Dear Creepypasta [#Wattys2016]

Things my grandmother taught me

My grandmother always said if they're polite enough to knock, then they deserve your answer. She changed her mind after Death came to dinner.

What I've seen from taking her advice has shaped my life and my own workings. It also explains why I answered the damn door.

Around my eleventh birthday, after many years of cooking subtle magics and sweeping ghosts out of the corners of my grandmother's home, someone knocked.

My family was gathered for Sunday Supper once more, a tradition we kept long past its welcome. The house felt a little more crowded than normal, with the addition of my new Aunt Brenda, and her daughter. My grandmother had also been taking care of her sickly sister for a year or two at this point, but Grand Aunt Esther tended to spend a large portion of her time in the hospital-style bed in the living room, where she could watch her soaps, fragile fingers cranking up the volume of Days of our Lives, when the noise in the house became too loud.

I handed Esther her supper plate, stretching my arms over the side bars of her bed. She clicked off the tv before looking at me. You know how some women age so gracefully that you can see the beauty from decades before? That wasn't Grand Aunt Esther. The woman was terrifying. Her eyes drooped, milky and cataract-filled. Her lips were constantly chapped, and her nails were yellow. Her white hair had grown so thin I could see her veiny scalp. Coming up on her in the dark was worse than a horror movie. She looked like a Cattawail, the Southern version of a Banshee. She screeched like one, too.

As Aunt Esther took her plate, she peered at me, and said, "Get the door. She's here to talk to me."

I retreated quickly, ignoring her nonsense. I was about to remove my apron and carry the mashed potatoes to the dining table when I heard it. Three quiet taps on the side door, just off the kitchen. Figuring it was a family member running late, I answered it. No one was there.

"Did you get that door?" Esther shrieked from the living room. My grandmother bustled into sight, curious what was taking me so long to bring the potatoes to the table.

"Door?" she called back to her sister. "I didn't hear anyone knocking."

"Yeah, Mamaw, but there's no one there." I said, looking over my shoulder at my grandmother, as I shut the door.

There came another knocking, three quick taps.

"Let that woman in!" Esther hollered from the living room.

I moved to open the door again, but my grandmother stopped me. "How many knocks the first time?" she asked.

"Uh, three. I think."

My grandmother stood straighter. "Don't open it."

"She come in? She's here to talk to me!" Esther yelled out again. Before we could respond, Esther continued. "Her wings ain't gon' fit through that door, though. Should've left them at home."

"Wings?" I asked. My grandmother shushed me.

Another knock on the door, three thumps. I flinched.

The knocking grew louder, persistent. They happened in threes, but the knocking became thudding, and then banging. The door shook.

"What the hell is going on?" my dad asked, walking out of the dining room. "Is someone there?"

My grandmother shook her head, shushing him, too. Esther continued yelling about her guest from the living room. The front door fell silent.

From the back door, someone else knocked, three taps. Brenda stood from the table and moved towards it.

"Stop!" my grandmother ordered.