• Jenny sat up in her bed and looked around. She didn’t know what woke her up, so she lay back down and closed her eyes. She sat up again. This time, she was sure she had heard something. It sounded like a sack of potatoes being dropped onto the ground outside of her window. She pulled her covers off and slowly walked over to her window. Her long, brown hair swished at her hip as gravity pulled on it.

    When she reached her window, she slowly parted the blinds. She gasped at what she saw and quickly let the blinds fall back into place. As she rubbed her eyes to get the image out of her head, something banged against the glass. Jenny jumped back and screamed. She fell to the ground and crawled over to the far corner of her room, away from her window and door, screaming the whole time. Her parents busted through the door and ran over to her.

    “Jenny? Jenny! What’s wrong darling? Jenny? Can you hear me?” her mother said, trying to get her daughter to stop screaming. “Jenny, tell us what’s wrong. Jenny!”

    “Jenny! Listen to your mother!” her father yelled at her. “Jenny?” he said, shaking her shoulders. “Jenny! What? What are you trying to say?”

    “Th-the w-w-window!” Jenny stuttered, pointing at the window, her arm starting to shake.

    “What about it, Jenny? What about the window?” But her mother didn’t get an answer.

    Jenny’s father stood up from leaning over Jenny and slowly walked to her window. He reached up and slowly parted the blinds, the same way Jenny had.

    Jenny started coughing horribly. Soon, her hand was covered in her blood, staining her silk pajamas with a dark crimson blotch.

    “John! Call 911! Something is definitely wrong with Jenny! John? John!” Jenny’s mother yelled as her husband fell to the ground. She stood up and walked over to Jenny’s window and pulled on the blinds. As the blinds went up, her eyes widened in terror. Outside the window, on the maple tree in their backyard, was a man. Not just any man, but a dead one. He was hanging off of a rope from the same major branch that held Jenny’s old tree house. Blood was dripping from his mouth and his neck. Jenny’s mom tried to take her eyes off of the man and back away but something wouldn’t let her. Suddenly, she felt her neck twist and heard a sickening snap like a wet branch hitting a tree. She fell to the floor and slowly drifted off into darkness, the image of the man’s face turning to her and saying her name kept playing over and over in her mind.
    )*(
    Ally walked into her new bedroom. She stared at the ugly red walls and the brown, wall-to-wall carpet. She sighed and set the box of her stuff that she was holding down. She didn’t want to live in a house where “psycho-freaks” had killed themselves, and she definitely didn’t want to live in the room in which it had happened. “It even smells like people died in here.”

    She walked over to the window and pulled up the blinds. She looked at the old creepy tree house and the rest of the street.

    “This place would be great for Halloween,” she thought out loud. “Especially with that rumor going around about some spirits haunting this place or something.” She shivered and tried to think about something else, but her mind kept wandering back to the subject. Ally heard the telephone ring from the kitchen and then heard a mighty, triumphant roar from her father. She walked out of the open door and over to the kitchen and watched her father and mother dance.

    “Um… You got our phone hooked up?” she asked.

    “Yes! Isn’t it great?” her father said, running over to rub her head.

    “No, not really.” She replied.

    “Oh, come now, Ally. It isn’t that bad to move.” Her mother said, trying to get Ally to be cheerful.

    Ally glared at her mother and went back to her room. She opened the box and looked at its contents. Clothes that her mother would want folded and put neatly away in little rows in her dresser. Ally sighed and turned to the dresser. She pulled out a drawer and set it next to the box. She started pulling out the clothes, one piece at a time, and folded them. When the first drawer was full, she put it back in a pulled out another one. She vacantly put it beside the box, thinking about the rumor again. When she looked into the box, she saw something looking back up at her. At first, she thought that it was a prank that her brother had tried to pull, but then she remembered that she hadn’t seen her brother ever since they started packing. She had watched the dresser and all of its contents go into the moving truck and the thing that was looking up at her now was not in it. She was sure of it.

    “M-mom! Dad! Could you come look at this, please?” Ally called to her parents.

    “Not now dear. We’re busy trying to get the television hooked up.” Her mom replied.

    “But it’s kind of important!” she yelled.

    “Oh, alright. I’m coming.” Her dad said. “What is it?” he asked.

    “Inside the drawer on the floor by the box,” she said, scooting away from it and standing up next to her mother.

    “Oh, oh dear. What is something like that doing in your stuff?” her father asked, the color in his face receding like a wave after it crashed onto a beach.

    “How should I know? I just pulled the drawer out and it was there.” Ally replied.

    “Well, what is it?” her mother asked.

    “Um… Dear, you’re not going to want to-” her father was cut off by a piercing scream. Her mother covered her mouth as she screamed and backed up into the wall of Ally’s room. She slowly lifted her arm up and pointed at something out of the window, all the while screaming.

    Ally’s father’s eyes grew huge. He was staring at the pair of eyes in the drawer. Suddenly, the loose eyes started drifting upwards, floating in mid-air. Then, Ally saw it. It was what her mother was screaming at. It was a man. She thought he was probably the eyes’ owner. The man’s eye-less, empty sockets turned and looked at Ally. She didn’t know how, but she knew he was looking at her. Not just at her, though. He was looking into her.

    Ally turned around and ran out into the hallway. She ran past the kitchen, and ran outside the front door. She stumbled across her lawn and fell over a neighbor’s lawn gnome. She turned on her back and glanced at her house. She saw nothing but she still felt his eyeless sockets on her from somewhere. Ally turned when she heard the sirens. The lights were stopping in front of her house, a couple of yards away. A man stepped out of the police car and walked over to her.

    “Neighbors are complainin’ ‘bout a disturbance.” He said, shining a flashlight on her face in the dull dusk lighting.

    “Th-there was a man and his eyes were in my drawer and my mom screamed and they’re still in the house!” Ally blurted out, unable to control her shivering. She started rolling on the floor, covering her eyes as she saw the man come around the side of her house.

    The officer stared at her for a little while and walked over to Ally’s new house. He knocked on the door and waited a few seconds. Ally’s father answered the door and greeted the policeman.

    “Hello there, sir. How may we help you?” her father said in a cheery, sing-song voice.

    “Yes, that young lady over there, the one writhing on the ground, said that there was an eyeless man in your home. Do’ya have any here?” the policeman asked.

    “Why, no, we don’t.” her father said. “Ally? Is that you?” he asked, walking over to where Ally had curled up into a ball. “Are you ok, sweetie?”

    “Stay away from me!!” Ally called out savagely, rubbing her eyes as she saw an image that she knew the man had placed in her mind.

    “But, it’s me, your father.”

    “No! That man! H-he killed you! He showed me! He showed me how h-he cut y-your head off! Stay away!” She yelled.

    Ally’s father turned back to the policeman with wide eyes and walked back over to him. “Do you know what she’s talking about?”

    “No, but she’s your daughter, ain’t she?” the policeman said. “Look, I’ve seen these cases before. Your daughter has a mental issue. I know this great little place out West where they can help her out. Here,” he said, handing Ally’s father a card. “Call me later for more information if you can’t handle this. They work miracles down there.” He said, walking back to his car.

    Ally cried out when she noticed the man was standing above her, watching her with his empty eye sockets. Her father turned back to his daughter, unknowingly standing right next to the eye-less man. She covered her eyes and whimpered when she saw that her father’s head was missing and his shirt was bloody. She screamed and started crying when her father bent down to pick her up to bring her inside.

    “Ally, come on now. I’m still alive. There’s no need to be afraid. Ally, please.” Her father tried to get her to reason, but Ally kept hitting him and trying to get away. Exasperated and unwilling to drag her across his neighbor’s lawn, he put Ally back down and pulled out the card. Tears stung his eyes as he pulled out his cell phone and started dialing the number provided on the card.

    “Hello, I-I need some help. My daughter thinks I’m dead and I-I can’t get her to budge. She’s out in our neighbor’s front lawn and I can’t get her inside…” Ally’s father proceeded to tell the operator where he lived.

    When he broke out crying, the operator tried to calm him down. “Sir, everything is going to be okay. Our men are on their way, sir. Sir, please calm down.”

    Ally stopped crying when she saw the van, suddenly scared. The van started transforming into a hideously vicious monster. The eye-less man walked over to the van and tapped one of its eyes. An ear unfolded and two smaller monsters stepped out of the bigger one. One of the smaller monsters was carrying a big, black box and the other was carrying a jacket. Ally recognized the jacket almost instantly. It was a straight-jacket. She started picturing herself in the jacket and screamed. She couldn’t handle the idea. The man walked behind the monsters and smiled at her, an evil, bloody smile. Ally scooted away from the monster with the box as he bent down. She screamed again and again when he pulled out a needle with a crimson red color.

    As the man grabbed her arm in a firm, hard grip, he turned to Ally’s father and said, “Sir, we’re sorry to tell you this, but we think that your daughter was poisoned. She’s showing all of the signs, but I can’t quite place what she was poisoned from until she’s tested. It’s a good thing you called, sir. She could’ve killed herself. You were also very lucky that our institution is a five minute drive from here.”
    )*(
    Arnold got out of his car. He walked up to the house and rang the door bell. The chime was a happy, musical tone that he couldn’t quite name. He looked up from his notebook and saw a woman, who seemed to have been crying, standing in front of him. He took off his ball cap and introduced himself.

    “Hello, Mrs. Smith? I’m Arnold Bell. I’m a detective and I wanted to search your house. I’m on the case of your daughter.” He was interrupted when Ally’s mother burst into tears. He continued, trying to speak over her, “She was poisoned with a kind of mold spore. It makes people hallucinate. Can you please show me where she was when it started?”

    As Ally’s mother led him into the house, Arnold looked around at all of the boxes. It looked like they were unpacking their things. Or packing them.

    When Mrs. Smith stopped in front of a room, she turned away and covered her face with her hands, sobbing at the sight of Ally’s room. Arnold stepped inside and looked around. The room had a different smell to it compared to the rest of the house. He walked over to the window sill, the smell becoming slightly stronger.

    He stepped back and out of the room, closing the door. He turned to Ally’s mother and said, “You’re going to want to get out of here really soon. The mold is spreading. It would be a bad thing if you stayed here any longer. There’s a great chance that you’ve already breathed in too much of the spores. I would suggest going to see a doctor to test. I would also suggest taking anyone else that has been in this house for more than a week.”

    “H-herald’s over at the c-clinic.” Ally’s mother said. “W-with Ally.”

    “I’ll call them and tell them to test him for the spores. You can go the clinic to be tested as well, since they’re already over there. Besides, the spores affect is curable. Ally won’t be in the clinic forever.” Arnold said reassuringly.

    “T-thank you,” Mrs. Smith said, hope in her wet, tear-filled eyes. “Thank you so much!”