Fear

Every year our town’s Jaycee club would do a haunted house. It was actually more like two trailer homes joined together but word around Mrs. Ragonese’s 6th Grade class was that it was the most terrifying thing you could ever experience. My two friends really wanted to go. I was a bit hesitant because although I am the child who cried when Frankenstein died (he didn’t mean to kill those people, it wasn’t his fault). I am also the child who looked under the bed and in the closet for three weeks checking for pods that would grow and steal my body.

I did finally decide to go. We stood in the snaking line outside the two solid black trailer homes with no windows. The screams from within could be heard perfectly. It seemed the terror was endless. Two of our classmates finished their turn and we flagged them down. They were out of breath but smiling and they talked so fast we could barely make out what they were saying.

“Ohmygod, I couldn’t stop screaming!”

“It was so scary, something cold grabbed my ankle.”

“That guy in the shower in the first room, scared me to death!”

My friends and I looked at each other wide-eyed. I was questioning if I really wanted to go through with it. Finally we were at the head of the line giving our money to the Grim Reaper. We were paired with two other girls we didn’t know and given a guide to lead us through the house.

We all held hands as we entered the black room. The lights came on and we were in a bathroom. The guide stopped us and we stood for a moment in the middle of the room. I saw the shower and remembered there was someone in there. I pushed the girls forward but the guide held her ground. There were words in blood written on the mirror and splatters all over the walls. The shower curtain rustled, I could see the blood dripping on the floor. Suddenly the curtain was torn back and a hairy man with a knife, dripping in blood, came at us.

My heart stopped, I screamed and let go of the hands I was holding. The girls and the guide continued down the hall but my friends and I were frozen in place screaming and cringing. The hairy man growled and went back into the shower and pulled the curtain closed. My friends pushed me toward the black hallway where the two other girls and our guide had gone. As I reached the doorway a white-faced man in a blood-spattered tuxedo and top hat jumped out from nowhere. His eyes were black and his teeth were red.

I screamed and pushed my friends back into the bathroom. Our guide and the other girls were gone.

The hairy man came out of the shower again. The white-faced man closed in on us from the hall. All I could think was “get out”. Images of the hairy man and white-faced man tearing us apart and eating our flesh flashed before my eyes. I screamed and screamed and screamed. I had to run away, I had to get out.

I pushed past my friends and ran out the door past the Grim Reaper ticket taker. Screaming all the way. Grim said something but I didn�t hear him. I ran into the parking lot. People in line were buzzing and snickering trying to decide if they should still go in or if we were just babies.

I bent over clutching my chest gasping for air. Tears ran down my face. My friends were there and they were pissed.

“What the hell just happened?”

“Why did you run out?” they asked.

“We were trapped, they were going to get us,” I tried to explain.

“It isn’t real,” they said in unison.

It was to me.