The Tupelo Theatre: A Short Story

The Tupelo Community Theatre haunted house has been around longer than my measly sixteen years, but I only just heard about it a few months ago in August. With my extreme love of Halloween and frightful things, I knew I had to go. It took a lot of hard work to convince my friends to come; but now, as we wind closer and closer to the theatre entrance, they cannot stop smiling that adrenaline induced smile. My teeth keep chattering from the biting wind. One of my friends says something about clowns with horns that spit fire. My pace falters a bit, due to my extreme phobia of clowns. Suddenly, I am having second thoughts about this. As we walk along the sidewalk, I can feel the goose bumps popping onto my skin; but I cannot let my friends see.

I am, after all, the bravest of the bunch. We walk mere feet from the doors plastered with posters of pumpkins and ghouls. My heart keeps beating a thousand miles an hour as we near the entrance of my most certain doom: TCT Annual Haunted Theatre.
We walk through the doors and buy our tickets.

We are told to head up the stairs and to our left. As we reach the top of the steps, we are instantly engulfed by a narrow hallway. We take our seats in what appears to be the balcony. It is pitch black dark, other than the glow of the emergency exits and our usher’s flashlight. He tells us a chilling tale of the theatre being built on Indian remains. He also tells of a young woman who took her own life in the theatre due to her lover’s tragic death. There are faint hints of crying and screaming coming from the stage. People keep getting up and leaving, not wanting to continue; but I am not a coward. I will finish

through.
As the usher finishes up telling us about the rules and regulations of the theatre, an old woman in a worn-out, white wedding dress comes up and tells us to rise. We shuffle behind the woman and come to a set of descending stairs. Strobe lights flash on and off, confusing our eyes. The woman smiles devilishly at us and simply tells us, “Good luck.”
We start down the stairs being chased by a masked man with a chainsaw.

He forces us into our first room. It appears to be a bedroom; and in the corner, on a small bed, sits a young girl clutching a teddy bear. She tells us of the boogeyman who visits her every night. All of a sudden, a bang comes from the door, drawing all of our attention to it. We turn back around and see the young girl being dragged under her bed. We all scream and push through the door. The next room contains dolls that move on their own and sing creepy nursery rhymes; and the room after that, is filled with shrunken heads that scream out names. As I leave the shrunken head room, I follow a dark path to a man with a red face and dreadlocks. In a husky, sinister voice, he tells me that I’m not supposed to be back here. I frantically tell him that I must be lost from my friends. He simply points to his left and remains silent. I follow his direction and wind up outside a black hallway. I see my friend in the dark red light and run to her side. I am about to explain where I have been, when a zombie bursts out of the wall, grabbing for us. We scream and run towards the end of the

hallway.
My friends and I walk out of the zombie hallway and are met by same dreadlock demon from earlier. He gets within two inches of my face and says in the same spine-chilling voice, “Go that way if you want to live.”
We follow his advice and come to a dead end. My friends and I bang on the wall, until a little girl with her left arm holding her bloody right tells us to head the other way to escape. We turn around and ignore the usher’s rules and sprint towards a black door lit by a red light.
As we push open the door, the brisk October air hits us. We laugh and catch our breath when we realize that a surgeon with blood on his shirt and a heart in his hand tries to chase us out of the theatre. We run down the sidewalk, escaping him. As we slow our pace, I notice my friend staring quizzically at me.
“What?” I ask.
“You seem really calm considering what just happened,” she says.
I laugh at her reply and say, “I’ll take a deranged surgeon over a psycho clown any day.”