The Dare

Me and my 3 other friends were.......well...immature. So we did a lot of things that didn't fit boys that were 14. This led to us getting into a lot of problems. But the worst was the day we lost a friend.

I am Elmer. My friend's are George, Fred, and Sam. Me, George, and Fred always made Sam do stupid things. He was a chubby, innocent kid. One day, one of our pranks went too far.

It was summer. We used to stay up late and wander the neighborhood, ringing doorbells and hiding, making scary sounds and stuff. We used to do that to almost all of the houses. We lived on a long street, so we had never reached the end of the street. One day we did.

There was a huge, scary house at the end of the street. We used to make scary sounds with no response. This happened for about 30 minutes. Then we decided to ring the doorbell. We forced Sam to do it because he was always a scardy cat. "Cmon dude", said Fred. "Nah man, that house looks kinda creepy to me.", Sam replied. "Dude, when will you grow up?" said Fred. "OK fine", Sam said. He looked kinda scared. " I dunno about this guys...", I said."You too?" , Fred said dejectedly. "OK whatever" I said.

Sam started walking towards the front door of the house. We hid in the bushes. There was a moment of silence. Sam rang the doorbell. Nothing happened. All of us rang the doorbell. It appeared that the house was deserted.

We eventually forgot about that house a few days later. But one day we came back to it. This time we rang the doorbell countless times. Fred, George, and me. Only Sam was too afraid to ring the bell because he "Saw a shadow in one of the windows". We made fun of Sam about it. Then we started shouting abuses at the house. " Whoever is in there probably is as ugly as Hitler's butt!" Fred shouted. Then it sort of became a thing. Everyday one of us was dared to shout obscenities at the house. Everyone did it except Sam. He always chickened out.

This one day we made fun of Sam a lot calling him a "Pansy boy". He got mad eventually and said that he is gonna throw stones at the window and shout abuses. So he took the greatest stone we could find and threw it with all his might at the first floor window. Then he walked up the steps right in front of the front door and shouted " My great grandma lives in a better house than this dumpster." Then he spit on the door. We started clapping. He turned back to us and said, "See, I'm not sca-", but he was cut off. The door had opened and a large bony hand potruded from the door and grabbed Sam by his mouth and pulled him in. The door slammed shut. We ran towards the door and tried to open it but it was jammed shut. There was no sound of a struggle from Sam or any kind of sound. Just an eerie silence.

Fred called the cops and our parents. They arrived in about 10 minutes. We explained what happened and the cops went in to investigate. When they came out they said that there was no trace of Sam or anyone else. They called the police station and found out that the house had been deserted for about 20 years and was going to be demolished the next week.
Further investigation proved nothing. The house was completely empty. The most scariest part was that the door was locked from the outside. How could the Door be opened from the inside and locked again after closing?
There wasn't even any sign of a struggle. No DNA traces of anything.

From that day on we were banned from ever leaving the house alone, and as far as I'm concerned, I don't even want to.