Haunted Read Free

I wasn’t the freaking out kind of person.
    The disappearances started immediately.   The baby’s pacifier, bottles, everyone’s shoes, and even silverware came up missing all the time.   I mean every day, ten times or more a day, something would go missing.   I could lay the baby down, stick her pacifier in her mouth and go to the kitchen.   I’d go to the sink, or fridge, or wherever, and the pacifier I’d just given her would be sitting right in front of me.   The first few times it happened, I laughed about it.   Maybe post partum or something?   Obviously, my mind wasn’t working right.  
    Five days after we moved in, the scary stuff began.   Chrissy, my friend’s 3 year-old, had come for a sleep over.   My husband had left to bowl with his brother, leaving just me and the three little ones at home.   The baby napped on the couch while the toddlers and I played.    Both sat on my lap as we practiced the alphabet song.   All of a sudden, Chrissy glanced over my shoulder toward the door.   She stopped singing and her face went white.   She looked terrified.   I turned to see what she was looking at, and the face of a man peered through the small window in the front room door.   His shaggy, dirty-blond hair hung limply around his narrow face.   The dark circles under his eyes could have been bruises.   His face was really pale.   I mean hadn’t seen the sunlight in 100 years white.   Unblinking, he stared at me.   Then he was gone.   Poof.   Nothing.  
    The girls had already started crying, but before I could put them down and get my gun (which was what I had every intention of doing), his face appeared in my living room window.   I was stunned and couldn’t move.   He disappeared again, and my body went into overdrive.   I shoved the girls behind the couch, grabbed the phone and dialed 911, and headed into my bedroom to grab our gun.   By the time dispatch answered I was locked, loaded, and back in the living room with the children.  
    Standing in the middle of the room gave me a clear view of the kitchen and the back door.   That’s what I was waiting for.   I figured he’d try to kick in the back door if he intended to enter.   As expected, his face appeared in the kitchen window.   He looked right me.   Now a normal person, even a peeping Tom, doesn’t just stand there and stare at you when you have a loaded 45 pointed at their head.   But this guy did.   No expression on his face whatsoever.   No fear, no recognition that I was about to shoot him, nothing.   And then he was gone.
    I still had the phone to my ear and the dispatch officer told me the police had arrived out front and that I was to secure the weapon.   My reply?   “No way!   You tell them to get someone around back and when they knock on my door, I’ll put it away.   Hell, I’ll hand it to them, but there is NO way I’m putting this down until one of them is in the house.”
    When they knocked, I released the chambered round, dropped the clip, and opened the door.   I handed the officer the gun butt first.   He came in and I was finally able to sooth the terrified 3 year olds.  
    Several minutes went by, and the other 3 policemen called the one talking to me outside.   They were out there a long time.   Finally, he returned and looked like he was trying not to laugh.   He asked me again exactly what I’d seen.   Frustrated, I repeated the story.  
    When I’d finished, he laughed.   “Mamm, have you taken a good look at the outside of this building?”
    “No, we haven’t lived here that long.”
    “Well, I’ll tell ya what.   I’m not sure what you thought you saw, but the ground on the west side over here slopes down.   The man you think you saw would have been 9 feet tall to look in those windows.   There’s no footprints out there anywhere.”
    My jaw dropped.   I wasn’t crazy.   And it wasn’t just me!   The girls saw him too!
    “When will your husband get