"The Empty House"

Scary was always my thing. That's how my friends and I met. We loved scaring each other, watching scary movies, going to cemeteries at night, even going into abandoned houses. We'd recently been hunting down some new places to check out, scary places that had creepy back stories. The house we were about to visit had one of the darkest.

It was a seemingly normal house on a seemingly normal street. The house was probably two stories, an attic with a balcony overlooking the sidewalk outside. The house was painted white with some of the paint chipping around the house. The house didn't even look that old.

The story centering the house was that the house was built and shortly after, the couple it was built for died, leaving the house vacant. Nobody touched it, other than taking care of the lawn, it looked like. There have been a few people that tried buying the house, but the people would never come out and eventually disappeared completely. Over the last few years, the land lord deemed it too dangerous to live in. It's been abandoned ever since. Rumor has it, if you enter, you may never be seen again.

There's no way any of us believed such a silly story. I personally believed that the owner put the price up on the house so high that no one wanted to buy it and eventually went bankrupt rather than lower the price any, thus having to leave the house behind. It made sense to me.

My friends and I made out way up to the front door and knocked, as if there was anyone there to answer. I pushed the front door open and lead the way inside. The main room was big, a staircase next to the door that lead upstairs. Without any light inside, the little bit we could see showed that the outside of the house was better managed than the inside.

After admiring the house I could barely make out, I heard nothing but silence. Where had my friends gone? I called for them but the only response was my voice echoing back to me. I shrugged it off, figuring they'd just wandered off without realizing they'd left me behind. I was fine with it, I'm used to being alone.

After looking around for a while, upstairs then down, I was surprised I hadn't ran into any of my friends. Were they hiding from me? They had to be. I ran around the dark building, calling for them with every room I went into.

I'd given up hope. Had they left without me? I went to the front door and went to open it, only it wouldn't open. The front door wouldn't budge. I yelled out the door, "Come on guys! This isn't funny!"

There was no response, not even laughter outside the door. Something was wrong.

I went to the window and peered outside. It was day time. I saw a man walking down the sidewalk with a pair of cheap, old headphone and a- a Walkman? There's no way there's someone still out in the world with a Walkman if we live in the age everyone has a smart phone. The man's shirt was baggy, as well as his pants. Why did he look completely like he'd stepped out of the 1980's?

Why hadn't I thought of this before? I checked my pocket for my phone. Maybe I can call one of my friends. I might be able to hear their phone ringing and find them.

Upon unlocking my phone I saw the year, 1983.