Chapter 1

“No.” I stated calmly despite the anger that was overcoming my body.
“Nikki, I can’t do this with you right now. It’s not-“ My mom tried to reason with me but I was mad beyond reason by now.
“No!” I exclaimed, raising my voice even more.
“I know, I’m sorry but-” I heard her voice crack and I knew it was just moments before the tears started.
“I’m not moving! I’ll stay with Bren-”
“You don’t have a choice! You’re going! And that’s the end of it. Pack. Now.” I watched my mom’s figure slump over the table before storming out. I paused in the hallway long enough to hear the soft sobs begin to escape her and my throat began to tighten also.
I had been without a father, and she without a husband, for a week now. The funeral had been only four days ago, just before she informed me that we were moving. I understood that my mom wanted to get away, she needed to escape the pain that this house held, I felt that need as well. But I had no desire to move to some old house in the middle of nowhere and leave everyone that I knew behind. But she did. She was forty-four and I was fifteen, so of course she was right.
I had no choice.
I crawled into bed for the last time in my own home that night. I wake up as I had every night for the past week. Shaking, drenched in sweat, stifling screams and tears of terror and rage. I dreamed of the night my dad died, it replayed in my mind over and over and over again. And, just like ever night, I would suffer the hours until sunrise alone, curled under my covers as sobs escaped me into my bedroom, praying that sleep would stay far, far away.
The drive from Kentucky to Maine was agonizingly quiet. Neither one of us felt any desire to speak to the other. Silence weighed in and I blasted my music so loud that it hurt and I felt as though my earphones would break.
Maine was wet and gray as we drove down a winding road that led to my new home, and I had a feeling that it always would be. Eventually we turned onto a gravel driveway that led into the thick forest that surrounded us. I hadn’t even seen the clearing coming until we were in it. A medium sized opening cut out of the forest contained a yard and house. At the sight of the house my jaw dropped. It was huge. The old design had the center section a little bit taller and the two wings on either side, there were logically placed windows all over the huge building. A large porch spanned the front of the house, an old rocking chair was still sitting on it. The grand front double door way was the center point of everything. And, the entire thing was falling apart mess.
Every last bit of paint had long since peeled off, leaving gray walls staring back at us, adding to the overall grayness of the state. One of the stairs leading up onto the porch had a hole in it, and the rest were sagging and didn’t appear as though they would hold if a person stepped on one. The windows were so dusty they couldn’t be seen through. The yard was overgrown with grass three feet tall. It was strange, the yard was a perfectly round circle with the house in the center. To the far right, amidst the fog and shadows and trees, I could make out an old cemetery with head stones under a thick layer of green moss. I looked over at my mom, convinced she got lost and pulled into the wrong driveway.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” She murmured quietly, mostly to herself. “There’s even a swing set and tire swing out back.” I thought about mentioning that I had outgrown swing sets five years ago, and that this one was probably far too dangerous to even use but then decided against it. She continued to gaze at the crumpling house as we slowly rumbled up the drive. She stopped the car just out front and got out with more joy than she had since my father died. I remained belted into the car, thinking that this would be the perfect set to film a horror movie. For a split second I thought I saw a face appear in an upstairs window in the West Wing. Just a moment, then it was gone. I shook my head, scolding myself. The house was already affecting my mind and I was yet to step a foot out of the car. Forcing a deep, calming breath I open the car door and stepped out onto the yellow grass.
My mom was already at the door, having somehow made it up the porch stairs alive. I joined her as she was struggling to unlock the door. “The key turned but the thing just won’t open.” She muttered. She took a step back, frustrated and near tears. She cried over everything now. Sighing I grabbed and turned the handle while giving the old door a rough shove with my shoulder. I would either put a hole in the door or the ancient piece of wood would open. Luckily it opened with a quick groan and a grunt on my part. My shoulder now ached but I restrained myself from complaining. Glancing at my mom as she strode in ahead of me I caught her shaking her head and dabbing at her eyes with the corner of her shirt.
The acrid stench hit me like a wall but my mother pretended not to notice, she ignored a lot of things these days. I tried not to gag on the overwhelming smell of mold, dust, mothballs, rot, and death. Everything, the walls, windows, furniture, was carpeted with dust. Spider webs decorated the window panes and moths fluttered in the high ceiling corners. The perimeter of the room was lined with dead bugs. Yet another barely audible sigh escaped my mother’s lips.
“Just think, Nikki, what it’ll look like after we’ve fixed it all up? Just imagine it with clean, repainted walls. I think the outside should be white. New furniture….” Another sigh. “It must have a touch of elegance, gold trimming perhaps.” I watched my mom as thoughts, ideas, and plans built up in her mind. This was why she was an Interior Designer. She could look at a house and tell you exactly what it needed to become a home. “Well then, get in the car. We’re going to the store.” I was still inspecting the house the when she said this and it took me a moment to comprehend.
“Wait, what?”
“Nikki, baby. I can’t just fix this with my bare hands. Besides, we have six hours before bedtime and I would like to have a least one room thoroughly cleaned so we can sleep here tonight. Renovating this place will cost me enough as it is, I refuse to throw away money that could buy a beautiful curtain on a hotel room.”
“Mom-” I started to object but she was already outside and opening the car door. There was no way I was sleeping in this house tonight. No way.

Chapter 2

I lay curled in my sleeping bag on a brand new mattress that we had thrown on the floor in what was soon to be a kitchen. The air stank of house cleaner. And the wooden floor was still slightly damp for I had just finished scrubbing it not an hour before. My mom had dropped me back off at home before returning to town and ordering new appliances, furniture, and other essential things. She had a plumber coming the next day. I found a rude surprise after lifting the toilet seat. Apparently the local kids in town enjoyed coming here to spend their Friday nights doing dirty things. That would explain all the cigarettes and why the toilet was jammed with cardboard cigarette boxes. I was yet to see my room. My mom told me I could explore after she dropped me back off but I decided against the idea of walking around the creepy house alone. With all honesty I believed there would probably be a murdering criminal hiding from the law somewhere in this mansion, even my mom agreed that it was a good hiding place after I brought it up. Now she lay next to me, I could hear her gentle breathing as she slept.
I was up at the crack of dawn the next morning, anxious to be done with night. After a few hours of fitful sleep I was ready to cry but was never given a chance. My mom was up, urging me to follow her and that I needed to see my new room. I could work on the cleaning aspect of it today and tomarrow she would take me back into town for furniture, paint and decorations.
“Oh, you’re just going to love it! You have a window over looking the back yard, and you can see our lake in the distance! You even have your own bathroom! And, my room is just across the hall!” She spoke quickly, excitedly. Meanwhile, I was forcing enthusiasm and trying not to be negative. My mom deserved to be happy, she did. She had been through a lot lately, we both had, and now it was my time to support her as she had for me.
“We have a lake?”
“Yes! Didn’t I mention it to you? Hmm, maybe not. It’s small, but it’s still a lake, or maybe a large pond, Im not quite sure. I know how much you love to swim and there is even a cliff about fifteen feet up to jump off of as long as the water is deep enough below it will be loads of fun! And there’s a perfect tree for a rope swing so you can swing into the water, and-“
“Okay, Mom. Sounds great.” She turned to give me a ‘don’t sass me, girl’ look and I playfully winked back. We had gone up a flight of stairs and were in a hallway that took a right at the top of stairs. It was dark because it lacked windows and my mom flicked a small switch in the wall. A row of dim lights flickered on slowly above our heads, lighting our way. After passing a few closed doors my mom opened one on the left side of the hallway. A small cloud of dust erupted as I followed her in.
It was a decent sized room and, just as she had said, there was a window overlooking the yard beyond. There was an empty bed frame in the far right corner, and another door kiddy-corner to the one we had entered through. Peeking in a saw a squishy bathroom complete with a shower and bath, a sink, and an empty hole where a toilet should go.
“I ordered you a toilet while I was in town today,” she informed me.
“Thanks,” I said sarcastically. There was one last door in the room that, with some more shoulder shoving, gave way to a bare walk-in closet. I meandered over the window and gazed out. The lake sparkled in the distance, I struggled to see it through the thick trees, and there was the swing set complete with a single wooden swing, a platform and a slide. The slide was longer connected to the platform and it lay on the ground covered in moss, broken, rejected, and forgotten, a symbol of the joy it must have once brought some little kid but no longer did. The swing was swaying back and forth, slow and steady. The thought crossed my mind that it wasn’t windy today, and the swing should be still, but I had other things to think about. I was beginning to feel the same way that my must when looking at a house, plans and ideas were gathering in my mind and I felt a small tingle of excitement at getting to do whatever I wanted to with this empty space. It was a canvas waiting to be covered, waiting for the artist to make the first stroke of the brush.
My day was spent cleaning what was to be my room, and by the end of the day my knees ached from being knelt on, despite the fact that I would have the floor carpeted i wanted all of the dirt and stains to b scrubbed off the wooden floors. The walls also needed scrubbing, as did the windows, doors, and every other thing in the room. There was one wooden dresser and a matching desk and nightstand, after cleaning them all I decided that with a fresh coat of paint they would add a cool touch to the room and save my mom a couple hundred dollars at the expensive of having to purchase to furniture for the entire room. The dresser was long and consisted of six drawers placed in a pattern of two columns, three rows. The desk was classic oak and very simple, a spot for your legs, a flat surface, and three drawers on either side along with a long skinny one in the center above the gap. Lastly the nightstand. It was clearly custom made and had a great deal of character. An ornate pattern decorated the top whereas the rest was just plain, old wood. When I opened the small door to see the space it held inside I was greeted with something new and unexpected. Unlike everything else in the house, the inside of the stand was dust-free. A nice surprise. It also contained a large stack of papers from the previous owner, I quickly skimmed them but after realizing that most were complicated legal documents I re-homed them in a bottom drawer of the desk. As the saying goes, out of sight, out of mind.
Sitting in the kitchen as my mom slept next to me yet again that night I worked on scribbling a list of things that I would need from town the next day. So far I had:
Paint
Bedding
Floor Lamp
Desk Lamp
Picture Frames
Bathroom Mirror
Door Knob for Closet
Shelf
Curtains
Rug (1 for room, 1 for bathroom)

Reviewing my list I decided that I would have enough things to keep me occupied for at least a week while I was renovating my room, my mom would also be needing help with the rest of the house. We were only going to work on the West Wing and middle section of the house for now, that would be enough work and plenty of space to live in, my mom said that one day when the need or desire arises we could fix the East Wing and I informed her that I was happy enough only having to occupy one part of the creepy house, despite the fact that I was liking the house more and more I didn’t like it enough to want to have more of the house to live in.
The next day I had fully completed my list and then some. I almost choked when the cashier rang up the price but my mom just smiled and swiped her card, I guess she was used to big purchases. We made numerous trips back and forth to town in order to get all of our new purchases home, she had bought quite a few things for the rest of the house as well but we were both discovering that we liked the character that the furniture already in the house possessed. With some work the furniture would all be back to looking like well kept pieces of ancient art.
I chose my first task to be painting. Three cans of paint should cover the room plus one for the bathroom. By the end of the day my walls were a soft, welcoming purple and my bathroom was a bright teal blue that screamed for attention. I would add two extra coats the next day but for now I set to helping my mom. She was still at the cleaning stage in everywhere except for her room and the kitchen. She had been diligently working on the kitchen so we wouldn’t need to keep ordering out but she was also desperate to get her room (as was I) to the point where we could sleep in it. Both of us were sick of the kitchen floor. I hoped that this would be my last night and I planned to wake up extra early to get my second coat of paint done, then I would do my third early afternoon before getting fans going and windows open in an attempt to rid the room of paint fumes.

Chapter 3

Things had gone according to plan and I had just settled myself into my new bed in my new bedroom. Ah, the magical feeling of brand new bed sheets, there was nothing like the 300 thread count fabric gently covering my skin as I rested my sore and tired body in preparation for a great night sleep.
I woke up screaming but quickly caught myself so as not to wake my mom. I was dreaming again. I listened quietly, holding my breath in anticipation for my mom’s worried footsteps but silence was the only thing that greeted me. I relaxed and took in a gulp of clean air. My curtains blue lightly making quiet rustling sounds as they brushed against my recently dried walls. The moon shone in illuminating my room just enough so I was able to make out the dark shapes of my dressers and doors and the bare emptiness of my walls. I slowly pushed my covers aside and glanced at my phone. Bright red letters showed 4:17am. I sighed knowing that I was done sleeping for the night and would have to occupy myself for at least the next two hours until my mom got up. Sliding my legs over the side of my bed I got up slowly. Needing to go to the bathroom I quietly slipped out my bedroom and into the dark hallway, the plumber was coming today but not until the afternoon so currently we only had one useable toilet. I stood in the hallway for a few seconds allowing my eyes to adjust. I left the safety of my room and began making my way through the house.
The stairs creaked noisily as I descended them and while in the bathroom I heard every creak and moan of the house, my imagination playing them up to be much more than they were. I shivered despite the warm July air. I tried to calm down, telling myself over and over again that the sounds were just the sounds of an old house, completely normal and nothing to be afraid of. But then, through the just barely cracked open bathroom window, came a sound far too clear to be a product of an old house and my immagination. It came from the backyard. A quiet, child-like giggle drifted through the night where it found my ears and sent me awkwardly running through the dark halls back to my room. I shoved my door closed as quietly as possible and stood there in my room panting, heart pounding in my ears.
Someone was in our yard. Someone had giggled. Not a normal, teenager boisterous laugh from someone who had snuck into the night to meet friends at a supposedly haunted house, no. This laugh had been much more…..sinister. There was something horrible and bone-chilling about it even though it sounded as though it came from a child. It had been soft, delicate, yet most definitely real. It was the giggle played in movies. It was the giggle that came before death and proved to be the scariest part. It was the giggle that sent everyone into a panicked hysteria and fear in anticipation for the awful thing that was surely to come. What had been out there? Someone? Something?
I slowly began to creep across my bedroom, approaching the window at an agonizingly slow pace. At first I peeked out only a little bit, hiding the rest of my body behind the curtain and wall. When I saw that so far the coast was clear I looked even farther, and then farther full. I strained to see the whole yard and I couldn’t decide if what I found made me more afraid or be put more at ease. The yard was empty, whatever was there was now gone and the only sign of motion was that eerie wooden swing swaying back and forth and back and forth.
I crawled into bed, deciding that my first task in the morning would be to set up a small bedside lamp so I could read at times like these, that was what I would normally do if I was at home. Now I was stuck sitting there all alone waiting for the sun to rise. Just me and my nagging conscious. I was already beginning to doubt my reaction to what I thought I heard. Nothing could have been out there, it was early in the morning but still dark, I had just woken up from a nightmare and was still drowsy and somewhat out of sorts, and I was in a creepy house that I wasn’t used to and my mind was playing tricks on me. That’s it. Nothing was out there.
Nothing.
Nothing.
Nothing.
I was mentally arguing with myself, an intense battle between sanity and insanity. A heated debate. My final conclusion was to not draw any conclusions. I would look around in the morning for signs of anything strange but until then I was to forget the whole thing and either go back to sleep or find something else to do. Immediately deciding that sleep was not an option I settled for reading a book with the assistance of the moon and my phone. I picked up my book from the floor next to my bed and removed the bookmark. Just before I began reading I got up and closed my window, locking it tight and returning to my bed. Then, feeling annoyed with myself for getting so worked up I got back up and reopened it allowing the night air to come in with a whoosh. I tried to read but couldn’t focus and eventually came to the conclusion that the waking birds outside were keeping me awake and the only logical solution would be to close my window. After taking care of that I laid back down and made a set decision that I was not to get out of this bed or let anything distract or bother me until day was here.
Morning couldn’t come soon enough and in my entire hour and a half of reading I only turned the page once. Oh well, it was time to get up and put the night’s events behind me. Then I remembered my plan. Okay, so I would put them behind me write after checking out the yard.
After throwing on a pair of old jean shorts and a tank top I hurried downstairs and almost collided with my mom who was dancing around the kitchen listening to 80s music while she cooked scrambled eggs on the stove. I gasped and dove out of the way in an attempt avoid get rained on by her glass of milk and was just barely safe.
“Mom!”
“Good morning, Sweetheart! Did you sleep well?”
“What do you think?” I growled as I pushed my way past her and into the front foyer. The front foyer consisted of four main things: a door leading to the West Wing, a door leading to the East Wing, a door leading straight back into the middle section of the house (that was the door I entered through just now) and a large, grand staircase that took to up to the second and third levels of the house. The third level only existed in the middle section because it was taller than the other two wings. I hadn’t been on the third floor yet, or anywhere in the East Wing and unlike all the other times I passed through the foyer I was anxious to explore the rest of my new home. I shook my head to refocus and spinning on my heel I exited through the front door, noticing that it swung much more easily now that the hinges had been greased. I also observed that the porch steps had been rebuilt with quality, stable boards and I could safely use all three of them without the risk of falling down. I realized just how hard my mom had been working the past few days.
Circling the house I stepped into the back yard for my first time and for once the swing was still. I scanned the empty yard and walked over to the outside of the bathroom window. I wasn’t sure what I was looking for but whatever it was it wasn’t there. I walked over to the swing set and turned, ready to sit down on the swing. Right as I sat a small gust of window breezed through the air sending the swing out from under me and I landed with a painful thump on the hard ground. I looked behind me just in time for the swing to come back and slam me in the face.
I crawled on my hands and knees away from the awful swing while holding my forehead. It wasn’t bleeding but a lump was already forming and I knew that it would definitely be black and blue in hours. Laying on the ground I fought tears, it was the same fight I had been fighting since….that night. After a few minutes I gave in and sobbed in a curled up ball on the hard ground as the yellow grass pricked and scratched at my skin. I felt that the tears could fall endlessly but I quickly fought to regain control over myself and soon I was wiping tears while aimlessly walking across the yard. I came to the edge where the tall grass, weeds, and trees started when something caught my eye. I turned and walked towards it, staying in the yard for as long as possible until I had to enter the woods to get closer. I found myself standing in the middle of the cemetery that I had seen the first day we arrived.
Most of the headstones were simple. Grey squares of rock with names and dates carved in, but a few were more elegant, larger statues of different animals and shapes. There was a beautiful angel that I walked over to. Brushing the moss off of the words engraved on the angel’s stomach I read what was written.
Madeline Rosemary Jamine
1899-1905

Impressum

Texte: Me!-So please don't steal it, that would make me sad
Tag der Veröffentlichung: 24.06.2012

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