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The first thing that came up when Penny searched for “O’Hallaran House” were the stories of mysterious disappearances. Not the murders of the twin girls, not their murderer found in the basement, but a string of disappearances going all the way back to the ‘20’s. They hadn’t all happened in the house, but to people connected to it in obscure ways. The first was the real estate agent who had tried to sell the house after Jimmy O’Hallaran, the father of the girls, had died. One man was a contractor who had attempted to renovate in the ‘70’s. Last was a teenager who had gone into the house on a dare about twenty years ago. It was the last story that made Penny grow cold.

The seventeen-year-old girl had gone into the house when her brother dared her. When she came out of the house half an hour later, she was scared out of her mind. She told her brother all sorts of stories about ghosts, doors, and pockets of the house being in different times. Her brother had believed it to be a prank, but she claimed it was all true. When no one would believe her, she stopped talking about it. Eventually, life moved on and they forgot about the incident. Then, one day about a year after she had gone inside, the girl disappeared on her way home from school. The last person to see her – her best friend from school – had seen her go back into the O’Hallaran house.

“What is she doing here?” Eric demanded from the computer next to hers, breaking Penny out of her reverie.

Penny glanced at Tina who, not noticing Eric’s arrival, was staring intently at her phone.

“I couldn’t convince her to go home,” Penny muttered back.

Tina, hearing their whispered conversation, looked up. “Oh! What are you doing here?” she asked Eric.

Eric shrugged. “I have some homework to finish up. My computer’s broken.”

“What are you looking at?” Tina asked, suddenly drawn to the images on Penny’s computer screen. “You aren’t seriously looking up stuff about that house, are you?” She shivered.

“I was curious to see if the story you told was true,” Penny told her. “So far, I haven’t seen anything about it.”

“That’s because you’re not looking in the right places,” Eric told her, turning to his computer and scrolling through the results. “See, it’s this one.”

The page he chose – called  “Haunted Houses and Paranormal Places” – pulled up an old black-white-photo of the twin girls standing on the porch of the O’Hallaran house. According to the article, when the house was built, it was the biggest one on the block. Very little about the house had changed in the last century besides its decrepitude. Penny recognized the girls immediately. Violet and Rose, were the only daughters of Mr. and Mrs. James O’Hallaran. The parents had died in 1908 from a tragic train accident and the two girls had been sent to live with their aged uncle. It had definitely been the girls she had seen in the house. Standing behind the girls was an older gentleman. The article outlined the basic story – it was a lot like the one Tina’s brother had told her – but it also talked about the man that had supposedly killed the twin girls.

WM. Archibald O’Hallaran, the uncle of Violet and Rose O’Hallaran, was a wealthy businessman. He grew up on a farm, but early in his life, he made money working for the railroad. When he got tired of that, he invested in cattle and made most of his money by running one of the largest cattle ranches in the state.  After a time, he moved back to where his father had once farmed and built the biggest house the Irving had seen. Still, he hadn’t been satisfied, it seemed. He was constantly looking for new ways to make more money. When the twins had been forced into his custody after their parents’ deaths, it seemed he wasn’t thrilled, but he took it on as he did any other job. He had been found wandering in the basement looking for something after the twin girls had been found dead upstairs. He was confused about what was going on when they arrested him. He tried to plead his innocence, but  no one would believe that he hadn’t done it and he couldn’t explain how he had come to be in such a state. He died less than a year later before the trial was over. The town paper had even published a short obituary for him.

MR. WM. Archibald O’Hallaran, prominent businessman and entrepreneur, passed away in his house last night. The causes of Mr. O’Hallaran’s illness is unknown, though he was always known to be in good health. Recently implicated in the murder of Violet and Rose O’Hallaran, Mr. O’Hallaran spent the majority of his days in his home.

Known to his friends as Archie, Mr. O’Hallaran enjoyed passing his time by playing Croquet in his garden or reading the paper in the local diner. Despite the recent tragedy, Mr. O’Hallaran is widely remembered as a good, gentle soul and will be missed in the community.

There was more, but Penny did not read it. It seemed odd to her that a man accused of killing his twin nieces would be so well thought of in the small Irving community, but perhaps people knew more than they were telling.

The O’Hallaran estate, having no heirs, fell to some distant relative after the murder of the twins and the house went up for auction. Archie had died somewhere in his house, supposedly. After that, no one who entered the house lived very long or disappeared completely.

“I told you, it’s creepy!” Tina complained. “Can we look at something else?”

“Wait,” Penny told Eric as he scrolled through the page. She had seen a picture of the man who attacked her in the house. He was a lot younger, but she could almost swear it was him. “Who is that?”

Eric squinted at the page, “It says  here he’s the last known owner of the house.”

“What’s his name?”

“Randolph O’Hallaran.”

“Is that all it says?” she asked. Eric kept scrolling but there was nothing else about him. There were more detailed stories of disappearances on this website than Penny had found previously. There seemed to be one every ten or fifteen years until the last girl had gone missing in 1999. One took place around 1968 involving a Betty, Jimmy, and Ann Sholtz. Jimmy had accidentally driven his car, his two sisters in the backseat, into the fence. They all got out to move the car, but Ann had gone up to the door of the house to see if they could get any help. Two days later Ann went missing after she had left home to go to a friend’s house.

“Betty Sholtz,” Eric read aloud, “Isn’t she the science teacher?”

“Maybe that’s why…” Penny began, but she couldn’t finish the thought.

Suddenly, Tina’s phone rang. Startled, she looked down at it as if she didn’t know what to do with it. When she answered it, it was her mom. They had lost track of time and it was now close to four-thirty. “I have to go, guys,” she said when she hung up. She gave Penny a questioning look. Penny was all for staying and looking at the stories, but she noticed Eric was also packing up his things.

“I have to be home soon or my dad will be mad,” he explained, sounding almost apologetic. Almost.

With an inward sigh, Penny logged off, packed her bag, and followed Tina out of the library, Eric not far behind her.

At home alone, Penny idly flicked through the few TV channels that her aunt had available. There wasn’t much on – news, nature, reruns – but it was better than sitting around doing homework. She couldn’t stop thinking about the information they had found that afternoon. The website looked like maybe it had been put together by some kind of fanatic, but it was interesting. Definitely more interesting than anything else this dull town had to offer.

What if Ms. Sholtz knew more about the house that she was willing to share? Had they gone inside? Penny felt more and more questions popping into her head and all she wanted to do now was find out more. Who was Randolph O’Hallaran?  Her mind raced, coming to strange conclusions and even more questions.

Maybe it was best to just let it go, she thought. Everyone else seemed to want to. Everyone except Eric. What had made him so interested in it? In her mind’s eye, she saw the glowing door and its chilling inscription. Something very weird was going on here.

The doorbell rang, startling Penny. Her aunt was out somewhere in the town, but she had left her a few bucks for a pizza and Coke. Cash in hand, she went to the door. When she came back to the couch, pizza and Coke in her hands, the TV had…changed.

The picture – some prime time channel she had landed on – had disappeared, replaced by a weird flickering. There was a familiar noise, like the sound of leaves in the wind. The screen sprang to life. It was like watching a really old home video, but with the quality of a Charlie Chaplin clip. Dad had loved the old comedies… Penny shook herself and focused on the TV. It was a video of people wandering around in a lush garden, walking back and forth as though parading for the camera. They talked and laughed among themselves.

“Penny…”

Penny froze, nearly dropping the pizza on the floor as a shiver ran down her spine. She recognized that voice.

“Come on, Penny!”

Some of the people in the garden looked familiar, like they had belonged to another part of her life, one she could only just remember. The camera zoomed in on a girl, holding the hand of a woman that Penny recognized. She smiled at the camera.

“Come on!” the voice said.

Penny gasped and the TV abruptly shut off. She grabbed the remote and turned it back on, but it was just some show about a group of penguins. She changed the channel and it was some old man sitting behind a desk looking serious and talking about a war somewhere. Again. No matter how many times she changed the channel, the video of the garden never came back. Sullenly, she ate her pizza and waited, but she didn’t see it again.

Maybe she had imagined it…

With a sigh, she pulled out the homework she had yet to finish. Tomorrow was Friday. One more day in this long week and she would finally have time to properly look into this mystery.

Her phone buzzed and, swallowing her bite of pizza, she answered it.

“Hey, it’s me,” Eric’s voice came through.

Penny fought the urge to roll her eyes. “What is it this time?”

“I think we should go back to the house,” he said resolutely, as though he had only just made up his mind about it. “I’ve been doing a little more research, and…well, I just think we need to go back.”

Penny was not surprised. She had been feeling the same way. “Well, maybe it should wait until Saturday…” Penny answered.

“We can talk about it tomorrow,” Eric replied quickly. “Just wait until you see what I found.”

“Alright,” she answered. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow then.”

After they hung up, a vague sense of unease settled over Penny. Would Eric believe her if she told him about what she had seen? She dismissed the thought; she didn’t need to tell him about that. Tina wouldn’t believe her, of that she was sure. Eric was right, though, if they wanted answers, they would probably find them at the house.

Making herself more comfortable on the old couch, Penny started on her homework, hopping to distract herself. For the most part, it worked; by the time her aunt came home around eleven to say a quick hello and goodnight, Penny had all but put the house out of her mind.