Tales of Horror

I Have Always Lived in the House at 1348 Black River Road

I was born in this moment. I watched you enter my home and walk slowly through the empty rooms, the empty halls. You dragged your hand slowly along the wall, letting your finger tips bump over door frames and the small holes in some of the plaster. You are wondering, why has this house been empty for so long? Your eyes roved over the floral wallpaper, narrowed at a stain on the hardwood floors, and wondered what could have caused that. The house at 1348 Black River road has many secrets.

As you meandered slowly through the house, I aged. I grew into a fully formed being, I stretched my limbs and rolled my joints. And you stopped in what had once been a bedroom. It was a room with a large picture window that looked out into the backyard, towards the dark flowing waters of the river. A small smile formed on your lips as you approached the window. A floorboard squeaked under your right foot, but you paid it no mind; it is an old house, after all. You looked over the back yard, your gaze settling on the massive , two hundred year old oak tree along the river bank. You did not notice the remnants of a rope, looped over a high branch. The frayed end of it swung limply in the breeze.

But as you looked over the yard, your smile faded. Why did the grass look so...gray? All of the branches on the trees seemed to be huddled to one side, as if trying to pull away from the house itself, reaching towards the black waters of the river instead. Why were those waters so much more inviting?

The first blows of old age are beginning to pock my flesh. I open my mouth to speak but only the groaning creak of an old floor board escapes my lips. You are startled, and turn to really look at the room, for the first time. You cock your head as something catches your eye, and you cross the room. A decrepit, empty book case leans against the wall, and you push it an inch or so to the left. Carved into a section of the wall that had been partially obscured by the book case, is a name. You stare at it, and I hear your breath hitch in your throat. I am so close to you. I am breathing the same air as you. I am feeling the heat radiating off of your back. I am feeling your...fear.

It is your name, of course. Carved into the wall. Anna. I suppose that must be your name. It is always your name. You reach out, and touch the jagged edges of the lettering. As you do, my spine is bending, curling in on itself. My chest is liquidy, and tight. I gasp in a deep breath, and it gushes right back out. You whirl at the sensation of wind against your neck, shuffling the baby hairs at the bottom of your scalp.

You do not know about the many, many lives I have lived in this house. Your fear is becoming a tangible miasma. Why has this house been empty for so long? You take a step forward, then another one. Then you are running, winding through the halls. As you run, my neck jerks to the side, cracks, and it is the sound of a slamming door, somewhere deep within the house. I am chasing you through the house because I have always lived here, and yet I can never escape in time. And neither can you.

Why are you so afraid? You aren't sure, but the specter of death in this house is unmistakable. I feel it to. Death is closing in on me, tangling around my ankles, pooling in the hollows of my collar bones.

You see a door ahead, and light is pouring through the cracks. Relief floods through you, filling you with that warm, safe feeling, a feeling that is a lie. You burst through the door, and you stop. I am behind you. I am gasping for air, and it sounds like a creaking floorboard. You are back in the same room. It is your name carved into the wall, and now you see the rope on the branch of the oak tree that is swaying lazily in the wind, and now it is too late. A new feeling settles in your bones. You cross the room, but stop as the floor creaks beneath your steps.

I am dying. I was born mere moments ago, but each moment is a lifetime. I am the wind against the back of your neck, the tight feeling in your chest. I am the door that slams deep within a house, and the floorboard that creaks beneath your feet. I am the feeling that tells you to leave, and I have always lived in this house.

You kneel down and feel along the edge of the floorboard that creaks, and you begin to pull it up. It is loose, and old, and it does not take much for it to pop out of its place.

This is how I begin to rot.

You have felt the small holes in the walls of this house, you have seen the dark stains along the edges of the floor. You have seen the rope that sways in the wind, and now you have seen what lies beneath the floorboards. The house at 1348 Black River road has many secrets, but you are slowly beginning to see them for what they are: fear, and death, and lies upon lies. It was, after all, your name that was carved into the wall. It was always meant to be you that would kill me.

I have always lived in this house. I was born when you entered, and now I am sinking, rotting, decomposing back into the house, where I will be born again.