Everyone knew it was a place to steer clear of. The subject you shouldn’t bring up. Even just by looking at it I knew. My parents didn’t have to tell me.
That place was haunted.
The entryway was large and imposing, doors always open like the mouth of an awful beast just waiting to swallow you up. Eerie sounds emanated from within. There was even a scent to it – an indescribable smell that left you with a chill. And there I stood, nine years old, staring at it as if in a hypnotic trance.
I had been seven the first time I stood in the exact same spot, enchanted by the dark aura creeping out onto the sunlit sidewalk. There was something about this place, and as horrified as I found myself, I still found myself tugging on the end of my mother’s coat.
“Can we look inside?” I asked. My mother’s face grew deathly pale and she placed a hand on my back to urge me onward.
“You’re not going in there,” she said. I turned my head over my shoulder to look back at it.
“Why not?” I asked.
“We can talk about it when you’re older,” my father interjected.
“How much older?” I asked.
“Maybe when you’re nine,” he answered quickly. Doubtless he thought I’d forget his words and soon forget all about the haunted house.
I didn’t.
In fact, my unconscious mind constantly brought me back to the house. I had dreams of the mysterious dark villains who must have lived within its walls. Dreams of chains. Of fangs. Of melting wax and chilling eyes. Of blood.
And so those two years went by, and by some twist of fate my family once again found ourselves walking past the dark, grey-black building. It hadn’t changed a bit.
Surely the visions in my sleep were worse than whatever truly lay behind those open, calling doors. Surely this place was only as haunted as the quiet townsfolk allowed it to be in their minds. All I wanted to know was what was in there.
“Can we look inside?” I asked again. “I’m old enough now. You said.”
“No!” came the quick reply of my mother. She gripped my shoulders with both hands and stared me in the face. “You must never go near this place, my child,” she warned.
“Why not?” I asked. She sighed.
“The only thing within those doors...” she answered slowly. “...Is fear.”
I protested, but my parents did not listen. In fact, from that point on, we never walked down the street the house was on anymore – only the opposite side, and only when we had to.
And so I grew up in the shadow of this house. It was as if at any given moment, the house was ready to bring itself back to the forefront of my mind. The dreams, though increasingly infrequent, lingered into my adult years. And whenever I journeyed with my family past that aging street, even without looking at it I could almost feel smoky wisps of nothingness pulling me silently towards the house’s open mouth.
It was a dark evening, many years after my first encounter with the house. My fiancé and I were strolling arm-in-arm, partly out of affection and partly out of the need for warmth against the chill that night. We were on our way home from a day-long trip to a marketplace on the other side of the river. By some force of above or below, we found ourselves on the street of my nightmares. Not once had I ever been here without my family. The house still stood, looking just as it always had. A dull red light flickered from within. I felt that old familiar gnawing, that dark hunger in the pit of my soul that called me towards that black, lifeless and yet animated structure.
“Let’s have a look at this,” I said, guiding my beloved to change pace with me.
“Is this...” she began to ask. “Darling, is this not the house you told me about?”
“It is,” I replied, without taking my eyes off of that red glow coming from the two eye-like windows above the mouth-door.
“We’re going inside?” she asked.
“It’ll be harmless,” I said. The pull from the house was too strong to resist. I didn’t want to resist. All my life this house had been kept from me. Well, no longer. Tonight, I would enter and see at last if my dark dreams were indeed shadows of a horror yet-to-come, or just the wild thoughts of a boy with an imagination.
With a single-minded step, I crossed the threshold into the house. I had never seen even what lay just inside the doorway. The chamber smelled old, and as my eyes adjusted I spotted a man standing behind a counter. He looked pale, and stared expectantly at me with dark hollow eyes as if I was supposed to speak first. It was cold.
“Hello,” I said, noticing the faintest tremor in my voice.
“Hello,” the eyes replied. “Two tickets?”
At first I was confused, but as more of the room around me became clear, I realized what this place truly was.
Aging painting on the walls, with faces so faded you could barely make out any features. Stone gargoyles with peering eyes of ruby or some other blood-crimson gem. A candle chandelier with cobwebs strewn across its arms.
A museum.
The excitement that was coursing through my veins was clearly not shared by my fiancé. Whether this was something I noticed in the moment or not, I cannot remember. What I do remember is leading her by the hand through a second door and up a tight, narrow, creaking staircase.
My heart was thudding loudly in my chest as the hallway opened up. It was dimly lit, and though the sound of a wind implied an open window, no light from outside came in. As we walked slowly, exhibits began to come into view. What I saw...surprised me. It wasn’t the monster-infested nightmare I thought it was. The exhibits were wax figures of varying historical periods. Though I couldn’t shake the feeling of uneasiness from my stomach, the dim flickering electric lights on the walls seemed to be a sign that everything was going to be okay.
Then the power went out.
There was a loud snap as the museum was plunged into total darkness. The woman I loved clung to me in terror, but something about this was almost hypnotically calming. This was what I had waited for. I knew it.
“Let’s turn around,” she said.
“We’re probably past the halfway point,” I lied. “It will be safer to keep moving forward.” I needed to keep going. It was like I was in a dream and my actions weren’t my own – like it was only my eyes that I was truly in control of.
“Keep going,” she said – no – that was not the voice of my beloved. Someone else was with us. My fiancé must have heard it as well, because she shrieked and began to tug me deeper into the blackness. Then, in that moment, the house showed me what it really was.
We blindly rounded a corner by groping our hands along a wall, and then there was light once more. But this was not the light of lightbulbs. This was fire. There was smoke in the air, and we found ourselves face-to-face with a wax figure, its features warped and distorted as the wax boiled and melted violently. The figure stared with white hot eyes and leaned forward. I grabbed my love and we darted out of the way just in time.
The museum, it seemed, was on fire, and we ran for the exit. Flames and smoke surrounded us, and horrific melting figures stared helplessly as we searched for a way out.
We finally reached the exit and burst out into the cool night, coughing violently. But when I turned to look at my beloved, her face was not covered in soot – only tears. I looked at my own attire. I didn’t even smell like smoke. We both looked up at the museum – it looked just as it always had – as though nothing at all had happened. The doors were still open, but the man in the entrance was gone.
As years went by, my wife and I never again dared speak of that night. There were nights where she would wake up clutching her own skin as though to keep it from melting off, and I myself had many troubling dreams of the horror we had experienced. I never told anyone what happened. I’m not sure they would have believed me.
The museum is still open. I know this because this past October we had to walk down that street on the way to my uncle’s funeral, and my son – he’s only four years old – he stared at that god-forsaken place as we walked by. I saw that same look in his eyes – that same dark hunger.
I have cursed him.