Chapter 1 – Chap 1

Yeah, I’m pretty sure my treehouse is haunted.

My mom and I moved into this new house a few months ago. We used to live in the city. A small apartment on the 12th floor of a building downtown. We’d lived there my whole life, and I loved it. I had lots of friends in the building and taking the city bus to school was always interesting. I didn’t like to take it alone, but that only happened a few times, when my friends were out of town, sick, or for whatever reason got to school a different way that day. Strangers were funny when you had someone to watch them with. They were a lot less funny when you were by yourself. They could be downright scary.

When my dad was killed in the accident, my mom decided we’d move to a house in the suburbs. Mom worked from home and Dad didn’t work downtown anymore (obviously), so she said we’d use the insurance money to buy a house where it was quiet and less dangerous.

So, I’d be starting junior high at a new school, which sucked, but I wasn’t going to be a jerk about it. My mom had been through a lot, and my friends and I could still hang out online, which is what we mostly did anyway, even when we lived in the same building.

I have to admit, so far the house hasn’t been all terrible. It’s pretty nice – much bigger than our apartment – and having a yard is pretty cool. I hadn’t thought about it before, but now that we live in a house and have a backyard with a fence I wonder if we can get a dog.

(NOTE: Possible birthday present?)

The best thing about the new house, at least at first, was the awesome treehouse in the backyard.

First of all, it’s big. Like four closets put together if you took out the walls. There’s a rope ladder that goes up through the floor that you can pull up once you’re inside. Keeps other people from invading. It also smells nice. Like wood and leaves. There are a couple cutout windows – one that looks into the neighbor’s yard and one that looks back at our house. If I look through the one facing the house I can see my bedroom window. I can even see my bed, which is neat. Like spying on myself.

There’s no light in the treehouse, but Mom bought me an electric lantern that I kept up there in case I wanted to go up at night, which I thought would be kind of cool. I thought maybe I could even spend the night out there.

But yeah, that’s not going to happen.

And that’s why I’m writing this. I want to see if maybe other people have had similar experiences as me. Also, I want to write about it because there’s no other way I can talk about what’s going on. I tried to tell Mom, but of course she thought I was being dumb, and then she started looking at me funny, like I was nuts.

No help there.

I tried to bring it up with my friends, but they just laughed their asses off and teased me. Trying to play Call of Duty while getting called “ghost boy” is not as fun as it sounds. Every time they’d call me that, laughing, I’d think about the little girl and feel sick all over again.

Right. The little girl.

The first time I saw her we’d been living here a couple weeks, I guess. Lots of stuff was still in boxes, but for the most part we’d moved in. My room was almost totally unpacked except for a couple boxes with toys and books that I just shoved into my closet. I’d already met a couple other kids who lived nearby, but we hadn’t really become friends yet. I knew when school started I’d meet more kids, so I wasn’t worried. But otherwise living at the house is pretty much the same as the apartment. We just hang out. Unlike the apartment, though, my mom started telling me to get outside all the time. When we lived downtown, that never happened. And now it’s like she’s desperate to prove how much better it is living in a house. She’ll be like, “Go outside and play!” or “Go ride your bike!” She has no idea how ridiculous she sounds when she says stuff like that. As if there’s a circus in the driveway or something.

So, whenever she’d get going on the “go outside” thing, I’d usually just head to the treehouse. I’d bring my phone or a book or my Warcraft cards. I had a sleeping bag up there already, and an old couch pillow Mom said was “okay to ruin.”

It was probably my fourth or fifth time going up there. Mom was working in her office, which was still really messy, and so I grabbed my stuff and went out back. I’d already gotten pretty good at climbing the rope ladder, which swings around a bit if you don’t balance right. But I’d had a lot of practice by now.

When I pulled myself up this time, though, the treehouse wasn’t empty.

There was a girl sitting in the corner.

Holy shit, was I freaked out.

“Hey!” I said, kinda loud and mean because her being there surprised me, and not in a good way. I assumed she was a neighbor kid I hadn’t met yet, but I was annoyed at her coming into my treehouse without being invited.

She didn’t answer me, and she didn’t look at me when I climbed up. Not even when I spoke. She just sat there, her knees tucked under, playing with something I couldn’t see. Like she was playing with dolls, but the dolls were fake. Imagined. Or invisible. She wore a yellow t-shirt and jeans. The shirt said something on it that I couldn’t read because it was super faded. Her hair was long and dark brown, and it hung down over her face while she played with her invisible dolls. I say she was little, and she was. Young, I mean. Maybe six or seven. Like a second grader.

She was humming something, but it wasn’t really a song. More like a part of some old rhyme. I tried to think about what it was, as it sounded familiar, but I never did come up with it.

“Hey,” I repeated, more gently this time. I moved over to my sleeping bag at the other side of the treehouse. Opposite the girl. She still didn’t look at me or do anything but play with the dolls and hum her weird tune in a way that was becoming more and more creepy.

“You’re not supposed to be in here,” I said, not wanting to be a jerk but more to get her to pay attention to me. “Hey, can you hear me? This is my treehouse, okay? You should go home.”

It was when I said that last word – home – that she finally stopped playing and looked up.

She didn’t look at me, though. She was glaring at the corner next to me. As if someone else was in the treehouse with us.

“Just me and Mommy,” she said.

“You and Mommy what?” I was now feeling very, very freaked out. The back of my neck prickled, and my stomach felt queasy. It was seriously weird.

It was something about the way she looked into that other corner. The empty corner. Like she wasn’t answering me, but somebody else. Talking to someone I couldn’t see.

I started to ask another question, but honestly? I couldn’t talk. For some reason, I was getting really scared. Which didn’t make sense because, other than the neighbor kid sneaking into my treehouse, there was nothing all that spooky going on. The day was warm and bright. There were no weird shadows or anything. And the girl wasn’t really scary, she was just a little kid.

Then she spoke again.

“I don’t want to,” she said, and then she looked scared. Frankly? She looked terrified.

“Hey!” I yelled, and it was so loud inside that little treehouse that I jumped at my own voice. “What’s your deal? Who are you talking to?”

And then it was like… I don’t know. It’s hard to explain. I’ll try.

Okay, so my dad used to play records all the time. It was sort of a hobby, I guess. My mom sold his collection when we moved. She asked me if I wanted them first, but I didn’t. That was his thing and I figured the records sort of died when he did. Anyway, one time he was playing a record and I was sitting with him doing homework, and the record started to repeat. Like hiccups. The same little bit of music played over and over again, and then after a minute or so it fixed itself and kept going with the song. Dad cursed (“Damn” and “Hell” were allowed in our house), and when he saw me looking at the record player he kinda smiled. I think he was embarrassed.

Then he said, “It just skipped a little, bud.”

Point being, that’s what happened to the little girl.

It was like her whole body sort of… skipped. One second she was looking into the empty corner of the treehouse, wide-eyed and frightened, and the next second she was playing with the dumb invisible dolls again, hair over her face, humming that strange melody and not paying attention to me at all.

Like she’d been reset.

That was it for me. I crawled to the top of the ladder, which was about halfway between us, and climbed down. I dropped the last few feet and sprinted for the house, not looking back once at the treehouse.

I went straight to my mom and told her. “There’s a weird little girl in there!”

She seemed annoyed with me at first, but something in my expression must have bothered her, because she stopped typing on her laptop and followed me into the backyard. She laughed at me when I stopped at the little patio just outside the house. I didn’t want to go any further.

It was almost funny watching Mom climb the ladder, but she did a decent job, actually.

I waited to hear her scream.

But the scream never came, and she didn’t go all the way inside, but I could tell she was looking around, her head and shoulders having gone up through the floor while she hung onto the ladder.

When she came back down, she walked over to me kinda quiet. Then she looked at me, not making fun, but serious. It was the look I would come to recognize when I tried to tell her about the other stuff a couple months later – the one she gave me when she thought I was nuts.

I hated it.

“No one there, pal,” she said, and cocked her head a little, like she was studying me. “Were you making it up? Like a joke? It’s okay if you were. But be honest.”

I started to shake my head, but then I glanced over her shoulder, at the treehouse window.

I could just see the top of the little girl’s head.

I swear I could even hear her humming.

“Yeah,” I said, not even sure what I was saying. “Sorry, just screwing around.”

I don’t think Mom totally believed me, but after looking at me that weird way for another few seconds, she just ruffled my messy (and sorta sweaty) hair and went back inside.

“Good one,” she said from just inside the house. “Since I’m apparently taking a break, why don’t we have lunch?”

“Okay,” I yelled over my shoulder, my eyes still fixed on the treehouse window.

Where the little girl was still playing.

I took a deep breath, then followed my mom inside.

After a while, I calmed down. Told myself it wasn’t a big deal and to stop being such a baby.

Of course, all of this was before things got really scary.