FLASH FICTION CONTEST #2

The Mystery of the Haunted Neighborhood

It was a gloomy, rainy, and boring Monday, while I was walking down the street. “What are we doing?” I asked my friend, Karina. She said, “I have to show you something.” We walked into a neighborhood that was completely empty. We heard some voices around the corner, but when we got to the end of the sidewalk the voices disappeared and nobody was there. We kept walking in the neighborhood, and I kept hearing voices, but nobody was there. “What are those weird voices?” I asked Karina but she said, “What weird voices?” I explained to her what I kept hearing and she said, “I don’t hear anything.” She explained to me that she kept on seeing shadows of people, but I didn’t see anything. Then, something struck me. I said, “We got to get out of here! I think this place is haunted.” Karina and I ran as fast as we could, I heard voices and she saw shadows but, we kept running, ignoring everything in our way.

We kept on running until somebody grabbed our wrists. My heart skipped a beat as we turned around and saw someone with a black hood. The person took off her hood and it was Karina’s mom! She asked, “What are you girls doing in this abandoned neighborhood?” She said that someone told her that they saw two girls walking into this neighborhood, so she decided to check if it was us. Thankfully, Karina’s mom found us and brought us home. We told her the whole story that happened at the neighborhood and we promised her that we won’t go there unless we tell our parents that we are. After we got home, Karina turned on the news and we were shocked about what we heard. A robber and his gang were living in a house that was in the haunted neighborhood. The news said that the police found him in unconscious, so they rushed to the hospital where he was recovered but he didn’t remember anything that happened. Th photo that was on the news had two girls that looked exactly like Karina and me, but the neighborhood was completely empty when we went there. I could feel the hair on my neck sticking straight up and my whole face getting hot. We were so worried what might happen to us. What if the police thought it was us who hurt the person? Karina turned off the news and we decided to figure out what happened tomorrow.

The next morning, Karina and I went to the police station to ask them to show them the photo. I was shaking as we walked into the door. Goosebumps were all over my arms. Surprisingly, the police said that they figured out this morning that the picture was photoshopped and someone was trying to frame us for the injury. The police officer also told us that the picture was taken by one of the people from the police station. Karina asked, “Can we see the security camera in the room where you keep the photos?” The police showed them the video, but nobody was in that room at all. Then I had an idea. We watched it again in slow motion and noticed and someone had edited the video. The only person who could have edited it was the person who could have done that was the photographer because he was watching the security cameras all day. He was the one made the robber unconscious and he was arrested. Then, something shocking happened! The photographer confessed that he was the one who was made those weird voices in the neighborhood to scare so he could get a good picture to Photoshop. The police found the robber the day before we went to the neighborhood so that’s why they didn’t see anybody. That’s how Karina and I solved a mystery, even though we were scared that our lives were in danger.