Knocking on the Door

(THERE WERE A LOT OF IMAGES AND I DECIDED TO USE THE IMAGESHACK EMBED PLAYER TO PUT THEM UP HERE. SOMEHOW IT DIDN'T WORK. BRB.)

When I was about twelve, my friend Kayla told me her parents had bought a second house in Sommerville, Texas and a few weeks later, she invited me along. It was a small neighborhood, so her parents had bought a golf cart to travel to their neighbors if needed, and a lot of people had them, so it seemed liked a good idea.

One day, we charged it up and headed out with a sack lunch, determined to find a nice park or picnic spot. Kayla’s parent’s had gotten the golf cart for her birthday, June 21st. So we had mostly been swimming and we hadn’t seen much of the neighborhood, but now it was a crisp December weekend, we had our cardigans on and were expecting to find something interesting.

I grabbed my camera I had brought with me and we headed out. We drove into a secluded part of the neighborhood we hadn’t noticed before and were horrified at what we saw... and smelled. It smelled, to say the least, like dog shit. We covered our nose but were determined to keep going. Then we saw it, I turned on my camera and took several pictures.

We got up super close (still holding our noses) and the dogs were laying on something; we couldn’t tell what it was. Then the neighbor came out, his eyes that creepy blue like in horror movies and his face written in pain. His eyes locked on mine and he was hobbling towards us on his cane as fast as he could. Kayla screamed and sped away; all I could remember were those horrible blue eyes, burned into my skull.

As I try to remember those blue eyes I get a massive headache. But I must continue. We drove and drove for about thirty more minutes in silence until we were deep in the neighborhood. It was now getting really cloudy and I was about suggest to go home when suddenly, the golf cart broke down. The charge should have lasted about 8 more hours and the battery was fine.

It took us awhile but we finally managed to push it to the side of the road as to not abstruct passing cars. Kayla took the key and walkie-talkie that we had in case we needed help, (signal wasn’t so good out there) but it was dead too. She turned it on and off but it wouldn’t let us talk, we could only hear the other side, what her mom would have been saying.

She put the walkie talkie in her pocket and banged her head against the steering wheel, and stayed like that for a good four minutes. I sat next to her, just staring at something up ahead in the road.

“Kayla.” I said, shaking her shoulder, telling her to lift her head. She lifted her head and her orange hair whipped my face as a gust of wind hit us from behind, it was so hard I turned to see if the wind brought something else, like a piece of cardboard or maybe wood. But there was nothing behind me, so I faced Kayla again.

“What’s that?” She asked, looking straight ahead where I had. She got out of the golfcart and I followed her.

“I- I don’t know, it looks like-“ She shushed me as we were close to it. It was a broken mirror. I attatched a lot of pictures of the mirror, and I took so many because it had writing on it, I took pictures of some of the writing but here is all of what it said. (misspellings included)

“Derek James Cotton!! You are so lame, Steven says your a fagget, (unintelligible) Dick, Derek is Gay, You suck a big cock. Derek, Steven, Loues + Kacy”

By now, we were pretty freaked, but only kind of. Why would someone leave a mirror here? What we thought happened was the mirror must have fallen out of the back of the truck, but wouldn’t you here it and go back to clean up the mess? Another thing we were shoving into the back of our mind was maybe it was there on purpose. That whoever put it there meant to, or maybe they smashed it and just dumped it there.

We tested our theory with a piece of glass, we figured it didn’t just drop because when we threw the glass in the street as hard as we could; it didn’t break until hit it against the ground a few times. It also looked like this Derek fellow, or perhaps someone else, had smashed the mirror before dumping it here, as the frame and cork that held it up behind it, was hanging on by the glue, which was pretty new looking despite being dry and crumbling.

We tried to think reasonably but we kept thinking that Derek did this, and we had to find Derek. Kayla asked what we should do; I said we should clear the glass so as not to cause any cars tire’s to pop. We quickly picked up the pieces of glasses we broke and put it in the ditch next to the mirror. We headed back towards the golf cart but realized it was fucking pointless considering it was broken down and we had no way of getting home or communicating.

“Why don’t we knock on someone’s door?” I asked, but then I realized, besides the house with the dogs and the horrible stench and the man with the blue eyes, there weren’t any houses that actually looked like someone would be there. We walked up to houses that might have people in it and knocked on the door. Each time, I snapped pictures of the houses.

Kayla asked why I was taking pictures, I laughed nervously and said something about wanting to document it or look if it had anything we hadn’t noticed before. We got to this one house that was surrounded by a chicken wire fence, but we took pictures anyway, there were these two creepy masks on the fence that creeped us out and Kayla even pulled out her camera and took some pictures.

We moved onto a trailer that was obviously abandoned but at this point we were looking for anything we could use, or at least ask for directions because we were so deep in this weird part of the neighborhood we couldn’t remember the way we came. There were some cinderblocks that were stacked on top of each other so I stood on them and peered into the trailer, there were a pair of crutches and a wheel chair in a back room. After staring into the room for a long time, I felt a horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach and ran to the next house.

We ran to another house that was obviously abandoned, by this time, Kayla was almost in tears, and I was trying to keep a straight face, but I wanted to cry too. This house creeped us out also, it had the door wide open, and even when a big gust of wind hit us, the door stayed perfectly open, I could hear bugs and snakes hissing and clicking, making their normal sounds, but it was amplified by the emptiness of the house. Kayla grabbed my hand as I took pictures, her grip arounds my fingers tightened and I dropped my camera.

Then we heard a voice that still makes me get chills whenever I think of what it could have been, I hear it in my head every single night, even more now since I’ve had to dig up all these pictures and remember it all. I can’t remember what it said, I just remember when Kayla heard it she burst in to tears and ran, her hand still latched onto mine, so I had no choice but to run with her. For a long time we ran, and Kayla was crying. I remembered that I dropped my Camera but Kayla wouldn’t go back, I asked her if I could atleast go,but she said she would never let any of us go back. Ever. Again.

And this is where my half of the story pretty much ends, Kayla and I ran to the golf cart, which was now working fine, and turned on the walkie talkie (which was also working fine) I looked at the time on it and realized it was 1:36 only thirty minutes after we had set out. But it had felt like hours. I tried to show Kayla the time but she refused, she said we were going to drive home and never talk about this. Kayla and I went back to the lakehouse and didn’t talk about it, as soon as we pulled into the driveway, Kayla was all smiles, saying how fun it was, and that the golf cart worked fine, and when they questioned me about where my camera was,
Kayla persisted I hadn’t brought it on this trip. We went to bed early that night, well Kayla did anyway, and with nothing else to do, I fell asleep. When I woke up the next morning my camera was in my hand, I thought maybe Kayla or her parent’s had found it or something , so I turned it on and saw the pictures I had taken, and new ones, these are the ones I found that I was SURE I hadn’t taken.

The last picture is the lake house, it was taken about the time we were eating lunch because when I woke up the next morning, Kayla’s mom had put away the chairs. I don’t remember seeing anyone out there at that time, (and I think I would have, I was staring out the window) but I do remember seeing broken glass and a tooth where in the street.

Shortly after the trip Kayla died, they said she swallowed her tongue after having a seizure. At the funeral I couldn’t bear to see her dead, it was too much for me, and I left early. I went to Kayla’s grave today, it was very nicely put together, and I was going to take a picture but my camera died as soon as I turned it on, I was able to take some pictures of the outside of the funeral home and around some smaller graves. It was a nice spring day, so despite the graves the cherry trees were in bloom and I had a feeling of optimism.

I got to Kayla’s grave and almost had a heart attack at what I saw; they were four items on the grave. One, the teddy bear from the picture that had mysteriously appeared on my camera, two, the larger mask that had been on the chicken wire fence, three, the smaller one with intricate red paintings on the eyes, and four, a note with a picture attached, “Kayla” it said, I turned it over to look at the picture, it was a picture of Kayla, in the hospital after she had died, there were red X’s over her eyes.

I dropped it in horror and burst into tears. Then I heard the voice again, this time its voice rang clear in my head, my mind. My name. The voice made me fall on the ground and pass out from shock.

Then I woke in my house, in the living room on the table it said one word “Lauren” and on the back it had a picture of me, the angle was looking down at me, my eyes were closed and I was sprawled on the ground of the cemetery, my eyes, though closed were X’d out.

BANG BANG BANG.

Someone is at the door. I’ll be right back.