POV of Kimberly

I lived in Caspel. It's a small town with a population of 200. There was a house in my street just a few yards away from my own. Nobody lived there, but there was a presence that kept us away. It had been vacant for centuries. Everyone in Caspel had their own homes, and no one moved into Caspel from the surrounding cities, so the house never went under reconstruction.

Villa de Caspel was its name. I grew up to stories about that abandoned house; stories that still gives me chills. It was said that a family once lived here: Mr. Fuchette, Mrs. Fuchette, and their little daughter Jenny.

The townsfolk had thought they were a perfectly happy family until one day, when violent rumors had started spreading around Caspel like a wild fire. Millie Masulent, a widower who had lived in a cottage near Villa de Caspel, had said that she heard Mr. Fuchette yelling at his wife followed by sounds of a beating and the wailing of a child.

After days of not seeing either the couple or their daughter outdoors, Millie had heard the creak of the swing at the Fuchettes yard. Parting the curtains of her kitchen window, Millie had observed little Jenny swinging all by herself.

She had been playing the spinning game with her swing. The one where you sit on the swing and turn around and around, making the two chains intwine and then letting go.

"Wheeeeeeeeeeeee!" Little Jenny had screamed joyfully as the swing started unwinding.

Millie had watched the girl repeat her game, until the show became too dizzying to watch. She had then gotten back to chopping her vegetables whilst listening to Jenny's sweet voice that had sung,

"Caspel, oh Caspel,
Is a beautiful town,
Where lays a beautiful house.

Caspel, oh Caspel,
In this beautiful house,
There once lived a beautiful girl.

Caspel, oh Caspel,
This beautiful girl,
Loved swinging in her beautiful swing..."

Minutes later, as Millie had been about to sit at the table to enjoy her stew, she had realised that she heard the little girl's laughter no more.

She had then peeped through her curtains again, just in time to see Mr. Fuchette walking away from the swing where Jenny sat still. Moments had passed but Jenny hadn't moved except for the idle swaying of the swing. And then, a loud bang had had Millies heart leaping to her throat. A gunshot. Millie had been sure of it, for her husband used to hunt rabbits at the forest close by; she knew the sound of a gunshot. Bang! Another shot had followed the first.

Millie knew that it was a sure sign of trouble. So she had left her stew untouched and sped off to the sheriff's department.

When the Sheriff arrived as the doorstep of Villa de Caspel all had been silent. When he entered the living room he had been met with the sight of Mrs. Fuchette awkwardly sprawled on the couch. Her eyes had been stuck in a shocked stare and her lips parted in a scream. There had been bruises- some old and some fresh- scattered all over her body. Blood had seeped through the gunshot wound on her side. The sheriff hadn't had to check her pulse to know that she was dead, so he had moved on.

He had inspected the kitchen, bathroom and other guest rooms on the first floor before climbing the stairs to the family rooms. And it was in the master bedroom that he had found the corpse of the suicide victim Mr. Fuchette.

The sheriff had then hoped that the child would be alright. Millie had told him that the little girl had been swinging in the yard when she last saw her.

He had found her at the swing, alright. But the closer he had gotten, the more he realized that Jenny seemed too limp. There had been something wrong with the way her head was flopped.

A violent shudder had run through the sheriff's body when he saw the situation more clearly.

Jenny's neck had been crushed. Not just broken, but crushed and grinded. Thick blood had spurt out of her glassy eyes and more had trickled out of her mouth. How did this happen, the sheriff had wondered. And a silent curse had left his mouth when he was reminded of the spinning game Millie had told him about...

The story of Mr. Fuchette twisting the swing with the little girls neck in between the chains was now known to every soul in Caspel. And it was said that, days after the incident, Millie had run through the streets blathering hysterically about Villa de Caspel being haunted by the ghost of little Jenny. She was later found dead at the foot of her kitchen window with the symptoms of a heart attack.