You know, what I remember most about the whole ordeal isn’t all the things that happened, all the fear and the panic. It’s how it began that I remember most, which is funny because it was nothing out of the ordinary. I was in a room I had lived in barely long enough to call mine, and already I was packing up my things, taking my posters off the wall and rolling them into cylinders and pretending they were telescopes or whatever, right after it seemed like I had only just put them up. But my parents move a lot, so I was pretty used to this routine by now.
That didn’t mean it didn’t suck. Here I was trying to fit in as a regular fifteen year old boy, which is hard enough without my parents constantly making me the ‘new kid’ everywhere we go. My Mom had said it was because she and Dad had gotten better jobs that paid a lot more money than here in Edmonton. So we were leaving. And I was going to have to start all over. Again.
Sorry, I'm getting kind of ahead of myself here. My name is Ian, and they told me that sometimes when people have a really traumatic experience or whatever, it helps to write about it. Plus, it makes Carla feel better as well, since she's helping me write this. So here we go.
We pulled up to the house, and I had to admit, it was some kind of house. Like, really big. Like mansion big. Well maybe not that big, but you get the idea. It was old though, it had that gray gritty color that old houses have, and had the plants that climbed up the walls because no one had been around to take care of them.
My Dad said that was why they got it cheap, said it was a ‘fixer-upper.’ I called it a hole, but they didn’t care. You could practically see the dollar signs in their eyes, you know, like in those cartoons. They got that way about money. ‘Maximum efficiency for minimum effort’ my Dad always said, which I basically interpreted as being cheap, but he didn’t like hearing that much. I figured I wasn't the first person to tell him that.
We began unloading our bags and bringing them into the house. I didn’t have a lot of stuff, so as soon as I finished I decided to go take a look around. I was an only child, so I didn’t have to worry about calling a room or anything like that but I was still curious. The entrance was pretty big, but really dirty. Mom said the cleaning people would be here tomorrow so we’d just have to deal with it tonight. I checked out the main floor first. It was about what you’d expect I suppose, living room, dining room, kitchen, just bigger.
I checked out the top floor next, with all the bedrooms, way more than we needed, and it was then that I could have sworn I heard a noise. Peering out the window I saw my parents were still outside so it couldn’t have been them. I listened real closely, and I knew something was…well…off - is I guess the best way to put it.
For some reason, just then I remembered my Dad talking about how he had heard people talking about how things seemed to be different lately. Like there was a noticeable change between today and yesterday, and other than the fact that it had been raining a heck of a lot more some places that usual, no one could really put their finger on it. But everyone agreed that something had changed.
I shook it off and kept looking around, eventually making my way downstairs and through the kitchen, eventually winding up at a door at the end of a hall. I tried the knob and found it was locked. I assumed it went to the basement, and I was gonna see if I could see under the door when I heard a creak just beyond it. I practically jumped out of my skin. There was something just on the other side of the door, I was sure.
I put my ear to the door, trying to listen closer, and just as I did the door started to shake. I mean really shake, like smashing back and forth so hard I thought the hinges were gonna burst off and the whole thing was gonna come crashing down on me.
I freaked. I ran, as fast as I could, away from the door and didn’t stop until I was outside.
I caught my breath on the front lawn, having made it out in record time I’m sure. I told my parents there was no way I was going back inside. I told them something was really wrong in there and that we needed to leave right now, pack our bags back up and drive very far away. But my Dad said I was just homesick and my Mom said that boys didn’t get scared by little noises in old houses. Little noise my ass but they weren’t hearing me anymore, so I helped my parents unload the rest of our junk until it was all done so I could calm down.
Boys didn’t get scared huh. I can’t tell you how wrong she was, and it was only going to get worse.
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