The forest was a dark tangle of twisted branches and undergrowth. Even with my flashlight, I could barely see where I was going. And yet, however frightening my trip through the woods had been, it was nothing compared to the dread I felt standing in the shadow of that old house. It rose up in front of me, a wall of pitch black set against the blue, moonlit sky.
Two months ago I would have never imagined myself trudging through the wilderness at night. I worked in an office, in the city, and spent my free time either watching TV or getting mimosas with friends. My life was boring, pampered and pointless, and I preferred it that way.
Everything changed when I got a text from Martin, an old friend of mine. I hadn’t spoken to him in years. We were close once, back in college, but life had taken us in different directions.
His text read; “Found the House. It’s actually real. Wanna go see it?”
Attached to the message were several photos of an abandoned mansion in the middle of the woods. Its facade was weathered and rotten, several of the banisters leading up to the front porch were torn away, and most of its windows had long since been busted out. Still, I recognized it as the house Martin had shown me all those years ago.
We had a mutual fascination with the supernatural. It started off with a common love for old horror movies, but quickly blossomed into a passion for the real thing. Ghosts, UFOs, the paranormal; it was a hobby of ours. Martin and I would scour the internet for tales of haunted houses and cryptid sightings. Whenever we shared a day off, we’d go explore a new location together.
It was fun for a while, but eventually the charm wore off, at least for me. We never saw anything, never found any evidence. In time I came to realize it was all nonsense, just silly ghost stories. Martin managed to stick to it longer than I did. He kept on searching for new places to explore. It went from being a hobby to his obsession. He even started going to locations by himself.
After about a month of not seeing each other, we met at a local bar one night. Martin’s face was bruised and his right hand was wrapped in gauze. He told me that on his last outing he had fallen through the floor of an old hospital. Seeing Martin like that made me feel guilty for letting him go off on his own. I suppose that’s how he managed to talk me into joining him for one final adventure.
The place Martin had in mind was called the Thompson House, though in the darker corners of the internet it was dubbed, “The Night House.” A collection of articles dating back to the nineteenth century told tales of people going into the house and never coming out again. Supposedly, a palpable sense of terror hung over the nearby woods, and witnesses claimed to have seen a “dark shape” emerge from the top floor just before sunset.
Tales varied wildly on exactly where the house was, so just finding it turned out to be quite the challenge. It took a couple months of digging and guess work before Martin formed a vague idea of how to get there.
Once we finally had a destination, we set off. After a few hours on the interstate, we exited onto a two-lane highway that brought us to a small town called Edgington. The place had seen better days. Even the local gas station looked like it was about to cave in on itself.
Martin wanted to stop and ask about the Thompson House. I half-expected the clerk to ominously warn us not to go there. Instead she had no idea what we were talking about. She perked up when Martin mentioned a house in the woods.
“Oh yeah,” she said, “there’s a place like that down by the blacktop, off of Shepherd’s Road.”
This confirmed Martin’s earlier research concerning the location of the house. It took a while to find the blacktop, and even longer to find Shepherd’s Road. Pavement gave way to gravel which eventually turned to dirt, then mud. It had been sprinkling all day, and as the sun went over the horizon it broke into a full downpour.
The prospect of getting stuck on a backroad during a rainstorm was enough to convince me to give up, and since I was driving, Martin was forced to surrender too. It took us another hour just to find our way back. Honestly, I was glad we were going home. I didn’t relish the idea of stumbling around a derelict house in the middle of the night.
Martin and I drifted apart after that, like people do. Eventually he dropped out and moved back to his home state. That was the last I heard from him until I got his text two months ago.
One part of me wanted to go with Martin, for old times sake, to recapture a fun moment from my college days and to reconnect with an old friend. But the part of me that texted Martin back said, “no.” He didn’t respond after that, and I can’t blame him. Turning down his offer pretty much severed whatever bond we once had.
A month later the police showed up at my house. Martin was missing. They found his cell phone, saw the text he sent to me, and were wondering if I knew anything that could help. By the time another month went by, Martin’s trail had gone cold. The cops actually tried to locate the Thompson House, but had even less success finding it than we did.
I realized that if anyone was going to find the place, it would have to be me. I had been in the area, and I had seen Martin’s original directions. Another factor in my decision was the guilt I felt for turning Martin’s invitation down. Twice I had abandoned him, and twice it had led to disaster.
So, I took some time off and set about retracing my steps from all those years ago. Around six I reached Edgington. It was completely abandoned. I almost drove right past Shepherd’s Road. The sign marking it was rusted so badly it was barely legible. Beyond that point the roads were so overgrown they had almost vanished entirely. Still, I felt like I was on the right track. Martin’s old directions seemed to be holding somewhat true.
Eventually I couldn’t drive any farther. If I wanted to keep going, I’d have to go on foot. Twilight had fully set in by that point, and If I had any sense I would have turned around and tried again in the morning. But I was feeling far too stupid for that. Instead I grabbed my flashlight and went traipsing off into the woods.
The moon was already halfway across the sky by the time I found myself under the looming silhouette of the Night House. I’m not exagerating when I say it filled me with terror, and I honestly can’t pinpoint why. There was just something about the place that didn’t seem right.
Finally I mustered the courage to make my way up to the front door. It was ornate, with an old knocker hanging loosely at eye level. I reached for the knob and turned. The hinges on the door made a thematically appropriate screech as it swung open.
It was pitch black inside. A musty odor hung in the air. The floorboards creaked with each step I took as I slowly made my way forward. Once my eyes had adjusted, I could make out more of the interior. It was ruined and decaying, devoid of any furniture or decorations. Large chunks of plaster had cracked and fallen off, revealing the rotting skeleton of the house underneath.
The deeper I delved into the Night House the more sinister it became. It was as though darkness clung to every surface. Even my flashlight couldn’t penetrate the gloom entirely. In certain spots the shadows grew so thick they formed into a tar-like resin. The stuff reminded me of moist spider webs, stretching from the floor to the ceiling in tangled black strands.
Surely there was a rational explanation for what I was seeing. Maybe it was some kind of mold, or water damage? The threat of exposing myself to airborne toxins should have been enough to make me turn back. Instead I kept going, winding through a maze of rooms, halls, and twisting stairways.
Eventually I came upon a large pillar. It was made out of stone, starkly contrasted with the wooden architecture found throughout the rest of the house. The air around it was soupy and foul, and the darkness was so palpable you could almost cut it with a knife. I don’t know how, but I instinctively knew this was the center of the house, the foundation upon which the rest of it was built.
It’s difficult to describe, but the surface of the pillar swirled, as though it was only partially solid. Symbols formed in the dim light, dancing in front of me before vanishing again. I couldn’t make any sense out of them though, and honestly I didn’t want to. This was no trick of the light. Something genuinely paranormal was happening right in front of me and I wanted no part of it.
As I turned to leave, my flashlight caught something in the corner of the room. It was a shoe, attached to a leg. I ran the light all the way up to a pale face staring back at me. It was Martin. His eyes were a milky white, like the color had been drained out of them.
At first I thought he was dead, but then I saw his lips moving, very slightly. Relief and anxiety hit me at the same time. Relief because Martin was alive, and anxiety because I had no idea how to get him out of there.
When I went over to check on him, I managed to catch a little bit of what he was whispering.
“Run,” he muttered. “Get out before dawn, before it returns.”
I’m not sure if he was talking to me or babbling to himself. Either way, it was creepy as hell.
Before I could do anything else, the atmosphere of the room suddenly changed. The air grew heavy and dense. Martin’s vacant eyes widened. A look of fear washed over his face.
I heard a low rumbling noise come up from behind me, followed by a gust of wind that nearly knocked me over. When I turned around to face whatever hit me, I saw that the pillar had vanished. In its place was a column of pure darkness. An aura of cold gray light pulsed around its edges, similar to how light bends around a black hole.
Another torrent of wind surged out of the void, even stronger than the last one. The sound of wood splintering filled the air, echoing throughout the hallways beyond. I watched in shock as the room started to split open. Long strands of that black webbing stretched out to fill the gaps in the walls, almost like connective tissue.
The time for thinking had passed. I reached down to grab Martin. His body was icy cold, practically freezing. Even though he was mostly dead weight, I managed to pull him to his feet.
We barely got out of the pillar room before the floor fell away entirely. I only glanced down briefly, but in that moment I could see the glowing column reach into the infinite darkness below. Something was down there, something vast and terrible. I could feel it.
I turned and rushed down the hall, dragging Martin along as fast as I could. All around us the house was tearing itself apart, opening up like some horrific exoskeleton. The walls peeled back to reveal vast, cancerous growths studded with teeth and spider-like eyes.
The house had unraveled to such an extent that I could actually see outside. A faint line of light shimmered on the horizon. It was nearly dawn, I realized, which meant that I must have been wandering around all night.
Martin’s warning, “get out before dawn,” sprang back into my mind.
“Before it returns.”
A great shadow blotted out the morning twilight. It was hurtling towards the tangled remains of the Night House. Towards Martin and I.
I kept pushing forward, in the direction of the outside light. It was nearly impossible to maintain my footing. On several occasions I thought we would go tumbling off into the void. Somehow though I managed to get us to what remained of the front portion of the house. Only a few more rooms and we’d reach the door, and hopefully safety.
It was at that moment the shadow from outside came crashing down through the open roof. Even now I struggle to describe exactly what I saw then. I felt the thing as much as I looked at it. It was both real and immaterial, a tenebrous nightmare of darkness made manifest. As it landed it wrapped its immense bat-like wings around its center, which was nothing more than a black cloud of amorphous tendrils. Long spidery legs jutted out from the sides of its body.
I could feel its gaze fall upon me. A rasping voice creeped into my mind. Images flooded in, visions of alien realities and concepts too horrific for any human being to truly fathom. I saw the darkness behind the shadow. I could feel the coiling embrace of the thing that dwelled below the world. Somehow I knew things I shouldn’t know, and I could see things that utterly defied description.
“Wake up,” I heard someone whisper in my ear. It was Martin. His fingers were digging into my shoulder. He was trying to shake me back to my senses with what little strength he had left.
I came out of my trance just in time to see the shadow creature barreling straight for us. I pulled Martin out of the way right as it slashed at us with one of its huge, segmented legs. We both went toppling over and onto what was left of the floor.
The Shadow whipped around to face us, unfurling its wings to their full extent. Another round of inhuman voices reached into my head, followed by a wave of absolute terror beyond anything I had ever felt before.
I was insane with fear, and I’m certain I would have died had the first rays of the sun not reached over the horizon at that very moment. Light poured in through the tattered corpse of the Night House, washing over the Shadow’s exposed form.
It shrieked in pain as the sunlight scorched its flesh. Thoughts and images poured into my mind. They were frantic, alien, full of hatred and impotence. In a single motion the Shadow recoiled and went plummeting downward into the safety of the darkness far below.
Just then the house started to contract. The web-like tissue between the walls and ceiling slowly pulled everything back together. I realized the house itself was like a protective outer shell, there to keep the light out. That shell was closing, with Martin and I still inside.
I got us to our feet, driving us forward with every bit of energy I had left. Darkness and rotting wood came bearing down, forming a tunnel at the end of which was our only hope. With a manic frenzy I hurled Martin over my shoulder and went crashing towards the ever shrinking iris of light ahead of us.
With my last shred of strength I threw Martin over the threshold and went tumbling out after him. The front door snapped shut behind us, as though to say, “piss off and don’t come back.”
“Don’t worry,” I thought to myself, “I wasn’t planning on it.”
I sat there for a minute, staring up at the golden sky above, the warmth of the morning light washing over my body. After the euphoria of escaping a brush with death wore off, I turned to check on Martin.
His face was ashen gray and shriveled. He seemed to be completely dehydrated, and was quickly getting worse. Cracks spread over his skin, reminding me of what baked mud looks like when it dries in the sun.
He turned to me and smiled slightly, saying, “Thanks, for coming to get me.”
Life left his eyes then. His expression went slack, and an instant later his entire body collapsed under its own weight. Soon enough there was nothing left of Martin but dust.
I should have been more horrified by watching him die. But some part of me knew that he was dead already. I think Martin found peace in those final moments. I’m glad I was able to give him at least that much.
Needless to say, I found my way back to my car. As I passed through the old town I felt relief at the thought of it being abandoned. It was comforting to know that no one lived anywhere near the Night House. If there was any justice in the world it would stay lost in the woods forever.
You’d think that after everything I went through I would keep as far away from the supernatural as possible. I didn’t though. The whole ordeal rekindled my fascination with the strange and unusual. I mean, I finally had the proof I was looking for. Granted, I couldn’t prove it to the world, at least not yet. But I could prove it to myself, and that was a start.
After plumbing the depths of the internet and sifting through all the hoaxes and crazy people, I’ve managed to find a few other individuals who have had experiences similar to mine. We’ve even formed our own little group of investigators. Our first outing is next week. We’re off to explore a supposedly haunted house tucked away in a desolate corner of Montana.
I’d like to think Martin would be proud.