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Everyone knows you’re not supposed to fuck with ghosts. Especially not on Halloween. Calum, being the giant dickbag he is, chooses to ignore this fact. So when it comes to his turn to dare Ashton, Calum dares him to use a ouija board in the local haunted house. And Ashton, being the equally giant dickbag he is, chooses to accept the dare.
So here Ashton is, breaking and entering into a completely creepy looking house with a ouija board in his backpack and a terrified look on his face.
“You’re on the phone with your girlfriend,” Ashton sings to himself to calm himself down. He’s always been a big baby. “She’s upset.”
He manages to finally make his way into the house. It wasn’t exactly hard since the only thing covering one of the windows was a piece of cardboard. Ashton walks slowly inside the house and tries to ignore his knees shaking. Anyone would call him a baby, but the thing was, the house had actually had legitimate sightings. That scared the shit out of Ashton. And Calum knew it.
Ashton sneezes and silently curses at himself. Dust is flying around from him disturbing the house and he’d rather keep his presence as unknown as possible. So no sounds, including sneezing.
The room he climbed into is dark and has a wooden floor. There’s minimalistic furniture and everything smells really stuffy and old. Ashton didn’t know old was a smell, but now, he can’t think of any other word to describe it as.
“She’s going off about something that you said,” Ashton sings under his breath. He’s reached the door to the room and takes a deep breath before opening it. The door squeaks loudly as it swings open and Ashton cringes. Fuck Calum and him clarifying that Ashton had to be in the lounge for it to count.
Ashton takes a step outside of the room, trying his best not to breathe. His eyes were adjusting to the darkness but that didn’t make it any less scary.
“You’re dauntless. You can do this,” Ashton says as loudly as he dared. The first step into the hallway was the hardest, but after that, all Ashton has to do is keep walking without hesitating.
“‘Cause she doesn’t get your humour like I do.”
The hallway is a short one which Ashton is thankful for since the floorboards are creaky. It led out a kitchen, meaning that a lounge would be somewhere nearby. The kitchen was rusted and there were a couple cans of preservatives scattered on the ground. It looked like there had been squatters, but like there were none left anymore. If the ghost was real, that didn’t surprise Ashton. Even if it wasn’t real, the mere idea of it was enough to drive someone out, surely.
It hadn’t been raining outside when Ashton came in, but he could swear he could hear the pitter patter of rain hitting the roof. If it got too hard, there was no doubt in Ashton’s mind that the roof would cave in and he would die.
Being careful not to step on anything, Ashton treads his way through the kitchen to the other side. Like he’d hoped, the next room was a joint dining room and lounge. There was a large wooden table in the dining room but nothing else. The lounge had a couple dusty brown couches and a coffee table.
Nothing looked clean enough to safely sit on so Ashton sits down on the cleanest part of the lounge floor he could find. Shadows darted everywhere and Ashton can feel himself on the edge of a panic attack.
He quickly unzips his backpack and pulls the ouija board and the planchette out and sets them up.
“You can do this,” Ashton whispers. “I’m in my room, it’s a typical Tuesday night.”
Ashton places his fingers on the planchette and lets out a deep breath.
“I’m listening to the kind of music she doesn’t like.”
Slowly, with shaking fingers, Ashton spells out A-R-E Y-O-U T-H-E-R-E. By the time he’s spelled it all out, Ashton can barely contain his uneven breaths and trembling lips. He waits about two minutes. Nothing happens.
“And she’ll never know your story like I do.” H-E-L-L-O.
Again, Ashton waits. Nothing happens. Calum only said three tries. One more. Taking a deep breath, Ashton moves his hands again. I-S A-N-Y-O-N-E T-H-E-R-E. Ashton sits for a minute, trying to control his breathing. A minute more and he can leave.
“But she wears short skirts, I wear t-shirts.”
“Are you stupid?”
Ashton swears his heart literally stopped beating. His head snapped up so fast his neck clicked. Ashton swung his head wildly around the room trying to find the source of the voice. Standing in the kitchen doorway, was a tall attractive, blonde boy with a lip piercing. His skin was so pale he looked like he was made out of moonlight.
“H-how did you get there?” Ashton said shakily. The boy gives him a once over and Ashton visibly shivers.
“I’ve always been here,” the boy says. His voice is cruel and makes Ashton want to crawl up into a ball and hide. So he does. Hey, he never claimed to be the bravest.
It takes Ashton almost ten minutes to calm himself down. When he comes out of his crouch and sits up, the boy is still standing there in the doorway with an amused expression on his face. Ashton likes to think he was a reasonable person and a polite one, at that, so he had to work past his horror.
“Why do you think I’m stupid?” Ashton asks. He’s proud of the way his voice doesn’t shake.
“Because you’re fucking around with a ouija board, idiot,” the boy says.
Ashton ducks his head in shame
“Well it didn’t work anyways,” Ashton says. He’s secretly extremely, totally, 100% thankful it didn’t.
“What makes you say that?” the boy asks with a grin.
Ashton’s blood runs cold. There’s no air left in the house and he’s left gasping like a fish.
“W-what?” he asks.
“This was going to be the first halloween no dumbass tried to contact me,” the boy says. He’s so factual and straight about it that Ashton finds it almost comical.
“Oh. Well. I’m sorry. I’ll just. Go. Now,” Ashton says. The boy stays where he is. He has an eyebrow raised and he smirks, making Ashton notice the lipring.
“You do that,” he says in that cold voice.
Ashton doesn’t even bother collecting the ouija board. He jumps up and sprints back to the room he came in and literally throws himself out of the window. His shoulder hits the ground hard, but the adrenaline allows him to get up and keep going. Within ten seconds, he’s at the corner of the street where he left Calum and Michael waiting. He runs into Michael, chest on chest.
“Woah, Ash, what happened?” Michael asks, holding Ashton’s shoulders to steady him.
“I saw the ghost,” Ashton says.
“No you fucking didn’t,” Calum says.
“I did. He’s maybe eighteen, blonde hair, tall, lipring,” Ashton says. He’s pleasantly surprised of the way he’s able to speak calmly about this.
“Oh,” Calum says.
“Oh? Oh!? You send me to a haunted house and I tell you I saw the ghost and all you say is ‘oh!?” Ashton yells. Scratch the previous statement. He’s on the verge of hysteria.
“Yeah, just. Dunno, man. My cousins friend went in there a couple years ago. He saw a guy who fits that description,” Calum says. Ashton doesn’t miss the look Michael gives Calum.
“What? There’s more,” Ashton says.
“Well, yeah. The guy’s been in a mental ward ever since,” Michael says, since Calum doesn’t look like he’s going to talk.
“What. The. Fuck,” Ashton says. “You sent me into a haunted house where the ghost fucking messed some guy up so bad he’s in a house?”
“But you saw the ghost, and he didn’t do anything to you!” Calum yells, trying to defend himself.
“Maybe the ghost likes you,” Michael says.
That makes Ashton stop. The ghost hadn’t seemed scary. Actually, he had seemed amused with Ashton. Maybe the ghost did like him.
Ashton didn’t wait until next Halloween to go back into the house.