"Do you want to tell me what your dream was about?" AJ asked, lying on top of Punks chest, trailing her fingertips along the tattoos, looking up at him.

"I was running from something…" Punk said, "I don't know what… all these images were just popping up, faces I didn't know, I was hearing voices telling me I was going to pay." Punk said, stroking his hand up and down her arm.

"Pay for what?" AJ asked.

"I don't know. That's when I woke up." He said.

"Did you know anyone in the dream?" She asked, trying to be there for him, slightly confused about his random dream.

"No… it was all just faces popping up and jumping out at me." He said, his heart starting to race again just at the thought.

Lying here in bed with AJ, it didn't feel like it was right. It felt dark and gloomy, small and closed in even though the house was huge. Maybe that was the problem.

"I want to find out what happened to the people that lived in here before us." AJ said, feeling him stroke her hair softly.

"I thought they just moved away?" Punk said, going by the real estate agents words.

"You believe her?" AJ said, looking up at him.

"I just don't want you scaring yourself. Let's just try settle down. I was going to go out later to see about getting my old warehouse job back. You'll be alright here?" He said.

"Yeah." AJ nodded, knowing exactly what she was going to do while Punk was gone.

Later on that day…

"Where's daddy?" Charlie asked, sitting at the kitchen work top on the high stools beside Sam, AJ making them their lunch as she kept a close listen out for James through the baby monitor in the kitchen, picking up noises from upstairs in his room where he was sleeping.

"He's out looking for a job." She said, buttering the bread as she made them a sandwich each, taking out two juice boxes from the fridge and sitting them down beside them, putting their lunch out in front of them and leaving them in peace to eat while she left the kitchen for a second, heading into the living room when she heard a smashing noise come from the kitchen.

She turned back and ran into the kitchen, looking at the twins looking at her.

"What did you smash?" She looked at them.

Charlie looked to his sister and then back to his mother, looking at her like she was insane.

"Nothing." Charlie shrugged, looking up at AJ strangely.

"I heard something smash… you aren't in trouble." She told them, just wanting to know what they had smashed so she could clean it up.

"Never smashed anything." Sam shook her head, biting into her sandwich, "Man is outside." She said.

"Dammit Samantha there is no man!" AJ shouted to comfort her own self.

"Hey, is anyone in there…" Someone knocked at the back door, a man, just like Sam said.

"Sam… I…" AJ watched as Sam jumped off the seat and ran away past her out of the kitchen.

"Hello…" The voice came from the back garden again, a fist banging at the kitchen door.

"Charlie, go get your sister and tell her I want to see her." AJ said, watching Charlie nod and hop off to go find where Sam had went to while she sorted out who was at the door.

"Hello, can I help you?" AJ asked at the inconvenience, opening the door and looking at the old man standing in front of her, a rake in his hands with grass stuck through it.

"I smashed a plant pot… I'll replace it tomorrow." He croaked.

"Right." AJ nodded, "And… who are you?" She asked, not trying to be rude.

"I'm the gardener around here." He said, "I do it for free, you don't have to pay me." He said.

AJ just nodded with a weary smile, "Ok… well the plant pots aren't really mine anyway." She said.

"Ok. I'll be on my way." He said, taking his hat off to her and stepping back to walk away.

AJ figured if he had been the gardener for as long as the age he looked, maybe he'd know something about the house, "Wait…" AJ said, watching the stout man stop in his tracks and turn back to her, "You don't happen to know anything about this house?" She asked.

"I know too much." He croaked in his hoarse voice.

"Do you have a minute?" She asked politely.

"To speak to a pretty girl like you? Always." The man nodded, walking towards AJ and into the kitchen.

AJ closed the door over and turned around to see the old man, maybe in his late 50's, looking in her fridge unpolitely. She looked past him however when she seen Sam and Charlie standing over in the corner.

She walked over to her children and crouched down to them.

"I'm sorry for shouting, Sam." AJ apologised to her daughter who really was being truthful about the man at the door, "I want you to both go into the living room, take your juice with you…" AJ stood up straight and past her two three year olds their juice, "I'll just be a minute talking to the man, ok?" She looked at them as they both nodded and ran away into the living room, pushing each other.

"That all the kids you have?" The man asked, sitting up at kitchen table as AJ turned to him.

"No… I have another son, he's just four months old." She smiled, walking over to the kettle and pouring herself a cup of coffee.

"So what's the deal? Are you a single mom?" The man asked rudely.

"No." AJ said, "My husband is out right now." She said, holding the cup of coffee in her hands as she stared at the old man.

"So what is it you want to know about this place then?" He asked.

"Who lived here before? Why did they leave the house?" AJ asked, leaning over the counter and sipping at her roasting coffee.

"A young couple with two daughters." The man said, "They'd moved from the city, always fought with each other." The man said, "The house drove the wife insane, no one believed her when she said it was haunted, including her husband." The man said.

"Why didn't they just leave?" AJ asked.

"I'm not sure. I wasn't close to them, I just done the gardening." He said.

"So what happened to them?" AJ asked curiously.

"The little girls… they were found hung outside, just a few yards from here at the tree, they had a tyre swing there, conspiracy says they done it to themselves, they were three and six years old. It was insane to believe they had done it to themselves." The man said.

AJ's hand was covering her mouth as she put her cup of coffee down, standing up straight.

"Why would someone…" She whispered to herself.

"The husband blamed the wife, she'd been acting crazy for a while, he only suspected she had done it, so he killed her, slit her throat and…"

"Alright alright…" AJ waved her hand in front of her, "You're not bullshitting with me are you?" She said, only having known this man for a few minutes, not willing to believe everything he was saying.

"You wanted to know what happened… I told you." He said, "Save your family the trouble and get out of here. This house will break you." He said.

AJ tapped her fingers against the kitchen counter, ready to speak up again, something in her mind to ask when she heard Punk come home through the door.

"April… sweetheart. I have good news." Punk exclaimed as he walked through the door.

AJ excused herself from her conversation with the old man and met Punk at the door, her face pure white, like a ghost you could say, watching his smile fade when he seen the look on her face.

"What's wrong?" He said.

"The gardener is telling me all about the people who lived here before us, Phil… this place isn't safe." She said, leading him into the kitchen, about to introduce him to the gardener when she looked upon the empty kitchen.

"April, are you ok?" Punk asked her.

"Don't look at me like that." AJ pointed to him.

"Like what?" Punk threw his hands up in the air, really not seeing the point in all this fear AJ was carrying with her.

"Like I'm crazy." AJ said, "I don't want to live here. The couple that lived here before killed each other and their children were hung outside at some stupid tyre swing. I hate it he…"

"You mean the tyre swing that Charlie and Sam are playing on right now… out in the garden." Punk said, pointing behind him as he looked at AJ's face drop, not thinking it was a big deal, the kids looked like they were having fun to him when he drove home. They must have crept out whilst AJ was speaking to the gardener who had mysteriously disappeared out of nowhere.

AJ pushed by Punk, running for the front door and running out, going as fast as her legs would take her, treading through the long grass in the front garden, reaching for Sam and Charlie and pulling them into her, crouching down and hugging them into her, looking over them at the tyre swing hanging from the tree behind, watching it swing back and forth.

"You don't play out here ok…" AJ looked at them both, "Do you understand?" She said, watching them nod at their mother's panicked face.

"Come on, let's go back inside. Don't ever come back out here again, ok?" She looked at both of them, lifting them both up into her arms as they leaned their heads against her shoulder, not understanding why their mother was so on edge with everything lately.

Punk walked out to the front hall when he heard the door shut, looking at AJ walk in with Charlie and Sam in her arms, such a worried look on her face.

"I want out of this place. I can't live here." AJ looked at him, walking by with her children in her arms, giving him a deadly serious look.

She refused to live in some freak show house that had blood stains in the carpet and outside on the tree's. She didn't feel safe here, she didn't feel safe for her or her kids, not even for Punk. She couldn't live here, not if it was her only choice.

10 REVIEWS = New Chapter.

Damn freaky house.