The long, gravel, dirt road went for miles. Miles and miles on end. This road was surrounded by beautiful aspen trees. White at the bases and ascended up into full and beautiful branches with hundreds of leaves shooting out. The road was straight the entire way. At the end of this long and lonely road sat a house. This house was sat a top a hill. The driveway leading up to this house was filled with weeds on each side, as tall as the average man and the path made a long winding curve around the hill. When you reached the end of the driveway there was a house. This was a lonely house as was the road that led to it. This house was a two story Victorian. It had a wrap around porch and what use to beautiful Summersweet and Shrub Rose bushes. The Victorian house was dark blue in color but was fading on one side of the house. The porch was pearly white but chipping away on many of the columns. This was most likely do to age and weather. There was one giant maple tree that outside in the front yard and the backyard was filled with spruce trees for hundred of yards.

This house that sat on a hill was no ordinary house. Many families have lived here before. It has been abandoned for almost fifteen years. A tragic event occurred at this house. One event that spawned many more evil occurrences. A haunting has consumed this house for hundreds of years. In the early 1850’s, a murder happened here. The Wilsteads built this house. They were a happy and caring family, consisting of a mother, father and two children. The father, Robert, came down with a terrible sickness. He had a fever that made him hallucinate. Robert began to see ghosts and apparitions. These figures, or whatever you want to call them, told him to do things. As the days went by the dark thoughts became worse. It started off in the beginning by random yelling. Yelling at the children because they were playing around. Then a couple days later Robert went out side and began digging holes. They looked like burial plots. When Susan, his wife, asked him what he was doing he snarled at her and said he was working. Susan was growing scared. Scared that something was terribly wrong with him and that something might happen to her and the children. Her thoughts, unfortunately, were about to come true.

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Robert was at his worst. Susan begged him to go see the doctor. He refused and began yelling at her. Spouting off horrible things at her. She ran upstairs and grabbed the children to tell them they were leaving. The kids packed up some clothes and went into their mother’s room. Susan was ready to go. They all walked downstairs and peeked around the corner to see if Robert was down there. Susan didn’t see him so they made their way to the front door. After everyone was outside they heard yelling coming from inside. Robert came running outside, delirious would describe him at best, asking where they thought they were going. No one was leaving this house. Susan told him they were going to her parents house. They lived in the other town. Robert grabbed both the children and dragged them back inside. Susan was smacking his arm begging him to let them go. Robert acted as though he couldn’t hear her. They were all back inside and he slammed the door shut and locked it. He went to the kitchen and pulled a long steak knife out of the drawer and told everyone to go downstairs.

In the basement Susan and the two children huddled in a corner crying. Robert was pacing back and forth talking to himself, or talking to someone, a demon would best describe what would come next. He was frantic. Slamming his fists against the walls and yelling “Why did you have to leave!” Susan stood up and said, “if you’re going to kill us just get it over with already, you’re not the man I married”. He turned to her and his face went completely white. His eyes were pitch black. Robert walked over to his family and looked down at them. He let out a small smile…that was the last anyone ever heard from the Wilsteads. Many families bought the house for years on end after the murders. Some of the people lived there just fine. Others would up and leave and some never left.

The Kline’s were the American dream of a family. Marshall the father came up, as most success stories often do, in a poor family. Raised in a one bedroom apartment. With a strong work ethic and dedication he moved on from that one bedroom apartment. He found love with Mary and they moved into a three bedroom apartment. Each of them received promotions and moved up the chain of command. These two American sweethearts moved out of that apartment once they found out Mary was pregnant. The middle of the city was no place to raise a child. They found a beautiful Victorian house far out of town. The same Victorian the Wilstead’s had built.

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The Kline’s lived in this beautiful house for four years with no troubles. Mary blessed Marshall with two children in that time. A little girl who’s name was Rose and a boy named Thomas. Rose was the oldest. She made sure Thomas had everything that he needed and was looked after. For being five years old she was extremely mature. It was in the middle of the year when things began changing in the house. They had just bought a two pit bull puppies. Dogs often have a sense of the unknown. They are able to sense things that humans aren’t able to. Everything started with the dogs. They barked at the walls and would get upset for no reason. Next it struck the family members. Everyone seemed to be on edge. Short tempers were flying over everyone.

Marshall began to miss work. Ever since having the two children Marshall had been the only one working. Mary left her high paying job and became a stay at home mom. This was something she loved and couldn’t have been more happy over. Both of her children brought so much joy to her soul. Once Marshall began missing work it started with that he didn’t feel good. At first it looked like he was actually sick. Then it turned in to faking sick every once in a while. After that he was just not wanting to go to work all together. He had turned the barn out back into his own little laboratory. Marshall was out there almost every night doing God knows what. One night after he had came back inside Mary decided to run out there and take a look to see what he had been up to. She slid the barn door open and couldn’t believe what she saw. There wasn’t a single thing inside. There were just hay bales. Mary went inside and looked around. There wasn’t anything behind any poles or behind any hay bales. What had Marshall been doing in here almost every night she had wondered.

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Mary went back inside the house and up to her bedroom. Marshall was laying there fast asleep. She felt almost a little uneasy laying down next to her husband. She wasn’t even sure who he was anymore. When she woke up the next morning Marshall was gone. She looked outside and his car was gone. Hopefully he had went to work and was getting back to his normal self. Ten o’clock rolled around and his car came barreling down the driveway. He pulled up to the house and popped open the trunk of his car. He pulled out a bag of dirt and a brand new shovel. Marshall headed straight for the barn and slammed the door once he was inside. She thought confronting him during the day was safer than trying to see what he was doing once the children were asleep. Mary made her way to the barn and slowly opened up the door. She peeked her head inside and didn’t see him anywhere. She stepped inside and saw that there was a piece of the barn floor opened up. Moving forward she looked down in the hole and saw a light on. Dirt was flying everywhere down below. She gently laid down on the floor and looked down the steps. He was digging holes. Four holes to be exact. Why was he digging these holes? And why was it four holes? Suddenly it hit her. There were four people in their family. Four people and four graves. At that moment a giant fear came over her and Mary jumped up and ran as fast as she could towards the house.

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Mary slammed the door and locked it. She made her way around the entire house and found all the other doors that led outside and locked them. She could hear the two children playing upstairs in Rose’s room. Thomas was on the floor playing with his blocks and rose was of course trying to get him to play tea party with her. Thomas wasn’t quite aware what tea party was but he sure loved those little blocks. Stacking and crashing then repeating the cycle over and over.

Mary went upstairs into her room and packed up all the bare essentials she would need. Nothing extravagant just some things to get her by until she could come back with her children. She went into the children’s rooms and grabbed their backpacks and shoved some clothes in them. Almost as she was done packing up Rose’s clothes they heard a loud bang on the door. The sound was so loud it blasted through the entire house. Mary went down the hall and looked over the stairs to the front door. Marshall was standing at the window, covered in dirt, slamming his shovel in to the front of the door yelling. She couldn’t exactly make out what he was saying. The words sounded like English but she couldn’t be entirely sure. At this point it really didn’t matter what he was saying. She was getting out of that house as fast as possible. The banging on the front door stopped. Mary walked down the stairs with the two children and looked out the window. No sign of Marshall. She walked back to the kitchen and grabbed some water bottles and snacks for the kids. They all had something to carry and quietly made their way to the front door again. The front door burst open and there stood Marshall, reeling in anger.

Marshall told them they weren’t going anywhere and to go back upstairs. This obviously made Mary scared and the children were so frightened they were sobbing. Everyone went back upstairs. The children both went into Rose’s room and Marshall slammed the door and put a chair underneath the handle to keep it from being opened. Mary went to their bedroom and he locked her in the bathroom. Marshall went and sat on the bed and began talking to himself. Mary put her ear up to the door to try and hear what he was saying. If she didn’t know better it was almost as if someone else was out there. He was having a conversation but it seemed to be two sided.

Mary sat in the bathroom listening to Marshall talk for what seemed like hours. The bedroom door slammed and she could hear him stomping down the stairs. She looked around trying to find a way out of the bathroom. There was a window in there. It wasn’t big but large enough for a body to fit through. She turned the crank, it took a little budging, but finally it popped open. She grabbed the step stool, that the children often used when getting ready or brushing their teeth, and looked outside the window. The roof to the wrap around porch was right below. If she could muster up enough arm strength to boost herself up and out the window, she just might have an escape route.

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Mary grabbed on to the window with everything she had, pulled herself up, and flopped down outside the window. She slammed down on to the roof fairly hard. Looking around hoping that Marshall hadn’t heard anything. She stood up and walked down the roof top to Rose’s bedroom window. Peering inside she could see both the children on the floor. Fortunately they had stopped crying and were playing with each other, eating their snacks she had packed for them. Mary tapped on the window to get their attention. She held her finger up to her mouth to signal them to be quiet. Rose nodded her head and walked over to the window. Mary pried open the window, which had clearly many years of paint on it, and crawled into the bedroom. She hadn’t quite figured out her plan to get the kids out but being with them now gave her a little more comfort. Once again the kids gathered up their toys and put them bag in the bags. She looked outside the window and there stood Marshall down in the grass, holding an ax, giving her a death glare.

Mary climbed out the window with the two children and made her way across the roof and then up on top of the house. All three of them sat up there and yelled for help. Marshall yelled at them from the ground to shut up. He knew that people didn’t live close by but someone walking down one of the dirt roads may hear them. He backed up a little further to see if he could pinpoint exactly where they were standing up on the roof. Marshall barely had control over his body now and it was being taken over by the demon. The same demon that had struck so many poor souls before him.

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Mary was sitting up on the roof yelling with the children. Screaming for anyone to come and save them. It was a far cry for help and she was well aware of that. Mary went to the edge of the roof and saw that Marshall wasn’t standing there. She began to panic, as well as she should, he was obviously psychotic and couldn’t be trusted. She didn’t know what was wrong with him.

Marshall went into the house and up to the second floor. He was thriving in anger. Slamming doors and breaking windows throughout the entire house. He finally went into Rose’s room and saw the same window that Mary had climbed in and out of to get on to the roof. He stepped out on to the roof and slowly crept down. He had a knife in his pocket and shovel in his hand. He stopped before he went around the corner to where it led to the top of the roof. He sat there and waited. He talked to himself for hours. “This woman doesn’t know what she did” , “I’ve given them everything”, “All hail the death”. These thoughts and words came out for what seemed like hours on end.

Mary was getting hoarse and her throat was beginning to hurt from so much yelling. She still hadn’t seen any sign of Marshall and thought she might slide down the roof and try to find where he was at. They obviously couldn’t stay up here all night. Mary made her way to the edge of the roof and looked over. A shovel came and swung right at her face. It her dead in the middle of the head. Mary went out cold and rolled down the roof and on to the bushes that sat on the ground. The children screamed when they heard the sound and they saw Marshall coming up the roof. Rose yelled out, “Daddy! Please leave us alone! Where is mommy!?” He didn’t make a sound or utter a single word to her. Marshall grabbed both of the children and brought them back inside the house. He took them down to the basement. Sticking them in a corner and he sat at the bottom of the stairs wondering what he should do. He wasn’t sure. A knock came from upstairs. Marshall went up there and shut the door behind him and locked it.

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He couldn’t see anything. The voices in his head were clouding all of his judgement. They were making things impossible to understand and to see. Where did the knock come from he wondered. He went to the front door and saw Mary still laying in the front yard. He knew it couldn’t of been her that he heard. He walked backed to the kitchen and couldn’t see any sign of someone knocking. Suddenly a loud bang rippled from downstairs. Marshall went back down and when he got to the bottom a gunshot resonated through the entire floor. A burning sensation hit him right in the chest. He flew back in to the stairwell and sat there looking at Mary dead in the eyes. He couldn’t believe what he was feeling and seeing. He sat there on the stairs. Tunnel vision came over him. He wasn’t able to completely understand what was going on. Marshall was filled with anger and hate. He knew not all of the anger and hate was his, but a demon or some other life form that was coming over his body. Marshall pulled himself up and looked into Mary’s eyes. He spit out the few words that he could muster up, “I love you”. She looked down at him and pulled the trigger once more….

The End