A Letter to Home, Part 1
I want to work on a side project for a bit. It will either be this one, Bizarre Terrors, or Grandmaster Strategist.
Author: 小僧
Genre: Horror, Ghosts
Note: Short Asian horror story
Dad, Mom:
How are you?
It"s been a year since I left the country but I never wrote you any letters. I read the ones you emailed me many times. I am deeply moved by them but at the same time I didn"t know what to do. So I hadn"t replied. I don"t know how to begin. It always seemed like there"s nothing to say when you called but that doesn"t mean I don"t miss you.
I won"t be coming home for New Year"s day. I have told you the reason in the call so I won"t repeat it here. As for the future, it"s difficult to say if I can go back. I encountered something. Something extremely strange, absurd, and unbelievable. This is what this email is about. I know you are going to laugh at me never growing up. Maybe you will scold me for lying, coming up with an absurd excuse for not coming home. But please believe your son this once. He"s not a successful person, he tells likes, he"s immature at this age, but please believe me, just this once.
I am possessed by a ghost.
That"s right. I am possessed. I can imagine your surprised expression or laughing it off as a joke. Perhaps you are going to simply close this stupid email. Yet, a sense of indescribable terror enveloped my heart when I wrote those words.
You know that I never believed in ghosts and G.o.ds. Science is the foundation of this word. I think that"s what most people believe. However, my view has changed. The experience I went through forced me to believe the existence of ghosts in this word.
Everything began in January.
Do you remember when I told you in the phone back in January that a friend of mine, Rei, from Beijing moved into an apartment with me? But I never told you the details.
It wasn"t a traditional apartment but a standalone house. There are eight houses of the exact same design around it. I was told this area used to be a holiday resort but business wasn"t going well so the management turned the houses into rental apartments. The houses are located on the foot of a mountain called Thunder Mountain. A broker referred us to this house. However, we never saw the landlord and he/she never contacted us, their only client. Right, we are the only ones living in this set of houses. The houses look normal from the outside. They all have two bedrooms, a living room, a kitchen and a bathroom. The only thing special about the houses is they are made of wood. We live in the east most house. It"s the best one since we have an ocean view. I live in a bedroom with my girlfriend and Rei lives with his girlfriend.
I haven"t told you about living with my girlfriend yet. I was embarra.s.sed to say it but it doesn"t matter anymore because we broke up. Her name is Li.
This place is rather far from our college but we still decided to live here. The rent is cheap and the area is quiet. There are trees all around the house and road. The environment is extremely nice and the air smelled of fresh gra.s.s wet soil.
But that was just my initial impression. I would rather destroy those trees and burn the gra.s.s and flowers now.
The scenery is amazing during the day but once night falls, just like now, chill and humidity takes over. I originally thought it was because the wooden walls couldn"t block the wind. But now I understand that isn"t the reason.
The smell from the gra.s.s and soil is actually the smell of blood! I can feel the b.l.o.o.d.y air surrounding me and won"t let me go. It stick onto every inch of my skin. Wind carrying the smell of blood blow into the house through the cracks on the windows and under the door. It sips in through the walls and ceiling. It pa.s.ses through my clothes