“Why didn’t they finish it?” I asked.
“I dunno,” Gummy said, popping a namesake sour gummy worm into his mouth. “Maybe they ran out of money.”
“No way,” Jason said, “they won’t let you build a house if you don’t have enough money to pay for it.”
“People run out of money all the time,” I said. “Even people that buy houses.”
“They didn’t finish it because it’s haunted,” Caleb said, shining his flashlight up the driveway of the half-finished house on Apple Drive. “Eddie told me, and he never lies.”
“Your brother told me he had sex with Miss Anderson,” I said.
Gummy, his mouth full of candy, snorted and spit out bits of gummy worm. “Miss Anderson wouldn’t ever touch his dick. She has standards.”
“That’s true,” Jason said, chuckling. “Your brother’s face looks like a pizza. No way she’s getting turned on by him.
“Besides, she’s saving herself for me,” Gummy said.
“Shut the hell up, man,” I said, laughing.
“If she’s not getting over Eddie’s acne-covered face, she’s definitely not falling for your little Buddha belly, Gummy,” Jason said, puffing out his stomach and tapping it for effect. It worked. We all laughed.
“Then she wouldn’t know what she’d be missing,” Gummy said.
“Okay, Eddie occasionally stretches some truths,” Caleb said, “But he wouldn’t lie about this.”
“How does he know it’s haunted?” I asked.
“He knew a kid who went inside and saw a ghost or a demon or something. He was so scared he left his bike in the backyard and ran down the hill screaming. They never found him, though. He just disappeared,” Caleb said.
“What was the kid’s name?” Jason asked.
“He didn’t tell me but said he was a football player. A popular one, too.”
We had all heard the rumors of a teen being kidnapped twenty or so years ago. Whether or not this football player was the same guy, we didn’t know. Nobody really did. In the moment, though, it made sense.
“If a football player got caught in here, what chance do we have?” I asked. I wasn’t suggesting we go home exactly, but I wasn’t opposed to the idea. This place was creepier than I thought.
“You got two football players here,” Jason said, slapping Caleb on the shoulder. “We can take him.”
“JV players,” Gummy added with a chuckle. Jason shot him a look, and Gummy offered a sour worm as a peace offering. Jason took it and nodded.
“We’ve come all this way,” Caleb said, “Wouldn’t hurt to take a peak, right?”
The wind blew, and I felt a chill run up my spine that I wasn’t sure was only weather-related. Chilly fall weather had come early, and the nights were freezing by mid-October. None of us had jackets on because we had snuck out of Caleb’s house after his parents had gone to bed. We had planned this secret trip to the unfinished house for a few weeks. It took a mighty effort for Caleb to get all three of us to stay the night at his house, but pleading kids had the same effect on parents as the tides had on rocks. Eventually, you were them down.
It helped that Caleb’s mom liked red wine, and his dad could sleep through an atomic bomb blast.
The house was a local legend in our town. Years ago, someone had hired a crew to build a home at the top of Apple Hill. They’d nearly finished the job, but something happened that caused them to quit and never return. The legend goes that the first people to visit the site post-construction exodus found dozens of tools the crew left behind. Whatever had driven the crew out had done it in a hurry.
It was like the workers had disappeared into thin air.
Whoever bought the house and the surrounding land did nothing with the property. People supposedly looked into the records to try and find the owner but only found a PO Box address for something called “You’re Home, Incorporated.” Outside that PO box, though, there was nothing else on the books. The company had no other listings or holdings. There were no names associated with the company. Like the construction crew, the company just disappeared.
The Apple Hill house became victim to the inclement weather and bored teens. The crushed beer cans and fast food wrappers sprouted like a garbage garden and took away from the curb appeal. Sections of the roof sagged over time, but it still remained attached. I’m sure it wasn’t safe to walk through without hard hats and safety gear, but we hadn’t rode our bikes up that steep ass hill to not go into the house.
“If that story’s true,” Gummy said, “there’d probably be a bike in the yard. The one he left behind.”
“Someone would take a free bike,” Jason said. “Some bum or somebody isn’t turning down a free ride.”
“Maybe,” I said, “you think someone lives in there?”
“It’d be cheap rent,” Gummy said.
“Nobody from here would willingly stay in a haunted house,” Caleb said, “regardless of how bad you needed a place to live.”
“People have been here,” Gummy said, kicking a rusted-out Budweiser can. “And they drink some pretty basic shit.”
“Like you’d know,” Jason said.
“Gonna tell a fat kid he doesn’t understand taste?” Gummy asked. Jason had to agree.
We all had brought backpacks with the gear we thought we’d need. Truthfully, it was nothing more than flashlights, snacks, a bottle of water, and knives we had stolen from our houses. We all took our flashlights out and fired them up like a low-rent production of The Ghostbusters.
“Where should we go first?” Caleb asked.
“Let’s just go in the front door,” Jason said. “We can decide once we’re inside.”
That sounded good to all of us, but tellingly, none of us took that crucial first step forward. After a beat, I nodded and started toward the front door. Everyone followed behind me like baby ducks waddling behind their mom. Nobody said a word. Gummy even stopped chewing on his candy.
We all flashed our lights forward to give ourselves the most light possible. It still wasn’t much. These flashlights were cheap emergency ones they sell at the drugstore for five bucks. They weren’t as good as a Maglite or anything, and it showed. Even with our four streams of light crossing each other in front of us, it couldn’t penetrate deep into the darkness in front of us.
I got to the front door, which was adorned with crude drawings of people screwing and the worst tagging this side of a middle school, and was about to push it open when Gummy grabbed my arm. I looked down at it and then at his face. He looked scared – I’m sure we all did – but he let go.
“What?” I asked.
“We should knock first,” he said.
Jason laughed. “Why?”
“Seems, I dunno, proper or something. If someone is in there, maybe they’ll tell us to leave, and we won’t get stabbed by some drugged-up drifter.”
“Come on, man. That’s not going to be the case,” Jason added.
“It’s not a bad idea,” Caleb said. “I mean, don’t people on those ghost shows always say to treat the ghosts nice?”
Jason rolled his eyes, but his objections didn’t go beyond that. I nodded at everyone and turned back to the closed door. I rapped on it, softly at first, but with each thwack of my hand, the knocks got louder. We waited to see if said knife-wielding drifter or ghoul spoke up. They didn’t.
“Told you,” Jason said.
“Better safe than sorry,” Gummy said. “I can’t die before I get my shot with Miss Anderson.”
We all chuckled. Nerves more than the punchline. I turned the doorknob and pushed the door open. It squealed on its hinges for a few inches before it suddenly snapped and sent the door dropping to the ground. We all ran back to the end of the driveway for a minute, expecting to see some demon come blazing out of the house, but relaxed when nothing happened. Old, rusted hinges sometimes break.
“That sucked shit,” Gummy said with another nervous laugh.
“You can’t go cheap on hinges,” I said, “first rule of construction.”
“Did you pick that up from one of the Property Brothers?” Jason asked.
“Common sense,” I said with a smile.
Once our collective nerves returned, we returned to the now doorless entry. I was the first to cross through. As I did, I called out to anyone who might hear me, “We mean you no harm. We’re just coming to check this place out.”
“There’s not a lot to do in this town,” Gummy added as he followed behind me.
“And we want to brag to everyone at school about how amazing we are,” Jason said.
“So, don’t kill us, please. Gummy has to try to bone one of our teachers,” Caleb added.
We all laughed and made our way into the living room. Like the door, it was decorated with gross art, marginal graffiti, and literal garbage. From this room, you could go one of three ways. There was a set of busted stairs that led to a darkened second floor, a doorway that led into the kitchen and dining room, and two closed doors that I assumed were bedrooms.
“Where should we go first?” I asked.
“Not upstairs,” Gummy said. “Not first, at least.”
“No arguments from me,” Jason said.
“Let’s check out these bedrooms. I don’t think there are any stories about the bedrooms,” Caleb said.
We moved toward the first room. I pushed open the door, and this one stayed on its hinges. There was nothing inside but more lousy art on the walls. Still, we walked in and looked around. There wasn’t anything spooky in this room. We turned to leave when we heard a door slam from the kitchen. We all froze.
“Someone is in here,” Gummy whispered.
Jason quietly unburdened his backpack and opened it up. He grabbed the knife he had stolen from his kitchen before switching off his flashlight. We all did the same. The room was now as dark as tar.
Jason and Caleb, the bigger two of us, stepped forward to take the lead. They held out the knives like they knew what they were doing. They didn’t, but their confidence filled me with confidence, too.
“Open the door,” I whispered.
Jason reached out with his free hand and slowly twisted the knob. You could hear the ancient mechanisms wheezing from sudden use after years of nothing. Jason opened the door and scanned the room in front of him. There wasn’t anyone there, not that we could see anyway.
Jason and Caleb ventured back out into the living room, knives drawn. Gummy and I followed behind, scanning the room for any movement. Everything was as still as it had been. We waited a few seconds before breathing or speaking, but once it became clear nothing was happening, we all relaxed and dropped the knives to our sides.
“That was terrifying,” I said.
The door from the second bedroom whipped open and slammed into the wall. We all jumped so high I thought we’d go through the ceiling. We turned around, expecting to see someone, but were greeted with another empty bedroom. Just as quickly as it swung up, it snapped shut. The echo of the slammed door bounced all around us.
Gummy ran into the kitchen, screaming like a banshee. I wanted to run, but my fight-or-flight nerve burned out, and I just stood in place like a tree in a meadow. Jason and Caleb, though, didn’t hesitate. They ripped the door open, knives ready to stab into hobo flesh, and charged into the bedroom.
Seconds later, their bodies still pumping with adrenaline, they walked out.
“There’s nobody in there!” Caleb said, his voice louder than he intended.
“They have to be hiding,” Jason said, his eyes scanning the room, “How the hell did the door just open?”
“Where’s Gummy?” Caleb asked.
“Gummy!” I yelled.
No response. I stumbled into the kitchen, fumbling to turn my flashlight back on, and called out for him again. I swung the beam around the dilapidated kitchen and didn’t see him anywhere. I turned the beam into the attached dining room and found nothing there, save for a door leading into a basement.
“Did he go downstairs?” I heard Caleb ask over my shoulder.
“I don’t know,” I said, my brain trying to imagine why he’d do that. I stepped toward the door and felt my foot squish on something soft. Weirdly, it made a crinkling noise. I tilted the flashlight down and saw Gummy’s bag of sour worms underfoot.
Jason ran to the basement doorway and yelled down to Gummy. Still, no response. Panic was starting to work its way into our bloodstream like a debilitating paralytic poison. This night wasn’t supposed to go this way. This was supposed to be a lark that gave us a tiny thrill and an incredible story to tell kids at school on Monday.
“We should go down,” I heard myself say. I was entirely outside my body at this point.
“Agreed,” Caleb said. “He’s either down there or upstairs.”
“I saw him run into the kitchen,” I said. “He’s gotta be down there.”
Jason yelled again, and there was no response. He turned, his face bearing the look of the poison in all of us. “Maybe he fell down the stairs and got knocked out?”
I pushed past both of them and peered down the stairs. If this floor was dark, then the basement was another kind of dark that only exists in the deepest reaches of space. I could barely make out the landing at the bottom of the steps. But I knew we’d have to go. Gummy would do it for us.
We all pointed our flashlights down at once to get a better view. The light reflected back at us. It was Gummy’s knife. I felt my stomach flip.
Jason charged down the stairs, taking them two at a time until he was at the bottom. Caleb ran after, leaving me alone at the top of the stairs. “Do you see anything? I asked.
“Not yet,” Caleb said, swinging the light around the different corners of the basement. I took the first few steps down when I heard something being dragged on the floor above me.
“Guys,” I said in as loud of a whisper as I could without drawing unwanted attention.
Caleb turned to me and flashed his light up at me. I pointed up, and he craned his neck to hear. It was quiet, and then there was another dragging sound. His eyes went wide.
“Jay,” he whispered. “Jay, I think he’s upstairs.”
“His backpack is down here,” Jason said from beyond the darkness.
“Is he down there?” I whisper yelled again.
“No, but I found something weird,” Jason said. “Come take a look.”
I tried to make my way down the stairs quietly, but every step made the wood sigh and scream. I tried to be silent, but the house wouldn’t let me. It was working against me, against us, and I was afraid of what more it might’ve had in store.
When my foot finally touched the blissfully silent concrete, I approached where Caleb and Jason were standing. They were in the far corner of the room, looking down at the ground. I didn’t see it initially, but what had pulled their attention away from finding Gummy made sense when I got closer.
There was a door in the cement floor.
It looked like someone had placed a bedroom door into the concrete. I flashed my light down the side and saw hinges screwed into the ground. An old brass door handle stuck up like an alien plant. The handle had been dulled from years of use. Somebody used this door. All the time.
“Is that a root cellar or something?” Caleb asked.
“They don’t build those anymore,” Jason said.
“Storm shelter?” Caleb offered.
“In the basement?” Jason countered.
“They don’t use regular doors for storm shelter doors,” I added.
“Where the fuck does this thing lead?” Caleb said.
Above us, we heard something thumping down the second-floor stairs. Creak. Thump thump. Creak. Thump thump. Something was being dragged down those stairs to the first floor. We all shut off our flashlights and huddled in the corner away from the door.
We kept our slowly adjusting eyes on the stairs, waiting for something to appear. Thump thump. It had reached the last stair from the second floor. Seconds later, another loud thump, like something unwieldy yet heavy, had been dropped hard to the ground. My brain instantly conjured up the phrase “dead weight,” and I swallowed hard.
Footsteps now, quickly walking through the kitchen above us. Each one caused a creak to shatter the stillness. Finally, someone reached the doorway to the basement stairs. I pulled my knife out. I held it so tight in my right hand that, had the handle been made of charcoal, it’d be a diamond when I next unfurled my fingers.
“Guys,” a familiar voice called out from the top of the stairs. “Guys, are you down there?”
It was Gummy. Caleb started to speak, but I shot my free hand up and held it over his mouth. Something about Gummy’s voice sounded off. It was him, but it wasn’t him. Caleb looked stunned, but I just shook my head and removed my hand from his mouth. He stayed quiet.
“I know you’re down there,” Gummy said. “Where else would you be? Did you guys find the door?” We stayed as still as statues. Gummy took a step down the stairs. “Guys, did you hear me?”
Another step. Creak. Creak. Creak. They were halfway down now. In my heart, I knew whoever was on those stairs wasn’t our friend. It was something pretending to be him. Their ability to mimic Gummy’s voice was incredible. A gruesome mockingbird pecking away at our hearts.
“Whatever you do, guys, don’t go into the door. Trust me, okay. Don’t go in there.”
Another step down. But this time, there was a slight noise that followed it. The twisting of a door handle. The three of us snapped our attention over to the floor and watched as something twisted the door handle open and softly pushed the door open.
It was Gummy.
His eyes were wild with fear, but it was actually him. He opened the door more and waved for us to come in there with him. Caleb and Jason looked at each other and then at me. I looked over at Gummy, and he nodded.
“Guys, you’re staying away from the door, right?” Two steps this time. Whoever was on the stairs was nearly at the bottom. “There’s nothing good in there. It’s evil, I think. Nothing good.”
We were paralyzed with fear. Who was the real Gummy? Where did the door in the floor lead to? Who the hell was on the stairway? I glanced at floor Gummy and then at the stairs. Floor Gummy kept waving at us to hurry, but no one moved. I knew we were all thinking the same thing. Which is which?
“I wanna fuck Miss Anderson,” the floor Gummy said.
Holy shit, it was him. He swung the door open wide and ducked back down. Jason climbed down first with Caleb hot on his heels. Whatever was on the stairs had reached the basement. It was with us now.
My thumb felt the rubber nub of the flashlight’s power button, and I decided I needed to see what the hell was down there. After all this time in the dark, the sudden reappearance of light hurt my eyes, but it was nothing compared to what I saw coming around the corner of the stairs.
Spindly legs held up a hunched-over mass of pulsating meat covered in ragged clothes. Narrow arms, no more than skin wrapped around bones, ended in hands with sharp, pointed fingers. Glowing ice-blue eyes sat on top of a long, razor-sharp beak that stuck out a good foot from its face. I wasn’t sure if it was some kind of mutant bird or someone in a plague mask. Either way, I wasn’t sticking around to find out.
“Let’s go!” Gummy yelled.
The creature spoke with a hiss. “A piece of you will forever be trapped here.” I dropped the flashlight, jumped into the opening near the door, and closed it behind me with a slam.
I fell out of another door and landed on a dusty, dirty floor. I was helped up by Caleb and Jason and saw that the door I had fallen through was on the attic wall. It…it shouldn’t be here. We would’ve seen a door in the roof when we were in the driveway. There was a half-moon window, and when I glanced out, I saw our bikes.
“How the hell were we in the attic? What’s going on, Gummy?”
“I dunno. After the door opened, I ran into the kitchen, tripped, and fell down the stairs. My knife nicked my gut,” Gummy said, holding up his shirt and revealing a scarlet zig zag. “That thing came down after me, and I saw this door. I didn’t know what else to do, so I went through it and ended up here.”
“Did it follow you?” Jason asked.
“It did. I hid, and it…” Gummy didn’t get to finish his thought because the door started to open again. Caleb and I grabbed the handle and held firm. We heard a scream both coming up from the basement and the area behind the door. It didn’t make any sense. None of this did.
“Run!” Caleb yelled.
“Get to the bikes!” I added.
Jason and Gummy looked for a hatch leading down to the second floor but couldn’t find one. Caleb and I were straining to hold the door close. Each time this creature yanked on the handle, the door would open a fraction of an inch further. We were losing.
“Where the fuck is the ladder out of here?” Jason yelled as he started ripping up the insulation around us. Gummy began to rip it up, too, and soon, the air was filled with dagger-like pink particulates that would Ginsu our lungs.
I breathed in some and immediately started hacking. I felt my grip losing on the handle. The door was getting wider. Caleb caught a breath with some of the fibers and coughed, too. The door was wide enough for the creature’s claw-like hand to curl around it. Where its nails dug into the wood, it melted away like acid.
“Another door!” Gummy yelled. Buried beneath the insulation was another random door in the floor. He ripped it open, and we felt a strong breeze come through. It blew the fibers away from us. I could breathe easily again.
“Jump!” Jason yelled and did just that. Gummy followed. They were gone to some other place in the house.
Caleb looked at me and nodded at the door in the floor. “I can hold him for a second. Go.”
But I wasn’t going to do that. I plucked my knife off the ground and held it firm. “Let go!” I screamed.
He did, and the door instantly swung open. I was mere inches from this thing. I could smell the rot and death that wafted off its grotesque body. We locked eyes for a second.
It didn’t see the knife in my hand.
I slammed the blade into one of its icy blue eyes all the way to the hilt. I used so much force that my hand slid off the handle and sliced my palm open. I didn’t dwell on the pain because the scream this thing let out blasted my eardrums and broke the glass of the half-moon window.
I stumbled back, my ears throbbing and sound dampened. I felt a trickle of blood running out of both of my ears and knew I had probably done some real damage. Caleb grabbed my shoulder and pushed me towards the door in the floor. We both jumped in and fell through a dark tunnel.
Seconds later, we came falling out of the first bedroom’s door and into the living room. Jason and Gummy were waiting for us. They pleaded with us to hurry, but the fall shook us. As we stumbled to our feet, I saw something lying at the edge of the second-floor landings.
It was a stained, dirt-covered canvas bag about the size of a full-grown man. It must’ve been what that thing was dragging down the stairs. “What’s that?” I yelled as I had no idea how loud my voice was at that moment.
“Who gives a fuck,” Jason screamed. I couldn’t argue with that logic.
The creature in the basement/attic screamed again, and we heard it scrambling around in both places. It would either come barreling out of the bedroom like we just had or coming up the basement stairs. I didn’t intend to stick around and find out.
“Let’s get out of here,” Gummy yelled as he turned towards the exit.
As he did, though, a horrific tearing sound filled the air around us. Caleb pointed at the bag, and we all turned to see several razor-sharp claws ripping the bag open from the inside. Was it the creature? That…that didn’t make any sense. We knew it was either in the basement or the attic.
In a flash, it tore away the sack like a butterfly emerging from a cocoon and slowly stood up. As it did, its joints cracked like they were splintering. When it stood, it was taller and thinner than before. That’s when I noticed what it was wearing.
It was a tattered football jersey. The legend had been true. The kidnapped kid hadn’t disappeared – he had been transformed into this…thing.
What shitty luck.
We heard a loud thump from behind us and turned to see the bird creature with its one icy eye. The other still had the knife buried into its socket. A thick black ooze streamed from the open wound. We were surrounded on both sides, and the football creature blocked our only exit.
Fuck. I had wanted to leave, too.
As my brain scrambled for a way out, something snapped inside Gummy. Summoning all the courage his little, round body had, he screamed so loud I could hear it clear as day, even with my popped ear drums.
“For Miss Anderson!” he yelled, kicking the bag creature so hard in its bony leg that it snapped in half.
It collapsed to the floor, and we took that as our cue to get the hell out of dodge. We all sprinted out of the unblocked door and onto our waiting bikes. We hopped on, never looking back, and kicked them forward, letting the momentum of Apple Hill drag us away from those nightmares.
As we reached the bottom, we peddled so hard I thought my lungs would explode. But we didn’t stop pumping until we saw the safety of Caleb’s front lawn. We ditched our bikes in the yard, letting them ghost ride into the bushes, and ran into the house, not caring if we woke up his parents. Thankfully, they didn’t stir.
We collapsed into his room and sucked in air like a vacuum. Once we finally caught our breath, Caled turned to Gummy and said, “For Miss Anderson?”
“Damn straight,” Gummy said with a grin that eventually gave way to peels of laughter. Soon, we all laughed so hard that I was afraid the house would shake. It was the cathartic moment we needed, a sense of normalcy after a supremely abnormal night.
Once we caught our breaths again, Jason patted Gummy on the shoulder. “I hope you get your shot, little man.” They pounded fists.
We stayed up for a few hours, our bodies still racing with adrenaline, and talked about what the hell had just happened. Were the doors time tunnels? Who built them? How and why? Theories were bandied around that we had stumbled into a mad scientists lair or some kind of creature from another dimension. Demons were brought up. Top secret government project? Gummy even thought magic because we were just tossing shit at the wall. None of it made sense and we were never going to know for sure.
The incessant ringing in my ears eventually faded, and though dulled, I could hear a little better. There was permanent damage, I knew that, but I was so glad I had gotten out of there alive that I didn’t care.
The creature had said part of me would always be there, and they weren’t wrong. My perfect hearing lay in ruins like a dilapidated house. Whatever. Hearing aids were super small, anyway.
Eventually, the adrenaline left our systems, and we crashed. The following day, we agreed to keep what happened to us a secret. If we told anyone what actually happened, they’d think we were nuts. Gummy and I were already low on the social totem pole and couldn’t afford to take the hit.
Even though it’s been a few months since it happened, I’ve started having weird dreams about the encounter. The fact that I’m having dreams about my trauma isn’t the strange part. I expected that. The dreams themselves are what’s unsettling me. They’re so vivid I feel like I’m back in that house.
In them, I’m trapped in a canvas sack. I can’t move or speak, but I can hear. I hear the hissing whispers of the blue-eyed creature. It’s talking to someone else in the house, but I have no idea who it is. I assume it’s the football player, but I don’t know. The words are difficult to make out, but I’ve started writing down what I remember. I’ve heard “blood,” “new,” “return,” and “rebirth.”
The other thing I hear is what it said to me the first time I saw it: “A piece of you will forever be trapped here.”
I don’t know what it means, but the scar along my palm aches when I wake up, and I struggle to catch my breath. I’ve told Gummy, and he’s had similar dreams. Jason and Caleb haven’t, and I find that strange.
Gummy thinks we should talk to a professional about it. I don’t want to admit what we saw, but he might be right. More than anything, I want to find an out-of-state college and leave all this shit behind me.
This town can keep Apple Hill – I’d rather have peace of mind.