My new house

  My house is haunted. Definitely haunted. You might be asking yourself why I am saying such stupid things. Well, here are the facts:

So last month, Hoping to get away from the rat race and lead a calmer lifestyle, I moved away from the hustle and bustle of Le Havre to the remote and tranquil village of Château-Ville-Vieille. 

The first night I stayed in that ancestral country villa the night air was so still that it held the tension you feel in the calm before the storm. All was quiet, so quiet was it that you could hear a pin drop. Despite being shrouded in the peace that I so much desired, as I lay awake staring at the ceiling a sudden gust of wind blew through the net curtains. The bedroom was so grand that anything that fell to the floor, no matter how small it would be, would be heard throughout the room. With no forewarning, the lights, that until now had been turned off, started to flicker haphazardly. After this, I couldn’t get a wink of sleep but at the crack of dawn, it was as though nothing had happened. During the day, everything was normal, however, when night fell, the whole house started to come alive.

  By the second week, I wanted to go outside and to stay there as long as possible, nevertheless, once I was outside, the only thing I wanted to do was to return home and lock myself in my bedroom and never leave it ever again. I was feeling weird, awkward, it was unusual.

During the same week, at night, I put a carafe of water for me to drink and when I woke up, the water was not there. I also had a headache everyday! That was awful! I couldn’t stand living like this. Sometimes, when I was reading a book, a page was missing or I could see how a flower from the garden started to float in the air, but the most weird thing was that when I tried to catch it, it disappeared, really it disappeared like it went transparent really, trust me. The doors opened and closed by themselves, the wood of the stairs, doors and walls were creaking, everything was extraordinary.

So the next day, I went to the nearest shop that was about 2 kilometers away, to ask if somebody could tell me something about what was happening. The man I asked was really nice, he told me that years ago, a robbery took place in that house. Once the burglar broke into the house, he heard strange noises but he didn’t care about that.

  While there, he found a secret corridor behind one library we didn’t know which one, and there he found a place with precious objects made of gold, diamonds and gems. A tiara caught his eye and just as he was about to take it, the library fell through the floor and the bugler with it.

I went home and searched around the house to look for clues that could help me to understand what was happening. The house was cavernous so it took me a long time. After hours and days of searching, I finally found the corridor the man of the shop told me about. It wasn’t like I imagined it would be: it was covered with cobwebs and there were spiders everywhere and even one of the walls was falling apart. Then, a lot of mist appeared from the mortar of the bricks and some fairy dust flew in a whirlwind and out of nowhere a spirit, the spirit of the house started talking to me in a language I didn’t understand since I only know English. She was telling me the following sentences:

“Si tu veux trouver mon trésor. 

Cherche, cherche en abord,

Si tu audacieux est,

Cherche avec intêret.”

I translated it and she told me that if I wanted her treasure I needed to be courageous and search carefully and in the unknown, that I think should be the unknown places in the villa. But the problem is that I didn’t want her treasure, the only thing I wanted was to know what was happening in there! The only thing I wanted is that, not much, however I can’t have it! Really, this is not normal! On the other hand, that is the only way to know the truth, I’ll search for that treasure!

I started to look in the walls for a loose brick, like I’ve seen in the movies and I found one, so I pressed it and immediately, the floor fell away from under my feet and I slid down to another room covered with hieroglyphs. I understood some of the writing because I studied some at school when I was younger. This is what I understand:

I started to look in each pillar with a magical magnificent glass next to one of the pillars and in each of them was a piece of a map, so I took them, I put them together and realized that they were the plans of the house, but 2 pieces were missing. Where could I look for them and find them? From where could I start? 

As it was late and I was tired, I decided to search the next day.

I searched in my room: nothing, in the kitchen: nothing. I found a basement where there actually was one of the pieces in a bottle of wine. The only one left was the one where the treasure was.

Then I remembered the sentence the spirit told me. I got it! I needed to look abroad, the garden! I went to the garden and I started searching. I couldn’t help noticing a different flower, a Rafflesia Arnoldi. So, I looked amongst its red petals and there it was, the last part of the map. 

I localized where the red dot was and I started looking for it. I went to my bedroom. The map said it was there just under my bed. I moved it and there was a trap. I entered it, I went downstairs and there was the treasure with… a body with it? 

The spirit reappeared and explained to me what happened. She was the wife of an Italian pirate that had a treasure and hid it where nobody could find it. One day, she got sick and she died and her husband was so sad that he died of a broken heart. So now he haunted the house to protect his treasure and to look for revenge for his wife’s death. And when the burglar found the treasure, he killed him by making the room fall apart.

I called the police and everything was solved. I gave the money to the minister so they could give it to poor people in the world and I moved to Paris to become a philologist so I could help people with the ancient languages. And you’ll be thinking: and the villa, what happened to it?  Well, the villa is still haunted and now it is closed and nobody can enter it.