Horror House

Horror House By James Sykes. Friday, April 22, 2016



Every Town has at least one. Mine was on the corner of Willies Road and the Bradford Road, I walked past it every day on the way to school. A grim building, unloved and forgotten.
It was called Holly House, but we always called it Horror House among my friends. Nobody dared to go past the rusty front gate and up the the path to the steps.
The last person to have stood before that front door was a very long time ago.
Raged curtains hung drunkenly like the sagging pale eyes of a corpse.

Everything outside was dead and anything to have ever stepped foot inside the house, was probably long dead too.
Each side of the garden path, there were two long mounds of earth covered in back plastic and weighed down with bricks.
We had been staying out late in a large group, a lot that summer. We were a bunch of friends that seemed nothing could break apart, with our collective gift to either stumble into parties. Or simply make where ever we where the party we needed it to be.

It was walking back from sitting like mushrooms in the park, pushing my bike that me, Jazz and Brummy had one of the strangest experiences I have ever encountered in my lifetime. Well, as true as I can remember it; the thought still turns my stomach...

I remember Jazz saying she was going to do a course specialising in home decoration after she had finished her design introduction.
Brummy mumbled something about doing a GNVQ I think. It’s funny how when you look back on the friends that have come and gone over the years, some of them you hear news about many years later and some just drop of the face of the earth and you always wonder what happened to them. Sometimes you do find out and the sadness of their story haunts you like a ghost.
It was like that awful life-sucking mouth of bricks was calling us in; like it could taste us already standing on the street, just outside. Brummy drained his beer can and put one hand on the gate looking up at the front door and said: (in my best Brummy translation) “Wouldn’t it be fucking nice to have a house like that to do up?” Jazz agreed, saying: “Indeed. But it would take way too much work for a novice.”
Holly House had been empty since before either Jazz or I could remember. Standing there, dark and empty. Sitting on it’s secrets.
Brummy didn’t grow up in our town. Surprisingly enough, he was from Birmingham and sometimes it was very difficult to understand what he was saying. Especially when he was drunk. But the more we drank, the more we seemed to understand him. I wonder what ever happened to him? Sometimes, his is one of the faces that comes back to me in dreams and just peers at me sleeping in the dark, like a psychic connection in the night.
“We should check it out”
“No way Brummy! Not Horror House, you don’t know it’s reputation.” Neither did I. I still don’t know one hundred percent if I do. It’s just one of those memories of going out and having a crazy night, drinking and having bad ideas. Then waking up with the feeling of loosing something, or something going horribly wrong. Maybe my mind also has to swallow up bad memories and just release them in mind farts or mental sneezes at night, so that they don’t just choke us or poison up our daily lives completely. How else would we not go crazy? But I do remember these events, before the days of phones with cameras. So you just gotta believe me. Otherwise I would have some fucking crazy video up on You-Tube.

Jazz was opening the gate, pushing it on it’s rusty hinges. It gave a weak scream, then swung open. “It’s two in the morning, nobody will see if just take a little look.” That girls gonna get me into trouble. I thought. We crunched up the path and up the three steps to the dull front door. The house hadn’t been inhabited (at least by anything fresh) in so long that there wasn’t even an electric door bell.
A knuckle of metal sat in a hole by the door. I don’t know what or possibly who to this day, possessed me to pull it. But I gave it a try. The wire it was attached was slack, but did go back and forth with a weak determination. Brummy turned the knob on the door. Why would a horror house be locked? We should have known that.
Peeping in from the steps should have been enough to satisfy our curiosity, but the place inside was beautiful.
I felt ashamed to be still swigging out of my beer can almost because of the disrespect to my surroundings. Almost.
The walls were lined in flock wall-paper and if it hadn't been damp and dark and rotting, the place would have looked like the inhabitants could have stepped out ten minuets ago. We used our lighters to navigate in the gloom and each of us went into a separate room.

Old public toilet stench, my nose was telling me hung in the air all around. There was a bang, as what could only possibly have been a through-wind closing the front door. The lighter burned my thumb and I had to suck on the end to take the sting away. Now voices. Brummy talked to him self a lot, I think most of the time he had to because we was hard to understand. His voice was either a mumble or a moan. But when you did understand; you either regretted doing so, or it was very funny.
But there were other voices, I am sure. At least one I can explain, I think. It was Jazz. I went into the front room that she was investigating to find her twisting the dial of an ancient wooden radio.
Through the crackle, (I didn’t even think until later what was powering the radio. Electricity must have dried up in this house with the last forms of life.) we could hear a voice.

It was the voice of an old BBC radio announcer. Of course thinking about it now, only a voice from the past would come out of a freaky old radio in an abandoned old house. The voice was quiet and muffled by a scratchy fuzz that made my head hurt. But it proclaimed in stead of speaking. It must have been a part from an old mystery play. Or a trapped spirit trying desperately to warn us from... Where? I don’t even dare to think about where. The only possible light side to this tooth-ache of a memory. Is that if evil spirits do exist: There is the possibility of the power of love and goodness on the other side.
If god exists I hope hope so. The voice proclaimed: “They all come to die.” Jazz said: “Urrgh!” And switched it off ,it faded back into the scratchy fuzz then silence.
After two or three minuets of moonlight quiet We both heard the bight. Like a juicy apple... I can’t hear that noise any more without wondering...
Then came a thud. We both ran into the oppersite front-room to see Brummy’s legs just lying there in a pool of blood. He had been bitten to his belly, legs and shoes lying in an enourmous red puddle. Beer can on the floor besides his remains. I don’t know what Jazz’s reaction was but my throat collapsed with fear, any screams were strangled. I felt very hot indeed, my heart was beating at the speed of a mouse and that was exactly how I felt. Like a mouse trapped in a death-trap. Jazz’s eyes were bulging and she was gagging. So I made the move, pushing her through the door into the hallway. I have never been so sure I was about to die in my life. My only thought was to save my friend. It was like trying to move a mummy and as soon as we got to the door frame, it shut.
My heart nearly exploded with fright. Jazz and I both grabbed onto the handle, her fingernails ripping into my skin, which I completely forgive her for. The door opened and you can bet we where through it as if our lives depended on it. Or maybe our souls did.
There was a dragging sound as we ran and Jazz pulled me around by the hand, although I didn’t want to look behind.
“He’s gone! Shit, look! He’s gone.”
I looked and the sight of the empty blood-stain on the floor nearly drove me mad. The front door also opened with out a problem. So we ran, doubled up on my bike and went as fast as possible. We never looked back, we never went back and we hardly ever spoke of it ever again.
I sometimes think back, remembering old friends I once knew. Some of the times we just lost contact.
I think some of them were eaten. I still don’t know what by.