HAUNTED

The sounds of screams came from a darkened house, black windows throwing half seen shadows across the floor. There came a noise of sheer terror from a creaking window. There was a flash of light as the luminous sign flashed its ‘Haunted House’ message across the park. A boy stood in front of the ride and shivered slightly. He hated this sort of ride but he had sworn to himself that he’d go on it. He wouldn’t stay a frightened child his whole life. He walked over to the booth, handing over a pile of coins to the man behind the glass. His hands were shaking as he walked away, clenching them shut to try and stop them. He was quickly steered into the last car on the ride, not able to make a decision on his own anymore, sitting next to a girl wearing a black T-shirt with a skull on it and a pair of large sunglasses. The girl gave him a smile as he sat down, it was a nice smile but the boy felt something else behind the smile as if she were welcoming her prey. The boy sat down stiffly beside her, his arms snapping out and gripping the bar in front of him. The girl let out a laugh at this, seeing how frightened he was without the ride even starting yet. “You need to calm down,” she said in a surprisingly happy sounding voice. The boy kept his own mouth shut, keeping his eyes dead ahead and watching the carts ahead of them fill up. “Come on, this’ll be fun,” she said, putting an arm round the boy. He turned his head slowly, looking at the girl hard for the first time. He couldn’t remember seeing her get on the ride and he had been the first one on. He came to the conclusion that she had been on the ride ahead of him and had paid for two rides. Thinking logically like this helped settle his nerves and his grip loosened on the bar a bit. His grip tightened again as the ride lurched forward, pulling them into the foul smelling, pitch-black mouth of the house. A line of flapping material lining the doorway for a second blinded him; clearing his eyes he found he was still blind because there was so little light in the ride.

He could see some kind of light bobbing up and down on the cars in front, coming closer with each second. He did not want to see that light because with each bobbing motion it made over the cars was accompanied by a scream from its occupants. Soon the light was over them however, the boy’s eyes drawn up by sheer human curiosity. The light lowered, bringing a horrible twisted face into sharp view. It was covered with scars and had bulging eyes that stared unblinkingly at him. The boy let out a load scream, making a few people in the cars turn. The girl beside him just began to giggle, half at the face and half at the boy. “You really scare easily don’t you,” she said, making the boy take his eyes of the distorted face and to hers. She had removed her sunglasses; he knew this because even in the darkness he could see her eyes sparkling. The boy looked down, slightly ashamed of himself for being so afraid. The ride trundled along a corridor, the small amount of light that fluttered through cracked and blackened windows showing bloodied walls and hands reaching out of nowhere to clutch at the riders bodies. With each of these sights the boy whimpered and tried to hide while the girl laughed, going as far to shake one of the disembodied hands at one point. The boy forced himself to look up from the floor, telling himself to be more like the girl. When he looked up he noticed there was no longer anymore carts ahead of them, the rest of the rides occupants could still be heard screaming some way off but he couldn’t tell where they were. His fear was building, wondering where the other riders were; the girl on the other hand was cleaning her nails. All of a sudden an axe thumped into the front of the cart, making him jump and try to escape the cart but the bar was pinning him to the seat. A hooded executioner stood there, half covered with darkness and holding the axe. The boy let out a squeal of terror and tried to hide behind the girl; only now he noticed that the girl had started to clean her nails on the blade of the axe, whistling a tune as she did. The figure pulled the axe out of the ride, swinging it forward as if to strike them on the head. The girls just continued whistling as the ride shot forward, making the axe miss her by inches. She brought her fingers up to her sparkling eyes, seeing her workmanship in the pitch-blackness. The boy was still cowering in his seat, whimpering and whining at every bump or shadow.
As they rounded a corner there was a flash of lightening, even though it was a bright sunny day outside the house; the flash illuminated a collection of bloodstains on the wall. There were several more flashes and it revealed a frame around the stains. It was a painting. A painting made totally of blood! What’s more it was a painting of a screaming old witch, her hair wild and her mouth snarling. The boy closed his eyes, but the image had burned itself into his retinas and he saw it whether he closed his eyes or not. Then he heard an odd sound. The girl beside him had just burst out laughing, pointing at the painting and having a hysterical fit. “I,” she said, through bursts of laughter “I didn’t know they had pictures of me when I wake up in the morning.” The boy stared disbelievingly at the girl as the cart trundled on, how could she see comedy in this? He turned forward again but his eyes sometimes darted back to the girl. It didn’t matter what sights they were greeted by, she always was smiling or didn’t seem to be bothered. She even yelled out “HI MOM AND DAD!” to a pair of actors that were doing a gory Frankenstein’s monster sort of scene, in which a man removed his own organs by hand to create a living woman. The boy remained the same, cowering, scrabbling to escape and trying to hide at nearly every chance he got.

After ten more minutes of this torture to the boy, and apparent bliss to the girl, they entered a dining area of the haunted house. The boy cringed away from the floating dishes of food and the moving chairs, the girl reached out and snatched an apple out of a squealing pig’s mouth. She bit into it and spits it back out “Ugh, wax,” she explained, shoving the apple back into the pig’s mouth. As the cart circled the table it neared a fireplace, the girl ignoring it because he thought it was for decoration. It was not however and it burst into flames, a ghost apparently made from fire spiralling up into the chimney. The boy jumped at the sudden flaring of the fire but the girl clapped happily, grabbing at a poker and skewering a marshmallow on it. The ride began to trundle of though, so she dropped the poker and ate the boiling marshmallows quickly “That’s a better meal.” She continued toying with the scenery for some time until the ride took them out of the dining room. She let out a small-disappointed sigh; she had obviously been enjoying herself.

The ride took the two teenagers into a long hall, the walls lined with coffins and chains. The boy whimpered again, slinking low in his seat. The girl grabbed him by his shirt collar and hauled him back up, showing surprising strength. “Don’t be a wuss,” she said, she was obviously growing tired of his scared nature. The boy nodded slowly and sat up, he was going to get through this. His resolve didn’t last very long as he jumped when an actor burst out of a coffin on the wall dressed in a vampire costume with fangs glistening with blood. By the third time he screamed the girl had had just about enough “One more time,” she said, a slight growl in her voice. The cart trundled on some more, the tracks looking like they led of to the left. The girl could see they really went straight on but the boy was too terrified to notice. Just at the junction the cart stopped. There was a few seconds of absolute nothingness, in which the boy became more and more on edge, sitting in the darkness and clutching at this girl he didn’t know. Then it all happened at once, a flash of lightening, a blood curdling howl and a werewolf lunging at the boy, a very weak looking chain around it neck. The boy screamed. With a sigh the girl stared at the boy, clicking her fingers to get him to make eye contact. The boy tore his eyes away from the snarling beast and looked her right in her wide, glistening eyes. The actor couldn’t see what was happening with the girl’s head being the wrong way round to see her eyes, but he could see what was happening to the boy. The boy had slumped in his seat, looking unblinkingly into the girl’s eyes. “There” the girl said, looking away. The boy looked up at the actor in the werewolf costume with glazed eyes. Then he did something the actor didn’t expect. He giggled. Reaching out a calm and steady hand and stroking the latex mask, while the girl said “Nice puppy.” The ride began to trundle forward, away from the werewolf’s line of sight. The actor shivered slightly, that had been weird.

The boy looked at the dark scenery through sparkling eyes now, each bloody wall became just covered with red paint, each clanking suit of armour rusty and in need of oiling, each skeleton hanging on the walls seemed to be grinning happily. An actor covered in bandages and moaning came out of a door, clawing at the cart. The boy simply rapped the man’s knuckles while the girl exclaimed “Wrap up!” Passing the actor now sucking his knuckles they ran into the man with the axe again, apparently he wanted to scare the boy again. The boy was different this time, he had a wide grin on his face and his eyes glinted in the half-light. As the axe hit the front of the cart again, the boy reached over and swivelled the executioner’s hood around, blocking the actor’s view. The girl kept her hands on the axe, making it impossible for the actor to lift it off the cart’s front. The actor tugged the axe a few times fruitlessly and let it go, turning his hood back around the right way. As he did this, the cart started up again, the two passengers zooming off with the axe still in the cart’s front. The actor chased after the cart for a short while until the girl pulled the axe out of the cart and dumped it for the man to pick up. They could hear him cursing them as they turned a corner. With another flapping of material the car burst out into the daylight, both of them shielding their eyes with their hands. It seemed brighter out than normal to the boy but he wrote that off to being in a dark tunnel for so long “Some ride,” the girl said. He got up calmly, walking away from the ride still shading his eyes. He looked around for the girl, wanting to apologise for being so scared earlier but he couldn’t find her in the crowd.

He wondered where he could buy some sunglasses, some large sunglasses. Meters away, a nervous boy climbed into the last of the carts on the haunted mansion ride. A girl was sitting there, all black T-shirt with a skull on it and large sunglasses. The boy grinned nervously and gripped the bar in front of him. “You need to calm down,” she said, giving a grin that seemed friendly but also seemed to greet her prey “Come on, this’ll be fun.”

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This story is rather old... and its not very well spaced. Sorry for errors.