We Hope This House Bought You As Much Joy As It Brought Us
Alright, so my family and I moved into a house back in July, 2005, when I was 15. Right off the bat, things seemed odd.
To start, it was summer, 2005, and MySpace was the shit back then. So, being 15 and in the summer, I didn't have any school or responsibilities; so I was on our computer in the kitchen every night till around 2:55 AM (step-dad woke up at 3:00 am and would get annoyed if I was still up).
Maybe a week after we moved in to the house, we still hadn't completely gotten settled. My mom had set all the plates, bowls, and kitchen utensils on the counter in the kitchen, below the cupboards she felt they would end up in. Particularly, she put 4 wooden spoons in ascending order on the counter, leaning against the wall.
So as usual, 2:55 rolls around and I panic to race to my bedroom so I didn't get yelled at. Well 5-10 minutes later I hear my step-dad get up and he walks to the kitchen and SCREAMS my name. I run out, thinking the computer was still on and he was just being weirdly annoyed I was awake, but really, all the stuff on the counter had moved to the floor, in the exact same position (the 4 wooden spoons were on the floor in the same position and everything). He thought I was trying to be funny, but I wasn't.
Over the years, SEVERAL more weird things happened, including my mom going into an extremely scary psychosis type state, and telling me someone was in the house for me and that she had already killed herself, but I can explain more of that story later.
Now, this was an older house, so the shapes of the rooms and closets were kind of odd, but my closet in particular had a few 2x4's that lined the inside upper part above the door, acting as a discreet little shelf. I did all my maturing in this house, so I hid all my unmentionables up there: my first condoms, my first bag of weed, my first pipe, porn, and whatever other stuff a teenager doesn't want their parents to find. I knew the space well.
Flash forward to 2009: My parents bought a new house in a small town a few miles away, but I had to stay at the old, empty house for a few more days to get to work. However, by the time we were moving, I no longer had to hide any of that stuff up there, my parents were pretty cool with it all by now. So I stopped using the small shelf in my closet.
So after my last day of work for the week, I went back to the empty house to wait for my mom to pick me up to take me to the new house. I walked through and thought about all the memories I had in that house, reminiscing and getting sentimental. I thought about my old hiding spot in my closet, and thought to check it, knowing I had cleared it out years ago. I reached up and back into the closet, feeling around the shelf, and felt a piece of paper. I pulled it down and sure enough, it's a small piece of paper from one of those tiny pocket notebooks with this chicken-scratch, almost child-like handwriting on it. The note said: "We hope this house brought you as much joy, as it brought us. -11/2005"
The note was dated for several months AFTER we moved in, and was placed in a spot only I knew existed. The thing is, I know that note wasn't up there before. And I know that none of my family knew of that spot, plus playing a trick like that would be way out of character. The paper it was on was older, kind of yellowed. And to this day, I have no idea how it got there.
I ended up sitting outside with my backpack and my dog, waiting for my mom to pick me up. And when she did, she said I looked awfully pale, and just horrified.
I still have the note, but it's at my parents new house, several states away. Next time I go to visit, I'll take pictures of it. That old house was actually my favorite place in the world. I felt safe, and I enjoyed life more there, than anywhere else I have ever lived.