Afterlife (A7X)

Chapter 3: The House

~~~~CHAPTER 3~~~~

The House~~~~

"Why'd you wanna do this at midnight?" Val asked, cuddling into Matt's side a bit more.

He put his arm around her as she shivered a bit and we walked along the long driveway that headed up to what I was now referring to as 'The House'. Not the most inventive name but man was it fitting. It was practically pitch black out here; pretty well no stars in the sky and the moon was behind the clouds; just our luck.

For some reason, they'd all decided to come here and do this at midnight, which was one of the stupidest things they could've done. It was bad enough in the day time, but night made it scarier in my opinion. Maybe that was why they'd wanted to go this late. Who knew?

"'Cause we can," Jimmy answered Val's question.

He was walking alongside Matt, Johnny was in the middle of the group and I was tagging along behind with Brian by my side, as he could clearly see how uncomfortable I already was.

"Why'd we have to walk all the way down the driveway?" I asked, Matt glancing back at me.

Matt had insisted on driving like always and we'd left the car at the side of the road and walked the rest of the way.

"'Cause we can," Jimmy said in response once again; he was always so full of the same monotonous responses.

I just shook my head and sighed to myself; trust these guys to think ahead. Maybe they'd just wanted to make the journey here scarier than it had to be. I dunno what went through their minds sometimes, to be honest. We kept walking and it wasn't long before we saw The House up ahead. We all came to a halt at the closed gate and looked at it.

The House was a two-storey, run down old house, maybe from the early 1900s or something. Half of the second storey had fallen into the house, leaving a massive hole where the roof was supposed to be. Just looking at it made me uncomfortable. Brian sensed my unease.

"Y'sure you wanna do this?" he asked me.

"Too late to back out now," I managed to say, not taking my eyes off The House.

Matt shone his torch on The House, giving it an even scarier illusion. He scanned the torch around The House and then started scanning the property. He stopped the torch on the barn not far from The House. By this time, I was really freaked out and ready to just get outta there as fast as I could.

Matt glanced back at us before looking back to where the light of his torch was.

"We all good to go in?" he asked.

"Man, fuck that," I said with a shake of my head. "There's no way in hell I'm stepping inside that house."

"Aw, c'mon Zacky," Jimmy said, looking to me. "What're you gonna do? Stay outside while we scope the inside?"

"If I have to," I said, though outside probably wasn't any better; nowhere on this damn property was.

Jimmy looked to Matt and shrugged.

"Lead the way Captain," Matt said. "You brought us here, so you're in charge."

Jimmy nodded, and clearly not fazed at all, he went over to the gate and jumped it, landing on the other side and heading off towards the dilapidated house. Matt helped Val over then followed, Johnny and Brian doing the same. I just stood on the other side of the gate, unable to physically move myself.

Brian was waiting for me, the others already over at The House and waiting for us.

"C'mon Zacky!" Matt called, his voice echoing around the open landscape.