With moonlight giving patchy guidance, three half-grown figures crept down the forest path. The silence was deafening. No owl hooted. No coyotes yipped. No bats flew across the face of the moon. “If you girls are scared,” Jack taunted, “we can turn back.” “Oh, no you don’t, Jack! You just want to get out of what you dared we couldn’t do! Kathy and I will go into the old Bell's Mansion and collect our pizza from you!” Amanda asserted quietly. Kathy the last in line, listened to her friends and wondered how far sound could travel in the quiet dead of night. As they emerged from the forest onto the once magnificent lawn now overgrown with saplings and tall, drying autumn grass, she looked up to see a light in one of the dilapidated building’s second story windows. “Hey guys! Quiet! Look up there!” Kathy whispered loudly. “There's a light!” “Where? I don’t see any light,” Jack whispered doubtfully. “Kathy, don’t chicken out on me,” Amanda said in a perturbed whisper, thinking her friend was finding excuses not to go on. “I thought for sure I saw a light but I must have been mistaken. Must be the Halloween jitters!” The three young friends followed an animal path towards the mansion. The crumbling turrets seemed to grow in stature and loom over them menacingly from the corners of the building. The boarded windows stared with unseeing eyes. Clouds began to race across the face of the moon, creating moments of complete darkness. Jack started off through the tall grass towards the massive front door, stopping once to turn and look back at Kathy and Amanda who were clinging to one another but still following. “Girls,” thought Jack disgustedly, “why did I ever make that dare?” Suddenly he felt a chill crawl up his spine as a grotesque face smiled wickedly from the door itself. “Okay, we’ve come here. Now let’s leave. You girls can have your pizza,” Jack mumbled as he turned quickly to leave. A shaft of moonlight lit the face on the door and the girls giggled. “Did that ghoulish door-knocker give a scare, Jack?” Amanda teased under her breath. “Lift the mouth and knock on the door.” With a barely concealed sigh of relief, Jack, glaring at Amanda in the semi-darkness, started to lift the knocker and thought out loud, “This is stupid. Why knock when there is no one here?” giving the door a push instead. The door creaked open easily and the three stepped inside to find a large foyer with dirty cobwebs trailing down from the tall ceiling and dust motes illuminated when shafts of moonlight from a high window illuminated the area. From a pitch black room on their left, there began a low moan which began to rise in crescendo. Kathy heard a whimpering and realized that it was her own voice. “Let’s get out of here,” she cried. A loud creaking began behind them and before any one of them could reach the door, it had slammed shut. Jack yelled, “Help me pull it open! It won’t budge!” Stumbling over one another to help, they heard the moaning getting louder and closer. They looked towards the sound to see a disembodied head in the dark doorway. Amanda and Jack ran into a room to the right at the foot of the stairs. Turning and seeing the disembodied head looking at her with sightless eyes, Kathy raced up the stairs and crouched in a small alcove.
“They must think I am with them,” Kathy thought of her friends as she tried to control the involuntary noises coming from her throat as well as the uncontrollable shaking of her entire body. “You really scared those kids, Joe. They are probably half way home by now,” a woman's voice laughed. “It’s a good thing we have those detectors and cameras around the building. Maybe we should move our operation. If those kids tell their parents and someone comes out here checking, we could lose a quarter of a million bucks,” came a gruff reply. “They’re not going to tell their parents. What are they going to say? Hey, Mom and Dad, we were out walking in the woods close to midnight a couple of miles from town. More than likely, they will just say they have been trick or treating.” “Maybe,” came Joe’s reply. “What’s that? Do you hear something?” “No, just you moaning,” the woman laughed again. “Good thing you had that Halloween mask. Quick thinking to put it on a broom handle and wave it in the door,” said the woman as they retreated down the hallway and disappeared into one of the rooms. Kathy waited a few more moments, breathing again. When she felt her legs would hold her, she stood and crept quietly down the stairs then pushed open the door where her friends had taken flight. Quietly closing the door behind her, she discovered that Amanda and Jack were not there! She saw that one of the boards nailed over a window was hanging loose. Stepping gingerly over the sill while holding the board out, Kathy escaped the old Bell Mansion. Yet how could she get away without setting off the sensors and being seen by the camera’s? Hesitating briefly, she crept close to the perimeter of the house until she came to an overgrown shrub growing close to the wall. Crawling on her hands and knees, she reached the edge of the woods. In the shadowy recesses of the forest, she could hear Kathy and Jack arguing. “I’m going to go back and get her. Something is going on in there. Kathy was right. See that light in the window upstairs?” Jack said adamantly. “No, you are not going back in there, Jack. One of us can stay here and watch and one of us needs to go get our parents, or the cops,” Amanda planned. Kathy, with giddy relief, almost felt like playing a trick on them and moaning but thought better of it and called out quietly, “Hey, guys, I’m okay. Let’s get out of here first and I’ll tell you what happened.” Back at the road and on their bikes riding to town, Kathy related what she had overheard Joe and the woman say. A grudging consensus was made that they should tell their parents what happened. And, although Kathy, Amanda and Jack were all grounded by their parents, the police raided the old Bell Mansion and busted a major drug operation. This and the fact that they had told the truth helped to lessen their confinement considerably. Yet, Kathy wonders if her Mother will ever stop saying, “When I think of what could have happened to you!” The ghoulish door knocker still smiles wickedly, waiting. And why did the Bell Mansion front door close behind the three friends? And why couldn't they open it? Happy Halloween everyone! [email protected] ©Ann Rains October, 2021
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