The Worst Haunted Mansion Yet!

The trail cut through the woods in a sharp zigzagging pattern that, if I had literally any good luck at all, I would have bet cash money looked like a lightning bolt from above.

Of course, with my odds, it'd probably end up looking curvier and curlier than Snowball's loopy cursive writing.

That was why I wasn't a betting man. And besides, I had left my wallet, I realized, back with our stuff.

Dammit. The curse strikes again. Hope it's still there when we get back…

Or at this rate, if we get back.

"Is it just me," I thought aloud, "or are we going around in circles?"

Everything in this beach forest looked the same to me. If there was even a single difference from one of these crazy stalk-like plants to the next, I sure couldn't tell it.

"Who knows, dude?"

"Who cares? This is great!"

Yeesh. See what I was working with here? Are you getting the picture? When you're the only one out of literally every single person you know with his head screwed on even half straight, life can be a—

"...beach! Hey, are you even listening?" Snowball was pouting in my general direction again.

"Yeah," I lied.

"Then what did I just say?"

"Uh… life's a beach, so might as well, err…" Damn, what was the saying again? "Might as well, uh, sink?"

"No… All I said was I'm having fun at the beach. You weren't listening at all!"

"Alright, well, sue me. I was, uh, watching our back for any signs of curses. Yeah, that's it. Let's go with that."

"Sigh." Snowball just said the word "sigh" instead of actually sighing, a habit she'd picked up from me.

"Hey, dudes, you know what?" Fence said. "This trail is zigzagging so much I would bet cash money it looks like a lightning bolt from above!"

"Wow, Fence! You're so smart for thinking of that!" Snowball said cheerfully, clasping her hands together in glee.

Dammit, dammit, dammit! I wanted to say that! Snowball wasn't being sarcastic. She probably thought Fence was a genius. I've said it before and I'll say it again: like most geniuses, Snowball was an idiot.

Eventually we reached the end of the path, where we came face to face with a giant sandcastle, the most huge and elaborate one I'd ever seen. The place was a real royal palace in scope, scale, size, all of it. And of course, every last inch of it had been constructed entirely of nothing more than sand. It was one of the most impressive sights I had probably ever laid eyes on, but I was so bummed out about Fence stealing my thunder that I didn't even care.

"Dude! What is this place? It's awesome!" As I hung my head, Fence was craning his neck back again, drinking in the impressive feat of temporary architecture. If he wasn't careful with all that craning, people were gonna start mistaking him for a piece of construction equipment.

Not that I could blame him for being impressed.

Someone else was impressed too, but for entirely different reasons.

"WOW…" Snowball marveled at the marbled exterior. Well, actually, it was just sand. But it kind of had that fancy, sophisticated marble vibe to it, y'know? The whole place did.

"This is like a real-life princess castle…" Snowball's eyes were all stars. Did I mention Snowball was a diehard Disney lover? Her passion for their cartoons was second only to her love of science. And she had a special obsession with all the Disney princess crap. She had watched all the movies, and even all the crappy sequels, like Frozen: Yogurt and Snow White 17: Sneezy vs. Mecha-Ghidorah.

Me? I liked cartoons too. It was actually the one thing me and Snowball had in common. But you could miss me with The Mouse and his ilk. I was always more of a Looney Tunes guy.

"Let's go in," Snowball suggested.

"Really?" I would've spat my drink, if I was drinking one. "In there?! Doesn't all this seem, I dunno, a little fishy to you?"

Snowball sniffed the air. "I definitely smell something. But I don't think it's fish."

"Yeah, dude. I smell it too," said Fence.

I sniffed this time. "Man, that kinda reeks. I've smelled better roadkill."

Don't ask why. We'd be here all day.

"Maybe," Snowball said, "someone's conducting an insane biology experiment with live subjects inside! Let's go in and find out!"

So, unsurprisingly, we did, pushing past the heavy, fully hinged and working sand double doors to the interior of the castle.

The inside was just as impressive as what we had seen outside. We entered into a massive hall, lit with a sophisticated — but also kinda eerie — lukewarm gloom. In front of us, there was a wide staircase sweeping up to the second floor, where a buttressed balcony spanned the perimeter of the large room.

The furniture looked antique but pristine, probably because it was all made of sand and couldn't have been that old at all.

Meanwhile, the curtains and rugs and stuff, also all made of sand, were perfectly sculpted to look like priceless decor.

All in all, almost all of it was so realistic that you could easily mistake it for the genuine thing.

"Now this," Snowball said, whipping a camera out of nowhere, "I gotta snap." It was one of those old-fashioned ones that prints the picture out right away. She had gotten the thing a while ago and had become an on-again-off-again hobbyist with it. Last time I had seen her with it was when Matchstick was just a puppy or kitten or larva or whatever baby chupacabras are called, and she had taken a picture of him sleeping next to me in bed. That was before me and Matchstick became mortal enemies.

"I can't believe it. I've been having so much fun I totally forgot I have to be taking pictures to document this awesome day."

I wasn't sure "awesome" was exactly the word starting with "aw-" that I'd use to describe today, personally, but that was Snowball for you. Chipperer than a bag of kettle cooked. In any chase, she snapped a few shots, momentarily lighting up the lingering darkness.

We ventured deeper into the gray gloom. Up the staircase. Through sitting rooms and ballrooms and fancy parlors. I was half tempted to try and kick something down — a table, or a fancy sand chair maybe — but I decided I had better not. I figured I was enough of a target for the curse already. Didn't want to place a negative-karma bullseye right on my head, and something told me messing around in here would do exactly that.

"Something," in this case, being the creepy, ghostly voice from nowhere guiding us deeper and deeper inside the castle.

Cause yeah, there was a creepy, ghostly voice from nowhere guiding us deeper and deeper inside the castle.

What? I should've mentioned that sooner? It sounds like a major part of the story? Too major to just throw in off the cuff like that? Well. Excuse me if I'm trying not to war flashback to nightmare-inducing events here.

…

What? Don't look at me like that.

Ok, fine. I admit it. I just didn't want to mention what a scaredy cat I was acting like. There. Happy?

The first time the ghostly voice rang out was when we were crossing a long dining room with the table fully dressed and set for a dozen guests who were nowhere to be found. Here was our reaction to it:

Ghostly voice: "Come… come, children… deeper and deeper into my domain… Oooooooohhhh…"

Fence: "Whoa, dude. Cool. Is this, like, a haunted mansion or something? Haha."

Snowball: "Oh my goodness! What is that voice? A ghost?!?! I knew I should have brought my optical spectrometer along!"

Me: "OHMYGOD AHAAGSHGSHSDHJSDHSFOHIWHRIWBIW)#HFWBNDNCN93u39hrebif!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! MOMMY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

See what I mean?

To be continued!