Ruby S. Mr. Roberts And The Old House On The Hill

[Mr. Roberts And The Old House On The Hill] Ruby S.

It was early in the morning and Will Roberts sits at his desk everyday watching the likes and views slowly go down. One day it’s 15,000, another day 10,000 and soon it’s only 100. Mr. Roberts, not knowing what to do, opens his comments and reads them. One comment caught his attention, “You should go to a haunted house. Like if you agree,” it said. Only 25 likes though. Mr. Roberts knew he needed something new to entertain people. He looked out his window and stared at a house on top of a hill. Mr. Roberts jumps out of his chair and grabs a bag shoving various pieces of clothing in it and his camera and runs outside opening his car door. Mr. Roberts drives up to the old crooked house on top of the hill, one hand clutching the steering wheel and the other holding onto his camera. He closes the car door and enters the house. Wind blows in his face as he opens the huge door to be met with a small living room, a door to his left and a staircase leading to the 2nd floor. Mr. Roberts turns his camera on with a click and explores the house. He opens the door to the left and enters an old timey kitchen, the lights still work but have a bit of a flicker. There is another door in the room that was left open, Mr. Roberts could see a washer and dryer, He guesses it’s the laundry room and moves on back to the living room and up the stairs. The stairs go up another floor but Mr. Roberts decides to stay on the 2nd floor exploring all the rooms. After a bit of ex-

ploring he concludes that all the rooms just have an odd wallpaper, a bed, and a nightstand. In Mr. Roberts’ eyes, he thinks this house is uninteresting and needs something cool to shock the viewers. “Ahem,” Mr. Roberts clears his throat then turns the camera around so it’s facing him. “You see folks I am in the very requested old and spooky house that sits on top of this hill in my town,” he says, deepening his voice. “The second I stepped into this house I was greeted with the howl of the wind, ‘’ Mr. Roberts paused as if he was thinking. “And the wind whispered welcome when I walked in,” he said. Then turned the camera off to give the viewers suspense. He goes up to the third floor. There are three doors. Mr. Roberts opens the first door on his left, nothing interesting about it, just a closet, it had three shelves all full with board games for children and old batteries. There’s one blanket at the very bottom placed on the floor, folded very carefully. Mr. Roberts guesses that whoever used to live here was neat and organized, but had terrible taste in wall papers. He closes the closet door and walks forward, opening another door on the left of the hallway. This room is a bathroom with rubber ducky wallpapers. The bathroom looked very fancy and vintage. He turns the camera on, pointing it to face the room slowly moving to get a full view of the bathroom. Showing every detail, like the sink tap dripping and the old conditioner bottle only half full. Everything had a gold accent, everything was used but was placed neatly. Then he closes the door and walks across the hall to see another door, Mr. Roberts opens the door and sees a beautiful room with doves hand painted on the walls. There’s a beautiful glass chandelier, a desk, and a king size bed. Mr. Roberts is taken back by the beauty of the room. Then he rushes over and plops himself on the very comfortable mattress. He takes out his computer and uploads his video. After a bit of work he notices his computer is almost dead and he left his charger in the car. He makes his way down the stairs and out the front door, the cool breeze hitting his face. He walks down the pathway towards the driveway. He opens the car door and reaches back

to grab his bag, once he is in reach of the bag he grabs it and pulls it out of the car, he swings it around his shoulder onto his back and walks back up the driveway. He makes it to the door and twists the handle, swinging the door open. Once one foot was in the house the wind began to blow into his face and a faint welcome was whistled, Mr. Roberts did not think much of it and went back upstairs. The next day Mr. Roberts continued his lies and recorded another video. “Did you know out back there used to be a pool. One day the parents of two girls decided to fill the pool with cement so they told the girls not to play in the pool but never told them why. Later that evening, the two sisters snuck out to play in the pool. They soon heard footsteps coming and hid under the water to only be pushed under by mud. People say the ghosts of the two girls still haunt the house,” Mr. Roberts says, his voice with a more spooky tone. He then goes out back and shows a place on the patio with uneven cement and says that this is where they died. Only lies ever came out of his mouth. This grown adult should know better, but he doesn’t and that’s gonna be his downfall. Mr. Robert stares at his reflection, his brown hair, dark brown eyes, dark grey pajamas that his mom got him. He gave his “camera smile” then walked over to the king sized bed behind, he laid down and shut his eyes trying to drift off into slumber but an odd presence stopped him from sleeping. He hears a faint laughter and quickly opens his eyes open with fear to see two girls one with a blonde bob the other with long brown hair, Mr. Roberts watches in fear, he was tempted to scream but kept his mouth shut, he didn’t want to upset the girls. He closes his eyes hoping they would leave but his tiredness took over and he fell asleep, in his dreams he can hear the pitter patter of children’s wet feet on the wooden floors. Mr. Roberts wakes up and looks around, his hair messy and his mind still thinking. When he looks around he sees no girls. He gets out of bed and checks the floors looking for water. No water. Mr. Roberts is confused but pushes away the thought and assumes it was just a dream. He walks to the bath-

room with rubber ducky wallpaper and gets ready for the day. Once he is all ready he goes back to the bedroom and grabs his camera, then heads to the kitchen. After he gets to the kitchen he grabs an apple and munches on it thinking of more lies to tell. Soon his apple is practically gone, he tosses it in the trash and sits at the table storming up ideas, sadly no ideas he thought of stood out. Still being a bit sheepish he drags himself upstairs to grab his laptop, still checking for water. Once the laptop is in his hands he begins his way down the stairs, step by step avoiding any nails sticking up from the carpet. His feet hit the carpeted flooring and he turns to his right making his way towards the kitchen door. He sits back down in his chair and opens his laptop checking his emails, notifications, then his videos. Mr. Roberts notices a recent spike in his views, he grins happily. His smile quickly fades as he realizes he has nothing new, he needs something big, something that will blow everyone away. “That’s it!” Mr. Roberts exclaims and hops off his chair and begins rushing into the living room, he runs over to the fire and picks up ash, not caring about how his hands will look. He goes around the house sprinkling bits of ash in places. Lots in the kitchen and the third floor hallway and some by creepy doors. He finishes sprinkling the ash around the house and places his gray hand that’s still covered in ash on a wall to make an imprint. He thinks this is his best idea yet. After he is finished he does his daily activities waiting for the sky to darken and the stars to poke through. He notices the sky darkening. He walks around the house turning off the lights and only leaving dim lamps on, the only sound throughout the house is the pitter patter of two feet and the clicks of the lights turning off. All the lights are out and Mr. Roberts makes his way up the stairs towards the third floor bedroom. His hand reaches out to turn the doorknob, opening into and walking into the room. He grabs his camera and places it on the desk facing him, he clicks the record button and begins speaking. “Hello everyone, as you can see I’m still in this house, nothing very interesting has happened until today,” Mr. Rob-

ert says, leaving a pause for suspense. He leans closer to the camera. “Today I found out that on a full moon just like today, at some point this house caught on fire. Flames bursting out of the house. It’s a dark night and the clouds and fog covered the house. Some say the house looked like the moon shining through clouds, others say it looked like a normal day but this very night I found ash around the house and a handprint on the wall,” Mr. Robert whispered into the camera’s mic. Mr. Roberts picks up the camera still recording and flips it around so it’s no longer pointing at him. He walks out of his room and turns down the hall to show the camera the hand print. He then walks back into the bedroom and shows the beautiful full moon outside his window. Even though Mr. Roberts had seen the view before, the full moon made him stop, he watched the trees sway as if they were dancing, the stars glistening and the moon was like a table centerpiece, a beautiful and important item. Mr. Roberts snapped out of the trance and placed the camera back on the desk facing him. “If anything else happens tonight I will inform you all,” Mr. Roberts pledged. He turns off his camera and walks over to his bed and begins uploading the recording to his laptop to publish. He clicks publish and waits. While he is waiting he starts to feel his eyelids fall and his body relax, not even seconds later he is fast asleep.

Mr. Roberts is laying in bed dreaming of who knows what until he hears crackling and he feels his body heat up. He opens his eyes and is met with large flames. He jumps out of bed in a panic and runs out the door burning his hand on a metal doorknob. He runs down the third floor hallway with flames burning and growing in every direction. He feels his face heat up. He needs to get out. He rushes down the stairs and leaps over fallen boards. He is just about to make it out the front door when the chandelier falls and shatters. Glass was thrown everywhere. A huge flame grows in front of the door. Mr. Roberts gasps and covers his mouth running around frantically. He

remembers the back door and rushes to the kitchen laundry room. The laundry room door was closed. He opens the door, burning his hand again. Mr. Roberts slams the door behind him. The room was untouched by the fire since the door was closed. He slams the backdoor open and bolts out of the house. Mr. Roberts inhaled lots of smoke and became dizzy. Only sirens can be heard in the background before Mr. Roberts hits the ground with a thump. He opens his eyes and sees a white room with a window and a single balloon by the door. Mr. Roberts is in the hospital. A woman walks into the room wearing dark blue scrubs and has her blond hair up in a bun. After a bit of speaking with the nurse Mr. Roberts learns that they were worried about how much smoke he inhaled and how he hit his head on concrete, he luckily has no major injuries, a few burn marks and some stitches in his head. Mr. Roberts was fine though, he went home and saw his mother. She was sitting on the couch of Mr. Roberts apartment holding a gift with a card. “This is for you,” his mother said with a heart warming smile. Mr. Roberts gently takes the gift and card from his mother. Mr. Roberts opens the card and reads, “Honesty is the fastest way to prevent a mistake from turning into a failure -James Altuche.” Mr. Robert felt guilt slowly rising as the puzzle pieces in his head slowly formed. Everything he lied about came true. The wind speaking, the two girls, the house burning down, the more he lied the worse it got. He hugged his mother and thanked her, then he opened the gift. A new laptop. “I knew you lost your old laptop so I got you a new one, do great things with this,” the woman said, giving her son another heart warming smile. Mr. Roberts did what his mother told him, instead of posting untruthful experiences he deleted them all no matter how many likes or views. Then he wrote a blog about his experience, no lies this time. Everything he said was the truth. His blog and writing became a hit when it was published, News reporters asking to have a word, many interviews. The money he earned from being on television and ads he spent to rebuild the

house on the hill. He kept the crazy wallpapers but modernized the house. Mr. Robert soon lived there, never telling a lie again. Well, maybe a few white lies here and there but the house was forgiving. You can still find his blog on the internet somewhere. Not sure where though.

“That’s all my friends! Thank you for listening to my presentation on my grandpa, Will Roberts, Jack Roberts out,” I say to my classmates who are amazed by my presentation. I smile, not a heart warming smile or a fake smile but a proud smile. My presentation was the best, but that’s just my opinion. Maybe I will publish this book and name it, Mr. Roberts And The Old House On The Hill, I’m not sure though.