Sam and Colby: The House

19

"From our direct interactions, it seemed like Ed was a cool guy. Didn't seem mean or awful or distorted at all. I lived on the same street as him. I was too young to remember his mom, but I had to be about ten or so when they finally caught him. I remember all of it so clearly. Maybe that's why I haven't been able to leave this town, because I'm scared that in a new place there will be new monsters.

"I had been down at the hardware store the morning he was taken into custody. I was looking to buy some plywood for the treehouse I was building with a few of my buddies. I went in and didn't see any workers, so I called for my mom. She came down to the store to see what was going on and I'll never forget the scream that came out of her mouth when she came in.

"I'd missed it somehow, the blood all over the floors and the checkout counter, the cash register drawer open and empty. I heard her call out my name and I came running up to the front of the store to see her completely frozen in fear, her limbs rigid and shaking. She didn't say anything, just kept screaming and yelling my name. I didn't know what to do, so I ran out into the street and screamed for help. The sheriff was just down the street. He walked into the store and I expected him to help out my mother, but he did just about the same thing she did. He froze too, started hollering and running throughout the store frantically. Later I learned that he'd been the son of the hardware store owner that Ed had abducted and killed.

"That night, the police came and took him away. My mother made me stay in my room and wouldn't let me read the paper or watch the news because she didn't want me to know what had happened. I understand now that she was just trying to protect me, but my ten-year-old self didn't see that just yet. A couple days after he was taken away, my buddies and I decided to break into his house to see if he had any cool stuff to put into that treehouse.

"We snuck in the back, completely ignoring the police caution tape posted all around the place. We went around with our flashlights in the middle of the night. The place was a complete mess. A few rooms were completely barricaded off, so we stayed away from those. But the living rooms and bedrooms were completely trashed, stuff thrown everywhere and trash on the ground. We sorted through the stuff for about an hour before we got too scared to stay any longer. My buddy grabbed a pair of gloves on the way out since we never found anything. We didn't think much of it, just threw them in the stack of everything else we were planning to bring up there.

"A few months after the treehouse was finished, my mom came up to bring me and my buddies some snacks. She saw the gloves and started asking about them. I've never been much for lying, so I broke down and told her we got them from the House of Horrors. That's what it's called around here. She brought them down to the police station and they were bagged as evidence. You know what those gloves were?

"Human skin. Those gloves we wore sometimes and played around in ended up being crafted from human hands that had been peeled apart. Ed stitched them together and liked to wear them around the house along with his masks. Needless to say, I wasn't allowed down by that house until I moved out and my mother no longer had a say in where I went and what I did.

"There's some pretty crazy stories and some really disturbing things about that house and that man. But let me be the first to tell you that there were genuinely no warning signs. That man was more or less my neighbor for the first ten years of my life. He always said hi when I rode by on my bike, had nice manners when I saw him in the grocery store and at restaurants. Hell, he even brought my dog home once when she ran away. Bottom line here is that everyone's got some problems, deep down. The man was nice enough, just had some deep rooted issues that he clearly had no damn clue how to handle.

"If you're spending time there, be real careful. I'm not one for ghosts and whatnot, but there's some serious weird voodoo vibes in that place. Make sure you aren't going in there alone. That place could drive anyone crazy," Paul said. He sat up from his hunched over position on the table's top and leaned back into his chair.

"There's a lot of folks here with different stories and ideas of the place. But I promise you that very few of those stories are going to be as true or credible as mine. Feel free to use that footage," Paul said, pointing toward the camera that Colby had angled at him. "But only if you kids make me a promise."

"Yeah, of course. Anything," I said.

"Be careful and don't go in alone," replied Paul.

"Don't worry, she's not going anywhere by herself," said Colby, resting his hand on my thigh.

"Not just her. You too. And anyone else you go with," said Paul. "And I mean it."