Haunted House 2

Note: This story is completely unrelated to any of my pervious haunted house stories.

It was a giant house, in a castle-like form, with large pillars on each side, the center a flat brick wall with tiny holes for windows. The balcony on the far right side of the wall looked like it would crumble if anyone stepped on it. There were cobwebs on the outside that stood out from the house’s dark brown and black color.

So, naturally, my friend's first reaction when he saw this was, “Let’s go explore!”

My reaction was slightly less enthusiastic and more concerned for my friend’s sanity, “Explore that? It looks dangerous.”

My friend, of course, decided to ignore me and run up to the front door of the house and knock on it.

Now, seems like a good time to introduce you to my friend. Meet Sant, nicknamed Santa by practically everyone in the school, an insane kid who keeps on dragging me into terrifying situations like this one.

I ran over to him just as the door creaked open. It screeched on the floor, making the most terrible noise I have ever heard, and then silence. Nobody was at the door. It had opened by itself.

“Hello?” Sant said. “Is anybody there?”

No response.

He took a step in, “Nobody’s here.”

“Let’s go back,” I said. Can I note that at this point I was completely terrified that we were going to get arrested for entering someone else’s house?

“No!” He took another step forward, or at least tried to, I stopped him.

“Rui!”

“There’s a wire over there, it’s connected to a cage that would have dropped down on top of you.”

He thought I was joking until he examined the floor and noticed the wire. Then he looked up and noticed the cage. It had rusted metal bars, and hung precariously off the floor on one frayed rope that was connected to the ceiling.

Now, while Sant is staring at the ceiling, let me explain something else important. I’m Rui (Roo-ee), nicknamed Rudolph, because Santa, Rudolph, you know.

Sant had now taken a few more careful steps inside and was examining the door. “Rui…” he whispered. “This door had a touch sensor. When I knocked, it automatically opened.”

I, being particularly interested in electronics, took a look at the system that pulled the door open, before declaring, “Okay, let’s seriously get out of here.”

“No, we have to investigate the rest,” Sant said and ran away before I could stop him.

So, you might have heard of “no scares on stairs''. The idea that it’s dangerous to scare someone while they are climbing stairs, because the person climbing might fall. That’s why haunted houses tend to put nothing scary on stairs. Well, it turns out this haunted house followed that, so we didn’t get scared while climbing down stairs to the basement.

There was a door when we entered the basement, which opened with the same terrible screeching noise of the first door. We took a few steps in and the door closed behind us. Of course it did. Perfect. Great. Amazing.

“The door is locked,” I said. There was a number lock with four digits on the door.

Sant who was examining the skeletons on the floor around us said, “Oh wait. Maybe these skeletons are real.”

“Sant!”

“Okay, okay,” he got to his feet and examined the lock. “This is really simple to pick. It makes a noise every time you reach the correct number.”

“What?”

“Shhhh.”

He silently turned the wheel on the lock until it reached one. There was a slight click. Then he repeated the process for the other three numbers.

“One, nine, eight, four,” he said, pushing the door open with that horrible screeching sound.

As I processed the fact that the door had been locked from the inside, and realized the place we had been in was probably a dungeon, Sant ran upstairs to the balcony. Just to recap, that’s the balcony that looked like it would break if anyone stepped on it.

“This is so cool,” Sant said, standing in front of the balcony. He took one step in, then another. He turned to me, “It’s not going to break-”

And of course that’s when the balcony broke. The bricks broke down and crumbled to the floor. I heard them hit the ground a second later. I could see the panicked look on Sant’s face as he started to fall.

Then he grabbed the wire that hung on top of him and shouted, “It’s a zip-line. We can slide down.” Then he slid down the zip-line to the floor and gave me a thumbs up.

I decided it would be a better idea to get out the normal way through the front door, until I realized it was locked, with the same four digit lock as the dungeon. Testing my luck, I typed in the number one, nine, eight, and four. The door opened with that horrible screeching noise that I’m never going to forget for the rest of my life (Ow…my ears).

I walked up to Sant, glaring, “We are never gonna do that ever again,” I proclaimed dramatically.

He grinned, “Why not? It was fun.”