The Mulberry Gate Incident

The three of us had been to the old Whitmore place before, but that evening in late October, something was off. The air around the decrepit Victorian felt thick, like the house itself was holding its breath. We parked the car at the end of the gravel drive, the headlights cutting through the fog that had rolled in from the river. As we approached the front gate, I noticed the hinges were coated in a sticky, dark substance that looked like dried molasses, and the iron was cool to the touch. Maya and Leo were already whispering about the usual creepy stuff, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that the house was watching us, and not in the playful way it had before.

We made our way up the cracked flagstone path, lined with overgrown rose bushes that seemed to have sprouted thorns longer than I remembered. The porch sagged under our weight, and the boards groaned like a waking beast. Leo joked about the peeling paint, but his voice trailed off when we all heard a faint, high-pitched giggle from inside. I asked them if they’d heard it, but they shook their heads. Maya said it was just the wind, but her eyes were darting. I felt a cold knot in my stomach, but we’d come this far. We had to see what was different.

The front door was unlocked, as it always was, but pushing it open sent a chill down my spine. The foyer was darker than before, and the air was stale with a scent of rotting flowers and old dust. We stepped inside, and the door swung shut behind us with a clang that echoed through the hall. I tried the knob, but it wouldn’t budge, as if some unseen force had sealed us in. Leo laughed nervously, saying, ‘Guess we’re staying for dinner.’

We moved from room to room, our footsteps echoing on the bare floors. The furniture was draped in white sheets, but some were pulled aside, revealing chairs and sofas arranged as if for a gathering. In the grand parlor, we found a small table set with three cups of tea, still steaming. Leo picked one up, but I slapped it from his hand, my heart pounding. ‘Don’t touch anything,’ I said. The giggle came again, closer this time, from the hallway. We all heard it. We ran toward the back of the house, towards the study where we’d once found a secret door.

In the study, the bookshelves were pulled away from the wall, and the hidden passage was open, revealing a narrow staircase leading down. A warm, yellow light flickered from below, and the sound of faint humming drifted up. Without speaking, we descended, the steps creaking beneath us. The basement was not the dank, musty cellar we remembered. It had been transformed into a strange, circular room, lit by candles in iron sconces. In the center stood a pedestal, and on it, a small, withered hand, severed at the wrist, resting on a velvet cushion. The hand seemed to twitch, fingers curling as if beckoning us closer.

Maya gasped and stumbled backward, knocking over a candelabra. The flames caught a curtain, and within seconds, the room was filled with smoke and fire. We scrambled for the stairs, but the flames were spreading fast. We burst out of the house into the cool night air, coughing and covered in soot. The fire department arrived within minutes, but the house was reduced to a smoldering ruin. As we stood across the street, watching the glow, I looked down at my hand. I was holding something I didn’t remember picking up: a small, tarnished locket. I opened it, and inside was a faded photograph of three children, one of whom had a hand that looked oddly like the one on the pedestal.

I never told Maya or Leo about the locket. I keep it in a drawer now, wrapped in a cloth. Sometimes, in the dead of night, I hear a faint, high-pitched giggle coming from that drawer, and I know that whatever was in that house found a way to follow me home. The worst part is, when I look in the mirror, I catch a glimpse of a child standing behind me, missing a hand, smiling.