Meet Me at the Haunted House (Patreon Extreme)
The haunted house on Lauren Lane was a legend in the town of Oxboro. It was three centuries old and was two stories tall with a massive attic. Once a mansion owned by a wealthy baroness that liked to host extravagant parties, she was also known to be a bit crazy. Depending on who told the story, the baroness had two children that both died of the flu, which caused her to go entirely insane. She killed her husband and two servants before hanging herself.
Ever since, any attempt to do something with the house was always met with unfortunate circumstances. It was practically free on the market, but anyone who bought it suffered unexpected demises while on its premises. As the years went on, it sank further and further into ruin. The structure sagged in on itself, brush overgrew its yard and scaled the building's sides. The windows were all broken, letting in the elements season after season. Probably rat infested and teaming with termites. There had been several attempts to demolish the building, but every project ran into major complications that ultimately caused abandonment.
And so there it sat, gray, broken, and silent, an extremely cliche haunted house right out of some bad horror movie from the eighties. A chain link fence separated the house from the sidewalk, on which a lone girl stood staring at it. She was a young ferret girl named Senya, about the age of ten though she came off as much older due to her maturity and intelligence. She wore a light blue shirt beneath a pink denim dress. White, thigh high socks disappeared at the knee, completing the look that she had come right from school. This day was the only day out of the week that she didn't have extracurricular activities to keep her back, since she was the class president and had a fair amount on her shoulders as far as responsibility.
She stared at the house with a determined look, her eyes scrutinizing the dilapidated structure. Next to her was her bike, a similarly pink little thing with a basket. She squinted her eyes and peered extra close at the building. Something in the window caught her eye, a white face in the shape of a canine, it vanished as soon as she locked onto it, as if it could sense her leer. Though it could have easily been a stray curtain.
"Hmpf!" she grumbled. There came another movement from the corner of her eye, this time it was on the sidewalk and coming right for her. On a similarly sized black bicycle was her friend and classmate, a tiger that was obviously in a hurry. He came skittering to a halt in the last few feet, tires barking and brakes squealing in protest.
"I'm sorry I'm late!" He said quickly and jumped off his bike. The girl crossed her arms and scowled.
"I don't know why I would have thought any different," she said with a frown.
"Give me a break, my mom was home and I didn't want her to get suspicious," he confessed and pulled the laden backpack from his shoulders and began to unzip it. His name was Rorry.
"Psh! There's nothing to be suspicious about," she continued to scowl, flashing a glare at the house. "It's just an old, dumb mansion, nothing else."
"Yeah, well..." he mumbled and paused.
" 'Well yeah' what?" she snapped and turned to him.
"There was that...whole thing with the Baxter restoration company..." he reminded.
"Baxter Inc used fifty year old machines that called into work more than its employees," she retorted.
"But there was also the Handwells that moved into it and tried to restore it ten years ago..."
"Any small amount of research will tell you that Mr. Handwells was a meth addict prior to moving into that house!" she said exasperated. "They had barely any money, how do you think they were able to afford it? He was just a ticking time bomb anyways," she grumbled and narrowed her eyes.
"Yeah...I-I guess..." he continued and pulled out two flashlights from his backpack.
"All right, let's get started." The two kids kicked up the stands of their bikes and left them there on the sidewalk. Senya nabbed one of the flashlights as they made their way over to a portion of the fence that had a large hole eroded away and bent up where it had once touched the ground. They gingerly picked their way through the section and popped up on the other side. Now there was no separation, they were mere yards away from the spooky dwelling and it seemed right at that moment that an eerie wind picked up around them.
Rorry shivered. "You really wanna go through with this?"
"Absolutely! Here," she said and dug around in the pocket of her dress. She pulled out her cellphone and tapped away at the different apps on it. She handed it over to him, the screen displaying the camera's input with a large 'recording' icon flashing in the corner. "We're going to prove that there is nothing superstitious about this house," she said, though it was more directed at the phone this time. The tiger boy held it up like he were a real cameraman from a news station.
With their adventure now on tape, they ventured closer to the house, cutting across the front yard and walking right up to the front door. There was barely anything holding the door in place, the hinges had been rusted away and the wood was chewed through by termites and weather. Senya turned the handle and shove her shoulder against the panel. Instead of it swinging inward it came off its foundation and fell onto the floor, the sound coming off as such a loud WHACK that Rorry jumped and almost dropped the phone.
"Oops," Senya breathed and flicked on her flashlight. Rorry did the same and they went in. Their golden beams traced the inner contours of the dwelling. What was the foyer was huge and lead into the kitchen and living room. Two flights of stairs wound up to the second floor balcony and between them was a mural that was so damaged it was just a frame on the wall. Every step they took inward creaked so loud that it echoed through the empty house.
Read the full story here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/meet-me-at-house-14982249