A Friend's House

I was in the car with my father sitting in the passenger seat, staring out of the window and occasionally watching the relaxing rain drops glide down the window. I didn't want to look over at my dad mainly because he had just finished scolding me about my grades and my recent actions in school. Never-the-less, we had just arrived at my grandma's house to stay for the weekend. My dad instructed me to go knock on the front door to see if my grandma was even home before my dad would make the errors of trying to lug around the bags out in the pouring rain.

I opened the car door and was immediately greeted by the sound of rain slapping the leather interior of the door panel, so I quickly slipped out of the car and up to the front door. The house was a decent size, large trees surrounding the edges with tree tops viable in the back yard. The porch was not covered and I immediately started knocking on the mesh-glass part of the door to avoid getting drenched more than I was. No answer.

I looked back to my dad giving the nod that nobody was home, he rolled down the car window and shouted, "Go around back and check in the shed, she might be waiting out the rain" This angered me. I began to do a half-jog, trotting the edges of the house feeling water infiltrate the edges of my shoes as they splashed in the mud covered ground. I had never been to my grandma's back yard so I didn't know what to expect. There was no shed visible but there was a trail that led slightly deeper into the tree cluttered back yard, so I assumed it was through there.

The rain picked up and I started an almost dead sprint down the trail, the trees became thicker and the trail still visible. Until I reached a large, two story house. Brush and over-grown bushes covered the bottom windows and barely allowed access to the front door. I swiftly made my way up the steps and knocked on the door. It opened upon the second knock by my own force. I started inside just to escape the rain. I knew of the classic "door closes behind you horror stereotype" so I placed the rug in between the door and the frame, I continued on to a one door room that served as the living room, but with no furniture in it besides a lamp giving off a fair amount of light, sitting on the ground by itself.

I opened the door and called out, "Grandma?" Hearing nothing but my voice return back to me in echoes. The next room was fairly bigger, and only had a desk, with a lamp and a pen and paper on it. I walked over to the desk and picked up the paper. In clean writing it said, "I began to get sick" I dropped the paper and continued to the next door which was the only door in that room as well. This time where was a staircase to the left and another doorway across the room, all lit with a lamp on the floor in the corner of the room. This time I walked slower, allowing for the hardwood floor to give under the pressure of each step, resulting in small creak sounds.

I slowly inched past the staircase and didn't bother to look up it. I proceeded to walk and this time the usual doorway was missing, and this led me to an oddly shaped kitchen of some sort, I walked in and bumped into a table with a candle on it. It read, "My sickness was going to XX me" I then noticed a bookshelf with only two papers sitting on the shelf, I dusted them off and read them while leaning against the table. The first was a news clipping. I read it out loud. "Ellen and her parents were killed in their summer home... Ellen being only twelve when her parent's mangled bodies were found in the woods and she was presumed dead."

The next paper seemed to be typed just like the first, but on a different material of paper with the title labelled, "Humor." I read it out loud. "A dog and its owner strolled the streets. They passed a fruit salesman who asked them to watch his belongings while he went home for a while, the owner agreed. After a few minutes passed, the owner left and instructed the dog to stay there and watch the stand while he went home for a minute. Soon the salesman returned. Happy to see his belongings untouched, he gave the dog a gold coin and told him he could leave. The dog ran home to meet his owner. Upon delivering the coin to his owner at home, the owner yelled at his dog. I told you to wait till I got back and you stole from the salesmen?!"

The owner then shot the dog. Immediately a demonic laugh trickled into my ears, as if something was standing over my shoulders, I dropped the paper and ran through the kitchen, to another room and closed the door behind me as I rolled onto the floor into a sort of fetal position.

It was the same lamp in the corner on the floor, this time with a piece of paper and a pillow close by. The laughs dwindled away only to emphasize how hard my heart was beating, the only sound in the room was my heavy breathing, I could only hear myself muttering small cries in between gasps of air. I managed to calm down enough to grab the piece if paper off the floor and put it down in front of me.

It read, "And then a boy came over to play." Tears rolled down my eyes onto the paper, my throat began to ache and I began sobbing out of control. At this point I was able to get to my feet, and run back through the door I had closed, and go back through the kitchen and find my way out.

I slowly gripped the doorknob, and tried to ignore the frantic horror I knew would come. I then flung the door open and quickly ran through, turning back through the kitchen I could see the next doorway. I made it past the kitchen, and in what seemed like slow motion, I could see an outline of a five and a half foot tall figure blocking the next doorway, this time the lamp lighting that room wasn't on to provide light, so instead of confronting something I couldn't make out to see, I darted up the steps to my right that I had passed earlier, it was maybe fifteen steps until I reached a point where I had to turn and go up another 6 steps, leading to a door.

I quickly opened the door. And I regret ever doing that. There was a bed in front of me, barely visible as the only source of light was a lamp on a desk in the for corner of the room. This room was fairly larger than the rest, so large that the other side of the room away from the desk was pitch dark I began to walk towards the desk and light, and in my peripheral vision, I noticed what looked like tons of blood plastered in the sheets of the bed. I felt my throat with my hand to try to soothe it. I began to cry again as I finally reached the desk. It had a not on it.

It read, "Ellen's body became weak, and I got sick. So I decided to XX her body. And take the boy's... after all, we are friends.... right?"

I stopped crying and I became stunned, I couldn't move or look away from the paper. Then almost without me noticing, I was looking at myself, from a lower position on the floor from the side I was actually looking at myself standing there. Then I watched myself move without my will power. My body looked towards where I was on the floor, and I was able to move. I watched my body dart out of the room towards the door. And that is when I realized I was no longer in possession of my own body. I began to yell but it only gave me pain, I couldn't bring myself to my feet in this body I was in. I began to drag myself as fast as possible, through the door, roll down the sets if stairs and crawl through the dark house in hopes of catching my body. I made it to the front door.

I became delirious and could see the image of my body walking away in the clear day as the rain let up and the sun shined down. I still crawled forward. I crawled until I was soaked in mud and until the figure if my body got closer. Eventually the figure stopped, as well as I did. My eyes focused in. I could see my dad looking at my former body, then at me on the ground. Whatever was controlling my body stepped behind my dad and watched me.

I looked down, and in a hazy puddle of rain I saw a woman's old, bloody, wrinkled face. I looked to the left to see my grandma's shed, hidden behind tall bushes. Then I returned my view to my dad, who was holding a pistol at me. I reached out my hand and managed to utter "Da-" before I heard a loud snap in the wind. And I died.