I never wanted to move away from my house. The warm comfort of my home was a feeling I’d never experience anywhere else. Due to high crime levels in the area, everybody agreed it’d be safer to move to a more isolated, suburban area, away from the urban city infested with crime.
My father purchased an old, run down home that had been abandoned for years, for 67 grand USD. It was the definition of a ghost house. You looked up haunted houses on google, and this house would be on the front cover. Anyway, despite its blighted appearance, it was a spacious house with 2 floors and over 4 bedrooms, all of which needed renovation of course.
We all stayed at a motel which was located about 4 miles away from the new house, and my father and a few of his comrades would begin the renovation tomorrow morning. I was eager to explore this new house. I mean, it is what we gave up our old house for after all, might as well have a look at the whole place, so he agreed to let me tag along.
The following day, my father and I arrived at the new house at 5:32 am, and his comrades were set to arrive a couple hours later. I began walking through the main hall. There were layers of dust engulfing the floors, and a thick grainy atmosphere which washed through the house like a wave. I went from the kitchen, which looked like a liminal space, to the living room, where the atmosphere was less dense than the main hall. The living room had a cold, burnt out fireplace that probably hasn’t been lit for decades, and large cobwebs hanging from the ceiling. What stood out the most from this room, however, was a huge, dark brown stain that was almost as big as the room itself. This would surely need a lot of scrubbing, which I was not excited for.
I continued into a bedroom. I immediately wanted this one because it had a large window and was very spacious. I continued into some bathrooms, nothing was out of the ordinary from what you would expect from an abandoned house. However, on the second floor, I noticed that there was a cut out piece of wood stuck on the ceiling of a hallway with some string hanging from the end. I jumped up and grasped the string and pulled it as I fell back down. The string pulled the wood piece out, which revealed to be a trapdoor looking thing, and a wooden ladder slid down from the hole it revealed. I climbed up into the attic, and turned on my phone’s flashlight.
The atmosphere here was even thicker than it was anywhere else. It was near pitch black, and it felt like summer. Despite the terrible weather conditions, the attic was relatively empty apart from vents, and old broken machines that probably didn’t do anything anymore. I walked around the area, and I found an old cardboard box. It was poorly sealed with blue masking tape, which was turning brown due to the dust that covered the box. I blew some of the dust off, which revealed writing on the blue tape. It read “07.18.01”. I ripped off the tape, and I found a bunch of old polaroid photographs. Most of these images contained a man and woman who appeared to be in their mid 20s. I saw that they all had writing on the back. “Kaylee 18th birthday” “1st trip to Disneyworld” “Busch Gardens trip” These were images of a couple’s life. I kept digging out all of the photographs. I found about 3 letters that were written from the girl to the guy, which I stuffed in my pocket for later. Finally, at the bottom of the box, I found a black box buried at the bottom of the box. It was an old VHS tape that read “Together forever”. Part of me just thought it was just a video of them doing something together that really showed that they were, indeed, together forever. A marriage, perchance? Part of me wanted to just leave the tape alone, but another part of me really wanted to see what was on it, so I took it with me and left the attic. After we left the house, I went to my dad and asked him if I could have the room I saw earlier. He said yes.
Because the motel only had cable, I had to go to a nearby antique shop to purchase a VHS player. Tiny bells jingled as I pushed the door of the shop open, and the smell of old books and leather instantly inundated my nostrils. At the front desk there was an elderly lady with large circular glasses, white puffy hair, and a warm smile. I walked up with confidence and greeted the lady.
“Good afternoon”.
“Well hello there young man. I’m Mrs. Wilson. What can I help you with?”
“I’m looking for a VHS player. Do you have one of those?”
“I think we have one of those around here somewhere. Let me take a look. Follow me”.
She slowly walked out from the desk and led me through the shop. Shelves stacked with old books and unopened records and antiques extended from the ground to the ceiling. She slowly turned right and began walking into one of the shelf passageways which contained old electronics and loose wires which probably didn’t work anymore. My hopes were low. She began digging through the old electronics, and carefully dug out a black slab which I assumed to be the VHS player.
“Ah, they don’t make them like these anymore” She stated, with a reminiscent chuckle.
I walked out of the shop with the VHS player, and headed straight to the motel. I entered the room, and my mother was nowhere to be seen. She probably went to get groceries. Anyway, I connected the VHS player to the television, and I inserted the tape. It slowly began to play, and it was not what I expected. It started with a man driving on the road late at night. He could be heard breathing heavily and sniffling. This went on for about a minute, until he pulled up into the driveway of a house. He got out of his car and slammed the door harshly, as if furious at something. He walked up to the front door and began pounding on the door while shouting “Kaylee! Open this door!” and I could hear the shaky voice of a woman responding with non-compliance. This definitely wasn’t what I expected. I remembered I had the letters in my pocket and began to unfold them and read them. The first one read
“Marcus,
you really need to stop behaving the way you are, alright? It is immature, and it shows that you aren’t ready for a relationship. These things, they happen, and the way you are reacting to them is completely unacceptable. I love you and all, but you need to figure things out. Get back to me when you’re feeling better.”
I began reading the second one.
“Kaylee, listen to me. These things don’t happen on their own, I think there is someone making you think this way. We were so happy, we went on trips, we had good times, nothing was wrong. You don’t just suddenly lose feelings for someone, not when our relationship is this high. I love you so so much, and I am not gonna let you go. Not now. We are too far to go back now. I can’t allow it. Please just come back home”.
I started building ideas on who these people were. Meanwhile, the shouting turned to yelling, and the pounding only got louder on the television. I unfolded the 3rd letter.
“Marcus,
I want you to understand, okay? I know you don’t want to go back, I get it, but I just don’t feel the same way for you the way I did all those years ago. The spark just turned off, and there’s nothing either of us can do about it anymore. This little thing we had going on, it ended. A long time ago. I am ready to move on and find somebody new, and frankly, so should you. The only time I will return to your house is tomorrow night to get the last of my stuff, and then it’s done. Okay?”
I was invested into this. It was like a drama series that you had to piece together. However, the last letter shook me.
“I can’t move on, Kaylee. You’re all I have. I have absolutely nobody else. I cannot allow you to do this. I won’t allow you to do this. We are meant to be, and I will not let you change that for either of us”.
There wasn’t a response letter from Kaylee, so she probably didn’t see it. I feared for what might’ve happened, and debated whether I should finish the VHS tape. However, I was too far in now, and was too late to go back, so I redirected my attention back to the television, where the shouting had stopped, and the man, now that I knew was named Marcus, was wandering around the sides of the house, and found a window that was slightly open, which he slid open completely and crawled in. He stood up, and faced Kaylee, who was at the end of the hallway with a terrified expression on her face.
“Marcus, please. We can talk about this okay? nothing has to happen here, please just calm down” Kaylee said while whimpering , but Marcus just kept breathing heavily. A few seconds of silence passed.
“Marcus?” She asked him, and he began to walk towards her. She began walking backwards while begging Marcus to stop, but he only kept walking towards her. The walking soon turned into running, and Kaylee was screaming for help. As Marcus was chasing her, he yelled out “I TOLD YOU, I AIN’T LETTING THIS HAPPEN”. Marcus was now right behind her as he said this. They ran into the living room, and he lifted up both of his hands while holding something, and then struck Kaylee on the head with the object he was holding, which turned out to be a heavy metal crowbar. She instantly collapsed to the ground, and began convulsing slightly. I felt a cold chill slithering through my spine as I witnessed Marcus repeatedly hitting Kaylee with the crowbar, as she let out quiet whimpers with every blow. I turned away, and all I could hear were heavy mushy blows followed by whimpers. I completely forgot I could turn off the VHS player at the moment. The whimpering slowly stopped, but the hitting continued for about a minute before it stopped as well. I gathered the courage to turn back around, and I almost fainted. Kaylee’s body was completely disfigured, her face didn’t look like a face, her arms and legs were twisted, and a dark red puddle was slowly growing under her, slowly growing bigger and bigger until it was about as big as the room itself. The camera was pointed at this scene for about a minute.
Eventually, the camera was picked back up, and Marcus was walking up to the 2nd floor to his room. When he entered, I immediately saw the large window from the room I saw earlier. The large window from the room I said I wanted. The large window from the room my dad said I could have. My room belonged to a murderer. Marcus sat down on a chair in the room, and opened a laptop. He began to type, and the tape ended abruptly. I sat there, absolutely appalled. I suddenly stood up and rushed to the bathroom and vomited. My brain could not comprehend what my eyes just witnessed. I did not want to keep such a hideous tape, but it could also be useful for a possible police investigation. I did not know what to do with it, so I kept it.
My parents arrived home an hour later with groceries, but for the whole night I could bring myself to eat. All my appetite was lost during that horrific tape. I also did not know how to tell my parents about what I had just watched, and about the fact that they bought a crime scene.
“What’s wrong honey? You look like you’ve seen a ghost”, My mom said.
The next morning, My father and I went back to that house.
“Right”, he said with a relaxed sigh, “Let’s start with the living room”.
We started making our way into the living room through the hallway I saw in the tape yesterday, and my eyes met the dark stain that was spread across the living room. I shuddered.
“Well, I think we can start by cleaning off the enormous stain on the floor here. What do you think?” My father asked me.
I took a deep breath.
“Dad, about that, there’s something that I found yesterday that you need to see”.