Flash Fiction: Our House on Baker Street.

We have lived at number 42 Baker Street for ten years, I lived my childhood there, and my days as a teenager were spent in that small house with five rooms; I lived there with my parents, my two siblings: Mark and Arlene and my grandma, Ella. 

Our lives were peaceful; we went to church every Sunday, and my mother baked cookies and sold them at her bakery in the village. My father worked as a foreman at the local refinery. My siblings and I went to Catholic school the church. God and Jesus were constant in our lives, and we were taught to put God first in everything. 

My family was perfect in the day, with smiles and laughter. But when it was after hours, the chickens had gone to bed, and crickets had returned to their holes, my family was awake, ready to face the horror of that night. 

Every 2:00 am, we lay awake shaking in our nightgowns, clinging to the blankets for any warmth, terrified of what would happen that night. We always locked our rooms and held our crosses to our chests; Ave Maria was the anthem. 

It always started with the door opening and the screeching of the door on the ground; it was a sound that made the hairs on my body stand. Then would come the horrible sound of pots and pans flying about downstairs in the kitchen; each clang raised my heart rate slightly. I would hold on to my bed frame and pray my door doesn’t fling open.

The disturbance would stop, and everything would be quiet again; it was time to lay our heads asleep for the night. Morning came, and we resumed our lives as a normal family. 

It went on for four years; we had no idea what was going on, we didn’t dare to dream that our house was haunted, priests came and went trying to sanctify our home but to no avail, and we were often left to our fate. 

At the end of their wits, my parents reached out to friends and people they knew to see if there could be any solution; they suggested we move out of the house. We took the idea and rented an apartment downtown while we tried to figure out what was going on at home. Our dilemma followed us to the apartment; it felt like an entity was following us. 

My father got tired and reached a ghost exterminator. He didn’t believe in it, but it was his last resort. The night the ghost exterminator came to stay at our house, my parents and siblings stayed with him in the living room to see how he would undo what priests couldn’t do. 

By 2:00 am, we waited for the disturbance to start. It was more chilling hearing it from the living room; it felt like a demon would jump out of the shadow. But the ghost exterminator was brave and made his way over to the kitchen; as soon as he stepped in, a pan came flying out. The rest of us ran back to the living room and found hiding places. 

There was a loud ruckus in the kitchen, and we all held on for our lives; we feared the ghost exterminator would be killed by whatever terrorized our family. After some minutes, everything died down. We heard him telling us not to be scared and to come out of our hiding places. 

I remember crawling out of the table I hid under and seeing the ghost exterminator holding my grandma; I stared wide-eyed, wondering if a demon had possessed her. I watched, stunned, as the ghost exterminator explained that my grandma sleepwalked and she was the one causing the disturbance in the kitchen. 

My jaw dropped, this had been happening for more than four years, and we didn’t know it was my grandma. My father was appalled; poor old grandma didn’t even know she was the cause. 

Eventually, we had to check her into a home; we went home where everything became normal for us for the first time in a long time, or so we thought…

READ MORE ENTRIES FOR THE FLASH FICTION HERE

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