No one knows quite how long the house at the end of Reidan street has been vacant. Long enough for the wood around the hinges of the shutters to rot away. Long enough for the grass to grow up through all the cracks in the cement and cover the walkway completely. Long enough that there was not a single intact window after years of vandalization and abuse.
But despite all the time that has gone past, the legend of what happened there still lives on in the minds of the people in Amity Park. Of what still resides there. It created a fear so strong and driven that the company that owns the land surrendered it to the house, and surrendered the house to nature. They didn't dare send a demolition crew.
They didn't dare disturb the house.
Despite the fact that the town itself is already overrun with ghosts, and such paranormal activity has become a novelty, and there are very real dangers within the city itself…
The house at the end of Reidan street was a place that not even fools tread.
Despite common belief, Kwan was not a fool. Kwan, despite being known as a jock, got pretty decent grades without trying a lick. Smarter than the rest of the A-listers. In another life, he could have easily been a nerd, instead. Such amounted to a degree of common sense. Kwan was not a fool.
Though it seems that does not stop him from doing foolish things. Because he was still following Dash, Paulina, and Star towards the end of Reidan street—even though his legs were rattling like loose window panes in a hurricane, and he could feel cold sweat trace down his palms. His throat was too dry and hoarse to call out, and his legs, though weak, didn't stop on their own. He was only left to continue walking with increasingly mounting horror as his body made his decisions for him.
The others didn't seem to understand his fear. More so, they didn't even seem to notice it. Dash and Paulina were both immersed in their own delusions of grandeur, and Star was picking at her fingers—a nervous tick. She, at least, was anxious. Though, her voice still worked.
"Guys, don't you think we should like, turn back?" she questioned, eyes flitting around the street.
Paulina snorted in front of them and waved the blonde's concerns off, never even turning around. "Of course not. There's nothing scary in that stupid house." She continued her confident strut forward, Dash right at her side. He echoed her in agreement.
"Yeah. Come on Star, are you chicken or something?" he sneered.
Her eyes widened. Kwan, who was walking next to the girl, could hear her swallow. "No, of course not." Though even as she said that, her fingers were tangling in front of her. "I mean, if anyone here is scared it's Kwan," she continued, eyes turning to him.
Kwan didn't react, continuing his robot walk forward. In his mind, he knew what she was doing—throwing him under the bus so they wouldn't pay any attention to her. Usually he wouldn't appreciate such actions, but right now there was nothing inside him that cared about something so trivial.
Dash and Paulina turned to look at the duo behind them questioningly, and upon such noticed that Star was indeed correct in her statement. Kwan, though walking at a steady pace, couldn't have looked more terrified. His face was so pale someone might have shaded it with a piece of chalk; his eyes were so wide his pupils could have been pinpricks; his shoulders were shaking so bad one would have guessed it was below freezing outside. He didn't seem to notice what was in front of him, or that everyone was looking at him.
Dash raised an eyebrow and gave a disbelieving bark. "Dude, are you really that scared? That's so lame."
"Hey, at least he has some common sense!" Star snarled. "Only an idiot would feel fine at a time like this!"
Kwan wanted to thank her, but he couldn't do anything.
Dash and Paulina reeled back as if struck.
"Excuse me, did you just call me an idiot?!" Paulina had the picture of surprise on her face. It quickly twisted in anger. "At least I'm not a willow-spined dweeb like you two!" she retaliated.
"At least I'm not an airhead!" Star shot back.
Dash cut in, holding out his hands in a calming gesture. "Now, ladies! Let's calm down a bit! It's halloween night, and we're all here to have a—"
"Shut it, Baxter!" both girls shouted in unison.
Before Dash could make any other attempt at speech, he was cut off by the sound of Kwan's shoes scuffing on the ground and grinding to a halt. The others were forced to stop their slow pace as Kwan refused to move.
If possible, he was paler now. His mouth had fallen into a gape of horror, and he was no longer looking directly forward. He was looking up.
"I— I— I—… I—" Kwan rattled harder, speech jamming his throat and cutting off. A single, trembling hand rose in the air and pointed between Dash and Paulina. His face contorted into what looked like a final expression before gruesome death and a near-silent scream eked from his open mouth.
The rest of the group turned to follow his finger and found, in all its glory, the house at the end of Reidan street.
Dash shouldered the old door open, the bottom edge raking against the ground and the hinges shrieking in agony. It hadn't been locked—simply stuck after too many years of disrepair and disuse. They all stepped into the main room warily and looked around.
Windows had been shattered, the shards on the floor hardly reflecting the setting sun's orange glow as everything was blanketed in dust. It was clear by looking at the scene that nothing had been disturbed in years.
Water and weather had come in through the broken windows. Wind had knocked everything into disarray—if that's not how it was left before—and the rain warped and stained the wood floors and wood furniture. Plenty of floorboards had become dipped enough to sustain a consistent puddle and were now victim to rot. The couch was no doubt home to multiple rodents, as bits of cushion were found molded, scattered about the room and bared to the open air. Fabric was torn back and chewed away like the edges of a festering wound.
Against one of the walls was the remains of a piano, the keys layered in dust, the top caved in from something having had broken it, and the wood being as weathered and sun bleached as the floorboards. There were plenty of empty slots from missing keys, and there was no longer a chair in front of it.
The four dispersed throughout the room, carefully looking things over as if they were in a museum. All of their steps tread softly, hesitant to make noise, and all of their fingers shied away from touching the artifacts of the room. Paulina found the a shattered china vase in the corner, its design hidden behind dust, but as she tried to swipe away the dirt she found that her fingers hesitated to do more than ghost above the shards.
Everyone else was also investigating their own niche in the room. Kwan had worked himself up to walking over to the couch and inspecting it for animal activity. Star had wandered over to the window and was bending down to observe the jagged edges of the grimy glass that still remained in the frame. Dash was drawn to the piano, fingers hovering above the keys. He looked around to see what the others were doing, and saw that they too were hesitating to touch. With a deep swallow, he looked back down at his hand poised over the keys. He dropped a single finger down.
He could hear the creak of the key pressing in, but no sound rung out. He tried another one, to the same result. He could feel the dust coating his finger pad and lifted it to his face with disgust. He rolled his fingers together and let the dust fall to the floor.
Two keys later he hit a still working key and the low note rung out in the room, causing everyone to jump—including himself. Paulina turned and glared at him wordlessly, prompting Dash to shrink away from the piano.
"Should we uh… check out the other rooms?"
Paulina groaned at him but got to her feet nonetheless. Both girls made their way over to Dash by the archway, ready to leave, but Kwan only stared up at his friends with wide eyes and two mice cupped in his hands.
"The rest of the house?" he whispered.
Paulina rolled her eyes. "Yes, the rest of the house. We didn't come here to stay in the first room. Come on." She swung around, hair trailing behind her, and everyone could hear her last muttered, "Scaredy cat."
Dash guffawed and followed after her, Star following not far behind. With a sigh, Kwan got to his feet and trailed after them down the hallway.
The first door on their right was the kitchen. It had a giant, iron monstrosity in the corner, with a big tube leading up to the ceiling. It was a thick black, with rust biting the edges and soot still staining the outside of it despite how long it's been since it's been used. Its front was a mess of knobs and levers, with a large door right in the middle of it. The floor of the room was an ugly, dirty checker of tiles—black and white—with most tiles cracked or missing. Odd ends of trash littered the ground, blown in through the shattered window over the sink. The sink was, of course, molded, with a quarter tank of brown, leafy water and barely visible glass shards at the bottom.
Paulina stepped into the room first, nose scrunched in distaste. "What is that thing?" she groused, pointing at the cast iron appliance in the corner. Dash and Star followed her finger and shrugged in response.
Kwan poked his head in the room last, the mice in his hands drawn up towards his chest. "...It's an old oven," he answered, more fully stepping into the room. He walked over to it, crouched down, and gently used and one of his hands to pull the door open. Small bits of charcoal fell on the ground and the hinges creaked in protest. The inside was revealed to be entirely soot coated. Kwan squinted his eyes in attempts to peer farther into the depths, but could only make out the vague shape of mostly burnt coal.
"Boring," she said, and instead walked over to the door in the left wall. She grabbed the handle and pushed it open. Dust that had been settled on the bottom ridges of the rectangles carved into the door billowed into the air, causing Paulina to cough as she stepped through the doorway. She dusted her hands off while looking around the new room.
Behind the door was the dining room. Unlike the previous two rooms, it was eerily well kept. There was an oil painting near the other door on the left wall—which must lead back out into the hallway—depicting some cattle by a river. In the center of the room was a very large table with ornately carved legs and matching chairs. All 12 chairs were upright and pulled out, ready for someone to come take a seat. Unlike the couch, the cushions in the chairs were fully intact, the deep venetian velvet that was stretched over the seat unmarred. The only things about it that showed the table's age were the mottled watermarks on the table's top and the bleached color on the rightmost side from the sun. The entire right wall was windows—though all of the glass was blown out and on the ground just inside. Above the table was a grand chandelier, dripping with beads of glass and made of twisted silver metal. The dust coating it hardly stopped the shining beads from reflecting the blazing orange sun, half sunk on the horizon.
Something about this room seemed unsettling. No leaves or trash had blown in, even though almost the entire right wall was open, and none have the chairs had been tipped over. It was… creepy. The teens decided to leave the room and go back into the hallway quickly.
The left side of the hallway was largely taken up by a staircase, though there was one door before the stairs started. Looking inside it was revealed to be a relatively small bathroom. There was no shower or bath, just a ceramic toilet and sink. Spiderweb cracks laced up the bowl of the sink, and white chips that had fallen out were lying on the tiled ground. Something must have gone wrong with the piping after all these years, because opening the door released a horrid, 100 year old shit smell. Paulina shoved the door closed and stormed towards the stairs, shouting, "Eww! That's disgusting!" Everyone else was quick to follow her.
The stairs were mostly intact, but they avoided a couple of steps that looked less than structurally sound. They kept a hand on the railing on the right, if only for the mental security it provided—if they were to fall, it was dubious whether or not it would support any weight. They reached the top landing with no problems.
Upstairs, most of the rooms were bedrooms. There was a master room, a child's room, and a room with two twin beds; all of the mattresses were torn and molded; most of the furniture was dilapidated to the point of destruction and coated in dust. The master bedroom had a tipped over bookshelf that had dozens and dozens of chewed, molded books lying spilled in front of it. The twin bedroom had a heavy, shattered mirror—glass shards were strewn about the floor, preventing their entrance.
There was one more door that they were in front of, but before Dash could push it open a colossal crack erupted from the downstairs. Thunderously pounding and as sharp as a whip, as if the ground and sky themselves were splintering apart—so loud that all four could feel the verberberations jar up their spines and press down on them from the air. It canceled out all other noises and for the succeeding seconds, they felt as if they were deaf because there was not a single other sound after the gigantic explosion of noise. They froze to their spots in terror, limbs hunched up to their forms in some primal instinct of preservation. Kwan clutched the mice to his chest, but even he didn't know if he was attempting to protect them or seeking comfort.
They all turned to each other white faced, the small sound of the floorboards creaking beneath them seeming pitiful after the grand display of noise. "What was that?" Dash whispered.
The others shook their heads. None of them had any idea. "Should we go see?" Star asked.
They began to make their way back down the stairs, Kwan meekly trailing after the rest of the group. He didn't want to find out what would make such a large noise in an abandoned, empty, haunted house.
There was nothing amiss in the hallway. They checked in the bathroom first because it was closest to the bottom of the stairs, and nothing was wrong in there, either. Nor the kitchen. They popped their heads through the archway into the sitting room that they first came into, but everything was as it was. They were now standing in front of the dining room door, none of them wanting to touch the doorknob. They knew. There was only the one room left.
It is Star that sucks up her stuff, reaches forward to twist the knob, and shoves. The door swings open slowly to reveal the room.
It is no longer pristine, preserved, or neat. The wallpaper is shredded, as if giant claws raked down the walls. The chairs were broken and askew, jagged spires of wood rising into the sky. The chairs' cushions are burst open, foam scattered all across the room as if someone had thrown pillow stuffing up in the air.
And the mighty wooden table has been split in half, with the grand chandelier resting on the ground in the middle of the break. The sun shone through the window and illuminated all of the glass beads like a raging inferno.
The scene was some malicious promise of pain, as if there was some malevolent being turning its sharpened gaze on them and claiming them as their next victim.
"...No, no, I'm getting outta here," Dash utters, backing away from the dining room entrance, and eventually turning to sprint towards the door at the end of the hall. Paulina and Star are hot on his heels, racing to exit the house. Only Kwan is frozen to his spot, staring at his friends and mind racing a million miles per hour.
"Wait—!" Kwan calls, stretching out a hand as Dash throws the door open. Behind the door is not the sitting room. It is the kitchen, and it is no longer dormant. The coal oven is turning red with heat, and the small hatch open so the fiery depths can be seen. When Dash opens the door it leaps and roars, fire and heat lashing out in a concussive wave. As it spirals towards him Dash yelps and backpedals, pulling the door shut with a slam.
He is gasping as Star and Paulina steady him with a hand on each shoulder. His hands are quaking terribly as he raises them to grip at his hair. "What—what was that?!"
"There's a door there; there wasn't a door before! And that's not where the kitchen is!" Kwan answered frantically.
"So?" Star asks, nervously pulling at her fingers.
"The rooms in the house are moving!"
"Where's the exit?!" Paulina shrieks, looking around and seeing nothing but doors on all sides. "The sitting room is gone! Where's the door?!"
Kwan tightens his grip on the mice and one of them bites his finger, prompting him to hiss and drop both of them. They scurry towards what should be the bathroom door—the one at the landing of the stairs—and run through the crack underneath the door.
"The mice!" Kwan shouts. "The mice are going back to the couch, so the sitting room must be in the bathroom right now!"
He runs and flings the door open, only to find that the bedroom with the two beds resting beyond it. He slams it shut and runs to another door, revealing the bathroom. "Find the sitting room!"
Everyone ran to a door and opened it. Upon no results, they shut their door and opened it again. No sitting room. Again—
"My door won't open!" Star yelled. She shouldered the door, jiggling the handle and trying to force her way in, but it was locked.
Paulina's face lit up. "You must have found it! Come on!" The other three went over to Star's door—the kitchen door—and helped her bust it down. The lock gave way with a bang and the four teens went toppling into the room. On its own, the door slammed shut behind them.
Kwan sat up, rubbing his head and looking around. Seeing faded, blotchy pink walls, he felt a stone slowly sink in his stomach. "Guys… this isn't the sitting room."
They were in the child's room, kneeling on the tattered rug. The twin bed with the chewed quilt was off to their right, the white dresser on their left, and the shattered window directly in front. The sun had set by now, but the dying colors were still coming off the horizon, throwing the window side corners of the room into shadows—where the two mountains of stuffed animals were stacked.
"...Let's get out of here," said Kwan, still looking around the room as he climbed to his feet.
He received quiet choruses of agreement as they all stood up and backed against each other, not taking their eyes off the room. Kwan, who was the closest to the door, grabbed the handle and tried to open it.
The handle wouldn't budge.
"Hey… ...Does anyone else feel like the stuffed animals are looking at them?" Dash asked meekly. "Because I feel like they're looking at me."
The three swallowed and nodded. Before, they had all been facing each other, or blankly staring off into space, but now, they had all turned…
Paulina inhaled sharply. "One of them just moved," she announced, as the ratty teddy bear with one eye at the top of the left stack subtly jolted—as though struck with electricity. And then, as if it was the tin man finally moving after years of paralyzation, it slowly stood up.
Dash began tapping Kwan's shoulder very fast. "Kwan. Kwan get the door open."
"I'm trying, dude," Kwan responded, now turning to the door and gripping the handle with both hands. "It's not going!"
"Kwan, open the door!" he shrieked, the teens pressing tighter against each other. Other dolls were starting to move in jerky, disjointed movements, clumsily climbing to their feet, stepping on others' heads, tripping over other dolls' flailing limbs like babies learning to walk, but very much moving, and very much coming towards the teens. They staggered out of the shadows like little zombies with missing limbs and lolling heads, and glassy eyes that sometimes caught the faint orange light of the horizon and blazed like lit embers.
The teddy bear made its way over to Star, where she was backed against the other teens and couldn't move. Its head tilted back to look her in the face, and the stitches that held its mouth closed ripped and tore as it opened its mouth and cawed at her, creamy colored cotton showing through the new holes and making the bear look rabbid. It took another step towards her foot and she kicked at it, but instead of flying across the room it grabbed on tight to her ankle and bit her. Somehow, it must have had teeth, because Star screeched in pain, reached down, and ripped the bear off her leg. She hurtled it at the other oncoming stuffed animals and bowled them over.
Dash gave a truly inhuman squall as he shoved Kwan aside, laced his fingers together above his head, and brought both hands down on the doorknob as hard as he could. The old doorknob gave way with a sharp twang, and clattered to the ground. Dash reached into the hole that the handle left and flung the door wide, charging into the hallway—the others followed. Star, the last one out, grabbed the door and dragged it shut behind her. They stood shivering in the hallway.
Dash put his hands on his knees and bowed his head, wide eyes staring at the ground. "I don't think I'll look at teddy bears the same way ever again." Kwan nodded his head in agreement.
Star grit her teeth and ducked her head to look at her ankle. There was a small bite mark about as big as a quarter that was slowly leaking blood, and a single trail leading down towards her shoe. She wiped it off before it could reach the edge of her white flat and huffed angrily.
"I am so over this house!" she snapped, whipping her head over to look at the door that should lead to the sitting room. "I just wanna get outta here!"
She kicked the wall as hard as she could, hitting a weak point and driving through the plaster. Her foot got stuck and she lost her balance quickly, arms pinwheeling in the air in attempts not to fall over. Paulina grabbed her around the waist to help haul her foot out of the wall when Star violently jolted, dropped herself to the ground and ripped her foot out of the wall. Her foot was pale with plaster dust, but as she shook it about in the air, the other three could see the small black dots stuck to her foot. "Ewewewew BUGS!" she screamed, flicking the roaches off her foot and scooting backwards.
Paulina backed up as well, chorusing Star with her disgust. They warily eyed the hole in the wall, and started to shriek as more bugs spilled onto the ground. Star stumbled to her feet, still backing up.
It was revealed to be an unholy amount of cockroaches, a rapid-growing squirming mass. They could hear the bugs climb on each other and hear their scrabbling legs in the silence of the hallway, dim hallway candlelight glittering off their backs. It continued growing to the point where all four teens realized that it wasn't just a horde of insects but another act by the house, and something that might actually be dangerous. The wave continued to accost them, and Paulina chose their route of escape by grabbing Star's hand and sprinting up the stairs. The boys were quick to follow.
They rounded the landing and stopped in the middle of the hallway facing each other.
"Well now what?" asked Dash. "How're we supposed to leave now that we're upstairs? Can't exactly go back downstairs, now can we?"
Paulina humphed, and crossed her arms. "Well what did you want me to do? Drag us into another room?"
Dash sucked in a breath. He gripped his hair and squatted on the ground in feeble attempts to calm himself. "I don't know! I don't know man, I just wanna get out of here! But we can't find the damn sitting room, and we can't stay in the hallway—does it even matter what we do anymore?!"
Star turned to him and snapped, "Are you giving up?!"
He glared at her from the ground. "Well then what do you think we should do?!"
"Guys," Kwan cut in, voice trembling. "Fighting's not gonna get us anywhere. Let's just… stop." He breathed deeply, body still shaking.
Everyone nodded and centered themselves. Kwan was right—infighting would gain nothing.
Kwan let his breath go slowly and checked out the hallway, looking for anything they could use to their advantage. Covering the majority of floor was a long, ornate rug that spanned from one end of the hallway to the other. It was almost entirely worn away in some places, and was caked with dirt and dust, but he could still tell that it was primarily red and cream—same as the one in the downstairs hallway. The pale blue wallpaper was yellowed and peeling in most places, revealing the light colored plaster beneath it. Star had already proven that the walls were severely weakened, but that wouldn't help them. At regular spaced intervals were black stained, wrought iron ornate candle holders. The candles were tall and thin, made of plain white wax, with small flames flickering on the tops of each of them…
"Hey…" Kwan gently called, gathering everyone else's attention.
"Has anyone else noticed… that the candles are lit?" he whispered. And almost instantly, a chilling wind swept through the hallway and blew their lights out. The doors were all shut and there were no windows, casting them into total darkness. The girls screamed.
Paulina was not keen to find out what would happen to them in the dark. With a shrill, strangled cry, she threw her hands out to where the wall was and scrambled to find a doorknob. Loud thuds started to sound in the hallway, felt more than seen, thundering up through their spines from the floor. As soon as her hand knocked against it she threw the door open. Bare strands of dark blue light made their way into the hallway, gifting meager sight, and everyone fell over themselves attempting to make it into the room.
The room they found themselves in was not one they had been in before. The walls angled towards them sharply, and all of the wooden rafters could be seen clearly. Boxes and furniture and trunks were crammed in and pressed against the walls in the shadows. Everything was dirty and grimy, and illuminated in the soft moonlight coming in through the shattered windows—and most noticeably, the gaping hole in the peak of the ceiling. The edges of the hole were jagged and sharp, and dripping wet. Small water droplets fell from a spine sticking out from the edge of the hole into a pool of water directly below. It looked as though something had hit the ground hard, because the floorboards were broken into shards and were sticking up in the air. It created enough of a divot for a puddle to gather, shining an ethereal moonlit white. Various other puddles and floorboard holes were around the room, causing it to look more like a spiny, tumultuous sea of wood than a floor. The teens didn't dare move out farther into the room for fear that their weight wouldn't be sustained.
They were in the attic.
They checked to make sure that the door behind them was still open, then waited.
Nothing happened, at first. Water drops slowly fell from the roof into the below puddle, illuminated white and blue like iridescent tears. Pip… pip... pip…
Gradually, they began to slow, time between drops getting farther between, until the very last drop was stubbornly clinging to the wood. For a few solid beats, the moonlight streaming through the hole hit it and irradiated it with a blinding white. But it too eventually it grew, and fell.
When it hit the water's surface, it did not sound like the rest of the drops. Instead, it sounded like the crunch of someone walking through wet snow. They peered at the water closely, attempting to determine why, and realized that the drop of water had frozen the puddle solid.
It was cold, in the attic. Very cold. Enough that the teens could see their own breath.
But it was not that cold.
Frost started to spread across the ground, spiraling outwards, reaching other puddles freezing them over—cursch, cursch.
They turned to the door for escape but the ice was faster. As much as the teens had learned, the house did too. They did not get away this time. It raced past their feet, an arctic wind blowing the door shut before Kwan's fingers could reach the handle and the searing frost binding the hinges and and the lock. He reached the door but it was too late. Nothing budged. The temperature continued to drop, and Kwan was forced to release the knob before he damaged his fingers.
The room chilled at an unimaginable rate. Before it had been nippy, stabbing at their ears and fingers and noses. Now it was a powerful monster, strong enough to drive spikes of ice straight through their chests and infect their whole beings with a shattering, wracking shiver. They huddled together, gripping each other with stiff, unfeeling fingers and blowing warm air on their clasped hands. Weakly, they shouldered against the door, the frost creeping up their legs from the ground, and crystalline designs working their way up their arms and throats and leaving a painful chill on their necks. The air was dry and cold, so cold that they could feel it in their chests when they breathed in and eventually so cold that it hurt when they breathed it in. They had to abandon their banging on the door and huddle near the ground.
"Is this how we die?" Dash asked in a wheezy, breathy voice.
Kwan coughed. No, no this couldn't be it. He looked around one last time, desperate for anything that could gift them freedom. The hole in the ceiling. The shining, gleaming, frozen puddles. The darkly shadowed boxes lining the walls. What?
Realization struck him, warm hope curling in his chest. "No," he rasped. "No."
He pulled back from the group, the frigid air rushing in to meet him. Challenging him, daring him to move. It was colder when he was alone, and even subtle movements sent it blowing against his face. He sated himself with the knowledge of freedom and warmth as he began to run towards the center of the room, the ground ominously creaking beneath his steps. He jumped as high as he could, and cannonballed straight through the floor.
He fell for what felt like too long before his back landed on something hard—but not the ground. It was angled, and he slid forward, his feet jamming against some sort of metal and glass structure, the sound of tinkling bells ringing out when his feet hit it. He was cramped and uncomfortable—but he didn't care. Kwan closed his eyes and relished in the heat around him, the feeling of his fingers, and full breaths. He could feel the frost that had touched his skin thawing, the warm water droplets sliding around to the back of his neck and wetting his shirt.
If he had been thinking properly—or been thinking at all—he would have thought to move, but he wasn't, so he didn't. One of the girls landed on his face—not Dash, they weren't heavy enough to be Dash—because obviously they were following close after him. It painfully jolted him back to his senses, and prompted him to grab her around the waist and roll both of them off whatever they were on before the next person came down.
Once he stood up and opened his eyes he found it was Paulina in his arms, so he gently set her next to him. Though she was still shaking something terrible, and he decided that she might want to put her warmth above her pride right now. He slung his arm around her shoulder and let her press into him.
"Y—you—your lett—tterman j—jacket is c—cold," she stuttered. He unzipped the front and pulled one of the arms off so she could press into his t-shirt instead.
Star and Dash were already out by the time Kwan looked up again, huddled together in similar fashion, standing a bit closer to the table than Kwan and Paulina were. They had landed on the broken table. They were in the dreaded dining room.
It wasn't long before Dash spoke up. "We need to get out of here right now."
"How?" Kwan asked.
Dash turned to resolutely glare outside, where the grass could be seen but 10 feet away. "The window."
Kwan's eyes widened. "That's dangerous! You wanna jump out the window?!" Not only was it full of razor sharp glass shards, but who says they're even on the first floor...
"Yes! Being in here is dangerous!"
"But Dash—"
"This house is trying to kill us!" he shouted.
The girls bit their lips. He was right. This was not a haunted house. A haunted house would insinuate that there is something inside the house. No, there was nothing in this house but them. There didn't need to be. The house would have driven away any ghosts long ago because the house itself was an insane, murderous death trap.
Kwan could see the majority was being swayed. He began to plead— "But—!"
A large crack echoed throughout the room and drowned out his word. It resonated in the walls and in their ears and instinctively, they all tensed and looked to the table—but it wasn't the table. They looked up.
It was the ceiling. A thick, ugly line, snaking its way across the ceiling above their heads. Plaster dust started to rain down as the crack spread, stretching towards both walls.
"I'm getting out of here!" Dash yelled, already running towards the large window. The girls followed after, Kwan threw an arm out.
"Wait—!"
Dash leapt, bringing his arms up to cover his face and breaking through the wood and remaining glass in a hailstorm of sharp noise, accompanying the deep, rolling, thunderous ceiling. Splintered wood and glass flew everywhere, the girls hardly paying it any mind as they jumped too. Kwan gaped, horror filled, but was broken from his supor as a chunk of ceiling finally loosed itself and hit the ground next to him.
He had a choice—face inevitable death in the house (whether ceiling of otherwise), or take his chance out the window.
Kwan ran for the window, sprinting and flying through the pre-existing hole and out into the sky.
At the peak of his jump, he felt the weightlessness that can happen when you jump really high—when you are hanging in the air and there is nothing grounding you. The second that exists before gravity kicks in and takes hold of your internal organs and drags you back to earth. That second felt a lot longer than he was used to; and he didn't know if it was due to the adrenaline shooting through his veins, or something else. In that second, he heard the ceiling crash down in the room behind him—the shattering of the chandelier and the crushing of the chairs—as if the house was angry that its four victims had managed to escape.
But in the next second, when his stomach slams back into his throat, and Kwan finally looks down at the ground much too far beneath him, and he his finally falling, he realizes that perhaps it was not in anger, but triumph.