Three of Us Went In… Only I Came Out

The police sirens were loud enough to wake the entire neighborhood. I heard them before I even opened my eyes, the overlapping echoes kept getting closer. My mom and dad were already out of bed by the time I stepped into the hallway, my sister right behind me. We all went outside together and saw that nearly every neighbor was doing the same thing, drawn down the sidewalk toward a cluster of flashing red and blue lights.

As we got closer, I realized all of it was happening in front of the Dreadmoor House.

The house had been abandoned for as long as I could remember. The boarded windows, the sagging porch, the stories people told about it being haunted. Crime tape stretched across the yard as officers moved in and out. No one spoke a word, then a stretcher came through the front door with a body bag strapped tightly on top of it.

Someone gasped. I felt my mom’s hand grip my shoulder

That was enough for my parents, they turned us around and made me and my sister go back inside. I didn’t sleep after that I just laid in bed staring at the ceiling, wondering what could have possibly happened in that house.

The next morning, I went through my routine and headed to the bus stop like normal. I was standing there when I heard my name being shouted, I turned and saw my best friend Joshua running toward me along with Damon who was right behind him. They were both out of breath, talking over each other so fast I couldn’t understand a word.

I told them to slow down. Joshua finally blurted it out.

“Nick’s dad is dead!”

I stared at him, waiting for him to laugh or take it back. When he didn’t, I asked him to say it again. He did but louder this time.

Damon jumped in, explaining that someone had called the police the night before about screams coming from the Dreadmoor House. Nick’s dad, who was already working patrol had gone inside to check it out. According to rumors, he just… died. No explanation or struggle he just collapsed.

The bus showed up before any of us could say anything else and when we stepped on, we noticed Nick wasn’t on it.

He wasn’t at school either. Days passed, then weeks eventually, missing person flyers with Nick’s face started appearing on light poles, strip malls, bus stops just about everywhere you can think of. I saw his mom out there almost every day, stapling them up for hours. Police cars even started stopping by her house regularly. One night, I overheard my mom telling my dad that Nick’s mom had started showing up to work drunk and getting sent home early.

Then came the night that started it all.

I couldn’t sleep. So, I got out of bed and pulled my telescope toward the window, aiming it at the moon like I’d done a hundred times before. But when I opened the curtains, I noticed movement on the street I adjusted the lens and felt my chest tighten.

It was Nick’s mom.

She was walking slowly like she wasn’t fully awake. I followed her with the telescope as she moved down the block. She was heading straight for the Dreadmoor House.

I watched as she reached the porch and lifted her hand toward the doorknob. Then she stopped for a second, everything was still.

Then her head turned slowly. Too slowly.

She looked straight at my window.

My breath caught in my throat as I adjusted the focus. Her face filled the lens, and her skin was pale in a way that didn’t look human anymore, it was stretched tight like all the blood had been drained out of it. Her eyes were the worst part though as they sunk deep into her face, completely black, not reflecting a single trace of light.

She just stared with her mouth hung slightly open, as if she was trying to remember how to speak. I dropped the telescope and stumbled backward, screaming. My parents came rushing into my room, my mom flipping on the light while my dad stood in the doorway, already annoyed.

“What’s going on?” my mom asked. “Why are you screaming?”

I was shaking as I tried to explain, words tumbling over each other. I told them about the telescope. About Nick’s mom and her face. The way she looked right at me.

My dad sighed before I even finished.

“You were half asleep,” he said. “You probably dreamed it.”

“I wasn’t asleep,” I said. “I was wide awake. I saw her.”

My mom exchanged a look with him.

“You’ve been hearing a lot of scary things lately,” she said gently. “With Nick and his dad… your mind is filling in gaps.”

“I know what I saw,” I said, my voice cracking.

“That’s enough,” my dad said. “Go back to bed.”

The light clicked off, and they left. I lay there in the dark, wishing I hadn’t looked through that telescope at all. The next day, I went to Joshua’s house and told him and Damon everything. We sat on the floor in his room with the door shut like we were planning something illegal.

Damon laughed after I finished explaining

“So, you’re saying she turned into a ghost now?” he said. “Come on.”

“She didn’t look normal,” I said. “I’m telling you, something’s wrong.”

Joshua didn’t laugh. He just sat there, quiet, staring at the carpet. He knew me too well to think I’d make something like that up. Damon rolled his eyes and suggested we should go and investigate ourselves.

“No,” Joshua and I said at the same time.

Later that day, we went outside to walk the neighborhood and saw police cars parked in front of Nick’s mom’s house. Damon asked one of the officers what was going on, but the cop brushed him off. As we walked away, we heard another officer say, “Her coworkers say she didn’t show up this morning.”

I stopped walking.

My heart pounded as I turned to them.

“I told you,” I said quietly. We ran back to Joshua’s house and talked it over. If she went to the Dreadmoor House, and Nick was missing too, then maybe that’s where he is. “We should tell our parents,” Damon said.

So, we did. They asked a lot of questions but none of them sounded worried just confused, or annoyed. My parents were more upset that I’d been awake late than anything else.

Later that night, lying awake in Joshua’s room, I finally said what I’d been thinking all day.

“No one’s going to help,” I said. “If Nick’s still alive, he needs us.”

Joshua sat up in his sleeping bag.

“You’re talking about going inside that house.”

“I know,” I said. “I don’t want to. But we can’t just do nothing.”

Damon didn’t say anything at first. He stared at the wall, jaw clenched.

Then he nodded. Joshua looked at him. Then at me.

“Let’s do it,” they both said.

And that was the moment I would soon regret.

After Joshua’s parents finally fell asleep, we quietly got dressed, grabbed our flashlights, and climbed out his bedroom window. We dropped into the bushes below, branches snapping and scratching at our arms as we landed. None of us laughed. None of us spoke. We moved quickly, cutting through backyards and hopping fences until we reached Wicked Lane.

The Dreadmoor House waited at the end of the street.

We approached the house and stood there for a moment, staring at it. The house looked bigger than usual, like it was leaning forward, watching us.

“Maybe this wasn’t the best idea,” Damon whispered. “We should head back.”

Before I could answer, Joshua shook his head.

“No,” he said. “We’re going inside. We’re finding Nick and his mom.”

“But what if they’re dead?” Damon asked.

Joshua swallowed.

“Then at least we’ll know,” he said. “And we’ll tell the police where to find them.”

He stepped onto the porch. We followed.

The front door was already slightly open, so Joshua pushed it, and it creaked open. We were greeted with darkness until we turned on our flashlights and stepped into a living room frozen in time with old furniture from the ’50s or ’60s, thick dust coating everything, cobwebs hanging in the corners.

My light drifted upward and stopped on a large portrait above the fireplace in the painting was a family of five. A mother, a father and three children. Something about their eyes made my skin crawl because as I looked closely, I realized they didn’t look painted. They looked aware.

“This has to be the Dreadmoors,” I said.

Joshua nodded.

“You remember the story, right?”

I asked him to tell it again.

He said the family moved in decades ago after making a deal that was too good to be true. The real estate agent promised them the house for almost nothing. For weeks, everything seemed fine until the youngest daughter, Rebecca started talking about “the red door.”

Upstairs, at the end of a long hallway, was a single door painted red. No one could open it. The agent claimed it was just a storage space, but whispers came from behind it along with loud sounds of scratching.

Soon the family started seeing things and hearing voices eventually paranoia set in. Then one night, they left everything behind and vanished.

Joshua finished the story just as something shuffled above us.

We froze.

Slowly, we moved toward the staircase. Every step creaked under our weight. When we reached the top, we turned to our left and there it was.

The Red Door.

“Nick and his mom have to be behind that door,” Damon whispered. None of us answered we just slowly moved down the hallway with every step carrying an impending sense of doom, but we abruptly stopped as we started to smell smoke.

I looked over the railing only to see the entire downstairs on fire.

Flames climbed the walls, roaring upward. Panic took over so we ran from door to door, yanking handles, screaming for help but none of them would open. The fire crawled up the stairs.

Then to our surprise the red door creaked open, we didn’t hesitate to sprint towards it.

Joshua ran through. Damon followed. I was right behind them when the door slammed shut so hard in my face that my ears rang.

When the ringing stopped, I turned around.

The fire was gone; the house was filled with silence, I rushed to the railing. The downstairs was untouched no flames, no smoke, no heat. Just darkness.

Joshua and Damon were gone.

I ran to the red door and yanked the knob. I pounded on it until my hand swelled, until my throat was raw from screaming eventually, all I could do was sit there and cry.

The police would search the Dreadmoor House from top to bottom after I told them everything. They said they never found a red door. They questioned me for hours, going over the same details again and again, trying to make sense of something they couldn’t explain and something I couldn’t prove.

Months passed. Life kept moving, even though I felt stuck.

Sometimes, late at night, I feel the urge to set up my telescope and aim it at that house. I tell myself it’s a bad idea. That my imagination is looking for patterns that aren’t there but every time I look, I swear I see the same thing.

Two small figures standing in the window on the far-left side of the house.

Watching me.

So, if you take anything from this story …whatever you do.

Never go inside anywhere you have no business being.