What Lies Beneath

Chapter Thirty-Six: Lost and Found

The house watched silently as all its' inhabitants moved about with all their different agendas. If houses could laugh, it would, but sadly all it could do was watch in silence, for now. It only had to wait for the last three to arrive before the real fun could begin.

Oh, and what fun it would be. It had been a long time since it had been able to indulge in the souls of the forgotten.

Joe didn't know where he was. It was almost as if he had been transported into a black and white picture movie like his father used to make him watch when he was young. Only instead of a silly and predictable story line he was back at the house. He didn't know how he had gotten there, only that he was somehow standing outside of the large entryway that he had left the girl from his taxi standing in front of.

He tried to push the door open, but it wouldn't budge. That's when the screaming started. It sounded like it was coming from deep within the house, but no matter how hard he pushed against the solid barricade, it never moved. Joe didn't know what to do. He had never been in a situation like this. His mind was racing with so many different possibilities, but still none of them would get him inside where he needed to be.

With a half-hearted attempt, he slammed his fist against the blockade one last time and then fell onto the old wood porch in a heap.

"Are you alright?" Joe jumped at the sound of a young boy's voice. He slowly raised his head to see who it was only to be confronted with the boyish face of his father.

"Dad?" Joe stared at his father incredulously.

"Perhaps, but not at the moment." His father said with a wry expression. Joe's father had always been like this. Quick to spouting out riddles, but never as quick when it came to answering them.

"How is this happening? Am I dead?" Joe didn't think that he'd died, but with all the crazy things that had been happening lately, he did not feel as though this was out of the realm of possibilities.

"Not dead, just asleep. We needed to talk."

"Talk about what?"

"This house. Why you feel the need to investigate it. The reason that you are currently lying unconscious on a strange man's couch right now. Or perhaps why you haven't met someone and gotten hitched yet. Take your pick." His father continued to smile at him as he spoke, but Joe could see the concern clearly displayed within his father's eyes.

"I- I dropped this girl off here a few nights ago and ever since then, I haven't been able to stop thinking about this place and what it means. Then this other kid, Paul showed up at my apartment and told me all this stuff and gave Bobby the address of the second richest guy in Connecticut. I figured that it was all connected and then I saw this photo of you in front of the house with six other people. Why is this happening dad? How are we connected to that house?" Joe had many more questions for his father, but he didn't know how much time they had, so he needed to ask the most pertinent ones right off the bat.

"My father took me to that house when I was a very young boy. My mother had just passed away and he was in search of work with his best friend Tom. One day when they were in a local tavern a man posted a help wanted ad. It was a job working on his house to which he would provide free room and board as payment. It was a great deal so they both decided to go for it. I didn't really think too much about it at the time, but it was a cool house and there was a beautiful girl living there on the property. She was the owner's daughter and I loved her very much. Then the incident happened, and we had to leave. I never went back to that house while I was alive, but it's so different after. It calls to us. It needs us. All of us. It will never let us go. Stay away Joe. Stay away for as long as you can." With that, Joe's father vanished like fog being blown away in the wind.