My Little Haunting chapter 7 by Emerson Van Wie

Chapter 7: 

The house at the end of the street had been empty for decades.

Its windows were boarded, its garden overgrown. The neighbors said a family had lived there once, but nobody could agree on how many people. Some remembered a mother and two children. Others remembered an old couple. One man insisted there had never been anyone living there at all.

Seth went because he had seen a light in an upstairs window, and his curiosity about the paranormal had been increasing as of late. He entered through the back door.

Inside, the air was cold and smelled of old wood. Furniture remained beneath white sheets. The wallpaper had peeled away in long strips, exposing dark plaster. The only thing living here now must’ve been spiders and other bugs crawling around. 

But when he climbed the stairs, at the landing stood a little girl.

She wore a dress with a white collar and held a porcelain doll against her chest.

He froze as the girl gazed at him.

“Are you looking for someone?” the girl spoke.

He could not answer.

She pointed toward the end of the hallway.

“She isn't upstairs.”

He followed her finger.

A door stood open. Beyond it was a bedroom with a narrow bed and a wardrobe whose doors had been left ajar.

He took one step forward, when he looked back at where the girl had been standing. 

There was no one. 

He ran into the bedroom.

It was empty.

On the bed lay a photograph of a family: a mother, a father, and two children. Their faces had faded, but the mother’s expression remained clear. She was smiling at someone outside the frame.

He picked up the photograph.

On the back was a name and a date, written in blue ink.

He recognized the handwriting.

His wife's.

He turned the photograph over again.

There was no reason for her to have been here. She had never mentioned the house. He had never seen the photograph.

He searched the room, opening drawers and cupboards, looking for something that might explain it.

In the wardrobe, behind a row of moth-eaten coats, he found a child's drawing. Four figures stood beneath a bright  yellow sun. One of them had been crossed out so violently that the paper had torn.

Beneath the drawing, in the same blue ink, were the words:

“Memento Mori”

He backed away.

A door slammed downstairs.

Then another.

Then another.

The house began to make noises around him: footsteps on the stairs, the creak of a chair, a child's laugh from behind the wall.

He heard a woman say, “Not yet.”

He fled as fast as he could until he was completely out of breath. Outside, he stumbled onto the pavement and nearly collided with an elderly man walking a dog.

“Did you see them?” Seth asked, regaining his composure.

The man glanced at the house. “Who?”

“The family!”

The man tightened his grip on the dog's lead.

“There hasn't been a family there for years son.”

“Then why is there a photograph?”

The man studied him closely.

“What photograph?”

Seth looked down at the paper he had clutched to himself.

For a moment, the two men stood silently beneath the bare branches.

Then the old man said, “You look like someone who's been waiting a long time.”

He walked away before Seth could answer. As he stared at the photo in his hands, he looked over at where the man was walking. 

Nothing. 

He wrote:

“The dead are not alone.”

Then, beneath it:

“Neither am I.”

He reluctantly crossed out the second sentence.

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check out more creativity by Emerson at @evwphotos