A wallpaper of an European Town[]
I’m not a huge fan of rooms with plain colored walls. Colors like white, beige, light brown, and many others. It’s just makes the room really bland and not that special from other rooms. This is what my mother and I thought before moving to a new house. You see, me and my mother lived in Indonesia and we just thought our old house is really ordinary for an Indonesian house. It’s traditional looking, it only has one floor, and the rooms are just filled with plain light colored walls. We needed something different and because of that, we started to look for houses on the internet.
One day when searching on the web, we came across a 2 story house for sale. With a rich modern look, and a medium-sized pool. Me and my mom were very pleased based from the photos of the house. The price is quite big though. It’s 48.000.000 Rupiah’s, Which is roughly $5.000 U.S. Dollars. Fortunately, We still own Dad’s Inheritance from his days at the army. Without hesitation, My mom contacted the owner of the house and said we wanted to take a tour of the house.
2 days later, we met the owner. The owner is this Caucasian looking male from Austria. And we Indonesians have a tend to call someone “Bule” For those that are an European descent. He then took us on a tour of the house. The rooms are unique, Each room has a theme and a personality to them. One’s more modern with slick colors, and the other one has this more poppy feel to it. But there’s one room that really striked me the most. It’s on the second floor of the house. The room is quite small, It has a vintage theme going to it and it connects to the balcony of the house. The most striking thing about the room is this Big wallpaper of a small European town. I presume it’s somewhere in Paris and the wallpaper drawing contains of Empty Buildings and a 1920’s car. I often freeze and just stare at that wallpaper for minutes. It is a bit creepy but at the same time it’s quite pleasing to look at. After the tour end, my mother with no hesitation agreed to buy the house, assuming that she just wanted that exotic lifestyle of living in a non - traditional Indonesian house.
A week later, we moved in to the new house and decorate a bit with our old stuff from our previous home, like antique displays of Indonesian sculptures and more. The moment after we done decorating, me and my mom talked about where we should sleep. Me, with pure impulsiveness said that I wanted to sleep in the room with the European wallpaper. I just cannot get it out of my head how pleasing yet ominous feel about that room, maybe I just cannot get it out from my head. As I continue to write this, I realize that this is a bad idea. In fact, buying the house from the start is a bad idea. Because now I want to tell you all something that horrified me to this very day.
It happened 3 days ago, at midnight. I’m sleeping like usual, a bit of snoring here and there. Then I noticed a continuous sound that is really hard to describe but if I have to try, the sound is like swirling vortex is as if there’s a portal right next to me. Even my snoring got subdued by that sound. The sounds really starting to get on my nerves and because of that I woke up. It doesn’t really took long that after I get my bearings, I started to notice that the European wallpaper is twirling. Because of that I jumped out of pure shock. I started to wonder if it’s the wallpaper that made that annoying sound. I approached the wallpaper and not only is the wallpaper making the sounds, but when I touched it, the form suddenly changed from brick solid to this liquid form (is as if you touched/dipped your finger into pool water). But the most terrifying is after touching the wallpaper, a hand suddenly pulls me in to that wallpaper. I cannot describe how the hand look like because it’s pitch black, but the way it pulls me in is like out of pure force, in the ways I cannot even fight back.
After that happened, I was on a rough concrete floor and I started to look around my surroundings. I realized that I was in that exact same location of the wallpaper, The 1920’s car and that empty building, yeah, I woke up next to that. I got up and noticed how there’s weird details around the world, not to mention there’s nobody there. The time of day in that world is in the afternoon, The sky is seems to be painted, to the point doesn’t felt real and there isn’t a single sound. Everything is static, no wind, no ambience, nothing. Heck, I even starting to yell hello and it produced this long echo. The environment is starting to get on my nerves, therefore I started to look for an exit.
I walked around the area while glancing around if there is an exit. But the thing is, the buildings besides the building I woken up into, they’re literally empty. not even a single furniture. As I continued on the path, suddenly for no reason, I feel a strong wind and The leaves in the trees and surroundings started to get blown away violently from the wind. At that time, I have no idea how there’s suddenly wind. Then I started to feel that there’s someone or something is following me. And it doesn’t took long that after I turn around and yes, there is someone watching me! From the rooftops. The figure is wearing a strip beige cloth and with camouflage clothes is as if he’s like a wandering soldier and he doesn’t have any arms. I froze, with an immense feeling of fear. But then, it slowly started to bend it’s knee, ready to pounce me. Because of this, I immediately ran. But as I ran and glanced back, The figure is dashing at a speed of light. I ran even harder and faster, to the point well my legs are started to feel numb. But it was pointless because without a second the figure is already in front of me and kicked my stomach.
The pain from that kick made me collapse to the ground. Hell I even started coughing blood. As I holding my stomach, mitigating the pain, the figure is approaching me, slowly but surely. I remember saying “What do you want from me?” then it answered with the most creepy and horrifying voice I’ve ever heard. “Why did you leave me?” if I have to describe the voice, it’s low, heavy and distorted. This is enough to make me scared and confused. Why did he say that? Do I have a friend or relative that I suddenly forgotten? Not long after that, because it doesn’t have arms, it finger snaps with its toes and I suddenly woke up back in my room.
The form of the wallpaper reverted back to solid and it’s now in the morning. I still don’t know to this day what I have just experienced a few days ago. I don’t know if me and my mom are planning to move somewhere but I’m sure I don’t want to continue living here.
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ChristianWallis (talk) 13:23, 29 December 2020 (UTC)[]
Hey, so good start. Let me try and point out a few of the more obvious mistakes in your English. I hope this helps:
“An European” -> “A European” – this is a very common mistake. Think of it like this, if a word sounds like it begins with a ja or Y sound (as in Y for Yellow) then you don’t start use “an”. This is because the rule of a/an is based on the sound of a word, and not the spelling. For example, you would say “he owns an xbox” because the word “xbox” sounds like it starts with a vowel.
Me and my mom -> “My Mom and I” – two points here. First, you almost always put yourself last in any given list. It is not “me, Bob, Ted, and Ed” but “Bob, Ted, Ed, and I”. Second, Mom should be capitalised. After all, to you there is only the one Mom and so she deserves the Proper Noun.
2 days later -> Two days later – if the number is smaller than ten, then spell the full word out and don’t use the symbol.
“The rooms are unique, Each room has a theme and a personality to them.” – in English you do not capitalise a word after a comma(,) – You only capitalise it after a period/full-stop (.)
Overall I can you see you’ve put a lot of work into this draft. I assume you do not speak English as a first language and it must be hard to write in. Aside from a lot of small errors here and there, you should consider adding more atmosphere and mood by thinking of descriptive words to include.
Descriptive words should help the reader know what to feel. Words can be emotional and you can use that. Dark woods can feel haunted. Old houses can feel ancient. Places can be creepy, cramped, eerie, strange, etc. There’s no easy to way to list all these words. The best way to improve your vocabulary is to read horror stories and pay close attention to how the writer makes you scared.
Descriptive words can also include the basic five senses and it is good to include more than just sight. For example, at the beach there is more than just the sight of water. There is the smell of salt. There is the sound of waves, or crying seagulls, or children playing. There is the feel of sand between your toes.
You don’t have to include all of these, but experiment with using more descriptive words and phrases and it will help your writing a lot.