10 Not Alone.

Chapter 1

The house on the hill.

Big, wide lawn and swings in the corner of the big ol' garden.

Two-three floors of the house filled with knick- knacks, have vintage vibes combine with modern style type of house and the most important part of it, The balcony.

The balcony having the view of the breath-taking hilly region surrounded by the clouds as a blanket on them.

*sigh* That was what Ethan had envisioned as his perfect and ultimate house to look like and felt like where he would like to spend his future in.

Those were his initial thoughts when he decided to buy a house as he got promotion and his life was shifting to somewhat toward stable living standards. He had some big plans for it.

But it all were put to halt when the cruel and unforgiving reality hit him and gave him no option except to compromise (At-least for the near future, he was not a quitter after-all), but it seemed that life had other plans prepared for him at that time.

Buying his dream house have to wait because... it was freaking expensive.

His dream house was much more demanding than he had expected it to be. And not to forget... little (very) hard to find.

The realization had hit him like a sledgehammer.

Expenses and taxes would engulf all his savings in one go and he can't take that big of risk right now and be in debt again. He finally was getting little freedom and was not to bounded to any mind crushing due dates for pending loan payment at last. He got rid of them last month and was short on money as his salary was yet to come.

But anyway he HAD to find a house to live as he was promoted and his office was shifted to another city.. Denver, Colorado.

Denver city was new to him and he needed help to settle there.

That was the reason why he decided to ask for help from the company only to find himself in the middle of the heated discussion, which held for almost two hours, to finally come to conclusion. Both him and his boss(es) come to the middle ground that they would finance his packing and moving and would also find him the place to live there.

As company wanted to expand their business in the city, they decided to accept the request to support Ethan. Not out of humanity.

They would be finding him a place to live but Ethan had to pay the bills, at-least they could have financed the first month of his rental bills but… he can't complain about it. After experiencing ‘little’ heated discussion round with the administrative people had taught him to not expect much from them.

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Ethan had to do the final confirmation of all the address changing boring paperwork, nothing but time-consuming formalities but it had to be done. Some were completed from his home town but some required him to go to the city.

But before doing that he wanted to visit the house first which his company had chosen for him.

Ethan didn't inform anyone before going there so that he could see the true reality of the place, if he had told the company they would have hid the issues from him.

He took the train and in afternoon he was standing in-front of ‘The’ house.

"huh..not bad", so apparently his company doesn't hate him as much as he was expecting them to be.

From outside, house looked decent enough to live in it and not regretting spending half of his time there.

Oh boy, He was wrong about that, for sure.

When he was distracted watching the grass growing in the pathway and observing the neighborhood, he missed something or to be more specific... someone watching him from inside the house.

Ethan entered the house and was little surprised. The house was decent and quite average but was very spacious.

“hmm, how big was the budget? Ohh it was on the sale... Understandable”, He mumbled to himself as he saw the “ON SALE” board left on the kitchen isle. Might had been left by the real estate agent. Aside from kitchen, there was spacious living room where he was standing.

Left to it was the bedroom, attached bathroom and walking up the stairs were two more rooms.

One on the right of the corridor was the room facing toward the neighbor house and the room left to the corridor was facing the streets. He glanced inside the room. They were bedrooms and he saw that one bathroom at the end of the corridor.

After glancing inside the room, he came downstairs.

Strange.

“Did I left the door open accidentally?” He thought to himself as he was walking down the stairs and saw the bedroom downstairs with door slightly open. “But I don’t remember opening it.” Thinking about it confused, walking toward the said room.

Strange.

It seemed that previous owner had left some of their belongings there. It looked like they were in hurry because those items looked new and in working conditions.

Work out equipment, a giant teddy bear, rocking chair and a decent looking cupboard with a full-size mirror attached to it.

Those were the items that were present in that room, just scattered around the corners with a single hanging bulb holder with bulb attach to it hanging in the air in the middle of the room.

“Why is this room much colder than other rooms?” Ethan wondered. But then, he was hungry. Hungry like a starved animal so he blamed his hazy mind and concluded that he must be overthinking and decided that he was satisfied with the small tour around the building and just wanted some belly fulfilling meals.

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He was standing on the entrance of the house and was tying his shoes and the second he stood up he swear he felt the cold breeze blowing over his shoulder.

He jumped and fell on the ground out of the gate out of sheer shock and friskily stood himself up so no one saw him struggling on the ground.

“wowww... I am being sensitive; I need to feed myself like right now” Ethan mumbled to himself embarrassed.

Without giving it a second thought he locked the entrance gate and tossed the keys inside the pockets of his jeans and crossed the road to go to the nearby café.

Eating till his heart’s content and after that he completed the formal work. Done with the paperwork he felt that an invisible weight being lifted up from his shoulder.

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Ethan didn’t get the chance to visit the house again as he had very limited time left in his hand, the last train going to his hometown was leaving soon.

When train started moving, him being sitting on an empty seat facing the windows with his mind not occupied with any dire needs or anything, his mind drifted and was thinking about the feeling he got when he was in that room.

“Air condition might be needed to be fixed in that room” He tried to rationalize his jumpy behaviour.

“Will talk to the agent to fix it and will make the company pay for it” Ethan thought about it with a little smirk spreading on his face.

While he was back in his town and was under the safety of his fluffy blanket that was draped on him, there was a rocking chair in another part of his ‘soon to be’ house that was rocking in the darkness of the night.

Only if someone had warned him about it.

If only.

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