Young Writers Society

Prompt: Write about a character who goes into a haunted house... Over the next four hours, he is encountered by four visitors. Describe each in great detail. As the night goes on, the visitors get worse and worse. 

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“Really? A haunted house?” Todd scoffed at his friend’s juvenile taste of a guy’s night out.

“C’mon, it’s not actually haunted. Don’t be a chicken.” George taunted Todd with various clucking noises that were enough to put a chicken to shame. Nonetheless, the two teens raced past the decaying courtyard and into the gothic doors just beyond the rusted iron fencing and overgrown weeds. As Todd pushed open the front door, he immediately noticed a layer of dust dry out the insides of his mouth. He blinked several times in order to see through the darkness.

“Man, is this place sick or what?” George screamed and tried to make his voice echo off of the moldy walls.

“I don’t know about this…” Todd felt his heartbeats speed up the farther from the exit he wandered. He brushed his hands on surrounding objects so that he could attempt to navigate the intense darkness.

“Don’t wimp out on me, bro!” George begged. “There’s no going back now. Put your arms down; you look like a little girl.” Todd had to admit that it was nice being with his friend. They hadn’t done anything together since the summer before freshman year, and they had previously been joined at the hip since kindergarten. George and Todd had met new people and moved on their own separate paths after high school began, and Todd had forgotten how much he had missed their stupid adventures together.

“This place is ancient… What’s the story behind it?” Todd asked, but George didn’t answer. Todd tried to look around for his friend, but he could only see the outline of a prehistoric grandfather clock showing the time nine at night. He could also make out a torn sofa and an empty fireplace. “George…George?” There was no sign of George anywhere. Just as Todd turned to run for the door, he fell - his head spun and his eyes rolled backwards.

Todd woke in a room with bright pink walls and white laced trim. The smell of rotting meat lingered in the simple little room. Posters of baby animals lined the walls. In the center of the room sat a large white baby crib. Todd hesitantly inched towards the crib to find it empty. He could have sworn he heard the wails of police sirens in the distance.

“Todd?” A chill in the room made Todd freeze in his place. “Todd…” He knew that voice all too well; he just never thought he’d hear it again. Behind him stood the love of his life carrying a little pink swaddled blanket.

“Julie… How are you here right now? Is that… Abigail?” Todd failed to hold on to the tears smoldering his eyes. His voice croaked with every word as he relived the nightmare that had haunted him for the past year.

“You killed me, Todd.” Julie’s voice was confused, distant, and almost robotic - as if it had been a skipped record plaguing him every sleepless night that left him tossing and turning for the past year. “You killed us.”

“I’m sorry. You know I never wanted to hurt you!” His last whispers were barely even audible as he let go of the pathetic, “Forgive me,” that even he couldn’t accept. Todd fell to his knees, begging like a pup starving for love. He knew Julie wasn’t really there - not his Julie. Her flawless peach skin was smeared with dirt and open scars. Her warm, bubbly heart was no longer pumping. Her long locks of hair were frazzled, dull, matted. and tangled. Her clothes were torn and reeking of putrid death.

“You did this to me! It was you!”

“No! No, I didn’t! You had an accident. I swear I would never…” He turned around and bawled into his lap. He covered his ears with his hands to block the malicious thoughts passing across his mind. That day was supposed to have been the best day of his life, but instead he lost the two people that he loved most, and he never even got the chance to meet one of them…

“It…wasn’t my fault. I thought it was… I blamed myself… I blame myself. But it wasn’t my fault; I couldn’t have known!” He was screaming, eyes closed, hands covering his head, and snot filled throat. “You died in child birth! I didn’t kill you!”

“You did this to me!”

“We both wanted the baby. Both of us, remember?” All was silent. He turned to see Julie stretched out and motionless on the floor. In her extended arm was not a baby swaddled in a pink blanket, but one seeping with a saturated, dark red blood.

Although no one could hear him, Todd closed his eyes and screamed. “No, please God. I’m…I’m so sorry Julie.” He wept until his head was dizzy. The clock struck ten.

When Todd finally lifted his head that was now covered in blood, he was still in the nursery room, but the atmosphere had changed drastically. The romantic baby pink wallpaper was now peeling to reveal a cracked concrete wall. The lighting set off a ghastly red ambiance. The crib was broken, smashed to pieces, and the floor boards were torn apart. He had a sick feeling in the back of his mind that he was not alone in the room. Slowly, he looked over his shoulder. “Dad?”

“Hello, Todd.” The sight of his father sent Todd back into the days of his childhood where he could never please his dad. No matter what he did, Todd was never good enough.

“Why are you here?” Todd already knew the answer within his heavy heart.

“You disappoint me, you know that right? You couldn’t have waited until marriage to have a baby? No wonder God took that girl from you. If you ask me, you deserved it. And you thought you could be a father. Hah!” His disapproving eyes stared into Todd’s soul and exposed him to all the pain he’d been oppressing from the day his father first introduced him to his belt. Even as an eighteen year old, his father’s ghost still bullied him in his subconscious and never forgot to remind him of what a failure he was destined to be.

“Dad, you don’t honestly think I killed them. That’s ludicrous. Why have you always torn me down? I’m your son!” Todd began to cry again, as if he hadn’t already dried his body an hour earlier of any tears it may have held onto.

“You’re no son of mine.” His father began to grow. No, Todd was shrinking! Every one of his father’s frowning wrinkles, every hair of his drunken shadow, and every pore of his oily, thick skin became larger and larger compared to Todd’s smallness. His father’s words rang in his ears as his dad looked down upon Todd. All his life, he had just wanted to make his dad proud.

Todd continued to shrink. His confidence, his faith in himself, and his dignity all became so minuscule, so insignificant, that he couldn’t have been seen with the naked eye. He ran across the floor boards whose cracks were now chasms in order to escape the ghostly room. The more he ran, the farther the door appeared to be. He kept running and running, trying to escape his father’s never ending hatred. There was only one thing worse than the glare of constant disappointment and that was the fact that Todd wasn’t big or important enough for his father to even acknowledge him. So Todd ran on.

Todd stopped running on the eleventh ring. His body felt cold and empty. He had been running so long that he hadn’t noticed that he was in a completely new room and was back to his normal size. He wiped his sweaty palms on his pants and sopped up his drenched forehead with the collar of his shirt. His perspiration made his body feel even colder. Blood, tears, and sweat clouded his vision to where he was practically blind. Todd tried looking around, but everything was blurry. After a couple of messy attempts to dry his eyes, Todd could now see that he was in a room full of mirrors. Every way he looked, a thousand reflections stared back at him. The bodies were that of Todd’s but none moved with Todd. The eyes just stared into him, as if crying out for help. As if all the pain he’d ever felt, they had felt too. Everything bad that had ever happened to him, he blamed on those reflections. He hated them. They stared at him, and he despised them.

Todd tried to rationalize that he was crazy, but it was simply all too real. The reflections never said a word, but they magnified a thousand flaws. All of Todd’s insecurities and fears seemed to have been broadcast in the magnified faces of his own. Todd searched frantically for an escape, but there were only mirrors. He spun in circles one after the other and screamed, and the reflections never moved. They watched him as his sanity dripped away.

Todd loathed those reflections. He loathed himself. He should have waited. He knew Julie was having second thoughts about keeping the baby. He had reassured her that they would be fine. He said nothing bad would happen to their family. It was meant to be, he had said. He had lied to her. He had murdered her.

Todd clawed at his eyes so that he wouldn’t have to look at himself anymore. He couldn’t live with the shame and guilt of having killed his one and only love. How could he live on after such a tragedy? How could he live with himself? He scratched his eyes until they bled, and he instantaneously could taste the burning metallic ooze drip into the cracks of his lips and stain his teeth. The pain, however, was nothing compared to the heartache and self-loathing that he had bottled up for so long.

Todd was lying defeated on the floor when the clock struck midnight. He didn’t move. He lay on the floor and waited for death to take him away. He waited for his eyes to bleed out. He waited for his heart to stop beating. It didn’t matter - he just knew he didn’t want to live anymore.

“Todd!” Todd didn’t move. “Todd, wake up! What happened to you?” George shook Todd’s arm to try to find a reaction. “You need to wake up. Now.” There was so much authority in George’s voice that the broken boy had no choice other than to obey. Todd reached for George to help him up, and his pal carried him out of the room.

“Where…where have you been George?” His voice was raspy and ruined.

“Come on, I have to show you something.” He didn’t seem very excited about whatever it was, and Todd wondered if his friend had experienced a similar hellish experience of his own.

George dragged Todd’s weary body to the main hall of the house, the one with the fireplace. They sat down, and George gathered some logs for the pit.

“Why did you have to meet her?” George spat the words into the hearth.

“What…what are you talking about?” Todd croaked. He couldn’t think straight.

“You know exactly what I’m talking about. You met her, you dumped me. You left me hanging! And for what - some girl?! We were best friends! You were my only friend… Do you know how hard it was for me to watch you hang out with someone else? I was bored to tears and you blew me off every time I tried to hang out with you. I just wanted to hang out with you.”

“I thought…we were hanging out…tonight…”

“It’s a little too late for that, isn’t it? Anyway, I just want you to know that you asked for everything that has happened to you tonight. Your decisions led you here, Todd.”

Todd heard George strike a match and ignite the fire. The warmth was too intense for comfort. Todd’s head was pulsing and felt as if it was melting. “Please…what is going on?”

George rubbed the blood from Todd’s eyes. “See for yourself.”

A body had been thrown next to the fireplace. Blood was pouring into a puddle around the head and the limbs were at unnatural bends. “You…killed someone?”

George laughed slowly and malevolently. “No, Todd. I killed you.” George flipped the body over to reveal Todd’s distorted face. Todd stopped breathing all together, but he did not suffocate. He could hear the police sirens even louder now, and he could feel all the head wounds from before even more clearly. He saw a large gash on his body’s head and noted that George had probably knocked him out.

“It was you! You concussed me by the grandfather clock… That was hours ago. You don’t have to do this George!”

“It has already been done.” George threw Todd’s lifeless body into the flames and watched as his friend disappeared into fiery sparks that eventually faded into a small handful of smoked ashes.

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Author's Note: Wow! You made it to the end! I know this may need some work, but it's actually one of the first short stories that I've ever FINISHED!!! WOW GO ME I NEVER FINISH ANYTHING UGH but anywayyyyy this really helped me practice plot twists and symbolism, so let me know if you caught on to any of that or otherwise how to improve it :) Thank you so much and God bless have a wonderful day!