The Lake house

I was running through a cornfield in the middle of nowhere. Something was following me. I wasn’t sure what, but I had the feeling that it wanted to hurt me. Suddenly I reach a lake on the other side of the corn maze. I stop running, not sure where to go. I hear the crunch of corn stalks underneath my attacker’s feet. I turn around and all I see is a pair of huge red eyes, viscous teeth, and massive jagged claws lunging at me. As I feel it bearing down on me, I wake up and practically jump out of my bed in a cold sweat panting, but then I realize it was just a dream, or so I thought.

My name is Tabatha Donaldson and I’m eighteen years old. I live in Denver, Colorado, in a town house with my mom and dad. I am an only child. I love to read poetry and write it as well. I also am an artist. I’ve always been a creative person. I spend a lot of my free time in my room sketching images that I have in my dreams.
The day finally came when I was leaving for college. My parents were informing me about this house that some late relatives had previously owned. They told me that the family lived there for many years, but something unknown drove them out. The family apparently went missing and was never seen again. They still owned the house and it was left to my parents in their will. The family was pronounced missing, therefore my parents have full ownership of the property. They have never been there since it is in Maine on the other side of the country. The plantation is huge and the house is pretty much an ancient mansion; it also has a huge barn and a lake from what I’ve seen in pictures. School is going to start next month and I need a house within the next two weeks. Since I am not the wealthiest person, I decide that moving into the lake house is my only option.

Within two days, I have all of my items including my flashlight, my dad’s shot gun, and bullets packed and loaded in my red Chevy pickup, which my dad had graciously given to me about a year ago. I got in to the car and checked my appearance like I always do. I have light green eyes and dirty blond hair. I have many freckles covering my entire face. I’ve always been the quiet, shy type but I am pretty brave. While I’m looking in the mirror I almost start to break down. I really don’t want to leave home but I have to leave. I need to see what else is out there. I say to myself, “be strong”. Then I quickly throw my hair into a ponytail and say goodbye to my parents. I put it in reverse and back down the driveway. Just as I am about to pull out onto the road, I look back for a second and say goodbye to the house I have lived in my entire life. For some reason it feels like I won’t be coming back for a long time.

I decide to make one stop at my best friend Veronica’s house before I leave the city so I can say goodbye. Once I pull into her driveway, I quickly get out of the car and run to her front door. I knock on the door and she answers it. She has known that I would be moving for a while because the moment she saw me she burst into tears like I wouldn’t ever see her again. We hugged for a while and then I said that I had to get on the road. She pulled away and we promised that we would call each other every day. I quickly hug her again and say goodbye to my lifetime friend. I sadly get into my car and pull out of her driveway onto the main road leaving the city.

I’ve been on the road for about three hours. I have the radio on and I’m just thinking about what my future may hold. I hope to become an artist or an author. I have not yet found a college that I think is suitable for me. I just don’t think I’m ready for college. I never was very good at science or math or geography. I always excelled in literature and art. I used to play soccer but I always got injured. It seemed like I would twist my ankle every practice and I just got sick of it. So I ended up quitting, I wasn’t very good anyway.

The sun was starting to set so I pulled over to eat a sandwich I packed. I didn’t want to waste any time going to a restaurant since I expected it to be a really long trip. I couldn’t help but think about the dream I had a couple days ago. I remember that day was the first day my parents showed me the family photo album. The album must have been one hundred years old because the binding was falling apart and most of the pictures were really faded. Many of the pictures were taken at the lake house with my relatives standing in front of it. In each photo, I saw a black dot that seemed to be floating in the air. I just assumed that it was because of water damage. But In every picture it was right next to the same person. This person looked to be in her early twenties.
My mother told me that she was my great grandmother, Abigail. For some odd reason, she and I looked a lot alike with all of the freckles and green eyes and dirty blond hair. Not that I could tell what color eyes and hair she had because the photo was black and white, but it seemed right. My mother told me that Abigail had a twin sister, Mallory, who had died a couple years after they moved. My mom showed me a picture the entire family including my great grandmother’s sister in front of the house. I looked at my great grandmother and saw that there wasn’t a black dot. I didn’t think anything of it at the time but now it seems kind of suspicious. I brush it off just thinking it was a coincidence. The picture had to be fifty or more years old so they could have been damaged many times before that.

It was now 10:00 in the morning. I had driven for a couple hours last night then stopped and slept in the car. I’m lucky it is summer or I would have probably frozen to death during the night. I was now in Vermont and I only had about two more hours of driving left. I was really getting tired of driving. I put in my favorite CD and started singing along. My mood lightened up and I was now nearing the last ten minutes of my road trip. When I got on the road to the house, I started getting anxious. I hoped that the house wasn’t too beat up considering no one had lived there for about fifty to sixty years.
As I drove down the road, I saw a big gate that had a mailbox next to it. The mailbox was bent at an angle and the metal was rusted through in some areas. I saw that the mailbox had the house’s address, so I turned into it. The vegetation had grown out of control but that was fixable. The gate had half rusted off of its hinges and it looked like it was bent like a car had driven into it from the inside trying to get out. I stopped the car, ran over to the gate, and pushed it open. After I got it open, I jumped back in the car and drove down the long driveway. It seemed like the driveway was half a mile long and it wasn’t paved.
When I finally reached the mansion, it looked like someone had destroyed the place. The windows were broken and the doors were wide open. There was furniture thrown out of the house, and it was just sitting there on the ground rotting from the weather damage. I got out of my car and walked cautiously toward the house. The place gave me the creeps. I walked up to the front porch and I saw that the door was half pulled off of its hinges. I pulled/lifted the door out of the way and walked inside. The minute I stepped inside I felt this bad vibe about the place and I felt like I was being watched. The inside of the house felt like it was thirty degrees colder than the outside. The house was trashed and it smelled horrible as if there were dead animals in the walls, which is very likely. The furniture was turned over and shredded. I went over to one of the couches and looked at the scratches. It didn’t look like ordinary weathering, I saw claw marks. That kind of scared me, but the house seemed so quiet I didn’t think anything was here.
As I wondered around the first floor of the house, I said to myself, “I wonder what happened here”. Eventually I found a huge staircase at the back that led to the second floor. Every time I took a step the floorboards would creak, and it just made the house feel more evil so I walked as quietly as I could. When I made it upstairs, I walked into the first bedroom I saw. There were two beds and both of them were torn open with fluff coming out of the mattresses. The sheets were gone and there were feathers everywhere, which I guessed, used to be pillows. I saw that there was clothing and other items spread out all over the place. The dresser drawers were thrown on the floor and emptied as if someone was looking for something or as if someone was scrambling to pack which I hope wasn’t true.
After a while of walking around upstairs, I heard a creak and then a groan that the house made. I paused for a second to make sure it wasn’t me. I heard it again and it seemed to be moving closer to me. It seemed to be coming from the third floor of the house. I shouted, “HELLO?” but there was no answer. I started to walk up the stairs and I said, “hello?” I said it more quietly this time because I had a feeling I wasn’t alone. That’s when I saw a shadow move. It had a human form to it but then again it seemed too big to be a human. The shadow moved closer and I heard footsteps so I knew then that someone or something was there. Then I heard a grunt and a growl. I jumped back and dashed down the stairs and ran out of the house as fast as I could. I sprinted to my car, threw myself inside, and locked the doors. I turned the car around and sped down the driveway and turned onto the road. I was so scared I just wanted to go back home.
I went into town and parked at a hotel. I got a room there and took the luggage I needed inside and left the rest out in my car. I rummaged through my purse and finally found my phone. It was really hard to type in my pass code and then my parents’ phone number because I was still shaking. I called my parents and told them what happened. They said that I must have made a mistake and that it was my own shadow. I tried to calm myself down and believe them, but it was hard. I ended up not eating anything that night because I was afraid of going outside. That night I had another bad dream where I saw someone in the house but it wasn’t a shadow, it was my great grandmother’s sister, Mallory. She turned to me and just as she was about to say something to me, I woke up panting and in a cold sweat. I started drawing my dream like I do every night. What scared me the most was that my drawing looked like claw marks and blood dripping from the marks. I never believed in monsters or ghosts, but my thoughts have changed. I just hope it’s not me that it’s after, but I have a bad feeling that it is. I’m being hunted.

The next morning when I woke up, I grabbed all of my things and checked out of the hotel. I was determined to drive that person or thing out of my house. I got into my car and drove off toward the house. When I got there, the door was now thrown to the other side of the driveway. I got out of my car, grabbed my gun and a couple of bullets as well as my flashlight. I started to walk to the house. My nerves started to get to me and I started losing my confidence. I walked up to the porch and I looked inside the house. The floor was marked with huge claw marks and I saw something black smeared on the floor. I then realized that it was dried blood. I walked into the house and paused when I heard the floorboards creaking. I stopped walking to make sure that it wasn’t me who was making the floorboards creak. I paused and then I heard it again. I thought that I had an advantage because I could locate where the creature was, but that also gave it an advantage against me. As quietly as I could, I tiptoed across the floor. I reached the staircase at the back of the house. When I walked up the stairs, I was lucky because the floorboards didn’t creak that loud.
I reached the top of the first flight of stairs. I walked across the hallway into the room I entered before. It looked the same as it did yesterday. I then turned around and saw something moving. I moved a little closer to the creature and I saw that it had black fur all over its body. I thought that it was a bear but its posture was nothing like a bear’s. I took one more step and then the stupid floorboard creaked. The creature stopped moving it turned around until it was staring right at me. The creature that I was staring at was nothing close to a bear. It was more vicious looking and it looked like death itself. I saw that it was previously eating something before it heard me. I looked at the carcass and it looked like a human. I took my gun and tried to aim at the beast but my hands were shaking so badly that I dropped it. The beast started to walk toward me so I quickly picked up my gun and ran out. All of a sudden, right before I was able to run through the door, a big black floating ball of fog stopped me. I tried to go around it but it moved so that it was still in front of me. I went to push it out of the way because the beast was getting closer and closer to me. The second I touched it I was sucked in through a black hole in the fog ball. I couldn’t see anything. I couldn’t feel anything. I felt numb. Then I saw a light. The light got closer and closer to me. It looked like an old black and white movie, a recording. I saw my relatives running around their house gathering anything essential. What they were running from I wasn’t sure, but I had a feeling it was the beast. The recording wasn’t like photographs or pictures, I was part of it, gathering items and stuffing them in a suitcase. I saw everyone leave the house through the front door. The house looked new and clean. Then I was alone in the house until I suddenly turned around really fast. I saw a blurred image of the beast that was chasing me earlier. Then the recording pauses. All I can see is a huge black head with red eyes and huge teeth. The beast had long claws as well.

It was then that I realized that this black ball of fog is a spirit. It makes sense because my great grandmother’s sister died. I think the recording I just watched was her death. This is the spirit of my great grandmother’s sister, Mallory.
I then saw that I was in the house again. I heard the beast getting closer and closer with every deep pounding step it took. I look over in the direction it is coming from. It turns the corner and I see that it is moving in slow motion. It is coming so close I don’t think I’m still alive. I pull up my gun and shoot it in the head. It falls to the floor and I feel this sense of accomplishment. I walk forward and I actually walk out of the ball of black fog. The ball of black fog turns to white, rises up, and then it vanishes. I turn around and walk around the first floor of the house. I walk passed a mirror and I back up to look in it. I Iook at myself and say, “I am strong”.