The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

The House at the End of the Lane
by Rie Sheridan Rose

“See what I mean?”

“It is a bit odd.”

“Why would you have a door like that? It’s two feet up the wall. And what is that chute thingy for in the middle? If it went IN, I could see it as a mail chute, but it comes OUT. What was this place?”

“No clue. It doesn’t look like it’s been anything for a very long time. Look at the state of the plaster…”

“I wonder if Mrs. Brighthart would know…”

“Maybe. She’s been here longer than anyone.”

I didn’t like Mrs. Brighthart. She gave me the creeps, but Tony was right. If anyone would know it would be she. We walked down the road and knocked on her door.

“Yes?” came a wavering call from inside.

“Mrs. Brighthart? It’s Liam and Tony. We’d like to ask you a question about the house at the end of the lane.”

The door cracked open.

“You don’t want anything to do with that place, lovey. It was a charnel house during the Famine. Strange things happen there…and woe-betide anyone caught up in them.”

“Like what?”

“They say that if you see a skull appear outside it, you’re destined to die within the hour.”

“Have you seen it?”

“Am I standing here talking to you?”

Just another ghost story, I thought.

Tony was laughing as we walked back down the lane. “That old lady is wack! But the door makes a little more sense now. They could just drive the wagons up to the door-sill and unload…”

I shivered. “Gives me the creeps.”

“Lame!” Tony laughed. “Whoa…do you see that?”

We were close to the house at the end of the lane, but to me it looked just as it always did.

“What do you mean?”

“There’s a giant—look out!”

He shoved me, hard. 

I stumbled out of the street onto the walk…just as a car slammed into him. He was dead before he hit the pavement.

Stay away from the house at the end of the lane. It’s cursed.

Fiction © Copyright Rie Sheridan Rose
Image courtesy of Pixabay.com

More from Author Rie Sheridan Rose:

Skellyman

“I have always preferred the supernatural in tales of horror, the knot between life and death. Rie Sheridan Rose’s Skellyman is cool and creepy. Her first horror novel is a chilling read.” — Charlee Jacob – Stoker winner, Best novel, “Dread in the Beast”

Brenda Barnett is trying to cope with raising her four-year-old daughter all alone after an accident tore her family in half. As she and Daisy go for a much-needed treat, the little girl spots a Skellyman on the corner.

This pivotal encounter leads to a wave of mounting terror as Brenda’s life begins to come undone around her. Who is the Skellyman? Why does he keep appearing? Can the sympathetic policeman Brenda turns to stop the madness before it is too late?

And why does Daisy insist that her dead brother is trying to tell them something important?

Available on Amazon!