"Where am I?" Venancio was surprised, and suddenly someone spoke to his left,
"You are in the hospital, do you feel any pain in any part of your body?" The man asked,
"No, who are you?" Venancio said softly, when he suddenly felt thirsty,
"Venancio," began his father, who was on the right side of the bed where he was lying, "you fell on the roof of the red house. We looked for you because you never came home, but it took us two days to find you."
His father made him drink water and helped him sit up. "Two days? Then, how many days passed before I disappeared?"
"Two days of searching, and two days here in the hospital. So it's been four days since you last woke up." His mother said who was next to his father, while the trace of concern was obvious to her face,
"What actually happened?" His father asked,
"The last thing I remember was that we were on the roof and—" He started, and he suddenly stopped when he remembered me, "Did you see my friend there? Why didn't he tell you that I had an accident?"
"Friend? Ven, no one lives in that house." With astonishment, his father replied to him,
"What does your friend look like?" His doctor asked as if he was thinking deeply,
"He's about the same age as I am, and he's got a lighter hair with white streaks and pale skin" Venancio replied,
"Lester Red!" Suddenly the doctor shouted, and they were surprised because of his scared reaction,
"Excuse me, Doctor Batumbakal, what did you say?" Confused, Venancio's mother said,
"Mr. and Mrs. Garcia, in your town a long time ago it was said that there was a married couple, the father was american and the mother was filipina, but there was a complication with the father's work papers so it had to be fixed. They left their son, Lester Red, alone in the red house." The doctor took a deep breath, as if he was preparing for his next words, "But what Lester doesn't know is that his parents have died because their car crashed on the way to the airport. So Lester was left alone in the house. Later, because he was only a child, his food gradually ran out and he lost electricity, so he tried to light a candle, but the whole house went up in flames along with the child."
"What are you saying? Lester is alive, I've always played with him!" Venancio shouted in panic,
And that's when Venancio found out what really happened to me. That's when I stopped watching him without him knowing, because I'm a ghost that can only appear when I'm inside my house.
YOU ARE READING
The Red House | Editing
Short Story"If I didn't lie, would you come by?" Venancio is merely a lonely boy, and then he met his first friend after moving to Grey Town, Lester. Only Lester is hiding something from him. ~ A crack where he was sitting sounded, and I was too late to warn...
