The Wooden House

Growing up as a child, my family never moved out of the neighborhood. We didn't have the need to, after all. Everything was close by, the school, the store, the hospital and the neighbors were great people. But now, if I think about it for awhile, there was some unsettling about that specific street that was away from the city.

You see, we lived in the suburbs, which were always pretty peaceful. The next door neighbor had a daughter about my age, maybe a year younger, called Remi and we instantly became best friends. Since there weren't many children around, we were very close and played together a lot. We even walked to school together.

And every time we did, we passed by a house at the end of our street. It was the only wooden house in the whole neighborhood, which made it stick out from the others. It seemed as if it belonged in a forest, and Remi always joked about a crazy lumberjack living there that chased people off. But the truth was, no one lived there. It wasn't abandoned, it was pretty clean, in a neat state if I can call it that. It was for sale, and Remi and I always wondered when will someone finally move and stay there.

We would get excited when a family of maybe four or three just moved into that house, but we knew that all it would take for them to leave soon was as little as two weeks for some odd reason and that the, "For Sale" sign would be back on the lawn in a couple of days. That house always seemed strange to us, but never scary. I imagined that living there would be as normal as living in any other house. That it provided an average lifestyle. Little did I know that you would be welcomed by sleepless nights and gruesome nightmares as soon as you stepped a foot into it.

And how I found that out was simple. A pair of twins that were older than me and Remi just a couple of years, a boy and a girl moved there once. The boy, Christian and the girl, Jessa. Their parents were really religious people and they lived with their medium aunt. She was a weird woman that would always tell about how death and misfortune would find those who moved into the house, but Jessa and Christian's parents didn't believe her. Jessa and Christian didn't believe her. We didn't believe her, our families didn't believe her, and everyone in the neighborhood didn't believe her. They even had a great laugh out of it.

But now that I know what's really hiding behind those wooden walls, I believe her. One time, Jessa and Christian's parents invited mine and Remi's for a cup of coffee. Remi's parents couldn't make it because of her older brother's wedding, which Remi refused to go to because she didn't like loud music and events like that so she just decided to go with me and my parents to Jessa and Christian's house. The old wooden house just around the corner of our street.

I remember Jessa opening the door and greeting us warmly when Remi, me and my parents arrived. My parents, of course, decided to stay in the backyard, drink coffee and talk with Jessa and Christian's parents and their aunt while they told us to play with Jessa and Christian. They seemed to have already gone off somewhere, so we decided to explore the house. It didn't take awhile to find them sitting by the table in the dining room.

Remi and I noticed that they had papers and crayons scattered all over the table, so we guessed they were drawing something. We rushed to them and they seemed quite happy to meet us. We introduced ourselves, they told us their names and we got to know each other a little. I looked around a bit, and turns out that they were drawing typical things like flowers and houses, but I also noticed that they were quite the fans of drawing churches and crosses. I guess that's what growing up a strict Christian shapes you into.

Their parents also seemed to be obssessed with putting pictures and icons of saints, crosses and all the religious things like that up on the old walls of the house. I've also noticed tons of sage, candles and little statues of angels decorating the fireplace in the middle of the dining room. The Bible, was of course, placed in front of the fireplace.

I don't know how we got to the subject of discussing games in the first place, but I know that Jessa suggested we play hide and seek upstairs. Remi was worried that we would break something and that Jessa and Christian's parents would get mad at us, but Jessa assured her that nothing would end up broken upstairs since everything up there is packed up in boxes. So we agreed to play it and climbed up the stairs one by one.

Everyone else hid, and I was "it". I counted to fifty. I could clearly their giggles and laughs coming from just around the corner and down the hallway, so that's where I went. I was met with four different doors at first, and all of them were locked and surrounded by boxes except one. First, I pressed my head against the fourth door and listened. I could hear someone humming a song from the other side, so I thought It might be Jessa and Remi in there. I kept my laughs to myself since I wanted to scare them, and when the humming stopped, I opened the door and bursted into the room.

But I was met by nothing. It was just the room and the closed balcony doors that greeted me. No one was in there. At first, I thought I might have imagined the humming, but then again, I thought about it for awhile and my mind deemed it as real soon after I found out what was really in there. On the floor in the room was a single item. And that something was a spirit board with no planchette. I thought it might belong to Jessa and Christian's aunt at the time, so I shrugged it off.

But before I got the chance to turn around, I heard a giggle as I saw a shadow run down the hallway in the corner of my eye. I couldn't make out who it was at the time, but I guessed it was Christian, Jessa or Remi. I rushed out of the room as fast as I could, and at the end of the hallway was an open door and a small room, and staring at the wall was what seemed to be a young boy. His face wasn't visible since he turned around, but I thought it was Christian so I ran into the room like a crazy person.

I attempted to grab him by the shoulder, but just as I did, the door closed and I was left alone in the small room in the middle of the wooden house. I turned around, and I heard violent laughs and giggles all around me. It's as if the walls started bleeding and three shadow figures stood in front of me, their eyes blood red and their screams muffling my cries for help. I leaned against the door and banged my fists against it countless times and yelled for help, but no one came.

The rest of the story, I don't know it. I was told that Remi, Jessa and Christian came and ran down the hallway to find me unconcious on the floor in the tiny, bathroom-sized room at the end of the hallway with the door wide open. Remi also mentioned that Christian went to call their aunt, who said that three evil spirits consumed my energy. She apparently, also mentioned that she cleansed the whole house with sage because she sensed an evil energy present around it, but forgot that one room I fainted in. My parents never allowed me to visit Jessa and Christian again, but allowed them to visit me in fear that the same thing will happen again if I visit their house.

Years later, my family still lives in the same neighborhood, but I, as a student, had to move to be near my dream faculty when I turned eighteen. And now, I'm twenty-two and still in contact with Remi, Jessa and Christian. Remi stayed in the same neighborhood, but Jessa and Christian moved out of the state. Jessa contacted me just a few days ago, and told me that the house got demolished recently. It was about time anyways.

She also informed me that just before the house got demolished, she contacted the previous owner of the house who sold it to them and their family when she and her brother were children. He told her that he had three children that died in the house before he put it for sale because he couldn't bare the memories. Two girls, and one boy. They all played around with the spirit board and invited demons into their house who ruined their lives to the point where they didn't want to live anymore, so they ended them together and remained stuck in the house as vengeful spirits and any change, such as new people moving could anger them so they seeked driving the people away from the wooden house they used to live in.

Jessa, Christian and their family moved out soon after that thing in the room happened to me. Scary things started to happen to them too, and Jessa said they became so bad that they moved out of the state, and stayed there ever since. I sometimes still dream of the wooden house in that neighborhood. But after all, I'm going to visit my family who still live there in three weeks.

I wonder did anyone buy the land lot yet, or built their own house on it. If they did, I wonder will they be interested to hear the story I will be telling to them of the old, wooden house that used to sit there, waiting for it's next victims.