I haven’t gone back up there until this day.

We were bored after we finished our coffee so we decided it would be fun to call the room next door to us. Each room had their own room phone number and I don’t exactly know how we got their phone number but we eventually did (we weren’t allowed to leave our rooms so we couldn’t go and ask them). Note that I wasn’t really all for the idea of calling our neighbors but I honestly didn’t care so I didn’t try and stop them. 

They dialed the number and the phone rung for a bit (we put it on speaker) and they didn’t pick up. We continued to call them, maybe two more times, until we eventually gave up. We sat down on our beds and did our own random things. 

Then, unexpectedly, we got a knock on our room door. We didn’t think much of it until we opened it and saw the face of a pretty annoyed teacher.

All of us were super confused when the teacher said: “Why did you call the police?”

We all just glanced at each other until we replied how we didn’t mean to call the police but instead we meant to call the room next to us. At this point I just backed away and sat on the bed, not wanting to be apart of this as the teacher said: “Well, the office was called by the police asking what was wrong and why the guests were trying to call them. From now on, don’t touch the phone.” 

We quickly closed the door when she left, and I was so nervous we were going to get into serious trouble, but no one cared afterwards and in the end we forgot about it. 

 I walked back to my seat, when an idea came to my head. As a trickster, ideas come into my head and on instinct I scare people (Just ask my friends). Me and Althaf would cross paths, so being the cunning person I am, I screamed, pointing, “IT’S RIGHT THERE!” 

Althaf screamed and jumped 10 feet high, trying to leap on a table, but he failed. So instead he crawled under the table. I was laughing so hard, my heart beating like a hummingbird. He came out from underneath the table muttering, “I can’t believe I fell for that.”

I sat back in my seat, hiding my smile and the laughter threatening to come into my throat. To this day, I still tease him by yelling, “Centipede!”

This happened to my sister and brother when I was still a baby. I guess you could say I got the trickster gene from my dad, because my mother, father, sister, and brother had just finished watching ‘nightmare on elm street’. (My brother and sister are about my age in this story). My brother needed to go and let the neighbors dogs out because they weren’t at home. There’s a little forest pathway between our house so my dad decided to hide behind a tree, and wait for my brother. Finally when my brother was walking back, my father jumped out from the tree and screamed at him. My brother screeched like a girl, echoing in the forest.

Now my father wasn’t done scaring yet. My sister’s room has two closets, and one she doesn’t use. So my father hides in the closet, in the dark. My sister comes into the room, confused as why that closet is cracked. She steps in her room, when suddenly my father jumped out scaring my sister half to death. After that my sister wouldn’t speak to my dad for two whole days. And I was sleeping through the whole thing.

To understand a bit of what I’m about to tell you, you’d have to know a bit about the layout of the upstairs of my home. My family has a two story lounge, and overlooking the lounge is a loft area on the second floor. When you come up the stairs and turn left, you would find my bedroom and bathroom. The closest bedroom on the right is Luke’s room, which is right between the banister overlooking the lounge and what we call the Apartment. The Apartment is just a small room with two large windows and two couches where my brothers and I play video games. If you go past Luke’s room, there is a long, dark, narrow hallway, which has a bathroom on the left and Daniel’s bedroom all the way down at the end of it (the only way I can think to describe this is to have you think of any horror movie you’ve ever seen based out of a hospital or abandoned house. Imagine the creepy dark hallway with the single, messy white door at the end of it where the killer lurks. That’s about what this hallway looks like). 

On this particular evening, my mother and dad were out of the house, having dinner with a few old friends of theirs who were in town for a short time, leaving us three kids and Daniel’s girlfriend, Traylor, alone in the house. I was hiding away in my room as a teenager often does, reading a book on my carpet, surrounded by the dirty clothes I had carelessly strung about my bedroom. Daniel and Taylor were in Daniel’s room, Taylor finishing up some school work and Daniel playing a video game. 

Luke, out of boredom, decided it would be fun to turn on Pandora on the tv and listen to it in the apartment. He played some sort of pop station, and was dancing around the loft, and signing horribly like he often does. I walked out of my room in confusion to see Luke dancing like a teenage girl in a club. I laughed upon seeing him, rolling my eyes and going to return to the safety of my bedroom and listen to music so I could finish reading without Luke distracting me. 

Just as I had my hand on the door knob, I hear a door slowly creak open at the end of the hall and turn to see Daniel staring out of his bedroom, only his face visible due to the darkness. He stared at Luke, who had moved on to twerking now, for a long minute or so, and then, with a shake of his head and a degenerate sigh, he slowly closes the door and I heard the lock click into place. Luke looks after him and yells “You’re breaking my heart!” and then collapses to the ground with his hand clutching his heart, which sent me into a fit of laughter as I retreated to my room. 

She and her aunt went to the bathroom before we got back in the car, so I was left by myself and decided to come so I wouldn't be left by myself. 

Once my friend came out of the bathroom she realised her aunt was still in the bathroom so she came up to me and whispered, “I’m going to jump out at her and scare her when she comes out.”

“Do you know which bathroom she went into?” I asked.

“I think so,” she answered. 

Tiptoeing up to the stall she patiently waited for her aunt to come out. 

Only you would do this, I thought.  My friend has always been the outgoing, funny kind of person. She and I had gotten into a lot of trouble as little kids. We had been friends for so long I’m starting to think I know her as well as she knows herself. 

I looked over at my funny friend who was now giggling to herself still patiently waiting. Suddenly the door slowly opened and my friend got ready. 

“BOO!” She yelled too loudly as she sprung out in front of the woman. 

At that moment I realised she had scared the wrong person and started dying laughing. The woman just stood there glaring at her. 

“Shame shame shame” the lady said.

 A crash rang through the house as a door shut ominously. My 18 year old brother, Josh, looked at me solemnly. My other 7 year old brother Andy whimpered. 

“There...Is a murderer...in...this very house,” Josh proclaimed dramatically. He looked left and right around the living room, one eyebrow raised. “We must protect this house, by the means of all dignified police officers...Nerf guns.” 

“Yeah,” shouted Andy.

Me, “Why don’t we just call the police?”

Josh looked at me like I had just asked the dumbest question in the world. “Because not even the police can track down this criminal. It’s up to us to keep our neighborhood safe!”

Well if Josh said it, it must be true! A teenager and two kids with Nerf guns can totally track down and capture a criminal, right?

The obvious course of action was to arm ourselves, and go through every door in the house methodically to find the criminal. We started with the bathroom down stairs. Josh instructed us on the “proper” way to open a door where an armed criminal could be hiding. Andy was stationed to the left, I to the right, and Josh in front of the door. Andy would slowly open the door, and I would fire. Josh would supervise. We went through every door, while crashes and strange groans were heard near our  parents room.

Finally, our parent’s room was to be opened. 

“Steady officers,” shouted Josh. A crash was heard behind the door. Trembling, we opened the door, and I fired at...the cat. Andy kept shooting. I asked him why. 

“The cat IS a murderer,” he replied

From this day I’ve never trusted my brother.

 I went into the bathroom with a grin on my face as I was thinking about how I could get them back, and some of my friends were still asleep as I walked back into the room. So, we went downstairs and quietly got ice cubes out of the freezer. We tiptoed back to the room and placed the ice cubes down their pants. One of them immediately jumped out of the blankets and screamed as they ran around the room, while the other just laid there groaning as we laughed at her. She eventually got up and chucked the ice cubes at us and since she was still half asleep she had no idea what she was doing. Even though I ended up having marker all over my face, I was able to get some of my friends back for it. 

I enter the house after practice. I go take off all of my soccer stuff and take a shower. After that, I go off to eat dinner. Nothing happens then either. I get ready to go to bed, and keep in mind that my sister is already asleep. I go to bed at around 11 o'clock. It isn’t until at around 1 when I hear someone call my name. “David.” “David, stop it.” It sounded like my sister, but she was asleep. I hear this several times before I went to go find the source of the sound. After looking around for a while, I realize that my house must be haunted because there is no other explanation for this noise. But it was 1 in the morning and I was really tired. After I start to wake up a little, I move closer to the source of the noise. It seems to be coming from my sister’s room. I open the door and my sister was sitting up, still asleep, sleep talking. She stands up and starts to move toward me…. then I wake up.