After dinner, his father was back, seeming out of breath, when he walked down the stairs.

His father said, “The house has three floors. You can choose a room anywhere you like. Most of the rooms are rather empty as I haven’t had the time nor need to decorate them.”

“Anywhere is fine really,” Ardwyn said. He thought of his room back home, which seemed more like a closet compared to this house.

“Here, let me show you around,” his father said.

Ardwyn followed his father upstairs.

“I can show you the first floor later. There is a lot of junk down there since I use the space for storage mostly.”

Ardwyn walked down a dark hallway, the floor boards creaking one by one with his steps.

His father flicked on a light switch toward a back window. The window was open, with the white curtains blown by the night breeze. The pale moon shone in the background, the only light in the distance.

“Strange,” his father said. “I don’t remember leaving this window open.”

He closed the window with full force, pressing down with his hands and grunting. The window slid down with a rusty scrape.

His father shrugged. “When you get older you tend to start forgetting things.”

“Here are three rooms that are empty. From my understanding they used to be bedrooms back in the day,” he said. “I haven’t used any of them yet.”

Ardwyn’s father opened the door to the first bedroom. The door opened slowly, begrudgingly, as if an ancient tomb disturbed for the first time in many years. A dust cloud burst around them.

The room was empty. The paint had weathered down to a dark brown, with flakes chipping off the walls.

“What I don’t like about this room,” his father said, “is that there are no windows. But you could use this as a study room, or an activity room if you like.”

They continued down the hall to the next room. The door seemed to open more easily than the last room.

“This room, I like,” Ardwyn’s father said, “because of the view.”

A large window framed the front of the room, with an angular space that caved out with a separate window area to view the back of the house.

Ardwyn looked out the window, which seemed not to have been cleaned for ages. In the back of the house was more darkness and woods. The moonlight lit up the tops of the trees, but most of the areas were hard to discern from any other shapes.

“Sorry about the dust,” his father said. “This house is too big to clean for one person. If I spent all my time cleaning this house I would never get any work done.”

Ardwyn wondered how many more rooms there were.

One by one they toured the rest of the rooms. The house seemed much larger than it looked from the outside. His father was right — they didn’t build houses like this anymore. At least only as props for horror movies.

After they were done with the second floor, his father showed him a series of rooms on the third floor. The third floor had an area with a balcony separating the two rooms of the house where you could look down on the living room on the first floor. If there was a visitor at the front door, Ardwyn imagined stepping out on the balcony, placing his hands on the rails, and greeting them as in some old movie.

“This room is one of my favorites,” Ardwyn’s father turned to face him before unlocking the door. “This was my second choice before I picked my office across the hall.”

Ardwyn’s father seemed to struggle with opening the handle. He twisted back and forth a few times before the door finally opened.

“You have to push in and twist,” he said. “That’s the trick with this door knob. The mechanism is faulty. I’ve been meaning to replace it.”

Ardwyn looked around the room. This room was significantly larger than the other ones. Ardwyn felt like he could fit at least five of his old rooms in here. There were three windows, one on each side, and then another one near a circular area.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

“This area is actually part of one of the towers of the house. That’s why it has this cool circular architecture.”

Ardwyn stepped into the area and looked around. A large tall window ran up to the high ceilings. The window had two handles that opened out.

His father pulled on the handles and opened the window. There was nothing separating the open window from the outside, not a screen or anything else.

The fresh night breeze rushed up Ardwyn’s face. He could smell the pine trees around him.

“I really like this room,” Ardwyn said, still not believing how much bigger this room was than anything he had lived in previously.

“It’s yours,” his father said. “This would be a good area for a desk. You could do your homework here, with a nice relaxing view outside.”

Ardwyn looked out into the forest. Relaxing, would not be the way he would describe the view. More like creepy. Something about the woods seemed strange.

“Totally peaceful out here,” his father said, seeming to notice Ardwyn’s expression. “A big change from life in the city, huh?”

After Ardwyn unpacked his stuff he sat down on the bed. His father was gone again, mentioning he had to check in on his work, and to let him know if he needed anything.

The bed was old, but it was big and framed by ornamental wooden curved designs. As Ardwyn leaned back he felt the rusted bed springs move underneath him with the sound of metallic screeching.

The few things he had, he placed into the giant walk in closet. He wondered who had lived here previously, and what their lives were like. Ardwyn carefully studied the walls, and the ceiling. This week he could paint the room. That would make the place feel less haunted.

He looked again toward the woods. Everything was so eerily silent, except the periodic creaking in the walls.

Ardwyn woke up in the middle of the night. He looked around, at first disoriented where he was, and the whole trip came back to him, his father’s house out here in the middle of the woods. The first night of waking up somewhere else than what you were used to could be disconcerting.

The night was silent. Whatever creaking in the walls he had heard before seemed to have gone away. Outside, the trees stood still in the silence of the night, with the moon now partially covered by clouds.

Ardwyn stretched, and got up from the bed. Where was the bathroom? He forgot to ask. Surely he could find the bathroom on his own. He didn’t want to wake up his father this late into the middle of the night.

He stood up from the bed, and noticed the window was slightly open. A fresh breeze with the scene of the pine woods drifted outside.

Strange. Had he left the window unlocked? Maybe the breeze had pushed the window open while he was sleeping. Ardwyn walked up to the window, and before shutting the two large window panels, took a breath of the fresh cold air.

Then from somewhere out there in the woods he heard a whisper.

Ardwyn.

The whisper was low enough that he wasn’t sure if he had been just imagining something in the sounds of the wind.

Ardwyn. The whisper came again, more distinguishable but still hardly audible.

He rubbed his eyes. Maybe night terrors. They said that sometimes on the edge of wakefulness and dreams your mind could play tricks on you, imagine things that were not there.

Ardwyn shut the windows quickly, and walked back to bed. Forget the bathroom, he thought. He wasn’t the scared type but he also wasn’t the naive type to mess with things that he didn’t understand.

He laid there for what seemed like a long time, staring toward the window, listening for the whisper he had heard earlier.

Nothing.

Just the silence of the night. An owl hooted suddenly startling him.

“Just the wind,” he said softly to himself, feeling slightly embarrassed that he was talking to himself.

The ceiling creaked loudly up above him and he jumped out of bed, his heart palpating wildly. Another creak.

He considered waking up his father, but what was he going to do then? Tell him there were creaks in the walls? That would make him look silly.

Ardwyn walked out of his room into the hallway. His father mentioned that he had used the first floor for storage. Maybe he could find a flashlight there.

He was wide awake now, and couldn’t see himself going back to sleep anytime soon.

Ardwyn found a room in the corner of the house with tools, and a workbench. A flashlight had to be around here somewhere. He went through the drawers, finding screws, more tools, and then finally at the bottom drawer he found a large yellow and black flashlight.

He turned the switch on. The flashlight lit up the distance with a cone of light.

Down the hallway he spotted a door open, with the bathroom. The bathroom had large brown panels, and a solid dark oak cabinets that seemed to be hand crafted. After using the bathroom, back in the kitchen he opened the fridge and got himself a midnight snack, with the flashlight resting on the kitchen table almost as if a weapon to protect him.

The wind picked up and began to howl. The house moved with random creaks. He was getting used to the creaks.

Relax, he thought to himself. It’s just an old house.

He felt more relaxed. The fear had lifted. In time he probably was going to get used to the surroundings. The peacefulness was nice after all. He didn’t need to be overreacting.

Ardwyn finished his meal in the kitchen and then with the flashlight in hand walked to the front door. He slowly opened the front door, and then shone the flashlight on the lawn and then on the trees, side to side, scanning if anything was there.

Nothing.

Relieved, he turned back, and then as he was about to close the door, he heard some far off rustling in the woods. He pointed the flashlight. The trees moved as if some large animal went through them, and then the movement was gone.

He took a few steps on the front porch and then scanned the woods on the other side of the house. Then, almost getting ready to go back inside, the flashlight momentarily caught on a pair of two green eyes.