The house was dimly lit, as I walked slowly toward the stairs. The floor creaked loudly like sounds of children’s screams rising through the boards. It has been so long since I’ve been here. The windows have been cracked open, and the lights flicker as they swing from the ceiling. The walls are melting away from the inside.

Halfway to the stairs the scent of burning flesh fills the air. The foul stench is worse than a pile of rotted food still sitting upon on oven. I gently take a few more steps forward trying to prevent the sudden urge to gag. The smell quickly floats away behind me. I press my hand upon the cold wood of the stair case banister. I can taste sweet jasmine in the air.

“She’s here,” I mutter.
Each step creeks under the pressure of my body. The wood beneath my feet is beginning to crack and so I quickly try to jump to the next. They break and fall through to an unknown dark abyss. The adrenaline is rushing through my veins like a twister as I jump each stair working my way to the top. I feel as though I am in an action movie trying to get away from an evil mastermind. Then again, I think, this is different from running away from evil because I am running to it. I step on the next step and my shoe lace becomes snagged between a crack in the board. The stairs below are falling and soon this one will too. My heart is racing as I quickly work at untying my shoe; it won’t budge. My sense of reality has become blurred. I extended my body and reach for a knife in my left pocket. Three more steps fall. I reach, without hesitation, down to my shoe and sliced the lace. My shoe now free from the grasps of the stair slithers from my heel down my foot and off my toes. I hear an echo of a child’s giggling fill the empty hall above me. I slide my feet in front of me and sprint up the remaining stairs. The small dim light at the end of the hall reminds me of the scent of jasmine, as it gave me a sense of relief as though everything was calm. I know that nothing has happened yet.

I’ve learned long ago to know the difference between what is real and what is just an illusion. I know there can’t be anything in this home. The house was condemned when I was a child and never reopened. I know that I should know that nothing is here. But still down the hall, in the shadows of the pale light coming through a window, I can slightly see a faint figure pacing the floors of a room.

Walking down the hall a faint shiver runs along my spine. Each step I’ve taken has given me an eerie feeling, but my steps race quicker as my mind grows with the wondering of what could really be there. I stop walking before I hit the light. My lung feels as though it is collapsing and I cannot breathe. This room sends my emotions fluttering around a garden with butterflies in my stomach as a dark misty storm begins to roll in with clouds in my head. I twist the upper half of my body towards the open door way and glare in. My memories became vivid and dance through the room.

Glaring into the room I keep my eyes wide open. The figures dance through the room so vividly.

“Come here Marky,” a little girl calls out.
He moves over toward her and they prance around the room full of giggles. From behind me I feel a forgotten presence. A man I will never be capable of stopping creeps up the hall. Now, even though I am older, I cannot help them.

He sways into the room with such ease. No one can stop him, no one even tried. The scar on my cheek feels as though it’s glowing, trying to make me remember. The pain is all so real, as I relive the death of my sister, sweet Annabelle. My eyes sting with each tear as they roll down my eyes creating a storm of depression within my mind.

What have I done with my life? The thought won’t escape me. I will never find peace with the pain one stranger inflicted on my life, but yet I still do not try. I walk around in my big, handy down patched up suite, and rugged beard, trying to act normal. All my life I’ve tried to act normal, when inside people don’t see what I see. I see and hear people who aren’t here. I have an ever growing urge to come to this home and when I do I see my sister’s murder all over again. I can see her and hear her, and sometimes she asks me to join her in tea time, and I do. I know she’s not there, she’s dead. But yet each time we see each other, it ends in a faceless man gutting her like a fish for sport. And as always I can never stop him. I guess I should be happy that she always finds her way back to me.

I turn away from this room, as I’ve done before. There is nothing left here for me, nothing but misery. As I walk back to what used to be a staircase, I hear her voice back giggling in the room at the end of the hall. Inching my body towards the edge of the old stair case I hear her screams once more. My feet come up and I jump. The rope upon my neck tightens as I swing within the air, and my neck snaps.