300 Horror Writing Prompt- Prompt # 20
Chapter 4
Aiden and Carol snuggle on the couch three weeks after the break-in and the scare with Aiden hitting his head on the bed. He had a small concussion, but no broken bones, only a twisted ankle from where he had tripped over the clothes. Carol and Aiden had thrown away anything that had been broken, torn, shredded, or had needed to be replaced before the break-in. They had to replace a lot of clothes, pictures frames, sheets, and pillows but thankfully they didn’t have to replace much of the furniture since it hadn’t broken when it was violently tossed around.
After a lot of hard work, the house is back the way it once was, with a few adjustments, and the family does their best to move on from dealing with such a scary event. Aiden has had to go back to work while the summer begins to march towards the end which means that Marcos and the twins will be going to school. Aiden didn’t see the person that he had seen that night since they had been back from their trip and back from his hospital stay.
He searches the house every day before he goes to work and every night before anyone is allowed in their rooms for bed. Carol keeps telling him not to do that because it scares the kids but he doesn’t listen and for the three weeks since the incident, he would check with his personal gun in hand.
Everything grows silent for a few days but then the shadow reappears, showing itself to the entire family here and there. Carol decides to take the kids out to South Carolina where her parents live so that her kids do not have to live in fear every day, wondering when and where the shadow is going to pop up. Aiden could not leave though since he still has to go to work, so he stays behind at their house.
He also starts looking for a new house closer to where he works and hopefully away from the shadow person. He doesn’t understand how or why the house is now haunted, only that it has happened and he needs to figure out what started it all. Had it been haunted before the deployment and he never noticed? Or has it started after when he maybe brought something back from overseas?
A week goes by, then a month, and Carol begins to grow worried about her husband as the phone calls become shorter and shorter until one day he doesn’t answer at all. She calls the police to go and check on her husband to see why he hasn’t answered her phone calls. She sits anxiously by her phone in a room in the back of her parent’s house while she listens to her parents playing with the kids.
The same cops who had helped them before parks in front of the house late at night since Carol had waited for a while to call, hoping that if she left a few messages, he would get back with her. One of the officers begins to pound loudly on the front door while calling out Aiden’s name while the other one tries to peer inside through one of the windows that sit beside the front door.
They can hear on the radio that his command hasn’t seen or heard from him in a few days so they are sending their own police to check out the house as well. The officers wait for a few moments until two military police officers join them on the porch, also looking worried for their friend Aiden. The civilian officer bangs on the door again while one of the military officers tries calling Aiden on his cell phone.
The group grows quiet when they hear the sounds of a phone ringing from upstairs but no one answers the phone. They look at one another then in unison, two of the men kick down the door, the wood splintering before giving way to their force. They rush in, guns drawn, yelling out Aiden’s name, only stopping in the entryway for a moment. One of the military cops motions for the others to fan out and check each room. The others nod their head and begin to walk over fallen debris and broken furniture as they search for the missing man. Once they all meet at the bottom of the stairs, they look up and see a shadow bolt from one of the kid’s rooms to the master bedroom.
“Aiden!” One of the four yells out at the figure.
The figure doesn’t respond so they rush up the stairs, taking them two at a time, their guns still drawn and their eyes darting everywhere to make sure that no one is able to sneak up on them. They stop in front of the closed door, wondering how Aiden had been able to get into the room and close the door so quietly when he was obviously in a rush. With their guns hold high and at the ready, they nod to the civilian officer closest to the door who grabs the door handle and shoves the door open.
They step inside to see everything is in place, not a thing broken unlike in the rooms downstairs. Sitting on the bed is an old weathered book, opened and maybe halfway read but Aiden is nowhere to be seen. They comb the room and bathroom but still find no traces of Aiden anywhere in the room. Scratching their heads, they head back out into the hallway, each taking an upstairs bedroom or bathroom to see if maybe Aiden had snuck into one of the other rooms while they were searching the master bedroom.
“Are are we going to tell his wife?” one of the officers asks the others, putting his fun away as they stand outside beside their cars an hour later.
They have searched and searched every room, the backyard, and the family’s 10 acres of land but here is still no sign of Aiden. Now standing empty-handed in front of the house, they look defeated.
“Just tell her the truth that her husband has gone missing and we need to start a search,” one of the military officers tell them.
The others nod their heads in agreement and one of the military officers moves away from the group so that he can call Carol while his partner calls Aiden’s command in order to tell them what they have found out. The civilian officers climb into their car and one radio the station to tell them that they have found nothing and that they have a missing person on their hands, telling them to start looking for volunteers to search the area for Aiden. The day drags into the night with both military and civilians going out searching for Aiden in the town and nearest areas to the house.
Carol cries most of the day and into the night, her children scared and crying as well at the thought of never seeing their father again. Her parents do their best to distract Marcos, Leah, and Lance but the children want to stay by their mother’s side to wait to find out about their missing dad. The family all sit together in the living room while they wait to hear anything back from either the town’s sheriff or the military police.