Turns out my dad’s old guitar isn’t haunted

I haven’t been in my childhood home for months because it’s so far away, but now I have to stay there because my dad died, and my mom needs me to pick out some of his stuff to keep or throw away. He had this guitar when I was growing up that he used to play all the time. When I was ten years old, I heard my dad walking down the stairs during the middle of the night. I was always afraid of the dark, but this night something worse than monsters scared me. He didn’t turn on the lights as he stumbled and almost fell down the stairs, and I could hear him making this sound like a hurt animal. My mom came a few seconds after and she was yelling at him to turn on the lights, but he didn’t. He ran out the front door and slammed it, and for months we couldn’t find him. My mom and I were living with just the two of us when he showed up again. He acted like nothing had happened, but for the next year he stopped playing the guitar and just kept it in his room, so I never heard it around the house again. He started playing it again when I was eleven, but he never sang anymore. He would play these sad songs for hours, and sometimes it sounded like he was crying or screaming, but when I looked at him there were no tears and his mouth was shut. I asked my mom if she was okay with him playing it again, and she started crying and ran out of the room. I got the idea that it had something to do with the guitar, but she denied it. I asked my dad, and he told me to always stay away from it. I never touched it or played it, but my dad made sure it was out of sight each time I had a sleepover. By the time I was twelve, I had totally forgotten about the night he ran away, but I continued to stay away from the guitar. When I was fifteen, I was alone in the house with him when he picked me up and ran down the stairs with me. I screamed but he didn’t say anything as he ran out the door and down the street. It took me a while to fight my fear and go back into the house, but I found out my dad had left the guitar on the stairs. He never came back, and my mom and I moved somewhere else to get away from it, but she told me that the police found out that he took the guitar with him that day. She said I would never see the guitar again, and when I turned eighteen, she told me that the police found my dad weeks later in some ditch with no body. I never learned what happened to him, but I assumed the police kept the guitar because they couldn’t find any family members to give it to. So when my mom told me to pick out anything from the house to keep, I decided to go to my dad’s old room to see if the guitar was there. I pulled back the blankets, and there it was. I guess she lied to me. My hands started shaking as I picked it up, and I felt my dad’s presence around me. I think he’s inside me now, but it’s okay. He’s playing a beautiful melody, and he’s singing along.<br><br>[The end]<br><br><br>Edit: I had an idea for a sequel, but I haven’t written it yet, so my apologies for the false advertising.