17 Gruselig

“AMY!!!” My mother shrieks, her usually neat hair flying around her shoulders, loose from running after me. I reach out to hold onto the rickety, old door frame but the rough hand on my arm tightens its grip, and pulls me away before I can grab it. I am a little girl again, and I am wearing my favourite pink skirt that I got for my birthday. It gets caught on something and I hear the material tearing, I am dragged deeper into the dark corridor of the ancient house. I scream again, and hear the distant cries of my mother. I am thrown onto a stool, and released for a moment, but before I have the chance to escape, my arms are tied up behind me, and I am stuck. I pull as hard as I can, but am too weak to make a difference. I hear a sinister laugh behind me, and feel the freezing hand on my shoulder. Suddenly, a light is switched on. The room smells musty, and old. It’s empty except for the light above me, some sharp looking things in the corner, some ropes, and the creature that brought me here. A black, cloaked figure stalks around the room, as if inspecting the cruel-looking sharp things, then picks something up. I hear his low, threatening voice, “You know too much, far too much”. Something hits me on the head, and everything goes black.

I open my eyes, and look around, then breathe a sigh of relief. I am safe in my own bedroom, again. My father’s hand is on my shoulder, and he’s murmuring ‘safe’ and ‘honey’ and ‘home’. I am tangled in my sheets and lying on the floor. It was just a dream, or more, a nightmare. I fix up my sheets, and Dad goes back to bed.

My alarm goes off, and I wake up, exhausted from the nightmare. I have a shower, then eat breakfast, and head out the door, and off to school. I look down at my watch and see that I am ten minutes early, so I slow my too-fast-for-this-hour-of-the-morning pace, to one that matches my tired mood. My eyes are drooping, and my feet are scuffing along the ground, because I’m still half asleep. I nearly trip over my massive feet, when I hear a huge crack. I look up, and realise it came from the rickety, old number 17 Gruselig St. I automatically pick up my pace, to pass the scene of my terrible nightmare.

When I was a young child, there was a rumour amongst the other kids at kinder, that a very, very old man who had seen terrible things, had lived there not very long ago, but he had died, and his unsettled spirit would linger in the house, until he was put to rest. Until then, he would go on taking people, starting with young toddlers, and taking people older and older, to prove he was getting stronger. Soon we all grew up, though, and it seemed a ridiculous thing to talk about, and so we didn’t anymore, but I don’t think any of us have stopped believing there is something wrong with the house. A few months ago, a twelve year old girl from the area went missing, and about a year before that, eight year old Ellie, daughter of a successful business man, had been reported missing, and was later assumed dead. There was still no confirmed explanation for their disappearances, but we all had a gut feeling it had something to do with the house.

I climb up onto the crowded bus, and sit down in the only spare seat, next to a girl with died black hair covering one of her eyes, thick eyeliner visible around the eye I can see. I try not to think of my nightmare, but with the girl next to me looking as if she would fit perfectly into the dark house, flickers of the nightmare dart through my mind, and I decide to try to figure it out. I can’t think of how I got there, or who it might have been that grabbed me, and I can’t think how long I was struggling, or why I was six years old. In fact, the only thing I can figure out is that it certainly had something to do with 17 Gruselig, as it’s referred to by the locals.

Once again on the bus, my eyes can barely stay open, and I can’t wait to get home. The bus pulls up at my stop, and I swipe my card then get off. I start walking down the street, and manage to pass 17 Gruselig… almost. I am about to breathe a sigh of relief, when I see out of the corner of my eye a pink frill exactly the same colour as the skirt I got when I was six. It had been my favourite, and when I could no longer squeeze myself into it, I had cried. I head over to the little frill, without thinking, to pick it up. It is exactly like the one I had, except this one seems so small, and is caked with mud. I am about to go home, when I get the biggest shock of my life… so far. A small foot is poking out from under a pile of scrap metal and weeds. I go to leave, convince myself it wasn’t real, but curiosity wins over my instinct to flee. I head over behind the house, and bend over to lift up the piece of corrugated iron covering it, when I hear someone standing right behind me clear their throat.

“Can I help you?” A rough voice asks me. I stand up and manage to stutter a small

“Oh, um… uh… I just… I saw that foot there and I don’t know… I just thought it might be a real person’s. I’m sorry… I didn’t mean to… I’ll get out of your hair. I guess it’s just a doll?” I step to the side, but the man blocks my path.

“Yeah, just a doll… you expect me to let you go? You think I can’t see through you? Of course it’s not plastic… but you already knew that, didn’t you?” He grips my chin and pushes it up, and hold my arms down with his other arm, and takes me into the house. The creaking floorboards feel thin and unstable beneath my feet, and my throat is tickling with the dust in the air, but I’m too scared to cough. I press my feet against the ground and try to get him to stop, but it makes no difference. Suddenly, I feel like a little girl again. Dressed in my pink skirt, always my pink skirt, and helpless against the strength of the horrendous beast pulling me further and further away from the sun. I give in, and decide that I might live if I cooperate. He leads me up the stairs, and down a hall. We stop for a moment, and he pushes me down onto the ground, and tells me not to move. I don’t, and he opens a cupboard, and inside fiddles with a dial, before opening a tall, murky green cabinet, taking something out, and leaning it against the wall next to him. I can’t see what it is, but I decide it must be pretty bad. He wrenches me back up onto my feet and pushes me out in front of him.

I walk forward, feeling incredibly vulnerable and so scared that if he wasn’t pressing something hard into my back, I would be too scared to move. I edge forward, and then stop. He grunts and tells me to go up the ladder in front of me. I warily step up onto it, and climb up the rotting ladder, and into an attic. There is a chair at the far end of the room, in front of a window. It looks like it’s the only thing in the room that has been used in the last few decades. I hear a thump, and the light coming from the trapdoor I came up through, is gone. I turn around, and the man, or more, the beast, who took me up here, walks across the room. “Unpleasant isn’t it?” He says, menacingly, “I’ve had to live through years of watching happy families playing on the street. Of children growing up, their parents taking photos of them on the first day of school, on their birthdays, their first day of high school, all through their lives. I’ve been sitting up here watching them grow up. I’ve watched people like you hurry past this house, children are too scared to get their basketballs from my backyard when they throw them over the fence. Society HATES me, and so I hate society.” He walks around behind me, and picks something up.

I feel the hard thing from before pressed against my head. I let out one little noise, a last goodbye, and then hear the ear piercing CRACK of a gun. Everything goes red, and then I am lying on the splintering wooden floor. I can’t feel anything. I'm the next victim. 14 years old.

One final thought travels through my mind. “AMY!!!” My mother shrieks, her usually neat hair flying around her shoulders, her clip bobbing around, loose from running after me. I reach out to hold onto the rickety, old door frame, of the front door, but the cold, rough hand on my other arm tightens its grip, and pulls me away before I can grab it...