Home

A home is a sanctuary, a place where a person can feel safe, where the troubles of the outside world seem to melt away and cease to exist. Its a place of comfort, a place of warmth, goodness, and peace. That's exactly what my apartment is to me. Sure is small, and not in the best shape, or in the best neighborhood, but its my home, my sanctuary. It's a shame though, that I can't leave or. Not because I don't want to, no, because they won't let me. That is, ofcourse, they are after me, and they can't enter. After all, they can't enter, if I don't give them permission to enter. Thats the beauty of a home, aslong as its yours, you have a say on who can come in. I'm not really sure what they are, to be honest. Demons, aliens, ghosts, monsters? I can't really be sure what they are, all I know, is that they want me...dead. I'm getting ahead of myself aren't I? Maybe I should start at the beginning, tell you how this all started. It's a tale not for the weak of heart, but its my story, maybe the last story I'll ever tell, you'll hear it out, right?

Chapter 1
My name is Kenneth Frank Harold. I was born in a small New England town called Redford, up north alittle ways from Boston. It was a small shore community, no more then 4500 people in it at a time. I know it may sound cliche' to say we all knew eachother on a first name basis, but it's the truth. I lived in a small victorian styled house, a few blocks from the Redford shoreline. It was a beautiful white home, two stories with a 3rd floor dormer within the roof. I slept there, in the room in the attic. It was a small room, but I loved it. I used to open the window at night, and fall asleep to the sound of the waves crashing along the rocky shore. My older Brother, Jacob, got the other bedroom, on the second floor. Because he was older, he always got the nicer stuff, a bigger bedroom, a better bed, a nicer bike. He said it was because our parents loved him more because he was planned, and I was an accident. Yeah, he wasn't the nicest brother, but he was my brother, and hey, we can't choose our siblings. Life was good though, untill our father died.
I was only eight when he died, and Jacob was twelve. The police report said that he threw himself off of the Redford Church bell tower. They found what was left of him tangled in the crumpled roof of a Volkswagon Beatle. I remembered the night we found out quite vividly. We were watching television together within our living room. Our mother was nitting Jacob a sweater, and Jacob and I were sitting on the floor, watching C.H.I.P.S on the tube. There was a knock on the door, not a loud one, not a "musical" knock, just two straight knocks: knock, knock. Our mother got up to answer the door, and, well, we were never the same again.

[edit on 6-30-2005 by WolfofWar]

The family sortof broke apart after that. My mother had gone alittle crazy, and just kindof departed herself from us. Jacob took it pretty hard to, alot of aggression, alot of anger, most of which was placed onto me. After Highschool, I went to college out of state, and I hadn't been back to Redford, untill a few weeks ago. I was sleeping in my bed at the time, in my apartment, when I got a call. The phone's ring seemed to echo throughout my small apartment, and I had gotten up to answer it. The apartment had a disorienting feel when so late at night. I had picked up the phone, and placed it to my ear, breaking off from a yawn as a spoke into it.
"Hello?"
The voice on the other end was instantly recognizable.
"Kenny....thank god."
It was Jacob. His voice had an heir of paranoia to it, frantic, rushed.
"Jacob? What are you calling for...its 3:30 in the morning."
"I needed to talk to you...its been so long. But I figured it out, I figured it all out."
"Figured what out?" I inquired, trying to make heads or tails of what he was rambling about.
"About our fathers death. Listen, come to Redford as soon as you can, I'll meet you at the Redford Church---"
And without a goodbye, the phonecall was ended, closing with the autonomious beeping of a dead line. Whatever Jacob wanted, he sounded very serious, and very shaken. I knew I shouldn't had, but I needed to know, so I got dressed and headed up to Redford.

Redford was atleast a 2 hour drive from where I lived, by the time I got there, it was already sunrise. Redford was always a very asteticly pleasing town. Victorian styled homes surrounded small family run stores and shops. Within the center of the town, the old Redford church, stood, rising above all other buildings. As I got closer to it, where Jacob said to meet, I could see a swarm of police cards out front of it, I knew something was wrong. There was blood splattered on the cement pavement infront of the church, and the police were surrounding a body maybe 15 feet away from the large mass of blood. My heart sank and I could feel a thick lump within my throat, my mind wandering to the worst case scenerio. Quickly I had ran out of my truck, heading straight toward the mass of police officers there. On the ground was my horrors realised.
"No!"
It was Jacob. His face twisted in agony. He had fallen from the same church tower that our father jumped from. His body appeared dragged from the original impact site, his hand outstretched, where four numbers were written in his own blood: 1762.

I had followed the body and police to their headquarters within Redford. I had known the sherrif, and he knew me aswell. It was hard not to know faces within such a small town. The Sherrif, Alec Finnley, was a portly fellow, flaming red hair on his head with a bushy mustache to boot. We were both sitting in his office, an informal interrogation of sorts.
"Ken, I'm really sorry about your brothers death. I never would have imagined he'd kill himself like that. Coffee?"
"No Thanks. I don't understand it myself. He had called me at around three, telling me to come here. He sounded awfully paranoid too."
"Three am? Are you sure about that?" Sherrif Finnley had asked, his bushy red eyebrows had cocked upward towards my comment.
"Yeah, about 3:30 am, why?"
"Well..." He had paused to sip coffee from his mug. "...because he jumped off that tower at 2."

Woah Wolfie!

Don't you dog us on this one. It's even better than the last, but I still want to see more of that one and I won't stop hounding you till I get it.

I liked it aswell, I'm looking forward to more.

Well done WolfofWar!

EDIT:

Great!!

Reminds me of the great H. Ellison.

Nice work Wolf. Don't leave me hanging, lets have some more of this soon. Keep it up.

I had left the Sherrifs office with little more to say. I wasn't going to argue with him that my brother phoned me beyond the grave, because I didn't quite believe it myself. I went to the only place I knew I could start making sense of things, to our old house. It ended up he had left his house and moved back into our old home, though with the way it looked you could hardly tell. The windows were cracked, some boarded up. What was once a beautiful vivid green lawn was now spotty and dieing. The white siding was now dull and grayed from a lack of care. I had walked up to the front door, and stepped inside.

Like gust of wind, old memories quickly flooded my mind, some willingly, others forced against my will. But it couldn't had been helped, it was a place where so much had gone wrong, for both of us. The old victorian home had a quaint layout: from the entrance, there was a foyer, with a small oak staircase that led up to the second floor, to the left, a doorless entryway into the small kitchen, to the right, the living room. Slightly beyond the foyer was a basement entrance. The term basement could have been applied very loosely, as it was more of a false space beneath the floor, then an actual underground basement. Everything had looked the same from when we left, except decayed and unkept. The only new thing in the foyer, was a small throwrug that had been placed at the door. Before I had a chance to take in the sights, there was a loud crash in the kitchen. There was a scuttling sound within the kitchen, like small claws on a countertop. My heart had froze as I slowly made my way towards the door, each footstep kicked up dust and made the old wood floor creak and groan loudly. My hands had curled into fists instinctively, as I turned into the kitchen. And just that quickly, I had calmed down to see, and hear, the rustling of two small pigeons, whom had probably snuck inside the kitchen from the broken window. The kitchen was as much of a mess as the foyer. Cereal boxes on the floor, with flakes surrounding them, dirty dishes piled up in the sink. I had made my rounds through the home, it all seemed roughly the same, and nothing appeared out of the ordinary. Before I knew it though, it was dark, and I had made up in my mind that I'd stay there. So I had layed to rest in Jacobs bed, closed my eyes, and swept myself off to dreamland.

I had found myself opening my eyes at 3:30 in the morning, the howling whistle of the wind that emitted through the cracks of the windows not permitting me to lay myself back to sleep. I stood up, and walked to the bathroom. Each bare footstep creaked on the wood floor loudly as I made my way into the bathroom. I opened the door, while a hand searched through the blackness, made it to the wall switch, and flicked on the lights. They turned on with a cacophony of flickers, all random. The only lights in the room were a set of three wall light bulbs which were plugged into the wall just above the mirror. I had turned on the water, the knob needed some force before it turned, but it eventually gave. The pipes shook slightly, a loud clanking, from the basement, to the second floor, echoed remotely as the well water slowly pumped its way to the focet. Out came a burst of clear water, and then a steady stream. I had cupped my hands to hold some of the water, and splashed it up onto my face. I couldn't believe my brother had killed himself, I just refused to believe he would, and I knew whatever he wanted me to know, could be found in the house, somewhere.
"Jacob...what did you want me to know...."
I asked myself through the mirror, and then, the lights quickly flickered themselves off. My hand had quickly began searching for the switch, flicking it back and forth to try to kick the lights back on. And just like that, they had began the flicker back on. What was within that mirror, was not a reflection of me. It was a woman, pale, her eyes bleeding profusely, and both eyelids surgically stiched shut. Her lips were dried, with thick cuts going from just above her upper lip, down in an x pattern, acrossed her lips. The flesh of her neck was missing, replaced with a sticky dripping sinew, and a clear few of the spine. She had a white shirt on, now stained with a deep red, and a small nurses hat on the top of her head, with a red cross stitched on it.
"They're coming for you!"
She spoke, from within the mirror, and like that, the lights stopped flicking, and my reflection had appeared back.

A ghost story within a mystery story and so much intrigue! I can see this is going to be another tease waiting on the next chapter.

Wolf, you really have a gift for weaving story lines. I have always envied that in other people. Please keep it up. I am really enjoying readng your work.