She woke up in darkness. Her skin was covered in icicles, and with every breath she took they broke off bit by bit. There where cuts all over her skin, stinging like a wasp. She didn’t remember how she got here, why she was here, or where she was before. For all she could see, it was just a small attic inside a house. Except there was no way out. Peering through the darkness, she could make out a small figure in the corner.

“Hello? Is there anyone there?” her breath shook as her hand shakily moved towards the shape. As she touched it, a shiver of fear ran through her. She stumbled back, a scream itching at her throat. The realization hit her like a rock. She was going to die here. It could be a fake… but the skeleton felt so real. There was a skeleton in the corner of the incredibly small room, and she was going to end up like that. The cold consumed her and almost made her black out.

“I’m… not… I’m not going to die here!” she mumbled with confidence. Determined to find a way out, she looked around. There was no light, so she couldn’t see. Then, she got an idea. She crawled around slowly, looking for an exit. When she ran her hand against the unseen wall, she felt a bump. Her heart surged with hope as she pushed and pushed her shoulder against the wall. Slowly but surely, she heard a creak as part of the wall fell out. She quickly crawled into the room only to realize that… it was the same as the other. Same skeleton in the corner, same bump in the wall. She pushed against it until it fell out like the one before. She hurried into the new room, now nervous, for she was scared it would be just like the other one. It was exactly the same.

With tears in her eyes, she ran towards the bump and rammed her shoulder through. She was no longer suffering from the cold, she just wanted out! She was sobbing now, desperately running through door and door and door. She cried out, with one last wave of hope, and pushed the secret door. This time, light started to flood out of the walls. Smiling, she ran out and… there was darkness. Darkness for a long, long, time.

She woke up to the blinding light of a hospital. There where dozens of people around her, hustling and bustling about. Suddenly, she heard someone say,

“She’s awake! We need backup here!” Doctors suddenly rushed to her bed, inserting needles and taking blood tests. Later that week, she was released from the hospital and went back to her house. This is when she learned what really happened to her.

Apparently, while she was trick-or-treating she had wandered away from the path and towards a creepy, old house. Her friends had tried to get her to come back, but she had started to run. When she had finally made it to the house, reports said that she went inside and wasn’t found for another three days. Police had searched the house, but only found a skeleton in the attic. At first, they thought it was her, but on closer inspection, they realized it was just a decoration. After about two days, they found her laying in the backyard of the house. They also found a hole in the attic. It was speculated that she had somehow gotten trapped there and busted a hole in the wall to get out. She was rushed to the hospital and lay unconscious for the next day.

She was shocked to hear this story, for this was nothing like her experience. She was afraid to tell anyone this because they might have sent her away. So she kept her mouth shut and went along with the story. She claimed she was perplexed by the house, went inside, got trapped, and had to bust her way out. After that, there where almost a hundred reports of the same thing happening all over the world. Someone went inside a creepy house and was found three days later laying in the back yard. The thing that really sent shivers up her spine was that in all the pictures, the house was exactly the same.

In all the pictures she could see a shadow, sitting on the house, and tilting its head towards the camera.

Acknowledgements/Sources:

Amelia DesMarais helped with the editing of the story, the picture shown was found on Google Images.