Tree of Life, Part One

2 December 2006

My father had said it was a great time to buy, and even though I wasn’t quite ready to do that yet, he insisted it was important I got into a house before the market turned against buyers. He said it was likely prices would get lower before they turned up again, but it was impossible to know how long that would be, and he didn’t want me to finish my degree only to find the prices higher than they were now. So I picked out a nice place in Madison, with some woods and a small creek behind it, and my parents made sure I had the down payment and a significant chunk of the contract price handled, and I moved in just after Thanksgiving.

I was there nearly a week before I first heard the voices at night. The neighbors weren’t close enough for it to be them, and when I called the police they checked and found no evidence of anyone in the house and nothing missing. All the same, I had a better alarm system installed, and I slept uneasy the next few nights. But last night, I heard them again. I couldn’t place where they were coming from. It was like they were going downstairs, but through the bathroom, instead of the actual stairs. I went down to the first floor with a flashlight and a baseball bat, but the only sound I now heard was my own heart thumping in my ears. I did some breathing exercises I’d learned that time my mom insisted I just had to try yoga, and as I began to calm down I flicked on the light. There was a brief shimmer in the corner of my eye, which almost seemed like a man in midair, but as soon as I turned to it, it was gone. I heard a scream, distant and brief, and spun around to see where it was coming from. Then everything went quiet, and a chill ran down my spine. I stood fixed, waiting for something else to happen, but nothing did.
​
I considered calling the police again, but I recalled the way the officer looked at me last time as he shoved his report back into his pocket and suspected that wouldn’t help anything. I remembered, then, Rick talking about looking into the supernatural with some friends of his. I didn’t know what else to think about it, so I made a note to talk to him in the morning.

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