Chapter One
The leaves rustled under my feet as I ran, gasping for breath, jumping over the dead, fallen branches strewn on the floor. I could hear it behind me, edging closer and closer, I could almost feel its breathe against the back of my neck...ice cold...as if it had no spirit.
No, no it can't be that close, just keep running
I thought, my heart racing quicker than it ever has before. Up ahead, a small wooden shed faded into my sight, out of the thick fog that lay before me. Its wood was aged and cracking, its windows now a thick tangle of cobwebs, making it impossible to see what lies inside.
That's my only chance, I have to get inside before it gets to me.
I push forward through the derelict door using my last shred of energy and collapse onto the ground, dragging myself into the corner.
Whatever is out there is still looking for me..I need to get out of this place.
I turn my head around the shed taking in my surroundings, perhaps the last place I'll ever know. The only natural way in or out is the door I just smashed through or the 'window' next to it, leading me straight back into its path. It was a mistake ever coming here, what on earth possessed me into thinking this was a good idea. I had heard the rumours about that house, about what went on in there, but I never thought they were true..atleast I'm away from there now, but not away from it. Hard, irregular thuds of footsteps begin outside, getting closer, sending sharp shivers down my spine.
I need to move, fast
.
I look around frantically, seeing a small hole at the bottom of one of the wooden walls. I start kicking and pulling at the small gap, trying to make it bigger, the noise of it still approaching, faster and faster. There, it's almost big enough for me to fit through. I get down onto the dusty floor and start trying to wiggle my way through...somethings got me. The tight grasp around my ankle is firm yet rough. Its hand has something sharp on it which pierces my skin..is it its nails..or even claws..? I feel the blood slowly trickle down my leg as its grip gets firmer, pulling me away from the shed. I grab around for anything to hold onto, my screams filling the shed. It's no use. It is pulling me back out into the darkness...back towards the house on Maple Street.
Chapter Two
I awake, my vision hazy from the unknown that beckoned me, rubbing my eyes I see my own reflection, a mirror perhaps or just my ghost escaping from my body. I'm Liam, a male teenager from Tennessee, I live near Maple Street now and I've always been warned of what lies there - why didn't I listen to those who forbid me to go? My mum Daisy and dad Frank will be worried sick by now, how can I get out and where am I going?
I've never broke rules to this extent before, everything had to be perfect in my life, my world. I have OCD you see, I like things to be just so and everything to run smoothly; this wasn't one of those times and I'm scared to even think what would happen in this house, on Maple Street. If anything's coming to get me tonight, I hope they don't see me, I wear black rimmed glasses and currently have a stripy shirt on - I mean if they find me they would do well in the book of 'Where's Waldo/Wally'... I just hope that I get out of this wretched place safe, normality won't return until I'm back in my own home, with my mum Daisy and dad Frank... if only I'd have told them where I was going... if only I'd listened when they had said not to go down this street, especially near Halloween.
Chapter Three
Liam clutched at the webbing of his left hand in an attempt to transfer the pain from his massacred fingertips, the permanent tingling sensation as lustful for a reaction as ever. He looked down at his digits, the reddening getting darker. He let out a saddened murmur and tore his eyesight from his damaged phalanges in place of the cataclysm surrounding him. Sat behind him laid the crumpled remnants of a metallic barrel, the thick, black liquid contained inside still dripping through from the corrosive damage. The lonesome boy had already put his hand in the fluid unintentionally whilst rummaging through the remains of his abandoned chamber. To his left, a green light was whirring around in a circular motion, clearly identifying a problem with the mains control in this section, the chances of salvaging anything from it had now been annulled. Twisted metal and fibreglass littered the ground around him, almost as if positioned purposely to create a dangerous and deathly trap.
Liam had woken several hours earlier in a daze, and in his desperate attempt to escape safely from this living hell, had wandered aimlessly in to a study. Though dusty and dank, the room had given him little cause for concern - until a rap, rap, rapping on the window startled the living daylights out of him, and he fell backwards on to a bookcase, which gave way behind him, sending him tumbling down into a chute and completely out of sight. When he woke once again from his delirium, it was in a heap of books and broken wooden planks - a seemingly hidden part of the house now uncovered. It was much different to the rest of the building. Instead of dilapidated furniture and grandiose décor, he found whizzing machines and metallic fittings. Instead of darkness and dimming candlelight, he was blinded by luminescent white light and blinking buttons. The fall through the shoot had damaged his hand, and the splinters from the bookcase had pierced his skin. The further he moved in to the... laboratory, he presumed, the stranger things got - and it became clear to him that an accident or explosion had happened here.
A pipe burst further down the corridor, causing a pyramid-shaped metallic lid to come hurtling around the corner. Liam got to his hands and knees and glanced down the corridor, a sadness running deep through his gloriously lit-up eyes, damp from previous tears of fear, confusion surging through every synapse in his brain, hormones and other complicated chemicals flooding him entirely. Another barely audible mumble emerged from his hollow voice box, and turning his head to the right slightly revealed an uncertainty, now confirmed.
There, bundled under a shattered window, of which a few pointed spikes remained rested in the frame, laid a corpse. Cloaked in white fabrics, now smeared with red liquid, presumably blood, and a brushed over smearing of the thick black liquid, the inanimate body was contorted. Liam approached timidly, though he had no idea whom the carcass was. Upon closer view, Liam peered over the right shoulder to see the face, and sure enough, lying on the floor was the significantly lacerated face of a professor or doctor. His positioning gave the impression that he was fleeing from the laboratory before getting caught in the blast that blew the window above him out. His lab coat tails had been slightly singed, probably by one of a number of chemically induced fires. As Liam continued to amble down the corridors, he found a number of bodies that had been emblazoned by searing heat, a lot of which were created by explosive electronics. One body of a female scientist had been impaled by a steel railing from the edge of a stairwell. Hungry, tired and suffering massively from fatigue, Liam looked around himself at his surroundings, contemplating exactly what the hell was going on down here, and why there was this oddly futuristic-looking laboratory in the bottom of the house on Maple Street. He wanted out. He wanted so badly to go home -
right now
.
Chapter Four
Liam walked around the corpses, thinking about the lives they must've lived...what they've left behind.
A moan came from the corner of the room. Liam jumped, startled, and ran towards the noise. They sounded in pain. When he got there, he noticed a lone girl trapped under a fallen shelf, blood trickling out of her leg. She looked at him, her eyes pleading desperately for help. Liam jumped into action, found a first aid kit and lifted the shelf off of the girl. He bandaged her wounds, pulling her closer to comfort her, reassuring her they'll get out alive.
The girls grip against liam grew stronger and tighter as she leaned towards his ear and whispered 'thankyou'.
Something sparked inside Liam, something he never felt before. This girl made him feel stronger, like he could protect her from anything.
Is this what love feels like? he pondered.
Chapter Five
The girl clutched on with what little energy she had left for a little bit longer, the reassurance for her was everything that she needed to know that she and Liam would get out battered, but alive and that was the most important thing. Liam was speechless momentarily whilst she was holding on. He was unsure whether to pursue his new feelings or just battle his own shyness and ask her about everything that had happened, why was she there and who was she? He trembled, not subtly enough for the girl to ponder what was wrong and she reluctantly removed her face from the crease in his neck and shoulder to face him. Her face was still marked from the dust and soot lingering around the room, but underneath it all her lip was trembling, her eyes were narrow slits due to dryness with crying so much; Liam could see she was becoming dehydrated and wasn't sure what to do, he had no source of water with him or a drink in general... in order to make sure she was safe he had to search, but where could he go?
Liam scoured the room they were in, searching high and low for possible ways to quench the girl's thirst, he didn't like this place at all anymore, he couldn't handle survival in the jungle let alone a haunted house. Something glistened in the dim light that filled the room, it was translucent... it was liquid and he needed to get it immediately. He edged towards it, unable to reach it, it was at the top of a high shelving unit, a separate one to the one that collapsed on the girl. He manages to balance himself on a shelf, the whole unit teetering forwards due to his weight, but he managed to grab it... just in time as he fell to the ground with a thud, but luckily the liquid was still concealed in the glass. He opened it up, he checked and no toxic signs were apparent on the bottle, he crawled over to the girl to give her his findings, but was it too late?
