Talking dead boys

It was probably 8 years ago or so when this happened. I was staying at my grandparent’s house for the weekend to help with some yard work and other household projects. I was a teenager at the time and had been tasked with painting the interior trim. My cousin, “Mike” was around my age and was helping me with this. <br><br><br>One day, as we were painting, I got some paint on my jeans. So I had to go take a shower before dinner. I got in the shower and had just gotten the water running when I hear the shower curtain (which was on the outside of the tub) rustle. I look up out of the shower to see this little boy peeking in at me when he quickly runs away before I could say anything. I turned off the water and put a towel on to go find my grandpa to tell him what had happened. He had no idea who it could’ve been and looked around the house. No one was there. <br><br><br>I finish my shower and go back to painting. It was getting late so my grandpa asked if we wanted to go to Wendy’s to get something to eat. I said yes, and so did my cousin, who had been painting in a different room the whole time that I was showering. We got in the car to go and I told my grandpa about the little boy in the shower. I finish telling the story and my cousin says “Wait, what? I saw a little boy too!” He had seen the same little boy walking out of his room while he was painting. <br><br><br>We get to Wendy’s and my grandpa goes inside to get us food. My cousin and I are still talking about the boy in the house. We figure he must have come in from the backyard. But neither of us had seen him go outside. As we’re talking, a young couple and their little boy come walking up to a car that was parked a few spots away from us. As we’re sitting there we notice weird things about this couple and their boy. First of all, my cousin and I can’t stop staring at the little boy because he reminds us so much of the boy we saw in my grandpa’s house. Second, something was strange about the way the parents were acting. They looked like they were in a zombie-like daze or something. They didn’t even look around to see if their kid was okay as he ran towards the car. And lastly, as they drove away, the boy in the back looked straight at me and smiled. He then covered his face with his jacket. <br><br><br>It was just so weird, and after telling my grandpa about it, he says “Maybe that was the boy you saw and they went home and he didn’t like the dinner his mom made so he came back to your house looking for food. Lol.” We all had a good laugh about it and that’s it. That’s the end of the story. Nothing else really happened. <br><br><br>But the other day I was thinking about that and I started wondering about that little boy. I found out that my grandpa grew up in that house and had lived there his whole life. He didn’t die until a few years ago so he had been in that house for over 80 years. I don’t know when the house was built, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was sometime in the early 1900’s. So I got to thinking. If my grandpa had lived there his whole life, then he must have grown up there when he was a kid too. And I started to imagine this boy growing up there. A little boy who is just as curious as you and I were when we were young. Always getting into things and always wanting to know more. Always trying to push the limits of what he can do and what he knows. I wonder if he ever went on an adventure into the woods behind the house, never to return. I wonder if he ever fell out of a tree or drowned in the river that’s not too far away. I wonder if he ever got some bad food from the ice box and died from it one day. <br><br><br>These are all very real possibilities. But you know what they say. “Curiosity killed the cat.” And who knows. Maybe this little boy was that cat. Maybe he was just too curious for his own good. But maybe he wasn’t. Maybe he didn’t die and maybe he’s still here. Watching over his home. Watching over his family. And maybe, just maybe, he saw something one day that he didn’t like. Something like a young couple who were in a zombie-like daze, wandering into a fast food restaurant. Or maybe he saw something like a little boy chained up in the back seat of a car, forced to cover his face with his jacket. <br><br><br>Maybe this little boy saw something like that. Maybe he saw the couple before they came to the Wendy’s where we saw them. Maybe he went into my grandpa’s house to try to warn us. Or maybe he was trying to tell us something else. Maybe he was trying to tell us the truth.