A NIGHT IN A MANSION A Short Story by Dibya Rana (5B)
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n a boring Sunday, my friends, Kai and Lauren, decided to go to an abandoned mansion. There were rumours in the village saying that the mansion was somehow haunted. The mansion wasn’t far from where we lived so, we thought we should find out for ourselves whether the rumours were true and besides, we wanted a gripping adventure as well. In the evening, we grabbed a few torches and headed out to the village. The wind was howling, which made the experience more thrilling. We were walking for about five minutes when we came across a road. The road looked very creepy and unwelcoming. It was dark because there were no street lights at all. There was a sign on a pole near the road. It had sketchy writing on it—a warning: “No trespassing, very dangerous.” Kai looked at the sign and asked, “Hm, what could’ve happened here?” We thought the same question. What could have happened? After walking along the road, we finally reached the mansion. The mansion looked menacing. It’s as if that even in daytime, it would still look as sinister as it’d looked at night. The windows of the mansion were broken and boarded up as if something horrible tried its best to come out. The front door was locked so we had to find another door or a broken window
that was big enough for us to climb through. We walked to the back of the building and found a back door. Surprisingly, it was open. It was like a secret entry. Lauren got in first, then Kai and me. As soon as we got in, everything became dead silent even though the wind was still howling outside. It was impossible that the sound couldn’t come into the building since some of the windows were broken and the back door was open. We were confused but ignored it eventually. We shined our torches inside the house. The interior looked burnt. It had many rooms but most of the doors were broken or missing. We all wondered again what could’ve really happened there. We took a quick glance at the rooms on the ground floor. There was nothing but broken beds, wardrobes and mirrors, nothing more. “Hey! Why don’t we go upstairs, there might be more to see?” said a curious Kai. We all agreed and started walking up the stairs. As soon as we reached the top floor, there was a long hallway. It was dark so, we shined our torches to the end of the hallway. When the light reached the end of the hallway, we couldn’t believe what we saw. It was a woman in a white dress. She had bloodshot eyes and burnt skin.
She disappeared in an instant! How did she even get there? We didn’t hear any footsteps at all! Horror-stricken, we all ran down as fast as possible. We could hear the loud footsteps of the woman coming from behind us. “What do we do now?!” I yelled as chills went down my back. “Break the windows! They shouldn’t be hard to break!” yelled Lauren. Lauren kicked the remaining pieces of glass off the windows. She got out and pulled us out together with her. As soon as we got out, we ran away as fast as possible. I saw the woman gesturing to us to never return. When we all reached our homes, I searched online about the mansion. I needed to know what happened there. My eyes widened as I read through the details of the story. Several decades ago, a wealthy man had gone bankrupt and had a lot of debts. When he couldn’t pay his debts, his mansion was set on fire. He escaped, but his wife couldn’t. People say that her spirit still roams in the mansion and wouldn’t like it if anyone disturbed her. I told my friends about what I’ve researched online and we all decided never to go there again. I feel sorry for the wife. She didn’t deserve to die like that.
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