This is a very bad idea.
There was this old house a quarter mile away from our grandfather's even older barn. Though, the most convenient way to get to the place is by a car or a local locomotive — a fast enough tractor — we can also do it by foot by trekking through bushes and various fields.
The old house, with some saying that it stood even before the cassette tapes were invented, is also a home for tons of stories people tell during campfires, and most of them, tragic. It's one of those haunting and creepy houses that people talk about whenever you're new to their turf.
Around our time of visit in grandpa's barn, during the fall of September if I could recall, we'd watch how golden, brown leaves scatter across the seemingly withered wheat fields and haystacks. The wind would blow them up and carry them through their own current. We spend most of the days doind chores and watching them fly freely in to the air. Our countryside's particularly full of trees that some wild animals even come close to our barn every now and then.
There's this one time where my cousins and I eyed on a fawn and followed it through the trees until it gradually overran us, hidden through thick and thin. Catching our breathes, Dennis asked, out of nowhere, if we could play hide and seek. We were sweating and exhausted, and we were also teen-ish kids that were trying have as much fun on such a boring vacation, so we just agreed to it. To make it more exciting, each of us placed bets, and even some green dough, as the price to whoever wins the game.
This is where the bad idea happened.
When Candice, who lost via rock-paper-scissors, started counting, I began sprinting without ever knowing where to go to, until I remembered the old house and thought about hiding inside there. And because of the stories people in this countryside have known for who knows how many years, it will surely secure my win.
One thing about the stories I've known is that some of them are true. One fact of it is that the house looks, and feels, really old. The moment I stepped on its stairs up to the front of the door, the wood almost broke. I could vividly remember the sound of the door as it slowly creaked and squeaked open. I never thought of how creepy the place was because all I had in mind is the game.
I went inside and frantically looked for places to hide. I checked every room: the messed up kitchen, dusty living room, even the ones upstairs that I even almost tripped on my way. And then I found it, a room with a window that has a view of the outside, even where Candice and the others are. I looked around and found a cabinet that I could fit into. I closed up its doors, slowly, and with little to no light shining inside, I prepared to wait for them. The rest of what happened after that, I couldn't recall.
But I did remember waking up.
I must've fallen asleep because of the boredom, and the time it took them to find me and I took to hide. I decided to open the doors and go outside. It was already night time.
The room, though, is as if it changed. And I swore there were less objects on it, too. Like, there's a broken lampshade right next to the bed, which is covered in something liquid and dark. Only the light of the moon illuminates the room so I couldn't see much. As I was about to take a step, I heard something.
"Clink!"
It startled me for a second and looked at its direction. It's like chains banging to each other. Then I heard it again, and again, and again — getting louder than the last. I looked towards the entrance of the room as I slowly move backwards and tripped on a toy or something. My hand broke my fall to the bed, but then I felt a bold sensation on my palm. As I raised it, the dark liquid was actually red blood. I froze for a second with trembling, soft, noodle legs. Rains of sweat poured down my face and the cold sensation got even colder.
I heard the noise again, and this time it was way louder. Like someone is coming to my way, and is just three more steps away.
Adrenaline rushed and I swiftly hid inside the cabinet, closing it as gently as possible, right on time as the noise finally stopped. And then it went again, but the noise changed.
"Thud!"
I closed my eyes inside to what I felt like the darkest, smallest, tightest space in the world I am that time and listened to every noise made. I could hear some footsteps along with it, too, but faint. The noise grew louder with every second that goes by.
I tried to get a glimpse by looking downward through the crevice under the cabinet door. First, it was all illuminated, then as if there was a figure that stopped to block the light. And I was pretty sure that time that "he" stopped right in front of the cabinet. I could see the shadows pretty well. "He" was carrying an axe. I felt as if the sky dropped above me, and as if the whole earth quaked under me. My heart beated as if it were it's last beats.
I've waited for a painstaking half a minute until I heard the noise again, but this time it is as if it's going on the other direction. I waited inside, all in heat and sweat and tremble, until the noises finally disappeared.
I faced the door of the cabinet and let out a very long exhale until I mustered up all my courage to open it. I got outside, slowly. I scanned through the room for presences. And then I heard a mild, singing voice followed by a subtle cry from a child. I didn't hesitate to hide again inside the cabinet. Both of my feet instinctively sprinted from the second floor up to the front of the house's door, opening it and running far away from it as fast as I could.
"Woah, there!" I accidentally bumped into someone that turned out to be a police officer. They said that my cousins and family called them and reported that I have been gone missing for about eight hours. Later that night of my return, I told them everything I went through.
Ten years later that incident, cousin Dennis and Candace visited my apartment in the city for a three-day stay. With some other frineds, we were talking about our time in our grandpa's barn.
"So, what actually happened in that old house anyway?" One of my friend's asked.
"There's tons of stories about that house, actually." I said. "But the most told story is that the whole family was allegedly massacred overnight by the family's father."
"Oh my, how awful!" My other friend said.
"Yeah, and the father was sentenced to life imprisonment until he died inside his cell, until years later of reopening the case and further investigation, it turned out that he didn't do it." Candice continued the story.
"Woah, really? Then who done it?" One of Dennis' friends asked.
"It was the father's wife's brother, or the brother-in-law. He used chains and an axe that was later found buried under his own house." Candice said.
"But why would he do such horrendous thing, killing a family like that?" My friend asked.
"Oh!" I exclaimed. "It's because of the land. It was supposed to be his, but was given to the father by the brother-in-law's father instead." Everyone felt astonished and sorry at the same time.
"That's just the general variety, wait 'til you hear the other conspiracies!" Dennis said excitingly, everyone laughed. During discussions, Candice brought up my incident and made me explain what happened again.
"But yeah, didn't we saw him on the second floor of that house, Dennis?" Candice said while eating chips.
"Oh yeah! I completely forgot" Dennis said, holding a can of beer.
"What's that about?" One of our friends asked.
"Yeah, what was that about?" I asked nervously.
"When we were playing hide and seek, you're the last one who we haven't found yet." Candice said.
"Ah! I should've gotten those prizes, you cheaters." I said jokingly.
"You dummy, that's not it." Candice continued, then she looked at Dennis. They both have serious faces.
"We saw you, on the second floor, in front of the window. You were waving at us." Dennis said.
I recollected the series of events that day and remembered not seeing them when I took a peek out of that second-story room window.
"And that was hours before, right?" I asked.
"Yeah, and that's not even the wors- uhm- weird part." Dennis continued. "You were covered in blood."