"Where's Simon?" Jack asked curiously when he saw Roger descending down the stairs to the back door.

It was Ralph's idea to perform the ritual there, since the blonde was a little paranoid about the game and he wanted at least a way leading to the street if anything went wrong. Jack joked about how his friend was a coward, but was relieved himself to know that the summoning wasn't going to take place at the main entrance, their best chance of escaping the house. At that point, Maurice was too oblivious to even bother choosing the location, so he just went with the flow. They had had everything set up at the door. It was simple, actually, and they had only been waiting for Roger and Simon to arrive downstairs.

"Not playing." The dark-haired teenager replied simply, then went on. Roger was always like that, consistent.

"Coward." A snort came from Jack, even though he was a little scared himself. He had too much pride to own up to it, however, so there was no going back for him. He looked over to Maurice, who was playing with one of the flashlights, making shadows on the wall, and Ralph, who was still on his phone, maybe hitting on some hot girls or something like that.

Jack approached them. It was almost midnight. The clock's hands were moving, and their ticking sounds were becoming obnoxiously hair-raising. He saw Ralph opening his front camera in an attempt to fix his messy blonde hair and sighed. The cheeky bastard was always worried about his looks, and maybe fixing his hair would be the last thing he did before dying in a gruesome death. Roger was drumming his fingers on the flat surface of the wall next to him, and Maurice was still messing around with the flashlight. It looked as thought it was about to he out of battery, so, if anything, Jack wasn't going to take that flashlight with him in the game. He grabbed himself one of the equipment. For a brief moment, he contemplated what Simon was doing if he wasn't participating in the game.

"So.. who's going to be the chosen one?" Ralph asked the group as he looked away from his phone. He pressed the top button to turn the phone off, then shoved it into his shirt pocket. The blonde asked Maurice to give him the flashlight, then shone it at the clock. It was eleven fifty five.

"If anything, I'm hiding, hands down." Maurice stated, grabbing the last flashlight. He was excited for a good scary game, and was, in truth, a little bit worried, but it was only a little bit.

"I will." Roger volunteered himself, looking around for his friends' approval. They all nodded, since they all knew Roger was always pumped for these kinds of creepy rituals.

Maurice proceeded to write their four names on a prepared piece of paper, Roger's written in red ink. He glanced at the clock, eleven fifty nine. It was almost midnight. There was no going back from this point on, and if he did try to stop before the game started, he would be considered a craven. Maurice knew he didn't really care what people called him, but it bothered him a little if his friends called him names. He was the funny one, and he was supposed to give people funny nicknames, not the other way around. His heart raised, and now that he realized it, his palms had been sweating.

The clock struck midnight. Its bell made them all jump.

Roger took the piece of paper from Maurice and put it in front of the door. He stood there while the other three walked a few steps back and held hands. His left knuckle raised up and knocked on the wooden door. One. Two. Three. The sound was rhythmic in their ears as they all counted. Four. Five. Six. It continued to echo around the giant house, synchronizing with their heartbeats in nervousness. All of their palms were pooling with sweat, but none of them admitted it out loud. Even if they wanted to stop right then, it wasn't an option anymore.

The Midnight Man was already there. Grinning.

Twenty. Twenty one. Twenty two.

The last knock made their hearts drop. Ralph, Maurice, and Jack started mentally counting down from twenty two. Roger was standing still in his place, as if he wasn't even breathing. If he was pretending, he was doing a more than great job at it. If he was possessed for real, then they were screwed.

Three. Two. One.

The game had begun.

The three at the back scattered to different directions with only one objective in their minds. Hide.

Roger turned around. The Midnight Man who was already there had a grin so wide it stretched from ear to ear.

The smell of a rotten corpse started to fill the room.

..

One of the first aspects of the house that Maurice noticed was how gigantic it was. With the size of it, it would be perfect for many activities that required a large space like throwing huge parties or avoiding an entity that now had a physical body and would murder him on sight.

Truth be told, Maurice didn't really believe in The Midnight Man or whoever the spirit thing was. When he split from Jack and Ralph to run, he didn't think Roger was actually possessed. The dark-haired teenager was just faking it for the sake of some good scares. Maurice always knew how much Roger enjoyed being intimidating, so pretending to be possessed by a mysterious ghostly creature would most likely be what he was doing. And, after a while of not finding anyone in this mansion of a house, Roger would just bail and go watch some scary movies instead, leaving them all in their hiding spots.

It had been about fifteen minutes in, and the hall he was on was still silent. Maurice had ran for the east wing of the house, and had climbed about two flights of stairs. He would say he was on the second floor, not that far from the main entrance, where they had planned to meet up if, by the slimmest of chances, anything went wrong. Around the hall echoed his heavy breaths and footsteps as he slowed down, laughing at himself silently in his head for taking this too seriously. In fact, he had been running so mindlessly that he even forgot to turn his flashlight on. He pulled it out of his pocket and switched it on.

The light shone at Roger's ghostly pale face.

Maurice's breath hitched as he staggered a few steps backward, not expecting his friend to find him that easily.

"Roger! You're.. fast."

But Roger didn't reply.

"Um.. is everything okay?" Maurice approached the dark-haired friend, the light from the equipment in his hand moved from Roger's head to his torso that was dyed with a crimson liquid. "What happened?"

Again, no replies.

The brunette took a few steps back to enlarge the area of the light. The sound of liquid dripping down repeated in his brain. And there was a head.

This game wasn't a joke.

It took Maurice a second to regain his consciousness and ran to the opposite direction. His hand gripped tightly into his flashlight as he tried not to fall down out of pure fear. He knew why Simon was missing now. Of course it wasn't because he didn't want to play. His head was right there, blood dripping down, eyes opening wide, reflecting the horror that had happened to him. Maurice's other hand covered his mouth, trying his best not to vomit as he thought about the tangy smell of the red liquid and the sickening grin that literally etched from ear to ear across Roger's face. That wasn't Roger, or even a normal human being.

He turned and stopped at a corner. His back leaned against the sturdy wall and he peeked outside, seeing no one. Maurice panted and looked down to his feet that were shaking. Images of the severed head flashed through his mind, making the dark almost unbearable. He flashed the light to in front of him and looked up.

Roger was also there.

Screams burnt his worn-out lungs as he lifted his feet to run again. The light from the equipment in his hand danced around on the floor beneath him in a frenzy as his mouth let out quick and ragged breaths. Maurice turned around to see no one chasing him. Despite that, he still ran, as fast as he could. Fear is an invisible entity, and he knew that now. His feet touched and lifted from the wooden floor, trying to speed up. He rummaged in the large pocket of his pants searching for his phone, wanting to call 911, or just someone, anyone, for help. His hands clumsily grabbed the phone and missed it. The sweat was making it much harder to just hold anything. His heart rate started to accelerate as he kept failing to grab his phone, and stopped as he stepped on some liquid and slipped, fell, and slid across the floor. His toes jammed into the wall painfully, and, as the flashlight rolled to him, he saw the head. Staring. Accusing.

The blood from Simon's head was soaking into the wood of the floor and Maurice's clothing. It was sticky and cold on his toes and socks. Maurice grabbed the flashlight and stood up, trying to not let the image burn in his eyeballs, staying there forever. He shone the light to the other side of him, looking for something helpful, but didn't succeed. His legs trembled as he started walking, looking around, there were still no signs of him yet.

As if on cue, a cold hand gripped at his shoulder, and a butcher knife's blade pressed at his throat.

The Midnight Man pushed him to the ground and covered his mouth with a foul-smelling hand. Maurice bit into the hand, only to find the piece of disintegrating flesh falling into his mouth. He winced as he tried to scream while not letting himself swallow the maggots that were digging their ways out of their host's dead flesh. His hand slid in his pocket, frantically dialing 911, and he saw the grin again.

In the pale and dead moonlight, Roger's mouth stretched out more than they ever did, revealing sickeningly white teeth and gum and a darkness that swallowed souls.

Maurice's mouth let out its last ever scream as the butcher knife descended down his throat. The crimson liquid gushed out, painting the blade and the pallid skin with its nauseating color. Limbs twitched slightly as another chop echoed around the now-silent hall. And another one. The vertebrae were kind of a problem. And the knife went down again. Soft flesh spilled out.

And the head was off.