“The House At The End Of The Street”

Author’s Note: This is a Take Ten to Write story and has not been proofread for errors. If I feel inspired or if there’s interest in the story, I’ll post a revised, edited, and extended version at a later date. Happy reading!

“Yes!”

I don’t usually do crazy, stupid, reckless things. But last night, I made a bad decision, and now, I’m in a bad situation.

Let me back up a bit. Ever since the old man in the rickety house at the end of the street died and left the house empty and abandoned, my friends wanted to go inside to check it out. ‘We’ll see ghosts!’ they said.

I can’t say that I believe in ghosts–at least, I didn’t before we went to the house. I’m also not big on trespassing, which is essentially what we did. Still, I somehow allowed my friends to talk me into it, so at 10 pm last night, we walked over to the ‘haunted’ house.

They were so excited, talking the whole way about what might be inside. Me? Well, I’d been inside the house before, back when the old man’s wife had still been alive. I used to help clean up their garden and they’d invite me in for cookies. It wasn’t haunted then, so why would it be haunted now?

Well, my friends were still curious, so off we went. We entered the house quietly, just in case some homeless guy was in there, but we found that it was empty.

Like, completely empty. There wasn’t a piece of furniture in sight.

I’m not sure why I found that odd. Maybe it’s because in all those horror movies and things, the houses are always fully furnished and covered in white sheets.

For some reason, I found the lack of furniture reassuring. Okay, so some small part of me thought that maybe, just maybe, ghosts did exist and that they would’ve used the furniture if there had been any. Yeah, it sounds ridiculous, but hey, I can’t control how my brain works.

We walked through the entire house. I honestly wasn’t sure what exactly we were looking for, since the house was empty, but I followed them around anyway, hoping for them to finish so that I could go home and sleep.

We were just about to leave when the noises started. Soft creaking at first, but then the noises grew louder and louder until it sounded like someone–or something–was banging on the walls.

As soon as the noises had started, we’d ran to the front door. Of course, it was locked or jammed or just being stubborn. Still, we were trapped.

My friends began to panic. My heart was racing a bit, but I wasn’t panicking.

At least, not until I saw the ghost.

Final Comments: I’m not really sure how my brain went from “Yes!” to a ghost story… But here we are. I’m not sure I love the type of voice I went with; I find that it doesn’t really have any urgency or anything and that the narrator just seems kind of bored (maybe?) with the whole ghost thing rather than scared or panicked.

Overall Rating: 😬