In a rural town, in a rural area, there is a rural house. An abandoned rural house. The front door is hanging on one hinge, the walls are buckling, and the windowframes, long deprived of their panes, are sagging into a twisted parabola. The town's children daren't go near it; rumours are abound of it housing vampires, or werewolves, or any other of the bogeymen that children are told about to keep them away from dangerous places and strange men.
The rumours were enough to keep the kids away, but eventually kids start to grow up, and when they grow up they grow bigger, and braver, and they're not scared of bogeymen - not in public, anyway. The house became a symbol of adulthood - when you turned thirteen, you walked in there with nothing but the clothes you were wearing and a sleeping bag. If you can stay in the house overnight, they said, you were an adult. You weren't an immature child any more, you were an adult, a grown-up.
You walked into that house a child, the world filled with wonder.
You walked out a boring, cynical, dead-eyed adult.
"Mum, I can't do it. I'm ill." Josh Blackson wore his Birthday Boy badge proudly. Tonight was his night.
"Well take some paracetamol in with you. You don't have a temperature; I'm sure you'll be fine." His mother, kind but stern, licked her thumb and rubbed his cheek. She, like many other mothers in the town, found it hard to let go, if only for one night.
"OK mum." Josh shifted his weight backwards and shuffled his shoulders. "Mum..."
"Yes dear?"
"Can I take in Dad's service revolver? You know, just in case."
"Of course not! What would you shoot? The shadows? A supporting beam? Yourself? No son, it's too dangerous. You know the rules, you're only allowed your sleeping bag."
"I guess you're right. I love you mum."
"Love you too honey. Good luck."
"Thanks. Er, mum..?"
"Yes?"
"I'm scared."
"I know. It happens to everyone. But there's nothing to be afraid of. Good luck"
And with that she kissed his forehead, and gave him a little push up the path, difficult to navigate with the grass coming up to his knees. The gravel crunched under his feet. The door almost came off its last hinge when he pushed it. It took a while for his eyes to adjust to the darkness of the hallway - even with the open doorframe it was black as night, despite only being six o'clock on a July evening.
Josh eyed the house. The staircase was missing several steps, the floorboards were buckled and seemed to be stained with the darkness, and crumbling doorframes, their wooden occupants long since scavenged by termites and weathered by time, were apetures into the pitch unknown. Josh had managed to sneak a torch in his sleeve. First, he decided, he would investigate the ground floor for remnants of the doors, or anything that could be used in lieu of the missing stairs. Then he would move up into the first floor, and the attic, to see how much of the town he could see from the house's dilapidated windows. Then he would find a place free from dust to settle down and--
CRACK!
Josh slumped to the floor.
Followed by his skull.
The next morning, as Josh Blackson laid in eternal rest in the cellar of that rural house, an adult walked out the front door. A boring adult. A cynical adult.
A dead-eyed adult.