“My house is haunted.” The house was a big farm house that had been empty for as long as anyone could remember. It was built at the top of a hill that looked over the town. The walls were tall, much taller than the walls of any house had to be. The building itself had once been painted a bright crimson that had now dimmed to the stain of old blood. Everyone in the tiny town said that it was haunted by spirits and devils. Johnny didn’t believe in that nonsense. Both of his parents were scientists and they had taught him from a young age that monsters, demons and ghosts were only figments of an overly imaginative mind. That had been one of the few times Dr. Cass and Dr. Nathan Gor talked to him. One of the few times anyone ever talked to him. Johnny was desperate. Since he had moved to Black Falls no one would talk to him . Looking away from his house, Johnny decided that he was finally going to make someone talk to him. He was going to make some friends.
It was the morning of the first of October, the trees were claws jutting out of the ground. There was a slight dampness to the air and a smell of mold enveloped the area. Johnny wore jeans and a black leather jacket but still shivered in the cool morning mist. He knocked on the decrepit door of the Andrew Jackson Middle School office. “Hello, I’m John Gor. I’m a new student here, I was told to register at the office.” he said with a weak smile to the lady who opened the door. She was dressed in a red dress that would have been better suited for a woman much younger. The woman wore a similarly colored lipstick that was smeared all over her mouth and slightly pointy teeth. Her hair was dyed a bright unnatural platinum that seemed nearly demonic with her pitch black irises. She looked at him in disgust.
“Where’s you’s parents?” His emerald eyes widened.
“Dr. Cass and Dr. Nathan were too busy. But Dr. Cass wrote a note. Here.” Johnny handed the lady a crumpled piece of paper torn up and played with with shaky hands. The woman seemed to pity him after hearing his parent’s names. Johnny had always called his mother and father by their professional names because he was a man. He was not supposed to call his father Daddy or his mother Mommy. In his thirteen years of life Dr. Nathan had only taught him one thing, if you were not strong, people will run over you. Johnny remember the day he had learned this lesson like it was yesterday. His father came home after a particularly bad day at work, his mother followed clutching her cheek and looking over to her husband. Dr. Nathan walked up to the three-year old boy and crouched down,
“Listen John Gor, and listen good!” his voice rose and his scowl deepened, revealing shiny teeth, but the boy dared not cry, “You have to be a man!. You can’t be weak. You can’t be afraid of anything. Because that is when people,” He looked over to his wife, “will take advantage of you. You understand me!” He grabbed Johnny’s shoulder and shook them violently. “Do you understand me?” Johnny’s began crying in the corner. “Say something you idiot!”
“Yes Daddy.” Johnny managed to vomit out the words. The boy’s father pulled back his callused right hand and the boy blacked out.
Johnny shook his head to try to rid his head of the acidic stench of this memory. The lady looked up from his note, “Come in dear.”
She ushered him to his first class. There were only twenty students in the class and each and every one of them looked at him with such contempt that he took a step back. The teacher was a surly man that compensated for his lack of hair by sticking out his protruding belly and unbuttoning the top buttons of his stained yellowing shirt, exposing graying hairs covering a gargantuan gold cross. He was a very superstitious man, as superstitious as the town itself. Johnny entered the room.
“Hi, I’m John Gor. My friends call me Johnny.” he said sheepishly. Nobody called him Johnny.
“Sit down John and take notes.” the teacher barked, “The name’s Mr. Barry or sir.” Johnny sat down in a creaking chair behind a gum-sodden desk. Next to him, there was a girl. She was wearing a frilly blue and white dress and black high tops. The girl had blonde hair reaching her hips and stormy eyes. She was pale and delicate so Johnny took her hand timidly when she stuck it out in greeting.
“Hi Johnny, I’m Toni. I mean it’s Toni not Tony, y’know. My dad really loved Shakespeare so he wanted to name his son Antony after Mark Antony but I came out out a girl so he just named me Antonia. My mom was upset but he already wrote it on my birth certificate so it stuck. I went by Ant for a while but that was a goldmine for jokes so then I just settled for Toni.” All the while Toni was aggressively shaking Johnny’s out-stretched hand. “I’m sorry, am I scaring you? My mom says thats why nobody likes me. I talk to much and that scares people away. I mean thats probably what happened with my dad.” She finally took in a shaky breath. Johnny smiled awkwardly and looked around seeming all his potential friends ignoring him.
This strange relationship continued for two weeks. As the weather got colder Johnny fell deeper into his own loneliness. Every day during lunch, the boy sat alone. Toni sat alone with him, spouting the occasional fun fact or tidbit. Johnny threw his ear into other’s conversations, drowning out Toni’s incessant questions. He heard them talking about the latest school gossip, the homework and their own lives, but he didn’t care. The only topic that seemed to interest Johnny was his house. The students sometimes talked about the haunted mansion at the top of the hill. The house that was painted with blood. They even talked about the Gors and how they were mad scientists that had created Johnny from a test tube. Johnny even heard stories of ghosts and monsters that lived in his abode. A plan began to bubble in the crevices of his brain.
Today, Johnny arrived at school, wet with bloodshot eyes and messed up hair. He was stammering. In class, nobody noticed him, Mr. Barry was asleep and the students were all staring at their books, occasionally stealing glances at one another. Then Tori accosted him. “Oh my! Are you alright Johnny? What happened to you?” He considered crying, but decided against it because he is a man. Men don’t cry. He settled on a grimace,
“My house is haunted.” His desperation had reached a peak. Everyone looked up, including the teacher who was now awake. They tried to cynically dismiss the announcement but each of them had grown up in Black Falls, superstition flowed through their veins thicker than blood. It was raining outside and at the moment of punctuation, lightning struck illuminating the hollows of Johnny’s cheeks. “I saw this thing in my room.” Each one of the twenty students drew closer despite their logic, magnetically attracted to his words. “It was last night. Dr. Cass and Dr. Nathan were still working in the lab. I had already gone to bed but something seemed to pull me out of the room. I left to go get water. My door stayed open. When I came back I saw it. It was crouched at the foot of my bed, black teeth shining in the darkness. The thing was barely a shadow but I felt its eyes burn with yearning. I stepped into my room. The door slammed behind me.” Johnny looked around, noticing the attention he was commanding. It was nearly erotic to him, how each word that dribbled from his plump lips hooked his captive audience. “I walked to my bed and hid under the covers but I dared not to close my eyes…”
“Sit down!” Mr. Barry whined. He was not a leader but he desperately tried to be one. Johnny’s story had him entranced as well but he could not show it so he puffed up his chest and stuck his belly out even further and stood next to the kid, shouting.
At lunch, Johnny’s classmates rushed towards him, eager to find out the truth about the house at the top of the hill. As all the student eventually spilled around, Toni was slowly being pushed back on the cold metal bench until eventually she slid off the side with a yelp. she jumped up, quickly, “I’m ok, Johnny! No need to…” she sighed staring at the top of his black haired head, “worry.”
That night, when Johnny was going to bed, he stopped at the doorway of his room, blue pajamas fluttering in the cool breeze he already associated with the house itself. The boy starred at the foot of the bed, petrified. He had the face of one who had seen something he shouldn’t have. Johnny knew his mind was no longer his own.
After that day, Johnny Gor slowly became the most popular person in Andrew Jackson Middle school. Every day at lunch, a group of loyal followers and a few interested newcomers would gather around him itching to hear what had happened the night before in the house on top of the hill. And every day, Johnny would supply a new horrifying tale of ghouls and spirits and monsters. These stories haunted him. One day he would be telling the invented memory of seeing the spirit of an old lady in the bathroom mirror. He would say that the lady seemed friendly enough as it was, but then, she opened her mouth revealing sharp fangs. That night Johnny could not go to the bathroom. He knew that the old lady did not exist but his mind assured him that she was in there. Johnny hadn’t slept for more than three hours since that fateful first day, but he was fine. He promised he was fine. What was fine? How was anyone fine? His eyes flooded but he choked back the tears, what would his father say?
The stories became real. Somewhere between telling the story of a monster he had found in his closet, Johnny get lost in the grey area between reality and his mind. He was now just relaying memories. The entire school was still interested but now the stories genuinely scared them. The younger sixth graders began tearing up as soon as Johnny opened his mouth, for now he told his stories of horror and of blood with a new conviction. One person refused to believe him, Toni. She had enough of sitting alone while the only person in the world who she cared about ignored her. She burst. Toni stood up on the bench and addressed all the students gathered around Johnny.
“If your house is really haunted, PROVE IT! Lets all go over there when school ends today and see.” She looked at him pointedly. Johnny looked over at her, noticing her for the first time. Toni’s hair fell in little golden ringlets that seemed to frame her face. Her electric eyes lit up. Why hadn’t he noticed her before? Then Toni’s words set in as the crowd began to agree with her. Johnny knew that he was lying but if they went to his house they would find the monster in his closet, hidden among the bones.
The bell rang, signifying an end. Toni gathered up Johnny’s most loyal followers and a few scared sixth graders and began to follow him home.
“Let’s go!” Toni’s battle cry rang in Johnny’s ears. He stared at the dust road, entranced by the similarity of the changes beneath his feet. His mind was racing. What if they find out he was lying? What if they find out he wasn’t? His hands were shaking. Why didn’t his hands stop shaking? His father’s hands never shook. Dr. Nathan was a man. Johnny clenched his fists. Lost in his thoughts, he didn’t notice that they had reached his house. A short sixth grade girl took one look at the house, whimpered and took off down the dust road, leaving an ominous gap in her place. Johnny reached deep into his pockets and pulled out a minuscule black key. With some effort, he shoved open the eroding wood and let in the mob’s curiosity. The students flooded into each crevice of the house like cement into a mold. Johnny began breathing hard as sticky fingers touched each painting, each vase and each open surface. Toni tapped him on the shoulder,
“Show me the monster.” She put her hands on her hips defiantly. He rubbed his temples.
“Just look around, like everyone else. This is what you wanted, isn’t it?” Johnny felt thumping in his throat making it harder for him to breathe. He felt his ears set fire.
“Don’t make me out to be the enemy Johnny! I’m not! In fact I was the only person in this school you was willing to talk to you. But you don’t care about that. You are so obsessed with making friends that you didn’t notice that you already had one!” Toni’s chest was heaving and her blue eyes spilled. She looked at Johnny the way Dr. Cass had looked at Johnny’s father the night he learned how to be a man. “So just shut up and show me the closet so I can leave. That’s what you want. To be all alone.” He was never alone. The creatures all followed him around the house. Johnny didn’t tell her that. He was speechless. Blood was a river in his ears. He grabbed Toni’s hand and pulled her up the stairs. They reached his room and she stepped in. The building hissed.
“Be careful!” Why was he warning her? There was nothing there, right? Monsters don’t exist. Part of him wanted this to be true but a stronger part of him wanted monsters to exist. That would mean he was telling the truth and that he wasn’t seeing things. If the monsters were really it would also mean he wasn’t alone. Toni began laughing but then she saw his face and stopped. Johnny was breathing hard and pressing his thumb to a scab on his wrist. He winced but kept pushing. She had never seen him like this. Johnny was always too cool. He was calm and collected. He was the opposite now.
“Please be careful.” He muttered under his breath as he pushed his wound. “I have skeletons in my closet. Don’t look at them.” Johnny bit his lower lip in pain. Pain was the only thing that stopped him from exploding. Toni put her hand on his shoulder.
“It’s ok.” How did she know that? It can’t be ok. Johnny was not ok. Nothing was ok.
She walked over and opened the closet. It was empty. Johnny gasped.
“It’s right there!” The monster resembled the one from that first fateful lie. It was larger than it had been when Johnny had first woven it. It sucked the sunlight out if the room. It had dead eyes. Its teeth shone pitch. The creature was hunched over Toni. It was breathing her in. She was fading away.
“What are you talking about, Johnny?” Toni turned towards him, confused by his odd statement. She thought he was crazy. Maybe he was. This isn’t what normal should feel like. He turned and ran, noticing but not acknowledging the pile of disappointed kids that stood beside the doorway to his room, looking in. Johnny ran to the bathroom to splash some water on his face, hoping to calm the fire. He looked up from the sink, the old lady’s fangs were smiling down at him in the mirror. He ran down the stairs, pushing everybody out of the way. Johnny tore the tore of his house open and rushed out. He looked in the window and screamed at his reflection. The thing staring at him was a ghoul. It had black hair clumped over its bloodshot eyes. There was blood dripping from its hollowed cheekbones. Its eyes were green. Johnny was a monster. He had become the very this he didn’t believe in. He looked at his hands still wet from the sink. They were oozing crimson.
“This is stupid! Ghosts don’t exist anyway!” A student announced, pointing his button nose to the air. He exited the house, followed by rest of the students. They shook their heads at the liar with wet hands. They trailed down the hill like slugs. Johnny backed up into the corner. Toni walked out of the house. The monster was still with her. Johnny began shouting,
“Get away from her! You don’t exist. You’re not supposed to exist!” Toni approached him. Johnny cried out like a wounded animal. He covered his head and shut his emeralds. He slid down the the wall to the floor.
“Don’t be scared, Johnny. It’s just me.” Toni was terrified of his hysteria.
“I’m not scared.” Johnny was horrified. “I’m a man.” He gulped. Men aren’t afraid, especially of things that didn’t exist. But the monster did exist. “Men are brave.” His knees hid his heaving chest as if to keep his heart from bursting out. Toni crouched down and grabbed his chin. She looked into his now open moss-filled puddles.
“Bravery isn’t the absence of fear, it’s being able to overcome it. Johnny, I think your monster is fear!” Johnny removed his hands from his head.
Toni sat down and took his hand. He turned to look in her electricity and he was met with the black eyes of the monster. Johnny steeled his glance. The monster faded away leaving behind only a shadow.
