Written By: Sophie M. Muñoz
Age: 12 or 14

The Noise

    The bus dropped my off after my day at the library. I look around and thought something was different. The day was bright and full of color. The autumn leaves look like a rainbow against a clear summer sky. I came home from the library early because I sensed something was wrong at my house. Something was deadly wrong.

    I opened the door and went in. The aroma of cookies and candies filled the air. That was strange because my younger brother and sister were still at school and my parents were still at work. It must have been my imagination. I went through the house looking for something, or something, that could have caused the aroma. I saw my older brother’s stuff on the floor. He must have come straight home from school. Where was he?

    It was then that I heard something, almost deafening above the silence. TAP! TAP! TAP! I jumped a good three feet. After the three taps it was deadly silent again. I didn’t like it being this quiet. I decided to feed my stomach before it started making weird noses too.

    After I ate, I heard it again. TAP! TAP! TAP! Closer this time. I decided to look around. The first floor was the floor with the most things that could make the noise so I started there first. The aroma of cookies and candy had been replaced with a rotten, sickening stench. I thought I was going to get sick.

    Ignoring the stench, I continued to explore the floor. The kitchen was painted white and the place where the stench was coming from. I looked all through the kitchen, holding my nose of course, and found nothing. I then went to the parlor. You could breathe better in here, and there wasn’t much to look at. The carpet was brown to match the coffee table and furniture. I found nothing in there either.

    I continued my exploration of the house to the second floor. The second floor was made up of all the bedrooms, except my sisters and mine. My two brothers shared a room at the end of the hall. It had blue carpeting and walls, but you couldn’t tell because of all the stuff thrown about. My parents’ room was filled with pictures, trophies, and anything else you would expect to see with four kids. They had colorful carpeting but nothing that interested me at the time.

    The third floor contained the study, my sisters’ room, and my room. My sister’s room was pink, everything pink. The carpet, the ceiling, the walls, the curtains, everything was pink. Nothing was found in there except some candy, a missing library book along with other things scattered about the floor.

    My carpet was violet with little violets on the curtains. My room was spotless so it was simple to see the nose was not coming from my room.

    The study was brown like the parlor with a chair, desk, reading light, and every book and anything and everything you could imagine. I did not come to read so I looked around, saw the noise was not coming from her, and left.

    The attic was cold and smelled of mothballs. Everything we had grown out of or didn’t want was in the attic. There were baby clothes, baby dolls, and toy trucks. There were old uniforms hung on the walls. I looked through the beaten up old trunks but had to stop because the cement floor was cold on my bare legs.

    I looked out the window and noticed everything was not sunny and bright anymore. It was turning dark, gray, and scary. Something big and unexpected was going to happen, but what?

    I went back downstairs to the first floor to get a snack. While I was eating, I heard the noise again. I was almost positive it was coming from the basement. I continued eating my snack and started humming out of anxiety. I ate slowly, not wanting to investigate the basement. When I was done eating, I washed my hands and started pacing. “It’s now or never,” I thought and opened the basement door.
    
    The basement was colder and darker than the attic. The basement had no window. I searched the whole basement and found nothing. I checked behind the washer and dyer. I found nothing but a few dead mice. I checked behind the furnace and under the steps. I heard it again, coming from the top of the steps.

    I raced up the steps and into our bathroom. I closed the door and locked it. I look down and saw my older brother, stabbed to death. I tried to scream but no sound came out, The once white walls were smeared with blood. One the wall, there was a warning, “You’re next!”

    I called the police. They fingerprinted my brother and the knife used to kill him. They said something not human had killed my brother. The fingerprints were like none they had ever seen before. They checked out the rest of the house. Everything else was untouched, everything except the thing that could not be replaced, my brother.

    When the police left, I cried. When no more tears would come, I looked around for something not human. The smell! The smell was definitely not human. I went to the kitchen. I examined the knives. All of them were there except the one used to kill my brother.

    Then I saw the thing that killed my brother, made the tapping noises, and the aromas. It was as tall as the door and just as wide. It had a head like a human and hands like one too. One his hands, the thing that made them not human, were eyeballs, alive and blinking. I remembered the message on the bathroom wall and must have fainted because I awake in the hospital.

    When I awoke, I saw the white room. The room had a lovely view of the city and the mountains beyond. I remembered the day before and was scared all over again. I started shaking uncontrollably. My hands and legs were cut, but that was all. The doctor said I could go home. I was scared.

    When I got home my parents asked  me if I was all right and what hap happened. I told them, detail by horrible detail. Then they asked me why I came home from the library early that day. At first I said I didn’t know. Then I remembered back to that beautiful autumn day. I remember everything that happened that day and said simply this, “I sensed something was wrong, deadly wrong. I was right.”