Everthing was so normal and we were so sure that their was no ghost in house it was just a rumour. But still we couldn’t find the exact reason for Ruby’s Grandparent’s death. Ruby was still busy searching all the details for the death. Happy was helping him out. Lucky was calm, silent. I mean he was totally changed. Everything was okay until something happend. A woman’s strangled scream woke me. I opened my eyes and rolled onto my back, staring at the ceiling, as my brain tried to come to terms with what had disturbed it. The night was unpleasantly warm. I’d left my window open to invite in a non-existent breeze, and sweat stuck my pyjamas to my limbs. I pressed my thumbs into the corners of my eyes to wipe away the gunk that had collected there, then I rolled over to fall asleep again. I blinked at the light pouring through my room window. Someone was awake in the Marwick property. Maybe they’d stepped on one of their children’s toys, or perhaps the mother had discovered the toilet seat left up one too many times. That could explain the scream. But it didn’t explain the gunshot.
I sat up, the crack echoing in my ears, and shuddered despite the heat. I hadn’t just heard the gun fire, I’d seen the flash of white burst through the second-floor window. I wondered if they needed someone called. The police… an ambulance… it wouldn’t be my first time phoning the emergency helpline over the Marwick property. They always took so long to respond, though. Far longer than for any other house in our street. My toes dug into my room carpet as I slid out of bed. I crossed the room, drawn almost against my will, to watch the neighbouring house. Lights were turning on throughout the property. A woman wailed, her voice so high and strained that I couldn’t understand the words. She was begging for something. I reached for my phone. Another gunshot came from the room near the back of the house. I didn’t know the family, but they had three children, and I was fairly sure that the room belonged to their youngest son. Real, visceral fear woke me. I dialled the emergency helpline and held the phone up to my ear. I heard static in response. More lights turned on, illuminating the house like a Christmas tree. A man ran past a window, his form a silhouette behind the curtains. He was carrying a child in one arm and a gun in the other. A woman followed closely. I could hear her words then. “Leave it… leave it, John. You can’t hit it.” A child’s cries rang through the stillness. The voice rose into a deafening shriek that drowned out the mother’s. I followed the family’s movements through the windows. They were going downstairs. I redialled the emergency helpline as I mimicked the Marwick family’s movements and descended my own stairs. Again, static. Had my phone broken? I was sure I’d remembered to pay the bill— The Marwick’s front door burst open. I stopped in my kitchen and bent across the bench to press my face against the window. I counted the shapes illuminated by the blocks of light escaping through the windows. Two large figures, three small. The whole family was there. Some of my fear eased, and I lowered the phone. “In the car.” The father put down the child in his arms and turned back to the house. He held his rifle close to his chest, using it as a shield more than a weapon. I could see the whites of his eyes flashing as he scanned his house. As the mother pushed her children into the backseat, the youngest continued to wail. She didn’t buckle them in. “John, come on.” He backed to the driver’s side and reached behind himself to open the door, not taking his gaze off the house for even a moment. I watched him slink inside and heard the engine turn over. Tyres screamed on the driveway as the car pulled out then rocketed down the street, its trajectory so erratic that I was sure he was still watching the building over his shoulder. Finally, the night fell quiet again. I leaned back from the kitchen window and dropped the phone to the bench. I wondered how many other neighbours had been woken by the screams and gunshots. Had any called the police? Were they pressed to their windows, like I was, watching with the same fascination drivers develop when passing a car accident? If they were, none of them turned their lights on. The street remained dark and quiet. I waited in the kitchen for another few minutes then turned an climbed the stairs. That was the last time I ever saw that family. I can’t even remember their last name—to me, they were just “the Marwick family.” That was the house’s name, and it had been for as long as I’d lived in the street. They didn’t return in the morning, as I’d expected, to collect their clothes. No one came for the furniture. No one even turned out the lights. They stayed on for two full weeks until someone cancelled the contract and power to the house was cut. I hung blackout curtains over my windows for those two weeks and suffocated in the stifling heat of my improvised hotbox. On a few of those hot nights, I lay awake staring at my ceiling, completely naked and still overheated, and actually considered crossing over to the Marwick building, walking through the front door, which I knew had been left unlocked, and turning off thelights myself. I never did. I was too afraid of what lived inside.