Deceptive

Childhood Home

The street on which the Afton home stood looked like it might've been rather nice at some point. But, as it currently stood, it seemed almost deserted. It was as if it belonged more in a ghost town than it did in theirs. The homes lining it were all almost identical. Only one stood out as some sort of outlier.

Of course, that outlier was the one they were heading to. It stood at the very end of the street.

Foxy slowed the car down to a stop near a few dead-looking trees planted in the yard of the house neighboring it. "We're here," he announced, putting the car in park. This time around, he was the first one out of the vehicle.

The sun had set completely and a nighttime chill had settled in the air.

Freddy grabbed the bag of supplies out of the trunk, opening it up and passing around the flashlights.

"H-here ya go, Foxy."

"Thanks." Foxy turned his flashlight on, waiting for everybody else to do the same before he before started to make his way past the trees.

"Well... this place has seen better days," Michael commented from somewhere behind him.

"Definitely not as nice as I remember," Charlie agreed.

They all stopped on the cracked sidewalk for a minute, admiring the decrepit beauty. It stood somewhat crooked, almost threatening in the way it seemed to loom over them.

The blue paint that covered the house had faded and chipped, revealing the old rotting wood underneath. Many of the shingles on the roof had fallen off, leaving holes both large and small. The shutters on the windows were either barely hanging on or had fallen off completely, exposing the dirty, partially broken glass. Weeds crawled up the walls and into the holes that decorated them.

The front door was missing from its frame.

Foxy took a deep, nervous breath and turned around to look at his friends. "Are you all ready?"

The entire group nodded and started making their way towards the house.

They went past the short wooden fence, which was mostly fallen over.

They walked across the crack-riddled path.

And then they found themselves in front of the porch.

Foxy was the first to set foot on it, looking down to make sure he didn't step on a spot that looked likely to cave in. The front door laid slight askew in front of him with a very noticeable dark stain smeared across it.

...Was that blood? He shouldn't have been too surprised at this point, but Foxy's heart began to pound harder in his chest regardless. The stain seemed to trail inside, but he could barely make out any of it once it hit the blue carpet. It was way too cluttered with dirt, trash, and various other things.

That didn't matter too much, though. They had an idea of where it led.

Everybody made a beeline for the shattered sliding glass door in the living room, which was visible from the hallway they had just set foot in.

The entire house seemed to groan as they walked through it.

The glass surrounding the empty frame of the back door crunched beneath their shoes as they passed over it.

There, in the furthest corner of the backyard, stood a rusted shed half-hidden behind overgrown grass.

Charlie looked at Michael. "Do you want to open it?"

"Sure."

The group watched with bated breath as he grabbed the lock and tried to get it open.

Foxy suddenly realized something. "Michael?"

"Yeah?"

"You said you figured out how to get into the shed, but you never told us what you found in it."

"Oh, I never found anything." Michael finished putting the combination in and the lock opened. "Didn't look very hard, though." The doors seemed to be a bit stuck and he struggled to wrestle them open. "And Dad used to spend tons of time in here, so there must be something special I that overlooked."

Everybody shined their flashlights into it all at once, not sure if something would be waiting for them or not. All they were greeted with was what seemed to be a normal shed full of tools and yard equipment. The only thing that appeared out of the ordinary was the large bloody smear on the concrete floor.

Riley's corpse had been laid in the very spot they were looking at. Mutilated to the point of being unrecognizable and photographed before being taken... somewhere else. Foxy swallowed the bile that threatened to rise up his throat.

"So... let's have a look and see if we can find anything." He shined his light into an open box. All he found was a bunch of books and miscellaneous manuals.

Michael pushed the lawnmower up against the back wall and revealed what looked like a wooden hatch on the floor. He stood there for a moment in disbelief before announcing his discovery. "Who wants to open it?"

"I'll do it." Foxy crouched down in front of it, avoiding the dry blood like it would burn him. Two rusty deadbolts held the hatch shut. He unlocked them and threw open the hatch a bit too roughly, causing it to crash rather loudly against the floor and send up a cloud of dust and dirt. He cringed. "Sorry. I probably shouldn't make a racket."

Michael leaned over Foxy, shining his flashlight down into the dark void before them.

"What do you see down there?" Ballora asked.

"Another hatch, I think."

"But this one's metal. And there's a bunch of beams or something down there too."

"Should we—?"

A loud thud sounded from somewhere inside the house, ten times louder than it should have been thanks to how quiet the surrounding area was.

Everybody's heads snapped towards the direction of the sound.

"Do you guys see that?" Charlie whispered.

Foxy couldn't see anything. "See what?"

"The person standing in front of that upstairs window."

There, up in the furthest left upstairs window, was the outline of a person.

It was very hard to make out in the darkness. Foxy had to strain his eyes, but there was no denying it. There was a person up there.

They didn't seem to be doing anything. All they did was stare down at them.

Foxy had half a mind to shine his light up there so he could see who it was, but it seemed as if the person knew the exact moment that the thought crossed his mind. They moved away from the window and out of sight.

"...Should we go in there and see who that is?" he asked after it seemed like nobody else was going to talk.

"I mean, we can't just ignore them, can we?"

Foxy could see Michael grab a sledgehammer off of the pegboard next to him out of the corner of his eye. "No, we can't," he said. "Come on."

One by one, everyone turned their flashlights off and started hesitantly following Michael back into the house.