Gabriel Tellez 

Period 7 

Grade 11

10/4

The house on 24th 

This was the most terrifying experience of my life, that will haunt me forever.

The season had just began to change and the hot sun had disappeared as the leaves began to fall. The fright of October filled the town. For the sake of this story, my friends will be Jordan, Michael and Dave. Turner is my name, but most call me T. This happened a few years back, and at the time I was an ant compared to the rest of the kids at school. My arms hung like sticks onto my slim frame, my head topped with dark black hair and deep blue eyes. I only hung out with Jordan, Michael and Dave, and the only thing we actually cared about was girls. Chasing girls around our small town of Lexington made it easy. It was a particular Friday night, right after a painful school day that changed everything for all of us. 

The morning started off slow. I got up and stepped down on the wooden floor which made my feet jump, as if I had just stepped on ice. I walked slowly down the hall dragging my feet each, seemingly glued to the floor. Ripping the curtain open and turning on the shower, I got chills that ran all the way down my spine. Tonight was the night. I sat in the shower thinking about what was in store for me. Getting out of the shower felt like running through the snow barefoot. I quickly motioned to my left, grabbing my towel. It took me a bit to rummage through my clothes before finding my usual attire; white t-shirt with grey sweats. I got into the car feeling like the lids of my eyes had tons hanging off. I shut the door without a word. The drive was not far and I saw the main block and all of my friends' houses on the way. Then we passed it. Or I should say the… the house on 24th.

Everyone in town knows this house is “haunted.” There were all sorts of rumors about murders and killings that happened there. But of course, this seemed like BS to my friends and I. Nobody had ever been inside of the house. The outside was crappy looking, the wood was molding and degrading, and the windows had  grey covers with cracks in almost every one that ran through the worn out plastic. The wind howled through the house. Shingles flew like saucers off of the roof, and the curtains whipped, dancing around the window frame. The yellow tape read, “do not enter.”

 I always studied this house on the way to school. Nothing ever changed, nobody went in, nobody came out and the house laid still. Driving by I peered at the door and then all around the house, examining it a little extra this time. The blind in the window was cracked open as if someone was holding it up on the other side. I turned my head until I could not see the house anymore. I slouched back in my seat thinking about what I just saw,  “Was I tired? Was it always that way?” I thought there was no way it was different, everything was always the same at that house. 

Approaching the school the house cleared from my head. It was a small school and you saw everyone in the morning. Dave approached me with the normal sigh, and the “f this place.” Dave really hated class, school and pretty much everyone in it. He was as tall as the trees, with a stocky build. He was quiet, so quiet that nobody understood him. We then saw Michael, who walked casually towards us. He is around my height, stocky build, and is always joking and laughing. But today, something was off with Michael. He was acting differently. His face seemed worried and as white as snow. His eyes were beat and I could no longer see the brown that filled them. Instead it was just a pool of red exposing little white blotches in his eyes. Dave had a worried expression across his face as we both looked at eachother. Michael did a little half-smile and walked in with us. Jordan was the one who was always getting us into trouble. He was a jock as most would call him, parading around with his head in the clouds like he was the man. If you did not know him you would think he was kind-of a jerk, but he was my best friend in the group. He came over to me, dapped me up and said  “What happened to you buddy?” to Michael, snickering as he said this. Michael just stuttered saying what I thought was “N-n-othing j-ust ti-red” sounding like he was shivering. We started to walk towards the school.

“Tonight is the night Dave,” I said. Dave looked at me and said “I'm not coming back to this place over the weekend. We are here now that is enough.” I looked at him and turned away. Jordan snapped his head at Dave and stopped him in his tracks, “Girls, Dave. Girls.” I knew what was coming. This was another Dave and Jordan episode. Usually I would have Mike to fix this, but looking over at him again made me feel uneasy. He was staring, intently staring, at the street. His eyes stayed positioned to the ground and his hair looked like he hadn't washed it in weeks. Kids walking by looked at him turning around and pointing. I pulled Mike aside and physically grabbed him pushing his head to face me. His eyes locked on me. I was scared. I did not know what to say. Silence took over as he just stared at me with emotionless eyes. I started to ask what was wrong but he just burst out saying “I went in the house.” 

I had so many questions for him like “Why,” or “With who” but all I said was “What do you mean?” I looked around to see if the others were following but they were not. Mike continued. “It started with me just walking by,” he said. “minding my own business, but I heard something. Something that I had never heard in my life. T, I looked to my right and saw the house. I knew the noise was coming from there, I knew I had to figure out what was making that strange noise. I barely could pull my feet from the ground hesitantly walking down the walkway. The air was still and there was no noise outside, besides the scrapping of the leaves off the sidewalk. I walked up the little porch that was filled with moss and bugs scampering around my feet. I stopped at the knob. It was dirty. Rust filled the entire handle. I pulled the door open slowly and saw nothing. The walls of the house were dirty and worn, pictures were all over the floor, broken. The stairs had several holes. It was empty. No furniture or anything, T. The noise continued. Walking towards the kitchen I saw pots and pans everywhere. Glass filled the floor and the table had cigarette buts and marijuana all over it.” He paused at this point. I saw him look down at his shoes and back up to me. Confused, I looked him in his bloodshot eyes and he said, “and….” Before continuing he took a deep breath. “I walked around the corner to a door. The door was perfectly white, like it had just been painted. The knob was a perfect gold color. At this point, T, I was freaking the f out. I had no idea how this one door could be so clean and perfect and the rest of the house could be so disgusting. I put my hand on the knob, and felt cold, dry hands wrap around my neck slowly. I froze as the grip became tighter. Something was whispering, but it was not the whisper you would expect. It was fast and continued to speed up. I could not make out what it was saying. I turned and ran for what seemed like miles, T. I stopped at the end of the block gasping for air. The worst part is as I exited through the back I turned and saw nobody. The noise continued to come from that basement. Not a sole laid behind me, but my neck had red marks until this morning, they were gone.”

I stared at him, 15 minutes late to class at this point. I said “We're going tonight” and sped away to class. 

The day dragged on. I could not remember a single thing I had learned with the house being the only thing present in my head. The final bell rang and I reached for my phone texting in the group chat, “meet at the spot in 10.” 

Jordan showed up first. He came in swearing like normal about god knows what. Then Dave showed up with Mike by his side. Mike looked much better, he returned to his normal color and his eyes were no longer red. I joked and said “fixed everything but your hair huh?” He laughed and Jordan shook his hair around a bit. To get to the point, I said “No dance, we’re going into that house everyone believes is so haunted.”

 I looked at Mike as I said this. He was staring at the ground again, intently. Dave was in before I could wrap my head around Mike. Jordan said, and I quote, “I am not going to no fairy tale haunted house. The only way I am going is if there’s some babes involved.” “Bring who you please, Jordan,” I said calmly.  He said “very funny” or something along the lines of that. “Tonight at 7, meet here and we will go.”

 The spot was a playground, it was nothing special physically, but to us it was the world. Nobody missed a spot meeting no matter what. We all rode off into the dark night not knowing what we really had gotten ourselves into.  

The night went by quickly. Hours passed like minutes. I sat in my room lying on my bed facing the wall thinking about what could possibly be in store for us. Finally I got up and threw on all black looking at the time on my nightstand. It read 6:45pm. I texted in the chat, “leaving now.” Jordan responded, “yea whatever, I got Riley and Tiff with me.” With a winky emoji after. I sighed and turned off my phone. I yelled to my mom I was leaving for the dance. Of course hurrying out. I rode fast down the dark street with only a single streetlight lighting my way. 

Finally getting to the spot, Dave was sitting on the swings waiting, smoking marijuana. That was kind of his thing, never mine but it was normal and we thought nothing of it. I saw Mike riding and swerving over the road pulling up fast and hard to the swings. He had a “Cig,” as we called it in his mouth. Jordan slowly came after, like he said, with Riley and Tiff. Riley was beautiful. She always made a point of saying hi to me. She was sweet and head of the class. I gazed at her with a twinkle in my eye, snapping my eyes back to not seem weird.  Tiff was Jordan's girlfriend, she was not the brightest but nice and pretty. We all rode, not saying a word, down the street stopping simultaneously in the yard of the house. 

I got off the bike first, then Jordan and the girls, and Dave followed. Mike stayed staring at the house. He pointed up to the window when I turned around to face him. There was nothing there but he continued to point. I said “Mike lets go” and he shook his head and snapped back into reality. We all walked up together barely fitting on the small porch. I turned to face them. I could tell everyone was shaken by the house, even Jordan looked at me with a look i never saw from him. I said “everyone sure they want to do this?” 

They nodded, and I turned the door and opened it, taking a step in the old house. It was not as Mike described it. Mike gasped with a huge breathe pointing at the wall. The pictures he described, were all hung perfect, shiny. There was no glass on the floor. The house was still, and not a sound besides our feet creeking on the wood filled the house. We walked to the kitchen, no pots or pans. The marijuana and cigs were gone. The floor had no glass. I looked around with my flashlight in my mouth. There was couches, although ripped and brown there was furniture when Mike said there wasn't. We came to the door. It was the only thing that was the same as Mike had said. I could not understand. I felt my face getting hot and red and Mike had an emotionless stare. We could not understand how this could have happened or who would clean this dump for no good reason. The others had no idea of the image Mike had planted in my head of the house. They were still walking slowly turning their heads rapidly in each direction, but none of the others could ever feel the sheer horror that spread across my body entering that house. 

 I put my hand on the knob waiting for cold hands to wrap my neck but I felt nothing. I turned it slowly before Mike grabbed me and said “Are you sure-...” but as he said this we heard a small laughter. Not a grown laughter not a woman's laughter or a creepy man laughter, it was little girls. It sounded to be two or three coming from above our heads. We heard multiple feet stepping on the ground above us running back and forth.

We stood frozen in that house listening. After a few minutes it went silent. The only thing we heard was “Your It,” followed by small girls laughter.

  I felt a chill hit my exposed neck and hands. Dust fell slowly from the floor above, pouring into our hair. Mike said “Let's get the f out of this place.” I ignored him and said to split up. Jordan and the girls went upstairs while Mike, Dave and I went down into the basement. 

The stairs were an old, dark wood. It had nails and bolts sticking out of every step. As soon as we opened that door a smell like no other hit us in the face. The most disgusting, rotten smell. I went down Mike behind and Dave behind him. Slowly, I stepped down and walked towards the bottom hitting the last step and jumping down. I looked around the small little room. The flashlight only lit a small portion of the room. It was empty nothing besides one cooler against the farthest wall. The ground was cold, as well as the air. It was small and the walls were concrete. The concrete was like no other. It had a red substances smeared across the wall. There was scratches, or tallys in the walls of the room.  The smell still filling our noises, we walked over slowly to this cooler.

There was no lock on this cooler. As it clicked open I heard the most blood curdling scream come from one of the girls. Shortly after I heard the footsteps stampeding down the stairs. Dave opened the cooler behind us to find bodies, dead bodies. Frozen bodies staring back at us. I began to gag. It was the most horrific sight. They were degrading. Their skin was dirty and their hair was crusted and falling out. The eyes were wide open.  We bolted out the door and down the street calling the police on the corner. We all looked around noticing Riley was gone. I felt my body get weak. I pounded my hands together in anger and fright. I bolted into the house.

The paintings were everywhere, broken glass, and the cigs and marijuana were back on the table and the pots and pans had returned. That white door was locked now closed tight. I screamed for Riley and ran upstairs. I saw the only room all the way at the end with the door shut. Small music played from behind that door a twinkle sounded. I turned the knob and saw Riley passed out on the bed. Her face was emotionless. She seemed so cold and sad. I could not understand how I knew this, but I did. I ran and picked her up sprinting back down the stairs. I got a glance of the living room from the stairs. I saw this figure. It seemed to be an older male sitting almost propped like a doll. No movement as it seemed his body was hollow. Rushing I got no glimpse of the man's face only his still body. As I got outside I layed her by my friends taking one last glance at that house. In the furthest window of the house two little girls wearing pink dresses with bright pink bows, stared darts into our eyes slowly turning and returning to the house.

We all sat there as the cops showed up and investigated the house. The paintings were back neatly on the wall. The kitchen was clean, and that white door was dirty. It had black holes in it and it barely stood. We walked down showing them the cooler that was filled with the bodies of who knows who. They called in on the radio for something but we could not make out what it was. I went upstairs, just Mike and I. We went directly to those little girl's room. It was no longer pink and the walls were black with the paint smeared and ripped off. The closet was wide open. The tea table did not exist and there was only one bed in this room. They came up after us and we explained where we found Riley. They said thank you for calling and this would all be taken care of. None of us said a word though. We turned and walked in opposite directions out of that house. I took Riley home explaining to her mom what had happened and placed her in her bed. 

 I am 17 now, everything has been somewhat normal in this small town. Although still friends none of us talk anymore or really hangout. Jordan went with the jocks and broke up with Tiff. Dave keeps to himself for the most part and Mike and I still talk regularly but it was never the same. Riley and I talk the most. I never knew what happened. Every time that house even comes up she goes silent. Jordan explained to me the room, that little f girls' room was all pink. The table had tea and steam pouring out of the pot. The walls were pink and the closet was shut. They opened the door and two little girls with an old man faced them. The man said what Jordan believed was “get out” but he ran before hearing another word. I will probably never find out what happened to her in that little girl's room. The cops never identified the bodies in that random cooler since the house had been vacant for years nobody knew. They tore it down last year. The property is now just dirty grass that nobody goes on.

I pass it every day on the way to school. Nothing has happened until the other day. I was walking to school, because my mom had to work, and there was an old man, walking at a strangely fast pace. I let him continue to pass me but he just stopped in his tracks and turned to face me. I had never seen this man in my life. He had to be around 80 years old. He was wearing no shoes and his pants were brown and cut up. His shirt was barely even a shirt. His hair was stringy and dirty and his eyes were beat red. I looked at him and he just said in his cracky, old voice “it’s a shame they tore down my house.” I looked at him gathering my thoughts, and said “yea” with a cracked nervous voice, I sped up my walk and was a way up before turning around to see him facing me with a large, wide grin across his face.  I honestly want to get out of this town before it gets worse.