"Do You See THe Little Children?"A Story by Cody Williams“Do You See The Little Children?” By Cody Williams
1. It had been about a week since my mother died. The doctors said it was due to a heat stroke, but now I’m not so sure. I know it sounds crazy, but maybe there was someone there. Someone who caused her to die…or something. The day after her funeral, my brother, Carlos, and I decided to go over to her house and search it for her will. It had been a while since I have been over to her house. I don’t think I’ve really been there for a visit since dad died back in 2007. When we first arrived, I parked the station wagon in her garage. My brother and I got out of the car and walked over to the front door. “Do you have the key her lawyer gave us?” I asked him. Carlos nodded and reached into the right hand pocket of his blue jeans and pulled out a key ring with a white rubber piece attached to it with JACKIE B. GOODMAN-ATOURNY AT LAW printed on one side of it. He placed the key through the keyhole and the door opened with ease. We stepped inside and shut the door behind us. The air had the strong smell of medicine. I guess mom was on a lot of it there at the end. The two of us looked around for a moment. Everything looked the same as it always had. Those ugly little glass rooster figures that she collected remained in the window seal. The blue sheets that she bought at the flea market down the street remained covering her precious Lay-Z Boy recliner that she sat in almost day-to-day. And the couch still had that stupid plastic wrap around it that made your a*s sweat bullets when ever you sat down bare bottomed on it. Yes, it was as if she could dig herself out of that grave and continue living in that house. Carlos looked over to me and pointed into the hallway. “Anne, if we’re going to find that damn will of hers, it’s probably in that closet of her bedroom.” Carlos told me. I agreed and the two of us walked down the hallway and into her bedroom.
2. Carlos and I looked around for a moment. We walked around her bed over to a light brown wooden door where her closet was. “You know, in all the time we’ve lived here neither one of us have seen what’s on the other side of this door!” I reminded my brother. “I know. She always kept it locked like it probably is now.” He said to me. I reached up and pulled out a bobby pin from my long brown hair and knelt down and placed my ear next to the doorknob. I placed the pin into the keyhole and turned it like a key until I heard it unlock. I pulled out the bobby pen and placed it into my side pocket of my skinny jeans and then placed my hand on the doorknob. Carlos and I looked at each other for a moment. “What are you waiting on? Are you afraid the boogeyman is going to be behind here?” He asked me in a taunting tone. “Is Willow going to be behind this door?” He continued to mock. Willow was a character that grown ups used to scare their children into staying out of the places they didn’t want them to be. I remember thinking that it was all bullshit until I saw a news report where a man was accused of killing his children. He blamed it on a strange creature he called Willow. I rolled my eyes at him and slowly opened the door. The door sounded and very creek as I opened it revealing a room that was pitch black. I reached over to the light switch beside the door and flipped it on. I gasped. It was a complete dump. Bicycle playing cards scattered all over the floor. The floor that was once covered in white colored tiles was either gray and covered with dust, or the tiles had been worn off completely. Countless packs of Sweet ‘N Low, that mom stole every time she went to a restaurant for some reason, was also scattered everywhere. Across from us was a small wooden trunk that had was sitting up against the wall. The two of us walked over to it and wiped the dust from the lid. “WILLOW WAS HERE” was written in red at the top of it. I flipped up the golden latch and opened it. Dust partials filled the air. I coughed and slung my arm through the air until the dust subsided. Carlos reached into the chest and pulled out several photos and handed them over to me. I grabbed them and looked through them. The first picture was of Dad posing next to a black car. I looked up from it and over to my brother. “Doesn’t that look like that car that ran down that woman’s cheating husband?” I asked him. Carlos just gave me a strange expression. “You know it was all over the news! I think he called the car…Black Beauty!” I told him. He just shrugged his shoulders and grabbed the photo from my hand. The second one was photo of me and Carlos standing in front of a corn stalk that Dad used to grow out in his garden. I was wearing a pair of denim overhauls and my brother was shirtless wearing blue jeans and the new pair of cowboy boots mom had just bought him. I smiled and handed it over to Carlos. “Do you remember this one?” I asked him. He gave me another strange look before he nodded. “Yeah, but I don’t remember them!” He said to me. “What?” I asked. He handed the picture back over to me and I saw something there that I didn’t see before. Two little children were standing behind me looking over each of my shoulders. One was a boy with long black hair. The other, a girl with long black hair and chubby face. Their skin was gray looking like they were from a photograph from the 1950s. Carlos looked over at the photo of my father and his car again and picked it up. “Anne, they’re in this one too!” He said as he handed it over to me. I looked at it again. My dad was leaning up against the driver’s side door. The young boy was standing at the front of the car while the girl was standing towards the rear. It was the same to children. But this I could see what they were wearing. The boy was wearing what looked like a white button up shirt with the sleeves rolled up halfway up his forearms. Dark suspenders were holding up his black colored pants. The girl was wearing a long white dress and white high hills. “They weren’t in the pictures before were they?” I asked him. He shook his head. The two of us looked into the trunk at the other photos. All of them featured the same two children. Carlos looked over to me. I could tell by his facial expression that he was terrified. “Anne, do you see the little children?” He asked me. I nodded and stood up. I looked around at the other pictures that hung on the wall and were propped up on mom’s jewelry box. The same two kids stood in the background of every picture. But they weren’t there before. I knew that. So where did the come from. I felt a strange feeling from the back of my throat and my breathing got heavier. I grabbed Carlos by the arm and tugged for him to follow me but he didn’t. “Come on Carlos! Let’s go! I have a bad feeling about all of this!” I told him. Those are the feelings you should learn to trust after all. He just stood there and looked around for a little while longer before he finally did look down at me. “Come on!” I shouted to him as I began to walk out the door. He obeyed and we walked out of the bedroom into the hallway where we were before.
3. The hallway looked different for some reason than it did before. It seemed longer and darker for some reason. Carlos and I linked our arms together and we began to make our way down the hallway. I could feel the sweat run down my face and into my eyeballs stinging them. But I didn’t care. I just wanted the hell out of that damn house. As I glanced at the pictures hanging on the wall, I noticed a spin chilling fact. The children were there. Staring at us from the background. We turned the corner and walked back into the living room to the front door. I gasped at what I saw. It was two children standing there blocking our way. They looked pretty much identical as they looked in the pictures. The boy’s right hand was terribly disfigured in the shape of a talon and was black as if it had been burnt. They were both looking at the floor and whispering something. I couldn’t quite make it out, but it didn’t sound like anything that was in English. I looked over to Carlos who was frozen in his tracks and then looked back at the children. “Who are you two? Why the hell are you all in our grandmother’s house?” I asked them. They looked up at me. Their eyes were a solid black and were empty. “This wasn’t her house. This isn’t your house. This is our house! We were here first! Before it burnt down!” The little girl uttered. “Your grandmother had to learn the hard way. Just like you will have to!” The boy said. Their eyes began to glow with burning white light. I shielded my eyes and avoided looking into their dead lights. But Carlos wasn’t so lucky. I glanced over at him staring into the lights. There was nothing there. He was gone. I grabbed him by the arm. “Come on Carlos! We have to go!” I told him. He said nothing. He didn’t move at all. I shielded my eyes with my hand and darted out the front door. The boy looked back at me and his eyes were back to the emptiness they were before. He had a wicked smile on his face that filled with razor sharp teeth. “Soon, but not today. Your time will come!” He told me. The front door of my grandmother’s house slammed shut and I could hear the terrifying shrieks of my brother. Copyright 2014 by Cody Williams Courtesy of TRUE TERROR PUBLICATIONS A division of TTP Entertainment <a target="_blank" href="http://www.copyrighted.com/copyrights/view/3ht3-q4yh-ypuq-lwsr"><img border="0" alt="Copyrighted.com Registered & Protected © 2014 Cody WilliamsAuthor's Note
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9 Reviews  Last Updated on July 31, 2014 Tags: horror, gothic, science fiction, paranormal, supernatural, ghost, short story, fiction, prose, Cody Williams Author
Cody WilliamsElizabethton, TNAboutI am in my second year at Carson-Newman University in Jefferson City, Tennessee were I major in instrumental music education and minor in English. My passions include playing the trombone/euphonium an.. more..Writing
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