1.
When Henry was 12 he wanted to become a doctor, like his father. He liked the fancy coat and the stethoscope hanging from the neck. He liked the way people called his dad, “Daktari.” He dreamt of opening up his own clinic or even his own hospital. Anything was possible when you were 12 years old.
When Henry was 18, he wanted to be a content creator.
He bought a camera, rather his doctor father bought him a camera (an expensive one) and he used it to take photos. He took photos of birds and trees and tiny snakes in and around his town. He got a few followers from that. But it wasn’t enough. He started taking pictures of buildings, cars, and people in traffic. He lost a few followers from that but gained some more. Not a lot more but he had a few hundred from when he first began.
Then Henry got an idea. He would start filming things. Of course, his generation was more into video content than still images. He started vlogging his life. He vlogged his bus trips (his father would buy him an expensive camera but not a car), he vlogged where he ate, he vlogged the late nights he had, filming himself looking at the ceiling from his bed. He even filmed himself sleeping.
By the time he was 22, he had amassed a few thousand followers on his platforms. And he had found a new niche. On one of his vlogging expeditions, he went into an abandoned building and looked around, pointing his camera at anything he found interesting. His views shot up from that one video. They went from double to triple to pentuple to whatever other multiple until Henry was looking at three million views on his content and a few thousand more followers.
Before long, he started getting messages. Some were from fans letting him know of an abandoned house in such and such a place. Some were from companies offering him the chance to use their fancy equipment on his vlogs. Some companies wanted him to talk about their products and they would give him stuff for free or pay him or both! He said yes to all these and he saw success. The money was coming in and the popularity was going up and up and up. And then there was the plateau. His content stagnated and no one was calling him for anything. In those moments, Henry wished he had become a doctor like his father. He imagined himself with the stethoscope and fancy white coat his name embroidered on it of course. Then he would cry.
When Henry was 24, he decided to do his last abandoned house tour. He had announced it to his followers and it was going to be big! It was going to be the best one so he goes out with a bang! And it was going to be LIVE!
And it was big. It was LIVE! And, indeed it was his last abandoned house tour.
2.
The house in question was quite far away. Henry had to take two buses and a motorcycle ride to the place. It took him five hours. He did not film the bus rides nor the bike ride because he didn’t want to spoil the surprise and have a number of his audience around the place before he even got there. That would be silly and it would not be an authentic experience, would it?
So he traveled in silence but his mind was racing with all sorts of questions, ‘What will I find there?’ ‘Why is it abandoned?’ ‘I hope there aren’t squatters inside.’ ‘Will my wifi even work?’
His wifi did work and he was relieved. As always, Henry did his preliminary walk-through of the property and confirmed that he was alone - no squatters, no nothing. He called his parents to let them know he got there safe and after he laid out his equipment on the ground for assembly at the back of the house.
The building was powder blue, made of mostly wood but the pillars on its corners were concrete. It had two floors and the roof was black iron sheet. The windows had a white trim and were encased within intricate metal grills. Some of the windows had a couple of potted plants, now shriveled and dead, some pots cracked and others toppled over maybe by some stray cat or other animal. Henry hoped it was cats though. The front door was locked. It had a giant deadbolt with a big TriCircle padlock guarding the entrance though the metal was now speckled with rust and something slimy. Nailed to the door was a plank about 12 inches by 12 inches that had painted in big bold red letters, “NO TRESPASSING”. The back door had a similar deadbolt but had a smaller padlock. The kind of padlock that can easily be picked open. He learned how to do it in high school - a deformed key ring could do a lot of damage in the right (or let’s say in the wrong) hands. There was no warning sign on this door.
The windows were dusty and had long trails of cobwebs under their sills, the webs finding holds on some of the broken pots and shriveled-up shrubs. Bushes wrapped themselves all around the house like some sort of prickly worm. They too were dead and brown.
Henry finished setting up his stuff and then he did the thing with the straightened key ring. The padlock gave after a couple of shakes and shimmies and he had access.
He began his broadcast.
3.
When the door creaked open, Henry instantly knew there was something off but he couldn’t put his finger on it. Everything looked normal - normal enough for an abandoned home - but he could not shake the bad feeling in his throat. His hair was standing on edge and he had to resist the urge to turn back and find a way back home because he was LIVE!
The comments started rolling in and Henry felt not so alone so he went on.
Inside, he could see that the windows were boarded up with brown cardboard so there was no light in the room save for the rectangle of sunlight peaking through the open door he had come through, the afternoon sun making the doorway look almost blinding in contrast. He looked for a switch thinking that there was no way this house had running electricity and even if it did, surely the light bulbs wouldn’t work. But there was electricity and the bulbs turned on with an incandescent glow that bathed everything in yellow. That was new.
It should be mentioned that by this time, Henry had a trio of cameras. He set one up on the ground floor above a bookshelf that leaned slightly to the left. He pointed this camera at the door. He did not know why but he felt like he should. He kept the other two in his hands - one camera showed Henry’s point of view and the other was his phone that showed his face and let him read the comments.
‘How in the world is there electricity in there?’ One commenter asked.
Henry shrugged. He didn’t know but he was glad for the light.
This floor held the kitchen, a large living room, a room that was locked, and a bathroom that had the stench of death. There were dishes on the floor of the kitchen, rust on the kitchen sink, and cabinets hanging suspiciously on the verge of collapse. The living room had the bookcase upon which were dusty tomes and old newspapers. Every piece of paper in there was yellow and made even more yellow by the light he turned on in there. There was an old CRT television with rabbit ear antennae and a couple of couches that were draped over with yellowing sheets. On the coffee table, there was a newspaper Henry barely glanced at.
Henry did not visit the bathroom.
He did go up the stairs.
‘Be careful,’ A comment said.
The stairs creaked with each step and it sounded loud. The floorboards felt as if they would collapse if he stayed on them too long. The banister wobbled as he made his way up. His hands were still full so if he did fall, he would either break a piece of equipment or himself. He managed to get to the top floor without breaking either.
This floor was even darker. He placed the camera down and felt along the walls for a light switch and counted his fortunate stars that he found one. The same yellow glow filled the place but the bulbs up here flickered. It was annoying but he was LIVE! And the numbers were now in the hundreds of thousands.
He explored the three bedrooms on this floor. Nothing but a bunch of old beds and bed linen and cabinets that were almost falling but not quite. He was ready to head downstairs to complete his tour when he heard the sound of the door slamming and the deadbolt being slid in. He ran down the beat upstairs and found himself locked in. He banged the door to let whoever locked him in know that there was someone inside but no response came. The comments and views came in like crazy.
“Someone locked me in,” Henry said.
4.
The house was built before Henry was born. It sat on a half-acre piece of land and back then the owners of the house had plenty of neighbors. The owners were a man, his wife, and their young son, a strapping lad of three named Daniel.
The house was complete when Daniel was five. When Daniel was 21 (the same time Henry changed his mind from doctor to content creator), his parents died and he inherited the place. He had just finished his second year in med school when it happened and he was distraught. He adored his parents and he could not imagine facing the world without them. A year after their passing, Daniel fell down the stairs and hit his head something proper. At the hospital, he was looked at, treated for a concussion, and sent back home. But there was something wrong with Daniel.
The bump on his head never quite healed and inside, unbeknownst to the doctors (because he never checked) there was a brain injury and his hormones went haywire. Particularly a hormone that caused him to grow.
By the time Henry discovered that abandoned homes were his thing, Daniel had become a giant of a man and he hid himself. Not in the house that his parents left him, but in a shed close by. He did go inside the house once in a while but he didn’t want to recall those times. Those were bad times when he would do bad things. So he kept himself in the shed and kept an eye on the house.
Sometimes, a person or two would come by. They would look at the place and Daniel saw the wheels turning in their heads. They wanted the place. They wanted to tear down the house and build something new. Yes, they wanted to take it from him.
The first few times, he would approach them. They would see him and he would see the fear in their eyes. He was big and they were small and they were scared. He’d tell them the owners aren’t selling and they would almost run from the property. In town, people started saying the place was haunted. Good, let them think that, Daniel thought.
The ones who didn’t think it was haunted kept coming. Until one day one went missing. He was last seen at the creepy house, they said. And that was enough to keep most of them away. But the ones from out of town kept coming. Slowly, like moths to a flame. They ended up missing as well.
Of course, they weren’t missing. Daniel knew where they were.
The day that Henry came by, Daniel was watching. Waiting to see what Henry would do. And he was shocked when Henry broke in. He knew what he had to do.
5.
Henry had no choice but to reveal his location - the one thing you don’t do on the internet.
Comments changed to something like, ‘Dude! That place is haunted!’
Yet more views came in. He kept streaming.
6.
Between the phone call that he had arrived at his location safe and the text that his son was in trouble, Henry’s dad had seen 12 patients. He was on his way home when the text came and he swiftly found the next U-turn and drove like hell to his boy.
7.
Ann was dispatched to the house on the hill, with the blue wood paneling and black iron sheets, that people said was haunted. She had just graduated from the police academy and this was her first official solo excursion. Ann knew that being a police officer would be a dangerous job and she had trained hard for it. She would be able to face dangerous criminals or rioting crowds or even traffic but it had never occurred that she would also be sent to places like this.
It was almost sunset when she arrived. She walked around the perimeter of the home and saw nothing unusual but just as she was turned about to leave, she heard someone shout from inside.
The front door still had that big old lock so she hurried to the back door. A tiny padlock swung on the deadbolt from the banging going on inside. “Stay back,” she said. And she took out her police baton to hit the thing with. It broke open but just as she removed it from the deadbolt, something hard hit her in the spine and she dropped to the ground. She still heard the banging inside and she saw through blurry eyes an impossibly huge man towering in front of her. He had a questioning look on his face. Then the last thing she saw was his foot as it crushed her face.
8.
From inside the house, Henry heard the grunting sound of someone stomping. He heard the squishy sound of force on flesh but he couldn’t quite make out what was happening except that he was still locked in and the lady who had told him to say back wasn’t responding. He was still LIVE!
A few minutes before, despite his better judgment he had opened the bathroom that smelled like decay. He had to piss and piss he did but he still didn’t know where that rotten smell was coming from though it was definitely stronger in the bathroom. He had had to use his phone’s flashlight to look around the room and to aim at the bowl. He maneuvered that craftily so as not to expose himself to his audience. If he had shone his flashlight just a few inches above him he would have seen the cause of the smell. He would have seen the four severed heads, tucked into the bathroom shelf like trophies on display, flesh melting, bloated and purple. But he didn’t shine his light up there and he didn’t see them. What he did see, when he stopped to actually look, was the newspaper on the coffee table was from yesterday.
“Oh, shit!” he had said.
Then he heard the lady on the other side and he thought he was saved. But he wasn’t.
9.
Henry’s dad was now an hour away. The sun had just set and he had his high beams on. He didn’t care if he blinded the other motorists on the road. He needed to get to his boy.
10.
A little after the sun had set and Henry had tried to kick the door open, the yellow light from the bulbs went out. He stood there in pitch blackness not knowing how to deal with the dark until he turned his phone flashlight back on. A little after that, he heard the deadbolt and the door opened. It was dark outside but there was enough light to silhouette a giant of a man in the doorway. Henry was still LIVE! When the man grabbed him. He screamed but the man put his big hand across Henry’s mouth and half his face. The phone and the camera were dropped on the floor of the not-so-abandoned house and the big man dragged him outside.
The views went wild.
11.
Daniel dragged the man to the side of the house where there was a door leading down into the cellar of the house. Not many houses actually had cellars in the area but Daniel’s dad saw it in a movie once, so he had one built. The man was stronger than he thought but no one was stronger than Daniel. He opened the cellar doors and threw him in. He landed next to the poor policewoman who now unfortunately had no face. The man still had a face though. It wasn’t a bad-looking face, perhaps he could join the others.
12.
By the time Henry’s father rolled on the scene, followed by three police cars, Henry’s phone was on a 10 percent charge. He was still LIVE! Some of his viewers had dropped off because there was nothing on screen but still some lingered. The viewership picked up once his dad picked up his phone.
The police officers canvased the area and found the cellar door. They also found Ann’s body tied to a chair, no face but in front of her a dining table, and on the table was a head.
It took three weeks to find Daniel. He resisted arrest till the end so they took him out.
They never found Henry’s body.