How in the hell had I ever let my so-called friends get me into this mess? I guess alcohol might have been a factor. You know how it goes; you're sitting with a few friends munching on enough junk food to put the Budweiser Clydesdales into a diabetic coma and sucking down beer. Do you have any idea how nasty beer and sugarcoated spice gumdrops taste together?
Since it was only two days until Halloween we had been telling ghost stories to see who could tell the scariest story. And as usual, some drunken fool had to make a silly-ass bet about someone spending the night alone in the old Ramsey Mansion on the outskirts of town. Yeah, you guessed it; I was the intoxicated idiot who took them up on the stupid bet.
The old abandon mansion had a reputation of being haunted. I didn't believe in ghosts, goblins, monsters, or any other creature of supernatural origin. I figured what the hell; I could definitely use the hundred bucks I was going to win.
#
The next day we went to the creepy old mansion to make sure there was a way for me to get inside the next night. The house sat nearly a mile off the highway, so we weren't too worried about anyone seeing us trying to break into the place; not that anyone would really care. A set of bolt cutters got us through the chain locking the huge, black iron gates in the high stone wall surrounding the mansion.
Even in daylight, the decrepit mansion looked eerie sitting at the end of the long driveway leading to its entrance. I'm sure, at one time the old place had been a beautiful estate, but now it lay in ruin, obviously having not been maintained over many decades. The massive roof sagged in the middle; many windows had been broken out and covered over with what was now rotting plywood; the grounds were over-grown with waist-high weeds.
Several years ago, the town council had discussed the notion of restoring the rundown mansion as a historical site, but it was decided to leave it to the ghosts, believed by many to be residing in it.
The last human resident of the mansion had been Lady Charlotte Ramsey; the beautiful young widowed bride of Lawrence Ramsey. Our county had been named after Mr. Ramsey's great-grandfather who built the mansion in the late seventeen hundreds. Lawrence Ramsey was rumored to have died after an unexplained fall from a third story window. It was generally believed that the jilted lover of his recent bride had pushed him out the window.
After Lawrence's early death, Charlotte had lived alone in the huge home with only her cook, a butler, and a maid. She never left the house until her sudden death ten years later in 1925. Her ex-lover was found hanging on a rope tied to the stairway railing just outside Charlotte's bedroom. The broken, battered bodies of Lady Charlotte and her maid were found at the foot of the stairway. The whole chain of events was chalked up as a murder-suicide that took ten years to draw to a conclusion. Their four tortured spirits are said to still haunt the mansion.
One would think, when the town council mentioned ghosts living in the old home, even in jest, one would have enough sense to at least
consider
the possibility of their existence.
Walking toward the crumbing old mansion, my three friends and I were very quiet. I think we were all thinking about the scary history of the place. I was beginning to have serious doubts about the intelligence of my bet and the validity of my own non-belief in ghosts. The old place looked as if a host of ghosts could reside there. Crawling through a broken first-floor window I hiked up my spirits and decided a bet was a bet; I would go through with it. Hiked up my
spirits
, a poor word choice under the circumstances.
The four of us stood in a group, dancing flashlight beams around what appeared to be the parlor or sitting room. All the furniture was still in the old place, covered with what looked to have been white bed linens at one time, but now appeared to be a dusty light-brown color.
We roamed around the abandoned house for almost an hour. My
good
friends wanted to be sure the place was safe for me to spend the night in. Even though it was light outside, with most of the windows boarded up, it was dark and dreary inside the musty smelling old mansion. I was glad I was getting a kind of tour of the place while someone else was with me. Had I been required to walk into the house by myself, I'm not so sure I would be able to do so.
I kept a close eye on Brenda's boyfriend, Tommy. He's famous for his pranks and I was sure he was going to leave something behind to scare the fire outta me the next night. Oh yeah, this whole charade had been his idea in the first place.
All the doors inside the house were sitting open except one on the second floor. With some effort and a little help from his pry bar, Tommy finally managed to get the locked door open with surprisingly little damage to the ornate doorframe.
The room had obviously been Lady Charlotte's private sitting room. Even though the room was covered with huge expanses of cobwebs and all the furnishings were covered with filthy bed sheets and nearly an inch of dust, the room still emanated an air of femininity.
I suddenly had the weirdest sensation. It was like a cold chill running up my spine, except it seemed to begin where my thighs met, run up my insides, and out through my suddenly erect nipples.
Oh my God
, what a feeling
that
was! I shivered and uttered a soft moan. It was scary as hell and wonderful at the same time.
"You okay?" Brenda asked, noticing the funny expression on my face.
I started to tell her what had just happened, but quickly decided it was ridiculous. It couldn't have been anything more than my wild imagination working overtime. "Yeah, I'm fine," I lied. "I was just thinking about the lady who must have spent a lot of time in this room."
I experienced mixed emotions when we climbed back out the open window into the bright sunlight of the cool late October afternoon. The curious side of me wanted to stay, while the smart side wanted to get the hell away from there.
#
My little group of friends and I spent the rest of the evening sitting around doing our part to keep Anheuser-Busch in business and talking about the old house and the deaths of the people who had lived, and apparently died, in the mansion. I think it was just Tommy's way of trying to scare the piss outta me so I would simply call it quits and fork over the hundred bucks. I wasn't ready to cry uncle that easily, not yet anyway.
I went to bed rather late; I wanted to talk about the house more. I think I was unconsciously hoping one of my kind-hearted friends would graciously volunteer to stay in the old house with me. But that never happened. It looked like I had gotten myself into this predicament by myself and I was going to have to carry it out the same way.
I tossed and turned fitfully for several hours before sleep finally managed to overcome my busy imagination in its attempt to terrorize me with visions of vampires, werewolves, witches, black cats, flaming-eyed jack-o-lanterns, and ghosts.
#
The cool light of early dawn glowed softly between the curtains drawn across my bedroom window. Resentfully, I allowed myself to be pulled from the wonderful dream I had been having. The images of the vile, evil creatures of the night had been safely shoved out of my dreams by the presence of a lovely lady that I had no idea who she was or where her image had come from. She was certainly no one I had ever met before.
Now let me explain my position. I am not gay. I love men and the wonderful things they can do to a woman and the things a woman can do to a man. But this lady with her sensual aura, I believe, could easily cause me to change my preferences.
In my dream, she was sitting at an antique vanity table, dressed in a pink nightgown, which was barely on her gorgeous body, while she leaned toward the mirror applying her makeup. For some unknown reason, I woke up wanting her so damn bad my heart was aching. I was wet between my thighs. "What the hell?" I yelled to myself, jumping from the bed.
It took me several minutes of pacing around my room to get myself back together. I had never wanted another woman before. Why the hell had I dreamed about this woman, and what's more, what the hell had caused me to wake up wanting her so bad? I could still smell the soft scent of her Jasmine perfume in the air around me.
Damn
, it had been so real.
#
Shortly before midnight on Halloween, after the hubbub of the local trick-or-treater's had calmed down, my three friends escorted me to the open window in the rear of the mansion. I had to admit to myself; just being in the yard of the creepy old mansion after dark was a pretty freaky experience in itself.
After I had climbed through the window, my friends handed through my sleeping bag and a large bag of junk food to sustain me through the long, lonely night ahead. At that time, they headed back toward the gates. As stated in the terms of our bet, they locked the gates, got in the car, and awaited my signal that it was okay for them to leave. The prearranged signal was for me to shine my flashlight out through a hole in the rotten plywood covering one of the second-story windows. They would leave, returning to unlock the gates and pick me up at 8:00 a.m. the next morning. I had my cellphone in case I needed an earlier rescue. For some reason, I didn't like it when my friends had used the word,
rescue
. Why should I need rescuing? I mean, if some big badass monster was after me, wouldn't it be a bit too late by the time they got back to
rescue
me?
I cautiously worked my way up the creaking stairway to the second floor. Once I had made it to the window with the hole in the plywood, lifting my flashlight up to that hole was the hardest thing I had ever done in my life. I really didn't want them to leave. Even for a hundred bucks, I couldn't figure out what I was doing there. Why had I been so stupid as to accept such an asinine bet? Sure, I really didn't believe there was anything bad or evil in the house, but who in their right mind wants to spend Halloween night alone in a broken-down old house no one has occupied in over seventy-five years?
I'm pretty sure my friends didn't actually think I would go through with it. I knew they expected to see me running toward the gates, crying for them to let me out. But I fooled the hell outta them, I shined the flashlight through the hole in the window! I was actually wondering who had really fooled whom.
They didn't leave right away. I stood transfixed, peering out from the dank musty innards of the crumbling old house. My heart pounded nearly out of my chest watching them finally pull away. It stopped pounding and sank quickly to the very pit of my stomach as the dim-red taillights vanished from sight. If a tiny mouse had ran across the floor right then, I am certain I would have immediately dropped dead from a massive coronary.
Moments later, my heart shot to the very limits of my throat, nearly jumping out of my gaping mouth when a soft voice came from behind me. "I am so pleased you decided to stay."
It scared me so bad, I dropped my flashlight to the floor as I spun around to see who, or
what
, was behind me. I gasped so deeply at what I saw, I must have sucked up all the cobwebs and dust in the room, because now the place was immaculate and softly lit by the warm, yellow glow of candlelight. The air was suddenly full of the soft scent of jasmine.
On a red velvet-covered bench in front of a vanity table in one corner of the room, causally applying her makeup sat the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. Mounds of deep-auburn hair lay in swirls above her large, sparkling jade-green eyes.
That wasn't actually the first time I had seen her, she was the same exquisite lady I had dreamed about the night before, after visiting in the old mansion for the first time. She was exact in every detail, right down to the lacy-trimmed, turn-of-the-century, pink, silk nightgown she was almost wearing. Lying loosely off her slender shoulders and below her upstanding naked breasts. The gown hung unbuttoned down the back, exposing her gorgeous round behind, exactly as in my dream.
The main difference between what I was looking at and what I had dreamed, was the focus, everything I was seeing at that moment seemed slightly out of focus, as if I were viewing it through a very thin layer of crystal-clear water.
My mind was having a very difficult time dealing with the events of the moment. My mind told me, "Screw it! I ain't dealing with this crap!" So I did what any self-respecting woman would do under the same circumstances, I fainted.
#
