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Printed from https://www.writing.com/main/view_item/item_id/1656734-Haunted
Rated: ASR · Short Story · Contest Entry · #1656734
A boy and his 'Friends' discuss five dollars to go into a haunted 'house.'
“Five Bucks if you go in there and stay in there for five minutes.” He pinched the five dollars between finger and thumb, waving it as if it were food before a starved homeless man. His cocky grin was joined by the smirks of the other three, all leaning in around their tiny prey like wolves around a fawn without its mother.
         “You guys are crazy! I’ll die!” He motioned to the chain link fence, rusted and falling to pieces as age hit it hard. Except for the fact the fence topped with bobbed wire hadn’t been put in place for more than two days. Inside the five acres that it cut the rest of the world off from was nothing but dirt that was oddly dark and mucky, other than that the area seemed as if someone had cleared it to put up a building.
         “Aw. Is poor little Nick afraid? Ghosts aren’t real, and you know that. Besides, even if they were real these ghosts are long gone. Think about it, the last house that stood here was burned down over a century ago. Everyone knows that ghost haunt houses, there isn’t even a cemetery near by so there’s no way ghosts can be here.” His eyes were rather deep set, proving that the boy had once worn glasses.
         Nick as the others called him sighed, and then looked at one of the many large holes that had developed in the fencing. Closing his eyes and taking a deep breath, he squeezed under the fencing. As he pulled himself to his feet on the other side, the boy winced as he wiped his hands on his pants.
         “Mom’s going to kill me. Staying out so late on a school night, and getting my new pants dirty.”
         “Oh stop your whining Nick! See anything interesting in there?” The boy with the five asked, shoving it in his pocket.
         “Nothing you can see from that side of the fence!” Nick called back, wondering where the house had once stood.
Everyone in town knew about the Lynch house. Mrs. Lynch had been accused a witch and thrown into the river, she floated instead of sunk. Her husband was accused of helping her and of course the devil, and their five children were all accused of being children of the devil.
It didn’t help that where both Mrs. And Mr. Lynch were brunettes, their eldest son had ebony hair, the first sets of twins were redheads, and the last and youngest twins were blonde. Even worse was the fact that their second eldest son had hair the color of blood, and it was understood that he also had heterochromia in the right eye. Which was something that at the time wasn’t common and wasn’t well known about.
The story went that they burned all but the second eldest son alive, allowing him instead to watch his family burn before throwing him in prison and starving him to death. It was two days after he had died that their house had burned to the ground, as well as the stables. Of course by that time people had moved into the house, and they as well as their animals and possessions been incinerated with it.

Two weeks later, Nick was found dead in his bed. It looked as if he had caught on fire, except the bed he slept on and even the clothes he wore weren’t so much as singed. Oddly enough there was a small mound of ash found in his piggy bank as well, though none of his allowance had been so much as marred. 
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