The House on the Hill More screams in the night. I awoke with a start. I was never sure if the screams were real, or a part of the dream. Quiet in the house. Seems that once again if the screams had been real I was the only one who heard them. I slipped out of bed and walked to the window. Pulling the drapes gently aside I looked out at the house I was unlucky enough to live next to. There had been a time when that house wasn't rumored to be haunted. Some of the older neighbors still spoke of it, those who had been in the neighborhood when it was still shiny and new. They remembered the lady who lived there. They say she was eccentric, but harmless. They say that it was when her children moved her to the nursing home that the strange events started to occur. According to those same neighbors, the lady was heavily into the occult. She had tragically lost one of her children when he was still a young boy and had since tried to communicate with him. They whisper that she had contacted something, but they don't know if it was her dead child. I shuddered looking at the house. When my husband and I had looked at houses for our family there had been no mention of the strange occurrences of the neighborhood. Of course then, the old lady was still alive. We weren't there for all of it, but according to the neighbors she died a couple months after we moved in, and that was when the occurrences really started to happen with regularity. The old lady's remaining children couldn't sell the house. In fact half the time they couldn't even enter it. The doors and windows would lock themselves and the keys wouldn't turn. Eventually the children abandoned their efforts. A faded 'for sale' sign was the only indication left that they had even been trying. It wasn't the only house with a for sale sign on the lawn in this neighborhood. Once the disappearances started people were anxious to get out. But it had been noteworthy enough that nobody wanted to move back in. People disappear in this neighborhood. Usually in the middle of the night, and with no cause. It's so bad, that, at times one missing person poster just gets tacked over the old ones. There's not enough room on the poles to have them all visible. I was about to let the drapes fall closed again when I spied something. The door on the cursed house was slightly ajar, and I thought I saw movement within. I moved quickly and silently to the phone. It was almost to my ear when I realized that there was no dial tone. I jammed my thumb on the base and let up again, but still the tone was absent. With a sigh I laid the phone back in its cradle. For several minutes I stood there, wondering what to do. I decided that I didn't care if intruders had broken into the house, but the open door bothered me. I decided that, if nothing else, I would have to close it before I would be able to get back to sleep. I pattered over to wake my husband, I didn't want to go alone. Then I remembered that he had a major presentation at work the next day and would need his sleep. I turned and walked to the closet to grab a baseball bat. Armed with a wooden club and a flashlight, I checked in on my children before I quietly stepped out of the house. The streetlights flickered as I made my way down the sidewalk and up to the front porch of the house. Night bugs chattered in the tall weeds, and the porch creaked heavily as I put my weight onto it. I turned and looked, positive that the creak of the porch had awoken the entire neighborhood. However the silence around continued, still as death. I reached for the door, staying as far away as I could when a breeze blew and opened it wider. The light of my flashlight fell upon the floor of the house within. And a sound escaped from the cursed building. I looked for footsteps, but saw that the layer of dust showed no signs of disturbance. "Hello?" I called softly into the darkened house. Another creak of a floorboard was the only reply. Every bone in my body screamed at me to slam the door shut and run home. Yet I was drawn to the house. My feet carried me forward, even while the rest of me wanted to go the other way. The flashlight clattered onto the porch and rolled out of sight as my increasingly limp hands could no longer hold it. As I crossed the threshold the door slammed shut behind me, forever trapping me in the darkness. Sometimes I watch, seeing the changes through the windows. Time has no meaning now. My family moved on, even their fliers depicting me as missing have long faded, and been covered. I cry with the others, those cursed to exist in this house. Our screams are all that remain. -------------------------------------------- Word Count 875 Inspired by the traditional haunted house story. :)