ghost story back up

So, from the beginning right?

   Well, it all started, how's that for a beginning huh? Any way, so there are these mountains where I have been hunting for like two decades, my father hunted there before the doctor got on him about his leg, and my grandfather before that. My brother liked to camp up there to but he was never much of a hunter, he liked to play with those drones, fly over everything taking pictures. Okay, it is sort of neat. So one time during early fall while I am hunting I come to the peak of one of the mountains out there and checking the signs for game trails figuring out where to put my tree stand for later when deer season started up when I see what looks like the top of a house poking through the trees. It was down the ridge and past the river, halfway up the mountain facing south. I know I had never seen a house there before, and to be poking above the tree line with some one widow old style tile roof it had to be a very big house.

   So when I get home I ask my father about it, he says there is are no houses out there. There was never a road out there, other than a logging road. Now, he did pause saying that and said I should ask my grandfather. See the forest out there is not old growth, it is all new growth forest. There used to be loggers out there ages ago. My grandfather said there could be a logging shack, some remnants of a store house for equipment, or the logging company had housing up there if it was as big I said it looked given how far away from town that was. My father argued it couldn't be where I said it was and had to have gotten mixed up, as if, because he swore he'd been down to the old logging roads years ago and never saw any buildings other than a few old tool sheds; which he commented were really creepy things to run into in the dark and try to figure out when or why they'd be there.

   Now my brother comes into the room during this coversation and offers to go with me the next day with his drone and see about getting a closer look. I was against it, because we had to go back to right where I was to make sure we saw exactly what I saw, and if that drone crashed we'd have to walk down the ridge, over the river, and up the mountain side as there were to ATV trails on that other side of the river that we knew about it.

   Yeah guess what happened right. So we got there and he sent his little drone flying high above the river and over to the house. We were both honestly amazed, because this wasn't some shack or a look out like I sort of suspected, it was an honest to God mansion of a house, like double doors, two stories with two towers on either side, it looked like it was built into the mountain side. There was a fence around a front yard with a tables and stuff outside like someone was expecting company. I swear the grass even looked shorter than you'd expect for an abandoned property. Just then, just as could be guessed, something hit the drone and it went down into that front yard. Whatever hit it must have been pretty small, because my brother was able to keep the drone going enough to not just crash, he said two of the props at least were still going, but it wasn't enough to get it to reach back to us; we'd have to climb down there and get it. As late as it was he decided to stay down at my campsite. I mean yeah, I was hunting, and had driven back to town. But its like a two hour drive back to the house from my campsite; and I prefer to stay in the woods when hunting, that and the gas.

   So the next morning we headed out, it would have taken longer to go up the mountain and down so the day before we tied a scarf to a tree to tell where our look out point was as we went down to the river. Using compases and good old fashion line of sight we went up along the river edge till we saw the scarf and headed up the other side in the direction of the house. As big as the house was there was no way we could miss it, and my brother was quick to point out how I missed this place being out here all these years hunting out here and how our father missed it. I was stumped, I mean we never hunted over here on this side of the river after all because of the lack of trails and the road. Kind of a pain in the ass to haul a deer carcass through the woods and over a stream and up a mountain side to get back to trails wide enough for an ATV, let alone a pick up truck. But still you'd think we'd have noticed it sticking out of the mountain side.

    No, I can't say there was anything odd about the forest or the path up to the old iron gate, other than aside from vines and thistles and other assorted brush growing through it that the iron bar fence around the front yard looked freshly painted. My brother and I thought that maybe someone did live there as he retrieved and inspected the drone still sitting on the ground. He said if someone did live there he was surprised the drone was still there, but aside from the trimmed looking bushes by the windows; only trimmed enough to not be in the way of the windows; nothing that really looked nice; and the painted rod iron fence that nothing else really looked lived in. We could see a broken window in the top right tower, tattered curtains, and the front door was open with the door creaking on old hinges.

   I don't remember our exact words but we did end up exploring inside the house. It was old, and really weird looking. I mean right inside was...I don't know the word for it, a lobby, or what, but it was like a fairy tale house. I mean the whole big space my truck could fit into, big stairs right in the middle going up to a landing with two paths to those towers; and doors along the top; and the first floor had two doors on either side of the stairs that would go further back into the hill side. We were iffy about exploring up the stairs given how old everything looked. On the bottom floor to our left was a room with tables and stuff in it and a window looking into the front yard. There was another door but it was jammed or locked from the inside. The door was some seriously hard wood and whatever they used to lock it was serious business too so we couldn't force it open. Giving up we went to explore the right side, it had another little room looking out the windows but also two other doors. One going back was an old kitchen with another door that we didn't see before in the shadows by the stairs next to the other door there. We opened that door and it lead to a really long and unlit tunnel...yeah without flashlights that was a no. My brother said he wanted to come back with another drone later to look down the old dusty tunnel to see where it went.

   Back through the kitchen we found another door going further right that lead to a big empty room with stacks of chairs and fold out tables. There was no way this was some old logging house with those there.

   What happened next should have been a sign this place wasn't right. My brother had opened a door in the back, what should have been parallel to that dark tunnel was a backyard. Like a garden and everything. Even one of those storm doors that looked to lead to a basement was up against the house. My brother just stared at the door, the back of the house...which had a glass sliding door looking in to another room...that would have needed to be under the stairs. I guessed maybe the tunnel wasn't as long as thought or had a sharp downward turn or something. Honestly I just shrugged it off. But this back yard had to be hidden in the brush because it should have been in the hill side. There were tall rocks and a really serious looking wooden pole wall like you'd see surrounding a village in an old jungle island movie. Exploring the back yard my brother didn't follow me as I went further to the back, there was a path beside some koi ponds leading between some thin fruit trees going to what had to be a 12 foot high door in the fence. Just before I was about to grab the latch to see what was on the other side my brother shouted that he thought he saw movement in one of the second floor windows.

   Joining him closer to the house we could see the curtains moving in one of the rooms on the second landing, but the windows also looked like they could be open a little bit. We headed back inside the way we came. I thought about using that sliding glass door; but something in the back of my head was screaming about how it didn't match up. It was silly; at the time. But we both went back in the way we came, heading the long way round to the stairs. We tested them with each foot step, finding them solid we went up. The doors opened easily enough, and they were hotel rooms. Two beds, a big box tv, a night stand between the beds, a small closet, and a bathroom. We checked three rooms, all the same. My brother remarked how freaky that was, I brought up the lodging for loggers thing, but even I thought that sounded dumb, this was a bed and breakfast, no doubt, but it made no sense to be out there. Like were they planning to build a road through there at some point and someone got a little ahead of it and built this right here before they decided to build a road elsewhere?

   It was in one of these rooms that I found it. Sitting on the night stand by an electric lamp, again...what...right; no powerlines out this way. There was a doll, a tiny burlap rag doll wearing a purple dress, black buttons for eyes, black stitch mouth, and red yarn for hair. I decided to bring it back as proof to everyone we found something; other than my brother's drone footage he recorded. I pocketed the thing and we headed out.

   The first sign something wasn't right. On the way back to camp I turned and looked one last time at the house and thought I saw a light on in one of the towers, a blink and it was gone. I told  myself it was a reflection from the setting sun.

   ******

   So, why the hell did I describe the house in that much detail? Why didn't I just say I found an old house with a few newer features that made us think someone might have lived there recently, and around back in a hidden yard I found an old doll that I took home for some reason and ended up giving to my daughter after she took a liking to it?

   My daughter, only seven years old...my daughter, whose eyes lit up when I came home with that doll when she saw it, and wanted it so badly. That doll she played with all the time after that, it became the center piece of her toys, of her games, carried it in her back pack to school, she even named it...Miss Voodoo...my daughter...

   I described the house in all that detail because it changed. I know its been investigated by the police already, the rangers. My brother was the first to go missing; he left one morning and three days later my wife tells me my brother's girlfriend is going nuts on facebook; and the police arn't much help. It didn't dawn on me that he had gone back to that house, not until the police asked me a few days later and his girlfriend mentioned he took his drone and a remote controlled toy car with a go-pro attatched to it. I brought it up and lead them there after they looked at his drone footage of the place. I recal on the way one of three officers being confused, he said the other side of these mountains was a park and pointed out a peak where he said he had driven his ATV around on before and never saw a house down here by the river. When we reached the house it was just like before except the broken window was no longer broken, I didn't bring that up. There were also flowers under the windows that hadn't been there before; I told myself they must have just grown since before, even though it was already fall.

   The cops said they hoped he was here, but I couldn't explain why he would be gone for a little over a week. I had a bad feeling about it, so did they. They didn't want to say it, but I knew they thought they were going to find a dead man, maybe fallen down some basement stairs, through a rotted floor, out here with no contact with civilization where the mountains interfere with cell phone reception. Inside the house while the cops stupidly were all agasp at the size of the place I spotted my brother's drone sitting on the stairs. They took pictures of it before picking it up and checking for the camera, but I told them they'd need my brother's labtop, it stores the camera feed. I told them how he had wanted to explore a tunnel we found and that his other drone, the car with a go-pro on it that is, wasn't here, so maybe he went down that tunnel.

  We made our way to the door leading to the tunnel, I was shocked to find it wasn't the straight tunnel we saw before but was not stone stairs leading down. There were lights hanging from the ceiling...lights that were on. The police told me to stay back while they went down, the light fixtures were swinging like there was a breeze as they went down. They only got four steps before my brother came running down from the stairs above shouting for them to stop.

   My brother looked odd, his clothes unkempt, hair a mess. He was always so neat and tidey. The police questioned him, but he was confused, especially about the part about his girlfriend, he said she was there with him, and that it had only been a few hours since he left. That she had gone with him there. He pointed at the front door, and I saw it, he saw it, I know the cops saw it, there was his girlfriend walking out the front door, looking confused and looking around, closing the door behind her. We ran to open the door and she was gone. The cops called back to their dispatch, his girlfriend was out by the road with my wife. When questioned she said she never left with him, she told him when he left she was still getting ready, she had agreed to go see a "surprise", a "really cool" place to explore with his drone. But he ended up leaving and driving off before she was ready. He argued that no, she had gotten ready and they left together. They even stopped at a McDonalds on the way. I think they investigated that, no one remembered him, but it had been a week after all, lots of people come and go from places like that in a week on the highway. When he got around to them arriving at the house and his girlfriend's doppleganger I guess eating some berries in the back they thought were mulberries, the cops wrote it off as hallucinations distorting his memory of events, why he left without his girlfriend after making a big deal about it was never explained.

   My brother ended up going to the hospital, he was mildly dehydrated, his stories about the place even started to sound like hallucinations even to him. He laughed it off, apologized to his girl friend for leaving without her, like maybe he misheard her about going or whatever. But his stories, he talked about an ocean in the basement, a great labyrinth of pillars and water down the tunnel, of a bosom woman in red who lived in one of the towers who had kept them company. He had thought he had just been with her and his girlfriend, as in WITH, WITH, a three way to be blunt. When she told him to stop the men going down the stairs or else the snake would get them. And that's where we came in. After a few days of observations he was laughing that off, as obvious hallucinations, but felt so real. The cops went back there. Said the towers had caved in stairs so couldn't be ascended, and the bottom of the stone stairs lead to a small laundry room with a generator. So they believed my brother got high on poisoned berries and somehow found his way back to his truck, siphoned the gas into a gas tank, carried that all the way back, and filled this generator that...honestly proved the house wasn't that old as it still worked...but that's cops for you, everything is explained, guy found, place is just an old dump. As for the sea in the basement, they said the other door going down lead to a broken metal stairway and a flooded basement, likely from the ground water with the river near by leaking in through the foundation. That alone made them declare the house condemned and that we probably shouldn't be messing with it, it could cave into his foundation before too long, a few more good rains and the whole place could collapse.

    Everything seemed normal after that, for awhile anyway, yeah there was strain between my wife and I, she thought I was cheating on her; I wasn't. My brother's girlfriend was acting weird from what I heard, asking weird questions about me, personal questions. I think she tried to convince my wife to a threeway; which my wife turned down, but thought we had been cheating with each other before that and after. We weren't. But that was normal compared to the other things causing us stress; my wife especially. Little things can eat at you more than the big things sometimes, especially as they keep happening. Our cat dissappeared, the home security system kept malfuntioning and showing a shadow streaking across the top of the walls where they meet the ceiling; the IT guy on the phone insisted it was somekind of camera bug doing it or insects getting on the lens. Our daughter was doing worse in school, she was only 7 years old, but according to her teacher she had receeded from her friends, stopped carrying about school work, and only wanted to be left alone by herself in some dark corner of the school yard to talk to her doll...the doll I found and gave her. My wife was being buggy at night because our daughter kept asking for darker clothes; I just figured she was turning goth and that my wife and her teacher were over reacting.  I talked to my daughter of course, she named the doll Ms. VooDoo, cute right?...but she told me Ms. VooDoo missed her friends back at the mansion...I didn't think we had mentioned the house, but she described it to me. She told me Ms. VooDoo, her doll, had told her I found her there.

   That was creepy and all, but the big deal was that our talk with her was that her teacher at school wanted her to leave the doll at home when she went to school; that it was a distraction. After all she was in elementary school now and kids took books to school to read, and next year she wouldn't be allowed to take toys to school at all. I honestly think that's a bit harsh, but the PTA insisted kids were in school to learn not play; whatever. We thought she'd have a fit, but she acted worried, she said, Ms VooDoo wouldn't like that.

   It was shortly after this that the weird stuff started to happen during the daytime, not just the secrutity camera getting a shadow on it. We had food in the fridge go missing, my wife's figurines were being moved around, but the biggest things were in the living room. We'd come home to find the tv on, movies taken out of their cases and being played, scribbles on the wall by the floor with crayon. We tried to rationalize it at first. But it made no sense to be our daughter, she was at school. Although it never happened on the weekend. After watching a ghost hunting show my wife insisted we instal a security camera in the living room. Like a ghost would be watching our collection of Disney cartoons while we are at work.

   I don't know if my wife ever caught anything on those cameras. Because this is where it happened.