“Come on, we’re going to get busted!” Shane said, looking around as his girlfriend wrapped a cloth around her hand, preparing to punch out the glass of the window to the abandoned house.
“You are such a whiner baby,” Liz replied before punching through the glass, a tinkling of glass echoing throughout the neighborhood during the night. Shane shivered and looked around as if someone was going to suddenly appear to alert the authorities of their vandalism.
The night only returned silence to Shane’s ears, along with Liz’s grunts as she reached in through the window, opening the door. Most of the street was deserted; the houses all up for sale due to the sudden loss of jobs when the mine dried up. Many families had moved away, merely leaving their home for the bank to try and recoup. Construction had become a big job, with businesses moving into the area to take advantage of the town’s weakness: the small mining town was suddenly becoming yet another shell of corporate America.
Shane’s mind came back to the here and now as he heard the door unlock, smiling weakly as Liz looked over her shoulder and gave him a come hither smile. Dressed in a black halter top with low cut jeans and sneakers, with her black hair pulled back into a tight ponytail, Liz was one of the prettier girls at school, someone who had actually asked Shane out instead of the other way around. She wasn’t popular, nor was she a social outcast. She was present at all of the local parties but never the center of them; she was just Liz, the girl who wanted to have a good time.
“Did you bring the stuff?” She whispered, holding the door closed as she turned, hands behind her back.
Shane lifted a Wal-Mart bag silently. “Beer, wine coolers and, um, condoms.”
“Aaaand?” She asked, leaning over to allow him a good look down her top to her ample cleavage.
“Oh!” Shane said, reaching behind him into his back pocket to reveal a zip lock bag of blue and purple buds, red veins curving through the plant mass like a colorful rainbow of illegal goodness.
“Good!” She clapped her hands before turning her head to the side, casting a sultry look in Shane’s direction. “Pot always makes me super horny, so I’m glad you’re here.”
“Y-you are?” Shane stuttered, his mind reeling at how dorky he sounded. He screamed at himself internally to try and sound more laid back, cool. “I, uh, I mean you are?”
“Yeah, now I have someone I like to take care of my needs instead of some stupid jock,” Liz said, looking over Shane’s shoulder.
A hand clapped down on Shane’s shoulder, an exuberant voice laughing loudly, causing Shane to nearly have a heart attack from fright. “Ha ha… so you got the place opened up?”
Shane looked behind himself, paling at the sight of Carlos. The older teen was a linebacker for the high school football team and built like a gorilla. Despite his size and rough looking demeanor, his pixie-like girlfriend hung off his side, holding a box on her hip as she swayed back and forth slowly. Shane didn’t know Rose all that well, only that she had been dating Carlos for three years and that she always seemed to keep him out of trouble… which made Shane wonder what exactly she thought was going to happen tonight?
“You bring the stuff?” Liz repeated herself, looking at the two newcomers.
“Yeah, I got a portable generator and a television in the back seat, along with a Gamecube and some movies,” Carlos replied, pointing back towards the front of the house to where his car was presumably parked.
“You parked in the driveway?” Shane asked, looking at Carlos as if he was nuts.
“Yeah, why?”
“We’re breaking into this place to have a party, that’s why! We can’t tip anyone off that anything is happening in this house whatsoever or else they’ll call the cops.” Shane said, exasperated that he was the only one to think about this.
Carlos looked over at Liz and smiled. “He doesn’t know?”
She shook her head. “Not a clue.”
“Know what?” Shane interrupted, not liking where this was going.
Rose hummed. “This is a haunted house, and the other houses on this street are abandoned save for one, where an old woman lives. As long as we don’t make enough noise to wake her up, we’ll be fine.”
“But what if someone see’s Carlos’s car? Won’t they want to investigate?” Shane asked, looking between the three as they all bristled with laughter. “What’s so funny?”
“Oh honey, no cop is gonna come here!” Liz said, opening the door and motioning for everyone to file inside. “I’ll tell you why once we’re all set up.”
“Okay,” Shane said, uncertain. He followed Carlos and Rose into the dark house, the floorboards protesting their presence the moment they set foot in the decrepit home. The walls were covered in worn, gray wallpaper that was peeling in numerous locations, revealing broken boards and cracked sheetrock beneath. The living room, where Carlos made a beeline to the fireplace, a crumbling stone edifice jutting out from the plaster walls. A leather chair covered in scratches sat in front of a rotted wooden table, where a leather sofa curled around to face the broken fireplace. Carlos, kneeling down, announced that he could get the fireplace going if given a few minutes.
“Sounds good to me,” Liz purred, throwing herself around Shane’s neck from behind. “Something romantic would be nice for such a dreary place.”
“So how is this dreary place haunted?” Shane asked, watching Carlos mess with the flume. “I mean, it looks haunted and all, but I can’t really say that I believe in ghosts or anything.”
Rose sucked in a breath through her teeth before giving a soft smile. “You shouldn’t say that here, the ghosts in this house like communicating with the living.”
“You come here often?” Shane joked, blanching when Rose nodded serenely.
“Every Halloween for the past four years,” she said, crossing her arms in front of her as Carlos grunted in cleaning out the chimney’s flume of ash and caked powder. “The spirits can cross over so much easier and they don’t like being left alone, you know? Several don’t know that they’re dead while a few others are mournful of their space in limbo. Only one is violent, and we avoid him as much as possible.”
“Violent?” Shane repeated before he felt Liz nibbling on his earlobe.
“No need to be worried studly, there’s a bedroom in good enough condition that we can have a little fun in.”
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