The Dare
	

THE DARE

	Mary was scared to death as she walked, shuffled actually, up to the large
black door. It loomed above her, setting a dark and eerie feeling
into an otherwise perfectly suburban street. Mary did not want to
enter the big house, for it was long told by the house-wives of the
street that the place was terribly haunted. ‘An old wives tale
or not,’ Mary thought, ‘either way it doesn’t mean
I have to go in there…’ She tried to muster up some
confidence, some false security. But deep down she knew that she must
enter, for she was bound by the long and everlasting laws of Truth or
Dare.
		

	Mary looked back at her friends, they all looked as nervous as she was, but it was a
different kind of nervous. They were waiting for a reaction, their
sly grins and quiet giggles reflected that quite clearly. But Mary
put on a straight face; if they were looking for a reaction then she
was certainly not going to give them one. She just had to do it fast,
she told herself. Do it fast and it would all be over with. Her
particular dare was one of such malevolence she did not want to think
about it, never mind do it. Go in the front door, then go all the way
through the house, the apparently haunted house and finally emerge
out the back door. So simply said, yet so deeply terrifying when the
task was set before you in the shape of a huge, black door. Mary
looked up at the sky, up at the stars. It might have been
over-dramatic, but she did what she was sure any thirteen year old
aspiring author would do. She bit her lip, closed her eyes and
whispered ever so softly, “Please Lord in heaven, if I die
tonight… If I die tonight then let my work be published…”
She finished it off with the customary “Amen.”
		

	Chancing one last look back at her friends, just to make sure they hadn’t decided to
abandon her, Mary caught sight of her little brother. He stood at the
back of the group, behind five girls who Mary was having a tough time
considering ‘good friends’ at the moment, and he was
whimpering softly. His eyes gave away the worry he was feeling inside
and Mary’s eyes stung. The boy had always been her baby, when
her mother was there and when she was gone they’d been there
for each other. Now that the boy was seven years old and Mary was
thirteen she still thought of him as her baby, and she gave him a
reassuring nod. In that one nod she assumed he would understand.
People had been proposing the same dare to Mary for the last eight
years; it was like the local school tradition. And her brother Paul
had joined the school three years ago, so it was likely he knew what
Mary was about to do. If you accepted the dare, if you went through
with it, you were a living legend. In contrast, the rumours of the
house’s supernatural infection had stretched so far by Mary’s
time that if the teacher’s found out you’d done it, you
were sure to get detention.
		

	To Mary’s comfort, Paul winked back at her, although he was terrified for his
sister, shaking even, he still supported her. It was always the way,
but never vice versa. If it was Paul standing on that front step Mary
would’ve pulled him off it sooner than he could even think
about opening the door. But Paul wasn’t in Mary’s
position, and it was time for her to do something before she achieved
the status of ‘Chicken shit’ in the eyes of her
classmates. So, with a shaking hand she reached towards the brass
door knob, stationed beside a brass gargoyle face. The face was so
ugly it made Mary’s skin crawl. What with its cruel eyes and
its sharp fangs it looked almost like a warning sign. “Don’t
go in.” Is what it would say, Mary imagined. Nothing more,
nothing less. ‘Don’t go in.’ achieve the perfect
amount of catharsis, said the author inside the thirteen year old
girl. And she straightened up a bit, she was an author. Or an
aspiring one at least, she was a respected and civilized member of
modern society.
		

	Drawing confidence from that statement and that statement alone, the young girl twisted
the large door knob. With a loud creak, the door moved as Mary pushed
it slowly open. The opening got wider and wider, as Mary’s
heart beat got faster.  She heard a few gasps from behind as she
stuck her foot into the slight opening. “She’s actually
doing it.” A girl said, probably Miriam, the youngest of the
group by only a slight bit. They all hushed to a deadly silence,
filled with heart pounding suspense, as Mary slid into the doorway.
She had her eyes closed but she could feel the air getting warmer,
and there was a musty smell in her nostrils suggestive of old
furniture. But she found that as hard as she tried she couldn’t
open her eyes, not unless she was turned towards her friends rather
than the pitch blackness of the house. At least she was fully inside
now, she could shut the door, and then she would have no choice but
to open her eyes. She would have no choice but to face her fears.
‘Yes,’ she thought, ‘shut the door, brilliant idea
Mary! Good girl!’ And that’s exactly what the ‘good
girl’ did, she shut the door.
		

	It slammed shut, cutting her off from the safety of the outside world. Mary waited for
seconds before she could finally build up enough courage to open her
eyes and take a step forward. All she could see was black, there were
windows in the house but they’d all been boarded up long ago.
Mary looked around, hoping her eyes would adjust, but it was no use.
She would have to do this dare blind. And she would do it; she was
not the kind of girl to back out of something. It was the reason
she’d had to go into the house in the first place. She could
still remember the day back in fourth class when she’d finally
accepted it. But on conditions, she remembered her friends upset
faces when she’d uttered the words that she now regretted,
“I’ll do it in sixth class."
		

She stuck a hand out in front of her, cautiously, to feel for something.
Nothing, there was nothing in front of her. Not sure how to feel
about that, Mary took another few steps forward, and felt again. This
time her hand landed on a wooden doorframe, and she slid it down to
meet the handle. Her heart was beating wildly, her head filled with
torturous images of what could roam these halls. But Mary’s
courage was not wavering as she pulled the handle down and stepped
into a new room, one the exact same as the first. Mary’s
confidence was building as she quickened her pace, eager to get back
to that beautiful night sky, eager to burst through the back door and
hug her baby brother. But there was still a way to go yet.
		

	Mary side-stepped a large table she had accidentally bumped into and carried on, quicker
than ever. The next minute was more of the same; Mary marched forward
and forward, occasionally banging into a table or a chair. She
thought at one stage that the house really was haunted, that
something had tricked her and she would just keep walking and walking
until she died of exhaustion, that there was no escape. Then, finally
she opened a door to reveal a large pack of familiar people. Her
friends standing in the back yard, all smiling up at her, were the
most glorious sight she’d ever set her eyes on. She’d
done it; she’d taken that dare and made it her play thing. ‘So
easy…’ She thought, and looked into her little brother’s
eyes. They nodded to each other; they had both been through a
nerve-wrecking experience and were glad to see each other’s
faces. Mary’s friends stood clutching their sides, laughing as
hard as they could. It wasn’t like Mary had an embarrassing
expression on her face, but the laughing was customary. If you didn’t
get a laugh out of it, there was no point in anyone even doing the
dare. Mary wanted to sound courageous though, sound like it had been
easy as pie. So, taking great relief in the fact that it was all
over, she glanced back over her shoulder and shouted into the
darkness. “Goodbye nothing.”
		

	She looked back at her friends, a huge smile on her face, and got the most horrible feeling
in the pit of her stomach. It was like she’d swallowed a
gobstopper without sucking it, and now it set there weighing her
down, weighing her down so that she stood rooted to the spot. Her
friends’ faces reflected something other than happiness. In
fact it was quite the opposite; her friends’ faces reflected
fear, disbelief, horror. Mary glanced at her brother, his skin was
white as the page of a book and his eyes were wider than Mary thought
possible. “No!!!” His scream could be heard by every
person in every suburban house of that suburban street as Mary felt
the freezing clutch of a small hand grip the back of her collar and
pull her back. Back into the house, back into the dark, back into a
nightmare. Mary kicked, screamed and threw her arms all over the
place but it was no use. There was no escaping the ice cold grip that
hand held on the girl’s shirt. The door shut in front of her,
blocking out her brother’s teary eyes and her friends terrified
wails. Suddenly the house got much colder than it’d been when
she entered. The air had been warm then, but now it was so freezing
the girl felt as if she was breathing shards of glass.
		

	Mary’s head bumped hard again and again off the wooden steps of a long stairs.
Then suddenly, she was lifted off the ground. Mary heard a swing, a
creek, and then something being dropped down, hitting the floor hard.
Mary’s legs dangled as she was pulled up into what she could
only assume was the attic, and her heart was in her mouth when she
finally touched the floor again. “Leave me alone!” She
screamed, the typical horror movie line. “Get away from me!”
But her screams were of no use to her now. The hand let go, and the
room went quiet. Mary started banging on the floor with both fists,
hoping in her desperation that the floor would break and she could
run for the door. But no matter how old the house was, how much
strength Mary possessed, the floor held and she was left in the
petrifying, silent darkness once more. She scrambled around, looking
for something, a light switch, a lamp, anything to illuminate the
room. After much knee scraping, with a great deal of fear growing
quickly inside her, Mary finally set her hand on a small lamp. An
old, bronze one which felt like it was made by a blind man. It was
dented and bent at odd angles, but it was a lamp nevertheless, and
all Mary needed was a lamp.
		

	Switching it on, she immediately regretted that moment in fourth class when she’d
accepted the dare. She regretted her courage and her bravery, which
she now realised was just veiled foolishness. Even though what she
saw was terrifying, disturbing to even the most daring of souls, the
only sound was her heart thumping. A girl her own age sat in the
corner, cradling herself while she clasped her knees to her chest.
She had a deranged look on her face; a smile filled with malevolent
glee and yellowed teeth. In the girl’s face Mary could see her
own death. And the worst part, there were two holes where the girl’s
eyes should have been, two blood lined, empty holes. And they were
staring back at Mary. It took Mary but a few seconds to take in the
bloody butter knife in the girl’s right hand and the pair of
dirty, amber eyes dangling from the left. The girl spoke to her then,
and the words chilled Mary to her very soul. She said in a harsh and
unforgiving voice, “Forget your friends. We can be friends
now.” She paused for a brief moment, and the smile fell from
her face. Suddenly she rose, and hovered a foot above the ground,
hunch backed. She brandished the knife in front of her empty eye
sockets and glared at Mary. She threw the pair of eyeballs at the
poor, innocent girl who lay defenceless and terrified before her. “I
know lots of games.”
		

And the lamp’s
light went out.
		

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