Emerald Street

I grabbed a chair and hit it, again and again, but each time I did, I felt the pain in my head get stronger. I fell to the floor as I saw all that I had come to know swirl to blackness before me as I emitted a scream.

There was no doubt that there was something wrong with the house on 49 Emerald Drive. We moved here in the Summer of '96. My wife Jodie had always wanted to live in a small neighborhood, and 2 years after welcoming our second child into the family, we decided that it was time to make the move.

49 Emerald Drive was a large, deep green house, (sort of ironic because of the street name..) with towering windows and 4 floors including the attic. The neighborhood was small, alright. It had only about 12 houses, including ours, on the entire street. We didn't care, though. The house came with beautiful decor, and was about half the amount of money that our old house was. My wife was purely overjoyed. I was a little bit uneasy at first. The house had a strange feel to it. I blew it off, though. It's normal to have a touch of moving anxiety, right? Still.. I knew that there was something wrong here.

This is when the weird stuff started to happen. Within the first week..well..things started to change. It was only little things at first, a can being knocked over in front of my eyes, my son Tobias' toy blocks being built in different towers without anyone touching them, and only one time did I put every glass in the kitchen away and come back to them all being broken all over the floor. My wife never saw these events happen, and neither did my 2 children. I figured that it was the wind, or our dog, Smokey might have knocked down the glasses, though I'm not sure how.

While all of these things were happening, no matter how crazy, I seemed to be the only one who saw it. During the summer, I was outside one early morning, helping my wife move some flower pots. We were laughing and joking in the pale sunlight as we walked along, until as we walked towards an already moved flower pot, the pot levitated about 2 feet forward and crashed at my feet. I was surprised, and called back to my wife if she saw what just happened.

"What are you talking about, David?" She asked, clearly confused.

"Well, that flower pot just got up and flew at me!" I defended myself. "I swear it did!"

"Dear, you're over reacting. The pot simply fell off the table! Can you please help me with this?" She sighed, struggling with both of our pots of tulips.

"But I swear, it looked like an invisible being picked it up and dropped it at my feet!" I defended myself as I helped her with the job.

"Okay, David, I believe you. Can we just get this done please?" She said, clearly exasperated.

"Yeah.. Okay.." I sighed quietly. I had seen what I had seen, and I remember it like it was yesterday. It was quite a shock that I was the only one that experienced it, though.

After this happening, I decided to install some cameras in our house to try and prove that this was not normal. They weren't all that fancy, just some cheap pre-owned camcorders. After a week of no luck, I finally got some evidence. I checked the tapes every night before I go to bed, just to make sure that I didn't miss anything that may have happened. After dressing and getting ready to go to sleep, I noticed a scene of my children, April and Tobias playing innocently in the living room with their toy blocks. They eventually got bored, and went to go look for entertainment elsewhere. As soon as they left the room, their block "castle" was knocked across the room, spreading blocks all over the floor. "Jodie!" I cried, calling my wife into the room.

"What is it, Dave?" She called back, a toothbrush muffling her voice.

"You'll never believe this! Come quick!" I cried in an excited yet slightly set off tone. When she came into the room, I showed her the tape right away.

She was quiet for a moment, up until she asked sharply, "Is this some kind of joke?" "What do you mean?" I asked. It was as clear as day!

"David, this tape is static."

"No, Jodie, it's not. I've watched this at least a dozen times, it's NOT static." I cried, pulling the camera back toward me. Lo and behold.. Black and white laced the screen entirely. It was static.

"No, Jodie, it happened! I caught it on tape! I saw it!" I was truly shocked. "You have to believe me!"

"Then why is there nothing on the tape, Dave?" She was clearly overtired and fed up with my suspicions. "..You're right.. Maybe I just imagined it."

"Maybe you did. I'm going to bed now, okay?" She yawned as the turned out the light next to our bed.

The worst.. was on July 19th. I woke up in the middle of the night, sitting upright and breathing heavily. I didn't recall any nightmare, so this confused me. I looked around the room, and seeing nothing, I went back to bed. That is until I heard something that gives me chills reciting it.

A cough.

And not just any cough, it was a deep cough of a man's. It almost sounded like a growl. I laid motionless, racked with fear of this man apparently in my house. A million questions crossed my mind. Should I get out? Should I call the police? Should I wake my wife? I slowly sat up in my bed and placed my bare feet on the freezing hardwood. As I walked through the house, every thing that I passed seemed to be frozen in time and I was starting to get paranoid. I walked slowly down the stairs and saw, to my horror, that the downstairs was madness. The armchair was springing up and down, and there was a small lump under the rug, zooming back and forth with great speed. The table was rocking back and forth to the point of nearly tipping over. I grabbed a chair and hit the strange bump under the carpet, again and again. Each time I did, I felt a sudden pain in my head get stronger. I fell to the floor as I saw all that I had come to know swirl to blackness before me, as I emitted a scream.

"Well we seem to be able to make a guess about what happened to your husband, Mrs...?"

"Jodie. Jodie Bernard."

"Well, Mrs. Bernard, it seems that your husband David Bernard always had something wrong with his mind. When you moved here, a childhood fear of strange occurrences struck him, making his condition worse. We can diagnose him with schizophrenia right away, because when we interviewed him, he continued to say that the items of furniture in your house were mocking him and trying to kill him. He is completely delusional at the moment, so we can assume that all of the things that he claimed were happening to him were either exaggerated or completely untrue. There could be other conditions, but we are not sure at the moment."

"Well is there anything that we can do? He is a father to my children. I can't make them lose their own father!"

"Mrs. Bernard, we can't do anything right now. I'm sorry. He needs to stay here for the moment. But we can assure you..

It's for the best."