He’d received a message on his answerphone from the estate agents. ”Your viewing is booked for number 11 at 12.15pm next Tuesday. We look forward to seeing you then.”
The journey to the house itself was treacherous. On the way, he had nearly run over a man in an old brown jacket, who was shouting at him to “go back, go back” but thankfully he had managed to swerve his BMW 6 Series just in time, such that if he’d hit the man at all, at worst he’d have driven over his toes, and well, thankfully any residue on the car could be washed out, buffed out at most.
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His sat nav started to cackle. “In 50 yards, turn the car around” it basically said, though it wasn’t using the Mr. Bean voice he had initially programmed it to use. Instead it sounded like an old hag, who was trapped into the dashboard software. He slapped the screen a few times like it was an old 50s TV, and with each firm contact the satnav made a sound, not dissimilar to a scream of pain. It was fine though, he’d looked up the location on the map, he was mostly keeping on the satnav for company.
The old gate leading to the drive of the property was brand new 50 years ago, or that’s how it looked, because it was rusted to shit, and off its hinges. It had been wedged open, no doubt by the estate agents he thought, as he signalled to turn off from this lonely country road.
The house from Horror Story (this is what you are reading)
Seeing the house for the first time, his Spotify playlist immediately started playing the main theme from Phantom of the Opera. The vast organ, with its many many keys, carousel led down scales, gypsy diving from high to low, repeating again and again.
“Stupid thing” he said out loud, and he slapped the car radio some more.Slapping was very much the level of his expertise, but thankfully it seemed to do the job. He hated musicals, though his wife had made that particular playlist. Well…had before she’d died. He slapped his head to be rid of the grief of her.
A new start, he thought to himself. In a house that was exceptionally affordable for his needs.
Stopping on the gravel, he noticed dark clouds had gathered around the tall tower that was the centrepiece of this admittedly dishevelled building. They didn’t empty with rain, but his head bulged with pressure in expectation. Somewhere, dogs were barking.
He squelched through an unfortunately large mud patch towards the doorway of the property. Despite its location just a few miles from where you, dear reader, are sat or stood, it reeked of vintage Americana, with vintage being the operative word. In its day, it would have been glowing in pristine paint. Now, the glow was an unfortunate green.
He knocked on the door and the doorbell rang. He waited a few moments before the door creaked open unsuspiciously. Two women, identically dressed, identically tall and identically twinned, stood staring back. In uncanny unison they greeted him:
“Welcome to Hell house!” came the monotonous call.
“Sorry, don’t you mean Hill house” he replied back inquisitively.
“Something like that” they both said again, gesturing as one for him to come inside. He noted that they were dressed like murdered school children or at least looked similar to the two girls that had gone missing about 30 or so years ago, presumed to have died after leaving no trace, which was an odd coincidence. He brushed his feet on the doormat, where a word was no longer legible from the wear of constant use. He could make out a “D” and an “H” at either end, and presumed the doormat was wishing him “depth”. He couldn’t at that time work out what the skulls represented on the mat, but no doubt this had been the home of a medical man who was probably interested in skull depth or something a lay person like he could never understand.
Stepping inside the hall, it certainly seemed to be a house once belonging to a physician. The many surgical tools, either rusted or permanently stained from their history, hung on the walls amongst a plethora of stuffed animals and other curiosities. Despite no clock being visible, a constant ticking rustled through the many cobwebs that this detached 4 bedroom property which had peaked his interest.
Neither of the women had moved, except to crane their neck to follow him as he circled the room.
“and are these accoutrements likely to stay with the property, or…?” he trailed off, indicating that he didn’t need to fulfil the sentence, but someone could easily have finished it with the phrase “or would they stay here and become my property if I were to buy this home”.
Home. He liked the sound of it.
“Through here is the lounge” they both said again, and seemed to float to the next room. Estate agents these days are really well trained these days, he thought to himself, either that or these women must have been ballerinas in a former life.
He stepped confidently behind them, surveying each room delightfully. Many of the rooms had nothing of note; old furniture in most which he forbidden from opening, books in cases with thick leathery bounding, with names like “recipes for murder”, “cruxes of the forbidden world” or otherwise completely nameless. Whoever owned this house was very well read, he hadn’t heard of any of these titles, and he couldn’t even recognise any of the symbols he saw which looked like they had been scratched by hand into various nooks and crannies.
“Plenty of storage” he offered, as his hosts had not been particularly forthcoming with conversation; he presumed they must have been in their nervous. They lead him to the kitchen. The walls were a musty yellow, which would have been quite in keeping with current Scandinavian trends were it not so inconsistent and covered in large patches and spatters of red paint.
“I knew this place was too good to be true” he rolled his eyes. “the report noted damp, but it’s quite a lot” he pointed at one of the walls, upon which someone had been particularly egregious with their attempt at paint colour testing. Usually a patch would suffice but clearly, someone had used themselves as a paint brush, and run into the wall in order to soak up some of the damp, and leave a rather artfully posed silhouette portrait. This really was a house with some remarkable heritage. Maybe there was an unaccounted for portrait in a loft that could fetch quite a bit. He’d also dreamed of bringing an item onto the antique’s roadshow, and the expert being blown away by the find. Everyone would have been excited, maybe even Fiona Bruce might purr in his ear with delight. He wouldn’t just be interested in updating his insurance if you know what he meant…
Wait, that wasn’t Fiona Bruce purring… he turned and a large black cat ran from a shadowy doorway to a crack in a wall. The paint was on the floor too.
“Is there much of this paint left somewhere?” He liked the colour, a rusty hue, but would prefer a solid covering on the wall.
“That’s not paint” the twins hissed back - he noticed their eyes were quite yellow, which was unique as far as he knew, except to some breed of rabid dog. Where he knew that he wasn’t sure, but he had seen quite a few episodes of QI.
“What is it?”
They turned to each other and back to him. They were holding something behind their backs. “ketchup” they both said, mischievously.
He smiled back at them, as if he got the joke, but he actually didn’t know for sure what they meant. “what do you mean ketchup?”
“Someone must have forgotten to keep the lid of the bottle on” said one of the twins
“I suppose it does smell a little bit” he said, realising that of course paint has quite a distinctive aroma that this wasn’t quite registering for him. They must have noticed his nostrils flare.
“Ketchup smells of blood after a while” the other twin spoke. He hadn’t known that, but he was certain it would come up in a pub quiz one of these days.
He looked again to see what they were hiding behind their backs, and remembered that he had noticed on another wall that the shadow of two axes were missing from the walls in the weaponry.
“Can I see a copy of the list of items that would be in the property?”
They spoke together again. “Yes, you will find it in your final destination on this tour”
He was excited as he knew there was a basement to explore. People love a basement. You can keep all sorts of things down there you don’t want visitors to see, like boxes, or ladders, or the ashes of a loved one.
They reached to the floor, and a mist carved out a square beneath them. A trapdoor handle rose from the ground, as stones scraped. Very fancy he thought to himself.
They opened and he walked downstairs. “Age before beauty,” he mumbled to his company as he rudely went first into the dark cavern beneath them.
Suddenly the door closed behind him. and a single bulb lit up.
“Welcome to hell”, said the man.
Immediately a giant spider ripped out of his arsehole. His organs groaned as a great weight was lifted from his anus, and the last morsels of waste expunged from his insides. It’s a strange feeling to feel the cold floor on your intestines, he thought, as his knees buckled and his head violently tapped the floor, opening his skull.
He remembers thinking “I’m getting too old for this” which was perfect, as he never aged again.
The end
…or is it? And then the reader closed the book, and never slept again. Night night my itchy bumhole pals.
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