Normally when your family moves into a new house, the first thing you think of is whether it is haunted or not. Well, my family, and me, are not normal. We had just moved to Oakland, California due to my mom having to move all the time for her work. We used to live in Raleigh, North Carolina, but that lasted about two years and we were on our way again. When you're the introvert at your school though, you tend to make one to zero friends and that’s about it, so I didn’t miss much from traveling away to the places I live. My mom worked for an international business company, I have no idea what exactly she does but that’s besides the point for me being only fifteen.

I breathed in the fresh smell of- wait. What is that smell? I smell a scent of decay and burnt wood. Whenever I enter places, the first thing my rigid, big, freckled nose does is smell the distinct smells of odd things that no one else in my family smells. “Mom, do you smell that decay?” I knew the answer would be no, but I thought i’d give it a shot and maybe one day they’d smell the scent of death like I do.

“No, sweetheart, I don’t. Maybe you got a whiff of skunk on the road and it stuck into your nose.” She came over to me and poked my nose and laughed. Her laugh will lighten up a whole room, her cherry lipstick that is a staple for her, really makes her pearl white teeth shine. The cherry lipstick also compliments her dark green eyes that look as if an emerald perfectly hit the right balance of light and shade. 

I scoff because I was right knowing they couldn’t and I don’t even know why I bother, they can’t smell it. I pull a fake laugh out to please her from feeling like these scents genuinely bother me. I hear my brother's footsteps walk through the door. With them comes along my dad, carrying all their luggage and probably straining his fifty year old back. Jonah and Cam’s ginger hair really blends them together to almost look like twins, even though Jonah is nine, a year older than Cam. Their bodies are covered with freckles everywhere you look followed with the same green eyes as my mom. 

Maybe it’s because I’m the only one who is blonde with brown eyes. Maybe that’s why I have the gift of smelling death. Maybe I’m even adopted, I think to myself. I laugh at the idea, my curled blonde hair looks nothing like my moms brown hair and dads course ginger hair. They also all got lucky green eyes.

“Which way is my room?” I holler down the hall, waiting for any of the four family members to reply. 

“Third door on the right, upstairs!” My mom hollers back.

I speed walk with excitement to my new room. I open the door and a loud creak follows it. I guess that means I won’t be able to sneak out or get midnight snacks easily. I try to ignore that part and I walk through to see the tan walls with random grey scratches all over them. This room could really use work but good thing I love art. 

That night after we all got a good look at our rooms and brought all the heavy brown boxes into our rooms, we went downstairs for a nice family dinner. My mom always makes chicken, with different seasoning and sides each night but there is always chicken included in it. I’m not sure why, I think it is something with a family tradition. Tonight we had green beans (canned, my favorite), mashed potatoes (with extra butter and salt, again one of my favorites), and the chicken seasoned with lemon. 

I began to dig in. “What do you guys think of your rooms?” I questioned the table with my mouth filled like a chipmunk.

“I like my room, I’m excited to put shelves up to show my car collection.” Jonah explained with excitement.

“I need new robin’s egg blue paint and some new curtains because the ones that are already there have grey scratches in them.” Cam said with no sense of worriment on why the grey scratches were there. The scratches on the other hand worry me. Why are they on his curtains and my walls, and why do I keep smelling decay?

“Our room is nice, we have a nice bathroom too, two showers!” He got giddied up in excitement. I guess that’s the next most exciting thing for him since the tv began to play football. “Now that you mention those scratches though Jonah, I've seen them in our bathroom.” 

I didn’t say much that dinner after that conversation because when I get a bad gut feeling the bad feeling takes its claws and shuts my mouth completely and makes me think about it until I figure it out, and that’s my curse I guess.

Going to bed was fine, I read and put headphones in on the rock music setting and fell asleep with them in. I awoke the next morning with a screaming headache and aches from all over my face. My first assumption was that the rock music was probably killing my brain cells leaving me with a headache, but in fact I turned to the mirror and my jaw dropped.

“Dad… Mom... “ I whispered. I couldn’t get any words out at the moment. Looking back at me in the mirror was my face, covered in ruby red blood scratches. Just like the grey scratches in all of our bedrooms. I let out a scream because that’s all I could. No, I don’t have pets, and as far as I know the people before us didn’t either. Unless- they had a mean cat lurking the halls as a ghost.

My mom and dad bulge through my door and come over to me asking “What is it Jenny?”, I turn my face towards them and they give me a confused look. “Mom, dad, why are you not freaking out right now? The scratches! What did this to me? I can’t handle this house. I hate it already,” I scream through salty tears that roll down my cheek like a soft river. 

“Honey, take a deep breath. What did you say?” They questioned.

“The scratches on my face. It’s right there, what do you guys not understand?” I say between labored breaths.

“Jenny I think you may have brought something from your nightmares into your mind this morning, there are no scratches on your face!” My mom’s soft eyes looked deep into mine.

I gasp at this. “What? Mom, dad, they are right there!” I point to different places on my face.

“Please, go back to sleep.” My dad carries me back to my bed and puts the covers over my face. I take a deep breath and begin to think that maybe I am hallucinating and maybe it is the move. I shut my eyes and the sleepiness daze of dreams cover me like a blanket of snow.

I woke up around three hours later to the smell of burnt wood, the smell of what I first got a whiff of when I entered the house. My eyes open wide and I hop up from my bed that had a boxspring that was ten times too uncomfortable to be sleeping on. I am sitting straight up in my bed and I look around to see flames lining around the bed. My mouth gapes open and fear strikes me like lightning. I scream, once again, because no words can come from my mouth when a rope of fear strangles my neck to the point where no words can cut through the rope.

This time, my parents don’t enter the room. Why aren’t they coming in here and extinguishing the fire? It wraps around my room like a snake wrapping around its prey. The smoke grasped into my lounges and I felt as though I couldn’t breathe. I tried to grab onto the handle of my door but the metal felt like a flaming hot pot steaming on the stove. My hand flew from the handle and I went to the singular window in that room. I opened the latch and jumped from the window into the green prickled bushes.

 I ran to go find my parents and they weren’t anywhere to be found. I begin to scream again as I look through the doors to find my brothers. They aren’t here either. I run to the neighbors house and see that their house in fact isn’t there either. Huge flames surround the premises of where I stand and my house lies behind me in smoke and ashes as it slowly burns down. All I see is my burnt house, an orange blood moon, the stars, and the soft grass, nothing else. I break down and fall into the grass and shut my eyes and pull at my hair hoping for this to stop. 

I wake up again. I am laying in the grass beside my house- my house! It’s still there and not burnt. I gasp and look around, my neighbors houses and the trees have returned around me, and the now precious sidewalk is there too. 

“Jenny! What are you doing out here? You have been acting so weird since we moved in. I have been looking for you all morning,” My mom says in a strict manner.

“Mom, flames, scratches, no neighbors, blood orange mood, soft green grass” This is all I can spit out from my shock. Where did it all go?

“Please come back inside, breakfast is ready, bacon and eggs. We need you to see a doctor and get your medications, this is strange behavior and I worry about you,” 

I stutter for words to come out of my mouth but I know no one will believe me. I get up and hold my mom's cold, wrinkled hands with a dozen rings on each finger. We walked inside and exactly what I suspected would happen, I would eat my food in misery knowing they would ask me tons of questions.

“Jenny I heard you’ve gone coo-coo and sleep walked into the yard and pretended like you were haunted,” Jonah sneered from across the table. I was still in shock but I couldn’t let my family know this.

I threw bacon at Jonah in a joking way and said “Just crazy nightmares, don’t worry about it y’all,”

“Seems pretty intense to me,” My dad sips his coffee and blinks at me once and then looks back at his newspaper.

“Yeah, it is.” I leave the conversation at that and put my dish into the dishwasher and walk upstairs, that was enough talk from my family thinking I'm some crazy lady. 

That night I went to sleep fine and none of the craziness happened. I dreamt about the new school and that was pretty much a nightmare in itself. Weeks went by and nothing much was happening. My family thought I was normal again and my mom didn’t make me go to a therapist anymore, thank goodness. I painted my room a bright purple to match my dream catcher. My room was looking more lively and the curtains were lavender with no scratches this time.

All the sudden, about a week after school actually started, I would start to wake up in the morning with the scent of decay in my nose and aching feeling of scratches on my face. Sometimes I would smell burnt wood too. Nothing ever actually appeared like it did that first night though, it just had the sense it was near. I can never put my finger on what happened. I think the house is haunted, no one else believes me, but no one else experienced the sense of their room burning and their soul burning with it.