Scary House ...

It was quite a lazy afternoon, me and my friend were lazing around. We had already seen a movie, had a nonchalant lunch, had fooled around and now we could think of nothing exciting to do. I mean exciting enough for a lazy afternoon. Just then out of the corner of my freaking eye I saw a Scary House. It's not that I had never been to any spooky place, it's just that I got a funny feeling running inside me. These spooky-scary-fright-houses have nothing but assholes in lame costumes with weak oil painted faces creeping out of the dark corners trying to scare the shit out of you, and believe me I have seen them fail miserably all the time. But I don't blame them, I mean, you can't have a more absurd job than scaring hordes of people day in and day out crawling out from the same old hideouts wearing a joke of a makeover. And morever it was inside a shopping mall and not an amusement park or something. I mean give me a break, who the hell do you intend to freak out ? A bunch of housewives out on shopping. I mean who gets a kick out of it. Anyways it was nonetheless a good way to spend some time as we had nothing else to do. So I urged my friend to come along with me. It's boring as hell to go in a scary house alone, nobody does that, and the coordinators too let in a group of people. Who wants to do the chores all day long. I mean I won't go alone, I get a kick seeing people crying and screaming seeing these jokers do their stuff. Either they are hopelessly coward or they are faking it. Well I had a hard time convincing my friend to come along, she was easily scared types. Finally she agreed, so I bought two tickets, 100 bucks. I felt nearly pathetic, shelling out 100 bucks just to keep myself amused for 10 minutes. Gosh ! What has the world come to. There was nobody else with us. So all said and done we were the two lucky folks going to face the music alone. But I was not harbouring any fantasies about what's going to happen inside, I merely expected that I be entertained in a proper manner, without any falacies I mean, unlike my friend who was preaching me on the lines of "run while you can". I think she was not happy of the fact that the two of us were going alone. Well I was not in a mood to back out. The bottom-line was that the tickets were non-refundable. First time in my life I felt grateful of this non-refundable policy. And as fate would have it we got going. We entered inside the scary house through a few centuries old looking door. I bet that door was as brand new as the Shopping mall itself, if it wasn't then who the hell would build a shopping mall around a scary house, the idea was idiotic enough. The room in which we stepped in was very dimly lit, just as I began noticing the things around a Mr. Scary jumped right beside me and gave a hell of a scream. Chrissake !!! Were we supposed to get an cardiac arrest or something. It was not at all a nice and warm welcome. Then I heard another scream and it was from right behind me. I turned around and saw my companion totally freaking out and screaming, poor girl, she was already in tears and was not willing to venture any further. I tried to look into the face of the over-acting jerk, I think he was feeling pretty sorry that he had overdone his part and was frantically trying to assure her that he was just as ordinary human being as the waiter who serves coffee in coffee shops. I felt sorry for both of them. I also started assuring her. The scream had her terribly shaken. She had had it. There was no way she was going a single step into the house anymore. I volunteered to go out too, I am a gentleman and this was a nasty situation, she was really frightened cold. But she urged me to go ahead alone and I obliged. I think may be she might have secretively pledged alliance to the hoodlums inside to scare the shit out of me just to get back to me, who knows ? Boy, what an exciting start. Now I was all alone in the scary house, the sole target of the miscreants who earn their daily wage scaring innonect folks like me. The chaotic atmosphere had settled down a bit and I was trying to get comfortable with the surroundings. It was very different from all the scary houses I had been to. No sandy graveyards, no creepy plastic plants, no polyvinyl reptiles, no fake spider webs. The house was looking inhabitable, I mean if you could put a family in there they might as well feel comfortable and start living their daily lives, of course you'll have to arrange for some bright lights. The point is, it was kind of real fake and not some stupid crappy setup. I was beginning to get cozy when a silhouette of a man started appearing from the shadows. His manner was apparently servile. He was very much composed and it appeared as if he was interested in having a conversation with me. His face was half molten and rest of the body was quite fine as a normal man . I was sure he was wearing a make up on his face. Whatever, he stood there and told me this chilling story which haunted the house. Here it goes...

"There lived a family in this house, an old couple and their four grand children, the mother of kids had died after being tortured and poisoned by someone and their father was arrested as the police thought that he was the one. He was innocent. The grandfather had a strange intution that the maid was the one who poisoned her daughter-in-law and was the cause of all misfortunes that plagued his family but no one believed him. The grandfather began losing his mind and day by day he was turning into an increasingly mad old man. There was this maid who used to work in the house, she lived nearby and her husband held odd jobs and also worked as a caretaker of the house. She was incapable of having any child. Then after a few months the grandmother died of a strange disease. The old man blamed the maid for this too. Then one morning the caretaker had to go to visit his folks in the village but when he retuned late at night what he saw was beyong his imagination. The old man was sitting on a rocking chair on the verandah, he held in his hands a blood soaked knife. The caretaker strongly jerked him few times as to know what had happened but the old man never opened his mouth but was blankly staring at the cieling. The caretaker ran inside but he could see no one. He ran into children's room and he froze. There lay in the room the bodies of four kids, bloody and stabbed to death while asleep on the bed. And beside that lay the body of his wife brutally stabbed, laying in a pool of blood on the floor. He loved his wife very much and the kids too. He couldn't stop himself from believing that the old mad man was behind this horrific tragedy. He ran back to the verandah only to find that the old man had stabbed himself too and was lying somehow on chair. He held the old man to ask him why did he do such a monstrous act. In his last breath the mad old man managed to tell him what he could never believe... The old man had heard some noises coming from the children's room and as he rushed inside the room he found that the maid had finished them one by one and was coming to kill him too. But the maid couldn't tame the mad old man who always wanted her dead for all she had done to his family. The mad old man had overpowered her and kept stabbing her until he was sure that he had put her out of her misery. Finally now he could die in peace, he had avenged his family. That was his last word. Later on after a few days the caretaker found out that his wife practiced occult and in fact the rumblings of the old man were true. The happiness of the family had gotten the better of her. Her incapablity to bear a child had poisoned her envy and jealousy even more. The caretaker lives on to tell this tragic story to every guest who come to visit this house. Like I am telling it to you, I am the caretaker..."

I was totally gripped by the story and his last words sent shivers down my spine. There was the caretaker standing right infront of me narrating the unfortunate story of a perfectly happy family and a jealous deranged woman. Somehow the makeup on his face looked real. Everything around me inside the house looked real. The caretaker seemed real. He showed me some photographs of the family hanging on the wall. I started relating them to the story I just heard, I could see the father, the mother and the four little kids. The mad old man and his wife. The picture of the mad old man somehow interested me. I turned back to ask something to the caretaker but he was gone after telling me the whole story. I had finshed going through the photographs and went ahead. Suddenly I could see a rocking chair and someone sitting on it with his back turned towards me. The story was still fresh in my mind. With measured steps I tried to see who the hell was that. Then I got a shock of my life. I still remembered the face of mad old man from the photographs I had just seen and he was sitting right infront of me with a blood soaked knife and blank stare. I was practically shaking, never in my whole life had I been spooked like this. Suddenly the man stabbed himself in the stomach, I could see blood oozing out his stomach. His hand tried to reach out to me but I was so afraid that I screamed and ran inside the house. I stepped into a room black as hell, then all of a sudden all the windows in that room started battering. I could hear the sound of a storm raging outside. Then as the sound stopped abruptly the windows slammed open. Moonlight was coming into the room and then I saw it. The four children lay dead on the bed, all bloody and gory, and the maid with a knife in her hand and deranged look in her eyes. My heart stopped. She started coming towards me and I ran, I stepped over something and I fell down, I crawled and ran again,I stumbled onto something, I was desperately looking for a door. "Please Help Me, Let Me Out, the Crazy Maid is coming for me", I kept on screaming as I accidently found the exit. I jumped out and I could see my companion standing there akimbo. I told her that the maid is coming to get me. And then the reality clashed with me, she was standing there laughing at me. Shit, I got spooked real bad. AAAAH ! Hell I would never step into a scary house again in my life.