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You wake up suddenly and look at your alarm clock. It reads 3:00AM. You can’t help but wonder why you are awake at such an hour but you are thirsty and head to the kitchen for a drink of water. While the water from the tap is flowing into your glass you look through the window above the sink at the long abandoned house across the street. It’s ratty and in disrepair but you can tell that it was once a very beautiful house. You wonder why such a place has never had an owner in decades, maybe even centuries.

While your mind is wandering, you begin to feel the cold trickle of water on your hand. As you realize that your glass is overflowing, you also catch a glimpse of light in one of the second story windows of the abandoned house. You quickly shut off the water and look back at the house. The light is gone. Was it just your imagination? You stare into the dark shape of the house across the street willing your eyes to adjust to the darkness outside. There is a rather bright half moon but it seems to only make the house darker. While you are straining you see the light again. It’s a candle?! Someone is moving through the house with a candle for light. You watch the figure move from the biggest second story window down through two smaller ones then up into what you always thought was the attic. Then the light grows for a moment and all the windows on the third floor light up.

“Someone must have bought the place”. You think, or did you say that out loud. Either way this was interesting. Perhaps you will introduce yourself in the morning. You have always wanted to know what the house looked like on the inside.

…

Early the next morning you woke with a purpose. You got yourself some breakfast and began trying to find an excuse to introduce yourself. Fortunately there is a convenience store a little way down the block past the house. And you feel like going and getting an iced tea.

While you walk past the house you begin looking for signs of life around the place. There are no cars and the weeds are so bad it’s a wonder anyone could get to the front door. You also notice that the second story windows you had first seen the light in are shattered. But it really looked like they were intact last night. You decide to get your iced tea first and then try knocking on the door on the way back.

After you bought your iced tea and a snack, you head in the direction of the house. On your way, you catch the shortest glimpse of someone walking around the back of the dilapidated house. You run to catch up with them and as you are turning into the old gravel driveway of the house you see that there is a car by the old garage in the back corner of the property. It’s old. Really old. Probably was built in the 1920s and looks like it has been rotting in the same spot for easily 70 years. But you are sure it has never been there before. You must have walked past this place a thousand times, how have you never noticed that car before. You shake the thought and continue around the house.

As you come around the back corner of the house you see someone again, only this time it looks like they walked under the house. There must be a cellar door back here. Just as you change your direction to head to where you saw the person, you trip over an old tree stump and hit your head. Everything goes black.

…

When you come to, the sun is now much lower in the sky and in the opposite direction from where it was when you went out this morning. You shake the headache out of your head and stand uneasily to your feet. You begin to head back towards the front of the house when you remember what you had seen before. Should you…