Short Scary Stories

Click click.

They said not to go alone. It was stupid saying that, of course; nobody wanted to go by themselves anyway. But the parents insisted on reminding their children. The Little Ealing Ghost Society had a standing offer of £50 for anyone willing to stay an hour in the place. But mothers shook their heads and said to each other, ‘Remember that nice Mr. Barrlow.’

Olive didn’t remember Mr. Barrlow. Most people didn’t. He’d come to the village almost twenty years ago to see the old cliff house for a piece on forgotten places of the past. Everybody recalled him differently, especially after what happened, until the only thing people could say for sure was that he smoked. He hadn’t left; at least not that anybody could be sure of. That was why they spoke of him. The last anybody ever saw of nice Mr. Barrlow was him going into the house.

Olive didn’t want to go alone any more than anyone else, so she made Ben go with her, and if Ben was going so was Caleb. They complained. ‘Why would anybody want to wander around a giant ruin?’ But they went along. Ben would always go — he’d had a tiny crush on her for years — and Caleb was too conscious of his 15-year-old dignity to admit he was scared. As for Olive, she was going because she was bored, tired of the same pebbly beach and gray stone houses and damp patches of fields.

They dumped their bicycles on the grass and pushed against the wind up a green hill. Olive led the way; she was the one who’d dragged them there, after all. The two boys unconsciously bunched themselves behind her as they crested the hill and saw the old pile for the first time.

The house leaned ominously toward the cliffs, buffeted by wind and a smatter of raindrops. Members of the council had proposed restoring it and charging admission, but no tourists came to a tired little village without a single decent beach and it had proved too expensive to tear down, so there it stood, quietly turning into stone chips and rot.

Once, it had been magnificent; a large manor that still retained its medieval austerity under the many layers of improvements made by a long line of inhabitants. The last of these, a wealthy gentleman in the mining business, had gone bankrupt in the 19th century, but not before adding a conservatory and a modern east wing that looked not so much out of place as decidedly garish. The house seemed to close in over it as though attempting to hide an unwanted protrusion.

When the gentleman had packed up and left for his family home in Scotland, the place stood empty. Furniture slowly crumbling, paint and plaster peeling off stone walls.

***

The house watched the three figures from its empty windows. It tried to shift itself on its foundations, but it was so old now, the stones went deep into the earth.

Why did they come here? They never stayed. Not even the thin one, black-haired, sallow, full of ideas. A gentleman, that was what he said. With a pocket watch. He’d liked it; open and shut, click, click while he waited. They’d ripped up floorboards, torn down walls, scraped plaster across raw boards. The house remembered pain.

Was there a pipe? The house thought. No, that was a different one. He’d smoked apple and hickory tobacco that smelled like neither. He hadn’t wanted to stay.

The house felt itself becoming angry. That wasn’t any good. They wouldn’t come in if it was angry.

***

A sharp wind rattled round the front lawn like old bones shaking. Ben had his hands in his pockets, head drawn into his windbreaker like a turtle. “Jesus, it’s creepy, Ollie.”

Olive flicked her black hair and shrugged. “I don’t see it. It’s just old, like everything else in Little Ealing.”

“Old and dangerous. I heard one guy dropped through the ceiling of some old house and broke his leg. I don’t think we should go in.” Caleb said this with as much casual disinterest as he could manage.