5th Grade, 2nd Place
by James Cooper,
Putnam County Elementary School
Have you ever felt like you were a hometown hero? You know, like you were put on earth for this moment. Well, that is what I feel like right now.
One week earlier…
“Time to wake up, honey. It’s time for school,” My mom yelled. Usually, I would try to argue and say five more minutes, but today I was excited to get to school. It was the day before fall break. I got out of my bed, got dressed, and then we headed off to school. I knew that today was going to be a good day because it was the day before a break, and we usually got to play outside the entire day. Every day on the way to school, we passed a creepy house, and it creeps me out a lot.
Today felt like forever, but I got through the day. I cannot wait to play baseball and football with Sam and Tatum for the whole break. Tonight was fun. Sam invited Tatum and me to spend the night at his house. I don’t know if it was the pizza or what, but when I went to sleep that night, I had a feeling that this was not going to be a normal break.
When I woke up the next morning, we went to this breakfast place that served pancake towers that had candy on it. After our huge breakfast, we went to get Tyler. He did not spend the night because he never can’t get any sleep at another person’s house. When we got him, we went to the field. We found the field about a year ago, and we made a baseball and football field. After we played for about an hour and a half, Sam’s mom called us for dinner. After we had dinner, we went to this bonfire in town, and we told spooky stories. We told a lot of stories, but one got me listening. It said that hundreds of years ago, there was a couple moving into the house. When they bought the house, the original owners had found the house in the woods and decided to fix it up and move into it. The thing is they did not stay there long. Some say that they were killed by ghosts, Others say that they just left the house and were never seen again. The only thing that everyone believes is that their ghosts haunt that place. If anyone dares to enter, they will never come out.
That next day I was very curious. Should I go in, or should I stay out of it? Although everyone said to not go in it, I figured it would not kill me to get a closer look at it. I rode my bike to the house because it was only about a quarter of a mile. When I got there, it just looked like an old torn down house, but the thing was that there were bars all around the house. There were no gates. Since there were no gates, I decided not to even bother going inside, but there was this voice in my head telling me to try to get into the house.
That next day I do not know what made me do it, but I decided to try to see what was in that house. The only thing that I was thinking about on the way there was if this was going to be my last day on earth. I had brought a rope with me, so I could climb over the gate. When I got onto the grass, I started to regret my decision, but it was too late. As I walked up the step, I was wondering if this was it. I was terrified to open the door, but then the door crack started to open and what was inside would haunt me forever. There was an ax
right next to what used to be a coat hanger. There were stairs that would lead upstairs, but I looked around the first floor first. I walked down a little hallway into the kitchen. In the kitchen, there was blood all over the counter, and there was a scull in one of the open drawers. After that, I went upstairs. When I looked inside one of the rooms, I saw modern furniture. I looked in another room, and it also had modern furniture. There was one more room, and for some reason there were lights on. I heard someone walking around. The door started to open, and someone came out. It was not a ghost it was a person. The guy said, “What are you doing here!” I asked him the same question. I looked in his room, and there was gold and diamonds everywhere. I asked him, “Where did you get all that stuff?” His face told me everything I needed to know. He was a robber. I ran downstairs, flew out the door, climbed the bars, so I could call 911.
One hour later…
“Dude how did you even get in the house?” asked Tyler. “Yeah, there are bars everywhere,”said Sam. Well, I am just glad that we got that robber. It turns out that the police had been looking for this guy for years. Now he is going to prison, and that kid who told us that it was haunted was his son.
I am so glad that I decided to go in there because if I had not, I would have never been a town hero.
