Toby had arrived home from the library about two hours ago. He had since eaten lunch with his family and watched an episode of Paw Patrol with his little sister, the whole time barely saying anything. Now, he was sitting on his bed, staring at the crumbled piece of paper placed before him and his mind was spinning. The only thing he could seem to focus on was Henry Moore. The boy who had lost his whole family in a matter of seconds, had been the same age then, as he was now, and he could not imagine what Henry must have gone through.
“But what does that have to do with the haunted house?” Toby wondered. Could it actually be the spirits of the family who were haunting their old home, not wanting anyone else to move in there? And if so, why did he not feel anything like what Marc, Jason and Miguel or even the other short-time residents from the article had mentioned? It just didn’t make any sense.
All of a sudden, Toby’s thoughts were interrupted when the article on the bed began to float in the air, only to start spinning round and round, faster and faster. It took Toby about 30 seconds before he jumped up to snatch the paper out of mid-air. “What do you want from me?” he shouted, looking around the room, and as soon as he had spoken those words, Toby felt something tucking at the piece of paper in his hands. He decided to let go of it and instead of continuing to spin, the article now floated over to the other side of his room and stopped on top of his desk.
By now, Toby was walking in circles around his room, trying to figure out what was happening. “This could also have been the wind,” he tried to convince himself, but he knew now, like he knew yesterday, that that was a lie, as the only window in this room had been tightly shut the entire time. “This was something else, something supernatural.” He finally chose to walk over to his desk to re-read the article. Maybe there was something that he missed? Anything that could help him find out what was happening here, but when he got the desk, he stopped dead in his tracks.
The newspaper article was lying on top of his desk and on it someone… or something had written the words “PLEASE COME VISIT AGAIN. I NEED YOUR HELP.” Next to the words there was a little arrow, pointing towards the image of the “haunted house”.
“Is this actually happening?” Toby thought out loud. “I guess there’s only one way to find out.”
© Marie-Christine Castelazo Hidalgo 2022-08-31