Home

It was the beginning of fall and already the leaves had changed to brown.  There was a heaviness about the air that made it hard to breath at times.  Out on the front porch was a rocking chair that never stopped rocking even when there was no wind.  I had just moved into this old gray house with weathered white shutters and already I felt like I was home.  I felt as if this was the place that I have been waiting to live my whole life and then one day it all changed.  It was about four o'clock in the morning when I heard a slamming against the windows.  I arose quickly and in a frightened state from my soft and comfortable bed.  My heart nearly jumped out of my chest.  I looked over towards the window and seen that the shutters had come unlatched.  I walked over and opened the window and started to pull the shutters closed, when without warning I heard loud footsteps rapidly approaching from behind me.  A voice shouted in my ear "it's time!".  I turned around so fast that I almost fell.  Before me was an old man with black teeth and white eyes.  I was now so frightened that I could not move or breathe.  With one quick extension of his arms the old man shoved me out of the opened window. I fell rapidly to the ground where I hit my head on the stairs of the front porch.  I slowly looked over and with blurry vision from the blood running into my eyes I saw the old man rocking in the rocking chair.  He had a big smile on his face and angry white eyes.  He was humming and eerie tune, and then he started singing in a low and crackly voice.  "I have seen the gates of hell and nothing can be done, I will walk to your front door and there you will be gone."  He kept singing this repeatedly and I could do nothing.  I was paralyzed from my neck down.  My head was fixed so it was aiming right at the old man.  He wouldn't stop singing and his white eyed glare felt as if it were ripping my soul apart.  Again I tried to move with no success not even a twitch.  Next thing I noticed was that the old man was gone from the rocking chair on the porch but the chair was still rocking back and forth back, and forth with each rock of the chair it was accompanied by a creaking noise made by the hundred year old wooden boards on the porch.  I could no longer hear the old man singing or humming.  I think that this frightened me even more, because now I had no clue where he was.  Then all of the sudden I heard the old man again.  This time he was standing directly over me and he was saying repeatedly in a grinding hoarse voice, "it is time, it is time, it is time!  He kept saying it and he was now about six inches from my face and I could smell his rotten breath.  I could feel the fear running through my veins.  It was a fright in which I had never felt before, I knew no that I was going to die.  Just as that thought crossed into my mind I saw the old man's arm raise up into the air and he was holding an ice pick.  He said one more time "it is time" and then he said "I am going to gut you child and hang your insides on the branches of the trees!".  I wanted to close my eyes but I couldn't.  I could feel my body shaking but still I could not move.  Suddenly, I heard an old screechy voice say "Harold stop it right now, I like her!"  I knew that this was the old man's name as he jerked his head in the direction of the voice.  I also looked in the same direction and the voice was coming from the rocking chair where there was an old white haired woman holding what appeared to be a glass of lemonade.  Then everything went black.  I awoke in the morning with my clothes wet from the dew.  I could feel my body and I reached up to feel how bad my head had been split open, there was nothing there.  No blood, no nothing.  I stood up and walked up the stairs onto the porch when from out of nowhere I heard a voice say "good morning sweetheart, your home now."  I looked over and sitting in not one but two rocking chairs was the old couple that I had encountered the night before.  The old women smiled at me, as did Harold with his black teeth.  Just as quickly as they had appeared the old couple disappeared.  I have been in the house now for ten years and still every morning the old couple sits out on the porch in their rocking chairs just watching the world go by.  I know now that I am home.