Chapter 4: Hope's Horrific Hauntings 2-3
If Hope told anybody, especially her mother (if she did care to listen), she'd be laughed at. Because what happened yesterday was unbelievable. Even more unbelievable than that note at the bridge talking about her father that left when she was 6. The note that had written exactly what Hope had asked her mother just 8 years ago: "Where did Daddy go?" The note that brought back such horrific memories.
All in all, the note was made to grab her attention. It was made to pull her in its despair and wonder. Someone had put it there for the exact purpose of her reading it and feeling like absolute shit. Not only did it bring up her father, but it brought back other bad memories about her childhood past. Most of which she, luckily, forgot about as she grew up.
The thought of poor little Jimmy who fell out of the large apple tree. The apple tree that Hope and Jimmy climbed all the time in the neighborhood. Jimmy had turned 7 that year, and it showed. For a branch had snapped off, making him fall and completely snap his neck. It left such a bad scar in Hope's mind, that every night, for many years, she pictured Jimmy's dying body crying "Call my mommy, now! This hurts! My neck…ouch!" while his hands were around his perfectly curved, flamingo-like, neck.
And that memory was the most tame of the bunch. There were worse ones. Way, way, worse.
Without a doubt, what happened just yesterday in her room had topped them all by far. Just the fact that it was happening really blew her mind. To say the least, she could not believe what was happening just beneath her feet.
Hope had arrived in her street from Central Park after finding that distressing note. She passed the usual buildings and streets until she stopped at her suburban one; the neighborhood on the outskirts of New York City. There were lots of nice houses in the street…all were decent except for hers.
She was used to the looks she and Amy (her mother) got. Of course, they weren't obvious looks of disgust towards her home and clothes, but they weren't too subtle to miss. If neighbors stopped to stare at her for just a few seconds (milliseconds, even) then quickly stared/talked at each other, she knew they were talking about her. Some of the kids she knew growing up had made fun of her face-to-face. But now that they've grown up and have gotten much more politer, they won't say it to her face, but she knows they say it behind her back.
And those are just her neighbors. She gets actual bad looks from the "rich" people of New York. Then there's her mother's ex-boyfriends who want to harass Hope on the street.
The time read 6:00pm. Her homeschooling ended at 12am, so she had spent a total of 6 hours outside in Central Park.
The homeschooling usually went along the lines of: Hope and Quinn going to the local bookstore for coffee and Reading class (Quinn pays), then back home for Math and Social Studies, finally, at the end of the hour is Writing, but they both usually spend it on talking to each other. To be frank, they usually speak to each other about off-topic things the entire day of lessons. But it never affected Hope at all. She still gets very good grades; Quinn tells her all the time about how smart she is. Quinn doesn't just homeschool Hope; she tutors many actual students in school, so she has a comparison of Hope vs. school-kids.
After telling Hope about a particular "bad" student, Quinn joked "Why are the rich kids always the dumb ones?" In turn, this made Hope actually giggle louder than she usually did.
Whenever Hope giggled, Quinn felt as if she made her own daughter giggle. It wasn't a weird thing to think, for they both knew, actually, that Hope would much rather prefer Quinn as her mother. They've never said it out-loud to each other, or to anyone, but it was no secret. Could Amy tell? Probably. Did it affect her in any way of how she treated Hope? Nope.
Hope stood outside of her front-door, which has a storm-screen that is broken (just like the rest of her home). She knew her mother was home with a man because a car, one Hope had never seen before, was parked in the driveway next to her mother's dusty, green, truck.
She had the idea of opening this stranger's car and stealing something from inside, but it quickly faded.
First thing she saw when she opened the front door was her mother, Amy, kissing her "pizza restaurant" boyfriend. She could see the saliva drip down his greasy beard.
"Gross," Hope hissed while walking past them both. Her mother, as always, gave no response. More giggles and kisses were heard as Hope walked through the hallway and into her room; shutting the door tight (the door had no lock).
She waited for the signal. The signal of her mother saying "Let's get out of here," then the door opening/shutting.
And as it happened, she quickly took out the "flier". The one she had found just after she opened the "box". The box that was wrapped up in decoration paper and a bow slapped on the top, plus a shiny red balloon, all just so she could read the "note".
Then there was the flier…about a missing kid. They were so close, yet so far. Could they be connected? No. Of course not…right? Hope for sure didn't know. But anything would've help her understand this situation. Someone obviously knew her life as much as she did. Whoever this person was, they wanted Hope to open the "present". It was meant for her.
She had studied this missing-flier top to bottom and noticed three important things:
1. The writer was a 14-year-old boy named "Tommy Dawson".
2. He lives in Manhattan (Central Park is located in the center of there).
3. The name of his apartment is "353 Central Park West".
She had no idea where that was. She would search it online, but her family didn't own any electronics. Not even a TV. Quinn has a phone—well a cheap android—but she'd have to wait for Monday because she doesn't have school on the weekends (It's Friday).
Quinn is in no way rich, but isn't poor either; she's middle-class. She doesn't really look it, though. Quinn's hair is always made in a high bun, with a pen stabbed through. Her light-brown skin compliments the black pencil skirt and white blouse she always wears; and now that it's getting colder in the year, she's begun to wear white, collared, sweaters. Basically, she dresses in professional clothes; she is a tutor/homeschool teacher after all.
Furthermore, she is always carrying around a notebook in her left hand and a red pen in the other. Her professionalism really adds a few hundreds. In reality, she's more wealthy than the Barbers (Hope and Amy), but a little less than all the other neighbors on the block.
Hope had decided to take action tomorrow. But because she didn't have school tomorrow (meaning no Quinn James, further meaning no phone), she'd go to the public library and use the computers there to search up the address of this "Tommy Dawson". Then she thought of something she didn't think of.
Should I tell Quinn what happened in the park? Would she believe me? Of course she would! But the true question, and Hope knew it, was if Hope would believe herself…if that made sense. Because after seeing something as shocking as that, you'd question yourself severely. Am I going crazy? She may have been. I don't even have proof…I threw it in the pond.
"Ugh," she groaned out loud, for her thoughts overwhelmed her; giving her a headache. Hope decided to sleep it off. She pulled the soft blanket over her (which Quinn bought for her birthday last year) and laid her head on the pillow—which had lost most of its softness over the years.
Just as she closed her eyes for sleep, she heard a laugh. A creepy laugh, to say the least. It was just one fast "hehehe". But it was enough for her to frantically sit up straight on her bed, with her legs dangling off the edge of it.
She saw, through the somewhat opened blinds of her window, the night arriving fast. It is Autumn after all.
The only sounds within the house were of the October winds blowing at the walls. No one was home. Her mother, and boyfriend, had left a few minutes ago. It was just Hope in her own home...presumably. Well, it was accompanied by rats and moths, but they don't—better yet, can't—laugh.
She peered outside the blinds of her window. The "pizza restaurant" boyfriend's car was not in the driveway. And, actually, that was where she heard the "hehehe"; just outside the window. Who just laughed? She asked herself with seriousness. This strange laugh had caused such distress in her.
Then it happened. The terror. The impossible.
Just beneath her dangling feet began loud rumbling. Like the sounds of destruction she hears when a building is demolished in the city. It was so abrupt that her legs had quickly picked up from the dangling position as if it was a reflex. Then she leaned her head forward at the floor of her room.
To her shock, the tiles of the floor began to crumble and fall. Literally. The floor had sunk so fast that it reminded Hope of sinkholes she reads in the New York Public Library. And this may have very well been the case. A sinkhole in her room.
But a sink-hole that looked to stretch all the way down to Hell? Not even Hell. Much deeper than that. Void, even.
The destruction began as an irregular shape, taking 1/3 of her room floor down into the void, but as it continued to collapse, it took the form of a polygon.
The desk against the right wall had fallen down into the dark abyss, and so did a few rats that lived under it. She heard them squeaking as they fell down. They never hit ground. Their squeaks only became quieter and quieter the longer they fell.
Luckily, the bed did not move, like an anchor it was stuck. Moreover, her bed was isolated in its own little island of concrete and tile-floor.
Disgustingly, many rats on the other side of the room were jumping over the hole to her little island of floor, then they hid under her bed. Over time, she heard a whole colony of mice under her.
These rats gave her an idea: jump over the hole.
Unfortunately, as if this hole had read her mind, her little island began to fracture, becoming shorter and shorter. Now, her side literally consisted of only the area of her bed and the ground below it. Sweat flowed down her cheeks and her breathing intensified.
Silence came. She could only hear the occasional crack and crumble of the floor falling down into the darkness of the void. Yet the noises all around her (outside of the house) remained the same. The tweeting of birds, the winds of October, and cars parking in the driveways.
"Help!" She screamed. "Help me!" But no one responded from outside. It's not as if they didn't want to. No one could hear her. The window was sealed and the blinds were closed. Hope couldn't open the window because, not only was it too far (she'd have to stretch her arm out to attempt an opening of the glass/blinds), she was much too afraid.
Matter of fact, Hope has a fear of heights. Ever since the "apple tree fall of Jimmy" when she was 6-years-old, being high up anywhere has not been a good feeling for her. That's why she's never voluntarily tried to fix her own house roof.
And as she stuck her head out into the air to look at the void that now took 2/3 of the room, her head became dizzy. She's never had the privilege to go to any amusement park, but she'd expect the "rush" you get when going down in a roller-coaster to be the same feeling she just got.
Uncontrollably, she puked on the mattress of her bed, wiping some vomit out of her red, tangled, hair…causing her to puke even more.
The silence had finally faded away and, within a matter of seconds, her concrete island began to collapse. The hordes of mice under her bed were squeaking loud, the sounds of demolition increased, and, most of all, her sweat now soaked her hands and her heartbeat was now in her throat. She knew what she had to do.
As the bed slid down into the void-hole in a diagonal position, she launched herself 3 yards off the cushy mattress and used her hands to catch the doorknob of the door.
The only thing stopping Hope from falling into the darkness of the hole was the brown doorknob that her sweaty hands gripped.
Her feet—no, her whole body—was dangling above abyss. Then she looked down. It was a fast peek that she immediately regretted.
Somehow, her entire room, and only her room, had collapsed and fallen down. Literally, only her room. She saw the layers of: house walls, then tile, then concrete, then dirt and stone; the dirt and stone never ended because, as her eyes followed deeper down the hole, it became too dark to see. Furthermore, pipes, electrical-cords, and sewage tubes were all poking out of the ground that surrounded the area of her squared room. It's as if the universe wanted only the floor of her room to just fall.
She felt her hands begin to give out from the sweat and the strength. Her immediate move was to find a place for her feet. Her legs moved desperately along the wall and door trying to find any place to stay; a ledge of some sort.
Luckily, she felt a pipe and her feet laid upon it. However, since her door opens from the inside, she had to climb downwards so that she could twist the doorknob, opening the door without her in the way of it.
From pipe to pipe, or cracks in the wall big enough for her feet to lay in, she made her way down far enough to the point that her head was just below the 1-inch gap that resides under the door.
Her breathing intensified, and her feet were shaking. She imagined that any second the cracks her feet laid into would crumble. Or the ground below the gap under the door, of which her hands were inserted into, would collapse, as well.
But they never did.
Courageously, she twisted the doorknob and opened the door a crack, so that she could get low enough down to just bend her fingers in the gap and gently pull the door out of the doorframe, swinging it open.
She carried herself over the tiles with haste, looked back one more time to see the void, and slammed the door shut.
Hope dropped to the hallway floor (which was only lit by the sunset coming through the windows of the house), and the first thing she did was bawl very loudly. The tears and snot from her nose had created a puddle below her face. Her lips shook as she thought of how close to death she was. She didn't even stop to think of how it happened. She only thought of her life and her leaving Quinn. That even though she had a bad life at home, she still loved her life.
Her voice dialed down to a soft cry now, and she whispered the first person's name she thought of: "Quinn". Hope felt like it was the only thing she could say to make herself feel better. "Quinn!" She cried, to no one in particular but herself.
Just the thought of them both together really reassured herself. The times when Quinn made her giggle, as no other person ever had. When Quinn bought her an enormous hot-dog from a street-vendor in Manhattan. How one time when it was raining, Quinn took Hope into her cozy apartment, where they sat and drank hot chocolate. The good times they had together.
Ding, dong! The doorbell rang.
Hope stopped whimpering, wiped the mucus and tears out of her face, and slowly stood up, to not make a sound. She combed her hair with her fingers and, totally disregarding what just happened, walked down the hallway with a slow rhythm until she reached the living room, where to her right was the front-door.
Through the blurry, glass, sidelight window (the small window beside the front-door) a human figure was standing.
After what happened, she didn't trust anything. And don't think she forgot that creepy laugh just before the sink-hole happened. That sink-hole that somehow confined itself to only be the exact shape of the floor of her room.
With an angry face of "I've been through shit already, what next," she looked through the peephole and saw…Quinn!
Hope spent the next 3 minutes swinging the door wide-open and hugging her. Quinn, who explained to Hope that she left her notebook here, hugged Hope back with much love.
"Please," Hope cried out, "you need to see this."
Quinn followed Hope to the outside of her room, where Hope told Quinn to stay far back as she carefully opened the door.
To her astonishment…everything was perfectly fine. Her bed was in the left corner of the room, where her window was, and her desk was where it was before it fell, and her mirror hung on the wall to her right, and the rug of her room laid perfectly on top of the tile.
Quinn rushed past Hope and entered the room with excitement, leaving Hope in the hallway. Quinn, shrieking with joy, cheered "Oh my gosh! Someone left a present for you, you lucky girl!"
As Quinn asked "Who's it from" with a happy smile (whilst flipping it to the underside to reveal a slit in the wrapping paper), Hope's eyes twitched with many emotions; anger, confusion, fright, sadness.
Hope's stomach tensed, and she almost vomited again. For there, on the desk near her bed and window, sat a white, small, rectangular, box with a pink bow, and, most importantly, a red...shiny...balloon.