Part 1
A Halloween Horror Story
Part One: The First Ring
Chapter One: 11:59 P.M.
The doorbell rang at exactly 11:59 p.m.
Ivy froze halfway up the stairs.
Outside, the wind dragged dead leaves across the pavement, scraping them against the front door like fingernails. Orange light from the Halloween decorations flickered against the walls. Somewhere in the distance, a dog barked once, then fell silent.
Ivy glanced at the clock on the wall.
11:59 p.m.
Whoever was outside had chosen a strange time to visit.
She had spent most of the evening watching horror movies, eating the last of her chocolate, and waiting for her younger brother, Leo, to arrive. He had promised to bring a large plastic pumpkin filled with sweets for the neighbourhood children.
He had also promised to be home before ten.
Leo had never been particularly good at keeping promises.
Ivy sighed and walked towards the front door.
The doorbell rang again.
She stopped.
"Coming!" she called.
No footsteps followed. No impatient knocking. Nothing.
She reached the door and peered through the peephole.
The porch was empty.
A plastic pumpkin sat beside the steps, its crooked grin glowing orange in the darkness. Its little triangular eyes shone against the black night.
Ivy frowned.
That was strange.
She hadn't seen anyone place it there, and the porch light had been working perfectly all evening. Yet the pumpkin looked as though someone had switched it on moments ago.
Her phone vibrated in her hand.
A message from Leo.
LEO: Don't open the door.
Ivy blinked.
She typed a reply.
IVY: What?
The response came almost immediately.
LEO: I'm still travelling. Whatever you do, don't open the door.
Ivy stared at the screen.
For several seconds, she simply stood there, trying to understand why her brother was warning her about a door he wasn't even near.
Then she remembered the pumpkin.
IVY: Didn't you leave the pumpkin outside?
Three dots appeared.
Disappeared.
Appeared again.
Finally, Leo replied.
LEO: Ivy, I haven't been to your house tonight.
A cold sensation crawled up her spine.
She looked towards the pumpkin again.
It was still glowing.
Then the doorbell rang a third time.
Ivy jerked backwards.
A small voice came through the door.
"Trick or treat!"
She swallowed.
It sounded like a child. A very young child, perhaps six or seven years old.
"I'm sorry," Ivy called through the door. "I've run out of candy."
Silence.
She waited for little footsteps retreating down the porch.
Instead, something tapped against the door.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
Then the child spoke again.
"You're looking through the wrong hole."
Ivy stopped breathing.
Slowly, she turned towards the peephole.
She had not told the child she was looking through it.
She hadn't even made a sound.
Her phone vibrated again.
LEO: Ivy, listen carefully. Do not look through the peephole again.
Her fingers tightened around the phone.
IVY: How do you know what's happening?
His answer arrived almost instantly.
LEO: Because it happened to me.
Before Ivy could type another message, the lights flickered.
Once.
Twice.
The house fell into darkness.
And from the other side of the front door came a sound that made every hair on Ivy's arms stand upright.
A slow, dragging scrape.
Something was moving across the wood.
Something that sounded much too large to be a child's fingernails.
Ivy backed away from the door.
Then she heard a tiny giggle.
Not outside.
Behind her.
She turned so quickly that her shoulder struck the wall.
At the far end of the hallway, beneath the dead ceiling light, stood a small figure dressed in a white sheet.
Two black holes marked where its eyes should have been.
Its arms hung loosely at its sides.
Its head tilted slightly to the left.
Ivy couldn't move.
The figure lifted one hand.
And in the same small, cheerful voice she had heard through the door, it whispered:
"Trick or treat."
Chapter Two: The Child in the Hallway
Ivy tried to scream.
Nothing came out.
The figure remained at the end of the hallway, its white sheet hanging almost to the floor. It looked like an ordinary Halloween costume, the kind a parent might make from an old bedsheet.
Except the fabric was wet.
Dark patches spread across its lower half, dripping slowly onto the wooden floor.
Ivy took one trembling step backwards.
"Who are you?"
The child didn't answer.
"How did you get inside my house?"
Its head tilted further to the left.
"I rang the bell."
Ivy's heart hammered against her ribs.
"No. You were outside."
The child giggled.
"Was I?"
Ivy reached behind herself, searching for the wall. Her fingers found the light switch, and she flicked it repeatedly.
Nothing happened.
She pulled out her phone and switched on the flashlight.
The beam swept across the hallway.
The child was gone.
Ivy gasped and nearly dropped her phone.
She shone the light towards the staircase, the living room, and the narrow corridor leading to the kitchen.
Nothing.
Then her phone vibrated.
LEO: Are you still there?
Her hands shook as she typed.
IVY: Something is inside the house.
This time, Leo didn't respond immediately.
The silence stretched until Ivy could hear the blood rushing in her ears.
Then her phone rang.
Leo's name appeared on the screen.
She answered so quickly that she nearly dropped it again.
"Leo!"
"Where are you?" he whispered.
"In the hallway. Something was standing right in front of me."
"What did it look like?"
"A child. It was wearing a white sheet."
Leo stopped speaking.
"Leo?"
"Did you look at its face?"
"It had holes where its eyes should be."
A faint sound came through the phone.
It sounded like someone crying.
"Leo, what's happening?"
His breathing grew uneven.
"Listen to me. You need to get out of the house."
"How? The front door is right behind me!"
"Don't use the front door."
Ivy stared at the dark corridor.
"Why?"
"Because that's how it gets you."
A sudden thud sounded upstairs.
Ivy flinched.
Another thud followed.
Then came the unmistakable sound of footsteps descending the staircase.
Slowly.
One step at a time.
Leo whispered, "Ivy, are you alone?"
She looked towards the stairs.
A small shadow stretched across the wall.
"No," she whispered.
"Then who is with you?"
Ivy couldn't answer.
The footsteps stopped.
A child's voice floated down from the upper floor.
"Ivy?"
She clamped a hand over her mouth.
The voice sounded exactly like Leo.
"I'm home," it called.
Ivy stared at her phone.
Leo was still speaking through the receiver.
"Whatever you hear, don't answer it."
Upstairs, the footsteps started again.
This time, they were running.
"Ivy!" the voice screamed. "Open the door! It's cold out here!"
The phone crackled.
Leo's voice became faint.
"Don't let it hear you say my name."
Then the call disconnected.
Ivy stood motionless as the running footsteps reached the bottom of the stairs.
A small hand appeared around the corner.
Then another.
The child slowly stepped into the hallway.
Its white sheet was now perfectly dry.
It held something in its right hand.
A plastic pumpkin.
The same pumpkin Ivy had seen on the porch.
The child lifted it towards her.
Inside the pumpkin lay a mobile phone.
Its screen was illuminated.
A message was displayed across it.
UNKNOWN NUMBER: Happy Halloween, Ivy.
Beneath the message was a photograph.
It showed Ivy standing in the hallway, holding her phone and staring at the child.
The photograph had been taken from behind her.
Ivy slowly turned her head.
There was nobody there.
When she looked back, the child had moved closer.
Much closer.
"You're supposed to give me a treat," it whispered.
Ivy backed into the living room.
The child followed.
"Please," she whispered. "Just leave me alone."
The child's head tilted.
"But you haven't opened the door yet."
Ivy's stomach twisted.
"What door?"
The child pointed towards the living room wall.
At first, Ivy saw only the old family photographs hanging there.
Then she noticed something that had never been there before.
A narrow wooden door stood between two picture frames.
It was small, barely tall enough for a child to walk through.
Its surface was blackened, as though it had survived a fire.
A brass doorbell was fixed to its centre.
The child smiled beneath the sheet.
"Your turn."
The doorbell rang.
And somewhere inside the tiny wooden door, something began knocking back.
Chapter Three: The Door That Wasn't There
Knock.
Knock.
Knock.
Ivy stared at the little black door.
The sound came from the other side, slow and deliberate, as though someone was patiently waiting for her to answer.
But the door was inside her living room.
There shouldn't have been another side.
She backed away until her knees struck the sofa.
"What is that?" she whispered.
The child in the white sheet stood beside the doorway, clutching its plastic pumpkin.
"Your door."
"That door wasn't there before."
"Yes, it was."
"No, it wasn't!"
The child's head tilted.
"Maybe you just forgot."
Another three knocks sounded from inside the door.
Ivy grabbed her phone and opened the camera. She pointed it at the wall.
On the screen, the family photographs hung exactly as they always had. There was no little black door between them.
Ivy lowered the phone.
The door was still there.
She raised the phone again.
Nothing.
Her stomach twisted.
Whatever was happening, it wasn't obeying the rules of the world she knew.
She ran towards the kitchen.
Behind her, the child began to laugh.
"Ivy?"
She ignored it.
"Ivy, don't you want to see who's knocking?"
She reached the kitchen and slammed the door shut behind her. Her hands shook as she pushed a chair against it, although she knew perfectly well that a chair wouldn't stop something that could appear inside a locked house.
She dialled Leo.
The call went straight to voicemail.
She tried again.
Nothing.
"Pick up," she whispered. "Please, Leo. Pick up."
Her phone vibrated.
An incoming message.
LEO: Have you seen the little door?
Ivy's mouth went dry.
She typed with trembling fingers.
IVY: How do you know about it?
The response arrived.
LEO: Because I opened it.
Ivy stared at the message.
Another followed.
LEO: Three years ago.
She slowly sank against the kitchen counter.
Three years ago, Leo had been fifteen. He had spent most of that Halloween evening at a friend's house, returning home after midnight with a bruised cheek and a story about falling off his bicycle.
Their mother had believed him.
Ivy hadn't questioned it.
She remembered that night now, though she couldn't explain why. Leo had been unusually quiet for days afterwards. He had refused to sleep with his bedroom door closed and had insisted on leaving every light in the upstairs hallway switched on.
When Ivy asked him what was wrong, he had told her that he had seen something frightening at his friend's house.
She had laughed.
She had told him he was too old to be scared of Halloween.
A wave of guilt washed over her.
Her phone vibrated again.
LEO: It told me I could have anything I wanted.
IVY: What did you ask for?
For almost a minute, there was no reply.
Then:
LEO: I asked it to bring Mum back.
Ivy's breath caught.
Their mother had died four years earlier.
For the first time that night, Ivy understood that whatever was happening to them had begun long before the first doorbell rang.
Another message appeared.
LEO: It showed me her face. It sounded like her. I thought it was really her.
IVY: What happened?
The typing indicator appeared, then vanished.
Finally, Leo answered.
LEO: I heard her screaming behind the door.
Ivy covered her mouth.
From the other side of the kitchen door came a soft knock.
Then another.
She turned towards it.
"Ivy?"
It was her mother's voice.
Warm. Familiar. Gentle.
The voice she remembered from childhood.
"My darling, open the door."
Tears sprang into Ivy's eyes before she could stop them.
For one terrible moment, she wanted to believe it.
She wanted to believe that her mother was standing on the other side, waiting to hold her again.
Then she remembered Leo's warning.
Whatever you hear, don't answer it.
The handle began to turn.
"Ivy, sweetheart," the voice whispered. "I've missed you."
Ivy squeezed her eyes shut.
A pause.
Then the voice changed.
"You were supposed to save me."
The handle stopped moving.
"You left me alone."
Ivy pressed both hands over her ears.
"Stop it."
Silence.
Then her mother's voice spoke one last time.
"You opened the door for him, Ivy."
Her eyes flew open.
"What?"
A long, scraping sound travelled down the kitchen door.
"You let him in."
The handle turned.
And from somewhere behind Ivy, inside the kitchen itself, a familiar voice whispered:
"She means me."
Ivy spun around.
Leo stood beside the refrigerator.
His clothes were soaked, his face pale, and a dark bruise spread across his forehead.
He looked exactly as he had the last time she had seen him in person.
Except that had been three days ago.
And according to his messages, he was still travelling home.
Ivy stared at him.
"Leo?"
He lifted one finger to his lips.
"Don't say my name."
Behind him, the kitchen door creaked open.
Leo grabbed Ivy's wrist.
"Run."
And together, they fled into the darkness.
Chapter Four: The Girl Named June
They reached the back door just as something crashed through the kitchen.
Ivy didn't look back.
Leo shoved the door open, and they stumbled into the garden. Cold air struck Ivy's face. The grass was wet beneath her bare feet, and the wind carried the distant sound of church bells.
She ran towards the garden gate.
Leo followed close behind.
"Where are we going?" she gasped.
"Anywhere that isn't inside that house."
They reached the gate.
It wouldn't open.
Leo pulled at the handle.
"Come on!"
The metal rattled, but the gate remained shut.
Ivy turned towards the house.
Every window was dark except one.
Her bedroom window glowed with a pale orange light.
A small figure stood behind the glass.
The child in the white sheet.
It raised one hand and waved.
Then the bedroom light went out.
Ivy heard a sound behind her.
Footsteps on wet grass.
She spun around, expecting to see Leo.
Instead, a young woman stood beside the garden wall.
She looked about twenty, with dark hair falling over one shoulder and a black coat buttoned to her throat. She held an old-fashioned lantern, its yellow flame flickering despite the wind.
Ivy stumbled backwards.
"Who are you?"
The woman looked at the house.
"You're late."
Ivy blinked.
"What?"
"The first bell rang at 11:59. You should have left before midnight."
"I don't know what you're talking about."
The woman finally looked at her.
Her eyes were an unusual shade of grey.
"Then you really don't know anything about this house."
Leo stepped between them.
"June."
The woman studied him.
"Hello, Leo."
Ivy's head snapped towards her brother.
"You know her?"
Leo didn't answer.
June sighed.
"He's always been bad at explaining things."
"Would someone please tell me what's happening?" Ivy demanded.
June lifted the lantern.
The light revealed something carved into the garden wall behind her.
A series of names.
Dozens of them.
Some were so old that the letters had almost disappeared beneath the moss.
Ivy moved closer.
At the bottom of the wall, freshly carved into the stone, were three names.
IVY.
LEO.
JUNE.
Ivy felt the world tilt beneath her feet.
"What is this?"
"A list," June replied.
"Of what?"
"People who answered the door."
Ivy stared at the names.
"Why is my name here?"
June's expression softened, but only slightly.
"Because the house has chosen you."
"Chosen me for what?"
Before June could answer, the church bells stopped.
The silence was immediate and unnatural.
Then Ivy's phone lit up.
11:59 p.m.
She stared at it in disbelief.
That was impossible. She had watched the clock pass midnight. She had run through the kitchen, escaped into the garden, and spoken to June.
Yet the time had returned to 11:59.
The phone vibrated.
An incoming message from an unknown number.
UNKNOWN: One minute until the last doorbell.
June's face went white.
"Oh, no."
Leo seized Ivy's arm.
"What does that mean?"
June looked towards the house.
For the first time since they had met her, she seemed genuinely frightened.
"It means the door has found all three of you."
From inside the house came a familiar sound.
Ding-dong.
The front doorbell.
June extinguished her lantern.
"Whatever happens, don't let it ring again."
Ivy looked at her.
"How do we stop it?"
June's answer came in a whisper.
"We don't."
The doorbell rang a second time.
The house lights flickered on.
Every window filled with the silhouettes of children, all wearing white sheets over their heads.
June grabbed Ivy's hand.
"There's something you need to understand. The child at your door isn't trying to get inside."
Ivy swallowed.
"Then what does it want?"
June looked directly into her eyes.
"It's trying to get out."
The doorbell rang for the third time.
And from inside the house, a child began screaming.
End of Part One: The First Ring.
