Stephanie

Down the street from a house I used to live in, there was a little girl named Stephanie. I don't remember her parents name, but her house was the same design as mine. The family moved out after Stephanie disappeared. A teenage girl about my age moved in and we became friends.

One day when we were playing in her house, while her parents were gone, I remembered that the closet under the stairs in my house had a hollow back room. I told her about this, and we decided to check out hers. There we found a piece of plywood over a square hole in the wall. I started shaking horribly just being near the room and I started hearing a loud buzzing, sort of like being in a loud cloud of angry bees. She pulled off the plywood and a really strong wind knocked me down, and the smell of rotting flesh (if you know what it smells like, it is the most horrible smell in the world) hit us. We both ran into her garage, after she helped me stand up. When we went outside, her little schnauzer who's usually very sweet to me bit my hand on the fleshy part between my thumb and index finger. (Note*: I had known about Stephanie's disappearance, even thought not many people on the block did..) I quickly got a bruise... one of those nasty ones with the red marks that show that you are truly bleeding on the inside. The red marks, instead of forming the round half-circle of a dog's teeth made an "S". This scared us both, and I went home, because it was getting dark and my parents were calling me to come home. After that I didn't talk to my friend, but I can hear Stephanie giggling occasionally, or I can hear her running. I see her in my dreams, but then they quickly turn to nightmares. I don't know whether I let out her spirit, or whether or not that smell of death came from a dead body in that back room, but I know I had to share it with someone.