It was a typical story. Brian Garner’s dad got a new job in a different state and the whole family had to move. They moved to a big house that had been empty for years; the kind that always gave kids the spooks. In one of its many hallways was a locked door, but everyone was too lazy to knock it down, so it was dismissed until nighttime when all the secret bumps and thumps filled the still and previously silent air. They were all blamed on that secret room, and if only mom and dad would open it to see what was inside...but they never would. Either the room would remain a mystery or the kid would have to take it upon himself to see what mysteries lay behind the closed door. And that’s just what Brian Garner did.

Brian didn’t like the house from the start. It was old; so old, in fact, it looked to him like it could collapse under the weight of his tiny seven-year-old body. His dad had received a new job, though, and he knew they needed the money, so he tried not to complain.

Brian sensed that his parents were worried about him. He was being very quiet. He wasn’t acting happy, but he wasn’t acting sad; he was completely indifferent to all the changes occurring. Once he realized this, he tried to act more cheerful when they began exploring all the rooms in the house.

“Hmmmmm...” Brian’s dad said. They were on the second floor and at the end of the hallway to the right, a door wouldn’t open. “Seems like this room’s going to be off limits.” His father tore off an old sign that said “NO TRESPASSING” and threw it on the floor.

“What’s trespassing?” Brian asked.

“It’s going where you’re not supposed to,” his mother answered, “and this is one of those places. I don’t want to catch you running around here. It’s creepy.”

When nighttime rolled around, everyone was exhausted and didn’t argue about going to bed. Brian’s parents were sleeping on the first floor; Brian was sleeping in the first room of the second floor by his own request. His mother had given in reluctantly, and he was quite pleased.

Once he was in bed, though, the house creaked and moaned on its foundation, and Brian started to get scared. He stepped out of his room, about to go downstairs to his parents’ room, when he heard laughter coming from the locked door at the end of the hall. He crept slowly towards the door, and put his head against it.

Inside he heard a woman giggling, and sometimes a man would break out in peals of laughter. Every time someone laughed, a whole audience joined in, and Brian was sure this wasn’t his imagination. He could hear the man talking, but couldn’t understand what he was saying. Instead of being terrified, he was fascinated and wondered what could be so funny in there. Perhaps he’d find out sometime.

“And don’t the little kiddies look frightened!” Brian suddenly heard the man say clearly. The woman and the audience began laughing. “I love to scare the kiddies who listen to things they’re not supposed to!”

Brian’s eyes grew wide, and his fascination was broken. He ran downstairs as fast as he could, yelling for his parents to help him, there was a monster in the room upstairs.

“Now, son, I thought we talked about this,” his dad said. “There is no such thing. That room is empty anyway. Now go back to bed.” Instead of leaving, Brian clung even stronger to his father, refusing to let go. “Okay, okay, you can sleep with us tonight, but only for tonight.”

That night Brian slept restlessly. His subconscious conjured up its own frightening images of what it thought was in that room, and he kept awakening looking at the foot of the bed to make sure the monster wasn’t going to attack.

Everything was peaceful for a while after that though. Brian didn’t hear any laughter, and he had grown used to the creaking of the house at night. He no longer feared the room; in fact, he didn’t even think about it anymore. That is, until it happened again 2 months later.

Brian was lightly dozing, not able to get any real sleep, when an image flashed through his mind. He saw the locked door, and he heard the laughter, but there was light coming from beneath the door. Then he walked up and turned the handle because it wasn’t really locked at all. When he was about to peek inside, he woke up. Immediately he walked out and peered down the hallway.

There, at the end of the hall, light flooded from beneath the locked door. Brian was drawn to it, almost as if his feet were moving by themselves. When he reached the door, he reluctantly turned the knob, and the door opened.

As soon as it opened, that feeling of being controlled from the outside left, but he was curious, and peeked inside further.

It was a normal bedroom. No blood anywhere, no monsters, no serial killers. What was there was a woman sitting on the bed, and a man walking around with his back to Brian. The woman had curly blond hair and blue eyes that Brian could still see from a distance. She was slender, and she wore a long, ornate light colored dress and a fur coat over it. The man was wearing a tuxedo as far as Brian could tell, and even had on a top hat. He was walking back and forth, telling jokes to the lady on the bed until she laughed, but Brian couldn’t tell where the audience was. The way the man was walking back and forth reminded Brian very much of Groucho Marx.

“…and so I told him to just get the heck out!” the man said, and the woman started giggling, and the audience started laughing. “Now, watch this.” The man grabbed three bowling pins off the floor and began to juggle. The woman was quite pleased. So was the audience. So was Brian.

He stood there for hours, listening to the man tell jokes and watching him do tricks. No doubt that he was trying to be a comedian.

“And now for my grand finale,” he said. “Why did the chicken cross the road?”

“I don’t know,” the woman said, still giggling from the last joke. “Why did he?”

“To get to the other side, of course!” he answered, then took a bow.

The woman let out polite laughter, and a low mumble went through the audience. Brian laughed out loud. As soon as he did, he clapped his hand over his mouth, as if trying to catch the sound and put it back before it reached the strange man’s ears.

Too late. The man turned around and saw Brian. The smile on his face faded. The woman turned and looked at Brian with shock. Then he spotted the audience.

Along two walls of the room was a shelf. Placed along the shelf at even intervals were fourteen human skulls. They were looking at Brian too. It was completely unnerving to see those empty sockets staring.

The man’s appearance was changing. His previously jovial face was now filled with rage, and his skin was pulling in tighter and tighter onto his face until it seemed like nothing more than a thin covering of his own skull. His eyes began to glow a dull red, and then brightened as he took a step towards Brian. “Can you not read, boy? No trespassing! You little peeking bastard!” The man began running towards the door. Brian was paralyzed with fear and hypnotized by the chanting “audience.”

“Brian...Brian...Brian...” they said. He saw their featureless faces mouth the words, but the woman never moved.

The man’s hands were on Brian’s shoulders. “You seem to like my show, Brian. Perhaps you would like to become an audience member. You can always become one as long as you pay the consequences for peeking!”

Suddenly Brian’s paralysis broke. He bolted down the hallway, hoping the man couldn’t catch him. Unfortunately, he felt a bony hand close around his leg, causing him to trip. Then another wrapped around his throat. He blacked out.

“Oh Brian, honey,” his mother cried, holding her comatose son’s body. “Brian, wake up and tell us what happened.”

“Doesn’t look hopeful,” a doctor told her. “We can’t figure what happened, but he’s only gotten worse. You should say your goodbyes and farewells; he could go anytime.”

“Oh, Brian, where are you?”

If she only would have looked into the locked room. There she would have found Brian sitting on a bed, next to a beautiful lady, laughing politely at some thing’s humorless jokes, and who knows...she might have been able to join them.