The Truth - Desire Scheepers (pdf to ebook reader .TXT) 📗

She was so tired. All she wanted to do was lie down and sleep. Slowly Sam approached the bed and as she pulled back the blanket to get into bed, she heard a noise on the first floor. Curious, she left the bedroom to investigate the cause of the noise. Cautiously she took the steps up to the first floor, the wood creaking softly beneath her feet. She stopped on the top landing, trying to locate the direction it was coming from. It almost sounded like footsteps. Like someone was walking on the wooden floor in the lounge, but that was impossible. Both her daughters were fast asleep in their room downstairs and there was no one else in the house. Besides, it sounded like a heavy person walking.
Gathering her courage, she approached the door to the lounge on tiptoe, in case it was a burglar waiting on the other side. Ever so slowly she peeped around the corner of the door. Luckily her eyes had already adjusted to the dark and with her first glance of the lounge she couldn’t see anyone skulking around.
Dragging the rest of her body through the doorway, she looked more carefully, because she could still hear the noise and it was definitely coming from the lounge.
It took less than a second for her brain to realize what her eyes were seeing and to compute the implications.
There, on the floor at the bottom of the flowered single seater was a pair of men’s shoes, and they were walking. Without a man in them.
She never even realized that she was screaming and running. It was only as she reached the bottom of the stairs that she saw where she was.

Chris woke up with a start. Something had disturbed his sleep. Lying still, he tried to define what it was that had woken him. There it was again. A noise was coming from the first floor. It sounded like footsteps, but who would be walking around upstairs? There was no one in the house except him.
Pushing back the blankets, he put his feet on the floor and almost immediately pulled them back up again. The floor was freezing. Switching on the bedside lamp, he saw that there was a mist seeping from under the door.
Feeling the first stirrings of uneasiness, he got up from the bed and put on his slippers. Something strange was going on.
He opened the door and saw that the whole passage was filled with the strange mist. It seemed to be coming from the first floor. The same place where the noise was coming from. With a sense of foreboding he slowly made his way up the stairs, flinching with each creak the wooden steps made.
As he reached the top landing, he hugged the wall, trying to be as invisible as possible. If someone was trying to break in, he didn’t want to advertise his presence. What was bothering him though was the mist. Had he left open a window and the mist was coming in through there or was something else going on? The strangest thing was that it was so cold. It was in the middle of spring. Even though there were still a few nights where a blanket was welcome, that was not an explanation for the bone chilling cold that was permeating the top floor. The first door that he opened was for the lounge and that was where the noise was coming from. With a rapidly beating heart and his breath clouding the cold air in front of him, he reached for the door handle and nearly had to jerk back from the coldness. Turning the handle, he thrust it open with force, and jumped through the doorway at the same time.
Scanning the lounge to see if someone was in there, he at first didn’t notice anything out of place. As he was about to turn around and leave, out of the corner of his eye, he saw a slight movement. Switching on the light to see better, he approached the area where he saw the movement. There, by the couch, stood a pair of shoes. Not one of his pairs. And they were moving. The movement that he had seen had been as they had turned around to return to the couch.
Slowly backing away in order not to take his eyes off the shoes, he hit the door and fell.
Scrambling to get purchase on the slippery wooden floor, his hands and feet not working together, he managed to fall down once again. As he lifted his head to try and get up one more time, he saw that the floor was really uneven at exactly the point where the shoes were now standing still, as if waiting to see what he would do.
Not bothering to try and get up, he hastily crawled to the door. Grabbing hold of the frame, he pulled himself up and dashed to the stairs, going down them two at a time.
He immediately ran for the phone to call someone but as he picked up the receiver, he realised that there was no one he could call. Who would believe him? The mist was disappearing even as he put the phone down and the temperature returning to normal.
The full impact of the last few minutes finally hit him and he started shaking.
He was living in a haunted house. He wouldn’t have believed that possible except for what he had just witnessed with his own eyes.
He slowly replaced the receiver and stood contemplating his options. The first thing to do would be to unfreeze and then make a list of all he knew regarding the house.
As he made his way towards the kitchen to switch on the kettle for some coffee, he turned on the lights as far as he was walking, because the light made him feel less jittery.
Finished with making the coffee, Chris sat down at the kitchen table with a pen and pad, ready to make notes.
The first thing that he noted on his list was his lack of knowledge regarding the history of the house. He had only recently moved in and had not bothered to ask the agent about the previous owners or even if anything had happened in the house.
So, that would be where he would start. After he had a good sleep. The adrenaline had finished running its course and he was feeling really exhausted.

The next morning he woke up early and started getting ready. He needed to talk to the agent as soon as possible. Luckily it was a Saturday, so he didn’t need to go into the workshop. Having his own woodworking business really had its benefits. He stood almost as tall as the top of the doorpost, with sun- streaked golden brown hair and green- flecked light brown eyes that could stare down an elephant if needed. Not that he had ever used such a tactic, because it went against everything that he believed in. Working hard and treating people with respect and dignity had always been one of his strong points, making everyone that met him want to be a better person.
Being eager to get to the bottom of the events of the previous night, he knew that he would first have to have some coffee and toast to take the edge off the hunger, otherwise he would not give his full attention to the problem, but rather be concentrating on what his stomach was feeling.
Finally stuffing the last bite into his mouth and swallowing the final bit of coffee, he was ready to talk to the agent.
Picking up the phone, he called the agent to make an appointment to find out more about the house. As luck would have it, the agent was free and could see Chris in the next hour.
Arriving at the restaurant where they had agreed to meet, Chris could see that James, the agent, had already found a table at the back where it was a little quieter.
“Morning James. Thanks for seeing me at such short notice. I hope you’ll be able to help me, otherwise I would’ve dragged you out here for nothing.”
“No problem. I wanted to get some fresh air anyway. What can I do for you? You mentioned something about the history of the house?”
“Yeah, I only now realized that I had bought the place without really knowing anything about it, so I was hoping to find out more about the place.”
“Sure. What do you want to know? If I don’t have the answers, I can always look it up for you.”
“Well, I never met the previous owners, so I was wondering why they decided to sell?”
“It’s quite a sad story, actually. They didn’t decide to sell. The previous owner was Mr Walton and he and his wife and two daughters had lived in the house since it had been built. In fact, he had the house built for his wife as a wedding present. Had the wooden floors especially made by a master craftsman. Anyway, no one knows exactly what happened, but it seems as if his wife took the children and ran away, causing Mr Walton to slowly deteriorate mentally until he finally committed suicide. The neighbours noticed after about a week that there was no movement in and out of the house and the post was piling up, so they decided to call the police who broke in and found him in the bath tub with a radio. Not very pretty I’m afraid. The police had tried to find Mrs Walton to inform her that her husband had killed himself, but they couldn’t locate her or the children. The next of kin was then contacted to inform them and find out how to proceed from there. Mr Walton’s sister made arrangements for the funeral and for the sale of the house. She did a very good job of having the placed cleaned, by the way.”
During the whole conversation, Chris was listening very intently, storing away the details. What was really surprising was the reference made about the wooden floors. Any woodworking person worth their salt would make the floors to last a very long time and ensure that they would not lift up or pull away from each other. James had said that a master craftsman had made them, making the likelihood of them pulling up the way that he had seen last night really strange. Maybe the chemicals that the cleaning company had used had something to do with it.
“Would the company that cleaned the house have had any reason to clean the living room upstairs with harsh chemicals?”
“Not that I know of. Why?”
“I noticed last night that some of the wooden planks of the floor in the living room are really uneven, like they may be lifting up and if, as you say, the floors were made by a master craftsman, the only reason for planks to lift up would be if they were treated with chemicals that were not meant to be used on wood.”
“Oh, no, I don’t think that would be the reason. There was nothing wrong in the living room. The main part that needed cleaning was the bathroom. Mr Walton’s sister did have the tub replaced, though, so you don’t have to worry about that. I am sorry to hear that the floor is lifting up. It was a lovely piece of handwork.”
“Well, thank you for your time. Now I know a little bit more about the place, though it does have a sad history. Luckily I tend to look at