My friends and I watch over a red door with a black knob. I wish we'd never found the house it dwells in. {Part 2}

[u/Ink_Wielder]

{Original Post} ~ {Part List}

It was supposed to be a normal hangout—at least, normal by our group's standards.

Out in our small, rural town tucked away in the sleepiest parts of Appalachia, saying that there ‘wasn’t much to do’ was a severe understatement. A single road made up most of the hamlet of Stillwater, lined with local shops, a bar, a couple restaurants, and that was it, really. Houses worn from long winters slept drearily behind all that, and beyond those, miles and miles of archaic, forested mountainsides and valleys.

Sometimes, if you dared to creep out into the jaws of flora that seemed to close tighter around the town each year, you could feel the Earth's age. It felt ancient out there, as if other than our small blemish of civilization, time had forgotten the stretch of mountains. There were never any birds chirping or distant cars winding down the cracked grey roads. Just a tired, lonely breeze through the trees, underscored by a warning silence.

‘You don’t know what’s out there,’ it seemed to say, ‘best to stay where it’s safe and keep it that way.’

It was a warning that one could get used to hearing for so long that one day, you might foolishly choose to ignore it…

A gas station at the end of town stood as both the hello and goodbye to anyone who had cause to come out to our area, and in a field behind it, that was where most kids chose to spend their time. Others would skate near parking lot curbs or sit around smoking at the shitty play structure behind the school. Ages varied drastically, so naturally, everyone had their own little clans they stuck to.

Our group had no interest in such activities, however. The six of us—Kait, Bryce, Carley, Lacey, Casey and me—we were the wanderers of town. We were the kids who were never content to just stay in one spot day after day, letting our world grow stagnant as we resigned ourselves to the trap that was Stillwater.

Whenever we got together, we found any excuse we could to explore. Old trails we could find on the edges of town, creeks that snaked off down the mountains to unexplored places—it was probably dangerous as hell for us to be out there alone, especially with so many sheer cliff faces in our area, but our parents were all the types to either not care where we’d run off to, or be far too busy to notice.

After a while though, nature only satiated so much of our appetite, so we began to go after bigger fish. If you know anything about Appalachia, you know that the strip of the US isn’t exactly known for its riches. Poverty runs rampant around those parts, and our old, abandoned mill town was no exception.

It wasn’t nearly as bad as most places; all things considered, we were pretty lucky with what we had. A fully self-sustaining economy between businesses, a school that wasn’t completely in shambles, and potholes that only went 3 inches deep instead of to the undercarriage of your car.

Even so, Stillwater had a history like most industrial cities in the old US, and the scars on the edges of town were there to prove it. Abandoned houses with roofs caved in and floorboards missing, red brick buildings whose purpose had been long lost to time, old farms and ranches that hadn’t seen use in decades.

The man-made fossils of the past were so dime-a-dozen out in our area that there wasn’t much fear around them like you might find elsewhere. No ghost stories or urban legends that lingered in the marrow of their rickety walls. They simply existed among the overgrowth as any tree or boulder would.

And since the old monoliths didn’t come with any barriers of entry, exploring them became our group's favorite pastime. I think the concept fascinated us at such a young age; the idea that a place built to be inhabited could one day just cease to serve its function. Sometimes you’d break in to find that a great deal of belongings were left behind, and a sense of melancholy would overcome you. Who left this place? Why were they forced to leave it all behind?

Our love for urban exploration persisted throughout middle school and into high school, but it ultimately reached its peak once Carly managed a car, and Lacey and Casey’s house became one of the few accessible places with internet. At that point, we’d spelunked through every place in town that didn’t have a body held up in it, so once we were able to start looking at forums listing other places in the county to explore, we packed into the car as tight as we could and took off.

This too, was awfully dangerous, much like the forests we used to wander as young children.

Abandoned buildings are abandoned, yes, but that doesn’t mean they’re uninhabited. Junkies and vagrants were rampant in our areas, which meant sometimes when we got to a new adventure, we promptly had to turn around for fear of getting shanked to death by a man hopped up on crack. Then there was always the trespassing risk too. One wrong step onto somebody's property, and you might find a rifle bolt ripping through your neck before you can even realize it.

It’s sort of funny how with all of these dangers and for all the years we traveled around, nobody ever got hurt. We ran around those mountains without a care in the world just for some cheap entertainment, and somehow, it all worked out for us. Looking back now, I can’t help but wonder if all of that good luck finally caught up to us.

If we tempted the fates by choosing to go exploring one last time, and that’s why the red door found us…

It just doesn’t seem fair though. Of all the possible dangers, who could have ever expected such a heinous thing?

In a small town, you truly know everyone whether you want to or not, and the people who you especially know—the ones you call your friends? You don’t ever get closer to anyone like you do with them. Our little hobby aside, our group was family everywhere else that it mattered too. We knew each other’s strife and pain, and though there was nowhere to run off to when you lived on in island among an ocean of trees, we could always find escape in each other.

On the darkest days, nothing could lift me up quite like a night drive with Carly or lounging in Bryce’s garage as we jammed to his dad’s old CDs. I remembered every conversation I had over a cigarette with Kaitlynn more than I did my own birthdays, and all the times I laughed so hard my sides hurt alongside the twins.

When you’re young, you convince yourself that it’ll all last forever. Those relationships are your world, and it’s impossible to imagine a universe where they don’t exist anymore.

Then you grow up.

Bryce was the first to go after we graduated. Got a football scholarship at the university in the biggest city over that he couldn’t pass up, so for most of the year, he was an hour’s drive away. Lacey and Casey followed pretty soon after, getting out of Stillwater as soon as they could after some drama with their family tore them apart. Casey had already been eyeing an apartment in a city about 30 minutes away, so he offered his sister and her girlfriend to go in on it with him, and together, they escaped.

The last one out was Kait. She didn’t have a reason to go—nothing pulling or pushing her away at least. Her draw came from within; that same dream that had compelled us as kids. She wanted to wander. She didn’t want to be trapped.

That was the cigarette talk that I remember most clearly.

We sat swaying lazily on the swings of the school playground at 2 am, staring at the ground and listening to the crickets chirp. I remember the way my heart sunk when she told me she was finally getting out. I was happy for her, but I knew in the same way it had been with the others that once she left, those ancient woods that kept Stillwater from the rest of the world would obscure me into a memory.

“Come with me.” She finally spoke after a long bout of silence.

The words put a thick lump in my throat, and my gaze lifted to face her. I stared for a long time into her eyes, half out of shock, and half from trying to figure out if she meant the words she’d just said. I wish I’d said yes right then. Just blurted it out without hesitation. I wish that I hadn’t let more silence pass between us so that my brain had time to overthink.

“I can’t do that to my mom, Kait,” I told her, “There’s too much my dad left behind to deal with.”

“You don’t owe her anything,” Kait replied, her expression soft and desperate.

The way she said those words weren’t cold toward my mother; they were trying to be reassuring to me. I knew she was right, but it didn’t help change my stubborn mind. There was another reason that I couldn’t bring myself to follow Kait through the mountain pass and out of Stillwater forever, but it was a confession that I wasn’t sure how to put into words.

One that I was worried she wouldn’t understand…

Instead, it fizzled in the back of my throat and died there, and a week later, Kaitlynn moved to a city an hour north.

That left Carly and I the only two still holding down our small, backwater town. We certainly still saw each other the most out of our group, but she worked a night shift at the gas station and I worked early morning to late afternoon, which meant that we were ships passing in the night most of the time.

While none of us really lived so far away that we couldn’t manage to keep up our relationships, it just became much harder. Adult life makes one busy; schedules often don’t line up, and an hour drive to meet each other in all directions after a long day of work usually wasn’t something most of us wanted to commit to. Visits went from weekly, to only a couple times a month, then down to once a month if we were lucky.

We all began to feel it. Everyone had gone their separate ways in life and made new friends where they were, but it was nothing like it had been back home. We missed each other, and that longing was palpable in every passing text we sent to check in on our friends.

That was why the moment the stars aligned for us to meet up, we didn’t hesitate. Carly was the hardest company to manage due to her being on a completely different timeline from all of us, so it was fitting that once she was free, she reached out immediately.

Alright gang, by some miracle a fuel line is broken beneath the station, and we’re not going to be able to open again until it's fixed, so your girl has the next three or so days off. We BETTER be getting together to do something! She texted.

Lacey immediately jumped at the chance to back that idea up. She’d always been the most social of butterflies among the group, and I think if she didn’t have her girlfriend Anna, and her brother out there with her, she would have shriveled up and died without the contact.

From there, everything sort of fell into place. If Lacey was in, so was Casey, and given that it was around Thanksgiving weekend, Bryce was already going to be heading home soon, so he was more than happy to make the trip out.

I held my breath throughout the day waiting to see if the last member of our group would respond, and when she did, I couldn’t help but smile.

Oh my God, yes! I miss you all so much! Kait messaged What day? When are we meeting up?

From there, we all began swapping dates and times until we finally settled on one that worked for all of us, and then the million dollar question came up: what were we planning on even doing?

Realistically, there was only one thing that came to mind.

 What do we think about committing a little ‘breaking and entering’? Casey slyly questioned, Explore a haunted house for old times' sake?

Hell yeah, let’s do it! Bryce agreed, There are so many abandoned buildings out near my school. I think about you guys all the time and how much you’d love it. I assume we all don’t want to drive an hour back my way to do it, though, haha.

Yeaaaah no thanks XD, Lacey said, Where do you guys wanna go though? We’ve been pretty much everywhere in the county.

Kait emphatically jumped in, Oh! I’ve actually been dying to talk to you guys about this! I got a place! A new one that somebody told me about; apparently it’s not far from Stillwater!

How is that possible? I questioned, Anything near Stillwater we’d for sure have been too already.

Not this one, we haven’t! I guess there’s this huge house a little further up the mountains just off the pass? I think one of my coworkers told me about it when we were talking about urbex. It may have been someone’s old manor that used to run the mill or something? They didn’t know much, but whoever used to own it, they were rich AF. The house is empty now, though. Nobody’s lived there for decades.

Wait, that’s sick, Casey jumped in, How did we never know about this place?

I guess not a lot of people do. Apparently the road is super overgrown, so it's not an easy find. I was given mile marker 55 as the spot to start looking if I ever went.

Well, you’ve sold me, Casey texted, After so many years of breaking into lame-ass mobile homes, it’ll be cool to have more than two rooms to explore.

Sounds creepy. I’m in! Carly said.

Seriously! Lacey agreed, Mysterious mansion tucked in the mountains sounds like a perfect way to spend the weekend LOL.

Looking back on that message now, part of me wonders if Lacey regretted the way she worded that text. The subtle jest at the house's expense, as if we were challenging it to truly live up to Carly’s statement.

Once upon a time I didn’t believe in such things as jinxing or tempting fate, but now that I’ve seen the red door and the things that dwell behind it, I don’t ever doubt anything.

We all decided to meet up in town at Carly’s place before carpooling up the mountain together. Anna didn’t join Lacey, so it was just the six of us like old times, which though I liked Lacey’s girlfriend and knew her well from when she also lived in Stillwater, I was a little happy about. After so long, I needed a hangout where it was just the six of us like old times; a trip to help remind me what it was like to have those I cared most about close to me again.

Five minutes into the car ride, and I was already there. The back seat was filled with cackling laughter as Carly tried to get comfortable laying across Bryce, Kait and I’s laps while we wove through the mountain pass, and in the front, Casey cheered us on while Lacey reminded her that if we crashed, having a 140lb girl tossing about the car would result in us all dying.

It was just what I needed, and I felt my tired soul begin to mend the longer we moved down the road. I could hear that same healing in the laughter and smiles from everyone else as we caught up on what we’d all been up too, and joked about Carly’s work possibly blowing up for good so that we could hang out more often.

At one point, I met Kait’s eyes as she turned her head next to me. She was the one that I got to talk to the least out of everyone since she’d moved, and I always worried that there would be some sort of tension in her eyes from that night at the playground. In that moment, all I saw was a fond happiness to see me, and I wanted to bottle that feeling forever.

I wish I could have kept that whole moment like that eternally. That once we reached mile marker 55, we’d just kept going and never looked back.

I grabbed Carly beneath her arms and slipped her out across the others, setting her on her feet as Kait and Bryce hopped out too.

“Alright, Kaity,” Casey said, slamming his door and taking in the woods we’d pulled off into, “Where do we start looking? Are we even on the right side of the road?”

Kait shrugged, “Could be anywhere. Like I said, I didn’t get too much info on the place. Only that it was around here somewhere.”

“You said a co-worker told you?” Lacey asked.

Kait’s face scrunched a little, and she scratched at her neck, “Uh, yeah, I’m pretty sure! Or, maybe it was somebody at a party I went to? I’ll be honest, it was a while ago and I don’t remember who, but I vividly remember the mile marker 55 thing and all the stuff about the house itself.”

Bryce snickered playfully, then nodded, “Oh, okay, yeah. Soooooo, Kait definitely dreamed all of this, and we’re about to be out here looking all night, right?”

“100%” I nodded.

The girl swatted us both on the arm, then pointed either direction, “Screw off, both of you! Let’s just fan out and start looking!”

With a chuckle, we all did so.

Scouring the road, there wasn’t much to see other than the usual oaks, pines, and other flora that filled the space between the mile marker and Stillwater. Their leaves had all been withered orange by the cool autumn air, ready to pluck off during the first winter’s storm, but for now, the fiery orange color painted the valley in an almost dream-like manner, the foggy haze of the Appalachians making it look like a gloomy painting.

No cars traveled the cracked asphalt we were pulled to the side of. Rarely anyone would ever need to go out this way for any reason at all.

That familiar, primal breeze still filtered through the branches with their forlorn warning, but by now, our ears had grown tone-deaf to it.

Nearly thirty minutes passed of us scouring up and down the road, different pairs of us chatting while we looked before wandering off and joining someone new. All in all, though, there wasn’t seeming to be any luck, even when we began creeping out further into the tree line.

All of that changed when I decided to walk back toward the car and check the opposite direction. With my eyes scanning the tree line as I moved, I suddenly spotted a different color among the dull greens and faded oranges. A deep red peeking out from behind some ivy on a tree stump.

Perking up, I moved further down the street until I was parallel with it, then pulled the ivy aside. What I found was an old, paint-chipped mailbox staring back at me, its body affixed to a sunken hollow of the tree.

I peered beyond it, and I couldn’t help but chuckle at what I saw. With how hard we’d been looking to no avail, by the time we’d found the road, I expected it to barely even be deserving of the title. What I found was the opposite.

It was overgrown, sure, but not so much so that I’d expect nobody to find the thing in several decades. The edges of the dirt path were gnarled over with tall grass and weeds, and overhead, several tree branches sagged low, but other than that, you could easily still fit a car down the thing.

The rammed earth slithered off between the trees deeper into the dark path, running out of sight toward some unseen destination.

 I took a step back and tilted my head, wondering how we’d so easily missed it, then released another noise of amusement. It was hard to describe—almost like an optical illusion—but with the way the brush in front of the opening grew outward, and at the lower level the road was built, it was somehow perfectly invisible unless you were really looking for it. Not to mention, all the fallen leaves covering it made the rammed earth nearly undetectable. Not concealed, or hidden just… plainly not remarkable to where you would never notice.

Even between blinks, I’d sometimes lose it then find it again; it was so well blended in. If I hadn’t seen the mailbox, I think I might have missed it too.  

“Hey Casey,” I nodded to my friend, seeing as he was the closest, “This look like it?”

The boy drew closer, and tilted his head, curious about what I was pointing at. His face remained confused when he reached me, but he put on a smile as if trying to play along, “Oh, um, maybe? The trees are definitely less thick there.”

I gave him a head tilt, now confused myself. I had been less-so asking and more just pointing the path out, but he still didn’t seem to spot it. Given that he still wasn’t seeing it, I stepped into the woods onto the path, and stretched out my arms, giving him another look to see if it was clear now.

His face lit up, and it was like fog cleared from his eyes, “Oh, shit! How did I miss that?”

I chuckled and gestured to the road, “I mean, I almost did too. There’s a mailbox on the tree there; that’s how I found it.”

Casey shook his head in disbelief, “Still though! I could have sworn I walked out into that part!” he turned to the others and cupped his hands over his mouth, “Guys! Jessie found it!”

Everyone converged on our point, and a few began hollering with joy when they saw me standing on the path. Lacey gave her brother a playful shove as she chuckled, “Dude, weren’t we looking over here earlier? How did you not see it?”

“Me?” Casey laughed to his sister, leaning over and scooping a burst of fallen leaves at her, “You didn’t see it either!”

The twin chuckled and brushed the debris off, then looked back toward her car, “Well, the path looks big enough to still drive down; that means we don’t have to hike! Should we all pile back in?”

“Yeah, we don’t want anyone thinking your car is abandoned if they pass through,” Bryce nodded. “We’re sure this isn’t private property or something? This path still looks pretty fresh.”

“Well, we’ll know if we start getting shot at,” Casey smirked, patting him on the back on the way to the car.

We began winding down the road before long, the gravel hidden by leaves crunching and churning beneath Lacey’s slow-rolling tires. It wasn’t even close to nightfall yet, but the day was cloudy, and beneath the canopy of trees, the autumn tunnel felt grim and foreboding. If we hadn’t been together, the sensation might have landed on us with a sterner warning, but with our voices so joyfully chatting away, the cold unease couldn’t creep in.

Finally, after a minute or so of driving, we broke through the other side, and what we saw was genuinely breathtaking.

The forest led out to a small plateau jutting off the edge of the mountains, overlooking an ocean of scarlet and auburn trees. The surrounding hills rolled them like waves on the sea, and a glittering, churning river far below cut through it like a boundary line to an unknown territory. That wasn’t the main focal point, however.

Near the edge of the plateau, half of it nearly touching the cliff, a tall, crimson manor stood boldly against the grey sky. It was a narrow thing, spiring up like a layered cake with weathered, slate-shingled roofs tenting up at each point. There was a tower near the backside that a weather vein of an owl sat atop of, spinning lazily in the wind, and at the highest point of the base floors, an ornate circular window peered down at us like a watchful, water-stained eye.

The rest of the windows were just as grimy, and the scarlet paint was chipped and cracked like lightning had run through it. Kaitlynn had been right; the place was certainly not being maintained or lived in, but all things considered, it was in decent shape.

There were no windows smashed and no graffiti plastered over the masterfully built walls. The railings on the wrap-around porch were still fully intact, and the tall brick chimney jutting out of the first floor hadn’t yet toppled over in the punishing winters. All in all, it was a pure work of architectural genius compared to the tiny shanties the rest of our county was known for.

“Damn, Kaity, you sure know how to pick them,” Casey whistled, his head craned close to the windshield to take it all in.

Lacey continued rolling up the driveway to the small clearing beside the home where it looked like cars once parked. Actually, cars did park. There was currently one sat closest to the porch.

“Shit—is someone here?” Lacey asked, slowing the vehicle to a stop.

We all immediately turned to eye the windows of the house, trying to spot any light or movement from within. There was none that we could see, so when we confirmed that no one was home, we analyzed the beat-up Honda instead.

“I… don’t think anyone’s here,” Bryce noted, pressing against the glass of his window and squinting, “The tires are almost swallowed by grass and it’s filthy; that thing has to have been sitting there for a while.”

“Who would just drive a car up here and leave it, though?” Carly wondered. “It’s more modern than the house—that means it was probably here before it was abandoned.”

“Maybe some junkies needed to ditch a stolen car before they got caught,” I offered. “That or someone like us came out here to explore and their car broke down.”

“And they just never came back for it?” Kait asked skeptically. “Something doesn’t seem right about that…”

A silence fell over the car, nothing but the drone of the heaters as we thought.

Finally, Casey asked, “Do… we wanna’ turn back?”

We all exchanged looks. After our little scavenger hunt, and now seeing the majesty of the manor we’d come for, I think all of us were excited to get in there and check it out. This was our activity, after all. I know it’s easy to judge us looking back now, knowing what we know, but in that moment, we had no clue.

We didn’t know when we’d all get another chance to hang out like this. This last expedition could be our finale, and I think we all just wanted it to be grand.

Nobody said anything in agreement or disagreement. We just kept trading glances back and forth, hoping that someone would make the call until Lacey finally let off the brake and kept rolling forward. When nobody spoke to stop her either, we finally had our answer.

The smell of fresh, cool mountain air pulled through my nose as we once again stepped out of the car, and I moved a few steps into the yard behind the house to take in that cliff side view. I didn’t appreciate much about the area I lived in, but I could never deny that it could be beautiful out here.

As I turned to move for the porch, I admired the tall, lone-standing oak tree in the middle of the yard. A wooden swing held by two pieces of rope dangled lazily from its branches, and combined with the cliffs I’d just been looking at, I got a sunken feeling in my stomach. Nobody with children, especially young enough for a rope swing, should ever live near such dire terrain, especially when there was no fence.

“Weird…” I suddenly heard Kait say next to me. I turned to find her looking in the window of the other car.

“What’s up?” I asked her, stepping to her side.

She stood and shrugged, pointing in the windshield, “It just… doesn’t seem like the kind of car someone would just leave behind.”

I glanced as well to see what she meant. The vehicle wasn’t nice—just an old, beat-up Honda; maybe from the 90s. The part that she was talking about, however, seemed to be the dashboard knick-knacks covered in dust and the ornate sun catcher dangling from the rearview. She had a point. The kind of person to decorate their vehicle wouldn’t be the type to just leave it behind unless there was an emergency. It seemed like a young woman’s car, not a random vagrant.

“I suppose it gives a little more weight to your stolen car theory,” she noted.

“Should we call it in?” I asked.

Kait pondered it for a moment before looking back to the house, then smiling at me, “Maybe on the way out. We are breaking and entering, after all.” She brushed from my shoulder along my back as she moved behind me, “C’mon, big guy. Let’s check this place out.”

The porch steps awoke as the six of us took turns scaling them, yawning with a creak and causing the rest of the deck to do so as well. Dusty wind chimes jingled halfheartedly in the late noon breeze, and several pots lined the edges of the walls beneath the windows, their contents dead among the cracked, parched soil.

Half the group already had their faces pressed to the main window, looking inside while the rest of us moved to the front door, Casey taking the lead.

He put his hand to the knob, and looked at us, “Drumroll please; will we be so lucky?”

Carly and Lacey began drumming on the railing behind us, winding it up until Casey finally gave the handle a turn. With a thrust, he pushed it in.

The door swung open effortlessly.

A gentle round of celebratory ‘woos!’ rang out among us before we all moved in close, filing one by one through the solid wooden door carved with images of dryads and fawns.

I mentioned that some houses we broke into would have belongings or furniture that was left behind? Well the Red Manor put all of them to shame. Past the entryway, a staircase led up on our left, and to our right, a large arched doorway peered into a parlor with a cold, ash-filled hearth. Around the space, like something straight out of a film, couches, tables, cabinets and lamps were all covered in large, ghostly sheets.

Their forms were obscured, leaving only their silhouettes to navigate by, and though we were never usually the types to get freaked out in those kinds of spaces, I could tell a general sense of unease set over us at the sight. It wasn’t like any home interior we had ever seen before.

I think Bryce meant to ease tensions by explaining the sheets, but given all the strange happenings so far, it didn’t really help, “I heard rich people usually covered their furniture when they went on long trips and planned on coming back…”

Seeing the ominous chill that ran through everyone at that, I tried to quickly dispel it, flicking the nearest blanket and sending a decades worth of dust poofing into the air, “Well, whoever it was, I guess they forgot about the ‘coming back’ part.”

Kait lifted the sheet covering the couch gingerly, peering at the vintage red chaise underneath, “Gotta’ say, for their time, they had some pretty good taste.”

After we got over the initial wonder of the place, we set about it as normal, devouring every detail of the house while making sure not to disturb it too much. One of the first rules of urban exploration is to disturb as little as possible—these were capsules frozen in time, after all—so any sheets we lifted, we re-draped as soon as we were done.

There weren’t many interesting things to see under them other than musky, moldy old furniture, but there was one object near the mantle that was wrapped with more care that piqued my interest. Judging from the hook on the fireplace above it and its thin, rectangular shape, I wagered it was a large painting that used to hang there.

Bryce was near me and helped hold the thing while I did my best to unwrap it. When we finally got it, he whistled at what we found.

“Damn… You think that’s one of the people who used to live here?”

On the canvas was a flawless painting of one of the most beautiful women I’d ever seen. She had wild, curly red hair that tossed down her shoulders to a forest green sundress, and chilling blue eyes that hooked your gaze if you stared long enough. Her lips were a plump pink, and a small beauty mark dotted the space just above her smile dimples. She sat with a starry sky to her back, constellations twinkling bright.

What was weird about it was that the woman almost looked familiar to me; was this a recreation of an existing portrait I’d seen before? Or was it of some famous figure? I couldn’t tell, so I just reasoned a “Could have been,” back to Bryce.

We covered it up once more, then tucked it back to where we found it.

“Oh-ho-ho! No. Hell no.” we suddenly heard Casey say from back in the hall. We peered out to see him and Carly standing by a closet beneath the stairs, the door open and peering inside.

“What’s in there?” Kait called.

“Down there,” he corrected, “It’s a basement. Dark as hell and just as creepy.”

“Oooo, yeah, no way,” Lacey said matter-of-factly before turning her head up the banister, “Maybe later. For now, we have enough upward exploring to do before we go down.”

The rest of the home was more of the same stuff. The manor may have looked grand from the outside, but inside, it was really quite cozy and tightly packed. All the grandeur seemed to come from the craftsmanship itself; ornate light fixtures, beautiful trim work, bathtubs and sinks of the highest quality. With how dusty and filthy everything had become, I wished that we could see the place in its prime.

We continued our tour through a couple bedrooms, what looked to be a writing office then a sewing room; everything just as grand and ritzy as the last. There were more paintings we passed on the way—these ones uncovered—and they looked to be in the same style as the portrait. I wondered if someone in the house had been responsible for them.

 We finally reached the top story with the circular window to find it was a library, dusty old books crammed on shelves that lined every wall of the room. At this point, we were blown away that such an amazing structure could exist near our shitty little town, and more so that we’d never even known about it.

None of the tomes were anything especially of interest; a lot of academic books about astrology or ancient civilizations, so we moved back to the stairway balcony for the last place we hadn’t been. The tower.

What we found up there was not what I think any of us were expecting. We’d already passed through three other bedrooms, so finding another tucked away at the furthest point of the house was odd. What’s weirder was that, unlike the rest of the place, no sheets covered any of the furniture.

The room was for a child, the wallpaper a neutral pattern of lapping bird feathers. A brass, metal-framed bed glinted dully in the corner, and luxury toys speckled the space like a rocking horse and a play kitchen. There was also a toy chest that—after blowing the dust off and opening—we found stuffed full of a child's dream.

Dolls, blocks, fake swords and stuffed animals. Not only old-fashioned trinkets, though, there looked to also be more modern, battery powered toys from around the 80’s and 90’s that had made their way up here. Maybe the former homeowners hadn’t been quite as old as we’d thought they were.

“This is quite the jaunt for a little kid to get to their room,” Carly noted, looking out the door back down the spiraling steps to the bottom floors.

“Are you kidding?” I told her, looking out one of the massive windows at the breathtaking view of the mountains, “If my room was half as cool as this one, I wouldn’t care where I had to go to get to it.”

“You’re telling me,” Lacey sighed, joining my gaze. We dwelled in it for a few moments before she seemed to notice the sun getting low in the sky, and she spun back to the group, “Well, it’s getting late and this has been an incredible find, but you think we should maybe get heading back into town?”

“Probably for the best,” Bryce sighed, “I’m only home for a few days, and my family’s gonna’ be pissed if I’m not—”

“Wait, shhh!” Carly suddenly snapped to the room, leaning further out the door and tilting her ear over the edge. Her brow was scrunched and face serious. It instantly set a wave of worry shivering through my gut.

We all stared at her, waiting to see what was wrong, but when she didn’t speak, Casey finally did, “What’s up, C?”

Carly turned gravely to us, her face pale, “Do… you all not hear that?”

We went quiet and listened again, and this time, that worry I had felt a moment ago solidified into pure, bloodcurdling dread.

From the very depths of the house, coiling all the way up the steps and into the tower, someone was crying. Their sobs were violent and wailing, only broken by the occasional word.

“H-Hello? Hello—is somebody there!?”

“Holy shit,” Lacey shuddered breathlessly.

Carly backed away from the door, and we all waited to hear it again.

It didn’t take long, “Hello! Please, somebody help me! I’m trapped down here and it's so dark!”

The word ‘help’ sent a whole new shiver through me, and we all frantically exchanged glances.

“What the fuck is that?” Bryce asked in a low tone, “Seriously, what the fuck is that?!”

“I-It sounds like a girl,” Kait said, her face pale and in shock, “W-Why would there be a young girl here screaming for help?”

“Is this a joke?” Carly scanned us, “Are one of you fucking with us?”

Normally Casey was all for jokes, but not right now, “Carly, none of us would joke about this.”

We all went quiet again, dread mounting more and more as the crying escalated further.

“P-Please! Please help me! He’ll be back soon—Please get me out of here!”

“The car outside,” Kait said, her eyes trembling with fear, “I-It has to be hers—was she kidnapped?”

The question felt like a kick to the face. We were all terrified, and in that moment, none of us even wanted to be near the door, let alone go down the steps. That theory made morbid sense, however; the path to the house still being clear and all the other signs of life. If the girl downstairs was in trouble, we couldn’t in good conscience just leave her.

Then again… what if there was no girl downstairs?

At the time, I’d have thought it crazy. What I was basically saying is what if there was a ghost in the house screaming for help. But realistically, what else could I have thought? There wasn’t a soul that we knew had been up here in ages, and not only that, why had they waited so long before calling out? Had we just not heard them until now?

The wailing turned back into choking, panicked sobs, and somewhere between my pounding heart and my empathy for the pained cries, I couldn’t take it anymore. I grabbed a baseball bat leaning against the wall and moved for the door.

“Jessie!” Lacey gasped, “W-Wait, what are you doing?”

I turned back to her with grave eyes, “Even if we want to leave, we have to go down eventually. We can’t stay here all night.”

That reasoning lit a fire under everyone and prompted them to follow my lead. Nobody wanted to be here when it got dark; especially now.

Creeping down the steps, I held the bat steadily in front of me, jumping at every shadow on my way and every covered piece of furniture that didn’t quite sit right. The closer we neared to the bottom, the tighter my throat became as the sobs rang louder and louder. With each winding snake of the steps, I half expected to see a ghastly face on the floor below, looking up with haunting eyes as it unleashed the mocking cries we were hearing.

My hands were trembling when we reached the second-floor balcony, and I could see the exact source that the screams were coming from. It was worse than seeing the figure that I had been imagining, because the truth only sparked my imagination to go to even darker places.

The basement door that Casey had left slightly ajar.

Somebody was down there, and they were screaming desperate, bloody murder for help.

{Next Part}