The floorboard creaked.

I sat up straight in my bed, my heart going at a thousand miles an hour. After a couple of bated-breath moments, I heard a meow.

I suddenly sighed. Damn cat.

I laid back down, trembling a little, my pulse still thudding throughout my body. Yet another sleepless night. Like always.

The next morning I flinched upon the sounding of my wretched alarm clock. It continued to go off for several minutes, as I lay there in my warm bed, listening to the numbing sound.

I turned over to click it off. As I did, I saw the day in the corner of its screen, in bright red flashing words.

It was Saturday. At five o' seven, no less.

I slammed down on the loud, obtrusive piece of plastic. It silenced itself, but my hand throbbed as I pulled it away.

My temper wasn't the only thing slipping. My sanity was too. I guess I should explain.

The past few days have been brutal. I can't stop replaying it in my mind. I haven't told my friends yet. They'd think I'm crazy. But there isn't anything to say that they would be wrong.

See, it all started with this house. You know, the creepy one down the street? Well, I've walked past it every day for the past three years on the way to school. Up to twice a day, really, because it's on my way home as well. Anyway, it had been just a quiet old run-down thing. It's been abandoned for as long as I can remember.

One day, as I was headed home, I saw bright flashing lights coming from the front of it. An ambulance.

Now this really weirded me out. Nobody lived there. I wondered if a house inspector got hurt by some falling furniture, or something.

I continued on my way. When I was about halfway past the front of the building, I saw a couple of paramedics wheeling a woman out on a stretcher.

I could see her from where I was. The surprise nearly stopped me in my tracks. She looked about sixty, with a pale complexion, curly graying platinum blond hair and eyes that were shut to the world. She was thin as a stick, and was dressed in slacks and a button-up blouse. Her head on one side seemed to be plastered with red paint.

It wasn't paint.

I shouldn't remember her this clearly, but the memory is scalded into my mind.

Ever since, I've been traumatized. I keep forgetting things. I jump at every sound. I tremble at night. I would keep a nightlight if I did not have dignity.

But the worst was yesterday.

I have to get to school one way or another, even if I'm terrified of this house, so I still walk by it. So as I made my way to school, I looked up at the thing.

It was this enormous retro-looking home in terrible condition. The yard was overgrown like a psychotic man's beard, containing thistle and thorn bushes, almost too prickly to look at. The sides of the house had peeling paint in a color that reminded me of a thunderstorm. The mold on the ancient wood was so potent it could be seen from the street, at the distance from which I always stayed.

Suddenly, a bloodcurdling scream of help, and a teeth-shattering slam- I froze, my world feeling completely unhinged. What do I do? What? What?

My body took over. I dropped my backpack on the ground, darting down the long driveway up to the porch. Before the closed leaning door I paused, my fingers shaking as they hovered over the dull brass knob.

But then I took a breath and pushed it open.

I called a hello, my voice loud and obtrusive in an eerie, yet pounding silence. There were cobwebs and dust clouds, the floating little particles dancing in the light from the windows.

I called out again. This place had furniture, this place looked as if it was once a happy home, this place had old hews of a once bright yellow.

I began to venture through the shades of gray and aged blue.

I'll admit. I was freaked. My heart was so strongly pulsing, it felt as though it could have been coming from the ground under my feet.

Stairs, rising up to the floor above, the top of which I could not see from the bottom.

I called hello once more. My voice gave me comfort, a false sense of security, safety.

Slowly I began to ascend the steps, and an obscenely loud creak caused me to stop, to catch my breath.

Then I continued on. Almost every time my foot fell, a creak occurred. But I kept going, I kept calling hello.

I reached the top.

Hello?

I walked down the hallway. There were four doors, three open, one closed. Hello?

I glanced into the empty open rooms. Hello?

I approached the closed one. Hello?

My hand hovered over the handle. I whispered hello.

I pressed my fingers against the cold metal, and it opened swiftly, opening into a room with a bed, a tall empty bookshelf next to it.

Nobody was there.

I ceased with the hellos.

I glanced back out into the hallway, then looked back.

A woman—

The woman—

She was leaning heavily against the bookshelf, it gave her support to stand. It was the woman, the woman I had seen before.

She made like she was getting out of the bed with the help of the sturdy shelf.

Suddenly the shelf complained creakily, much like that first step I had taken up the stairs. She didn't take notice of the noise. I wanted to stop her, I wanted to run, I wanted to help, I wanted to scream.

She leaned hard on it again, taking a step forward. It moaned again, and it began to fall forward over her. She turned to me for a split second, and her bloodcurdling scream called out for help-

I accidentally blinked and it all disappeared. The bed, the shelf, the woman.

I turned and fled.

It's been a year since that event, now.

I still remember it like it was yesterday. A couple of months ago someone bought the property and tore down the house.

I changed my route to school anyway. Now I have to walk a mile further, but I'm okay with that.

And every once in a while, when the night is stormy and the windowpanes shake, I hear her voice in the whistling wind.

Hello?