“Good night, Charles.” She said as she gently shut his bedroom door.

“Good night, mom.” The nine-year old child lay still in bed as he listened to the woman walking around, turning off the hallway lights and proceeding downstairs before coming back upstairs to return to her bedroom. He noticed the moving lights on the ceiling through the blinds every time a car drove by, and most of all, he could hear the noises of the house. There was always creaking in the house, even when no one moved, even when everyone was asleep except for Charles. It wasn’t just creaking, the old house moaned too, as if it were a restless creature reminiscing a youthful past.

Charles was still, staring at the ceiling with unrelenting eyes, wondering when sleep would come, when he heard the sound of the front door opening and closing. There was the sound of someone taking their shoes off, even though Charles’s mom should have been the only one with the keys. There was the sound of floorboards creaking as someone walked up the stairs, step by step. The creaks were an eerie sound, accompanied by shuffling. No lights were turned on. The sound grew closer, not louder, but closer. The staircase leading upstairs began to creak, step after step, a sound that seemed to last forever, yet still draw closer.

At last, the sound reached the top of the staircase, and headed down the hall towards the bedrooms. It walked past his mom’s bedroom, and stopped in front of his.

The doorknob was jangled, before the door slowly creaked open to reveal absolute darkness.

“Charles, Daddy’s home.”

Charles’s dad had not been alive for seven years.