Short Scary Stories

Words In The Dark.

Ever since I was small I’ve had a fascination with old things, buildings specifically. Something about things that rot and decay is beautiful to me, I don’t really know why.
As a kid I’d get into all the dark, dusty spaces I could. The attic, the crawl space in our roof; I’d hide under my bed and read legends about abandoned houses and the ghosts that lived in them. I told my mother that some day, I was gonna be an urban explorer. I’d fight ghosts and barely escape from crumbling buildings, take creepy pictures of grand stairways and underground tunnels, find the lair of the Phantom Of The Opera under The Paris Opera…and one evening in September I finally got my chance.

I’d been taking a class on architecture in the 18th century, and after a long day creating dust in our local library, I discovered there was a great example of some beautifully classic 18th century architecture right in my own back yard. According to Houses of New Hampshire, the place had been abandoned since the owner, Eric Hunter, had disappeared one night after shutting himself in his library to study an old book he had picked up at an estate sale.

He never came out.

When the house was finally searched, no sign of him was found except his coat, hurriedly thrown on a chair. The book was placed almost perfectly in the center of his desk, as if put there with great care. Strangely, the book had no words. All the pages where completely blank.

The house was never sold, never demolished and eventually all but vanished from the minds of everyone as if nothing had ever happened.

Of course, I couldn’t pass up an opportunity like that without at least poking around a bit, so the next weekend I twisted the arm of my girlfriend, Alex, to come with me to the house. We’d decided it would be best to go at night so there’d be less of a chance of getting caught. I’d packed my new camera and night vision goggles the day before, and had everything laid out and ready to go. I know, now, just how naive I was to think darkness would make me safer.

We drove about ten minutes to the outskirts of town and another fifteen or so to reach the old house. We pulled up and got out of the car. As I walked up the driveway, I stared at the house. It was tall, the windows shuttered and dark, the raspberry bushes in the garden had become wild and overgrown with no one to tend them, growing around the house like a short thorny wall; and there was a large tree in the front yard, one of its branches laying across the pathway leading to the house.

I started breaking branches off of it to make an open area to climb through when I heard Alex laughing. I looked up to see her standing on the other side of the branch watching me and giggling. “What?! How did you get over there?” I asked, snapping a few more branches and climbing through.

She pointed. “You could have just walked around it. It was out of the way a bit, but it was quicker than turning it into part of the pathway.” She continued to giggle.

I glared at her unable to think of a clever retort. “What if I wanted to make it part of the path?”

She smiled and rolled her eyes. “Then you succeeded.”

I laughed and took her hand, walking up the steps to the doors, “They’re pretty old,” I said. “Might take a few good shoves to…” The doors swung open with a slight squeak. The entry was large, with small pillars on either side of the interior doorway. There was a staircase not too far from where we stood that appeared to curve into a hallway, and a fireplace with a few chairs, a couch and coffee table; all the things you’d expect to see in an old house like this. A small chandelier hung from the ceiling, covered in cobwebs. It appeared to have broken years ago; one of its sconces laying on the floor in pieces.

“Wow! Look at this place!” I said, as we walked through the doors.

“Yeah… It’s kinda… run down. Are you sure it’s safe here, Connor?”