Breaking into Granahan Park- a short story

“I’m bored,” Shannon sighed as she flopped herself back on the pillows on the floor of my bedroom. “It’s Saturday night, we should go do something.”

“Like what?” I asked, picking at a loose thread on my comforter. I was laying on my stomach looking over the edge of the bed at her, my feet crossed at my ankles and swinging in the air to the music we were listening to on my phone. 

That sneaky smile she wore so well spread across her face as she sat up again. 

“When my mom dropped me off, they were finishing another tour at Granahan Park. Old Mrs. Garry was running it,” her eyes narrowed as her smile got bigger. 

“And what do you want to do? Break in?” I could feel a small pit in my stomach forming. 

“My mom made me go on a tour last week. We were there until the end of the night to help clean up and Mrs. G. definitely did not lock the house,” Shannon leaned forward so her face was directly in front of mine. “We should go and see if it’s open. Just to poke around.”

The pit in my stomach grew. While I didn’t mind going out and having a little adventure, “poking around” a historical manor house the night before Halloween did not sound like the smartest idea. While I tried to hold my ground, eventually I gave into Shannon’s begging. Before I knew what was happening, we were pulling on our identical track team sweatshirts, sneaking down the stairs and out of my parents’ house. 

Granahan Park wasn’t far, but there were no street lights and it was overcast, so there was barely any moonlight. It was late enough that we didn’t want to draw attention to ourselves, so we didn’t say much as we walked. My heart was starting to race at the thought of getting inside Granahan without a chaperone. I’d been there several times in my life, for Fourth of July picnics, a Christmas pageant, and last year, a walking ghost tour of the grounds like the ones Shannon had been to last week. 

The ghost tour had been the most interesting of these mini field trips. Like most colonial manor houses, Granahan Park was riddled with its own painful history of soldiers’ deaths, a woman whose children all died from everything from scarlet fever to a suicide, a lover’s betrayal, and other dramas related to the human condition. Of course that supposedly equated to lots of ghosts. While I wasn’t sold on the idea of these supernatural beings (afterall, who would choose to spend their afterlife in the same place that caused them so much misery), the stories were dramatic and the tour of the house was fun. 

Shannon and I approached the front door of the manor house in silence. She reached out for the door knob and tried to turn it, but it wouldn’t open. Hoping to jar it loose, she threw her weight into it. It was painful just watching her shoulder hit the solid door hard without any give on the other side. Raising both of her hands, she hit the door in frustration with balled fists of frustration. I had kind of half-expected it to creak open. It didn’t though.

“Oh well,” I sighed with relief, “We should probably head back.”

She considered it for a moment, and then that sneaky smile returned. “There’s a door in the kitchen, let’s try that.” Shannon didn’t even wait for my response before jumping off the top step of the stone porch, landing with a solitary crunch in the leaves on the ground. Before I even got to the last step, she had already sprinted around the side of the house and out of sight. Sighing again, I followed her trail in the leaves, shaking my head at her persistence. 

When I came to the kitchen door, Shannon had already gone inside without bothering to wait for me.  The door was left ajar, encouraging me to join her. Standing in the doorway, I called for her but she didn’t answer. I went into the old kitchen and used the flashlight on my cell phone to see where I was going. The light reflected off the caldron-type pot sitting in the old stone fireplace. The darkness was eery, and the air felt heavy, like it was weighing down on me. 

As I looked around the kitchen, I heard Shannon’s footsteps in the room overhead. I called out for her again but she ignored me. Typical Shannon.

All of a sudden, I became annoyingly aware that we were breaking about five laws. I headed for the stairs at the front of the house. “Shannon!” I hissed as I clambered up the steps. My pulse started to race in my ears; I wasn’t sure if that’s why I didn’t hear her response or if she was actually ignoring me. When I got to the top of the steps, an icy chill ran through my entire body, starting at my heart and radiating through to my fingers and toes. The hairs on my arms stood up, I could feel the tingle of it on my skin, even though it was dark and I was wearing my sweatshirt still. I stopped in my tracks.

“Shannon!” I called out again, letting the stillness of the hall swallow my voice. “I want to leave!”

 This time, I could hear her moving around the master bedroom, and realized she was actually ignoring my pleas. Frustrated that she was so willing to disregard me and looking to get out of there sooner rather than later, I held my phone up higher, letting its light bounce off the walls and sparse furniture of the hall. Laying my eyes on the ornate door of the room at the far end of the hall, I started walking towards her childlike giggle. As I pushed open the door that was closed but not latched, the heaviness of the air returned, along with a feeling like someone was trying to hold me in place in the doorway. I turned around quickly to see if Shannon had somehow gotten behind me and was clasping my shoulder. No one was there. I shook off the feeling and reminded myself that my mind was just playing tricks on me. Then, I took a step into the bedroom.

That’s when my flashlight suddenly stopped working. The blackness of the room poured over me. Panicking, I closed the flashlight app on my phone and went back into it. Still, the light would not turn on. The brightness level was all the way up to level 5 and I still had 68% battery power. There was no reason that my light should not be working. 

“Fun’s over,” I snapped, hoping I sounded braver than I felt. Shannon would never let me live it down if she knew how scared I was right now. “It is time to go.” She slammed the closet door in the far corner of the room closed in response. Realizing she was really in this to screw with me and feeling exhausted by her games, I said, “If you make me drag you out of that closet, I am telling my parents that this was your idea.” This was an empty threat, but it didn’t matter because she refused to answer. The silence was becoming unbearable. The small lump in my throat was growing by the second, and it felt like it would soon be choking me. 

Crossing the room to open the door of the closet, I was shocked when the knob was ice cold to the touch and would not turn. I tried opening it again. Nothing happened. As I jiggled it wildly, my heart started beating faster. What was going on? That’s when I heard Shannon’s voice ring out clearly for the first time in what felt like hours. 

“Callie! Where are you?!” her familiar voice shouted hysterically. It wasn’t coming from the closet though. I looked out the window of the bedroom and the blood drained from my face. Shannon was frantically pacing the side garden. 

If she was outside, who was in the closet? 

Not wanting to find out, I turned and ran to the steps, flying down them, and bolting out the front door, forgetting that less than twenty minutes ago, it had been locked tight. Landing in the leaves at the base of the porch, I couldn’t catch my breath as I collapsed in a heap. Shannon was at my side in an instant, brushing my hair out of my face and checking me over to make sure I was not hurt. 

“Why were you inside by yourself?!” She asked me, her eyes searching my face for some kind of answer.

“You were the one who left the door open and didn’t wait for me!” I shouted at her, gesturing generally at the house.

“What are you talking about? The kitchen door was locked too,” Shannon shook her head. “I went around to the garden to see if there was a basement window or some other way in to the house. Which there wasn’t.” 

We both looked back at the house as she pulled me to my feet. Our eyes scaled the stone wall and we both gasped at the same time. There was a strange white figure in the window of the bedroom that I had just been in, a child with a lace dress and a small doll in her arm. Without a second glance, Shannon grabbed me by the wrist and we both sprinted down the drive and back up the street to my parents’ house.