The Empty Room

Prologue

{From the perspective of Edgar Jones, oldest sibling}

There are some moments in which everything seems a bit too perfect in your life that you know something's wrong with it.

Five years ago, I lived in a paradise with my family. My mom and dad both had a job, so that left us three siblings to look after ourselves. It was mostly my sister, Taylor, and I that had filled our small suburban house with delightful memories. Our brother mostly stepped aside while we shared gossip or complained about school. Sometimes, Taylor would even let down her wavy brown hair and l would attempt to braid it and even if it looked like a messy knot, she would still say that she loved it. Mom used to say that we were almost inseparable.

However, on February 19th five years ago, everything changed completely. Life started to go down the drain when Dad lost his job. Family income became a major issue and Dad started drinking uncontrollably, with a box of six bottles finished every time. Every night, the house was filled with voices of malice and anger. Laying on my bed, I always pondered what the future would hold. There were no more delightful family times as each day passed by.

With every drink, Dad started to change in a horrific manner. His once calm face and twinkling eyes twisted into a menacing snarl. Most of his hair was gone except the two patches on the sides. Every day, when Mom was gone, he would always hurt us even when we did nothing wrong. He never hurt Tristan, but anything that precious little child did wrong, Taylor and I always got the blame. Some days he would throw his beer bottles at us and others he brought out his black leather belt,  leaving permanent scars. He went after Taylor, always spitting in her face, saying that she was too weak and needed to toughen up. I tried to stop him from hurting her, but he would lash out saying if I came in the way, he would discipline her more severely. Life was miserable, but there was nothing I could do about it. It came to the point where Taylor and I plotted to run away, but we never did. We were afraid. We were scared of what the consequences of failure would be.

With many opportunities slipping away, the chances of making it out of the reality we were trapped in became slimmer and slimmer. Eventually, our idea was thrust away and swallowed up in grief and self-doubt. It merely became a hopeful fantasy, and we stayed put in an attempt to become content.

Then one day, Mom came home and said weakly that we needed to move away from our small suburban home. Trying to lighten up our spirits, she said that it would give us a new start and it would allow us to move away from our troubles. She was completely wrong. Instead, it brought a whole new mess.

I already knew something was wrong with the house when I first looked at it. The house we moved in looked like an old shack from the 1900s with four crooked windows in the front. Some of the paint was peeling off and brambles crawled up the front porch. An eerie sensation hovered in the atmosphere-it made me feel as if someone was always watching me.

When we explored inside, I noticed a disturbing room near the end of the hallway. The room was cold and pitch black. The only light filtered in from a small window near the back where a silk curtain blew gently in the wind. Much of the glass of the window was cracked by branches of the tree and a there was a hole large enough for a person to fit through. Taylor and I called it the "Empty Room" and constantly made up spooky stories. Taylor decided to move into that room, so all of her belongings were strewed about the room.

We met our neighbor, Mr. Grubbs, the following day. As a housewarming gift, he brought us a tall lamp for our house that he found no use in anymore. I couldn't help noticing his hunched back and his wandering eyes inspecting every millimeter of our house.

Since he was so kind, my mother decided to invite him over to eat dinner. Her homemade meals always made my mouth water. At the dinner table, he stared at each of us through his thick lenses with stone-cold eyes. I could feel him looking skeptically at me as if I were some kind of animal. Right then and there I decided I hated the new neighbor.

When he left, he walked slowly, re-examining the house and taking his time as if my family had nothing else to do other than serve him, so my mom began to clean the dishes, my father grabbed a Bud Light, and my siblings and I went upstairs to finish unpacking. We saw Mr. Grubbs peeking through his blinds at our house to see if he could find anything interesting. Taylor and I ran around the house closing any open curtains before returning to our rooms in privacy. "There's something odd about that neighbor," I remember my sister saying. Before long, I found myself in a deep sleep, reality coming to a close for the second day at our new house.