The Creeps! || Book of Spooky Stories (COMPLETED ✔️)

58 ~ Something Is Wrong

(ORIGINAL FROM THE CREEPYPASTA APP... SERIOUSLY GUYS, YOU SHOULD DOWNLOAD IT, IT'S REALLY COOL.)
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Five long years had passed since I had seen any of my cousins. The last I time I saw them was when I was only eight years old. I had skipped gaily around their little house, singing my favorite songs and playing games with the six year old twins. This playtime, however, was consistently tainted by the gloomy presence of my Aunt Clarissa, who always used to scare me as a child. With her sharp chin and stormy eyes, she seemed the perfect flesh and blood representation of a living witch.

My Aunt Clarissa was always a perfectionist, a taskmaster who held onto the firm belief that everything in her life should be perfect or as close to perfect as humanly possible. She cared so much about faultlessness that you would’ve thought the whole world would be thrown out of orbit if something in her life were to go wrong.

The one thing my aunt cared about the most was her children: the two little angels who kept her heart beating and air pumping in and out of her lungs. As such, she was incredibly protective of them. Whenever I would try to play tag, hide and seek, monkey in the middle, or anything of the sort really, she would be hovering over us, with her dark grey eyes flashing.

She would always say, “Now, Jared, don’t you ever play too rough with Simon or Eloise. If anything ever were to happen to them, I’d wear you out.”

I always tried to dismiss these threats as being nothing but empty. My own aunt, frightening though she was, wouldn’t dare to put a hand against me when my own mother was also present in the house? Would she? One way or another, I never dared to find out. I always managed to tread lightly when cavorting with my cousins, for fear of what my Aunt Clarissa might do.

I also had an Uncle Wayne, but he was often overwhelmed with his work as a businessman, and it was rare that he would descend from his office to be in our company. He was a shy man who seldom spoke, but had a great bellowing laugh that broke free whenever he found something humorous. There are only wisps of memory that I can recall of him, such as him donning his head when it came time to say a prayer before we ate, or the way he always used to absentmindedly rub his stubble when he was deep in thought.

My family and I used to visit our cousins all the time back at my old house. We lived only thirty minutes apart from each other, and so it was often that we dropped by, if only to say hello and catch up on the goings on in life. Then my dad got a job offer in Virginia, and it was a long time before my family or I set foot in North Carolina, let alone the miniscule town of New London.

I do remember feeling happy, at the very least, for my Aunt Clarissa as we left, despite my disliking her. She was about to have another child, and her happiness had reached a peak that I didn’t even know existed. Her eyes weren't as stormy as they usually were the last time we went to visit to say goodbye, and she seemed unusually content. Three was the perfect number. Three perfect children; this was all Aunt Clarissa had ever wanted.

We all moved to Norfolk, and eight months later the big news came. Aunt Clarissa had delivered her baby. She sent us a letter fueled with obvious excitement for her newborn, who she had named Mallory. Now I’m thirteen years old and I still remember thinking of how odd it was that Aunt Clarissa hadn’t sent us a photograph of her infant child.

The years whisked by like sand in wind, and the more time went by, the less contact we had with our cousins, Aunt Clarissa, and my Uncle Wayne. Then, finally, we were invited over to their house for the holidays. My mother, who missed her older sister dreadfully, readily agreed to visit, and my father, seeing how eager my mother was, consented a weekend long stay.

After a daylong car trip, we finally got to the familiar residence of my aunt, uncle, and their three children. We all approached the steps, laughing and talking amongst ourselves before my father reached the door and knocked. There was no immediate response. A full minute later we were still standing there awkwardly, fidgeting and stealing glances at each other.