The darkness creeps

I had always been afraid of the dark as a child, though I wasn't fully kept on a reason, perhaps it was the faceless woman I talked about as a child or the smiling man. Though my mother had told me they were just nightmares. They felt pretty real to me if I'm being honest, the drawings I had made of both of them.

The faceless woman she was an older lady, though I never really felt scared of her. She was more comforting from what I had told my mother. In all of my many drawings, she wore a pure white hospital gown, her hair was brown to her mid-back. A few missing locks near the front. Though she didn't have a face. Just a bloody pit of darkness. She was always stood by the start of the hiking trail outside. Always waving at me to come over.

On the other hand, the smiling man was terrifying. He looked around six-feet tall and wore a top hat. Though I could only always see his face, no body. His eyes were sown shut, black looking ink normally leaked down the stitching. His mouth was cut pulled up to show all of his teeth, sown with a single stitch to keep it in place. He was who I was scared of. He always at my window, his face pushed up to peer through. He normally left droplets of ink on the window. Though my mother never saw it.

Eight years later I still talk about these creatures, though again they tell me it was just nightmares. Looking further into the history two murders had happened in the woods. The woods right behind the house I grew up in, a building had been torn down before we had moved in. A man had been decapitated, his body left hanging upside down, a noose wrapped around his leg. His body dressed in a fancy suit, a golden watch still on his wrist. His head still missing to this day. The last was a woman. Only her face and a few locks of brown hair had been found nailed onto a tree stump, her body still missing. So were these really nightmares? Were they spirits? Did they want me to find them? If so why did I only see them?