The House Of Terror

Who's first?

You could hear their faint voices outside of that red house. Sometimes they'd become quieter but it wasn't to the neighbour's surprise that the peace wouldn't last.

"Are you talking about that time when Ms. Harris next door called the police on us?"
"Which one? There were so many I can't recall!"

All the adults were united around the Christmas' Eve table in the Phillip's kitchen, eating dessert and laughing happily to the great memories they once had, while the adolescents were sat down in the living room on both white sofas. Wake up, eat, watch TV, talk about their adventures, repeat. That became the typical Christmas break for all of them: monotonous and meaningless. It's not like they despised their little ritual at that time of year, but compared to the rest of it, everything felt like less. The parents seemed like the teenagers in the house as odd as it may sound.

Marcus was eating his favourite chocolate pudding while watching some random reality show. "Brother, could you please pass the remote? This show is more boring than the last time we tried to find a spirit in that old theatre" he said to Neil as he tried to contain his yawn. Neil didn't take his eyes off of his book. "I'm too focused on the book I'm reading now, Mar. Plus the remote is too far away from me." he complained with his calm and deep voice, not seeing that the remote was next to his feet.

Dissatisfied with his response, he asked his cousin that was sitting next to him. " Well since you're being so grumpy, Hope could you do that pleeease?"

She gave him a small giggle, still not looking away from her book either. "Look who's talking, Mr. Grumpy!" playfully says Hope while she stops reading and grabs the remote, passing it to Marcus. He replies to her by showing his tongue and giggling back. He then grabs the remote and changes to the kids show, turning from his bored expression into a happy and giddy one.

Marcus was sat on the left sofa with Hope while Neil was on the right sofa, laid down. William and Sophie were on the floor between the sofas, watching Youtube and laughing to an almost maniacal level.

This group of friends have been together since they were only children, and this type of activities were normal to them, even though they could feel boredom fill every vein of their restful bodies. It was strange for them because in every festivity their energy seemed to drain. On other days their paranormal club called "The 6th Generation" would go around town trying to locate spirits or would follow Hope's family book that was filled with paranormal episodes that her mom, grandma and many others in the past wrote about.

Well, at least some of them were having fun.
"Yo, Hope!" called Sophie, trying to calm her laughs "you should def see this video! It has exactly your face."

Hope closed her book once more, sighing. "Uhm... don't tell me is one of those 'Oh I just caught a ghost on camera' type of videos." she says sarcastically while putting the book on the arms of the sofa and standing up.

"It is and it is soooo bad it's actually hilarious!" responded William, still breathless from laughing.
With her curiosity picked, Hope sat down on the the floor right in the middle of her cousin and her friend and pressed the play button on the phone that Sophie was holding.

The video was of a 'famous' YouTuber that tried to convince his viewers into believing that he was actually able to connect and talk with lingering spirits.

Feeling slightly insulted, Hope rolls her eyes and complains: "Okay obviously this is so fake. I don't get it how people can actually believe in this, I mean look at the views and comments! The 'ghost's' voice wasn't even convincing at all, it sounded more like they recorded a turtle noise and pinched that sound down". William agreed and said "I swear, we could actually make a better video than this, we already got our medium and all" then rested his arm on Hope's shoulders and pulled her closer to him, making the poor girl blush. She just tried to brush it off by saying: "I'm only an apprentice in the end. But to be honest, anything can be better than this trash."

Hearing this, Neil closed his book, sat up and talked to the group with a suggestive tone: "And why don't you guys propose that? I mean, we have some knowledge about this, all thanks to Hope, it would be quite interesting to 'try to catch a ghost'. Plus this house is huge, I bet there are places even Sophie doesn't know very well, we could explore".

Sophie, not liking the idea, looked at Neil while narrowing her eyes. "Yeah, but like, there's no way there's a ghost in MY house. Maybe the corridors can suddenly be a bit chilly from time to time, but c'mon guys." she proclaimed. Hope broke hers and William's embrace and directed her speech to Hope: "Yeah, neither my mom or grandma wrote about this house being hunted on our book. But mamma wrote that she would always play a game here with her siblings around this time of the year, and she would always find peculiar stuff from it. Like old photos and things filled with supernatural potency. It would be interesting to try it out!"

Sophie simply gulped while looking at the worryingly passionate expression on her cousin's face.

Marcus turned off the TV and stood up." Guys, anything is better than staying here until we go to bed. I demand to know how that game is played!"
"Hm, are you sure you won't pee your pants after a couple of spooks again?" said Neil, making the whole group, except Marcus, laugh. He just stood there with an angry and cheeks filling with a overflowing red.

William snapped hid fingers, "and grabbing Neil's idea, we could film while playing the game! Maybe the cameras will catch something that we won't be able to see."

"Now that's a lovely idea! So Hope, tell us about this game of yours." said Sophie while pushing her cousin to stand up so she could tell everyone how this mysterious game was played.

Everyone was excited. They have finally found something to do on that faithless night.
The group would always get thrilled whenever paranormal stuff was involved in the subject. "Well, it's fairly simple. There's a hunter and then the preys. We all go to a dark room, no lights whatsoever, and the hunter will hunt its preys that are hiding in the pure darkness. If the hunter catches all of us, they win, but if the preys can escape the room and run to the light, they win and are free of being the hunter. Got it?"

Everyone nodded in agreement but Marcus being the smart boy that he sometimes was couldn't wrap his head around something, "well that sounds kind of unfair for the hunter. If people can escape then they will gang up and run to the door all together."

"So, in that case, when a group leaves only the first one that exists the door will escape, while the others will stay in the dark. Until the hunter catches them. One. By. One."
While Hope was saying this, she was getting closer and closer to Marcus, leaving him with cold sweats.

There was a long silence until...
"Okay! Who's the first hunter?" yelled William out of the silence, scaring Marcus to the bones.
He didn't want to look more scared, so he yelled back "THE ONE WHO YELLED FIRST SHOULD BE FIRST."
Laughing a bit and admitting defeat, William replied "Okay that's fair enough I guess. And which room will we use? It has to be a big one to fit us all"

"What about if we did the whole house?" suggested Hope. "I mean, when we close all the doors and windows, this gets really dark so, what's better than a dark room?"
Everyone went into silence, their faces showing a bit of fright. The idea of a dark room mixed with the intention of catching a ghost was a tad scary, but now they would do the whole house?
William said quickly "Aaaaaand someone will get hurt, but DARK HOUSE IT IS."

So then, they asked their parents to close the door of the kitchen and decided to create the Dark House.

The game still didn't look fair though, so they created new rules. The hunter would hide the other's phones all over the house, and in order to a prey win, they needed to grab theirs and then run to the kitchen, which was he only place that had light.

The other rule is that the doors would stay open until the hunter would enter the room, closing it afterwards. The noise from the doors would alert that there were people leaving or entering a room.

Once they decided how the game was going to be played, William went through all the rooms to hide his friend's phones, and after that Hope and the rest went to hide all over the house while he waited in the kitchen for them to do their thing. He waited 10 minutes and then left the last lighted room he would see in a while.

But the game had already begun.