What lies beneath the abandoned house on Vermont St.

Six days out of the week I would wake up at 5 A.M. to do the paper route for my hometown, Richmond, Massachusetts. Where I would go from block to block delivering everyone's newspaper; I’d pass by my friend Jimmy's house as he would come outside at exactly 6:05 AM everyday of the week to wave and say hi to me as he grabbed his family's newspaper that I had just dropped off that morning and hurriedly get on his bike to catch up and join me. "Man, isn't it great that we don't have school today!", "Yes Jimmy, it is Saturday after all.", as he turned his head away from me and rolled his eyes and said. "Can you at least try and be positive for once!". We laughed and continued to ride our bikes; as I approached my last few houses for the day Jimmy suddenly stopped. I stopped my bike once I noticed that Jimmy was no longer riding beside me and looked back to see him just staring at the old abandoned house on Vermont St. He stood there holding his bike up looking at the old creepy house like he just saw a ghost or something. I yelled out to him, "Come on Jimmy I only got a few houses left then we can go to the park!". Jimmy shook his head and snapped himself out of his daze as he said, "Oh, right! Wait up!", he caught up to me as I finished delivering the rest of my newspapers to the last couple of houses on my paper route and afterwards we headed over to our local park where we soaked up the nice, sunny day by playing catch with one another and trying all different kinds of fast and trick balls that we had learned last summer while on our travel ball team. We were trying to act just like Roger Clemens as I passed the baseball over to Jimmy with my go to, lights out, fastball; as he caught it he took the baseball and started throwing it into his glove just looking down at it as he said to me, “You think what they say about the old abandoned house is true?”, “The part where they say that the ghost of the old mob boss that used to live there still haunts the place? C’mon Jimmy, don’t be ridiculous!”, I replied. “No man, the stuff about all of the kids that have gone in there trying to find money that the old owner had just left in there that have gone missing.”, “Nah, I don’t believe in any of that crap. It’s just some made up story by some of the high schoolers trying to scare us younger kids away from their little hide out spot, that’s all.”, I said that having an older sister who was a senior in high school and saw sneak out all the time to go hang out with her friends. “I think that i’m going to go tonight, I think that I am going to go and see for myself what is actually in that old, creepy, abandoned house.”, Jimmy said trying to convince himself that he wasn’t going to just turn back around and run home at the first sound, or sight of anything. “Suit yourself.”, “I don’t want to stay out too late to just see some rats scurrying around an old abandoned house or, even worse, bump into my sister and her friends doing things that they shouldn’t be doing; especially since I got the paper route the next morning.”, some weeks I would work on Sunday mornings as well and work from 3 o’clock in the morning to 6 or 7 o’clock in the morning. “Man, you’re no fun.”, Jimmy said with a disapproving look on his face. “If I weren’t fun wouldn’t you find someone else to hang out with on Saturday mornings?”, I replied. “Yeah, but you’re the only friend that I really have, or at least the only one who doesn’t make me do their homework for them.”, we laughed together as we continued to play catch in the park until about noon when we rode back to his house where his Mom made us her famous four cheese mac & cheese along with some perfectly sliced hot dogs as we both chugged down a can of soda with it until we were both stuffed. “Thanks for the food Mrs. Johnson!”, “Of course Matthew! Come back again soon sweetheart!”, she yelled out to me as I waved goodbye and rode back home. I live just a few blocks away, from where Jimmy lived, on Royal Wood Dr. I came home to see no car in the driveway, “Dad must still be on his business trip.”, I said as I looked over to the front of my house and saw that only the screen door was closed as I parked my bike on the side of the house next to the garage door and then walked in and saw straight ahead in the kitchen my mother doing the dishes while baking something in the oven with my sister lying on the couch with her legs hanging over the side of it with her headphones on, and plugged into her Sony Discman. I walked into the kitchen and said hi to my Mom as she stopped washing the dishes in the sink and turned around to give me a hug and kiss on the top of my head. She said, “How did everything go this morning? I heard you and Jimmy had a great time at the park.”, my Mom was best friends with Jimmy’s mom so anything Jimmy I did together she knew about. “It was fun, I feel like my fastball is really starting to look a lot like Roger Clemens’s!”, I said proud and excitedly, “Maybe if you were a little bit less of a dork then yeah!”, my sister, Jessica, yells from the family room. “Hey why don’t you go stare at yourself in the mirror for three more hours so that you can fix your ugly face!”. “Hey both of you knock it off right now! Or both of you will go to your rooms and be grounded for the rest of the day!”. I replied, “Alright.”, my Mom tussled my hair as I went to make my way to the staircase leading upstairs when my sister called out for me, “Hey Matt.”, trying to sound sweet and innocent, but probably about to say or do something super passive aggressive towards me. I turned back around to see what she wanted only to see her flipping me off. “Sorry for being mean.”, she said in a super sarcastic voice while still flipping me off. I sighed and headed upstairs to my room where I changed into a pair of comfortable clothes and then proceeded to crash on my bed until later that evening. When I woke up I looked over to my alarm clock to see what time it was as it read “8:10 PM”; I sat up on my bed, rubbed my eyes, and then headed down stairs. As I headed downstairs I heard my Mom on the phone with someone, and as I got closer and closer to the main floor of our home I heard my mother say, “No, Jimmy hasn’t stopped by our home recently; Matthew hasn’t been out of his room since he got back from playing at the park with Jimmy.”. I walked into the kitchen as Mom was on the phone and asked her, “Mom, what’s going on?”, while still rubbing my eyes trying to wake up. My Mom told Jimmy’s Mom on the other line, “Hope give me just a moment please.”, as she covered the phone up with her hand as she looked over at me and said, “Jimmy’s Mom just called and said that Jimmy hasn’t come back home yet from going out and playing with some of his other friends today. Do you know where they might be?”. Still feeling groggy and slowly trying to wake up I thought back to my earlier conversation with Jimmy talking about how he was finally going to go and sneak inside of the old abandoned house on Vermont St. to see if there was actually any money hidden there. I didn’t want to be a snitch and rat him out so I told her, “I have no idea.”. My Mom turned her head back to the phone, placing it up against her ear as she continued her conversation with Jimmy’s Mom as I went and made myself a plate of the delicious ham dinner that she had made while I was asleep earlier. I woke up the next day and went to school that Monday and when I went to go and meet Jimmy by his locker like I do every other school day he wasn’t there. It was weird and unusual to not walk with Jimmy in the hallways, eat lunch with him, and ride our bikes home after school together. I stopped by his house on my way back home from school to see if he was okay. Come to find out Jimmy never made it back home that night. That same day they sent out a search party looking for him, the search party lasted for a couple of months until the police eventually gave up their search for him and told the public that he was presumed dead. It’s been five years since Jimmy disappeared and I still hold a tremendous amount of guilt over not telling my Mom where Jimmy had planned on going that night. And everyday since then when I am on my way to, or from school, work, or baseball practice, I always stop and look as I wonder what could’ve happened? What did Jimmy find? What lies beneath the old abandoned house on Vermont St.?