Still craving more for your carnivorous appetites? Want to sink your fangs into some more scary stories? What about houses? Do you ever wonder about what lurks in old buildings? They’re just old masses of brick and wood, aren’t they? Surely they don’t really house any bad energy. Surely they don’t hold anything malevolent. They’re just buildings!
Are they?
This next story opens with a young man who can’t quite remember what’s going on or why he needs to fortify himself before getting on with his day. All he knows is that his friends are waiting for him…and that he has a slow feeling of dread that he can’t shake. But he has to go back to the house to find his friends, doesn’t he? After all….it’s just a house.
When Bobby Gaston walks into a diner and orders a beer with his breakfast, he can’t quite remember why he needs the fortification. While he wants to remember, he’s pretty sure he doesn’t want to know what happened. He strikes up a conversation with the cute little waitress, Sheila, who offers him a ride back to the house on Normandy Road where he claims his ghost-hunter friends are sleeping after a night of exploration in the spooky old mansion.
Only, Bobby knows his friends aren’t just sleeping. He inherited the house from his grandfather, and while his memory is hazy, his unerring knowledge that something evil lurks inside makes him hesitate. But with the spunky and impetuous Sheila by his side, the darkness doesn’t seem so bad… until she leaves him hanging.
Bobby is left with two options: turn tail and run, or face his personal demons while fighting against the evil that waits for him.
***
Still not satisfied? Still not sure if you can stomach what lies between roof and floor in the house that waits for Bobby? Well, luckily there’s an eerie excerpt to help you make up your mind…
“So, why were you up at the mansion anyway?” she continued, jerking me back to the present.
“Two of my friends are…were…well, are ghost hunters. They own all of their own equipment. Ever hear of Shadow Nine?”
She squeaked in surprise. “Yeah!” Wow, she was enthusiastic. “I used to watch their TV show…all three episodes of it!” I had to laugh. Had Chad and Tim been there to witness the rush of fangirlishness, they’d have loved her for it. Three episodes, we found out after it started airing, was generous, considering the TV families said it was the lowest rated show in the history of the Public Broadcast System. “So…” she continued, her tone muted, “they’re dead?”
“Yeah, I’m pretty sure.”
She swallowed audibly. “What were they looking for?”
I sighed. “Grampa used to tell us stories about a woman on the stairs and an imp in the basement.”
“An imp?” she asked, her voice thick with disbelief. “You mean like one of those pointy-tailed deals you see in renaissance paintings?”
“Not exactly,” I said and slammed the car door just in time to keep her from tearing it off on the side of the building. “The imp in the basement was supposed to look like a man – only short.”
“So, a midget?”
“Something like that.” She didn’t respond; only made a low musing sound as she whipped out onto the highway and into morning traffic.
Sheila was thinking hard about something, and I was pretty sure I didn’t want to know what it was. I could feel the unasked questions buzzing around her. She wanted to know how they died; what happened and why I was still alive. To be honest, I wasn’t entirely sure why, but I did intend to find out.
“I didn’t kill them if that’s what you’re thinking,” I blurted, before I realized I had even spoken. Her eyes left the road for a moment, fixing on my face with deep scrutiny before she slammed on the brakes at a changing traffic light.
“I wasn’t thinking that,” she said. She was a horrible liar.
“Chad and Tim wanted to go out there for a while, but I wouldn’t let them. I kept trying to tell them it was stupid. Ghosts don’t exist.”
“They don’t?” she asked, again with that same hint of sarcasm and disbelief. “Then what happened to them?”
“I don’t know. They kept saying they could feel something moving around in the house, but I never saw a thing. The place has been empty for so long, there’s no telling who or what might be living in it. And no, I don’t know how they died. Truthfully, I’m not even sure they are dead.”
“Then why did you leave?”
“Because I didn’t want to be there anymore,” I said. She glanced at me as she turned a corner a little too fast, nearly taking out a mailbox as her right front tire hopped the sidewalk. “I couldn’t find them.”
“So maybe they’re just hiding from you…trying to play a prank on the skeptic.”
“I don’t know,” I replied and sighed. The whole situation was a little too strange for me. It was possible they would go to such lengths… but surely they would have come to find me by now.
I hadn’t been in the house since Grampa died, but I had the keys because it was my inheritance. Reluctant as it was. The house held too many memories for me, both good and bad. My mother didn’t want the house, and nobody trusted my sister to have it. Everyone had told me to get out of my apartment and move to Newton, but I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to be the crazy guy that rattled around alone in the big house at the end of the street. I could have gotten a bunch of cats to keep me company, or maybe found some bimbo to marry and occasionally fuck in between trips up and down the moldering, old staircase, but that wasn’t what I wanted.
***
Desperate to get your claws on the full story? Then take a look HERE
Come Selahway With Me... 