Dare you

Written for Miranda’s #MidWeekFlash. I thought I’d broaden my range and have a crack at a scary ish story. Note the ‘ish’.

It’d been a dare, of course.

Spend Halloween night in the creepy old house behind the graveyard.

So just after ten, we quietly broke in through the back door and made our way through the house. It was dark inside, apart from the beam of light from our torches criss-crossing and catching the motes of dust we disturbed, and everything had that damp-and-cold smell that abandoned places do.

We found the kitchen, a cavernous room with high, Victorian ceilings, and then a dining room, with the table still laid, and finally the sitting room. Massive, ancient furniture with greyed anitmacassars on the high backs made the room feel cramped and uncomfortable. We decided to camp in the hallway.

We laid our sleeping bags out by an old, dust-covered sideboard. On the sideboard was some broken crockery, a vase of long-dead flowers, and a heavy iron typewriter, which still had a sheet of yellowed paper caught in it. We sat cross-legged on our sleeping bags and one by one turned the torches off until we were sat in the chilly, oppressive dark, telling each other ghost stories.

It wasn’t long until we heard noises, creaks and groans which we reassured ourselves were nothing more than the sound of the house settling in the night. But then…tap. Tap. Tap.

It sounded like the typewriter, but surely couldn’t have been… so we flicked our torches on and looked over. It sat, innocent, in the light. We went and looked closely at it, and there was a ripple of unease.

die

The word on the paper was bold, and we wondered that the ink in the ribbon had not long dried up. There was nervous laughter, and jokey accusations as we looked at each other. But nobody owned up to typing the single word, and we collectively shrugged. Someone was playing silly buggers.

We went and sat down again, turning the torches back off, although nobody really wanted to. But equally, nobody wanted to look like a coward. We spoke to each other quietly, an appreciatively spooked audience.

But again, tap, tap, tap. Clunk, tap, tap, tap. Clunk, tap, tap, tap, TAP.

The torches came on almost as one this time. In a huddle, we approached the typewriter again.

die

Die

DIE!

And then, a moan which most definitely wasn’t the house. Eerie, chilling, wavering, it filled the space until our heads were pounding along with our hearts. There was a shuffling noise at the top of the stairs, and we shone our torches up to see a cadaverous man, clothed in grey and white rags, and wielding an axe. The moan broke off, and the man screamed, “Die!” and started slowly down the stairs.

We stood, paralysed with terror, until the man was nearly upon us. He lifted the axe and screamed and we screamed back, before breaking for the front door, which was locked. Fumbling fingers reached for rusted bolts at top and bottom, numb lips sobbed desperate prayers, but eventually we wrested the door open and spilled out into the cold, dark night, before running away as fast as we could.

The following day, we met up at the old house in daylight. Surely we’d had some kind of mass hallucination, right, brought on by the night and the darkness and our willing minds, yeah? Exactly.

But when we pushed the open front door to and made our way into the house, this time we could see when the typewriter began to type by itself…