Note: We had prompt night last night and it started with a spelling test on ten commonly misspelled words. The prompt became that we had to use five of the ten words in a story about a haunted mansion. I borrowed the location and characters from some previous story attempts on my part and played around a lot with word choice and description. This doesn't have a conclusion, but I thought it was a nice exercise.
Weird? That’s an understatement. Saying Thunder Lane
is weird is like calling the surface of the sun toasty. That might be kinda
right, but it doesn’t fit exactly. Spooky? That’s closer, I suppose. It’s a
hella spooky street if you happen to be walking down it tomorrow night
when the moon is full and the shadows long. Yet, spooky is so childish
sounding, like a story told to keep kids from wandering off into the woods.
Spooky doesn’t do it justice. Haunted? Perhaps, but there’s a lot left open to
interpretation with the word haunted. Like maybe it’s just Casper whispering
sweet nothings in the wind rather than the spirit of some tortured soul. No,
the only word that fits into place when I think about Thunder Lane in Lincoln,
U.S.A. is possessed. That strip of blacktop from Main Street to Adams Street is
a mile owned by evil, maybe so evil that even Satan wouldn’t pick it for a
vacation spot.
And right on the
northwest corner of Thunder Lane and Main sits the epicenter, the dilapidated
mansion with gabled peaks and gargoyles sneering so savagely that walkers-by
break their usual rhythm before speeding along, suddenly remembering
that anywhere but here is better. Young kids run toward school, gamblers toward
their debtors, old men turn back home to their fussing wives, and even cats take
one look at that damned house and seek out the company of the nearest big dog.
Then there’s me. Why do I know so much about it? How do I
stand separate from any of the rest who whisper in this damned town
about the evils of Thunder Lane and that one house? Well, I’m the fool who
twenty years ago bought the house next to it. A tiny thing, a ranch style house
built in the 1970s and when sitting next to that looming monstrosity appeared
to be nothing more than a dropping of that hulking beast rather than a living structure
of its own. Up to that point, my life had been on schedule. Graduate
high school. Check. College. Check. Got a degree in education, you see, and I
wanted to be a history teacher. When Lincoln High School hired me on in 1991, I
was stoked for the chance to shape young minds in the Midwest, and when I
visited town to find a place to live, I couldn’t believe the luck that I could
live so close to such a vintage looking mansion.
Nobody told me, of course, about Thunder Lane. Certainly not
the real estate agent, who was probably drooling about making a commission on
an otherwise unsellable house.
“Who lives next door?” I asked while that greasy scumbag
showed me the one-car garage that had a cheap roof that would blow off in a
storm two summers later.
“Well, that is the old Scarlet Mansion. Not sure why it’s
called that, but I think one of the town’s founders built it. No one lives
there, I think it’s just waiting for the historical foundation to dump some
money into it to fix it up.”
“Well, I hope so, it’s a shame to see such Victorian architecture
go to waste.”
“Yes, I’m sure it’ll get worked on next summer, probably
just needs the right budget resolution. Politics, am I right?”
I laughed, but hell, I was twenty-two, what the hell did I
know about politics. I just thought we went to vote every so often and then the
right people get in. Goes to show that I was as stupid about the real world as
I was the otherworldly back then.
When did I first notice things were a bit off? You sure ask
a lot of questions. You aren’t planning on publishing anything on this? I don’t
want the whole country thinking that Lloyd Rivers is some sort of quack.
Just some paranormal research, you say. Well, be sure to
keep it that way. I could survive the embarrassment, I suppose, and folks
around here wouldn’t think any less of me, that’s for sure, but I doubt the
scarlet witch would approve, and she’s less forgiving than me.
The scarlet witch? Well, that’s what you’re here for, aren’t
you? I mean there are others. Those god-awful twins from the other end of the
block cause a ruckus from time-to-time. Then there’s that vile Mr. K. He’s a
bit more outgoing than the rest, carrying his cane and wearing that ridiculous
monocle. The other one I call the druid, wears a brown robe and some say he has
no tongue. Boy, I could go on and on about the things I’ve seen, but the
Scarlet Witch, she’s my neighbor, and I know her best. She’s boss demon in this
troupe. Anything that goes down in Lincoln, goes through her first. Well,
anything bad, that is. Not much good to write about here, just a lot of
heartbreak and split blood.
Anyways, I didn’t notice anything was up until the twelfth
night living next to the Scarlet Mansion and the witch within. That night the
twins – ugly beasts those two, each about four hundred pounds and never wearing
anything but ragged bibs overhauls that let the fat of their torsos spill out
in grotesque roll - visited the witch.
About midnight, I heard them pounding on her door – the
front door that faces Thunder Lane. The knocking was like thunder, and it woke
me like someone cracking a ball bat against my head. I fumbled around in the
dark, only reaching the window in time to see the two hulking figures lurch
forward into the mansion.
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