[Wordsmiff]

THE DOLLS’ HOUSE



CHAPTER ONE


‘I dare you to go inside that old house at the end of Shady Lane and stay inside it for twenty minutes. We’ll wait outside for you.’

The girls often spent their Saturday afternoons in the park, playing truth or dare, and they were finding it increasingly more difficult to come up with original dares.

‘But...’ Amy wasn’t sure about her friend’s dare. She knew the old house and its story. “It’s...’

‘Are you chickening out?’ Kirsty said. ‘If you are, you have to do the counterfeit.’

‘Forfeit,’ Melanie corrected her.

‘Whatever,’ Kirsty said.

‘What’s the forfeit?’ Amy asked, hopefully.

‘Hang on,’ Becky said, ‘Let’s scrum.’

The other girls huddled together and whispered so that Amy couldn’t hear them. After a few moments, they came out of their scrum and Kirsty said: ‘You have to go up to a random man in the park and ask him if you can suck his dick. If he says yes, you have to do it.’

‘What?’ Amy felt herself starting to blush. She looked around the park. ‘Okay, I’ll do the old house dare.’

The other girls laughed.

‘I knew you would,’ Kirsty said.

The four girls set off for the old house which was about five minutes walk away. They left the park at the Shady Lane gate and walked down to the house which stood alone at the far corner by the common.

Amy had often passed it on the bus on her way to school and, when she was on the top deck, she could just about see above the overgrown hedge and trees in the garden. The windows were boarded up and there was a hole in the roof where some of the tiles had been dislodged. Other than that, she knew nothing about it apart from things her friends had told her. It used to be owned by an old man who had died a few years ago and since then it had been deserted.

Amy had no idea how she was going to get inside. She hoped that there was a window or door that wasn’t boarded up. If she couldn’t get in, she’d have to do the forfeit and she was too much of a good girl to do things like that.

By the time she came out of her reverie, they were standing outside the house.

‘Go on then,’ Kirsty said. ‘Twenty minutes. Take some pictures with your phone to prove you’ve been inside. Then back out here.’

Amy took a deep breath and started walking down the driveway, which was overgrown with nettles and brambles, trying her best to avoid the vicious plants and glad she’d worn jeans and not a skirt.

When she got to the house, she looked around for a way in. The front door and windows were boarded up. One of the upper windows was un-boarded but she had no chance of getting in through that one. She walked down the side of the house to the rear. Like the front garden, the rear garden was overgrown with nettles, brambles, wild roses and other plants and shrubs.

She went up to the back door of the house and tried the handle. To her surprise, it moved.

Amy let go of the door handle and got out her phone from her jeans back pocket. If she could get inside through this door it was going to be a doddle. She just wanted to get in, take her pictures, wait the requisite twenty minutes and then get the hell out of there. Some people said the house was haunted and she didn’t want to discover whether it was or wasn’t.

With her phone in hand, she tried the door again. It opened with an eerie creak and she stepped inside. Once she was inside, the door closed behind her, startling her. She looked around. She was in a hallway.

The floor was just basic wooden boards, some of which were broken. There were a couple of loose wires hanging from the ceiling which, she assumed, should be attached to a ceiling light. She was glad it was daylight although, with the windows boarded up, even in daylight, the house was only dimly lit. She adjusted the camera settings on her phone to enable clear pictures in low light.

She walked slowly down the hallway, taking one step at a time, ensuring that she didn’t step on any loose or damaged floorboards. She took a couple of pictures with her phone.

Curiosity started to get the better of her. She had twenty minutes to wait, so she decided to have a look round. She opened another door and looked inside. It was empty and, she thought, surprisingly clean for a house that had been deserted for several years.

She closed the door again and walked further down the hallway. She could see the boarded up front door at the far end and the banister of a staircase on the left hand side. She approached the staircase and took a picture of it. There was a pile of old newspapers at the bottom of the stairs, beside the front door and she noticed that the date on the top one was almost two years ago. She took a picture of them. She wondered if she should go upstairs and take a picture of the upper floor as well, just to satisfy her friends.

She placed her foot on the lower tread of the staircase, testing it for stability. It creaked under her weight but held firm. She walked step by step to the upper landing, occasionally pausing as a tread creaked and bent slightly under her weight. When she reached the landing, she looked into the bathroom to take a picture of it, expecting it to be filthy and disgusting. It was surprisingly clean.

They’ll never believe this is the same house, she thought to herself as she took the picture.

She stepped into the bathroom. There was a bath, a washbasin and a toilet. Just basic facilities. She tried on of the taps (faucets) on the washbasin. It was tight and, when it did eventually turn, nothing came out. She assumed the water supply had been disconnected. She tried the toilet flush. It didn’t work. She wondered why the bathroom was so clean if it hadn’t been used for years. She was expecting, but hoping not to see, spiders and rats.

There was another creak on the landing behind her. She froze where she stood, staring into the toilet bowl and not wanting to turn round. What if it’s a giant rat, she thought.

‘Who are you?’ It was a croaky male voice. ‘And what are you doing in my house?’



Who is there? Find out in Chapter Two