I got to Kevin’s house a little after 10 in the morning. I made the cab drop me off right by the very creepy gate. It took forever to get a cab which is why I didn’t get there earlier. I think there’s probably only one taxi in all of Kentucky which is just another reason everything is so slow around here. As the cab drove away….slowly I might add, I got a good look at the house from the front. “Why on earth did you buy this place Kevin? It’s like Amityville horror house!” It was really the definition of creepy. Even the flowers and bushes surrounding it, had a very creepy feel.
Now that I was here, I didn’t want to be. I just had that horrible feeling in the bottom of my gut telling me how stupid I was for doing this. First of all, the place was going to be locked. Kevin Richardson is not the type of person to just leave his front door opened. So that meant I was going to have to break in. Maybe I was wrong, but I know Kevin…I’m not wrong.
Slowly I made my way up the creaky but now stable steps to the front door and closed my eyes before turning the knob. My life would be so much easier if he left the door opened. But just like I thought, the door was locked. “Damn you Kevin!” Why couldn’t he be more like me? I never locked my door. Well, now I do but before the show and having all my siblings live with me I always left the thing unlocked.
I thought about that for a minute and smiled. It was because of Kevin’s incessant nagging that I began locking my door to being with. He would lecture me for hours about safety and how naïve I was and how I wouldn’t be happy until some deranged fan walked right into my house and stabbed me with a knife repeatedly. Yes he said repeatedly because in Kevin’s mind, once or twice wouldn’t have had the same effect on me I guess. “It happened to George Harrison and he had a huge and expensive security system. He didn’t leave his front door opened so any Joe Shmoe from the street could walk in and kill him.”
He went on and on like that for hours! After that I started locking my front door. The first night the kids were at my new place, they went out without locking the door and I found myself sitting in the living room giving them the very same lecture I always got. Funny how that works out isn’t it?
I checked under his welcome mat and of course there was no key there either. He was going to make this as hard as possible for me. How the hell was I going to get into this place? I didn’t come all this way only to have to turn around and go back to the hotel. “Okay think Nick…think!” I let out a sigh and walked down the front porch steps stopping when I saw one of the small windows which led down to the basement cracked slightly opened.
I knelt down and pushed on the window and smiled when it gave way. Now I just hoped my fat ass could actually get into the window. I can see it now, calling 911 because I was stuck in the basement window. Hearing the paramedics commenting, “Isn’t that the same guy who was stabbed by a teddy bear yesterday?”
Yup, sometimes I love my life.
Luckily I sucked my stomach in and was able to roll my way into the window. Of course that meant falling to the ground and smacking my face against the cold floor, but at least I was inside.
It wasn’t until I stood up that I realized how creeped out I was in the basement earlier. Well really until I saw the broken ping pong table sitting there. “Oh right…” I tried not to let it get to me. It wasn’t nearly as scary down there this time around. Maybe it’s because I didn’t have a wussy AJ freaking me out every ten seconds. Besides this was the home of the tiny door. I reached into my pocket and pulled out the key. I was certain that the key was going to get me into the little room.
I walked down that odd hallway full of obscure drawings on the wall and noticed once again how Chub Chub was displayed in and around all the scenes. “Seems like he’s a popular little guy.” I said to myself. I found it helped to calm me down when I talked to myself. I always did it right before I went on stage. The guys always thought I was talking to them but truthfully it was just me talking to me.
I bent down next to the door and jiggled at the lock. Was it wrong of me to open it up? I mean first I go into that secret room in the closet now I’m about to enter another closed off portion of the house. How would I like it if someone went through my stuff when I wasn’t around? But then again if it happened after I was long gone and I left everything there for whoever found it in the first place, I guess it wouldn’t matter would it. Way to justify breaking and entering Carter!
I placed the key in the lock and just as I had predicted, it fit perfectly. I hesitated briefly before actually turning it though. Putting it in was one thing but turning it, was another. “Do I really want to do this?” I muttered under my breath, but my fingers didn’t give my brain a chance to reply as they automatically went for the click and just like that the small door came slowly creaking opened.
I was hit with a putrid smell almost immediately. Something died in that small little room at least that’s what it smelled like. An old rotting corpse, not that I’d know what that would smell like in the first place but I bet this smell was pretty darned close to the real deal.
Closing my eyes, I made sure to take a very deep breath as I opened the door all the way. It was so dark in that room I could barely see a thing. One thing I did know was I wasn’t going in there unless I had a flashlight or something with me. There was no way I was going to accidentally fall over or sit on a dead body. No freaking way in hell. One problem though…one of many so far I suppose, what if the door to the kitchen was locked? Kevin had locked it the last time we were trapped down here, hence the reason we WERE trapped down here.
“I’m such a bone head. Why didn’t I just go with Kevin and AJ?”
I walked back out of that small hallway and towards the steps leading up to the kitchen. I knew why I was here…because at the end of the day, I’m an adventurer. Yes, there are two kinds of people in this world. Those that just sit back and do nothing except maybe paint their nails and golf, and those that go ahead and jump right into the thick of things. Get their feet wet and be the action. I was one of those people….I… “What the holy fuck was that?”
I stopped right at the top of the stairs when I heard it. Why did I always have to ‘hear’ things? Why couldn’t I just be deaf…well… to things at least? I’m pretty sure I heard footsteps up above. Creaking around in the kitchen, where I was just centimeters from being myself.
No panicking Carter…it’s just the wind or something. Yes the wind is walking in the kitchen, probably just making itself some tea…you dumbass. But an even more horrifying thought popped into my head. What if it was Kevin? What if they had changed their minds and came back to the house instead of golfing? And why was that more horrifying than something or somebody else being there? What the hell is wrong with me?
While all of these scenarios, none of them pretty by the way, were going through my head, I realized that I hadn’t heard any more noise at all. Just the one little scamper and that was it. Maybe it was just a mouse. Do ghosts scamper? No they certainly do not and I know for a fact Kevin does not scamper so it wasn’t him. Chances are it was just my over-active imagination getting the best of me. With that thought in my head I slowly turned the knob and smiled when the door actually opened. “Wow something went right for me…cool.”
I scrounged around for a flashlight and happily found one pretty quickly. It was so hot and muggy already that I broke into a sweat after only a few minutes. The place was so stuffy. Now that I was up there, I thought about continuing on my mission to the attic instead of venturing back down to the basement. I mean that was my original plan anyway wasn’t it? Before I found that key I had every intention of going into the attic and looking around.
Kevin said he was going to throw everything away up there so maybe it made more sense to go there first. And okay honestly, I was in no big rush to go back to the small room and find out what that rancid smell was so instead of going down, I went up towards the attic.
The second floor was even hotter than the first one was and I found myself not looking forward to how stifling hot the attic would be, but I continued on anyway. I felt that same zing of adrenaline hitting me as I got to the bottom of the attic steps. This was it…the place where I was really meant to be.
As I got closer to the top of the stairs the air became cooler somehow. I felt comfortable and oddly calm, like once again I belonged there. All the anxiety I had felt when I was in the basement was washed away by the time I reached my destination.
When I stepped into the attic it felt as thought I had stepped into a time warp of some kind. Everything about this room screamed ‘the past’. There were tons of old chairs and couches lining the walls, full of dust and discolored from neglect. Stacks of albums were piled high as well as old dishes and utensils. Piled so high you could make a wall out of them if you really wanted to. The odd thing was how neatly everything was organized. The way it was set up left a huge space right in the middle of the floor.
“It looks like a ballroom up here.” I found myself saying as I passed by an antique mirror. It had a small crack in it and was a bit dirty which distorted my image. It made me look old and sad. But maybe it was just the expression on my face. Maybe I was sad? Why did I feel so sad suddenly?
I took a few steps back and managed a few deep breaths. Thoughts of my mother came into my head suddenly. A memory of her and I cleaning the attic of the nursing home we used to live in. That was back when she was kind of nice and happy herself. I enjoyed being around her back then. I missed that.
“Where did that come from?” I hated when I suddenly got all emotional. I tried my best to distract myself from full out wallowing in self pity.
My eyes scanned the attic, searching for anything I could explore but aside from all the furniture, there didn’t appear to be anything more in here. It was a big room though, it was all opened and just about the size of the living room, dining room and kitchen combined. Maybe behind one of these couches there was a box or something.
I continued down the long hall looking from side to side and occasionally bending down to see if I saw boxes hiding behind furniture, but nothing stood out at me, until I passed by the old, gray recliner. I almost missed it, but lucky for me, my shoe which had untied itself almost made me trip over my feet. When I looked down, ready to curse at myself a saw carved into the floorboard the number 13.
“Well isn’t this odd…” I decided to bend down to get a closer look and noticed that one of the nails holding the floorboard in place was gone. That made me bite at the inside of my cheek as I searched for something to help me pry the board up. Under the recliner there was a crow bar, “That’s convenient.” I reached underneath and grabbed it out, realizing that’s probably how whoever hid something under there did it.
The board came off pretty easily and lying there hidden by a few cobwebs and a whole lot of dust, was a leather bound book. I reached in and pulled it out, quickly blowing on it to rid it of a spider that was sleeping.
It said Isabella on it in nice script, monogrammed along the front cover. “Why would you hide this up here?” I sat there and opened it up and sure enough, instantly I found out.
If anyone but me is reading this, it probably means I’m dead…so better read this carefully and take everything I say to heart.
I was just about to turn the page when I heard the sound of shattered glass. I stood up and walked over to the window and noticed a car parked out front. It wasn’t Kevin’s it belonged to someone else, and that person had just broken in.
I immediately heard a small commotion coming from downstairs. It sounded like at least three people. “You check the basement, you check the second floor and I’ll head to the attic.” The voice said.
“Shit.” I had no idea what to do, so I found that huge mirror and hid behind it as I heard someone running up the attic steps.
