A Dark and Stormy Night

It is a dark and stormy night as a group of five friends arrive at the steps of decrepit mansion. The place is practically falling apart, and the jock—smarter than he looks—says to the rest, “Dude! This place is wicked!”

You may have guessed that I’ve deceived you, for it wasn’t smarts that led to his apt description of the place—and, in case you have any doubts, his next words confirm his utter stupidity: “Let’s check it out!”

He, of course, speaks only in exclamations.

The first to respond is the hot cheerleader wearing tight-fitting clothing, who rushes to his side, giggling maniacally as she skips toward him.

She probably said something, too, but she rarely says anything intelligent, so no one pays attention.

They beckon for the others to follow as they turn toward the door, but the next person in the group, a geek with curly red hair, objects. “Wait,” he shouts in a nasally voice, “That’s a terrible idea!”

It seems like no one’s listening, but the fourth person, another girl—also hot, though no one’s ever told her that—hears it all. She has been hesitating because she secretly has a crush on the jock but isn’t an idiot.

Just a moron of the “oxy” variety.

The geek’s objection has convinced her to also speak up, but instead she speaks down, toward the ground, “Yeah, I think Harry’s ri—”

She’s cut off as the final member of the group, the sole white guy, says, “Yeah, sure,” and hurries to catch up to the rest.

The jock shouts, “Race you to the basement!” and runs through the front door as the cheerleader rushes after him, still giggling. The white guy shouts, “You’re on!” and runs to the side of the house, where he’s seen the rather obvious entrance to the cellar. He thinks, Heh, that stupid jock is too stupid to see the stupid entrance to the stupid basement—or something like that—and pulls at the cellar doors. They’re locked.

The reticent Four worries that her crush is going to get himself into trouble and rushes grudgingly after him. Geek—Harry, apparently—sighs and rushes after her since he’ll do anything for her.

As these last two enter the house, the door slams behind them with a bang. Harry looks at Four—

You know what? I’m just going call her “Hoodie.”

—and sighs again, “Cue the tormented screaming…”

He clearly watches too many movies.

They indeed hear tormented screaming coming from outside.

The white guy, having found a stray lead pipe in the graveyard at the side of the house, has broken the lock on the doors to discover a rather explosive trap—a curse, in fact, but he doesn’t know that yet. Now he rolls around on the rain-wet ground, trying to put the fires out.

Harry and Hoodie tug at the door, but it’s locked, and they don’t seem to realize that it locks from the inside.

I thought you two were better than this…

Harry, trying to look manly in front of his crush, kicks at the door like they do in movies. The door, of course, does not like that at all, and it swings inward as his kick contacts its solid oak surface. His shinbone snaps and penetrates the skin of his leg, and he is tossed backward to lie in a bloody heap a short distance down the hallway.

Hoodie watches in horror as his body arcs through the air. Once he hits the ground, her eyes are drawn to the bloody heap that was once his leg. She wants to go to him to use what little she knows of first aid to save him, but instead rushes out the now-open door to retch on the lawn.

So much for those dreams of medical school.

The jock and cheerleader hear Harry wailing in the hallway and come running back downstairs to find out what’s happened. The jock sees Harry’s crumpled form on the floor and shouts, “Don’t worry! I’m a lifeguard! I know CPR!”

Harry objects, but the jock is already kneeling at his side. “I’ll save you, buddy!” Harry swings an arm at the jock but is cut off by a sudden KER-ACK in his chest as the jock begins chest compressions. This, of course, does not help things.

As the jock continues chest compressions, he realizes that he should put this on Instagram. He shifts his weight to do compressions with his left hand and pulls his phone out with his right.

The shift in weight causes him to press even harder, and he gets the recording started just in time to capture a final pained scream from Harry before the life fades from him. The jock continues compressions.

Meanwhile, with the jock bent over Harry, Hoodie bent over the porch railing, and the cheerleader giggling maniacally away in a closet upstairs—

She thinks all the screaming is just some pleasant dream.

—no one is watching the doorway, which the white guy shambles through. “White” is no longer an appropriate description of him, as his entire body is a blackened husk. And, though no one realizes it, the fires that consumed his body have not gone out. They’ve moved to his eyes.

He groans as he stumbles toward the jock, who, finally noticing him, says “Oh, hey dude!” and forgets about Harry entirely. He goes to give Dude a high-five, but when his hand meets Dude’s crispy skin, Dude once more bursts into flame, consuming himself and the jock. The two meld into a single burning mass and howl in rage.

The fire doesn’t seem to have any effect on the walls of the house, but Hoodie feels its sudden intense heat behind her and turns to face her burning friends. As Harry’s corpse is also consumed, something snaps inside of her, and she charges the creature, swinging her fists wildly about her.

A moment before she’s close enough to touch the creature, the heat and stench remind her that death is a rather undesirable state, so she dodges around the conflagrant mass and dashes down the hall and up the stairs.

The creature, having assimilated the jock and the not-so-white Dude, is now two-thirds stupid, so it decides to go for a pleasant jog in the rain instead of following the human into the gloomy mansion. In the rain, its flames quickly sputter out, and it resorts to composing whiny poetry about all the rain, darkness, and unfairness in the world.

Three exceedingly long poems titled “Rainy,” “Dark,” and “Unfair.”

The mansion is gloomy as Hoodie runs upstairs, taking the steps three at a time. She may not be a cheerleader, but she did run track the past few years.

As she approaches the cheerleader’s closet, she hears the giggling and slows to a stop. She checks behind her, but the monster is nowhere to be seen. As the giggling continues, she realizes its source and smiles evilly, a sudden idea popping into her head.

She walks as heavily as possible toward the door, and the cheerleader jumps out at her, giggling maniacally as she throws her arms around the person she thinks is the jock and plants a kiss on what she thinks are the jock’s lips.

Hoodie faces her and says, “Finally coming out of the closet, I see.”

They are, of course, bitter enemies.

This phrase causes some serious internal strugglings within the cheerleader, and though I certainly can’t say she actually thinks about it—that would be beyond her—she attempts to examine her feelings on the subject. Failing that, she gets frustrated and finally—blessedly—stops giggling as the flat of her hand connects with Hoodie’s face.

Hoodie, of course, does not like that, and knocks her flat with one punch.

With blood on her knuckles, Hoodie approaches the next door in the hallway. She still fears the thing from the hallway downstairs, but she doesn’t realize that the thing in the room before her can smell blood. Yet before her hand touches the doorknob, she’s jerked back by her hair.

“I’m not done with you yet!” the shrill voice cries from behind her.

She can apparently do more than just giggle.

She licks the blood from Hoodie’s fist and starts to chant,

Oh thou chaos, from whence the night is sprung,

By this blood be thy bonds undone

And as I bind myself to thee

I beg thy help; I set thee free!

A cute little summoning spell performed by an amateur. Since she forgot to perform the token sacrifice, a deep chill falls on the room as she completes the little chant, and the cheerleader feels as if her heart is caught in an icy grip—which, of course, it is.

The Lord of Darkness steps briefly from his domain, one hand lodged within the cheerleader’s chest to steal her soul. Hoodie, freed from the cheerleader’s grip, attempts to back away.

“Oh, hello again,” he says to the house, and then to the cheerleader, “I accept your sacrifice, foolish mortal.” A sudden eerie light fills the room as he removes his hand from within the girl’s chest, and Hoodie looks away. The cheerleader’s corpse drops to the ground, still breathing but not alive, and the Lord of Darkness fades slowly away, yet his voice enters suddenly into Hoodie’s mind, Thank you for your devoted service. He laughs wickedly as his voice, too, fades slowly away.

Hoodie shivers, suddenly aware of her wet clothing and the darkness of the hallway and the fact that she is now utterly alone.

That’s not actually true, but we’ll let her think it is for now.

She begins to sob, the weight of the night’s events closing in on her like the hungry spirits around her. Yet as the spirits hear her pitiful cries—they being all-too familiar with that sort of sorrow—they decide to leave her be for the time being. Instead, they inhabit the body of her old enemy.

The cheerleader is first inhabited by the homeless man who wandered into the house over forty years ago. He goes downstairs to the kitchen to have a bite to eat and, realizing that all the food has rotted away, leaves the girl’s body in a huff of despair.

The next to inhabit her is a con-woman who, twenty-five years ago, attempted to claim the house as her own. She searches the house for her hoard of ill-gotten gains and, upon finding it in its original spot, untouched by common thieves—she being a rather uncommon thief, by her own estimation—finding it untouched, she is at peace, and leaves the cheerleader’s body.

Since no one has ever found the treasure, the spirits are also unable to find the cheerleader’s body again. It soon realizes that it won’t be getting another soul to inhabit it, so it gets up on its own.

Meanwhile, Hoodie has finished crying and sits pondering her sorry state.

That is, of course, Kentucky.

When she realizes that her sulking hasn’t helped at all, she decides that the only sensible course of action would be to find out what’s in the other rooms of the dark and stormy mansion. She approaches the door closest to her, and as she reaches for the handle, she notices a scratching noise coming from within the room. Curious, she slowly turns the handle and pushes the door wide open.

She carefully peers into the room and sees an ancient-looking tome atop an ancient-looking desk with an obviously ancient quill pen scratching wildly away at the open pages of the book. She enters the room and notices a blazing fireplace in one corner of the room and a shatter-faced doll whispering to itself in another corner. She approaches the only truly interesting thing in the room.

Finally!

As she looks at the book, the quill races across the page. She reads a few lines from the page opposite the busy pen, “She begins to sob, the weight of the night’s events closing in on her like the hungry spirits around her. Yet as the spirits hear her pitiful cries—they being all-too familiar with that sort of sorrow—they decide to leave her be for the time being. Instead, they inhabit the body of her old—”

She’s interrupted by the page as it turns on its own to a new page that begins filling with the words, “She’s interrupted by the page as it turns on its own to a new page that begins filling with the words, ‘She’s interrupted by the page as it turns on its own to a new page that begins filling with the words, She’s interrupted by the page as it turns on its own to a new page that begins filling with the words,’” and so on.

While she reads and re-reads that bit, trying to make sense of it, the cheerleader’s body approaches from behind with a garrote, but before she gets it around Hoodie’s neck, the maniacal giggling gives her away, and she finds herself knocked out.

Once Hoodie’s finished dealing with the cheerleader, she returns to the book, which tells her that the only way to be safe from the evils of the house is to interrupt the quill and burn the book page by page while reciting her happiest memories. Something about light balancing out the dark.

She is skeptical, but she—

She’s doing it! I can’t believe I’ll finally be free! I guess I just need to wait for the last page to be burned.

The quill falls to the ground and continues scrawling on the creaky floorboards as Hoodie burns page after page. With the addition of each page, the flames grow hotter, until Hoodie can barely stand beside the fire.

Wait… It shouldn’t be getting hotter.

Are those really your happiest memories? I mean, 'passing the math test' is so... meh.

A tongue of flame leaps out of the fireplace and latches onto Hoodie’s hoodie. As the flames dance across her clothing, her thoughts turn to her greatest fears. The cheerleader’s jeering, vicious voice. Her plentiful insecurities. Her mother’s disappointed gaze…

Think happier! Puppies! Ponies! ANYTHING!

Bah! I wish you could hear—

H-hello? W-Where am I? What happened? Am I… dead?

After Hoodie’s body is fully consumed, a shiny new tome appears on the desk, the quill rising from the floor to once more scratch out its grim record. On the front cover is the image of a hoodied figure standing before a raging fireplace, with a boy seated on the floor beside the hearth, his head in his hands.