John woke up in the middle of the night for some reason. His eyes opened immediately and he looked around, it was one o'clock in the morning. He lay very still, breathing quietly, as if any noise would trigger whatever it was that had woken him to attack. Had it been a nightmare, was there some sort of animal outside, or had one of his family members simply gotten up to use the bathroom? But his question was answered when he heard a sound, like the creaking of the old floorboards, coming from the right wall. John's blood ran cold as he lay in the bed, listening so hard that it felt like his ears were stretching. Fear made his heart rate increase, and with the effort of nice, quiet breathing, it made him feel like he was slowly suffocating himself. And then it came again, something like a footstep, coming from what seemed like the walk in closet. But there couldn't be anyone in there, could there? Unless there had been a hobo living in his closet this whole time, and he never noticed... John took a deep breath, fighting the mental battle of turning on the light and revealing that the room was occupied, or staying still in the darkness, fearing for his life. If it really was someone, the light might scare them off, or maybe it would just make them want to cover their tracks and kill anyone who knew of their presence. John took a horrible, plunging chance, and switched on the lamp. Half of him was totally ready for a fight with some crazed homeless man, but the other part was expecting some sort of mountain lion or coyote to come out the closet, fangs barred. But nothing happened, nothing came out of the closet, and everything remained still. Maybe it was just his imagination? Maybe the sound had just come from Harry's room, and she was pacing or something. Yes, that must be it. So John switched off the light, still terrified but also very relieved that he was able to go to sleep without any surprise visitors.                         

                    When morning came the sight of sunlight wafting through the thin curtains was very relieving. Even after the night's events, everything was a lot less terrifying when the birds were chirping outside. John sat in his bed for a little bit, but today was Sunday, the last free day he had to explore the house and the town before school started on Monday. He was to be a new student at Southwest Lehigh, home of the lions. He was slightly nervous, but more excited to make some new friends and learn more about the town he had just moved into. So he got up, stretched his legs a little bit and pulled on his robe, trudging down the old wooden stairs to the dining room. Mr. and Mrs. Watson were already up, having cups of coffee with empty cereal bowls in front of them. There was a map on the table, and they were going it with permanent markers, circling stuff they wanted to see and things that were noteworthy, like where the house was and where the school was.
"Ah, and he's a hardware store, that could be helpful." Mr. Watson decided, circling a little dot on the map.
"Good morning John!" Mrs. Watson said cheerily, smiling at him as he walked into the kitchen.
"Hi." John mumbled, pouring himself a cup of coffee and dulling it down with some creamer and sugar. Mrs. Watson watched him with her lip pursed, but she made no move to stop him. John's dad was usually the one that let him get away with things like drinking coffee, because his mother was the strict one in the house. They had to balance each other out some way.
"How'd you sleep in the new house?" Mr. Watson asked, still studying the map without much care to John's sleeping schedule.
"Fine, it's very quiet around here, and dark." He decided, sitting down on a stool and just reading the cereal box without much intentions of eating. He still wasn't very hungry.
"That's good. I slept like a rock." Mr. Watson agreed.
"Did any of you get up to go to the bathroom around one o'clock?" John asked, trying not to make it sound like he was about to write his will on the wall.
"Not either of us, we were both asleep. Why, did you hear anything?" Mrs. Watson asked, looking more amused than worried.
"No, nothing really, just sounded like someone had gotten up, a footstep maybe." John shrugged.
"Maybe a mouse or something, they said we might have some little critters in here, living in the walls." Mr. Watson decided.
"I put up some traps, so we'll catch them. But it was probably nothing, just fear of living in a new house." Mrs. Watson assured, glaring at her husband as if he were just making things worse.
"I'm not scared, just curious." John insisted.
"We'll get you a nightlight if you want." Mr. Watson recommended with a laugh, and John just hit him over the head with the cereal box, laughing.
"Well, there's plenty of town to explore today, before you go to school." Mrs. Watson decided.
"Did you get the school stuff?" John asked.
"I'll do that today, we got the list and all of that, would you like to make any suggestions, colors of binders or anything?" she asked.
"Anything green really, green, blue, orange, red, just no girly colors." John decided.
"Get him a folder with a unicorn on them, those are total chick magnets." Mr. Watson insisted.
"Dad, come on!" John groaned, but Mr. Watson just chuckled.
"Where's my bike?" John asked, finishing up his coffee in a large gulp and hopping off of his stool.
"Out by the garage. It's so nice to have a garage, isn't it dear?" Mrs. Watson asked.
"Very convenient, and we don't have to worry about robberies." Mr. Watson agreed.
"So nice." Mrs. Watson agreed.
"Alright, I'll go get dressed and go explore." John decided.
"Well it's really warm out, so you might want to have some water before you go." Mrs. Watson decided.
"It's Sunday, everything is going to be closed." Mr. Watson pointed out.
"Everyone will be in church as well." Mrs. Watson sighed. "Will they judge us for not going?"
"It'll be fine." Mr. Watson assured.
"Alright, alright, I'll bring a bottle along." John decided, running up the stairs and pulling on shorts and a tee shirt. He sighed; stopping outside of Harry's closed door and deciding whether or not to invite her on his little adventure. Then again, he really doubted she wanted to be seen walking around with her dorky little brother. So he moved on, pulling on his sneakers, grabbing a bottle of water without the intention of drinking it, and walked out the door. It was hot indeed; the sun was beating down unchallenged out here, without any buildings or skyscrapers to cast shadows over the land. Bugs were chirping cheerily and the birds were tweeting, but no one was out. The house across the street looked as old and rundown as usual, but somehow the bright sunlight made it look a little bit less dismal. John crunched through the gravel parking lot and got his bike, a beat up old black mountain bike his uncle had given him for Christmas. He didn't bother wearing his helmet, feeling like a bit of a rebel, and kicked off down the cracked pavement road. In no time he was working up a sweat, and the town was a lot farther down than he had imagined. The roads were much windier and a lot longer than what he was used to, and at every stop sign he had the instinct to look both ways and behind him, before realizing there were no cars to watch for. It was kind of lonely around here, in the city there was always a person, or a car, or a hobo on the side of the street shaking their little mug at you. There was no one here except some bugs and birds, possibly a little squirrel watching from the tall grass. Finally the small town was in sight, nothing over three stories high, looming before him. The first thing he noticed was that some of it was older brick, stuff that looked like it had been there since the stone ages, and others were newer brick, as if something had happened to the previous buildings that stood there. Some, he even noticed, had both, the old dark brick ending and new stuff had been added, as if the building had been torn in half or something. There was a town park in the middle of the two rows of shops, with roads going around it. There was a fountain, some benches, and a pond, which was still a lot more than he had at home. The shops weren't anything special, a drug store, some restaurants, an ice cream parlor, a dentist, nothing real commercial. Everything was closed though, so John could only peak in the windows. So far he was very underwhelmed, wondering how on earth he was to survive without a video game store right across the street. He continued down the street where the school stood, looming in front of him like some sort of horrible prison. It looked ancient as well, it's roof ended in a bell tower and there were many rows of stairs leading up to the entrances. Shrubs and flower bushes were lined on the perimeter, as if to make it more welcoming, but John thought it was actually terrifying. He'd be in there tomorrow, trying to find his way around, trying to make new friends while deciding who to avoid. He'd have to learn the hard way which teachers to avoid and which principals you want to act very nicely around, how the cafeteria food was and what the punishment was for keeping a library book out a day too late. John sighed, none of that sounded like too much fun, and he was absolute rubbish at making friends. And it wasn't like Harry would be a friendly face, she'd probably do her very best to pretend she didn't know him at all. There wasn't much to do anymore except wander aimlessly around the many rows of houses, some old, some new. Some were apartments, but others were old style Victorian mansions, with white marble pillars and iron door knockers. John thought that these houses were a lot more preferable to the shack his father had picked. The one he was looking at though, had a historical background, according to the bronze sign that was in the garden. It had been home to some general or something, General Trevor, in World War Two. It was a house converted into some sort of World War Two museum or something; surely his dad would drag him to go see that as soon as he figured out its true identity. So that was what happened to the town, possibly a bombing? He'd just have to learn from the people at school or something. So John peddled home, hoping that his mother had made lunch or something so that he wouldn't have to do it himself. When he got home though, the car was gone and the garage was opened, as if they had gone out without him. So John leaned his bike up against the house, wiping the sweat off of his forehead, and walked inside, chugging some of the water from the water bottle.
"Ew, you're back." Harry grumbled. She was sitting at the counter, and if she was out in a public family place that meant the parents were out.
"Where'd they go?" John asked.
"Said something about tile, and left. I wasn't listening." Harry snapped, taking her large mug of coffee and staring to walk up the stairs.
"Hey, did you get up last night?" John asked suddenly, making Harry turn around with a massive scowl on her face.
"No." she snapped.
"Oh, okay." John sighed.
"Why?" Harry asked with a laugh. "Were you scared?"
"No, I just thought I had heard something last night, that's all." John insisted.
"Aw, little Johnny got spooked. Maybe they're going to the store to buy you a little train night light and a monster repellent kit." Harry laughed, ascending the stairs with a cruel laugh. John just scowled, but was too hungry to care. He toasted some bread and dug around in the fridge, finding some lunch meat and cheese, and made himself a sandwich, lathered in mustard. He was too curious to just sit at the table, which he had already seen, so he decided to go on the back porch. It was screened in, well; it used to be, before there were all of these holes in it. There was some gross furniture and some old rugs spread out underneath his feet, everything here looked older than the World War. So he decided to walk around the apple orchard, where it looked as if nothing had changed since the seventeen hundreds. The apple trees were all wilted and gross, the dried, withered fruit clinging to the dead branches. There was assorted tools laying around in the over grown grass, rusty shovels, broken wheel barrels, and even a pitch fork that had some mysterious substance on it, maybe rust, maybe blood. John kept walking even though there was nothing to see, his sandwich soon gone so he found himself picking around in the branches, trying to find some fruit worthy of eating. Nothing really caught his eye, the most alive looking tree was so wilted that it looked like a prune tree, so he headed back to the house in defeat, shuffling his feet along in the tall grass and hoping there were no snakes or anything hiding. The rest of the day was quite mellow, his father was measuring the length and width of the kitchen and asking everyone repeatedly which color of tile they preferred. John simply sat up in his room to avoid any more home decorating questions, taking a leaf out of Harry's book and keeping the door locked. His school supplies were waiting for him on the bed, so he packed up his back pack and pencil case before hand, put his books in book socks and made sure he had enough led in his led pencils. There seemed to be nothing more he could do, so he simply read a sports magazine in his room and waited until dinner. When dinner finally came both he and Harry trudged downstairs to smell steaming spaghetti. It smelled good, but John knew they wouldn't be making any major meals until they had their whole kitchen set up. His mom loved to cook, and at the old house her spice cabinet had been organized alphabetically and all of that, but everything was lost in the boxes stacked in the living room, so they were just having sauce out of a can.
"So, excited for school tomorrow?" Mrs. Watson asked Harry as she poured sauce over the pile of spaghetti.
"No." Harry sighed.
"Why not?" she asked.
"What's there to be excited about? Summer is over and it's back to the hell hole." Harry sighed.
"It's a new school, it might be fun." Mr. Watson insisted.
"John's excited." Mrs. Watson pointed out.
"Not really." John muttered, not wanting his sister to make fun of him even more. The rest of dinner was filled with Mr. Watson's plans for the house, the paint color, the tile color, the counter marble and the lighting fixtures. If it had all been put together by a professional John was sure it would look nice, but with his dad in charge there would probably be chips in the tile and streaks in the paint. It was just his father's nature, he had a knack for messing things up, no matter how seriously he took them. When dinner was done Mrs. Watson scooped out some ice cream, some cheap chocolate type she had bought at the store. They were still yet to find the ice cream scooper though, so she was using a spoon, bending the metal back as she dug through the frozen chunks.
"Well, you should all get some sleep, big day tomorrow!" Mrs. Watson decided when all of their bowls were empty. Harry took that as an okay to leave, and bolted out of the dining room like a flash. If only she were that fast when she was doing chores.
"And if you hear something again, I'll give you my shot gun." Mr. Watson proposed, and John just rolled his eyes.
"I'm sure I was just half asleep." He insisted.
"It'll be fine, and we're right down the hallway. If you need us, just call." Mrs. Watson assured. John nodded, and scuffled along up the stairs without a good night. Even though his room kind of creeped him out, he went into the room and shut the door, looking around at the closet to see if something was waiting for him now that darkness had fallen on the old house. But he had to man up, all of his family members thought he was a coward, scared of the dark and the creeks an old house makes. But even as he changed into his pajamas and slipped into bed, he had an odd feeling, like someone was watching him. It made the little hairs on the back of his neck stand on end, and goosebumps rise up on his arms. But with a quick scan of the room he saw nothing was there. If someone was watching him, he was sure to have noticed, and of course this house was too outdated for security cameras and what not. So John fell asleep, undisturbed even if he were a little bit unnerved, and slept undisturbed through the night.