Mr. Buckley was thought to be a strange man by his fellow town.  Although no one was actually sure what went on behind the shanty walls of his secluded house, rumors arose that he was a devil worshipper, or a witch, or maybe even a murderer who hid his victims in the basement for years until he finally ended their stay.

Of course, these rumors were spread exclusively through children.  Any sensible person knew that he was just an old hermit who enjoyed no one’s company except his own.  This, however, did not stop curiosity from striking even the most sensible man in town.  What did go on behind those locked doors?  People who claim to have seen him (outside of his weekly run to the grocers) say that all he was doing in his house was cleaning; tidying up, making things look nice inside of his crappy old estate.  However, not just one or two people had seen him doing this, rather anyone who’s ever dared go up his private road has seen him doing this; no one has ever seen him doing anything else other than clean, leading some to believe that he was crazy.

Scary rumors and the one mile hike through the woods have kept his property mostly unvisited and disturbed only by the wind and rain…

---

Two boys stood by a locked gate on a narrow and uneven gravel road, expecting a third to arrive soon.  Elias leaned against a tree, bored out of his mind and wanting to go home to escape the crisp fall weather.  Their previous trek to Mr. Buckley’s had resulted in a big letdown, as all they saw was an old man doing chores in his house.  Even though they now planned to become the first people to go inside (to their knowledge) he still would rather spend his Halloween roaming the town until 1:00 AM like the rest of the kids their age.

Elias looked at the current time on his phone: 10:30.

He looked up and drew a heavy sigh as a cool breeze rolled the leaves from his left.  “Hey, how long are we planning to stay?” he asked.

“All I wanna do is look around a bit.” 

Elias pondered this statement for a second, as that could mean a range of things for his friend Chris.

Chris impatiently walked back and forth in front of the gate, checking his phone for a text every couple of seconds.  “Did he text you?” he asked.

Elias pulled his phone back out of his pocket.  “Nope,” he blandly replied.

“Imma try to text him again.”

“Can’t we just leave?  I bet if we tried we could still catch Becky at Foster’s.”

“Hey, man, you’ve been complaining about this so much.  If you really don’t want to go, you can leave.”

Elias felt frustrated and crossed his arms, “It’s so freaking cold.”

“It’ll be fun, trust me.”

Elias looked beyond the tree line opposite the gate to see some windows lit and some seasonal orange jack-o-lanterns fading out in the neighborhood.  When they had first arrived, there were still some trick-or-treaters running around with their parents, thirty minutes later, however, there were no more.  “Maybe he already walked up there, where did you tell him to meet us?”

Chris looked at his phone again, “No I told him to meet us at the gate.”

Elias again looked off in frustration.

After waiting for five more minutes they heard leaves crunching and saw the small 5’3” silhouette of their friend walking towards them from the neighborhood.  “What the ---- took so long?”  Chris called out to him.

Barclay looked up from the dried leaves under his feet.  He could barely see his friends through the thick blackness of the forest.  He waited until he reached them to answer Chris’ question, “I was with Becky at Foster’s.”

Chris failed to notice Elias’ obscene gesture and asked Barclay why he wouldn’t answer his phone.  “I got it taken away from me.”

This type of thing happened often to him, as his parents were extremely strict, so Chris and Elias didn’t ask many questions.

Chris looked back towards Elias, “You could still leave if you want to.”

Elias smirked and said, “Nah, Let’s Roll.”

---

Barclay shook and tapped his flashlight, struggling to get it work.  “All good there Clay?” Chris chuckled out.

“I don’t know man, it’s been like five years since I used this thing…” Chris looked at Elias and they laughed, “I wonder if it’s out of battery.”

“Why didn’t you try to turn it on before you left?”  Elias asked, still giggling.

“This type of thing seems to happen to me a lot,” Chris took one last look at the big metal plumber’s light and then threw it into the woods.

After trying to figure it out himself, Elias asked he did that.

“That thing’s a lot of dead weight if it’s not working.”

Chris started laughing again, “Well it was probably just out of battery ya stupid idiot.”

Clay smiled and said, “You’re welcome to go pick it up but I don’t want to carry it.”

“No I’m good,” Chris said and his laughter started to die down.

“Hey, why are we going inside the house if he’s going to be in there?” Clay asked, “We could probably get caught really easily.”

Chris smiled, “Yeah but then only one of us would probably get caught, and I’m the fastest so I probably have the best chance of getting out.”

Elias looked over at Chris in confusion, but Chris gave him a wink and Elias laughed under his breath.

“Seriously though, why don’t we go out when he’s out shopping?” Clay asked.

“You’re so dumb,” Chris replied laughing.

Clay furrowed his brow, “What?”

Elias laughed and then looked over at him, “He left town yesterday.”

“What?  Really?”

“Yeah my mom saw him leave,” Chris stated.

“Oh…  Hey, there’s the rock,” Clay said, directing his beam at a large boulder sitting on the side of the road.  They walked off the road and around the rock, entering on to a narrow trail that could usually only be found by those who knew where it was.  After about five hundred yards they found the legendary shack, constructed out of splintery unfinished wood and dirty glass.  Elias’ heart skipped a beat when he saw it.  He didn’t feel scared when Chris told him of the idea, but for whatever reason, he felt – not scared, but rather frightened.  Something about the sight just injected a deep and awful feeling in him.

He saw that there was a car in the driveway, a rusty red pickup, however all the lights in the house were off.  He pointed the car out to his other friends but they both were sure that Mr. Buckley had more than one car.  Elias swallowed hard and agreed that he must have more than one.  Chris turned around and looked at Elias, telling him to hurry up.  Elias didn’t even notice that he had stopped.  He caught up to them and they approached the cellar door.

Chris was the first to try to open it, and when he couldn’t Clay moved in his place.  After determining that it was locked, Chris suggested that they could break a window.  Elias was against this idea, reasoning that if they can’t leave the place the same way it was when they arrived, they should leave.  Clay stated that he didn’t want to leave, but that they should try the front door.  Chris agreed, and that’s what they did.

When the front door didn’t work, they tried the back.  When they found out that the backdoor was locked as well, they were back at the window idea.  Both Chris and Clay agreed that since they had come this far, that they shouldn’t give up.  Elias, on the other hand, was content with staying out and seriously wanted to leave.  After some convincing, they got him to stay, but he wouldn’t agree to go in the house; something in the back of his head was holding him back.

“Fine,” was all his friends had to say.

Chris being the baseball player was the one to throw the rock through a window close to the ground.  He leaned inside and looked around, but didn’t see anything except very organized and very clean furniture.  He hopped in and, just to check, called out to anyone that might be in there.  He didn’t hear an answer, so he called again.  He turned back to the window and told Clay and Elias that it was okay.  Chris moved back to let Clay hop in, but then stuck his head back out.

“Are you absolutely sure you don’t want to come?”

Elias looked at his friend, and then peaked inside, glancing at the neatly hung yet eerie portraits.  He turned his attention back to Chris, “Yeah, I’ll be out here when you’re done.”

Chris nodded, Clay called out for him to hurry up, and he disappeared.

Although Elias was absolutely sure that he didn’t want to go inside, he started to have second thoughts.  Getting a glimpse inside had given him a new type of curiosity that he didn’t have before.  What if there was something truly amazing inside that house?  Maybe the old man had once been a bank robber and he had a mountain of gold stashed in his basement.  Elias knew that was ridiculous, but there must have been some reason behind Mr. Buckley’s severed connection with the town; and Elias really started to wonder what that was.

Elias remembered back to when he was maybe seven or eight when a 12 year-old girl went missing.  The town went into a panic, worrying there was a kidnapper on the loose.  Elias wasn’t allowed to leave the house without one of his parents and he even missed trick-or-treating that year.  The whole town (naturally) turned to Mr. Buckley’s estate and the poor old man was bombarded with unwanted attention.  Of course they couldn’t find anything that said he was the culprit, and that young 12 year-old girl has still never been found.

He heard someone’s scream inside the house get suddenly cut off.  His eyes widened and his body froze.  He couldn’t move, he didn’t want to move.  He stared into the window.  His chest quivered and his legs shook.  He couldn’t blink, he couldn’t breathe.  His fingers trembled and his hair tingled.  He heard footsteps.  He heard footsteps.  They moved closer.  And closer.  He wanted to call out.  He wanted to know who was there.  All that escaped his lips was a choked breath.  Footsteps walked towards him.  He couldn’t move, he didn’t want to move.  His heart beat hard and his pulse was in his neck. 

A shining light came from a doorway and pointed to him, “You okay there?”  Elias still couldn’t speak and was confused.  Chris and Clay walked into view. 

“What?” he managed to stammer out.

Chris furrowed his brow, “You alright?” he said as he walked to the window.

Elias looked up at him, “What happened?”

“We just walked around the house, are you okay?”

Both Chris and Clay looked at him with puzzled faces.  “Did one of you scream?” asked Elias.

Chris and Clay’s expressions grew on their face.  “No,” answered Clay, “Are you alright?”

Elias looked at Clay, and then at Chris, and then back at Clay, “Yeah I’m fine.”  He could see that they were still confused.  “I swear I could’ve heard a scream.”

As if right on queue, a loud laugh came from the town behind the woods.  Chris laughed, “Are you going crazy?”

“What?”  Elias asked.

“You probably just heard that big laugh,” Chris said, pointing to the town.

Elias turned around and faced the woods; he could’ve sworn that he heard a scream from inside the house.  He turned back to his friends, the proof was right in front of him, everyone’s alright and no one screamed.

“Come on,” said Clay, interrupting his train of thought, “We found something.”

“What did you find?” Elias asked.

“Just come on we’ll show you.”

Elias was reluctant to go inside the house after what (he thought) had just happened, but he was just as curious to see what they found.  He swallowed his fear, lowered his heartbeat, and climbed inside.

The place smelled like mothballs and burning woods, and it was just as cold inside as it was outside, if not colder.  The paintings of different people and families on the wall seemed to stare at him as he walked past, he tried not to notice.  The place had a clean red and brown finish to it and was very well dusted all over.  It was almost amazing how much the inside of the house contrasted to out.

Chris and Clay looked behind them every other second to make sure Elias was still following them through the dark hallways.  More portraits lined the walls, forcing Elias to get uncomfortably close to them.  They stopped at a closed door, Chris and Clay looked back at Elias, and then Chris pushed the door open.  They walked inside.

On the wall was a giant pentagram, painted in red.  Several unlit candles stood on either side of the large shape and the carpet on the floor was dirty and torn up.  There were no windows.  “Creepy, right?” said Chris.  To Elias creepy was an understatement; to Elias this meant that they were in a crazy man’s home, and to Elias, that was horrifying.

“Let’s leave,” Elias said.  The door slammed shut and the room was shot with an orange glow.  The three friends looked towards their exit, the door was now red.  A wave of heat washed over them when the pentagram set on fire.  Elias again was unable to breathe.  He stumbled back and bumped into something warm and fleshy.  He jumped forward and turned around to see Mr. Buckley, dressed in black dress pants and nothing else, impaled on a stake.  The corpse started to animate, the arms started to move, the head looked up.  Elias stared into Mr. Buckley’s cloudy eyes, and Mr. Buckley’s cloudy eyes stared back.  The floor caught fire and the three friends screamed in pain.  They escaped to the door and burst into the hallway, only to find that the whole house was set ablaze.  The house gave out and crumbled around them.  They were never heard from again.

---

Mr. Buckley swept the floor with his straw broom, making sure that everything was tidy and in place.  He stopped to examine his most recently acquired portrait of three teenaged boys and their flashlights.  He stared, smiled proudly, and got back to work, making sure that the charred remains of his floor and furniture would be nicely cleaned by the time the police came knocking at his door.