The Terror Next Door (Based on a True Story)

10)Terror Lurking

"Goosebumps theme song"
...It doesn't matter what age I reach, this melody still gives me the heebie jeebies.
Happy Reading!
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"What the heck is your sister doing??" said Mr. Summers  incredulously. The loud noise of pounding nails and even of a drill gun sounded. Upon entering the house, Alex had not acknowledged her parents upon her and Sophia's coming home. Considering it was late enough everyone was getting ready for bed, it was surprising to see Alex head downstairs to the basement. The young woman came back up with a hammer, a box of nails, the drill, and screws. After she hurried towards Sophia and Annie's bedroom, she ran back without answering anyone and went to the basement once more.

"Er...Alex? What are you doing?" Sophia asked tentatively.

Alex still, did not answer as she came back up the stairs with a large board. It was only then that Mr. Summers scowled. "What the hell do you think you're doing at this time of night? Do you even care toddlers are trying to sleep??"

By the agitation in his voice, Alex turned with wide eyes. She set the board down and directed her hands towards the left of the room. "That...boy..." she said, waving as if referencing the Bradshaws next door, "is seriously messed up! I believe Sophie when she says that weirdo was climbing into her bedroom!"

Mr. Summers raised a brow. "With a straight face, you believe our underage neighbor snuck into the house, didn't disturb anyone or anything, but turned off the girls alarms...?"

"Maybe he went through their closets or diaries, hell, maybe he even watched them as they slept or even looked around the house as we all slept," Alex shrugged. "My point is, he's a psycho! I'm talkin' Norman Bates meets real life!"

"You do remember Norman Bates is a fictional character, right...?"

"Do any of the boys in our family pin pictures of serial killers and fictional murderers on their walls like they're idols and role models??" Alex countered in a whisper. "Blake Bradshaw has pictures of Charles Manson, Ed Gein, Ted Bundy, and Albert Fish on his wall!" she claimed, shaking her hands for emphasis.
At this, Mr. Summers only frowned. "With the exception of that first one, I have no idea who those people are-"
"-Serial killers, dad! People who've earned the title of serial killer based on how any victims they've had!"

"And what? Because of that, he snuck into our home in the dead of night?"

"Damn straight, he's a baby psychopath. It wouldn't surprise me if he's already killing animals."

Sophia's mind briefly drifted back to her first time of watching Blake when the hissing cat had been heard. Mr. Summers scowled once more. "How many times have I told you not to use profanity in front of the kids??"
Alex rolled her brown eyes given the only 'child' in the room was Sophia. "I think Soph has a bigger problem at the moment minus my swearing. Namely, the psycho Blake has a massive crush on her."

Sophia felt her face pale at her sister's conclusion. "Wait...what!?"

Alex continued forward, trying to strike her point across. "Maybe that's why his parents are always trying to get her over at their house! Maybe they know he's coo-coo and they're just trying to appease the creepy little bastard so he doesn't murder them in their beds while THEY sleep!"

"Annnnnd now you've lost all credibility," Mr. Summers sighed, rubbing his eyes tiredly. "The conclusions you jump to...Did you stay up late watching an Alfred Hitchcock marathon again...?"

Sophia frowned, thinking this was massively unfair Alex was being waved off.She personally felt her older sister was making great points. While her sister looked to be on the verge of snapping verbally, Sophia intervened. "Dad, I'm with Alex. There's something seriously wrong with Blake! He hit me on the trampoline, and he wrote that word on my locker because he was angry I didn't want to babysit him again..." she paused, thinking of something else. "And now that I think about it, when Alex and Blake were verbally sparring, he said something identical that made it sound like he was spying on us while we were talking yesterday."

At this declaration, Mr. Summers turned towards his eldest daughter. "You got into a verbal-sparring session with our neighbor, who is a CHILD?" Alex shot Sophia a dirty look, as if miffed she would bring this up. It was then Sophia saw why this agitated her sister. Their father would concentrate more on this fact alone then the actual problem at large. "What is the matter with you??He's what, fourteen or fifteen? Who was the adult in this situation??"

Alex balked. "Are you not listening? Albert Fish, Ted Bundy, The Night Stalker, Michael Myers, Jason Voorhees! It doesn't matter if the killers are from real life or make believe! Blake is obsessed with them!"

"It's true!" Sophia concluded. "There's an entire room in his house dedicated to horror movies or real life killers. When Blake snuck back downstairs while we were watching him, he started watching this really terrifying movie that was showing a woman getting tortured before murdered!"

Mr. Summers grimaced. "What movie was it...?" All Sophia could really do was shrug at her father's question. She had no idea given she wasn't a lover of horror movies.

"It was a movie so high on the gore factor, it actually looked like a snuff film," Alex insisted, crossing her arms. "Maybe it's nothing. Maybe Blake just has a sick fascination with horror and gore while his dad and brothers like cars. My point is, what of it's more than just a fascination for him...? What if he's as psychotic as we think he is? Do you really want an I-told-you-so moment to happen where something bad happens but you didn't believe us when we tried to tell you? I thought you were better than parents in bad fiction not believing their kids, dad."

At this point, Mr. Summers looked positively tired of arguments and purely exasperated. Whether it was because his daughters wore him down with arguing or because it was late was unknown. Due to both of his daughters intense stares,he seemed to finally believe them. "All right, fine. Do what you want, just make sure you don't wake the toddlers up," he grumbled, rolling his eyes as he headed back to the bedroom Mrs. Summers was currently fast asleep in.

Sophia watched as Alex collected her decent-sized board to hurry towards the girl's room. "You really think he'll try coming in again?" she asked in a quiet voice.

"If he's hanging around our house to the point of being able to eavesdrop on conversations he shouldn't be able to overhear, then yes, I think he'll try coming in again," Alex replied, heading towards the window. Annie perked her head up from underneath the covers to see what they were doing before tiredly going back to sleep.
"Maybe we should inform the police," Sophia said, helping Alex by holding the board as the young woman started lining up her screws.

Alex snorted. "Don't you watch TV shows? Real life is sadly just as bad as that. We have no hard-proof Blake broke in. All we have is a few instances where he's creepy as sin and where he somehow copied what I said almost word for word."
"But if we both say it wouldn't the cops have to believe it?"

"Probably not. We could try but I bet they'd want us to wait until something concrete comes up."

"Like what?"
Alex contemplated this as she finished putting the last of the screws in before testing out her handiwork. She then added a few more screws to each corners of the boards. "Blake physically harming you."
***
Sophia couldn't find herself falling asleep that night. She laid awake in her bed, not even huddled under her covers. One hand of hers gripped the metal baseball bat she had decided to sleep with while her other hand lay poised to turn on the nearby lamp. Her eyes were unblinking as she watched her boarded window. Alex had not been wrong in her assumption that something was truly wrong with Blake Bradshaw. Sophia felt it to. There was something very abnormal about him, something that made the teenager feel as though he were a predator while she was the prey.

After two hours of stupidly laying in the dark and staring at her window,Sophia released a breath. Maybe her constant worrying as of late was for nothing. Perhaps she was getting worked up for positively nothing. The basketball incident could have very well have been an unfortunate accident.B-I-T-C-H on the locker could've easily been a spiteful girl who was jealous Sophia made the top dance squad. Maybe, she had overthought Blake's using the same wording that Alex had. Maybe he hadn't been spying on them at all, maybe it was just an eerie coincidence. A low creaking above Sophia's bedroom had her stiffening in place. "You're just afraid," she whispered to herself, trying to relax her nerves.
Only, the noise did not stop. It increased tempo, soon enough the sound of footsteps taking place above her. Glancing at her clock on her nightstand, 3am blinked back at her. Even though she possessed a large family, Sophia knew automatically not one person was upstairs at this time. The way the layout of this house was setup left the attic directly above the renovated garage area that was now Sophia and Annie's bedroom. No one should technically be in that area of the house at this time of night.

Low footsteps sounded, almost sounding as if the owner was walking specifically around the area where Sophia and Annie's beds are located. The teenager gripped her holding on her baseball bat, her eyes going wide as her skin crawled. It was when a low sounding creaking noise took place that Sophia decided to call for backup. She crept out of her covers and over to her sister's bed."Annie...Annie!" she hissed, shaking her younger sister awake.

Annie groggily pulled herself awake, her brown eyes blinking slowly. "Whuh?"

"I think there's someone in the attic," Sophia explained in a breathy whisper.

Annie blinked herself awake, not looking as though she were fully understanding what her sister was implying. "Whatdoyoumean?" she grumbled into one word. At that moment, the low creaking started again, something that sounded suspiciously similar to footsteps walking up inside the attic. Annie paled immediately at the noise. "DAD!!" she practically howled, jumping off the bed and bolting from the room in a panic. At that moment, the footsteps started again, this time with a more frantic edge. Sophia started holding the bat protectively as the thought of Blake Bradshaw creeped into her mind.
***
"There was someone up there," Sophia insisted adamantly, shaking her head after her father came downstairs. He had announced the family had acquired yet another bat problem given the attic window was broken. He checked the entire attic with the help of his eldest son. Not only was there no human running around upstairs, there was a decent sized bat hiding in the top far corner of the room. Upon seeing it,Mr. Summers came rushing down the stairs with promises to call animal control ASAP.

"Sweetie, it's just a bat problem. The isolation on this house has been weak since we moved in," Mrs. Summers tsked, shaking her head in disappointment. A few of the groggy kids who were awake nodded in agreement. Alex saw the worried look Sophia was sporting and intervened.

"What if it was him? That kid next door? I blocked Sophie's window, maybe he was looking for another way in-"

"Dammit Alex, knock it off," Mr. Summers growled, sending a glare towards his eldest daughter. "You're scaring the kids over a damn animal." Alex scowled but didn't push this issue as her father started fumbling with his phone. "Animal control for the Schaumburg area doesn't open until seven. Later today I'll call them and they'll fix the bat problem. After that, we'll board up the windows and make sure the bats can't get in again."

Sophia stopped paying attention to her father. The girl only had eyes for the house next door across the massive lawn. Three floors up, in the room she now knew to be Blake Bradshaw's bedroom, his light was on. It was the only light in the entire house that was still on. As much as it frightened Sophia to admit it even mentally to herself, she felt she was quite accurate with her belief that the boy next door was lurking around the area directly above her bedroom tonight.