Mr. Owens

Annie was smart. Everyone said it. However, she was prone to crumbling under the weight of peer pressure.

Which was why she ended up in the creepy old murder house. Alone. At midnight.

She was totally smarter than the stupid dares her peers could come up with, but she liked fitting in, and she liked being part of the group. And sometimes being part of the group means going into creepy murder houses on a dare.

The dare was to go to the top floor of the house and leave a lit candle in the window so that the others could see it. That was all she had to do, then she could leave. She would then wait and watch the next person retrace her path to retrieve the candle. Ben, the scaredy-cat, would be next. It was harmless fun. A town like this had never had to lock their doors at night. No one was around to lock the doors of this house anymore.

The former owner had been shot. Several months on the run and a manhunt across several state lines made the police antsy, and ready to shoot to kill.

The entryway was dusty, worse than she had ever seen it. She had dusted this entryway so many times over the years, and it had never been this bad.

She had stopped in the entryway, looking at the filth that had gathered.

Annie heard a noise from deeper in the house, one that could not be explained away as the house settling. She wanted to run, or maybe to see what was in the house when the laughter of her friends outside drew her attention away from the house for a moment. The joke was lost to the wind and the night, but she had still cracked a smile at the sound of the others’ enjoyment.

Mr. Owens had been nothing but kind to her. She had never felt ill at ease around the man or in his house before. Well, she was comfortable in the house before the big shocking news story dropped about him being a serial killer.

She'd made extra money almost every weekend coming around and cleaning Mr. Owens' house. An unspoken duty of the job was to talk with him. Admittedly, he was a little odd, but he seemed lonely to her.

Annie looked at all the cobwebs that were on so many surfaces; the place looked like it had been abandoned for years, not the short summer that had passed.

She loved coming over. She had spent years coming and going from the house. Mr. Owens was pretty neat on his own, and he generally had a list of simple and not very time-consuming chores for her to do. He had managed to find something to do in every room she was cleaning and, though awkward at times, he tried his best to maintain normal conversations.

The house looked like it always had, except the amount of dust lied about the unbelievably short amount of time that had passed. Her heart ached now at the memories of her time spent here.

It had been heartbreaking to see the news that night. The newscaster, reading off the names of known victims. When their pictures flashed on and off the screen she memorized each and every one. His victims and a few of his suspected victims. She was glad when the more official report came out.

She was glad that none of them looked like her. When the manhunt had started she'd spent hours, hours that a few weeks prior would have spent with Mr. Owens, pouring over the literature of serial killers and murders and psychology. She wanted to know why the man who she would have sworn could never hurt a fly would actually have a body count in the double digits.

There were no answers, only legal and medical jargon that begged more questions.

The police had spoken to her a few days after that first news report. They interrogated her about Mr. Owens, believing that she knew something about all of the terrible things he had done. She didn't have answers for them and they didn't stick around to answer her questions.

She had hoped that seeing the old house empty, harmless would settle something inside her.

It hadn't, not really.

She walked down the hallways. She passed the rooms and thought of the time she and Mr. Owens had spent together. Annie had felt like she and the man had had a connection, a real bond. He was one of her closest friends, and she later learned she was his only friend.

There were cobwebs between the bars of the stairs. She saw no spiders when she looked at the cobwebs. She hated spiders and would have left, task unfinished if she had seen one. Up the stairs she had gone. Not looking too close at cobwebs, lest she see a spider, and lose her will to carry though.

She didn’t realize she was his only friend until a black-edged envelope arrived for her in the mail. Her family had gathered around her to read the Last Will and Testament of Mr. Oscar Lester Owens. The Will stated that he had no living relatives and no friends. The only person he wanted to leave anything to, was her.

She was the new owner of the creepy murder house on the hill. Mr. Owens had left everything to her, from his fortune to his house to the cars (plural!) in the garage.

Annie’s parents had taken her to a lawyer to make sure that everything was in order, that it was real. It was, and so she had sworn them all to secrecy.

She may own this house now, but it sure didn’t feel like it was hers.

There was a study that looked out onto the street. The others would be able to see the small candle from there.

The study looked how it always looked. There were walls that had built-in bookshelves. The walls that were open were a dark wood filled with deer racks and skulls. The room felt like the personal study of a big game hunter from the late 1800s. Very intriguing and intimidating. Ben would probably freak out about the room but that was something that they could deal with later.

Annie lit the candle in the window. She watched the light flicker back and forth for a few moments like it was thinking about going out. She could see her friends’ flashlights from where she stood.

After a few seconds of waiting, she turned away from the window, ready to make the trek back through the house.

A noise from inside the study stopped her at the threshold; she turned back, but nothing was there.

She’s not sure what she had heard, but she’s tired of being alone in this house.

Annie’s friends cheer when she returns. She laughs and bows, pushing any misgivings to the back of her mind.

She ends up being right about who they send in next. Ben whines about having to go in alone and a few of the guys tease him until he gives in and goes.

They all wait, and wait, and wait. Ben never comes back out. The police were called, and a formal search of the house was done. Neither Ben, nor Ben’s body, are ever found.

It’s not until later that night, right before she falls asleep, that Annie realizes what she heard in the entryway, in the study that made her turn around.

She heard a voice, like an echo without a source, "You came back."