The Last Room on Blackthorn Lane
There’s a house on the far end of Blackthorn Lane that everyone in town avoids. It’s not because it’s particularly frightening by appearance — in fact, it looks like any other weathered old home. Faded paint, a rusted gate, and an overgrown garden where wild roses tangle with brambles. But it’s the stories people tell about it that keep the place empty, and what happened to a girl named Marianne Holloway one autumn evening is the reason no one goes near it anymore.
It was the kind of October dusk where the sky hangs low and bruised with purple clouds, and the air carries the scent of cold earth and fallen leaves. Marianne, being seventeen and defiant, didn’t believe in the town’s ghost stories. She thought them old wives' tales meant to scare children and keep teenagers from sneaking around at night.
But curiosity is a powerful thing.
It was Caleb Carter’s idea to dare her. “Spend one hour in the house on Blackthorn Lane,” he grinned, his breath misting in the chill air, “and we’ll never call you a coward again.”
Marianne smirked. “One hour? That’s it? I’ll do two.”
So at 9 PM sharp, while the town’s lights flickered and the wind whistled through brittle branches, Marianne stepped through the iron gate. It groaned on rusted hinges as she pushed it open, sending a flock of crows scattering from the gnarled tree overhead. She glanced back once at Caleb and the others, who waited at the corner, their faces pale in the thin moonlight.
The door to the house was unlocked, as it always was, as if it waited for someone foolish enough to step inside. The air inside was cold and heavy, thick with the scent of mildew and old wood. Dust floated in the flashlight beam as Marianne moved through the narrow hallway. Faded portraits hung on the walls, their faces long blurred by age.
Marianne scoffed to herself. Ghosts. Right.
But then she heard it — a faint sound from upstairs. A soft, deliberate creaking, like someone shifting their weight on an old wooden floorboard. She froze. The house had been empty for decades. The last owner, an elderly widow named Mrs. Halberd, was said to have vanished without a trace. Her house left exactly as she left it — tea still in the cups, a book open on the side table, her bedroom door closed.
A few kids over the years claimed to have seen a figure in the upper window, a pale hand pulling the curtain aside, but no one ever stayed long enough to prove it.
Marianne’s heart picked up, but she pressed on. It had to be the wind, or a loose shutter. The upstairs hallway was colder, and each step made the floor groan beneath her weight. She passed by several rooms, doors half-open to reveal tattered curtains and broken furniture.
Then she reached the end of the hallway.
The last room.
Its door was closed, painted a deep, flaking red. Something about it made her stomach twist, but Marianne, stubborn to a fault, placed her hand on the doorknob.
It turned easily.
Inside was a small bedroom, the walls covered in yellowed wallpaper patterned with faded roses. A single bed sat against the wall, the covers undisturbed and perfectly made. The air in here was even colder, her breath misting visibly.
And then — a sound. A whisper.
“Marianne…”
She spun, flashlight beam slicing through the shadows. No one there.
Another whisper, from the corner this time.
“Come… here…”
Her throat tightened. The room seemed to darken, shadows lengthening unnaturally. The flashlight flickered.
A figure moved in the far corner — a woman in a faded nightgown, hair hanging in long, matted strands around her face. Pale skin, lips cracked, and eyes dark as bottomless pits.
Marianne couldn’t scream. Couldn’t move.
The figure pointed one trembling hand toward the bed. And as Marianne’s eyes followed, she saw it — a name scratched into the headboard.
M. Holloway
Her own.
The temperature plummeted. The walls seemed to pulse, the wallpaper patterns twisting like living vines. The figure stepped closer, her voice a rasp like dry leaves.
“You came home…”
A skeletal hand reached out. Marianne turned and bolted, her feet barely touching the floorboards. The hallway seemed longer now, the stairs farther away. She ran, the shadows chasing her, a chorus of whispers filling the air.
She burst through the front door and into the night.
Caleb and the others were gone.
The street was empty, the houses dark, as if the world had folded in on itself.
She ran until she reached her house — or what should have been her house. But the number was wrong. The yard was overgrown, the windows boarded. A sign on the gate read: Condemned Property. Holloway Residence. Family deceased. 1975.
Her stomach lurched. That wasn’t possible. It wasn’t possible.
A voice behind her.
“Marianne.”
She turned.
The woman from the house stood at the gate, a smile stretched too wide across her gaunt face.
“You never left.”
The world twisted.
Darkness closed in.
And then — silence.
When townsfolk walked down Blackthorn Lane today, they tell of a girl’s face in the upstairs window of the old house. Young, pale, eyes wide with eternal fear.
And if you listen closely on cold October nights, you’ll hear the faintest whisper.
“Come home.”
The End.