Out of the Darkness

38

 She stared at me for a second, folded her lips inside her mouth tightly, then sighed. "You're kind of bomb, you know that?" I know that confusion crossed my face, a smile also spread across my lips. "I'm kind of bomb?" I repeated. She laughed and nodded. "Yeah. You're also kind of a dork, but you're a hella cute dork." I couldn't help laughing as I watched her turn her head in embarrassment. "You're kind of bomb too," I replied, grinning at her. She didn't reply, but I swear if she were alive, she would've been blushing and that was adorable. We started up the research again, but this time it was on the history of the house. I went over the same things that Sam and I had learned when we planned the trip there. "I already know all of this..." I muttered, scanning through the page. "Wait," I said, knowing that I had to dig deeper. "The witch. Everyone says it's the Witch's House, but does anyone know her name? Maybe we can figure out where and when the legend started." I typed into my Google search bar and scrolled through the links that popped up. "Here, maybe," I muttered, concentrating only on my screen. "The Witch's House has many dark stories attached to it, as well as many recorded disappearances. I'm entitled to believe there are many more that were not recorded. It starts way back in 1695, a few years after the infamous Salem Witch trials. This was about 200 years before California even became a US territory, even though there were some Europeans breaking ground here. The legend says that there was an old woman who lived in this wooden cabin. No one knows if she was European, Native American, or anything about her nationality. There are recorded incidences of some saying she was a Caucasian woman, while others say she was Native American. Still others claim that she could've been some other nationality. Her nationality wasn't the only thing that changed throughout the responses. Her age seemed to differ as well. Sometimes, she was seen as this frail old woman with a glare as cold as ice. Others saw her as a welcoming young lady, with alabaster skin. They always saw her in the same place however. The lake behind the wooden cabin. She would be walking the property, humming to herself, as she picked herbs, mushrooms, and other random items. The local children took to spying on her for a thrill in their mundane lives. They claimed that she would sit on the grass, with a pewter and grinder, then mix the random ingredients together while she started to chant something with her tune. It's been said that one young lady caught her eyes while she was chanting and felt electricity and cold wash through her body. The young woman, terrified, screamed and ran back through the woods to her own home. Once she told her parents what had happened, the adults in the area became suspicious of the weird woman who lived by the lake. Other children started telling their parents what they had experienced or seen while watching the witch, as she was called now. Everything from sharp pains their legs, darkness covering their eyes, irrational fear stopping them in their tracks, to so many more claimed incidents. One sad day, a young girl, by the name of Allison Johannsen, never came back from her task of gathering nuts and berries for dinner that night. Her parents began to worry when night fell and she was still missing. A search party was gathered to hopefully find the young girl. What they found devastated the entire town, but her parents most of all. The young girl's basket was found on the edge of the lake, close to the back of the Witch's House. Her father banged on the door, demanding for her to open up. The old woman, as her image was then, opened the door and smiled at them all evilly. When Allison's parents accused the witch of having their daughter, she laughed and laughed. "Your daughter is here, but you will never find her," the Witch claimed. "She's mine now." The council of the small inhabited area decided to confront the woman on her witchcraft, and judge her for her actions. They sentenced her to death by hanging, as was the way of execution then. She laughed the entire time, claiming that they would never be able to stop her. She was immortal and she would come for all of the town's children for years to come. "I will feed upon their souls and no one will be able to stop me," she screamed before the trap door was released from under her feet, silencing her and taking her life. Or so the towns people thought. Things were quiet for a while, a few months maybe, but then then the children started to disappear. No one knew what was happening, until one child came forward and said that it was a dare. A game to see who was the bravest of them all and could get closest to the Witch's home. He claimed that they would disappear as soon as they stepped a foot onto her porch. The property wasn't overgrown yet but you could tell that it was abandoned. They knew that the witch wasn't alive any longer, so they assumed that a homeless person, or native had found their way to the home and decided to claim it as their own. The adults of the town gathered and went to investigate the property. There were cobwebs inside the old place, and rotten food in the old icebox. It looked like it had been vacant for a very long time. There was no indication that anyone had been here since the witch had died. They did find something, however. Something that chilled them to the bone. A doll. A single doll. A doll who had Allison's blue eyes, and blond hair. It was also wearing the same dress that Allison had been wearing when she disappeared." I noticed that the little arrow on the screen was shaking, so I glanced at my hand that held the mouse. It was trembling. "Can we just take a break from research for a while? I kind of want to, like, just chill," Anna whispered, turning away from the computer screen. I nodded. "Yeah, that's fine. I think I'm actually going to go hang out downstairs for a little while with my friends. Clear my head, ya know?" I saw the light in her eyes dim a little, but she smiled and nodded. "Okay, I guess I'll be here. Living my ghost life, doing ghostly things." I grinned at her, but it didn't reach my eyes. "I'll be back soon. Here, you can watch YouTube."