As I approached the deserted house at the end of the road, I saw a man with a scruffy appearance. He was skinny and tall. His light blue eyes stood out against his deathly pale skin and his clothes were tattered, ripped and torn as if he had been wearing them for ages. The man's black hair was greasy and there were smudges of dirt on his face.
My best guess was that he was a homeless man, but there was something extremely creepy and unnerving about his piercing gaze.
I gave a small smile and a wave in hopes that he would return the gesture, but his features remained blank, unmoving.
Behind him stood the house, the one which everyone talked about. The house where, twenty years ago, a man had flipped and murdered his entire family, and five years ago, a single mother had killed her two children before taking her own life. The house was notorious for the many murders which had been committed by every person who'd ever resided there.
I'd never been inside that house, but my friends had when we were younger. Some had even went in there as teenagers to explore, or on a dare. I remembered the accident that had occurred two years prior better than anything.
Two of my classmates and one of my best friends had ventured in there on Halloween night, fully prepared to play with the Ouija board and get drunk. I'd been invited, and I'd almost said yes and went along with them. The only reason I hadn't joined them was because my little sister had gotten sick and I was left to take care of her while my parents went out to an 'adult' Halloween party. The next day, all three of their bodies had been discovered in the house. They had been brutally murdered, their stomachs cut open and their organs pulled out.
The whole town blew up. Everyone knew there was something wrong with that house. Whether it was haunted by something supernatural, or someone lurked there, waiting for innocent victims, no one knew. Maybe it was both. But I was lucky I hadn't went with them that night. I had hated that house ever since, for taking away my best friend.
As I walked closer to the house, a feeling of dread spread throughout my whole body. I was supposed to go to the store to pick up some soda for my mom, which meant I would have to pass by the house, and that man. I'd done it a thousand times beforehand, and each time I hated it. I hated that each time I walked past the house, I was passing the place where my friends had been murdered in cold blood without anyone to help or save them.
I should have ignored it, but the cold look in that man's eyes chilled me to the bone. There was something eerie about him. So, trusting my instincts, I turned around in the opposite direction and fled. I only looked back once; to see the man, still standing there, watching me walk away, grinning from ear to ear. And then he did something that made me feel cold all over. He called my name in a deep, rough voice, and he held out his hand.
It took me a moment to decipher what the item he held in his hand was. But when I finally figured it out, I felt my face drain of all color. Because it was the friendship bracelet I had given to my best friend back in elementary school, the one she had never taken off until the day she died.
To this day I wonder if he was the man who had killed all my friends, and was waiting for me to be his next victim. But how...did he know my name?