The house was sad, wreathed in loneliness. It stood tall, its paint chipped, its crooked chimney stretching into the pale sky. The house drooped and sagged and groaned in the wind; constantly casting its eerie gloom over the rest of the neighborhood.
I stared at it from my bedroom window. I’d only been inside the old house once. If I didn’t carry the scars on my body, I would have forced myself to believe that the night of my visit to 155 Chester Street had been nothing but a painful nightmare.
The first thing I had noticed about the inside of the house had been the synthetic, sickly sweet aroma. It was overwhelming, as the owner was trying to cover up some other smell. I looked at him, as he stood back to let me through the door. He seemed nice enough.
As I stepped inside I was confronted by a bare, whitewashed hallway flanked by dark rooms, it reminded me of a hospital.
I turned to the owner. “So, where is Sophie?” I asked. I’d been called to babysit “Sophie.”
“She’s downstairs,” he answered, directing my down the horrible hallway. At the end of the hall sat a small, empty kitchen. He brushed past me, I tried not to cringe at this light exchange of body heat as he opened a dirty brown door to our left.
I was slammed with a stronger wave of that powerfully fake smell, but detected another scent lingering underneath. Death.
I stopped in my tracks, heart racing. Something told me there was no Sophie. I realized how little I knew of the man who lived at 155 Chester Street.