First Time Fright
First Time Fright
By Greentea82
Corey stopped walking and crossed his arms. He observed the bedroom he stood in and found it had at least an attempt to look dilapidated. A rusty bed stood against a wall. On it lay a white cloth dummy with a potato sack for the head. The room contained nothing else.
He had no idea how far along they’d walked through the Terror Farms, long corridors of rooms made of nothing more than obvious wooden pallets stuck together. It was room after room like this one. Bedrooms, bathrooms, with a set piece of broken furniture and dirty mirrors that gave a derelict feel, like many old shacks connected to each other.
Golden oldies played from a scratchy record player that echoed everywhere. Every once in a while, from the hole in the wall windows made of broken planks an actor or actress dressed as he assumed a member of the evil demented family who owned the shacks, peeked in and rasped something at them.
Beside him, Avery said nothing but remained impatient, as if waiting for something to happen as well. Corey could tell a lifetime of horror films had jaded his younger brother to most attempts to be frightening that even an elaborate jump scare wouldn’t affect him.
In yet another bedroom, a glowing eyed scarecrow wedged into a closet coughed up stock spooky sounds through a staticky speaker. It didn’t spring upright to scare, rather it sat there like a display at the Spirit costume store. Corey rubbed at his temples hard.
“You’ll see me in your nightmares!” An actor wearing a platinum curly wig and heavy red and black flannel shirt and slashed trousers that looked as if mauled by a bear made growling noises at them in plain sight from the next room.
Corey held back a chuckle at the less than half-hearted attempt. Avery burst outright into laughter at the actor, who retreated to a corner still growling at them as they hurried on eager to leave the experience.
Once out of the Halloween attraction that took them all but ten minutes to walk through, they were back in the parking lot.
“Well that sucked.” Corey shook his head. “I can’t believe we paid fifteen bucks each for that, that was the shittiest thing ever. Seriously what was that, they weren’t even fucking trying.”
“The last guy though,” Avery laughed again.
“I mean what was that? Corey felt his head get hot. It happened just before he felt a rant coming on.
“There was nothing scary about it. Are they afraid of what actually scaring people? Getting sued by someone who was too frightened?”
They drove home in silence. In their neighborhood Corey noticed the significant lack of decorations on the doors of homes.
“How was the haunted house?” their mom asked, watching tea boil on the stove as they entered the kitchen.
Wordlessly, Avery trotted off to his room excited to watch a new horror movie he’d gotten.
Corey noticed the plastic package strips of assorted candy still unopened on the kitchen table.
“Did any Trick O’ Treaters stop by?” Corey asked.
“No we didn’t get anyone. The doorbell didn’t ring. It’s been like this for years. We don’t even put out any candy in those…remember those orange plastic pumpkins when you were little?”
“Yeah.” Corey walked languidly to his room. Drained, he plopped himself down in his torn office chair and stared at his classic 70s and 80s horror and sci-fi movie posters that left no space on his walls, like the billboard event postings in a music store. His mind drifted off, and he thought back to the first haunted house he’d ever been to.
They stood in a line that stretched all the way past the post office, the law offices, and around the Green Square, the town of Merrimack’s own small central park. Four friends, unrecognizable in their Halloween costumes, a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle, a Freddy Krueger, a zombie, and a mutant hockey player, all awaited entry to the haunted house at the Merrimack Opera House at City Hall. Every year it was hosted by the local fire station, where earlier they had stopped there for candy apples and hot cider.
The cold New England autumn air and the topic of Nintendo games caused Corey to be all smiles, as he fidgeted back and forth.
“The Wily Stages are tough, especially the Dragon.” Ben confessed.
“Have you beat the game yet?” Scotty asked.
“No. I’m stuck on the fourth boss. The one with the wall guns.”
“What game are you talking about? Mega Man 3?!” Corey piped in.
“No dummy, Mega Man 2. That boss is a cinch. You use Crash Bomb on the walls to destroy them first, then use Metal Blade on the guns,” Scotty explained. The boss’s life bar won’t start going down until you start hitting the guns.”
“But I always run out of Crash Bomb.” Ben complained.
“If you run out them, you just die, then do the level again. Fill the energy tanks of the weapon back up all the way. When you fight the boss again, the walls you knocked down won’t be there anymore you won’t have to kill those ones, you’ll have enough to blow up the rest.”
Corey had no idea what Scotty was talking about. He had never made it that far in Mega Man 2. He borrowed the game from Ben on the weekend his friend went on a family trip to visit some national park. He always died over and over again on the Bubble Man and the Quick Man levels. Your character of Mega Man took several hits from enemies before he ran out of energy and died. But those levels, every death to a spike or laser beam was unique. It was instantaneous. When they happened, it caused him to jump up from sitting on the carpet and feel shivers down his spine. He shuddered at the sounds of the laser beams. They were like some horrible vacuum noise.
Corey frowned under the Ninja Turtle mask of Michaelangelo. Scotty was better than him at the game? The rubber band dug into his ears around his hair ready to snap. The orange bandana ’ed turtle’s dark green face looked as if the mouth was shouting Cowabunga!
“Did you guys go trick or treating yet?” Scotty asked.
“No, me and Corey are gonna to go after this.” Ben being blunt and vague as ever.
“How much candy do you think you guys will get?”
“We’re gonna hit every house!” Corey exclaimed.
“Shut up...Don’t tell them our plan.” Ben elbowed Corey.
“Ow, that hurt!” Corey felt the sharp plastic of the costume’s serrated elbow pad in his side.
“You’re gonna walk from house to house? I’m just going to have my mom drive me around.” Scotty grinned.
“Wanna go egging later?” Levi butt in his face into the circle with a vulpine smile.
“We toilet papered Mr. Marigold’s house last year,” Scotty admitted.
Scotty lied. Corey felt sure of it. He believed Scotty to be a troublemaker, but it was only because Scotty swore a lot, talked tough to the other kids at school, and he seemed to love sports more than school, or anything else.
“Stay up all night and watch horror movies? Freddy and Jason ones.” Scotty pointed at his Freddy mask.
“Your parents let you watch them?” Corey exclaimed.
“My dad told me he had Scarface on TV next to me when I was in the crib.”
Corey didn’t know of any Scarface. Was that a horror movie?
“I saw Child’s Play at my cousin’s house.” Corey lied. He remembered they had tried to watch Child’s Play, but his mother had grabbed the VHS and hid it or likely threw it away.
“Chucky!” Scotty yelled. “Where the guy uses voodoo turns into the doll and starts to murder everyone. Yeah, that one’s wicked scary!”
“All right, lines moving!” Scotty punched his clasped hand.
The four shuffled up behind a mom and dad with their kids dressed up as Ghostbusters complete with proton packs. Soon they stood on the steps to a building they’d never been in before because no kid ever visited City Hall or attended its Opera House otherwise. A ghastly light gleamed from inside and cobweb covered doorways gave way to a large vampire who loomed silently over the large oval reception desk. He remained silent and motioned his arm to the right of him.
“Come thisss way! Heh! Thisss way!” Corey recognized Igor who stepped around the desk bent over crooked, laughed crazily, and waved his arm as he beckoned the friends to follow as they joined a group of six other attendees.
They were ushered down a hallway with paintings of dark landscapes and old ancient caretakers with eyes that seemed to follow them as they went. They took the wide crimson carpeted stairs down. There was spiderwebbing everywhere and the sounds of insects crawling. The Igor creature instructed them to scrunch together to make room for everyone in the antechamber.
Corey couldn’t see his friends in the darkness to the left or right of him but straight ahead the stage lit up with yellow light. It appeared to be some sort of living room with a couch and wooden knobbed television in the background with static, and a dining table. On the table was a lump concealed with a black cloth.
Right of it stood a tall man in all black leather clothes, black gloves, and a dark grated mask. From his arm dangled a long sharp teethed blade.
Corey watched as the foreboding figure whisked away the black cloth. A man’s head cut off by the table at the neck struggled around and tottered side to side. A person, not a puppet like he’d seen on morning TV shows.
“He is our prisonerrrrrrr. We caught him in this house where he wasn’t supposed to be. Now he will be part of the show!” The standing man pulled a cord that reminded Corey of when he started up the lawnmower. The man revved up his chainsaw.
Corey had never heard a real chainsaw before. His dad had only ever used an axe to chop wood. But it looked and sounded real enough to him. His heartbeat faster.
The chainsaw blade roared and dropped down on the thin haired scalp of the struggling head. The eyes of the man grew wide as he spewed fake blood from out his mouth.
The kids and their parents in the audience groaned in disgust, some in amusement, as everyone played along.
Corey could not believe what he saw. Was the man…the chainsaw? Part of him knew it was a haunted house, the other part was frightened the same would happen to him and his friends if they stayed. The scene and the light cut out as one and an evil laughter accompanied the replaced darkness.
The group ushered themselves through a maze before it became a castle stone archway. Ben rushed through the paper streamers that hung like a gate as he did when he played flag football at school.
The group came to a small room lit by fluorescent blue light with a table like one in a school cafeteria.
“Now here we have a table of treats!” A hulking lunch lady with a blood-covered apron waved a hand across the dark table upon which sat four plastic bowls, each fully covered with cloth except for an invisible slit through their center.
“Place your hand in the bowls, IF YOU DARE!” The lunch lady let out a shrieking laugh.
One by one, each of the willing dunked a hand into the mystery containers, and as they did, she revealed what the bowls contained.
“These are the eyesssss of the deceased!”
Corey felt chilled, round, squishiness. They were eyeballs, his mind told him.
“These are the wormmmmmms that eat their eyes!”
Corey hesitated on the next one. His fingers felt long strings like a bowl of wriggling snakes.
He winced and jerked his hand back, cold water splashing out. He could deal with anything but snakes. If he heard so much as hissing, he’d run out of there screaming.
Levi went next, rummaged around the same bowl with a grin.
“Mostaccioli Monday night! Tues-days Rig-a-toni! Levi sang. The four friends joined in the song.
Vermicelli Thursday night!
Fridays Fettuccini! Sa-tur-days lasagna night! Sundays Price Rotini! Every, every, every day’s a Prince Day!”
The jingle for the Prince’s dried pasta commercial got a laugh from everyone, including the bloody aproned lunch lady.
“Ah, the zombie is quite the smart alec eh?!” Her voice trailed as they left the room.
The maze turned dark again. They barely knew if they took a left or right at points and cowered with anticipation. A light flashed and a secret door in the wall flipped with a bang. From it a mummy groaned and reached out its long musty arms. Corey heard a scream followed by relieved laughter from the group ahead of them. The mummy spun back around into the wall as quickly as it revealed itself.
When the hallway became almost silent with only the slight ambience of the squeal of bats and the beating of wings, Scotty turned to the group.
“Mummies aren’t that scary. It’s just a wrapped dead person.”
“A pharaoh,” Corey corrected.
“Ooo think you’re smart huh? Oooh a Fare-Oh! Still not scary. Like toilet paper wrapped, just pull the wrapping, or just set them on fire.”
Corey smirked at the slight bit of annoyance in Scotty’s voice. He thought of the Gods of Ancient Egypt with glee. Ra, Osiris, Anubis, and Set his favorite one.
The maze became illuminated with the quick flashing of strobe lights. Corey examined the texture of the walls slightly and felt the illusion somewhat break. He noticed the wrinkles of the black trash bags covering them.
“Beware of the wolf!” They all heard the mysterious guiding voice warn. A howl ran throughout the maze.
The strobe flashed slower. From the corridor a giant black furred werewolf in tattered rags charged down at their group. Corey screamed when it appeared right in front of them, furred hands and raised large claws, eyes and teeth in fury. He wandered past it still startled, almost if by magic, the werewolf seemed to move very slowly in each flash. So how did it get to them so fast?
Down the hallway it became pitch once more, and it sounded like something was boiling. Lava? Corey thought. Crows cawing, and then a long cackle.
“My dear pretties, you will all be part of the witches brew!” From a nook behind yellow weeds, thorny thickets and a smoking cauldron over a glowing fire stepped a lanky witch.
Corey instantly recognized her under the warty nose, wrinkled face, and long chin.
“Hi Mrs. Bloomington.” Corey greeted her.
“Hi Corey!” The beaming witch gave an excited quick wave of a gnarly wart filled hand. “Don’t get too scared now.” She smiled, her voice chipmunk-like and enthusiastic.
“I won’t.” he promised with a smile on his face.
Fog amassed by their feet as they entered a graveyard where the grey graves rumbled and shook and lightning flashed in the purple sky.
“The names of the Beatles! On the graves!” Ben exclaimed.
Corey heard the delight in his friend’s voice and knew the Beatles had something to do with rock ’n roll, but that was it. He was still excited and happy for his friend.
A rickety wooden sign marked their Way Out. They exited the house and found themselves outside the back entrance of city hall.
“That was AWESOME!
“Whoa that was scary!”
They all celebrated and talked over each other, no one knew who said what, until Levi spoke.
“I saw Mr. Greene there he was the guy in the weird alien mask hanging upside down from the ceiling. Aha, ruined it for ya. It’s our history teacher not really an alien.”
Quit it Levi, don’t ruin it!Cory wanted to say aloud. He didn’t see the alien, or Mr. Greene the case being, but realized then the house had more to it than what he’d seen. He wondered what else he missed along the way.
Levi and Ben walked ahead, talking about baseball players who they followed while Corey decided to hang back. He felt a slap on his left arm and turned spooked. Beside him, Scotty cracked a smile at being able to cause him to jump.
“You talk about video games all the time. What’s with that?” It sounded more like a statement than a question from Scotty. “Remember you brought that notebook to Mrs. Bloomington’s class? Did you draw all those Mario levels?”
Corey dropped his head and felt his cheeks go red.
“Hey, don’t be embarrassed they’re really good. I just don’t know anyone else who likes Nintendo games that much. You should come play basketball with us after school this Monday me and Ben and Roy, and Eric.
Corey nodded completely disinterested. He already knew he didn’t want to, but still really glad Scotty asked him.
The four friends went their separate ways and spent the night in costume black trashbag in hand Trick or Treating through Merrimack.
Corey awoke from his nap and wandered into the dark living room, switched on the tv, and mindlessly flipped through the channels. On a local news channel an advertisement ran for the Scream-A-Thon in the city happening on Halloween night through the first week of November. The production value looked more elaborate than any haunted attraction he’d ever seen, a film production of an evil funhouse with mirror mazes, shocking death row prisons, and an old manor. He watched the captured footage of the attraction, of the terrified faces, screams, and laughter of the onlookers.
He felt a moment of joy return.
