Everybody shows an utter lack of concern when they walk past the haunted mansion

How could they, when it’s the 21st century and the last thing you can do as a conscious haunted mansion is make some absolutely spooky noise that would creep out a bunch of oldies, but the kids wouldn’t even move an inch, probably stare and make some hysterical noise. Of course, they’d go out trick or treating in their bedazzling costumes as Harry Potter or Chucky. Boy, these Generation Z kids were tough as an old Nokia phone.

It’s a shame, actually, that kids these days are indestructible in their own way, and wouldn’t believe the crap of being haunted for the rest of their lives by a haunted mansion. The mansion was falling and ripping itself due to the fact that it had no purpose anymore. Every year, during Halloween, a group of kids and teenagers would walk past the mansion but never bother to explore the hidden magic beneath it that would probably scare their guts out: they were too focused on winning the costume contest and taking meaningless snaps of themselves on some mystifying virtual object.

It was the 100th Halloween night of being a haunted mansion on this godforsaken planet, and the mansion was becoming self-conscious about its ability to scare, and it needed attention. Any form of attention was good. The walls were turning out to be mouldy with fungi that never existed; the creaking floorboards were on the verge of being crashed apart, and the walls kept groaning in languor. It was only a matter of time before some authorities arrived with their heavy machines and forks, wiping off its existence. It seemed as if another Halloween would pass by, simply forgotten.
Until now.

The grass on the patio of the garden becomes agitated, and an eerie feeling buzzes through the mansion, and it instantly knows that they’ve been graced by someone’s presence. The walls are tense, and the windows creak and groan at their presence – something was wrong. The mansion had had a variety of human visitors over the years, from the introverted to the audacious, but none of them compared to what it was feeling now: murder was lurking around one of these humans, and the mansion could target it to the last person walking in the bunch – the one with an unusually hideous nose and a gleam in his eye.

One by one, they walk into the pathway, and the mansion starts to flicker at what’s left of their hall lights, trying to stir them away. Run! The mansion tries to convey, and even though it crashes a bunch of window panes on the rooftop or smashes a floorboard, it wouldn’t lure them away. Years of trying to tempt people to enter the mansion, but it never knew that it had to get them away from it as soon as possible. With crooked teeth and a dagger in its back pocket, that one human stare at the gang – it was only a matter of time before they entered the mansion.
Once the human closes the door of the mansion when everybody else gets in, and that’s when his smile grows wider. There is a slash, and one person falls down with a hiccupped gasp to the rusty floorboard, choking on her own blood, staining the old floorboard in a blood-red stain. There is a silence, and the mansion knows it’s too late.
And then, the screaming begins.

There is chaos as the second body falls down, and now the mansion is enraged. Not in my mansion, you murderer! The mansion growls as two more bodies fall to their deaths, each slashed by the sharp dagger of the murderer. Not in this house, where there were happy screams and thrills of children waiting to have the spookiest experiences of their lives. No, the human wasn’t going to get away with it. The rest of the gang was too shocked to make a move, but then the mansion knew it was time to unleash the wrath that it had never unleashed before. It slams its doors shut and melds them with the walls until they become rock solid. If this human was going to get away with it, then the mansion knows it’s time to become the monster that it’s supposed to be.
It was time to give this human a taste of his own medicine.

Penned By: Rtr. Sheikha Hanna (Editorial Member 2021-22)
Edited and published by: RACSLIIT Editorial Team 2021-22