Ryan snuck out of the house Saturday night. He had never done such a thing and was totally unprepared for the anxiety that every sound he made would cause, and for the ease with which he accomplished the goal. His father had stayed up an hour later than his usual 9 pm, and had been drinking. At 12, alcohol was a shrouded mystery to Ryan.
The town was small, and the boy was able to cut through the yards for most of the way to meet with Daniel and James. There was one street he had to cross, but the street was in the center of town, and the cop was probably nearer the tavern on the edge of town. Even so, his anxiety spiked again as he moved across the unlined tarmac.
His destination was the infamous old Turner Place, an overgrown plot of land walled in with mismatched fencing. The property had three buildings: house, garage, and barn. These were contained within the walls of fence, much of which had been doubled over with chicken wire. The occasional section had been tripled with livestock panels, and it was near one of these that he was to meet the others. He arrived and leaned on the panel, its thick bars rusting around the original blue paint.
“Daniel?” He called into the night, his voice little more than a whisper.
“About time.” His friend replied. Footsteps from the other side of the fence filled the quiet of the night, and he spotted his friend on the other side. “Come on, climb over. Be quick, Officer Jenkins might do a drive-through.” Ryan climbed up, throwing his leg over with an exhale. He dropped into the shade of the overgrown property as if he was dropping into another world. As far as he knew, he could have been.
“Is James here?” Ryan asked. Daniel nodded. Neither of them much liked the older boy, but they held onto the hope that appeasing him tonight would ease his tendency to bully them. And so, at the insistence of James Reuben, the pair had trespassed on the Turner property, a dilapidated, weed-strewn place with a reputation for supernatural occurrence.
“He’s over here, in the drive.” Daniel said, then lead the way. The autumn had just begun, so the leaves still stood, hardly into their metamorphosis to that resembling the deceased. The pair found James with a cigarette in hand, dappled by moonlight filtered through the changing leaves.
“Sup, bitch.” James said through a puff of smoke. “You punks ever been here?” The pair shook their heads. Ryan looked around, taking in the area. Peeling paint and thick spiderwebs formulated his first impression of the place. Miraculously, all the windows he could see were unbroken. “Introductions, then.” He said, flicking the cigarette away and spreading his arms grandly. “Welcome to the home of Jeremy Turner. Jeremy was a successful young lawyer that retired from the city and build this house in 1915. He married, and began to generate children. Rumor holds that retired life did not agree with him, and he drank too much and beat his loved ones. Regardless, the story really begins in 1922 when his fifth child, Denise Turner, disappeared. The story goes that she began to appear to her siblings and beg them to avenge her. When she had been gone a year and a day, she grew more violent in her demands, and began to torture her family. Finally, the mother killed herself, and the youngest child tried to kill their father. He lived but beat the kid to death. The three spirits, then, drove the rest out, and have found no rest with their family gone and their father, their target, lost to them.
“Years passed without incident, but no one could stand to live here for more than a few weeks. Twenty years ago, my dad told me, a boy went in on a dare. He screamed for an hour, but never returned.”
Ryan was wide-eyed by the end of the story, and he met Daniel’s eye. Daniel gulped, then turned to their bully.
“So, what the hell are we doing here?” He asked.
“We’re going in.”
“What for?” Ryan asked, his imagination conjuring the shade of a small child with glowing red eyes. James shrugged.
“I want to see if you pussies believe this shit or not. It can’t be true, you know. Anyway, I brought you flashlights. Um… you guys smoke?” The pair shook their heads. “Well, ok. Probably don’t want to smoke in there, might burn it down. Well, let’s go.” James handed them a pair of flashlights, then led the way to the door. It was locked, but he broke out the brittle window with a swing of his own flashlight. The glass clattered on the inside, seeming to echo. To Ryan’s overactive imagination, it sounded like the clatter of bones. He gulped. James knocked the stray shards of glass away, then reached in to unlock the door. “Here we go. Bitch, you get the basement. I’ll take the ground floor, and you can take the top floor, Dan.” Ryan smirked as he watched Daniel bristle at the shortening. He did not understand of course, he would have preferred that to ‘bitch.’
The foyer floor creaked beneath their weight as they stepped into the house. Daniel sneezed, displacing the dust from a table nearby. The dust motes floated in their light beams. It seemed to Ryan that he could feel the house around him, stirring as if awakening to meet them. He shuddered, imagining psychic tendrils running down his spine, learning him. Daniel gasped, then looked at him.
“You feel that?” Ryan nodded.
“Feel what?” James asked, half-turning to them. His voice had lost its bravado, but neither did it betray any anxiety or fear.
“It was like… I don’t know.”
“Like something’s here. Aware.” Ryan said, his voice low. James shook his head.
“Pussies.” He muttered.
“Hey, don’t be a prick. We’ll leave your ass here.” Daniel said suddenly. Ryan shot him a glance, prompted by the uncharacteristic steel in his voice. James shrugged, chuckled, and moved down the hallway.
Cobwebs filled the place, and the few spiders they could see were large and slow as they retreated from the lights. Scat from mice or maybe rats peppered the floor, but they did not see any. Ryan thought he heard skittering though. A thick layer of dust covered everything, but the worst was the smell.
“God, what is that?” He said as he stepped into the hall, covering his nose.
“Rot, most like. Roof must leak. Be careful where you step, or you might end up in the basement.” James said. His voice was calm, which was not typical. Typically, he was boisterous and immature. Also, Ryan noted, he had never known the bully to be particularly considerate of the wellbeing of others.
The trio were halfway down the hall when they heard the thud above them. They all froze. It was repeated, louder. Closer. Ryan could hear their breathing. James’s seemed to be hard and ragged. After a second of listening, he decided it was from all the smoking. Daniel cleared his throat, then sneezed again.
“So, uh… let’s not split up.” He said after sniffing. James turned to look at him, then shrugged again.
“Yeah, I guess there’s no real hurry. Upstairs or basement first?” Ryan felt that feeling of being scanned again, then wondered if the house had a preference. Deciding that he would not be the one to answer, he suddenly became aware of his own pulse, racing. He did a calming breath to try to slow it. As if in response, another set of three thuds resounded from somewhere above them.
“Let’s check out the upstairs.” Daniel said, sniffing back the snot loosened by his allergies.
“Right. Sure.” James did not sound sure at all, however. He turned his light toward the end of the hall in time for the trio to catch sight of a person’s leg as it moved into a doorway. “Did…” He began but stopped when the door slammed. He jumped, then trained his shaking light on the suddenly visible doorknob.
Seconds ticked by as the three stood in the hallway, stock still. James was breathing rapidly, but the other two held a tight grasp over their breath, as if afraid to breathe. Ryan was acutely, painfully aware of why: not only was something here, but it knew they were here. Worse, it was baiting them deeper.
“We should go.” He squeaked. “This isn’t…”
“The fuck you say?” James was suddenly angry as he swung his light to aim at the younger boy’s face. Ryan had a second where the return to normal behavior seemed better than scared James, before the abusive tirade began. “We haven’t even made it into a room, you chickenshit! What the fuck… What are you even doing here, pussy?” Daniel hissed.
“James. Shut up. Look.” The bully turned to look at Daniel, then turned again to follow his gaze. The door that had just slammed was rattling. The knob was twisting… and suddenly three rapid thuds from above them shook the whole house. All became still.
After several minutes of standing in quiet, James relaxed.
“Ok. We are panicking ourselves. Come on. We’re gonna start with this floor, because, well, there’s already activity here.” The decision to act seemed to make him feel better. The others followed his lead. The first door to the left opened onto a sort of living room or den. Old fashioned armchairs flanked a wooden table, facing a boarded-up picture window. The table held a huge glass ashtray, the sort with ridges in the center to hold lit butts. “Smoking room. Guess it was meant to be.” James said, tucking his light under his arm and putting a cigarette into his mouth. He flicked his zippo open and struck the flint. The brief light from the flame illumined a woman’s face beside his, her mouth open to her navel. Her shriek filled the room, and James dropped the lighter with a loud “Fuck!” that was swallowed by the woman’s scream.
The three ran from the room. Every door in the hallway began to slam. For what seemed like an eternity, the doors beat strangely syncopated rhythms as the boys huddled there, unmoving. No direction seemed safe. As swiftly as it began, the doors stopped, all of them closed. Ryan looked to Daniel, whose face was a thundercloud of fear. A distant cackle swept through the house. The woman’s elongated, screaming face popped back into Ryan’s head, and he shuddered. Then, all of the doors in the hallway creaked open. Clapping sounded somewhere in the house, three sharp smacks. Then all was still again.
James exhaled, his tar-covered lungs loud in the vacuous space.
“Shit. I lost my lighter.”
“Can’t you get another one? Clearly that room is bad. Bad place to be.” Ryan felt the panicked edge to his voice but was not worried about it. He had bigger concerns.
“I mean, yeah. Fuck, ok. Where to next?”
“You serious?” Daniel hissed.
“Of course. Don’t be a pussy.”
“Fuck! Whatever. Next room, I don’t care.” Daniel did not sound scared. He sounded angry. Ryan raised an eyebrow at this in the dark. James moved to the next doorway and peered in.
“Bedroom.” He reported. “Looks like a teenager’s.” He stepped in, and the younger boys followed. Ryan watched their lights play across the room. It was not a child’s room… and yet, as he moved deeper into it, it seemed more and more like it was.
The bed that filled the center of the room was broken, with one corner touching the floor. However, as they drew nearer, the bed changed, growing posts and pink bedcurtains. Shelves appeared on the walls, and a second later stuffed animals and wooden boxes marked “Puzzle” filled them. The door closed behind them, almost tenderly, and a little girl materialized on the bed. She was young, and her dress indicated that she was from a previous era. Without turning to them, she spoke in a guttural, gravelly voice:
“This is no place for the living.” The three intruders stood still, unsure that they were really seeing this. She turned her head to look at them. Her cheek had a deep, wide laceration that gushed blood and revealed her teeth. One of her eyes was rotted away. Three knocks came from above them, again, and suddenly she was before them, her mouth contorted in a horrid scream. The lacerated side of her jaw seemed to dangle, slack beneath her torn skin.
Ryan bolted, his pants suddenly wet and warm with urine as he threw open the door. He heard footsteps following him and prayed that they were Daniel’s as he left the room and turned down the hallway, facing the exit. The moonlight came through the open door, obscured by a hulking figure standing in it. Red eyes glowed in the silhouette’s head. A roar came from it, and it reached for him. He cringed and dove under its left arm, rolled, and came up in the driveway, sharp pains in his back like something had dug in there. The footsteps kept coming and James tripped over him. The pain in his back intensified. James began to rise as blood soaked his pant leg.
“Glass, in your back. Come here, I’ll get it out.” He panted around the unlit cigarette. Ryan moved to the bully and turned his back to him, felt the shards of glass leave his skin. He turned his light to the doorway. It was empty, he noted, just as the door slammed shut. Both exhaled as if they had been holding their breath. James produced a lighter, this one a cheap disposable, and lit the cigarette that had been hanging from his lips.
“James… where’s Daniel?”
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