Are you scared? The three words that will get pretty much anyone to do pretty much anything. In this case, it was the three words that got me to go into that haunted house with my older brother, Scott and my boyfriend, Mitch.
"How much further is it?" I complain.
"Not too far, Kirsten, now quit wining," Scott says impatiently. Well I'm sorry, Scott. It wasn't my choice, being dragged out here.
Mitch squeezes my hand as we step through the knee-high grass. Our flashlight beams suddenly reflect off glass up ahead. We stumble out of the field and fall upon a run-down, abandoned mansion. The shudders of the broken windows—the remaining glass is what the flashlights were reflecting off of—creak in the wind.
The floorboards squeak as Scott steps onto the porch. "Isn't this cool? I found it one day when I was driving. I looked it up, and I can't even find it on Google maps! Isn't that crazy!?"
"Are you sure this is okay?" I ask.
"What, are you scared?" Scott challenges.
I swallow a lump in my throat. Yes, I am scared. No, I'm not going to admit that I'm scared to my older brother.
"No," I say, trying to hide the truth.
"It's okay, I'm right here if you need me," Mitch says, squeezing my hand again.
A chilly wind blows, making me shiver. "It is cold," I say. "I guess it would be slightly warmer inside."
"Then what are we waiting for?" Scott says, opening the apparently unlocked door. He leads the way, followed by Mitch, my hand still in his. Therefore, I have no choice but to follow.
The door leads down a narrow hallway with stairs at the end. Rooms branch off from the left and right.
Scott shines his light through the doorway on the left. I do the same on the right to see a living room. A fire place sits parallel to the doorway with an broken window to the right of it. Moonlight spills into the living room, tattered mahogany curtains whipping in the breeze. Some scratched couches sit around the fire. There's a piano in the corner with sheet music sitting on it. I walk over to it to read the music. It's untitled. Losing interest, I walk back over to where Scott and Mitch are exploring what seems to be the dining room.
"How old do you reckon this is?" Mitch asks.
"I would guess 1700s," Scott says. I roll my eyes. Scott is always trying to sound smart.
The dining room has a long table with candlesticks lining the middle. It looks freshly polished, which is odd. There are portraits hanging up of what appears to be the house's owner. The man's eyes looked hollowed and gray, his face looking sunken with his high cheekbones. His hair was gray and disorderly.
There was a china cabinet in the corner with wine glasses in it. Broken windows lined one wall with more torn curtains.
"We should go upstairs," Mitch says.
Scott nods and we all head up the stairs, which creak with every step. The red carpet lining the steps is mostly wore off. Darkness awaits us as we climb higher. We explore the hallway upstairs and check out some of the bedrooms, which were pretty fancy at one point.
"Does it seem odd that all of the beds we've seen aren't dusty and look freshly made?" I ask Mitch in one of the rooms.
"Yeah, it is kind of odd," he replies.
I look at an old makeup dresser in the corner. The mirror is dusty. Well, at least that's natural.
We join Scott in the hallway again. "We should see if there's..."
His voice dies as a note rings out from downstairs. The piano.
Our eyes widen as the three of us look at each other.
"I'll check it out," Scott says fearlessly. He turns and walks downstairs.
I turn to Mitch. "How much longer are we staying here?"
"You're scared, aren't you?" he asks. I nod reluctantly. "Not too much longer. Don't worry, you're safe with me." He wraps me in a hug.
He turns and looks at one end of the hallway, where there is a set of glass doors.
"Want to go out on the balcony?" he asks. I nod and he takes my hand.
We open the doors and step out into the crisp October/November air. The moon shines on the field surrounding the house, bathing everything in silver light. I can see trees in the distance. They must be near the road.
"It's beautiful out here," I say.
"Sure is," Mitch says. "And that's not the only thing, either."
I grin at him. "Stop it," I say playfully.
A sudden scream comes from downstairs. Mitch and I jerk around and take off down the hallway, clicking on our flashlights as we run. We descend the stairs two at a time and skid to a stop in the living room. Nothing. We check the kitchen. Also nothing.
We go back upstairs and check every room. I go into the last room I was in before we heard the piano when I gazed at the dusty mirror. That's when I saw the movement. A shadowy figure. Yet when I turned around, nothing was there. Although I didn't see my own reflection, either.
I reached out a hand and wiped the dust off of the mirror. The figure was twisting and writhing. And it wasn't standing behind me. It was trapped inside of the mirror. It was Scott. I clamp a hand over my mouth to stifle a scream. Scott's nose is bleeding and he has cuts on his arms. He puts his hands up against the glass and screams, yet it sounds like he's underwater.
I put my free hand up against the glass to match one of his and he grabs me by the wrist as if reaching through water. He's trying to pull me in with him.
I twist my wrist free and make a break for it. I ran to the room that I last left Mitch in. I start to cry as I see him writhing in the glass of the mirror. There were other people trying to restrain him. They looked to be in old clothes—clothes from the seventeen hundreds. One person turns to face me. He has hollow, gray eyes with a sunken face and noticeable cheek bones. Gray hair sprang from his head with bald patches amount it. It was the house owner.
"I'm sorry," I whisper to Mitch. Then, I run out of the room and dash down the stairs toward the front door. A hand grabs the collar of my coat right when I reach for the doorknob. I whirl around to see a fair faced man with dark hair in a tailored suit. It's a musician who must have played the piano.
"Won't you like to join me tonight?" he asks with an accent. I scream and wrench free of his grip, running out of the house. Scared or not,
I'm never coming here again.
