THE HAUNTED HOUSE

by

Vicki E Slaughter

 

            In most small towns, and quite a few large towns, there is usually at least one haunted house.  Often, the house was considered haunted because some small child was scared one spooky night into believing that the windows of the old deserted house glowed an unearthly light. Usually, with help from an older child.  In most cases, the glow shining from the empty windows was only the moonlight’s reflection beaming an eerie light off the house’s windows. 

 

            But the creepy house we moved next door to was said to have been different.  It was really supposed to be haunted. Even the adults of the town were afraid to go pass it at night, especially if it was stormy out.  So, I was told.  I was to find out first-hand the real truth of the matter.

 

            I'd been in the town of Tarrington for only one week when I first heard of the town's haunted house. Being a wise thirteen-year-old, I wasn't scared by the fact that the supposedly haunted house was right next door to me, but my eight-year-old twin brother and sister were! 

 

            In fact, they were so frightened that they made me switch rooms with them. I could tell they were really terrified by the old house and they are just kids.  So, I traded rooms, moving from a room with a nifty view of the woods, that I had really wanted, to a room with a view of the so-called haunted house.

 

            The nearest occupied house was a city block away from our house and the haunted house. The Begers lived there with their three children: Billy was 15, Jean was 13, and Tommy was 9.  It’s funny how we never saw these three neighborhood kids until the first day of school. Their house was just inside the city limits, and only separated from ours by a thinly wooded area.  

 

            This wooded area was about two blocks long, by small town standards.  The haunted house was on the left side of our house beyond the woods on our right.  The houses were separated by twenty feet of uncut grass lawn and a strand of hedge wood bushes.  The haunted house was once a beautiful twin sister to the mammoth sized one that we now owned.  But while ours had been kept up, the haunted house had been left to fall into ruins.

 

            My brother, sister, and I finally got to meet our neighbors at the bus stop in front of their house. At first, I didn’t think they were going to say anything to us and con­tinue to keep up the silence they’d held thus far since our arrival here in their...our town two months earlier.  However, the small blonde boy couldn’t stand the strain of his unanswered questions any longer, no matter what his sister had told him about manners.

 

            “Didya hear anythin’ from the haunted house?” Tommy asked excitedly, his blue eyes sparkling. “Didya hear ghos’ and such breakin' up things and all?  Didya..."

 

            “Tommy!” His older sister warned at the same time I broke in to protest. “Hold it! Hold it!”     

 

            Although Tommy’s sister said nothing further, I was determined to strike up a conversation with our neighbors, even if I had to start with the youngest. “What haunted house?”

 

            “You mean you don’t know?” asked Tommy in surprise.

 

            “No,” I answered simply. "Why don't you tell us?  By the way, I’m Mary Lou Mainprize and these two bright haired monsters are the twins, Peter and Linda.”  I pointed to my red-haired brother and sister standing behind me.   “I'm starting 8th grade and the twins are starting third grade.  Peter, Linda say hello to our new neighbors.”  While the twins politely said hello, I looked questioningly to our youngest neighbor for an introduction to his siblings, but his older brother answered.

 

            “I’m Billy.  I'm a freshman at Tarrington High School. This is my sister Jean.  She's also starting 8th grade this year.  And the squirt there is my little brother Tommy.  He's a fourth-grader at Tarrington Elementary School.  Sorry we haven't been over to meet you, but we didn’t want to get in your way.  So, we were waiting until you were all unpacked before...”

 

            I figured Billy had talked enough.  I wanted to know about the haunted house, so I interrupted his long-winded speech and stated as politely as I could, “I hate to interrupt you’re so informative introduction, but what was it that your brother was asking me about? A haunted house?  Why would we know what goes on in the town’s haunted house?”

 

            This time Jean answered, “You know Mary Lou, I think I’m going to like you. That’s the first time in years someone's shut Billy up before he even got halfway started.  He is really hard to stop once he gets to talking.”  She grinned mischievously, ignoring her brother’s sputtered protests.

 

            However, Billy got back at us for our rude (Billy's description) teasing by telling us the legend of the haunted house next door to us during the half hour bus ride to our various schools.

 

           “As legend has it...” he started only to be interrupted by Jean’s “Oh brother!”

 

            “Silence!"   He glared at her until she shrugged her shoulders and started staring out the window in resignation. Convinced he had the floor, Billy continued, “As legend has it... the house next to yours, Mary Lou, and the house you now live in once belonged to two wealthy brothers from Chicago, which is about a hundred miles from here, somewhere around the mid-twenties.  It was rumored then that they were the big bosses of a racketeer gang on the west side of Chicago. It seems the two brothers moved here in a hurry one summer night and was hardly ever seen outside their houses after that.”

 

          Billy took a deep breath and continued, “They lived in the town about two months without anything unusual happening, so the excitement of their arrival died down.  Going into the third month, the brothers had visitors, and all accounts, the strangers were unwelcome guests. 

 

          Neighbors from two blocks away heard angry shouts for quite a long time. Then gunshots sounded, followed by a momentary silence before the roar of a car racing off into the night was heard. The shots were reported to the police by frightened neighbors.  Although the brother in the house you now own was apparently at home, he wouldn’t see anyone.  He refused to answer the door even when the police who came to ask questions about the reported gunshots.  He just shouted through the door for them to go away. 

 

          This made the police suspicious.  They left, but only long enough to get a search warrant for both brothers’ houses.  When the police returned with the search warrant, they searched the haunted house first.  There they discovered three bodies, one of whom was the owner of the haunted house, buried in the backyard flower garden.  They went over to the other brother's house next, but didn’t find anyone home.  The brother was never heard from again.  The houses were sold soon after by a Chicago lawyer from his office in the city.” 

 

            Billy looked at me closely as he added his final piece of information. “Both houses were sold quickly. The one you live in, Mary Lou, has been owned by many families after its first tragic owner, but the house of the dead brother didn’t seem to want anyone living in it. Although, no one in your house ever heard or was disturbed by strange noises or eerie sights, the people who lived in the haunted house claimed that they heard voices shouting or screaming and the sounds of gunshots.  All of the families moved out within weeks of moving in.  Only four families have attempted to live in the haunted house, and they no longer even live in this town.”  Billy ended his story abruptly as his turned to see the reactions of the newcomers.

 

            His storytelling was rewarded by the twins’ reactions of sheer terror.  As for me, I was unaffected.

 

            “Terrific ghost story, it’s such a shame you couldn’t have told it in a darkened room or the dead of night.”  Was all I had to say about it.

 

            The arrival of the bus at the schools only gave Billy time to protest,  "That's all you have to say about living next door to a haunted house?” before I stood up to get off with the twins at the elementary school a block down the street from the middle school.

            "Yes," I paused to answer him.  “That’s all I have to say about a silly old ghost story told in the daytime.”  I quickly crossed the street to the elementary school to help the twins register before going to the middle school to register myself.  I left a very frus­trated storyteller behind me. 

 

            But I couldn't afford to linger and let the twins be scared any further, because it would be me that they'd be pushing out of bed when they had their nightmares.  I had hoped to lessen any fears they might have gotten from the story.  However, as you know, my hopes were in vain and that very night we had to switch rooms. Our parents were surprised by our actions, but decided to let us be.  We didn’t enlighten them as to the reasons why we were changing rooms, either.

 

            In our short lifetimes, we have moved many times following Daddy’s engineering jobs all around the world.  I hated it that we moved so much, because I would barely make friends and we'd be gone.  Daddy promised us this time we'd be staying put.  We'll see. 

 

            Still, our past moving experience helped us out this time, and it didn’t take us long to get the rooms switched over.  By nightfall, I was completely moved into my new room. That night I had a dream about the haunted house. It was so real that when I woke up in a cold sweat, I instinctively got up to look out the window. And there, just as if I was still dreaming, was the haunted house shining brightly against the dark moonless sky.

            “It’s on fire,” I whispered softly to myself, then louder. “The haunted house is on fire!”  Yet, even as I was preparing to scream at the top of my lungs to wake up my parents, the fire went away.  I rubbed my eyes and then looked at the house again. The fire was still gone, but this time a man’s face was peering out of the window adjacent to my window. The face stared at me wistfully before disappearing, just like the fire had.  I was left with the feeling that the face had meant no harm to my family or me.  It seemed to me that it wanted to ask me to help it somehow. Only how?

 

            During the next two months after that first night, neither the twins nor I saw any more mysterious fires.  Which was a great relief to us all.  After a while, the twins became less fearful of the old house when no ghost came over to haunt us.   Eventually, they stayed in their own beds for the whole night.  I kept waiting for the dreams to return, but they didn’t.  

 

            A few nights before Halloween, Billy thought it would be cute for his best friend, Paul, and him to scare Jean and me.  So, on the day of Halloween, the two of them dared us to spend two hours alone in the haunted house. "Well, I don’t know,” I said hesitantly. “We’ve got to take Tommy and the twins out Trick or Treating.”

 

            “I know,” answered Billy. “But only from 5 PM to 7 PM.  After that you take them to our house for an overnight sleepover, while Jean stays at your house.  And Mary Lou, your parents are going to be late coming back from that party they're going to, so if you’re late coming home they won’t notice."

 

            “And where are you two brave heroes going to be all this time?  Hiding underneath your covers?" asked Jean pertly.

 

            “Well, no. We’re baby-sitting while Mom and Dad go to that party with Mary Lou's parents,” answered Billy.

 

            “And what brought this on?” I asked curiously.

 

            “Twenty dollars each,” answered Paul.

 

            “Twenty dollars!”  Jean and I sputtered. “Is that why you were so quick to agree to let me stay over at Mary Lou's while you watched the kids?” asked Jean hotly.

 

            “Yes.  Now do you take the dare or not.” asked Billy calmly.

 

            “Ooh, you make me so mad, brother of mine,” declared Jean before she stalked off.

 

             "Yes, we’ll take the dare.” I answered him before following Jean. Then I paused and, turning to look back at the two sniggering boys, added, “I’ve been wanting to examine that house anyway, this gives me a good excuse to go and look around.  Bye."  Then I ran to catch up with Jean, leaving behind me two very confused boys.

 

            After a fun time watching the younger kids while they showed off their costumes and collected their candy, we returned the little ones to Mrs. Beger to wait until the boys came back from their Trick or Treating.   As we were walking down the driveway of her house, I suddenly turned to Jean and tapped her on her arm to get her attention and said,   “Jean?”

 

            “What?”  She stopped and turned to me questioningly.

 

            “Don’t you think the candle bit was going too far on the scare line? I don’t trust the boys as it is, but making us promise to use candles for light was too obvious for words.”

 

            “It sure was,” she agreed.  “But then my brother is too obvious for words. You know and I know that they plan to rig up some sort of gadgets to scare us, but those dummies don’t think we’re smart enough to figure out anything so simple.”

 

            “Dumb girls, us?   Boy, you’d think they’d outgrow such childish notions about girls!  Especially with such terrific examples as us!”

 

            Jean rolled her eyes and gave Mary Lou a speaking look.  Mary Lou grinned in response and laughed when Jean said, “You’re right, but not in Billy’s case, and Paul sort of follows along from habit.”

 

            The girls were still laughing at their jokes at Billy’s expense when they turned into the haunted house’s unkempt driveway.  The gray-weathered, three-storied mansion loomed ahead of them, unnoticed.  Once on the front porch though, their laughter soon died a quick death.

 

            The porch curved around the front and halfway down the sides of the house.  Tall and narrow windows lined the front wall on either side of a thick, ornate, oak set of double doors.  Some of the windows had been cracked or broken over the years and the jagged edges made the windows almost look like malicious eyes staring out at us.

 

            “This is spooky!” I whispered softly as I stepped up to the door. “I hope the doors are locked!”

 

            “Nope.” Jean answered with a gulp. “I think some bums broke into the house some years back, anyway somebody broke in, and the locks were never fixed after that.”

 

            “You mean somebody actually spent the night here?” I asked in astonishment, turning to stare at Jean in amazement.

 

            “No.” Jean answered quietly. “They were only in there an hour or so when they came running out of it, scared to death and begging the police to take them in and protect them from the ghosts they’d disturbed.”

 

            “You’re kidding!” I glanced in her direction for reassurance only to find she wasn’t kidding.   Her face had taken on a fearful expression.  We almost didn’t go in after that.  Jean was certainly ready to cry uncle and run home.  Then the memory of the face I’d seen in the window and its silent plea for help came back to me.  I felt I couldn’t let down whoever it was whose face I’d seen.  Besides we couldn’t have stood the kidding the boys would have most assuredly given us for chickening out.  So, reluctantly, we began pushing against the rotting door as we turned the doorknob.

 

            Nothing happened to us once inside the house, so we lit our candles and bravely began to wander from room to room. The dare was for us to stay in the haunted house for two hours.   We checked the time on our watches for our start time.  Then, we began exploring the house from the third floor to the ground floor.  We decided to start our exploration on the third story and work our way down so that we would end on the ground floor near the front door. 

 

            The stairs leading to the third story ended at the foot of a huge open area.  On each wall of the room were eight tiny rectangular rooms, each with a ceiling to floor window.  I learned later that these were called dormer rooms and were where the servants slept.  The narrow rooms had no doors and no privacy, but the view from the windows was beautiful.  

 

            The end rooms had the same wonderful view of the nearby woods that I had given up for the twins’ peace of mind.   This entire area was used for storage in our house. Reluctantly, I decided that Mom and Dad wouldn’t let me take it over, no matter how tempting the idea was to me.   There wasn’t much to see here, all the rooms were empty, and so we headed back downstairs to the next level.

 

            We soon discovered the second story was just as empty as the third story.  There was no furniture in any of the second story rooms or closets.   A short hallway separated two large rooms from three smaller rooms.  All five rooms had stone fireplaces that looked like they had never been used.  The two large rooms each had their own bathroom. 

 

            The smaller rooms shared a common bathroom at the end of the hallway.  The bathrooms had old-fashioned tank toilets and huge, white ceramic bathtubs resting on clawed legs.  We quickly examined the hauntingly empty rooms, so similar to the second-floor rooms in my house that it was unnerving to see them so dusty and bare.   We quickly headed for the first floor.

 

            The first floor was a series of six rooms that lead off the entrance hallway.  What had to be the music room was next to the dining room on one side of the hallway.  On the other side of the hallway were the sitting room and what we decided had to be the library because it had wall to ceiling bookshelves.  There were even a few dusty books scattered about on the shelves. 

            At the end of the hallway were a powder room and a huge kitchen.  The kitchen had wood burning stove next to a brick oven built into the wall to the right of the door.  Directly ahead of the door was a double-sink under a window overlooking the woods. 

 

            To the left was an open door leading to a huge storage area.  To the left of the oven was the back door.  Neither of us felt like seeing what the back yard looked like in darkness, so we headed back to the sitting room.  We felt fortunate that this house didn’t have a basement like my house did.

 

            So, after looking the empty house over from top to bottom and finding nothing in it to scare us, we sat down on the faded Persian rug that covered the entire front room.  Rotting and tattered curtains barely covered the windows.  Two shattered chairs laid in the far corner of the room with yellowed newspapers and dry leaves.  The leaves probably blew in through the broken window near that corner.  Otherwise, this room was also empty.

 

            “Well!  We've covered every room in the house, so what do we do now?”  asked Jean.  She seemed to have calmed down a lot since we’d gone through the whole house without encountering any ghosts or other scary things.

 

            “Did you see any wires or anything else that might lead us to the gadgets the boys set up to scare us?”  I asked in return.  Already knowing what her answer would be.

 

            “Not a thing.  So, what do we...?”  She stopped short and stared at the far wall of the room.

 

           “Jean!  You’re turning white as a sheet! Are you sick?”  It was all that I could think to say.  Then what had caught her eye caught mine. The wall next to the huge room’s fireplace was moving outward!

 

            “Mary Lou!”  half screamed; half joked Jean.  “Please tell me that what I’m seeing isn’t what I’m seeing!”

 

            “You mean the two ghosts floating out of the secret passageway behind the fireplace?”  I choked out with barely con­trolled fear.

 

            “I told you,” Jean shouted as she ran for the door.  “not to agree with what I see...or don’t see.” She paused in her flight to take one more look before grabbing my hand in an effort to be brave and said, “Mary Lou, it’s only the boys dressed up in sheets!”  Her grip on my hand halted my own rush for the door.

 

            I paused in my struggles to exit the room and took another, closer look. “You sure?”

 

            “Sure, I’m sure.”  Jean stated firmly, though her voice ended on a squeak.  The shakiness of her voice wasn't very convincing.

 

            “Well, if you're so sure, how come you’re still shaking like a leaf? And if it is the boys, why haven’t they jumped out at us by now laughing at our cowardly dash for the door?” I quavered slowly.

 

            “I wish you hadn’t brought that up,” moaned Jean. “I would have preferred it to have been the boys!  Shall we con­tinue our mad dash for the door?”

 

            “Yes!”  I agreed quickly.  Although, that turned out to be another hopeful gesture that fell through.  Some force had set up an invisible barrier at the room's doorway through which we could not pass.  “Hey!”  I shouted in astonishment when I rammed headlong into it.  “Who shut the invisible door on us?”

 

            “We did!”  answered an eerie voice from the open wall’s secret doorway.  “We have waited a long time for someone brave enough to still be here after the door first opens."  Then one of the wavering figures in front of us asked politely.  "Please be seated."

 

            “Are you going to hurt us?”  Jean quavered.

 

            I took a long look at the two ghosts.   One seemed familiar and somehow, my fear eased at seeing that sad face again.  “No, I don’t think so."  I answered for them. “Not if one of them is the face I saw the first night I was here.”

 

            “How correct you are.  I thought we could count on you.  But why did it take you so long to visit?”  The sad faced ghost whimpered.

 

            “I didn’t understand what you wanted.  Still don’t for that matter.”  I muttered to myself.

 

            “Are you sure you’re not out to hurt us?”  Again, Jean questioned the floating forms ahead of us.

 

            The voice of one the ghosts laughed softly before answering, “No, no.  My dear children, I have no wish to harm anyone.  I only want someone to burn my house down.”

 

            “Burn it down!”  Jean choked out at the same time I was shouting, “Do what!” Then, shoulders relaxing, Jean continued after a moment's thought, “But why?"

 

            “Because it is the only way that my brother and I will ever be granted eternal peace.”

 

            “Huh?”

 

            “I am the owner of the house twin to this one. I was betrayed, along with my brother, by my men and his.  My body was found, but my brother’s body was hidden so our men could sell the houses.  They wanted every bit of our money.  I was sentenced to live earthbound in spirit form, because of my hatred for this betrayal and the men in on it.  My brother was condemned to walk the earth because his body was never found.  We are stuck in this state until we find someone who was brave enough to stay and listen to what I request, and then do it.  My request is simple.  Please burn my brother’s house.”  The old ghost hurried to add, “I promise only it will be burned."

 

            “But...but!”  Was all that I could come out with, but Jean found much more to say in fewer words.

 

            “Yes!” she answered his pleads for help.

 

            “You must burn it soon!" urged the ghost who had been silent until now.  “It must be burned before midnight, or you two will have to come again tomorrow night.  It cannot be done in the dawn of another day.  Hurry!  Burn it now!”

 

            “Okay,” agreed Jean. Then she started gathering up burn­able objects from within the room and piling them in the middle of the room. “Help me!” She commanded impatiently.  My mouth dropped open in shock at her quick agreement, but then I also started piling things on the floor.  

 

            When we had a big enough pile of trash stacked up, Jean touched the flame of her candle to the pile starting fires all over it before laying the candle among the rubbish.  The curtain material we pulled from the windows was so old that the old cloth caught fire quickly.  Since everything around our pile of trash was very flammable, it wasn’t long before the whole house was on fire.  In fact, the two of us just barely made it out the front door before the house burst into flames like the tinderbox it was.  We ran blindly out into the fresh air and straight into the arms of Billy and Paul.

 

            “What did you girls do?   Drop your candles?” shouted Billy angrily.

 

            “I tripped and fell with it in my hands.”  I quickly spoke up.  “Oh dear, I hope it’ll go no further!”  I was truly worried, because twenty feet can surely get small when it’s the distance between your home and a fire.

 

            "What are you guys doing here!"  demanded Jean when we were away from the blazing house.

 

            Billy looked sheepish.  "We were worried about you."

 

            "Yeah,” added Paul.  "We thought about putting some spooky stuff in the house to scare you, but this house is scary enough.  We didn't think you'd last 10 minutes."

 

            "When you hadn't returned home after an hour, we got worried and came over to see that you were all right."  Suddenly we heard a fire siren howling in the distance, but it was getting closer.  Mom and Dad had seen the fire almost as soon as it had started because they had come back from the party early.  They had immediately called the fire department.  Everyone looked to the street to see if the fire truck was in view yet.  After a moment, Billy turned back to check us girls over.  "Are you all right?"

 

            Jean gave her brother a puzzled look.  He really seemed concerned about us.  "Billy, we're fine.  The fire seemed to catch quickly, but we got out in plenty of time."  She looked like she was going to say more, but just then the fire trucks arrived.  We stumbled out of the firefighters' way and watched them work. 

 

          Turns out the fire trucks weren't needed, because the fire only burned the haunted house just as the ghosts had promised.  Which was just as well because the house was too far-gone to save by the time the firemen had arrived on the scene.  The fire didn’t even burn the grass more than two inches from the haunted house.  For a fire that seemed to be burning out of control, it sure remained totally controlled.

 

         Investigators came from miles around to examine the house’s burnt remains, but no one could explain the phenomenon.  Jean and I were excused with only a strong reprimand to never be so careless with candles ever again and to stay out of fire hazard houses, especially since it usually involved trespassing.

 

         The boys admitted they had considered putting in scary Halloween gadgets in the house to scare us, but they didn't get the chance.  Billy never did believe my story about tripping and dropping my candle by accident, but he couldn't believe we'd just set the fire either.  Every so often he'd badger us for details of our stay in the haunted house, but we always told the same story.  We saw nothing and the fire was an accident.

 

        We never told anyone the whole story, but for you, dear reader. You can surely see why!  After all who believes in haunted houses?  You?  Jean?  Me?  You’d better believe Jean and I do, at least.  And maybe, after hearing our story, so do you.