The Girl on the Swing, Rachel [librera reader txt] 📗

door kiddy-corner to the one we had entered through. Peeking in a saw a squishy bathroom complete with a shower and bath, a sink, and an empty hole where a toilet should go.
“I ordered you a toilet while I was in town today,” she informed me.
“Thanks,” I said sarcastically. There was one last door in the room that, with some more shoulder shoving, gave way to a bare walk-in closet. I meandered over the window and gazed out. The lake sparkled in the distance, I struggled to see it through the thick trees, and there was the swing set complete with a single wooden swing, a platform and a slide. The slide was longer connected to the platform and it lay on the ground covered in moss, broken, rejected, and forgotten, a symbol of the joy it must have once brought some little kid but no longer did. The swing was swaying back and forth, slow and steady. The thought crossed my mind that it wasn’t windy today, and the swing should be still, but I had other things to think about. I was beginning to feel the same way that my must when looking at a house, plans and ideas were gathering in my mind and I felt a small tingle of excitement at getting to do whatever I wanted to with this empty space. It was a canvas waiting to be covered, waiting for the artist to make the first stroke of the brush.
My day was spent cleaning what was to be my room, and by the end of the day my knees ached from being knelt on, despite the fact that I would have the floor carpeted i wanted all of the dirt and stains to b scrubbed off the wooden floors. The walls also needed scrubbing, as did the windows, doors, and every other thing in the room. There was one wooden dresser and a matching desk and nightstand, after cleaning them all I decided that with a fresh coat of paint they would add a cool touch to the room and save my mom a couple hundred dollars at the expensive of having to purchase to furniture for the entire room. The dresser was long and consisted of six drawers placed in a pattern of two columns, three rows. The desk was classic oak and very simple, a spot for your legs, a flat surface, and three drawers on either side along with a long skinny one in the center above the gap. Lastly the nightstand. It was clearly custom made and had a great deal of character. An ornate pattern decorated the top whereas the rest was just plain, old wood. When I opened the small door to see the space it held inside I was greeted with something new and unexpected. Unlike everything else in the house, the inside of the stand was dust-free. A nice surprise. It also contained a large stack of papers from the previous owner, I quickly skimmed them but after realizing that most were complicated legal documents I re-homed them in a bottom drawer of the desk. As the saying goes, out of sight, out of mind.
Sitting in the kitchen as my mom slept next to me yet again that night I worked on scribbling a list of things that I would need from town the next day. So far I had:
Paint
Bedding
Floor Lamp
Desk Lamp
Picture Frames
Bathroom Mirror
Door Knob for Closet
Shelf
Curtains
Rug (1 for room, 1 for bathroom)

Reviewing my list I decided that I would have enough things to keep me occupied for at least a week while I was renovating my room, my mom would also be needing help with the rest of the house. We were only going to work on the West Wing and middle section of the house for now, that would be enough work and plenty of space to live in, my mom said that one day when the need or desire arises we could fix the East Wing and I informed her that I was happy enough only having to occupy one part of the creepy house, despite the fact that I was liking the house more and more I didn’t like it enough to want to have more of the house to live in.
The next day I had fully completed my list and then some. I almost choked when the cashier rang up the price but my mom just smiled and swiped her card, I guess she was used to big purchases. We made numerous trips back and forth to town in order to get all of our new purchases home, she had bought quite a few things for the rest of the house as well but we were both discovering that we liked the character that the furniture already in the house possessed. With some work the furniture would all be back to looking like well kept pieces of ancient art.
I chose my first task to be painting. Three cans of paint should cover the room plus one for the bathroom. By the end of the day my walls were a soft, welcoming purple and my bathroom was a bright teal blue that screamed for attention. I would add two extra coats the next day but for now I set to helping my mom. She was still at the cleaning stage in everywhere except for her room and the kitchen. She had been diligently working on the kitchen so we wouldn’t need to keep ordering out but she was also desperate to get her room (as was I) to the point where we could sleep in it. Both of us were sick of the kitchen floor. I hoped that this would be my last night and I planned to wake up extra early to get my second coat of paint done, then I would do my third early afternoon before getting fans going and windows open in an attempt to rid the room of paint fumes.


Chapter 3

Things had gone according to plan and I had just settled myself into my new bed in my new bedroom. Ah, the magical feeling of brand new bed sheets, there was nothing like the 300 thread count fabric gently covering my skin as I rested my sore and tired body in preparation for a great night sleep.
I woke up screaming but quickly caught myself so as not to wake my mom. I was dreaming again. I listened quietly, holding my breath in anticipation for my mom’s worried footsteps but silence was the only thing that greeted me. I relaxed and took in a gulp of clean air. My curtains blue lightly making quiet rustling sounds as they brushed against my recently dried walls. The moon shone in illuminating my room just enough so I was able to make out the dark shapes of my dressers and doors and the bare emptiness of my walls. I slowly pushed my covers aside and glanced at my phone. Bright red letters showed 4:17am. I sighed knowing that I was done sleeping for the night and would have to occupy myself for at least the next two hours until my mom got up. Sliding my legs over the side of my bed I got up slowly. Needing to go to the bathroom I quietly slipped out my bedroom and into the dark hallway, the plumber was coming today but not until the afternoon so currently we only had one useable toilet. I stood in the hallway for a few seconds allowing my eyes to adjust. I left the safety of my room and began making my way through the house.
The stairs creaked noisily as I descended them and while in the bathroom I heard every creak and moan of the house, my imagination playing them up to be much more than they were. I shivered despite the warm July air. I tried to calm down, telling myself over and over again that the sounds were just the sounds of an old house, completely normal and nothing to be afraid of. But then, through the just barely cracked open bathroom window, came a sound far too clear to be a product of an old house and my immagination. It came from the backyard. A quiet, child-like giggle drifted through the night where it found my ears and sent me awkwardly running through the dark halls back to my room. I shoved my door closed as quietly as possible and stood there in my room panting, heart pounding in my ears.
Someone was in our yard. Someone had giggled. Not a normal, teenager boisterous laugh from someone who had snuck into the night to meet friends at a supposedly haunted house, no. This laugh had been much more…..sinister. There was something horrible and bone-chilling about it even though it sounded as though it came from a child. It had been soft, delicate, yet most definitely real. It was the giggle played in movies. It was the giggle that came before death and proved to be the scariest part. It was the giggle that sent everyone into a panicked hysteria and fear in anticipation for the awful thing that was surely to come. What had been out there? Someone? Something?
I slowly began to creep across my bedroom, approaching the window at an agonizingly slow pace. At first I peeked out only a little bit, hiding the rest of my body behind the curtain and wall. When I saw that so far the coast was clear I looked even farther, and then farther full. I strained to see the whole yard and I couldn’t decide if what I found made me more afraid or be put more at ease. The yard was empty, whatever was there was now gone and the only sign of motion was that eerie wooden swing swaying back and forth and back and forth.
I crawled into bed, deciding that my first task in the morning would be to set up a small bedside lamp so I could read at times like these, that was what I would normally do if I was at home. Now I was stuck sitting there all alone waiting for the sun to rise. Just me and my nagging conscious. I was already beginning to doubt my reaction to what I thought I heard. Nothing could have been out there, it was early in the morning but still dark, I had just woken up from a nightmare and was still drowsy and somewhat out of sorts, and I was in a creepy house that I wasn’t used to and my mind was playing tricks on me. That’s it. Nothing was out there.
Nothing.
Nothing.
Nothing.
I was mentally arguing with myself, an intense battle between sanity and insanity. A heated debate. My final conclusion was to not draw any conclusions. I would look around in the morning for signs of anything strange but until then I was to forget the whole thing and either go back to sleep or find something else to do. Immediately deciding that sleep