Yo.
This was written for a class assignment.
Sorry that it’s so long, but once you finish the piece, you’ll understand why I couldn’t cut it in half or anything. I hope you like it.
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Drumming my fingers on the top of the steering wheel, my head bobbing with the music, I briefly wondered what had led me here. A dare… a very small dare. Meant as a joke, but taken seriously. Some begged me not to go; some just gave others high fives. I only shrugged and accepted.
The dare was to go into the house, the “haunted” house, starting in the basement and going up to the attic, exploring it, and bringing down a pop can supposedly left up there by the last kid that had been dared to go up there. They say he was drinking a cola. “They” being, of course, the kids waiting outside who had dared him to go in.
No one does know what actually happens in that house—that’s why its dubbed haunted—because whoever goes into the house never comes back out. It’s quite cool, actually. Not for the kid who disappears, obviously, but to me… I think it’s pretty awesome having a haunted house in my home town.
Now, however, when I looked out of the window and up to the house, it looked kind of creepy. And foreboding. Ahh, I’m kind of having second thoughts about this…
It was almost midnight and the sky was clear, bright with the light of the full moon and stars. Two cars pulled up behind me and flashed their bright lights twice. I sighed and turned off the car, making the night silent as the grave.
I opened the car door and got out, slamming it shut. Four others got out of the two cars behind me, three boys and one girl. The girl walked toward me with a worried look on her face while the other three stayed by the cars, snickering about something.
“You know, Anna, you can back out of the dare,” my friend, Keri, said when she was close enough to hear. “I wouldn’t blame you. That house… it gives me the creeps.”
I wholeheartedly agreed. “I know, it does me too. But I can’t back out of the dare… what would the guys think?”
Keri threw a glance at the guys, David, Bobby and Drew, bringing her hand up to her mouth and lying the tips of her fingers on her lips, a habit of hers. “Forget them, Anna. Do what is right for you. They’ll still be your friends if you back out.”
“Yeah, they may be my friends, but they’ll think of me as a ‘fraidy cat. I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t want my ‘pet name’, if you will, to be ‘Fraidy Cat’ from now on. Would you want that?”
She opened her mouth to answer, but I held up a hand, cutting her off. “That was a rhetorical question. I was trying to make a point. Don’t answer it.”
She shrugged and sighed as the guys came up.
“So, Anna, are you excited for the ‘Haunted House of Horrors’? I know I’m excited to see you come running and screaming from the house white as a ghost.”
I snorted. “Psh… as if that’ll ever happen.”
David grinned. “Are you scared at all?”
I raised an eyebrow. “Come on. I live with my father, thank you very much.” My dad attempts to scare me at every possible moment of every day. Needless to say, I’ve gotten quite used to it. I stopped getting scared—mainly because I never let my guard down—when I was about ten. Now he tries and I just calmly say, ‘hey, dad’.
Bobby laughed. “That is true.”
I nodded. “’Tis.”
Drew looked at his watch. “Okay, you have to enter the house at midnight, in three minutes time. We’ll time you to see how long it takes you to get through the whole house, starting in the basement and up to the attic. Remember, you have to bring the pop can.”
“If it’s there,” I muttered.
“If you don’t come back within… oh, an hour, we’ll say, we will all run screaming from this place, assuming you got eaten by the ghost.”
“That’s a very encouraging thought.”
He smiled brightly. “No problem!”
I rolled my eyes and open the cellar door that led to the basement. “In I go, to where, nobody knows…” I mumbled to myself.
“What?”
“Nothing… just talking to myself.” I slowly descended to the depths of the basement, squinting to see around me, and jumping slightly when the cellar door slammed behind me. There were only boxes and boxes of storage stuff… I couldn’t really make out much anything else. So, I started walking nervously. There was a rectangular spot on the wall across the way and up a bit, so I assumed it was the door. Quickly, I made my way towards it. Just my luck, I tripped and fell to the ground, taking some boxes down with me.
I ended up landing on my elbows and winced when a box fell on top of me. “Ouch…” I got on my knees, brushing my front and back off as best I could. I stood up and looked at the box that fell on top of me. Some papers had fallen out and were scattered around everywhere. I sighed impatiently and quickly picked them up, coming to a stop when I came to a photograph.
It was an older picture, one that was black and white. There was a father, a mother, an older sister, a younger brother, and a baby in the mothers’ arms. I smiled. Kind of like my family… Without thinking, I put it in my back pocket, picked the rest of the papers up, and returned the box to its rightful position on top of a couple of others.
I ran up the stairs, taking them two at a time, and didn’t stop breathing hard until I shut the door from the basement and leaned against it. I wasn’t sure what it was, but I could’ve sworn that I saw something white glide between two piles of the boxes…
Looking around, I saw I was in a room with furniture covered in big white sheets. There were two chairs, a couch, a table and a fireplace, all covered in massive amounts of cobwebs. The living room, maybe? I breathed in deeply, walking toward the chair on the pretense of sitting down and gathering my thoughts (spider webs don’t bother me all that much) when I noticed a smell. Smoke. But… no one lives here. Is it a fire? No… it isn’t… I walked over to the fireplace and bent down, smelling the hearth. It smelled of recently burnt wood.
Furrowing my brow, I tried to figure out what was going on. Coming to the most obvious solution, I laughed at how ridiculous I had been. It’s just like the guys to come out here early and put a fire in there, just to freak me out. In fact, they probably set up the white thing, too. Rolling my eyes and laughing quietly to myself, I called out, “Drew… David, Bobby! Ha-ha-ha, very funny! I know you’re trying to scare me, but it won’t work because I have—AAAHHHHHH!”
As I was talking, I had put my hand against the stone fireplace and it collapsed inwards. Clumsy as I am, once again, I fell in, and, once more, landed on my elbows. “Ow… I’ve really got to stop doing that…”
Standing up and brushing myself off, I looked around to find that I was in a room, lit by a nice, warm fire, and a very plump chair right in front of it, facing the fire.
I walked slowly toward the chair, only jumping when the trap wall moved back into place.
“Hello.”
I whirled around and saw an older man, maybe in his late thirties to early forties smiling pleasantly at me with a cup of something hot in his hands.
I smiled nervously, not knowing what to do or think. “Uhmm… hi. I didn’t… uhmm… didn’t expect anyone to be here. I’ll uhh… I’ll leave you alone now…” I turned to go, but realized that the man was standing in front of my only escape route.
“Oh, no, that won’t be necessary. You must stay here, and enjoy this nice hot cup of cocoa. Warm up by the fire. Please… sit.” He motioned to the chair.
“Oh… uhmm… no thank you…”
He looked at me curiously.
“Stranger and all that…” I explained uncomfortably.
“Ah, yes. I would expect no less than that from a fine lady like yourself.”
I smiled as kindly as I could manage; this guy was really giving me the creeps! “Uhmm… who… who are you?”
“I am the ghost of this house.”
“You look real to me.”
“That I am,” he nodded lightly, “that I am. I guess you would more or less call me the phantom of this house, then.”
“Makes sense.”
There was an awkward silence then, and I really wanted to get out of there. I didn’t care how. It could be running and screaming for all I cared. All I wanted to do was get out. But I couldn’t. That guy was in front of the only exit! “Yes, well, my mother is going to be very worried if I don’t get home soon, so I’ll just be on my way…”
“My mother was a sweet, kind woman.”
I rolled my eyes. I could hear a story coming on about how he loved his mother so much and that everyone hated him, so, in order to live peacefully with his mother by his side (of course, all creepy psychotic bachelors have to have an Oedipus complex—a mother complex), he moved into this house and called it ‘haunted’ so people wouldn’t come near it. Only, when he was interrupted of his quiet, peaceful life…
“Uhmm…” I squeaked out as I slowly inched toward the right, “if you don’t mind me asking, what uhh… what happened to the other kids who came in here and never—“ My voice cracked. Clearing it, I tried again. “N-never, ahh, returned?”
The question seemed to snap him out of a day dream or something because he all of a sudden started to smile maliciously. “Ahh… the other wonderful children that came and visited me here in my home?” He chuckled. “This.”
Then, before I realized what happened, he had his hands around my throat, trying to choke me. I struggled to get his hands off. But I couldn’t. He was too strong. He was…
I couldn’t breathe… I was going to suffocate… I slowly started to enter the dark abyss…
“And… CUT!”
The man, Charlie, let go of my throat and smiled, holding out a hand to help me up. “Sorry about that, Anna. Did I grab you too hard?”
I took his hand and he pulled me up. “Nah, not too hard. You only startled me, that was all.”
David, Bobby, Drew and Keri came up to me, Bobby holding a bottle of water. I took the water from him and took a sip. “So, what do you guys think? Was it good acting?”
Keri smiled at me. “Some of the best I’ve ever seen.”
“Thanks,” I grinned. “But those falls really hurt. I always land on my elbows…”
The director came over, grinning like a five year old in a candy store. “That was perfect acting, Anna. It felt like it was actually happening. Now, make sure you’re here tomorrow morning at eight for the final shot!”
“I will! Thanks!”
Bobby, Drew, David, Keri, Charlie, and I all walked out, our minds set on getting pizza to celebrate.
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I really hoped you like it. Let me know, yeah? =D
I really enjoyed this story- i loved the twist at the ending! I think the story was well written, i could only see a few of things that could be improved:
