Chapter 31: The Rusty Old House
Living in some rusty old house was my late dad's dying wish. Why a parent would want to make their children suffer such atrocious torment was beyond my understanding at the time. The house was creaky, with a lingering musty smell that made the place unbearable the first night I spent there. My mom was especially afraid of the dark, while my fear was of bugs—especially cockroaches. Despite the claims of the fumigation company to have erased all the bugs in the house, I could feel it in my mind: there were indeed cockroaches in this house.
The first night was a restless one. Every creak of the floorboards, every gust of wind against the old windows seemed magnified in the silence. My mom refused to turn off the lights, the fear of the dark paralyzing her. I, on the other hand, lay awake in my bed, every shadow a potential hiding place for the roaches I dreaded so much.
I spent hours trying to convince myself that the exterminators had done their job, that the house was bug-free. But the nagging feeling persisted. It was as if the house itself was alive, whispering to me that the cockroaches were still there, lurking in the walls, waiting for the perfect moment to emerge.
The next morning, determined to prove myself wrong, I began a meticulous search of the house. I looked under every piece of furniture, inside every cupboard, and in every dark corner. I found nothing, yet the feeling of being watched, of not being alone, grew stronger.
As days turned into weeks, the house's oppressive atmosphere took its toll. My mom's fear of the dark worsened; she barely slept, her eyes constantly darting around as if expecting something to jump out at her. My obsession with the cockroaches intensified. I started seeing them in the corners of my vision, scurrying along the edges of the room, but every time I turned to look directly, they were gone.
One night, as I lay in bed, I heard it: the unmistakable sound of skittering legs. My heart raced. I sat up, straining to hear over the pounding in my ears. The noise grew louder, coming from the walls. I grabbed a flashlight and followed the sound to a corner of my room. There, on the floor, was a small, old hatch I had never noticed before.
With trembling hands, I opened the hatch. A wave of foul air hit me, and in the beam of my flashlight, I saw them: hundreds, maybe thousands of cockroaches, their bodies writhing and crawling over each other in a grotesque mass. The sight made my skin crawl, but what paralyzed me with fear was not the bugs—it was the discovery of a hidden, underground room beneath the house.
I hesitated, but my curiosity got the better of me. I climbed down into the room, my flashlight revealing old furniture covered in dust and cobwebs. In the center of the room was an ancient-looking table with a book on it. The book's cover was worn, and its pages yellowed with age.
I picked it up and began to read. It was a journal, written by the house's original owner, who had been an eccentric entomologist obsessed with cockroaches. The journal detailed his experiments, his belief that he could communicate with the insects and even control them. He wrote about how he had bound his spirit to the house upon his death, ensuring that his "children," the cockroaches, would always be protected.
A sense of dread washed over me. My dad must have known about this, but why he wanted us to live here remained a mystery. Suddenly, the room's temperature dropped, and I felt a presence behind me. Turning slowly, I saw the shadowy figure of an old man, his eyes glinting with malice.
"You've found my secret," he whispered, his voice like the rustling of dead leaves. "Now, you are mine."
I scrambled out of the room, the sound of skittering legs growing louder around me. I slammed the hatch shut and ran to my mom's room. She was sitting on her bed, eyes wide with terror, surrounded by cockroaches.
"Mom, we have to leave!" I shouted, but she just stared at me, unresponsive. The bugs crawled over her, and her fear had rendered her catatonic.
In a frantic rush, I dragged her out of bed and we fled the house. As we stood outside, gasping for breath, I watched as the windows seemed to glow with an eerie light. The house had come alive, and it wanted us back.
We never returned to that house. To this day, I don't know why my dad wanted us to live there, but I believe he must have known about the spirit and its obsession. The house still stands, abandoned and decaying, a testament to the horrors that lurk within. And every so often, when the wind blows just right, you can hear the faint sound of skittering legs and the whisper of a malevolent spirit waiting for its next victim.
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