The house was perfect. It was exactly what we had spent the last year looking for: a period property in the middle of nowhere. It needed a little renovating; it was an old house after all.
The house radiated peace and calm, until the building work commenced. That’s when everything changed.
The contractors disturbed more than the bones that were found buried beneath the house that day. My dream home became a house of horrors. Even after the bones were gone something lingered.
A dark, suffocating presence filled the house. Noises in the dead of night. Cold spots in an otherwise warm room. Clocks that stopped for no reason. Lights that would flick on and off on their own.
Things changed irrevocably one October evening…
I was home alone, waiting for my husband to return after working late. As I was walking along the first floor landing, I saw through the window car headlights coming up the driveway. My husband was home. But as I was about to turn and go down to meet him, something else reflected in the glass caught my eye, and I went deathly cold.
A misty outline of a figure was standing right behind me, and I knew that they were responsible for the all the strange and frightening things that went on in the house. Who they were, I didn’t know and didn’t care to know. I didn’t want to know why they did it or why they were still here. I just wanted to be left alone.
Frozen to the spot, I heard the front door open and my husband call out. I couldn’t speak, I was so scared. I thought about the bones that had been discovered, and I got the distinct feeling I was going to die.
But I was wrong.
It wasn’t my body that would be found at the bottom of the stairs, broken and bloody.
This was originally posted in October 2015. You can find the original post here.
The Winter Ghost has made it onto the Open Novella Contest 2019’s Longlist! Yay! That was certainly unexpected…
Sammi Cox 