Scary Story for Halloween: "The Dark Spot"

AUTHOR'S NOTES

I wrote this story years ago, just for fun. I found it while going through my childhood bedroom at my parents house. Just in time for Halloween! If you're a book worm or a horror fanatic, and find unanswered questions or things that don't quite match up, give it some grace.... my high school days were just the beginning of my "story" writing experience. I still think it's a fun read. :)

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The Dark Spot

Prologue 

                I’ll never forget that day — the day when the world seemed to stand still. I reminisced how the night before that day was cold and quiet, different from any other night we experienced that year. The night was so still; something seemed wrong. I wasn’t sure if I was the only one who noticed the eeriness. It was the darkest night I had ever seen. In fact, it was so dark that without any lights on in the house, I wouldn’t have been able to see a step in front of me. Why was it so quiet? Not a breeze was blowing, not a bird cawing or house shifting. So quiet. So still. I could hear water dripping from the kitchen faucet downstairs.

Chapter 1

   

               We moved in our house two years ago. It’s an old Victorian home with weathered mauve shutters on every window. The color of the house was toasted hazelnut, but the paint looked worn and distressed. The porch was cracked and rotten, so we remodeled it for safety purposes. Plus that was something my mom was really excited about using during the cooler months to enjoy coffee and a book. She said we would repaint the whole house eventually once we could afford it, which never happened. I remember walking into our house for the first time and seeing how ancient it appeared—so abandoned and broken. My two younger siblings, who were 6-year-old twins at the time, would joke about it being haunted, but Mom got onto them and told us to appreciate the “history” of the house. Mom still calls Sara and Thomas her “little blessings,” but I knew they were accident pregnancies. Mom and Dad planned on only having one child and that’s why I am so far apart in age from Sara and Thomas. Ten years to be exact. It never occurred to me that the house we just moved into might be haunted because I didn’t believe in ghosts and all that haunted stuff you see in scary movies. I’m a teenager boy and know better to believe in that crap.

Our house was fairly large, extremely outdated and only had windows in the main rooms of the house, so it was naturally darker in the hallways. Because of the age of our home, there were a few parts of the house that did not have any access to electricity outlets. If we did try to get outlets installed, Mom said it would cost a fortune, so we let those areas remain the “dark spots” of the house. We just kept a flashlight at the beginning of each hallway in case we needed it. There were two flights of stairs — one leading up to the second story and one leading up to the third story, which was the attic. On the second story, there were three hallways. The first hallway closest to the staircase had my room and a separate bathroom. The middle hallway had Sara and Thomas' room and a separate bathroom. The third hallway had an unused room, unused bathroom, and the second staircase leading to the attic at the end of the hallway. This third hallway was left unused because there were no electricity outlets available anywhere causing it to be the darkest hallway, which scared Sara and Thomas. Most areas in the house, including the stairs, had old hardwood floors that creaked every time you took a step. This became an annoyance at first because everyone in the house knew when someone was still awake while the rest of us were trying to go to sleep. But we got used to it after awhile. The creaky floors also made it easier for me to know when Sara was trying to scare me. Sometimes she would hide outside my bedroom door and wait for me to come out. She thought it was funny, so I usually just played along and acted surprised.

Chapter 2

We lived there for almost two years and nothing suspicious had happened. But one night was especially eerie and cold. The only thought that ran through my head at the moment was how different that night seemed from any other night. It was more than just a cold front; it was early October and we lived in Jacksonville, a small town in the southwest region of Texas. Cold weather at that time of year was not usual for the area. For some reason, that night was the first time I didn’t feel safe being alone in my own room. But being a teenager, the oldest sibling and a boy, I didn’t want Sara and Thomas to make fun of me if they knew. Or make them even more scared. I didn’t know what to do about it and I couldn’t go to sleep, so I just went downstairs with a flashlight to get a drink of water to clear my head. The second I walked out of my room, my sister was standing right outside my door. It startled me because I never remembered hearing the floor creak as it usually did. I took a deep breath and asked what she was doing just standing there.

“I heard you call my name,” Sara said.

“No, I didn’t say your name. Maybe it was just the wind or something,” I replied in an ambivalent way knowing that there was not a gust of wind blowing outside. Why did she think I called her name? She lived in the second hallway down from my room and on a normal day I would have had to speak loudly for her to hear me. But the house was awfully quiet that night. The fact that she thought I said her name didn’t cross my mind at the time. I could only think about why I didn’t hear her walk all the way to my room, especially on a night like that. It was quiet—too quiet. I walked Sara back to her room to tuck her in bed and then continued to go downstairs to get a drink. I chugged two glasses of water and walked to both my mom and brother’s room to check on them. They were sound asleep.

Chapter 3

After my dad died, I had to mature and grow up fast since I practically became the “father” of the house, except I didn’t have a job and still got grounded by Mom at times. He died in a small plane crash when I was 11 years old; Sara and Thomas were only babies. I took care of my siblings and helped Mom out with a lot of things, including cooking dinner and cleaning the house while she was at work. My mom worked a full-time job to help pay the bills and put food on the table, but didn’t make enough money to pay for much else. I took my brother and sister to school and even went grocery shopping occasionally. I wasn’t supposed to drive since I didn’t have a license or was 16-years-old yet, but we lived in a small town and you can get away with things like that. Plus, I knew how to drive. I was tall enough to reach the pedal and see over the steering wheel. We moved to Jacksonville two years ago to get far away from the town we shared so many memories with my dad because Mom would still cry herself to sleep many nights, even after years of his passing. It was affecting her work and she was almost fired for it. His memory, scent, and presence lingered our home and even throughout the community. We were both suffering while we lived there, still thinking about the shock we fell into when we first heard the news.

The deal-breaker for packing up and moving to Jacksonville was that she found a home we could afford to live in, and there was a full-time job offer at a local bank just 30 minutes away in Stanton that she could commute to everyday. There wasn’t an affordable house for sale in Stanton so the closest town with a school and an affordable house for sale was in Jacksonville. We didn’t have much option for where we would live, but I liked the town just fine. The people seemed nice, the town was small and peaceful, and there were not many records of criminal activity. I felt safe in Jacksonville. I also liked that everyone could enjoy privacy in their own homes, considering that each house was widely spread apart from one another. There weren’t any neighborhood developments or apartment complexes.

We lived on the outskirts of Jacksonville, practically in the middle of nowhere. Our home was located in a forested area, with tall evergreen pines and oak trees surrounding our home for a couple miles in every direction. It was peaceful and beautiful. There were also a lot of hills in Jacksonville, giving my school the name Hillside High School. I never understood why they didn’t just call it Jacksonville High considering it was the only high school in town. There wasn’t a whole lot to do in Jacksonville except go to the lake, just a couple miles from our house, and hang out with friends. Overall, not much went on in that town. People liked to keep to themselves. I was okay with that and I think my mom was, too.

            As I walked back upstairs to get ready for bed, I tried to step as lightly as possible so I didn’t wake anyone up with the creaking noises of the old hardwood floor. I tried to go to sleep once again, but ironically, found myself unable to from the disturbing silence of the house. I have always been a light sleeper, so the silence should have made it easier for me to go to sleep. But it was just the opposite. With the silence, I found myself thinking a lot about “haunted” things and started to scare myself. I started to imagine I was hearing things and seeing images in the pitch-blackness of my room. I shut my eyes as tight as they would go and turned my head quickly, facing the wall that stood right along my bed. I started praying out of fear and soon after, I found myself calmed down and able to fall asleep. That was the first time I had prayed in awhile…especially since my dad passed away.

         

Chapter 4

            The next morning seemed brand new. I felt like everything I had experienced the night before was almost surreal. I got ready to go to school, made blueberry pancakes for my brother and sister, and took them to school in my ’93 Toyota Camry. That was the only thing my mom could afford when I turned 16. As soon as I arrived to the Jacksonville Elementary School, cops were surrounding the school and blocking off the campus with yellow caution tape to keep people from entering. All of us were confused and curious of what had happened, so I found a place to park and we jumped out of the car to find out the news. Thomas, my younger brother, saw his teacher and ran to her. I walked over to Mrs. Kline and asked if she knew anything about the scene.

            “Last night after theatre practice, Charlie Littleton, a little boy in my class, was locked in the boy’s bathroom and murdered. We haven’t been able to find the murderer and still not exactly sure who it was. One parent, who was waiting to pick up his daughter from theatre practice, did tell us some viable information. He saw a man with broad shoulders and wearing dark clothing come out of a side door of the school last night. He assumed it was a janitor or another parent at the time, but now we think it was the man who killed Charlie. Charlie lived really close so he had always walked to and from school everyday. His parent’s didn’t think much about him not coming home before they went to bed because Charlie had come home late from theatre practice on occasion. The next morning Charlie still wasn’t at home so his parent’s called the police. They searched the town and school early this morning and found him brutally murdered in the boy’s bathroom. The town is going to be in so much shock and fear once the news spreads, and you know it won’t be much longer. Keep your brother and sister close; we don’t know if the killer is still in Jacksonville,” Mrs. Kline replied.

        

 Chapter 5

This instantly sent chills down my spine. I feared deeply for Sara and Thomas. We got back into the car and drove home in panic. I called my mom at work and told her what happened. She got off work early to come home, since it was practically an emergency. After my mom finally arrived home, we all sat in her bedroom and kept each other company. I couldn’t stop thinking about the incident at the school and how it connected with the eerie experience we had the night before. But my mom was always good about comforting us and making us feel safe. She told us that God would protect our family and reminded us to never go anywhere alone, especially Sara and Thomas. After some fresh chocolate-chip cookies and a glass of cold milk to cheer us up, Mom tucked Sara and Thomas into bed and they quickly fell asleep. I talked to Mom downstairs at the kitchen table about the incident and asked if she was scared. All of a sudden, rain started to pour loudly on our rooftop. My mom looked at me in a curious way.

“Drew, I’m terrified. How could someone do that to an innocent little boy? What if the killer is still in town? Just the thought of it scares me to death. We live in such a small town that security systems are very limited here. On top of that, every house is practically miles apart from each other; we don’t have any neighbors to watch over each other’s homes. I don’t want to scare you too, Drew, but we live in the middle of a forest. This is the perfect place for a killer on the loose to hide if he doesn’t live in town. This forest reaches miles out in every direction. It takes us 5 minutes of driving in this forested area just to get to the main road that leads to town. I fear for the safety of all of you. Maybe I should take off work for a little while and stay here.”

“No, Mom. You need to go to work. I’m scared too but I promise we’ll be okay. I’m here to protect Thomas and Sara. You didn’t force me to go to karate class all those years for no reason, did you?” I say this in a light-hearted way to help cheer her up and make her laugh a little.

I didn’t want her to worry, even though deep down I was worried, too. But we both knew we needed to put our full trust and faith in God to keep us safe and comfort us during these times of fear, because nothing else really could. I kissed her good night and went upstairs to go to bed. A huge burst of lightning and thunder scared the life out of me as I changed into my pajamas in the bedroom. I almost fell down. While brushing my teeth, I couldn’t stop thinking about Charlie. I would never look at a boy’s bathroom the same. I tried to get it off my mind so I would be able to sleep that night, but it just wouldn’t go away. Suddenly, a crackle of lightning struck near our house and caused the electricity to go off in the house. I can honestly say I’ve never been so scared in a dark bathroom before. My heart pounded so heavily I could almost hear it against the rain.

The amount of fear I had caused me to have no reaction and I stood as still as death. I was too scared to try and find my way out of the bathroom. As I just stood there in front of the mirror, not done brushing my teeth, the lights start to flicker back on. Still looking through the mirror I see someone standing in the corner by the door. I screamed at the top of my lungs and as soon as I turn around to run out the door, the image I saw in the mirror was gone. Scared out of my mind, I felt so sick to my stomach I almost puked right there on the floor in front of me. Toothpaste was foaming out of my mouth. After I wiped my mouth, I grabbed a pair of scissors out of the bathroom drawer and held them tightly in my hand as I walked slowly towards the door, ready to defend myself with the scissors. No one was there. As I was stepping outside of the bathroom, looking both ways into the hallway before I went to my room, I was hesitantly breathing. My muscles were tense and I knew my pupils were dilated like a paranoid cat, seeking for any sign of an intruder. I felt that every turn I made became more and more intensified by fear.

Finally, after reaching my room, I shut the door quickly. I could use a lock on my door right about now. I checked underneath the bed and closet for, well, I don’t really know what for. I just checked to make sure nobody or thing was there to hurt me. I don’t really remember exactly what I saw in the reflection of my bathroom mirror when the lights were flickering, I just know I saw something. Or someone. I couldn’t make out a face. The image kept playing over and over in my mind. Of course at this point, I knew my hopes of sleeping well that night were ruined. I lay in bed the whole night with the lights on and stared intently at the door with hardly a blink. The worst thing that went through my head that night was wondering if the image I saw in the bathroom could have been Charlie’s killer. I was even too scared to go back through the hallways to go check on Thomas and Sara. So much for being the brave “father figure” of the house. I just prayed that they were okay and that what I saw was just a figure of my imagination. Somehow, and miraculously, I fell asleep sometime that night. I woke up the following morning with the lights still on.

         

Chapter 6

            I felt kind of bad for running the electricity all night, hoping the bill wouldn’t be too high that month and getting grounded by Mom. I got out of bed and semi-cautiously walked out of my room into the hallway to go downstairs. Thomas and Sara were already eating cereal at the kitchen table. Mom left a note saying she had gone to work early so she would be able to come home sooner. After breakfast, Thomas and Sara decide they want to play a game since it was a Saturday and none of us had school. Even if it weren’t the weekend, school probably would have been cancelled to mourn Charlie’s death. Thomas and Sara decided they wanted to play Hide-and-Seek—of course. Let’s play the creepy little kid game that you see in scary movies and somebody always gets killed. They seemed really excited about it so I just got over myself and agreed to play with them. As usual, I’m always the first one to be “it” so I started counting to fifty at the kitchen table, which we made the “safe zone.”

“One…..two….three….four….” I continued to count until I reached the number fifty. “Ready or not, here I come!”

As I started looking around, always looking in the areas closest to the “safe zone” first, I couldn’t find either of them. As I kept looking around, I heard footsteps come from upstairs. I instantly knew someone was hiding up there. As quietly as I could, I went up the stairs so I could find someone hiding in one of the rooms. I knew they wouldn’t be in the third hallway because it was a “dark spot” in the house and they were scared of it. I checked the first hallway—no one there. I checked the second hallway—no one there either. On my way over to the third hallway, I hear Sara downstairs yelling, “I’m safe! I’m safe!” This made me sure that it was Thomas who was hiding upstairs. I thought to myself, “I guess he has more guts than I thought and decided to hide in here.” With the flashlight handy at the beginning of the third hallway, I picked it up and started searching for Thomas. There were only two rooms in the third hallway: a bedroom and a bathroom. I search the bedroom –he’s not there. Forgetting about the incident I experienced in my bathroom the night before, I also search the bathroom for Thomas. He was not there, either. The last place I had to search was the attic. I hadn’t been up in the attic since we have lived here, so I was a little curious anyway. Slowly, I walked up the creaky steps leading to the attic. As I opened the attic door, dust started flying everywhere. The flashlight was small and janky, so I could only see a limited amount of space with the narrow light beam. I felt like I needed a big spot light to be able to see up there. The attic was much larger than I had imagined; it was stuffed with boxes, furniture, and other random objects. Afraid that I might fall through the floor that appeared to be brittle from old age, I took each step with caution.

“Come out, come out wherever you are! I know you’re in here, Thomas. Might as well give up.”

Looking for him behind every box and piece of rusted furniture, I didn’t find him anywhere. He must’ve hidden really well—maybe inside of something since he’s so small. In the corner of my eye, I saw something move at the other side of the attic, so I carefully walked over. Once I reached the other side, I heard a creak to the right of me behind an old chest stacked on top of some storage boxes. As I walked towards the sound, getting ready to tag him, I hear Thomas yelling downstairs, “I’m safe, Drew! You didn’t find me!”  Instantly, my stomach dropped. Someone was in the attic with me, and it wasn’t Thomas or Sara.

I dropped the flashlight on the ground and ran out of the attic, sprinting down the stairs and out of the dark hallway as if my life depended on it. After jolting downstairs to the kitchen table where Thomas and Sara were, I grabbed both of their arms and took them out of the house to the front yard. I asked them where they had been hiding; both were downstairs. I had an adrenaline rush, my heart was pounding out of my chest, and I was in so much fear I couldn’t think straight.  There were only 2 things I knew at the moment: someone was in the attic with me and I was not about to go back in that house anytime soon. I felt like I couldn’t breathe. Thomas and Sara wouldn’t stop asking me questions on why we were outside in the front yard and, unable to catch my breath, the only answer I could give them was, “We need to get out of here.”

         

Chapter 7

            We take off down our long driveway to get away from the house. I didn’t have my cell phone to call Mom or my car keys with me, but there was no way I was about to go back inside that house to get them. I couldn’t stop thinking about how much I wished Mom were there. Several minutes later, she drove up the road and slammed on the breaks, wondering why we were walking in the middle of the road. We got in her car and I told her what I saw. She immediately turned the car around and took us to Stanton to stay the night in a motel. She called the police to request a search in our house for anything suspicious, but of course, they found no clues of any mysterious activity or anyone in the house. That didn’t make me feel any better. I told Mom to believe me, but she said the police mentioned there were probably some rats creeping around in the attic making noise and that we should get an exterminator. I know that what I saw was not a rat. It was something bigger. Much bigger. 

            I told Mom that I didn’t want to go back to that house. Unfortunately, we had no choice. School started back up in a couple days and we couldn’t keep staying in a motel, commuting 30 minutes every day until we found a new place to stay. On the drive back to Jacksonville, so many things went through my mind. I was determined to keep Thomas and Sara safe. To do this, I had to face my fears. I knew I was going to have to find whatever it was in our house and put it to an end. A feeling of anger struck me as soon as I realized that this thing that was haunting our home could be a danger or threat to my family. The more I kept thinking about it, the more plans I came up with. Something that I never thought of before was to find out the history of our old Victorian home. Why would such a large and antique home be so affordable for us to buy? And how come it had been abandoned for so many years? I started to get really suspicious and curious.

As soon as we arrived back home about mid-afternoon, I went to the local library and searched Jacksonville on the Internet. Nothing important came up, so I had to refine my search. I typed in our address. The only articles that popped up had headlines such as “Suicide In Abandoned Home.” I almost wished I hadn’t read it. The article said a man from Cincinnati named Jonathan Thiffeault went into the abandoned home and committed suicide, but it wasn’t more specific than that. I didn’t say why he did it, or where he did it, but it did say the home was abandoned for over 30 years before he killed himself there. I called Mom to find out who sold us the house. After receiving the woman’s information, I went to visit her since she lived in town. She told us only a couple families had lived there in the house before us, but didn’t live there for long. The house had been abandoned for more than a hundred years before anyone ever moved in, and that’s why it has been sold for a very affordable price. Nobody has been able to trace back to who first owned the home. After I got all the information I needed from her, I went back home before dusk approached.

         

Chapter 8

            After we left Stanton and started staying at our house again, all four of us slept together in Mom’s room. We wanted to be sure that if anything else were to happen, we would all be together. One night, I had the weirdest dream:

I was walking up our driveway towards the house during what seemed to be a late morning. There weren’t as many trees as there are now. The house looked brand new and beautiful. After entering the front door, I turned my head to the left and saw the kitchen, which looked quite different than it does now. The stairs ahead of me were made of beautiful, dark brown wood and beautiful portraits were hung on the wall leading up to the second story. I noticed the wood floor didn’t squeak as I walked up the stairs. Each hallway was well lit with candles and lanterns. I walked into the first hallway where my room was—there was a bed, rocking chair, and vanity. A girl must’ve lived in here. I walked into the second hallway where Thomas and Sara’s rooms are and where a bathroom is located. All of a sudden, I saw a little boy run out of the bathroom into the third hallway, as if he were playing a game. I followed the boy and became surprised at how different the hallway looked, since it was fully lit by lanterns. The little boy ran into the bedroom on the left and as I soon as I walked over to see what he was doing, the boy was just standing there, staring at me with an expression of terror on his face. I felt someone’s presence behind me, and the moment I turned around, I saw the boy’s father with a butcher knife in his hand. The man raised the butcher knife up high above his head, blade pointing straight towards me.

He walked past me and into the room, while slamming the door shut in my face. A terrifying scream seeped through the door and echoed in the hallway. Then the man stormed out of the room with his knife, calling out to a girl named Kelsey and saying that he was going to find her. I looked in the room and discover the father had killed the little boy. As I ran downstairs from fright, I see another little boy hiding behind a chair, as if he were playing hide-and-seek. Discovering that this “game” is actually these kids hiding from their father who was trying to find and kill them, I rushed back upstairs to find the little girl that the father was currently searching for so I could warn her. Suddenly, a loud thump came from upstairs in the attic. It became obvious that Kelsey was hiding in the attic. Without hesitation, the father rushed around the corner from the second hallway and with a brisk, determined walk, he reached the stairs that led up to the attic.

He slowly creeped up the third story stairs and as he opens the attic door, he calls out with a vengeful tone, “Come out, come out, wherever you are. I have something for you.” I heard little Kelsey’s footsteps scamper across the attic floor and quickly after, the father’s large stomps pound the floor towards her. I feared deeply for her and as much as I wanted to help her, I was unable to. It was almost like I was there with them, but they couldn’t hear or see me. Knowing that the other little boy was still alive and hiding downstairs behind a chair, I ran downstairs again screaming at him to get out of the house, whether or not he could actually hear me. After hearing the little girl scream horrifically in the attic upstairs, the boy ran out of the house and into the forest. The father continued searching for this boy throughout the house, but it wasn’t until later when realized out the little boy was not there. The man busted out of the front door and goes on a search for the boy.

All of a sudden, I’m with the little boy who was still running from fear into the wilderness. He ended up stumbling across an old woman’s cabin in the middle of the forest and decided to hide there. He knocked frantically on the door and told the old woman about his father on a rampage, so she kept him safe in a secret cellar she had in the floorboard of her home, which was covered by a rug. In the blink of an eye, the father found the old woman’s house in the forest and knocked on her door. Regardless of the old woman swearing that she had not seen the little boy, the man killed her in cold blood. The boy witnessed his father killing the woman through a small crevice in the wood flooring above him. The father briefly looked around the home and left after being unable to find his son. The little boy climbed out of the cellar a few hours later and ran off again to get help. He reached the small town of Jacksonville and went straight the sheriff’s department. Immediately, the police department went on a hunt for the boy’s father, but never found the madman. Living many years in constant fear and having consistent nightmares of the day his father killed his entire family, the boy eventually ends up going back to the house and commits suicide in the bathroom located in the first hallway— my bathroom where I saw an image in the mirror’s reflection that one night.

         

Chapter 9

I woke up in a cold sweat. I didn’t know if the dream was a sign or just another nightmare. There was only one other way I could find out if the dream was actually a flashback of what happened in the house—go into the forest and find the old woman’s cabin. After what seemed like miles of walking, I gave up hope and decided to turn back. But as soon as I turned around, I saw something in the distance that looked like a large object. The closer I walked towards it, the clearer it became. To my astonishment, it was the same cabin in my dream. It was much smaller than I remembered in my dream. There was no need to knock on the door to see if anyone was home, for it looked abandoned and worn down. I tried peeking through the window but it was full of dust and dirt, so I went inside to see if there was actually a secret cellar—sure enough, there was. This made me certain that what I saw in the dream was real. I had been revealed what happened in our home before it became abandoned. As soon as I walk out of the cabin, I saw a broad shouldered man dressed in dark clothing and a hatchet in hand only about a hundred yards away, staring at me intently. I think we were both surprised to see each other. My stomach drops instantly and my only reaction was to take off running into the forest towards my house, because I didn’t know which direction it was to reach town. He took off after me and I finally reached home without him catching up. I couldn’t believe how fast I could run when I literally felt like I was running for my life, but it did help that I was on the track team in school.

I jolted inside the house and locked the door behind me, screaming at my family to hide somewhere; for who I assumed was Charlie’s killer was coming after us. They all scrambled for a place to hide. As for me, I grabbed a knife from the kitchen and quickly tried to find a place to hide, but somewhere that I easily attack him if he tried to intrude our home. I hid behind a large Lazy-boy chair near the door. I saw the man walk up to the front door and try to open it. Unable to, he broke the window with his hatchet and unlocked the door with his hand. Yet again, my heart started pounding so loud and fast that I feared he would hear me. After he busted open the front door, I waited for the right moment to charge. But he hesitated walking in. Suddenly, he backed out of the doorway and walked to the backside of the house. Confused and frightened by the unexpected manner, I tried to figure out what to do next. My first plan was a failure, and I had to react quickly to figure out another way to reach him and still keep my family from becoming harmed.

Plan B. I peeked up from behind the chair and looked out of the window to see where he was located. There was no sign of him anywhere. I crawled out from behind the chair and, gripping my knife tightly, I walked along the wall towards the back of the house. I become startled when I see the intruder’s silhouette approaching the back door. It was unlocked! But it was too late to go lock the door, so I quickly turned around and ran up the stairs. Plan C. I went into the closest room to hide—the bathroom in the second hallway. I hid behind the door and as I peeked through the crack between the door and the wall, I waited for the intruder to walk by. I could hear him downstairs, throwing stuff around as if he were looking for something. Then, I heard his footsteps slowing creeping up the stairs. Once he reaches the final step, my stomach drops.

         

Chapter 10

He went into the first hallway to look around for a less than a minute, and for some reason, walked straight to the third hallway. I don’t know why he skipped the second hallway—the one I was hiding in. I became terrified for Sara and Thomas because I knew they were both hiding in the third hallway. I saw them run there earlier when I told everyone to hide. I think I may have heard them going in the attic earlier but I was unsure, and I definitely wasn’t sure where Mom went to hide. After a minute or so, I stopped hearing his footsteps. I slowly backed out from behind the bathroom door and eased my way into the third hallway. It was dark; so dark I doubted if I should even go in there. Trying not to make a sound, I stepped slowly towards the left side of the hall with plans of entering the bedroom. Suddenly, I heard the man’s footsteps in front of me to the right, as if he had just come out from searching the bathroom. My body froze and I tried holding my breath so I would be undetectable. I couldn’t see him. I could only hear him, so I knew he couldn’t see me either. You can’t see anything in this hallway without a flashlight and it’s still somewhere in the attic from that day we played Hide-and-Seek. His footsteps reached the end of the hallway and I heard him walk up the attic stairs. The attic door then sprung open and I heard him reach the top of the third story floor.

As I heard him walk around the attic, I approached the stairs quickly so I could make a move. I remember during my search for Thomas when we played hide-and-seek a few days earlier, I saw a small crevice in the wall by the stairs. I hid behind it and waited for the right moment to attack the intruder when he walked by. Suddenly, Sara screamed loudly in the attic and adrenaline shot through my bloodstream like a gasket. I sprinted up the stairs and busted open the door, finding the intruder cornering Sara. My distraction allowed Sara to get loose. The man charged towards me as he swung his hatchet at my head. My quick reaction time and skills from learning self-defense in karate class allowed me to duck just in time and he lost his balance, falling to the brittle floor and crashing through the ceiling to the second story. I didn’t even have time to charge him with the knife I had been gripping onto. He landed face first on the second story, looking severely injured and unable to move. Maybe even dead. I grabbed Sara and yelled for Thomas. We ran all the way downstairs and met up with Mom outside in the front yard. Earlier, while we were upstairs, my mom called the police. Shortly after, the police showed up at our house and arrested the injured intruder.

            

Chapter 11

The intruder was taken to the hospital for critical care and once in better conditions, he was found guilty in court and charged with the murder of Charlie Littleton. I asked Thomas where he had hid, recalling that the intruder never found him. He told me that he was hiding in the bathroom with a boy named Luke. Luke distracted the intruder by running out of the bathroom into the attic. The murderer, thinking it was Thomas who ran out of the bathroom, followed him into the attic and that’s where he found Sara. Sara told me that after I came into the attic to distract the killer, a little girl named Kelsey pulled her behind a chest drawer into a small area where she could temporarily hide. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing but it all started to make sense. I realized the images I had seen in the attic and bathroom earlier this week were ghosts of the children of the murdered family in my dream and the son that survived but took his life later on. The little boy and girl were the ones who helped Thomas and Sara hide. The house may have seemed “haunted,” but they weren’t there to haunt us. They helped save our lives. God was faithful and protected us…yet in His own mysterious way.

As we stayed in Stanton at a motel for the rest of the week to recuperate from the horrifying incidents we experienced, the home was inspected for the damage done after the intruder fell through the attic floor. The inspector told us we were lucky we didn’t get hurt living in that house and that only the murderer did, because all the floors were as brittle as chalk. God protected us from falling through the floor and becoming badly injured, or even killed. The conditions of the house were extremely unsafe and incompatible for living conditions, but the inspector mentioned it would cost more to repair and remodel everything than it would be to demolish the house. Mom agreed that demolishing the house was the best decision and the city volunteered to pay for it. Jacksonville became a more safety-awareness town by installing security cameras in every store and school, as well as making other public safety changes. Ever since the new changes had been made to the town, the people of Jacksonville have regained a sense of comfort and safety they once had before the few previous incidents. But even with the new safety environment established in Jacksonville, they will never forget that terrifying week in October.

As for my family, we officially moved to Stanton into an apartment complex that was newly built in the area, which my mom could also afford. Since it was new, we wouldn’t have to deal with any “history” of living in a previous home and so far, haven’t had problems since we moved in. We thank God for protecting us each day, especially while we were living in Jacksonville. We are also now avid attendees and active members of a local church in Stanton. Our lives have been changed forever since my dad passed away, but even more so since our time in Jacksonville. God really does work in mysterious ways, and those ways brought our family closer to God, as well as each other.

The end.