In our house, there was always peace. It was a beautiful Victorian era home with deep wood accents and tinted window art and so on. The rooms were beautiful and spacious, the garden looked like it was out of a fairy tale. That’s why my parents were so surprised to be able to buy it for such a cheap price. I understand why that is now.
My room was on the end of the corridor on the second floor. Nothing that special about it but it had a window facing the backyard. In that backyard, I had an imaginary -but not so imaginary- friend called Elanor. She was this beautiful girl with blond hair and blue eyes that made her look like a doll. She was quite older than me since I met her when I was 6 and she was around the ages of 9 or 10 but weirdly for her age, she always carried around her bunny stuffed animal. I used to play with her by chasing her around the huge tree in our backyard, and thinking back, she always was quite fond of that tree. I didnt know why but she would never come inside the house with me, and insisted that I did not enter. I got so worried once that I cried to my parents about not wanting to go in and they had to show me that the house was safe and there wasnt any issue with anything at all. I really wish I took Elanor’s advice…
On the first floor, the basement was right under our living room which was full of decorations and furiture that sometimes I would act as if it was a labryinth. Sometimes during the day, you would be able to hear small sounds of knocking or something falling but my mom always put that aside as something from the furniture. But the weird thing was, even though nothing fell, we would sometimes hear vases breaking. Or even though both of my parents and I were watching a movie, we would hear footsteps as if someone was walking up behind us.
One day -for a reason I still do not know- my father decided to break the lock on the basement door and see what was there. I think it was something about our water heater not working but, oh well. So my dad went down with a flashlight in his hand and came back with multiple boxes of things that had a layer of dust so thick that it could even be qualified as skin. We opened the boxes, and ofcourse, there were things from the previous owners of the house. Family photos, legal documents, dresses made out of the most precious fabrics I had ever seen in my life and several childrens toys. However, what striked me the most was that my childhood imaginary friend Elanor’s face was in one of the pictures. So, I decided to do a little more research.
My dad said he was going to lock the door again, since it would be “dangerous” for me, and I, with my stupidity of youth decided that I was fit to the task of breaking the lock of and exploring the basement at the darkest hours of night to assure my parents wouldn’t catch me. So, I took a flashight -purposefully chose the weakest one to assure I wouldn’t wake up my parents by shining bright light in the halls- and stole the keys from my dads jacket pocket while he was eating dinner earlier that day. So when the clock hit 2 in the morning, I took my fliashlight, and went slowly down the stairs, making less noise than an ant. I walked to the basement door and got my courage together to open the door. What could go wrong? It’s not like there’s ghosts down there!
The darkness of the room almost made me trip over multiple times but I finally found one of the things I was looking for. A photo album. I was going to try to see if that girl only looked like Elanor from the angle, or, if it indeed was my supposedly “imaginary” friend. Scanning quickly through the pages, I felt like I was calmer. I couldn’t see the girl anywhere so she was most likely a part of my imagination, right? Wrong. She was there, at the last page. With her rabbit in her hand, she was smiling at the camera but that smile seemed to me as if she was staring into the depths of my soul. While I was rushing to put back the album and get out of there as soon as I could, I felt something soft touch my hand. It wasn’t there before, so I quickly pulled it out. It was the rabbit. My “imaginary” friend Elanor’s stuffed rabit was in my hand. I let out a quick scream and ran to the door as fast as I could. Just as I was leaving that horrid basement, a hand touched my shoulder.