Into The Darkness

Chapter One

Chapter One

Six Months later.....

“Dad, why did we have to move to South Dakota? I mean seriously, all of my friends were in Chicago; I will never meet anyone here with similar interests.”

“Stephanie, give it a chance, really I think you will have lots in common with the kids here.”

“First off, I am 16 years old dad; I am not a kid anymore. Secondly, I am not into cow tipping alright? So I seriously doubt teenagers around here are going to whip me into a verbal frenzy.”

“Stephanie is right John; I don’t know how we are going to relate to these people. We are from the city, nine times out of ten they resent folks from the city moving into small towns. They believe we bring our big city problems to their small town moral values and create nothing but problems, and in some ways how do we argue the point?”

“Lisa, Stephanie come on, will you to please just give it a break? We were not safe in Chicago, I went out six nights a week putting my life on the line trying to clean up our city and every night just got worse. I made no difference what so ever, till the night I was almost killed and all I could think about was what was going to happen to the two of you, so please let’s start over new and at least try to be positive about this? Just wait till you see the new house, you are going to love it!”

Stephanie just rolled her eyes and plugged her ears with her headphones, turning her music up loud enough for me and her mother both to hear it. I turned on the car radio for Lisa and I to listen to the rest of the drive.

Four hours later we finally arrived in Rapid City and stopped at a local Chinese restaurant for lunch, then moved on up the road into the beautiful Black Hills. The house sat about twenty minutes outside of town, about half mile off the main road up a windy thick treed and brush driveway that crossed over a beautiful flowing creek.

When we pulled up in front of the house, it was breathtaking like stepping back into the late 1800's but the home had been very well maintained for its age. It was of a Victorian style home, cream white colored with black trim and shutters with massive oak and pine mixed. Trees surrounding the house but still leaving all the yard space you could really desire, one of the beautiful massive oak trees stood strong in the front yard draping over the roof of the deck, which also happened to be a beautiful patio off of the master bedroom.

When the girls set their eyes on it they could speak but only one word "wow" they spoke in an awing manner, I shifted the truck into park and everyone stepped out.

“Well the moving truck will be here tomorrow, we’ll stay in town tonight but I thought I could at least give you both a tour; what do you say Stephanie?”

“Hell yeah, let’s go, I get first choice of rooms!” She laughed.

“Yeah, whatever room you want besides the master bedroom, but you do have five other rooms to choose from.”

“Oh my John, this place is breathtaking and massive; how can we have afforded this place?”

“Don’t worry baby, I got it for a steal with the housing market in the toilet, property values are incredible; especially in nowhere places like this.

I unlocked the door and Stephanie rushed in to see the place, letting out a shrill of a scream, she rushed back out leaning over the railing of the porch throwing up.

“Steph, baby are you ok? What’s wrong?”

She was coughing and pointing to the door, I stepped forward towards it, holding the palm of my hand behind me; keeping Lisa back. As I pushed the door open slowly a foul smell rushed out the door and into my face, tripping my gag reflex, flies were buzzing around everywhere. I couldn’t go in, I slammed the door and got everyone to the truck and headed back to town.

“Dad, what the hell was that?”

“I don’t know Steph, the smell was god awful. I will call someone to go clean it up when we get back to the room, ok?”

“No dad, I mean on the walls, there were all kinds of weird symbols and writing saying to leave now and then yeah the smell; there were dead rats and raccoon’s everywhere covered with maggots and flies.”

“I didn’t see that Steph, are you serious? I opened the door and the smell hit me and I couldn’t step in, it was probably some asshole teenagers messing around in an empty house but the dead animals are disturbing.”

“Hey what the hell is that supposed to mean, asshole teenagers?”

“Not you Steph, you’re excluded from the asshole group I’m referring to, the type that do sick messed up stuff like that.”

“John as bad as that smell was, how are they going to get that smell out? We can’t live in that and also if someone was disturbed enough to do that in our house, do we want to live there? This is really freaking me out John.”

“Girls look it is going to be fine, it is a beautiful house. I will get it taken care of and we won’t have any more problems, I promise.”

We got back to town and to our motel for the night, I flipped through the phone book looking for cleaning services and started calling five of the six that I called turned me down upon receiving the address of our home but gave no explanation just hung up, then finally I spoke with a man that agreed to take care of it. I drove to his office and gave him the key, then returned to the motel for the night.

The girls were still freaked out about the house, but I just shrugged it off and reassured them that the cleaning crew would take care of everything tomorrow.