The Man With The Carved Smile

Chapter 4

I walked into the house. The first thing I saw was the living room. The living room was nice. It had a red velvet loveseat and matching sofa and chair. The walls were a royal blue. From the living room there was the kitchen to the right. To the left was a staircase with a room just after it. The room was a nice bedroom. It had silk sheets and red walls. As we walked up the stairs we got to a long hallway. There was a room at the top of the stairs to the left. The room was huge. It looked to be a master bedroom. Further down the hall was another door and it was another bedroom. This room was smaller but had an amazing view. Even further down the hall was the bathroom and another bedroom.

Once, we got all of our stuff in the house we picked our rooms. I picked the room downstairs next to the stairs. My parents got the big bedroom at the top of the stairs. My sister got the room at the end next to the bathroom. My brother got the room in the middle. Once we all decided whose room was whose, we all took our stuff to our room and began to unpack.

I finished unpacking about five o'clock at night so I decided to tour the house a bit more. In the living there was two doors. One was a closet and the other was a half-bath. I walked into the kitchen and it was beautiful. The wood stained countertops were gorgeous. I walked through the kitchen to what appeared to be a mud room. A little before the mudroom was the laundry room. I walked through the mudroom and outside. We had a huge yard. We had a trampoline and an underground pool.

The deepest part of the pool was about eight feet deep. I walked around to the other side of the pool and a hot tub was connected to it. I walked away from the pool to a huge cottonwood tree in the backyard. I went over to it and there was a ladder leading up.

At first I was skeptical about it. Like, what if someone has personal stuff up there that I don't need to see? Eventually I allowed the thought to leave my mind and I began to climb. Once I got up there I gave myself a little break because my arms and legs hurt. After a few minutes I got up and started to look around. It was a tree house, but it wasn't like any ordinary tree house. It was bigger than most tree houses and even though I'm only 4'11 and was still able to stand in normal tree house. I could jump around in this one and not hit my head on anything.

As I walked around something caught my eye. I walked towards the back of the tree house and looked at the wall. There was a piece of paper sticking out of the wall. I grabbed the paper and walked towards the front for light. I smoothed out the paper and what I saw made my jaw drop. It was a picture of the man I saw that night my house caught on fire.