The room at the back of the house was full to the brim with old stuff. Forefront in the space was a lamp with a stained-glass shade. The lamp base looked copper or bronze, reminding Cary of the candlestick in her Clue board game. The lamp was sitting on a tall, wooden dresser that was just inside the door, directly in front of it, and looked rather heavy. If Cary didn't know better, she would have thought that dresser had been leaning against the door, keeping it closed. There was only just enough space between the door and the dresser to allow Cary to slip past it, though a larger child wouldn't have made it through at all.

As Cary made her way deeper into the space, she felt something on the wall behind her snag on the back of her shirt. It slowed her progress past the dresser, but when she got free of it, she looked back to see a small picture hook sticking out. There was no picture on it, nor any sign of her shirt being torn away by it. Before she looked at the rest of the room, she reached back there, feeling around, searching for a hole in her shirt. Anything that might betray her time in that house to anyone that might ask. Her shirt seemed to be intact, but she wouldn't know for sure until she took it off. That wasn't something that she was likely to do in that room. Not with the ghosts still watching her.

When she turned around, she thought she saw one of those ghosts. A face came at her from the other side of the room, gloomy and frowning at her. A small squeak came out of her as she jumped backwards, away from that face. She didn't quite have a scream in her after being in that house for so long. But thankfully, she didn't need a scream. Instead of a ghost, it was an old painting of an even older man. The man was wearing a crisp suit, sitting in an old, red chair. The chair from the painting was stuck right next to the painting itself, along with several other small knick-knacks that Cary had never seen before, and didn't have the words for.

Once she got over that shock, Cary glanced around that small space that she had wiggled into. Other than the dresser, the painting, and the chair, there was also an old, empty bookcase that blocked off that portion of the room. As Cary looked around at all the stuff crammed into that one room, she got the feeling like the previous owner of the house had moved everything of value, and quite a lot of things of no value, into that one room. The place was too full of treasures and junk to move about the room. She was reminded of the floor of David's bedroom, which was often so covered with toys that one could hardly walk from one end to the other without stepping on several of them. There were far too many things just in that one room alone to fully explore the place in one outing. As she stared around at the things there, she silently promised herself a return trip to the strange room. Something told her that there were treasures abound in that place, and any number of the items there could be priceless beyond belief.

Or it could be something fun to play with.

However, Cary knew that the only way to make a proper search of the place would be to take everything out of the room, piece by piece. With the rest of the house being as empty as it was, there were plenty of places to stick things. But with the large, heavy dresser near the door, blocking easy access in and out of the room, any such efforts would have to wait. Even with David's help, she doubted that she would be able to move it. That only left what little was out in the open in the areas that she could get to.

Cary moved forward, carefully picking her way through the room. She pulled the largest of the knick-knacks, something that looked like a blow dryer crossed with a pogo stick, off the chair, placing it against the side of the dresser. With that off, she climbed up onto the seat of the chair. Her weight pressed down on the cushion there, causing the other three objects to fall onto her feet. But she was suddenly tall enough to look over the back, towards the rest of the room.

Directly behind the chair and painting was a large bed. Cary wasn't sure what size it was, but it was bigger than her own bed, and she was pretty sure that it was bigger than her grandparents' bed as well. The bed had a golden frame to it that glistened in the sunlight coming through the windows of the room. But when she noticed that the sun was setting in one of those windows, she suddenly realized just how long she had been in that house.

"Darn," she said. "I need to get home. Grandpa should have been home already."

Despite her words, and the truth to them, Cary stood there for a moment, just looking around the room, desperately searching for something for her to grab. She couldn't bear the thought of making it that far into the house and coming away with nothing to show for it. Any number of items in that place could have been worth taking, showing off to anyone that asked. But what she was really thinking though was that anything in that house could have been something to show off to the bullies. Something to prove her own bravery and possibly get them off of her back. Something to get them to leave her alone.

The painting would have been her first choice. The eerie look in the man's eyes and the ghostlike nature of his face would be enough to scare the living daylights out of Greg. But it was far too big for her to manage, and she was afraid that it would tear apart when she was getting it back through the gap between the dresser and the wall. That picture hook could be deadly.

The rest of the stuff, what she could see in there, was all too weird. Things that no one would know what they were, including a strange device on a table next to the chair that had a clear piece of circular plastic on the front, marked by numbers, a long cord that connected itself to itself, and a horseshoe-like handle to it. But there was a book on the table next to the strange device that she took, hoping that it would tell her what the device itself was. The book was small enough to fit in her pocket, so she stuck it in there before hopping back down off the chair.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

With one last look around the small space between the chair, the bookshelf, and the dresser, she retraced her steps back past the dresser. Once she was back at the door to the room, she reached up to grab the lamp, figuring that would be the best proof that she had made it into the house. However, the moment that her hand clasped the neck of the lamp, the whole thing fell apart on her. The stained-glass lamp shade shattered, raining down the panels onto the top of the dresser. Several of the pains broke on impact, splashing shards of glass at Cary. Automatically, she pulled her hands back, putting them up in front of her face to protect herself from the glass. Once the sound of tickling glass had stopped, she looked back at what was left of the lamp.

Only, there wasn't much left. The wire frame for the lamp shade had broken apart at her touch, and looked more like one of the other unidentifiable nick-knacks that cluttered the room. As she looked at the remnants, she wondered if that really was the source of those other items. If the objects stored in that room were just slowly falling apart, and would continue to do so even after she had left. Would there be anything worth seeing in there at all upon her return?

The base of the lamp had snapped in three pieces, with the broad stand staying in place on the dresser, the thick handle slowly rolling onto the floor, and the part that had once held the lampshade still clenched in her hand. But instead of the nut that held the shade in place, there was just a ring on the end of it. When Cary looked at that ring, she thought that it was just a washer; something to put beneath the lampshade to hold it up. But the ring was bigger and thicker than any washer that she had seen before, and much more narrow. It reminded Cary of her grandmother's wedding ring, complete with a small gem embedded in the metal.

Cary took the ring off of the rod, holding it in her hand as she examined it. The gem seemed to catch the light from the windows, despite the fact that she couldn't see them from the other side of the dresser. The ring was quite large, larger than the rod it had been on even. As Cary looked at it, the ring seemed to get even larger, stretching out between her fingers. She looked between the ring and the rod for a bit, comparing the two of them. But when she placed the ring back onto the rod, it slid into place exactly where it had been before, at exactly the same size it had been.

"Weird," Cary said.

As she continued to stare at the ring, it was starting to get harder to see it there, tucked away behind the dresser. When she started to realize what that meant, that the sun was starting to set behind the next house over, she grabbed the ring back up off of the rod, dropping the rod itself to the floor next to her, next to most of what was left of the lamp.

"But I'll need proof," Cary said to herself, as she came back out of the room and into the hallway. The rest of the house was getting just as dark as that back room, with only the sunlight coming through the distant windows to see by. "David would never believe that I came in here just from some weird ring and an old book."

Cary started heading back the way that she had come, retracing her steps down that first hallway. She looked to both sides of the hall, searching for something to prove that she had been in there. The only thing she could see were the balls in that first room. As she came inside the bedroom, she looked around at the balls collected there. It looked like another baseball had joined the three that had been in there before. But she just scooped up the one that David had hit up there before heading back towards the stairs.

At the top of the stairs, Cary looked through the windows in the far wall. She could still see Greg and Angelica pacing outside of the wrought iron fence, but the other three bullies had already left. Cary stood there for a moment, watching, waiting for the last two to head off as well. However, she knew from experience, from all the other times that those five had trapped her inside a building, that Greg and Angelica would stay out till dark. Cary didn't have that kind of time. She would have already been missed.

"Stupid Greg," Cary said. "Stupid bullies."

Cary looked down at the ball and ring in her hands for a moment, wondering how she would be able to make it past the two of them. She hadn't found another door out of the house, and it was too late to continue her search. Instead, she tucked the ball under her arm, as she slid the ring onto her index finger. When the ring seemed to shrink to fit perfectly on it, she just shrugged before turning back to the door.

"Alright, Cary," she said to herself, as she pulled the ball back into her hands. "Nothing to it but to do it."

Staring out at the two bullies out there, Cary took a long, deep, steadying breath before heading down the stairs. When she was halfway down them, she turned into a run, meaning to try to run right past the two of them and over towards her house. With her grandfather home, she'd be able to make it inside to safety. Assuming that she could make it past the bullies and keep ahead of them.

When her feet made the bottom of the stairs, she increased her speed as she darted forward towards the door. A guttural scream of effort came out of her without her thinking about it as she charged outside. It echoed around the huge entry hall, sounding deeper and louder than her small lungs could manage on their own. As she emerged from the house, her eyes flicked towards the bullies in the distance, but her head was turned towards the sidewalk in front of her.

"Ah," Greg shouted. Cary looked over at him, expecting him to run towards her. Expecting his scream to be a sign of his triumph. But his earlier pale faced, shocked look had returned as he stared over at her. "A ghost," he shouted, pointing at her before running away.

Cary looked over towards Angelica, or at least where she had last seen her, only to find her similarly in retreat. But Cary didn't stop her run as she made her way towards the wrought iron fence. Moreover, she didn't look behind her, back towards the house, afraid that there really was a ghost behind her, chasing her out of there.