This Is Halloween {Cashby • Completed}

•|| 5 ||•

Taking in a deep breath of cold air, Alan watched the mist unfurl from his lips. It was October. Bright, but gloomy, autumn had become Alan's favourite time of year. He liked the bright orange leaves and misty mornings, but the real reason he looked forward to this time so much was because of Austin.

A year before, Alan had been flung into a 'haunted' house by his friends and had ended up thanking them for it rather than falling out. During his time in the mansion, Alan had stumbled upon a vampire, who he had surprisingly befriended. Oh, and he did sleep in the same bed as him as well...

Since the night they spent together, Alan had hardly seen Austin, apart from glimpses in dark rooms and the odd nightly visit. Most of the time Alan was too scared to go into the house, in fear that someone would see him and that he was just making it all up...The few times he had mustered the courage to go in, he had failed to find Austin anyway.

The only thing that kept Alan sane was the letters, they must have written hundreds, exchanging conversations as if they were together in the same room. Austin wrote nearly every day, that was until 7 days ago.

At first Alan was okay with it, a few days of silence was normal, when they had nothing to say, or things to do, but after the fifth day, he worried. He tried to brush it off, but the thoughts were getting more and more frequent until they were the only thing that filled his mind. By the seventh day he was so anxious he had decided to go to the mansion to investigate. Usually, he would have been scared, but the seventh day happened to be halloween, and haunted houses were socially acceptable on halloween.

Impatiently, he waited for night to dawn, and eventually decided to occupy his time with makeup. Even in his extreme state of worry, Alan was able to focus his mind on painting himself as a skull. Once he was pleased with how his face looked, Alan (feeling considerably more calm) glanced out the window and saw exactly what he had been waiting for: darkness.

Grabbing a jacket, he only just remembered his phone, before sprinting out the door. The streets seemed to wind on forever; Alan was practically jogging in an attempt to make time pass faster. Fear was still pumping through his veins, but determination was strongly over powering it, causing a strange sense of bravery.

After a quick, but still too slow, journey, Alan was at the foot of the path that lead to Carlile Manor. He walked frantically down the muddy path, and failed to notice the signs of destruction around him. A gate the once barricaded the path was reduced to splintering shards of wood sticking out the mud. The 'DANGER DO NOT ENTER' sign had been torn from it's post and bent in half, it also lay abandoned in the sludge.

Alan reached the door. Every part of his body seemed to be shaking. He knocked gingerly on the door, and instead of swinging open like it usually did, a lump of wood fell off the door, before the rest of it tipped to hang from its hinges.

Daring to step inside Alan was relieved to see that everything looked just as disheveled as usual. Creeping up the stairs, he took care to miss out the stairs that were broken. Soon Alan found the main dining room where he knew Austin spent most of his time, and looked around. At first all he saw was a gloomy, dusty room, but then he saw a crumpled figure wilting in the corner.

Despite his waves of brown hair, his familiar features and long stooping figure, this man looked nothing like the vampire he knew.