The Bedroom on the Second Floor

I was about 22, just got out of college and had a nice wad of cash from my summer jobs in my pocket. I was looking for a place to settle down and start a family in. So far I had found a few decent places that caught my eye. They were the beaches of North Carolina, the Southwest, and New England. After lots of consideration, I chose New England. I flew out there straight away and started looking for houses.

During that time, I was without a place to stay. After searching, I found a five story boarding house that had cheap rent. I figured that I could stay there until I bought a house. As soon as I got my room, however, the landlady told me never to venture near the bedroom at the end of the second floor hallway. Mildly creeped out, I entered my room.

It was a nice third floor suite, done in red and brown. The couple next door, Mr. and Mrs. Ardeni, immediately welcomed me to the building and promised me a special cake. I was soon carted around to some residents of the building and chatted in the lounge. Soon I met almost everybody in the building, and I noticed that all the rooms were occupied except for room 238, the room at the end of the second floor. I quickly shrugged it off and returned to my room.

I awoke at midnight precisely. There was a great amount of thumping underneath me, which scared me a bit. Even more frightening was the fact that underneath me was room 238! The thumping persisted for about ten minutes, and then stopped. I could hear the faint sobbing of a young woman as I drifted off to sleep.

The next morning, I saw a tenant named Ray Jansen come into the lounge sobbing. He shrieked and cried that his beloved wife Mayella was gone. That was wierd. I had heard a woman crying in the room below me the night before. That night, and for many after that, I would hear thumping, crying, and many shrieks of pain coming from the room below me.

One night, it became too much. I had just gotten back to my room with my girlfriend Cherri, and we were joking around, just having fun. But the thumping started up, and Cherri was curious. W ended up, I don't know how, at the door to room 238.

It was Cherri who broke open the door. I wish she never did. Bodies of all sorts littered the room, some hung from the ceiling, some nailed to the walls. In the middle of it all, sat the landlady. She looked up at us and said,

"Be a dear and fetch me the honey, please?"