9111 Sharp Road (2 page)

I could hear footsteps
coming to my door
. They were a bit lighter, so naturally, I assumed they were Lori’
s. “Lori, check this out.” I stood and went to the door, but there was nobody there.

Strange. I felt hairs sticking up on my head and my neck, and my heart started beating
faster
. I wouldn’t exactly say I was scared, but….

“Amanda, hey look at this!” Lori said, jumping out of
her
room
directly to my right. The smokestack blocked most of my view of her room.

“Lori, you scared the bejeebies out of me.
Is there anyone else up here?
”

“
I don’t know, but you gotta l
ook at what I got in my room!”

My heart-rate s
lowed
a bit as I entered her room. It was a lot like mine, except with pink walls instead of green. But most noticeably, there was a white pipe running from the floor to the ceiling. Lori jumped on it as if it were a fireman’s
pole and attempted to climb
it. She managed only a foot or two, but then slid
back
down. “Isn’t this awesome?”

“I wonder what it is,” I said.
“Looks like some
sort of
plumbing.” I thought for a second. What room was directly below this one, wh
ere that pipe might have
come from
?
Being so new to this house, it took me a second to remember that it was the bathroom. “Lori, you know what that is?”

“What?”

“It’s the main pipe for the bathroom.”

“It is? Ew.
Does that mean there’
s poop and pee in it?
”

“
Sure thing. A
lso
has farts.
”
I
heard
from Mom
later that day
that it was a vent stack
, sometimes called
a stink pipe
,
that carries gases from the septic system to the outside so that it doesn’t back up into t
he house. T
hese pipes we
re usually in the walls, not jutting up from the floor in the middle of the room.

“That’s gross. I don’t think I want this room anymore.”

“Tough luck, chum.
You
gotta play
the hand you’re dealt.”

“Huh?” she said with an exaggerated look of confusion.

“I don’t know. Just sounded good.”

I turned to leave Lori’s room but paused as I saw a dark shape walk past the door.
“Lori, did you see that?” I cried. It wasn’t your regular shadow.
T
his had more substance to it.
“It was like a—”

“Ghost!” Lori screamed, finishing my
sentence
.

I don’t know what came over me, but before I knew it, I was rushing out into the hall to get a better look at whatever it was. There was a man walking
away from me,
toward that strange door
to nowhere
, as if he aimed to walk through it.
He was dark, almost impossible to see, but I could
barely
make out
his clothing. He
was wearing
one of those hats you see all
the men wearing in old movies
, as well as a matching suit
.

And then he was gone.

Chapter 2

I had trouble sleeping that night.
This was a large adjustment for Lori and me. First of all, we were in a strange, new place, but also, and more importantly, our father was gone. Mom never told us how he died, saying it wasn’t something we should have to think about.
I was to take the fact of my dad’s death as a matter of faith, that he was no longer around because he no longer existed, that he was dead. It hurt, and what was worse, I wasn’t even sure if I fully understood what death was.
The fact that he wasn’t here with us anymore made me think every day and night about him, and how much I missed him.

The moonlight coming through the wavy glass of the windows created strange shadows on the walls. I
lay
in my bed, thinking about the meaning of life, what it meant to die, and where my dad fit into all of that.

In a way, I took Dad’s death a lot harder than Lori. I knew him better.
Sometimes, s
he acted as if he were just a name, a faceless figure that had never actually been there.

He was dead, but did that
mean he was truly gone forever?

I was at Dad’s funeral.
Mom, Lori, an
d I stood there at the graveside as the casket was lowered into the ground. A part of me didn’t really believe he was dead. I needed proof. I needed to see for myself.

“He’s not really dead!” I screamed, rushing toward the open grave. I leapt on top of the casket and tried to
pry
it open, but before I could, a set of strong arms pulled me back and pushed me to the ground.

It was the man in the old-fashioned suit and hat.
“Who are you?” I shouted. He only smiled in response
and then disappeared
.

Mom
grabbed my arm and pulled me
back to the group of family and friends, all of them looking at me with a mixture of disdain and sympathy.
I
could almost read their thoughts through those hurtful looks:
I feel so sorry for that pathetic child.

I woke with a start. Nothing but moonlight greeted me as I sat up in bed. Shadows danced on the walls and across the floor, creating weird shapes across the
walls
.
The sound of wind gusting outside made me think of
The Wizard of OZ.
I imagined I could look outside the window and discover that the house—or just the room I was in—was blowing away to some far-off land.

In reality, the
east-facing
window
just above
my bed
showcased a large pine tree with
its limbs blowing in the wind.
The limbs shook ever more vi
olently as the gusts increased.

The long gr
ass swayed in the wind as well, but there was something else out there. I couldn’t tell for sure, but it looked like people walking around, people in dark clothing.

I pressed my face against the glass. It was cold to the touch.
Who were those people?
Or were they people at all? They certainly had humanoid shapes, but I could make out what looked like wings on their backs, as well as glowing red eyes.

There were at least five of them, but less than ten. They seemed to be running about, chasing each other,
then before my eyes, they seemed to multiply. Before, there were less than ten. Now, there had to be no less than several hundred, if not more.

A
fter several minutes, they gather
ed
in a circle around the tree. They
started
chanting something
that sounded like a combination of animalistic screeches
. It was hard to hear
over the wind.
I leaned closer to the window, the side of my face pressing against the cool glass.

T
hen the bed moved, and I slipped, knocking my head against the window. Boy, did that ever hurt. I lay on the floor for a moment. Stars danced across my vision.

I didn’t immediately get up. Something was telling me to stay
down
, to stay out of the sight of the window. A moment later, I realized the
screeching
—th
e
chants—had stopped. My window face-plant seemed to h
ave gotten their attention—
attention I most definitely didn’t want.

And then I heard something, a tapping at the window just above my head.

I looked up and screamed.

Staring in at me was a pair of bright red eyes sunken deep within
an
inhuman face.
I closed my eyes.
Please go away, please go away.
But I could hear the breathing, the tapping at the window. The thing that was out there wanted in. It wanted me.

Then I heard a cracking sound. Was the window cracking? As I looked, instead of cracks, I saw the spreading of ice across the glass.

My heart raced.
What do I do?
I rolled away, to the other side of the room against the wall that I shared with Lori. What I wouldn’t give to be in her room right then, to be far away from this being staring in at me.

It tapped the glass again.
The ice was now gone, only having been there for a few brief moments.
From my new vantage point,
I saw the red eyes reflecting off the glass and back into
its face. The sharp angles of its nose, the long, drawn-out knives of its teeth,
it
s leathery skin,
and the bat-like snout reminded me of some sort of vampire-like creature.

It cracked its head into the glass, and then pushed i
tself off the side of the house, and in the light of its glowing eyes, I could clearly make out wings measuring at least twenty feet in total span.

The gusting wind couldn’t dampen the sound of the creature’s screeches as i
t
flew away.
T
he other
s
that had been standing outside appeared to fly away as well, for I could see the glow from thei
r eyes lift into the air
.

I had no curtains, no blinds. There was no way I was going to be abl
e to sleep, especially not in this room, where there were two windows—one on the east wall and the other on the north wall—and nowhere to hide.

But somehow I did. Somehow I drifted off to sleep without even getting back onto the bed.

In the early hours of morning, just before sunrise, I was awoken by the creaking of
a
door,
possibly the door out in the hallway, the one that led to pain and suffering,
as if it were opening and
closing
.

And then I heard the voices, voices calling my name.
“Amanda…Amanda…
Let us out
.”

I don’t know if I was just hearing things, letting
my mind run wild
.
M
aybe my mind was playing tricks, but why did the voices sound so
real,
so
clear?

I could barely eat my breakfast. Picking at my pancakes, I could not
gather
the strength or desire to lift a single bite to my mouth.
Those
red
eyes burned through my memory, searing my mind, ruining any semblance of appetite
I may have had
.

Lori seemed to be doing the same, looking as
though she had some huge, foreboding weight on her shoulders
, and picking at her food
.

Gramma came in from the kitchen, carrying a steaming p
l
ate of sausage
and hash browns
.
“Who wants sausage?” she
said with an abnormally cheery
manner. Well, not abnormal for her, I suppose
d
. Her hair was done up in giant pink curlers
, her bright red lipstick smeared messily across her lips in a way that made her resemble The Joker from Batman, and her light blue nightgown left little of what was underneath to the imagination.

I could feel the urge to throw up,
to vomit
all over my pancakes.

But I somehow managed to calm the urge and say, “No thanks, Gramma. I’m really not that hungry.”

“Me neither,” Lori said.
 

Gramma smiled, looking ever more like an insane clown, and shoveled a mixture of sausage and hash browns right on top of my uneate
n pancakes. “You two
should eat. You’re both too thin. Eat up.”
Then she went back to the kitchen.

I couldn’t even
imagine
eating any more, especially not when all my food was mixed together lik
e that. It was a bit disgusting
to say the least.

“
Gramma?
” Lori asked as she pushed her plate away. Gramma had piled the disgusting mixture onto her pancakes as well.

“Yes, dear?”
s
he said as she returned from the kitchen with a pl
ate of something green and blue
and
possibly deadly. I breathed a sigh of relief as she sat down and started eating it without offering it to either me or Lori.