A Haunting: Pick Your Path

You ignore Carl and Suzie’s stares of disbelief and step into the darkened house without a word.  The remaining sunlight barely penetrates the gloom, and it takes a few moments for your eyes to adjust to the lack of light.  You find yourself standing in a hallway with lots of furniture covered with old sheets.  It seems as if you are surrounded by ghosts of times past.  You pull off the sheet of the object closest to you.  It is an old grandfather clock, whose face is almost impossible to read, as the glass covering is dark with age.  It gives a dull, tuneless clang, and then is still.  It obviously has not worked in a long time.  You can just barely make out the time on the face, 8:00.  You glance at your watch, realizing with a chill that it is just a minute before 8:00 now! 

You back gingerly from the clock and bump into another large shrouded object. You turn around and gently remove another sheet; this time you find an old Victorian sideboard, ornate and imposing, with a framed photograph sitting on top.  You look closely at the photo, in it you see the sepia image of a young woman in old-fashioned full skirts and eyes that stare plaintively back at you. You shiver inwardly and move on towards to stairs. 

As you start up the rickety, steep steps, you wonder at what is making you so brave.  It is almost like you are in a trance.  You are starting to feel incredibly scared, but your curiosity is insatiable. At the top of the stairs, there is something mounted on the wall, also covered with a sheet.  You know that you will look under it, even though the thought of it makes you want to run away screaming. Heart pounding, you reach out a shaking, sweaty hand, and rest it on the covering.  You hold your breath and quickly pull the sheet away.

You jump back!  Something is looking right at you!  You feel a scream building up in your throat; you are about to run away when you realize that what you see is actually a dim reflection of yourself in a dusty old mirror.  You shut your eyes, take a deep breath and laugh nervously.  The old place has certainly made your imagination get the better of you.

You open your eyes and take a last glance in the mirror before you walk away. This time when you look at your reflection, you see something small and misty behind you in the reflection!  You squint your eyes and peer in for a closer look; something is silently gliding up the reflection of the stairs; now it is reaching out with a pale, ghostly hand!  You see a face; with the very eyes that you saw staring at you from the photograph downstairs!  Suddenly the old grandfather clock begins to ring the hour with a dull, dirge-like groan.

You turn around, trying to find some way to escape these terrible sights and sounds.  You clamp your eyes shut to avoid looking at whatever might be behind you.   You stumble on something; you don’t know whether it is your own feet, or something else impeding you.  The last thing you see is the floor coming at you at a sickening speed as you tumble over and over down the staircase.

The End