It all took place about 7 years ago, when I was 10. My family lived in a house on the edge of an active street. Across this active street lie another row of houses, although these houses were very old, and all my neighborhood buddies teased they had to be haunted. The houses were being torn down in order to build a plaza. Except one. The house that still had people living inside was direct across from my house. An aged couple abided there and refused to leave. I’d overhear my mother and father blabbing about how the elderly wife had slapped a guy trying to persuade her to move. Their conversations led to my father explaining he grew up in our house and remembered the tired couple once had a son that he played with. One morning, the son didn’t come back out to play and my father assumed he had gone to a boarding school or whatnot. My father’s 8-year-old mind was limited to what he could imagine. Now, however, my father presumed he had passed away.
I always found it odd and asked too many questions. Questions my father had no answers to. “Did he tell you he had any illness?” “Did he look like he was in poor health?” I was a curious 10-year-old, and my father was a grumpy, tired man, who wasted no brain capacity to answer my silly questions.
A year passed, and rumors circled around the neighborhood that the wife had passed. The speculation was true. Soon, the widowed man was sent to live in a retirement home. I was present to watch the deconstruction of the home. My parents and neighbors could look if anything was salvageable. Doorknobs, and whatnot. My older brother’s friends also traveled down, seeing if they could recover anything useful for their amusement. As I was seeking around, I noticed a weird shaft-looking trapdoor. I pointed it out to my brother, and he showed his friends. “There must be a basement,” one of them suggested. The boy began jumping on the trapdoor. It broke, and he fell into the darkness. It was only chaos from there, and I remember nothing besides law enforcement and an ambulance arriving, along with the chatter of my neighbors. I wasn’t aware of what happened until a full day had passed. My parents explained the pit wasn’t on the blueprints of the house. But inside the pit shocked everyone in my neighborhood, along with the rest of the town. The findings were everywhere on local news.
Inside was a small child-sized bed, toys, and other things you’d encounter in a young child’s bedroom. Everything seemed usual until the police found the human remains of a small child in the shadows of the large pit. The entire town was in awe. Nothing scary ever happened like this. The investigation began, and the old man refused to give any information during the confrontation. He died shortly after they had questioned him. Some say he killed himself, some say he was just old. Detectives tried to track down any relatives of the deceased couple, but everything was a dead end.
The town had a public funeral for the boy, named Thomas Prestley. They showed a picture. He looked unhealthy in the photo. He was skinny and pale, but smiling. My family was blue after this incident, however my father was the most affected by it, and we began packing to move soon after. With a bare room, waiting for the rest of the house to be packed, I stayed outside a lot. Mostly sat on the sidewalk, playing with anything I could find to distract myself. Being 11 years old when this all went down, I was confused. There were questions that were never answered. I talked little during this time. I was stuck in my thoughts.
While sitting on the sidewalk, playing with a stick, I heard a voice call out to me. It came from across the street, in front of where the infamous house used to be. Now just laid concrete. “Hey!!” the voice called. I looked up to see a boy, who looked to be around 8, in ratted clothes. “Hi?” I responded. I had never seen this kid around the neighborhood before, although he looked eerily familiar. “Want to play?” He said while itching his ankle. He looked disheveled and unbathed. “No thanks, haha.” He ran across the street, and seeing him up close, I realized he wasn’t wearing shoes. “That’s okay, then..” He gasped for air, “Do you know where Giovanni is?” Giovanni is my father’s name. “What’s his last name..?” I questioned. “Ramos”. That’s when I realized who this little boy was. “What’s your name?” “Tommy”. I began shaking. “Dad!!” I yelled out, hoping he could hear me. He ran out of the house, and as I pointed to the boy, he faded away, waving goodbye to me. I was a trembling mess, trying to explain to my father what I had just witnessed. He comforted me as best he could, but reassured me it was all just my imagination and that ghosts weren’t real.
As I got into the moving truck and began driving away, I looked back at my house, and my eyes wandered across the street. The boy was there again, waving goodbye from the sidewalk. I looked away, and when I looked back, he was gone.