Cary sat there on the stairs for a moment, catching her breath as she stared out the front door. She could see Greg and Angelica pacing back and forth in the distance, safely outside of the wrought iron fence. Over those first few minutes, the other three bullies came over to join them, the full band in place to block her from escaping the house. At least until they had to go home, which Cary figured was after she was expected by her grandparents.

When it became clear that she was trapped inside the house, she started to look around the room that she was in. Looking for another way out of that haunted house, hopefully one that would get her past the bullies. The entry hall was large, with the two sweeping staircases taking up much of the space. They twisted out from the center of the room, coming to two opposite sides of the upstairs above her. The rest of the room was empty, with just the remnants of the crystal chandelier dangling precariously from the ceiling. Between the two stairs on the ground floor, against the back wall, were two large doors leading into a room. These two doors were the only things in the house that weren't falling apart. Even the set of stairs that she was sitting on had huge gaps in the wood where steps had fallen away.

To either side of the entry hall were doorways leading deeper into the ground floor. Cary could see through the one to her left, into another room over there. In the distance, against the far wall inside that room, she saw crumpled bookshelves, which had no books in them. They showed no sign that they could hold a single book aloft without falling the rest of the way to pieces. When she glanced the other way, though, over towards her right, she could only see the front window of that room. From how it stuck out into the front yard, forming a bay there, she figured that it was a sitting room or a solarium. What a solarium was doing in that old house was beyond her.

But the one thing missing from that area was, of course, anything worth her time. Nothing that could aid in her escape or to help while away the time until Greg and his crew gave up. Moreover, there were no signs of ghosts, or anything that didn't belong in that old house. Nothing to show signs that being in there was dangerous to her health. Or at least, no more dangerous than going out to greet the bullies waiting for her.

With another look towards the door, and said bullies beyond it, Cary stood up on the stairs, turning around to look up them. Above her were two hallways, leading deeper into the house, one for each of the staircases. There was no way to cross between them that she could see, and with no idea of what she might find above, she opted to climb the stairs that she was already on. She took her time of it, placing one foot down gently and waiting for the stair to fall out from under her before moving to the next one. The lack of ghosts in the house wasn't proof that there were none, and she wasn't about to risk adding her own ghost to the place.

The left upstairs hallway was as empty as the entry hall below. There were markings on the walls, showing where old photographs used to hang. None of them were there anymore, though, having been removed when the house was abandoned. The floor gave out whines and groans as Cary made her way along it, seeming to complain about her weight. She tried to pay it no mind, as she stopped at the first set of doors, one on either side of the hall. Both doors were wide open, with the door to her right having fallen completely off. Both rooms were empty of furniture, or anything of the former owner. However, the one on the left had three baseballs, two rocks, a tennis ball, and a golf club.

Cary stood there for a moment, looking at those balls. She knew that one of them was David's, probably the nicer, cleaner one near the center of the room. The rest of the debris, left over from people that weren't brave enough to retrieve them, all seemed like it had been in there for decades. Certainly longer than Cary had been alive. Staring at those objects, Cary was left to wonder just how many times the window had been fixed since the house was abandoned. After all, she knew that David's ball had broken the window anew. What never occurred to her at the time was to question why whoever it was that repaired the windows hadn't pulled the balls, rocks, and club out when they were in there. She just figured that, whoever it was, they had repaired the window from the outside, opting to risk their life on a ladder rather than entering the haunted house.

When she looked back towards the room on the right, she just stood there for a moment staring through the door. The room was bigger than her own room back at her house. However, with the room being in the center of the floor, with the stairs right next to it, the room didn't have any windows. She thought that seemed like the gloomiest room that ever existed, and hoped that no one had been stuck in there for long. Or if they had, she hoped they deserved it.

There were three more rooms along that hallway, with two on the left and one more on the right. The one on the right was the bathroom, but the toilet was dry and empty. The smell kept her out of there, though she would have liked to have tried to clean herself up after running from the bullies. Both of the rooms on the left were as empty as that first room on the right had been, but they both had windows. She found it almost odd that these windows were still intact, though neither of them faced the front of the house. No one would have gone to the trouble of heading around the haunted house just for fresh windows to break, when the ones in the front proved to be perfect targets.

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After the bathroom, the hall turned back towards the right, continuing on along the back of the house. In the distance, she could make out the point where it turned back towards the front, along the hallway at the top of the other set of stairs. She smiled at that, suddenly thankful that she wouldn't need to backtrack along that hallway just to explore the other one.

As Cary walked along the back hallway, she spotted two more doors, one on either side, both closed. Figuring the one on the left would be another bathroom or a closet, given how little space was over there, she turned that way first. When she reached out to it, the knob fell off, falling down to the floor in front of her with a loud thump that echoed around her. She jumped at the sound, backing away from the door and bumping against the one behind her. It was only that solid wood at her back that kept her from running from the house right then and there, bullies be damned.

"Get a hold of yourself, Cary," Cary said to herself. "There's nothing spooky about this house." Despite her words, she looked all over the hallway, expecting to see ghosts coming out of every wall. She wondered briefly if they would have agreed with her assessment if they had.

Cary placed her hand to her chest, trying to stay her racing heart, as she moved back to the door in front of her. Without the knob, she thought that the door would be as solid as the one behind her. But as she pushed against the door, it swung open easily, with barely a creak. On the other side of the door was another set of stairs, leading further up. Those stairs had no draw to Cary, though. At least, not yet. She pulled the door closed again, trying to block off that other path. Trying to block out any ghosts that might come at her from that direction. But the door just bashed against the jam loudly enough to wake the dead, refusing to close for her.

"Great," she muttered to herself.

With that door stuck open, her first thought was to skip the other door. To leave it closed there as she made her way around to the other hallway. As she started to walk away from them, her hand reached out to the other knob almost absentmindedly, just trying to see if it too would fall off. However, the knob didn't fall off. It didn't turn or move. The knob was quite stuck.

"Well, fine, be that way," Cary said to the door. "Stay closed for all I care."

Cary was quickly growing frustrated with her exploration. After all the hype about the haunted house, she couldn't help but feel a bit disappointed about the whole thing. Let down in a serious way. The place was about as exciting as the museum that her school had gone to last spring. It had similar smells as well, making her think that the house was just a museum waiting to happen.

With Cary growing comfortable with being inside the house, she quickly turned the corner in the hall, checking the rest of the place. The right hallway was an echo of the one on the left, with the front room having five rocks and two golf balls. However, there was no second room in the center. It was just that one room, two bathrooms, and the stairs leading up. Nothing worth searching. Nothing worth hanging out for.

Except, even as she looked into that front room, and out through the shattered front windows, she could see Greg and Angelica still pacing outside of the wrought iron fence. They were doing a full circuit of it, starting at one end of the fence and walking all the way over to the other. They were two caged lions, looking out at their desired food. The three other bullies were just standing there, watching them as they paced. Waiting for them to pounce, or for Cary to come out and join them.

"Well, poo," Cary said, snickering a little at her words. She walked further up the hallway, making it to the top of the right stairs. Her hands reached out towards the banister there, not quite ready to head down. "Now I rather wish that back door had been open. Without my backpack, there's not much else to do in here."

As her hand touched the wooden banister, she felt a shock come out of her. At the time, she just wrote it off as static shock, despite the house being all hardwood floors and the banister being wood as well. With her path out still blocked, she gave a shrug as she turned around, heading back down the hallway. She figured that she could at least explore the next floor up.

But those thoughts evaporated as she turned the corner down the hall. Even before stepping foot into that back hall, she knew that something was different. She could feel it in the air, even before noticing that the door to that back room was suddenly open. When she saw that, a chill raced up her spine, and she shivered at it.

"Finally," she said. "Something spooky happening here. And it's the right level of spooky. Weird but not scary."

Cary took her time, picking her way forward down the hallway, looking through the door as best she could as she went. With every step she took, she expected to see a ghost in there. Some sign of the supernatural. Some hint at whoever, whatever, opened the door for her. But as she approached the door, all she saw inside was junk.

"Pay dirt," she said, as she looked into the space. Because this junk wasn't just the same debris and lost items that she had seen in the other rooms. It wasn't the house falling apart like she had seen downstairs. This was real junk, left behind by the old owner. Forgotten behind the stuck door. It was a treasure trove of weird things.

Exactly the place that Cary felt most at home.