The Old Carter Place by Whitney R. Holp

An abandoned house, a frightening local legend, and two boys determined to discover the truth come together in “The Old Carter Place” by Whitney R. Holp. This supernatural horror story explores childhood curiosity, isolation, and the terrifying pull of a place that seems to exist outside the ordinary world.
First appeared in Blood Moon Rising Magazine #89, October 2022

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THE OLD CARTER PLACE

There was an abandoned house near his hometown that people called the old Carter place. For years, he never knew anything else about it, except that it existed: a stark standing ruin somewhere in the woods north of town. Something glimpsed from the car when his parents happened to take that road, but only in autumn and winter, when the trees were bare. It was a hideous rotting old edifice and Peter Pough was fascinated by it; the place reeked of mystery, of the unknown. This seemed all the more so because people refused to tell him anything about it. Everyone he asked said they either didn't know or couldn't remember.

Nonetheless, it came to him in piecework over the years, tantalizing fragments overheard when adults were talking. Eventually he gathered that the man who lived there had hung himself in that house. He was an alcoholic and his wife died of cancer; there was the suggestion of insanity; other bodies were found in that house. One of the kids at school said that Old Man Carter worshiped the Devil and molested children; he said that Old Man Carter killed his family and chopped their bodies into pieces. Nobody said the house was haunted, just that something bad happened there.

Finally, one day when he was about ten years old, Peter went to go see it with his own eyes. A new family had moved to town that summer, and they had a boy the same age as him who nobody wanted to be friends with, so Peter became friends with him. They often took long rambling bike rides around town and the surrounding countryside. There wasn't much else for them to do but hang out at the local cemetery and auto junk-yard. It was a dreary late summer afternoon, sometime before school started, when they decided to venture out there to investigate.

They met at the garbage dump on the edge of town, and from there biked to the intersection that would take them the rest of the way. At the crossroads, they turned north and continued onward. Down that long lonely stretch into an increasingly desolate and untenanted area. The further they went, the more something seemed sinister in the dark clusters of bush in the fields, and the empty space carved from the forest those trees were the last vestiges of. Peter began to worry about how far they'd gone, and how long it was taking. Nobody knew where they were; they made sure to keep this a secret. But now, if something unfortunate happened...

They kept going, and eventually they arrived at the NO TRESPASSING sign hung from a rusted chain strung across the driveway to prevent entry. They laid their bikes in the ditch, where they would be out of sight, then hopped over the chain, and started walking down the overgrown lane that led toward the house. Evidently, no one had come this way in a long time: the driveway was barely more than a couple wheel-tracks in a tunnel formed by foliage. They walked wordlessly in the gloom, gravel and dead leaves crunching beneath their feet. There was a stillness in the air, a calm like a tense of breath. Even the birds were silent.

The driveway curved slightly so that the house wasn't directly visible as they approached, not until they came around the bend. And then they stepped into the light of a clearing that had once been a yard, at the center of which there stood the house itself, the old Carter place. It loomed over their arrival, a massive decaying edifice, like some monolithic singularity, seeming vast and impossibly old. They both shivered upon stepping into its shadow. For all that, however, it was just an abandoned house, a decrepit three-floor dwelling with an attic window looking out on each of the four directions from beneath a roof that had partially collapsed. Trees encroached upon the structure, but otherwise it appeared to be in good repair despite being untenanted for so long. It bore none of the vandalism to which such buildings are often subject, and its stoic white walls gave nothing to indicate such as the rumors this place had garnered.
They tried the front door first, then the back; both were locked. All the ground-floor windows were boarded over and nailed tight, the basement windows as well; they tried prying them off, but to no avail.

“Maybe we shouldn't go inside,” Peter said. “It’s probably locked for a reason.”

But the other boy was determined and walked around the house again, looking for something they missed. Peter followed reluctantly. He tried not to draw attention to it, but it didn't matter because just after he noticed it then the other boy did too: a small crooked window, tilted like a diamond and mostly hidden behind a bushy shrub that grew beside the house, it was just big enough for a medium sized boy to climb through. So he searched for a suitable rock, and upon finding one, hurled it at the pane.

The glass shattered; the window now possessed a cyclopean aspect, like a blinded eye, or a mouth full of teeth. Peter kept his distance. The other boy went over to inspect his handiwork, peering into the hole, and plucked a few shards from the rim. He looked back at Peter and said, “You sure you're not coming?”

Peter shook his head; his tongue had suddenly become numb. The other boy nodded, then he climbed through the broken window and into the house. It was so dark in there that Peter barely saw the devil-horns he waved at him from inside.
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“What's it like in there?” he said. “Can you see anything?”
“There's nothing here…” he replied. “Just an empty room with a fireplace... some garbage in the corner… the walls are all wilted-looking… I think there’s a ladder... or maybe it’s a staircase, I can’t tell… I’m gonna go have a closer look.”
And with that, he turned and went deeper into the house. It was the last Peter saw of him; he had the impression he just watched his friend get swallowed whole: disappeared down into the gullet of the room. He strained to hear any sounds that would indicate his progress through the house – floors creaking, doors opening – but there was nothing, not a sound. Peter was left alone out there in the sunshine world of silence and stillness. He stood there looking up at the old house, waiting and listening; he took a few steps closer so he could hear better.
The everlasting serenity of that moment, it was as though the world stopped, like this place was outside of time. He didn't know how long he stood there, looking up at the old house, staring at it as if mesmerized – that blinded eye window seemed to stare back at him. And the others, those of the upper floors were left uncovered; they glittered in the afternoon sun, hiding the empty cavities that were its rooms. He stared and stared and dared not move in all that time, however long it was. That moment seemed endless.
Then he snapped out of it and shook his head to clear away. I have to get out of here, he thought. There's something wrong with this place.
“Hey!” he shouted. “Are you okay? Can you hear me? Say something!”
He waited awhile and said it again, but there was no answer. He became unnerved: something bad had happened to his friend. He was too scared to go inside after him. He had to go get help, an adult, someone who would know what to do.
When he turned to leave, however, he saw that the driveway had somehow disappeared.
It should be right there, curving sideways and back to the road, but instead he was now faced with a growth of trees where the driveway ought to be. He walked around the house to be sure, but he distinctly remembered entering the yard facing the south side of the house. He saw no other exit routes; the foliage was a dense enclosure encircling him with the house, a veritable wall closing him off from the rest of the world.
Peter returned to his original position and took a few hesitating steps toward the mirage, uncertain whether to go any closer. He looked back at the house, and for a moment, it seemed to gleam at him, the upper windows salivating sparkling light reflection. He shuddered and started into the bush.
The branches scratched and dragged at him, clawing, almost like they were trying to hold him back. He attempted walking the approximate route of the driveway as he remembered it, he knew it would be easy enough to get turned around in here; get going in the wrong direction and he might never find his way back. Everywhere he looked was more of the same fructiferous milieu, it was hard to tell where he was, how much further there was to go, it didn't seem he was getting anywhere.
The first threads of panic wisped across his mind; he tried to keep them at bay. He looked around, his vision starting to blur. Dark branches scratching and leaves caress dense and tight around him. Spinning in circles, his breath reduced to heaving puffs. There was the taste of metal in his mouth. How much further can it be? Surely he would have reached the road by now. He kept going, certain he would find the way out, driven by a blind urge to get away from the house.
He stumbled and staggered over stumps and rocks, scratched and dragged along the way. Finally, in his exhaustion, he tripped and fell, the momentum carrying him forward and he continued in this fashion, crawling on his hands and knees. Ahead, he saw a twinkling of light through the veiled scrim, and with a surge of hope, he rose and ran toward it, bursting through.
But as soon as he did his heart sank because of where he found himself. Somehow he got turned around in there and wound up back here, back at the old Carter place.
At the sight of the old house, a black tide washed over him, drowning all hope. He suddenly knew that he was never going to get away from here. If he tried going back through the trees again, he would get lost like before, and somehow or other end up right back here again. There was no escaping this place.
It dawned on him that no one would even realize they were missing any time soon: his parents were away for the weekend and wouldn't be back for a couple days; the other boy's parents let him have pretty free rein. Even when they started looking for them, it was doubtful anyone would think of this place. And even if they did think of it, they might not even be able to find it.
Oh yes, he’s all alone and no one knows where he is and no one will hear him scream when in the dead of night the other boy or someone who looks like him comes out of that house – oh no, not even as he is grabbed and dragged inside. Peter laughed, a desperate yapping sound he didn’t quite hear as he looked up at the old house. That wouldn’t actually happen.
The sun began to set, sinking into the horizon, getting lower and lower with each passing moment. It smoldered amber haze like ectoplasmic blood-honey and the melting candle eye shrouding the earth, this dying light washing over him. Cold accompanied the onset of night. Shadows bled from the spaces between the trees, slowly overwhelming the visible world. Peter went and sat at the foot of the front steps, wrapping his arms around himself and started to cry; he didn’t want to, but he did. He didn’t know what else to do.
A wind kicked up, swirling dead leaves between his sneakers and across the cracked sidewalk. He kept telling himself it would be okay, it would only be a few days until someone came to find them, it wouldn’t be that long. He won’t be out here forever.
Then, from behind him, Peter heard the sound of the door opening, the door that had previously been locked, and in the squealing of its rusted hinges he heard an invitation. He sat there for a while, tense and shivering, his heart pounding, waiting… and then, after a while, he turned back to look. Looking into the empty doorway, into the dark beyond its threshold, down the yawning esophageal chasm of the hallway leading in; he looked into that doorway for a long, long time.
Then he got up and went inside.

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​"Whitney R. Holp is a student of surrealism. He seeks gnosis through dreams, intoxication, and objective chance. This story is from his unpublished book, The Old Carter Place."
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