A Haunted House

                It was just after dusk one night early in the fall that I made a call at an old dilapidated, uninhabited dwelling house located in a deep forest.  This house was said to be haunted.  The air was cool crisp and the fog hovered over the house like a giant ghost.  The mournful “who-o who-oo” of an old owl seemed to fit perfectly in this scene.

                The wind was sighing in the pines.  I was seized with a weird feeling as I trudged up the uneven stones of the path with my light clutched tightly in my hand.  As I mounted the creaky old steps, my hair seemed to stand upright on my head producing a prickly sensation on my scalp.  I stopped for a minute to view my strange surroundings.  All the doors were ajar and the glass had been broken from the window frames and large holes could be seen here the there in the house.

                I ventured to the door and peered in.  I cautiously turned on my light and entered a room at a tortoise speed.  Cold chills seemed to race up and down my spine and the flesh of my body seemed to cleave tighter to the bones.  With sure and steady steps, I made my way into a room where there was a huge fireplace.  On coming closer, I could see the rough rocks, which served as a hearth, were slightly over-turned as if it had been the secret hiding place of a miser.  A creaky old plank almost let me fall through the floor.  It gave me the felling that I was about to overturn a miser’s pot of gold, or worse still, put my foot right in some terrible monster’s mouth.  I heard a low moaning sound.  My heart begins to pound against my ribs like a woodpecker pounding on a dead pine tree.

                Something terrible happened.  My light refused to shine.  I groped my way through the darkness for the door.  As I reached the door, I saw the outline of an old stairway.  I peered up the stairs to see a pair of fiery eyes meeting my gaze.  My heart seemed to rush up to hold a conference with my Adam’s apple.  I seemed to be in the very jaws of death and decided to make one more effort to get out of that horrible place.  I decided to jump.  I gathered every ounce of my strength and leaped.  As I leaped, a shot rang out on the stillness of the night air.  Then, I found myself all sprawled out on the floor.  The shot had been the backfiring of a car on the highway.  The whole experience had only been an ugly dream.

By: Lula Gregory Flynn