Splinter Lane

I knew I shouldn't of come here... I knew I should have heeded my older brother's warning and turned back...
Now here I am trapped in this awful house, terrified with two friends...
Maybe I should back up and start from the beginning.
My name is Merideth and I am a senior at Markham High. My six friends and I thought it would be fun for our last senior skip day to spend it in the house on Splinter Lane. The house has long since been deserted due to it's long, history, deep in the myth of it's lore. It is said to be haunted, it is said that unearthly apparitions and things that go bump in the night dwell therein. Every town has one, a tale of a house that grows into urban myth... So naive were we to believe it would be fun, despite the warnings we paid no heed to... Oh God, we should have listened... Well I can tell you from my very own experience that haunted does not even begin to describe this house. This house is pure EVIL!!! 
The six of us started out on this journey and we have spent 10 hours so far in this nightmare. Three of our friends have already met a gruesome and brutal demise. The last three of us remain huddled in the closet of a third floor bedroom awaiting whatever fate decrees us... I am getting off track again... We had all heard the stories, the horrible tales of people coming up here and never coming out... We thought it was all a hoax, a story to scare kids... Little did we know....
We hadn't been in the house 20 minutes before George decided we should go exploring and though nervous most of us agreed. After all, nobody wanted to be the scaredy cat and face the teasing of the others. Callie, Derek, and myself all agreed to search the downstairs, while Alex, Isabel, and George went off to check out the second floor. We agreed we would all meet up on the third floor and search that together then come back down stairs and have something to eat and a bit of a drink. 
This was when all the trouble started. We were searching the kitchen when this awful sound seemed to resonate through all of the walls in the house. It was like nails on a chalkboard mixed with a high pitched screech. The we heard the scream that chilled us to our bones. Derek quickly turned to me and Callie, fear in his eyes.
'That sounded like Isabel'
We all ran towards the stairs, a wave of foreboding washing over us. We desperately swallowed down our suspicions  and started taking the stairs two at a time when we heard her scream again, further unnerving us. The three of us tried to follow the sound but it seemed to be coming from every where, echoing off of every wall. Derek was leading us, he took us down a long dank hallway into the bedroom at the end of the narrow landing. He stopped, stock still, just inside the doorway, mouth hanging open, with a look of sheer terror in his eyes. As Callie and I entered the room we understood why. The room was a bright color of red, it looked as though it had been painted by the grim reaper himself. The room had the stench of rotting meat, flies buzzing about in the gloom. In the corner we found a lonely limb of a person, Callie threw up as events became too much for her. I closed my eyes praying this was not a piece of our friend Isabel. When I opened them again Derek was in the corner trying to examine the limb without touching it. Callie, having regained her composure, continued on through a doorway off of the bedroom. She returned shortly with tears in her eyes, looking as though she was going to hurl all over again. I tapped Derek on the shoulder to alert him and he nearly jumped through the ceiling. We tried to get Callie to talk but she seemed to have lost her voice, so he and I ventured slowly into the bathroom. As soon as we entered we wished we hadn't come in. Little pieces of flesh hung from every where in the room along with other organs, sinews and limbs... I think we even saw an eyeball... Isabel's screaming had long since stopped... We were too late... We turned, disgusted out of the grotesque bathroom as George and Alex entered the bedroom. They knew something was wrong right away. They didn't say a word and rushed past us into the bathroom, only to come right back out. Alex was ghost white and retching from the sight, George looked as though he had been dipped in flour. I was the first to say something...
'Where is isabel? And why weren't you all together?' George looked wounded by this and he opened his mouth to speak.
'She was right behind us when we went into the first bedroom at the other end of the hall... We turned and she was gone.' 
'We were searching for her when we heard that awful scratching and screeching.'
Alex added. 'We were going from room to room looking for her and we heard you all going down the hall in the other direction.'
I mumbled an apology. George shot me a look that could kill, then said 'I think the more important question is, if that's Isabel what the heck happened to her? There are body pieces and flesh every where.'
We all nodded in agreement. Derek then said 'I think we should all go back down stairs and see if maybe that isn't her and maybe the awful scratching scared her and she is hiding some where.'
We all agreed but we also knew, nothing scared Isabel, she thrived on this stuff, she was drawn to it. George then said.
'If she is hiding some where and just scared shouldn't some of us stay up here and look for her as well?' Derek agreed and the two of them decided we would stay split up as before. Derek, Callie and I went back down stairs, while George and Alex stayed upstairs searching from room to room. Callie still looked terrified as we made our way back down stairs. I told Derek that we should split up. Callie didn't seem to like this idea but she agreed to search the dining room while I searched the kitchen and Derek said he would search the ball room. All of these rooms pretty much connected but they all had doors that separated them. I could hear both Derek and Callie moving around in the other two rooms. This made me feel a bit better. I kept on searching the kitchen, I opened a door and an iron fell out at me... I thought I was having a heart attack but resisted the urge to scream when i saw what it was. I lifted the iron back into it's cubby and moved on the next big door. I could only guess it was a pantry by the looks of it. I slowly opened the door and when nothing jumped out at me, I opened it fully. What I saw made me wish I hadn't. Staring back at me through empty sockets was a petrified skeleton. It almost looked fake from where I was standing, but when I moved closer I could see that fake it wasn't... I decided I would continue looking, as this surely wasn't Isabel. I shut the pantry door and started to move on when the awful scratching, screeching noise started up again. I stopped in my tracks. I yelled out for Callie and Derek... No answer... I was alone... They couldn't hear me over the awful noise that seemed to come from every where at once. I went into the ball room off of the kitchen and found Derek there, cowering in the corner, covering his ears. I didn't want to startle or scare him any further, so I waited for the noise to stop. When it did, I yelled out for Callie... This released a high shrill scream from Derek as he quickly stood, spinning around startled. Callie didn't answer. Derek quickly swallowed hard and called for her with me as he stepped toward the doorway to the dining room. Before we even opened the door, we could smell the stench of rotting flesh once more. I braced myself for the same sight that had greeted us up stairs. But, there were no bits of flesh, no organs, no fluids dripping... Just Callies lifeless body swinging back and forth from the main chandelier in the middle of the dining room. Her face was abnormally contorted into a terrifying parody of a scream. There was a puddle of bodily fluids beneath her that seeped into the carpet, her tongue seemed to hang out of her mouth. Derek and I stood there, saying nothing, rooted to the spot, numb and scared to move... He finally turned to me and said 
'If we heard that so did Alex and George, why haven't they come to investigate?'
I shrugged and said 'Maybe we should go back up stairs and check on them, what if they have been hurt or... Worse?'
He nodded in agreement. We both looked up at Callie one final time before moving on. There was nothing to be done for her. Two friends gone, I was beginning to think we should leave... Now! First we had to find Alex and George and quickly before something horrible happened to them too.
As we got to the top of the stairs we were all halted by a wet, slurping, sucking sound that relayed so many vile images to our minds. We stood listening for a moment, I could see the disgust on Derek's face. I myself wanted to vomit,retching as the bile hit the back of my throat... I swallowed... I had to be strong... We couldn't tell where the sounds were coming from and again it seemed to be all around us. Each time we had heard a noise in this house since we arrived, we found another body of one of our friends... It was getting too much, I could feel my sanity slowly ebbing away... Just a glance at Derek's features, told me he felt the same... We seemed to realize this at the same time and Derek picked up the pace as we searched the closest room first. This room seemed to have been an office or library of some kind as there was a wall full of empty book shelves. We noted nothing was here, so we moved on to the next closest room. This room was still full of furniture, it used to a child's room. It was painted a baby blue and had an old style bed with darker blue sheets and comforters. Toy trains and trucks still lined up along the wall where a small wooden toy box filled with dusty old toys sat. It was almost as if this room was waiting for the little boy who once occupied it to return... Derek quickly moved on to the next room. This room was also furnished, a large four poster bed inhabited the middle of it. A dressing table with a pretty engraved mirror stood between the two main windows. A sitting chair that I could of slept for weeks in, sat closest to the doorway where we stood. We could still hear the grotesque, slurping sounds coming from all around us. To our intense relief, only one more room was left on this side of the hallway. Derek led the way into this room too. This room was unfurnished like most of the rooms in the house. It only housed a large walk-in closet. Derek speaking broke my reverie.
'Has that sick sound seem louder to you since we came in here?'
I nodded my head, not wanting to speak, afraid that whatever was making the sound would hear us. He glanced towards the walk-in closet. I must have looked terrified because Derek shot me a look that said 'come on get a hold of yourself'. I tried to pull it together and moved closer to the closet with Derek. He paused and looked back at me before opening the closet door slowly. We stood looking on in horror as a huge, slimy, serpentine, worm looking thing seemed to be devouring Alex's beaten but deceased body... I couldn't scream, I couldn't even tear my eyes away from the sight. My heart hammering against my ribcage lie a jack hammer... Derek and I stood, fixatated, watching as this thing seemed to be swallowing our friend whole. I was the first to move, I slowly backed away and out of the room into the hallway. I wasn't paying attention as I backed right into George, I let out a piercing scream that could have shattered glass or awoke the dead. I turned as he said
'Mer it's just me... What is going on?' 
'Alex is gone too... And so is Callie...' I stuttered, with tears welling up in my eyes. He shoved past me to stand with Derek as the last of Alex was being forced into the belly of this grotesque, massive worm. They both seemed to move at the same time as if the creature had just turned to look at them. They began to run, Derek grabbing my hand as he ran past me. We ran down the hallway to the massive staircase which led to the third floor. We didn't stop until we got to the top of the stairs. We could no longer hear the slurping as the thing was done devouring our dear friend Alex. I couldn't help but sob now, building to a racking cry at the desperation of our situation. All I wanted to do was leave this awful house. Derek and George looked very shaken themselves. George spoke first.
'Okay no more splitting up. We are all sticking together'. Derek and I nodded in agreement. Through my sobs I said
'I just want to get out of here, what is happening? I haven't seen anything odd or out of place. Why, and how are our friends dying?'
George put an arm around me trying to comfort me and calm my shaking. Derek  started laughing uncontrollably. Both George and I looked at him like he had lost his mind. George asked him
'Why are you laughing? 
'Because this is insane it has to be a prank.' he replied. 
'I saw Callie's lifeless body hanging from the chandelier, with a puddle of red piss under her. That seemed pretty f*****g real to me.' I yelled through my sobs.
He seemed to ignore me and my yelling and said to George
'Well lets finish up looking around and get out of here. I think almost 10 hours here is enough'. Both George and I seemed to be thinking the same thing but he was the one to finally say it.
'After everything we have seen here, you still wanna look around this horrible place?'
'Why not? You don't think we owe it to Alex, Isabel and Callie?' Derek shouted. He had a point, three of our friends had lost their lives to this house, we did seem to owe it to them to try and find out the truth. With that, George nudged me to follow Derek's lead. We continued on down another long hallway to the first room we came across on this end. The room was empty like most of the others.
'Nothing here' said Derek and turned and lead the way to the next room. Also an empty room. Nothing out of place so we moved onto the last room on this end of the hallway. It was a huge room with just a piano sitting in the middle. George being able to play was drawn to the instrument. He ran his fingers over it and mumbled how beautiful it was. Derek continued looking around while George admired the piano. I watched as Derek went into the bathroom off of the bedroom. I couldn't help but have a sense of deja-vu of how we found Isabel splattered all over the bathroom on the second floor. I was shaken out of my thoughts by George screaming. I looked up to find his hands were slammed in under the piano's lid where he had stroked the keys. He was looked feverishly at me, screaming...
'Lift it off my hands... Get it off my damn hands... I cant feel them.' I ran over to him and tried to lift it. It wouldn't budge it was almost like it was glued there. Derek came out and was trying to help me, prying it with a piece of broken floorboard he'd found. As we were desperately trying to lift the lid, with George still screaming, the piano began to play. We stopped abruptly and looked at George. he shot us back a look and begged pleadingly, tears in his eyes...
'It's not me... Please... Get my hands out of here...' All at once the music stopped and the lid lifted to free George's hands. His fingers broken, dangling bizarrely at odd angles in almost every direction...
'We need to get him to a doctor. We need to get out of here now.' I said to Derek. It was George who spoke up.
'I'm okay' he grimaced, biting back yet more tears, and said 'We'll go to the doctor after we finish the search... We owe this to our friends... Remember?' Derek and I nodded in agreement despite our concern for George and even our own terror... And so we left the room, nerves shot to shreds... Upon our departure, we heard the piano start to play again... To afraid to look back we ran towards the other end of the hallway, making it passed the stairway... Then all at once, the horrible screeching and scratching started too and pretty soon, the gut wrenching, sucking sounds too. We ran to the first room we found... It was empty to our immense relief. It only had a huge walk in closet. So we opened the door... Empty too... Phew!!!
Derek said 'we need to hide until the noises stop... We know what happens every time they have started before...'
George and I agreed. 
So here we sit three friends scared out of our minds, losing our sanity, trapped in this house of horrors on Splinter Lane.