It’s early October and the weather is starting to get cooler. I’m sitting in school thinking about what my friends and I should do after. Some of them mentioned a haunted house, but I don’t know if that's a good idea. The bell rings for us to go home and since we all live next to each other we walk home together. My friends Colin, Alex, Nick, Ben and I saw a sign for a haunted house on the way home. We called the number that was on the billboard to see when it opened. Once the guy told us the time we all went home to ask our parents. I waited for my mom to get home from work so I could ask her to go.

“Hi mom, I hope you had a good day today, I was wondering if my friends and I could go to a haunted house tonight?” I said.

“Where is it?” She replied.

“I think it’s down in Scarville.”

“Tommy that’s way too far, I really don’t want you going down there alone.”

I said okay and went to my room to tell my friends I couldn’t go. Once I told my friends what my mom said, they were all bummed out, until an idea popped into my head. I told them that I could just sneak out and they would come pick me up and we would go. They agreed to the idea and so we waited for it to get dark outside.

It’s now around 7pm and it’s time to go to the haunted house. I called my friends to make sure they were on their way to get me. I went to say goodnight to my mom, so that she would think I was going to bed. Then I went back to my room, grabbed a sweatshirt, and went out my bedroom window to get into Colin’s car. I looked up the address on my phone so we wouldn’t get lost on the way there.

“How far away is it?” Asked Nick, bunched up against the window.

“It says it’s about 30 minutes away.” I told him.

While we were driving we listened to music and looked out the windows to see what was around, there was nothing. It was just a bunch of trees and a very winding road. As we were getting closer, there were signs for the haunted house and all of us started to get a little bit nervous. When we pulled up to the parking lot, there were clowns that were telling everyone where to park. We couldn’t help but laugh at them because they kept jumping up and down laughing, which was supposed to be creepy but it was just funny to us. We got out of Colin’s car and walked to the gate. There was a man at the booth where we had to pay, so we walked up to him.

“Entry fee is ten dollars a person.” he said to us.

We all handed him our entry fee and then he put these neon green bracelets on our wrist.

He then said, “you guys be careful in there.” almost as if he was worried something was going to happen, which kind of creeped us out.

We stood in line waiting for our turn to go into the haunted house. While we were waiting in line we could hear people screaming, and we could also see the smoke coming from the haunted house. When we got to the front of the line there was a “ghost” that told us rules like don’t touch the people, stay with your group, and exit out the exit doors if you need to. The guy opened the door and we stepped inside. It was pitch black and all I could see was my bracelet. We didn’t know where to walk so we stood there until a clown popped out of a curtain and scared us. We walked through the curtain into smoke, still not able to see anything. There was banging on the walls and people screaming every few seconds. As we walked through all the different rooms there were different characters and different effects. When I stepped into this one room there were strobe lights and a black and white swirl thing that spun when you walked on it. Up above there were clowns with chainsaws in their hands. I turned around because I heard banging and screaming behind me, but when I turned back around Nick was gone and so was the group in front of us. I thought that maybe they just continued through the haunted house and lost us a little bit. We got through the spiral and into the next room full of clowns. They were jumping in our faces saying creepy things.

One of them said, “Come with me hehehe!”

They jumped around in circles, barely letting us through and then I noticed one going behind the curtain with a limp body on its back. I told Colin, Alex, and Ben what I saw, which was a mistake because one of the clowns heard me.

Taking his mask off, “Don’t say a word and move forward.” he said. “You won’t get hurt if you follow my directions.”

I started to sweat and my hands were shaking excessively. Nick was gone and we had no clue where he was. We walked through the next two rooms and then got to the final room. In that room were “fake” bodies hung from the ceiling with bite marks and blood running down them. We heard chainsaws and people screaming, but it wasn’t from behind us. It was from above us. We got to the exit of the haunted house and I almost passed out by what I had seen, but before I hit the ground Ben and Alex picked me up and we started running. We were being chased by the clowns with  chainsaws. We ran through a dark cornfield to get to Colins car. We got in and sped off terrified that we were going to be followed.

When we got to my house Colin, Alex, and Ben told me not to say anything. I snuck back inside and tried to go to sleep but I couldn’t. The Image I saw at the haunted house was repeating in my head everytime I closed my eyes. Nick was being hung by a rope. He had bite marks in his skin and blood all over his body. I kept thinking of the worst possible outcomes of this night. I didn’t want to be accused of murder or go to jail. I finally fell asleep in my bed with my bedroom light on. When I woke up the next day it was 7am. I looked out my window and saw cop cars at Nick’s house. His family was outside talking to the police and showing them pictures of Nick. I opened my window to see if I could hear what they were saying. Nick’s mom was telling them about the haunted house and how she didn’t want him going. The cops told her that they would look for him and keep her updated on the case. I felt so guilty I was sick to my stomach. The next day I was sitting at lunch with Colin, Alex, and Ben and I got a phone call from an unknown number. They told me to answer it and I did, so I put it on speaker.

“Hello.” I said.

“Tommy, it's Nick, I need you to come back to the haunted house.” Nick said.

“How are you alive?” 

“I can’t explain it right now, I just need you to-”

The phone call ended. We all got up and walked out of school confused and terrified. We decided to go back to the haunted house together. When we pulled up there were a dozen trucks leaving the property. The haunted house was not open yet since it was the middle of the day so when we walked to the entrance we were being questioned by a man with black hair. He took us to the back room of the haunted house where we saw Nick hanging. When we got to the room though, all the bodies were gone and the room was clean and empty. A voice called us and we all jumped and turned around. Nick was standing there with two clowns on each side of him. The clowns started walking towards us with something folded up in their hands. They taped our mouths shut and started dressing us in clown costumes. After that they handed us chainsaws and walked out of the room. Nick was still standing there with a smirk on his face. He walked toward the exit of the haunted house, all of our eyes following him, stepped outside,  and closed the door.