Nothing ever happens

Again I apologize for my typos.

The streets were empty, save for one or two cars that kicked up dust as they sped by. This place had always been a quiet town, from what I could tell. My footsteps echoed off the small, silent houses, and bouncing off the sidewalk as I went. There’s No Sympathy for the Dead, by Escape The Fate, roared in my ears, anything to fill the silence. Another small car passed tossing my hair across my face.
I wasn’t a small town boy. Never really was, but I’ve learned to love this town the few weeks I’ve lived here. Me, my two brothers, and my sister. Both our parents had died, leaving us orphaned. We were shipped here, to live with our aunt and uncle, whose children were already off to college.
I walked slowly, in no great hurry to get to what I now called home. The sun was just hardly tinting the horizon pink, It was only 6:02 and dinner didn’t start until 6:30. I stopped for a second and turn. There was an old house here. Older than the rest it seems, but it might only be the abandonment it resonated. I looked at it. The whitewash paint peeling, the door hanging on the one hinge it had left the windows either cracked or dusted, but always covered with cobwebs. It’s lawn overgrown with weeds, and vines crawling up its walls, hanging limply over the gate, now painted entirely green with foliage.
“There’s a monster in that house.” That’s what my sister whispered when we first moved here. She walked next to me, between me and my brothers. She was the youngest of us, maybe five or six and bling, but not only that she was also severely autistic. I had heard somewhere that autistics could tell things normal people couldn’t. I might have believed it then, but now... Now it all seemed so stupid.
I took a step forward, but something compelled me to stay, to simply stand there and watch. Like something interesting was happening. But nothing was. Nothing ever did in this town.
The gate creaked open. I glanced around. There was no one there. No eyes watching from across the street, no cars passing, no stragglers ambling home from school, not even the birds sang. I turned back to the gate, wondering what to do now. I stepped forward. I made my way across the overgrown walkway way, the cracked cement turned to rubble with weeds. I looked at the door perplexed. Wasn’t the hinge broken? Maybe it only seemed crooked from the street.
I halted at the door, which once looked ajar, but was clearly tightly in place. I raised my hand to knock. Just walking in seemed wrong. As I waited for an answer, I knew wasn’t coming, I noticed a small garden planted along the wall of the house. The flowers were choked with grass, but still it was there. It surprised me that they lasted so long, but I am no botanist.
I twisted the door handle slowly, and it opened with a loud squeak. I winced at the noise and stepped in side. The floorboards creaked beneath me, deafening in the silence of this town. I walked through a hallway full of older than life portraits of people I never knew, into an old living room, with actual victorian furniture. The wood so carefully carved, now faded and worn. A rug that must have been beautiful once, now was moth eaten and rotted. The creaking had stopped, maybe I had gotten used to it, Instead it was replaced with voices.
“I told you Thomas! No more!” A women. No. A girl yelled from somewhere in the house. I followed the echos.
“Dare you defy me girl!” A man shouted back. The echoes rattled my skull, but still I searched. There was a loud twack. It sounded so painful, that even I winced, and I wasn’t there to see it. I expected to hear crying, more yelling maybe, but what came was nothing. Only silence. I couldn’t bring myself to wonder what people were doing here. In such a run down house. The though never came to my dazed mind. I found the source of the voices in the dining room. The colors here were so bright. So vivid. The paintings of a thanksgiving cornucopia over filled with fruits, so full of detail compared to the rest of the house. The small chandelier gave dim light over a mahogany dinner table. In the middle of the room stood a girl, maybe my age, maybe older, dressed in a long white dress that swept the floor, and beautiful blonde curls that cascaded down her back. The other was a man, with peppering hair, dressed in slacks and trousers of the same brown and a burnt orange vest, with a black tie.
The girl’s cheek was red, her eyes watering from the sting of the man’s slap, but she didn’t back down. She stood proud and defiant.
“I said ENOUGH Thomas! My child deserves no father the likes of you.” She spat out those words with spite and vile poisoning each one as they left her lips. It became clear that her stomach was bulging. There was a knife on the table when I had walked in. I had disappeared. A flash of silver. No. It had jumped to the girls hand. It had slashed open the man’s throat. He fell to his knees, the girl above him, staining her long white dress.
I turned away from the scene. The screams had faded, but still I was terrified to look again. My attention was caught again, by a beautiful voice, singing the most beautiful song. I followed the voice, the melody and whisked away my worries. The words that lulled me to peace. I found myself outside a bedroom. The girl sat on the edge of the bed, maybe a few years older now. Moonlight fell into the room, casting silver light over the bed sheets. The sun had long since disappeared.
“There, there child. Now hush, go to sleep.” She cooed stroking back the hair of a young girl perhaps the age of my sister.
“Is something wrong Mama?” the girl asked, her voice tired, but concerned.
“No Dear. Shush now.” But the little girl showed no signs of falling asleep. “You have beautiful eyes. Eyes just like your father.” Those beautiful brown eyes slowly drifted closed, “Just like your father.”
“What are you doing here?” I heard someone scream from a corner of the room. I spun sharply. There sat the young woman, in the corner huddled besides a dresser. In her arms she clutched her daughter tightly to her chest. But something seemed off about the little girl now. Her long black hair, like her mother’s cascaded elegantly down her back. Her fair skin was grey-blue in the moonlight. She stared blankly at the wall. No. She didn’t stare. She couldn’t. Her beautiful brown eyes had gone. Scooped out by her mother’s own bloodied hands. Her empty sockets dripped with blood, as though she were crying, crying and crying. The red liquid stained her cheeks like rouge. I took a step back before the woman screamed again. “Why have you come back here?”
It took me sometime to register, but I saw it now. She was looking straight at me. I stumbled back again, unsure what to say, do, my limbs were on the verge of being paralyzed.
“I told you no more Tomas! NO MORE!” She screams were edged with hysteria. No. Insanity.
“Thomas?” I said half to myself. “Thomas is dead. You killed him.” My voice was shaky, as shaky and unsure as my legs, my knees trembling, threatening to give out. The woman got to her feet. I heard the sickening thud as she dropped her daughter limply to the floor. She took a lurching step towards me.
“Leave this place Thomas.” She growled. “This child is yours no longer.” She snarled, more beast than human.
“I’m not who you think.” I try to reason, knowing there’s no hope. “My name is David. Not Thomas.”
“You are here to haunt me Thomas?” She asked, almost innocently, as though my first words were finally dawning on her. “What for? I was only doing what was best for our daughter. I didn’t want Loretta growing like the others. With a drunkard father like you.” She emphasized each sentence with another jerking step. Her back hunched, like she were baring some great weight. “What of your wife? Did Annabel know? Of corse not.” She let out a high, shrill, maniacal laugh. I noticed black smearing her face. The blood wasn’t just on her hands. It was all over cheeks, her lips. Oh God. Oh God did her-? She ate them. She ate the eyes. I nearly doubled over. I nearly wretched, but she was coming at me.
I darted out the door as fast as my unsteady legs would carry me. Bile burned my throat, my eyes watered as I fought to keep it down.
“Run. Run boy. You don’t belong here. A monster lives in this house.” A voice sang. That voice. The girl. “Hurry back to your home, boy. Run. Run. She comes for you. Quick to your family boy. They call your name.”
I ran. And as I ran I watched the house deteriorate with every step I took. I watched paint on the wall crack and peel. I watched the floorboards beneath me rot away. I watched as cob webs formed, as paintings faded, but not before the people they portrayed jumped out of their frames. Their eyes disappearing as they ran after me, snatching at my clothes. A ghastly figure, all skin and bones, grabbed my ankle with gnarled fingers, bringing me to the ground. A feel a stray splinter of wood slice my cheek, and I turn to my attacker. The woman, now old, her once blonde hair, white, her once beautiful face wrinkled and snarled. I kicked at her. I kicked that old growling face.
She let out a horrifying scream of pain, that crawled under my skin and poisoned my blood. I struggled to my feet and stumbled away quickly, only on the edge of my balance. I threw open the hanging door, it’s single hinge squeaked, and the other hung limply, rusted away from the rotted frame. I heard the door slam shut crookedly into the frame, but dared not look behind me until I reached the safety of the sidewalk.
I turned around slowly, to the old house. Older than the rest it seems, but it might only be the abandonment it resonated. I looked at it. The whitewash paint peeling, the door hanging on the one hinge it had left the windows either cracked or dusted, but always covered with cobwebs. It’s lawn overgrown with weeds, and vines crawling up its walls, hanging limply over the gate, now painted entirely green with foliage.
“You hear the sounds, they're carried out. there's no sympathy for the dead. it swells and I, was never the same. there's no sympathy for the dead.” Ronnie Radke sings. I pause my iPod, returning to the silence of this small town. Returning to serenity and peace, but my heart pounds sharply against my chest. I check the time. 6:02.
I turn and head back home thinking of that little girl, only Lori’s age. Lori. Little Loretta. I bite my tongue as I push open the front door.
“Anything happen today David?” My uncle asked. His usual greeting. I glanced at my sister scribbling with her crayons, long black hair falling cascading down her back, her beautiful brown eyes watching carefully as if she could see.
“You know this town Uncle. Nothing ever happens.” I answer casually wiping blood from my cheek.