It's Probably Haunted

Chapter 11

Pulling into the long gravel driveway for the second time, the house looked exactly like it had when we had pulled in the first time. Something about it wasn't sitting right with me and it wasn't until we were standing on the porch, waiting for one or the other to open the front door, that I noticed the black plastic shining through the dust covered window. It was the same window I had taken the plastic off of when we had first visited.

Calvin must have noticed my discomfort and walked up beside me to look where I was staring. I told him that I had pulled the plastic from that window and left it fluttering on the ground when we left last time. He told me that I was probably just confused and that I had taken it from another window and thought it was this one when I came out. He reminded me of my less than graceful exit from the house last time and I felt the uneasiness in my stomach start to reside. I told him he was probably right and walked over to open the front door.

Inside I found a familiar darkness settled over the entirety of the house. An eerie silence accompanied the dark and I thought it would make the perfect setting for a number of cliché haunted house horror movies. I had my shirt pulled up over my mouth and felt around for anything resembling a light switch.

I started by the door, following the wall with one hand, the other held out in front of me, and I walked around blindly without finding a single switch. I turned back towards the door and could see Calvin standing there, one foot on the threshold, unable to continue. I noticed, with a pang of fear, that the light from outside seemed just as unable to enter. It was as if the light stopped at the outline of the door. Not a single ray of sun made its' way past it. I was almost ready to walk back outside when Calvin pointed past me and asked what the light was behind me. I spun around and saw a faint red glow coming from under a door on the opposite wall from the entrance. I glanced back at Calvin, catching a feared look in his eye, then walked over and turned the knob.

To say that I was blinded by light that flooded the house would be a lie. In truth, the anticipation of opening the door and seeing the light was much more interesting than what was waiting behind it. A single, large red lamp was placed on a small, circular, wooden table. The table was in the center of a room that was only slightly smaller than the room we first entered into. There were no windows and no doors besides the one I had come through and really nothing else in the room at all besides that damn lamp. The lamp resonated with a faint red glow and I walked around it, looking for something more interesting. The only oddity I discovered was that the lamp was not plugged in to a wall and had no obvious cord, switch, or button to turn it off. Calvin suggested trying to clap at it, and foolishly listening, I started clapping as I rounded the table until my foot tripped on one of the table legs and it all came crashing to the floor.

Two of the table legs had splintered off from the base and the single source of light in the house, the soft glow from the red lamp, lay shattered at my feet. I kicked around through the glass and wanted to check the bulb; hoping it would still be intact so I could use it in another room. After cutting spiderwebs across my hands, I gave in that the bulb was destroyed and turned around to go back outside.

In the darkness of the room, I had somehow become disoriented and had forgotten which wall I had come through. I called out for Calvin but heard no response. I could hear my voice getting louder with each call but it didn't help and I started feeling along the wall for the door that I was hoping hadn't disappeared. Eventually, my hand bumped against what I knew was the door knob. I turned and pulled and the door gave way to another pitch black room. There was no sign of Calvin, though he could have been standing five feet in front of me and I would have had no idea. It was so dark that every step felt like you were walking into an oblivion; a void in the world that everyone else had forgotten about. I struggled with the darkness around me until I managed to find another thing that could only have been a doorknob and turned it. Opening the door, I was welcomed into the room by a faint red glow. A large lamp stood on a small circular table in the middle of the room. I closed my eyes.