Watch Your Back

Chapter 1

"Don't go near the old Roseburk asylum" Aaron Jetsten had heard these words all his life. No one had told him what they meant by this, but now Aaron was nineteen, so his parents had to tell him.

The day was gloomy and dark. It had been raining all night, so the sky was blanketed in fat, gray clouds. That morning looked too depressing to hold any joy, but Aaron lept out of bed and bounded down the hall, eager to hear the asylum's haunting back story. Aaron had a pretty morbid mind, something he hid from his fretful parents. He casually walked into the kitchen, seeing his mom on the left cooking pancakes and his dad sitting at the table on his phone.

"Good morning, Aaron. I'm almost finished with breakfast, so have a seat."

Aaron pulled up a chair next to his dad, who furiously tapped at his phone.

"Hey Aaron, did you hear about that miss Callie Winderman? Apparently she's been missing for a week now." His dad flicked his wrist towards Aaron, showing the homepage for the AOL website and a picture of a blonde woman in her late twenties was displayed on the shiny screen. Her green eyes almost matched the intensity of the glowing device.

"Patrick, not before breakfast." Aaron's mom scolded and waved her spatula at her grinning husband.

"Oh, come on Dawn! This is way more interesting than counting numbers. Even you should agree." Aaron's dad was an accountant, and his mom was a surgeon at the local hospital. Though they were about to eat breakfast, Aaron couldn't keep his excitement contained.

"Hey mom! Guess what day it is?" Aaron waited for an answer.

"HM... Is it Christmas?" His mom and dad always joked around with each others birthdays. But Aaron was not in a playing mood. He wanted answers.

"Mom, I'm nineteen. You know what that means."

His mom fumbled with the spatula and his dad froze. They obviously knew the answer to his outburst.

"Aaron..." His dad began, but his mom interrupted.

"Patrick. Not now." She turned to Aaron. "Aaron, not...not before breakfast. We will tell you later... Perhaps after dinner. Now grab your school bag and get ready."

Aaron soon dressed for school, inhaled a plate of his mom's golden pancakes, and began the walk to school with his dad. The two walked down the familiar sidewalk lined with houses and crossed the smooth street past the old stores selling food and toys, onto the town square, with its cracked sidewalks and busy people bustling about. But this morning, no one was bustling about. The townsfolk on the street gathered in a circular formation in the center of town.

"What's going on?" Aaron and his dad pushed through the circle, not expecting what to see. But the sight that beheld them was something that made Aaron's morbid curiosity get the best of him.

Because there, strung up on a lamppost in the middle of town, was a body, dead, rotting, and terribly mutilated.