-There is nothing to fear but fear itself .
The iron gates groaned—a sound like metal teeth grinding against bone—before slamming shut behind them with a finality that vibrated in the soles of their shoes.
Mia gasped, her flashlight beam jerking violently toward the sound. "Did you see that? It just… it just locked." Her voice was thin, losing its earlier edge of skepticism. Ben stepped closer to her, his own light trembling as he swept it over the rusted hinges. "It was just the wind," he muttered, though he kept his gaze fixed on the darkness beyond the gate, refusing to look back. "Old houses have drafty entryways. It creates a vacuum. Physics, Mia. Nothing more."
They turned back to face the incline, and the sheer scale of the place hit them. Harroway House didn't just sit on the ridge; it seemed to consume it. The manor sprawled upward, a jagged silhouette of rotting wood and shattered glass that blocked out the moon. It looked less like a home and more like a tombstone waiting for inhabitants.
"It’s… it’s huge," Mia whispered, her earlier bravado crumbling into an uncomfortable awe. "Why would anyone build something this big just to leave it to rot?"
Ben swallowed hard, his voice dropping to a somber, nervous rhythm. "My cousin told me it wasn't just rot that drove people away. He heard the locals used to treat this place like a magnet for… other things. Satanic rituals, blood offerings, the kind of ‘bad juju’ that keeps the neighbors awake at night. And then there’s the Harroway legend itself. They say the old man finally snapped, butchered his entire family in the dead of night, and then… he just ended it."
"Ended it?" Jace asked, keeping his eyes on the looming front door. "With an axe?"
"Some say that," Ben replied, his voice barely audible over the rustle of dead leaves. "Others say he just vanished into the walls, becoming part of the wood and the rot. He left the blood, but he never left the house."
Mia shuddered, clutching her jacket tighter. "That’s a lie. I heard they never even found his body. If he did kill them, he must have died here, but no one ever found a corpse, not even when the cops finally stormed the place years later."
An eerie, suffocating silence fell over them. The air around the ridge felt pressurized, thick with a cold dampness that seemed to cling to their skin. Every step up the overgrown path felt like trespassing on hallowed—or cursed—ground. The house watched them with empty, broken eyes, and for ten long, agonizing minutes, the only sound was their own ragged breathing and the crunch of dead foliage beneath their boots. The dread was a physical weight, thick enough to taste, turning the simple act of walking into a march toward an inevitable end.
Then, CRACK-HISS.
The sharp, metallic snap of a can of Monster energy drink ripped through the silence like a gunshot.
Mia shrieked, jumping so high she nearly collided with Jace. She whipped around, her flashlight blindingly bright against Tyler’s chest. Tyler stood there, unfazed, a smirk playing on his lips as he took a slow, deliberate sip from the neon-green can.
"Tyler!" Mia’s voice was a jagged blade of adrenaline. "You absolute psycho! You nearly gave me a heart attack!"
"Fuck you, asshole!" she snapped, her chest heaving as the terror gave way to pure, unadulterated rage.
The tension in the group shattered. Jace and Ben broke into uneasy, breathless laughter, the kind that comes when you’ve been terrified for too long. Mia, still fuming, swatted lightly at Jace’s arm, then Ben’s, her irritation masking the lingering tremor in her hands.
Tyler just chuckled, his smirk widening as he crushed the can after downing the drink in his grip. "What? You guys looked like you were heading to a funeral. Thought you needed a pick-me-up."
"We are heading to a funeral," Ben muttered, wiping sweat from his forehead. "Likely ours if you keep making noise like that."
Tyler just shrugged, the smirk never leaving his face, and gestured toward the imposing front door with his can. "Legends don't wait, boys. Let's see what the old man left for us."