I. Danny
I won’t go to the house again.
I won’t go to the house again.
I won’t go to the house again.
I went to the haunted house.
I woke naked in the garden. Nothing grew there—not even weeds. Just withered stalks that looked ages old. Maybe dating back to when things were still okay.
The darkness was beginning to brighten. I always came to, just before dawn.
As usual, my mouth tasted of blood. The first few times, I’d thought the blood was mine. Eventually, it occurred to me the blood might come from someone else. That made me swear I’d never go back to the house.
But I did.
I got up and limped around to the front door. It took me a while—plants grew thick everywhere except the garden, and most had thorns or nettles.
Beyond the briars, trees crowded up close to the house. The forest ran for miles in every direction, full of whispery sounds and shifty movements. I stayed away from the woods, even in daytime. Animals hated the place too; I never saw a single bird or squirrel among those trees. I don’t know if the house had infected the woods or the other way around, but they were both no-man’s-lands. Maybe like Mandy and me, the house and the forest went bad together.
The inside of the house was always cold and silent. That hadn’t seemed strange the first time Mandy and I broke in. It was November, with an inch of snow on the ground, so we weren’t surprised to see frost on the mirrors and icicles on the ceiling lamps.