Michael Makenda wanted our house from the start.
It was a nice house. Three stories, four bedrooms, two bathrooms and a roomy garage. The house was not cheap to buy at all, despite the rumour surrounding it.
It was the most generic rumour I had ever heard. A woman named Lizzy poisoning herself in the kitchen a long time ago when she couldn’t afford the house anymore, but she loved it too much to ever part with it. Her boyfriend buried her body under the house, as she requested, and of course now her ghost was supposed to haunt the house, and hurt anyone who tried to hurt it.
It was Michael Makenda who first told me and my sister the rumour. I rolled my eyes at him. “There’s no such thing as ghosts.” I said. My sister Jasmine elbowed me. She’s really into the supernatural and ghosts and paranormal activity and all that, and I think she’s even written a few creepy stories herself.
Michael Makenda was a grown man living in another part of Blackthorne, the town we had moved into, and his house was falling apart at the seams. Mould and bugs everywhere, even on the outside. He’d always wanted our house, even though it cost more money than he could ever hope to have. And he’d cornered us on the street and told us this story.
Michael smiled at us. It was not a nice smile. “That’s what they all say in horror movies.” he said. “And then the poor person who didn’t believe is always the first to go.”
“I really do wanna see a ghost.” Jasmine said. She was only nine. Michael rolled his eyes at us and walked away, yelling over his shoulder something about how the ghost would probably be the last thing we’d ever see.
I took Jasmine’s hand and walked back to our house. The house Michael was so jealous of.
…….
The first hoax came next morning. Mom came downstairs and found a bunch of notes plastered all over the walls, all saying the same thing.
“Get out of my house.”
Mom, of course, screamed, and Dad and us came down to see what had happened. Jasmine was excited as anything upon seeing all the notes, but now I was determined to catch Michael Makenda in the act. This wasn’t just house jealousy anymore. This was breaking and entering.
“But what if it’s not him, Daniel?” asked Jasmine that night. “What if it really is Lizzy?”
“It’s not Lizzy.” I said. “And I’m gonna prove it.”
Looking back, I don’t know why I was so desperate to prove it myself without any help from Mom or Dad. Too many years of media where the kid saves the day while the adults do nothing, I guess.
…….
I thought I would catch the second hoax.
I’d set up my phone to record Michael breaking into the house, but when we came downstairs in the morning the battery was dead. And it turned out to be doubly pointless, since this hoax wasn’t even downstairs.
When Mom and Dad opened their bedroom door in the morning, a bucket of red paint fell on them, Carrie-style. And of course we kids got the blame. And that’s when I actually told them about Michael Makenda.
The next thing I knew, we were all over at his house confronting him, but of course he played innocent and pretended he didn’t know a thing about the whole affair. But me and Jasmine, we knew better. Well, maybe not Jasmine, but I sure knew better.
And I was going to catch him and expose this wannabe Scooby-Doo villain.
(Meanwhile, me and Jasmine were grounded until ‘one of us fessed up’ to the paint crime.
…….
The night of the third hoax, I was patrolling the house when I happened to bump into Jasmine doing the exact same thing.
“Jasmine!” I hissed at her. “What are you doing?”
She rolled her eyes at me. “Trying to catch Lizzy, duh! What are YOU doing here?”
“Trying to catch Michael.” I said. “Duh.”
“It’s not him!” said Jasmine. “Didn’t you hear him today? it’s Lizzy doing this!”
“There’s no such thing as ghosts, Jasmine!” I practically yelled. “He’s breaking into our house and doing this!”
We argued for a while and went back to our rooms in a huff.
Unfortunately, due to the barbed wire around the doorways, we couldn’t enter, and were caught by Mom and Dad in the morning.
I was hating Michael more day by day.
…….
The next day after school, I went around to his house and thought ‘two can play at this game.’
I went into Michael’s house and found a tin of red paint, a roll of barbed wire, and an empty notepad.
There were more items too. A bottle of bleach. Boxes of dirt. Knives.
But the one that really caught my attention was the animatronic.
A big corpse-like animatronic wearing a flowing white dress stood front and center in the whole mess. It was distinctly a woman rotting away, with mould and bugs and bone showing everywhere.
And I knew just what he planned to use it for.
I hadn’t really had a plan to begin with. I just wanted to break into his house and do something to him. What that ‘something’ was, I didn’t know.
But as I stared mesmerized at this rotting woman, I completely forgot where I was in the first place until Michael came home.
I was grounded even further, and nobody listened to me when the next day there was bleach all over the floor. The fourth hoax. Even Mom and Dad were starting to slightly believe the ghost story by now.
…….
The fifth hoax was what I like to call the ‘buried alive’ one.
The house was filled with dirt, top to bottom.
I convinced Jasmine to come with me to confront Michael about it and all he said was, “Lizzy’s trying to bury you, just like how she is buried. She wants you gone.”
But I saw the twinkle in his eye.
And thankfully, Jasmine saw it too.
…….
At the sixth hoax, Mom and Dad, I think, didn’t care whether it was really a ghost or not. They just wanted out, and I think I would have reacted much the same had I woken up and found the floor littered with knives and cut my foot.
Oh, wait. That happened to me, too. It happened to all of us.
Sorry for the sarcasm, but this wasn’t just annoying at this point. It was flat-out dangerous.
And Jasmine and I agreed.
Whether ghost or human, we were going to catch this thing in the act, once and for all.
…….
What would have been the seventh hoax ended up being a night I’ll never forget, and not for the same reasons as the previous six nights.
Me and Jasmine split up patrolling the house, as we had done on the third night, except this time we were working together.
I heard Jasmine let out a scream in the kitchen, and ran to her.
And there he was, Michael Makenda. Setting up the animatronic of the rotting woman in the kitchen.
I pulled out my phone, which I’d had with me just in case, and took a photo. He just stared at us with an odd smile on his face.
And then he grabbed a carving-knife out of the block on the kitchen table, walking toward us with it. Jasmine screamed again (Mom and Dad were really heavy sleepers), and I was ready to run out of the room to get Mom and Dad when…
The knife flew out of his hand and embedded itself in his foot. He muffled his own scream.
Suddenly at the same moment, the animatronic corpse-lady came to life, and slowly started walking toward him with its arms outstretched.
And next to us, me and Jasmine noticed someone else too.
A woman next to us, with short hair and jeans. But what was odd about this woman was that she was…entirely transparent.
I’ve heard the saying don’t trust your eyes before, but for some reason I couldn’t help but trust them now.
She, like the animatronic, began advancing on Michael Makenda, who began mindlessly banging the window he was next to in an attempt to escape.
The transparent woman pointed to the door, indicating for us to leave, and we went back to bed.
…….
When we woke up, the house was completely ordinary.
No animatronics. No ghosts. No Michael.
I could almost feel the relief coming from Mom and Dad.
Me and Jasmine, we were just shocked.
I knew Michael was responsible.
And Jasmine knew there was a ghost in the house.
Neither of us, though, had suspected we were both right.
…….
They say if you stay in the kitchen of our house long enough on certain nights, you’ll see an old man banging on the window. He is banging because there are two women in the room with him, both of whom want to get him. They are advancing on him. He is terrified.
One of the women is rotting away and wearing a white gown. The other woman is wearing jeans and a T-shirt and has short hair, and an unspeakably angry expression.
She hurts anyone who tries to hurt the house.