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What exactly are the Callahan children seeing? |
| [Introduction]
It was the summer of my seinor year, I was 17. It was supposed to be a summer of endless skateboarding, the last summer i had with my friends before we went off to college. I never believed in ghost storys but when we bought that old house, I just knew there was something wrong with that place. It was a few weeks after we moved in, my room was no doubt the biggest room i've ever had. It had a little window seat that looked out over the road in front of our house. It was the only house on the street that didn't fly off the market. My little brother Riley was the first to get a real taste of our new home. For his 12th birthday my parents had bought him an huge 30 gallon fish tank, the thing was brimming with angel and clown fish. Riley was obsessive about that thing, the tank was cleaner then our whole house, all of his allowence went into his fish. I was babysitting him watching the band Flyleaf perform on tv when I heard my brother screaming. My brother does not scream, once when he was 7 he cut his head open from falling off his dirtbike, he didn't even flinch when they stiched his head up. I bounded up the steps. "Riley?" I ran up the stairs, my huskie dog suddenly ran down the stairs yelping and tripping over his own paws. My brother continued to scream "Riley are you playing a game? This isn't funny!" I yelled up the stairs, I only had about 6 left when my borthers bedroom door flew open there was a thunderous crash of glass and water poured down the steps. I sliped and fell getting soaking wet and smacking my knee. My brother was lying on the floor his fish were flipping everywhere struggling for breath. I ran over to him and picked up his head, he coughed and threw up water as if he had been drowning. "She doesn't like the water, the little girl doesn't like water." he said and then ran to put his fish in the bathtub. "Riley who doesn't like water? What happened how did your fish tank break?" i said thinking he might have hit his head. "Mallory doesn't like water! The little girl in the red dress! She dosen't like the water so I smashed the tank! Okay?" I couldn't believe it. "What?" I asked not understanding " EllE, LEAVE ME ALONE SHE TOLD ME TO!" he screamed little did we know the fish were the least of our problems. ************************************************************************************************* Well in case you Didn't catch it the main charcater is Elle who is 17 and Riley who is her brother who is 12. The little girl is named Mallory and was 8 when she died. I left this pretty open just to give people a lot of freedom. But the general idea is that Mallory becomes more and more angry as the story goes on, and only stops when Elle finds her careless grave in the woods by her house, but im leaving how and why she died and why she was buried there open to whoever wants to contribute. If you want an invite there is a ton of spots left. |
| I looked at Riley curiously a few days after the fish incident. I still didn't know who the little girl was, and Riley remained stubbornly silent. The one time I asked him again, he went hysterical, and almost hit his head on the wall. I finally went outside, scuffing my way through the leaves. Headphones on my ears blasted Flyleaf's song "I'm So Sick" through my head. "I'm going in the woods," I yelled at the open window. "Okay," came drifting back. I drifted along the narrow dirt path that wound into the scruffy patch of woods by my house. Another reason to hate this place. Who has a forest as their backyard? It wasn't long before I saw a long, low mound of earth covered with a thin scattering of leaves...and I started to wonder what it was for. |
| Suddenly my ipod screen went dark and died, cutting off Lacey Mosley's voice mid chorus. 'Damn,' I thought 'didn't I charge this overnight?' I crammed my ipod into my pocket and keep walking deeper into the woods, i'd just have to recharge it later. The longer I was in the woods the more I began to wonder why on earth my parents even bought the house. The woods were overrun with junk, it looked like the people who lived here before didn't figure out what a dump was for. I guesed that explained mound of earth. All of it seemed random; broken glass bottles, a rusted bike, a pair of sneakers hanging from a tree, spray paint cans, news paper shredded from being blown through bushes, the list went on and on, intill something caught my eye. Partly hidden by the dirt mound, I carefully picked it up. I realized right away it was a ring, the band was silver and I knew it was real from the lack of tarnish a cheaper metal would have shown. It had good sized rock on it too, without thinking I slipped it on my ring finger and it fit perfectly. I mean, i'm not one for anything really girly but I liked the ring, It was simple and feminine but not too over the top. "Elle?!" My brother was yelling my name, snapping me back to reality, he was no doubt to immature to handel being alone for five minuets. "All right im comming!" I yelled back at him, and I started the walk back to the house. |
| A few uneventful days passed. The montony of the summer was only broken by a few exciting thunderstorms. The weather turned hotter and it chased us inside where the heat was not so scorching. It was on the fourth day after I acquired that cursed ring that I began to have horrible nightmares. They were all the same one, and I would awaken in a sweat afterward. It started out with me walking down our main hallway to the stairs, I could hear indistinct shouting in the distance, as I approached the stairs the shouting got louder and louder. At this point I could tell it was a man and a woman fighting at the top of their lungs. As I start down the stairs I hear a crack an ominous silence falls. As I walk into the kitchen a man looks up from the broken body on the floor. "You" he shouts at me "you never saw this" he takes me by the arm and brings me into out back into the forest to a small stream. He then looks at me and says "You will never be able to tell anyone!" With that I awake drench in sweat and my heart fluttering like a caged bird. |
| I couldn't figure out what the dream was about. Why on earth would I dream of a murder? It had to be a murder. I wanted to tell my brother the next morning, as we ate breakfast, just about this funny little dream ha-ha how weird, but as soon as I opened my mouth, my throat locked up. I couldn't get a sound out. "Elle, are you all right?" Riley asked, peering into my wide-eyed face. Tears glistened in my eyes as I tried to force something, anything, out of my mouth. I couldn't even breathe. |
| Suddenly I woke up to see my brother craned over me. 'When did Riley get so tall?' I thought, suddenly I realized I was on the floor. “I’m gonna go call mom.” He said clearly freaked out. My head felt funny, like I’d been hanging upside-down. “No.” I grabbed his arm “no I’m fine,” I didn’t want my mom making a big deal out of it. Riley looked at me as if I might burst into flames at any second “really, im okay, I’m probably just overtired.” And I smiled more for my own benefit than for his. The next day started out normal, I practally ran to work, it seemed like I was constantly late these days. The wind kept blowing and I wished I had grabbed a thicker sweatshirt. The morning was like any other, people rushed in to grab a overpriced morning coffee and paper on their way to work. It wasn't in till noon that something happened. At first, I barely noticed the girl. She stood out side wearing dark baggy jeans and a sweatshirt that was about 16 sizes too big, her head was bent towards the wind, blowing back her brown uncombed dreadlocked hair; she was counting her money. The girl stood 5'7" and was incredibly thin, as if she hadn't eaten in a few days, the over sized clothes only magnified how small she was for a girl of her height. When she walked into the store she acted confident and casual, but not cocky. Suddenly the door to the store was yanked open, and a boy even taller than her walked in. "Hey, Vivian, tanks' full don't take forever." he said grabbing a pack of cigaretts and slapping them down on the counter. He pulled out some crumpled money from his pocket and paid for them with ones. But Vivian had disappeared, "Hey! Excuse me young lady!" A worker called. Realization flooded over the boys face and Vivian made a mad dash for the door, as she zipped up her sweatshirt over the bulk of whatever she’d stolen. "Elle stop her!" the worker yelled, stupidly I panicked and hesitated. I got to the door in time to see a pickup truck pulling away, several kids were in the back laughing and leaning over the tailgate to help pull in Vivian and the boy. "Thanks kid!" Vivian laughed. My feet were cemented froze realizing I had just let that girl, Vivian, go with out a fight, I slowly turned to face the other worker, my boss. ‘great’ I thought ‘more good luck.’ |
| My life had turned into a kind of living nightmare. My sleep my was fragmented, that was when I got to sleep at all. The same dream haunted me over and over again. During the day I couldn't focus on school, work, friends and family. Everything was slowly falling apart. My mother and brother had started looking at me strangely. I had just come home from work and my mother was making us dinner. "Honey, you look transparent, you need some rest, go upstairs and take a nap while a make dinner." "I'm fine!" I snapped. What had gotten in to me? This rage inside of me at such a innocent statement. Something was wrong, it was time I find out just what was happening to me. |
| That's it, I thought, slipping out the back door, frozen in a mixture of emotions. I am going to find out what the heck is going on around here. And I know the answer is in the freaking backyard. Nobody noticed as I walked away in the gathering darkness. According to my dream, I thought, something is by a stream. That I can't tell people about. But there's nothing that says I can't look, right? I rationalized. Leaves crunched under my feet as I walked. It was eerily still, as if the entire world held its breath, waiting for me. My foot splashed in something and I nearly fell, waving my arms wildly for balance and support. The stream. I'd found the stream. I scuffed around the dirt on the edges, searching for something, anything, that would explain my odd behavior. Or the dream. Something sparkling caught my eye. I picked it up and looked at it, bewildered. What on earth was that doing out here? |
| What was it with these woods and finding things? I thought of the ring I had found earlier in the week and glanced down at my hand. I didn't know why but guilt washed over me. Suddenly my mind whirled and somehow that ring was familar. I'd seen it before, but where? I reached for the sparkling object and realized it was a gold locket on a long chain. I was afraid to open it. No one had lived in this house for years these woods were private property. What was this stuff doing here? It wasn't like the preppy girls at school actually passed through here, let alone with something actually, truly vintage. My mind drifted as I wondered what else was hidden here. I just didn't know what was wrong, I looked at the small heart in my hand and threw it as hard and far as i could into the stream. A few moments later I heard a small noise, and I knew it was gone. I had to get out of those woods, it didn't matter that I was outside I couldn't breathe. I turned and ran the way I had come, my feet were soaked, not to mention the bottom of my jeans. As soon as I was clear of the trees I picked up my flip-flops and ran bare foot back to the house. And suddenly it hit me: the reason why the woods were so quite? No birds, I couldn't hear the birds, or squirls, nothing. Even at night when there should have been an army of screaming cicadas and crickets, there wasn't. |
| The silence that night seemed to stay with me for the next few days. All my actions seemed to be masked by a fog. For all my effort I could not shake that idea of that place by the stream. Whenever I was not focused I found my thoughts straying to it, even my feet drifted towards it when i was not paying attention. Gathering my courage I knew that I had to go back to that stream and explore the mystery surrounding it. One Monday afternoon I walked the 5 minute hike to that dreaded spot. This time I had come prepared and brought a shovel with me to explore the earth around that spot where nothing seemed to be. After a few minutes of digging the sun shining through the trees gleamed off of something white. |
| "Oh my God," I whispered, staring down at it. It was a dirty off-white, discolored by dirt and age. But it was unmistakable what it was. It was a bone. It looked like a human bone, too. I started digging more, feverish now, my heart pounding in my chest. More bones turned up in an untidy jumble like a broken puzzle. They were splintered and broken, but unmistakably human. And then I turned up the skull. A gold chain was inextricably wrapped around it, threaded through the gaping jaw. I stared at it, puzzled. Why was a tarnished gold chain wrapped around a human skull? |
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