The House on Maple Street

The stories that surround the house that stood on the very end of Maple street are full of hushed up disappearances and gruesome incidences. They range from electricians and tax collectors that go missing mid-route to dismembered animal limbs found in the houses with yards bordering the mysterious home. A number of mental patients around the world have described a home exactly like the Maple Street residence, and, after describing it, all collapsed into fits of hysteria, muttering things about 'that wretched bowl', and 'the man, the man, his eye'.

One patient is recorded to have had his only known moment of clarity amid his muddle of insanity, and described what his nurses believe to be his experience in the home. He sat straight up in his hospital bed, completely lucid, looked straight ahead, and cried out, "I fell into the center of that universe in that house. And I don't think I can ever come out. I looked into the center and fell and fell and fell, and landed here. I don't think this is a permanent stop. I've seen horrors and atrocities of all of the world, and I am so scared. I looked into the bowl of gold and things shifted. Please, please help. HELP ME! I. AM. AFRAID!" He screamed this at a terrified nurse standing a few feet away at another patient's bed. He opened his mouth and let out one final, lamenting howl and collapsed back into his bed. He was drenched with sweat.

A few days later, the man had a brain aneurism and passed away.

____________________________________________________________________

Years before any of these stories had surfaced, the address at the end of Maple Street was known as just another abandoned house in a failing economy. The house stood in the very center of an otherwise empty lot, surrounded by a brown ring of dead grass. in a state of disrepair, it had falling down walls, sagging window frames, and chipped white paint that revealed the light brown color of rotting wood beneath it. It sat on a busy suburban road called Maple Street, surrounded by pastel houses and clean white picket fences."An eyesore to the entire neighborhood," they called it. It had always been believed to be abandoned, when one late August morning, a beige sedan pulled into the driveway. The car stayed parked there for nearly a week, when one day, the neighbors headed off to work and noticed that it was gone from the driveway.

Until the day his children arrived in that plain car, no one had even known the man lived there. There had never been a light in any of the decrepit windows, had never been so much as a sound that would show that a human being lived inside. Even so, when the body of the old man had been found, the adults of the community mourned as if they had lost a dear friend.

The children of the neighborhood, on the other hand, knew something wasn't quite right about the passing of the old man. on some odd occasion, most of them had been dared to sneak inside and take a decrepit artifact from the 'abandoned' house. Never had any of the adventurers seen the old man, or even evidence that an old man had lived there. Just a bunch of useless old junk. As a group of teenagers gathered in the basement of Pat Sinclair's house one Friday afternoon, the brave foursome decided that they would investigate.

"This has got to be the dumbest plan ever," Colleen said as she collapsed into a lumpy brown couch next to her brother.

"No one's making you come," Pat replied, his eyes fixed to the television screen where the gory murders of An Imperial Death were playing out. His hands on the controllers, he swerved his body with his digital counterpart, leaning into his teammate.

"Watch yourself," Charlie barked. Gunshots echoed from the screen. "I just saved your sorry butt."

"I'm coming," Colleen said firmly. "do you know how much trouble I'd get in if you died and mom found out I didn't stop you from going? Dude, there's no way you're leaving me to that."

"Suit yourself," pat muttered. "it's not like we're actually going to find anything. BRO!" he cried out, throwing the controller to the ground. "what was that?! What WAS that?!"

"The civilians were compromised," Charlie replied calmly.

"the CIVILIANS were compromised?! I was compromised! There's no coming back from that. There just isn't. God, you picked a TERRIBLE moment to go kamikaze, I was almost to the next level." Pat shook his head.

"why are we even going, then?" Chuck spoke for the first time since the group had arrived at the Sinclair household. His voice shook and his white hands gripped his legs.

"what?" Pat looked over at the heavy, pasty-skinned boy, irritated.

Chuck cleared his throat. "I... I asked why we were going. You know. If we're not going to actually find something." He glanced quickly up towards his brother, Charlie, trying to tell if what he had said was going to make him angry.

Pat just scowled at him. "God, do you have to ruin everything, Chuck? Why don't you just go home?" Chuck lowered his head, regretting having opened his mouth.

Charlie shoved Pat. "Shut up, man." he turned to Chuck. "this, little brother is a life lesson. We're going to investigate; to have a grand adventure, if you will." Charlie rose flamboyantly from the couch, raising his arm to his chest and letting his voice drop an octave. "On our quest into the abandoned manor on Maple Street, we shall not only solve the mystery of the ghost of a man who claims to have lived there-"

"His kids actually claimed that," Colleen reminded him. "He's been kind of busy. You know. Being dead."

Charlie nodded. "not only shall we solve the mystery of the ghost of a man whose CHILDREN claims he lived there, we shall also become better men-"

"And women!" Charlie glared at Colleen. "Fine, fine, I'll be quiet," she said, raising her hands.

"Egotistical, over glorified jerk bag," she muttered under her breath.

"we shall also become better PEOPLE along the way. We shall learn the lessons of many brave men before us, that exploring not only enlightens the mind, but also the soul. You, my wimpy little brother, shall find the heroism that you've long been searching for. And, well, Pat and I, we'll just find more of it." he sat down again and out his feet up on the coffee table, smirking. Colleen glared at him, and Chuck appeared even paler than before.

"Well, my goal is to find some stuff I can sell on eBay, but whatever floats your boat," Pat said, pick up his controller from the ground. "Another game, my good hero?" He also bent to pick up Charlie's controller, handing it to him with a grand flourish.

Charlie grinned and snatched the controller from Pat's hand "But of course."

Charlie started to set up the video game and Pat took some deep breaths. Everything will be fine, he convinced himself. It will have to be.

As the video game's noise filled the basement, Chuck and Colleen exchanged worried looks. Both had a sense of foreboding about the whole ordeal, but were too worried about looking like wimps to back out at that point. Not after Charlie's grand speech.

And they were right to be worried, but they'd unfortunately only had an inkling of the horrors that would await them in the abandoned house on Maple street.

__________________________________________________________________________

The creaking of floorboards and the smell of air that hadn't been moved in days were what greeted the four to the house on Maple Street.

"Charlie?" Chuck murmured. He spoke quietly, with reverence, as though he were afraid of waking the occupants of the house.

"God,  is he going to be like this all night?" Pat asked Charlie, startling the quiet of the house.

"Pat," Charlie matched his tone to Chuck's. "Chill. All is well." He turned to Chuck. "We'll be in and out in an hour. Deep breaths, and try to soak up all the awesomeness you can. "

He slapped Chuck's back and moved from the foyer into the kitchen with Pat.

Colleen stepped through the door and into the house, and stood next to Chuck. She tried using her normal voice, but it had the quavering tone of someone pretending to not be scared. "Let's just stay here," she said quietly, grabbing Chuck's arm.

He jumped and pulled away. "I'm gonna go to the kitchen," he mumbled, hurrying away. Colleen was left alone in the foyer, her eyes wide and terrified.

______________________________________________________________________________

Pat's eyes traced the edge of the dusty counter in the kitchen. Pots and pans were scattered across the counters, like someone had set out to make a huge meal but had abandoned it halfway through preparation.

He swallowed hard, letting his mind drift back to when he was eight years old and had entered the house for the first time. He shuddered and tried to shut his mind to the memories of screams and flashing lights and the missing posters that could still be found in the odd convenience store. It had been in here, hadn't it? Where they had first seen the bowl? Or was it the living room? His shook his head and cleared his thoughts. Tonight was not about that, he thought. Tonight is about getting some cash.

He grabbed a copper bowl that looked expensive and shoved it into the duffel bag he had brought with him.

"Strange they didn't empty this place out, huh?" Charlie mused, running his finger over the dust-layered counter. "I mean, when his kids were here. It just seems like they would have."

"Maybe they didn't want the memories." Pat said, moving around the kitchen, continuing to stuff wares into his bag. He didn't think about the fact that his older brother's room was still full of his things, and that it had been eight years since he had gone.

Chuck burst into the kitchen, his cheeks flushed. "Are you guys almost done?" He asked, his voice still little more than a whisper.

Pat groaned and stalked into the living room.

There, he saw it. The golden bowl.

He came to a sudden stop and fell to his knees. That night, he remembered. That night, his brother Joseph had gone missing. They were here, he remembered. They had broken their mom's vase and were going to steal another one to replace it.

And then there had been light and Joseph walking towards it. There were screams, he remembered. As Joseph got closer to the object, his mouth opened in an unending scream. Whether it was of pain or terror, Pat could never tell. All he knew was that he had run out of the house and never saw his brother again.

There had been someone else there, though. Pat realized this later. A strange movement in the shadows, an odd noise coming from the corner. In the house, he assumed it was nothing. Later, he realized that another person had been lurking, waiting.

Now, Pat quickly scanned the room, looking for the man or woman he had seen the night his brother had disappeared. He saw nothing, but then, it was very dark, and the moonlit room held many shadows to hide sinister things.

"Dude?" Charlie came into the room and clapped him on the shoulder. "You ok?"

"Yeah," Pat said faintly. "Just. Thinking."

"Well, don't think to hard now. We need to be home before midnight. Keep your thoughts short." Charlie headed back to the empty kitchen. "Chuck?" He called it quietly at first, then raising his voice, "Chuck?"

He poked his head back in the living room, asking Pat, "Have you seen Chuck?"

Pat looked up at him, a stricken look on his face, "No," he whispered. "I haven't."

Charlie noticed the haunted look in his eyes. "Seriously, are you ok?" He knelt down next to Pat.

"No!" Pat cried. "I'm NOT ok! And it's... He's... He's here and I can feel him and he- he- it was my fault!" Here, he started sobbing, a broken and jagged sound, crumpling until his face was held in his hands.

Chuck looked uneasily at him, then stood back up. "Look, you get yourself together. I'll find Chuck and Colleen, and we're leaving." He left  Pat crouched on the floor and walked through the kitchen and foyer.

He walked back into the living room, his face creased with worry. "They must have gone home," He said.

Pat raised his head. "Or maybe they never will." Now his voice was a whisper. The boy who had entered the house with such bravado had now shrunk to a shriveled figure on the floor, his face streaked with tears.  In the course of twenty minutes, the house had broken him.

"Pat. We're leaving." Charlie grabbed his arm and pulled him to his feet.

"So soon?" A man, if it could be called that, came from the shadows. His face was half rotten, one of his eyes gone, leaving a gaping socket on one side of his face. The other was sagging, full of wrinkles, and still somehow sinister.

"You." Pat's face was flushed now, and he staggered in the direction of the man.

"PAT." Charlie grabbed his arm again, forcing him to face him. "What the hell are you doing?"

"He took my brother!" Pat roared, spit hitting Charlie's face.

"Your brother?" He asked. "He's been... Pat, you know he's...?" Charlie stared at Pat, wondering what he should say and what was going through his friend's head.

The man across the room chuckled, a rough and coarse sound, sounding more like a cough than a laugh.

Pat stared at him with intense fury. Now that he saw him, he knew he had been the one in the shadows that night. He was sure of it, more sure than he had ever been in his life. "Where is he?" He spat, moving even closer to the man.

The man continued to laugh. Or was it cough?

Charlie stared at his friend, not sure whether to be frightened or worried. At that moment, he felt a surge of both emotions. He was also suddenly very worried about his brother and Colleen.

"You stay here, ok?" He said in a quavering voice. "I'm... I'll be RIGHT back. Don't do anything. I need to make sure they're alright." He ran out the door, and out to the street. His feet made skidding noises on the gravel of the road as Pat heard him gallop towards his own house.

"He left you," the man said in a coarse, low voice. "Just like your brother left you." Suddenly, the man was directly behind Pat, at a place where his breath should have been tickling the back of Pat's neck. But it wasn't.

"You TOOK HIM," Pat yelled, turning around to face the man.

"Oops, over here now!" He had popped over to the other side of the room. Suddenly, the strange man vanished. His rough laughter filled the entire house, echoing off of the still air and dusty furniture.

"PAT." Charlie came rushing back in. "They're gone. They're both gone. They're not at home. Something's not right, dude, we need to call the cops."

Pat's eyes looked dark. He ran into the next room, screaming a wordless roar.

"Who the HELL are you screaming at, Pat? NO ONE IS HERE." Charlie yelled this into the house silent of all noise but Pat's howls.

To Pat, the house still had the rotten man's laughter bouncing through it.

Charlie stood stock still. He closed his eyes, trying to think. Trying to come up with some way to solve this insane situation. From behind closed eyelids, he could see flashing golden lights. When he opened them, he sank to the ground.

Pat dashed back into the empty living room. He came to a sudden stop. "Charlie?" He whimpered. The whole house was now silent.

Suddenly, he could hear steps from behind him.

"Follow him." A hushed whisper came from behind him.

Pat, feeling a strange sense of calm, almost numbness, walked towards the shining golden bowl sitting on a coffee table in the dead center of the room. Come to think of it, it was the only thing that he had seen that night that wasn't dusty. His feet made plumes of dust rise from the carpet.

He picked it up, running his hands over the ornate designs.

"If you look into it, you can see the world." The man was on the couch now, his remaining eye fixed on Pat.

Pat's eyes were tracing the patterns. Amid the flower design, there was some sort of animal, perhaps an elephant. It was hard to see in the few rays of light that the moon gave him.

"The bowl holds the secrets to the universe," the man on the couch said. "It holds the key to understanding mankind."

Pat looked at the man, tired. "I don't care about mankind." He said quietly. "I care about where you took my brother. Now where is he?"

"The bowl can tell you," the man reiterated. "if you look into it, you can see all."

Pat stared at him blankly.

"Just know," the man continued, "That knowledge comes with a cost. If you understand the ways of your people, it may drive you past the point of no return. To insanity, if you will."

Pat opened his mouth, then closed it. "Is this what my brother did?" He asked finally. The man nodded. "Why? Why give this to a ten year old child?"

The old man looked , tired, at Pat. "I looked into it at that age. And here I am. The guardian of the world's secrets."

Again, Pat looked at him blankly.

"I'm trying to find my replacement," the man explained. "You, you have potential. You see things. You understand them. If you look into the bowl, and you can bear it, you can be the protector of this house and the golden bowl. You can be the protector of the world's most important secrets. Haven't you ever dreamt of being special?" Pat nodded hastily, his eyes straying back to the bowl. "This could make you special!"

The old man got up and walked towards Pat. "Be special!" He whispered in a harsh tone, and promptly disappeared.

Pat took a deep breath. He closed his eyes for a brief moment, opened them suddenly, and stared deep into the depths of the bowl.

Instantly, the world flashed before his eyes. But it wasn't what he had anticipated.

Images of concentration camps, of brutal murders, of cult suicides. Teenagers with a bottle of pills slumped over magazines explaining how to be happy, crowds screaming in support of a stoning. Small children working in factories and women getting abused. Nooses, guns, gangs, and scars. Car crashes and drugs and drinks and tears and screams and so much blood.

He was suddenly looking at Charlie, Colleen, and Chuck. All of them were lying in a ditch, dismembered, lying in a pool composed of a mixture of their blood. Pat let out a small cry.

The final thing he saw was a little boy, couldn't be more than ten years old, lying in the very living room he was standing in. Surrounded by a rusty puddle, the young boy was frozen with an eternal scream on his lips.

The final thing he heard was the old man whispering, "He couldn't handle the weight of his own world."

______________________________________________________________________________

Pat woke up twenty years later in a mental hospital. For the first time in such a long time, he could remember who he was. Desperate to warn someone, he cried out, "I fell into the center of that universe in that house. And I don't think I can ever come out. I looked into the center and fell and fell and fell, and landed here. I don't think this is a permanent stop. I've seen horrors and atrocities of all of the world, and I am so scared. I looked into the bowl of gold and things shifted. Please, please help.

            "HELP ME!

            " I.

            "AM.

            "AFRAID."