Scary Stuff

Just Your Typical Haunted House.... Part 4

        We talked for a long time. MK had snacks: chips, Cheetos, crackers and cheez wiz, grapes, and chocolate. When I'd asked her why she was sharing with me, she'd said that she didn't have any friends, hadn't had any since before she ran away. I found out she'd been abused by her father, which was why she ran away. As the night wore on, she seemed to grow more and more comfortable with me, and four hours later we were sitting on her floor, leaning against the bed, watching motorcycle fail videos on my phone and laughing our heads off.
        As the video finished, MK yawned and lay her head on my shoulder. I suddenly found myself unable to move, or even breath. I was afraid if I did that she would move away, and I didn't want that. I couldn't believe I'd only met her a few hours ago, and that we hadn't been friends our entire lives. I felt like I knew her so well already.
        I yawned too. It was almost midnight, and I was just realizing how tired I was.
        "I forgot what good friends felt like," MK whispered.
        "Yeah, me too."


        When I woke up, MK was gone. I checked my phone- 1:06 A.M. I'd been asleep for just over an hour. So why did it feel so much longer? Blearily I stood and looked around the room. I thought maybe MK had gotten into bed to sleep, but no. She wasn't there.
        It could've meant anything. Maybe she went to get more snacks, or go to the bathroom, or maybe she just felt like a late night stroll through a dead house. But somehow I doubted it. I shivered as the dread that had abandoned me so quickly before returned to pool in my stomach. Then I knew what must have happened: old Mr. Evans' ghost must have gotten her. No matter how much I contradicted it and made up "reasonable" explanations, I couldn't shake the feeling that she was in terrible danger.
        And I was the only one who knew.
        I ran to the door and opened it- or, at least, I tried to open it, but the door stuck fast. It wasn't locked: the handle rotated like normal. The wood could've just been stuck, but I remembered how easily I'd opened it before, and I knew Mr. Evans had done it. I crossed the room to the window and tried to pry it up but it, too, held fast. Trying hard not to panic, I ran back to the door and tried again. This time it opened easily, and I knew it wasn't luck. My next idea was to break the window and climb out that way, and the ghost wouldn't have allowed that. He wanted me inside the house.
        I sprinted into the hall and down the stairs, calling her name the entire way. I looked briefly into each room in the house, but I had nothing to go by. There were no tracks in the dust but my own... except... mine weren't there either. You could see where they had been, but they were now covered in another layer of dust that should NOT have been able to accumulate in five hours. I was getting seriously scared now, and it only got worse when I came to the living room.
        By now I knew I wouldn't find MK in any of the rooms, but I was determined to check all of them anyway. I was fully prepared to sprint into the living room, call her name, and sprint out again. But what happened was more like, sprint in, glance around, stop dead, feel sick. Because on the ground was my sleeping bag, right where I'd left it. Only now, instead of being bright red and out of place in the dust, it was full of holes like the furniture and covered in dust... it looked a hundred years old.
        I started hyperventilating, and my asthma kicked in. I hadn't had an attack in years, but now I was on full panic mode and couldn't breathe. How long had I been here? The only way I knew to find out was my phone. I pulled it out of my pocket and turned it on, still gasping, and nearly fainted. The screen took a moment to turn on, and when I thought about it, I realized it had done the same thing upstairs. At the time I'd thought it had just been my sleepy brain.
        I looked at the top right corner of the screen where the time and date should be. The time was 1:39 A.M. The date was 2148.
        I'd been in the house for one hundred and thirty years.