Evil Inside by Katie Burgess (phonics readers TXT) 📖

During dinner, more of after dinner, I asked if I could go outside. I went outside, one of the leaf piles was gone. I think it was the one that Janus would have been under. All of the leaves were all scattered over the lawn, exposing my sisters bloody dead body. “Where’s Lily, she’s always home before dinner? Do you know anything Sylvia?” I quickly ran inside as I heard my father saying these words. I tugged at my fathers sleeve, “I raked the yard today. All into one big pile. I think I did a very grand job at it.” My father started to stand up when he realized he still hadn’t finished his dinner meal. My father always ate every single little thing on his plate, he thought it was rude to not. I walked back outside, Blake and Johnny followed me like little ducklings following the mother duck. “Wheres the other pile, the one with the tall elf girl?” I just shook my head slowly at him, Blake knew her name. “That leaf pile was gone when I walked out here, I have no idea where she went or why she scattered the leaves. We should probably rake again, cover up Lily. She’s starting to smell a little bit weird.” I walked over to her, a hole right next to her eye, dried blood surrounded it. She was so gross right now. “I think that you should rake the leaves again and then spray some of her smelly perfumes all over the backyard.” Johnny wanted a word in the conversation. I began to rake the leaves back on top of her, in one big pile like I had told my father. I heard some distant screaming near the end of the street, and a thin line of smoke appeared from where Janus’s backyard would be.

The next day was a Sunday, which meant homework day all throughout the house. I wasn’t worried about schoolwork though, I was worried about my parents noticing that Lily was still ‘not home’. I awoke at about seven thirty, I had a very rough sleep knowing that the new girl on my street had killed my own sister. I heard the little boys on the couch watching their little kid cartoons, the only reason they liked sundays. We had to go to church as well, Lily always loved going to church. I started to cry as I slipped on my robe over my huge pajamas. I heard my parents door opening, probably my mom going to go make breakfast. I saw my mom’s shadow as I was just about to open the door to my room. I heard the steps down the staircase, I followed trying to find the source of them.

“Good morning my sweet little boys, which cartoon is on now?” My mom loved the little twins, she didn’t want them to ever grow up. “It’s Power Rangers, Ultra Sunday Fun Time!” Johnny started to jump up and down on the couch, he was wearing the Power Rangers Pajamas. “Mom, what’s for breakfast this morning? Are we going to church? And can I go to Janus’s house today to see if she knows what we are learning about in school?” “Whoah, whoah, and a big fat whoah missy. What is with all of the questions and lack of good morning huggies?” I hugged my mom, all of the answers were yes or french toast sticks. I knew the routine. I sat at the ‘bar’, “would you like any help with breakfast or waking anybody up this morning?” I was helpful. “Can you please wake up Lily and get Johnny in here, I need to speak with him. He’s not in trouble, so don’t be so smirky about it.” I walked out of the kitchen, and pulled Blake up the staircase with me. “What am I supposed to do, I was told to wake up Lily!” I started to freak out while whispering. “Tell Sylvia to act like shes Lily and that Sylvia is going to be pretend sick today.” That was a fantastic idea, I told you guys he was a genius in a smaller package. I walked into my sisters room and Lily was in her bed, but she wasn’t.

I mean, she was somewhat faded, almost as if she was a ghost. “Sylvia, wake up and look across the room.” I shook Sylvia until she turned over and swatted me away. She lightly sat up, squinted, and saw Lily as if she was actually there in her bed. “LILY! Wake up and get down to mom, she wants you, right this minute.” Sylvia screamed, as if Lily was actually there, trying to replicate the morning routine. “Look, you have to pretend to be Lily today, Sylvia is going to be deathly sick and doesn’t want to talk to anybody except for you. Got that all?” I was trying to be stern with her. It didn’t work. She stood, quickly shoved me out of the room. She emerged a whole minute later, looking exactly like Lily would this early in the morning. Hair up in a bun, spunky popsicle pajamas pants with a ‘I Heart Nerds’ shirt on top of a tank top. Even the nerd shirt was hanging off of her shoulder at the perfect angle, they were twins. She walked downstairs in her light yellow slippers that didn’t match the outfit at all, her signature thing in the mornings. “Good morning mother, do you need help with breakfast or with the twins?” She was an amazing actress. “Yes, could you help me with cooking the sausage patties for your fathers breakfast, we don’t have enough french toast sticks for him.” My mom believed that Lily was right in front of her.

Syl stepped near the stove top, grabbed a frying pan and began to cook three sausage patties for the dad breakfast sandwich, large style. My father never ate three unless it was sunday, ever other day he only had two, except for mondays of which he had only one. How did Sylvia know so much, she’s never been awake this early in the morning for the past two years. I was watching this weird cartoon about a cat and a fish and their adventures in the neighborhood they lived in, watching the little twins. The smells coming from the kitchen were amazing, then I smelled, what is that smell? It’s familiar, yet nowhere near familiar. I slowly walked towards the kitchen and saw ghost Lily, lying right next to the sliding door. She had the same hole next to her eye as the real Lily had. This was all very alarming, I screamed. My mom came rushing over and hugged me, “what’s going on? Are you hurt?” My mom was crazy whenever she thought somebody was hurt.

I shook my head, “everything is fine, I just remembered that my school was doing a play and the lead girl has to scream like that. I’m auditioning, you know.” I was trying to play it cool even though I was freaking out on the inside. Syl looked towards me and then looked towards the sliding door and saw dead ghost Lily. She had a gaping opened mouth and looked like she was going to scream.

That day at church, I saw Janus. I saw her praying, but I didn’t see her family. In fact, I only saw her during that one part. Janus was just freaky, I was almost scared to go to her house after we got home. I went anyway, I had to know what was going on. Three cars were in the driveway, only one was the first time. I knocked, nobody answered. I went to the back door, she had two separate garden sheds in her backyard. I didn’t even have one garden shed. I walked up the steps to her deck, the sliding door was opened. I knocked, it seemed that nobody was home. Her house had a whole lot of doors, most of them were locked tight and shut.

I was practicing, when I felt a strange presence in my house. I stopped, I shouldn’t have. I opened my door and slipped out into the upstairs hallway. I heard footsteps coming up the staircase, a robber. I readied a weapon, a teleport pod. My family was special, everybody had powers and had our own special type of technology suited to our special powers. I was a naturalist, I had mostly powers of nature, but when I was focused enough, I could chanel darker powers. I had never meant to learn to channel the darker powers, they just kind of came to me one day, last month. That’s why my family moved here, I accidently got overwhelmed with my new found darker powers and something happened in the last town. I didn’t kill that girls sister, my dark spirit did. Everybody in my family has a dark spirit, mine just happens to be a bit more powerful than I am on my own. It’s scary when a dark force overtakes your mind and body. Most people don’t like it, wait… make that all people don’t like it. Having a darker personality controlling you, nobody would like that feeling. I fainted after that girl died because the darker side of me had used too much of my energy, I got burned out like a lightbulb. When I awoke I smelled french toast and sausage, but couldn’t see anything. I used one of my naturalist powers to explode the leaves that were on top of me, scattering all of them into the lawn and ran back to my house. I went looking, creeped down the staircase. I saw that girl, Julia, in my kitchen. She kept opening drawers, was she looking for something? Or was she looking for somebody? I approached her slowly, placing the teleport pod to my room onto the floor behind the couch. “Hello, I see you’ve let yourself into my humble home. I apologize that nobody came when you knocked at the front door, we were all upstairs playing a board game.” I was trying to pretend that we were a normal family. “I just came to talk to you, and explain some of the school work you may have missed.” She was nice-ish, I still wasn’t sure if I should trust her though. I was homeschooled, but I guess it would be nice to know the standard for education around here. You know, make sure they won’t think that I’m stupid if I haven’t learned something yet. “Um, well you see, the thing is… I’m actually homeschooled, I don’t got to public schools or private schools. But I would love to get to know you a little bit better, and to be able to know some of the standards of education for this area.” I was pretty dumb about normal stuff, very smart about powers though. She was staring at me like I was crazy. “Why are you staring at me?” “You should probably go to the public school, people would think that you were weird if they found out you were new and were homeschooled.” She was concerned about me, she was somebody who was trustworthy, I’ve never met