Fear Fest

Tonight's the night. The night people dress up, go trick or treating, and enjoy a good jump-scare at the haunted houses. That stuff isn't for me though, I mean, I used to enjoy all that; going out with a group of friends, putting each others makeup on, and coming home with garbage bags full of candy that we would still be eating half a year later. All that stuff seems great and all, but the past couple years I've been trying new things to do on Halloween night. I felt as though I was too old for dressing up and collecting candy with a bunch of 10 year olds; I needed new ideas.

Two years ago my friends and I decided to go egg houses, smash mail boxes, and TP some trees, it was ok, but not the best. Last year I had an idea that I thought was pretty genious, I wanted to go find an abandoned house to explore. Most of my friends ended up chickening out though, everyone except Robert. Robert was my lab partner in my college science class, I've known him most of my life. He's always gone out on Halloween night with me and has never seemed to be afraid of anything, which explains why he didn't back out like everyone else did.

The next step was to find somewhere to go; Robert and I headed back to the dorms, after class, to brainstorm. After hours of searching the internet for abandoned places to experiment with, we finally found a good spot. It was an amusement park that was once used for haunted tours; It hadn't been used in over 10 years. The owners of the park renamed it the "Fear Fest" after deciding to turn it into a very dark, almost evil looking, tour for people to enjoy around Halloween. We decided that was a great spot to go exploring and planned on heading out the next night.

After class, the next day, we headed to Robert's place to gather some supplies for our trip; It would take a little over an hour to get there, so we needed to pack accordingly. We both had backpacks full of food and water bottles, along with survival packages, first aid kits, flashlights, batteries, and Robert's camera that he usually used for his Photography class. We were prepared but he looked worried, or maybe he didn't get much sleep. He isn't usually worried about this kind of stuff, i mean, he didn't chicken out; he must just be tired.

We loaded all of our things into Robert's truck and began our journey. I offered to drive but he refused; I figured he could've used the break to catch up on some sleep but I guess not. As we got closer to the park Robert began to shake slightly, "Are you sure you're ok? I can drive." I said, looking at him in worry. "No, it's ok. I'm sure I'm just hungry. Grab me something out of my bag; I'll be fine." he replied. I got him some beef jerky and hoped it would calm him down a little by the time we got there.

We were getting close! My GPS said we were about 5 miles from the place; I was so excited I could barely sit still! "What road is this place on again?" Robert asked. "Uhhh.. let's see here..." I said, looking down at the map on my phone's screen. Right as I was about to read the name of the road I lost the signal for the navigation and my phone instantly shut off. "Well, my phone died. I didn't get the name of the road but I know we should take a right in about 2 miles." I said, getting a bit angry at my phone's horrible battery life; I just charged it before we left. "It doesn't even matter now, we're here. If we need to use a phone we have mine." He replied, getting out of the truck.

I hopped out of the truck and looked up in awe at the tall, black, rusty gate and the huge faded sign above it. As I peeked through the bars of the gate I saw that the leaves from the many tall trees covered the cracked, cement walkways. Off in the distance I could see the horses on the mary-go-round, but only enough to barely make them out; I needed in there! I looked down at were the gate doors met, it had a huge lock on it, hopefully Robert had a tool box.

When I turned around to ask I saw that he had gotten back in the truck! He was just sitting in the truck staring up at the sign! "Come on dude, what are you doing!?" I said, frustrated, as I opened the door. "I'm not so sure we should do this." He replied, looking worried. I looked at him as if he was crazy and shouted, "What!? You have got to be joking! We just spent an hour getting down here and you just want to turn around and go home?" I took a deep breath to calm myself down, "Look, all I want is to do a quick walk through, get some cool pictures, and then we can leave. Can we at least do that?" I asked. He looked at me with a sigh, "Sure, I guess so. I just don't want to be in there forever."

After about 15 minutes of trying, we finally got the lock off of the gate with various tools from the bed of the truck; The heavy metal chains, that once held the gate closed, fell to the ground. We were in! I grabbed the camera from Robert's bag, stepped over the heap of heavy chains, and lead the way down the leaf covered path.

The first stop was the marry-go-round, of course I was the first one there, Robert was dragging his feet and looking every direction as if he were actually scared. I couldn't believe it, he has never acted this way before, but I guess everyone has their limits. While I waited for him to catch up I took some pictures, admiring the the aging amusement park ride in front of me; The rust and cracks didn't do it justice, I could tell it was once a magnificent piece of artwork at one point. The moonlight and fog made it creepier than it should've been but it was still an amazing sight to see. Robert finally caught up to me, he looked a bit paranoid and was still shaking, so I figured I should hurry things along.

Off in the distance I saw a sign that read "Kiddieland", I walked toward it with a smile; it would definitely be a great place for pictures. Along the path were giant, alphabet, building blocks stacked on each other that spelled out the word "FEAR", which was the exact expression on Robert's face every time I looked back to see how far behind me he was. He was walking pretty slow for how badly he wanted to leave, and every once in a while he would jump as if he saw something right next to him. I let him catch up a little and took pictures of the building blocks before I continued walking down the path.

We made it to the children's area of the park and I snapped a picture of the enterance before entering so Robert could catch up once again. Inside were many small versions of rides that were usually only meant for adults; Cute little roller coasters, swing rides, and ferris wheels. Even though I was having a great time, my partner in crime wasn't amused; Maybe he was scared of getting caught trespassing? I don't know, at this point I think I'm just making excuses for him; I just can't seem to wrap my head around the fact that a grown man, especially Robert, could be this scared. I decided I would cut him a break and head back to the entrance of the park; when he realized we were headed in the direction of the truck he seemed to calm down a little but he was still prepared to book it out of there at any second.

The main gate was in sight, as I walked toward it I saw the lights in the park flicker. I wasn't sure at first, I thought it was just the way I blinked, but it happened a second time and I was sure of it. My heart skipped for a split second, I turned around to look for Robert; He was standing on the path staring at a sign! "Robert? What are you doing? The gate is right here!" I yelled as he ignored me; I rolled my eyes in frustration and ran toward him to see what he was looking at. It was a small wooden sign that read "Bloody Brittney", she must have been an actor the park hired for the haunted tours or something but why would he be more interested in this sign than getting out of the park? The lights flickered a third time, then a forth, less and less time passed between flickers until it was almost constant; I grabbed Robbert's arm and pulled him in the direction of the gate. When he realized what was happening he started running faster than I was, he ran so fast that he tripped over the chains that were laying in the enterance. Careful not to make the same mistake, I jumped over the pile of chains and ran to the truck; I heard the engine start as I quickly made my way into the passenger seat. Right as I shut the truck door Robert was making his way toward the main road. I took one last look at the park and noticed it was fully lit! I quickly took a picture of the park sign while it was still in plain sight.

"What happened!? Why were you staring at that stupid sign? You never get scared! Ever!" I said, in a panic. "Calm yourself! Look, I have no idea what happened! I don't want to talk about it! All I know is that I'm leaving and I'm never coming back! Don't ask me to do anything like that ever again!" he yelled back at me. All the way home we sat in silence, never even looking at each other. He dropped me off at my dorm, still not saying a word. I sat his camera on the passenger seat, shut the door, and headed up to my room. I thought it would take quite a long time for him to talk to me again after that so I decided just to try and get some sleep. After hours of tossing and turning I received a text message from Robert that read, "Sorry for yelling at you earlier. We'll talk tomorrow in class. TTYL." but I was way too tired to reply.

The next day I stumbled out of bed, got ready, and went to class. When I arrived there was no sign of Robert, that was strange, he's usually there before me; He must have had a worse morning than I did. I sat and waited for 15 mins, then a half hour, I was starting to worry; I figured he slept through his alarm or skipped class and forgot to text me. I decided to sit through this class and catch up with him later on.

I knocked on the door to his dorm room multiple times without an answer. I tried texting him and calling him but he wouldn't answer his phone even when heard his ringtone through the door each time I called. "Robert! This isn't funny! I know you're in there, I can hear your phone!" I yelled with my ear pressed to the door. I knew he hid an extra key outside his room, on top of the door frame but I wasn't going to just open his door without permission. I tried looking underneath the door but I couldn't see, the space was too small! I was just about to get up when I smelled a completely horrid smell coming from Robert's room; That wasn't the smell of week old dirty laundry or rotting pizza, that smell was more like dead animal. Something wasn't right, I needed in there.

I grabbed the key from the door frame and unlocked the door; When I walked in the smell was so horrible it made my eyes burn. After adjusting to the strength of the smell everything became clear, it wasn't a dead animal, it was Robert! I couldn't believe the sight, my stomach could barely handle it but, with almost all my strength, I held down my breakfast. My friend was torn to shreds in his own bed! His chest and stomach completely ripped open with his intestines spread about the room like they were thrown into the air like confetti; His face held a look of pure terror as the walls were almost completely repainted in blood. When I went to get a closer look at his corpse I felt something drip onto my shoulder from the ceiling; I was almost afraid to see what it was. As I took a step back and looked upward I saw it, it was a message written in Robert's blood! It wasn't the sloppy writing one usually sees in the horror movies, this was extremely neat. The message read "Once you enter, you stay forever! Love, Bloody Brittney" with a very neatly drawn heart at the end; My heart felt like it stopped for several seconds. I grabbed the camera on the desk, ran out of the room as quickly as I could, and called the police. Obviously they never found the person responsible, I wouldn't expect them to. They would never think some "girl" from an abandoned amusement park, that has been shut down for over a decade, to do this; they would never believe that if someone told them.

As soon as I got back to my dorm I plugged the camera into my laptop to see if any of the pictures looked abnormal. I scrolled through the pictures one by one, all looking as normal as abandoned amusement parks can get; When I reached the last picture I almost fell out of my chair! It was an extremely blurry picture of a bloody, clown looking "girl" with long black and pink hair; the flash lit up her face in such a way that made looking at her a very uneasy experience. She had blood dripping from her mouth and eyes, her smile was wide with many shark-like teeth, and her nose was red and round like most clown's noses are. The last part kind of confused me, I wasn't sure if the black gashes that were around her eyes were makeup or not, but I sure know what to look out for when she comes looking for me...