The house is evil. I swear to you. Absolutely evil. The hairs on the back of your neck raise and goose bumps pop up all over on your skin when you step inside. It feels like someone’s watching you. Like there’s something lurking in every corner, always one step behind you, but when you turn to look for them, they disappear. It’s fuckin’ creepy.

When Becca went inside, I decided to take advantage of her mad bobby pin skills and go into the house, despite the risk of being attacked by a serial killer. I closed my eyes, squeezed them shut, bracing myself for attack, but all I got was that weird tingly paranoid feeling you get when you know someone isn’t watching you but you can’t help to spin around and place your back against the wall, breathing shallow and staring hard into the shadows trying to catch a glimpse of the boogie man.

There are no monsters here though. At least, not anymore. So I pick myself up off the wall and look around, trying to convince myself that there is no such thing as the monsters under your bed and I was being irrational for even considering it.

The house is silent. Dead silent. And the expression is so true, it feels as though the house and everything in it has died a terrible death and all is quiet as if to morn them. It’s so quiet you could hear a needle drop in the next room over. So quiet you could hear the mice moving in the walls. So quiet you could hear the shallow breathe of the serial killer lurking in the- Stop it, Gerard, you’re freaking yourself out.

I stand in a short hallway that opens up into a living room and a kitchen. To my right is a door, most likely a closet, and to my left a staircase. The stairs are narrow and crooked, the walkway getting darker and darker the farther you go up until nothingness. I blink, scurrying away from the ominous dark stairwell. Below my feet is a dark wooden floor, the panels scuffed and worn. The walls are bare, off white with brownish-yellow tobacco stains. I could imagine the white paint streaked with dark red, hand prints and drag stains and splatters marking everywhere. I could see it. It was something that probably happened. Something that could happen again. That blood could be mine. If of course I wasn’t being a complete lunatic and imagining blood on the walls.

Both the kitchen and the dining room are bare, the lights off, shadows painted over everything like someone spilled a bucket of ink in each corner. The only light drifting into the room comes from the one, slightly open window in the living room. A cold draft spills in through the crack between the window frame and the glass sending chills up my back. I squirm in my spot in the hallway, eyes darting around, looking for something that could lead me to the reason I’m here.

I can hardly see in the darkness and the light socket on the ceiling is an empty carcass. I step forward, heading toward the kitchen to investigate.

Crunch.

I look down, lifting up my foot to examine what I’ve stepped on. Under my converse is a flattened red piece of candy the white inside crushed into a fine powder that sprinkles off my shoe back onto the wooden flooring. I bend down to pick up the remnants, rubbing the chunks in between my thumb and forefinger. A bit of the hard red coating has the letter S on it and I immediately know what it is. A Skittle.

The note had been in a Skittles box.

Follow the rainbow it had said.

I’m a bit of an idiot when it comes to riddles, but this one is so easy even I can figure it out.

I scan the floor in front of me, finding a neat row of candy leading toward the stairs arranged in a rainbow pattern. It’s like the light in the dark, leading me out of the shadows. My own yellow brick road, except… not yellow. Or brick… Same concept though.

Pulling the Skittles box out of my pocket, I reach down and scoop up the next piece of candy (which is orange) and drop it in the box. I follow the trail like Hansel and Gretel, and hopefully I won’t find a child eating witch at the top of the stairs. I gather about six or seven pieces of candy before I reach the bottom step. The Skittles jingle in the box as I stare up into the dark.

Yes, the little trail of rainbows is intriguing and sure I really want to go find the next bit of my memories, but it’s really frickin’ creepy up there. I’m starting to wonder if I’m afraid of the dark or something. Because this was really scary. I mean, is it normal for a seventeen year old boy to be piss-your-pants scared of a dark stairwell? No, it’s not. And don’t laugh at me. It’s not even funny.

And so I climb the stairs.

And I feel like every single creature, every monster, everything with claws or fangs or big yellow eyes, is going to jump out at me as I make my way up the creaky crooked stairwell. The walls are close together, the steps narrow and rickety and I feel like I’m being suffocated. Like the walls are closing in on me. I squeeze my eyes shut to try and be brave, but I end up almost falling flat on my face. Bad idea, eyes open it is. So I have to climb the stairs staring into the dark, waiting for the vampires to come and eat me.

No matter how cool being turned into a vampire would be I still kinda don’t want to die.

There’s a single Skittle on each step and I pick them up as I go. I can just barely make them out in the dark, but I must have fucking night vision because I find them all. I make it to the top of the steps without getting eaten (luckily), and find another trail of Skittles leading down a very tiny, very narrow, and very dark hallway. There are three doors, two bedrooms and a bath, and the Skittle trail leads to the door at the very end of the hall.

The shadows lurk in the dark, crawling down the floorboards like beasts with spindly claws ready to grab me with a fowl swoop and squish me like a fly. I swallow, taking a long shaky breath, and then follow the rainbow.

I find myself standing in front of the door at the end of the hall. The off-white paint is chipping and the brass doorknob is dull and scratched. The knob of the lock is on the outside instead of the inside, and I assume that the inside has the key hole. But why would someone go through the trouble to switch the lock around? They would have no reason to, unless they locked something inside. Something with opposable thumbs that would be capable of twisting the knob if it were on the inside.

I shake the thought away not wanting to psyche myself out and ease the door open. The room is dark, pitch black, the window on the back wall covered with thick heavy curtains. I can’t help but think that whatever they locked in here is still here. I can barely make out anything, the shadows are so deep. It feels like it’s the darkest sort of dark I’ve ever been in. It feels like someone took a black blanket and just threw it over everything. Perfection in its purest form for a monster to live and eat and breathe. I grimace, bouncing on my feet, trying to avoid the rustles in the room that I’m making up in my head and figure out what to do next, and then decide to make a mad dash for the window. I run like the wind, dodging invisible monsters and almost crash into the wall. Feeling around as fast as I can, I find the heavy curtains, wrap my hands around the edges and yank them open harder than I thought I could possibly pull with my thin wiry arms. Gray clear light filters in through the glass and dust explodes everywhere. I almost hack up a lung coughing from it. When I finish coughing I get a good look around.

The room is small and square with a closet in the back right hand corner. The walls are a deep shade of black, the flooring dark hardwood. No wonder it had looked so dark. There isn’t any furniture and the light fixture is empty. The draft is exceptionally cold up here and I have to pull my jacket closer around me. The room is almost completely bare except for one thing. In the center of the floor is a pile of rubbish, brown and tan and wooden, junk at first glance. I step forward, getting down on one knee to get a better look. The junk isn’t really junk. It’s an old looking acoustic guitar. The instrument is smashed into three major pieces; the body, the neck, and the head stock. The strings are all busted, curled and tangled and the tuning pegs have fallen off.

Reaching forward I pick up the body of the guitar. The wood bumps against the rest of the pile and creates hollow thumping noises that fall into the room like echoes. I cradle it gently in my arms, wondering who in the world would’ve broken such a pretty instrument. And it seems so familiar, the guitar smashed to bits on the floor, but I can’t quite put my finger on it. It feels like I’m in one of those dreams where you feel like something’s happening, but you can’t quite see what it is.

I sigh, frustrated with my brain damage, and stand up. I carry the body of wood across the room, delicately as if it were a child, and then sit down under the window, my back against the wall. I let my feet stretch out in front of me, sitting the beaten guitar in my lap.

Something tells me that he owned this guitar. The boy. Ocean eyes. He had lived here, after all. This might have been his room. It’s very likely that it’s his guitar. In fact, he’s probably here. He’s probably crouching outside the door, waiting patiently for the best moment to strike. Maybe he’s the one leading me here. Maybe he left the sticky notes for me. Maybe he wanted me to come here, just to kill me. Or do whatever to me. I have no idea. I just feel tired, I guess. Freaked out, but exhausted from running around town all day only to find a stupid smashed guitar that doesn’t even spark a graspable memory.

Maybe I could take a nap.

I take a deep breath, staring out into the hall with tired eyes and gently stroking the wooden surface of the guitar methodically.

If I were a cat, my ears would have perked up. Something’s outside the door. A gentle rustle plays in my ears like music.

I’m gonna die. I’m gonna fucking die.

The noise happens again, and I can sort of make it out. A rustle of… clothing maybe? And then a footstep. And another.

Yup, goodbye cruel world.

The noise continues and the footsteps get increasingly louder. They sound like boots. Big hollow sounding pounds against the hardwood. And more rustling. Lots of rustling, like their clothes are extremely baggy.

“Hello?!” I’m surprised at how raspy my voice is. I haven’t spoken in a while I guess. My heart beats are louder than my voice, thumping in my chest like a machine gun, constantly pumping pumping pumping.

I feel like some hopeless chap in a horror movie, going into the basement no matter how many times you call him an idiot. I kind of get it now, why they went into the basement. If I’m gonna die anyways, I might as well get it over with quick.

“Anyone there?!” I call out. The footsteps stop a moment. I stand up; setting the guitar down on the ground and slowly, ever so slowly, edge toward the door.