<------------o------------{-( I )-}---------------o------------> I regret moving into my parents house more than anything. You see, I just graduated from college, and it was finally time to start looking for a house. My parents decided to let me stay at their place while I was looking. Well, until a few weeks ago, that is. My parents are… getting up there in age, and were wanting to retire. They wanted to move to Florida for retirement, but didn’t see the need to sell the house. So, they gave it to me. I was ecstatic. This meant I could just move into a house without the stress of looking for one. Plus, that saved a lot of money. As soon as they gave the go-ahead, I moved in. The house was one story tall- plus an attic- and had two bedrooms and bathrooms. There was a small kitchen and dining room, and a decently sized living room with a couch and a couple of chairs. A cozy fireplace was nestled into one wall, next to a window out into the front yard. As they were leaving, my parents told me that there were boxes in the attic full of stuff. They didn’t want any of it, telling me to do with it what I would. “There might be some things up there you definitely won’t want,” my father said ominously. I had no idea what that was supposed to mean. Over the next few days, after all my stuff was moved in, I got to work rearranging things and making the house my own. It took a few days, and it was hard work, but it was worth it. After I was done with the main floor, I moved on to the attic. And, well, let me just say: It. Was. /Dirty./ There was dust everywhere, and I almost missed the boxes lining the walls. That’s how thick the dust was. Just looking around, there had to be at least thirty different boxes. Sighing, I got to work. Honest to gosh, the attic took longer to sift through than the rest of the house. As I was looking through the boxes, I found something odd. It was a small, wooden toy horse. It was painted black, and was missing chunks of itself. A chipped ear here, a broken tail there, missing hoof, etc. The little horse was wearing a saddle, but there was no rider. None of this was what made the broken horse odd, though. It was the wide, perfectly white grin on its face. Just looking at the thing made me shiver. It leered up at me, seeming to relish in my disturbance. I quickly placed it back in the box it had come from and slid the box as far away from me as possible. I tried to open more boxes, but I just couldn’t stay in that attic any longer. Over the course of the next few days, strange things started to happen around the house. Standard ghost stuff, really. Things would disappear and reappear in another spot. I would hear things, just out of ear shot, never able to find the source. It happened every day. Now, I’m not the sort of person that believes in ghosts, but I still couldn’t help being just a little disturbed. Well, a few days ago, the thing that decided to disappear and reappear for the day was… the horse. When I saw it sitting on the living room table, I felt a chill crawl up my spine. I swear I left that thing in that box. In fact, I hadn’t even been back in the attic since then! And yet there it was. Grinning, always grinning. I threw it away in the garbage bin outside. I remember hoping that I had gotten rid of it, and yet somehow knowing that I hadn’t. The next day, it was there again. I stared at it for a good ten minutes before picking it up and driving it to the farthest dumpster I could find in the neighborhood. I thought that that should have gotten rid of it for good. But then yesterday, it was back. In the middle of the frickin’ night it was back. Okay, that’s it, I remember thinking angrily to myself. If this thing was going to haunt me, there was only one way I could think of getting rid of it. I started a fire in the fireplace. I waited until the red-hot flames were licking at the wood, hungrily searching for more. I grabbed the wooden horse, about to throw it in the fire. Suddenly, pain shot up my arm, and I realized the dang thing had bitten me. I yelped, dropping it. It hit the floor and bounced away. Lunging for it, I pinched its neck with my thumb and forefinger and threw it in the fire. It didn’t come back out. That was six hours ago, and I’ve been awake watching the flames ever since. I’m not tired- and even if I was, I couldn’t go to sleep. Not now, not after what just happened. As I’ve been writing this, the flames have been slowly dying. I’m afraid to look- afraid to see what is left of that thing. But I can’t help myself. And as I look up now, I see… I see a small, broken horse with a horrible, horrible smile… grinning up at me. <------------o------------{-( I )-}---------------o------------>
