| abstract | - I am a 15 year old boy, and I've been living in my current house for almost four years. My father bought this house without consulting with me about it, but I digress. I do not claim that my house is haunted, well I do, but not for the purposes of this story. I live here with my father, Kevin, and my cat, Paul. Paul enjoys sitting on the window sill facing the street, more specifically, the house across the street. I am kind of embarrassed to admit this, but I do enjoy talking to Paul while he sits on the window sill. He often stares out of the window for hours on end, I ask him what he is looking at, but of course he does not answer me. With myself being a social, young kid, I prefer to know who my neighbors are, and what is up with them. For instance, I have grown to be quite close with my neighbor on the left, Matt. Matt is your typical 'guys guy,' him and Kevin often go fishing during the summer, as well as playing me in Madden on PS3. Matt's girlfriend has recently moved in with him, so we have not heard from him, besides a few encounters in the yard. On the contrary, after living in this house for three days, I broke the window of my neighbor to the right, needless to say she confronted me screaming and furious, so that has pretty much defined our relationship. The nearest convenience store (Jane's Variety), is located two doors down, across the street, it is eerie, to say the least. Whenever I bike past this store, you can smell the unmistakable aroma of marijuana. A few days after moving in, I had ventured over to Jane's Variety to buy some RedBull. As I was walking down the walkway to my steps, I happened to look into the window and I saw Paul staring at the house across the street. I shook it off because he is just a cat, and I continued on my way into my home. When I got inside, I found Kevin sitting on the couch talking with Paul, I sat down beside him and opened my beverage. I waited for a lull in his conversation with the cat, and I mentioned to him that I had thought that the old gentlemen working at Jane's at the time appeared very creepy. Kevin then said to me, "Yeah, but I bet you he will be the man to one day save your life." These are the main buildings in my neighbourhood, save one house. Despite the cliche, this particular house is surrounded by shrubs of all sizes, they engulfed a 'No Parking' sign. Other than this fact, it comes across as the typical suburban home, a regular white house, with a wooden door, and really no other way to describe it than plain. Nothing special. Throughout all the time that I have lived in this house, I have seen about ten people enter this house, but I have not seen any of them leave. I do know that they must have left because their cars have left, but I have not physically seen anybody leave that house. When we were moving into our home, we had arrived here at 9 am and the moving company had told us that they would meet us there at 9:30. We had taken our personal belongings with us and brought them into the house. By the time that we had brought in all of our things, it was already 10 o'clock, and the moving company had still not shown up yet. We stayed inside and planned out where we were going to put everything once it arrived. We periodically checked outside to see if the moving people had come yet, but to no avail. At around 11:30 am we had started to get hungry, so Kevin had went to McDonald's to grab some lunch for us. He had returned to the house at 12 pm, and the movers were still not there. By the time we had finished our lunch, the moving truck had finally rolled down the street. They had parked in front of the house across the street. We thought nothing of it, until the moving men got out of their truck, and retrieved one singular chair from the back of their truck. It was a tattered, old, mahogany chair. They had brought had the chair to the front porch of the house across the street from mine. They set the chair down and knocked repeatedly on the door. After several minutes of knocking, they gave up and saw us standing outside on our steps. They then brought the chair over to us, and asked us to sign for it, and give it to our new neighbors when they had returned home, as they had to leave for another delivery. Soon after this whole escapade, the delivery truck with our belongings in it had arrived. After the movers had left, and everything was all settled into our new house, we remembered that we had had the chair that belonged to the neighbours across the road. We held onto it for a few hours, but as it was starting to get late, we decided to put the chair on their front porch for them, as we figured they should be coming home soon. The following day I carried on with my daily life. I went to school, talked to people, learned some stuff, and as I was walking home, the chair remained in its place, and Paul was looking out the window once again. I entered my house, and sat down with my cat. After a spirited conversation with him, I happened to gaze out the window to see a large, red truck stop in front of the house. Two men then exited the truck, ran up to the chair on the porch of the house, picked it up, scrambled back to their truck, put it in, and drove away. After seeing this event unfold, I was not too certain of what to think, but since I did not know who the people who lived in this house were, as it could have been themselves or a friend, I just played it off as it were nothing and continued my conversation with Paul. I moved into the house on November 4th, 2009, in January 2010, I was returning home from a late soccer practice. I had biked home, as it was late and I did not wish to disturb Kevin from his sleep as he had to work in the morning. As I had put my bike away in the garage and got into the house, I collapsed on the couch in exhaustion. I lied there, face down, for a few moments until I gained the minimum energy to sit up. As I sat up I noticed Paul sitting on the window sill, looking out of the window. I began to speak at him, he stood up from his perch and darted back and forth across the house. From the window at the front, to the one at the back. He had done this at least 30 times before he had tired himself out, and just sat there on the window sill, looking at the house across the street, like always. In September of 2010 we had a block party. Everyone was there! With the exception of, of course, the people from across the street. We were all having a great time, Me, Kevin, Matt, all of us. Being that Paul was an indoor cat, we left him at home. I would periodically look back at my house to check on Paul only to see him appear in the window, as if he were darting back and forth. This had been a regular occurrence for him, ever since doing it for the first time, back in January. In May of 2011, I was hanging out with some friends at my house when we decided to go over to Jane's Variety to buy various snacks and beverages. When we had arrived there, Jane had given us a dirty look, probably because he was nervous that four rowdy teenage boys had just walked into his store. We walked to the back refrigerator and picked out eight large cans of RedBull. When we walked up to the front counter and placed our items on it, Jane got a strange look in his eyes as he raised his voice and told us that it was unhealthy for people of our age to drink that many energy drinks, or any energy drinks at all for that matter. After several moments of trying to plead with the man behind the counter, he demand that we leave his store. On the brief walk back to my house, I gazed into the top floor window of the house across the street from mine. There was nothing there, it was desolate. The window was black, as if covered by a garbage bag. I quickly caught up with my friends and went home. All throughout 2012 people around town had been scrambling to collect supplies and nutrition for what was supposed to be the end of the world on December 21, 2012. For the house across the street, it had been just like any other time of any other year. No one had ever exited the place, and I had not seen anyone go in for several months. Throughout the paranoia of an apocalyptic end to the world in 2012, Matt had not been heard from that year until October 29th. He one day strolled over because his girlfriend was "out of town" and he "wanted to hangout with some guys for once." Kevin invited him in for some coffee. We sat in the living room and chatted for a while. After a short time, Paul started doing his thing. Dashing back and forth, from front to back of the house. Matt then questioned; "What is your cat doing?" To which I replied, "Oh don't mind him. He does this all the time. I guess it's just a cat thing." That brought us back to our regular conversation. Nowadays, Matt is still rarely seen. I have not spoken to him since October 29th, 2012. My neighbour to the right has only spoken to me once in October of 2011 when she brought me some candy corn, which to this day I claim was tainted. Mac's Mart had opened up a few blocks down, so Jane's Variety lost most of it's business, and was forced to close down in the spring of 2013. It is now August 7th, 2013. On August 1st, Matt had popped by again, Kevin was not home at the time, but I invited him in for something to drink, and possibly some Madden. Matt and I had regular conversations about our fantasy football league that my family runs each year and I was considering getting Matt involved in it, when he raised a point about a noise concern he had with the house across the street. I had not heard anything, but seeing as he was an adult, I went along with it and asked him if he would like to borrow my phone to call the police. He politely accepted and the police arrived shortly. The police knocked on the door again and again, but to no avail. Eventually they broke down the door to investigate. After what seemed like an eternity of waiting, they came over to speak to Matt and I. The officer said that upon entering the house, all that they saw was an old, tattered, mahogany chair on top of a small area rug and some sort of putrid stench. He stated that after furthering their search, they discovered that beneath the chair under the rug, was a small door leading to a what they figured would be a cellar. When they opened the door the smell grew much stronger. In the end, the police discovered the decaying remains of eight individuals, but no signs of anyone living in the house. To this day, I still do not know who it was that lived at 305 Brock Street.
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