Stories My Mother Told Me: The Haunted House


     So when I was little, my family took these 5 hour trips to visit my father's relatives in the south.  We had a full size van, and we laid out sleeping bags in the back so we could stretch out while my dad drove.  
     Sometimes mom would tell us stories back there.  They were always scary ones, as per request by my older brother and me.  I think my mom was partially inspired by old TV shows such as The Outer Limits, The Twilight Zone, and Alfred Hitchcock Presents.  We were probably her inspiration as well.  Our most favorite story was called The Haunted House.  It was very suspenseful and always left us wanting more.
     Recently, I felt the need to write the story down and even perform it as a YouTube video.  I should note that I have updated the story for the current century and added in a little extra character development.  The main story is still the same from beginning to "end."
     And so, here it is for all zero of my followers to enjoy, The Haunted House:



The Haunted House

There once was a brother and sister whose parents made them walk to and from school together.  The older brother hated his little sister.  She was so annoying and always getting in his way.

Now, the sister loved her brother very much.  To her, he was the coolest person in the whole world, and she just wanted him to like her and think that she was cool too.

Every day on their walk home from school, they passed by an old abandoned house. The paint was peeling off of it, and the doors and windows were all missing.  So anyone could go inside of it.  Except for the rumor that this house was haunted.  Every kid in town swore that they knew someone who had gone inside the house, but had never been seen again.


The brother loved to tease his sister about the house.  He told her gruesome stories about the missing people being dismembered, torn into bloody pieces by the spirit of an ancient evil madman. The stories terrified the little sister, but she did her best to laugh it all off because she didn’t want her brother know that she was afraid.  

But he knew.  She knew that he knew. And the knowledge pierced her everyday as they passed the haunted house.

One day, the older brother was in a particularly bad mood.  Boys at school who were much bigger than him had beaten him up. And now he had a swollen eye and a split lip.  His anger grew and grew as he tasted the wound on his mouth.  He wanted to make someone else hurt just as bad as he was hurting.

He looked over at his sister.  He hated the way she appeared to be skipping as she took long strides with her overly long legs just to keep up with him.  He hated the way her cute little piggy tails bounced up and down. But most of all, he hated that look of concern on her big, dumb, stupid face.

Pleeeeease!  Please tell me what happened,” said the little sister.  “Those dumb jerks will be sorry when I tell mom and dad.”

The older brother stopped dead in his tracks.

“Do NOT tell mom and dad,” he growled.

If somebody told, the bigger boys would just make things worse.  How could his stupid sister not know that?


As he turned to look at her, he realized that the haunted house loomed in the behind them.  It gave him an idea. A terrible idea.  A cruel smile spread across his face as his dumb sister blinked innocently at him.

“But-“ she started to say.

“Whoa! Did you see that?” he said, pointing over her shoulder.

“What?”

The brother took a step past her, pointing at the house. 
“I saw something moving by the door.”

Fear filled the sister’s eyes.  She clenched her hands at her sides.

“No you didn’t.”

“Yes, I did.”

“Nuh-uh! You’re just trying to scare me!”

“You don’t believe me?” the brother laughed.  “Why don’t you just check it out yourself then?”

The sister shivered with terror at the suggestion.  She bit down hard on her lip to keep a whimper from escaping her mouth.



“Are you chicken?”

The sister recoiled at that.  It wasn’t cool for her brother to think she was chicken.

He began flapping his arms, his body moving to a slight squat.

“Bahk-bahk-bah!  Bahk-bahk-baaaah!” he crowed sadisticly.

“Stop,” squeaked his sister.

But he kept going, louder than before.  His eyes narrowed into a merciless glare.

“Bahk-bahk-bah!  Bahk-bahk-baaaah! Bahk-bahk bah! Bahk-bahk-bah!”

“Stop it,” she said, pushing a little more strength into her voice.

“Bahk-bahk-bah!  Bahk-bahk-baaaah! BAHK-BAHK-BAHK-BA-BAAAAHHH!!”

His upper lip curled harshly as he beat his arms harder, kicking up his feet.

The sister thumped her backpack onto the ground as hard as she could.

“FINE!” she shouted.

Her arms swung wide at her sides as she stomped up the lawn and onto the front porch of the haunted house.

“How’s this?”

The brother shook his head.


“Nope. Go step through the door.”

Her eyes widened.  The corner of her mouth twitched just a little.  She couldn’t understand why her brother was being so mean to her.

The brother began to raise his arms again in another flap.  

“Bah-”
But his sister turned on her heel before he could finish and stomped her way to the doorframe.  She stood right there on the threshold, throwing her hands open and wide to indicate her new position.  She raised her eyebrows in question.

“That’s pretty good,” her brother conceded.  “But what if you went all the way inside and stood in the window?”

Tears filled his sister’s eyes.  She bit her lip again.

“Please,” her voice trembled.  “Please, I just want to go home.”

But her brother was immovable.  He folded his arms across his chest, his cruel smile growing wider.  He decided that he wanted to see his little sister literallypee her pants. That would be so awesome! Maybe then she would finally leave him alone.


“Do it,” he insisted.  “If you do it, I’ll take a picture, and we can show everyone in school how you were brave enough to go inside the haunted house.”

“Then we can go home?” his sister wined.

“Then we can go home.”

She let out a great sigh.

“Fine.”

The sister did not stomp this time.  She turned her head all around, checking to make sure she was, in fact, all alone in the house.  She took one slow step inside.  The floor creaked eerily under her slight weight.  The empty window frame was only about five feet away. She could make it.  She knew she could.

Another slow step, and the floorboards groaned.  The wood beneath her feet didn’t feel very solid.  It was so old and rotted, she wasn’t sure if it could hold her.

Two more steps, each sounded louder than the last.  If there was anyone or anything here, it surely knew that she was here now.  Oh, why had she been so loud stomping up the porch stairs? The tears began to spill from her eyes.

Just a couple more steps, and she would be in front of the window.  Then she could see her brother.  Then it would be safe…  Right?



She could feel the snot, heavy within her nostrils.  If she snorted it back up it would just make more noise. It would be a noise that would confirm to anyone or anything here that she was a person, and not just a wild animal or stray cat bumbling about.  Maybe it was better to just let it run out onto her upper lip.

The next step snapped loudly.  A piece of wood splintered up toward her as she stumbled forward the final few steps.  She was breathing heavily as she straightened up in front of the window.  Her blurred eyes searched frantically around her once more before landing on the figure of her brother on the front lawn.

He was hunched over and laughing maliciously at her misfortune.  He looked up at her with that terrible, but pleased smile.  Her brother was enjoying this far more than he had imagined.
“That’s really good,” he said.  “You made it.  I’m proud of you.”

“Just take the picture,” his sister sobbed.  “Take it.”

He nodded, traces of his insidious laughter still leaking out of him.  The brother took his time, digging through his own backpack to prolong his sick pleasure.

“Please hurry,” begged his sister.  “I want to go home.”

She was blubbering now.  The brother supposed this was just as good as peeing her pants.

“Okay,” he said.

He lifted his cell phone up into the air.  He made devil fingers with one hand and waggled his tongue at his sister. She shakily lifted her hand to make devil fingers back at him.  Then, he looked down to the screen and took the picture.


Wait a minute, he thought as he pressed the button.  Something didn’t look right on the screen.

He quickly flipped back to the most recent photo he had taken with his phone.  Then it sunk in.  His sister’s head had begun to turn to the side, her eyes looking away from the camera as though she had just spotted something that startled her.  Jerking his head up, he dropped the phone to his side.

The window was empty.  His sister was gone.

“Ha, ha. Very funny!” he called out.

The brother waited for a response, but there wasn’t any.

“That’s great, sis.  I didn’t even here the floor creak when you ran and hid… ”

That didn’t make sense either.  The wood floor had clearly creaked, not just when she stomped up the porch, but when she slowly approached the window.

“Okay, you can come out.  We can go home now.”

But his little sister didn’t answer.  He approached the house, stopping just at the bottom step of the porch. His sister had gone farther than this without hesitation, so why couldn’t he?

“It’s not funny anymore,” the brother called.  “Come on!  Let’s get out of here.”

He waited a minute more, biting his lip so hard that the blood began to trickle out again.  He had to go after her.  What if she was hurt? He had wanted to embarrass her, but he did not want her to be physicallyhurt.

The brother forced himself to take that first step.  It creaked loudly, as expected.

“Are you okay in there?  Sis?”

He paused at the doorway and took a deep breath.
“Sis?”

The brother slowly bent his head into the door, turning into the direction of the window that his little sister had gone to.  His eyes grew wide.  What he saw there shocked him beyond anything he had ever seen.



To be continued…

Comments

Popular Posts