Tale #27: Found Footage, Lost Minds (Part 1)

Tale #27: Found Footage, Lost Minds (Content Tags: Messy and wet undies, messy and wet diapers, age regression, mental regression, braindrain) "I'm not afraid of some stupid, abandoned house. You guys are just being babies." "Dude, it's a *murder house*." "That's probably not even true. Probably just some dumb rumor that got started by teenagers." It would have been prudent for Jimmy to listen to the concerns of the other kids in the neighborhood. Jimmy wasn't that type of boy though; he was bold, he was daring! So when the time had arrived for him to be dared to spend a night in the abandoned house, it was only natural that he'd said yes. It was just an empty house after all, what was the worst that could happen? He picked a Friday night to go through with it. The boy packed a small bag, told his parents he was spending the night at a friend's house, and had pedaled his bike down the road to meet with the other kids. They really hadn't expected him to go through with it. The dilapidated manor was spooky, to the point that nobody even dared to condemn it and tear it down. Everyone else seemed to have the good sense to not even acknowledge the house, let alone get close to it. Jimmy didn't take much stock in that hokum, and the neighbor kids had pooled a small fortune to award him with if he went through with it. He'd gotten a video camera for his birthday, so that'd be his measure of evidence. A few segments with time stamps would be sufficient to prove that he'd braved the 'haunted house' for the whole night, and then he'd be having to figure out what to spend that hundred bucks on. Whatever happened in that house that night was not worth a paltry sum, nor was it worth the pride of a stubborn sixth grader. Jimmy didn't come out to meet the kids the next morning, and by the time noon was hitting, they'd gotten worried. If any of the grownups discovered what they'd been up to, they'd all be in big trouble, and Jimmy's parents would notice if he wasn't home by this evening... The oldest of the children drew straws. Somebody had to go in and make sure that he was safe, and nobody was willing to do it voluntarily. The unlucky souls were Rodrigo and Juniper. With a flashlight and an uneasy turning in their stomachs, they went into the house. "Jimmy! You in here, dude?" "This isn't funny, just come on out!" Nothing but echoes. It looked bigger on the inside, and smelled like moth balls. Dust coated every surface, cobwebs every corner. The worst part was that it looked like it had been lived in until one day when the residents had just left or disappeared; chairs weren't pushed in, cups were on coasters, toys left on the floor. It was like it had been suddenly abandoned and then nobody had ever set foot in there again. No realtors, no squatters, nothing. "Uh, Juniper? I found something..." It was Jimmy's video camera. The pair looked at eachother, the tension palpable. They'd found Jimmy's camera, but no Jimmy. With how much his parents had spent on it, they knew that the boy was too attached to simply leave it lying around. Rodrigo picked it up and flipped open the side, seeing that it still had battery power left. "Do you think he filmed anything? Why would he just leave it here?" Juniper shrugged nervously, "Maybe something scared him and he just dropped it and ran. Maybe he already went home..." The boy shook his head, "Me, Mason, and Kurt all spent the night at Kurt's place, so we could take turns watching the door from across the street. We never saw him leave." She looked unconvinced, though perhaps she just wanted an excuse to leave this musty tomb of a house. "I'm sure you guys weren't watching the *whole* time..." Rodrigo didn't answer, instead he inspected a suspicious white powder that was on the side of the camera. "...Maybe we should see if he recorded anything. Could give us a clue on where he is now..." The jittery pair shuffled to the nearest table, and Rodrigo pushed play on the tape. Static at first, then the image of the very living room that they'd stumbled into. There was a timestamp that placed it at only a few minutes past the start of Jimmy's ordeal. "...Alright, so I'm in the stupid house. It smells like ass and all the dust is already making my eyes kinda itch." Jimmy spoke into the camera, moving it around to show off the living room, before turning it around to show his own face. "I've just got to stay until dawn at six, and then I'll be making a cool Benjamin on this dumb dare." Jimmy started to walk around the living room some more, talking about the ugly wallpaper that was peeling from the walls, or the small black splotches that he was pretty sure indicated mold. He genuinely seemed unperturbed by the spooky atmosphere of the abandoned place, and more annoyed than anything that he had to stay there. Juniper rapped her fingers against the table, and then stopped once she realized how dirty it truly was. "...Maybe we should fast-forward? I mean, we could just get to the end of the tape, right?" Rodrigo paused the playback, "...Yeah, but..." The boy felt a sinking feeling in his gut as his mind raced with revelation. "...This is just the first tape. These cheap ones only hold a couple of hours of footage, and he said he'd be recording pretty much the whole time. Even brought an extra battery and everything...It was how he was going to prove he stayed the whole night." "...Yeah, so?" "Well, if the first tape is still in the camera, that means that he either only stayed long enough to use just one, or he put the first one back in for some reason. Otherwise, wouldn't his camera have the last tape he used? There should be about four of them in total, and he would've been on the fourth." Juniper looked uneasy, "Well, he probably just left early, like I said. I bet this place has a backdoor too, y'know. Or maybe he lost his backpack or something, so he didn't have the other tapes. Just fast forward on this one." The tape continued for a while in just the living room, until Jimmy suddenly got up from the couch he'd been sitting on. "...Probably getting bored, you know how fidgety Jimmy can get when he's stuck in one place." Jimmy left the living room and entered the door on the west wall, and Rodrigo hit play to slow things back to normal. They could hear his voice coming from the audio of the playback, "...Probably just the house settling or whatever, or maybe raccoons or something. Might as well check it out though, I'm tired of just sitting around." The room Jimmy entered looked to be some kind of study or den, but before he got much further in, the tape suddenly reached the end of its duration. Rodrigo looked up from the camera and over at the door that Jimmy had went into; in the video, he'd left it open when he went in, but here it was closed. Did that mean that he came back out at some point? "That didn't tell us anything, except maybe that Jimmy was eaten by raccoons." Juniper grumbled, folding her arms, though keeping one hand firmly gripped on her flashlight. "Gave us a clue. Last place we saw him go into was there, so I guess we should check there next?" Neither of them wanted to. It was bad enough coming into the house, but to continue exploring its depths? Taking the loss and getting in trouble with their parents was starting to sound like a much better option... Rodrigo led the charge though, determined to not show any fear. They didn't hear whatever noise Jimmy had gone to investigate. The study was more of a parlor at closer viewing; there was a desk, but more prominently was the chair next to a small fireplace. "Looks like a dead end in here-- Oh, another tape!" On a small table next to the chair, where an old tobacco pipe sat, was one of the tapes. It was the only thing in here not coated in dust and grime. Rodrigo swapped out the tapes and began to play the new one. It looked like it started a few minutes after the last one had ended. Jimmy was complaining about not being able to find the source of the sounds he had been talking about, while also commenting on the cool pipe and spending some time rifling through the desk. Rodrigo hit fast-forward again, since it looked like Jimmy had just set the camera down at some point. After over an hour of the footage, which only cost the pair a couple of minutes to zoom through, the camera began to move position again. "...They must be in the walls. They're really starting to bug me. Or maybe in the ceiling?" The camera started to pan up, and there was something that looked to manifest for just a moment. An odd shadow where there shouldn't have been, one in some mangled shape that nothing should have been able to cast. It only was there for a moment, and then it was gone. "...What the hell was *that*?!" Jimmy gasped, the camera crazily swinging around the room in an attempt to catch whatever had just made that silhouette. There was nothing though. "Maybe I'm just imagining things, I think I've been in here too long...I'm going to go back to the living room for a while, or maybe find a toilet, I have to take a wicked leak.." The tape ended with Jimmy making a fast walk for the exit. Rodrigo closed the camera and looked around the study, trying to find a bizarre hat rack or something that would explain the shape of the shadow. Nothing. "...I think we should get out of here." The boy said quietly. "Agreed, let's just go tell Jimmy's parents that he stayed the night and now we can't find him." Rodrigo shook his head, but didn't waste any time in making a swift move for the door. "That's not what I meant...We need to find him, Junie. He'll kill us if we tell his folks." Juniper scowled and followed the boy back into the living room, "So, what? We're just supposed to explore the murder house and follow the breadcrumbs? He's either playing a prank on us, or there's something really messed up going on here. We saw him *leave* the study, so why would the tape be in there?" A prank would actually be a best-case scenario here. It followed logical sense, since Jimmy could have planted the tapes throughout the house in hopes of scaring whoever came in to find him, like a Blair Witch format. Alternatively... Rodrigo didn't want to entertain 'alternate' theories. They searched a nearby bathroom, they searched the kitchen, but alas there was nothing but dilapidation and dread. It wasn't until they circled back around to the stairs near the house's entrance, that they found something. They hadn't seen it when they'd come in, which seemed impossible, unless it had been planted since they'd arrived. The third tape, sitting on the shirt that Jimmy had come into the house wearing. It should have been terrifying, but that wasn't the way the kids had decided to interpret it. To them, this seemed like evidence that this was indeed a prank that Jimmy was trying to play on them. Juniper scoffed, "That's it, I'm done. Does he really think he can just jerk us around like this? I'm going to wait outside with everyone else...He'll eventually get bored and come out anyways." Rodrigo felt more confident too. It looked obvious that Jimmy wanted to lure them up the stairs, probably so he could jump out and scream at them from one of the bedrooms. "I'm not waiting around all day. I'm going to go find him and give him a piece of my mind." The boy heard the door closed and he took a step onto the stairs, hearing the wood creak underneath him. He put Jimmy's shirt over his shoulder and started to switch out the tapes on the camera, even if he thought this was a ruse now, he was still curious as to what Jimmy had in mind for him. Slowly he plodded up the stairs, finally getting the tape in and hitting play. The timestamp had over an hour missing from the last tape's end. At first this would have seemed like Jimmy had shut it off so he could take a bathroom break, but that seemed like a really long time just for that. Maybe this was when he was figuring out how to execute his prank? He heard heavy panting on the tape, like Jimmy was completely out if breath; his hands on the camera were shaky, but they were pointing up the stairs, which Jimmy was clearly ascending just like Rodrigo. "..Gotta...gotta hurry...oh my god...door was locked, and its coming...G-gotta hide somewhere.." The boy's voice sounded desperate, it sounded *genuine*. Was Jimmy really that great an actor? The camera panned backwards, just as Rodrigo had reached the top step himself. The boy nearly toppled backwards from what the playback showed: there was indeed something chasing Jimmy. It looked pale, shrouded in an ominous veil; was it a woman? Her face was completely obscured, but that's what the figure appeared to be. Rodrigo found the bravery to turn around and look down the steps. There she was, just like how she'd appeared on the tape. A terrifying, imposing spectre that betrayed no emotion, but that invoked a strong sense of doom. She had her hands clasped below her bosom, like a nun with a rosary. Rodrigo ran. ((Split into two parts, due to length!))