Last year, I was in my room, sitting on my bed and talking with my friend Noah on the phone. we were telling scary stories to each other. After a few hours of talking I hung up. one of my other friends named Jonah, messaged me. She said “you don’t want to see my dark side.” After I had left her on read the other day. All of a sudden I heard tapping coming from my window, I went to go check to see if it was a wild animal or a bird. Once I got to my window I opened my blinds to see. And there it was, a shadowy figure with dark red eyes. I froze in fear un able to move, but when I blinked it disappeared.

After all that had happened I questioned myself “what was that” was what just now happened real? I shook my head in disbelief. I was probably just imagining things, but then it happened again. This time I was walking home from school. I thought I heard someone following behind me but when I looked behind myself, there was no one there. When I turned back around I thought I saw something in the corner of my eye, I told myself it was nothing and just kept walking. But the further I walked the more I started to hear things. it sounded like voices or branches snapping every 2 minutes.

When I realized I had passed my house, I sighed and turned around to walk back. Once I got home I felt something Tap on my shoulder then after, i felt it breathing on my neck. I slowly turned around and it was just my friend Jonah I sighed in relief and said to Jonah “you scared me there for a second, I thought you were a ghost” but she didn’t reply. I turned to face her and her face was pale, I asked her what was wrong. “Can I talk with you inside for a minute?” Jonah asked. I nodded my head yes and she followed me inside I shut the door behind me then I went to make her some hot chocolate. Jonah went and sat down at the little bar I had in the kitchen. Once I got done making the hot chocolate I handed it to her smiling. But she didn’t smile back, I asked her what was wrong again and this time she answered “Did you know that there was a black figure following you?” She replied with a shaky voice. “A black figure?” I said.

I tried to think about what it could have been, maybe she misunderstood and saw something else? But then it hit me. “Jonah.” I said with a terrified tone. “What is it?” She asked. I was hesitant to ask but I had to. “Did the black figure have red eyes?” She didn’t answer. We were both sitting there in silence, sipping on our hot choco. My heart racing, once we finished our drinks, she sets her cup down on the counter. She sighs “I wasn’t paying attention. All I could see was a black figure” she exclaims. A wave of relief washes over me, I told myself it might have just been her imagination. But I couldn’t let her leave, something didn’t feel right I asked her if she could stay the night and she nodded her head yes. I put the dishes in the sink and washed them by hand. after, I went to go fetch some pillows and blankets so we could make a fort together. But she wasn’t in the mood because of what had happened earlier. Since I was also still creeped out, I asked if she wanted to watch movies instead, and she agreed. I went to the pantry to grab some snacks but I had forgotten that I needed to run to the store to stalk up on food. I told her that I was going to the gas station across the street and asked if she wanted to tag along, she didn’t answer but she got up and followed me out the door. At the time my car was in the shop getting fixed since there was something wrong with the air conditioning, I asked her if it was okay if we walked there. she said yes but she wanted to lead the way. When we got to the gas station it was already 9 since it was a 5 minute walk, I opened the door for her and we both went inside to find some snacks. I’ll just go grocery shopping after school tomorrow, we went to the checkout with our hands full of candy chips and drinks, she asked if I could pay since she forgot her wallet. I nodded yes and proceeded to pay with cash. Jonah bagged up all the stuff and we headed home. on our way there we almost got hit by a truck speeding down the road. Jonah asked if I saw anyone in the truck, I told her I didn’t know since I wasn’t paying attention. After we got home we took off our shoes and left them by the front door, i handed Jonah her snacks and she went to go sit down on the couch, I told her she could choose a movie while I get her some night clothes to change into. When I came back she wasn’t there, I tried calling out to her but no answer. I looked to see if she was in one of the bathrooms upstairs but she wasn’t. I checked every where in the house, except for one place. The back yard. When I started to approach the door that leads to the back yard, I started to get weird vibes. when I slid open the door I saw her sitting on the swing I had in my back yard. I sighed in relief I had finally found her, but something wasn’t right was there someone behind her? It looked like a tall black figure I couldn’t really see since I didn’t have my glasses on. I called out to her, “Jonah! Come inside it’s getting cold out.” But she didn’t respond. it looked like she was just sitting there staring at the ground. All of a sudden she slowly looks up at me, then she stands up and starts to slowly walk over to me but mid way she starts to run toured me, I slid the door closed as fast as I could and locked it. Jonah isn’t the running type so it caught me off guard at first, when I looked at her eyes, they looked unusual. Like she was possessed, but then I heard the toilet flush in the downstairs bathroom, I had forgotten to check that room. I froze when I heard Jonah call for me, I heard her walking toured me. “Are you alright Ava? I heard you calling for me earlier” she questioned. I didn’t reply. She noticed I was looking at something, she looked up and saw it too. I could feel her worried breathes on my shoulder while she was standing close behind me. the thing that was outside finally vanished. We were both frozen, I grabbed her hand and dragged her into the living room. We were standing in front of the back door for a while, I didn’t even realize what time it was. I took out my phone and checked the time, it was 12:50 AM. Me and Jonah sat down on the couch for 10 minutes trying to process things. Jonah mumbled something, I asked what she had said since I couldn’t hear her, “you need to move out of this house.” She said. I didn’t have a problem with what she had said since I was thinking about moving to France for a while. “Do you want to live with me? In France I mean.” Jonah nodded since she was in an abusive house hold. My house and school was her only escape.

A few months had passed, I bought the plane tickets to France, Jonah had helped me pack all my things the other day. I had to sell most of my stuff because I couldn’t bring it onboard the plane with us. When our flight was ready me and Jonah went to get on the plane. We found our seats and put our luggage above us and sat down, Jonah sat by the window And I sat beside her.

After the plane arrived in France, I had to call my older brother, Ashi.

Ashi is my brothers nickname my whole family calls him that. But his real name is Akashi. When I took my phone out of my pocket, it wouldn’t turn on so I figured it was dead. I asked Jonah if I could use her phone to call him instead, when Ashi arrived we got into his car and he drove us to my apartment first. When we got inside, the nice lady at the front desk showed us where my apartment was. It was a big and comfortable looking apartment, next was Jonah’s apartment. Hers was a really big and fancy looking apartment across the street from mine, she had a big chandelier in her living room, and in her guest bedroom and her room was a pretty, big blue flower light made of glass. Her family was rich so before we had left to come to France she asked for a lot of money. When me and Jonah settled in to our apartments I asked Jonah if she wanted to come over for a couple of hours next week. She agreed, we set up a time and date to meet at a near by restaurant. Time went by fast and in a blink of an eye it was already time to meet up. When I arrived at the restaurant, Jonah was already there waiting for me. “Did I make you wait long?” I asked, Jonah shook her head no and got up out of the chair she was sitting in. We ordered some drinks and then went to this old park that nobody goes to anymore. We went to sit down at a bench near the rusted swing set, but when we did I swear I saw a shadowy figure walk past us in the corner of my eye. I didn’t think much of it at first since France has a lot of people and it could have been anyone. But this ‘person’ looked a little too tall to be a human. After we finished our drinks we threw the cups away and headed home. Jonah insisted I should come to her place so I agreed. After we got to her apartment, Jonah went to grab some blankets while I made some hot chocolate since it was cold outside. Jonah put soft blankets on the long couch she had and pillows all over along with stuffed animals. She put on a movie once I got done making the hot chocolate. I handed Jonah her hot chocolate and sat down beside her. When the movie was over I glanced over at Jonah and I saw that she was asleep. She must have fallen asleep half way through the movie. I carried her to bed and covered her up. I made sure to shut the door behind me when i exited her room. I put up all the blankets and stuffed animals, I wanted to leave the pillows for decoration. After I was done I heard something fall in the kitchen. I went to go check it out and I saw something in the shadows, I couldn’t tell what it was since it was dark in the room and I couldn’t find the light switch. But when I did it was gone. It was probably just my eyes playing tricks on me. Well, that’s what I thought anyway. Later that night I thought I heard someone go into Jonah’s room. Was it a robber? I jumped out of bed and I walked over to my door to peek out to see who it was, but it was just Jonah going to use the restroom. She looked into my room, I thought she had spotted me so I gave away my hiding spot and walked over to her. But something was off. She wasn’t looking at me, she was looking behind me. I turned around as fast as I could but there was nothing, I asked her if she was ok but she didn’t say anything. I asked her if she wanted to talk about what she had seen just now but all she said was “I’ll tell you what I saw in the morning. For now just sleep in my room.” When she got back from the restroom she took out a pink sleeping bag from out of her closet and handed it to me, along with some pillows. I laid it on the floor then went to sleep. In the morning I woke up to Jonah cooking breakfast, I went downstairs to ask her when we could talk about what happened last night and she said “after breakfast.” Once we finished eating I wiped my hands on the napkin she had handed me before, she turned to me and said “do you remember that tall black figure with dark red eyes?” After she had said that, it confused me a little since it was almost 3 months ago. “Yeah, why?” I said. She looked around and then looked back at me. She said “that’s what I saw behind you last night.” It felt like my heart had stopped. I asked her if she wanted to stay at my house for a night or two but she declined my offer. I looked at the time and it was 7:00 am, I told Jonah that I had to leave early since I had an appointment. When I got to the door she hugged me and said goodbye. When I got to my car I waved at her and left. After the appointment was over I headed straight home. I called Ashi and told him what had happened last night, and about the shadowy figure from 3 months ago. He offered me to stay at his house, but I told him it was fine. When I was cleaning my apartment I heard a loud crash coming from upstairs, I went to go check it out and I saw a picture of my family had fallen off my dresser. “How did this fall off? It wasn’t near the edge.” I said to myself. Since it had spooked me I took a break and made me something to eat. When I got done I felt something standing behind me, but there wasn’t anyone there. A couple hours flew by and I decided to watch a movie since I had nothing else to do. When I was 50 minutes into the movie I heard cop cars and ambulances. My brother Akashi had called me right when they arrived across the street. I realized it was at Jonah’s apartment. I hurried and picked up the phone, “Ava, I went to go check up on Jonah to see if she was ok. Something happened you should come and take a look.” Akashi said. I ran over to where Ashi was, and questioned him. He told me that when he got to Jonah’s apartment all he could hear was glass being broken and screaming. He had called the cops but they didn’t show up until 40 minutes later. The cops went inside to check on her, they had to break down the door since no one was answering. They let me and Ashi follow behind them since I was close to Jonah. When the door fell on the ground there was glass everywhere and there was blood trails leading upstairs. The cops made us wait outside while they go and investigate. Thankfully they found Jonah alive, but she was unconscious with tears running down her face and blood all over her. They put her in the ambulance and rushed her to the hospital, later the hospital called. They said that Jonah had finally woken up and told us when to come visit her. When they hung up, me and Akashi went over to see how she was doing.

After we visited we went home to rest. 4 months has passed since that incident, Jonah is seeing a therapist Along with me and Akashi. But none of us would talk, because if we did they wouldn’t believe us.

2 years passed by after all that had happened, me and Jonah haven’t seen the ghost since. Akashi started to work a few weeks ago and Jonah got with my friend, Noah. I moved out of my apartment and into a small cozy house with a garden and a cat, and Jonah moved in with her boyfriend. Me Jonah and Noah are all thinking about hanging out some time this week, we’re going to a walking trail with beautiful cherry blossom trees. When it was time to go, I made sure to bring a pocket knife with me just in case of any danger. I got into my car and went to pick up Noah and Jonah, they got into the car and I drove to the cherry blossom trees. It took 1 hour to get there but when we arrived we went to a sushi bar near by. After eating we went to the walking trail to view the beautiful trees. Noah needed to use the restroom and told me and Jonah to keep walking. Me and Jonah both agreed and walked away. It was starting to turn dark and it was getting cold out. So me and Jonah waited for Noah at a bench. We walked a couple miles away from where Noah was so we had to wait for him to find us. I thought I heard Noah coming but Jonah said she didn’t hear anything. I wanted to go see if it was Noah or if it was a random person so I got up and told Jonah I was going to see who it was. She nodded and said to be careful. When I started to walk over to where I heard the footsteps, there was no one there. Then my vision went blank, I woke up a few moments later, but I couldn’t control my body. It was moving on its own, i heard someone in my head say, “do not worry, everything will be ok.” My body started to walk over to Jonah. “Are you ok Ava? You look sick” said Jonah. She asked if I was ok but I couldn’t respond, something was controlling my body and I couldn’t do anything about it. All of a sudden I couldn’t feel anything anymore. My hand started to reach for my pocket knife, Jonah stood up and started to walk over to me to see what was going on. Then 3 seconds later I couldn’t see anything but i could hear it all. Screaming,crying in pain, it was Jonah. Something was happening but I didn’t know what. When I woke up my hands were covered in blood. I was sitting on top of Jonah with my pocket knife in my hand. Noah came rushing over, when he saw what had happened he called the police. When the police arrived they pulled me off of Jonah and took me to the cop car. When we got to the cop car they put me in hand cuffs and told me to get in the car. When we got to the police station, they questioned me before locking me behind bars. That was the day I had lost my best friend.

2 months later my brother had figured out what happened. He came straight to the police station to talk with me about what I did and why I did it. I told him it wasn’t me, but he didn’t believe me. He said his goodbyes and then left. 10 months later it was Jonah’s birthday.

A year has passed and I finally got let out of jail. Akashi let me stay with him for a while. When I got let out of jail Noah tried to kill me several times, but I don’t blame him. 2 years has passed since I killed my best friend. I grabbed a rope from out of the junk drawer ashi had in his kitchen, I tied it around the ceiling fan in the bedroom while standing on a chair. Once it was secured, I put my neck around the rope and tipped the chair over. A minute had pasted, I heard Ashi walking toured the room i was in. When he opened the door he looked up and saw me, he rushed over and tried to get me down. After I few seconds I blacked out.

For some reason I ended up in the mental hospital. Ashi called mom and told her about what happened. They flew to France as fast as possible, and came to see how I was doing. When I got out of the mental hospital, I went with Akashi to a bridge with beautiful mountains in Japan. I said to Akashi “thank you.”Before I tried to jump off, but he stopped me. After viewing the mountains it was time to head back home since we were only visiting family. Our uncle paid the fee for our flight, then we boarded the plain and waited patiently to land.

When the plain had finally landed Akashi took me to his house, since he can’t trust we after I killed my best friend. I started going back to school a week later, and I made a new friend. Her name is Jules, she reminds me a lot of Jonah. Me and Jules started to hang out a lot and since we have been friends for a while now, me and Jules decided to go to a indoor water park. I asked Ashi if we could go and he said, “sure, it’s been a while since I’ve been to something like that.” I went to my room to message Jules, I told her to grab her swimsuit and head over. 15 minutes later I heard a knock on the door, Akashi went to open it and I followed behind him. When he opened the door, Jules squealed in excitement and ran to hug me. We had been planning to do this for months, so we both went to go change into our swimsuits. Jules had a green and blue checkered bikini and I had a red and black swimsuit that covered both my legs and arms. Ashi changed into his favorite swim trunks and we headed to the indoor water park. Once we arrived, we had to go check in so we had a room to rest in after. When they told us the room number we went to look for it, after a couple minutes we found our room and put our stuff on the beds. We each grabbed a towel and headed to the water area first since mine and Akashi’s favorite part of water parks are the big water slides. Jules said she didn’t want to go down there but I insisted since I haven’t had this much fun in forever. It took a lot of convincing but finally Jules agreed, when we got to the top of the stairs we grabbed a big tube for four people and went down the slide. Jules was screaming her head off since it was the first time she had ever went down one, when we arrived at the end she wanted to do it again but me and Akashi wanted to do a different slide since that one was too fast. Luckily we all made it to the bathroom on time unless we would have threw up in the water. After we went to a even bigger slide, we went to the stairs and stood in line, when we finally got to the top our legs and feet were hurting so we were ready to get into some water at the end. We grabbed the tube and sat it down on the water, once we were ready the lifeguard named Bob pushed us down the slide. We were hanging on for dear life when the big drop came ahead of us, Jules’s face was pale as a ghost so me and Akashi both looked behind us and saw pitch black. All of a sudden we were falling really fast down the slide since it was a even bigger drop then before, when we got to the bottom we were done with slides for the day. We went to the lazy river to swim under water and prank little kids by grabbing there feet and pulling them under water. When it was time to go back to our room we were starving, me and Jules asked if Akashi could order pizza. Akashi said, “fine but only because you two are behaving.” I can’t believe he said that to a almost 19 year olds.

After the pizza arrived we laid in our beds and put on a movie to watch. After we finished the pizza it was already late so we went to bed.

When it was finally time to head home we dropped Jules off at her house and went home. Once we got home we went inside to take showers then we sat down to eat dinner. It’s been 3 years since Jonah died, I miss her so much. When her birthday came around it was almost new years since her birthday is December 30th. We celebrate it every year to remember her. Noah, Jonah’s boyfriend, came to visit us. He said he was sorry for everything and asked if we could be friends. I looked at Ashi and looked back it him and said no. Although I forgave him I still don’t trust him, after new years came around my birthday also came soon after. I turned 19 and Jonah is 20. A month passed, Jules asked if I wanted to go to the movies with her so I said yes. When it was finally time to meet up, me and Akashi got into the car and headed to the movie theater. When we arrived, we waited outside for Jules to arrive. It had already been 2 hours and it was already 4pm. I tried calling Jules 5 times but she wouldn’t pick up. A few minutes later her dad calls and tells me that Jules had gotten into a car crash on her way here. After he hung up I started bawling my eyes out, I told Akashi what Jules’s dad had said and he dropped me off at the hospital she was taken to. When I got to the front desk I asked the nurse if she could take me to the room Jules was in. She told me to go sit in the waiting room since Jules had just gotten to the hospital 30 minutes ago. When it was finally time the nurse called on me and escorted me to her room. I opened the door and walked over to where her parents were standing. They turned to me in tears and said, “they tried everything they possibly could.. but they couldn’t get her back.” I broke down in tears after I had heard what they said. I thought to myself, “how could this happen? It’s all my fault. First it was Jonah, and now Jules?” I couldn’t stop myself from crying so Akashi had to come in and get me. He took me home and we had a talk. He signed me up for therapy since I needed someone to talk to after all that had happened.