This Old House

Edit: I changed the age of the house so...yeah. You might want to read the second and third paragraphs again because that's where the changes were made.

Just to like let you guys know, I really don't remember how I got the title...Was it the name of a TV show? Ehh...I don't remember, it just sounded nice since the story is about a house and it's history...Anyway this story totally came to me last night when I was trying to go to sleep. It shouldn't be that long and I'll try to update it on days that I don't have updates for LTLABL.

When Alfred first bought his new house in the suburb close to his cousin Arthur, he thought that the price was too good to be true. The house was relatively cheap but was located in a fairly wealthy neighborhood of newly restored pre Victorian aged houses. The price of the house that Alfred bought was odd since most of the other houses in the same area cost a small fortune, but then again, his house was not restored like the others.

On the outside, the house looked its time and was very much old. Some of the windows were broken, the back door was falling off its hinges, and the yard was almost like a jungle. The intriguing part of the house, however, was that it was older than all the other houses by about 100 years. The house had to be at least 200 to 250 years of age in total, making all of the other houses about 100.

Of what little Alfred did know about the building, one thing was certain. He knew from the real estate agent that the house hadn't been lived in for about little over one hundred of those years it had existed. At the time, he figured that the low price of the pre Victorian age house was due to the fact that it was a fix it house and he reasoned that a deal such as this one will never come around again. Though for a moment, he had thought about why the house hadn't been lived in for almost a century.

When he arrived at the new house, Alfred helped the moving people place all of his boxes and things into the house. Afterwards, he began to move some of the boxes into the specific rooms to which they belonged. The kitchen things like the boxes marked "PLATES" and "POTS" were left unopened for tomorrow on the kitchen counter while the one that said "BATH STUFF" was placed into the bathroom conveniently close to the room he had picked to be his bedroom. Once he was done moving the specifically marked boxes to the rooms they were designated to, Alfred decided to tour the house he had so recently purchased.

He drifted through the halls and rooms, quietly and almost ghost like. He discovered many interesting, but dust covered rooms that he figured could be used as storage or could later be converted into something useful. Of all his little discoveries Alfred had made that day while touring his house, his favorite and most intriguing had to be the dusty grey bear he found sitting on the bed in one of the extra bedrooms.

Now this room, he concluded, had to belong to a child. The room was scarcely furnished and decorated, as being the only pieces of furniture were a bed, a dresser, and a large mysterious chest. The walls were a faded, dusty blue color, drained and washed of the original light blue it once was. The drawer was covered in layers of dust and stood against the empty wall, closest to the small, child sized bed. Of the few things in the room, the one object that caught Alfred's eye the most, however, was the large, presumably empty, chest at the foot of the bed.

From where he stood in the doorway of the room, Alfred walked slowly over to the chest and attempted to open it. The hinges creaked from being moved for the first time in over one hundred years, and he was finally able to open the trunk after a good few minutes of trying to push open the top. He was met with a startling surprise.

Inside the trunk, he found clothes, small, child sized clothes. They were also boy's clothing, not dresses and other girl associated clothing. He had assumed early on that the child that occupied the room was a girl due to the bear he had found. But as he looked at the clothing, he realized that it was for a boy, and not just any boy at that too. They looked like they could only fit a child about eleven or twelve. Alfred dug through the chest some more and felt something hard and cool. He grabbed the thing and pulled it out, finding it to be a dust covered picture frame. Rubbing off the offending substance, Alfred found himself face to face with the picture of a young boy.

The boy looked about twelve, the right size for the clothes in the chest. As Alfred examined the boy some more, he took note of the young man's nice wavy hair, his large, soft eyes, and the white bear clutched tightly in his hands, the same bear he had found, just less white. While he stared at the picture, he came to the conclusion that maybe the chest, room and bear belonged to him, the mysterious boy. As Alfred examined the picture longer, something about it bothered him. He stared intently at the black and white photo, and it finally hit him. The boy looked like he was living in the 1800's. If that was true, he and his family were probably the last to live in the house.

When Alfred looked up from the picture, he noticed that the grayish bear he had found earlier was now closer to him, placed ever so lightly on the corner of the bed closest to the edge and overlooking chest and its contents.

"Funny, I thought that the bear was next to the pillows…" He thought to himself.

When he got up from his crouch on the floor, Alfred noticed an indentation on the smooth surface of the bed near the bear. It was as if a person had been lying on the bed and was watching him as he looked through the chest's contents.

"Hmm…" He said to himself, as he quickly decided to straighten the covers of the bed, eliminating the indentation. He picked up the bear as he left, deciding to take it with him and wash it up since it was so filthy. It would look so much better than before and would probably look nice on the he saw near the fireplace.

As he walked through the halls to the bathroom nearest his room, Alfred could have sworn that he heard the sound of light footed feet following him. Quickly, he turned around, wanting to make sure that nothing was indeed following him and that it was just his imagination. When he saw nothing he concluded that he was just tired from the long day of travel to his new home and that his mind was just playing with him.

When he found the nearest bathroom, he went directly to the box he had moved in earlier, pulling out a bar of soap. He turned on the faucet to what he thought was a nice warm temperature and waited as the rusty colored water poured out of the pipes, further reminding Alfred of how old the house really was. He let out a yawn and was vaguely aware that he was getting sleepy.

Once the water was clean, he plugged the drain and filled up the basin with the nice warm water. He placed the dirty bear in and began to wash it gently, trying not to tear or otherwise ruin the plush.

While he cleaned, Alfred had the strange sensation that someone was watching him. It was that intense feeling and every few minutes, when the feeling was too much to bear, he would look over his shoulder hoping to get a look at what was the root of the strange sensation. Every time he looked, however, he was met with the same old wall, covered in old peeling wall paper. Hardly something that could possibly stare at him, let alone cause the feeling he was experiencing.

Once the bear was clean, Alfred pulled out a towel out of the same box in which he got the soap and tenderly dried the bear. After he deemed it dry enough, Alfred moved back into the hall way and made his way to the room he deemed as his. Tired from all his work and travel, he collapsed onto the bed and pulled up the covers to his chin, unaware that he still held the now white bear in his arms. Before he could turn out the lamp next to his bed, Alfred fell asleep, blissfully oblivious of the eyes that were silently watching him. With a click, the lamp turned off by itself and the light pitter patter of feet echoed through the hall way back to the faded blue room.

Did you like it so far? Out of curiosity, do you think it should be continued?

Well, I'm tired...No more school for me! Hooray! At least now I'll have time to read, volunteer, and write these awesome stories :D