Our Sick Inheritance (editing)

Chapter 28 - Am I Seeing Things?

Anna jumped up and ran across the room to her closet, turning on the light. She recognized the woman from her garden had walked into her closet. Yet when Anna flicked on the light it was obvious to her nobody was there. The closet was empty except for the boxes that were full and waited to be tagged. Anna turned off the closet light and shut the door. She felt like she was living with an imaginary stalker in the corners of her home.

To say their house was spacious was an understatement. That made for a lot of unsettling noises and dark corners. Anna had gotten up several nights to see who was creeping by her door, but always found nothing but a few creaky floorboards. The woman from her garden often made herself seen to Anna, so she knew it wasn't her that slithered around in the darkness. Though she never found anybody walking the house at three in the morning, she knew someone who didn't wear shoes did. The reason she knew this was because she often saw wet dark footprints that lead a path to nowhere disappear before her eyes. Anna used to follow the prints when she was little, but back then they used to stop at her father's door which he kept locked. It usually happened when he wasn't home, so she always knew they weren't his, plus his feet were much bigger than the woman sized prints that walked the hallways. The older she got the footprints stopped reaching the far down the hallway. Harmony never saw them because they would disappear before Anna could wake her to show her. There were enough noises in the house that Harmony did experience so Anna tried to keep it to a minimum, so Harmony wouldn't accuse her of being crazy.

Anna spent a lot of time in the house alone, so it was easy to establish the difference between the scary noises and weird happenings because she was so used to them. It was the lady in the garden that often surprised her as if she tried to on purpose. The blond-haired woman from the garden resembled her mother so through the first few years into puberty, Anna trained herself to imagine it was her mother protecting her while she slept. But it didn't matter if she ran from her thoughts to her imagination she knew someone else was in the house also. Often Anna wondered if people had died in the house before they moved in or if the two ladies had walked here from the cemetery up the mountain just past their property. Anna had visited it once, but Harmony ran her out of there when they both heard girls crying and they knew they were alone.

It bothered Harmony to be scared in any way. She hated horror movies and wouldn't venture with Anna to haunted placed when they went on fashion trips. Anna absolutely loved the fear and adrenaline being scared provided but she usually had to experience it all alone. There were days she wished she had a boyfriend to cuddle up with that enjoyed the same hair-raising excitement. To have a partner to share things with was all the support she needed to make her feel like she could handle anything.

Anna sighed. Lately Anna was afraid of becoming paranoid of everyone and everything, like a child who walked around with his security blanket needing a night light on. Anna was tired of seeing ghosts and hoped whatever haunted her property wouldn't follow her to the island. It will be nice to get away from it all for a few days.

Instead of falling asleep, Anna got a second wind and retrieved her black box from under the bed. During this task she as least was alone this time. After grabbing what she wanted to take on her trip, she only left a few of the contents in the box and replaced it careful not to make any noise. In the wall of hidden secrets was where she was going to keep it until the day she moved when it would travel with her in her bag to their island. To have it so close to her father was nerve-racking but she didn't have much of a choice. It would kill her if anyone were to find out what the box contained. None of her explanations would be favored by anyone in her family. Anna would have to explain much to her bubble pink embarrassment. She only had an idea of how furious her father would be.