The Hornton House

     There was a feeling of despair around that house. It wouldn’t go away. It stayed there like a bad smell that had soaked into my clothes and would take some time to leave. The creaking stairs and broken floor kept my senses open to any and all disturbances to my normal welfare. A similar sounding footstep behind me kept me on my toes, causing me to turn around nearly every ten seconds. I wasn’t in my place, and I knew it. But I had my torch at hand, shining it at everything to make sure nothing was hiding.
     I had heard many a rumour about the people who went missing; the murders that went on within these walls. Bodies bricked up. However, all cleared away by the police. And now I was there to check out the mystery. If I’d had the choice, I wouldn’t have gone near that place. But I was stuck there, in the house drowned in shadows; alone.
     I checked every room, slowly turning each handle to let whatever was already in there know I was coming. But every time I opened a door, I found nothing sitting behind, ready to take me. Nothing but the bare grey walls. All the furniture was gone; taken away after the last family who lived there moved out. They had said it was because of voices. Voices that lingered through the halls and drilled into your head. I couldn’t tell if my thoughts were actually my thoughts or not.
     I shivered and trembled with each new discovery of the wide house. Each room was just as grey and dark as the last, providing no clue as to why the despair that haunted the house stayed. It was empty, except for the few spiders that weaved their webs into the shadowed corners of the rooms; no rats scuttled about like the films. I was careful to shut every door I opened, to leave the spiders as they liked it.
     I felt chills through my spine as I climbed to the second floor up the lobby stairs; a strange feeling of danger. The floorboards cracked under my weight, making me more aware of the danger of the house itself, rather than the danger of the things that haunted it. But still, at the end of the corridors, in the shadows, I saw the moving figures running from it, out of their hiding place. Shivering, they watched me. I took a risk and took my hands from the walls, shifting my weight back on the floor, and shone my torch at them. But alas, they escaped into the crevices and fled from my light.
     A strange sense of power overtook me in the form of my torch. I could ward off all the bad with it. I did not think that if someone was here, they would not be afraid of a little light.
     And as I finally came to the very last room, I found that nothing had been sitting, and waiting. I was safe, and the house was empty of all kinds of danger. I sighed in the relief of my conclusion and began to leave the house with a quickened pace. However, I still walked carefully and steadily to the lobby, as if creeping past a sleeping guard. I did not wish to wake the house and its might.
     And I stepped down to the lobby, looking up to a large portrait on the wall. A man with his wife and baby. If I’d had any courage left in me, I would’ve checked the portrait, and I probably have found that it was a photograph. I would have found a date under the frame going back only a few years. And that would have scared me. But I was already at the door, and those facts never came to the surface as I left the house. I was outside.
     The terror was closed inside the large box of the house; its peeling paint and smashed glass of renegade teenagers who had never returned. I closed the door gently, with a click. It was painted in broken green and the knocker was worn by the rain, turning a teal metal. No longer was it the golden object of beauty. The handle too was transformed to a pitiful green of sadness.
     And I left the house, not turning to look back. My companion stood by the post box, watching me with interest. He was astounded at my achievement. He had told me many had not returned from venturing in the house. I had believed him, but now I had a feeling of doubt. He was gawping at me.
     “Yeah?” I asked.
     “You din’ scream!”
     “I told you I wasn’ scared!”
     “Holy crap!”
     He jumped onto his bicycle and I did so too.
     “You din’ see anyfin’?”
     “There’s nuffin’ in there! You lied!”
     “I did no’! Everyfin about there is true!”
     “Yeah righ’.”
     I pushed my bike off into motion and gave a quick glance back at the house. I don’t know what made that feeling of despair, but it swam to me from looking at the house; lonely without its tenants. A moment of confusion caught me when two eyes met with mine from the window, but I realized as I looked away, it was from the portrait that hung up in the lobby.
     With that thought, I left.