• The staircase leading up to my room has fourteen stairs. Three of those stairs creak; the first, the fifth, and the thirteenth step. A few minutes ago I heard a creak. Now I'm worried, I don't have any pets, I don't have any siblings, and my parents are out of town. My house is brand new, we just built it last year when we came from New York. We found out that it was built on the ruins of a plantation destroyed in the Civil War. This whole town was. Some people have cried ghost before, but, it's never been confirmed. I would talk to one of the few people that have said something, but, they're all dead.
    s**t. The little voice in my head whispers as I hear another creak. The sound was getting closer, the high pitched sound of wood grinding rang out for a second before there was silence.

    Right now I only know three things for sure: the first being that there is someone climbing the stairs that lead to my bedroom, the second is that I really wished I had gone to the bathroom before I went to bed, and the third is that I really wish that I had locked my door. [********] The voice inside my head whisper yelled, another creak. My room was pitch black until now when the door began to open slowly, I can't help but look.

    It's hideous, the smell was the first thing I noticed about it, it smelt like rotting flesh and sulfur. Then I saw it. I tattered gray uniform that was hanging onto the body by maggot feces alone riddled with holes that could have been from bullets or were places that the maggots had eaten away at, there are hundreds of them sticking out of the thing and falling onto the floor in a wiggling, pale mass. The skin on his body is drawn tightly across the bone, leaving every last bit outlined, even the bugs wiggling around beneath the surface, scavenging for one last bit of edible before they started on the leather like skin. It began stepping toward my bed, dragging it's left leg behind it, repeating in his scratchy Southern drawl, “Yankee gotta go.”

    The thing is almost to the head of my bed, it started pulling out what looks like an old six-shooter, covered in rust, it's breath is wretched, I can smell it from here, the noises it was making were even worse up close. He reached for me and I shot out of bed. Damn. All a dream, I really have to stop eating before I go to bed. But, then I heard it, “Yankee gotta go, Yankee gotta go...”