Kids go missing in the town of Riverdale. It’s pretty obvious by now. Every time, I notice the absence of a kid in the cafeteria I think to myself, he’s probably gone missing. Then after a week or so of their absence, I write the person’s name down on my wall. I have six names so far. I can’t help wondering where these kids go. I ask my mother and she says that they’ve just left this horrible town. I want to believe her but…. I just have a different feeling. One day, as I was getting in the car for school, I noticed a ‘missing’ poster on the light pole in front of our house. My dad cursed out loud and torn the poster off from the pole. “these people, crossing other people’s property.” We just moved into our new house, and I could tell dad was not having a good time. Another weird thing was our neighbor. We never saw him, but dad says he has met him before moving here. His house was… well, big, like, really big, an elephant could fit into the front door. Every evening as I come back from school, I see him watching the news on the old, battered TV of his. Then one day, when I came back from school, I noticed his absence as I inspected the living room. Suspicion got the best of me, and I decided to investigate. I should’ve minded my own business. <<<<<>>>>> I waited until the sun went down, until my parents were fast asleep. I crept out of my bed, making sure not to make noise and sneaked outside into no-man’s land. Our neighborhood was a small, classic area, the type you would expect if you were living in western Ohio. Unfortunately, that meant the width of our street was huge. I would have to walk 50 meters to get to the other side. I felt like a real live action spy, keeping quiet while also sensing his surroundings. I tip-toed slowly across the pavement. The crazy man had set up cameras in his front yard, like if anyone was going to stalk him. I hid behind the bush that’s when I heard the scream, a loud, ear-raping scream, followed by worse ones. No doubt these were the unmature voices of kids. Only why they were screaming. Suddenly, the screaming muted. I finally convinced myself to take a look. Just in time to see my neighbor lock something in his basement. Just then the cameras turned on, I was helpless, the cameras could see through bush. I lost my bravery and scrambled for my life. The neighbor was on me, he was faster, probably stronger but my house was only 50 meters away. I didn’t stop running until I was in my house, locked the doors and even put a chair up to its handles for an extra security. As soon as I did all of that, I ran into my room and hid my body under my blanket. 10 minutes later, I checked my window and saw the neighbor guarding his property against the kid that discovered his secret, I let out a sigh of relief. I wondered if I would sleep tonight. <<<<<>>>>> I didn’t sleep all night, I couldn’t help thinking and making up theories about the neighbour’s life and secrets. What was the sound of the children screaming? Were they kept in the neighbour’s basement against their will? Who was the neighbour? Questions floating in my head were like cats fighting for my attention, I tried to ignore them. Should I tell my parents? The police? In the end, I decided to keep this not so little secret to myself, for now. <<<<<>>>>> A week has passed by, life feels no different to how it was a week ago. Every morning, when I got on the car for school, I can’t help wondering if the neighbor is watching. Stalking me as I did to him that night. I think I needed help. Thinking this over, even if I told my parents, they probably wouldn’t believe me. That was out of option. I thought about calling the police, but gave up on the idea immediately. At the end of the day, my only option was to take another little visit to my neighbor’s house. Not what I was planning. <<<<<>>>>> The neighbor has obviously added legitimate security measures to his “structure”. Now there was a fence around the perimeter and he doubled the number of cameras there was before. It looked like something from an apocalypse. It took a little bit longer to find my way in, but as far as I could tell, he wasn’t home. His car wasn’t in the driveway, and there were no lights on in his house. There were several very strange objects littered on his front lawn. A hammer, a big rock and a box of matches. I opened a window and climbed in. The first thing I noticed was the candles, lots of them. The second thing was the furnace, a huge furnace, big enough to cook humans, then I banished the thought from my head. I got out of the furnace room and found myself in the living room with the huge, blue television in the center. Then I noticed the basement door, the one I heard screams from it was quadruple locked, I left that to explore later. Right now, the house was eerie silent, the only sound was the rustling of the leaves outside in the cold autumn. I wondered around the house for another ten minutes and finally locked my eyes on the door again. Time to open this sucker. I took a closer inspection on the keys and realized they were colored strangely. The first was orange, the second blue and the third completely black. When I think about orange the first thing that comes to my mind are oranges, I ran to the kitchen (which I previously explored) and found the basket of oranges. I dug my hand into the basket and fished out a key, the orange key! The second key was blue, the living room with the big blue TV! I jogged to the living room and found the key on the couch. The third was black and reminded me of the black carpet. Within minutes I had the three keys. But I could hear the sound of the neighbor’s car pulling into the driveway, I ran home, feeling disappointed. <<<<<>>>>> I decided to wait another few days for my last assault on my neighbor. More importantly, I waited for the opportunity that the neighbor was home during the day. And finally, the moment came. One Saturday morning was all I needed. My parents were out shopping, leaving me to defend our properties alone. I didn’t really have a plan this time so, long story short, I knocked on the door and hid in the same bush as the previous night. The neighbor immediately answered the door. The weird thing was that after he found no-one there, he instead of turning back inside like what I expected, he walked down the doorstep and carried on walking around the house. This was my chance! As soon as he was out of view, I ran on to the porch, into his house, and locked the door behind me. Then I had a brilliant idea. I was going to block the neighbor out from his own house! I placed a chair on the door handle of the furnace room, the only other entrance to the house. I was about to leave when something caught my eye. The furnace room has always been like this, nothing different. I moved out of the room and it struck me, a blunt object to the back of my head. A few centimeters to the left and I would have been leaking brains. I somehow managed to hold myself together and dodge the next, what would somewhat be fatal, blow. I ended up behind him. I would never get a better shot at disarming him than this, I twisted his arm behind his back, classic disarming move and it should’ve freaking worked but it didn’t. He used his arm to pull me back to face him. He was strong, really strong but he underestimated my weight, he did an unintentional front flip and land with a ‘thump’ into the giant furnace. This place was creeping me out, I decided to quickly check the basement and leave, I didn’t want to look at any other secrets the neighbor had. I was about to open the basement door when I heard the same scream as I did on the first visit. <<<<< >>>>> I’m not sure what happens after but here’s what I know. My doctor told me I fainted in the neighbor’s house. My parents were looking for me and it wasn’t so long that they thought to call the police. After a while, the police broke into the neighbor’s house and found me on the floor. I tried telling my parents about what had happened but all I got back was three months of therapy. These days I think back to what had happened and find it hard to believe myself.

Hello Neighbor

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