My Haunted Tale page 2

Pushing against the wall, the panel stiffly jerked and achingly inched back from the frame. A smell like opening an old book reached my nose as the dust motes swirled in every direction. Peeling dark red paint lined a eight by five foot room. A small oval window streamed light onto a steamer trunk that sat in the center of the room. Dark wood and iron strips held a secret within moldy leather and a dingy clasp.

I pushed my way into the room excited at what I had found, taking a moment to survey the room and the chest in an eerie silence. Grasping the clasp, I pulled down and it begrudgingly gave way. Inside, the steamer chest was empty except for a gray powder spread out and clumped up at the corner.

Putting my index finger into it, I discovered that the powder was ashes which stirred and began to rise. A draft pushed the ashes into the air and a few joined the dust in celebratory dance. I swear I heard laughter.

At that moment , I heard the door open and the voices of parents. I ran downstairs to greet them with the news of my discovery. They were pleasantly surprised. After a cursory once over, the room was dismissed as extra storage and the steamer trunk found a place in the den to hold daily newspapers.

After that day, my father began to change as the season changed to fall. He became short tempered with my mother and argued over minor things. Becoming more neurotic, he would fly into a rage and accuse her of having affairs. As the days grew colder, he would build enormous fires in the fireplace that burned like infernos threatening to catch the house on fire. No longer sleeping in the same room with my mother, he would pace the den’s hardwood floors until the early morning hours.

One sleepless night, I begged and pleaded with him to get help but he would not listen and accused me of conspiring with my mother whom he now outright accused of being in league with the devil. My head downcast with grief, I noticed the steamer trunk had taken on a new lustre. Perhaps due to the light and heat from the fireplace, the wood now seemed to glow. I then noticed faint letters stenciled into the wood. The letters spelled out

“LIVES FROM FIRE AND EXTINGUISHES IT”.