My mom called me in the middle of my third period class. When I answered, all I heard was screaming.

“Mom? Is ever-”

“I just bought a new house. Clean your locker, we are moving!” My mother shrieked into the phone.

“What? No. You can’t just do that to me. You didn’t even confront me about this beforehand. No, I’m not moving.” I quickly hung up the phone. She was crazy to do that to me. I put my hands to my face, and realized it was hot. Sorry, mom, but no.
Unfortunately for me, though, as my week went on, my mother ignored my arguments, and begging to stay where we were. My house got emptier the closer we got to our set moving day. I haven’t even seen this “beautiful,” and “inspirational” house.
My mom always felt that we needed to move every time she ran out of ideas to write a novel. The good thing about it, though, is that her novels take a while to actually be finished and published. So, I get some time to settle down and act like everybody else. I think the only plus side to this move is that I’ll only be there for my senior year, and then I’ll be able to go off to college, and not get weighed down by my mother’s needs.

It was our last day before we officially moved. I already went out and wished my friends a good life, and said my goodbyes. The only goodbye my mother let out was at the grocery store to the lady who seems to work 24/7, because no matter what day or time we came in to shop, the lady was there, and ready to check our items. Let's just say my mother didn't get out much to make friends.

I ran up to my room, and put my hand out to my shelf only to find that my camera was missing. I walked over to my suitcase, and looked in. It wasn't there either. "Okay?" I grunted.

I stood in the middle of my empty bedroom trying to figure out where my camera could've possivly went. I sat there for 5 minutes reviewing my room. It just was not there. 

"Mom? did you touch my camera?" I yelled down my floor vent that opened up to the living room.

"No. I haven't, is it missing?" My mother yelled back up. I saw her figure appear under the vent.

"Yeah, I though I left it on my shelf, can you look around down there?" I yelled to her. I saw her figure move out of view, and heard her moving things around.

I walked out of my room and into my mother's room. I searched around in the little bit she had left sitting around in her room. But, there was no sign of my camera. I stood up, and walked out. I proceeded to the guest room. It was already pretty much empty in the first place, since it was unused. I always found this room to be creepy, so I never bothered with it.

I looked around the bed, and in the nightstand drawers. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of a glare. I walked over to the closet door, and opened it wider. Sitting there on the floor was my camera.

Today, we move. I’ve been sitting in the car for about 4 hours. I can’t help, but to feel anxious. This whole car ride, my mother has been explaining to me the type of town we will be living in. And so far, I am not impressed. My mother keeps trying to call it a “gift” to find. But all I’m hearing is “boring, little, country town.” No, thanks.
“Stop playing with your hair.” My mother smacks my hand down.
“I’m just nervous.” I say, continuing to twirl the little blue strands I dipped dyed.
“Don’t worry, we are almo- actually we are here.” My mother shrieks in excitement.
I look out the window, and all I see are fields. Fields, fields, and I believe those are cows over there. I, soon, see a little diner, a grocery store, and a gas station. The longer we drive into this outcasted town, I see more houses and stores. I guess they aren’t that bad. Just really old fashioned looking.
We drive for about 10 more minutes before we pull into a short little driveway, at the end of a neighborhood. I turn my music off, and slide out of the car to inspect the house. Looking up, I see a banged up, shabby, fixer upper. The house looks as if it will fall apart any minute. God forbid if we ever have a storm, this house will fly away at the first hit of wind.
It holds a dark brown color, and the wood used to build it has some holes within it. The shackles are falling off, and I could see bits of black roof on the ground. The house was the definition of disaster.
“Do you like it?” My mother interrupts my judgmental moment.
I quickly fix my frozen horror face, and quickly smile.
“Mom, this place looks like the place you’d hear a murder happened in.” I say.
“Exactly.” My mother walks up to the door and slides inside.
That’s when it hit me. Of course she picked this place. It’s the perfect setting for a horror book. I continue to stare at the house a little longer. Maybe it won’t be that bad, right? In the window, my mother opens it and yells, “Don’t worry, all the animals in here are dead. I checked.”
I look at her in disgust. Nope, it is bad.

I decided to take the only room that didn’t have any dead rodents in it. It also happened to be the biggest room, and the only room on the third floor. If I’m going to live here, I get dibs on the nicest room. The walls were painted the color of coffee with tons of cream. The floor was hardwood, and a light brown. My furniture was going to clash with the colors, maybe. My stuff is a mix of dark color, to bright colors. There is no inbetween.
It took me half an hour to unpack my bags, and about 2 hours for the moving people to get all of our things set up, inside. My room was still half empty, but I had what I needed put where it needed to go.
In the hype of putting my things away, I kept hearing a little ring of a light voice. I couldn’t find where it was coming from. It just sounded really close. I was afraid there was a kid trapped somewhere, or something. Maybe it was the movers, or maybe even someone outside of my house. I do live in a close little neighborhood. Everybody’s house was in close range of each other, and wore faded colors that were at some point bright. There also were a lot of kids. They played in the middle of the street. I guess not many cars come through.
“Hey, mom, I’m gonna go out for a while. Explore the place a little.” I yell to my mother.

“Sure, just keep your phone close in case you get lost. And remember, please don’t talk to strangers. I don’t know this place or these people.” My mother wrinkles her face up, concerned.
I nod to her and walk out. I get to the end of my driveway, and decide to turn left, but before I could complete my turn, I run into someone on a skateboard.
“Woah, excuse me!” The person yells at me, as they fall onto their knees.
“Hey, bud, you were in my way.” I fight back.
“Have you ever heard of driving? People who are already on  the road have the right of way. People turning have to yield to them. Same rules apply here.” The boy stands up.
I’m taken aback by how nice this boy looked. He wasn’t extremely hot or anything, but he wasn’t ugly. Plus his hair looked healthier than mine. I have him beat at length, though. His only reaching a little past his ears, and mine reaching the small of my back.
“Just watch yourself, next time.” He waves a hand in front of my face.
My positive thoughts for him disappeared as soon as he spoke.
“Whoops.” I respond to him, shrugging pass.
I walk a couple feet when I start to hear a scraping noise behind me. Before I could turn to look, the boy was right beside me, on his skateboard.
“Can I help you?” I ask him. But, I don’t face him.
“Yeah, you’re moving into Hallows?” The boy slows down, and looks at my side profile.
“Hallows?” I ask.
“Yeah, that’s what the town calls that house. Short for Halloween, you know.” He points at the house.
“Why do you call it that?” I stop.
“Rumor has it, that it’s haunted. Stupid stories, honestly. The only fact I know is that a kid died in there. He was probably around our age.” He simply puts.
“What do you mean he died?” I furrow my brows. I want to know.
He shrugs his shoulders.
“A couple years ago a guy named Aaron Fulton stayed in there for maybe 2 months. He was freshly graduated, and clearly no one was up to buying that house, so it was super cheap. A dream for an entering college student. Well, no one saw him for 3 weeks, and when his neighbors went to check on him, they found him dead in the guest room.” We both lock eyes.
“How?” I am curious.
“No one really knows why, but it was ruled a suicide.”
I don’t really know how to respond, so I start to walk again.
“I’m Mitchell.” Mitchell holds out his hand.
I grab his hand. “I’m Lena.”
“Nice to meet you, Lena.” He bows.
“Nice to meet you, too.” I nod.
We walk silently all the way down the block, and back to my house.
“If you ever want a tour, find me.” Mitchell winks.
I shake my head in disapproval and say my thanks. I walk back into my house, and everything is put into place, we just have to unpack our boxes and put all of our items away.
“Mom, when are you starting your books?” I ask coming up behind her.
“Whenever. Why?” She turns to look at me.
“No reason.” I respond. Maybe I’ll keep my info to myself for now.

We’ve been in our new house for 2 weeks, now. I’ve only left the house once or twice in that time to go to the grocery store. I’m starting to miss going to school. Enrolling me into school is a process that seems to be taking forever. In my opinion, I think the school is not used to getting new students, so they probably have no idea how to go about this.
Hopefully, by the end of this week, I’ll be able to head into school. Give me something to do. 
“Lena, why don’t you take some pictures of the house? Maybe you’ll see something.” My mother stops sipping her tea, and starts to throw her hair up with her chopstick hair pieces.
“I don’t know. I don’t want to use my film on trash.” I roll my eyes.
“Lena, knock it off. This house is not trash.” She gets up and leaves the kitchen.
I sat there for 10 minutes when I finally got an idea. Maybe I’ll use this as a new art project. A kind of scary or horror type piece.
I race up to my room to grab my  camera. The thing is though, is that it is missing again. It’s not sitting on my nightstand where I had left it for 3 days.
“Are you serious?” I say to myself. I open up all my drawers, and dig around under my bed. I suddenly get a flashback to the day before our move, and see my camera sitting in the old guest room closet.
I get up and walk over to my closet, and what do you know. Sitting on the floor of my closet is my camera. I slam the closet shut, leaving my camera in there, and I walk back downstairs. “This house has officially hit its creepy status.” I whisper.

I don’t go back in my room for the rest of the day, but after my mom went to bed, I knew it was time for me to retreat to my bedroom, as well.
I slowly made my way up, and gave my door a blank stare. I wasn’t scared, I was creeped out. I’ve watched enough horror movies to know how these things go. A small happy family moves into a darling little house, only to witness weird, and creepy things, until it leads up to them all being murdered by the demon that runs their house. This might be how I die.
I slowly open my door, and peer into my lightless room. I didn’t realize I had prepared myself to see someone or something in my room, until I felt the flood of relief when I saw nothing out of the ordinary in there.
I reached my hand in, and turned my light on. “There. Lena, you’re being silly.” I try to convince myself. I open up my closet, and see grab my camera from the floor. “Huh.” It doesn’t look broken or touched.
I turn it on to make sure there isn’t anything wrong. I felt shivers run down my body, when the first picture that I find in my camera is a picture I did not know.
In the picture, was a boy. He looked about 12 or 13 years old, so he was young. He wore clothes that you would see in the ‘60s, and he sat on a floor. The same floor I was standing on. I look closer. I see somebody else. A male figure in the corner. He was older. Maybe even an early adult. I looked at the date in the corner of my screen, and it read 11/15/60.

They both stared into the camera, and I could make out their little eyes, or at least the place they should be. But, in the place of their eyes were black holes.
I throw my camera onto my bed, and back out of my room. That was the most terrifying thing I’ve ever seen. Who were they? And why was that on my camera? I know I didn’t take that. It’s 2016. So who did?
That night, I slept on the couch next to my mother’s room. I didn’t want to tell her  what I saw. It would only excite her for her book, and then all she’ll do is be up my butt about it.  The only thing I wanted to do, was to move out.
Nothing happened for a couple days. I stayed as far as I could from my room and my camera without my mother noticing. It became easier when I started school and I had an excuse to be out of my house.
“It’s about time you came.” Mitchell said beside me.
“Yeah, I know.” I responded. I felt a bit unconnected from the world. I think it had to do with the fact that I didn’t have friends, or anyone to talk to about my camera incident. Even if it was just a small thing.
“You’re in my grade, right?” Mitchell asked.
“12th.” I looked away from him.
“Yeah, me too.” He said, giving up conversation with me.
“Hey, if you need a tour, I’ll give you one. I’ve been living here all my life.” He put his hand on my arm, grabbing at my attention.
“Wait.” I stopped. “You’ve lived here all your life? As in you were born here?” I asked, frantically.
“Uh, yeah?” Mitchell looked confused.
“Take me to the public library.” I demanded.
“Right now? In the middle of school?” Mitchell looked puzzled.
“Yes.” I pressed on.
“Are you sure? I mean, I know the best routes out of here. I just didn’t know you were the type to ditch school.” He smiled crookedly, and winks.
“Just take me there.”

We got to the library pretty fast. I walked up to the front desk and asked the librarian, “Where are the documents, newspapers, archives, anything from the ‘60s in this town?”
“Um, may I ask why you’re wanting to dig through there?” She asked.
“School research paper. History class.” I gave her the cliche lie.
She stared at me for a couple minutes before leading me to the back. Mitchell followed.
“They’re all in this section.” She pulled out a bunch of papers, and books, and pointed at more on the wall.
“Thank you.” I pushed passed.
As soon as she left, I started looking for a yearbook.
“What are you doing?” Mitchell stared at me.
“Find me a yearbook, please.” I ordered.
Mitchell continued to sit there and stare at me suspiciously.
“Please?” I stopped.
Mitchell reached over and starting digging through the books on the wall. After about half an hour, he pulled out a thin hardcover book. “Here.This is the only yearbook I can find.” He half yelled, and threw it onto the table.
“Now, will you please explain to me what you’re doing?” He breathed out.
“Let me see something first, and then, I’ll tell you.” I promised.
I threw open the book and reached for the high school 12th grade students. I flipped each page carefully searching for the one face I needed. But it wasn’t there.
“You said a guy about our age committed suicide in my house, right?” I turned over to Mitchell. He shrugged.
“I’m not telling you until you tell me what’s happening.” He leaned back against the wall.
I glared at him for a solid 5 minutes before I opened my mouth.
“Fine. Look, this might sound weird. But I have this camera. My camera disappeared on me, and when I found my camera, strangely on my closet floor, it had a picture I didn’t take. It looked old. And it was of 2 boys. One was young, maybe 13. And the other was around our age. And the picture was taken in my room. But the thing is, it was taken in the ‘60s. The date read so.  I’m looking for their faces.” I explained.
Mitchell gave me a blank stare before he began to speak.
“So wait….. what?”
I nodded at him.
“Look, I can show you the picture, after I finish looking.” I said.
“Well, to answer your question before, yes, there was. Aaron Fulton being his name, and he died a couple years ago, not in the ‘60s.” He shrugged.
I stopped moving completely and sat down.
“Okay, well there’s another kid in the picture. Do you know anything about that?” I asked.
“No, I don’t. No one really bothered with the house before Aaron died.” He responded.
“But everyone thought it was haunted?” I started to spark ideas.
“Yeah?” He questioned.
“Well… haunted by what or who?” I jumped up and started searching for any documents regarding my house. I found past resident papers, but none showed to be children. After searching for a while, I gave up, and started heading home. Or at least I tried. Every time I turned around, Mitchell was there.
“Can I help you?” I yelled at him.
“Yeah, you told me you would show me that picture.” He looked smug.
I rolled my eyes at him, and kept walking.
“Once  I show you, you have to leave.” I pointed at him.
He smiled, and shrugged. “Whatever.”

Here we are now, sitting on my bedroom floor. I’m about to expose my camera.
“It’s really creepy.” I warn him.
“I think I can handle it just fine.” He sighs.
I turn my camera on and flip to my pictures. I don’t think I want to see the picture again, though. So I hand him the camera. “Look.” I say. Mitchell takes the camera. Instead of a horrored expression, he just looks extremely confused.
“Uh, this is just a picture of a house. A nice one at it, too.” He hands me the camera.
“What? No.” I yank the camera and what do you know? The picture was gone.

After that failed attempt in letting someone know what’s been happening, I made Mitchell go home, and I went to bed. I fell asleep rather fast, too. I guess I haven’t gotten much sleep since I moved here. I still was not comfortable with the house, even if it’s been weeks since we have been here. I've been restless.
I fell asleep to the sound of my mother typing underneath of me on her laptop. Except, the sound carried into my dream. One minute all I see is the black that sleep provides you with, until I begin to form a dream. Before the dream even started I felt nervous. Suddenly, I was in my room. I was sitting next to my bed. Except, it wasn’t my bed. It was someone else’s bed. Along with everything else in the room. Everything was not mine. I got up, and looked around carefully. I recognized some things. I recognized a chair, the right wall, and a nightstand. I moved to the center of the room and faced the items I knew. I finally realized what I was looking at. I was in the room that the picture was taken in.
I tried to wake myself up, but I felt my eyes force closed. Was this even a dream anymore? I heard voices from outside the room in my “dream.” It was muffled so I couldn’t understand. I moved over to the door, and opened it.
“I told you, you are not allowed out of this house.” A man’s voice loudly said.
“Why can I not?” A light voice spoke out.
“Because you don’t deserve to go out. Look at you.” The man laughed out.
I heard footsteps come closer to me. Peeking my head out even more, I saw a young boy climb up the stairs. His face came into view. It was the boy from my picture. And as if I was hit with something, I woke up. I had a really bad headache, but I knew something.
Suddenly, everything made sense. I knew who the boy was, I knew why he was in my picture. I’m not sure why I know, but I do.
I felt very sad. I walked over to the place the boy stood in the picture, and looked around. I picked up the floor board, and found a box. It held a note, some shiny rocks, a pencil, and some pictures.
From that night on, I kept getting this weird dream, but every time, it would extend further on events. Eventually I was lead outside my house, and through a field, all the way to a woods line. And that’s when I saw it. An unmarked grave. The unmarked grave of the young boy.
His father killed him, but didn’t want to bury him without some notification of the kid being there. I guess since the boy was never let out of the house, no one knew who he was. And I guess that’s why I never found him in the past residents documents. He never existed in the sense of documentation. Who knows if he was ever known about. 
But I know about him now, I found him, through my photograph.