CAMPFIRE: The Last House on Adeline Lane

Please note: this story was provided by the author and published as is.

Dear reader,  

The last house on Adeline Lane was supposed to be a new beginning for us. What happened within those walls is something I have never spoken about. Until now.  

Clay, my younger brother, was at the center of it all. I wasn’t able to save him. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but for me, it’s the stuff monsters are made of.  

It’s ok if none of this makes sense right now. Soon it will. In time, you’ll know everything about the last house on Adeline Lane, and how my little brother, in a way, is still there. 

You’ll know why I have to write this letter, how I have to tell someone, anyone, because it’s all happening again. The red paint soaking my sheets; her incessant, raucous giggling; the low lull of rolling, of something rolling… I can’t escape it.

I’ve always known this day would come, so now I write, in the hopes you’ll find this, dear reader, and tell them the truth, before it’s too late.  

It might already be too late. 

*** 

It’s as if it had been sitting there, waiting for us.  

When Mom pulled into the driveway of the last house on Adeline Lane, the first thing I noticed was the towering turret oddly angled at the top left corner of the house. Following the grand exterior down, a large weeping willow, which I suspected was decaying, drooped away from the house.  

The house, which had been painted a pastel blue (charming once, I suppose) now paled, chipped and faded by weather and time. I couldn’t shake the feeling that this house had been abandoned.   

With such a foreboding first impression, initially I didn’t want to go inside. But then Mom said we could pick our own rooms, if we were fast enough, and that did the trick. Without a moment of hesitation, Clay and I spilled out of the car, and we ran up the front porch steps. Second floor, Mom yelled after us. I beat Clay inside, the foyer and kitchen a blur behind me.  

Then, I reached the foot of the stairs, stopped, and peered up. Made of decades-old redwood, the sweeping staircase curled like a claw, twisting upwards, its landing point far out of sight. 

Timidly, I placed one foot on the first step and the floorboard creaked under my weight. Everything about this place was uninviting.  

At that moment, Clay shoved me out of the way and ascended the stairs two steps at a time. I chased after him and saw him running down the hall to the left. He came to an abrupt stop in the center of the hallway, his eyes growing wide in amazement. Then, without looking away, he yelled dibs! He must have found a room. 

I caught up to my brother and could see he had found the room that belonged to the turret.   

Looking in, the curve of the turret evoked a feeling of vulnerability, like the room itself was watching you. Its arched windows offered a wider view of the front lawn and surrounding woods, with the top of the willow tree just brushing the windowpane. Its unconventional shape provided limited functionality, but I could see the appeal. For Clay, this was the wild excitement of a child’s playroom.  

Dibs, he screamed again. I agreed, not only because he was happy, but because I wanted a bigger room. I wandered down the hall and found a modest sized one with yellow walls. Nothing special, but it was mine. I placed my bag down and sat on the edge of the bed. It was finally sinking in, the reality of moving.  

Then, Clay called out to me and said he wanted to show me something, and so I went back into the tower room.  

He was standing in the far-right side of the room and looking at a large painting hanging on the wall. How had I not noticed it before? It was huge, practically life-size.  

As I got closer, I could see it was the portrait of a woman dressed in a light pink frilled dress and matching tights. She wore silver slippers meant for dancing, and her head, which was tilted to the left, was adorned with long brown curls. Her arms were stretched out far in front of her, as if she were reaching towards us. But perhaps the strangest thing of all was she appeared to be suspended in a doll stand. Was she a dancer, or a doll? I could not tell. Her thin lips were painted passive, but her eyes, they held something, a knowing, I think. It was as if she were looking right at me.  

An odd picture for an odd room.  

Clay pointed to the bottom right corner of the painting and there, written in clean cursive, was his name. First and last.  

We stood and stared at it for some time, and when he finally tore his eyes away from the painting, I could see the uneasiness wash over him. I couldn’t explain this, not to me and certainly not to him, but I tried my best, because that’s what big sisters do. So, even though I didn’t mean it, I laughed and told him that this room was meant for him. That his name was a sign, quite literally, that we were exactly where we should be.  

His face softened and I poked his stomach. I told him I’d race him to the kitchen, and so down we went.  

We didn’t think about the woman in the portrait again until later that night.  

*** 

On the first night we went to bed in the last house on Adeline Lane, I was already awake when it began.  

It was around 3 am and I was finding it difficult to fall asleep. Like many old houses, unexpected sounds dotted the darkness, but I told myself it was perfectly normal. I tossed and I turned until I heard Clay scream out my name. It cut through the night like a knife.  

Jumping out of bed, I yanked open my door and ran to my brother.  

When I entered the tower room, all the lights were on and Clay was sitting upright in his bed pointing at the portrait. He told me he heard someone laughing, whispering his name. He said it was the woman in the painting.  

I eyed the painting then walked closer to it, until I was face to face with the doll dancer. I noticed right away that something was off. Her head was angled differently, in fact it was facing Clay’s bed, straight on. I could have sworn it had been tilted a different way before.  

No matter what I thought, I knew I couldn’t tell Clay. He would be fixated on the painting now, and getting him to fall asleep would be nearly impossible. So, I decided to take the painting off the wall.  

I reached for the painting, making sure to hold on tight with two hands, and then I pulled.  

But nothing happened.  

It didn’t move, it wouldn’t move, not in the slightest. It was like this painting was glued to the wall. I tried again with all my strength to get it just to budge, but still, nothing happened. I turned around and saw Clay was starting to cry. I thought of Mom and how she had worked so hard to get us this house. I had to fix this.  

So, I walked over to the corner of the room where Clay’s unpacked boxes were piled high and pulled a thin sheet from one of them. I walked back to the painting and draped it over. The sheet wasn’t thick or long enough to completely cover the painting (I could still make out the doll dancer’s silhouette) but it was better than nothing.  

I told Clay I would find a way to take the picture off the wall in the morning, and that for tonight, I would sleep with him. So, I turned off the light, hopped into bed, and held him close. We both dozed off, eventually.  

I slept with Clay every single night after that. Every single night. Even his last.  

*** 

Clay was in high spirits the next day and so we didn’t talk about the painting. There was so much unpacking to do that we were both exhausted when it came time for bed. Clay asked me to sleep with him and I said yes. Truthfully, I fell asleep faster the night before knowing I wasn’t alone.  

We both found sleep almost instantly on the second night.  

Then, around 3 am, I woke to the feeling of something dripping on my nose. Then again on my cheek. I patted my face, expecting beads of sweat to be there, but there was nothing. I looked up at the ceiling, wondering if there was a leak, but there wasn’t. I must have dreamt it.  

Clay started to tug on my sleeve, and I elbowed him to stop, but he wouldn’t. He didn’t speak, he just continued to pull at me and point at the painting across the room.  

I rubbed the sleep from my eyes, and when I finally did look, I could not believe what I was seeing. There, from across the room, the sheet I had used to cover the painting had fallen to the floor.  

And the woman in the portrait was holding her head. 

I froze, dumbstruck. How could this be real? We had to be dreaming; this had to be a dream. No, a nightmare.  

I was trying to rationalize what I was seeing when the noises began.   

At first, I couldn’t tell what it was, or where it was coming from, but it sounded like a string of slow, soft thuds approaching from far away. The noise had a rhythm to it, and it was definitely getting louder. And closer.  

Now, it sounded as though it were just down the hallway. As it grew even louder, I could tell it was the sound of something being rolled, something heavy, like a bowling ball.  

Then, Clay whispered look. I knew he was talking about the portrait, and I didn’t want to look at it, but in the end I did. And my first thought was, where was her head?  

Looking straight at the portrait, it was clear her head was missing — completely missing — not just from her shoulders, but from the painting all together.  

Her head? Where the hell was her head? Was she losing hers or was I losing mine?  

Chills ran down my spine and my chest began to tighten. Panicking, I reached for the lamp light with shaking hands. Once I found it, I flicked the switch two, three, ten times, but it wouldn’t turn on, and all the while that maddening, low rolling grew louder and louder, until I was sure whatever it was, was in the room.   

Her head. Where was her head? 

I tried to steady my breathing as the rolling traveled past the door, across the room, and then, it sounded like it was headed directly underneath us.  

It was underneath us. Underneath our bed. All at once the rolling sound stopped.   

I had to look. I had to see what it was. Clay shook his head, begging me not to, and believe me, almost every fiber of my being told me not to. But something was taking over me, something else entirely. Call it curiosity, or insanity, but I had to look. I had to.  

By now my eyes had adjusted to the darkness, and ever so carefully, I leaned to the right and gripped the side of the bed, preparing to hold the weight of myself as I looked under.  

I took a deep breath, paused, lowered my head, and…  

Nothing. The floors had collected some dust, but other than that — 

SCREAM.  

I bolted upright. It was Clay, he was screaming and pointing at the painting again. I turned and saw that the woman in the portrait was gone. Only her doll stand was left.  

Right then, high-pitch giggling broke out from all corners of the room. I frantically looked from left to right, trying to find the source of the laughter, but it only grew louder and continued to disorient us. And when I couldn’t take the madness of the moment any longer, I screamed like I never had before in my life.  

A few seconds later Mom slammed open the door, switched on the lights, and asked what happened. Clay pointed at the picture, and when we all turned and looked at it, there she was, the doll dancer, back in her place, suspended in her doll stand.  

I stammered, trying to put into words what had just happened. Mom sighed, said she expected more from me, then walked over and covered the painting with the sheet again. She told us to really try and give this house a chance, and that maybe we should sleep in my room from now on.  

She didn’t believe us and how could she? The doll dancer losing her head, the unexplained sounds? It all was too much, I knew that.  

But it was real. Oh, god, it was real.  

And so, even though I knew in my gut that we needed to leave the last house on Adeline Lane immediately, we stayed another night.  

And it would be Clay’s last.  

*** 

Created by: Luke Previs

“No, no, no,” I reassured him. “It’s not blood, it’s, it’s….” My voice faltered as I didn’t know what to tell him. It wasn’t blood, it couldn’t be. It didn’t smell like blood, and it had a strong scent. It almost smelled like, like, paint — 

Before I could finish my thought, it started.  

From far down the hallway, that familiar, horrifying rolling sound began. I could hear its monotonous lull growing louder and louder with each passing second, and I knew it was her.  

It’s the doll dancer’s head, I thought. It’s her head rolling down the hallway, coming for us.  

For what seemed like hours, the rolling sound traveled down the hallway, past the tower room, and then, with a loud THUD, it beat hard against our door. And then it was quiet.  

The bedside lamp, which had been on all night, flickered twice, then gave out altogether. We were in silent, still darkness. And something was outside our door.  

Clay started to shake and I pulled him close. I whispered sweet nothings to him; empty promises about how everything would be ok. She couldn’t get in, couldn’t get us, because we had locked the door. I told him monsters didn’t exist and that this was all a bad dream. That we would be ok. We had to be ok.  

I do not know how long the figure had been standing in the far-right corner of the bedroom, for Clay and I never took our eyes off the bedroom door. But when it started to move toward us, we turned and saw it. 

There, just a few feet from the edge of the bed, was someone, or something, wearing a white bed sheet. The ghostly figure in the sheet froze when I noticed it, and like that we stayed, still as statues, staring at one another. I can’t tell you how much time passed in those moments, if they even were moments, or minutes, or hours. But eventually, the figure lifted something round from under the sheet up high, and it looked as if it were placing something on top of its head.  

At that moment, the figure took form, and it hit me: This was her, right in front of us. This was the doll dancer.  

The figure in the sheet inched forward, step by step, closing the gap between itself and our bed. It made no sounds as it moved, as if it were gliding across the floor, and all I could hear was my heartbeat pounding out of my chest.  

When it was just an arm’s length away from the bed, I noticed the sheet was starting to discolor a dark maroon right around where the head would be, and the image of two eyes, and, and — a mouth? — began to bleed through the sheet. As the figure got closer, I could see the mouth was lopsided, curved into a crooked grin, the corners of its lips dripping red droplets down the sheet.  

I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t scream. Paralyzed with fear, we sat there and watched the figure pause when it got to the edge of our bed. Then, it lowered itself down to the floor, got on all fours, and crawled under our bed.  

The bed sheet caught on the floorboards right before the figure went fully under the bed. As the sheet pulled off, I was able to catch a glimpse of a silver slipper slide under the bed.  

Clay was shaking violently, and I was trying to get a hold of  my senses. I leaned to the left and looked at the floor. The white sheet was sitting in a pool of red and the figure was nowhere to be seen.  

But I knew where it was. I knew where she was and what she wanted. I had to protect Clay.  

So, I sucked in a shaky breath and prepared myself to lean over and look under the bed. I didn’t have any type of weapon to defend us, I didn’t have a plan, or any sense of strategy. I only knew that Clay and I would not be able to leave this room as long as the figure was under our bed.  

Just like the night before, I leaned to the left, gripped the side of the bed, and held the weight of myself as I lowered my head, and…  

CLAY STARTED SCREAMING WILDLY. 

I jolted upright, turned, and saw only the end of it: A white flash, the bedsheet being thrown over 

Clay, and then…  

He was gone.  

Clay! Where was Clay? 

At that moment, I heard my brother scream my name, but it wasn’t from my bedroom anymore. It was coming from the tower room, I knew it. Even though I was scared out of my mind, I had to go to him. I had to save my brother.  

I ran down the hall and made it to the tower room, but the door was locked. I could hear Clay crying and screaming my name from within, and her sickening, deafening giggles, echoing off the walls. I beat at the door, pounding my fists hard against the wood until my knuckles bled. I was just about to kick down the door when all of Clay’s screams and the giggling stopped. And then the door to the tower room creaked open on its own.  

I hesitated, but only for a moment, then I entered the tower room in the last house on Adeline Lane for the final time.  

The room was empty, and it looked as though nothing had been disturbed. I checked under the bed, in the closet, but somehow, I knew he wouldn’t be in any of those places. There was only one place left to look.  

I walked over to the portrait and saw that something was wrong.  

The doll dancer was there, suspended in her doll stand, her head tilted to the left, and her arms still reaching out towards me. But now, there was an audience that wasn’t there before, watching her. They all looked like children, and some of them had their hands in buckets of red and white striped popcorn, while others held gobs of colored cotton candy. Some of the children were laughing, but there, in the corner, one boy stood out.  

It was Clay. It was my brother Clay. Make no mistake of that, my brother was now in this painting, and I had no idea how to reach him. He looked at the doll dancer with worry on his face and held hands with a small blonde girl who looked younger than him.  

Clay. Oh, Clay. What happened to you?  

I started to back away from the painting, my breath quickening, and the room spinning. I was losing it, that was all. I’d wake up, any moment now, and Clay would laugh, and we’d be ok.  

I held my head in my hands and stared at the doll dancer, hoping against all hope that this was just a nightmare.  

Then the doll dancer turned her head, offered me a wide grin, and winked.  

And I hit the floor.  

*** 

I woke with maddening worry in my bedroom with the yellow walls. The red substance that had soaked my sheets was completely gone, and I knew even before I stretched out my arm that Clay would not be beside me. I ran to my mom, and I suppose the look on my face told her something was terribly wrong.  

She never believed me when I told her where Clay was. There was only ever a brief moment, when I watched her from the doorway of the tower room, that I saw the slightest hint of realization wash over her. She walked up to the portrait, cupped a hand over her mouth, and gasped. Right then and there, I knew she knew the truth too, even if she refused to believe it. She shook her head, tears in her eyes, and told me to call 911. She said we had to report that Clay was missing.  

They never found my brother, but not without effort. For weeks and even months, our family was in the headline of every article and at the center of every police search. Overtime, the police’s leads dwindled to a trickle, until one day, they stopped calling with updates all together. And it didn’t take long for the local lore to spread, too, especially during Halloween time. The police had their theories of what happened to Clay, the townies had theirs, but me? I knew. I’ve always known the truth.  

That my little brother was still inside, trapped between colors and canvas, forever frozen on the walls in the last house on Adeline Lane. 

GIGGLING BEGINS. 

Do you hear that? She’s back. Back for me. It’s her, it’s really her, the doll —