[Solo] Monster Mash - Zac/Haunted House - Finished

[endejester]

A Haunted house, it wasn’t strange in this kind of season, but it was odd that there was no one there waiting to take tickets. It was just there; it seemed to have cropped up over night. Not just the set up, but also the whole house. Stranger than that, it wasn’t there when he looked in the morning the second day after he realized that the house had appeared walking home one night.

He tried again in the evening, and there it was. The house was old, rickety like it had stood for years, falling slowly into disrepair. It would have done the Adams family proud to be honest, the spider webs that decorated the corners of porches and windows looked more solid than the house itself.

Hay bales and pumpkins were also part of the decorations, and he was at least a little re-assured that the front porch could stand up to the weight of the decorations. It gave some credence that it might be more solid than it appeared.
Candles winked and bobbed in the darkened windows, and there was a single sign as he approached the front door.

“Prizes await those brave souls who face the horrors within!”

He snorted, arching his eyebrow. Part of him suspected that ‘prizes’ might actually be some station where you’d be expected to donate to a charity or some such. He had a few dollars though, and some time.



0/18

239  

[endejester]

The first room after he entered the house, cautious because of the prolonged creak from the floorboards and the smell of dust, was a hallway. There was only one-way to go other than ‘back out’ which was fine. What was odd was he didn’t see any windows, but there had been windows from outside that he could see had lead into a living room. There was a table to one side, and a rocking chair, it wasn’t moving so that was good, no motor sounds to indicate that it was supposed to be haunted.

Well, no more haunted than the fact that the house vanished by the light of day and returned at dusk.

The lights flickered and he cursed, of course they were flickering, it was meant to scare people. They went out for a moment with an electric ‘pop’. He stood there in a moment with the feeling of ‘eyes’ on him, though he knew, knew It was just being in the dark.
The lights flickered back on and he let out a breath of relief, though it was short lived.

He ‘felt’ it more than heard it, the shadow that had appeared just behind him to the right.
He turned slowly and watched it, for a moment it looked like him, his shadow and nothing more, but then it changed. It twisted, horrifying, step-by-step into something utterly inhuman. The shape was just –wrong- and he could taste the fear. He cast dignity aside and bolted for the next room, he could feel silly later for running from ‘his own’ shadow.


6/18

502  

[endejester]

... screwed this up. Rolling in new post.  

[endejester]

Lightning flashed across the sky as he darted into the next room, there were skylights that he could see in the ceiling as he scanned it carefully for signs of other creatures waiting on high.
The rest of the room was awful though, wax figures sitting around a table with eerie not quite right faces, frozen in what seemed like a heated conversation.

It seemed like politics, he wasn’t sure why but the word was what came to mind more than anything else.
There was after all, a television in the corner where a debate was playing out. Honestly this year might be scarier than the shadow he’d just run from.

A door opened, a creaking sound and the shadow of it swung to touch his own.

He was not entirely surprised when his shadow started to twist and change again, but perhaps that was because he had no plans to stay and find out how far it would change.


12/18


662  

[endejester]

The third room, it was ghosts, yes, actual ghosts. He really shouldn’t have been surprised. College students like him, lounging around on couches. One of them was doing caricatures, and another player was playing beer pong. None of them really paid him much mind, except for the one.

The one that was pointing behind him…

He turned and saw –it- again, the shadow, that had once been his own, oozed out from the other room. He wondered if what seemed to be tentacles had been his arms, or the shadow of his arms, was that a mouth? He wasn’t staying to find out.

Screw this haunted house.

He ran for the next room and …

And he was outside, blinking and uncomfortable, staring at his own shadow, the actual shadow with some discomfort.
There was a bag of candy there, off brand weird candy and … a commemorative photo of him looking petrified. He swore and headed home.

He cursed a lot more when he found the note pinned to his back.

‘Better luck Next Year.”


18/18


838