Haunted Order

Jason had been working at Fireside Pizza for six months, and though the hours were long, the job was predictable: take the order, deliver the pizza, collect the cash. Simple. That’s why the order for 113 Ashwood Lane stood out.

The address had been flagged in the delivery system with a note: "House burned down. No deliveries." Yet, every couple of weeks, the same order came through: one large sausage and mushroom pizza. The caller always sounded the same—soft-spoken, almost mournful—and paid online with an unusually large tip.

Most drivers ignored the order, marking it as a prank. But on this cold October night, Jason was desperate for extra cash.

“I’ll take it,” he told the shift manager.

“You sure?” The manager raised an eyebrow. “That place gives me the creeps. Burned down ten years ago. Nobody lives there.”

Jason shrugged. “It’s just an address. Easy money.”

As Jason drove to 113 Ashwood Lane, he felt a strange heaviness in the air. The streets were eerily quiet, and his GPS glitched, recalculating repeatedly. By the time he reached the address, the hairs on his arms stood on end.

The house—or what was left of it—was a charred skeleton. Blackened beams jutted into the sky, and the air smelled faintly of ash, even after all these years. Weeds grew wildly around the foundation, and an old mailbox leaned precariously near the road.

Jason stepped out of the car, pizza in hand, and hesitated. He felt like he was being watched, though the street was empty.

“Hello?” he called, his voice echoing unnaturally in the cold night air. There was no response, but he swore he saw a flicker of movement in the shadows of the ruins.

He placed the pizza on the cracked concrete steps and turned to leave.

“Wait,” a soft voice whispered behind him.

Jason froze. Slowly, he turned back. A figure stood on the steps—a woman in a tattered dress, her face pale and blurred, as though he were seeing her through fogged glass. Her hair moved gently, though there was no breeze.

“Did you bring it?” she asked, her voice wavering.

Jason’s throat was dry. “Yeah, I… I brought the pizza.”

The woman stepped closer, her movements jerky, like an old film reel skipping frames. “It’s for them.”

“Who?” Jason asked, his voice barely above a whisper.

She pointed to the ruins. “They’re hungry. They’ve been waiting.”

Jason turned to look at the wreckage. Shapes began to emerge—shadowy figures slipping through the broken walls, their hollow eyes glowing faintly. They moved slowly, crawling over the debris, their movements inhuman and wrong.

“Leave it,” the woman urged. “And go.”

Jason didn’t need to be told twice. He backed away, his heart pounding, and bolted for his car. But as he reached the driver’s seat, he realized he’d dropped his phone. It lay on the ground near the steps, its screen flickering.

“No, no, no,” he muttered, glancing between the ruins and the phone. The figures were getting closer to the pizza box, their skeletal hands reaching out. Jason took a deep breath and sprinted back to grab his phone.

The moment he touched it, he felt a hand on his shoulder. He turned, coming face-to-face with a child—her face half-burned, her eyes filled with tears. “Don’t go,” she pleaded, her voice echoing with pain. “Stay with us.”

Jason yanked free and ran to his car, slamming the door shut. As he sped away, he looked in the rearview mirror. The figures stood in the middle of the road, watching him, their faint glow visible even as he turned a corner.

When Jason returned to the pizzeria, he was pale and shaking. He told the manager what happened, but the older man just sighed. “That’s why we don’t take orders for Ashwood Lane. That fire… it killed an entire family. They say the parents and two kids haunt the place, waiting for someone to bring them what they never had that night—a last meal.”

Jason quit the next day.

Weeks later, another driver saw an order come through for 113 Ashwood Lane. He laughed it off, thinking it was a prank, and ignored it.

But Jason couldn’t ignore it. At night, he’d wake up to the sound of soft whispers and the faint smell of burning wood. And no matter where he went, he swore he could see hollow eyes glowing in the shadows, always watching.

Waiting for him to come back.