A Haunted Blog Hop | Part 1

Welcome to our Haunted Blog Hop-a scary collaboration with some of my blogging buddies. The Hop continues tomorrow and goes on through Halloween night. The story starts here and continues on the following blogs. I hope you visit them and enjoy our story. 

Part Two: Minivan Momma 
Part Three: All that and some other stuff 
Part Four: Lucky Mama 
Part Five: Grace, Grits & Gardening 

The Rutledge Home for Wayward Boys sat quietly at the bottom of the driveway. The steep decline from the dark road was nearly a forty five degree angle and was covered with wet fallen tree limbs and dead leaves that glistened from the recent rainfall and crunched under the weight of the car’s wheels.

Gillian maneuvered her car down the drive and as she did so the beams of the car’s headlights illuminated the white siding of the one story ranch house. The house had sat abandoned for many years. Forty years to be exact. It had been her grandfather’s endeavor; a home for troubled boys, a place for them to make amends and seek help to right their wrongs.

The windows of the house were dark and filled with wet cobwebs and the overgrown shrubs below swayed in the cold October wind. As Gillian continued around the backside of the house a low rolling fog crept over the driveway and into the shadows of the surrounding property. The hair on Gillian;s arms rose and she wished she’d given in and let her boyfriend ride along or that she had acquiesced to the pleas from her best friend- ‘’don’t go alone.”

She found her way to the back of the property where another smaller cottage-style house sat at the edge of dark woods. Beyond the thick woods there was a small lake. This house had been her grandfather’s as well. It was the childhood home of Gillian’s father who had been an only child. Gillian didn’t know much about her father’s time at the house, in fact that was why she was there. Her father had left the property- ran away from home shortly before his eighteenth birthday and made a new life for himself at a four year college, married her mother, and didn’t speak much about his early life, except to tell her to sell the property and never, never visit. They had been his last words as he died, holding Gillian’s hand.

The car rolled to a stop in front of the cottage. Gillian grabbed her father’s old set of keys from her handbag and the purple potted mum from the front seat of the car. She was determined to stay on the property and determined to find out exactly why her father didn’t want her there.

Gillian fumbled to find the correct key and as she reached out to slip it into the rusty lock the purple mum slipped from her arms and crashed at her feet spilling dirt out onto the wet cracked sidewalk and across the toes of her navy blue high heels. Her hand stopped just short of the lock as she looked down at the mess at her feet. Gillian crouched to picked up the crushed mum and as she did she was startled by the eerie click-click of the door’s old lock. With eyes wide in surprise, Gillian lifted her head as the door creaked open. She looked into the darkness of the house to see who had unlocked and opened the door. Only. There was no one there. She straightened and stood up quickly. A sudden gust of wind blew the door open further and at the same time there was the distinct snap of branches behind her.

…be sure to visit Minivan Momma tomorrow for what happens next!