Read Hauntings for Free Online

so it was always dark in there at night.
    That’s when Jeremy would start up with some crap he’d seen in a movie or something. “I heard they found a whole shitload of bones when they dug the foundation of this house,” he’d say, and he’d launch into some nutty tale about how it turned out to be an Indian burial ground, just crazy stuff like that. After a while, it would get so I could hardly breathe. Then Jeremy would unleash that crazy laugh of his. “C’mon, Si,” he’d say, “you know I’m only kidding.”
    He was always sorry—genuinely sorry, you could tell by the look on his face—but it never made any difference the next night. It was like he forgot all about it. Besides, he always drifted off to sleep, leaving me alone in the dark to ponder open portals to Hell or parallel worlds or whatever crazy stuff he’d dreamed up that night.
    The days weren’t much better. The house was on this old winding road with woods on one side and there weren’t but a few neighbors, and none of them had any kids. It was like somebody had set off a bomb that just flattened everybody under twenty—like one of those neutron bombs, only age-specific.
    So that was my life—interminable days of boredom, torturous insomniac nights. It was the worst summer of my life, with nothing to look forward to but a brand-new school come the fall. That’s why I found myself poking around in the basement about a week after we moved in. Nobody had bothered to unpack—nobody had bothered to do much of anything all summer—and I was hoping to find my old teddy bear in one of the boxes.
    Mr. Fuzzy had seen better days—after six years of hard use, he literally had no hair, not a single solitary tuft—and I’d only recently broken the habit of dragging him around with me everywhere I went. I knew there’d be a price to pay for backsliding—Jeremy had been riding me about Mr. Fuzzy for a year—but desperate times call for desperate measures.
    I’d just finished rescuing him from a box of loose Legos and Jeremy’s old Star Wars action figures when I noticed a bundle of rags stuffed under the furnace. I wasn’t inclined to spend any more time than necessary in the basement—it smelled funny and the light slanting through the high dirty windows had a hazy greenish quality, like a pond you wouldn’t want to swim in—but I found myself dragging Mr. Fuzzy over toward the furnace all the same.
    Somebody had jammed the bundle in there good, and when it came loose, clicking metallically, it toppled me back on my butt. I stood, brushing my seat off with one hand, Mr. Fuzzy momentarily forgotten. I squatted to examine the bundle, a mass of grease-stained rags tied off with brown twine. The whole thing was only a couple feet long.
    I loosened the knot and pulled one end of the twine. The bundle unwrapped itself, spilling a handful of rusty foot-long skewers across the floor. There were half a dozen of them, all of them with these big metal caps. I shook the rag. A scalpel tumbled out, and then a bunch of other crap, every bit of it as rusty as the skewers. A big old hammer with a wooden head and a wicked-looking carving knife and one of those tapered metal rods butchers use to sharpen knives. Last of all a set of ivory-handled flatware.
    I reached down and picked up the fork.
    That’s when I heard the stairs creak behind me.
    â€œMom’s gonna kill you,” Jeremy said.
    I jumped a little and stole a glance over my shoulder. He was standing at the foot of the stairs, a rickety tier of backless risers. That’s when I remembered Mom’s warning that I wasn’t to fool around down here. The floor was just dirt, packed hard as concrete, and Mom always worried about getting our clothes dirty.
    â€œNot if you don’t tell her,” I said.
    â€œBesides, you’re messing around with the furnace,” Jeremy