The Horrible House in the Woods

I first saw the broken down old house while hiking through the woods behind my friends property. We were both 13 and just going into high school. His name was Jacob Torrington and we had planned on building a dam across the old river that snaked it's way in the woods behind where he lived. It was while we had ranged a bit away from the river, looking for some good solid fallen wood to use as a base for our dam, that I spied the building much further through the trees. If it hadn't been late fall, with most of the trees bare, I would never have spotted the decrepit old structure.
I asked Jacob about it, and he said that his father had told him to stay away from it. He said it was an old hunting cabin, and also private property. His dad has warned him that he'd get in big trouble if he went near it, both possible from the law and definitely by his dad. It had stood back there for as long as Jacob could remember and yet he had never seen anyone ever use it.
Well, as a teenager that got my imagination going. I talked Jacob into going to take a look. He wasn't sure about it, but I convinced him that we were old enough. At 13 you have a weird sense of invulnerability, and neither the law nor Jacobs dad held much terror for me. So we gave up on the dam and headed back deeper into the woods to see about this hunting shack.
It was old, and seemed like it should be falling down. Yet it stood tall, almost brooding. The front door was closed tight, and the light was wrong for peeking in past the dirty windows. It was two stories high, made of wood that looked grey and brittle with age. It was obvious that no one had used the structure for many a long year. Yet despite being curious neither of us quite had the courage to try the door to see if it was open. Looking was one thing, trespassing was another. Yet now that Jacob had gotten this close he seemed loath to just leave. Perhaps it was just a part of him that was excited about going against his fathers wishes for the first time, that first taste of rebelling against authority. We stayed near the house, trying desperately to see inside, until the sun started to go down and we realized that we needed to get home for dinner.
That started a trend for me and Jacob. Every day that we could we made our way back to that house. After a while we became brave enough to try the door, but it was locked tight. I even brought some Windex and paper towels one time to try and wash the windows, but the dirt must have been on the inside because we still couldn't see through them. Sometimes we would talk about breaking one of the windows so that we could get in, but talk was all it was. The thought that someone might one day come back to use the place and find what we'd done was just too terrible to follow through with. So instead we'd hang out in front of it. Acting like it was our house, our place. While we both had other friends we never brought any of them back there, somehow we both felt that it was our little secret.
Of course after we got our licenses we stopped going back there. With a car at our disposal there were much better places to go than to sit in front of an old empty building in the woods. We had discovered girls and cars and arcades. The world seemed full of possibilities. Yet ever once and a while Jacob would still mention the old house back in the woods. I got the impression that maybe he still walked out there sometimes. The thought of my friend standing at the door to the place alone gave me the willies, but I never said anything about it to him. I figured that it was his buisness and no one else's.
We were 18, having just graduated, when he brought the place up again. I was heading to collage, and Jacob had decided to join the navy. In fact he was going to be leaving in about a month from that night. We were having dinner at McDonald's, and he told me that he had thought about it and was going to break the lock to the place. At first I didn't know what he was talking about. Once I caught on I told him he shouldn't do it. I talked about the law, about getting in trouble, but Jacob would have none of it. He said that if no one had gone to the place in all these years then it must be abandoned. I hadn't realized how much the thought of the place had prayed on his mind all these years. He told me that some nights he would tell his parents he was going to a friends, and instead take a sleeping bag and camp out by the houses door. That sometimes he would knock on the front door and wait for hours to see if anything answered. He said that he felt that he couldn't leave the town peacefully until he had seen the inside of the house.
Well, all this kind of freaked me out. I told him that it was going beyond curiosity and sounded dangerously like an obsession. To my surprise he agreed with me. However he said that the only way he felt he could get free of the obsession was to walk inside of the place. I told him that it could be dangerous, the wood was probably rotted and termite eaten, in fact the whole thing could come down on his head just by opening the door. It had looked like it wanted to fall apart when we first found it, and I was sure it hadn't gotten better over the years. Yet still he persisted that he needed to go in, to walk the halls and look upstairs. He said that some nights he would dream about walking out there and finding the door open. He always woke up covered in sweat before he entered the place.
I asked him when he was going to do it, having decided that there was no way for me to change his mind. I suggested that I would like to go in with him, since I had been with him the first time he had gone to it. He said he hadn't decided yet, but sometime in the next week before he left for service. He also promised that he would call me before he did it, so I could come with him.
It was three days later when I was getting out of work when I got the call. I worked at the local Scrubby Bubbles Car Wash, and was just heading out when my dad called my cell phone. He said that there were some police cars and an ambulance over at the Torrington place. I raced over, but by the time I got there it was all over. His mom was sitting outside, just crying to herself. I hugged her and asked what had happened.
Apparently Jacob had gone out somewhere that afternoon for about an hour and when he got back he had walked up to his room, pulled out a gun that his father had gotten him for his 18th birthday, and blown his brains out. No explanation, no warning, just gone. No one could understand what had happened, he had seemed fine until that day. He had been looking forward to the navy, he'd always loved the thought of being in a uniform. Now he was gone. I stayed with his mom till his dad got home, then I went home myself.
Somewhere in me a horrible suspicion was forming. He gone out somewhere on foot for about an hour. Which meant that it had to be somewhere close. I wasn't surprised to see that there was a message on my phone at the house when I got back. At first I didn't want to listen to it. I was afraid of what it might say. But after about an hour of staring at the little blinking light I gave in and pushed the play button.
At first there was nothing. Just white noise that you get when someone is not talking. Then came a sob. A sad little noise that broke my already broken heart further. Then my dead friends voice came out of the machine. It sounded strained and full of bleak depression. All he said were five words.
"Inside....Inside that damn house."
A last message from my friend. Jacobs only explanation as to what he did and why he did it. His suicide note, 5 words recorded on my machine forever. I had to go. Had to see for myself. I ran all the way. Past the house of sorrow, where his parents were undoubtedly sitting and wondering why had their baby boy done this terrible thing. I ran past the river, where we should have just built a dam that day and been done with it. I ran until I reached the house. Then I stopped.
The door was open. It was getting dark, so I couldn't see inside very well, but the door was open. Also the ground floor window next to the door was broken. Some of the other windows were broken too. I wasn't sure if these had been broken at some point in time, or if it had happened when he had gone in. How much had age changed the place, how much had been him? He'd done it. Just as he'd said he would. Gone inside, and whatever was in there had killed him. Maybe not in body, but in mind and spirit and ever other way that mattered. I realized standing there looking at the place that in a small way I had killed him too. It was me, all those years ago who had convinced him to come back here. It was me who had introduced him to this awful place, that had gotten him hooked on it, fascinated by it. Whatever was inside belonged to me as much as it did to him, and maybe it would mean my death too but I had to see. See what had broken my friend. See what had been hidden in these woods for so many years, what had been right next to us all those times we'd hung out here. I knew I had to see.
I walked up to the door. I realized that I was holding my breath, that my heart was just about bursting through my chest, that I was crying. Crying in fear and loss and pain. I couldn't make out anything through my tear blurred vision, and it was getting dark, but I was going in anyways. Then I saw movement from inside, something coming forward in the dark of that place. Coming down the hallway towards me.
I fainted when I heard the voice. Just passed right out. How long I lied there I don't know. When I awoke it was late, the moon shining high over head. The first thing I noticed was that the door, the door to that horrible house, was shut again. I didn't need to try it to know that it was locked. I got up slowly and walked home.
I have never been back to that house in the woods. I think about it a lot, but I have never gone back. I'm glad that I never got to see inside, that I never got to see why my friend died. I'm also glad that I never got to see what was moving inside of there. Whatever shut that door, as I lied there on the ground before it, did me the greatest favor of my life. I'm grateful for that.
But that voice haunts me. I can still hear it while I sleep at night. All it said was one word.
Simple, direct, to the point.
Just the word NO.
But it said it in Jacob Torringtons voice.
That voice, the voice from inside that house.
That horrible house in the woods.