[Short Story] - My new home

When I was about twelve my friends and I met up regularly after school to pass the time. We’d go round the block and steal whatever fruit was in season from people’s front yards, ring the doorbells and run away, and sometimes even wandered to the old and abandoned part of town just to get that sweet, sweet kick of adrenaline going through the spooky deserted houses.

The old part of town was abandoned some ten years before because the local factory had shut down, and it made for an excellent playground and scavenger hunts for the local kids such as myself. It was huge and counted more than a hundred houses for sure. Some were in pretty bad shape with more lumber in their front yards than in their construction and some still as glorious as on the day they were built. Needless to say which were more exciting for a group of teenage kids.

One of the days when we were exploring, however, we stumbled upon something none of us expected. From the outside it looked just like another ordinary house, but the inside of it told a completely different tale. There were hidden doors and passageways all around that we somehow figured out, one of which lead underneath the cellar into a completely dark, and very humid room that reeked awfully. Nobody dared go inside. Not on that day, not on any other day.

Plenty years later, when I was 25, with a job and looking for a place to stay, the old part of town was starting to attract interest again. The land there was cheap and there were plenty of jobs in town, so there was a lot of newcomers. I asked around about prices and ended up buying that exact house with the hidden passageways. I wanted to know more about it and its backstory. After all, it was the only one with hidden doors and it came with an extra cellar for the same price. It was a steal, not a bargain.

The cellar, I soon found out, served a very specific purpose. The person who used to live there was a hoarder. A gatherer. Everything was kept in separate glass jars with articulate handwritten labels on them about what was inside, and they kept a very descriptive journal of all they did for, and with their collection. It wouldn’t have been weird at all had the collection not been human parts, with the books describing, in detail, everything they did to the victims before finally killing them.

I wanted to call the police and tell them all about my discovery, but that would mean they would seize my property for investigation, and who knows when I’d get it back. If ever. I didn’t want to live with my parents anymore so I decided to stay quiet and take care of things on my own. I could just close it down and no one would ever even know it was there.

Fast forward a couple of years to today and I’m happy to say I’m finished with all the moving and painting and restoring. I’ve found some more of the hidden doors that we missed back in the day and realized I got nearly twice the amount of house that I paid for.

I kept the hidden basement largely intact, but curiosity got the best of me one day, so I cleaned the place of all dust and read all the journals. I didn’t get rid of anything down there, rather added some new inventory myself. Following all the procedures written down in the journals made it easier for me to take the plunge and kill my first victim, and writing it all down step by step by myself after the act was very soothing.

Tomorrow they’re opening a new museum at where the old factory used to be. It’s going to be swarmed with tourists and other non-locals. A perfect place to pick my next target. Someone, after all, must continue the old tradition.