It Happened on 10/31/23

Despite the NO TRESPASSING signs posted outside Crimson House, Cyrus Colton knew the young people would come, the way they always did every Halloween.

A Rite of Passage in this rural Kentucky county was to find out which teenagers were brave enough to spend a night in the haunted house. Mostly, it was boys who sought to explore the ramshackle building, but they occasionally brought their girlfriends.

Cyrus hoped there would be girls this year! He was feeling the old itch again. He had no intention of making one of his trips to the Big City— the cravings weren’t that strong— but he didn’t see the harm in spying on girls, as long as he didn’t act on his cruel impulses.

Cyrus was a paragon of self-discipline. The years with Hope and the boys had mellowed him. He wasn’t the same person he was when he was younger. It had been years since he’d slain someone. Not since July 5th, 2017, to be exact. Even serial killers believed in retirement! Mangling people and getting away with it was not exactly easy work. It was labor better suited to the young.

Hope, Cyrus’s dutiful wife of thirty-nine years was snuffed out by lung cancer in September, 2019. Her death came quickly and Cyrus was glad. In all the years he was married to Hope, he had only gone three times to the Big City to fetch a victim. He was quite proud of his restraint. It was a testament to his respect for his wife. Before he met Hope, he once butchered three women in a single night.

Cyrus thought he knew why the old cravings were back. He was lonely. He told himself that was only natural. Both his sons had long since moved away, Christopher to Texas and Charles to Arizona. His wife was gone. Even D'Artagnan— his beloved German Shepherd— had passed away six months ago.

Was it any wonder he was looking forward to a diversion?

When he was a child, he lived in Crimson House with his parents and his little sister. It was so long ago— back before Cynthia was committed to the asylum, back even before Cyrus started torturing small animals. He was happy in that house, Way Back When.

The winter when Cyrus was eleven years old (and Cynthia was seven), the county was hit by a terrible blizzard. It continued for four days straight, burying everything. Under the weight of all that snow, the roof of Crimson House partially collapsed. His family then lived for a while with his grandparents, until later the next spring when construction was completed on the Brick House. The newer residence was closer to the road, had better plumbing, better insulation, and employed an oil furnace, instead of the coal-burning contraption in the underground belly of Crimson House.

Eventually the entire farm— all eighteen acres of it— passed to Cyrus, after his parents were killed in a car crash.

Their original red house fell to rack and ruin.

When Cyrus was a young man, just twenty-two years old, he murdered his first victim in Crimson House. The dilapidated building was secluded, so far off the road that all the screaming didn’t matter. He was clumsy in his execution; later he would become much more proficient at inflicting pain, at prolonging the experience. But that first time, he ejaculated too quickly, killed the girl too fast, and it was over entirely too soon.

Afterwards, Cyrus took her nude body to the basement of Crimson House and laid her to rest. All total, there were fourteen women buried down there. He actually wanted to stop at thirteen, but he thought that was an unlucky number... so he killed one more.

Throughout his dormant years, when he was particularly happy being married to Hope, Cyrus would still occasionally have a craving. But generally he could trek back to Crimson House, spend a little quality time there reminiscing about the savage way His Girls had died, and then he'd be able to return to his civilized life.

Hope often urged him to have Crimson House torn down. She said it was an eyesore. Cyrus agreed it was ugly. But he also secretly thought of it as a shrine. Over the years, he’d done his best work there.

It was Cyrus himself who started the rumors about Crimson House being haunted. Or rather, it was Cyrus’ sons.

Both of his boys were the sensitive type. In that regard, they took after their mother. They were squeamish about blood. They were easily frightened. Both were jokesters, hiding behind laughter, but Cyrus knew the truth.

His sons were wimps.

When Chris and Charley were young, Cyrus fabricated the ghost story. To give it more impact, he would only share it once a year, on Halloween night. The first time he told the tale, he fully intended to scare the crap out of the boys and he succeeded beyond his wildest expectations. For weeks, both his sons were plagued by nightmares. Hope was furious.

The story had the desired effect. It kept his scaredy cat sons from poking around Crimson House. They avoided it. What Cyrus hadn’t anticipated was that Chris and Charley would recount the ghost story to their friends. Within a few years, a legend had taken root.

Now, nearly four decades later, the allegedly haunted house was still the stuff of local folklore. Every Halloween, the ghost hunters came.

Inside Crimson House, Cyrus had a place where he could hide, where he could spy on trespassers. He was always eager to hear new twists on his old yarn. Last year, the ghost story bore only the vaguest resemblance to the tale Cyrus originally told his sons.

Now, October 31st had finally come again. Cyrus left Brick House just before sunset. It was already very dark. The sky was overcast, the wind was picking up, and he could smell the approaching storm. As he trudged through the dying fields, bound for Crimson House, Cyrus said a silent prayer that the bad weather wouldn’t keep the kids away.

He was looking forward to the girls.

He hoped very much there would be girls.

⚡_________________⚡

Isabella Idlewine was a beautiful seventeen-year-old girl.

A junior in high school, she was enormously popular, but she was currently ‘between boyfriends.’ She broke up with Jacob Lauder two weeks ago when she caught him red-handed looking at another girl’s butt. It didn't bother her that much. Actually, it suited her just fine. By Christmas, she was confident that she would be going steady with either Rem Johnson or Taylor Whitfield. Right now, she couldn't figure out which of them was hotter so she was determined to enjoy her independence. A free spirit, she was cheerful, optimistic, bright, and funny. The only thing in the world that could turn her into a pissed-off bitch was if someone called her 'Bella'.

Isabella saw her first and only ghost when she was just nine years old. It wasn’t a frightening experience. She loved it. And ever since then, she’d been eager to see other spirits— other glimpses of the unseen reality that overlapped with the seen.

The specter that Izzy saw when she was a little girl was her grandmother’s. She had always been close to her Nana. On the night the old woman died, Isabella woke up from a sound sleep to find her grandmother sitting on the side of her bed. Her most beloved Nana told Izzy to always listen to her own conscience. "You've got a pure heart, baby girl. The best!" Her Nana told her that there were no limits to what she could achieve. "Dream big! Love a lot! Love whoever you want and love them fearlessly! Promise me," she insisted, "that you'll do whatever it is that makes you happy!"

Isabella promised. Her Nana then just faded away, her manifestation dissolving right before the young girl’s eyes.

Izzy climbed out of bed, went to her parents’ bedroom, and told them what happened. They didn’t believe her. They told her she’d been dreaming.

The next morning Grandma Cain’s dead body was discovered.

Even now, eight years later, Isabella could still vividly remember the conversation she had with her Nana’s disembodied soul. It was because of that wild experience that ghosts became her hobby. She voraciously read everything she could find on the subject. She was especially fascinated by tales of earthbound spirits— the victims of tragic demises who didn’t know they’d died.

That was why she was so annoyed with her friends when she discovered they were holding out on her! True, Isabella only moved here three years ago (she grew up in Illinois), but that was still two Halloweens that had passed without her hearing anything about the local haunted house!

There was disagreement amongst her friends about what happened there, particularly about the date of the events. Some said the murders took place in the 1970s; others said they occurred all the way back in the 50s. The only thing everyone seemed to agree on was it happened in January, during a bad blizzard. A man went nuts— cabin fever— and killed not only his nagging wife but also his six kids.

And while a few storytellers added knives or guns or even the occasional axe, most seem to agree on the method of execution. Unable to actually harm his loved ones, but also unable to go on living, the crazy man had chained up his family and threw open all the doors to his blood-red home. Then he got drunk, laid down in the snow, and died. His family eventually froze to death, but not before screaming for help. No one heard, of course. The house was too far from the nearest neighbors and the howling wind was entirely too loud.

Isabella didn’t know if the legend was true or not (she secretly suspected it wasn’t because she could never find any mention of it on the Internet,) but she enthusiastically tried to keep the faith!

Just after dusk on Halloween, Isabella and six friends snuck onto the Colton property, making their way back to the haunted house. All three of her girlfriends were nervous. Their boyfriends seemed horny— nothing new there!

Isabella was excited.

She had brought with her tools traditionally effective in summoning ghosts. In addition to a Ouija board and sandalwood incense, she was also carrying tom-toms, having read about how Voodoo priestesses in New Orleans used drums to call up spirits. She honestly didn’t think she’d see any apparitions tonight... but she remained hopeful!

In the west, lightning slashed the sky.

The young people always gathered in the living room.

According to the stories, it was there that the tied-up phantoms had been seen, screaming in vane to be released. The prevailing wisdom was visitors didn’t need to be here in January, near the anniversary of the murders. For the ghosts in Crimson House, it was always winter.

At some point in the distant past, someone brought seven metal chairs here, one for each of the alleged victims. But in recent years, the teenagers never used them. Generation Z sat on the hardwood floor.

One of the things that amused Cyrus was how the number of victims had grown. When he originally told the ghost story to his two sons, the death toll was limited to a woman and her two sons (mirroring their own family). Years ago, the death-count rose to five, although there were always debates about the ratio of murdered boys to murdered girls. He wondered how high of a death-toll would be discussed this year.

When the teenagers gathered, Cyrus was excited to see the girls outnumbered the boys! Jackpot! thought the delirious bedlamite inside his skull.

One girl in particular really captured his attention.

All of Cyrus’s previous pigeons were pretty petite darlings that he'd kidnapped from the faraway Big City. He was proud to say that he had never killed anyone from around here, even though he wanted to so many times. He credited his extraordinary discipline as the reason he'd never been caught. These young people were in no danger from him! He would never strike so close to home!

But he was tempted. The young blonde— he soon learned her name was Isabella— she was exactly the type of girl that Cyrus had always been smitten with. She was beautiful, every bit as attractive as the girls buried in the basement. He became aroused as he watched her. At his age, it was amazing how amorous he felt. He knew he would need to go to the Big City on a hunting trip after all! He might even go later tonight.

He wanted Isabella!

But he’d never give in to his desires.

It was too dangerous.

⚡_________________⚡

After lighting the incense, Isabella persuaded one of her friends to work the Ouija board with her.

A few minutes later, the clouds burst. There was a roof over their heads, but it was full of holes and offered little shelter. When splashing dribbles put out one of the guys’ blunts, he jumped to his feet, declaring, "Fuck this shit! I'm outta here!"

Isabella wasn’t ready to go yet. She had always been warm-blooded. Despite a radical drop in the temperature, she was not the slightest bit chilled. And she hadn’t tried her drums yet.

She decided to stay. Her friends tried to talk her out of it, but she was determined to try some tricks. She passionately wanted to make some form of otherworldly contact! If you couldn't see ghosts, perhaps she could at least connect with spirits through her Ouija board? For reasons she didn't understand, here in this house, the viel between worlds felt very thin!

And so her friends (and her friend’s friends) left her, not thinking for a moment that she was in any jeopardy. They all went running out of Crimson House, dashing into the rain, unknowingly leaving Isabella alone with a serial killer.

When he realized he was alone with Isabella, Cyrus began to sweat.

The old cravings were back with a vengeance, stronger than ever before. The girl had gotten herself wet, the ceiling above her was a sieve, and her sweatshirt was clinging provocatively to her chest. He imagined how much fun it would be to grab her, to strip her, to cut her. _Lightning sizzled and thunder roared. The thought of loving/torturing Isabella while the storm raged outside made Cyrus particularly randy. He yearned to hear her wails intermingled with the thunder.

The longer he watched her, however, the more confused he became, particularly when she began playing her tom-toms. She talked to herself, but in such a low whisper he couldn’t hear her, no matter how hard he strained. She began a circular march, traipsing around and around the old chairs. Her personal promenade brought her periodically near Cyrus’s hiding place: a closet that opened through another room, with a peephole opening on this main living room. When he finally was able to catch snatches of what this honey was chanting, he was startled to realize Isabella wasn’t talking to herself after all.

She was talking to the ghosts!

She was beseeching them to show themselves, to appear to her! Cyrus found that profoundly odd! He couldn’t understand why she would do such a thing.

Isabella continued to pace round and around the room, pounding her drums.

Cyrus’s confusion and curiosity dulled his passion. Feeling his lust wane ignited his anger. Then Isabella did something that caused Cyrus’s hot blood to go cold.

Isabella turned again to her Ouija board, but not before stripping off her wet sweatshirt.

Barely covered by a black lycra bra, she unknowingly pointed her big breasts at Cyrus. Sitting down on the floor, she bent over her planchette. Asking a series of YES or NO questions, she quickly established there was indeed a presence here in Crimson House— in truth, more than one ghost!

Thrilled, trembling with anticipation, Isabella asked the spectres to name themselves.

⚡_________________⚡

The elderly serial killer remembered all his girls, each and every one of them.

He remembered their faces, their names, the way they shrieked when they were hurt, the sounds of their gasps and gurgles when they were dispatched by his knives. They belonged to him.

When the Ouija board spelled out the name of his first victim, both her given name and her surname, gooseflesh popped up all over his wrinkled body.

But the hateful/lovable girl didn’t stop there! She began spelling out the name of his second victim, speaking each letter aloud as the planchette stopped on it.

That’s when Cyrus lost all self-control.

When Isabella wasn’t home by midnight, her parents checked with her friends.

Learning where she was last seen, her father went looking for her at the old haunted house. When Andy went inside and found her Ouija board and discarded sweatshirt, he became frightened. When he found her bloody underwear, he nearly panicked.

Hearing someone whistling, the terrified father crept down into the basement of what millennials used to call 'Scarlet House'. There in the cellar, he discovered Old Man Colton burying his sweet ravaged Isabella!

There was a struggle, but the outcome was never in doubt. Cyrus was worn out. Andy was grief-stricken and enraged— possessed by an adrenalin-fueled fury.

Cyrus-the-serial-killer was butchered with his own shovel.

While his body will be buried elsewhere, in a nearby cemetery, the evil essence of Cyrus Colton remains trapped in Crimson House. Like all the serial killer's thirteen victims, Isabella’s soul moves on, ascending into the Light.

It will be another seven years before Crimson House will be finally torn down. Throughout those years, many teenagers will come to it by night, hoping to catch a glimpse of the old man’s specter.

Psycho Gramp’s ghost is sometimes seen in the basement, whistling happily as he digs another grave.

I hope you enjoyed the horror show! 👻☝ If any of my 🎃 October stories 💀 scared the beeswax out of you🐝 ... or grossed you out 🤮 .... or in some way caused you to doubt your own sanity 🤪... MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!✔

⚡😁👍

Please share my disturbing shit with people you hate!

_____________Bolt ⚡