A Halloween Story

A dark street with a flickering light. A dark broken down house at the end of a street. Lightning strikes far behind the house revealing a storm brewing in the distance. A dark shadow smoking at the gate to the dark house. A soft wind blowing.
Can there be more?

It had been years since he had been back to that dark corner of the world. He stood, motionless, as he glared up at the lonely house at the end of the street. It always seemed like it was the far reaches of the world where no one could get there. He stepped on to the first step and took a deep breath and took another, each seeming that more intense and bewildering. He remembered the past that haunted him. He remembered the tears, the screams, the agony of having to live there and then having to leave. It was still now. Not like it used to be, only more chilling.

He tried looking in through the first floor windows but the boards and the darkness within made it difficult. Then, there was motion. His first instinct was to pull away from the window but then he thought it to be nothing more than shadows and his imagination. He smirked and flicked his finished cigarette down into the brown grass and dirt and proceeded to walk to the opossite side of the old grey house. He noticed his footsteps as he creeked the old boards beneathe him and the whining wind as it passed through broken glass on the top two floors, or at least he told himself it was the wind. Suddenly, as he passed the front door, the door began to bang and thrash, and the door nob began to twist and turn as if there was someone within trying to get out. He leaped back and yelled, "Hello? Who's there?"
No answer.
He yelled again, "Who's there?"
No answer still, but the door stopped its motions.
He walked up to the door and tried to open it but found it to be locked, to his utter relief.

He stood at the door for a while and smiled. He thought it nothing more than his eyes playing tricks on him or at least the wind, but the wind had died down. His smile went away slowly as the wind began to subside. A loud clap of thunder joistled him from his thoughts and the lightning made him flinch. That's when he saw the shape of a human at the bottom of the stairs. Fear rushed through his body and he tried to run but found that he couldn't. He tried to yell but found no sound he could make. As it began to rain, the figure walked up the stairs with its hands out stretched. All he could do was wait for the inevitable. The inevitable.

He awoke on a bed in a white room. As he called out, a nurse walked in and smiled. She said, "We thought you'd never wake up. How are you feeling?"
"Fine, it's just I don't know where I am."
She laughed and replied, "Well, you were found laying in the middle of the street one night. You were brought to the hospital where you've been a guest for the past week." She looked concerned and asked, "What happened?"
"I don't recall. Last thing I remember is being at my old house where I grew up as a kid."
The nurse smiled again and asked, "Around here?"
He brushed his long hair back and replied, "Yeah, at the end of 13th Street."
The nurse dropped the needle she was trying to insert into his I.V. sack and gasped. She asked, "The old three story victorian!?"
He smiled and replied, "Yeah, you know of it?"
The nurse gave him half a smile and rushed out.

As he was raising up from the bed, two security guards ran in, weapons drawn, and told him to stop what he was doing. He stopped, amazed at what was happening, and asked, "What's wrong?"
One of the security guards replied, "That house burned down twenty years ago. I know because my best friend lived there."
He looked closer at the guard and said, "Jack?"
The guard lowered his weapon and slid closer to the man on the bed and answered, "Yeah, who are you though?"
"It's me, Jack. Tom."
Jack returned to his original position and said, "That's impossible. I saw them pull your body out of the house. Everyone was accounted for."
Tom looked up at Jack and said, "I'm right here!", and as he raised to his feet he burst into flames. The nurse and the two guards rushed out of the room with Tom's screaches and cries far behind them.
Jack grabbed a fire extinguisher from the wall and as he ran back to the room, there was no fire. The room was clean as if there had been no one there at all.

Jack went home after sitting down with the nurse and his partner and making a pact that the nights incident would not go beyond them. He began to think of the night at the old house. He remembered being there with Tom and how they began to play with a match box. Jack remembered setting an old newspaper on fire and watching it burn. He even remembered watching Tom trying to put it out, to no avail. He remembered the confusion later as the ambulances and fire trucks pulled up and tried to stop the blaze. As he pulled into his drive way, he looked into his rear view mirror and caught Tom just before he touched his arm...