A 79-year-old grandmother rummaged through the trash every morning. People thought she was looking for food, but the truth was much more terrifying
The old woman lived on the ground floor, in an apartment with steamy windows and withered ficus trees on the windowsill. No one really knew who she was. The neighbors only knew one thing: every day, at six o’clock sharp, she went out to the trash with a large, discolored bag. And she began to rummage. For a long time. As if she were looking for something important.
“Gone again…”
“Maybe she’s looking for food? Or bottles?”
“No, she’s just crazy.”
“Or maybe she’s a witch. Her eyes, like an owl’s,” the locals whispered.
In the same building lived a nine-year-old girl named Lily. She often saw the grandmother through the window and didn’t understand why she did this every day. Her mother had warned her not to bother the old woman, calling her strange and unapproachable. But Lily was curious. Why did the grandmother spend so much time searching through the trash like that?
One day, curiosity won out over fear. When her mother left for work, Lily decided to follow her instinct. She put on her shoes, slipped out of the apartment, and cautiously made her way down the stairs. The sun was barely rising, casting a pale light over the neighborhood. As she approached the trash cans in the yard, she saw the grandmother, bent over her task.
“Grandma… have you lost something?” Lily called out softly.
The woman didn’t respond at first. Her hands continued to rummage through the refuse—food scraps, broken bottles, scraps of paper, dirty rags. Then, with a sudden movement, her hands froze. Lily waited, watching as the old woman’s eyes narrowed in concentration.
Without a word, the grandmother slowly stood up, clutching something tightly in her hands. It was a small, folded piece of paper, stained and torn. But there was something about it that made Lily’s blood run cold. The woman’s fingers, wrinkled and trembling, began to unfold the paper.
Lily’s curiosity got the better of her, and she couldn’t help but step closer. She watched as the old woman muttered something under her breath. Her voice was low and raspy, like a whisper from another time.
The woman glanced at Lily, her eyes wide and unblinking. For a moment, the air felt thick, as if something heavy was about to happen. Then, without a word, she crumpled the paper and tossed it back into the trash. But Lily noticed something strange—the paper had a symbol drawn on it, a symbol that sent a shiver down her spine.
“Grandma,” Lily said, her voice trembling. “What is that? What are you looking for?”
The old woman’s gaze softened, and she slowly shook her head. “You shouldn’t have seen that, child,” she whispered, a strange sadness in her voice. “I’m just trying to fix something that’s been broken for a very long time.”
Lily stared at her in confusion, but the grandmother gave her a small, cryptic smile before returning to her task. “You’ll understand when you’re older,” she said, her voice barely audible.
Just as Lily turned to leave, a cold gust of wind blew through the yard, rustling the leaves of the withered ficus trees. Lily shivered and hurried back to her apartment. But as she climbed the stairs, she felt a strange unease settle in her chest. What had she just witnessed? What was it that the old woman was searching for, day after day?
That night, as Lily lay in bed, she couldn’t shake the feeling that something sinister was hidden beneath the grandmother’s quiet routine. And the symbol on the paper… it had looked so familiar, as though it were a part of something from the past—something she was meant to remember.
The next morning, she noticed something strange. The grandmother wasn’t out by the trash as usual. Instead, there was an unusual silence in the air. Lily ran down to the yard to check, but all she found was a pile of empty trash bags and the faint, eerie echo of whispers from the apartment windows. The grandmother had vanished, leaving nothing but a sense of dread behind.
Lily’s curiosity would never let her rest until she discovered the truth. But some truths, she realized, were too terrifying to uncover.