Across the street stood tall my reason to be afraid of monsters. The reason I run back home and lock the door after the school bell rung. The reason I no longer play in the backyard without a friend or mom. It’s the reason I can’t sleep without the light on or otherwise face the blurred, shifting faces and teeth and claws of black figures lurking deep in the shadows. It’s the reason I’m afraid, but to others it’s just a house. But a house doesn’t make the snarly face of the boogeyman. A house doesn’t have trees so rotted and cracked they bend into a reaper’s claws. A house isn’t just a house, until you know who lives there.
The Mannirrey Mansion isn’t a mansion because it’s big. It’s quite small, with a small yard and a small clump of dirt just twice the size of everyone else’s dirt. The mansion contains the oldest history in town. Despite no encrusted mailbox or big, outrageous car, the Mannirrey Mansion is the most populated plot of all, and still to others it’s just a house.
It was a simple sleepover on a simple Saturday, only with unordinary people and unpopular James. By the seventh chime of my auburn grandfather clock, everyone was frustrated of boredom, and by the ninth, were even bored of that. We all wanted to escape the dull prison we locked ourselves in, but we only made things worse, leaving a prison for a graveyard. Granted, so long as I don’t have to live a legend, I can handle a scary story. But a supposedly innocent, short game of truth or dare lead to just that. They wanted something fun; they craved excitement! And when we broke the rusted, barred gate and crawled into the horrid Mannirrey Mansion, they got just that and more, for a price. As the moon travelled farther across the old cloth sky, my worries turned out, the games got freakishly fun, and soon I believed myself it’s just a house… until we woke the family up.
We all laughed on the floor of a dry, dusty parlor, surprised by the sudden cautioning tick of midnight. After that annoying tick died, we got out all our girlish giggles and sleep yawns and strolled to the old, manly door. One of us was halfway through when the door suddenly slammed on her hand, leading to a loud bang, crunch and blood churning screams. The twitching, jagged little fingers turned a dark red-purple, causing the girl on the other side to whimper and ball like a whiny mutt. We clawed and pushed and smacked the door, her cries increasing in volume until our bodies turned to stone from a shrill, animalistic howl from the front of the house. The now crippled girl began screaming, pleading, only causing us to rush and injure ourselves. I finally went to try the dense window on the side, when the gates of hell opened to our friend. A low, intense growl created? of infrequent, blood-curdling shrieks from the girl, splattering a dark liquid onto the windows. The rest of us lost our ghosts as we screamed after and heard a crunching sound until everything became a silent graveyard. Our eyes crept to the door to find it a crack open. We opened the door, seeming to crack louder than earlier to find no one there except for a dress and the giggle of a smiling woman with hungry eyes, floating right behind us. The night ended in shrieks and limbs flying, and the morning, intense shaking and red eyes. This was four years ago, the day I learned that nothing is just a house.