[HxWeen] Chapter Three: House on Maple Street

[James]

There were few, but absolutely amazing entries. They were all such a great read, but the best entry I read, and also the winner of Chapter Two is:
Samanfa!

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.

A huge congratulations to all of you who entered, lets keep this up!

For Chapter Three, I'd like you to write a paragraph or two describing a plot twist of the story! What happens is entirely up to you. It can be for the best or worse, but remember it is a horror story!

Chapter Prize: 25 Credits, 30 Rep, 2 Weeks Forum VIP and 1 Trick or Treat

[Lex]

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.

[Samantha]

The haziness draws to a close and I regain my vision, I can see the darkness that is in front of me, but somehow it's a lot clearer and brighter now. Although I'm not meant to be here, I doubt I could even leave if I wanted to, but something is telling me I need to stay here and find out what lies in the House on Maple Street. Struggling to get up, I saunter around the room before balancing back to my perfect posture, again I look around the room and all is quiet, you could hear a pin drop. I edgily make my way to the staircase, it's rickety and wobbles at the slightest touch, I grab onto the bannister with all my might and make my way up into the unknown.

'Creaaaaaaak', what was that? I freeze not knowing what to do, I can hear footsteps, are they getting louder, I can't tell over my heart thumping repeatedly, so hard that it feels like it's coming out of my chest. 'Creaaaaaaak', there it goes again, and now I hear a voice, who's voice could it possibly be, what do they want? Perhaps they live here... no that's not possible, no one could live here... could they? I see the shadow of a figure, the footsteps drawing closer, getting louder, I could run, but I don't know which way to go or what I could encounter that way or this way, I have to face it, perhaps this is my fate... this is where it ends. I look down the staircase, I see a figure staring back, and all I can see is the bloodied face of someone familiar... someone I know too well and have many a disagreement with, my Principal... Mr. Howley... I drop to the floor... the room goes black.