The Midnight Hour & Other Scary Stories

The Shape

It was the week before Halloween. Devon liked this time of the year the most. There was always a chill in the air and scary things lurked around every corner. It was a slow buildup until Halloween night, of course, but when All Hallow's Eve crept up on them, he and his friends would stay up half the night and eat themselves sick with candy.

What Devon loved most about this week, however, were the haunted houses.

It had been tradition to visit all the local haunted houses with his friends the week leading up to Halloween. This year, however, was different. Devon and the others had grown bored of the haunted houses in Stillwater. They were too fake or too silly. But most importantly, they weren't scary.

That's why, when one of his friends mentioned a new haunted house, Devon was excited.

"I heard it's on the edge of town." One of his friends said. "They say if you want to go inside, all you have to do is show up and someone will guide you through it."

So, at the start of the week, Devon and his friends made a plan to set out for this new haunted house. School was nearly unbearable as they counted down the hours, but then when night came, they set out for the outskirts of town in a fervor. Excitement hung in the air, crisp with that familiar Autumn chill. But there was also a sense of danger accompanying them, not from the prospect of visiting a haunted house, but something more real than ghosts or goblins. Devon's mother had warned him hours before not to leave unless he had adult supervision. Apparently, a young girl had been murdered a few days prior and the killer was still at large.

As such, every shadow cloaked a hidden danger and each step farther from home caused his hair to stand on end.

It was a perfect night to be scared.

Nearly an hour had passed before they saw the house. It was the stereotypical manor, the kind Devon had always seen on TV or read about in books. But unlike those fantasies, this was surprisingly real and very dark. Surrounded by thick trees, the house seemed to lean over its hill of dead grass like a perched vulture eyeing a corpse. Shutters, hanging by a rusty hinge, clapped against broken windows at the slightest breeze. Gooseflesh broke out over his arms.

This was the real deal. Devon could feel it.

Navigating the brown, weed-choked lawn, Devon and his friends found themselves at the front porch. It was terribly dark and the door beyond looked less like wood and more like a hole that something could come crawling out of at any moment. Finally, after nearly a minute of gathering the courage to approach it, Devon stepped into the gloom and knocked.

At first, nothing happened, but then a voice came from behind them.

"Good evening." The stranger said. Devon and his friends jumped. They turned around to see a man wearing a dark cloak with its hood shrouding his face. He had been standing so close to them that the man could have stabbed Devon's friends and there would have been nothing they could have done to stop him. Devon shook, thinking back to what his mom had said. They weren't dead though, so they didn't have anything to worry about, right?

The Stranger's cool voice whispered from underneath his dark hood. "I take it you're all here for the ritual?"

"Ritual?" Devon asked. He and his friends shared uneasy glances.

"Yes. The ritual." The stranger repeated. "Have you come to take part?"

Devon didn't know what to say. However, one of his friends spoke up.

"Y-yes! We're here for the ritual."

The Stranger nodded, then extended a hand to the door. The old wood creaked on ancient hinges as it swung to the side. The sound made Devon jump.