investigate the footsteps, because we will not see anything at the end. We hear a noise, we run. We never speak about the noises we would hear to each other or anyone; we just ignored everything and tried to forget everything. She is only a year older than I am, but even then she was my little protector. Minus the noises, she would not wait on me at all. She would be gone as fast as lightening.

I was six years old, my bus driver just dropped my middle sister and I off at our house. We were both wearing our Easter dresses, I remember I had a yellow Easter basket full of candy, and my sister had a pink one full of candy as well. We waved our bus driver Dennis good bye and we looked at our house. My mom usually greets us at the door, but she didn't do that this day. We both called out, "Mom." No answer. My sister and I went around the back unlocked and open the back door. We set our Easter baskets on the kitchen floor, and stepped into the house. We heard footsteps in our house, we looked at each other and we took a step back and ran to the front of the house. My sister grabbed her Easter basket and mine stayed in the kitchen floor.

We sat in the front of the house waiting for mom to get home. My stomach was growling, and my sister was sitting next to me eating away with her candy. She never shared and was very stingy. I told her, "...can you give me some of your candy?" She said, "No!" I should have known better. I then threatened her, "Well if you don't give me some of yours, I'll go get mine. And if they take me, it's your fault." She then said, "Here!" She offered me some of her candy, which was very unusual. We finished her entire basket of candies. I was stuffed, she was stuffed and we waited. No sign of mom and no more noises in the house.

We can usually hear if a car is approaching, because there were hardly any that would pass by. We were bored, playing with the wrappers. Then I heard a female high pitch tune, coming from my left and going towards my right. It said my sister's name. Nobody was there. No person to go along with the lady calling my sisters name. I was tired; I didn't want to ignore it this time. I looked at my sister and I asked, "Did you hear that?" She ignored me for a second and said, "If you heard it, then what did it say?" I asked her, "How do you even know it said something?" We both got goose bumps and I then told her, "It said your name." We both scooted next to each other and were side to side, no space what so ever. Then we both heard my name, it came from the right to the left carrying the same tune. We waited until my mom arrived; once she got there we both felt at ease. We never told her a word. We just kept our not normal experiences to ourselves.

Ten years passed, this memory crept up on me one night. My sister moved up north, and I was still in Uvalde, Texas attending school. I called her the night I remembered this, I asked her, "...did this really happen?" She said, "Yes." She even remembered where we were sitting. We both reminisced on the many times we used to go play out in the woods and hear my mom scream out our names, but once we got to the house my mom would say, "I didn't call you."